Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Contact Tracing Pilot Program Supported by Mayor Mike Bloomberg to Begin in Coming Weeks

VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.

AUDIO of today's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

Governor Cuomo: Good morning, we have some new faces with us today. Starting at my far right, Sarah Feinberg, who runs the New York City transit system. To her left, Patrick Foye, Chairman of the MTA. Dr. Zucker, you know, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health. To my left, Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor. To her left, Robert Mujica, who is the Budget Director of the State of New York and wears second hat today because he is also a member of the MTA board. He doesn't really wear a second hat. That was metaphorical.

What day is today? When I was at Housing and Urban Development, I would sometimes say in a staff meeting, what day is today? What is the date? And I worked with a great fellow who was a Catholic priest, Father Joseph Hacala. And he would say today is another day to do better, with his warm smile, today is another day to do better. He passed away, Father Hacala. I have this picture in my room and I was thinking about him last night. Today is another day to do better. It is another day to improve. It is another day to be better, make life better, to be better at helping people. Today is another day, another opportunity God gave us.

Hospitalizations are down - good news. No change in total hospitalizations down - good news. No change in intubations down - good news. New covid cases slightly down, 933, but still unacceptable. But down from where it was. Number of lives lost, still terrible, 306. An optimist would say the number is on the decline, a realist would say that's a tremendous amount of pain and grief for hundreds and hundreds of New Yorkers who lost a loved one.

The big question everyone is asking is the reopening. When? How? Where? I said from day one on this situation, we have to be smart. We are at a place we have never been before. Emotions run high. Be smart, follow the numbers, follow data, talk to experts. Don't get political, even in this election year even, even in this partisan time in this country where everything is political and everything is polarized - not now. And respond to facts and data and experts, not to emotion which also runs very high right now. If we do this right, it is science reopening. It's not a political exercise. It is a science. It can be based on numbers and data, and that is true. Everybody wants to reopen, caveat is reopened but don't reopen in a way that increases the spread of the virus, doesn't increase the rate of the spread of the virus. Well how do you know that? You can test. You can get numbers. Test, get a sample and see what is happening. You know that if the rate of transmission goes over one 1.1 you are in an outbreak, you're in an epidemic. So, you don't have to guess. It's not what it feels like. Get the numbers, do the testing, get the numbers, rely on the numbers.

The second fact you have to deal with as a science in this formula, do you have the hospital capacity available if that rate of infection increases? Don't go above 70% capacity, so you have a 30% buffer, so we don't wind up in the same mad scramble that we were in last time. Make sure you have ICU beds with the 30% capacity and make sure you have enough equipment. We're not going to go through who has a mask, who has a gown, who knows someone in China? Let's have at least a 30 day supply of stockpiled equipment: ventilators, masks, gowns, gloves, etc. There are facts, its science, it's data. Then what's testing? Testing, then you trace, then you isolate, and that remains the key to controlling the rate of infection.

The testing is how you monitor the rate of infection, what's happening to the rate as you increase the economic activity? I will take the test and we'll test enough people so we have enough data to make a decision. We're increasing the number of tests. It's hard. Nobody's done it on this scale before. There's been a lot of back and forth, we met with the federal government, met with the president. We have now a partnership in how to do testing. We're ramping up testing. We're moving very quickly in this state. We do more tests in this state than in any other state in the United States. We do more testing in this state than any country on the globe per capita. So, we are doing it well. We are doing it aggressively. We've increased from about 20,000 tests to about 30,000 tests per day and we're still ramping up and that's good. There's more to do more testing and more to talk about on testing, but not today.

Today, we're going to talk about tracing which is the second step after testing, right? You test, you now know what's happening on the infection rate, you can gauge your decisions based on that infection rate. Second step is trace those people who came up positive. All right, we tested. You have the data. You can adjust the opening valve, the reopening valve, now you trace. When you get a positive, you talk to that person and trace back to they have been in contact with. You with then test those people, you then isolate those people so you don't increase the rate of infection. That's what tracing is. Faster you trace, the better. You want to test right away. You think you have symptoms, you think you were exposed, come and get a test, do it today. Once you get that test results, you have data on what's happening with the infection spread. You then right away, as quickly as you can, trace that person. Who have they met with? Who have they been in close contact with over the past 14 days? And you then contact those people and say you may have been in contact with Dan. Dan tested positive. You should check your symptoms - if you develop any symptoms what we know right away and we will bring you in to take a test. That is tracing.

