Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo Updates New Yorkers on State's Progress During COVID-19 Pandemic

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today updated New Yorkers on the state's progress during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Four additional cases of the UK variant were identified, one in Saratoga County, one in Warren County and two in Suffolk County. The new Saratoga and Warren County cases are tied to the first case discovered in Saratoga County. To date, there are 22 known cases of the variant in New York State.

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 morning all. To my far right, Mr. Gareth Rhodes, to my immediate right Dr. Howard Zucker, to my left Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor, to her left Robert Mujica, Budget Director.

Today is day 326, but in many ways today is like day one. Interestingly, today is the one year anniversary of the first case being found in the United States, first COVID case. One year ago today, it was in Seattle, Washington and today, one year later, it's like day one because we start with a new president, President Joe Biden, and it thrills me to say President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. I'm very excited about the president and the change for this nation. This is going to be a different country. It's going to be a country that needs healing, needs direction, needs a new agenda, but Joe Biden is the right person, I believe, for this time. I have known him many, many years. He's been a great friend to me personally and I've tried to be a great friend to him. Good days and bad days, he's been a great friend to New York State. He's been with us on many projects that we've done, many important milestones here in New York, that he helped make possible when he was vice president. He was, in many ways, our go to person during the Obama administration. If I needed to cut the federal bureaucracy and get something done, the Vice President was always there and his team was always there, and many of his team as vice president are now on his team, obviously, as president. So, it's exciting. It really is exciting in many ways.

I'm also excited about the rescue plan that he's laid out. It's what the nation needs. By the way, it's what the governors had been arguing for for the past year - state and local financing, which is very important. As I said my budget yesterday, it's now very important that New York gets its fair share of state and local financing, and we're going to fight very hard for that, but Joe Biden, to his credit, put it in his plan, $350 billion for state and local financing. Now it will go to the Senate and go to the House, and they will carve up that $350 billion, right, they'll divide it. What does New York get? What does California get? What does Florida get? What does Texas get? So, we have to make sure in that process that New York is represented, but he put the plan on the table that he said he would. So, all good news and a new day, and a new sense of hope, and a new tone and a new spirit. A more loving, more healing and uniting presence in Washington. And the president sets the tone, you know, the president is not just another person on Twitter. Normally, people look to the president; people listen to the president. The president is a leader and a tone setter and when he is strong enough to use words like "love," like "healing," that's a special person, because it's hard to show your soul in that way. It's hard to be that honest and that authentic, and that's who Joe Biden is.

I didn't go to the Inaugural because my first job, my first priority is Governor of the State of New York. Law enforcement had warned that there could be demonstrations at state capitals by supporters of former President Trump - former President Trump, it's first time I've said that- and I don't like to call out the State Police, and we've called out the State Police for today, or call out National Guard in what could be a dangerous situation; I don't like to call out any public servant to handle a situation without my being willing to stand next to them in that situation. It's my own personal prerogative, my own style, and I call out public employees for dangerous situations, but I'm always there standing next to them, so I didn't want to go to the Inaugural and have troopers and National Guard dealing with demonstrations in front of the Capitol. We know how violent these demonstrations can be, we all watched what happened in Washington, so I didn't want to take any chances. As it turns out, the demonstration in New York was, I think it's fair to say, less robust than anticipated. I just took a look. There was reportedly one protester, I just took a look outside, I couldn't find the protester, but the protest didn't materialize here in New York. To the extent that gentleman represents the protest, I could have gone to the Inaugural, in retrospect. I have full capacity in my team, and I believe Melissa DeRosa and Robert Mujica and Gareth Rhodes and Commissioner Zucker could have handled the situation, but better safe than sorry. It's a new day and it's a happy day.

Overall today statewide positivity: 6.8 percent. Number of tests: 185,000. Statewide deaths: 185, that's 185 families that are grieving today and we grieve with them. 400,000 deaths in this nation and it didn't have to be, it didn't have to be. If we learned the lessons from COVID in the spring, if it hadn't been politicized the way it was, if the government was more competent - it did not have to be 400,000 people. We learned many of these lessons, we should have learned these lessons if we were smart and we were quicker. We knew what happened in the spring and we knew what was going to happen. Our leaders, our government failed to make the adjustments. Our political system failed and people died.

Statewide hospitalizations up 37; ICU up 7; intubations up 5. When you look across the state by region of percent hospitalized, Finger Lakes is still right up there. Finger Lakes, that number is not going to change unless the Finger Lakes changes that number. I don't know what else to say to them. Their positivity rate has been among the highest. Their hospitalization rate is among the highest, that means more people go into your hospital. Your nurses and doctors are working harder. That means more people are going to die, it means more elderly people are at risk and it's a function of your behavior. One point in life is it's up to you. It's up to you, it's a function of your behavior.

