Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Gives Update on New York State's Efforts to Combat COVID-19

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced a series of universal mask requirements designed to protect New Yorkers against the highly contagious Delta variant and the recent surge in COVID-19 infections statewide. Governor Hochul also announced new efforts to increase COVID-19 vaccinations and prepare for booster shots upon FDA approval. To continue to support vaccinating school-aged New Yorkers, one hundred twenty-five free tickets to the upcoming Governors Ball Music Festival are available to individuals who receive their first vaccine dose at a #VaxtoSchool pop-up location through this new incentive program.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

Good morning. And thank you for joining us today, as we provide an update to New Yorkers on the status of COVID in our state. And there have been a number of developments, but basically, we're not in a foreign territory. We've been down this path before, and there's a lot of trends that we're seeing and some concerns we have, especially as I spoke to you last time, it was all about getting the kids back in school. In many, many places, the children are back in school, which I think is incredible. And I commend all the school administrators and school superintendents and school boards, teachers, and parents, and everybody who had to go through a lot of anxiety to make this happen.

But it's the right place for our children to be. And we want to make sure that they are falling our directives, that everyone in a school setting be wearing their masks. That is something that we launched a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago, when I first took office, to make sure that everyone is as safe as they can be. We're continuing to push vaccinations and I'll give you some statistics on how we're doing on those numbers as well. So, school season's underway, we're also looking forward to making sure that we get people back to work. And we're seeing our ridership up, at least setting records in our New York City transit, our subway or Metro North and Long Island Railroad.

We've set some records there as well. Again, these are COVID records. These are not the records we would have hit in the past, but again, we're trying to do the best we can. We're going to continue to monitor the numbers very close. We always have as sort of maintaining the status quo. We've been over the last few days, a little bit over 3 percent statewide.

Individual areas we're concerned about, we're in conversations with the leaders locally to see if they need anything from the state. And we're watching make sure, particularly areas like the North Country, Western New York, the Finger Lakes and Long Island and the Capital Region. Let's see if we can continue to drive those numbers down in terms of our positivity rates. And our highest area again, it's the North Country at 5.6 percent. New York City is doing very well. I just got in from New York City this morning, and it's heartwarming to see people walking down the streets, outdoors, wearing their masks and inside the restaurants, showing their vaccination proof before they're served food, as I was in a diner late last night.

Let's see our COVID hospitalizations. Again, this is a huge area of anxiety for us last year. Again, we had to ramp up to the surge. We had to make sure they had enough staff. We had to make sure they had enough protective equipment. And as you look at this graph, we are in a far better place. The hospitalizations are nowhere near what they were last time. And the only reason is one: Because people are vaccinated now. And that is the difference between this year and last year. The deaths continue to be there. We lost 31 people just yesterday, and that is actually very tragic. And I lost someone rather close to me as well. So, it's people that are still succumbing to this and it's painful for everyone.

We also want to make sure that we are monitoring very closely the hospital capacity overall. We're in a good shape. We are still in good shape. We know that every one of these hospitals, if necessary, can ramp up again to surge capacity, which means increasing their capacity by 50 percent, and so we want to make sure that that continues. That's going to give us the confidence to know that we can handle what's on the horizon. But if these numbers start changing, we are going to have to make some more decisions with respect to our hospitals and they are ready. This will not be new to them. And they're watching the numbers just as closely as we are to make sure we have enough hospital beds available if necessary, and enough ICU beds in particular. Vaccinations. We're getting better, my friends, were getting better: 82 percent 18-plus with at least one does. Fantastic. Still concerned about our young people: 63 percent for the 12- to 17-year-olds. And, the completed series, 73 percent and the numbers keep trending upward, particularly since there have been more vaccine mandates. That is having an effect on people's decisions, and that's exactly what to have. If you did not know enough on your own to do this because it was the right thing to do to protect yourself, protect your family, and to get us out of this long slumber known as the COVID pandemic, then at least some of you are doing it now because it's a requirement of your jobs, and that's what the effect is we wanted to have. And we're seeing the numbers go up there as well. I still want to see them go up. We're going to continue pushing that. We're going to continue finding creative ways to make sure that that happens, especially with our teenagers. Teenagers have to be higher than those numbers.

And we know that vaccines work. Here are the numbers. If you're not fully vaccinated, you're 10 times more likely to be hospitalized. Let me repeat that. 10 times more likely to be hospitalized if you have not been vaccinated and 11 times more likely to die. I'm not sure who wants to play with that Russian roulette. I don't know why anyone, knowing that, knowing that you're highly vulnerable to succumbing to this, having the infection in the first place, and it's not fun to have, even if you're not hospitalized. And we also are still studying the long-term effect, the long haulers, if you will. So why would you take this gamble in the first place, but also statistically far more likely to die, and that's according to the CDC.