The problem is it's not rocket science to do it on an individual basis. The problem is the scale that we have to do this act. Yesterday we tested 4,681 people who were positive. Yesterday 4,681 people were positive. How do you now communicate with 4,681 people, trace back all the people they've been in contact with over the past 14 days close contact, and contact those people. That is an overwhelming scale to an operation that has never existed before. We do tracing now but on a very limited basis. That's why this is so hard tracing in and of itself - one person it's easy. 4,681 on one day. Today we'll have another 4,681 people. So just think of the scale on the operation. Last week we announced that Michael Bloomberg would lead the first ever testing-tracing-isolation program. Figure out, how many people, how to train them, what technology, how do we do this. And it's of a scale never been done before and by the way we need it tomorrow. There is no time to go get a university to do a study, a blueprint, and then put a plan together. We need it tomorrow, because we're literally doing it right now. We're doing the testing, we're coming up the scale on the testing. You need the tracing to come up the scale to meet what we're doing on testing.

The estimate so far is you need 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 people who are in the affected are. Statewide that would be about 6,400 to 17,000 tracers, depending on what happens on the testing rate. The more people test positive, the more tracers. The less people test positive, the less tracers you need. So, these things are all linked, right? The better you do at reducing the spread of the virus, the fewer people test people test positive, and the fewer you need to trace back. It will require under any estimate, a tracing army to come up to scale very, very quickly. And Mayor Bloomberg has put together a great team who's going to work on this. He has great talent in his Bloomberg Philanthropies, Johns Hopkins University working together with the New York State Department of Health. This is that undertaking and it is massive and that's why bringing in a person with the talent of Mayor Bloomberg and the experience of Mayor Bloomberg to do this is essential. Where do you get the army? Well we have Department of health employees all across the state - counties have them, cities have them, the State has them. We'll marshal those employees - you also have a lot of government employees who are at home now getting paid but are not working. What government employees who are now existing, city, state, counties, can we deploy to become tracers and then train them, et cetera. After you go through all of that, if you don't have enough, you're going to have to hire people. And then you have to train them - right away, because nobody's done this before. They're going to need help, they're going to need technology, they're going to need monitoring and they're going to have to be tested before they can do this.

So, it's a massive undertaking. And that's Mayor Bloomberg's involvement in his generosity here is so important, and we want to offer a big thank you to Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Who I believe may be joining us by telephone or some technological means. Here he is. How are you, Mayor Mike?

Mayor Bloomberg: I'm here.

Governor Cuomo: Good to see you.

Mayor Bloomberg: Governor, I'm fine and good to see you. And I want to thank you for all your good work to lead this State through this crisis and to deliver facts and data to the public, and also a sense of hope which really is important. I know your daily press conferences have become must-see TV for a lot of people. And for the record, I thought your advice to fathers on what to say about a daughter's boyfriend was exactly right the other day. Anyways, the question on everybody's mind continues to be, "How can we begin to loosen these restrictions and begin reopening the economy?" And one of the most important steps we have to take to reopen the economy as safely as possible is to create a system of contact tracing as you just outlined. When social distancing is relaxed, contract tracing is our best hope for isolating the virus when it appears and keeping it isolated. The Governor recognizes that and since Bloomberg Philanthropies has deep experience and expertise in public health, we're glad to support the State in developing and implementing a contact tracing program.

As Andrew said, the contract tracing is a way to identify people who may have been exposed to the virus but don't know it. And doing that requires a lot of well-trained people who are coordinated and managed effectively. It is a very big undertaking just because of the scale, so we've enlisted the best public health school in the world at Johns Hopkins University. No offense, but its name Bloomberg School of Public Health, which our foundation work with on public health and other issues. And we've also teamed up with nonprofit organizations Vital Strategies and Resolve To Save Lives. They get the contract tracing program up and running a lot, has to happen first and hiring, training, deploying and managing a small army of New Yorkers as the Governor said is really the great challenge. To help the state recruit contact tracers, we've brought in a staffing organization. And we're also teamed up with CUNY and SUNY, both of which will help identify potential job applicants, and I want to thank both of them for their work in joining us. To help the state with training, Johns Hopkins has developed a training class which can be taken remotely. It will cover all the basic information of epidemics, contact tracing and privacy. There's also a test at the end of the training which you have to pass in order to be hired, so we're not going to put up people there that don't know what they're doing. We'll also put technology to use in other ways. Vital Strategies is developing three new smartphone apps. The first will help contact tracers find information and data quickly. The second will help the public to provide information to health departments. And the third will allow those in quarantine to access the guidance and services they need including the ability to report any symptoms they may be experiencing. Vital Strategies is also working directly with the state to develop protocols and workflow materials for contract tracers and mappers. That includes a comprehensive playbook that will detail the steps needed to do contact tracing effectively. And I want to make it clear, we will release that playbook publicly so cities and states around the country can use it and so can nations around the world. That way the work we do here in New York really can help fight the virus globally. We'll also bring in a group of outside experts to conduct an evaluation of the program so that other states and countries can see what worked well and identify areas they can improve on. And, we'll learn as we go, and make adjustments and share what we've learned.

