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

Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo updated New Yorkers on the state's progress during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Three additional cases of the UK variant were identified in Westchester and Kings Counties. To date, there are 25 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:

Okay, Happy Friday. To my far right, Gareth Rhodes, changed positions, try to confuse me, but they can't. to his left, Dr. Jim Malatras, Dr. Howard Zucker, Secretary Melissa DeRosa, Budget Director Robert Mujica.

Today is day 328, and we welcome common sense and competence to the federal government. It is a relief for us here in the State of New York. President Biden's inauguration was beautiful, and it was uplifting, and it was entertaining, lot of great entertainers. We want to thank President Biden for including the state and local aid in his first announcement of the America Recovery Act. State and local aid is something we fought for for about the past two years. All the governors were united. State and local aid is just what it sounds like. It is aid to the state governments, aid to the local governments. The Senate refused to put it in the previous bill. The Senate leadership is now changed, obviously, and President Biden put in $350 billion.

The next obstacle on the federal side is $350 billion is in President Biden's plan. They could raise that if they wanted, by the way. Speaker Pelosi had a higher amount in her Heroes Act. I would urge them to raise it. National Governors Association, Democrats and Republicans, asked for $500 billion. But, the real fight is going to be the allocation of the $350 billion. What state gets what? What's the distribution formula? And that is a slicing of the pie function, which is going to be done in the House and the Senate. We made it clear that New Yorkers are firmly committed to two things, our fair slice of the $350 billion, which we believe is modestly $15 billion, which we need for this year's budget relief, and repeal SALT, which is not state and local but it was something that every Democrat was outraged that when it was passed, it crushed New York. Everyone said they would repeal it. Well, now is the time.

Also, President Biden's team is a welcome relief. The COVID task force coordinator is Jeff Zients. Jeff I've known for 20 years. He is a true pro, and you see even on day one, the actions they're taking are just long, long overdue. Use the Defense Production Act. I had a number of conversations and statements going back over a year urging the Trump Administration to use the Defense Production Act. Wear a mask. Look at that, common sense. Lightning bolt from above. So congratulations on implementing common sense. And international travel procedures. We see these strains walking in our airport. It's easier to bring a COVID strain through an airport than it is to bring fruit from another country. It has defied common sense. Sothis is a welcome relief. And it makes us feel, frankly, like we're not alone. The federal government is actually doing something positive. And it's a real partnership. Jeff Zients is going to work in partnership with the governors. The governors are the ones who are administering this COVID vaccine. governors are the ones who've been fighting this COVID battle. We felt like we've been battling it on our own. But, we're going to have a weekly meeting with Mr. Zients, hear from the governors, hear what they need, and it's a real functional partnership. So I thank them all very much for that.

Where we are in this footrace, how fast does the infection rate go up, how fast do we vaccinate? This is where we are today. 5.65 positivity, 268,000 tests. Statewide deaths, 165. Deaths, talk about lagging indicator, which is a sort of antiseptic term, but you get infected, you go into a hospital, if you're in a hospital long, ICU, intubation, and too often death. And that's what we're seeing now. Good news is, we're seeing the hospitalizations decrease over these past couple of days. Significant decrease, 400 over the past couple of days. So that's really positive news. ICUs down 14, intubations down 19.

Positivity rate is down, continues to go down, and that's very good news. Hospitalizations are also a lagging indicator, but eventually they follow positivity. If fewer people are getting positive, fewer people are getting infected, fewer people going into the hospitals, and that's what we are seeing also. This is a confusing chart, but just to make it confusing, as if it wasn't confusing enough, start at the bottom, December 7th. December 7th is when you start to deal with the surge from Thanksgiving. People gathered for Thanksgiving, social gatherings, if they weren't smart, infection rate went up. Week later or so you start to see it in the hospitals. So from the bottom up, we had 150 new people a day, 164 new people a day, 97 people a day, 165 a day. Then it starts to turn. 111 per day, 48 per day, 32 per day, five per day. So this, again, is more good news. We just need to keep the arrows pointed down. But, never get cocky with COVID. Truer words were never spoken. I'll take credit for that quote. Never get cocky with COVID.

