Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces 35 Counties Approved to Resume Elective Outpatient Treatments

Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced 35 counties have been approved to resume elective outpatient treatments. The Governor previously announced that the state will allow elective outpatient treatments to resume in counties and hospitals without significant risk of COVID-19 surge in the near term. The counties now eligible are: Allegany, Broome, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chenango, Delaware, Dutchess, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Genesee, Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Livingston, Madison, Monroe, Niagara, Oneida, Onondaga, Ontario, Orleans, Oswego, Putnam, Saratoga, Schoharie, Schuyler, St. Lawrence, Steuben, Sullivan, Tompkins, Ulster, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates.

Governor Cuomo also announced New York State is now conducting an average of 30,000 diagnostic tests for COVID-19 per day. Last week, the Governor announced the state will work with the federal government to double New York's testing capacity from 20,000 tests per day to 40,000 tests per day over several weeks.

The Governor also announced the results of the state's FDNY and NYPD antibody testing survey that tested 1,000 New York City Fire Department officers and 1,000 New York City Police Department officers from across all five boroughs. The preliminary results show 17.1 percent of FDNY officers and EMTs have COVID-19 antibodies and 10.5 percent of NYPD officers have COVID-19 antibodies. The state will be conducting further antibody analysis and surveys by race and gender in the future.

The Governor also announced the state is testing today 1,000 transit workers for antibodies to further determine the spread of infections among our frontline workers. The State is working with BioReference to provide antibody tests to first responders and other essential workers from the MTA, State Police, DOCCS and others.

The Governor also directed the MTA to issue a full plan by tomorrow, April 30th, on how it will clean and disinfect every train, every night in response to reported deteriorations of the conditions in the subways during the pandemic.

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:

Good morning. Members of the esteemed Legislative Correspondents Association. Thank you very much for being here. Everybody knows Joe Friday. My daughters tell me that nobody knows him, and nobody knows what I'm talking about, but that's okay because what he would say is just the facts, ma'am, just the facts, ma'am, very droll, dry. Because people want to give their editorial comments, well I think this, I think this, no, no, no. Well let's just start with the facts, ma'am. Joe Friday. Get to know him.

Hospitalization rate ticks down, good news. Net change, down, that's good news. Intubations down, that's good news. COVID hospitalizations, new ones per day, just about flat, that's not great news. Actually up a tick. So that is not good news. What we're watching now is how fast the decline, how low does it go? We don't want to see 1,000 new cases every day. We'd like to see that in the low hundreds, ideally, of new cases every day. Death rate, terrible news. 330. You see the decline has been slow at best and still disgustingly high. So we're making progress, that's for sure, but we're not out of the woods yet. And we're proceeding with caution.

And there are caution signs out there that we should pay attention to. Singapore is talking about a second wave with 900 new cases. This is after they controlled the beast, they're on the decline. They're now looking at new cases. Germany is a situation that we should also watch and learn f from. They relaxed and started to reopen. they're now seeing an increase. These are interesting, the rate of infection, which is what we watch, was at .7. One person infecting .7 percent, obviously less than one person. 1 percent infection rate is one person infecting one person. They were at .7. They started to reopen. In 10 days they went up to a one on the infection rate. That's troubling. Shows you how fast the infection rate can increase if you don't do it right on the reopening. So proceed with caution.

Our reopening is different. We don't have a conceptual plan. We don't have an abstract plan because there is no conceptual plan, there is no abstract plan. You have to have a plan that is based on facts, based on specifics. This is not about politics, this is not about spin, this is not about emotion. There are no conspiracy theories at work here. We outlined a 12-step plan that is factual, that is based on numbers, based on data and then it has a numerical circuit breaker that is not subject to personal emotion or desire, but just checks and monitors that infection rate that we just saw in Germany and is watching for those increases. And if there's an increase, circuit breaker stops the reopening at that point. Some of the specifics we're looking at, you must have 30 percent of your hospital beds available.

We can't go back to where we were where we overwhelmed the hospital system. We have to have a 30 percent buffer. We have to have 30 percent of ICU beds. We have to have that buffer before we start bumping up against total capacity, and we have to watch the hospitalization rate and the diagnostic testing rate, how many are positive, how many are negative, which we'll take on a continuous basis. You see that number start going up, worry. But it's all based on the data and the numbers. I'm sorry, and the rate of transmission, RT, rate of transmission, our road and track, rate of transmission has to be 1.1 or less. We just said Germany is at .1. The 1.1, that is textbook outbreak. So watch the numbers and watch the transmission rate.

