Searchable compilation of Press Conference Transcripts (non-COVID-related subjects deleted)
New York City Mayor de Blasio 2020-02-26 to 2020-11-30
Includes Also Brian Lehrer Show Transcripts and Q&A

2020-02-26 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: On behalf of the City of New York, I want to respond to the Centers for Disease Control warning that was issued yesterday and I want to commend the CDC for acknowledging the reality and saying very clearly that it's not a question of if, but when the coronavirus affects the United States in a much more profound manner. I welcome that acknowledgement by the CDC and the federal government. I will say very plainly that on January 24th with my colleagues, I made the same exact statement about the City of New York. So, it has been clear for weeks now that was not a question of if, but when it is important that the federal government is accepting that reality and acting more aggressively and I'm going to talk about things I think need to be done additionally by our federal partners to address this crisis.

No one should take the coronavirus situation lightly. In fact, I think the problem we're seeing in many countries of the world is that there was not an aggressive approach and there was not transparency and there was not a willingness to fully acknowledge the danger. Here in New York City, we took the exact opposite approach. We acknowledged it from day one in a very open manner that allowed us to communicate with our people about what they needed to do. I want to thank New Yorkers. New Yorkers heard the instructions that were offered by our public health officials and they acted on them and our focus right now is on addressing this crisis and ending it, but when the story is told later, New Yorkers will prove that they once again showed strength and resiliency by following through and doing exactly what they need to do to protect themselves and their families and their neighbors. That's part of why we have the situation in this city that we have today, which is clearly better than many other places.

The precautions that were put in place back in January, including in our public health system, our schools, working with our federal colleagues at the airports, have had a very positive effect even against the backdrop of a major, major crisis. So, first information that I want to update you on, on the City of New York – as of this hour, there are no confirmed cases of coronavirus in the City of New York. Every single potential case that was tested came back negative and that is a very good thing. That does not reduce our vigilance one iota. We're in a state of high vigilance, high readiness – all elements of the City government to address this crisis.

We all ask ourselves the question after seeing the CDC guidance yesterday, what would we be able to do if this became a much deeper crisis? What kind of capacity could the city of New York bring to bear immediately want to give you a couple of updates? Right now we have 1200 hospital beds that we can make available immediately for any individual who is in the testing process or who tests positive and needs isolation in a hospital setting, 1200 beds that can be brought online immediately. That is a very, very substantial capacity given what we're seeing playing out even in some of the countries that are dealing with this crisis in a much deeper manner. Already our public health officials have distributed 1.5 million masks in the City of New York. That is a very good start, but we need more. We have requests out for an additional minimum of 300,000 surgical masks to guarantee that these arrive in New York City promptly. We will need federal assistance, so I'm calling on the federal government to help us and all other localities to get the masks we need. Working with the private sector providers.

Now, we need the CDC to help us to help ourselves. Not just New York City, but cities all over the country. We have very advanced laboratory facilities as a part of our Department of Health. Other cities do as well. These facilities are being under-utilized by the CDC. We've made this point now for weeks and weeks. There has been an honest effort between CDC and city, state to try and speed up our ability to do this local testing, but more can and should be done immediately. As our Health Commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot and I were talking about, what's the simplest way to explain this? It's obviously technical. It's obviously complex, how the testing occurs, so I'm going to use very plain simple human English. Right now the CDC posture is they are letting perfect be the enemy of good. We believe that if they would empower local laboratories, we could work with them to do high quality testing faster. That will allow us to keep staying ahead of the situation. We want to be their partners, but we need more flexibility. We also call upon the CDC to add to its testing regimen for travelers. Right now it is too narrowly focused on travelers coming out of China. We think that has to be expanded to any traveler coming from a country that's seen a major surge in cases. We think that needs to be expanded to any country that now has a travel warning attached to it by the United States government. So, I am urging the CDC and the federal government to add the testing protocol upon entry for visitors from Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. If these steps are taken, I believe it will help us to respond more quickly. It will help all of us to identify cases more effectively and really limit the spread of this epidemic.

Before I close, I'll note some of those who are with me and we will turn your questions, but before I do, thank you. The most important information that has been provided on this situation was the information that was provided by all of us a month ago and I want to go back to it. I know everyone rightfully is trying to get new information, deal with new realities, but stay with the basics first. If someone has the symptoms and a nexus to one of the countries deeply affected, meaning they were there themselves or they are living in the same home as someone who was there or in constant contact with someone who was there and they have any of those identifiable symptoms they need to get to health care immediately. That is what has been working in New York City. We did have a number of people who matched that definition and they consistently went and got health care quickly. They were therefore isolated from everyone else productively. The testing happened quickly. The testing came back negative. So, the real simple basics, if you have symptoms that seem like a flu and there's any possibility of a nexus to travel to those countries or anyone who's been to those countries that's close to you in your life, get to a doctor immediately. Now, a very fair question. What if someone doesn't speak English? What if someone doesn't have a primary care doctor? What if someone is not able themselves, physical disability or some other reason, to navigate the process? All that is necessary is for someone to call 3-1-1. The person themselves or anybody in their lives can call 3-1-1 and if they cannot get to a doctor immediately we will get a doctor to them. It's as simple as that. There is no filter here. There's no delay. Anybody needs help, just has to pick up the phone and they will get help. And the classic obvious advice, better safe than sorry; if you may have it, if you're worried you might have it, act like you do have it. Do not delay. Do not explain it away. Do not hesitate. Better safe than sorry.

Finally, and I'll offer a couple of sentences in Spanish, but just to say New Yorkers, I have often said, do not scare easily, do not get intimidated, do not panic. We've been up against many, many things. We've been up against global health crises, terror attacks, the greatest terror attack in the history of this country against our people. We've been up against any number of crises. New Yorkers are very, very consistent. They're tough, resolute. They help each other. They know how to deal with pretty much anything. So I'm going to ask everyone who is listening to me right now and all my colleagues in the media, this is not the time to sow panic. This is the time to share information and help people understand this can be dealt with. The places that have the problem are the places that did not deal with reality, that were not honest and open, that did not help people understand what to do, that did not make help available easily. We're doing the exact opposite here in New York City. We have the greatest public health capacity of anywhere in this country and we're using it. So there is not a single reason for panic. There's a reason for people to focus and follow through on the basics and if we do that, we will all be safe.

In Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

As I said, want to thank my colleagues who have been at the forefront of addressing this crisis. Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, Dr. Raul Perea-Henze; Deputy Mayor for Operations Laura Anglin; Dr. Oxiris Barbot, our Health Commissioner; Deanne Criswell, our Emergency Management Commissioner; Lorraine Cortez-Vasquez, our Aging Commissioner. Representing the DOE, Chief Operating Officer Ursulina Ramirez; Dr. Machelle Allen, Senior VP, Chief Medical Officer at New York City Health and Hospitals. I want to thank everyone who's here from FDNY, OMB, all the other agencies that are involved in addressing the response. Also want to thank our elected officials who are here and have been very, very supportive and are spreading important information. Manhattan Borough President, Gale Brewer, the chair of the Committee on Aging in the City Council, Council Member, Margaret Chin, chair of Committee on Health, Council Member Mark Levine, Chair of the Committee on Hospitals, Council Member Carlina Rivera. Thank you to all for your partnership as we address this crisis.

With that turn to questions from the media. Yes?

Question: Mr. Mayor, you talked about wanting more flexibility from the federal government in terms of he believes local labs to out. Can you just say like what is that flexibility, what don't you have now? What do you need to do that?

Mayor: Dr. Perea-Henze, Dr. Barbot will speak to that.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So, right now, there is a test that they are finalizing and the very last step is what's limiting our ability to do that test here in the city. And we would like the CDC to allow us to partner with them on finalizing that last step so that we can make that test widely available and get results as quickly as possible for New Yorkers.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I'm going to give you my editorial comment and my health colleagues can – I think the CDC is trying very hard to address this crisis. I give them credit for that. I think the phrase I used earlier, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. We believe in a crisis of this magnitude that decentralizing the approach and helping localities that have vast capacity, this is the finest public health apparatus in America right here, you know, get the ball to the Department of Health, right? You know, just focus on where you can get more capacity to speed up the response. So I would argue it is a matter of them being a little more creative, little more flexible to help us do the most we can do. There's real work that has to be done between them, but I think it's been held a little too close. So then a little bit too much business as usual. And this is not a business as usual situation. Yeah.

Question: I wanted to ask about the masks, because I saw earlier this week the OEM that put in an order for additional masks, was it a company in New Jersey. Could you explain a little bit of the federal government's role in this? Is it just delivering them? Are they a hindrance in that or is it true that they haven’t—

Mayor: I’m going to start and turn to Deanne. Again, I'll be the guy who gives the simple, hopefully common sense answers and my colleagues will give them more erudite answers. The problem right now, and you're seeing it around the world is everyone's competing for masks. So the government actually has to step in. This is what a government supposed to do and make sure that they are maximally produced and distributed quickly. So we need 300,000. If normal private sector channels are going to get them to us promptly, that's great. But I don't feel confident of that in this environment, so I'm asking the federal government to actually step in and create some coordination here and some command and control to make sure these masks get where they need to be.

Do you want to add?

Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Office of Emergency Management: Yeah, the only thing that I would add to that is yes we did put in the request for masks, but everybody's putting in requests. So there's just a long waiting list and the only way to fulfill that is by the federal government. They have means where they can enact the Defense Production Act and get people to produce these more quickly.

Mayor: I want you to expand on that just for a second. Deanne was a senior official at FEMA, so she understands what the federal government is capable of doing. Could you speak to how that works?

Commissioner Criswell: Yeah. The Defense Production Act allows the federal government to authorize or enforce manufacturers to produce things in a priority and move things down below that priority levels so that way they can prioritize producing the personal protective equipment that we need for this crisis and put other things that are more routine down at a lower level of priority.

Mayor: Literally they have to, in an emergency, the private company has to change what it is doing. You want to finish?

Question: [Inaudible] these masks are for? Are they for health care responders, are they for first responders?

Commissioner Criswell: The masks would be for our health care professionals and our first responders.

Mayor: Hold on, hold on, let it get around a little bit.

Question: For schools, what advice are you giving schools?

Mayor: We've now done two rounds of information to parents and obviously to the school personnel. We're doing another one today. Stay on the basics here. Anyone with symptoms and that nexus needs to get care immediately. Again, and I credit everyone – and I gave you guys an editorial view earlier about help us not – help us avoid panic and help us get out information in the earlier weeks. One of the good things that happened is you all spread that common-sense information and people actually listened. So, thank you. The fact is that we've seen – Raul, seven tested cases?

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: Seven total –

Mayor: Seven total now in over a month, almost five weeks, all negative, which means people are doing what they're supposed to be doing. So, we want keep telling parents, keep telling school personnel – get tested immediately. That is the ballgame. So, we're continuing to pump out that message.

Question: Just a follow-up – are there nurses in schools or is it teachers that are observing children or administrators observing children?

Mayor: Again, I want to start in the home. The most important thing is the people, and the people have been responding. So, I want to just – I understand everyone's going to think about what can the government do, what can officials do, but I want to – this is a grassroots solution first. We also have an amazing grassroots health care world in New York City – nonprofit organizations community-based clinics, everyone's in this together, a great deal coordination. Every New Yorker needs to take responsibility. So, if you have a symptom and you have that nexus, if your child does, act. Now, of course, the instruction to our educators, and I'll start and if our chief operating officer wants to add anything, jump in – to all educators, to school personnel of all kinds, to medical personnel in schools, nurses in schools – if they see a child with symptoms, of course, they're going to immediately investigate whether that's [inaudible] nexus, of course they're going to immediately get them to further care. That's the instruction we're giving.

Who has not gone? Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: To convince?

Question: To convince the immigrant communities.

Mayor: Again, we are very satisfied so far that immigrant communities are seeking help. We've had – every community, of course, matters, every community has been being communicated with. A lot of this has revolved obviously in the early weeks around the Chinese community. There's been tremendous communication, tremendous leadership by Chinese community leaders, elected officials like Margaret Chin and many others, community-based leaders – everyone's doing exactly what we need them to do to make sure people know what to do. The follow through is obvious, the facts on the ground after five weeks show that everyone's actually doing what they’re supposed to do. We want them to keep doing it.

Go ahead.

Question: A little more clarity [inaudible] cpartner with the CDC to do in terms of the test. Is it developing the test with the final –

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: Let me just make it very, very simple. Right now, they're waiting to do all the steps before they send us the testing. What we are asking for is for them to send us what they have so we can partner with to finish the testing.

Question: So you would help develop the test?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: Absolutely.

Mayor: We can be their pure partners. They're acting a little too siloed, if you will. They're keeping everything close in the CDC, but they can't do it as fast as we need. We should be empowered, deputized to simply be their partners to do the testing.

Go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: I would clarify that the test has already been developed. They're finalizing validation steps and we want to be partners in that final validation step.

Mayor: Can you say just –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I'm sorry. Hold on. Hold on – dude, dude, dude, excuse me. I said hold on a moment, could you respect that? That's really not cool. This is a very serious matter. Could you help everyone understand what a validation step is? It's not a word that most people are used to.

Commissioner Barbot: It means that there are specific procedures in place to make sure that every time that test is run, you can be assured of the same level of accuracy so that it's replicable.

Mayor: Okay. Go ahead.

Question: Are you saying you don't have the test here.

Commissioner Barbot: Correct. We don't have the authorization to do the test here. We have to rely on the CDC.

Question: So, just a quick follow-up on that. Do you have the operation authorization to do the first few steps of the test or none of the test?

Commissioner Barbot: No. So, we had initially gotten the go-ahead to run the test, and then there were issues found on the third and final step, and so CDC found that there were issues with a third batch – third component of the complete assay that needed to be run. And so, that's the part that needs to be rerun and that's the part that's holding up our ability to run it here locally.

Question: An element of the test itself?

Mayor: I'm going to stop the questioning on this narrow point. Hold on, hold on. We will do a follow-up immediately after this – technical briefing to make sure everyone understands. We should not ask every – you know, I understand that the will for clear information, but this is not going to be productive to keep trying to drill down on something until we can make it exactly plain. Let's talk about other matters. You will get that answer very quickly. Who has not gone? Hold on. Who has not gone?

Question: Mayor, is New York City putting up people who are self-quarantined [inaudible] are being tested for coronavirus up at hotels?

Mayor: Anyone that needs to be quarantined, we'll quarantine.

Question: Is there anybody in that hotel right now?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: We have capacity to have people in quarantine. We started by having three, the last one left yesterday I believe. And so, right now, there are zero people in quarantine.

Question: [Inaudible] in the hospitals.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: They were in the hospital and the hotel for observation.

Question: Which hotel?

Mayor: Again, we're not going to get into that.

Go ahead. Back there.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: We are not recommending the use of masks. There's a place in a time to use masks. We recommend individuals who may be symptomatic and seeking medical care to wear masks so that when they go to the doctor's office and they end up having either the flu or coronavirus, they don't inadvertently infect other people. But for everyday New Yorkers, there's no need to use a mask. We need to remember what we know works and what works is washing your hands frequently, covering your mouth and your nose when you cough and you sneeze, and remembering, as the Mayor said, if you've traveled to China and now more broadly to countries that have community person-to-person spread and you're feeling symptomatic to call your doctor.

Mayor: Who has not gone?

Question: Do you see any relevance with this experience connected to the ongoing debate for universal health care?

Mayor: I don't want to get into a bigger policy discussion. The obvious matter is, the more health care people get, the less likelihood that something like this gets out of hand. But that's a discussion for another day.

Go ahead.

Question: Thank you, sir. The President yesterday says the coronavirus situation nationally is under control and it will go away and the $2.5 billion [inaudible] should be enough. He’s going to make additional comments later today. Is there any message you feel the federal government needs to know based on our experience?

Mayor: Yeah. I think the honest assessment I would give you is, the federal government's been kind of a mixed bag on this. There are some things I think they've done very, very well. I think they were smart to act at the airports, originally, they were smart to do the travel restrictions. I think it was not smart to suggest there was an end in sight to a disease that literally we still know – medical science does not understand this disease. They literally don't understand it, it’s so new. They don't have a cure. They don't have a vaccine. It is not particularly responsible to suggest there's an end date to a brand new global health crisis. So, that's not helpful. I think having – and again, you know, I can disagree with the President on politics, but, in a moment like this, we are all wearing the same uniform. We all have to address this crisis. So, I think the administration did some very good things, but I think they're sending a lot of mixed messages and they should stop. They should just get a one page. It should be, this is going to be with us for a long time until further notice. We all have to work together. Localities have to be empowered. Localities, ultimately, have to be reimbursed or they're not going to be able to do this – we’re going to run out of money real quick. We should be much more stringent on the travel restrictions in light of the realities we see in the countries I mentioned. The CDC should play a more aggressive role in terms of stepping in where there are gaps, clearly things like the mask situation needs federal – and with FEMA, et cetera – it needs federal intervention at this point. So, I think we have a mixed bag. On the money issue, it's a no brainer. We're dealing with an unprecedented global health crisis. If the minority leader in the Senate, who I have tremendous respect for, is saying – who knows a whole lot about the federal government over decades and decades – and if he's saying $8 billion, no one should be skimping at a moment like this. Get the money going so we can solve the problem. I'd say that the administration would be better served to maximize rather than minimize in the middle of a crisis.

Go ahead.

Question: Question for you, Mr. Mayor. I need clarification on the number of hospital beds. You said that you have 1,200 –

Mayor: Correct.

Question: Now, is this 1,200 additional hospital beds to what already exists?

Mayor: 1,200 that if needed can be used to address coronavirus without compromising our other health care services. Meaning, we can work strategically with our vast public health system and our private partners to free up 1,200 beds in the event of an emergency. We can do that.

Question: [Inaudible] still take care of other people –

Mayor: That's absolutely the right question. I thank you for the question. That's exactly the question – great minds think alike, I asked the exact same question. We obviously do not want to rob Peter to pay Paul. It is a well-known fact, there's been a surplus of hospital beds over recent decades in New York City, so this is not entirely a newsflash. But the point is, when we say we're going to maximize and coordinate how beds are used, you know, prioritize the greatest need, really be agile about how we use them, that's a number we can get to in real time.

Question: Mr. Mayor, if those 1,200 beds fill up, what’s your plan then?

Mayor: We are – at this point, we have zero need in New York City. It's a little hard to articulate to you that I am deadly serious about a global health catastrophe, while simultaneously able to tell you that it has not existed in New York City at this hour, although I'm 100 percent certain you will see it. But I don't need to go from zero to 1,200 in a minute. We've got a long time to ramp up if we ever had anything like that. So, the capacity we have right now is outstanding given the challenge we're facing right now.

Commissioner Barbot: If I could just sort of add that, at this point in time, even though we are hearing most about the number of individuals that have died and the number of individuals that have been severely ill in China, what we are seeing in other transmission in other countries leads us to believe that in other countries the severity is not as bad as we're seeing in China. So, as the Mayor said, we've got capacity and we are prepared for the worst-case scenario, but all indications are that it is a milder illness outside of China.

Mayor: Okay. Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] call to increase travel restrictions?

Mayor: Yeah. Again, when the first restrictions came out, I thought they were right, and they helped – it’s part of why we don't have a bigger crisis here. But now we know in the case of these countries, it's just a fact at this point that, you know, they had, each and every one of them with all due respect, an opportunity to hopefully avert this, or maybe it matters we're beyond, you know, their reach. But in the case of Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, it just stands to reason that anyone coming in needs to be screened and if they have symptoms, they need to be quarantined. It's very straightforward at this point.

Okay, anyone who has not gone then we'll go to people who have gone. Not gone – not gone – not gone – Rich?

Question: So, Mr. Mayor, you touched on it briefly. I'm just wondering, you know, is New York lucky or good here? I mean, how is it possible that –

Mayor: New Yorkers are good. This is really the story, I'm not making this up. It's a very cynical world right now and, you know, bad news travels a lot faster than good news, but people are actually listening and paying attention. Rich, you remember – it's a bad parallel, but I think it stands to reason. When we had the worst blizzard in our history, we told everyone stay off the road, they actually stayed off the road. When we had Ebola, which was horrifying, frightening as all hell, we told people, you know, they could go about their business. They went about their business. New Yorkers are extraordinary. So, I think we're good. I also think we have the best public health capacity of any city in America.

Commissioner Barbot: If I could just add to that, please. I want to just be mindful of the fact that viruses don't respect borders. And while we've been good at delaying, as we have said from the very beginning, it is inevitable that we will have someone who has coronavirus. It will also be likely that we may have a limited amount of community person-to-person spread, and that's why we need New Yorkers to lean in to the messages that we've been giving from day-one in terms of the importance of washing their hands frequently, covering their mouth and their nose when they cough or sneeze, and, if they've traveled to one of these countries and they're feeling symptomatic, to reach out to their provider.

Mayor: Anyone who’s not gone? Yes?

Question: Thanks. Actually, I was hoping to do an off-topic about the sanctuary –

Mayor: We're not doing any off-topics right now. Anyone is not gone – not gone – last call. Come on, guys, real simple – Yoav?

Question: Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I'm just wondering how the coordination's going with this State. You know, when the Ebola crisis came out, there was, I guess, some miscommunication and some surprises. Is everything going smoothly?

Mayor: Yeah, I think the coordination with the State is good. I think the – look, our health officials constantly are communicating on many, many, many fronts, and, right now, we're unified in the approach.

Katie?

Question: I wanted to go back to the hospital – you know, the 12,000 beds that could be made available. I think I asked this back in January, but –

Mayor: 1,200 –

Question: 1,200 [inaudible]

Mayor: That's a difference. Did everyone else – wait, show of hands, who heard 1,200? Just make sure I wasn't crazy. Okay.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Well, I thought I said – did I say 12,000?

Unknown: No –

Mayor: Okay, thank you. The jury has spoken. Go ahead. 1,200 –

Question: Back to the question – so, of those beds that are available, are they centralized to one public hospital? Is that the plan?

Mayor: They’re all over our public and private hospital system? I want to thank for joining us and for his efforts helping us to spread the information and protect people – our Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams. Thank you very much for being here. Go ahead. Did you get your answer?

Question: Well, I'm just curious, is there some – and maybe Dr. Barbot could explain a little bit further, is there – would there be a need to kind of quarantine within the quarantine to maybe keep it to one hospital or one hospital –

Mayor: I'm going to start and pass to her. Again, you want every bed in an event emergency you can get, you want them to be all over, because people are all over. We have a lot of capacity, but you can speak to the specifics.

Commissioner Barbot: So, I want to just start by reminding folks that coronavirus causes a spectrum of illness that can be anywhere similar to the common cold, to really bad pneumonia. All of our hospitals are proficient in treating patients that may present with those symptoms so that the level of isolation that would be needed is in those 1,200 beds spread throughout the system, because the reality is we can't predict where it is that someone will present. And so, the important thing is to have care closest to them that meets their needs.

Mayor: And it's also to your question, an important, I think, clarification – it's not Ebola. You know, this is something that is still not understood, but it's somewhere on that spectrum, as we said, common cold to SARS, et cetera. It's not Ebola. With Ebola – and I remember vividly, and the heroic actions of people of Bellevue – you know, you had to lock down every single step in the process. This was like, death right away if you do something wrong. This is not that, thank God, as we know it at this moment. We take it very seriously, but you can have people in different hospital settings, properly isolated, possibly properly treated, and we want the – I think the real key here is we want people get the health care real quick, so we want decentralization in this case.

Go ahead.

Question: I'm wondering if you have a price tag associated with a response. I think –

Mayor: No, we do not, but we will.

Question: [Inaudible] said earlier today that the Counterterrorism Unit will be involved in response. Why is that? Is there any –

Mayor: It's a precaution we would always take in a crisis, that if we need the folks who are at the NYPD. I mean, look, we have a highly trained group of officers for dealing with crisis. If we need them for any situation, there'll be available, but there's not a particular role yet.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: If I may, Mr. Mayor. lt's worth reminding ourselves that when we started this situation, the Mayor convened a tabletop exercise and Deanne may want to comment on this, but we have a city-wide readiness mechanism that we've activated a month ago – five weeks ago. So, every element of the City government is already on high alert.

Question: Governor Cuomo had a press conference earlier today where he mentioned that they have a number of masks. Are they going to coordinate with you if you need them at all?

Mayor: We're certainly in constant communication coordination. I want to be fair to the other, you know, 10 million or so people in the state who don't live in New York City – that the Governor has to think about the whole state and that's fair. But we're all going to work together. I think the important point is to keep that supply coming in. The City and State don't produce masks. The private sector produces masks and that's where we need the federal government to step in.

Question: So, in terms of the masks, you guys are asking the feds to facilitate the production of more masks and not pay for the masks themselves or both?

Mayor: I'll start and you guys can jump in. In a crisis, we're not worried about who pays upfront. We’re worried about who pays ultimately. So, a lot of a lot of FEMA activity, for example, is you pay and you get reimbursed.

Question: So, the idea is that you'd figure out who would for these masks –

Mayor: The federal government in an international health crisis should maximally cover the needs of localities. This is – anything that is beyond our borders affecting us, the right and fair thing to do is to not take localities that have inherently limited resources and make them pay for it when the federal government does not have limited resources. By the way, there's a lot of places in the country, again, could not pay for it – just couldn't. So, it's get the material where it needs to be. If it has to be on a reimbursement basis, that's fine, but the federal government needs to step up.

Question: The Governor requested the Legislature approve $40 million for the emergency response. Does that number seem adequate for what the City needs?

Mayor: I think it's too early to tell. I think, you know, right now, thank God with everyone's help, this is a contained situation. If it gets more extensive, it's going to cost a lot more. But I think it's the right step to get the Legislature into gear to start putting funding forward.

Go ahead.

Question: You mentioned no recommendation for wearing a mask. Do you recommend that the average person buy masks? Which masks should they buy? And is there any concern over price gouging?

Commissioner Barbot: So, at this point in time, there's no recommendation for an every-day New Yorker to buy a mask. The situation, as I said earlier, there's a place in a time for using masks and they should use the guidance from their individual providers about the most appropriate situations. But we're not asking New Yorkers to go out and buy masks.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: And just remember this, the mask is when someone has the symptoms – it’s to protect others. The mask is not to protect yourself. So, I think it's a common mistake.

Question: So, just in regard to the testing, without going into the nuts and bolts, is the issue of time then? How much of a difference in time would there be in the return of a test if you were able to do it here locally as opposed to Atlanta?

Mayor: And they'll answer, I just want to, again, give you the common-sense answer. If it even improved things by hours, it's worth it, because if you ended up in a situation of real high volume, you want every possible advantage you can get. But help define hours [inaudible] kind of thing.

Go ahead.

Question: The 1.5 million masks – those have been distributed to like nurses and healthcare professionals. Have any of those been distributed to like citizens, non-health care people. And in terms of the RFP or the request for the 300,000, there was no price tag on that at all. You guys have no idea how much this would cost?

Mayor: We’ll come back to you on – I mean, you can give now, but, again, everyone, I'm just going to do a blanket rule. We're not here to talk about money. This is a rolling situation. We're going to front the money we have to, we're going to expect the highest level of reimbursement. That's what happened with Ebola. That's what happened in other crises. This is not a budget discussion. So, you can ask all day long, we're just not doing budget numbers here. But go ahead. It's just not – you could ask, but I'm trying to tell you if you ask, if this is going on for days and days and days and you guys keep asking budget, we're going to constantly tell you we don't have the numbers and it's not what we're focused on. So, this is not the topic. The topic is protecting people's health.

Go ahead.

Commissioner Criswell: Yeah. The only thing that I would add is we're asking the federal government to prioritize the production of personal protection equipment. We have existing contracts in place to purchase this equipment. We just need the material to be there to purchase. Right? It's on a, it's on an as needed basis. Right now we're just asking for the n95 masks.

Mayor: Okay. We're going to shut down in a minute, guys.

Question: [Inaudible] assurances can you give people on public transportation where there's large numbers of people together?

Mayor: Right now, for five weeks we've got, you know, six million riders a day in the subways, and we have zero cases that tested positive. So, there's all the reassurance you need, but this is, again, every single New Yorker is part of addressing this crisis. If you yourself, any individual thinks they have symptoms, you have to do the responsible thing and act. You cannot hesitate. If a loved one sees someone with symptoms, they have to make them get medical care, a parent with a child, whatever it is. So I, you know, this is not the nanny state. This is every human being can do something here. And if everyone steps up, we're going to be fine. I really believe that we'll have cases, but we're going to be fine. So far, for five weeks in one of the largest cities on the earth, we have not a single case because people are actually doing their job and I want to commend all New Yorkers for that. Let's keep it that way.

Last call
Question: Mt. Sinai released a statement [inaudible] their doctors have developed a way of identifying coronavirus through CT scans of the chest. Have you worked at all with them or you – is that another possible way of identifying the virus?

Commissioner Barbot: So, the use of CT scans has been used in China, but that's not a scalable model to test folks.

Mayor: It's a good thing, but it doesn't solve our problem. Last call – Yoav.

Question: Just as far as kind of worst case scenarios, how far do you go in your planning such as the potential for the federal government to seek school closures and things like that? Do you kind of map that all, is that all already kind of—

Mayor: When you tabletop, you're always trying to do worst case scenarios. Now, that's a big, big jump from where we are now. So, I think the – you know, the comments – and I've done a lot of tabletops on a lot of different crises. I think what we would do more normally, would say you go from zero cases to 10 cases, 20 cases, a hundred cases, not shut down your school system. If you had a situation, a particular school, you could deal with that school individually. We don't have anything like that right now, but the fact is everyone starting up that chain of scenarios higher and higher, getting ready. And I wanted you to know about the hospital beds in particular to help you all understand the extent to which we are going to be going in our planning. So, you go from zero cases over five weeks to 1,200 live cases is an extraordinary progression. And we're saying we could do that tomorrow if we had to. So, we'll look at every scenario, but I want to just strike that balance as I close and say, the people in New York City, the health professionals, everyone's doing things right. Let's keep it that way. We can keep this thing really contained. If we do that, we need a hell of a lot more help from the federal government so we can get there together.

Thank you, everyone.

2020-02-29 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Statement from Mayor de Blasio:

"Today, the FDA approved our application to develop our own test for the Coronavirus. That is not the only good news: after asking the CDC for weeks, they have finally sent us new kits that will allow us to run the CDC's test locally. This means we will soon, within the coming week, have the ability to get results back in a matter of hours, not days. Quick detection is vital to stopping the spread of the virus, and this development will help the experts do their job to protect New Yorkers."

Statement from Health Commissioner Barbot:

"We are pleased to learn our advocacy efforts on behalf of New Yorkers have paid off and that we will soon be able to test for COVID-19 here in New York City. Having tests available will significantly reduce the amount of time we have to wait to know whether someone has the virus that causes COVID-19. This is a big step and one that was possible through our strong partnership with the State Health Laboratory."

2020-03-01 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Statement from Mayor de Blasio:

"From the beginning, we have said it was a matter of when, not if there would be a positive case of coronavirus in New York. Now our first case has been confirmed. The patient contracted the virus during recent travel and is isolated in her home under close monitoring. Our health authorities have been in a state of high alert for weeks, and are fully prepared to respond. We will continue to ensure New Yorkers have the facts and resources they need to protect themselves.”

Statement from Health Commissioner Barbot:

“While we hoped this moment wouldn’t come, it was something we prepared for. Our disease detectives have already identified close contacts of the patient, who may have been exposed, and will take appropriate measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Despite this development, New Yorkers remain at low risk for contracting COVID-19. As we confront this emerging outbreak, we need to separate facts from fear, and guard against stigma and panic."

2020-03-02 NYS Gov. Cuomo / NYC Mayor de Blasio

Governor Andrew Cuomo: Good morning. Thank you all for being here. Let me first introduce who’s here and then I’ll make some opening comments, and then I’ll turn it over to Mayor de Blasio. To my far right, Dr. Ken Davis from – President and CEO of Mt. Sinai Health Systems. Dr. David Reich from Mount Sinai Hospital Systems; also, Ken Raske who is the President and CEO of the Greater New York Hospital Association, I want to thank him for all his good work; our State Health Commissioner Dr. Zucker, this good gentleman you know; Bea Grause, who is the President of the Health Association of New York State – HANYS; Dr. Steven Corwin, who is the President of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Joe Lhota, Executive Vice President from NYU Langone Medical Center, but at one time he had a really important job –

[Laughter]

And we have Dr. Barbot, Commissioner of the New York City Health Department. The – first, we’re going to speak about the situation that was reported last night with a person who tested positive for the coronavirus. That woman is a health care worker, she’s 39 years old, she had been working in Iran and came back on Tuesday to New York. She did not take any public transportation. As she was a health care worker, she was very aware of the situation and the potential for this situation. We don’t believe that she was contagious when she was on the plane, or when she took a private car from the airport to her residence. But out of an abundance of caution we will be contacting the people who were on the flight with her from Iran to New York. And the driver of that car service. We’ll be contacting and following up with them as the facts dictate. The health care worker also was with her spouse. He was also a health care worker. So they were both aware of the situation. Her husband is being tested also, but we are assuming that he would be positive in the circumstances, and he has been following the same protocols that she has been following. The testing was done at Mount Sinai. Again, since they were health care workers, they’ve contacted Mount Sinai before that they were coming in and they took all precautions necessary. They are at home, at their home, she – the health care worker has manifested some respiratory illnesses, but her condition is mild, so she’s at home, and she’s not even hospitalized, even though she has tested positive for the virus, her spouse is with her.

In general, there is no doubt that there will be more cases where we find people who test positive. We said early on, it wasn’t a question of if, but when. This is New York, we’re a gateway to the world. You see all these cases around the world, around the country, of course we’re going to have it here. And that’s why the whole challenge is about containment of the number of people who become exposed and who become infected. Our challenge now is to test as many people as you can. You’re not going to eliminate the spread but you can limit the spread. And testing is very important, and that’s why the CDC, the federal government’s now allowing us to test is a very big deal, and will make – have a dramatic effect on how quickly we can mobilize and respond. We are coordinating with private hospitals, private labs around the state. We want to get our testing capacity as high as possible. I said to the people around this table that I would like to have a goal of one thousand tests per day, capacity, within one week, because again, the more testing the better. Once you can test and find a person who’s positive, than you can isolate that person so they don’t infect additional people.

We’ll be moving a piece of emergency legislation on the stateside that will authorize an additional 40 million for additional staff, additional equipment. I want to make sure that the health care system has everything it needs. We’re going to be instituting new cleaning protocols in our schools, on public transportation, et cetera, where they will use a disinfectant. Many will use bleach, which is a good protocol in the flu season anyway. So, if people smell – if it smells like bleach when you get on a bus or when a child goes to school, it’s not bad cologne or perfume, it is bleach. And again, we’re going to be focusing on our facilities that treat our senior citizens, debilitated people, or immune-compromised people, because those are the people who are most likely most affected by this virus.

My last point is this. Late last night, my daughter called me, and I could hear in her voice that she was anxious. She had seen on the news that a person tested positive. And my daughter said “what’s this” and I could hear in her voice she was nervous, and my daughter said don’t tell me to relax, tell me why I should be relaxed. Which is a very big difference there. So, I want to make sure I tell the people of New York what I told my daughter – in this situation, the facts defeat fear, because the reality is reassuring. It is deep breath time. This – first of all, this is not our first rodeo with this time of situation in New York. In 1968, we had the Honk Kong flu. In 2009, we had the Swine flu, where we actually closed like 100 schools in New York State. Avian flu, Ebola, SARS, MERS, measles, right? So, we have gone through this before. When you look at the reality here, about 80 percent of the people who are infected with the coronavirus self-resolve. They have symptoms, the symptoms are similar to what you would have with the normal flu, and for most people, they treat themselves, over 80 percent, and the virus resolves that way. About 20 percent get ill. The mortality rate is estimated to be about 1.4 percent. 1.4 percent, what does that mean? The normal flu mortality rate is about 0.6 percent, and the CDC says 1.4, but they’re extrapolating from what we know from countries around the world. First, even on the 1.4 percent, again that is – tends to be people who are debilitated, senior-citizens, many of whom have an underlying illness – that tends to be the people who are vulnerable to this. Good news, children do not appear as vulnerable to this virus. Less vulnerable than to the normal flu. So, that is good news, but 1.4 percent, that’s extrapolating from China and other countries. 80 percent, it’ll resolve on their own. The woman who has now tested positive, she’s at home, she’s not even in a hospital, so the perspective here is important. And the facts, once you know the facts, once you know the reality, it is reassuring, and we should relax, because that’s what’s dictated by the reality of the situation. I get the emotion, I understand, I understand the anxiety. I’m a native-born New Yorker, we live with anxiety. But the facts don’t back it up here. Also, we’re extrapolating from what happened in China and other countries – we have the best health care system in the world here. And excuse our arrogance as New Yorkers – I speak for the Mayor also on this one – we think we have the best health care system on the planet right here in New York. So, when you’re saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries. We are fully coordinated, we are fully mobilized. This is all about mobilization of a public health system – getting the testing done, getting the information out, and then having the health care resources to treat people who are going to need help. Again that is going to be primarily senior citizens, people who are debilitated, and we are going to have a special effort for our nursing homes, et cetera – congregate facilities where senior citizens are being treated.

And I can’t thank our partners enough. Everybody is doing exactly what we need to do. We have been ahead of this from day one. It was a big break when the federal government allowed us to do our testing because now we are actually in control of the system ourselves. And as New Yorkers, we like control.

[Laughter]

So, with that, let me turn it over to the good Mayor of the City of New York.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you very much, Governor. And Governor, first of all, a compliment to your daughter. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. She is asking the tough isocratic questions that I know you’re known for and I think it’s a really great vignette to use to help everyone understand what’s going on. And particularly – look, as a parent I want to say I know parents all over the city have been deeply concerned. I really want you to heed the points that the Governor just made. This is a disease we’re learning about, the international medical community is learning about. But so far, it does not seem to be a disease that focuses on our kids – in fact, the opposite. But the point – the vignette with your daughter, that in fact the facts are reassuring. All New Yorkers should really pay attention to this.

We have a lot of information now, information that is actually showing us things that should give us more reason to stay calm and go about our lives. Also, if I have one difference with the Governor’s remarks it’s that we don’t think we have the best health care system in the country or in the world, we know we do, and it’s a credit to everyone here and I want to thank each and every one of you and all the professionals who work with you in –

Governor Cuomo: [Inaudible] credit to us, no?

[Laughter]

Mayor: [Inaudible] take it. But in the private, in the voluntary hospitals, our nonprofit health care providers, and our public health care system, there is literally no parallel on Earth. So, there’s a lot of places for New Yorkers to turn for help and I want to emphasize today how important it is to turn for that help, to go get that help the second you think you might need it. So, the facts, in fact, show us that this is a situation that can be managed but bluntly what has been the advantage here in New York – we’ve kind of been the anti-China in this sense – has been to say from the beginning, it’s coming here, it’s a real thing, everyone get ready for it, to be transparent, to be open about it from day one.

And the coordination between the City and State, as is always the case on these issues of health care, has been consistent and strong from the beginning. I want to thank you and your team, Governor, for that. So, the fact is we have told New Yorkers from the beginning, get ready, here it comes, we’re going to all be able to deal with it together. By the way, crucially important – the message to New Yorkers from the beginning has been, this is something we all can handle together, go about your lives, go about your business. People are doing that consistently. New Yorkers do not scare easily, do not intimidate easily. Second, we’ve said if you have the symptoms and have any nexus to the nation’s where the issue is profound at this point, go get health care.

Guess what? People have been doing that. The reason it’s taken all this time to get the first case – I fundamentally believe it’s a matter of common sense – is that people have been heeding the warnings, going and getting tested, going and getting checked on, and that’s helped us to stay ahead of it. Now, we need to keep doing that. Obviously, if you have the symptoms and you have a nexus to the nations that are suffering the most, whether it’s you yourself who travelled or a family member or loved one or someone you’re in close, close contact with, go get help. Get to a medical facility, get to a doctor immediately. It’s crucial to understand – and this is again an evolving situation. I’m briefed constantly by our health care professionals. No one is saying they know everything about coronavirus yet, but we do know a lot.

But this is not, so far, something that you get through casual contact. There has to be some prolonged exposure. And I think it’s really important to get that information out to all New Yorkers. People need to be aware of their patterns. If you’ve had contact with someone who may have had a nexus to one of those countries, that’s an important indicator. Act on it. Listen, there was some question earlier about – in the last few days – about whether you go directly to health care or you place a call first. Here’s the bottom line – don’t hesitate to get to a doctor or a health care facility. If you can call first and let them know that you’re coming and let them know your symptoms, that’s ideal and helpful but the most important thing is not to hesitate. We all know a lot of people – and particularly New Yorkers – tend to shrug things off, tend to say, ‘I’ll get to it when I get it or my schedule is so busy, I’ve got something else I have to do.’ That’s not the way to think about this. If you have the symptoms, if there’s any possibility it may be this disease, get to health care right away.

I want to also say that the case here that the Governor described is an example of the work that is done and we all know this, we remember when we all went through Ebola together and other situations. And I appreciate the Governor’s point – we have been down this road as a city, as a state many times before. We have disease detectives at the New York City Department of Health. The New York City Health Department is renowned all over the world, one of the great public health agencies on Earth. Disease detectives who literally track back everyone’s interactions if they contract a disease, do the work to figure out who they’ve come in contact with. As the Governor said, in this case this individual has only one person they’ve been in prolonged contact with, that’s their husband. That capacity has been honed over years. So, if we have other cases, we’re going to be able to do very fine tuned work to know who those individuals come in contact with, and do the kind of follow-up we need.

Finally, the key point about having the ability to do our own testing – the City and State are working together with the Wadsworth Lab, the state lab. They’ve been fantastic, we’ve been able to get a lot done. We’re going to be able to do so much more now starting this week. The city’s capacity will be up and running for the testing as of Friday. That means results will come in hours, not days. This is going to be a much better situation for all of us. In addition, we’re initiating this week an early detection system. We’re working with a number of hospital systems to bring together information gleaned from thousands of health care professionals as they are having appointments with individual patients and there are cases that have relevance here – respiratory diseases. The information coming from those visits is going to be pooled to watch for any trends, to watch for any areas where we need to do additional outreach or work at the neighborhood level.

This is very much a grassroots reality, how you address something like this. It’s making sure the information flows right down into each neighborhood, into each household, it’s making sure that we have people out there giving people accurate information. It’s making sure if someone needs help they can get it. And I want to emphasize to all New Yorkers – there are people in this city who right now feel they need to get to a doctor but don’t know how, they don’t have their own doctor, they don’t know if they can pay for it, they don’t happen to speak English, they don’t have a way to get to the doctor, they may be disabled. Whatever it is, call 3-1-1. Here’s a simple message. If you think you need care, if you are worried you have the symptoms of coronavirus and you don’t know where to turn, pick up the phone, call 3-1-1. We will help you get to the health care you need. If we need to send someone to you, we will send someone to you. But no one should hesitate. The best thing you can do for yourself and your family and all fellow New Yorkers is get to health care immediately if you think you have that need.

So, with that – and I’ll just conclude with the basics. Remember, everyone, as our Health Commissioner Dr. Barbot likes to constantly remind us, cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze. It’s amazing that that may be the single most valuable thing people can do to address this challenge. Just the basics – wash your hands frequently. If you think you may be sick, act like you are sick, and do something about it. These are really basic rules. If people follow those rules – and I think New Yorkers have been up to date – it will make all the difference in the world. So, following those simple precautions will help us a lot.

And again thank you to Dr. Barbot, our Health Commissioner, Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze of Health and Human Services, and our whole team that’s been working with the State to prepare for this day. And now, we will all be working together to address this challenge.

Governor Cuomo: Well said. Questions?

Question: Governor, can you [inaudible] to a patient zero or is it possible multiple [inaudible] were affected and can ever spring up simultaneously perhaps [inaudible] –

Governor Cuomo: Patient zero is called China, right? And beyond that, China does the tracking. Community spread is going to be real, right? Thus far we've had – you can trace it back to an individual or someone who came from overseas, but we're seeing already on the west coast that there's then community spread where you lose the causal connection along the way. And we believe that's going to happen here. So, we will have more cases, we will have community spread – that is inevitable. And we're in this cycle – well, did anyone test positive – did anyone test positive? I've been saying for weeks people are going to test positive – not just one or two or three or five, there will be many who test positive. That's a false bar that we've set. And you will have community spread where people test positive and you can't track it back to any one causal length. The testing and increasing the testing capacity – and that's why we just had a conversation about how aggressive can we be to ramp up the testing because these institutions can also do testing where they get the test – the approved test – but they have the laboratories to do it. We want 1,000 tests per day. Test as many as you can and then isolate those people so you reduce the spread. But that's all this is about, is reducing the spread, not eliminating the spread. And then you say, well, so the virus will spread. Yes, it will spread, like, by the way, the flu spreads every year. And then you get in to talk about the consequences, which is 80 percent of the people who get this virus will just self-resolve – they'll think they have the flu and they have the symptoms and then it self-resolves.

Question: What precautions are being taken where this woman lives, whether it's an apartment building or in her neighborhood, anything like that?

Governor Cuomo: Well, first, this is a trained health care professional. Obviously, in this environment she was very aware of the possibilities so she did, textbook, everything right. Her spouse, also a health care worker was with her – again, textbook, everything, right? They have basically been in a controlled circumstance. We don't believe she was contagious when she was exposed to other people, because remember the contagion comes from the sneezing, the coughing, et cetera, in an isolated setting. We don't believe she was contagious on the airplane or in the car. Out of an abundance of caution, the “disease detectives” that the Mayor referred to – we're going to contact the people on the plane and the private car driver. But those were really, to the best of our knowledge, the only possible exposure.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: I’d like to add to that – what the Governor mentioned. Because of the fact that this New Yorker took early action, and we know that there's currently no indication that it's easy to transmit by casual contact, there's no need to do any special anything in the community. We want New Yorkers to go about their daily lives, ride the subway, take the bus, go see your neighbors. The important thing, as both the Mayor and the Governor have said, we want New Yorkers to lean even more into frequent hand washing and covering their mouths and their noses. And if you can't get to a water source, make alcohol-based hand sanitizer your new best friend.

Question: [Inaudible]

Governor Cuomo: You raise a good issue. And it's something we, when we talk about being prepared, and we knew this was coming four weeks, which was actually an advantage, having the right supplies, the right masks, the right protective gear, the right training is something we've been working on with the entire hospital system. We started weeks ago in terms of having the equipment and having the training. It has worked very, very well. If any doesn't have the right equipment, they should let us know ASAP and we will get it to them because we have it. And I'm going to refer it to Mr. Ken Raske, who represents the hospitals and who has been working with us on this.

President Kenneth Raske, Greater New York Hospital Association: Well, thank you, Governor. It's a great question. Protecting the health care workers is our primary concern, obviously, within the health care community and having the right equipment is essential in that obligation. And I have to tell you, and it's represented here at this table with the Governor, the Mayor, and our respective Commissioners who are outstanding health department officials – we work hand-in-glove with them in terms of getting whatever supplies that are necessary to the places that are needed. In both cases, both the City and the State, there are stockpiles of stuff – medical equipment, medical paraphernalia and stuff like that that we can draw down. The federal government has one too, and all of which are tap-able in terms of this. But the coordination effort is done in our case through our office of institutions that are running into shortages of this, that, or the next thing. And we will do the best that we possibly can to contact Commissioner Zucker, our commissioner of health in the City, and we will get those supplies to them ASAP.

Governor Cuomo: Also, one general point – there is no mystery to how this is – how contagious this is or how it transfers, right? This transfers like the common flu. So, for health care workers, yeah, you take the right precautions, but it's not like we're dealing with something that we haven't dealt with before. Actually, we've dealt with worse, right? The Ebola Virus, that was really a much more difficult, more frightening situation than this.

Question: Governor, now that the CDC has given the go-ahead for this testing to go forward, are you satisfied that you've gotten everything that you need from the federal government to handle the epidemic?

Governor Cuomo: Have we gotten everything we need from the federal government? No. No, no, no, no – on many levels. On this specific level, we have the testing, but the – I spoke to Vice President Pence, he's heading the President's task force. They're going to be doing a supplemental appropriation. This is going to be expensive for the State, for the City, and we are – I understand the relationship to the federal government, I understand our responsibility, but this is a significant financial burden. We have no issue with the administration, the management and doing the job, but the financial consequences are highly relevant. And at a minimum, we would expect the federal government to help with that.

Question: Mr. Mayor, is New York City’s public laboratory currently testing or not –

Mayor: As I said, as of Friday. This coming Friday.

Question: This coming Friday, okay. And so, what is our current [inaudible] what is the current capacity and was there delay testing this woman because of the [inaudible] –

Governor Cuomo: There is no – we can – our current capacity is several hundred, so we have much more capacity than tests that are being requested. The City lab will come online, the Mayor said, on Friday. The people around this table, they also have laboratories and the State is going to give them the approved test and they will then operate that test. So, we've set an initial goal of 1,000 test per day capacity all combined and then we'll see where we go from there.

Question: The Mayor said earlier that it was a matter of hours [inaudible] give us like a tic-toc of – for someone who gets tested, how that test is done, exactly how long that takes. And also, should this, God forbid, get worse, are there hospital beds set aside in the city for people?

Mayor: As I've said publicly days ago, 1,200 beds are right now identified and can be used in the city without interfering with other health care activities. So, we have that in reserve. Now, I want to emphasize the Governor's point earlier. Right now, we are nowhere near that kind of need. Yes, we do expect communities spread and, yes, we have to be ready for anything, but I want to emphasize that, one, you've got a disease that for the vast majority of people manifests as something that they can handle just by, you know, waiting it out and taking some basic steps. It is obviously dangerous to a small percentage of people, we take that very, very seriously. But I want us to put it in perspective, the Governor's point about Ebola is well taken. I remember I was sitting here during the Ebola crisis. That was a disease that, you know, once it hit, if you got it, you were in grievous danger no matter who the hell you were. This is a whole different reality. But I think the other point to recognize here is that we have the ability to address this. If all of these messages get out of the kinds of things people need to do, the basic precautions, getting to a doctor if you have the symptoms, all of us now being able to test quickly, we have the capacity to keep this contained. If God forbid, it spread, spread, spread, the fact that this hour we have 1,200 beds ready right this moment should be very reassuring to New Yorkers.

Question: [Inaudible]

Governor Cuomo: Several hours – the test itself takes several hours to conduct. But within about 12 hours the results are turned around from start to finish. 

Question: [Inaudible] it’s faster than before.

Governor Cuomo: Yes, because we’re doing it ourselves.

Mayor: We’re not sending it to Atlanta.

Question: When does the State testing start?

Governor Cuomo: It has started, it’s ongoing. The State did this test.

Question: [Inaudible] when did she arrive? On what flight did she take?

Governor Cuomo: We can get you the specifics, she arrived on Tuesday. Our best information is she was not contagious on the flight. Out of an abundance of caution, we're going to be contacting the people who are on that flight. And took a private car to her residence, she was with her spouse. We're testing the spouse who's also a health care worker. We assume the spouse will be positive, okay? So, that's our operating assumption. He has been following the same protocols. They were tested at Mount Sinai and we got the results last night.

Let's do one more –

Question: [Inaudible] a hospital?

Governor Cuomo: Because she doesn't need a hospital. Because she doesn't need a hospital, and that is the point here. Somebody used an expression, this is like the flu on steroids, okay? 80 percent of the people if when infected with a coronavirus will self-treat and self-resolve. They'll think they have the flu because it's the same type of symptoms. About 20 percent will get ill, and, again, as the Mayor said, I've said, everyone on this table has said, the people who are in danger – “most danger” immune compromised, debilitated people, senior citizens, like the normal flu. And those are the people who we have to focus on and concentrate. The good news here, the normal flu also does children – this virus does not seem to affect children. So, this is good news. And the case that tested positive should be an affirmation. She's positive and she's home, because she doesn't need to be in a hospital.

Mayor: Alright, thank you.

Governor Cuomo: Okay. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you.

2020-03-02 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you, everyone, for being here. We just finished an exercise with our emergency response teams. Heads of all major city agencies were here to run through scenarios related to the coronavirus. This is a process that we undertake on a regular basis on a variety of different fronts. We do a counter-terrorism tabletop exercises, we do a tabletop exercises around major weather events. This is something the City does on a regular basis led by our colleagues here at Emergency Management. Today, we ran a scenario involving a quickly escalating a coronavirus spread and all agencies participated in determining their actions to address the situation. We are going to continue to do a number of these exercises of greater and greater levels of difficulty and challenge in the coming days to prepare. I want to remind everyone, a number of you were here back on January 24th, and now it's March already.

So, on January 24th was the first time that I said on behalf of the City of New York that it was not a question of if, but when we would have a coronavirus case test positive here in New York City. So, in that is the good news that the City of New York now for almost seven weeks has been in a state of high readiness and preparation. The confirmed case we received last night since we anticipated it is something that was handled properly, as you heard this morning. And I want to certainly commend the health care worker who is the individual with the disease for having done everything right in that situation.

I want to thank all of the members of my administration who are here, all their agencies that are working hard to address this issue and get ahead of it to inform the public, to inform their employees of all the things we have to do. And also want to thank the many, many elected officials and community leaders, community organizations that we have been working with constantly. And I want to say again, New Yorkers are really doing the right thing here and all of the organizations and leaders are doing the right thing. There's not been a single moment of denial over these last six or seven weeks. Everyone is taking it seriously. Everyone has spread the word of what people need to do. New Yorkers are clearly responding when they have symptoms, they’re are acting on it, which is exactly what we want. We want people getting to health care. When in doubt, get to health care, go to your individual doctor, go to a community clinic, go to Urgent Care, go to whatever you can, but get to health care. And again, anyone who is unclear about where to turn or how to get to the health care they need can 3-1-1.

We do know, because our Department of Health has been down this road many times, has the ability to track the exact interactions that anyone has had with who contracts the disease. We do know from the disease detectives at the Department of Health that the individual in question had very, very limited contact with others, only serious contact with her husband who we are waiting the test results on, and handled her visits to the hospital exactly right with the prior notice and all things were handled properly there. We also have now, today – literally, today, for the first time an advantage we have not had over the last six or seven weeks, which is the ability to test here in New York City. Literally this morning, based on the information we had at the beginning of the day, we thought it would take until Friday and we wanted to be cautious in guaranteeing when testing would begin here in New York City. I'm pleased to tell you now, it will begin later on today. So, we will be up and running with testing through our Health Department later on today. That testing will take a matter of hours for each individual case. So, we're basically saying on any given day, we'll know the same day whether someone tests positive or not.

Right now, we have two outstanding cases we're awaiting –

Unknown: [Inaudible]

Mayor: One – I'm sorry, one outstanding case we're waiting results on. I mentioned earlier, I want to reiterate that we're launching this week an early detection system. This is a structure through the Department of Health, working with hospital systems to constantly glean information from patient visits. So, we're talking about thousands of health care professionals encountering thousands and thousands of patients each week. We'll be getting a constant flow of information from that system, indicating if there's any trend lines that need to be addressed. And obviously, if any individual is found through that process, who needs coronavirus testing, they will get it.

The bottom line, as always, is we will remain in a state of high vigilance. We don't have a timeline for this crisis. I think people should assume it will be with us for months and we're going to be in a high state of readiness as long as it is here. But what we do know for sure is that those basic precautions really, really matter. It's stunning that we have a global health care crisis and the best way to address it individually is to wash your hands, to use hand sanitizer, to cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze – those basics really, really matter here – and to be quick to come forward if you have symptoms. And look, right now, that means particularly if you have a nexus to travel to the countries have been most affected, whether that means you, yourself or someone you've been in close contact with has been in one of those countries recently. But we know community spread is likely, so even if you don't have that nexus, but you have the symptoms, it's important to get to health care right away. We'd rather have many people quickly find out they do not have coronavirus than people holding back who might have it and not getting the health care they need and maximizing the chance of a dangerous spread.

Again, any questions whatsoever – please, everyone in the media spread this news – if people have questions that call 3-1-1. There's no one out there – if they can't reach their own health care provider, they don't have one, there's no one who should suffer in silence. Any questions, any concerns, call 3-1-1.

With that, let me just say a few words in Spanish before turning to my colleagues.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, thank you again to all my colleagues and all the agencies, all their personnel for all they're doing. And I want you now to hear from our Health Commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Good afternoon. As the Mayor has said, we have our first individual that has been confirmed to have the coronavirus. This is has been anticipated because we know that viruses don't respect borders. And the patient is doing well clinically and has received the proper isolation protocol in their home. We will be continuing to monitor the individual for the next 14 days on a daily basis. And we have, through our disease detectives, done all of the necessary tracing of potential contacts that the individual may have come in contact with and we're pleased to report that there is only one additional individual who was a contact with prolonged exposure. And so, those individuals are currently, as I mentioned, under the proper level of isolation.

The other thing I want to just note is that with the ability to do on-site testing here in the city, we will be obviously increasing the capacity of our testing. But before I get to that, I want to just sort of remind New Yorkers that hearing this news of our first case, even though it was anticipated could create a bit of anxiety for folks. And I want to just remind individuals that we are encouraging New Yorkers to go about their every-day lives and to practice the precautions that the Mayor said with regards to hand-washing to regards to covering your nose and mouth when you sneeze or cough, and that if you are feeling ill and you have traveled to one of the countries that are now hotspots, if you will, across the globe, to call your doctor as quickly as possible – don't delay. And, at the end of the day, our risk remains low and our preparedness remains high. And in terms of the height of our preparedness with having city capacity to do our own lab testing, we are now going to be increasing the number of tests that we do. And one of the things that we will be kicking off today is in collaboration with three health systems – H + H, New York Presbyterian and NYU – we will be starting what we're calling an early detection system for individuals who could potentially have a coronavirus, because the idea is, as the Mayor have has already said before, we don't want people to go undetected. And this is an opportunity for us to take a deeper dive, leave no stone unturned in terms of identifying individuals who may have coronavirus. So, again, it's an opportunity for us to leave no stone unturned.

The other thing I want to remind New Yorkers is, we're in the middle of a very rough flu season. I don't want New Yorkers to be in a situation where they may develop flu-like symptoms and they go through the anxiety of wondering, do I have the flu or could I possibly have coronavirus? This is a reminder, it's not too late to get your flu vaccine. We've been looking at data across the city and I'm seeing roughly a 5 percent increase over last year in terms of the number of children that have received the flu vaccine, and that's good, but we can do better. And with regards to adults on an average annual basis, less than half of New Yorkers get immunized against the flu. This is a time where you don't want to be caught in a situation, again, thinking, do I have the flu or could I possibly have coronavirus? The other thing I want to remind New Yorkers, and, again, we are in a scenario where the risk to New Yorkers remains low. Our preparedness is high. We want New Yorkers to be prepared. So, you know, this is not the time to sort of delay on filling your prescriptions. We want to make sure that if you've got a prescription that needs to be refilled, you do it sooner rather than later.

And then lastly, I want to also sort of draw special attention to the fact that what we have learned from the experience we're seeing across the globe is that 80 percent of the individuals who do develop coronavirus, COVID-19 have very mild symptoms. And that those who tend to have severe symptoms are the elderly and those with chronic underlying diseases. And so, this is an opportunity for us to remind the seniors that we have in our lives that if they are feeling symptomatic, and, by all means, if they've had a connection to travel, they should reach out to their doctors. But even without that connection to travel, we want to make sure that all of these routes are open and that there is no delay in care for them. And then lastly to remind individuals in terms of having a chronic underlying illness. These can include asthma, diabetes, heart disease, but it also incorporates those individuals who may be smokers. So we want the folks who fall into these categories to pay special attention. And again, if you've got meds that need to be refilled, this is the time to do it.

I guess the last thing that I will say is that the messages that we've been giving in terms of hand-washing continue to apply. You know, this might be an opportunity to make alcohol-based hand sanitizer your new best friend if you don't have easy ongoing access to a water supply. And it may also be an opportunity to start practicing fist bumps, handshakes or elbow handshakes.

So, thank you very much. We can model that.

Mayor: There you go. All right.

[Laughter]

We modeled good behavior. Thank you, doctor. Our Emergency Management Commissioner, Deanne Criswell.

Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Office of Emergency Management: All right, thank you Mr. Mayor. You know, as you've heard today, we do have this first case of coronavirus, but this is something that we have prepared for and the city is ready to tackle this virus head on. New York City Emergency Management, along with the Department of Health has been working very closely since this first hit the scene in early January and we're working with our State and federal partners in all of our preparedness efforts as well as in response to this first confirmed case. Today's tabletop exercise really brought together all of our leading experts across the city as well as the officials from a dozen City agencies and our partners such as MTA and the Port Authority to continue our planning – planning that has been ongoing long before this even arrived – and continue our response to prevent the spread of this virus. As the Mayor stated, these efforts are going to continue and we will be having escalating exercises that increasing complexity as the weeks go on.

Building off the work that has been ongoing for some time now we also will be working to improve and expand on our long history of pandemic planning that New York City has already done. We have established several inter-agency crisis planning working groups. They started meeting yesterday – or, last week and they will be focusing on containing the spread of the virus in the future. Plans are also in place for City agencies to maintain essential services, continuity of operations. What do we need to do to make sure our workforce can come to work and what do we do if they can't? Emergency Management and the Health Department have also conducted multiple calls with our private sector partners to address any concerns about the potential impacts of this virus. Additionally, we have engaged close to 800 organizations that are the City's partners in preparedness that focus on supporting organizations in preparing their employees, services, and facilities for emergencies.

One of the big questions that we've had continually through this as our impacts to the supply chain, and so we have also been closely monitoring those impacts across the city. Right now, we've been tracking any resource concerns from City agencies, and, as of right now we have not received any concerns about current disruptions to the supply chain, but we are monitoring this very closely. Because we do have concerns over this, New York City Emergency Management is working very closely with the Department of Health, as well as our State and federal officials to prioritize and coordinate the distribution of those high priority commodities, such as N95 masks that we've heard so much about an additional personal protective equipment. We also have a direct line of communication with our state and federal partners, so as we find that we may be reaching critical levels of our resources we can reach out to them to make sure New York City has what it needs. People should also go about – and as you've heard – in closing here, people should go about their daily lives, remembering that the precautions that you would take during cold and flu season are the precautions that we would expect you to take today. As we continue to work through this first case and potentially future cases, the City is going to continue to work together to enhance our existing plans to make sure we're monitoring our stockpile and making sure that New Yorkers have what they need in order to respond to this.

Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you, Commissioner. Finally, want us to hear from the Speaker of City Council. I want to thank Speaker Johnson and the whole City Council for partnership during this crisis. Also, a reminder, he used to be Chair of the Health Committee, so this is something he knows about and cares about a lot, how we all have to work together to address a situation like this. Speaker Cory Johnson –

[…]

Mayor: Thank you very much, Speaker. And amplifying that point, discrimination is illegal in New York City. So, people who practice discrimination – there's a number of potential sanctions and consequences. And I want to really emphasize that we mean business. I'm very disturbed, as the Speaker is, with some of the specific discrimination that's been directed towards the Chinese community. It's unacceptable and we will use every tool we have to stop it.

With that, I want to take questions on this topic. Yes?

Question: The Health Commissioner [inaudible] why do you believe that? And a second question is the low infection rate a function of low testing rates? With more testing, do you expect there to be an increase in the number of diagnosis [inaudible]?

Commissioner Barbot: So, there's a lot in there. Let me just unpack that. The risk to New Yorkers remains low because we only have one case and there is no indication that casual contact was a driver of ongoing person-to-person transmission. The other thing is that we have been focused on ensuring that we are in close communication with all of our health care providers so that when they see individuals who have traveled to any of the affected countries, they're incorporating a travel history into that history and physical. And then lastly, you know, we've been fighting long and hard, led by the Mayor's advocacy, to make sure that we have the testing capacity here in the city. So, even though we hadn't had the capacity here in the city, you know, it didn't delay diagnosing folks. But now, with the increase in person-to-person transmission that we're seeing in Washington State, California, Oregon – I think, you know, it's to be expected that we will have person-to-person transmission here. And so, all of our efforts are directed at cutting that off as quickly as possible.

Did I get all your questions?

Question: The second question is, is the low infection rate of function of low testing and since you’re going to be testing more [inaudible]?

Commissioner Barbot: I think that the low numbers are a result of a number of different things that include the travel restrictions that took place, that include all of the protective measures that we have put in place. I wouldn't ascribe it to low testing.

Mayor: I want to thank also Council Members Steve Levin and Ydanis Rodriguez for joining us. Thank you very much. Go ahead.

Question: Your administration has been working to connect immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants to care. How does that kind of play into this when we're looking at public charge? We’re looking at ICE coming to hospitals. How are you addressing immigrants who might be too afraid to be able [inaudible] facility?

Mayor: First of all, thank you – excellent and very important question. Please, everyone, report the truth – we do not ask documentation status in our public hospitals and clinics. We never have. We never will. Folks who need health care should be absolutely comfortable coming to get it. In fact, we are trying to ensure that they have ongoing health care – any undocumented New Yorker has ongoing health care through our guaranteed health care plan through NYC Care. And I think, you know, without getting into the bigger issues of the day, this is an object lesson. As a nation, as a city, would we be more comfortable with folks who happen to be undocumented having regular health care and having their needs addressed quickly and well – isn't that better for all of us, for our families too, and our neighborhoods too? Or, do we think it's somehow better, more moral, more practical to have hundreds of thousands of people with nowhere to turn for health care? That's what it comes down to. So, for anyone who contests why we provide health care to undocumented people, it's not only the morally right thing to do, it is absolutely the practical right thing to do because exactly in cases like this it maximizes the chance that people will get care when they need it and we can deal with a crisis before it gets out of control.

Question: [Inaudible] specifically, like any sort of like specific actions?

Mayor: Sure, a huge amount of outreach. My conscience is here, come over here Bitta. A huge amount of outreach is being done right now through community organizations, community based health care providers, et cetera, with a constant message to people that if you have symptoms get to health care and that it will be available to you regardless of your status, regardless of your availability – ability to pay, I should say. And that's why, again, the central message, whoever you are, call 3-1-1 if you're not sure what to do. Our Immigrant Affairs Commissioner, Bitta Mostofi –

Commissioner Bitta Mostofi, Office of Immigrant Affairs: Thank you. And, of course, I underscore everything that the Mayor said and would just add, in terms of what we've been doing to respond to public charge and to this particular crisis. We have a large network of community providers that we work with. We partner with community-based organizations to do specific engagement around NYC Care in communities and ensuring that people are connected to that service and know what's available. We've also trained our legal services providers on connection to NYC Care and, of course, have had a wide – city-wide systematic response to public charge with that same messaging. We don't care about your immigration status, we don't care about what language you speak, we want to make sure you get the care that you need and that you're informed to do so. We're taking additional steps with the particularly impacted communities that we work with who may have some of the travel history as well.

Mayor: Gloria – hold on, Gloria?

Question: I think the last time we were here we talked about how – the difficulty of testing for the virus. What has changed since and can you walk us through what this testing looks like that will become available [inaudible] –

Mayor: Can I just make sure we're all speaking the same language? When we were first here, we didn't have the ability to test ourselves. So, that's what you get into, right?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Right. Okay, go ahead. And obviously, Deputy Mayor, join in whenever.

Commissioner Barbot: So, the easy answer is, the CDC shipped us the reagents that they needed to and we're doing the same test that they were doing, but just doing it here.

Question: What does the test look like? If someone's showing symptoms and they want to come in and be tested, what should they expect?

Commissioner Barbot: So, the procedure is when you go to your doctor, you present symptoms. They'll do a nasal swab, they'll test for the 26 most common viruses that may be accounting for your symptoms, because, remember, the likelihood of you having the flu is way higher than the likelihood of you having coronavirus. And so, we want to rule that out first. Then, we would take a similar sample – that swab – and send it to the public health lab for it to be run. So, there's no blood work that needs to be done, nothing separate to what is currently done with regards to nasal swabs.

Mayor: Katie?

Question: This is a two-part question. There's a private school here in the city that has – is asking students who traveled to some of the affected countries over the February break to self-quarantine for 14 days. [Inaudible] would the Department of Education consider that for students who may travel during February break, or then even in the future, the upcoming spring break? And then the second part I guess is the admissions and that if it becomes an issue when you consider, especially for specialized schools, would you consider not using the attendance just to encourage people to actually stay home?

Mayor: Fair questions. I think we're going to do this, as with everything in life, in stages. We – the exact reason we have this exercise today is to start running different scenarios, and, again, there'll be higher and higher levels of difficulty in the coming days. Right now, how we would address school attendance issues and admissions and all, that's over the horizon and we're not there yet. We’re obviously going to take into account aberrant realities if we get there. The question of whether the kids who had traveled overseas should be handled differently. I think it's a fair question. That's an assessment we'll make in the next day or two. We have obviously not done that yet, but I think it is a fair question and we'll come back to you on that.

Go ahead.

Question: Can you talk about what is being done specifically at the city school? I know that they - you talked about at this point about your safe – cleaning protocols [inaudible].

Mayor: Look, I'll start and if the Chancellor wants to jump in, feel free. I want to emphasize that, again every time I attempt as a non-doctor to talk about coronavirus, I'll acknowledge not only am I a non-doctor, even the doctors don't fully understand coronavirus. It is a new thing in the human experience. We do see so far noticeable dynamic that does not seem to affect children in a meaningful way. So that's a very good sign. But you know, we will not make an assumption, we have to see more play out, but so far so good on that front. The guidance to the schools has been to intensify cleaning efforts. The guidance to all school personnel is to look out for children with symptoms and advise their families to get care, but obviously for our personnel as well, if they have symptoms to make sure they get care.

But what you're going to see on all these fronts is we're going to keep amplifying those messages and keep ensuring that there's follow through because the real difference here, I think there's a common sense point that it bears saying publicly that the difference between finding someone the first day that it might be clear they have coronavirus and testing them and getting them the help they need and isolating them versus, you know, the third day, the fifth day. Obviously the more someone's out there, the more they could be in a position to expose others. Again, from what we know right now, it takes prolonged contact to transmit the disease, but the perfect world is find everyone the first available day and isolate them. So we want all of our city employees to be a part of that, that if they themselves or anyone they come across might need that testing, that we're getting that done at the first available moment. Chancellor do you want to add anything?

Chancellor Carranza: So I want to emphasize what the Mayor has said is absolutely true. What we've been focusing on is working very closely with the Department of Health. In fact, we've backpacked home already a letter by Dr. Barbot that gives very specific guidance to parents. Since January we have issued guidance to all of our facilities crews in terms of cleaning protocols, we've also sent guidance with principals on what protocols they should be aware of. We've also communicated directly with parents through backpack letters – electronic communication. And we've also worked with our nurses, our school nurses, following protocols at Department of Health has developed. So we want to over communicate and again, we want to emphasize if a child is sick, do not worry about admissions and all of those things. If the child is sick, stay home and get some attention. If our employees are sick, we want them to stay home, get some medical attention as well. And we will continue to work very, very closely with the Department of Health.

Question: You mentioned - actually the city's official Twitter account mentioned cleaning protocols for public transportation. What would that look like for subways or buses? What does mean in actuality?

Mayor: Again, I think everyone's familiar with the fact that the subways and buses are run by the State of New York, but the fact is that the basics here apply and other experts can speak to it more eloquently than me, but it means thorough, consistent cleaning. It’s the, you know, I'm going to make it really simple to the point that Dr. Barbot has said about alcohol based hand sanitizer for people. It's using, as the Governor said earlier, using cleaning agents, using bleach, et cetera on public facilities. So, that's just going to be done very systematically. I want to defer to the MTA about how they're doing it in their case. But that's the basic concept.

Question: Yes, I was wondering when the Chancellor if schools are requiring the parents to advise schools if they travel abroad at anytime [inaudible] having a family member visiting one of the affected countries [inaudible]?

Chancellor Carranza: [Chancellor Carranza speaks in Spanish].

I just want to reemphasize that we're working very closely with the Department of Health under the leadership of Dr. Barbot. We do not have that specific guidance in place yet. I want to reemphasize there is one case so far but our guidance is all focused around having a heightened sense of alert, having a heightened sense of being – monitoring what's happening with our students and as time goes and circumstances change, we're constantly revisiting what that looks like.

Question: Right, you said earlier that New Yorkers are doing the right thing here, that there hasn’t been a single moment of denial and then New Yorkers are responding, I guess my question is how do we know that and which are the communities that are at risk for failing to respond or distrusting you and how do you reach those people? And is there a -

Mayor: Okay, wait, wait, dude, this is becoming a 12 part question. Henry, Henry, respectfully, Henry, Henry, Henry, please. When I'm asking you guys – when I'm saying you're asking so many things, I can't follow it and answer it. It would really be dignified and decent and human, if you'd recognize - I'm speaking to you as a human being who's trying to communicate. If I can't follow your question, I can't answer your question. When I ask you to separate your questions and I loyally come back to you for the rest of your question, it is to get you a good answer. Please work with me.

Question: You said that New Yorkers are responding and that there is no denial.

Mayor: Correct.

Question: How do we know this?

Mayor: Facts. Outcomes. Product. That's how I'm judging. We've gone this whole way with consistent reporting of people going and getting health care, coming in with their symptoms, not holding back. The folks who came in for testing previously, those folks came forward. So now our grand total since day one of people under investigation is –

Commissioner Barbot: 11.

Mayor: 11. Those 11 folks didn't hold back. They came forward. We have seen extraordinary outreach efforts. I've seen with my own eyes in communities. I particularly commend all of our colleagues in community organizations, in Asian communities who have done a great job getting the word out, demystifying, telling people where they can get care. The proof is simply in the pudding here, Henry. We have seen a tremendous amount of information flowing. We have seen people responding to the information doing what we have asked them to do. I'm not saying it's perfect by any stretch of the imagination. What I'm saying is when there's public messaging and then you see follow through on the public messaging, that's very, very affirming that New Yorkers are taking it seriously and further that when we specifically offer guidance you see it being spread intensely by lots and lots of other sources. So I'm very satisfied by what I see. Go ahead.

Question: Which are the communities that would be at risk for resisting this mess?

Mayor: I don’t see resistance. That's my point. I literally do this for a living. I pay attention to communities and what they're going through and I've been doing it my entire life. I talked to community leaders, I talked to elected officials. I'm listening for denial. I'm listening for resistance. I'm listening for disconnect. I'm not seeing any. I'm sure there's some somewhere, but if we thought there was a systematic problem, we would want to be all over it. So in other words, your question's a great question, if we saw it, we would be doubling down, but we're not seeing it. We're not seeing a place where there's some pushback or minimization or resistance.

Unknown: Last two.

Mayor: No we'll do a few more.

Question: Commissioner Barbot mentioned an early detection system. Can she elaborate a little more about what that means and how it works?

Commissioner Barbot: So the early detections system builds on our existing flu monitoring systems so that when a patient goes to a doctor and they have symptoms consistent with flu and the provider does a flu test, then those samples will also be tested for coronavirus.

Question: Can you, I’m sorry, can [inaudible] can you talk about whether that system will have [inaudible] places that [inaudible] talk about, including hospitals to make sure you separate people from the rest of the population of the hospitals. If you could talk about it in Spanish too about the system?

Commissioner Barbot: So the early detection system that we're talking about has only to do with the lab samples. It's not a part of the overall process that happens in hospitals.

[Commissioner Barbot speaks in Spanish].

Question: In terms of the early detection system, the Governor mentioned [inaudible]. Is that part of this?

Mayor: No, the early detection effort is city-based. I think the Governor is absolutely right to aspire to that level of testing and it looks like the stars are aligning. We want to have maximum testing capacity, but he was referring to the State's testing capacity as well as the city. So the point is we want to keep maximizing that for everyone

Question: Just a follow up, [inaudible] I know you’ve been very critical of the CDC and the federal government’s response, I wonder if Dr. Barbot can tell us a little bit about when the city first got warning signs about the virus and if she could talk from a medical perspective about the federal response?

Mayor: Absolutely.

Commissioner Barbot: So coronavirus activity picked up in China in late December and I think that we're – there are many outlets through which we pay attention to what's going on in the world. We have sort of the graduate level of disease detectives that are on the lookout for what's happening globally. So we were already paying attention. I don't have the exact dates that the CDC first contacted us, but I think the point is here that we don't necessarily wait for CDC to sound the alarm. We're always looking out for what's happening globally, especially being an international city.

Question: A couple of sets of clarifying questions. The flu tests, are those done in the hospitals and then if they test negative for flu, does it go to the public health facility for additional tests? Can you sort of walk through the logistics of that a little bit more?

Commissioner Barbot: That's correct.

Question: And those tests are done at Bellevue or they're done in Long Island city or where are they at?

Commissioner Barbot: At the Public Health Lab is where we do the coronavirus testing and that's on First Avenue.

Question: All right. Secondly, with regard to the case of coronavirus, can you provide any more details about the timeline she got back in the country on Tuesday? When did she go to Mount Sinai for the testing and how long did it take to get the test results back? And do we know exactly how she got back from Iran? Did she come back from London or Paris or is – there aren't any nonstop flights between here and there?

Mayor: I don't know if we have all that, that last part, but do we have the part about the –

Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So we do actually just the details - I'm sorry, I’m Demetre Daskalakis, the Deputy Commissioner for Disease Control at the Department of Health. The individual that you're talking about landed as you said around Tuesday asymptomatic for several days, became symptomatic and sought care on Saturday. Testing was done and we got results on Sunday.

Mayor: Who has not gone, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah.

Question: If you would, this was a question I was going to ask you earlier. Can you talk a little bit more about the disease detectives? Who are they and how does this process -

Mayor: Do they have a cape?

[Laughter]

Question: What challenges might be facing them –

Commissioner Barbot: So no joke. I think these folks are the unsung heroes of public health because they do their work behind the scenes. And they are Health Department staff that have been trained in the most sensitive interview techniques to be able to get clinical information that sometimes can be very sensitive, get that information from people who are - who have a particular illness that we want to make sure that no one else has. And so these were the same detectives that we deployed when we had measles. These were the same detectives that we deploy, you know, when we've got any kind of outbreak. And so they're very well versed and toggling between things that may be incredibly sensitive. And, you know, we feel good about their ability to get important actionable information from patients that we're trying to treat.

Question: [Inaudible].

Mayor: Hold on, hold on. Guys, just time out. We’re going to finish you and then going to anyone who was not gone and then we'll go to anybody else a little bit longer.

Question: If this expands as we were anticipating and hoping not, what's the greater challenge for the detectives, the disease detectives?

Commissioner Barbot: So I think the best way to answer that is during the measles outbreak, we track down over 20,000 people.

Mayor: Right, just volume.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah.

Question: The one case pending [inaudible] is that the husband? The spouse –

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Okay, so if the turnaround is pretty quickly [inaudible].

Mayor: The Governor said and I agree with him. We expect that there'll be a positive.

Question: Do you know how soon we can expect those results?

Mayor: Today we think, tomorrow, hopefully later today.

Mayor: Thank you. Way back. Yup.

Question: I wonder whether there's any thought about some kind of enhanced screening or protocols of nursing homes and assisted livings in light of the situation going on in [inaudible].

Mayor: Yes. I'll start and if any of my colleagues or Aging Commissioner wants to speak or anyone else. The Governor indicated earlier, there will definitely be a focus on assisted living, nursing homes, senior centers, there's obviously a strong nexus there. So a lot information has flown already, but we're going to be doing constant work with each of those institutions to make sure if there's any kind of follow-up, any kind of assistance they need, that they will get it. Anyone want to add anything there. Not from there. Not from there. Come on, dude. You've been, you've done this for a while. You got to get to the microphone.

Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, Department for the Aging: I just want to remind everyone that the nursing homes and assisted living facilities are under the jurisdiction of the state.

Mayor: You didn’t say who you were.

Commissioner Cortés-Vázquez, Department for the Aging: I'm sorry, I am Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez. I'm the Commissioner for the Department for the Aging. The other thing is that we have been giving information to the older adult centers that we have throughout the city as well as to the workers that work in those facilities.

Mayor: Okay. Who has not gone? First call. Not gone at all? Nolan, your hands up, you've gone. Who? Who? You haven't gone. Good.

Question: What do you guys - what's the plan for the population of street homeless who already very, very not interested in authority and how can you even like make sure that those people will get care if they're already like, you know, not trying to like -

Mayor: Right, good question. The two - it fits actually with two things we do already. And I'll start and Steve, if you feel free, jump in. One is because we are now, unlike in the past, we're in an incessant outreach effort through HOME-STAT. If our outreach workers who really get to know each individual on the streets, I mean that's the whole concept is really getting to build a personal relationship. If they see someone with symptoms, obviously they're going to know to act on that. And second is, you know, we have the code blue concept during, for example, a blizzard. Obviously if we think anyone is in physical danger, we have the ability to bring them in willingly or unwillingly. Now this is, as you've heard, this is a disease that manifests different ways and for a lot of people it is like having the flu and nothing worse. But if someone had, for example, obvious medical conditions already and vulnerability and had symptoms that would be the kind of situation I'm extrapolating. I don't know if this a scenario you've dealt with before and I'm looking to Jim as well, but I think this is a case where if someone had clear medical distress and symptoms consistent with coronavirus, that we would want to be aggressive about bringing them in to help.

Commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Social Services: I think you're quite right that we do encounter individuals who do not want to on the first interaction accept services. But that doesn't mean we don't know who they are. And one of the important new tools that we've developed over the last several years is the by-name list which enables our outreach teams to actually, as the Mayor said, meet people where they are. And so part of evaluating what their needs are - are going to be taking into account whether we're seeing any potential concerns in this area. And if we see that we will be very aggressive in making sure that people get the help that they need so that we all can be safe.

Mayor: All right. Last call and anyone who has not gone at all.

Question: All right. You spoke last week [inaudible].

Mayor: We had an extensive conversation about masks during the tabletop exercise. It comes down this way. Our current stockpile is strong, but in an escalating crisis, we would absolutely need federal assistance. We have an outstanding request, as you know, for 300,000 masks. The federal government is finally playing a more decisive role. And I think they're right to try and figure out where the need is greatest first. But, so I'd say right now in New York City is good today, but we might need help very soon if we had a bigger situation. Okay. Last chance I'm going to do this one more time. Anyone who was not gone at all, not gone at all. Yes.

Question: Has there been any discussion in expanding the list of countries from which people are [inaudible] China [inaudible] JFK?

Mayor: Again, I want to be careful on this one because I'm not the perfect expert on all this. We've called for a very aggressive approach. In terms of screening, I think it's more than that already. Go ahead Raul.

Deputy Mayor Dr. Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Service: Right now the travel restrictions are four countries, China, Iran, Italy and South Korea. Japan has a lower level of restrictions and Hong Kong follows. We expect that in the coming weeks we'll probably going to see this number of countries increase.

Questions: So those are people coming into the country. All of those flights, anyone coming –

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: The U.S. has actually plays advisory, very strong advisories for travel back and forth from those four countries. Basically saying restrict to only essential travel.

Mayor: And again, on the further on, that would be for the federal government. Okay. Now guys, we're going to do a few more. We're not going to go on forever here – so, go ahead.

Question: Dr. Barbot actually, one of the things that's really unique about – there’s 86 cases in the U.S. but in Manhattan where this case is, population density, people live on top of each other. You mentioned earlier at the Governor's press conference [inaudible] about casual contact, so there isn't an immediate concern, but at some point when we expect more cases, people living in apartment buildings, what is the risk – people start wondering, if someone in my neighbor in my building has coronavirus, what are the concerns if you live in a building with ventilation, apartments, common space, things like that that are unique, especially to the [inaudible]?

Commissioner Barbot: You know, I think the important thing to remember is that this is not an illness that can be easily spread through casual contact. We want New Yorkers to go about their everyday lives, use the subway, take the bus, et cetera. The other thing that we have working in our favor here is that we have been very aggressive in identifying potential cases and not necessarily waiting for the final test results before doing all of the contact tracing that needed to be done to ensure that if indeed someone did turn out to be positive, we would have already done that important legwork with regards to limiting the mobility of potential contacts. So, all of that put together puts us in a really strong position. Now that to say, in spite of those efforts and you know what I said before, viruses don't respect borders. So, we do anticipate seeing additional cases, but we will treat each of them as aggressively as we have these.

Question: In the case of the woman who tested –

Mayor: Hold on, I'm sorry, I'm just going to stop you for one second. To clarify on your question, because I think this is, I got this earlier when I was on the radio. You're the doctor for New York City. Here's the question. Can I get it through the ventilation system based on what we know today?

Commissioner Barbot: On what we know today? No.

Mayor: No. So, there’s a simple answer.

Question: Just to follow up just because I, this is something people are asking. This woman is somewhere in Manhattan isolated in her home. When the disease detectives are identifying others who may have been in contact you know, the plane, you mentioned the car that that's not necessarily prolonged, was her building, you know, people in common space. Is that something that was identified? Where those people notified?

Mayor: I don’t think that qualifies as prolonged?

Commissioner Barbot: No. That's casual at best. So, no.

Mayor: So, let me try and you'll – here, you stay here for a second and then you're going to assess whether what I say – As a layman, I'm going try this. I believe it means you're in the same apartment with someone. You're like prolonged contact, you're breathing the same air for like a meaningful amount of time or you're working really closely with someone at work over hours, days, not, you know, I was in a car with someone for a half an hour or an hour. I was on a subway. I walked through the lobby. No, you actually have to be in regular contact in a meaningful way.

Commissioner Barbot: Correct.

Mayor: Correct. Okay, go ahead. Yeah.

Question: Commissioner could you please say that in Spanish?

[Commissioner Barbot speaks in Spanish]

Question: There was a man in Miami who thought he had coronavirus. He went to the hospital, insisted he get a flu test just to make sure and rule it out. He wound up having the flu. They made him, the hospital charged him like $3,000 to get that test done. So what I wanted to know was for people who, you know, with ACA going up to the Supreme Court, there’s concern –

Mayor: You're blending here. What's your bottom-line question?

Question: My bottom-line question is, what are you doing with the hospitals to ensure that the cost isn’t being shifted onto the people?

Mayor: I think this is a, I'm going to try and Oxiris or Raul, Mitch, anyone who wants to get in this. Look, if anyone comes to one of our facilities, everyone understands the ground rules. You know, we're going to get people care no matter what. If people have insurance, we're going to use their insurance. But no one's being turned away. No one's being gouged. So if anyone is in doubt, they can always go to a public health care facility. But in terms of regular health care, I don't know about that case. I think it's fair to say that the, the healthcare community in the city, and you saw a lot of people at the press conference earlier, Greater New York Hospital Association, they're not trying to gouge people in the middle of a crisis. Someone comes in for a test, they're going to be treated the way they would for any other tests. So it's a valid concern, but I don't see the health care community here doing something immoral like that.

Question: Just a quick follow up since you are working with two other hospitals beyond Health + Hospitals. What, how'd you come to that conclusion to work with New York Presbyterian [inaudible] and are there other hospitals that are coming into the mix?

Commissioner Barbot: So that constellation of hospitals gives us a fairly comprehensive footprint of the city, and we will continue working with other hospital systems to bring them on board as well.

Mayor: Gloria?

Question: Mr. Mayor, if I may. Commissioner –

[Reporter speaks in Spanish]

[Commissioner Barbot speaks in Spanish]

[Commissioner Cortez-Vasquez speaks in Spanish]

Question: What day did the infected woman become symptomatic? Is her husband currently symptomatic?

Mayor: Saturday.

Question: Okay. The second, would people sharing the same subway air be at risk and how would the disease detective track them down?

Mayor: I'm going to try again as the layman and I'm looking to the doctor to grade me. No sharing subway air is not close contact. So, again, enclosed spaces –

Question: If you were on a subway car for an hour you wouldn’t –

Mayor: Again, we’re going by what we know. You’ve got to have prolonged contact with someone that would typically align to, for example, a family member in an apartment, not open context for a limited period of time. That’s what we know today.

Question: So, the doctor mentioned that smoking is actually one of the preexisting conditions. Is vaping also in that category, if you're vaping electronic cigarettes or marijuana use? Like, is that something that's also going to make you more predisposed to get this?

Commissioner Barbot: So, before I answer that, I want to go back to the question about the subway air. This is not transmitted like measles where, you know, someone with measles is in the room, 10 people who come into that room an hour after that person left can get measles. This is totally different, right? This is, someone is ill and they have symptoms having prolonged exposure to – not to be too graphic, but their secretions. So, it's a very different scenario. In terms of the question that you just asked me, can you, I'm sorry, can you ask me one more time?

Mayor: Vaping –

Commissioner Barbot: Vaping, oh yeah – you know, it's unclear. And the risk factor of smoking is the same risk factor that we call out when we advise individuals about the flu.

Mayor: But can I bring you back? I'm going add to the question, what do we say if someone is vaping, they should beware even though we don't know, it's unclear, but does it add caution or not?

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely. That's a good idea to add caution. Yes.

Question: For everyone has been reading about it in the papers and knows that there's worldwide concern about the spread of this disease, can you explain to me a little bit how you guys make the determination that self-quarantine at home is sufficient and how do you make sure people are actually respecting self-quarantine?

Unknown: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Right, fair questions. I'll start, and, Oxiris, join in. Okay, so, as the non-doctor, my understanding is this is the global health standard that given that this behaves for the vast majority of people somewhere in the neighborhood of like a flu, it's understandable that the way you deal with that as you ride it out and that the self-quarantine is the right way to ride it out without infecting other people. So, we're not making that up, we're basing it on the global standard. On the question of other folks, it's an excellent question. And, again, as we're saying about the husband in the case we already have where it's likely he will test positive. Yes, if the rest of your family stays there, there is the risk of them contracting the disease, which means we would like to see the rest of the family not be in the same place with the person who quarantining. And that could be done – by the way, you can do that within a single home or a single apartment. You can create separation. Either – doctor, or anyone wants speak to that?

Commissioner Barbot: I think what the Mayor said was right on in terms of the appropriate level of isolation depends on the apartment situation. I want to also just add that we have been working very closely with our sister agencies, the Office of Tenant Protections, the Commission on Human Rights. And we haven't come up against these issues yet, but we are, as the Mayor said before, deploying all City agencies to contribute so that there isn't anyone who has any hesitation about coming forward. We will do anything and everything possible to make appropriate home isolation be as minimally painful as it is. Because, you know, the reality of it is that any of us would have challenges staying in our apartments for 14 days. And so, as part of our response, we're looking at the mental health needs of individuals, we're looking at a whole host of areas that we can provide support to make it as easy as possible for them to follow the instructions.

Question: [Inaudible] taking care of themselves –

Mayor: So, wait, let me go back on the previous and then we'll follow-up on your question. So, to all my colleagues and just want to give an order of the day here – 3-1-1 is central to this whole reality. If folks don't know how to properly self-quarantine, I want to make sure they can get that information through 3-1-1. If a family doesn't have a context where they can create separation and we need to find a way to find other family members a place temporarily, you should be able to do that through 3-1-1. Whatever the outstanding issue, I want to make sure – so, I'm saying this both to tell New Yorkers, call 3-1-1, but I'm also telling the rest of the government, make sure 3-1-1 is up to this capacity immediately and whatever we have to add in terms of personnel or training or follow-through mechanisms, we need to do that immediately because the best way to see this through is if people can very easily get the support and facilitation they need. Now, your question?

Question: I was just wondering about [inaudible] the couple that's been [inaudible]?

Mayor: Right. I want to – again, I think guys – I want to – just listen carefully on the part about what it is and what it isn't. So, this couple is in their 30s, they happen to be health care professionals. If you had the flu, you yourself had the flu. We wouldn't have a nurse there with you to see you through the flu. You would stay home and take some meds and you’d get through it. So, the people who are in danger are the folks with those underlying medical conditions. For those folks, obviously, we're talking about in some cases a higher level support, but in a lot of cases being in a hospital setting, obviously. So, I think to really help people – anyone who's worried has every right to be worried. Anyone who's scared of this could turn into something much bigger, has every right to be. But what we know essentially is, the vast majority of people on earth who get this, they have it, they get through it, it's over. For a much, much smaller number of people, it is a greater danger, a greater problem. For a very small number of people, it can be fatal. We take that very, very seriously. So, I think it's fair to say, if you're in home isolation, it means you're dealing with the lesser version and you can see it through on your own if you need to.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Yeah. And Chief Monahan, Chief Sudnik participated, if either of you want to come forward, feel free. Chief Monahan is very shy, he may not want to speak.

[Laughter]

He's a – we're trying to get him to go one of those courses to be able to feel comfortable in public. The – what there has been information given out to all our first responders. They are taking additional precautions already. And there is, right now, all the equipment we need to accommodate. But as we said, over the horizon, in a bigger crisis, we're going to need more equipment, but we have what we need now.

Chief of Department Terence Monahan, NYPD: All right. We have a stockpile of masks, disinfectant gloves that we gave out to all our PSA transit housing facilities. They're out there. We've given some protocol and conditions to our personnel when they respond to jobs, working with the Fire Department, EMS, if it's a sick job, a potential for coronavirus, our personnel will wait outside, EMS will respond, they will go up and we will provide whatever assistance that EMS needs.

Chief of Department John Sudnik, FDNY: So, as a matter of protocol, our EMT’s, our paramedics, our firefighters already follow universal precautions. So, they're already trained and equipped to deal with any exposure that they would have for anybody, including people with the flu. Right now, we have a response protocol where if somebody calls 9-1-1 and reports either a fever or a cough and they have traveled to one of the countries that we're talking about that are the at-risk countries, our EMT’s, our paramedics, our firefighters will be notified that it's a potential fever, cough, travel incident and they would take additional precautions, and that includes wearing N95 respirators wearing gowns, if necessary, and eye protection.

Mayor: Okay. We’re going to do two or three more and be done. Yes, Jeff?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: That’s the only one. It's the only one right now. Again, we predict a positive on that.

Yes?

Question: Can you give a sense of how much it costs for each test?

Mayor: I'll certainly have – anyone who has the answer – but again, I'm going to have a blanket answer on everything cost, going forward. The President of the United States said in his press conference that not only states but localities would be reimbursed. Take him at his word, glad to hear him say it proactively. We are going to do whatever it takes to protect New Yorkers. That will be an ever-changing situation. So, anytime we can give you a cost update, a cost estimate, we will. But bluntly, we're in the middle of dealing with things, we're not totaling up the dollar figures each day. When we get to the end of line, we'll go for the appropriate federal reimbursement.

Question: Health care professional is kind of a wonky term. Can you give us any more idea of what they do? Are they surgeons? Are they –

Mayor: That’s all I’ve got for you right now. Go ahead, last call –

Question: Just wondering [inaudible] showed symptoms Saturday and was tested Saturday?

Mayor: That’s what we understand, right?

Unknown: That’s correct.

Mayor: Yes and yes.

Okay. Thanks, everyone.

2020-03-03 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good afternoon, everybody. We’re going to give you an update on the latest news on coronavirus and just we’ll say that I think we’re going to be doing updates regularly, going forward. Sometimes I will lead them, sometimes my colleagues will, but we predict we will be getting regular flow of information in the coming days. Obviously, this is a crisis that will be with us, I think it’s fair to say not for weeks but for months and we want to make sure we’re providing as much information as possible.

So, just to say to everyone upfront, what we can tell you, we will tell you. There are some details today that we are holding back pending notification of individuals and family members that we have to be careful about. Obviously there are confidentiality issues. We are trying to balance that with the need to give you prompt, accurate information, so the rule today will be when we can give you something very specific, we will, if we are not yet able to do that, we’re going to try and do that within the matter of hours filling any outstanding blanks. And again, we’ll call briefings whenever necessary.

So, obviously from the beginning the message has been it’s not a question of if, but when. And that was true of coronavirus coming here to New York City, having cases and obviously is true now, as we discussed yesterday when the Governor and I had our press conference that we would go from a situation based on travel being the crucial nexus to something beyond that being the community spread. We’re obviously starting to see that in other parts of the United States and we believe that we’re now seeing that here in the New York metropolitan area.

With the good news, of course, is that everyone has seen this coming and has been preparing all along for this exact situation. The – I’ll say upfront, I’m going to go into the specifics here, I do think it’s important to keep reminding people upfront that as much as coronavirus has caused tremendous concern and for good reason, the manifestation of it for the vast majority of people ends up feeling like what most healthy people go through when they have the flue or a cold. For the vast majority of people it is something you ride out with some basic medications, it resolves, and you’re able to go back to your life. That does not mean for a moment we take it lightly, we obviously understand for a much smaller number of people it can be very, very serious threat and we obviously want to contain the spread but I want to always start by saying for the vast majority of people who even do end up contracting coronavirus, the impact will be limited.

So what we have – you know some of this already, I’ll fill in a few more blanks perhaps, we have a New York State resident diagnosed. He is a man in his 50’s from Westchester County, works in Manhattan at a small law firm in Midtown. Had repertory issues off and on for the last month but they became much more severe in the last few days. Was originally hospitalized in Westchester County, now hospitalized at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and in serious condition. So this individual that you have been hearing about is the new nexus to some particular activity. He is the first patient who required hospitalization in New York City since the coronavirus issue began. He is the first patient to be seriously ill and obviously we’re very concerned because what appears to be previous repertory condition which creates more danger.

What we know at this moment, there is always more investigation being done, but it appears to be no recent travel nexus. So this appears to be an example of community spread. Also talking about this individual’s family. Two sons with a connection to New York City. And again, I will be broad and vague where I have to be and we will get your information very shortly, but both sons are isolated at their home in Westchester County. Both are being tested, one as I think you know now, is a student at SAR Academy in Riverdale and that young man has no symptoms at this point. The second student goes to a university in New York City and does have symptoms and we will have more to say obviously on that front when the tests come back.

Giving you an overview to just put this in context and reminding you of the overall situation in New York City. At this moment, separate from these individuals, we have ten individuals who have been tested previously, eight came back negative, one came back positive – that’s the health care worker we talked about yesterday who had been to Iran – one pending, that is the health care workers husband, we will have that result later today. So that’s the overall trajectory for New York City. All of this makes clear why we needed local testing all along and as of yesterday we finally were able to start testing locally, it’s going to make a world of difference in our ability to address this very, very quickly, and just in the nick of time given what we’re now seeing.

The work of the famous detectives is underway. City Health Department is doing that work obviously coordinating closely with the State Health Department. In the case of the individual from Westchester County, that family as I said isolated at home being tested, those tests are being done by Westchester County working with the State lab. In the case of each of the institutions, our Health Department has been working closely with SAR Academy, with the local university in question, with the small law firm in question. Department of Health officials at each site working with the leadership of each organization, specifically identifying any cases, any specific situations where there was prolonged contact between the individual in question and other people at that organization.

So again, want to come back to this point, occasional contact, glancing contact, temporary contact, it does not, from everything we know about coronavirus, lead to transmission. It needs to be prolonged, you know, if not intimate, at least prolonged, constant contact. In the case of the small law firm, there are seven people who work at the firm who have been identified by the Department of Health as worthy of follow up. That testing will proceed. Others who did not have that direct contact have been given broad precautions and guidance and that same process is now undergoing with SAR Academy and with the university. We believe as early as today, no later than tomorrow, we will have the map of each individual that came in contact with the members of this family in a more substantial way through each of these organizations. And again there will be appropriate follow up with each of them, very hands on, very specific to follow up in each case.

So – excuse me – I’ll conclude and I’ll do a little quick Spanish. Again, it does not necessarily – what’s the word I’m looking for – when you see something coming and it manifests the way that was expected, that doesn’t make it necessarily better, but at least it is what we expected. We have been preparing for this. We have the capacity to address it. We’re moving on it very aggressively. Everyone in each institution is cooperating. I continue to tell all New Yorkers to go on with your lives, go on with your business, we are going to be in a very high information environment. I think information is helpful to the people of this city, it’s clarifying, it’s comforting, we’re going to be providing a lot of information. Right now, again, we have a very isolated situation. People should continue going about their lives. Anyone, however, who thinks that they might have the symptoms, particularly if they have a nexus to someone who has traveled to one of the more affected countries, again, simple way to address call 3-1-1. If you have a health care provider, immediately get your health care provider, call them at first if you can, get to them immediately, doctor, urgent care, whatever it happens to be, get to a health care provider if you need that. If you have any questions or needs call 3-1-1. If you’re not sure what to do, call 3-1-1. If you don’t have a way to get there call 3-1-1. That is the go to. In Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

I want to note, joined by Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Dr. Raul Perea-Henze; our Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot; our Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell; CEO of Health + Hospitals Dr. Mitch Katz; Deputy Commissioner for Disease Control at the Department of Health Dr. Demetre Daskalakis. And with that, I will turn to your questions about this update.

Yes?

Question: I know that MTA is wiping down subways and services, can you talk a little bit about what’s being done with City owned and run public buildings?

Mayor: Yeah, we are going to be following that protocol, starting with the schools, where a new protocol has been issued. The whole idea here is just intensify our sanitary efforts. You know, it’s common sense, it’s straight forward. So all City facilities will get extra consistent cleaning. We want to tighten up those protocols. I think that will be helpful. Yes?

Question: How did this Westchester patient get to his job in New York City and are you tracking his tracks? Like did he take MetroNorth, or the subway?

Mayor: Again, what we are tracking is the prolonged contact. And I get the – I am sure I am going to get this question a lot of times. It’s a perfectly valid question but I want people to understand, I am always going to answer the same way. From what we understand, and I am the first to say, the global medical community does not understand everything about coronavirus, but from what we do understand, you cannot contract it through casual contact so the subway is not the issue. The issue of the train is not the issue. The issue is prolonged, consistent contact. As you might have first and foremost in a home. That is the number one area of concern. If someone is in a home setting with someone who has the illness. And so I am going to, I was using an analogy with my colleagues earlier, trying as the layman to get really clear so I am going to use the analogy with you guys too. Here’s home, here’s subway okay? Home is the issue, home is the problem. Where you are in constant, regular, intense contact with other people, breathing the same air, the same bodily fluids around, like that’s the issue. Subway is the other extreme, limited contact in a more open space, short period of time. Subways is not our problem right now. Home is our problem. In between you have some variables. For example, if you are in a law firm and you are someone working on a case with that lawyer and you are in their office incessantly, sitting right next to them, hours upon hours, that’s more like home then like subway. So that’s what the disease detectives are going to trace. Not did you walk by someone in the hallway, not where you on the bus with someone. But did you have regular, prolonged contact which inevitably means you bring down the number of people who are of concern and you can follow up on those people very systematically. That’s what we are tracking right now.

Question: So you are not going to say how he would travel to work, you are choosing –

Mayor: We will track everything but it’s not pertinent from what we understand strategically right now. It’s not pertinent to how we figure out who we need to get to, to make sure that they get testing and support. Go ahead.

Question: Is CUNY recalling students studying abroad or suspending any travel?

Mayor: Again?

Question: Is CUNY suspending any travel for students or recalling any students who are currently abroad?

Mayor: The City of New York does not run CUNY, the State does. So you would have to ask the State and the CUNY leadership. Again I think it’s advisable if you are talking about the areas that are specifically experiencing the crisis the most.

Question: If the virus can only be transmitted by regular, prolonged contact, what’s the point of wiping down the subway and wiping down schools?

Mayor: Abundance of caution. Go ahead Gloria.

Question: Mr. Mayor I think you mentioned this person does not have a travel connection?

Mayor: Correct. Traveled but not to one of the affected countries.

Question: Okay, where did he travel to and –

Mayor: To the best of my understanding, traveled to Israel, but we are still getting more information.

Question: And are you saying which university one of the –

Mayor: No I am not yet.

Question: Okay. And then my other question –

Mayor: But I will shortly.

Question: Okay. There was a question about – I understand really making this point about you are not going to get it if this person, if you happen to share a train car with this person, but you are focusing right now on home, family, staff that he, coworkers?

Mayor: Not just coworkers, I want to clarify. Coworkers who had consistent, prolonged contact. I am going to take you to the NY1 newsroom. And I don’t wish any ill upon you Gloria. The person – if you sit next to someone and you are talking to them all day long and God forbid you contract it. I want to know about the person you sit next to all day long. I don’t want to necessarily talk about the person who you know, is 50 feet away on the other side of the newsroom. From what we understand today. The issue is who could really be in enough contact to have a likelihood of transmission.

Question: And if I could just ask about the travel thing, because most of the cases we have seen so far –

Mayor: Yes.

Question: You said that you think this is the beginning of community spread?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: What does that mean in terms – since he did not come from a place where the outbreak is more significant, what does that mean?

Mayor: Well obviously Washington State, and I feel horrible for what they are going through right now. We are seeing community spread. I mean this is part of the reality. I still think the basic rules of engagement are the same. The more people who get to health care quickly, the more people who if they need more serious treatment, they will get it. Or if they just need to be isolated, they will get isolated. Or if it turns out it’s not coronavirus, they will know that. So job one is just get people assessed, get people help. And that’s how you keep some handle on this. Clearly because of specific dynamics as I understand it in Washington State, some of that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons and that’s part of why we are seeing the problems we are seeing. So when you have the ability to track, then we identify people, we follow up with those people very, very specifically. But, look there’s a point obviously, if it continues to grow and grow and grow where that gets very hard to do. But right now where we can still deal with sort of a finite reality we are going to fully use our capacity to follow each case through. Jeff.

Question: What’s being done at the New York university where the son attended? It seems like that would be a place where you know, if he’s moving about a lot, going to classes, talking to people there, could be a wide number of people?

Mayor: Again, I would argue the other way around. So we have been in touch with the president of that university. We are coordinated, DOH is onsite. We will be giving you more information very shortly. I would put it this way, we want to know and again I will just try – I’m going to be the interpreter here. I’ve got great experts around me, if I say something that misses the mark, I know they will assist me and jump in. I will think of my own college experience. It’s not the kid I went to you know, political science class with who was sitting three rows back. That’s not the issue. If again if I am consistently close, if I am in study group every day with someone that’s pertinent. If I have a romantic relationship with someone that's pertinent. If I have a roommate that’s pertinent. It’s not the vast majority of people that a student would come across.

Question: I wanted to ask you to outline, I know the DOE is going to release some updated travel restrictions or guidance for the upcoming spring break. Could you just let us know what that is?

Mayor: I don’t have that but will have that shortly. But yes, we are going to get some clarity out on that.

Question: Is there anything that you can say about the genetic sequencing of this test? Like I know that when they were tested in Washington they were able to compare it with earlier tests that suggested this circulation for multiple weeks. Do we know anything more about where this strain of the virus –

Mayor: And you have now exhausted my knowledge base. Who wants to jump in?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: The short answer to that is no not yet.

Question: So, yesterday there was some questions about whether schools would continue to take attendance into account in admission decisions in middle and high schools. [Inaudible] created some tension –

Mayor: Again, we are just – Adam, I am not saying this to be difficult. You asked it yesterday, we are dealing with other – I’m sorry someone asked it yesterday. You look so similar, I am sorry. I will get to that, that’s not where we are at right now.

Question: The DOE put out guidance today, they tweeted that coronavirus related absences will not impact current applications to middle and high school.

Mayor: Right.

Question: I’m just wondering how that’s possible given that –

Mayor: Okay, again respectfully, I am trying to be real with you. This is not where we are at right now. I will happily get you an answer. We are dealing with much more central things then admissions issues right now.

Question: Just a second schools question?

Mayor: Sure.

Question: CDC officials have asked parents to ask districts about whether there are plans for remote learning in the event that one or more schools will have to close. Is that something that the DOE is prepared to do?

Mayor: I think we are not there yet either because the model we are working on right now does not involve school closures. But we will look at everything if we end up in that situation. We are doing this in stages. Right now, we are dealing with what we have. We are doing as you saw yesterday, more and more scenarios, getting us out over the horizon. But I do not want people assuming outcomes right now. Right now we have a situation where we are continuing with the work of the City, continuing with the work of our schools, we are not doing alternatives until we have to. Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, in terms of a timeline for the Westchester case, do you know when he went to the hospital in Westchester, when he was moved to NewYork-Presbyterian and this may be further a fields but you might know also, we’ve heard that he traveled to Miami. Do you know the dates of the departure and return for that trip?

Mayor: My understanding is he did travel to Miami. Demetre on when realized sick, when went to the hospital in Westchester, when went to the hospital in New York City?

Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: First became ill – I’m Demetre Daskalakis, Deputy Commissioner for Disease Control, Department of Health. He first became ill on the 22nd of February. He then ultimately was admitted on the 27th and then was transferred from the hospital in Westchester to Columbia yesterday.

Question: Do you have the dates for his travel to Miami?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: I can say early February.

Question: [Inaudible]?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: February.

Mayor: Yoav?

Question: Mr. Mayor I know, the City doesn’t want people panicking and seeking a test where it is not needed. But for the folks who have a legitimate reason to believe they might need to be tested, what should those folks do?

Mayor: So thank God we now have the testing capacity. Again it was a long time coming but we have substantial testing capacity and we are building it out as we go. Folks should get to health care and if they get to health care, and a health care provider says yeah, you need a test, we are going to get them a test. So it’s fine for someone to say I am worried I may have it. Particularly, very important Yoav, and please everyone, if they have been to an affected area they need to say that, first words out of their mouth. First words out of their mouth, I have been to fill in the blank place, and I have these symptoms. They will go to the front of the line, I assure you. And the assumption will be that they will be tested. But remember the first thing that is down is to test for the more traditional, if you will diseases. If that’s a match, if you know immediately you’ve got one of the more, the things we’ve known previously. Well that answers itself. If it turns out that you don’t, we are going to get you tested. Who hasn’t gone yet? Anna?

Question: Mr. Mayor, you have repeatedly said that folks who don’t have preexisting conditions and who aren’t necessarily older, don’t really have something to worry about. But the folks that have those, actually includes you, I believe you said recently you have asthma.

Mayor: Yup.

Question: And there’s also thousands –

Mayor: Mild asthma, but yes asthma.

Question: There’s also thousands of people who smoke cigarettes, which the Commissioner said. So, what do you say to people who have those conditions, like how do you reassure them since they are the ones at risk?

Mayor: So, I will happily accept that status to make the point, is take it seriously. Don’t ignore the symptoms. Now I have not traveled to the affected areas so you know, I think if I were someone who had my exact profile, and had traveled to the affected areas or had close contact with someone who did, and I started to show the slightest symptoms I would get to health care immediately. But remember, Anna, the vast majority even of those people come through okay. So the reassurance is 80 percent plus of those who have been affected experience something like a cold or normal flu. They deal with it, they come out the other side, they go about their lives. For the 20 percent, the vast majority of the 20 percent, even if they need more advanced care, still come out of it and go on with their lives. For a much smaller percentage, there’s a profound danger, absolutely. But like everything else in life, the faster you act, the better off you will be. So the moment you have symptoms, go get help. Which maximizes the chance that your situation could be addressed well, but also maximizes the chance that if God forbid you have it, it doesn’t spread to other people.

Question: Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Yes?

Question: Mr. Mayor at the beginning of this press conference you mentioned that certain notifications were not made yet so you couldn’t give us –

Mayor: Correct.

Question: Are those notifications about positive results, hospitalizations or fatality?

Mayor: No, Lisa, nothing as dramatic as that. It’s simply when we are dealing with organizations and institutions before we say publically they have some things they have to do to get ready internally to be able to explain to their own people what’s going on, get their personnel in place, it’s just good practice to be coordinated. But again, I think there will be a very brief delay before we can fill in those blanks for you. You will – well ahead of your deadline, you will know what they are. Go ahead.

Question: Quick question, concerning the schools in Riverdale, two private Jewish schools that are closed. Has the Department of Health been in contact with them and just, what kind of guidance are schools getting in terms of – I know you said there will be some other information coming out but those schools are closed now. Where they told –

Mayor: No.

Question: They made that decision? Are people being tested?

Mayor: No, very good question. So, they made their own decision to close. It was not our guidance. Our guidance would be, all things being equal, keep going while we identify the specifics. Remember in the case of the student at SAR, that student has not had symptoms at this moment. So everyone, the urgency and the concern is real and honest. We all feel it but you know, facts do matter so you have a student at this moment, no symptoms whatsoever. I would certainly never say to close the school. If they would choose to as private institution that’s their choice obviously. Health Department has been there throughout the morning, contact with the principal. We are dealing with the heads of each organization, we are dealing on the ground with the folks who work there. We are doing that mapping to figure out who needs follow up.

Yes?

Question: Mr. Mayor, should people be concerned about medical bills and what if they are undocumented, how's the process for them?

Mayor: So, again, in a moment like this, the last thing people should worry about is the financial. Clearly, if someone has insurance, they have insurance. If they don't have insurance, we've said our public health system will always take care of people and we've made that very clear that includes undocumented people. So, if someone does not know where to turn because they don't have insurance or they may be undocumented, but they are fearful that they have the condition, they can reach out to 3-1-1 and get a location to go to, they can go to any New York City public hospital or clinic.

Yes?

Question: Because in Asia we already see some patients without any symptoms. So, do you think the public should be concerned about that?

Mayor: We see patients – what?

Question: Without symptoms – they are [inaudible].

Mayor: Right, and what’s your question then?

Question: So, should [inaudible] worry about that or does the City take any precautions or measures?

Mayor: I'll start and my colleagues will answer. Look, again, we are – when dealing with a situation that is evolving and where we don't have perfect information, we want to where we can be very specific, we're going to be very specific. So, so far we have situations that are allowing us to be very specific. We know exactly who we're trying to find and what we need to do with them and we're going to keep doing that. If we see something evolve that requires a bigger response, we'll be ready to do it. And this is a good moment for me to make clear we are not – I don't think at this hour of this day we're anywhere near an emergency declaration, but obviously things could change. In the event that there's a need for emergency declaration, I have the ability as mayor to order institutions to be closed, to order public spaces to be closed and cleared, to restrict vehicle access to initiate curfews, to modify labor contracts. There's a whole host of things I can do if we get to that point. But we are not there based on what we're seeing. So, we're going to take this literally day by day, hour by hour, and see how it evolves.

Question: So, I just want to make sure we're clear on the number of pending cases, because the –

Mayor: The number of?

Question: Pending cases. A [inaudible] earlier this morning said there were five.

Mayor: Okay. I’m going to – I checked this and my colleagues will confirm. Separate from the individuals we're talking about here, okay, up to that point, 10 had been tested – eight negative; one positive, the health care worker went to Iran, female; one pending, the health care worker husband of the woman who went to Iran and we will have that result today. Can you all confirm that's accurate?

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: Yes.

Question: [Inaudible] earlier there was five on the DOHMH [inaudible] –

Commissioner Barbot: It should be only one pending. Yeah. Sometimes we have technical glitches, so I think that was just it. Yeah, it's one pending.

Mayor: Okay, go ahead.

Question: I just want to follow up with Dr. Daskalakis. When you had mentioned that the individual from Westchester went to [inaudible] hospital and then was transferred to Presby, was there a reason for that? Is there, like, do the City hospitals have some like greater capacity for treating this? Like, why move somebody? It seems like –

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Great question. My understanding is it's actually he required a higher level of care and required different specialty sort of assistance. So, that was the reason for the transfer.

Question: Was he tested and was this just today that he [inaudible] –

Mayor: I think we said that again. Say it again, the [inaudible]

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Question: Mr. Mayor, we talked about tax being important. The Westchester County Executive and a parent at the school said that the student – there is actually a daughter, a ninth grader –

Mayor: I'm sorry, at the – at SAR?

Question: At SAR, yeah.

Mayor: Okay. I'm happy to be corrected if I’m wrong. I've been told all morning it's a son.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: My understanding is it's a male.

Mayor: We’ll confirm that.

Question: The woman who was most recently diagnosed, the health care worker – get from her home to Mount Sinai. Did she take an ambulance? Did she take a car?

Mayor: We talked about this previously – private car?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Private car – private vehicle.

Question: [Inaudible] got the hospital?

Mayor: Yep.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Question: You mentioned there were being new procedures in place for cleaning schools. I'm just wondering if you could say how they're different from the previous –

Mayor: We'll get that out today. It'll just be more intense cleaning and we'll get that out to you today.

Go ahead –

Question: Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I think you said earlier that this man had been having respiratory symptoms on and off for about a month. With that said, when do you think he actually contracted this? Is it possible –

Mayor: I don't think we know that, right? I mean, that's – we don't know that. I think – but I do think there's an object lesson. I don't know this individual and I mean this only as an example to everyone. At this moment in history, if you have the symptoms, go get medical care immediately. I think anyone who delays endangers themselves and others.

Commissioner Barbot: So, I just want to add, as the Mayor announced yesterday, we now have put in place an early detection system where we have loosened the criteria by which someone gets tested. And this – and in this particular situation, it's an exact example of having an individual who has severe pneumonia with no underlying reason for that pneumonia and us wanting to rule out potential COVID-19. So, it's an example of how the systems that we're putting in place to make sure that we're not missing people are starting to bear fruit already.

Question: In Washington State, when the severe cases developed, it later emerged that there were – they suspect hundreds or more who had not severe cases of illness. Is that what you think has happened here?

Mayor: I don't think we have that indication right now. Again, I'm going to go by common sense and the medical professionals can jump in. I think in Washington State, it appears – again, I'll try this, so listen carefully and correct as needed. It appears there was a real nexus that was missed that unfortunately – and talk about a place where there could be intimate contact and an ongoing prolonged contact. We don't see that so far. I mean, we're obviously looking, but I don't think we have a parallel to that.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So, we detect severe cases because they come to health care. And so, the concern about community transmission, which is why we're having this conversation is that there are less symptomatic people who are potentially in the community who could potentially transmit. So, I think we have not demonstrated that, but that is the assumption under which we are working.

Mayor: Okay, Jeff?

Question: About the university student, again, if he was showing symptoms though, would that cause any more alarm than the situation you described where, you know, people don't have to be as concerned if he was already showing symptoms?

Mayor: Well, I'll start and say again. I think if a university student anywhere in this city just had normal flu-like symptoms and no nexus to travel and no family member who had traveled, et cetera, et cetera, you wouldn't – and again, healthy, no preexisting conditions – that's exactly someone who in the vast majority cases would come through fine. I think knowing that a family member has tested positive obviously changes everything. But I would say to everyone at this point, even if you're in the categories that are probably the strongest and the safest, if you have these symptoms, get to health care, if there's something about your situation that causes that provider to believe you need to be tested, you should get tested.

Question: Is the city concerned now as more cases begin to come out about being – the system being overwhelmed at this point with people being afraid, going in for testing, what's the capacity?

Mayor: We've talked about this a lot. The capacity obviously is vast. This is the biggest public health care network anywhere in the country by very, very – you know, by a huge degree. We talked about previously, if we ended up in a situation where we have to isolate people, we told you guys this days ago, we have 1,200 beds we can make available without compromising our other health care services. We have – Mitch, how many total hospitals and clinics do you have?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health and Hospitals: We have 11 acute care hospitals, five skilled nursing facilities, and 60 other outpatient sites of care.

Mayor: Right. And that's just H + H. So, we have immense capacity. To your underlying question of whether there is a strain created if lots of people suddenly come in and obviously the vast majority of them, thank God, will not have coronavirus – of course it creates a challenge, but we've made a strategic decision to say to people we'd rather you come in. It only takes so long to assess someone, and this would be a good – I'm going to turn to Demetre and say that that test for things that are not coronavirus, what's the timeline on that? Just to – what is it? Tell people to understand that.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So, there's rapid viral panels that use a similar technology to what we're using with a coronavirus test. It looks for genetic material of the 26 most common viruses or bacteria that can cause respiratory illness. Of course, influenza is in there, RSV is in there, there's the list you'd expect – there are a couple of coronaviruses that are not this coronavirus that are also detected by that. Turnaround time depends on the lab. Places like H + H can often turn it around within two hours. Other places that use contract labs, there's also the transport time.

Mayor: Just tell – literally, what does the doctor do? You're in the doctor's office, you have symptoms, what does the doctor do?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: The doctor will stick in an unpleasant swab in your nose and twist it and then send it to the laboratory to do molecular testing.

Mayor: That was awfully graphic.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: It is true. I deliver. It is a swab.

Mayor: But that is job-one. I mean, again, I'm going to try and be the every-man narrator here and the professionals will always correct me. Job-one is if you have the symptoms and you're with a health care professional, they want to see if it's just one of the many, many other things it typically is. And if you take that sample and then you find out hopefully in a matter of hours it is, for example – what would be the most common hits for normal diseases today?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Today? Influenza.

Mayor: Right? So, if you find out it is the flu – again, I'm going to be painfully systematic and common sensical here and the doctors will help me. You go through that, comes back, it’s the flu, by definition you do not have coronavirus – true statement?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Mayor: Okay.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: That's what I'm trying to get to, so let's talk about it.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Not seen in any volume in the reports of coronavirus. So, usually, at least, and also by our guidance from public health, that we're seeing another diagnosis then stops the evaluation.

Mayor: So, again, I'm going to pull that back and take Anna's question and work it through. We are not – we don't have perfect knowledge. Everyone – the entire medical community globally would agree, we do not have perfect knowledge of coronavirus. Now, I'm listening to you guys and I'm listening to the wonderful accent of Anthony Fauci – if you get a hit for pneumonia, for all intents and purposes, it means you don't have coronavirus. Maybe there's some perverse, exceptional case, but for all intents and purposes, if it's pneumonia, you don't have coronavirus. True?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: That is true.

Mayor: Okay. And could you give us another example of a typical disease it might be that's not coronavirus?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: It's a long name, I am sorry – Respiratory syncytial virus – very common in the community. RSV, usually people think about in kids, but it happens in adults as well.

Mayor: What do we call it? What do we think it is? A cough? I mean, what are we thinking?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: It's a cough. It's a cold.

Mayor: Okay, so a cold. There we go. So, to finish through this point, that initial test, which is not complex to give and comes back pretty quickly, if it rules out coronavirus, that's wonderful, and that's one less person we have to wonder about and that person moves on, takes care of themselves – next. So, we want people coming in when a medical provider thinks, nope, I want a coronavirus test on this, then we go get the test

Question: I want to go back to the school questions, because, you know, a lot of people obviously have questions about the DOE policy. Are they hammering that out? Why didn't someone from the DOE come here because, I know you say later on, but you know –

Mayor: What specific question are you looking at?

Question: The updated travel advisory, if it’s going to affect admissions and if there's anything more on –

Mayor: Again, this is just a perfectly fair question, it’s just everyone has to understand, having been through these things, we're trying to do what we think are the most important things first. We're going to get to those things quickly, but right now it is taking care of the things that are about basic health and staying ahead of all of that. We will have answers for you in the course of the day.

Question: The test – just going back to the scenario where we're testing, if the test comes back negative for all the common illnesses, is it an automatic kickoff to the Health Department to test for COVID as a precaution or does the health care provider have to request that? I mean, I've seeing emails from family practitioners who are like, if you don't have severe illness, stay at home. We don't have the capacity to take everyone in with a sniffle right now.

Mayor: Well that's is a true statement on one level, except you varied the scenario there by saying they tested and found it wasn't all the typical things. Look, again, as we build out our testing capacity, we want to test more people who need it. So, I would argue if someone comes in and we have found that we can't identify it as one of the other things and now we know community spread is a possibility, we're going to be testing whenever possible. Abundance of caution.

Question: [Inaudible] family practitioners to be requesting the testing and all this?

Mayor: I want more opportunity to define what's going on. That's good for everyone. But again, I want to put the horse before the cart. We have a really easy test to figure out if it's all the things it usually is, and, again, doctors, I think we would generally find by giving that really easy test, it will usually be the things that usually is, right? The vast majority of the time. So, okay.

Question: Mr. Mayor, with regards to the symptoms, earlier, the Westchester County Executive held a press conference that if you feel like you have the symptoms, don't go to the Urgent Care, don't go to the hospital because you could spread it. Earlier, you said you should go to –

Mayor: I have a very strong view. We've all worked this through in the public health folks will be the first to say that they are worried about too many patients coming in and they are worried about making sure there's good protocols when someone goes for health care, but we made a strategic decision to say to people get to health care, because it's too hard for people to understand – and I don't blame them, in the most diverse city on earth, hundreds of languages, people dealing with busy lives and schedules and challenges. We want one simple message, get to health care. We're – the Deputy Mayor will jump in a second – we will sort it out. So, you got a private doctor? That's great. Urgent Care? That's great. Hospital is not the first-go, to go to something simpler than a hospital whenever humanly possible. Call ahead when you can to maximize the protocols. But I know too many people, myself included, who hesitate when we're sick, come up with some reason not to go get help. Oh, you know, I'll do it tomorrow. Oh, you know, I'll do it when I have a chance. That's not what we should be doing in this situation. I want people getting into health care. We have a massive health care apparatus. We can handle it. One message, this is – whatever Westchester wants to do is up to Westchester. This is the New York City message. Deputy Mayor?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: The Mayor said it yesterday and he just repeated it, you know, 20 minutes ago, the key point here is the nexus. Where you have to start is, if you have symptoms and if you travel to any of these affected countries, or you are in close contact with anyone who has, that's where you really want to go. When anybody's says don't come because you're going to overwhelm, hopefully he means for the others that don't have that strong nexus.

Mayor: That’s a very important point. If you have the symptoms and you have a nexus to travel to the affected countries there is – you're not only wrong to hesitate, you could be putting other people in danger. You just need to get to health care immediately.

Lisa?

Question: Can we just get some clarity on prevention and cleaning? Because you say the subways obviously are getting cleaned with bleach – you can't use bleach in a lot of homes if you have small children or people with breathing issues or asthma. In terms of prevention, maybe the medical experts can give us some help with [inaudible] close quarters –

Mayor: I’m turning to Dr. Barbot because her line yesterday was a very good one about your new best friends, so I think you should repeat it.

Commissioner Barbot: So, everything that we have talked about before in terms of prevention still hold. So, it's the basic messages of hand-washing, covering your mouth in your nose when you cough, and if you're not close to a water source then you should by all means use alcohol-based hand sanitizers. In terms of the cleaning for homes, for institutions, I think it's always good practice to use thorough cleaning. But we don't want people to have a false sense of security that if that cleaning is done, it absolves them of the responsibility to continue washing their hands.

Mayor: Right. Okay, we'll do a few more. And, again, guys, there's going to be more updates from whatever combination of us later in the day. So, just to say this is not the last you're going to hear of us.

Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] conversations with the TLC about you know, keeping Ubers and taxis sanitized. I know that casual contact is not what's going to drive this, but since we are doing that with subways and buses, is there anything you guys are doing with regards to –

Mayor: So, we'll have update on that. Basically, every agency has been charged with figuring out what they have to do here not only for those that they serve in the public, but for their own employees as well. All of that – there's been guidance given out, agencies are developing those plans, putting them in action. I don't have the TLC guidance in front of me but we'll get that to you.

Go ahead.

Question: We were talking about colleges and we know college dorms are petri dishes for variety –

Mayor: That is a true statement.

Question: And I was curious, Dr. Barbot, are you working with any of like the on-campus clinics for students coming in and thinking that might have mono, they might have the flu, they might have coronavirus, and using those results or early detection or is that just not included in that process?

Commissioner Barbot: So, right now we're starting, as we said yesterday, with three major hospital systems, including H + H and then we'll be working to include all of them. The thing to note here that we haven't yet talked about is that the private sector is also working on having access to testing. And so, we anticipate that that will also come online soon, which will increase the City's capacity to do testing even more.

Question: You might send a result to the public health laboratories versus, like, I talked to Northwell yesterday and they're hoping to get online within like the next week or so. And so, I'm kind of curious, like, how does that work from the City standpoint in saying, okay, we're going to send this out to a private lab versus the State lab, versus the City lab.

Commissioner Barbot: Well, first and foremost, we want providers to send them to us now because we have the capacity. But once providers – commercial labs get their capacity, or academic labs, we want there to be as easy a road to getting tested, to the Mayor's point, as possible.

Mayor: Easy and fast. Okay. Guys, we're wrapping up. I got three – Julia?

Question: It's Columbia Presbyterian on 168th Street where the Westchester case –

Mayor: Correct. Go ahead.

Question: In terms of the disease detectives, do they ever track something like flu and can they – is there a threshold where there's so many cases that they can't possibly keep trying to track all the millions of contacts?

Deputy Commissioner Barbot: Flu is a good example. So, when a disease is rare and it is a public health consequence, they can pursue. When a disease, even like the flu, is not rare, then it becomes not possible to do that same level. So, for instance, we do not track every flu case in New York City. We do close surveillance of the flu cases and we know what's happening in the city sort of really day-by-day for influenza.

Mayor: Okay, we're finishing. One, two, done – go.

Question: The City’s testing capacity came online yesterday, do you know how many people have been tested?

Mayor: Do we have that or we’ll get back to them?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: We will ultimately update on the website. A person under investigation equals a test, so we haven't updated yet.

Question: Just want to get clarity on the two sons. I know one is showing symptoms. You said they're both isolated and the other one isn't. Is this going to be like the health care worker and the husband, that you're expecting [inaudible] one that's not symptomatic you have to eventually become symptomatic?

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, I mean, I think those details will become more evident as the day goes on, but we will work with the family to keep them together as much as possible. Yeah.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Yeah. As I said, they're there at the home in Westchester – the mom and the two sons. Okay.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Yes. Yes. That's all we know of.

Thanks, everyone.

2020-03-04 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Everyone, we're obviously have been gleaning a lot of information. Apologies for the delay, we had to get everything from the State. And I know they were putting information out, but we've had some additional things we wanted to track down before coming, before we give you an update. Okay. So, starting at the beginning, we all have been predicting that these cases would come to New York City and that we would see a number of them and that we would see community spread. We are seeing all these things. That being said, we also are seeing a very consistent pattern – I'll go over the numbers with you – that when we test people who are the kinds of individuals that it makes sense to focus on a test, we're finding the vast majority of cases that we're getting a negative back. So, that’s not to minimize the severity of this crisis and the global nature of the crisis, it is to say that we're going to do as much appropriate testing as we can, because I think it will help us to continue to inform all of you and the people in New York City as to what's going on, obviously allow us to follow up on cases most effectively. And as we are doing this testing, we're getting some results that are generally good for all of us. That being said, obviously, for anyone who does have this disease we want to make sure they get all the support they need and all the help they need and obviously protect against others getting it. So, we're going to keep updating regularly on the results of our testing so you get the overall picture.

Let me begin. And first, I want to just note everyone who’s here – Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze; Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Chancellor Richard Carranza; the First Deputy Commissioner for Emergency Management Andy D’Amora; Dr. Mitch Katz, CEO of Health and Hospitals; and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the Deputy Commissioner of Health. And then I want to thank Council Members Mark Levine and Steve Levin for being here and for all you’re doing working with us. Oh, I’m sorry, I did not have you on my list and I did not look up far enough – I know see you – Council Member Inez Barron. Thank you all, all of the Council Members who have been working with us intensely to get information out to the community and make sure people are getting the help they need. So, thank you all very, very much.

So, let's start with the cases that connect Westchester County in New York City. We have the lawyer from Westchester, you all are very up to date on his situation. We're hearing from the State his condition is hopefully a little bit better. We're hopeful on that front, but obviously not out of the woods. Want to just make sure everyone knows, because, as I said, we're going to be adding specificity whenever we can. In some cases, as I said yesterday, we might have to hold a little bit until notifications are made and people are ready for specifics. But now, we can tell you the law firm in question is Lewis and Garbuz – that's G-A-R-B-U-Z – 60 East 42nd Street by Grand Central. We'll go through the family first and then talk about the employees of the law firm. The family members, the wife, son and daughter of the lawyer – the family from Westchester – the wife, son and daughter have all tested positive.

This is not surprising. They are all in isolation at their home in Westchester, which is where they need to be. I'll go one by one. In the case of the wife, she actually works at the law firm. She is asymptomatic, she tested positive but is asymptomatic. Let me – then I'm going to talk about each of the three and then I'm going to double back to the law firm itself. In the case of the daughter, who is 13 years old, and I apologize, we did have the gender wrong yesterday, so apologize for that. The –

Unknown: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Maybe you can give me a better age. I have 13. What do you have?

Unknown: 14 –

Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: 14 is correct.

Mayor: I'm sorry, that might be my inaccuracy – writing it down. 14 years old, a student at SAR Academy in Riverdale, asymptomatic. The son, Yeshiva University undergrad, 20 years old, had symptoms, apparently is getting better, was last on the campus on February 27th. Department of Health disease detectives have been following up on his connection to the campus. They have two individuals that meet the standard – the New York City Department of Health standard for the kind of close contact that would be pertinent here in the case of coronavirus – one is a roommate, the other is a close friend. Those are the only two. Those two individuals are being tested or have been tested. We're waiting for the results at Bellevue. And we are – right now, the disease detectives are mapping their contacts proactively even before we get the result of the test. Now, again, I want to use this example – I'm the layman, the experts are around me, but I'm going to keep trying to make things real simple. The disease detectives, who are very, very proficient at what they do, who worked with us in the Ebola crisis and many other really challenging situations, they've interviewed that student at Yeshiva, looking for the level of specificity and the close contacts that would reach the level where someone needs to be followed up on. They found two people that meet that standard. So, undoubtedly, the student was in classrooms and activities with all sorts of people, but two only reach the standard that require follow-up, and that follow-up is happening. It's not – and I'll keep emphasizing, it is not, for example, you walk by someone in the hallway or you sit in a classroom with them. It is, you know, if you are – a roommate is an obvious example or if you're, for example, in a study group that meets every day and you're in constant direct contact in a small enclosed area, just to give you an example. So that's Yeshiva – we're working very closely with the leadership at Yeshiva University – great cooperation, and they, I think, are pleased that Department of Health is taking a very aggressive effort to ensure that we're tracking each situation.

At the law firm – the same standard, using our disease detectives, we have seven coworkers, one intern that are the people of interest here. So again, husband and wife both work there – in addition, seven employees, one intern for those individuals, five being tested as we speak in the City, one tested in New Jersey, two more we are confirming the location of their test. We'll have more on that later on today.

Okay. Let me go over the overall numbers. And again, these numbers will keep moving, so we'll do our best to clarify them at any given point in time. From the beginning, and I'm going by those in New York City who have a completed test result, that's the standard I'm going to be using here – 16 individuals under investigation from the beginning have tested negative. So, 16 – and I'm going to have to just check one fact here – 16 have tested negative, one particular – a very particular case is the husband of the health worker who was in Iran is a negative, but we're going to treat as a positive. So, I want to make very clear on that – that one we were waiting for the final answer on officially has come back a negative, but we are requiring the same exact quarantine, the same exact follow through as if it was a positive in that case.

I’m going to give you some agency updates, but first say that we are now in a series of daily tabletop exercises at OEM. We'll be going over there a little bit after this, continuing to run different scenarios so that – at these tabletop exercises, so we basically have all pertinent city agencies around same table. We go through evermore challenging scenarios to identify everything, supply chain, personnel, what we would do to compensate for different situations if we had to do closures, that type of thing. So, that effort is ongoing and will continue to prepare us for any eventuality. Again, we will constantly give you updates as we get them on a variety of fronts, sometimes me, sometimes my colleagues. Let me give you some updates on agencies, and this is in response to some of the questions the other day. Department of Consumer Worker Protection formally declared as a regulatory act that there is a shortage of face masks in New York City, which means that they can prevent stores from price gouging. Any store that is found to be price gouging will be fined. If anyone sees what they think is price gouging around a surgical masks, please call 3-1-1 and report it right away. Taxi and Limousine Commission has provided guidance to 200,000 drivers and operators on a daily cleaning protocols for their vehicles. And a reminder on top of that, of course, that drivers need to recognize the same health standards as everyone, if they have symptoms that they need to immediately not put themselves in proximity of people. Also, reminding all that discrimination against passengers is illegal and anyone who feels they’ve been a victim of discrimination should call 3-1-1. Department of Education, canceling all trips or study abroad programs to China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, Japan. In addition, cleaning protocols have been sent to all schools, CDC approved cleaning supplies have been provided in all 1,800 schools. Deep cleaning will be required two times a week. Guidance has been sent to all principals and health personnel in schools on what to do in the case of a suspected a coronavirus case in a school, whether it be a student or a school personnel. The simple protocol for a student would be to, of course, immediately isolate them, ensure they have a face mask and ensure that they are picked up by a parent or guardian and taken to a doctor right away.

There's a question – a couple of things came up the other day. Again, I'll always tell you when I think some things are not what we're doing first compared to other things, but we do have answers on them. Attendance – the question about attendance and admissions – attendance will be frozen as a factor in admissions for the foreseeable future so as not to allow any impact of this crisis to negatively affect the admissions process. That said, the Chancellor and I just talked about his attendance situation. He has been monitoring daily and hourly. It is unchanged. Very important for people to know that – school attendance has not moved one iota as result of what's going on here. I want to thank parents and students for continuing to go about their lives, even against this challenging backdrop. Further later today, the Department of Education will issue guidance, there have been some issues that have to be worked through including a contractual issues. We will issue guidance later today to all school personnel if they have traveled to any of the affected areas in recent weeks. This is an area we have to clarify and that guidance we're – we have some quick legal work to do and some work to do with the unions, but that guidance will go out by the end of the day and be communicated to all personnel this afternoon or this evening before anyone has to travel to school tomorrow. So, we will get that done and we'll update you on that later on when we get that out.

With that, I think those are the basics. I want to just again – I will say just a couple of words in Spanish, but want to keep coming back over and over again, the most important guidance to New Yorkers – we’ll keep saying it, can't say it enough times. Again, this is a disease – I think it's a little perplexing for everyone. For the vast majority of people, even if you had it, if you contracted it, it would feel like a common cold or a typical case of the flu. For some other people, it could be a real danger, but that is a small minority of those who even were to contract it. The best way to prevent is the basics – washing hands, covering your mouth when you cough and sneeze, using hand sanitizer. And I think one of the things the doctors have said that I want to repeat it is, even though it's not the typical time of year to get a flu shot, if you haven't yet gotten a flu shot, it's helpful. So, reminding – oh, and by the way, flu shots are very readily available in medical offices, pharmacies, et cetera. So, for folks looking for something productive to do in light of this very challenging crisis, real simple thing – if you and your loved ones have not gotten the flu shot, please go get it. That's a simple thing you can do right now.

Again, if you have symptoms and you believe it might be coronavirus because of travel, your life and your family loved ones or for any reason, get to medical help right away, your doctor, Urgent Care, whatever it may be, get to help. If you're not sure how to get to help, where to get to, how to pay for it, call 3-1-1. No one should hesitate. A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, let's take questions.

Katie?

Question: I'm going to ask you about the neighbor in Westchester who drove him to the hospital and then is now testing positive for coronavirus. I know that this was in Westchester, this is not a New York City issue, but have the Department of Health have its disease detectives seeing if this neighbor has any connection in New York City. And I know for Dr. Barbot, if you want to maybe address that, I know we've been told that you can't patch coronavirus within unless there was like super close contact. But it is a little concerning that you could be driving someone and it can happen. So, if you want to speak to that And Mayor, if you want to speak to the neighbor, any New York City connection at all?

Mayor: So, I'll make a point to begin, and then over to the doctors. We are – I mean, these diseases detectives do extraordinary work. We're actually going to be bringing on more of them very quickly or training existing personnel to be able to do the work very quickly. So, we're going to increase our capacity rapidly. Anytime where we can look for a nexus, we want to. I think you make a good point, in the case of someone in Westchester who works in the city that we want to know everything we can know. His wife who is also employed at the law firm has been interviewed, looking for any connection to the city so far. My understanding is, the patient himself up to now was not in a position to be interviewed just health wise, but the wife has been able to work to sort of track everything. I don't know if we know about the person who drove him and whether that's something we need to follow up on or not.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So, I'll start and then Dr. Daskalakis can give more detail. I think it's important for New Yorkers to know that the degree of collaboration between the City Health Department, the Westchester Health Department, and the State Health Department is really unprecedented. And I think it's a testament to the Mayor's leadership, to the Governor's leadership that there's no ambiguity about what the job is in terms of keeping New Yorkers safe. And so, we've been working very closely. I would say that almost on a daily basis I have communications with Dr. Zucker and Dr. Daskalakis has communication with his counterpart at the State. So, we're working very closely to make sure that we identify individuals as quickly as possible and get them to the appropriate level of care. I don't know if you want to add details about the neighbor.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Just one comment, which is that we work very closely – disease detectives – the disease detective across borders to make sure that we identify all appropriate contacts and we're in the process of doing that.

Question: [Inaudible] is he drove – he or she, the neighbor drove this coronavirus patient to the hospital. So, we are always are on subways, we're in close contact. Do you have any information from the State on if there were other factors at play?

Commissioner Barbot: So, there's no indication that being in a car, being in the subways with someone who's potentially sick is a risk factor, because, again, it goes back to the issue of casual contact.

Question: So, then how did the neighbor – if they're connecting the act of driving to the hospital with him getting sick. So, I think that kind of is counter –

Mayor: No, it's a fair point. I think, just to make it simple that Dr. Barbot is making the broad point and, I think, rightfully, the broad point, because that's what the medical science keeps telling us. If someone got sick from – we don't know the whole story – I mean, I think it gets to your question – we don't know if he was spending a lot of time with a him otherwise or with someone else, but we need to know. We need to know, because if there's a nexus to New York City, we need to know. And again, I think the point about the disease detectives are kindred people working with each other. We will follow up and make clear with the Westchester personnel, if they know something we need to know, we need it; if we need to do a separate interview, we will certainly do it.

Question: Yes, Mr. Mayor, as you know, of course, you are also an employer of over 300,000 people and as we know throughout the world, civil servants are on the front line of this kind of [inaudible] challenge. There is a controversy developing within the TWU Local 100 about the question of wearing masks in the subway environment for protracted periods of time. At this point, management has lined up saying that that is not effective, but there is already – there's occupational evidence that being in the subway for 12 hours a day and more isn't healthy even without coronavirus. [Inaudible] be solved. The NYPD [inaudible] had a story, and I believed them, about buying thousands of masks. Where is the civil service supposed to be on this in terms of being free to keep themselves safe and public?

Mayor: Okay, so, let me do my best here. TWU Local 100, we clearly care about them, we need them. They're very, very important people to this city. We don't manage them. The City of New York doesn't manage them, so I just want to be mindful, I don't want to speak about the management by another agency. You need to ask them. But on the bigger question, which is a very fair question – I think we saw images from around the world that told us that people are supposed to wear masks and somehow that's helpful. I believe our professionals here who say, no, it's the other way around. It's not that you wear the masks to stop from getting, it is that you wear the mask if you have it to stop from spreading it. And if you are a health care provider who is in constant contact, that obviously qualifies under the definition we're giving of someone who has very regular contact with people. We want whatever level of protection necessary for the contact. So again, what we're going to do – I want to just warn everyone, I think we're going to be together for not weeks but months talking about this. I'm always going to try and put things in very simple terms that I believe are true. And if any of these four doctors hear something that needs clarification – that means you too Mitch –

[Laughter]

These millennials, they're always looking at their screens.

[Laughter]

If any of these four doctors hear something that they think needs clarification, they will jump in. If none of the panel of four exceptional leaders in public health say I'm wrong, I think you can bank on it. So, here we go. If you have this disease, wearing a mask helps you to not spread it to others.

Unknown: Correct.

Mayor: Okay. If you are a health care professional, coming in contact with folks on a regular basis who may have the disease, the proper mask helps protect the health care professional.

Unknown: Correct.

Mayor: Those are the two reasons for masks. It is not a general – I'll use the word prophylactic – no one laugh – it is not a general prophylactic for every-day people trying to ward off the disease.

Unknown: Correct.

Mayor: Okay. Of course –

Question: [Inaudible] brave first responders, World Trade Center survivors [inaudible] initial research [inaudible] folks that are dealing with World Trade Center health issues, may be back on the job but have immune issues – this may be a little bit of a complication. It that something the doctors could talk about how they should be guiding, because many of them –

Mayor: If someone has got a compromised health dynamic and might be in the presence of this disease, who wants to speak to that? I think that should be handled very specifically, right?

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah. I would encourage them to talk to their individual physician. I would encourage them that, if they are thinking about traveling to one of the affected countries, that they rethink it and don't do it. And that if they have come in contact with someone who has traveled to one of the affected countries in the last 14 days, that then they should contact their provider.

Mayor: But I would go further to your occupational point, which is if we've got folks who are compromised, I think our managers need to make adjustments in how people are working if they think there's any potential vulnerabilities. So, I think this is obviously the health care [inaudible] – I’m look in the Mitch, first and foremost – and Mitch, you're quick on your feet, I'm sure you can speak to this. If in this environment, one of your employees says, I have a compromised system, what should I do? Give us your best on how you're going to guide.

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: You're absolutely right, Mr. Mayor. We would make job adjustments and I think that that's what's appropriate. You have to tailor it to the person's circumstance.

Mayor: So, Bob, I think you'll get the word out, I'm sure. If individual employees have a concern who might come in regular contact with patients, they should come forward to their supervisors at H + H, obviously EMT’s would be another good example. We will give guidance, the team will follow up to make sure that those requests and concerns will be received positively.

Go ahead –

Question: Mr. Mayor, is it safe to say that coronavirus is contagious essentially in the same way in common cold and flu are?

Mayor: I think that's – I was about to say – well, you guys, this would help, I want you to answer, but the difference between this and measles, which you talked about the other day – help everyone know the difference of sort of infect-ability, if you will.

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely. And what we know currently from what's been seen across the globe is that one individual who's symptomatic with coronavirus can infect up to 2.5 people, and so that is equivalent to a really bad flu season.

Mayor: But do the comparison I said – like what’s an easy to contract – super fast contracting kind of situation, versus it takes more, just give some examples.

Commissioner Barbot: As opposed to measles, which is airborne, meaning that if a person with measles was in the room right now, two hours ago –

Mayor: You and me, right now.

Commissioner Barbot: Right. You had measles, you came into the room, you left – two hours later, if I was unvaccinated, I would be at high risk for contracting measles –

Mayor: Because it’s in the air.

Commissioner Barbot: Because it's in the air. As opposed to an individual, let's say, God forbid – I would never wish this on you – you've got coronavirus –

Mayor: Thank you, Commissioner.

[Laughter]

Commissioner Barbot: You're in the room, you go out for that same period of time – I, being a good health commissioner have been washing my hands religiously, but I touched the microphone. If I don't wash my hands on a regular basis, then there's a very, very, very, very small – and probably a microphone would not be the best example – maybe a handle – an extraordinarily small technical risk. But the reality is for every-day living there's no indication that casual contact, being in a room with someone, using the subway is going to any way, shape or form increased the risk to every-day New Yorkers. We want to really emphasize the risk to New Yorkers remains low.

Mayor: And to both of you, the cold and flu parallel – and I think would be helpful, I'm just going to take a moment here to clarify to everyone where the cold and the traditional normal flu are on the spectrum of diseases, family of diseases with coronavirus and whether the way you contract is similar or not.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So, biologically and epidemiologically, the coronavirus acts a lot like the influenza virus. So, I think it's exactly on the same end of the spectrum.

Mayor: And again, just over-communication – how do you contract the flu?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So, contract track the flu usually from droplets. So, it usually is direct contact with someone coughing or sneezing. As Barbot said, hand hygiene is important because there is the possibility of touching something and potentially getting the flu, but it's less common than the droplets. I just wanted to add a comparison for measles, about nine in 10 people who are exposed to measles who are unvaccinated will get the measles. So, way less in a coronavirus-influenza world.

Question: [Inaudible]

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: It's what Dr. Barbot said that about two people – so, it's about 20 percent.

Question: [Inaudible] one other question. New York States said that it is following the CDC guidelines, New York City going to expand those guidelines and test more people.

Mayor: Yeah, you start and I'll jump in.

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: The Health Department already sent a health alert notice this morning, matching the CDC criteria.

Question: [Inaudible]

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: Yes, our health department. Vice President Pence actually opened the lid even more last night. So, we are trying to make sure we understand exactly what the repercussions will be. But more than likely, the Mayor has said, we err on the side of extra caution. We want people to come forth and get treatment and tested if needed.

Mayor: Yeah, let me follow up on that. So –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Hold on, let me – when I'm saying let me follow up, let me follow up, and then we will happily take your question. The big story here, and I’ve really been thinking about this a lot and we've had endless meetings about it – but the big story here is what a difference it would have been if in the very beginning the decision had been to decentralize the testing and maximize the ability of all localities to do that. Because what I'm seeing here is, now that we finally have it – and we're, you know, on day-three of having testing capacity – it gives us much more strategic ability to address the situation, you know, to the CDC guidance and beyond, which is where I want to be, I want to be beyond. That, you know, when – and these is not just, you know, random, but when there's a strategic reason to test someone, we need to be able to test them and we're building out that capacity rapidly. Given the trajectory of this disease, and I think our colleagues in Washington State would be the first to say this – if that capacity have been up and running two weeks ago, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, this would be an entirely different situation. I'm hoping and praying it's just in time to stay ahead of this, but my directive is that we are going to expand the criteria for testing. We're going be testing more people than the CDC would specifically suggest. Obviously, we have to keep building up our capacities. And we talked about yesterday, we want other labs to come online and that's going to help. But my strategic approach is, every time we can disqualify a person, which is so far what the batting average says, you know, the disqualification rate is pretty high, that's helpful to everyone. And when we can clarify, that someone has it, that we know what to do and we can maximize the chance there it won't be a spread. So, we're leaning into testing.

Go ahead.

Question: I just wanted to ask how Vice President –

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: Original CDC guidelines were Hubei Province, very, very strict. Then rest of China. Then the CDC changed guidelines for the new countries, South Korea, Italy, Iran, Japan. So they're very slowly expanding. What we are seeing here is that if, because of the community spread now beginning, the nexus to the countries is important but it's not the only way. So as the Mayor keeps challenging us to do, we're going to be leaning forward to try to find more people out faster.

Question: [Inaudible] Vice President [inaudible]?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: He's beginning to say, we need to test more. We cannot restrict only to the countries because it's already here.

Mayor: Right. Gloria?

Question: Mr. Mayor – I wanted some clarity on when and how we got to the schools guidance specifically there's some reporting about a teacher who is showing symptoms and has been self-isolated.

Mayor: Right.

Question: What, where are you on that? What, what do we know about who that teacher has been in contact with, the kids he might've been in contact with?

Mayor: I think it’s a she? Or is it a he?

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: I think it’s a she.

Mayor: Okay. We'll confirm that. That look, the important thing is the teacher is self-quarantined and that is a very good thing. We are, as I said today, we will tighten up that guidance for sure. We have some work to do with that teacher and with the union. Right now the most important thing is that teacher is not in contact with students and won't be in contact with students until it's safe to be so. But we're going to look at that situation to see if there's any other follow up that we need to do in that school. We'll know more on that later today.

Question: [Inaudible]?

Mayor: Again, we'll speak to that later today. We're just, again, I want to – that's, and again, you'll understand folks, there will be times where I say we're not ready to say something until people who have been appraised and we've given the proper notification. Go ahead.

Question: I understand that we're not quite there yet, but when will the Department of Education begin planning for the eventuality that you might have to close a school or two? Maybe not the entire system? I'm not mistaking, I believe during H1N1, there were a couple schools that had to close. Are you planning for remote learning at the time?

Mayor: I'll start and then over to the Chancellor. We spoke about this and it's going to be one of the additional elements of the tabletops. We have right now the basic capacity, if we had to close the school to provide remote learning, we have more work to do to get it to the level we would like it to be. But it is an already existing capacity.

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah. So we're working very diligently with our department partners in the city, especially the Department of Health around contingency plans should we ever get to that point. I think we all agree that closing schools is probably the last option because of the, just the myriad of issues that creates for not only students, parents, teachers, et cetera. So that's a one – it's on the spectrum of a last resort. But we have contingency plans already developed for if we need to get there, how we get there. What are the triggers, et cetera. We're continuing to revise them and as the Mayor mentioned, we have our tabletop exercises where we're kind of kicking the tires on those as well.

Mayor: Okay. Go ahead.

Question: Back to the Westchester attorney. I know we said yesterday that he first became ill on February 22nd. I'm wondering if you can determine when he contracted it based on that date. And have a couple other questions but maybe start –

Mayor: Go ahead, start with that.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So it's hard to say exactly when he contracted. We know that the incubation period for this ranges from a couple of days to maximum 14, the average is about five. So somewhere in that timeframe before he became ill was his exposure. So maximum 14 days, but potentially as little as two to five.

Question: We still don't know like exactly where or how he contracted it?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: We do not have a source for incident infection.

Question: Okay. And I know we went over this yesterday and there was kind of a refusal to say whether he had taken the subway or even Metro-North. Can we say whether he did that? Is there a reason that you're not saying whether he did that?

Mayor: Again, it's not a refusal, it's just not the way we approach this strategically. The fact is we trace where there is a specific danger to an individual and we follow up on that danger. We just, we're just, this is what this Department of Health does. We believe it's the right strategic approach. It's something that's been worked on many, many times. It is not simply based on taking mass transit. That's just the reality.

Question: Because what I think people are concerned about is that they hear that he was in this car with this [inaudible] he's in this car with this neighbor. So you're an enclosed space like a subway.

Mayor: Well no a car and a subway are not entirely the same. But go on. Go on.

Question: [Inaudible]

Question: The subway is worse.

Mayor: No, I would disagree. Go on.

Question: They are both enclosed spaces. I'm just saying this is generally what the public is concerned about. And we don't know how he may have contracted it, the neighbor, otherwise. So –

Mayor: But again, I understand why people want maximum information, but I also want us all to be careful here of what we know and what we don't know. And when we start worrying about the things that we don't know the wrong way, I think it only creates confusion for people. So what we have is, okay, we've got a case of someone who knew him obviously. We need to find out, I think very valid question, where did that come from? If we learn something new, by the way, I want no sacred cows. If it turns out it happened in the car, we need to know that. But it could also be any number of other things. So they think getting a clean answer out to the world is good. But we don't go by if he took Metro-North or he took a subway or whatever else we're going to tell you that. So what does that – and I'm saying this not to be difficult. I'm saying it to be sort of a communicative. So if he took Metro-North, are we telling people therefore don't go on Metro-North, it just doesn't follow. We have standards this city has been working on for a long time of what constitutes the kind of contact that would be pertinent. That's what we're going to work on. That's what we are going to speak to. If we start telling people a bunch of information, we actually think will be misleading. I don't think we're doing anyone a service. Go ahead.

Question: The teacher, has she been tested at this point?

Mayor: We need her to be tested.

Question: And there's a plan to test her or?

Mayor: There is a plan to test her.

Question: Okay. And is that going to happen today or?

Mayor: I think it's probably more like tomorrow.

Question: And in terms of her students, is there any examination of whether those students have come down with any issues at all?

Mayor: I don’t think we have any evidence of that.

Chancellor Carranza: We don't have any evidence of any symptoms with any students.

Mayor: Any student. Let me just clarify. It's a very important point. I'm glad you asked the question. Richard and I just went through that question earlier. So remember it's 1,800 schools, 1.1 million kids and schools have all been asked to report back if they have a situation. And at this moment we don't have a single report.

Question: Follow up question on a different topic.

Mayor: Okay, go ahead.

Question: The lawyer, his building? When did a City Health officials –

Mayor: Work, the law firm? Go ahead.

Question: When did City Health authorities contact the building management there and what guidance was given to the building management?

Mayor: I'll start and pass it out. Again, the question is not the building management. The question is who was in close contact with him in that building and obviously with his wife as well. That mapping has been done. That's the seven employees and one intern.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Otherwise, from the perspective of just maintenance, which I think is what you're asking. The guidance is routine cleaning. There's no – it's unnecessary to do any further terminal cleaning or, or more than just routine.

Commissioner Barbot: And so –

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: Sorry. We were – the same day we found out that the individual was positive, that morning we were there before any other employees waiting for them at the door to make sure that they were aware that we were now conducting an investigation to rule out a potential close contacts. So we were in touch with the Director of Human Resources. No one came to work that day. They are all able to work remotely. So it was a very aggressive response as soon as we found out.

Question: Is there another parent at the SAR Academy? He was tested positive.

Mayor: Is there, are you asking?

Question: Yes.

Mayor: I don't have in New York City, another parent from the SAR Academy testing positive. Do you know of one outside New York City?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Do not.

Mayor: We do not at this moment. Okay. Anyone hasn't gone? Yes.

Question: Thank you. What is the current testing capacity of the city lab in terms of number per day?

Mayor: I think we're in right now, dozens and we need to get to hundreds quickly. Yeah.

Question: So because community spread is definitely an issue now. So is the City considering canceling any mass gathering events?

Mayor: No. Again, we talked about this a little bit yesterday. I have under my executive powers the ability to cancel mass gatherings. That would be triggered by very specific developments. We are certainly not there yet.

Question: Two questions. Like the teacher who self-quarantined, how many other school personnel do you know that might be in self-quarantine right now? And also we're three weeks after the first suspected case in New York City. Why isn't there a protocol yet for suspected cases involving school personnel?

Mayor: I think the first point we want to confirm any other employees who are in self-quarantine, I want to make sure that we give you accurate information. So I think we will have that if not today, tomorrow. If there are any, I think it's a very small number at this point. On the second point, I think the initial focus on China was there and was right. I think we would all say now there should have been a faster adjustment for the additional countries. We're going to get that fixed today.

Question: One of the issues I imagine is teachers are limited to ten sick days per year. Is that one of the issues that you're working out? Are they [inaudible]?

Mayor: Yeah, that's not going to be an issue in this case. We'll work with that.

Question: Is the City doing any work with private hospitals to make sure that they are prepared and equipped to take on the coronavirus? You know, Staten Island is the only borough with no public hospital. What are you doing there and also does it –

Mayor: Wait, can we just stay on that and we'll come back to you? Go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: So we have a very robust network of both public and nonpublic health systems that we meet with on a regular basis during this outbreak. When we activated we are on regular calls with Greater New York. We're on regular calls with Health + Hospitals to make sure that they are up to date on proper protocols for identifying patients, communicating with us about patients that need to be tested for coronavirus. We query them on a regular basis to make sure that their supplies are up to date. Beyond that, we have a health alert network where we send out written guidance to thousands of providers across the city who may not be connected to a health care system but may be in solo independent practices. And then beyond that, Dr. Daskalakis in collaboration with our State partners has been on webinars for health care providers. And the last call that he was on, there were over 3,000 doctors participating all across the city.

Mayor: Go ahead, your follow up.

Question: Do you have estimate of like resources that you're giving to public hospitals, like masks and gloves, testing kits?

Mayor: Again, let me I understand the import of the question. Let me cut through it. Right now in this environment, I think there's been extraordinary coordination between State, City, Greater New York Hospital Association, everyone. There's no question that what people need, they're going to get. So if we control it, we're going to make sure people get it. We have raised the important point about the federal government's role in distributing certain types of masks. That requires federal action. We don't control that supply, but the things that we can control, we'll work with every single health care facility. So if the question is, if there's something needed on Staten Island and we have it, will they get it? The answer is yes. If there's a specific, that any of the health care providers on Staten Island feel they have a need for, they should raise it immediately to my colleagues. Go ahead.

Question: For Yeshiva University students who don't live on campus, are they being sent home. And is there any concern that they could spread the virus?

Mayor: I'll start and I don't know. I know Dean Fuleihan has been in regular touch with the President of Yeshiva University, so maybe want to see if he wants to do a guest appearance. But my understanding is their impulse here is to not do a prolonged closure. They did some very short term closure to address the immediate situation. But that they will be up and running. I don't want to speak for them, but that's certainly been their instinct as I understand it. We agree with that.

Question: Two questions. Do you have anything on five NYPD officers who had self-quarantined because of the coronavirus?

Mayor: Yeah, I understand just that. That there are five. We're going make sure they get tested. And we're coordinated with PD on that.

Question: Do you know where they had traveled, if they had –

Mayor: I don't have that right now. We'll get that to you.

Question: Do you know anything about the disease detectives? I know you mentioned before that you were going to bring on more. Is there any sort of timeline or how many you are going to bring?

Mayor: Fast. That's a great question. I've given the order and the resources are there and I know our good colleague, Dr. Katz is going to help make some of his folks available. Let's get you, we can get you an answer on that one later on today. Go ahead.

Question: So as you know, there are a lot of people that are buying mask and they are [inaudible] enough equipment. Knowing the fact that – is the City ready to take care of this massive, if there is a massive outbreak because knowing the fact that most of the, even the ventilators are made in China and they are shut down. So are we ready, have enough hospital beds in the city?

Mayor: So you asked a couple of different things. Again, I want to differentiate on the masks and I'll start and then the health care folks will jump in. Two crucial purposes of the masks again, stop someone who already is affected from spreading it. And for our medical personnel and any first responders who are dealing with folks who are sick. In that context, we have a very substantial supply right now. Our colleagues can speak to that. On the question of, I think it's a very important question, not just what do we have right now in New York City or what could we get from the federal government, but what if fundamental supplies are disrupted because global supply chains are disrupted? That puts a premium on what we have in stock and how long it will last us. Start with Mitch in terms of, because they do the direct health care provision.
I think we've said the other day in the meeting that Health + Hospitals is in strong shape for any short terms scenarios. I think there's a question, obviously over long term with something like ventilators, you can speak to that.

President Katz: On ventilators, New York City is in good shape. And based on the, even the most dire predictions of percentages of people who will have serious illness with this, we will be fine. And that’s because all hospitals, including ours, have the most current ventilators that we use every day. And we also keep stores of ventilators that were previous generations that can be made to use an emergency.

Mayor: On masks, I think we would say our supply right now is sufficient. In a more extensive crisis, we would need help from the federal government.

President Katz: Right. So we're set as all the hospitals are, but if there were influx of hundreds of patients, it would require using the stockpiles. But that's why you have stockpiles though. The whole point of the State and the federal government keeping reserves is for exactly this emergency.

Mayor: Back on Yeshiva for a moment. Hold on. Dean, I'm going to summarize it and if you have anything to add, I mentioned that you've been in touch with a President Berman I think it is? That their impulse is not to stay closed for long. They did some temporary closures just to address the issue and then they plan to reopen and that we agree with that strategy. Is that a fair assessment?

First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan: Yes. Right now they have closed the Morningside Heights campus through Friday, but they – I'm sorry. They've closed classes. They have not closed the campus.

Mayor: Classes themselves. They've canceled classes.

First Deputy Mayor Fuleihan: Correct. The dorms remain open, food service remains open. They've only closed classes. The rest of their campuses are remain open.

Mayor: Okay. We're going to finish here and then we'll go back over this side. Go ahead.

Question: Are all New York City public hospitals equipped with negative pressure rooms and mechanical ventilation devices to contain the coronavirus and –

Mayor: Okay. Stay there first. Go ahead.

President Katz: Yes.

Mayor: Go ahead. Next one.

Question Okay. Question for you Mr. Mayor, what, what do you think about the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus so far? And are you concerned that the outbreak is being politicized?

Mayor: I don't want to politicize the outbreak and I don't think that's been the response to it by and large. I think the honest, and I'm saying this as a practitioner, the honest response here is the federal government was out of position for a long time. They just weren't ahead of this. They weren't providing us what we needed. I, you know, we're talking about six weeks or more ago, you know, I said, we need – we need to do local testing. I said it publicly, we sent letters, folks here talked to officials at the CDC. I'm sure we weren't the only locality. So I think it's very frustrating to think about six weeks ago localities were saying empower us to do this testing and then we can stay ahead of this. I strongly believe, I'm not a medical expert but as a leader in government that if Washington State had had the capacity to do local testing, the trajectory out there would have been different.

So I think the central story here is the federal government waited a hell of a long time to act and – there was some denialism about the extent of the problem. And we're all paying for it now. That said, I agreed with the travel restrictions. I'm glad they were in place and I'm glad they're acting now because they clearly have moved intensely in the last few days. But I want them to stay ahead of it, not always play from behind. And I want to stop any talk that this is going to be over anytime soon. It's not going to be over anytime soon. So we're actually better off – people appreciate real talk. Assume this is going to be with us for a long time and maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised at some point. Okay. Who has not gone on this side? Not gone, let me give you a chance.

Question: So first question, can you give us a total number of people who you are aware of who are self-quarantining? And as a follow-up, can you talk a little bit about what that process should be? Because you're in New York City, lots of people live with each other and other people and family, roommates, et cetera. So what should that process actually look –?

Mayor: I'm going, I start and frame it. You can, we talked about this the other day and I restate it, you can self-quarantine in a home, in an apartment. There is a way to do that. Now, a lot of our homes, apartments are pretty damn small, so some - they'll be harder in some cases depending on the number of people, but there is a way to do that properly and I think we'll describe that to just to be vivid about it. In terms of what I'm seeing is relatively few examples that have been reported to us of self-quarantine. There are well may be any number of folks out there doing it and that's great. But in terms of our constant tracking, we're not seeing a huge number of people formally reporting through our channels – self-quarantine – that I know about. But you guys can correct if you know better?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: The mayor is totally right in the numbers and we're tracking almost each one of them. There is another group, however, if you may remember the guidelines from the CDC said if you are coming back from [inaudible] you have to go and get tested and all that. And then there's the other group that if you are coming from mainland China you were going to go to self-quarantine and we have about 2,000 of those people regularly being monitored by DOH at all times. We started with about 7,000 and of course now that the trips are diminishing, but we're still very closely monitoring that group.

Mayor: Describe how to quarantine, including if you're in a multi-room apartment?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So in a multi-room apartment, the guidance is to try to stay in one bedroom if possible. Try if possible to use a separate bathroom facility if not hygiene with the bathroom facility to make sure that it's wiped down. Otherwise the guidance is outside of the apartment, which is to minimize any departure from the apartment and if necessary to wear a mask.

Mayor: Can you just one more step Dimitri, if you're in an apartment you're going to come in - as you just said - you're going to have to go over to the bathroom or people are to pass you food. Can you sort of clarify how to do it in a way that would not create the kind of exposure or prolonged exposure for if you're the person bringing someone the food, why are you going to be okay?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So most delivery of food in that way wouldn't involve any amount of prolonged close contact. So it would not be something that would make us very concerned. Of course, I'll echo Dr. Barbot’s previous comment that everyone should make alcohol based hand sanitizer their best friend. So there's no harm in sanitizing your hands after that. But ultimately it's not a high risk exposure.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: Hi, yes, there's some scientists in Washington State who actually use – who’ve actually sequenced the genes of the coronavirus cases there and in doing so have been able to come up with an estimate how long it's been circulating in the state and also to some extent how many cases might not have been diagnosed. Are there any plans to do similar genetic sequencing in New York State to get a sense of how long it might've been circulating here and an estimate of how many undiagnosed cases there might be?

Commissioner Barbot: At this point we're not there. We will be having conversations with the State to see what’s the right time to do that.

Mayor: Folks haven't gone first please? Anyone?

Question: So you've told us you're going to ramp up the instructions for teachers about what to do if they're sick but we've also been hearing from teachers who are concerned about lots of coughing kids in their classrooms. So what's the advice for them?

Mayor: Again, the guidance to principals and assistant principals and health personnel in schools and obviously on down to the teachers is if you've got a case where there's a specific nexus we want to know about it. Look, this time of year, a kid with a cough, per se, is not telling us a whole lot. But a kid with a cough who has traveled overseas to an affected country or whose family member who lives in the same home with them has – then we obviously want immediate follow-up. So I would just say we're all finding our way step by step through this, but I think the underlying reality, I keep having to come to this is this, you know, this is like the anti-Ebola, right? This is not – you know, if it touches you for a moment, you're going to die. This is something very, very different. This is a disease that for the vast majority of people will have a very mild impact. Even for the vast majority of those who have a tougher experience, they're still going to come out the other end. They're going to be okay.

The reason I think if it were not for – and this is said very, very seriously – if it were not for the fatalities, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion at all, right? So what is really driving this is not here's a disease, kind of like the flu. It is, here's the disease, kind of like the flu that can lead to fatalities that we don't understand enough, that doesn't have a vaccine, that doesn't have a cure. That's what's really going on here. So if a child, and again we are seeing this does not appear to affect young people much or even if it affects them, it is very, very mild. That's what we're seeing so far. A child with the sniffles, we have to not overreact, but a child with symptoms and that travel nexus, we want to get that child immediately to health care.

Question: But who will know? You know, do teachers are they expected to know the travel plans of their kids?

Mayor: Teachers know a huge amount about their kids. Parent coordinators know a huge amount about the kids and families. You would – it would be pretty natural to know if someone's sick. It's a very simple dialogue. Have you traveled recently? Has anyone in your family traveled recently? And if so, and that's again, principal and Chancellor jump on in that the folks who run the school, the schools are finite. I mean, the vast majority of our schools are not huge. We have some huge ones, but most are a pretty manageable size. If a teacher comes in to the principal and says, hey, I got a kid who, you know, his aunt just got back from China three weeks ago and he seems to have the symptoms, they're going to act on that right away.

Chancellor Carranza: Absolutely. And just a reminder, we're still in cold and flu season in general, so you know, they're sniffly noses and sneezing is not uncommon. But a teacher myself,
I always had that that a big bottle of disinfectant to all the time. So we encourage teachers to do that. But if a teacher notices that a student just doesn't look well, the protocol calls for the teacher to bring that student to the attention of a nurse or the principal or the designee, at which point that person will do an assessment, ask those specific questions, ask the student to wear a mask only for protective purposes. We will call a parent and a guardian to come and pick up the student and then the instruction is for the parent and guardian to get a medical care and we can facilitate and help make that happen. And then, we've also as part of our protocol are requiring nurses or principals or any situation like that to be reported to us so that we can then report that to the Department of Health. And then there's follow-up that happens with the student.

Mayor: Guys. I've got about 10 more minutes. So let's give folks our second round. Bob?

Question: Yeah, I know the doctor had said his background with this. I didn't see him [inaudible] any references to the Department of Homeless Services. We know as a matter of fact that we're only as healthy as those people with the least and humble circumstance. How do you deal with this issue that there are people out there that [inaudible] has significant health issues?

Mayor: We spoke about this yesterday. I'll reiterate the fact that we're deep into the HOME-STAT strategy, which is very, very specialized to each individual. Means our outreach workers are aware – broadly, not every single person – but a very, very high percentage of folks on the street. We know who they are there, their general health private profile, we're in a lot of touch with them. If someone exhibits the symptoms who's homeless, they'll be immediately offered care depending on their willingness to accept or not and what specifically is going on. If they're not willing to accept care and they're deemed someone who needs care for the good of everyone, we have the ability legally to require them to come in.

Question: As a follow up, if I may ask you? To what degree is the universal health care that's provided for use for Health and Human Services – HHA - helpful to being able to do with signs? Isn't there a very proactive thing –

Mayor: Profoundly. And then I'll let Mitch advertise, but the, if people know they have access to healthcare, they know it's a readily available. It's a supportive and compassionate and free. The chances of them coming in when they have a problem are greatly intensified and that's how we stop a small problem from turning into a big problem. Mitch?

President Katz: This is a great example of why NYC Care needs to exist and should exist throughout our country. Immigrants should have no fear about coming forward for care.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: Could you just outline if you have any cleaning protocol for the City’s correctional facilities? It's not on the briefing and I don't know what the Department of Correction is doing to –

Mayor: Yeah, they have very intense protocol around inmates ensuring that if there's any possibility that they get them to health care immediately. I think the clean protocol and Dean, this is your turf, I think for every agency that clean protocols gone out?

First Deputy Mayor Fuleihan: Correct. Correct. We're doing it citywide. We'll get you the details.

Mayor: Yes?

Question: Mr. Mayor, I think that also we have heard that the New York Law School suspended classes today because they also have a student who made contact with the lawyer and self-reported it to the school. Do you have enough data on New York Law School specifically?

Mayor: I don't, and again, we're happy to work with them. Coming into contact - we'd need to know a lot more about that before we would suggest a closure of the school, but again, they have a right to do whatever they choose to do but we'll follow up with them right away.

Question: I know there is a concern about whether or not a countrywide there are enough testing kits available. Do you have numbers of how many kits are available in the city? And do you know yet how many people have been tested?

Mayor: So again, I gave you the update on the negatives –

Question: Right.

Mayor: And I gave you - obviously know the positives. So that's everyone. We're with new people coming in now. We have what we need right now. Right? We have what we need. If we see a meaningful uptick in the coming days, but we need to keep expanding capacity. We're working on that right now. We're also looking forward to private labs having the capacity, which I think we hope is fairly soon. So we are right now we can do dozens, as I said, we'd like to get to hundreds. Right? So we're nowhere near needing dozens in a single day right now. But we have that ability right now. I want us to be in the very short term, meaning you know, next week I'd like to see us having the capacity to do hundreds in a single day. Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, do you find yourself washing your hands more frequently these days? Now having the handset and sanitize here around you. And you - would it be useful for you or do you think it would be useful for you to take the subway more frequently now to express confidence in the assessment?

Mayor: That's a great point. I've partly because I'm in constant contact with people I learned a while ago, it’s a smart idea to wash your hands regularly and use hand sanitizer. So that really hasn't changed. I'm doing it the way I was, but I accept the point happily. I'll go out in the subway and bring you all with me to a show people that – because by the way, I mean everywhere I've been going to be clear, I think New Yorkers are going about their lives. Again, we do not intimidate easily. Every place I've been in the normal course of life in the last few days, I don't see major changes. I told you fact, largest school system in the country today versus the same day a year ago, you know, no change in attendance. So I think New Yorkers are going about their life, but I'm happy to be an agent of positive reinforcement and go out in the subway. Yeah, go ahead – I'm sorry. Finish.

Question: As a follow up, and you heard that Italy has closed all of its schools from pre-K all the way through universities until the 15th of March?

Mayor: I had not and I'm sorry to hear that for Italy's sake and for those kids’ sake. But I think this is an object lesson. The - look national government's pretty much across the board have been behind the curve on this. Right? I mean, I don't want to put down any one government. It's been all of them. China, Italy, United States of America, South Korea, Iran, I mean look at this wonderful global coalition of, they've all been equally screwed up and localities have to deal with this stuff. National governments don't. You know, they often can make our lives a lot easier or a lot worse, but we have to bear the brunt. So I think what you're seeing at the local level here in a lot of other places is we are doing the things to actually try and stay ahead of this, but it's very sad to know that this whole scenario could have been better if national governments had been more active in the beginning.

Question: How does the city do enforcement of quarantines? I guess in New York we only have the case of the health care worker.

Mayor: Right? I mean I would just start and say on a common sense level where we're not hearing – and that we would always listen for – we're not hearing a lot of people resisting quarantine or misunderstanding why it's in their interest in everyone else's interest. I think we had such a situation, we – I'm very happy to be creative about being assertive about it and we obviously have a tremendous ability to do that if we need to. But I think to date we have not had an instance, at least I have not heard of, where someone's trying to violate quarantine and we need enforcement.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: That's correct.

Commissioner Barbot: So we check on them daily and then we do random checks to make sure that, you know, they're not cheating.

Question: That’s DOHMH?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes.

Question: Okay, and then are there guidelines for the self-quarantine suggestions that the doctor was on your website or something?

Mayor: Go ahead.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: We do have guidelines for self-quarantine. They're not available on the website but we do provide them to individuals who are on quarantine.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, you said you expect this to be around for months, but to the health professionals, do you expect the trajectory of this just to follow the cold and flu season?

Commissioner Barbot: There's nothing at this point that gives us any indication about when it's going to stop. I think one of the challenges is that when you have a novel virus where people haven't been previously exposed and developed natural immunity, it's difficult to project where and when it's going to end. You know, and I'll go back to H1N1 where I was actually the Medical Director of the public schools here in New York City and that outbreak started in April and went deep into the summer, which is not typically what you would expect in flu season. So, you know, I think the reality is that we take every opportunity to learn from what other jurisdictions are experiencing and that our preparedness remains high.

Mayor: Okay, last call. We're going to have to shut down in just a minute. So I'm going to take these two - three. I'm sorry. And we'll be done. Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] you suggest [inaudible] get the flu shot, where they should get the shot? I called several like CVS and Walgreens last week. They are all out of the flu shot. So what should [inaudible]?

Commissioner Barbot: So two things on that. One is I want to be clear that we are asking people to get the flu shot, not because we think it's a treatment for COVID-19 but because we don't want them to be in a situation where they may develop symptoms, have the anxiety of thinking, do I have COVID-19 when it's an actuality the flu. The other thing I would say is if they go to a CVS where they don't have flu vaccines, they can call 3-1-1 or they can go on our website and we have a flu tracker where they can find the location nearest to them.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: So the MTA is going to be disinfecting the trains and the buses every three days [inaudible] does the city plan to do the same for the Staten Island ferry?

Mayor: Yes, of course.

Question: But when do you plan to?

Mayor: I think that guidance has already gone out and looking to Dean, I don't know if you would know, but we will get you an answer. Do you know off hand or we get? We'll confirm it back to you.

Question: For the folks that already have the virus, what's their day to day look like? Are they in touch with somebody from the city? Can somebody come visit them personally? Are they're getting tested every day? What's that like?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So the individuals who are isolated because they have a COVID-19 are contacted daily by our staff to make sure that they're clinically doing well. They're offered wraparound services if necessary. And then also as you heard, we do come by unannounced just to make sure they're complying to their isolation.

Question: Who exactly is coming?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: The disease detectives are the ones who do the main contact. So again, that, that power force, the people who do both contact tracing as well as follow up, they sort their cases and follow them through. And then we have other staff including health police that will do spot checks.

Mayor: Okay. Thanks, everyone. We'll get you more updates soon.

2020-03-05 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: …a number of different areas. What I’m going to try to do in each briefing is create as much continuity with the previous briefing as possible. And as I said, I think we are going to be doing a lot of these for the weeks to come. So, let me start with, yesterday we talked in detail about the family from Westchester and the law firm, Lewis and Garbuz, where both the mother and father of that family worked. In addition to the mother and father, eight other individuals at the law firm – seven employees want to intern – four residents of New York City, four residents of areas outside New York City all have been tested. Here is what we know so far – for the four New York City residents, the tests have all come back negative. For the one resident beyond the couple of themselves from Westchester County, the test has come back negative. We have three more tests pending. We will have those results today and we'll publish them as soon as we have them.

