Fast Facts:
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The governor chose Sunday to give thanks to:
* the 1.1 million health care frontline workers, including 445,000 hospital workers in the state and 160,00 nursing home workers
* the entire team at Northwell Health
* neighboring states and the 95,000 medical professionals who volunteered
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The governor said the state will “undertake the most aggressive statewide antibody testing survey in the nation” over the next week.
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“Part of how to reopen New York state is determining how many people have been infected with the virus already,” the governor said.
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The governor said he understands to political pressure to reopen the economy as well as state parks, “But we must be smart and coordinated and give the people their best government. ”¦Blame me.”
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The governor quoted the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
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New York has 400 ventilators ready to go to Massachusetts, which is seeing a spike in cases, should the state need them.
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There were 507 deaths, down from the previous day”™s 540
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Total hospitalizations continued to decline in New York state
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Intubations also continued to drop
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo this afternoon warned that while data indicates that New York has passed the apex of the COVID-19 outbreak and is now on the downhill side of the epidemic, dangers are emerging that could lead to a fresh wave of cases.
While praising what health care workers, first responders, government and the general public has done to stop the spread of the virus, Cuomo warned that the progress can be undone by political pressure to reopen the economy too quickly and failure of the federal government to fund the states as they struggle to reopen while keeping the virus in check.
Cuomo spoke at a Sunday afternoon news conference in Manhasset following a visit to Northwell Health’s laboratories where the health care organization is expanding its COVID-19 testing capabilities.
The state Department of Health released new statistics on the outbreak on Sunday afternoon. They showed that as of yesterday there were 3,869 deaths in New York state. Westchester had 831 deaths, of which 743 were county residents.
Rockland had 276 COVID-19 deaths within its borders, while a total of 297 Rockland residents had died from the virus. For Putnam, 36 county residents were fatalities with 35 of the deaths occurring within the county. There were 168 Orange County residents who died, with 165 of the deaths occurring within the county.
Dutchess County had 51 fatalities with 49 being county residents.
New York state had 242,786 cases identified from 617,555 tests that were conducted. Westchester had 23,803 cases identified. There were 9,364 positive tests in Rockland, 592 in Putnam, 6,379 in Orange and 2,240 in Dutchess.
Cuomo decried conspiracy theorists and protesters supported by President Trump who are opposing the actions of states’ governors without knowing the factual basis going into decisions the governors have been making. He quoted the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Before the COVID-19 era, the Trump administration was fond of developing what it called “alternative facts.”
“People are angry and frustrated right now. This has been a great triumph, what the federal government did, what the states did, what the health care workers did, the way Americans responded and acted responsibly. It is better than any of the predictors,” Cuomo said. He recounted predictions from the Trump administration in mid-March that there could be up to 2 million Americans needing to be hospitalized with COVID-19 at a time when the country had only about 1 million hospital beds.
“This was heroic efforts that changed that curve,” Cuomo said. “God Bless America. But, don’t underappreciate what you just did. And don’t go backwards. That would be a real mistake.”
Cuomo presented facts that yesterday there were 507 more deaths in New York state from the virus, with 474 in hospitals and 33 in nursing homes. That was a slight drop from the 540 deaths on Friday. He said another fact is there were 16,213 people still in hospitals suffering from COVID-19. He found good news in another fact: the number of hospitalized people no longer requiring a ventilator went up by 112 yesterday.
Cuomo pointed out that in the beginning there were people who doubted that the spread of the virus could be controlled, but what was done in the way of imposing social distancing and restricting economic activity worked.
“We controlled the beast. We apexed, we plateaued, it’s coming down the other side. That is good news,” Cuomo said. “But, the beast is still alive We did not kill the beast. And, the beast can rise up again. We know that.”
Cuomo said that what happens with the virus is wholly dependent on what society does to control it. He said that society should learn lessons from what has happened and be thinking about reopening and rebuilding not just what had existed but doing things that are better and smarter. He said there needs to be a more cohesive spirit in the community, with more social equality. He said people should be thinking about better health care, better transportation and more telecommuting, smarter telemedicine and smarter technology in education.
Cuomo expressed a concern that school systems in New York would face up to a 50% cut in state aid if the federal government continues its policy of not providing relief funding to the states.
He pointed to the administration calling on states to handle testing programs that would be at the core of the reopening process without providing funding for the states. Cuomo again pointed out that the National Governors Association has issued a bipartisan call for the federal government to fund state governments during the recovery effort to the tune of $500 billion.
Yesterday, Cuomo and Govs. Ned Lamont of Connecticut and Phil Murphy of New Jersey announced that recreational boating would be allowed to operate, including restaurants at marinas being allowed to provide takeout food and beverage service.
Cuomo said that was another example of regional coordination by the states while also noting that there were some differences when it came to policies on parks and beaches. He reported that in New York parks are open but beaches closed, in Connecticut state parks and beaches are open and in New Jersey state parks are closed and some beaches are open.
Cuomo said that he’d be signing new executive orders allowing any former funeral director or licensed funeral directors from out of state to work in New York and allowing any person licensed to conduct weddings to do so remotely, expanding on the previous executive order allowing municipal clerks to conduct remote weddings.
Appearing with Cuomo was Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health. He said that over the next week they anticipate being able to process 10,000 COVID-19 antibody tests a day, quickly growing the number to 20,000 tests a day.
He said Northwell is working with all the other health systems in the region to increase testing capability. He said that all of the lab people are collaborating daily to work on expansion so that eventually hundreds of thousands of tests can be run weekly.
The governor said that New York state will this week begin a program to randomly sample the population for COVID-19 antibodies in an effort to determine the true extent of the infection throughout the state’s population.
Staff writer Bob Rozycki contributed to this report.
