Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo Announces New York State's Rate of Transmission Has Dropped Below One

Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that New York State's rate of transmission, or Rt, has dropped below 1. An Rt of 1 or more means COVID-19 will spread quickly.

The Governor also announced that elective surgeries can resume in Erie County following a sustained decline in Western New York's positivity rate. The county's positivity has steadily declined for nearly three weeks, going from 8.6 percent on January 7 to 5.2 percent. Hospitalizations have declined from 427 on December 31 to 323. The county's hospital capacity is at 48 percent.

VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) 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 afternoon, everyone. Let me introduce the people who join me, my colleagues today. To my right Mr. Gareth Rhodes who has been working on the COVID Task Force since we began, to my left a person who needs no introduction – our great Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul who has been doing a fantastic job not just with COVID but with everything and I thank her very much for all her great work, and Gareth and Kathy will help me answer all the tough questions that I don't know the answers to.

It's a pleasure to be a Roswell Park today and I want to thank Dr. Candace Johnson for their hospitality here at Roswell. It’s always a pleasure to be here. And talk about great work and lifesaving work. Congratulations to all the people at Roswell.

Let’s give you an update as to where we are. Day 331, Groundhog Day, but a little different. Overall positivity 5.47. Statewide deaths 167. That's always the most difficult number in this presentation and that's 167 lives. That's 167 families. It’s 167 wives and daughters and sons and husbands and they're in our thoughts and prayers.

Hospitalization up 1.17, ICU down 5, intubations plus 8. If you look across the state at the hospitalization rate the percentage of population hospitalized by region, you see it’s Long Island and Finger Lakes once again. Highest positivity is Long Island. Within New York City it's the Bronx. And the, Finger Lakes which has made some progress over the past couple of weeks, but the Finger Lakes is still an issue for us. Long Island is an issue and the Bronx in New York City is an issue so we're going to be focusing on those three areas.

We're working on 3 tracks simultaneously if you will. First, keep the spread down, control COVID. That's obviously the national priority. Second, vaccinate New Yorkers, and third, get on with life, rebuild the economy, get back to work. This is unsustainable, this situation that we're in. It was never a choice between public health and reopening the economy. You have to do both, but you have to do it intelligently.

On controlling the COVID spread, the good news is the number is down and it has been continuing to decline. You look at our high point, we were at 7.9. That's in the beginning of January. We're now down to about 5.85. That then tracks to the hospitalization rate. These are all connected. The infection rate, a few days later, a person goes into the hospital so they call hospitalization a lagging indicator. But the number of people being hospitalized has gone down. You see this is true all across the state. These are the curves in different regions. I know they look like scribble from a fourth grader, but they're actually the curve in each region, a little different in each region but overall every region you see on the decline, some areas faster than others.

One of the most important numbers we don't talk about every day is the rate of transmission, what they call the Rt rate. This for every person who is infected, how many people do they infect, and you can see at our high point, one person was infecting two-and-a-half other people. They say anything over 1, the virus is out of control, when one person is infecting more than one other person. Ideally you want to be under 1 and that's where we are right now but it's been a bumpy ride to get here.

The projection models done by the experts in the field show New York's positivity rate continuing to decline. So not only are we on the way down, but the experts tell us that they believe that's going to continue so that's good news also.

In Western New York, we also see the same basic pattern. Positivity is down. December 25, Christmas week, big socialization week and you see the numbers go up and then you see them coming down towards the end of January. Positivity in Erie County was 8.6. It's down to 5.2 and it's been on the decline for three weeks. You also see the hospitalization number on the decline so that is also good.

We wish nobody went into the hospital but it's good to see that number dropping as well. We have a hospital capacity of about 48 percent in Erie County and that's very good because remember the nightmare scenario is hospitals run out of capacity and then you have to shut do. So 48 percent capacity is very good.

We talked about this and actually what we talked about happened. We talked about the holiday spike. We started talking about it at Thanksgiving time because Thanksgiving really is the kickoff of holiday season. You go to Thanksgiving, the next day is black Friday, everybody starts shopping, and you go Thanksgiving, Christmas party, meet me for a drink, celebration into Christmas into Hanukkah into Kwanzaa, now it's New Year's Eve, now it's New Year's Day, and that's all increase social activity. We were saying celebrate smart, celebrate smart, celebrate smart, but just the increased social activity we were afraid you were going to see a spike. We said wear a mask, celebrate, Lord knows it was a terrible year, but celebrate smart and we saw that holiday spike.

