Governor cuomo good morning. Good to see all of you. Smiling faces. Mostly smiling faces. Ill just give you an update as to where we are today. The number of cases continues to increase. Were up to 7,917. The number of people tested, again, is the highest rate in the country. And per capita higher than china, per capita higher than south korea. We tested 18,000 people, total tested 238,000, which is a lot of people but remember new york, youre talking on a base of 19 million. Number of positive cases up to 8,669, 92,000 total in the state. Predominantly in new york city, but you see westchester nd nassau, which, by percentage, is a troubling number. Remember new york city, so much larger than westchester or nassau or suffolk. So those numbers are concerning and were watching those. You look to see in nassau county, 1,000 new cases, suffolk county, 1,141 new cases, that is roubling news. Number of counties, you see the entire state. Every county in the state now has reported a coronavirus case. We said it was going to march across the state. Ive also made the point to my colleagues on every phone call i do with the other governors, the other officials, i say, its going to march across the country. It is false comfort to say, well, we are a rural community. We dont have the density of new york city. That is a false comfort. Ou have counties in new york state where you have more cows than people. New york state, dont think of just new york city. Upstate new york is a rural community. And you see that its not just urban areas, its suburban areas, thats westchester, nassau, suffolk, comparable to suburban communities all across this country. And we have Rural Communities that are comparable to Rural Communities all across this country. In many ways, new york state is a microcosm of the United States and thats why i believe its going to be a illustrative for the rest of this nation as to whats going to happen. Current hospitalizations, as i said, 92,000 tested positive, 13,000 currently hospitalized. Thats up 1,100. 3,000 icu patients, thats up 300. 7,400 patients discharged, thats up 1,292. Thats good news. Number of people going to the hospital is going up, number of people coming out of the hospital is going up. Number of deaths up to 2,373, up from 1,941. Looking for a trend line, the trend line is still basically p, total new hospitalizations. Trend line of icu admissions is till up. Certainly a couple of small deviations but the line is up. Number of intubations is up but if you want to take an optimistic view, you could start to see a plateauing in the number of intubations. But the statisticians tell me thats an optimistic view. Number of daily discharged is going way up. Thats people going in, people going out. Challenge is still at the apex. Thats what this is been all about for every system in this country now. Everyone is basically waging the same battle. Ifferent timeframes, different umbers, different percentages, but its the same battle. When you hit the apex, which is the highest rate of infection, highest number of people coming into the hospital system, can you handle that number . Can you handle the height of the impact on the hospital system, which is at the apex of the curve . We call that the battle of the mountain top. At least i call it the battle of the mountain top. Questions people keep asking, which are the right questions, well, when is the apex . It depends on what model you use, what model you follow. We follow all the models. Its anywhere from 7 to 21 to 30 days depending on what model you look at. Well, how can you have that variable 7 to 30 days . It depends on how that model rates how effective social distancing is. The variable is the models that think social distancing is going to be more ffective at slowing the rate have a longer timeframe for the apex. Those models that discount the social distancing, they have a shorter time frame for the pex. It makes it difficult to plan, frankly, because 7 to 30 days is a long window and we are literally planning on a daytoday basis, deploying ssets on a daytoday basis. We believe it is closer to the horter end of the range with our inhouse people looking at the professional modeling thats being done. How many beds will you need at the apex . Between 70 and 110,000. Again, that is a broad range. Again, thats one of the frustrations trying to plan for this. Right now we have 53,000 statewide. We have only 36,000 downstate. Remember that, and this is primarily a downstate issue. So by any estimate, we dont have the number of beds but, again, weve taken extraordinary measures. Every hospital by mandate has to add a 50 increase and they have all done that. Were setting up extra facilities, which weve been talking about. Weve been shifting patients from downstate hospitals to upstate hospitals and that is continuing. When does this end . You have projection models that have us hitting the apex, coming down from the apex. Models vary at how quickly you come down from the apex but they all basically say you come down rom the apex quickly, and then some models have it flattening out but flattening out for a period of time. Models have it flattening out and continuing through the summer. How many lives lost . Theres only one model that we look at that has the number of projected deaths, which is the ihme model, which is funded by the Gates Foundation, and we thank the Gates Foundation for the National Service that theyve done. But that is the model that suggests approximately 93,000 deaths across the country. Thats the model that i believe dr. Fauci was referring to when he said about 100,000 deaths. By that, new york would be about 16,000 deaths by that model. When were doing this planning and were doing our deployment, the theory is the chain is only as strong as the weakest link. So thats true for the hospital system. We have about, give or take, 180 hospitals that we are focusing on here in this state. The hospitals that will have the greatest issue will be those hospitals that are usually the most stressed in normal circumstances. So if the hospitals before this were under stress, you then add this crisis on top of that, those are the hospitals that one would expect to see struggling first. Thats also true for the entire hospital system. We talk about