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WPCNR GOVERNOR ANDREW M. CUOMO FRIDAY CORONAVIRUS BRIEFING. By John F. Bailey, May 8, 2020 UPDATES IN BLACK BOLD TYPEFACE :

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced a “Toxic-Shock” like disease killed a 5 year old child Thursday in New York, who had been suffering from the corona virus. The Governor listed the symptoms above. The Governor said the State Health Department is investigating.

The Governor commented that though coronavirus infection statistics were going down they were going down much slower than they went up. He attributed that to a continuing new hospitalizations rate of approximately 600 a day, he commented on earlier this week.

“We would have liked to see a steady sharp decline in these numbers, (the decline) is more of a flattening out as numbers continue to drop,” the governor said. He said Thursday saw 216 New Yorkers die from coronavirus, which has been the trend this week.

He said “We are in control. There is a science to this, contrary to politics and emotion. You can pull up the records of countries who reopened, and now have had to do a 180 degree turnaround. I don’t want to see 100,000 more people die. Facts make the decision. If we make a wrong move, more people will die. Let’s get through it without any further loss of life.”

The Governor is now concentrating on how to lower the vast proportion of infections in black and Latino neighborhoods. He said, from his address: “When you look at the new cases and where they’re coming from in the state, it’s clear that a majority of the new cases and a disproportionate number are coming from minority communities. 21 zip codes with the highest rate of hospitalization – 20 have greater than average black and/or Latino populations. So, this is something that we’re focused on and we’re going to address and we will address immediately. We will have more information on this in the next couple of days. “

In the “Q. & A,” the governor said upstate regions would likely be allowed to reopen for construction and manufacturing, but felt the numbers for the downstate region were not going to be there..

The “Q. & A.” brought reporter questions on the unemployment checks situation.

Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governer said the state was “trying to build a plane while trying to fly it,” because the automatic telephone system crashed due to 1.6 million unemployment claims in 3 weeks. Last year the state only processed 300,000 in twelve months. She repeated for about the umpteenth time to the reporters, who always raise this question, that 3,000 people had been hired to get through the backlog. She said 1.6 Million million claims had been processed in 7 weeks.

The governor with a huge grin, remarked to reporters in a few weeks reporters would be asking about persons who received checks who were not entitled to them, the state should take the time to check them.

There were no questions on nursing homes. There were questions on the new illness being investigated.

The Governor confirmed 2,938 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 330,407 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 330,407 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows (DOWNSTATE REGIONS IN BOLD FACE. WESTCHESTER HAS TOPPED 30,995 CASES, ROCKLAND IS NOW AT 12,349 CASES, NASSAU, 37,812; SUFFOLK, 36,223; NYC, 18,713:

County	Total Positive	New Positive
Albany	1,384	36
Allegany	35	0
Broome	364	4
Cattaraugus	59	0
Cayuga	52	0
Chautauqua	40	0
Chemung	130	1
Chenango	105	0
Clinton	74	5
Columbia	304	2
Cortland	29	0
Delaware	63	0
Dutchess	3,277	44
Erie	4,255	119
Essex	31	1
Franklin	17	1
Fulton	103	2
Genesee	169	1
Greene	199	1
Hamilton	5	0
Herkimer	76	2
Jefferson	66	2
Lewis	10	0
Livingston	100	5
Madison	249	3
Monroe	1,735	47
Montgomery	64	1
Nassau	37,812	219
Niagara	605	17
NYC	181,783	1,567
Oneida	620	11
Onondaga	1169	54
Ontario	104	3
Orange	9,402	74
Orleans	121	13
Oswego	72	2
Otsego	67	0
Putnam	1,074	8
Rensselaer	380	13
Rockland	12,349	69
Saratoga	388	14
Schenectady	558	7
Schoharie	45	0
Schuyler	7	0
Seneca	46	0
St. Lawrence	187	6
Steuben	225	1
Suffolk	36,223	331
Sullivan	1,039	18
Tioga	99	2
Tompkins	131	1
Ulster	1,429	13
Warren	199	6
Washington	201	11
Wayne	79	1
Westchester	30,905	197
Wyoming	73	2
Yates	20	1

WPCNR THURSDAY GOVERNOR ANDREW M. CUOMO CORONAVIRUS BRIEFING. By John F. Bailey, May 7, 2020:

This morning, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo extend until August 20 the moratorium on evictions for non-payment of rent in New York State, and allowed persons unable to pay rent to use their security deposits (with landlords) to draw down against the rent, with ability to pay the security used later.

In the “Q. & A”, Governor Cuomo in response to a question said the state is working for a moratorium on foreclosures of banks on landlords who have protested that nonpayment of rent affects their abilities to pay their mortgages.

He also announced efforts to avoid farmers destroying food for lack of buyers on the face of the accelerated demand Food Banks are facing. He detailed how the state is spending $25 Million to purchase food for Food Banks who are seeing unprecedented demand from persons needing food. He encouraged philanthropic organizations to contact the state to aid the Food Banks in purchasing enough food to feed the growing public demand (up 200% in Westchester alone).

Governor Cuomo said the state’s $25 million Nourish New York Initiative has purchased food and products from more than 2,100 New York farms and provided support to nearly 50 food banks, soup kitchens and food pantries to date.

Within the next week, more than 20,000 households across the state will receive Nourish New York products. First announced by the Governor on April 27th, the Nourish New York Initiative provides relief by purchasing food and products from Upstate farms and directs them to the populations who need them most through New York’s network of food banks. The state is also asking any philanthropies or foundations that would like to help the state’s food banks to contact [email protected].

The Governor said the coronavirus rates of decline were continuing on all leading indicators of the disease slowdown in infections. He said total hospitalizations was down to 8,600, net hospitalizations were down and the 3-Dqy average was down. Deaths were steady with another 231 New York dead from the virus yesterday. New hospitalizations were down.

He reported  that 27,000 essential employees who were on the front lines were tested for antibodies, and results showed what he called “amazingly good news,” than that of the general population, noting that masks and sanitizers work. The essential workers average 7% infecttions behind the average 14% rate of infections in the general population.

• 6.8 percent of health care workers in Westchester County tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 13.8 percent of the general population in Westchester County
• 12.2 percent of health care workers in New York City tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 19.9 percent of the general population in New York City
• 11.1 percent of health care workers on Long Island tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 11.4 percent of the general population on Long Island

He said the New York Policy would be to prevent deaths as much as possible, and not reopen until deaths had declined well below the 231 a day rate.