By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com
With testing and tracing COVID-19 cases critical before the state can begin to reopen its economy, New York State is launching large-scale antibody testing to help determine what percentage of the population is now immune to the virus who would then be able to go back to work.
Following a tour of the Northwell Testing Laboratory, in remarks at the Feinstein Research Center on the Northwell hospital campus on Sunday, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the State Department of Health was beginning to conduct a statewide antibody testing survey. The testing survey will sample 3,000 people for a population of 19.5 million people (for context Germany performed a 3,000-person sample with a population of 83 million). Large-scale antibody testing will help determine the percentage of the population that is now immune to the virus, allowing more individuals to safely return to work.
“Any plan to start to reopen the economy has to be based on data and testing, and we have to make sure our antibody and diagnostic testing is up to the scale we need so we can safely get people back to work,” Governor Cuomo said.”We are going to start antibody testing across the state tomorrow – and we are going to do that in the most aggressive way in the nation. This will be the first true snapshot of exactly how many people were infected by COVID-19 and where we are as a population and will help us to reopen and rebuild without jeopardizing what we’ve already accomplished.”
Cuomo cited the positive drops in numbers of infections, hospitalizations as deaths as proof that the policies have worked, that the state can “control the beast”. But that this is no time to get complacent.
“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 don’t 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 I’ve had people feel political pressure. Here is the simple answer. The State’s emergency powers now govern in this emergency. Blame me. Blame me. Somebody’s complaining about a beach, somebody’s complaining about whatever, businesses open, schools open, blame me. It’s true. It’s right. It’s the state law and I don’t have any issue with that. So blame me.
“Also, as we are planning the reopening, let’s set the bar a little higher. Let’s 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? 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? It is not just reopen. It is not just build it back. It is advance. Use this as a moment in time where they look back, when they write the history books and they say oh 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 built back smarter. We had Hurricane Sandy, devastated Long Island. I was governor. I didn’t say we want to replace, I said we’re going to learn how to do a new grid system. We’re going to learn how to do better infrastructure. And we did. Long Island, today, is better for having gone through Hurricane Sandy as terrible as that was.
“We have to do the same thing here. How do we come back even better? So, the long and the short of it is thank you to all New Yorkers for all the good work. To our healthcare workers, a special thank you. To the police, to fire, to the transit workers. You know, the economy has not been closed down, right? All the essential services have still been functioning. You still can go to the grocery store and get food. Lord knows you could go to a healthcare institution and get healthcare. The transportation works, the buses work. All these people who kept everything working, we thank them from the bottom of our hearts.
“But also remember we still have more to do. New Yorkers know that because New Yorkers are tough, but tough doesn’t mean just tough. Tough is easy. It’s tough but smart, but disciplined, but unified, and but loving. That’s who we are as New Yorkers.”
Cuomo – along with Vice President Joe Biden – is proposing hazard pay for frontline workers, who have disproportionately suffered illness and death, are disproportionately women, people of color, in low-paying jobs and living in congested communities that have also not had the same access to medical care.”
No Time to Get Cocky
Cuomo reflected, “So the recent news is good. We are on the other side of the plateau and the numbers are coming down. But, that’s good news only compared to the terrible news that we were living with, which is that constant increase. And remember, you still have 1,300 people who walked into the hospitals yesterday testing positive. So, it’s no time to get cocky and it’s 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’ve been playing catch-up 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 have to make sure 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’s not over.
“We have a whole second phase and in this second phase, first, do no harm. Don’t jeopardize what you’ve 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 that organized. And then when we talk about rebuilding, we have to talk about not just rebuilding, but let’s learn from this horrific experience. Let’s take these lessons forward and how do we build back better than before? I don’t want to have on 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, I know people are eager to get on with life. We have slowed the infection rate down to .9 percent. 0.9 percent means one person infects .9 percent of a person, 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. This is a new world for all of us. How do you get testing up to scale? How do you get it up to scale quickly and how do you find out where we really are right now in terms of this virus? You have all these scientists and experts who are basically trying to extrapolate from the data, but we don’t really know how any people were infected. How many people had coronavirus but self-resolved? We don’t really know, because we haven’t been able to do testing on that large a scale. But we are going to start, we are going to start here in the State of New York with antibody testing.
“Antibody testing means you test the person to find out if they have the antibodies if they were infected with the coronavirus. We are going to do that in the most aggressive way in the nation. 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 short-term immune to the virus. This will be the first, true snapshot of what we are really dealing with. We are going to be doing that over the next week and the New York State Department of Health will be running that. There’s also another set of test that are called diagnostic testing.
“Diagnostic testing is whether a person is positive or negative. We are coming up to 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 it’s a number of big manufacturers. 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. 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 can’t 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.”
Federal Funding for States Necessary
Cuomo was critical of the failure of the federal government to include funding for states and localities in the stimulus packages.
“They want to help small businesses, and that is great. They also have to help a governments and local governments, which have not been supported in previous legislation. Everyone is saying, ‘It is up to the states to come up with a reopening plan, it’s up to the governors, it’s up to the governors.’
“Fine. That is true, and right, and legal. But the governors in the state have to have resources. And yes, you have to help small businesses, you have to help the airlines, all of these private sector interests as well as citizens. But if you don’t help the state government and local government, then how are we supposed to have the finances to reopen? If you don’t 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 don’t get federal assistance, you are looking at education cuts of close to 50 percent 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?
The National Governors Association has asked for $500 billion to be included in the stimulus package currently being discussed.
Cuomo said that the decline in infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths shows that the state’s actions have been effective.
“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 New Jersey and Connecticut because whatever one state does affects other states, right? You live in Nassau, Suffolk, New York City, you can get in your car and be in 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 on everything, but at least let’s know what each other is doing.
Cuomo noted, “This is a reality check. With all the good news in the reductions, we still have 1,300 people that yesterday came in and tested positive and were hospitalized. Thirteen hundred is a lot of people coming into the hospital system with that diagnosis. Less than it had been, so that’s good news, but it is still 1,300 people who are testing positive and need hospitalization.
“Nursing homes are still our number one concern. The nursing home is the optimum feeding ground for this virus. Vulnerable people in a congregant facility, in a congregant setting where it can just spread like fire through dry grass. We have had really disturbing situations in nursing homes and we’re still most concerned about the nursing homes.
“The worst news of all for us to live with every day and an everyday tragedy, we lost another 507 New Yorkers. Those are not just very large numbers we see deaths. Every number is a face and a family and a brother and a sister, mother and a father. People are in pain today and will be in pain for a long period of time.”
In his press briefing on Monday, Cuomo announced a new initiative to address the disproportionate number of cases in public housing – ripe for the disease because the people are lower income, living in highly concentrated circumstances: the state is delivering 500,000 cloth masks – at least one for every resident – and 100,000 gallons of hand sanitizer to NYCHA residents.
“What we do determines our future,” Cuomo said. “Smart government shapes future. This is cause-and-effect on steroids. What we do today will determine tomorrow – you won’t have to wait to read history books. If we make smart decisions, you will see smart outcomes in two weeks. We make bad decisions, you will see bad outcomes in 2 weeks.
“The future is in our hands, really in our hands.”
“We can control the beast, the beast will not destroy us. We have a lot of work to do to keep the beast under control. A lot of work to do to reopen. But will set bar high, reimagine so what reopen will be better. Build. Back. Better.”
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