And everything's very dynamic, as everyone is seeing, so these numbers can move at any given moment. But as of this moment, I've got – obviously, we'll talk about the four confirmed cases, the four cases that tested positive, but now the number of negative cases is 26. We have 26 tests completed, have come back negative. We have two new cases confirmed this morning in New York City, a man in his forties, a woman in her eighties. Both are critically ill at this moment. Both did have substantial preexisting conditions. In the case of the man, respiratory issues related to smoking and vaping; in the case of the woman specific illnesses related to her advanced age. One is at a hospital in Brooklyn, one is at a hospital in Manhattan. Again, we're going to try always to define what we are able to tell you, what we're not yet able to tell you. Obviously, there's a confidentiality issue here that we have to be sensitive to. These are voluntary hospitals, not public hospitals.

Okay. Now this gets into the issue of community spread, which we're very, very concerned about obviously. And this is kind of defining a changing reality. So, today, we're going to be talking about some strategic differences even compared to yesterday now that we have more evidence of community spread. So, in the case of these two individuals, neither one had a connection to the areas affected in other parts of the world. So, there no travel nexus. Neither one connected to any of the other cases we've seen. Our disease detectives are working with their families right away on mapping their contacts. And we'll have more to say on that shortly and we'll obviously be following up with any close contacts. The community spread issue – we are seeking a guidance from the World Health Organization and from the CDC now that it's clearly established as a phenomenon here. We are trying every day to get a better understanding of this still new disease. We are not getting all the answers we would like, but, to be fair, the entire medical community around the world is trying to get clear answers and clear facts. What we do know is when you have a community spread dynamic, you have to assume it could be anywhere in the city. So, we are going to work on an assumption of the intense vigilance. We're going to update our approaches as we get more information. A phrase I've just learned – transmissibility is sort of the amount or the ease with which this is transmitted. World Health Organization continues to say this disease is less transmittable than the flu. But again, we are watching carefully. A community-spread dynamic suggests it will be more pervasive and that worries us obviously in terms of how easy it might be for someone to come in contact. Again, goes back to what people can do. And this is the consistent part, because it is affirming as we use the example yesterday of the measles – it is not a disease that the substances hang in the air and if you come into a room where they've been present that it's easy to contract. We know that is not the case. What we're concerned about is direct contact with fluids. And so, that's the area where people can do all the smart basics, the hand washing, the alcohol-based hand sanitizer – thank you, Commissioner, you've gotten that in my brain. Obviously, covering your mouth when you cough and sneeze – all those basics really matter.

Notwithstanding our real concern about the situation, the overall numbers still remain, in a sense, very favorable. We have only four confirmed cases. Obviously, out of 8.6 million people, we have 26 tests that have come back negative. I want to note, I should've said this up front for continuity – the two Yeshiva students who the disease detectives identified from the first Yeshiva – so, that is the roommate and the best friend of the student from Westchester – both have been tested, both came back negative. So, they're in that negative number of 26. So, again, by the numbers, we remain in a strong situation. The community-spread dynamic is unpredictable and worrisome, so we're watching carefully. And I want to alert everyone, each day we may tell you we're finding something new about how this disease is acting in general, how it's acting here in New York City, so our level of concern is rising for sure. That said, the big picture point, I'll keep saying it, we do know this for a fact, over 80 percent of the folks who get it have very mild symptoms, very mild experience, and the vast majority of folks even who have more serious outcomes still end up seeing it through. So, it comes back to – I'm making really clear, we believe in a containment strategy. We understand there are limits to that at a certain point, but that is the strategy we're using. We believe in a strategy that focuses on identification and testing. We believe deeply in the work of the disease detectives and we will be introducing you to some of them soon so you can get to see the real human beings who do this important work. But finding everyone who needs a test and getting them a test as quickly as possible and isolating them when they need to be isolated is the smart strategy.

We have a directive for all New Yorkers, and I'm first going to talk about all New Yorkers and then let's specifically talk about City workers. For all New Yorkers, if you had returned from one of the five countries I'll indicate, we're asking you to isolate yourself for 14 days as a precaution. Any New Yorker coming back from any of these countries – China, Iran, Italy, South Korea, all on the current CDC list. Japan should be on that list we believe. So, from the point of view of New York City, if you're coming back from Japan, you should isolate for 14 days. And obviously if you have symptoms, then you need to get to care and testing. Now, this is a brand-new thing I'm going to introduce to you today. Thanks to our Health Commissioner, this order is being issued as we speak – the Commissioner's Order. And this refers to City workers, specifically first responders, health care workers and educators. So, this'll be up online momentarily. Under this order, the Commissioner has the ability to determine case by case specific actions. And if the Commissioner determines that anyone fits the criteria and is a risk, they can be required to get a coronavirus test. Right now, I can tell you, anyone who has traveled to one of the affected countries and has symptoms will be required and the broad assumption has to be that those who have symptoms alone, except for a particular extenuating circumstances, anyone who has symptoms will be required to get tested and we will act in accordance to that test in terms of if and when they can return to work. Anyone who refuses testing must comply with a quarantine and there will be specific employment consequences if they refuse testing. We'll get you the details on that.

I want to also emphasize – again, I think we're in a very dynamic crisis, which I have said to you guys I believe will be months if we're lucky. This is the first Commissioner's Order, I doubt it will be the last. You will see evolving actions. This one refers only to city workers – obviously, the Commissioner has a power and I have the power to do things related to the general public as well. So this is – we're going to take each step as needed. We'd love it if we don't have to take a lot more steps, but we are prepared to do a lot more the moment we need to.

Consistent with the topic of City workers, an update related to schools. So, we have three teachers who have recently come back from Italy. I'm going to give you a lot of detail on one and then there's two more where I can give you a little detail, but we will have more specific as soon as certain notifications have been made. First teacher, it was part of a high school trip at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, 3787 Bedford Avenue – 44 students and this teacher plus six other staff members went to Italy. My understanding is to one of the affected areas of Italy and that's important here. Obviously, countries are experiencing this crisis but there are areas of particular concern. Came back on February 23rd. The teacher was symptomatic, the teacher has been tested, the teacher tests negative. We are assessing all the other staff and students on the trip. At this moment, we have none with symptoms and we believe we have a low-risk situation, especially given that we're getting close to the 14-day mark, but they are being carefully assessed. If anyone needs testing, they will get it.

This is a good example of a situation I want to clarify about. We've been talking a lot about how to talk to parents. And I'll say this – and at any point now or in the back and forth my health colleagues will jump in – but the basic guidance to parents who are very, very concerned right now is, if your children are healthy, at this moment, there's very, very little to be concerned about. If your children have serious respiratory diseases or a compromised immune system, we want you to be extra vigilant and we want, in that case, we obviously want to make sure our schools are aware of those particular students. So, looking to the Chancellor and the Health Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner that we obviously have the ability with school records and school health facilities, something you used to do, to understand school-by-school who those students are. We're going to have particular sensitivity around those students, but, at this moment, because there's not a single symptomatic student anywhere in New York City public schools that we know of, we're not taking an additional action. But that, just the human guidance to parents – and I'm saying this as a parent – based on what our public health officials are saying is only if your student has a serious respiratory problem or have compromised immune system is there an immediate threat. Otherwise, as everyone is seeing, this disease disproportionately affects older folks and folks with a serious preexisting conditions, but, obviously, overwhelmingly it's been adults.

Two other teachers – in this case, they both returned from a vacation in Italy over the winter break. So again, we're getting close to the 14-day point. We will have more information shortly. Both are being tested today. We'll have the results on that shortly and then we'll talk about pending notification, the specific schools and any other follow up. But again, those teachers just went themselves personally on vacation, not with students or other staff.

I want to give you a couple of agency updates. Department of Correction – all housing units, day rooms and common spaces are now being cleaned once per day. Shower areas are being cleaned three times per day. Transport buses are being cleaned and sanitized daily. Staten Island ferry – every ferry, each boat will get a deep clean every 72 hours minimum, often more than that, more frequently than that. Terminals will be consistently clean, constantly clean. DOT crews are also handing out material on the ferry to educate customers as to the facts on the virus. Those – I obviously gave you some other agency updates yesterday. Those are some of the things that are happening in our government, but I want to emphasize we need from another government, the federal government. This is a still the case. Even though there was a little progress last few days, it's still not what we need. We need the ability to test as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. We cannot do that without help from the federal government, period. The CDC has finally broadened the criteria, which is good, but we do not have the physical capacity. We need the FDA to speed up approval of the test developed by private companies. We just need this to be a consistent effort by the federal government. It has not been. The goal has to be the decentralized testing as quickly as possible and maximize our ability to do what we need to do.

One other piece of news, literally coming in just before I came out here from New Jersey, but related to us. We have one new case in New Jersey that has a significant nexus to New York City. We don't have the details yet. Our health authorities are speaking to the New Jersey health authorities. I will be speaking to the Lieutenant Governor who's in the role of Acting Governor, because Governor Murphy has been in surgery. So, Acting Governor Sheila Oliver, I'll be speaking to her later on today. We will get you an update as soon as we have more of the details. We're going to have our disease detectives engaged with the health authorities in New Jersey to track what that nexus is. So, we know there's a case and we know there's a nexus, but we don't have the details on that. Hopefully we'll have that in a matter of hours.

A few quick words in Spanish and then I'd like to have the Speakers of the City Council, Corey Johnson, say a few words before we open up to questions.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, I’d like to turn to Speaker Johnson.

[…]

Mayor: Thank you, Speaker. I couldn't agree with you more and thank you for that rightfully passionate statement. Yeah, we're just not – I want to amplify, we're not going to accept any discrimination. There are real consequences. Some forms of discrimination are illegal and you will feel the consequences of it. But also, if anyone's paying attention, this disease is now in, I think, 79 countries of the world, so it is unfortunately affecting people of all backgrounds, all nations. We have no time for discrimination. I also want to thank the Speaker, I appreciate the hearing he's having. I also want to thank them for riding the subway and want to inform you all that I'll be going from City Hall to OEM by subway, and you will all be welcome to join, anyone who wants to come along a little bit later on this afternoon.

Go ahead, Katie.

Question: So, the CDC added Italy to a level three non-essential travel warning a week ago. I want to know why [inaudible] and if they did, I’d be happy to be wrong – why didn't DOE proactively go and see what schools had trips to Italy, and the other countries, South Korea, Japan. We're just now finding out that 50 people from a school traveled to Italy for February break, one had symptoms, and I just want to know if that was done, let me know, and if it wasn't, why not?

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: So, again, you said it was added a week ago. These trips were in February. So, as the information was coming to us where we're going back and finding out where are students going, where were these trips planned for? A large agency, lots of groups moving. The good news is, going forward, we have very, very clear protocols. We now have an inventory of all of these trips, even trips to non-designated countries. We're sharing those trips with our partners in the Department of Health to make sure that there's nothing brewing that they know of that we don't know of. So, going forward, we have tight controls.

Question: Did you not have inventory before and could you let me know if there were other trips made during February break?

Chancellor Carranza: We can get that information to you. But again, we are going back and there are some trips, quite frankly, that – even our unofficial trips, they’re paid for by parent organizations, they’re paid for by a church-related organization. So, we're trying to get an inventory of everything and everywhere and we're in the active process of that. We've been doing that for about a week as well.

Question: With all due respect, I know teachers who probably can't go to like the Hall of Science without notifying their district. I'm just trying to clarify, you mean the Department of Education wouldn't know if a school sanctioned DOE trip with 50 people –

Chancellor Carranza: That’s not what I’m saying. What I'm saying is that there were a lot of trips, there was a lot of information. CDC was changing and giving different guidance. We were working through the Department of Health as well – a lot of moving parts.

Mayor: Right. Richard, let me just, for everyone's sake. I use to know when I was a parent, I don't know what this year the exact dates of winter break were. If we could give that, I don't know if you have at your fingertips, but we can get the exact dates of winter break, I think it will help to answer the point that's being raised here. But the bottom line is, we're going to inventory everything now and go back and look if there's anything we need to follow up on specifically.

Question: [Inaudible] point was that they shouldn’t have traveled –

Mayor: Again, I would just – I’ve been very clear, we’re going to inventory everything and we're going to be very transparent about it.

Question: I just want to clarify two points. The first, the two new cases in New York City, the man and his [inaudible] is there any connection between the two of them?

Mayor: No.

Question: No. And can you clarify –

Mayor: I’m double-checking – no. No.

Question: And are there three confirmed cases in New York City, or four –

Mayor: Four if you include the guy from Westchester who worked in New York City, lived in Westchester but isn't in New York City hospitals. So, we're calling that in New York City for the sake of abundance of inclusion.

Question: [Inaudible] he’s in Westchester.

Mayor: Correct.

Question: About the lawyer, his wife, do we know if his wife had traveled to Israel?

Mayor: We know he traveled to Israel. I don't know if we know his wife's traveled to Israel.

Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: I'm not aware of her travel itinerary. We do know that he traveled to Israel, but way before he got –

Mayor: But she is – again, I'm trying to – there's so many cases I'm trying to make sense – she's asymptomatic?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Question: I have two questions. One is – yesterday, you said there'd be an update to the protocol regarding staff who show symptoms of school.

Mayor: When you say staff – I’m sorry –

Questions: Teachers –

Mayor: Teachers. Yeah, that’s the Commissioner’s Order.

Question: Okay. So that is how you're dealing with [inaudible]. Also, the teacher who you said today had been tested, it was negative. Is that the same one that we talked about at yesterdays –

Mayor: Yes, I believe it's the same. Let me think – I'm trying to keep my continuity tight. I'll say it again just to make sure we're all over-communicating. James Madison High – there’s a teacher who went on an official school trip with students over there – again, tested negative. We'll have the other two teachers results today.

Chancellor Carranza: Mr. Mayor, can I amplify?

Mayor: Please.

Chancellor Carranza: There was additional guidance and protocols that were sent to all 152,000 employees in the DOE today with very specific instructions. We've also updated our guidance to all principals about how to work with students, how to work with other staff members if they are presenting. So, there's been updated guidance as well.

Question: [Inaudible] ask the DOE press office to share that? [Inaudible]

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely – just went out.

Question: [Inaudible]

Chancellor Carranza: Sure, say that again?

Question: [Inaudible]

[Chancellor Carranza speaks in Spanish]

Question: Just a few questions wrapped up under the quarantine headline. There are 1,000 people quarantined in New York State. I wondered how many in New York City? Are any of those involuntary? And do we – how many mental health – I'm sorry, how many Department of Health staffers do we have to check in on them? And are you worried about a shortage of staffers to check in on the [inaudible]?

Mayor: The last point – the last point I was saying, we're obviously in a crisis. The message to the Department of Health is that whatever staffing they need, if they need to hire new, if they need to gently borrow from a Health and Hospitals, which has been wonderful about offering personnel, or from any other agency, there's not going to be a staffing shortage. That will be whatever they need, whenever they need it. As to the quarantine numbers and whether there's any involuntary –

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: I'll start and then Dr. Daskalakis can add anything that I’ve missed. With regards to individuals that are returning from the involved countries. The guidance from CDC and we, along with our state partners and various jurisdictions across the country, are taking the approach of providing them information when they get off the planes, giving them our phone number, what symptoms to look out for, and then we reach out to them on a daily basis to make sure that they are not developing symptoms. It's what we call voluntary home isolation. And so, they have a phone number to call us if and when they develop symptoms. There haven't been any individuals in that group that have reached out to us thus far. And then, we have individuals who are in mandatory quarantine and I'll let Dr. Daskalakis speak to that.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Currently, individuals who are under mandatory quarantine really fall into two categories – individuals who are – actually, three – individuals who have active COVID-19 disease. So, they're in isolation. There are also individuals who are close contacts of a COVID-19 case. Those are also individuals who are on quarantine. Then additionally, it is a dwindling population of individuals returning from Wuhan, China. So, currently, there is no one who meets that criteria.

Question: And what’s the universe? How many people are in quarantine, mandatory versus voluntary?

Mayor: If there’s any – let me pause you guys. It’s a very, very fair question. If you are 100 percent sure you have all the up-to-date facts, give them. If not, we should get back shortly.

Commissioner Barbot: So, we have the two individual – sorry, we have the two individuals that we have identified earlier as having a travel nexus to Iran.

Mayor: If there's any – let me pause you guys. It's a very, very fair question. If you are 100 percent sure you have all the up to date facts, give them, if not, we should get back shortly.

Commissioner Barbot: So we have the two individual – sorry – we have the two individuals that we have identified earlier as having a travel nexus to Iran. And in addition to that we have a number that changes on a daily basis in terms of returning passengers from the five affected countries, China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, and now Japan. And so that's a fluid number that we can get back to you on. I think - yeah, we'll get back to you on that correct number.

Question: I’m just sorry, one last follow up. How often are those unannounced spot checks that you mentioned yesterday?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: During the period of quarantine? They're done a couple of times a week.

Question: Is there a nexus with the 42-year-old man in Nassau County who was diagnosed with COVID in New York City? [Inaudible].

Mayor: I have not heard – haven't heard on that one. If there is a nexus, do we know anything yet?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Which person in in Westchester?

Question: [Inaudible], in Long Island, in Nassau County. The Governor today said that there was a 42-year-old man who tested positive and you're looking to see if there's a nexus or you know that there is [inaudible]?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: We’ll have to follow up. Usually what will happen is they will reach out to our disease detectives to have a conversation. So I'm sure that those are happening. But we'll follow up,

Question: Can someone on the panel clarify how many tests New York City has, if you're running low and also the type of test if it's the one developed in Albany or if it’s a CDC test?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So currently we have enough tests to test around a thousand people. The test that we're currently using is the kit that was shipped by the Centers for Disease Control. We have not brought the New York State - New York City Cooperative Test onboard yet.

Question: What is the nexus between the New Jersey case and New York City –

Mayor: That’s what we’re waiting to find out. So we do believe from the initial information, there will be, for example, someone who works here, you know, that's kind of thing. But it's really, literally was breaking before I came in here. So we know enough to say, we assume it's someone who's been in New York City a lot and there may be that kind of contact. We've got to get our disease detectives connecting with the New Jersey health officials and map that quickly.

Question: Do we know anything about their travel [inaudible]?

Mayor: We don't know anything yet, but we'll know more in the next few hours. Go ahead, Rich.

Question: So I may have missed this but the two teachers who came back from vacation, were they in a school when the decision was made to test them or have they not been back into the school building or did they voluntarily say, you know, we ought to be tested? What happened?

Mayor: Richard, correct me. I think both have been home for a period of time –

Chancellor Carranza: They have been at home. Yes, correct.

Mayor: So the whole time since they got back? So just let me do this fact point is we're going to really always try and shower you guys with facts. Winter break, Saturday, February 15th to Sunday, February 23rd, I did math, 11 full days, including today, since then, not including February 23rd, which would be the day they either were traveling back or they were already back. But if you want, the cleanest interpretation has been at least 11 days for anyone who was overseas on winter break. Maybe more in some cases. So in this case or these two cases, Richard, did they go, did they stay home since to the best your understanding or do we need to confirm that?

Chancellor Carranza: So the best of my recollection, they were in school for one day, did not feel well, went home and have not been back in school since.

Mayor: Okay. We're going to confirm that. We'll get you the exact details on that and we'll get you the results on their tests. Erin?

Question: Can we get some more clarity on the Commissioner's orders? So this is – you can order testing under what circumstances?

Mayor: Can I just confirm too colleagues? Is it online yet? When we'll be online momentarily? Okay. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Erin.

Question: What are the circumstances under which you can order a city employee to take a test?

Mayor: I’ll start and the Commissioner will get into more it. It begins with if they have been to one of the countries, they're experiencing the crisis within the timeframe, and especially if they are symptomatic. But again, it gives the Commissioner the right to make that determination. Simply being symptomatic is sufficient. You and this – I’m just going to leave it on.

Commissioner Barbot: That's absolutely right, Mr. Mayor.

Question: Okay. If they refuse to do that, you said they will be quarantined. Is that a mandatory quarantine?

Commissioner Barbot: Mandatory quarantine.

Question: Okay. And you said they would face discipline. Is that termination or at the type of discipline specified?

Mayor: It depends on the employee. But the point is there – we want to be very clear, look, I come at this with a positive spirit. I think everyone would want to follow the Commissioner's orders in the name of their own health, their family's health, and the people they serve and come contact with. But I'm just trying to be very straightforward from the beginning. This is not optional. This is required.

Question: Is there a response to [inaudible]. Have there been city workers who have not wanted to take the test?

Mayor: This is - given the severity of what we're talking about here, the situation we're facing, we want to be very clear from the beginning that it's not optional. So we're just, I'm a believer that if you make clear as consequences, it helps to people to understand.

Question: And then finally, is there a reason to city workers specifically as opposed to this applying to anyone? Especially with the authority you have.

Mayor: The city workers in this case, the healthcare workers, obviously I think that says it speaks for itself. These are folks who we need and we need them to be healthy – and if they are in contact with other people, we cannot take a risk if they might spread disease. First responders, exactly the same point. Educators, additional sensitivity cause they come in contact with children even though again this is not a disease that seems to focus if you will on children. Those three areas to us just made total sense to delineate. We have the option of going further into the general public in different ways, if we need to. It’s something we're going to assess day to day, hour to hour. Go ahead. Ashley, did you have? No? Yes.

Question: I wanted to ask. We have a lot of larger events coming up. It's getting warmer. What's the threshold for deciding whether or not to cancel those events? And a follow up question, there are in the city like the South Bronx where their high rates of childhood asthma and do you have specific plans for areas like that?

Mayor: The first point this is something we're asking ourselves regularly. We're watching and again I think to be very clear, the last 24 hours have changed the dynamic with the first community spread. So previously we went quite a while where the only the only impact we were feeling was directly related to travel or even for quite a while we weren't feeling any impact. Right? So now with communities spread being established, it will be a constant discussion of whether we need to start canceling events. We are not there yet today just based on what we're seeing, the limits we're seeing, the numbers on the testing and the high rate of negatives. We're not there. It is a constant conversation and this is the group right here that will be making that decision together.

Question: [Inaudible]?

Mayor: There’s not a formal rubric that – I mean we're talking about a lot of factors but I will ask the question, is there a, a model rubric from either CDC or World Health Organization?

Commissioner Barbot: There isn't. Generally we take into consideration the severity of the illness along with how far wide it has spread.

Question: So would there be like parameters, let's say indoor events as opposed to outdoors activities –

Mayor: Again, I want to clarify in theory, yes. But I want us to – I don't want a respectfully – I don't want to see reporting that says we're planning on closing events when we're not. We're not planning that yet. If we get to that point, we're going to specify to the maximum extent possible what sorts of things we're concerned about and what we are not, but we're certainly not there yet. Your other question was about asthma. I mentioned that we are concerned for sure. I'm someone who has mild asthma but for folks who have severe asthma, especially in particularly kids with severe asthma, we have a real concern there. Again, we do not have a single a nexus to the schools vis-a-vis kids at this point. We don't have a single symptomatic kid we know of, but we are watching very carefully. If we saw something else in schools, the ability to identify any kid with severe asthma and I think that's a case where we would say if we see a school situation, we're concerned about, we want to get those kids isolated from that situation very quickly. That's just my common sense answer. But would you guys like to add?

Commissioner Barbot: What I would add is that this is, as we have said in a previous press conference, a good time for individuals who have chronic underlying diseases to make sure that they're up to date on their refills and not to take for granted that, you know, they can go to the pharmacy next week or the week after. Want to make sure that in the event that someone is symptomatic and they haven't gotten their flu shot or I want to – I need to get my daily plugin, it's still not too late - that they have the medication that they need at their disposal. And one of the things that we've also been talking about is not only individuals, let's say that child with asthma, but especially older individuals who have chronic underlying diseases. We want to make sure that they are up to date with, you know, their doctor's phone numbers so that they have the easiest possible access to care.

Mayor: Can I do two things on that? One, would you remind people that that a site, you can go to the find out where you can get a flu shot?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, you can go to our website nyc.gov/health and there is a flu tracker on there and it'll tell you, or you can go – call 3-1-1 to get the pharmacy nearest you or the nearest H + H facility to you that where you can get immunization.

Mayor: I want to come back on the prescription point too. I want to make this a little vivid for everyone. So I think everyone understands here we are encouraging calm and we're encouraging people to do the things they can do. But here's something where I want people to feel a little more urgency, which is on the prescriptions. A very, very different reality but I remember vividly in the days after Hurricane Sandy because of the disruption that occurred, pharmacies were closed. People could not get meds they needed. We're not in that kind of situation, but we all can imagine a crisis in which there's basic disruption of supply chain. That's not hard to imagine in this case at some point. So please all New Yorkers get your prescriptions filled now. Protect yourself, protect your family, do not hesitate. Get them while you can get them. That's just smart for everyone. I hope we never get to a point where it's a consideration, but everything that people lay in now is in their interests. Go ahead.

Question: So how are you addressing a small business concerns? You know, we talked about Chinatown, but I'm hearing that restaurants were let's say, groups or organizations that have been scheduling events, you know, large dinners that they're canceling on the restaurants. And so this has been happening –

Mayor: Yeah, Juliet. I mean, I want to be clear about the sort of the serenity prayer here. What we can control and what we can't. And when what we're doing that I think is helping is telling people the facts very transparently and reminding people that, you know, life is going on in New York City. And I've been plenty of places in the city in the last few days where life looks pretty normal, actually. School attendance, we just, Richard and I just discussed this today in New York City school attendance is higher than it was the same day a year ago. So New Yorkers, all of you have to obviously report a lot of information, including information that causes people some concern. New Yorkers are pretty tough, pretty resilient. They're generally going about their business. Some organizations, you're absolutely right, are making choices, some travel related changes, et cetera. But I think the best thing we can all do is remind people, keep going about your lives, you know, keep going out and patronizing those businesses. We'll tell you the second we think you should change your behavior. You're - and again, we're constantly communicating here, but right now go about your business, Erin.

Question: For Chancellor Carranza, there's been some requests to provide on private schools with sanitation materials so they can do the deep cleaning or disinfectants is, is that anything you planned to do?

Mayor: So our approach to this is we are here to serve the children in New York City. All children. So we are working with our nonpublic schools. Our charter schools, our early community-based, early education centers. They're getting all of the guidance that we're providing to the Department of Education. They're getting the same guidance. We have liaison is working with them. We are also providing cleaning supplies to all of those organizations and networks as well. And we are just considering them all part of the children of New York City. So we are working very closely with them.

Question: Yes. Two questions. First is do the two cases today, are those New York City residents or are they being treated in New York City?

Mayor: Residents.

Commissioner Barbot: Residents.

Mayor: Residents, and being treated in New York City. Oh, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Question: What is being done to address the homeless population who may not have as much access –

Mayor: [Inaudible] different times, so a lot of your colleagues have heard this. I'll reiterate again. We have an extensive outreach initiative, which has nothing to do with coronavirus. It's been going on for three years. But the positive outcome of that is that the vast majority of our street homeless folks, we have very specific information on our outreach workers, know them pretty personally know if there's particular challenges that might be pertinent here, are talking to them as the maximum stand possible regularly. If anyone has symptoms, we're going to make healthcare available. If they have symptoms that indicate an immediate danger and they're not acting on it themselves, we have the power to have them come involuntarily and get treatment.

Question: Thanks. Will the police be bringing in the homeless population –

Mayor: If necessary, yes, but what I don't think we have a single instance of that yet, but we have that power and ready to use it.

Question: As far as the Madison students or any others who have been on school trips, have they been asked to quarantine? Are they doing that?

Mayor: The Madison students right now are asymptomatic. The staff is asymptomatic and they're almost at the end of the 14 days as well. So I think we have a little unusual situation there where the information flowed when it did. But I'll check with our doctors here. I think at this point it wouldn't be a time to start a quarantine unless we saw something problematic.

Commissioner Barbot: That’s correct.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Commissioner Barbot: No need for it.

Mayor: Yes.

Question: In terms of the city's messaging for people who do develop symptoms, I know you've been saying people should go to their doctors, but a lot of doctor's offices are saying that they don't – they're not equipped to handle coronavirus and they should go to the ER, but then ERs are saying that people should not go unless they need urgent care, so what can you clarify –

Mayor: So, I think we have a little unusual situation there where the information flowed when it did. But I'll check with our doctors here, I think at this point it wouldn't be a time to start a quarantine unless we saw something problematic.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Commissioner Barbot: That’s correct. No need for it.

Question: In terms of the City's messaging for people who do develop symptoms, I know you've been saying people should go to their doctors, but a lot of doctor's offices are saying that they don't – they're not equipped to handle coronavirus and they should go to the ER, but then ERs are saying that people should not go unless they need urgent care. So, what –

Mayor: I want to pause you for a moment, respectfully. I don't know who these people are who are saying what and I don't know how widespread it is. Our message is abundantly clear – get to health care. If you call your doctor and your doctor says, I can't see you, which I would question that doctor's approach to begin with, but then, yeah, you go to Urgent Care, you go to go to a Health and Hospitals clinic or hospital. Go to health care wherever it is readily available. If you can't find it, call 3-1-1, which we've said incessantly, we'll tell you where to go. So, your default is, come to one of our facilities immediately.

Question: Regarding – I just want to clarify, you were saying that you can test 1,000 people. Does this mean, heaven forbid, we get to a point where there are a 1,000 [inaudible] who need testing, at that point there's no longer the availability to do testing. And related to that, federal funding – Mr. Mayor, you were talking about the need for the federal government and step in to ensure we've got enough funding for tests. Can you maybe tie –

Mayor: Funding – I actually feel better about the funding than I do about the testing. The, you know, Congress is acting, which is great and I really want to commend Senator Schumer who immediately noted how extensive this crisis was and raised the bar on the federal funding request. The President said days ago in his remarks that there would be reimbursement to localities. So, that part actually has been much more coherent than in some other situations. The test capacity, right now, we need to get to the point where we can do hundreds a day, every day, maybe even more at some point, and we're not there yet. We are not – now, you've seen the numbers develop. I mean, right now, you know, with four positive and 26 negative from the beginning of this crisis, we're still in a – we want to stay there – we're in a very, very minimal dynamic at this moment, but we know it could move very quickly. We've seen that – not anywhere, we've seen that in advanced industrialized nations like Italy and South Korea where the numbers jumped in a matter of days. So, we've got to get to more testing capacity. We can't do that alone. We need the federal government.

Commissioner Barbot: What I would add is that we're also partnering with our academic and commercial labs and our understanding is that we will have some commercial lab capacity starting next week. And so that'll help a lot.

Question: [Inaudible] about mandatory isolation. I assume this is just – maybe, I shouldn't assume, but I assume it's just a term. It's not like you're – has anyone refuse to be isolated?

Commissioner Barbot: So, it depends on the individuals that we're talking about. You know, Dr. Daskalakis referred to how we monitor individuals that are on mandatory home isolation where we do random checks to make sure that they're being compliant and that the level of monitoring that we do really has to do with level of risk. And so, there are, for example, individuals who may be returning from one of the affected countries where they are perfectly asymptomatic. We are asking them to be on home isolation. That doesn't mean they can't go out if they are asymptomatic. It does mean that we want them to minimize outdoor exposure. And the minute they have any kind of symptoms, cough, no matter how mild it is, a temperature, or feeling unwell, we want them to call us or their provider to get them to treatment as early as possible and get them tested. I mean, one of the things that Mayor has been really clear about is we want to make sure that New Yorkers who need a task get tested as soon as possible.

Mayor: But I think, just following through the question, I don't think we have an instance of someone refusing mandatory or voluntary. I think that – because remember, before it ever became an issue for New York City, there have been weeks of people being pretty damn scared by what they were seeing, particularly in China. My sense here is we have a high level of adherence, a high level of interest in following the rules right now.

Go ahead.

Question: Is the city helping out folks financially who are on this mandatory 14 day – or, recommended 14-day isolation?

Mayor: That's not part of what we do to the best of my knowledge.

Commissioner Barbot: So, we are working with our sister agencies to make sure that we put in place what we call wraparound services, which include, you know, if someone is having mental health issues, if someone is have having housing issues, we have measures in place in case someone does end up needing financial support. Honestly, we haven't come to that situation yet.

Question: What kind of financial support do you think agencies might be able to provide?

Commissioner Barbot: So we are working for example, with our Department of Social Services to determine like for example, we've already helped people enroll in insurance, right? So that's one way to help them financially. And our DSS partners are also working with us to figure out all the different ways that New Yorkers might need help.

Mayor: Right, but not income replacement if that's an issue. I just want to be really clear because I think sometimes I understand the questions, but there's the assumption that the City government does what the State government does, federal government does, charitable organizations, et cetera, et cetera, all wrapped in one. There are limits.

Question: [Inaudible].

Mayor: No, I know. What I'm saying – I think a lot of times just over many, many situations, there's sometimes a little bit of drift of what the City can and should do. Absolutely we are going to help people. Absolutely we're going to look for every service that we can provide, some of which has financial ramification. Income is their own reality. Hopefully employers are going to be sensitive.

Question: It’s been said that dogs and cats, your pets cannot catch this virus. Can they carry and other animals like mice, rats and pigeons, can they carry this and give it to humans?

Commissioner Barbot: I'm going to defer to Dr. Daskalakis on that one.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: We think that – we know that pets are fine. There are mixed data.

Mayor: Did you say fine? I couldn’t hear you.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: They're fine. They are safe. So I think there's always data about shedding and identifying viruses. But so far nothing convincing that would make us concerned about our furry friends, so I think our cats and dogs are fine.

Mayor: Finish up on this side and I'll go back over to that side. Go ahead.

Question: Sorry, just to be clear about the students who traveled to Italy, not just the Madison students, but any students who've come back in the last 14 days. No one is showing symptoms –

Mayor: There’s 1.1 million public school students. We don't have a single one we know of anywhere. Any kind of student who is showing a symptom.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No, I just want to make sure you're hearing this first point. Anybody, if we get any more information about nexus, we want to know it and act on it immediately. But just wanted you to hear the overall point. Did you get – what was, did you have another question?

Question: I just want to make sure no students have been asked to quarantine.

Mayor: No, go ahead.

Question: Okay. So I just talked to many small business owners in Chinatown [inaudible]. They are very thankful for the Mayor and Corey Johnson comimg to Chinatown to have dinner to promote business. But what else? The City or the City Council can do, like financial aid or you know, give them some – the sales, to reduce the sales credit or something sales taxes reduced maybe? Any possible way to help?

Mayor: I think there's clearly we're very concerned about these small businesses and we're concerned about small businesses beyond that are starting to feel the effect around the city. We don't have an easy answer right now. I want to keep encouraging people to go out and live their lives and patronize those businesses. But we're certainly going to look at anything that we can do that would be helpful.

Question: [Inaudible] I am sorry if I'm making you repeat yourself. I know at the beginning you said that the numbers looked really good. I mean, pretty good.

Mayor: Wait, because I want to make sure we are speaking the same language? Do you mean the overall testing numbers?

Question: Correct.

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Can you just, I just wanted you to put those in a little more context of how slowly this is spreading or if we should still expect to see some, some exponential –

Mayor: I think until 48 hours ago, if you just were gone by the numbers you would feel very, very good. I think the last 48 hours are sobering. You know, community spread is an entirely different ballgame and I don't want people to assume, I don't want people to overreact because this is going to be a day to day, hour to hour thing, which is why we're trying to constantly update you when we have information. Community spread is different. It makes it a lot harder for us to control the situation. That said, even though we now know it exists in New York City as a phenomenon, it is still striking that, you know, of a city of 8.6 million people in a crisis that’s been going on for six weeks or more. You know, four people who are positive and 26 who are negative. And we do have a handful of pending tests as well. But you know, that's striking in comparison to what you've seen some other places and I do think it is because people are heading the guidance, they're getting to care. We have obviously the most extensive health care apparatus anywhere on Earth. That's all helping us. But we're all very sober right now about what tomorrow could bring or the day after that.

Commissioner Barbot: I don't think any of us would be surprised to have more individuals identified who show no nexus to travel to the affected areas. And that's why it's really important for New Yorkers to take measures now that we hope they've been taking to heart. And those are very simple. It's washing your hands frequently, covering your mouth and your nose when you cough or you sneeze. And you know, I don't think I've made, I've sort of gone deep enough into why that's so important. Right? And the reason why we want people to wash their hands frequently because that's the way in which the virus can be introduced into your mouth, to your eyes. And those are the areas that are the easiest entry points for the virus. And so to the degree that New Yorkers, as I've said earlier, make alcohol based hand sanitizers. They're best friends if they don't have easy access to, you know, water sources. That's how they're going to keep themselves, their kids, their families and their communities, the safest. But again, we are in a situation where we are doing everything we can as the Mayor said to contain. However, we would not be surprised to see other cases of community transmission.

Mayor: Just to note what, we'll take some more, but I know the Speaker has a hearing starting at 3:30 and everyone here has to be a part of it, myself excluded. So, or almost everyone I think. So we're going to take some more but we need to wrap relatively soon. So it will be the last one on this side. Then we're going over all the way to the left and we'll take questions over there.

Question: I just want to clarify, the folks who are urging to self-isolate who had been to those five countries, is that you're asking, or you're telling them?

Mayor: Which category are you talking about here?

Question: Folks who have been to those five countries?

Mayor: Not the city employees? Overall?

Question: Overall, you're saying you're urging them or you're saying half to self-isolate and we're going to track if you do.

Commissioner Barbot: We are urging them to self-isolate.

Question: I know you said for now Mr. Mayor, people are doing the strict adherence to the rules, but I think we all know that there are folks who don't follow the rules. So what are the consequences if you're supposed to quarantine and you don't, are there fines? Will the police get involved? What are the consequences here?

Mayor: So let's just go over the basic protocols that exist in a case like this. And obviously again, I think a good way to think of this is we are climbing a ladder right now where we do see very good results on a voluntary level and we do see good overall dynamics in the city. But we, you know, this is indicative, so you saw communities spread in the last 24 hours or so. You now see a Commissioner's order. I'm indicating there could be a lot more coming behind this. We're going to get more and more mandatory as needed. But today, let's clarify where we are. And then clarify the kind of history that is existed around previous quarantines.

Commissioner Barbot: So as we've said earlier, there hasn't been anyone on mandatory quarantine that has tried to, the term of art is elope. And you know, I think it's important to note. I think it's important to note that as the Department of Health, we have taken every measure possible to make it as easy as possible for these individuals to remain in quarantine. Above and beyond that, because we communicate with them on a regular basis, on a daily basis for those that are in mandatory quarantine, we develop a relationship with these individuals. And so it hasn't come to that, but if we were in a different scenario, you know, the powers that we have could include you know, the police powers that we have. No one wants it to come to that. And so that's why we take the investment and the time to put in those supportive services.

Mayor: Yes, Ashley?

Question: Two questions, first with the two people who – two current patients, most recent patients, a 40-something-year-old man and 80-something-year-old woman, I think to some people it might be pretty worrisome that you all haven't identified the source of their infection. I'm wondering if you all have any hypotheses that you are evaluating or any kind of reasonable suspects and that I'd like to ask the question after that.

Mayor: So I'm going to start as the layman here. I want to caution, your question's fair, but I think it's and I don't say this disrespectfully, I think it's two days late. I think community spread, if I'm understanding the doctors, you can't any longer find the specific origin. This is the whole reality. We started with a crisis where presumably the only way you could get this disease is someone came specifically from China. Then it turned into someone came from China, South Korea, Italy, et cetera. Now it's past all that. It's just out in our communities to some extent and we are not in the practice of being able to say, here's where you go back to the origin point. What we would do at a case like that with those two individuals we're doing right now is say, okay, who are the people that you had enough direct contact with? And that's the disease detective work, which we talked about a lot yesterday. You know, to reasonably have a possibility of having spread this. The object lesson is the Westchester family where the father manifested and therefore there was the mother and the two kids. That was a very, very obvious universe. The other obvious universe was the law firm. So what I think will happen from now on is not a search for the origin but a search person by person for their network that we then need to follow up on to make sure if they need testing they get testing.

Question: [Inaudible] you had to kind of look at that for the two of those individuals?

Mayor: No we said it’s, literally breaking them. It's, you know, this is only in the last hours. And so the disease detectives are working with them and their families right now or their families really because both of them are intensive care to map those contacts. And then just so I want to go back to the Yeshiva example cause it's the live other good example. The student from the Westchester family, undergrad at Yeshiva. The disease detectives identified who are those people we need to follow up on. Two people, in fact, roommate, best friend got to them. They've gotten tested, they came back negative, repeat, repeat, repeat with every new case, that's what we're doing now.

Question: On to that second question. What's your advice to people who can't afford to take the time off? Either their employees won't allow them, they can't afford to lose the days at work. What's your advice to them?

Mayor: Look, if anyone is sensitive to how much people struggle to make a living and how even a loss of a day's pay can be very, very problematic. But this is beyond anything we normally deal with. The last time, remember there was a pandemic of this nature it was 11 years ago. This one is still, you know, this disease is still not fully understood. That is a fact. No cure, no vaccine. We cannot play around. So even if it means economic suffering, people cannot take a chance with this disease. If you're told to stay home you just have to stay home for yourself and for your family. For the good of everybody.

Question: I just wanted to confirm that the total universe of staffers at the school who have self-isolated or self-quarantined is the three teachers of whom traveled to Italy?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: I have two questions. This first one is in terms of the lawyer, I know it was said to you that he had gone to Israel a few days prior. Does that mean there’s a nexus there? Is there a search for a nexus there?

Mayor: We don’t think so. I'll start and you guys will jump in. We don't think it’s based on Israel. We think it's based on community, which is the first instance of community spread.

Commissioner Barbot: Right. His travel to Israel was in January, which is way beyond the incubation period.

Question: And the other question I had was about the disease detectives. You guys could go into a little bit of detail as to what that doorknob looks like? You know, are they checking temperature for instance. How long is their interaction with them? Whether it's –

Mayor: I'm sorry to interrupt. This is someone, they're talking to someone who we already have a concern about and they're talking about them to figure out who are the other people in their world that we next need to get to?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So they are called disease detectives because it's what, it's exactly what they do. It's they investigate, they will interview either the primary individual who has a disease to identify what their, what their motion is. They will also talk if they cannot speak to that primary person, to family and friends who are identified. They look at institutions where the individual has been and don't just say where have they been, but track them. So for instance, for school, they'll look at what a class schedules are and also see if we can identify seating scenarios depending on who was around, if they were on a and others sort of meetings again, they do the same things. So it's really, it's very intensive. And also always evolving. So, you know, we'll, I think the Mayor described it exactly, that you identify one person, you tell their friends, their friends tell their friends and you get more and more sort of information about the circle of folks that you need to be concerned about or potentially not concerned about depending on exposure.

Question: And how about the folks that have already had a positive coronavirus [inaudible] the days when a detective goes to their house. What's the protocol there?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: It's actually more than just spot visits. So for the individuals who are admitted to the hospital, the answer is very straight forward. They're continuously monitored. So that's very straightforward. It's the individuals who are on home isolation. We do spot checks to make sure they're complying to their mandatory quarantine. But additionally we reach out to them daily to make sure that they're feeling well and that their needs are addressed. And so we really are in effect case managing them from a distance and then also spot checking them to make sure that they're compliant.

Question: And how have they progressed to today? Like has – I know you said that they're checking in daily, so are they better or from the first case – are they better today as –

Mayor: So again, reminding you – and again, I'll make sure I'm articulating a lot, but I want everyone also listen carefully because the lawyer we said yesterday, the lawyer is already getting better. Thank God. Not entirely out of the woods, but getting better. The Yeshiva student better.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Mayor: Right. The health worker who was in Iran better.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Mayor: So, you know, again, this is this, as we're learning this disease that there is, you know, some, it's not just a one way street, right? We are seeing people come through it and get better and we're done with and we're moving on to other people now. We've got two folks in particular now though, we're worried about. The two new ones today, but the previous two actually are doing very well right now.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I’ll just let that one in because I think it’s important. Doctors, what does better mean?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: So, for the two individuals in home isolation, there’s not a lot of difference between sick and better at the moment –

Mayor: Just clarify – you mean husband and wife who came back from Iran.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Husband and wife – correct.

Mayor: One is, again – careful, one is a positive, one is a negative we’re treating as a positive.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: That is correct.

Mayor: So their status right now – their health?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: For a lack of a better word, they’re doing fabulously well.

Mayor: Okay. The lawyer, what exactly can you tell us?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: We can tell you that he is still in the intensive care unit, but that he’s stable, doing better.

Mayor: Let me go to the last two. Rich and then Erin – go ahead.

Question: So, the two teachers that came back from vacation from Italy are now being tested, they went into school one day, they didn’t feel well –

Mayor: We’re going to confirm if it was one day or more, but it was a limited period of time for sure. They had been out of school for a period of time and we’re going to get you – so, I want to do – on them – is wrap it all in a bow, get the test results, get the school, all the facts, but I’m going to give you that. We also, as I said, we have some notifications to do. We’ll get that to you either later on today or tomorrow.

Go ahead –

Question: [Inaudible] can you clarify, does the paid sick law apply if you are recommended isolation, if you’re not just sick?

Mayor: Certainly, it would count under the five days, for sure. Right? I mean, that’s a no-brainer.

Question: And as far as the guidance to travelers, that’s a new guidance today that everyone coming from those countries [inaudible] and could you just list the countries again [inaudible] –

Mayor: Sure, absolutely. We track the CDC on China, Iran, Italy, South Korea. We disagree with the CDC on Japan. It is on our list, we think Japan should be treated the same as the other four. We think they should put it on their list too.

Okay. And we will see you again soon.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, nexus to New York, but we are waiting to get more details on what that means. We will have that to you as soon as we have it.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

2020-03-06 NYC Mayor de Blasio Brian Lehrer

Brian Lehrer: It’s the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. And we begin as we usually do on Fridays with our weekly Ask the Mayor segment, my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our phones are open at 2-1-2-4-3-3-WNYC. That's 2-1-2-4-3-3-9-6-9-2. Or you can tweet a question. Just use the hashtag #AskTheMayor. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, Brian.

Lehrer: So, today, I'm going to begin by asking you questions about the coronavirus for the first stretch and then we'll take phone calls on that or anything from our listeners. So any updates on the number of cases this morning?

Mayor: Yeah, let me give you the latest. We have one new case. This is a man in his 50’s. When I say new case, just listen to the whole narrative. A man in his 50’s who lives in Manhattan, he has mild symptoms at this moment. We're testing his family and the disease detectives are following up on his contact. So he has tested positive. He is associated with, in some way and we'll get the details later on, with the lawyer who lives in Westchester County and worked at a law firm in Midtown. But again, so when Brian, I've been doing this obviously with a lot your colleagues in the media, really important to hear the exact reality. This man in his 50’s has tested positive but has very mild symptoms, which is a very good sign. We'll know more shortly on his family and any other close contacts.

Lehrer: I saw the stat yesterday that more than 2,700 people in New York City are being quarantined or self-quarantined and aggressively monitored. Can you explain how the number got that big?

Mayor: Well, remember there have been the different guidances given out by the CDC, by the Health Department now for weeks and weeks. And that's particularly related to folks who traveled. And what we're finding so far and we're going to constantly update the community on this, is that people are taking that quarantine very seriously. But remember you go into quarantine, whether you have symptoms or not based on the travel guidance out of an abundance of caution. And what we are seeing in the vast majority of cases of course, is that people, you know, go those two weeks, stay out of circulation, don't evince symptoms and get back to their lives. If they do evince symptoms, if they are in any way symptomatic, we then go and test them right away.

Lehrer: What does self – what does the term aggressively monitored mean?

Mayor: It means checking in with them regularly. First of all, when anyone goes into quarantine and we know about it we're giving them guidance up front on what to do, how to approach the quarantine, what approach they should take to their health, how to deal with anybody else in their life. And to know where to call with our Health Department if they have symptoms. Because then we want to act right away. But we also have contact information, reach out regularly, check on them to see if they need anything, to confirm that they are abiding by the quarantine. I think it's important, Brian, there's a lot of concern out there obviously, but I do think people need to recognize this.

Now this is about, you know, I remember my first press conference was January 24th. And on January 24th we said this thing is coming to New York City. It is not a matter of if but when and we need testing capacity from the federal government. That's six weeks ago. People for six weeks in this country have been bombarded with information about coronavirus. In fact, really even beyond the impact of the disease, people have been really, really put on high, high, high alert.

So I think what we're finding, we'll keep checking this – that people who are quarantined are taking it pretty damn seriously because they've been told so many times by believable sources that this really matters and that they will put themselves and others in danger if they don't abide by the quarantine. What I'm seeing so far is that people are taking that real seriously because they're convinced that they have to.

Lehrer: You announced two new cases yesterday, I believe a man in his 40’s and a woman in her 80’s, now in intensive care units in Manhattan and Brooklyn hospitals. But you were uncertain how they became infected because neither had traveled to a known effected area or had exposure to other known patients, like you said, the man in his 50’s who you're announcing today had a connection to the New Rochelle lawyer. So do you know any more about those two people today? We've heard quickly about the New Rochelle attorney’s links to a number of people, but not so far in these two cases announced yesterday.

Mayor: Well, first of all, later on today, I'll be holding a press availability where we're going to give full updates on every case. So I will have more to say in a few hours, but on the general point, look, we've been saying our health experts have been saying community spread now means, which is only this week we've experienced it. That you will not always be able to trace it back to a specific origin. Once it's out in the community. People can and will contract coronavirus and we will not be able to know the origin. We will be able to know who they have been in close contact with so that we can go and follow up.

I want to use the Yeshiva University example. The young man, the student at Yeshiva University, the son of the Westchester lawyer. He tested positive. He had very mild symptoms. He's doing great, but our disease detectives from the Department of Health found two close contacts. A roommate and a close friend went to those folks, tested them. They both tested negative. So we're going to be constantly doing that. Looking for every opportunity to look for who needs more help, who needs to be brought in for testing? Who needs a medical support? That process so far is going well, but that's a different matter than knowing exactly where the origin was. We're not, bluntly, if we can find it, we want to know it of course. If we can't, it doesn't change our basic strategy.

Lehrer: About the New Rochelle attorney who works near Grand Central. I read that reporters were asking if he traveled on Metro-North because a neighbor told the Daily News that he had, but the City or the State have not confirmed or denied this. Can you now?

Mayor: I can't, but I keep saying, we're going to keep explaining to the people in the city, the latest understanding of how the disease is transmitted. We're going to constantly update the understanding of that. Because this is a literally new disease in the world. It's been around essentially for three months. We are getting – the international medical community is trying to understand it all the time. Obviously trying to get to a vaccine and a cure.

But the reason I say that, Brian, is we'll tell you what we understand about transmission. We'll constantly update it. The one thing that's clear is if he traveled on Metro-North based on the information we have now that's not overly telling, it's not overly indicative. Because you know, if someone's on the same train car as another person, that does not, from what we know so far, create a dynamic where you have an opportunity to catch this disease. It's just a different reality. What we're seeing – look at what we're seeing so far. It's people in close contact. And again, we'll keep updating that. But what we've seen so far, facts on the ground, it is people in close contact. And so if we get information about where someone traveled, great. But what I am concerned is Brian, so what then what then do people extrapolate out of it? If this man took Metro-North a week ago, for example, or two weeks ago, I'm not sure what that tells us that's usable. If we find something usable, we will tell people.

Lehrer: And I guess especially if you're not having a lot of other random people show up coronavirus positive just from having been on any kind of public transportation, which so far I guess we're not.

Mayor: No, we're doing more and more testing and when I give the update later day, you'll see, and I know all your colleagues in the media are listening, you will see more test results than you've seen in previous days because we said where we're going with a containment strategy. We're going with a maximum testing strategy and so we have greater numbers today than we've had any previous day. We'll have the final update again in a few hours. But here's what I want to really emphasize that this is very important for your listeners. We all understand, I hope we all understand what coronavirus is and isn't. It can be very serious for a person with a compromised immune system with a serious respiratory problem, you know, with other medical challenges. But overwhelmingly what we're seeing is for younger folks, for healthier folks, it is a quickly passing, mild disease.

No one should underestimate it. No one should underestimate the fact that you, for example, if the Yeshiva university young man came out fine, but we want to be sensitive to in any case, you know, if he was in contact with other people who might be more compromised, that's exactly what disease detectives look for. That's a real issue. But for most people, 80 percent of people who get coronavirus experience it somewhat like a cold or flu. 20 percent experience more serious reality, but overwhelmingly come through okay. It clearly can be fatal for folks who are already compromised. We take that very, very seriously.

But here's the other point about what we're seeing with the approach. If you have the symptoms – so, first of all, if you've traveled to the areas that are most effected or people in your life that you're close to have traveled to those areas, and you have those cold and flu type symptoms, get to a doctor immediately. If you don't know where to get doctor, call 3-1-1, we’ll tell you where to go. You can go to one of our public hospitals or clinics. Then what happens, Brian – I think it's important for people understand – as you go in, the doctor checks the symptoms, if it confirms those are the symptoms that might correlate to coronavirus, they give you a test that I believe it's called BioFire is one of the phrases for the test that immediately identifies, I think it's 29 more common diseases in that family and if you have one of those 29 it's not coronavirus. If you don't have one of those 29, then there's a good question, okay, of course, especially if there's a travel nexus and you don't have one of those other more typical diseases, we want you tested immediately for coronavirus.

Lehrer: Let me follow up on that in a couple of ways. One, you just said something that you said on last week's show that wound up confusing people. When you said get to a doctor if you think you have the symptoms, a lot of other people seem to say don't just show up at a doctor's office because you might be contagious. At least call ahead before you go and don't just show up. Unless you're really in emergency condition. What's the –

Mayor: This is deadly serious stuff.

Lehrer: Absolutely.

Mayor: I don’t mean to overstate. When you say I'm confusing people, I'm going to take a little offense to that. I am the ultimate voice here taking the information from our health authorities and giving the people in New York City one message. So let me give it again. And what I said was the guidance, period. I'm sorry to be heavy on your brother –

Lehrer: It’s alright.

Mayor: But this is the way it is. Get to a doctor. Of course we prefer, and I want you to hear this very important nuance. If you can call first, inform the doctor of your situation so they can be prepared. If you can actually get through to the right person, of course, we prefer that. That is the optimal situation. Please, if you can do that, do that. But here's why the guidance does not end with that. A lot of us have had the experience of trying to get through to a doctor's office.
We can't get through it. We can't get through to the right person. The person we talked to doesn't have the right information because you know, the doctor's busy, whatever it may be. I don't want someone sitting around and waiting, you know, an hour, two hours, six hours, a day, two days because they can't get to the right person. If you don't know where to call, if you can't get through to the right person, just get to health care. This is the decision that we came to with our public health experts. That it is a much better bet to get the health care.

The minute you arrive here is really clear guidance. If you arrive at any place, a doctor's office, a clinic, an urgent care, an emergency room, the first words out of your mouth have to be, I'm here because I'm concerned I may have coronavirus because I have these symptoms and especially if there's a travel nexus immediately identified. I traveled to one of the countries, my spouse traveled to one of the countries, my child did, whatever it is, put that information up front. They will know immediately what to do to isolate you in that situation but do not hesitate to get the care because what we're trying to do – this is a containment strategy that depends on very rapidly getting people to evaluation and testing so we can rule out people, which is most folks so far, and then rule in the folks who need to be immediately acted on. If you go to a medical facility and you announce your situation, they will know how to properly isolate you, put a mask on you, whatever they need to do. But if you don't go and get care, to me, that's a much more problematic scenario because then someone is making their own decisions out there, potentially coming in contact with a lot of people. That's what I will not – that's what I do not accept as a good course of action. I want people getting in front of professionals.

Lehrer: Here's a question from a listener via Twitter who came back from Japan and says, got back from Japan 10 days ago, but can't be tested as I have no symptoms. This might be justified - they write – but I'd like to know why. It sounds like this person is seeking a test because of simply having been in Japan but has no symptoms. What would you tell them?

Mayor: Okay, and this one sort of - again anyone who needs information can call 3-1-1, just want to clarify that. Anyone that needs a test can call 3-1-1 and get literally told, here's exactly where you go. And again, assuming they do meet the criteria for a test, but certainly anyone can get to health care by via 3-1-1. The basic guidance on travel is once you have been, again, and I'm going to say a really important asterisk here because we don't fully understand this disease, the guidance could change every day. I hope it won't, but it could. So when I'm doing what has been a daily briefing this week, my public health experts are some of the finest in the country, we'll constantly update if some of the facts, some of the specific strategies are changing, we will give people exactly what we know.

But here's what we know as of now, if you come back from one of the affected countries and you self-quarantine, and you've been back over 14 days, and you have no symptoms, then you're in the clear. If it has not manifested within 14 days, and you haven't been in contact with new people, and that's crucial. If your version of quarantine is you're coming in contact with a whole bunch of new people, that's a different discussion in a community spread dynamic. But let's say a real quarantine, literally isolate yourself from anyone else. You go through your 14 days, then you're in the clear because there's no source that has caused you to manifest the disease. And if that hasn't happened in 14 days based on what we know today, it's not going to happen.

Lehrer: Why have so few people been tested? I gather the city says it has the capacity to test a thousand people, but only about four dozen have been conducted so far from what I've read?

Mayor: So it's an excellent question. So remember we pleaded with the CDC to give us independent testing capacity. Previously, literally the test had to either go to Atlanta which is ludicrous or eventually the State lab was up and running, but that's still not, you know, here in the city and available to us the way we want. Only as of Monday afternoon this week were we able to do our own independent testing. So that's point one. We had a cumbersome system. Now we're in a heavy testing mode, a containment mode. You're going to see what the report later today, the numbers will jump up meaningfully. They're going to keep jumping up. We're trying to expand our testing capacity rapidly. We need support from the federal government to do that. When we get where we want to go, which is where we can do hundreds of people in a day, that's going to give me a lot more comfort that as we're telling people get to health care and we're identifying cases and are getting the test that we're going to have a much better sense of what's happening out there and how to address it.

So I expect Brian, just based on the testing capacity we have right now, that you're going to see a regular increase in the number of people being tested. When we get more capacity, we can do even more. But it really depends on, this is a participatory dynamic, if you will, it depends on people coming forward, getting the health care, particularly of again, that travel nexus is still really matters, it’s still a really intense predictor in this case, even with community spread. We got to get people to come in so then we can test everyone who should be tested.

Lehrer: I want to ask you about some measures that Seattle and King County there are taking with 31 cases as of yesterday. Not that many more than here. They're recommending –

Mayor: I’m sorry, I just want to clarify, we have right now, we're at six cases. They are at 31 - five - I'm sorry, five cases. There are 31.

Lehrer: Okay.

Mayor: I think it is and we're a city about that, I think something like 10 times larger than them, but go on.

Lehrer: Right. But including Westchester, I think it's 22 –

Mayor: Yeah, when you do metropolitan area, I hear you. Yeah.

Lehrer: And they're recommending in general, in the King County - which Seattle metropolitan area - that people not gather in groups of more than 10 if unnecessary. That people over 60, even if healthy and pregnant women, stay home as much as possible. That people work from home as much as possible. Later in the show, we'll talk to a Seattle reporter about how far this is going in the real world, but what are you advising or having now to think about advising regarding workplaces and theaters and other institutions where people gather suspending usual activities to whatever degree?

Mayor: We’re asking ourselves the question every day. And when I say ourselves, I mean some of the leading public health experts in the country and some of the leading emergency management experts in the country. Look, I have – it's not just a matter of guidance. I have emergency powers I could invoked where we can actually shut things down [inaudible] if we need to. I don't do that, wouldn't do that lightly, obviously. But here's the challenge, Brian – we were watching daily, hourly, the trajectory here. It's not the same as Washington State. I really want to emphasize that, Washington State had a situation where in a particular facility things got out of control and it took a long time to get a handle on it. And I don't blame them, they didn't have the kind of testing capacity that we've all been trying to get from the federal government. And obviously we're dealing with a new situation. The advance of the disease, there is, I think, patently different from what we're seeing here. Again, a much smaller area and it jumped up very quickly and I don't blame them for being very, very cautious. I'm watching for that moment where the experts and I come to a conclusion that it's smart to do that type of thing. I don't see it now. I see still very isolated cases and I see people coming through overwhelmingly, it doesn't mean everyone's going to come – very worried about the woman in her 80s, for example. But the lawyer from Westchester originally was in tough shape, has been getting better. We're getting a lot of negative tests, including from even family members of people who have it, live under the same roof. I'm trying to strike that balance, because, you know, there's a whole lot riding on this – there's everybody's lives, their livelihoods, and I really am sensitive to that. People, you know, have to pay the bills, and our entire economy – nothing's as important as health and safety. But I'm watching the numbers, I'm watching the trend line here and I don't think it's the moment to take that kind of action. That could be changed tomorrow, that could be changed next week, but, based on what we see now, Brian, here's the most important thing, and this is the irony – the solution, if you will, and every public health expert I've talked to says this – the solution is the basics. If you have symptoms, immediately get to health care. Wash your hands all the time, use alcohol-based hand sanitizer all the time, cough into your elbow or sneeze into your elbow – really basic stuff. If you think you're coming down with something, get away from other people. And again, everyone can be responsible here. If you think you're coming down with these kinds of symptoms and you don't know what it is yet, don't go out into the world. Don't go to work. Don't get on the subway. I know that's not a perfect reality, Brian, where everyone's going to hear my voice and do what I say, but I think more – this has been surround sound coverage of this crisis. More and more people are getting the message. Don't take a chance with your life or anyone else's life. Those people should stay home. So, Brian, I don't think it's about shutting down all workplaces or movie theaters and all, I think it's about people who may be vulnerable or people who may have symptoms acting accordingly. And I would say with parents, and I want to offer this proactively – as a parent, because parents have been asking this question – as of now, and we'll update people constantly. But as of now, we do not see this disease affecting children in a meaningful way, except – the one thing to be careful for is a child who has a compromised immune system or a child who has serious respiratory issues. There, we want parents to be very vigilant, obviously keep them away from anyone who has any kind of symptoms in that whole family. And with those children, we're going to put every school on alert to know exactly who those children are. And if we see anything that worries us, we might give a specific instruction about those children. But here's another example, Brian, we have 1.1 million school kids, as of last night – I'll check again today – but, as of last night, we did not have a single symptomatic child in our entire school system. So, you know, this is going to be day-to-day, hour-to-hour. I think the media and the public are seeing were constantly updating people. We want to be very transparent. But if we get to a point of something, a more serious action, you'll know about it right away. But I do not believe we’e here.

Lehrer: So, last question from me, for now, and then we'll get to a few phone calls in our remaining time. About schools – despite claims I've read that the DOE is providing supplies to all the schools, we continue to hear of bathrooms without basics like soap and towels, and custodians who have to squeeze extra cleaning into their existing hours. Can you guarantee that all schools will have what they need by a certain date and are following the cleaning protocols?

Mayor: Yeah, I first of all, it would be a service to me and to the people of New York City, if anyone knows of such a situation, I want to hear about it. So, call 3-1-1 and report any school facility that doesn't have soap and towels and we will, you know, we will rain holy hell on that school, with all due respect to them, because that's unacceptable. It's unacceptable anytime, it's especially unacceptable in this environment. Brian, I'm going to say it was very bluntly, this is not the 1970s – our school system has the resources to provide every school with towels and soap, and does. If any school is not making sure – I would put this on all school personnel to step up – if any school is not ensuring those things are present, they have a problem and we're going to deal with them. But it's not for lack of supplies. In fact, the Chancellor made clear yesterday that we are supplying – if a private school, religious school, charter school, any kind of school needs supplies, we have them, we'll get them to them. And the cleaning supplies are not mysterious, they are basic cleaning supplies, disinfectant supplies. No school in New York City should lack them. If they need them, all that to do is call the Department of Education, they'll get them. If someone sees something's not happening, please report it to 3-1-1 or call WNYC, as people often do. And, Brian, we’ll welcome your team alerting us to anything you hear.

Lehrer: And we definitely will. And thank you for that offer. Carlton in Harlem, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Carlton.

Question: Hey, good morning. Good morning, Mayor de Blasio. I just wanted to ask the Mayor to grant me and a group of people who live in HDFC a meeting to discuss the solution – these solutions to the crisis that HDFCs are facing right now. Are you still there?

Lehrer: We’re here.

Mayor: Yes. The answer is yes. This one – I'm glad you called Carlton, this one bugging me. It is a complex subject matter. This is – Brian, these buildings – this goes back, literally to, I mentioned, the 70s. This goes back to the 70s. This goes back to the bad old days and the “Bronx is burning” and everything else where a bunch of buildings were abandoned by their landlords and the tenants hung on and the City stepped in in many cases to provide support. And it's a complex set of dynamics around the status of these buildings here, but here's the bottom line – we want to do right by the people live in the buildings, we want to keep those buildings affordable, we want it to be in good shape. We need everyone to participate. There are some ground rules, but each building is different, just to make it more interesting. So, I would like to meet with representatives of that community with my housing officials, because I think we still need to improve our response to the situation.

Lehrer: Here's a listener question via Twitter. [Inaudible] writes, a young black man in Canarsie was brutally taken down by six cops, none of whom told him why he was being detained, nor did the plainclothes police officer identified himself when he stopped the young man. Mr. Mayor, I don't know if you've seen that video that's going around.

Mayor: I have, I spoke to it. Brian, I spoke to this at some detail, as did the Police Commissioner at our press conference yesterday. So, again, I'm saying this lovingly – your team would do well to inform you of that. But let me speak to it. It's –

Lehrer: By the way, I knew that, but a lot of our listeners did not hear the news conference and are concerned about this. Go ahead –

Mayor: I’m saying I said in the press conference I had seen the video. So, let me clarify. I'm not – what I saw, I do not like and is not what we're supposed to be doing here in New York City. It's not what our police officers are supposed to be doing. Now, that being said, and I want people to hear me clearly, because it's very important to also to understand the perspective of our officers. We're actually all in this together. Our officers, our community members – were all actually in one city together, trying to keep it safe. The officers were responding to a shots-fired alert. That is a different dynamic than every-day. My understanding of the narrative is this, the officers were responding in the community, looking for a shooter, see two men in a park, approached them and they both run. Once you have two people running from police officers, that raises additional concern. The officers chase after them, the one officer gets the one individual you see on the video. I don't like how it ends, because it's not what we're trying to aspire to. We're trying to always deescalate and get things right. I don't know, I don't think anyone knows the exact dialogue, Brian, because the video, to the best of my understanding, doesn't clearly – you can't clearly hear everything that's transpiring. There's an investigation going on. We're going to look at exactly how the officers handled it. But I do want to emphasize, if it's a shots-fired dynamic, that means that that officer does not know if the individual has a weapon on them or not. That's a different reality than an every-day situation. So, I want to see a better protocol, but I also want to emphasize that we have to strike a balance here. Anyone who is asked by a police officer to stop should stop, anyone who's asked by a police officer to answer a questions should answer the question, and if a police officer says, I'm going to put you under arrest, you're not supposed to struggle, you're supposed to agree with it. If there's a difference, we'll sort out the difference later. We have a legal system. So, this is an imperfect situation all around. But the last part especially, that, to me, is not the situation we want to see in the city and we're going to take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Lehrer: And on one additional crime and policing story before we run out of time, and I know you addressed this yesterday too, but for this audience, and if there's any further development – I see crime stats went up meaningfully in February as they had in January, and the debate is deepening over whether the new bail reform law has anything to do with it. Public defenders, as you know, are questioning whether the NYPD is maybe even giving the most aggressive possible tabulation of the numbers with a possible political agenda of discrediting the new law. An example that they use is that NYPD stats show that a 65 percent increase in car theft has taken place this year, but the public defenders say their caseload of such cases is actually down 9 percent. So, what can you say to the spike and the bail reform debate?

Mayor: I think the public defenders should be ashamed of themselves. And I made the point of the press conference yesterday, they're in good company now with Ray Kelly, who at one point tried to challenge – when Bill Bratton was commissioner, tried to challenge NYPD statistics for his own agenda, was quickly proven wrong, and then never said it again. This is ridiculous the NYPD – you can agree or disagree with any given policy, but the NYPD has been extraordinarily transparent via CompStat, including putting out all sorts of information that isn't convenient to put out, but is the truth on a regular basis and explaining it and answering to it. We're talking about a 20 percent increase in major index crimes – we saw it in January, we saw it in February. This is not small stuff. We’ve had, you know, 25 years overall, Brian, of steady decline. Particularly the last six years, I'm proud to say, we've had very consistent decline. How do you have a 20 percent increase for two full months out of the blue? We’ve go to be honest about this. So, there's always – I'm happy to say, there's never a single, single factor that answers everything. I'm fine with that. But let's be honest, the statistics are real. The statistics are truthful. Something has changed. A good part of it is related to the new law. The new law, as I have said and the Commissioner said, is the right thing to do. And we supported it. I supported it in the main. I think there were in the wording that need to be corrected and I really do believe based on what the Governor said, based on what the State Senate majority has said that you're going to see some work done by April 1st with the State budget to improve on that law. The intended law was good. A lot of the law is providing crucial reforms we needed. There's a few things that need to be improved.

Lehrer: Thank you, as always, Mr. Mayor. Talk to you next week.

Mayor: Thank you, Brian.

2020-03-06 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Okay we have updates for you. First of all what you heard from the Governor earlier I want to emphasize here in the city. Obviously, this is this a new reality of community spread. So the fact is, even compared to a few days ago, we have a very different reality. When we began the week, our focus was on people who had traveled to effected countries overseas and those who had come in contact with people who traveled to those countries. What's happened in just the last few days is the initiation of community spread, meaning that these cases now are coming from within our communities in an untraceable fashion. That's going to lead to a series of changes.

So starting now, I'm going to offer some specific things that are starting to change in our approach. You'll hear more in the coming days. But let me first start with the overall numbers at this hour. At this point, still five confirmed cases of coronavirus, five individuals in New York City. We have an update on testing that will show a big jump in numbers compared to yesterday. This is the beginning of numbers starting to expand rapidly. So we have 47 negative now. That's about double where we were yesterday. And that's good. The number of negative tests continues to be strong. We have 40 outstanding tests at this moment. Now these numbers are very dynamic as new cases are being discovered, but right now that's the pertinent scorecard and we'll keep giving you updates as we get more information.

The community spread means we're going to have to determine some new strategies and it means it's going to be particularly dynamic. As we get more information, we're going to constantly update because sometimes we will learn something and it changes the approach and we want people to understand it in real time. What we have now that we didn't have as well, is our own information. So when we started dealing with this crisis, we were dependent on information from the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control and the broader medical literature. Now over these last days, we've started to get direct information from our own disease detectives and they have every day more and more information to work from. And we also are working, of course, very closely with the State Health Department and the cluster in Westchester is crucially providing us a lot of information. We of course, wish there were no cases at all. But when we see more and more cases, we actually learn from them and it helps us to understand how what's going on with this disease and how to address it.

A reminder to everyone, this is a brand new disease. The global medical community is still trying to understand it. There are still things that we just don't understand about this disease and again, it is a disease with no cure at this moment and no vaccine. So it is clear that we will learn by doing, our health professionals will learn by doing and get a better sense of this. We know one thing now from experience for sure, community spread means a greater ease with which this disease can be transmitted because it's just in more places. Even compared to a week ago, the likelihood of being in a place where someone had been infected by coronavirus was less than it is now. It has grown in the last week, so there's a volume issue here. There's just more places where more New Yorkers might come in contact with someone because the disease has been spreading out in the community. Now I remind you over the vast majority of people, they experienced very mild symptoms and have no lasting impact from this disease. There are people who may have it, don't even realize they have it. We've certainly seen that in some of the cases already. One of the children in the Westchester family had almost no manifestation of the disease. But the fact is it has spread substantially.

The other thing, and this is going to be a little graphic, so forgive me, but you will certainly understand what I'm saying. How it transmits from people to people. We've said from the beginning, it is not like the measles and I've asked our health professionals to be really clear and specific about this. Everything we know about this kind of disease, because it is part of a family of diseases is you're never going to have a situation where it becomes an airborne disease. Meaning it hangs in the air like measles does, like some other diseases do and can be contracted hours later after its presence in a room, for example. That is not coronavirus. What it is, is something that transmits through bodily fluids, but not all bodily fluids. So again, forgive the bluntness – a sneeze, a cough, if you spit and remember sometimes people spit inadvertently just talking energetically. That's how it can transmit, but not just that. It actually has to get into your body, which means basically your mouth, your nose, your eyes. Hands can also be the path.

If something's on your hand and you often, all of us have, we're touching our mouth, we're touching our nose, we're touching our eyes. People do it all the time. They don't even realize they're doing it. That's how it gets into you. It cannot just be any place else on your body or any place else in the air. It has to get directly into you. So the point being you kind of need a direct hit because it doesn't just hang in the air. It's also important to know, I’m sure people will have common sense questions. What if someone sneezed on a countertop? The disease doesn't last long, literally minutes and it's gone. I asked earlier, what if someone sneezed into someone's drinking water? It doesn't transmit through anything you ingest. What if someone sneezed on your soup? It does not transmit through something you ingest. It has to have come in mouth, nose, eyes, through directly breathing it in, directly breathing in someone sneeze or cough or spit. Or it gets on your hand, hand there to your body, but really soon thereafter because it doesn't stay alive very long in the open air. So just to make sure we are abundantly clear about what they call transmissibility.

So I'm going to go into some of the specific cases in a moment, but in light of the community spread, here is where we start to give some new guidance. And again, this is not yet invoking emergency powers and I hope we don't get to that point. This is guidance right now. We'll be very explicit day after day with any changes and if we ever get to the point of needing to use emergency powers. So I'm going to separate the guidance into two categories. Folks who are well and folks who have symptoms. And again, the symptoms are the symptoms you would normally associate with a common cold or flu.

If you're well and you don't have any symptoms, it's just go about the basic precautions. Wash your hands, use alcohol based hand sanitizer. Try not to be touching all the parts of your face that allow in the disease. Avoid handshakes. So I'm someone who shakes a lot of hands all day. Our Health Commissioner saying she would really prefer people tap elbows, not do handshakes while we get through this part of it. And be vigilant about symptoms. If you do get symptoms, if you get a fever, if you get a cough, if you get a sore throat, don't assume it's nothing. Assume it's something in this atmosphere.

Again, community spread has caused us to want to up the ante on our guidance to New Yorkers. So in light of that, if you do have the symptoms, if you have a fever, if you have a cough, if you have a runny nose, if you have congestion, stay home. Simple voluntary point, just do the smart thing. Stay home, don't go to work, don't go to school, don't go out on the town, don't go to a restaurant, don't go to a theater, just stay home. If it is the normal kind of sicknesses we have this time of year, as everyone knows over a few days that passes by and then you can go back about your life. If it turns out it's something more serious than obviously we want to get you help, but in the first instance, just a simple symptoms and nothing else. Stay home. Obviously the parents, the same guidance for your kids if your kids are sick, and we've said consistently and it still remains true, this disease again seems to be much more prevalent in the older folks than in kids. But if your kids are sick, just abundance of a caution. Keep them home. Alert your doctor as soon as you're sick. Again, if there's no extenuating circumstances like a travel nexus or other things that – or preexisting conditions, it was just an average healthy person having these kind of diseases we typically have this time of year. That's those kinds of symptoms. Call your doctor, let the doctor know what's going on. Give it a day or two. If you're getting well, that's great. If you're not getting well, we want you in.

We're going to talk about testing and the expansion of testing that has occurred. And the good news is for folks who are going to need testing, we have more capacity. Again, alerting your doctor immediately to everything. I want emphasize this folks, if you have travel history, if people in your family have travel history, that's still pertinent here. Even though the community spread is the new powerful reality we're dealing with, there's still that travel nexus, that's important. Also, preexisting conditions, crucially important – respiratory problems, heart disease, immune system problems. The doctor needs to know exactly what they're dealing with. And in the case of preexisting conditions, that's a case where probably they're going to want you to get tested right away. So as to the testing – we now have substantial new testing that has come online through the private sector. That is changing the numbers rapidly. So we've said in the course this week we could do dozens of tests in a day. As of now that is turning into hundreds of tests a day as we speak. We want to get up to thousands of tests per day capacity. We're on the way there, but what would help us immensely, and this is still where we need help from the federal government. We need the FDA to approve testing that is faster and more efficient than that, which is currently available. They have the capacity to do that. We've obviously made that request. So the number of tests we can perform is getting, those numbers are getting better. But the speed and efficiency of the test is still not what we want it to be. We need the FDA to help us. The faster we can get turnaround on results, the more we can do to address the situation.

Let me do an update on some of the individual cases. So, I talked about this morning, we have a man in Manhattan. And this directly relates to the original Westchester case. The gentleman who works at the law firm in Midtown, lives in New Rochelle. This is a direct nexus to that case via New Rochelle. The man in question is 51 years old. From what we know, no preexisting conditions, lives on the Upper West side, mildly symptomatic at this point and isolated at home. Married, his wife is 47 years old, has three daughters, ages eight, 10 and 11. All are mildly symptomatic. Essentially showing the kind of symptoms associated with a cold. All tested today. We're going to have the results later on. And the disease detectives have interviewed the families – the family members I should say, to clarify any contacts that they need to trace. And obviously we'll have that information ready and then we'll judge accordingly related to the test results.

Another case, which I think has been talked about publicly, and this spans a New York and New Jersey. 32-year-old health care worker, at Hackensack University Medical Center, in isolation, in stable condition. This individual has an apartment in Midtown, Manhattan that is his primary residence and also an apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The health officials in New Jersey have been working with us very closely and obviously with New York State Health officials as well. The disease detectives have done the interview in this case. I'm going to give you some of the information. There's some other pieces we're still confirming. We'll have more for you at the next briefing. He worked on February 29th, seeing patients while symptomatic. But also while wearing a mask and gloves, saw ten patients but then went for care the next day. All patients had been identified and monitored. None are symptomatic. So none of those ten patients are symptomatic at this point. And this has obviously been a number of days since then. So that's a very good sign that so much time has passed. We are tracing any other contacts now. We'll have an update on that tomorrow.

Finally I'll just give you some quick Spanish in a moment, But one more update. The teachers that we talked about previously. So yesterday we talked about a teacher from James Madison High School, Brooklyn tested negative. That was the teacher went on the trip to Italy. 44 kids, and six other staff, still none have any symptoms. And again, we're almost at the two week mark. There were two other teachers who were on their own personal vacations over the winter break. One is a teacher and I will, let me say the most important part first. Both tested both negative. The second and third teachers both tested, both negative. One teaches at PS 369 in Brooklyn. One teaches at PS 130 in Lower Manhattan. So as soon as those teachers, who do not have coronavirus, but have been just generally sick, as soon as they are fully well, they'll all return to the classroom. But none of those teachers have coronavirus.

So to conclude, just a few words in Spanish,

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish:]

So that's the update. My colleagues are with me. Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Deputy Mayor Laura Anglin, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, our Health Commissioner, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, our Deputy Health Commissioner, Chancellor Richard Carranza, our Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell. And we are ready for questions.

Question: Thank you. I actually have two if you don’t mind. The first would be probably for Dr. Barbot, actually. I'm wondering, there’s obviously, you know, community spread is here. A lot of people are concerned about kind of how widespread this might be. And I guess, I'm wondering if you have a sense for how widespread the asymptomatic group might be? Like if you were to swab this room, would you expect to see it? Would you expect to see flu if you were to swab this whole room? Like, I mean what you try to – can you put this in context?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: I think right now as the Mayor has said, we are pivoting into what we're seeing with regards to person to person spread in the community. And so what that means is that New Yorkers are probably more likely to contract, or less likely to have contracted coronavirus from someone that had a travel nexus than from someone who had contact with an individual who had the disease. And so we're not at this point looking for asymptomatic – excuse me, because the literature, the experience from other countries doesn't bear out that those are the individuals that are responsible for this explosive growth across the globe.

Question: [Inaudible] transmitted as easily as somebody who is symptomatic or?

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, I think the science is still out, but there's nothing convincing that would lead us to believe that going after asymptomatic individuals would give any fruitful information. We're focused on ensuring that New Yorkers get the message that if they are sick, if they have symptoms of a, cold-like symptoms, they've traveled, we want them to reach out to the doctors. Even if they haven't traveled, we want them to have a lower threshold of staying home when they're sick. Because as we pivot into this new, early phase where we're having community transmission, one of the most effective ways to nip that in the bud is if people really take to heart the advice. Stay home if you're sick, don't go to work. As the city's doctor, what I'm asking them to do is to have a lower threshold. You know, we have a habit of wanting to power through if you've got a cough, a scratchy throat. I'm saying don't. Do us all a favor. Stay home. Stay home for 24 to 48 hours. And if you're not feeling better, make sure that you've reached out to your doctor. We've now increased the availability of testing. As the Mayor said, you know, we have commercial tests online. And so the important thing to note is if you're sick, stay home. If you're sick for more than two days, reach out to your doctor, ask for the test if you think you've got concerns.

Question: Thank you. My other question was, and this is really more I guess for you Mr. Mayor. You know, you see Wall Street firms are now splitting up their trading operations. They're putting personnel kind of elsewhere so they don’t all get sick at the same time. Have you had that conversation in terms of city government, in terms of a continuity of government? I mean you're all sort of standing here. If this gets that widespread, what did you do?

Mayor: Look, I think this is the kind of thing we're going to start scenarioing. In fact, yesterday we had one of our exercises where we talked about what the impact would be on the total number of city employees who will be available to us at any given point in time? So we're starting to run those scenarios. We have not yet gotten to the point of saying we want to split up people in different locations. But you know, we're going to put everything on the table and decide what makes sense. The community spread dynamic requires us to consider any and all possibilities. You know, if this really started to ramp up intensely, we would definitely need the ability to make sure we had enough personnel at all times. Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, there was a –

Commissioner Barbot: Yesterday, I issued a commissioner’s order ordering that first responders, educators, health care workers who are from the City, stay home if they're sick. And so that is our way of ensuring that A.) Those individuals that are in the closest contact with people who may be at risk for other reasons who may be sick, don't transmit the illness. And it's also a way of protecting our workforce because the work of the City has to continue. And so in that same vein, what we're asking is for businesses to look at ways in which they can help support workers heading this advice. So, for example, if they've got options for telecommuting or using video conferencing, we want them to be looking at the possibility of putting those things into place.

Question: Both Gap and a WeWork office had employees who tested positive and shut down their workplaces in Manhattan. Or are those the 40-year-old and 50-year-old man or are those additional cases?

Mayor: I don't know those specific ones. You're saying here in the city, had cases that tested positive. Those are not in the numbers I have. So I want to make sure we're saying the same thing. I don't know where they live. Do you know this one or not?

Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: If they are not New York City residents you are going to hear about them from another jurisdiction.

Mayor: Let's confirm and get that back to you.

Question: So I have two quick questions. The first is if you can give an update on the quarantine number? I know it was about 2,700 yesterday. And the second is, I know Governor Cuomo said he's not concerned about the number of tests, but you and your administration is concerned. So is there a disconnect between the concern of the available tests?

Mayor: I think we're saying – we're talking about two different categories. I watched some of the Governor's press conference and I saw the exchange. On the pure numerical level, we've seen a really great improvement in this week. Went from, you know, literally Monday morning we could not do our own testing, to Monday afternoon we could do our own testing but not the numbers we were hoping to get to. Now the private capacity is coming online as we speak. That's revolutionizing the situation. Hundreds of tests per day will be possible, on the way to thousands. Good news. The bad news is a test takes too long compared to where we want it to be. And we want the fastest, most efficient test and that requires FDA to approve the next step of evolution, if you will, and allow those faster, better tests. We need that to happen. We made that very clear to FDA. We're waiting for answer.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I think it's the same as this morning. A 2,773 is the number I have. Yes.

Question: Do you see any more schools in the city closing down out of precaution?

Mayor: You know, we're constantly monitoring for any instance of a teacher, a student, a staff member with symptoms that links back to this. We're not finding any others at this moment. So no, we're continuing, but that's something people should keep in – You know, I'm asking all parents, constantly keep aware of the latest news because if we get to a point where we have to make any kinds of closures, we'll get that out immediately. But at this point, thank God we're not seeing it in the school system.

Question: Kind of, you know, looking at the strain of the virus, that the multiple people have had and if they're connected, do they get it from the same, or do we know anything about the sequencing of the disease at this point?

Commissioner Barbot: So through the work of our disease detectives, we have established clear what we call epidemiological connections, which means that we have been able to determine instances where a symptomatic individual who was positive transmitted to another individual. And so when we talk about community spread, I think it's important to note that now what we're seeing is contact spreading the illness to other contacts. And that puts us in a different situation that we're going to be paying very close attention to.

Question: [Inaudible] in Washington within a few days we knew that, there were estimates that the disease had been circulating for six weeks. Did we have any kind of estimate for how, like when it came here?

Commissioner Barbot: To date we do not have that estimate.

Mayor: Who has not gone? Way back.

Question: Regarding the MTA and their approach, you have a comment on the cleaning of the trains and the buses and the stations? And does their approach need to change now that we're in this space?

Mayor: I mean my understanding is they're intensifying their cleaning efforts and that's right. But again, I want to, you know, we're constantly trying to get really, really clear if there's any new information about this disease and I want to be clear, the entire global medical community is trying to get more information, get around, you know, this is a, this is going to change potentially, literally day by day even. But as of today in terms of cleaning and everything else. It doesn't get transmitted hanging in the air. It would only get transmitted in a surface and kind of a perfect storm where you instantly touched it and touched your mouth. You know it’s a very rare dynamic. The thing to be concerned about is person to person, close contact, you know, liquid fluid going from one person into another person. Sorry for the bluntness. That is how it gets transmitted. So I think of the MTA, which I have every reason to assume is happening is doing intensified regular cleaning. That's good. But I think that you know, the heart of the matter here is something that's much more about the experience people have as individuals rather than in a big open space.

Question: Yes, please, the Commissioner [inaudible] you know, talk about the transmission in Spanish, please?

Mayor: Sure.

Question: Thank you. You know the body fluids and everything?

Mayor: Sure. You can ask it in Spanish.

[Laughter]

[Commissioner Barbot speaks in Spanish:]

Mayor: Who has not gone, one call on that. Okay, let's go around again.

Question: Thanks Mr. Mayor. As we're sitting here, Amtrak put out a statement that they're pulling down three Acela trips a day because of reduced demand. Airlines are fighting service, you know, I mean everybody knows what's going on with the economy. Where are we headed here in New York? And based on this that you guys are saying that it's, it has to be [inaudible] from person to person. That it's not, you know, sitting around on the subway pole necessarily. What do you say to New Yorkers and to people who might think about visiting New York as these numbers grow and presumably will continue?

Mayor: Look, I think first of all, there's just no place in America that’s better able to handle a situation like this than New York City. We have the strongest health care system anywhere in the country by far. We have the strongest public health capacity. I really believe New Yorkers are heading these warnings and acting accordingly. I just continue to see people doing the right thing and I appreciate that very, very much. So, I also would tell you the vast majority places I'm going in the city, I'm seeing people going about their business. Which I think is also New Yorkers are, if I may editorialize particularly resilient and tough and tend to keep going through all sorts of things. Now I agree with the Commissioner. We want people to be tough as they always are, but recognize that if they're sick it's smart to stay home. But I'm going to be going out around the city like normal. I think people should. I think people who want to visit this is damn good place to visit. But those companies that are making decisions based on reduced demand, that's just common sense, right? I mean if people aren't showing up, then you're going to alter your behavior. I think that the thing I want, I want all this energy to go into action. So the cleaning your hands, the alcohol based hand sanitizer, the new cool way of greeting people. There's your example. You know, being smart, if you happen to be sick. Filling your prescriptions now, which we mentioned yesterday is a really smart thing to do. Just get that done. I think that's a smart thing to do.

The where's it going? Look, we are now going to do – we're running scenarios that are the total shutdown scenarios and everything in between. But we also are going to be really specific. Like we have to see evidence of something that causes us to want to get to that point. And I'm still not seeing that, you know, we have a slew of new tests here. Obviously a huge number of them came back negative. That's great. You know, the teachers came back negative. That's great. But it's going to be a day to day, hour to hour thing. Go ahead.

Question: I'm going to need you to clarify. I know you said that the coronavirus can only lasts a few minutes on surfaces, but the World Health Organization and Governor Cuomo had actually said that it could survive on some surfaces for a few hours or several, several days. Could you?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Very often when new viruses are identified there are studies that are done in laboratories that don't actually look like real life conditions. So we think like other coronaviruses and cold viruses, this one also has a life on surfaces that's short. Not as long as quoted by the WHO.

Question: [Inaudible]?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: In the lab –

Mayor: Apples and oranges.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Apples and oranges. So in the laboratory I can make anything live long in the laboratory.

Mayor: I'm not saying you can get it from apples.

[Laughter]

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: No apples, no apples, no apples!

Mayor: I’m going to work with you. A laboratory is a rarefied environment?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Mayor: So you're saying it's easier for something to survive there as opposed to the rough and tumble of the outside world where there's air circulating and all sort of stuff happening. So let's just describe, let's go to the positive version. If I were to sneeze on my kitchen counter or my desk, how long is it going to survive on that surface?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: On the order of minutes.

Question: Ten minutes?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: On the order of minutes.

Mayor: Right, but you've got to give some –

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: 10 minutes seems long.

Mayor: So what’s typical?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Somewhere – a couple of minutes. Two, three minutes. That’s like a typical coronavirus.

Mayor: So the two, three minutes and then it's inactive. That's your typical experience?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Mayor: Okay. And we, look, we try – I’m going to editorialize and I want you to work with me and modify. One, we're dealing with something where there's no one on Earth who has all the facts about this disease. Two, we really respect the World Health Organization. We really respect the CDC, but I want to kind of take you to, we especially appreciate our own local expertise. Particularly when it's based on our own experience. So I mentioned that the disease detectives are bringing back our own information, not someone else's study, but what they're seeing. So Demetre the go-to-guy on what happens with diseases. So the New York City understanding is on a surface, it's a few minutes.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: All of our scientific advisors within the Department of Health agree that it's on the order of minutes.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: I have two questions Mr. Mayor, I'm going to ask what I think is the easier one first. We have confirmed that a hardware store in the Garment District is selling two liter bottles of Purell for $109.

Mayor: I would like to have the name and address of that hardware store. I know our Department of Consumer Affairs would like to pay them a visit immediately.

Question: And why is that? Can you just explain why?

Mayor: I mean price gouging, they put out the guidance disallowing price gouging. So you know, I don't have the guidance in front of me, but that sure sounds like it would be a hit. So I would – you've sometimes had brought up other individual cases, which I appreciate. This is one where we'd like the information and our team will follow up immediately.

Question: And then secondly, the Westchester attorney because he has so many cases associated with him. I know early on he was in critical condition so you couldn't get information directly from him. Now he's in stable condition. Have you learned any more about where he might have contracted the virus?

Mayor: And let's confirm he has been getting better, but has he been better enough to interview?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: The answer is he's not better enough to interview, though he is getting much better. So we're very reassured by that. But not quite ready for interviews.

Mayor: In terms of the question, from his family or other sources, do we have a sense of the origin point of him where he contracted it?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: We think he's part of the larger Westchester cluster that we're hearing about.

Question: [Inaudible]?

Mayor: Not from travel as far as we know.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: No, oh yeah, absolutely not. No travel. There's no travel nexus that would indicate this is from a travel related infection.

Question: Several of the health care workers that were in contact with the Westchester lawyer have now confirmed to have the virus. And there's the health care worker in Manhattan. We obviously have a patchwork of different facilities that treat people. We have family doctors, we have urgent care centers and we have private hospitals. I know that there's protocol at the City hospitals that people come in and get like a respiratory thing right away.

Mayor: A mask. Not a respiratory thing. A mask. We're going to put out a press release, every time we're going to refer to it as a respiratory thing just to see if you're catching. Go ahead.

Question So what there – is there a common guidance going out to all these different places? How are we going to make sure that health care workers are not exposed to this?

Mayor: Yes, distinctly yes. Go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, so all providers are trained on universal precautions, knowing when to use gloves, mask. Beyond that, we have sent numerous bulletins to the health care community to ensure that they are fully up to date on the requirements, the recommendations for the use of masks, for gloves, for gowns as needed. Additionally, we have held several webinars with physicians. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis did one earlier this week where 3,000 doctors participated in this webinar. We did it in collaboration with State partners. Beyond that, as part of our ongoing emergency preparedness work, we do secret shoppers at hospitals where we send folks who show up with scenarios of a novel respiratory virus to make sure that unannounced, institutions are taking the proper precautions. And if they're not, we take it as an opportunity to reeducate them. Because one of the things that we are critically focused on is ensuring that all of our health care workers have the equipment that they need and that they know how to use it consistently and effectively.

Question: What do you have to say to those who may be experiencing the symptoms and they're afraid to go to the doctor because of the bill, medical bill, even with insurance or even worse, with no insurance?

Mayor: Very, very important question. And I want to emphasize again. This is a city that now is guaranteeing health care for everyone who needs it, including undocumented people, regardless of ability to pay. And anyone who's not sure what to do or is confused because I don't have insurance or they're not sure where to go. Call 3-1-1, which can speak to them in multiple languages. And they will be told the best facility to turn to. And again, everything will be, if people are unable to pay, we're still going to treat them. If they're able to pay, we'll work with that. If they have insurance, great. If they don't have insurance, we're still going to treat them. Okay. Last call. See if there is anything else.

Question: Thank you. I just wanted to nail down the lawyer, the New Rochelle guy. So it sounds like, I just want to, what I heard was he's not the one, you know, he acquired it from someone.

Mayor: He acquired it from someone somewhere. But, but not as far as we can – we have no, it was his travel, because of the timing and everything. And we have no evidence it was from someone else's travel in his life. But as you heard, we still will, we'll learn more. We've interviewed his wife but we haven't interviewed him. So you know, there is more to learn. But community spread is community spread. There's a certain point where it's just out there and the travel nexus is in the past.

Question: Yes, my question is I think you had said that you think it was somewhere in that New Rochelle cluster. Is it, do you think it's somebody who's already been identified as a patient?

Mayor: We don’t know. We just don’t know.

Question: Okay.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: I really have nothing to add to that. So I think this is the point of, of what community transmission can look like. So though not the most satisfying answer, there'll be answers where the index patient, the first patient is unknown.

Mayor: And I want to note, I mean obviously travel is going to become less and less of a nexus just because fewer and fewer people are traveling. But when we get this interview done, if something new comes up, we will absolutely put it out. Yes.

Question: Just two more quick questions. The New Jersey man, I believe he got it at a conference in Manhattan on March 3rd?

Mayor: I don't think we know – do we know he got at the conference or we didn't, or we're not at that level of specificity? Please come on over.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: I can confirm that he was symptomatic before the conference.

Mayor: Okay, so he didn't get it at the conference?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Correct.

Question: [Inaudible] where it was?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: I don't want to comment on that right now. We're investigating. So it's we want to not compromise our investigation.

Mayor: Right. We will, the ground rule is the same. Very fair question. Our job is to one, lock down facts. In some cases, again, there's notification issues. But I'm going to say to our communications team to keep a running list of specific questions and our job is to fill in the blank as quickly as possible, hopefully as early as tomorrow.

Question: Are either of the AIPAC attendees who tested positive in New York City –

Mayor: We don’t have evidence they're in New York City but we don't have –. In other words, no one has said they are from New York City. No one's alerted us that. That doesn't mean they aren't from New York City. We just don't have that.

Question: I have a question for Chancellor Carranza. So there are some students in the public school system who go to internships in nursing homes and other facilities. Is there any plan from the DOE to dial that back or to kind of remove some of those programs? Especially [inaudible] programs?

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: No plans at the moment to do away with those programs. But we have provided guidance around just common sense at this point. And the guidance is really based on the Department of Health. If they are presenting or they're sick or there's somebody at that place that is sick, there's an issue. Just common sense. And again, as a situation and circumstances warrant, we'll adjust.

Mayor: I want to emphasize to that question. We're watching every single day. We keep coming back with the same basic fact. Can it afflict a young person? It can, but it seems to be with very, very limited impact. The central question I want to make sure, and we should make sure this is in all our guidance, the students who need to be treated differently and with deference are if they have preexisting conditions, and those would include a compromised immune system, a severe respiratory problem, or severe heart problem. Those students, I want us to set a higher bar and I would not take chances on them being out and about, unless absolutely necessary. Yes.

Question: Is there anything more you can say about the two people that were diagnosed yesterday? If there's any indication where they got it or any of their contact tracing, if they rode subways or if they were in public gatherings? The 83-year-old woman and the man in his forties, and also their condition. If we have any update on that?

Mayor: So, Demetre, do you have condition? Okay. And I don't think we have more on if you know, more on origins.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: The 40-year-old male has been discharged and is isolating now at home. The more elderly patient is doing better but continues to be in critical condition.

Mayor: And do we have anything on origin in these cases?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: We do not have an identified origin for either case. We have done appropriate contact tracing and close contacts are being are being handled appropriately.

Mayor: We'll have an update on that.

Question: Mr. Mayor. The Governor had said four cases in New York City. And you're saying five, was he just not updated?

Mayor: I can't speak for him. We're all getting constant flowing information. So you know, I'm, I want to emphasize and we're working very, very closely with the State. There's one, ever-changing details. Two, we have interesting situations like the New Jersey health care worker. Literally the health officials are trying to determine whether to call that a New Jersey case or a New York case that has not yet been determined. It has been determined? Okay, well as of an hour ago, it hadn't been determined. Okay. New Jersey gets that one. Okay. Breaking news. Thank you. So that's New Jersey.

We're five with the addition now earlier today of the 51-year-old man from the Upper West Side, that's five.

Commissioner Barbot: [Inaudible] Westchester.

Mayor: Right. Thank you. That's where the other confusion is. The individual lives on the Upper West Side but contracted it in New Rochelle. So that's where these are very valid, you know, you could count one way, you could count another way. Last call.

Question: We talked about this a little bit a couple of days ago, but now that we have over 2,700 people in home isolation, can you just walk us through the do's and don'ts of what you should, should or should not do? You know, can you go down and do your laundry if you live in an apartment building? Can you, you know, should you go out and walk your dog? Can you take a food delivery at your apartment door or that sort of thing?

Mayor: I am going to start with a little bit of common sense. And then Demetre jump in on the specifics. Look, an asymptomatic person who is in voluntary quarantine, out of abundance of caution. I mean, obviously our expectation in the vast majority of cases is they're just going to ride it out and they will have run out the time limit. And then we know they're fine. I will state the common sense reality for everyone. Maximum isolation possible. A person can stay in their apartment, can get, you know, if they're able food deliveries or friends or relatives can bring them food, whatever it is. They should minimize any contact with anyone else. Abundance of caution. So I think that's the standard. That doesn't mean you can't, you know, get a little fresh air for a minute, but you should, to the maximum extent possible, avoid contact with other people. Have I gotten my medical degree? Thank you. Okay. This was the moment where I got my medical degree. Okay. We will certainly be updating you regularly. There's a lot more to follow up on from today. We'll get that to you tomorrow and let's keep going. Thanks everyone.

2020-03-08 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Okay. We have a lot of information for you here. So, this is going to take a while to go over and then we'll take your questions.

I want to start a couple of things. First of all, the information we're going to provide today is based on the latest information that we have here through our public health agencies and we are constantly assessing what we're experiencing here in New York City. This is again another reason to appreciate the work of our disease detectives at the Department of Health who are not only working on specific cases and helping to address the specific individuals, but they're also gathering a huge amount of new information. This is basically research that's happening right here in New York City, giving us direct knowledge of how this disease is acting so that we can make the best strategic judgements. There is a lot of information out there in the global health community, national health community, but everyone understands there's still a lot that is not understood about this disease. Again, this is a disease that this moment does not have a cure, does not have a vaccine.

So, the fact is the ability to constantly gather new information and understand the way the disease acts in real world conditions is crucial. We talked about this yesterday is a real difference between real world conditions and the laboratory. So, we are getting more and more information and it is affecting our understanding and therefore our strategies. You'll hear those updates as we go along. Also want to emphasize this of course is an ever-changing situation. There are times we get guidance from the World Health Organization, from the CDC, State Health Department, obviously our own health officials. Sometimes there are areas where there is not clear guidance or there's different guidance different levels of government. We're constantly assessing, refining. So, this is an ever-changing situation. We will update you constantly. You will see variations. We'll try and identify those variations of why they're happening, but you should expect it. You should expect changes in information, changes in approach as we go along. Therefore, the things we say in many cases are preliminary because the information about the disease is preliminary. We hope over time to get a much deeper understanding, but we can say some things with you know, a high level of certainty based on actual experience. So far, and I'm going to repeat today and probably several other times in coming days, what we understand about what is called transmissibility, which is literally the process through which the disease goes from one person to another because there's still a lot of misunderstanding out there and a lot of mythology out there.

So, I'm going to put it again in very plain graphic terms because I think New Yorkers, we are blunt and straightforward people. People want to hear the truth about this stuff. And the way I try to explain it as sort of what it is versus what it's not. So, what it's not is a disease like some that hang in the air for a prolonged period of time, that you can come into a room hours later after someone has been there with the disease and you have a danger of contracting disease. That is not what we're talking about here. This is a disease that requires a very direct level of contact. The question of surfaces has come up a lot. The best understanding of our public health officials is that this is a disease that does not live long on a surface. Certainly, on most surfaces like metal, plastic you know, a desk, a kitchen counter, a subway pole. It's only a matter of minutes before the disease dies, the virus dies in the open air.

If it got on a part of the human body that's not the mouth, the nose, the eyes, might live a little bit longer, but still a very limited period of time and the only way it can become active and affect you is if it gets into the mouth, the nose, the eyes. If the disease got on your leg, but nowhere else, you don't get infected. We talked yesterday about if somehow it got someone's sneezed over some soup they were serving you and then you drank the soup, you're not going to get infected. Same thing with a glass of water. It has to be direct fluid from one person right into you, which means a cough, a sneeze right at you that you received directly into your mouth, your nose, your eyes, or potentially onto your hand and then immediately onto your mouth, nose, eyes.

A lot of us and I am one of them, often touch our face. It's kind of a normal human reaction, normal human habit. You want to try to do that less nowadays in addition to all the other precautions to washing hands and the alcohol-based sanitizer. It's great to try and reduce that contact between your hand and your face, but if it doesn't get into those parts of your face, it doesn't get in. That's what we understand at this point

And when we talk about the close contact, we've seen this in cases. Again, we understand if someone sneezed right at you, they coughed right at you. They did not do this like they're supposed to. You're supposed to cover your mouth, your mouth. When you cough or sneeze into your elbow, someone does sneeze or cough right at you. Yes, direct hit. That's a real problem. If you're deep in conversation with someone right up next to you and they're vehemently talking and some spit comes out and it gets right into you, that's a problem. It is not a problem. If someone is 10 feet away and they sneeze, it's not going to reach all the way over to you. But if it's close to you, that's where the problem occurs and that's where we want to be mindful of. So those are just basic points I want to say upfront.

The other thing I really want to emphasize, and I've been working with our health officials on this because there's been a lot of misunderstanding and we really want to get right to people – who's vulnerable and who's essentially not now. I'm going to say on this one again, I'm going to use the – I'm the layman here. I've been talking to these public health officials now for days and days and days. I'm trying to composite the information, make it simple and clear for New Yorkers to use. I'll put an asterisk on and say, there are always exceptional cases. So, I'm not saying I'm giving you, you know a perfect rule that affects every single time, but this is the basic rule, overwhelmingly consistent rule based on what we have seen globally from this disease. So, I want to start with who is most vulnerable – it’s abundantly clear, who is most vulnerable to contract coronavirus. It is people who have preexisting serious conditions and are over the age of 50, and those preexisting conditions, and our team has really been working to get this definition clear for everyone because we think it's helpful if it's very, very clear. So, the preexisting conditions in question are heart disease, lung disease, cancer, immune system vulnerability and I – diabetes, thank you. And diabetes, those five I'll do it again. Heart disease, lung disease, cancer, compromised immune system and diabetes, those five preexisting conditions. And then one other thing we could call a factor is not a preexisting condition but it is a factor that we are concerned about and we've seen already – if you are a smoker or a vaper that does make you more vulnerable. And we'll say it probably several times today and in the days to come, if you are a smoker or vaper, this is a very good time to stop that habit and we will help you.

Our Health Department and our colleagues in the state have a lot they can offer people who want to quit smoking or want to quit vaping. If you can do that, if you want to do that, please do that now. It is a very good time to take that vulnerability off the table. Call 3-1-1 if you need help. So, for folks who have one of those five preexisting conditions, or God forbid more than one, even more, for folks who have that reality that they’re smokers or vapers, they're in particular danger. And if they're over 50 that is the category where we're seeing the biggest problems by far. That's where the real danger is. Those are the folks, God forbid anyone passes away, but overwhelmingly the folks in greatest danger, the folks we have the greatest concern about whether they will still be alive at the end of this is the folks who are in that category.

Okay. The next category to think about is folks who have those preexisting conditions but are under 50 years old, so the preexisting condition is a deep concern at any age, but a much deeper concern that if you're over 50 years old. The next category is a healthy person over 50. Now, a healthy person over 50 in most cases is going to do fine, but there is somewhat more vulnerability if you're over 50 and then the last category, thank God, is the biggest category of New Yorkers under 50 years old does not have one of those five preexisting conditions or smoking and vaping. That's the single biggest category of people and for those people, by and large, if you contract coronavirus, you're under 50 you don't have those preexisting conditions, you will generally experience it the same way you do a common cold or flu and there'll be unpleasant, but you'll be okay in the end.

We see very consistently with children, again, this is not a perfect rule, but it has been a consistent reality. Children who do not have preexisting conditions, their general experience again will be that of something like a common cold or flu. So, I want to reassure parents on that point, but I also want to say to parents who do have children with those preexisting conditions that we want you to be very vigilant. Make sure that you do not come in contact with folks who have symptoms. And obviously if any child who does have those symptoms develop, we want to be very careful to get them care right away. But I want to be clear about where there is some good news. And the good news is for the vast majority of New Yorkers, they are in the less vulnerable categories.

Okay, let's go over numbers. But first, one other thing that was going to be constant flow of information in lots of different forms for folks who want to get connected to information, you can text the word COVID – C-O-V-I-D to 6-9-2-6-9-2, and you will get regular updates from the city.

Let's go over numbers. As of yesterday, we had 12 positive cases since the beginning of this crisis. There is one new one and I'm going to say up front we are gathering information on this new case. We need a little more time to get all the facts a 100% clear. So, we'll have an update on the new case later on today. I can only tell you, tell you in New York City, in the Bronx, but I want to get all the facts straight before we give you a more. So, 12 as of yesterday plus one, 13 as of today, seven new cases since Friday. Negative tests, we are now at 146 tests that have come back negative and that is 60 new tests since yesterday.

So we'll keep giving you those updates as long as we can. Now, the numbers – I'll just finish it and say we also have 76 tests outstanding that we're waiting for results on that we'll know by the end of the day. I'll go over specific cases in a little bit. Our goal is to keep giving you the numbers and the case breakdowns as long as we can. There well could be a point where the number of cases gets so large that becomes impractical to be able to give you that level of detail. We'll keep giving you updates as much as possible.

I think it's fair to say, you know, right now for a crisis that's been going on six weeks or more in this city, we're at 13 positive cases. I think we could well be at a hundred cases or hundreds of cases over the next two or three weeks. We have to be prepared for that reality, so we're going to – today I'm going to give guidance and updates, but as we end up in a situation where there are more and more cases, again, we'll be able to give updates but maybe not as fine tune in real time. It's also important to say that our public health apparatus is already planning on the assumption that we will be at hundreds of cases soon and is ready for that reality and we'll talk about that as well.

Fundamental change has occurred in the last few days. This was overwhelmingly until this week a problem related to travel and there still are travel cases coming in the last few days, in the last 24, 48 hours. Several of those new cases we have one that's related to travel to Italy, one related to travel, a Chile, one related to travel to Egypt, so it's not that the travel issue is entirely over but what is coming up now unfortunately is the community spread reality and that's where you're going to see much greater numerical growth.

There are things that we can do to address community spreads, so I think that the way to think about this is phase one was travel essentially and there were very specific strategies we could use to address something that was being brought in by travel. We're going into phase two now where the dominant reality is community spread and we're going to have instructions of how to deal with that. You'll get guidance today and the guidance will be constantly updated. But finishing on travel because it is still pertinent, we had canceled school trips to five effected countries. We are now taking the next step and we're banning school international trips across the board, out of abundance of caution. Also, for our City workforce, there will be no non-essential international travel at this point

We're going to put some other actions into place. Again, this is a lot of different pieces. They won't flow in perfect order, but bear with me, a lot of concern has been raised about our small businesses, many of which are really hurting right now are seeing fewer customers. I'm going to just tell people we're going to give you guidance every single day. We'll update it. I am still going out to small businesses. I am saying to my fellow New Yorkers, unless you have particular vulnerabilities or you have symptoms, I believe you can go about your life continue to patronize our small businesses and I urge you to, but we have to provide some relief for the businesses that are hurting right now. So, we have two forms of relief we're going to implement right away
For businesses under 100 employees that can document a decrease in sales of up to 25 percent, they will be eligible for no interest loans and those loans will be up to the dollar figure or $75,000. So, we will be able to get money in their hands to tide them over. The details of that initiative we’ll put out, this is something we've just got approved. We just finished the process on. We'll get you further details on it in the course of the day. For our smallest small businesses under five employees, a lot of mom and pop stores, neighborhood-based stores under five employees, we will offer grants of up to $6,000 to help them retain employees. That's a literal, a direct cash grant to very small stores that are at a point where they may have to lay someone off. We'll get some money in their hands as a grant to help them keep people employed. And any business under five employees that suffering immediate crisis because of what's going on can call 3-1-1 and they will get help getting that assistance.

In the schools, again, emphasizing children in general at low risk, but children with those preexisting conditions, we are very vigilant about, we want parents to be vigilant as well.

We're going to add 85 nurses in the course of the week to ensure that every school building will have a nurse on call, on duty during the school day, remembering that some buildings have one school in them and some buildings have multiple schools in them. Every building will have a nurse and that will be implemented in the course of the week.

Continuing with the guidance, we want to provide people and remembering again that real clear distinct difference, preexisting conditions, especially above the age of 50. So, the issue here is to think in terms of symptoms. And the particular concern would be if someone had a fever plus either cough or shortness of breath. So, we're going to keep providing more pinpoint information. If you have fever plus cough or shortness of breath, we are particularly concerned and then much more concern if that's accompanied by those preexisting conditions. And again, our Health Commissioner will go into more detail. Crucial point, if you're not in a high-risk category. Again, that biggest high-risk, I mean, excuse me. The biggest category of people, low-risk, biggest low-risk category under 50. No preexisting conditions, particularly for folks in that category. If you've got symptoms, first thing to do is to alert your health care professional. If your symptoms are moderate, you can stay home. If they improve that says everything. If they don't improve, we want to get you in. We want to get you tested.

There's been a lot of questions about public events. This is going to be a question we're going to ask ourselves every single day and update you every single day. Based on the information we have today we are not, not altering our stance on public events. But we are making clear people, I think it's straightforward and obvious, but it bears being said in a straightforward fashion. If you are sick, you shouldn't be going to a public event. If you are sick, you shouldn't be going to work. If you're sick, you shouldn't be going on the subway. Now, if you are not sick, but you're in that particularly vulnerable category, over 50, preexisting conditions, you should avoid unnecessary public activity. There are some things someone may have to do, but you should avoid unnecessary public activity. We'll go over the basics every single time. Commissioner, will say it again. Wash your hands. Use alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Dan Nigro is going to be my test model. Come forward with your elbow. Let me see your elbow. You can do this. 

[Mayor de Blasio, Fire Commissioner Nigro tap elbows:]

Okay, do it again, Dan. That's our new handshake, until further notice. And just be very aware of symptoms. Don't ignore them. Don't explain them away. We have a couple of things we want people to make adjustments on and for some people and some employers this will be something they can do readily, for others more challenging. But this is guidance and it's pretty much common-sense guidance at this point. For employers, if you can institute telecommuting or more telecommuting, you should. So if that, if you have the kind of work where telecommuting is a possibility or if you're using it now and think you can use it more, we'd like to see you do that. See how much of that you can do. The more the better. Employers who can stagger their work times, that would be very helpful. Right now, at the height of rush hour, obviously people, we've all experienced it, we've all been the sardines in the subway. We're in super close proximity. We'd like to open that up a little more. And one of the good ways to do it is to stagger work hours. So any employer who is in the possibility of staggering work hours, that's helpful. If people typically come in at 9:00 am and they can come in instead at 10:00 am that helps. Or if you have different people that can come in at different hours a little more, that helps.

And then everybody, of course, following the basic rule, if you're sick, stay home. If you become sick at work, get out of the workplace. If it's mild, go home. If it's more serious, get to health care. Remember we have a Paid Sick Leave law in this city that grants people five days annually. And as you’ll hear from Dr. Barbot, typically the symptoms we're talking about here manifest and give us a clear sense of direction within two or three days. So the Paid Sick Leave is there to give people the opportunity to be home in just these kinds of situations. 

If you are traveling by subway and the train that comes up is all packed and you can possibly wait for the next train in the hopes it might be less packed. Please do, very common-sense measure. Something a lot of us do anyway. If you have the option of walking to work or taking a bike to work, please do. Buses can be very crowded, probably pound for pound, a little less crowded than a lot of subways. If a bus is a less crowded option and you can use that. Please do.

In terms of the guidance to health care providers. Obviously we're making very clear that we are now in this next phase, this phase two which is where community spread will be where the vast majority of cases are coming from, not travel. Specific guidance is being given to providers, to max extent possible to have health care professional meeting patients as they enter health care facilities or just outside, I should say the health care facility. The Commissioner will clarify to make sure that if they need a mask put on them, that that happens or they need to be handled in a particular fashion, that happens. 

In terms of the federal government. We've made multiple appeals. And I think, yes, here we go. This is the letter we've sent to the FDA. This is one of many communications we've sent to the federal government asking for help on testing. This relates to the issue of automated testing that would allow us to do not only hundreds, but potentially thousands of tests in a single day and get same day results. Can't do it without FDA approval. We've asked for days now, we are awaiting that approval. We need that approval. It's one of the best things the federal government could do to help us. Everyone knows this has been a really persistent problem. The federal government has been slow and elusive on all questions of testing. But this is one where they could finally get it right. FDA approval would make all the difference in the world for us. 

Also we're putting out in this kind of — summarizes a lot of what I've said. We're putting out this simple flyer. You'll see it a lot. The basic rules that I've outlined here. We're going to be doing an advertising campaign to get the word out on this as well. 

Okay. I’m going to go through some numbers and some cases. The number of folks in mandatory isolation has gone up to 19. They get a daily call to check on them. They get unannounced visits, in person twice a week. If they violate the standards of the quarantine, they will be fined and they will find a police officer at their door on a regular basis. And that will either be NYPD or the Health Department police. Again, I'm saying that out of abundance of caution, I think overwhelmingly we are seeing people are honoring quarantine. They have like everybody else, heard weeks and weeks of warnings about coronavirus. We don't find a lot of people taking quarantine lightly so far. Thank God. The voluntary isolation number has gone down substantially and that is related to the fact that we are getting fewer and fewer travel cases and people have gone through the full 14 days. But of course, that number will continue to change. You'll see fewer and fewer travel cases. You will start to see more community spread related cases. But as of today, in voluntary isolation, 2,176. They are now getting a regular communication pattern. In the beginning, they're provided information including a robo-call and a text on how to approach the quarantine and what to do if they develop symptoms. They get repeated texts and constant requests to know if their condition has changed. What to do if it does. If they need immediate assistance, we're going to be continuing to deepen that communication. We'll have more to say on that.

A couple of updates on some other issues that come up. On schools -- in addition to our traditional public schools, we have made clear to charter schools, religious schools, private schools that if they need any additional cleaning supplies, they will be delivered tomorrow. And we have requests. And we have requests from 132 Catholic schools, 59 Jewish schools and one charter organization. Which means multiple schools and those deliveries will be made tomorrow. In our traditional public schools, the mandate is abundantly clear and obvious. Every bathroom has to have soap and towels in abundance. Sinks have to be working and school personnel will be held responsible for that being kept consistent. Officials of the DOE will be spot checking schools on a regular basis.

We had one case that was particularly notable of price gouging, a hardware store known as Scheman & Grant in Midtown. They have been fined. What they did was unacceptable. We're using them as an example. The inspectors have been on site. The case has been referred to the Attorney General as well. Any price gouging, we want reported immediately to 3-1-1 so we can act on it. And just saying to all store owners, absolutely unacceptable. Come on, this is a crisis. Help your fellow New Yorker, this is not a time to try and profit. And we'll be giving plenty of messages to people in different elements of the business community about how to be responsible at this moment. 

As I said, we have seven new cases since Friday. One of which you will get the update on later, which is the Bronx case. The information we're providing you is what we have and it always keeps evolving. So, it's preliminary, but we'll give you updates as we get more. The family on the Upper West Side – the father had tested positive, age 51. This is a family that has a nexus to that cluster in Westchester County. Of the family members, the mom of the family and one daughter, mom's 47, the daughter's 11, tested positive. None of them have preexisting conditions to the best of our knowledge, the dad or the mom or the daughter. All had been symptomatic. All are doing well now. Isolated at home. Two other daughters, ages eight and 10 have tested negative. No other close contacts per the work of the disease detectives. We have, and again, I'm just going to, we'll try and keep this a little bit of a numerical order. Those were cases six and seven. Positive tests. 

Case eight — the Uber driver in Far Rockaway, 33 year-old-man. He is an Uber driver. He is not a TLC Uber driver. He works on Long Island so he's not under TLC jurisdiction. Had pneumonia related to coronavirus. Now in stable condition at the hospital in Far Rockaway. Family has been contacted by the disease detectives. All family members in isolation. All family members, asymptomatic. That is his wife. Three children, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, all asymptomatic, all in isolation at home. The hospital in Far Rockaway, St John's Episcopal, they have a situation there were 41 staff members, and this is again one of these abundance of caution situations, that may have experienced exposure. They're all now in voluntary isolation, being monitored regularly. None symptomatic at this point. The hospital has been provided with support to have additional resources and personnel. And at this point reports normal operations.

Cases nine and ten — two women who went on a cruise to Egypt. So here's travel now coming back as a factor. Two women from Brooklyn, they are 66 and 71 years old. No preexisting conditions. Returned to New York City, February 20, so that's now over two weeks ago, they were symptomatic. They did the right thing. They immediately isolated themselves at home. They are now asymptomatic and still at home. No close contacts who require follow-up. Those are cases again, nine and ten.

Case 11 — 39-year-old man from Brooklyn who was in the affected area of Italy, came back March 2nd. Symptoms manifested March 3rd, in serious condition in a voluntary or private hospital in Manhattan. Does have preexisting conditions. Serious condition now as I said. One close contact, business associate tested negative and is an isolation.

Case 12 — 58-year-old male returned from Chile. Apparently contracted coronavirus during a lunch with a confirmed coronavirus patient in Chile. Lives in Manhattan. I need a reality check because I don't have this much fine tuning. Hypertension, Dr. Barbot is in the group of preexisting conditions or not? Okay. So does not have one of the preexisting conditions. Was in a hospital in Manhattan, has been discharged doing well now at home. No close contacts to follow up. So that's the cases to date. We'll get you more on the Bronx case later. 

Just some other follow-up from ones we've reported earlier. The Westchester family, all doing well now. And then the employees at the law firm, Lewis and Garbuz. Four New York City resident coworkers, all negative as we've said before. The four non-New York City coworkers – we have one Westchester coworker negative, one New Jersey coworker positive, two remaining coworkers, one from Westchester, one from Nassau, both asymptomatic. And then another piece of news because we had talked before about the health care worker from New Jersey who had seen patients in New York City. 32-year-old male, specific information we want to give you now. He saw 11 patients while symptomatic, but he did wear a mask and gloves during that which is important and lessen the chance of transmission. 11 patients. All 11 are asymptomatic now. It's been a week. That's a good sign. And they have all been carefully monitored and will continue to be. We are working with the State Health Department on this right now and we believe we have a low-risk situation. But it is important to confirm that this occurred at a nursing home, specifically in Brooklyn at 2266 Cropsey Avenue. The King David Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation. The health care worker from New Jersey also attended a small medical conference at the Westin Hotel in Midtown. Based on the follow-up of our disease detectives, the attendees are all asymptomatic. Also, his family is asymptomatic.

A couple more points and then I'll turn to my colleagues. We reported a man in his 40’s who was a smoker and vaper. He was hospitalized. He has been discharged, now at home, mild symptoms. Has a partner, the partner’s under mandatory isolation, is a symptomatic, is the only contact of interest to our disease detectives. The last of the previous cases, this is the one we're most worried about right now. This is the woman in her 80’s, it is not going to come as a surprise to anyone. We're really concerned for her. She is hospitalized and continues to be in very serious condition. So, we are hoping and praying for her. There was a report in the media about an employee of the Gap. Best of our understanding that report was erroneous, came up Friday. We have followed up with the company. The individual to the best of our understanding, not from New York City and does not have coronavirus. So, any company that is, has concerns and wants to connect with the City to report information or has rumors that are not accurate and wants to help us dispel them, please reach out. And there's a specific place to go online. The wordspublicprivate@oem.nyc.gov, publicprivate@oem.nyc.gov. And Deanne, let's make sure if they call 3-1-1. That gets routed as well. 

Finally, I'm going to say a few words in Spanish and I want you to hear from three of my colleagues.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, let me turn next to our Health Commissioner. Want to thank her and her extraordinary team at the Department of Health. They've been working very, very hard these last days. Want her to give you an update, Dr. Barbot – and I want her to be taller. Okay, there we go. Do it again. Look at that smile. Okay. There, that's much better. You could be the spokesperson for elbow bumping.

[Laughter]

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: That and alcohol-based hand sanitizers are going to be my – good afternoon. First of all, let me start off by acknowledging that there may be many New Yorkers who are feeling frightened or sad because of all of this information that's coming at them. Every day we hear about new cases worldwide. We are, in the city, sharing information on a real time basis. And so, I want to just acknowledge that there may be some New Yorkers out there that are having those feelings. I want to encourage them to call NYC Well. It's an important resource that – I think that especially at this point in time can provide valuable supports.

The other thing I want to say is that fear is no excuse for propagating stigma. This is not a time for us to be buying into false information on the internet. I want to encourage New Yorkers to visit our website at nyc.gov/health for all the best information on COVID-19. They can also visit cdc.gov. The best way to guard against fear, against stigma is by having the correct information.
And so we are very much committed to transparency.

The other thing I want to just emphasize that I think the Mayor touched on is that this is a situation that is evolving on an everyday basis. We've been learning almost every day something new about how this virus behaves. And I anticipate that over the coming weeks we will continue to learn more information about this virus. And so that's why it's so important to have the information, but also to know that this is, for the foreseeable future – at least for the next couple of months – something that the Health Department will need the support of everyday New Yorkers in order to really turn the tide.

Last thing I want to say is – and just to really reemphasize that we are marshaling all of our resources, but we need New Yorkers to do their part. In that vein, I have talked about what I want New Yorkers to do. As the city's doctor, I need to make sure that if someone is sick with fever and cough, or fever and shortness of breath, they do not go to work. Beyond that, I want to make sure that New Yorkers are also paying that same advice to their children. If your child is sick with fever and a cough, fever and shortness of breath, do not send them to school. That's baseline advice. But especially important here during the COVID-19 season. There are things that we can do and that we are doing. And then there are new things that we want folks to do.

So for example, we want people to continue washing their hands often covering their mouths and their nose when they cough and if they don't feel well, call the doctor. And I'll say more about that in a moment. But there are other things that over the course of the last few days we have been changing advice on. And the first thing you'll notice is we said don't shake hands anymore but do the elbow bump. And that's a way in which we can minimize the risk of transmission. The other thing I will say is that none of these measures that we are recommending are effective in isolation. We need to do all of them at the same time. So, the frequent cleaning of surfaces, the frequent cleaning of hands, the covering of your mouth, for the foreseeable future the elbows, not going to work. So that's – I want New Yorkers to get used to the fact that that's our new normal for the next couple of weeks.

The additional thing that I will say is – and let me just sort of reemphasize what the Mayor said in terms of the folks that we are especially concerned about. And it's those individuals with chronic underlying diseases, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, an immune compromised system –

Mayor: Did you get lung disease?

Commissioner Barbot: Chronic lung disease, cancer, diabetes, immuno-compromised, heart disease.

Mayor: You get them.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, I got them. And so – and being over the age of 50. If you are sick, don't go to work. Call your doctor if you're not better in two to three days. We want you to make sure that you access care quickly. The other thing I want to emphasize is that beyond the individuals with these chronic illnesses, there are other individuals that we are particularly concerned about and that is the elderly. So, we want to make sure that individuals who are symptomatic and who may have a loved one in a long-term care facility, in a nursing home, don't go visit them. If you are symptomatic, the best thing you can do for your loved one who's in a nursing home, in a long-term care facility is don't go visit them until you are better. The other thing is if you've got, you know, a grandparent that you haven't seen in a while and you want to take the kids to go see them and they are symptomatic, don't even do that.

We want to make sure that elderly folks who have chronic underlying illnesses, we do everything that we can together as a community not to increase their risk. The other thing I will say is again to emphasize to the Mayor is if you're sick and your company has a telecommuting policy, we want you to take advantage of that. This is a great time – well, it's always a great time to stop smoking, to stop vaping, but this is especially a great time. And I want to remind New Yorkers that they can call NYC Quits – 8-6-6-NYC-QUITS – and they will be provided support.

The next thing that I want to talk about is the importance of our health care delivery partners. And so we are communicating with thousands of doctors across the city. Tomorrow, we will be issuing additional guidance about what we want them to be aware of. And so first and foremost we want them to be aware that there is now COVID-19 testing available at commercial labs and how it is that they can go about accessing. We want them to prioritize patients in their practices who have chronic diseases, are over 50, and are symptomatic for that testing. We want to especially remind them of the importance of infection control. And this is one where, again, we don't want to take anything for granted.

When you call your doctor, tell them about your symptoms. We – the best practices for them – they want to see you in the office to make sure as soon as you walk in and you've got those symptoms to put a mask on you. Right? Because the – I have said in the past, there's a place and time for the use of simple surgical masks and that is when someone is symptomatic and they're going to a health care facility, so that they don't potentially infect other people. The other thing is we want to make sure that the – all hospital facilities, all outpatient centers have all of the supplies that they need. We reach out to them on a regular basis. But again, ensuring that we leave no stone unturned.

And the other thing is I'm hearing more and more that medical practices are putting in place what we're calling electronic visits. So, if you can do over the web, if you can do FaceTime, that also is a measure that can help all of us in this shift that we're taking. The measures that we are emphasizing are so that we reduce the number of potential cases but also reduce the potential harm to New Yorkers. And that's why it's so important for us that all New Yorkers are a part of this response to COVID-19. Thank you very much.

Mayor: The Commissioner made a really important point. I just want to say, anyone who is worried, anyone who's afraid, it's very, very normal. It's a confusing situation. It's a situation where people are being bombarded with information that – if, you know, that doesn't make you worried, I don’t know what would. So, it's really natural to be concerned and it is an ever-changing situation. So, there's that uncertainty. The Commissioner made a really good point. If folks are feeling anxiety, they're feeling stress, if they're worried, and they don't have a mental health practitioner that they turn to normally you can call 8-8-8-NYC-WELL. You get a trained counselor 24 hours a day who can talk it through with you. If you need ongoing mental health services, they can help you get to it. So very normal and natural to be deeply, deeply concerned in a crisis. Don't suffer in silence if you need mental health support and you need someone trained to talk to – 8-8-8-NYC-WELL. Now I want to turn to our Commissioner for Emergency Management. I want to thank her team, which has also been doing an amazing job coordinating so much around the city, and they are hosting us here for our many strategy meetings, tabletop exercises, et cetera. Commissioner Deanne Criswell.

Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Office of Emergency Management: Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, everybody. Yeah, I just wanted to take a minute to update everybody on what is happening here in our Emergency Operation Center. And so, for several weeks now we have convened more than a dozen interagency task forces that have comprised personnel from agencies across the city as well as some of our partner agencies to look at those impacts that we may expect from COVID-19. One of those key task forces that I want to talk about has been focusing on our continuity of operations and our continuity of government plans. So, New York City's agencies provide key services to millions of New Yorkers every day, and we want to make sure that that work can continue uninterrupted and that all City agencies have their plans updated and in place. All City agencies have always had a continuity of operations plan. And so, what we have been doing over the last several weeks is really fine tuning those plans so they specifically address the impacts that we may expect from COVID-19. For example, City agencies are now putting processes in place that can support essential functions through telework, scheduling adjustments including staggering work shifts as well as the possibility of cross training if we see a reduction in personnel.

Our remaining task forces that we have here are also tailoring City response plans to meet the unique need of COVID-19 response. Some of these task forces are working upstairs right now in our Emergency Operations Center and they include health care and 9-1-1, New York City health and worker safety, special populations and homelessness, transportation, and education. These task forces will continue to support this response as long as needed.

We're also sharing information and guidance to our cultural institutions and our tourism partners, our faith-based community, to decrease the COVID-19 exposure and limit disruption to their services. As our senior New Yorkers, as you've heard today, are especially vulnerable to the effects of this virus, we are also working very closely with the Department for the Aging and our other human service partners to ensure our senior centers, adult care centers, nursing homes, receive up to date guidance on how to limit the spread of the disease.

One other thing that we have done here at the Emergency Operations Center is activated our Logistics Center. They're working closely with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, our city, state, and federal partners, our private sector partners, and they are tracking and prioritizing any resource requests that we get. We are also keeping a close eye on the global supply chain and monitoring any potential impacts that New York may see. During emergencies, New Yorkers always help their fellow New Yorkers and COVID-19 is no different. We all have a role to play in keeping our city safe and healthy by staying home when sick, covering your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze, and we want to be able to show – we want to make sure that we can connect with New Yorkers and give you the vital information that you need as this progresses.

So, as you heard the Mayor say, we are launching today a Notify NYC that is specific for COVID-19. We want you to text COVID – C-O-V-I-D to 6-9-2-6-9-2. Again, that's COVID – C-O-V-I-D – to 6-9-2-6-9-2, and we will be pushing out important information as this progresses. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you, Commissioner. Finally, I want you to hear from Dr. Mitch Katz, CEO of Health + Hospitals. Want to say, by way of preface, right now our team at all of our Health + Hospitals facilities are doing their job. They're not only dealing with this, they're dealing with all the other health care needs of the people of this city. But the important point to recognize is the capacity we have. We have the biggest public health system in America by far. Dr. Katz and his team are doing a great job preparing. We've already talked to you about how many beds we have available if we need them, but Dr. Katz is going to further explain, in addition, to broad guidance he'll give, he's going to explain the point of how we would respond as needs intensify around Coronavirus, how we can reduce some of the other work that's being done to free up staff, to free up capacity to address this crisis while without compromising health care. And that is a pre-planned protocol that Health + Hospitals has in place. We want you to understand it. Dr. Katz.

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, NYC Health + Hospitals: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a moment when New York City can be proud that it has always maintained a robust public hospital system. We have 11 acute care hospitals. We have 60 other outpatient sites where we're able to provide care. Today we are seeing people who have symptoms suggestive of COVID-19, people who have cough and fever or shortness of breath and fever, and we are able to see them in our facilities. We are able through our commercial lab to test those people who turn out not to have influenza or another cause.

As the Mayor spoke, we've spent the last several weeks preparing all of our facilities so that if there is an influx of tens of patients, if there's an influx of hundreds of patients, we are prepared to do that. The way that you do it is by having protocols that first look at who is in the hospital for some other reason, who can be cared for at home, and you rapidly discharge them.
You cancel elective surgeries – this is not a moment where we will be doing elective gallbladder removals, doing hernia repairs, important surgeries – surgeries that have major impacts to the quality of people's lives. But we can do them, we can reschedule them for after this outbreak.

During the time of the outbreak, if we are having tens or hundreds of new patients, those patients will be rapidly discharged. Outpatient services will be canceled and we will pull all of our doctors and nurses into our inpatient areas so that we can provide adequate care to all those who need it. Every single hospital has a plan of where that care would be provided if there are hundreds of more patients. In some cases, it's a cafeteria. In some cases, it's an auditorium. In some cases, we have tents that are specially made for creating clinical areas in parking lots.
Each hospital knows exactly what it would do depending upon how many patients we have. We have enough supplies and we have access to those supplies. We watch them every day. I participated in a call about face masks, about antibiotics, about fluids, and we are prepared if this pandemic gets much worse in New York City. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. Dr. Katz. Okay. Covered a lot. Thank you for your patience everyone. Let's take questions. My colleagues will come up to help answer.

Question: Mayor, have you spoken to President Trump or Vice President Pence, who is leading the coronavirus response?

Mayor: No, our team has been in touch with federal officials. We've continued to make clear, you know, we obviously have a lot of capacity to deal with this situation. We're working very closely with the state. That's a crucial partner here. What we need from the federal government is very straightforward and it's been the case for weeks and weeks. We need help with the testing. If they will take care of that part of the equation, we can take care of our share, for sure.

Question: You haven't had any thought – I know you're holding firm on public gatherings in the city, but next weekend is a half marathon –

Mayor: We're assessing that. We're talking to the folks who are running the half marathon. That's a decision we're going to make pretty soon. We'll make it with them. We obviously want to give prior notice, but we're not there yet.

Question: Can you give us details on the testing, your capacity, how many tests you've done to date, what your [inaudible] capacity is –

Mayor: Sure.

Question: [Inaudible] you’re using, whether it's CDC, local, state labs –

Mayor: I'm going to start, my colleagues can jump in. So right now, in terms of – our public health labs have been going nonstop and luckily just as they were reaching capacity, the private labs have come online. What we want to see is faster testing. So, in terms of pure numbers with the private labs now we are well ahead of the level of testing that we need numerically, but not in terms of speed. We want a lot faster than we can get with the current protocol. But to give you the overall numbers, and I don't have the math in front of me, but it's easy enough to do. We have, you know, 13 positive cases, 146 negative cases, and 76 pending tests since the beginning. So, we're pushing up towards almost 250. But we've been able obviously to get all those done. The pendings we'll have in the course of the day. We need to be – right now we can handle hundreds of tests in the day, but not as fast as we want. Our goal is to get that FDA approval to be able to do hundreds of tests same-day, ultimately thousands of tests same-day. That's where we need to get to. Did you have another part of your question? I'm sorry.

Question: How long do you think it would take to get – how long do you think would take you to get to hundreds [inaudible] –

Mayor: If we got FDA approval, what I'm told is, it would be a day or two before we'd be up to hundreds that could be same-day. Yes, sir.

Question: [Inaudible] public schools also ask for [inaudible] and get a nurse in their building?

Mayor: If a nonpublic school needs medical assistance, we're going to work to get them help. We have just – the first thing we had to do, of course, was account for the public schools. We're happy to work with any nonpublic school to see what we can get them. Obviously, we're trying to draw in whatever capacity is out there in the community, but any nonpublic school that needs help should immediately communicate with the DOE. Yeah.

Question: Another question, tomorrow evening Purim begins?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Is it safe for people who have no symptoms to visit parents and grandparents?

Mayor: Yeah. The point is – and the Commissioner can jump in – yeah, if no one has symptoms, neither the visitors nor the people being visited, yes.

Question: Two questions. One for you. So, we're now at 13 cases.

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: Will there be a point where you will consider closing schools? [Inaudible] we get to that point? If so, what number are you –

Mayor: So, look, the important point here I'm going to keep emphasizing, literally each day we're getting new information and we're dealing with a disease that's not fully understood. So, it's a very unusual situation. We're going to everyday ask ourselves the whole set of questions about what we should do. But I will say definitively, everything we've seen so far, this is a disease that for a healthy child presents minimal risk. We do have a concern about children who have one of those five pre-existing conditions. We want to take special care with them. So, the schools is not the place we'd be looking first in terms of trying to address this problem. Obviously, I'm saying this as a parent as well. I think parents want to see the schools keep going so long as it's safe, want to see their kids getting educated. And we do have a tremendous interest in avoiding the disruption of this city unless there's a very specific reason to act otherwise.

Question: [Inaudible] specific like number of cases where you say, okay, maybe we should?

Mayor: It's not as simple as that. It's very much about the combination of what we're seeing in terms of the numbers and what we're seeing in terms of the constant flow of information about the disease. The point Dr. Barbot has made over the last few days, her disease detectives are literally gaining new information in real world conditions. You know, a lot of what we're getting out there from the guidance is based on other places. And I assure you the dynamics in China and Italy, South Korea are different than here. But also, a lot of it is theoretical. It's academic research, et cetera. This is the real world, frontline New York City, no place like it on Earth. And our public health officials are getting real world information about how things are playing out here. We're talking about it every single day and making adjustments.

So, there is no simple algorithm. When we get to the point where we think anything needs to be adjusted, we will. Now, what I have found is New Yorkers are really doing a fine job of listening to guidance. So, we're telling people now if you're sick, don't go to work, don't go to school, make adjustments if you can. If you can telecommute, do it. If you can do different staggered work hours and take the subway at a different hour, do it. If you don't need to take the subway, you don't have to. That's great. I guarantee you, a lot of people are going to make those adjustments and that's going to put us in a stronger position.

Question: The two ladies in Brooklyn that were in Egypt on the cruise ship, were they on the cruise ship that is currently under quarantine in Egypt or a different cruise ship?

Mayor: I don't know if we know that. Do we know that? Anyone? We’ll confirm that back.

Question: The Uber driver who is hospitalized in Far Rockaway, can you tell us where he drove on Long Island and whether any of his passengers are being screened for symptoms?

Mayor: We – all I understand is Long Island registered and did all his driving on Long Island. We can see if we have more than that. So, this is important to understand about car services, taxis, Uber's et cetera. So basically, again, remembering that you need that kind of direct hit for transmission. Obviously, anyone who is a driver has every reason to be concerned and vigilant, but you would need, you know, that cough or sneeze to get right into you. We don't have an indication of any customer being affected, but we're certainly going to be looking at that. But we are giving guidance to TLC drivers, not only about continually keeping their vehicles clean and sanitized, but also this is really simple and really important, this is what our doctor said immediately when they started talking about drivers, open your windows. The circulation of air. And I know that's not always possible but whenever possible, if you're a professional driver, keep your windows open, the circulation of air literally disrupts the possibility that that projection of a cough or sneeze might get to the driver. It's a simple, important step that they can take. Let me come over to this side. Yes?

Question: There were reports that there was an Asian man in Brooklyn who was stabbed in a suspected coronavirus hate crime. And I was wondering if you could provide any more information on that and if it is being investigated as –

Mayor: I need to get more on that. I don't have – we've heard some, obviously, some very unacceptable instances of discrimination and hate speech, all of which is inappropriate, a lot of which is illegal, and we're going to follow up on, but I don't have that specific connection you're talking to. Let us confirm that.

Question: You mentioned that we could see hundreds more cases in the next few weeks. Is there a tipping point where the capacity for say disease detectives or something to that effect – is there a tipping point where the number of cases just overwhelms City resources and if so, when do you anticipate that might –

Mayor: I would say there are a couple of different pieces. In terms of the work of disease detectives, we're going to use them in different ways depending on what we're dealing with. [Inaudible] health professionals that right now they're doing the thing we need the most because we are able to trace and we have a finite number of cases. As you see, so far the contacts have been limited in each case and the precision has been intense and the follow-up has been quick and that's a great thing. We want to keep doing that. If we get to a point where we need to shift all health professionals towards direct service of folks who have contracted the disease, we'll make that shift. That's a day-to-day decision. That's something that would be, as you see, a major uptick.

But in terms of the overall capacity of the system, you know, as we talked about days ago, we have 1,200 beds that we can activate readily. We can go farther than that if we take additional measures. We have the biggest public health capacity in America. We have a lot of voluntary hospitals, nonprofit organizations helping us. We got a lot of capacity and what Mitch said has not really been introduced into the equation. I want to emphasize it. There's so much that happens in a hospital every day that if it had to wait, could wait. I mean, I was just in a hospital getting arthroscopic surgery a few weeks ago. You know, if we're in the middle of a really intense challenge around coronavirus, we're not going to be doing arthroscopic surgeries. People like me are just going to limp a little more for a while. Right? So, there's a lot that can be opened up where our existing facility – all of our existing capacity then gets turned to this challenge. And there's just no place in America that has anywhere near this much medical capacity. So just the fact that you'll turn off a lot of non-essential things and turn all that talent and capacity to a crisis, should give New Yorkers a lot of confidence that, you know, even with hundreds of cases we'd be able to handle it.

Question: Mayor, is the test a blood test [inaudible] –

Mayor: I’m sorry?

Question: Is the test and blood test or something –

Commissioner Barbot: So, the test is essentially putting a medical grade Q-tip up a person's nose, swishing it around, taking it out, and then putting it into a medium. So, it's not blood, it's something that's very easily done. And we also take oral swabs.

Question: [Inaudible] go to their primary care doctor, will their primary care doctor test them there at the office or do you have to go somewhere else to get tested?

Commissioner Barbot: So right now, with the commercial labs being able to do the testing, providers will have the opportunity to do the test and to send it directly to a lab. They can visit the websites of the various labs to know sort of the nitty gritty. The important thing here though is that we still want providers to go through the history and ensure that there are the symptoms of fever and cough or fever and shortness of breath. We're not encouraging asymptomatic New Yorkers to go to their doctors and ask for the test.

Mayor: And can you – I'm sorry, just let me help you with this on terms of like news you can use. Talk about BioFire as the first step too.

Commissioner Barbot: So, BioFire as we've been saying all along is a very simple test that's also done through the nose and nasal swab that can help rule out the 26 most common viruses that can account for someone's cold-like symptoms. So, there's a whole range of them. If that tested negative and the person is symptomatic, then we would go to the COVID-19 tests.

Mayor: And if it is positive [inaudible] –

Commissioner Barbot: And if it’s positive, then that explains the person's symptoms.

Mayor: And you don't need to do –

Commissioner Barbot: You don't need to do the COVID-19.

Mayor: I’m your coach.

Commissioner Barbot: Thank you.

[Laughter]

Question: [Inaudible] question, the transmission facts that that were given earlier, are those agreed upon science with the CDC, the WHO?

Commissioner Barbot: Say more about what you mean by transmission facts.

Mayor: The spitting, the coughing, the sneezing, the –

Question: Right, that it only lives for two minutes on certain services, all of that stuff.

Commissioner Barbot: Correct. So, we are learning about how this virus is transmitted on an everyday basis and to give you a very concrete example, initially we thought it was just prolonged household contact that was the biggest risk factor. With the work that the disease detectives have done and documented how it's being transmitted in the community, we are adjusting that guidance, right. It's not just prolonged household contact, it's the very graphic description that the Mayor has given. And so that's one. What has not changed is that it's only by droplet spread. This is not like measles where if you come into a room where someone with measles was there an hour ago and they left, it's still hanging in the air and if you haven't been vaccinated against the measles, you can get it. So, this is by droplet spread.

Mayor: Direct.

Commissioner Barbot: Direct.

Mayor: Can I add one thing just to clarify the surface point, because this came up on Friday. We had a different interpretation on surface life. Then I think the WHO when we were – and Dimitri spoke to this – we were pretty clear about that. We do have a different interpretation.

Commissioner Barbot: Right, the other thing to note is that the – this is a brand-new strain of a known family of viruses. And so, some of the guidance is based on how those other strains within that family behave. And so, there's no scientific studies that I'm aware of that have studied this new strain to get exactly, you know, is it 10 minutes, is it 20 minutes. But from our best-informed scientific information, from learning, from scientific partners around the world, in real world situations it's a few minutes, anywhere from like two to three minutes, a little bit more, a little bit less. But I think that's an area that still needs further scientific investigation.

Mayor: Hold on, let me do that one. I'll come back to you. Go ahead back there.

Question: I wanted to get more information on the FDNY order regarding [inaudible] calls and Commissioner Nigro, feel free, if you would like to speak as well. Why was that order made and when might that be taken off the table? Some might see this as resources coming off the table when they're needed most.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro: Well, I think as you've heard, this is not a situation that's likely to end tomorrow or the end of next week. So, an agency's biggest resource, most important resource is their people. And so, we have trained medical personnel, EMTs – all of the calls to 9-1-1 are say – well over 90 percent result in a transport. All those transports are done by our EMTs and paramedics and ambulances. So, our firefighters are still going to the most serious calls of cardiac arrest, of choking, of major traumas, but we've taken them off some other call types that are less likely to be life threatening in order to play this game – play the long game. So if it was a sports analogy, we'd say if you use all your resources in the first half, you're likely to lose the game in the second half. The Fire Department can't afford to lose a game. You know, we've transported folks with measles and tuberculosis and Ebola quite successfully. Our people are highly trained and highly skilled. So, I think the department is being prudent, being proactive and we'll see how – as you've heard, each and every day we learn something else and we'll review everything on a daily basis.

Question: All of the EMS unions have said they are stretched thin, that it's essentially not fair for firefighters to be taken off the job when there could be a lot more activity –

Commissioner Nigro: Well, I think we have to keep in mind the EMS unions are perhaps not as happy as they may be in their plight lately. You've heard that before this came out and that may play into what they're saying publicly.

Question: Has there been any discussion about maybe putting some of the work on subway trains aside because particularly on trains like the L which don't run regularly on the weekend, they are packed to capacity, like multiple –

Mayor: When you say work you mean like track repair and stuff like that?

Question: Yeah, like to make trains, you know, come more frequently and not be as crowded?

Mayor: I think that's a great question. Obviously, I will say this for the record, we don't run the MTA but I think it's a great conversation for us to have with the MTA as to whether in this environment there are maintenance efforts that could be delayed to keep more frequency, I think is a fair question. Now obviously if the maintenance is to keep the trains running and you might lose capacity without the maintenance, what we want – you know, we want to play the long game there too a bit, but it's a great question. We will pursue that and have an answer on that tomorrow. Go ahead.

Question: Commissioner. I wondered if you could say some words in Spanish –

[Question is asked in Spanish]

Commissioner Barbot: [Speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: Is it [inaudible]?

Commissioner Barbot: [Speaks in Spanish]

Question: Sorry another question – 

[Question is asked in Spanish]

Commissioner Barbot: [Speaks in Spanish]

Question: [Speaks in Spanish]

Commissioner Barbot: [Speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: So, everyone just – I think we've covered almost everything that Oxiris has said previously in English except just to clarify that, you know, we're in this for months. We don't have the exact number of months for you yet, but months is the way to think about this. We'll be at this for a while. Okay. Let me see if there's anything else before we close down. There will be regular updates obviously.

Question: There's a lack of hand sanitizer around the city. You cannot find any hand sanitizer or any supplies like this. 

Mayor: Well, I'll tell you something. I've been in a lot of places where I see hand sanitizer out. I agree there's less and less in the stores, but I think a lot of people have stowed it away and are rationing it out. We certainly want to make sure that working with the private sector, working with the federal government, that we continue to see that supply. So that's something we'll be following up on, working with the State, working with the federal government. It's still being produced out there and we're one of the places that needs it more than most. So, we want to work to see the supply come in. And this is the point about the federal government again. I learned this a long time ago, you know, no one should have the assumption in mind that the federal government actually comes to the ground and helps in a crisis except for the most dire emergencies when the military is mobilized. Basically, the federal government provides financing and provides logistical support. So, we've been asking — and then, you know, legal approvals, things like that. We've been asking for approval on the testing incessantly. It's really troubling that that hasn't come. But the other thing we've talked about is the supply of masks. And now I think hand sanitizer is another great example. This is where the federal government needs to step up. They can ensure that the supply that's available in the country is appropriately distributed to where the need is greatest. I think pure math tells us we're one of the places that needs help compared to a lot of their places in the country that thank God, don't have cases. So I'd like to see the federal government step up, help us get the masks we need, help us get the hand sanitizer we need. Those are simple steps and if they would do those things and just stay out of the way otherwise we would be able to handle this situation.

Question: So is that what you would personally want to say to Vice President Pence or President Trump or anyone from the federal government?

Mayor: Yeah, but I want to, it's great — I mean I'm happy to talk to any of them and we are scheduling a call with the Health and Human Services Secretary. But again, I think this stuff has been said so many times, so many ways. It's just time for them to do it. I don't think this is mysterious stuff. We've been talking about the need for masks for weeks. It's just time for them to create a distribution structure and enough of a command and control that these things get to where they need it.

Question: Are you hopeful?

Mayor: I'm hopeful that here, we can handle a lot because we have a lot of talent and we have extraordinarily strong agencies and the best medical capacity any place in the country. We are just legendary hospitals, both public and private. And I think New Yorkers are listening and I think they're making the right adjustments. So I am hopeful about what we're doing. I am confused about what the federal government is doing and am I hopeful they will get their act together? I'd like some more evidence. I will quote as I often do, Ronald Reagan and say trust, but verify. I would like to see some evidence. So how about the FDA approval? If they could get that done today, tomorrow, that would be a real sign of progress. A few more and then we'll shut down for today and get you more tomorrow. Go ahead.

Question: Going back to the, sort of expecting hundreds of cases in the coming weeks. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? Meaning is that based on some specific modeling that you have? Say hundreds, we're talking about obviously positive cases. Weeks, we're talking about three weeks, four weeks, eight weeks?

Mayor: Yes. So I would say the best guest today, but ask me again tomorrow, is in the next two to three weeks, we'll be at at least a hundred cases since day one. So we're at 13 today that's played out over the last week or two. That you know, that pace is going to pick up because of community spread. So if we were guessing right now based on, and I say guess, based on, you know, a lot of data and modeling, we would say we'll get the case number 100 somewhere in the next two to three weeks. But again, we're watching every day. We might change that estimate up or down each day, but at some point it could easily be hundreds of cases. And that's daunting except against the backdrop of all the capacity that we've just outlined to you. And a reminder -- so let's go back to these overall facts. This has really been pretty consistent, that 80 percent of the cases result in very mild symptoms, 20 percent more serious. But of that the vast majority, even if it's a more serious challenge, it still ends with the resolving of the disease and people going back to their normal life. For a very small number, very tragically, it can be fatal, but that's a very small number still. So given what we can tell you right now, the vast majority of our cases are going to be people who come through fine with limited impact. And that breaking out into categories, I really asked you all to share it, that the number one largest population category in New York City, under 50-year-old people who don't have one of those five preexisting conditions. For those folks with very few exceptions, it's going to be a very mild experience. So that's where we think when you add all those facts together, we have the capacity to handle this crisis. Last call.

Question: You've mentioned the military, they do a lot of research of [inaudible] stuff. Do they know anything about this virus? And also, can they rule out that there's nothing [inaudible] with any terrorism?

Mayor: I can't answer those questions effectively. I doubt my colleagues can too. If the military has research, I want to believe, you know, meaning that would be helpful in addressing it. I would assume the federal government would bring that into play. I don't think they would hold it back. I have not heard anyone suggest that this is anything but an organic disease that developed as we've seen in the past. And I think its history is pretty well documented. So I have no reason to believe it's anything but unfortunately something that derived in nature.

Question: This is concerning the 11 patients from the Brooklyn nursing home, how are they being monitored and are they in voluntary isolation?

Mayor: I, we can get you more. They are being monitored. They're all asymptomatic. It's been a week. They're certainly being watched carefully. Want to speak to it Doctor?

Commissioner Barbot: So they are all in private rooms and being monitored daily. So they're in the appropriate level of isolation.

Mayor: Last call? Yes.

Question: So you just mentioned there’s two types of tests [inaudible] virus [inaudible] is it possible the person get the flu or coronavirus [inaudible]?

Commissioner Barbot: To our knowledge, that hasn't been studied enough and we don't have a good indication that that's commonly occurring. And so our guidance, the guidance that the World Health Organization and others have been giving is that if the BioFire is positive, that is the definitive diagnosis. However, I will add, you know that we always want doctors to practice good clinical judgment and if someone does have influenza and they're not getting better, then certainly that would be a situation where we would want them to contact us and have more in depth conversation. But again, it's not to my knowledge, something that has been seen in the literature.

Mayor: Respectfully, I think that a little restating there might be helpful to everyone. Your general view, if you get a, if you've got a positive on the BioFire, which is the other more traditional, if you'll forgive the phrase, more traditional known diseases. If you've got a positive on the BioFire, what does that generally mean?

Commissioner Barbot: Positive BioFire means you have one of the 26 viruses that it's counting for the symptoms that you have.

Mayor: And not coronavirus?

Commissioner Barbot: Not coronavirus. 

Mayor: Based on what we know now.

Commissioner Barbot: Yes. 

Mayor: Yup.

Question: Just a little more color on small businesses. In order to introduce these grants and loan programs, they must be hurting pretty bad. What have you heard from small businesses in terms of what they may go -

Mayor: Gregg or James? Who wants to speak to that? 

Commissioner Gregg Bishop, Small Business Services: And so first I just want to encourage New Yorkers to support our small businesses. We've heard from mainly restaurants, catering halls, et cetera, sales declines of 40 to anywhere up to 80 percent. We're getting inquiries now from small businesses about what to do with their employees. So, these two programs will adjust that. 

Mayor: Okay. Last call.

Question: Could you elaborate on the smoking and vaping, does that also include the medical marijuana patients?

Commissioner Barbot: It's always – well, let me start there. Smoking and vaping are always major concerns. If someone is taking medical marijuana by vaping, I think we would want to look more into that. But if they're taking it through other measures, then I don't think that that would be a situation.

Question: So, you don't think that that would be a factor?

Commissioner Barbot: Vaping and smoking combustible cigarettes are the major factors.

Question: The 80-year-old woman, she's the one in the most serious condition. Is there anything you can tell us about her? Was that transmitted through travel or through the community? 

Mayor: Yeah. We don't have the profile in front of us. We'll get that to you quickly, but that's, yeah, that's the patient we're most concerned about right now. Okay. Everybody, we will get you more updates tomorrow. Thank you very much.

2020-03-09 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: We have a lot of information for you today. I'm going to go into a lot of detail and we'll of course take questions, but let me start with what I think is really the bigger picture here because what's on everyone's mind is how do we all together get through this crisis, how do we get through coronavirus, when are things going to be normal again, how are we going to make sure everyone's okay? That's what's on everyone's mind. There's a lot of fear out there. There's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of confusion, and people are looking to the government on all levels for answers. So I want to speak to the overall situation and I want to be the first to say we've seen some things that are really dissatisfying. Certainly a lot of people would say all over this country that we haven't gotten the answers we would have liked to have seen from our federal government.

But that being said, I think there's a bigger truth about the coronavirus and what we're experiencing here, which is that ultimately the people will be the solution. All of you. And I want to speak to all my fellow New Yorkers – you will ultimately be the solution to this crisis. So our job in government is to lead, it's our job to make sure that everything that needs to be put in place is there, that the answers to people's concerns and questions are there, that we do everything in our power to protect people and to see us through. But ultimately we're talking about something that's going to reach into every part of our community. And we're seeing that all over the world. This kind of crisis is not solved from on high. This kind of crisis is solved at the grassroots by the people. So our job is to help the people, to help people know what they need to do to support them, protect them, really give them the tools.

I want to empower the people of this city to be part of the solution here because that's the only way we're going to get out of this. Now, I have seen New Yorkers respond to this in a very, very powerful way. You know, there are places around the world and certainly even around this country where you see people radically changing their lives, where you see some panic starting to set in. You don't see that in New York City. New Yorkers are strong and resilient. New Yorkers, overwhelmingly, are going about their lives, taking smart precautions, making some adjustments, but going about your lives. New Yorkers are also listening and we are tough people. We're opinionated people, but New Yorkers do listen and we found that in other crises where we've put out guidance and people have really paid attention to it and followed it. I've been watching this for weeks and weeks and I believe New Yorkers have heard the importance of taking precautions, taking seriously if they have symptoms, reaching out to doctors, following through on the orders of their doctors.

We see a lot of evidence that people are really doing that, see a lot of evidence that people who are in quarantine are honoring those quarantines. We see a lot of evidence that people are changing their basic habits in a way that really will affect the trajectory of this whole crisis. You know, we talk about washing your hands, we talk about hand sanitizer, you've got all these basic rules right up here on this board. People are doing it. You see it all over. You see people using hand sanitizer all the time. You see people tapping elbows. You see folks taking the smart precautions that are going to make a world of difference. Talked a lot about making smart adjustments if someone in your life is sick or if you yourself are sick.

And I keep saying it, this is one of the big difference makers. Everyone can be a part of this. If you are sick, if you have those cold or flu-like symptoms, stay home. If your child's sick, don't send your child to school. Really basic stuff. If you're someone with vulnerabilities and we've talked about that, we'll go over it again, but certainly that means folks with pre-existing serious medical conditions, and particularly if they're over 50 years old, you don't want to visit folks who are sick. Even if you love your grandchildren, for example, you don't want to go see your grandchildren if they happen to be sick. Even with a common cold, you just don't want to do it, and so there are so many things that people can do that actually will determine the whole trajectory of this crisis.

This is a disease that came from far away and we don't fully understand all of it. The medical community is still trying to understand it and this was not something any of us bargained for, but even with those realities, that doesn't mean we will ever be defeated and certainly New Yorkers never accept defeat. We have to feel that we have the power to overcome this. And in fact it is something that everyone can participate in. So in all of our updates to the people of New York City, we're not just going to tell you what the government is doing, we're going to tell you what you can do. And I think people are listening. I think people are acting. I think it's making a world of difference. And if we keep it, we're going to see this to its completion, and get back to normalcy in this city.

It's going to take time. It's going to be a long battle, undoubtedly – months – but I am convinced we can do it. So with that, I want to just give you updates and I will say – you'll forgive me, I'm going to always give you some qualifiers besides the fact that we're still learning more about the disease, and you know what we talked about yesterday, our disease detectives, our Department of Health is getting first hand new information through practice, through actual work with patients. We're learning things that are now becoming part of how we approach this disease. We listened to the CDC, we listened to the World Health Organization, but we believe what we see in front of our eyes more than anything else. So our health officials are experiencing the reality of this disease in our neighborhoods. Making adjustments to our strategy and tactics accordingly. That's ultimately what is most important to us.

The evidence that we are seeing with our own eyes, the cases in our own city. We're getting a lot more information all the time and a lot of the time I'll be giving you updates on individual cases or new developments, but I won't have all the details because they're coming in. So I'll just consistently say to you when I have a complete picture, I'll tell you that. When I have a partial picture, I'll tell you that. When we're not yet able, as you saw last week, to give you some specifics because people have not been fully notified or prepared for it to be public information, we'll tell you that. But the goal is to constantly give you as many details as we can, as specifically as we can, as quickly as we can.

Also a reminder, all New Yorkers who want regular information updates can text the word COVID – C-O-V-I-D to 6-9-2-6-9-2. We just set this up recently. Text COVID – C-O-V-I-D to 6-9-2-6-9-2. Already 20,000 New Yorkers have signed up. We encourage people who want regular updates to do that.

Okay, so we're going to do some of the basics again because that's just something that people just constantly need to hear and I will dare say I've been watching as everyone has a lot of coverage and I'm not sure these basic facts are coming through as often as they should, so I'm going to make it my business to just always hit these notes. What the disease is, what it isn't. This is not a disease you can contract simply by being in some large open space where someone previously was who had the disease. There are diseases – take this room, measles. If someone with measles was in this room an hour ago, you could still contract it now or later. That's not the reality with coronavirus. Coronavirus is not something that hangs in the air. It is – requires, and I'm going to be graphic, forgive me, requires literally the transmission of fluids.

It has to go from someone who is infected to another person directly into their mouth, their nose, or their eyes. How does that happen? A sneeze that gets right on you. A cough that gets right on you. Someone's talking right up close to you and inadvertently spits a little bit while they're talking and then it has to get right into your mouth, nose, or eyes, not it got on your arm. That's not an issue. Not it was in the air over here. It has to get right into you. It is true, if somehow you get it immediately on your hand and you immediately take your hand to your mouth or your nose, your eyes, that is a way it can be transmitted, but a fact that our disease detectives are seeing is that this disease does not last long on surfaces, literally a matter of minutes. So there's understandably a lot of concern and we want to answer the concern, but there's also some mythology out there that's making the disease something it's not. This just takes a certain amount of intimacy and closeness, if you will, for it to be transmitted.

The other thing to come back to is who's vulnerable and who's not. Look, you've seen the numbers and we – our hearts go out to every family who has lost a loved one all over the world. But still what we're seeing as a matter of percentages, the vast majority of people who even do contract coronavirus have a very mild experience, very similar to just having a typical cold or flu. Even those who have more serious medical problems come through it overwhelmingly. So the fact is we can't miss the forest for the trees about this disease.

Who's most vulnerable? Folks with five pre-existing conditions – lung disease, heart disease, cancer, compromised immune system, and diabetes. Those five pre-existing conditions are the single most important indicators that someone who did contract coronavirus might be in danger of a very bad medical outcome especially if you have the combination of those five – one or more of those five pre-existing conditions and you're over 50, that's the group we're most concerned about. That's where we're seeing the biggest problems and God forbid, but the facts have proven it, that's essentially where we're seeing people who lose their life in that category. We are concerned about folks who are under 50 and have pre-existing conditions, but their chances are certainly better. We're concerned about people who are over 50 and have no pre-existing conditions, but their chances are definitely better. And the biggest single category of New Yorkers and Americans is also the category that is safest, that is people under 50 who do not have one of those five pre-existing conditions. An important additional fact is even though it is not a pre-existing condition, we do know that smoking and vaping makes it easier for the disease to have more negative impact on a person's body.

It's not the same thing as a pre-existing condition, but it is an important factor in the equation as well, but for the vast majority of New Yorkers under 50, healthy, even if you were to contract this disease, you will probably have a very limited experience with it, very limited impact on your health, similar to what you have with a cold or flu in any typical season. After a period of days you will be able to resume your normal life. Children in our experience, and I say as a parent and I know there's so much anxiety among parents all over this city, children in general have not been afflicted by this disease and even when they have, have had very, very limited symptoms and very few dangers, but the exception again is children with one of those five preexisting conditions and, again, smoking and vaping is a real issue.

Younger people are always going to have a more resiliency health wise, but we do want to note those are the areas of concern, but for a healthy child, the chance of a negative impact, thank God, is limited and that's going to be very important as we talk about schools later on. That is in the front of our mind. The first concern here obviously is health and safety for all New Yorkers. Everyone knows how deeply we care about children. Thank God we're dealing with a crisis where they – from what we know, healthy children are amongst the least vulnerable in this equation, the safest in this equation.

Okay. Bringing all these pieces together, we want people to take this information and act on it. Again, we want to empower all New Yorkers. So, if you're one of the categories where you're most vulnerable and you start to get symptoms that, again, are similar to cold or flu symptoms, we want you to call your doctor immediately and depending on the severity of those symptoms, we may want you to get to a facility immediately. Folks in that top vulnerability area, pre-existing conditions one or more and over 50, we are very concerned about you. We want you immediately – never brush it off, don't explain it away, get on the phone to your doctor. If you're really doing poorly, we want to get you the health care immediately. Anyone who feels like they have those cold or flu like symptoms, stay home immediately. If you start to experience them at work, go home. If you start to experience that at school, go home. Don't wait until the end of work. Don't wait until the end of the school day. Go home.

If you experience them in the morning right before you're about to go to work or school, stay home. This is so crucial to how we all get through this. Look, New Yorkers are very tough, legendarily the hardest working people in America. Every single person in this room has worked through sickness. I guarantee it. I don't even need to take a poll. It's a running joke pre-coronavirus at City Hall how many people would come to work sick because they thought it was their obligation to keep working no matter what. And I would usually give people a wonderful lecture about, thank you for your diligence and your devotion to public service and now you're making everyone else sick, right. That was in a more normal time, but it's true, obviously, as we're dealing with this crisis. New Yorkers – tough people, we want to keep going. This is a time to listen to your body.

So, if you're starting to get sick, stay home, do everybody a favor and stay home. It makes a crucial difference in this equation. If you're starting to get sick, don't go on the subway, don't go on a bus. If you have to get to health care, you have no other choice in the world, we understand. But remember, if you need to get to health care and you need help, you can call 3-1-1, if you need an ambulance, we'll get you an ambulance. I want as a general rule, if you're feeling sick, stay away from mass transit because we don't want you spreading it to other people. We want everyone to get through this and again, the vast majority of people, even if it is coronavirus, will have a very mild limited experience a matter of days and then it will be over.

We're going to give you updates every single day on the number of cases and that tells you a lot. We're also going to tell you about individual cases, the human reality, but we're going to show you the whole picture, which is not just how many new cases we have and not just how many times we got a negative on a test as well as a positive, but we're also going to start to tell you starting tomorrow some of the stories of people who got well and are starting to resume their lives because I want to emphasize that testing positive for coronavirus for most people, that is just a very brief period of their life and then it's over and then people go back to their lives. I want us to give you real life examples so you can start to – everyone can start to understand that.

As of today, and this is an update even since this morning, obviously an ever-changing situation and we receive regular updates from the state with information that's adding to what we have. So right now, New York City, 20 confirmed cases of coronavirus – 20 test positives. That is eight new since yesterday. If you include the one case that I mentioned yesterday in the Bronx that we didn't have the full details on, we'll give them to you now. Twenty new, that's eight since yesterday. Four come from the state from their briefing earlier. Two – from that four, two more in the Bronx that relate directly to that Westchester cluster. Two more in Manhattan and one has been publicized – the head of the Port Authority, Rick Cotton, who's a very good public servant and he is modeling good behavior. He immediately went home and isolated himself, which is exactly what everyone should do and he's working from home.

So there's 20 positive tests. Again, we're doing this from day one, from the very first time we got a positive test. But we're going to start to show you now that the – essentially the numbers that come off the board, we're going to start to show you that, the ones that are resolved. But I also think it's important to get the negative test results. We now have 205 tests that came out negative, which is great. 59 new since yesterday. So the rate of testing is really increasing rapidly. We have 86 pending tests right now, but again, the negative tests tell you some things. It does not tell you everything. Some of the people tested were in one situation. Now there's other situations. Certainly I'm happy to see only one out of 10 tests is coming back positive, but that's just one piece of information.

We have now 24 people in mandatory quarantine and they're being very closely monitored. In voluntary isolation, I'll give you the updated number and that number continues to go down for now, it could easily go back up again, but now that number is 2,019 – 2-0-19 – 2,019. Obviously we're seeing fewer cases related to travel. We are seeing cases more and more related to community spread. Yesterday I explained that we were beginning what we're essentially calling a phase two where we're giving people specific guidance that will have more impact on their lives, more impact on their workplaces. This is guidance. These are not mandates. We have the option of moving to mandates if we get to that point. But right now this is guidance and I believe people will take it seriously and will do their best to implement.

So again, for private employers – every employer is different. I want to emphasize this. Every employer is different. We want our employers to keep going. We want our businesses to continue to do their work. People need paychecks, they need a livelihood. We understand that for some employers because of the nature of the work, they have many more limitations on what they could do than others. Others have more flexibility. It all depends on the employer, but we all agree we want our businesses to keep going. So for a business that can allow more employees to telecommute, we want you to do that. If you can do it, it's a good thing to do. Why? Because we simply want to reduce the number of people on mass transit just to open up some more space. And this is really crucial. The challenge, which is more a New York City challenge than almost any place else in the country, particularly for the subways, particularly for rush hour, is people just packed like sardines.

We've all experienced it and in that atmosphere, as I told you, that direct transmission is just really, really close and a little too easy for someone to accidentally cough or sneeze and not cover it in time. We'd like to open up that space, so we're trying to get it that we – if there's folks who do not need to be on that train because they could work from home, that's helpful. If an employer says, no, we just can't do that, we can't effectively run our business that way, fine, understood. But if you can create some flexibility or even some days in the week for some employees, some more telecommuting is helpful. And then staggering hours is very helpful. For employers that usually have their employees all come in at one time, if you can mix that up, particularly get that away from the harder rush hour, very helpful. If you have a business where people typically all come in at eight o'clock or nine o'clock and you can get some of them to come in at 10:00 am and work later, that really helps us. So we're looking for either or both of those accommodations from employers to the maximum extent they can.

For everyone – remember, you're in a city that if you are sick and you need to stay home, this is a city, thank God, that has paid sick leave and typically, and obviously Dr. Barbot will speak to this, it only takes a few days to see where your symptoms are going if you have cold or flu-like symptoms. Paid sick days is five days per year. So it can cover that eventuality. Important to recognize this as something you can use so you don't have to worry about missing pay if you end up being sick. I mentioned earlier particularly for folks who are vulnerable, don't put yourself in the presence of people you know to have symptoms. But I also want to note for all New Yorkers, you know, even while we're being careful and cautious, we say in every challenge, every crisis, a heat wave, a blizzard, a hurricane, we always say, look out for your fellow New Yorkers, look out for your neighbors. If there's someone who is in your apartment building or on your block who has medical challenges or a senior that has trouble getting around, check on them.

Someone may need some food delivered. Do the things that neighbors do and if you're concerned to make sure it's safe, there are obvious ways to address that. If someone's not well, but they need food and they're your neighbor, you can bring food to their door, you can leave it right outside the door and ring the doorbell. There's still ways to help people, even if you need to keep a little distance, and we talked about in previous gatherings, folks have said, how do you do self-quarantine? Not always easy in a city where people live in apartments and small spaces, but even staying in one room, your family is in the other rooms, people can deliver you food, what you need. There's ways to do these things. Again, everyone has a role to play to help each other, but in a way that can stay – can be safe for everyone.

Okay. I mentioned some other basics. If you have a way to get to work that is not a subway train in rush hour, that's great. If you can walk to work, if you can bike to work, that's helpful in this environment. I said a very common sense thing. I'm going to reiterate it. It's something we all deal with all the time. If the train that arrives is really, really packed and you can wait for the next one, that's smart. Do so. We understand that doesn't always mean the next one is not packed, but we've all had the experience of, we see a train that's just too packed, we'll take our chances on the next one or the one after that. If you can do that, that's smart. We just want to spread people out as much as we can.

Now here's a new one which came up – we were constantly having meetings over here and really interesting information comes up in these meetings. Dr. Barbot can speak to the details of this, but we talked about hand sanitizer, what it can do and what it can't do. Hand sanitizer is fantastic for insuring in the rare dynamics where somehow someone coughed right onto your hand, sneezed right onto your hand, it was on your hand, you didn't want to put it to your mouth, nose, eyes – hand sanitizer immediately kills the virus. You don't have the problem. But we started talking about what if people misinterpreted. Because there's 8.6 million of us, everyone's got a different understanding. Do not put hand sanitizer in your mouth. Sounds silly, but you know what, we want to make sure everyone understands. Don't put it in your nose. God forbid, don't put it in your eyes. Dr. Barbot will explain that not only are you going to sting a lot, but it actually makes it harder for your normal body defenses to function. And the doctor will say it more eloquently than me.

Some updates and some of these will be from yesterday and some will be new ones. So, no non-essential international travel for City employees. No public school international trips through the end of the school year. Nurses being added this week to every public school building. Again, that may be multiple schools in a building, but there will be a nurse that will cover all the schools in the building. All public schools will have nurses this week that don't have them currently. And every school is being supplied as well as those other nonpublic schools that ask for supplies and there'll be regular spot checks to ensure all bathrooms in the schools have plenty of soap and paper towels.

Reiterating for small business – two new initiatives for businesses up to a hundred employees, we will make available zero interest loans up to $75,000 if they have experienced a decrease of sales 25 percent or more in recent weeks. For businesses with fewer than five employees, these are the mom-and-pop stores, neighborhood stores, we will do direct grants up to 40 percent of payroll costs. That's to help them continue to employ their employees even if they're seeing a downturn. Additional actions for senior citizens – we have outreach teams going to each of our over 600 senior centers to ensure that every one of them is observing the best health practices, checking all seniors who come in to the center, make sure if anyone is sick, God forbid, they're immediately isolated and gotten back to their home or if they need medical care to their medical care. But we're going to protect our senior centers to make sure that they are functioning well and they are a place only for folks who do not have any symptoms.

Related to the homeless – our outreach workers are now working on a systematic effort to go through all of their contacts with homeless individuals, reach them all, check on their health, see if there's any sign of symptoms, follow up where there is, get them health care. We'll have updates on the numbers related to that shortly.

In terms of our Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, we're giving designations to items that are available for purchase by consumers that we want to stop price gouging on. We have already done that with N95 masks. We're adding hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes to that list. This means that from this point on any stores that charge exorbitant prices for those items will be fined. We need, of course, anyone who sees that happening to call 3-1-1 immediately and report it, and if you see it, take a photo that's helpful.

Fines up to $500 per incident, any case of price gouging. So we're starting with the N95 masks, the hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes. Let me just say to business owners, and I think this is a very small minority of business owners, but don't even think about price gouging in the middle of this crisis. It's absolutely immoral, it's unfair to your fellow New Yorkers. They will not forget. By the way, if you do something like that and you're going to see a lot of customers not come back, but on top of that we will fining you and we'll keep fining you until you stop.

On the federal side. I don't know how many days we're going to go on where we keep pleading with the federal government, documenting to the federal government. I've been saying this here in these press conferences, I've been saying it on local television, national television, it's the simplest thing in the world. Approve the automated tests. The FDA needs to approve the automated tests. Right now we're bringing you back results every day. We could be bringing you back a lot more results a lot more quickly from these tests. If we had them automated, the FDA could do that in a stroke of a pen and help not only in New York City, but cities and towns and counties all over America. They should do that immediately.

Okay. A little bit more. And then we'll hear from our Health Commissioner and Speaker Corey Johnson and then we'll take questions. New cases. Okay, on the eight new cases – so we're going to start with the one we talked about initially yesterday, but we're waiting on the final details. Here are the details. And this is case number 13 – seven-year-old girl in the Bronx. She attends Westchester Torah Academy, which has been closed since March 3rd, directly related to the Westchester cluster. No pre-existing conditions, no nexus to travel. She is doing well. Minimal symptoms. She's quarantined at her home right now with her family. And her mom, her dad, her two sisters have all tested negative. And that is again – this is what our disease detectives do. Tracing those contacts, they're still looking to see if there's any other contacts that need follow-up, but those are obviously the most important.

Case number 14 – we have a 68-year-old man in Brooklyn, had symptoms, ended up being admitted to the hospital. He has traveled, so we're not sure 100 percent of the origin here, but most notably, and we're very concerned about this, has both diabetes and heart disease, so this is someone we're very concerned about. Critical condition, but stable in ICU in a private hospital in Brooklyn. We've tracked close contacts. A girlfriend who has symptoms and is being tested is in mandatory quarantine, a son also in mandatory quarantine. We have three other family members in voluntary isolation who do not live with the patient. That's that group as far as we know right now. And again, as these detectives do their work, oftentimes we get to a very finite number of contacts. Sometimes we find a few additional, but typically it's only been a few additional.

Case number 15 is a 22-year-old man in Brooklyn, had symptoms, ended up being transported by EMS to a private hospital in Brooklyn. Stable but remains hospitalized. Had some recent travel, but again, not to one of the places where – these last two cases both had travel but not to one of the nations where we have had the bigger outbreaks. Why is a 22-year-old man stable but hospitalized at this point? The one factor we know of is he has a vaper. So, we don't know of any pre-existing conditions, but we do think the fact that he is a vaper is affecting this situation. Two close contacts, lives with his mom and sister who are both quarantined.

Case 16 – and this is of the city residents. I want to remind people, we're going to – these cases are New York City residents. There are other people we've already talked about and we'll continue to talk about who don't live in New York City but have a connection in New York City. This is about city residents and case 16 is going to be the last one I have a detailed profile on. As I said, we've gotten some new ones recently. We will get you more details on each of those as we get them. Case 16 is a 75-year-old man in Queens, had fever, then developed pneumonia, had shortness of breath, there's a lot of activity here, ended up in the ICU, has a pre-existing condition of diabetes and now this individual is really in trouble, this 75-year-old man in Queens, critically ill at a private hospital in Queens. This is someone we're very, very worried about. In terms of contacts. His wife is asymptomatic and will be quarantined and we are waiting to know more on other contacts.

So those – that is the 16th case. We have an update on a Westchester County resident, part of the Westchester cluster, but important here because he is also a City employee. We'll have more details on this as we are able – we have more specifics we have to put together and notifications we have to do. So this one's going to be very broad, but a City employee who was in a City office last week but only for three hours was not symptomatic at the time, still not symptomatic – in quarantine now. So we'll have more to say on that. All family, all other family members negative.

There was one other point from yesterday that came up that we've done the follow-up on. There was a concern yesterday about an Asian man wearing a mask and the concern was that there was a physical altercation. The question was, was it being investigated as a hate crime. From the NYPD, we have an update that the NYPD based on their investigation believes it was an interpersonal dispute, not a hate crime. They're not at this point investigating it as a hate crime.

Okay. We are now going to– I'm going to say a few sentences in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, I want to bring forward our Health Commissioner. She has been working nonstop and I hope she will get some sleep. It's been long, long hours. Want to thank you and your team, Dr. Oxiris Barbot. And you'll explain hand sanitizer, where it shouldn't go?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Yes.

Mayor: Okay.

Commissioner Barbot: So as the Mayor has outlined, we are in a new phase of this outbreak. And before I go into details about that new phase, I just want to acknowledge and emphasize that we are delivering a lot of information to New Yorkers. New Yorkers are hearing every day about new cases all over the world. They're hearing about an increasing death toll from this virus and so I want to just take a moment to say these times, it's normal and it's to be anticipated that some people may be frightened, some people may be sad and I want to remind New Yorkers that NYC Well is a resource during these times. If you are feeling – well, let me go back there. There are a whole host of potential responses to this. Some people may be in denial and say, oh, it's never going to happen to me. I'm just going to go about my daily life and I'm not going to listen to anything. There are other people who may get angry. Why is this happening here? There are some people that might say, well, you know, I'll wash my hands often but I'm still going to go to work because I have that important meeting. And as long as I wash my hands, everything should be fine. And then there are folks who will be maybe depressed and say, you know, the world is going to come to an end and I'm just going to stay home and I'm not going to do anything. What we want people to understand is that A, there are resources, NYC Well and B, that the best way for all of us to respond to this is by having accurate information. I want New Yorkers to know nyc.gov/health is the best place, our website, to get the most accurate up to date information. You can also get it at cdc.gov. They have ample information.

