Cuomo Appeals for Federal Assistance on Testing Supply Chains
Gov. Andrew Cuomo renewed calls on Saturday for a more robust federal commitment for vigorous testing and tracing and financial assistance to the states in order to combat COVID-19 in hopes of reopening the state’s economy.
Cuomo said that his administration has called on the state’s top 50 producing labs to see what would be needed to double the state’s testing capacity. There are about 300 licensed labs in New York State.
However, the labs informed his administration that some of the components necessary to complete the tests aren’t available, including chemical reagents and swabs. Some of the items aren’t even produced in the United States and must be obtained from China.
“The challenge now is bringing this up to scale,” Cuomo said. “We did 500,000 tests in a month. That’s great news. The bad news – it’s only a fraction of what you need. The more you test, the more information, the more you can reopen society.”
Cuomo made his comments as another 540 New Yorkers died on Friday from the virus. A ray of hope is that net hospitalizations have fallen modestly for the fifth consecutive day to less than 1,700 on Friday. However, there have been still more than 1,900 new COVID-19-related hospitalizations statewide for the past three days.
In addition to a lack of swabs and testing chemicals, there needs to be thousands of people available to trace contacts in New York State to identify and isolate those who have been exposed, the governor said. That was successfully accomplished after New Rochelle became one of the first hot spots in the United States.
The goal is to lower the infection rate from the current .9 people infected by a person with COVID-19, Cuomo said. Once that infection rate reaches 1.2, then there is an outbreak similar to what was occurring in late March in downstate New York, he explained.
In addition to the equipment, which the federal government should be coordinating, Cuomo said about $500 billion to the 50 states apportioned by need is required to control the virus.
“We need these things from the federal government,” Cuomo said. “We need help on the supply chain, especially when it becomes international, and we need coordination and federal partnership.”
The federal government did provide the state with 1.5 million cloth masks since Cuomo issued an executive order earlier this week. It required anyone who goes out in public and unable to maintain social distancing to wear a facial covering.
During Saturday’s briefing, Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor, announced that another executive order will be issued that would allow couples to get married remotely and for clerks to perform ceremonies over video.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
