Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on CNN's Town Hall With Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was a guest on CNN's Town Hall with Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta to discuss New York's response to Covid-19 and where the State is 110 days later.

AUDIO is available here.

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

Anderson Cooper: Joining us right now is Governor Andrew Cuomo. First of all, you've got to feel pretty good about what is happening in this state. How does it feel to you? What do you see in the numbers?

Governor Cuomo: Anderson, where we sit, it's been a dramatic turn around as you mentioned. We did have the worst case scenario. We had the highest infection rate and remember that's because the virus came to New York from Europe. The federal government thought it was still in China. We were blindsided by the virus. It landed in our airports and we had the worst situation in the country. We had the worst situation on the globe.

We took it seriously, we followed the science, we did the testing, et cetera. We now have the lowest infection rate in the country. We went from the highest infection rate to the lowest infection rate. We're reopening our regions and we've been phasing in the economic activity. Our numbers are doing very, very well. We have less than a 1 percent infection rate. We did 60,000 tests yesterday, less than a 1 percent infection rate.

I'm now worried about the other states as an American, but also selfishly. People will get on airplanes and they come to New York and they could bring the infection with them.

Anderson Cooper: So what do you do about that? Do you talk about a mandatory quarantine for people entering the state? Is that actually doable?

Governor Cuomo: It is doable and that's what happened at the beginning of this, if you remember. It seems like a lifetime ago. People put a quarantine on in their states that people coming into their state needed to be quarantined for 14 days. What they were saying is if you come to their state and you come from a state that had a high infection rate, it was a mandatory quarantine for 14 days so you didn't infect their state.

Now the tables have turned 180 degrees and we're considering it for New York. You have a lot of people in these states where the infection rate is going through the roof. New York is in better shape than their state and we're seeing people who want to come to New York. I understand that, but we worked very hard to get the infection rate down, I don't want to see it going back up.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: It seems like you always have to think a few chess moves ahead, Governor. If the state does decide someone must quarantine, for example, I think you have to think about where exactly are they going to go, how long - I guess 14 days you said - will that be enforceable? Will you be able to enforce that in some way?

Governor Cuomo: Well, again, Sanjay, this happened the first go around and it can be enforced and it can be done. The cruel irony is why are we here? If you can take New York State that had the worst infection rate on the globe per capita and we turned it around in a matter of 100 days, why are we seeing these increases in other states? That's the question we have to be asking ourselves.

We know that more people are going to wind up dying now. We've seen the models that Anderson was just referring to. In one week, they said another 30,000 people would die by October. They made that shift in one week because they're extrapolating from this new viral spread. Thirty thousand people who they project will die who didn't need to die. I don't know what we have to do to get a wake up call in this nation.

Anderson Cooper: How do you move forward in a city like New York? You have now restaurants, bars doing take out but you've seen large crowds gathering, hanging out on streets on a weekend night. The city doesn't seem to be able to do anything about that. Businesses, I guess they can police what's right out in front of their business, but can they tell somebody half a block away to move along or is that the city's responsibility? How does the city move through these stages now?

Governor Cuomo: Two things: You are seeing increased activity. That's because we're phasing in the reopening of the economy. We do it by following the metrics and we're following the infection rate literally every day, about 60,000 tests per day. Sanjay can tell you that's an enormous number of tests. No state in the United States does that many tests per capita. No country does that many tests. When you get that much information per day, you can calibrate your reopening.

I said from day one on your show, rather than telling states just reopen and say hallelujah and watch that virus take off, do a phased reopening monitor it, and control the virus and that'll even be better for the economy because you won't see the start and stops that now rile the markets and you'll save lives. So yes, you're seeing more activity. We monitor the infection rate. Also, we're very serious about compliance.

It is the responsibility of the city, New York City, that local government is responsible for the compliance. If the city doesn't do it the State is a backdrop to the city. I have the authority of the State side to actually close down a business, close down a restaurant, close down a bar that's violating it because we take it very seriously as well as the mandatory mask policy that we've had in place for two months which has been very effective. But it's the local government's responsibility. If they fail, the city can step in. If everything goes bad and the city government is incompetent, then we can slow down the opening of the economy if we see any tick up in that infection rate.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: You know masks have become such a contentious issue it's remarkable, Governor. As you probably Governor Newsom ordered that masks are now mandatory in most places in California, something that you did you just mentioned back in April for New York. Why do you think that this has become such a contentious issue when the evidence is clear? We've been talking about it and it reduced transmission significantly. Is there a way to move beyond this so it's not so contentious anymore?

Governor Cuomo: Look, Sanjay, it's all be contentious. When I had to stand up and tell people you have to stay home it was contentious. When I said schools are closed it was contentious. When I said businesses were closed it was contentious. When I said you had to wear a mask it was contentious. It is disruptive and you know people don't want to be disrupted. They want to solve the virus but they don't want disruption. But that's where government has to step in. We did the masks two months ago. I got beaten up for it but it worked and we knew it worked and you knew it worked. The scientists all knew that it worked.

The numbers that are now coming out, the World Health Organization says it's even more effective than we knew, wearing a mask. So none of these things were easy but it's following the science. You know the difference in these states, some follow the politics and some follow the public relations frankly and those are the states where you now see the virus going up. Some states were smart, they made the tough decisions, but they did it early and that's where you see it going down. This was always about the science and not the politics and if we handle this as a public relations issue then of course you're going to let people do whatever they want to do, let the economy open, no controls, and now you see the virus go up.

Anderson Cooper: We're this rally this weekend in Oklahoma. The President is going to theoretically pack 19,000 people into an indoor arena, doesn't seem like there is any social distancing, no one is required to wear a mask though they will probably hand them out. Would you allow a large political rally in New York in these circumstances in this time?

Governor Cuomo: No. No. No. Look, the President's position all along has been a political position. His position was, you know, this is a virus, it's a flu, don't worry about it, reopen the economy, reopen the economy, reopen the economy. He believes his reelection is correlated to the economy. I don't even think that's right politically. I think it's correlated to leadership, not to the Dow Jones stock market index. But that's always been his position - just reopen the economy.

The states that are doing that are seeing the virus go up and seeing their hospitals fill up and their ICU beds fill up and that's going to not only hurt the economy, it's also going to cause more Americans to die. When they raise up those projection models which they're now doing that is just an extrapolation on the viral rate that they are seeing and when you see the spike they then update the projection which extrapolates out how many more people die. 30,000 more people die by October in the model that the White House accepts. Just think about that. And the President of the United States, knowing that the models say another 30,000 die by October, still insists that we shouldn't be careful, we shouldn't follow the science, don't worry about the public health, have a political arena. I mean it makes no sense and it's the exact wrong signal and that's what the States who are getting into trouble are all following.

Anderson Cooper: Governor Cuomo, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Governor Cuomo: Thanks.