Mohawk Valley and Long Island, which is new to the list and concerning, but that's the top three places in the state in terms of hospitalization. Positivity, Mohawk Valley and Long Island, Finger Lakes is not in the top 3 and I hope that remains; but Mohawk Valley and Long Island have the highest possibility. You look at New York City, the Bronx and then look at the variance between the Bronx and Manhattan. Double, double the positivity rate. Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.

The period we're in now is a footrace between the vaccine and how many people you can get vaccinated, which is becoming more and more a question of how fast can you produce the vaccine and how quickly is the infection spreading. Right now, the vaccination rate is a function of the supply - as you'll see in a moment. The infection rate is a function of people's behavior. Right now, the infection rate is on the decline. Caveat. Caveat is if one of these new strains of the virus don't take over, that's the caveat, but this is the basic dynamic that we're in right now.

Overall, it's good news. Overall, the positivity rate has been dropping and it's been dropping across the State and that is good news. It's in different rates of decline in different parts of the State, but this is the overall statewide average on the 7-day. If you look at the regions, you see all basically follow the general curve where it went up, flattened a little bit and then is coming down as the holidays are more and more in the past. We hope this continues and we hope a new strain, like the UK strain, doesn't take over which could change these numbers.

Hospitalization rate is what they call a lagging indicator. What does that mean? That means you get infected, you go to a Hanukkah party and you get infected. Several days later, you start to feel ill. You think maybe it's just a cold, maybe it's the flu. Several days later, you're more concerned and you go get a test. Now you know you have COVID. Several days later you get sicker and you go into the hospital. You're in the hospital for several days, if you don't get better you go into the ICU. If you don't get better you go under intubation and then question marks. But the hospitalization rate lags the infection rate and the positivity rate, so you see the positivity rate going down, you can still see the hospitalization rate going up. Why? It's the time lag between the infection and the hospitalization rate.

When you look at the vaccine administration rate by region, it's up across the State, still with variance. 96 percent, North Country. Who wins, who's doing the best? Southern Tier, 99 percent. North Country, 96 percent. Long Island, 90 percent. Western New York, 89 percent, Central New York, 87 percent, Mid-Hudson, then Capital Region, then Mohawk Valley, then, nope, then New York City. So it's up, which is the good news. It's varied, which is the bad news. Glass half full, glass half empty.

On the vaccination of hospital workers, which I am telling you is a priority. If the nurses and doctors get sick, you lose hospital capacity. Hospital capacity will be determined by staff. That's what it's going to be. No hospital is going to call up and say "I'm out of beds." No hospital is going to call up and say "I'm out of ventilators." No hospital is going to call up and say "I'm out of PPE." A hospital will call up and say "I don't have enough staff, because my staff is sick." Especially if the UK strain hits. Vaccinate the nurses and doctors. That's why they were the top priority by every federal guidance and by every state guidance.

We're now up to 65 percent. That's better. It's not great. Herd immunity was supposed to be 70 to 90 percent. I would have liked to see the healthcare workers leading the charge, just as a sign of confidence to New Yorkers. If nurses and doctors take it, it must be safe. But, they're at 65 percent. Again, that's varied across the state. Some areas are doing better than others. High of 81 in Central New York, goes down to a low of 61, 62, Long Island, New York City. So, that's a priority, and it's a priority we're going to continue to follow.

The pace of the distribution of the vaccine is way up. Week one, this was a new experience for these institutions. we did 34,000, week two, 54,000, week three, 120. We got more aggressive, talking about percentages, showing transparency, people across the state what regions were doing what, what facilities were doing what. Publicized it, talked about it, it went up higher, 235, we're now at 329,000 in week five. Week six is going to be even higher and dramatically so. Overall, statewide, total doses, 1,156,000. First doses and second doses. But that's way up. 86 percent of the dosages have been administered, which means they are now in arms, and that's great news.

There are 145,000 first dosages that are remaining on hand. We're averaging 65,000 doses per day. So that means at this rate we only have two or three days of supply. We'll start to get the next week's allocation, but what's clear now is we're going to be going from week to week, and you will see a constant pattern of basically running out, waiting for the next week's allocation, and then starting up again. We're trying to smooth it out, but we're also trying to get it out as fast as possible. But, that's where we are now. It's going to be a week to week allocation situation. And at this rate, we're going to be out in two days. We're going to have to start to move the next allocation quickly.

