Dramatic increase in the number of cases. We are still watching big questions, how fast is that number continue to go down . First, does that number continue to go down . That would be a nightmare if it picks up. How fast does it come down and how low does it go . Before we started this, you had a couple hundred cases. When do we get back to a couple hundred new cases going in . The overall hospitalization rate is down, the number of intubations is down. Even the number of new covid cases is down. Still not good, still 1000 new cases yesterday, to put it in focus. That would normally be terrible news, it is only not terrible news compared to where we were. This is just terrible news. 367 deaths. Which is horrific and there is no relative context to death. Death is death. 367 people passed, 367 families. What i have been working from day one is to make sure people understand the facts of what we are dealing with. This is a unique situation. Government cannot act unless the people fully support the action. What we have done here, government could not do. It was a pure function of what people did. My plan has been, give people the facts, and if they have the facts, they will act responsibly. But they have to have the facts. They have to buy into the plan. And it really is an individual decision. Who is taking care of your health . You are. We are mutually dependent and what i do can affect your health. But it comes down to giving everybody the information so people can make their own decision. The great achievement in this period has been that when people get the facts and they trust the facts and understand the facts, they do the right thing. That is a lesson that i hope people remember after this is over. But we still have to remember the facts. We talk about reopening, talk about reimagining. Lets start to put some meat on the bones so people understand. The federal guidance from the cdc is that before you start reopening the state, the racial hospitalization rate must be in decline for 14 days. That is the cdc guidance. The federal government leaves it up to the states, but they also give guidance. In this case, i think the cdc guidance is right. We are monitoring the hospitalization rate, monitoring the regional hospitalization rates. In this state, it is a diverse state. Upstate regions are like states in the midwest, even out west. We have different hospitalization rates. We look at the rates across the state as well as across regions. We will reopen in phases. A regional analysis on what we call our economic regions that we have been working with the state on and those regions have been working together on economic policy, so to analyze the regions, which are existing coalitions actually works. But look at the regional analysis, make a determination, and then monitor whatever you do. Phase one of reopening will involve construction and manufacturing activities. Within construction and manufacturing, those businesses that have a low risk. There is a range of construction activities, a range of manufacturing activities. Those businesses that pose a low risk within them. Phase two would be a business by business analysis, using the matrix we discussed, how essential a service does that business provide, and how risky is that business . If you reopen that business, how much risk are you possibly incurring . How important is it that that business reopen . That matrix will be guiding us through phase two. In phase two, when we get there, we need businesses to do that analysis. They have to think about how they are going to reopen with this new normal. What precautions are they going to take in the workplace . What safeguards are they going to put in place . Very much going to be up to businesses. Then we are going to leave two weeks between phases so we can monitor the effect of what we just did. Take an action, monitor. Two weeks, that is according to the experts, the incubation period of the virus. You can see if you had an effect where you increased the rate of infection, which you would see in hospitalizations, testing, etc. Everyone understands the overall risk that you start to increase activity, infection rate goes up, two weeks to do that monitoring. That is the broad outlines of the reopening plan. One caveat is you cannot do anything in any region that would increase the number of visitors to that region. You have a multistate region in lockdown. It is possible you open something in syracuse, open something in the north country, where you now see license plates coming in from connecticut, new jersey, from downstate, all coming to that area because they have been locked down and they are looking for an activity. That is something we have to Pay Attention to. All of this is done in a multistate context with our neighboring states. Most relevant especially downstate. Downstate is obviously the most complicated situation. That is new york city, westchester, surrounding suburbs. Multistate coordination is vital there because the new jersey, connecticut, new york city area is very intermixed, people are going and coming, they live in one place, they work in the other. That coordination is important. You get upstate, coordination with massachusetts is more important in some areas. Some parts of the state, pennsylvania coordination is more important. Coordinating with those states that our neighbors to that region. Downstate, we have to coordinate the main activities. There are gears that enter mesh sh. Interme you cannot turn one gear without turning the other gears. That is how you strip gears. I keep trying to explain to my daughters. Transportation, parks, schools, beaches, they are all coordinated activities. You turn one, they all have to turn. That is true for new york city, suffolk, westchester, they all have to be coordinated. We are working with local businesses and leaders to do that. On the phase reopening, does my business reopen . What is your business . How would you do your business in this new normal . You normally have people in the Conference Room or go to do that, you have people in workstations that are right next to each other. Do you plan on reopening that way . This is not a onesided equation. Businesses, you develop a plan on how you would reopen given everything we now know. If you have a plan i will show you in a moment that takes into consideration these new