The new strains are frightening. The UK strain, Brazil strain, now the South Africa strain, and there are going to be more strains, I would wager on it. The UK strain has been spreading, should have never been here, if this federal government had done the testing and the quarantine mandate that other countries did, but, we are where we are. We're up to 25 cases in New York. CDC has said the UK strain is going to overtake the COVID-19 strain by March. That's how quickly this strain spreads. If that is true, you could see the infection rate go up again. So, hence don't get cocky with COVID. Two cases in Westchester, one in Kings County. I'm a born and bred New Yorker. I still call Kings Brooklyn. So, we adjust, right? We are in a war with COVID. It's a fluid situation. Government normally takes a position and stands there, that doesn't work in war. In war, when the enemy moves, you move. They try a new tactic, you try a new tactic, and that ability to flex and adjust is very important. Stay on the balls of your feet - mixed metaphors.

Hospitalizations: Finger Lakes. Finger Lakes, Finger Lakes, Finger Lakes, Finger Lakes, and now Long Island. We have seen Long Island ticking up but now it's Finger Lakes and Long Island with the highest percentage hospitalized. Highest positivity: Long Island, Mohawk Valley. Highest positivity in New York City: Bronx, which has been growing for a while. Staten Island seems to have stabilized and that's good news. Thank you very much, Staten Islanders. And again, these numbers are function of behavior. How you act is how the virus will spread. It's that simple.

Where are we in terms of vaccinations? Remember what happens. We get a supply from the federal government. We've tried to find the allocation on our own, purchase on our own. Pfizer and Moderna how are both operating under something called an Emergency Authorization Use, they call it EAU, it's a federal program. Everything has to be an acronym because that's the federal government. Emergency Authorization Use does not allow them to sell it, so they cannot sell directly to the State of New York, so the supply comes from the federal government.

We have used 97 percent of the doses we've been allocated thus far through week one to five. This is the allocation usage by region for week one through five. Best, highest level of vaccination rate, kudos, Southern Tier: 100 percent. And the Southern Tier is a real turn-around story, so hats off to the Southern Tier, and to those county executives and supervisors. North Country 99; Central New York 98; Long Island 97; Western New York 96. Kudos to all of you. Lower performing regions in the state: Mohawk Valley 77, that has to improve, and it should improve. People are in desperate demand for the vaccine. We want to make sure as soon as we're getting it, we're getting it out. Capital Region 82; Mid-Hudson 84; New York City 90; Finger Lakes 94. Overall statewide 1,329,000 thousand doses delivered. We run out of allocation today. The week one to five allocation will be exhausted by the end of the day Friday, it may already be exhausted, frankly, midday on Friday and we now going week to week on the next week's allocation. We have 28,000 dosages left in the state from week one to five. If you add up all the dosages that are not in arms in the state, it's 28,000. The problem is we administer about 80,000 dosages per day, right, so 20,000 does not get you through the day when you're doing 80,000 dosages per day. We will, by the end of today, fully utilized all of the dosages that have been delivered.

Week six dosages are being delivered as we speak. They come in throughout the week. They are delivered by the federal government through various means, one of them interestingly enough is through the Federal Express, but they're basically delivered through private carriers, and they arrive at different times across the week. Some jurisdictions are starting to receive them already. That's 250,000 dosages and they are now being delivered.

Week six allocations are arriving. Providers should only schedule appointments for allocations they know they will receive. In other words, in this confusing situation, the last thing we want to do is cancel appointments. So, don't schedule an appointment unless you know you have an allocation. A person who had a first dose, they have an appointment for a second dose, they are going to get it. If you made an appointment at a pharmacy, we told the pharmacies we're going to give you X next week, but only schedule an appointment for an allocation you know you are going to receive. Don't gamble. Don't bet. Some providers think if they schedule the appointments ahead of time, people will feel comfortable because we have waiting lists. Not if you cancel those appointments, so don't schedule any appointment unless you know you have an approved state allocation coming and appointments will be honored.

The moment the vaccines arrive, our goal is to get them in arms as soon as possible. 80,000 per day; 250,000 doses per week is not enough and in truth, we can be doing more than 80,000 dosages per day. We have about 1,200 distributors. We can ramp that distribution network up very quickly. The 1,200 distributors are more distributors than we need. I can't provide the 1,200 distributors with all they could use now because we only get 240,000. We want to have that distribution network in place because we're hoping to get more production and I want to anticipate more production and have that distribution network in place. I'd rather have more distribution waiting for vaccine, than having vaccine sitting on a shelf waiting for distribution. So, we have about 1,200 distributors. We could go to 2,000, 3,000 distributors, just like that, and we could easily do 100,000 dosages per day. That would be 700,000 per week. So, we're limited by our supply. When we get the supply, we distribute it by region, right? The region distributes it by subgroup by the different providers, so just stick with me for a second, it's not that complicated, but I want to be clear once again.

