They have an extraordinary leader in Michael Dowling. Michael dowling ran health care for the state of new york, social services for the state of new york. He worked with my father, came for one year, wound up staying with my father for 12 years in state service. He is one of the really beautiful and brilliant leaders in this state and it is a pleasure to be with him. I want to say to all the people of northwell who have done extraordinary jobs, thank you so much for having us today. To my right is Melissa Derosa, secretary to the governor. To her right is what is your name . Mariah kennedy cuomo, who is part of my team and it is a pleasure to have her with me today. I will be mentioning more about that in a second. Today is sunday. That is a fact. I know these days tend to run one into the other, but today is sunday. And i like to focus on the facts in this situation because facts are what is most important. A lot of people have opinions and a lot of theories, but senator Daniel Patrick moynihan, who was a great senator from new york, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Lets give the people in the state the updated facts. This is the chart of total hospitalizations. We have been watching this 24 hours a day for what seems like most of our lives, but it has only been about 40 days. The total hospitalization rate is down again in the state of new york. We are down to 16,000. If you look at the numbers, we were at 18,000 people hospitalized for a time. It flattened there for a while. It paused there. Then it went down to 17,000. This is a low from our high point of 16,000. The big question of whether we have passed the apex, past the high point and it turned out the high point was not a point, but the high point was a plateau. We got up to a high point and then we stayed at that level for a while. But, if the data holds, and if this trend holds, we are past the high point and all indications are we are on a descent. Whether or not the descent continues depends on the what we do. But right now, we are on a dissent. We are on a descent. Hospitalizations numbers are down. The three day average of hospitalization rate is down. I was speaking to michael and that is what he is seeing in his Hospital System. That is what Emergency Rooms across the state are saying, that they see the maximum inflow is less than what it was. So that all tracks with what the numbers are saying. The number of intubations, which the number of intubations, which i watch carefully because intubations are the numbers of people put on ventilators and the number of people put on ventilators who dont make it, so this is an important chart to look at and the fact that those numbers are down is important. This is a reality check. With all the good news and the reductions, we still have 1300 people that yesterday came in and tested positive and were hospitalized. 1300 is a lot of people coming into the Hospital System without diagnosis. Less than it had been, so that is good news, but it is still 1300 people who are testing positive and need hospitalization. We have been watching the spread of the virus from the new york city area and there have been little outbursts on long island and upstate new york and we have been jumping on those outbursts, but overall, we have controlled it and the numbers are about the same. Westchester and rockland, where we had real problems the first problem was in westchester county, new rochelle. Westchester, rockland, upstate new york, only about 7 of the cases. So we are watching for potential spread in other parts of the state. So far, we have contained it and we have controlled it. Nursing homes are still our number one concern. The nursing home is the optimum feeding ground for this virus. Vulnerable people in a congregate facility, in a congregate setting, where it can spread like fire through dry grass. We have had really disturbing situations in Nursing Homes and we are still most concerned about the Nursing Homes. The worst news of all for us to and anth every day everyday tragedy, we lost another 507 new yorkers. Those are not just very large numbers we see. Every number is a face, a family, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, and people who are in pain today and will be in pain for a long time. So we remember them in our thoughts and prayers. But, on this sunday, a day of reflection, thank you from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of all new yorkers, for the people at northwell have done, the entire team, talk about a team effort, this is the team effort. To all of our Health Care Workers across the state, one million Health Care Workers, 445,000 hospital workers, the 160,000 nursing home workers, they have made all the difference in the world. A crisis like this, it tends to bring out the best and the worst in people. And certain people can break your heart in their response to this. But on the other hand, other people can rise to the occasion and give you such a sense of confidence in the human spirit and the healthcare workers have done that. I have been looking at this chart for 40 days and it looks like a bar chart, it looks like numbers and a line. I dont see it as a bar chart as we have been going through this. For me, it was a mountain that kept building and building and building and you didnt know where the top of the mountain was. Those numbers kept growing and we kept going up the mountain and we kept wondering where is the peak, where is the apex, what is the high point and when does it stop. And we get to the mountain and it is not a point, it plateaus and it plateaus at a very high rate, which means every day those Health Care Workers have to come in and they are seeing a tremendous number of people come in the door, overwhelming the capacity of the hospital. Remember, we asked hospital to we asked hospitals to increase their capacity 50 . So if a hospital had a 100 bed capacity, now they had a 150 bed capacity. And it stuck at that very high level on that plateau, and it was day after day after day. People who were at their max and had given it all. But they did it, they got us through the plateau, and now they are getting us down the other side and we just pray to god it remains down on the other but the skill, the courage, and the love of our Health Care Workers, of our first responders, of our police, of our essential workers, they have really gotten us through all of this. We also want to thank our neighbors. 