We said we hoped the spike would end after January 1, when people stopped socializing as much and then you start to see a trail off and we talked about mid-January and late January where we would see the spike dropping and that's right where we are frankly. We're seeing that spike come down, that’s the positivity numbers down and the hospitalization numbers down, so now we can start making adjustments. I talk about open the valve, close the valve. When the positivity is down and the hospitalization rate is down and the infection rate is down and the Rt rate is down then you can increase economic activity. We’re through that holiday period. By the way, other states had a much higher rate of infection during the holiday period. I believe New Yorkers were smart about it. The increased activity was going to raise the rate, but I think they were smart about it, and I think that’s why you’ve seen the positivity rate did not go up the way it did in other states. But, I think we’re at a new place now, and we can start to adjust that valve, and start to open up more economic activity, and reduce some of the restrictions, and reduce some of the what we call micro-cluster zones, orange zones, et cetera. And we’re going to be talking more about that in the coming days. Department of Health is going through that right now. But, for example, elective surgeries had been stopped in Erie County because we wanted to make sure we had enough hospital capacity for that spike. That, we now feel comfortable about. Elective surgeries can start once again in Erie County, and as I said, we’re going to have some more adjustments over the next couple of days.

But, don’t get cocky with COVID. It’s a great quote. I don’t know if it’s a great quote, it’s my quote. Don’t get cocky with COVID. This beast changes on us all the time. And you can watch TV news all day long, and not really know what’s going on, because I don’t know that anybody really knows what’s happening with the COVID virus. We were told the UK strain was more transmittable, but it wasn’t more dangerous. Now, they’re rethinking that. We were told the South Africa strain might be more transmittable, but, the vaccine worked. Now they’re saying we’re not so sure about that.

They’re now talking about a California strain that developed in California that is a variant of the UK strain. So don’t get cocky with COVID. This virus has been ahead of us every step of the way. You know there are certain things to do that are smart. You know this is a changing situation. Socially distance, wash your hands, wear a mask, be smart. I know it’s been a long time, and I know the numbers look good today, but we have been down this road before, and the road has curves, and the road has potholes. So please just be smart.

Second is on the vaccination front. We did over one and a half million vaccinations. Over 91 percent of the vaccine we’ve received has been put in arms. And that’s a great number, and I congratulate all the providers who were involved in doing this. When we say we’re at 91 percent, people say “oh, few more percent and they’re out.” We don’t run out of vaccine. We get a weekly allocation from the federal government, and it goes week to week. When we say we’ve used 91 percent of our vaccine, that means we’ve used 91 percent of all the vaccine that we have received to date, and then they start with a shipment every week from Washington. The shipment for week seven starts arriving tomorrow, the next day, the next day, the next day. It arrives throughout the week because literally it’s delivered, it’s mailed, FedEx, et cetera. So it arrives at different times. We have told the local governments a hundred times, don’t schedule an appointment unless you have a specific allocation. For people who took their first dose, you will get the second dose. The federal government protects that second dose allocation. So don’t worry about 91 percent, “will I get my second dose?” you will get your second dose. And if you have a scheduled appointment, that appointment will be fulfilled from the allocation that we’re receiving this week. But we are going week to week in terms of the allocation. And again, that will start tomorrow.

So the issue with the vaccination plan is the supply. It’s how much vaccine we are getting. We’re getting about 300,000 dosages per week. Last couple of weeks we got 250,000, this week the incoming allocation is 250,000. But, we are ready for distribution of the vaccine in a much larger quantity. We have 3,000 distribution sites, 3,000 providers, already signed up. So we can get the needle in the arm, we just need the supply itself. But between the National Guard at mass vaccination sites, which are probably the most effective way to do volume, we have mass vaccination sites that could do 10,000 a day per site. So, we can literally do millions of doses. It is a national supply issue. And again, this is not a New York issue, it’s a problem all across the country. It’s a problem all across the globe. Every country is trying to get more vaccine, so that’s the situation we’re in.