beds, we talk about staff, we talk about supplies, but the truth is you need all three of those things to provide any care. A bed without staff doesnt do anything. A bed and staff without supplies doesnt do anything. So you need all three of those components to work to have a situation where someone can actually get care. In terms of beds, those are the easiest to find and were constructing additional facilities. Were now going to start at the brooklyn cruise terminal, obviously in brooklyn, new york city. Its expected to open this week, 50 beds. Were taking a office of Mental Health facility in Staten Island and converting it to a covidonly hospital. So on beds, we are in relatively good shape because a bed is a bed. A bed is a question of a structure. Push comes to shove, we can acquire dorms, we can acquire hotels, we can acquire physical structures with beds in them. Of those three components, bed, staff, supplies, i personally am least worried about bed capacity. We have 2,500 beds at javits. We have a thousand beds on the naval ship, comfort. Beds we can find, not easy, but we can find them. The harder components are the staff and the supplies, which is what weve been talking about. On the staff, were continuing to shift staff from the upstate hospitals that are less impacted o downstate hospitals. Weve requested outofstate healthcare workers. God bless america. 21,000 people have volunteered from out of state to come into new york state. I thank them. I thank their atriotism. I thank their dedication and passion to their mission of public health. These are beautiful, generous people. And new yorkers will return the favor. New yorkers will return the favor. This is going to affect every place in this country. E are, in some ways, the first major encounter. Were learning. Well get the experience and we will return the favor. When your Community Needs help, new yorkers will be there. And you have my personal word on that. And its also the new york tradition. When theres been a hurricane or theres been a flood or hurricane katrina, new yorkers are the first ones in their cars o go anywhere in this nation that needs help. And i will be the first one in my car to go wherever this nation needs help as soon as we get past this. I will never forget how people across this country came to the aid of new yorkers when they needed it and i deeply appreciate it. We have 85,000 volunteers now in total, which are being deployed to the hospitals so they can find staff that works for them. Supplies are an ongoing challenge. The ppe is an ongoing challenge, the gowns, the gloves, and the ventilators. First of all, we have for the first time ever, a hospitalbyhospital survey that will be done on a nightly basis of exactly what they have. As i said, were coordinating the Healthcare System in a way its never been coordinated before. Rather than having all these regional systems and public systems, private systems, et cetera, we have a central stockpile. We are asking all the hospitals to contribute what they have to that central stockpile and then we will disperse on a need basis. Some hospitals have more supplies than theyre using. Were saying, dont hoard supplies. Lets put all the supplies in a central stockpile and then we will draw down from the central stockpile. And we will monitor this literally on a daily basis. Im also asking on supplies. I dont have a new york defense production act. A governor cant say to a company, we need you to manufacture this. But i asked businesses just to think about the situation were in and a possible opportunity. T is the cruelest irony that his nation is now dependent on china for production of many of these products. Many of these products in the normal marketplace were being produced in china and now you have everyone shopping china for ppe, gowns, ventilators. The gowns, the gloves, are not omplicated components to anufacturer. The gowns are tyvec or paper material. If you are a manufacturer who can convert to make these products and make them quickly, they are not complicated products. The fda lists the specifications for these products on their website. If you have the capacity to make these products, we will purchase them and we will pay a premium and we will pay to convert or transition your manufacturing facility to a facility that can do this. But we need it now. Were not talking about two months, three months, four months. We need these materials now. Thats the stress. I understand that. But if you are in the Garment Manufacturing business, if you have machinery that can cut a pattern, a cover all, youre not making a fashion forward fitted arment. These are relatively straightforward components. If you can do it, it is a business opportunity, it is a state need, it is a national need. Please contact us. We will work with you, we will work with you quickly. There will be no bureaucracy, no red tape, and we will finance we are not asking for a favor from these businesses we will finance what you need in terms of transitioning, and we will buy the product and i will pay a premium, because we needed. This is the number for the Empire State Development corporation, which is handling this task. In terms of ventilators, we released 400 ventilators last night to the new York City Health and hospital corporation. We released 200 to long island and westchester. As i said, you see those growing numbers in nassau and suffolk, and that is starting to stress that health care system. So we released those ventilators last night. At the current burn rate, we have about six days of ventilators in our stockpile, meaning if the rate of usage, the rate of people coming into hospitals who need ventilators, if that rate continues in our stockpile, we have about six ays. Now, if the apex happens within hat timeframe, if the apex increases, if the apex is longer, we have an issue with ventilators. These numbers, by the way, are lso going to be compiled every night. There is a difference of opinion, how many will you eed . We need what we need. I have no desire to acquire more ventilators than we need. The way we are basically acquiring ventilators, the state is buying them. They are very expensive and the state is broke, so i have no desire to buy more ventilators than we need. But we need what we need. If