We have 1,200 vaccine distributors around the state now. It's a very large network of distributors. We also have other distributors who are ready to come online, who we have prepared to come online. Frankly, the 1,200 distributors are more than we need right now. We have more of a distribution network than we have product, so to speak. We have 1,200 distributors, but, we have so many distributors that we can't supply them all and you will see distributors who run out of supplies. When distributors say "I'm running out," they're right. We want to make sure distributors don't schedule any appointments for which they don't have a definitive allocation, because we don't know what we're going to get next week, and we don't know where we're going to distribute it next week. So don't schedule an appointment unless you know your allocation for the next week. Otherwise you have to cancel appointments and it adds to the chaos, which is already inherent in the system. When the federal government decided to say 65+ were open, and this was open, and this was open, and this was open, but there was no supply they created tremendous anxiety. Only Jesus with loaves and fishes could handle the situation that the federal government created, because they created such a demand and then they never increased the supply. But this large distribution network that we're putting in place we're anticipating more supply. I'd rather be in the situation where we have more distribution waiting on supply than supply waiting on distribution. As soon as we get it, we want to be able to send it out and that's why we have such a large distribution network.

I also believe you're going to see more production, knock on formica, and Johnson & Johnson may be coming online, now we hear maybe March. AstraZeneca may be coming online. More Pfizer production maybe in the second quarter. More Modernaproduction. So, our distribution network is up and running, we're just waiting on the supply. But we're in a position that when we get the supply we will be able to move the supply, and that's the position we should be in and I feel good about that. What else is happening is as we move allocation faster, the vaccines are becoming more scarce and harder to find. Fairness becomes more important, alright, because now you're getting down to -- we only have very few vaccines that we're allocating because so many are going out the door. Fairness is important, and I want to remember where we are in general. There are three groups that are now eligible. The healthcare - nurses, doctors, patient-facing staff, therapists, et cetera - healthcare; you then have what's called 1b. - essential workers, police officers, firefighters, public safety officers, transit workers, grocery food, teachers - that's 1b.; and then you have 65+ - just general members of the public who are 65+. Why? Because older people are more susceptible to COVID. Those are the three categories that are open.

I want to keep it fair among those three, right? So healthcare workers, there are about 1.3 million who haven't been vaccinated, that's about 21 percent of the eligible universe. Essential workers, there are about 1.7, that's about 27 percent of the eligible universe. 65+ is 3.2 million people, that's 52 percent of the eligible universe. Theoretically and ideally, if you had 100 vaccines and they said, "how do you distribute those 100 vaccines fairly among these eligible individuals," you would say 21 percent go to healthcare workers, 27 percent go to the essential workers, and 52 percent go to 65+. That would be fair among those eligible people, and that's what we're trying to do to the extent practical. The way we distribute it is we distribute it by region. A region gets an allocation. The region's allocation is based on pure percentage of their population. If a region is 14 percent of the state population, they get 14 percent. It then goes to the provider network.

The provider network is in two parts. One is the governmental, the public side and they basically operate the local health department: county department of health, city department of health, that's what they run. If they have a public hospital they run the public hospital. The private sector runs the majority of the providers: hospitals, pharmacies, Federally Qualified Health Community facilities. The hospitals to give you an idea in this state, we have about 200, roughly, we have about 15 public, and the rest are all private. So, hospitals are private. Pharmacies are private: CVS, Walgreens, et cetera. And the community healthcare facilities are private. So, that is duplicated in every region. The County Executive is in charge of the local health department. The private facilities are private facilities. Each provider has a priority and this is important. Pharmacies should be doing people who are 65-plus. Hospitals should be doing the health care workers. Why? Because health care workers are related to hospitals and we don't want 65 year olds walking into hospitals. Pharmacies are better accommodated to handle 65-plus. The city and county departments of health are supposed to be doing the essential workers, police, fire, teachers, and the police, fire, teachers are supposed to be working on self-administration programs. So, the local county department of health can just hand them an allocation and say, here you go, Chief of the Police, you have your medics administered. Here you go, Chief of the Fire Department, you have your EMS administered. Here you go, teachers, you work with your local provider to administer it. That's how this should be working. Each provider must follow the priority or else the allocations are unfair. That's why we push and stress the prioritization and that's why it's in the law.

If everybody vaccinates everyone then it's going to be unfair to someone. If a local health department receives an allocation which is calibrated to their number of essential workers but they give it to people who are 65-plus, then the essential workers are going to have less of an allocation. The pharmacies that are supposed to be doing 65-plus, if they give it to essential workers, it depletes the allocation for the 65-plus. That's why it's important, because we want this fair as possible. I understand everybody wants it. I understand people under 65 are saying, why not me? I understand there are thousands of people over 65 who can't get a vaccine. I get dozens of calls every day from people who are 70, 80, 90 years old who say, "I try calling all day, I try on the internet all day long, my daughter tries all day long, my son tries all day long, we can't find an appointment to get a vaccine." That's true. That is very true. I talk to police officers who say, "I can't get the vaccine yet, my police department says they don't have enough. That's true.

