Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on ABC's Good Morning America

Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was a guest on ABC's Good Morning America.

AUDIO is available here.

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

Michael Strahan: Welcome back to GMA. We have much more on our top story, the coronavirus outbreak. New York State is the epicenter with around 160,000 confirmed cases. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo joins us now and, governor, thank you so much for joining us. We know you're very busy at this time. With those 160,000 confirmed cases New York Sate has more cases than any other country besides the U.S. but you reported yesterday the hospitalizations are down. They're flat. Intubations are down. So has New York reached its peak?

Governor Cuomo: That is the big question. Good to be with you, Michael. good to see you, thank you. Thank you for what you've been doing. Talk about mixed emotion, mixed information. The hospitalization rate is down. the number of new people coming into the hospitals is down. And that is good news. We think we're on what they call the plateau, as opposed to the apex. But we're on a plateau and the hospitalization rate is coming down. It's making it easier for the emergency rooms to deal with this because they're at overcapacity to begin with. The terrible news is the death toll is going up. And I understand the logic to that. These are people who came into the hospital a couple of weeks ago, they didn't recover, they were put on ventilators and once you're on a ventilator, the longer you're on a ventilator the worse it gets, Michael. So the death toll is going up and that's what's most painful. The good news, if you will, is this plateau, this peaking of the number of new cases.

Michael Strahan: And with the death toll going up, when do you expect these numbers to go down? Because we hear everyone being in quarantine that these things are working but when can we expect the numbers to go down?

Governor Cuomo: Well, we'll see the death toll going down hopefully over the next few days. Nobody really knows, Michael. We've been following these projections from some of the experts, global experts, but they're just projections because nobody's been here before. This is uncharted territory for everyone. The important point to me is the numbers aren't doing anything on their own. This is all a function of what people are doing, right? So it is directly related to our behavior. I keep pushing to stay at home, stay at home. Don't get complacent just because you see the situation is not getting worse doesn't mean it's going to get better on its own and you can relax. The numbers are a consequence of our daily actions. I'll tell you what the numbers are tomorrow if you tell me how we behave today, right? It's almost that cause and effect, so people have to understand if we did nothing or if people didn't comply with these close down messages and social distancing requirements, you would see those numbers go up on a straight rocket ship. It's what we're doing that's working and we have to keep doing it and we hope over the next few days you'll start to see the death toll come down also, if, if, if we keep doing what we're doing.

Michael Strahan: And you say these are uncharted waters for all of us, so how worried are you about a second wave here?

Governor Cuomo: Well, not to get ahead of ourselves but how do we start to get back to the economy, how do we start to look forward? Let's learn the lessons from the past, right? And this virus, we all saw the virus in China, et cetera, in Italy, et cetera, but, frankly, we still were in this country and nobody really anticipated what it could do here and we didn't really get prepared. So before we start to relax, there is some troubling information about a second wave of this virus moving and people getting reinfected in Italy and China. I think we have to watch that and understand it. We don't want the same thing to happen twice. So I think there's a big caution flag on all of this going back to the new economy. We're going to have to be able to test in a way we've never tested before. Testing is going to be the key, I think, Michael to getting people back to work but that means millions of tests quickly, so how do we do that? So, there's a lot of question marks in the future.

Michael Strahan: And then we talked about rapid testing is the key to opening up New York, which you just did right there but what is your best time frame for when that could happen?

Governor Cuomo: It's when can we make it happen. I don't think it just happens, right? There is a disconnect between what government wants, what society wants and what private companies can do quickly. We're going to have to work to make that rapid testing come online at the volume and scale we need. We have been working on testing for months, right? We still haven't gotten it to where we need it to be. This rapid testing is a different type of testing. The antibody testing is a different type of testing. We're experimenting with convalescent plasma as a treatment, people who were infected. How do we bring that up to scale quickly? these are all new challenges for us, Michael. We haven't done this before. We haven't done it well to date. So that is, again, going to be a consequence of how well government responds and how well we get this up and running.

Michael Strahan: And governor, it's been a big demand for beds and ventilators as well. are you confident that we can continue to meet the demand for beds and ventilators over the next few weeks?