But I still want to be clear that lack of information is no excuse for spreading stigma. It's no excuse for spreading hate. Fear is not an excuse to do that and we want to allay people's fears. We want to acknowledge that we're all in a new reality, but I want to just sort of start with that. There's no room for stigma and fear in this.

The other thing that I want to sort of emphasize as I say that we're in a new phase. When we say that we are in a new phase, there are a number of things that we have learned through the course of our investigation. One is initially we thought that the main risk factor was travel. We know that that is no longer the case. We know that the virus is here in our community and we are taking measures to address that.

The other thing is from the work that we have done, we have also been able to document that it's not just prolonged household contact, as we initially thought. That we have evidence that there are other types of interactions that can occur that can transmit the virus and where people can become ill. And I think, you know, the Westchester cluster will go down in history as one of those classic situations where we have learned a lot. And so when we have person to person spread in a community, the things that we need to do change. And so I want to make sure that as New Yorkers we are all aware of the changes that need to take place. And I also want to emphasize something that the Mayor said earlier that we are in a phase where, because of the fact that this is a novel virus, meaning that no one has ever been exposed to this virus before, anywhere in the world. And so none of us, literally none of us, is immune. And it's important to note that we all have a role to play in addressing this outbreak. And so in that I want to be clear that while we are marshaling all of our public health resources, all of our health care delivery system resources, each one of us has a role to play.

First and foremost, I have been very clear that as the city's doctor, I need people to stay home when they are sick. And the symptoms that we are specifically concerned about are fever and cough, or fever and shortness of breath. And especially in individuals who have the five chronic illnesses that the Mayor spoke about. Which I will repeat – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic lung disease, and having an immunocompromised system, along with the fact that if you, you have any one of those and you are over 50, we want you to take, have a lower threshold for staying home if you're sick. And having a lower threshold that if you stay home for 24, 48 hours and you're still not getting better to reach out to your doctor.

Now what happens when you're at the doctor because this question has come up a number of times. You have those symptoms, you reach out to your doctor. We want you to let your doctor know ahead of time that you have these symptoms so that your doctor can be ready to meet you or someone in your doctor's office, with a mask. Because the best use of a mask is to help symptomatic people that we still don't know whether or not they may have the infection, not transmit it to others. So your doctor's office or when you're at the clinic or at the hospital. That's what we want all of them to do. The second thing is that there's a very simple task that we have been talking about from the beginning. BioFire. First thing they will do, or among one of the first things that they will do is test you with BioFire. And that's to rule out any one of the 26 most common viruses that can be accounting for your symptoms. BioFire is positive. Stop, do not pass go. Provide appropriate treatment, send you home until you're better. 72 hours, 24 to 72 hours after your symptoms resolve, go back to work. That's it.

Mayor: And you don't have coronavirus.

Commissioner Barbot: And you don't have coronavirus. Now, different scenario. You've got those same symptoms. You go to the doctor, he or she does the BioFire test. It's negative. She or he in their clinical judgment thinks that you are sick enough to have the coronavirus test. They do the test. One of the things that now has changed is that we have commercial labs on board and so they send off the test. In the meantime they should be telling you to stay home until you get those results. Very important. Stay home until you get those results, minimize your outside interaction. Results come back negative, your symptoms resolve, go about going back to work, sending your kids to school, et cetera.

Your symptoms are positive. Let's go through that scenario. We have within the individuals that have thus far tested positive, a wide variety of individuals. And I just want to emphasize something that both the Mayor and I have been saying on a number of occasions. By and large, the vast majority, 80 percent of people will have mild symptoms, won't even have to go to the hospital. But they will have to go through coronavirus because again, none of us are immune. And so you stay home until your symptoms are resolved, 72 hours after those symptoms are resolved and then you can go back to work. You can go back to school.

If on the other end we have individuals who are more severely affected by coronavirus, and we have had a certain subset of individuals that have ended up in the hospital. Some of them have already been discharged and are doing well in their homes and they will continue to complete the isolation period. And then we have unfortunately, a certain subset of New Yorkers as you have heard, that are severely affected. They are in the intensive care unit. And we are working closely with hospitals. We're monitoring the situation closely, but the unfortunate reality is that while many, many, many people may end up getting COVID-19, there will be a certain number of individuals that will succumb to this virus. And so that's why it's so important that we pay attention and that we adhere to the recommendations of frequent hand washing, covering your mouth and your nose when you cough or sneeze. And definitely don't go to work if you're sick. Don't send your kids to school if they are sick. Because what we are now trying to do in this next phase of the outbreak is to reduce the number of individuals that are affected and to reduce the number of individuals who have bad outcomes as a result of the virus.

The next thing that I will say is that we are focusing intensively on communicating with our provider community. And just today you know, we have issued what we call a health alert. And this goes out to thousands of doctors in our city. And what we want providers to be up to date on is the fact that now commercial labs are doing these tests. We want them to be diligent about prioritizing individuals who present with symptoms and have chronic underlying diseases and are over 50, to make sure that those individuals are sick. We're focusing on folks who are symptomatic. We're not looking for everyday New Yorkers who have no symptoms to look for the test. It's not the best use of our resources. We are also making sure that our health care providers are up to date on ensuring proper infection control in their offices. Because as we transition to this next phase of the outbreak, it's critical that we maintain the resources of our health care workers. And so the same guidance goes to them. If they are sick, most definitely they need to stay home. Because we need them to get better soon and beyond that we need to make sure that there are no infections spread in hospitals. That's why it's critical that we get this message out.

Same goes for their medical staff, their receptionist, their nurse, anybody in that office. And also advising them that if they can, to do more of what I've heard is happening, which is tele-visits. Using FaceTime, using other vehicles through which they can interact with their patients on a face to face basis, but not necessarily have them in their offices. Beyond that, we want to make sure that the message goes out to individuals with chronic illnesses, that this is not the time to put off refilling your medications. That if you have a refill to do, make sure that you're up to date on that refill.

Beyond that, I want to just sort of re-emphasize as the Mayor has been saying. Oh, the last thing about the hand sanitizers, which I forgot. Yes. And you know, I learned the lesson that the Mayor was trying to sort of illustrate when I was a pediatrician in clinical practice where I took for granted that if I gave a parent antibiotics for their kid's ear infection that they were going to give it to them in their mouth and that they weren't going to put it in their ear. And so I think as health care providers, as public communicators, we can't, especially in this time, we can't take for granted that people will automatically understand what we are advising them to do. So very important that New Yorkers are very clear on the fact that alcohol based hand sanitizer, it goes on the hands. It doesn't go in the eyes, it doesn't go in the nose, it doesn't go in the mouth, it doesn't go anywhere else but the hands. And I haven't given this level of detail before, but I will now, we specifically want people to use at least 60 percent alcohol based hand sanitizer. And you know, many people ask me, well what about antibacterial soap? It looks just like alcohol based hand sanitizer. We don't want people to be using antibacterial soap for two reasons. We're dealing with a virus. Antibacterial soap isn't going to do anything about that.
The other thing is antibacterial soap will diminish the normal healthy bacteria that we all have and need on our hands. So I hope that clarifies it.

And the last thing that I really want to emphasize is that we are in this for a long period of time. We think our best guess is going to be sometime in September, but there is no indication of how long ongoing transmission will persist. And that's why it's important for New Yorkers to be prepared now that we don't have a lot of cases because it's inevitable that we will have more and more cases and we need New Yorkers to be prepared.

Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you very much, doctor. Before I call up the Speaker, just want to thank Councilmembers Steve Levin for joining us, and thank you – you've been very actively involved in your district and beyond trying to address this challenge and thank you for that. Now we've been working very, very closely with the Speaker and his team and sharing information constantly and thank you for the hearing you held the other day, which I think helped get a lot more information out.

Speaker Cory Johnson –

[…]

Mayor: Thank you very much, Okay, we are going to take questions. Yes.

Question: Yes. The discovery that the Health Department made about the longevity of the virus on surfaces that it dies after two or three minutes seems very important and it's been kind of understated. It would seem like an override the need to do, say, deep cleaning of arenas or subways or buses. I was wondering if the Commissioner or where you could talk about one, why it's been underplayed or if it's been underplayed. And two, what's the science behind this new theory?

Mayor: Sure, I'll do the broad part and the Commissioner will do the science and the part from her agency. Look, I want to emphasize again, there are studies, there are academic studies, there are global and national organizations providing the information they have. But you know, the old saying, God bless the child who's got his own or her own. This is the New York City Health Department, which is widely regarded as one of the best, strongest health organizations in America actually working with real patients here in real conditions in New York City. You know the reality in China, the reality in Italy, the reality in South Korea, they're all going to be different factors. All information is valuable, but the information that we're gleaning from our own direct experience is the most valuable to us. When you're talking about something where there's literally no one who has all the facts and that is a true statement.

So what we want people to understand is what we are seeing as the truth. It has been said from this podium many times, so I don't think there's any issue about downplaying. There is a dissonance in other parts of the medical community on the question of how long it exists on a surface. But we're giving the best information we have because we don't – we're very concerned about people having an impression that is not consistent with what we're seeing. The fact is – on your bigger question, which is a good one, so what is the purpose of the cleaning? Look, I think the cleaning is an abundance of caution concept. This is where and again, Commissioner, you'll forgive me, I'm always trying my damnedest to put things into simple, plain English and you can always refine or dare I say correct if I say anything that wasn't as good as it should be, but I think in the public mind there's still the assumption like diseases that hang in the air and we're using measles as an example. Commissioner, could you throw me another one? What's another example of a disease? Chicken pox. There are diseases we're all very familiar with that have like long shelf life, hang in the air, really easy to contract and it's not surprising that people are having trouble understanding the difference that we're trying to demystify may clear that there's clearly a higher bar for the transmission of this disease based on everything that we are seeing. We're a city of 8.6 million people. We've had community spread now for a substantial period of time. We're still at 20 cases that says something and the Westchester cluster is clearly the number one generator. I'm not saying we do not expect many more cases. We do, but transmissibility is not a layup to put it in my own term. It obviously, you know, take some effort if you will. The cleaning is just good practice. Everyone benefits from more cleaning. But I do think there is a bit of a fault line and I think some people think, well if you clean something that means that the disease that was there yesterday won't be there the next day when in fact transmissibility is a much more immediate thing. But I would never discourage more cleaning. I think it's reassuring to the public. I think it's just good health practice. And we are still learning. We think we're seeing real facts that are consistent but we are still learning. And so why not be even more cautious on that front?

Commissioner Barbot: Just to add to what the Mayor said because I think, you know, he nailed it. This is a novel virus that we're still learning a lot about and there is still science that's coming out and you will find in the literature that in a lab setting you can have the virus live up to a couple of hours but in everyday world scenarios what we're learning from our partners from around the globe is that typically it's in a range of minutes. Now as we learn more, that range of minutes may shift to the right or to the left, but I think focusing on the number of minutes is the wrong place to focus because we don't want new Yorkers to have a false sense of security that if a surface was cleaned two hours ago, that that then relieves them of having to keep their hands clean because this is an approach – I think of it as a layered approach. Every layer of precaution that we add helps us as a society, as a city, change our collective behaviors. It's always good as the Mayor says, you know, frequent cleaning of surfaces is always a good baseline practice. Frequent cleaning of hands is also a good baseline practices because there are other viruses and bacteria that cause other illnesses that benefit from frequent hand washing. Staying home when you're sick is a good general practice. But in this special situation, it's even more critical that we do that. So it's not just do this or do that. It's layering the approach.

Mayor: I'm going to do some on this side and then I'll go to that side. Go ahead.

Question: Does the city have any plans to cancel the upcoming St. Patrick's Parade in Manhattan? Today, Ireland announced that it's going to be canceling its St. Patrick's Parade, which draws about 500,000 people. The Manhattan parade brings about 2.1 million.

Mayor: Sure. No, we do not have a plan to cancel the parade at this point. This gets back to the trends, and this is a phrase I only learned the last few days, transmissibility, the how you actually get this disease. So we – look, we're all working nonstop trying to not only take in a lot information, analyze it, but test it against real life experience, make adjustments in our strategy. There's a group of folks here who we're constantly communicating, but one of the things I think is a fault line and it's an important distinction is the larger gatherings, the argument for canceling larger gatherings is a lot of people, and in principle you might have that many more people who have been exposed to disease in the presence of that may more people have not been. But when you think about the transmissibility, one of the things that's holding us back from wanting to go down that path is that it doesn't really fit with what we're understanding of about transmission. As Dr. Barbot said, what we thought originally clearly was true, we see transmission in the home as the leading element and transmission from people who had really continuous, intense proximity, close physical proximity. Because again, if I were to sneeze right now, it can only reach, you know, maybe some of you, it can't reach all of you, right? It just can't and it needs that direct connection. So that's where it doesn't entirely fit to say, let's cancel a bigger event. Now we're going to watch that day to day, hour to hour. At a certain point we may say the numbers are telling us something different, but there's another piece of this equation which is really important and everyone knows I've been at this now for more than six years. I'm always going to put health and safety first, but that does not negate the fact that people's livelihoods also matter. I am very resistant to take actions that we're not certain would be helpful, but that would cause people to lose their livelihoods. And that's a lot of people. There's a lot of people in this town. If they lost a week's pay or even a day's pay, it would be a big problem for them. There's a lot of parents that don't have a place for their child if the schools are closed. There's just a lot of human reality. There's a lot of businesses that might not survive if they didn't still have customers for a period of time. So there's a balance that has to be struck and, and you know, I'm watching how different places are handling it and I'm not sure the balance is always being struck everywhere, so.

Question: What would need to happen in order for the City to make that kind of call to cancel—

Mayor: Going to be day to day, hour to hour, it's a lot of factors. Clearly we're going to watch the progression, how quickly this disease progresses. And a number of other factors are going to tell us. All options on the table. We've talked about in some of the previous press conferences. I have a lot of different emergency powers I could invoke. We do not believe this is the day to do that, but it will be a day to day thing. I also want to thank Council Member Robert Cornegy for joining us. Thank you, you've also been actively involved in efforts to get the right information out to the community and to support and reassure your community. Thank you so much for that.

Okay. I'm going to stay on this side a little bit more and I'm coming to that side. Okay. Yes sir.

Question: Thank you, Mayor. Ford from PIX 11 News. Can you talk a little more about the seven- year-old girl who contracted coronavirus? Certainly we've been hearing plenty of information from you all that children tend not to be subject. Can you say how this case fits in with the overall picture?

Mayor: I'll start, and I'll always give you what I got, and Commissioner, jump in anytime you want to. If I see you moving this way, it means you want to jump in. So that – remember in the case of the original Westchester nexus that we found was through the lawyer worked at the firm and Midtown had two kids, one 14, so high school age one college age. You know, both came through this very, very smoothly. So now we have, and the family and Upper West Side, the same thing. Their kids, we're seeing if my memory serves, I think at least one tested positive. I think one or more tested negative, we can go back and give you all the details. But the same thing we're seeing so far early on early, but kids who don't have those five preexisting conditions are tending to have a very mild experience and then it's over and they go back to their lives. So the seven-year-old at this moment, exactly consistent with that pattern is not struggling, is having a mild case of something very similar to a cold or flu. And from everything we see will be fine.

[Inaudible] exhaust this side, come to that side. So you guys just chill for a little bit. We're going right to you. We take lots of questions and in please anyone who's gone just hold back. I'm going to do a round of everyone and then if there's still seconds needed, we'll do as long as we can take it. Go ahead.

Question: Beyond putting out this advice at these press conferences on that we should be staggering sort of the time we show up to work. What more could we be doing to make that a reality?

Mayor: We're going to – look, I think respecting that businesses, again, are trying to keep going and I really value that and this is, I would have felt that regardless of what we saw from the stock market this morning, I value it even more given what we saw from the stock market. I think we have to look, it's a real challenge, but we have to see coronavirus for what it is and what it isn't. And we cannot lose sight of everything else in our society simultaneously. People need a livelihood to pay the rent, to get food, to get medicine. We have to be really mindful of that. So our economy right now, although broadly strong, is going through a real shock and we don't want to inadvertently exacerbate that. We do want to take care of health and safety. So we want to make clear and I think employers are listening, employees are listening, people are listening. This is a really clear, important predicate. We're watching to see the level of adherence to instruction. We've been watching for seven weeks. People are paying attention because, and you guys deserve a share of the credit. They're getting wall to wall concern and warnings and information and they're heeding the advice overwhelmingly. We have clear metrics. We're watching the quarantines, we're watching what people are doing in terms of their habits. We see a lot of actions being taken by people conforming with the guidance. So we're saying employers loosen up if you can. I'm sure a lot will. We're saying to people, make some adjustments in your life. I'm sure they will. If at any point we don't think it's enough, we can be more stringent. Very quickly.

Question: Can you say about the Port Authority Executive Director, Rick Cotton? Do you know when he started showing symptoms?

Mayor: No, I don't have any details. We'll get them. I know Rick well, he's a good guy. I'm sorry he's going through it, but he did exactly the right thing. He got away from work. He's working from home, but we'll get you more details as we have it.

Question: Have you spoken to him?

Mayor: I have not.

Question: The US Department of Health says the country as a whole may only have half a number of intensive care beds that it needs. How are we, where do we stand on that?

Mayor: So as again, I'll start and if Mitch wants to jump in or Oxiris, we announced I think it's now a couple of weeks ago that we have a 1,200 bed, effectively a 1,200 bed reserve that we could put in play very quickly as Mitch described yesterday. In terms of the vast health and hospital system, we can immediately cancel a wide range of elective activities and open up capacity. So, you know, we have a right now and you know, knock on wood and we're all saying it's going to get worse before it gets better. But we have a handful of people hospitalized in New York City right now against a 1,200 bed reserve. We're in very strong shape right now. But we're also being vigilant.

Question: Are those high intensive care—

Mayor: No, not all intensive care. So you want to speak to intensive care capacity.

President Katz: Intensive care is all about staffing and equipment and I can make at Health and Hospitals any bed into an intensive care bed, including a bed in an operating room that's not being used, because we've canceled all our elective surgeries. So that we can take care of people. I can turn a lunchroom into an intensive care unit. What's important about intensive care and is relevant to this disease, is being able to provide people the level of oxygen, whether it's through a nasal cannula, which are those the little prongs in your nose, a face mask, all the way to intubation and the ventilator. And I can do that in any space, as can any hospital.

Mayor: Okay, I saw a way back and anyone's gone, you're not going to go now. You're going to go on a second round after all your colleagues have a chance. That's really fair and egalitarian. Yes.

Question: Thank you Mr. Mayor, for Univision. I was wondering if Dr. Barbot could say a few words kind of [inaudible] into what you're talking about, the decision of closing our schools to give some peace to parents, as far as what they can do to protect their children at schools.

[The reporter speaks in Spanish]

[Commissioner Barbot speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: Okay. This side, a few more and then we'll go switch to the other side. Jeff.

Question: Mr. Mayor, you've said a few times that you can't, you're not likely to catch this on the subway for example, but then you also are telling employers to stagger times so that the subways can be less crowded. So can you explain that again? Yeah,

Mayor: Absolutely, so again – it is an excellent question, but there's actually a real logic pattern here. So Jeff, again Dr. Barbot, Dr. Perea Hense, Dr. Katz, if I sneeze now, what's my chance of hitting Jeff right there? Who asked the question? Okay, so, okay. We have three leading public health officials. Very quick on the draw there. That ain't happening to you, Jeff. This is important because the space and the proximity issues are real crucial here. What we're saying is, you know, a kid walking through the hallway at school, a kid in the classroom you know, going to a sports event, getting on a bus or subway, those are not per se conducive environments. Where things get conducive is where you get very close to people who then happen to cough or sneeze or spit right at the three parts of your body that can take this in or right onto your hand that you then decide to bring to your face really, really quickly.

So that's what we understand at this moment. So what we want is not that people don't take the subway, we'd like to avoid the classic rush hour packed like sardines situation. So common sense way to do that is some folks who don't need to be on the subway, you'd have an option, the walk, you can take a bike, whatever. Great. If you don't need to be obviously 8:00 am, you know, prime time. If you could instead go at 9:30 or something like that where it's a little more open. That's good. So we're trying to ask and we, again, we expect a lot of support for employers on this because everyone wants to get through this. So it's in the interest. It's not only employers are wanting to help, but it's in their interest to get through this – staggering hours is going to help us spread people out, reduce that intensive proximity, make it less likely there'll be a spread. That's what we're – and obviously reducing number of people, if more people telecommute, fewer people on the subway. Same concept. Please, hold on one second.

Commissioner Barbot: So I just want to add to what the mayor said and just be clear that we're not saying that there's a particular place where there is zero risk, right? So I think we just need to be sort of clear about that. Unless you know you're hermetically sealed in your apartment, there is no place that's going to be zero risk and there's a graduation of risk, if you will. But the important part – and when we learn about new scenarios that provide risk as we learn through our investigations that it wasn't just prolonged households contact, that we now have other outside situations that provide that risk, we will share that with New Yorkers. So, the important thing, and I can't stress it enough, is that the adherence to those layers of prevention that we all do individually will provide that layer of support and having that social distancing is yet one more of those layers.

Mayor: And finishing the follow-through, there's no such thing as no risk in the world. No such thing as no risk if you're driving a car or walking down the street or anything else. But the fact is, we know definitively that if you are under 50 and don't have those preexisting conditions, even if you were to contract it, your experience with it's going to be very mild. What we are very concerned about, and this is why we're sort of saying, you know, we want people who if you have one of those five or more than one of those five pre-existing conditions, particularly over 50, we want you to be really mindful. Do not go near anyone you know to be sick, for example. Someone in that category should be thoughtful about situations they put themselves in. That's a person I would say, if you've got to get on the train, really, please do try to avoid the rush hour. So, we think these gradations make a big difference and sort of the guidance makes a big difference and people are going to honor it.

Question: Any plan to change the ultimate side parking, for example? And a follow-up question, what do you know that we don't that you're encouraging people not to put hand sanitizer in your mouth?

Mayor: Excellent question. Because when you're in, like, interminable meetings, thinking of every conceivable possibility, things come up you wouldn't have thought of it before. And we were having a discussion about the value of hand sanitizer and that it really was to try and avoid the secondary transmission. And then that led to the question of if everyone's being sort of – hand sanitizer is the new, you know, American idol, and that people might misinterpret and think, oh, if someone sneezed on you, like, say someone literally just accidentally sneezed on you, they tried to stop it in time, they didn't, and it got in your nose or out in your mouth – someone might think, oh, if I put hand sanitizer on it, it's going to fix it immediately, when, in fact, it's actually a really bad thing to do. So, we just out of abundance of caution wanted to get that out. Alternate side – there's no changed plan right now, but we're going to look at everything again day by day.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: That's a situation – and I'm – you know, I was a public-school parent. I've spent a lot of my life working on public school issues. So, what I believe is the right approach is we would be very pinpoint in our approach. If we found a positive case, we would be doing a temporary shutdown. That's a case where a re-cleaning of the school is valuable. And we would want to reopen as quickly as possible, but having isolated the individual with that case and done the disease detective work to see if there's any close contacts who need to be followed up on. And we would certainly make sure we followed up with the parents of any kids who might have one of the five preexisting conditions. And that's obviously a pretty small number of kids and we know who they are because our schools have enough medical records on kids to know something like that. But generally, it would be a brief shutdown or re-cleaning and that disease detective work about where there were close, close contacts. And now we're going to this side –

Question: I have a follow up on schools. First of all, the Governor said today that if there was any case in a school where either a staff member or student had tested positive, the school would be closed for 24 hours and there would be a reassessment. So, I have a three-part question. One, how do you feel about that policy? But two, can you address the concerns [inaudible] one, of parents who have no place to send their kids; and two, the number of kids – I think it's like three quarters – who get their meals in school and, if you were to close the school, may have no food?

Mayor: Marcia, this is very, very much on my mind. And I agree with the Governor's approach. In fact, our teams have been talking intensely over the last 24-48 hours on this very matter. So, a lot of these issues that are coming up around the State, there's close consultation going on between the State and City on how to approach them. Think what the Governor is doing is the right way to approach it. But the point is very consistent with your, your other questions. We want sort of pinpoint accuracy. We want to make sure that a school is closed only for the period of time it needs to be, because there are so many parents who depend on that school. We want our kids to get educated. You're right, there's a lot of people depend on not just for the kids to be in a safe place and to get their education, but also to get their meals. So, we want to keep those closures minimal. Children who need alternatives, we're going to work on that. Obviously, we are going to see any other way – and we have other ways of getting meals to folks, if that's one of the things that we can do. But my hope and prayer here is because we are not seeing a lot of transmission to children. And obviously everyone's getting the word about what to do. So, for example, if a staff member is sick, all they have to do is stay home for the substantial period of time it takes to see if they have ongoing symptoms and that school does not have a problem in that case. If someone does not manifest the symptoms, they're not going to have to be tested. If they don't – if they are tested and they come back negative, either of those cases you don't have a problem. That's obviously generally what we're seeing. We're not seeing this in the schools. So, I'm going to be hopeful, but my goal is to have minimal disruption of our schools.

Please –

Question: Given the fact that you're asking people who may be symptomatic to stay home, do you have any procedures in place to provide extra teachers or a substitute teachers for people who may decide to err on the side of caution and not go to school [inaudible]?

Mayor: So, we have our traditional approach to bringing in substitute teachers or personnel already in the school stepping in. Now, as of just a few days ago – a very important point – I asked the Chancellor repeatedly how attendance was looking. Attendance was absolutely consistent, in fact a little better than the same days last year. So, we're not seeing an attendance problem with kids, not having a problem that I know of so far with staff. But if we had a number of folks out, we do have a reliable reserve of substitute teachers. We do have staff in schools who can step in and play other roles. We would look to how to ramp that up if we needed to on a bigger level.

Question: [Inaudible] follow-up on that and that and then I have a separate question. To follow-up on that, are you doing any preparations for remote learning if, you know, that there did needs to be shut downs. And, in particular, in that case, how would you deal with kids who don't have broadband access?

Mayor: So, we are doing preparations, but again, that's not going to be our preference for a lot of reasons. That doesn't solve the issues we just talked about, about parents not having necessarily a good place for their child and not necessarily kids getting all the same meals. That's a fallback we are working to get ready. We have some of that capacity right now, but that's not our preference. Our preference is obviously do everything we can to avoid any shutdown. But if we had them, they would be very brief.

Question: Is the lack of internet, sort of, part of the reason that's not your preference?

Mayor: No, for the other reasons first and foremost, because, again, that starts with where does the parent send the child or take the child? A lot of workplaces you can't. I mean, some – look, I think there's a lot of people in professional roles who are used to a certain amount of flexibility nowadays where you could bring your kid to work. A lot of other places that's just not possible. A lot of parents are dealing with multiple kids going different places. It's really, we want to avoid the dislocation for so many reasons. We are working to have remote-learning capacity for, you know, a really intense scenario, but it's something we'd like to avoid.

Question: [Inaudible] question was about the testing. When Dr. Barbot described a pretty seamless process where you go and you get tested for the other viruses and if you don't have that, you'll get the coronavirus test. But there've been numerous reports that people who do have the symptoms and have traveled or have exposure in other ways who aren't able to get the test, they get turned away because they're not sick enough or they're getting a run around in one way or another. What do you say to these people and is the City doing anything to make sure that health care institutions are actually, you know, testing people appropriately?

Mayor: I will start and I'm sure Dr. Barbot will jump in. So, remember that you – this very day, an hour a week ago, we did not have testing in New York City. This is really important – this thing that was moving like a freight train, you know, we're really – a lot is changing quickly. So, we did not have our own independent testing capacity. Remember, it was very, very recently the tests were being sent down to Atlanta. And we had to wait for them the results to come back. As of Monday, late Monday, at last we our own testing capacity at the New York City Public Health Lab. As of later on Friday, we got the ability for a private labs to start coming into play and ramping up. That's helping to address that issue, because some of that issue was there just wasn't testing to be had. But now, if we can get the automated testing with the FDA approval, you're talking about an actual abundant amount of testing that's going to help sort out the issue. Now, the doctor will certainly tell you we still want prioritization, and why don't you speak to that?

Commissioner Barbot: The other thing I'll add to what the Mayor said, because he got it just right, is that in addition to that cascade, the guidance for who to test has also been changing. Initially, it was just individuals with a travel nexus to a particular part of China and then that increased. And so, it's been a moving target since the beginning. I think the important thing to note now is the capacity for the commercial labs to do testing did come online Friday, but they didn't start submitting samples until today. So, it has been a process of, I would have to say, fits and starts with regards to, you know, what originally happened with the CDC test kits that had issues with them. But the important thing to note now is that once we have established that there is what we call widespread community transmission, where travel is no longer the main risk factor, and now that we have established that the vast majority of people do have a mild course – 80 percent of them – there will soon come a time when we'll say, only if you're really, really sick do we want you to get tested because there'll be so much COVID-19 out there and most people will recover within a couple of days. So, where we are right now, we want more people to be tested, but we also want to keep in mind that as more people do become effected by COVID-19, it may make more sense for them to stay home, recuperate and go back to their regular lives once they fully recuperate and they may never get tested. So, we just need to be prepared for that reality.

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: Oh, sorry. And then for the priority groups – thank you very much – right now, we are prioritizing, as the Mayor said earlier, individuals who are symptomatic – fever and cough, fever and shortness of breath, are over 50 – and, or have the chronic underlying illnesses. Additionally, if there is someone who is in intensive care and has a pneumonia of unknown etiology, then those would – or, unknown underlying cause, sorry, I use [inaudible] words there – then we will test those individuals. But the important thing to note is that, as of today, it should be much easier for every-day medical providers to offer those tests through their offices, through commercial labs such as Lab Quest – Lab Corp rather, or Quest, which they already normally use.

Question: [Inaudible] test people then who have the symptoms and have some form of potential exposure but are under 50 without the underlying condition?

Question: We're asking medical providers to use their clinical judgment about whether or not someone has already tested negative through the BioFire and if their symptoms and the rest of their history gives them an indication that they should be tested.

Mayor: Yeah, I want to try some more – again, we're all dealing with a mysterious situation here and everyone's concerned, but the numbers, they're really speaking powerfully to us. If you're under 50 and you don't have the five preexisting conditions, and throwing in if you're not a smoker or a vaper – bless you – you know, the chances are just so overwhelming that you're going to have only a mild form of this, that that really has to be taken into account. But to the point that Dr. Barbot made, you're still in touch with your health care provider, and if something unusual is in the mix, you know, and the health care provider says, no, there's something going on here, I want that test for a specific reason, of course. But I think that the challenge here, which is really – I don't know, I'm not watching every TV show or reading every article, but I think the notion that this overwhelmingly for most people is very, very similar to a cold or flu, period, is still not fully getting through because of all the fear about the spread around the world and obviously the pain of the most extreme cases. We've got to help people to understand that for most people the impact is minimal. We want to help the folks who are most vulnerable first. So that's where the, you know, the sense – there is some sense of triage eventually. As Dr. Barbot said, we went from almost no local testing to now starting to have a substantial amount, but the number of cases is likely to go up intensely as well. At a certain point, the prioritization becomes ever more important.

Question: [Inaudible] didn't you order just a few days ago that City workers we traveled had to get tested? And now it sounds like you're saying they wouldn't even be eligible for testing.

Mayor: Which specific – which piece are you talking about?

Question: [Inaudible] educators and first responders –

Mayor: Right, but it's not just travel, it's folks who we think need to be tested. It's across the board. If there's a specific reason per the Health Commissioner – it gives the Health Commissioner absolute latitude to determine in any specific case if someone needs to be tested in those categories, it is broad because it obviously enclosed community spread.

Hold on a sec. Yoav?

Question: Mr. Mayor, on the school the school closure policy that Cuomo announced today, I just – I'm trying to understand what the purpose of a 24 hour closure would be given that that the City doesn't think the virus kind of lingers on surfaces. Is it just for deep cleaning? And if so – I guess I'm trying to understand what that 24-hour closure –

Mayor: Yeah, look, it's a regrouping opportunity, obviously. We are – I'm a parent, I understand that parents are going to be really concerned. I'm going to say, you know, a thousand times and I hope all of you will amplify how much consistent experience is saying to us that children are not in danger unless they have those preexisting conditions, God forbid. But nonetheless, many, many parents will only get some of that information or they'll just be so scared for the kids, which is absolutely a basic human instinct that they're going to be, you know, really worried if they hear there's a case in a school. So, I think the – this is sort of a common sense measure – a timeout. We're going to give people a lot of information. We're going to do the cleaning, which is abundance of caution, also, I think, reassuring to people. We're going to have the disease detectives identify if there are particular close contacts. Again, it's not that the kid walked down the hallway and there were – bless you – there were 20 kids in the hallway. It's, was the child working very closely intensely with a teacher or a tutor? You know, did the child have a best friend that they, you know, they're always together and you know, constantly really close to each other? Those are the kinds of things we're going to be looking for. So, I take that as a 24-hour kind of timeout where we get the information out, we do some of the work we have to do, and then any kid who needs to stay home who's identified by the disease detectives, we do that. Obviously, if there are children in the school who have those preexisting conditions, we want to alert parents so they can make their own choice. That might be, again, an abundance-of-caution dynamic for parents to say, let's hold kids back for a little period of time. That's the kind of thing that I think makes sense during that timeframe.

Anna?

Question: Do you guys have an estimate for the number of people considered the most vulnerable folks over 50 those with those five underlying conditions? Do you have an estimate of how many said residence?

Mayor: Of total New Yorkers? Yeah, it's a great question and I don't think we have at our fingertips, but we can have it by tomorrow.

Go ahead.

Question: You had mentioned a city employee from Westchester who had no symptoms and still has no symptoms, but still got tested. Why did that City employee get tested? Are City employees required to be tested?

Mayor: So, let me separate those two concepts. And again, the executive order – the Commissioner's order, I'm sorry, is online. So, anyone who wants to look at the provisions of it, it's there. Connection to the Westchester nexus – that's what – the first words out of my mouth about that case, connection to the Westchester nexus, which has been obviously the core reality of this whole trajectory in the last week or two. So, that's why the individual was tested. The Commissioner's order says, first responders, health care professionals, educators – that's where the Commissioner retains the right to order testing.

Question: [Inaudible] clarification. So, the State guidance that Cuomo talked about today does apply to New York City schools as well?

Mayor: Yes, we all worked together on it and we think it's good guidance.

Question: [Inaudible] 20 cases in New York City, does that include the Westchester attorney and I think –

Mayor: Again, I'm going to – guys, I'll try really hard to be consistent about the ground rules of the information for everyone's benefit. New York City residents – the numbers I'm going to give you are always New York City residents. As I said, we had the New Jersey guy who had been in New York City. We've had obviously the Westchester folks. But what our coin of the realm is going to be, New York City residents.

Question: And do you know of the 20, how many people are in the hospital currently? I counted five, but I just want to see –

Mayor: I want to get you an up-to-date count, because we have these four new cases we're still getting all the details on it. There has there have been more out of the hospital than in the hospital, that much I can say. And again, we're going to start telling you about the people who are no longer of concern from the original set of cases. We'll start giving you more on that, but want to make sure that the – oh, this is a technicality [inaudible] let's get that straight and come back on that. The – but again, most people, not hospitalized.

Question: Can I ask just one – also clarification on the testing. So, we know we've only had this capacity to test here for a week, but there was so much confusion before I heard from a lot of doctors and health care providers, they don't know how to get the test where they were [inaudible] on calling the Health Department, couldn't get through, just had the person go home and self-isolate. So, when a person tests negative for the BioFire, they can now conduct the test themselves and they've been given that guidance. Can you just explain that a little –

Mayor: Yeah, I mean, you – some journalists were here for other settings, other gatherings and others weren't. Explain the simplicity of the actual taking of the test.

Commissioner Barbot: Sure. So the health alert that went out today to all providers clearly lays out what providers can do in order to order that particular test through a commercial lab. And the – and most physician offices have those capabilities. In terms of the actual test, as I have described before, it's the equivalent of having a Q-tip up your nose kind of probably further than you would feel comfortable with, swish it around, put it into a liquid medium, and then run it through an analyzer.

Mayor: I think it was yesterday, the Commissioner used the now priceless phrase, a medical grade Q-tip, which sounds to me suspiciously like a regular Q-tip. Okay. Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, just to be clear on the Department of Health website, you are now counting the Westchester lawyer as a New York City case, is that no longer – has that changed?

Mayor: I think you are right. And that's – Freddi was also raising the point with what we're trying to do and it's getting – it's a fair point. That one was the origin for a lot of stuff. We're trying to do it based on residents because otherwise it's going to get kind of crazy if, for example, the guy in New Jersey was in here, we have people from Long Island who were in here. So, we're trying to do it based on residence. But I will let me accept humbly that our definition may be a little gray there and by tomorrow I'd like to get us 100 percent tight that it's going to be residents and if we vary from that, it'll be an asterisk and we'll clarify it.

Question: My actual question for you and I have a follow-up for Dr. Barbot. There've been a couple public employees who have tested positive and forgive me if this is in the Commissioner's order, but what exactly does the City tell workers who have come in contact with a person who has tested positive or think they may have been in contact? What is the directive there?

Mayor: The Commissioner can jump in. Every agency has been giving guidance to its employees on obviously all the precautions to take and, to the best of my understanding, on what to do in that scenario, and each agency has created its own guidance based on what the Health Department has told them.

Commissioner Barbot: So, the guidance to City workers is the same as the guidance to any New Yorker. And our disease detectives during the course of their contact tracing as it's called will determine with the individual who has been identified as a case who their close contacts are. And those close contacts may range from household contacts to individuals that spent a prolonged amount of time with him or her during their infectious period. So, that then translates into making decisions about who should be tested in addition to the index case and who doesn't need to be tested. And so, that guidance is the same for City workers as it is for City residents.

Question: So, does that person who thinks they have come in contact with someone who tested positive, did they tell their supervisor and then self-isolate? Like what is the immediate – what are the immediate steps?

Commissioner Barbot: That, let's say, contact tree, if you will, originates from the individual who has been diagnosed with COVID-19. And so, based on his or her history of who they came in contact with, what type of contact, how long the contact was, would then be the genesis for them determining who in addition to test.

Question: So, the individual employee who's saying that their wife has positive, they don't then tell their workplace like, you know, Department of Sanitation, oh, by the way, my wife has positive, what should I do?

Commissioner Barbot: So, what – that's a different scenario, right? Because the index case is not the City worker, it's the workers spouse. And so, in that situation, the same thing holds. The index case, we look up their close contacts, which would be their partner. And then, if that index case was positive, the partner, whether or not they were positive or negative on the test would be treated in isolation – they would be isolated for 14 days. And so, we would then take additional history to determine whether or not there were any additional close contacts.

Question: And then you said that it's not just prolonged –

Mayor: Hold on one second. Don't go away – continue. Just want to add on that, so – and I think it's fair to say we should go back over all the guidance. I think that's a very important scenario – family member makes sure – I think it's self-evident that if a City employee had a family member in their home test positive that yes, that is something their supervisor should know. But the point I think that Dr. Barbot is making is, every case is being watched like a hawk right now by New York City and New York State. The disease detectives are making immediate contact. You know, even in an instance where somehow the supervisor didn't know, the Health Department's going to know. But I do think to your question, it is very smart for supervisors to be alerted immediately in those cases because we just want more information than we should make that clear in the guidance.

Question: [Inaudible] you said it's not just the prolonged household contact as we initially thought, but other types of interactions. Could you just spell out what other types of interactions?

Mayor: So, they have ranged from close proximity and extended face-to-face contact as would happen in, let's say, a lunch or an interview type of scenario. And so, that we have seen in more than one case. And so, that's why we are alerting New Yorkers that it's not just prolonged household contact. It can be prolonged contact that can be constituted by what I just described.

Mayor: Let me be more graphic. Well, we have case that we think we understand pretty well. Two people deep in conversation for a half-hour, animated conversation. The best thinking of the medical personnel is that in animated conversation sometimes people project some saliva and that may have been the contact. Obviously, another option is someone sneezed or coughed, like looking right at the person they were deep in conversation with. So, that's the evolution – that is still close proximity and you need that direct hit with the exception, again, of right to the hand, right to the face in fast proximity, because otherwise the virus just wouldn't live that long. But we do think this is an area of concern. It's not people in the stadium, it's not people in the big open area or a conference and all, it's people close up to each other, deeply engaging each other to the point that the inadvertent spitting that comes with a conversation sometimes, or a sneeze or a cough directly goes at the other person in close proximity.

Question: [Inaudible] which case that was?

Mayor: I've got to get back to you on which one that was. Okay. Who has not gone? Not gone – Courtney?

Question: So I know you want to get away probably from these extreme measures, but obviously over the weekend we saw what happened in Northern Italy. And I imagine you and your administration are sitting around every day and talking about, and doing tabletop exercises in those scenarios. In any way are you talking about that kind of scenario in which New York City could potentially be –

Mayor: Yeah, but I, you know, I was asked the question earlier on CNN and then I saw a lot of reporting said, you know, like we're thinking of a citywide quarantine. That's just not accurate. I want to be clear. We are obliged to scenario everything. So I know headlines are headlines. I know a lot of you are not responsible for the headlines. But you know, let's be clear here. We're far from that at this moment based on the facts before us. I mean we've been talking about this, the first press conference on this was January 24th in this building. And today we're at 20 cases, most of whom have not been hospitalized. And even among the hospitalized, we have some that are coming through fine. So I just have to put it in perspective. I think – I feel deep pain for Italy. Obviously I feel emotionally very connected to Italy. They were playing from behind from day one. I mean they had a major outbreak before they even could start to imagine something was happening. They never had a day where they were ahead of the action because it just was suddenly upon them. We had a long time to prepare. We have the best hospital network anywhere in America, I would argue anywhere in the world. Right here we have the most health care professionals. We've been messaging to New Yorkers for weeks and weeks. They appear to be really consistently abiding by the messages overwhelmingly. So I think we're in a much, much stronger position than some of the places. Obviously the ultimate example, China was playing wildly from behind and then didn't tell people what was going on. But here we've had time to really get ready and handle this in stages. That said, we talked about this yesterday, we'll be at a hundred cases relatively soon. And then, you know, we'll be at hundreds of cases relatively soon in a matter of weeks, based on what we know now. But that's, you know, every single day we're reassessing that trajectory. And so we're table-topping everything you name it. We're basing it on everything we know from previous you know, natural disasters and every other kind of situation, getting ready for different eventualities. But the school answer is very indicative here. Some places like Italy are doing mass school closures. That's not on the menu here. Is there a theoretical scenario where that could happen? Of course, but is it anywhere near to where we are now? No

Question: And just a quick a follow up. And I imagine it's the same answer as the St. Patrick's Day parade, but there is a Brooklyn half marathon coming up on the 20th, maybe. I assume that's still on?

Mayor: It is still on. We're in conversation with them. You know, we're going to make our best judgment very shortly on that. Now again, you know, because obviously we want to give people guidance at this point. I don't see a reason to cancel. That could change at any point, but right now I don't see a reason to cancel. Okay. Is there anyone who has not gone in the first round? All right, let's do a few second round. Go.

Question: Is there – are you looking ahead to maybe take over a hotel or something if you need to enforce some sort –

Mayor: If we need to we can.

Question: Yeah, on that question. You said you have 1,200 beds in HHC. I mean that doesn't really actually sound like that many beds as a reserve, given the current rate of transmission. I mean, at what point does the City, will the City face like serious strains to its capacity?

President Katz: Remember that Health + Hospitals represents about 20 percent of the inpatient capabilities. So you have five times more in terms of capability. There is a lot of space in hospitals including for emergency preparation. Our hospitals have tents that would allow us to turn a parking lot into an intensive care unit. So, when you look at the numbers and consider what the Mayor has said, that the vast majority of people actually do not need to be in the hospital. 80 percent of people are going to be fine. Only about 20 percent of people might have symptoms serious enough to be in the hospital. And it's even a much smaller number, perhaps four or five percent that actually would require intensive care or intubation. There is enough capacity to handle that in New York City.

Question: Commissioner, you'd mentioned that you thought virus might be with us until I think September. Can you walk us through the modeling or predictions [inaudible]?

Commissioner Barbot: You know, it's our best estimate based on experience from what we're seeing abroad in China. Our learnings from what happened in H1N1, which was the last time you know, that kind of a virus presented itself. So there isn't something that we can necessarily, you know, hang our hats on if you will, but it's our best informed estimate of how long the transmission will take.

Mayor: Yeah. And look, we're going to constantly give people updates as we receive them. But I think the Commissioner is absolutely right to give folks a sense, you know, this is not going to be quick. We'll be at this for months, but we'll update as we go along.

Question: You mentioned that the 68-year-old, 22 and 75-year-old men who tested positive for the coronavirus were being treated at private hospitals. Is there a reason why they opted to go to private hospitals and not –

Mayor: I don't know. In each case, I mean we've seen people go to public hospitals, we've seen them go to private. Again, we want to respect confidentiality, give you broad profiles, but I don't know the specifics in this.

Question: Also what's happening to the 2,000 plus, people who are at home in self-quarantine?

Mayor: Again, as we've talked about in previous press conferences, so there's a check-in system for those folks. The mandatory quarantine folks get a very regular, they get a daily call, they get spot checks in person. The voluntary get information updated to them and you know, they're constantly asked if they want to make contact and get more guidance. Or if they need help, they can connect readily and get help. We're, again, I'm happy with what I'm seeing with the voluntary, that people seem to be following it through and coming out of it well. But we're going to intensify the outreach to the voluntary just out of abundance of caution and anyone who needs additional help, will get it.

Question: I know you mentioned that tomorrow you'd have more details about people that have gotten over the virus, but for right now, can you explain the progression in health for some of these folks? Like are they, are these folks that we're going to talk about tomorrow, are they back to work now or are they completely fine? Is it just like coming – like recovering from the flu?

Mayor: Yeah, you're going to see different people in different situations. But the real –and what the Commissioner – and this is, I think the crucial thing for people to hear is, how many days, and again think about typical cold and flu dynamics. So for the folks who are not having a more serious experience, how many days until people typically feel better and the standard you hold for knowing that people can go back to work?

Commissioner Barbot: So you know, the range of days that someone will be symptomatic varies. But what we understand from what we understand, the vast majority of folks will become symptomatic within about five to six days of being exposed. And the range of symptoms can include, as I have mentioned, fever and cough, fever, or fever and shortness of breath. You know, there have been reports of other potential symptoms, but the vast majority of folks who will become ill because of exposure to COVID-19 will develop those symptoms. You know, how long individuals remain ill is something that I can't answer because everybody's different. Everybody's got different – I think we're still learning. You know, we've got folks who present with very, very mild symptoms and they may clear their symptoms in two or three days. Where, and it goes back to what we're learning from real world experience here in New York City. And then we have other individuals who present in severe condition who require intensive care support and their care may last longer than the average individual.

Mayor: Let me give you a lifeline on just one piece of this. You stay where you are. I think the cases we're talking about in this specific question are the folks who go through sort of the simpler recovery and go back about their lives. I think helping people understand the range from symptoms manifesting, typical range of how long until you are a quote unquote, well. And then how long until a doctor, like you would say you have evidence that it's okay for someone to go back into the workforce, for example.

Commissioner Barbot: So typically it's a couple of days of being sick. And what we are advising is that once a person no longer has a fever, then they can return to work after three days.

Question: Has anybody gone back to work after recovering from the coronavirus?

Mayor: We'll give you those tomorrow.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, we'll give you those details –

Mayor: And again, some people are still in the quarantine situation. Even if they are well. We'll explain that to you. But the point is we are starting to see a phenomenon of people coming out of it. And that's an important piece of the equation too.

Question: In a letter that the Deputy Mayor wrote to the federal government, it said that we received two test kits. Do you know how that compares to other cities and states? And also I'm curious, what is our, what's left? Like how many samples are left and how many people do you think that New York City can test before we run out of tests?

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: The original request generated those two test kits. Each one can do about a thousand tests.

Question: How many people, that's like 600 people?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: That's about 600 people. You know, considering that many times you actually do two tests per person. Now with the new commercial labs coming online, that just expands our capacity significantly, threefold.

Question: They get their own kits then?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: They get their own kits.

Question: Okay, I understand.

Mayor: Okay, last call.

Question: Do they each get one? Do we know? We don't know?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: They're working with the FDA to actually allow them to get their own reagents and their own testing, so they don't have to go back and get kits from CDC.

Question: And we get more test kits, so public health laboratories can do more testing? What is the –

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: We are getting more kits from CDC. But the honest truth is that our public health lab is set up for more research now that the commercial labs and HHC and all the other voluntaries are open. The expansion is where a lot of the tests are going to be.

Mayor: But, but still hindered by the lack of the automation, which is what we're waiting on the FDA for. Anna.

Question: So I apologize if this has come up previously, but is there any indication that this can be sexually transmitted other than like the close facial contact? It might happen during a sex act?

Commissioner Barbot: I haven't seen any scientific studies that are looking at whether you can find it in semen or in vaginal fluids. But I suspect that with time that will become available. But certainly as you alluded to, the close contact that one would have would clearly be an increased risk.

Mayor: Can you, while you're there, talk about, because this came up. I mentioned that people –we are talking to each other all day long and coming up with all sorts of interesting questions. So
In food, in your soup, in your entree, in the water, in the beer, just talk about whether any of those things are transmission vehicles?

Commissioner Barbot: So this virus, if ingested the acidity of the stomach will denature it. And that's sort of the most succinct answer.

Mayor: Yes, that's a no?

Commissioner Barbot: That's a no.

Mayor: Last, very last call. Erin, two more. You – Erin and then you.

Question: Just a technical point. For the preexisting conditions, are you classifying asthma as a lung disease that should cause people to be extra concerned?

Mayor: Severe asthma, you can clarify it. Severe asthma is more of an issue. But what is your definition?

Commissioner Barbot: Typically when we say chronic lung disease, and Dr. Katz can help me out. We're talking about things like emphysema.

President Katz: Emphysema, chronic bronchitis.

Question: So that's a no?

Mayor: But can I ask a clarifying –

Commissioner Barbot: Although I will add –

Mayor: Yeah, let's, can we do everything you put in that category, but what you do feel about severe asthma interplay with this? If anything.

Commissioner Barbot: And again, Dr. Katz, if someone has severe asthma that they have had for a long time and they need to take steroids for it or they may have other complicating, you know, conditions. Those are the kinds of factors that a clinician would take into consideration when evaluating their individual patients.

President Katz: I would agree that asthma is a highly variable disease. So sometimes what it means is a young person where the bronchioles or the breathing tubes are just more reactive. But many times if people have had asthma for a very long time, it accompanies by that time some harm within the lungs. And so –

Mayor: Just list, Mitch, the lung diseases that would categorize here.

President Katz: So certainly emphysema, chronic bronchitis, people who have rheumatological diseases that are associated with restrictive lung function, which means that the lungs don't expand normally. As well as people who have obstructive disease, which means that the air does not move in smoothly. People who have suffered from exposures. So we do very much worry about people from the World Trade Center incidents. This is New York right? Where we have a number of people who may be suffering from lung dysfunction due to their exposure. So, it's basically that people, when your lung function and structure are not normal, your risk is greater.

Mayor: Okay, last call.

Question: I know last week you mentioned an increase in the number of disease detectives and added resources. At this point, do you know how many, in terms of number, disease detectives you've added, how much more personnel there is to handle this?

Mayor: I think we will have that firm number tomorrow. We're still doing a little bit of work on that. I think we'll have that tomorrow. Thanks everyone. Go ahead, Marcia. Yeah.

Question: Are there any conditions under which you would consider closing New York City?

Mayor: Again, what I said earlier and I'm going to just need people to not take me out of context. We're going to look at any scenario, but that's not a scenario I could see happening anytime soon. Our goal here is to keep the city running. Our goal is to make sure that kids go to school, people go to work, while supporting the folks who do need a health care. That's what's happening right now. I want to see us do that for a long time. Meanwhile, a lot of very smart people led by our Emergency Management Commissioner are playing out and scenarioing, war gaming all sorts of scenarios. But none of those are over the horizon right now.

Thanks, everyone.

2020-03-10 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, first thing I want to say is – I want to thank these extraordinary people who work here at Bellevue.

[Applause]

This is a world-renowned institution that does so much good every single day. This is a place where – I say this with tremendous respect to all of you – you, day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out, you handle whatever's thrown at you and you're doing an amazing job. I remember vividly the days I got to spend with some of you during the Ebola crisis, there was no place better in America to handle that challenge. And you did it beautifully and you're playing a crucial role right now helping us address coronavirus. One of the very first people came to be tested in all of New York City, came right here and, thank God, that was a negative back when – seems like a long time ago – it was only weeks ago. But we are depending on all of you and all your colleagues in Health and Hospitals, and I can safely say we are in very good hands with all of you. Let's thank them again.

[Applause]

Also, this group is exceptionally good at the elbow bump. I think you guys can go out and teach all of New York City how to do that. I want to start up on our update today. We've got some new information, but I wanted to say something really clear to all New Yorkers. Every single day, we're going to give you new information. Every single day, we're going to give you what we have that we can tell you that's clear and helpful. But every single day we're to tell you we're also receiving a lot of new information from our own experiences here in the city, from national sources, international sources, and everyday we're trying to understand the exact right approach to take the information changes day to day. We get new interpretations all the time. We get new strategies all the time. We're going to constantly update people, but you should assume a changing dynamic. This a – you know, we've dealt with a lot of things but I think we can all say with coronavirus we have rarely seen a situation that started with people not even understanding the disease to begin with because it was brand new – that's been the whole international community, medical community. And then, we've all had to learn by doing and our understanding of the best approaches keeps evolving. So, you will hear change because the information is changing. But we are still in the middle of a fight right now. We have to, every single day, do the best we can with the information we have and the resources we have. So, we'll tell you what we're doing, why we're doing it, and then as information changes we'll provide those updates. The fact is, everything is inherently preliminary at this point because, again, the information about the disease continues to evolve. It helps us to have our own experience here in New York City, our own work from our Department of Health and Health and Hospitals, our disease detectives giving us new information all the time. But there's a lot more out there that we are trying to glean and work with.

The crucial point I made yesterday, and I'll keep saying it, New Yorkers are going to be able to have a really big impact on this crisis by your own actions. So, the government is here to protect you, protect your health. We're going to do everything we know how to do. We're going to throw in every resource we got, but this one is participatory. This one is for everybody to be a part of the solution. The government cannot solve this alone. It has to be in every family, on every block, in every workplace. Everyone has to participate from those basic things, washing your hands, hand sanitizer, covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze onto the kinds of decisions we make in our life, starting with being very sensitive to the vulnerable people. We have seen this over and over again. It's very consistent all over the world. People over 50 with the preexisting conditions, that's the number-one problem. Either people like that in your life, support them, be really careful, watch out for them. We need New Yorkers to watch out for their fellow New Yorkers, which New Yorkers are very, very good about. But if someone in your life is vulnerable, be careful – another great example I'm giving, and I think it's a real life example – grandparents who want to visit their grandchildren, we all understand that that's normally fantastic, but if a grandchild is sick, the grandparents should not be visiting with them now. If the grandparent wants to visit their son or daughter, but the son or daughter is sick, this is not the right time for that. So, we really want to be clear about those common sense measures. The folks who are vulnerable need to take precautions. We need to support them as they take those precautions. We've talked about employers being as flexible as possible where you can have some telecommuting. We like that. We need that. Where you can't, we understand. Where you can stagger work hours – that helps. Everybody can participate. Literally every single person that'd be part of ending this crisis. So, we'll keep giving information and we'll keep updating people every step of the way.

Now, folks want information, they want accurate information. Want to remind you, you can go on our website, nyc.gov/coronavirus – nyc.gov/coronavirus – and you can text COVID to 692-692 – that's COVID to 692-692. I think it was yesterday we said 20,000 people have done that. Now, 60,000 people have done that. It's a really good way to keep informed. We're going to give a quick presentation, then you'll hear from – I'll give a presentation – you'll hear from the CEO of our Health and Hospitals, Dr. Mitch Katz, you'll hear from the Speaker of City Council Corey Johnson. I want to thank for their partnership and the good work they're doing Borough President Manhattan, Gale Brewer, thank you very much; Council Member Steve Levin of Brooklyn, thank you very much for all you're doing working with us. Let's give them a round of applause to thank them

[Applause]

Okay, so as we said, we're now in what we are simply calling phase two, and that means more and more guidance to New Yorkers of things that we want you to adjust in your life. I gave the example of employers staggering work hours and allowing telecommuting where they can. Again, those who are self-employed, those who have the ability to make those decisions yourself, we want you trying to – if you're going to have to use subways, use it on off hours. To the maximum extent possible, avoid the rush hour. If you can telecommute yourself, we prefer that right now. We need people to be mindful. We have a real concerned about the super packed subway cars, particularly in rush hour. If you don't need to be on one of those, please avoid them. Even means letting a few trains pass until one's less crowded. And then there's the really basic, but very, very important things – you know, a lot of people get sick and they power through it. A show of hands – even these health care providers – you ever been sick and powered through? Raise your hand. Raise your hand. Okay, stop doing that.

[Laughter]

So, what we need to do, all of us, is if we're sick, we need to take it seriously. We need to talk to our doctor. We need to stay home if we're sick. Health care workers, obviously we depend on you, so the best way is for the health care – and Mitch will speak to this – health care worker's sick, they get to be evaluated by health care professionals, and if they shouldn't be at work, they shouldn't be at work. If they can be, that's great or with whatever precautions, and I want you to go in detail about that. But for the rest of everybody else, if you've got those cold and flu symptoms, don't go to work, consult with your doctor, make sure you're well before you get in the presence of lots of other people and, God forbid, do not go near someone in that vulnerable group over 50 with the preexisting conditions.

Okay, I'm going to state it just so we're consistent – over 50 preexisting conditions, that means heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, and a weakened immune system. Those five areas – we've also said not a condition, but a factor – smoking and vaping. Smoking and vaping do not help, in fact, they make it harder for someone to handle coronavirus for folks who have the preexisting conditions and are over 50 be very, very mindful of who you're coming in contact with. We want you to adjust your routines mindfully and if you do have symptoms, that group of people needs to get to care immediately.

Okay. Now, update on numbers. We have a very rapidly evolving situation on the numbers of cases and we're obviously concerned when we see more cases, but there's a piece of this that actually is in its own way good news, which is the testing capacity is coming online more and more. We still are waiting for that formal confirmation from the FDA that we've been talking about. We're hopeful but we still want it to be 110 percent formal. We haven't gotten that yet, but the private labs that started up on Friday are now really ramping up. So, we are starting to get more and more test results back. They are coming in so intensely now that being able to give you the detailed case breakdown, we're not in that position to do that at this moment, because so many new cases are coming forward. We will of course when we can give you updates on particularly pertinent cases and again, what we have been doing historically – there was a good question yesterday – I want to just clear this up for all the cases we've given you up to date –the ones with detailed profiles were all New York City residents, but one exception, the original lawyer from Westchester County, and the reason he was counted among the city cases was he was diagnosed hospitalized in New York City and remains in New York City. That was the one aberration. But now, with the private lab results coming in very, very rapidly, we're adjusting our approach, because we don't get the profiles on each case as quickly as we were because of the sheer numbers. So, again, we won't be giving across the board individual profiles. We will be giving them in particular cases. And we are happy to be getting more and more test results because it allows us again to ensure that people are getting the care they need, people are isolated that need to be isolated, and folks who are negative can go on with their life.

As of 12 noon – so, I gave a report yesterday and then this morning we had a different report. Now, we have another update as of 12 noon, working with the State of New York, the number now for confirmed cases in New York City is now 36 – 36, that is 16 new since yesterday and 11 new even since this morning at 7:00 AM when I last spoke about this. I said yesterday, we're going to start to talk to you about people who have their cases resolved. The first two that we will get information on, but they are not yet fully through the process, are the two health care workers who had been in Iran. They are now asymptomatic. They're going through a first of two tests that will lead to them coming out of quarantine. We're waiting for the results soon on the first test and it will take a second in short order thereafter, if both those come back negative, they will be out of quarantine hopefully as early as the end of this week. So, those are the first two that we will report on. As other people come out, we're going to give you those updates.

Now, as of – this is – I want everyone to hear a carefully, this is a different time frame because this is the last information we have. As of 10:00 am, before some of the newer information came in on cases, so this is probably dated by now – actually, is dated by now, but at least it's somewhat helpful information. As of 10:00 am, the number of negative cases for New York City was 258 – that was 57 new since yesterday. The number of pending tests, 195. So now, what you're seeing is we're talking about – and this is what we've been projecting – we'll be doing hundreds of tests a day and that's where the numbers are getting – moving so rapidly that we won't be able to do the individual cases the same way, again, with some exceptions.

In mandatory quarantine, 30 people right now. In voluntary isolation, 1,980. So, this is the context of community spread, which has only been with us since the latter part of last week and intensive testing, which has really only been with us the last few days. Now, we're going to see a very different trajectory in terms of the information flow and the numbers and we're going to keep giving updates every day.

Okay. A few quick updates in terms of the city. An issue that has been getting a lot of attention, rightfully so, around the country, around the world is cruise ships. So, the cruise ship terminals in Red Hook and the West Side of Manhattan, those are licensed via the Economic Development Corporation. They are run by a private entity called NY Cruise. We are following the guidance of the CDC and saying to all New Yorkers, this is not the time to take a cruise. I just want to start with that. Obviously, the cruise ships have been a real focal point for problems while our nation gets ahead of this crisis. This is not a great time to take a cruise, but if people do choose to take a cruise specific actions are being taken. The two terminals are being thoroughly cleaned throughout and health care workers will be on site if anyone is leaving on a cruise for additional screening during boarding. Anyone who attempts to get on a cruise and it has a temperature of over one 100.4 – 100.4 will not be allowed on a cruise ship. So, that's outgoing and that's trying to guide our fellow New Yorkers on how to handle this situation and protecting all the fellow passengers. The obvious other question is the incoming, and on the outgoing, I don't have in front of me, but I'm going to turn to my team and say we should check with EDC on the outgoing cruises – we have the incoming, let's get the outgoing dates. For incoming cruises, the next incoming cruise to the Manhattan terminal on the West Side will be Sunday, March 15th that cruise will be met by Department of Health Officials. And the same standard of 100.4 degrees will be implemented in this case, meaning folks who are coming off that cruise with that temperature will either, if they're from New York City, depending on their overall health, they will either will be allowed to go home into self-isolation or will be taken to a hospital depending on their health. If they are not from New York City, they'll be taken to a hospital or other health care facility right away. That Sunday, March 15th – this coming Sunday. The next incoming cruise to the Red Hook terminal in Brooklyn is April 9th, so we won't be seeing much there anytime soon.

On the issues related to the federal government, I mentioned that we still are waiting for the formal approval on the automated testing. Again, we keep seeing promising signs and some movement, but we do not have the fully confirmed formal approval. We need that right away. We've also talked about the N95 masks, which are particularly important for keeping our health care workers and our first responders safe. We definitely need more of these masks. The State, to their great credit, has kept their reserve. They gave us 120,000 new N95 masks. That's crucial. I want to thank the State for doing that, but we will certainly need more and we'll need them soon. We're sending a specific request today to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for 300,000 more N95 masks, specifically for our Health and Hospitals personnel who need them and for our first responders. That supply, in addition to the 120,000 from the State, the 300,000 more we're requesting from the federal government, we could get that soon, that will take us through the coming months. Related to our disease detectives, we are working right now to double the number of disease detectives. One element of that will be training all school nurses to do this work, to do the initial screening. We'll have an update shortly on the exact timeline on the doubling and the protocols we'll use, going forward. But the – one of the most immediate things we'll do is get all of these very effective school nurses into this work immediately. That's going to help us speed up the process.

An important note for all New Yorkers – obviously, there's information out there about coronavirus and there's misinformation and there's confusion. One area that should be crystal clear is that it is absolutely crucial for everyone to keep giving blood. There is no danger in giving blood, but we must maintain our supply. At this moment, our supply is okay, but we're concerned. We have seen some workplace blood drives canceled. That is a worrisome sign. So, we will be working to make sure that as many as possible blood drives continue. We're encouraging all New Yorkers who can to give blood. I'll be doing that myself in the coming days. And a thank you to all New Yorkers who have been giving blood and everyone who works to keep our supply strong. But there is no health risk related to coronavirus in the process of giving blood.

One more update. Yesterday, we talked about later in the day an emergency medical technician who works for the Fire Department tested positive for coronavirus. The information we have at this moment is that that was passed along by a flight attendant who is this individual's girlfriend who had been traveling to an affected area. As a result of this diagnosis, five fellow EMT are in self-quarantine. They are all asymptomatic. The EMT in the timespan that's pertinent here treated 11 patients, but as – when treating these patients wore protective gear. The Department of Health and the FDNY will be reaching these patients today to follow up and do the normal diagnostic work. But the good news is they are identified and the other good news is that the EMT wore protective gear, but we're still going to treat each case obviously very seriously.

Okay. Just very few sentences in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

And that is a thank you to all New Yorkers who really have been following the guidance in so many ways and helping us to address the situation here in New York City. Now, to talk about the capacity of our Health and Hospitals facilities and all the personnel, like these good people here, who will be part of fighting off this virus here in this city. We want to turn to CEO of Health and Hospitals, Dr. Mitch Katz.

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health and Hospitals: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you for having this at Bellevue. Bellevue is the longest running public hospital in the United States. Established prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Bellevue was a leader in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Bellevue was there to provide care with compassion without fear, to provide the very best of care. Also, in the Ebola outbreak, this hospital was the only hospital in New York State to successfully take care of somebody with Ebola who fully recovered and to do that without any other infections occurring to health care personnel. This is a hospital that knows how and knows how to do it with compassion, with love, with competence. It's also a public hospital, which means that people who are undocumented, people without insurance, they know that they can come here, they can come to Bellevue, they don't have to worry that they're going to get a bill that they can't pay, that they're going to be treated as unwelcome. With all of the negative anti-immigrant spirit coming out of Washington, how great that that's not true in New York City, it's not true at Bellevue, and I'm so grateful to you, Mr. Mayor to the City Council for always maintaining that.

We are prepared at Bellevue. We are prepared at the other 10 acute care hospitals of Health and Hospitals. We are prepared at our other 60 outpatient sites. We have known for several weeks that it is likely that we would reach a point where there would be many people seeking our services because of respiratory disease. As the Mayor has explained, 80 percent of people who contract this virus will have little or minimal symptoms, but 20 percent will need healthcare services, and probably about 5 percent of those people will need intensive services such as a breathing tube and a ventilator machine. We are prepared for that. We have been practicing – Bellevue in all our acute care hospitals have plans. Now, those of you in the press may say, well, wait a minute, we've been hearing that hospitals are crowded.

We've been hearing that ICU's, are crowded already – how could you possibly be prepared to take on additional people? And the answer is that in an emergency you change how you operate. You don't continue to operate in the same standard. So, we are prepared at Bellevue and all of our hospitals that were we to have many patients with respiratory distress, we would rapidly discharge those patients who are in the hospital now and do not need to be in the hospital, because they can be safely cared for at home. We would cancel all elective surgeries, so there is a lot of incredibly valuable work that a hospital like this does – we remove gallbladders, we fix hernias, we fix bones, we do arthroscopy, we do bariatric surgery – all very worthwhile. All that stops in an emergency. We have outpatient clinics, Health and Hospitals does 1.1 million outpatient visits a year. In an emergency, we will be canceling our outpatient surgeries. We will be canceling our outpatient visits and we will be directing all our great physicians and nurses and technicians and physician assistants and nurse practitioners and pharmacists to our inpatient areas. We know we're in every hospital. If we needed to set up intensive care beds, someone thoughtfully asked the other day, well, but do you have enough intensive care bed? An intensive care bed is defined by the great nurse who is caring for the patient is not a physical space. If you give me a great nurse as I have in Bellevue, I can turn any space into an intensive care space. What matters is the staffing. What matters is having the appropriate equipment. We have at Health and Hospitals 376 negative pressure rooms. If we needed to double up negative pressure rooms, not something we would ever do in regular practice, where the overwhelming likelihood is you'd have two patients with different diseases – of course they would not go in the negative pressure room together. In the case where we suddenly have many people who've tested positive of COVID-19, we would be able to double up existing spaces. We have practiced on our masks. We have practice on our gowns. We know the different levels of protective equipment that are necessary. We have implemented that in all of our settings. We very much appreciate the efforts on having more testing. That would make a huge difference for us and we greatly appreciate the efforts that you, Mr. Mayor, and the City Council have made to make that happen so that we know who is sick, who is not sick, and that will allow us to take care of people. We are 30,000 employees strong. We will all be taking care of those patients. If we have a large number, Mr. Mayor, Mr. President of the City Council – we are ready. We are prepared.

Mayor: Thank you very, very much. Mitch, an energetic report as always. Thank you very, very much. And now, I want to thank again for his partnership and the great work he and all the members of Council are doing and spreading good information and helpful information and helping to make sure that folks all over the city get to the help they need – Speaker Corey Johnson.

[…]

Mayor: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. We'll do questions and I'll start on this side. Again, let me do my simple ground rule up front – I'll start on this side, I'll go to that side. Everyone, one round first for everyone and then if there's anything real pertinent, we'll come back on it.

Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, the [inaudible] told people to not wear masks because masks cannot protect you from being infected, only can prevent sick people from infecting other people, but at the same time you said that medical personnel's need [inaudible] people sneezing to your face. So can you explain the rational of [inaudible]?

Mayor: I will start and then our health professionals can go into more detail. One of the things that is clear about health personnel is that they are constantly exposed to people and the difference, I would say, between – from what we've seen so far, and again, everything, this is preliminary based on the knowledge we have of this disease from only weeks of everyone even knowing it existed and trying to constantly update our knowledge. But there is a real difference between the interaction the people, every day people, have with others versus when a health professional sees many, many patients in a day in much more intimate dynamics. So I think this is a fundamental, qualitative difference, but take it from there.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So it's incredibly important –

Mayor: Is yours on? Yes, okay.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, it's important for us to first and foremost protect our health care workforce. And it is imperative that they have the equipment that is needed in order to ensure that when they are seeing patients that are potentially symptomatic with COVID-19 that they are protected. Because if we, as we anticipate, have more individuals diagnosed with COVID-19, and we have health care workers that are also affected, it then starts affecting the capacity of the health care system, and so that's why it is one of our central areas of focus. And then secondly, with regards to the utility of masks for everyday New Yorkers that are not symptomatic, the concern is that it provides a false sense of security.

The most important and central way to minimize your risk, because, you know, we need to be realistic here, there is no zero risk situation unless you hermetically seal yourself in your apartment- the most effective way is to have diligent hand hygiene practice, which means washing your hands often, thoroughly. And if you're not close to a water source to use alcohol based hand sanitizer. And so for everyday New Yorkers, we don't recommend the use of mask of surgical masks. The one situation where mask would be useful is if someone is known to a health care provider to be coming in because they're ill, then we are recommending to health care workers that they meet that person outside of the office or as soon as they come into the office and place a mask on them so that they don't then infect other individuals.

Mayor: Okay. Yes?

Question: The nurses [inaudible] couple of questions about resources. One beyond n95-respirators, I think [inaudible] could be, maybe not now, but there could be shortages of [inaudible] gowns and the regular surgical masks, [inaudible]. That's one question, is that something, do you [inaudible]?

President Katz: The, the surgical mask, we have a very, very large cache and are not, not at all an issue. And the gowns the same. So those are not – we're, as the Mayor's appropriately called for, it's in the n-95 masks where we want to make sure that it's not that we have enough for today, but what the Mayor and the Speaker wanted to make sure is that we have enough to get us through September.

Question: The other question was [inaudible] is there a time [inaudible]?

Mayor: Take, what is our plan? What? I couldn't hear that.

Question: What's the plan if nurses and other health care workers have to start quarantining, what's the plan [inaudible]?

Mayor: So, just I'll start and pass it. Again, that's a standard procedure. Some of that will happen inevitably. Remember that, you know, we're going to take a whole host of precautions to keep our health care workers safe to begin with. If some end up having a quarantine, that will happen and then they'll come out of quarantine and we'd be back in the game. And we're going to clearly work to make sure that there's sufficient personnel at all times, including by adjusting away from those less necessary procedures. You want to add any –

President Katz: I think you've said it well.

Mayor: Okay, go ahead.

Question: Yeah, on the budget, I was wondering if you can say where you're thinking is now a potential adverse impact to virus on the economy and if you're contemplating budget cuts anticipating maybe even a recession coming?

Mayor: A couple of different things. I mean the immediate thing we're looking at working with the Council obviously is relief for small business. We announced a couple of initiatives that will be added into the budget. We'll look to see if there's other things that we need to do. In terms of revenue forecasting, we will do that as part of the budget process, which culminates in the next six weeks or so. So we'll have a lot more information. The stock market dynamic, deeply troubling, this morning seemed to be a little bit better obviously, but we got to see this play out. Clearly could have an impact on revenue in terms of the finance sector. We're very worried about our businesses and drop off in sales for them and obviously that has revenue ramifications in many ways. So yeah, it's very much in our mind, but it's too early to have a number, obviously. We will have to make adjustments accordingly, but that will be against the backdrop of where our revenue was in general. So in terms of cuts, it's too early to say because we have to see the overall revenue picture. All of that will be revealed when we do the Executive Budget.

Question: You suggested that people avoid rush hour subways [inaudible] biking and walking –

Mayor: Yes, if they can.

Question: Right, [inaudible] still afraid because of cars parked in bike lanes and just lack of protected bike lanes. Yesterday, Transportation Alternatives [inaudible] specific demands to make it safer. Are you [inaudible] immediately commit to any of those?

Mayor: I haven't seen them, I'll happily look at them. Look, we obviously have devoted a lot of police resources to clearing out bike lanes. We'll keep doing that. We're dealing with, you know, a crisis here with many, many elements. Whatever we can do to – that we deem appropriate to help make it easier, now we will, but I again would say for folks who have the option of walking to work, for folks that have the option of biking to work and feel good about their route, we appreciate that, it helps. But also for folks who ride the subway, if they can even vary the time off of rush hour, either the evening or the morning rush hour that helps. We know that's not everyone, but it helps to the extent people can do it.

Question: Would you bike to work one day to practice your own advice –

Mayor: I have some to do on my bike, but I think that'd be a great idea. Let me see if I can do that sometime soon.

Question: Wow.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, there's been some concern about inmates in city jails, on Rikers and other facilities. Any sense for whether there are protections in place? Any plan a part of the Department of Corrections?

Mayor: We've talked before about the fact that there's a constant screening going on. Everyone new comes in, if there's any health issue that we are concerned about in general and specifically coronavirus, they're immediately taken to health care facilities within corrections. And everyone's been instructed that if they see any symptoms to isolate the individual immediately. I'll check. I don't know if - I'm looking up and down the line to see if anyone knows different, but I don't think we have any reports of any instances of –

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: We do not.

Mayor: Not within Department of Corrections. Back there.

Question: Can you talk a little bit about the Staten Island EMT worker who tested –

Mayor: Say again? I'm sorry.

Question: Can you talk a little bit about the Staten Island EMT worker tested positive for the coronavirus. Did his girlfriend test positive too? You mentioned she's a flight attendant. Which country did she travel to and do they live together and can confirm –

Mayor: Yeah. I only have what I've given you and I want to be very careful. I'm looking to Freddi, I didn't say Staten Island, so I want to make sure we're all being very careful about our facts. The profile I gave her, the EMT did not include where he works or lives. Is there a Staten Island nexus?

Commissioner Barbot: We believe so.

Mayor: We believe so. Okay, so I just –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, respect the hospital. I want to make sure we're always giving you accurate information. Let's just confirm all that before we go any further. But that's, that's all the details I have.

Question: [Inaudible] the process of when a hospital learns that someone has tested positive for the coronavirus, what - who is alerted next up? Our reporters, when we tried to confirm this information, we reached out to the State, the State said to reach out to the City –

Mayor: Wait, wait, back, back up your question in a second. I want to make sure I understand. You're saying when someone is tests positive –

Question: Yeah, what's the protocol for alerting the public? When we found out about this case on Staten Island, we learned from a hospital sources –

Mayor: Okay I let me - I want to make sure – again, I don't mean to interrupt except I want to make sure we're really being clear about the consistent reality. We've been updating you guys essentially daily and I'm sure we will be for quite a while. We give you the numbers as we have them. If there's cases that we can give you a detailed profile on, we will, that's going to get harder with the numbers coming in. I will just ask people to, for simplicity, you know, because you know we're going to be constantly updating and we're making sure that as best humanly possible the information is confirmed. Sometimes an institution has information and I'm sure it's accurate a lot of the time, but it may not be exactly what we confirm. So we are trying to be the central clearing house information and put it out constantly, but that may not be going forward, those individual profiles simply because of volume. So whatever we can put out, we're going to put out, I think the simplest thing to make sure you're getting the whole story is to lean on these briefings and the other updates that our press office is putting out. Go ahead.

Question: A question for you, Mr. Mayor and a question for Dr. Barbot. For you, I'm wondering what our current testing capacity is if we are at capacity? And yesterday you essentially said that, you know, there's plenty of people who may have it who aren't going to get tested, but what we saw with the South Korea example that speaker Johnson pointed out is that aggressive testing really helped reduce the cases. So it seems like you said you're looking internationally –

Mayor: I want to make sure, I'm sorry to interrupt, I want make sure I'm whatever sentence you're quoting from. I want to make sure it wasn't a misunderstanding. We've been talking about aggressive testing for weeks and weeks and wanting to test everyone who should be tested. I think we all agree there are people out there who may have symptoms we never hear about, including folks who have very mild cases, but I want everyone tested who should be tested. That's absolutely why we've been clamoring for more and more testing. So I don't, again, I don't know what you're referring to. Bring it up when you have it. A message of the city has been 100 percent clear, people who should be tested, and we need that testing capacity so we can do it. Volume, we're now around hundreds a day. We need that capacity to get up to thousands a day. Hopefully, again, this FDA approval is going to come presently and that's going to allow us to do that with the automated testing.

Question: So you're capacity is hundreds and you're [inaudible].

Mayor: Hundreds, hundreds. It's Public Health Lab, H + H, private labs, everyone together, hundreds per day is the capacity, currently. The turnaround time is slower than we want. The number we can get to is less than we want, that's why we want the FDA approval.

Question: Just for Dr. Barbot, several positive cases have done health care workers. Are you looking at doing more widespread testing as a precaution of city health care workers?

Commissioner Barbot: So when we have a positive health care worker, we work very closely with the State to ensure that we are monitoring the health care workers and ensuring that they go through the appropriate quarantine timeframe. The testing for health care workers is the same as it would be for everyday New Yorkers, right? We test people who are symptomatic. We don't test people who are asymptomatic. If someone has had an exposure that we are concerned about, then we do that testing.

Question: Given that there in such a vulnerable position treating patients, is there no consideration being given to just across the board testing health care workers?

Commissioner Barbot: That's why we quarantine people who may have had questionable contacts. Again, if someone is asymptomatic and we test them, we don't want to have a false sense of security that they're actually negative. That's why we want to align testing with symptoms.

Question: Following up on that NYU Langone told Politico that the City Health Department is turning away patients from testing. And so I wanted to get a sense of how you're determining who gets tested and what capacity you're at for testing.

Mayor: Yeah, again, we always - I want to get back to our basics that we've talked about several times. I don't know who said what at NYU Langone and we always welcome getting that information and being able to check it against our reality. So I'm glad you're raising it. The City Public Health Lab, who said previously has limited capacity that only started up a week ago Monday to be clear, because that was when we finally got the federal approval. The H + H has substantial capacity working with the private labs. That's where the real numbers are as those private labs. So if there was an instance where the city health lab did not have capacity at any given moment and we were diverting to other labs that would be normal. But I don't know what NYU Langone is saying. I'd like to hear a very specific instance so we can respond to it.

Question: [Inaudible] Story, but to also follow up the New York Times had an opinion piece of a woman who went to three emergency departments to try to get tested for coronavirus and was told, sorry you're not hitting qualifications for testing. So Dr. Barbot can you kind of explain what the triaging process looks like? Do you have to have certain amount of symptoms plus saying, oh you came from this a geographic spot to actually get tested ahead of somebody else. What does that process and how do we prevent people from coming in and then they can't get tested? Come back and they're possibly sheds the disease up to six days or seven days.

Commissioner Barbot: So I think it's important to first sort of level set and realize that the testing criteria have been evolving by CDC. You know, initially it was a very specific part of China travel, then it broadened, and so I think it's illustrative of the fact that this is a rapidly evolving situation and guidance for testing has been changing as we learn more and more. Recently there has been a loosening of those testing guidelines so that we are now focusing on testing symptomatic individuals and there's no longer that threshold of having to have a travel connection. And so it's unfortunate that New Yorkers who had been previously, you know, trying to get tested went through that. And you know, and I think it's a real thing. I've heard the same thing and it's very concerning, and so that's why we tighten up all of our possible connections with health care delivery systems so that they are on top of all of the new developments. So recently, today is what, Tuesday, Wednesday, I can't –

Mayor: Tuesday.

Commissioner Barbot: So yesterday we issued a HAN, a health alert, to all doctors making sure that they were aware of changes that have taken place and how they can order labs directly from commercial labs.

Question: Mayor, so just to compliment the last question, are we at maximum testing capacity as is right now?

Mayor: Right now we have the capacity to keep up because I mean you're seeing these numbers evolve. We're getting hundreds of tests that we need to do and we have the ability to do hundreds of tests. What we don't have is the ability to get them in – back in real time and that's the problem. So every test that comes in is sent to a lab for testing and there is capacity, but the turnaround time is slower than we need it to be. And we need that capacity to keep jumping up because the number of cases will likely keep expanding. We want to get, you know, the – again, we're trying to give you as much information as we can get. It's just getting harder to get all of the information we'd like out quickly. But we're still seeing, you know, a lot of tests out pending. We're still seeing a lot of negative tests as I said, as of 10:00 am from day one, we had 258 negative tests. So, you know, we want as much testing as we can get done. One more step and I think we'll be at the point that will sustain us for a long period of time. Please.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze Sorry about that. We are in the hundreds as the Mayor is saying. The commercial labs will increase our capability into thousands, but also please make note of what the Mayor is emphasizing. We still need the FDA to approve the automated version of the testing as soon as possible because that's what is going to make the difference. That's what is going to get us to what the speaker is mentioning in South Korea. 10,000 a day.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: So, two questions. The first is I know you said you're looking at double the number of do disease detectives. Can you tell us what that number is or at now and what you would like that number to get to Dr. Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: Currently we're at 50.

Question: And you'd like to get it to a hundred?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes.

Mayor: Yeah, and to begin, we might go farther than that soon.

Question: And my second question is, I know you mentioned earlier that the doctor - the doctor, who had travel to Iran, who tested positive. They're going through separate tests. She and her husband, I guess is that –

Mayor: There's two, I'm going to use a layman's term, there's two checkout tests. So when you're coming out – you're a health care professional, these were obviously our first cases, so when you're a health care professional, you have to take two tests on the outbound that both come back negative. So they've taken the first test, we're waiting for the results, they get a negative, they take a second test, if they get negative, then they're cleared to go.

Question: And is there a plan I guess to retest some people who maybe had tested negative, especially if they had a long time exposure, like the wife of the Westchester attorney and then [inaudible] coworker, I'm sorry, Westchester attorney's coworkers. I mean, do you do follow-up tests in case it does show up after?

Mayor: What's the protocol on that?

Commissioner Barbot: Right now, as I mentioned, we want to align testing with symptoms because that's going to give you the highest probability of having a test that gives you the best information. There is no indication that once the incubation period is over, there's any need, and if the - especially if the person's asymptomatic that you need to do additional testing.

Mayor: Jeff.

Question: Mr. Mayor, how many actual test kits does the city have available and how many have you actually used at this point?

Mayor: Yeah the kit's thing, I think – no, not challenging your question, just for clarity – I think that kits is misleading. It is the capacity each kit allows for. So can - who can speak to the total capacity we got from day one and where we're at vis-ŕ-vis that.

Commissioner Barbot: So each kit contains a thousand tests and we have two kits.

Mayor: So, that would be 2,000.

Commissioner Barbot: Yes.

Mayor: But our daily capacity in the Public Health Lab is physically limited?

Commissioner Barbot: Is physically limited. So currently we can do a samples for 60 people, which is 120 tests. And we are looking to expand that capacity to roughly 100 people a day.
Question: I want to clarify, so you said there's a slow turnaround for the testing, so how long does it take [inaudible] the automated tests—

Mayor: Automated test is hours. Existing tests or the public labs is days. I think we're talking about can be three or four days. Way back

Question: [Inaudible] Uber driver who tested positive. Have you guys done any researching on the riders and how they've been effected or whether or not they've come down with anything? The other question I wanted to ask is – there's a Pre-K teacher—

Mayor: Wait, actually, I'm sorry. It really helps me if you just stay on one topic at a time, I'm not going to go anywhere. So on the first one, so we're constantly monitoring and we're trying to support the drivers and certainly give them good guidance. And one of the things we talked about, this based on the healthcare professionals, that real simple thing of opening the windows is exceedingly helpful. Circulating the air. I don't think we have a case so far that we believe links to being in a car service as a passenger. So nothing that's come up that we know of. So in terms of survey, I mean obviously we're, we're looking across the entire city for anybody who may have symptoms and needs to be tested, but I don't think we're hearing anything particular from the TLC sector – anyone know different than that? No.

Question: You guys have gone through all of that, drivers, riders, and checked them out to make sure—

Mayor: No, of course we haven't gone through all drivers and riders and all that. Again, let's be clear what I'm saying. The, we have, you know, the city has almost 400,000 employees. The driver sector is huge. We're not calling each person and checking on them. We're going the other way around. We're trying to inform people what they should do if they have symptoms and then what to do if the symptoms are particularly problematic or they have those underlying conditions and the health care system, and Dr. Barbot, I think it would help if you explain, you get a constant flow of information from all elements of the healthcare system. I don't think we've really said that clearly enough to people how that works because that's the way we see each case. And we have a sense of what's going on. Could you speak to that?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Alright. Hold on. Just let me do this and we'll come back to that.

Commissioner Barbot: So we do, we, we have close collaboration and contact with all of our hospital partners so that if there are individuals that are of particular concern, we certainly get early alerts from them. And additionally we work very closely with all of our partners in the ambulatory sector. So we have a pretty well knit system whereby providers have access to physicians within the Health Department, through our provider access line to ask us questions about if they have doubts of who they should be testing, if they have results that may be concerning. And that is a system that is available to all physicians.

Mayor: [Inaudible] them, we'll come back to your question is more the automatic – the mandatory information sharing that physicians have to do in terms of certain cases. The way you get a flow of information, your early detection system. I hope people understand how much information is flowing to you all the time. And if you could make that a little bit clearer, it would help people.

Commissioner Barbot: Certainly. So there are ongoing surveillance systems that we have that are data-driven, where we look at what the influenza trends might be coming from hospitals. We look at what the visit types are through their emergency departments and we can view that on an hourly basis. So we have a fairly good temperature gauge of what may be happening in our emergency departments.

Mayor: So you're talking also about the individual driver.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Right. So what we know about the driver is the family contacts for sure, and we went over that the other day and everyone else is asymptomatic, at least as of the last report we had and they are in quarantine. In terms, again, this was a Nassau driver, so we're not in a position to track the Nassau contacts. I don't know what the latest is, if we've heard anything from the Nassau Health Department on that, if there's any news on that, but we can try and get that for you if we don't have it.

Commissioner Barbot: So my understanding is that we have not identified additional close contacts that would need to be evaluated.

Mayor: Right. And again, being in a car per se would not necessarily be the issue. Now you had another question?

Question: Yeah there was a teacher that teaches Pre-K who sent out a tweet saying that coworkers were being denied tests for the coronavirus. Have you heard about that or?

Mayor: No. And I'd like – look, we would welcome getting that information. We'll follow up with that teacher right away. But again, if someone was not symptomatic that we're not doing tests for folks who are not symptomatic. So we, we as much as I want that flow of information directly from people, and a lot of times every-day New Yorkers, everyday public servants will raise a concern that we're not seeing clearly enough and we need that information. If someone tweeted out, I just want a coronavirus test and are not symptomatic and they're getting turned away. That's right. They're not supposed to just walk up and get a test with no symptoms. So we need to know more about that.

Question: [Inaudible] tweet it said they had shortness of breath and high temperatures.

Mayor: Okay. So we need to know what happened specifically, and then we need that contact so we can follow up. You can just, if you hand that off to Freddie, we'll follow up and then we'll get you an answer. Who has not gone? Go ahead.

Question: The [inaudible] health care worker in New Jersey's most [inaudible] case is now hospitalized—

Mayor: Which one? I'm sorry. You said New Jersey?

Question: He was [inaudible] in New Jersey, asking to be transferred to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. Would you accept his request, what is the protocol?

Mayor: I don't know the protocol, that's a great question. What is the protocol?

President Katz: That would go doctor to doctor. Often we do transfer patients, especially if this is somebody who is at a hospital that does not have the capability of Mount Sinai. It would make sense that they would then take on that patient.

Mayor: Anyone not gone?

Question: What's the city doing in order to dispel fears and handle disinformation spreading in the city's homeless community?

Mayor: What, I'm sorry, for the last part. Of which community?

Question: About the homeless community?

Mayor: Right. We've spoken to this in a number of the press conferences, our outreach teams, which you know, we're already extensively connecting with the homeless are doing that very systematically and I'm waiting to get numbers back that we can share with you, but with the – there's an ongoing outreach function. Remember the street homeless is between 3,500 and 4,000 most of whom were in regular touch with through outreach workers. They're looking for folks who may have symptoms to get them to care, giving them information. If anyone's in grievous need, of course we can get them to care, whether it's voluntary or involuntary. But so far I have not heard of any cases or symptoms among the homeless that needed follow through. But we'll get you more on that as soon as we have it. Okay, anyone who has not gone, just want to try this once. Okay, round two. Go ahead.

Question: Just somewhat related to that, I know you spoke yesterday about your homeless outreach workers, you know, visiting up with the individuals that they know of. Is there anything specific being done to check in on the homeless who are frequently on the subways and related somewhat related state health officials said today that actually the virus can survive on metal and plastic for days, not minutes as your health officials have said, can explain that?

Mayor: Yeah, so two very different questions. On the homeless and subways. It's the same exact outreach effort that we've been doing now for months and it is social services and NYPD and the guidance has been given to everyone. If anyone is symptomatic we want to try and get them obviously immediately to care. I was briefed on the latest information coming in to state. What I am told, and I'm happy to confirm this is that there is a new study that suggests that, that the state is evaluating and we will evaluate too. That is a study that we have not seen previously. It's one study, we take it obviously every study seriously, but we have to evaluate that and as I understand it, the state is in the process of evaluating that as well. Go ahead.

Question: This is a question for the Mayor and the Speaker, are you allowing your staffers to telecommute?

Mayor: I can say for the city we're looking at and trying to act quickly on those who can. Now we are different from the private sector, obviously. We have a lot of areas of work in New York City government because we do public service. Bluntly, the private sector is there to make money and God bless them, but they're – you know, they have more flexibility in some cases than we have, but a very, very high percentage of city employees can only do their work by being out in the field or being at a government facility, but where we can find some space for telecommuting, we're going to try and do that quickly. That's the ongoing effort. We'll know more about that soon.

Speaker Johnson: We're looking into it. We haven't started it yet. We've been having conversations with DCAS, the city agency that makes decisions for agencies across the city on these types of things, in conjunction with the Mayor's Office, but we are looking into both telecommuting and also staggering work hours. Those are things that we're looking at. We don't have a final plan yet, but the last few days we have been trying to put a plan in place. We tried to look back and see what happened during Hurricane Sandy. What happened during 9-1-1, were there lessons to be learned as it related to government workers and measures that they took? And so, we're looking at the past to see if there are lessons to be learned that will inform a potential policy that we figure out towards the end of this week, I think.

Question: My assumption, please correct me up if I'm wrong, is that the Council staffers can do work remotely whereas like maybe some City agency workers wouldn't be able to do that. So, can you speak a little bit to what those roles would be and, like, the reason why, I guess, there's such a delay?

Speaker Johnson: It's complicated. So, it's complicated because when we talk about City Council staff, you have the district office staff who work in the members' offices who are dealing with primarily constituent and community-driven issues and complaints. And so, a lot of constituents are calling local Council members offices wanting to get information. So, if you didn't have folks actually at that telephone, you'd need to find a way to redirect those calls in an appropriate way where you're still being responsive to New Yorkers as their local elected official – that's number-one. Number-two is, the way we currently track complaints in the Council is through something called CouncilStat, and CouncilStat does not have the ability to be remotely accessed. It can only be accessed from 250 Broadway, the central offices, or the member offices for security reasons. If you have people work from home, you wouldn't have the ability to have the same access to case files or to log complaints in the same way. That's different than 250 Broadway where you have the folks that are working in the legislative budget, general counsel, administrative services, land-use divisions who are doing that work every single day. So, we have to take those things into consideration as make a decision like this. And those are some of the things that we're looking at right now.

Question: Can you just describe the process of when people who have been in quarantine and they're getting checked up on or having the tests, I mean, does the Department of Health – is there a protective measure that goes into that?

Mayor: You mean the mandatory?

Question: The mandatory, yeah.

Mayor: So just – I'll start and then to the Commissioner. So, the mandatory is a daily phone call and then the spot checks several times a week – and that spot check is in person.

Commissioner Barbot: Right, the spot checks are in person and we talked to the individual through the door.

Question: And the second question is [inaudible] that's coming into the West side of Manhattan on Sunday, you know, let's say a New York City resident gets off, is there any kind of checking to make sure, okay, you have a 100.4 or higher fever, you live in Brooklyn – but how they get home – you know, is there a concern of maybe someone says, I want to take the seven train home and [inaudible] been a concern that someone who may have it and who hasn't been tested –

Mayor: Yeah, it's a very good question. I think, you know, we are – this is sort of uncharted territory to us, greeting cruise ships. So, I think we're going to have to figure out the right way to do that. Obviously, anyone who needed medical care, you know, we have ambulances, but I think that's a very good question. If we got someone who it's appropriate for them to go home and isolate, we want to make sure they get home safely. Obviously, we'd like that to be as simple a procedure as possible. Maybe we – something we can do to facilitate that, but it's literally brand new, something we're dealing with today. So, unless you have another answer, I think we will get back with more detail tomorrow.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, I would say that we collaborate with the CDC and along with EMS to see if we need to transport anybody. So, we'll be playing, I think, for right now, a coordinating role along with CDC. More details to follow.

Question: [Inaudible] Mr. Mayor and Mr. Speaker. You know, today, you decided to cancel your State of the City speech, which attracts several hundred people you mentioned, and you guys still aren't – or, the Mayor still isn't saying whether he wants to cancel the St. Patrick's parade, which brings about 2.1 million people. Why did you decide to cancel, you know, your State of the City speech, and what do you personally think? Do you think the Sr. Patrick's Parade should be canceled?

Speaker Johnson: I'm not in the position to say that about the parade at this point, because, again, as you've heard from the Governor and the Mayor, the health commissioners and the top staff who are working with the Governor and the Mayor make these decisions on a day-to-day basis, given the most current information that they have, and we want to be honest with New Yorkers and say that we understand the fear and concern that are out there, but we don't want to induce panic by making rushed decisions way ahead of time. The Mayor and the Governor and their teams continue to talk and I'll let the Mayor answer that question on when would be the appropriate time to actually figure that out. As it relates to my State of the City, my State of the City is not a, sort of, necessary event. It's not something that has to happen on a certain day.
I've been excited about it and I've been working on it for a long time. I've been practicing the speech. I've been doing a tremendous amount of work in the last many weeks and months, but it's not really about that. It's about in this situation that we're in right now for events that are not entirely necessary that can be postponed, especially when I was going to have, I think, a significant number of people coming that have many of the underlying health issues that you've heard about every single day. And I didn't want to cut those people out of the event and I didn't want to in any way endanger them by having them come to the event. So, out of an abundance of precaution, and talking to some of the people who are at this table here, we made the decision to do this and I hope that at some point we can have it in the future, but it's out of an abundance of caution and on larger wide-scale events that you're talking about, public events like the St. Patrick's Day Parade, again, I want to hand it off to the Mayor. He is looking at this information every single day to make determinations like that.

Mayor: Exactly right. And so, let's just separate this into two concepts. Any organization, any business that is holding an event and makes a decision that they want to cancel the event for their own reasons, that's their right. But the question of the City's decision based on every – I agree with what the Speaker just said – every piece information we take in daily, hourly, all the work we're doing with the State, et cetera. We are not canceling any events until and unless we say we're canceling them, it's as simple as that. So, it's not – with real respect, your question suggested indecision. There's no indecision. We're not canceling events – that's today, at this hour. If at any point we decide to cancel some events, we'll tell you and we'll tell you why. If we cancel others, we'll tell you, we'll tell you why. But based on the information we have, we are not canceling events.

Anyone who has not gone in round two? Go ahead –

Question: I have a couple of questions. The first one was about the CUNY system. I know a lot of universities around the country are reacting [inaudible] at what point would you do something differently?

Mayor: We don't control the CUNY system, the State does. And again, we respect the State – is making a variety of decisions. We're working closely with them but they obviously have the right to make their own decisions. I would say with the private universities, we certainly want to make sure they are consulting with public health officials as they're making their deliberations. The fact is – and we've seen different things from different universities – most of them seem to be filing a pattern of they're actually keeping a lot of activities going, dorms open, et cetera, but going to distance learning because they feel they can do that easily. But the CUNY decision would have to be made by the State.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I don't think we have all those details now. And again, that's part of the reality of more and more cases and we're catching up on the profiles. That one's obviously high profile, so we'll make it a point to come back for the next briefing with the details on where that stands and the tracing of that case. Back there –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: There's no hostility. I don't understand that. And if there's any – again, a lot of you in the media who are talking to people who have concerns, we want to know who those – not in a negative way, you can do it very discreetly – we need to know who is misinformed or has a concern or needs help or needs information. If you'll flow them through to our press office, we'll follow up. There's no hostility – if a senior center wants to have people masks, that's their choice in a free country. We're not advising it –

Commissioner Barbot: Right.

Mayor: We don't believe – where we believe the masks are necessary are for folks who are constantly working with people in a health care setting, for example, on folks who are already sick to protect them from spreading. But it is a free country, if someone wants to wear a mask because it makes them feel better that's alright. Doctors, am I saying anything wrong here?

Commissioner Barbot: Nope, I agree.

President Katz: And people do wear masks on regular days before this.

Mayor: Yes, this is not the first time.

President Katz: So, if it makes someone feel better, we're not [inaudible].

Mayor: That's great. And there's no – there's not going to be any hostility. There's not going to be any negative consequences.

Speaker Johnson: Can I just say one thing, Mr. Mayor? I mean, if you're talking about hostility from the public, if you're talking about hostility from New Yorkers, then we have said at every single press conference over and over and over again, and there have been some incidences that have been put on social media of New Yorkers being attacked, discriminated against because they are Asian and wearing a mask in public. What you're hearing, I think, from the Mayor is, there's no hostility from anyone in government for them making those decisions. But for New Yorkers that may be discriminating against people, the Mayor will saying it, the Governor will keep saying it, the Health Commissioner will keep saying it, I will keep saying it – unacceptable, cut it out, you're making the situation worse in New York City by inciting more fear. We need to treat each other with respect. We need to take the precautions, but that does not mean discriminating at someone because they are Asian. It does not mean discriminate against someone because they may be Jewish. No discrimination. Let's go by the facts. Let's not go by fear. Let's go by science. No hostility towards anyone in New York City. It doesn't help anyone.

Mayor: Exactly. I want to thank the Speaker because he's been outspoken on this point and I appreciate it. Look, discrimination is illegal in New York City. Let's just go back to the beginning. A number of us have gone out into Asian communities to show solidarity, to remind people to keep going to communities and shop and participate in the life of the community. I'm going to keep doing that. You will see me out in the community more. But discrimination is illegal, it's immoral, and for any discrimination that violates our human rights laws, there will be consequences. For anything that constitutes a hate crime, there will be an NYPD investigation. So, I've heard people – I know people are very, very fearful and concerned in Asian communities in general, and particularly in the Chinese community. My message is abundantly clear – New York City stands with you. If there's any instance of a hate crime or discrimination we need it reported immediately. You can call 3-1-1 in terms of any discrimination. You can call the NYPD, obviously, or go to a police precinct, whatever makes sense. We want to get all of those reports so we can follow up to ensure there are consequences against the perpetrators.

Question: [Inaudible] one of the plans to replenish that [inaudible]?

Commissioner Barbot: So, we will put in an order to the CDC. The one thing I will say is that with the increasing capacity of the commercial labs, you know, we are looking forward to having, as was said earlier, the capacity to do thousands of tests across the city.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: I think it's other companies that are also providing reagents. And so, I think all of us together. You know, initially we had thought that the CDC test was going be ready to go at a particular time and they had internal technical issues. You know, and so I'm sort of hedging my bets to be totally honest because it's not something that we control definitively, but we are certainly looking forward to receiving the next batch when we need it.

Mayor: And I think it just – I'm sorry to follow the question, just a prompt here. Look, at when we started out – again, remember, as recently as a week ago, Monday we didn't have any of this stuff and that was really, really problematic. Having it first be our public health lab, then expanding to the private labs, that was great, but the vast majority of the capacity is the private labs. We're working well with them. Again, the automation will be a whole much better situation. But I think, Commissioner, it's right to say, so long as between the public health lab, H + H, and the private labs, there's always capacity to do testing. It's fine either way, right? I mean, we can work with any and all of those pieces.

Commissioner Barbot: Exactly.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: No, they're still having their own test.

Question: [Inaudible]

President Katz: H + H alone has a thousand ventilators. And so, we represent about 20 percent of the inpatient volume. So, I would times it by five to have a rough estimate of what's available in the city itself.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: He just said that. He said, you can assume that since there are 20 percent of the health care system, just assume parity – 5,000 would be a good rough working number. We can check that. I would assume the voluntaries have at least as much resources that you have proportionally.

President Katz: Yes, absolutely. 

Mayor: We can verify, but I think 5,000 is a good working number now.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I just want to start and then pass to the Commissioner, saying, remember New York State – you know, we are a big part in New York State, obviously, 8.6 million people, but there's even more people outside in New York City in New York State, and the Wadsworth Lab plays a crucial role for the whole rest of the state. But go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, I mean, is your question if we have our own kits or if we share kits? I don't understand your question.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: Well, we have our independent kits and we can order independently from the CDC.

Mayor: Okay. We're going to finish up. Let's go this way through these last few.

Question: [Inaudible] St. Patrick's again [inaudible] from your office – did anyone of your office [inaudible] today [inaudible] –

Mayor: I'm sorry, I heard NYPD and OEM –

Question: Has your office met with NYPD [inaudible] –

Mayor: OEM – she is right there. Right there is OEM, but go on – what's the question about NYPD?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Let me just start and pass to you. Again, that NYPD is always going to look at the broader security concerns around St. Patrick's – logistics, et cetera, safety. This is, you know, the new fact – but that's every single year. The new factor here is on the health side of the equation, so we'll certainly be well coordinated, but that decision is going to be with the health care professionals, ultimately.

Commissioner Criswell: Yeah. The only thing that I'll add is, you know, we have representatives from all City agencies working in task forces every day at the Emergency Operations Center, looking at not just the St. Patrick's parade, but a variety of other things. And so, we're continually looking, working with the Health Department to determine what decisions we need to make.

Mayor: Okay. Final round over. I've got one, two, three, four and that'll be it. Go ahead.

Question: Michael Bloomberg launched a coronavirus response network for mayors. Will you be joining that?

Mayor: I don't know anything about it, but I'm happy to work with all my fellow mayors. I've been working with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, have been in regular touch with them. I think we're doing a conference call with mayors around the country on Friday. But if there's something else that will help us, we're happy to work with everyone.

Question: I was curious if Health and Hospitals cause any capacity for telemedicine, considering the current of the virus outbreak? Like, are there any plans in the works to have telehealth services to people who then you could kind of screen [inaudible] saying you might have coronavirus why don't you come on and then we're prepared for it?

President Katz: Yeah, so we actually have pretty good telemedicine, especially when you realize that in most cases for symptom review a regular telephone would work just fine. You don't generally need to see the person. So, we would mostly do voice, but we do have the ability to do a full telephonic evaluation.

Question: [Inaudible]

President Katz: Well, obviously, the phone is fully available. The telephonic right now is more limited.

Mayor: No, you said the phone and the telephonic –

President Katz: I'm sorry, the video is more –

Mayor: The video is more limited. The phone is very available. Okay. Who had last two? One –

Question: I wanted to get some clarity on, you mentioned that you're not testing people who are asymptomatic and self-quarantined – are you not doing that because there's not enough tests available? And another – my last question is, are you guys planning to do like a borough breakdown of coronavirus cases at any point?

Mayor: So, we were simply trying to get information out in aggregate over time. I'm sure we can do a borough breakdown as well. So, if you guys will follow up on that. On the – I think, Dr. Barbot, it would be helpful to just clarify again, we're going to have asymptomatic people who remain asymptomatic and if someone is asymptomatic through the entire reality, you know, that says a lot obviously. And our central concern is symptomatic people where – that's where the concern is about spreading the disease and obviously their own health needs because they're symptomatic. So, I think helping people understand why it is not our priority to test the asymptomatic – capacity is an issue, but it's much more about prioritization. We want to get to the folks who need the help first and not do a lot of extraneous testing compared to those in need.

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, Mr. Mayor. So, the priority is those individuals that are at greatest risk, so over 50 and have one of the five chronic underlying diseases that we mentioned – additionally, individuals who may be very sick and hospitalized. We are not recommending – we will not test asymptomatic people because they are not the ones that are responsible for spreading the illness.

Question: So, it has nothing to do with the fact that you guys don't have enough tests?

Mayor: It has to do with prioritizing the people we should be focused on. And again, we started with a very limited testing supply. We're now getting more and more. If we get the authorization on the automated, we'll have an abundant supply of testing, which is really what we want. But this is about testing the people who need to be tested. We don't want a situation where everyone in New York City says, I just want a coronavirus test despite the fact I show no symptoms whatsoever, have no nexus to travel, no nothing. It's much more pinpoint than that. And again, against the city of 8.6 million people, the numbers still remain very limited. We want to focus on the people who have a need.

Question: Two questions on the kids. You said you have – the number of kids you currently have. Does that mean your capacity as a thousand people to test? Is that accurate? And then, what's the order of priority for you guys? Is it more CDC tests? The automated tests –

Mayor: The automated. The automated is whole ballgame. That takes you from – that guarantees you're getting to thousands a day and quick turnaround. We need those two things.

Question: And then finally, Mr. Mayor, have you canceled any of your political travels on behalf –

Mayor: I have no political travel, so there's nothing to cancel.

Question: You haven't canceled any plans to go –

Mayor: I literally – listen to the actual answer. I had none scheduled, so there was none to cancel.

Okay, everybody we'll have more for you tomorrow. Thank you.

Question: Mayor, could you try to do these on time? I know it's like –

Mayor: We can't until we're ready. If there's constant – it's a fair question, but this is literally ever evolving. We're not coming out until we can answer every one of your questions. So, we – again guys, we're estimating the best start time, but, as you saw, the Governor's press conference brought out a lot of information right ahead. We can only do what we can only do. I'll ask Freddi to be conservative – the one time I'll ask you to be conservative in your timing, because we obviously don't want you waiting for no reason. But if we are getting breaking information and details, the last thing we want to do is come out and we can't answer your questions.

Thanks, everyone.

2020-03-11 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Welcome everybody. Thank you for being here. I am joined by Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services; our Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot, who you'll hear from in a moment; our Emergency Management Commissioner, Deanne Criswell; our Commissioner for Community Affairs, Marco Carrion; our Commissioner for Immigrant Affairs, Bitta Mostofi. Thank you.

Want to say at the outset, people all over New York City are depending on all of you and, the fact is, that's not anything new and I think everyone in this room knows that, that the work you do is for so many New Yorkers, many cases their first source of information, in many cases the source of information they trust the most, a place they turn to make sure they really know what's going on from people that they have faith in. And I want to thank you for what you do every day, but I also want to thank you for the work you've all been doing in the last few weeks. This is a complex situation dealing with a disease that's literally brand new to the world, just months old. A lot we're still trying to learn. Everyone's trying to learn about, you know, getting information out in this atmosphere is particularly important. And so thank you for all the work you've done to inform your communities. I think it's making a very big difference. So we've gathered together in different times when we've been challenged, when we've been at crisis. This one really is different. Thank you. Also want to thank you, I want to acknowledge and thank Dr. Mitchell Allen, the Chief Medical Officer for our Health and Hospitals system. Thank you for joining us. We have been up against many, many challenges as New Yorkers, but a still little understood disease facing the entire globe, challenging the entire globe, an ever shifting environment. This creates dynamics we really haven't faced before or certainly not in recent memory. And the fact that new information comes in literally by the hour and is effecting our approach and strategies adds to these dynamics. So, I just want everyone to understand that at the outset.

The scientific community is trying to understand this disease and there's new information coming up every day, including from our own health workers here in New York City. All levels of government are trying to come up with the right strategic decisions, but based on information that changes frequently. I do want to emphasize, I think the situation in the United States, America is by definition different than say Italy. And I think Italy is different than say South Korea. I think South Korea is different than say China, et cetera, et cetera. I think each nation is facing some particular dynamics and circumstances and although it's valuable to look at what we learned from other countries, it is not the whole story, the comparisons aren't inherently imperfect.

I do feel as New Yorkers, we even when dealing with a crisis, we are blessed to have some very, very key and distinct factors in our favor. And we have unquestionably the best healthcare system anywhere in the United States of America and that's both our private voluntary hospitals and nonprofit organizations, and clearly our Health and Hospitals corporation or public hospitals and clinics, we have just a lot more and a lot better healthcare available and a history of making healthcare available to people in a very universal fashion. And even more recently by guaranteeing health care for all New Yorkers, telling people health care will be available to them without any regard – bless you. You sneeze properly, you get up, you get a point. Little bit more to the elbow, but you were close there. The fact that we're not asking documentation status, I want to really emphasize that, anyone who comes for healthcare will not ask documentation status – we want everyone to get the help they need. We're not in our public healthcare system stymied by someone's ability to pay or not. We're going to give them care. People have insurance, we'll draw on that. If they can get insurance and they don't have it already, we'll get them on insurance. But we're not ever going to withhold health care from anyone who can't afford to pay for it. We're trying to demystify the process and get people help, as simply as calling 3-1-1or going online and finding out where they need to go. And again, always knowing that they can turn to our health and hospitals corporation.

So we do have that great advantage. A lot of health care, law quality, Harris County, very accessible healthcare and equal opportunity healthcare. We also have the advantage of New Yorkers. New Yorkers are, I think it's fair to say the most resilient people, certainly in America, maybe in the world. And the – I'm very, very impressed by how New Yorkers are handling this crisis, by how much they're listening for the guidance and acting on it, helping each other. We need that. I said the other day, and I'll emphasize this is not just a crisis that the government takes care of for you and we'll call you when it's over. That's not how this works. Everyone has to be a part of solving this. So those good common sense personal hygiene adjustments as we just saw make a difference. I'm watching out for those who are most vulnerable, the folks over 50 with those major preexisting conditions, you know, making sure that we're following the guidance every day for folks who need to be quarantined, honoring the quarantine. These are all really, really important things that really will affect the trajectory. And so far I think New Yorkers are really listening and really following through.

So there's a lot of reasons to feel that there's a much stronger hand to play here than has been seen elsewhere. I also would say watching particularly the example of Italy, and so many of you come from different communities in the city, so you appreciate where your ancestors come from. Well, my ancestors are from Italy and Italy had a crisis almost before they knew it was, you know, upon them. I mean, the speed with which that happened in such an unexpected manner, such a fast trajectory, very different than what we've experienced so far. Now we knock on wood and every day it has to be analyzed and assessed. But Dr. Barbot and I, and Dr. Perea-Henze and I, we got together on January 24th and had a press conference at OEM telling New Yorkers that this disease would eventually reach New York City. Not a matter of if, but when, and outlining on January 24th all the precautions and preparations that were in place, didn't have our first case Doctor, I think until, we said March 1st? So we had, you know, five weeks of preparation before even getting a single case as opposed to when I say this with great sorrow for Italy, you know, almost no preparation before they suddenly had a full blown crisis. We have to look at those differences and understand them. That does not mean we're out of the woods by any stretch. We have a long tough battle ahead. Dr. Barbot said, and I've commended her for it, her assessment as a professional is that this will be until September, could be less, could be more, but I want to just let that hang in the air for a moment. Six months. We could be at trying to get this under control and starting to resume some kind of normalcy. So when you put that into perspective of the amount of time we had to prepare, what we have to throw at this challenge against how long we will be working to resolve it. Again, I think we have strengths here that a lot of other places don't have.

Just a couple of other points. The fear out there, everyone knows it's real. The anxiety, the confusion. Dr. Barbot rightly has talked about, you know, not only the physical health dynamics, the mental health dynamics and reminder to everyone, there's a lot of very worried people, anyone can call 24 hours a day, 8-8-8-NYCWELL, and talk to a trained counselor. The anxiety is natural. It's normal. It's not like you on your TV and you get all the answers, right? It's normal – people would be worried even that it could get all the answers because it's a serious disease, but it's even worse when you can't get all the answers because no one has all the answers.

So there's a lot of fear. The best way to fight fear is with information is with a good guidance by all of us showing that we believe in each other and that we can get through this. That's what we're trying to do every day and always tell people what we know and what we don't know, and the fact that sometimes what we know will change. The guidance could very well change. The decisions could change with new information. I will say very quickly, I'm sure it'll come up in discussion, I have been reticent for sure and I'm in constant contact with my colleagues, reticent to take the kinds of actions that might cause a huge number of unintended consequences and other negative dynamics. Easy example, closing schools, and I appreciate the state and the partnership. We've had to determine the right way to address a situation in a school, not with a sledgehammer, if you will, but with a scalpel, not with a full closure of vast numbers of schools for long periods of time, but with a very pinpoint approach to addressing the specific school, the specific needs and then getting that school up and running. Why? Because families depend on those schools for a safe place for those kids. Many families have no alternative. They have no alternative in some cases as a place to get their children quality food and nutrition. By the way, families want to make sure their kids get educated. We all care about health and safety first, but the notion of losing months and months of our children's education should be very troubling to all of us. So we're trying to strike a balance. We can talk about this and many other veins. We're trying to strike a balance. Every day will be a new day in terms of assessing the information we have. So again, it goes back to giving people good information. We depend on you. Reassuring where we can reassure, being honest about what we do and don't know. Giving people guidance about how they can comport themselves and what the best things to do are.

Another very important message. We will not tolerate any discrimination. We will not tolerate any hate crimes. Right now we've seen particularly troubling instances of discrimination directed at Asian communities, particularly in Chinese community. This is unacceptable. We've talked openly and honestly about the fact that too many hate crimes go unreported. I am beseeching you all to tell the members of your communities that they are the victim of a hate crime, it must be reported to the NYPD so we can act on it, so we can find the perpetrators, so there will be consequences, so we can stop someone from doing it to another person. Any act of discrimination could very well be something that constitutes a breaking of the law of the city, which we have a very strong human rights law. So people are discriminated against in employment, in terms of their day to day lives, shopping, housing, anything, we want to know about it, we want to stop it. There's no discrimination. There are no hate crimes that are acceptable, but we have to tell people how crucial it is to report them. Anybody who wants to report such a crime or act to discrimination can call 3-1-1. And obviously that is available in many languages.

So, it's up to all of us to contribute to ending this crisis. Every New Yorker can help. And the information you spread really can empower people to do that. We want to get a lot of information out. This is a – guidance and safety tips, frequently asked questions. This is available now in 15 languages and by Friday it will be 23 languages, so this is all this, these two pages, very, very important basic information we want to get out there. Please get this around to all your communities. It will also be available at nyc.gov/coronavirus.

This is a flyer – Stop the Spread – very informative, basic flyer. A lot of great information here. This is available in seven languages and by Friday will be 23 languages. This happens to be an example of the Chinese, we'll get this around to everyone obviously, but you know here on one clear page is a lot of the most important things for people to know and including one of my personal favorites. If you're sick, don't go to work. If you're sick, don't send your – if your kid's sick, don't send your kid to school. Let's really do the basics here. That alone could have a huge positive consequence in terms of ending this crisis. That will be an advertising campaign, multimillion dollar public advertising campaign with the Stop the Spread message. Subway ads are already up in English, Spanish and Chinese. There'll be TV ads in English, Spanish, Cantonese and Mandarin. Those will start Friday. There'll be TV next week, TV ads in starting next week, Korean, Russian, Hindi, Punjabi, Vietnamese and Japanese. And as I turned to Dr. Barbot simply to say obviously we're holding a press conference, we expect questions, but I also welcome information, insights about what you see in your communities, concerns that are being raised. So not just traditional questions where we're giving you an answer as a government, but we welcome your feedback. We welcome your observations as well.

With that, Dr. Barbot –

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I want to start off where the Mayor also began to remind New Yorkers that we have an incredible resource here in the city, NYCWell, and I want to just remind folks of the phone number 8-8-8-NYCWELL. The reason why that's so important is because we recognize that when people hear new information that may sound scary and they're hearing every day of increasing numbers of individuals affected around the world, increasing number of individuals who are dying because of this illness, it may cause anxiety, depression of a variety of reactions and indeed, you know, they may be having family members that are affected in these countries. And so we want them to know that NYCWell is a resource that is available 24/7, any language, you can text as well. And so I've also been saying that anxiety and fear about this illness is not an excuse to spread hate and the best way that New Yorkers can contribute to having a more healthy city is by ensuring that they have all of the correct information. And so we encourage New Yorkers to take advantage of the resources that we have.

I want to just review and summarize what we are learning every day about this virus. When this first began, we were very clear that in what it means to be a novel virus is means that it's never existed before. No one in the world has ever been exposed to this. And so there are a lot of people who are not immune. And when we have that kind of a situation, it's natural that every day we will be learning new things. Initially we thought that this virus was transmitted by prolonged household contact, meaning that people who can track did the illness tended to be members of families or people who live together. And then as we learned more specifically here in the cluster that we have been investigating in Westchester, we are learning more every day. So now we know that it's not just household contacts, it's also people who have spent a significant amount of time together, which can range from having close conversation over a meal or in other situations that might make it easy to transmit the virus. And we may continue to learn more about how this virus behaves, but the important thing is that there are some very basic things that as the city's doctor, I want New Yorkers to always do and those are to wash your hands frequently, best to do it with soap and water, but if you're not close to a water source, to use alcohol based sanitizer. The other thing is that if you cough or sneeze, to do it into your sleeve, not into your hand, and most importantly, if you're sick, don't go to work, don't send your child to school.

What we are learning about this illness is that while people may present with symptoms of fever and cough, fever and shortness of breath, it's not like the flu. Sometimes you know when we get the flu, you're fine one day and the next day you feel like you got hit by a truck. What we're learning about this is that people generally present with mild symptoms, some cough, a little bit of fever, and they still go to work. We don't want them to do that anymore because while you are symptomatic, you can transmit the virus. We want people to stay home, stay home 48 hours. And if you're not feeling better, typically what we're seeing is people start developing shortness of breath. We want people to reach out to their doctors and let them know what the symptoms are. And then their doctor will make the clinical decision about whether they get the more common tests we've been talking about BioFire, that's positive, then they will give you the appropriate treatment, where if that's negative, then they will do the COVID-19 test. So that's the very sort of simple overview of what we've learned, what we recommending to New Yorkers. The other thing I want to say is that when you are sick, we are asking businesses to help support workers stay at home so that if businesses can implement working from home, ensuring that staff have an opportunity to do what they need to do, we want to encourage that. But again, we don't want folks to be going into work when they are sick. Additionally, I want to say that – I want to echo a very important point that the Mayor made, which is we are committed as a City to ensuring that individuals who need access to care have access to care. And that's why it's so important that we have NYC Care so that it's a guarantee for New Yorkers who may be feeling not only these symptoms but have any other medical needs and have access to care. And I want to remind the New Yorkers that we don't ask folks about their immigration status. We, if people are uninsured, we work with them to get them insured and that shouldn't be a reason not to access care.

The last thing I will say is that over the – I was going to say over the last few months, because it feels like it's been that long. But since the beginning of this outbreak, we have been reaching out to a number of different communities to ensure that not only are we putting things out on our website, not only are we doing these press conferences, but we are making ourselves available for meetings and communities to answer questions that individuals may have. And so we were, we are going to continue that. And as the mayor said, and as I have said before, we're in this for the long haul and we need all New Yorkers to do their part in slowing the spread of COVID-19.

Mayor: Thank you very much. Commissioner.

Mayor: Two other quick points before we open it up. One, I want to make sure I'm giving you the up to the minute information about the number of confirmed cases in New York City. This morning that was 46, now is an update to 53, so that's again, starting on March 1st until now, 53 confirmed cases. Also an hour or so ago I spoke to the chair of the St. Patrick's Parade Committee, Sean Lane. He and his colleagues are talking through the situation with the St. Patrick's Parade. We're also in close consultation with the State and the Governor's Office on this. First, I want to understand the intentions of the parade organizers. I know they are trying to very quickly decide if they think there is a context for them to continue or not. We're waiting to hear that back. But certainly the City and State are looking at the situation as well and I think we will have resolution on all of this today or tomorrow, either way, but trying to always do these decisions in consultation as much as possible with the organizations involved. Okay. With that. Want to take questions? We'll start on this side. Go ahead.

Question: New York 1 is reporting that this St. Patrick's parade has been called off –

Mayor: We are waiting for confirmation. We heard that too. But again, from the information I had in the last conversation that was not confirmed. So I want t -

Question: So what was the discussion that you've had with the parade –

Mayor: I don't want to get into details of a private discussion simply to say the, I think it was a very thoughtful conversation where clearly the folks who run the parade are very, very concerned for everyone's health and wellbeing. They obviously also have a tremendously beloved annual event that's been going on for hundreds of years literally and want to be very careful and smart about it. So we're all in consultation. If they have made that final decision as confirmed, well that will end the discussion. If there's more to be done, again between us and them and the State, I believe that all be resolved today or tomorrow.

Question: Did you and Commissioner Barbot personally tell the Parade organizers that you wanted this –

Mayor: I'm not going to go into a private conversation. We're weighing all the factors with them.

Question: Did you speak Commissioner Barbot –

Mayor: Again, that's all there is to say to it. Go ahead.

Question: You spoke about those who are uninsured, but there are people in the City and can't afford to stay at home.

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Because they are undocumented and they need the work. So what is this city planning on doing for those people?

Mayor: Well, I want to make sure I'm understanding your question. Right now, again, our goal is to be smart about the public health needs of this city, but also keep the city running as best possible. Keep people employed. We obviously care deeply about people's livelihoods. I'm very worried about, you know, there's literally millions of New Yorkers who if they lost, you know, even a week of pay would be in real tough shape. So we're trying to balance all those factors. But let me understand your specific question?

Question: Okay. That was the question because you spoke earlier about people feeling sick and having to stay home –

Mayor: Yes.

Question: But with some people, they cannot work remotely because of the type of job that they have. So that means that if they stay home because they [inaudible]

Mayor: Right.

Question: They might end up losing –

Mayor: Let's talk about that. It's a great question. So this is going to be a combination of Dr. Barbot talking about how long it normally takes to understand if someone is sick with coronavirus or not, but also paid sick days. So obviously for all New Yorkers with a very few exceptions, for the vast majority of New Yorkers, paid sick days means if your own company does not have a paid sick days policy or your union has not guaranteed you a paid sick day policy, we ensure that many other New Yorkers have such a policy. That's five days each year. That's really important here because that connects to how long it takes to figure out what's going on with someone. There's also real discussion going on at the State and federal level where we would need the help about, you know, trying to extend paid sick days, unemployment insurance, obviously want to see all of that done. But let's start right here at home. Doctor, help us understand what it normally takes to determine from symptoms, what's going on.

Commissioner Barbot: Certainly. So the average time that it takes for someone who has been exposed to COVID-19 to develop symptoms is anywhere around five to six days. It can be as short as two days. And so in that time, most people develop, as I mentioned before, fever and cough, or fever and shortness of breath. And so what we are advising New Yorkers to do is to stay home for the first 48 hours and if they're not getting better, to then reach out to their doctors. What we're also asking doctors to do is to implement things that such as telemedicine, so that instead of someone having to go into the office, they can be assessed either over the phone or through things like FaceTime or other video conferencing. The point being that a patient be assessed to determine whether or not their symptoms are getting better or whether they're getting worse enough so that they need to be seen in a health care facility.

Mayor: Anyone [inaudible] this row? Yep.

Question: Brooklyn Hospital Center. Are there any updates on those two cases, [inaudible] –

Mayor: In general now I'll start and if anyone has something specific to add, they will. So we said a couple of days ago that just the volume of cases is such that we're not going to be doing individual updates as we were able to do before with a much smaller volume. There will be some exceptions, obviously in particularly notable cases, for example, with public employees will be one of the areas where we'll try and get you more. But generally we're not going to be able to answer specific questions on specific cases. Go ahead.

Question: What is the testing situation? We're still hearing that people can't, there's not enough tests –

Mayor: I'll start and my colleagues will jump in. That's just not accurate. What I think we have here is there, there are people understandably just want the test, right? They don't even have symptoms, they want the test or they have very initial symptoms they want the test to. I don't blame anyone who feels that in this atmosphere, being bombarded by alarming stories. But the first thing and really want people to report this is okay, you feel symptoms, first, you know, don't go to work, don't send your kid to school, et cetera. If, and doctor, you'll - both doctors, you'll correct if you don't like anything.

You know, if your symptoms start to fade over a day or two, that's one thing. If your symptoms manifest and continue or get worse, that's another thing. Anything that seems like it's sustained, we want someone to get to medical care and get tested for the more traditional - I'm using my own term - more traditional diseases. Before we ever heard of coronavirus, there were lots of other diseases that would cause those kinds of symptoms. And there is a test called BioFire, which is very typically given by physicians that rules in or rules out. Is it 29? I keep losing this please.

Commissioner Barbot: 26.

Mayor: 26. I'm sorry – I said 29 – 26 common if you will diseases. If you have one of those diseases, you have one of those diseases. If you don't have one of those diseases and you have sustained symptoms consistent with coronavirus, then we want you tested for coronavirus. If you just came back from one of the countries and have symptoms, then one of the countries that were, you know, obviously a deeply affected and have symptoms, right? We want to get you tested. If you have a direct nexus to an existing coronavirus case and have symptoms, we want to get your test tested. But you know, if any one of us just woke up in the morning and said, jeez this seems really controversial, I'd like to get tested. That's not what we're going to accommodate right now. It's not for lack of testing capacity. It is I think intelligent prioritization. Anyone want to add?

 

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: Yes. Let me see if it's on.

Mayor: I will also say just one thing that the doctors have a rule with me. If I say anything that's a little off, they will jump in and correct.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: We certainly know that.

Mayor: You're not shy.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: So let's talk about the capacity. Right now the Public Health Lab here in New York City, which is one of the premier labs in the country can do up to 60 to 80 tests a day. You may all be aware of all the issues that we had where the CDC and the FDA and the federal government being slow and then sending us, you know, chemicals for the test that didn't work. The Mayor really was constantly asking and relieved – demanding that the federal government allowed us to do our testing here locally. Now we have that testing. As of today, two commercial labs, our online Quest and LabCorp, and also H + H that works with Northwell, and many other hospital labs are going to be online. I was on a call with the Governor's staff earlier today in which he announced that 28 more labs statewide would be now approved to do more testing.

We literally went, one by one, you know, and some can do 150, 200 like Columbia, Cornell Montefiore, Mount Sinai, and the expectation is that by the end of the week collectively we will all have around 5,000 – the capacity to do 5,000 tests a week. The public health lab here has two kits from the CDC. Each one of those kits can do a thousand tests each and they already put in for another order. As the commercial labs continued to expand their capacity, obviously that's where most of the testing will be done, not so much of the Public Health Lab. That was our first line of defense. And so hopefully in the coming days we will have the ability to test all of the categories that the Mayor just outlined very explicitly.

Mayor: Okay. Go on back. Yes.

Question: Today the CDC stopped [inaudible] Oversight Committee that they are trying to do with second type of test called surveillance testing in which you go out into the community itself and do proactive testing, and that's six communities around the United States so far are participating in that. Is New York City going to be participating in that?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: We just – go ahead. Go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: So we are part of that six cities that were participating in surveillance and we've talked about earlier that our early detection system, and that's been one of the ways in which we have identified new cases.

Question: How does that work?

Commissioner Barbot: So we work with hospitals around the city and samples that have been previously collected. We then test for COVID-19.

Question: Have you found anything through the surveillance testing?

Commissioner Barbot: We have found positive COVID-19. I mean the reality is we've talked about the fact that there is a community transmission, widespread community transmission, and what that means is that currently where we are in the outbreak, a New Yorker is probably as likely, if not more likely to contract COVID-19 from someone who has not traveled than someone who has traveled.

Mayor: Okay. Excuse me. That's enough. I got to get to other people.

Question: Yeah. My name is Javier Castano from Queens Latino and this morning, I was distributing my paper and many people ask me this question is why [inaudible] universities or the school or the all chat classes that take place in a place in a room like this with 50 people. So what is developing?

Mayor: So first of all, each institution is making its own decision right now. And what I was seeing is a mix. Columbia University decided the other day to go to online classes because that's something they can do easily, but they were keeping dorms open and other activities open. So it's going to be, you know, each one will make its own decision while we're working with them to try and figure out, you know, what are the smart standards going forward? And it's obviously about what – again, this is, this is where people have to play a role if we're going to get through this. Its people being smart about if you yourself are sick, don't go to a gathering. Being very mindful of the folks who are older and have those preexisting conditions. But also trying to strike a balance because there is a profound danger if you just start shutting down everything, you're going to lose a lot of other things that we depend on in the dynamics of that, like people's livelihoods.

And when people don't have a livelihood, there's a lot of consequences to that too. So we're trying to strike a balance all the time. It's very clear from what we know that this is a disease that transmits in a particular way, not in every way. And I think if you look at some of the reporting out there, you would think, you know, you just have to look at someone with coronavirus and you'll get it or, you know, walk into a room someone was in a day before. So no it's very direct contact and then fluid transmission, we don't know everything. And you know, the doctor could tell me tomorrow that there's new research that tells us something new. But after all of us talking about it for six weeks straight, we really do believe this is, you know, very direct contact, fluid transmission is what is the essence of this. So we want decisions made carefully and when we get to a point of needing to give some very specific guidance beyond what we've given now we will, if we get to the point of needing to instill - or utilize very specific tangible emergency measures, we would do that. But right now it's day by day, case by case.

Question: Mr. Mayor –

Mayor: Only people have not gone please. I'm sorry. We're going to – we got lots of hands so that's all we're going to do today is one round per person. Go ahead –

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: Let me add something that I think all of you should, as the Mayor said, could help us with. Remind people that 80 to 90 percent of all of us could be touched and we are going to be okay. We may have mild symptoms, as the Mayor keeps saying, also remind everyone that we need to protect those most at risk and those are our seniors and people who have this preexisting conditions. Only one percent of the population that has been affected worldwide right now is in serious conditions. The average age, you know, in some – in China and some of the places is 81-years-old. We don't have that many cases, but please remind people that it's okay to try to live a normal life as much as possible with the precautions that we continue to address.

Mayor: Okay, this side. People have not gone go.

Question: Yes. I, I just wanted to ask about how long the virus lasts on surface as you understand it?

Mayor: Go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: So there's a range. Laboratory studies have shown that the virus can survive for hours. Real world scenarios indicate that the virus may live anywhere from like two to five minutes. I think the real question should be how can New Yorkers best protect themselves? And that's, you know, the answer is going back to the basics of hand-washing and covering your mouth and your nose when you cough or you sneeze. I think having the additional information of the importance of just basic cleaning is also important. Part of what we haven't talked enough about is the behavioral changes that we as a society need to go through and to remind ourselves that every time we're are wiping a surface, every time we are washing our hands that it's not just about doing it for ourselves, but it's for doing it for our neighbors as well.

Question: Okay, and just to follow up on that though, because there was a study and it was published today according to the this news report today, that found that the viable virus could be detected up to three hours later in the air and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel. And I'm just wondering like if the City has been able to evaluate that study and draw that into what you all are recommending people because this study is saying it could be up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.

Commissioner Barbot: So on a daily basis, we're looking at all studies that are coming out. You know, scientists across the world, they're studying all aspects of this. I think the important thing here to note is the difference between surviving in a laboratory setting and being able to actually transmit the virus in a way that it causes illness. And so I don't want New Yorkers to come away thinking that in any way, shape or form they have to worry more about one particular surface or another. The important thing is to focus on the fact that hand-washing, covering your mouth and your nose when you cough, is an appropriate way, not only in the beginning, but it will be an appropriate way in the middle, and it was always be an appropriate way to protect yourself and your family towards the end of the outbreak.

Mayor: Okay, we're going to finish this side, one per – one round each, go. 

Question: Okay. So a number of a dim sum parlors in Sunset Park, the Eater reported that, is there anything that the city can do to help those business and employees when they are close?

Mayor: Yeah, I mean the, the things we've put out there already that for businesses under a hundred employees we can do no interest loans of up to 75,000 for businesses have fewer than five employees. We can do direct grants up to 40 percent of their – I think its operating expenses is the basis I need to check that – but substantial direct grant. That's one thing we're looking for. Any other relief we can find. Look, we're also telling people to not avoid restaurants, not avoid you know, the normal things they would do. This does not transmit through food or drink. Again, I constantly am peppering the doctors with questions, common sense questions that they are adamant. All of our healthcare experts are adamant. You don't get this disease by eating food in a restaurant or you know, eating takeout or drinking something. It is neutralized in your digestive system.

You get it through cough, sneeze, or spit and you know, through people talking in spit coming out inadvertently for example. And it has to go directly into your mouth, nose, or eyes. So people should go out and continue to live life, should go out to restaurants, and obviously we don't want any discrimination. That's unacceptable. But for businesses that are hurting, we'll try and give them support. We're hoping that we'll see other federal support as well. And I'd hope they can hang on, because you know, this is, this is something that'll be with us, but it will be with us for a finite period of time. Go ahead.

Question: For relief for small businesses, March 15th, deadline for income tax for '19, will administration consider an extension without [inaudible]

Mayor: Yeah, we'll look at that. I have to get clear about how, what we do interrelates with the State, but we'll certainly going to see if there's a way to provide some relief there.

Question: To the degree that some businesses are being proactive and staggering employee schedules and doing the best they can to have [inaudible] is there a clinical medical basis for that kind of move? Is that a good idea?

Mayor: Yes –

Question: Secondly – and if you could explain why that is and make that clear. And then secondly, is the City planning on doing the same?

Mayor: So, I'll start and the doctors can jump in. Yes – the answer to the first question, yes. There's a basis, it's just trying to take away the dynamics where people are on in unusually close circumstances, like a crowded New York City subway car in rush hour where, you know, God forbid, someone coughs or sneezes and can't get their elbow up in time. You know, you could be right there in front of them. That's a real thing. We want to try and just create a little more space, a little more openness, staggering work hours, allowing more people to telecommute really, really helps. So, that's the basis. The doctors can give you a more elegant answer. We are looking at it for the city, but I said in several press conferences, we do have a different dynamic. We are here to serve people. We are not profit-making enterprise.
We have less flexibility because our people have to be where they have to be when they have to be, you know? We have to – our first responders, our teachers, our health experts, you know, our nurses, our doctors have to be where we need them. But to the extent with some of our employees, we can create more staggering or telecommuting, we will. We're still working out how to do that.

Just timeout before these two – just looking to the communications people, going to remind you all the importance of keeping a running list of concerns. For example, the potential of moving the tax date. I want us to quickly answer all we can answer today, tomorrow, consistently keep a running list of the answers we're providing to our colleagues in the media. Do you do want to add on the why of the staggering?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: I'll do a quick one. The main point is to avoid crowds where contagion transmission will be easier. So, by staggering time we're trying to diminish crowds and subways and buses and office settings, which will probably lead to less opportunities for transmission.

Mayor: And I think there's a particular concern about, sort of – there's close, and then there's super close. You know people on a crowded – really truly crowded in New York City subway car in rush hour are amongst the closest people to each other in the world, right? That we want – that's the kind of thing we want to open up. But we, again, don't want to go to the point without the hardest evidence of creating so much momentum for shutting things down that we undermine people's day to day lives, undermine how parents take care of their kids, undermine, you know, the availability of employees to take care of what needs, undermine the ability of people to pay for the things they need to pay for in their life. We're really trying to strike that balance. We think that staggering, that telecommuting can be very, very helpful in achieving that.

Okay. Finishing on this side, only people have not gone. I see two more. Go –

Question So, the World Health Organization is – already has updated [inaudible] to a pandemic. They are expected to recommend that governments around the world institute a quarantine. How far are we from that consideration?

Mayor: I can't give you a day or a projection. This is something we are taking in new information all the time. World Health Organization is one source, respect it – doctors, you can amend my layman's statement. I think we can say at this point in time we're looking at all the guidance, but with a bit of a trust-but-verify a worldview. I think we've been a little confused by our own federal government. You know, New York City, our health organizations have extraordinary capacity and extraordinary experience. So, you know, we are very, very mindful of first relying upon ourselves and our own people. But we're looking at CDC, NIH, WHO – all the guidance. But I find a lot of the media questions are about when – you know, when are we going to shut everything down? If I could be so plain. And that's not what we're trying to do. If we have to, we will. It's not what we are yearning to do. We want to try and do this very carefully and see if we can keep a lot of things running for the good of all while keeping people safe. We are not rushing with great joy to the notion of shutting everything down. Look what's happening in Italy right now. Folks, you know, we'll do whatever we have to do to keep people safe, but I am telling you it's going to take Italy not months but years to recover from that level of shutdown. I think we would all agree that's something we should not do lightly.

Last one on that side. Okay. I'll give you an opportunity and then we're going over here. Go ahead.

Question: As a community transmission increases, so is there any possibility the city is considering, you know, sharing information about the confirmed cases – where he or she have been, which train he or she took, which restaurant [inaudible] –

Mayor: No. I'll give you a straight forward no on that. One, we tried in the first weeks to be very transparent, to show people bluntly the opposite of what you saw in some other countries. There's been a direct correlation between countries that were secretive and not transparent with the media and the people, and the massive spread of the disease. We tried to be ultra-transparent about the specific details, the cases, the realities. But now, the number of cases are such that we cannot do that. We just can't accurately give you that kind of information, except, again, in cases that there's a broader public interest in that we understand it's important to provide as much detail as we can. But again – look, these two doctors, plus Dr. Barbot's deputy, Dr. Daskalakis, who is Deputy Commissioner for Disease Control, plus the head of our Health and Hospitals system, Dr. Mitch Katz, and his chief medical officer. They all are the people who are looking at all the information and providing advice on how we proceed. I have never had any of them say we need to tell people whether someone was on a subway car yesterday or a week ago, because that gives anybody any meaningful guidance, because we don't accept the notion that the disease hangs in the air like other diseases. And you two should really – I keep trying my best as a layman, but if it did, if it was a disease, like if you just walked into this room and someone had been here an hour ago who had coronavirus and it's just hanging in the air, we'd tell you, I assure you. It's just not how it works from our understanding. And if the surface issue was resolved and we – also, if we thought the surface issue was how you generally got it, we would tell you that. One, it's not resolved.
Our team thinks it's a very limited a shelf life in real conditions. And second, they just don't think that's generally how people are transmitting, because it takes a lot of steps to find the right service to touch and get it to your mouth or nose or ears really quick. Sorry – eyes, I should say – not ears – not ears. So, we're telling people what we understand, but I do see this consistent, like, what if – I remember this around the individual, the first lawyer from Westchester – the first case that was part of that cluster and people saying, did he take Metro North? And our answer would be, even if he did, we don't know he took Metro North, it has no bearing on anything, because if you took Metro North a week ago, it has no impact on anyone. If someone sat next to him and had a close conversation and contracted it, well, they'll know that for their own reasons. But telling people on Metro North be scared of Metro-North or telling people to be scared of the subways – I remind you all, we went through Ebola, and there were people who are scared because the one patient in the Ebola – and this is an absolutely, you know, Ebola makes, if I could be so cold, coronavirus look like a walk in the park. You know, this was really a high level of guarantee of death, unlike coronavirus. You know, the individual involved had taken the subway, there were people like shut down the subway, except the science didn't comport with that and we kept people going about their lives and we had one case and it was resolved favorably and it did not spread. So, we really have to strike that balance. So, that's me as a layman doing my damnedest. Now, let's let actual experts speak to you.

Commissioner Barbot: I think, Mr. Mayor, you captured it. The only other thing that I would say is that in the very beginning, it's important for us to do the types of in depth investigations that the Mayor was talking about because we wanted to learn whether or not the virus was here in the city or whether it was something that was still just being exported from other countries. And once we established that beyond the shadow of a doubt, the value of continuing to report on in essence the same story but a little variation on the theme doesn't add anything to what we're trying to do in terms of educating New Yorkers about their potential risk, educating New Yorkers about how they can protect themselves and educating New Yorkers about what we're doing as a city in collaboration with New Yorkers to ensure that we slow the spread of the outbreak.

Mayor: Okay. You are the last one on this side. Guys, one round only. I'm going to say it a hundred times – go.

Question: Do you think that the virus will impact things like the Queens Borough President primary election and the Census? And if so, how does the city –

Mayor: So, let's – those are two very different things. Very fair question. We've gotten some people concerned about the special election for borough president. I am really, really hesitant to change an election, ever, for anything. I think it's a very dangerous thing to do in a democracy. So, we'll look at it, but I would say, you know, we'll give it a very careful look. We'll talk to health care experts, we'll consider the dynamics. But right now, it is not my intention to change an existing election. The Census, we don't get to make that call. If the Census is on, it would be absolutely at our peril if we did not proceed with a full-bore effort and that's what we're doing right now. And the Census, by the way, is very individual. I mean it's, you know, people making sure individuals have followed through. The Census doesn't involve, like, calling people to a mass meeting, right? It's really about going out into communities and connecting with people briefly, one-on-one, making sure that they followed through. So, I've heard no suggestion that the Census would be delayed. It's something we should study to see if there is an argument for the federal government to do that in this environment, whether we're going to get an aberrant census and the dangers that could come with that. But until that decision is made and formal, we have to assume it's on and we have to continue our efforts. That would be my argument.

Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, you asked that we should provide information [inaudible] asking questions. The DOE announced recently that they're going to provide sanitizing supplies to private schools [inaudible] schools. One private school I spoke with 700 students said that they went down to pick up the supplies. They were given one bottle of bleach, one pack of paper towels, and three bars of soap.

Mayor: I need to know and my team needs to know exactly – you don't have to say it here, you can give it to us – that's unacceptable.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I need to know that, because that's not what we said we were going to do and not the intention, obviously, because the DOE is a massive operation. It has the resources to support these other schools in a time of crisis. If – and I want to say this about the whole government, if you all believed that before this crisis, the New York City government was operating perfectly, then I want to thank you for your faith in government and ask you about your naiveté. The – or about any institution, any institution of any kind, any business, any organization, anywhere. There's always going to be imperfections. That doesn't make it good, but it's just true. I'm in an atmospheric crisis, it gets harder, but the rules are the rules. We said we need to, and we will, help these organizations. If an organization is not getting the help it needs, I need to know about it, my team needs to know about it, and we'll fix it.

Please –

Question: [Inaudible] 80 to 90 percent of the city would be touched by the coronavirus –

Mayor: No, not at all.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: I said if 80 to 90 percent of us get touched, we will be okay.

Mayor: He was talking about the overall impact of the disease.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: We don't have that projection.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: So, look, again, I'll jump in and then my colleagues can. Guys, I understand, I really do, why you would like to be able to crystal ball the situation and be able to tell – you know, tell your readers and your listeners, your viewers exactly where this is going. If you do that, you'd be the first people to ever successfully – no one is certain. We've got to be comfortable with the fact that uncertainty is a part of life. But here's the certainty part, based on the entire experience of the disease, 80 percent or more of the folks who get it have minimal health impact; 20 percent have a more serious health impact, yet the vast majority of those will survive, will recover. There's a debate about the exact rate of fatality and we don't take that lightly. Even one more person dying is a tragedy, obviously, but we, you know, whatever that is, it is a very small percentage of those who get the disease. So, the Deputy Mayor's point is, whatever the ultimate number of people who do get in New York City, the vast majority are not only going to survive, the vast majority are going to have a very limited experience with a disease. And we've got to keep that in perspective here, and not turn it into something that's not, that's why I use the Ebola – when Ebola was bearing down on us, there was no gray. It was a truly consistently deadly disease. A huge percentage of the people who were affected ended up dead. This is not that. So, we can't tell you how many people can get it. We can tell you it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Anyone want to add or –

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: Just a quick one. This is not measles; it doesn't hang in the air. And I'm old enough to remember, this is not HIV, right? If you get it, you're going to die. The Mayor –

Mayor: HIV in the early years, just to make sure people fully understand – you were around. By the way, Dr. Perea-Henze was working for Health and Hospitals during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic when literally, you know, the city was trying to keep up with an overwhelming crisis and people were dying constantly. So, you do have real perspective.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: And we used to have this anxiety and we used to have these conversations and I can tell you, having been through both, this is much different. The Mayor just said it, you know, pretty accurately.

Question: Thank you. [Inaudible] channel community in New York city. Thank you so much Mr. Mayor, and your colleagues, for your work. I know you [inaudible] everything again, thank you. And I have a question about in the future. Now, that we have a controlled situation, but we don't know exactly what will happen, right? And what do you think – is there chance for the city to be closed in the future because we don't know exactly –

Mayor: So, this is – it's a fine question, but, again, gets to the – I understand everyone wants to both know exactly what's going to happen. We can't help you with that. And there's almost a desire I see in a lot of questions from not only here but other media, you know, tell us all the tools you have and when you're going to use them. And we're keep telling you, we are not going to do that because, one, it would be absolutely inaccurate and misleading. We know the emergency powers we have, I have tremendous emergency powers to shut down all sorts of things, but we are not using them until we are certain it's the right thing to do based on the evidence. Now again, I commend Dr. Barbot constantly for saying something that I think a lot of other people in government wouldn't say, but they should say, which is let's talk to you about how long will this war is going to go on, right? Because you know the famous – I'll use a bad analogy, but it makes the point – down through the ages, certainly in this country, you know, the famous promise, oh we're going to war and it'll be really brief. You know, for those of you who know your history, the phrase the boys will be home by Christmas, you know, or even more recently in presidential history, the mission accomplished in Iraq, right? What Dr. Barbot did, which I was fully supportive of, said the other day, based on her knowledge – September – six months – we will be at this for six months. We may tell you next week we think is going to be longer or maybe we'll catch some amazing lucky break and it's less. But I want people to start to see that. I think we owe people the – sort of to acclimate them and help them understand the battle ahead because everyone's got to be a part of it. So, think about – this is imperfect, but just take it as a working model. The next six months, we're going to be –

[Commissioner Barbot coughs]

Mayor: Did she do it right? Did you do it right?

[Laughter]

Commissioner Barbot: Perfectly.

Mayor: Okay, I'm watching you.

Commissioner Barbot: I'll do it again.

[Laughter]

Mayor: For the next six months, we're going to be dealing with this. We'd like to believe at the end of six months or so, we're sort of now coming out of it and starting to normalize. The numbers that Dr. Perea-Henze put forward about the 80 percent, the 20 percent, we really feel strongly, so you can project whatever number of people get this, you have a pretty clear chart of what's going to happen to those people. Our goal is to keep it a few people as possible. Meanwhile, you say, okay, what about the entire rest of civilization? Think about this for a moment, what about everything else we do? By the way, all of these people up here have to fight all the other diseases too. So, let's put this in perspective. Everything else we do in health care has to continue in the meantime, there's lots of other health care challenges. What we're doing about – I'm not making – you know what we do with heart disease, smoking, all sorts of other challenges. Our police still have to fight crime. We still have to stop traffic fatalities. Then there's a question of people's livelihoods. It is dangerous when people don't have a livelihood. It's dangerous when people cannot afford the rent, food medicine. So, the idea here is to try and balance all these factors even down to the fact that children missing their education is highly problematic. Children over the summer lose some ground in their education. Imagine if our schools were closed for months. What about all the parents who have no place for their kids? What about kids that don't get a meal? So, we're going to do this day by day, hour by hour, and if we make decisions, we're going to try and pinpoint them, which is I think against sort of, bluntly, the American discourse, which looks for you know, absolute certainty, simple, simple answers, yes or no, black or white total instant gratification. We are not near any of that. This is going to be nuanced and difficult and prolonged and we're going to get new information all the time and we're going to have to make smart decisions. But I have to protect the whole equation – 8.6 million people, the whole picture, not just the narrow question of what happens with coronavirus. I'm sorry for the long answer, but I hope that – I hope that answers some of your question.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I respect any school's decision. I do think there's a direct correlation between the schools that have chosen to go to distance learning and either the age of the students or the economic circumstance of the families. College students, if you go to distance learning, you're dealing with adults. You're not dealing with kids who may not have another place to go. You're not dealing with parents who don't have the ability to bring their child to work and desperately need to work, which is a whole lot of people in this town. So, adults, meaning anyone who goes to college, essentially, that's overwhelmingly going to be an adult – a different reality. And then for some private schools, I think they make their decisions for whatever their reasons, and I respect them, but they make their decisions with the expectation, I assume, that the parents have lots of resources and opportunities to address the issue, unlike our parents of 1.1 million kids, you know, a huge percentage of whom are working people, working class people, lower income people who have many fewer options. So, we have to put that into consideration. Also, there's no question that the quality of teaching in a classroom setting is going to be better and a follow-up on that, it's going to be better than in a distance setting. So, we're weighing all of that. The DOE is preparing options for online learning, but it is by far not our preference, and we don't see a context for it right now. And again, I need people to hear, we're watching obsessively, but we are not seeing this as a disease that afflicts children in an overwhelming fashion with the notable exception of a child has one of those five preexisting conditions. So, I would say to any parent in that situation, exercise tremendous caution.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: The seven-year-old girl did not have any of those preexisting conditions.

Question: [Inaudible] talk about, you know, the subway –

Mayor: Right, I hear you. I will turn to my colleagues and that's certainly going on the list of things that we will follow up on. And I don't think – I know that has not been on the list of things we're considering so far. I think it's an unfair suggestion, but it has not been on the list of things we're considering so far. There'll be some really substantial logistics to that one. But if you all want to offer –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Let's do both on this one. Start in English and then the crossover –

Commissioner Barbot: The most important thing is we have been emphasizing is that if New Yorkers are sick, if they have a fever, a cough, shortness of breath, stay home. We need to ensure that New Yorkers are clear about what their role in this is, right? It's not just about what public health does, it's not just about what the health care delivery system does, it's what we all can do together. And the first step starts with stay home, if you're sick. Like, I can't say it any more bluntly – as the City's doctor, just stay home if you're sick.

[Commissioner Barbot speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: I want to pick up just one point on that, which is a stay home if you're sick is – you don't need to go to the subway and have someone outside the subway with a one of those things they swipe over your forehead to tell you if you have a temperature, right?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No question. But this is actually – I don't want to sound like I suddenly have lost track of the nature of human beings or New Yorkers, but I want to say something. We're talking about two months of essential total immersion for the people of this city being told to be scared of this disease. You know, I mean there's very few parallels. We like to put out all of our messages and our flyers and this has value, but you know, you cannot – you can't do anything in New York City or America right now without being bombarded with fear about coronavirus. So, I think when our health officials say, don't go to work if you're sick and check your temperature – one of the number one indicators, right? And I think doctors, it would be helpful to sort of really put a pinpoint on how much fever is crucial in this equation. I think there's a hell of a lot of people have a thermometer. If you don't have a thermometer, go buy a thermometer if you can. And I think that's, again, the vast majority of people. If you're not sure if you have a fever, take your temperature. Now, you could say, oh, you know, the government has to do that for me. I'm sorry. No, I'm trying to make clear. This isn't that kind of crisis. The government can do a lot. We cannot do it. All the people have to participate. So, you could say, well, what if someone is not responsive? How about their loved ones? How about their family members? How about their friends? Yeah, I'm sure there's some people who are like, oh, I'm okay, when you can tell they're not. Well, then other people need to say them – hey, you know what? You actually don't seem so okay. Take your temperature. And if you have a fever, stay home. It's a little change of behavior, of course, for a lot of people, but we all have to be a part of this. So, I'm going to keep telling you and I ask you to report it and I appreciate your reporting. If the answer is, I'm going to sit back and the government's going to come and take care of me, that is a misunderstanding of this crisis. Everyone needs to participate. Would you speak to fever?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, we're telling people at temperature of 100.4 or higher.

Mayor: But speak to fever as an indicator of how to act –

Commissioner Barbot: In any situation, if you've got a fever of 104 – 100.4 don't go to work.

Mayor: Say that again, I think there's –

Commissioner Barbot: 100.4.

Mayor: Strike what you heard a moment ago. Erase that. I'm going to neuralize you, for all of you Men in Black fans. Start over – doctor, what's that temperature?

Commissioner Barbot: 100.4.

Mayor: Just less than two degrees over normal.

Commissioner Barbot: There you go.

Mayor: 100.4.

Commissioner Barbot: Don't go to work, right, at any point. And especially in where we are now in terms of this pandemic, we want people to have a lower threshold for staying home. So, at any point, if someone has a fever of 100.4 and cough, fever – temperature of 100.4 and shortness of breath, don't go to work. Stay home. Stay home, and if after 48 hours you're not feeling better, then talk to your doctor. And they may say stay home an extra 24 hours or they may say, you've got a chronic underlying illness, I want to see you. We need the most important part to be, don't go to school, don't go to work.

Mayor: Can I just ask you, for everyone's sake – just fever, nothing else. I don't know if that's even normal, but try it on for size. I would think we care about that too.

Commissioner Barbot: Just fever, we want you to stay home because you may have something else, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have COVID-19.

Mayor: Right. But just fever alone against an abundance of caution – just fever, we want people to stay home.

Question: Good evening, everybody. Mr. Mayor, everybody –

Mayor: You're oratorically strong, I'm impressed.

Question: Thank you. Thank you very much. I used to be a homeless individual. I am now here because I'm trying to figure out, is New York City prepared to handle the homeless men, the women and the children the same way they are prepared to handle the individuals without the – you know, the medication and the insurance as those who are a little bit more privileged here in New York City within the five boroughs. And how do you – how could you elaborate this to all of us? Because I think it's an issue because myself being an ex-homeless individual, I created myself, and not looking to blow smoke up there, I want to just have everybody understand that when there's a will, there's a way, but you have to gather your strength, get yourself out of bed and be a strong individual. How does New York City [inaudible] –

Mayor: I got it. So, thank you. For folks in our shelter system, obviously we're ready to provide whatever health care support they need. For folks on the street, our outreach effort HOMESTAT is constantly working anyway, long before this crisis, three years, to connect with people deeply get to know them personally, find out what they need, help them, which is a perfect methodology that fits this moment. We didn't anticipate this moment, but it fits it where those relationships now get turned into also asking people if they're okay looking for people with symptoms, getting them help. Again, I think my experience says in this dynamic, homeless people are getting the same media and information the vast majority of other people are in many, many cases. If someone needs help, I think they'll readily come forward and accept it. If someone we think is a danger to themselves or others as per usual, we have the ability to act, but we will be out in force looking for people who need help. We are not seeing that as of yet. That's not where we're seeing the challenge. Okay. Thank you.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: It's a great question. Let me first say, with all due respect to that hospital, it is not part of our public hospital system. So, when I say we have been preparing since January 24th, let me affirm that means, first and foremost, the public sector, Health and Hospitals. That is Episcopal Hospital – that is not part of our public system. Immense guidance has been sent out. My colleagues will join in – immense guidance has been sent out regularly to hospitals about how to create the right protocols. Overwhelmingly, it has worked because you've not seen any other situation like we saw in that hospital. I think by definition there was a lapse and an unusual circumstance that led to it. That said, you know, the hospital – I know Dr. Barbot spoke with the head of the hospital immediately to make sure they had what they need. They could keep operating and they are. Those individuals, you know, before you know it, they'll be back out of quarantine and back on the playing field. But something imperfect happened there. It's the only case we've seen like that and there's a constant effort to ensure that the right protocols are used. Someone shows up, asks the right questions, treat them right away, put a mask on them if needed, isolate them if needed. And I think the vast majority of the health care community in New York City is doing, but you guys can affirm if you agree with that statement.

Commissioner Barbot: So, yes, since the – actually even before this outbreak on a regular basis, we train with hospitals to ensure that they are up to date on infection control procedures. We actually do what we call secret shopper visits through their emergencies departments to test them. And there are occasions when we do these tests where not every single person in that facility knows exactly what we do. We take those testing opportunities to retrain folks and make sure that they learn from that experience. And so, this was a situation, as the Mayor mentioned, where there was a clear lapse. And so, I spoke with the CEO. We are working in collaboration with the State to make sure that first and foremost, all of those health care workers are appropriately quarantined and that we ensure that that hospital is clear on protocols and has all of the equipment that it needs.

Question: [Inaudible] will the City cover the cost?

Mayor: So, yeah, this is not a new thing. I appreciate the question, but I mean this is pretty obvious from just the way we handle all things. First of all, there's a whole lot of people who are testing positive and are at home and seeing it through. So, there's not a guarantee you end up hospitalized. For those who are hospitalized, if they have insurance, we'll draw off the insurance. If they don't have insurance, they always have the option of being in a city facility and we're going to make sure they get the care they need no matter what. If we can put them on insurance, we'll put them on insurance. But there's – of course we're going to make sure that everyone gets care regardless of the ability to pay.

Okay. We're closing down. Last call. People who have not gone –

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: So, as the Deputy Mayor said earlier, of the people who contract COVID-19, 80 percent of them will do well and they'll do well outside of the hospital. Some people may have very, very mild symptoms and then others will progress to more severe symptoms. The thing about this COVID-19 is that there is no vaccination and that there is no antibiotic. There's no antiviral therapy that has been approved to treat it. So, when we say that people will get the appropriate treatment, it means that if they are sick enough where they can't eat or they can't drink and they need to be in the hospital to receive intravenous fluids so that they don't become dehydrated, they will get that. If their pneumonia as a result of COVID-19 is severe enough that they have difficulty breathing and they may need oxygen, that they will receive it. So, it's those kinds of treatments that will be available.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: So, the people that present mild, you know, it's typically how you treat if you would get a cold or the flu at home. So, drinking lots of fluids, getting lots of rest, taking ibuprofen or acetaminophen for your fever. And the most important thing is not going out until your fever is completely gone.

Question: [Inaudible] should we avoid these large crowds, even though it may negatively impact these industries?

Mayor: Again, we are encouraging people to think about it in a more individual manner. If you are over 50 and you have those five preexisting conditions, you should take extra precautions for sure. Be very, very careful not to be in the presence of anyone sick and the example I use is a grandparent and grandchildren – if the grandchildren are sick, don't go visit them. You should be very, very careful about large gatherings. Folks who are in those particular vulnerability areas – bluntly, this is overwhelmingly the people we're losing – need to be extra careful. For everybody else to think about how to balance your life, and that means starting with your own situation – if you're sick, don't go out and put other people in danger and make sure that you are getting the care you need. If you are not sick, if you are not in the vulnerable category, you should be going about your life, but we want you to try and be mindful to avoid like the super crowded situations like the, you know, rush hour subway car. That's about it. You know, it's not quite all things in moderation, that would be too simplistic, but there are some of that. Try and strike some balance, because we are not trying to, at this moment, say, let's go to the extreme of shutting everything down, shutting down everyone's livelihoods, shutting down to everyone's way of life. If we get to that point or close to that point, we'll tell you case by case. But clearly, we are evaluating all the time – all the people up here are evaluating all the time. And if we get to the point where we think any particular type of activity needs to be suspended, we can do that voluntarily with the organizations, or we can mandate it depending on – you can – if we were there, you would know about it. We're doing this day by day, hour by hour. Okay.

Thank you everybody.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: We have covered it. Thank you.

2020-03-12 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: We have a lot of information to share with you. Obviously, things are moving very, very quickly when it comes to the coronavirus. I'm stating the obvious to everyone here. I don't think for most of us even who have been in public life a long time, we've seen a situation quite like this where we receive extraordinary new information on what now literally feels like an hourly basis. So, we are constantly making adjustments. We're also going to go over the numbers here, which are very sobering. We're seeing intense increases in the number of cases in the city. And I think we have to fully understand this as the shape of things to come.

So, we'll start with saying we're going to be giving regular updates, but expect major changes from day to day because we've now seen a pattern of such extraordinary information coming in. It's forcing very, very different decisions than we would've made typically not only here, obviously, all over the country. But the last 24 hours have been very, very sobering. Literally, yesterday, morning feels like a long time ago. We got a lot of information in the course of the day yesterday. A lot change then. Then, last night, it just seemed like the world turned upside down in the course of just a few hours. So, you know, I think what we are seeing is more and more of a consensus on how to act and everyone is moving as quickly as we can. That said, you're going to see differences, of course, between different parts of the country, what public sector and private sector does. And I'm going to try my best to explain the specific approach we're taking, but, again, it will be evolving literally daily and hourly, and we will update you constantly.

In light of several new developments – obviously the numbers that we now have seen over the last 24 hours here in New York City, what we're seeing nationally and internationally. The reality of community spread that's been with us over these last few days and the close working relationship between the city and state, the decisions that we are making together – and I spoke with Governor Cuomo at length earlier today about a specific set of decisions. And obviously, you heard his announcements earlier today, which he and I discussed in detail and which I agree with fully. In light of all those changing realities, it is time now to declare a state of emergency New York City. And I will explain what that means, the powers that are vested in me, what it will allow us to do going forward. I'll also emphasize that the declaration of state of emergency authorizes the use of the powers, but we will use them as needed. That doesn't mean everything will happen at once. And we're going to try and be very, very careful to give you accurate information about what the city is doing and why. There's already some very inaccurate information out there, which we'll speak to later on. But I want to ask all of you in the news media, if you're hearing things that are being attributed to the City of New York, please ask if it's true or not. We will confirm with you instantly. It's very important that the people of the city know what is really coming from the government and what is not. But now, again, it's time to sign this state of emergency declaration.

[Mayor de Blasio signs State of Emergency Declaration]

And continuing on the conversation with the Governor, again, I fully support, we are in total agreement on his decision related to large gatherings. So, we will be working with the state to enforce that new rule that relates obviously to anything where over 500 people would gather – parades, rallies, concerts, sports events, professional conferences, et cetera. And all of our largest venues will now no longer have gatherings until such time in this crisis as it's acceptable to do so again. And again, I unfortunately suspect that will be a number of months. So, places like Barclays, Madison Square Garden, Radio City will obviously will not be operating. As you heard, for most venues that will begin in five o'clock Friday. For Broadway, as I understand, it begins five o'clock tonight. Also agree with the decision for gatherings of under 500 people – this essentially refers to non-essential, non-workplace related dynamics. And we're talking about events, we're talking about restaurants, we're talking about bars. Gathering places under 500 people will be mandated to have occupancy levels at 50 percent or less of their legal occupancy. That will allow for space between people. That will allow for some effective opening up of those spaces. We understand, obviously – thank you – that some businesses will choose to work with these rules because they can make it work economically or they want to stay open for the long haul. Other businesses, I won't be surprised if they believe that's a situation where they'd rather close temporarily. It will be up to each business, but those are the rules that we will enforce from this point on.

Now, I want to say, and I know the Governor feels same way, these decisions that we're making, and the state and the city working closely together to make these decisions, we don't do any of this lightly. This is difficult stuff because we know it'll have a serious, serious impact on a number of businesses. Just talking about the over 500 people gatherings – I mean, that's – in this city, especially, a huge number of events, concerts, et cetera, that's really, really painful for the many, many people who work in that field, let alone so many New Yorkers and people all over the country who really look forward to these events, these concerts, these sports events. And it's really going to be a kind of a hole in our lives and it's painful. It's not something we would ever want to do, but it's something we have to do.

I am going to use every power that I have, everything we can find to support people, businesses and working people are going through this, obviously. The state and even more so the federal government have the greatest powers to provide that kind of relief and support. We're going to urge them to do that. But, you know, we understand that this is going to be a huge dislocation for so many people and it's painful. And it's obviously, as we've grappled with this crisis, our greatest concern has been how to balance all these factors and ensure that we could keep a functioning society and protect the elements of our society that are most crucial – our hospital system, our schools, our mass transit, all of this interconnects. And I can certainly say none of us wanted to take this action unless it was 100 percent necessary because the impact it'll have on the whole overall picture and clearly the human impact, which is going to be really extensive. And we talked in recent days about a projection that this crisis could easily be a six-month crisis. We all know it could be longer, but then the recovery from it could take a really extensive amount of time. So, going to this level is not done lightly, but it is the point where it's necessary.

I'm going to give you some other updates. Let me start with the overall numbers and I'll just double back to some other things. And again, these overall numbers are striking and troubling. We now, and even compared to this morning, we've seen a big jump. We now have 95 confirmed cases – that is 42 new since yesterday, so you can see the progression now. We do have just a small important procedural point. We are now going to define our cases as only New York City residents. So, we had some questioning that, rightfully so, the other day, we said we were including one person, the original Westchester lawyer and account. We've taken them out of the count from this point on. This will only be New York City residents. As of noon, and again, this is changing constantly – as of noon, the breakout we had, and I don't think this breakout correlates to the 95, so, forgive me, that this is not fully aligned. But as of noon, by residency, it was 25 people from Manhattan, 24 people from Brooklyn, 17 people from Queens, 10 people from the Bronx, and five people from Staten Island. And we'll try and keep you updated regularly on those borough breakdowns.

We have 29 people now in mandatory quarantine. That number continues to rise. We have 1,784 people in voluntary quarantine. It's a lot of bad news today. There's a lot of troubling news. There is one small piece of good news that we talked about the other day, and I'm not going to be specific to which individual, because we are getting some clearance on that, but we can say at least broadly that the first – we have the first case of someone coming out of mandatory quarantine and able to go back to their normal lives. So, even in the midst of the growth of this, we will see this. We met with employers here in the Blue Room earlier today. I'll talk about that in a moment. We talked about the deep fears about losing members of their workforce and the and the health dangers people face, but also the reminder that people will come through and we'll get back into the workforce and get back to being healthy. We'll talk about that in a moment.

So, a couple of pieces here. I keep giving you some agency updates as they arise. We're very concerned about people's loss of livelihood in the kind of situation we've just described, especially where a number of businesses will be cutting back or shutting down. We're worried about folks having trouble paying the rent. We want to emphasize, if anyone is facing eviction, we want to help them to avoid eviction. If it is a sheer legal matter, we will get them free legal help and people can call 3-1-1 if they need it. For folks who are now in a situation of distress, it will depend of course upon levels and other factors. But if someone is faced with eviction or unable to pay the rent, in some cases we can provide some short-term support through our human resources administration. We'll get you more details on that, but anyone who thinks that they need that help, they can go to nyc.gov/accesshra. And we'll get you more details on that.

We are concerned about people again who have less money because their employment has been compromised, running low on food for their families. Our Department of Social Services is activating emergency food contracts, working with nonprofit organizations, community-based organizations, and increase the amount of available food. We'll have more details on that in the next day or two.

And again, there's nothing that would be more important in terms of providing support and relief for people than federal action. We all understand in a national crisis, the federal government can provide a level of relief that state and local government simply can't. We need the federal government to move immediately with a huge stimulus program and a program of relief for working people – paid sick days, any number of measures that would help people through what could easily be a half year or more. The House of Representatives has put forward a stimulus plan that is very helpful and a very positive step. We need to see action by the House, Senate and the President as quickly as possible.

I want to give updates about our school system. And I'll talk about the school in the Bronx in just a moment. But first, overall, and this is absolutely essential to our strategy and something we are working very, very hard to continue to keep continuity on, I know the state feels the same way, we want our schools to remain open. We intend for our schools to remain open. That said, there are non-essential and non-instructional activities that we will alter. They'll either be moved online if they can be or they will be canceled, depends on each activity. So, that includes PSAL activities, athletic activities, games and practices, assemblies, parent teacher conferences, PTA meetings, and school plays and recitals.

And I will stay on the topic of schools and then double back. This morning, we have a potential – and please, everyone accurately note this, we do not have independent confirmation – we have a potential case of a student at a school contracting this disease, but it is self-confirmed. We do not have a medical provider or a testing agency that has independently verified that. That is not in any way doubting what the individuals are saying, it’s saying that we have to make a series of decisions and we need medical confirmation. We don't have it right now. We hope to have that confirmation in the next hour or two. Two schools – and the Chancellor’s here, and obviously we'll add in the Q & A – and Chancellor, make sure I described properly, if there's anything you need to correct me on, feel free. Two schools in the same building, the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology and South Bronx Prep. This is in the Mott Haven neighborhood in the Bronx. The school is at – or, the two schools are on the building at 360 East 145th Street. Again, this was a decision we made this morning a little after 7:00 am based on decisions – excuse me, based on information that had just come in and it was a tough decision because we did not have that confirmation, but out an abundance of caution determined that it was the right thing to do to close the school to work, to work to get that confirmation. If we were so lucky as to get a negative confirmation, that would be ideal. If we get a positive, it's quite clear the follow through. In the meantime, the full disinfection and cleanliness regimen is placed in the school today. The disease detectives from the Department of Health have been deployed to figure out any close contacts, as we said would be the case in any potential temporary school closure. We have checked the school and we'll keep double checking, but, as of now, there are no children in the school who reach what we call a tier one level of preexisting medical conditions – so, children who would be particularly vulnerable. We're double checking that. But as of this point, we do not have an indication of any children in the school having those particular preexisting conditions.

I want to talk for a moment about two things. The City workforce and then the private sector workforce on the city. We now intend to authorize 10 percent of the city workforce to work from home. The specific details are being determined. So, this is telecommuting. We believe that's a number we can hit in the short term, but it will take some real work. It's not the norm, obviously, for city employment. There's, as is obvious, a huge number of our employees who cannot telecommute, who we need at their posts, but we believe in short order we can have 10 percent telecommute. I am – want to confirm that number. I believe that is 34,000 but I want to check that –

Unknown: 35,000 –

Mayor: 35,000 – thank you, Commissioner. And then of the remaining 90 percent of the workforce, there are 20 percent we intend to put on staggered schedules. Again, understanding a lot of our folks not only play a crucial role but cannot be on staggered schedules, but others can. So, we in short order hope to put 20 percent on staggered work schedules even as they report to their normal work locations. And I wanted that – so, that's 20 percent of the remaining 90 percent – I want that number too – do you know –

Unknown: 70,000 –

Mayor: 70,000 – thank you, Commissioner. So, between those two categories, that's about a 100,000 City workers will either be in telecommuting or on a staggered schedule and getting them as much as possible away from the rush hour.

And again, our message to New York City businesses, as much as humanly possible, please authorize maximum telecommuting and or staggered schedules for your employees. I want to say, it's our impression so far from the information we're getting that business community is really honoring that, a lot of them are acting on that. The meeting we had here which was organized with the help of the New York City partnership and CEOs and business leaders of some of the most prominent businesses in New York City. Just going around the room and going [inaudible] each of them going through, with each of them what they are doing, we saw a very, very high level of adherence to the guidance to institute telecommuting. In fact, in the case of some of the companies, which had the ability, obviously, if it's a technology company, for example, more capacity to do that. We had companies that were literally at 100 percent telecommuting now. Other companies are going to have a much harder time and strike a balance. A great example, one of the great New York City iconic companies, Macy's, the CEO was here. Macy's is in a different situation where a lot of their workers obviously work in physical locations, but they are working with us to maximize any kind of adjustments they can make. So, I want to say I appreciate the high level of cooperation from the business community. I also want to note every business is different. Some can do a lot of – have a lot of flexibility. Others do not. They are all taking it seriously. They're all working with us. We do want to keep reminding any business that's not yet instituted maximum telecommuting and, or staggering or work hours that we need them to. But we, again, are sensitive to the fact that not every business can do that and that we are simultaneously extremely concerned to keep people employed, keep people from running out of their livelihood because that has a huge number of other ramifications. So, we're trying to strike that balance, but very, very pleased with the cooperation we're getting. And we're going to try and work with these businesses on any help they need as they proceed.

Hang on one second. Okay, a couple of other matters. There's been concerned about the special election scheduled for March 24th for borough president of Queens. We are analyzing those concerns but I want to be very, very clear that election will continue as scheduled. We are dealing with an unprecedented challenge, but I think it is a signature of a stable democracy that elections happened when scheduled. So, we very much want that election to happen on time so long as we believe it can happen effectively. However, want to urge all candidates and campaigns to alter their activity. Right now, we're reaching out to each campaign specifically – believe that door to door canvasing should be stopped immediately. And I want to note, and knowing a lot about campaigns over the years, campaigns have many, many ways to still be effective without door to door canvassing or rallies. Clearly, phone banking social media, email updates, digital ads, TV ads, radio ads – there are many, many ways, including some of the most effective ways to get the message out. So, I think it's fair to say, and that campaign that's been going on for a while, that the democratic process can continue here effectively and the campaigns do have other options for getting their message out. We do not need people going door to door canvassing and taking those risks. So, we will move forward. We have a lot to sort out of course about making the voting process as safe and effective as possible. But I do want to say, particularly with early voting, the voting process is being spread out. So, it's almost its own version of social distancing. I can say from the first day early voting I saw this – fewer people are congregating to vote. The voting process and early voting is very fast. And again, preserving our democracy is crucial. We'll talk about it in the Q & A, but we are more comfortable getting this done now than waiting. We have a related challenge, which is a huge challenge and something we really have to think through, which is the Census – was raised in the Q & A the other day. This is going to be a very, very complex matter and we have to see on the federal level there'll be any consideration of altering the Census, delaying it, extending it. But my fear right now is that there will not be any change from Washington and we’ll be put – in many places, we’ll be put in a really, really difficult spot. We're going to have to figure out if that is the case, some way to communicate with people to the maximum. It's almost impossible to engage the Census without some kind of in-person activity, but we can alter the nature of the in-person activity. We've got a lot of important work to do on that. So, that's an area of tremendous concern, going forward.

Last few points and I'll be the only speaker and we will go to Q & A right after my remarks. My colleagues obviously will jump in on the Q & A. There have been questions previously about the homeless. I've said we would come back with a specific update. We have now trained 550 outreach workers through HOMESTAT and the protocol for discussing coronavirus with homeless folks, giving them information, checking on their condition, making sure they get the help if they need it. As of today, and we'll get the exact timeline on this, but we have 764 homeless individuals on the street who had been engaged so far. At this moment, we have no known referrals, so no one that was exhibiting the symptoms or the specific dynamics that led to follow up health care activity. But we'll get more on that day by day.

Want to just say something simple about the President's remarks last night. And I think at this point, it's not worth wasting breath on everything that has happened over the last few weeks and all the missed opportunities. I think we can at least say that last night's remarks indicated that the President is now finally taking the situation seriously. The steps he outlined showed much more connection to reality than a lot of what we heard previously. But he was essentially silent on the single most important action that the federal government could take, certainly from the perspective of New York City, which is to get immediate approval for a huge expansion of our automated testing. This is a tool that would be immensely helpful in addressing all the concern you're hearing from New Yorkers. So many people who want to get tested that we cannot prioritize right now. Businesses that would like to test employees that can't right now because we have to focus on the folks who have the clearer symptoms and the folks who are in the greatest danger and the folks who have a nexus to travel or an existing positive case. We want to do wide-scale testing. We cannot do it without the federal government coming in. There has been talk of localities taking matters into their own hands. I believe that that is what's going to happen if we don't get this federal approval. And I think this is bluntly the last chance. I think if the President United States and the FDA do not give us approval, I don't blame any locality, any company, anyone who just decides to do whatever kind of testing they can at this point. And we will work with all of them.

Finally, I want to say, all of us have been talking to so many New Yorkers over the last days and we've been watching how people are responding to quarantines, how their businesses are following up on guidance, how our public servants are reacting to the crisis. And I'm very, very proud of New Yorkers right now. It's been extraordinary. We're dealing with the absolutely not only unforeseen, something on a level we have never seen in our lives. There is no precedent for this in U.S. history or New York City history. New Yorkers are handling this with tremendous strength and resiliency. People are stepping up, people are looking out for each other and their neighbors. We're going to need a whole lot more of that. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. And I want to be clear about that, we will be at this for months and months. This is – I said earlier today, this is a battle we are going into – a long battle. It is the opposite of when you're told don't worry, it'll all be over soon. This will not be over soon. This is going to be a long, long battle. It's going to be a tough battle. We're going to lose some of our fellow New Yorkers – that, unfortunately it is inevitable, but we can fight back. There's a lot we can do to help each other, to support each other, to protect people. We will unquestionably overcome this. It will take time, but we will. The City will prevail in the end and the vast majority of people who are afflicted, thank God, will survive and will fully recover, but it is going to be a long, painful episode. The more that people are informed, the more they follow through on the guidance that we are trying to give them constantly, the more people support each other, the better off we will be. Anyone who needs information can go to nyc.gov/coronavirus or text the word COVID – C-O-V-I-D – to 692-692, or call 3-1-1. Any of those approaches will get you information.

A few words in Spanish and then we'll go to questions –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Okay. With that, let us turn to questions. And we'll go from this side to that side. Go ahead.

Question: Thank you. Since you just mentioned that this is going to get worse, what number of cases or other metrics would trigger a large-scale mass quarantine as we've seen in Italy and China? Could that happen in days?