It’s also, this whole COVID situation has been an eye opener for Americans, and I hope they take it to heart. We talked for a lot of years about public health. There are great institutions dedicated to public health. There are great public health professors. People dedicate their lives to being public health experts. But, what we neglected to do as a nation was invest the money we needed to invest in actually having an operational public health system. It’s not just about studying it, it’s not the academic, it’s not the theoretical. It’s the operational, it is the practical. That’s where this country fell down. You have to be able to do the screening. You have to be able to do millions of tests. You can’t run out of Q-tips. Nasal swabs, which was the reason why you couldn’t do testing. A nasal swab was a big Q-tip. You can't run out of ventilators. You have to have this vaccination capacity set up, you have to have the contact tracing capacity set up. You have to have the quarantine facilities set up before. You have to have a communication plan where people get factual information so they don't have the same level of anxiety that people went through this last time. That's all the operational capacity and it's expensive. But plans alone are not enough if you can't implement them and you can't implement them to scale.

You can do a desktop exercise, "This is theoretically how i would do it." Yeah, and then COVID happens, and it's bigger and it's badder than you expected, and we didn't have the operational capacity. New York State is using the opportunity to put in what I believe is going to be the best public health operation in the United States, of any state. We have a surge and flex management system that now manages all hospitals statewide. on how to handle a surge capacity, never done before. PPE stockpiles, you can't run out of the N95 masks. We're setting up a thousand people for just public health corps, trained experts to work with communities across the country.

We're going to train citizens, free online training to be ready for the next public health emergency, so you can volunteer in your community and also inform yourself, so you know how to help your family and your children, what advice you should be giving. Cornell University's doing that curriculum. I'm very excited about that. We're going to train all the National Guard to be public health emergency responders. You have to be able to test people coming into the borders. It can't be, you land at JFK airport or Buffalo airport and they check your fruit at customs, but you can walk in with a virus.

We have to have that screening capacity, we're setting up the quarantine facilities. We didn't have enough lab testing capacity in this country to do the number of COVID tests we needed to do. We didn't have any contact tracing capacity. We had plans for all of this, but no actual capacity to do it. So, we've all learned. The Biden Administration, I believe, gets it. And I believe they take public health seriously, and just in the past few days you've seen a big difference. And they've taken actions that I think we're long overdue. I think the mask mandate was long overdue. New York State was the first state to pass a mask mandate. It saved countless lives. They communicate factually, let the experts speak and give people information because when people don't get accurate information they are more nervous about the situation.

They're increasing production of the vaccine. And they're going to give states projection allocations so states can plan. Right now we go week to week. And we don't know what we're going to get next week. So I can't tell Erie County what we're going to get next week, so they don't know what the schedule. Every week you get a new number and then you have to figure out how to allocate that number, how to plan that number. This, there's no operational intelligence to this. And I believe the White House is working on that. We're going to have a call tomorrow with the Governors with people from the White House to talk about these issues, but we've already had many conversations.

The head of the COVID task force is a real pro named Jeff Zients. I've been talking with him. Our Secretary Melissa DeRosa is actually on the committee that is working to operationalize this, so I think it's going to be better and smoother, you're still going to have the fundamental issue of an international shortage of vaccine. Hopefully Johnson and Johnson gets approved in a couple of weeks, that would increase supply. Hopefully Pfizer and Moderna, which are the two big manufacturers now, increase supply.

In the interim, the top priority on vaccination was health care workers. We're at Roswell today. You want to have hospital capacity. You want to make sure the hospitals don't reach their capacity limit. We've seen that in California, we've seen that in Italy. When that happens people die unnecessarily. They die because they couldn't get into a hospital. If you asked the hospitals across the state now, what is your mean capacity issue? When you say capacity, what do you mean? They have the beds, and they have the equipment. They're worried about staff shortages, they're worried about nursing shortages, health care professionals shortages, staff shortages. Why? Because they have staff getting sick.

