Now, new york governor andrew cuomo, he briefed reporters on center thats being converted as an ad hoc medical facility. This is about an hour. Governor cuomo good morning. Good to see youall here. In masks, related gear. Let me introduce to my right we have general patrick murphy. My left we have general raymond shields. These are two gentlemen who i have been through many situations with. We have been through hell and back. And if you have to have two professionals dealing with the situation like this, these are the two situations that you these are the two people you want to be with. I thank both generals for being here today. Im private cuomo but ill be your governor today. I want to thank all the Army Engineer people who are here today who have done an outstanding job. They came in very quickly in setting up this emergency hospital. Which is going to be badly needed. I want to thank all of the center. T the javitt this is a great exhibition hall. This is not what they normally do, and they have really stepped risen to the occasion. So i want to thank them. Let me take you through some facts today because we have some facts, changes in circumstances that are not encouraging, and i want to make people understand and then we react accordingly. The increase in the number of cases continues. Unabated. As a matter of fact, the rate of up. Ease has gone we have the most sophisticated people you can get doing projections on this. They have been studying projections from china, south korea, italy, places all across this country. And what they are now seeing is that the rate of cases, the rate of new infections, is doubling about every three days. That is a dramatic increase in the rate of infection. And this whole discussion all along has been how fast does the rate of increase spread, and can we slow the rate of increase. We are not slowing it and it is accelerating on its own. One of the forecasters said to me, we were looking at a Freight Train coming across the country. We are now looking at a bullet train because the numbers are going up that quickly. And the most challenging point about the increasing numbers is where the numbers will apex. What is the high point of the numbers . And the apex is the point where we have to be able to manage the capacity. We have projected the apex at about 110,000 hospital beds. Thats the number i have been talking about. The new projection suggests that the number of hospital beds needed could be as high as 140,000 hospital beds. Flatten the curve, flatten the curve we havent flattened the curve, and the curve is actually increasing. That means the number of hospital beds, which is at 53,000 beds, 3,000 i. C. U. Beds, the anticipated need now for the height of the curve is 140,000 hospital beds. And approximately 40,000 intensive care unit beds. Those are troubling and astronomical numbers. As i mentioned are higher numbers than i had been previously projecting. Previously projected. We are exercising all options as aggressively as we can. That rate of increase, that apex they project at this time could be approximately 14 to 21 days away. Not only do we have a spike in the increase, when you spike the increase in cases, it accelerates the apex to a point where it could be as close as 14 to 21 days. We are exercising all options. To re doing everything quoteunquote, slow the spread, flatten the curve. We have closed businesses. We have reduced street density. We had an issue in new york city, i spoke to mayor de johnson, welley have a plan that i believe will be in place by noon today. And we have increased testing to the highest level in the United States and the highest per capita level on the globe. No one is testing more than we are testing. So in many ways we have exhausted every option available to us. We have closed all the businesses. We have reduced the street density. And we have increased testing to the highest level in the country. We are also trying all the new drug therapies, the hydroxychloroquine which the president speaks about and is optimistic about. Hope for optimistic results, also. We are starting that today. The president and the f. D. A. Ccelerated that drug coming to new york. The hospitals will start using that drug today. The f. D. A. Also authorized an experimental procedure by the new York State Department of health where we department of health actually takes plasma from people who are infected, who have the antibodies, and will try putting that plasma into a person who is still struggling with the disease hoping that the antibodies make a difference. We are also pursuing many levels of testing which will test peoples blood to see if they have antibodies for the coronavirus which means they may have been infected and resolved and never knew it, but if you had the coronavirus and resolved, you now have an immunity to the coronavirus. For some period of time, most experts suggest a significant amount of time. That would be very important for us to know because these are then Health Care Workers can go back to work, workers who could return back to the private sector. But the inescapable conclusion is that the rate of infection is going up. It is spiking. The apex is higher than we thought. And the apex is sooner than we thought. That is a bad combination of facts. So slow the spread. Well still keep doing everything we can, but it is clear that we must dramatically increase the Hospital Capacity to meet that highest apex. And we have to do it very quickly. Again, the apex could be here in as little as 14 to 21 days. And we are talking about a very significant logistical Operational Movement to increase that number of hospital beds and doing the things you need to do related to the increase in hospital beds. There are three elements that are necessary to increase the Hospital Capacity. First are obviously the availability of the beds. A bed without staff is virtually useless, and a bed and staff without the right equipment is virtually useless. You have to complete all three at the same time. As far as beds, we