Mayor: Look, I would say this. I think we can now say as we're on the verge of a hundred cases, I'm very sad to offer this prediction, I think we'll be at a thousand cases next week. We are modeling right now and war-gaming or table-topping, whatever word you want, different scenarios for different actions. We're going to be doing this nonstop. So, I just want to say to everyone here, who’s been extraordinary, I want to thank my colleagues. There's, you know, my colleagues up here are about to go through six months without a day off and they all understand what they just signed up for and they're all extraordinary public servants. We are going to be looking every single day at the numbers, at what we can learn from the rest of the world, at the various efforts to mitigate and decide what it means. I want to be very clear, and this is, again, an area of tremendous agreement with the state, there are three things we want to preserve at all costs – our schools, our mass transit, and, most importantly, our health care system, and all those pieces interconnect. So, right now, we want to try and, in a sense, as we are indicating with the state's actions, with my actions, we’re falling back to the next line of defense. And our goal is to, to the maximum extent possible, protect those three areas no matter what. We will scenario everything, absolutely everything. And we'll look at every model, every situation around the world. But I also want to emphasize, there's no two countries that are the same, this is an absolute fact. If you look at the different countries around the world that had a serious experience with coronavirus, there's no two that have the same exact trajectory. It has a lot to do with when people got information, how much transparency, how they reacted, what kind of health care was available – there's all sorts of factors, but we're going to be constantly drilling for every eventuality.

Yes?

Question: You had mentioned that it might come to a point where the city is going to move forward with testing and the mass [inaudible] automated testing. It seems like the most capacity is at the private hospitals. So have you been having conversations with the private hospitals to say like, this is kind of where we're at. Are you on board? Is that something that governors have to convince them to do? That seems like the questioning and Deputy Mayor, you're shaking your head no –

Mayor: Yeah, it's that point. It's that point we have – I don't know how many letters calls public please to the FDA. And again – last night would have been the perfect moment for the president to announce the FDA was giving that approval or he was, you know, ordering in what is becoming sort of a wartime situation that that approval be given. It's not, you can't do business as usual, but that, you know, that opportunity came and went and there's no new information today. So again, I think people are going to have to start taking matters in their own hands. We will work with those organizations to figure out the way forward.

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Yes, please. Deputy Mayor.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: Just on that point, precisely, I have a daily call with the President of Greater New York Hospital Association, Ken Raske, and we are completely coordinated. We're tracking number of beds available, number of ICU beds, number of all equipment and medical supplies, testing capabilities, and we do that every day – part of the H + H system and the voluntary hospitals.

Mayor: Thank you.

Question: That’s exactly what my question is, which is what is the capacity of the city? Can the city handled 500 cases a day, a thousand hospitalizations a day? At what point does the city get overwhelmed by the event?

Mayor: It's not the – It’s a great question. It's a powerful question, but I want to also make sure we're always clear about if we tried to give you that answer before we've completed the actual modeling and war gaming, we wouldn't be responsible. I can tell you the next milestone is a thousand cases and if you'll follow the very broad dynamic we've seen here and elsewhere of 80 percent are cases are – forgive my nonmedical phraseology – low-level impact. A lot of people don't go to the hospital, overwhelmingly don't go to the hospital can get well at home. 20 percent are more serious. A lot of those will be hospitalizations. Not necessarily all, let's just use that as a working model. So at a thousand cases we're adding 200 more people. Look, we have a huge, huge medical system here in the city. So putting 200 more people in. Yes, of course we can handle that.

And Mitch can speak to that as one of the people runs one of the biggest pieces. But – and as Mitch said so powerfully yesterday, there's a bunch of things that would be retrenched in a crisis that got deeper like ending elective surgeries and all. But it's an excellent question. What is that moment where we start to overtax the system? And I want Mitch to jump in with a reminder to what Mitch said yesterday, that he and other hospitals will create brand new capacity. They'll take a parking lot and put up a tent and turn into an ICU, they will turn a cafeteria into an ICU. I mean, this is again, we're getting into a situation where the only analogy is war, in a wartime dynamic, you turn all sorts of facilities into something else. You mobilize people, you change their roles, you do whatever it takes. Mitch.

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health and Hospitals: One of the ways New York City is so lucky is because there is a very strong hospital system and Health + Hospital alone with its 11 hospitals, we are prepared to take literally hundreds of people who are sick. So again, when you go back to what the Mayor has said, that 80 percent of the cases are unlikely to need any hospital care. Only 20 percent of people will be sick, not all of whom will need hospital care. I believe certainly for the foreseeable future we will be fine.

Question: Do you have the ventilators, the respirators, the supportive equipment that you need for this kind of thing?

President Katz: Yes. So Health + Hospitals has a thousand ventilators. We estimate that across the city there are 5,000 ventilators. And again, if you remember that it's only likely 5 percent of people who would actually need ventilators. You get 20 times 5,000. We have a huge amount of capability. Also, remember people will get well, not people will not stay on ventilators. So as somebody – there will be new cases, but as the Mayor has also happily talked about, people do get over this infection and so everybody is not going to be sick at the same time.

Mayor: Rich.

Question: So Mr. Mayor, of the – there is 95 cases now that in the city, right? Do we know how many are in hospital? How many – do we have any sense of condition of the –

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: 22 are in hospitals. The rest are at home – isolation. A lot of them doing well.

Question: Mr. Mayor, you talked about an intense increase in cases, perhaps as many as a thousand by next week, we’re talking here about hospital capabilities. What is the point where the city says, you know what maybe you'd like not to get to 2000 and we're going to start to shut things down. We're going to start to shut down schools. And, and why is it that the Governor, who's the person who is shutting down parades and shutting down theaters when you're here in the city? –

Mayor: Again, there's been – again, listen to how this has progressed over just a few days. Governor and I have been talking, our teams have been talking. We truly – all of us believed and believe that we had to be certain before we started what is going to be – a lot of dominoes falling in terms of our society, the impact on people, the impact on people's livelihoods, all sorts of other consequences. And we had to be certain it was the right thing to do. We're all coordinated here, so we now believe these are the right steps to take now.

The danger, and I just disagree with the analysis, it will be an ongoing conversation obviously, but the danger of going to a full shutdown is it will degrade not only people's lives on a host of matters, including their health and safety and other ways. But it's unrealistic in some very powerful ways. For example, where do our children go? And if our children have nowhere to go, then their parents can't go to work. That includes a lot of parents we depend on, first responders, health care professionals, it’s a very slippery slope. If our transit system is not working, how will people get to those health care jobs? We can make some accommodation, but we shouldn't kid ourselves. So there's also – and the doctors can jump in on this very obvious point, there's nothing that says if you do these mass actions, it ends all your problems. The community spread has been established. You have to balance the negative impacts with the positive impacts. So that's what we're trying to do all the time, and the City and the State are coordinated on that.

Question: I appreciate the answer, just a quick follow-up on the issue of testing. You've had doctors interviewed on TV, so they're not, you know, people to shout on. They're putting their names to it.

Mayor: Yep.

Question: A former federal prosecutors saying every flu test has come back negative, but they're not giving me a test for this. What is – Weill Cornell and saying that emergency rooms are overflowing, I'm not there, I can't tell that, but we're – what is going on with respect to testing in this city? Where is the breakdown it seems in communication and action –

Mayor: I think there is a breakdown in understanding and we need to clean that up and clear it up. But I want to caution on the Weill Cornell point. First of all, I appreciate your straightforwardness. You're saying you've heard a report but you can't confirm it. I want to ask everyone please, because there's going to be so much misinformation in these next months, I ask you all, the people are depending on all of you. Please confirm things before you put out there. So for example, we've heard various people alleging that emergency rooms were overflowing. I've turned to Dr. Katz constantly say, what is your emergency room usage? As of yesterday, had only one of his emergency rooms that had any unusual uptick in activity. I mean, normal levels. I turned to the Chancellor a few days ago and said, what's going on with attendance, it was not only the same as the same day a year ago, it was higher.

We’ve got to separate the fact from fiction. So I don't know what's happening at Weill Cornell, the Deputy Mayor will find out right away, and report to you and report to me if they're experiencing a particular challenge. But again, Mitch, you can give today's update, as of yesterday you had one and only one that you thought was experiencing any kind of unusual size of usage –

President Katz: Our system is doing well and I think as the Deputy Mayor when he said 22 cases, I counted five are ours, which again is consistent with what I keep saying, the Health + Hospitals represents about 20 percent of the city's capability, and we're, we are doing well. I can address and agree, and we've talked among ourselves, there are confusing messages out there among physicians, people, right? Health + Hospitals is a government agency. We have an advantage, right? We're constantly able to send out messages. We've talked with the Department of Health and we - hey, here is the latest recommendation and it all gets pasted up and it gets acted on. Right? In medical practice, people have very diverse populations and every doctor is not sitting there waiting for the next report – oh from yesterday. The testing criteria has changed.

I can tell you that at the Health + Hospital facilities we are following exactly what the Mayor had described that we're not testing people who are well, but we are testing people who have symptoms of fever and cough or fever and shortness of breath. We are testing them first to see if they have a flu or influenza or some other explanation and those who are not. We are sending for COVID testing and we have capability, but I certainly agree with the stories and I've heard them myself of person goes to X physician office, gets told something completely different. As the Mayor said, you can help us by getting out the message of what's true. 

Mayor: And I'm going to go through, hold on –

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Let me add to that –

Mayor: Hold on, hold on one sec. We're going to Deputy Mayor wanted to jump in and then the Commissioner, but I'm going to go through the exact prioritization and then who's not getting the tests. I want to be super communicative with you and why that FDA approval or whatever alternative we come up with is the hinge here, the pivot to being able to answer the concerns and make it more widespread, but first Deputy Mayor and then the Commissioner.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: As of this morning in my call with Ken Raske, the only increase in cases in the voluntary hospitals including Weill Cornell is for people who are asymptomatic but worried. Now if you actually see the picture of right now, I don't want to escape this, 95 cases, 22 in hospitals is exactly what the Mayor has been telling all of us, right? 80 percent would be okay, 20 percent go to hospitals and out of that 20 percent, 1 percent will be severe cases in ICUs. So they're spread across all the different levels of services.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: So on the testing issue, I think at the very beginning there was certainly a lot of confusion. Some of it was because of the strict criteria that the CDC had put in place in terms of requiring a certain amount of travel in order to authorize the tests. But as of this Monday, we released the health alert that goes out to thousands of doctors clarifying how it is that they go about ordering from the commercial labs. And we hope that that will start to clarify some of the confusion that there was earlier. And in addition to being able to get the tests from H + H and from the voluntary hospitals, there are places like City MD that is offering the test as well.

Mayor: So just coming back on the overall situation here again, so the history is really important. The point the commissioner made first we were getting a very narrow interpretation from CDC. Then of course we couldn't do our own tests. It was not until, it seems like a century ago, but it was 10 days ago that we first were able to do our own tests. It was Friday, so six days ago that the private labs were doing their own tests. But we need to be clearer and I'll certainly take that on all of us about the prioritization schema, until we get the FDA approval or something, another way to get to automated testing. What we've said is there's hundreds of tests that can be done a day. That is a true statement. It also takes too long. That's another true statement. Turnaround time, even with the private labs, H + H, everyone on the playing field that can do what they can do. We still have tests that we wait three or four days for an individual result. Okay. But at least the tests are moving.

The problem is a lot of people, understandably, they're literally like, I don't have symptoms, I don’t have anything. I'm just scared about coronavirus. I want a coronavirus test. That's nothing wrong with someone feeling that. There are people have very mild, you know, initial symptoms, they want a coronavirus test. There's all sorts of people, I don't blame a single one of them, but with the amount we have, what we said is we have to follow the priorities. So the priorities are folks who have been exposed to someone with coronavirus, confirmed with coronavirus, folks who've come back from one of the impacted travel areas of the world to places where it's obviously prevalent, folks who are older and have those preexisting conditions and are immediately in danger in a way that others are not, and folks who have gone already through symptoms, the BioFire test have come back negative on the BioFire and now the very good chance that they could have coronavirus. Those folks all go to the front line and doctors, if there's anything that needs to be refined in my answer, please refine. But those folks all go to the top of the line. That takes up a lot of what we have. The person who just wants out of an abundant caution to get coronavirus test, we don't have that kind of capacity for.

The folks who were here from the business community earlier raised the point, it was an excellent point, they said if we've got someone in our company who has symptoms and you know, we'd like to rule them out so that we can tell everyone that's okay to keep working, you know, we'd like that ability. That wouldn't be a priority right now. We'd think that is a worthy concern, but we need the more widespread testing to be able to do that.

Question: Mayor, I’m hoping you can explain the executive order, particularly section two, where you say your direct agencies to provide all appropriate and necessary steps to preserve public safety and require all assistance available to protect the security, wellbeing and health of the residents, how is that different from the status quo?

Mayor: Sure, the – and I asked my – I need one document that I left in my office. There's a document from my General Counsel with the delineation of variety of examples of what the emergency - state of emergency entails. So let me get that in front of me to just give you live examples clearly is - the status quo is when, as Mayor, I can direct my agencies to do a whole host of things to protect the health and safety of New Yorkers. But the emergency order allows a much deeper intervention into the daily life.

Question: If I may just follow-up after [inaudible].

Mayor: Yeah, so for example, these are just some of the specific actions that can be taken. I want [inaudible] please. I'm going to be treating everyone with a real respect that I'm going to be very clear when I'm giving you examples. This is – none of these have been activated. They are – when they have been activated, I will indicate it. But this is the range of potential actions that can be involved by executive order under this state of emergency. So there's the ability to establish a curfew. There's the ability to regulate whether vehicles or individuals may enter or leave specific parts of the city. There is the ability to close down public transportation. There's the ability to order hospitals to postpone elective procedures, to ration supplies or impose restrictions on supplies and prices - and price gouging, I should say. The ability to suspend or limit alcohol use, firearms, explosives, flammable material and liquids. The ability to prohibit or restrict people from being on the streets and in public places. One that we've obviously already seen the state acted on and is consistent is the ability to regulate or close public spaces. There is the ability to create or designate emergency shelters, emergency medical shelters, and community based care centers. The ability to limit a maximum building occupancy. These are some of the examples. So they're very extensive capacity.

Question: To follow-up, at what point do you move from containment to mitigation. Are we there yet?

Mayor: We’ve been there.

Question: So the disease detectives have no more work?

Mayor: No, that's not – a good question and no, they do have work to do. In a matter of days it was clear and unfortunately I think the testing I'm not going to bemoan what's already too late. I think – I think if we had had early testing this could have been a very different trajectory. But again, this entire experience we've had with testing is 10 days old. And almost before we got started with it, we found that we were really struggling to maintain a containment stance. Now, you know, we saw community spread on Wednesday or Thursday, really start to establish, we see the growth. There's only the one true cluster I think at this point still that we know of in Westchester, but we still see this growth pattern is very, very troubling. So it's a mitigation mode, but the disease detectives still have real, real value and we want to keep augmenting their ranks because they still allow us case by case to achieve specific things. Anytime you know the pattern of contacts, you can follow up with the folks who most need to be followed up with, and then that helps speed action, follow through on their care, but also helps us to deal with other dynamics like what happens to everyone else who was not affected. So they're still very, very important work.

Question: Are they in touch with all 92 people in their [inaudible]?

Mayor: Let's check on the exact cause obviously this has been –

Question: [Inaudible].

Mayor: Yes, of course. That - wherever possible. Okay, go ahead.

Question: What at point would you, Mr. Mayor, and you, Chancellor Carranza, decide to shut down the schools? Is this option very much on the table at this point? And can you give us an update on the five different cases on Staten Island, you know, one is EMT worker –

Mayor: Right.

Question: Another one we hear from sources as a coach at St. Teresa School that may have been in contact with other students?

Mayor: Yeah. I cannot give you individual updates as we said you're right to point to those examples as – particularly the EMT – as someone who we would pull out and try and give an individual update because the ramifications.

Question: [Inaudible].

Mayor: Right. Well, we talked about that the other day. The point being where we can give some particularly pertinent updates, we will. But the problem is with these numbers, it's going to be harder and harder to do so. So cannot give you anything new beyond what I said the other day about the EMT. I'm not familiar with the situation with the coach. If we have information our City Hall press team will get it to you. But generally speaking in these briefings, unfortunately we've gotten to a point where we can't do much on individual cases.

On the schools, again, we are going to fight tooth and nail to protect our school system for many, many reasons. It is where our children are safe in the day and many parents have no alternative. It's where our kids – a lot of kids get their meals. It is the pivot for a lot of people we need to get to work to get to work that their kids have a place to be. A lot of them have no other choice. They cannot bring kid to work. They do not have a relative can take their kid and you could say, well, why don't we come up with an alternative location? Well, that creates the same exact problem. If a bunch of kids are congregated in a school or a daycare center or whatever it might be, if congregations the issue it would be true anywhere. So we are going to do our damnedest to keep the schools open. We are going to scenario everything, as I said, and I'm going to say it a few more times and I'm going to respect your intelligence that I don't need to say it a hundred times. We are scenario-ing absolutely every potential of what could happen to this city.

Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible]

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Yeah. There's nothing else to add. The Mayor’s exactly – we were on the same page, exactly what the Mayor said.

Mayor: Go ahead, Jeff.

Question: A question for you, Mayor, and then to follow up on Dr. Katz's comments on testing. I heard you mention a six month timeline at least three times. What historical lessons have you learned from the Spanish Flu in 1918 in terms of social distancing, in the extent that you're using it now?

Commissioner Barbot: So I think the most important thing to note is that when we put social distancing in place, it is to slow the spread and to reduce the potential harm to people who may be at highest risk for bad outcomes.

Mayor: But is there – I think the question was more about the history.

Commissioner Barbot: So the lesson learned is putting in place the kind of measures that the Mayor is announcing, is a way to help slow the spread and reduce the harm to New Yorkers.

Question: And Dr. Katz, you mentioned testing. Is there any guidance that you want to offer to families about whether or not they should be giving their children medicine before they get to the clinic? Because as I understand it, personal experience, a doctor told me that unless the child is experiencing a fever in the office, that's one of the criteria for getting the test?

President Katz: No, that's not accurate. No good clinician would require that a child be forced to have a fever in order for it to be recorded. We believe when parents say my child has a fever and then I gave them some acetaminophen and it went away. We understand.

Mayor: Okay, just finishing this side first round. Okay. Going over here. Yes.

Question: There have been some calls to all the eviction proceedings in the city. I just want to know if the city going to step in to stop – I don’t know if the Deputy Mayor wants to discuss that because there are seven people who are facing eviction and things will only get progressively worse as the virus continues.

Mayor: Yeah, and I talked about and obviously the Deputy Mayor will add, but you know, we are clearly, for anyone that needs the legal help, we're going to do that for some people – we can't necessarily do it for everyone. But for some people who need the financial help, we can help. It is a very good question which we can follow up on and get back to you about other more extensive actions that we could legally take. But, Deputy Mayor, do you want to speak to that?

Deputy Mayor Laura Anglin, Operations: Yeah, we are in discussions with the court system about what we could do under different kinds of authority, where we have the capacity to stop anything we have, for example, NYCHA is not executing any warrants of eviction right now. We are a really ramping up and making sure that we are providing lawyers where we can provide lawyers to tenants. And as the Mayor said, we have some assistance available for people on under certain circumstances.

Question: In terms of some of the rumors floating around about a city shut down, of those natures. Have you had any sort of just even conversations with the Governor about how that would actually play out if necessary? Talked about gaming out these exercises. Have you had any conversations with the Governor and the secondly—

Mayor: Can I just stay on that and you'll definitely get the next one. So again, what I want to make the ground rules since we will be doing a lot of briefings and then when we're not doing a briefing, our press office will be putting out a lot of information regularly. Obviously we'll put out information on Twitter, et cetera. If we don't say it, please don't assume it because there has been misinformation out there and if anyone, you know, it's not coming from our mouths, my mouth or these folks or our official Press Office or Twitter feed, don't believe it. But ask us and we'll give you a quick answer. The understanding I have, some of the stuff that we've seen out there today is really, really wrong. Really off base. My impression is some of it came from either leaked information or extrapolated information from scenario planning, not from actual decision making. The scenarios – I've been to a number of these different types of events. You know for example, NYPD does scenarios all the time where they talk about, you know, 10 different sites where there's an active shooter simultaneously, for example, if there was a terror attack, something like that. It's not real. It didn't happen. They're planning for the unexpected. They're trying to see what their capacity is. So we're going to run a number of scenarios, but no one should mistake those scenarios for something that's actually happening or being authorized, first of all.

To your question about the Governor, absolutely. We all are constantly comparing notes on the different things that we might do. There's been a high level of agreement, step-by-step. Everything that's been announced, City and State, has been talked about in advance. All the major actions and there's been a high level of agreement. The going forward scenarios, first we need to, I'm sure the state is doing the same. We need to feel that we've perfected them and believe in the projections and the right approach. That's part of why you do the exercises to test them. You're sort of pressure testing different scenarios. And then we're going to absolutely compare and see if we're all on the same page about how we would handle things. But it is very much a one day at a time, one hour at a time in terms of taking a newer information, making adjustments while simultaneously running scenarios that are really about weeks ahead and what we would do at that point.

Go ahead and get other part.

Question: Up to this point. You’ve talked to New Yorkers about remaining calm, optimistic, and today, you know, obviously your tone is a little different [inaudible] announcing something very serious. Do you – how do you feel, have you struck the right tone, the right balance up until this point, where now you're announcing this state of emergency?

Mayor: Sure. It's – this is, we're dealing with a great unknown here and we all understand that. My strong view is that people do really well when they're told the truth. They do really well when they're given the opportunity to be a part of the solution. And I certainly feel that strongly about New Yorkers. They don't want anything but the best blunt information we have. But you know, they also don't scare easily and they, you know, they don't want a panic. That's my view. And I don't think, I don't think panic is the right thing for any leader to do. I think based on the information that we've had over the last few days, tried to really be clear that this thing was ramping up and we were making adjustments. But I'm very, very concerned, as I've said before, that there is a bad scenario where folks in leadership ended up creating an atmosphere of panic, ended up creating an atmosphere where everyone went too far in terms of some of the steps that could be taken and therefore created huge unintended consequences and hasten the day when that last line of defense wouldn't work. And I think that's, again, this is, everyone has their own analysis, but this is mine. Protecting our ability to do the most basic stuff is absolutely crucial here. And that's not going to happen if people believe that the only choice is to panic. Right? So I think New Yorkers have received ever-changing information very, very well. I think we've sort of tried to do it in sequence as we knew things and they've, they've taken it in and made adjustments. They're going to make a lot more adjustments, but it is the strangest thing to deal with an ever-changing diet and is the ultimate moving target, you know, we don't have no day is like the previous day and that's extremely challenging. Okay.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I have two questions. The first, I just wanted to get a little bit more further clarification on the state of the testing, and I think there's a little confusion because there's swabbing on the front end and then there's the analysis on the backend. I'm talking about the backend testing. The Governor today actually said there is a shortage as far as that concern and I don't believe that that's something you have—

Mayor: I want to make sure we're speaking the same language. When you say the backhand, what do you mean?

Question: The analysis of the samples.

Mayor: Like the actual getting the results.

Question: Yes.

Mayor: Okay.

Question: Yeah. So I guess I'm just wondering is that what is determining the priority list? I guess? Are you limiting the criteria because at the moment you don't have the capacity to analyze every sale?

Mayor: I’ll try and start really, really top level. And then my colleagues will jump in. I don't want to mistake the delay in the results from the ability to get results. I mean it's perverse that you have to wait three or four days, but they do come in constantly and that's why you're seeing the numbers grow and grow. So I think with a capacity of, again, everyone will update and confirm this, but you know, we've said originally we could do dozens a day and then that advanced to a hundreds a day. But when you listen to all those priority areas that require support, that takes up the capacity quickly and understandable why a lot of people might ideally like a test but don't have those particular needs. Couldn't get one right away. I don't love it and no one loves it, but that's I end. At least there's a logic to it, you know? But I don't think it's about how long it takes for the results to get back. It's about how many physical tests you can do in a day versus what you could do if you have the automation. So that's my attempt as a layman.

Commissioner Barbot: And to build on that from a public health point of view, now that we have commercial testing available through hospitals, through ambulatory facilities like CityMD, the public health lab is prioritizing testing healthcare workers who may have been exposed, testing individuals who may be in critical condition and really reserving that capacity for the, for the sickest.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Hense: If I may also, you probably know the governor also approve 28 more labs to get started on fast approval for more testing, which we hope in the next 10 days will yield about 5,000 tests a day. I owe the Mayor the specific amount from those 5,000 that are going to be for the city itself, but we believe very, very slowly – but this is ramping up. So to your point we're going to have more capability to do more analysis.

Question: [Inaudible] one understanding is are you limiting in the criteria because you know you currently don't have the capacity to test all those all of those analyses at the moment or—

Deputy Mayor Perea-Hense: If I may, I think we are doing the criteria because those are the people who need it the most. Regardless of the amount of testing that we would have, those people will still have the priority lining that you heard.

Question: Just one other quick question. Is the Wall Street trading for going to be closed?

Mayor: Yeah, the CEO of the Stock Exchange was here for our meeting earlier and we are adamantly devoted to keeping the market going. That's absolutely crucial for not only the city, for the whole nation, and we talked about how to do that and how to do it with you know, the most minimal staffing necessary. So I believe there's a way to keep things moving smart and a safe way.

Question: I just wanted a little more clarification on the eviction question. You guys said that you were staying all evictions in NYCHA and you are working with the courts currently to what – help people who are having convictions from the private sector and have you guys considered at all putting moratorium on evictions altogether or at least forced evictions both in private and public?

Mayor: So I'll start and then pass to the Deputy Mayor again. We are exploring right now, under a state of emergency, how the state of emergency powers affect that particular equation. So we're, we want to do everything we can do, but we have to make sure we're on firm legal ground on that one. Do you want to add?

Deputy Mayor Anglin: We have suspended the execution of any warrants of eviction in NYCHA, except in very limited circumstances involving criminal activity in a NYCHA apartment.

Question: So to follow-up, is the city preparing for possibility in the increase of homelessness because of the evictions?

Mayor: It's a fair question. I think right now, given that we are taking the actions we're taking my hope is that would not be the case, and obviously, God forbid that happened to anyone we do have right to shelter in this city, we would find a way to accommodate them. But I think to your question, our, our goal here is to not only avert the kinds of evictions that would happen because people are losing their livelihood in this crisis, but actually frees up evictions as much as humanly possible, even ones that would have been proceeding regardless of this crisis. So hopefully we can stay ahead of it.

Question: I mean, you're talking about six months, you really have an idea of how long this is going to impact us?

Mayor: I'm confused by your question. We said our projection today is six months. What are you trying to say?

Question: I’m saying, where'd you come up with that calculation?

Mayor: It's, there's no one on earth who can give you a perfect number. This is based on and I'll let Dr. Barbot who's the author of the number and who I've been praising for it because I think it's real talk. I think it's being honest with New Yorkers about the duration came up with the number, I think I feel like three or four days ago based on, we started talking, we started in our strategic meetings saying let's talk, analyzing what we know and went around the room talking to people about what are you seeing, what would you put as your initial estimate? And Dr. Barbot very quickly said six months based on the growth pattern we're seeing and the time it would take to really come down off it. I mean what, what would be the end? The end would be when people are getting well and there's very few new cases and you know, life can start to resume normal. I think it could be six months. Obviously it could be more, but it's a lot that has to play out. Before we will get to that point.

Commissioner Barbot: And to add to that would say part of it is based on the experience we had during H1N1, which was the last time the world saw a pandemic as well as what we're learning from what's happening in China and other countries. And I just want to remind us that this is a novel virus, which means that none of us has ever been exposed to it and no one has immunity to it. And so while we go through that process, you know, to go back to something that the Mayor said earlier, 80% of us are going to hopefully have a very mild course. While 20% of us may have to have higher level of treatment either by going to a doctor or potentially going into a hospital. But the, the rationale for this taking that long, and again, it's our best estimate, is the fact that none of us have ever been exposed to it before.

Mayor: Way back

Question: Mr. Mayor, regarding the large group gatherings. I have two questions. One you said Madison Square Garden and Barclay Center could be closed for months?

Mayor: Yep.

Question: How long [inaudible]?

Mayor: This is for, you know, over 500 people. So they're never going to have an event in those places under 500 people. And we are estimating, this is our estimate. We're not putting, you know, this is not a binding commitment, but we're saying our estimate is this will go through September at six months. I think that's the right way to think about it right now.

Question: [Inaudible] for six months?]

Mayor: I do and I feel horrible for them. I mean, they're very, very important places in the city and lots of people work there and lots of people depend on what they do, but that's just the reality right now.

Question: The other question is, we're getting – Ubers are calling us concerned about weddings. The weekend is fast approaching, most weddings are under 500 people. What is the advice of the Health Department to people who may be attending a celebration like this young people all ages, what do they do?

Commissioner Barbot: So our recommendation would be the same as we would give individuals who are having those questions about work, about school. And it goes back to the really fundamental, if you are sick with fever and a cough or fever or shortness of breath, don't go. If you are an individual who is, who has one of the chronic underlying illnesses that we're most concerned about – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, immunocompromised, and chronic lung disease, then I would think twice. And especially if you're over 50, I would think twice about going.

Mayor: Let me, let me be the non-doctor and just say I would go a step further than the think twice. Just common sense from my point of view. And I know a wedding is a crucial, priceless, beautiful moment. So no one wants to miss it. But I'd say if you're someone with those preexisting conditions, and particularly if you're over 50, if you go to such a wedding, you should really keep your distance from people. You can be there and experience it, but try not to be too close to people is what I would argue just to be – an abundance of caution. It's painful, but I think it's better than taking a risk right now. And obviously, you know, if you're talking about gatherings of under 500 people, we're still saying we want those halls, those banquet halls, wherever it is to keep their capacity to 50 percent of what their legal limit is. So it's very sad if anyone has to change their guest list or their plan or do something different. But this is all about protecting people, protecting the couple themselves, protecting everyone there and people going to have to make those adjustments. Okay. Who has not gone? We're doing the first rounds of just reminding everyone. The ground rule is if you've gone hold back and we'll see, we can get to some others on a second round.

Question: Mr. Mayor, two questions if I may, because DCPI kept one up to you. You've talked about the importance of the frontline employees. What is the NYPD doing to assure that its officers are staying healthy?

Mayor: We can get you details of how each agency is doing that. But look, overall I'd say everyone is getting a lot of information from all of you and then from the guidance from their departments about the basics of staying healthy, including one of the most basic things, which is if you are feeling ill, stay home, it's really profoundly important. And what we know about, and NYPD officers are incredibly devoted to their job and they're going to, you know, always show up to protect other people. But we want them to be mindful. If they're not feeling well, stay back. You know, it only takes a few days in – I think it'd be really, really helpful to give people the truth of – from the second you start to feel not well to when you can determine you're actually starting to get better or you got a bigger problem on your hands, whatever that is. How many days do you think that is typically when we're talking about these kinds of symptoms?

Commissioner Barbot: Usually what the trajectory is, people will become symptomatic as early as two days from being exposed.

Mayor: Not even saying coronavirus. I'm saying just generally the cold, flu, et cetera thing, I just, how long—

Commissioner Barbot: Three days.

Mayor: Right? So that's, I mean at the point being we're not, for folks to know if they're getting well of whatever is going on or to not getting well is a very small number of days and we just want people to exercise that caution.

Question: I spoke to your former Health Commissioner this morning, Dr. Mary Bassett. She said that she was very worried that it doesn't look like New York City has prepared. Her predecessor Tom Friedan shared the same concerns. I'm just wondering if you feel like, you know, late yesterday you weren't even saying that they should cancel the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Did you wait long too long to enact these serious measures at all?

Mayor: We have been, every day, every hour, assessing and making decisions. Look, you're a very intelligent person. The parade was canceled well before it happened. We were all working to be very, very careful about that decision. This, this parade has gone on since before the United States of America was a country, not a minor matter, an outdoor event, different from an indoor event. But the more we looked at it, the less comfortable we got given everything we're seeing. I don't blame anyone in the world for being really careful about that decision. But the parade, you know, the cancellation of the parade had to happen in time for people to not show up. So there was time on the clock. The same with the half marathon. We're all very conscious of that clock. You guys, and I don't mean disrespect, you guys are a little more energetic about reporting on this thing or that thing. We are watching a whole bunch of elements and really quite aware of what it means to cancel something and when the actual event is, as long as the cancellation happens, inappropriate timeline. So we're perfectly comfortable that those decisions were made the right way in the right time. The bigger decisions have been really open with you all. There is a real price to pay and we try to balance that price because what we see is a lot of danger in overreach and trying to strike that balance. And we think at this point – and the state and the city got to the same conclusion on the same timeline, that this was the time to now take it to the next level and then we can escalate that very rapidly if we need to. I don't know what are – both of those are folks – Mary worked for me for a number of years; Tom is someone I know for a long time – they both know how to reach me. If they have something to want to say, they're more than welcome to call. Oxiris was Mary's deputy – more than welcome to offer their concerns. I don't know what they're talking about and I don't know if they understand the details of what we're doing or what we've been doing all of these weeks. So, we're very confident that we're taking every step instantly when is needed to be taken.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: The actual need to take specific actions. You know, when the Governor and I talked and we got to the point of feeling that we were going to do the kinds of things that would take that kind of intervention, even though the State was going to go out with its actions first, it's quite clear we're now in that vein where we're going to be limiting events and taking very physical actions. Until we were sure that, it was not time to declare it because I didn't need to use those specific powers. Now, it's time.

Question: [Inaudible]

[Chancellor Carranza speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: Okay, we're going to finish this one. I want to get my ground rule check here –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Hold on. I see you. Last call on anyone for round one who has not yet gone, and then on round two we're going to do a few, we're not going to be able to do forever.

Question: [Inaudible] I guess, first of all, out of the 2,000 tests the city got from CDC, how many are now left?

Commissioner Barbot: We'll have to get back to you with that exact number.

Question: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: I don’t.

Question: And on the RNA extraction kit component of the tests, can you say which manufacturers have not been able to send the extraction kits to labs that are developing the tests?

Mayor: Wow, this is getting deep, dude.

[Laughter]

And I was going to say, if this is your natural knowledge, we need to know more about you, why you know this.

Question: [Inaudible] is there a timeframe on how long it will take until they can meet the demands?

Commissioner Barbot: We'll have to get back to you on the details of the manufacturers.

Question: Is the city considering using sort of rudimentary testing procedures like the ones China resorted to, like mobile CT scans and fever scans, if the CDC approved testing and it doesn't come through in time?

Commissioner Barbot: We haven't discussed that, but I think, right now, given all the conversation about testing capacity, we could start the conversations, but it hasn't been a primary part of the conversations that we've had.

Mayor: Yeah, I think, look, that's a good question. And I'd say there is a – I'll give you my own imperfect mathematical equation – there's a direct correlation between the unwillingness of the federal government to approve the automated testing. The fact that we really are running out of time here, have been running out of time, and we have to find any and all creative solutions. So, that specific option has not been fully vetted by us, but we're going to look at a lot of different ways to proceed if we don't have anywhere near the testing capacity we should have, we’ve got to be as creative as we can be.

Question: Will the same thing go for – there's alternative tests and not FDA approved [inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: Again, we'll have to get back to you on that detail.

Mayor: Everything's being looked at. Okay, who has not gone at all. Okay. We're going to start at this side again. Let's see if we can do not too many and we'll try and be quick. Go ahead.

Question: What was the closure or the restriction on [inaudible] enforced?

Mayor: As anything would be enforced. I mean we'll figure out the departments, but the natural ones that think about – the Police Department, Fire Department, Buildings, Health – we’ve got to sort it out, obviously, it's a few hours old, but there will be an enforcement mechanisms. There's fines involved. We'll be very vigorous.

Question: [Inaudible] what advice would you give New Yorkers who are considering going on dates?

[Laughter]

Mayor: Okay, you've got range. Okay.

[Laughter]

Mayor: I do not know the answer on disinfecting Citi Bikes. I don't know if anyone else knows. We will get back to you, it's a good question. We'll get back to you on that one. Look, this is kind of – it's a fun question, but it's also a real question. It gets to the heart of the matter. I think it is dangerous to stop living life. You know, this is a crisis, but it is a crisis that will one day end and, you know, we're going to lose some people and that's horrible, but the vast majority of people even who are affected are going to live and recover and then a whole lot of people will not be affected. I mean, every nation in the world that is still a factual matter. It does not – every single human being gets it and we understand the real numbers around what happens to those who do. So, we’ve got to keep living life. People, you know, cannot get to a point of hopelessness. I do think it's fine to have a social life, but you got to exercise some smart rules, right? If you're sick, don't go on a date. If the date is sick, don't go on the date. People should probably over communicate about things like that, right? Hi, are you sick today? And I do – look, I think people are being, in the scheme of things, you know, we're all humans, we're not perfect, but people have been pretty damn responsible. They understand this is serious stuff. So, the other thing is, you know, with a date, you know, you might keep a little more distance than you might have before, right? That's okay. I saw one thing the other day that said a date didn't end that great and they did not kiss each other on the cheek or anything at the end of the day. I think it was wise, especially if it didn't go well. But people are going to – people are still going be people. How do we be smart about it, right? That's the way I would say it.

Okay. Yes?

Question: I'm wondering, are the disease detectives maxing out on their capacity to keep up with these cases and track [inaudible]?

Mayor: We're doubling the number as we speak and we're going to keep augmenting.

Question: Is the city keeping track of how many people you guys have turned away from testing? If not, why?

Mayor: We don't – I mean, again, why don't you – the vast majority of the health work that's done in New York City is not us. So, I want you to just be careful with your question when you say that you guys – it's doctors, doctor offices, clinics, Urgent Care, private hospitals, nonprofits, none of that is us. Then there’s Health + Hospitals, that's actually us.

President Katz: In someone's record we would. Any patient who comes in, we open up a record and we would document what we recommended for that patient.

Question: Do you have a number or estimate?

President Katz: No, I don't.

Question: And also, is City Hall planning to close?

Mayor: No.

Question: [Inaudible] gatherings of 500 or less [inaudible] how does the city plan to handle Times Square, Bryant Park in the spring time when the weather warms up?

Mayor: Sure. So, let me start as the layman and then the experts will jump in. I mean, outdoor and indoor is different. We're still trying to understand this disease. But, you know, define – it's I think a definitional matter that outdoor and indoor is different. You know, circulating air makes a difference.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No question. No question. I mean, it's a very fair question, but I'm saying – I just want to start by saying we would take a different view of anything outdoor. But you're right that we have to try and figure out without the kind of – indoor is defined, right? If you got a venue, you know how big it is, it has entrances. It's like, you know, you can actually enforce that. Outdoors all over the city, that is a much more challenging matter. Although, you're right, there are some places that'll focal point. We got to figure that one out. That's – to me, that's like a real higher-level challenge. But I do think, again, I don't know many situations where people have gotten most of two months of nonstop warnings. And if that wasn't enough, the last few days probably have really done it for a lot of people. So, I do think there's a consciousness when we see it manifesting in people's activities and behavior to be more careful and to do some things differently. We’ve got to think about what we can do about outdoor venues like that. But I do think the people themselves are already acting in many ways.

Y'all want to add? Anyone?

Commissioner Barbot: I think you got it.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: You just had it all.

Question: Just to the scientists on board here. Is there any indication that a change in temperature upward is going to in any way mitigate the spread of this disease?

Mayor: I'm sorry, Mr. President, what did you say?

[Laughter]

That was my homage to Trump saying it'll go away when the weather got warm. Go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: We have had conversations with scientists in different institutions and given the fact that this is a novel virus that we've never seen before, it's hard to predict what temperature will do – ambient temperature will do with it. I should really say seasonal changes, not ambient temperatures, cause that might mean something different. So, there's no way to know, you know, what's going to happen when the spring comes, when the summer comes. We can't predict whether it's going to behave like influenza does – that typically it's got a very defined you know, September to March, April kind of trajectory.

Question: To the Mayor and the medical doctors, there have been a couple of articles in the past few days about Italy, for example, being overwhelmed, the health system, and today the Washington Post wrote about Iran building mass graves. How [inaudible] are you guys keeping up with these, sort of, international developments? And when you read something like that, it freaked me out. But how do you guys deal with that. Do you plan more? You know, how do you react to those sort of horrible –

Mayor: I'll start and my colleagues can jump. I mean, they're really, really troubling. I've read in particular number of accounts what's going on in Italy, including first person accounts – doctors and patients and all. It's very, very troubling. Now, I cannot emphasize enough, that they started so far behind. I mean, China started even farther behind because there was mass governmental denial of the obvious, but Italy just – you know, it was already established by the time they even had a sense that there was something to pay attention to. I mean that's my layman's interpretation. You know they were in full-blown crisis before they even braced for impact. As opposed to the United States, which, in general, and certainly at the state and local level has been preparing for this in a lot of ways and warning people. Again, January 24th was our first press conference on this – first case was March 1st. I mean, that's real, real different than Italy. I think Iran was the same thing. Iran went from no indication of anything to, like, a giant problem in a matter of days. They were not ready. Also, not transparent. South Korea that started in a particular religious institution and blew up, and I just don't think there's a parallel to – we had the benefit of seeing everyone's experienced, all of us, in getting ready. I also think that just objectively we have a much stronger health care system, not standing as to problems – we just do – and this city, especially, in this country. All that should give us a little more hope. But to your question, yeah, it's sobering as all hell when you read those reports and no one should take it lightly. And that's where I said to you guys, and I'm not happy to tell you, but, you know, if I can see a thousand cases by next week, you know, of course we are worried about where that takes us and how we deal with it. And that's why we're going to be planning for anything and everything.

Commissioner Barbot: Just to add to what the Mayor said, we have staff who, part of their job in this response is to make sure that they stay up to date with the scientific literature, because this is, as we've been saying, every day we're learning something new and we look at studies that are released. Additionally, we talk to scientists at the World Health Organization. We talk to public health practitioners in other cities to learn from what they're experiencing so we can integrate that into the longstanding plans that we've had. And so, you know, part of this – part of the role of public health is to anticipate a number of different potential scenarios and put measures in place that will help address the spread in the immediate period and in a situation like this, then, over time, reduce the speed of the spread and reduce the potential harm to those New Yorkers who are most vulnerable.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I would say a couple of things. And again, the doctors will jump in. I appreciate the question. I understand the question. Obviously, we're all humans. It was something happening in your neighborhood, you’d want to know. On the other hand, when we’re saying communities spread, just the assumption should be this is something that's going to reach into every corner of the city whether we like it or not. And I don't think it's particularly productive, meaning I don't know what you'd do with that information. I don't know how you change your life for what you think, unless there’s a – excuse me, an indication of a cluster. That's something we absolutely will talk about. We do not have that at this point. So, as you saw, from those numbers we’re spreading out over at 8.6 million people you know, 95 cases. So, what I would – what I would say to you, you can be guaranteed of is, if we see something actionable, if we see something that tells people something or that explains something that is strategic, if you will, like obviously with Westchester, knowing there was a cluster led to a whole lot of decisions and actions and people need to understand that we would do that in a heartbeat. But I think in terms of saying, oh, you know, we've got – let me do a real life example – you know, if the Brooklyn number is 24 for a borough of a 2.6 million people, you know, if I told you there – I'm not saying this is real, but I said though there's one in this neighborhood, one in another, two in that – I don't think it tells you much, but I think a cluster would.

Does anyone want to add, or – go ahead.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: If I may. I think there is another piece that the Mayor has spoken about before many times, it hasn't come up now, and that is we need your help with the stigma that this is generating. We hear of real serious consequences of people that have been singled out over the course of the past weeks. We are as transparent as we can be. The Mayor has been very forthcoming, but now we need your help in protecting those people because frankly we're changing their lives.

Question: [Inaudible]

Chancellor Carranza: Yes, absolutely. And we've identified all of our medically fragile students, all of our fragile students. And if they are participating in any kind of those programs, we've actually already stopped those internships.

Question: [Inaudible]

Chancellor Carranza: That's been in effect for at least the last 48 hours, but we can get some more verification for you.

Mayor: And we need to make sure every school is fully cognizant.

Question: I wanted to ask you about the school closures, a couple aspects of it we're trying to get clarity on. One is just kind of the timing between the fact that it looks like the DOE or whoever was notified by the student's family, that the student –

Mayor: Wait, wait, wait, are we talking about the Bronx?

Question: The Bronx, yeah. The student or their family notified officials before the city got the results from the state?

Mayor: No, no. I want to – I'll jump in because I know some of this. We don't have the confirmation from the state, that's why I said to you potential – very, very important. We don't have – we’ve got a self-report, which we were going to honor in the first instance – better safe than sorry – you know, abundance of caution. But we need to get that confirmation from the health authorities, from a medical source to determine the next course of action.

Question: [Inaudible] there appears to be a directive to school not to report cases directly to the Department of Health. And we just wanted to understand that, but because perhaps –

Mayor: Where are you getting that? I'm sorry.

Question: I believe there was a memo distributed to schools.

Mayor: I have not heard that.

Commissioner Barbot: We get the results directly from the labs that run the test. And so, there's no need to do that double reporting.

Question: Right. But in this case, for example, you did close the school because you learned from the student, and I guess if you're waiting for the state lab, doesn't that create some delay?

Mayor: Yeah, there's a real issue here and this gets back to the automated testing. It really does. It's a very fair question. If we had the automated testing, if you had thousands per day results in hours. That's what we need. We're fighting a war here without enough ammunition. So the - we did not have 7:00 – 7:30 this morning when I was informed and made the decision, we did not have the benefit of the confirmation from a medical professional, or from, you know, the State. So we had to work with imperfect information. You're absolutely right. Will this be a repetitive pattern is something we'd be very, very concerned about. But, you know, I want to believe one way or another, we're going to find a way to get to that automated testing and then that will change the entire equation.

Question: Right, but in the interim, does it make sense for schools to have a directive to not report cases or suspect the cases to the Health Department? If I'm understanding that –

Chancellor Carranza: There is no directive. There's guidance that we've given schools and as the Mayor has talked about with increasing numbers of people that are now coming out, what we don't want to do is inundate the Department of Health with all of these kinds of cases. We have ongoing, daily, almost hourly contact with the Department of Health. We have designated people that we work with. So for us to funnel that information to the Department of Health is much more structured. We're trying to put structure into place then having random array of people calling the Department of Health and then using their very limited resources to have people try to figure out is that valid or not. In this particular case, we had a trusted reporter. It was apparent that we said it sounds credible. A student, and as the Mayor has said, imperfect circumstances. And again, I think this really would bespeaks to the notion that we want to err on the side of caution and abundance of caution as we work through some of these imperfections.

Mayor: But I think the underlying point to your question is a very fair one. Even though I want to believe the automated testing will solve it and solve it soon, there is still a reality that we have to figure out how to get that information from the second it comes into our possession, to the right people to make the analysis. I don't think every report will be created equal – Uh huh. Okay. I don't think every report will be created equal. I think we're going to get information from people that some cases we may build verify much quicker, sometimes slower. I think, you know, we're going to have times where the timing will be different where we have more time to double check before we have to make the decision. So but you're – I think it's very fair to say, and we'll work on this wherever a report comes up, no matter how informal, we need it quickly, and we need, you know, all the pertinent people who need to analyze it to get it. Way back.

Question: If the Governor said this morning in New York State, the test was free, does that mean free, free? Or does that mean no copay free? Or does that mean we'll bill you later free. And also what are we doing to assuage the fears undocumented persons [inaudible]?

Mayor: Sure, we've said in many of these press conferences, I'll say it again, no one who is undocumented will be asked their documentation status. We don't do that as a City of New York. Health + Hospitals doesn't do that. We already last year said to undocumented New Yorkers, we're guaranteeing health care without any question about documentation status and to all New Yorkers that we want people to make sure they have health care, if they cannot afford it we're going to work with them. We're either going to help them get insurance getting NYC Care, pay what they can pay, but we're going to get them health care.

But on the issue of the test, look, anyone who has insurance and doctors, I think this is self-evident, if you have insurance, the test is covered by insurance.

President Katz: Correct.

Mayor: If you have no insurance, no nothing, we're going to make sure you got the test for free. On copays, I think there was an action on copays by the State, but I don't know. Does anyone know that one?

President Kat: I believe you're correct. They waive copays.

Mayor: We can check that. I think they waive - the State created a rule to waive copays, but you can check that.

Question: So if there’s no insurance than it is entirely free without that for New York.

Mayor: Correct.

Question: Mr. Mayor, or maybe not for you, but for Dr. Barbot, what is your advice to public school parents who have one of those serious underlying conditions and yet their kids are going to school?

Mayor: You mean the child has the underlying condition?

Question: No, the parent. A parent at home has an underlying condition and the kids going to school and potentially contracting coronavirus. What is the advice for those parents at home? Should they try to isolate from their kids? What are the best practices here?

Commissioner Barbot: So I think the most important thing is for parents to be vigilant about potential symptoms in their children. Cough, fever, cough, shortness of breath, and to have a low threshold for reaching out to their pediatricians to assess what could be accounting for those symptoms. At this point in time, I wouldn't recommend parents isolate themselves from their kids. I think at this point in time we need parents to spend more time with their kids. I'm sure that a lot of children out there are feeling anxious about what they may be hearing or seeing on TV, and we want to take this opportunity to remind parents that there are resources for them to share accurate information with their children and to assure them that there are things that we all can do to keep each other healthy.

Question: And then you said, you're not sure how many tests that he has right now. I think Politico reported 500. Is that not accurate? [Inaudible] well, I'm sorry, you don't have a more exact number on the current amount of tests?

Commissioner Barbot: So, we're running tests all day, so I don't have the latest figure –
Question: [Inaudible] capacity.

Mayor: You mean per day?

Question: No. How many tests could you do if you needed to do – if a thousand people [inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: Oh, so, we can do 60 a day. And we –

Mayor: And that’s a Public Health Lab –

Commissioner Barbot: The public – just the Public Health Lab and we are working to increase that to somewhere between a 100 and 120 per day. And then that adds to the capacity of the commercial labs where we anticipate that they can do thousands per day.

Mayor: Okay. We're the end of the line.

Question: Yeah, I wanted ask about some proposals kind of circulating in the Council. Brad Lander and Ritchie Torres are sort of forwarding a proposal in which you would order the NYPD to stop making low level arrests for violations or misdemeanor. The idea of being prevent the potential spread of the virus in jails, courts, and precincts. The other idea was to order the courts to consider releasing anyone in pretrial detention who's over 60, same justification. Have you thought of measures like that? Is that something that we could expect potentially under the emergency order?

Mayor: No, that's not on – let me first say, just let me break this into pieces. Is that something we're planning on right now? No. Is it something that's sort of a front burner issue we're adjudicating right now? No. Is perfectly fair things to talk about? The second one you know, there an argument obviously if there's a health specific danger, that's a very real issue. So we should talk about if we want to put any criteria in place around the health of an inmate, but in addition to what we have right now, but the first one, it, my immediate response, I'd be happy to talk to them about it, but my immediate response is no. That this is exactly an example of the fact that we cannot think coronavirus is the only thing happening in our lives and in our city right now.

You know, our police officers still have to fight crime every day. There's not like, there's some timeout the criminals take because of coronavirus. You know, people still need a livelihood, right? I mean, you go down the list. Children still need an education. Does that - the entire society has not gone from, there is no – we didn't even know what coronavirus was to now the only thing we can do is coronavirus. We just have to strike some balance. So I would not want to see the NYPD not arresting someone who deserves to be arrested because of coronavirus. That doesn't follow to me.

Okay. Everyone, thanks very much. We'll have more tomorrow.

2020-03-13 NYC Mayor de Blasio Brian Lehrer

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. As our world continues to change in this way that was unimaginable just a few weeks ago, even just a few days ago. I mean the world changed a lot yesterday afternoon with all the different closures and other announcements. So we're all living to various degrees in a state of shock this morning. And I just wanted to acknowledge that because I guess it's probably best to just say that out loud to each other to help us face whatever each of us is facing with this and to help us get through this together as a city, as a country, as a world. I hope everybody listening right now has a good private support system. We will keep trying to be part of your public support system and do best to provide information and community.

But not everything is different. And we begin as usual on Fridays with our weekly Ask the Mayor segment, my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio at 2-1-2-4-3-3-WNYC, 2-1-2- 4-3-3-9-6-9-2 if you want to call in or you can tweet a question, just use the hashtag #AskTheMayor. Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you very much Brian and Brian, I want to thank you for what you just said. I think it's really, really important that we acknowledge the shock we're all in. It literally seems to change hourly a lot of the time and we have not been through anything like this. And people are fearful, they're anxious, they're confused, they have every right to be. And I think it's really important that people have places like your show to turn to for accurate information and you know, a real dialogue. I really want to emphasize to people there’s a lot of anxiety and fear out there. First of all, listen to the actual official sources of information that can give you facts. For example, there was a ridiculous rumor yesterday that all of Manhattan had been quarantined. That was patently false. People who want to get the truth can go to our website, nyc.gov/coronavirus, can go – can call 3-1-1 and get updates.

We also have a text, which I'll get that for you right now, what the number of people can text to get regular updates texted to them. They can watch obviously the, the City Hall Twitter feed and the Office of Emergency Management. They are constantly putting out refreshed information. So anyone who wants those text alerts and tens of thousands of New Yorkers have signed up for them. You text the word COVID, C-O-V-I-D again, C-O-V-I-D, to 6-9-2-6-9-2. And you'll get those sent to you. And the last thing, Brian, which is to people's feelings and emotions, which are real, that anyone who's really feeling worried and anxious besides trying to get good, usable information. If you just feel, you know, worried, depressed, confused in a way you want to talk to someone professional. Any New Yorker can call our helpline, 8-8-8-NYCWELL again, 8-8-8- NYCWELL, W-E-L-L, get a trained counselor 24/7. There's nothing wrong with asking for help in the middle of a pandemic obviously, and people want someone professional talk to it is available for free 24/7.

Lehrer: And those are all good places to start. Thank you for those. And before we get into policy questions around coronavirus, let me ask how you are? I don't envy you having to be faced with the incredibly difficult choices that you're having to make right now. How are you holding up?

Mayor: Brian it's, thank you for asking. I am really focused on listening to what New Yorkers are going through, but also making the right decisions for them. Never letting the fear or the panic in. And I want to say something very personal. I think it's true in my case, and I don't mean to overstate this, Brian, but it's just a human reality. I had the blessing and so did my wife, Chirlane. We happened to be brought up by parents who participated. Every single one of our parents participated in World War II, and we were told those stories throughout our upbringing. And I think when your entire worldview is shaped by people who went through something absolutely cataclysmic, that the entire society participated and everyone closed ranks and supported each other.

Lehrer: And the depression that led into that for all those years.

Mayor: My parents were absolutely children of the Depression. My parents both had any late in life at the age of 44. So I know we almost added, you know, skipped a generation, if you will. It is very much in my DNA, my worldview. I've heard stories that none of us in modern society could possibly imagine happening to us. And my dad came back, you know, a lieutenant in the US Army, fought for three years, came back, you know, having had half his leg blown off on Okinawa. You know, I think when those are the stories that you are taught from moment one in your life, it puts in perspective what pain and suffering is and how a society should deal with it. I think we're dealing with a very different reality in modern society and we have to sort of think about that deeply even more so as we deal up ahead with the challenge of global warming.

But I do think there are some basic rules that come from, you know, really listening to those who, you know, walk through hell and came back. Which is, you know, the number one thing is never let the panic in, never let people, anyone convince you to panic. There are so many things that should reassure us despite the fear, despite the real honest fear, the unknowns, the unknown is the biggest fear here Brian. We're dealing with a disease that no one ever heard because it didn't exist to medical science less than six months ago. And they still don't understand. And that's a very valid reason for fear. But there's a whole lot of facts, a whole lot of truth and experience that should be reassuring to us. And also this is a true statement. God forbid any of us has to deal with coronavirus, but if you had to – if you had to experience it, there is no place better on Earth to be than in New York City right now, with literally more doctors and nurses and medical professionals, the strongest public health apparatus in the nation by far. Huge, huge number of hospital beds and a lot of dedicated medical professionals, first responders, people are going to be at their posts no matter what to protect everyone else.

So I understand the fear, but I also want people to keep in perspective, this is New York City. There is no place stronger and more resilient and we will come out of it. This is, you know, our Health Commissioner, I think very rightly reminded people that this could easily be six months or more, but it is finite. And we will come out the other side and we will, you know, the vast, vast majority of people are going to survive and recover fully. I'm very worried about older folks and folks with preexisting major, serious medical conditions and we want to protect every life. But we do need to keep in our minds. We're going to get through this and we'll going to come out the other side and we're going to move forward.

Lehrer: Let me deal with the most frequent question that we're getting. And that's about closing schools. Six States have done it. We're getting some calls for it and the Chancellor and you have some reasons against it. What you're thinking as of right now?

Mayor: Oh, not just some reasons, profound reasons. I really believe this. It begins with our children. We need our children to be safe. We need them to be in a place where, you know there's now a school nurse in every single school building. We need our children to be fed, which is a reality, bluntly in a city with lots of folks who have very few resources, a lot of folks who are poor, that our schools are a place where kids often get two nutritious meals in their day that they might not get otherwise. We need our first responders, our medical personnel to be able to depend on our schools for their children, for their own children so they can do the work to protect all of us. So they did not force to have to stay home because they have no other choice. And we also, by the way, you know, I, when people, when states, or any place else closes their schools is that for a week, a month? Is that the entire rest of the school year? Do you realize the impact that has on a child's education to lose half a school year, or a big chunk of the school year?

Lehrer: Well, the other side of that is it's just a few months.

Mayor: Well, but I would say in the life of a child and their intellectual development and everything else, it's a big deal. Now the question is, you know, what's safe, what's the right thing to do? And right now we have seen that this disease has a very consistent pattern around the world. This disease, its biggest impact in terms of truly negative consequences is on older people, folks 50 and over. Folks who have preexisting serious medical conditions. The children who have experienced this disease in this city who did not have a serious preexisting medical conditions came through very, very well, very quickly. So this is Brian, just to finish it, you know, we have a very strong philosophy and I've been talking constantly with the Governor and the heads of the different agencies that the line of defense we are holding here is to keep our health care system running, including the people we need to staff it, to keep our mass transit running, which is crucial for everything for making sure health care workers can get to work, first responders so that people still can work. We need people to keep working for their livelihood and our schools. A lot of other things we could do without, but those three things are absolutely crucial to preserve.

Lehrer: But before we go to the phones on what you just said, what’s safe? It's not just for the school children. It's also for the grownups who take care of the school children. And I want to play a clip of probably you agree, the most respected national leader on this right now, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. This is a 60 second clip of him after he was asked on Morning Joe today on MSNBC to lay out how he would balance when and where to close schools.

Director Anthony Fauci, National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases: I think you need to do it proportionately. If you have a considerable amount or even the beginnings of community spread in your community, clearly you need to do very aggressive mitigation procedures. If you have less, you can start doing something. I mean, physical separation. A lot of crowds, don't do unnecessary travel. The kinds of things like telework, that's all fine. When it comes to the really, really forceful mitigation, should be a little bit more proportionate. But with regard to what you're saying, what the effect is, even though we know, because we have experience now with other countries, that children, although they get infected, they really – unlike influenza, they do not necessarily at all, get serious disease. In fact, if you look at the history of what we've seen, children do very well. The only problem is when they get infected, and schools can be a breeding ground for that. They go home and infect grandma or grandpa or a relative or someone who might be in a more vulnerable position. So that's the rationale for shutting schools.

Lehrer: So Mr. Mayor, I'm not advocating one thing or another, but Dr. Fauci seem to say without naming New York or any other city, that because we have community spread of the virus and you know, there's a need to protect the older parents and grandparents, which would imply separate the kids from each other. What would you say to that clip?

Mayor: I would say, first of all, we should not have an illusion that if you close schools, kids are not going to still be connecting with other kids and family members and you know, be out and around. I mean this, the notion that we're going to isolate every child from the rest of their family. I think is very suspect. I think in fact it puts tremendous strain on families.

Lehrer: Well not from the rest of their family, from other families, children more, right?

Mayor: Listen to where I'm going. It's got to put tremendous strain on families. If they can't have their kids in school, everything else is going to change in their lives. And do you really think kids are going to stay in their room or stay in their apartment for weeks and weeks or months on end and not come in contact with other kids and other people? It's unrealistic. So I think the reality we have is we need the adults – anyone who is an adult in our school system needs to practice the kind of common sense measures we've talked about. If they're truly themselves, if they are sick, not out of fear, but out of fact if they are sick, they should stay home until they are well. That is very, very important. If a parent, any child, sees that their child is sick in any way, hold your child home because most of the sicknesses that are traditional this time of year take a few days to clarify. Either something more serious or something that kids will get over or anybody would get over after a few days, typical cold, et cetera. If it's something more serious, we'll get them tested. But the fact is to say we are going to shut down everything and thus in the process create a huge amount of negative impact onto itself, let alone undermine all the people who we depend on to help keep the society running and protect everyone who then have to deal with their own children. There's a very slippery slope here and I've been blunt about it, Brian. So I heard exactly what Dr. Fauci said. And I'm heartened, especially by the point he made clearly that this disease has had minimal impact on kids, particularly healthy kids. But we have to balance each of the pieces right now in a very big complex equation. And I don't think it's as simple as saying, if you do something like close schools, it doesn't have a huge domino effect that then hurts a lot of other pieces of what we need to do.

Lehrer: Alexis in the Bronx, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello Alexis.

Question: Hi.

Lehrer: Hi, Alexis. Are you a student?

Question: Yes.

Lehrer: What grade? What grade are you in? Can you say?

Question: I am in tenth, I am a sophomore.

Lehrer: Okay. Do you have a question for the Mayor?

Question: Yes. So my school, there's another school in the campus and there was a case of coronavirus yet we were still required to go to school. I didn't because my mom was scared that if I do go, I'll get infected. But they still made us go to school and they're not cleaning the school, they're not taking students out. And my worry is that if a student has a family member with respiratory issues or HIV or any other issues, that they might not show any symptoms and might not know that they have it and bring it back to their house. So what are doing, do you think you can close down with schools after hearing that?

Mayor: Alexis, just which school do you go to? I'm sorry.

Lehrer: Alexis, you want to say your school's name?

Question: Bronx Academy for Software Engineering.

Mayor: And which school did you say is connected to because that's not one of the ones obviously, that has the scare in the Bronx, which proved to be false. And I'll speak to that. Are you in the same building as those other two schools?

Question: Yes.

Mayor: You're in the same building as Laboratory School of Finance and Technology and South Bronx Preparatory?

Question: No. Crotona International High School. There was a staff who has the coronavirus and got tested and proved positive.

Mayor: Okay. Let me – Alexis, I want to respect your question but I want to confirm details before I – I'll talk about the broad answer but I want to confirm details because here's the problem we've had already. In the case of those two schools I mentioned in the Bronx, where on Thursday a parent, quote unquote self-confirmed, that her daughter had tested positive. When that was checked against the New York State health officials, it proved to be unfortunately false and the student in fact had tested negative. So that school was closed for day as a precaution has now reopened. The protocol in any school where there's a real positive is a full cleaning of the school. Isolation of course of the student themselves who tested positive, tracing of any other people in the school they had a close connection to because we know, and yet another study has come out from the World Health Organization confirming in tremendous detail that this is not an airborne disease. This is a direct contact transmission, by fluid disease. You have to be close to someone, that fluid has to go from one body to the next. So that's where we will trace the exact people that that student would have had direct contact with and those folks will be isolated from the school.

And you make a very good point about any student who has those very serious health issues. The Department of Education keeps a list of those students by school and we would immediately alert those parents. And I think I have abundance of caution, we would advise those parents to hold that student back for a period of time, just to be safe. But the fact is once there is a fully confirmed case that will be all those steps immediately. And the City and State are in total agreement on that, that one day full shutdown, the cleaning, the isolation of those who need to be isolated. But we need to also recognize that people are starting to suggest they have a positive when they don't. And we have to be very careful about balancing that.

Lehrer: Right. And in fairness in the interest of not freaking people out with rumors we can't confirm that because somebody called a talk show and said that they heard that somebody at a certain location is positive, that that's the case without you having heard of it, Mr. Mayor, that's an indication that it may or may not be the case and maybe it is the case and you just hadn't heard it yet, but just not –

Mayor: I'm sorry to jump in there. There's a need to confirm with the actual – the actual medical professionals who did the test and we get that through the either the state or through the city public health lab, whichever is the specific entry point. But you know, no one can be – replace the doctors right now, we have to hear back that we have a confirmed positive.

Lehrer: I see that City Council Councilman Mark Treyger sent an idea to the Education Department, which is closing most public schools and using the rest to serve at-risk students and families like those you were describing who need food aid or childcare, whose parents are health care workers, and kids with certain disabilities. Those were all on the Councilman's list. Have you seen that one yet?

Mayor: I haven't and I appreciate every constructive suggestion. And he's someone I respect a lot. But again, that's one piece of the equation. There are many, many other pieces. I just actually reviewed a number of them with you. The nutrition is one piece of it, but we're going to watch this every day. And one of the things I said in detail at the press conference yesterday, Brian, is – and it fits with how you opened – this situation is changing not daily but hourly. If conditions change, we'll make decisions accordingly. But I believe that everything I laid out to you, the extraordinary negative impact of taken out schools, all the multiplier effects, the fallacy, I really believe this, that kids at home in their neighborhood are going to be in perfect isolation which I just don't believe as a parent. I'm mean, I'm a parent of two kids. I saw how they acted if they stayed home for a day. I saw how restless they were.

We're talking about weeks, months. I mean, I just think we have to be honest, but the fact is we can make sure with common sense – and everyone's in this, I think there's another real challenge here which is we got to make sure people don't think they can just sit back in a crisis and let the government fix it for them. That's not how this one works. Everyone has to participate. So anyone who is sick has to stay home, which usually means only a matter of days. If your kid's sick, you'll hold your kid back. But everyone has to participate and that's why I get back to that, you know, greatest generation reference. I don't want people thinking it's just about, you know, looking out for number one and that's all there is to it.

We actually have to think as a community here and there has to be a sort of a social commitment. Everyone involved in solving a problem. This is much farther – much bigger than government alone can solve. And I obviously, I understand everyone has to look out for themselves in a natural way, look out for their families. I do that, too. Everyone should, but there's got to be a sense here that actually you can also participate in the bigger solution and protecting each other and looking out for people in your life who might need help. We got to get to – I think New Yorkers do that. I think New Yorkers did that after 9/11 in an amazing fashion for the whole world to see after Sandy. We got to think big here.

Lehrer: Shane in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Shane.

Question: Hi, Brian. Hi, Mr. mayor. Really appreciate the weekly shows that you do. They're very informative. The weekly Ask the Mayor is so informative. Mayor, thank you for all you're doing to keep us informed. I have a dog walking business that's been around for 12 years. We have a lot of dog walkers with us and we're in the service industry. We've experienced an enormous drop in business where people don't want people coming to their homes or people are not working from the office, so they don't need our services. And so my main question here is that there's no work for our employees and we don't have a budget that can support them while we're not working. So I'm wondering what kind of support from the City is going to be there or the State that you might've heard of to help our workers. Like they –

Lehrer: So you don't just work walk dogs yourself, you employ other people who also walk dogs. Is that correct?

Question: Yes –

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor –

Question: [Inaudible]

Lehrer: That’s [inaudible] –

Mayor: It sounds like you have a –again, everyone does things differently. Sounds like you have a formal business, right? An incorporated business?

Question: It's incorporated and we didn't want to do things the 1099 route with independent contractors. So our walkers are employees.

Mayor: Okay. In your case then there's two things that we can do immediately at the City level and then I'll talk about the bigger level. We announced a few days back one for the smallest businesses under five employees, we can get cash grants to maintain employment levels. They're not limitless, but they are substantial and they could be very helpful. Depending on the size of your company you might qualify. And then second for companies up to a hundred employees no interest loans, zero interest loans, up to $75,000 to tide people over, keep them moving. And you can find out about all of those things through 3-1-1 and how to apply. The bigger relief that I believe is coming quickly from the federal side – I hope so at least – it will be a combination of things, as I understand it, including things like extending unemployment insurance for anyone who really can't continue their work and other kinds of stimulus package that might help including down to small business.

That's my hope that they will aggressively shore up employment. Because I think one of the big things to be concerned about in this crisis and a balance that we have to strike is keeping small businesses alive so we don't lose them, keeping people employed so they have money for the rent, for food, for medicine, everything people still need. There's a real balance. I met yesterday with some of the biggest employers in New York City who are trying in every way they can, to their credit, to move to telecommuting or staggering work hours. So people are staggering them so that people don't have to be all in the subway in rush hour, that kind of thing. But everyone agreed, protecting employment and protecting people's livelihoods is really important. We can't forget this piece of the equation. So Shane, if you'll give your information to WNYC I'll have people follow up with you directly from our Small Businesses Services department, but anyone – any business owner listening can call 3-1-1, then we'll help in the ways that we can.

Lehrer: And I will say that Shane kind of represents a good number of the callers on our board this morning with small businesses or just people who find themselves out of work now. Here's another one like that. Listener on Twitter writes, “I’m a stagehand, out of work for a month or more, is the Mayor willing to work with the government to freeze rents and utilities? Our theater community lives paycheck to paycheck.”

Mayor: Yes, they do. And I know I've worked very closely with the stagehands’ union and their work is, you know, something that we all think of as sort of symbolic of our city and I can imagine how tough it's going to be for them now. So yeah, look, we're trying to figure out every way that we can, for example, to stop evictions from happening, freeze that situation. If there's anything else that we can freeze up or suspend in the way that people have to pay, if there's anything we can get our hands on that we can do like that we're going to, that's an ongoing work.

So absolutely, I think it's a combination of, the City can provide support of some kinds for small business. For everyday people anyone threatened with eviction should be calling 3-1-1. And we can provide, in many cases, a free lawyer to stop it. If folks, particularly if they're lower income, are unable to pay the rent there are times when we can get them some immediate financing, some immediate money to help pay the rent immediately to keep them in their apartment. But for the larger society, we're going to work with the real estate world, the landlords, everyone to try and get everyone to be truly socially conscious and not greedy and really cut people slack in the middle of this crisis. We’re going to trying to do that on many, many levels.

Lehrer: Winston in East Harlem, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Winston.

Question: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I have a quick question about the job search requirement for people who are getting cash assistance. So right now the guidance that I have been told is that we're still expected to report in person between 9:00 and 9:30 in order to maintain our EBT and cash assistance benefits. And I'm wondering if there's a work around for that during this health crisis. So I know that some people are able to do online job searches but that doesn't seem to be the predominant way that people are getting those. And then my second question, just as a follow up would be, you know, with people who are on food stamps, is there a way to maybe give them an advance so that people can have money to prepare? And I'm – not to be alarmist, but just are there considerations for that?

Mayor; Excellent, excellent questions and I'm going to answer them, but, Brian, I want to say this is another example of why your show is so valuable. This kind information directly from people and what they're experiencing helps me and everyone in the government to make the adjustments we have to make in the middle of a crisis. So, I want to thank you for that.

Lehrer: Yes.

Mayor: To the question. I think that's a great point about getting away from the in person interviews in this situation. We actually have been moving away in a lot of different areas. Food stamps, for example, SNAP program – we've been moving away from in person interviews to an automated system or call in. That's what we need to maximize now. In this case, I think your suggestion is right on. We'll follow up today. Please give your information to WNYC so we can make sure that we make the adjustments that we can for you.

But to the maximum extent possible, I'm going to instruct our agencies to start moving away from those in person interviews immediately. And if they can cancel them all together, that would be ideal. On the food stamp advance, it’s a great question as well. I don't know what the federal rules are, which govern the program, and if we are allowed to do that and if we can, I think it's a very thoughtful idea if we can help people get ahead of this a little bit and stock up, I think that's real smart. So we're going to see if that is possible. Maybe a little complicated because we have to get a federal sign off, but let's see if we can do that. But again, thank you. Excellent questions and we're going to follow up on all those.

Lehrer: We have time for one more caller. Alina in Manhattan. You're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Alina.

Question: Thank you so much for taking my call and thank you guys for your leadership and intelligence. I'm calling because I just am a person sort of going through it on the ground and trying to sort my way through and it's been pretty confusing and I just wanted to share that experience and to see if others had had the same and what I'm either getting wrong and what I can do or what we could change. So my boyfriend was asked to be quarantined because he worked in WeWork with the financial advisor of like patient zero in New Rochelle. And we were asked to quarantine ourselves. Nobody ever contacted us. I, after that, got symptoms. They got worse. I called my doctor, my doctor wasn't sure, but he had no tests. So he put me to a hotline with Weill Cornell.

They basically told me that they are asking people to just stay home if they have symptoms that are not critical. And the only way to get a test was to be critical. So I've been extremely diligent and my boyfriend's been extremely diligent, but I have two children who can't come home. I have an elderly mother that I can't see who's now showing symptoms. So I called her doctor, was on hold for an hour. Not sure what to do, short of trying to take her to the ER, but there are a lot of problems with going to the ER. You don't want to infect yourself if you're not sick. You don't want to get others sick. We don't have enough masks, we don't have enough gloves to be able to do that in a safe way. And then it's really unclear, even if you're guessing whether you have it or not. It's unclear what the time frame is. I know [inaudible] yesterday that said about two weeks from showing symptoms. But anyway, this is sort of what I'm going through on the ground and it doesn't seem like there's a particular test center, a place we can go to, just kind of get tested. And I'm worried that people are, you know – I was very careful, but I have other friends who are coughing and because they're not getting tested, they're just assuming they don't have it. So that's my experience. Sorry to be long winded.

Lehrer: Oh, and it's so complicated, Alina. I feel for you so much, Mr. Mayor, how can you help her?

I feel for you too, Alina – and I'm shocked actually that, you know, the Westchester case is the one true cluster. Like that's been the epicenter. There's nothing else like it. And if you're saying that your boyfriend was directly related to that case and no one gave you guidance on what to do, something's very wrong there because there's been a – I've seen in many, many cases a lot of follow up and taking very seriously that folks need to be given guidance and support. So I wanted to say, I don't know how on Earth that happened. I think it's absolutely unacceptable that you were left in that situation. I'm very, very sorry that happened to you. First of all, give your information to WNYC and we will absolutely have someone in authority follow up with you today who can really make sure that all the right follow ups happen for you, for your boyfriend, for your mom right away today.

Because this is unbelievable that you were left in that situation. I want to, though, speak to the bigger picture because I think everyone who will listen to that needs to hear what's supposed to happen and what we're trying to make happen for everyone. First of all, anytime you're – you have a private doctor or whatever health care facility you turn to regularly, that is of course the first place to turn. But if as Alina was saying, you're not getting satisfaction from that, you can't get through or you're not getting good answers you should call 3-1-1 and they can connect you to our Health + Hospital system, meaning our public hospitals and clinics, connect you to someone who can either give you a guidance over the phone or tell you where we need you to go to come in and see a doctor directly.

The goal here, Alina, is for folks who don't have an immediate direct connection like you have to someone who tested positive – what we want for the vast majority New Yorkers is if you start to feel sick, with the kind of classic cold and flu like symptoms get home, stay home, and if after a day or two it's, you know – if it's getting better that's great. If it's not getting better, it's getting worse, it's really important to alert your health care provider or if it can't reach one again through 3-1-1 alert our Health + Hospitals team. And then what happens typically is someone comes in to whether it’s a medical office, clinic, urgent care or a lot of people getting tested at urgent care for the first level. And the first level – we said this to people, and we really want people to hear this. There is a standard test that has been around for quite a while well before this outbreak, it's called BioFire is the name it goes by – and it is a test that immediately identifies if someone has one of 26 more typical diseases especially that we see around this season. If you go and get that test – if you were sick and it persists, you go in, you get that test and if it's one of those 26 things then it's not coronavirus. That's going to be true for a whole lot of people. If you take that test and it proves that it is not coming up positive on any of those 26, then we're going to want you to be tested for coronavirus. So there is a prioritization around people who have been exposed to other folks. Direct contact with someone who tested positive, we want them tested, we want folks tested who are coming back from one of the worst affected countries.

We want folks tested who have symptoms and are over 50 and have pre-existing conditions. That means cancer, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, or a compromised immune system. And obviously again, someone who goes through that normal pattern, gives it a few days, disease persists whatever it is, goes and gets the test, it is not one of the 26 from BioFire. That's someone else, of course, we want tested.

And today for the first time, and Brian, this is breaking news as of this morning after us pleading with the federal government and the FDA for many, many weeks to authorize more testing, they finally this morning for one of the major testing companies also authorized automated testing, which means that we are on the pathway now as a city to be able to get thousands of tests done in the day and get the results back the same day. That's going to ramp up now. This is the first time we're finally going to be able to have the testing capacity to get to a lot more people, which we've been needing for a long, long time.

Lehrer: And that doesn't change what an individual does in terms of how to have contact with the medical profession if they think they may need a test?

Mayor: Given that – the basic answer is no, and I'll tell you why because given the fact that we are going to have a lot more testing but we're also going to have obviously more cases. We still want to keep that progression intact. If again, if you're someone who is over 50 with those preexisting conditions, those five areas I mentioned, we want to treat you very carefully. That's a whole different discussion. Or again, if you've been in direct contact with some of this already confirmed, tested positive or you just came back from one of the highly affected nations, those folks are going to go to the front of the line for obvious reasons. So we're going to do this in progression. The more testing capacity we have, the deeper we can go into the community obviously, but I want people to understand there's going to be a lot of people who will have symptoms this time of year and it will turn out to be something that resolves like it does for all of us.

You know, every year there's – often you'd get the cold, you get the flu, whatever, and it resolves quickly. For other people, if it's not resolving, they're going to find out if it's something that can be identified by a doctor, as not being coronavirus. And for those who it turns out it is coronavirus we know exactly what to do. For a lot of people – for about 80 percent of the people who even end up with that diagnosis they will be able to go home, stay in isolation, ride it out and fully recover. 80 percent is the consistent number we're seeing of folks who go through it with minimal impact, fully recover. 20 percent have a more serious impact. The vast majority of the 20 percent will come through. It'll be – they'll have a tough experience, but they're going to come through, they're going to fully recover. There's a small percentage who are in true danger, who we are very worried about we could lose, but that is overwhelmingly not only anyone over 50, over 50 is sort of the base, much more likely over 60, but even more likely over 70 over 80 years old and one or more of those five preexisting conditions. We know that's where the real danger is.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor, thank you for staying over your usual time this morning to take some peoples – and I know you’re –

Mayor: [Inaudible] yeah, just one more very quick point – to anyone thinking about the parents, grandparents, if you are – everyone wants to visit with each other, that's normal. If anybody in your family is sick, make sure to not visit someone who is older and has one of those preexisting conditions. We have to give them space. Do not put anybody who even might be sick in direct presence with them. That's actually the dangerous thing that we have to have that kind of separation for a period of time here.

Lehrer: When should they visit people who are very elderly, even if they're not sick? I see there's a restriction in New York – and I'm sorry to throw on another follow up question, but I see there's now a restriction in New York from anybody visiting nursing homes.

Mayor: And that has to do with the fact that it is a congregate setting where unquestionably, you're going to have a lot of people who are much older, much more vulnerable and undoubtedly a high percentage of people who will have a major preexisting condition or a meaningful percentage of people have a preexisting condition. If you're talking about an older relative, first of all, if they do not have a preexisting condition, that's a much better situation meaning of those five areas I mentioned. Also if you're absolutely certain no one who would be visiting is sick at that point in time – and one very easy thing our Health Commissioner says, just take out a thermometer if it hits at 100.4 or above don't even think of visiting someone elderly or someone who has those preexisting conditions.

So you can just literally do that every day. If you want an extra measure of clarity. If you go – if you're above 100.4 so less than two degrees above normal you should exercise that caution. So folks can visit if they're convinced everyone is well and if they're, you know, if they know what's going on with the older person they're visiting. But it's just an abundance-of-caution reality, Brian. If you think someone might be sick, don't put them in the presence of an older person with those preexisting conditions.

Lehrer: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Talk to you next week.

Mayor: Thank you, Brian.

2020-03-13 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Okay. We have a lot to go over with you today. And, obviously, we all just finished watching the President's remarks and the President specifically declaring the national state of emergency. This confirms what we've been talking about, obviously, for weeks now that we needed the federal government to play a much more active role and hopefully this is a step in the right direction. I'm going to go into a number of things that the government is doing, but, again, want to first talk about New Yorkers and everyone's lives, every-day lives. I've talked to so many people these last days and there's obviously a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety, tremendous amount of confusion – who wouldn't be confused in this ever-changing situation? New Yorkers right now are hurting and they're looking for answers. But I also want to remind everybody, despite the anxiety and the confusion, New Yorkers are still New Yorkers. We are the toughest, most resilient people in this nation. And I see so much evidence of that as well. And I appreciate – I see so many people helping each other out, going the extra mile for their fellow New Yorkers. And this is what I think we'll see throughout this crisis, and I always will be honest with people, we're going to be at this for months and we're going to need people to do that, to be a part of the solution, to help us solve the overall situation, but also to really be there for each other. Now, I also want to say, even though New Yorkers are tough, if you're feeling scared, if you're feeling anxious, if you need help, there's nothing wrong with that and you have every right to get help and help is always there for you. I want to remind you, you can call 888-NYC-WELL, 24 hours a day, multiple languages, trained counselors. So, if you're feeling anxious, you're feeling depressed by everything going on, you need some help, we want to know there is some place to turn – 888-NYC-WELL.

Look, we've been getting so much news, so much changing all the time. This, again, this really feels like a crisis that changes almost by the hour. Most of the news we get isn't real good, a lot of it's really quite troubling. But there are still things happening that should give people some confidence and some hope. And I just want to take a moment to thank my colleagues here and all the people who work under their command. Each of these people represents many thousands more who work for them and I've a lot of them these last few weeks, and I'm going to be asking a lot more, but they have always risen to the challenge. I think it's hard for every-day people watching the news, getting their information wherever they get it online, et cetera, from the newspapers, it's hard to imagine what these people do and all of the thousands and thousands of people who work for them do, but I want to give you a window on it. They work extraordinarily hard and there are no boundaries to their work. There is no clocking in and clocking out, everyone here signed up for the 24/7 plan. And I will give you some evidence – last night, I was over at OEM till about 9:30. When I left OEM, it was filled with public servants who were manning their posts, dealing with everything that was happening. I continued emailing and calling these folks and some other folks till about 11:00 pm, and everyone was 110 percent on duty. And I sent an email this morning at 6:50 am to a group of people and instantaneously a number of them responded with specific information. So, you got people here are going to be working really, really hard and they all know we're going to be doing this for many, many months. As I said, no one's going to have a day off, everyone's going to be working very, very long days. There's no holidays. There's no weekends. It's just going to be continuous for all of us and that's what everyone here signed up for, but I want to honor them for that so New Yorkers can at least feel comfort that the entire team will be devoted throughout. And that's certainly the case of our first responders are healthcare professionals, so many public servants who are going to be there no matter what.

We obviously have the basics of the President's state of emergency. There are a lot of details that we need to get filled in, a lot of information we don't yet have about what it means. But, directionally, certainly a lot of good new initiatives in the President’s state of emergency that hopefully will help us in very tangible ways. Want to confirm also to all New Yorkers and clarify what our state of emergency here means, because I think, understandably, there's lots of questions. There's a Medium post that’s up now. I think we're changing the title to make it a little clearer, but it's up now, from me, just explaining some of the basics on the state of emergency for the city. That obviously is available. It's a Medium post, it's also been sent out our Twitter handle for the Mayor's Office, @NYCMayorsOffice, and mine, @NYCMayor. We're sending it out because we really want people to have an understanding of this. And the important thing to understand is state of emergency doesn't mean that every piece of our lives have changed overnight by the stroke of a pen, obviously. There were the rumors yesterday that I really – I can't say I'm ever shocked by anything, but I was troubled by them. The rumors of Manhattan being quarantined and everything being shut down, it bore no semblance to reality. But I have to tell you how many, many, many people – people I've known a long time were all bombarding me with emails and texts asking me if it was true. And people I would've thought would immediately not assume it's true and people obviously did not take the opportunity to go and look at the many information sources we have. I want to really reiterate to people, we have got to be sober and clearheaded in this crisis. It's not going away. It's going to be here a long time. Anytime you're not sure of something you hear – and I ask this, of course, of our colleagues in the media as well, they can obviously get to all of our colleagues for quick confirmations – but for every-day New Yorkers, you can go to nyc.gov/coronavirus. You can call 3-1-1. You can get our regular updates by text – again, text COVID – C-O-V-I-D – to 692-692. COVID, text that to 692-692. That number now, it's amazing – there's 220,000 people getting those updates now. It's almost a quarter-million people and the more people get them the better so good information is out there. For Spanish speakers by the way, they can text to COVID ESP – so, C-O-V-I-D E-S-P to 692-692 and get Spanish updates.

But once we heard that rumor yesterday, we immediately shot it down. It has no basis in fact at all. What our state of emergency means is that the city has the capacity to take actions including very intense actions to protect everyone and to address the crisis. As I said yesterday, and I say in the Medium post, right now, the most important piece of the equation is the limitations on gatherings. We did that in conjunction with the State. The State put out the rules, we’re absolutely unified on that. There are many, many other emergency powers that could be utilized depending on what we need. But we want people still to go on about their lives. We want people to rest assured that a lot is being done to protect them, a lot of public servants out there making sure things are working in this city. To the maximum extent possible, we want people going to work, earning their livelihood. So, I don't want any misunderstanding of what a state of emergency means in our case. And as we have to use any of these emergency powers, we're going to announce that in real time. We have a lot of powers in reserve right now. We'll announce when and if we need to use them.

So, in the months ahead, I've established the notion, there's three pillars to protecting this city and our longterm interests of our people and the health and safety of our people. And I've talked in terms of lines of defense and the line of defense that I want to defend with everything we've got, it’s got three pillars – our schools, our mass transit, and our health care system, and those three interrelate deeply. You take one out of the equation, it affects the others. My goal is to keep all three of those going as effectively as we can and the most important piece of that will be our health care system. And again, we will constantly update you on how we're handling each of these.

On our health care system, I want to start by saying that we are constantly working to understand coronavirus, the entire global medical community is. We have some of the best public health experts in the world right here in New York City and they're constantly consulting with other experts all over the country, all over the world. An interesting new study today, or yesterday, I should say – WHO study. This one is extraordinary. It is a study of 65,000 actual coronavirus cases in China – so, in other words, an extraordinarily in-depth extensive study. And there's a lot in it, but the thing I want to say, which was very important for us to see and confirmed exactly what Dr. Barbot has been saying, Dr. Katz has been saying, is that based on the latest evidence, this is not an airborne disease. This is a direct transmission by fluids kind of disease, not a disease that hangs in the air. So, this is the latest as of yesterday. Again, we'll constantly update you as we get new information, but when it comes to our health care system,
New Yorkers should understand, of course, we have real challenges ahead, but we also literally have the biggest, best public health system in America and the biggest best health care system overall of any city in America by far, and the talent pool doctors and nurses and technicians and all types of medical professionals and support staff – there's just no place in the country that has this level of talent all amassed in one place. And that means, of course, as we always say, physical health and mental health, we're going to need them all. We're going to need every single health care worker to be a part of the solution. We need to protect them. We need to make sure that their skills are used to the maximum. We need to find everyone who could be brought into our service, including former health care workers or people who want to come here to help. There's people we can help take on different roles and some of that's indicated in the Presidents specific announcements today. But we have to protect our health care system at all costs. And that is underlying all the decisions we're making. I will remind you at the same time that even if some of our health care workers, God forbid, they are exposed to this disease, the vast, vast majority – overwhelming majority will be treated and will come through and we'll be able to get back to their jobs. So, we're going to have times where some health care workers are offline or maybe they're in quarantine as a precaution, but they're also going to keep coming back online and we're going to constantly help people to get back on the playing field.

Then to the question of our schools – I will say at the outset that every new piece of information helps us in our decision making. There is no such thing as a perfect definitive piece of information, whether it's World Health Organization, or CDC, or NIH, or academic studies, or anything, each piece just helps us know a little more and gives us perspective. But as we discuss our schools, this is important information from the CDC today. This is – and this is online – guidelines from the CDC for considerations of school closure. This is a very thoughtful document that I think says better – I've been trying to talk about the unintended consequences and the many, many factors that go into the decision. I think the CDC has done a hell of a lot better than me at expressing how complex this reality is and how many consequences intended and unintended come out of school closure. So, I would urge everyone to read this thoroughly.

I know there is tremendous concern among parents, students, caregivers, teachers, principals, crossing guards, cafeteria workers, you name it, everyone's concerned. And there's a lot of anxiety. And I can tell you I know it because I spent years and years and years as a New York City public school parent – from the time each of my kids went into pre-K to the time they finished high school – 14 years each and they were three years apart. So, over 17 years I had that experience. I also happened to be a community school board member and worked with parents all over my part of Brooklyn. I understand the anxieties right now. I also understand that many, many parents want us to keep school open, depend on it, need it, don't have an option. And there's a lot of different statements out there and I'm sure you'll ask me about some of them. I urge you to take a look at this one from 1199 SIEU, literally single largest labor union in New York City talking about their workers, the people we depend on for our health care system and why they need our school system to be up and running. And it's quite clear in the statement, there’s are strong preference, which I agree with, is to keep our school system running and if, God forbid, it wasn't, we'd need some very substantial fallbacks to protect and support the children of our health care workers among many others, our first responders and many others.

So, I look at this through the lens of parents that I've known and as a parent myself, and I know there are many, many factors that have to be looked at here, but I'm also looking at this from the perspective of how we protect those three pillars I keep talking about – schools, transit and health care, how those pieces interrelate and they must be protected. And I look at it from the perspective of the real world, which we'll talk about. My strong belief is that if the schools weren't open, that children would end up going all over their buildings, their communities looking for something to do that you would not see a pristine quarantine situation. You'd see the real lives of kids play out. And that comes with some real challenges of its own. Been working closely with the Chancellor and his team, because, obviously, since we do want to keep schools open, we have to make an immense set of adjustments, and we can, and we will. So, for example, things we've said in the last few days, and we'll keep adding to them, canceled all non-essential and non-instructional activities, either canceled or moved online if they can be. We've canceled field trips, we're going to be canceling work that takes school officials from school to school, except for that that's most essential and make that virtual. In our school cafeterias where we can create some social distancing, a space between kids, we're going to do that. Where we don't have those physical possibilities, in many cases we will move breakfast and lunch into classrooms. We're going to rework gym, phys-ed to reduce the number of kids who are ever in close proximity and wherever we can move phys-ed activities outdoors, as the weather is getting warmer, we will do that.

So a variety of steps will be taken to support everyone in the school community. And we'll talk about it, I'm sure, but I spent about an hour with Michael Mulgrew at OEM earlier today, and we talked about a variety of specific actions we can take to support and reassure not only teachers, but all members of the school community. And even though we have some differences on the approach, we're gone to work together because it's okay to have differences on the big strategy. We're still going to work together every single day to make sure everyone's safe.

I do want to say, and I think some of this is public domain now, we're happy to be transparent about it. We're seeing obviously an impact on school attendance because of the really shocking global news that's come out in the last 24, 48 hours. And to give you a perspective, our attendance as of this Monday was 89 percent, which is pretty close to our typical average throughout this school year. It went down a little bit on Thursday to 85 percent. But really I think again we're seeing just extraordinary concern over just the last 24, 48 hours. So now, as of today we had 68 percent attendance. Obviously something very worrisome, but that's today – I think people are going to be acclimating to the new reality and that's going to change and affect how people think over time. A number of kids didn't come to school today and that's a concern but I also want to be very clear, we'll get you the exact number but well over 600,000 kids did come to school and again that's a huge number of young people and their families who are depending on us.

Now I want to talk about some specific cases or specific instances with schools. In each of these cases, one you'll see there is the tendency to apply abundance of caution here. You'll also see the consistent application of the new policy, which the State promulgated and we agree with fully about limiting school closure where there is a specific concern and the steps we will take to clean the schools, do the follow-up on the individual case, isolate people who need to be isolated, and then move forward.

So as of this morning we had one confirmed case of a positive coronavirus test that was in Staten Island. The student in this case was at the Richard Hungerford School, co-located within the New Dorp High School campus. For the record, there are a couple of other or several other Hungerford schools in other locations in Staten Island. The only one that was affected here was the one at New Dorp High School. Again, the student is in the Hungerford program, that D75, District 75 special education program, but it is connected [inaudible] separately to the New Dorp High School itself. Same building. So the entire school building was closed. Cleaning and disinfecting went on today. There'll be an evaluation of the building over the weekend. Disease detectives are talking to the student and their family. The plan right now is to reopen Monday.

We had a very different situation in Brooklyn, on the Brooklyn College campus. And I want to emphasize, and I say this collegially, the leadership of Brooklyn College and CUNY made this decision because this refers to one of our New York City public schools that's on that campus. But the decision was not made by the DOE in this instance. It was made for the entire campus by the Brooklyn College leadership and we respect that, we certainly honor that that was a decision they made to close their entire campus for the day. The individual in question is a self-reported case and we have not been able to confirm it yet by a college student, not a New York City public school student, a college student at Brooklyn College.

So we'll wait for more information on that. But at this moment based on the actions, the cleaning of the campus today, the fact it's not yet a confirmed case, but also if it were confirmed is the college student who, to the best of our knowledge, had no contact or no specific contact with the Brooklyn College Academy, our school. The intention now is to reopen on Monday.

Lastly Brooklyn Occupational Training Center on Avenue X in Brooklyn. That's a District 75 school as well. It serves medically fragile students. We have a teacher who self-reported a positive case that was confirmed later in the day. Again, that school – we're going through the protocol now. Because it's medically fragile students, we're going to double check and make sure before we reopen that one. So, there's still a question about what day that will reopen and we'll update you when we have that.

Let me go over the overall numbers now – as of 2:00 pm today, and this is based on a lot of new information we got from the State and their testing numbers that they're getting into us, now for New York City, 154 confirmed positive cases of coronavirus, that is 59 since we gathered last for the press conference yesterday. So 154 cases. I'm going to give you a borough breakdown, but again, you're going to see, sometimes, dissonance between the totals because the numbers are not always broken out in time for the latest updates. So, the last borough breakdown we had, and we'll keep giving you updates as we go along, 35 cases in Manhattan, 24 cases in Brooklyn, 26 cases in Queens, 13 cases in the Bronx and five cases in Staten Island. We have 29 people in mandatory quarantine, I believe that's the same as yesterday, in voluntary isolation, we have 1,747 people.

Couple more things on testing. We had very good news this morning. I spoke to – some of you may have seen, I spoke to the Health and Human Services Secretary Azar last night. A good conversation, very tangible. I appreciated his responsiveness and we will be in touch regularly as we go forward. This morning, the FDA formally approved for one company, for Roche, the faster automated testing. We need that to happen though still for other companies. So that is a very important step. It is not the same as all the companies being approved. We need that. It is not the same as us getting the test kits we need still to keep supplying our public health lab and others. I believe we will see progress on that, but we just need a constant uptick in federal testing capacity or federal support for our testing. Again, the president's remarks today are promising on that front, but we have to see the results.

And as this automated – this permission for the automated testing has now arrived, there will be some ramp up, but certainly it will sooner rather than later start to allow us to get much faster tests and more. That's some good news on the supply front. We are still very, very concerned that we're not seeing the progress on the federal side we need. Now, we did get some new guidance, which is helpful on masks and this is new guidance from the CDC and the WHO, which again gets back to the study I indicated that this disease is transmitted by droplets, by fluid, if you will. Liquid from one person has to get directly into another person, not airborne. And that suggests very clearly that there's more than one kind of mask that can be helpful here. The N95 masks are particularly valued, but they are not the only ones that prevent transmission.

So we certainly – our ideal is to get a substantial number of new N95 masks, but we are more confident now that surgical masks can achieve a lot of what we need for sure. Let me give you the numbers on N95 right now. Our citywide total supply is 503,000 and that is combining stockpiles that are available now at Health + Hospitals, FDNY, Department of Corrections, and other agencies. But we would like to add to that substantially. This is our ideal, is to have a much greater [inaudible] supply on the N95 masks. And we have asked the FDA for 2.2 million more. That is a new number, but we have only been approved so far for 76,000 and I'm looking to Deanne, that's approval but not delivery.

Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Emergency Management: Correct.

Mayor: Okay, so, again, 503,000 in stock. Now we would like 2.2 million more. We have that request into the FDA, but now let's talk about what we do have, and this is very important because we will, based on our own experience but also the CDC and WHO guidance, we will treat the surgical masks as an acceptable replacement for the N95s. And now some actual good news in this world – in stock right now, 16 million surgical masks in the New York City supply
And in the next two weeks – and we actually believe this is happening, that this is coming specifically – 25 million more masks will be arriving.

There was misinformation today and we'll shoot down misinformation whenever we see it, that the NYPD was somehow being deprived of masks. We would never allow that. Spoke with Commissioner Shea this morning. Anything the NYPD needs, they will get. That is self-evident. That's always been the case. Delivery today to NYPD of 250,000 masks – and that supply will be augmented anytime the Commissioner says. I know the Commissioner spoke with the Health Commissioner, spoke with the Emergency Management Commissioner. Everyone is coordinated.
And the same will go for other agencies. What they need, they will get. Other supplies though – this is, so I gave you some relative good news.

This is not good news, which is the other supplies we need that we are not getting a clear answer for from the federal government. So right now, again, because the private market is not consistently producing supplies given what's going on, we are consistently asking the federal government to step in, ensure more production, use its emergency powers to ensure that any private company creating these medically crucial supplies goes to maximum production 24/7, rationing out the supplies to where they're needed around the country. We're not seeing any of this yet, honestly. And these are things that the United States has done in crises for decades. So it's absolutely perplexing why we're not getting a clear answer on this. We have requested 800,000 face shields, 95,000 surgical gowns, 600,000 pairs of surgical gloves, and we are waiting for answers on all that. We'll do our best to push the federal government to move on all of those.

Finally, a very important topic – evictions. This has come up a lot in the last few days. Rightfully, we know what's happening out there. A lot of people are losing their livelihoods. They're not going to be able to pay the rent. The help that would be there for people is not yet where it needs to be. So a lot of folks are really in a tough situation. The City already had said over the last few days, we would suspend all evictions in NYCHA and in any of the affordable housing we control. We've got good news – just a short while ago, that the court system, the State court system, has confirmed that they will suspend eviction actions through the courts. And then even more recently we got news from REBNY, from the Real Estate Board of New York, that their member organizations’ companies will suspend evictions for the next three months.

So I want to applaud the court system. I want to applaud REBNY. These are very important actions. That being said, if we see any evidence of anyone being evicted, we will step in any way we can, including free legal services. And there will also be cases where there is not necessarily an attempt to evict, but there is a problem because someone can't pay the rent. If we can provide direct support through the Human Resource Administration, we will. That's obviously for folks with real challenges in terms of their income and low-income. We will try and help directly in every way we can. Just in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

And I'll finish on that note in English as well. I just continue to be appreciative. I'm very appreciative of my fellow New Yorkers, they are really listening to the guidance they're receiving. They're acting on it. They're helping each other. I want to thank all New Yorkers for all you’re doing to help us get through this crisis. Okay, we’re going right to left today. Anyone on the right, Les?

Question: What about the idea that the City can control the marshals? So the courts stayed evictions for one week. What about the idea that the City can control marshals?

Mayor: You know something I don't know and I want to check with our team. I did not hear one week. I want that double checked to make sure – you can scream out if you know the answer.

Question: The courts have stalled the eviction proceedings for one week with the option to then renew, understood that they're going to renew and they have stopped actually issuing eviction warrants for longer.

Mayor: Right. We'll get you all the details, but that's our understanding. It is a more long-term action than that.

Question: There is, the oversight committee of DOI some talk of the city being able to have marshals not enforce evictions and for private –

Mayor: Yeah, we don't want people to evict it in the middle of a pandemic. So we'll follow up on that. Certainly with DOI, anything we can do to stop evictions at this point, including within our own power. We will. So I don't have all the details. We'll get you the specific answer, but that's absolutely the direction we're going in.

Question: Having heard your decision to keep the schools open. Is there a point at which you would think that was untenable?

Mayor: We absolutely – look, this whole experience we're about to go through are, or are going through, every day will be different. And we are processing an immense amount of information all the time. And it's a very complex equation. And again, when you look at the CDC guidance, I think you've got a real window on how complex the equation is. We're thinking about many pieces of it, including the impact on our kids, the impact on their nutrition, the impact on the families and the ability of the public health workforce and first responders to get to work. You know, I am absolutely convinced, and this is something I'll say out loud and if it turns out to be a different scenario and it changes, I'll tell you that too. But I think there is an illusion out there that you can shut down schools temporarily in the midst of a growing crisis. I think the sober, honest reality is if you shut down, you have to be ready for the possibility that that's it for the school year. That might be it for the calendar year. So I'm being real about the fact that I think is a very high bar to shut down. But of course if conditions change and information changes, our internal deliberations change, I reserve that right at any moment to go in a different direction if that's what I think is in the best interest of the city. Rich.

Question: So I was going to ask the same question, but I'll ask it a little bit differently here. How much pressure are you feeling from various angels, to close the schools? I mean, what are you hearing?

Mayor: Yeah, it's an excellent question, Rich. I got to tell you. And it's probably something that might be unusual to hear. So I’m going try my damnedest to articulate it. So in a crisis it’s not business as usual. And the question of pressure almost fades away. I have a very clear understanding of crisis. Whether it's things we went through in this city, obviously Ebola was a very powerful education for me and a really troubling moment for this city. I'm really glad it's not back. The issues we faced with terrorism. But you know, I remind people I spent four years in this building as a staffer in a time in our city's history, it was almost perennial crisis, the AIDS crisis, the crack epidemic, riots. It's just, I'm just being very personal and, but trying to help people understand how I'm making decisions. I have experienced so much in the way a crisis that the concept does not scare me. It doesn't faze me. It is part of human life whether we like it or not. So in a funny way, I find like my whole system cools down in the middle of this because we are getting a ludicrous amount of incoming.

I mean, the amount of information we're taking in, we're all talking constantly. We're getting new information, we're trying to assess it. We're making constant decisions on ever changing world. You have to stay cool. If you start to panic, you're never going to be able to serve anyone. So, and I think my colleagues are doing the same thing. I give them a lot credit. Everyone you could, you would be impressed by these internal conversations. Once in a while they get heated, but generally not. People are all saying we better keep it together for the sake of 8.6 million people. So yeah, I'm not surprised. There's politics out there. There's people with constituencies. Of course. I'm never surprised when I see a bunch of people stake out their position. But they are not me. They don't have to make a decision for 8.6 million people. It's really easy to talk. And I don't mean that derogatorily, it's just reality. This is crunch time. Every decision matters.

So Rich, I'm aware, I'm listening. And by the way even having said all that, that doesn't mean you don't listen. It doesn't mean you shut yourself off. You actually have to listen at the same time while not getting overwhelmed by the noise, if you will, or critique. Critique is going to come with the territory. You got to stay cool. You got to listen, you got to consider alternative views. You got to constantly keep in mind the notion that you should critique your own assessment, critique your own assumptions. And people here have been doing a lot of that in a good, healthy way. But this is not a popularity contest, this is war. You know, I really feel like that. It's not literally a war, but the prism that I'm looking at this through is war. This is the kind of decision making that you have to make, you have to approach in a way that has nothing to do with everyday normal. And you have to do what you think is right for everyone. And it doesn't matter if it's popular or not. You have to do what you think is right. Back there.

Question: I was wondering if you've spoken with the Governor at all about potentially reopening the health care enrollment for people that are uninsured or underinsured?

Mayor: I have not, but I'm happy to. We want to do everything we can to support health care for people. So we'll do that and have a follow-up. Anyone else over here, going over here.

Question: One more crack at the schools question Mr. Mayor, then another question. You talked about attendance and it being at 68 percent, and that still means over 600,000 kids in schools. Do you have a threshold, a percentage attendance threshold under which you’d think that it wouldn't make sense to keep schools open?

Mayor: Not a hard and fast one. I'll tell you why. I think we're going to see an evolutionary pattern here. And again, maybe it is the blessing of having been through you know, a real myriad of experiences in public life that tells me, you know, this thing is going to be very different in a day, in a week, in a month. This whole reality. I think there's a shock right now. I think the last few days have an absolute shock to the system. You know in a way that if you look at, if coronavirus, so we were all together on January 24th, I mean I guess first news out of China was December, right? If you look at the entire trajectory from the first day, you heard the word coronavirus to today, the last 48 hours have been just unbelievable. So if people are reacting to that, that's kind of normal. But I want to see where things are in a week or two weeks.

I think it could be very different because I think at once that little bit of calm sets in and people have to actually – and look at the whole picture. I think a lot of them are going to want to preserve as much normalcy as they can. I think the practicalities also are going to come into play. That parents really want their kids educated. They want them to get those school breakfasts and lunches. They want to go on with their lives, but they obviously care first and foremost about their kids' safety. And we will show them the ways we're keeping their kids safe. So I think it's going to be different over the days ahead. And so that's why I wouldn't say, oh, it has to be this number. No, it has to be in my view, a sustained reality and it's going to interact with everything out there in the world.

There may be things that happen outside that are much more foundational in how we make the decision. But, I’m trying to, and I appreciate, and I know you're conscientious about the details. When I say to you day to day, hour to hour, I want you to feel that in your bones. I want you to understand and I threw in that reference to make a point. When I said earlier, the last traffic between all of us was 11:00 pm and it picked up at 6:50 am. I wish I could interpret to a civilian what this is like. But it's like being on a train on a track and the track never ends and there's no station and there's no Terminus and it's going to be going on and on and on and on. And that's what we do. A lot of us, this is just our lives. So I mean this is for some strange reason, our vocation. This is how we think.

So my point in that is, I mean I was talking to Dean Fuleihan off and on between like 9:00 pm and 11:00 pm and it was like the ever changing situations just in those two hours, right? So there may be a moment where I hear a set of information and say, okay, now I really want to look at this differently. And that could happen tomorrow at 6:00 am for all I know. Or it could happen Sunday. But it's that total and we are all thinking together. Chancellor and I are talking all –
everyone's talking and we're going to make those decisions based on the best information. Not going to make them precipitously. We're not going to make a decision that we think, wait a minute, that might be really different in 72 hours. But you know, sometimes you're going to say, yeah, I see something, but I'm not convinced it's going to sustain.

But it is constant and it will be constant. And Oxiris said six months, Governor said six to nine months. I think they're both right. I think, and that by the way, for everyone looking at the school year, I am saying, and I want you to take it in, And I said this to Michael Mulgrew in a very productive conversation. I said, you walk out, not the people. I'm not saying it individually. I'm saying we shut down this school system. We might not see it for the rest of the school year. We might not see the beginning of the new school year. And that weighs heavily on me.

Question: The New York City Correction Officers union has called on you to stop inmates from receiving visitors, noting that you know, the jails are very contained environment and all it takes is one person getting infected to spread it rapidly. What's your response?

Mayor: I think it’s a fair concern? I mean, we're looking at a lot of different pieces right now. I haven't seen their formal statement. I'm going to ask Deanne and Raul and Oxiris, and obviously Mitch in terms of the health care provision in the hospitals and all that, to all work with me on that question. I think it's a fair concern and something we need to make decisions about quickly. Go ahead.

Question: I had a question about the masks, but if I could quickly on schools. Obviously based on the attendance numbers, there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of parents who are keeping their kids home. Presumably they have concerns about safety and about the spread and maybe they have elderly grandparents at home. There any number of concerns they might have. Are you discouraging them from keeping their kids home? I mean, what's the message for –

Mayor: Your question's a great one because you sort of gave the different categories a bit there. I, look I'm a parent. I respect the choices of parents. By the way, that's true every day of the year. You know, parents can make whatever choice they think is right for their kids. If a parent, for example, as you said, if you had an elderly member of your family in your apartment with a preexisting conditions, I wouldn't just ask the question about this kid going to school. I would ask a whole lot of other questions and I'm sure my colleagues would join in, of like how do you protect that grandparent? In many, many ways, I'm not sure I would say necessarily that means don't send the kid to school, but you'd have to start from protecting your relative is huge. There's like a number one thing. But I want to make the equation complex for you. You know, what if the kid can stay home? What if the kid can't and there's no place else to go? What if the family has food, what have they don't? What if the kid's whole life revolves around school and now you're taking that away from them? What about the kids' education, especially if it may be, we can't provide anywhere near the quality of education for a long period of time? There are so many factors here. I think what happened in the last 24 hours was a sheer shock we're all feeling and the people sort of understandably reacted and there's nothing wrong with that, but I think there'll be a chance to sort of catch people. Everyone will have a chance to catch their breath and then we'll see what they feel.

But I'm sure there are some extenuating circumstances. I respect any choice. But if you said to me, what's my broad guidance to parents? Here's my broad guidance. And I've had this conversation with a bunch of parents today. Just people who I know, you know, who are parents. I said what – I ask people, what do you think would happen if you let a bunch of New York City school kids out for not a day, not a week, but three months? What's going to happen? And everyone says they're all going to go outside and find their friends or go over around their building or whatever. You think they're going to stay in isolation in their apartment? That's just not real. So you're going to have, all a recreation of social networks and if you're worried about community spread, there'll be plenty opportunity right there. What are people who are not working, going to do? Do you think they're going to stay in their apartment in isolation for a week? Sure. For a month? For three months? For six months? No. So that's where the equation, in fact, again, look at the CDC guidance. It gets right into that. It's like it literally points out do not expect children to stay in isolation.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: One more thing, I'm sorry. I apologize for the long answer. And the CDC guidance also points out children who are unsupervised creates a host of new challenges including health and safety challenges. Go ahead.

Question: On the masks – you're asking for 2.2 million in N95 – 25 million, sorry. There was another big number for those surgical masks. Are those, can you explain that? Are those just for health care workers?

Mayor: No, there are for a lot of people. So 2.2 million on the N95s is the request. We are getting, we believe, we'll believe it of course when we see it. Exactly. But you're pretty confident.

Commissioner Criswell: I'm pretty confident.

Mayor: 25 million more on the surgical masks. And then the other items I talked about.

Question: Just for health care workers?

Mayor: Health care workers, first responders, a whole host of people and patients, patients who need, and Mitch jump in. Patients who manifest symptoms and walk into one of Mitch’s facilities, explain does it help?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: Right. Well as soon as someone comes into any of our health care facilities and has any symptoms which may just be like a runny nose, we put a mask on them immediately so that we can make sure that there's no transmission of disease, or even just inadvertent exposures that would cause people to worry that they should quarantine themselves.

Question: That provides some barrier. Why not encourage members of the public? I'm assuming that there's enough of them in stock?

Mayor: Okay. This is an excellent question. So I'm going to just, I’m going to pop the ball up and you spike it. Okay. So they, this has become – we've heard this over and over again. And I got educated by Dr. Barbot because I bluntly, you watched the initial outbreak and people seemed to putting on mask as a protective. But in fact it turns out not as simple as that. And the masks are for the folks who do the work and are going to get a lot of exposure potentially to a lot of different people and to prevent someone who has the disease from spreading it outward. So Dr. Barbot please explain.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Right. The Mayor got it just right. The indication for the use of a mask is if someone is symptomatic, meaning they have a cough, they're sneezing and we want to protect other people from becoming infected. And then additionally, as Dr. Katz said, for individuals who are symptomatic, haven't yet been diagnosed and are seeking care in a health care facility so that we don't run the risk of infecting other folks who are there for other reasons.

Mayor: Did that get you what you need?

Question: I think I’m still just understanding, if it is at least somewhat effective in preventing you from being transmitted to you. So I just want to understand even if it's just marginally effective, why, I mean you’re not discouraging people from wearing them?

Mayor: No.

Commissioner Barbot: No, certainly if someone chooses to wear a mask because they feel that much more secure, then by all means. But as a population measure, the most appropriate use of a mask is for someone who is symptomatic to avoid infecting other people. For folks who are not symptomatic. You know, the guidance that we have been given from the very beginning, which is frequent hand washing covering your mouth and your nose when you cough or you sneeze are the most effective and consistent ways in which we can minimize more New Yorkers being infected. And so I guess to round out the response, what we're talking about here is a layered approach to prevention, right? No single preventive measure in isolation is going to give the greatest protection. It is the hand washing, the covering of the nose and mouth, the staying home if you're sick. All of those sort of cumulative efforts are what are going to keep not only individuals, families and communities safe, but the, the city has a whole. And I think, you know, we need to be prepared for the fact that there will be many more individuals who become ill. And so the more that we become accustomed to being diligent and dare I say militant about hand washing? I think the better off we'll all be.

Mayor: And one more point here. I think the there’s something like, I get the common sense to Bobby's question. Like, well what could it hurt or does it help a little bit? Again, we’re not going to discourage anyone. If they have them that's great. But I'm also just thinking about, you know, you have a mask on, you're going to take it off some time. Right? You got take off when you eat, when you drink. You know, it's not like to me like a perfect separation from the world right there. But I think what’s interesting, because there's a common sense to Bobby's point, well it does help somehow. And it's really interesting the medical community is not even granting it that notion of, you know, we prefer it. I don't know if there's another sort of piece of analysis that you guys can offer or we can get back to Bobby. But there is sort of something there. It's a good question. Like why wouldn't the medical world say, you know, better than not?

Commissioner Barbot: Well, because I think it gives people a false sense of security. If you're not doing the other things – you know, I talked recently about, I saw someone with a mask who put it below their chin and started smoking. Right? I mean like, come on, lets be real.

Mayor: We need that photo.

Commissioner Barbot: So it really does go back to in order for something, anything to be most effective, we need to have it be consistent. And so I have spoken about this earlier, we're looking for a cultural change in the way in which we do hand washing. You know, I've been a part of public health for a number of years and I was with the schools when we were doing H1N1 and it was really at that time that we started teaching even our kids to do this. And over the course, you know, I've got a goddaughter who's now 16 but back in that time was in grammar school and I was surprised when one day, you know, she came home and she did this and I was like, it's working. And so you know, population behavioral change takes time and it takes practice. And so that's why I can't lean away from the fact that hand washing, covering your nose and your mouth are really the fundamental components of ensuring safety.

Question: I have another schools question if the Chancellor wants to chime in. I'm curious I know the student attendance was 68 percent. Do you know how many teacher absences there were? And I don't know – I know we spoke about earlier this week, you said there's a significant number of substitute teachers. I don't know if there was a noticeable dip. I'm sure, I've heard from multiple teachers who they live on the Island and their kids don't have school. The UFT is telling them, urging them to close schools. So what is the plan is for that? And my second is do you know how many UPK or 3K schools are housed in some of these schools, whether it’s private or Catholic that will now be closed?

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: So in terms of the teacher attendance issue, there was a slight uptick in teacher absenteeism today. Again we don't have the exact percentage. We'll get it to you. Those numbers we get, we kind of solidify later in the day. But we can get you the specific numbers. I think it also relates to what the Mayor was talking about. There is a sense of shock currently about, you know, this new era that we're entering into. And in terms of the campuses that have been closed, I don't believe there has been any pre-K or UPKs in any of those campuses at this point.

Question: And is there a plan to, I mean, if it continues and there are more teacher absences, what's the plan then?

Mayor: I'm sorry, Richard, I’ll just jump in on the first part. Again, we are, kind of similar to the previous question, how are we going to handle different scenarios or what's the magic number? Again, we're not going to look at it by a day or two days. We're going to look at an overall pattern and we need to see where that pattern goes. But I want to emphasize we got a lot of very devoted educators and school staff who are showing up who are going to be there no matter what. We have – I understand it's a very fair point about folks who live in the suburbs and it emphasizes the point I'm making about the schools in general. If kids don't have a place to go to school, it encourages their parents to stay home. And if that's first responders and that health care professionals watch out. But I think with time what we're going to see is people will make the adjustments. I think a lot of people are going to want to get back to what they do, right? But so we're going to have to figure out also how to take whatever number we have on a given day and make it most effective. And if you need to bring in some people from other agencies to support in different ways, we can do that as well. Go ahead.

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: This is a mental health explanation, not a public health examination. In the last 36 hours you've seen the Governor declared a state of emergency. The President, the Mayor declares state of emergency for the city. The President declares a state of emergency for the nation and it's frightening. What would you think a lot of parents and children would do? Probably just trying to decompress, take a day off, long weekend and really kind of begin to reassess. What do we do now? I think, you know, you're hearing from both the Chancellor and the Mayor. I think we're all shocked because everything is going so fast and so big. Right. Right now, they're 421 cases in the State of New York. We have surpassed, we're now number one in the nation. The clustering in Westchester has really grown. So if you put it all together I can easily explain a lot of the mental health issues going on with children and their parents and particularly the seniors that we started saying from the beginning are so vulnerable.

Mayor: Amen. Go ahead, Richard.

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, so to get to the question, we've obviously been looking at different scenarios. We've had tabletop exercises where we look at what do we do if unfortunately, you know, our – all of our first responders get hit with this. So – but there's no magic number. Schools are different. They have different capacity. They had different numbers of students with the Mayor has said about, we've looked at how do we then maybe take some people from one place to another place, lots of different scenarios. So there's no magic number.

Question: [Inaudible] it's clear. Any - the Mayor many different agencies so let's just – using a hypothetical. If there's a school where there's 100 percent teacher absence or a very high number sub schedules overloading, you can't go all the subs. Are you pulling someone from the DOT or a City Hall –

Mayor: No, It wouldn't be - obviously, I mean respectful, you know we wouldn't do that. The question is we've got people in a variety of agencies who work with young people. It's just a common sense thing. There may be applicability from one agency to the next in a crisis. Remember, look, this is an emergency. We're going to be doing things we don't normally do. I also remind you in the emergency powers, if I have to suspend contractual dynamics, I have the right to do that. So we are going to figure out what's best for the people of our city and we're going to make the adjustments we have to make. But the reality here, I think everyone, I actually think every day New Yorkers are getting this. We left business as usual behind days ago. This is again your – you guys start thinking more like a war than like normal life. And we're going to be doing all sorts of different things to make things work. And we can't give you the exact template now because we just entered this reality. But we can say we want to make sure our kids are safe, we want make sure they're educated, we want make sure they get food, and if that means bringing some people in from different agencies to help at work, we'll do what we have to do.

Question: With all due respect, even that war time mentality this is when I'm speaking to every day New Yorkers, some who work in schools who have kids who are begging the school’s to shut down. If you're saying that this is an emergency, we're going to do things we don't normally do. Couldn't that same logic be applied to why you would go to school to [inaudible] –

Mayor: Couple of points. One, I'm sure you are finding the people want the school shut down and I would urge you to go talk to George Gresham's, you know a hundred or 200,000 members New York City, you’re going to find a lot of people who do not want them shut down. I've talked all these people, not only this situation but in previous crises. And I do feel – I absolutely respect your reporting – but I will tell you I've spent a real long time talking to parents in my life. I have a strong understanding a lot of what they're concerned about. You can go out and do your research. I think you're going to find a split for sure, but a hell of a lot people do not want them shut down. I think it will split economically, honestly, demographically, folks with fewer resources are going to be much more likely to want to see the schools keep up open. And a lot of people are worried about losing their own livelihood and they need their kid to be in a safe place so they can get to work and make whatever money they can make in an economy that's starting to shrink. There's a lot of real life stuff going on here. But to your question – it's not even, to me – I absolutely can take in the possibility of doing all sorts of additional things, the schools and far beyond because we're in the great unknown. There is nothing off the table to say the least, but right now, based on what we know, I think this is the right thing to do.

Question: Well Michal Mulgrew said that there are plans in place through OEM that contingency plans can be made to address a lot of the issues that you're bringing up in terms of closing schools, like what they did after Sandy with providing meals to students and a place for students who don’t, whose parents are, you know, single parents for them to go within the city –

Mayor: Sure.

Question: And he says he has plenty of volunteers lined up to staff those places. So I mean is that an option? He’s saying it is.

Mayor: I have great respect for Michael Mulgrew. We've worked together for many, many years. We had an hour long, very detailed, very productive, very positive meeting today whatever his public statements. I know him and I know what we talked about and the bottom line is any one of those solutions to some extent recreates the problem. You are congregating a bunch of people in the same place on any of those scenarios. And it does not solve a lot of the other problems. And I agree that there is a scenario – if you get to a scenario where you said we really don't have a choice anymore and we have to fall back, sort of strategically retreat. Yeah, there are things you would do that are better than nothing, but it is not an easy equation. Again, I'm going to really respect everyone's intelligence. Try reading through this and see if you feel very certain at the end of it because it's sobering about the unintended consequences.

But I don't need to know the exact alternative at this hour. We are constantly doing scenarios. We’re going to look at every – I mean Richard and his team have been looking at all sorts of permutations. We said to you guys a week or two ago, we're preparing distance learning opportunities, but we also know they're not as good as what we normally do. And again, great. So you have distance learning. You also have a huge number of kids unsupervised. It's not so clean suddenly. You have a huge number of kids who don't have a computer, like the dominoes start to fall pretty quickly when you actually run it as a real life scenario. But we'll look at everything.

Chancellor Carranza: Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Yes, please.

Chancellor Carranza: Can I add one caveats. I think it's important in terms of context you remember that the percentage of attendance has been talked about and people are rightfully questioning, you know, why that percentage today? But consider the fact that the number of students in New York City that attended school today is significantly greater than if the second largest school district in America had 100 percent attendance. There's still more kids today that attended school in New York City. That's, that's who we are - that's who we're keeping the schools open for.

Mayor: Thank you.

Question: Mayor, regarding the jails, is there sufficient soap there, Are you considering relaxing prohibitions on inmates using hand sanitizer? And I have a second question [inaudible] –

Mayor: I’m always going to tell you when I literally don't know the answer, but we can get to the answer on the soap supplies. I know there has been a real focus on - we understand the dynamic of a jail. It's obviously a very vulnerable situation. We want to make sure that everything they have – everything they need to have. I will check again on soap. And what was your second question?

Question: Well the second part of that question was, are you considering the relaxing prohibition on alcohol based hand sanitizer in the jails? As I understand it correctly it’s contraband.

Mayor: That, I don't know if my colleagues know anything on this one. That's – that's a new one on me.

Question: Okay, the second question is what's the plan that perhaps the Commissioner can tell us this? If you, God forbid, or one of your team gets coronavirus.

Mayor: I'll give you my layman's version and then the experts will give you the medical version. I - look, I don't know how to say this to you guys anyway, but plainly if it happens, it happens. I'm not scared. I would go into isolation unless it was something where they told me I needed to be in a medical setting and I would do whatever the doctors told me to do and I'd constantly update you guys and I would run the city from wherever the hell I was. Would you like add?

Commissioner Barbot: That’s a great answer –

[Laughter]

Mayor: And I do want –

Question: Contingency plan?

Mayor: Well no, I want to - I want to just throw in that, yeah, well you'll get a much more elegant answer from our Emergency Management Commissioner, but I really am going to try my damnedest to communicate this. I think it's hard for anyone. I don't blame anyone who hasn't been in the life here to understand it, but I remember vividly maybe this will give you a little window.

I have this deep recall with a very, very complex conference call. A whole lot of people, Deputy Mayors, Commissioners, were on the call and we were making some very serious decisions. And the reason I remember it so vividly is it was 2014. It was July. It was after the tragedy of Eric Garner and as you may remember, a very long planned family trip that went on at that time to my grandparents’ home towns in Italy, and I was on that conference call after- from the van. We were just having left my grandmother's hometown. And the reason I say that to you is, you can put me anywhere and give me, you know, a device, any device, and I can run the City of New York from it. And I don't mean that with hubris. I mean that that's the way the world is right now. So as long as I can be on a conference call and I can send an email and we do it just all day long, all of us, and I get why the various times you guys have been understandably focused on official schedule and I get the meaning of that.

It's an entire – not a misunderstanding because you did something wrong. It's just misunderstand because you can lived the life. Official schedule and meetings are like the small part of it. It is the hundreds of phone calls and emails and everything that goes on nonstop between all us, all the time, where a whole lot of the decision making happens. So put me anywhere and give me a device and we can keep things running effectively and then there's all these other wonderful people and our First Deputy Mayor, Dean Fuleihan, our Chief of Staff, Emma Wolfe, everyone else who keeps things running all the time.

Question: In other words, would you guys, not to be – would you guys need to be quarantined? You all are very close to each other.

Mayor: Well there's a thing called reality. We could try and socially distance at the press conference, but the blue room really wouldn't allow too much of that.

Question: But seriously, if you got the – a chance you got the coronavirus, you all would need to be in quarantine, right?

Mayor: And we would keep leading.

Commissioner Criswell: But if - I'd like to just add to - every agency, every city agency has an established continuative operations plan and we do have a city wide continuity of government plan. So every department head, and then including the Mayor, has a line of succession of who would take their place if they couldn't perform those functions. We've really pulled those plans out and looked at them really closely as they relate specifically to coronavirus. And we've been testing those plans ever since we started with this – what? Back in January, the end of January with that that first press conference. So these plans have been available. The agencies exercise them annually and we've just really taken a hard look at them through this process.

Question: And it would be the First Deputy Mayor, Jumaane Williams?

Mayor: No, it's the First Deputy Mayor, obviously. I would be quite resident New York City, I assure you. I intend to be fully effective and awake at all times. But the – you know, there's also a very deep bench. I mean, we have a strong structure here. You know the Deputy Mayors, the Commissioners, all the staff here, these are folks who are running, you know, an extraordinarily complex organization. And I've learned to perform at very high level, and there's lots of depth here. If someone's out of commission, there's always someone else who could step up. But I think from watching the cases, and again I know anything could happen. I do not have one of the five preexisting conditions. That’s not the end of the discussion. But I don't. And as Dr. Barbot will attest, an incredibly healthy specimen, you know, so anything could happen. But I suspect for a lot of people it would be you're isolated and fully functional and just doing your work.

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely.

Question: Could you sort of update us on what's the hospital capacity and if you have sort of where the trajectory is going now, you're sort of worst case scenario, do you have the beds? And lastly, just the –

Mayor: Wait a minute, that's a lot right there. You'll get your next shot, don't worry. Just – I’m going to try this ground rule again. We're not going anywhere on your first round. I mean if you try and do 27 follow-ons I'll cut you off. But, but I'm saying it's, I'm beseeching you, I'm beseeching you. I'm trying to say to you all, I'm really going to try and communicate. We're going to be doing a lot of this together. It helps me to answer your question, to hear the first question and really give you an answer and then your follow-up or your second – I'm not trying to cut you off. If you say like two or three things, I can't keep it all straight enough to make sense. I'm trying to think about your first question immediately. So just help me by sequencing a little, because we have been consistently giving people time to ask their questions.

So your first question is about our healthcare system capacity. The initial estimate was 1,200 beds that we could make available immediately and again, remember a lot of people who need quarantine do not need to be in a hospital setting. A lot of people who even are – have contracted disease don't need to be in the hospital setting, but we could immediately put together 1,200 beds. We can go deeper through, and Mitch, I don't want to try and articulate more than – I don’t want to get more than I know about your specific turf, but you should talk about how you would progress into cancellations of electives and all that.

President Katz: Right, New York City is very lucky in that we are a hospital, health center-Mecca. People typically come from New Jersey and other areas to get outpatient procedures, to get second opinions. And what why that's relevant is all of that stops in a crisis. But the resource, the doctors and nurses who would do that kind of work, doesn't stop and they are available to then respond for patients with respiratory distress. We have, as the mayor said, identified 1,200 beds that we can use immediately. Every hospital knows where it would put additional people if they didn't fit into the usual space. We would rapidly discharge who have conditions that no longer require hospitalization. We would cancel elective surgeries, which would get us a great deal of resource, just as something no one outside of the medical facility would know, it – when you have surgery. There are two doctors in the room. An anesthesiologist is the third, two surgeon, an anesthesiologist, two nurses, the scrub nurse, and they're circulating – five highly trained people are necessary for one person having a 40-minute arthroscopy procedure. Right? And that's entirely right. But the point is, we're not going to be doing arthroscopy in this instance, all of those resources are going to be going to take care of our sickest people.

Question: Is 1,200 enough for your worst case scenario projections?

Mayor: Well, that's just – that doesn't even account for what he just said about how you could fall back and get deeper and deeper and open up more and more. Go ahead

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: I may actually sort of give you a little bigger picture. There are about 20,000 hospital beds in New York City. What we know about coronavirus is that 80 to 90% of those cases, the coronavirus cases do not need hospitalization. Right there, you just eliminated a whole bunch of cases. And we also know that only 6.1% require ICU treatment. So that's the universe that not only Mitch, but the voluntary hospitals are concentrated on. I’m working with the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, Ken Raske, every morning in trying to make sure that we coordinate all the healthcare resources for the city, and we are in constant communication to see how we can wrap it up.

Question: I guess I'm wondering like based on the percentages you just talked about, the percentage of people obviously it's a small one who need ICU care. Like it's, does the 20,000 beds match up to that smaller percentage?

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: You don't need the 20,000 beds. You only need to know that you have enough ICU beds for that 6.1%. What I cannot tell you is the 6.1% means X number of cases.

Mayor: Yeah, but I want to even take it farther, which is, and we talked about this over several press conferences. This is not static. I mean Mitch was very clear. And again, Mitch, how many hospitals, how many clinics?

President Katz: Just, Health + Hospitals alone has 11 hospitals, five skilled nursing facilities and 60 other sites of outpatient care.

Mayor: So that's one piece of the bigger picture. Mitch said, you need more ICUs. I'm going to build ICUs. He's going to convert the cafeteria to ICUs. He's going to put a tent in the parking lot, turned it into ICUs. We look again, it is it. When I say the, the analogy to war, I don't say it to romanticize or simplify. It's just true. We're going to do things we've never done before. If we need to keep expanding capacity, we're going to take everything we can get our hands on and do it. I'm worried about, you know, weeks and months down the line, anyone that isn't should really wake up. But that doesn't mean that we are in a state of panic. It doesn't mean we don't have the ability to throw a huge amount of resources at this and it's going to be constantly building up our capacity to meet the challenge and we're going to need help. I mean, the State's been fantastic. The State has constantly, when we're asking for help, they're providing it. There's tremendous cooperation. If the federal government actually would come into this, and I mentioned all the things, the testing, the masks, the supplies, if they would really go to maximum, would change the playing field entirely. But there is no place in America you would rather be right now, even though we have all these cases, we have the most hospitals, the most doctors that, you know, nurses, everything. We have the most of everything and we're going to use it all and then we're going to add to it. But there's still going to be a reality that, you know, we're watching every day. How much could this jump up and how big could it be on what timeline? And we're going to be clear as we know that, but we have, you know, an extraordinary foe and we also have a huge amount of ammunition, you know, and, and we have huge resources to throw at this battle. And that's what we have to understand here.

Question: Two questions, Mr. Mayor. The first is on the issue of ventilators. So this might be for Dr. Katz, but the chair of the Council’s Health Care Committee has been saying – I think the numbers were 1,000 at a H + H and then 5,000 citywide. I think the chair's question is how many of those are kind of typically being used for other patients, you know, I guess currently or on a typical day because you can't divert all 5,000 to coronavirus patients?

President Katz: No, of course not. But remember that each one of those surgeries is somebody who is on a ventilator, right? So when you cancel the elective surgeries you gain – those then become large numbers of ventilators that are available for patients who would have COVID-19.

Mayor: So I'm staying there one second. So I think the point is to redefine the dynamic. It's really important. Understand if you have – if you think of your 100% of your resources, but the way they're being used now only would free up a certain amount for a situation like this but you say no, wait, we're changing the definitions. We're changing the approach. So we have a much bigger bandwidth that we can then devote to this situation. That's one of the pluses here. Also, we are absolutely looking for more ventilators. We're trying to see if there's any way on the private market to get them. But I'm going to do everything I can to push the federal government. I also want to give a shout out to Senator Schumer who has been intervening on our behalf regularly, was very involved in helping us on this approval for the automated tests. The federal government right now, I mean the United States of America for God's sakes, you can't find the factories that produce ventilators or factories that produce something kindred enough to be converted. Why on earth is the federal government not treating this like a national mobilization? Whatever those factories are doing now, they're doing ventilators and they're not doing it on an eight hour shift. They're doing it 24 hours a day as you would in wartime to produce the huge number of ventilators we'd like to have ideally, and then get them where the need is greatest, which would be New York State, Washington State, a few other places. This is perverse that this isn't happening. I mean, it could have been happening weeks and weeks ago, but even if it started now you could, I don't, I'm not an expert on ventilator mass production, but I could sure as hell tell you they, someone builds them now. Right? So go get thousands of them produce quickly. If they could get them to us, even a matter of weeks, it would have a huge impact.

Question: Just a brief follow up on that. Do you have a target for how many of you're trying to procure?

Mayor: We’re working on – our ideal number, so I gave it to you with like the masks – we're working on our ideal ventilator number. And again, if once we see that we're going to go right at the federal government and trying to push this notion off them mobilizing industry to do this, we're again also trying to see if there's any private contracting that would work and what the capacity of that would be. But we don't have that number yet.

Question: And then just one other question was just you said a number of times that the city was in a better position than some of the other locales that have dealt with it because of the five week essentially head start. And I just wanted to get a sense for what you were able to accomplish during that time that you think has put the city on a better foot. Because even with that head start, you know, through no known fault of the city’s own, you know, the testing has been delayed. What, you know, where were you in a better position?

Mayor: Yeah, I get it. It’s a damn good question. I was on a call a few hours ago with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, mayors around the country and my colleague, Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle, gave a quick summary of what she's been going through. I felt real pain for her and everyone out there, because remember they had a huge outbreak that was – really overtaxed their system almost instantly and they're still trying to recover in so many ways. I mean, we went from that January 24th press conference to March 1st without a single case. What did that mean? A whole lot of people got educated. And, again, this is where – and I think I'm going to get an amen over here on this point – this is not just what can the government do for you, which absolutely it’s our obligation to do as much as possible for everyone, this is participatory. There's no way you solve a crisis like this with orders from the government or, you know, supplies from the government. This is about every single one of the 8.6 million people doing what they can do. Dr. Barbot said the words hand sanitizer so many times, I know it entered the – alcohol-based and sanitizer – like, I didn't know there was another kind, it's okay – it entered the consciousness of people. I think the massive incessant public information efforts by all the agencies, obviously by the media – we saw people changing their behavior in a lot of very tangible ways, that for sure helped. There was time to do the planning and preparing, that definitely helped. The testing as it was, at least we are able to get going with what we had effectively. And that wasn't right on the point of contact. I mean again, other places – and this was true in China, in Italy, in a different way in Seattle – you know they woke up to mid-crisis, right? I remember the first few cases it was like clockwork. The disease detectives went out there, they were tracing immediately. Remember, Yeshiva University, the Westchester lawyer? And they really put a ring around the situation to the maximum stand possible and controlled what they could control. That stuff has a multiplier effect. Look, we have a serious number but we also have 8.6 million people. And that number could jump up a lot, and I told you a thousand by next week is what I'm betting on and that's not a minor matter. I think if all this stuff hadn't been done, that number could be a hell of a lot higher right now. So, I can't – Yoav, I can't say the proof is in the pudding in some perfect way. I can say it is very meaningful to me that we are at this advanced a point in the trajectory, starting from Wuhan until now in a city of 8.6 million people and we're clocking in at 154 cases. You could have easily said for something that started in December, you should be at a much, much more advanced place. And that doesn't mean we aren't going someplace tough, but I think some of these things really did help.

Anyone hasn't gone – hasn't gone?

Question: On teachers and other staff members, if they're in high risk groups, what is the advice to them?

Mayor: We're going to codify – that's a real good question – we're going to codify that. If a teacher is over 50 and has those preexisting conditions, we want to protect them deeply and we're going to work with DOE, the union's going to make all sorts of provisions to help them. Anyone who we think there's a very direct and serious medical concern we're going to treat differently, but we have to codify that quickly. We'll get that done the next few days.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I don't know if I'd say before Monday. You're good, but you're not that good necessarily but –

Chancellor Carranza: No, but there is a heightened sense of urgency. There's also a process by which teachers can request accommodations and we've put out guidance about these particular five conditions that we – there's an email address and we're actually processing those as well.

Mayor: Right. So, that is a preexisting procedure. We're now going to put that on a very expedited footing and we'll have some devoted, dedicated personnel on that. Now, that's a really fair, serious issue that we are going to be all over.

Who has not gone – you've gone, who has not gone? You have not gone –

Question: Yes. Mr. Mayor, can do – and maybe the Chancellor can talk a little bit about the logistics of the distance learning in case of school shutdown. Like, how would you – or even with the declining attendance, you know, do you give students computers? Worksheets? How do you make sure they're learning? What do you do about [inaudible] et cetera? And then, secondly, could you talk about the logistics of why if we shut the system down, it may not open again?

Mayor: Sure. I'll do my overview and then you jump in on all of it. Your question raises a lot of the concerns organically. A lot of kids without computers, in theory you could get them computers, but then their kids – you know, are the parent's home and the parent's not home? Are they going to actually take care to log in when they have to log in? Are they going to follow up with the homework? How do you follow up on their follow-up? You know, like it gets squirrely. It's far inferior. Could you do something? Yeah, you could do something, but it's nowhere near the quality of what we do now. And I'm sorry – and this is a parent speaking – you know, again, a lot of people want to think of this as a day or a week or some people have said how about a two week pause? And I just don't believe that because I think we're going into a growing crisis, not a decreasing crisis. And I know that's counterintuitive – well, if it was growing, you know, shut down everything. To some extent it's true that we will shut down some more things except if they're mission critical. It's a very complex equation. And I said to you, you do not want, for example, our mass transit system to go down. You do not want our hospitals to be compromised. And there is that inner connection to the schools and the schools are providing so many layers of positive impact that I really want to protect them with everything we got. So, the reason I don't believe in short-term is I just don't think – I'm watching a crisis that's growing all the time and I think the human reality if you say to folks, we're going to pause, is there's a high, high likelihood that even if you say it's time to come back, the momentum's lost, there's tremendous concern has grown. I think it's very hard to restart. I don't think it's impossible. If I had no choice, maybe I'd try it. But I'm a really – I'm a realist about how these trajectories go and my argument is I would rather hold the line with something and keep it working rather than atrophy it and take my chances on that. And I do have to think about that interconnection of you take a risk of going down for a period of time, if that makes more likely you're not coming back up now what does that mean for a million kids, and I worry deeply about that. So, I wish I could articulate it better. I think it's everything from logistics to really the momentum that comes with keeping something running versus shutting it down. I think that's a real issue. The – sort of, the restart is not easy. There's a lot lost in translation there. Also, the psychology, the difference of keeping continuity versus losing that continuity. We all experienced that, right? If you go away on a trip, you feel like your life's different when you come back, right? If you do something different for a period of days, you can feel it in your immediate life. Now, this is that on steroids, which is another reason why we are all going to stay at our post no matter what, because that continuity – the continuity of information matters. But it's true for a kid too. If you take a kid out of their equation, something is going to happen and I think it's not going to be a good thing.

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah. So, specifically to the question on distance learning. So, we have worked up a number of scenarios that really kick in right around day-three, going as far into the future as possible. What the Mayor has talked about in terms of the rigor and the comprehensive nature of distance learning kind of kicking in all of a sudden, it's problematic, especially for seniors. You can imagine what the Mayor's talked about. Let's say we go into June, then what happens to seniors that are on track to graduating?

Mayor: Meaning seniors in high school –

Chancellor Carranza: Seniors in high school. I'm sorry, seniors in high school. You know, so what does that [inaudible] for Regents exams? What does that [inaudible] for grade completion? So, it becomes very complex very quickly. Interwoven with that is we've already surveyed what is the penetration of WiFi and who has WiFi and connection to WiFi. And I will tell you with, you know, our student population almost 80 percent being students that qualify for poverty, we don't have a lot of penetration in terms of WiFi. So, then you have to ask, well, can you do this off of the cloud? Can people do this off of a smart phone? Can they do this off of the internet? Where could we get internet penetration? So, becomes very complex very quickly. What we do have in place is that we have the ability to go between five and 10 days right now with grade-level work, all of it available right now on our website. People can log on and see that. But also paper and pen copy because we understand that not everybody has WiFi. It becomes much more complicated when you go beyond that. So, it's complicated. We've scenario’ed, if that's even a term, different kinds of scenarios around this particular topic. But again, the best place for a student is in a classroom with a teacher, the well-trained teacher that is monitoring progress and is continuing to provide instruction.

Mayor: Okay. Anyone has not gone? Last chance – not gone before? And now, go –

Question: Just wondering, I've heard from some city employees that the work from home is not being implemented quickly. Where are you with that? They said that their managers are going to get back to you –

Mayor: Yeah, we did not promise you a rose garden on that one. This is a brand-new thing. We what we said yesterday – I'm as into instant gratification as anyone, but come on. We announced yesterday 10 percent of our workforce will go to telecommuting. We did not say we could just flick a switch and do that instantly. It's nowhere we've ever been before. This is a whole new world. So, it's going to take time. I don't think we have an exact date of how much will happen in each agency and when – it's a big endeavor. Remember, that's 30,000-35,000 employees. But we have to do it quickly and we will keep updating you as that develops. Do you want to add?

Commissioner Criswell: Yeah, I can add – we've been working with all of our agencies for the last two weeks as part of this continuity of operations planning process to help them really write a telework plan. It's not something that the City has done before. And so it will take some time to actually execute and implement it. But this is something we've been working very hard on over the last several weeks to figure out exactly what work can be done at home and then who can do it at home. Do we have the equipment to do it at home? And then if you can't do it at home, you know, how can we stagger those shifts so we can make sure we're keeping our distance within the workplace. And so as the Mayor said, it's – we've been really writing these plans over the last several weeks of physically implementing something that the City has never done before. And it will take us some time to actually get it fully operative –

Mayor: And then it has to work. And this is also, you know, anyone who is a student of wartime reality, it's like, this is again our civilian version of it, but in war you find that things fall apart really quickly. You know, plans fall apart when you think you have the perfect solution. And in real life it doesn't work it. We need these people to do their jobs. If we can make it work, great. With some of these cases, I'm sure we'll find, wait a minute, that doesn't work so well, we have to do something different because this city has to keep running. A lot of people are depending on our public servants. Yeah?

Question: In Italy, there are 17,000 cases and counting and there's a hierarchy, if you will, of which patients are prioritized in case of crisis. Do you guys have a similar hierarchy of who will be treated?

Mayor: No, we're nowhere near that. I’ll let the doctors, this is like – the Italy – I got to say again, I'm very proud of my ancestry, but that is a hot mess and it is because of – you know, they woke up to an extraordinary crisis. I mean it just hit them like a two-by-four. Again, guys, we had a lovely little press conference on January 24th we talked about all the preparations. We had five weeks to do something before we had a single case. They woke up out of nowhere, in the middle of a full blown crisis and it just – the projection of that was unbelievable and they just never had a day of rest, a chance to retrench. It was just like a tidal wave the whole time. So it's very hard to compare anything here to Italy. But no, we are nowhere near that. Please, Doctors.

President Katz: Correct. We will treat everybody who is ill.

Question: Yes. Just to follow up on the work from home question.

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: I mean telecommuting has been a thing for a while. Why didn’t the City have a policy in place for telecommuting?

Mayor: Well, telecommuting is a mixed bag. I mean it has virtues, but there's also a lot of virtues to being in the workplace and the collective reality of people working together and a lot of efficiency that goes with that. I mean, I'm not a management expert, I just manage a whole lot of things so I'm speaking from common sense. You know, I don't think telecommuting is the ideal. I think it is an option.

Commissioner Criswell: Yeah. I mean the thing that I would add to that is you know that the amount of collaboration that is able to happen when you're working together in a workplace is not replaceable, I think, by a lot of the teleworking options that are out there. And so telework is an option and it's one that we are now implementing. Some agencies have done this in limited fashions prior to this. I mean we're putting it in in greater force right now.

Question: [Inaudible] in place [inaudible] emergency, for example. I mean, why wasn’t there a policy set up for cases like this?

Commissioner Criswell: Yeah. I can't speak to why there wasn't one put in place prior to this, but we are writing the telework policy right now. It should be released later today. So we have more information that is going to go out to our employees, to our workforce.

Question: Besides 1199 and the UFT, did you consult with any other unions about keeping schools open, including the 32BJ and if so, what were their positions?

Mayor: You have to ask each of them their positions because I know members of my team had been talking to different people, but again, to me – and I did not directly consult with 1199. The only direct conversation I had with a union leader was with Michael Mulgrew. I'm speaking to Mark Cannizzaro later on today. But again, I will always listen to people's perspective, but the reasons I have for doing this are so deep-seeded and based on so many factors that I'm working from a very, very, you know, multilayered matrix. It wasn't about going to people and saying, well, okay, your one factor is going to decide it for me. I knew what I had to do based on everything I know.

Question: [Inaudible] back to school. On a different issue, the State ELA exams are coming up, I believe in less than a couple of weeks. And you know –

Mayor: Just to make matters more interesting.

Question: [Inaudible] some kind of disruption in the school right now with everything that's happening, no matter what perhaps attendance, but also adjusting to all these things. Is there any consideration being given to perhaps ask the State to delay those or anything?

Chancellor Carranza: So we are actively engaged in conversations both with the State Education Department and the Regents as are a number of my colleagues from other school systems across the State of New York. So there are active communications around that very issue.

Question: [Inaudible] specifically asking for a delay, do you have a position on that?

Chancellor Carranza Well, I think, you know, there's already been trauma inflicted as we've talked about, you know, just the very fact of what we're all dealing with, a pandemic. Throw into the mix the fact that you have interrupted learning time, throw into the mix we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow much less in a week. So I think there are conditions that could warrant some alternate thinking about when, where, and how much – and those are the conversations that we're having.

Mayor: And this answer. Sure. I appreciate the answer. It's also a reminder and I really want to try and communicate this well – as we're thinking about this stuff and these meetings would make your hair curl, there are so many factors, there's so much incoming. But everyone here could tell you their stories. And I think if you had a chance to look at that, you'd understand sort of the way we all think and try and make decisions. I mean, Deanne, I don't know everything about your history, but was a firefighter for many years, was a FEMA official. I mean you can think about this answer, but how many substantial disasters you have been present to address? If you know the answer off hand, you'll tell me.

Commissioner Criswell: I don't know the answer off –

Mayor: Would you say it's dozens?

Commissioner Criswell: Yes.

Mayor: Richard helped bring Houston back after Hurricane Harvey. In fact, when we were doing research on Richard, one of the things that really, really came through was throughout the Houston community, the appreciation for the leadership he showed and they were just laid waste. I mean they went through hell and the schools actually are actually coming back extraordinarily fast because of Richard's leadership. Raul as we said, was present at the beginning of the AIDS crisis here in New York City and one of the people in government trying – and we got actually very moving stories of him being one of the people in government trying to talk to the community of people with HIV and AIDS and try and work with them and hear them and make government work for them at a time when many other people were still in denial or unwilling to even engage the community.

Oxiris talked about H1N1, I'm sure you have many other stories of crisis that you went through.
Mitch, I know you were in the beginning of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco.

President Katz: Yes, Sir.

Mayor: Frontline of the crisis running their public health system. And then I've got a whole host of tales to tell including Ebola and Sandy and 9/11 and many others. I think everyone here has been in battle in a variety of ways and it's in our bloodstream. So when you ask even a question as simple as, should the test be canceled, which is a very good question, we're trying to process all of this all the time. And that is an interesting question. Some things it really does make sense to postpone or cancel. Other things would be really bad to postpone or cancel or have lots of negative experiences or outcomes. But I can at least say that everyone, certainly, you know, Dean Fuleihan is playing a crucial role and he's been through extraordinary times at the city and state level. Emma Wolfe has been through every challenge we've had in the last six years and played a crucial role.

You know, everyone has been to this movie in one form or another and is taking from our previous experiences and adapting them here on trying to, like, use that combined knowledge to make decision after decision after decision in real time. Last call?

Question: [Inaudible] how many are in –

Mayor: Of the what?

Question: Of the 154 cases how many are in the hospital?

Unknown: 21.

Question: 21. So that's less than yesterday?

Mayor: Wait, I think – no that's not, hold on. I think – I want to check.

Commissioner Barbot: 21 was in the ICU.

Mayor: The ICE is 21. Right.

Commissioner Barbot: 30 is in the hospital.

Mayor: Right. Sorry.

Question: And also do you guys have any kind of plan or chemically dependent New Yorkers who rely on methadone or suboxone programs in case the smaller private clinics start to close? I know that the city detoxes were set to close. Is that going to not happen or is there any plan for that?

President Katz: We would be able to supply the medications. We have a large number of waivered physicians. And as you know, the medicine itself is not at a detox center because there's not – it wouldn't be part of detox. Right. But it is available both through our pharmacies and through pharmacies in the community.

Mayor: And is it – I want to ask, thank you for your question. I want to ask are – do we see specific centers closing?

President Katz: I've not heard [inaudible].

Mayor: Are you seeing specific centers closing?

Question: No, I was just going – because I mean, well at least methadone is part of the – in some cases, some of the detox program. And I'm wondering how a lot of the private detoxes were weathering this, considering the virus and –

Mayor: No, it's a great question. I'm saying, do you –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: You have not heard of closures.

Question: [Inaudible] the impending closures of city detoxes, no, I haven't heard of clinics closing.

Mayor: Wait, slow your role –

President Katz: She doesn't mean methadone. She means the fact that Health + Hospitals moved from –

Mayor: That earlier policy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That – I want to –

President Katz: That’s not about methadone.

Mayor: That's a little apples-and-oranges on methadone and we should double check. But I don't hear any change in the approach so far out in the field.

President Katz: No.

Mayor: Okay, good. Thank you, everybody.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I don't know if we have it. Do you have it –

Unknown: [Inaudible]

Mayor: [Inaudible] okay, thank you.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: [Inaudible] confirm that.

Unknown: [Inaudible]

Question: [Inaudible]

Unknown: [Inaudible]

Mayor: [Inaudible] take steps [inaudible]. Thank you, everyone.

2020-03-14 NYC Mayor de Blasio

“Today, we are confirming our first death due to severe complications from COVID-19. The patient, an elderly woman with advanced emphysema, was admitted to the hospital last week as one of our first cases, and had been in critical condition ever since. We’ve known from the outset that these people are the most at risk in this pandemic, and today’s news is a sad confirmation of that reality. I want to thank the staff of Wyckoff Medical Center for their efforts to save this woman’s life, and all the medical professionals on the front lines protecting our most vulnerable.

“We all have a part to play here. I ask every New Yorker to do their part and take the necessary precautionary measures to protect the people most at risk.”

2020-03-14 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: To hear of the death, the first New Yorker to die related to coronavirus. This is a very painful moment. This is a moment we all knew would come. That doesn't make it any easier. I want to say at the outset our hearts go out to her family, our condolences to them, and we will do all we can to support this family in this really difficult moment.

I'm going to speak to this situation and some other updates, but want to say at the outset how grateful I am. And we'll talk about in a moment how grateful I am, how grateful all New Yorkers should be to Senator Schumer for the work he's done on our behalf. You'll hear from him in a moment. I'll give some updates. Senator Schumer will offer his remarks. We want to ask questions, then of Senator Schumer while he's here, he has to depart to some other things. And then I'll continue with our Health Commissioner, Dr. Barbot with updates and a Q & A. Also want to thank our Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, and our CEO of Health + Hospitals, Dr. Mitch Katz. But back to this very painful situation. I think people know by now, 82-year-old woman, who on top of what she went through with coronavirus, previously had been diagnosed with emphysema. And I know way too much about emphysema. My own father suffered from it. And she had been hospitalized for emphysema previously, recently, before then being later hospitalized for coronavirus. She went in the hospital last week, one of our first cases and has been in critical - was in critical condition ever since. So again, our hearts are with our family and we also have to offer thanks to the people, the good people, the staff, the team, the doctors, nurses that Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, who did all they could do to support her and help her.

Want to give the overview very quickly and obviously as we have been unfortunately having to predict the number of cases, continues to grow in New York City. As of 10:00 am today we are at 183 cases and that is 29 new since we gathered together late yesterday afternoon. So again, 183 cases now in New York City. We're going to give you more information as we get it and we solidify numbers on hospitalization levels because obviously this is crucial to what's going to happen going forward. The latest numbers we have, and this is now based on 6:00 pm last night, so this is a different number than the timeline on the 183, and I'll always try and differentiate for you. But as of 6:00 pm last night we had 30 people in New York City hospitalized related to coronavirus, 30. And of those 30, within those 30, 19 as of 6:00 pm last night were in the ICU. And we can say so far based on our experience, about 80 percent of our total hospitalized cases, so of those hospitalized approximately 80 percent are over 50 and-or have preexisting medical conditions. That five conditions we've talked about previously and we'll continue to get more information as we go along. But we are seeing and it's a sad, sad reality and we saw it play out in the death of this woman today. Undeniably those who are in the greatest danger are those who are older and particularly those who are substantially older folks in their seventies, eighties and those with those serious preexisting medical conditions. That is the community we are most concerned about and keeps playing out time and time again. That's where the most severe problem is.

Another update, I'm going to tell you what we have here and the actions being taken to address it. We have a -- and I'm going to give you some information. We did not have every detail yet and we are still doing some notifications and actions so this is purposely partial information until we have further confirmation. We have a new confirmed case member of the FDNY, from a firehouse in Brooklyn. The member worked from Sunday through Tuesday, went home on Tuesday with symptoms and we'll get you the exact details on that. Tested positive late yesterday. While on duty the firefighter did not respond, I'm going to say again, while on duty did not respond to any medical runs or treat any patients. As a matter of precaution, 31 members of that firehouse will be quarantined immediately. Those who had worked with the member directly and the member is now quarantined at home. Other members of the house who were not in direct contact will take over the operations of the house. It's being cleaned right now. The firehouse will be fully operational and up and running at full capacity by 6:00 pm. There are other fire resources in the immediate area that obviously can cover any need in the intervening time. I spoke directly to Commissioner Nigro who's confident of the coverage levels that are available.

And you know, we've been very clear about the fact this is going to go on for months, this crisis. We are very clear who is most vulnerable, those older folks with preexisting conditions. I want to just say something I think is now a moral imperative for all New Yorkers, which is to protect those older New Yorkers who have those preexisting conditions. To really think about those who are most vulnerable among us and take actions accordingly. That means in your own life, even though you want to visit your older relatives and they really cherish those visits. If you're sick, if anyone around you is sick, it's not the time to visit. But that doesn't mean don't stay in touch with them. Call them, get on FaceTime, whatever else. There are older relatives who need support and we don't want to leave them alone, but we have to be smart about never subjecting them to anyone who might be sick. And when you are visiting with someone older and or with preexisting conditions, all those basics, washing your hands, using the alcohol-based hand sanitizer, covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze, social distancing, even when you're visiting, keeping some distance, we really need that. They need it. And even down to the point of everything that is available in our stores. Want people to remember, of course people are stocking up, but there's older folks in your life, neighbors, folks you worship with, family members of course, who may be low on supplies, share with them. Because we can't have those folks go without the things they need. So, everyone's got to think of this. And I said to you all yesterday and other times we're going into a full crisis footing. This is a wartime dynamic. We have to think about helping each other in different ways and it will take the people to solve this crisis, not just the government. So, we have to look out for each other.

Okay. Just a quick few sentences in Spanish, and then I want to say something about the actions taken in Washington as a preface to introducing Senator Schumer

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish:]

So, we've talked a lot about the problems we're seeing at the federal level. And I will note again what we are waiting for from the administration in Washington. But I have to start by commending Senator Schumer for his actions, which had been crucial. He has been constantly available, supporting the needs of New York City in New York State. He has intervened on numerous occasions on our behalf and obviously worked closely with Speaker Pelosi on the stimulus bill, which is a major step forward.

It is still astounding that the administration has not moved an aggressive program of testing. We are still waiting on FDA approvals for a number of companies. We are still waiting for direct support for testing. We are nowhere near where we need to be as a nation and I'm going to keep talking about the need to go on a wartime footing and nationalize or mobilize key industries. There is no reason on earth that the companies that produce ventilators are not on a urgent 24/7 production line right now to get ventilators produced on mass and distributed where they're needed in this country. There's no reason on Earth that there are not enough surgical masks in different parts of the United States or face guards or hand sanitizer. This all needs to be federalized in whatever way possible and production needs to be taken to maximum, immediately while we have a chance. And there's no inkling of that from the federal level.

So, the Congress, the House is acting and Senator Schumer is acting and we're waiting on the rest of the Senate. And I want to also note as astounding to me that the US Senate did not stay in session yesterday to be able to receive the action by the House and move immediately. I know Senator Schumer and I are united in that thought and that's not to say the least his doing that is Leader McConnell, but it just makes no sense. I mean this is, I think we've directed a lot of ire at the President and the federal agencies. But let's be fair, how on Earth did the US Senate go out of session in the middle of a national crisis and a global pandemic. That said the action the House took, and I know Senator Schumer was instrumental in, I believe the Senate will act on, parallels a lot of the things we've been calling for here and a lot of things we actually do here. Obviously, this is a city that now guarantees health care for all our people. I am heartened to see the legislation include free coronavirus testing, even for those who are uninsured. That is a major step forward. 14 days of paid sick leave, absolutely crucial, up to three months of paid emergency family and medical leave. These things that are finally happening that we need desperately, food security actions for students and vulnerable populations. We need all of this. I'll state the obvious for the future. These are policies we better put in place permanently, if we don't have paid sick leave nationally, if we don't have universal health care on a much more extensive level, good luck dealing with the epidemics and pandemics of the future and they are coming.

So, I hope this is a wake-up call to our nation that we need to go a lot farther. With that, I have to express profound thanks to Senator Schumer. We in New York City, I hope all 8.6 million New Yorkers know this. If this man were not here and was not taking care of us and watching out for us, not just on this issue, but on so many others, we would be in so worse shape, but he is indispensable. And he is a guy in his -- I'm going to say something, Senator, I think you should appreciate. His name originates from a word that is translated as guardian. And he has been our guardian in this crisis, he has stepped up in an extraordinary fashion. It's my honor to present to you the Minority Leader of the US Senate, Senator Chuck Schumer. And I will bump you right. There you go. That's right. Good.

Senator Charles Schumer: Well, thank you, Mayor. And thank you for the good and long work that you are doing as well as the hundreds of thousands of city workers who work for you in health care and first responding in all the other places where we need the help. So, what we passed last night or what the House passed last night is a lifeline. I'll get into the details in a minute. But we have a crisis in this country as seen by the unfortunate death last night. And I am really glad that Congress took action and our action was aimed at families, working people who were affected and need the help most desperately. And we passed the kinds of things that matter to them – free testing for the coronavirus. You do not want -- these are the six things – we do not want people who are – who might have it, but say the doctor will charge me a couple of hundred dollars. I'm not going to go and then walk around with it. We strengthened food assistance to both the elderly and the kids who were not in school for whatever reason. And that's their best meal and they can't get it. They are safeguarding the medical benefits. That's FMAP. I'll get to that in a minute. That's the real biggest benefit for New York directly. We enhance unemployment aid. If you're unemployed, all those poor people, you read about Broadway and Barclay's center, what are the people who collect the tickets or who clean the place up or who sell the food going to do? They don't have jobs, paid family leave, sick leave won't help them, but we've greatly expanded and made more flexible unemployment benefits so they can get them. And then there is paid leave, both family and sick leave. You get 14 days of sick leave, you get full pay and then you get another three months of family leave for yourself or if your kid’s home, if your spouse is sick or whatever else.

So those are good things. Very good things. Now, despite President Trump's downplaying the issue, pointing fingers of blame at all people like the press, calling it a hoax, tell the family of the woman who died that it's a hoax. And basically, just not stating the facts correctly. He was forced to go along with what Congress wanted. First the original bill, which dealt with the vaccines and getting our own health care agencies up and going [inaudible] remember, called for $2 billion. I called for $8.5 billion. The package we passed was $8.3 billion. Last Thursday, sorry, last Tuesday, I said he should declare an emergency so he can use FEMA and the dollars that FEMA has. He just said that yesterday. And maybe most importantly, these six things are what Nancy and I called for, Speaker Pelosi and I called for Saturday, last Sunday. And these are the six things in the bill.

No giveaways to oil companies or other things they were thinking of in the White House. So now, it was disgraceful that Leader McConnell left town last night. The Congress, the House was debating and voting. We could have had this done already, but he left. But now I am calling on Leader McConnell to move this package immediately when we return on Monday, as is. No new amendments to help some special interest. Nothing. Everyone's going to have a lot of good ideas. There's going to be a third package and a fourth package and a fifth package. But if we add things to this, has to go back to the House, back and forth. The people of New York and the people of America can't wait. So, Leader McConnell, let's get moving. Pass this package as is, ASAP. And I hope they'll do that.

Now, for New York. There are lots of benefits for New York, but none is bigger than what's called FMAP. And I have over the years I've been in the Senate used FMAP to channel money at times of need into state and local governments. And New York does better than just about anybody else because we have the large -- FMAP is Medicaid and we have the largest Medicaid population in the country. And traditionally the federal government pays 50 percent of Medicaid and the State government and the localities together pay 50 percent. In almost all states, it's only the state government. In New York and North Carolina, the locals have to pay. We have raised that amount to 56.2 percent. That's what the federal government will pay so the State and local share goes down concomitantly two 43.8 percent. That will mean $6.2 billion for New York on an annual basis. It's done quarterly. If you went to the quarter and still have the virus, you get it for the whole quarter so you can prorate it by one quarter. If you know, luckily enough, there is no coronavirus by the fourth quarter of next year, it'll be three quarters of the amount I give. And we divide the money between the State and the localities. New York City will get over $1 billion and that will be -- it will enable them, since it will help pay their Medicaid to use other dollars that might've had to go to Medicaid, to go to all the needs that you were talking about.

Mayor: [Inaudible]?

Senator Schumer: Well, I am a Brooklynite. We say next, when other people say this. 2020, fourth quarter of 2020. I always confuse that with my staff – this year, next year, this week, next week. I forgot who's right, which one is right and which one is wrong. Okay, so it’s fourth quarter of this year, 2020. The City gets a billion. The other counties and localities in the state get $400 million, the State gets $5.2 billion. There's a lot of money there. And it will be used to help our states and localities that are on the front line with all of their other expenses. It'll probably help the State review, solve some of their Medicaid problems that we've talked about previously as well. We used FMAP in 2003 when the fiscal, when there was a downturn and most notably, we used it very significantly and very successfully in 2008. And each time I wrote a provision into the law that localities could not be, they had to get a good share, a decent share of the money. And that's back in the law. And this time there's over $1 billion of employment benefits that go to the State. As I said, we loosened up unemployment, how quickly you can apply and under what conditions.

And then there's money in many other things. There's about $15 million from meals to seniors. There was money for all kinds of other things. And then there are all the things that we mentioned that go to New Yorkers, not to the city or state governments, that I mentioned before in terms of sick leave and in terms of paid leave, in terms of free testing, things like that. So this is really a lifesaver for New York during a difficult time, and that's what the federal government should do. So, I hope the -- I believe and hope the Senate will pass this quickly and then we will have to move on because there are other issues that we're going to have to deal with as well. This will not be the last coronavirus relief bill at all. Okay. I'll take questions on this subject if you have them. Yes.

Question: Me or Kate?

Senator Schumer: You.

Question: Okay. Not that you're describing is in the Senate bill you [inaudible] Monday or is it separate?

Senator Schumer: It's in the house bill and that's what sending – being sent to the Senate. Same bill.

Question: How much would Long Island get?

Senator Schumer: Long Island would get in the hundreds of millions I would think. Or the high tens of millions each county. They're the next two biggest counties in terms of Medicaid. I'll get you those numbers.

Question: My question is, I guess it's more for the Mayor or it’s about coronavirus –

Senator Schumer: We’ll do questions for me first because I’m –

Question: [Inaudible] some discrepancy on the number [inaudible] –

Mayor: Yeah. The Senator has to go onto other things –

Senator Schumer: Okay. Yes, ma'am?

Question: The free testing and hand soap [inaudible] is that already in [inaudible] –

Senator Schumer: That will take effect once this law is signed into law, but the president has said he will sign it.

Question: Have you been tested for coronavirus?

Senator Schumer: No, I have not been exposed.

Question: The family leave, can you just talk a little bit more about what that means and is it only if he gets sick with the coronavirus?

Senator Schumer: Yes. Yes.

Question: Okay.

Senator Schumer: We would have liked to have permanent family leave. That's a goal of mine. I know the Mayor agrees with that, but this was - and we originally, actually put seven days of paid sick leave as a requirement. Not family leave but sick leave. But the Republicans wouldn't go along with that but –

Question: [Inaudible] to get a confirmed. Like does it have to be a confirmed case of coronavirus since we're still at this period [inaudible]?

Senator Schumer: It doesn't have to be a confirmed - you have to show on family leave that you – if your child is home, if your loved one is home, if your parent is very sick, it would apply to all of them. And unlike most family leave where you get off but they can't fire you, here you get two-thirds pay. And by the way, one of the other advantages of this is it helps the economy because all these people who are out of work or not working might not have gotten paid and that would be a real crimp on the economy for all of us. They're going to have money in their pockets.

Question: What should be done to help the businesses that putting [inaudible] –

Senator Schumer: In this package is money for small business lending. We would like to get grants to small business. We couldn't get that through the Republican side, but we're going to try to get that in the next package.

Question: Dollar amount?

Senator Schumer: I think it's – I'll get you the number, I think it's in the tens of billions. It's either 30 or 50, I can't remember which one they ended up with. Okay. Yes?

Question: Is there any provision for part time workers or –

Senator Schumer: Yes, the part time workers would get paid their part-time salaries under both the sick leave and the paid family leave. Okay. Thank you, everybody and thank you, Mayor. Nice to see you all.

Mayor: Thank you.

Senator Schumer: [Inaudible] elbow bump.

Mayor: There you go. See? New habits. And Senator, thank you. You are allowed to do it, elbow bump, everyone is. Senator thank you, and thank you to Speaker Pelosi. Thank you to all the members of the house delegation.

Senator Schumer: Nancy Pelosi did a great job.

Mayor: She sure did.

Senator Schumer: [Inaudible] really proud.

Mayor: Amen. Thank you.

Senator Schumer: Used to [inaudible] 10 - 15 times a day the last week –

Mayor: God bless you. Thank you to Senator and again, Speaker Pelosi, an outstanding job. The members of our house delegation from New York really stepped up and you know, we have not been used to a lot functioning on the federal level in recent weeks. This is something that actually is progress and is moving, but we have to see the Senate move on it on Monday and the president sign it immediately. With that, I want to just turn to Dr. Barbot for a moment because she has some guidance to give New Yorkers because again, we have to constantly get the message out about how people should handle this situation.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Thank you. So, as the Mayor said, today we are announcing our first death related to COVID-19 and it's a difficult moment for the City and especially for the individual's family and our hearts go out to this family. And we are committed to providing them ongoing support during this painful time. I think it's an opportunity for us to be clear that with this outbreak we should not be surprised if we see additional deaths. I think it's a reality that we have to be clear with New Yorkers about that all of our efforts clearly are directed at ensuring that we minimize harm to New Yorkers, especially those that have these chronic underlying illnesses, but that we can't predict the behavior of the virus in all individuals. And so that's why it's incumbent on all New Yorkers to change our behavior so that when we say, don't go to work if you're sick, don't send your kids to school if they're sick, it has implications beyond the individual, beyond the individual's family, beyond the individual’s community. It has implications for all of us.

So, we need to make sure that New Yorkers are clear that if they are having symptoms, they should stay home. They should contact their providers if they're not getting better and that in this situation it's important for us to be testing those that really need to be testing. The social isolation that we are putting in place is really only going to work if New Yorkers change their behavior. And I think the last thing that I want to say because I can't say it enough, is the importance of frequent, thorough, consistent hand-washing, as well as covering your hands – excuse me –covering your mouth and your nose when you cough or your sneeze. Ensuring that you've got alcohol-based hand sanitizer when you are not close to a water source, ensuring that you don't shake hands, and I think it's okay for us to remind one another to say, uh huh, not shaking hands, glad to do the elbow bump. People are getting creative. But the point is, now more than ever, it's important for us to change our behavior and I don't want that message to be lost because, you know, as I've said in the past, we're in this for the long haul. I think our best estimate is sometime in September. We are always hoping for it to be shorter. We can't predict if it's going to be longer. So, these are things that we need to put into place on a regular, ongoing basis. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Okay. Let us take some questions. Go ahead. Katie?

Question: I just wanted to ask, you said the number in New York City is 183 cases, but the state has it at 213, can you explain the discrepancy?

Mayor: Sure, if that – I have not seen the latest State – the State is getting results in obviously from a variety of labs and they have oftentimes information ahead of us and they share it with us and we update our numbers. So, at this point it's going to be a rolling basis. There's a lot of different sources of testing out there. We're going to update our numbers every time we confirm them. But honestly this is what we had at 10:00 am, it's not 10:00 am anymore.

Question: With all due respect before the press conference – I mean because we have put this out, this is being broadcast live on television in some cases, shouldn't that have been checked by [inaudible] or some of your team [inaudible] –

Mayor: Katie, again, with all due respect back, we're going to give the numbers that we have that we have confirmed as the latest. It's sometimes the State will have something that we have not yet confirmed, but let's be clear, if we update an hour later or two hours later, it's actually not changing anybody's lives. We're going to give the best information we have once we've confirmed it, but it's equal, bluntly, that we know we are in a crisis and I want you guys to have accurate information. We're not going to give you something until we're sure. This is the number as of 10:00 am. We're going to update it constantly.

Question: When did the woman pass away? What borough did she live in? Dr. Barbot?

Mayor: Yeah. I don't have the exact – do you have that? We don't we don't have that. We'll get you that as much as we can. Go ahead.

Question: What advice for New Yorkers who are HIV positive, are they in the category where –

Mayor: Oh, absolutely compromised immune system. Doctor or either one, whoever wants to jump in?

Commissioner Barbot: To the extent that individuals have the five underlying chronic illnesses that we have laid out and have additional diagnoses, they are certainly at risk. But HIV in and of itself with a well-controlled viral load - they don't have a standalone category. What we now know is that most individuals who are surviving with HIV are actually more likely to die from the leading causes of death that we all die from, which include heart disease, which is one of the major categories that we're concerned about. As one of the chronic illnesses that puts people at risk for COVID-19 bad outcomes. And let me just say again, to reemphasize, we've been saying that those that are at greatest risk are those with those five underlying illnesses and who may be above 50. But I also don't want us to lose sight of the fact that they're not the only ones that are at risk. This is a situation where every day we're learning more information and we're going to adjust our guidance as we learn more about what's happening here in New York City. But for now, that piece of information hasn't changed.

Mayor: [Inaudible] all get it right [inaudible] HIV/AIDs [inaudible] can we clarify the difference, sort of the spectrum, because I'm assuming – compromised immune disease [inaudible].

Commissioner Barbot: Nowadays, having HIV in and of itself doesn't necessarily mean that your system is immunocompromised. If you are well controlled, you're on the appropriate medications, you're controlling your viral load.

Mayor: But If not –

Commissioner Barbot: If not, then certainly. Yes.

Mayor: So that’s what we have to be clear. It’s a qualitative reality –

Commissioner Barbot: Correct.

Question: [Inaudible] press conference that you mentioned setting up drive-through testing centers. I know that's happening in New Rochelle. Can you talk about what sort of streamline testing?

Mayor: Sure.

Question: Are there going to be fever screening [inaudible] the way China is set up [inaudible] –

Mayor: So, we are discussing that literally today. The – look we saw in South Korea for example – every place is different. Let me be the first to say, and every scenario is different, but in South Korea, you know, very powerful results from an aggressive testing approach, that said that requires having the testing capacity. So, here's been the conundrum from day one and I think this is what the history is going to show at the end of this. If it – you know, I keep coming back to if our press conference was – first one was January 24th and we were calling for testing capacity then, you know, what a different world this would have been if the federal government in the first half of February had moved testing into as aggressive a stance as it could have been all over the country. I think we'd be having a very different reality because it would have allowed early on to do the testing, do the follow-up, isolate people, you know, do the tracing, all the things we needed to do.

There's a really fair argument that now we're in such an advanced place that testing can't play the same role it used to. But this – I would argue as a layman, the South Korea example proves that there is a strategic value that can be done, it can be achieved, if you have mass testing ability. So, we'd love to get to that point and we're on every possible source. I like the idea of the drive-throughs, if it’s done – and I think the State is doing this – on a prioritized basis. It's just a way of streamlining getting to the people who need it most. I would love even more to have the massive capacity to go deeper and deeper into the population, still prioritize, but much deeper into the population. So, if we can get the capacity levels up higher, I'd love to see the drive-throughs here as well.

Question: Okay. Just to clarify, is it still as a I think it was March 10th, the Health Department's protocol was each and every test had to be approved by the Department of Health. Like a health care provider has to call – call the hotline and say, can I do this test? Is that still the case now that [inaudible] labs come online?

Commissioner Barbot: So, I want to build on what the Mayor said with regards to testing. Now that the commercial labs are doing the testing, we are sending guidance to health care providers to really focus testing on those who need it. You know, at this point in time, having increasing testing capacity is really important for folks who are significantly sick and not getting better. There may be other jurisdictions where they're still not sure if they've got community-wide transmission and there is a different purpose for that. But in our situation, we know we've got widespread community transmission and so we need to focus, as the Mayor says, on testing people who are sick and not getting better.

Mayor: But the question was approval –

Commissioner Barbot: Oh you - they don't need our approval.

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: They used to. Yes, they used to.

Question: When did that change?

Commissioner Barbot: We can get back to you. But the reason why they needed our approval was because CDC was very strict on limiting who it was that was able to be tested and so CDC gave us very strict guidelines about who was eligible for testing. But now that's been lifted.

Mayor: Yeah, that's really, this is a strangest thing I think for all of us to recognize. It feels like we're going through months or years of history, but it's actually only days. I mean, so we're talking about it's less than two weeks that we had the ability to do any testing of our own here. And yeah, it was really tight in the beginning. I mean, that's the irony. You know, the need was so great and we needed flexibility and speed and creativity for the federal government. We had a super tight regimen restricting. That's obviously gone out the window and now there's finally movement. The FDA approval for Roche was a very good example that there's finally a recognition of the need to expand. But there's so much more to do. There's a bunch of laboratories that still need that FDA approval. There still should be many more tests made available directly from the federal government.

There's so much more to do to put this on a really strategic footing, and you know, I'd like to see the whole federal government involved. You know, I think FEMA is starting to get involved because of the state of emergency. That's good. It should have happened already. VA, we talked about yesterday, one of the points that Dr. Henze made, you know, the Veteran’s Administration could be a part of this too with their capacity, the military, there's a lot of pieces to the equation that need to be advanced if we're really going to do the kind of testing we need and get the kind of supplies and medical capacity we need. We need an actual full federal response and we're still not even close.

Question: What would it take for you to consider closing the schools?

Mayor: It's going to be a day by day examination of all the facts. The –I talked about the CDC guidance sound, don't know if you were here yesterday, but I urge you to take a look at that.
It expresses the sheer complexity that attends to this, particularly when you're talking about such a vast number of kids in such a densely packed city. The – and we're going to have further conversations internally today. The pure public health strategic consideration is straight forward about closing the maximum things you can close. On the other hand, there are very, very pertinent health and safety dynamics. When you close, you create a series of additional new problems in terms of health and safety. When you close, you potentially compromise the hospital system and the health care system by the impact it has on health care providers who would hold back and not go to work, stay with their families, stay with their kids. Let alone, of course, the impact on children's education, but I think a very sobering fact is hundreds of thousands of teenagers without adult supervision. I think that's not just about health. It is. It's about all the other impact that has on their life. It is about the impact on safety. You know, we just have to look at a whole picture. So, we're going to be doing that constantly. But I think we have a lot to balance. And I'm holding where we are right now.

Question: [Inaudible] policies in the state of emergency that you've enacted or considering –

Mayor: The first policy is what we ended up in an absolute agreement. And I heard that there might be some misunderstanding of this. I want to clarify. I can't even, someone's going to have to help me on which day was which because they're all blurring together. But when I was on a New Day on CNN - was that Thursday morning? You know, on Thursday morning and we obviously Wednesday night was a seismic night, right? We saw just a huge amount of movement just on Wednesday night in this country, in this world, in terms of changes in our society. On Thursday morning, we were still trying to find a way to keep certain institutions open on hopefully a more limited basis, but even within hours as we compared our options, and then I consulted with the Governor, and he and I compared options, we agreed that we had to move to a more aggressive restriction. People have to understand this stuff is not days anymore. It is hours.

So, there's absolute unity between the City and State on the specific strategies. We'd agreed together that there had to be that 500 or more-person limitation. We agreed that there should be an effort to reduce capacity by 50 percent for everything else, because we wanted to try that, and see what it would do and see if it would work rather than shut down everything, which I think again comes with real unintended consequences. And this was before we knew that there would be some federal relief and we're going to factor that into the equation, if we see it's real, bluntly. That people are getting some economic aid that's going to also affect the equation. But even just Thursday, that was not a given.

So, all of these pieces are moving. Obviously, the State and City are unified on how we handle a school that has experienced a contamination or I should say a case and how we decontaminate clean, et cetera, get a school up and running. This is a constantly evolving situation, but we do believe in keeping as you know, keeping the unity of the State and City strategies to really consistent. And that's something that Governor and I are both committed to, but that means also one day at a time. And if we're not sure we're ready to implement a strategy we hold to get more information.

Question: Isn’t it hard to make that argument when the two largest school systems outside of New York City, LA, and Chicago, and Illinois making the decisions for Chicago and the LA unified school district, making the decision to close schools, the largest making the decision not to.

Mayor: Right –

Question: But you can now model it off of those two places?

Mayor: We don't model off anyone else. I mean, I'm not saying that to be disrespectful to the question. I think New Yorkers would agree there is no place like this literally –

Question: We modeled the restaurant grading after California –

Mayor: That’s not the same thing my friend. Hold on, hold on everyone. We're coming around but we are actually calling on people. Work with me, over here still. We have particular conditions and we have to look at the whole picture. That is a day to day assessment. There's going to be differences of opinion. There's going to be new information. We’re going to make decisions based on the facts and based on all of the factors. And again, I refuse to belittle the impact this would have on our health care system, which is the thing we care about the most. Absolutely the most. But I also am not ignoring all those other factors because I know a lot about kids and families – whose phone please? Someone want to turn off their phone, please?
Come on dude. I know you're deep in your art there, but you got to pay attention. There are so many factors to consult. Please look at that CDC guidance. It gives you real sense of the complexity.