Governor Cuomo: Well, the good news is, Michael, we were looking at numbers and projections that were really frightening. We have about 53,000 beds in New York State. Hospital beds in New York State. We were looking at projections that said we may need 110,000 beds, another model, 73,000 beds. That was just staggering. We went from 53,000 beds to about 90,000 beds in this system in about a month, which was incredible what the health care system did. But by our best projection, we couldn't make the numbers if we didn't control the infection rate and if we didn't get those numbers down, so, so far we have gotten those numbers down. We have increased the capacity of the health care system and we're managing it in a way we never have before. If the numbers don't go up, we should be okay. The whole system is overcapacity, but we built in some relief valves. We have a 2,500-bed capacity at the Javits Center that we did with the federal government and the military. We have the U.S. Navy ship Comfort, which has 500 beds available as an overflow, if you will. So we're managing the case intake as long as it doesn't go up. And, again, we're now seeing the death toll rise as people who are in those hospital beds longer are passing.

Michael Strahan: We know about the heavy impact this has had on minority communities and particularly African-Americans. You talked about doing more testing in those communities. If you did that testing, how would that help the spread there in those communities?

Governor Cuomo: Well, the testing helps because when you find someone positive the point is you then isolate the positive. That's why we have to get more testing and faster testing, because the testing is not just to say, just so you know, you're positive, you're negative. It's to find that positive quickly, isolate the positive so the positive doesn't continue to infect and that's how you get the infection rate down. But with the African-American community, Latino community, are we shocked that the rates are higher in the African-American, Latino community? We shouldn't be, Michael, if we're being honest. We know that there's inequality in the health care system. We know that the poorer communities often pay the highest price for these types of emergency situations because they're really just bringing to light that systemic racism and discrimination in the system. My question is, let's learn from this moment, right? And what do we learn that we can change and make this place better for having gone through this hell? That's what I'm looking at. So it's not just testing. It's testing and understanding why the minority community has a higher rate. Is it because they work in public sector jobs and they were essential workers and they didn't have the luxury, Michael, of staying home and they didn't have the luxury of going to stay at their second house or staying with a relative in their home in the suburbs. Is it the co-morbidities? Is it the lack of health treatment? Why and how do we fix that? You know, we paid a horrendous price here. I lived through 9/11 in New York and I thought 9/11 was the worst tragedy that we would see in my lifetime, and it changed New Yorkers. It changed America, 9/11. This is worse in terms of death than 9/11. Multiples of the people we lost in 9/11. Let's please learn from this. There has to be some lesson that we take from this so we're better for it because we paid a very high price. One of them is let's understand what happened with the African-American/Latino communities, and let's fix it and let's understand broadly how this lapped and what we missed so this doesn't happen again.

Michael Strahan: A lot of lessons to be learned through all of this, you know, the president, he's clashed with other governors over the federal response. How do you think the president has done so far?

Governor Cuomo: Look, I said to the president, there's been - there is no governor who has clashed with this president more than I have, okay, over the past few years. And there's no governor who has been attacked more by this president over the past few years, so it's been mutual, but in this situation, I said to the president, look, forget the politics, put that aside. Forget the past, put that aside. Forget personalities. These are all indulgences that we don't have right now. We have a common goal. We have to save lives. This is about saving lives. And I said to the president, I need the federal government to work here. A state can't do this without the federal government. I was in the federal government, as you know, for eight years, I was a cabinet secretary. I know what the federal government can do. I know what the state government can do. I know the state government can't do this without the federal government, so I said, open and honest relationship. You help New York, I'll support you. If you don't do the right thing by New York, right thing, quote-unquote, I'll let New Yorkers know. And that has worked well. The federal government has done a great job at Javits, they've done a great job bringing the Comfort, the Navy ship here. We have over a thousand military personnel helping us, so that has worked well, and I've told the president that. We have much more to do. I want to tackle this testing challenge with the federal government. I can't do that on my own. Private sector can't do that on their own. That's going to be a real federal-state challenge, so, you know, you call it as you see it. There's - I'm a New Yorker. There's a plain truth to this, Michael, without the filter of politics or protocol, all that other stuff, and this is plain truth time, and you deliver or you don't.