95,000 medical professionals who agreed to help in this state and outside of this state, who said they would come and help us. And i want to thank the other states and communities who we put out a call for help and we got help from all across the country. It reminds me in that post9 11 time when we needed help and other communities in the northeast needed help, and people came from all across the nation and they just wanted to help, and they just showed up. That is what happened here. When i talk about seeing the best and the worst in people in a time of crisis, that outpouring of generosity im sure you felt the same gave us such a sense of confidence that we are not in it alone and humanity and the love of the American People was there for us. And i said we need your help today, but new yorkers also never forget. And thank you for the help, and we will be there when you need us. And we will be there when anyone needs us. Right now, our neighbors in massachusetts are looking at an increase in cases. I spoke to Governor Charlie Baker yesterday. They may need 400 ventilators, and we know how important ventilators are. If their numbers keep going up and if they have to scramble, i said you were there for us, we are going to be there for you. If they need 400 ventilators, we have already identified them and we will bring them over on 24 hours notice. And we wish them well, and anything they need, we are going to be there. So, the recent news is good. We are on the other side of the plateau and the numbers are coming down. But, that is good news only compared to the terrible news that we were living with, which was that constant increase. And remember, you still have 1300 people who walked into the hospitals yesterday testing positive. So it is no time to get cocky, and it is no time to get arrogant, right . We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do. And this virus has been ahead of us every step of the way. We have been playing catchup from day one in this situation. So it is no time to relax. And this is only halftime in this entire situation. We showed that we can control the beast, and when you close down, you can actually slow that infection rate, but it is only halftime. We still have to make sure that we keep that beast under control, we keep that infection rate down, we keep that hospitalization rate down, as we now all get very eager to get on with life and move on. So, it is not over. And we have a whole second phase and in this second phase, first, do no harm. Dont jeopardize what you have already accomplished by seeing that infection rate increase. We have to be smarter, especially when it comes to the new frontier of testing and how we test and how aggressively and how we get better organized. And then when we talk about rebuilding, we have to talk about not just rebuilding, but lets learn from this horrific experience. And lets take these lessons forward, and how do we build back better than before . I dont want to have gone all through this and then just say we are reopening. No, we have to open for a Better Future than we have ever had. And we have to learn from this. As we go through this, remember, i know people are eager to get on with life. We have slowed the infection rate down to. 9 . 9 means one person infects. 9 of a person. Him less than one. That means the virus is slowing. If one person is infecting 1. 2 people, the virus is increasing, and is an epidemic and an outbreak, and is out of control. So we have a very small margin of error here as we navigate going forward. Any plan that is going to start to reopen the economy has to be based on data, and that means it has to be based on testing. And this is a new world for all of us, testing. How do you get testing up to scale . We are going to do that in the most aggressive way in the nation, where we are going to sample people in this state, thousands of people in this state, across the state, to find out if they have the antibodies. That will tell us for the first time what percent of the population actually has had the coronavirus and is now at least shortterm immune to the virus. This will be the first true snapshot of what we are really dealing with. And we are going to be doing that over the next week, and the new York State Department of health will be running that. Theres also another set of tests which are called diagnostic testing. Diagnostic testing is whether a person is positive or negative. And we are coming up the scale on this, even though it is very, very hard. Northwell is leading the parade on this, and i just looked at some of the technology they are bringing in. All of these different manufacturers who make different machines to run different tests, and its a number of big manufacturers. And northwell is bringing in as many as they can, but this has to be brought to scale. Nobody has done testing at this level ever. And we have to do this in partnership with the federal government because there are all sorts of logistical questions and supply chain questions and people cant get certain chemicals they need to do tests, and the chemicals are made in other countries. So, we have to do this with the federal government. I spoke to the head of the cdc yesterday and he was very smart and very informed. And we talked about how we can do this together. Talk about being smart, the federal government is talking about passing another piece of legislation which would help in the reopening. And they want to help small businesses, and that is great. They also have to help State Governments and local governments, which have not been supported in the previous legislation. Everyone is saying, well, it is up to the states to come up with a reopening plan, its up to the governors, its up to the governors. Fine. That is true, and right, and