have told the hospitals, im going to speak to every Hospital Administrator today, hospitals must increase their capacity by 50 . To tryl is to ask them to increase it by 100 . Remember we have 53,000 beds. We need 140,000 beds. Even if they did increase it by 100 , you would only be at about 100,000 beds, you need 140,000 beds. Emergency hospitals like the 1,000 bed facility being built here will be helpful. The emergency hospitals that we are building at stony brook and the Westchester Convention Center will be helpful. They are nowhere near the number of beds we are going to need. I have no problem using the dormitories all across our state campuses, our community campuses, State University campuses. Im speaking to hotel owners about taking over their hotels. To put patients in. I will turn this state upsidedown to get the number of beds we need. But we need the staff for those beds. We are calling and contacting all retirees in the health care field. We are calling all professionals in the health care field. Whether or not they work in a hospital. They can work in an insurance clinic, or whatever. But we want to get as many staff staff an and backup because Health Care Workers will get sick. And this is going to go on for weeks. And you cant ask a person to work for 14 days consecutive or around the clock shifts. So well need a backup reserve staff. And equipment, equipment, equipment. Masks, p. P. E. s, and ventilators. And of those three, the greatest critical need are ventilators. Ventilators, nobody really knows what you are talking about. The people who are going to come in, the people who have acute needs, these are people who have are under respiratory distress. They need a ventilator. The ventilator will make the difference between life and death literally for these people. This is a piece of equipment that in the normal course of business you dont have a need for high levels of ventilators. And our Hospital System has about 3,000 or 4,000 that has always met the need. This is a dramatic increase in the number of ventilators that you need. We have been working around the clock scouring the globe. We procured about 7,000 ventilators. We need at a minimum an additional 30,000 ventilators. You cannot buy them, can you not find them. Every state is trying to get them. Other countries are trying to get them. The capacitys limited. They are technical pieces of equipment. They are not manufactured in two days or four days or seven days or 10 days. So this is a critical and desperate need for ventilators. We are going so far as to try an experimental procedure where we split the ventilator. We use one ventilator for two patients. Its difficult to perform. Its experimental. But at this point we have no so were working on this experimental application. Picture two hospital beds, two people in beds, one ventilator between the two of them, but with two sets of tubes, two sets of pipes going to the two patients. Again, its experimental, but necessity is the mother of invention and we are working on this as we speak because life is options and we dont have any other options. There is no other way for us to get these ventilators. We have tried everything else. The only way we can obtain these ventilators is from the federal government, period. And there are two ways the federal government can do it. One is to use the federal defense production act. There is a federal law where the federal government can say to manufacturers, you must produce this product. I understand the federal governments point that Many Companies have come forward and said we want to help and General Motors and ford and people are willing to get into the ventilator business. It does us no good if they start to create a ventilator in three weeks or four weeks or five weeks. We are looking at an apex of 14 days. If we dont have the ventilators in 14 days, it does us no good. The federal defense procurement act can actually help companies because the federal government can say, look, i need you to go into this business. I will contract with you today for x number of ventilators. Heres the startup capital you need. Heres the startup capital you need to hire workers who do it around the clock. But i need the ventilators in 14 days. Only the federal government has that power. And not to exercise that power is inexplicable to me. Volunteerism is nice and its a beautiful thing and its nice these companies are coming forward and saying they want to help. That is not going to get us there. And i do not for the life of people understand the reluctance to use the federal defense production act. Also the federal government has 20,000 ventilators or thereabouts in the federal stockpile. Secretary azar runs an agency called h. H. S. , health and human services. I asked the secretary, look at the first word in the title of the agency you run, it is health. Your First Priority is health. You have 20,000 ventilators in the stockpile. Release the ventilators to new york. How can we be in a situation where you can have new yorkers possibly dying because they cant get a ventilator, but a federal agency saying, im going to leave the ventilators in the stockpile. Have we really come to that point . Smarter have to be about the way this is being done. The federal government has to prioritize the resources. Look at where the problems are across this nation. California has 2,800 cases. Cases. Ton state, 2,200 florida, 1,200 cases. Massachusetts about 800 cases. New york is 25,000 cases. New york has 25,000 cases. It has 10 times the problem that california has. 10 times the problem that Washington State has. You prioritize resources and your activity and your actions to where they are needed. And new york, you are looking at a problem that is of a totally different magnitude and dimension. The problem is the volume. Dealing with 2,000 cases is one thing. 