How do you do that? You do that with testing and that's why everybody is talking about testing. The testing allows you to continually test sample how many people are positive, how many people are negative. You see the positive start to increase through your day-to-day testing. That is a pause sign. We're doing about 20,000 tests. We said we wanted to double that. We're now on average about 30,000 tests per day which is a dramatic increase, not where we need to be, but a dramatic increase.

Where we are now, you should know, is New York State is doing more than most countries are doing so we have been very aggressive in testing and we have made great progress. New Yorkers should feel good about that but we have more to do.

On elective surgeries, we had canceled all elective surgeries so we could have increased capacity in the hospitals. When you cancel elective surgeries hospitals feel a financial pinch because that's where they make their money is on elective surgeries. So for areas that don't have a fear of a COVID surge, we're going to allow elective surgeries to begin. That's primarily in counties upstate. Again, counties where we're still worried about a surge in the COVID beds, we're not going to open it up to elective surgery until we know we're out of the woods on the COVID virus. This is a list of counties that are eligible now for elective surgeries. I'll do an Executive Order on that today.

We've been worried about front line workers because they are the heroes who are out there every day so everybody else can stay home. Somebody asked me yesterday on a radio interview, well, you're out there every day. Are you taking care of yourself? I'm out there every day. Forget me. I'll tell you who is out there every day. The nurses who are in the emergency room, the doctors in the emergency room, the police officer who is going into homes and apartments because there's a domestic disturbance, the EMTs, the Fire Department, the delivery worker who goes to 50 doors a day and gets paid. Those people are out there every day. They're the ones who are really doing the work. Compared to them, what I do is de minimis. They're doing it not because they get paid a lot of money, not because people say thank you, God bless you. They're doing it because it's their value, their honor, their pride, their dignity, and they show up. Even when it's hard, they show up. My hat is off to them.

I want to make sure we do what we need to do to protect them, that they have the equipment, they have the PPE, they have our respect, they have our gratitude. I also want to make sure we're testing so we get them the results of tests so they can be taking care of themselves.

I also want to see if we have a significant problem in any of those front line workforces. So we're doing testing. We started with the New York City Fire Department and New York City Police Department. What we found so far, the Fire Department which also has the EMTs, tested 17% positive, NYPD 10% positive. Number much higher in the FDNY, EMTs. We believe that's because the EMT number is driving it up, but we have to do more numbers and more research to determine that. Remember, the EMTSs, they are the front line. They're the ones who are there assisting the person in the closest contact in many ways. FDNY, also. But we want to find out exactly what's going on. They compare to a downstate average of the general population of about 18%. Again, we'll do further research, further surveys to look at it by race and gender, also.

We're also going to do the same thing with the transit workers, the people who drive the buses, the subways, who clean the buses and the subways. Without those buses and subways, the essential workers couldn't get to work. Why didn't we just close down subways and buses? Because you close down the subways and the buses in New York City, don't expect the nurses and the doctors to be able to get to the hospital. Don't expect the delivery worker to be able to deliver food when you ring on your telephone. We need that public transportation to transport the essential workers. Those front line workers are at risk, so we're going to do additional testing for the transport workers.

I also commented yesterday, the Daily News had pictures of things that are going on in the New York City subway system, where the cars were filthy, they were disgusting. Homeless people were there with all their belongings and it was not just a Daily News picture, it reflected what has been in the press and what people have been saying, which is the deterioration of the conditions in the subways. Some crimes are up in the subways, even though ridership is down 90 percent. I don't even know how mathematically that is possible. The trains are filled with homeless people. You're not doing the homeless any favor. I've worked with the homeless all my life. To let homeless people stay on the trains in the middle of a global health pandemic with no masks, no protective equipment, you're not helping the homeless.

Letting them endanger their own life and endanger the lives of others is not helping anyone. I told the MTA yesterday, in two days, which means tomorrow, I want a full plan. How do we disinfect every train every night, period. Any essential worker who shows up and gets on a train should know that that train was disinfected the night before. We want them to show up. We don't want them to stay home. We owe it to them to be able to say, the train you ride, the bus you ride has been disinfected and is clean.

Also, state and local funding from Washington is essential. This is now turning into a political brawl on state and local funding. More and more, some of the elected officials in Washington are saying they're against it. They're lead by Senator Mitch McConnell, who leads the Senate, who makes it blatantly political. No blue state bailout. No blue state bailout. What is he trying to say? The states that have coronavirus are Democratic states and he's a Republican, so he doesn't want to help the Democratic states.

He went so far as to say, well he'd be in favor of the states going bankrupt. First, states have never gone bankrupt. States can't go bankrupt. There are serious Constitutional questions about whether or not a state can declare bankruptcy and you need a federal law that would allow the states to declare bankruptcy even if you got around the Constitutional question on bankruptcy. If he believes that, if it wasn't just political rhetoric and personal vitriol, then pass a law that allows states to declare bankruptcy. He would have to do that. I dare him to do that and get that bill signed by the President.

