Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on CNN with Kate Bolduan

Earlier today, Governor Cuomo was a guest on CNN with Kate Bolduan to discuss the state's first drive through COVID-19 mobile testing center in New Rochelle.

AUDIO is available here.

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

Kate Bolduan: Now facing the largest cluster of coronavirus in the United States, New York is taking new steps today to try and slow the spread. This morning, New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo, he opened the first drive through testing facility on the East coast in the New York City suburb of New Rochelle. Governor Cuomo joins me now. Governor, thank you for jumping on. I know as I was coming up to set you were still having a press conference, so thank you so much.

Governor Cuomo: My pleasure, good to be with you, Kate.

Kate Bolduan: Thank you. So this is the first public drive through on the East coast and it's just getting underway. What are your expectations, how it's going to go? What are the hopes that this does for folks?

Governor Cuomo: Well, Kate, no one's been here before. These are all uncharted waters for all of us. But new challenges, new solutions. The number one thing we have to do in this country and in this state is slow the spread is testing. We're behind on testing. We have to come up to speed quickly. We have to get more laboratories in and we have to get better testing regimens which are called automated testing. And also, on the testing, we have to do it in a way that's safe. If a person walks into an emergency room, they expose people in the emergency room, they expose staff we've had that problem. What this drive through does, is you call, you make an appointment, you stay in your car you drive in - just like a drive through - the medical staff comes to you. We have 6 lanes, we can do about 200 cars per day. And that can ramp up. You drive off and then we call you with the results. So as a way to bring this testing up to scale, safely, I think this is a very innovative but effective way.

Kate Bolduan: Now, you heard Colorado is trying to do this as well. We actually heard that they had to turn people away because the lines got so long and there was something like a 3 hour wait at one point. Is that a concern here? How are folks to know if they can come in for testing?

Governor Cuomo: Yeah, what we did here is there's a phone number. You have to call the phone number first. You have to make an appointment, you can't just show up. There's a compounding situation here is the anxiety and the fear. If you just put up a sign come up and get tested with all this fear out there, you'd have lines that go on for forever right. We have 18 million people in this state. If you said anyone who wants a test a test can have a test, you'd have 9 million people. So we have to prioritize because we don't have that kind of capacity and that's what we're doing with this call first and we set up an appointment.

Kate Bolduan: Governor, the someone that said if you want to get tested you can get tested was the President of the United States. And what you're trying to tackle with this drive through testing facility gets directly at the bottleneck, inexplicable bottleneck that we're looking at when it comes to testing. I heard you say this morning that you have been in direct contact with the Vice President about this. What is the hold up quite frankly on testing? Getting the test kits out and getting the results back?

Governor Cuomo: Look, the retrospective on this is going to go on for a long time, right. I'm on the ground, Kate, and I have to figure out how to make it better. The bottleneck is the CDC and the FDA - the federal government - has been controlling the tests who can do it, what the protocol is, whether it is manual or automated. And the volume is too high for this federal bottleneck. I said to the Vice President, who by the way has been very accessible and very cooperative, is a former governor himself. I said, look the states do this. I have 200 laboratories in New York. We regulate them. We license them. Let me release the 200 laboratories and let me do the approval. It is not a complicated test. If you make that shift, which is basically going to a decentralized testing system, you can bring in not hundreds but thousands of laboratories overnight and get this testing where it needs to be, because you are exactly right. You had China who was doing about 150,000 tests per day. South Korea, 15,000 tests per day. We have not done that do date. That has to change. That's the best way.

Kate Bolduan: There is a reason - As you are saying, this isn't politics. You have got to fix what you are faced with. It sounds crazy that the United States, the best country in the world, is slower on testing than other countries. Did the Vice President seem open to your suggestion?

Governor Cuomo: He did. As I have said, we have had good conversations. He did. He said he would get back to me. He understood, as a former governor, he understood what I was saying. So we will see what they do. If you do not do that, I do not know how you possibly solve this testing situation in a way that is going to make the difference we need to make.

Kate Bolduan: So Governor, another big issue is schools. I was talking about it at the top of the show. There are now six states, is where it stands, where the governors have decided to close all the public schools in the state to protect against the spread. And the governors from all different parts of the country acknowledge it is an aggressive move and it is a tough decision, and it is a complicated one. Are you any closer to that?

Governor Cuomo: We have not decided to close the schools, Kate. We have left it down to the localities to make a decision whether or not they want to. Our state rule is if you have a child that tests positive you must close for 24 hours so we can look into the facts and the circumstance. But you are right, Kate. Closing the schools is a complicated decision. There are significant pluses, significant minuses. You close the school, that child may not get breakfast, may not get lunch. They are not learning. The parents now have to stay home. Those parents may be nurses, may be doctors, may be healthcare workers. You could slow down your healthcare response, which by the way is the challenge here - is overwhelming our hospitals. So there are many, many possible negatives. And also children, thank God, are not being affected by this virus. Yes, they may be carriers by some opinions. But they are not are not being affected so it is complicated.

Kate Bolduan: It sure is. Governor, thank you for the time. I really appreciate it.

Governor Cuomo: Thank you.