legal. But the governors in the states have to have resources. And yes, you have to help small businesses, you have to help the airlines, you have to help all of these private sector interests as well as citizens. But if you dont help the State Government and local government, then how are we supposed to have the finances to reopen . And if you dont give state and local government support, we are the ones who support the schools, we support the police, we support the fire, we support the hospital workers, we support the transit workers. So if you starve state and local government, all that means is we have to turn around and reduce funding to the people who we are funding. If we dont get federal assistance, you are looking at education cuts of close to 50 in the state of new york. Where School Districts would only get half of the aid they got from the state last year. You are talking about cuts to hospitals from the state. I mean, how ludicrous would it be to now cut hospital funding from State Governments . So, the governors, bipartisan, democrat and republican, in this crazy and political environment where you cant get democrats and republicans to agree on anything, all the governors agree and have said to washington, make sure you fund the states in any next bill you pass. And we asked for 500 billion, again, on a nonpartisan basis. We also must remember as we go forward what we have done so well thus far. The mutuality and discipline that we have shown. I have many School Districts in the state, over 700 School Districts. They are calling, saying they want to open up their local schools, they want to make these decisions, local officials are calling, we have beaches, we have parks, we have businesses, we want to make decisions. I understand the pressure that the local School Districts are under. I understand the pressure that the local officials are under. I understand the mounting political pressure. You know, people see those numbers come down, they are like, ok, lets go. Let me get out of my house. I get it. But, we have to stay smart, and we have to stay united. Now is no time, as i said, to get arrogant. We are working with our regional states, our partners, new jersey, connecticut, etc. , the surrounding states. We are coordinating with them and we have to continue to do that. The weather is getting warmer, the numbers are coming down, cabin fever is getting worse i believe that is going to be a documented disease when this is over, cabin fever. But we have to stay smart and we have to stay coordinated. We have been working with the new jersey and connecticut, because whatever one state does affects other states. Right . You live in nasau, you live in suffolk, you live in new york city, you can get in your car and go to new jersey, you can be in connecticut in a matter of minutes. So it is very important to plan accordingly. It is not that we can be on the same page for everything, but at least lets know what each other is doing. For example, on state parks, we are coordinating what our policies are because you can see people go from one state to another. I was in albany yesterday, talked to a couple who drove up from queens for thai food. To albany. And i said, you came up for thai food from queens . That is a 2. 5 hour ride. They said yeah, we had to get out of the house. I said, just for thai food . Queens, they have good thai food, im from queens. It just shows how people need to get out and do something. So, we get it. Nerk in new jersey they are closed, in connecticut they are open. New york, our beaches are closed. In new jersey, the state beaches are closed. Some of the local beaches are open. Connecticut, they are open. Connecticut marinas are open. And new jersey and new york also. So, staying coordinated with our partners is very important. And it is important within the state also. I get the political pressure that everybody is under. I get the political pressure that local officials are under. But we have to be smart and we have to be coordinated. People have to have the best government from government officials in the state of new york. Government matters today, in a way it has not mattered in decades. And it is important that government sends the right signal and one message and there is no confusion. Because if people dont have confidence in government right now, if they think there is chaos or confusion or politics, that would be a terrible message to send. We have done a great job as government officials. All of us. Democrat, republican, state, local. We have to keep doing it. And now is not the time to send mixed messages. And also on a very parochial level, i get that in the conversations ive had a, people feel political pressure. Heres the simple answer. The states Emergency Powers now govern in this emergency. Blame me. Blame me. Somebodys complaining about a beach, somebodys complaining about whatever, businesses open, schools open, blame me. Its true. Its right. Its the state law. And i dont have any issue with that. So, blame me. Also, as we are planning the reopening, lets set the bar a little higher. And lets all start to think about this now. What did we learn during this . Personally, what did we learn. Socially, what did we learn . Collectively, what did we learn . And how do we incorporate that into our reopening . Right . How do we have a Better Health care system when we reopen . How do we have a better transportation system, better telecommuting, a smarter Telemedicine Program . Better technology and education . How do we have more social equity . You can see the disparate effect of this disease and how it reinforced the disparity in the inequity in society. How do we remedy that . And how are we more cohesive as a community for having gone through this . Right . So, it is not just reopen. It is not just build it back. It is advanced. Use this as a moment in time where they look back and they write the history books and they say boy, they went through a terrible time but they actually learned from it and they improved from it, they moved forward. We had 9 11. Yes, we built back. We built back different. We b