You have three groups, basically. You have healthcare workers, you have essential workers, police, fire, teachers, public safety, food workers. And you have sixty-five plus. Three separate groups. We want to be fair in the allocation. Well then do it by percentage of population -- we are. Healthcare workers are about twenty-one percent of the eligible population. So we distribute twenty-one percent of that region's allocation to healthcare workers. Essential workers are about twenty-seven percent, so we allocate twenty-seven percent of that region's allocation to essential workers. Sixty-five plus are more than half, fifty-two percent. So we distribute fifty-two percent of that region's allocation to the providers who serve sixty-five plus. No one is happy, everybody wants more, what do you do, you just be as fair as you can possibly be with the allocation you have, and that's what we're doing.

Different, the three different groups, are provided for by three different providers. Essential workers are done by city and county departments of health. Why? Because that's the normal liaison with the police and the fire and volunteer fire, they have the most accessible relation to the city and county governments. We're also asking the large unions, the large forces to self-administer, so the city and the county don't even have to do the administration, they just hand it to the police departments, and let the police departments, medical officers do it, hand it to the fire departments and let the fire departments, EMS, EMTs administer. Again, the vaccination is not rocket science, with all due respect to Doctor Zucker. It's a vaccine. And EMS workers, EMT workers administer a vaccine in the normal course of business.

So, essential workers, and the percent that essential workers represent, twenty-one percent, goes to city-county departments of health. Healthcare workers go to the hospitals. Nurses and doctors work in the hospitals. Doctors offices are affiliated with the hospitals, or FQHCs. But that's the normal accessibility for them. Healthcare workers get twenty-seven percent, so, twenty-seven percent goes to hospitals, and then sixty-five plus, we don't want them walking into hospitals. There are a lot of other people who are ill in hospitals. We don't want them walking in toCity Hall, so retail establishments, pharmacies, mass sites are where we're doing the sixty-five plus.

It's important that the provider follows the prioritization, because otherwise they're giving that group's allocation to someone else, and I've said this repeatedly, but I understand the stress level and the anxiety level. At least we have to be able to say we are fair. If you give the police dosage to sixty-five plus, then the police don't get it. If you give the sixty-five dosage to hospital workers than the sixty-five year olds don't get it. So please follow the department of health prioritization. Otherwise, you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. That's all you're doing.

The Trump Administration, and I said this not because he's out of office, I said it while they were in office, this was all unnecessary chaos and confusion and anxiety. Everybody agreed nursing homes were the top priority. Everybody agreed with that. All Americans agreed with that. You have vaccines, they're limited, give it to the people in the nursing homes. Everyone agreed with 1A. Nurses, doctors -- give it to them. They're on the front lines, they're dealing with COVID positive people every day, I'm not, they are, and if they get it they're super spreaders. And if they get it the hospitals close down.

Everybody agreed. First responders, essential workers, everybody agreed. They could all be potential super spreaders, they're more exposed. They then opened it up to seventy-five plus, which made sense, but again you are already way over capacity. By the way, we still have not received enough supply just to do 1A and 1B. If they had only opened it up to nursing homes, healthcare, and police officers, we still have not received enough supply, even to get past nursing homes and 1A. We wouldn't even be in 1B yet if they opened the categories sequentially. Then you open seventy-five plus, then they opened sixty-five plus, all at the same time. Soyou now have seven million people, all who are eligible and they're chasing 250,000 vaccines per week, it made no sense.

What should have been done, nursing homes first. You finish nursing homes, go to 1A. You finish 1A, go to 1B. Then after 1B, and again we still wouldn't be through 1B, we wouldn't be through 1A, we've done 1.3 million dosages, how many people were in 1A? Who remembers? 2.1? 1A is two million people, we've only done one million dosages, we would still be in 1A. Then go to 1B, and then if you open the age groups you should have opened it as a priority by age.

I'm ninety years old, I should go before the person who's sixty-five. I'm ninety, I should go before the person who is seventy. And it should have been opened as you had allocation. Anyway, that is not what we did. It's not what they did and now you have a period of confusion and anxiety because you're trying to get 7 million people with 250,000 a week. That would take 7 months.