Sharing in spreading best practices is something that Bloomberg Philanthropies works on with cities around the world. In about an hour I'll be getting on a call with mayors around the country, which is a call we hold every week. It's been a good way to share information and strategies. And I know all of the mayors are following the news of the contract tracing program that we are starting here and other states have also begun the process of starting. Before I turn it back over to the governor, let me just echo something that he has said repeatedly and that really is important to remember. As tough as these times are, we are New Yorkers, and we've been through a lot together, and we're going to get through this together again. So governor, back to you and thank you for everything you're doing. Together we're going to lick this and get back to a normal life that we can, we are so proud of the way the citizens of this state are behaving. Thank you all.

Governor Cuomo: Thank you very much. Thank you very much to Mayor Bloomberg. This is such a great asset for the State of New York and all of the people in it. This is a monumental undertaking. You know, so many of these things that we talk about just never existed before. Testing of this magnitude, contact tracing of this magnitude. It's never existed. So we have to design new systems, new approaches to do this and this problem is bigger than any one of us, but it is not bigger than all of us. And using the expertise and the talent that we have we get everyone to work together here. we will do this and the mayor is exactly right. New York, he says as a New Yorker, in many cases we've dealt with challenges first. We figure it out and then we work with other places to actually learn from what we've done. I think this is going to be one of those examples. We want the best system that we can have to get New York open and to protect New Yorkers. But it will also be a laboratory to put together the best system ever put together so we can share that with other governments. And that's what Mayor Bloomberg does so well. He did as mayor and he does it now but through his philanthropy.

So, we'll develop the best system here and then what we learned we hope can benefit other people. We'll also be coordinating this contact tracing on a tri-state basis because many of the people who come into New York, live in Connecticut, live in New Jersey, go back and forth. We don't want to get limited by jurisdictions when you're doing this contact tracing. Somebody turns out, you have a trace that takes you to a person in New Jersey. Well, we work in New York, we can't go to New Jersey. Having that tri-state alliance makes tremendous sense. So I'm working with Governor Murphy and Governor Lamont on that, and I want to thank them very much. Next problem. Stone to stone across the morass, right. Problem to problem across the morass. In this situation every day is a new problem that pops up. Okay, let's handle it. Next problem. In an emergency crisis situation what happens is problems compound, right. You're in the middle of a hurricane, the power lines go down. Now the power lines go down, now the heat is off. Heat is off, now people are freezing in their homes. We didn't anticipate that. I know, but that's what happens. One problem creates another problem, it's like a bad game of dominoes. And these problems compound each other, and the combination is often unforeseen.

We have that now with the New York City subway system. Daily News did a front page story, which crystallized it, but it had been happening for weeks. And no one anticipated it, but you have a virus outbreak and conditions on the New York City subway system, for a variety of reasons, have rapidly deteriorated. When you think about what happened you can put it together in the retrospective. The COVID outbreak happens. New York City's a place of density, subways, buses are a place of density. MTA employees who run that system, care for that system, get sick, call in sick as they should. They don't want to infect other people. The number of MTA employees comes down. Number of NYPD, New York Police Department, they get sick, their numbers come down. You now have fewer MTA workers, you have fewer NYPD workers on the trains and in the stations. We have now a greater need than ever to disinfect the subways, the buses, and the stations. Why? Because you're in the middle of a pandemic, this is a place of density and you have thousands and thousands of people going through these subway stations, these turnstiles and these buses, trains and ADA vehicles. Because MTA workers are sick, NYPD officers are sick you have fewer people to monitor and maintain the system. This all happens in the midst of a public health emergency.