Question: The guidance says eight weeks is the recommendation because of community spread to seniors. And I can't, like –

Mayor: I hear you, I hear you. But we are factoring in everything. And here's the problem again, the CDC says this, I'm not praying at the altar. I appreciate it analytically. So what happens to those kids?

Question: Their home, their parents have the ability to make decisions if the announcement is made today?

Mayor: What happens to those kids? Just tell me over – let's assume we're talking the entire rest of the school year, which is a very good likelihood. Like are they going to do? What's a teenager going to do?

Question: I'm not an expert at that. And we know –

Mayor: I'd like your personal opinion.

Question: Parents make the decision.

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Ask their grandparents system and ask neighbors to step in. That's what we did in the Bronx. I was growing up with the issue of childcare –

Mayor: So, and I'm going to tell you what else happens, and I guarantee it, and I've talked to a number of other parents who agree and people who work in this field and agree it's not a day. It's not a day, it's not a week. My tremendous fear here is when we shut down, if we shut down, we will not see this school year again. So now we're saying kids are going to have these months and then the summer and then we don't know when schools come back. So what are they going to do? They are going to go out in their neighborhoods -- they are not staying indoors. They're not staying in isolation. Guarantee. Teenagers? Guarantee they're going to go out and create all sorts of new social networks, all sorts of opportunities for spread. Families are not going to stay in their apartments. They're going to start socializing or coming up with something because they just won't be able to resist it. And you're going to have another version of the problem. And then people say, oh, the health care workers, why not just have centers for their kids? Okay, so we're going to congregate a lot of people in those centers. It gets more complex. That doesn't mean at some point, I might not say at any point -- now I factored in all the equations and I've decided we've reached that tipping point, but I'm not there today.

Question: Parents we talked with them -- I'm sorry, teachers we were talking to yesterday, say that the students are distracted anyway, the teachers are on edge. Some of them saying that they want to, thinking about protesting and not even coming to school next week. What is your response to that? And another parent that we talked with also says, you know, we're doing these parent teacher conferences on FaceTime, but you know, you're keeping us away from teachers and from these buildings. But if we have it and we give it to our kids, they're going to go back into the school and give it to other kids and teachers anyways?

Mayor: So again, let's, I understand the questions fully but, but this is true of everything in our society. I think there's also being -- there's a bit of tunnel vision on this question. Dr. Barbot has said to us a thousand times in just two weeks if you're sick, stay home. That's true for whatever, because again, so the kid who even -- say you have no school, if everyone who feels that way got their wish, then be careful what you wish for. Now you have hundreds of thousands of teenagers trying to figure out what to do. We have to deal with them wherever they are. If they're sick, they have to stay home no matter what because again, what are they honestly going to do? They're going to go out and about. So, whatever's going on, you've got to keep your sick children home. If you're an adult, you got to stay home. There are some things that are rules no matter what. We need people to do that right now, no matter what. If there's real adherence to that, and I think people are taking this pretty damn seriously right now. Then the kids who do go to school so long as school is up, there are going to be kids who by and large, there's a consciousness that they are not going to school sick. If anyone gets sick, we're sending them home, et cetera, et cetera.

But for the teachers who don't want to participate, I would only say this to them. Right this minute, this is a fact in New York City -- first responders, yeah there’s a challenge out there, but they're showing up for duty to serve and protect people. Health care professionals are showing up. Sanitation workers are showing up. City workers are showing up for duty. Overwhelmingly teachers are showing up for duty. Everyone who works in school buildings, even with that drop-off from Thursday and Friday, Thursday we were very close to regular attendance. Friday, we had a big drop off. But as we said, over 600,000 maybe 700,000 kids got served. So, the teachers who feel differently, they have a right to protest all they want. And they know what their contractual rules are and they have to make a decision. But there are rules of employment and the folks who are showing up and doing their work are the vast majority. That is the fact.

Question: [Inaudible] businesses, we've got -- we're with Channel 11 and we’ve got about a dozen phone calls this morning. Workers at Macy's Herald Square saying that they did test positive and people just don't know what to do because they're just told to go home. Nothing’s [inaudible]. Are you aware of that and what should coworkers do if someone is tested at the workplace?

Mayor: Sure, I'll start and then various doctors may want to jump in. The CEO of Macy's was actually in this room. Again, I'm losing track of days. What day did we meet with the CEOs? Does anyone remember? Was that Wednesday or Thursday? We'll come back. Thursday? Okay. And raised similar points. Very good. We obviously, Macy's is such a crucial institution in this city. And this is why the testing tactically could be important. Boy would I have liked the testing in February, you know, the beginning of February where it could have played a huge strategic role, but it still plays absolutely a tactical role at minimum, that allows you to know enough to make the adjustments in a workplace, for example. So, I would love us to get to the day where we could get the testing so extensive that we could answer that kind of question. Obviously, if someone was sick in the workplace and had a negative test, it would tell everyone something very important. Someone is sick and had a positive test, we'd want to know who they were in direct contact with. Not, were they in the building at Harold Square, you know, on the first floor. That doesn't affect the eighth floor. You know, we want to know who they were in direct contact with. And those folks of course should be isolated. We need to get to that point. This is why we keep saying every hour and we keep pushing the federal government and trying to appeal at all levels of the federal government for more and more help on the testing because what you describe is what we want to go.

Now for here and now, and I'll segue into one of our doctors. Right now, I think the common sense is if someone's feeling sick and they are at home, don't go to work. And you feel sick at work, get out of the workplace immediately. And you don't assume just because someone felt sick, because remember you can feel sick from a lot of things, you can't go like, oh, someone felt sick, now the whole place has coronavirus. It has to be a process around it. We want people to get out of there immediately. And then from there, the normal testing and Dr. Barbot will go into greater detail. But to finish, typically we want to see if you have, I'm going to say it and you'll correct anything you don't agree with or you can refine, cold and flu type symptoms. Get home, isolate, gets better, that's great. Doesn't get better. Doctor's office or medical facility or Urgent Care, BioFire test. That's 26 more, in my words, typical diseases. You got one of them, you don't have coronavirus. You don't got one of them. Now we definitely want to test you. That's my simple progression. Doctor, will you refine? We'll come back to -- let's get this part right.

Commissioner Barbot: So, the advice in that situation would be as follows, because of the fact that we don't have diffuse access to rapid testing on site, right? We need people to make common sense judgements. And so, in that situation, if someone is diagnosed as having COVID-19 the first -

Mayor: Can I stop you? Could you go back first, to the person who is just sick, [inaudible]?

Commissioner Barbot: If the person is just sick? Go home, don't come to work.

Mayor: And then what is the regimen for figuring out what's going on with them and what it means for the rest of the workplace? So, what I reviewed, is that right? Or do you want to vary that anyway?

Commissioner Barbot: So, okay, let's start from the beginning. I work at Macy's and I have symptoms. I take myself out of circulation because Dr Barbot, as the City's doctor has said, and let me just clarify this here. Initially we were saying 24 to 48 hours. I'm now extending that because what we're learning is that many people do get better in that amount of time. So now I want New Yorkers to wait three or four days. If you're not better in three or four days, I want you to reach out to your doctor. Your doctor will then make the clinical decision to understand if you want to have a BioFire or if it's indicated to have BioFire, BioFire positive stop, do not pass go. Go back to work when you're fully asymptomatic. BioFire negative, your doctor makes a determination you need COVID-19 testing, COVOD-19 testing positive, go home, stay home for the 14 days.

In the meantime, your coworkers, because we know that there is a lag in the test turnaround time -- use good judgment, which means if you are symptomatic, we want people to self-monitor, right? What that means is that if I know that I didn't share utensils, that I wasn't, you know, holding hands with the individual that had you know, general contact in the office, then what I would do is monitor myself. Am I feeling like my throat is getting kind of raspy? Am I developing a little bit of a cough, a little bit of a fever and as I've been saying since the very beginning, have a low threshold for staying home, right? I stay home, I take Dr. Barbot’s advice. If I'm not better in three to four days, then I get tested. Because the reality is, as we've been saying, we have to assume that coronavirus is everywhere and 80 percent of the people are going to be having mild symptoms. And we want to reserve doctors, offices, emergency departments, we want to reserve testing for people that really need it.

Question: Yeah. So, this is more of an economic question. Obviously, you focused on the issue, but there's a tremendous economic impact. [Inaudible] the social distancing. I know you created a small business loan program. Businesses that I've talked to haven't been able to apply and it's just a survey online. Is the City doing enough to help small businesses? And are you worried about the effect that this is going to have on the City's economy?

Mayor: Hugely worried. Again, what we think of as a normal timeline, just I want everyone to erase your brains and neuralize yourself and you're now in a whole new world where the stuff that happen -- that used to happen over a month or a week now happens in a matter of hours. So this situation is changing so constantly it's almost impossible to make normal sense of. So now again, we're on that kind of wartime footing where we have to see things very differently. Two days ago, in terms of understanding the economy and small businesses in particular, you would say something different even then versus what you say today. We're obviously deeply concerned about what's happening in the stock market. We're deeply concerned about the overall trajectory of the economy, if we're going into a major recession overall. But then the other factor is what is the federal government going to do? They are the central actors economically in terms of the kind of relief they can provide, stimulus, et cetera.

What's happening in Washington now with the House is real progress. I would not say it is comprehensive, but it's real progress. Senator Schumer just told you there's more coming behind that. To the extent that deepens and deepens and deepens and you know, almost in the style of the New Deal really reaches deep into people's lives. Direct grants to small businesses, all that kind of thing. That's when I think we're at the point where you can really, really protect people and their livelihoods. I don't think we're there yet. So, we have to understand and is in my decision making, I worry about a tipping point and I think I've been clear about it. We are one part of the big national equation, but we're a very prominent, crucial part of it. And what I do not want to inadvertently exacerbate is that very slippery slope into a full-blown economic recession.

Again, we're just one part of the equation. But we have to be very smart about what this part of the equation does. Full blown recession is going to have ramifications far beyond the coronavirus. Coronavirus I take very, very seriously. Coronavirus is going to be over at a certain point and the vast majority of people are going to come through it. But if we have another Great Recession, which we are literally to this day still feeling the effects of the last one, we could be playing with that fire right now. I think people have to be sober about it. There's also a societal breakdown question, which is very much in my mind. And the public health folks are doing their damnedest here to bring all of their knowledge and all into the equation. But the equation has gotten much more complex in the last 48, 72 hours because now it's not just a question of public health. It is a question of the potential of fundamental societal of degradation. You're talking about simple things like businesses that will close and never come back. You're talking about the potential of a full-blown major recession. But you're also talking about dislocations that could be much deeper.

The object lesson is Italy where you're talking about things that will have years and years of effect, and people's lives that will never be the same in a much deeper kind of way. So we're trying to figure all that out. And what I don't want is those dominoes to fall so quickly that employment recedes drastically in New York City, that basic services are compromised. Remember you know, right now in Italy there's only pharmacies and grocery stores. That's pretty much it. And I'm not saying we're on that track because I think we are much better set up to address things in Italy, but I'm also a realist about how quickly things can change. And I think trying to hold the line at a higher level, again, my view, protecting the health care system, protecting the transit system, and to the extent we can I want to protect the schools. So all of these pieces come together and everyone's watching and people are taking cues from the decisions of government and the more radical our decisions, the more radical their behavior will be. So, these are things that we have to factor in.

To the small business question. I want to understand what's in the House bill. I think there sounds like there's some substantial small business relief. Our programs are brand new but we intend for them to act quickly. So, I want any information. If you can share it with our team, if you have cases, examples that can help us with quality control, those $75,000 – up to $75,000 zero interest loans, we want to get those – we are liquid, the City of New York is liquid right now. We want to get money in the hands of those businesses. The grants, which I think I'm right in saying, up to $6,000 direct dollar, direct grants, we want to get it to anyone who qualifies. If our system is not on a war footing itself, we need to fix that right now. It should be a fast, fast application turnaround.

Question: [Inaudible] this week [inaudible] –

Mayor: Again, we're trying to get, not surprisingly, on that full of war footing. I want to know what you're hearing and please share the specifics. I'll go with the team today to analyze what the turnaround time is. It has to be very fast. No question. Anyone who hasn't gone first?

Question: Well, I've also heard that there's been some employees who've been complaining that their employers are forcing them to go to work and they feel like if they don't show up to work, even if they're feeling sick, like they might lose their jobs. And I'm wondering if there's any way that the city can help these people understand that it's more important –

Mayor: Well, again, I'm going to ask everyone in the media, your questions always help us, but your specifics help us more. You don't have to shout out in front of a room, but I'd beseech you, if you know of specific cases, you can say it quietly to our press and communications team. We need to know these things so we can go at the individual situations and fix them. The messaging as – I mean, again, I had a number of the biggest employers in New York City in this room 48 hours ago, couldn't have been clearer. And to their credit, they agreed that sick people should stay home. They agree that anyone that got sick at work should go home. They agreed that they should maximally telecommute. We had one of them – MasterCard, they said they were close to a hundred percent telecommuting at that point, if I remember correctly. They agreed on staggered schedules. I don't hear a lot of folks in the private sector not getting the memo right now, it's pretty clear. But if someone doesn't get it, private sector especially – public sector, we have a reality of, we are here to protect and serve people so we need to stay at our post no matter what. But clearly even we're saying if you're sick, stay home. But if a private sector entity is telling someone, come in, even though you're sick, first of all, they're idiots. Second of all, they're doing something dangerous and we need to know about.

Question: In the same grain – I spoke to Uber drivers and yellow cabbies and they're saying, ‘there's no way, if I don't draw, I don't get paid, what do I do?’

Mayor: Correct. And that's where the – so again, separating the small businesses where for a number of them we have grants and loans that we can help with, much, much more important. The state I know is doing some important work. And the federal government's the ultimate. So everyone here is a mature adult. We understand the hierarchy, the cities – any city can do something, states can do more, federal government can do unimaginably big things because they print money, right? I mean it's just reality. And we saw it in the New Deal and we've seen it in other crises and wars and everything. The federal government, at this point, I mean, is there anyone who's seriously talking about debt or deficit anymore in general in the United States, let alone in the middle of a pandemic? No.

So, the federal government could do what the hell they want right now and they could provide massive relief to small businesses and employers. I think the legislation that we understand, the stimulus does some of it. What I want to know is, is it anywhere near what we need? And I'm heartened by the Senator's point that more is coming soon. That is the ideal way to address the situation. Folks who have not gone once – just want to do a last call. And now we will start around again, but hold on, I have an update. Hold on. Standby. Standby.

Okay. We have a – this is a one of our public schools. I. S. 27 on Staten Island. I had gotten a report on this before coming in, but it wasn't complete now we have more. We have a confirmed case of coronavirus, but is a student who, as I understand it, was not in school, I think, all of this last week. We're going to confirm that, but was not in school while symptomatic for sure. Did stay home, which is very good. The protocol that the City and State agreed on, is now in effect. So the cleaning will happen now. The contract tracing will happen immediately. And at this moment, that school I. S. 27 on Staten Island, we will reopen Monday. And the school community has been notified. Okay. Yes?

Question: [Inaudible] not in school all week.

Mayor: Not in school all week. This last week. Katie?

Question: So, I wanted to ask about closings, not schools but other City facilities and then the cleanliness as well [inaudible] I've received questions from people about senior centers. If the Department for the Aging [inaudible] senior centers because some facilities have been closed, some have stayed open. And then secondly, you know, City-run pools and gyms, I've heard people who say there aren’t appropriate cleaning supplies. Are there any kinds of plans to mitigate that? And then –

Mayor: Katie, you and I are going to be working together a lot. I think you know my – I beseech you, collegially, just one at a time and I'll give you answers to each, but just help me to be accurate.

So let me – I need to do a reality check. Doctors, because this is – I was literally getting these questions from people the other day. I want to make sure. The pool itself, which I think across the board is chlorinated in New York City – the pool itself, the water in the pool, I think I know the answer, but I'm going to ask the experts, can you can track coronavirus from the water in the pool? No is the answer. Okay. So, and we have also said not through drinking water or other beverages, not through eating food. But to Katie's question in a pool facility, a locker room, or whatever it is, you – of course, contact concerns, et cetera. So your question, I want to go back to your question is, is there sufficient cleanliness and should they be open?

Question: Yeah, I mean, perhaps more important are the senior centers. I didn't mean to reverse my questions, but is there going to be guidance for senior centers run by the Department for the Aging, even through contracts, but then also just generally what the cleaning is at a lot of these City facilities?

Mayor: Yeah, so the broad answer, and we can get more detail – every agency has been sent repeated guidance on heightened cleaning protocols everywhere, every agency, every kind of setting. So that I have confidence in. The follow through – we're all, again, mature adults here. We know that each institution, each setting, each location needs to be monitored to make sure they're really following through and we're going to make sure supervisors are doing that. But I don't have a doubt in the world about the basic guidance. I definitely want to know more about the follow through and the monitoring. We will get back to you on that.

On the question of senior centers themselves and equally on pools or rec centers – we're going to look at each and everything in turn, but there are some real questions here about, again, how much are we going to compress society and where does it take us? For a lot of seniors, they have literally nowhere to go. So now if you take senior centers out of the equation and if you take, you know, potentially pools and rec centers out of the equation, you have just taken a whole lot of life away from people. We’ve got to make that decision very soberly. I worry about that. I worry about it for people’s overall health. And by the way, meanwhile, and this is something we've all talked about while we're dealing with coronavirus, what about everything else health wise? Someone who's not getting more exercise, someone who doesn't have a social life, the impact on mental health. We got to think about all of this.

But these, you know what – we're also not going to be reticent to close things we need to close. With senior centers, we have very strict protocols about no one is sick is allowed to come in obviously. But we're going to look at every piece of that equation to see if we want to go even deeper and those decisions will be made quickly.

Question: [Inaudible] I realized that the city's three public library systems, you do not control that, the City provides substantial funding to. So the New York Public Library decided to close their facilities this week, but the Queens and Brooklyn Public Libraries have remained open. I've heard from a lot of people that say that's very confusing. I wanted to know if you provide guidance to these libraries. Some people say it gives a mixed message because you're suggesting social distancing, but then keeping these facilities open while realizing that they are very important [inaudible] –

Mayor: The mixed messaging challenge is a constant. And, again, where do you draw the line? It’s something we're talking about daily. Is there a mixed message and telling our public servants who need to protect us and serve us that we need them at work, when we're also saying social distancing? Of course, these are challenges, right? If you want to do Italy – and I don't – you could shut down everything in sight and then you're still going to need a certain amount of public servants, but we're not there. We want to strike a balance and we're trying to discern that balance every day. We've definitely talked with the library systems. The library systems, again, play a crucial role for young people, for seniors. They can practice social distancing like any place else. They can make modifications. But I think there is a massive fallacy in this discussion. As you keep closing, what do 8.6 million people do?

And this is real world. We want our young people to be safe. I don't think anyone wants to see a bunch of young people outside getting into other types of danger. So now what are you going to take away from them? If you take away their schools and you take away their recreation centers and you take away their life, where are they going to go? What are they going to do and where do you strike that balance? As opposed to the qualitative, which I think is the real question right now. So it's fine – no one's happy we don't have sports or theaters or you know, a lot of those things, but we can at least acknowledge those are less vital to human life than a lot of these other institutions. Less daily, if you will, less basic. I'm sad those things are gone, but we can deal with it.

But we have to figure out where that balance is. So today I say to the library systems that stayed open, I think they did the right thing. But they're obviously doing a lot of measures to make the adjustments. And it's almost like the – your first question follows your second question. You know, we're going to put everything else that's still surviving up on the board every day and say, are we holding or are we making a change and how far are we retrenching? How far are we retreating and where's that point we should not go past?

Question: [Inaudible] about the libraries closing, did you express any concern about that?

Mayor: Yeah, I disagree with it. But they had made the decision without consultation with us, which was a mistake in my view.

Question: You said we're not Italy. Are you confident we're not going to be there in two weeks as some projections have suggested? And can people still really be going to bars and clubs and venues with half capacity? Is that a responsible thing to be doing right now?

Mayor: Again, daily reality. The Governor and I have talked about this and we’re going to keep talking about it. We are reserving our rights in an ever-changing situation to take any standard and intensify it, you know, to go to deeper closures, whatever it may be. One day, I'd love to be able to stand before you and say we're going to be able to open things back up again. I don't think that's anytime soon. And that sobriety is affecting my decision making. When I talked about openly the schools yesterday – you know, I don't think there is such thing as temporary closure. So, it's fair to say every day we're going to be evaluating and we're going to come up here with adjustments. Private institutions are going to make their own decisions. When we decided – the Governor and I had a deep conversation about this 50 percent concept, and we did it – and I've talked about this in the past, I'm going to use this to make a parallel. History shows us that in crisis relatively few people have a perfect, absolutely tried and true plan. A lot of times you have to take your best understanding and then implement it and see what works and what doesn't work in real conditions. I often refer to the New Deal, which a lot of us put on a pedestal today. Some of it worked perfectly and brilliantly and other pieces of it were absolute failures instantly, and those things were done away with, and we don't even remember their names in history. But I assure you, I've read the history, there was a bunch of initiatives that did not work and they got rid of. We're going to try this. We think the 50 percent could be helpful in this sense. People still have some employment. Businesses don't have to fail. And I assure you, a failing business today, a number of them will never come back, and I don't like that one bit. People still have some place to go, but with distancing. But we knew – I knew, I'm sure the Governor knew that just that very limitation would cause some places to choose to shut down, and lo and behold, we see that. There have been bars and restaurants and companies that say, if I'm at a 50 percent limitation, I'm stopping right now. That's their choice. But I am not ready today at this hour to say, let's have a city with no bars, no restaurants, no rec centers, no libraries. I'm not there. And we will make that judgment every hour of every day. The other thing too factor in – the Italy question. I don't think there's anyone who knows that answer perfectly, but I will tell you a couple of things I think are just plain fact. The trajectories, very different – they were in – they went from nothing to full blown crisis with extraordinary speed.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Excuse me?

Question: [Inaudible] you’ve only conducted 2,000 tests –

Mayor: Again, I think you can – I'm very comfortable. I'm very comfortable. It's not just about the test, it's about everything that happened there and the speed and ferocity with which it happened, the concentration of it, the way it spread. Look, we're talking about the United States of America – look at the pattern. It's not the same pattern as Italy. That's just a fact. Also, bluntly, with all due respect to their health care system and their government, they don't have the capacity across Italy that we have in New York City. There's no parallel. There's no place in Italy that has the capacity in New York City. That is a fact. That does not mean we're not very sobered by what happened there. But in other European countries – so, let's compare modern industrialized countries – there's no two countries that had the exact same experience. That's also a fact. So, I'm going to argue to you that I think the level of preparation here was entirely different and the follow-through has been entirely different, but that does not mean we don't look at that with extraordinary concern. And we're going to have a discussion today and make decisions and another one tomorrow and the next day for the duration.

Okay. Few more and then we'll be done.

Question: [Inaudible] go back in schools. Your worst-case scenario is coming up in April, with a forced 10-day closure of schools because of the Easter break, spring break. This is your worst-case scenario in that kids are out of school, they don't have libraries to go to, they’re in the park –

Mayor: They do have libraries to go to right now, but go on.

Question: They don't have the public library to go –

Mayor: Again, did you hear – respectfully, I'm not trying to mess with you, I'm trying to get accurate. You just heard your colleagues say that Queens and Brooklyn are open right now. I want to make sure we’re –

Question: [Inaudible] that kids are out of school with very little things to do. Is there a consideration that schools would be closed after that break? Is that a pilot you're looking at?

Mayor: I'm not doing projections because it's not responsible. I'm telling you where we are today and I'm also being as honest as I can be that that could change tomorrow or next week, because it's based on information every single day and that's just not about schools. That's about everything – everything. And we're going to be making, you know, big strategic decisions and when they're the kind that the City and State should make together, there has been a real commitment of both governments to make those decisions together. So, this is not something I'm going to project to you. I agree with you, the vacation comes with its own dynamics. I would also say that is different because it's something people have experienced every single year and are used to, as opposed to something that jolts the very fabric of the school system.

Okay. Anything else?

Question: A couple of questions – most New York households do not have cars and the President is setting up drive-through testing, as is the State. Is there a counterpart program for folks who don't have cars to be tested? And I have just another question –

Mayor: Yeah. I mean, I would say the notion to me is not just surely drive-through, but centers where people can be tested, whether it's drive-through or something else. But again, boy that would be nice if we could have the tests, right, on a really mass scale and could still prioritize. And I think I'm getting this right, doctors, that even the Westchester center is on a priority basis and a reservation basis. And that's where we would begin, by definition, until such time if we were so blessed as to have truly pervasive testing.

Question: [Inaudible] enforcing capacity as far as the restaurants? Are there spot checks?

Mayor: Yeah. That's – again, this is so brand new, but the goal will be to mobilize whatever appropriate agencies to start doing that kind of – just the same way we enforce everything else. I think we have something going for us right now, which is ubiquitous information. I'm sure there are people who want to get really, really close to their fellow New Yorker and are not heeding the warnings. But I think there's a whole lot of other people who are hearing this idea of social distancing and acting on it. I've had almost no one in the last 48 hours offer a handshake. Like, literally – it's amazing to me. I've been in contact with a whole lot of people and everyone's doing this, or they're doing this, or they’re doing something. I think rapidly people are understanding that I think a lot of stuff is just happening, so that's one part of it, but we do need to enforce and we do need to put a coherent mechanism in place. And I don't want to see a bar where everyone's crowded up next to each other and we have to step into that case. So, we'll have more how we're going to do that over these next few days.

Please –

Question: For the doctors, are you suspicious of the low rates among young people? Is that because they’re asymptomatic and they have it? Are you worried [inaudible] if they are symptomatic?

Mayor: If they are asymptomatic –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: This gets to the [inaudible] question, what we feel about spread when you are asymptomatic.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah. So, I have been asked that question before in these press conferences and I think I've been clear to say that while it may be theoretically possible for people to spread while asymptomatic, they're certainly not the reason why we're seeing an explosion of people with COVID-19. We've been very clear to say that when people are symptomatic with fever and a cough, fever and shortness of breath is when they are most likely to be transmitting. And that's why we've been so clear that we don't want to test the asymptomatic people, right, because we're going to get potentially false negatives. And that's been the emphasis from the beginning.

Question: I was wondering, you know, we've gotten so much information about New Rochelle and we’re able to consider this and hotspot. Is there anything more you can say about specific neighborhoods in New York City? Give us any kind of specific –

Mayor: No, and that's a good thing. I did the breakout yesterday. It's obviously widely distributed. But there’s not – and I'm checking the doctors, because, again, what we said yesterday at 7:00 pm may be different than what we say today at this hour. The only cluster that I have heard of in the New York metropolitan area is Westchester. So, God bless us all, and we'd like to keep it that way. Widespread is a challenge, clusters are at deeper challenge, and, so far, it's only Westchester. But ask me in an hour.

Question: Do we know of the cases, the proportion of which are unrelated to community spread –

Mayor: What does that mean?

Question: Like, the 83-year-old woman was an isolated case and maybe then there was a chain of people that were tested around her. Like, how many individual people –

Mayor: I’m going to try and reinterpret and see if we're on the same page. So, travel – let me just go back to the beginning. Travel has – it's not – I would argue it hasn't entirely left the building, but it's basically it's community spread. And as you get deep in community spread, you cannot trace the origins. Right? So, you trace the contacts whenever you can and you isolate the contacts.

Question: [Inaudible] how many people – are you tracing their contacts?

Mayor: Everybody that we talk about when they have a confirmed case, we're tracing the contacts. We're trying to keep up, there's a lot of work to do. But the goal is, you know, obviously when you get it, as quickly as possible, you're tracing the contacts.

Question: [Inaudible] one of those is a case of community spread across the city.

Mayor: Again, I think – I'm really working with you, I think there's a definitional problem. And I'm going to try and the doctors are raring to get in.

[Laughter]

Unless you have – let me try this, doctors, you'll be my panel and experts – unless you have proof of a travel nexus, it is community spread, or you got it from someone already had it, but overwhelmingly they got it from community spread. So, it's almost like immaterial at this point. It's, all we need to know is – if someone has it, then we need to do the follow up. Is that a fair – simple – simple-ish – you can modify. You can add. You're allowed to add.

[Laughter]

Question: [Inaudible] presumably, some are husbands and wives, sons and daughters of people that were treated. How many unconnected cases are we talking about?

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: I got you –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: But you can't do the back tracing. But yeah, in essence –

Mayor: [Inaudible] I’m sorry [inaudible] what do you mean, you can’t do the back tracing?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: So, by definition, when we are investigating an outbreak, it is – we have clearer lines of transmission when we have fewer people who are affected. And so, I think the cleanest example is with measles. Because it's a reportable condition, you know, when the measles outbreak happened it was because we had someone who came in from the outside where clusters were happening internationally. An astute clinician alerted us to the fact and we were able to in essence jump on that, right, and track down – this person had dinner with that person, went to the store with that person. And given the transmissibility, meaning that it's got like a 90 percent attack rate, we have a pretty good idea of who was where, when, and who was at risk. The challenge with something like COVID-19, especially as you get more community transmission, is that, because of the fact that the travel nexus now is pretty much irrelevant, meaning, it doesn't matter if you've been to China, doesn't matter if you've been to Italy, it doesn't matter where you've been because it's in over 80 countries around the world, and because of the fact that we're having transmission from other places in the state, other places in the United States, that web, if you will, that family tree of the outbreak gets ever more complicated and so you can't trace back. And so, that's why as this outbreak matures, the work of the disease detectives then becomes even more important for those individuals that are very sick in the hospital. And that's where, you know, we're going to start seeing a pivot to focus on those that are very sick and especially protecting our health care workers.

Mayor: I don't want there to be gray about sort of back and forward. So, what I'm trying to define clearly is when you have communities spread, where it came from, where in someone's life they may have made that contact is less pertinent. But we still, whenever humanly possible, want to know who might be most vulnerable we need to follow up on. That is still true. Now, volume is going to be a giant challenge, to the point Dr. Barbot made, and there's obviously cases that you have, you know, greater concern and lesser concern depending on the specifics, but I just want to sort of say wherever an individual got it along the way is less important than who they came in contact with who might be now vulnerable that we need to connect with.

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: I think you said it all, but just to add – if you remember, at the beginning, we could trace the contacts back to the cluster in New Rochelle, because that became such a big hub that we could talk about the lawyer and some of the family and all of that. The way it looks right now is much more spread and we are constantly looking for any information that could lead to a cluster, which is what we want to avoid at all costs, because we don't want to have the situation that New Rochelle is having by just the explosion in one cluster.

Mayor: Last call and we are going to close down.

Question: Where’s the fire house in Brooklyn?

Mayor: We’re not saying the specific. Again, we're doing still some work on details and notifications. So, Brooklyn, details TBA, open again at six.

Thanks, everyone.

2020-03-15 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Let's get our team in in here. Okay. So, everyone knows on Thursday, I declared a state of emergency in New York City. At the time, I said this situation was going to get more difficult. It is quite clear – thank you – it is quite clear that this crisis is growing intensely. I spent much of the day with our public health team going over a variety of projections, going over information from the experiences of other parts of the world and details of what we've seen here in New York City. I am very, very concerned that we see a rapid spread of this disease and it is time to take more dramatic measures and I will tell you that the issue that's been on everyone's mind is our public schools. I was a public-school parent for the entire education of my children, pre-K through 12th grade for both of them. I know just how much our parents depend on our public schools. I know right now there are so many parents who do not necessarily have any other place for their children. There are so many parents who depend on our schools for meals for their children. There's so many public servants we depend on, our first responders, transit workers, health care workers who need their kids to be in school. So, for everyone who is wondering why this has been such a difficult decision, it’s because I know the full cost of shutting our schools, I know all of the negative ramifications of this decision and it's very painful. It's going to be very difficult for a lot of families.

And so, this is a decision that I have taken with no joy whatsoever, with a lot of pain, honestly, because it's something I could not in a million years have imagined having to do. But we are dealing with a challenge and a crisis that we have never seen in our lifetimes and is only just begun. So, I regret to have to announce that as of tomorrow, our public schools will be closed. In other words, to all parents who are hearing this now, there was no school tomorrow and we will be suspending our public schools until after the spring vacation. And I'm going to say this very precisely. We will make a first attempt to restart our schools on Monday, April 20th but I have to be honest that we're dealing with a lot of unknowns and a lot of challenges and we understand how difficult it will be to achieve that goal. But just so everyone has something to organize their thinking around. Our first attempt to reopen the public schools would be on Monday, April 20th. I have been very honest about the fact that there is a real possibility that by closing our schools now we may not have the opportunity to reopen them in this full school year. So, we may actually have to go out for the whole school year, which is just extraordinarily painful for our kids, for our parents, for our educators, for so many people. And the notion of a school year being disrupted in this fashion, I have no words for how horrible it is, but it has become necessary.

You're going to hear from the Chancellor in a moment and we're going to talk about the things we're going to do immediately to compensate for the loss of our public schools. And we will put a number of measures in place and we hope that they are effective and they help, but they will not by any stretch replace the full value of having our kids in school all day, and that’s just an honest statement.

The challenge, and I've said this as recently as this morning and again – I believe the facts unfortunately have given us no other choice, but there's three things that we have been trying to protect. Most importantly, our public health system, our hospital system, our clinics, everywhere that people go for health care and two things that feed that system, our public transit system and of course our schools. Now that we will not have our normal school schedule, kids in our normal school buildings, we are going to come up with a number of alternatives to try to as much as possible, still provide our kids with an education remotely and to provide a physical location for the children of those crucial public workers, those health care workers, transit workers, first responders. Those locations will be in various places around the five boroughs. We hope between the remote learning and the specialized sites for the children of essential workers that we can keep enough going to support our health care system, but it will not be easy. So starting tomorrow morning, again, as of now, school is canceled for tomorrow, canceled to at minimum Monday, April 20th, at maximum the entire 2019-2020 school year.

Remote learning will begin on Monday, March 23rd a week from tomorrow. Our colleagues in the Department of Education have in these last weeks been setting up a remote learning system. It has never been attempted by the City of New York on this scale to say the least, but they have been working on a wartime footing to prepare it. It will be up and running for children in grades K to 12 Monday, March 23rd, in a week. It is a system that will improve with each week and we'll certainly take time to make it as strong as it could be and needs to be. But it will begin and we'll be effective starting Monday, March 23rd. Over the next few days, teachers will be trained how to teach remotely. Again, this is going to be a kind of battlefield training. These are not ideal conditions. We're going to have to teach these teachers very quickly. And this is a point where I can say to all our educators, we need you. We need you. These children need you. These families need you. For so many of our educators, there'll be an opportunity to take the tools of your profession and use them in a new way to reach a lot of kids who are going to be dealing with really, really tough circumstances. Keep their education going, help those seniors to still graduate. We don't want to lose that.

For those teachers who will be a part of our learning centers for the children of essential workers, your work will not only be crucial in terms of supporting our children and their education. You will literally be in a position to help form the backbone of the system we need to keep our health care workers at their post. We cannot lose our health care workers; we cannot lose our health care facilities. So we need to make sure those children are taken care of so our health care workers feel the ability to be where we need them most. And we're going to be asking a lot of everyone in the health care field, long hours, tough conditions. So supporting their children becomes absolutely crucial.

Over the next five days, our school locations will be open for one function specifically related to kids, which will be grab-and-go meals on a transitional basis. So that is only for this coming week. At least it'll give some ability for families that need it to have that assurance. But again, these are not for kids to stay in the building, not to eat the meals in the building, to come to the building, get the meals, and take them home for any kids who need them. We're going to be doing a lot of work in the coming days on how to make sure food is readily available for kids at various locations around the city and in the days and weeks going forward. But we have more work to do on that front.

We will be working to supply technology for every child that needs it. This is, again the Chancellor's been very honest about this, an imperfect situation. We have a lot of kids of course who did not have a computer at home, a lot of kids who don't have connectivity. We're going to do our best to supply as much as we can to help those kids.

So, I'm going to give you some other updates and then we'll turn to the Chancellor, but to say the least, this is a very troubling moment. A moment where I am just distraught having to take this action. But I became convinced over the course of today there was no other choice. And now I'll tell you the overall numbers of cases and I think it makes part of the argument clearer.

Number of cases is obviously moving rapidly. Confirmed cases at this hour and that could change literally in a matter of hours, from New York City, we now have a number of confirmed cases for coronavirus of 329. And I'll remind you when we started this week with several dozen cases, we're now at 329.

A borough breakdown from numbers earlier in the day. They will not add up to 329 but it'll give you a flavor of the breakdown. 78 cases in Queens, 72 cases in Manhattan, 53 cases in Brooklyn, 21 cases in the Bronx and 16 cases in Staten Island. Yes, indeed. 78 cases in Queens, 72 cases in Manhattan, 53 cases in Brooklyn, 21 cases in the Bronx, 16 cases in Staten Island – that is ever changing. One of the worst things I have to tell you now is we are now at five total deaths in New York City. Again, it's recently as Friday afternoon. There were none. It's now five. You all know about the 82-year-old woman from Brooklyn who suffered from emphysema then was hospitalized related to coronavirus. We lost her. Now four more deaths reported related to coronavirus, a 79-year-old woman who did have preexisting conditions of heart failure and lung disease, a 78-year-old man who had multiple preexisting conditions, a 56-year-old man who had diabetes and a 53-year-old woman who had diabetes and heart disease. We feel horrible for these families. We grieve with them, they're in our thoughts and prayers and it is a reminder to everyone of how vulnerable that part of our population is that is older and has those preexisting conditions, we must protect them. Another reminder, anyone in your life who meets that standard, we have to isolate them from anyone who might be sick, even if it's their loved ones.

A number of other specific actions. I will tomorrow sign an executive order requiring all hospitals in New York City to cancel elective surgery in the coming days. This is one of the powers that exists under the state of emergency. We will work to word this specifically to allow the flexibility because some hospitals can continue over a period of a few days to close out some existing elective surgeries. Not all of them have to go to zero instantly, but they will all have to go to zero on elective surgeries soon. So that will be codified as an executive order and that will be a requirement of all hospitals. Obviously, our public health system is ready to do that immediately. We see several of our voluntary hospitals have started down that path, but everyone needs to do it is, it's absolutely that time. And even if a hospital at this moment does not have a demand related to coronavirus that requires in their eyes the cancellation of elective surgeries, that day is coming very, very soon. And we just have to make this a standard across the board.

We are canceling the special election for Queens Borough President that was scheduled for March 24th. Details will be provided soon on potential options for holding that election later. And other ways we might be able to approach that election. But we did not have those details yet. But there's been a lot of concern raised about the election day and the, all of the experiences, particularly the poll workers would have to have to make this work. And as we have seen more and more challenges, you know, this is another one is very painful, honestly, in a democratic society, the canceling of an election is such a rarity. It should be avoided at all costs. But in this case with the nature of this crisis, I've come to the decision that it's necessary.

We will be closing our senior centers, ending all programming there with the exception of activities related to food. We will turn them into feeding centers, again, focused on grab-and-go, meaning pickup of meals for those seniors for whom that works. They'll all primarily be locations for preparing and delivering meals to seniors’ homes. So instead of being a place for seniors to go to eat meals in the senior center, they'll become a dispensary to get quality meals out to seniors, whether it's by delivery or by pickup, but we will no longer have any programming in our senior centers.

Tonight, in all five boroughs. The FDNY, the New York City Sheriff's Office and the Department of Business will be cracking down on businesses that are not abiding by the 50% occupancy rule. In the first day there was warnings given, there was an attempt to educate, but now given the nature of the crisis, it's time for violations to be written. Those violations come with penalties and we are asking all businesses and that obviously largely means restaurants, bars, all businesses that have a number of people coming in and can become crowded. We can't afford those crowded spaces anymore. So, stay to the 50 percent level or you will be penalized. If you cannot make your business viable at the 50 percent level, we understand. We wish there was something we could do otherwise. And any business that feels they have to close the result, we understand that, we are not any more happy than you are. We'll try and be helpful in any way we can, but we cannot have bars and restaurants at over 50 percent capacity.

I will also say we are going to take a look at even going farther related to bars and restaurants. We have not made that decision yet. There've been a series of meetings today at City Hall and OEM. There's going to be more meetings this evening on additional topics, so in terms of the future of bars and restaurants, that is an ongoing discussion that will continue this evening.

There's also a discussion that will be solidified this evening on programs related to young people. I want to say very frankly, at the same time we are closing schools, I am tremendously concerned about what's going to happen with young people out in our communities without enough positive options, particularly teenagers, but we cannot have large congregations of young people in small spaces. One of the things we're going to be looking at is as the weather's getting warmer, can we convert some programming to outside? Is that an option that would allow us to continue some youth programming? That's something we're going to try and determine this evening.

Just finishing a few points and then to the Chancellor. The federal government – some progress, I don't want to say a little, there's been some real progress over the last few days. It’s nowhere near what we need. We still need more FDA approval for more companies to do the automated testing. We still need the Senate to pass the stimulus and then we'll need additional stimulus thereafter. Although there's been serious progress last few days on support for working people and a safety net as a strong beginning, but it's nowhere near what people are going to need for a crisis of this magnitude. So, we have to see more.

I am particularly concerned about medical supplies and all supplies needed in this city, but particularly medical supplies: ventilators, masks, face guard, sanitizer, everything that not only are we going to need in huge quantities, but Washington State will need, California will need, every part of this country that experiences this crisis right now. We've asked repeatedly and have no indication for the federal government that there has been an effort to in-effect nationalize the production process, meaning to ensure that these companies and factories that produce these goods are on a 24/7 basis until this crisis is over and that the goods are being distributed where they're needed most. This is a wartime approach. It is well known in the history of the country. We have not seen any efforts so far by the federal government in a meaningful way to do it and meanwhile this crisis is bearing down on us. We must have a consistent supply of these particularly crucial goods and we cannot guarantee that at this moment.

I'm going to emphasize something that Dr. Barbot said and in the Q-and- A, I'm sure she'll get into it further. In light of the growing number of cases, amending the guidance for the vast majority of people and Dr. Barbot can get into any exceptions or specifics, but for people who get sick with those symptoms, those what we would think were normally the seasonal kind of cold and flu-like symptoms: stay home, do not go to work. If your child is sick, do not send your child to any kind of program. Stay home. We're saying now three or four days is the timeframe to see the direction of the disease. If you're getting better, great. If you're not getting better at that point, then that's the time to call the doctor and discuss next steps. But remember, we are now going to be in a situation where our health care system is going to be increasingly stressed. We need people to recognize who will be the priority. Obviously, we've already said it, the folks who are in most danger, we have to protect first. Folks who may not be in any danger at all, we're going to ask them to wait and then if they need to get care, that makes sense, but first to wait and see it develop.

Before just a couple of words in Spanish and the Chancellor, look, I'll conclude with this. We've never been through anything like this. We're all trying to make sense of it. I've talked to so many New Yorkers. Everyone is confused. Everyone is in pain. Everyone feels like we're dealing with the great unknown because we are dealing with a great unknown. The only way we get through it is by supporting each other. The only way we get through it is by people actually following through on the information they're receiving and then backing each other up, supporting each other, looking out for each other. There's no other way. We got to take this more and more seriously with every passing day. It's tough. It's tough to get out of the patterns that we've lived our whole lives in, but something's changed and it's not going back. So I ask you, all New Yorkers, there's no place on earth where people are stronger, tougher, more resilient, and more compassionate. There is no place on earth better than New York City. We're going to need to show that right now. Everyone, step up. Look out for the people in your life because they're going to need you. A few words in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, one person I want to speak now is our Schools Chancellor, and then we'll open up to questions. Chancellor Richard Carranza –

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a very sobering day for all of us and as the Mayor has been very clear from day-one, as circumstances continue to evolve, so does this city's response to the COVID-19 situation. And the situation continues to evolve. We've been monitoring this closely day by day, hour by hour, some cases minute by minute. And this weekend as the Mayor has announced, we've taken the sobering look at what is happening in our city, the rise in cases across the city and quite frankly, the sustainability of continuing public education in our school buildings for the time being in the way that we have educated children for years. So, the Mayor and I had been clear that any changes to the current model would be an extreme measure and a decision we considered the last resort. We are at the last resort.

So as a Mayor has announced effective tomorrow, school will not be in session in the traditional way that we've become accustomed to. Students come to school, parents drop students off, teachers, administrators, custodial staff, everybody comes to school. We want you to think of tomorrow as a snow day. So, everybody stays back. Our, and I want to thank Henry Garrido and his union members because our food and nutrition workers are going to come to their schools and they will be available to distribute in a grab-and-go methodology, breakfast and lunch for our students. So, for this next week you can go to your school, you won't go in, but you can grab food if you need the food.

So, on Monday, all school-based personnel will stay home. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week, we are asking our principals and our teachers to come to school. We will practice social distancing, of course, but it's going to be critical because we are going to be distributing, training, giving guidance on what the remote learning will look like over the next four weeks. What will be critical as well is that resources that teachers have, there'll be an opportunity for teachers to upload those resources as well. So, it's going to be important that for the next three days our teachers and principals are in school buildings. Students will not be in our school buildings. And then Friday will be another day of training for those who need it, virtually. As the Mayor has announced, on Monday the 23rd, we will launch into remote learning across the city. We feel confident that students will be able to continue to engage academically. It belies any logic to say it will be the same thing as a student in a classroom with the teacher.

But I have tremendous, tremendous faith in the teachers of New York City and the administrators of New York City, and I know that if there's any school system that can launch into remote learning on a moment's notice like we're about to do, it is the New York City Department of Education. I'm going to ask all parents, if you have not yet done so, please sign up for the New York City Schools Account. This is going to be critically important as we push information out, but also important for you to get resources to be able to support your students remote learning needs. We are pushing through all of our social media accounts, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera, and I will be amplifying that, the exact way of signing up for a New York Schools Account. It's not difficult but it's going to be critical. Additional guidance on what this will look like, all of the details, and the who, and the what, and the where, will be forthcoming over the course of this this week and in the coming weeks as well.

Also, on March 23rd, we will be opening several dozen regional enrichment centers across the city, in all of our boroughs, to serve the children of our city's first responders, including health care workers and to serve our most vulnerable student populations. That Monday we will also launch remote learning for grades K-12 and those resources if you want to preview, are available on our school – on our website as we speak. I also want to be clear about a few things and amplify what the Mayor has said. Breakfast and lunch will be available for any student who wants it. Starting tomorrow through April 8th, the first day of spring recess. We will also be in close communication regarding technology pickup locations for regional enrichment centers in the coming days. As I have mentioned in response to questions, we understand that there are students that may not have devices. We understand that there are students and families that may not have Wi-Fi connection at home. We are working with a number of partners. We estimate about 300,000 of our students are in need of devices. We have partners that has stepped up. The City of New York has stepped up and we believe we can actually get devices into the hands of our students who need them. We're going to also prioritize our students living in temporary housing, our students that are living in poverty, and students that do not have access to those resources.

As a Mayor has mentioned, this has been a very sobering 48 hours for both of us. We believe in strongly believe the best place for a child is in a school house with a well-trained, caring teacher. We know that our teachers believe their place is in a school house caring for their children. And as a teacher, I can tell you my kids were my kids. We're going to ask teachers to continue with that philosophy. They're still your students. You're just going to be helping them a little remotely now, we want to share families also that we're working to make this as a seamless of a transition as possible. We're not lowering our expectations. We're just changing the delivery of instruction. And we know that with our dedicated, and I would say passionate staff, our school staff, our teachers, custodians, administrators, and especially our school food workers who are going to continue to work during this time. We know that we will be serving our 1.1 million students. This is a time as the Mayor has said for us to be together as New Yorkers. Not physically, but philosophically. For sure. A few words in Spanish.

[Chancellor Carranza speaks in Spanish]

Mr. Mayor, I turn it back over to you, sir.

Mayor: Thank you, Chancellor. Okay. Questions? Yeah.

Question: Can you say more about enforcing the 50 percent capacity. Your people at the agencies are – when that's going to start? What the fines are? And maybe St. Patrick is upon us. How are you going to enforce this –

Mayor: It's – I mean, obviously look, this – to state the obvious, all of this has been painful. You know, St. Patrick's parade, something that's been around over 200 years, shutting down our school system for who knows how long this is. This is just painful, painful stuff. The fact is though, we have to enforce these rules, so it will be FDNY, it will be Department of Buildings, it will be the sheriff. The initial, as I understand it, the first violation is a fine of $400 and I’m going to confirm that and then it escalates with any future violation. Also, the authority in question will ensure, on the spot, that the audience if you will in the establishment is brought down to 50 percent. So they will not leave until they're under 50 percent, right then and there.

And again, this is a beginning. We announced this policy in accordance and agreement with the State. We have given people the chance to acclimate to it. They've been given warnings. Now the enforcement begins in earnest. If folks do not comply, we will just keep ramping up penalties. But we're also going to assess the bigger situation, as I said, with bars and restaurants, it may be necessary to go farther soon. And that's something we'll start to a conversation on in just a few hours.

Question: If someone is being intransigent, can there be arrests?

Mayor: Of course. I mean, this is, this is an emergency and anyone who was intransigent in the middle of a pandemic deserves to be arrested.

Question: Mr. Mayor, if you'll indulge me a couple of questions -

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: [Inaudible] you've said if you stick to staying home, what if you're not feeling symptoms? We know that asymptomatic people can have – share the virus. It's not clear to people – what are they – what do you do if you're not feeling sick? Do you also stay home?

Mayor: So, I'm going to start and pass to the health care experts. One, let's just as a good – very fair question, but I want to not negate the sort of the pillars of the guidance we're giving. If you do feel sick, stay home. You don't need to try and figure out what category it falls in. If you feel sick, stay home and your kids are sick, stay home. If you're sick, don't get with older relatives or sick relatives. Okay. And then I'm going to try and the doctors will jump in if they don't like anything they hear and they'll jump in anyway. What we see is transmission, certainly primarily coming from symptomatic people. Simple reason, I think you've told me Dr. Barbot, because it's symptomatic. People who are sneezing, who are coughing, it is through droplets. So, something has to happen. And that's much, much more likely to happen with symptomatic people. That does not negate your question. It just says the odds are really much more in favor of transmission from symptomatic people. Is that too laymen? Okay, come on up.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So, I want to broaden the response a little bit because we're talking about social distancing, which means creating physical distance between individuals. But I want to just sort of hit home the point that the Mayor and Chancellor Carranza have been saying in terms of while we may be asking New Yorkers to distance themselves physically, we're asking them to come together emotionally. This is a sober time for the city and it's an opportunity for New Yorkers to do as they have done historically and help one another. And so while it may be theoretically possible for someone who is asymptomatic to transmit the virus, there really is no indication that the asymptomatic people are responsible for this explosion worldwide. And that's why it's so important for people who are symptomatic to stay home. Every day we are learning more about how this virus behaves. And initially we took – we gave New Yorkers the advice to stay home for 24 to 48 hours. We're now learning more that in reality we've been saying 80 percent will have a mild course that's bearing itself out here in New York City and we feel comfortable saying if you're not better in three or four days, but you're not getting worse, than this is the time not to go to the doctors. Maybe you call them, but by all means, if you are not getting better, that's who we want to make sure reaches out to your doctor, gets access to care, because we're not asking people to stay home and suffer. We're just asking them to spend a little bit more time recuperating and if you're getting better than stay on that trajectory if you're not getting better than seek care.

Question: That’s interested, but if you are not sick should you stay home?

Commissioner Barbot: Well, in this situation, yeah. That's the reason why we're closing the schools. That's the reason why we're telling people not to go to work if they can telecommute, because we want people to have more distance from each other. Not because we think that asymptomatic people are spreading the virus, but because we want to reduce the number of New Yorkers that get infected, and as importantly, if not more importantly, we want to reduce the number of New Yorkers who are at risk for bad health outcomes such as needing to end up in the hospital, in the ICU, or God forbid dying because of this. And it's a real reality. And so it's incumbent on all of us to play our part and stay home.

Mayor: Let me amplify one piece. If you can stay home, and that's a crucial, I mean, again, this is why this school's decision is so painful. I know there are many parents who right now are scrambling trying to figure out what to do. I mean, obviously everyone's been paying attention and known that we were dealing with an incredibly difficult situation. But you know, there are some people in this town, if they are still going to work, they could bring their child to work. There are plenty of people in this town that that would never be allowed and there are a lot of people who still need a paycheck. Now, something has changed the last few days and I'm sure we will get questions along the way as sort of how thinking evolves, how strategy evolves.

I will say that Friday signified – Friday night really – signified a change because we were far from certain the federal government was going to get into a serious relief effort because it's been so slow and because of obvious partisan and philosophical issues in the Congress. The bill that passed the House was very substantial relief. It's shocking to me the Senate didn't stick around. I don't understand that for the life of me, but we presume they're going to pass it tomorrow. And Senator Schumer has said he believes there will be another package immediately behind it. That at least gives us a little more assurance that folks who now can't go to work anymore, will have some support. But that's not enough at this moment. I mean, you're hopeful it will come, but right now there's a lot of people who just can't yet say to themselves, I’m just not working. You know, they literally have bills to pay. They literally can't take the risk. So if you don't have to go to work, don't go to work. If you're sick, don't go to work. If you can telecommute, telecommute at minimum, if you can stagger hours away from rush hour, do obviously rush hour is getting reduced all the time, but do.

But I also want to be real about the fact there's a number of people who do have to go to work, including the ones we are requiring because of their call to duty to go to work. And they are doing an amazing job. Our health care workers, our first responders, our transit workers, and obviously we're going to need our educators in a different way now. So it's not as simple as like everyone can totally 100 percent stay home at this moment. But anyone who has the ability to should, and I'll give you one more and then I got to give to others.

Question: But this is all just following up on my first –

Mayor: Yeah, I'm sorry. You'll get another chance after one more. One more and then we're going to everyone else.

Question: Criminal justice system, right?

Mayor: Right.

Question: Rikers Island, the courts, if school's going to be closed. What about all the people in our jail?

Mayor: The folks in our jails are in our jails right now with a lot of specific precautions. There's definitely distancing initiatives going on. Very careful checks on health care. We'll have more to say on that. That's one of the areas that's going to come up next on the agenda, but I'm very concerned about it. But that doesn't mean we don't need a functioning jail system.

Question: One of your concerns in not closing schools last week was that not like you closed the school these kids are just going to stay in their house.

Mayor: Correct.

Question: You said they were going to gather –

Mayor: Yup.

Question: What can you do to stop that?

Mayor: We can't.

Question: How do you convince young people then you're not making a big deal out of –

Mayor: It’s – I'm not going to lie to my fellow New Yorkers. We're not going to convince teenagers to not gather if they're out of school for weeks on end. We are going to try and maximize distance learning, which the better we can make it and the more cooperation we get from parents who again, are going through amazing stress right now. You know, parents are going through so much at this moment, we're going to ask them to help us. And obviously Richard, jump in if you wish. The parents and family members, guardians, help us get kids connected to the distance learning and keep them connected.

But we have no illusion. We do not have the same control we have in a school building. We just don't. And I was very blunt about it. If you, you know, we're talking about initially weeks, it could be months. Anyone who believes those kids are patiently going to sit in their room, in their apartment and never go outside, just has never met a teenager. They eventually, whether it's during school hours or after school or weekends, they're going to go seek out their friends. They're going to create their social networks. There's going to be possibly a transmission. I'm sure. I think it's a factual statement. It's probably a better reality and being in a school building in some ways, but it's not pristine. And then we will have to have some kids in those learning centers for the children of our first responders, et cetera. So this is not a perfect equation. It's a very imperfect equation, but it became necessary. And we'll do, of course, we're going to do our best, if we see - all of our police officers and other public servants see congregations of young people, we're going to obviously try and reduce that space that out. If we see any nefarious activity, that's where the police will come in. But it's going to be a tremendous challenge when you're talk about so many kids in such a big city.

Question: Can I ask a couple questions if I have a chance to like –

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: A few things, [inaudible] really short. The first one is what’s the details about what socially remote learning might look like for parents that have no clue what that's going to mean. And the second thing is, you know, a lot of fifth eighth graders are waiting for their acceptance letters from middle schools and high schools, will the closure impact this for them.

Chancellor Carranza: So remote learning is exactly what it says. You're learning remotely from your home or wherever alternate location you are. So it looks – it's going to look different in different places. We currently have on our website, New York City Department of Education website, about 10 days’ worth of from K-12 of materials and assignments and activities that by grade level parents can access. Now again, we're flying the plane as we're building the plane. So the next steps are to translate those materials into a number of languages that's happening actively as we speak. But we know this is going to go beyond 10 days. So part of bringing our educators back on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, is to going to be to capture and populate that website and that platform with additional resources. We also know that there are a great number of our schools that already utilize Google platform, Google classroom.

So we're going to – and part of the training that'll happen these next few days – is schools that don't currently have a presence on Google classroom, they will get trained on how to use it, which allows teachers and to in a virtual way submit assignments to push information out. There's going to be a number of third-party partners that we have in our school system that already provide additional supplementary types of activities. So, all of those things will continue to be how we continue to build this remote learning platform for parents and for students, which is why it's really critical that we have all of our families on – signed up for that New York City Schools Accounts that they can get that information. This is going to continue to evolve over the course of the next few days, next few weeks. And we're committed to being very, very transparent about what's available and what's new. And I've got to tell you, I have tremendous, tremendous faith in the teachers that are in New York City who I've seen do some incredibly innovative things already. We want to capture that as well, so that's available to other students and families.

Your second question was about admissions letters. You know, we'll get back to you on that. I don't see why that's going to be affecting students because the central offices, we're going to continue to work. So, I don't see what that would be delayed, but we'll confirm that for you.

Question: On the national level, the top infectious disease expert is calling for – he wants a 14-day national shutdown. Do you think you're going to see a 14-day city shut down? What would happen?

Mayor: We're going to be making day to day, hour to hour decisions. I mean, right now this crisis is getting a lot worse very quickly. And we have been, as I said over the course of this day analyzing a whole lot more information and trying to assess where it's going. And it's certainly very, very sobering. So, I'm not ruling anything out, but the – I think the smart thing for New Yorkers to recognize, we’re going to make each announcement the second is ready. But I don't want to project something until we're sure, but everything, literally every option is on the table right now. Yeah.

Question: How do you protect these workers? I mean, I've talked to so many workers who are servers, you know, are in the service industry or [inaudible] workers and you know, they – some of them can apply for unemployment because they're not full time or you know, there's just no safety net for them when they're getting laid off because they're not eating at the restaurants. Have you been in talks with Senator Schumer, [inaudible], the State? I mean, there states, California now, Ohio, Illinois are shutting down bars and restaurants now. It's probably inevitable that that's going to happen. So what protections are going to be there –

Mayor: Senator Schumer and I have definitely talked about what needs to be in the next stimulus bill and this is exactly the kind of thing we've talked about. That it has to go much deeper into the workforce and provide a lot more income replacement for a lot longer. Look, this is the great unknown. We haven't seen something – I think doctors, you'll agree – we haven't seen something like this in the United States of America since the 1918. So, literally over a century. We're in a whole different reality than 1918. Thank God. We do have a lot of advantages compared to them. But on the other hand, we're dealing with the great unknown. We’re literally dealing with a disease that they still don't know entirely how it works. There's no cure, there's no vaccine.

So, we've got to recognize the sheer magnitude. But even though that's the, the only parallel you can find to this pandemic and the experience in America, there is a positive example of helping people in crisis across the board. And we actually lived it and a lot of people are walking around today who are part of it, and it was called the New Deal. It actually happened. Where the federal government determined that it would, in that instance, employ people outright and provide every conceivable form of financial support and it saved this country. This is a different situation physically, right? You know, you've got – you obviously have to make sure people get through the immediate crisis, but this is a crisis that will end. One of the things we talked about today is the fact that over time this disease will reach its high point and then we'll start to recede. It will end, but the financial, the economic, the human impact has only just begun and it will go long past the point where we say the immediate crisis with a disease is over. The federal government has the power to address that, to borrow some of the tools of the New Deal and use them in our time and they have the power to get ahead of the medical crisis by ensuring that the supplies we need are there. We are all talking about ventilators. We're here in the biggest thing in country. We, right now, are an Island. If we don't get help from the federal government to get those ventilators that we need going forward, we will simply run out. Right now, we have a strong supply and we're looking for any more we can get. But there's going to be a point where if we don't get help from the federal government, if we don't get help from the military, we will simply run out. There's still time to fix that.

Yeah?

Question: [Inaudible] The first is for Chancellor Carranza [inaudible] from home? Are they – are kids expected to be in front of a computer, you know, normal school hours? Are they going to get grades? Is attendance going to be taken? How much will it be like regular school?

Chancellor Carranza: It's not going to be like regular school. I mean, that's impossible to create those conditions, again, which is why I said it's going to look different in different places with different teachers, different subject areas, different grade levels, et cetera. What we want to be able to do is provide as much flexibility for our teachers and for our students to continue to be engaged intellectually over the course of however long this is going to last. I would ask people to think about what happens in the summer, and there's a term that we use called summer slide where you're not actively engaged and you start, you know, you start regressing a little bit on your skillset. No one would ever say that summer school is exactly like the traditional school year, but what it does is it prevents that summer slide. What we're trying to say is, instead of saying, we're not going to be in session for four weeks and figure it out, do what you’ve got do, we want to be able to provide resources and support. And our teachers are still working, they're just not working in the building. And provide the infrastructure so teachers can continue to connect with students, students can continue to connect with teachers. I would not be surprised – all the details about what's that going to look like will become much more clear after we have our teachers kind of weigh in with us.

Question: [Inaudible] you believe that it’s only theoretical that there [inaudible] asymptomatic transmission? Dr. Burke's at the White House said – I'll read the quote – “You don't want to say that the risk is low. We don't know how low the numbers are for people who are asymptomatic.” So, can you reconcile, you know, what you believe [inaudible] said yesterday?

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah. I believe what I said was that it is theoretically possible for someone who's asymptomatic to shed the virus, but they're not accounting for the explosion that we're seeing. It's the symptomatic people that are accounting for the spread, not just in the city, but worldwide.

Question: On the bars and restaurants, at last count, there were something like 27,000 restaurants in New York City. How much enforcement do you think can get done here? As an addendum, why isn't the NYPD helping with that?

Mayor: Oh, they will. This is literally – so, this is a policy that came out Thursday, with initial applicability data Friday, with explicit decision to educate and warn for the first 24 hours, and now enforcement will begin in earnest and NYPD will absolutely be a part of it. It's a huge task. Now, I think there are a lot of bar and restaurant owners and employees who have gotten the memo here because they see what we're all seeing nonstop who are not taking it lightly. I have definitely heard reports of bars and restaurants that have spaced out their tables and are doing the right thing. I think there are others that have simply closed because they didn't think they could keep going. I believe as enforcement ramps up and word spreads that it's serious, that will help lock things down further. But again, we have bigger decisions to make soon. But I don't think it's one way or another. I think, for sure, there's some places that are going to try not to do it, but there's a lot of places I think take it seriously.

Question: I have two questions. One is about the ferries. Observers are saying that the ferries are not being [inaudible] –

Mayor: Do you mean Staten Island or NYC Ferry?

Question: NYC Ferry –

Mayor: We’ll find out.

Question: Also, are you guys going to ramp up service since there is like an outdoor option on a ferry rather than [inaudible] like a subway or bus?

Mayor: Excellent question. On the first one, I'll check the cleaning schedule. I know EDC takes this very seriously and they're very efficient. On the second one – that's a very good point. And obviously the weather is supporting us now. I mean, we're literally on the verge of a formal spring and it's getting warmer. But I don't have an answer for you at this hour. It’s something we can come back to you on.

Question: [Inaudible] Cuomo this morning was talking about state [inaudible] closed stores in one state, people will come to New York from New Jersey and vice versa. So, Hoboken has enacted a curfew from 10:00 pm till 5:00 am are we worried at all that a lot of those people [inaudible] will come over?

Mayor: Thirsty Hoboken’ers – is that the category? Yeah. I don't know. I think, right now, we are going through such an intense, fast transformation, I think a lot of people are recognizing the dangers and so I don't expect people traveling long distances. I expect a lot of people to get their libations and go home. But that's just me thinking common sense. I think it becomes an interesting question as this all develops. But, right now, I'm not sure that those actions going to have a big impact on us.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Everything is on the table. Curfew is one of the emergency powers I have under the state of emergency. We have not made that decision, but everything's on the table.

Question: Mr. Mayor, one quick question and then a follow-up. With respect to the schools and teachers going into this new learning platform, some have already messaged us and said, is there a way for us to learn virtually ourselves – this virtual platform – so we're not exposed to other people? Just how would you address those concerns?

Mayor: It's a fair concern, but I think the reality is not as well as they need to. I mean, we've been talking about this – it’s a very fair question. We obviously worked it through. This is – again, this is a battlefield condition. We're asking people in three days to prepare to teach in an entirely different manner. I think in terms of the sheer efficacy and, you know, putting materials in their hand and one thing the other, we're going to be a much better shape coming into the building. But, of course, we're going to distance people and be respectful of that need. And there's no kids there, so it's a very different environment. And anyone who's sick of course should not come. Going forward, we'll do our best to keep updating virtually, but I think it's just an honest reality to teach people, many of whom will be the first time they've done it, it's hard to do all of that virtually. And, Richard, I'm just trying to summarize from our conversation. Right. Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] you know, you were the mayor after Sandy, but you were the mayor during Ebola. Obviously, the idea of an infectious disease or virus in this city is not a new one. Was there not a plan in place ahead of time to say, okay, if we were in a situation like this, how do we shut down the schools to address the understandable concerns you've raised over the last week or so, which is lunches and then health care or essential workers not having [inaudible] –

Mayor: There's OEM – the Office of Emergency Management for a living does that kind of planning. Each agency has their version of that planning. But you have to be honest about the fact that it's very theoretical until you deal with the real thing. In the last weeks, all of that planning has advanced intensely in each agency. We would not be able to tell you that on Monday, March 23rd, we were going to have distance learning from 1 million kids if a lot of work had not been done already. We wouldn't be able to tell you we are going to be able to do, you know, tomorrow morning grab and go meals, breakfast and lunch if work had not been done. The same with the ability to set up alternative learning sites by Monday, the 23rd for the essential workers’ kids. So, there's a lot of planning. There's also a lot of concern that all of these things are so different than what we normally do, it will take time to get it to be as good as we want it to be and it will never be as good as everyone being in a classroom. That's just the truth.

Question: Mayor, can you describe your conversations with 1199 and what prompted the change of your position to close schools?

Mayor: My –

Question: What prompted your choice to close schools?

Mayor: Well, those are two very different topics. Let me, let me start with the bigger one. Look, it is – it kind of goes against everything I believe to take a decision that I know will have so many negative ramifications and I don't think I've sugarcoated them in any of these conversations over the last few days. You know, I was a public-school parent, I was a school board member. I mean, the notion of our public schools being closed, not for weeks, but potentially for months, and what's that's going to do to kids, the notion of a lot of kids unsupervised, the health and safety problems that come with that. I mean, I could go on and on. I have delineated it. It just was a very painful, difficult decision, but it became clear to me as we went through the projections that it was just necessary, as bad as the – in other words, you're now baking in a lot of negative impact, a lot of damage that's going to be done. But the threat was growing so intensely that we had to accept it. And it's – I think it's kind of rare that you sort of – you make a lot of decisions in this work, but where it's you know you're doing something that will cause so much harm, but unfortunately it's like a sacrifice that has to be done for a greater good. And we have never seen anything like this disease. Yeah, I went through Ebola. I went through a lot of things, never seen anything like this. So, it was really seeing the latest models – they're still being perfected, but just seeing where we were at this point, talking through the ramifications, and obviously appreciating that the DOE has been working constantly on these last days to try and get a fallback ready and they felt confident in the last 24 hours that they could provide a quality option. I needed to hear that. That was not so clear days ago, but it was clear this weekend. And the federal stimulus was also a part of my thinking. I thought a couple of days back to – you know, three, four days ago that there was a question of the panic it might induce. There's a question of the way it would have an impact on people's livelihoods if people couldn't go to work. But that now has changed. I mean, so many people increasingly can't go to work anyway and there's finally some federal support coming in and some safety net being built. So, that gave me at least a little solace that we had some more room to maneuver. Vis-a-vis 1199 – I mean, it's a union I think very, very highly, worked closely with over decades. We are depending on their members. They are crucial to the battle ahead. They're the health care workers that will keep our hospitals, our clinics going. You know, a few days ago they worry – they were tremendously worried about no school for their kids and then I think they looked at other factors and they came back and said they had changed their minds. They have every right to that, but that was not part of the decision. The decision was based on all the other things I said.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No. I respect them. I spoke with George Gresham, I really respect him, but, no, this was many, many layers and many, many other factors that were really about a million kids and their families. That's how the decision was made. Okay. We're almost done. Let me see if there's anything else. Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] foster care and other social service organizations sent you a letter expressing concern about mandatory face-to-face visits [inaudible] compromise people's health. What kind of guidance are you giving them and what should they all be doing?

Mayor: It's very fair question and this is exactly the next level of things we're going to start to deal with. Some of the questions that come up here – our Correction system, Social Services youth programs – we're going to start one by one dealing with each of those. Someone – I can't even remember which day is which anymore, Andrew, I think you'll forgive me, but I think it was Friday, someone called in to WNYC about in-person interviews for food stamps or for public assistance. We want to try and weed out everything we can weed out, anything that doesn't have to have to be in person really urgently we don't want to put people in that situation and we got to move quickly. On the other hand, we have to get people support. So, on that previous question about the food stamps and public assistance, we can't see that collapse. The foster kids are depending on us. We have to make sure we have a way of supporting them. But as much – doing as many things virtually as possible, streamlining as little a gathering as possible, that's what we're going to be working on.

Question: [Inaudible] I want to really getting some clarity because I don't have it and I don't think the folks and home have it –

Mayor: What don’t you have? You’re talking about the disease or the clarity?

Question: [Inaudible] not symptomatic –

[Laughter]

Question: I get you're saying don't go to work and if you can [inaudible] but what about all the other stuff? Having dinner with people going to a restaurant –

Mayor: If you’re not symptomatic?

Question: If you’re not symptomatic [inaudible] –

Mayor: So, let me – I'm going to start and I'll let the health care professionals jump in. I'm a human being. I respect that doctors have the perspective, that, sort of, pure medical perspective. It's just like the question earlier, what are teenagers going to do? I know what teenagers are going to do. I had teenagers. I know what – I was a teenager, you know?

Question: [Inaudible] follow the best practice?

Mayor: Right. And so, what I'm saying is, of course we want people to just continue to reduce what they do out in the world to as little as possible. If they don't need to go to work, don't go to work. If you don't need to go out and go to events or gatherings or need to go to a restaurant, the less the better. On the other hand, I'm trying to be real and, again, the doctors can come in and be tougher, but I'm trying to be real about the fact that some people, you know, may be seeing that long lost friend or relative is so important to them, you know, even if it's brief – I don't want to suggest we're at the point of saying literally no one can go outside. We may say that very, very soon. I think we're saying, avoid anything unnecessary. Just be really judicious about it, especially if you’re sick, stay home, and if someone else is sick, don’t go near them. So, I'm not telling you, you can never do anything fun. I am telling people, you know, reduce everything you can reduce. Now, again, doctors, you want to bring down a hammer, go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: I think we've been clear, and thank you for the opportunity to make it even clearer, that there isn't a situation where there is zero risk, unless someone is going to be hermetically sealing themselves in their apartment, given that we have community-wide transmission, there's no place that's going to be zero risk. What we want New Yorkers to do is to be smart, to be vigilant and to be diligent about the recommendations that we've made, which include consistent, thorough handwashing. If you're not near a water source to use alcohol-based hand sanitizer – you know, there can't be a press conference that goes by that I don't say that.

Mayor: [Inaudible] clearly does not know how to say hand sanitizer without saying alcohol-based [inaudible] –

[Laughter]

Commissioner Barbot: And that on top of that, you know, covering your mouth and your nose when you cough or sneeze. That, you need to be vigilant about developing symptoms such as fever and a cough, fever and shortness of breath. And that all of these preventive measures in and of themselves doing them in isolation isn't going to provide the maximal support, that all of these interventions together layered on top of one of each other are intended to not only help individuals lower their risk but also lower their risk to their neighbors, to their families, to their communities. And so, you know, this drastic step that we're taking in terms of closing the schools is sort of the ultimate in terms of that preventive measure.

Question: You said this morning you are not yet at the point of saying you want to shut down completely everything non-essential [inaudible]?

Mayor: We are – so, I respect to anyone who calls for anything, and I'd say to them, try being the person who has to make the decision and be accountable to 8.6 million people to get it right. The human ramification of each decision is being factored in very carefully. The viability of each decision – you know, the sort of big distance between theory and practice, trying to make sure what we decide is real and viable. We had to, in the last 24 hours, really get all of us into a point where we were certain based on the numbers, based on projections, based on other countries’ experiences that we needed to take these very radical steps right now. We're taking them instantly. There's definitely more coming, but we have to account for each – for example, in decision on of schools, and I been plaguing people throughout the week on this, all those other factors that I've talked about, all those negatives that come with closing the schools, I have been asking everyone to answer those as best they can and show me how they can mitigate at least some of the impact. I think the DOE did a great job. I think that between Monday and now, people like Chancellor Carranza and our Chief Operating Officer, Ursulina Ramirez – you know, they have not slept much and they have been forcing everyone to figure out alternatives in a whole new way. So, it's really been a you know, a mobilization, if you will. And I think the answer's got better about how we can address some of these situations. But everything – this is the honest blanket statement – you tell me a thing that might be used and I'm telling you it's on the table, and the second we're ready to use it, we’re going to tell you.

Question: Mr. Mayor, who ultimately came up with the decision? Was it yourself or –

Mayor: On the schools?

Question: Yes.

Mayor: That's me – mayoral accountability for education – obviously, working constantly with the Chancellor.

Question: In regards to the grab and go meals, is that all schools?

Mayor: Yes. Confirming all schools for five days only.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Tomorrow. What time, Ursulina?

Chief Operating Officer Ursulina Ramirez, Department of Education: [Inaudible] starting tomorrow, anyone 18 or under can show up to get a meal.

Mayor: And do you know the exact time they’ll start?

Chief Operating Officer Ramirez: When school starts, so 7:30.

Mayor: Depending on each school start time, okay. Yes.

Question: [Inaudible] police going to be breaking up groups of teenagers who were in assembly.

Mayor: What I said – again, let's be careful not to overstate it. So, if you've got a bunch of teenagers hanging out and really close up against each other, what our officers should do is go and say, hey, guys, you know, what's going on with coronavirus, spread out. That kind of thing. And that's important to get – in fact, what our officers do with neighborhood policing all the time is talk to young people. So, it's go in there, remind them what social distancing looks like, tell people spread out, be a little more careful, that kind of thing.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: We're going to – let's try the power of communication and persuasion. I think everyone knows what time it is.

Question: You've alluded several times and there are still ongoing discussions about the future of bars and restaurants –

Mayor: You’re very interested in bars and restaurants, I wonder if this is professional or otherwise –

[Laughter]

Really getting a feeling you have a more-than-professional interest here.

[Laughter]

Question: Would you say it's only a matter of time until we see more drastic –

Mayor: I'm not going to – again, I'm real clear, everything's on the table. The next set of decisions we're going to start in a matter of hours. We may have announcements tonight, we may have announcements tomorrow. Everything is on the table. If you love your neighborhood bar, go there now – under 50 percent occupancy because we don't know what the future holds. But be only there very briefly and socially distant, go ahead.

Question: This is for the Chancellor. One of kind of – be more specific about what we're doing to get hardware into the hands of kids who don't have the hardware to do distance learning. And then also the other question was since public schools are sometimes the first line of defense against child abuse, what does the child protection agency – like do you have any plans for ramping up resources for kids?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, so I'll do the top lines and I'm going to ask our Chief Operating Officer to give some specifics. So we've surveyed and part of the next four days is also to get more concrete data as to who has connectivity, who does not have connectivity. We're working on a figure of about 300,000 of our students currently may not have those devices. So we need to verify that as well. We are working with some really large companies. Apple has really stepped up to the plate. I'll let Ursulina talk a little bit specifically about the numbers. T-Mobile has also stepped up. Verizon has also stepped up, Google has stepped up. So our big partners are really stepping up to help us make this a reality. In regards to the second question – absolutely, I'm working very closely with my fellow commissioners. We're in a whole different environment now. So we're working very closely about how do we continue to monitor, how do we continue to have a pulse, what are the escalation protocols? We'll have more details as we solidify those as well. But I'm going to ask our Chief Operating Officer to give a little more specificity on the device and connectivity question.

Chief Operating Officer Ramirez: Thank you so much, sir. So, we are working diligently with our private partners around devices. As the Chancellor mentioned, we've surveyed our principals to ask about what kind of devices our students have and what kind of connectivity that they think that they have. So as the Chancellor mentioned, we're working with Apple to supply 300,000 iPads to our students and we will be working on a distribution method over the next week. We are also working, as he mentioned, with T-Mobile to make sure that those devices are activated and students can use internet on those. In addition, we're working with other partners, as he mentioned, Verizon, Spectrum, and a host of people who have really stepped up to want to support our students. So, I thank them for that. So, you'll be hearing more from us over the next week around how we're going to be distributing those devices and what our expectations are for the devices.

Question: [Inaudible]

Chief Ramirez: We are purchasing the devices, the Apple devices. But obviously they're working with us on reasonable costs for the system.

Chancellor Carranza: So, I also want to just – yeah, just want to add to what Ms. Ramirez just said. So obviously we're purchasing them. We're not giving them away. So, they're being assigned to students to use. Obviously, they belong to the Department of Education, but we want students to have the devices that they need and serv – you know, mind because you've said we all wear the same uniform during this particular situation. I want to thank and give a shout out to our controller, Scott Stringer, who moved heaven and earth to allow us to be able purchase these in record time. And it's that kind of cooperation that makes a real time response possible.

Mayor: [Inaudible] that question over here. We'll do a few more and then we're done because we got a lot more to work on tonight. You had a question about child welfare?

Question: I did. Just how are we making sure that the children of physical abuse are safe as far as the burden of reducing the number of face-to-face visits and things like that, and if you don't have kids going in schools like [inaudible] are we handing out. Is there [inaudible] –

Mayor: There's usually – I mean I've worked on these issues a lot over the years. There's a lot of different nexus points out in the community historically where there are adults watching out for that kind of problem. Obviously, police are watching out for that kind of problem, health care professionals, a whole host of – and obviously some of that will continue. I think you're right that there's less information flowing if schools are not in session. But we have to figure out if there's some kind of information we want to get out or some kind of special effort. The work of child protection is one of those critical elements of what we do. It's very similar to what police or fire do in my book, different kinds of work, professionally, different kinds of skills, but in terms of protecting people's lives. So, we need that work to continue, but it will be a different approach going forward. Okay. Few more and I got to get out of here. Hold on, hold on. Dudes. I am pointing at people, let it happen.

Question: Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I have a question for Chancellor and I was hoping you can elaborate a little [inaudible] component. I know DOE has nine [inaudible] what about parents whose language is not nine top languages [inaudible] about parents whose languages don't fall within those?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, so more, more guidance will be coming more information. We're literally building the plane and flying it right now. So, we are – we do have a whole team that's translating materials. Language translation in and of itself, we take very seriously on our website as well.

Mayor: We'll update which languages it is as we know along. Yes?

Question: Is the City doing anything to prepare for potential unrest –

Mayor: Unrest?

Question: Yeah, it's a very stressful time. What is the NYPD doing –

Mayor: The NYPD has that concept in its planning, I think, perennially, I don't see the context for that right now, but the point is that's the kind of thing NYPD is more than able to plan for in general. Yep.

Question: Super quick. One thing is – any thoughts on suspending alternate side parking. And do you have –

Mayor: We're looking at that. We are not there, but we're looking at it.

Question: I just want to verify if you were just joking about the neighborhood bar thing and just –

Mayor: I am allowed to joke still it’s – because again guys, I know we're in a crisis, but I'm still a human being. It was my way of saying I cannot guarantee if bars and restaurants are still going to be open in a few days. That's all I'm saying.

Question: I wanted to clarify that and I just want – it feels like you guys are stopping short of telling people who aren’t sick or aren't displaying symptoms to stay home and cut out non-essential –

Mayor: We're trying to be clear about, yes, cut out anything non-essential. That does not mean that people are not going to exercise their judgment if something is particularly precious to them or important. We still understand human beings are human beings, but I'll tell you something, I appreciate the precision of your question, but if people would just do the basics, we would be in a much stronger position. So, if every single New Yorker did not go to work or anywhere if they're sick, did not send our kid anywhere if there was sick, did not visit anyone else if they were sick, and did not do anything that they don't have to do in terms of their day to day life, like if they can telecommute, instead of going into the office telecommute – if we get those basics right, we're going to be a much stronger position. I am not yet at a draconian, perfect place of saying you cannot leave your door. I would like people to keep it to a minimum.

All right. Thanks, everyone.

2020-03-17 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Okay. As everyone understands, we are in an ever-changing situation. I have no example I can offer you of another situation where, for such a long period of time, we have seen just constant, constant changes. It seems to me we're in the middle of meetings and discussions and, you know, the world is different even in the middle of one meeting than where it started, on a regular basis. And this is going to be going on for quite a while. So, this is really uncharted territory.

What we're trying to do, of course, is constantly consult with people, have the best information and perspective and coordinate across a very, very broad spectrum of agencies while simultaneously working with folks at the national level, state level, regional level, et cetera. Yesterday – I said this this morning – I had the opportunity to speak directly to Dr. Anthony Fauci who I think everyone would agree has been one of the truly coherent voices on the national stage in this crisis, and obviously someone we honor for decades of serving this country effectively. So, I consider him one of the ultimate voices of truth. I also have to say as a New Yorker and a Brooklynite, I'm very, very proud of him and what he has done for this country and what he's doing right now. And we talked about the decision to close schools and then we talked about the things that have to happen next. And he strongly advised the actions related to the bars and restaurants. And then we took those actions later last evening. But also, we got into a conversation about how to guide people in their day to day lives in the crisis that will be with us for weeks and months. And I said to Dr. Fauci, we all agree that those over 50, with serious pre-existing conditions are the people overwhelmingly in danger here. These are the folks that, God forbid we might lose.

I said, what else would you say to guide people beyond that extraordinary danger that those individuals face, how do we create an understanding of people of who is in danger, and who has to take even more precautions? And he said that it's not over 50, healthy, but the area where he starts to get concerned just on an age level is over 70. So, I hope this is a helpful additional piece of information in terms of people trying to make sense of how to live and approach a crisis like this. And we'll certainly talk more about the details in the Q-and-A and my health colleagues will jump in when they come over, but over 50, pre-existing serious conditions – diabetes, lung disease, heart disease, cancer, compromised immune system. Those individuals are in the greatest danger by far. The people in your life, your family, your friends, your coworkers, the people you worship with in, those categories, your neighbors, those are the people we have to go – all of us – out of our way to protect, not let anyone sick near them, make sure they are staying in to the maximum extent possible. If they need food, and the only way they can get it is to go out themselves, let's see if one of us can get it for them. Someone in their life can get them food or get their prescriptions.

We're going to work as a City to try and figure out some bigger systems to make sure people get what they need. But everyone understands that this is an extraordinarily fast-moving crisis and we don't have that capacity today. But we do have New Yorkers, we have New Yorkers' heart and soul and conscience. We have New Yorkers' resilience and strength. You can help your fellow New Yorker. So please, for folks in that category, over 50, pre-existing major conditions, help them not have to go outside, help them get the things that they most need in any way you can. But again, the further guidance from Dr. Fauci, if you're over 70, even if you're healthy, even if you don't have one of those pre-existing conditions, exercise additional caution, don't go out unless you need to. Keep it to the essentials, limit your contact with other people. Everyone's going to have to interpret that for themselves. Obviously, it's a free country, but we are asking people to really be cautious and conservative in the way you interpret this reality if you're in one of those categories that's particularly endangered.

Now yesterday, everyone knows I was very, very troubled to have to close our schools. Our goal again is to reopen April 20 but I've been very honest that that is a goal that will be very difficult to achieve. What I want to clarify, because in some of the covers today, there still seemed to be some gray on this point – remote learning begins Monday, March 23rd. Distance learning, definite, starting Monday. I want to thank all of our leadership at the DOE who's making this happen with lightning speed. I want to thank our educators who are stepping up to meet this challenge. I especially want to thank four groups of workers who are the unsung heroes today, who today are at the front-line helping kids in those schools that are providing the breakfast and lunches on a to-go basis.

Want to thank our school custodians including those from Local 891, our school cleaners including those from Local 32BJ, our school food workers including those from DC37, and the firemen who keep – and this is meaning the folks who run these systems in the building, the fireman who keep the boilers and systems running, including those from Local 94. All of you, I want to thank you all for what you're doing, for your commitment to your city, to your fellow New Yorkers, and to the children of our city. Thank you. Because you're allowing all of them to have food they need today.

So there's a number of actions we're taking today, some of which were announced last night, others of which are new, all contained in an executive order. I'm going to summarize very broadly. Obviously, it will be made public immediately. But the business closures related to restaurants, bars, cafes – now adding other businesses consistent with the State's actions and we are obviously staying in close contact with the State and agree with the actions that the state has taken. The postponing of elective surgeries. And again, that is both in our public hospitals and in our voluntary hospitals. And we've set a 96-hour window for all of those to be shut down, obviously with the allowable exception of something that is life and death or something that it goes from optional to mandatory because of the nature of the health condition of the individual.

Because we need to avoid public gatherings to the maximum extent possible, we're suspending for the time being City Council hearings. We're suspending ULURP rules in terms of the land use process. That means that anything that was going to go through the land use process will simply be frozen in place. It does not mean there'll be an alternative decision making. It means that that application will just have to hold until we are able to get back to normal.

We are suspending visits to inmates at Department of Corrections facilities. And that starts Wednesday officially. But my understanding is there are no visits scheduled for today or tomorrow. So that effectively means there will be no visits from this point on. Obviously we're going to encourage alternatives, more phone calls, potentially video conferencing, et cetera.

We are suspending procurement rules to allow for faster procurement.

And as I noted yesterday, we are officially canceling the special election for borough president in Queens. So, all of this is included in the executive order, which I will now sign.

[Mayor de Blasio signs Executive Order]

This executive order takes effect immediately. As you heard – and again, we're in agreement with the State on all these actions – speeding up the closing on the restaurants, bars, cafes to 8:00 pm tonight. And again, they will be able to be open going forward for takeout and delivery under certain hours, conditions. Other businesses that will be closed – movie theaters, other types of theaters, museums, and cultural centers, concert venues, nightclubs, and commercial gyms. Obviously, we continue to say to all private business that it is crucial to allow telecommuting wherever humanly possible. So that is something we want to continue to emphasize. We've gotten a lot of cooperation from the business community. We want that to be as deep as possible. Anybody who can telecommute, should.

I also want to note there are a host of public recreation centers, youth programs, afterschool programs. These are all going to be shut down for inside activities. We are trying right now to determine if we can re-engineer some of those programs for outdoor activities with appropriate social distancing. Very, very concerned about our young people and what's going to happen to them over weeks and months, potentially. I think they have to have some kind of outlet, some kind of recreation. We're trying to see if we can figure out a model for doing that outdoors with proper supervision and proper social distancing, but we do not have that locked down now.

To working people in the city, and obviously to business owners, including small business owners. Everyone is immediately hurting very deeply. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of confusion. Immediately, we are seeing working people with much less money in their pockets and tremendous fear about what's going to happen next. There should be at least a little sense of relief that the House of Representatives acted on Friday, but it is not enough. We need more. Obviously, need action on a consistent, ongoing basis from the federal government and we will be fighting for that and working closely with our federal delegation, our senators, and our Congress members to achieve a much greater stimulus and relief package that really allows people the comfort of knowing that they will have some continuity in their lives. They'll be able to afford the basics no matter what their employment situation. They'll be able to stay in their homes and afford food, medicine, all the basics. We have to achieve that, we can only achieve that with federal support.

This is going to be very, very tough for all of us. There's no question about it. There's going to be a lot of sacrifice here, a lot of pain. I hate to say it, but it's true. Lives will continue to be lost. Our job is to try to help people in every way, reduce to the maximum extent possible, the number of lives that will be lost in this crisis. Help people get through it and help people get back on their feet, make sure people are getting the right information so they can make the right choices. And this is something that will evolve and change probably pretty much every hour of every day. And we will be constantly giving you updates. The overall numbers are sobering. As of this hour, and everyone knows that these numbers can change at any moment -- as of this hour, 463 confirmed cases in New York City.

The borough breakout again lags behind — it has not yet been fully cross referenced with the newest number which is that 463 number is from 11:00 am, so we do not have an exact cross-reference. The last best information we have from earlier this morning based on a smaller number of cases was here's the borough breakout — 118 in Queens, 111 in Manhattan, 62 in Brooklyn, 34 in the Bronx, 19 in Staten Island.

I am very, very sorry to say that we now have two additional deaths, or a total of seven people have passed away. The first is a 56-year-old man from the Bronx who worked as an investigator for the City government. This is something we are feeling all personally. One of our own, one of our colleagues in public service has been lost. Investigator for the Department of Correction. We have checked the log books for his work in recent days and to the best knowledge he did not visit the inside of a jail facility. He worked with one fellow employee closely. That individual has been – is self-quarantined. So, to our Department of Correction colleague who we've lost, our condolences to his family. Our hearts are with them. Our prayers are with them and we will do all we can to help them in this incredibly difficult time. We've also lost an 89-year-old man who returned from Italy about a week ago. And we grieve also with his family and loved ones as well. We see consistently that have keep losing people overwhelmingly in those same categories of those who are older, particularly much older, and those who are vulnerable because of preexisting disease.

Now what we are going to do to expand our capacity. We understand that this curve is moving rapidly. We're going to have to radically expand our health care facilities in New York City and capacity. Again, this is going to be a war basis in New York City. I do not believe the United States government is on a wartime basis right now, I think is painfully evident. If they were, we would already have immense support from federal agencies on the ground right now. I do see a beginning of federal support, but nowhere near what it should be at this point. So, we will do it ourselves to the maximum extent possible. And I've ordered all my colleagues to identify all spaces that can be converted immediately to medical use. We're going to start with those that are most obvious, that already are engaged in health care and either being underutilized or not utilized, and then we're going to go much farther. So, I think you have to think of this in a wartime worldview. You have to think of this as something where you're going to see a massive mobilization to save lives, to help people through their suffering with this disease. A lot of people who are hospitalized, the vast majority of people who are hospitalized will survive, but they'll go through a very difficult experience. Again, basically the numbers keep holding. About 80 percent of everyone who gets this disease does not require hospitalization, has a fairly mild experience. 20 percent have a much more serious experience. Overwhelmingly those folks need hospitalization. Ones who end up with the most serious problems in the ICU. And there is the category where we see ourselves losing people, particularly among the older folks with the preexisting conditions. What that says to us with this kind of steep increase in the number of cases is we're going to need massive medical capacity on a scale we've never seen in the history of New York City before.

So, we are going to be constantly building out medical facilities and creating them where they've never existed before and retrofitting facilities that have nothing to do with health care. We will turn them into hospitals so long as we can get the equipment and the personnel, we will keep building our capacity to meet the demand. We've had a lot of conversations internally about how we're going to achieve this. The personnel are the single most crucial element. Thank God we're in a city with a vast amount, number of health care personnel, but still nowhere near what we might eventually need. So, we're going to find many ways to take people who are in other appropriate parts of the health profession, help them maximize their ability to serve. Look for folks who may have retired recently who could come back. Students who could be appropriately credentialed to be brought in.

I predict and this, if it continues to be a situation where our area and others like Washington State are disproportionately suffering in the context of the whole nation, that we're going to ask the federal government to send in health care workers from other places to help. Clearly, we're going to ask for the military's medical units to come in, which are very effective. And that's a substantial amount of military personnel. We're going to need all of that to get through this and we'll have more to say on it as we go along.

Facilities that we are immediately bringing online and this is a combination of some public facilities, some private that we will in this instance, working with their owners. We will put them into public service and obviously we will compensate for it. And we're going to work the same with the voluntary hospitals to maximize their capacity. But I can report four new facilities, being brought online immediately – the Coler facility on Roosevelt Island, an H + H facility that was empty. It is being immediately brought back online. 350 beds. It will be ready in approximately a week's time. There is a recently built nursing home in Brooklyn that had not yet been occupied and again, we'll get you more details as the announcements are ready and final notifications and confirmations are achieved, but this is very likely coming online in the next two weeks. 600 beds. The Westchester Square Hospital in the Bronx has an available approximately 150 beds. And we believe again likely to come online in the next two weeks or so. The North Central Bronx Hospital, part of H + H, has two floors that are vacant with 120 beds. This will be activated immediately within a week's time or so. That gives us somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200, 1,300 beds that we can immediately say will be activated.

Then when it comes to existing Health + Hospitals facilities and voluntary hospital facilities, a three prong strategy - discharging patients on an expedited basis, obviously in a manner that is still healthy and appropriate, canceling the elective surgeries as is ordered in my executive order under our state of emergency, and building additional capacity within hospital buildings. The example Dr. Katz gave, turning a cafeteria into an ICU, turning a parking lot into an ICU with a tent. Those three strategies between our existing Health + Hospitals hospitals and the voluntary hospitals we believe will net us an additional 7,000 new usable beds. Meaning new because they will be available for the cause of fighting coronavirus. So, with that estimate, 7,000 beds capacity plus the 1,300 almost that we will bring into play from the other four new locations. That will take us to 8,200-8,300 and then we're going to keep going rapidly from there.

But this will be a race against time to create these facilities to get them up and running, to find the personnel and the equipment we need. We have no choice but to expand rapidly and be ready for anything. It would be - I think that my colleagues in health care would agree much better that the facilities are up and ready too early than too late. In terms of space for any individual who needs to isolate or quarantine and or for city workers who we need to keep in that kind of location rather than sending them home, we're getting additional hotel space immediately. We have identified and are acquiring space in five smaller hotels that will amount to 250 hotel rooms, but we'll be building out from that rapidly.

In terms of tents for medical use, the kinds of tents that could be used to set up a medical facility or an ICU, our Emergency Management team has already acquired 11 such temps with another 10 to 20 coming in the coming days and they're working out the distribution of those tents between public and private facilities.

We now have as a result of the President's state of emergency. Again, the real time here, everyone, is just staggering. We had the President's state of emergency just a few days ago, the Congressional vote, the House vote just a few days ago. Everything is really moving fast. But when the President signed the state of emergency that put FEMA into play. And this is crucial, we need FEMA to be part of the solution. Our Commissioner for Emergency Management, Deanne Criswell, was a former senior official at FEMA, understands exactly what capacity and resources they bring. So, this is a very important dynamic to have FEMA involved and they have immediately gotten to work with us. We will be standing up five drive through testing facilities across New York City, and again thank you to FEMA for working with our Office of Emergency Management and our Health Department to do that.

Just some other items I mentioned in our correction system that we will be suspending visits. I want to emphasize this is also the kind of decision that should never be made lightly for those who are incarcerated, it's something they will be lacking and missing greatly. We will come up with alternatives as I said, more phone calls, hopefully video conferencing, but it was absolutely necessary to protect the health of all those who are incarcerated and obviously very importantly our correction officers who we are depending on greatly at this moment. They have a very tough job, their job is crucial. We need to protect their health and wellbeing. That was a driving factor as well in making that decision.

We are announcing a new emergency rule from our Department of Consumer Worker Protection. I mentioned a few days ago specific actions that were being taken to delineate products that were becoming scarce and to institute anti-price gouging measures. We are taking a much deeper step now, an emergency rule banning price gouging on supplies needed to treat or prevent coronavirus. I'm going to list them for you. And so for all the folks out there who sell these items, we are deadly serious. You need to not only not price gouge, you need to understand you have an obligation to your fellow New Yorkers to make sure that people can get these crucial supplies. It is not time for profiteering. It is time to be a good citizen and help your fellow New Yorker. The items are thermometers, sanitizing wipes and or baby wipes, paper towels, latex gloves, face masks, fever reducers, cough suppressants, zinc oxide supplements, facial tissue, toilet paper, rubbing alcohol and Aloe Vera. And apparently, I did not know this, rubbing alcohol and Aloe Vera can be mixed together to create a version of hand sanitizer. So those two make the list. Retailers cannot increase the price of these items by more than 10 percent. That is the rule. And every time there was a violation, there'll be a $350 fine per instance. And that means it can add up very, very quickly if someone is violating that rule.

Turns to the supply chain. We have been studying carefully. I've asked our Emergency Management Commissioner to constantly reassess the supply chain and update me at this moment. The good news is on food and basic household goods that you would find in a supermarket, there has been actually a very intensive resupply in recent days. That's the good news. The bad news is stuff is being snapped up really, really quickly. I remind people we are going to work to ensure that the supply chain remains strong. We need our federal government to do that in a way that's far beyond what we can do. But while this is all proceeding, we need our fellow New Yorkers to look out for each other. If you're someone who's bought a lot of everything, God bless you. But if there's someone in your life, someone older, someone with one of those preexisting conditions, someone who has a disability that keeps them from getting out and getting supplies they need, either help them by getting what they need for them or share your supply enough to help them out. I know we are in a society where people have been taught too much just to look out for themselves. We're going to enter an entirely different human reality and societal reality. We're going into something that people in this generation have not experienced before, but in previous generations they knew way too well and everyone's going to have to figure out how to work together and share. So, if you have an overabundance and you see someone who doesn't have anything, please help them out.

A few other points. One related to that, we're very concerned about isolated New Yorkers, for the folks who have to stay home because they're vulnerable, for the folks who are in isolation for medical reasons, we want to help them out and communicate constantly with them. And this is whether it's someone who is a confirmed patient with coronavirus or just experiencing sickness but not yet confirmed, and certainly for folks who have to be very, very careful and stay in to the maximum extent. We are going to create what is being called an isolation app. Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications has put this together. It will be up quickly. We'll provide guidance and nine languages. It will ask if individuals need anything and they'll get real time responses and also will give us good information on what challenges people are facing, where we're having particular problems across the city, et cetera. Finishing up obviously now with the action on the restaurants, bars, cafes that serve food. A crucial issue will be food deliveries. I got the question out of the day whether we would suspend enforcement on e-Bikes in terms of deliveries. The answer is yes. We are suspending that enforcement for the duration of this crisis.

Okay. Few more things and then we will start to take your questions. We're going to all of us up here, especially the health professionals, we're going to repeat ourselves a lot over the next weeks and probably months, so let's begin with the most important point, which is stay home as much as you can. That guidance might get a lot sharper at any point. I have been asked repeatedly, are we considering travel restrictions? Are we considering curfews? We are considering everything is the answer. Every option, every tool is on the table. We will decide in turn when we want to employ each, but right now the answer is simple. Stay home to the maximum extent possible. Protect yourself, protect your family. In general, the simple rule is when in doubt, stay home. If you're not sure you should do something, stay home. We're going to talk about some things that if you're healthy are still appropriate to do like getting food and medicine, but again, the simple guidance to all New Yorkers is if you're not sure you need to do it, stay home. If you have any option, then you don't have to go out, stay home. Limit your time outside your home or your apartment. When you go out, be mindful of social distancing and try and distance as best you can. Those are some very simple rules.

For folks who are sick, it's a stronger of stay home, stay home, don't even think about going out.
Try as best you can to get the people in your life to get that food for you, get those medicines for you, obviously there'll be deliveries. Do not accidentally put someone else in harm's way. If you must go out, if you're someone who is sick and there is literally no other way to get food or medicine, you can't find anyone else who will do it for you. You must go out. You should be out for as little time as possible. You should keep your distance. You should help people around you to know to keep their distance.

If you are sick with the symptoms, again, I keep using simple layman's terms. The doctors will always feel free to improve upon them but cold and flu like symptoms. Our guidance has changed the last few days. We are saying stay home for three to four days. If you're getting better after that time, that's fantastic. Stay home until you're well. If you're not getting better, call your doctor and act accordingly. Crucial piece of information. Do not go - now that this crisis has advanced, do not go to the emergency room unless it is actually an emergency. If you are in a absolute dangerous situation health wise right now, that's what the emergency room is still for. Otherwise, if you're just worried that you might be getting sick, I want to tell you more and more what you're going to see in emergency rooms. You're seeing it now all over the country as you will see officials of that healthcare facility outside screening and turning away people who do not need emergency care. So, the better way to do this is to not go in unless you absolutely have to. We cannot overwhelm our healthcare facilities. We have to make sure the folks who need help the most are getting the care.

Finally, just try and give some examples for the many, many New Yorkers who are not in those particularly vulnerable categories. You're not over 50 with the serious preexisting conditions. You're not over 70 and you're a healthy New Yorker and you're trying to figure out what to do. So, when in doubt you still stay home. But we understand that people need to stay healthy. We understand that people under any circumstance, if they have the ability to get a little fresh air and exercise, that's actually quite important to their health. We understand that people need groceries, they need medicines. In these instances, it's okay to take a walk, but practice social distancing. It's okay to go jogging, but practice social distancing. It's okay to walk your dog, but practice social distancing. If you don't need to go get groceries because someone else can get them for you, that's great. If you can get a delivery instead of going out, that's great, but I understand that there's so many people who are healthy who are trying to figure out what to do – some basic simple things like getting some exercise or getting some fresh air. I've spoken with all of our key health officials on this, everyone agrees that's acceptable if you keep it limited and you practice social distancing. That's where we are today. That could change tonight. That could change tomorrow, but that's where we are right now.

So, everyone understands this is going be a very difficult few months. It will definitely get worse. It will get a lot worse before it gets better. I don't take any joy in saying that, but people expect our leaders to talk straight with them. It will get a lot worse before it gets better. We understand that so many people are going to be affected by this. But again, the answer is not fear. The answer is not panic. The answer is not, I'm going to sit around and hope that someone else will save me or the government will take care of everything. The answer is for all of us to work together and support each other. The answer is for us to believe in each other, support each other, look out for each other and understand that everyone has a role to play. Everyone has a chance to do something really important for their fellow New Yorker and for someone in need.

Everyone has a chance to exercise personal responsibility, listen to the guidance and abide by it. But also, listen to the idea that even your city government, your federal government doesn't reach into every nook and cranny of our lives, but people do – our family does, our neighbors do, the people on our block do. And we saw this after Sandy, the people were helping each other before any government agency could arrive. And I was very moved by it when I went through neighborhoods and Brooklyn and Staten Island and saw the amazing things people were doing to support each other. We're going to need that again now and we're going to do everything we can as your city government, everything we could possibly imagine to do, we will expend every youth resource. We'll do things that have never been seen before in the history of New York City. But in the end, New Yorkers will play a crucial role in helping us get through this crisis and in helping us overcome this crisis. And I have absolute faith in my fellow New Yorkers that you are more than up to the challenge.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Okay, we covered a lot there. Let us open up now to your questions. My colleagues will join in as we go along.

Question: Mayor, so I just looked it up. Anthony Fauci is 79 years old.

Mayor: Yes, he is. 

Question: So, has he [inaudible] you in a sense if he is fearful about himself?

Mayor: No, he's been quite clear about that. He said, he was asked, has he been tested? He said, no, I'm not sick. I think he's exactly what we should be looking to as a role model. Amazing story – I was looking it up the other day and here's a kid who grew up in Brooklyn. His family had a pharmacy. He used to deliver, you know, the prescriptions to people's homes in Brooklyn. And boy, when he talks you know where he's from and what an admirable guy and someone we should be proud of, but he was quite clear. People need to take common sense precautions, especially those in greatest need. But right now, I think – look, Dr. Fauci is in the same situation we are in. We have to – all of us have to serve the public. We are not going to be able to look at things the same way everyone else does. On one level we are supposed to put ourselves in a harm's way, not to be reckless obviously, but we're supposed to stay in our post no matter what. Just like our first responders, our health workers. So, this is a situation where public servants are in a very different category than everyone else. We are supposed to do everything within our power. A number of us may get sick. That's the price of admission we're asking every day new Yorkers to really be cautious and careful. But we are holding ourselves to a different standard, a higher standard because we signed up for putting ourselves in harm's and that's fine. No one has a problem with that.

Question: Mayor de Blasio, given your own guidance that you just gave to new Yorkers about stay at home to the maximum extent possible, receive a lot of [inaudible] that you were going to the gym today.

Mayor: Sure.

Question: Do you want to explain your thoughts? And then if Dr. Barbot or a medical professional wants to weigh in on how safe that was?

Mayor: Absolutely. I knew in advance that it was a very socially distanced situation. There was almost no one there. I hadn't heard that information prior. I suspected that we were all going to be about to close them down and this week the last chance to get some exercise, I got no exercise whatsoever over the weekend I was in this building a huge percentage of the time. I need exercise to be able to stay healthy and make decisions. I'm going to figure out some new way to do it going forward. I did not for a moment think there was anything problematic because I knew the dynamics and again, I have to stay healthy so I could make the decisions for the people of the city.

Question: Other people [inaudible] you've asked people to make sacrifices. You're not the only person in New York that needs exercise to stay healthy, other people have found other ways to adapt. Do you think it was irresponsible for you –

Mayor: Now, you can ask a hundred different ways. I'm very comfortable. They're all closing down today anyway.

Question: [inaudible]

Mayor: Sure

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: I'm a practicing doctor. I support the Mayor's decision to get exercise today.

Question: I know some people who have already been laid off from their jobs, what steps should people in that situation [inaudible]?

Mayor: When they've been laid off? Look, this is something, you know that obviously there's actions being taken on unemployment insurance, for example, but we're going to need something much deeper from much deeper than that. From the federal level, we're going to need direct income replacement. So, I use the example earlier today about the new deal and it's a very different physical reality, but just play it out in your mind for a moment. Remember, as soon as the new deal, excuse me, as soon as the great depression hit a previously prosperous country with very low unemployment went in short order to 25 percent unemployment. My grandparents were among them and the stories I heard, they had a small business in the garment district and it was wiped out very quickly and the stories I heard from them, from my grandfather about the ways people came together to help each other and support each other were very, very powerful. Just everyday people helping each other survive. But then very soon after, once Franklin Roosevelt became president, these miraculous things started to happen like massive numbers of government jobs. Now, coronavirus is different because we can't create massive employment when people can't gather, obviously, but the notion is the same. The federal government did something unheard of. There was no precedent whatsoever for it. It was night and day from what had been known a year earlier even, and they created a massive infusion of money into people's pockets through government created jobs and it saved America literally saved America from falling apart. Right now, I'm asking this administration, this Congress, to create today's version of that replace people's incomes, not just unemployment insurance, which is nowhere near what people made, but replace their incomes to the maximum extent possible. I'm sure it may not be exactly the amount that everyone makes, but it has to be enough for people to afford the rent. Food, medicine, the basics. If we don't do that, you're going to see a tremendous amount of pain and a danger of a further collapse in this country. Let's be blunt. They have the money. They just did, you know, a trillion and a half, one point $5 trillion tax break for the wealthy a few years ago. Endless expenditures on the military with very little assessment of whether that's the best use of money. Endless Wars that are getting us nowhere, there's money, it's going to the wrong place, it should be going to the American people in a time of crisis. So, I take to heart what Senator Schumer said right here on Saturday that this bill is going to be followed by another bill. That next one needs to get to direct income replacement.

Yeah?

Question: Have there been higher up ranking Department of Health officials ready to resign in recent weeks over disagreements with you and your staff about [inaudible]?

Mayor: No.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I was – I don't know about the multiple press accounts. If someone wants to bring me specifics, I know nothing about that. I know people have had serious conversations, trying to make citizens decisions together. I know when someone comes up to me and says, I want to resign, that has not happened.

Question: Mayor on the expansion of hospital capacity can you –

Mayor: Just a little louder.

Question: The expansion of hospital beds. Are there other facilities that you're looking at? Are you looking at expanding beyond health care facilities?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Anything and everything, but it will be, look, anything health care related, obviously Erin, is better, because there are certain advantages to a facility. It was built for something like that. But we're going to look at anything and everything. Again, it will be very much related to the extent of the mobilization we can achieve depending on the personnel available, the equipment available and the federal presence. If the military will come in, in a big way, with their medical capacity that would help immensely. If we're able to get, if we get to this point, healthcare professionals from other parts of the country brought in on a systematic basis. So, look again, I don't understand what the federal government is doing. I cannot believe what I'm seeing should be a full national mobilization. Look, I've had my differences with certain decisions our military have made over the years. But I come from an army family. I would trust the Pentagon right now a hell of a lot more than the White House to figure out how to sort out this crisis and address it. I wish the President would just call up the Secretary of Defense and say, you take over, I don't know how to do this. But if we could put this on a war footing and you have states in the union that have very little presence of coronavirus, we need health care professionals here. So, those are my thoughts about the expansion. If we have the personnel, if we don't have the personnel, you can only expand so much. If we don't have the equipment, you can only expand so much. But if we have those things, we can keep expanding constantly into any and all types of appropriate buildings and creating what we need. It's never going to be perfect, but it's, again, these are battlefield conditions.

Question: [Inaudible]

Question: What type of response have you gotten to request for a military assistance?

Mayor: Nothing to speak of. FEMA, different from the military, obviously. FEMA is actually now truly engaged and I'm, I'm saying some of this is obviously strong opinion and other things I'm reporting to you are updates and my colleagues can jump in at any point and put more sharpness to it. But FEMA is now here. That is really good. That's really helpful. And we're engaging the veteran's administration and that's really helpful. But we're still, we have some more work to do to get to specifics. There's no military presence at this moment. There should be. We're one of the epicenters. I mean I don't check the morning state facts against each state, but I'm looking at my health collies I believe we are still the leading state in terms of cases. What do you got to do to get prioritized around here? This should be where, I think, Washington state has gone through a horrible experience. Absolutely horrible. But in terms of sheer number of cases, this should be where the first aid goes and I don't see it. Anyone else, I'm going to keep moving this way. Go.

Question: Oh, mindful of what you said about having everything on the table [inaudible]. Is there a threshold or a trigger for doing that?

Mayor: It's a constant conversation of what we think makes sense to do all things considered. This is how all the decisions have to be made. We have to factor, it's not one thing, it's everything and what it means, you know, obviously, look who wants to compromise the employment of everyone who works at bars and restaurants and cafes. That was not a lightly taken decision, but it was at least somewhat mitigated by the notion we could do take out and delivery, keep a certain amount of them employed and obviously a lot of people depend on them for their food and that's their reality, um. So that was where we struck, you know, a balance of how you figure out how to do something in a sensible manner. We're going to be looking at all of this. If you do a curfew. If you do travel restrictions, there are real ramifications, so we have to process that, and come to a decision quickly, but each in real time.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, you announced the new rule on price gouging.

Mayor: Yes.

Question: A couple things. What should people, what should New Yorkers do if they see price gouging? Um.

Mayor: Call 311

Question: Okay. The second thing is –

Mayor: I'm sorry to interrupt. Call 3-1-1 and be specific.

Question: Ok.

Mayor: I really urge people, a lot of times New Yorkers come up to me with a complaint or they call WNYC, whatever it is, it is very fair. I always say, please get us all the information you can get. If you go into a store and you say, you know, a store price gouge me, I want to know the name, the address, what item it was, take down the price, if you can take a photo, whatever they can get, the more the better.

Question: And then, do you know how many fines the city's issued in recent days on price gouging?

Mayor: I don't, but we can get that to you.

Question: Okay. and then, I'm Morgan correct [inaudible] from New Yorkers that they think we're cash strapped at this point, that they think 10 percent is just too much of a markup, are you considering lowering it? [Inaudible]

Mayor: I think we assume some variation is normal in a free enterprise economy and [inaudible] on a surface doesn't, you know, seem to be necessarily unfair. Your point is well taken though. If we, I think 10 percent is also consistent with the current legal guidance, but we'll reassess that in light of the emergency to see if we can go even farther.

Question: And then I have another quick question for Dr. Barbot.

Mayor: Sure.

Question: Dr. Barbot, off of Sally's question, there's been multiple reports that there's a toxic relationship between you and the Mayor, that there's a log jam in getting out guidance because the Mayor is micromanaging the process. Can you speak to those reports?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: I think it's been clear from the beginning that we are, and the Mayor has been very clear, we all wear the same uniform, we're all on the same team and we share the same goal of slowing the spread of COVID-19 and reducing the potential harm to New Yorkers. My team and I have been working 24/7 since this began and nothing has changed nor will anything change going into the future.

Question: Mr. Mayor just a couple of questions, just – Dr. Barbot, has she threatened to resign?

Mayor: I just answered the question like a minute ago.

Question: No, I asked her directly. 

Mayor: But you called on me. You said, Mr. Mayor.

Question: Mr. Mayor, can you ask Dr. Barbot if she has resigned?

Mayor: I don't understand your question. I was asked the question, has anyone resigned? No. Has anyone threatened to resign? No. Do you want to ask her if she's resigned or threatened to resign? Feel free, but ask her, don't ask me. I'm confused by your question.

Commissioner Barbot: I have no intentions of resigning. I'm very honored to have this position at this time in history and I am honored to be working with the Mayor closely, along with my colleagues to, again, ensure that we have one goal, which is to slow the spread of COVID-19 and reduce the harm to new Yorkers.

Question: So, you never threatened to resign? 

Commissioner Barbot: No.

Mayor: Guys, you can print what the hell you want in the middle of a crisis, but when we tell you it's false and we confirm to you, it's false it would be really, really nice if you would acknowledge it. This is a crisis. This is not personalities and games. This is a crisis. It did not happen. It just didn't. It's like the day a few months ago where someone said, I had a lunch with Eric Adams and we came up with a grand plan and we agreed. We had not even seen each other in person for months and yet it still went in the paper. I don't know what you guys think are the right standards, but I would hope you would raise them a bit in the middle of a crisis. We have been discussing decisions every single day. Does everyone agree on everything all the time? No. Are there different factors? Does health think the same way as education? Guess what? No. They have different imperatives and we have to make sense of them for example, but no one threatened to resign. Period. What else?

Question: Just a follow up.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: There was – you talked about over the weekend how you had to, you wanted to see the models and the paperwork and I've heard you've asked very detailed questions about those things. Can you talk a little bit about how you take advice from people like Dr. Barbot and Dr. Katz?

Mayor: The same way I take advice from the Police Commissioner, the Schools Chancellor, and every other leader of every agency. And if you think that a responsible elected official is supposed to just take whatever people say period and implement it without any discussion, without considering the impact on all the different pieces of the equation, guess what my friend-if I asked five different agency heads what they want to do about the same situation, I will get five different answers. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that. Did Richard Carranza want to close schools? Of course not. Of course not. If he said, oh geez, yeah, shut him down, no big deal, I would not think that's a very devoted educator. He hated it. I hated it. But we have to think about the health considerations first while balancing all the other pieces of the equation. And there were public safety elements. I'm going to try to articulate how this works, but I'm also going to beseech you guys, you better start searching for truth, not scandal, not headlines, not clicks; truth. This is a crisis. Real decision makers have to factor in everything, everything because the ramifications of people's lives are that great. Unfortunately, on Sunday I had to do something which is really going to take away the chance for kids to get educated as well as they might have. It's going to take away a chance for a lot of kids to get meals. We're going to try our damnedest to find an alternative. There are many, many other points. These things are not easy.

Question: Circling back to the question from Friday about the potential of reopening health enrollment. I've spoken with a number of New Yorkers that have concerns associated with the potential loss of jobs and the various factors that might go into healthcare in this crisis. [Inaudible] or otherwise. Have you had that conversation with the Governor about reopening the health care enrollment period?

Mayor: I have not amidst all these other things. That's a great question. I will guarantee you'll get an answer very quickly.

Question: Hi. So –

Mayor: And everyone, we're doing first round for anyone who hasn't gone, we're going to go one round through and then we'll see if we do any other, depending on however long that takes. Go ahead.

Question: Senator Zellnor Myrie today called to suspend the detainment of people on technical parole violations to police, elderly, sick, and those [inaudible] released from prison to suspend arrest for low-level offenses, and basically things like that. Currently there is video conferencing, video visitation suspended at Rikers and –

Mayor: I'm losing you. Nothing wrong with your question, it's just a lot of pieces. Help me out with where you want to go here.

Question: What is the plan to actually implement some of the safety precautions by or allowing prisoners to communicate with outside people?

Mayor: Well, to increase the number for inmates in our correction system to increase the number of phone calls and to implement wherever possible video conferencing is the simple answer.

Question: Are any of these other measures that the Senator suggested, for instance, like releasing the elderly or not detaining people on technical parole violations? Are any of those going to be taken?

Mayor: It's a [inaudible]. Anything that might go in the humane category, someone who there might be an argument particularly with these healthcare dynamics to reconsider? That's a fair question. I don't have a firm answer for you. I think it's a fair thing for us to reassess and come back with an answer. That is a different question than how we are going to police. We still have to police consistent with what we do, historically. I am concerned that you have to, again, in real decision making by real people in real conditions, by serious people having to make decisions for 8.6 million New Yorkers-such as myself-you have to think about the ramifications for public safety. The healthcare crisis is extraordinary and is the first consideration, but we do still have to think about public safety because that also affects people's lives. It can literally mean life or death for people in a different way, let alone all the other forms of challenges that we have out there. So, we're not changing our basic public safety strategies in light of the situation right now. We will assess as we go along.

Question: How are you communicating to every single police officer the new rule on not enforcing violations on the E-bikes?

Mayor: The same way we do everything else. It will be guidance given in every precinct. It'll go out to every officer's device and the NYPD can get that kind of instruction out very quickly. Go ahead.

Question: A budget question. Scott Stringer today called for your preliminary budget to be cut by $1.4 billion because we may be entering a recession. I just wanted to get your reaction to that. Also, just on the Council side, you're not the Council members' boss, but what's your understanding of what they're doing? What would be your guidance to them on the budget process?

Mayor: Right now, I think both as a matter of statute and as a matter of trying to keep this city functioning, I intend to keep to the budget process on calendar. That might change at some point. I mean, we are, you know, a month or so out. I think we have a very real possibility of keeping it on track. So, until I feel otherwise, I'll stay there. I don't want to predict the number. I could be up or down. I mean we first of all have to look at the revenue we had before all of this hit and then we have to look at the revenue impact of this. And that's going to be ever changing. I think it's way too early to determine how we're going to adjust the budget.

Question: [Inaudible] your reference yesterday? 

Mayor: Which reference? I'm sorry. 

Question: Regarding the [inaudible] dynamic [inaudible] coronavirus [inaudible] can you expand upon that?

Mayor: So right now, and again, my colleagues in health care who I've been listening to every day and trying to glean information and use it in what I say to you. And they'll jump in if there's anything that they want to add or subtract. And obviously Commissioner Criswell in terms of who comes out of the federal government understands these issues as well. So, right now, we're dealing with, if you think between cities, states, et cetera, it's like every man or woman for themselves. There's almost no semblance of federal command and control, federal coordination, federal prioritization. We saw a glimmer with the state of emergency declaration by the President. We saw a glimmer with the action taken in the House. Those are steps forward undoubtedly. But the crisis, I mean if we all had a press conference on January 24th, which meant, you know, the thing had already been growing to the point that we finally said, we got to speak to this and we got to put some rules to this and we got to tell people where we're going.

I think it's fair to say the federal government has essentially had two months to put itself on a war footing, which means you look at every element of solving the problem. What are those elements? We need the hospital facilities, we need the testing, we need the personnel, we need the supplies. Ventilators are a great example. You know, we are struggling right now to increase the number of ventilators in New York City. We're having some success. But we're trying our best to find new ventilators and competing with all sorts of other localities. And yet our need is much greater than many other places. Why is it catch as catch can? Why is it, you know, survival of the fittest instead of the federal government says, hold it everyone. One, the following companies that produce ventilators, you're going on a 24/7 production line. Okay? These companies over here, you could be producing ventilators. Now you're producing ventilators. It's a state of emergency. Whatever it is to maximize the supply to a national level. And now here's, you know, we've got 100,000 units, okay, this many go to New York, this many go to Washington State. This many go to California, according to need. And that gets adjusted all the time. 

The military should be on the ground in the key impacted areas with their medical personnel. They have fantastic medical personnel, trained for emergencies. These are some of the people who deal best with a crisis. They're not here. I'm sure they would love to be here. And I said earlier, the idea of any member of the United States military working on that border wall right now, when we're in the middle of a pandemic is idiotic. They should all be relieved of that responsibility. And every one of them should be thrown in the effort to address coronavirus because I'm not just talking about medical personnel, the sheer logistics. The military is brilliant at moving material where it needs to go. And they should be mobilized to ensure that every -- we need ventilators, we need masks, face guards, right on down to more mundane things like hand sanitizer. So it's just left now up to -- not only is it left up to the private market, but the private market will be the first to tell you they're overwhelmed. I've been talking to some of the companies that we are depending on, and they are the first to say their supply chains are beginning to be disrupted. And there's no one in charge in Washington stepping in to fix it. It's, I don't think there's a precedent. I mean, look at many presidents of many different stripes. Do you believe John F. Kennedy would not have already mobilized this nation to address this or Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower? It's unbelievable.

Question: Yeah. Just talk about daycare centers. Should they be closed? And what percentage of the City's workforce is working remotely and have you maxed out on that percentage? 

Mayor: Yes, very, very sadly, daycare centers should be closed and we're working with them now on that. It's a very painful situation. Again, for folks who are those essential workers, the first responders, the transit workers, the health care workers. We're going to set up not only 3K to 12 education, we're going to find a way to also reach if they have even younger childcare needs because we need them freed up and able to do their jobs. But this is a work in progress to put that up to the level we need it to be really quickly. But that's the answer on the centers for sure. 

On the telecommuting. Our goal right now, let's again be very clear. All essential personnel cannot telecommute period. I mean first responders, health care workers, you know, there's so many people who cannot -- we need them at their post. For the folks who can, which will now in effect be the vast majority of educators except for those in the learning centers for the essential workers. You know, a lot of our educators will be telecommuting now and doing distance learning with their kids. And a lot of our personnel who are deemed non-essential but still play important roles will be. So, separate from the educators we were trying to get 10 percent of the workforce. And I believe we made real progress, but I don't have a specific number. We can get that for you.

Question: A follow up on that, on those are teachers who have expressed concern that they have to physically be there for the remote learning sessions. Why not just do those also remote? 

Mayor: I'll start and the Chancellor will jump in. We answered this yesterday, but I think you weren't here. Because we are asking them to do something they've never done before. The vast majority of them in their life. And on a total battlefield training basis, we're saying to a teacher who spent, in most cases their life traditionally teaching, we're going to give you three days to figure out how to do distance learning with us, with all the training we can give you. Then we need you in play on Monday because we're in a full mobilization and we cannot train them as well from afar. And we can't give them all the materials they need from afar. It's just the truth. They will not have kids in their presence. We will socially distance them while they're getting that training. But if we're going to serve a million kids by Monday with something that's never been done before on any scale in New York City, we need to train them effectively.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Yes. To add to what the Mayor has said. What's important to understand is that every one of our buildings today was deep cleaned because there was no one there. So, the Mayor's thanks to our custodial staff is heartfelt. They were there cleaning our buildings. I'm going to reiterate what our Health Commissioner has said. If you're sick, we do not expect to see you there tomorrow or Wednesday or Thursday. If you're sick, stay home. There's processes for letting your principal know if you're sick. Those two things being taken into account, we have a vast array of educators that are prepared on different levels. We have some educators in some schools in the New York City Department of Education that have been doing distance learning, had been doing virtual learning, have been doing all different types of learning using Google classroom and different platforms that are very proficient. And yet we have other educators that have never even touched this kind of learning before. So the differentiation that we have to do to bring an 80,000 teacher workforce up to a minimal level, yet some that are already advanced, not bring them down, is just something you cannot do virtually right out of the gate. So we have to be in those classrooms with them in those schools. There are some teachers that are going to show us what they're doing. We're going to take what they're doing and wrap it into what we're going to provide for the rest of the teachers. But there are some teachers that have never even been in a Google classroom environment. We have to literally help them log in, create their profile, help them understand how they post things onto that platform, where you find resources. So, the variability is so much that it's impossible to do that in a virtual way. Now that being said, with these three days of training and teachers having the opportunity uninterrupted to be able to create materials and create different kinds of learning experiences, they will be ready and up and running and even more importantly, know who to call to get assistance when they hit the ground running on Monday. The other thing that I think is really important for New Yorkers to understand is this isn't a four-week vacation. This isn't a five-week vacation. Our teachers are working, they're working in a different environment. They are telecommuting to the greatest extent of that definition. So, we need to make sure they're prepared to be able to do that work.

Mayor: Okay, who's not gone over here?

Question: I want to ask about the homeless population? What's the City doing to help them out? [Inaudible] outreach workers are discouraged to give out sanitizer, [inaudible] things like that to encourage homeless people to go into the shelters. Is that different now [inaudible]?

Mayor: I don't know if I agree with that assumption at all. It's a fair question. But no, remember the strategy we use. the HOME-STAT strategy as a, you know, we're playing a long game. That's a whole strategic assumption is not hi, I know you're homeless, come with me. First contact, you know, you're going to suddenly want to just come in period. No, it is literally dozens or hundreds of conversations before a homeless person who's street homeless, permanently homeless, often agrees to come in. So, there's all sorts of instances of providing support. Not sort of saying, oh, we can't help you until you come in. No, no, that's not the ethic at all. I've talked to the outreach workers. They try to help people in the here and now. Even if they're not ready to come in. That would certainly be true now. The outreach workers have been trained on mass to go out and engage, look for people with symptoms, offer them a chance to get, which has happened in some cases so far. And I've heard it's all been voluntary so far. But we're trying to continue to deepen that because we're very concerned about homeless folks and getting anyone to health care who needs it. So, so far, I'm hearing there's a lot of outreach and it's having a good effect.

Question: On that point, is there anything being done at homeless shelters given that you have a lot of people living in close proximity? 

Mayor: Everyone, as far as I know, everyone in the government facilities, all the types of government facilities and then everyone that we contract with has been given the same guidance about constant cleaning, deep cleaning, social distancing. I can get you more on if there's specific guidance that's been given to shelters and how we're following up on it. Shelters by definition are going to be harder in some cases to deal with physically than others. But the basic approach, not only do we give them the guidance, I think the vast majority of people get it now and are trying to honor it for their own reasons too. So that's the approach, but I'll try and get you more on the specific numbers. Please.

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: Just to supplement what the Mayor just mentioned, we also have identified several locations for isolation rooms in case that people either have been exposed and need to be isolated or if they actually have the symptoms and they cannot be in a congregate setting.

Question: Okay. Just the one quick one. Do we know if street cleaning and enforcement or alternate side, tomorrow –

Mayor: Under discussion, it's a rolling list of agenda items and as we make each decision, we're announcing them. So that's still being discussed.

Question: I think maybe best for the Health Commissioner -- in terms of the overall numbers. 463 total positive cases. But there's been [inaudible] and obviously we have people who are showing symptoms but they're not in the risk and the high-risk category, they're staying home and not getting tested. So presumably the real number is much, much higher. So talk about what -- that must present a huge challenge for the Health Department just in tracking this and what is the real number? Are we assuming this is in the thousands?

Mayor: Can I just help the Health Commissioner before she begins. If we had a real perfect number, we'd be sharing it with you [inaudible]. And trying to do our damndest [inaudible] help share with the New Yorkers a sense of projection. But that's what we're still working on all the time all the time to get right. The last thing we want to do is be premature about that number.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, and to build on what the Mayor said, I think part of the, what we're learning about this illness is that people can present with the spectrum of symptoms. Typically, people will have fever and a cough, fever and shortness of breath, but they may also present with other symptoms that they may be very mild and so not even realize that they had COVID-19 and thought maybe I have a cold. And so, that's why as we have already documented that we have community transmission, which means that, as we speak, New Yorkers are more likely to contract COVID-19 from someone who's already in New York City than someone who's traveling in, our messaging is changing. So, that's why we're so focused on making sure that anybody who has those symptoms stay home, right? Because we want folks to realize that whether they have been in contact with someone who has been diagnosed or whether they have been in contact with someone who has symptoms, like maybe they had COVID-19, the important thing is if you're symptomatic, stay home. And especially if you are someone who is 50 and above with those five chronic conditions, we want you to be especially mindful of developing these symptoms and staying home early. The other thing that I will add is that as we've had been mentioning from the beginning, we are learning more as we go through this experience, learning more about how the virus behaves, learning more about what groups might be at potential risk. I think today you heard one of those fine cuts in terms of, yes, people who have chronic illnesses and are above 50, we're paying us especially close attention to them, but even folks who are older, 70 above, and may not have chronic illness, simply because of the of their age, they may be at even further risk. So, as we learn about more chronic conditions, as we learn about more situations that might transmit illness, we will share that with New Yorkers. But I think the important thing to note is that the guidance doesn't change, which means don't go to school, don't go to work. Now we want you to limit your outside exposure, right? It's something that we haven't necessarily talked about, but during this time of having the schools close, imploring people to work from home, we want New Yorkers to limit their outside exposure. If they don't have to go out, don't go out. But if they do have to go out, either because they have to get groceries, they have to do the laundry, they have to go get medications, we want them to be smart about it and to limit the time that they spend outdoors. I guess the last thing I will say, because it hasn't come up, but we've been having internal conversations about it – you know, we want – clearly people need to walk their dogs. Clearly for mental health purposes, people will want to be outdoors, get some fresh air, do some exercise. We want them to do it, but what we're seeing with regards to social distancing is the ideal is to be six feet apart from someone else, especially if you're not sure about whether or not they may have symptoms. It doesn't mean be six feet apart from a family member that you live with and doesn't have symptoms. Right. We want people to be smart about the facts. We want them to use their best judgment. This is a time where yes, we're at asking New Yorkers to have a physical distance, but certainly a time where we're asking New Yorkers to come together emotionally, spiritually, because we're going to be in this for the long haul and we need one another to get through this.

Mayor: Okay. Anyone who's not gone? Yes?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: To me, again, we've absolutely feel for them, but this is what the federal government is for. And to some extent the State government, the State has limitations too, obviously. This is just a nature of reality. The federal government prints money. The federal government has a limitless credit line and the federal government has been the place that is turned to in a national emergency to cover those costs. And by the way, in fairness to the administration, they said from the beginning they would cover the necessary reimbursements, which will be vast for cities and states. But on this matter, there needs – the money has to come from the federal government, because, you know, we would never be in a position to cover the amount of money it would take. I mean, we literally would not have the physical money to cover what it would take. We can't front that amount of money. And we're not – just aren't – we don't have it without taking away from everything else that people need us to do. But the federal government could do it in a heartbeat. So, that's just the reality.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: We're going to have to give you all those details when they solidify. We know there'll be five in New York city, FEMA working with Department of Health and OEM, but details to be announced. And again, by priority and reservation, not just anyone walks up or drives up.

Okay. Who has not gone at all? Okay. I'm going to do a few more – wait, someone who's not gone at all? I'm sorry, go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I don't have justified – or, what's the word I'm looking for? Consistent with the latest number I just gave on cases on waiting for those numbers to be checked so we can get that to you later in the day.

Question: And just related – and recognizing how quickly this has been moving, but we – the topic of a hospital bed and ventilators, you know, was asked about last week and there certainly wasn't kind of this crisis mentality and urgency –

Mayor: Right, and I agree.

Question: [Inaudible] wondering, I guess, what projections are you basing your current action?

Mayor: Yeah, there's that constant discussion and updating. Look, I remember I mentioned to a lot of you the World Health Organization study that came out Thursday, Friday – I'm not sure – the 65,000 cases in China, that was a really important new piece of information. Every day, the whole thing is changing, the understanding of what other countries did, what we're seeing in our own numbers, what we're seeing around the country. I wish – I think – I don't blame anyone for liking static, clear answers. This is kind of an American reality. We're used to instant gratification. We're used to certitude. We're used to things that we think are, you know, yes or no. This ain't that. This is a whole different reality. It changes constantly. There was no human being on earth who fully understands the coronavirus – that is a fact. And we're all trying to make sense of it constantly. So, projections are even changing, but what is clear is just our own number of cases. You can see immediately that thousand number that I told you we would hit this week, I was hoping and praying and I was wrong. There's no question, tragically, I was right. So, it is enough to tell us how much faster we're going to have to move up schedules and you know, that ventilator thing – we have a very substantial supply right now. I'm not worried about right now. I'm worried about, you know, a month from now.

Question: Well, I guess I just want to know as far as the projections, are you mostly relying on internal numbers? Are there specific external sources?

Mayor: It's a lot of different pieces. It is the – everything we're learning, most, especially from our own cases and our own experience. It's constant information from World Health Organization, CDC, research papers. I mean, the medical folks here are constantly being briefed. They're reading, you know, everything that's coming in. It's just ever-changing. We're even learning, of course, about other countries' experiences, which is ever-changing, and things that are working – you know, we've seen some places that are having some surprisingly good dynamics, some places are having horrible dynamics. It is daily, hourly.

Question: [Inaudible]

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah. So, we are solidifying those plans as we speak. We're working with our union partners as well. We're also working with other city agencies. We're looking at third-party support systems. We have a list of every one of those students. There are some things that you can provide via virtual reality. So, for example, speech therapy – we can provide that. Even some occupational therapy we can provide, but physical therapy, how do you do that? So, we're working to provide that kind of support for students and families. We are reaching out to every single one of those families. We've already started reaching out to them and we'll do that via their IEP. But it's going to be critically important. I want to remind all New York Department of Education families, you need to create your account on MySchools. That's critically important. That's how we're going to blast information. Go onto our website and there'll be a link there and it's really simply sign up, give us your information. You'll get real time information. Also look at our New York City schools Twitter account. We just tweeted how to do it in a link. I retweeted it and there's a link there as well. But we are actively working on those plans right now.

Mayor: Let me challenge you – I'm sorry, I'm going to challenge you at one point. For folks who are less computer savvy, and I don't know if you have this yet or you're about to put it together, but what about a human being struggling to figure out how to get their accounts [inaudible] –

Chancellor Carranza: They can call 3-1-1 and 3-1-1 will patch you right into our call center as well. Also, on the website, there's a phone number as well. People can call.

Question: You mentioned third parties. What would that necessarily [inaudible]?

Chancellor Carranza: There are different kinds of companies that provide mobile services like that. So, what we're trying to do, and the Mayor has given us very clear direction, there is nothing that is sacred. So, if you need to go and get a third party and augment what you have in your school system, do it. There is no excuse for not serving our students. So, we're taking that to heart and exploring every possibility.

Mayor: Okay, we're going to do a few more because we have a lot we have to get back to.

Yes?

Question: [Inaudible]

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah. So, they also are one of the groups of students that are referred to as our high-priority students – so, students with disabilities, students in temporary housing. So, we're prioritizing them in everything that we're doing. So, they're at the top of the list for devices. If they're homeless, chances are they probably don't have a device, chances are that they probably don't have internet connection or connectivity. So, as we're working with Spectrum and other providers, we're prioritizing internet and Wi-Fi connectivity for those students. In particular, we have 30,000 iPads that we have in our possession right now that are Wi-Fi equipped. The prioritization is for students that are in these kinds of most fragile – we call them our fragile students – most fragile circumstances. We are going to be receiving shipments every single week until we ramp up to 300,000 iPads that we will be distributing. Part of the work that'll happen in this week in our schools is actually getting an accounting of who are our students, because teachers and principals know who are the students that either don't have Wi-Fi or don't have devices, et cetera. So, we're trying to be very strategic, very, very specific about who those kids are and then prioritize them.

Mayor: Okay. We're going to have to go fast because we're running out of time.

Go –

Question: And FDNY fire marshal [inaudible] coronavirus the union just announced. Were you aware of that? Does that make account eight in the city?

Mayor: I want to – no disrespect to the union, I want to confirm everything before commenting. That's the first I'm hearing of that being confirmed, so let me make sure we do that.

Question: And I know you said you're working on the details for the drive through testing center, but can you give us any kind of flavor of what they look like in an urban area? We know what they look like in suburbia.

Mayor: No, it's brand new. It's just gotten agreed to. We'll get you as soon as we have it, but this is a moving situation. We just got the agreement to do it.

Question: News just broke about 10 minutes ago, six counties in California have a shelter-at-home order. Is that different from the strong advice that you and your [inaudible] –

Mayor: Again we're –

Question: Is that something that you're considering or talking about?

Mayor: We're looking at everything in anything and we're going to announce as we go along when we think the next step up the ladder is. So, some places are doing curfews – that's a new thing – the shelter in place. We're going to make decisions as we go along.

Question: [Inaudible] the Governor asked for contingency plan for daycare and, you know, the learning substitutes for schools [inaudible] 24 hours. Have you turned that in? Or is it going to be ready?

Mayor: We're looking at the details of what the State needs, but we've obviously announced clearly that on Monday there will be for the children of essential workers for the children of the folks we need to deal with this crisis. There will be that in place. We've obviously announced a distance learning plan, so, you know, a lot of pieces are already on the table. We're happy to go through all that with the State.

Question: Just to clarify –

Mayor: Okay, we've got to go fast, seriously, I have a lot of work to do. So, go fast please.

Question: The 1,200 beds, you've got Coler, you've said – is that a vacant –

Mayor: Coler was an active H + H facility. You want to jump in quick and explain?

President Katz: Because, as the Mayor has said, Coler was previously used as a hospital, it has all of the right ingredients such as hookups for water, hookups for oxygen, electricity. Likely we will use it to take patients who are not intensive care level but who need a hospitalization, put them there so that our active hospitals are able to take care of people with ICU conditions.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: [Inaudible] Central Bronx. There's a nursing home facility that's private that we are going to be able to contract with and take over. And then there's Westchester Square Hospital, 150 bed capacity. That's a voluntary hospital.

Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] How did it go today? How many kids showed up?

Mayor: I don't know if we have it already with just early in the day, but, if you have it, let's talk about it.

Chancellor Carranza: Sure. So, we had a little over 14,000 students that showed up and picked up a breakfast or lunch, or breakfast and lunch. I just want to remind everybody, this is the very first day, we made an announcement yesterday. So, if parents are still figuring out their situation, their circumstances, we're expecting that number to continue to increase over the course of the days and weeks.

Question: The NYPD's and enforcement, I guess it's going to be a short-lived rule at 50 percent capacity in bars and restaurants. You just get a sense of how that –

Mayor: There will be a lot of enforcement. I don't know about last night, I haven't gotten a report on that, but there'll be a lot tonight because we obviously need to make sure that people still respect the 50 percent up until the point they closed and then that they actually close. So, there'll be a lot of enforcement out there.

Question: [Inaudible] recommended today that people of 10 not gather in the same spot. Dr. Barbot was saying six feet of distance. How much of that is your administration adopting for its own workforce? You know, there's 30 or 40 of us here in this room.

Mayor: Yeah, I think this is the last time we'll be gathered. It's been great, but I think this is it. We're either going to go to a much bigger room where we can spread everyone out a whole lot and scream across the room at each other, or we'll just do everything through a conference call or some other form. But look, everyone's adapting in real-time. It's strange for all of us here. We're used to nonstop activity in this building. You know, all of us here for more than six years. It's really hard to suddenly turn all that off. But we're going to make major adjustments and we're trying to do that all throughout our workforce. It won't happen instantly, but that's, we're trying to get everyone to be.

Thanks, everyone.

2020-03-17 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Welcome everybody to our temporary home for these press briefings. And, again, we'll start with this and we probably are going to go to a calling system soon for obvious reasons. But for now, we are here and I have a number of updates to share. Let me start by saying, of course there was a lot of new information every day that's sobering – thank you – and troubling. But there's also a lot of people stepping up, a lot of people helping out a lot of people really coming to the defense of New York City and the people of New York City. And so, there is some good news and I'm happy to announce one piece of good news as we fight this virus and this challenge. Last night, Health + Hospitals, our public health care system reached an agreement with BioReference Libraries and BioReference Libraries, one of the largest testing companies in America.

This is an example of a real public private partnership at a time of tremendous need. This agreement will allow our public healthcare system to ensure that up to 5,000 coronavirus tests per day can be done. I want to say that again. We will have the capacity in our public health system, just our public hospitals and clinics to perform up to 5,000 coronavirus test per day. That capacity will start to come online on Thursday, it will ramp up in the coming days until we reach that daily total. This is a huge increase in testing capacity for the City of New York as a whole and specifically for Health + Hospitals. You're going to hear a little later on from Dr. John Cohen, who is someone I've known for a very long time and have tremendous admiration for the Executiveof BioReference laboratories. I want to thank you Dr. Cohen and your whole team for working so fast and so effectively with our team to come to an agreement and to put this testing capacity online.

So, I'll give a number of other updates and then you'll hear directly from Dr. Cohen and we will start the Q&A with questions specifically about testing and this agreement before we go to other matters related to coronavirus. Once the testing capacity is up, starting on Thursday, the tests can be processed in one to two days. So that's a strong turnaround time, and the focus will be, and we'll say this throughout on those who are currently hospitalized and who are medically in danger and those who are, in general, the most vulnerable, but we're going to be very careful about the prioritization of these tests. Even with this substantial new capacity, this will be a highly prioritized approach to testing. I want people to be very clear that our healthcare professionals are determining those priorities and we're going to stick to those priorities to ensure we can help those who truly need the testing most and to protect our entire healthcare system.

So, want that to be clear. We'll clarify more as we go through the Q-and-A. We're going to – I'm going to say, and I know my health care colleagues are going to say many reminders throughout this press conference that the guidance remains for those who are sick with the cold and flu type symptoms and only have mild or moderate symptoms. The guidance is to stay home, do not go to the emergency room or a clinic, and remember that there are those who are immediately in real danger, who need those facilities to be available to them. The goal for everyone is wait three or four days, if your symptoms improve, then you're good, if they don't or get worse, that's when you need to contact first by phone your healthcare provider. And this has evolved over the last few weeks as this crisis has deepens. So, this is what we need people to do. If you're sick, stay home, do not go to work, do not go out, do not come in contact with other people and then give it three or four days to see if it develops further. So, that's about the announcement today of the 5,000 test per day capacity going to Health + Hospitals.

I want to go to another update, very different one, but very much about how we have going forward, how we'll have the capacity, the medical capacity and all the capacity, logistical support that we need to protect New Yorkers in a growing crisis. About an hour ago, I spoke with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States armed forces General Mark Milley. We had a detailed conversation about the capacity that the armed forces could bring to bear to address a crisis like coronavirus and we went over details in terms of different options of what the military might be able to provide. I want to thank General Milley for his willingness to provide assistance and it is quite clear that our military in a high state of readiness and we agreed to continue to communicate and to work closely. So very, very much appreciate the update that I received from General Milley. And even though we are waiting for a lot to happen particularly decision making in Washington to happen it is comforting, it is definitely comforting to hear of the extraordinary capacity of the United States military and that the military isn't a high state of readiness to be able to provide support to not only New York, but other parts of the country as well.

Now, I want to talk about a question that's on everybody's mind, and that is the issue of shelter in place. This is a reality that is being talked about because this crisis continues to grow. We are all deeply concerned about the direction and the trajectory even as we get new information daily and hourly and we're trying to better understand the specific trajectory. It's quite clear this is a fast-growing crisis. In my view, I think the right guidance to give all New Yorkers is, even though a decision has not yet been made by the City or by the State, I think New Yorkers should be prepared right now for the possibility of a shelter in place order. It has not happened yet, but it is definitely a possibility at this point. I believe that decisions should be made in the next 48 hours and it's a very, very difficult decision.

I want to emphasize that it is difficult anywhere in the United States of America. It is particularly difficult in a city with such a large population so densely populated together. But I think the point is come with that decision does have to be made. We will be communicating closely with the State. Obviously, it's a decision we want to make in common. And I think it's just right to let people know that there is that possibility. To be clear, if that moment came, there are tremendously substantial challenges that would have to be met. And I don't take this lightly at all. Folks have to understand that, right now, with so many New Yorkers losing employment, losing paychecks, dealing with all sorts of stresses and strains, I'm hearing constantly from people who are tremendously worried about how they're going to make ends meet. And that scenario a shelter in place begs a lot of questions. What is going to happen with folks who have no money? How are they going to get food? How are they going to get medicines? How are we going to ensure in a dynamic like that, that supplies are sufficient for our population? What role does the government need to play to ensure that the proper distribution occurs and no one gets left out? There's a lot of unanswered questions and I dare say those are particularly difficult in a City as large as New York City, but I believe we have to quickly come to grips with those questions and determine different contingency plans while deciding if this is the right strategy to move forward with.

And that statement obviously connects with the update on the number of confirmed cases. Now we have information that is updated since the Governors earlier press conference today and you will see you that the numbers continue to grow rapidly. So as of this hour, and this is again our two hour changes now, as of this hour, the number of confirmed cases in New York City is 814, the sad reality, the prediction I made last week that we would hit a thousand cases this week is obviously about to come true and I'm very sorry to say that. Now, the borough breakdown I will give you now I believe, I think we can confirm this is directly connected to that 814 number. So, the borough breakdown as of this point 248 cases in Queens, 277 cases in Manhattan, 157 cases in Brooklyn, 96 cases in the Bronx, and 36 cases in Staten Island. And again, very sorry to say we have lost seven of our fellow New Yorkers to coronavirus.

We will need quickly support from the federal government. Everything I've talked about so far keeps coming back to the federal government. There's more of the federal government can do to help us expand testing. There is obviously much to the federal government could do to ensure that the military is brought to bear to the fullest extent to help New York City and other areas that have been hard hit by the coronavirus. There is so much the federal government can do to ensure that people have income. Right now, although there are some promising elements of the stimulus bill, there is nowhere near the kind of income replacement that people need in this kind of crisis. I mentioned earlier today the parallel to the new deal. We've got a crisis on the scale, obviously, on the trajectory of both the epidemic we saw in 1918, not the exact health trajectory that, as Dr. Cohen and I were discussing earlier, there was a lot less health care available to New York – I mean, to New Yorkers and Americans in general a century ago. But in terms of the sheer reach of this disease, the only parallel will be the 1918 influenza epidemic.

In terms of the economic dislocation, I think it's fair to say we are going to quickly surpass anything we saw in the Great Recession, and the only measure, the only comparison will be the Great Depression. Hopefully not as bad an overall impact, but I think in terms of the sheer reach, again, that will be the only comparison in the Great Depression. The federal government focused on creating jobs to put money in people's pockets. We can't do that now because there won't be scenarios where people can work in congregate settings. There's so many ways we cannot repeat the model of the Great Depression and the New Deal. It's going to take direct income support on a vast scale. And I have said very clearly, the federal government found a way to come up with vast amounts of money to bail out the banking industry a few years ago, to bail out the auto industry, vast amounts of money for a tax cut for the wealthy and corporations, even vaster amounts of money for endless wars that have yielded little for the people of this country. Clearly, the federal government knows how to spend money quickly and on a huge scale. It should be spent on the American people right now, working people who are suffering. They don't have that income replacement. They will not be able to afford food and medicine and the basics. We are sending today additional requests and there's been a nonstop stream of requests to the federal government.

Three letters going out today, one to the veterans administration and to HHS requesting that unused beds in veterans administration hospitals in New York City be freed up for the battle against coronavirus and requesting that medical supplies be expedited and delivered to New York City, including surgical masks of all the different kinds, surgical gowns, all the elements we need to protect our health care workers and allow them to do their work.

Sending out an additional letter to Secretary Azar, HHS, on specific medical supplies that had been provided, but are insufficient uh in previous shipments we've received. And we're sending a letter to the leadership of the United States House of Representative and the United States Senate imploring them to use their power to ensure that the military will be activated in this crisis and that aid will reach New York City and other parts of the country.

Some quick additional updates and announcements. In terms of food provided through our schools this week – this week, as we've said, all schools will be providing breakfast and lunch grab and go options at each school. Next week we will be opening up an enrichment centers, learning centers for uh children of essential workers that'll be providing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We are also determining a methodology to provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner at additional pickup sites around the five boroughs for young people who need them. This will not, at this moment, be at every school. This will be a more concentrated approach, not exactly what we do during summer, but closer to that then to every school building. But there will be ongoing sources of food for students that who need them in a new form starting next week.

I'm going to go through different items. They don't necessarily all connect, but they're all pertinent. There's been questions previous last few days about our budget process update that we intend to continue the city budget process on schedule, according to the law, and our office of management and budget is continuing to do its work to prepare the budget on time. And you should know that the office of management and budget is working remotely already.

An update related to for-hire vehicles, and for this one I will be signing an executive order right now for for-hire vehicles. We want to protect drivers and we want to protect riders alike. This executive order will ban a ride shares and a pooling of customers. This has been done in agreement with a major for hire vehicle companies such as Uber, Lyft, and Via. And the rule will be a one individual customer per vehicle to of course create social distancing as best possible within the vehicle. This does not disallow a couple that is together already, and actually a real couple. I want to be clear with people, a married couple, for example, or people who live together, or a family that lives under the same roof. Those folks obviously have had deep exposure to each other. It's appropriate for them to share a vehicle but not people who don't know each other. So, we will formalize that now in this executive order.

Related to the health and human services field, we have a huge number of nonprofit workers who play a crucial role in providing health and human services to New Yorkers. They're almost 40,000 nonprofit workers who've been under contract with us. A vast majority right now are in a situation – or, I should not say a vast majority – a very large number of them are in a situation right now where their work places may be closed, but their work is still crucial and we have a variety of things we need them to do. So, for approximately uh 40,000 nonprofit workers already working under contract with New York city, we will designate them as essential workers.

Next topic is, one, there's been a tremendous amount of interest in alternate side parking. Starting tomorrow, Wednesday, March 18th and continuing through Tuesday, March 24th, we will suspend alternate side parking. This is for one week, for seven days. This will give us an opportunity to evaluate the impact and see if it's something we want to do on a longer term basis. I want to just to help all New Yorkers to know, these are discussions we have all day long trying to make the right decisions, doing it for a week to see how it goes, makes all the sense in the world. Doing it throughout a crisis that could easily reach months upon months is a bigger question mark because what our Sanitation Department does related to alternate side parking is actually to keep our streets clean, keep our neighborhoods clean. There is a real connection between clean streets, clean neighborhoods, and overall health care. So, we have to be smart about keeping the city as clean and sanitary as possible. But let's do this first suspension, see how it goes. We'll update you as it gets close to next Tuesday on what we're going to do next. But again, alternate side parking suspended tomorrow through, all day tomorrow, and all the way through Tuesday, March 24th, and then we'll get you an update.

In terms of the criminal justice system, there've been some very fair and important questions about what is going to be done differently. First of all, anyone who is arrested and has flu like symptoms uh will not be taken to a precinct, will not be taken to central booking. There will be a specific methodology limiting their contact with our first responders and using a video conference system uh to immediately provide for the workings of the criminal justice system and our first responders being trained in how to appropriately handle that kind of circumstance. That's if they have those symptoms.

Now, another question has been about the number of people in jail and will there be some alterations. We are evaluating right now working with the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice and the NYPD, the number of people in our jail system who might be particularly high-risk in terms of vulnerability to the virus and another category of people – those who are incarcerated but are at low-risk of re-offending. We're going to evaluate those numbers and the details and determine if case-by-case any of those individuals should be taken out of our jail system. We don't have a final decision or final numbers, but that evaluation is happening today.

Question came up about business taxes. Here is the instruction – everyone, business owners – everyone should file their taxes on time as normal. We understand some people have obviously a hardship situation. If you have a hardship, you can apply for an extension and if you can prove that your business has been disrupted, we would waive any penalties that you might incur, but the request is that all business owners file taxes as normal to the maximum extent possible and indicate specifically and with a proof if there is a hardship.

It's very important to note that this crisis certainly puts a clear light on the fact that the city of New York does not have unlimited resources. We have a lot we need to cover and we do not have unlimited resources. We need the federal government to play a much bigger role and we don't see enough evidence of that yet. So, our concern is overall when we think about revenue, the impact, all this is happening of course, but we're also concerned we do not see that massive federal stimulus yet. And we do see a lot of volatility in the stock market. So, we are very concerned that we keep our revenue picture as strong as it can be in light of those realities.

Now, very important issue, everyone understands we're going to be massively building out our health care system. We're going to be creating a new health care capacity in our hospitals, but we're also going to be creating health care capacity where there's never been a hospital before because we're going to need this massive mobilization to be able to address this crisis in the weeks ahead. As our health care leaders have said, the physical space in many ways is the easy part. Getting the equipment and supplies, which we do not have enough of for the long haul, we must have federal support for that. But maybe even more challenging – the personnel, the glue of the health care system is the people, the experts, the medical professionals of all types. So, we're launching a citywide campaign and it will look and feel like a war time mobilization message. And the message will be simple; if you are a health care worker, you have any appropriate training, we need you and we need you right away. It's going to be crystal clear. This is so far from business-as-usual, there's no words for it. Anyone who brings health care skills to the equation, your city needs you now.

Now, couple of key categories – there are about 9,000 licensed and retired health care workers who are registered in what is called the Medical Reserve Corps. That corps is managed by our Department of Health. We're going to work to mobilize that corps immediately. It is on a voluntary basis, but we're going to ask all those who are part of our Medical Reserve Corps who can come forward to help, we need you now. Also, licensed workers who aren't in the Medical Reserve Corps can be added to it and that means a number of folks in health care right now could be people in private practice, for example, who are not connected to a larger institution – we are going to need you and we're asking you to sign up for the corps.

The website where you can sign-up is live today. Go to www.nyc.gov/HelpNowNYC. Again, nyc.gov/HelpNowNYC. We need everyone who's able to come forward.

Few more updates. We had enforcement activities this morning by the NYPD, FDNY, Department of Buildings, and the Sheriff's Office out at bars and restaurants to ensure they have closed their in-house dining and have converted to delivery and take- out. We have had a very high level of compliance. There were instances where warnings had to be given and reminders had to be given that initial, and this is initial information, said that was around ten percent of the cases, but overall high compliance and we believe that will only deepen up-ahead and that enforcement will continue so long as we see any lack of adherence.

Few final points, today at 6:00 pm there will be an alert sent to all New Yorkers with an appropriate device. Some of you will remember this has been the same approach that has taken place in the middle of a major weather events, blizzards and hurricanes, or major police activity. You will get a loud audio alert and a vibration. This is happening today at 6:00 pm. We'd like everyone in the media to please let all those who follow what you put out there know. This is to alert everyone to the fact that as we move forward this type of alert will be coming and that we want everyone who can to sign-up for the proactive information; there's still a lot of misinformation out there. So, one, what we're going to say today at 6:00 PM is how important it is to text C-O-V-I-D to 692-692. Or, if you're a Spanish speaker, C-O-V-I-D-E-S-P to 692-692." The more people who do that – and it's hundreds of thousands already – but the more people who do that, the better off we'll be in terms of ensuring that people are getting real accurate information quickly. But it's also a heads-up. The alert will send at six o'clock, which will be in both English and Spanish, is a heads-up to people that given the severity of crisis, they can expect those more serious alerts from time-to- time and to get ready for them.

Before I turn to Dr. Cohen and Dr. Katz, just a few reminders again, if you are sick - stay home. If anyone in your family is sick, they need to stay home. If you're sick, take those three or four days. If you don't get better, call a doctor. Do not go to the emergency room unless it is truly an urgent and immediate emergency. We have to protect the ability to help those who are in greatest danger and everyone has a role to play in that.

And again, the current rules in effect always potentially subject to change. We want as many people in general to stay home as possible. We want everyone who can telecommute to telecommute and when you're trying to figure out what's an appropriate activity or not, the general rule is stay home - when in doubt stay home. But there are exceptions, Dr. Barbot delineated them yesterday. Obviously, if you need to go out and get groceries, that makes sense. If you need to get to the pharmacy for medicine, that makes sense. If you need to get clean clothes, that makes sense. If you need to get some exercise or take your dog for a walk, that makes sense while you're doing all these things, practice social distancing. Keep three to six feet apart from everyone around you to the maximum extent feasible and when you don't need to be outside, get back home and those are simple rules and we'll keep updating people on them as we go along.

There's a big share of personal responsibility in all of this is not going to be easy. This is going to be a long battle, but New Yorkers are the toughest and the most resilient people in this nation. If any place can handle Corona virus, it's New York City. But I always say behind our tough exterior's beat hearts, gold. New Yorkers are very compassionate people. Look out for those in your life – seniors - look out particularly for those over 70, if they need food, if they need prescriptions, if they need help, let's be there for them. Look out for folks who have those preexisting conditions. If we help each other, we will get through this. I'm absolutely convinced if New Yorkers do what we did after Sandy after 9/11, so many other times, we will get through this, but we all have to do it together.

 A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that and I just want to thank you, Dr. Cohen and everyone at BioReference laboratories. I am I literally want to thank you on behalf of 8.6 million New Yorkers. You are the cavalry who has rode to the rescue here and we are eternally grateful. And Dr. Cohen, I'd love you had talked to everyone about the new capacity you're bringing online and the work we will all be doing together. Thank you.

Dr. Jon Cohen, BioReference: So, thank you, Mr. Mayor, first off for your leadership and the privilege actually to serve. I can assure you that the folks at BioReference I can tell you have been working 24/7 for literally the last ten days to get up to capacity for what we think is going to be needed and beyond. So first you know, we take this responsibility incredibly seriously and believe that the private sector is here to assist government and government agencies to combat this epidemic. Second, in particular supporting the Health + Hospital Corporation as the largest public health system in the country. And, of course, serving New York City, serving the most vulnerable and at risk populations in this city is something we think is incredibly important for the private sector to step up to and be part of. Third finally as a physician I take this personally. And what I mean by that is I want to make sure that every one of those front line physicians, nurses, health care workers that are actually putting their lives and their risk in the front to get these people done, to get these people healthy, have everything that they need and in our case, the testing ability and to bring that testing ability to them in the most timely fashion so that they can take care of their patients. We will, as we've stated, we have committed to testing 5,000 patients a day and as a result of that, we will ramp up for them as needed in the next couple of weeks.

Mayor: Doctor, thank you again. We really, really appreciate the collaboration and the partnership and we've got a long battle ahead, but it is great to have you and your colleagues on our side. I want to turn to Dr. Mitch Katz, CEO of Health + Hospitals. And obviously he will describe what this new testing will mean for all of the people who work in Health + Hospitals and their ability to serve people in greatest need. 

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: Thank you Mr. Mayor and thanks to you and Dr. Cohen for providing us this capacity for testing. For people who need to better understand why this is so important —remember that not everybody who has respiratory distress has COVID-19. Some people may be suffering from heart disease with it worsening. Some people may have bacterial pneumonia. These are illnesses that typically affect hundreds of people every day at hospitals that we run. What we need to be able to figure out is which seriously ill people have COVID-19 and as quickly as we possibly can. This capacity will assure that we're able to test all seriously ill patients and equally important, it will cut in half the wait time to a final response. So, we will know for sure that the patient is COVID-19 positive or negative and that will greatly improve our clinical care. Let me just say though that while this capacity is wonderful, it is meant for people who are sick and need services at a hospital. The City is working extremely hard and the Mayor's done great efforts on being able shortly to massively expand capacity for testing people who are not symptomatic at other facilities that will be created in non-hospital spaces so that people can be tested in the safest place possible as quickly as possible.

But I'd like to ask all my fellow New Yorkers on behalf of their parents, on behalf of their grandparents, on behalf of people that they know, who have serious health conditions, that right now we need people who are asymptomatic to stay home. We need people with minimal symptoms in the first three days to stay home. We are preparing to take care of anyone who has serious symptoms, people whose symptoms have not gone away after three or four days. And that will all be helped if people who are currently without symptoms or with minimal symptoms will await the greater expansion of testing for them. Thank you. 

Mayor: Thank you Doctor. So just want to ask of our colleagues in the media, if you have specific questions about the testing announcement with BioReference and H + H, we can just get those questions up front. Dr. Cohen may have to leave at some point. So, I just want to give him an opportunity to answer anything you need from him while he's still here. Please.

Question: If it's not automated [inaudible] tested?

Dr. Cohen: So, the original CDC test, as you probably know, was manual and it was manual for the extraction of the virus, the RNA, and then was put on a platform. So, the platforms we're now running, we have four platforms that we've brought up. Each one of those platforms have essentially a slightly different, what we call recipe, but the end result is they all diagnose to a very high sensitivity and specificity, the coronavirus. Those platforms are all automated. And what that means is that when you get the sample, you can put the sample right onto the analyzer and then it takes it through the entire analysis.

Question: In a best-case scenario, what does this additional testing, 5,000 per day at city hospitals supposed to yield for us? Once we've had that kind of increase in data, why is that a good thing?

Mayor: Well, it's not just about the increase in data, it's about the ability for all of our health care professionals, at Health + Hospitals to actually do their job more effectively, to understand who needs what help and prioritize it. Dr. Katz is going to explain it, I'm sure more eloquently than I. But it is a sea change to go from having minimal capacity to have a reliable capacity daily which, we're talking about the entire Health + Hospitals system. The largest public health care network in the United States of America went from, you know, a very tenuous situation to now having its basic needs guaranteed for the foreseeable future. That's a huge deal. But Doctor, maybe you can make it a little bit more day to day. Explain the reality?

President Katz: Sure. Three things - we will cut the time it takes to get a result in half. Which is very important for me to be able to correctly manage patients with serious disease. It will ensure a sufficient capacity. So, right now, I have been able to get test results more in the three days or four days, now I'll be able to get in much shorter. But also, there was no guarantee as our numbers grew that that would be able to be continued under our current lab arrangements. And third, while this arrangement is just for Health + Hospitals, it really helps everyone because it means if I'm sending my specimens to Dr. Cohen's labs, it opens up capacity at the other commercial labs to be able to provide rapid responses for their hospitals. So the more labs that come online, the more help it is to everybody no matter who has what arrangements.

Question: A quick follow up Mayor. Since you were accurate or likely to be accurate about the 1000 cases probably as soon as tomorrow. Are we still in an exponential situation where by next week you're looking at 10,000 cases or even more?

Mayor: Look, we're certainly going to have thousands of cases next week. I don't want to give you an exact number yet, but you know, it's conceivable to be in the, you know, a number of thousands, so we'll get to a better guess. It's not that long. I can say it this way, it's not that long until we hit 10,000 cases. That is a true statement. Whether it's next week or some later period is not that far off. But that's why we are racing against time to set up the expanded medical capacity in this city and to ensure — coming to you — and to ensure that we have the testing capacity we need. I'm going to ask before going to the Deputy Mayor, I'm going to pass it back to Dr. Katz in a moment on a practical point, but I want to just make an obvious statement. New Yorkers are self-reliant. New Yorkers are resourceful. This is what we do. We have not been sitting around crying about the fact that the federal government never really showed up. Once we understood there was an opportunity to work directly with Dr. Cohen and his company we just went and did it. And we're going to do this all along. Look, I am praying our federal government will actually come into this crisis and help us. But I don't sit around as assuming that. We're going to build our own new health care capacity. We're going to recruit our own professionals. We're going to find our own supplies, whatever it takes. It would be a lot nicer if we didn't spend weeks and weeks, even now almost months, pleading with the federal government on testing only to get very mixed results. But here we are. So, from this point on we're going to be absolutely self-reliant. God bless the child that's got their own and maybe one day we'll be pleasantly surprised and the federal government shows up. But Dr. Katz, I think it would really help everyone, all of us lay people to hear you say the difference when you're in the middle of all the work you're doing, especially in a crisis, you have a patient, you get that test back. The difference for the health care professionals, if it's positive or negative, what it helps you do and adjust. Just help people vividly understand that. 

President Katz: Sure. So, I think the easiest way to think about it is that just because we're in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic doesn't mean that anyone has cured bacterial pneumonia, tuberculosis, congestive heart failure. We're doing our very best to keep people who are minimally symptomatic away from the hospitals, but we have people with serious respiratory diseases that are not COVID-19 and I need for any of those patients to be able to know whether I'm dealing with COVID-19 and I should treat it as COVID-19 or whether I'm dealing with a bacterial pneumonia or tuberculosis or someone with congestive heart failure because the treatments differ. It also affects our ability, right —the person with congestive heart failure needs to be kept as far away from possible from patients who have COVID-19. Right. And increasingly in our hospitals, we're now, because we have so many cases, we are dedicating wards to people who do have COVID-19. By having accurate testing, I can put those people who have serious respiratory diseases that are not COVID-19 as far away as possible and with different health care providers, then those people who have COVID-19.

Mayor: Deputy Mayor?

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: I think that was the first part of my response. You asked, I was going to try to answer your first question in two parts. One is the test is very important for the individual patient's management. Dr. Katz just explained all the details on why it's better if you know for sure. Also protects the health care workers. If you know for a fact that you have a COVID-19 positive patient, you protect yourself in a different way. The second utility, which is also as important, in order to understand how the epidemic is evolving, you want population-based numbers, you want to be able to collect, as much as you can of information and begin to plot it in a map across the city to be able to detect where the activity is surfacing, one way or another.

Mayor: So, I am staying on testing to see if there's anything else on testing and we'll go to other COVID-19 topics. On testing, Rich?

Question: So, the Doctor approached the City? Or the City approached the Doctor? How did it work?

Mayor: As soon as we heard, and again, Dr. Cohen and I have a long, a wonderful relationship. The second I heard that his company had capacity, I had his cell phone for many years. And I called him on his cell phone and to his great credit he was, he said, we want to help the City of New York. We have capacity now. We need to come to a deal as quickly as possible so we can get this up online, and immediately put our Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Melanie Hartzog, on the line with him and they struck a deal. And here we go. So, it was very, very fast. But it was great that we had the preexisting friendship and it was great that he was so ready, willing and able to help. Eric?

Question: Two things. Number one, when will it be up fully to 5,000 tests per day?

Mayor: So, I'll just start and say, Thursday will be the first day to receive. It will take some time to ramp up, but —

Dr. Cohen: We'll ramp up to the 5,000 as needed. We're predicting that's not going to be 5,000 on Thursday. It usually it'll be a couple of hundred — we'll see how it goes. We are prepared to do the 5,000 on Thursday, but I doubt that that's going to be the need for the first couple of days based on what we've seen today for the other hospitals.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Well, Erin, I'm going to jump in and then Mitch can be more exact. The numbers to question Andrew raised, you know, this is all about the numbers. If we're going to be next week, thousands of cases we're on a path to 10,000. The sheer demand is going to keep growing and obviously you have to test a lot of people. You don't only know in advance who's a positive. So I think it's fair to say over the next week, two weeks, that demand is going to grow intensely, but we can't give you the date yet. We'll keep you posted on that. Do you want to add? 

President Katz: So yes. The promise is that they have capacity to do it happily. Today, I don't have 5,000 people who may have COVID at my hospital per day. But by next week I might. And so it's not a ramp up in the sense of Dr. Cohen's lab having to ramp up. I don't yet have 5,000 people a day in the hospital who I think might have COVID-19.

Question: I guess related to that. I'm a little confused because you were saying a few days ago that anyone who has the correct symptoms, fever, cough, should be tested. Now you're saying you are going to be prioritizing, restricting even as it sounds like you're saying, you don't have 5,000 people to test. So why not just do all 5,000?

Mayor: Because everything is changing very, very rapidly. We're you know, even compared to last Friday, it's a whole other world. We are preparing for an onslaught and it's coming very, very fast and we have to prioritize and the testing capacity is going to be taken up very quickly is our prediction. And look, if we can continue to add more and more testing, we can then develop new rules. But right now, just like the point about why we have canceled elective surgeries, why we are building as we speak, new medical capacity, including the tents that are going to go up, the new buildings that are going to be acquired. We're in a period where we have very few days and weeks to prepare for a massive number of cases. So that's the entire focus right now. And we have to realize the extent of this crisis and be prepared to deal with people in greatest need consistently. And that's why that three to four days, that was also different, Erin. A couple of days back, our health care professionals were saying one to two days. That had to be changed. You're going to see change all the time. So every question is valid and I appreciate the question. I'm only going to remind everyone in the media and I would say it to all my fellow New Yorkers, if you say aha, you have a different answer today than a few days ago, that's often going to be the case because we are in a rapidly expanding crisis. If you say we said something a few days ago and we've changed it today and it actually doesn't make sense and we haven't explained it, then we have to explain it better. But there will be many times where, like, you're absolutely right. The message changed over the course of a few days because the reality has changed. Please go ahead. 

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: We are at – as we've been saying, the character of this outbreak is changing and with widespread community transmission where New Yorkers are more likely to get COVID-19 from their neighbor than they are from someone who has traveled. I think we're at a point in time where we need New Yorkers to pay attention to their symptoms, not so much whether they're being tested. Because we're at a point where we want people who have mild symptoms to stay home. Right? We've been telling folks, if you've got fever, cough, fever and shortness of breath, stay home. Stay home for three or four days. If you're not getting better, then reach out to your doctor. We are past the point and this builds on what Dr. Katz is saying. We need now the testing capacity to make treatment decisions for people who are hospitalized and not getting better. Whether or not someone who's at home, not feeling well, honestly, it doesn't matter if they get a test because I want them to stay home. I want them to stay home until they're better. If they're not better than I want them to call their doctors. Which is a change in messaging, right? Before we were saying stay home for three or four days. Now I'm telling you don't call your doctor at least for three or four days and having a test doesn't really matter because most people, 80 percent of people will have a mild course. Where this makes a difference and a critical difference, is for those people who do end up in the hospital and for those people especially who are in critical condition, we want to make sure that their doctors have all of the information that will give them the best course of action and help us minimize the potential risk for New Yorkers.

Mayor: On testing one more time, see if anyone has — go ahead.

Question: Did you, is there a cost figure of this? And is there a maximum capacity [inaudible]?

Mayor: On the cost — first of all, just we went over this earlier as we were preparing. When someone goes to H + H if they have insurance, you want to take it?

President Katz: If they have insurance, we'll bill the insurance. If they don't have insurance, they'll not be charged in any way for their test. 

Mayor: So, that's the personal reality. On the City budget reality. If it goes to insurance, then obviously we're not paying for it. If we have to pay for as a city, it would be eventually and heavy, heavy underlying eventually, federally reimbursable. So, this is something where we will front the money as much as it takes. This is — there is no outer limit here. As much as it takes but in terms of where capacity can go, we're going to work with Dr. Cohen to see if that 5,000 number can be intensified. What we're also doing simultaneously is looking for every other testing source that we could possibly get our hands on because we are very concerned about the overall trajectory here.

Question: [inaudible] maybe can you talk about what the scenario would look like in the city if you were doing 5,000 more tests a day – would that mean thousands more people would be in the hospital? You know, what would that scenario look like [inaudible] that many tests per day?

President Katz: We're certainly planning for a scenario where there could be thousands of patients in our hospital who are seriously ill. And as the Mayor has said, we're working very hard to expand capacity both at our physical hospitals and at other sites.

Mayor: Rich?

Question: [Inaudible] 14 that have come up so far. How many [inaudible] in the hospital?

Mayor: I have left my chart behind – do you have it? You can hand it to me.

Commissioner Barbot: 124

Mayor: Well, let's see if we – I'm sorry. We're confirming and obviously the doctor's ahead of me, but I want to make sure we all were working from the same timeline. Based on the 814, 124 in the hospital. Okay. On testing. I'm just going to do one more around if there's anything specific testing, then we'll open up to other coronavirus questions. Last call on testing. So, Dr. Cohen, if you want to stay, stay, if you can, and if not, we understand or if you get called away. Go ahead, Andrew.

Question: On the shelter in place. You just – to clarify you said sometime in the next 48 hours you'll decide whether you're going to –

Mayor: This is a decision that obviously we want to work with the State very carefully on. I believe based on the constant updates that I am getting that – and the numbers you're seeing before your very eyes – that the City and State should work together to resolve this issue within the next 48 hours and that all New Yorkers need to understand it is a possibility that this will have to be implemented. We have not made that decision. I don't want to speak for the Governor. I want to simply say I think it's gotten to the point where a decision has to be made very soon and we have to work together to determine a common strategy and our teams are talking to, and will be talking to get to that resolution.

Question: How concerned are you that even suggesting the possibility will make the next 48 hours a frenzy at grocery stores and other places.

Mayor: I think – first of all, we've seen a huge amount of stocking up. At this point, that's my polite phrase for it. I mean obviously people have gone out and constantly are clearing the shelves. I, of course, am concerned because I want to make sure that people as much as possible recognize how important it is to share with other people. And I know that's hard to get across, but especially thinking about the folks in your life, older folks, folks with disabilities, folks with serious medical needs, making sure they have everything they need and sharing what you have with them.

But I just think it's very important to be transparent and honest about what's going on. I think the time has come to make that decision. I don't think it's an easy decision. And I would say, you know, and I feel the State is grappling with the same things we are. Once you do something like that, you have cut off a lot of people's jobs, which I hate. I hate the notion a lot of people would lose their livelihood. And then I'm very worried about not only do they lose their livelihood, but then how do they afford food and medicine and all the basics. We can, you know, do a lot to stop evictions. So, God forbid someone can't pay the rent. If we can make sure there is no evictions, they can hang on and make it up later, you know, but food, you got to pay for food, you need food, right? You need medicine.

We have to create backup systems on the public side to help those who might end up in that situation. I will affirm to you, Andrew, federal government could have done all of this weeks ago where they had created income replacement or, you know, a major food relief program or any number of things – a supply program – so we could make sure people have their medicines. None of that's happened. We don't know if it ever will. So now we're put in a difficult situation of trying to create something we've never done before, but one of the most challenging parts of that decision and it gets a lot harder when you're talking about 8.6 million people concentrated in one place, is how do you ensure not only a consistent food supply, but it gets to everyone who needs it regardless of the ability to pay, how do you ensure that medicines, including prescription medicines, get to those who need them regardless of ability to pay? We have to figure out that part of the equation. We're not there yet. Go ahead.

Question: Would the shelter in place system be unprecedented for New York City? And can you talk about how it will be enforced, would the military be involved, and how would you ascertain that folks are indeed going out for groceries or other essentials?

Mayor: Your first question answers a bit of your second question. We've never been here before. I have never heard of anything like this in the history of New York City. We can all check our history and if anyone knows something jump on in. But we – a lot of us have been doing this work a while and never heard anything even close to this. We're going to have to create it from scratch, if we do it. To your second question, I would say I do not assume the military. One, they're not here – and again, they're extraordinary and I think we would all take heart to see the military involved more deeply, but they're not involved in that way at this point. And you can't assume, nor can you even assume where the need might be greatest in this crisis, that could shift radically.

So, what we would do if we got into that situation, we'd work with the State and we would use the NYPD, obviously. I think we have a lot of other agencies that could play a crucial role like the FDNY. And we would I think have to create some kind of monitoring system that made sense, that respected the fact that people still do need – even under the model in California right now, and I've read the specific ground rules of that model, it leaves leeway for going to the grocery store, going to the pharmacy, and other things. The model in Italy is stricter, as I understand it, but still leaves leeway for going to the grocery store and the pharmacy. Some kind of method for knowing if people are actually doing one of the things authorized or not. And a lot of presence out on the streets to enforce. But we would have to create that from scratch. Yeah?

Question: The Governor said that in order to do a shelter place [inaudible] sign off on it. So have you spoken with them or [inaudible] –

Mayor: As I said, this is a decision we would have to make with the State.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Variety of conversations at the staff level constantly. I look forward to talking to the Governor directly about it. But it's a very serious, complex decision.

Question: Mr. Mayor, have you yourself decided whether this is necessary [inaudible] –

Mayor: Not fully. I see the numbers escalating and I'm very concerned, but I also could not be more clear that the – what we would need to make it work and to compensate for the problems it would create, we do not hold that all in our hand right now. And again to the process of decision making, which is nowhere near as simple as I fear some people think it is, when you think about taking an action like this, upending people's lives, you have to feel you can somehow compensate for all the other things that occur and ensure that people are safe, are healthy, you know, have enough to eat. That's a lot of moving parts that at this hour we don't have all of the answers for. We'd have to feel we either have the answers or we believed we could get to them quickly enough. So, I am very sober about the extent of the crisis. I am very sober about what it's going to do to our health care capacity. I think we're in a race against time right now, but that doesn't mean I have all the answers that would make me fully comfortable about shelter in place.

Question: [Inaudible] Mr. Mayor or Chancellor Carranza [inaudible] –

Mayor: I couldn't hear the first part. I'm sorry.

Question: Today, President Trump announced [inaudible] sending a check [inaudible] if that happens [inaudible] what it's going to do for all the undocumented immigrants who work in the city, if there's going to be any economic relief for them because [inaudible] losing their job?

Mayor: Well, first of all, I'll say to the notion of the $1,000 check, although it's better than nothing, it's not going to last long. I don't think the idea here should be to send everyone $1,000 and feel that you're absolved by doing that. I think it's about the reality of people's lives. Folks already – so many working people in this city just in the last few weeks have lost thousands and thousands of dollars of income already, already. So, a one-time check of $1,000, who wouldn't take it, but that's not the same reality as being able to sustain a crisis that could be months and months. I would like to see a serious effort to bail out working people and support them with something that is much closer to income replacement.

But for undocumented folks obviously, look, they're going to bear a lot of the brunt of all this. Whatever shape the next steps take. A lot of undocumented people right now have lost their work, obviously, more will. What we do is what we always do. We provide help to everyone regardless. So, if people need food, doesn't matter documentation status, need health care it doesn't matter. We would try and provide support across the board and we're never going to ask people documentation status.

Question: Chancellor Carranza, today [inaudible] too many meals were just wasted. For example, in five different schools there were no kids picking up the meals. So is there any plan to [inaudible] trash because there wasn't kids picking up.

Chancellor Carranza: Well, the food should not be in the trash. We actually have food that is food-stable. In other words, it can be refrigerated. It can be used again. We also are working with the Mayor's Office and City agencies to get food that cannot be reused into the hands of local community-based organizations, other organizations that feed the poor and the hungry as well. So, if any food's being wasted, I need to know because that's not what should be happening. Yesterday I said that there were about 14,000 youngsters that availed themselves of a free breakfast and lunch. Today that number is 53,000. So, as I mentioned yesterday, we expect that as family situations become more and more stable, more and more of those children are going to be able to come in and avail themselves of lunch and breakfast as well. We expect that number to increase.