2,000 cases we could deal with in this building with the capacity that we are providing. We have 25,000 cases. We need the federal help and we need the federal help now. There is a smart way to do this. Deploy the ventilators around the country as they are needed. Different regions have different curves of the infection. New york is the canary in the coal mine. New york is going first. We have the highest and the fastest rate of infection. What happens to new york is going to wind up happening to california and Washington State and illinois. Its just a matter of time. We are just getting there first. Deal with the issue here. Deploy the resources. Deploy the ventilators here in new york for our apex, and then after the apex passes here, once we are past that critical point, deploy the ventilators to the other parts of the country where they are needed. Im not asking for 20,000 ventilators and they stay in new york and they live in new york and change their residence. As soon as we finish with the ventilators, then you move them to the next part of the country that has the critical problem. And then after that region hits its apex, then you move to the next part of the country that has its critical problems. I will take personal responsibility for transporting the 20,000 ventilators anywhere in this country that they want once we have passed our apex. Dont leave them sitting in a stockpile and say we are going to wait to see how we allocate them across the country. Thats not how this works. They are not simultaneous apexes. They are a curve that is individual to that region. Deploy to that region, address that region, and then move on to the next. And im not only talking about ventilators. We get past the apex, we get over that curve, that curve starts to come down, we get to a level where we can handle it, ill send ventilators, ill send Health Care Workers, ill send our professionals who dealt with it and who know all around the country. And thats how this should be done. You know its going to be on a different calendar. Its going to be a different sequence. Lets help each other. New york, because new york is first. And then after new york and and then after new york and after the curve breaks in new york, lets all rush to whoevers second. And then lets all rush to whoevers third. And lets learn from each other and help each other. I want to make a point on the president s point about the economy and Public Health. I understand what the president is saying. This is unsustainable that we close down the economy and we continue to spend money. There is no doubt about that. No one is going to argue about that. But if you ask the American People to choose between Public Health and the economy, then its no contest. No american is going to say, accelerate the economy at the ost of human life. Because no american is going to say how much a life is worth. Job one has to be save lives. That has to be the priority. And there is a smarter approach to this. We dont have to choose between the two. You can develop a more refined Public Health strategy that is also an economic strategy. What do i mean by that . Our Public Health strategy was a lunt instrument. What we said at a moment of crisis is isolate everyone. Close the schools, close the olleges, send everyone home, isolate everybody in their homes. In truth, that was not the most refined public strategy. Why . Because it wasnt even smart, frankly, to isolate younger people with older people. But at that moment we didnt ave the knowledge we needed to act, thats what we did. You can ask us to refine that Public Health strategy. You can start to say look, the lower risk individuals do not need to be quarantined. And they shouldnt be quarantined with an older person who they may be transferring it to. People who are recovered, you test them, you test the antibodies, you find out that they resolved themselves of the virus, and i believe once we get that test, you are going to find hundreds of thousands of people who have had the coronavirus and resolved. Once they are resolved, they can go back to work. Develop that testify. Its in testing now. Once they are resolved, let them go back to work. Let the younger people go back to work. Let the recovered people go back to work. Its even better for the older, Vulnerable People who you are trying to protect. And then ramp up the economy ith those individuals. So you are refining your Public Health strategy, and at the same time you are restarting your economy. Those two can be consistent if done intelligently. Restart the economy with our younger recovered tested workers. Dont make us choose between a smart Health Strategy and a smart economic strategy. We can do both and we must do oth. Its not the economy or Public Health. Its restarting the economy and protecting Public Health. It is both. But, i understand restarting the economy, the crisis today, focus on the crisis at hand. Focus on the looming wave of cases that is about to break in 14 days. That has to be the priority. And that is hospital apacity. And that is about providing hospital beds, providing staff, and providing equipment, and providing p. P. E. , and providing ventilators coming back to that number of 30,000 and needing federal action to address it now. If the federal government said today, i would deploy all 20,000 entilators, it would take us two weeks to get those ventilators into hospitals and to create i. C. U. Beds and to locate the staff. So there is no time to waste. He time to do this is now. Fema is sending us 400 ventilators. It was on the news this morning. They are sending 400 ventilators to new york. 400 ventilators. I need 30,000 ventilators. You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators . What are we going to do with 400 when we need 30,000 ventilators . You are missing the magnitude of the problem and the problem is defined by the magnitude. These are the numbers from today. Ou can see our testing rate is now over 90,000 people who have been tested. Thats the highest rate of testing in the country and per capita on the globe. We did 12,000 new tests since yesterday. Number of positive cases, state of new york, 25,665. 4,700 new cases of those ested. You see the entire state,