circumstances, more essential, lower risk. The way a business will open will determine the risk. They cannot determine how essential their service is, but they can determine how risky opening them up opening their also, we need them to be creative, to think outside the box. Weve been speaking to Business Leaders across the state, but some people even need a new economic model. Sowant to bring sports back, this kind of that activity that people can watch on tv. What sports can you do without an audience . Can you make worked economically where you dont have to sell a seat in the stadium or in the arena . How do you do driveins . How do you do different types of businesses that could actually work in this environment . And have to be creative they have to think about it. Downstate, which does have particular needs, we need some ,ore activities in downstate new york. You cant tell people in a dense, urban environment all through the summer months we dont have anything for you to do, stay in your apartment with the three kids. That doesnt work. There is a sanity equation here also that we have to take into consideration. Special attention for Public Housing residents, special attention for low income numbe communities that number one paid a higher price for this disease than anyone else, we talk about racial disparity, africanamericans and latinos, we are increasing testing, we will have more to say on that this week. More assistance through this. And but low income communities need more assistance through this. I also need to focus we need to focus on the basics. We need more food banks, more food assistance, there are people who are struggling for food and childcare. We have to make that more available and i want to bring in, in a coordinated way, philanthropies. There is a lot of good will come along a lot of people want to help. Doing that. Looking through all of this, with partners in the Business Community and health care community. We have an Economic Strategy and a Public Health strategy. It has to work with businesses who are creative and more thoughtful, and Health Care Professionals who learned an important lesson with what we went through. I dont want to lose that lesson. In terms of businesses thinking about the new normal, think about it in terms of people, how are you going to protect your people . What are you going to be doing differently with your employees . Your actual, physical space . What does the physical space look like when you be open in this new normal when you reopen in this new normal . What are you doing about ppe equipment . How are you cleaning . What is the hygiene . What is the access . What is the screening . How do you move people . What is the travel and transportation . What processes can you put in place to make your business less risky . How can you train people . How can you communicate about this disease . Can you do testing in your workplace . These are all factors for businesses to consider that want to reopen quickly. Again, it is between it is governmental decisions, in partnership with business decisions. I think every Business Leader gets, you cant go back to where you were, we have to go back in light of the circumstances that have developed. In the midst of all this, monitor the Public Health impact. All the progress we made by flattening the curb, we could curve, we could lose that in a matter of days if we are not careful. It is important that people understand what that means. This gets a little technical, but it is worth understanding. If i can understand it, anybody can. They talk about the rate of increase of the spread of the infection. The r0 factor. It is basically straightforward. If one person infects less than one person, that is the first category of r0. The next step up is one person infects one person who then infects another person. One to one to one to one to one. The worst situation is one person infects two people and those two people in fact two people. That is fire to dry grass. Now you are in bad shape. That is where we were when this started. We were actually there before we even knew we were there. This is now the insight that the disease came from europe to new york because it was already out of china by the time we realized it, it went to europe, went to italy, went to the lombardi district, got on a plane, came to new york, and was here earlier than we knew and it was spreading earlier than we knew at a higher rate. We have to be down to the one person infects one other person. We cant really go beyond that margin. Right now, we are at 0. 8. One person infects 0. 8 of a person. One person is infecting less than one person. That is good news. At that rate, you see the virus declining. Upstate, interestingly, it 0. 9. Statistically, very close. But upstate, the infection rate is one person infects 0. 9 . Downstate, one person infects 0. 75 . That is where we are across the state. If we keep the infection rate although one person infecting below one person infecting one person, that is where the infection rate continues to drop. That is where you will see the curve dropping. We have to stay there. How do you monitor it . You have three basic tiles. Dials. Number of hospitalizations, which you see every day, which i show you every day, number of hospitalizations. You can see that by region. Number of positive Antibody Tests. This is why testing is important. We are doing Antibody Testing around the state and regions. Antibody testing tells you how many people have been infected. Little bit of a lag because you only have the antibodies after you have had the virus, but it tells you on a lag basis how many people have been infected. The third dial is the diagnostic tests, which are positive or negative. They tell you what your infection rate is. Those are the three dials you are watching. You have your hand on the valve, the activity valve. You open the valve a little bit, phase one, watch those dials like a hawk, then you adjust. That is called the rt factor, rate of transmission factor. What is the rate of transmission of the virus . We are now at 0. 8. You cannot go above 1. 2. 1. 2, you see that number go back up again. We will be sitting here, talking about showing you a chart that showed up, down, then up again. Thats what happens if the rate of transmission gets to 1. 