Mayor: Okay. Bobby?

Question: [Inaudible] shelter in place, obviously, you haven't developed the details, but you talked about [inaudible] pharmacy in general how would shelter in place be different from what people are? [Inaudible] –

Mayor: Sure. No. First of all I am going to – this something where a decision has not been made, needs to be made together with the State. We've never done it before. We've never even done anything close to it before. So this is, you know, trying to make sense of the situation as best we can. I think we've got initial interesting information from California, the way they set up their model, which is, you know, a step – definitely a step more strict than where people are right now. And I think Italy, from what I understand imperfectly, we're continuing to study, is a step even more strict than that. And the way I would say it is, right now, people are still going to work who are not just essential service workers. In a shelter in place scenario, to the best of my understanding, you know, you have to be a police officer, firefighter, health care worker, transit worker, or any number of people are determined to be essential to the continuance of society.
But if you're someone that works in retail, if you're someone that works in, you know, food service, all sorts of things, your work is going to be closed down unless it is being rerouted to an essential need. So the fact is, it's a much tighter reduction of the workforce and of the amount of people who are out and you have to have a reason to be out that aligns to being essential in terms of moving around from place to place. What I understand in the, again, this is only initial, the California model, what I'm seeing is they leave space for, you know, if you want to go out and get some exercise and you're socially distanced, you can do that. But that's not the same as, you know, going to work at your tech company, right? That's not the same as, you know, going to your little league game, right? All that stuff is gone. It is if you want to go out and get some air and exercise, you do it in a very limited way and you socially distance.

So it's taking some of the rules that we're encouraging people to follow now, making them tighter and reducing the workforce greatly and reducing travel greatly. And then the next step, again, I'm the layman and my colleagues can jump in, but the Italy version is even tighter still. As I understand it, beyond the essential service workers. Italy is basically, grocery store and pharmacy – and they have the ability for the police to stop you and confirm that you're going to one of those places and that you are supposed to be out on the street to do just that. So it's all about levels of restriction and enforcement. I don't know – is that in the ballpark?

Commissioner Barbot: Yep, you got it.

Mayor: Okay, he judges have spoken, go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] Councilman tested positive, just your quick reaction and have you had any contact with him recently?

Mayor: I have not at all. I'm sorry that he's going through this and, again, I'm hoping – I know Richie is a very, you know, he's a young, healthy guy. I'm hoping he comes through it very smoothly.

Question: [Inaudible] St. Patrick's Day parade held an event, I think it was early this morning [inaudible] few thousand people. Is that a bad idea?

Mayor: I think for a parade that's been part of the fabric of our life and this is an amazing statement to make for almost a quarter-of-a-millennium since before I believe the founding of the Republic. I understand they weren't – I spoke to Sean Lane, the chairman of the parade, they were in just pain and agony that this parade went off every year from its founding until now. And this is the first time in war and peace and anything else that's ever happened in history, the parade was shut down. I think there's a lot of pain. There's a lot of pain right down the Irish community that honors St. Patrick's, honors that parade. So I think what they wanted to do was do some small symbolic effort to keep continuity with all those hundreds of years of tradition. If they kept it to a few dozen people, I think that's honorable. They obviously stayed within the rules. Okay, who has not had a chance? Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] details. I think Dr. Katz said [inaudible] the City had 5,000 ventilators, he thought that that was sufficient. Is that number still right?

Mayor: We continue –

Question: [Inaudible] –

Mayor: Let's be clear about the word sufficient and timelines – and Dr. Katz will jump in – but based on what we knew then we thought it was a good number. We continued to check and we're checking every conceivable existing source of ventilators in the city to make sure where we're at. My understanding is that number approaches 5,000. I don't have an exact one for you, but we're still in that ballpark. We need more for where we are now and where we are going. So originally you know, we obviously hoped that it was not going to project the way it is now. The way it is now, we're going to need – there's a point coming when we're going to need more.

President Katz: I agree. I mean actually what I said was that we had – that Health + Hospitals has over 1,000 and we represent about 20 percent of the city in general. So I estimated for you that if you wanted a ballpark figure would be around 5,000.

Question: [Inaudible] city will need as the crisis continuous –

Mayor: We are going to need a whole lot of everything. There's your first estimate. I mean we – look, we're trying to figure it out. What I would say to you is constant expansion. I don't mean that to be flip or evasive. I mean that it's literally an unknowable number, first of all. And second of all, if we can get it, we want it. If we can get help from FEMA, if we get help from the United States military – anything we can get our hands on. We're the biggest city in the country. The numbers are growing rapidly. We're going to get our hands on every medical facility, every – if we can get, as we did the other day, a former nursing home, a nursing home that hasn't opened – anything like that, we're going to be looking at hotels, anything we can get our hands on for buildings, every form of equipment and supply, every professional who's willing to come into our service. We will need it all and it just has to constantly keep growing so we don't have an end point number yet. There's just – the answer is yes to everything we can get our hands on.

Question: [Inaudible] suspension on people moving apartments to [inaudible] and what would you say to people whose leases are up at the end of the month, because this has to be a hard time to find [inaudible] place.

Mayor: I'm a little confused by the question. What do you –

Question: [Inaudible] if you live somewhere and the lease ends at the end of the month [inaudible] would you recommend against that given, you know, concerns about spread?

Mayor: My colleagues can speak to this. I mean it's obviously a very individual dynamic. If your lease is ending and you have the opportunity to renew it and keep continuity, that would be ideal, obviously. I mean people have to deal with their individual circumstance, but I don't know, really, what guidance – have you got something? I welcome it.

Commissioner Barbot: So, the recommendation would be, what we've been saying, if the individuals who are doing the moving are asymptomatic and everybody's asymptomatic, then go about your life, minimize, you know, contact and exposure, and then do it as quickly as possible. But folks shouldn't stop doing the essential things in their lives. Right? We want people to continue with the essentials and if having a stable house, stable housing, I mean that's pretty essential. So we would – I would certainly encourage it, but I would want people to be diligent and vigilant. Right? Those are my two new favorite words. Diligent about hand-washing, covering your mouth and your nose when you cough you sneeze and being vigilant about whether or not you are developing symptoms of fever and a cough, even shortness of breath. I think that we are far enough in this outbreak where New Yorkers should assume that in some place, shape, or form they've already been exposed to COVID-19. And the important thing now is to be vigilant about whether or not they developed symptoms and if they do, to stay home. And if they haven't, then to double down on all of the preventive measures we've been saying, in terms of hand washing, covering hands, and cough, et cetera.

Question: [Inaudible] about the shelter in place, have your medical personnel here weighed in on whether they like that idea or not [inaudible] –

Mayor: First of all, thank you for calling them esteemed. It's a conversation we're going to be having starting today in detail, again, a parallel conversation with the State. But I'm saying as the person who manages the decision process, I think we have to come to that decision in the next 48 hours. So, we're going to get everyone to weigh in as we always do.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I'll let my colleagues – and, again, we're going to be in intensive conversations with the State today and tomorrow, and always respect the role of the State. And let me affirm, I think the State has handled this crisis very, very well and we've been working closely together, all of us, and we've been very aligned on the decisions. I don't hear the word quarantine as the exact equivalent of the words shelter in place. Shelter in place, to me, is a kind of way of life, if you will, and a more total strategy and quarantine suggests when you're dealing with a very specific, narrow area and who goes in and who goes out of that area. I think they're kind of two different things. I'm saying that as a layman, but, again, we respect the role of the State always. I just think it's decision time.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Louder, please.

Question: [Inaudible] get to leave the city?

Mayor: I am not an expert on something that we don't know enough about yet and something that we would have to determine the ground rules of. And, again, I'm going to say it, and I will really appreciate if it's reflected in coverage, because it's true – the actions we would have to take to compensate would be immense and that is a plan we don't have because it's never been done before and it's a lot we would have to work out very quickly. So, this is not a simple decision. This is a very, very tough decision. But how it would work and questions – very fair question like that, I don't have that answer right now because we have not even gotten to the decision of whether we think it's the right thing to do. As we look at it, we're going to try and figure out all those elements. We just – again, it's perfectly fair question, it's just you're asking a question about something we haven't even fully modeled yet.

Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] Dr. Barbot or Dr. Katz. [Inaudible] were they all hospitalized at the time of their death?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes.

Question: The second question is, for City employees [inaudible] they still don't understand their guidance and when they should come to work and things like [inaudible] waiting rooms are still really busy. [Inaudible]?

Mayor: Go ahead. I'm sorry, I thought you were asking someone else. My apology.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: My apology.

Question: So, I've heard from city employees who were still confused with their guidance about whether they should come to work and, in addition, places like the Department [inaudible] is still an open and trials are still going on. Will there be further guidance to say no more OATH hearings [inaudible]?

Mayor: Each thing is going to be – each issue is going to be addressed day by day. There are essential things, essential work still going on in different forms. There's things we might determine to be less essential that we would shut down. The first question was, who could telecommute and who could stagger hours, and that's been advanced substantially. But those examples you gave, to the best of my knowledge, are the kind of things you couldn't do with telecommuting. But I think it's a very fair question – are they now things are kind of arcane in light of this crisis or it could be delayed. You heard, of course yesterday in the executive order we delayed the land use process, for example. So, I think we're literally going piece by piece trying to identify what needs to be brought down next. Even if we're not doing shelter in place, we would constantly be trying to refine that. So, let us agree, we'll give you answers on those two by the next time we meet. Thank you.

Who hasn't gone? Go ahead.

Question: I have a few questions. One is, just a little more clarity on basic [inaudible] not sure what shelter in place, the difference between shelter in place and quarantine. Like, Scott Springer is calling for shelter in place. But the Governor is very adamant that [inaudible] –

Mayor: Again, I tried to answer that a moment ago. I respect – the concern is real, and it's just really, really simple – this is a decision that should be made with the State, it should be made the next 48 hours given the trajectory of this crisis. I don't want to be the guy who defines for anyone was the difference in quarantine and shelter in place, because we're still trying to learn what shelter in place could mean. And obviously, when the Governor says it, you should ask him what his interpretation is. But we – I don't think it's time to say this person likes this idea, this person likes that idea. It's time for the City decision makers to refine our thinking on whether we think it's the right thing to do and how on earth would we do it, and to align with our State colleagues on what they think and see if we can all come to a common vision

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I want to be clear, I have not heard the standards. I don't think we're suggesting – I have not heard of any wholesale release. I assume it's based on certain standards.

Question: [Inaudible] believe it's based on certain standards, but Eric Gonzalez this morning said that he's no longer going to prosecute low-level [inaudible] that would – or, things that wouldn't harm the public safety. So how long is it going to take our city to start assessing on the –

Mayor: The assessment is starting already – has started. That's a decision also I'd like in the next 48 hours – to know who – if we have people in our jail system who should not be there at this point in this crisis or don't need to be there or we have an alternative that makes sense. I want to get that resolved quickly.

Question: Sorry, one more. Ferries are currently serving alcohol and have been called – are currently serving alcohol [inaudible] advertising happy hour still. Is that something you guys –

Mayor: I don't think they're attempting to do anything inappropriate. I think they've been advertising happy hour all along is my understanding. But what is your question?

Question: My question is, basically, if we're closing bars and restaurants, what's going on [inaudible] service and the alcohol consumption –

Mayor: I think – I'm not – you're the first person to ask about that, so I'm just going to give you my commonsense answer. It's all takeout. So, by definition, it fits that model. And the ferries are still part of how people get around and we're still keeping our transportation network up. So, I don't hear a problem per se, but maybe I'm missing something.

Question: But I mean, people are on these fairies for a while, so isn't it creating a situation that's a little bit confusing since they're not on generally traditionally taking it out, they're [inaudible] sometimes 10 to 40 minutes.

Mayor: I appreciate it, and I think you're right that there should be a social distancing dynamic, but I think the core notion this – I mean, I've been on the ferries, it's not a seated restaurant, is not a seated bar. It's a takeout counter. So, I think – an excellent point would be as say, the ferries – we'll follow up – on our follow-up lists with EDC, need to practice social distance into maximum extent possible while getting people where they need to go. But I – at least hearing it on first blush, it sounds like takeout to me and therefore appropriate, but we'll check.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: On what?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I think it's something that – look, we have to look at everything in light of a crisis. The standard with the Rent Guidelines Board has now been established for seven years, unlike everything that came before. We actually look at the full cost to the entire equation, the costs that landlords deal with, the economic factors we take into account, tenants, we look at everything. And that has gotten us to the decisions that have been made over time, including two rent freezes. So, we would start with a proven formula. Whether that formula gets varied because of a global crisis is a great question. It's something, of course we have to consider, but we're not there. I think that's May – I'm not sure I'm right about that, but I feel like it's a ways off. So, excellent question. We'll come back.

Question: Have you heard about a cluster of about maybe a hundred positive coronavirus – positive tests in Williamsburg?

Mayor: If we had a cluster, I assure you, we would tell you. I asked this very day, we do not have any clusters in New York City.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: If we had a cluster in New York City, we would tell you. I asked right before coming out here – I'm not trying to be difficult with you – that's like a giant, giant, important question. I asked right before coming out here, confirming we have no clusters in New York City. Answer – yes. You can look at the people who are the people gave me the answer right here.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah. What I would add is we get results from the commercial labs on a continuous basis and we analyze those results on an ongoing basis. So, you know, as we've been saying all along, things change hour by hour and so as soon as we are, you know, concerned about any particular activity that is beyond what we would anticipate, we look more deeply into what's happening.

Mayor: I'm trying to interpret this note I was given, because it was on the other note. Price gouging – I want to make sure I get this right – I'll mention it proactively. On price gouging, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, 550 fines have been issued since yesterday. And is that dollar figure to the total of the fines? I'm interpreting Freddi's note here. Yes, $275,000 in fines since yesterday for stores that were price gouging on those basic items. I say, God bless the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. And I say to all those stores, you've got to be out of your mind to be price gouging in the middle of a pandemic.

Okay, we're going to wrap up. Thank you, everyone, and we'll have more for you soon.

2020-03-19 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good afternoon, everybody. We are obviously doing something very different today and something we haven't had to do previously, which is to have this update remotely and we're doing that to protect everyone and to show New Yorkers how important it is to practice social distancing. We're all getting used to this. We're all trying to make sense of it. I just want to say my fellow New Yorkers, anyone out there who's scared, anyone who is confused, anyone who feels like we're dealing with something we've never dealt with in our lives, you're right. This is in many ways the great unknown, but I'm also confident we can get through it and I'm going to talk about that in a moment. I'm confident we can overcome it. In fact, my confidence in New Yorkers, my confidence in all of the organizations in the city, the hospitals, health care providers, my confidence in the working people in New York City, and my confidence in our government couldn't be stronger. I'm going to talk honestly and bluntly about what we need from our federal government and how crucial that is in the equation.

City of New York is working constantly to protect our people, I know the State of New York's doing the same thing, and we are coordinated and share goals and strategies, but we all are waiting for federal help that still is not arriving and that is the central challenge. We have to talk bluntly about that and I will today, but to everyone who's dealing with this confusion and these challenges, I feel it. My family feels it just like you. We're all trying to make sense of a new reality. What I'm going to try and do every time I give you an update is tell you the blunt truth and I'm trying to do very hard to make sure I tell you what we exactly know and when we're not sure about something, we need to be clear about that too. It would be a mistake to tell you something certain if we're not certain, it would be a mistake to hold back things that you need to know and it certainly would be a mistake to sugar coat this very, very painful reality.

I think New Yorkers want real talk. I think New Yorkers like it straight and we're going to do that. So, I'll be talking about several things today that are really painful and troubling and I want everyone to understand that. I am not here to give you false reassurance. I have a lot of things I'll say that should cause you to be confident about what we can do in this city. Confident, particularly in the fact that we have the finest health care institutions, the finest doctors and nurses, and all the people that work in our health care facilities, the lab techs, everyone who works in our facilities. This is – there's literally no place on earth with a stronger and better health care sector than New York City. Nowhere on earth and we are going to ask of our colleagues in health care so much in these coming weeks, they are already heroes, but they're going to have to work in battlefield conditions, their strength, their courage, their resilience are all going to be needed. We're all going to be depending on them, just like we depend every day, not only on their work, but on our first responders and so many of our public servants. Everyone is going to be needed. Everyone needs to answer the call. Everyone needs to step up for the good of everyone else.

But despite my tremendous confidence in our people and our ability to serve them, I also have to be very clear about the extent of this crisis. It is unlike anything we have seen outside of wartime, with the possible exception of the Great Depression itself. It – we can make obvious and powerful painful parallels even to things like 9/11, the days and weeks after that. But this crisis is even more unknown in many ways because we don't understand the exact trajectory we're on and we know it will reach very deep into our communities. That is not a reason to be hopeless by any stretch. Because remember, every single piece of evidence we have continues to tell us that this is a disease that for 80 percent of those infected will have very little impact. So I want people to think about this. I'll tell you a lot of things that are tough and sobering, but I want you all to remember this side of the equation. There will be many New Yorkers who never get this disease and there will be many New Yorkers who get this disease, approximately 80 percent who get it and will feel very little and experience very little. But those 20 percent who experience a much tougher time with this disease, people in particular who are older and that means particularly folks over 50 and especially over 70 and it means those, of course with those serious preexisting conditions we talk about so often, lung disease, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and compromised immune system. For those people particularly at they're over 50 we're worried and we need them to take extraordinary measures. We need you to take extraordinary measures. If you're in that category of people, we need you to live differently and we need your families to adjust as well. You're going to hear from Dr. Barbot in a few minutes and she's going to talk to you as the city's doctor and give advice directly to New Yorkers in the light of a ever-growing crisis.

But I heard from a friend in Brooklyn from the Midwood community just yesterday and he said something I thought really captured it. He said, and they're very knit extended family over decades and decades of would've been unimaginable to keep his older parents away from their grandchildren. But he said, now he understands because of coronavirus and his older parents who have vulnerabilities of their own, they have to understand this is not the time to visit with their grandchildren because we just can't run that risk. It's time for getting on the phone with your loved ones. It's time for getting on FaceTime, but it's time to make adjustments that wouldn't have been imaginable in other situations, because we've never dealt with this situation before. This is literally unlike anything we have seen in our memory. It will not be the same as the 1918 flu epidemic because for one thing, the health care capacity of this city and this nation are tremendously better public health ability, the information flow, it's night and day compared to a 100 years ago. But in terms of the extent that's the only other parallel we can make in terms of recent health care history, it's going to be an epidemic, a pandemic that reaches deep into our communities. We got to be honest about that. We’ve got to make more changes in the way we live and we got to do things we wouldn't normally do.

I also want to emphasize this is a crisis that has an end point. As I said, it will play out in unpredictable ways and it'll play out for a period of time and that's what makes it different from some other things we've been through. It will go on for months, but it will not go on forever. At some point in the coming months, this crisis will start to abate and we'll be able to start the work of getting our lives back to normal and getting our city back to all the things about it that we love so much. But it will be months, so it will be a long battle. I don't think it serves anyone to be told, get ready for something easy. I think it is much better to tell people get ready for something difficult and something that'll go on for a long time, but also have confidence that we can get through it. And that's what I truly believe.

The numbers all go over with you today are nothing short of staggering, but they are not just numbers. I'll tell you the statistics that I have trouble even conceiving of myself, but I don't want you to think of them as statistics. I want you to think of them as your fellow New Yorkers, every number means another person has been affected by this disease and another family and that's what I feel watching a crisis that is really, really affecting the lives or our people, and putting a lot of people in danger. So, I'll tell you the honest truth and I'll go out of my way in the weeks ahead to always level with you. But I'll also tell you what we can do. And that's a lot. And I will be very honest about what we need our federal government to do because I have to be clear with you. We alone, even if we're the greatest city in the world and we are, we alone cannot solve this crisis. And I need people to hear that, not to create fear, but to level with people.

In the next few weeks with the extraordinary resources, New York City, we will fight this battle no matter what. But as we get into April, the farther we get into April, the more we will need the help of the federal government. It must arrive in time and there is time for that help to arrive but the federal government does not do all in its power immediately. It's as simple as this. There'll be a lot more people who get sick who didn't need to get sick and there'll be people who die who didn't need to die. It's as simple as that. So, we need to act now, and I know our federal government has the capacity. We have the finest military in the world, the largest by far, extraordinary resources, unlike the City or the State. And I always say it very bluntly, the federal government literally prints money. They can create any credit line they want to save the lives of Americans, but we're not seeing that, not even close at this point. So, I'll go into some very specific information now and then you'll hear from Dr. Barbot and then we'll open up to questions from the media and we'll be doing all of this remotely. It's the first time we're doing it. I want to just say to all my colleagues in the media, we'll try and get it right, but it may be a little difficult the first time, but please bear with us as we try and perfect this new system. This is something we'll be having to do for quite a while to keep everyone safe.

I've given you a framework to think about this situation with - and I'll be updating you regularly, but again, it will not be all bad news. It often will be tough information to hear, but not all this bad because in the middle of this fight we have the extraordinary heart and soul and spirit of New Yorkers and here's an example for you. Just on Tuesday I put out a call to retired health care workers and those who work in private health care offices to come forward and join up to serve in the fight against coronavirus. I ask people who have already given so much of their lives to others to step forward and to come out of retirement. I asked people who are earning a living and are not obligated to join public service and I asked them to join nonetheless in the name of all New Yorkers. That was Tuesday. Today, Thursday as of today, 1,746 health care professionals have stepped forward to augment the ranks of those already serving at the front line in our hospitals and clinics. That's something all new Yorkers should be very, very proud of and I am certain those numbers will grow.

This is going to be one of the most difficult moments in New York City history. I ask everyone who has health care training and who can help us to please step forward now and anyone who's willing to volunteer, please go to nyc.gov/helpnownyc, nyc.gov/helpnownyc, H-E-L-P-N-O-W-NYC. And I want to express my tremendous gratitude on behalf of 8.6 million New Yorkers, to all of you who have come forward and are ready to serve to protect all of us and what you are seeing from those retired health care workers and those private sector and health care workers you're seeing in many other ways. The extraordinary efforts of our colleagues in our public hospitals and clinics and all of those at the voluntary hospitals who are already doing so much. Our first responders, the envy of the nation, all that they are doing to protect us. Our social service workers who are helping people through all of the challenges they're confronting now. Our sanitation workers who are doing absolute crucial work to keep the city clean while we encounter a health care crisis.

On Monday, I talked about a very, valiant, noble group of workers. School cleaners and custodians and food service workers who went to school to make sure kids had meals even though school was not in session. Those workers showed up at their post to help our children and have enough food to eat. I want to thank our school safety agents and food service managers, including members of Teamsters 237 who have answered the call, stood up to help our children and those families who need food. I want to thank our school crossing guards who have been protecting our children who went to get food. We're going to keep talking from now on about all those who are standing up, unafraid, willing to fight, willing to help others. And I say unafraid, that's not to say they're not human beings, they're not worried like the rest of us, but I say unafraid because they showed up, they stood up, they did the right thing to help others and I thank all of you for that.

Again, all I ask of our federal government is to be as good as the people of the United States of America. Look at these everyday New Yorkers that I've mentioned to you and these are just the health care professionals and the public service workers who are all at their posts doing what is needed. There are thousands of stories every day and New Yorkers helping each other out. I've called on New Yorkers to help the people in your lives, your family, your neighbors, those you worship with, the folks that live on your block or in your building who might be disabled, might have a serious health condition or seniors who can't get around so well, to help them out. Help them with their groceries, help them get the medicines they need. We've been getting wonderful stories from all over the city, New Yorkers stepping up, making things happen right there where the need is greatest. There's so many people helping each other right now. Again, I've just asked our federal government to do its job, help all of us, and that's eventually going to be this whole country. It's New York City today. It's places like Seattle, but we certainly saw what happened in Westchester County. We see other places developing around the country, but make no mistake, it'll eventually be everywhere. So our federal government needs to right now go where the need is greatest and there is no place where the need is greatest in New York State and New York City.

Of course, I am heartened that the Congress passed an initial relief bill, but initial is the key word. It is a small beginning. It's far from what we need. I never look a gift horse in the mouth, but I can say with assurance that the first step taken by the Congress is just a small first step and we need a huge stimulus and relief bill immediately that puts money back in the pockets of people who have lost so much. It helps local governments to keep going and doing the work we do and it really, it responds to the reality on the ground, particularly in providing health care for so many people so quickly. Right now, the United States government is not even close to where it needs to be, but I do thank the House and the Senate for the action they took. I am very thankful to the United States military for sending the ship that we've all been waiting for, the USNS Comfort with just a 1,000-bed floating hospital. And will be crucial to our efforts in this city and state to protect people. 

The military, as I've said, I have no doubt in my mind stands ready to do all necessary to help their fellow Americans. I just wish they would get the order and they have not gotten that order.
President Trump, I will only say to the President, I don't understand and I think there are millions and tens of millions of Americans who don't understand what you are doing right now. You are not using the tools of your office. This is one of the greatest emergencies our nation has faced in generations. Every tool must be brought to bear. For some reason, you continue to hesitate. I said it not to be flip, but to note the historical parallel. President Trump right now, you are the Herbert Hoover of your generation. You are watching and waiting and missing every chance to be bold and to act to protect our nation.

Herbert Hoover, his successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, determined that our nation needed urgent and immediate action and created the New Deal and transformed the effort to help our people and saved our country, literally. President Trump is not doing that now for reasons that are absolutely inexplicably to the vast majority of us. But there is still time, not much, but there's still time. The President yesterday invoked the Defense Production Act. I have no idea why the President waited until March 18th to invoke the Defense Production Act, which has been used repeatedly in recent decades. Seems to me, given what we knew about this crisis, given that the City of New York held his first press conference to announce our steps on coronavirus on January 24th, I think the President could have invoked the Defense Production Act in February or even January. 

But he's finally done it and we know the history that that authorization allows for massive actions by the federal government to ensure that companies are producing needed goods and that they get to where they're needed most. However, the President has not ordered any of those subsequent actions, and this must change immediately. Through the Defense Production Act, the President can authorize the Department of Health and Human Services to order manufacturers to provide materials and services and to use their private facilities for manufacturing needed items. That has not happened. We have not seen the order from the President ensuring maximum 24/7 production of all items needed by our health care industry. And I would say it very plainly, every factory in America that can be converted to health care production, to the equipment and supplies that our valiant health care professionals need and they will need even more in the coming months. Every such factory should be ordered on a full production basis, on a level prioritized by the federal government. 

And then those goods must be distributed and it cannot be distributed in a business as usual manner because as I said here in New York City, we are two weeks or three weeks away from running out of the supplies we need most for our hospitals. The only way those supplies can be provided in time, is through the full mobilization of the United States military. At this point, there's never been a greater no-brainer in the history of the Republic. How on Earth is the finest military on Earth being left on the sidelines? That's what's happening right now and I guarantee you go interview our generals and our brave men and women who serve in the military, go interview the average American soldier and ask them if they stand ready to get the supplies needed to New York City and the other parts of this nation that are in such danger right now. I guarantee you two a one, they would tell you that is exactly why they are a part of our armed forces and they would not only await the order, they would welcome the order. But that order has not been given by our Commander-in-Chief and it is beyond comprehension. It is immoral that our President has not ordered our military to full mobilization because this is the great threat to our nation.

We have armed forces overseas who are protecting us against terrorism and foreign threats, but right now we have a domestic threat on a level we have never seen in decades. Our military is the only answer at this point. And if we expect those goods that are produced that we need for our hospitals to get there in time, there's only one organization that can guarantee that. And that is the United States military. When will President Trump give the order? That is my question. When will he give the order? Why is he hesitating? People are suffering now and they will be suffering so much more in the month of April. And the President gives himself an A grade and he congratulates himself and yet he will not act in the way we need it most. This is patently unacceptable.

Our military also, in addition to their extraordinary logistical capacity, our military has the ability to bring exceptional medical personnel directly to where the need is greatest. Our health care leadership here in the city has made clear that supplies and medical equipment are a deep concern. Physical capacity to build out an extraordinary amount of new health care abilities and beds is crucial. But the single most important factor is personnel. We're going to need all the people I've spoken about previously to do all they can do, but they can't do it alone. In our military, our extraordinary trained professionals are used to dealing with the most difficult circumstances and yet they are at their basis right now, all over this country. They are not at the front. The front is here in New York City. Let's be very clear. This is a different kind of war and the front is right here in New York City. How on Earth are some of the finest medical professionals in this nation who serve this nation, why have they not been activated and sent to New York City and New York State and California and Washington State where they could be helping right now? We need them. We need everything that the military can bring to bear.

I've sent two letters this week and I'll be sending many more. Trying to get action and letters are just a way of making a hundred percent clear what we're talking about. This letter to Secretary Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Secretary Robert Wilkie, Department of Veterans Affairs. This lays out very clearly our request that the Veterans Administration facilities in this city, all available beds, all available medical personnel in our Veterans Administration facilities be activated immediately to serve in the cause of fighting the coronavirus. We know for a fact that our Veterans Administration facilities have excess capacity and we know we're in the middle of a national crisis. I know again that the medical personnel in these facilities stand ready to help, but they need the order from these two secretaries so they can provide maximum support to New York City. And the same would be true everywhere in the country. I sent this letter to Secretary Azar of HHS delineating the supply requests again. And this is one of many requests we've made, but I'm doing it very publicly. We'll put this online for everyone to see. Here are the supplies that must be provided to New York City early in April for us to ensure that our health care system, public and private, can bear the brunt of the coronavirus crisis, and serve our people. We need three million N95 masks. We need 50 million surgical masks. We need 15,000 ventilators and 25 million each of the following items of personnel protective equipment, which are health care workers and first responders would use depending on the situation — surgical gowns, coveralls, gloves, face masks. We need these in great numbers. They may sound like daunting numbers at first, but given the extraordinary production capacity of this country, they are very much achievable. If our nation has put on a war footing and our President uses the powers he already has to coordinate and to prioritize through the private sector, the production we need. That's the kind of level of production we need, those specific supplies. We need to ensure that health care in New York City can continue on the level we need to fight this crisis. 

Our Senator – our senior Senator, Chuck Schumer, has put forth a powerful idea. He calls it a new Marshall Plan. It’s a Marshall Plan for our hospitals and I give him credit for this because he's using one of the great examples in American history, the Marshall Plan after World War II, which rebuilt, literally rebuilt the European continent that had been left in ruins after the war and re-established a thriving economy. The Marshall Plan, the original Marshall Plan made the United States the envy of the world and created tremendous gratitude for our nation all over the globe. And that was at a time when we had a lot less technology and many disadvantages just having come out of war ourselves. Senator Schumer's right, that's the right attitude, the right approach. A Marshall Plan for our hospitals for the entire nation would involve massive new investments to support state and local governments that already are doing so much to fight coronavirus. And that are struggling with the challenge in so many ways, to strengthen and build out our health care workforce. It would involve major investments in our strategic national stockpile and our Centers for Disease Control and it would allow for the large-scale infrastructure we need to fight this extended war. So, I want to thank Senator Schumer and I ask all the members of the House and Senate to include Senator Schumer's plan in the upcoming legislation you pass.

Now to the part of this update that I hate to give but I need to about the overall situation. And I will say we will attempt to give New Yorkers constant updates including ones we wish we didn't have to give and anyone who needs an update can go to nyc.gov/coronavirus. Anyone who needs specific information or has specific needs of course, can also call 3-1-1. We are seeing an explosion in the number of cases here in New York City. Now I will be clear that part of that is that we finally have more extensive testing going on. We have nowhere near the amount of testing that we should ideally have. We have nowhere near the amount of testing we should have had weeks and weeks ago to get ahead of this crisis. Nowhere near the amount of testing that a place like South Korea had. And they were able to use testing as a powerful part of a strategy to beat back the coronavirus. We're still far from where we should be, but we have a lot more testing than we used to have. And so it is natural that as you have more testing you will see numbers grow simply because the larger reality is being captured more effectively. But this number is nonetheless very, very painful. I'll tell you that the City of New York will be every day at 10:00 am and again at 6:00 pm putting together our numbers and providing updates as we are ready once they are confirmed. 

So, based on the update from 10:00 am today, which is different from the State’s update, which came from last night at midnight. So, this is, again, a different number than the State, the State had for the city — different number because it is a 10 hours difference. And this'll show you how fast this crisis is growing. At this point in New York City, based on a 10:00 am number 3,615 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in New York City. Again, each of those, a human being and a family represented and that number is undoubtedly gone up since 10:00 am. It's a painful, distressing number. I also have to report another even more painful number. There have been 22 deaths now in New York City directly related to the coronavirus. The breakout by borough — in Queens 980 cases, in Manhattan 976 cases, in Brooklyn 1,030 cases, in the Bronx 463 cases, in Staten Island 165 cases. I'm going to go through some specific issues before I turn to Dr. Barbot and I'll go quick here.

Unfortunately, we can report that we have the first instance of an inmate on Rikers Island testing positive. The inmate is individually in his early thirties. And thankfully at this moment health wise is doing okay. Is in isolation and has been moved to our communicable disease unit on Rikers Island, part of the health care apparatus on Rikers Island. This inmate was in a housing unit with other inmates. All had been checked for symptoms. Eight had been identified with symptoms and moved also to isolation in the communicable disease unit. Question came up several times last few days about those incarcerated and if there were instances where anyone should be released because of particular health vulnerabilities and because their status put them at low risk of re-offending or being any kind of threat. At this point this is an ongoing effort, it will keep growing as we review more cases, the cases are being reviewed by the NYPD and the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice and as they reach agreement on an individual case, we start the process to release them. Forty inmates, forty inmates have been put on the list. We are awaiting sign-off - depending on the case - from the relevant District Attorney and/or the State of New York and we intend to begin releases as early as today once we have that sign-off, we will continue reviewing other cases.

An update on testing availability. As we said a few days ago, the health and hospital system has greatly increased its testing capacity. They're now 10 new sites at hospitals and these sites will have the ability to serve approximately 150 people per day. Eight, again, I'm going to emphasize throughout, I know we're going to get this question constantly and we'll keep reiterating - on a priority basis, on a reservation basis, until we have much, much greater testing capacity everything must be focused on those in greatest need and everything will be done on reservation basis. People that walk-up or drive-up without a reservation cannot be tested. We have to keep the priorities tight here, but we keep, we keep working every day to try and expand the amount of testing to reach as far as we can.

The 10 sites, again, will serve 150 people per day – approximately - initially. Again, in every case, we'll look to increase the numbers as much as we can. Eight are already open at Bellevue, Elmhurst, Harlem, Jacoby, Kings, Lincoln, Woodhall, and Queens hospitals. Two will open next week at Coney Island and Jacoby. There are seven new sites at Gotham clinics. Each can serve and test 50 to 75 people per day. All will be open this week and they include Belvis, Cumberland, East New York, Gouverneur, Morrisania, Sydenham, and Vanderbilt. Four new testing centers each will serve and test 100 people per day, approximately two are open at Coney Island and Jacoby, two coming up shortly at Kings County and Queens Hospital.

This is all separate from the State operated drive-through testing center in Staten Island and separate from the five new testing centers that are coming soon in coordination with FEMA that will be set-up in New York City. We'll have details on that as they get solidified. All appointment only, all prioritizing of the sickest and most vulnerable, remembering that 80% of all coronavirus cases will be mild – thank God for those who have them. And again, if you are younger than 50 and you don't have a preexisting condition, those are exactly the people who are coming through overwhelmingly pretty well through this challenge and we want those people – especially - if you get sick to stay home and wait three or four days to see if your symptoms get better or worse. Only if they get worse do you call the doctor at that point.

In terms of our businesses, I want to thank all the restaurant owners, bar owners, cafe owners, all the people work there. You've been put through so much these last days. I'm sorry for that, but this was something that had to be done for the good of the people in New York City. But there have been so many great instances of people who own these establishments working with the new rules, keeping those takeout and delivery options going, trying to take care of their workers and we understand what a strain that is. We understand there've been real layoffs and it's very, very sad, but thank you for everything you're trying to do to keep getting people food that need it and keep your businesses alive to the best of your ability.

I want a note for all those who doubted the ability of New Yorkers to deal with this new dynamic. Over the last few days, we have sent out the NYPD, the FDNY, Department of Buildings, and the Sheriff's office to enforce, to ensure that restaurants and bars that serve food were closing at the appropriate hour, that they were not allowing customers to dine-in. We have seen overwhelming compliance by those who own and work in these establishments. There have been as of yesterday I believe this number is 8,150 inspections that yielded only six violations. That's about as close to perfect as it gets in human life and I really want to thank everyone and thank these inspectors who are doing such important work to ensure everyone's safe by avoiding the social distancing that goes with what we used to know as social life only a few days ago. That helping people not continue the habits we used to have that unfortunately only led to the spread of this disease - these inspectors are doing such important work, I want to thank them all.

On telecommuting, the State issued the new guidance, which I approve of 100 percent, taking 75 percent the number of workers who should be out of their offices even for those businesses that continue in their physical locations. We are working with the State on a proper enforcement mechanism. To everyone, if you still are not yet telecommuting, you must, it's as simple as that, and we need every employer to understand that. And any employee who still has to go to a work site and is not an essential employee, please, if you have an idea of how you could telecommute or some alternative talk to your employer, we need people to be creative here. Anyone who believes that there is a problem with their work site that can be addressed call 311 and we will try and help. Our Department of Consumer and Worker Protection or our Commission on Human Rights can step in if someone is being kept at a work site that does not need to be and is a non-essential worker. We want to make sure that employers really get the message that everyone needs to be home who can be home.

And as to the city workforce, which is about 380,000 strong when you factor in all elements of the public sector at the city level. By Sunday, all nonessential personnel across all of our agencies will be working from home in some form or fashion or will be waiting for a specific assignment. Many of course can do telework. Some we're going to come up with a new way for them to work at home even if it doesn't exist right now. Some may be mobilized to address a food issues or other issues at the community level. The estimate at this point, and we'll have a better number for you by the beginning of next week, but the estimate is 250,000 city workers will be out of their traditional work sites and working from home unless they are given a very specific assignment in the field. As part of fighting this crisis that is approximately two thirds, two thirds of our workforce that no longer are working – or no longer will be working at their traditional work sites. You're going to see a lot of city offices are just shut down because we came up with an alternative and for all city workers with symptoms of coronavirus. As you're going through those three or four days waiting to see if you get better or worse as you're going through this entire process, we will not— take away sick time for anyone who has symptoms and is waiting for clarity about this disease. We will not— take that off your sick days.

Few last points, questions early in the week about food stamps and public assistance. Want to clarify; there are no more in person interviews for food stamps or public assistance. All of that has been converted to online and – phone interviews and processing. Very specific issue, this is something I have to say to people, and it's painful to say it, but I've gotten concerns raised by community leaders. We understand that people at this point cannot in general go to their house of worship. We understand how painful that is for people of all different faiths, what a pillar of their lives, their faith is, and how important their visit each week or more often to their house of worship is. But we are in a moment of tremendous danger and we have to deal with that reality. We have to protect each other. So, I know that clergy all over this city, and I've talked to clergy leaders. I had a call with members of our clergy leadership just a few days ago and there were unified across all faiths, led by Cardinal Dolan unified in recognizing that many, many people will have to forego traditional religious services and clergy had been leading the way and telling people to stay home who need to stay home and then reducing services or closing them down altogether where needed. But what we have heard in some communities is that in the absence of traditional services, some individuals are choosing to create home-based worship services. That per se might not be a danger except when it means in so many cases that large numbers of congregants are being crammed into a very small space, which immediately violates the concept of social distancing. The rule is to try and keep six feet apart or as close to that as humanly possible. Worshiping in a living room with numerous people immediately violates that idea and makes everyone vulnerable. I think something that unites all faiths is the desire to protect each other, uplift each other, respect each other. It is not helpful. It is not safe. It is not faithful to gather large numbers of people in a small space for informal services that would only serve to cause this disease to spread and you know who will then be in danger. Our seniors and those who already are dealing with serious healthcare conditions, I don't think there's any faith on earth that would condone that. So, please, to all of you who are doing this or considering doing it, please stop. Simply forego traditional services don't try and recreate them, if you feel you must do a service that needs to be just a small handful of people, socially distance, six feet per person apart or else you're creating a risk to all those involved.

Close with a reminder, thank God we see that for younger, healthier people, this is a disease that they can see through – and come out safely, overwhelmingly. So, let's keep the focus on those in need those who are most vulnerable and let's help them out. Anytime you can help your fellow New Yorker in need, I know a lot of people have been stocking up on groceries and all sorts of household goods. If you know someone who needs help, come on, don't keep it all for yourself. Share with your fellow New Yorker, that's how we're going to get through this. This will get worse before it gets better, we've all heard that phrase, but this is probably the most blunt example we're going to see in our lives of the notion that this is going to get worse before it gets better. We have to brace ourselves for that, but it will get better, it will get better in the end, and we will see it through

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, I want to turn to our Health Commissioner, who I know has a message of real urgency and she'll say it in English and Spanish both. But remember Dr. Oxiris Barbot is the City's doctor. For those who have a doctor, she's also your doctor, for those who don't have a doctor she's your doctor. She is going to tell you now the truth you need to hear.

Dr. Barbot –

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Thank you Mr. Mayor. And I actually, I want to start where you left off in terms of things will get worse before they get better. And actually, what I have been saying is that things will get worse before they get bad and how fast things get better will depend on all of us. This is a sober moment that we are in with regards to the City's health and as the City's doctor. I take pause when I look at the speed with which we are identifying new cases and I take further pause when I put that against precious resources that are quickly dwindling and I call upon all New Yorkers to take this seriously. This calls into action, our personal responsibility, our civic responsibility to ensure that we take every measure possible so that we minimize the potential risk and harm to New Yorkers. Those that are most vulnerable to this virus, those that are elderly, have underlying chronic illnesses and who otherwise would not be able to access care.

Over the course of the last several days, I have been conveying messages to New Yorkers about how they can protect themselves. Those messages hold true, ensuring that we are diligent about keeping up with hand hygiene, covering our mouths and our noses when we cough, and when we sneeze, but the reality is that at this point in the outbreak, we need to do more. We need to do more, if we are going to stay off the onslaught of potential cases that are facing the City and doing more means staying home. If you are not an essential worker, I need you to stay home. If you are developing symptoms, I need you to stay home and stay away from individuals who are at risk for bad outcomes such as those that are over 50 and have chronic illnesses such as those who may have disabilities and not be able to isolate themselves. I need you to ensure that you stay home and you don't worry about whether or not you have a test. I want you to think about you've already been exposed and having a test doesn't really make a difference. The important thing is that you stay home. You stay home for at least three to four days, and that if you're getting better to stay home for seven days or 72 hours after your fever has gone away and if you're not getting better after three or four days, that's when you should reach out to your doctor.

One of the most important ways in which we as new Yorkers have an opportunity to slow the spread of covert 19 is by staying home. Social distancing is the single most important tool that we have to reduce this potential onslaught of COVID-19 infections. It's the best chance that we have of ensuring that our health care delivery system isn't overrun with individuals who are coming to the emergency room or coming to the doctor's office because they're worried, and in reality they have maybe minimal symptoms. This is an opportunity for New Yorkers to step up and to stay home if they have no symptoms or minimal symptoms.

The best chance that we have to reduce the number of people who may ultimately die because of COVID-19 is if we take our personal responsibility in this seriously and if we all take that covenant seriously of civic responsibility to each other's health. There will be, as the mayor has said before, people who will succumb to this illness. But the reality is that if we don't protect our health care system, there will also be other people who die of other reasons because they haven't had the, didn't have the opportunity to access the vital health care that they need.

So this is as much about protecting our resources to treat COVID-19 as it is to protect those precious health care resources so that folks who may develop heart attacks, who may have ongoing needs for cancer treatment, can get secure ongoing access to those important healthcare services.

The last thing that I want to ensure that I share with New Yorkers is that as the city's doctor, my job is to make recommendations that may not be popular, and I don't take those recommendations lightly. I know that asking people to socially distance creates hardships. And as the mayor has said, has said, we are putting measures in place to try and reduce those hardships. But the reality is that unless we take those serious steps to socially distance ourselves for the foreseeable future, we may find ourselves in a place that overruns our health care delivery system and overruns other systems.

So, I need New Yorkers to take this opportunity to only get tested if they're not getting better. To look out for our elders and ensure that they have all the resources that they need to make it easy for them to stay home safely, and to only reach out to their doctors if they're not getting better.

And lastly, though we're asking people to socially distance, physically distance, this is a time for us to come together emotionally and spiritually. I want to remind New Yorkers that we have a tremendous resource in NYC Well. I encourage people to call or text, reach out to NYC Well. The news that people are hearing every day is sobering. And today, I hope it's clear that we are changing the tone. I am changing the tone and that may create anxiety. It may create feelings that individuals need help working through. This is the time to really access NYC Well.

I want to now just make some remarks in Espanol.

[Commissioner Barbot speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: Thank you very much, Commissioner. Okay, we are going to now turn to questions from the media. Want to emphasize to our colleagues in the media, please ask your question, if there's an obvious follow-up, I'll certainly take that, but want to try and get to every member of the media who has a question as we do, even when we're in person. So, I'll entertain a first question. I'll entertain a follow up if there is, but then we're going to aggressively move to the next person to get through everyone. And I know Olivia from our press office will be managing the flow of the questions. So, Olivia, please start the questions.

Olivia Lapeyrolerie: First up is Alejandra, from AM New York.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Speaker Johnson proposed a $12 billion relief plan for our city businesses and workers impacted by the pandemic. Can you share your thoughts on that?

Mayor: Could you repeat the specific figure? I couldn't hear you.

Question: $12 billion. 

Mayor: Yeah. The reality right now, we obviously — there's tremendous need for relief for our small businesses and working people, but that has to come from the federal government. Right now we have to be very mindful that our city government is paying for a lot of extraordinary expenses. And while dealing with real revenue challenges, we're going to keep serving New Yorkers no matter what. But those really big bailouts have to come from the federal government. And that's exactly what Senator Schumer's talking about right now. And he's one of the people leading the way. Federal government is a place that has that capacity. They need to do it.

Question: Thank you. 

Mayor:Thank you.

Lapeyrolerie: Next up is Alex Zimmerman, from Chalkbeat.

Mayor: And just say it a little louder. It's Allison?

Lapeyrolerie: Alex Zimmerman, from Chalkbeat.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Two quick questions. One is just I know the City had said that they -- that there are about 300,000 families who are in need of devices to access remote learning. I'm wondering whether the City thinks it will have all of those in family's hands by this coming Monday?

Mayor: Okay. We have a special chair, well distanced from me for some of our key leaders of this administration. Chancellor Carranza has now joined us and he will give you the answer.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: So, we're not going to have 300,000 devices by Monday. That's, we never said we would. We do have a plan for having those devices in the hands of our students in the coming weeks. There are 25,000 devices that will be distributed over the next week to families. We are in the process right now of collecting the survey results that teachers and principals have been sharing with families over the course of these last three days that they've been at their school sites. We are prioritizing students in public housing, students that are homeless, low-income, Title I students as priority to get those devices right off the bat. But we will, we are committed to having devices for all of our students. Also, important to understand that schools have laptop carts, schools have laptop computers. Many of the schools are assigning those assets that they have in their schools to the students as well. So, it's not just purely devices that are being purchased, but also schools are assigning devices that they have in their schools as well. The good news as well, is that while we are ready to go in remote learning mode there are a number of resources that are still in-your-hands kind of materials that families over the next few days we'll be picking up as well. So we're going to be transitioning in this way, but those devices will be here in a matter of weeks. 

Mayor: Stay there for a second. Alex, did you have another?

Question: Yeah, just a quick follow up on that. Do you know how many, what the gap will be on Monday? Like how many more you'll have to go by then or, or what the number currently is?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, we don't know that.

Mayor: But we'll keep updating as we get more information.

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, we're getting information in real time. So we'll update as we get that information.

Question: And the second question was just I know in the past the City has been confirming positive cases on, you know, like there would be releases if a member of the school community had tested positive. It seems like that stopped and I'm just wondering, like why the City has stopped confirming positive cases given that there have been teachers in the school buildings for the last three days?

Mayor: Well, it's a couple of different things. I'll start and the Chancellor can jump in. I mean, first of all we said you guys, it seems like a century ago, but I think it was last week that we were not going to be able to go over individual cases the way we used to in any way, shape or form. And the number here is staggering obviously. There will be specific situations where we have information we think is crucial to share on a particular case. But I think that that will be a rarity, honestly. In terms of a school communities, well, obviously the vast majority of school buildings are shut down except for that food function this week. And that's going to be reset next weekend to something different where we still manage to get a lot of food out, but it will not be in a all school buildings. We're working on what that looks like. There will be a small number of specific learning centers for children of essential workers. And that's being engineered as we speak too. And everything's happening in real time because none of us have ever done any of this before. We're creating constantly. So I think the fact is that the reality of updating you has fundamentally changed. I think obviously two things. One, going forward as we have ongoing facilities like those learning centers for the children of essential workers, we are obviously going to be very mindful, if any person in that building gets sick, they're going to be immediately isolated and we’ll work in every way to make sure anyone else needs to be isolated will be. But we've entered such a different realm here. I think that Dr. Barbot should emphasize this, that we simply can't do what we used to do even just a week or two ago. But now what's been replaced by general rules for everyone to follow. And this is based on an assumption and it's a painful one for us all to understand, but that coronavirus is now widespread in our city. And so we have to approach it differently. So Doctor, just taking this example, if in one of our feeding stations or one of our learning centers, someone who worked there you know, was symptomatic or later tested positive, how we're going to approach that situation and how people have to kind of live by some general rules now that are different.

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely. So as I've said in previous press conferences, at this point in time with the degree of community spread that we have individuals who developed symptoms of fever and a cough, shortness of breath, sore throat should assume that they have been exposed to COVID-19. And they should take the appropriate measures of isolating themselves, staying home for seven days from the onset of symptoms. And if they have fever, to stay home three days after the fever is gone, whichever of those is longer. But the reality is that when on a daily basis we have new cases that are in the triple -- double digits and the triple digits it becomes, and I'll be blunt here, really meaningless to go through a case by case accounting. What's important here is ensuring that we focus on vulnerable populations, focusing on protecting the health care delivery system. And imploring New Yorkers to do the right thing, to stay home and to not overload our emergency departments. I think we need to be ready to see that kind of volume and to redirect our thinking away from individual cases and how it is that together as a city, we are protecting our health care workforce and we're protecting our most vulnerable.

Mayor: Thank you. Who's next Olivia?

Lapeyrolerie: Next is Andrew Siff, from NBC New York.

Mayor: Andrew. Andrew?

Question: Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? Okay, Mayor. The question is about this San Francisco style, some call it a shelter-in-place, but I know you and the Governor have been having a little bit of a verbal disagreement about what to call it. The question is, if you're going to issue a directive or a recommendation or an urging that people stay at home, like they've done in San Francisco, why not do it right now? Why no -- why wait until Friday or Saturday or Sunday or Monday? What are you waiting for?

Mayor: Thank you Andrew. Let me try and lay out a couple of facts I think will make it clear. First of all we are working with the State of New York. I spoke to the Governor yesterday. I'm going to speak to him later on today. We need to be coordinated with the State of New York period. That's the right thing to do in terms of being effective for our people. That's the right thing to do according to the law. We will be coordinated with the State of New York and the State of New York has to make the ultimate decision here. I respect that. I respect the Governor. It doesn't matter if we've had disagreements along the way. Right now we're in a crisis together. And I would note that I actually think the Governor has handled this crisis very well. That I agree with the decisions that he’s made, that there's -- I cannot think literally of a major decision that I disagreed with.

So, in this instance, I think that definition really matters and I want to be clear and I think I thought it was understood and clearly it wasn't. That's on me, that when I first made this point, it was as we saw San Francisco make its announcement. It is there, a public health order and they use the phrase shelter-in-place, but with a variety of steps to ensure that essential services would continue. And that people could still get basic goods they needed, food, medicine, et cetera. I think that San Francisco model is a clear sort of humane, smart version of shelter-in-place that really keeps the essentials going but gets rid of everything non-essential. I think it's a smart approach. And anyone who's not clear on what it is or what it isn't, it's not hard to find. Just go on the City of San Francisco website and it's a couple of pages and you'll see exactly what they're doing.

But you know, for the City of New York and the State of New York, the decision has to be made by the Governor looking at all the factors. And I've given him a sense of what we're seeing and what I think we need here. But I also understand he has to think about the entire state. He has to think about the interconnection of the city to surrounding counties. There are real issues. So this is something -- he feels urgency. I feel urgency. It has to be decided quickly what additional steps will be taken. He did something I think, very good today by taking that level, the 75 percent for businesses to clear out their employees and get them home. And I know the Governor's taking a series of other actions to reduce nonessential activity, which I agree with. So that conversation will happen later on today and then I'll certainly have an update for people by tomorrow. Who's next, Olivia?

Lapeyrolerie: Up next is Brigid Bergin from WNYC.

Mayor: Brigid can you hear me? I don’t hear Brigid. Brigid can you hear us?

Lapeyrolerie: Brigid we can’t hear you so we’ll come back. 

Mayor: So we'll come back to Brigid.

Lapeyrolerie: Up next is Erin Durkin from Politico New York.

Mayor: Erin, can you hear me?

Question: Yes, I can. Can you hear me?

Mayor: There you go, loud and clear.

Question: Okay, great. I'm just wondering, is NYCHA Housing taking any particular steps to prevent the spread of coronavirus there? And are there any confirmed cases among NYCHA residents?

Mayor: On the question of confirmed cases -- I have not been told of a case among NYCHA residents, but I also want to note that with the numbers growing it's harder to specifically confirm exactly who is where, obviously. But I have not been told of anything among NYCHA residents. In terms of steps, I know I've spoken to the Chairman and the General Manager, they've done a lot of outreach you know, flyers and, and robocalls and electronic messages telling their residents how to approach this crisis. They have done lots of extra cleaning. Obviously, and we know this from Sandy in the years since Sandy and I know Emergency Management Commissioner Criswell is here, works with NYCHA to keep track of any residents who have particular medical needs, who need medicines, or who are incapacitated need help. So they're aware of who to check on and see if they need anything special. Those are the basics. But I can get you a more detailed update on NYCHA. I'm looking to Freddi. We can have that for you. Get you some of that later day and have more for you tomorrow as well. Is Brigid back or not? 

Lapeyrolerie: No, we're going to go to Gersh next and then we’ll come back to Brigid.

Mayor: Okay Gersh. 

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes indeed.

Question: I may be a journalist, but I first want to say, I hope you and your family and your team are well and safe.

Mayor: Thank you Gersh and you are — that's very much appreciated. I hope you and your family and all your colleagues are safe.

Question: Well who knows. Anyway, there has been —

Mayor: That was not reassuring. We hope you’re safe.

Question: But I have to be honest. Anyway, my team is separated, so that's fine. So last week when you urged New Yorkers to bike to work if they could, there has indeed been a huge surge in cycling. And now new NYPD statistics just released today showed that there has been a 43 percent increase in injuries to cyclists even as injuries to drivers and pedestrians are down by double digit percentages. And you know that cities around the globe are expanding their cycling networks during the crisis. Bogota, Columbia is adding 47 miles of new routes and you've been asked by Transportation Alternatives and by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer to provide those safe routes. When will you act on this?

Mayor: Well, the first I heard honestly – and Gersh, I think you understand, I know you have an area of particular focus. I respect that. I think you understand we're trying to address many, many issues simultaneously. The first time I actually heard it was from the Borough President late yesterday and I think it's an important proposal. So, we will get a sense quickly from our Department of Transportation of where we think there are areas that we can do that in real time. I think it's a very fair point. Wherever we can do a fast expansion, we will. I think there's going to be some obvious limits as we deal with so many other challenges in this crisis. But we want people biking who can. So, I'll have an answer for you on that tomorrow. 

Question: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. 

Mayor: Who's next? 

Lapeyrolerie: Gloria from NY1.

Question: Hello can you hear me? 

Mayor: Yes. Go ahead Gloria.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I wondered if your administration has done any follow up on the reports of a cluster over in Brooklyn as we see them numbers increasing there? And if you have any update or any new information, I know you noted in your remarks, your message to people about religious gatherings, but I'm wondering if part of the reason you did that is because you are seeing an increase in that kind of activity in that particular community? And if your health care officials have any update about the possibility of there being a cluster in that area?

Mayor: So first let me say, I spoke to some leaders. As I mentioned earlier in the week, I spoke to a broad range of faith leaders led by the Cardinal. Spoke yesterday to a number of leaders in the Jewish community who did note their real concern about those in-home crowded services. So I wanted to be very, very clear, but it's not just for the Jewish community, it's for all communities because anybody who in pursuit of their faith understandably wants to keep their services going. I fully understand that, but they can't do it in a way that's dangerous to themselves and others. So that's where I’m being very, very explicit. You cannot have those in-home gatherings that crowd people together. I've asked our Health Commissioner just in the last hour or so whether there are any, what we call clusters anywhere in New York City, the answer remains no. There are areas all over the city where we're seeing major increases. We can say -- the Commissioner and I both would be very quick to indicate if we thought someplace was going through an extraordinary situation. Commissioner will speak to why we think there is some particular focus in Brooklyn, particularly around borough park that is not indicative of a bigger problem than anywhere else but just a different dynamic. But no, right now we are seeing growth in the disease and with some consistency across the five boroughs and that part of Brooklyn is not any more endangered than anywhere else. So Commissioner, why don't you explain why we're seeing some of that concern?

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely. And as you said, and I want to emphasize, we are seeing widespread community transmission in all of our boroughs. And concerns about quote unquote clusters really at this point in the outbreak just indicate widespread transmission. When we have particular institutions that may be more aggressively testing individuals, we may see what we think of as quote unquote false signals. But this is an opportunity to remind New Yorkers that we need to have access to testing for the people that need it the most. People that are in hospitals and intensive care unit and not getting better. People who have been at home and getting worse and where their doctors feel that it is having a test result is necessary for their treatment plan. We are not recommending that there be widespread testing because again, when you've got widespread community transmission and you have symptoms, I want New Yorkers to assume that they've been exposed to COVID-19 and I want them to follow doctor's orders to stay home until they are better. Seven days or 72 hours after their fever is gone, whichever is longer.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: Can I ask a follow up?

Mayor: Yeah, absolutely, go ahead.

Question: Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just — I wanted to -- you cite incredible numbers about what the City is going to be in need of 50 —you're talking about numbers in the millions, if the federal government does not step up and you're talking about two weeks timeline. With how — the speed that we're seeing things move at, how confident are you that the federal government will step up in the needed time and what are you going to do? What is the city going to do if the delays continue and we run out of these supplies in the next couple of days?

Mayor: It's not the next couple of days that we're worried about Gloria. I want, please I thought I was very precise and I want to say to my colleagues in the media, you have a sacred responsibility right now and even more so than last week, we are going into a full blown crisis such as we have not seen in generations. You have a sacred responsibility to ensure the information that you portray to the public is accurate. And I would ask you please to be very, very careful not to provide misinformation by accident. I said very clearly that for the month of March, we have the supplies that we need. The City has very strong reserves of the kind of supplies that I talked about. There are places where there may be shortages specifically and we're going to work to get those shortages addressed, but it's not because we don't have strong overall supplies to get through the immediate need. It is going into April that I'm worried about. I don't have a perfect day for you. We're assessing all the time, but it is a day, two weeks from now or three weeks from now where we must by then have had a very substantial resupply. I think the simple way to think about is the federal government has essentially two weeks to get us major resupply or the people in New York City are going to be in much greater danger.

Where do I have confidence? I have confidence in our State government and in Governor Cuomo. I have confidence in our National Guard here in New York state. I have confidence in the United States military. I mentioned two days ago I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, General Milley, and we reviewed the kind of capacity that the military has to bring to bear in this crisis and what options they might have, and it is a very, very encouraging reality. But the military must be given the order to mobilize and that order has not been given. It's as simple as that. I – Gloria, I don't understand why on earth, I even have to say this sentence. I don't know. I don't think any president in American history would have hesitated to mobilize our military in this kind of crisis when we're not in war time in the sense of a threat to our shores. And we have such extraordinary military capacity available to us. And the crisis is growing intensely and there's a global pandemic. I don't think this is even close. So if our military is mobilized immediately, even elements of our military being mobilized immediately would make all the difference. And if with the Defense Production Act, those assembly lines, those production capacities are immediately activated, we could get a steady stream of supplies that will keep us moving forward.

There's clearly time, but there won't be time, you know, a week or two from now. And so if, and I had this conversation in detail with Senator Schumer earlier today, I went through the exact numbers with him. I understand how personally and deeply he feels his crisis he has put forward this Marshall Plan idea. The word is spreading. We'll ask our entire congressional delegation to fight like hell to get this done. But let's face it, the great irony, Gloria, the fate of New York City rests in the hands of one man, and he is a New Yorker, and right now he is betraying the city he comes from. We are the front line. We are going through more than almost any place else in the country. By pure numbers this state is going through the worst of any state. How on earth is the president sitting idly by and not activating the forces that could help us. So if he acts today, if acts tomorrow, if he acts in next few days, we can and should get what we need. If he refuses to act, we are going to have an extraordinarily difficult situation at some point in the first half of April.

Lapeyrolerie: Yeah, back to Brigid.

Mayor: Brigid, can you hear me? Brigid, Brigid, what's up with your phone?

Lapeyrolerie: We're going to go to Gwynne Hogan from WNYC.

Mayor: What did you say again, I’m sorry?

Lapeyrolerie: Gwynne Hogan from –

Mayor: Gwynne, can you hear me Gwynne?

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Okay I got two questions. One just logistical. Can you give us a breakdown of how many cases are hospitalized? How many people are in the ICU and how that squares up with our current hospital capacity?

Mayor: Gwynne, I have a report that is helpful but not perfect, so just bear with me because the last confirmed numbers for hospitalization ICU where as of 5:00 pm yesterday. We're trying to get these numbers to tighten up. You can imagine there's so much of an information flow, we're trying to get everything aligned better. But as of 5:00 pm yesterday, when obviously the overall number of cases was, you know, substantially lesser we had 554 hospitalizations and 169 ICU cases. That was against the base of about, and I say it, you know, approximately about 2000 cases at that point. So, 554 hospitalizations of which 169 were in the ICU. We are going to try and constantly update those numbers and get them closer to real time as quickly as we can.

Question: Okay. And is there any update on increased hospital capacity at that point? Or how does that – what does that out of total hospital beds that we have emptied –

Mayor: The reality – Gwynne, as the executive order that I issued related to ending elective surgery, as that has been fully in effect in almost every hospital now has turned off their elective surgeries. There's just a few that are finishing up now, but basically elective surgeries have been ended across the city. That has opened up a lot of capacity. Early discharges as we talked about. The next phase of course will be building new health care capacity, those tents and other build-outs, but to handle the incoming that has been achievable because so much space, so much personnel and supplies were being devoted to elective surgery that that's not the case anymore. So the system is certainly able to make that adaptation. Dr. Katz told me about his visit to Elmhurst Hospital earlier today where he saw in a place where there's been a number of cases, but he saw the obvious positive impact of getting the elective surgeries out of the way and opening up a lot of space and capacity for the incoming coronavirus cases.

So that I think is our reality at this hour, today. We have to radically expand capacity in the next two weeks, and I think it's hard for us all to fully understand the exact trajectory and we are very careful about telling you what we know and what we can confirm versus what is speculative. But I think if people think about that two-week, three-week kind of dynamic and let's be conservative and just call it two weeks. For next two weeks we have in our hospital system a lot of capacity we can bring to get bear, a lot of adjustments. I'm looking at Dr. Katz right now. Anything he wants to add, he'll come up. And just the power of getting rid of the elective surgeries and getting the early discharges and surging in personnel is helping us immensely. Again, we do have a reserve of equipment and supplies, but after two weeks – just to finish – after two weeks that situation would be a lot harder. So we have to use these two weeks to build out all the capacity we can in hospitals and in new facilities really quickly and we'll get you updates on that over the next couple of days as that is all coming to bear and again desperately need that federal resupply while we're doing that.

Question: Great. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And just, just one question about enforcement. You mentioned that the NYPD was doing some enforcing. Is that of the closure of bars and large gatherings?

Mayor: Yes –

Question: You know, my question is really – it has to do with like all the stores that are open. There are toys stores open, there's clothing stores open, you know, in neighborhoods that I've seen, it's like business as usual except for restaurants and bars. I was just at a factory in Sunset Park where a bunch of workers who walked off the job because they're not reducing staff there and they don't have any personal protective gear and somebody has gotten sick at there. So I just, who is enforcing this at this point?

Mayor: So let's – you said several different things. I'll respond quickly. The restaurants, bars for example, as I said, NYPD, FDNY, Building, Sheriff, all participate in different ways. Lots of activity because it was so important to get it right in the first few days. Clearly, we're seeing tremendous adherence to the law. I think everyone understands how important it is. We'll keep an eye on that. But we have to do new enforcement in different ways all the time as the state is issuing new rules. And again, I agree with those rules. We're going to help enforce in every way we can, by the way. All those agencies have to do what they normally do too on top of that.

But to your point, I do think there's a lot of things still happening. That again, a week ago, I was certainly trying to see everything I could do to keep employment going and keep people having a livelihood and felt very, very deeply concerned about the dislocation that occurred. I feel that still, I feel humanly, you know, deep pain for the families that are running out of money, don't have a livelihood, but I'm even more worried about the lives that are on the line right now because a coronavirus and that's where I want to see us take every step we can take to limit anything non-essential and we will do all the enforcement in our power to make that come to life. So I think there's more that still can be done and that's what we're working on right now.

Question: Is the NYPD empowered to right now enforce the workings or the only 25 percent of – is it any business to staff? Can, it has to be, can be on site, is that factories –

Mayor: The State rule on the businesses, which was just issued by the State, updated the 75 percent. That specific enforcement mechanism, we're working with the State right now to figure out how State and the City can play their own different roles to support each other on enforcement. What NYPD has been doing is the kinds of things we already talked about, the restaurants and bars, and the other things related to immediate health and safety. And I think, you know, as this is going to change, I mean, I think everyone – look, New Yorkers are very, very realistic people. This situation is going to change. What we're talking about today is not going to be the same in two weeks or three weeks. The NYPD is going to be an extraordinary savior here. We need our men and women of the NYPD to adapt to this situation and help us through anything and everything we go through and I know they are the best in the nation. They'll answer the call, but we just have to understand it will change constantly as the rules change, as the realities change.

Lapeyrolerie: Excuse my pronunciation. Next up is Hansi Lo Wang from NPR. Hansi, you’re up.

Question: Thank you very much. Mayor, can you confirm report that 20 members of the NYPD have tested positive for COVID-19 and what is the city doing at this point to ensure that first responders are protected and not exposing the public to any potential a coronavirus infection, given that they are in the role of enforcing a lot of these new requirements?

Mayor: Yeah, we need our first responders. We need our health care workers. So many people are essential. I cannot confirm that number simply because I have not been given that update. I remind you there are 36,000 men and women in the NYPD. That’s just the uniform side. There's, you know, another, I think 15,000 or so on the civilian side. So they're part of our communities too. They're our fellow New Yorkers, so a lot of people will be infected by this disease. Thank God a lot of members NYPD overwhelmingly, of course, are younger, healthier folks who should not have too much of a challenge. But I'm not the belittling it. We are desperately concerned to protect them. That's why we need that protective equipment. We have given from our Health Department a lot to the NYPD. We're going to give them more of – constantly give them more because they need it, they deserve it, but we have to get that federal resupply.

So I would say that all the members and NYPD, all of the members of the FDNY, all the members of our Health and Hospital system, our voluntary hospitals. The city, and I know the State feels the same way, we will do everything we can to get every conceivable supply of protective equipment from anywhere in the nation that we can on the private market and get directly to you. But President Trump has to give the order for the federal government to get you what you deserve. So, I just ask everyone to join in – in issuing the call to the president to release the supplies that the federal government has already, to order the production of new supplies on an expedited basis and ensure that our military distributes them to New York City and other deeply affected areas. Immediately.

Question: I apologize for interrupting earlier, Mayor, how is your office keeping track of confirmed cases amongst NYPD ranks as well as the first responders, given that they do play a big role in how the city is responding to this crisis?

Mayor: It's exactly the same way. And again, the fact that I don't have the latest update is different from the question of how each agency handles the work. I've talked to our Police Commissioner, our Fire Commissioner even long before this crisis. I'm quite aware of what they do. These are a really large, sophisticated agencies with huge amount of personnel. They can always bring more personnel to bear by keeping people on a shift or by using overtime. They're very agile. They're very sophisticated. They have been through situations, the most horrifying situation you can imagine, 9/11, where our fire department, our police department suffered horrible losses and yet made immediate adjustments and kept the city safe. They are right now making adjustments day to day to ensure that everyone's protected. And remember for the vast majority, I'll say it and our Health Commissioner can add if she wishes, for the vast majority of our uniform service members, if they get sick, they will get well quickly because they are overwhelmingly younger, healthier people.

We are concerned for every one of them. I don't want to see a single one get sick. I am concerned for their families. I know they are. There may be some individuals who have particular conditions that make them more vulnerable, but the vast majority of our first responders are people who have, God forbid they got sick, they'll be out of commission for a limited period of time. Then they'll get well then, they'll be back at their post. And so that is something that our Fire Commissioner, our Police Commissioner understand and they'll make adjustments as they go along.

Commissioner Barbot: I think Mr. Mayor, you covered it all. I don't have anything else to add.

Mayor: I accept, okay. Thank you. Who's next?

Lapeyrolerie: Henry is up next.

Mayor: Henry –

Question: Hi, how are you doing? Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Henry, go ahead.

Question: I actually have two questions. Totally unrelated. But I want to go back first to Gloria's question about what is happening in Brooklyn. Because as you know, there's a history of some of these communities resisting public health measures, resisting inoculations for measles, and these are communities are intensely religious and very tightly knit. And it would seem to me that it's almost counterintuitive not to think that there's a cluster going on given the closeness of these communities and the history of skepticism that they have toward public health rules.

Mayor: It's a very fair and knowledgeable question, but I'm going to tell you a couple of things. One, I spoke with a number of community leaders who I know very well, and I think you know, Henry, I know the community deeply. I represented it in various ways over the years. Very directly. I heard things I never thought here in my life from leaders of the community who made very clear how many shuls have been shut down, how they were urging the shutdown of those remaining and how much agreement there was in so much of the community to do it. Because I think what we cannot ignore here, this is not the measles which was a very difficult time for all of us, and you know, we had to all work together with the community to fight it back. This is a global pandemic a disease that no one on earth fully understands, has no cure, no vaccine. The Jewish community and all communities have been affected by that understanding. So I think you're seeing things happening here that you would not see in normal situations.

I mentioned the example of the gentleman had told me he's keeping his parents away from their grandchildren on purpose and what never did that before in his life. I think a lot of people are waking up quickly to what Dr. Barobot said. I just hope everyone's listening to Dr. Barbot when she says we have to change what we're doing right now to protect ourselves and our families. So, I understand your question, but I'm telling you, and I've asked my own liaisons who worked with the community to confirm this. We are seeing things we have literally never seen before. Shuls closing, people only socializing with their own family, not with neighbors, not going to religious service with their neighbors. We're seeing things that are very, very different. And as to the facts about the numbers of cases, Dr. Barbot, I've asked her probably five times in the last week cause it's come up so many times, she pours over the numbers all the time. There is nothing happening at that part of Brooklyn that is meaningfully different than what is happening in parts of the rest of the city. It’s just a fact.

Question: Okay. My second question has to do with the fiscal impact on the city. The Comptroller’s come up with his estimate. Is that an accurate estimate? I think it was something like $1.4 billion or around there –

Mayor: It's way too early to make that assessment in an ever-changing situation. Say a few things. We intend to in about a month's time we will do the Executive Budget. We intend to keep it on time. We will have to of course account for what's probably very substantial changes in revenue and very new expenses. I also want to believe and I think even within the course of a month we might see a stimulus bill and a bail out for localities on a level we've never seen before in decades. We should see that. I don't know for sure if we will, but I think there's a lot of movement in that direction. So we need to look at the whole picture. I think we're going to have a tough time, Henry. I think we are having a very tough time. I think we will find a way and the big X-factor will be how much of federal support comes in directly to New Yorkers, money directly in their pockets and directly to localities and obviously then the reimbursement levels for localities after the fact. All of those issues need to be factored in and we'll do that through the budget process.

Question: Okay, have you made a request to the feds on this issue yet?

Mayor: We have made a request to the feds on everything that we need right now to ensure our hospitals operate and, and all those frontline needs, and we have a guarantee which has been stated in many different ways, including from the president to the nation that there would be reimbursement. In terms of immediate local support, we've been working with Senator Schumer on what will be included in that next stimulus and relief bill. So that's where I think we have an opportunity to get something done.

Mayor: Okay. Thank you.

Lapeyrolerie: We're going to go back to Brigid.

Mayor: Do I believe you?

Lapeyrolerie: Hopefully third time's a charm.

Question: Oh, hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah. Brigid, if you didn't want to ask a question, you should have just said so.

Question: Oh my goodness. Thank you. First of all, thank you so much for doing this virtually and thank you for your patience with both my tech challenges. I wanted to start by asking a follow up question related to Rikers Island. You said that the city had identified 40 cases, 40 inmates who could potentially be released. I'm wondering if you could give us a few more details about how you're identifying potential inmates for release? What's the criteria? And do you have an estimate for the number who could be potentially released or reviewed?

Mayor: It's literally individual by individual. So, that number will be after each case that's pertinent is gone through – we'll get to a point we say, okay, we reviewed all pertinent cases, here's our final number. And, of course, it could change over time, but the basic approach is the FDNY and Mayor's Office for Criminal Justice literally go through each and every case. It's 40 now, we certainly expect more. Those have to be signed off on by the relevant DA and/or the State depending on the situation, whether, for example, it's related to parole violation or some other situation. And the goal is to get releases starting today if those sign offs occur and then we'll keep updating you on the numbers. What we are looking for is – we, of course, don't want anyone to be older with preexisting conditions, but anyone who is older with preexisting conditions, we obviously would prefer to get out of the facility if we can. And we want to see those who are at low risk of offending. And obviously, we're talking about a more minor charges because we're talking about those awaiting trial at Rikers and those who have been held as a sentence which means less than a year sentence and for therefore lower-level offenses. This would not be the case, for example, if we thought someone was a threat to the community, a high risk of re-offending, a more serious charge. So, those are the ways we're looking at it.

Question: And then, separately –

Mayor: I’m sorry. I am told – forgive me, the acronyms overcome me sometimes. Freddi said, I said FDNY when I was supposed to say NYPD, my apology. I did not realize that. NYPD and Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice are doing that individual by individual review. Thank you, Freddi.

Question: Thank you, Freddi. And then, separately, as you talked about how the work – the City's workforce is going to scale back and that perhaps some City offices may just shutter, you know, do you have – can you tell us about, you know, which for people [inaudible] and, you know, want to find a file building permits or trying to go to the marriage bureau, can you tell us the places that made [inaudible] closed come Monday?

Mayor: Not yet, but that is a great question. Give me until tomorrow to answer that, because I think the way to think about it is, Bridget, that there's a whole bunch of people we need to be exactly where they are – that's police officers, firefighters, of course, EMT, train – well, transit workers are obviously mainly the State – but health care workers of all kinds. And there are some folks who will have to be in community locations, for example, when we set up education and childcare for essential workers’ kids, we will need all the people to staff that as necessary to make that a safe environment, an environment where there's education, where there's food, et cetera. So, we're going to delineate all of that, but what we've come up with is about 250,000 people who will end up working from home – or, again, we're going to – even if they don't know how to do it now, we'll create some new approach to it or some new assignment. I think what it means is anything that is not essential – that we don't need – if you’re not essential, we don't need it at all right now – or, not essential, it can be done remotely, we're going to do that. But in terms of the services that will be affected, we'll get that list for tomorrow. I've used the example earlier of something like food stamps and public assistance that'll go on, but it will go on remotely for both the applicant and for the government side – that'll all be done remotely. So, that's an example of something where the service will continue, but you won't need to go to any office or go to any in-person interview. But let's get you a list of everything that will continue, even if it's in a different form versus things that might be put on hold or disrupted until we get through the core of this crisis.

Lapeyrolerie: Up next is [inaudible] – yes, we can hear you.

Question: So, I want to ask you a question, Mr. Mayor. [Inaudible] agree and disagree between you and the Governor Cuomo [inaudible] safety, as the Mayor, what's your point of view of sealing of the city – New York City. At what level will this measure be necessary? Like why the [inaudible] Wuhan, China?

Mayor: What I think is – it's not about quote “sealing off.” I appreciate the question, I think it's really important. And I have to be mindful – and I'll do my damnedest to be thoughtful – again, the other day, when I talked about the San Francisco model of shelter in place, this was soon after San Francisco had announced what it was doing and called it shelter in place and it was a public health order. I honestly thought that that had spread so quickly as the most aggressive action of being taken in the country and obviously a major metropolitan area in our biggest state that I thought that was sort of well-known that that was happening and I was referring to that model and I should have been more explicit. I was not referring to closing borders. I was not referring to sealing off the city. I was not referring to closing the bridges. I never referred to any of that ever, nor when we went through the rumors last week where, you know, people were – I had some of the most sophisticated, educated knowledgeable people that I've known in my life calling me frantically saying, you know, what's this about the bridges being closed and all? And I said, there's no truth to it. We would tell you if something like that is happening, there's no reason for something like that happening. It's not happening. So, I repeat again – and I ask our colleagues in the media, I may be in articulate sometimes, I may be imperfect, and I will take full responsibility, and I will apologize anytime I do – but I want people to know if I give you information, you can always ask for clarification. We've had rather elaborate press conferences – they're long, they're detailed – and then, anytime you can't reach me, you can reach my whole team. If anyone heard me to say, we’re, closing the borders, I never said that. I never meant it. I never implied it. I don't say it now. I don't imply it now. I don't mean it now. I was talking about a model being used in a major American metropolitan area, which is a sharper, tighter version of restrictions – still humane, still allowing people to get what they need, but through the vision of – or, through the prism, I should say, the vehicle of a public health order. That's all I was talking about. Anything else would be in a very, very different kind of situation. And I want to say again, only the State of New York can make that decision and I respect that. And I'll be talking to the Governor again later today. And I also want to say with community spread – and again, if you want our health care professionals to speak to it, they can – community spread means that the notion of quote unquote closing off borders or closing bridges is a fallacy. Again, more educated people than I can fill in the blank. This disease is 50 States already. It is a global pandemic. You cannot seal off your community and expect it not to spread. It's something we all have to deal with. So, the better way to approach it is to deal with it, is to educate people, get people to really practice social distancing, prepare our health facilities and get our government, our federal government to do what it is there for. The federal government is supposed to protect the wellbeing of the people this country and, you know, the ultimate line of defense for all Americans and it's just not doing it now. It's not even close. That's where our energy should be. Not on a too much obsession with the ideas that are not even on the table. So, I hope that's clarifying.

Commissioner Barbot: Mr. Mayor, if I may add in the vein of having crystal clear clarity about why it's so important for us to be aggressive on social distancing. The reason why we're calling for people to stay indoors is because when we have person-to-person spread in community, we want to reduce as much of the, I would say, firewood as possible from the fuel so that we end up reducing the amount of transit mission and reducing the amount of time that we have such a front load of cases. And so, when I call for, you know, more diligent social distancing, it's to remove people from the potential path of transmission and continuing that transmission because that is the most effective way that we have to stop ongoing community-wide transmission at the population level. It's critical.

Mayor: Okay. Who’s next?

Lapeyrolerie: Javier from Queens Latino. Javier, you’re up.

Question: Yes, I know that the City of New York is fighting the coronavirus for everyone, but what about the undocumented? They’re more afraid because they have a reason to be [inaudible] speak English, they don’t have the money, they don’t have family and friends here. I see people in the streets really, really afraid. What is the City going to do to help them?

Mayor: Javier, it's what we do for everyone and we always have. I mean, this is a city that, for decades, has not asked documentation status, has provided people with education for their kids and support in so many ways. And obviously, our police do not ask documentation status and we're going to continue. But everyone's afraid. I think we're all in this together. So, there is no one who needs help who's going to be turned away. You know, we've started a process in the city of guaranteed health care for all regardless of documentation status. I hate to say it because this is such a painful situation, but this pandemic is telling us even more clearly why we need a universal health care system in America and why it is just a fallacy to think that you can have a health care system that excludes 12 million people who happen to be undocumented and yet everyone else is going to be safe. I think this horrible situation with the coronavirus waking us up to the reality of a global world, the reality of health care today in an ever-changing environment. If you want to protect yourself and your family, you should protect the health care of your entire community and your entire nation. So, everyone will be served. And anyone undocumented, please spread the word. If they need help, they can call 3-1-1 in a host of languages and get guidance on what to do. If they need health care and that's confirmed by one of our doctors, because, again, if they're symptomatic, they should be like everyone – stay home and wait those three or four days and see if it gets better or worse. But if they need health care and it's confirmed, they will get it and they'll pay only what they can pay and if they can't pay anything, they won't pay anything. I don't know what more we can do in this city to – I mean it as, you know, a statement of philosophy. We couldn't be clearer that our fellow New Yorkers are our fellow human beings. We will be there for them.

Lapeyrolerie: Up next is Jennifer from the Associated Press.

Question: I was going to ask, now that testing has increased to the level it has, is there any thought being given to testing groups of people symptomatic or not, who might be a particular risk such as health care workers?

Mayor: Dr Barbot?

Mayor: There's no indication for testing asymptomatic people. And, you know, it gives me the opportunity to really highlight the point that for every unnecessary test that we do, for asymptomatic people, it also squanders limited resources of necessary gowns, gloves, masks. And so, for every one of those, we not only squander a test, but we squander all of the other critical personal protective equipment that is in short supply across the world. So, there's a double reason why we don't want to be testing asymptomatic people, even if they're health care workers. We have clear guidance that health care workers who are potentially exposed being vigilant for any potential symptoms that they may have. We actually issued a health alert to the tens of thousands of doctors that we have in this city and directed them to check their temperatures twice a day, to be vigilant about the symptoms they have,, and to stay home. So that advice is the same advice we give all New Yorkers. It's however more instructive in terms of actually taking their temperature twice a day.

Question: Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. Next?

Lapeyrolerie: Julia Marsh –

Question: I just wanted to say that I appreciate you recognizing the sacred responsibility that we in the press have. And in that vein, just before I get to my questions, I'd like to say – and I'm speaking for many in the press corps – we understand how busy you are, but we respectfully request that these briefings happening more timely manner as the delays are preventing dozens of frontline reporters even getting vital information to the public.

Mayor: Well, Julia, I respect that request, but there's two problems. The first is, we have an ever-changing situation. And we assess when we think we'll have the information we need and then a lot of times it changes, literally, while we're in the middle of preparing. So, I think we're going to do this – we're going to try to give you a very conservative time. And I'm going to say this with no disrespect, we're going to give a conservative time for when we begin. We catch information coming down from the federal government down from the State government and we have to make sense of it and we have to be ready and we have to be accurate. We'll give you a conservative start time. If you want to participate, participate. If you don't, you don't have to. But we cannot start until we had everything assembled and proper. And that's just the standard I'm going to hold. So, I hear you, but I have an obligation, 8.6 million people to get it exactly right. And I know there are many, many reporters who are ready to receive the information at whatever moment it is available. We'll do our damnedest to make it as early in the day as possible. But this – I have never seen a more ever-changing situation in my life. So, that's the ground rule. Respectfully, that's the ground rule. Take it or leave it.

Question: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And then I have a couple of quick follow-ups and then a question about the Veterans Administration. Dr. Barbot, on the Brooklyn cases, I'm wondering, were you trying to indicate that people in Borough Park and Williamsburg are getting tested who actually don't need to?

Commissioner Barbot: No, I'm saying that there are health care facilities that may be more vigorous in their outreach and we are encouraging providers – and we just sent out a health alert to doctors, reminding them that we want to reserve testing for individuals who are not getting better and who require hospitalization.

Mayor: Can I just friendly amendment that, because I want to make sure we're not miscommunicating. I thought Julia's question was, are there – does that particular testing location, for example, was it testing only priority people, according to your priorities? I don't think – I think the answer is no, unfortunately.

Commissioner Barbot: I have no way of confirming that and my concern is that they were not adhering to our guidance.

Mayor: Right. So, Julia, just to make sure we're all speaking the same language – and please, if you need to clarify, ask again – we know when we are seeing the priorities Dr. Barbot has laid out and Dr. Katz has laid out being followed. There's other times we're not sure they're being followed and that certainly raises a concern, because we need testing to be done on that same priority basis everywhere.

Question: Yeah. I just wondered if she thought that you're seeing – I mean, if you look at the breakdown and the borough of Brooklyn, 40 percent of the cases are in Williamsburg and Borough Park. So, I'm wondering if you thought that there were such a high number there just because more people were getting tested.

Commissioner Barbot: So, as I've said, we're seeing widespread community transmission. There are – we're hearing reports of parts of the Bronx where many of the clinics are being inundated with patients. We're seeing different hospitals across the city indicating increasing numbers of patients. And so, while there may be public reports about increasing testing in those neighborhoods, again, our data indicates that we have hotspots all over the place and that these places don't necessarily stand out above anybody else.

Question: Okay. And then, Mr. Mayor, Gwen Hogan asked you about stores that are still open. We also noticed numerous tourist gift shops in Little Italy and Chinatown, but it's my understanding that there's no directive that says those stores have to be closed. Is that correct?

Mayor: I am not kind of pretend to tell you I know every chapter and verse on everything that the State has put out in terms of how it relates to each industry and whether a gift shop, for example, fits under one rule or another. The team is obviously constantly updating what we're doing based on new State guidance. But I think it's absolutely right to say those are non-essential stores. And what I've seen is the State moving sort of sector by sector to tighten up, choosing areas that they believe are non-essential, shutting them down, obviously, limiting the number of people and workplaces – the 75 percent rule today. I think that's certainly the right thing to do.

Question: Right. And then, just lastly on the Department of Veterans Affairs, I think you said that you're confident that those professionals there are standing at the ready to help out. But if you look at this City's VA system right now, there are 393 vacancies, that includes 30 medical support assistants, 31 nurses and 25 medical officers. So, it seems like they themselves don't have enough medical personnel to run the system.

Mayor: Well, I would be the first to agree with you if you said there are still issues at the Veterans Administration that need to be addressed more holistically, but I also would be the first to say that we've known for a while there's excess capacity in Veterans Administration hospitals. So, I would just put the two and two together and say, if we know there's beds, we want the beds. If we know there's personnel, I would like to see, of course, the Veterans Administration work by the same rules the rest of the health care system has, which is that get rid of elective surgeries, do early discharges and open up as much space as possible. So, even if there's areas where they're short of personnel, I have no doubt they can still be extremely helpful in this effort.

Lapeyrolerie: Kyle Mazza –

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah, hold on. We're just getting the volume up a little.

Question: Of course. Can you hear me now, Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Yes, indeed.

Question: Great. Thank you for taking my question and thanks for doing this press conference, especially virtually – very helpful for us. So, my question is, will you – are you trying to reach out to President Trump regarding the shortage of supplies that you are seeing? Have you spoken with his administration? I know Governor Cuomo has been in contact with President Trump when they do the governor video conferences, but have you?

Mayor: I reached out to Vice President Pence. His team was very responsive, but they referred me to me Secretary Azar. I am, of course, like everyone else, trying to remember which day was which, but I think it was four days ago I spoke to Secretary Azar, and that was about some of the issues. I will certainly be speaking to him again. I have spoken to Senator Schumer who has been, obviously, our greatest advocate in Washington. I know he is speaking to Vice President Pence. So, as I've told you all, I've spoken to Dr. Fauci. I've made him aware of the situation. I'm sure he will make others aware of it because this is his hometown and he is doing such amazing work for this nation. So, I'm certainly going to try again to reach Vice President Pence, who the President's put in charge of this effort. I'll certainly be talking to Secretary Azar again. But my hope is, the combination of the efforts of Senator Schumer, the efforts of Governor Cuomo, the efforts of other members of delegation, and just the sheer public demand, because, let's face it, the more that the President and Vice President and there cabinet hear from the people, from leaders of all sectors – business community, everyone – that this is an unacceptable situation. When you’re in the nation's largest city, and I'm telling you point blank that we have a real danger up ahead and we've codified it in letters to all, you know, top federal officials. I mean, there's a point at which you say, are people actually taking responsibility or not? So, I'm going to hope and pray that if we sound the alarm enough times someone will listen.

Question: Well, also, as a follow up, Trump also said, governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work. The federal government's not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping, you know, we're not a shipping clerk. But you also said earlier in your remarks that President Trump is betraying the city. So, I wanted to get your reaction first to what he said in his press briefing at the White House. And then I also want you to say, well, is it fair to say that given the crisis that we're seeing – from your side – that he is betraying New York City where he came from.

Mayor: It's abundantly clear to say he's betraying his hometown. And he, unfortunately, is letting down his entire nation. I have worked in the federal government, I understand the different responsibilities, but this is a time of crisis. And the greatest example in American history was a great New Yorker named Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression who ensured that the federal government would do things they had never done before to protect people and it saved our nation. That was a time that was much more shocking, if you will, when there was no roadmap in the least. There wasn't a kind of technology, communications, our government was very, very small at the time, and Franklin Roosevelt had the audacity to say we're going to build something entirely new to save this country. And now, we've got a president with a vast military, a massive government with literally endless resources effectively and he won’t use them. And no, mayors and governors cannot make supplies appear out of thin air. I mean, we have powers but not the kind of powers to get factories in other states to have produce something we need or to get it from another state to here in a manner that's prioritized and guaranteed. That's what we need. We've got two or three weeks for God's sakes. The only way you know that goods are going to be produced on a huge scale and gotten where they need to be is to use that war production act to the fullest – I'm sorry, Defense Production Act to the fullest and to ensure the United States military does the logistics. It’s only way you can guarantee at this point – you know, if the President acted two weeks, four weeks, six weeks ago when he could have, we might be having a different discussion. But wake up, we are really running out of time and the only way it works is if the federal government immediately uses all of its muscle to save this city and a lot of other places.

Lapeyrolerie: Katie Honan is up next.

Mayor: Katie, can you hear us?

Lapeyrolerie: Katie?

Mayor: Who's next?

Lapeyrolerie: Mark Morales, from CNN.

Question: How are you doing, Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Good, how are you?

Question: Good, good. So, I just wanted some clarification. The number – back to Borough Park and Williamsburg, in that area, the number that's being reported is more than a hundred. So, two questions. What's that number at now? And, if that's not a cluster then, then why isn't it a cluster? Is it – is it lower than that number?

Commissioner Barbot: So, citywide, as the Mayor mentioned, we've got above 3,000 people.
And it's to be expected that we would have high numbers in all of our neighborhoods. And so, when we talk about a cluster, it is a situation where we can trace it back to an originating source. When you've got widespread community transmission, it is impossible to draw back to a single source, because there are so many opportunities for individuals to have gotten infected.

Question: Gotcha. Okay. So then, what's the number for Borough Park and Williamsburg now?

Commissioner Barbot: You know, we'll have to get back to you on that.

Mayor: Right. Again, it's a hundred cases, which no one takes lightly, but against what at that hour was 3,615 overall for the city, over a thousand for Brooklyn. But we will get you more.

Lapeyrolerie: Mary Frost, from the Brooklyn Eagle.

Question: Good afternoon. Shall I ask the traditional question? Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Mary.

Question: Okay, great. This is a two-part question. The first is, we are hearing that younger people are actually being hospitalized in greater numbers than expected, even though they are not dying at the rate of older people. And related to that, a number of younger people are telling me that they feel compelled to work in the gig economy because they have student loans that apparently can't be deferred or they have all kinds of problems deferring them. Can you address these questions?

Mayor: Okay. On the younger people, I'll let Dr. Barbot speak to, -- we've talked about what we've seen globally and consistently about the impact on young people. No one has ever said there won't be some young people who don't go through a more serious situation, but overwhelmingly we've seen young people, healthy key word, healthy young people have very limited impact. I don't have a number in front of me for hospitalized out of that 554 as a 5 pm yesterday. I don't have a number in front of me of how many are under 18. But if you could speak to the larger situation?

Commissioner Barbot: So, we are looking at the data on a continuous basis. And by and large, the vast majority of people who have tested positive are above the age of 18. We are not seeing clinically anything that at this moment looks differently from what's being observed in other countries, which is that primarily the people who do end up hospitalized and who may have more severe cases tend to be older individuals and especially those with chronic underlying conditions.

Question: Excuse me. Well, this report is referring to the group between 18 and 46.

Commissioner Barbot: So again, the majority of individuals that we're seeing hospitalized with severe conditions tend to be individuals who are above that age. But that's not to say that we don't have people who are between 18 and 49 who have been hospitalized. But it's not out of proportion, again, at this point in the outbreak, in terms of what we're seeing, it doesn't seem to be out of proportion with what's being observed in other countries.

Question: Okay. Thank you. And can you can the Mayor, can you address something about the pressure that people in the gig economy are feeling from their student loans and debts?

Mayor: Oh, I think people in the gig economy are feeling this immense pressure. That gig economy is for so many people falling apart and they're going through a lot. Now I am not up to date on the federal or State actions on student loans. Obviously, that's not something the City regulates. My understanding is there's been some kind of relief or suspension around interest payments or something like that. I'm not, again, forgive me, I don't have all those details. But I, look at this point like everything else happening, we need extraordinary measures. This would be an ideal time to postpone all student debt in the middle of this kind of crisis because a huge number of people are in no position to pay it right now. We're talking about yesterday, I heard a federal official mentioned the possibility of 20 percent unemployment, 20 percent unemployment puts you damn close to where we were in the Great Depression — that’s the only time in our country's history, to the best of my knowledge where we've ever been at that level. You're going to have a vast number of people who cannot afford to pay for a lot of things, especially student loans. So that should be part of any kind of bailout package to suspend those payments. Give people a substantial grace period until they can get back on their feet and be in a position to pay again. Who's next?

Lapeyrolerie: Matt Chayes.

Mayor: Matt.

Question: Thanks for taking my questions. 

Mayor: Yes. 

Question: A couple of them. First, to what extent does the Governor's executive order yesterday limit what you can do and to what extent does it limit what you can do under the orders you've already signed? And then at the top of the call you listed certain very important, vital items that you're running out of masks, coveralls, ventilators, et cetera. Approximately how many of these items that you listed do have right now? Assuming the feds do come through with this wish list, how long will the supplies last? And finally, will Elon Musk be producing ventilators for the city? I know there's been some back and forth on Twitter?

Mayor: With Elon Musk we were very happy to receive his offer of help. We're trying to assess what it means and how quickly it could make an impact. And, you know, I'm holding out the, you know, the hopeful idea that he could do something that's important here. But we have not been able to confirm what it means yet specifically. We'll get to more on that when we know. On the question of a timeline. I think I spoke to it earlier in this session. I'll just say it again. We will be supplied through the month of March and into the beginning of April. A few days ago, I don't have all of it in front of me now, but a few days ago I delineated the kind of reserves we had in terms of masks and other capacity, other supplies. Again, we have, thank God, the biggest, best health care apparatus anywhere in the country. And we do have what we need to get through the next, at minimum two weeks, hopefully even three weeks or more.

But it is time to be blunt and honest that we must be resupplied. And so that's what I'm saying here today. I have been -- I'm being abundantly clear for the month of March, we have supplies. It will take us into the beginning of April. 

Question: And how long will that last if the feds come through? When will you need another restock? 

Mayor: Again, respectfully, Matt, I think I've said this numerous times. We need to be, I've said two weeks is the good working rule. It could be more like three. The federal government must activate its capacity immediately so that we can start to get those supplies within the next two weeks. We don't need everything simultaneously, but we need substantial resupply in the next two weeks, maximum three weeks. 

Lapeyrolerie: Last two, back to Katie. 

Mayor: Katie?

Question: Can you hear me now?

Mayor: Yes.

Question Thank you. Sorry. Thanks for the tech help to the WebEx team and to Olivia. My question is, I know you said that the numbers of patients are updated every day at 10 and six. It's now 6:44 pm. Do you have those updated numbers? Because the data we're working with is from 10:00 am and it's probably this point unfortunately really out of date.

Mayor: Yeah. When I say they're updated, Katie, that we have to, there's a lot of cross-checking that happens and so six o'clock is the time that they, as I understand that they sort of call timeout at six and then they have to do all the analysis to make sure it's right. If we have and I’ll turn to the team, if we have something ready for publishing now, I will happily do it. If we don't, we'll get it to you when we haven it. We're checking right now. No, it's not. It is not ready yet, is what we're getting. But when we do have it, we'll put it out.

Question: Thank you. And secondly, I know that you announced new testing facilities with a new drive through facilities and other boroughs. I know Queens has some of the highest numbers, but I don't know if they have the same level of testing capabilities as other boroughs?

Mayor: Well, let me clarify again. I explicitly did not use the word drive through because they're not drive through. So I want to be really, really clear about that. And I'm going to again, ask everyone, I'll try and be really precise. Sure. I'll be imperfect. But if you ever need clarification, please say so. On testing centers through H + H, 10 new sites at hospitals, those are not drive through. Each will serve 150 people per day with testing. Eight open already, Bellevue, Elmhurst, Harlem, Jacobi, Kings County, Lincoln, Woodhall, Queens Hospital. Two more open next week. Coney Island and Jacobi, none drive through. On the seven new sites of the Gotham clinics. These are also not drive through. Each will serve 50 or 75 people and those are all open, will be open this week, [inaudible] Cumberland, East New York, [inaudible] Morrisania [inaudible] Vanderbilt. Four new testing centers, a hundred people per day, two open Coney Island, Jacobi two coming up, Kings County, Queens Hospital, none drive through all everything I've just said by appointment. And prioritize testing only. The only drive throughs are the State operated one on Staten Island and the five that are coming in coordination with FEMA. But we don't have locations or start dates for those yet.

Question: That’s what I was asking about. Do we know when we'll get those locations and start dates yet?

Mayor: Just what I said, we don't have it yet and when we have it, we'll tell you.

Lapeyrolerie: Last but not least, Yoav.

Mayor: Yoav.

Question: Hi. Mr. Mayor. Two questions. One, I know you said there's no citywide shortages and there’s not expected to be for a few weeks, but are you hearing from individual hospitals about specific shortages, either of masks or ventilators? And if so, what is the City doing about those? And can you identify anyone, any that you might've heard from?

Mayor: I heard rumors, but then generally, and you know, again, we have the Health Commissioner here, CEO of Health + Hospitals here, Emergency Management Commissioner here. I think if anyone has different information they'll jump in. But we heard rumors we did some follow ups. I think there were some places that had either you know, they're getting worried about a shortage or they had some very particular thing they needed some quick infusion of. But the basic reality has been we have supplies and if health facilities need them, meaning hospitals we can get them where they need to go. But I am not seeing this as a major problem at this point. I am very concerned going forward, but I don't see it as a major problem at this point. Dr Katz you want to add or Dr. Barbot?

President Katz: I'd just like to validate what the Mayor has said. Health + Hospitals runs 11 hospitals and there have been moments when we've needed to move supplies from one hospital to another. There are also people who are sensibly worried that will we have enough supplies for two weeks from now? And as the Mayor has been very clear, that's why we need a restocking. So I want to assure people that yes, as of this moment we do have enough supplies and we're able to move supplies. And I know that's true of other hospitals. But also understand why people may not have that perception because they are looking at in their hospital how many of the N95 masks are there right now and thinking this is not enough. So I understand the concerns and I certainly appreciate the Mayor's call for help for us to get that restocking. But at the moment the hospitals have what they need.

Mayor: So, to both our doctors here. I think it'd be really helpful. I think it's a very important question -- let’s kind of demystify a little. If a voluntary hospital or an H + H facility needed suddenly more surgical mass or whatever it was. Just let's explain to our colleagues in the media how that request would be acted on. And who would they call and what happens next to make sure they get what they need. And obviously our Emergency Management Commissioner might want to chime in as well. Do either you want to start?

Commissioner Barbot: Sure. I'll start. So, we work closely with our State counterpart to ensure that we communicate with our hospitals on a regular basis and query them on where they are with regards to specific supplies related to masks, gowns, et cetera. And we ask them how long they think that the particular supplies will last and if they are anticipating a delivery so that if there are concerns about potential shortages, we then work with our partners at [inaudible] Office of Emergency Management and at the State to ensure that these hospitals get their supplies in a timely manner.

President Katz: Yes. And to demystify, as the Mayor has asked, all of our 11 hospitals have already been moving supplies and moving patients. So some of our hospitals have been more heavily affected such as Elmhurst than other hospitals. And we've responded as a system by moving supplies, staffing to Elmhurst to do that. And also moved other patients who didn't need to be at Elmhurst to other hospitals. So that's what hospital systems do to respond in a crisis like this.

Question: Okay. Thank you. And I did want to ask one other thing about the disease detectives. I'm curious if their role has changed now that the number of cases coming in is so high? You were planning to double the size of the team, but if they are still doing what they were doing, how do you decide which cases to investigate? And is that work even, you know, how useful is it at this point of widespread community spread?

Mayor: I'll start and pass to the Commissioner. We the number and we're going to continue adding. You know, we're in a different strategic context, but there are plenty of situations where that work is absolutely crucial. The Commissioner can give you a flavor of that.

Commissioner Barbot: Certainly. We've said before that as this outbreak matures, that the work of the disease detectives will focus to prioritize on identifying potential outbreaks amongst health care workers. Because again, the primary focus here is to ensure the capacity of the health care workforce. And then also to work to identify potential clusters in nursing home facilities, as well as, assisted living facilities.

Mayor: Okay. All right, everybody. Thank you. We appreciate – we're in a new world together here, but hopefully we made this work together today and we'll be giving you more updates shortly.

Thanks so much.

2020-03-09 NYC Mayor de Blasio Brian Lehrer

Brian Lehrer: And now we start as we usually do on Fridays with our weekly Ask the Mayor segment – my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio at 212-433-WNYC – 212-433-9692 – or, you can tweet a question, just use the hashtag #AsktheMayor. And good morning, Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, Brian. And thank you and all the people you listed for all the work you're doing. It's very, very important that people get accurate information and it's very reassuring to New Yorkers to know they can turn to all of you. So, thanks to your whole team and, you know, we all need you. Appreciate what you're doing.

Lehrer: Thank you. I know you're calling on the President to use his powers under the Defense Production Act to help get us the millions of masks and thousands of respirators our health care system needs in very short order. What could happen under such a presidential order?

Mayor: So, the President has invoked the Defense Production Act and that allows him to mandate that industries produce what is needed for the national good. And factories, literally, that produce the goods we need have to do it on the highest production level, has to be prioritized for distribution to where the need is greatest. I mean, Brian, let's be very clear, right now, with the almost 4,000 cases confirmed coronavirus as of 6:00 pm yesterday in New York City, and 26 people who have passed away, we now have about 30 percent of the cases in the United States of America and about 70 percent of the cases in New York State, and New York State, unquestionably, is the leading state in this point in the nation for this problem. With the Defense Production Act, the President could simply say, okay, these industries are now going to produce at maximum these kinds of factories that produce something similar, are going to convert to produce, for example, the ventilators at maximum and then distribute them where they're needed most. And I think the best way to ensure that is to bring the United States military into the equation. They have the best logistical capacity. They also have a huge amount of medical personnel and supplies of their own. Now, Brian, what's happening right now is, all of that capacity is sitting at bases all over the United States, while, right now, we're at the front and other parts of the country are front where people are suffering and they're going to be dying more and more. And I don't mean to be too dramatic here, it's just a fact. It is a fact that a lot of people are going to die who don't need to die if this doesn't happen quickly. How on earth is our military not mobilized? I know the military would answer the call instantly and know what to do, but they are being left to their bases while people are suffering. It makes no sense.

Lehrer: So, what kind of response have you gotten from the White House?

Mayor: Of course, nothing. I'm sorry that I have to say of course. I reached out to Vice President Pence a few days back, he sent me to Secretary Azar of Health and Human Services who was receptive and helpful on the narrow question of getting us some testing approval for one company. But we've continually asked for supplies, they've sent us a very small amount. I'm going to try today again to talk to Pence, Azar, to talk to the VA Secretary Wilkie to activate the Veterans Administration's Hospitals and capacity in the city, which would also help a lot. But honestly – and I know Senator Schumer has been trying – everyone and anyone in the executive branch as well, I've talked to him about it. But we couldn't be clearer about what we're asking for. We've documented it. We've repeated it publicly, privately. You know, the Senate Minority leader has asked, I've asked as the leader of the nation's largest city. They're not responding and they're not responding either out of ignorance or they're not responding on purpose, which I think history is going to judge very harshly. You know, we're talking about, ironically, a New Yorker in the White House who right now is betraying New York City. We're talking about a president who is basically doing what Herbert Hoover did at the beginning of the Depression and minimizing the danger and refusing to use available federal action. And people are going to die and they shouldn't. They don't have to if we could get the support that we're asking for. We have two or three weeks before our hospitals at a point where they cannot provide the care they are capable of because they won't have the equipment and the supplies. That's how clear it is.

Lehrer: California's Governor Gavin Newsom has issued a statewide stay-at-home order, as I'm sure you know. Pennsylvania's governor ordered all non-essential businesses to temporarily close. How different are those things from what you're already asking of New Yorkers in the city and do you think we need to go further?

Mayor: We need to go to a shelter in place model. In California, they're calling it safe at home. What Governor Newsome did was exactly right, it's very similar to what San Francisco did earlier in the week. It is a public health order. It is an order to people who are non-essential industries to go home, stay home. That does not mean you can't go to the grocery store or the pharmacy. You have to, obviously – and this is accounted for in these orders – anyone who wants to understand it, I've seen the San Francisco website where they lay it out. It's very clear. It is balanced. People still can get food, medicine. People can still get outside, get some exercise, walk their dog, but they have to socially distance. And it's enforceable, it's a public health order. If people try to assemble, they'll be broken up. If people loiter on the street and aren't out there for a specific purpose, they'll be sent back home. So, it's enforceable. But I think I really believe this, Brian, if we have a clear order to our people to change their habits immediately, they've gotten plenty of education on the problem of this virus and what is starting to do, I think people are going to be receptive. We've seen that in many ways already, but they need an order and they need to be crystal clear – this is what you can do, this is what you can't do. And if you're not one of these essential industries, if you're not involved in a health care – you're not a healthcare provider or a first responder or someone who keeps, you know, electricity running or water running or basics, you should be home. You should shut your store if you – if you're involved in providing food to people, we need you. If you're selling, you know, items to tourists or if you're selling a regular old, you know, luxury goods or anything like that, there's no way in the world you should be open right now. So, we've got to have a sharp delineation. This is what's essential, this is what's not, everyone else get home. That's what California has done and I think it's the model that should be followed literally everywhere in the nation that's facing this threat, because it's the only way we know – and our public health leaders say this, Brian – it's the only way we know to slow down the speed of this spread of this disease. If we don't slow it down, our hospitals will simply not be able to handle the burden. And if we do slow it down, we give time for resupply and time to prepare more health care facilities.

Lehrer: So, why not just order that shelter in place right now, right here?

Mayor: The State of New York, under its emergency powers, has the right to make this decision. I respect that. I've said publicly, I think Governor Cuomo has made right decisions throughout this crisis and I’ve supported him in that. On this one, I think no one likes the idea. I don't blame him or me or anyone who would hesitate to do something this intense. But the time has come. It's his call. I respect him. We've been talking. But I think what California did will be the moment that people all over the country will say, now other states and cities must take on this model because, otherwise, if you wait too long it will not have the effect of slowing down this disease.

Lehrer: You know, I can't let go yet of this request or making of the President. I know we moved on to the next thing, which is what you can do and what the Governor can do. But what you're saying sounds so urgent with New York having 30 percent – I even saw on other news organizations 40 percent of the cases in the United States, I guess that's New York State – and if the military really has the capacity to be mobilized or it's the – maybe it's the private sector under this act that the President could order these things under to make thousands of respirators really fast. I don't know if there are plants in place where he can just order that to be done or make these, I think you said yesterday, millions of masks more than we have are going to be needed in a matter of weeks in the health care system. I can't let go of this yet. What's their reluctance?

Mayor: Brian, you know, look, all I can analyze at this point is that, one, for some perverse combination of sort of optical reasons, political reasons, denial, whatever it is, or just lack of leadership, lack of coherent professional leadership. And we know that over the months, you know, the, the team that started in the White House was a much more professional and stronger team. We miss people like General Kelly, for example, who I don't think would've had a doubt in his mind that it was time to mobilize the military. I think there's been a diminution of the capacity of the federal government in terms of the executive leadership. And I think there's denial and I think there's political considerations and there's just a lack of connection to reality. Of all the people you have thought who would want to activate the military, I would've thought Donald Trump would be that person. He has been just so evidently unwilling to pull the trigger and move the one force that could make a difference. I know this much about our military – they can move very fast and make a huge difference. They do it in wartime, of course, they could do it in peace time and they're the best shot we got. If you've got a factory in Ohio or Illinois that could produce a lot of mass or a lot of ventilators, I don't have a doubt in my mind the military could get them here and ensure the right prioritization. But on the Defense Production Act, clearly there are companies in America that produce these goods and there are companies that produce similar goods that could be converted on an urgent basis. And we don't need everything instantly, we need a steady supply to try to keep ahead of this crisis. And I would think any president in the history of this republic, seeing the nation's largest city, two of the largest States in California and New York, all deeply endangered, thousands of lives on the line, maybe tens of thousands of lives on the line – how on earth would that president not use the power they have as Commander in Chief? Why do you invoke – why does the President evoke that, the Defense Production Act and then not use it? It's in explicable. So, Brian, my view is, take everything to maximum right now to save lives. And it won't be a perfect, I know that, but if we knew that more and more supplies were coming on a steady basis, we could keep rationing, we could keep doing our best to get from day to day, because starting in the first or second week of April, we're just going to play and run out. If we got even some resupply even could buy a few more days so they could produce more. You know, we could keep going. But, right now, there's literally –literally, no response.

Lehrer: Maxine, in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hello, Maxine.

Question: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I am calling on behalf of [inaudible] USA, which is a viral testing lab and an immunology testing lab to tell you and the City of New York and America that we have available 500,000 tests virtually immediately. We can provide samples within two days and we have these blood serum tests with FDA approval already. So, they are fully, scientifically tested.

Lehrer: So, why isn't this happening, Maxine? Why do you have to call a radio show to talk to the Mayor?

Question: Brian, I have been attempting to get to the CDC. I have been attempting to get to the New York State Department of Health. I have spoken to my Congresswoman. The materials have been presented to them and I am calling you so that the Mayor can put me in contact with the appropriate people.

Lehrer: And I'm going to leave it there, because we have so many callers, except to say, Mr. Mayor, do you want to take our contact information?

Mayor: Of course. And, Maxine, if you'll give your information right now to WNYC, we're going to follow up instantly after this call and one of our top health officials will reach you directly.

Lehrer: Jack, in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Jack.

Question: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Good morning.

Question: Until the end of the call for social distancing, I'm calling on you, Mayor de Blasio and the Governor, to immediately place a moratorium on rent, mortgage and debt payments for individuals and small business, as well as putting in a long-lasting financial relief package for workers and families. When is this going to happen? Why haven't we seen it yet?

Mayor: Jack, thank you. Look, I think you're directionally right. I think we have to figure out how to do some kind of moratorium for both residents and small business. I'm going to find out if that's anything within the power of the City or if that can only be done with State law or State action, but I think it's the right thing to do. We have to obviously make sure when the smoke clears that the folks who own the buildings are going to somehow be whole and able to keep running their buildings. But, right now, people are suffering. People don't have income for food or medicine. So, I agree with you and we're going to try and figure it out. Jack, the reason everything is being figured out, it's hand to mouth right now and I don't think that's a surprise to anyone. We are trying to figure out each step and right now my most central concern is trying to build out our hospital capacity urgently and somehow find the supplies we need to keep health care going. That is my first concern. But not far behind is to try and make sure people have the resources to buy food and medicine. So, I will pursue the rent moratorium idea immediately and see if it's something the City can do or if we have to get the State to do it.

Lehrer: Sylvia, in Upper Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hi Sylvia.

Question: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I'm 73 and really trying to stay at home, but I do have to get out to get groceries. I live in Northern Manhattan. And my problem is that the big, the main grocery store in our neighborhood has absolutely no social spacing going on. It's nightmare in there. There’s panic buying going on. I took one foot, you know, one step into the store yesterday and told the guy standing guard who was doing nothing. you know, that this is not a safe place to buy groceries. You've got, you know – so is there anything that can be done to enforce – because the grocery stores are precious for those of us who can't buy food online, who can't afford to do that. So, is there any way to enforce grocery stores, you know, being safer about this?

Lehrer: Sylvia, thank you. And Mr. Mayor, I've heard this from a number of listeners and I wonder if you could even mandate something like appointment shopping at grocery stores so that they maintain six-foot distancing?

Mayor: There's been several ideas, whether it's appointment shopping or special times for seniors. Those are ideas we're working on right now. I think the important thing in this case with Sylvia, please give your information WNYC. I need that location. We'll send the NYPD over right away. And look as we move deeper into this crisis, and I do hope we very quickly get to a public health order for the social distancing and for the shelter-in-place, again, in the style of California. The NYPD is going to play a crucial role and other city agencies in enforcement. And look, I don't think it means a heavy, heavy hand. I think it means reminding people, educating people, warning people, and when necessary, saying guys, you got to create some distance here. We're going to open this up. Other people need to hold back so these shoppers can finish doing what they're doing and get out of here. And obviously we don't want to see the lines where people are tight. If we ever have lines, we want people spread out. Social distancing is pretty straight forward. You're trying to keep six feet away from anyone else. It's easier said than done in New York City obviously, but at least we know what the rule is. Six feet away from each other, as close as possible to that and we can enforce that. And the NYPD – no organization is better at enforcing and doing it in a smart way than NYPD. So I want this location. I will send the NYPD over there immediately, but we will also work to get them to recognize for neighborhood policing, any sites in their communities that are having a similar problem and get the PD to get present there and create more space.

Lehrer: Minnesota and Vermont, by the way, just classified grocery store workers as emergency workers, which gives them access to childcare. Here I believe it's just for health care, transit and first responders. Even in California, of course grocery stores are considered essential and they're being allowed to stay open. Would you consider doing what they're doing in Minnesota and Vermont with respect to childcare?

Mayor: Yeah. First of all, I do think obviously the folks who keep the grocery stores open, the pharmacies open, of course they are essential workers. We have to figure out quickly how much capacity we have in terms of the enrichment centers we're going to set up for the first responders, for the – we've said already, we're going to have them for sure for the children of first responders, health care workers, transit workers. And we're trying to figure out how much capacity we can get, how many we can cover. I think there's a very fair argument for the grocery workers as well, but we have to come up with a formalized list. We hope to have that as early as today and then we'll apply it. But Brian, and you know again, always trying to be honest. It depends on how many spaces we have, how many kids we can accommodate and trying to really somehow ration that properly.

Lehrer: Cindy, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hi, Cindy.

Question: Hi. Can you hear me?

Lehrer: Can hear you.

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm a small business owner in Brooklyn, Beacon's Closet. We have four locations. We took the measure of closing last Friday because we're really high volume and we're concerned for our customers and our staff. Last week we filled out the interest survey that you have for the 75k, up to 75k low-interest loan. And I know that you opened the grants for the less than five businesses yesterday, but we still have no, there's still no application for that loan that you're offering. Can you tell me when that might be and why it's not available for us to fill out yet?

Mayor: Let me check. Is it Cindy, is that, am I getting the name right?

Question: Yes, that's right.

Mayor: Cindy, please give your information to WNYC. I am – I want to get that clear. I don't understand why on Earth that wouldn't be up. We announced that far enough ago that everything should be up and running. So, something's wrong and I want to fix it. And either the information is not being made available the way it should, or something has been dropped that we have to fix immediately. Because we obviously intend to get those loans and grants out there to try and help. Now, even since we announced that Cindy, the world has changed so radically that is fair to say the only way a lot of small businesses will get the relief they need is with a massive federal aid package. It's gone far, far beyond anything that the City could possibly do. But I at least want to follow through on the things we started. So, I will find out immediately what's going on with that. Give us your information and we'll make sure people follow up with you so you can start processing that immediately.

Lehrer: And a similar concern from a listener who says she's a now unemployed bartender, but the online site for unemployment benefits wasn't working as of yesterday. And she says she and her, some of her friends really need the money. Are you aware of problems with that site?

Mayor: I have heard that and I have to follow up, my best understanding that's run by the State, but we'll work with them immediately to see what will need to be done to get that to handle more volume. Clearly there's going to be massive need. I mean, Brian one, we’ll work on this immediately. And it sits a bigger problem. And I again, want to always be honest with New Yorkers, we're going to have more and more people who don't have money, just plain don’t have money, don't have a place to get money, need food, need medicine. That's what's going on here. It's going to get worse. We're going to do our damnedest as a city to figure out how to get food out there into communities, to people who need them across the city, every neighborhood. But it's a daunting situation. We've never had to do this before, obviously in our memory as a city. We're going to try and figure out a way to do that. In the meantime, what we need is the federal government to just flood the zone, to get money in the hands of people, to do maximum income replacement direct to people in the city and all over the country, to cancel student loan payments, to do everything that the federal government has in its power. The federal government prints money, literally. They can take on any amount of burden. And this is going to be one of the greatest national crises in generations. So that is the only way we're going to truly make people whole. But in the meantime, we're going to try and set up some very basic structures to at least try and make sure people have food to keep going. And we'll try and figure out anything we can do to help expedite things like unemployment benefits.

Lehrer: Let me come back to the grocery stores for a minute. We're getting a similar story now that they heard Sylvia in Upper Manhattan from somebody citing a particular Trader Joe's in Brooklyn. And your response to her was the first reference that I believe I've heard to using the police to enforce social distancing. Are you really prepared to use the police to enforce social distancing? And would it be better perhaps to start with some kind of an order that's grocery store specific?

Mayor: Again, the answer is yes. I am a realist, Brian, and we're talking about an ever-changing situation everyone's trying to make sense of. I think we need a public health order in the style of California that clarifies to everyone what they're supposed to do, what they're not supposed to do, who's essential, who's not. But then you still have the issue of people will under that order be allowed to go to the grocery store. If they are not properly distancing, and I urge people to recognize, is on all of us. I'll talk about the enforcement, but it's also a matter of every one of us taking responsibility. If you get too close to other people, you're running the risk of contracting the disease and then spreading it to your family. Or you're running the risk of giving the disease to someone else. That's just not what we should be doing right now. Everyone needs to be serious about what social distancing means. But, of course, we have the best enforcement entity on Earth, the NYPD. It's totally appropriate for them to again educate, warn, use the ability of someone in uniform to create some clarity and say, nope, that's too many people in one place, clear it out. We've been doing that already with the original order related to public gatherings in spaces, bars, restaurants, et cetera. NYPD officers, Fire Department personnel, others, Sheriff's Office, Buildings Department have gone out. They've had relatively few examples, but there's one example that was reported. For example, there was a wedding group that was supposed to be under 50 people and they tried to do 150. And you know, City officials arrived and sent everyone home. So we will use our enforcement powers. We don't want to have to be too draconian, but we must enforce all of these rules. I think it’s absolutely appropriate.

Lehrer: By the way, you mentioned that, you mentioned that wedding. One of our tweets from a listener says they tried to go get married, but the Marriage Bureau was closed. Is that deemed a nonessential service and closed in New York City?

Mayor: I'm going to confirm that. And Brian, you'll forgive me and to all your listeners, forgive me. The things are moving so fast that I'm getting updates all the time. It would not surprise me if it's closed because as I announced yesterday, we're sending home 250,000 City workers by Sunday. And that's going to be on a long-term basis. We have to clear everything out. So, anyone who did not have to be in their work location is going to work from home or work in an alternative capacity. So, I will confirm to you about the Marriage Bureau and see if my team can confirm it right now. But obviously, and it's painful because it's such an important moment in people's lives, but we're also dealing with a crisis that we've never seen before. So, if it is closed down, it doesn't surprise me, but I'll confirm it back to you.

Lehrer: Some people getting married are anticipating the health insurance benefits that are going to go to the uninsured spouse. Just saying there's a relevance there for some people.

Mayor: There is, there is. But we also have a broader reality that we must go to urgent social distancing. Brian, I want your listeners to understand why. If we don't slow down the growth of this disease, it will create a dynamic where our health care system cannot protect people and cannot save lives that could be saved. And the fact is unless we have much more intense social distancing, the disease will spread faster than it needs to. It's as simple as that. We have to do things we would never have thought of doing and it's a simple equation. If you don't get a lot more social distancing, like now, the disease will spread so fast that it will get to the point where our health care system cannot serve people properly. If we conversantly, actually do more serious social distancing, we'll slow down the growth of this disease meaningfully. And give ourselves a chance to get resupplied and keep our health system able to serve people. That is the choice right now.

Lehrer: We're going to run out of time soon. Question –

Mayor: And Brian, one other point, very important, I’m sorry. People who do not have insurance, it's a little moot at this point. If you don't have health insurance, our public hospitals and clinics are still going to serve you. We're in a wartime dynamic. Of course, I want people to have insurance if they can. But the most important thing is no one should think if they don't have insurance, they're not going to get served. So even if the reason someone's getting married is for insurance, I get it. But if you can't get served anywhere else, you will be served in our public facilities.

Lehrer: Glad you said that. Last question from a listener and then I'm going to try to close one with one if you have time. You announced that you'll release, this is via Twitter – listen writes, you announced you will release 40 people from Rikers. But Rikers is a fundamental public health crisis. And I will add from what I know that the Chief Physician there, Dr. Ross MacDonald, warns a storm is coming in those close quarters, please let as many out as you possibly can. So what's the status of that?

Mayor: I agree that we need to let as many out as we possibly can. And the structure we've set up for that is to determine with our Office of Criminal Justice and NYPD, anyone who can be released either because they have the pressing health dynamics that qualify them. And also of course they have to be someone that we believe we can responsibly release, you know, their offenses are minimal in the scheme of things. They are not someone we expect to re-offend, low-level offense, et cetera. So, we're working that through. 40 is the first group. It requires approval from the State and/or DAs. And then we'll look for anyone and everyone more. I'm very, very concerned about the situation. I will also tell you, this is fact, that because the number of people incarcerated is about half as what the number it was when I came into office, there's actually a lot of space available on Rikers and in our jail system to socially distance people and isolate people. We also have very strong health care provided by Health + Hospitals in our jail system. So, we understand the danger, but we have a lot of capacity to address it. We’re going to constantly see if there are more people that can be released, but we have to be smart about this equation. We still need our criminal justice system to function at this moment.

Lehrer: And I want to close –

Mayor: I am being told the Marriage Bureau closed, starting today. So, are they going to be working today or not? Let me clarify. They are not working today – closed. So, the Marriage Bureau, closed as of today. That is fact.

Lehrer: Until further notice

Mayor: Of course. But I think further notice – again, real talk for all New Yorkers, further notice is when we start to come out of this crisis, which on the trajectory we're on is many weeks away. It's certainly – the thing is going to get a lot worse in April, and I'm worried about whether May could even be worse than that. So, this is going to be a long battle. I've been trying to be very real with people about it.

Lehrer: And let me come back to close where you started because you've certainly got me on board with this, that if the game is – the essential game that is life and death is getting enough supplies like ventilators and masks into the health care system here where we have 30 to 40 percent of the cases in the country, and if the president really could make that happen to a large degree by invoking the Defense Production Act in the way that you're requesting – is there anything you can do to get other mayors and governors on board? They all have their interests for their own localities, but to lobby the president on behalf of this unique concentration in New York to do this for us.

Mayor: Of course, I've been working with the U. S. Conference of Mayors and I believe governors will be very helpful across the board. I mean, it's been noted that some of the Republican governors have been leaders in calling for more urgent action. So, we'll look for every colleague to weigh in. But to me, Brian, we have to be blunt. The president invoked the Defense Production Act and then – meaning he activated it and then gave no order to produce anything. So, there's something strange. Everyone understands the military could have been mobilized already, can be mobilized this moment. So, this is almost willful ignorance, willful betrayal of New York City by the president. I don't know if he's doing it on purpose. I don't know if he is – somehow thinks this is something he is – some revenge he's taking. I don't know what the hell is going on here, but it's so obvious.

So yes, we will look for anyone and everyone who can lobby the president and have an impact on – I'll call business leaders who have a relationship with them, everyone. But it's so far beyond anything that we could possibly logically follow. It is a pandemic, it is a global crisis – thousands of Americans infected and it's just begun. This is the tip of the iceberg – and a president who praises our military so often, rightfully so, not activating the military. You know, who is giving him his instructions? Where is he getting the idea that our military should stay at their bases in the middle of the biggest health care crisis we've seen in generations? I will try and get anyone and everyone to lobby, but I think it goes far beyond that.

Lehrer: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Talk to you next week.

Mayor: Thank you.

2020-03-20 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, everyone, we've got a lot to cover today and I'll try and give you quick updates and then we're going to hear from our Police Commissioner and our School's Chancellor, then we'll open it up to media questions. We're going to talk today, of course, about the new measures taken by the State and going to talk about what is still not happening with the federal government and what we need from the federal government and obviously the overall situation in terms of what's happening with the people of this City.

I do want to start by saying that we had a very, very important announcement by Governor Cuomo. I want to thank him and commend him for the decision that he made. I think it is the right decision. It's going to be a new reality in this City and we have to understand that this is something that's absolutely necessary. I want to say to my fellow New Yorkers, none of us asked for the coronavirus to say the least. None of us expected the coronavirus. We are in a whole new dynamic. We're all learning every day how to make sense of it. And when I give you these briefings and just like my colleagues we’ll try and be as blunt and straightforward as we possibly can be, but some of the time the answer will be we don't know because we still don't know. There are so many things we're trying to sort out in a brand-new reality.

What I can say is a lot of the pieces are coming together to make sure that we do everything humanly possible to slow the spread of this disease, to give us a chance to prepare for the weeks ahead when we're going see a lot more cases and make sure our healthcare system will be as strong as it possibly can be. And that's why the Governor's decision was so important to make sure that all non-essential workers go home, that only people who are working are people who are doing something absolutely necessary for our City and our State. To make sure that people had some clear rules about what you can and cannot do. And we want to be clear about how we're going to enforce those rules. And you're going to hear from our Police Commissioner in a moment and clearly the NYPD is going to play a major role in enforcement along with other agencies that we depend on like the FDNY, the Sheriff's Office, many other agencies will be involved. But really, we want to emphasize from the beginning – I want to be clear that we're in a brand-new reality – we have not gone through something like this across our whole City in generations.

And our goal would be every single day to try what we think makes sense, to see how it goes, to listen to New Yorkers to best understand what's going to work and what doesn't. I constantly am listening for the feedback I'm getting. People are reaching me from all parts of the city, are giving me updates, I know my colleagues are too, and we're getting a real sense of what people need and how best we can serve them. But we are all trying to catch up with a new reality. So we will be enforcing the Governor's order, the Governor's order is the right thing to do to protect us all. And particularly to protect those who are most vulnerable, the folks over 50 with those preexisting health conditions and particularly folks over 70, even if they're pretty healthy, those are the people in most vulnerable - those are our loved ones, our friends, our neighbors, the people we worship with that we need to take care of.

So, acting on the State's order, we're going to do all we can to educate people to help them understand how to live with this new reality, how to work together, how to support each other. It's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to be perfect the first time, but we do know that we're going to be able to help people understand how to make it work and that we all have to make it work. We all have to do this together. So, you'll see folks from your city government led by the NYPD out there, reminding people, educating people, warning people to make sure we get this right.

So, let me go over a few other matters, starting again with the State order. Again, starts to take full effect on Sunday night at 8:00 pm, 100 percent of nonessential workers must stay home. But there are a number of industries and businesses that are essential – those that provide food, groceries, obviously food delivery, pharmacies, mass transit, healthcare, that's, those are the areas that of course will be protected – will keep going. But I think it's as simple as this. If you don't need to be out, you shouldn't be out, and if you can be home, you should be home. That's what it really comes down to. Especially for those folks most vulnerable, as I mentioned, you know, folks who at this moment are vulnerable to this disease, let's just think about it, we don't want them to take any chances whatsoever. If anyone in those categories wants to go outside for a little bit, I get it, but please, absolutely distance from anyone around you and as briefly as possible really, really limit the people who come in contact with you. No one should come in contact with anyone over 50 with those preexisting conditions or over 70 in general without checking first to see if you have a temperature, use a thermometer. If you have a temperature over a hundred, you should not be in contact with anyone in those vulnerable categories. People have to be really, really smart about it and always, always practice social distancing. That's six feet apart - wherever you are - except when you're right among your own family members, you go out for a walk, stay six feet apart from people. You go to the grocery store, stay six feet apart from people. Anything you're doing, keep to that rule. Does anyone think it's going to be perfect, no. But if you keep thinking all the time and acting all the time, you'll be able to protect yourself.

For folks who we know were planning gatherings, obviously we're quite clear and it's tough to say, there's so many gatherings we look forward to each year. Anything non-essential should not happen at this point, just has to be postponed. The core of this crisis will certainly go on for weeks, most likely months. If you have to postpone, you'll be postponing for a while, but it is the right thing to do to keep people safe. And I remind people that's true outside as well as inside, that six feet apart matters in either situation. We want to make sure people remember, even when you're doing those basic things, going to the grocery store, going to the pharmacy, you still need to keep six feet apart. And again, we're going to ask the NYPD and other agencies to keep an eye on places where people are getting a little too crowded and to go in and remind people to separate and spread out. I don't think most New Yorkers need a lot of reminding of what this pandemic means and the dangers it brings, but we're all human beings, we're social, we're used to being close together, especially in this City. I know the NYPD and others will do a great job of making sure we’re reminded to do the smart thing and the healthy thing and the safe thing.

Okay, let me now talk to you about the overall situation. And this is the part of each briefing that I really hate to give cause it's just astounding and it gets worse each time. But my job is to tell you the truth and my job is to tell you the facts that you need to know, so here we go. As of 10:00 am today we can confirm in New York City, 5,151 cases confirmed of Coronavirus and to give you perspective, that is now about one-third of all the coronavirus cases in the United States of America. It is about two-thirds of the cases in the State of New York. I hate to say this, but it's true, we are now the epicenter of the crisis right here in the nation's largest city. And we have so much we have to do.

The City, we are doing everything that we possibly can. People are giving us ideas every day. We're running with those ideas. We're trying to create new things to help people. We're, we're our public servants are doing an amazing job. A lot of people are coming forward from the private sector offering help from the philanthropic center - sector. They're so many people offering help from individuals like those amazing medical professionals who've come forward over 2000 of those retirees who have volunteered to come back to help. Business people big and small, offering to give anything they have to help this City. So many amazing positive stories and that reminds me just how good New Yorkers are and how much we're going to really find a way to get through this together.

So, the City government is doing everything it knows how, New Yorkers, businesses, nonprofit organizations, community groups, houses of worship – everyone's chipping in – State of New York, doing the right thing, the right policy to protect us all and taking a lot of the other right moves to be careful to make sure we all get through this. Everything makes sense until you get to the federal government. And I still can't understand it. Every day that I talk to you, I cannot understand what's going on here. There was another big press conference by the President and his key officials. They were talking about what is undoubtedly one of the biggest crises in this country in generations, one of the biggest threats to our national security in generations, and, yet, essentially, today, the President offered no new evidence of action. I don’t understand why he won’t do the single simplest thing that would help us and help this whole country mobilize our armed forces. We need their ability – their logistical ability, their operational ability, their extraordinary personnel, including their extraordinary medical personnel. We need them here, we need them now, it's as simple as that. And the orders still have not been given, the same with the Defense Production Act. We have been waiting and waiting. The President said today he would utilize it, but there's no specific evidence of that confirming to us any specific supplies or equipment being built manufactured— distributed. We have nothing yet to tell us when we're going to get help and we need it. Continue to appeal to our congressional delegation, which has been very supportive. I'm reaching out to cabinet secretaries. I'm reaching out to the Vice President, anyone who will listen. But we need the President's full authority utilize under Defense Production Act so that it will actually turn into thousands of ventilators, millions of surgical masks, all the things that New York needs.

And by the way, I've warned people in two or three weeks at this rate, we're going to run out, but that's the beginning of the crisis. Later in April, into May, it gets worse. So, we need the Federal Government to act. Senator Schumer to his credit is playing extraordinary role. He has offered this Marshall Plan for hospitals. That's exactly what we need to give our health care community what they need, the supplies, the equipment, everything they need. But listen, it also to his great credit, recognizes that States and Localities are right now bearing massive new expenses and are stressed in huge ways and we need the financial relief to so we can help our people and our people need money back in their pockets and the federal government can do that. So again, thank you to Senator Schumer for all you are doing. I want to give a number of updates about actions quickly that the City is taking. And then I'll turn to our police commissioner and then our School's Chancellor.

Let me just say, I mentioned earlier of the sheer number of cases, again, 5,151 – an astounding number – 29 people in this city have passed away because of coronavirus. We've lost 29 New Yorkers and that number is sure to keep growing very, very sadly. In terms of the boroughs, we have 1,406 cases this as again as of 10 am this morning. 1,406 cases in Queens— 1,518 cases in Brooklyn 1,304 – I'm sorry, 1,314 cases in Manhattan, 667 cases in the Bronx and 242 cases in Staten Island. Let me tell you about some of the things we're going to do. — Chancellor will go into more detail on the question of our enrichment centers. These are the new centers we've never had them before, this is a brand new thing. And I want to thank everyone at the Department Education. Everyone, our educators, our staff, our – senior leadership, everyone, these, these folks have been working nonstop to get this ready. This, these are the enrichment centers to provide education and to give a safe place to the kids have, are absolutely essential. Workers are our healthcare workers, our first responders, and our transit workers. We know we need all of those workers at the front where they're needed most and they need to have their kids someplace safe. So, they will open up on – Monday morning, there'll be 93 to begin, but we could well be adding more. A 76 of those will be a K to 12 education centers – 17 will be early childhood grades only. And these sites can handle well over 50,000 students. It's not going to be anywhere near that number to begin but it could grow much more as we go along and we want to be ready for anything.

The first group, of course again, is health care workers, first responders, transit workers, I've identified them before. All of them will be able to once confirmed, of course we'll be able to have the kids— go to these schools and centers during the school day. For the department education staff who will be working at the centers and the food— distribution locations, I'll be talking about those in a moment. Of course, their children as well we'll have that opportunity, for the frontline investigators and child protective workers in the Administration of Children's Services who protect kids against child abuse. The same for Department of Corrections essential staff, the same for Department of Homeless Services and Human Resources Administration shelter staff and key contracted staff, the same and for sanitation essential staff. And that obviously means in case of corrections and sanitation, our frontline workers as well. So – we will be getting all the details out on the different categories of City workers and – other workers who qualified to have this opportunity for the kids. Those categories are not a final, meaning, we will reserve the right over the next few days into next week to add as we see what's going on, as we hear from additional folks what they need. I mentioned the feeding sites – we're going to be doing a lot of work in these next weeks and months on new ways of feeding New Yorkers. – In terms of feeding, in this case we mean grab and go meals. So this is not people sitting down, of course we're trying to enforce social distancing in every way we can. So, the grab and go meals would be for any young person under 18, whether they go to a public school or any other kind of school. 435 sites we'll be opening on Monday, they will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. A young person can come and get all three meals at once or any combination – for limited hours and a day on the early part of the day. Details will all be posted – we've got – this is based on sites that were either part of our summer food program from last summer, about a hundred of those sites are being used here. A number of other sites where we see a very high level of kids who during the school year get school meals at a reduced rate or free because of their status economically. We're also to have a special initiative to get food to the homes of medically fragile students. Those are students who really need particular help the Department of Education is going to have a special plan for them. And we're working with Door Dash and we want to help them, excuse me, we want to thank them for their help in making this possible. Everyone who stepped up to make these feeding sites possible, I want to thank all of you. There are a lot of public servants, everyone out there I just want to say a lot of public servants who know it's a tough situation. There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of anxiety, but they're stepping forward anyway to help their fellow New Yorkers, and I want to commend all of them.

Some other quick updates – there’ve been real questions about the small business grants and loans that we announced over a week ago. Want to make sure we're clear about how that works and I want us to do a better job of keeping this information straight forward and clear for a small business folks who need them going forward. The grants for businesses with five or fewer employees who have lost 25 percent or more of revenue, that application has been online and live since last Tuesday – and we have now 466 applications, they will all be processed by Monday and money will go into people's bank accounts on Monday. For the businesses with fewer than a hundred employees, and those that also lost 25 percent or more of their revenue, there’s a huge demand for those loans. We are not going to be able to meet the full demand immediately. We'll do our best to reach as many as we can initially, that's about 400 businesses as well. Those businesses will be able to process their applications tomorrow, beginning tomorrow and the money, the loan money will be in their bank accounts by the end of this coming week. So that one we're still playing some catch up on, but we should have money in people's hands by the end of this coming week.

On our City Parks, this is another one that pains me again. I'm a parent, I love our parks for my own experiences with them, but also all of the time I spent with my kids in our parks. It pains me to tell you we have to cancel all field permits— we cannot allow any events, we cannot allow any team sports. And I'm someone who loves team sports in every form. And it really, I'm very sorry I have to tell you that. But, it's just unfortunately pretty much all team sports come with people getting in close proximity and that's how this disease spreads. So, we're not going to be able to allow any permits for that. We're going to urge everyone to exercise on their own and socially distance to the best of their abilities. And parents are going to have a tough time with this and kids are going to have a tough time with this and it's not going to be perfect. But do the best you can to live in this new reality. Again, is it going go on forever? No. It will be a certain number of weeks, a certain number of months. We don't know exactly what it will be, but it will not be forever, we know it will be finite. We know this crisis will end. So, it's – we had tough, tough adjustment, but we have to be clear about keeping people safe. There's been real good questions about bike lanes and bike usage, so it seems to be a real surge in bike usage, that's fantastic. We want to support that; we're going to begin by installing temporary bike lanes hopefully by the end of next week. First of all, in an area very, very important Second Avenue, Manhattan between 34th and 42nd street, a temporary bike lane. They're also on Smith Street and Brooklyn, part of Smith Street that does not have a bike lane. We'll put in a temporary one there. We’ll be looking for other areas all over the city that need them. Certainly, want to encourage people to use bikes as much as they can at this moment. And we'll have constant updates on that.

Now, when it comes to another way that people get around our ferries, we do have, unfortunately, we do have to reduce some of our ferry service because there simply isn't a ridership to you know, justify the kind of frequency we have now, and we have to be smart about that. Every resource right now has to be used best to fight coronavirus. Every part of the city government has to support every other part. So, we will have to reduce frequency because we just see many fewer people. Staten Island ferry ridership is down 70 percent compared to the same point last year. We will still have ferry service, but we need people to, of course, be smart about social distancing and they will have fewer trips. And so, we have to be really smart about keeping an eye on that, keeping that balance. It will not be a huge change. We'll be reducing weekday schedules from four to three boats during rush hours. So, you'll still have regular service, it'll just be somewhat less. And that will go into effect this Sunday at midnight. The same for New York city ferry. NYC ferry reductions will begin next week. We'll get the exact details. Obviously, we will be careful to protect the times that people need the ferry the most during morning and evening rush hour. But there will be reductions as service details to be announced.

So, concluding and then a few words in Spanish. Look, just to say, anyone out there is confused, you're not alone. If you feel afraid, you are not alone. If you're anxious, you're not alone. Everyone is – all of us are trying to make sense of this. But I'll tell you something – and I really, really believe it New Yorkers are so strong. There are other places in this country – and I love this whole country – but there are other places in this country this may be a particular shock to the system, but here New Yorkers have dealt with every single thing ever thrown at them, and we've had a lot thrown at us. We are a tough people by nature and that's something to be proud of. So, everyone, you know, lets depend on that. Let's believe in that. Let's believe in also the compassion in New Yorkers, that ability to help each other out no matter what. We've seen that time and time again. Let's depend on that again. Let's be there for each other. A few words in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, I'm going to turn to our Police Commissioner. I'll just say this, Commissioner Shea and I have been talking over these last days. This is going to be a new reality for the NYPD. There's no force on earth more effective, more capable than the NYPD. There's no group of professionals, more agile, more sophisticated than the men and women of the NYPD. But there's an added positive reality here. And Dermot Shea is one of the people that created neighborhood policing from scratch over these last six years to really connect our officers more deeply to their neighborhoods, to build personal relationships to really understand what was going on block by block, to get to know the people who run those grocery stores and those pharmacies that are so crucial right now. So, our officers, kind of, in a way had a head start on this crisis and with the neighborhood policing strategy. We'll have a real understanding of where they need to be to help educate people to help people remember to keep moving on and dealing with these new rules. So, the NYPD is going to be absolutely crucial in this crisis, but I am convinced they are more than ready to meet the moment.

With that, I turn you to our Police Commissioner Dermot Shea.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll give you a brief overview of what we're seeing throughout the city as it relates to the Police Department. In terms of crime in the city, we've seen a downturn and then about the last week since as with dealing with this crisis, as you see crowds disappearing on streets and other areas, that has translated to a decrease in crime. We've also seen a decrease in calls to 911 for service throughout the city. With one notable exception, calls for service regarding sick patients and that has seen obviously an increase as expected.

I want to thank the public and all the other city agencies, some of whom are sitting here, for the cooperation that has really been seamless as we've all come together to deal with this crisis, really as one city. Men and women of the Police Department, uniform and civilian, the message to the public is they are out there, they are out there in force, and they are there to keep people safe. Whether it's at a school for kids to pick up lunches, whether it's traffic agents, expediting ambulances to get to a hospital, the men and women of the Police Department remain committed to being out there. There has been a toll to this. As we look at the Police Department’s sick, we've seen a notable increase the last four days picking up. That is something that we are watching closely, but I will tell you that at this point we remain very well resourced to handle any and all obstacles that come our way. But we are watching that closely.

As I sit here, the number is probably changing and it has changed throughout the last 24 hours. But we have at this point in time, 52 members of the NYPD that have tested positive for coronavirus. That ranges from civilian members to the executive level. The very good news is, only 1 out of 52 is hospitalized at this time and that's hospitalized with pneumonia like symptoms. So, our hearts and prayers go out to the members and their families with that respect.

What are we doing now? We are paying extremely close attention, as the Mayor said, to areas where people are gathering for good reason. Grocery stores are at the top of our list. Grocery stores, hospitals, the schools and the many facilities in the board of ed that will be open for both children and for picking up breakfast and lunch. So, that remains a focus point in the next period going forward. In terms of the grocery stores and the bars and the restaurants with these new orders of closings. Certainly the, the food establishments and the grocery stores remain open, but we also ask for continued cooperation in terms of just managing any volumes of people.
The good news is we consider about 500 locations that I would categorize as large establishments throughout New York City. We have been to them all and we have not seen any major problems. We have issued very few summonses to any establishments because of the level of cooperation that we've seen. so it's about education, it's about working with each other, and it's about the social distancing that Dr. Barbot has been preaching now, seems like years, but it's really about weeks. So, we will continue to work with the communities that we serve every day to keep continuing to spread that word. We ask for your continued cooperation at this time of certainly stress for all New Yorkers, but again, thank you for all the cooperation.

Mayor: Thank you, Commissioner. I just want to thank you. Again, the men and women of the NYPD have been outstanding in this moment and really want to thank you for reminding people, again, this is one of the leading – I would argue, the preeminent public safety official in the United States of America. And what he's saying here is, that in fact, what the NYPD is finding, is the vast majority of New Yorkers are abiding by the new rules even before today, are being clear about their responsibilities to each other, the responsibilities to their community, and are listening to the constant information that they're getting about coronavirus and taking it seriously. So, I actually think as we go into this new phase with the new plan put forward by the state, that New Yorkers are going to adapt to it quickly, and the NYPD will be there to help. And if anyone needs a reminder, they'll get that reminder. If anyone needs to be reminded that you got to stick to the rules and keep moving along, the NYPD will do that. But I think new Yorkers are ready to listen, and their respect for the NYPD is great, and for all the other agencies that will help with the enforcement. So, thank you very, very much, Commissioner. Appreciate it. And we all share for you – with you, I'm sorry – the thoughts and prayers for your members who are ill, particularly the member who's hospitalized. And that's true for all of our public servants who are dealing with these challenges now and all their families.

I want to turn to our School's Chancellor now to give an update on what is starting Monday. And as he comes up, Chancellor, I have to commend you again and your team. You were asked to do something that's never been done in the history of New York City before, and you were asked to do it in a week's time. And I know it won't be perfect, but you and your team have really done an extraordinary job moving mountains here. And a lot of kids and families are going to benefit and a lot of kids are having, are getting food right now because of what you and your team have done.

Thank you. Please.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, I want to echo what the Mayor has talked about, what our Police Commissioner has talked about, what Dr. Barbot has talked about. This is a time to be aware and it's not a time to be panicked. It is a time to follow instructions. And I've been so inspired, Mr. Mayor as I've been out in the city looking at the professional development, but more importantly speaking virtually with many of my colleagues across the system. When you think about in a matter of days, the largest school system in America is going to completely switch its instructional delivery method in a matter of three, four days. That's unheard of and it's only possible because of the incredible educators that we have in our schools and leaders that lead as principals and the support team that we have in place. I've also – I'm also going to take just a moment here to say thank you to our custodians, our school safety agents, our school food and nutrition workers who have all shown up every day without fail to make sure that our students have what they need, whether it's food, but that we have clean facilities that are disinfected and deep cleaned every single day, and keeping our building safe and secure as well. I want to thank them. I haven't heard one complaint from them to say they don't want to come in, so I want to thank them for what they do.

Our school teachers and administrators as well. We're about to go into the very big unknown, but we're excited because there are many schools in New York City that have already had some version of virtual learning, distance learning, remote learning, but this is an opportunity for us to take this to scale. So I'm thankful that on Monday we will switch to a remote learning model where our students will continue to be able to get the instruction they need over the next few weeks, hopefully not months, but whatever the time period is we will be able to continue to have them engaged academically. It doesn't mean that there won't be hiccups, and Mr. Mayor, I appreciate that you have said we are in uncharted waters and there will be hiccups. But the good thing is that we all recognize that a good is not going to be the opposite of a perfect, and we're going to continue to work through those hiccups as we build this new –

Mayor: Perfect is the enemy of good.

Chancellor Carranza: Perfect is the enemy of good. Yes, sir. So, there will be hiccups, but we're going to keep the lines of communication open. But not only will students be transitioning to remote learning on Monday, but across the city, and you mentioned this, sir, 439 buildings will serve three meals a day to any student that wants one. No identification is required. No identifying what school you come from. If you show up, you will be able to get not only breakfast and lunch, but also dinner, all at one stop. Now you mentioned that these sites were specifically chosen. 100 of sites were chosen because they were high participation sites in summer of 2019 and the remaining sites are schools where more than 50 percent of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. So we're trying to be very strategic in terms of where we locate these sites. To find a site near you, it's very easy. Just search free meals on the DOE website, free meals, or you can call 3-1-1. Or starting Monday, you can text food, F-O-O-D, or comida, C-O-M-I-D-A to 8-7-7-8-7-7, that simple.

Mayor: Say the name of the DOE website.

Chancellor Carranza: It’s www.nycschools. So, please it's that simple. 3-1-1 or texting 8-7-7-8-7-7, food or comida. We're also opening 93 regional education enrichment centers serving up to 57,000 students whose parents are on the front lines serving our city, including first responders, health care workers, transit workers. We will also be serving the essential staff – other essential staff including sanitation workers, DHS and HRA, shelter staff, ACS staff, and obviously the DOE staff that are reporting to the regional enrichment centers and serving food all day. 76 will be K-12 centers in 17 will be early education childhood centers. And again, we want to thank our first responders and our essential workers for keeping our city going. Students at these educational enrichment centers will be there from 7:30 am until 6:00 pm and they will participate in remote learning with their school as well as any art or physical education activities that we have. I personally had been blown away by the fact that we have 2,000 volunteers that have thus far volunteered and signed up to staff these centers. We've also heard the call to expand the eligibility for these centers and we are evaluating in the coming days and weeks our capacity to be able to meet that need as well.

So, the work isn't going to be easy and it's probably not going to be flawless, but I am very proud of the work and the labor that my colleagues in the Department of Education have put into making sure with a compassionate heart that our 1.1 million students will be served for either weeks or months, but they will be served. We have a long road ahead, but I'm confident that together we will be able to make this a reality for all of our students.

Mayor: Thank you very much Chancellor. Now we will turn to Olivia who will be our moderator. Go ahead Olivia.

Olivia Lapeyrolerie: So, just a quick note at the top for folks, we want to get to as many people as possible, but in order to do that, we ask that you limit your questions to two max. And with that we're going turn it over to Yoav for the first question.

Mayor: I see have reverse the order here. Go ahead, Yoav.

Lapeyrolerie: Changing it up on a Friday.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Hi, so two questions. One we seem to be hearing about a surprising number of younger people who are hospitalized and even in the ICU and supposedly many of them do not have preconditions. I'm just wondering if your Health Department is seeing that and whether there's any consideration to changing the messaging so that perhaps some of the healthy young adults don't continue to think of themselves as very low risk personally?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So, let me start off by saying that from the beginning we have made clear that even though the individuals who are most at risk for bad outcomes are people above 50 with chronic underlying illnesses, we have also been saying that they're not the only ones who are at risk. That certainly we have had young people not only infected but also have been ill. We have not seen a large number of young people hospitalized, but the reality is that, and I just want to sort of take a pause here because we're in a somber moment in this outbreak, right? We've gone from a period of three weeks of having single digit cases to then having double digit daily cases to then having triple digit daily cases, and now we are in the thousands every day of new individuals infected with COVID-19.

So it's inevitable that there will be individuals infected with COVID-19 that represent the spectrum of New Yorkers from the young to the very old, and certainly the reason why I have such urgency with people staying in their homes is because every time New Yorkers go out unnecessarily, they are adding potential flame to the fire of spreading COVID-19, and my concern is that right now we are in the single digits, thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, single digits of people dying, reporting dying every day. But I wouldn't be surprised if we get to a day where we have double digits, new people dying every day. And so, it's incumbent on all of us, young and old and especially the young who may think that they are invincible to stay the heck indoors every time they go out unnecessarily, it puts others at risk.

So, thank you for that question because I want New Yorkers to be clear that no one, and I've said this before, it's an opportunity to really hammer home the point, no one literally is immune to this. This is a novel virus that we have never seen before and everyone is at risk for being infected. Thankfully what we've seen is that, yeah 80 percent of the people who do become infected do have mild courses. But the reality is that there are, and there have been, and there will be young people who have bad outcomes as a result of this. So, it's an incumbent on all of us to do our part, to take personal responsibility for our behavior, to be civically responsible, to stay indoors, especially if you have symptoms and to only go to the doctor if you're getting worse.

Question: Okay. Thank you. And one other question, I just want to get some clarity that there appears to be a kind of new directive from the Health Department that says “outpatient tech testing must not be encouraged, promoted or advertised”. And I'm just wondering because there was a kind of a drive through, I forget what you call it, a drive through testing site on Staten Island. I don't know if that was set up by the City or State, but given that directive would, would the administration like to see those drive through efforts stopped?

Commissioner Barbot: So, again, we have been clear that testing is best indicated for people who are symptomatic, have chronic underlying illnesses, and are not getting better. To the extent that health systems are using these types of testing sites to offload volume from their emergency departments, then that we think is okay. But we've been clear from the very beginning. We do not encourage and we actively discourage asymptomatic people from getting tested because it's squandering scarce resources, not only in terms of tests, but also in terms of the personal protective equipment that's required by health care workers when doing these tests, which include masks, gowns, gloves, all of which we will desperately need, as this epidemic continues. We are only at the very beginning, and so it's incumbent on us to protect those valuable resources, and testing asymptomatic people is a waste of time.

Mayor: Yeah. And so, Yoav, we – any testing center set up by the City or State is working on a priority basis and a reservation basis. That's the standard we're working with our two health commissioners, City and State, talk constantly. What we have all agreed to is on the, the testing centers we've announced around Health + Hospitals facilities, you call, you speak to a clinician, they determine if you need testing. If you're a priority person, you get a reservation. This is the way it's going to go for testing for the foreseeable future until and unless we have a really, really substantial supply of testing and we can have different standards. But that is clear. And I do think to make clear to folks that, you know, it 80 percent and this continues to be seen in the statistics, 80 percent of people have a mild experience. For those folks, if you stay home, if you are able to ride this out, you may never need to be tested. And we have to be clear that that is in an imperfect situation, that's a virtue if folks can, and we actually, bluntly, a lot of people already have – some of them didn't even know they were sick with anything special. I mean, we know this, that some people had this disease and had a very minimal impact from it and just wrote it out. Other people we know are tremendous danger. So we have to keep focused on where the need is greatest and that's how the testing programs will go. Go ahead, Olivia.

Lapeyrolerie: Matt Chayes, you’re up next.

Question: Thank you Olivia. Mr. Mayor, I know you're in close contact with the Governor and you've been working very closely together. But I'm looking for you to be specific about the extent to which his executive order that he signed on Wednesday limits which you as Mayor can do and also how it limits what you can do under the two orders you've already signed? And then I have a question for the Police Commissioner once you've answered that.

Mayor: Yeah, Matt, I think that we have done previously, it continues. The State to the best of my knowledge agrees with it. There's nothing changing on the actions we've taken so far. And the Governor's order is for the entire State, and I think as a very simple way to characterize it. It says that localities need to defer to the State, and if we want to do something specifically, we go to the state, we talk it through. If there's agreement, either the state's going to do it or we're going to do it, but it's going to be done with a common understanding. That makes sense to me in a time of crisis. So that's how we'll operate.

Question: Thank you very much. And for Commissioner Shea assuming your officers ask nicely and a person is not on an authorized outdoor excursion and is intransigent, what will the response be for failing to obey?

Commissioner Shea: There's a range of available methods that can be taken. You know, and ultimately summons and arrest is one of those options, but that's the last resort. And as I stated when I opened today, what we have been encountering from the beginning of this is overwhelmingly cooperation. When you look at the summonses that have been issued, when you look at the initial things that were put into place regarding these bars and restaurants, single digits in a city of 8.6 million people, and not only single digits, I think closer to two is I believe the last number I saw. So certainly, with anything that we put into place in New York City. There are many laws on the books, but we start with a conversation and we progressed from there. And by and large what we have gotten is cooperation and we anticipate more in the same.

Lapeyrolerie: Mark Morales from CNN.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, how are you Commissioner? I just had a couple of questions – actually two questions for the Police Commissioner. The first one is, is there going to be any plan to say going to a place like Prospect Park for instance, that just seems like it's very crowded and either kick people out of the park but to reduce how many people are there? And the other question I have is just the Department ha have anything like a pandemic plan in place and if it does, what are the elements and has that being implemented?

Mayor: Let me jump in on the first part because we are obviously putting together our approach. This action by the State is very new. Again, I agree with it fully, but it's a new reality we're going to acclimate to. I know Prospect Park like the back of my hand, spent, you know, decades around it. If you had – think of a very, very crowded Prospect Park the goal is not to kick people out. The goal is to get people to create some distance of some space from each other. There's already officers who patrol in Prospect Park. They'll go and say that people getting too close together spread out. And you know, find – there is lots of different parts of the park spread out, make sure you're safe. And we'll be doing that all over the city and wherever we can find opportunities to open up additional spaces. One of the things I want to make sure we're working on is school yards, for example. We want to maximize spaces for people, but the goal is not to kick anyone out who's, you know, getting some exercise. The goal is to space them out and to make sure that people don't linger too long, because the goal of course is once you've gotten your exercise to get back home. You can take the rest, Commissioner

Commissioner Shea: In terms of the second part of the question, when you talk about planning for a pandemic, that's what we do. We plan for large scale events. When you look at tabletop exercises, when you look at organizations such as the NYPD and how we plan with the Fire Department, EMS, Office of Emergency Management, all of the partners. And that's whether it's for a terrorist strike, whether it's a New York City Marathon or any other events. Certainly, this coronavirus that we're seeing now is a new page. But many of the things that we are seeing now are things that we have quite frankly planned for in terms of immediacy, in terms of going into hot zones and working with our partners, in terms of planning for longer term outages of water, food, electricity. So what – pulling this altogether, this is a very, very fluid situation that we're involved with. But as I said, whether it's patrol strength, switching to 12-hour tours, dealing with less resources, these are things that we plan for the worst on a daily basis. And I think that many, much of that planning is providing very useful today.

Mayor: Amen.

Lapeyrolerie: Thanks, Mark. Up next is Julia.

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Kind of related to Yoav’s question, the City Health Department – maybe this is a question for Dr. Barbot, put out demographics that found most of the city's positive cases are men between the ages of 18 to 49. Can Dr. Barbot discuss why that is?

Commissioner Barbot: So, I think it's too early in the outbreak to make any informed opinions about what that might be. But it does sort of draw attention to the fact as we have said in the past, that we are encouraging those in that age group who are not symptomatic, not to be tested, and that we are encouraging folks who are mildly symptomatic to remain home. You know, I know that recently there have been reports where worldwide, it seems like men have worse outcomes than women. Again, I think it's premature to make any sort of inferences on what that might mean because especially here in New York City, we're only at the very, very, very beginning of this outbreak. And while for example, places like Italy, you may see that disparity, in places like Korea it's a 50-50 split. So, I think it's too early to tell.

Lapeyrolerie: Thanks. Julie, do you have an additional question or a follow up?

Question: I don’t. Thank you.

Lapeyrolerie: Thank you. Up next is Joe Anuta.

Mayor: Who is that?

Lapeyrolerie: Joe Anuta.

Mayor: Joe?

Lapeyrolerie: Joe you're up. Okay. We can't hear Joe. Joe, we'll come back to you. Jen. Jennifer from the AP is up next.

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: Thank you Mr. Mayor. And this is actually a question for the Schools Chancellor. I was wondering if you could enlighten us a little bit more about the nuts and bolts of what the preparation for remote learning has entailed both technologically and then the teacher training, and in communications with families?

Chancellor Carranza: Sure. So, thank you. So, it's important to recognize that as I mentioned in my comments, there are a number of schools in the New York City Department of Education that are very, very far along this path, have been doing this for a while, have very sophisticated systems and structures and have really done a great job. We've been trying to capture those best practices as part of our ramp up as well. And then we have some schools that this is the first time they will ever try remote learning. So, we do have a differentiated group of colleagues out there. So in order to do that, what we've done is we've created tutorials for all of our teachers. We've vetted and curated lots of different virtual, not only learning sites but also activity sites. We're working with a number of partners, third-party partners that have great resources. Everything from being able to take virtual trips to do virtual treasure hunts, and then students get to write about it. They're all grade specific, they're grade aligned -- standards aligned. We have given guidance and we'll continue to give guidance to teachers around being able to, for example structure a learning day so that students have multiple opportunities to explore different content areas. A student in middle school or in high school for example, may have a math assignment, then if they are having difficulty with that math assignment, there's a hot link in their Google classroom where they can click and go to the Khan Academy and get a tutorial on how to solve for those issues. That's the kind of support that we're trying to provide for our teachers. And I have to say that a number of the things that we've been able to curate are coming right from our teachers as well. So, this has been a good discovery process for us.

For parents and for students, it is also a shift in the learning environment for them. So we're putting guidance out to parents in terms of what they can do. And parents can be as involved or not in terms of guiding what their children are doing in this environment. We're going to ask that parents do support us and make sure that they understand that we want students to participate in the remote learning activities. It's only going to benefit them. But we also recognize the fact that parents are under a lot of stress right now. And we know that there, there's multiple things happening in family dynamics. So, we understand that as well. But we just want to make sure that parents and students and teachers have what they need to be able to have robust learning that happens in the very near future. One last thing that I'll say is that we are also paying special attention to our vulnerable students. So, students with disabilities, our English language learner students, our students in – that are homeless. So, we have very specific plans that teachers in their schools are working on with those students. For example, students with disabilities – they're being reached out to, they've been reached out to this whole week and they're developing certain ways of working with those students. Some of them you would expect to be easier than others. For example, students that need speech therapy, you can do that in a virtual environment rather easily. But students that need physical therapy, it requires a whole other dynamic. So it's not a cookie cutter approach. And we're working through those issues right now. We also are addressing the device and the digital divide between our students. We have about 25,000 Wi-Fi enabled computers that we're starting to distribute on Monday and we'll continue to. We have others already planned and schools using their own stock of computers that usually stay in the school and they're assigning them to students to be able to take home. A lot of moving parts. And I know I gave you a lot of information but a very complex implementation. I'm really proud of our team.

Lapeyrolerie: Back to Joe. Oh, sorry, Jennifer, continue.

Question: Thanks for that. And following on that, I know that there have been some students who tried to pick up a device this week and were unable to, they ran out or what have you. What guidance are you giving them for what they should do until next week if they don’t have the equipment on Monday?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, so I'm going to encourage all families to stay in close contact with their school because the school will have the most up to date information pertaining to their particular distribution. But – and remember devices are coming in all the time. But we also have more than two weeks’ worth of paper and pencil assignments and activities and packets that are available as well. Those will be available at the hubs that I spoke of where parents and students can come and pick up breakfast, lunch and dinner. They can also pick up assignments. So again, it's very simple, www.schools.nyc.gov. There is a link right on the homepage there that'll take you to home learning and it has lots of information. You can also call 3-1-1 and we'd be happy to help.

Lapeyrolerie: Up next is Jeff Mays. Then we're going to go back to Joe. Jeff?

Question: Yes. This is for the Commissioner. There have just been some calls for the NYPD to cut down on low level enforcement. And some district attorneys have said they will not prosecute such arrests. Does the NYPD plan to curb some of its enforcement activity or have you already begun to do that?

Commissioner Shea: So, if you look at where we are in New York City, we've dramatically cut our enforcement over really the last six years. I'm very comfortable where we are right now in terms of policing in this city. It continues to evolve. As I said before, the primary focus that I want to get out today is the men and women in the New York City Police Department are out there. They're out there to keep people safe. Whether you're a crime victim or whether you're a person dealing with this crisis, and we're going to continue to do that.

Question: But have you cut enforcement?

Commissioner Shea: I'm sorry?

Question: But have you caught enforcement?

Mayor: Not because I, just to clarify it. Not something different because of what's happened in the last few weeks?

Commissioner Shea: We have no intention of strategically cutting enforcement specifically related to this coronavirus. But as I said before, we have through precision policing exhibited what I like to think is the best policing model in this country for the last six years. And we'll continue to do that.

Mayor: Yeah. Jeff, I want to add to that. I think there's – we got two historical trends kind of coming together here and we got to understand that. Six years of nonstop adjustment, and I always remind people, the day Bill Bratton said to me, it was a very, a revelatory day for me learning from, you know, one of the great police leaders of our time. And he said, you know, arrest is just one tool. And obviously some years ago before this administration, arrest was overused and stops were overused. And what Bill Bratton said is we need to understand that arrests have a place, summonses have a place, warnings have a place. There are all different tools that police can use, but really what you need to do is treat police officers as the professionals they are. Train them, constantly support them, constantly give them discretion. And honestly, in the past, and the Commissioner knows much more than me. Went on the job in 1991 in the South Bronx in a tough, tough time. But in truth, for a long time, our officers were not given the respect to get the kind of training they deserved and the opportunity to use that training and that discretion. When you combine that with a constant devotion to reducing unnecessary arrest, reducing stops profoundly, turning to summons is more and warnings more while keeping people safe. And we do know, notwithstanding the last few months where we've had some aberrant realities. Overall, we're at the safest point in New York City since the 1950’s. That six-year trend was already highly established, deeply established before coronavirus became a major reality in our lives in the last few weeks. So, I would argue the adjustment already happened and there's not a lot of additional adjustment that needs to happen. Our police officers obviously focus now in this new reality starting Sunday, on educating and warning and helping people do the right thing. But we also have to keep people safe. And the Commissioner and I've talked a lot about the last few months and we saw some things we did not like that we have to address and we have to keep an eye on that. I'm heartened to hear that crime has gone down recently, obviously interconnected with the last few weeks. But Jeff, I'm just trying to put that all in perspective. I think we would argue that we got to a good balance point and we're not moving off that simply because of what we've seen in the last few weeks. We'll continue to watch if something changes. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. But I think we feel good about where we are.

Lapeyrolerie: Back to Joe.

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah.

Question Okay, great. Hi Mr. Mayor. I have two questions for you. The first I don't know if you've seen, there's this new data analysis out there that says hospital visits will overwhelm capacity next week. I think that this gentleman Michael [inaudible] is predicting 3,000 visits by Tuesday, 8,000 by Friday in 15,000 early next week.

Mayor: I'm sorry to interrupt Joe, just to make sure we're speaking the same language. When you say visits, do you mean hospitalizations?

Question: Hospitalizations from a coronavirus, yes. And I'm curious if you could just give us an update? I know there are lots of plans to bring additional capacity online. Where are we today and sort of can you give any specifics about when we'll see some of the reserves brought online?

Mayor: I'll start and then pass to Dr. Katz. Joe, I've only a glancing sense of that particular production. There's a lot of projections that are being looked at right now. But what I've said over the last few days I think is the summation, the sort of simple version of the projections that we're seeing. Which is for the remainder of March, we believe our hospital system in its current state can handle what is obviously a very, very intense surge of cases. When, I mean our system, and again, Dr. Katz and Dr. Barbot will refine what I say as experts. But that our public system and our voluntary system having now shed a huge amount of activity with the end of elective surgery and ending people's hospital stays appropriately earlier where they could, they have a lot of capacity opened up. And they've obviously been preparing and we believe, you know, over this next week or two, we're prepared to handle that. I've been very blunt about the fact that after two weeks or three weeks, we get into a whole new reality. And that's where we not only need that expansion of space, but we need that expansion of supplies and equipment to start reaching us. We have, as you heard, you know, about 1,200 additional beds we're bringing on rapidly. Some of those will be as early as this coming week. A huge amount of space has been offered us in the hotel industry and others, Deanna Criswell is here, our Emergency Management Commissioner, her teams coordinating that. We are going to be literally bringing stuff online as quickly as we can. But I think it's safe to say that next week will be the beginning of new capacity and then it'll just be rolling over weeks and weeks. So as we get specific numbers, I think, you know, as we get into next week we'll be able to start putting some specific dates and numbers to it. But I do feel that next week for sure, our system has the capacity it needs. Dr. Katz?

President Katz: Well Health + Hospitals which runs 11 acute care hospitals, is very much dealing with the dynamic that you're speaking of and that the Mayor has spoken to. We have been able to open up capacity in the ways that the Mayor has spoken. We're also focused very much on COVID specific care for patients who have COVID, which allows us to provide that care much more efficiently. But I would certainly agree that our hospitals are seeing volumes of patients that they have never seen before. And it's extremely challenging. People are rising to meet that challenge, but it certainly is a difficult situation.

Mayor: Dr. Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: And Mr. Mayor, if I can add to what you and Dr. Katz have said. Part of the reason why it is so critical for us as New Yorkers to take social distancing really, really, really seriously is because that is our best chance at bending the curve and not overwhelming our health care system. Every time a New Yorker goes out unnecessarily, they risk being exposed. They risk becoming sick to the point of needing to go to the hospital. And we need New Yorkers to stay indoors because all of the measures that we've been talking about in terms of preparing hospitals, securing beds, all of that can be, I'm not going to say avoided because we're far enough along that it's going to be bad. And I've said that and we're preparing for bad. And you know, it doesn't really matter which models you look at, they're all pretty dire. But you know, the reality is that we as New Yorkers have a role to play in protecting our health care workforce. And to the extent that we can stay indoors, not go out unnecessarily will be the best chance that we have at protecting our health care system.

Question: And if I can just ask you a quick follow up question? Mr. Mayor we’ve heard you talk about your requests to the federal government for aid and supplies and --

Mayor: You there, Joe? What happened?

Question: Yeah, I had a quick follow up question?

Mayor Yeah, yeah, go ahead. We heard you and then we lost you. Continue.

Question: Okay. So, we've heard you talk about your request to the federal government for supplies and aid that really, you haven't been getting the response you want. The President said today at his press preference that he's not dealing with you, he's dealing with the Governor. I was wondering if I could get your reaction to that? And also, is it sufficient that the President is only communicating with the Governor of New York and not the Mayor of New York City?

Mayor: Look, his answer was bluntly irresponsible. And first of all, I don't care if it is the President or the Vice President or a cabinet secretary. I don't care who it is. If someone in the administration would tell us that we're going to get the supplies we need in time and would prove to us how that's going to work, I would have only praise and appreciation for them. That's never, ever happened. We haven't gotten a single response from anyone indicating that they have a serious plan to get supplies to New York City, the largest city in the nation, the frontline of this crisis, the place that's bearing the brunt. They just don't have a plan and they're not taking it seriously. So, his response, it was kind of childish really. You know, it was like, I'm taking my ball and going home.

I would think that a responsible president of the United States, and I've had the opportunity to work with previous presidents. None of them in a million years would have thought, you don't talk to the mayor of the nation's largest city when it's the epicenter of a global crisis and how it's affecting the United States of America. It's inconceivable regardless of political differences. Any previous president, you can list them all would have been on the phone talking about how to address this, would have taken our request seriously and personally. And of course, we all are working here in New York City, and any locality through the state, but the State hasn't gotten what is asking for either. So, you know, that answer was just literally an example of running away from the question. Because if he said, Oh, I've, you know what would have been a great answer? You know, I disagree with the Mayor and here's all the things we're doing for New York State, New York City, and you know, these supplies are going to get a 10 million mask next week and they're going to get 15,000 ventilators the week after. And here's how they're being provided. Here's how I'm using the Defense Production Act. Here's how I'm going to have the United States military ensure that these supplies arrive and these military medical personnel will be there in a week. That would've been a great answer. If he has that answer, you can give it. He doesn't need to give it to me. You can give it to anyone, I'll be happy. But he had no answer. That's the truth.

Lapeyrolerie: Henry is up next.

Question: Hello, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Okay. I want to go back to the situation that, or the question that Joe asked about hospital capacity. And I'm just, I'm wondering whether anyone keeps a current tally of the status of New York hospital bed availability, particularly ICU rooms, how many are available now and how many do you need? How many patients are being hospitalized, and what percentage of those people need an ICU?

Mayor: Yeah, Henry, the answer basically is yes and the reason I say basically is, talk about a moving target. I mean we have never experienced anything quite like this, but that's exactly what everyone at Emergency Management is doing, working closely with Health + Hospitals and the Department of Health.

Question: [Inaudible] on this.

Mayor: Well, Henry, again, the numbers move constantly and the projections are constantly updated to determine exactly the equation you put forward. What's your base of beds to begin with, how many are available, especially as a lot have been emptied out for ending elective surgeries and early discharges. How many are now being utilized, how many of your ICU versus non-ICU? This is what they're doing all day long and it helps, obviously, in the process of determining what we need next and how quickly we can get it online. So that's the exercise every single day, honestly.

Question: This is the question really, though, that we have is why don't – why not at 10:00 am every morning we get a status report that gives us the number of hospital rooms available, the number of patients overnight. The number of – what the percentage is of ICU demand of those patients so that the public really has a clear sense of what the City's needs are?

Mayor: I appreciate the question.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I appreciate the question Henry. I know it's a straight forward, honest question, but I want to think about that. We have, again, an ever-changing daily, hourly situation. Want to be careful that if we put that information out, it's done in a way that actually is clear and consistent. So that's a conversation I want to have internally before I make a specific commitment to you.

Lapeyrolerie: Gloria is up next. Gloria?

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Lapeyrolerie: Can you hear me?

Question: Yes, Mr. Mayor, I just want to ask you, I understand that this this new mandate the Governor put into place today will go into effect on Sunday and if you and the Commissioner could just give New Yorkers an idea of what they can expect come Sunday night what will it look like when they go –

Mayor: Which commissioner, Gloria?

Question: What will it look like when they go out there? How is the NYPD going to enforce this?

Mayor: There we go.

Question: We are still seeing groups of people gathering in the city's parks. I know you're encouraging people to get outside and get the exercise that they need. But we are seeing video and reports of dozens and dozens of people gathering in not what looks like a – not practicing social distancing. How is the NYPD going to enforce all this?

Mayor: Gloria, I – look I understand your question is honest but I want to just say to you this is something we're going to have to figure out how to do that we haven't done before. So I understand the urgency, but I also think people – and I absolutely want to stop social distancing, but I also think we have to be honest about, we're going to figure it out every single day. The reality is, well, I want to be careful, you said encouraging people to go out. I want people to get exercise, but then I want them to get back to their homes. So it's not – I want to be very clear. I know Dr. Barbot will energetically agree with me. It's fair that everyone needs a little bit of air and exercise. They need to walk their dog, go do that. But keep it to what you need and then get back home.

Whether that's the most fun way to live life or not, is not the question. Where in the middle of a crisis, we’re in the middle of a pandemic for God's sakes. Get some exercise, get back home. So it's not, it's not like hang out all day, it's not getting in big groups. And the fact that people are still doing it because they've been doing it their entire lives is not shocking. It's actually amazing, Gloria, that in just a course of days, people have had to stop going to work, stop going to restaurants and bars, stop going to houses of worship, stop doing movie theater. So many things they used to do, like literally every day they're shedding parts of their lives and reality. They know it will come back one day, but it's a big adjustment. So if people are gathering together, we're going to send the NYPD and other agencies out to say, ‘hey, you can't do that because it's a whole new situation here, split up, spread out, go home – if you need to exercise, exercise, that's it, get back home’. Go ahead, Commissioner.

Commissioner Shea: This is an adjustment period clearly and you're going to continue to see that adjustment period evolve in the days to come. I can tell you that this afternoon with the executive staff we met on this topic via teleconference included in that was our Legal Bureau and we're going to be putting out the message to the cops because this is very fluid so that we have uniform – I'll use the word enforcement, but it's not enforcement. It's engagement throughout the city and they are going to be encountering, I'm sure, in a city of 8.6 million people in many countless neighborhoods throughout New York City, groups as people continue to adjust. You're going to – expect to see a continued high visibility policing throughout New York City and they're going to encounter groups at times. The groups are appearing to be smaller and smaller, but they're going to inform them of this order and they're going to politely ask them to disperse. I again, for the third time, I'm going to tell you that people are cooperating. This is what we are seeing all over. New Yorkers adapt like nobody else. Exercise is sometimes a fine line between a gathering, but what we can't have is large groups, gatherings. It goes against everything that we're trying to accomplish through this social distancing. So that's what you can expect to see. Will there be some bumps and learning curve, as we go forward? I'm sure they will, but I think that New Yorkers, together with the men and women of the New York City Police Department, will adapt as we do always, we’ll overcome and we'll get through this together.

Question: And Mr. Mayor, if I could follow up and ask you to provide – do you have an update on the situation at Rikers? How many people have been removed, are you still looking to let more people out? Do you have an update on how many inmates have tested positive there and what's the status of what the city's doing at the Rikers – at the correctional facilities to protect people there?

Mayor: So, nothing new to report on, number of inmates who may have been affected. I gave a report on that yesterday. I have not heard of any change in that. We're absolutely committed to protecting the health of our Corrections officers and our inmates and everyone who works in our Corrections system. And there's a very strong health system in place there. And there's also a lot more space than we used to have because our inmate population is literally half of what it was six years ago. So, we have an initial list of people who are being processed for release, but that requires DAs and/or State approval. We're still waiting on that. Another list is being developed as we speak. You'll see a number of additional names coming – or a number of additional people who will be released, but there's more work to be done. We're trying to do this quickly, but it has to be done very, very smartly. So it's absolutely on our minds. As soon as we have firm numbers on how many people will be released and how quickly, we will update you guys.

Lapeyrolerie: Gersh is up next. Gersh? Hello, Gersh?

Mayor: Gersh?

Question: Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Hello?

Mayor: Can you hear us?

Question: I can hear you. Yes. Hi, Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Good, man – how are you doing?

Question: I have two very quick questions and I'll ask them in order. The Governor's order today declared that car repair shops are essential businesses, but bike repair shops are not. Given the surge in cycling and also how much work the city's bike riding delivery workers are doing, do you think bike repair shops are essential?

Mayor: Well, it's a great question, Gersh. I want to talk to the State about that because you make a good point. But I want to make sure I understand how they're treating that and why. So I will pledge to you that we will raise it to the State this evening and have an answer for you tomorrow.

Question: Okay, good. This is – the second question is a little more complicated. So today you announced two specific locations for temporary bike lanes by the end of the week, with possibly more, but will the additional locations be announced before the end of the week or only after you and DOT review the first two, and perhaps there's other things you're planning, like closing some residential streets entirely to automobiles so people can socialize that at a distance.

Mayor: Okay. Just want to say first hold on. Practical note. Someone's got something that's dinging.

Lapeyrolerie: It’s Gersh’s phone.

Mayor: It's Gersh. Oh, that Gersh. Alright, I thought it was here in the room. There you go again, Gersh. So, on the question of new bike lanes, we intend to look very quickly and aggressively at what we can do more. So as soon as – there's no interrelationship of how one fits with another, every time we’re ready to announce another one, we’re going to announce it as soon as it's ready and implement it as quickly as possible. So that's straight forward. Again, we are in a brand-new reality, we're acclimating, but obviously we've said to the Department of Transportation, working with NYPD, we want to see an expansion quickly. Let's see how quickly we can do it and where we can do it. The other part of your question, Gersh, I was so distracted by your dinging bell, I lost track of the other part of your question. What is it?

Question: [Inaudible] it feels like a – it's a casino anyway.

Lapeyrolerie: Cut out a little [inaudible] Can you start again?

Question: Yeah. The question was simply, are you considering closing some residential streets as some cities have done so that people can socialize at a distance without cars going through?

