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DETAILS REOPENING “MUSTS”

NO LAB CAPACITY TO ANALYZE MULTI-MILLIONS IN TESTS NATIONWIDE

BUSINESS OPENINGS BASED ON ESSENTIALITY

WPCNR GOVERNOR CUOMO CORONAVIRUS REPORT. By John F. Bailey. April 15, 2020:

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo detailed how New York will come back today in a program that emphasized stopping the spread, making sure the spread is stopped, and described a structured reopening plan driven by faster testing, and careful analysis of the essentiality of businesses that would open in sequence.

He said the Apex of infections in New York State had eased in a definite downward trend, but noted that though incubations of persons (going on ventilators) had declined, 2,253 new hospitalizations of persons with corona virus were reported.

To emphasize the need to stop spreading the Governor announced a new executive order making it mandatory persons going out in public had to wear a face mask, which could be made out of  cloth and cover the nose and mouth. The order is to be effective this Friday, April 17.

The Governor provided how he felt the New York “Bridge to Normal” would proceed. The first was massive testing of persons coming back to work. Testing essential workers and health care providers first. Then employees coming back to work in essential businesses. (more on that later in this ariticle.)

He said: “When you relax that social distancing, you could very well see an increase in the infection rate. So it’s all a calibration to the public health. But it’s going to be a gradual increasing of economic activity in calibration with the public health, public health standards. The single best tool to doing this gauging, right, is large-scale testing. Test, trace and isolate.”

He also announced the New York State Health Department had developed an antibody test, which can be administered by a pinprick taking blood from a person who has recovered from the coronavirus.

The state is asking the Food and Drug Administration to authorize the new antibody test for use beginning next week. With approval the state could conduct 100,000 tests a week. The Governor also said the state wanted to use saliva tests.

However the massive testing needs analysis, which suggests another problem:

New York’s 228 labs will process most of the NY tests, the governor said, and they would also help analyze tests in Michigan and Maryland which are other states being hard hit. He announced he has started the New York ventilator sharing policy he had promised two weeks ago.  He is sending 100 New York State ventilators to Michigan and 50 to the state of Maryland to handle the outbreaks gripping those states.

The Governor said the nation does not have the laboratory capacity to analyze the tests of all 50 states to give states a handle on the virus states of penetration. He pointed out the federal government has to act to set up more lab testing facilities, to speed the testing states not facing high coronavirus spread yet will rapidly fill out private labs, and probably have to pay a premium for test analysis in bidding wars. The governor said states are “broke,” that the federal government has to  spend to set up those labs, that the states cannot handle the testing capacity they need.

The governor gave insight into how businesses would be selected to be opened. He outlined a process that involved which businesses would be deemed essential, based on the service/business provided, and the number of essential public workers were needed, police,fire, health, ambulances, etc. The essential businesses would open first: testing persons in the city who returned to work to see if they were infected. Next another tier of essential businesses not so essential as the first would be allowed to open. Testing would continue.  What businesses were considered the most essential were not specified.

Questions in the press “Q. & A.” center on the “Must Wear Face Masks” State Order, focusing on how it could be enforced. The Governor said that you wear the mask off, but if you were approaching someone or a group of people on a street crossing so to speak, you had to put the mask back up. Asked about penalities, the Governor said there would be none to start, but he would see how compliance was before he specified penalties.

The Governor said:

“Stopping the spread is everything. How can you not wear a mask? I hope New Yorkers will do it because it makes sense.”

Below is the county-by-county listing of where the cases are Metropolitan area counties are in BOLD FACE.

the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:

County	Total Positive	New Positive
Albany	548	13
Allegany	28	0
Broome	153	7
Cattaraugus	32	0
Cayuga	36	3
Chautauqua	24	1
Chemung	69	5
Chenango	71	3
Clinton	45	0
Columbia	96	12
Cortland	23	1
Delaware	46	1
Dutchess	2,048	114
Erie	1,751	83
Essex	12	0
Franklin	13	0
Fulton	24	2
Genesee	76	0
Greene	73	7
Hamilton	3	0
Herkimer	40	1
Jefferson	47	0
Lewis	7	0
Livingston	31	0
Madison	105	1
Monroe	884	34
Montgomery	32	0
Nassau	26,715	1,465
Niagara	204	7
NYC	118,302	7,837
Oneida	246	17
Onondaga	449	18
Ontario	62	1
Orange	5,716	138
Orleans	33	2
Oswego	42	1
Otsego	44	0
Putnam	571	13
Rensselaer	124	4
Rockland	8,474	139
Saratoga	227	3
Schenectady	237	2
Schoharie	20	0
Schuyler	6	0
Seneca	18	0
St. Lawrence	92	0
Steuben	151	4
Suffolk	23,278	816
Sullivan	424	9
Tioga	25	1
Tompkins	115	3
Ulster	733	43
Warren	77	0
Washington	42	2
Wayne	48	0
Westchester	20,947	756
Wyoming	34	2
Yates	6	0