President Biden has said he would produce 100 million dosages in 100 days. That is about 1 million per day. New York State is about 6 percent of the population. That means New York State would get about 60,000 doses a day. That's about 420,000 per week. That is higher than we are now. Even at 420,000 dosages per week, you still have to do 7.1 million, that still takes you 17 weeks. All this to say, this is going to be a long several months in distribution of this vaccine and the anxiety that has been created. I'm hopeful that the Biden administration can figure out how to increase production and shorten that 17 weeks. I think the President is right - I'm not accustomed to saying that - increase production through the Defense Production Act. We should have done it a year ago, but increase production because that is the bottleneck right now.

With all of this said, hospital capacity is still our top priority and hospital capacity is going to come down to how many hospital staff get sick. That is what is going to happen. Much of what has happened since the first onset has not been a surprise. I feel like I'm standing on the beach and you see in the distance a large wave building and we're standing on the beach and the wave is building and the wave is getting closer. Don't be there when the wave hits. The UK strain is here. The UK strain is spreading. We still are only at 67 percent vaccination rate of our hospital workers. This is a problem. We're supposed to be at 70-90 percent for herd immunity and the hospital workers are the people that if they get sick, the hospital capacity would collapse.

The hospital capacity collapses, we have to close the economy. We're working very hard on this message and we're working very hard to get the hospitals to get their staff vaccinated. I've spoken to dozens and dozens of hospitals. There is a broad disparity. Some are at 100 percent. Some are 50 percent. Average is 67. It's picking up. It was 65 on Wednesday, it was 62 last week, but we have to do more and we have to be faster.

This is the percentage of hospital workers across the region and you see the variance. Central New York is 82 percent. You then go down to 61 percent on Long Island; 62 percent in Western New York. What accounts for that? 82, Central New York; 78 North Country; 69 - we need the hospital staff vaccinated, that's why they were 1a.

More good news, we completed the first round of vaccinations of nursing homes because they were the most vulnerable population. 70 percent vaccinated so far. The vaccination rate among nursing home residents is higher than the vaccination rate among nursing home nurses and doctors. Social equity is also a pressing issue.

We have a COVID-19 equity task force and want to make sure that everyone has access to the vaccine. There are two issues there. One is accessibility and we're working on that. The second is the willingness to accept the vaccine and we're doing everything we can on accessibility. We're going directly to public housing projects, but we have a problem with skepticism about the vaccine, especially in Black and Brown communities. I'm working with clergy, I'm working with community leaders, I'm working with respected doctors, nurses. I understand the skepticism about the federal government and the past federal government and their vaccination approval. It gave the sense that it was political. I get the historic skepticism, especially among the Black community with the Tuskegee experiment, et cetera.

That's why we had New York doctors approve the vaccine in addition to the federal government approval. People said at that time, oh why would New York State do this? It's redundant. If the FDA says it's safe and if HHS, federal HHS says it's safe, then it's safe. No. Because people did not believe that administration and they did not believe that HHS and that FDA. By the way, as I say to members of the Black and Brown community every day, I don't believe them either. I had my own level of skepticism and cynicism about the previous administration. But, I'm not taking their word for it. We had New York doctors go through it.

We have the best hospital network on the globe in New York. They have all gone through the vaccine, it is safe and it can save your life. I need the clergy members, I need the medical community - we have to get past this skepticism problem and we have to do it quickly. Otherwise, without this vaccine, the UK strain hits, you're going to see the death rate go up.

As an aside, in the budget, we're doing something called 21-day amendments where you can amend the budget and add certain things. I just want to make sure people are aware. We have consumer utility protections in the budget. Right now, there's a statutory cap on what the utilities can pay for damages. If there's a storm on Long Island, people get hurt, Public Service Commission determines that the utilities were not ready or whatever, they charge a penalty to the utility. In the law, they have caps on the amount a utility can be penalized. NYSEG was penalized the other day. It was only $1.5 million. Why only $1.5 million? The damage was much worse. Well, because the law capped the penalty. The laws, and these are old laws, but they were basically a utility protection program. Why would you cap a penalty? The penalty is commensurate with the damage. That's what a penalty is. But at one time the utilities were very powerful and they were powerful with the Legislature and the law protects them. That has to change. You can't artificially limit the penalty. The penalty is what the penalty is. The penalty is equivalent to the damage. If you create $10 million worth of damage, the penalty should be $10 million. Also, they can't shut off utilities because a person can't pay in the middle of an emergency like COVID. That's in the bill also.