The best we can do is be fair to everyone and that's what we're trying to do. We don't have enough supply. We don't. At this rate of supply, it takes seven and a half months to get enough vaccines for the currently eligible population. I'm 63. I know I look older, but I'm only 63. I'm not eligible. At this rate, I'm not going to be eligible for eight months because the current eligible population, it's going to take seven and a half months to get to them. I get the frustration but I want to at least be able to say, we were fair with what we had.

So how do we allocate? First, geographically by region. Every region gets their population allocation. Period. Then by eligible group, 21 percent healthcare, 52 percent 65 year olds, 27 percent essential workers, then a priority for the more effective providers. You've all seen the provider list. Some providers are much more efficient than other providers. You want to get the vaccine out the door so we prioritize within that group the providers that are higher performing. On top of that, we have a mandate for social equity. I don't want it to be the poor places and Black communities, Hispanic communities wind up getting left out because they don't have a hospital and they don't have a doctor's office and they don't have a chain pharmacy. So special efforts in public housing, in churches and through community groups which we have been doing. I've been myself with public housing. The State has set up sites in public housing with Black churches. We have SOMOS that is doing a beautiful job, and Northwell that is setting up a lot of pop-up sites for us. So, the equity is also very important to us.

But the issue is supply and that's not going to change. We got 300,000 doses. Then we went to 239. Last week we were at 250. At this rate, if you were to receive 300,000 vaccines, it's going to take six months. If you receive 250, which is what we're receiving right now, it's going to take seven months. We just received the allocation number for next week, it's 250,000 again, so it didn't go up. I urge the President to do whatever he can to increase the supply. Pfizer and Moderna can not sell, by law, to a state, I tried. Apparently they only have what's called an "Emergency Authorization Use," an EAU. They're not licensed to sell to states, it's a very limited federal approval, so states can't buy, private individuals can't buy, it's not allowed by the Pfizer-Modernaapproval. So, it's going to be up to the federal government. But whatever they can do, that's going to be job one.

Something else I'm concerned about, on the theory of, it's been one year, learn the lesson in life, it's okay to get knocked on your rear end, it's really not okay but it's unavoidable, life is going to knock you on your rear end. Two pieces of advice: get up, get up. Second: learn the lesson that knocked you on your rear end, and this country hasn't done that. We know this: viruses mutate. We know that. This virus is mutating, we know that. So far the mutated strains are different and are more dangerous. The UK strain spread much more quickly, CDC casually mentions that the UK strain can takeover by March, in which case you'll see our infection rate go like this, and then you'll say, "Why didn't we vaccinate the nurses and doctors?"

There's a South African strain that may or may not be more lethal. There's a Brazilian strain that may or may not be more lethal. We're seeing the UK strain spread. We have two more cases linked to the Saratoga Spring spread and two cases in Suffolk County. Wadsworth is testing, we have not found the South Africa strain, or the Brazilian strain, in New York. I believe it's just a matter of time.

And I believe it's just a matter of time until there is a strain that is much more lethal. And unfortunately, I believe you have to anticipate a strain that is vaccine-resistant. It is almost a matter of probability, when we talk about these strains, there are dozens and dozens of mutations. Probability suggests there will be a strain, there will be a mutation that is vaccine-resistant, as frightening as that sounds. The flu mutates every year. There's a new flu vaccine every year. There could be a strain that requires a new vaccine, that's a possibility. And we've done so much vaccine work, it's also possible that we could come up with a quick new vaccine. But you'd then have to administer that vaccine all over again.

So, you are playing with, now, Russian roulette with this virus. You know it's mutating around the globe. Why are we still allowing international people to fly into our airports without tests? Why would we do that? One year later, one year later. Why didn't we learn the lesson of a year ago? How did New York wind up in this situation? It flew here from the UK. It flew from Italy. It was never the China virus. It was the mutated virus from the UK, and from Italy, and from France.

And you know what's happening today? The UK virus is still flying in to JFK. The Brazil virus is still flying in to JFK. Why? Why wouldn't you say that all international travelers have to be tested? It is just basic common sense, and realizing the lesson of last year.

Moving forward in this new year, our new President, we are ready, we are energized, I'm feeling good, we are strong, this state is stronger than it's ever been, we had a horrendous experience last year with COVID but it made us stronger. That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And we are the stronger for it.

And I feel it and I believe it. We're going to battle COVID, we're going to deal with the economics in the budget, we're going to make sure Washington gives us our fair share of state and local financing. We're going to reopen the economy as we're now doing, safely and smartly. And build baby build, my own expression.

This is the perfect moment in time. Listen to FDR, listen to all the greats. Private sector is slow, private economy is slow, people are out of work. Money is cheap. Build, build, like we built airports, and bridges, and subways. Build. And build a New York that's better than it has ever been, and that's exactly what we're doing. And we're building today and we're waiting for no one. We create our own destiny, I truly believe that. And no one is better at creating destiny and shaping the future than the people of New York State, because they are New York Tough.