2. This is a balance that we collectively need to strike. I want to get back to work, my kids want out of the house, i need to do something, i understand. We have to do it intelligently, and that is this is the definition of intelligence in this context. I dont want to just reopen. We learned a lot of lessons here. Painfully, but we learned a lot of lessons. That is what we how do we take the lessons we learned, take this pause in life, and say, when we reopen, we are going to be better for it . And we are going to reimagine what our life is and we are going to improve for this pause . On an individual level, you had time to decompress a little bit or compress for a different set of factors. I think everyone went through a period where they analyzed their life and what they were doing and when somebody pulled the rug from under you and you wind up in a different place, you see life differently. I think that is true for most people. After that, how do you what have we learned . How do we improve and how do we build back better . It is not about return to yesterday. There is no return to yesterday in life. It is about moving forward. It is about taking your experience and what you learned and bringing it to a positive effect. With that, i want to end on sharing a story that taught me a lot. There is a tunnel in new york called the l train tunnel. People in new york city know it very well. It is a tunnel that connects manhattan and brooklyn. 400,000 people use this train and this tunnel. 400,000 people is a larger group than many cities in this country have. They had to close down the tunnel because the tunnel was old and it had problems, everybody looked at it and said, we have to close down the tunnel. 400,000 people could not get to work and they had all these complicated plans on how they were going to mitigate the transportation problem in different buses and cars and bikes and different courses, the whole alternative transportation. This went on for years. Everybody said, you have to close the tunnel and it would be close from 15 to 18 months. When the government says it will be close from 15 to 18 months, i hear 24 months to the rest of your life. Thats my governmental cynicism. But that was the plan, we will close it, rebuild the tunnel 15 months to 18 months. The mta. This was going to be a massive disruption. I heard a lot of complaints, i get a few smart people, cornell engineers, columbia engineers, we go down into the tunnel and we look at it and the engineers say, there is a different way to do this. They talk about techniques that they used in europe and they say, not only could we bring these techniques here and we would not have to shut down the tunnel at all. We could just stop music at nights and weekends and we can make all of the repairs. And we can do it with a partial closure for 15 months. The opposition to this new idea was an explosion. I was a meddler, i did not have an engineering degree, they were outside experts, how dare you question the bureaucracy the bureaucracy knows better. It was a thunderstorm of opposition. But we did it anyway and we went ahead with it. We rebuilt the tunnel and the tunnel is now done, better than before, with all these new techniques. It opens today. And the proof is in the pudding. We went through this period of, i dont believe it, this is interference, it opened today. It opens today not in 15 months, but in only 12 months of a partial shutdown. It is ahead of schedule, it is under budget, and it was never shut down. I relay this story because you can question and should question why we do what we do. Why do we do it that way . I know that is how we have always done it, but why do we do it that way . And why cant we do it a different way . Why not try this . Why not try that . People dont like change. We think we like change, but we dont really like change. We like control more than anything. So it is hard to make change. It is hard to make change in your own life, let alone on a societal, collective level. But if you dont change, you dont grow. If you dont run the risk of change, you dont have the benefit of advancement. Not everything out there has to be the way it is. We just went through this wild period where people are Walking Around with masks, not because i said to, but because they understand they need to. How do we make it better . Lets use this period to do just that. And we will. We will reimagine and make it a reality because we are new york tough and smart and disciplined and unified and loving, and because we know that we can. We know that we can. We showed that we can. Questions . What you presented today seems to be an outline, kind of a philosophical approach to reopen, but when can people expect dates and hard facts . Times of opening . Gov. Cuomo you have them there. You have may 15. The pause is statewide until may 15. Then you have the cdc guidance that says total hospitalizations declining for 14 days. We get you may 15, what regions have seen a decline for 14 days . We assume we will see a decline in the state for 14 days. But what regions of the state have seen a decline for 14 days . That is where you will start the conversation to get to phase one in that region. The regions that would be more likely able to open sooner would be the upstate regions. You take central new york, the north country, the mohawk valley, those regions have seen lower numbers from day one. You would talk about phase one opening there, which is construction and manufacturing. With the caveat, dont do anything that will ring people in from all across the board. Then you have people from new york city and massachusetts and connecticut coming in. Also, construction by manufacturing is a business by business analysis, not all construction is the same, what are those businesses doing to incorporate the safe procedures . You would see that more likely in the upstate area as if those numbers continue to decline the way the cdc recommends. Downstate new york is going to be more complicated. You cant do anything in new york city that you dont do in nassau, westchester. You cant do anything and downstate that we dont do in coordination with connecticut and new jersey. Coordination does not mean total consistency, but it does mean what a nation. Coordination. We have to know if we are doing something different. We have had issues where certain activities were open in connecticut and you saw many new york license pl