China 200,000 tests per day.

South Korea, 15,000 tests per day.

They got.

They were so aggressive on testing that they actually identified the people who tested positive, isolated them, and then ran down the track of who those people may have contacted.

Massive testing.

This country, we've done 5000 tests to date, according to the Secretary of Health and Human Service is so our testing capacity is nowhere near what it needs to bay.

Now there'll be a retrospective one day.

What happened?

Why you saw China November, December last year.

You saw the case coming.

Why did it set take so long for this country to get a testing protocol done?

That will be for another day.

I'm a governor.

I'm concerned about today.

I'm concerned about tomorrow.

So New York State is going to take matters into its own hand.

We're going to start contracting with private labs in the state to increase our testing capacity.

Remember again the chronology we started several weeks ago?

CDC said they would do all the tests and they would send them to Atlanta.

We said that was too little too late.

They allowed the state laboratory to do testing.

That capacity was several 100.

We said That's too little, too late.

We have great labs in the state Why the federal government wouldn't avail itself off the labs, why they wouldn't have had protocols and tests ready.

So we are going to contract directly with private labs in this state.

There are about 200 laps in this state.

The Department of Health routinely works with about 28 labs, which are expert in this kind of testing and virology and where the Department of Health has a pre existing relationship with these labs, where they're confident of the lab's work product, et cetera.

We had a call with the 28 labs today.

We informed them that they should get up, get running and start moving forward with testing.

There's still some complexity that the FDA needs to sign off on the actual protocols of some of these tests, and that is still complicating the situation.

But this will greatly increase our testing capacity as we get these 28 labs up and running.

We had them on the telephone today, had the communication today and we're starting the mobilization of those 28 labs, but that'll make a big difference.

But frankly, we're not in a position where we can rely on the CDC or the FDA to manage this testing protocol.

So we'll be moving forward with that second track reduced density.

Why?

Because if somebody has infected, you don't want them to infect more people.

That's what we're doing in New Rochelle.

You have that intense cluster.

You know you have an intense cluster stop large gatherings where you have a large cluster of people who are infected called common sense on.

That's what we announced with New Rochelle.

We're also announcing that CUNY and Sunni, starting March 19th will move to a distance learning model, and both systems will be doing that.

CUNY will help reduce the density in New York City.

Sunni will help reduce the density in downstate New York.

At SUNY Purchase, it's Stony Brook.

It's Westbury, et cetera.

Downstate is where we have the highest density of cases now.

So SUNY and CUNY closing March 19 thereabouts.

There some different campuses that maybe some variability, but that will be a way to reduce density, and that is a good thing I've also spoken today with hundreds of business leaders, primarily in New York City.

I've asked them voluntarily to help reduce the density.

There are a number of ways they can do this.

Different work shifts.

Some people work early.

Some people work late, different teams.

One team works one week.

The other team works the other week but again, ways to reduce density in the city.

Telecommuting, Working from home, all the experts say social distancing.

You should be more than six feet from someone.

Try walking down a New York City sidewalk on be six feet from people.

It would be virtually impossible.

So reducing density.

How do you do that?

Ask the businesses to cooperate.

We're also gonna be making a decision on the ST Patrick's Day parade will make that decision later on.

I want to speak with a few more people, but I've been speaking with health experts Dr Fauci, who I believe is one of the best in the nation, who I've spoken to a number of times, he testified today, and this is his strong recommendation, just reduced large gatherings.

Why would you risk bringing thousands of people together knowing that this is a virus that easily communicates.

Doctor found she was talking about sports events, et cetera.

But ST Patrick's Day is one of the great, uh, convening strike of a large number of people, so we'll be making that decision today.

But if you listen to the experts, they would say you should not be having a ST Patrick's Day convenient.

Attn.

This time, which I believe makes sense, we said, If we're asking people to be quarantined, we are asking the Legislature to pass a bill that says people will be paid by their employer if they're on quarantine.

Lead by example.

New York state will pay any person who is quarantined, who's an employee of New York state.

So if you're on mandatory quarantine or on what we call precautionary quarantine, you'll be paid.

If you're a state employee.

Public transit, We've asked them statewide to double cleaning protocol.

There's conflicting information on how long the virus lives on a hard surface, plastic or stainless steel.

It was at first a couple of hours.

Then some people set up to 12 hours.

Some people now say up to 24 hours.

Some people say maybe a little longer than 24 hours.

We want to double the cleaning protocol just to make sure New Yorkers a confident there was a situation in White Plains where an attorney who practiced at was just a county courthouse in the White Plains courthouse tested positive.

Six courtrooms are closed for cleaning, and employees who had contact with that attorney will be on precautionary quarantine and anyone who needs a test, we will do the overall number of cases in Westchester.

You see again 13 new cases.

That is probably the single most troubling point in the state right now.

48 12 new ones in New York City, 28.

NASA, 212 statewide.

This number, as I have said from day one, will continue to grow every day.

The more tests we get, the more positives we will get.

That's exactly what we are seeking.

These are not random survey tests.

This is not a random sample.

We don't have people who are random sampling the universe to find out what the infection rate ISS.