Mayor: Yeah. Without overstating it, Gersh and I just want to – I'm going to put some brakes on you to make sure that your interpretation does not get too energetic here. Definitely interested in creating more spaces for people outdoors so we can have social distancing. I think we have some good models of, like, summer streets – is an interesting idea. That's something we'll look at right away. Obviously, school yards. And that's something that's going to be a real – a challenge in a different way because we don't have the same personnel at the schools we normally do, but I think there are ways we can deal with that. So, the question is going to be how can we create the right space, the right amount of space in different places so people have alternatives and they can keep some distance. That is not necessarily the same as closing residential streets. But it means making sure there's enough space and that'll be something that will constantly grow over the next few weeks.

Question: Yeah. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you.

Lapeyrolerie: Craig from the Post is up next. Craig?

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Alright, great. Commissioner, what would you say to cops that are feeling that they're not getting enough specific info about the spread of the virus in the department and feel the supplies provided have been inadequate?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, I think that – as we're sitting here, another message went out from myself personally to the men and women of the Police Department. I think with any crisis, it's fluid. There's always things that we can learn. I think we've done a good job of trying to put out information that at times seems to be changing day by day, in terms of what we're seeing. So I think you can always learn from an experience in terms of one crisis and how you can learn and better prepare for the next one. I think we've done okay in this, to be honest with you, in terms of internally informing our members what's going on, meeting with the unions, but we're also being receptive and being honest and transparent about what can we do better. In terms of equipment that too is – I think that some of the big complaints that we're getting has been just the basics, making sure that a cleaner that calls in sick, that spot is filled in.

We've done a lot in the last couple of weeks and I'll just quickly recount for you in terms of readily ramping up and hiring a hundred extra cleaners. The first set are due to come online next week. And that's moved pretty significantly in terms of the normal course of action. That's in addition to the existing cleaners that we have. We've gotten several supplies – and I want to thank Dr. Barbot for helping us get equipment and OEM and many others in this room. So whether it's masks, surgical masks, or N95 masks or basic cleaning supplies, soap, dispensers, gloves, all of this – all of this is quite frankly in short supply not just to law enforcement, to health professionals. And the prioritization and the use of it – this is going to be an ongoing challenge, not just for law enforcement, but really everyone that needs it.

I think that we've done well. We've gotten it to the frontline people of the NYPD, those that need it the most. And it has been a challenge, but it's something that we're continuing to do and we strive to do everything that we can to make our members as safe as possible during this difficult time.

Mayor: And Craig, I want to add to that. I mean, obviously we've been – I've been real blunt about the supply challenges we're facing in the next two or three weeks. And I'm praying that, you know, our pleas will be heard in Washington and acted on, and I know others are stepping forward trying to help us out. But I'm very, very cognizant that we have to make sure the men and women of the NYPD are protected. Commissioner Shea and Commissioner Barbot and I spoke yesterday. We have another half-million surgical masks that are going to the NYPD immediately. We have real, real challenges with our supply, but we're going to make sure that the men and women in the NYPD are protected for sure.

Question: Thank you. Just one other question, Commissioner Shea, you had said that the growing number of officers calling out sick, is there a plan in place if it gets to a certain level? And if so, what's the breaking point for that?

Commissioner Shea: Well, I'm not going to get into breaking points here and I don't like to advertise ever to criminals where we have higher than ordinary levels. But it – this is something that I will tell you, that every morning I wake up, I look at the numbers, I have a conference call just the second I get into work with entire members of the executive staff that are now spread out throughout New York City but calling on a central call and going over. And the first thing I start with every day is how are our members, how many people are sick, where are they sick, what rank, where do we have clusters, if you will? We also plan for where is it at now, where can we project? And this is an imperfect science as we try to lay out a roadmap of where do we think we'll be a day, two days from now, a week from now? Certainly, I don't like what I see the last four days. We had been holding steady. We can, generally speaking, predict where we will be in terms of sick rates in the NYPD. The last four days, it is going up. So, in terms of a breaking point, I'm not going to give you a number. We absolutely plan for certain levels – what do we do when it gets to a certain level? And as I started today, I talked about we're in a good place, still manageable, in terms of balancing the needs of New York City in dealing with this crisis, but also dealing with – the world goes on – and I think that's a good thing that the world goes on. So, people call the police for the traditional reasons too, whether it's somebody injured, whether it's somebody that hasn't come home and I'm worried, or whether it's, unfortunately, there are people that will still prey on victims at times like this. So, balancing all of that, we have not had to go for example, to 12-hour tours and extend and throw out our existing duty chart, but we're prepared for the point when we have to if we have a need to really rapidly ramp up and put extra officers on the street. So, again, are we planning for it? Absolutely. Are we there yet? No.

Mayor: Yeah. I want to also question, sort of, a one part of what you're raising here, Craig, respectfully. I mean, this is a police department that went through 9/11. And in the immediate aftermath, after losing so many brothers and sisters in arms, you know, got back out there and protected this city. The same obviously for the FDNY – went through hell and managed to keep us safe. This is a police department that has 2,000 more officers on patrol than it did a few years ago. So, it's a stronger, a bigger department. It is unquestionably the most efficient it's been in its history. So, the men and women are being used to the maximum in the best ways. You've got more positions that were civilianized over the last six years, so more officers made available that way. I don't think the NYPD has a breaking point.
I really don't. I think the NYPD – 36,000 officers strong – has amazing ability to adapt and to deal with any circumstance. And I would add further, two points – one, you know, a typical NYPD officer is someone who in the scheme of things, in general, is on the younger side of life and obviously typically in very good shape. It also means that for a lot of folks who even do get sick, it will be for a limited period of time. And I want to take a time out on this point just to finish the answer. I have Dr. Barbot as my lifeline. I think Dr. Barbot, there's still confusion about from the moment you feel ill to the point that just in days – the little as, as much as – if you're a healthy younger person, an average officer in their 20s or 30s, let's say, who's healthy, God forbid they can track this disease. But what would be the typical timeframe they would be out of commission before they were well enough to get back to work.

Commissioner Barbot: So, Mr. Mayor, what we are now – have now moved towards is to say from the beginning of your symptoms, you've got like roughly seven days we think you should be able to be back at work. Or, if you've got fever, then three days after your fever is gone without having taken any Tylenol, Advil or anything like that, whichever one of those two is longest. So, typically a week for most people is usually the longest that they would be out of work.

Mayor: And Commissioner, just for everyone's benefit, you're feeling fine again, you're saying you don't take the Tylenol or anything because it actually masks the reality of fever and you want to be able to test. Is it true that the fever has gone away? When you feel well.

Commissioner Barbot: Exactly. We want to make sure that it’s – when we say it's no fever, it's like a true no fever, that there's nothing potentially masking and ongoing infection.

Mayor: So, seven days, or three days no medication, without fever, whichever is longest. So, to Craig's question – again, I think what that means, Craig, I'm just going to call that for definition purposes seven to 10 days. I think like every public servant who might be affected by this disease, as we know by the numbers, 80 percent are going to come out with that kind of experience. Seven to 10 days, it's not going to be pleasant. I don't wish it on anyone. I know people are going to be concerned for their families, but they're going to come out the other side and then get right back in the game. Now, the big question – I don't think we have 100 percent answer is, are you therefore immune thereafter? I think we think there's a possibility you're immune thereafter, but we don't know for sure.

Commissioner Barbot: That's exactly right. We don't know for sure.

Mayor: So, what we do know is once you've gone through the course of the disease, you've gone through the course of the disease and then you get back in the game, as will everyone.

Lapeyrolerie: Christina, from Chalkbeat, is up next.

Question: Thanks for your time. I want to ask about the regional enrichment centers and try to get some clarity around who can attend those. You've in the past said that they'd be open for the most vulnerable children [inaudible] specifically homeless students, medically fragile students. So, can you just provide a little more clarity on who can attend those?

Mayor: Well, I want – as I turn to the Chancellor, the focus has been in this crisis on supporting the children of essential workers. That has been the construct from the very beginning. And we know there are many children in need who we want to serve in a variety of ways. Obviously, in our shelters, we're trying to do special efforts to support kids in shelter as we were doing during the school year. And the distance learning, obviously, is being developed rapidly and we have a special effort for medically fragile kids. But the Chancellor will give you a deeper definition. But the central purpose, the reason we started up these enrichment centers was to support the effort to fight coronavirus and to support essential workers’ children.

Chancellor Carranza: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, we've been really clear from the very beginning, if you have 1.1 million children that are not in school and their parents, their guardians, their adult caregivers are first responders that are critical to keeping the city running. You could, in one fell swoop, shut down the city and our response to this virus. So, as a Mayor has been very clear and hopefully we've been clear, the whole point of these regional enrichment centers is to provide a space so that first responders, essential workers, essentially keeping the city running, have a place that their children can be while they are serving the residents of New York City. We have put out the call, we have about 57,000, which by the way, is larger than most midsize school systems in America. And we've stood these up in a matter of days. And we have – we're trying to build more capacity as we go. We've said that – and I'm going to reiterate this here – this is for students whose parents are on the front lines right now – first responders, health care workers, transit workers, other essential staff, including sanitation workers, DHS, HRA, shelter staff, ACS staff. And, of course, the DOE staff, who are manning these service centers. That being said, we are working with all due diligence to try to build more capacity to add additional groups of students into these regional enrichment centers. We're working very hard to be able to do that. But to be able to do that, you need to have a facility, you need to be able to have volunteers that are going to come and volunteer to staff them, you have to have supervisors, there's a whole range of things that have to happen. So, I understand the wanting to know why and when and how many. We are continuing to work to build more capacity to it, but the intent has been clear from the very beginning.

Lapeyrolerie: [Inaudible] Bridget is up next.

Question: Two questions, first regarding [inaudible] remote learning that's going to start on Monday. Have you had any conversations with internet service providers? We've heard anecdotally from some families that are struggling to figure out how they're going to get internet access to be able to get online for some of that.

Chancellor Carranza: Yes. So, we've actually been in contact with several internet providers. They are offering to install internet services. Obviously, we're vetting that because we want to make sure that that's not just a backdoor way to, you know, hook people into longer term engagements. But, again, that information is also available on our website on home learning where you can actually connect with those providers directly – www.schools.nyc.gov. We, also, with the devices that we are purchasing, T-Mobile is installing chips that are Wi-Fi enabled, so every one of those devices will be Wi-Fi enabled. The other thing to understand about the resources that we have is that they're accessible through smart phones. And I haven't seen very many students that don't have a smart phone, so they can actually get access to many of these resources through their smartphone as well.

Question: Great. And just a quick follow up, if a family is having trouble getting the internet service they need, is there – who should they be in contact with?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, they can call 3-1-1 and they'll put them in touch with our hotline and somebody will be able to work – walk them through a series of different options.

Lapeyrolerie: Last question goes to Ashley from the Times.

Question: Hi, good evening. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Ashley.

Question: Okay? So, I have a few questions, actually, mainly for the Commissioner, but also for the Mayor –

Mayor: Ashley, which commissioner?

Question: The Police Commissioner, the one I cover. [Inaudible] we've been talking to police officers at work over the last week or so and we saw 12 officers respond to a bus job with no gloves, masks, or sanitizer. Officers who are conducting traffic stops are leaning into windows and exchanging documents with drivers without any protective equipment. And even you, Chief Shea – Commissioner Shea, excuse me, have spoken to roll calls where there were not 10 officers, but dozens. And these are the officers who the Mayor is putting in charge of them enforcing social distance in hopes of preventing and containing the spread of this virus. But how can they be expected to do that if they don't seem to know what that looks like looks like in their own job?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for the question, Ashley. I'll start at the second one regarding the roll calls. I've been to too-many-to-count roll calls this week, a number of them, and they started out as you described, and, as the week went on, they ended in a very different place. So, I think that's a good thing, is we educate the people. One thing we have to do is put police officers on the street to keep people safe. We work within the environment that we work in. We have made changes. We have adapted. I could tell you that – whether it was yesterday or two days or three days ago, the days run together – but I turned out a number of traffic agents in Midtown that were taken into the streets and told them that we haven't forgot them too. They are part of the NYPD family. We thank them for what they're doing. But I actually talked to one group, which was divided into about eight groups. So, we are aware of that and where wherever possible we are making the changes, if you will, to practice spreading out. To the first part of your question about the seeing officers engaging people with masks or gloves not on, that could very well be a good thing, quite frankly. When not under any orders or direction to wear gloves when interacting with people, or to wear masks. Actually, it's pretty much the opposite. We're trying to conserve the use of these and use them where appropriate. And I think the medical professionals would tell us that, generally speaking, it's better to have the masks on the people that are sick as opposed to officers walking around in the street. But certainly, we're trying to educate our members, make sure that they have the masks if they need them and to use them appropriately.

Question: Even when they're working in close proximity, you don't think they should be wearing gloves and mask? I mean there's these traffic stops, you know, you're within a foot of the officer.

Mayor: Wait a minute, Ashley, we're going to bring another commissioner in because this is like – this is – everybody in public service who – yeah, everyone in public service who – well, first of all, everyone's being told to distance, which goes against everything we've ever done in our lives, especially in New Yorkers, we’re like the most closely packed people in America. We're all learning as we go along. But the point is, trying to remember to socially distance to maximum extent possible, to be mindful, to cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze. Let's have our Health Commissioner tell us when public servants are supposed to don masks and gloves and when they're not.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, but before I do, I have to just take this moment to say, Mr. Mayor, you and I have been together I think every day for the last, I don't know, eight weeks. But I want to give a special shout out to Commissioner Shea who is joining us at the dais now, but it's clear that he's been paying attention and I think he'll get my honorary master's in public health after this press conference.

Commissioner Shea: I'm going to put on the wall.

[Laughter]

Commissioner Barbot: And, you know, I think the important thing to note is just what the Commissioner said, that the guidance that we are giving to our first responders is the same guidance that we're giving to New Yorkers in that it is a layered approach. And so, obviously, first and foremost, good hand hygiene, covering your mouth and nose when you cough and you sneeze. Layering on top of that, ensuring that if you're not close to water source, using alcohol-based hand sanitizer, layering on top of that, ensuring that if you're sick you stay home, layering on top of that, that if you can to maintain a distance of at least six feet, at least three feet, and that there are very limited circumstances under which there is an indication for using a mask. You know, all along I've said there's a place in a time for using masks and as Commissioner Shea said, the time to use a mask is when someone is symptomatic, when they're coughing, when they're sneezing, and it's to ensure that that individual doesn't contaminate other folks. It gives people who are asymptomatic a false sense of security that if they wear this mask, they don't have to wash their hands, they don't have to cover their mouths and their noses when they cough or their sneeze. And I've also given the example of, you know, seeing New Yorkers on the corner who have a mass when in reality the mask is under their chin and they're talking and they're not really following those precautions. And so, the important thing is having a layered approach and knowing what the layers are in order to provide the maximal security.

Lapeyrolerie: That concludes the press conference. Thank you, everybody.

Mayor: Thanks, everyone.

2020-03-22 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Everybody we are coming to the end of a week that has changed our lives profoundly. The week before that I think we would have said was a week that changed our lives profoundly. And next week will be even more. So, we're dealing with something we've never dealt with before, none of us has experienced. We are all together trying to figure out how to deal with a new reality and that will be something we grapple with together for weeks and months to come. So, I just want to start by saying for everyone, it's important to recognize the distance we've had to travel in very, very little time. We've had to get used to things that were literally unimaginable and we didn't get months to get ready. We only had days to change our habits and our lives profoundly. Anyone out there who's confused, you are absolutely in the vast majority with the rest of us. We're all trying to make sense of so much new information, so many new challenges and trying to figure out the right way to do this together. I'll be talking today about clearer specific ideas about how we will work together within the new pause order from the State of New York. I'll be talking about the ways we're going to work together to get through the weeks and months ahead.

I want to be very clear about challenges. I think my job is to tell you the things that we're going to confront, including some things that are difficult to hear, but to brace New Yorkers for the reality. To get you all informed honestly about what we're dealing with, what we will deal with. But also, to remind you of our strengths, of all the help that people are giving each other, all the help our City government can and will give our State government can and will give. All the people who are stepping forward not only in New York City but all over the country, all over the world who want to help New York City right now and God bless them all. I'll talk about all of that today and in the days ahead. But really it is important to recognize the sheer extent of change. And to understand how challenging that is for all of us as human beings to make sense of so quickly. If anyone is feeling anxious or fearful that is entirely normal at this moment. And what's so important is to talk it through with each other and seek, you know, good and real and accurate information, which we will provide constantly. To support each other, listen to each other's concerns, see how we can help, particularly how we can help those in greatest need. And that's what New Yorkers do so well. We've seen it time and time again, after 9/11 after Sandy, so many times. When seniors needed help, folks with disabilities, folks who didn't have medicine, folks who couldn't get out of their apartment, time and time again every day, New Yorkers answered the call. And we're going to need that again. And we're going to be at this again for weeks and months.

But I'll tell you something, I really believe that even though we are the epicenter of this crisis, and I want to be real, real honest about that. We are now in New York City, the epicenter of this crisis in the United States of America. I'm not happy to tell you that and you're not happy to hear it. But I'll tell you something else, there is no place in the United States of America, no place on Earth, where there are stronger, tougher, more resilient people, where there is more spirit and compassion. This is the place where people can handle anything thrown at them. That's who New Yorkers are. That's who all of you are. And that gives me a lot of hope. And I've been real honest about the fact that I'm not satisfied by our nation's response to this crisis. I don't feel that there's been anywhere near the response that any place in this nation deserves, especially our nation's largest city with 8.6 million people on the front line. But I, at the same time as I'm deeply concerned and troubled and angry and frustrated at the lack of federal response, I am inspired by the response right here in New York City from everyday New Yorkers, from our public servants, from all the people who protect us and keep us healthy. So many good people who are stepping up. And I'm inspired because I believe if there's one place on Earth that has the ingenuity and the creativity and the sense of entrepreneurship to find a way to overcome this crisis with our own resources, that's right here.

Now, I want to be 100 percent clear that doesn't let the federal government off the hook in the least. I couldn't be angrier at the lack of response. I've been very plain about that. But you know what? If we're going to be left to fend for ourselves in New York City, in New York State, all I can at least say there are no people on Earth who are more creative and more able to create something out of even the most tough circumstances. No one's better than New Yorkers. We're going to find a way to do things we've never done before. And I've likened this situation to war many times because it is, that's just the reality. And we've only begun down this very difficult path. But I already see New Yorkers doing extraordinary things. I already see people volunteering to find the supplies we need to build the equipment we need to make things happen. Even when previously we would've thought it impossible. Isn't that the history of New York City in a nutshell? People making things happen even though they were told it was impossible. That is the story of New York and New Yorkers. So, we will do it again in our time right here, right now.

Let me turn to some specific updates and information I want to share with everyone. And I want to take a moment to really commend the people who are doing exceptional work right now, helping us all. Of course, our health care workers, God bless them. They have such a tough job at this moment. But they are showing up with energy and passion, protecting the lives of so many people. Our first responders, who we call – we need them every day, every year, and we need them even more now. And they are at their post doing their job brilliantly. Our transit workers we're depending on them to make sure that everyone else we need gets where they need to go. And thank you to all the transit workers for what you're doing. And then there's a lot of even more unsung heroes who really deserve notice at this moment. You know what? Maybe in the normal course of life, you don't stop to think about the man or woman that works in the grocery store or the pharmacy. The postal worker who brings you every day, things you depend on and you're going to depend on even more now. All the delivery workers, whether they're in the public sector or the private sector – the men and women who deliver food and are now working at so many food establishments, they're going through a tough time, but a lot of them are continuing to operate so they can help all of us. All those folks are answering the call in their own way. I want to thank all of you. We need all of you and you don't get the praise you deserve normally and you should get a whole lot of praise now because you, all of you are helping to keep this city running, keep it together and ensuring the people who need help the most are getting it. So thank you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

I want to note and I want to ask everyone if you see, you know, this is a time I say it a lot, that you know, remember to thank people who do so much for us. You know, this coming week we're going to be dealing with a whole different reality. We've never been under this kind of order to pause our lives, change our ways. It's going to take getting used to. It's going to take adjustments. There'll be some trial and error for sure. But let's thank the people who are helping us, helping to make it work. If you see a first responder, a police officer, a firefighter, a EMT, thank them. Thank the transit workers, thank the health care workers, thank those educators who are going to be at those enrichment centers taking care of the children of those essential workers. And like I said, the postal worker on your block, the person that delivers a pizza to you, anybody you come across who's out there making it happen, please give them some extra gratitude because they deserve it.

Each day, I have a very unfortunate obligation to tell you the overall situation in terms of the number of cases. I remind you every case is a human being and a family. And the numbers, again, continue to be staggering. Confirmed New York City cases at this moment, this is based on information from 10:00 am today, 9,654 cases, an unbelievable number. We couldn't even imagine such a number just a week ago. We are on the verge right now of 10,000 cases in this city. We essentially at this point, and this has been a trend over recent days, we represent shockingly about a third of the cases in the entire United States of America. And about two thirds of the cases in the State of New York or even more. We'll constantly keep you updated, but I want people to just for a moment reflect on that fact. This is a crisis affecting our whole state, our whole nation. But it's a crisis affecting New York City far more than any place else just by the numbers. One third of the cases in the entire nation right here. We have lost 63 people to coronavirus in just a matter of weeks.

We're going to constantly update you, what we see within these facts to help people understand this disease better. And I remind you, it’s a disease that literally no expert on earth fully understands but we're trying to constantly confirm our understanding and update people. But here is a fact that's important. As of this moment in New York City and this information will be published in more detail shortly. There have been in the age group from birth to 44 years old, so New Yorkers from the first moments or life up to 44 years old. Within that group, there have been no deaths. And that is a very important fact confirming a lot of what we understood previously about this virus. The breakdown by borough – Brooklyn is 2,857 cases, Queens 2,715, Manhattan 2,072, the Bronx 1,411, and Staten Island 593. Another very important point. And again, information will be updated constantly and made public when we can. But we've talked a lot and I reflected a few days ago about a conversation I had with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the leading national expert in this crisis and who we all are turning to for important information. He's also a proud son of Brooklyn, proud son of New York City.

He, days ago, said to me, we really need to educate people to the particular danger to those over 70 years old. Well, here's what we know in New York City. So far, 35 percent of our hospitalizations related to coronavirus have been for New Yorkers who are over 70, 35 percent, over a third. But you should also know that people over 70 constitute only about 10 percent of the population of New York City. So, what we're seeing is the over 70-year-olds represented among those hospitalized, over three times more than their proportion of the population. That really reminds us that that's the particular thing we need to focus on. Folks who are much older and particularly they have those preexisting conditions we've talked about so much. These are the folks in the greatest danger who we have to really move heaven and Earth to protect. Keeping them isolated and out of contact with other people to the maximum amount possible, supporting them, still giving them a lot of love and support -- phone calls, FaceTime, everything you can do to support your older loved ones, getting them the things they need. But keeping them out of contact with others to the maximum step possible to protect them. That's crucial.

I'm going to talk for a moment about a situation with the other levels of government, and it is if there were ever a tale of two cities, this is at -- the State of New York is doing so many wonderful things, so many of the right things to help people all over the state and certainly to help New York City. I commend Governor Cuomo and our legislative leaders in Albany, Speaker Heastie and Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins and so many people across the state government who are doing so much to help New York City right now. And on the federal side, it's almost exactly the opposite where we're seeing so little. That is not to say there are not good people in the federal government trying to help us. And Dr. Fauci is a great example and so many of the good men and women of FEMA are a great example, it's not one way or another. But when it comes to the decisions of government and the actions of government, really doing something tangible, we're seeing a lot of help from the State of New York and very little and in the way of evidence that the federal government understands that our nation's largest city is in the crosshairs and that the federal government's going to actually do something about it. I won't dwell. I've been perfectly clear. We need our armed forces and we need them now. And I'm very happy that we're getting the ship, the Comfort coming to New York soon. That's very, very helpful. That's a great example of what our armed forces could do, but they could do so much more if they were fully mobilized and we need them.

We need supplies on a vast scale for the city. We are very happy that FEMA is here. That could make a difference. But so far, we have no specifics on what supplies we will get when and we need them now. I have, again, to compare -- great appreciation for the announcement that Governor Cuomo made yesterday, a million more N95 masks coming to New York City soon. That's crucial. That's wonderful. But I have no such announcement from the President of the United States. In fact, he still has not fully utilized the Defense Production Act. He has not given orders to specific companies, to not only produce those items that are needed most starting with ventilators, but to ensure that they will be distributed to where the need is greatest here in New York and other key parts of the country. I believe that can't be done and won't be done unless and until our military is mobilized. And I don't know why on Earth the President hesitates at this point. I think you're seeing a human cry all over the country for our armed forces to be activated. The time is now.

Very quickly, and this has been put out publicly yesterday. I'll just give a brief overview, a number of personnel announcements. We are continuing to build out our team to deal with what is a wartime type of crisis. I want to thank for her extraordinary leadership, my Chief of Staff, Emma Wolfe and I announced yesterday that I will add to her title the designation of Deputy Mayor for Administration and that will put her second in the line of succession after our First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, both of them have been the paramount outstanding leaders of the day to day operations that are being run out of our Office of Emergency Management and other locations, coordinating all the work of all city agencies. We, all of us, even though we're working remotely from each other in many cases, we are talking constantly throughout the day. I am being given every hour, literally, it seems new decision to make and I'm determining the direction of the City's response. But I have extraordinary leaders to depend on to implement those decisions and to coordinate the work of all of our agencies. So, a tremendous thank you to First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, and now Deputy Mayor for Administration and Chief of Staff, Emma Wolfe.

I announced that we will have one of our most extraordinary public servants, our Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia will take on an additional title as our COVID-19 Food Czar. This is a brand-new concept and it reflects the reality of what we're dealing with today. We hope to get good news from Washington of some kind of true stimulus package that will actually reach the people of this city and this country with substantial direct support. Not token support, not one-time support, but deep ongoing support so folks can afford everything in their lives. We don't have that yet, however. I'm desperately concerned that a lot of New Yorkers are running out of money and that's the money they use to buy food among other crucial necessities. Commissioner Garcia and her new role will create a citywide network to ensure that food is available to those who cannot afford it. Food is available to seniors and vulnerable folks. Food is available to people who are working just a few weeks ago and no longer have any means of support. It's going to take a mobilization such as we've never seen before. She'll work with all of those agencies that currently do food relief, the Human Resources Administration, the Mayor's Office of Food Policy, obviously state agencies, Food Bank, soup kitchens, so many amazing nonprofit organizations. She'll work with all of them, but she's going to build something bigger and more comprehensive than we've ever seen in New York City. On the assumption that food will become much more of an issue going forward and that many people will have a strain that they have not experienced previously because of huge disruptions in their own income. So I want to thank Commissioner Garcia for taking on that role.

I've named Peter Hatch as our COVID- 19 Public Private Partnership Czar. He will work with private sector entities and philanthropic partners to create a brand-new network of support. There are so many wonderful offers of help coming in. We have to build that into a truly organized forceful effort to ensure that the maximum private and philanthropic help reaches those in greatest need and augments everything we're trying to do as a city. Peter Hatch has served previously as deputy, excuse me, as Chief of Staff to Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze. He will take on this new role as the public private partnership czar. Also coming back into city service my senior advisor for years, Gabrielle Fialkoff who played a crucial role activating many forms of support for the people of the city. She did an outstanding job over five years serving the people of this city and she's returning as a senior advisor. She will ensure that many of the organizations that previously she worked with to help in normal times will help even more now in these tough, tough times. And replacing Peter Hatch, in his role as Chief of Staff to the Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services will be Julie Bero who has worked in our Intergovernmental Affairs operation and thank her for taking on that new role.

Lastly, we're going to be doing something and I’m announcing this now, something we have not had to do in our recent memory in this city, which is to organize production here in New York City for vitally needed supplies and equipment. The notion of this city being left in so many ways on its own to deal with this crisis is deeply painful, but we don't take it lying down. We're going to fight for all the resources and support we deserve and need. But in the meantime, I've named Carl Rodriguez, who is currently Chief of Staff to Deputy Mayor Vicki Been, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development. Carl will additionally take on a role running our production capacity group. This will be leaders from different city agencies working with the private sector to determine the maximum extent possible quickly, tangibly, how we will produce ventilators right here in New York City. Surgical masks, hospital surgical gowns, anything and everything that we need. This is a no way letting the federal government off the hook. But it does say that if we can effectively produce something in New York City, even if it is not exactly the ideal we would want, but it's still usable, we will produce it here. I want to thank Carl for taking on this role in all those who will be working with him.

Quickly I'll talk about some other items and then turn to our Police Commissioner who will give you an update. On the question of parks, I spoke earlier with Governor Cuomo. We are fully aligned. We understand that we have a big and different and new challenge on our hands. Folks who are going to be home in a way that literally, it doesn't happen any time of the year, not even in summer, to have so many people home at once. So many families and so many children looking for some opportunity to get out of their homes, at least for a small portion of the day. Here's how we're going to do it. And I'm going to describe what we're going to do in the first week, starting Monday and throughout this coming week. And then we're going to judge the results accordingly. And we might then make some very different plans. And again, one of the things I want to emphasize, every single day instructions can change based on new circumstances because we are dealing with something that we've never dealt with before. We'll always try and give you clear and consistent information. But I'm also warning people it can change. If it changes, it changes for a reason and we'll certainly explain why.

So, on the parks -- we understand that under the Governor's pause order, which I entirely agree with, we need to ensure that if people want a little exercise in their day that they can do that the right way. It is absolutely normal and human to want to get outside, get a little bit of exercise. But I remind you, the pause is all about social distancing. It is all about protecting ourselves and our families and each other. When we say you can go out for some exercise, we are not saying you can linger. We're not saying you can make a day of it. We're saying, go out, get a minimum amount of exercise, get what you need, and then get back in the doors. Same with grocery shopping. Go get what you need. Get back inside. You got to go to the pharmacy, get what you need, get back inside. We will be enforcing this, but with an understanding for the challenges that people are facing for how new this is. And I'll talk about it. And then Commissioner Shea will talk about it. We'll enforce through education. We'll enforce through warnings. We'll enforce with having real conversations with people to help them understand what's going on. We're not going to be draconian. We're going to give people a chance to get used to this, but I guarantee you we will enforce this new reality. And I think the vast majority of New Yorkers will understand quickly and will act accordingly. So, folks will go to their parks. That's normal. You want to get outside for a little bit. You want to get some exercise, you want to go for a run, whatever it is, that's normal. You got a socially distance. You can't do it the way you're used to. You can't play team sports at this point. It's going to be unfortunately quite a while before that's possible again. There's no more gatherings. There's no more events. There's no more big barbecues. All that is gone for now. It's not gone forever. It's gone certainly for weeks, probably for months. At some point we'll be able to resume a more normal life, but for now, when you go to the park, you're going for your own exercise. Now, you might say, well, wait a minute, what if it's a parent going with their child and they live under the same roof? Of course, you're already living with someone under the same roof or a couple that lives together. Let's be clear, that's a different reality. People who live under the same roof and are already exposed to each other all day long and this is something that Governor and I explicitly discussed, they already have a different reality and they don't need to distance from each other because they're already in constant contact with each other. So, if a mom goes to the playground with her child, obviously she's already in constant contact with that child. That's different than if that child came in contact with a child from another family or that mom came in contact with a mom from a different family. That's the problem. Let's be clear, within the family, under one roof, that's one thing, but families mixing, people connecting who are not under the same roof, that's where we're going to see a spread of this disease that we can't have. That's where the social distancing rules come into effect, six feet apart, and we all want to be social, but we just can't the way we were. So you can go to the park, but only for a limited period of time. Families can stay together but don't mix with other families. If you're going on your own, stay on your own, keep six feet apart from everyone else. Go get your exercise. Get home.

In terms of playgrounds, this is a thorny issue, and I'm saying this as a parent, I used to take my kids to playgrounds around Prospect Park in Brooklyn constantly. I understand a lot about the culture of our playgrounds and the challenges that we deal with in normal times with all the kids who want to be on the playground. Here's what we're going to do for this next week, and I'm only saying this for this next week because we want to try it out. We're going to say to parents, look, here's the reality, if you're going to go on a playground, you have to take full responsibility for the situation. Full personal responsibility. Here are some of the realities. We cannot have overcrowding on a playground. If there are some people already on the playground and it’s starting to get to you can't keep six feet away from people who are not part of your family, don’t go on the playground. If our police, our parks enforcement officers or other enforcement agency see a playground that's starting to fill up, they're going to clear it out. If you go the playground, you need to keep your children away from children who are not part of your family. That's your responsibility. We will always do our best with city enforcement, but we can't be everywhere, obviously, you have to take responsibility. If you don't feel you can do it, don't go to the playground.

Some parents have said, will the playgrounds be cleaned and sanitized? The answer, just a real blunt, New York City answer is no. They never have been. They can't be in this situation. It would take a Herculean effort every five minutes, literally, that we simply can't do. If your kids go to a playground, you might want them to not be on certain types of equipment or any type of equipment. You might say, I don't want to go to a playground. I just want my kids to run around in an open area. You parents have to make that decision. Well what we're going to do is have playgrounds open to the maximum extent possible, monitored and enforced, but parents have to make their own choices for this next week as to what they feel is appropriate. I'm trying to give you real honest warnings. We'll put up signage, we'll constantly reiterate these rules and we'll see how it goes for a week.

If people are responsible about use of the playgrounds, and we believe it's a good outlet for kids who are only going to get in a short period of exercise each day, we'll keep them open. If we feel that they are not being handled properly. If we feel that people are taking advantage in the wrong way of the situation or not paying attention to the rules, or it's creating something that's just not supportable, we'll have to at that point strongly consider shutting them down. It's not something I want to do. I really don't want to do that. I'm saying that as a parent. So, we're going to see how this week goes and we have agreement with the State of New York that that is the approach we'll take. Tomorrow, I'm going to provide the State with a written plan delineating what I've just told you in broad stroke, and we'll work with the State each step of the way going forward to determine how best to handle a real sense of reality of our parks and playgrounds.

But again, a NYPD is going to be out there. If they see anything that looks like even the beginning of a gathering, they're going to say, break it up. They're going to say, you got to get your quick exercise individually and get home. The message couldn't be clearer. And Commissioner Shea will give you a sense of what he's experienced in recent days. But I can summarize it. New Yorkers are listening. They are following the guidance they're getting. And when police officer or other enforcement officer tells him to do something, overwhelmingly they are doing it. They all understand what time it is. So, I think we're going to see that we're going to find a way to make this work. Okay, very quickly, let me just note, hold on one second - oh, this is consistent with this point, to confirm just how much New Yorkers are adhering to rules. I want to give you an example. It's a very striking example for anyone who knows this town and has been here for any amount of your life, especially if you've been here a long time. I think you might find this striking. Yesterday in New York City, we sent out four agencies, NYPD, FDNY, Department of Buildings, and Sheriff’s Office to continue doing enforcement at bars, restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, any place that we needed to ensure people were not congregating. There were 13,000 inspections yesterday by those agencies. 13,000 inspections of which in only 11 instances was a violation given. One in a thousand – less than one in a thousand cases, was it even necessary to give a violation. I think that speaks volumes about what we are dealing with now.

A very important topic. There's been a lot of concern about our jail system. I'm going to be giving you constant updates. This is an area of tremendous concern, obviously. Talked about an initial group of inmates who were being reviewed for release. This will be an ongoing situation and a rapid one. I have been working closely with the Police Commissioner and other officials and obviously our correction leadership to determine the proper approach that is a humane and responsive to this crisis, but also constantly takes into effect – into account, I should say – public safety and obviously legal requirements. 23 inmates are being released today from our jail system. Those individuals are over 50 years old and low risk to re-offend. Some others we're awaiting a response from the State before they can be released. We are now starting immediate work on a group of 200 additional inmates who are being reviewed for release. We will have the update on what number within those 200 will be released. That update will be tomorrow. These are primarily individuals who have limited time remaining on their sentences on Rikers Island.

For all those who are concerned about this issue. I'm concerned. The Police Commissioner is concerned. The Health Commissioner is concerned. The Correction Commissioner's concerned. We're all trying to make sense of a very challenging situation in an appropriate way. We are looking at each individual case and some of the portrayal of the situation I think has left out some of the complexity. There are individuals who I think are obvious candidates for appropriate release. There are some other individuals with complex histories that raise other questions. We're going to strike that balance, but we will continually update, continually look at tranche after tranche of inmates for potential release in this crisis. This next group of 200, we will have an answer on by tomorrow. There is a very rigorous effort being made right now in our jail system to keep everyone healthy and safe. There's a lot of resources being applied for the safety of our officers and inmates alike. That effort will continue to intensify.

We have updates, I know some of them I believe have been announced about changes in testing locations. You can hear later on details from the Health Commissioner and from our Health + Hospitals CEO. There's been a closure of the site at Jacobi. We'll explain that, when we get to Q & A. Everything is being done specifically related to prioritization. That means ensuring that we get to those individual patients in greatest need, and we do everything we can to use our testing capacity, ease the burden on emergency rooms. Testing has been fully focused on priority needs. Structural needs to keep our health system going to reach those in greatest danger. It will be tightly organized according to that principle, and we can get into detail in the Q & A. Few other points quickly. For our health care workers, these are the people are, there are so many heroes in this city, and so many people are depending on, I think we can all agree there is no group of New Yorkers we are depending on more right now than our doctors, our nurses, our lab techs, every human being who works in our health care system is precious right now. These folks are doing heroic work. They're working exceedingly long hours. They are putting themselves at risk. We must support them in every way we can. A small but helpful thing we can do right now in light of the profound changes in this city, the fact that so much of the city is not operating the way it normally does, and the idea of commuting has been fundamentally changed and so many parts of our city are not seeing the kind of traffic, etc., that we're used to. We're going to do something temporarily in this crisis and grant parking permits to health care workers who we need to serve this city in this crisis. So, there'll be a process to determine who qualifies and we will begin with 10,000 permits for these heroic workers that we will start to distribute as early as tomorrow.

Related to how people get around. There's an excellent question in the last day or two on what is essential in terms of how people deal with this crisis? And the question that was asked to me is if car repair mechanic shops, automotive shops are being kept open, shouldn't bike repair shops be kept open? I thought it was a very good question. We in the city have compared notes with the State and we have agreement that yes, bike repair shops are essential at this time of crisis because more and more people are depend on their bicycles. So yes, we will instruct that bike repair shops will be treated as essential and if they are open all of our enforcement agents will know to respect that and allow them to keep doing their work that we all need.

Finally, before I give you a few words in Spanish just to say I don't think anyone will be surprised to know that since we're in a crisis, we really have to be careful for everything we need. Everything that's a basic need and know nothing is more basic when it comes to protecting people's health care than ensuring that there is a blood supply to serve all New Yorkers. Right now, our blood supply is sufficient, but a lot of the blood drives that happen throughout the year, particularly based in companies that we appreciate deeply, a lot of those have been canceled because the companies have had to shut down. Giving blood is essential. So we need New Yorkers to step forward. Go to any New York blood center site in the city. If you are going to give blood, everyone will know that that is an essential activity. Again, you go, you participate. Every one of us says thank you and then get back home, as with everything else. If you are ready and willing and able to give blood, please call (800) 933-2566, again, (800) 933-2566, or go to www.nybc.org, nybc.org. Everyone I've heard from so many New Yorkers who want to do something, who are looking to be helpful and you know, are frustrated by this crisis and want to help, here is a way that anyone who qualifies can help. So, we really, really appreciate that.

In Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio Speaks in Spanish]

With that, I want to turn to our Police Commissioner. I want to thank you, Commissioner, and all the men and women of the NYPD for absolutely outstanding work in this crisis. And I know together we're going to be figuring out how to do some new things. But I know you are up to the task as are the men and women who serve under your command. Commissioner Dermot Shea.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: Thank you Mr. Mayor. As the Mayor said, it's been an interesting couple of weeks here, but I can tell you definitively that the men and women in the New York City Police Department, as well as all the other city agencies, certainly the health care workers across the board are rising to the challenge. And it's at a time like this when quite frankly, you see the best in people come out and we're seeing it day in and day out. The traditional crime that we put on the shoulders of the men and women in the New York City Police Department has not been forgotten, but there was so much more that they've picked up in the last couple of weeks. Just most recently in the last couple of days, we've begun surveying over 500 large supermarkets in New York City. Just yesterday in the last 24 hours between pharmacies and supermarkets, over 1600 visits by the men and women in the New York City Police Department and literally no issues. A couple of couple of discussions about overcrowding, but, overall, very well.

In the last 24 hours, over 5,500 bars and restaurants. And that's the story that you're continuing to see, cooperation by New Yorkers. Two arrests and out of 5,500, and that I believe is one incident in Queens. So by and large, we are seeing cooperation. We're seeing New Yorkers rise to the challenge throughout the city and all five boroughs. You're seeing tasks picked up by the men and women of the police department in reaching out to elderly people that may not be serviced by traditional means and working with elected officials, working with community partners, getting them food. So, I can tell you that I couldn't be more proud of what I've seen. To the parks, the Mayor mentioned the parks and in the last couple of days. It's an interesting dynamic now as we get through this time where we've been all stressed I think and all pent up inside and we are like no other city in the world, in a city of over 8 million people – a vertical city – and you saw yesterday people getting out exercising, which is a good thing. I can tell you that I hit the – in the last 48 hours, the East River Park, the West Side Highway, I personally saw a Riverside Park, Central Park, over 99 percent of what I saw is what you hope to see, New Yorkers coming out, parents with kids, responsibly getting the exercise that the Mayor have talked about. No, I did not see organized sports. The biggest thing I saw was a two on two pickup game. And I can tell you that the men and women now of the New York City Police Department are getting more and more involved in this as the Mayor said. Made calls yesterday with some of the borough and bureau commanders of the NYPD to just reinforce that messaging piece of this. We're all in this together, reinforce that positive message. As much as you want to get out, there's a responsible way to do it. And that's what we all need to hear and take part in.

So you'll expect to see police officers throughout the five boroughs, whether it's on a bicycle, probably on some scooters and some marked police cars, driving slowly through the parks and just broadcasting and speaking to people about that message. Enjoy, how you doing, get your exercise, and then the politely, get out of here. And I say that tongue in cheek. We are all in this together and, and it was really, it was heartwarming, I'm sure to see, Mr. Mayor you touched on it, people that are people that are behind closed doors all day, every day. That's not really what we're worried about when they're walking. A husband and wife holding hands in the park, taking a walk with their dog. That's not really what we're worried about, they’re together in the apartment anyway, but it's the large groups. I heard from some elected officials yesterday and throughout the city working on this. We got to we got to think, think long distance here. This is a long game. So those backyard parties, those DJs, I'm sorry DJs, I know how everyone is hurting here, but we can't be having parties with the large gatherings whether it's in backyards or anywhere else in New York City at this time right now. It's just too dangerous. So thank you. I'm sure we'll have some questions. But again, on behalf of all the men and women in the police department, thank you for all the kind words we are there for you and we're going to continue to be there for you.

Mayor: Thank you very, very much Commissioner. I think you laid it out very, very clearly. I think you said a very nice version of get out of here. I like that. And then we'll make sure the message spreads in in a very smart, fair, decent way. With that want to make sure that we now have an opportunity to take questions from the media on all the things we've talked about here and any other topics they would like to bring up. And let's turn to the media questions. Who's first?

Ann Cheng: Hi all. Just a quick note at the top, we ask that everyone limit their questions to no more than two, including follow-ups. This allows us to be fair and try to get to as many people as possible. We will start off today with Aaron from the Post.

Question: Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, indeed.

Question: So just wanted to go on to circle back on the issue of parks and people going outdoors to get their exercise and just want to see if there's any sort of understanding as far as what the cutoff would be? How much time is enough time? And also understanding that people have been pretty good about abiding by these rules as far as businesses goes, what the sort of potential enforcement or penalties might look like if you encounter anyone, particularly obstinate?

Mayor: I'll start and I'm sure the Commissioner has a view too. First thing I want to say is the NYPD every single day, and I would say this about Parks Enforcement and you know, depending on how this plays out, we could easily get other agencies involved as well. But the story that I think is missed, and I don't ever blame the media for telling the exceptional story or the dramatic story, but I would like us all to do a little bit more particularly a time of crisis to acknowledge what is exceptional and dramatic and unusual versus what is typical. When you hear the number of inspections were made and you only had 11 violations, as I mentioned earlier out of 13,000 inspections, that that really says something not just about store owners, but about what people in general are understanding about this crisis.

And I have seen it in many places I've been in recent days. I really think there's a deep understanding that something profound has changed and it has to be handled differently. And I have a lot of faith in New Yorkers. I have a lot of faith in everyday people. Will there be some individuals at 8.6 million people that don't get it? Of course. And our officers for time immemorial have had to deal with people who don't get it. People try and make their own rules. People who think they're smarter than anyone else, I assure you there's no one more worldly wise than the New York City Police Officer. There's no one understands the human condition better than in New York City Police Officer. And they are extraordinarily resourceful, our officers, so sometimes they use humor. Sometimes they use firmness. Sometimes they illustrate their point, whatever it is. I've seen it throughout my life. They know how to talk to people. They know how to talk to young people and old people. They know how to talk to every kind of person. They'll make clear what you got to do.

And I believe the vast, vast majority of New Yorkers will listen. We're not to the point yet of specific sanctions because we're starting down a road and we'll decide with the State if we need to get into sanctions more deeply. But I don't think that's going to be the case. I think the number of people who truly don't get it and try and stand apart is going to be limited. And I affirm, if someone really wants to disagree with a police officer and acts in a manner that's inappropriate and illegal will then they will be handled the same way as anyone else who obstructs the work of a police officer. But I don't think we're even talking about the level we might see of that in normal times because we're dealing with a crisis that's being felt in every inch of our city. I predict you're going to see a different reality in the word will spread. And I'll turn to the Commissioner to one more point.

How much time? Well, you know, we're going to work on this and I think it would be helpful to give people some guidance, but I just want to start with common sense. How much time does it take to exercise, folks who go for a jog in the morning, know how long they go for a jog. People go for a bike ride, know how long their bike ride is. People go for a walk, know how long the walk is. You know, if you're exercising now and you have a basic thing you do, for a lot of people, I'd say it's a half hour, 45 minutes, something like that. Go get in your exercise and get home or go do your exercise, go to the store and get home. The point is, maximize the get home part. Get only the most basic exercise – I understand you need to walk your dog, walk your dog, and then get home. Your kids understand you have young kids are going crazy inside. You need to get them outside for a while. Get them outside for a while. As soon as you get them through a little bit of real, you know, working off their steam, get them back home.

So, we'll give some guidelines, but this is also about personal responsibility. This is about common sense, which is what the vast majority of New Yorkers have. We're not going to allow gatherings. We're not going to allow loitering. We're not going to allow someone just to hang out. And you know, for a long period of time, if an officer sees you and you're sitting on a park bench, they're going to say, hey you know, you need to get home. And the person says, all, you know, I'm only going to be here for a few minutes, then I'm going home. Fine. If someone thinks they can hang around for a long period of time, I assure you that officer will remind them again energetically. But people just have to get it. We have to help ourselves and each other by taking seriously, you know, just what you need, nothing more and get home. Commissioner?

Commissioner Shea: I – as I hear this discussion, I'm thinking – and I laugh at the reputation that we have as New Yorkers of running around, running from one location to the other, bumping past each other, probably like no other city. I've seen the opposite in the last two weeks and I'm sure you have too, whether it's in parks or walking around. There's a forced politeness these days of allowing one to pass before you proceed down a path. And that's what I saw in the parks yesterday, and not universally, but you saw people giving each other that wide berth. In two weeks, we've learned to distance whether – it may not always be six feet, it may be three to four feet, but you're seeing this all over. And I saw it yesterday in every park that I visited. Not universally. Some issues – we will double down on the education piece.

And this, I'll tell you on a personal level, this hurt. The last thing you want to do is tell kids that they are doing everything we want them to ordinarily, but not under these extreme circumstances, get out of a park. But we have to, we'll continue to educate and again, I think the message here is you can find three or 10 or whatever it is, messages on Twitter. I was out there myself and saw it firsthand. By and large, there were no large organized sports, there were people getting out on a beautiful day in a really difficult situation. And we'll continue to monitor it. We'll step up the presence as well as the audio messages and the speaking. And again, this is probably the least of my concerns.

Commissioner Barbot: I want to just build on the –

Mayor: Please, Commissioner –

Commissioner Barbot: I just want to build on that to say, as the Mayor mentioned, we want New Yorkers to use good judgment in terms of time, but I want them to pay special attention to ensuring distance. This is about distance. This is not so much about time as it is about distance. And the longer – given the density of our city, the longer someone stays outside, the greater the risk of coming in contact with someone within that six feet perimeter. And so that's why, focus on distance, not so much on time.

Mayor: Right. I want to just – that's great. And I want to just put a point on that and then we'll keep going. I think Commissioner Barbot said something that's really good, common sense guidance. Yeah, if you stay out longer, your chances of bumping into someone, your chances of being put in a situation that's not the ideal, which is six feet apart, those chances increase. Where do you know you're not going to bump into someone or end up coming in contact with someone else who, God forbid, may have the disease at home, right? When you're at home, you know what you're dealing with. So, you get the exercise you need, keep it as tight as you can in terms of time. You go to the store – even if you go to the store, keep your time as tight as possible, observe that six-foot distancing, soon as you're done, get back home because that's the safe thing to do. And it's not going to be fun. It's not going to be easy, but it's also not going to be forever. And we want to keep people safe. Go ahead.

Question: Well, one more in that vein, Mr. Mayor. Governor Cuomo, this morning floated the ideas of potentially opening up some streets or I should say closing them to vehicular traffic and opening them up for people who want to get out, stretch their legs, get a little fresh air. Is that anything that's being considered. And thank you all for your time. I appreciate it.

Mayor: Thank you, Aaron. I spoke to the Governor about this and we had a great conversation and we're going to again. We're going to codify in the next 24 hours our approach here in New York City, share it with the State, with the Governor's team, and we'll take it from there. But we had a high level of agreement in the conversation earlier today. We're certainly going to consider over time the possibility of opening up some streets for recreation. But I want to caution, the first frame is the first frame here, which is we want people to get that exercise, get that time they need, but we also need to enforce it. And our ability to enforce directly correlates to knowing where we need to put our focus, our energy, and our officers. We know where that is right now in terms of our parks and playgrounds, because right now the NYPD patrols those areas, the parks enforcement patrols those areas. That is something that we can focus on, have a strategy for, and do the right way.

If we're going to expand, we're going to expand very purposefully. If we're going to look to have a street that's opened up for recreation, we're going to do that very smartly and carefully because we have to attach enforcement to it. It cannot be, oh, we're just going to close off some streets and leave it be. If we do that, I guarantee what will happen is a whole lot of people start to congregate. And again, because we're humans, we're social, it's natural, and people won't remember and they'll fall into – I see it all the time in the last few days, people start to reach out their hand to shake hands or start to want to hug someone they know and they stop themselves. Almost without exception, I find that sort of sudden stop. It's going to take us a long time to get used to it.

So, if your block – you know, if you put barriers at the end of your block, everyone's going to come out and hang out like it's normal. We can't have that. We got to do this in a systematic, careful fashion. So that's an idea that’s on the table. What I would say is, think of it this way, we're going to start with the parks and playgrounds we have that we know how to patrol, determine over the coming days if we need to expand that – and if so, how? – but most importantly, how do we enforce it, how do we keep eyes on it, how do we make sure it works? So, one stage at a time and we'll keep people updated as we do. Go ahead. Thank you.

Cheng: Next we have Alex from the Daily Beast.

Mayor: Go ahead, Alex.

Question: Hi. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yep.

Question: Okay, great. There's growing concern among a lot of gig economy workers, not delivery people, but freelancers in general. We've now passed a cycle of a single paycheck and some people are out of money. If someone is entirely out of money, let's say, and that goes everywhere from rent to food, what actions should they be taking?

Mayor: It's a very painful situation. I'm glad you raised it, Alex, because this is – I think the gig workers are facing some of the toughest dynamics here. Obviously, it depends on each individual. Anyone who, again, everyone's different, everyone has a different situation. Anyone who does have the opportunity to apply for unemployment insurance obviously should but we also know that system's overloaded. I'm not belittling that fact. We are hoping and praying that the Congress acts very quickly on a stimulus that is direct money into the pockets of working people, including gig economy workers. Obviously, there've been some other actions taken, which I'm happy about, including by the federal government, like limiting student loan repayments and actions that had been taken by the City and State to ward off evictions. All of those things help but we're going to have to do a lot more.

And again, the place where we need help the most is a federal government because the City is, you know, really struggling right now to cover needs with what we have and with our own resources and our revenue that's clearly declining rapidly. So, I think it is that stimulus bill and then it's the things we're going to try and do. God forbid there's a gig worker who, as you said, hasn't gotten that paycheck, is starting to struggle to find food. That's exactly why Kathryn Garcia has been named to this new position to create a food network, you know, a food distribution network to help people who honestly, maybe a few weeks ago, never in a million years would have thought of needing food and government support like that but now they will. So at least with no evictions at this moment hopefully people can pay the rent on time, but if they can't they won't be evicted right now.

And we're looking to find other ways to provide support and relief to ensure that people who don't have money are not forced to pay rent that they just can't afford. Hopefully we can ensure that there's a steady supply of food and that will at least get us a fair amount along the way. And I remind people, in terms of health care, there's going to be people who won't be able to afford medicine. We're going to try and work on that issue too. But anyone who really is dealing with a serious, serious health care issue, thank God for our public hospitals and clinics that will always back people up regardless of ability to pay.

Question: Thank you. And one more question. It's being reported right now that two dorms and 45 people incarcerated at Rikers are refusing to leave their dorms for work duties and meals, in protest. And I'm just curious, is there a way that you guys could be possibly, like, speeding up the release and relief of certain prisoners in our jail system?

Mayor: Yeah, we are absolutely going to move very fast now. We have to work through some legal issues that were complex issues as I said, involving DAs and the State. We have a clearer template. We were working on this literally past midnight. I was here in City Hall after midnight still on conference calls with people working this through because this stuff is very complex. But I am confident now that we have the ability to figure out what that right number is. I don't know the number yet. I want to be real with you and honest with you. And there are some people who clearly, we are not going to feel comfortable releasing. But we will steadily increase the number to the point that we believe is appropriate. I cannot confirm the report that you just gave. I've heard that but I have not heard it in a confirmed manner. So, we will get that information clarified. But suffice it to say, over the next few days those who can be released to the maximum extent possible, we're going to try and do that over the next few days. Go ahead.

Cheng: Next up, we've got Amanda from Politico.

Mayor: Go ahead, Amanda. Amanda?

Question: Can you hear me okay?

Mayor: Yep.

Question: Hi, how are you? I have a question for you and Dr. Katz. So, I was hoping you could circle back to the Jacobi [inaudible] –

Mayor: Yes, Dr. Katz is not in the room, but through the miracle of technology, I think he can hear us. Dr. Katz, can you hear us? Dr. Katz? Paging Dr. Katz. Is there a doctor in the house? He's on? He just can't – he can't respond to me. Is that right? But he's talking on the line. Okay.

Cheng: Amanda, we'll come back to you.

Mayor: We'll be right back around. Okay. Who's next?

Cheng: We have Ashley from the New York Times.

Mayor: Go ahead, Ashley. Ashley –

Question: Good afternoon.

Mayor: There you go.

Question: The question I want to ask is for the Police Commissioner about exposure since officers are basically intensifying their role in the corona – in kind of making sure that everybody adheres to the rules. I'm wondering if you can give us raw numbers on people who are infected and out sick due to coronavirus inside the department and tell us how it is and how the NYPD tracks exposure.

Commissioner Shea: So yeah, actually I – at the beginning I had a little trouble hearing you, but I think I got the whole thing. The most current numbers that I have, and they are moving, is 98 members of the NYPD have tested positive for corona. Of the 98, 70 are on the uniform side, 28 are from the civilian side. It's important to know that in terms of how they contracted it, you know, the belief at this time, with very limited information obviously, is that it's not necessarily contracted at work, that some are contracted sick family members. We are New York. So as society contracts this disease and you know – so do we. In terms of the testing, the numbers are going up because the testing in the entire city is going up so that's not unexpected. In terms of sick rate, I'll stay away from exact numbers, but I can tell you that our normal – if you have a normal sick rate, and we do for the department, it's approaching about double that rate and we saw the numbers start to go up when this really took hold, roughly March 17th. I can tell you that we are still, what I would consider, in very good shape in terms of resources. But we plan for it literally every day. If I told you how many phone conferences I had in the last 24 hours, I'd be lying because I, literally – Terry Monahan is sick of hearing from me. Rodney Harrison, the entire executive staff –

Mayor: Let’s be clear. Terry Monahan is not sick. He's just sick of hearing you.

Commissioner Shea: Yes, that's right.

[Laughter]

So, we are not at the point where we're close to going to 12-hour tours. What we are doing though is planning for all eventualities and moving people from units that are less important right now to, you know, be ready for any and all eventuality. So, I think that we are in a good place still and the planning is literally ongoing hour by hour.

Mayor: The other thing I just, before Ashley follows on, I just want to say is, again, as we've heard from Dr. Barbot, a typical younger – and this is again, most PD officers, younger person, 20s, 30s, 40s, a healthy person, their experience with this disease will be something like seven to 10 days and it will not be a fun seven to 10 days. But at the end of that seven to 10 days, they will be right back in uniform, right back at their posts. So, this is a number that goes up but will have an element that starts to go right back down from that original group that got sick. A lot of them will come back online. We'll be going through this for weeks and months. I don't want any misimpression that a person who contracts coronavirus is not coming back to work. They are coming back to work in the vast majority of cases and soon. And we got to keep that in our calculations and in our planning. And obviously we're very happy that most people are going to have a mild experience.

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, I can tell you Ashley – and if I miss one point, I'll circle back to you at the end – I can tell you that we've had people come back to work that had been put on quarantine and I am really looking forward to when those people that are out sick with this virus come back to work for the obvious reasons. But I think again, we're in good shape. Of the now 98, I think there's three that remain hospitalized. And that's including one that was discharged today. So that brings it to three. And that's with pneumonia-like symptoms. I think I mentioned that the other day. So, the vast, vast majority – 95 of 98 are recovering at home.

Question: But for those officers who had contact with the public, is the NYPD tracking that and are you telling members of the public that they've had contact with an officer who has now been confirmed to have COVID?

Commissioner Shea: You're talking post?

Question: Yeah, post – once the officer tests positive, are you going back and telling members of the public who they've interacted with in the course of doing their job that they have interacted with them? Do you have numbers on that?

Commissioner Shea: No, I don't. And we'll take a look at that with Legal. Obviously, you run into some HIPAA issues and things of that nature.

Mayor: I go beyond it and I'll pass to the Commissioner. I think we are at such an advanced stage in this crisis but for a very particular situation where we thought – where our health people thought it was important to do that follow through. I think the honest truth, Ashley, is we're in a new reality here where that generally is not going to be doable, nor is it necessarily going to make much sense – and I think the Commissioner is going to follow this [inaudible] – because of the sheer spread that we're experiencing overall.

Dr. Barbot: As I've been saying for the past couple of days, which feels like the past couple of weeks, we do have widespread community transmission. So that means that it's very likely that a large number of people are already exposed and there is no real way to track down, back to the point source. The other thing I want to just emphasize is that even though we are learning more and more about how this virus is transmitted, we still don't think that just casual contact passing someone in the street is going to infect folks, right. We're asking people to remain six feet apart because that's the general distance that a good, healthy, strong cough or sneeze has to get from one person to the other. And so, I just want to remind us of the basics. And it's not just passing someone in the street. It's not even limited contact. It goes back to those basics. And so while the tendency may be to want to let everybody know who it is that may – they may have contact with that may have had contact with yet another contact and you know, that kind of becomes irrelevant when we've got widespread community transmission. And that's why I have been so, dare I say, militant about having New Yorkers stay indoors.

Mayor: Amen. Okay. Who's up?

Cheng: Dr. Katz's issues have been resolved. Dr. Katz, can you hear us?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, NYC Health + Hospitals: Yeah, sorry. I could hear you always, but I had a technical problem.

Mayor: Alright.

President Katz: Thanks so much for the question. With Jacobi [inaudible] –

Mayor: Is Amanda – hold on, is Amanda back on the line? I'm sorry, Dr. Katz – is Amanda back?

Cheng: Yes.

Mayor: Okay.

President Katz: Amanda, we changed the method of testing from more of a walk-by or drive-by model at Jacobi. It will reopen tomorrow to relieve the emergency department. [Inaudible] the Mayor says that we need to focus our testing on those people who are most sick and help to decompress the emergency rooms where people are coming with mild symptoms. We need to focus our attention on those people who are [inaudible] –

Question: Dr. Katz, I hope you’re feeling okay and getting some sleep. Is this transition going to happen across all Health + Hospital facilities or are we starting with Jacobi [inaudible]?

President Katz: Thank you, Amanda. All of our hospitals will have a tent outside as a way to decompress our emergency rooms. Several of them already had it. I visited the tent that was at Elmhurst and the tent that was already at Lincoln. Jacobi had the other model and that's changing to the tent outside of the emergency room for this week coming.

Question: Okay, great. Thank you very much.

President Katz: Thank you.

Cheng: Thank you. We have Craig from the Post.

Question: [Inaudible] are you today? The unions have been calling for additional testing for Fire, EMS, and NYPD. I was wondering, since these are the guys on the front line, they're, you know, going in there and getting people out of parks, is there going to be any plans to maybe do expedited testing for them if they're considering that they have coronavirus since they're out in the streets?

Mayor: I'll start and my colleagues have joined in. Again, the entire testing system is based on the priority needs. There's a priority given, of course, to protecting our health care workers and our first responders, but that's done still according to the health care priorities overall. If someone is young and healthy and has symptoms, there's many, many cases where they're just going to ride it out and they're going to be well and they're going to come back. If after those three or four days, and we're not seeing them get better, that's a different discussion, but it's about a priority structure that – we have to remember that the testing has to be there to protect the people in greatest danger. You want to speak to that, Commissioner?

Commissioner Barbot: Certainly, I think to the extent that they fall into the prioritization categories of being over 50, having one of the chronic underlying illnesses, being sick, not getting better, and having their doctor determine that knowing that test status is going to change the course of therapy, then of course we would want to test them. But the basic message of if you're sick, stay home, stay home for at least seven days since your symptom onset or three days after your fever has gone away, whichever is longer, we'll continue to apply.

Mayor: Okay. Who's next?

Cheng: Next, we have Katie.

Question: Hi, can you hear me –

Mayor: I’m sorry, who is it?

Question: Can you hear me, Mayor?

Mayor: Yep, go ahead, Katie. How are you doing?

Question: I'm great. How are you? I'm calling to ask if the City discussed if there might be any changes to property taxes which are due in April?

Mayor: At this point, and we'll obviously be looking at everything, Katie, but we are in a really tough situation right now in this city and I need to be very plain with New Yorkers about this. In the Congress, as we speak, there is a real discussion going on. This is directly responsive to your question. There's a real discussion going on about relief for states, counties, and cities – direct relief to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars because right now all local governments are just hemorrhaging money and dealing with massive new challenges and plummeting revenue. An example – I believe this estimate is right from our OMB, when the president canceled, or postponed, I should say income tax payments that immediately took about $1.7 billion of revenue away from New York City at the height of the coronavirus crisis. That's a massive amount of money to have taken out of our hands just when we need it the most.

So, revenue is being stressed very, very deeply. Expenses are skyrocketing. We have a lot of tough choices ahead. I'll certainly consider all options, but it is not my instinct to take away other forms of revenue because we literally will not be able to pay for basic services. Now, if we get a massive direct federal stimulus, and I know Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand have been fighting for that very hard. I spoke to both of them yesterday. If we get that support, if it's really showing up quickly, that will affect our thinking, that will affect the equation. But I've heard in the course of today that unfortunately Republicans in the Senate are trying to remove any form of direct support for cities, states, and counties, which makes no sense in the middle of the biggest national crisis since the Great Depression, and that's going to hurt red states and blue states alike. It makes no sense. We need that support. We need the hundreds of billions for localities and for hospitals, also hundreds of billions to be able to keep everything going. We have no guarantees of if and when and how that's going to happen.

So, the answer to your question is certainly I'm not ready to say that today. I don't think that's something we're going to want to do, but we're going to look at everything.

Cheng: Next up we have Gersh.

Question: Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: I can.

Question: I promise you no unauthorized dinging today. I've turned off my notifications.

Mayor: Excellent.

Question: So, you mentioned 10,000 new placards for health care workers. And, as you know, most New Yorkers will completely agree on the need to help essential health care workers do their jobs. But doesn't this emergency order actually reveal how completely unnecessary the vast majority of the city's other 150,000 placards are? Because those, are after all, in most cases, just a job perk.

Mayor: Gersh, that's a fair question, but, honestly, not a question for today. We've talked plenty of times about the need to change the approach to placards. I believe that it not only needs to be fundamentally changed, it will be as we bring on automated enforcement systems and we're going to be very quick to take placards away from those who abuse. And I think we're going to have the greatest ability to know that next year or so that we've ever had in the history of city. But, right now, that's, bluntly, a secondary issue. This is about making sure that people who are desperately needed can get where they need to go. They're working very long hours. This is an emergency measure that we need to do. We'll deal with the rest of that when we get back to normalcy.

Question: All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Thank you.

Cheng: Next, we have Jeff Mays.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask, the Governor painted a very different picture of what he saw yesterday in New York City when he drove around. He was very frustrated and talked about how there were a lot of people out, a lot of people in the parks, but that's very different than the picture that yourself and the Commissioner painted just now. What's the difference there? Why is the Governor of seeing one thing, but you guys are seeing something different?

Mayor: Well, look, first of all, people can be at different places at different times, Jeff, and see different things. I think there's a tremendous consistency in the sense that we all are looking for where we think there's a problem or lack of adherence. And when we see it, we don't like it, we're going to deal with it. And we all agree that's not most people. In fact, I think the Governor's frustration was directed at the few who were being disrespectful of others, not at the vast majority who are following the rules. But again, I spoke to the Governor today in detail and I'm confident that in that conversation we aligned fully. We're going to have a strong enforcement apparatus from the finest law enforcement organization in the world. And I am certain it's going to be very, very effective. And, you know, I think there's going to be a certain amount of pressure from fellow New Yorkers too. I think the point that you heard from my colleagues about people, like, literally – I think you said, cutting people a wide birth. And we were talking about the ways people are adjusting and changing. I'm seeing it 100 percent. Folks used to just walk by each other. They're now like, stopping, figuring out who goes first, you know, is there enough room to have your six feet – that's only going to deepen. We're about to really feel that change in our lives with this new rule in effect and so many people home. I think it's going to really jolt people's consciousness. And this is the beginning of the crisis. I've been blunt, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. So – Governor and I are aligned and we're going to say to anyone who's not getting the message, we're going to help them get the message. And then, obviously, I believe people will start to fall in line even more deeply.

Question: Just another follow-up. Do you know what's happening to the prisoners that are being released? Are they being monitored? Where they're going? And then quickly, have you still been in contact with federal officials? You mentioned earlier this week you've spoken to Dr. Fauci and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman. Have you had further conversations with federal officials?

Mayor: Yeah, I just want – I'll answer Jeff, but I want to, again, in the name of rationing as we do these calls, I think we're saying that people try and keep it to two areas and please try not to do multiple run on many, many topics at once, because I think we want to make sure it's fair to everyone else. I spoke to the Veterans Affairs Secretary yesterday. I am trying to reach Vice President Pence. I am trying to reach the FEMA director. I know my team has spoken to the FEMA director. This will be ongoing. I've spoken to Senator Schumer almost every day, spoke to Senator Gillibrand yesterday. This will be ongoing- spoken to Dr. Fauci a number of times. Again, what I'm looking for is the big answers on what will be delivered to us. On the question of folks who are released from our jail system, there will be monitoring for sure. There'll be individualized monitoring and follow-up and supervision. Who's next?

Cheng: Next step is Marina, from AP.

Question: Hello. I was wondering about the – what the conditions are at the local city hospitals? We're seeing some videos on social media of patients and masks lying on the floor because there are no beds. Is that real?

Mayor: Mitch, are you on the line still? Dr. Mitch Katz –

President Katz: Masks lying on the beds? I don’t understand that.

Question: We're seeing a video of patients on – we're seeing video of the social media of patients who are wearing masks, lying on the floor because there are no beds. Is that real? Is that fake?

Mayor: You mean the patients that – I'm sorry, Marina, just to clarify, you're patients who instead of being in a bed or a stretcher are on the floor?

Question: Yes.

Mayor: Okay. I have not heard that previously. Mitch, what have you heard?

President Katz: No, it is not true. There are no sick patients lying on the floor at any of our hospitals.

Mayor: And if you have details, Marina, we want them. If there's any place where something's not being done right, we want to know about it. There's definitely some real stress now on our public hospitals. I've been very blunt about the fact that the next 10 days are going to get harder and harder and we desperately need resupply. But we welcome from our colleagues in the media, if you have a specific situation, which might mean honestly there's something wrong in a particular place, a particular moment that needs to be addressed by management, please get us those specifics even if you want to do it confidentially so we can follow up and help people.

Question: And are you aware of any nursing homes who are experiencing any sort of high number of cases like the retirement community on Long Island? Are there any plans to test everyone who's working or a resident of a nursing home?

Mayor: I'll turn to Dr. Barbot. The primary regulation of nursing homes is by the State. And obviously, there's a lot of division of labor going on right now with so much to do. But Dr. Barbot does try and stay in regular touch with the State health commissioner, Dr. Zucker. On this question, are you hearing about any particular areas of concern with the city nursing homes?

Commissioner Barbot: So, we are in close coordination with the State – excuse me, close coordination with the State on nursing homes. And prior to the start of this – the upscale in this outbreak, we had actually sent out, a number of surgical masks to the nursing homes in anticipation of increasing cases. And to my knowledge, there aren't any ongoing outbreaks, but again things are moving very quickly. They're always in flux and my staff and the State staff are working closely to ensure that we are especially vigilant with nursing homes, long-term care facilities. The Governor has restricted access to those facilities, again, trying to minimize the number of individuals who may show up to them who are symptomatic.

Cheng: Next, we have Mark Morales from CNN.

Question: Hey guys, how are you doing?

Mayor: Good. How are you doing?

Question: Good. So, I had a couple of questions. The first was in regards to the testing centers in Manhattan. Why were they canceled and what's the status of what FEMA is doing?

Mayor: So, let's see – I want to make sure we're getting the right person on this one. We're not talking about Health + Hospitals, you're talking about the work that we're now going to be doing with FEMA for testing. Is that right?

Question: Right, right. And the location that was going to be there in Manhattan.

Mayor: Right. So, I think that Deanne Criswell, I believe, is on the line, our Emergency Management Commissioner. Deanne, do you want to speak to – and, Deanne, I want to remind everyone served – she's done many things in her life, firefighter, air force officer, but also served at FEMA. So, she's quite familiar with how to coordinate with them. Deanne, can you speak to that situation?

Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Office of Emergency Management: Yes, I absolutely can. So, FEMA did provide some testing equipment and personal protective equipment and we were originally going to set up five separate drive through sites. Right now, in an effort to utilize the limited resources that we have while still expanding the city's overall testing capacity, we are going to be co-locating these testing sites now with our Health + Hospitals location so we can maximize their use in those locations while making the best use of some of the personal protective equipment that is in really limited supply.

Mayor: Yeah, and, Mark, I want to emphasize we're, you know, it's so painful to think of the greatest city in the world with the greatest health care organizations, the greatest professionals on earth – I mean, we, we are so blessed, but if you don't have equipment and you don't have supplies, it's a whole different ballgame. And we all know that when we really needed the testing, when it could have been absolutely strategically crucial, we didn't have it. And now, we're at a point where we have to treat testing on a priority basis given this massive community spread. But even that has to now be thought about in terms of the supplies and the equipment needed, even just to keep the testing going as much as we want because the first obligation is to save human lives. And when we're having to wonder, are there going to be enough masks, for example, for medical personnel, first responders, for everyone who is at the front line saving lives, it gets more and more complex by the day, the considerations that all of our health care and emergency management professionals are making with, you know, no guarantees of resupply and supplies dwindling constantly. I said, originally, you know, I thought the thing we needed to worry about is the first or second week of April. I unfortunately can't say that anymore. Right now, even getting through the month of March is getting harder. Certainly, we expect tremendous difficulties in the first week of April if we don't get resupplied. So, everything is changing by the day in our calculations. And, you know, it all comes down to if we don't start to change that supply situation, we don't get the help we deserve, we're going to have to make even more challenging decisions.

Question: The other question I had was in regards to Rikers. It's about those two dormitories, about the inmates who were inside who are not going outside of their dormitory and I think there are the refusing meals. What's being done about that? What are the conditions there? And can you give more specifics as to the monitoring process of inmates when they're going to be released?

Mayor: We'll get you more on the monitoring. We are obviously creating this approach as we go along, but it's based on some of the other work that we do with supervise release. So, we'll get you details on that. In terms of the situation on Rikers, we again don't have confirmation of the specifics, so don't want to comment until we do have confirmation. Our job is to protect everyone. There's a lot of extraordinary professionals who provide correctional health on Rikers and other facilities. Obviously, our Corrections officers who protect everyone. And we, obviously – look, the one positive X factor here is compared to compared to six years ago, we literally have half the population in our jail system we had six years ago. We used to be around 11,000-plus and now we're between 5,000-5,500. And we do think we'll be in a position very soon to start acting on hundreds of releases. But this is being created very, very urgently and also in a way we've never had to do before. And so, there's a lot being worked through. We'll have more to say on all of that, you know, in the coming hours as we have more detail.

Cheng: Next we have Rosa –

Mayor: Who is it?

Cheng: Rosa, from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you doing?

Mayor: Good.

Question: Good. So, I'm hearing from construction workers who don't understand why they're still building luxury condos and offices. They're cramming into an elevator to go up 50 stories to work on a luxury condo right now. And they want to know why the DOB is not shutting down sites, including sites with reported positive cases. Why should construction on these sites – these kind of sites – be continuing? Why aren't you instructing DOB to shut down building on sites like that?

Mayor: Rosa, we are working within the parameters of the State emergency order. This is something I know like every other piece of the equation that's being constantly assessed. And I care about the safety of those construction workers. And I want to be very clear, if any construction worker is sick, they should stay home. If anyone gets sick on the job, they need to get immediately home or if it's something urgent, of course, to care. But, right now, the State guidance – and this is true in California to the best of my understanding, it was certainly true in San Francisco, but the guidance was to continue that work because it is outdoors, because clearly any part of the economy can still allow people to have a livelihood that's so important as we see so many other people losing their livelihood, and because a lot of what is constructed obviously is crucial to our future. You and I would agree that luxury condos are not the priority in this city, but there's a lot of other things being worked on that are important because we will come out of this crisis and we will be playing the long game, as Commissioner Shea said. So, as I understand it, that is the State guidance at this moment, and I believe it is the same in California, but it's something we're going to monitor all the time, and if they're specific sites we don't think are safe for specific reasons, we always retain the right to act on those. If there's any particular site, you know of, we want to understand that so we can do follow up inspections right away.

Question: Yeah, I do. And I've passed them on to DOB. But just to follow up – I understand that the State does not make any differentiation between essential construction that, you know, [inaudible] infrastructure and things that are, you know, like I've referred to, the offices, the condos. I've talked to people who are outfitting corporate offices right now, like, that are – that are totally empty, the insides of them. I mean, do you personally think that there should be some differentiation here?

Mayor: Rosa, I want whatever's going to keep people safe and I'm also concerned simultaneously, obviously, that anyone who can keep making own living within the parameters of the State pause order, that still has value. So, I am moved by your question to say we need to look at any individual situation that might need to be treated differently. And I certainly think it's a very important conversation for us to have with the State about whether we want to think about differentiation by type of construction. But I'm not offering personal opinions in the middle of a crisis. I'm hearing your question. I think it's a fair question. Best way for us to handle this is to have a real conversation with the State and get us all aligned on how we want to handle this for this coming week. But Rosa, I'll say to you and all your colleagues, any rule, any approach, you know, could change by the week, by the day, depending on changing conditions.

Cheng: Next we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Yeah. Thanks for taking my question, Mayor. I just wanted to go back to the possibility of closing some streets to vehicular traffic. Are there any details under consideration at this time, like the number of blocks or which parts of the city would be involved that you can share at this time?

Mayor: You know, I think some people, I believe Speaker Johnson is one of them, has said, look at the model from the Summer Streets program and, you know, consider that as an option. I think that's a helpful of something to look at. But I want to emphasize, Shant, we are not acting yet on that. This is – I wish I could describe to you what we are all doing in terms of the day to day, hour to hour, constant decision making, constant adjustment. It feels like our lives are one endless conference call these last days. But I say that only to say this point, we are constantly making changes and updates. So, what I'm being blunt about is, here's how we're starting this coming week. We're starting this coming week with a focus on parks and playgrounds. That's where you go. And streets are open as normal. But we're going to see how that goes. We're going to see how enforcement goes. We're going to see how many people come out and how they handle it. If we think it's smart to open up some alternatives, we're only going to do that when we have a clear plan and we have clear enforcement in place. The last thing I want to do is create new places for people to congregate with no enforcement. That would be absolutely contradictory to the State order. So, one thing at a time, we do not have a specific plan for those streets yet. I want to affirm that there is no specific plan. There is no order that’s been given, but we are going to consider it.

Question: Got it. And just briefly, can you say who is kind of a scrutinizing everything right now? [Inaudible] who the players are?

Mayor: I mean, it's – since all of this is kind of run-and-gun, obviously, because we're dealing with an ever-changing crisis, we certainly – we’re going to work with the City Council. They've had a lot of good ideas, we want to hear them, and they understand their communities. We're going to work with DOT, of course. I think Parks obviously has a lot to say. But I'm going to really say, the Health Commissioner and Police Commissioner are going to be the first stops on that discussion, because why would we open those streets only if we thought it would not endanger people obviously. So, we have to solve for the negative first. If we think opening up more – or, I should say, closing off streets and opening up those spaces for recreation would create danger. We're not going to do it, plain and simple. We're not going to do it if we think it's going to be a net negative. If we think it might be a positive, we still need an enforcement mechanism. So, that's how we're going to start the discussion. You've heard some of the others who will be in it. But I am emphasizing, I want to be crystal clear, not happening unless I say it's happening and we're going to be working closely with the State to align strategies. So, I want to be really careful in a crisis that an idea is out there – if an idea is out there that I think is absolutely unworkable, I'll say, period, we're not doing that or we're not doing that, you know, in the foreseeable future. If an idea is a good and interesting idea, like this one, I'll say we're going to consider it. But I don't want people turning, we'll consider it, into, oh this is definitely going to happen, because a lot of stuff is not going to happen in this kind of environment or we may like an idea but may turn out to be not workable where we have really sharp health and safety imperatives that we have to meet. So, definitely will be considered, stay tuned, but not happening now.

Cheng: Next up, we have Shayna, from the Washington Post.

Question: Hi. So, recognizing that the strategy is to provide tests on a priority basis, has there been thought to testing frontline city workers – NYPD, FDNY, also, I guess, private EMS – who are non-symptomatic with the idea that you could take them out of circulation and avoid spreading the virus throughout the ranks?

Mayor: I think, again, I suspect what the Commissioner is about to say is community spread. And again, the whole reorientation we've had to go through with a changing reality with how pervasive this disease is becoming. But, Commissioner Barbot –

Commissioner Barbot: Right, so the recommendation would be the same. We're not going to be testing asymptomatic individuals, individuals who are symptomatic. We want to make sure that they take themselves out of – excuse me, out of circulation as quickly as possible. The reality is that the best way to avoid propagating the illness is to ensure that symptomatic individuals stay home, limit their outside contact to only the most essential activities. If they have someone who can go out for them to get food, medicine, et cetera, that's the best thing. Reminding individuals that 80 percent of the folks who do develop symptoms will have mild symptoms and that usually within about seven to 10 days, those symptoms will resolve. We want people to then come back to work seven days after onset of symptoms, three days after their fever has gone, whichever is longest. But the most important thing is for symptomatic individuals to stay out of circulation, whether or not they are first responders, because the reality is that when we've got widespread community transmission it's implicit that anybody you can come in contact with who is not one of your household members, you have to assume that they are symptomatic. And that's why we want to make sure that people stay at least six feet apart.

Mayor: Shayna, I'd also say, you know, we're still in a situation of tremendous scarcity with testing. If that situation changed profoundly, we'd look at again. I don't think it’ll ever have the same strategic impact it would have, you know, a month or more ago. But I think it's a common sense point, and the Commissioner can speak to this, that, you know, if you had endless testing capacity, you still have the challenge that a negative today could be a positive tomorrow. And it's, I think, the symptoms – at least, I believe, Commissioner – this is what our health care leadership believe – since the jury's still out on asymptomatic transfer, the symptomatic people are the folks that we know for sure there's a concern, much greater likelihood of spread, and that is dispositive. If someone's symptomatic, they’re symptomatic. I mean, that's something we know tangibly in a way that even testing might not give us the clearest picture. Is that – I'm trying as a layman.

Commissioner Barbot: Right. No, I think that's a good point. I think for the foreseeable future, I don't see a scenario where we get real-time results back. And so, any delay in someone taking themselves out of circulation then unnecessarily exposes other individuals to potentially contracting the illness.

Mayor: Whereas symptoms are visible and immediate and you know what you're dealing with – that kind of common sense.

Go ahead –

Cheng: Next, we have Sydney from Gothamist.

Question: Sydney with Gothamist. So, just going back to the releasing people from city jails that I know a few people have touched on here. You said that you're identifying – you've identified another 200 you hope to release. And so, I know that the Board of Correction has identified hundreds of people who are older than 50 with underlying health conditions in jail for technical reasons, but 551 of those are in DOC custody serving a city sentence of one year or lasts or under one year for low level offenses. And my understanding is that, you know, they've called on you as the Mayor to use your executive power to release those people. That's 551. So, where are you getting the 200 number from? And could you elaborate a little bit on how many people you hope to be able to release beyond those 200?

Mayor: Sydney, no. I'm going to be straight forward with you. We do not have a magic number at this point. This is something we've never dealt with before. And Commissioner Shea, First Deputy Mayor Fuleihan, his Chief of Staff Freya Riel, Liz Glazer, our Director of the Office of Criminal Justice – we're all trying to create a new approach here from scratch. We're all talking rapidly and constantly trying to figure this out. There is not a perfect target number. The Board of Corrections Letter gave one interpretation of reality. I respect the board, but I don't think it was most complete explanation of what's really going on. Within each of those categories, there are real variations and real differences from inmate to inmate in terms of criminal record and other factors. So, it's just not, bluntly, as that letter portrays. The group of 200 is the next pool, if you will, of people we are considering. I am not saying we're going to release X amount or Y amount. I'm saying we have 200 we're looking at right now that we're going to decide by tomorrow and then it's just going to be constantly rolling. But we have to do – I think it's a very complex equation because we need the right kind of monitoring and supervision. We have to make sure that's there. We need to ensure that the people we’re releasing we feel relative comfort are not likely to re-offend or do serious crimes, because we have to balance all of the factors here. And the health conditions of people, absolutely crucial factor. But there's a deep concern that we not create a situation that we are uncomfortable with in terms of the ability to know what the outcomes will be because you don't want to create a new problem trying to solve an original problem. And we have to take the public safety elements into account. It's very thorny. But one thing we know is we have to move quickly and we will.

Question: Okay. And so, just to follow up on that. The latest understanding I have is that there are 38 people who tested positive for the virus in city jails. That's a combination of staff and detainees. And so, I'm wondering, do you know the sense of the spread that is already existing in city jails? And do you know across which city jails that is? Is it beyond Rikers?

Mayor: I don't have that in front of me. I don't know if Commissioner Barbot knows if it's just Rikers or beyond Rikers. I think you've answered the point, obviously, numerically. We know the number of people who have tested positive. And we know, obviously, as with the whole city, they are going to be, some people have not yet shown symptoms but are positive. But we don't have a perfect model for this. We know it's an urgent matter, by definition. It just the nature of incarceration. So, this is – again, it's a tough, tough equation we have to work through very, very quickly. But we're all working together to get these answers and make decisions quickly, particularly for folks – anyone, we think there's a particular medical vulnerability that will be the front of the line.

Commissioner Barbot: We don't have information about whether it's Rikers or beyond, but we can get back to you on that

Cheng: Last up for today, we have Yoav.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask two questions about the testing priority. One of them is just based on the number of confirmed cases, the percentage of people under 50 who have been confirmed. It comprises 56 percent of the confirmations. I'm trying to understand, given the criteria for getting tested, how so many people under 50 would have even been tested at this point, because I thought the initial criteria was being over 50 with preconditions. And now, it's largely people who are either hospitalized or might require hospitalizations, if I got that correct. So, yeah, I guess, why would so many people under 50 have been tested at this point?

Mayor: I'll start and I'll turn to Commissioner Barbot. Yoav, I think, you know, you've seen it that in the course of the last few weeks, we've been rapidly evolving and changing from a situation where – it seems like a very quaint time long, long, long ago, but it's only a few weeks ago where we were still trying to get testing in when it could have had a more strategic impact. And, you know, we would talk about, you know, a handful of cases in a day. I think it's fair to say that the testing prioritization has changed radically over the last days in particular. And remember that a lot of folks early on were getting testing, you know, from different parts of our community without that prioritization. So, I think that's part of it. What we're seeing again on the difference between who's been tested versus who's been hospitalized is striking, that we – and obviously, who is in most danger in terms of, you know, preserving their lives. The fact that 35 percent of the hospitalizations are folks over 70, more than three times the representation of that group in the population. The fact that we've seen no deaths in people between zero and – you know, birth, I should say, and 44 years old. You know, it keeps confirming that we need to shift as much of our focus as humanly possible to protecting folks who are older and have those preexisting conditions. Now, I'll say it, and the Commissioner will say it better than me, there are people under 50 with preexisting conditions that we clearly are concerned about and that's a group of people that obviously there are situations where they absolutely need to be tested. But I think the answer is that where we started, you know, a few weeks ago versus where we are now, it's a much tighter prioritization now and I think as you see testing levels going forward, they will follow that prioritization more and more.

Commissioner Barbot: I think that's right, Mr. Mayor. We, through the course of the changing nature of this outbreak, have been adapting, if you will, to the changes that came down from the CDC in terms of testing recommendations. I think that there are a lot of people who in the early period were getting the message, get tested, get tested. We're trying to change not only provider behavior, but also New Yorker behavior and having people feel comfortable with the fact that as we are in a greater proportion of people having COVID-19, meaning widespread community transmission, that the importance of being tested goes down evermore, unless you are in one of those priority categories. And even though we've said, you know, greater than 50 with those five preexisting conditions, I think the reality is that there are many New Yorkers who may be less than 50 and have those chronic conditions. So, I think what we're seeing is a shift in changing behavior between New Yorkers, providers, and the available availability of testing. And so, my hope is – and we're trying to put measures in place that over time we will see an increase in testing of older individuals and a decrease in that younger age group. Though, certainly, it is up to provider discretion if they have patients they feel are not getting better, because, again, we don't want to completely discourage people from getting tested if indeed they are not getting better after three or four days of being home sick.

Question: Okay. Thank you. And just along the same lines real quickly, there was a photo by my colleague David Goodman – our colleague, I guess, I should say – outside of Elmhurst Hospital of people waiting to get tested at the tent, and it looks like there's a good 50 to 80 people there standing in line. And this was after the change that, that focused on testing the folks who are hospitalized or kind of severely ill who might require hospitalization. So, I guess my question is, am I to assume that everyone out there, you know, meets that criteria? And, if so, I guess I'm just wondering if that is the best method to test people who might be severely ill –

Mayor: Yoav, let me jump in on that, and then Dr. Katz, it's a very good question. I don't – you know, we're trying our damnedest to take an immense amount of information and make it clear and sometimes I think we don't fill in the blanks as well as we need to. So, I'm glad you raised this. But I think we've said it in press conferences, but not nailed it really, as clearly as it needs to be. Priority people – that means, you know, folks who were really worried about their fundamental health and their potential obviously have severe, severe ramifications. That's not, generally speaking, folks who are younger and healthier, but folks who could easily end up hospitalized or, God forbid, even in danger for their lives. That's one of the priorities for testing. But the other thing that we've said over recent press conferences is to relieve pressure on emergency rooms appropriately where people are coming in with specific situations that are worthy and need to be addressed and we're trying not to let the emergency room be overloaded. We have the folks outside of emergency rooms who are turning away folks who do not need to be there at all or diverting them to another location where they should be, but also the testing capacity to protect the emergency rooms, the ability to serve people who need it most. So, Mitch will speak to that. But I also want to note to Mitch and to everyone, you know, even in a situation like that where we're trying to make sure we're serving people, if the wrong kind of lines develop, and this is something Dermot and I have spoken about, we understand there will be lines some places in New York City if folks are waiting to go the grocery store or a pharmacy in some places or to get tested – lines needs social distancing. You know, we don't like lines at all. I think Dr. Barbot does not like any kind of line, but if you have a legitimate line, you know, we need social distancing in the line and there may be times when PD for example says about something – you know, we don't think this is a smart way to do this line and we want people to go away and come back later and there's different ways we'll deal with it. But for that specific situation, let's presume our friends at Health + Hospitals would be very careful to do line management. Mitch Katz, please explain for that line why other folks there are being tested and how that fits with keeping your emergency room going.

President Katz: Yes, sir. When we opened up the tent, we gave tremendous relief to the emergency department so that they could focus on the sickest patients. Those patients were previously coming forward, and, of course, everyone has to be assessed, because some people really do need to be emergency care, but the tent has allowed us to have them be – mild illness to be assessed in a different place, to not take up the emergency room time. I'll add that in that picture your colleague took, you'll notice that the people online are all wearing masks. And we put the – we give people who are standing on that line of masks to decrease the chance that they will cough or sneeze on anybody else. And of course, it's also much better for them to be on line in the outside with the free air than sitting in a waiting room in a closed hospital.

Mayor: Well said, Dr. Katz. With that, thank you, everyone. I hope we were able to share a lot of helpful information and we will see you tomorrow.

Thank you, everyone.

2020-03-23 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, everyone, we’re starting out a week that we've never seen before – anything like this before. This is going to be a very challenging week, a week where we're going to get used to doing things that are absolutely unprecedented in our lives. So, I think it's safe to say that as we woke up this morning, this Monday, looked very different than any Monday we've ever experienced.

I want to talk about what we all will be doing and will need to do to make these adjustments and to deal with our new reality. But I want to talk about against the painful backdrop of this surge of this disease, the fact that we're seeing milestones in the growth of this disease that are just absolutely staggering. Things we could not have imagined even a week or two ago, we've now passed by quite a bit – 10,000 cases of coronavirus here in New York City. We are as of this morning on the verge of having lost a hundred New Yorkers for a disease that would, most of us had never heard of a few months ago – that seemed to just have the smallest presence in our city just weeks ago – it now has become the dominant reality and we're all trying to make sense of that together. But, suffice it to say that we now – all of us – fully understand what we're up against and we are taking every conceivable action as a city working with the state government and now increasingly working with the federal government, to address this crisis, to try and every way we can to slow the growth of this disease, to help everyone in need, and to get through to the day when this will be part of our history, not the reality we're living. Right now, for so many people it’s just a day-to-day adjustment trying to figure out how to live with these new rules, trying to figure out how to adapt. For so many people trying to figure out how to get the basics of life even if you aren't being paid anymore, you don't have a job anymore - so much uncertainty, so much fear, so much anxiety. That's what I hear everywhere I go.

Look, what we all have to do is help each other. But we in government particularly have to help you to understand this new reality and help you navigate it, support you through it. And so, I'll talk about some of the big picture reality, but I'll also keep coming back to the day-to-day reality; how important it is for us all to stay home to the maximum extent possible. To really understand that what we do will affect the overall situation, not just for ourselves and our families, but for everyone else. And that social distancing is so important for all of us.

I will tell you again these very painful facts about the situation. Our city right now, confirmed cases as of the last count this morning already 12,339 New Yorkers have tested positive for COVID-19. I want people to understand that at this point we're about 60 percent of the cases in New York State are here in our City. About 35 percent of the cases in the entire country are here in this City. We are the epicenter of this crisis. No one wants that distinction. Not a single one of us, but it is true that we are the epicenter of this crisis and that's why we so desperately need help, particularly from our federal government to get through it. As I said, at this, as of this moment, 99 confirmed deaths related to Coronavirus. We know more are coming and that again, those are not statistics, those are human beings, those are friends, those are our loved ones. The breakout by borough, Queens has 3,621 cases, Brooklyn 3,494, Manhattan 2,572, the Bronx 1,829 and Staten Island 817. It's a very tough time, but it is not a time for people to give-up to say the least because this fight has just begun. It is not a time for hopelessness because we finally see things starting to happen and first and foremost New Yorkers are making things happen.

I had the opportunity today to be on Roosevelt Island visiting the Coler hospital facility and there – right this minute – new hospital beds are being created right now so that we will have additional capacity to handle this surge in coronavirus cases and to make sure that everyone else who needs hospital care for other diseases and challenges will have support as well. On Roosevelt Island at Coler, 100 new beds will be available this week, 240 will be available next week. It's just one example of many to come where we're finding new ways to create hospital space for those who need it. And of course, we heard great news today about the Javits Center and so happy to say the Army Corps of Engineers working with FEMA, working with the State of New York, all of us working together, setting up a new field hospital at the Javits Center. This was something absolutely crucial and we've been pushing for the federal government to bring in everything they have, every form of support and everyone knows the great work of the Army Corps of Engineers. This will mean a thousand new beds. That's going to be extraordinarily helpful.

I want to talk about supplies as well, which are absolutely crucial. Equipment and supplies we're going to need to get through not only this crisis over many weeks, but what we need to do to get through just the next days, just the next week or two. And I do want to say on a positive note, I had a long and detailed conversation last night with President Trump and Vice President Pence. And we got into real specifics about the challenges facing New York City. I emphasized to both the President and Vice President that we particularly in our public hospitals are dealing with honestly a day-to-day reality where we have to make sure that there'll be more and more equipment and supplies coming in to deal with a surging demand of people in need. I'm very pleased to say that conversation focused on ventilators - in particular - as the single most important, most urgently needed piece of equipment. And today we received the good news that 400 ventilators from the federal stockpile are arriving now to help New York City. That's going to make a huge difference. Now, our need for ventilators is in the thousands, but we're going to fight every day to stay ahead of this curve. We're going to literally be in a race against time, so even 400 ventilators is a huge step forward to help us get through this weekend into next. So, I'm very grateful the federal government has come through with this first-step.

I also had conversations today with Peter Navarro – several conversations – who the President deployed as the individual he's going to have focusing on specific supply requests from New York City. We've talked multiple times today. We've been texting back and forth and again, the focus that I made clear Mr. Navarro is ventilators, but other supplies as well are part of his purview. And again, we see very productive actions in the course of today.

I spoke with Defense Secretary Esper about an hour ago. Continue to emphasize how much we need the military’s help here in New York City. I want to thank the Secretary for the fact that the USNS Comfort is on its way soon to New York, obviously are so appreciative for the presence of the Army Corps of Engineers, but we are going to need so much more going forward and then when New York gets through our crisis the same help is going to be needed from the military all over the nation. So, it is my hope that that military role will continue to expand in the days ahead.

When it comes to supplies, we have been amassing supplies and ensuring that they get out immediately to public and private hospitals across the city and starting today we sent out supplies around the city in total 200,000 N95 masks for our hospitals, 2 million surgical masks and 70,000 face shields. Additional help is coming from both the federal government and the State government, that includes 430,000 more surgical masks, 170,000 more N95 masks, 175,000 pairs of gloves, 98,000 face shields and 72,000 surgical gowns. So, we'll be giving regular updates, but you can see these are substantial quantities. And yet, I think everyone knows we're going to need constantly to get a supply because the number of cases will keep growing and the number of medical personnel that we're going to need will keep expanding, number of facilities will keep expanding, so these numbers represent something good, which is the flow of supplies to where they're needed, but we're going to need a lot more where that came from. And we're going to focus on getting supplies from all over the country from obviously the federal, state government, any private sources we can find, any philanthropic sources and we're going to be manufacturing our own here in New York City, cause we're going to be at this for a while. We're going to need all of that to get through.

There are some companies that have really stepped up. I think it's really important to give credit where credit is due. So, I want to thank the ASO Corporation of Florida who has sent 600,000 vinyl gloves to New York City. I want to thank American Express for putting together 36,000 N95 masks. Merck Pharmaceuticals, sending half a million surgical masks and then companies here that are stepping up to produce right here in New York City; Boyce Technologies, Bednark Studio, MakerSpace, and Adafruit, all local companies that have agreed to help us by producing tens of thousands of face shields right here in New York City. All of this is going to make a difference. Every single one of these efforts matter. And this is how we save lives to make sure these supplies are always available to our brave and heroic health care workers. So, thank you to all of these companies for stepping-up.

I want to make clear as we all get into this new reality. We all have been told, I think very, very clearly to think about the difference between what's essential and what's not essential. At this point since we passed 8:00 pm last night, non-essential businesses, non-essential activities are a part of the past and that is going to be true for weeks to come. At this point since we passed 8:00 pm last night, non-essential businesses, non-essential activities are a part of the past, and that's going to be true for weeks to come. So, non-essential businesses closed down. The things we all used to think were normal. The things we used to do for leisure and fun, the things we used to spend time and money on, we're not doing that anymore, honestly. We're doing something different now. So essential businesses are what are allowed to be opened. Grocery stores, pharmacies, food establishments that provide delivery and take out, obviously, the kinds of businesses that we are going to depend on to get through this.

And another thing we have to recognize that’ll be different. We're used to – we’re New Yorkers, we're used to crowds, we're used to lines, we're used to being close together. Not anymore. We're not going to allow crowds to form. We're not going to allow lines where people are tightly packed next to each other. We're not going to allow any indoor space to get overcrowded. We're not going to allow outdoor spaces to get overcrowded. From this point on, everyone needs to understand social distancing. Six feet apart on every side. The obvious exception is when you're with the people who live under the same roof with you. The family, whatever the composition of your family, those you live with. Obviously, that's different because you're in close proximity all the time. And if you live with someone else, and you're out on the street, just the same way as you would be living together, close together, that's fine. We understand that. But for people who you do not live under the same roof with, you're going to have to practice the social distancing and we're going to help, the city of New York, all our agencies will be there to educate people, to remind people, to warn people, sometimes to step in and help people create more separation. We're going to be doing that very, very energetically from this point on.

And we've made clear that everyone we understand who has to go out for groceries or for medicines or for a little bit of exercise or walk the dog, that's okay. But for as little time as possible. And there are some people who should not go out. And those are the folks who are the most vulnerable, the folks who really have to avoid any other contact with other people. And that means, especially outside their family obviously, and that means folks over 70 and folks with those serious preexisting conditions, medical conditions.

So now, to the question of our parks and the places that we are used to going outside. We want to get some exercise, some recreation, as Commissioner Dermot Shea, and I said yesterday, we're going to focus in the first days on education and warnings and a lot of NYPD presence and also the presence of many other city agencies, obviously the parks department included. We're going to focus, we're going to have signage out to help people understand, lots of messages that you'll hear constantly letting people know how this is going to work, and you have to practice social distancing. And that if we see people in groups, we're going to break them up. If we see a place that's too crowded, we are going to get people to disperse.

And also, I want to say to my fellow New Yorkers, this week's going to be decisive. We want to see how this is going. We're going to work with the State of New York to figure out what the law, the rules I should say, will be for the longer term. This week is our chance to test different approaches. We need to make sure people will practice social distancing in our parks and playgrounds. And if we don't think it can be done, we're going to have to come up with tougher rules. So, it really is incumbent upon all New Yorkers to do your damndest to live by this new reality.

As our officers go around monitoring and enforcing, the more we see people practicing social distancing, the more we see people avoiding crowds and really greeting some space, the more we can allow folks the opportunity to use parks and playgrounds fully. If we see that we're just not seeing enough evidence that people are getting the message, we're going to be tougher about getting that message out and more enforcement. If that's still not working, we could easily get to the point soon where we say, you know what, we're not going to be allowed to be able to allow playgrounds to be open. I don't want to do that. I don't think a lot of New Yorkers want to see that happen. But the only way we keep playgrounds open is if people really honor the rules. Don't overcrowd them. We don't need family groups mixing with each other. We don't need kids playing with kids outside of their families. I know it's strange. I know it's difficult. I really do. But this is the reality we have to make sense of. So, if everyone is tough and strong as New Yorkers are, we can find a way to strike that balance.

What will not be allowed in parks at all is any larger gatherings, and no team sports activity, which again pains me as someone who loves sports and still plays team sports. It's just not going to be possible. Team sports, pretty much in every case, involves close contact. It does not allow for social distancing. So, this has to be something that we've just let go for now. But hopefully in the months ahead we can all get back to. We're also not going to allow barbecues, which obviously are social activities. We know that's going to be tough as the weather gets warmer. But again, that's just for the duration of this immediate crisis. And then when we get through it, we can go back to normal.

So, you will see a lot of enforcement, a lot of personnel. You'll see first and foremost the NYPD that is going to make this a high priority to be present around parks and playgrounds. But you're also going to see teams from the FDNY. You're going to see teams from the Sheriff's Office, from the Office of Special Enforcement, from the Department of Buildings, you’re going to see teams from the Sanitation Department, our Community Affairs Unit here at the Mayor's Office, our Office of Neighborhood Safety at the Mayor's Office. And of course, from the Department of Parks and Recreation, you're going to see in every case a lot of presence. And please, I’m going to state the obvious to my fellow New Yorkers, when an officer asks you to move along, move along, they ask you to disperse as part of the crowd, disperse. If they remind you that you've been out exercising, and it's time to go home, go home. We really need people to recognize our officers are simply telling us what we need to do to keep safe and to stop this disease from continuing its extraordinary growth. That's the whole mission will be to keep people safe now and in the future. So, please follow the instructions of our officers.

Some other updates. And I will go through different items quickly. And then we'll hear from the chancellor, and then open up to questions from the media. You know, I've been calling on the federal government and I talked to President Trump and Vice President Pence about this last night. I've mentioned, I talked about ventilators. I talked about the need for medical personnel, including from the armed forces. We went into detail about that.

But I also talked about the situation that our public and private hospitals are facing where right now they are dealing with huge new surges of cases and it's tremendously difficult for them and it's costing them so much in human terms, but also in financial terms. Public and private hospitals need help from the federal government. Cities, towns, counties, states all have been constantly stressed over these last weeks and we'll be much more stressed in the weeks ahead. Massive new expenses, plummeting revenue. I've made very clear, we've got to have help in the legislation as being discussed right now in Washington. Hundreds of billions of dollars we need for localities and States, hundreds of billions to help our hospitals get through this everywhere in the country. I'm hoping and praying we'll see that support from the federal government. We're certainly fighting hard and I know our senators and our house delegation are as well.

But while we're hoping that some relief may be coming, the size of the deficits ahead are huge. We again, you cannot have billions of dollars in new expenses while simultaneously losing billions of dollars in revenue without having a massive problem. So, knowing that we're going to have severe challenges with our city budget, I have instructed our office of management budget to initiate a peg program immediately. That means a mandatory initiative requiring city agencies to cut their spending. This is going to be a very difficult exercise. Given the backdrop of this crisis. I want to be very clear, we will not cut spending related to COVID 19 response. If it has anything to do directly with stopping the spread of coronavirus, of course, that's where we're going to prioritize spending. That's where a lot of our new spending is. But outside of that area, every agency will be asked to help. All in different ways. But the specific goals that will be given to each agency by the office of management budget will be obligatory. We have to make these cuts in light of an ever-worsening budget situation. And I say that with no joy, but I know it is time for us to do this. Looking ahead, just weeks until the next step in our budget process, the executive budget.

Another important topic, our jails. I'll be updating New Yorkers daily on this situation. We continue to ensure that there's additional healthcare capacity for our jail population. We continue to ensure that there's ample space for any inmates who need to be isolated. One thing we have, particularly on Rikers Island, is space because our jail population is less than half of what it was six years ago, thank God. Today, through the combination of efforts by the city and the district attorney's, 75 individuals have been released from our city jails. There are more being immediately reviewed that are under state jurisdiction, but in our city jails. We'll have an update on them shortly.

In the course of this evening, I will be given results of an effort by the Department of Corrections and NYPD and our Mayor's Office for Criminal Justice to review a list of approximately 200 inmates for potential release. From that list, a number will be determined, and we will make the decision this evening on what that exact number will be and then they will be released. Whatever that specific number of inmates, those individuals will be released tomorrow. Then starting in the morning, an additional group of between 100 and 200 will be reviewed quickly. We hope to make decisions on them very quickly. But I think to be safe, I would say those decisions will come Wednesday. But this process will be ongoing. It will be constant to determine what is the right number of people and who are the right people to release, and under what conditions to make sure everyone is safe, but also to make sure we look out for the health and wellbeing of all. So, we'll have constant updates on that.

Two more points, then I'm going to just give you a quick summary in Spanish. Been a lot of questions about city services that we normally expect and city offices that are normally open and obviously a lot has been suspended, a lot’s been altered. A lot of things we depend on aren't there right now. Anything you want to check on for City services or offices to know if they're open or if they're operational, you can go to nyc.gov. Right there on the homepage, you can click into a list and see exactly what is still available and what isn't. And anytime you have a question, you can always call 311— to get a clearer picture. I want to take one moment before I close to talk directly to New Yorkers with disabilities. I know there's tremendous concern in our disability community dealing with all the unknowns everyone else is dealing with, but needing to make sure that there'll be sensitivity and concern in our City government and all the institutions of our society – that there'll be information flowing and messages that will be helpful and necessary information for the community, that everything that we do takes into account all New Yorkers, including so many fellow New Yorkers who have a disability and who needs support at this moment. The fact is we are focused on making sure that every New Yorker gets the support they need during this crisis and anyone who has a specific concern and needs help can reach out to our Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities. And I want to thank Commissioner Victor Calise and his whole team in that office who do extraordinary work all the time, but have really risen to the occasion in this crisis. Anyone who needs more information or needs help can call 311 or visit nyc.gov/disability for more information and deaf New Yorkers specifically can connect through video phone at 646-396-5830, I'll say that number again, 646-396-5830.

Quickly in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, I want to talk— I want turn to, I should say, our Chancellor. And Chancellor, you and your team, I know you have not gotten a lot of sleep these last days because you've been trying to recreate the nation's largest school system – virtually something that's never been done before on this scale. But I can tell from the smile on your face that you've had a good start today. So, really want to thank you and your team for the extraordinary effort. We look forward to your update. Chancellor Richard Carranza –

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for your leadership in these very trying times. Just to give some context to what happened today in New York City, if you took all of the public schools in Los Angeles, you added all of the public schools in Chicago and you threw in the public schools in Boston. All of those schools today converted to a new way of learning and teaching in the— in America's largest City. We converted how students learn and how teachers teach with only days to be able to do that. So, I am here this evening to give thanks and kudos to our incredible educators, our leaders, our students, our parents who have taken on this challenge to make sure that students in this very difficult time period will continue to be engaged academically and we'll continue to be able to add to their knowledge base for however long we go.

Today is day one of a new reality for the 1.1 million students and families in New York City. And although these days are uncertain and, at times, frightening, we must all pay attention to the work of our administrators, staff, teachers and families. That's what's been the focus today, and what I saw today was nothing short of incredible teachers rising to the occasion, administrators rising to the occasion, parents rising to the occasion, students rising to the occasion. So, the two operative words as we go forward are flexibility and patients; those are the two words to keep in mind, flexibility and patience. We are literally flying the plane as we're building the plane. So, not everything is going to go 100as we plan, but that's okay because we'll figure it out together. There were thousands of teachers today that logged into their Google classrooms and they were recording welcome videos and lessons and getting to work with their students.

We had chat rooms where students and their teachers were reconnecting. I saw evidence of kindergarten teachers that sang songs with their students on a video classroom. A myriad of wonderful learning experiences were happening today across our City and we know that many families and students were going to schools.nyc.gov/learn-at-home to access the resources that we have available online not only for educators, but for students and for families. Teachers are making use of the professional learning opportunities that are being offered multiple times throughout the day and throughout the week. And I also want to acknowledge again our parents who we know are managing a myriad of challenges, not only working from home. Some folks are not working right now, but they're helping their children through remote learning opportunities. We promise to continue to work with you to give you the support that you need to help your students stay connected.

We also cannot talk about remote learning without acknowledging that there is a technology gap that exists among our school communities. And I want to start out by saying we are working quickly to make sure every family that needs a device gets a device. If you filled out the – remote learning device survey, I want to say thank you. If you have not yet filled it out, I want to say you need to fill it out and I'll give you the web address and the phone number, in just a minute where you can do that. You can expect if you've already filled out that survey to receive an email in the coming days on the next steps and if you haven't yet received a device, don't worry, you will receive a device. So far including school-based devices, we have handed out approximately 175,000 laptops, iPads and Chromebooks and we have New York become a little blasé when we think about the 1.1 million students, but 175,000 laptops, iPads and Chromebooks are bigger than most school systems in America. Yet, we've distributed that quantity of laptops, iPads and Chromebooks already and we are on pace to continue to distribute the 300,000 iPads to students in the coming weeks.

You'll also be happy to know that I have good news to report from day one of our 93 regional enrichment centers, our recs. About 4,500 students, children of first responders, healthcare workers, and other essential service providers were confirmed to start attending one of our recs as soon as today. Now these are the children of the men and women who are keeping New York City running and safe during this crisis. This is an important service to New Yorkers. Each one of these 4,500 students represents a family of a first responder or a critical care worker that does not need to worry about childcare and continue— can continue to support our city during this critical time. We also had Mr. Mayor and I'm very proud to tell you about 5,000 DOE employees and employees from the community-based organizations that we partner with that stepped up to volunteer to staff our regional – enrichment centers. That's 5,000 volunteers. I want to say to you, thank you, for your service to the children and to our City during this unprecedented time. I'm absolutely blown away by the dedication of our staff and our partners and the sheer number of people who have stepped up in a matter of weeks to ensure that on the front lines, our first responders to COVID-19 have the backup childcare they need to continue to serve the citizens of New York.

Our commitment is to make sure that every student who wants a meal can also get a meal and can continue to get a meal. And while we were serving breakfast and lunch today, we were serving three meals a day to the children of New York City. So, for – at 449 sites across the City in every borough, we served approximately 78,000 meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner for anyone that wanted them. And through our partnership with Door Dash, we delivered 246 meals to our medically fragile students. So, we're serving all of our students in New York City. And as a reminder for anyone that needs a meal, it's very easy to find a site – go to schools.nyc.gov. on the homepage, you will be able to see a link where you'll be able to find information as to where these hubs sites are. Or you can text food – F-O-O-D – or comida – C-O-M-I-D-A – to 877-877, it's just that simple.

As we continue to say the situation and the situation continues to evolve, we'll continue to monitor all of these services day to day, hour by hour to make sure we're meeting the needs of our students. We know there's a lot of unknowns, but what we do know is that we have each other and we do know that if we work together, if we heed the call of our Mayor and all of our Commissioners that are asking us to maintain social distancing, that are asking us not to congregate, we know that we can, as New Yorkers, take this on and as we've done in our history. There's no challenge too big for us to take on.

Mayor: Well said, Chancellor. And thank you to your team. Thank you to all the educators. I want to say to all the educators who are out there making these enrichment centers work. Thank you to all the food service staff, the custodians to the crossing guards, everyone who's making sure that young people who are children of these essential workers are getting this support and everyone's making sure that those food distribution centers are working. Thank you to all of you. It makes a huge, huge difference. Okay. That concludes the opening remarks here. We're going to take questions from the media and I want to just say several of my colleagues from different agencies will be on the phone. So, we will bring them in audio if we get questions pertinent to them. And with that we'll take the first question.

Moderator: Yoav is up first.

Mayor: Go ahead, Yoav.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor [inaudible] for Dr. Barbot. I'm just wondering [inaudible] kind of science the city is following as far as whether the virus hangs in the air and how long it lives on surfaces. The reason I ask is because there seems to be different statements coming from Governor Cuomo and while it does tend to impact people's behavior, if they think something does kind of survive in the air for a little bit such as taking an Uber or Lyft, and also for kind of folks who rely on handrails to get up the stairs. You know, I had a concern about how long it lives on surfaces. So, has the City’s, kind of, science, on those two things changed in, you know, recently –

Mayor: Yoav, let me start and then let me also confirm, is Dr. Barbot hearing us?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah. Okay. So, let me, let me –

Commissioner Barbot: The science [inaudible] –

Mayor: Can she hear me? Oxiris, can you hear me okay?

Moderator: Dr. Barbot, can you hear the Mayor?

Commissioner Barbot: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Okay, does she have feedback?

Commissioner Barbot: [Inaudible] this virus is transmitted through what we call droplets, which means someone coughs, sneezes, and that droplet then makes contact with someone else's hand or mucus membrane such as the mouth, the eyes. And that's how it gets into the body. So that has not changed. This is not an airborne virus such as measles. This is a virus that's spread by droplets. The other thing is when we talked about this before, you know there are studies that have shown that you can make a virus live as long as you could possibly make it live under laboratory conditions, which is very different from what we see in real world scenarios. So I think the important thing is the [inaudible] to New Yorkers and how it applies to their everyday life is, it really shouldn't matter if a virus lives 10 minutes, two hours, two days because the important thing is the guidance that we're giving to New Yorkers hasn't changed, which is the importance of frequent hand washing, the importance of covering your mouth and your nose when you cough in your sneeze, and by all means if you're sick, stay home.

So, while there are studies that have indicated you could make the virus live long under laboratory conditions, the real-world consequences to New Yorkers is the importance of hand-washing. That's number one.

Question: Okay. Thank you. Unrelatedly another question is, you know, there's been quite a bit of focus on the Department of Correction, but a little bit less attention to the youth detention facilities and we understand that there are some staff who work with kids who have tested positive. Is there any kind of similar effort to get some of the youth out of detention like there is at the DOC?

Mayor: We're going to look at, obviously, every situation from a health lens. Huge difference immediately is what we've seen with this disease, the impact it has on older people versus younger people, on those who have those preexisting conditions versus those who are healthier. So, I think it's a very, very different dynamic immediately when you're talking about a youth facility. But we still want to be careful. We want to be mindful. So, you know, we are looking at and will look at it through a health lens, but I don't think it is the same level of challenge as what we're facing with the adult facilities.

Moderator: Sean is up next.

Question: Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. Just wanted to get a few more details on supplies. You originally called for 15,000 ventilators, [inaudible] N95 face masks and a bunch of other things. Did you get a specific commitment from either the president or Peter Navarro to help meet those goals? And do you still want the president to basically enforce the Defense Production Act?

Mayor: No. And yes. It's an excellent question. I appreciate both questions. Look, I appreciated that last night's conversation was a substantial conversation. We, literally – you know, the president and vice president went over the information they had, how they were dealing with things. We talked about a couple of different issues, but then I went to my agenda, which was ventilators, medical personnel, including getting military personnel with medical training here, and of course, the stimulus legislation needing to include funding for public and private hospitals as well as for localities and states. It was a very substantial conversation. I made clear that we were in immediate need, particularly in our public hospitals, and the president specifically designated Peter Navarro as one of the people who would do follow up. And he has been very, very focused today. I want to thank him – been calling up consistently directly with me multiple times in the day, lots of detail.

But what I would say is we appreciate every step forward. Every additional shipment literally could mean the difference between life and death for some New Yorkers, but we're nowhere near, of course, where we need to be. And my job is to fight for this city and to advocate for our people and make sure we get literally everything we need for a crisis that is really in its infancy at this point compared to where we're going. So, I am very happy to have the conversation moving forward and I'm very happy that something’s starting, but we're far from that larger goal of like really seeing the kind of equipment and supplies we need. And that is not any lack of appreciation on my part. I am truly appreciative, but I just know we're in it for the long haul.

And then on the question of the Defense Production Act – no, I fundamentally believe it needs to be fully activated to ensure that we'll have the kind of quantities you're talking about and producing ventilators is not a minor matter. It will take a national effort to ensure that the number of ventilators we need in New York and beyond – this disease is starting to grow in many other places. So that Defense Production Act should be used to the maximum right now for the good of all Americans. I just don't understand why it isn't being done. But right now, you know, there's – I know what my position is and the president still has not made that decision and I'm going to certainly keep pushing him to do so.

Moderator: Mark Morales from CNN is up next. Mark?

Question: Hi, everyone – how are you doing?

Mayor: Hey.

Question: So, I wanted to ask more about the incarcerated folks who were going to be leaving over the next couple of days and the ones that have already left. What is their process to be going – to be released as far as testing, whether or not they've contracted the virus while they were incarcerated? Like what measures, what steps are in place? How do you make sure that you're not releasing people into the population that have – that have this virus?

Mayor: I want to get you the exact answer because it's something that's being worked on by a task force of people between the Department of Corrections and NYPD and our Office of Criminal Justice. And I want to make sure I give you the exact specific facts and I don't have it at my fingertips here. So, we will make sure to get you that answer later on today. But clearly that's being considered and everything else is being considered – the health of the individual overall, the age, the health status overall, obviously on the public safety side what the nature of their offense has been and, you know, the likelihood of a recidivism, a lot of different things are being looked at in the equation. But it's a very good question. We will get you the details on that later on.

Moderator: Julia Marsh is up next. Julia?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Hi. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yep.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor on the 400 ventilators, when did you find out about New York getting those because this morning, you know, you were saying, we're a week away from running out.

Mayor: Yeah, in the course of the afternoon.

Question: Okay. And did you learn that from someone – from who in the federal government?

Mayor: I learned that almost simultaneously from my own team that got information simultaneously hearing it from Peter Navarro.

Question: Josh from WABC is up next – Josh?

Mayor: And I'm sorry, can I just, can we hold on with Josh? I assume Julia can still hear me. That 400, tremendously helpful and it's going to help us get through this week into next week, particularly in our public hospitals, but I don't want Julia or anyone else to imagine that, that is going to take us too far. Again, our request is for 15,000 to get us through April and May. So I want everyone to understand, you know, from now to the end of May, let's call it 10 weeks for a nice round number, 15,000 ventilators is what we think we need. So I'm very, very appreciative for the 400. That will buy us days for sure. But we have a much bigger need we have to fill. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Josh.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Okay. I'm not sure if you're aware, I think just while you've been speaking, the Governor of Florida announced that he’s either about to sign or has signed an executive order requiring anyone traveling from a New York area airport to Florida – that's like almost 200 flights a day – to self-isolate for 14 days. And I guess I'm wondering your reaction to that. Obviously, it reflects what you've said, that we're now the epicenter of this. Do you think that's – I mean, I'd love to hear what your reaction is – is that good policy, should we be doing something similar for people flying here from say, Seattle?

Mayor: I have to be honest with you, Josh, I have always had mixed feelings on travel restrictions. I think some have been intelligent, are intelligent – I think the initial restrictions, for example, related to travel from China when we were at the very beginning and we were hoping to be able to stop this disease from asserting in the United States, I think there was real logic to that. I think at this point, the truth is this disease is in all 50 States. You're going to see community spread eventually all over the nation. It's just a matter of how much we deal with it and try and get ahead of it. So, my sense is it’s a different reality when you already have this kind of spread around the country. I understand it. We are the epicenter.

But I think right now, an answer to your part about our city right now – you know, the challenge we have is not people coming in from outside. It's the fact that it's well – very much has asserted itself throughout the five boroughs. As to the Governor of Florida, look, I'm not sure it's the most enlightened approach. I understand it. I think for a lot of people in Florida, their connection to New York City is very, very deep. And I'm sure a lot of people in Florida are going to be put off by that. But I also have to be honest that I understand if any governor, any official who's trying to grapple with this moment. So, I can't give you an easy, you know, yes or no answer on that one.

Question: Thank you.

Moderator: So, we're going to go back to Julia who had a follow up question. Julia?

Question: Hi. Thanks so much. Mr. Mayor, I'm wondering what your response is to New York Presbyterian Hospitals not allowing partners in the delivery rooms.

Mayor: Yeah, I just heard about that a short while ago and I'd like to understand that better, Julia. I'm unclear what the rationale is. I have a lot of respect for that hospital system for sure. And obviously I understand it is in relationship to this crisis, but at the same time we're talking about an irreplaceable life moment. I mean, I – you know, the moment I was in the delivery room when my kids were born is sort of one of the most important moments in my life, for sure, unquestionably. So, I'm concerned about that because I think it means so much to people, but I'm not a doctor. I'd like to hear more from them on why they think that specifically is the right thing to do before I can give you a better comment.

Moderator: Jennifer, from the AP is up next.

Question: Thank you. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: This is actually a question for the Schools Chancellor. I wondered whether he has attendance figures for today and also on the device issues since I know that he included the school [inaudible] devices along with the ones the City ordered. What is the [inaudible] the need estimated to be for the additional devices?

Chancellor Carranza: I didn't get the last part of your question. What is the, what?

Question: Since, as you noted the schools have also given out some laptops [inaudible] how many more do you think you'd need all together for all the students to have what they need?

Chancellor Carranza: So first of all, with the attendance issue – so we are in the process this week, because this is a new normal, of developing guidance for all of our staff members out in the field and at home on what attendance will look like. Obviously, you don't go to first period, second period, you don't have the morning checking. So, we want to have attendance procedures that make sense. It could look like a myriad of things. When a teacher posts an assignment, when a student is able to then enter Google Classroom and access the assignment, that counts as engagement. That could be attendance. So, we're in the process of working through that along with the New York State Education Department. So, we'll have guidance throughout the course of this week that solidifies what that attendance looks like. That being said, we can't really tell you exactly what it looks like because we know that some schools are still collecting what they think is attendance from self-reporting from the field and then entering it. Again, all of this is in flux – and remember my two operating words, flexibility and patience.

Now, as it pertains to devices, we have done a survey. We've asked parents to submit their answers. We've extended the deadline for that survey. So, we're in the process of actually getting some concrete numbers as to what that gap is in terms of devices and devices that are in the hands of students. We hope to have a little bit more clarity as this week goes by. We do know that there are a number of schools that have actually assigned their in-school technology. So that looks like computer carts or iPad carts that usually stay in the school. Principals and teachers have started assigning those to students to take home so that they can have them for the duration of this stay at home order.

That being said, we also know – I retweeted a picture of a principal who knew of a student that did not have a device. The student's parent called the principal. The principal got in her car, went to the student's home with appropriate gear, and delivered a device to that student. Those are the kinds of unsung heroic acts that are happening across our city as we speak. So, again, as we have more definitive numbers, we will share those numbers. But the ballpark figure based on a number of analyses was that – the realm is around 300,000, and we hope that it's less than that. We are planning for 300,000 devices.

Moderator: Okay. Jeff Mays is up next.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask about the PEG program. Is the $1.3 billion, is that just the beginning of the cuts? You know, the Comptroller came out with an estimate today that there will be $4.8 billion to $6 billion in revenue lost. So, are you looking at further cuts or is this just the beginning?

Mayor: We're going to be – Jeff, it's a great question, but the fact is we're going to be determining that literally week by week as we go along. None of us have ever been through anything like this. The one thing I think I can say is when you really total up the impact of this crisis, it will far surpass the Great Recession, and it will look closer to the Great Depression in terms of the shock to the economy, certainly the shock to employment, but a radical negative impact on City and State budget. So, we're going to have to make a bunch of tough decisions. This is a first step. I'm certain there's going to be a lot of other things we're going to have to do over time, but this is a first step.

Moderator: Gersh is up next.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Hey, Gersh.

Question: So, you went through a lot of very important information, which I know we all appreciate, but I did not hear anything about Governor Cuomo’s demand that you come up with some sort of plan to ban cars on some streets to create more social distancing space. So is there a plan?

Mayor: I spoke to this yesterday in detail, Gersh, and nothing has changed between yesterday and today. I have talked about what I think makes sense to do as a first step. I've talked to the Governor about it. Our teams are going back and forth on details. We'll have a plan worked through in the course of the evening to get started with. But I've also said really clearly that how we start this week in this whole new reality is just the beginning and I'm reserving the right in the course of the week and the weeks ahead to say, hey, we might want to do more of something or less of something or something different. And that'll be an ongoing conversation with the Governor as well.

So, the first point, which I said I think real bluntly yesterday, is we need to determine how and where we can enforce this new reality effectively. And that begins with the places that people already do go to. And that any new places we create, even though it's meritorious in many ways, if we create them, we then have to ensure there's an enforcement mechanism to go with them. We already have that when it comes to parks, for example, we don't have that when it comes to new streets being designated separately. So that's going to be something we only consider one step at a time. And I understand again, respect absolutely advocacy journalism – you're looking at this from one prism and it's a good prism, but I'm looking at this through the prism of how do we enforce these challenging new rules and a whole new reality. That's what I care about first here, it’s getting that part right.

Question: Fair enough. I totally understand that, Mr. Mayor, just thought there might've been an update today. So, let me ask a second quick question, which is, you mentioned enforcement – there is incredible anecdotal evidence of lot of drivers speeding out there. Now, certainly the NYPD is aware of it. So, is there a plan to address it?

Mayor: Well, for sure, Gersh. It's not acceptable anytime and we are clearly not going to allow it going forward. There's a lot the NYPD is being asked to do right now and a lot of new things the NYPD is being asked to do, but we do not want a situation where people, because, you know, our lives have changed, they start doing things that are reckless and dangerous. NYPD has been brought into Vision Zero from the very beginning. We will be very tough on people who are speeding, for sure, and I'm going to certainly insist on continued enforcement on that front.

Moderator: Erin Durkin is up next. Erin?

Question: Hi, another question about the enforcement. You talked about police officers being out there, you know, dispersing groups of people, but is there – will there be ticketing, arrest or any other form of enforcement beyond just telling people to move along?

Mayor: Well, Erin, again, Commissioner Shea and I talked about this in detail. I think the Commissioner is on the line with us.

Moderator: Yes, he is.

Mayor: Yes, is. I'll start and then, Dermot, if you'll jump in. We spoke about this, Erin, yesterday in some detail. I think the fact is, the NYPD is very good at telling people the way things have to be. They're very good at educating. They're very good at warning. And this is different from almost any other situation we've been in, because there's near universal information being projected all the time by all of you in the media in a way that's very, very important, very helpful. So, I think folks aren't getting the message in so many intense ways that when an officer goes out there and says, hey, guys, you know, you're not six feet apart, you need to be – or, hey, sorry, this is a crowd, we can't have that. It's not like it's going to be a shock to people, I would argue. But no, at this point we were focused on the education, the warnings, the communication, the use of neighborhood policing, not the sanctions yet. It's a conversation we're having with the State right now, how and when and if we want to use sanctions. But our first impulse is to go out there and educate people and do what the NYPD does so well in terms of communicating. Dermot, why don't you jump in?

Commissioner Shea: Certainly, we'll use any and all laws available to us, but I would just caution everyone that no two incidents here are alike and we are always going to default to what the Mayor said. We want to gain cooperation with compliance. We want to educate people. We want to talk to people. And we want to – and that's what we've been seeing throughout New York City. Listen, this is a very important matter when you talk about social distancing, when you're talking about the spread of this disease, and whether it's the Mayor or Dr. Barbot, all up and down leaders – we are trying to spread the same message that we were all in this together and, really, looking to – I had calls with members of the City Council today, other elected officials throughout New York City, we all want the same thing here and we're all working together to spread that message that all New Yorkers seem to step up. It's literally a matter of life and death and we need to practice this social distancing. So, we expect for other compliance, but the shorter answer is we'll use whatever is in our toolbox to make sure that that happens.

Question: Okay. And then, the patrols that you're talking about, are those additional patrols that are being added over and above, you know, what's normal?

Commissioner Shea: Yes, absolutely. We met with – had a long conversation today with members of the executive team, including Dave [inaudible], who heads up our housing bureau; Fausto Pichardo, who’s the Chief of Patrol throughout New York City. So, what we're trying to do is boost up patrols and we are able to do it throughout New York City to locations that we think needs a little extra attention, and certainly public spaces and parks falls into that and this environment. And what we're looking to do is increase those patrols without having any negative impact on the day-to-day operations of the NYPD when people are encountering situations and 9-1-1. And right now, we can do both of those things. We are very well resourced. So, you can expect to see in the days to come throughout New York City members of the New York City Police Department in parks. Certainly, it's a cool day today, a little rainy, but as the weather warms up to the end of the week, you'll see increased patrols throughout the New York City parks. You’ll see marked police cars driving through. You’ll hear audio messages playing for people, just reminding them of the importance of social distancing. You know, it's all hands on deck. You'll see our community affairs officers in those parks as well. So, it's all hands on deck at the NYPD, but you will absolutely see an increase as we move forward.

Moderator: Christian, from Bloomberg is up next. Christian?

Question: Withdrawn – the Mayor answered my question earlier.

Moderator: Got it. Brigid is up next. Thank you. Brigid, you’re up next.

Question: Thanks. Hi, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple questions about elections. I know you've been dealing with more existential issues, but State lawmakers right now are considering some legislation that could potentially move the April presidential primary to June. Are you having conversations with the Governor and State lawmakers about moving the April presidential primary and what's your message to them?

Mayor: First, on a pure answer – no, because I've been dealing with more existential issues as you said. A second answer, I think there's two good alternatives. I think if there's some way to create a mail-in system, which some States have. And, you know, that's a big endeavor, I’m not the belittling the challenge, but if that's something that can be put together in the short-term as an alternative to in-person voting that would be appealing. If it can't be, I think you have to figure out a delay because I don't think it's realistic to have it in April under these conditions. So, we either need a new alternative or we need a delay. I haven't had the conversation, but I'd be supportive of either of those options.

Question: And are you hearing any concerns from the City Board of Election that their ability to both run an election and to get voters registered while this virus is still peaking?

Mayor: Again, I have not engaged them compared to all the other things we're doing. I haven't heard from them. Maybe my colleagues in the administration have. I am certain this – the first question, even before you get to registration is, can you do an in-person election in April under these conditions, which will only get worse between now and that election? I don't think it's realistic. So, I think if we're not talking about some new kind of voting system that can be used at least temporarily, maybe as part of, you know, a different future where there's more voting options, if you don't have an alternative, I think immediately that April is unrealistic and that immediately affects the registration – question two, obviously. I don't see how they could do what they normally do, you know, in this kind of environment, even in terms of registration. So, I think that's another, another reason why we got to figure out an alternative.

Moderator: Ashley, from the Times is up next. Ashley?

Question: I have two questions. My first is about enforcement for the Police Commissioner. My colleague who – media are essential workers during this time – was ticketed this morning for turning down the street that is trucks-only from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. And it seems like, given the public health mandate to keep distance and the state of emergency, that that might be something unnecessary. So, I'm wondering if you have given any more thought or guidance to whether some enforcement is dismissible, especially given the new duties that the Police Department is taking on and also the hit it's taking from the spread of coronavirus?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, we exercise discretion at all times, whether it's during a crisis or not. The first part of the question – did you receive a summons? Is that what happened?

Question: No, of course not. I don't drive. But my colleague, received a ticket for turning down the street that's trucks-only from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm, and it just seems like, you know, they're – they're in close contact for the time that she's receiving that ticket. So I just wanted [inaudible] you give it any more thought or guidance about that.

Mayor: Yeah, Ashley, I want to just ask for both Dermot and I, are you saying a colleague in a regular car with press plates, is that what you're saying?

Question: Yes.

Mayor: Okay. Go ahead, Dermot.

Commissioner Shea: I would just say, you know, if you listen to the questions for this press conference, two minutes ago, it was Gersh calling up about cars speeding. We handle and juggle a lot of balls. So, obviously, Ashley, there's always discretion in what we do in terms of – you know, during crisis. But we're also balancing the public safety needs and Vision Zero and other matters. So, beyond that, I won't comment on a summons that was written.

Mayor: Yeah. Let me make the broader point. Ashley. Obviously, you know, the media, playing a crucial role right now. People desperately need information. The information is changing constantly. This is one of the fastest-moving crises we've ever lived through. So, we want to make sure all of you in the media can, can do what you need to do and get where you need to go. We all need to be cognizant – absolutely considered essential workers at this point. Again, I'm not going to comment either on a specific incident, not knowing the details, but I do want to affirm that part of the equation. We have to make sure that you guys can continue to do your work.

Question: My second question [inaudible we've learned – my second question is just that we've learned that more than 2,000 police officers or civilian aids have called out sick, reporting, flu-like symptoms. So, I'm wondering, for the NYPD, what's the current caseload? I may have missed that earlier in the call. If you, the Police Commissioner had been tested, and whether the NYPD has a reserve corps of officers to call up if things get worse, as you did during 9/11?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, Ashley, we are – when you look at the numbers, we are definitely spiking someone on people reporting sick in the midst of this. And I want to just take a moment to thank everyone. I've literally been receiving calls from across the country, spoke to Charlie Beck today from the Chicago Police Department, and Buffalo Police Department, and many others offering their words of – you know, patting us on, if you will. We are, as I said many times, we are very well resourced. We have the greatest police department in the world and we have the ability to rise up to any and all occasions and we intend very much to do exactly that here.

Mayor: And Ashley, to the of testing – this has come up for different officials at different points. What our health commissioner has told us – and she's on the line – is, no one should get tested unless they're symptomatic. So, unless a Dermot is symptomatic and it hasn't mentioned it, there's no reason that he would have been tested. Dermot, are you symptomatic?

Commissioner Shea: Just overworked, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Just overworked – very funny. Okay, I'll take that as not symptomatic.

Commissioner Shea: Yeah. Not symptomatic, feeling perfectly well. But my heart goes out to everyone in New York City. We'll get through this one.

Moderator: Alex, from Chalkbeat is up next. Alex?

Question: Hi, this is probably a question for the Chancellor. In just talking with some educators today, it sounds like there hasn't been a ton of clarity yet on whether – like, sort of, what the grading policies are for students and online coursework, like whether teachers should be grading this stuff, whether it's counts as credit? Like, has the DOE come up with a framework for thinking about that yet?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, so really good question. As I mentioned, right up top – flexibility, patience. We cannot obviously put a traditional classroom schedule in a virtual environment and then expect to have the same processes, including grading. We also have talked about there being a gap in terms of how many students have technology – they have the device or they have internet connectivity. We're still working through all of those issues. So, it's not surprising that there are some questions about grading. I think what I'm going to say to folks is, continue to pay attention to the guidance that is being developed. We're working very closely with lots of focus groups that include teachers and principals. We're working with the unions as well, because they have a really good pulse of what's happening out with their members out in the field as well. We want to be practical, but we also want to be rigorous and that means that we're doing a new way of teaching and learning that's never been done before. So, that guidance will continue to become clearer and clearer as the weeks go by. For right now, what I'm going to ask all educators to do out there is to think about how do we engage students to the maximum ability possible, giving them a really robust kinds of experiences. Unfortunately, the alternative is to just let kids sit at home, do nothing. We'll see you when we see you again. I don't know of one educator that wants that for their students. So, as we figure this out together, let's not worry about grades. Let's really worry about how do we keep kids actively engaged and we give the educators what they need to actually craft lessons and experiences that will keep students really, really engaged.

Question: At the enrichment centers, it sounded like you mentioned there were about 4,500 students who are – not students who actually attended today, students who are eligible to attend?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah. So there are about 4,500 students that registered. Now, again, this isn't an open registration. It's very specific for the children of first responders, health care workers – I've read the list before. So, these students have actually registered to attend. Now, it's also important to understand that as families are adjusting to their new reality it's going to be a gradual uptick in the number of students that are actually taking advantage of this opportunity. So, they've registered and we understand that life intercedes sometimes with the best laid plans. So, we expect that we will have an increase in actual children showing up at these sites over the course of this week, so we'll hit our maximum enrollment.

Moderator: Paul, from the Wall Street Journal's up next. Paul, can you hear us?

Question: So, I just wanted to clarify something. I may [inaudible] Mayor said earlier on, that, in addition to police officers, some of the other city workers from the Parks Department, Sanitation Department and other departments that would go out to try to talk to people and get groups to disperse and to follow the social distancing rules.

Mayor: Correct, go on.

Question: The full question – tonight, do you anticipate that perhaps while people would ordinarily listen to a police officer or even a firefighter, but they may not take direction from other City workers? What powers – or, how would you help City workers for enforcement?

Mayor: Well, so let's go over what I said here. Again, you're talking about enforcement agencies, so NYPD, Fire Department, Office of the Sheriff, Office of Special Enforcement, and Department of Buildings, all which do enforcement anyway, they're pretty familiar with how to talk to people, including people who may not agree with the notion of being enforced. But again, I think a massive X-factor here is, this is a global pandemic that everybody knows about. You know, anyone who doesn't know about the coronavirus is living under a rock right now. So, I think you're talking about different reality when so much has been established publicly in such a clear imperative here. But again, these are folks who do know a lot about how to engage people on enforcement matters. I mentioned Department of Parks itself, which obviously knows its constituency and the people they deal with all the time and folks from the Mayor's Office who deal with communities all the time. I think people will be fine. If there we find there's something particular that has to be dealt with, we'll deal with it. But I think in this environment, again, education, reminders, warnings, all of that's going to be a really, really valuable. And if there's a situation that needs more sophisticated, if you will, or more intense follow up, they'll know to call in the NYPD, who obviously will never be far away.

Moderator: Last two, Mike Gartland is up next.

Question: Hey there, Mr. Mayor. Can you hear me okay?

Mayor: Yes, indeed.

Question: Hey, how you doing? So, I had a question about the playgrounds and I was wondering if you could talk about the rationale behind keeping them open, given that there's so many surfaces for kids to put their hands on. I get the social distancing aspect of it, but you know, as far as that goes, it seems like a place where the disease can be spread pretty easily.
Mayor: Yeah. Mike, this is about a couple of things. One, you know –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Wait, we lost you for a minute. Hold on. I heard you, you raised the point about – your concern about the disease being spread and then we lost you all together.

Question: Yeah, that was it. It was just the rationale behind keeping playgrounds open given that the surfaces seem like the way the disease would primarily be spread rather than the social distancing aspect of it.

Mayor: And so, again, the first point I would make is the social distance, which is, and our health commissioner has guided us throughout all this, that the – the central concern here is the social distancing, that is the strategy. Absolutely, what we're all working on in unity is social distancing and that directly relates to the manner in which the disease is clearly spreading most prevalently, which is the droplets. So, that's entirely consistent and that, to our point of view, you know, again, if a family goes to the playground as a family unit, if a parent goes with their child, this is, again, a parent who's already under the same roof with that child, it's a different reality. You’re not seeing the same social distancing concerns because those folks are already constantly exposed. So, from a social distancing point of view, the question will be can we create the kind of balance in the playgrounds where they're not too crowded, where social distancing is respected as people enter a brand-new reality this week that they've never experienced before in their lives? There will be a lot of information. There'll be a lot of enforcement. If we can do that effectively, I'd certainly prefer see the playgrounds open. If we cannot do it effectively, then it becomes a real option to close them. And I said that yesterday, we're going to give it a week to see how it goes. But I'll make the point about the underlying rationale, which is – and I'm saying this as a parent who spent, you know, years and years taking my kids to the playground. You know, I used to take my kids to the playground when they went to school during the week. They had afterschool activities, they had little league, they had basketball, you know, they had all sorts of things. None of that is there anymore, Mike. We really have to understand the amount of dislocation here where all children will have and families will have is being home in their apartment or their home, limited time outdoors each day and limited options. And in a lot of neighborhoods in the city, the playground near your home may be one of the only open areas that you can go to, to run around and do anything. So, you take that out of circulation, certainly in a lot of our lower income neighborhoods that's true, where there's just, unfortunately, nowhere near the amount of park space there should be. So, I'm very reticent to take away one of the few alternatives that a family may have for any exercise at all, during a time when everyone's going to be limited in how much time that can be outdoors. But if we find it cannot be monitored properly, then we can do something very different.

Moderator: Last question goes to the Yasmeen from WNYC. Yasmeen?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor – a few questions related to the jails. One, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about expanding [inaudible] –

Mayor: Yasmeen, we’re losing you. Hold on, we lost you mid-sentence.

Question: Okay, I’ll repeat the sentence –

Mayor: Yasmeen, are you near a window or something? Because you sound like you're coming in real sketchy.

Question: I am near a window.

Mayor: Good, try again.

Question: Thank you. Can you speak a little bit more about expanding [inaudible]

Moderator: Yasmeen, it sounds like you’re coming in and out. Could you repeat your sentence again, one more time?

Mayor: Wait, let me ask. Yasmeen, do you have another phone you can call on, by any chance? Try that, we’ll give you one last chance. You can call in again or call from another phone, because we cannot hear you.

Question: Okay –

Mayor: Last chance –

Moderator: Yasmeen?

Mayor: Well, so much for technology.

Moderator: [Inaudible] we’ll get back to her.

Mayor: Alright, we will get Yasmeen an answer tonight and we’ll give her a special role in the lineup tomorrow.

Moderator: Yes, we will.

Mayor: Okay. With that, everyone, thank you very much. We’ll continue to make technology work in this new age and thank you, everyone, for being a part of this.

2020-03-24 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, everybody as usual, there's a lot to go over here and we are all going to be in this together for a long time here in the City. And that's something I want to start with, we talked about this yesterday. We're starting a very new reality this week, something we've never experienced before. As I've gone around the city today, I've seen places that, you know, usually you think of as really, really crowded— totally empty, literally streets where you couldn't see anyone walking down a sidewalk. Places that are normally very, very crowded in the City absolutely empty or only a few people. Obviously, what's happening now is our lives have been changed profoundly. People are recognizing and dealing with this new reality, making the tough choices and the sacrifices. I want to thank all New Yorkers, no one, not one of us wants to go through this. None of us asked for it, but it's our reality and I think New Yorkers are handling it with a lot of strengths, a lot of resilience, a lot of creativity working together, supporting each other. That's what I expect and I've always seen from my fellow New Yorkers. I want to thank you, I know it's not easy, but I really appreciate everything that people are doing to get through this together.

I have to be honest about the fact that we do not expect this to go quickly and I wish we did, but we don't. I've had several conversations this week with President Trump and I respect his office for sure and I'm trying to work with him to ensure that we get support in this City, but I have to respectfully disagree with him. When he says, as he said earlier today that he's not looking at months for this crisis. – I have to say Mr. President, I wish that was the case for New York City, I hope that's the case for other parts of the country. But, right now, we are looking at months and I'm going to say it again because people deserve the honest truth that we are doing all we can just to get through March right now, particularly in terms of our health care system. April will unquestionably would be worse than March, and right now my fear is that May could be worse than April. That's the reality we're facing, I think the notion that we could be quote unquote back to normal in the month of April is absolutely inconceivable at this point. So, I want to give people the truth because I think it helps us all to just, you know, really get our expectations right. Really know how to plan, really know how to kind of gird ourselves for battle; this is a battle we're all going to be in together. Again, no one is tougher than New Yorkers, so we will get through this.

The people we’ll depend on, I want to thank again our extraordinary health care workers who every hour of every day are doing amazing work, protecting all of our first responders; they're heroes to us all the time. They're renowned all over the country, all over the – world, and they're doing amazing work right now. Our educators are so proud of the amazing work that's been done just over a days to create – an online learning distance learning program for hundreds of thousands of kids, never been done before in the City. It's amazing what's been started already as well as those learning centers for the children of essential workers. I mean, this kind of improvisation, this kind of speed and an intense teamwork. This is the mark of New York City and this is something we should be proud of. But I also want to thank other heroes I’ll keep mentioning different people each day, but there are some unsung heroes out there that really deserve our thanks because they're keeping this whole place running in the most basic ways.

When you think or you turn on that faucet, you turn on the tap and you get water. Let's thank our department of environmental protection workers for getting us clean water, the best water in the nation every single day despite this crisis for making sure our water system, our sewer system works. Thank you to all of them. Thank you to our department of transportation workers who continue to do vital work to keep us safe, to keep all those vehicles that are moving around and that we depend on for essential service, make sure that they can keep doing all of their work. So, thanks to the DOT workers, thanks to the sanitation workers, continue to do all of that possibly could be done to keep the City clean despite all the challenges we are facing. And there are many, many other public servants— folks who work in non-profit organizations, folks who work in the private sector, all of whom are chipping in.

So, I'll say thank you many times during this crisis, but a special thank you to our City workers from all those agencies I mentioned who are doing extraordinary work right now. And I'm going to keep telling all my fellows, New Yorkers say thank you when you see one of them because we are depending on them right now. So, what I am seeing again is despite the intensity of this crisis, despite the growth of this crisis that New Yorkers continue to make the changes necessary to follow the rules to step up. And that's against the backdrop of really just staggering numbers, now again; every number represents a human being. And I'm going to tell you about one human being, I know who we've just lost, we just heard about in the last hour. But first, the overall situation, amazing— horrible number, almost 15,000 cases confirmed positive.

Now, in New York City as [inaudible] – I'm sorry, 14,776 is the exact number, but that number keeps changing obviously throughout the day. So almost 15,000 cases, we're now about 58 percent of the cases in New York State and still about exactly a third of the cases in this entire Nation. So, we are the epicenter, I don't want us to be the epicenter, but we are the epicenter of this crisis for this Nation. And obviously as we discussed this each and every day, because we are the epicenter for this Nation, because we are the Nation's largest City, because the entire Nation depends on New York City we need more federal help and we need it quickly. The number of deaths related to coronavirus is 131, as of this moment, 131 New Yorkers, we've lost, the breakout by borough 4,364 cases from Queens, 4,237 cases in Brooklyn, 2,887 cases in Manhattan, 2,328 cases in the Bronx and 935 cases in Staten Island.

We've lost a great New Yorker— one of the most really renowned members of our cultural community, the great playwright, Terrence McNally. Someone who epitomizes so much about this City, came here from Texas as a young man brought all of his talents wrote some of the greatest plays of recent memory, but also someone who worked so hard for a better New York City and a better America for everyone. I had the honor of knowing Terrence because he ended up marrying one of my college roommates, Tom Kirdahy. And you know, I went to NYU, my roommate and I stayed friends over all the years and I got to know Terrence once they married. In fact, once marriage equality was finally the law of the land, we held a ceremony out here right in front of City Hall in our Plaza and performed a marriage ceremony for Terrance and Tom to mark that historic occasion – an amazing, amazing New Yorker who did so much good. So, we all should have Terrence McNally and his husband, Tom Kirdahy in our thoughts and prayers. And Terrance rest in peace, and thank you for all you did for this City and this nation.

And you can see this crisis again, it's not— it's not just numbers, it's not just something happening somewhere else or to somebody else. This is going to be something we all will feel very directly in our lives before it's over. Our job is to do everything we can to save lives, to protect lives, at this moment, it's going to take everything we've got. This morning I spoke with Governor Cuomo, we agreed on the most central fact, the most central need; and that is ventilators that right now and our efforts to save lives. The City must have the ventilators we need they are all over this country we've got to get them here. We have to be a priority for this Nation because we're the epicenter of the crisis. It has to be clear to all New Yorkers, and I'll talk about a visit I paid to our emergency management warehouse earlier talking with doctors from Kings County Hospital one of our great public institutions about why ventilators are so crucial. I think for a lot of us, you hear the word ventilator, unless it's been something you experienced in your own life or with your family, it probably sounds like – a word you can't really make sense of. I can tell you having seen one of the ventilators a machine that literally could fit in – in a big suitcase it is something that literally is going to be the difference between life and death for thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers. A ventilator and the doctors from Kings County Hospital made this so clear today if a ventilator is available for a patient stricken with coronavirus patient gasping for breath, fighting for their life, if that ventilator is available exactly when it's needed, that patient can stay alive so the doctors can do their work and in many, many cases that patient will live and resume their life. But it's as plain as this if a doctor cannot get a ventilator to that patient, literally the minute they need it, if too many minutes pass, that patient will suffocate, that patient will die a horrible death and they'll be gone forever.

That is what a ventilator should mean, it's not a technical term anymore, it means life or death, and we need as many ventilators as we possibly can get right now in this City. At our warehouse, our emergency management warehouse in Brooklyn, I saw 400 ventilators that arrived from FEMA, from the Federal Government. And I am thankful for those, but I have to be clear. So long as there is a single ventilator sitting in a federal warehouse that could be here in New York City saving lives, something's wrong. We must get the ventilators to where they're needed most. And I'm not saying we're the only place in the country, we know how much Washington State has suffered, we know how much California has suffered. And unfortunately, more states ahead will suffer and my strong view is we need the ventilators and all those who are at the front line need the ventilators now.

And as soon as we no longer need them, we will be the first to say, let's make sure they get to where the need is greatest elsewhere in the country. We're asking for help – supplies, we're asking for help getting medical personnel, but we need as Americans to be ready to contribute back to all the other States, the second the crisis comes to some kind of end here in New York City. So, we stand ready to support our nation, but now we need our nation to help us first because we are the front line of this fight.

At the warehouse today. 400 ventilators from FEMA, as I mentioned, that are being distributed and they have been distributed already this morning. 100 going to our public hospitals, 300 to a variety of other public, private excuse me, and nonprofit hospitals around the city. To make sure that no hospital gets into that awful situation that I just described where they need a ventilator immediately and they don't have it. So that 400 will help us a lot. And just a short time ago, I got the very good news that we got an announcement from the federal government that 4,000 more ventilators are on the way to New York state in the next 48 hours, and half of them will come to New York City. 2000 more ventilators for New York city, and that's great news. But I need people to understand that is only the beginning of what we need. The speed with which this disease is growing, the human impact. The fact that we could lose a life in minutes if there is not a ventilator. Even with the new supplies we have received and will receive this week, what does it tell us? It tells us we can get through this week. It tells us we can get into next week, maybe even get through that first week in April. But with the rate of increase of this disease, we need ventilators to be constantly plugged fide into New York city, constantly supplied to New York city until we got to the point where we're absolutely sure we have an ample supply.

I don't want to see a single person die who could have been saved. That's my standard and that's why we're going to need many more ventilators. We asked the federal government days and days ago, we made the formal request for 15,000 ventilators. Again, I'm very appreciative of the progress. I want to thank the administration for what has begun to happen, but I need everyone in Washington to understand that'll just get us to the first week of April and I'm very worried about the first week of April. Even with this new supply, it doesn't guarantee we'll get through April that first week. This is a race against time. This is a race against time and every one of us here at City Hall and Emergency Management, all of us who are in charge of fighting this battle, and I know our colleagues at the state level feel exactly the same way, we are all racing against time. We need our federal government to join us in that race against time.

Again, I'll always tell you when I think there's progress and I'll tell you when I think there's setbacks. There is another act of progress today and we heard it from FEMA and I'm very appreciative for all females doing, they have been difference maker in the days that they've been on the playing field since the president signed the emergency declaration. FEMA is making a huge difference already with a lot more to come. So, I thank them. We heard the news earlier today that for the first time that defense production act had actually been activated in the real world conditions we're talking about where it actually needs to be used to guarantee that companies will produce exactly what is needed to protect the American people, and that those goods will be distributed to where the need is greatest. We are finally beginning to see the defense production act being implemented. It will have to be used on a much bigger scale to produce not only what New York city and New York state are going to need. I am trying to tell people all over this country, it's coming to you next. This will be a national crisis – all 50 States. We must get the maximum production immediately. So, I am pleased to see progress, but we have a long way to go, and the defense production act needs to be used to the maximum.

I will say in addition to the good work of FEMA the good work we're seeing from the federal administration getting us some new supplies, the good work of course from the state of New York, which has done extraordinary work to help us. We are seeing more and more private corporations step up. We're seeing more and more individuals come forward. Philanthropies have come forward. A lot of people are helping.

Last night I had a very encouraging conversation with the CEO of the 3M Corporation in Minnesota, which is in a position to give us some of our most crucially necessary supplies, including N95 masks, which are those very high-quality masks. We need a lot more of, to the tune of millions. CEO, Mike Roman and I spoke at length. It was quite clear he's very committed to New York City. I want to say thanks to Mike and your entire team. And we talked about a very large order we need help with and he was ready to help. So, thank you to everyone at the 3M Corporation, and we're going to be having that conversation with a lot of other CEOs, a lot of other people in a position to help real quickly, because we're going to need it all.

I want to make clear to everyone who wants to help, especially if you have even a single ventilator that you can get to New York city or if you have a supply, even more of a bigger supply of ventilators. If you have surgical mask, if you have N95 mask, if you have face shields, gloves, gowns, anything that could help us, we need it. And the simplest way to let us know about what you have and your willingness to help is to go to nyc.gov. It's right there on the homepage. It's got a long title for this section. It says produce or donate supplies to fight coronavirus. I assure you we will come up with a simpler title, but right now anyone who can help us can go to nyc.gov, that homepage. It's really clear where you click to let us know about what you can give us to help and we need it. And I am so grateful to all who are helping and I assure you, I guarantee you, we will return the favor to our fellow Americans, to other states and cities as soon as our crisis abates. We have to be ready to say thank you and mobilize to help the rest of our fellow Americans.

Now I want to talk to you about some of the issues we're dealing with today out on the streets of our city in terms of our parks and playgrounds. Places that we are concerned, obviously to make sure that people practice social distancing. That people don't congregate. Don't live the way we used to just weeks ago but live in this new reality. And I spoke several times to our police commissioner, Dermot Shea. He has been out checking. I've been out checking. He has patrols out all over the city and getting constant feedback. And what we're seeing in many, many places is that people are truly abiding by these rules. A lot of our parks and playgrounds, actually I've had very limited activity today. Others obviously might have more, but what we are seeing broad adherence to the rules and we're going to make clear through NYPD enforcement and enforcement by many other city agencies that we must have a real respect for these rules. And anyone who is not following the rules will be quickly corrected. They'll be warned, they'll be educated, and NYPD will be out making very clear to people, using our patrol officers and with messages that'll be electronically transmitted all over parks as well as all the person to person contact that we need people to deal with this new reality of social distancing.

We have been working closely with the state of New York and with the city council to make sure that we are able to maximize the education, maximize the enforcement, maximize the chance that people can continue to enjoy our parks and in particular our playgrounds. But it's also clear, as I said just a few days ago, that if that is not working out, if people are not abiding by the rules, if they're not listening to the warnings, we may get to the point in just days where we have to close the playgrounds for the duration of this crisis. It's not something I want to do, but it's something I'm ready to do if needed. We have agreed with the state of New York and the city council that we will give this process until Saturday evening. So, we'll have some warmer days coming up. We'll have a chance to see if people have gotten the message. We will be doing all the enforcement, but if by the end of Saturday, it is not sufficiently clear that New Yorkers are following these new rules, at that point we'll be prepared to shut down playgrounds for the foreseeable future. So, to everyone out there, to all the parents with kids, and again, I've made very clear, if you're living under the same roof, social distancing is different for you. Obviously, people who live under the same roof are going to be in close proximity all day, all night. You don't need to do the six feet apart out on the playground if it's a mother with her child, for example. But you do need to keep your distance from everybody else, and your child does as well. So, the rules are pretty straightforward. If people follow those rules, my hope is the playgrounds stay open. If they don't follow the rules, most assuredly, the playgrounds will be shut and we will make that decision by Saturday evening.

Also, in terms of our streets, we've worked with the state and with the city council on an initial effort to ensure that we can enforce a limited number of streets that will be opened up. This will be a pilot program. We'll do up to two streets per borough. And everyone wants to make sure that there are spaces for folks to get their exercise, to get fresh air. We also are quite clear there must be enforcement, so it has to be places that the NYPD and the other agencies can enforce effectively. We came to, I think, a very smart, workable agreement to do a limited number of sites around the five boroughs. See how it goes, see if the enforcement works while we're trying, of course, to do the enforcement everywhere else. We're going to, our goal is to get these up and running by Thursday at the, again, up to two sites per borough. Details will be announced, but the one thing for sure, every site can and will be enforced by the NYPD and other agencies. That obviously underlies our entire approach. So, you'll see that up and running in the next couple of days.

Let me turn now to something that there's just, I have to be very clear. There is no good news at all when it comes to the topic of our budget, our city budget. And I always say, you know, a budget reflects priorities and values, and the budget really means what we can do to serve people, what we can do to employ our public servants who do so much good for everybody else. How we can make people, can make sure people get what they need. Well, as I said yesterday, unfortunately I've had to instruct our Office of Management and Budget to immediately initiate a savings program, what's called a peg program, which requires agencies to have to, in a mandatory fashion, come up with savings. That goal. I want to use these words very, very specifically. That goal will be at least 1.3 billion dollars. And everyone who's listening knows that is real money. That's a huge amount of money. And that process has begun today with city agencies. And I say at least because that number may have to grow in the near future as we continue to lose revenue and see massive new expenses because of this crisis. But I wanted to give you that update. It's an unfortunate update, but it's the truth.

Something that is also related to the crisis we're going through, but I imagine people will be a much happier about, is that we have paid very close attention to parking on our streets, in particularly alternate side parking. The issue that is one of the things that New Yorkers feel very deeply, very personally. I know from my own experience in my own neighborhood trying to find that parking space and circling the block a lot of times over the years. We gave it a week to see how things would go and I'm happy to say that the results were very good. Even after a week we found that our city remains sufficiently clean, so we will extend for another week and now alternate side parking will be suspended through next Tuesday, March 31st. So, alternate side which has been suspended for the last seven days will be suspended for another seven days through Tuesday, March 31st. We're going to look at the situation week-by-week; we might do more extensive time periods depending on what we see. But I think the thing to expect right now is we'll try and deal with alternate side in chunks of time, at least a week at a time. But again, always watching to make sure that our city stays clean for everyone's benefit and it's important against the backdrop of something like this disease that we maintain real cleanliness in the city. So that's some good news, that alternate side is suspended through Tuesday, March 31st.

Now want to just speak proactively to an issue that might come up. I know our colleagues in the media have a lot of questions and I'll be turning to them in just a moment. But one issue has come up, which is very, very emotionally important, humanly important, important in terms of health. And that is the question of, for folks who are giving birth, families that are giving birth what are the protocols about whether a partner of the woman giving birth can be in the hospital room at that moment? This is a medical decision obviously. It is something where all of us who are not doctors need to defer to the medical community. The decision made by our public hospitals – our Health + Hospital system – is that partners should be allowed in for the process of labor and when a woman has given birth that is the official policy, but with some very clear guidelines that any partner in the hospital room when a woman has given birth must be wearing a surgical mask and that there is a clearance procedure to ensure that if any partner is symptomatic with the symptoms of coronavirus or of course if they have tested positive, then they would not be allowed in the room. So, I think that's very straightforward. If someone is healthy, then that partner is allowed in. If the partner is symptomatic or tests positive for coronavirus, they are not; we certainly hope and pray that happens to nobody or very few people so that partners can be there for that amazing life moment. To me, there's just no more important moment in your life than when a child is born, obviously. But we do need to protect the health of the mom and, and really make sure we handle that. Right, so that's the way our public hospitals will be going about it.

Another topic, and this is again, I'll often have tough updates for you, but this one is good news and this is related to transportation and all the critical essential workers who need to get around. Very happy to say that our colleagues from Citi Bike are offering them – folks who are essential workers – a free 30-day membership and the owners. Citi Bike, Lyft, I want to thank them and all like so many other private sector companies that are stepping up, thank them for that effort. I know they're going to extra effort to make sure those city bikes are stationed in the right places particularly for health care workers and [inaudible] extra effort to make sure the seat bikes are sanitized frequently. I want to thank you for all those efforts, everyone at Lyft and Citi Bike that really, really helps a lot.

Now, to a very important issue that has come up a number of times and I understand why it's a hugely important issue, which is our jail system. We have important and very sensitive and very complex decisions to make related to those who are incarcerated at this moment. I remind everyone the number of people in our jails right now is just over 5,000 as compared to over 11,000 when I first took office. So, thank God, it's less than half of what we used to have in terms of people incarcerated, but it's still a lot of people. My strong view is at this point, well I want to follow the exact same categories that I heard from Dr. Anthony Fauci in terms of those who are most in danger and obviously Dr. Fauci has done an extraordinary job during this crisis leading this country with the best information and guidance on how to address coronavirus. Dr. Fauci told me last week that anyone over 70 years old or anyone one of those five major preexisting conditions, those were the people most likely be in danger. This is my view, no one over 70, no one with any of those five preexisting conditions should be in our jail system right now. We have -to work through some very intense complicated legal issues case-by-case. In the case of those individuals, some I have the direct power to release. In other cases, that can only be done with the approval of the State of New York or a District Attorney. But that category of people, those in immediate danger because of the specific nature of coronavirus, I strongly believe they all should be released and we are working through those details immediately. I believe some have been in the group that's been released already – there’s 75 that have been released already - but we want to identify anyone in those categories and get them out immediately. 

Now, to the bigger picture – the reality is of the over 5,000 people in our correction system different inmates are in different statuses. There's been, I think some information put out that is not accurate about which are the group that I have the direct ability to release into a work release monitored and supervised program versus those who could only be released with the approval of the State of New York or a District Attorney. The group that I have direct ability to act on is those who are serving a city sentence and that means that they have gone to trial, they've been found guilty, they've been sentenced, and the sentence is under one year and they would serve that sentence on Rikers Island rather than serving that sentence in one of the upstate prisons, those of course are meant for people who did more serious offenses. Folks who are serving a sentence of up to one year on Rikers are individuals convicted of offenses such as misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. So, when we looked at that category of people there's over 500 inmates in that category. There is a substantial group that because of very specific legal issues I'm not able to immediately release, we would have to work through those case-by-case. There are some who have domestic violence charges or sexual offenses charges who I have determined we are not prepared to release at this time, although we'll continue to look at cases individually – I'm not comfortable releasing those individuals at this point. The remainder, are individuals who have been convicted of misdemeanors, nonviolent felonies, have less than a year left on their sentence - some have many months, some have only a few months, some have only weeks. But I'm going to treat this category across the board, it's approximately 300 inmates, and we will move to release those 300 inmates immediately. The other categories that I think are immediately areas to focus on in terms of potential release. In addition, as I said to those over 70 with preexisting conditions and those in the city sentenced category, there are those awaiting trial. There's a particular group of them about a hundred who should be considered immediately, but that will require actions by the district attorneys. We will work with them to determine the proper outcome quickly. And then there's another group of about 700 that are technical parole violators. We will be working with the State of New York that has to ultimately give approval. We'll be having that conversation to see if that is a group that can be acted on across the board or that needs to be handled in a more a specified manner. But certainly, that is an area where we think we could find a number of people who may be able to be released quickly. And we'll work closely with the state on that.

Okay. Just a few words in Spanish and then we will start taking media questions. I know we're going to have Dr. Oxiris Barbot, our Health Commissioner on the line and Dr. Mitch Katz, CEO of our public health hospitals – Health + Hospitals. And to our colleagues in the media, if we need to get other Commissioners on the line, just to let you know, we may ask you to pause your question while we get the appropriate Commissioner on the line and we'll come right back to you after a one or two of your other colleagues has gone.

With that, just to say in Spanish, just a few sentences –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: We will now turn to questions from the media. Go ahead. Thank you.

Moderator: Hi, all. Just a quick note at the top, we ask that everyone limit their questions to no more than two, including follow-ups. This allows us to be fair and try to get to as many people as possible. We're going to start off today at the top of the list with Alex from Chalkbeat.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I'm curious about two school principals. One passed away this week at Brooklyn Democracy Academy, another principal in that building and Kappa V appears to have been hospitalized. Can you confirm that? And do you know what the last time those principals were in the building?

Mayor: Alex, I heard from Chancellor Carranza last night and we were – he was very, very sad and very pained, and I was too to here we lost the principal at Brooklyn Democracy. Someone who obviously gave his whole life to try to help kids, but I do not have the details of any connection to other DOE members. So, I want to make sure I don't give you anything that's inaccurate. We can get that to you for sure later on today. Is there a follow up?

Question: Yeah, I mean, I'm also just curious like what is going on in those –for the people who are connected to those buildings now? I mean, I know that the DOE has said they're not confirming cases, but is the City doing anything to try to connect to people in those buildings who may have been exposed to either of these two educators?

Mayor: Look, I think right now – I'll start and then Dr. Barbot will certainly, I'm sure, join in and go over again the reality we're in now – I think when you're talking about 15,000 cases and community spread, we're in a new reality. I mean, the truth is out so you know better than anyone. The vast majority of our school buildings are shut down now. Some are only doing food operations, pick up, but no educators there, no students there. Others, a very small number, compared to all the buildings we have, a very small number of being used for our enrichment centers for the children of essential workers. So for other folks the school has been out since last week obviously. But we take each of these cases seriously. If there's something specific that we know that we can act on, we will. But with community spread there's unfortunately many different sources through which someone may have been exposed. And the most important thing is for folks to follow those basic rules in terms of what to do if symptomatic. We're just in a whole new world now. So, Dr. Barbot, can you hear me?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Yes, sir.

Mayor: Well, I think it's a good time to go over once again that, you know, we've – once upon a time we were able to trace very specifically with a very small universe and act accordingly. We're now in an age of rapid advance of this disease, community spread dynamic where the broad guidance that you are providing as a city's doctor is what really governs everything we do. So, I think it would be great if you would just review that again.

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely, sir. So, as you say, when we have broad community-wide transmission, it is virtually impossible to trace back to a “point source.” And so that, on top of the fact that schools have been closed for over a week really speaks to the importance of New Yorkers self-monitoring. And so, what that means is we need New Yorkers to pay attention to symptoms they may be developing that are either fever and cough, fever and shortness of breath or any other symptoms that might make them feel out of the ordinary. And the most important thing to do overall is to stay home, but that if they're not feeling better within about three to four days to reach out to their doctors. But again, when we have widespread community transmission, the best thing we can do to break the cycle of transmission is stay home.

Mayor: Thank you doctor. Who's next?

Moderator: Next up, we have Alex from the Daily Beast.

Mayor: Go ahead, Alex.

Question: Hi, just a little more clarity around the inmates being released, but as far as the 100 people that are awaiting trial, what exactly is the process with those people? What is this process that you mean by the DA's? Because it's been a few days now and I'm just curious what exactly do they have to do to release them?

Mayor: Yeah. Alex, I'll always tell you when I have the chapter-and-verse and something and when I don't, I don't know the exact technical and legal approach. Our team can get you that right after this. I do know that it requires action by the DA's. I think – I remember we got five DA's. Each has their own view on the specifics. All of them are united as are we, as is the Police Commissioner. I am certainly in trying to strike this balance between the humanitarian need to get everyone that we can get appropriately out of our jail system out and be mindful that there are also real public safety concerns here. It's not just one thing or another. It's a really tough situation. I've talked to a lot of people who are dealing with this issue. There's not a single one of them who thinks it's simple. We're pained by both sides of the equation, the health concerns and public safety concerns. But my understanding, Alex, is that that is a situation where I know broadly what I’d like to see happen, which is for folks who have more minor offenses certainly and/or people that don't have much time left to serve. I want to see the maximum number of people that we can have safely get out, out. But I also know there's a lot of extenuating circumstances. There are some cases that are much more complex than meets the eye. And the DA's have real concerns that have to be addressed and by law they have to sign off.

Question: And just another quick question, is there going to be any change in enforcement for the city's sex workers? Are we going to – like stop arresting them, I guess is the most blunt way I can ask that?

Mayor: No, it's a good question. I – obviously the Police Commissioner needs to weigh in on this and if we can get them on the line, we should. I think we've said very clearly now over the last few years our goal is never to focus on the worker, but to focus on those who are profiting off that worker and exploiting that worker and sometimes trafficking in that human being. So last thing we want to do is you know, have a situation where the worker is put into jail, if there's any way to avoid that. That's generally our view before all of this. So I know there's sensitivity on that front but the Commissioner can speak better to it. And why don't we – oh, he’s on, okay. Commissioner Shea, let me just summarize the – can you hear me okay, Commissioner? Let's try again. Dermot Shea, are you out there?

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: Yeah, I hear you.

Mayor: There you go. The question from Alex at the Daily Beast is given the coronavirus situation, has there been a change to approach in terms of the decision to arrest and potentially jail sex workers? And I said our overall approach for quite a while has been to focus on those who are profiting, those who are behind the “business,” those who are exploiting rather than the worker themselves. But I want to turn it over to you to talk about any particular changes or approaches that you're using in this crisis.

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, I think you've summarized it perfectly. And that was in place before this crisis. Certainly, this crisis is a challenge for all of us in city government. All of us as New Yorkers. But well before we had ever heard about coronavirus, the NYPD had shifted its policy in terms of dealing with certain types of arrests in New York City. And going back a couple of years, we made a conscientious effort to really go after people that traffic and are predators and victimizing women and forcing them to take part in activities such as that. Our arrests in – for people that are forced many times to partake in these types of activities, has plummeted over recent years. We continue to work with nongovernment organizations and our partners and our Vice unit to really work with and go after really the source: people that traffic, whether it's from state to state into this country or homegrown here. So I am comfortable where we are. That's been taking place for some time now. And I think that with the prior question, I would be shocked if you found any people currently on Rikers Island that are on Rikers Island for prostitution. I just don't think that's accurate.

Mayor: Okay. I appreciate that, Commissioner and Commissioner, if you can bear with us for a little while, you may have got other questions, so stick around if you can. And let's go to the next question.

Moderator: Next, we have Yasmeen from WNYC.

Mayor: Go ahead, Yasmeen.

Question: Mayor, can you hear me okay?

Mayor: Indeed.

Question: Okay, great. I do have two different questions if I'm allowed. One about jails? Aside from releasing inmates, I'm wondering, are there more aggressive measures that the DOC can be taking to prevent the spread of the virus in jails? I feel like yesterday in your opening statement, you alluded to perhaps more social distancing measures. I'm not sure. I don't know if there's any talk of potential widespread testing soon of a contained population like a jail population. Are there other measures that they can be taking?

Mayor: Yeah, Yasmeen – best of my knowledge – I think Dr. Mitch Katz is on, I'll get him in this answer in a second. Look, here's the reality. We've said again, thank God we have, you know – we've got a jail system that was built out for over 20,000 inmates. That's where we were in the 1980s. And some pieces have been closed down, but a lot of our jail system remains intact. Even though we went from, as I said, over 11,000 inmates when I took office. We're now just around 5,000. So, we have space and we're using the space we have to create some distancing in general. So, certainly, be able to isolate anyone who needs to be isolated purposefully. And there's a much stronger health provision in the jails now because of the role of Health + Hospitals than what used to be there some years ago. So, there's really intense focus to keep making adjustments and keep protecting people and anyone who needs special care there's ways to provide it. We're going to keep refining that. Obviously now that we're talking about starting to release hundreds of people, that will open up even more space. And we'll see how far we can appropriately take that. Dr. Katz, do you want to talk about the health strategy in the Correction system and any changes that you're making, adjustments you're making?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, NYC Health + Hospitals: Yes, sir. I think you've explained it well. We make a lot of effort to isolate anyone who is symptomatic or anyone who is known to be positive. We've opened up additional spaces so that we can do it. We encourage social distancing throughout the jail and most importantly for this disease, our clinicians are alert to people who may get sick quickly. This is a disease where people can deteriorate in a matter of hours. And anyone who gets sick, we are able to swiftly reach them and take them to one of our hospitals.

Question: As just a follow up to that, we have heard though from even jail employees from corrections staff that or at least their union that represents officers that they are not getting information on who has the virus so that they can take proper measures to distance themselves.

Mayor: Yeah, Yasmeen –

Question: Would you like to be more transparent there?

Mayor: I want to just be careful. I'm going to bring Mitch in. But we work with all the unions, all our different departments. You sometimes get information from a union that is more or less accurate than – obviously anyone who is symptomatic is treated differently in terms of health care. So I think it's, that's pretty obvious that someone is being treated differently and, and there's not going to be a case where there's lack of transparency because action will be taken. And Dr. Katz, we all agree there's not been enough testing in general since the beginning of this crisis and we're trying to deal with how to prioritize going forward. But I think Dr. Katz, if I said a simple sentence, anyone who is symptomatic alone, even before a test is going to be isolated and treated differently. It's going to be self-evident that someone who there's a concern about is in a different category. They're not going to ignore – no one would ever be allowed to ignore someone symptomatic. Dr. Katz, is that all accurate?

President Katz: Absolutely true, sir. Right now, while there are delays to getting test results, we of course assume that the person does have COVID-19, and we isolate them and put them in masks appropriately.

Mayor: Okay. Thank you, doctor. Next question.

Moderator: Next up, we have Amanda from Politico.

Question: Hi, how are you? You said earlier today the hospitals are going broke. Does Health + Hospitals need a relief package and how will they get help from City Hall when it's also facing a budget shortfall?

Mayor: I'm very, very concerned about that, Amanda. That's – look our hospitals are being asked to do everything right now. And the course, the message to them is do everything you can to save human lives. And you know, throw in the kitchen sink, you know, so that no one is sitting around saying, oh, no, you can't do that thing because even though it would save a life we're having a budget crisis. No, we’re acting like right now we have only one imperative: save lives. And we know right now the city's losing billions of dollars and that includes the budget that supports Health + Hospitals. So, my comment this morning was directed specifically at our colleagues in the Congress who are making a decision as we speak. And I have not gotten an update in just the last few hours to be honest, what I was basing on is what I knew this morning, where we still did not have confirmation that public and private hospitals will get direct immediate relief in the stimulus legislation. We must have that. My point this morning was if you risk our health care system collapsing financially, not only in New York City, but all over the country, we're not going to have an economic recovery, which I know the president rightfully wants to see, but we're not going to have an economic recovery if our health care system collapses. The dominoes that will fall from that will be extraordinary. So, my point was that the Congress right now needs to provide direct, immediate financial relief to public and private hospitals alike.

Moderator: Next, we have Ashley from the New York Times.

Question: Good afternoon. My question is for the Police Commissioner, as always. I would like to see if he could, you could explain, Commissioner, today what the NYPD's role is in reviewing inmates for release and what you think of this policy of releasing some Rikers inmates. Are you supportive of that? Do you have some objections and what those are?

Mayor: Let me start before the Commissioner and he will fully answer. So, actually, I have never taken offense at you asking the Commissioner directly, but you should start I think with the person who's making the decision, which is me. I have been consulting regularly with Commissioner Shea and my team has been consulting, not just with him, but other key leaders in the NYPD, with our Mayor's Office for Criminal Justice, with Department of Corrections. We've obviously been consulting with DA’s. It is a very complicated dynamic. It's one we've literally never dealt with before any of us. But I'm listening to all the input. I spoke to the Commissioner detail earlier this morning. We're making these decisions in an entirely new atmosphere. So, the Commissioner will offer his views, but I want to make very clear that I'm making the ultimate decisions, taking in the advice from all these different sources and doing what I think is the right thing for this city. Go ahead, Commissioner.

Commissioner Shea: Thank you. Mr. Mayor. I'll start with the first part. In terms of the types of information, there's many things that we're looking at. We were asked to look at a list of individuals, for example, that are incarcerated on Rikers Island, that are due to get out in a certain amount of time. One of the basic, I think, things that would paint you a good picture is, for example, are we releasing, I'll give you an example, individuals convicted or awaiting trial on domestic violence and think of a situation where we would be releasing them to a location and the victim of that domestic violence would be at the premise. Are we, do we have open cases on any of the other individuals that we would be releasing them on, that we would then be in a position to make a determination, would they be arrested on a different case? There's many variables that we're looking at. But as the Mayor, said – ultimately, we're working together. My personal opinion on it. I've spoken to the Mayor many times on this, so we're in lockstep. It's a very difficult decision, but I think any decision you make, you have to start with what's important, and you have to be a realist and you have to be humane. And I don't think anyone wants to be in a position where we're doing the wrong thing, where we're, we have individuals incarcerated – that their lives are on the line because of an illness. It's a very difficult decision. We're trying to weigh all factors. I know that I've worked – conversations with not only the Mayor, the prosecutors, as well as the members of [inaudible]. And I think we're all united on that. It’s a very difficult decision. Let's try to do what's right. Let's try to do what’s humane, but let's also remember we got to do this right and we have to have a plan. And some of the examples I gave you I think make sense. So, we’re releasing people that could be infected to a location, where there’s an elderly aunt, where there’s somebody with an active order of protection, whether that's the victim of the crime where they went in. So that's all the type of stuff we will look. Again, thank you for the question.

Question: Thank you for the answer. Also, overall, since the pandemic has hit New York, are you seeing any emerging trends in crime, whether they be good or worrisome? What are you seeing as far as the – I guess regular crime?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah. I think I hit this yesterday. Very, you know what, I don't even I don't think I've released this tidbit, but I will to you so you can get the scoop here. We just had the day yesterday, with the fewest crimes. We'd have to go back to two other dates, and the other two dates we had that few crimes were three feet of snow in New York City, Ashley. So that gives you an idea of what we're seeing. From March 12th, when we started this journey and it seems like a lot longer ago, but when really all of New York City workers, frontline hospital workers, police, fire, schools, everyday New Yorkers, when our lives were turned around about a week or two ago, we immediately saw what the steps put in place by both the Mayor, the Governor, businesses close, parks close, school playgrounds closing, and everything else that we see every day. You know, you never seen Fifth Avenue so open, you never see crosstown streets so open. We saw an immediate drop in most categories, I would say, of crime. Is it universal? It's not universal. We still have some shootings that we have to address. You know, we're much more concerned about everything else that's going on. But we're not taking our eye off crime either. I can tell you that arrests have dropped significantly, you know, in the last week or two. We managed to be up in robberies in New York City last week. That's a little troubling. We've been having significant increases in robberies last week. It’s not a huge increase, but it was still up. And that tells you a little bit about what we're facing in robberies, that it's still up and the [inaudible] are still a problem. And Ashley, you and I have spoken many times about sexual assaults. We would down dramatically in sexual assaults last week, and I'll tell you that that really worries me. And maybe I'm just glass half empty here. But I can’t imagine that you know, the crimes aren't happening. I'm sure that there's many crimes happening. So that's, I think it's something that everyone, we should just continually get that message out.

