COVID-19 LATEST: NY, NJ, CT to form testing coalition; 428 dead in Westchester

Fast Facts:

• The governor said he was cautiously optimistic that “we are slowing the infection rate”

• The governor asked rhetorically, “Who should have warned us last December?” He said, “If we don”™t know the answer, how do we know it won”™t happen again?”

• The state is providing $200 million in emergency food assistance to more than 700,000 low-income households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

• Airbnb will give $2 million to help provide rooms in union hotels at no cost to frontline workers. As part of this, 1199SEIU is partnering to offer housing to their members as they fight the pandemic statewide.

• The InterContinental Times Square, Yotel and the Hudson Hotel are providing 800 free rooms to health care workers coming from out of state

• The governor said he was working to create a COVID-19 Heroes Compensation Fund to support front line workers who contracted the virus

There have been 428 deaths from COVID-19 in Westchester, according to the New York State Department of Health. The department said that 389 of the individuals were Westchester residents. The statistics were released this aftrnoon.

Earlier, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo told an Albany news conference that New York, Connecticut and New Jersey are ready to join together in a coalition to produce a test that would be used to determine who is safe to go back to work and resume other activities because they have developed an immunity to COVID-19 and can no longer infect others.

Cuomo said the Health Department has developed an antibody test, already has the capability to run 300 tests per day and will have the capability to do 1,000 tests day by next Friday. Cuomo warned, however, that millions of tests would need to be administered.

The three states are asking the federal government to join in a full partnership in the project. Cuomo said the federal government could use the Defense Production Act to quickly ramp up American industry to produce the enormous quantities of the tests that  would be needed to safely bring the U.S. economy up to speed while avoiding possible second and third waves of the pandemic.

Health Commissioner Howard Zucker explained that the test is conducted using a needle stick in a finger or the heel of a foot to draw a drop of blood. The blood is then combined with a chemical to reveal whether the person has developed antibodies that protect against the virus.

Cuomo was speaking against the background of President Trump’s recent statements that he wanted to see the U.S. economy opened in a month and testing for presence of the virus was not necessary. Trump’s downplaying of the importance of testing was a sudden reversal of his former position touting the excellence of COVID-19 testing under his administration and his false claims that anyone who wanted a test could have it.

About 2 million tests have been administered among the country’s population of 327 million people. The diagnostic tests for COVID-19 have been rationed with some individuals who were showing symptoms being denied a test.

“We need an unprecedented mobilization where government can produce these tests in the millions,” Cuomo said. “We have nine million people we want to get back to work. You need more than several thousand tests per week if this is going to happen anytime soon. Private sector companies on their own I don’t believe will be able to come to scale. You’re going to need government intervention to make that happen.”

Cuomo said that if he had a Defense Production Act in New York state he would use it.

“I don’t have that tool. The federal government does,” Cuomo said. “Any way we can partner with the federal government to get these tests up to scale as quickly as possible, we are all in.”

Cuomo said a new federal stimulus bill for the economy is needed, but this one needs to be fair, especially to New York. Without directly naming Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who yesterday tried to push through a $250 billion package using a unanimous consent procedure rather than taking a vote of the senators, Cuomo said this is not a time to be passing bills to make sure that a senator’s home state gets a lot of pork barrel money.

“This is about helping the country come back and focusing on the need,” Cuomo said. “Look at where the cases are. Look at where the damage has been done. Help those places come back and come back quickly. That’s what the stimulus bill is supposed to be doing.”

Cuomo reported that there now have been 7,844 deaths in New York state from the virus. He said the number of new hospital admissions yesterday was 359, down from the 481 on Wednesday. For the first time since March 17, more people were discharged from intensive care units than were admitted. There was a net decrease of 17 in the number of people in ICUs compared with Wednesday’s 84 new admissions and 302 new admissions on Tuesday.

Health Department numbers showed that 146 Rockland residents have died from the virus. Putnam County lost 22 residents to the disease. Orange County recorded 91 fatalities. There have been 25 deaths recorded in Duchess County. There have been 18,077 cases confirmed in Westchester. There were 7,122 cases in Rockland, 487 in Putnam, 4,532 in Orange and 1,598 in Dutchess.

Cuomo said that the state had been doing much better in terms of controlling the spread of the virus than had been forecast by researchers.

Cuomo proposed creating a COVID-19 heroes compensation fund that would support health care and other workers who contracted the virus and their families. It would be similar to the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. He said he was working with the state’s congressional delegation on the idea. Cuomo said among the categories of workers who would be covered by the fund would be fire, police, EMS, transit and private sector workers who were in essential businesses.

Cuomo said he felt relatively comfortable for the moment with the situation regarding personal protective equipment and ventilators but there still are anecdotal reports of hospitals asking personnel to operate under emergency preservation rules to get extra uses out of masks and other equipment.