This is when we find the person who is positive asking them who they came in contact with and then testing that chain that's primarily where these tests come from, and we're looking for the positive.

So that is actually good news because it says where were successfully tracking the chain?

These numbers will continue to go up dramatically.

The more tests we do, the more these numbers will increase.

These numbers do not reflect anyone's belief off what percent of the population is infected.

My theory.

Talking to everyone else having no medical experience whatsoever, is the Corona virus was in this country before people acknowledged, and that it is much more widespread than people acknowledge.

My guess is when we go back and we look at this, we will find that there were many people who had Corona virus where it resolved, and, uh, nobody even knew about it.

We're looking at a test that would test for antibodies that the body produces to fight the Corona virus.

To prove out this point, if a person has antibodies that were produced to fight the Corona virus, it'll show that they actually had the Corona virus at an earlier time resolved and moved on.

But that's a test that the Department of Health is working on.

You see, it goes New York and Washington state number one, or number two depends on the number of cases that day again.

To the extent these cases, these tests are representative of anything death rate in Washington state, much higher because it wasthe of a vulnerable population.

It was a nursing home on, and that is the vulnerable population in a congregant setting that is the most most dangerous situation posed by this virus.

Senior citizens, people with a compromised immune system, people with an underlying illness in a congregate facility.

What third point, this communication communication is making sure people have the facts, the right fax, the right information because the facts here do not justify the amount of fear.

I understand it's a virus.

Understand?

It sounds like a bad science fiction movie.

This is not the Ebola virus we've dealt with that that was a much more dangerous, frightening virus.

The facts here actually reduce the anxiety.

We have 212 cases in the state of New York.

32 are hospitalized.

Well, how about everyone else?

They're home.

They're recovering at home or they have recovered.

But only 32 out of the 2 12 require hospitalization.

And to me, what is the most definitive factual information is the Johns Hopkins study.

Let's go back and track every case of Corona virus since we first heard about it.

Let's go back to China to the first case and track all the cases and finds out we find out what happens.

121,000 cases from the beginning 4000 deaths.

66,000 people recovered.

50,000 pending cases.

4000 deaths are terrible.

Yes, no doubt how many people died in the United States from the flu last year?

Roughly 80,000 from the flu.

So again, perspective, questions, comments.

Does this mean that students who are living in dormitories will be sent home way are developing plans, as we speak with in consultation with SUNY and CUNY to make sure that they can deliver all of these classes online?

There may be certain applications where in person instruction is still required, like lab settings.

S o.

The campuses are not themselves going to be closed, but the goal is to reduce the congregation of multiple students so stagger class times may be breaking up class into smaller units.

Things of that nature is the mask.

Yes, Yes, honey, The exact number, but hundreds and hundreds of tests between Can we get a way over 500 tests.

Wherever are you up to?

2000 per day?

Let me look for the exact number.

What did the federal government say when you said you're gonna go?

Europe was gonna go Tone rounds are contracting with private.

Been ongoing conversation.

Ah, from day one, you know, right from when they announced what all the tests have to be done.

It C d c.

And then there was a tremendous delay.

And CDC was a terrible bottleneck.

CDC Their main lab was in Atlanta.

So all the test was supposed to go to C.

D.

C.

They won't send them down to Atlanta.

Then they were gonna come back.

We had a tremendous pent up demand for tests, and that was just too restrictive.

Uh, we voiced our consternation about that good word consternation.

I've voiced my consternation to you on occasion.

So you understand what I mean by consternation.

They then went to face to okay.

The state labs can test.

Yeah, but that God is a few 100.

That wasn't enough on then.

This is the third phase where we can't just wait anymore.

It's it's creating.

It's compounding the problem.

And, uh, frankly, uh, they can't put us in this situation because we're not able to do our job and our constitutional duty, which is to protect public health.

So we said we want to authorized the private labs in our state on that we were going forward with doing that on dhe.

They assented.

Very clear.

I don't care if you're sorry if you don't want to be repetitive.

Oh, so you're not.

So you're affirmatively repetitive, aggressively repetitive.

Uh, so soon?

This is not a ban on any person classes pursued.

This is taking restriction, taking steps to restrict the number of people in passes Coming Ban is a notary.

Said Ban Ban is like a harsh work.

We want to reduce density.

Uh, the Sunni CUNY campuses will, uh, another individual campuses.

They have different programs, but they will be releasing students to the best of their ability.

Uh, starting march 19th.

Um, if students have hardships where they have nowhere to go in the dorm students that I'm sure an individual campus would take that into consideration, there'll be some situations where they have programs that must happen on site doing a lab or something like that.

But those are the exceptions on those will be exceptions to avoid hard chips.

Otherwise, they'll be releasing for the rest of the semester to do distance learning, et cetera.

Follow up on that.

One would be there.

Some students who are on break now that might come back on March 15th for example, which would be a few days before that.

What happens in those situations and also what happens with the Theo athletic teams, the athletic events that yeah, the different schools have different breaks at different times.

Your scenario.

I don't believe the school would say, Come back for two days and then we're going to release you so different schools can calibrate it differently.

Sports teams?

I don't know.

We'll get the answers.

You want a sports team that sonny, I'm just governors.