Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo Announces New York's COVID-19 Positivity Rate Has Declined

Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that New York's State'sCOVID-19 positivity rate has declined for 23 straight days.

AUDIO is available here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's interview is available below:

Good morning, everyone. I have Melissa DeRosa with me, Robert Mujica with me, I have Beth Garvey with me, Commissioner Zucker with me, Kelly Cummings with me, Gareth Rhodes with me, and Michael Kopy who runs our emergency services. When I say "with me" that is not technically true and I know you're technically minded, but they are on the phone. Bear with me in the conceptual sense.

Big news for you made by the Governor of the State of New York right now - it is very cold outside.

Second piece of big news, a major winter storm is forecast which will be a statewide event. Statewide events are a problem for us because they don't allow us to regionally deploy assets. If it's only New York City and Long Island we can descent plows from all across the State to downstate if it's only upstate, vice versa. This is going to be a problem all across the state if the weather forecast is accurate. To suggest that the weather forecast isn't always accurate, but for those of you who think the weather forecast is not always accurate, if the weather forecast is accurate. But they're talking about a serious amount of snow - 18 inches of snow, New York City, Long Island, Hudson Valley, with the 45 miles per hour possible coastal flooding, so this is a bad combination.

We're working this morning on getting all our equipment ready and trying to pre-deploy equipment. Again, it's harder to pre-deploy when you're looking at a statewide event but we'll have 1,600 plows, 300 loaders, 175 medium plows, 52 tow plows, 20 graders which are a serious piece of equipment. As you know, since there are hundred-year storms twice a year, we have purchased much more snow equipment, emergency equipment in general, and Mike Kopy is on top of that. I will be on top of that through today, tonight and tomorrow.

With this situation come power outages. With power outages comes another set of problems. If it is this much snow, then you get into closing roads, people stranded on roads, so the situation gets complicated quickly and we are on it.

But be smart please. If you don't have to travel, don't travel tonight. If you don'thave to travel, plan not to travel tomorrow. When people are on the roads and get stuck, it puts their life in danger. Then the people who have to go and rescue them their life is in danger, and plus it makes clearing roads a lot harder.

On COVID, the post-holiday surge reduction continues. That is an awkward phrase, but I don't have a better one. We had a post-holiday surge. The surge has reduced and the reduction of the surge continues. The positivity rate is down to 4.4. State's positivity rate has declined for 23 straight days which is a significant trend. 138 New Yorkers passed away. Hospitalization is 7,976. That'sdown 200, but please remember the New Yorkers who passed away in your thoughts and prayers. Thank the essential workers and hospital workers who went through another surge after a very, very long year.

The seven-day average daily hospital admissions is at 913. That's the lowest level since December. Seven-day positivity is 5.1. That's the lowest level since December 14. The seven-day average for new daily cases is 61 per 100,000. That's the lowest level since December. ICUs are down 17 and intubations are down nine. What is happening — I'll give you the number by regions in a second — we anticipated the holiday surge. I spoke about it for all 37 days. I started with Thanksgiving. People teased me about being anti-celebration. I'm not anti-celebration. I'm very pro-celebration, but celebrate smart. The surge went up. That's because the social behavior went up, the social interaction went up, but now it's coming down. All the models show a continued reduction. Hence, reduction of the micro-clusters, the orange zones, 25 percent indoor dining New York City Valentine's Day, using testing, Buffalo Bills, marriage ceremonies.

In the here and now, all the news is good. You look at all the trend lines, it'sgood. It's good. For me, I have been through this a number of times and I anticipate the probability of the future to be ready for it. "The lines are all going down. What is there to worry about? I should relax and liberate myself because the trend is all going down." That's true on one level if you look at just today's numbers. What to watch for are these strains and the quote unquote "variants of interest." I love it when they make up new terms. Variants of interest. Put in that the new dictionary of COVID terms. If the U.K. strain hits, if the Brazil strain, if the South Africa strain, if there's another mutation that comes down the pike — that could change the trajectory, so yes, feel good about how we handled the holiday surge. God bless New Yorkers. They step up. Don't fully relax. Appreciate the success, but these U.K. strains could happen and I don't want to be Governor Downer, but I don't want to be anything other than frank and candid with the people of the state. Today's news is very good but keep an eye on these U.K. variants and the other variants - and all of them suggest more diligence.

The CDC is talking about things like double masks. Wear two masks, so that'sthe overall point. Positivity seven- day average, Long Island, number one: 6.3. Mid-Hudson, number two: 6.1. North Country, 5.8. That's a different place for the North Country. New York City: 5.2. Western New York: 5.1. That's a different place for Western New York. Capital Region: 5. Mohawk Valley: 4.6. Finger Lakes: 3.9, 3.9 Finger Lakes. That's a different position for the Finger Lakes, but that's a good, better position. 3.1 Central New York. 2.1. Southern Tier. Southern Tier, congratulations. They had that spike, they got it, they turned around. Looks like the Finger Lakes even understands what they're dealing with now. Positivity by borough: Bronx is highest, 6.8, in New York City. Queens 5.6, Brooklyn 5.5, Staten Island 4.9. Looks like Staten Island understands what they're dealing with. That's a turnaround for Staten Island. Denial is not a life strategy. Manhattan's still 3.4. Manhattan has been the lowest for significant period of time in New York City, which when we get the time and we go back and we study the cultural and demographic overlays of how this virus spread, it's going to be interesting. My next life, when I come back as a research scientist.