So, a top priority was vaccinate the health care staff, right? Vaccinate the nurses, the doctors so they are healthy and they can provide medical treatment. We remain focused on that priority, that was the top priority for the vaccine, that was what they called 1A, then was supposed to be essential workers, then older Americans, older New Yorkers. But 1A, the top priority was always the health care workers. We have focused on it, I've said to hospitals all across the state numerous times, personally, in these briefings, "You have to vaccinate your employees first." And it was initially a problem, but the focus has worked. We were at 63 percent last Monday of health care workers vaccinated. One week later, we’re at 72 percent. So, that is a huge improvement; 70 to 90 was the range for herd immunity, right? That was the goal for the vaccine, so we wanted healthcare workers to be above 70 percent and in one week we went up from 63 to 72. So, I applaud the hospitals. I know we literally said what the percentage of hospitals was across the state. I think that got their attention, but it made a big difference. There is still a variance among hospitals that we've never gotten a good explanation for so, while we’re above 70 across the state, you still have hospitals that are lower, and we need the local governments to focus on it. There are over 200 hospitals statewide. I can't call every hospital and our state Department of Health can’t called every hospital and work out local issues but, county governments, mayors, please, you know what hospitals are at what percent - congratulate the high performers and ask the people who are at a lower level what help they need to get their percentage up, because the variance is too great and there is- even if you look at regions within the region, you see a variance. It's not like you can say, well Western New York is different than the Capital District.

Within the region there's a big difference, and again I want the county executives and supervisors and mayors to really focus on this. But Capital Region 85.5 percent at Albany Medical Center down to 72 is the low, so it's 85 to 72 in the Capital Region. Central New York is 98 to 65. Finger Lakes it's 85 to 48, right? Long Island you go from 100 percent in Syosset Hospital 97 percent Plainview to 51 Saint Catherine, 53 Saint Francis. Why? Why does it drop by 50 percent? Mid-Hudson you go from 93 to 40. Why? Why is Northern Dutchess hospital, Saint Luke's health alliance hospital, what's the differential among these hospitals? There are going to be a certain percentage of health care workers who say I don't want to take the vaccine. I get that, but why within the region that you have such a disparity? Mohawk Valley 89 to 42; New York City 100 Lenox Hill, 100 Staten Island University, 99 New York City Health+Hospital/Woodhall but New York City Health+Hospital/Harlem 38. How? Why?

We'd like to see everyone as high as possible. I understand, again, there will be a certain percent that refuses. Fine. That's their right, but why do some hospitals have 100 and others have half that amount? Western New York, Roswell Park 88 - highest number in Western New York. Congratulations again Roswell Park. So, 12 percent didn't have it. My guess is, 12 percent said I don't want to take it, but then why do you get the Children's Hospital at 42 percent? So, that's for the local governments, but overall, we've made great progress.

The vaccine is scarce so it's important that with fair in the distribution and this is how we distribute it. If you look at who's now eligible: health care workers are eligible, that's what we just talked about; essential workers, police, fire, teachers, public safety, their eligible; and then 65-plus. If you look at the numbers health care workers are 1.3 million workers; essential workers 1.7 million; 65-plus are 3.2 million. So, of the eligible population, from when we get an allocation, 21 percent goes to the health care workers; 27 percent goes to the essential workers; 52 percent goes to 65-plus. The way we do that is we give it to providers who are supposed to be prioritizing that population, right? The essential workers are being done by city or county departments of health, health care workers are being done by the hospitals and FQHCs, 65-plus by the pharmacies and the mass distribution sites. If the providers don't follow their prioritization, then you won't get a fair allocation. If the pharmacies use their vaccine for police, fire, et cetera, then the 65-plus won't get a fair allocation. So, everybody wants it. I want it, but it has to be fair, and providers please don't schedule an appointment unless you have a specific allocation.

I'm the former attorney general. I said a few weeks ago, you're going to see scams on the vaccine. You have a high demand for the product. You will see scam artists and you will see fraud. I guarantee it. We've already seen it and there are a number of situations that we're looking at. If you get an offer that sounds too good to be true, 833-VAX-SCAM. Everyone wants it but beware of fraudsters.

Third priority is rebuild the economy. First step: we need Congress to repeal SALT. It sounds technical. People don't understand what it means. It was the federal law that passed that ended the deductibility of state and local taxes. It was the first double taxation in the nation's history. The federal government taxes the tax that you pay to the county, or the city, or the state. Federal government now taxes what you pay in property taxes. So, you pay $4,000 in property taxes, the federal government now taxes that $4,000. Whereas up until now, you deducted that from your federal income. They now tax your property tax. First time in history. They did this three years ago. Everyone said it was unfair, it was partisan, it was political, it was terrible. It costs on average $2,600 for New York taxpayers. Everyone said they would repeal it. They now are new leadership position; repeal it. That will be a big deal for the State of New York.