People are concerned about breakthrough infections and there's some people are trying to make an argument that well, there's breakthroughs, so why get vaccinated, it proves they don't work. That is a false narrative. It's been spun around on social media. We need to shut that down. There can be breakthroughs. They're rare. They usually have very minor symptoms, and we're monitoring whether or not those breakthroughs are increasing. You can see it ticked up a tiny bit, but in terms of who's hospitalized, these are not the people who've been vaccinated. It's a very, very small percentage and usually people with underlying conditions would fall into that category.

Okay. And I mentioned the young people want to get those numbers up higher, and we're going to be focusing on some ways to convince them. Fully vaccinated, still only 52 percent. So, how do we get younger people vaccinated? Well, we're trying to get creative. I've been in the city a lot, and I know that there's something very exciting going on known as the Governors Ball.

I didn't start this, but I will take full credit for the excitement that's behind it. Billie Eilishis going to be there, and Post Malone, and so I think there's going be a lot of people who want these tickets. So we're just trying to find places all over the state, and this is the kickoff getting young people excited, at least having a shot at 125 tickets to come to the Governors Ball. Big, big concert, a lot of excitement around that in the city. So there's the details on that.

And let's just step back and see what we are Had a gorgeous, very nice, and still feels like it in some parts of our state, with the heat continuing, but fall and winter, as we saw from last year, again, I feel like we're replaying the same movie as last year, but it has a better outcome because we now are better prepared and have the vaccines, but still people are coming indoors, congregating more closely together. And we also know we have some events and we saw a spike go up last year. What triggered it? Halloween. Who would have thought that people gathering on Halloween would precipitate a spike, but that's exactly when the numbers started going up. You saw what happened when people gathered at Thanksgiving. We tried to tell people to gather in small settings, not to congregate in large gatherings with family and friends.

I think a lot of people didn't listen to us and we went all the way to New Year's Eve and we just had a heck of a spike. A lot of people were hospitalized. The infection rate was almost 9% at the time.

Again, this was pre-vaccine, so people contracting it, it was a very frightening diagnosis because we lost so many people last year. So there's still a big question mark on sending into that same season right now. These same holidays are coming and we only saw the spike go down last year when the Superbowl was over, when people stopped getting together for those.

I would encourage people to have these celebrations, have fun if you are vaccinated. And that is the big difference between 2020 and 21, 22. If you're vaccinated, these should be safe occurrences, but continue wearing masks so we can avoid breakthroughs. But this is in the control of New Yorkers. I can't control what that number is going to look like when we have an assessment after next year's Superbowl. And I know who I'm rooting for in that, but that's another whole topic.

So let's be smart, New Yorkers. Let's just be really smart about it, we have the control, we have the power, we have the tools to make sure that that flat lines at that number, absolutely flat lines. So we have a vulnerable time coming forward.

I'm sending out the alarm right now, New Yorkers pay attention. If you know people who are not vaccinated persuade them that it is not going to be fun to spend the winter on a ventilator. There's a way they can prevent it, and that means getting vaccinated.

We talked last time about whether or not there's variants that are of concern to us. And as we head into fall, we want to make sure that we're monitoring this. I've not seen a difference. We've not seen a difference in the State of New York, as far as the mu variant. And that was the most recent one identified by the CDC. We were following it, tracking it here in Albany, in our Wadsworth labs as well, but I'll keep you all apprised. If we start to see any more variants of interest or concern that have been added to the World Health Organization's list.

So we talked about boosters, we're getting closer and following what the federal government is telling us, you know, we have been delayed as we've been told as they are on track to approve booster shots for people beginning on September 20th, if they approve it, we'll be ready. And I wanted to make sure that all of our local health agencies knew that our expectation is very high, that they put the infrastructure in place, because if they've told me all through last year, they know how to do this. They're well-prepared, they do flu shots. They've done other vaccinations.

They've done other health crises before. This is what they do and do best, but I will always have the resources of the state to back them up. We can continue some of our max vaccination sites to make it easier on people. Pop-ups, drive-throughs, we'll keep that going. But again, I wanted to allocate $65 million to support the local efforts so they're ready.