To make it partisan is what is most disturbing and you can see they're now rallying the partisan troops. Senator Scott from Florida says we're supposed to bail them out. We versus them. We're supposed to bail them out. It's we and it's them. That's not right. Who is we and who is them? Who is we? And who is them? Them, the people who had coronavirus. They are the ones who had the coronavirus. We, without the virus, are supposed to bail out those people who have the virus. what an ugly sentiment. First of all, on the facts, it's not even close to right and why they would even want to go down this road when the facts damn everything they're saying. And there are still facts. I know it's hard to communicate facts in this environment. I know a lot of the filters don't communicate facts. They all communicate spin now. Everybody has their own spin. But there are still facts that are not political theater, right? New York State bails them out every year. They're not bailing us out. We bail them out every year. New York State pays $29 billion into that federal pot, $29 billion more every year that we never get back. Our state contribution into the federal pot, the United States of America pot, every year we put in $29 billion more than we take out. On the other hand, they take out every year $37 billion more than they pay to the federal government. Senator Mitch McConnell, you are bailing out New York, when every year you take out more from the kitty, the federal pot, $37 billion more than you put in? Who is bailing out whom?

Senator Scott, Florida, you're going to bail us out? You take out $30 billion more every year than you pay in. How dare they? How dare they when those are the facts? How long are you going to play the American people and assume they're stupid? They are not and they can add and they know facts. And I don't care what the news media tries to do to distort these facts. They are numbers, and they are facts, and they can't be distorted, and this is every year.

Look, what this is really about, it's the Washington double speak. You look at the bills that they want to pass and who they want to help. They want to fund the hotels, the restaurants, the airlines, the big corporations. That's who they want to fund. Who do state and local governments fund? State and local governments fund police, firefighters, nurses, school teachers, food banks. That's who I want to fund and that's what it means to fund a state and local government. And that's the choice they're making. Everybody applauds the health care workers. Jets fly over in tribute to the health care workers. That's all nice. Saying thank you is nice. How about actually rewarding them and making their life easier? How about giving them hazard pay? How about helping with their childcare? How about helping families who can't feed their kids right now? How about helping the police, and helping the firefighters, and all the people who are out there right now killing themselves to make life easier for us?

That's what this is really about. They want to fund corporate America. That's who puts money in their pockets. And I say let's fund working Americans. That's the choice. Bail out us, them. No, it's just theater. It's just smoke and mirrors to avoid the American people seeing the reality, which is whose pocket they want to put money in, versus whose pocket state and local governments want to fund. The reason that it's so disturbing to me, I'm not surprised by anything in politics. I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly for many, many years. I was in Washington for eight years. I know what it's like. But if there was ever a time that one could reasonably believe you could put aside partisan politics. If there was ever going to be a moment where we could say, you know what, let's stop just for one moment the partisanship, the ugliness, the anger, the deception. Let's just stop for one moment. If there was going to be one moment to hit the pause button, the moment would be now. You have human suffering. You have people dying. You can't stop the politics even in this moment? Even in this moment when people are dying all across the country, you still want to play your politics? That's what this is about, and that's why it is so disturbing on a fundamental level. Politics, I'm getting up and I'm reading that death toll number. I'm speaking to the widows and the brothers and the sisters and the children of people who died, and then we're going to play politics with funding that's necessary to save people's lives? When does it stop?

And the disconnect is between the political leadership and the people, because the American people, it's not them. They are principled, they are kind, they are better than what they are getting. The American instinct is to help each other in crisis. The American instinct is to be good neighbors. The American instinct is the farmer who sent me the one mask to help a New Yorker when he only had five masks and a wife with one lung and underlying illness. And he sends one of his five masks to New York. Think about that generosity, that charity, that spirit. That's America. Why? Because we're good neighbors, because we care about one another.

America was when I said we need help in our emergency rooms and hospitals and 95,000 nurses and doctors from across the nation said we will come to New York to help. We'll come into the emergency room. We'll come into the hospital. I understand it's COVID I will leave my family, and I will come to help yours. That's America. That's who we are and that's who we have shown ourselves to be in the middle of this crisis. The crisis brings out the best and the worst, yes. And the best of America is beautiful and that's what we've seen. Because, yes, we are tough. Yes, we are smart. Yes, we are disciplined. Yes, we are united. Yes, we're loving, loving, because we are Americans. And that's who we are and how we are as Americans. And I just hope the political leadership of this nation understands how good we are as a people.