Also, internet providers which now have limited regulation from the state and can often be very abusive to consumers - if you have a problem with an internet provider it is the most frustrating process that a consumer can go through, and really there's nobody to complain to. Many of them have basically a virtual monopoly and they're not responsive to consumer complaints. We also want to say internet service providers, low income families, you cannot charge more than $15 for the basic internet service program. We go to remote learning and kids are not in school, if the household doesn't have internet that child doesn't get an education. And I'll tell you who that child is. That's a poor child, a Black child, a brown child, a child in public housing and education is supposed to be for everyone, so that's in the budget also.

Also, and this was announced last June, about seven months ago. Public safety is a crisis in this state and in this nation. The lack of trust between police and the community is worse than anything I've seen in my lifetime. The feelings are very high. Police feel victimized, they feel terrorized, they feel that the community disrespects them, they feel that they're the scapegoat, they feel that they can't do their job, and if they can't do their job, they're not going to try. Members of the community feel that they've been victimized and they've been terrorized. Our great Attorney General just did a report on the New York City Police Department that fines basically that the police have been using unfair tactics against protesters for a very long time, tactics that were supposedly no longer in place. This relationship has to be fixed and it's not going to fix itself. The communities - we have 500 communities with police departments - put the people at the table like this: police, community activists, representatives, and talk through the issues. Everyone in the state these public safety. The police serve everyone. When you see these spikes in shootings now, you know who's dying? Black and brown and poor people. Those are the victims of the increase in crime in the increase in shootings. Forge a collaborative, talk through the issues, it has to work for the police, it has to work for the local community and I can't do it from Albany because there are 500 different police departments. And by the way what works in Rochester is different than what is going to work in the North Country and is different than what's going to work in New York City. They have to do it.

I said this in June. I said form the collaborative and let people talk. By the way, a collaborative itself can be cathartic. I'm offended and I want to be able to express my feelings and my fears and my thoughts and I want you to hear me. That's the collaborative. You never solve a problem in light that you refuse to knowledge or you deny. I believe that's true in our individual lives. It's also true in our social lives. You deny a problem, it doesn't go away. It gets worse and that's what we're doing. I said in June if you don't have a new reform plan passed by your community by April 1 you won't get funding in the State budget. I've said this 11 times. The plan is whatever your community wants. Nobody's saying we're telling you what's in the plan, oh, State government is telling us how to police. No. We're not telling you how to police. We're saying, I'm saying, figure out how you're going to police. What is your plan, and get it passed by your local legislative body. But get it by April 1, so I told you in June. That was June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April. Some communities are doing a great job. I mean a really great job and they've been creative and I talked about them in the State of the State, and they're using it for the opportunity it is. Every system has to reform. Every system has to reform periodically. Education has to reform. Everything we do has to reform. The environment has to reform, criminal justice system has to reform, and the police department has to reform. How you policed 20 years ago is not how you police today. We're smarter. We're more savvy. We have more technology. There is 70 days left to April 1. Don't think the problem is going to go away. Your community has to be safe and 70 days for those communities who haven't made progress is a blink of an eye. So this is just a reminder.

As I announced on the State of the State, New York is operating on multiple levels right now. Track one, defeat COVID, vaccinations, stop the spread, manage the hospitals, win the COVID war, stop the strains, win the COVID war, job one. At the same time, we are anticipating the post-war reconstruction and we're actually energized by it. There is going to be a transformation moment and places are going to rebuild all around the world and we think we can be the first and the best in the rebuilding and that's why "build baby build." I love that expression. And you know who's going to be the first to build? The first one with shovel ready projects who can actually deliver. When President Biden passes an infrastructure bill, which he will, which he will, he's been dedicated to it all his life. He's going to look for projects that are ready to go. I know that. He said it. I've been in the federal government. Nobody wants to fund a project that's going to take three years to brake ground. That doesn't stimulate the economy. New York is going to be ready to go. That's why were' queueing up all these projects, ready to go, ready to go, as soon as that federal bill is passed, we are ready to go. And we're going to be starting on our own, not even waiting for Washington, because I've been waiting a long time. So, simultaneously, all of this is happening. Win the war, post-war reconstruction. Do both at once. "It's hard." It's not hard. We're New York tough. We're smart, we're united, we're disciplined, and we're loving.