They've already identified over 200 vaccination sites, more will be online and we have over 8,000 people and providers already enrolled in this. So I just want the message to go out, be aware of when you had your last shot. Eight months later, start talking about going to see your doctor, a pharmacist, or take advantage of one of our, I have to stop hitting that, taking advantage of one of our mass vaccination sites. We'll make sure all the information gets out.

So I had my shot, I believe, was in March. So I'm watching the calendar as well. So a problem we identified was that we, as we ramp up and there will be a crush of people, hopefully who will want the vaccine all at the same time. If you remember last year's trend, December when they were first available it was highly vulnerable people in nursing homes.

Then we started doing older age demographics in January, February. It wasn't until March when my age group was allowed, I'm not going to tell you what that is, but you can look it up. So we're going to have a real spike. We're going to have a lot of people, all of a sudden who are now eligible.

I don't want it to be a problem and I wanted to address it before it becomes a problem. So we basically needed more people who are trained and qualified to administer vaccines. And so what we're doing today, and I wanted to announce today, we are directing the department of health to allow basic EMTs to administer vaccines. This is an idea that came out of our local officials.

Many county executives told me that they would like to be able to have this ability for their local fire departments and health agencies. And that adds over 2,000 fully trained vaccinators. And we have 50,000 now eligible for training. Training is simple and there is an online and in-person training.

It only takes a few hours, and they have to demonstrate their competency at this as well. So anybody who is giving you a jab knows what they're doing, very important, but it's going to help alleviate a staffing situation that we're anticipating will be the case. So we want to get ahead of that. Helping the local governments prepare for this as well.

But I've seen a lot of good signs lately and it's very, very promising.

Last night we opened Broadway. Broadway was the first to shut down and the last to reopen, as far as our key industries that helped define our state. Everyone comes to New York City, all those 60 million tourists a year who used to come and they all want a ticket to Broadway. So I was there on the stage of Phantom of the Opera. I wanted to go there because that's where mask for first really popularized. If you remember the Phantom years before anybody else thought it was cool to rock a mask, the Phantom of the Opera had a mask on. So we were there. Lot of excitement. If you saw the news coverage, we want to make sure that people are safe. You had to be vaccinated to go in here. People still wore masks.

We also know how smart this was. So we were able to open this industry, which has really. Really, really, really hard hit. It was hard hit. And I had many conversations with people in that industry. It's important to our economy. It's important to our identity. So it was a big night to get Broadway opened again.

I went to baseball games, people being very smart again as well and wearing their masks. So, and making even outdoors in places where we congregate. So we're going to continue making New York reopened by having people continue wearing masks. And also I want to commend the organizations and County Executive Mark Poloncarz. We tweeted him this morning for being smart and basically saying, if you want to go to a sporting event, even if it's outdoors, because there's a large congregation of people, whether it's a Bill's game, Sabres game, or other games across the state, you should be vaccinated. We are not able to mandate that under the more limited powers that I have compared to what was allocated the governor last year by the legislature.

That's not a problem because I'm asking everyone to do is I'm asking every organization, every sports organization, to follow this lead and Institute a requirement that your fans be vaccinated before they can attend. That's how we're going to deal with this fall vulnerability. This is where people congregate, big gatherings, a lot of tailgating going on, but if people are there, who've been vaccinated, it'd be a far different outcome if we allow people to come who are not.

Also right now, here's talk about masks. You have to wear masks in schools, certain healthcare settings and correctional facilities, homeless shelters, our transportation hubs. So that is not new, but we also want to make sure that we expand this. Starting today, we're going to require masks in childcare and daycare centers, because if you're watching the national news, the scariest announcements coming out every single morning are the number of children now contracting COVID. And we don't have a vaccine available for five to eleven year olds. I am very anxious to get this approved. And as soon as it is, we'll be working with parents and pediatricians and schools to make sure that the children are vaccinated, but we're not hearing that that will occur for a number of months yet.

So we want to make sure that even people in our state congregate facilities, our mental health facilities, residential substance abuse facilities are all getting, wearing their masks so we can protect staff and all the individuals who would enter those facilities and that's effective today.

Here's the final message. We all want this to be over. Everybody's tired of it. It's been a long, long, long haul and great news is we have the power to end this. If every single person in New York who is eligible, and that is everybody over the age of twelve, would simply get their vaccine and then prepare to get their booster, we could get through this like this. We could show the rest of the nation what enlightened people look like, what they act like, what they do. They get vaccinated, they protect themselves and they protect each other. And we can start bringing back this economy. It has been too long, my friends. We can do it. There's nothing stopping us and I want to get it done. Let's do it together.

Thank you very much.