Second, what they call state and local financing. The state has a very big deficit. If I have a deficit, we have to cut. If we cut, we have to lay-off essential workers. We don't want to do that in the middle of the pandemic. We have a $15 billion cost from the COVID crisis. That's what Washington has to help this state and every state with and that is number two — and number three, which is part of rebuilding the economy, but people don’t often think of it this way — is public safety, especially in our urban areas. You want businesses to grow? You want people to move in? Public safety is essential and this is also a national crisis. I said months ago, I understand the tensions from the community. I understand the tensions from the police. I’ve seen the demonstrations. We’ve all seen the demonstrations, but we have to work through these tensions because you need public safety. You need a relationship of trust and respect between the community and the police and the police in the community. Trust is a door that swings both ways and we have 500 localities with police departments in this state. I said work with your police, with your community, work through the issues and come up with a plan that your community accepts by April 1. And if not, April 1 is when we pass the state budget, that locality won’t be included. I understand it's a difficult issue, but in life, the problems you ignore do not go away. Those problems mount. It’s true in an individual's life, it’s true in a family's life, it's true in society. Some localities have done a great job. City of Buffalo is doing a great job, but they have to have a plan done in 66 days. It's a difficult issue. I get that it's a difficult issue. Police have strong feelings. I get it. Protesters in the community have strong feelings. I get it. I understand the problem. What's the solution? There has to be a solution because you can't allow the tension between the police and the community to exist, right? Divorce is not an option here. One side feels this way. The other side feels that way. Yeah, reconcile it or we get a divorce. We can't get a divorce because we need public safety, so we have to reconcile these feelings and these tensions and we have to get it done quickly because you're not going to rebuild the city If people don't feel safe. Also gratuitously, communities that have elections this year, if I’m running for a city position, if there's a mayoral election — this is a topic to discuss. What is your plan and your vision to make public safety work in our city? But it has to be addressed and it’s community-by-community.

New York State is ready to go. We're anxious to get on with the reopening and the rebuilding, and we are poised like no other state in the nation. We know how to move. We know how to build. We know how to get things done and we have demonstrated that and we have great plans that are just already in the works and when the federal government actually starts to move, we are going to be the first out of the box building a New York that is better than it has ever been before all across the state.

And then last point: I want to thank the Buffalo Bills for a really great, great season. It's been many years since we had the opportunity to watch a game like we watched last night for the AFC Championship and they really did have a great season, a lot of great talent, a lot of great young talent with a lot of promise for the future, but best of all is the way they played together as a team and the way they supported each other. Even last night in a game, there were a couple of instances where you saw how the team rallied together to protect each other and defend one another and it was beautiful to watch. Yes, we would have liked to have a different outcome, but that does not diminish the accomplishment that was achieved by this team and we thank all of them. Kim and Terry Pegula, they have been a beautiful to work with and they brought such pride to Buffalo. Coach McDermott, General Manager Brandon Beane, we all worked together to get fans in the stands safely and I know they appreciated that and 7,000 fans cheered like 70,000 when they were in Buffalo, but that is the Buffalo way, right? And the Buffalo Bills — what's beautiful about them and beautiful about the relationship between the team and the city, the county, Western New York really. The team symbolizes Buffalo. There is no quit in Buffalo. There was no quit in Jim Kelly. There's still no quit in Jim Kelly. There's no quit in Thurman Thomas. There's no quit in Buffalo. Tim Russert was a beautiful friend of mine, passed away too young. There’s no quit in Tim Russert. That's Buffalo. That's the Buffalo spirit. That’s the Buffalo Constitution, you know? They’re not going to back down; they’ve not going to give up — and that's the essential quality of life. That's what resonates all across the nation about the Buffalo Bills. People have said it all different ways. Mark Twain: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog,” right? Winston Churchill: “Never give up, never give up, never give up.” That's the Buffalo Bills. That's Buffalo and it's beautiful to see. To the Kansas City Chiefs, Mr. Mahomes: congratulations on a good game. Congratulations on the win. Not taking anything away from them at all, but Mr. Mahomes, Kansas City — we will see you next year and I will wager today that the outcome is going to be different. So, let's get o