This is going to be one of the most aggressive, creative, challenging undertakings that the MTA has done. It's going to require the MTA, the state, the city, the NYPD to all work together. It's not that easy to stop train service. You have to close down stations, you have to make sure people don't walk in, then you have to figure out how to clean all these trains and all these stations.

I've consulted with the elected officials on the MTA's recommendation and we all agree to accept the plan on the Essential Connector Program. The MTA is undertaking something that people would've said was virtually impossible. Trains and buses will be disinfected daily. Service will continue. The MTA will also disinfect the fleet on the Metro North and the Long Island Railroad, which is what goes out to Long Island, goes to the Northern suburbs. They can do that without any disruption in service because of the volume of ridership, et cetera.

So, just think about it. The entire public transportation system in downstate New York will be disinfected every 24 hours. This is a joint MTA, state, city partnership. We're doing a lot of things here that we've never done before. I am never one to shy away from a challenge. I don't believe government has that option. I'm never one to say, "well, that's just too much, too hard, too ambitious." We can do it. I believe we can do it. I believe we can do anything. I believe we can build bridges, I believe we can build airports, I believe we can defeat global pandemics. But this is as ambitious as anything that we've ever undertaken. It's going to require a lot of extraordinary service and effort from multiple agencies all working together.

The MTA has stepped up by recommending this plan. The state will do whatever it has to do. A big part of this falls to the city. I've spoken to Mayor de Blasio. It's going to require a lot of assistance from the NYPD, it's going to require a lot of assistance from different city agencies. Again, close down every station, close down the trains. We've never been here before. I guarantee another ten things come up when we go to do this that are also anticipated consequences.

So the mayor is really stepping up to the plate here and is doing something that no mayor has ever attempted to do before. We'll all do our part, we'll all work together, but it's a heck of an undertaking for the mayor. I applaud him for his ambition here in stepping up and taking this on. You know, it's always easier to just say no. It's always easier to say we can't do it because when you say we will try to do it, now you're changing things and whenever you change, there's opposition. Every time. So, it's always easier just to stay status quo. It's always easier not to risk. Not to try to raise the bar because maybe you can't do it, maybe there'll be problems. So it's easier just to say no. It's easier to say this is all we can do it's impossible. That's not what the mayor is doing here. The mayor is stepping up and he's stepping up in a big way. I want to applaud him for it.

I think we have the mayor who is on the telephone or some electronic means. There he is, Mayor Bill de Blasio. Welcome to Albany.

Mayor de Blasio: Thanks, Governor, it's a pleasure to be with you. Governor, that point you made about all of us together doing something different, doing something necessary, and being willing together to go someplace we've never been before. You and I have talked about this kind of idea a lot over the years. I think when we first met each other, the word "disruption" was considered a bad thing. In recent years, it's taken on a very positive connotation. That when we disrupt something that isn't work or has been thought about in a very narrow way and we go someplace new and better, that's a positive. I think what we're talking about today is exactly that. I commend you and everyone at the MTA.

I want to talk about why I think this plan is so important - in terms of our essential workers, our first responders, our healthcare heroes - why I think it's so important in terms of also addressing homelessness in a new and powerful way.

But I first want to express my appreciation, along with you, really appreciate - back on one of your previous topics - the contact tracing. Really appreciate that my predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, is stepping up such a big way for New York City and New York State. Contact tracing, the test and trace approach, is going to change everything. You and I are united in that, as well. The aggressive approach. In fact, Governor, New York City is hiring 1,000 contact tracers with healthcare background to super charge this effort. I think we are going to be able to show this country a model that's going to be extraordinarily effective in beating back this disease. I look forward to that partnership as well.

Right here on the issue of the MTA, we've all been thrown the biggest curveball of our lives with this pandemic. But look at the consistent heroism of the healthcare workers, the first responders, the grocery store workers, the pharmacists - everyone who came forward. And, Governor, I know you feel it too. It's probably the proudest moment we've had as public servants in this state, in this city, watching the heroism of these New Yorkers who have stepped up. Now, we owe it to them to understand their lives and the notion that they have a daily routine where they go into battle. They go toward the danger. They go to where the infection is, which so many people couldn't even imagine, but that's what these heroes are doing. We owe it to them to support them every way possible. You and I have talked many times about the PPEs and the basic protections. But we also owe it to them to be safe on the way to work. On the way back home to their families. So, I think what we're doing here in partnership is exactly the right thing. To say we're going to find a way to make our subway system cleaner than its probably ever been its history honestly and address this crisis in a whole new way. I agree with that and I commend you for it. And yeah, it took some disruption to say we're going to do something during this pandemic we've never done before, but it makes sense when it comes to protecting our heroes.

