Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the launch of the $100 million New York Forward Loan Fund to provide flexible and affordable loans to help small businesses, focusing on minority and women owned small businesses, that did not receive federal COVID-19 assistance. The state will take a smart, targeted approach for distributing these loans, focusing on businesses with 20 or fewer employees and less than $3 million in gross revenues. Businesses interested in receiving a loan should visit esd.ny.gov/nyforwardloans.
Governor Cuomo also announced the Long Island and Mid-Hudson Valley Regions will be permitted to begin construction staging in anticipation of phase one of reopening. If the number of deaths continues to decrease and the tracing is online, both regions could reopen next week.
The Governor also announced the launch of a new pilot program with 52 independent pharmacies to conduct 7,000 tests per week. New York State now has more than 750 testing sites across the state. The Governor also encouraged eligible New Yorkers to visit coronavirus.health.ny.gov to find a nearby testing site and get tested.
The Governor also announced that the state is making its contact tracing training curriculum available at no cost to all states through the National Governors Association to speed the process of creating contact tracing programs. The state partnered with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University to develop this comprehensive online curriculum to train potential contact tracers. Contact tracing is currently underway in seven regions of the state – the Capital Region, Central New York, Finger Lakes, the Mohawk Valley, the North Country, the Southern Tier and Western New York.
The Governor pointed to the urgency of continuing practices like social distancing, hand-washing and perhaps most critically, wearing a mask in public when six-feet separation cannot be maintained.
“How do you know the mask works?” he said. “First responders have a lower infection rate than the general population. Nurses, doctors in emergency rooms have a lower infection rate than the general population. How can that possibly be? Because they wear the mask and they do the hand sanitizers. You feel out of control, you can’t protect yourself, you can’t protect family? Yes, you can. That’s what the mask does. You want to be in control of yourself? You want to greatly increase your odds? Wear the mask. By the way, not just asking you. The mask is mandatory in public settings. Public transportation, if you are in a taxi or Uber, private carriers, or anytime you are in public within six feet of another person, the mask is mandatory. It is not just a nice thing to do, a responsible thing to do, for citizen duty, it is mandatory that you wear the mask within six feet of another person in public. You don’t have a right to infect another person. You don’t. Look at the constitution, tell me where it says you have the right to infect another person. You don’t.
“So, how do we reopen smart? It’s up to you. It’s up to us. And that’s both the beauty and the conundrum of this situation. It is wholly dependent on social action. Wholly dependent on social action. You tell me what people do, I will tell you the results, period. Government can say whatever it wants. I can sit up here and say whatever I want. I can’t control it. People can control it.”
Cuomo is so keen on mask-wearing, that he enlisted his daughter Mariah Kennedy Cuomo to create the state’s Wear a Mask New York Ad Contest, which was launched on May 5th. Out of 600 submissions, five finalists have been selected. New Yorkers can vote for the winning ad until Monday May 25th at WearAMask.ny.gov, and 92,000 people have voted to date. The winning ad will be announced on Tuesday, May 26th, and that ad will be used as a public service announcement.
On the state’s decision to launch its own small business loan program, Cuomo said, “Small business is a priority. Federal government passed the Small Business Assistance Program. That has run out of money and small businesses are taking a real beating in this situation. They are 90 percent of New York’s businesses and they’re facing the toughest challenges. The economic projections, vi-a-vie small business are actually frightening. More than 100,000 have shut permanently since the pandemic hit. Many small businesses just don’t have the staying power to continue to pay all the fixed costs, the lease, et cetera, when they have no income whatsoever. Minority owned businesses face a far greater risk and have received less in federal relief.”
The state’s own small business relief program will make $100 million available through private banks.
“We’re going to focus on MWBEs that did not receive federal assistance and focus on really small business. The federal definition of small business is what many could consider large business, but we’re going to focus on true small businesses. Twenty or fewer employees, less than $3 million in gross revenues.”
Finally, the Governor confirmed 1,696 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 358,154 confirmed cases. Of the 358,154 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
| County | Total Positive | New Positive |
| Albany | 1,756 | 56 |
| Allegany | 44 | 0 |
| Broome | 468 | 17 |
| Cattaraugus | 74 | 3 |
| Cayuga | 73 | 1 |
| Chautauqua | 63 | 5 |
| Chemung | 135 | 1 |
| Chenango | 118 | 0 |
| Clinton | 94 | 0 |
| Columbia | 356 | 1 |
| Cortland | 37 | 1 |
| Delaware | 72 | 1 |
| Dutchess | 3,767 | 22 |
| Erie | 5,397 | 127 |
| Essex | 36 | 0 |
| Franklin | 19 | 0 |
| Fulton | 189 | 3 |
| Genesee | 189 | 1 |
| Greene | 215 | 0 |
| Hamilton | 5 | 0 |
| Herkimer | 95 | 2 |
| Jefferson | 72 | 1 |
| Lewis | 19 | 1 |
| Livingston | 114 | 0 |
| Madison | 297 | 3 |
| Monroe | 2,601 | 71 |
| Montgomery | 77 | 0 |
| Nassau | 39,608 | 121 |
| Niagara | 897 | 17 |
| NYC | 196,484 | 809 |
| Oneida | 828 | 11 |
| Onondaga | 1,828 | 57 |
| Ontario | 180 | 4 |
| Orange | 10,142 | 50 |
| Orleans | 175 | 1 |
| Oswego | 96 | 4 |
| Otsego | 67 | 0 |
| Putnam | 1,187 | 12 |
| Rensselaer | 460 | 4 |
| Rockland | 12,905 | 28 |
| Saratoga | 448 | 8 |
| Schenectady | 645 | 7 |
| Schoharie | 49 | 0 |
| Schuyler | 11 | 1 |
| Seneca | 54 | 2 |
| St. Lawrence | 195 | 0 |
| Steuben | 240 | 2 |
| Suffolk | 38,672 | 119 |
| Sullivan | 1,287 | 6 |
| Tioga | 118 | 1 |
| Tompkins | 147 | 2 |
| Ulster | 1,595 | 11 |
| Warren | 246 | 5 |
| Washington | 224 | 2 |
| Wayne | 104 | 1 |
| Westchester | 32,767 | 94 |
| Wyoming | 79 | 0 |
| Yates | 34 | 0 |