Vaccine, 1.9 million doses administered, actually 1.919. 1.558 for first doses. 361 second dosages. The people are talking about using second dosages for first dosages. There is disagreement in the scientific community. That is not up to a state. People are saying "oh, the state should allow it." Yeah, I know. Except there's something called the law, l-a-w. The federal government would have to approve that. It is a very difficult call gratuitously for the federal government, because you better be very certain of what supply you have, and what production you're going to have. If you start using second dosages for first dosages, the federal government has to be sure the production level is going to increase so you can satisfy the increased first dosages and still have enough to do second dosages. No one is saying, do first doses and not do second doses.Actually, some people are, but they're a very small minority. But, if the federal government allowed it, we would do it, but we'd have to be prudent too, because it's very complicated. And the federal government has said a number of times that they don't really have their handle on the production level yet. Until you have a handle on the production level, I wouldn't start getting overcomplicated. Also, if the Johnson & Johnson dosages come online quickly, and they have a production level, that would be significant.

New York was the first state to talk about social equity in the vaccines. We have a social equity vaccine task force, and we focused on two issues. We focused on accessibility of the vaccine, making sure it's accessible to every community. If you remember I started when the president was Trump. I said there's not enough talk about making sure the vaccine is available for everyone. Blacks died at twice the rate, Latinos died at one and a half times the rate, healthcare deserts, et cetera. There was a poll that was put out by, and we talked about, I'msorry, accessibility was first, and acceptance was second. Acceptance meaning would people take it? And this has been a general population issue. It has been more of an issue in the Black and the Brown community. There's more cynicism, more distrust of the system, Tuskegee experiment, and it's understandable. I don't believe it's justified for this vaccine, but it's understandable historically. There was significant distrust of the Trump Administration, but we put together a New York State panel to be able to say don't trust Trump. New York State doctors reviewed it, and we did it. People said "oh, it's going to take more time to have a New York State panel." They were wrong. The New York State panel acted very quickly, and now we needed the New York State panel, because we have a real hesitancy problem. There was a poll that came out during the week, the Association for A Better New York, conducted a poll. It had troubling news. It said that 2 out of 5 New Yorkers, or 40 percent, are hesitant to take the vaccine as soon as it's available - 60/40. That is not good. Remember, we have to get70-90 percent, 75-85 percent vaccinated.

It also pointed to, again, and this poll found what many other polls found, there is a differentiation in the white community, Hispanic community and the Black community. 78 percent of white New Yorkers said they would take a vaccine as soon as it's available. Only 39 percent of Black New Yorkers, 54 percent of Hispanic New Yorkers said they would take it as soon as available. That's a problem.

What's more of a problem is we are seeing that anecdotally, but with some data. We have data on the 1a population and if you want to talk about a controlled group, hospital workers and - you know we're concerned about getting hospital workers vaccinated because if they're not vaccinated, they'll get sick and if they get sick the hospital capacity comes down. Hospital capacity comes down, we close. Hospital capacity comes down, hospitals get overwhelmed, California, Texas, Florida, Italy. We've been hyper-focused on the vaccination of hospital workers.

Hospital workers are interesting because virtually all hospital workers have been offered the vaccine. They're probably the one population where you know with the most certainty everyone was offered the vaccine. You know we've been pushing that for weeks and we've seen the overall number go up dramatically. Every hospital now says they've offered everyone the vaccine. Of hospital workers, listen to this, 70 percent of the hospital workers statewide are white. 63 percent took the vaccine. Of Latinos, Latinos are 8 percent of statewide hospital workers. They are 10 percent of the people who took the vaccine. Asian-Americans are 11 percent of hospital workers. They are 16 percent of the people who took the vaccines.

Asians are over performing, if you will, by percentage. Latinos are over performing by percentage. Black population, among hospital workers, 17 percent. Only 10 percent of vaccine recipients. What we've seen in polls, what we see anecdotally is continuing. The hospital workers, when I say it's a controlled group, this has nothing to do with region of State. This has nothing to do with residents. This was at their place of work, where they were all offered, they didn't have to travel. It was in their facility, and I think it's the clearest demonstration of hesitancy. And again, it's what we anticipated, which I understand, but it's something that we have to overcome. Now, you have about 12 percent of respondents who declined to provide ethnicity. What the scientists will say is, "well they were probably more African-American, more Latino," but we don't know that with any certainty. I've spent -- I've made a lot of phone calls this morning to pastors and to leaders in the African-American community. The state is going to do an advertising campaign on vaccines, but specifically targeted to Black New Yorkers to build up the trust level, and have validators speak about the trust level that people should have in this vaccine. It has nothing to do with politics, the Trump administration's gone. The New York panel approved it. Leading Black doctors recommend it. Leading Black civic leaders recommend it. Leading Black elected officials recommend it. But, there is a definite trust issue that we have to get through.

Okay, with that, operator, let's take some questions. While we're compiling let me ask Melissa - we're getting questions on people who have vaccination appointments tomorrow and what are we going to do if the snow is anything like the forecast. Melissa, do you have an update on that?

Melissa DeRosa: Yes, so we're going to do a weather check early this afternoon and based on that weather check - people should assume that their appointments are going forward - however, if the weather is looking bad or as bad as we think it's going to be, then we figure that there is going to be issues with roads, then people will either get a text or email depending on how they signed up for their appointments initially, letting them know about the cancelation. If there are cancelations, which mainly we're looking at Aqueducts, Javits, Westchester, Stony Brook, Jones Beach, then you will get an email or text message letting you know your appointment has been canceled but it will be rescheduled for this week, so you will still get your appointment this week and you will be given a new time and date this week to get your appointment and if you have an issue with the time or date of the appointment there will be a phone number in the email or text message that you could call to reschedule, but you're guaranteed to get your appointment this week, should we have to reschedule for the snow.