The second point, homelessness, look another issue you and I, Governor, have worked on for decades. Well, we know it's been on many ways an intractable issue because there wasn't always an impulse to disrupt. And here is an example of saying look, we now found new ways to get street homeless people off the street. I want to commend Commissioner Dermot Shea and everyone at the NYPD who's really focused on how to help the homeless. Commissioner Steve Banks, everyone at Homeless Services, Social Services, also those heroic outreach workers.

Governor, you know about this work, go out there day after day to engage homeless people on the streets, in the subways. Get their trust and get them to come into shelter and ultimately to permanent housing. This work has always been in some ways stymied by the reality of a homeless person who is struggling with everything their dealing with, a mental health challenge, a substance abuse challenge, riding the subway all night long. We're New Yorkers we know about this reality and it's been put in stark white by this crisis, like so many other challenges and disparities have. Well, it's an unacceptable reality and this new plan will disrupt that unacceptable reality and allow us to actually get help to people more effectively. Because if you're not going back and forth all night on a train and you're actually are coming above ground where outreach workers are there to help you. Where NYPD officers trained in homeless outreach are there to support homeless people and get them to a better situation.

Governor, you know for decades in this city somehow homeless encampments were actually tolerated. People thought oh it's the kind of thing, what can we do about that? I'm proud to say the last few years Homeless Services, NYPD, nonprofit organizations, we got together and said we're not allowing that anymore. We shut them down and we found it actually helped us to get the homeless to the help they need. This is another example of that, so I want to let you know that as we all talked about this idea and I commend you, your team in Albany, and obviously team at the MTA, Pat Foye, Sarah Feinberg. It's been a very productive conversation these last few days. And what I think we've come to together, is yeah we're going to do something unprecedented. We'll do something because we're in an emergency but we're also going to do something that's going to protect people and offer a new way to get people help who never got enough. So Governor, thank you. I think this is a partnership you're right it's not going to be easy. No one said it was going to be. But you have my full commitment, the commitment of the City commission, the NYPD and all of our agencies. We're going to make this work together and we're going to be able to look back and say we did something that actually changed people's lives for the better and as long as it takes we're going to stand with you and get this done.

Governor Cuomo: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mayor de Blasio. Mayor made a lot of good points. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. But nobody ever said it was going to be this hard either and I think the Mayor's point is very well taken. Look, we're doing things all across the board here that had never been done before and I think there are lessons to learn and lessons we'll take with us. Telemedicine I think is a lesson we'll take with us, tele-education, remote learning, it's a lesson we'll take with us, a new public health system is a lesson that we'll take with us and I think we're going to improve and learn from this experience with the New York City transit system because the truth is it wasn't working well or as well as it should before. We did have a problem with the homeless and Mayor de Blasio is right. I've worked on it all my life. Outreaching to homeless people is very, very hard and getting them to come in to a place that actually provide services is very, very hard. So this can actually energize the connections with outreach workers and the homeless population. And we've never had to disinfect trains like this or buses like this and they will be cleaner than ever before.

So a global pandemic, but you live, you learn, you move on and most importantly you meet the challenge. You meet the challenge and this is a daunting challenge and the Mayor is stepping into it with eyes wide open and it takes guts and it takes courage and they'll be bumps along the way I guarantee you but that's where we are and that's why we get the big bucks.

I also want to be able to say today to the essential workers, we thank you not just with words but with our actions and I want you to know we are doing everything we can to keep you and your family safe and that's what it means to say, thank you. Act with gratitude. Don't just use the words. Act with gratitude. They're on those trains. They deserve to be kept safe. They deserve to have a clean, safe ride to and from work and they're going to have it and we're going to move heaven and earth to make sure that happens.

So in a challenge what do we do? We come together and we rise to the occasion. Never did it before. I know. So we'll do it now and we'll figure out how to do it and we've overcome every obstacle that we've been thrown. We have the beast on the retreat. We're making ground every day. We just have to keep it up and we will because we are New York tough. We are smart. We are disciplined. We are unified and we are loving.