a person comes in and needs a ventilator and you dont have a ventilator, the person dies. That is the blunt equation ere. And right now we have a burn rate that would suggest we have about six days in the stockpile. But, but we are taking all sorts of extraordinary measures. I have spoken to help people across the nation, doctors, workers, all sorts of research, and we have extraordinary measures in place that can make a difference if we run into a real ventilator shortage. First, we know where all of ventilators are in the state of new york by hospital. If we have a problem in any hospital, we are going to take the ventilators that are not needed from the upstate hospitals and transport them to downstate new york, to the hospitals that do need them, which again, more and more are going to be on long island. We will return them or we will figure out the finances of it and make those hospitals whole. We are also increasing the number of ventilators by ending all elective surgeries. If you need an elective surgery, the hospital cannot perform it. If it is not critical, we will be freeing of ventilators. We will also be using anesthesia, without the anesthesia, obviously, but using them as ventilators. All the hospitals are practicing that now, one ventilator, two set of tubes can do two patients. It is not easy. It is not ideal but it is better than nothing. We are also including bypass machines, which do not have the same force as a ventilator, but on an emergency basis, some research has been done that says they could be suitable. We are also still in the business of looking for ventilators to buy ventilators. T is too late to ask the company to make them. In any way that would work for our timeframe. Our timeframe, seven days to 30 days no one is going to be able to make a ventilator for ou in that period of time. Nationwide, parts of the country that have a later curve, yes. If you give a company two months, three months, they can ramp up production. But not on our curve. So we have to find ventilators that we can buy, and we are still doing that. Again, the main place is china. We are converting the bipap machines. This has not been done before, but north well, one of our premier health care systems, has developed a protocol, and they are teaching the other hospitals now how to do it. We just bought 3000 bipap machines and 750 came in yesterday. So yes, the burn rate of ventilators is troubling, and six days of ventilators in the stockpile is troubling. But we have all of these extraordinary measures that i believe, if push comes to shove, will put us in fairly good shape. I do not want to say yet i am confident, and it depends on how many we need, but i can say with confidence we have researched every possibility, every idea, every measure you can possibly take to find ventilators. This state has done, that i can promise you. We are also going to open the Health Care ExchangeEnrollment Period through may 15. E have about 96 of the people in the state covered with health insurance. If you are not covered, we are extending the Enrollment Period to may 15. Please get covered. You can go to the new york state of Health Website and sign up. My brother, my little brother, i only have one brother, christopher, tested positive for coronavirus. A lot of people are concerned about him, obviously people in my family, but even beyond that. New yorkers are very compassionate and many people asked me about chris, how is he doing . Not just for himself, but we keep talking about this coronavirus, coronavirus, coronavirus i am afraid of it, i am anxious about it, what does it actually mean . Ok, your brother has it. Hows he doing . A lot of people asked me that question. I talked to him quite frequently, and he is doing k. I checked in with him this morning and asked him how he was feeling, and he was up and spry and much his normal self. I invited him to join us for a couple of minutes if he was up to it this morning, and i think he said that he was in a position to join us, and i asked him to join us by video, if hes available. There he is with his hat, cuomo primetime. Ets get after it. I love that saying. You are looking fit and fine, many people are asking about you. I will tell you the truth, everyone i am talking to is asking about you and how you are handling it and how you feel. Kara is here, shes working with me now on supplies and she says hello. How are you feeling . I love kara, you have great kids. There is no better way to measure what you actually meant in the world then your kids and your daughters are great. Im not surprised that they are helping. They make me proud of the family. Thank god the next generation is better than the one that came before it. Im doing really well, all things considered. This is very tough. I get it now. I have now become part of this group of people who have this virus, they are reaching out to friends, old friends, new friends, they have this constant ever and its tough. You look like youve been cutting your own hair, which some people are good at, some eople are not. Ive chosen to wear a hat so i dont butcher my own hair. Now that i know what im in for, i am more comfortable. And i see why it takes people out, you have to rest. Your body has a fever because its fighting the virus. You have to chill. Im very lucky. I have a wife who loves me who is keeping me fed. I have a nice place to be. Youve been very smart and getting people to think about how they can reach out and help people without contact. A lot of people are fighting us alone. I cant imagine it. I can barely keep it together and every there are a lot of people in a bad way and i feel for them. We are in a real fight. And we have to remember our connections to each other. Governor cuomo youre on what, day two . I really believe that it did not start until i got the diagnosis, maybe because, psycho somatically or whatever, i got hit with the fever. And it felt like rigors. T was like out of a movie. You came to me in a dream, you ad an interesting ballet outfit, and you were dancing in the dream, and waving the wand and saying i wish i could wave my wand and make this go away. Then you spun around and danced away. Governor cuomo well, thats a lot of metaphoric reality in that one. Thank you for sharing that with us. It