Mayor: Dermot, I’m just going to jump in –

Commissioner Shea: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Dermot, I want to just say that real clearly to all New Yorkers, what would you just said, that your fear is that crimes particularly crimes like domestic violence or sexual assault could be happening and not being reported. And I want to emphasize this is something that NYPD has been working on intensely over the last few years. And our message is always clear. It is crucial, God forbid anyone is the victim of domestic violence or of a sexual offense, it is crucial that it be reported to the NYPD so we can ensure justice is served and we can ensure that the offender never hurts anyone else. And I would say another very, very obvious area that we're dealing with right now – we've seen an immense number of bias incidents, some that rise to the level of bias crimes, some that are verbal, some that are physical, certain acts of discrimination that are clearly illegal. We've seen that in a number of areas, but particularly in recent weeks directed at our Asian community – that's thoroughly unacceptable. We will not stand for it. We'll ensure there's consequences for anyone but we need the reports to be able to have the NYPD do the investigation and follow up and ensure that justice is served. So, to your point Dermot, it is especially important at this moment that anybody who is a victim of crime, the survivor of one of these situations reports it right away. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next, we have Bridget from WNYC.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, I wanted to follow up on the PEG program announcement, just to clarify – $1.3 billion, that's over this year or what's the timeframe for that? And then –

Mayor: So, Bridget, let me just let me answer that out. We'll let you continue in a sec. Bridget, it is at least, and I'm underlining the words ‘at least’ $1.3 billion. That number could change at any point in the budget process that's going to play out over the next four weeks leading up to the executive budget. We're going to go to each agency. They will have a specific dollar figure that OMB will give them that they must hit, they can offer different ways of achieving it, but they have to hit the dollar figure in time for the executive budget. And it will be savings from the current fiscal year and next fiscal year combined to achieve that dollar figure.

Question: And obviously this is a time that is difficult for everyone in New York – is the guidance coming from OMB, you know, trying to keep layoffs off the table?

Mayor: We've had – in the midst of all this other challenge that we're doing with the coronavirus, we've had budget meetings. We would have been already, you know, in the budget process normally getting ready for the executive budget. In this case, we've had essentially emergency budget meetings. And the first goal, of course, is we just – we, by law, must have a balanced budget by the middle of June, and legally by the end of June. And we need to do the things necessary to achieve that. We need to make sure that we can protect the resources to fight COVID-19. That is, you know, non-debatable at this point. We must make sure that every resource we need to fight this battle is available. And to this hour, Bridget, we don't know at all what's going to come from Washington in terms of any financial relief.

It keeps changing it seems like, you know, multiple times a day. So, we are on our own at this moment trying to sort it out. We know the State's going through a real tough time and so, we have to take actions to prepare to protect our most vital services. I'm not going to say anything at this point about what the ground rules will be going forward. Certainly, right now it's just a simple instruction to agencies to achieve a dollar goal. And I don't think any of them has to think in terms of layoffs to do that. But we have a very, very tough road up ahead and we'll – you know, I'll keep being very honest with you and all your colleagues about what's on the table and what's off the table as we go each step through the next few months of what will be an exceedingly difficult and complex a budget process.

Moderator: Next, we have Bobby from NY1.

Question: Hi, can you hear me okay?

Mayor: Yes, Bobby.

Question: Okay. Couple of things. First on the street closings, I know you said a lot of the details are still TBD, but can you give an example? Like if we’re talking about Broadway in Manhattan and what is the thinking here, is there any concern that opening streets could actually incentivize people to get outside and congregate in a way that you're actually trying to discourage?

Mayor: Bobby, that's exactly – you know, Commissioner Shea and I have talked about this repeatedly. I've talked to the Governor several times about it, including this morning. We want to strike that balance. So, what we decided was to have a very limited number on a pilot basis, certainly a number that the NYPD and other agencies can account for in terms of enforcement. But the ground rule was we had to be able to enforce it or else it was going to be counterproductive. So, the streets will be selected for where they'll have an impact, obviously, where people do need that – they need space exercise, I believe in that to say the least. But there'll be where, working together with the City Council, where we think there'll be a positive impact, but where we can guarantee enforceability.

Question: Okay. And this might be more directed at Commissioner Barbot, but given the spike that we're seeing, the daily increases in positive cases and in deaths, you know, we've seen these social distance measures in place now for a few days, I mean, going back a couple of weeks even – how will we know and when will we know if they're working?

Mayor: Dr. Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes. So, it will take at least, I would say, a good 14 days for us to start seeing a potential change in the trajectory of new cases. But the concern is that the more that we get New Yorkers adhering to our guidance of staying inside, the faster that that trajectory will change. But at the very earliest, I wouldn't anticipate seeing something before 14 days. And certainly, it will last, as we've been saying, at least the peak into sometime late April, early May. So, we are nowhere near getting a good sense of what our efforts are yielding. And until that time, we need New Yorkers to really take to heart the importance of staying home. And I know it's not easy. But it's something that is our best chance at turning the tide because otherwise, you know, we're facing an onslaught – a potential onslaught of thousands of people coming into our health care delivery system, into our hospitals, and many of them requiring a higher level of care. So, the best chance that we have against this is people staying home.

Moderator: Next, we have Chip from [inaudible] –

Question: – Wanted to ask about the PEG program and I was wondering if you know, Mel is going to be able to get those numbers in time for the executive budget at the end of April. And [inaudible] –

Mayor: No, no, we are committed to the current timeline. That's why we instituted this PEG program immediately. Conversations – you know, the program was based on obviously OMB’s intimate knowledge of each agency and providing goals that they thought were absolutely attainable. And we're on the same timeline. The agencies have been informed today. And so, we will stick to the schedule and everyone will have to deliver the results in time.

Moderator: Next we have Christian from Bloomberg.

Question: Hi, two questions for the Mayor. The first is last week you talked about trying to increase bed capacity on an emergency basis, sort of, surge capacity, if you will, around New York. And you talked about several different sites where you hope to add various numbers of beds including nursing homes, hospitals, medical facilities, and also some small hotels. Any update on that effort in terms of where we are on that?

Mayor: Yes, absolutely. We're working very closely with the State. The specific instruction the Governor gave, which I think is absolutely the right one, is that each hospital has to create a 50 percent expansion plan. That's what we're doing with Health + Hospitals. Look we're going to need, before this is over, a huge additional amount of hospital beds. We're going to need a lot more of them in April and I think we're going to need even more going into May. So, that expansion plan is moving very rapidly. I use the example of Coler Hospital on Roosevelt Island yesterday, a hundred beds will be up this week, 240 next week. But many, many other examples already of that rapid expansion going on. But I just need to be clear that, you know, it's amazing that we have the Javits Center – and I commend the State and FEMA and Army Corps. Everyone is doing that. That's going to be, I believe, a thousand beds, a USNS Comfort will bring 1,000 beds, but we have to never stop expanding because of the sheer scope of what's about to hit us. So, we're confident that we can hit the initial targets, but there's going to then have to be a lot more after that.

Question: Okay. Other issues – question in terms of the borough breakdown, for the last few days, the numbers have been running highest in Queens and Brooklyn obviously since they're the most populous boroughs. It sort of tracks the density there. Is there any sort of specific help being done for those areas? I think the Brooklyn Borough President today asked for something along the lines of Javits. Is there anything sort of being done to ensure that the capacity they get or the services they get are on par [inaudible] populations in those areas?

Mayor: Look, of course we have to make sure the care is where it's needed most. And I would let in a moment, Dr. Katz or Dr. Barbot can speak to this or both. But here would be my immediate answer. You know, what we hope to do is build capacity where the hospitals are first, both the publics and the voluntary hospitals. So, that's just proportionate to wherever they happen to be. And, obviously, you know, they're going to be the linchpin to this, those existing hospitals, which as Dr. Katz has said, will be in many cases, you know, will be primarily ICU units across the board to deal with coronavirus and then build out in their buildings, their campuses, build out in nearby buildings to really focus the attention first and foremost, where there are existing health care facilities.

You'll have exceptional situations like the Javits Center and the USNS Comfort, which are very, very valuable. And then we'll look constantly to see where we need expansion the most and where we can get it done the best. So, to some extent it will be as much a question, not just of where people are, we always will think about that, but where we can very, very quickly turn a building into a working hospital facility. That speed, I cannot emphasize enough – the kind of speed we're going to need here is unprecedented. It has to happen with lightning speed or it will be too late. So, it's a variety of factors, but you know, we're obviously going to get a patient wherever the health care is. That's going to be the imperative. Dr. Katz or Dr. Barbot, you want to answer further?

President Katz: I think, Mr. Mayor, you've explained it very well. The hospitals are best suited to be ICU beds because people who are critically ill need a lot of services from the pharmacy, from nursing, from physicians and equipment. And so, what we've been doing is constantly expanding the number of intensive care unit beds in our hospitals and looking to take patients who are not as sick and place them in other environments such as skilled nursing facilities or residential hotels.

Commissioner Barbot: And I'll just add that, you know, while we are anticipating a large influx of thousands of patients who have COVID and need to be hospitalized and who will require intensive care support, there are also those people that will continue to come in for other non-COVID related illnesses that will also need hospitalization. People, unfortunately, are still going to have heart attacks, they're still going to have appendicitis and they will need to be served. And so, that's why it's so critical for New Yorkers to stay home. If they don't need to go to the doctors, if they don't need to go to the hospital or the symptoms that they have that are likely mild COVID symptoms, they should stay home. We need to protect our health care system to ensure that it is not only strong for the people who are going to be developing COVID, but for everyone else who will still have a need for a strong health care delivery system. And we're looking at this as a five-borough strategy. And right now, though we're seeing the greatest activity in Brooklyn and in Queens, you know, we have to look at activity all over the city – and so, we are putting into play all of our resources in all five boroughs.

Moderator: Next, we have Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Hi, guys, how are you?

Mayor: Hey, Gersh.

Question: So, I mentioned this yesterday as an anecdotal story – so, the question is for the Commissioner we've actually crunched the numbers on [inaudible] –

Mayor: Commissioner Shea, I take it.

Question: Sorry. Yes. Commissioner Shea. We've crunched the numbers and found that New York City's speed cameras have issued roughly the same number of tickets over the last eight days as they did during the comparable eight-day period in January when we all know there were tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands more cars on the road. So, I guess the question I'm asking first Commissioner, can I get your reaction to that fact? And since those are just the camera tickets, I'd love to get the comparable numbers of tickets written by NYPD officers themselves.

Mayor: Yeah, I'm going to jump in just for a second, Gersh. I want to make sure – I haven't seen those statistics. I'm sure the Commissioner, who's Mr. Statistics himself, will be able to speak to them or get them. But I just want to make sure we are very clear that we're dealing with a crisis dynamic where obviously a lot of people, for example, are being brought to hospitals. I want to make sure that that number is excluding emergency vehicles that are speeding for a reason and we're just careful that we're actually getting a true filter on what's happening here. So, I just had to mention that to begin, but go ahead, Commissioner.

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, Gersh, I heard most of the question. Are you saying that in general or are you saying emergency workers getting captured on the camera? Because I wasn't familiar with it.

Question: No, the vast majority are normal drivers. It's the same statistics that would have been during January, in March. I guess the reason I'm asking is because there's so many fewer cars on the road right now, so that the idea that the speed cameras would be catching basically the same number of speeders is amazing because it suggests that, as I mentioned yesterday anecdotally, people are driving way too fast. And, as you know, when people drive fast, there's more crashes, which puts people in hospitals, which is what we're all trying to avoid.

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, it's a point well taken, Gersh. I mean, we'd have to look at the data. It's a little preliminary. You know, I can certainly pass it on to Billy Morris, our Chief of Transportation who works very closely with DOT. And again, we're in the middle of uncharted territory here, but we have not taken our eye off traditional crime. We haven't taken our eye off many of the things that we do with communities throughout New York City and we haven't taken our eye off Vision Zero either. So, if we have to reassess it and move resources around, we certainly will. I'll have Billy Morris take a look at that and reach out to DOT. But thank you for bringing it up.

Mayor: Yeah. And Gersh, I also say thank you because, look, I want to say, having raised my concern about the consistency of the statistics, I'll now go the other way and pick up on your point, which is, hey, everybody out there, if you're an emergency vehicle, that's one thing, but all other New Yorkers need to take to heart the point that Gersh made. The last thing we want is any additional crash that harms your fellow New Yorkers and takes up yet another bed in a hospital. And my number one reason we don't want the crash is because it means a human being got hurt. But we also cannot afford our already struggling hospital capacity to be further strained. And it's about to get really, really bad. I have to be blunt about that. So, even though the streets are more open, everyone still has to slow down and be careful and not act like, you know, we're in a different situation where it's open season if you want to speed. It is not and we will make sure the NYPD is vigilant and that there's real enforcement because we have to keep people safe.

Moderator: Next, we have Craig from the Post.

Question: Mr. Mayor, there are 300 inmates that you had said that are going to be released immediately today. And the other inmates you're working with other agencies to help move out, are these people that only fall into the vulnerable population? And are you working with – is there any plans to get a COVID-19 testing center on Rikers?

Mayor: Craig, on the – I’ll let Dr. Katz speak to the testing center point. I'll speak to the first point. I've given the instruction today. I'm sure the process of release takes a little bit of time, so I don't expect all of them to be out today. On the specific question, the folks that I released, again, are in the category that I have the power to release in. I think, with all due respect to some of our colleagues, elected officials, advocates, et cetera, I think there's been some misstatement out there of which people I have that direct power to act on and who I don't. So, the category that I have the power to release from is those serving a sentence on Rikers Island of less than a year. And again, those are for lower level crimes. Within that population, we screened out anyone with who had done a domestic violence crime, anyone who had done a sexual offense crime, and anyone who for other legal reasons and other factors in the criminal justice system, there was a legal prohibition on me acting alone. And that number, when you take out those exceptions, you get about 300 and that's what we're acting on now. Separately, I am saying across the entire population, that it is imperative to me that anyone over 70 and that anyone who has those preexisting – one of those five preexisting conditions, or more than one, should be released as well. But I know that will mean in many cases – probably the vast majority of cases – some additional sign off from either the State or a district attorney. So, we are going to aggressively move that. They have to make their own decisions. We're all working together, but they have to make their own decisions. But I'm going to argue to everyone that those categories at this moment need to be acted on. And in terms of whether there will be a testing center on Rikers – or, for Rikers, Dr. Katz, do you want speak to that?

President Katz: Yeah, so, we follow for inmates the same protocol that we follow in general, which is to say that if people have symptoms, then we test them, or if there was a close contact that required testing, we test them. We don't test asymptomatic people. But we do constantly do symptom review and we will make sure that at the time of release, if people have symptoms, we will get them to the appropriate medical care.

Question: Can I ask you a question of Commissioner Shea before we get off? Commissioner Shea, could you give us an update on the number of officers who have contracted the virus and the percentage of officers and civilians who have called out sick or are out on sick leave?

Mayor: Could you hear the question, Dermot?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, I did. So, the most recent statistics, which are, you know, fluid, to say the least. Unfortunately, we've had 211 members of the NYPD test positive. Of those 177 of the 211 are uniformed, 34 are civilian members. We have a little over 27 to 2,800 members currently out sick. So, that is an increase. I mean, it's just a trend that, as you talk about what we've seen and what we've tried to do with social distancing and lowering the curve, essentially. What we're seeing internally as an agency on the front lines is, we are still on an upward [inaudible] –

Mayor: And, Craig, look, we are – this is something we're going to be dealing with across all our agencies to say the least. We know certainly with NYPD, but other agencies as well, that there's been a lot of adjustments made to ensure we always have the personnel we need when we need them. But also want to really emphasize what Dr. Barbot has said many times, for the typical, healthy person under 50 years old, the recovery time from the time they get symptoms to the time they're clear to go back to work is essentially seven to 10 days. So, I know a Commissioner Shea and I have talked about keeping track of who comes back on duty after they have been out. And that number will start to grow soon too. It'll always be a juggling act, but this is what we all do for a living and certainly we're going to make sure we have the capacity we need when we need it.

Moderator: Next, we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: My question is about the ventilators. I'm curious, do you know where they're going to go yet? Will they only go to H + H hospitals? Will they be distributed to private hospitals that are in need? What’s the process for that? And I have another one.

Mayor: Yeah, the process through our Emergency Management – Emergency Management will determine, obviously in consultation with the Health Commissioner, in consultation with the CEO of Health + Hospitals what the needs are. The group – the 400 I mentioned earlier today, a hundred went to Health + Hospitals, 300 went to a variety of voluntary hospitals across the five boroughs, depending on need. And we'll make those adjustments each time. So, our job is to make sure that there's no hospital of any kind in the city that hits that – you know, that crucial point where they don't have a ventilator when they need one.

Question: Thank you. And my second question is, I know for the past week there's been discussion about testing sites set up at Citi Field, or even utilizing Citi Field [inaudible] the parking lot by Yankee Stadium for other uses. Is that still in the works for either a testing site or [inaudible] earlier, you know, Queens has some of the most [inaudible] had the most amount of cases? Would it ever be used for secondary hospital sites or anything like that?

Mayor: I'll start and I don't know if – Deanne is on? Okay, I'll start and our Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell will jump in. Look, this, Katie, obviously, ever-changing. Testing – it would have been so valuable in the beginning to do it on a really, really broad scale. It's now, as you've heard from Dr. Barbot the realities of testing have changed over time. We certainly need it for folks who are most vulnerable and to keep emergency rooms from being overwhelmed. That's where the focus is. So, we'll be making those decisions, those adjustments, Emergency Management, working with Health + Hospitals, Health Department, FEMA, they'll be constantly figuring out where the adjustments are. But in terms of expanding hospital facilities and capacity, we're absolutely going to constantly look for additional space. Those obviously have to be either indoor spaces or places where we could best set up tents. And we are always in touch with the federal government trying to see if we can get additional military support in and that's something I sure hope will be coming over time. But the focus will be again, wherever possible close to existing health care facilities. That's the ideal, to put any new capacity near existing health care facilities to maximize the way you use it. Commissioner Criswell, do you want to add?

Commissioner Criswell: Yes, thank you, Mayor. Regarding the site that we were looking at Citi Field, that [inaudible] one of the places we had identified to use the FEMA drive through sites, but we have [inaudible] and I think we briefed this yesterday or the day before, decided to co-locate all of those FEMA testing sites with our current Health + Hospital sites. So, our supplies have all gone over there and they are being cold located and we're working with FEMA right now to finalize those sites. I think just to add onto what the Mayor said about them possibly using it for other types of operations, you know, I have been in touch with several members from DOD today about some of the resources that they're looking at bringing in and we're working with them to identify if they do and when these resources do come in, you know, what would be the best locations that they could set up field hospitals if that's what they are going to bring in or other types of equipment and supplies that they might be bringing. So, there's a lot of spaces out there. There's going to be a lot of, at least we hope, equipment and people coming in and all of these spaces are going to be needed to help us support the bigger picture in the bigger response to this COVID crisis.

Question: Next we have [inaudible] from Crain’s.

Question: Hello? Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah. What's the name again? I'm sorry.

Moderator: Janon Fisher –

Question: Yeah, hi, this is about the small business loan program. Wanted to see how many businesses have applied? How many grants have been issued? And how much money has been dispersed so far? I also wanted to see how much money is in the pot to disperse the grant money. I have similar questions about the loan program – how many applied, how many loans have been –

Mayor: Hey, I appreciate it. Let me just give just a helpful ground rule. I've said it to a number of your colleagues and I want to keep repeating, even though it's – we're trying to keep everyone to a two-question allotment, if you could split it up, it really helps me to just be able to follow it all and give you accurate information. So, on the question of the small business loan and grant program – applications have come in and large number as I understand it. I know we are hitting some limits in terms of that, but I want to get you the exact details. I don't have them at my fingertips. We will absolutely be able to get them to you right away. I think it was back on Friday, I was giving details about when money would flow. If my memory serves, some of it already, some of it by the end of the week for the two different programs. Both definitely have limits. I'm certain we will max out both of them. But I hope it will help a number of small businesses keep going. Of course, the big question will be, does this stimulus bill focus where it should on working people and on small business in addition to our hospital system and our local governments and state governments – you know, will that be really the focus? Or, will it be a corporate bailout more than an actual relief program for people in need? So hopefully, hopefully you'll see some relief for small business in this next stimulus. I think it's fair to say there will be at least one or two more stimulus bills after this one given the magnitude of the crisis. So, we hope there's going to be help there, because the real help the small business needs is far beyond what the City government can do. But we will get you the answers on our program and what's happened with it.

Moderator: Next we have Jeff Mays, from the Times.

Question: Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. I'm wondering, you've talked a lot about the ventilators. Are you at all satisfied with the amount of other supplies that you've received from the federal government? And what else are you in need of at this point? And I have a second question.

Mayor: Yeah. Deanne might be able to do the chapter and verse. My memory is, the overall requests that we documented time and time again to numerous federal officials over the last two weeks – 15,000 ventilators, I think it's 50 million surgical masks, if I remember correctly – Deanne can fill in some of the other blanks. But Jeff, no, of course I'm not satisfied. I am pleased that there's finally a flow of real resources for New York City. I mean, literally a week ago at this time we had seen essentially nothing. And now, you know, there's an actual constant dialogue going on. A week ago, I believe there's only one federal secretary who, despite letters, phone calls, everything, really gave me any answer on anything. Since then, I've been talking constantly to federal officials and they have been much more responsive and much more detailed that are actually providing answers. And we saw obviously today some real progress on the ventilators. But no, the day I will be satisfied is when we have such an ample supply that I am certain we can get through April and May. And I mean, we are far from that moment. What we have right now – I'm going to be blunt as I can be – I said it earlier, I'll say it again – right now, I am satisfied we can get through this week in New York City in terms of our health care system. And even with that, I think some of our hospitals are going to be very stressed. I am hopeful we can get through the week after that, but I'm not convinced. And when I say get through, I mean be able to ensure that every single patient who can be saved is saved who has coronavirus, while also addressing all the other patients with all the other serious conditions that have nothing to do with coronavirus. So, because we got an infusion of help – we got a lot of help from the State, we definitely got some good help from the federal government. We've gotten a lot of help from just individuals and companies. We're going to get through this week and we have a strong chance again through next week and that's all I can guarantee you right now. So, we're going to need a huge amount more. Deanne, are you able, again, from memory or maybe you have the letter in front of you – was I right? It's 15,000 ventilators and 50 million surgical masks? Am I right so far?

Commissioner Criswell: Yes, Mayor, those numbers are right. We also asked for 3 million N95 masks and we are starting to see some of these supplies trickle in and we did get a truckload, or several truckloads that were delivered to the Javits Center today. Some additional PPE, I don't have exactly what arrived yet, this is just a late breaking news. But really want to expand on something that the Mayor said, and that is, while all of these items are really critical in order for us to be successful with this, our number-one most precious commodity and all of my years of disaster experience is time and you can't get time back. And every day that goes by that decisions aren’t made supplies don’t come in are going to cost people their lives.

Mayor: Well said. Very, very painful reality, but very well said, Commissioner. Okay. Who's up?

Question: Secondly –

Mayor: Oh yes –

Question: [Inaudible] Mr. Mayor about the street closings. Why only do two streets per borough? And do you have some sort of resistance to the idea of closing streets to open up more space? Why start with so few streets?

Mayor: Jeff, I'm going to very respectful answer, but I'm also going to refer you to what I said earlier in this press conference and what I said in detail at yesterday's press conference. I think I've been real clear about it. Enforcement, enforcement, enforcement – if you open up a bunch of streets and you cannot enforce because you're spreading out our resources too much into places we haven't normally had to enforce, you're going to have a problem of gatherings starting to happen and people not observing social distancing because there's no enforcement mechanism. So, what I – right now, we have a huge system of parks and playgrounds people are used to going to and we know where they are and we know how to enforce them and that's what we're doing. But we're going to work to set up a select number of other locations, but with enforcement attached. The only way we can expand in my view is if we keep proving that we can enforce. So, think of it as toeholds – like, first you get one thing done, then you climb to the next level and next level. If you cannot get regular presence from City agencies that are being stretched all over the place right now, if you cannot get regular eyes on and regular enforcement, you run the risk of exacerbating social distancing rather than reducing social distancing. And we do have a lot of places for people to go right now – parks, playgrounds – that's where we think the focus should because we can monitor and we can enforce properly.

Moderator: Next we have Matthew Chayes, from Newsday.

Question: Mr. Mayor, Dr. Katz – gentlemen, when I asked you a week and a half ago you said the City didn't have a triage plan recommending like who's gets care when there are limited circumstances. When I cited Italy, Mr. Mayor, you call that country a hot mess and you said we're nowhere near that. But when I asked, there were 15,000 cases in Italy – that's, kind of, where we're at now. Other jurisdictions – Washington State – have disclosed their plans, They call it – I think it's something called like a crisis standard care for these very difficult circumstances. So, just to be clear, I'm not asking whether the plan is in effect right now. But I am asking, yes or no, does New York City have such a plan? And, if yes, who gets priority and who doesn't?

Mayor: Matt, I'll start and Dr. Katz can jump in. Again, I couldn't be clearer about what we're trying to do right now, what we – and until I got to the point where we can't do it. If I ever – if we ever get to a point where I have to say to all of you, we cannot keep up with the number of cases, we'll say it. But the very blunt, detailed conversations we're having every single day with the people of the city is to say exactly where we are on space and personnel and supplies and equipment. And as I said, today, we have what we need, going into next week, so that we are not making the kinds of decisions that you're talking about. And when I referred to this situation in Italy, I was also referring to a very different trajectory than we went through, very different level of preparation. So, I think you have very honestly – you have creatively reinterpreted what I said and you have not accurately portrayed it. We, of course, know that we might get to a triage situation, but I don't think it's appropriate to start talking about not just a theoretical, a very painful theoretical that I don't think is fair to people to just lay out there as something that might happen when we're being real, real honest about the fact that if we don't get more help and we're going to be in a situation where not everyone can get what they need. I think we have to keep fighting to get the help we need to keep innovating, to have the space, to have everything we need ready, and we ever feel there's going to be a problem beyond that, we're going to be honest about it. And, of course, our hospitals know how to handle a situation like that as difficult as it may be. So, I'm not going to lay out some plan in advance because we are not at that point. Dr. Katz?

President Katz: I agree. I think to lay out a plan is to accept that we're not going to have the resources that we need in order to take care of everyone. And you've been very forceful about getting us those resources and I think we have to keep pushing for the necessary resources and believing in our amazing health care workers, who I can tell you, Mr. Mayor, at Health + Hospitals have just been phenomenal and doing things that would have one seemed impossible to them, such as doubling our ICU capacity. So, we are actively innovating and I'm not at all prepared to say that we can't meet the needs of everyone.

Question: Also, for Dr. Katz and potentially for Dr. Barbot, how many ventilators approximately does New York City have at this moment? And how many approximately, again, are in use for coronavirus, but also for other reasons – and ditto for hospital beds. Same question.

Mayor: Yeah, let me jump in and then they can jump in. Again, respecting the question, but this is – one of your colleagues, Henry, asked a similar question. We're just not going to be giving specific answers to something that's a constantly moving target. It's not fair to New Yorkers to constantly say one thing when it could be moving a course of hours. We said earlier in this trajectory that the estimate was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 ventilators in the city. That number has grown markedly in the last 24 hours with the shipment from FEMA and the announcement of the 2,000 more that we hope to receive as early as tomorrow or the next day. And there's lots of other sources being acted on. It will be changing all the time. The way we can interpret all of this to you, and the best way and the most honest way in the most effective way, is to talk about overall capacity with that simple standard – can we serve everyone who comes in with the coronavirus and give them the care they need? That's what we're going to be reporting on constantly. But I guarantee you, the number of masks, the number of ventilators, the number of hospital beds, the number of people admitted are going to be varying by the hour and we are just not going to be in the business of updating people on that, because it's not going to be sufficiently accurate. It's not fair. It's not a good use of our time. Our job is to give you the overview and be very, very honest where we are at any given point with that overview report. Doctors, do you want to add?

President Katz: I think you covered it. We have enough resources, as you've said, certainly to get through March and to get into April, and we have confidence in your abilities and FEMA and the federal government to bring us – and State government – the resources we need to go beyond that.

Commissioner Barbot: I don't have anything to add. You covered it, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Thank you, Commissioner. Okay. Who's up?

Moderator: Last two – we'll take Yoav next.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. I'm just wondering – or maybe one of the doctors can answer this, but are there specific hospitals, either public or private, that are already or close to being in serious trouble? And I wonder if there is any value of making at least that information public, because perhaps that might change public behavior. Maybe somebody who's sick can avoid hospital that's overrun currently and try another one?

Mayor: It's a fair question, Yoav, and I appreciate it. I don't like the word overrun because I don't – I’m not trying to be semantically difficult, I'm just trying to be honest – I don't think it's a helpful word because I don't think it portrays reality. For example, Dr. Katz has been very open about the fact that there's been a disproportionately high number of cases at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, and yet, at the same time, it's an extraordinary facility that's very well run and they've been making constant adjustments to deal with it. I think we need to be careful. I agree with you, if you had a perfect world where you could say, hey, you know, everybody, let's move over here, move over there, that would be a wonderful, but I think what I've learned from the doctors is that's not the way health care works. If someone's in an emergency situation location, location, location becomes the issue. And also, our ability to communicate to people down to that kind of micro level of here's the hospital usage levels at any given hour, I just don't think it's going to get through to people. We’ll say, certainly, especially for our public hospitals, if there's something shift situation that we think is particularly troubling we'll be open about that. Elmhurst has gone through a lot, Queen's Hospital's gone through a lot, but they are keeping it together, particularly as we get them more supplies and personnel. But I don't think it's really easy to say, go here, don't go here, go to this other place. It just doesn't strike me as a realistic. Doctors, tell me if that's accurate or not.

Commissioner Barbot: [Inaudible] add here, I would say that, you know, I've been the first person to say, people stay home, stay home, stay home, and that's for two reasons. One is, we want to make sure that people are socially distancing. The other one is, we want to maintain the capacity of all of our health care delivery systems and our hospitals because we don't have to travel any longer [inaudible] not only for COVID-related, but for, as I said earlier, you know, heart attacks, appendicitis, other things that they might need to have urgent care for. We don't want to extend the period or the length of time that they have to – or space that they have to go get care, we want to relieve the congestion of what we call the [inaudible] well, meaning people who have mild symptoms, may have, you know, a certain concern that they may have COVID. The reality is, as the Mayor said earlier, and I've been saying, 80 percent of the people who get COVID will be able to ride it out at home for three or four days, and if they're not – excuse me, seven to 10 days – and if they're not better in three to four days, that's when we want them to reach out to their doctors. We need to reserve the capacity of our hospitals, not only for COVID, but for all of the other things that need to come in as well.

President Katz: I would add on the hospital capacity that it's more appropriate for us to move resources than it is for patients to go elsewhere. Part of why people come to Elmhurst is because it has an excellent reputation as a hospital and it's really well trusted by the immigrant population that surrounds it. So, rather than directing patients away from it, I keep directing resources of additional nurses and additional equipment and additional physicians to the hospital.

Question: Thanks for that. And actually following up on that issue about the distribution of resources, if we – if the city does get to a point where all the ventilators have been distributed and other supplies, is there a going – is there going to be a sharing of resources for whoever needs it at that point? I guess I'm wondering if there's going to be kind of no distinction between private and public hospitals at that point if the materials that are in short supply need to go, you know, to a particular facility.

Mayor: Yeah. This is something that talked to the Governor about. We are absolutely united in that point that there are no lines at this point between the public and the private hospitals. As I mentioned, our Emergency Management warehouse had 400 ventilators. We didn't say, oh, we're going to just, you know, keep them just for Health + Hospitals. We made sure they went where the need is greatest – Health + Hospitals has close relationships with a lot of the hospitals and the voluntary system. And the doctors can speak to this, but the anticipation absolutely is that you'll see equipment moved among them if needed, because what we cannot have is a situation where any hospital doesn't have the basics. And so, we'll keep mixing and matching literally day by day, hour by hour to stay ahead of the situation. Dr. Katz, you want to add?

President Katz: No, I think you've covered it, sir. Thank you.

Mayor: Okay, who's left?

Moderator: Last question is Julia at the Post.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, indeed. How are you doing?

Question: Good. How are you? So, two quick questions here. Can you tell me when the city was notified that they'd be getting be getting half of the 4,000 new ventilators? Specifically, I'm wondering if was if it was before or after the Governor’s press briefing discussing the dire need.

Mayor: Yeah. Julia, I want to just caution you. You've been, I've noticed, asking these very fine tuned, like who knew what, when questions. They are perfectly fair questions, but I really am trying to be as honest as I can be about how things are changing by the hour or even by less, constantly. I heard the confirmed information that 2,000 would get to New York City just before coming out here. So, sometime, you know, maybe 3:15-3:30, something like that, because we at first heard the State allotment, we did not hear if a certain amount was being determined specifically for New York City. So, that's my impression. It only came into us after 3:00 pm.

Question: Okay. Thank you. And then a second question – I know you and Dr. Katz have said that you could make any hospital bed into an ICU bed. Given that our ICU cases are escalating the city, can you just give us a sense of what the current landscape looks like in terms of ICU beds? I've seen reports out there that range from 1,000 to 2,000.

Mayor: What do you trying – I'm sorry, I want to make sure I understand your question. What is – when you say 1,000 to 2,000, what are you trying to say?

Question: What is the current number of ICU beds in New York City?

Mayor: Similar point, again, I'm going to be very rigid about this, which is, we have an ever-changing situation. The way we are grading this is overall capacity. This is so fluid, I cannot even begin to describe it to you. So what Dr. Kat said from the beginning, he could take any part – or, almost any part of his hospital and turn it into an ICU. And what you're going to see is the hospitals more and more will expand ICU capacity. A lot of other types of capacity will go over into other places, whether it’s the Javits Center, whether it's hotels, whatever we're able to stand up, but I'm not going to give ever a number that is a moving target. I'm going to talk about what we can do to serve people. If we're confident we have the capacity to serve people at any given hour, that's what I'll say. If we are not confident of that, I will say that too. If we're not confident at any particular place, I will say that. But I'm not doing a running count. It's just not responsible or fair given the ever-changing situation.

Question: [Inaudible] supplies –

Mayor: Again?

Question: But you can do a running count of medical supplies but not beds?

Mayor: Again, I'm telling you that we – I got the question on medical supplies a moment ago too and I said we'd give very broad figures, but we're not – those figures are changing all the time too. We have determined this is just the way we're going to do it, that we're not going to say something that could easily be misunderstood and that's ever-changing. We're going to talk in terms of ability to serve people. Everything is changing by the hour.

Thank you very much, everybody.

2020-03-25 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: I want to give everyone an update. This is another day where a lot is going on here in New York City of course, but also in Washington. That will mean a lot for us. I'm going to speak about that in a moment. I want to explain from the beginning how important I think it is to tell you information that I believe is 100 percent accurate, that I believe is crucial for New Yorkers to know, and to tell you information that sometimes will be tough to hear, other times, thank God, will be hopeful and inspiring information that will show just how many people are working hard together to address this crisis, how many people are working together here in the city, but also all the people around the country, and not only rooting for New York City, but are really stepping up to help us out. I'll tell you those stories and those facts and I'll tell you the facts when they're difficult to hear, but important for all New Yorkers to know.

What I'm always going to be careful about is not to tell you something if I am not certain it's accurate information. A lot of times we're going to see really fast changing developments, a lot of times we're going to have information that we do not think is complete because of this ever-changing situation or information that might be inadvertently misleading to New Yorkers instead of giving you the complete picture. My job is to always try and sort that out and do the best I can to level with you about the challenge and what we do about it, but also constantly tell you the good news to, all of the things that are being done to address this challenge.

One thing I believe very, very strongly is to be honest about the timeline here. It's been a lot of discussion in the last few days. You've heard people talk about the hope that we can get back to normal really quickly in this city and in this country. I want to tell you that we should not cling to that false hope. I want to get back to normal as much as anyone. And maybe after a period of time if we saw sustained progress, really, really had evidence of progress, we could have had that conversation. But we're seeing right now unfortunately, a growing challenge, a growing crisis that's clearly going to take us into April in a really tough situation and for everything we know now we're going continue to deal with more and more challenges in April. And I have tried to be honest with everyone to not get into a situation where we let our guard down. We start to have false hopes. I think we're much better off being girded for battle and knowing the truth. So, I believe that April is going to be tougher than March. And I think at this point May could be tougher than April and people need to be ready for that. But the notion that everything might be fine by Easter, I don't know where on earth that idea comes from. Certainly, does not apply to anything we're seeing here in New York City. And again, if that situation ever changes, I will be the first to tell you, I assure you. What we're seeing right now is huge challenges and intense stress in particular on our hospital capacity, on the men and women who do such amazing work in our healthcare system and clearly on the supplies and equipment that we need to make sure that we can keep moving forward.

We did get some good news in the last few days and that is very, very important to say. Supplies have come in from the federal government, from the state government and elsewhere that have certainly improved our situation this week. That'll help us get into next week. That is a Ray of light for sure. But we know we're going to have giant challenges ahead in terms of producing enough hospital space or enough personnel who are trained to help us in this crisis and that ongoing challenge with equipment and supplies. That's what we'll be dealing with for weeks and weeks ahead. The painful obligation I have every time I joined with you to tell you the overall numbers. And I will say every single time, these are human beings, these are families represented in these numbers. These are our neighbors. So, in New York City today, as of the official numbers from this morning, the last official count that we have, 17,856 cases, almost 18,000 at this point. Now at this point, we, our cases in New York city constitute about 54 percent – 54 percent of the total in the State of New York, and about 32 percent, almost a third of the cases in the United States of America. And very, very sadly now the death toll from coronavirus New York city has reached to almost 200.

What do we do? It's what we do every day. We work to make sure that we fight back and we stay ahead of this crisis and that, and we are winning that race against time for as many people as possible. And that starts with ventilators. This is going to be the single most valuable item, the single most valuable piece of equipment in this fight ahead. And we can say compared to last week, we've seen real progress. The 400 that came in yesterday from FEMA, the 2,000 we expect by the end of this week on top of that from the federal government, a big step in the right direction, but only one step more. We must receive and we must receive quickly. And that's what we're working on every single day. The goal for New York city is 15,000 ventilators. So, the numbers that we have from this week gets us about a sixth of the way there, and that is important, but we got a lot more to do and the sooner we get them, the better.

We still need the federal government to maximize the use of the defense production act. There's been some major steps forward in the last a day or two. FEMA has certainly been taking a more aggressive role in using the possibilities of defense production act, but nowhere near where we needed to go. And I’ve got to be clear that this is in everyone's interest everywhere in the United States of America. It's us today. It will be some other part of the country tomorrow. We need this production to be maximized for everyone's good. But on top of that, we have to be honest about the fact that even if the production occurs, the only way it will get to us in time on a sustained basis, is if the United States military gets involved much more deeply. I had a second round of conversations yesterday with the Defense Secretary and the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to constantly update them on what we are facing here, to thank them for the supplies, and the troops that we’re starting to get come in from the United States military to play a crucial role. There is some military presence now in New York City, and that's going to help us a lot. And that's going to give us everything from the extraordinary talent of our men and women in uniform, the supplies, the equipment, and also a real boost to all of our morale to see heroes from all over this country coming here to help New Yorkers, protect New Yorkers, and save New Yorkers.

That's a really positive sign, but we need to go to a much, much higher level and for the good of our nation we need the military to be directly involved in getting supplies all over this country on a really rapid basis, starting with those ventilators. Putting into play their extraordinary medical personnel on much higher level and bringing medical personnel, civilian medical personnel, from all over the country to serve here quickly. And then we will all together turn to support the next part of the country that deals with this challenge after our crisis is over. But I have to be clear, if the military is not mobilized on a higher level, I can't see a scenario where those supplies, that equipment, those personnel get where they need to go here in New York City in time. The only way we have a guarantee is with the active presence of the United States military.

Now, today in Washington, obviously there's been a real movement on the stimulus bill, although we are still waiting to confirm exactly what's going to be happening with it. We have seen a lot of detail come out today. And I have to say that I will talk in a moment about some of the things in the bill that are absolutely crucial for New York City and for the people of New York City and some of the things that went right. But I’ve got to first honestly talk about the thing that didn't go right and what has to be done to fix it. And that has to be addressed really quickly. Look, here's the truth. It was the majority leader of the U S Senate, Mitch McConnell, who stood in the way of real aid to New York City and New York state. That is just a fact. We know from all the negotiations that played out in recent days that all the other parties were willing to do more to support direct aid to New York City, direct aid to New York state, to keep our governments functioning at their current level.

Look, we are every single day doing more and more to address COVID-19. We are doing more and more to help people in need and the need keeps expanding all the time. At the same time, of course, our economy has ended up in a very difficult situation and our resources are plummeting. Our revenues plummeting. The, the money that we use to help people is drying up. So, what the most obvious thing in the world would've been to say, okay, we know, everyone in the country knows New York City is the epicenter of this crisis. Therefore, the state government, the city government in New York need all the help they can get to keep helping everyday people and to keep afloat everything else that we do. We need every other service of government to work, police and fire, and water, and sanitation, all the things we do. And that gets harder and harder if you have less and less money. So, it should have been one of the easiest no-brainers in the world for the U.S. Senate to include real money for New York City and New York state, in this stimulus bill, and yet it didn't happen. And we know why, because Mitch McConnell wouldn't let it happen. I don’t understand how anybody, any public servant could live with themselves if they deprived the cities in the middle of the biggest crisis since the Great Depression, deprived us, deprived our state, of the money we need, giving New York City $1 billion out of $150 billion pool that they provide for the entire Country. But we are one-third of the cases in this country right now, someone do the math down there in Washington, in the Senate, Republican majority, someone do the math. They gave us less than 1 percent of the money that they were giving out to cities and states, and we have a third of the cases in the Nation – that is just immoral.

I'm going to call President Trump. I've spoken to President Trump several times about the stimulus bill, about what it means to New York City. I'm going to call President Trump and appeal to him – to intervene or to either fix this bill as it is or to guarantee that there will be another stimulus bill in the coming weeks that will address this problem immediately. I reached out today to Senator Schumer, I reached out to Speaker Pelosi, spoke with both of them and I want to thank them because we all know they were the lead negotiators in achieving all the good in this legislation. The direct money that will be provided to families in need to working people who have lost their jobs, those extended employment benefits, the grants to small businesses. Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi made a priority of helping the American people and helping the people in New York City who are suffering and only because of their presence do those items end up in the legislation. I say thank you to them, but I know where the roadblock is on the money, we need to keep this City and the State going. I know it's Mitch McConnell and I'm going to appeal to President Trump who's from this city, who understands very personally just what's at stake here. I'm going to appeal to him to step in and fix this situation on behalf of all Americans and to make sure that all New Yorkers are safe.

I'm going to give you some quick updates on some other issues. We have in our regional enrichment centers for the Department of Education, we are providing – education and childcare for the children of our essential workers. And we've said from the beginning that we include those who work in Healthcare, our first responders, transit workers— starting this Friday, we're going to add to that list— workers in a number of other categories and this is something that can be added to at any point. We'll make adjustments to the regional enrichment centers on a regular basis as we experience everything happening in this crisis, and we determined the best way to proceed. So, starting on Friday, the children of grocery workers and pharmacy workers, the essential staff at groceries and pharmacies, their children will also qualify for regional enrichment centers. There are staff members at our Department of Health who were not previously covered they will now be covered. Essential staff from Staten Island Ferry and NYC Ferry will join other transit workers in having the ability to bring their children to those regional enrichment centers. Department of Environmental Protection essential staff, the people who made sure we get water, the people who make sure the sewer systems working among other things their children as well, and essential staff from Department of Probation. So that's an update and all of that will be activated for Friday.

I want also to talk to you about the activities out in our communities to make sure social distancing is being enforced, I want to thank New Yorkers. Overwhelming, I've talked to Police Commissioner constantly gotten statistics from numerous agencies I've gotten counts on how many inspections are done. What came from a number of encounters, thousands and thousands of encounters with every-day New Yorkers, meeting our enforcement agents, and the results are the same every single time. Overwhelmingly, New Yorkers are paying attention to social distancing rules they understand how serious it is, they understand it's about their health and their family's health and our whole City. So, overwhelmingly, we are seeing New Yorkers follow the rules. We do have some issues though, and we're going to be very open and honest about those issues when we have them. And that specific problem we've seen is in some parks, not all, some parks when it comes to basketball courts and every one of us who loves basketball and I'm one of them loves to go out and court and play a pickup game – or play with your family on the court. I want to differentiate in fact what's acceptable and what's not on a basketball court in the age of coronavirus. If you're a kid or adult who just wants to shoot hoops yourself, single, solitary, you can do that. Make sure you're socially distanced from the people around you. If you're a family that people live under the same roof and you want to play with each other on the basketball court, that's fine. But what's not fine anymore is any kind of basketball game between people who do not live under the same roof, because, let's face it, it's a contact sport, people are going to get close together, it creates a danger. It does not mean social distancing, so here's what we're going to do. I've heard back from the Parks Department and the NYPD that they have found 80 locations – 80 courts around the city out of about 1,700 that, after repeated attempts to make sure everyone there understood what social distancing was, they did not get the response they wanted. And so, in those 80 locations, we're going to remove the basketball hoops and make it impossible, sadly, for people to play basketball there. That's what we have to do right now at those 80 locations. The courts will still be there for folks who want to do any other kind of recreation and we'll be enforcing that. But there will not be any basketball games because there will not be any basketball hoops. And as I said, there's about 1,700 locations total so that means about 1,600 more courts that we can leave intact, if people follow the rules. People don't follow the rules, we'll take the hoops down there. And if we have to end up closing off basketball courts across the board, we'll do it, if we have to. I don't want to do it. I want to see if we can get it right. I want to give people maximum options, but you’d got to follow the rules to matter of everyone's safety.

I also want to give you an update this'll be a daily reality until we get to the point that we believe all this work has been done in terms of our jail population. A lot of work is going on right now to ensure that any inmates who should be brought out of our jail system because of health issues or concerns will be any inmates who can be directly acted on by the City of New York and not pose a specific serious threat to community. But we want to make sure that those who can be released are, there will be some, as I said yesterday who will not be released because they do pose a threat or because for example, they've committed an offense related to domestic violence or sexual offenses and we're going to have to work with other agencies, district attorneys and the State to determine what would happen with a number of other inmates.

But as for the total today, by tonight 200 inmates will have been released, there will be more releases tomorrow— and we will give you that update as it occurs. By way of closing, I’ll say a special thank you to folks who have been out there educating their fellow New Yorkers working with them. I gave you the example of one of the few things we've had a problem with those very specific basketball courts, but as you saw, that's not many out of the grand total in this City. But overwhelmingly what I've heard back from the Parks Department and NYPD is again, that cooperation from New Yorkers. I want to thank all of our park’s workers and a special thank you to our park's enforcement patrol workers for all you do every day, but especially during this crisis. Thank you for educating people about social distancing. Thank you for enforcing a special thank you to all of the men and women at the NYPD who have become really experts in describing social distancing and enforcing it over the last few days and they've been doing a fantastic job. So, thank you to all the men and women at the NYPD, and to all the six other agencies that are out there doing this work. This, again, is how we keep our parks and playgrounds going. And thank you, it's making a big, big difference.

And look, I will conclude before I say a few words in Spanish and then we'll open up to questions. I'll conclude by saying just a point to everyone about this new reality we are living in – it is very easy to feel alone in a situation like this. But you really – even if you feel it, even if you feel the confusion and the uncertainty, I guarantee you you're not alone. First of all, there are millions of us all feeling a lot of the same things. Second of all, there are literally hundreds of thousands of good people working every single day to protect you. Whether it's our first responders, our health care workers, our transit workers, and all those other essential workers, folks at the grocery stores and the pharmacies I mentioned earlier – so many people who are making it their business to get out there and help you live your life and protect you and your family. So, you may feel alone sometimes, but I guarantee you you're not. There are a lot of heroes out there who are going to help us save lives, and that's what we do here in New York City, that's a New York City tradition. Even in the toughest times, New Yorkers step up – in fact, a lot of people would say it's in crisis, in a moment like this. And New Yorkers are not at their very best and no one wishes for a time like this, but we've seen time and time again just how good New Yorkers can be even when our backs are against the wall. So, I just want to reassure everyone, you are definitely not alone and we will all get through this together.

Let me just say a few words in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, I would be happy now to turn to Olivia, and we will take questions from the media. Go ahead, Olivia.

Moderator: Quick programming note at the top – to ensure that we get to as many outlets as possible, we're going to limit it to one question per reporter and we'll come back around if we have time. So, with that, we're going to start with Kathleen from Patch. Kathleen, can you hear us?

Mayor: That’s not working so far. Kathleen, last call. All right, we'll come back.

Moderator: Next up is Reema, from Chalkbeat.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Okay, great. Hi to everyone there. So, I have a question just about the Regional Enrichment Centers. Do you know what the total capacity is of the centers in terms of how many children came to go there? And then do you know what the latest attendance numbers were?

Mayor: I want to – I'm not sure if the Chancellor is on the line.

Moderator: He is on line.

Mayor: Chancellor, can you answer those questions? Chancellor, can you hear us?
Go ahead. Chancellor, did you hear those questions?

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Can you repeat those questions, Reema, please?

Question: Yeah. Hi, Mr. Chancellor. So, I'm wondering what the total capacity in terms of how many kids total capacity is for the RECs and then do you know about the latest attendance members were to update us?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, so we have a capacity of about 8,000 students at the moment. Today's attendance, we're still compiling that information, but I can see that a little less [inaudible] –

Moderator: Reema, I think you are typing.

Mayor: Yeah, Chancellor, you know, are you in a place where you can – we're getting a lot of background noise there.

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, it's not me.

Mayor: Okay. There you go. Go ahead.

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, so we're seeing that the uptake hasn't been as robust as we anticipated, and that's why the Mayor announced today that we're opening up capacity for additional people in those Regional Enrichment Centers. We have 32 sites in Brooklyn, 22 in Bronx, 20 in Queens, 15 in Manhattan and four in Staten Island and we're fully staffed and we have a we have about 5,000 volunteers that are staffing those centers. So, we're confident that we're going to be able to meet the need of whoever needs those, those centers. We have approximately 40,000 student capacity in those centers. So, we're going to keep ramping up and going to different tiers of first responders and your emergency workers, until we get to that 40,000 a student capacity number.

Mayor: Let me, let me add to Reema, that we understand this is an ever-evolving situation. So, what the Chancellor's told you is, you know, we're ready to go to a number like that. We're also ready if we don't find that demand at any given point, we can adjust for that as well. The thing, the important thing is to understand because it's about essential workers, that's really the crucial crux of this matter is making sure we are supporting those essential workers and giving them the option in terms of our kids. If they want to take advantage of it and we find a lot of pickup on it, we're going to be able to have the capacity we have now. We could even build it out more. If we find that there is not as much use of it, we'll of course be able to compress it if we need to. But important point is we will grow in whatever direction according to the level of need to make sure those essential workers can get to work and be really comfortable about where their kids are and what they're doing.

Chancellor Carranza: Mr. Mayor, if I can add one more caveat, late breaking information. So, today's enrollment was about 8,000 students. Okay. So, we have some capacity.

Mayor: Thank you, Chancellor.

Moderator: Back to Kathleen from Patch. Kathleen? Kathleen? Kathleen – okay, we'll come back to her. Next up is Julia, from the Post.

Mayor: Julia, can you hear us okay?

Question: I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah, there you go.

Question: Okay. So, on the open streets, again, I believe that is supposed to be rolled out tomorrow, do you have any details for us?

Mayor: Yeah, we are finalizing with NYPD and other city agencies and the Council. As we said, it'll be up to two sites per borough. Key point is to make sure that we are confident about the enforcement levels. We are going to announce those sites, I think by the end of the evening. We're going to need one extra day to get them up and running because of some of the practical considerations. So, those will be open on Friday.

Moderator: Thanks, Julia.

Question: [Inaudible]

Moderator: Julia, can you repeat your question? We couldn't hear you.

Question: Yeah, sorry, Mr. Mayor, could you say what the enforcement will look like and can you tease expectations?

Mayor: Yeah, the enforcement is going to be similar to what we're doing with parks now. We have to make sure if we leave any official space for people to gather and we don't put enforcement with it, my fear has always been, it becomes like a new magnet for people to return to the way we all lived for all our lives until a week ago. And people started gathering and getting too close together. So, especially with a new site, which might attract a lot of interests, we want to make sure, whether it's NYPD, Parks, whatever way we configure it that there will be enforcement at the locations. And that we know all the other places that have to be enforced are covered as well. So that's what we're refining. Again, we'll have those sites shortly.

Moderator: Yoav is up next. Yoav?

Question: Yeah. Hi, Mr. Mayor. There was apparently there's a FEMA leadership briefing document, the Times obtained it, and it says that the City's more than 1,800 intensive care units are expected to be full by Friday. Just wondering if you can confirm that that's is that the right figure for the number of ICU, is that prognosis correct? And also, as far as the 400 ventilators, how quickly do those get mobilized? The ones we got up in the hands of, are they all entirely in the hands of hospitals?

Mayor: Yeah, that was – as you can imagine, Yoav, the days are – I can't really remember sometimes when one day ended and the next day began. But yesterday was – when I was at the warehouse in Brooklyn and they all went out yesterday – 100 to Health + Hospitals facilities from that 400; 100 to Health + Hospitals facilities; 300 to all different types of voluntary hospitals, wherever the need was greatest. To your question about overall capacity, again, I'm going to be very, very clear that I am not going to get into details that are ever-changing. So, ICU’s are not a fixed asset anymore. They used to be in the world we knew a few weeks ago and are not anymore. And Dr Katz is the person who most educated me on this point. He is going to be turning vast amounts of his buildings into ICU’s He conceivably could have a hospital that's all ICU. So, there's a very fast evolving situation now, where we're going to make more and more and more beds that used to not be ICU beds into ICU beds. So, the notion of a fixed number is a thing of the past. It's going to be very dynamic of what we do know is if we've got the space the equipment, the supplies, the staff, we can create an ICU bed in any hospital facility and even outside of them as we go along. So, that's what we'll be doing. The ground rule I'll give you, and I'll be very clear about it, is I'll tell you every single day if we have what it takes to get through that day, that week and wherever we're looking for the week ahead. Right now, across our hospitals in New York City, we did get some good resupply both in terms of equipment and other supplies. We do have a huge number of professionals who are showing up doing what we need them to do and others who are joining. And we have the beds we need. That is the case today. That's the projection for this week into next week. But we remain concerned as we start April about capacity and we'll keep updating you on that as we go along.

Moderator: Alex, from The Daily Beast is up next. Alex.

Question: Hi. I have a question about Rikers Island. And thank you for taking my question. Legal Aid just sent out a press release saying that Rikers Island now has seven times the rate of the infection as the rest of the city. And I'm wondering if you guys have a plan on how you're going to deal with that. Are we going to open hospitals on Rikers? Is there going to be a separate place for, I mean, isolating prisoners? What, what is the plan going forward at this point?

Mayor: I'll start and then D Katz will – obviously, H + H runs Correctional health, so he'll speak to it. Okay. So, we start with the reality that there's about 6,000 fewer inmates in our Corrections system overall than six years ago and obviously, that means, especially on Rikers. So, we have more space we're dealing with, more ability to isolate, more ability to provide healthcare to what is a much smaller number of inmates. We also, as I said, by the end of today, we'll have 200 inmates who will have left because of the decisions we made directly related to this crisis. That number will keep growing as we go ahead and we're going to determine when that number stops, but it will keep growing in the short term with a particular focus on inmates who are really older, particularly over 70, and inmates who have preexisting conditions. There's a lot of work to do very quickly to get inmates out who would be appropriate to get out. We have to work in many cases with the state and or the DA’s. But that is happening now rapidly. So, you'll see, I think substantial numbers over the next few days. Every time we get a single inmate out, it creates that much more space. And that many obviously each time there's one less inmate, it makes it easier on the medical personnel. So as to your core question about how health care is being provided by the correctional health folks, Dr. Katz –

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, NYC Health + Hospitals: Anytime someone is symptomatic in the jail, we isolate them, as the Mayor has explained, because the population at Rikers is dramatically down. We have more space and we're opening up more wards. If somebody is seriously symptomatic, we move them to Bellevue Hospital. That's a much better facility for taking care of someone who is very ill, then trying to create a Hospital on Rikers.

Moderator: Next step is Mark from CNN. Mark?

Question: Hey guys, how you doing today?

Mayor: Good Mark.

Question: I wanted to ask about the morgue situation right now in the city. From what I understand from that [inaudible] the briefing that you all were referencing like choosing hospitals who already reached capacity and that the rest of the city hospitals maybe at capacity by weeks end. I want you to talk a little bit about [inaudible] mobile morgue that's in front of Bellevue now and what that plan is for relieving that, and then where exactly does it stand right now? Are there enough morgues for the city hospitals? Is that going to be full by Friday [inaudible]?

Mayor: Yeah, I'm not going to get into a lot of detail. We'll make sure our team gives you a lot of specifics. But let me say, I understand there's all sorts of documents that are being put out there. Some of them accurate, some of them inaccurate, some of them new, some of them old. I would just want folks, when you ask the question, just realize I'm going to be listening very carefully for whether it's something that has been confirmed as fact or is not fact. So the facts as I have heard them from folks in my administration are that we have capacity right now. We have capacity for the foreseeable future. We've been working with FEMA to ensure that we have additional capacity and we can handle what we have. As this crisis deepens, we'll keep updating you on the status of things, but right now we have the capacity, and in terms of any of the details, I'll have my team follow up with you.

Moderator: Josh from ABC-7, Josh?

Question: Hi there Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Good, Josh.

Question: I wonder – you walk around the city now that almost serenity. It’s empty everybody’s inside, there's no traffic, if it was over 40 degrees warmer, it would feel like a summer weekend, but obviously we know what's really going on, But we don't have a picture of what's happening in the hospitals. And I wondered if maybe Dr. Katz or Dr. Barbot or somebody could sort of paint the picture of what it's like right now at Elmhurst or Kings County or even Columbia Presbyterian that, you know, how desperate is the situation right now? What does it feel like to walk in there and what are, you know, what [inaudible]?

Mayor: I'll turn to Dr. Katz and Dr. Barbot, but let me just give you the layman's answer first. I think it varies obviously by hospital, but I think what we can say right now is, again, every hospital has the personnel, the equipment, the supplies and the beds, but we know in a week or two it's going to be a much tougher situation. And I do think we see some real variation in terms of some hospitals having a lot activity, others less, I think over time that will even out a lot more. But I think it’s be a different experience depending on where you go. Go ahead, doctor.

President Katz: I think Mr. Mayor you've done a good job of expressing that there are hospitals like Elmhurst that have been very heavily impacted. There are other hospitals in our public system such as Coney Island that haven't had very many patients with COVID. But today we were able to transfer 30 patients, including 28 to them to help relieve our hospital at Elmhurst. I think the hardest struggles right now are psychological. This is a very difficult disease despite providing the very best of care, those people who are elderly and to have comorbid conditions especially are very much hurt by this illness. It is an illness right now with a major role of the hospital is to provide supportive care as doctors and nurses. We like it best when we can provide a medication that is known to be effective. In this case, we're using experimental treatments where they're available, but primarily we are supporting people until their immune system comes back. So you would see if you walked into Elmhurst, you would see a lot of heroic doctors and nurses who were working very long hours under challenging conditions. They are unfortunately seeing some of their patients die, which is always extremely difficult for doctors and nurses. We seek not only to provide all of the care, but we hope that it works and it's very difficult for us when it doesn't.

Moderator: Jennifer, from the AP is up next. Jennifer.

Question: Thank you. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Thank you. Following on that, actually, I wanted to ask what information the city has about the number of health care workers who are themselves testing positive and what impact that's having on the hospitals?

Mayor: I'll start again, Dr. Katz or Dr. Barbot jump in. Clear look – everyone, everyone's being affected. And you know, I said in my message this morning that we should anticipate that half of all of us or more could be infected. Although again, thank God, most New Yorkers who are infected with this disease will have a very limited, mild experience, and be able to get back to work in seven to 10 days. So it's a real issue for all parts of the city, for all of us, but especially as we think about how much we're depending on our health care workers and our other essential workers, we're going to have at any given point in time a number of them, you know, having to go home, having to take care of themselves, but in the vast majority of cases, they will come back quickly and get right back into action. But we are seeing it happen across every part of the city, including the health care sector. Do you want to add?

President Katz: Yes, absolutely. They’re have been health care workers who have - who are infected with COVID-19, just as you would expect, given how many people are infected already in New York City. The vast majority are doing well, but there have been people who have required hospitalization. I don't think anybody has an exact number. But we wish them all as we do with all patients who are sick a speedy recovery.

Moderator: Katie Honan is up next. Katie.

Question: Hey, Mayor de Blasio, I wanted to get your reaction to statements saying that everyone has visited New York City should self-quarantine?

Mayor: I'm sorry. You're saying that from the federal government?

Question: Yes, that people who visited New York City should self-quarantine, I just wanted to get your reaction on that and the city's taken any quarantine measures for visitors?

Mayor: Yeah, look, I think what I heard was – I'm always going to respect our federal authorities, but I think there's a little bit of a lack of recognition right now of just how much this disease has already spread around the country. So, you're talking about New Yorkers going elsewhere, I think we know where the disease that's in all 50 states and pretty much all over the world, I don't love the notion of the suggestion that, you know, there's any more likelihood of coming from one place or another. It's obviously everywhere already and will continue to spread. People need to be smart individually. Anyone who's symptomatic needs to isolate themselves and follow the rules we've been over so many times and you know, reach out only after a period of time to a doctor if they haven't gotten better.

So I would say that Katie, I think we're seeing a weird kind of – you know, if I was using the psychological term, sort of approach avoidance, to the topic of coronavirus from different officials around the country, where on the one hand, people seem to in one moment talk about the seriousness of the threat and in another moment sort of say, oh, it'll be over soon. It's not going to be over soon. For us it's going to be several tough months ahead and then for a lot of other places in the country, they're going to go through their round. So, I think the notion of a travel being particularly relevant at this point is it seems to be pretty limited. That's my nonmedical opinion. But I'm happy if either doctor wants to jump in.

President Katz: I think you did it well.

Mayor: Alright, I’m learning –

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Mr. Mayor, you got it just right.

Mayor: Okay. Thank you, doctor.

Moderator: Bobby Cuza is up next, Bobby?

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor, I wanted to follow up on the morgue issue. I know you said you can't confirm details, but there is a tent that's gone up on the East Side and the Medical Examiner's Office told us they have bought 45 tenths and trailers to expand the capacity of the city morgue. I guess I wonder what, what's the message for New Yorkers who see that, who see this tent and it's obviously alarming, but you know, in the vein of what you said earlier about telling people the truth, should New Yorkers be bracing for the possibility that the death toll is going to go up dramatically from what we've seen so far?

Mayor: Yes, of course. Bobby. I mean, there's not – you know, I don't think any of us and I think I can speak for Dr. Katz and Dr. Barbot, I don't think any of us have tried to sugar coat this. It's going to be really tough. I know the more I was pushed a really strong emotional button, obviously we're all humans, it's a very troubling thing to see, and it makes it kind of very immediate, very visceral. But let's be honest, we've been talking now for weeks and weeks about this disease coming on and we watched it move all over the world and we've seen the horrible things that happened in China and Italy, so many places. I think most people are really quite aware.

I think the news media understandably is trying to tap into the human reality, the emotional reality. I think that's what you guys do and that's very important. But I would tell you, having talked to somebody in New Yorkers, I think people are there and then some already. They know how bad this is. And I've been trying to be real straight forward. I think the Governor has been very straight forward as well and I commend him. We've been clear, it's going to get a lot worse. So clearly, you know, what we're trying to do now is save the people that don't need to die. And that's where our constant pleas, particularly to the federal government, for more supplies, more equipment, to help us get personnel, you know, all the efforts are being made to create more beds, that's to make sure that no one dies who could have been saved. But we've been real honest that unfortunately we're going to lose a number of people as this continues to grow. So no one's trying to, Bobby, no one is trying to downplay. It's going to be very, very painful. But let's acknowledge it's here. It's our reality. Now let's fight back. Let's do everything we can to fight back and we can't do it alone. We need help from Washington in particular. If we get that help, we're going to be able to save a lot of lives.

Moderator: Matt Chayes is up next. Matt?

Question: Hey there, Mr. Mayor. Last night you said you'd consider closing playgrounds by Saturday night. You guys found insufficient social distancing compliance. You also consider doing that for the city parks if there's similar insufficient compliance? And are there more or fewer unchanged numbers of people reaching out to Thrive during this time?

Mayor: I don't have the thrives statistics, but I will say I think anyone, I know the Governor made an announcement today, which I thought was very good for folks all over the state who are feeling anxiety, who are fearful, who need someone professional in mental health to talk to. I was very happy to see that. And certainly, with Thrive, a reminder to all of New Yorkers you can call 8-8-8-NYCWELL, a 24/7, trained counselors, multiple languages, there's nothing wrong with feeling afraid or anxious at this moment. If you need some help, pick up that phone and they can also help you get ongoing mental health support if you need it. But, so that's that part of the question to the part of the question and I don't – again, we'll get you the follow-up on the numbers, Matt, I don't have them at my fingertips.

On the question of the parks now, I really want – glad you asked it, I want to differentiate strongly the parks and the playgrounds. The area that we're all concerned about to make sure that there's real clear adherence to the rules or else by the end of Saturday we might get to a shutdown, is the playgrounds themselves. The parks obviously are – in many of them huge. They're absolutely necessary in a situation like this. Parks will remain open, but with a lot of enforcement under any scenario. So, there's a real differentiation there. And again, we'll make that decision on the playgrounds at the end of Saturday after we've seen how it's gone up to them.

Moderator: Amanda, from Bloomberg is up next. Amanda?

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yep.

Question: I'm wondering – we had a story today about emergent emergency medical services, you know, seeing the most calls since September 11th. Are you worried about, you know, whether those services are staffed enough? Or, is there any kind of change to the resources that, you know, emergency medical services have at this time?

Mayor: It's a great question, Amanda. I mean, until very recently – I checked with Commissioner Nigro only days ago – we were actually fairly steady, fairly normal. We also had that reality with emergency rooms around the city, by and large. So, we've really seen some movement in recent days and, obviously, we're additionally concerned because a number of workers are out sick. I've said to Commissioner Nigro, whatever we have to do to make sure he has what he needs we'll do. Like the Police Department, the Fire Department has a very deep bench and they're really good at knowing how to move folks around to compensate for different situations. So, I'm confident about that. At this point, we'll continue to back that up. But, you know, this is the kind of thing we'll be dealing with intensely for the next weeks that we are going to need to make sure those services keep going. And this is why, again, it comes back to that discussion earlier about Washington. I'm going to be very blunt with everyone in Washington, starting with President Trump, that when we are in a situation where we don't have the money to pay for the most vital services, this is where you get to a very dangerous place. And I know the State's in the same boat. We need the resources to not only keep our fire department doing what it does every day, but you know, fire, EMS, doing what they would have to do on a higher level in this crisis. And we are the epicenter for the nation, so this is exactly an example – it's not just all the huge expenditures being put out to protect people's health with Department of Health, with Health + Hospitals, but also the additional strains on police, on fire, on a lot of other agencies, and that's why we need that direct support from Washington and we need it immediately.

Moderator: Erin Durkin is up next. Erin?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I heard you say that you're expecting that 50 percent of New Yorkers will be infected with coronavirus. Can you just talk a little bit about what that is? What's the basis for that prediction? And relatedly, since most people are not being tested, I think – I assume the number of confirmed cases doesn't reflect a full spread currently. Do you have any just order of magnitude sense of what the true current prevalence might be?

Mayor: I'll start on both those and then if Dr. Barbot wants to jump in, she will. Erin, I don't think there's anyone that knows the answer accurately to your second question. Perfectly fair question – I think we – my layman's way of saying it is, there's a lot more people out there who have had coronavirus already and gone through the whole course of it and people out there right now who have it. There's a lot more of them than we know and there's a lot, obviously, who have never been tested. We don't even know truly when it first asserted here in the city, that could have been people who had it before we even knew it was here. So, what we do know based on a lot of different projections – and we don't have a perfect single projection, but sort of compositing a lot of projections is, it's a fair bet to say that half of all New Yorkers, and maybe more than half, will end up contracting this disease. And that's worrisome, very deeply worrisome for all of us. But you know, we have to start with the truth and recognizing that for 80 percent of those who do it will be a very limited experience. So, you know, I don't – I can't tell you it’s going to be 50-50, but I think as much as we're dealing with a lot of painful reality, a lot of fear, one way to think of this that is a little more hopeful is, you know, a certain number of people will not, and that may be 50 percent, or 45 percent, or 40 percent – whatever it is, a certain number of New Yorkers will not contract this disease this season. And of the ones who do, 80 percent will have very limited experience. But for that other 20 percent, we have a lot of work to do to protect them. Most of them, of course, the vast majority of even them will come through okay. But we have to make sure of that by really having all the health care they need available. So, the answer is, it is a composite of a lot of different projections. But I think we see consistently that 50 percent-plus is the right way to think about it. Dr. Barbot, do you want to add?

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I think you got it right. The only thing I would add is that, right now, you know, I think it's safe to say that there are tens of thousands of New Yorkers that are somewhere along the spectrum of having COVID-19 or having been exposed to COVID-19, and that's why it's so important for people to stay home. You know, we've been saying all along that person to person transmission is widespread in the community and 80 percent of the folks will have mild illness. And I think also just to reemphasize what the Mayor said in terms of, you know, we think 50 percent will – by the end of this epidemic, this pandemic – so, by the time September rolls around, likely 50 percent, but it could also be much higher. And so, that's why we've been so focused on slowing the spread of this pandemic, because we don't want all of those people to be seeking health care at the same time. The measures that we're putting into place in terms of closing schools, in terms of telling New Yorkers to stay home is our best chance at slowing that spread and then spreading those individuals who may need to seek health care in a hospital – spread it out over time so that we maintain the capacity to treat everyone who needs treatment.

Moderator: Last two. Ashley, from the Times. Ashley, can you hear us?

Question: Yes, I can. Thank you. My question for the Police Commissioner.

Mayor: I don’t think we have the Police Commissioner, Ashley. Let's make sure on our team that we put up every time who is actually available so reporters can see that –

Moderator: They can see it on the app right now.

Mayor: Where is the app? Let’s advertise how reporters [inaudible] make sure we’re clear –

Moderator: Yes.

Question: Yeah, it’s fine. You know, I’m on audio only [inaudible]. But maybe you know the answer to this question, Mr. Mayor. The NYPD sick rate is approaching 10 percent and the Police Commissioner in the past has talked about going to 12-hour shifts and doing reassignments of administrative officers to patrol jobs. I wonder if you can – what the most recent numbers tell us, you know, at what point [inaudible] does NYPD go through those contingency options and what happens if they exhaust them? For instance, they call in the National Guard?

Mayor: Yeah. Ashley, appreciate the question, but I'd say, first of all, we're not to that point with even the 12-hour shifts and all yet. At any point we might get there and we'll obviously announce it when and if we do. Last conversation I had with the Commissioner, he was confident that, you know, we're sort of in plan-A now and plan-B was very, very straight forward about how to utilize people differently and we’ve got a lot of people to work with. Again, we also have to remember that, for the vast majority of folks who get sick, after seven to 10 days, they'll be back. And I would further remind you, there's no one taking vacations now. So, there will not be people taking vacations anytime soon for any of us until this battle's over. So, we're going to have a lot of areas where we lose different public servants for a period of time, but we also are not seeing people take their normal time off like they would in peacetime and we'll make all the pieces fit. In terms of needing any outside help, we are nowhere near that this point. If we ever get to that point, we'll talk about it, but we're nowhere near that.

Moderator: Last call is Kathleen from Patch. One more time – Kathleen, can you hear us?

Question: Can you hear me this time?

Mayor: There you go. Third time's the charm, Kathleen.

Question: Thank you for your patience, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to check in with you about a potential rent freeze. I know that you said last week it was something you would potentially support and April 1st is fast approaching. What's your update for the renters out there who have concerns?

Mayor: Thank you for the question, Kathleen. There's obviously the process that our Rent Guidelines Board goes through – and we'll have more to say on that soon for sure – but there's also a question of beyond the Rent Guidelines Board, how we should handle folks who are not covered by rent stabilization. Look, I think at this point – I mean, we know for all intents and purposes, evictions are not happening and that is absolutely the right thing in the middle of a crisis like this. To the question of whether we could do something deeper like a rent moratorium, this is an idea that I think has a lot of value to it. I'm going to be looking to see if something like that is possible. Even though I'm heartened by what I see in the stimulus bill in terms of money back in people's pockets, again, I want to get all those details and I want to see how long it's going to last, and I want to see how long this crisis is going to last. I mean, that will certainly help, but we need to understand if it's enough for people to actually make ends-meet and be able to afford food, be able to afford the rent, be able to afford a medicine, and, if not, we need to look at all, you know, any and all possibilities. So, all that's being discussed and we will have updates on that very soon for sure.

And let me say thank you again to my colleagues in government who are part of the call. Thank you. To all the members of the media who have participated. Just one more thing at the end here. We started something today in addition to press conferences and individual interviews I give to the media. Every day I will do a daily message from the Mayor. It's going to be a very brief but, I hope, a helpful message, giving people a little bit of grounding as we start the day as to where we stand, what we're dealing with, and some very important reminders about how to think about this situation, but also answers to questions that every-day New Yorkers are asking me and all of us in government. So, I'll make that a daily feature. I'll give some opening statement, but then I'll quickly go to talking about questions I've received and giving you answers that I hope will be very helpful to you in your every-day life. Anyone who has a question for me, you can go to #AskMyMayor – again, #AskMyMayor – and raise whatever question it is. It could be something about, you know, very specific to your neighborhood or your life. It could be something that we're all dealing with. But send in your questions, I'll try and answer as many as I can and will make sure that we're constantly updating people on things that they care about. You can get that message from the Mayor every day at 9:00 am. It'll go up and you can find it on my Twitter feed – and that's @NYCMayor. You can find that at Facebook, which is NYCMayor. And on Instagram – @MayorBilldeBlasio. And I will constantly endeavor to give you information in a brief, straight forward manner that will really, hopefully help you get through this crisis.

And I'll conclude by saying, the one thing I know in my heart – and I know for sure, and it is a fact – we will get through this crisis. And it will not be easy, but we will all get through together.

Thank you, everybody.

2020-03-26 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Everybody, I want to give you a couple of updates on things are happening around the city and how we're addressing this crisis. Every day I think we're learning about the sheer challenge we're facing and all the forms it takes and every single day we're making changes. We're adding new approaches, new strategies. We're getting help from the state, from the federal government, from all over. Things are changing day by day, hour by hour. We find new challenges, we find those solutions, and, of course, we find the extraordinary efforts of New Yorkers to address this crisis. There is a lot more to do. Especially in terms of our federal government, a lot more to do. But I can at least say that we see on many, many fronts, help coming in. And I'll talk about, of course what happened in Washington yesterday with the stimulus bill. Many forms that help but also immense challenges that we're facing.

There's just nothing we've been through that could possibly compare to what we're experiencing now and where we’re going and it will be a long, tough fight. And I'm going to keep saying that because I know there are a lot of voices out there trying to act like we can turn the page soon, and I just don't believe that's true, and I don't think it's helpful for people to be given false hope. I want to give people real hope. Real hope comes from the extraordinary commitment and hard work of our health care workers and our first responders and all the people that are protecting us right now. Real hope comes from the resiliency in New Yorkers. Real hope comes from real support. Every time a ventilator arrives, every time we get more supplies we need, every time the military comes to help us, those are the causes for me for real hope. But it's going to be a long, tough fight and we're going to be stronger if we understand that, than if we try and wish away something that in fact, we're not able to change entirely right now.

Let me talk about the overall situation, and it continues to be numbers I can barely even comprehend. I know a lot of you feel the same and they all represent real human beings, real families. Total cases as of this morning in New York City, 21,873. A number that would have been unimaginable just a couple of weeks ago. Deaths in New York City, we've now lost 281 of our fellow New Yorkers to this disease. So, we got a tough time ahead, and that's obviously particularly true in our health care system. I want to take a moment to talk to all those who are doing extraordinarily valiant work right now all over New York City. Doctors, nurses, all health care workers, everyone who works in a hospital, whatever your job is, every single one of you are doing something heroic and really difficult and absolutely necessary to save the lives of your fellow New Yorkers.

There's a phrase we use. We say people have gone above and beyond the call. Well, all of you are doing that now in a way that we're going to remember. We're not just going to remember it next week, or next month, or next year. We're going to remember it for the rest of the history of New York City, oh and forward. It'll be part of a chapter in this city's history that will be unforgettable. That all of you stood up, all of you showed up, all of you gave your all, under very, very trying circumstances, because none of us have experienced anything like this, and it came out of nowhere. So, I want to say on behalf of all 8.6 million New Yorkers, a thank you to all our health care workers, and not only our gratitude, not only our words, but our deeds. That's what we should show our thanks through.

You deserve, and you must have, and you will have, the supplies you need. One way or another, we're going to get them to you every day. It will not be easy and we absolutely must get federal help if we're going to be able to sustain this. But my commitment is, if it is available anywhere in the United States of America, and we can get our hands on it, those supplies we'll get to you immediately to protect you, to allow you to do the lifesaving work you're doing. This is going to be a day to day, hour to hour reality. I keep saying, I know this week that we have the supplies in this city we need. I hope we can get through next week, but that is literally as far over the horizon as I can see right now in any way that I can feel comfortable about, because I need to know we're going to have what we need for our health care workers and our people.

But any health care worker who's out there who feels afraid or worried, we all stand with you, we understand why you might feel that. Anyone who feels resolute about serving their patients but is worried about supplies, I understand that, and I want to make sure you don't have to worry. That you can see the supplies coming and know there'll be there. It's understandable that health care institutions, hospitals, clinics are trying to be careful about their use of supply. They're trying to make sure that we'll always have it going forward. But we also have to make really clear to our health care workers that any supplies we get from Washington, from Albany, from the private sector, are immediately being turned around to our hospitals and our health care facilities, and I want people to see more and more evidence of that. We're going to show it very publicly. And to all of you who are experiencing challenges, we need to hear from you. We need to understand what you need, so we can get the job done for you, and thank you for all you are doing.

Now, I've said throughout this crisis, there's a lot of that we're facing, but we also have some extraordinary advantages and one of them is that we have the best public health system in the nation. We have the largest, we have the best by far. Health + Hospitals is an amazing organization that's only gotten stronger in recent years, but now it's under a tremendous amount of stress. And obviously Elmhurst hospital in Queens is right now the epicenter within the epicenter, dealing with an extraordinary surge of cases. It also happens to be an extraordinary hospital. It's renowned within our public health care system as one of the very best hospitals we have, with an incredibly committed staff who have been able to deal with so many challenges before with great skill, great compassion, great ability, and that's what they're doing right now.

The folks at Elmhurst Hospital, the folks doing this noble work, need supplies, and I'm committed to getting you supplies. In fact, in the last 10 days, we have four times resupplied Elmhurst Hospital with additional ventilators, and we will keep doing that until we're at the point that Elmhurst absolutely always has more than enough ventilators. Today we sent over 40 additional ventilators that have arrived at Elmhurst. This'll be an ongoing commitment to make sure that that hospital and all our public hospitals have whatever they need at any given point in time. If we have it, it will get to you. We also sent today to Elmhurst hospital, 56 additional staff members to deal with the challenges that they're facing, and again, we will keep adding as needed. We have to make sure that they really, really hardworking doctors, nurses, all the health care workers who have dealt with the sudden surge. We need to give them a break as quickly as possible. We need to bring additional folks in to give them, to spell them, to give them a chance to catch up, catch their breath, get a little downtime, so they'll be able to continue on going forward. So, it's crucial that we get more and more support into Elmhurst and we will do that.

So, in terms of our entire health care system, public and voluntary nonprofit, the whole picture. Look, before the coronavirus came to New York City, we basically had 20,000 hospital beds with everything that was needed. All the staffing, the equipment, everything that you would need to fully attend to a patient in a hospital bed. That number about 20,000. Once upon a time, and once upon a time was only weeks ago, that was a really big number and that was certainly sufficient to handle demand every day in New York City. In fact, there are people who used to talk about there were too many hospital beds in New York City. Well that 20,000 number, that once seemed so impressive, now it's only a part of what we need to deal with the coronavirus. Our goal is to triple the number of hospital beds in the city by May. Now, that's an extraordinarily difficult goal, and I am not going to look you in the eye and tell you, I can guarantee you we will get there, because we have so many challenges. The bed, again is only one part of the challenge. Location is only one part of the challenge. We need the equipment, we need the supplies, and we need the highly trained personnel. All of that we're working on simultaneously. And this is where the federal government, again could be absolutely crucial and I've been very clear about what could be done on the federal level that could affect that entire equation in our favor, particularly when it comes to things like personnel. The reality is we have a very, very difficult goal to reach, but it is our goal and we will every single day work to achieve it. The surge plans that the state put forward asking every hospital in the city to increase capacity. I think it was a very good strategy. We'll add at least 7,000 beds quickly. And that's a crucial part of what we need to do.

We've obviously – in addition to what can be done in hospitals, it is crucial to find new locations either facilities that are health care-related where we can put in more beds or facilities that weren't health care at all, but where we can now create a crucial new capacity. So, those new locations in places like Coler Hospital, part of Health + Hospital system, Javits Center, obviously a convention center had nothing to do with health care, now it does. And the Federal Government, FEMA, State of New York are playing a leading role there to get that up and running— with the surges in the hospital with the additional beds outside the hospitals. That gets us to almost 34,000 beds compared to the 20,000 we had just weeks ago. That is a very, very important start in addressing this crisis. But as I said, my goal was to get us to not just 34,000, but then the 40,000 to 50,000, ultimately to 60,000 if we can get there. And if this crisis continues to build the weight, we think it will, I would love nothing more and I know you would love nothing more than to find out in fact we got some relief from this crisis and the numbers got better and the human misery got reduced and there were fewer and fewer cases. That day comes, maybe won't need 60,000 hospitals, but I cannot depend on maybe I have to prepare this city for the toughest scenario and that's what we're doing right now.

On supplies, look, there's nothing more important than ventilators – we’ve all talked about this, I really didn't know a lot about ventilators a month ago. Now, I know something, at least I've realized that a ventilator, it's, you know, we could put one right here on this desk. It goes in a packet that's about the size of a suitcase, but it is a lifesaver, as simple as that. If you have a ventilator, you can save a life. You can keep someone going, get them through this crisis so they can recover. You don't have a ventilator people die who didn't need to die it's as simple as that. This is one of the most important pieces in this whole puzzle, getting enough ventilators, getting them quick. 500 have come in through our efforts working with the White House, working directly with the administration to get immediate direct supplies to New York City and that's been very helpful this week. In addition, 2,000 more from FEMA – about half of them are here in New York City now over a thousand already here, the remainder coming in the next couple of days. So, when you combine all that 2,500 more ventilators that will have a few days from now, we'll have about 2,500 more ventilators than we had say 10 days ago. That's hugely important, that's only about a sixth of what we are going to need to get through this entire crisis. We predicted this moment, we need 15,000 ventilators and we are pushing every possible button. We're looking under every stone we're calling all over the country to find every ventilator we can get and soon we'll be talking about the efforts to create them right here in New York City as well. But my deep concern remains that the Federal Government is not using it to its full disposal of the Defense Production Act.

That's the game changer, that's where we could get a lot more ventilators built around this country, manufactured and shipped to New York City in time. While this crisis is raging and every ventilator comes here when we don't need it of course when the crisis is over, we're going to help make sure it gets to other parts of the country that need it. But we've got to get to that number and we got to get to that number fast. Today I saw a great example of New Yorkers stepping up to help fellow New Yorkers at the Brooklyn Navy yard an amazing example. This is something that just a few days ago, not only didn't exist, but the idea didn't even exist. And I want to thank Michael Bednark, of Bednark Studios and Michael Duggal of Duggal Greenhouse. They are doing amazing work working with everyone at the Brooklyn Navy yard, led by David Ehrenberg.

They literally came up with idea just days ago, they said, we need to help our health care workers, our first responders, we're going to create face shields. And they literally decided they would create a factory in a place that wasn't a factory, they would create a factory from scratch to make these face shields. They'd find the equipment, the different elements, they'd find the different supplies they'd get a plan, they bring it to the Department of Health. As recently as Sunday night was when they got this plan approved by the Department of Health to come up with their own version of face shield to protect all of our crucial leaders and crucial folks in the health care field our first responders, all the people out there at the front line doing such important work. This brand-new idea out of nowhere was this was put into production these face shields were put into production yesterday. They're at full bore today, they will on Friday ship 50,000 face shields to the Department of Health to distribute to hospitals all over New York City and to first responders. By next Tuesday, they’ll have 120,000 made— this is just an inspiring, beautiful effort and we're going to make sure New Yorkers see a lot about this and understand how powerful this is. And what it means is for the future, so many New Yorkers are just finding many, many ways to help each other. So, we need more of that coming you're going to see a surgical mask, gloves, surgical gowns, all sorts of things being built right here in New York City manufactured right here to protect our fellow New Yorkers. None of that takes the Federal Government off the hook, I want to be clear, and we need everything that is being produced here just to keep going day to day.

We need the Federal Government to come in with a really big numbers that really big supplies if we're going to get all the way through April into May, but we're going to help ourselves in the meantime every way we can. Finally, couple updates, there's been a lot of concern about the situation in our jails. Want to give you an update that I'll keep doing every day I'll give you an updated number. We are looking to release the inmates that we think are appropriate to release— that we think do not pose a threat to the community. And we're also very, very concerned there are inmates with very serious preexisting conditions, inmates who are much older. We have an obligation to think about them the same way we think about all New Yorkers who are in those high-risk categories. So, we're working that through.

I'll give you updates regularly about where we stand – we have to work in many cases with the district attorneys in the states – state governor, I should say, to get to a specific decisions case by case, but we'll keep updating you. So, as of last night, 200 inmates from our jail system had been released from the beginning of this process, 200 that action last night allowed us to hit a major, major milestone and none of us expected this crisis. But one thing that has come out of it has that our jail population continues to decline. Last night we went below 5,000 inmates in our jail system again, last night we went to below 5,000 inmates in our jail system in a City of 8.6 million people. The last time the New York City jail system had fewer than 5,000 inmates was 1949 right after World War II. So, this is an important a note against the backdrop of this crisis, something happening that has a real value in other ways, even though it's part of addressing this crisis. It should be noted as an important moment by tonight, by the end of the day, going into tonight that number of inmates released will go from 200 up to 375 and we will keep giving you updates as we go along. So, I wanted you hear about that, just to officially know that now our jail population as of this morning is 4,906.

On supermarkets, there's a lot of concern to make sure we keep our supermarkets clear so people go in there, can shop, observe social distancing, not be crowded, not end up being in a situation that violates the rules we put forward. We need everyone to stick to that idea. So a couple of thoughts, first of all to again, the store owners, the store managers, the employees, very, very important to practice social distancing and insist on social distance in any line inside or outside the store needs to be distanced six feet between the person before them and after them constantly have to make that happen. We have to be conscious about limiting the number of people coming into a store, if you start to see an overcrowding situation again, if that means the line outside, keep that line distanced. To any storeowner or store manager or employee says, wait a minute, we need some help to do that, we need some backup, we need some enforcement. Just pick up the phone and call 311 and we will get you help quickly. Whether it comes from the NYPD, the Fire Department, the Sheriff's Office, Buildings Department, whatever it is — members of our City Government will come to you and we'll help you achieve that social distance and you're not alone in doing this, we want to help you do it. Call 311 and we will get help to you quickly, but we've got to get this done.

Finally, a recommendation for all store owners; this will certainly be true for grocery stores, supermarkets, pharmacies, if you can - and some it will be easier, some will be harder, but if you can, there’ve been a lot of requests to institute senior citizen hours early in the day. So, the idea would be to set up a time – and I'm going to suggest something like 6:00 am to 8:00 am where only seniors come into shop. Look, this is a suggestion, this is a recommendation. It's something that is not typical, but, in this crisis, people are adapting and you know, getting used to very different realities. I think all New Yorkers want to make sure our seniors are safe and they get what they need. So, having those early morning hours available to any pharmacy or grocery store supermarket, anyone who can do it, whether it's six to eight or whatever version you choose; letting seniors have that time, that's just for them, keeping the crowds low, making it a little easier on them - a lot of them are up early and can get to you. If you can do that, it would really help, if we can stretch things out, it would really, really help to avoid social distancing other times of the day. I mean, excuse me, to ensure social distancing, to avoid crowding, my apology.

So, everyone, just to finish and then we'll take questions from the media and I will be joined by Dr. Oxiris Barbot remotely, our health commissioner. I talked earlier about our health care workers, our doctors, our nurses – every single human being whose working in a hospital right now, whatever your job title, you're a hero, we need you, you’re at the front line. I want to also remember at the same time our, everyone at EMS, everyone emergency [inaudible] medical service who is constantly there saving New Yorkers. We depend on them 24/7, you know, you call 9-1-1 and [inaudible] as New Yorkers, we expect not only an ambulance to arrive quickly, but some of the best professionals anywhere in the world to be there and they are, and they've been great throughout this crisis. They're dealing with a lot, but they've been there for us every single day and I want to thank everyone at EMS for all you are doing.

And I want to thank the folks who get even less attention, I would say. I want to make sure EMS gets their fair share of attention and their praise and their appreciation, but our voluntary ambulance services, community based, neighborhood-based ambulance services that really play a crucial role as well, a lot of times they get low overlooked. I want to thank all of you for all you do for our communities and especially in this time of crisis and I'll make sure to, make sure to use Twitter and other forums to thank each of your organizations individually for everything you're doing. We appreciate it and it makes a big difference.

So, everyone, I conclude before saying a few words in Spanish by saying, it'll be a hell of a challenge these weeks ahead, but there's nowhere on earth where people meet a challenge like New York City and I want to thank you all, I know it's tough. I know people are really, really changing your lives, but you're also doing it in a way that's inspirational and showing the whole nation what it looks like to deal with a crisis, and, and do it with strength and dignity and resolve and I want to thank you all for that.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, let me turn to our colleagues from the media and we will be calling upon you one-by-one and we'll call in Dr. Barbot on questions that are relevant to her. Let's go ahead.

Moderator: Hi all, just a quick note at the top. Today, we'll ask that everyone limit themselves to just one question in an effort to get to as many outlets as possible. Just a reminder, we have Dr. Barbot and Dr. Katz on the phone today.

Mayor: Good, Dr Katz has joined us. Okay. Glad for the update. Thank you.

Moderator: With that, I will start with Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to ask for your reaction to today's historic unemployment numbers and if that's changing your response for your plans, looking ahead,

Mayor: Shant, it’s staggering. We're only seeing the initial numbers. They will get worse, unfortunately. A lot of people can't even apply for unemployment yet, they’ve been trying to get through. So, right now, our early estimate is unfortunately probably at least a half million New Yorkers will end up unemployed - are already or will soon be. That's just a staggering, staggering number. What it means is, you know, we need everything in that federal stimulus bill and we need more going forward. And this is not looking a gift horse in the mouth. I really do appreciate what's in that stimulus bill. It is unprecedented. I'm very appreciative to Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi in particular for what they achieved, but I don't think there's anyone in Washington – I've talked to Senator Schumer, I've talked to Speaker Pelosi, I've talked to Senator Gillibrand, talked to our whole congressional delegation as a group earlier today. No one thinks it's enough. Everyone agrees there's more that has to be done, and the next, the next act will be potential additional legislation in the house very soon. So, we're going to need a lot more help for working people and a lot more help for our local government to support working people in this city. It's staggering, but look, if the federal government does everything they're capable of, it will help us get through and we can help everyone to the point that we then actually start a recovery, which I think, you know, is something that's hard to believe before the summer or fall, but we will get to that point. We need that direct support for the city government, we need that direct support for the state government in the next stimulus package or else we just won't be able to help all these folks who are unemployed and their families to the level they need, but if we can get that help we'll find a way to do a whole lot for them. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Kathleen, from Patch

Question: Hi, can you hear me this time?

Mayor: Yup. That's good. It's working this time Kathleen.

Question: I was going to ask for your thoughts about legal aid society hoping to get 22 juvenile detainees with [inaudible] kind of ACS and if Dr. Barbot you wanted to weigh in, that would also be great. They are saying that these facilities aren't really equipped to protect people and that, you know, they are prone to some of the health issues that would make them more vulnerable to COVID-19.

Mayor: You're talking about specifically the ACS facilities for young people under 18?

Question: Exactly.

Mayor: Okay. Yeah. This is something we're going to come back with more on shortly. Obviously, the focus has been on addressing the issues around adults in our jail system, particularly those who are older or had preexisting conditions. That's where our focus has honestly been. We will have more to say on the juveniles soon. The facts keep bearing out that thank God that the challenge, the threat to those under 18 is substantially less, but we don't take it lightly and we will address what we're going to do there, but we just don't have that plan ready to announce yet. Dr. Barbot, do you want to add?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: No, I think you covered it well.

Mayor: Okay. But Kathleen, we will have an update on that very shortly. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Matthew Chayes, from AM New York.

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor, the Governor said yesterday that New York state has 11,000 ventilators – your own health department website breaks down by zip code specifics about the flu. When you've been asked provide specifics like this, you've explained you can't because the numbers are in flux, it's a fluid situation, et cetera. Obviously, they're in flux with the flu, obviously they’re in flux with the state guarding ventilators. Why are you able to provide those zip codes, specific numbers for the flu? Why is Cuomo able to say how many ventilators the state has, but you won't do the same for that and other things?

Mayor: Well, it's really as simple as this, Matt, when I feel that we have something that's a non-moving target, as I just told you, the 2,500 ventilators that come in or are about to come in from the federal government – when I got something I think is really solid - I'll tell you, but I think we've got other situations here that are changing constantly. I think there's too much potential for misinformation, misunderstanding. The issue to me is that we owe it to the people to say what the practical impact of all these numbers is, what's really going on and to update them on what really matters, which is do we have the supplies, are we able to take care of people? Are we getting to a point where that's not necessarily the case and what we're doing about it? That's where I'm focused. I just don't find it productive to put out numbers that I'm not sure at any given point are accurate cause things are changing constantly and I'm just going to stick with that. If at some point I feel that we've got more stable information and I feel like it's productive and consistent cause I do not want to give out information then have you guys legitimately ask questions and it turns out it wasn't accurate or it changed in a way that isn't being reflected. So, I'm sticking with where I am. If it gets to a point that we can get that in a forum I feel better about, I'll be happy to share.

Moderator: Next we have Yoav, from The City.

Question: Yeah. I just wanted to ask him about the recreation centers. What's the plan if someone there tests positive for COVID-19 which –

Mayor: Yoav, what are you talking – which recreation centers?

Question: The school for the kids –

Mayor: No, No, you confused me with the phrase, you mean the regional enrichment centers?

Question: Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry.

Mayor: Yeah. Recreation centers got closed down already. That's where I was confused.

Question: Yeah, sorry, the enrichment centers – if someone there either a student or staff tests positive is there going to be like the, the plan for the schools where you shut them for 24 hours and clean them? And if so, there seems to be some – there seemed to be some issues with that. The teachers union didn't think the City was following the guidelines properly when it came to schools. Are you going to adjust that at all?

Mayor: So, first of all, going to the past, which seems a long time ago, we've checked very carefully. I've no evidence whatsoever that those guidelines were not followed in the past. If anyone wants to provide me evidence, I'll look at it. But I just want to say – looking you right in the eye – no, I believe those guidelines were followed properly when we were in a whole different reality a couple of weeks ago. Now we're dealing with something that's not bluntly a typical public school anymore. Now we're dealing with these enrichment centers that are explicitly meant to be there for our central workers who we must have at work. We're in a state of emergency, our first responders, our health care workers, our transit workers, and the additional workers we've added – groceries, pharmacy workers, all the people we've added to the list – we must have them at work or this city cannot function particularly in this emergency environment.

So, we have to keep those centers running. It's literally mission-critical. If we have a sickness, we're going to deal with it specifically. Meaning, we would obviously make sure that anyone who became sick immediately was taken out of school, gotten to their home, or wherever is the appropriate place for them. And anyone else that we think needs to be gotten home or gotten to a different location, we would do that. Anything that needed to be cleaned in the immediate area, we would do that. But we have to keep the centers open. So, no, it's a different standard because it's a state of emergency standard and it's for a very limited and essential purpose.

Moderator: Next, we have Sydney from the Advance,

Question: Can you hear me? Hi.

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: Thanks for finally taking my question. So, you talked about how you want to triple the number of hospital beds across the city, there's currently about 829 hospital beds on Staten Island between the borough’s two private hospitals. We just found out that 1,000 more are going to be added at the College of Staten Island. So about 1,900 beds total. This morning, there were 1,200 confirmed cases on Staten Island. Do you think 1,900 beds is enough for a borough with no public hospital? And do you have a plan in place to mobilize Staten Islanders to get to the city's public hospital system or places like the Naval hospital ship or Javits center if Staten Island's hospitals reach their capacity?

Mayor: Well, I think the first part would be like I said, we want to first double and then ideally triple our capacity everywhere. So, what already exists on Staten Island and what is going to be built out is a beginning. I want to keep looking for every additional opportunity we have to build it further on Staten Island. That to me is the obvious thing to do next and I understand the distinction on public and private hospitals, but that distinction means a lot less in the middle of an emergency. Right now, it's just about wherever we can get the beds and the ability to serve people. So, we're going to keep doing that on Staten Island. What I would say then if you say in any part of the city, what if you needed people to get out of their own borough and go somewhere else?

Well that's something that you know, Health + Hospitals is doing right now, for example, in Queens where there's been – the hospitals, the public hospitals in Queens have been getting a huge number of people coming in. Cases that can safely be diverted to other Health + Hospitals, facilities outside of Queens are being. So, we would do the same thing with any borough – if some cases – you know, people need health care out of their borough, we will do that. But I think the goal now is to maximize the growth of this system in every part of the city to make sure health care is as close to people as possible. We'll constantly give updates as we open up more capacity. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Julia, from the Post.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, indeed.

Question: I'm wondering if any federal, State, or City guidelines allow for the reuse of personal protective equipment during a pandemic. And was that in any of the executive orders you signed?

Mayor: I'll let the Health Commissioner speak to the guidelines. I think from the entire global discussion – literally, when I say global, I mean all over the world – there's been a recognition that we're in an unprecedented situation. I think it's a great question, Julie. I'm not in any way belittling the question, but I want to say that I think what's happened in the global health community, the global governmental community is a recognition that we are in something has literally never been experienced by humankind previously. And that there are a number of things where we have to use different standards to practically reach as many people as we need to and care for them. And I believe – and Dr. Barbot will speak to it – that we've seen from the World Health Organization and CDC, any number of different sources depending on the issue, depending on the topic, a recognition of the need for flexibility and improvisation in this kind of environment. So, Dr. Barbot, that's my layman's framing. You take it from here and you can give a much more eloquent answer.

Commissioner Barbot: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, let me just first of all start off by saying that we have been focused on maximizing getting the personal protective equipment to the front-line staff and in that focusing on ways in which we can reduce the unnecessary use of personal protective equipment so that again we can maximize that supply getting to front line health care workers. That being said, there are evolving guidelines that are allowing for more extended use of personal protective equipment and we are working collaboratively with the CDC. We're working collaboratively with the State Health Department as well as our clinical partners to ensure that whatever guidance we end up evolving to always maintains the maximal safety of health care workers and front-line workers as we move to address this response. And additionally, I will say that, for example, there are health care leaders in other parts of the country that are looking at ways in which we can potentially re-sanitize, if you will, surgical masks.

We recently had a meeting with health care providers in Nebraska that are looking at ways in which we can re-sterilize surgical masks. So, the [inaudible] is that while we are focused on ensuring that PPE gets to the places where it's needed and where we are focused on ensuring that we don't squander these precious resources, we are also looking at different ways in which we can extend that supply. And actually, the Mayor referred to earlier some of the innovations that have been introduced in this, which include those full-face masks, [inaudible] again to ensure that our front-line workers are safe as they perform their really heroic duties.

Moderator: Next we have Jennifer, from AP.

Question: Hi, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: Thanks very much. I'm talking again about health care workers. As you’ve probably seen [inaudible] number of reports of workers who are seeing [inaudible] there's been at least one death, many are frightened about getting sick. Is there any further effort to kind of tally this and its impact on the hospitals and to try to figure out whether there's any further measures that need to be done for them?

Mayor: It's something I know our health care leaders think about all the time, both the folks who run each hospital and certainly Dr. Katz in terms of Health + Hospitals, Dr. Barbot looking at the overall situation with health care in the city. Everyone's thinking about this. I think the ways that, you know, are the basics, making sure that the equipment and supplies are there for our health care workers, trying to get them some relief going forward by bringing in more and more additional health workers from around the city, around the metropolitan area, even around the country. But the – it is obviously, you know, part of the heroism, just like our first responders, you know, run toward the danger, our health care workers every day, you know, even when there's just a normal day in New York City before this ever happened, this crisis, you know, they put themselves in harm's way and they've chosen a profession that comes with a lot of challenges, but is an extraordinarily noble profession.

Our job is to support them and back them up and get them what they need. And so, we're always going to be looking at how we can protect them. And if there's something we're seeing, any of us, are seeing some kind of indication of something else and different that needs to be done, we're going to do it right away. But it is, unfortunately, you know, we're seeing in all parts of the essential workforce that a number of people are out sick. The vast majority of the people out sick will be back seven to 10 days later in each case. But it's a real issue we have to keep working on. So, Dr. Katz or Dr. Barbot, do you want to add anything?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: Mayor, I think you've expressed it very well. It's certainly within Health + Hospitals – it's extremely upsetting to staff when a fellow person becomes ill. And that [inaudible] they happen, we don't have a tally of it. But we do want to protect all our workers as best we can. And, again, as you have done, admire, they're amazing heroism in working through this pandemic.

Moderator: Next, we have Erin, from Politico.

Question: Hi, there. I'm just wondering, out of the 4,000 – about 4,000 hospitalizations, how many of those are in Health + Hospitals, facilities? And also, how long until the system runs out of operating revenue? And I guess related to that, are you currently billing patients or billing their insurance in these cases?

Mayor: Let me just say, before Dr. Katz jumps in, he can tell you about the billing process and he can tell you about the broad numbers of patients. But look we've had to and we're very willing to, as the City of New York, backup Health + Hospitals before, and we'll keep backing them up. They have to have the resources they need. I consider that really sacred at this point, especially in this pandemic. There was substantial support in the stimulus bill for hospitals. We’re getting all the details on that, but that's certainly going to help. And some of the other elements of the stimulus will help us to protect Health + Hospitals for sure. So, you can talk about the budget situation, but I'll instantly say that we're going to be there to make sure that they are protected. Go ahead, Mitch.

President Katz: Well, as the Mayor has said, our focus is on saving lives, not saving dollars. If people do have insurance when we're over the crisis and we're able to send all our bills, we will certainly send out bills. There is no reason not to. The City will need that revenue. But right now, we're focused on saving lives. We'll have to get you an exact number of the people who have been hospitalized at Health + Hospitals. I don't have it separate because obviously we do a lot of testing in our outpatient facilities as well.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Mr. Mayor. I'm curious – I know Governor Cuomo said he's done a tour of some of the New York city sites he's eyeing for overflow space in hospitals, Aqueduct Race Track and CSI on Staten Island. Two of them. Will you be joining him? And then secondly, you have to release more detailed data on cases and deaths. It's negligent that you're not, I understand you [inaudible] point, but please, everyone has to get this data. Thank you.

Mayor: Look, Katie, respectfully, you can ask any question you want. I'm always going to respond. If you believe it's your role to editorialize in the middle of your question, that's your right as an American. I don't believe that not only is it not negligent, I would say to you it's the exact opposite. We are trying to never give you inaccurate information. Again, if we get to a point where we feel the information is consistent and accurate and not misleading, happily as we've done many, many times over these last months, give you a lot of information. But I don't find it appropriate for you to offer your own personal opinion on something where you're not in the middle of trying to manage this crisis. I don't think that's what the journalists are supposed to be here to do, to offer your opinions. You’re supposed to ask questions so you can get answers for people.

On the question of the facilities, I was out at the Coler Facility and really appreciate the progress that’s being made there. I'll be going around, certainly, as we find some other facilities that we’re ready to open. You know, the Governor is working on a number of leads. We're working on a number of leads, we're all coordinated, and we'll keep doing that.

Moderator: Next we have Mark Morales, from CNN.

Question: Hi everyone. How you doing?

Mayor: Hey, Mark.

Question: A quick question. I know we have 13 deaths attributed to Elmhurst Hospital. What about today? What’s the death toll there and how does that compare to the other hospitals in the city? Are they seeing comparable numbers? Is it also in the teens? What is that like?

Mayor: Mitch, do you want to start with that?

President Katz: Yeah, so the – of the last 24 hours, Elmhurst had only four deaths. I think that from the overall city counts, it looks to me like the deaths, as you would expect, are tracking very closely with the number of patients who are intubated on ventilators. So, I think all hospitals that are having a lot of patients on ventilators are experiencing a high number of deaths.

Mayor: Mitch, do you have any – I don't have the figures in front of me. Do you have any kind of comparison to other hospitals beyond that?

President Katz: I don't, Sir.

Mayor: Okay. Thank you.

President Katz: [Inaudible] work on that for tomorrow.

Mayr: Okay.

Moderator: Next we have Amanda from Bloomberg.

Question: We ran a story today about New Jersey setting up an ethics panel to kind of guide, you know, which patients will get access to ventilators. And I'm wondering if your administration would consider moving to create a similar kind of, like, ethics panel with experts, kind of, to make some of those decisions.

Mayor: Amanda, I'll let the doctors speak from their perspective. My perspective is I honestly want to do everything we can to have the equipment we need so that that is a decision that our medical personnel do not need to make. So, I understand your question entirely. If you knew you would have to make that decision, of course there should be standards. I know there already are in many cases. But I'm not giving up on the notion that we can get the ventilators we need in time to make sure every hospital has what they need, including creating our own here in New York City. I just want to be real clear on that. You know that is a challenge I still think we can meet. It won't be easy, but I still think we can beat it. And if I ever think we can't, I'll be the first to say it. But doctors, you want to add?

President Katz: I would agree that right now our focus should be on getting enough equipment so that we can save every life. There are existing State guidelines that have specific [inaudible] ahead of time into pandemic issues and what are the right ethical principles to follow in such cases. But I believe that with our efforts we’re not going to need to get there.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, I would echo that. I think that if and when we ever got to that situation, there are guidelines that are out there and, you know, we've worked collaboratively with our partners through Greater New York through Health + Hospitals, to ensure that if and when we ever got to that situation, we would have those conversations. But I really can't stress enough that all of our efforts have been directed thus far at slowing the spread of this pandemic and protecting the health care delivery systems so that individuals who need access to care get that access to care as quickly as possible.

Mayor: Amen.

Moderator: Next we have Gersh, from Streetsblog.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor and others. Thank you for taking the call. Late last night, the administration revealed its plan to open up those four stretches of [inaudible] for pedestrians. I have a two-part question [inaudible] question. First part is how were those particular stretches selected given that [inaudible] you chose seem to be harder to secure than quiet and residential streets that drivers could easily be diverted from?

Mayor: Gersh that was a process with my team, the City Council, DOT, NYPD. I can't give you the chapter and verse on how they were chosen, but we'll get folks to follow up with you on that.

Moderator: Next we have Bobby from NY1.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. And this may also be a question for Dr. Barbot. I'm wondering what is the latest guidance for people who feel sick? I know as of recently the messaging was, they should stay home for three to four days, see if they get better on their own. How sick does someone have to be before they should feel it necessary to go to a hospital? And related to that I'm wondering about the status of testing. I know you guys had said testing is really only being done on people who show up at hospitals. People shouldn't be seeking a test. Is that still the case or has the testing capacity expanded?

Mayor: Dr. Barbot –

Commissioner Barbot: Certainly, so I'll start with the recommendations of what people should do when they're sick. So, from the very beginning, we've been saying that people should stay home rather than flooding the emergency departments or clinics. And we have been telling folks to stay home for about three-to-four days. And if they are not getting better, either at that mark or certainly before that mark, they should be reaching out to their health care providers. And the rationale for that was that, as we've been saying, 80 percent of individuals who do contract COVID-19 will have a mild course. And so, the recommendation has been three-to-four days not getting better, then go to your doctors. And certainly, if you're not feeling – if you're getting worse in that period of time, don't wait the three-to-four days. You know, with regards to the testing, our priorities still remain testing the right people. And I have to tell you that – I really have to emphasize the importance of testing the right people. And the right people – by the right people, we mean individuals who are above the age of 50, have one of those five chronic underlying illnesses, and who are sick and not getting better. I'm still hearing of people getting tested at some of these, you know, walk-in urgent centers like City MD and getting a test. And I really want to discourage folks from getting the test unless they are not getting better. And the reason for that is twofold. One is, we don't want people who are sick walking around. We want you home. And only if you're not getting better and your doctor tells you that you need to be seen is when we want you outdoors. The second thing is that every time we do an unnecessary test, we are burning through personal protective equipment that we need to ensure we have maximal supply for health care workers and for our frontline staff.

Moderator: Next, we have Todd, from AM New York.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I know it may be a little premature – I know that it's rare that you get the kind of money that you want from a stimulus package. So, what are you telling your commissioners in terms of what they're going to need to cut in their budgets? And are you envisioning the possibility of layoffs of municipal workers?

Mayor: Todd, it's a very important question. I mean, look, first of all, the way we have to approach this crisis is to say, what are we going to save? What are we going to protect at all costs? You know, what is the bottom line? So, the budget process is going to go like this – if it's related to fighting COVID-19, it goes to the top of the list, and that will be protected all costs, and obviously the most crucial services that New Yorkers depend on – police fire, water, you know, sanitation. We have to protect the basics very, very rigorously here. What we're going to do is, you know, as I said, we're going to look for everything that we can appropriately cut in this first effort for the April budget and that's going to be initially at least $1.3 billion, but it's not going to be from those areas that we have to protect and save at all costs, which, again, is the COVID-19 response and all the basic services that New Yorkers depend on. The other thing is – look, the stimulus bill is not everything I think it should've been, but there's a lot in it. There is a course to direct money that New York City will receive and then there's other elements of it that we will benefit from directly – any money that goes to our public hospital system, money that goes to our school system. So, we're still figuring out the full effect of it, but it's going to help a lot. What it doesn't do is address the billions upon billions of dollars we're going to need to keep our budget balanced, going forward. That's what I hope will be included and should be included in the next stimulus bill, the one next month because it's crazy that we are the epicenter of the crisis and we're a third of the cases in the nation, but we got funding very similar to places that have almost no cases. Something's wrong with that to say the least. So, I'm hoping that will get addressed next month in Washington.

Moderator: We'll take two more today. Next step is Alex Lynn from the Daily Beast. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I am asking about new – if there's a guideline or plan in place for New Yorkers who are chemically dependent. There have been some reports of overcrowding at methadone clinics, both public and private and people who have been suggested to be in quarantine not being able to have access to their methadone and there is no sort of delivery plan in place for things like that. What do you guys have in mind?

Mayor: Doctors?

Commissioner Barbot: So, I can start and then if Dr. Katz wants to weigh in. We have been in contact with providers, reminding them of various ways in which they can ensure that their patients are safe when they come to seek care, including social distancing during a visit to the office as well as ensuring that people who are asymptomatic receive to care and people who are sick either have a mask placed on them or [inaudible]. We haven't, as of this point, heard of any issues at any of the centers that are providing methadone. And we would encourage you, if you are hearing of any of those, we would gladly follow up on them.

Moderator: Next we have Alex Zimmerman from Chalkbeat. He'll be our last question.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Hey.

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yep.

Question: Great. So, I wanted to ask a question – so, I know that some internet providers in New York City have been providing, you know, 60-day plans for families who might have, you know, limited internet conductivity at home. Obviously, that's relevant for the, you know, million students who are now turning to pivot to online learning. But we know that some providers aren't giving free access to families if they have outstanding bills at those providers. So, if that had like an unpaid cable bill even from a while ago, they're refusing to hook some parents up to internet access. And I'm just wondering if you can comment on that, if that's an acceptable practice to you?

Mayor: No, I very much appreciate you raising it, Alex, because you know, we've all been going nonstop for weeks now, but that's still – every single day, either reporter raises an issue that had not been brought to my attention that I wanted to know about – in your case, I'm really glad you did – or, obviously, I'm on now accepting questions from New Yorkers that I'm talking about the morning update and, you know, a lot of important questions are coming in on things we have to deal with and I very, very much appreciate that. That really pisses me off to tell you the truth, that any provider in the middle of a crisis like this would deprive a child and their family of the chance for that child to continue their education, which we all know is going to be, you know, disrupted already because school isn't in session. I'm going to instruct my team to go back to the providers and be very clear about the fact that we find it unacceptable that any family wouldn't be given that opportunity. If there's any outstanding bills or outstanding issues, those can be addressed once the crisis is over. But we are not going to allow them to deprive children of their education. And if we have to take action – legal action or other action, I would happily do that to protect our students. Thank you very much for raising that.

Alright, that covers it. Thank you, everybody. Take care now.

2020-03-27 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: It’s Friday – what feels like has been an endless week. I know so many New Yorkers have really felt this week. It's been very, very difficult. We've lost a lot of people. It's been a tough slog already. We've also seen just so many examples of heroism and strength, and the very best in New York City. And particularly from our frontline health care workers. And I want us to, just from this point on, understand how much our nurses, our doctors, everyone in the hospitals is going through. What a shock this is to them to go through what is basically battlefield type conditions compared to just a few weeks ago. What was a lot more normal life in their hospitals. Now, they're dealing with very, very painful realities all the time, but they're doing it with skill and with passion and with compassion. And we really need to thank them always, and we need to support them, and we need to get them a break, and reinforcements, and all the supplies they need. And we're going to be talking about that today. The things we're doing to try and reinforce, and support are noble, extraordinary health care professionals.

And what's abundantly clear to me is we've all been focused so much on, on supplies, on equipment, on ventilators. We need to focus increasingly on our health care personnel, both everything they're going through and how we help them now. But the fact also we're going to need a lot more people. We’re going to need a lot more highly trained health care professionals to get us through this in the coming weeks. I spoke a few hours ago with President Trump and Defense Secretary Esper, and over the last few days I've been talking to White House and the Department of Defense about the personnel needs that are facing our public hospitals in particular. And I have asked them for help with additional medical personnel as quickly as possible from our military all over the nation, from the civilian sector around the nation. I have made very clear we're going to mobilize everybody in the health care community in New York City, but we're going to need help from outside to get through the sheer magnitude of the crisis ahead.

The day that I've identified to President Trump and Secretary Esper and other federal officials that I think is the crucial date to think about is Sunday, April 5th. Meaning, as I've said, we're getting through this week. It's tough. We have what we need for next week, but it will definitely be a very hard week. But after next Sunday, April 5th is when I get very, very worried about everything we're going to need. The people power we're going to need, the equipment, the supplies, obviously the ventilators. I'll keep updating you regularly about what our situation looks like, but I want to put down that marker right now. And I've put down that marker to the White House that that is a decisive moment for the city of New York. We need to make sure that we can get to that day ready to face the week after that, and the week after that as well, and right now we're not there.

So, look, I've been trying to work with the President and his team. We obviously have to be, at this moment, working in common cause on behalf of New Yorkers. That doesn't mean we agree on everything to say the least. But I will always say when the White House does something to help us, I will be thankful and I'll give credit when due, and when I think they're missing something, I'll say that too. I do think the notion that any, any messages being put forward, that this will be over by Easter. It's just unfair. It's not true. It's not accurate and it's going to mislead people and raise false hope. I've been honest as I know the facts to be – that April will be tougher than March. May could even be tougher than April. And if that becomes less true, if things get better, I'll be the first to say it. But I don't want people to think this is going to be easy when it's not going to be. I think people need to be ready for battle, and the hard truth helps people gird themselves for what's ahead. And it is a battle, but it will be over. It will be over at some point in the coming months. And then we'll start that, that long recovery. But we will come back strong.

The numbers, every time I have to tell you about this, it’s human beings who are afflicted, the people we've lost, it is painful and it's shocking. 25,573 cases in the City of New York. We remained the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States of America. I look forward to a day when I can tell you that's no longer true. But today that is true. 366 New York City residents have been lost. 366 of our neighbors have been lost. And I want to note that this is becoming personal for all of us in our neighborhoods. All of us have experienced this pain, and it's coming home certainly to our city government, to our agencies that are out there serving people every day. I think you know, just in the last few days, we've lost a principal in our public school system. We've lost a custodian who works at police headquarters. We've lost a member of our Department of Transportation team, a member of our Department of Corrections team. And sadly, we are sure to lose more of our colleagues, and that's painful. Some of the most senior members of the NYPD leadership have been afflicted by the disease and are fighting it now.

Want to take a moment to just offer my sorrow and condolences to the families of some of our public servants that we've lost. Dennis Dixon, the custodian I mentioned at One Police Plaza; Irene Weiss, a community assistance in the Parking Meter Collections Department at Department of Transportation; David Perez, an investigator at the Department of Correction; Kious Kelly, a nurse manager at Sinai West – this is not one of our public sector organizations, but obviously our voluntary hospitals to us are our brothers and sisters in arms, and to have lost a nurse on the front line of this struggle is very painful for all of us; and Dez-Ann Romain, principal at Brooklyn Democracy Academy. Everyone's feeling these losses deeply. We look forward to the day when we don't have to talk about falling comrades, but that day is still a way off and we have to be clear about that.

The human toll is what matters. And for everyone who says it's about the economy, and getting the economy back up, that's just wrong. It's about saving lives first. That's what we believe here in this city. And it's about keeping our hospitals going and keeping our health care system going. I want to remind everyone, you cannot have an economic recovery if our health care system isn't working. You can't have an economic recovery if hundreds or thousands of people are dying. You can't have an economic recovery. If city governments and state governments are going bankrupt. That's the reality we're facing right now. So, I want economic recovery. You want an economic recovery, but we better deal with the problem first. And that's my message to the president and everyone in Washington.

The stimulus bill voted on today, an important step forward, but we sure as hell need more if we're actually going to stave off the full extent of this crisis. If we're going to keep our city running all our vital services, our health care running, our state running, our ability to keep our health care system intact, our ability to save lives. We are not where we need to be yet in terms of the support we need from Washington. And if that support doesn't come, then anyone who harbors the illusion that we can have an economic recovery, is putting the cart before the horse to say the least. Recovery only comes when our people are whole, our people are safe, our health care system has recovered, our city and state governments are working. We're a functioning nation again, that's when we go into recovery.

The economic impact already vast hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers already unemployed. When all is said and done, I think soon, unfortunately we'll find as many as a half-million New Yorkers might've lost their jobs in recent weeks it’s inestimable. My parents who were from the World War II generation, they would tell me stories of the Great Depression, and my older relatives would as well. The only thing that I can compare these last weeks to is that time. And I don't say that with any joy, it's just a fact. In the Great Depression, there was unemployment as high as 25 percent. In this city, in this country, we're seeing that level begin to be approached. Right now, that's the extent of the economic crisis. We have to be honest about it. The fact is that people are being hit real hard. And yes, the stimulus bill does provide some crucial direct relief to working people. That's very important, and I commend everyone in the Congress, the House and Senate who did that. But that impact that people are feeling right now, it is vast. It's why we're preparing right now to make sure that people can't afford food, will have food. And we're working every day to make sure that whatever those basic needs people have, they're going to get them, even if they don't have any money left. But we've got to take another step to recognize just the sheer extent of the pain, the suffering, the challenges that New Yorkers are going through as we suffer this massive fast economic decline.

I think if ever there was a time, there should be a rent freeze, it is now. So, for the millions of New Yorkers who live in a stabilize rent, stabilized housing in this city, normally you wait until later in the spring for the Rent Guidelines Board to make its decision on what rent levels should be for the upcoming leases. What we've seen here, to me, makes clear that we need a rent freeze for everyone who’s rent stabilized and we have to talk about all the people who are not rent stabilized as well. But for everyone, who is rent stabilized, since we have a mechanism, we need to have a rent freeze. But the only way to do that is with the help of the State of New York. And I would like to see the state immediately join with us and they've been very cooperative on so many fronts. We've worked on so many issues together and come to a common agreement on the way forward. So, we will be working with the State starting immediately, requesting the opportunity to suspend the rent guidelines process for calendar year 2020. If we are able to get State agreement to suspend the rent guidelines process for this year that will effectively create an immediate rent freeze for new leases, that's something I think we have to do given the sheer severity of this crisis.

I want to go back to the topic that's been on people's minds so much and it should be, which has all the equipment and supplies we're going to need for our hospitals to get through this crisis. As you know, on the crucial lifesaving issue with ventilators. We do have some progress and I do want to give the Federal Government credit and thanks for having gotten us 2,500 of ventilators in the course of the last week or so. Each ventilator at any given moment can save a life, keep someone going who can find their way to recovery with the help of our extraordinary medical professionals. But we have stated from the beginning that the number we need in New York City is 15,000, 2,500 helps a lot and it helps us right now until I see evidence to the contrary, I am sticking to this number because I believe is based on fact. 15,000 is the number we need,

I have reiterated that to President Trump and other key members of the administration. The President made a comment about New York State I think it was last night questioning the number of ventilators needed. I think New York State has been exactly right and asking for the number they have, which they've said is at least 30,000. When you look at the growth of this disease, not just in the City, but also in the suburbs, in other parts of the State. Governor Cuomo was exactly right to identify that number of ventilators we need them here in New York immediately to stave off this crisis. We are clearly in this city, in this state the very, very center of this national crisis. And the Governor said, and I've said once the crisis starts to pass, we will absolutely make sure that ventilators and supplies and personnel we'll get to all the other places in our country that need help.

But I want to be clear those ventilators, we are not kidding about that number, that is about savings lives right now. I spoke to the President earlier this afternoon about not only the medical personnel but also the situation at Elmhurst hospital. And we spoke about this on Wednesday night as well. I wanted him to understand very personally just – how hard it is for our health care workers, what they're dealing with, why we need so much more in the way of personnel and equipment and supplies. And I do want to say the President knows that area, his family coming from Queens and he made very clear, he's familiar with Elmhurst Hospital and the area around it. I want to keep asking the President to keep Elmhurst Hospital in mind and realize that today it's Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, tomorrow it's going to be other hospitals in this City and soon it's going to be hospitals in other parts of the country. And since he can understand and relate to the borough Queens let that be the touchstone, let that be the example that moves the President and the Federal Government to maximum effort immediately. Now, today we saw some progress and again, I will always praise progress, the President put out the statement having invoked the Defense Production Act related to general motors. That's a step in the right direction, I'm very happy to see it, but now we have to go a lot farther. And I would urge the President to use the full power of the Defense Production Act to mobilize industries across America to produce the maximum number of ventilators and other crucial medical supplies. It's quite clear this crisis is spreading rapidly around the country.

We as a nation did not have the supplies and equipment ready. It's not just this crisis it's whatever happens in the future we should produce now while we have the chance, all the ventilators possible to save our people. Obviously to make that happen, the military will be needed in every sense, the logistical capacity, the ability to move material without question, the finest ability in the nation to get things where they need to go and to deal with the toughest conditions that's our military. In addition to the extraordinary personnel that can bring to bear, the military needs to be mobilized fully our standing members of the permanent military reserves national guard this – has to be the ultimate team effort. And there's no Americans more ready to serve than the members of our military, the commander in chief now needs to make that call and get them into this fight, immediately.

Questions has have come up this week, rightfully about – Personal Protective Equipment, the PPEs that our health care professionals need, our first responders need I’ve talked about the amazing effort at the Brooklyn Navy yard. You’re going to see a lot more of those homegrown efforts to create a lot of the supplies we need, but obviously what we need most is to help with the Federal Government and the supplies to come in from all over the country. Even in some cases from outside the country, the mass, the gowns, the gloves, the face shields we need them in huge quantities going forward. We have enough of the personal protective equipment again to get us to that crucial day of Sunday, April 5th. I will update you constantly if that crucial demarcation line changes, but right now we must keep getting more to make sure we can get passed Sunday, April 5th.

Here's the distribution that's going on as we speak, just to give you a sense of the sheer magnitude. And this is all what's being done by the City of New York and our agencies right now, our Department of Health, Emergency Management, Health and Hospitals, all our agencies working together. As we speak 20 trucks are on the road delivering to our hospitals this includes a grand total of 1 million surgical masks, 200,000 N95 masks, 50,000 face shields, 40,000 isolation gowns, 10,000 boxes of gloves this is all happening right now as we speak. Tomorrow trucks will be delivering 800,000 more N95 masks and 2 million more surgical masks, and this is going to be constant from this point on. We've had a really amazing outpouring of offers from New Yorkers and people all over the country offering to get us supplies like this who have sources of their own companies that they can draw on.

We need it all is the answer. And everyone who wants to help us anywhere can call this number and let us know what you can get us and how soon, and we will follow up immediately. The number to offer supplies and equipment to help the people in New York City is 833-NYC-0040 again, 833-NYC-0040 and we appreciate the help and we need it now. A few more updates, Elmhurst Hospital, as I said, we all understand has been a hit so hard, it's been the epicenter of this crisis. The doctors and nurses, all the staff fighting so hard and they need reinforcements and reinforcements keep coming each day. Today the Health and Hospitals ascent 64 additional clinicians to Elmhurst hospital that's registered nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and physicians. 64 more clinicians sent today within the hospital, 45 members of the ambulatory staff have been moved over to work on urgent COVID cases. Tomorrow 105 additional nurses will be sent to Elmhurst hospital. So this is what we're going to be dealing with in the days ahead. Moving people, moving materials moving equipment where they're needed the most and trying to get more and more brought in all the time. But Elmhurst is the first in everyone's mind and we're making sure that reinforcements are sent constantly. Obviously yesterday the ventilators that were sent the 40 ventilators to back up, additionally their supply needs we will keep doing that. So, everyone, Elmhurst you will always get resupplied with everything that we can get you. We've talked recently about where what we're seeing around the City what information we have about the spread of this disease.

Our Health Commissioner will be part of this press conference, so she can certainly speak to as many of the details we know. But what we know for a fact is the disease is widespread around New York City, all five boroughs across the board community spread means community spread everywhere. What we also know is testing patterns have vary deeply around the City it's really been different depending on where you are and some parts of say there's been a lot more testing and other parts less testing. And some parts of the City testing has really been focused on folks with the most severe cases, in other parts of the City testing was done on a lot of people who now we would say would not be priorities for testing that will affect the rates of positive cases in each neighborhoods because the testing patterns have been uneven.

We're always looking to figure out what is the exact truth and what do we need to know strategically. But the information we have now is skewed in some ways of course by the realities I just explained to you. But we are going to try and put out information, we put out the borough numbers. Now Department of Health has put out a map showing what the pattern is, and this is on the Department of Health website, what the pattern is around the city. But again, this information only tells you part of the picture because the testing patterns have been so inconsistent. We're going to keep digging down to figure out if there are any particular areas that need particular strategic approaches. We know what's different around the city is that some areas have a greater concentration of hospitals others have less. That's part of what's going on in Queens for sure with Elmhurst, whether there's fewer hospitals that people are going to, but we've got to get to the bottom of any deeper trends that we can act on and we will keep doing that and then keep reporting the facts as we know them.

Couple of other quick points, our jail population we will continue to reduce our jail population to address this crisis to ensure that any inmates who can be appropriately released, particularly those with real health concerns that we act on we know we have to do this quickly. I mentioned that because of all the efforts over the last few years, but also this recent release effort that we now have for the first time since 1949 under 5,000 inmates in our jails, that number will continue to go down in the coming days. As of last night, 375 inmates had been released, by tonight that number will be at least 450. We are working with District Attorneys and the State to additionally work on release of the appropriate inmates that they have a specific jurisdiction over. So, we'll constantly update you on what's going on with that situation. But again, as of tonight, at least 450 will have been released.

Related to our parks and the question that's been on everyone's mind about what's going to happen going forward with our parks and the question of whether we're seeing compliance and commitment to social distancing? Overwhelmingly, the answer is yes and this is coming back from the NYPD, Parks Department, and many other agencies. We're seeing the vast majority of New Yorkers do the right thing, observe social distancing, take it seriously, spend only the time that they have to be outdoors, outdoors, and then get back indoors. But we are seeing in the last day or so, we have seen some noncompliance that is really a concern. We obviously have to think about the warmer weather coming ahead and we need to make sure that people understand this is really, really serious. So, the NYPD has been instructed, of course, to educate people, warn people, move along if people need to be moved along, break up groups and make sure there's no gatherings. I want to be very clear that at this weekend we're going to make a decision on whether we need to start instituting fines for anyone who is noncompliant. We have not made that decision yet. We'll make it this weekend. Fines of up to $500 per incident are being discussed right now. This means if any of our officers – NYPD or Parks or any other agency tells you, you need to move along, you need to move along. If they tell you to break up your gathering, you need to break up your gathering. It does not mean you can break it up for a few minutes and then come back. It doesn't mean you can tell the officer you're not going to do it. We're going to start to bring heavier enforcement to bear if people don't pay attention to the nonstop guidance that we've all been giving, and our officers are giving, and our health experts giving, and the national news media has given. Come on, you've gotten enough information to know you have to practice social distancing. I know it's not easy. I know it goes against everything we're used to doing. No more team sports, no more social gatherings in the park, no ganging close together, unless it's your own family members or the people you live with under the same roof. Those are the rules and people really need to follow those rules. If you don't follow those rules, then what it's going to say to me is we start to have to use much more serious penalties. I don't want people to be penalized in a time when there's so much economic distress. I don't want people to be penalized who are trying to make sense of a new painful reality, but I need people to listen and understand this about protecting yourself, your family, and all the rest of us. So, we'll have more information on that over the weekend, but I am asking my fellow New Yorkers to take it seriously or else there will have to be more severe measures. Obviously, the same point about playgrounds. After tomorrow night we're going to make a decision on whether to keep playgrounds open. It will be directly related to the level of compliance we see, whether we can keep them open or not.

Another area, and it pains me to say this and it's probably a pretty limited phenomenon, but it has to be addressed. I've spoken to religious leaders of all backgrounds and I want to thank them. So many of our religious leaders have really taken a lead and said to their congregation, said to members of our faith communities that we have to act differently now. A vast majority of houses of worship have stopped their traditional worship service. If they could, they went online, they went on the radio, whatever they could do, but they've stopped gathering people, understanding the nature of the crisis. We've had extraordinary support from the leaders of major Christian denominations. We've had extraordinary across the board, rabbinical support from all the different elements of the Jewish community, and the same is true other faiths as well. A small number – a small number of religious communities, specific churches, specific synagogues are unfortunately not paying attention to this guidance even though it's been so widespread. So, I want to say to all those who are preparing the potential of religious services this weekend – if you go to your synagogue, if you go to your church and attempt to hold services after having been told so often not to, our enforcement agents will have no choice but to shut down those services. I don't say that with any joy. It’s the last thing I would like to do because I understand how important people's faiths are to them, and we need our faiths in this time of crisis, but we do not need gatherings that will endanger people. No – no faith tradition endorses anything that endangers the members of that faith. So, the NYPD, Fire Department, Buildings Department, and everyone has been instructed that if they see worship services going on, they will go to the officials of that congregation, they'll inform them they need to stop the services and disperse. If that does not happen, they will take additional action up to the point of fines and potentially closing the building permanently. Again, that will begin this weekend. Again, I'm sorry I have to tell you this, but anyone who's hearing this take it seriously. You've been warned, you need to stop services, help people practice their faith in different ways, but not in groups, not in gatherings that could endanger people.

Finally, on remote learning it is a huge new endeavor. It's a challenging effort. Yesterday I have to say, I was really upset when I heard from one of our reporters that a couple of major broadband providers apparently were making it more difficult for certain households to get the internet service they needed so that our kids could participate in distance learning. I made very clear we would act if Charter Spectrum and Altice did not resolve these issues. I do want to give you good news and I do want to give these companies credit for acting quickly. Both have now said they will waive the rules that were the problem. They will not hold back service from families with students who need to learn online. And now more of our students will be able to learn. So, that is a good step and I want to thank our colleague in the media who brought that forward, so we could act on that.

And finally, just to say to another group of people, I've tried to really take time to thank people and then I'll say just a couple of quick words in Spanish. You know, there's so many people to thank and I’ve talked a number of times and I'll keep talking about our doctors, our nurses, our frontline medical staff, but there's another group of unsung heroes who are the clinicians who are staffing our 3-1-1 Health + Hospitals hotline. That's more than 750 clinicians, they work at literally all hours of the day. This last week already, they've taken 23,000 calls just in a week and what they're doing is helping New Yorkers to understand what they need to do in this crisis, how they can address whatever they're experiencing. And what's in fact the case is that 90% of these calls, the answer is hearing from a medical professional, understanding what's really going on and how to handle it – 90 percent of these calls, the advice was to stay home, see it through or see it through to another point in time and then call back if the situation got worse. For those who needed additional care immediately, our clinicians were there to direct them immediately to where they needed to go and make sure they had the information they needed. Those clinicians are doing something crucial and they've helped give people the confidence that if they did need to stay home, it was after having talked to a capable medical professional to get that advice. That's really crucial because that's been helping people to feel that peace of mind. To do the right thing, to be able to make the right decision cause a public servant, a professional was there to help them. So, thank you to those 750 clinicians, you're doing something very important for all of us.

Finally, just a few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

New Yorkers are always at their best, at their strongest, in moments of crisis. We saw it after 9/11, we saw it after Sandy, we're seeing it again now. With that, I want to turn to our colleagues in the media and Dr. Katz and Dr. Barbot will be available on the line as well. And we welcome media questions now. Please proceed, Olivia.

Moderator: Quick reminder that we're going to do one question per reporter to get to as many outlets as possible. And with that, Erin Durkin is up first. Erin?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I just have some questions about – there have been reports of overwhelming numbers of 9-1-1 calls and they're telling people, you know, even if you're having trouble breathing, go to the emergency room by yourself. I guess I'm just wondering sort of on a practical basis, we're also hearing that emergency rooms are turning people away if they're well enough to walk or talk on their own. So just on a very practical level, if you need care, how are you supposed to get to an emergency room if you're not supposed to call 9-1-1 and you can't walk on your own. I assume you don't want people in cabs and subways. And related to that, just with the guidance to stay home, if at all possible, and people being turned away, is there a concern that people are going to end up, you know, deteriorating getting into really serious conditions, possibly even dying without getting into care?

Mayor: So, Erin, I'll start and our doctors will jump in. Look, I'd say to you, I'd say to your colleagues, every time you raise an issue we're all following up on it right away. But I also want to be careful that sometimes the issues raised are based on either rumors or very, very narrow circumstances that don't reflect the reality. You're asking a very important question. I want to thank you for the question, but I want to be careful that the opening assumption of the question that people don't hear it and think, suddenly, you know, everything that we knew before is gone because it's just not true. We have some hospitals that have been particularly stressed. We have a number of other hospitals that are in much less of a situation of overload. Of course, all of our EMTs continue to do their work.

I will look into everything happening with FDNY, EMS, 9-1-1 – but the basic rules that have always applied apply. If someone's in urgent need we get them, we give them help. Now you're right to say that people have been walking up. It's true. A lot of people have been walking up, particularly in the case of Elmhurst and we said days ago, that every emergency room now has outside medical professionals who are screening to see who actually needs to go into the emergency room and who does not, who needs testing, who does not. In this crisis, there's so much fear. There's so much confusion. Of course, people are going to want to, you know, get as much testing as possible. It's natural. We kept telling them who really needs it, who doesn't? But I understand that that message is hard for people to hear.

So, the fact is that the emergency rooms, those decisions are being made outside. But anyone who needs immediate care is getting immediate care. We're not telling people if you're in immediate danger, stay home. That's not the message at all. The message has simply been, if you have cold or flu-like symptoms, stay put to begin, give it three or four days, if you're not getting better, call your doctor and your doctor will direct you from there. Obviously, if you have anything that's an emergency, we treat it as an emergency. But what we didn't want was a lot of people – and we know this about this disease, 80 percent of the people who get it are going to have a pretty mild experience. We don't want those people flooding the emergency rooms and the hospitals. We need them to have the confidence that the pattern is so consistent that they can stay home and ride it through unless something changes for the worse, in which case, of course, we want to get them to more care.

So, no, I do not have reports of people not getting care who need care. In fact, I think, Erin, it's been the other way around. A lot of people still kind of understandably rushing to the hospital even though they're only having those very initial symptoms. And we're trying to get people to understand they don't need to do that. They can call those clinicians, as I said, and call 3-1-1. You can get connected to a Health + Hospitals clinician if you need to confirm how to handle your situation. So, there's always help out there. But FDNY, EMS, they continue to do as they always have and address people who have real emergencies in real time. To Dr. Katz, Dr. Barbot, you want to add?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: I would just add – I think Mr. Mayor did a great job. As you said, 90 percent of the calls to our clinicians have resulted in people being advised to stay home. But that means 10 percent of the time we're telling people they need emergency care. And the biggest distinction is shortness of breath. So, people who are short of breath are much more in danger and do need to be seen as rapidly as possible. Part of your good advice about people staying home that three or four days is we don't want them to expose – to be exposed and we don't want them to expose others. So, it's also part of our preventing disease transmission.

Mayor: Mitch, can you just dwell on that for a moment? Hold on one second.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I'm sorry, Oxiris. Mitch, just stay on that for a moment because I think this is really been under-discussed. You know, a lot of people I think understand that there are times when you have to go to the hospital and how hard the people at the hospitals work to protect you. But there's also a lot of truth way before coronavirus that a hospital is an environment that's not ideal either. And, Mitch, you know, talk about the fact that if someone might have very mild symptoms or a mild experience with this disease, that it actually could create more danger to go to where there's a lot of people trying to get into a hospital. I think if you play that out a little, it'd be helpful for people.

President Katz: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, I've been advising my own primary care patients that they need to stay at home unless they develop shortness of breath because I don't want them to be exposed to other people who might have COVID. So, I think it is part of our social distancing. I think one of the common conceptions that's wrong in this disease is generally we teach people come early, come early. So, I've already heard people say, you know, I'm trying to come early before this gets bad and I'm being told to, you know, not leave my house. Part of the difference is, we don't have an effective treatment for this disease. So, it's not as if we want people to come early and start a medication. We want people to stay in their homes, we want them to drink lots of fluids to get lots of rest. But if they do develop shortness of breath then we want them to come forward.

Mayor: Dr. Barbot.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, so, I was going to add that certainly if someone feels like they are unable to get to see their physician and they're getting worse and they're having symptoms where they're not sure that they're going to be able to make it through the night and they're not getting better, of course, we would encourage people to use the 9-1-1 system. That's what it's there for. But I think it's incredibly important to really emphasize the fact that 80 percent of the folks will have mild illness and that if someone is not getting better, we want them to reach out to their doctor first and to use EMS as a last resort.

Mayor: Thank you. Go ahead.

Moderator: Matt Chayes is up next.

Question: Hey, guys. I hope you will indulge me. This is a question for Dr. Barbot or Dr. Katz. Can you tell me how quickly people are going from initial onset of symptoms to a more serious situation? How long to recover? Do fever and cough appear together or one after the other? Do symptoms come and go or do they escalate? Do they disappear permanently and how long is recovery usually?

Mayor: Okay, Doctor?

Commissioner Barbot: Do you want me to take that or do you want to take that? Why don’t I start?

Mayor: Okay. You start and Mitch will join in.

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely. From the onset of this pandemic, we've been saying that we're learning more and more every day about how this virus behaves. And generally, we know that individuals can develop symptoms anywhere from two to 14 days after being exposed. With that – as we learned more, it became apparent that people would generally develop symptoms somewhere around five to six days and that individuals would present with symptoms of fever and a cough, fever and shortness of breath, but that it didn't necessarily mean that they would develop the fever first and then the cough. Oftentimes what we've been finding is that individuals may start off with a raspy throat, with a runny nose, and then develop a cough, and then progress into fever and more severe symptoms. And that course is generally dictated by someone's underlying health conditions. And so that's why it’s really important to focus on those five chronic underlying illnesses as potential risk factors for having a faster progression to more severe illness or unfortunately worse health outcomes in terms of needing intensive care support or unfortunately dying as a result of the illness. And so, the thing that I will say is that as we've learned more, what we've generally learned is that children tend to have a much milder course than adults do. And so, there's large variability in how someone progresses along the spectrum of COVID-19 infection. But the bottom line being that what we've seen still roughly born out is that 80 percent of individuals will have a mild course of illness.

Mayor: Do you – Dr. Katz, do you want to add anything?

President Katz: I think Dr. Barbot did a great job.

Mayor: Alright.

Moderator: Reema from Chalkbeat is up next – Reema.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. So, I have a question about the regional enrichment centers – we've heard and now we've seen a statement from the Speaker's office and a few other elected officials that the City is deciding to close some of these centers. Can you give me a number of how many are closing or consolidating, and can you explain why that's happening?

Mayor: Yeah, what we are doing at this point is recognizing that the – and I'll get to the exact, I don't have the final numbers in front of me here, but I can give you the basic approach. We are looking at the sheer number of students signed up and then the sheer number of students showing up. And we need to be mindful that to have one of those centers up, which are there for one purpose only to ensure that our essential workers can get to work – Health care workers, first responders, transit workers, grocery workers, pharmacy workers, and others. That's why they were created. If it weren't – I want to be real about this – if it weren't for that purpose, they would not exist because we shut down the whole school system, which I hated doing. But we did that. And this would have been true for all those kids, too.

But the essential workers, we all understood – the City understood, the State understood we needed every single one of them, and if not having a place for their child was a possible impediment or a problem for them to get in the way of them being at work. We needed to make sure we addressed that. So, we set up a really substantial capacity. And then we opened up the opportunity for enrollment. We got a decent amount of interest, but nowhere near what we thought might be based on projections. We continued to add additional categories of essential workers and the numbers have not moved much, but even more important, not just the enrollment numbers, but the actual attendance has been very strikingly low. Now, what we want to do – and we can expand and contract depending on the situation, but if we're talking about thousands of students, if it's single digit thousands or even a little more than that, we can certainly, you know – 10,000 kids or 15,000 kids, we could handle in a lot fewer centers.

And that means we don't need as many staff to be there. That means that we're freeing up school nurses who can go and do other important health care work. So, this is a fluid situation but fluid, not just because of circumstance, but because of a strategic decision that we want to only have the number that we truly need and then maximize the use of those precious health care personnel in other ways. So, you will see this number potentially go not only down, it could go back up if real enrollment starts to move. If we really start to see more and more interest in kids being there.

Moderator: Yoav is up next – Yoav?

Question: Yeah. Hi, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask you about a tweet that Representative Grace Meng tweeted. She said she talked to a nurse at Elmhurst who said that they need vents, but “more so we need doctors and also doctors who are ICU trained”. I know you've moved a considerable number of staff over at Elmhurst, but my question is are these people ICU trained doctors? And the same would go for nurses because I've heard they're using floor nurses who don't have a lot of ICU training in the ICU. So, is the hospital still short of that experienced personnel and is that part of your plea to the federal government? Are you looking for folks typically who have that ICU experience?

Mayor: Let me it’s – there’s a couple of points there and I'll start and obviously, Mitch will jump in, Yoav. Mitch and I talked about this in detail earlier today. To the last part of your question – absolutely, positively, yes. I have said to the President of United States, the Defense Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the military medical personnel in the standing military, in the reserves – these are folks who in many cases literally have battlefield experience and even those who have not served in battlefield conditions have trained to be able to handle those conditions. And the military leaders have been very clear that that's a true statement about the nature of military medical personnel, that they are trained for the toughest conditions. So, I think calling them up and sending them to the new American front, which is New York City right now, to fight this battle the same way we would fight a battle or a war if we were being attacked by a foreign invader, I think that makes all the sense in the world. Because not only do we just need additional numbers of personnel, they would bring some of the very best skills and most pertinent skills for this situation.

The second thing I want to say to you is, no one, no one, expected to go from relative normalcy just weeks ago to this totality that we're going through now with so much stress, so much difficulty, so many people suffering, so many people dying so quickly. Of course, the human beings who are our health care professionals are feeling that strain. Everyone would feel that strain. I think it's true to say that some people have had the kind of experience that prepares them more for it and others less so. But that's true throughout our entire health care system. You cannot say that a health care system that's made up of folks who, some of whom have had a lot of ICU experience, some of whom have not, that suddenly they're all going to instantly understand things the same way.

That's just not realistic. And we're going to need all hands-on deck. We do need to be mindful of ensuring the maximum number, sort of, battle ready medical professionals in each of the key locations, especially the ones going through the most. And I think in part that is the folks who do have that experience, in part, that’s just having enough personnel, just a sheer number of quality personnel of different kinds of experience together to support each other. We got to think about all those factors. But where we are going in this crisis, we don't have the luxury of saying, well, the only people who are going to be around to help are those who have, you know, the most perfect experience. In fact, we're going to have to use every single health care professional we can possibly get into this fight. We're going to have to get people who have been trained in one background to learn to do things very differently in another background because it's going to be a war-like dynamic.

So again, I'm sorry for the long answer – and Mitch will jump in – but I'm sure I'll get other questions like this. I want to appeal to my colleagues in the media. You can ask anything and everything that's absolutely your job and I will honor it. But I need you to understand that some of the questions sound like the kind of standards we would hold in peacetime and why are we not reaching the kind of, you know, ideal situation we would normally aspire to in a peacetime dynamic. This is no longer peacetime. I'm not saying that to be melodramatic. This is a wartime dynamic already and this is just the beginning. We're going to have to make all sorts of tough choices and do things very differently and, you know, fight each day to get through this. So yeah, there'll be imperfections for sure, but our job is to make sure that the people we can save, are saved. Mitch.

President Katz: You said it very well, Mr. Mayor and I think all of the hospitals in New York City will be like Elmhurst in the next week or two. Elmhurst is just ahead of the curve. As New Yorkers we're used to subspecialists. That's our tradition. And I certainly understand that given that I have doubled the number of ICU beds at several of our hospitals, it would be ideal if I could double the number of ICU intensivists – that's a sub specialty function. But if we went to other parts in rural America, we would find that there was a family practitioner doing an excellent job in the ICU at his or her hospital. So, we can teach people to do these skills and we have the advantage of having amazing intensivists who can teach generalists how to function in the ICU environment.

Moderator: Kevin from the Brooklyn Paper is up next. Kevin, can you hear us?

Mayor: Kevin? Kevin?

Moderator: We’ll come back to Kevin. Sydney is up next. Sydney?

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah Sydney.

Question: It's a weird echo. Do you have any figures on how many coronavirus patients are in recovery or have recovered? If not, why don't you have that information and does the city – sorry, I know does – sorry about the ICU beds. Why don't you guys keep track of the number of ICU patients who are in the ICU.

Mayor: So, again, couple of different points there. There definitely are people recovering all the time. I think you make a good point, Sydney, that in a perfect world we would get to the point where we could say we have, you know, confirmed that this individual is recovered and we would keep a running list of folks who have recovered. I think it would be reassuring to people. It'd be helpful. The doctors will know better than me what it would take to achieve that. Obviously, there are a lot of people, Sydney, who contracted disease, never go to a health care institution, go through the whole course of it in seven to 10 days and come out okay, that's that 80 percent. Obviously, that's overwhelmingly folks under 50 and folks who don't have those preexisting conditions. But I think that's the fundamental challenge in giving you a number like that is that so many people consistently are going through the whole course of the disease and they never are in direct connection with the city or the health care system. There is no way to track that number. We could track I guess for the ones we know for sure, like we will – start to talk to the Police Commissioner yesterday and Dermot said, you know, he will start identifying the number of officers who come out of being sick and come back on the job. We can do that certainly for public agencies and to our colleagues from our communications team, that would be a very valuable number to start putting out from each agency as they start to accrue those numbers. But I don't think we can do it entirely accurately for the larger population. I want, I'll answer the other part of your question, but doctors – to the two doctors online, am I in the ballpark there that we could only get a very partial sense of that? Do you agree?

President Katz: Yes sir. I'm not – the happy part is people are recovering. And we do see people leaving the hospital who had shortness of breath. We even see a few people being able to get off the ventilator.

Mayor: Good. So, on the other part of the question what we are trying to do here, and I said it to you yesterday to everyone – we want to make sure if we give you numbers, they are accurate numbers. We are constantly changing the number of ICU beds because we are honestly going to convert a number of our major hospitals to all ICU or primarily ICU rapidly over the coming days. So, when I feel we've got stable, consistent numbers we can give you and we're sure they're accurate, we'll happily put that out. But, right now, it's very much in flux. The number of patients is constantly changing. The question I always keep coming back to is, do we have the capacity to handle the patients we have? That's really the measure I'm looking forward. Not what is today's number or this hour’s number or the next half-hours’ number, but are we able to serve the people we have that comes down to beds staffing ventilators, et cetera.

As we are able to get to a situation where we feel we can give more real time updates that are absolutely accurate. Again, I'll happily do more as we go along, but right now the priority has been just setting up this infrastructure, getting it to be able to handle what's about to hit us and again, that's why I'm using that date, Sunday, April 5th. We are not thinking about what happened, you know, at four o'clock today or five o'clock today. We are trying to build enough capacity to get us to Sunday, April 5th and then beyond and that's my obsessive focus right now.

Doctors, you got anything to add?

President Katz: We opened up, I see us in all, in three of our hospitals last night, which I think again goes to what you're saying Mr. Mayor that our job is to meet the need for ICU.

Mayor: And we will. Okay, who's up?

Moderator: Alejandra from AM New York is up. Alejandra?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, indeed. Alejandra.

Question: Okay, thank you. These fines for religious institutions that keep having services, how large would they be and is there going to be any sort of a warning system before they're shut down permanently? And how is this going to be enforced?

Mayor: Okay, so – make sure I got this in front of me. Let me emphasize, Alejandra. It is a small number of institutions, meaning the vast majority, and again, I've had calls with a lot of the senior religious leaders of all the faith traditions in recent days. What I'm hearing really consistently is the decision they've made and they've communicated, they've acted on it to shut down their houses of worship and to send a message to their faith communities that it's actually consistent with their faith to keep people safe. What we’re seeing is a small number and I don't have a perfect number for you. I think it could be you know, only a few dozen that you know, maybe it's a storefront church, maybe it's a small synagogue, but we are seeing in certain communities, smaller religious institutions that despite everyone around them acting, they still are refusing.

So I'm being really clear about the fact that we are telling them right now do not hold services this weekend period. It goes against everything that we've put forward in terms of this state of emergency. And what will happen is if there is any report and obviously anyone who sees such a service can call 3-1-1 and it will be acted on immediately. It begins with a warning to disperse. If they disperse immediately and obviously our enforcement agents would watch that happen, make sure that happens. That's fine. We just want to address the issue. If they refuse to disperse, there would be a fines that could be levied. I'll get you the exact dollar figure. I don't have it in front of me now, but we could do a fine further, if we see any recurrence, we would move immediately, or refusal, we would move immediately to have the Department of Health issue in order to have the building shuttered, so that could not be used for those services. Again, no one wants to see this happen. No one wants to see us ever have to take an action like this. So the word to the wise is just don't hold services this weekend. And if anyone tries to and our officers arrive and say it's time to leave, they have to honor that request or we will have no choice but to ensure there are consequences.

Moderator: We're going back to Kevin from the Brooklyn Paper. Kevin?

Question: Hi. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Kevin.

Question: Okay, great. Thanks so much for taking the question. Mr. Mayor. I'd like to go back to the neighborhood breakdown that you provided today and thanks so much for providing that. I know you mentioned that, you know, the numbers vary on testing patterns and all that, but for our purposes at the Brooklyn Paper in Brooklyn, I'm seeing a large concentration, you know, starting in Greenpoint, going down along the east of prospect park to Midwood, and Borough Park. Do you have any idea of why there could be a large concentration there and are, you know, sending out a targeted response to these areas of high concentration?

Mayor: I'm going to turn to Dr. Barbot because the Health Department assembled this information or is part of that process of assembly. But I just would say at the outset, we are – just everyone is day to day, hour to hour, constantly responding to new information and trying to dig down and figure out each trend. We see we're obsessed right now, that is the right word, with building out the capacity to save lives. But obviously if we saw something we could act on in the nature of the disease or how it's manifesting, or where it's manifesting. If we saw something actionable, we would immediately move. The concern here, and the Health Commissioner and I have talked about is that this information, although it gives you something, it gives you unfortunately a very incomplete picture because it was not based on a uniform testing standard.

If we had said, okay, every one of these you know, specific subset areas of the city, we were going to do a thousand tests in each one with the exact same criteria who gets tested and you know, you had perfect consistency and then you saw a really big variation between neighborhoods, that would tell us potentially something very real. This doesn't tell us something as easily understood and acted on because the testing standards and amounts were so different in each neighborhood. So, the Health Commissioner will tell you if she sees more in it, that can be acted on and we are looking for something we can act on. But I'm not sure this information tells us enough. Dr. Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: So, Mr. Mayor, I think you've got it exactly right. This map tells us about testing behavior. It doesn't tell us anything about how the virus is being transmitted. For that, we know and we've been sharing that we have widespread community transmission, which in essence means that New Yorkers are more likely to be contracting COVID-19 from their fellow New Yorkers than from travel. And that the guidance and the treatments if you will for this community-wide transmission is for people to stay home. What the map shows is the variability in terms of if you could think about it as hit rate, meaning that there are some parts of the city, Brooklyn and Queens where providers are being more judicious in terms of who it is that they're testing and that in other parts of the city you still have a-ways to go in terms of ensuring that we are reserving testing for those individuals who are not getting better and who fall into those chronic underlying illnesses. So I wouldn't make anything more of the map other than it reflects testing behavior of providers. It doesn't tell us anything about community transmission because we know that there is widespread community transmission in all the five boroughs and what will help prevent or help slow the spread of this virus is again New Yorkers adhering to staying indoors.

Moderator: Bridget is up next. Bridget.

Question: Thanks. Hi, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to follow up on the April 5th date and your comments talking about how you think the city is going to have enough equipment through that date. Just wanted to clarify, when you say that, are you only speaking about hospitals or does that extend to some of the city's frontline workers? EMS NYPD, FDNY, and you know, we're seeing – I'm seeing a lot of folks talking about being out there without any protective gear. So to what extent are they part of how you assess whether the city has what it needs and when it will be at this April 5th sort of shortage point?

Mayor: The – I want to be really clear and I understand there is real fear and anxiety among all of our public servants. And we're all getting used to a new reality. So I think some of our public servants, even some our first responders are trying to figure out when you're supposed to use what form or protection when you're not, et cetera. The message I've given the Police Commissioner; Fire Commissioner is whatever they need, if we have it, they're going to get it. And I think I've said publicly with major shipments of masks, for example, were presented to the PD when they needed them. We sent the last one I think was half a million masks a few days back. Whatever our first responders need, they're going to get whatever we have. But I know of at this point, no shortages in getting those protective gear to our first responders. I do think we have to constantly make sure that each and every one of them are getting the information about when to use them, and when not to use them, and we have to make sure that it's being done properly. So, the answer to your question is yes, we are taking into account the whole picture. The first consideration you'll understand is to ensure that we can save lives. In our hospital system. The measure Bridget, and I've said this very bluntly, publicly, constantly, and in the conversations with everyone in Washington. I have a very simple sad, painful but common sense measure – are we going to be able to save every life that we can save? We know that our doctors, all our nurses, our medical personnel are working nonstop and we are all able to honestly acknowledge that sometimes despite their very best efforts with all the equipment they need with all the supplies, sometimes they cannot save a life. And we mourn when that happens.

I'm worried about a life they could save and they would have saved if that ventilator had been there in time or if that equipment had been available, that supply had been available. That's the standard I'm holding. Right now, from everything I've seen from, from Mitch, from Oxiris, from every part of our team and the amount of supplies being delivered. There are clearly enough supplies, enough equipment in New York City to meet that standard this week and next week. After Sunday, April 5th. I'm not yet ready to guarantee as we go into that following week that we'll be able to say that across the board. Just being fairly, bluntly honest. And I want everyone in Washington to hear this point. And that's the reason I'm making the appeals I'm making.

Now help keeps coming in from some places we expect and sometimes from places we don't expect, and that's very good news. And if at any point that estimate changes and improves, I'm going to be saying that too. It's going to be constant updates, but I needed to give everyone a clear understanding of – we need help by that date. We need to make sure that we have in place the ability to respond on a much greater level. You heard what Mitch said, I thought it was very painful but poignant that what's happening in Elmhurst today is going to be happening in a number of other hospitals starting next week. So that's what we're bracing for. But we're going to of course include our first responders and everything. But the first thing on our minds is making sure that we can actually save every life with everything we have.

Moderator: Julia Marsh is up next. Julia.?

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor,

Mayor: Hi, Julia.

Question: So just back to the personal protective equipment. You know, this morning on ABC, George Stephanopoulos showed you the Post cover with the nurses wearing trash bags. We've heard similar reports of lack of supply that Elmhurst, the nurses at Jacobi are having a press conference tomorrow morning saying they don't have proper equipment. You said that we have the supplies this week and next yet you're, you know, you're kind of wondering why maybe the hospital management isn't pushing it out to the nurses and you yourself are going to push out millions of pieces of equipment over the next two days. So can you just kind of explain like why you and other officials are saying there's plenty of equipment and yet all the frontline workers are saying there isn't.

Mayor: Yeah, Julia, respectfully, I think you, you often ask very intelligent questions, but I want to just watch you on that last “everyone is saying there isn't” You mentioned three instances. I take them all to heart. I know all those folks are going through a lot. We would never belittle anyone or underestimate the challenge, the fear, the difficulty that people are going through, when they get to the point of reaching out to you or any other reporter or having a photo go out, that represents real pain and real fear. I get that. That's a different question than whether a huge amount of supplies had been sent to each hospital. I want to understand that better for sure. When it comes to Health + Hospitals, Mitch is the person that can always answer that. And when it comes to the rest of the health care system, Oxiris works on that all the time to understand if those hospitals are getting everything that we've sent, if there's some issue of why they may not be reaching everyone who needs them, or is there something happening internally? Is there some miscommunication? Is there – I don't know the answer. I don't want to assume the answer, but I do know what we've taken in and I do know what we've sent out. And what I want us all to understand is that we will absolutely try to get to the bottom of any situation where our health care workers feel there's a problem. We have to take that on face value and believe it and act on it. But you know, we've also got to acknowledge, if the materials had been sent out. Then there's something happening somewhere along the line that needs to be addressed. Mitch, you and I have talked about the situation at Elmhurst. I know there's tremendous fear, anxiety. I know a lot of those really noble health care workers were shocked by just a sudden change of events.

The ventilators is a good example. There was a real desire, a real fear about the lack of ventilators. We kept sending more and more shipments. But I think it's important for you to this point, because again, we can't speak as well for Sinai West or for Jacobi. Well, I guess you could speak to Jacobi but I can't speak for Sinai West, but in the case of Elmhurst, could you just clarify this point of what you know personally – and you visited – about the supplies that had been sent?

President Katz: Yes, sir. And I do think that it's a very emotionally difficult issue and that's why communication is so hard. In the public system, we have not run out of protective equipment at any point in this pandemic. You've been very clear though that we do need to be resupplied to go beyond April 5th. I think a lot of the concern that providers are saying is they know that this is going to go on for weeks. They know the supply that we have and I think they are calling out to say we don't have enough supplies. They don't mean we don't have enough supplies at this moment. They mean we're not going to have enough supplies to get through this unless there are major restocking. So, I think distinguishing between, do you mean we don't have enough supplies this minute, or do you mean we're not going to have enough supplies as part of this?

People are used to a previous day where you could just open a supply closet at Health + Hospitals and there would be as much equipment as you could possibly need. Right. That's very different than now where we keep the supply to several days’ worth. I think the other complicating issue that we need to be transparent about in the way you have is that as we've learned more about the virus our advice has changed. And we try within that change to also recognize that our providers who are on the front line and are doing different work have different arrangements that make them feel more comfortable. So, for example, in some settings in the emergency room, we would say that the appropriate PPE necessary on your face is a surgical mask. But if you feel more comfortable wearing an N95 mask, we're good with that. And we give you an N95 mask, you wear it during the day, which is actually safer because you're not taking it on and taking it off and you wear a surgical mask over it. So, without going into all of the various details, I’ll just say that as a way to say it's complicated and it's been changing. And I think that's a second feature of why this has been so difficult.

Mayor: And to both doctors – Mitch just said something really important. So again, to all my colleagues in the media and all the New Yorkers who are out there watching this and listening to this, we used to be in a time of plenty. I mean, let's just be honest about how much of a shock to our system this is. We're Americans, we're New Yorkers, we're used to an abundance that most of the world still can't dream of. And that was true weeks ago only. And Mitch is saying something very important. The supplies that used to be plentiful and people would use them, and doctors explain just how often people would throw away different supplies after even a single use. And now there are cases where we're saying you need to wash them and reuse them, or whatever is the specific guidance to keep the – extend the life of a certain product for a day or multiple days. And that's been a shock to people. It used to be, you know, that they just knew they could use anything and throw it away. In previous generations, people had – you know, any possession they had, they had to hang onto and try and preserve and people had very few possessions. In our time, we're used to a culture where you could get anything you want anytime and it's going to replace instantly. So, I think that's as a one of many, many things going on here. But doctors, could you just explain, because I think it would help our colleagues in the media, which of these items can be reused and what the basic guidances in the health care community about how you do that?

President Katz: Sure. So again, because I know Mr. Mayor, how you value transparency, we don't ask anybody to wash anything.

Mayor: I used a bad word, Mitch. I'm sorry, that's a layman's word. Let me rephrase, I’ll let you used the right word.

President Katz: So, what the issue is that an N95 masks, which is, right now, our most protective device and it has been in short supply worldwide, once you put it on, if you're staying in an area where all of the patients are have COVID-19, it's okay to keep wearing that all through your shift. And what you do is you wear a surgical mask over it to make sure that it doesn't get splattered. And if you do feel it any time that it did get splattered, then we would want you to change it. But it's perfectly safe to wear that N95 mask all day long on your shift as long as it's not soiled.

Mayor: Any other examples Mitch? Or, Oxiris?

Commissioner Barbot: I could add to what Mitch said because I agree 100 percent with him. The other thing is that we have – we want to emphasize that the way in which this virus is spread is through droplets spreads and so that there are places and times when an N95 is certainly indicated, you know, high risk procedures like suctioning someone who may be on a ventilator. And then there are other parts of providing care where a surgical mask is equally protected. And so part of this evolving nature has been spending the time to talk with staff and showing them what the evidence is and what the evidence isn't, answering questions that may come up, but really keeping front and center the fact that we want to make sure that all of our health care workers are maximally protected and that's why we, and especially the Mayor, have been so forceful in asking the feds and demanding of the feds that we get the supplies that we need because certainly as the doctors and the nurses are sounding the alarms and the hospitals were doing similarly that may need ongoing supplies because we're at the very beginning of what will be a very challenging can weeks and months ahead.

Mayor: I just want to – one last quick second, we'll keep moving after that. Doctors, besides the N95, is there any other example of reuse among the sort of crucial we keep talking about?

President Katz: Yes, sir. Some of our health care workers have chosen to wear helmets that come with filters and this is a kind of protective equipment that someone owns themselves, that is to say it's going to be there as for a period of as long as a month and it has air filters. It looks a little bit like you're wearing a Darth Vader mask, if people want a visual. But it's one of the pieces of equipment that people are allowed to reuse for a long period.

Mayor: Thank you very much. Go ahead, Olivia.

Moderator: Jeff Coltin is up next. Jeff?

Question: Yeah, sure. Right. Mr. Mayor, this City did a pilot program this week of [inaudible] for seniors –

Mayor: We lost you for a minute, Jeff. Start again –

Question: Sure, I've heard that the City did a pilot program this week for a meal delivery for seniors, but I'm hearing a lot of complaints about seniors being left off the list among some other issues. Is that still planning to go to a citywide on Monday?

Mayor: Jeff, I need to get our folks to update you on that. I spoke to our Commissioner for the Aging, Lorraine Cortes Vazquez, just a few days ago about all of the efforts we're trying to do to expand access to meals for everyone and for seniors in particular, because, again, we know a lot of people are really being challenged now in terms of food supply. But I don't have the specifics on what's going on with that and we'll make sure – in terms of the pilot, we'll make sure to get those to you right away. Everything in the area of food now is going to be not just what each agency does, what DFTA does, what Human Resource Administration does, what the traditional food banks do. But now, again, under the leadership of Kathryn Garcia, there's going to be a much bigger strategic look at food supply and getting food to folks who don't have the money to pay for it in the weeks ahead on a much bigger scale. And we'll have a lot more to say on that as that plan develops.

Moderator: Bobby Cuza is up next. Bobby?

Question: Hey, guys. This question is for Dr. Barbot and maybe Dr. Katz also wants to chime in. There's been this, sort of, experimental treatment that has come to light in the last couple days of using blood plasma from those who have recovered from the disease and giving it to those who are hospitalized and, sort of, in a serious, or maybe even critical stage of the disease. I believe it started Mount Sinai. I'm wondering what the City's view is. Are we even participation on this? I don't know if the City is involved. And what is the message to those who have recovered? Should they be looking at going and donating blood – and why or why not?

Commissioner Barbot: So, I'll start and I’ll let Dr. Katz weigh in. I'm not familiar with this particular instance. What I will say is that, again, we're learning new things every day and there are certainly new experimental treatments using established medications, but this is a particular area that I have to admit I haven't heard, but I will certainly look into it.

President Katz: I can provide a little bit more information because our hospital is participating in doing this. The basic idea is that part of how we get over this virus is that our bodies create antibodies and it's been found that those antibodies seem to help some people to get over this disease more rapidly. The way that – it wouldn't be someone giving a blood donation. It's a specific procedure that would be done at a blood donation center, but where we harvest those antibodies and then give it to another patient. And the city hospitals are part of a group of hospitals in the city that are pursuing this. I think it's something that you will hear about more in the coming weeks.

Moderator: Last two. Jennifer, from the AP. Jennifer?

Question: Hi. Can you hear me?

Moderator: Yes, we can.

Question: Thank you very much. I'll be switching back to the topic of 9-1-1 calls. The EMS unit I believe was reporting the calls hits something like 7,100 yesterday, the highest level since 9/11, perhaps. I’m wondering what you knew about that and whether it was having any effect on response times and whether there was a plan to reinforce capacity since these calls will probably be up for a while.

Mayor: Yeah. Jennifer, thank you for the question. So, the bottom line is that we know – we've been saying that the call volume has been going up. It's a real serious issue. But also, we know – and we've talked about the staffing levels at FDNY in general, and Commissioner Nigro has been very confident he can keep ensuring that he has the staffing he needs to respond. So, I can get you the exact – our team will get you the exact statistics on what we know about response time so far. I think the central question is, can we handle a greatly increased call volume? Yes. Will we have the personnel? Yes. We can keep making adjustments. You know, all of our first responder agencies are used to making adjustments in real time to keep staffing levels high. We are in a crisis. The crisis is clearly going to have an impact. Our job is to either ensure that it doesn't affect response time or affects it as little as possible, but I want to be real about the fact that if we are ensuring, you know, we can get the person out where we need it to the maximum time possible, but we have a constantly growing volume, of course that's going to create challenges. And it gets back to the answer I gave earlier about the reality we're going to experience in our hospitals, in our ICU’s – it's going to be different than what we're used to and it's going to be a challenge and we'll throw everything we got at it. But, again, we cannot do everything alone. We are going to need a certain amount of outside help in general to keep this whole thing moving and keep people safe.

Moderator: Last call, Jeff Mays. Jeff?

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, you gave this very ominous date of April 5th. Is there any way other than what you explained – do you know exactly what that is going to look like if the city doesn't get what it needs? Does that mean hospitals will have to turn people away? Will there not be protective gear? You know, what exactly – and maybe Dr. Katz can weigh in as well. What exactly does that look like?

Mayor: Okay, Jeff – no, I appreciate the question. I want, I want to flip the question other way to make sure you understand what our game plan is. By being honest about the threat we face, it is not to us, you know, that we are going to leave that reality the way it is. In fact, the goal is to not allow that day to come and be a day where we run out of supplies. It is to, in fact, ensure that we get the maximum help we need from the federal government, from all other sources and everything we can create here in New York City. It's to be clear – it's an act of clarifying that, you know, 10 days, including today, to brace ourselves for a new and more challenging reality and do everything we can to get ready and to get ahead of it and to stave off the problems that I'm addressing. So, I’ve got to be really clear, there's still a lot of time on the clock to get ahead of it and we intend to. But look, I think the simple definition – I don't want to paint pictures of horrible things happening when we're trying to ensure they don't happen. I think the simplest way to say it, Jeff, is we don't want to have a situation where someone dies who didn't have to die. And that means we want a ventilator available where it's needed every single time. We want to make sure that every health care professional has the protection they need and the confidence they can go to work and have the protection they need. We want to make sure there's sufficient personnel at each of these ICU’s, each of these hospitals that need it. That's the crucial issue, is to make sure that we can hit all those milestones and make sure people are safe.

So, you know, I could try and paint you a picture of what if everything went wrong but it's just not the way we operate and I'm not going to do that. If it started to happen in any way, shape, or form, if we felt things were clearly not working, we would tell you bluntly. But I want to be clear about there is still time to prepare and get ahead of that date, and, in fact, get it to be a very different day, a much later day in April when we might be facing these challenges. If we get the help we need.

Very good. Thank you, everybody, and we will give you more updates soon. Take care.

2020-03-29 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good afternoon, everyone. We've got a lot to go over here and we're all feeling very heavy hearts as we deal with such an extraordinary challenge and we think about the New Yorkers that we've lost and we think about what's ahead and I'm going to go over a number of things now that update you. Understanding the challenge but also understanding that New Yorkers will get through this together and it’s hard to explain that balance sometimes that we're dealing with something absolutely profoundly different than anything we've dealt with before, extraordinarily difficult and invisible and confusing, but we will get through this together. That is something that comes back to just the pure strength of this place and our people. But in the meantime, we will go through a really tough, tough journey and it all comes back to, as always, needing to work with the federal government in particular to get the help we need.

And I'll give you some updates starting there. There was confusion yesterday obviously when President Trump mentioned the concept of quarantine. I think a lot of us were confused, thought it was something that would be in so many ways counterproductive and obviously unfair to so many people. What ended up happening was a CDC travel advisory, something much different – not a lockdown, something much more consistent with what we've been actually saying and doing in the city and state already, which is telling people to stay home unless they have an essential reason to go somewhere. So, again, that threat of a quarantine turned into a very different CDC travel advisory working with the federal government, working with the governors of the tri state areas. Now, I spoke to the president this morning and in truth, I did not want to discuss with him the travel advisory that had been settled in a way that, again, I think we can live with.

What I wanted to talk to him about was ventilators. What I wanted to talk to him about was medical personnel and I went over with him again, the reality in New York City, the fact that we have until next Sunday, April 5th, to get the reinforcements we need, particularly when it comes to ventilators. In fact, I asked the federal administration to get us additional ventilators even earlier. My request to them is to get 400 more ventilators in by April 1st because we've seen such movement with this disease, we have to be ready for all eventualities. So, my hope is that we'll see some of the results we've seen previously in the last few days. And again, there's a lot we could talk about what the federal government has and hasn't done over the last two months, but in the last week we have seen some real support and I want to see it again with the 400 ventilators we'd like to get in immediately.

Then we have a lot more we're going to need by Sunday, April 5th and beyond. And certainly, the medical personnel, which I talked to the president about repeatedly and to the defense secretary and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. I think the best way for us to get a lot of that medical personnel is from the military. Everyone's been receptive. I'm waiting for specific results. But again, I will keep hoping that these very specific requests and very specific conversations will yield what New Yorkers need so that we can be safe. The fact is we remain the epicenter of this crisis nationally. A day will come when I will be able to no longer use that word and we all look forward to that word. But right now, we are the epicenter and the numbers are staggering. And again, they all represent real people, real families.

As of this morning, we were at 32,308 total cases, a stunning number. And we have lost, and this is so painful, 678 of our fellow New Yorkers. That means in the last 24 hours from this morning to Saturday morning, we lost 161 more people in this city. People of all walks of life, every kind of New Yorker. And it's so painful for everyone that we're going through this and we have to fight back with everything we've got. I want to tell you some of the stories because it's important to understand the lives of the people we've lost, and many of them were devoted to all of us and helping all of us in protecting and serving their fellow New Yorkers. And I have to say every loss, every death is painful. I feel a particular sense of loss when it's one of our public servants.
So, I want to name some of them and talk about them very briefly.

At Health + Hospitals – and Dr. Katz is here, I know he feels the same pain as we discuss the loss of some of his colleagues – we lost at Health + Hospitals, Freda Ocran. She was a psych educator at Jacobi, previously the head nurse of the psych unit, and a mom supporting her family, but also supporting her mom who lives in Africa. So, what a horrible loss for that family, that hospital, and our city. Another story of tremendous commitment to Theresa Lococo, a pediatric nurse at Kings County Hospital, serving families and children. Amazingly, she was in her 48th year of employment in our hospital system, protecting her fellow New Yorkers – 48 years, serving us, and she gave her life helping others.

We've heard of terrible losses from the MTA. Our colleagues at the MTA, we grieve with you and we're so sorry for what you're experiencing. Of course, we all heard the story of Garrett Goble, 36 years old only, had only been working at MTA for six years, out there helping to keep the city run in this crisis of fire on the train put his life in danger. And what did he do? He worked to get everyone else to safety first and then got off the train and passed away immediately after, leaves behind two young sons in his family. So sad. And someone who, again, was right there at the moment, his last moments of his life, protecting others, serving others, saving others. Also, from New York City Transit, Peter Petrassi, 21 years as a conductor. And a beautiful tribute to him was posted by his nephew, Dylan, calling him the most loving, enthusiastic man, always putting others before himself.

You see this really painful pattern here of people who just cared so much about others and we’re losing such good people. Also, Oliver Cyrus, a bus operator, 21 years at the MTA, based at the Manhattanville Bus Depot, a quiet and humble man, loved by his coworkers. We have lost to Oliver as well. And then you heard, painful loss at the NYPD. A man that worked at One Police Plaza, I mentioned yesterday – or Friday, I should say. We've now lost Detective Cedric Dixon, 23-year veteran of the NYPD, he worked in the 3-2 Precinct in Harlem. Not only a great detective, but someone that everyone who knew him knew would always be there to help other people. An electronics and tech genius who always could fix things for other people. A horrible loss for the NYPD and the city. And from the NYPD as well, Giacomina Barr-Brown, an administration assistant in the Bronx, 49 Precinct roll call office, seven years in the NYPD and the kind of person her colleagues said she lit up the room with her smile, also always there for other people. And the FDNY – we rely on the FDNY in so many ways they've lost James Villecco, auto mechanic. He's been with Fleet Services since 2014 and this is the kind of unsung hero who doesn't get the credit he deserves. This is the kind of man who keeps us safe because he kept the ambulances in good repair so they could get there to help all of us. We grieve with his family in Staten Island.

Finally, NYC & Company, they do such important work promoting New York City to the world and helping bring in all those tourists, all that investment that helps this city keep moving forward. NYC & Company has lost Hubert “Rally” Nurse. He was there for 30 years working to promote New York and share New York with the world. And now we've lost him and all of us, all of New York grieves with his family. These are examples – and it's just so painful to say that's just a small, small fraction of those we've lost. As I said, these are the people we've lost who are our colleagues in public service. And as you heard, every one of them, an amazing story of sacrifice and concern and love for their fellow New Yorker.

So, we see this crisis growing and for weeks and weeks we've been talking about getting ready for this and we have to get ready for even more. And it's not just the incredible toll this has taken on our health care system. As you've heard in recent days the number of cases is growing, it’s also having – putting a huge burden on our emergency system. I can't thank enough everyone at EMS, they're doing amazing work under the toughest circumstances. Our EMTs, our paramedics, all the officers, everyone who is doing such important work at EMS. We thank you and we feel for you because I know that the number of calls to 9-1-1 have been skyrocketing, it’s putting a huge, huge demand on EMS. Let's be clear, Commissioner Nigro will be available to speak to this later on in the question and answer. This is unprecedented.

We've never seen our EMS system get this many calls, ever. But what Commissioner Nigro is doing with his team and our Deputy Mayor for Operations, Laura Anglin, is we're making a series of very fast, intense moves to ensure that more personnel will be available for the EMS. We're going to shift personnel onto the work of EMS. We're going to come up with more ambulance shifts, additional vehicles, whatever it takes to keep serving New Yorkers who are in emergencies. We're also going to make sure that folks who don't have a pressing emergency, because we all know for years and years, folks have called 9-1-1 and most of those are true emergencies and some of them are not. Anyone who's calling and needs something else, doesn't need an ambulance but needs a different kind of help we're going to find a way to get that to them too so ambulances are never going to a place that they don't need to be. But what we have to do first and foremost is put on more personnel, more ambulances, more shifts. And we are doing that immediately so we can serve the true emergencies and there's a lot of them to make sure that New Yorkers get the help they need.

Obviously, there's been a lot of attention on the situation in our hospitals in general and in particular at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. I'm just going to give you a few quick points. Dr. Mitch Katz, here with me, will talk about Elmhurst and Health + Hospitals more specifically. But look, the bottom line is the incredibly valiant team at Elmhurst has gone through so much in the last few weeks. That's an extraordinarily effective hospital. Real professionals who have found a way to keep saving so many lives while dealing with such pain at the same time and real loss. And you can imagine how hard it is for people whose whole life is saving lives to see that sometimes there is no way to save a life, but they have been doing amazing, amazing work to save so many others. We've been sending constant reinforcement. So, 169 clinicians have been sent in recent days to Elmhurst.

That means physicians, registered nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. 100 nurses this weekend alone. In addition, within the hospital, clinicians have been moved from outpatient activities to ICU activities. Staff from the central office of Health + Hospitals are moving in, taking on roles in terms of ICU and emergency department. We are going to keep moving personnel and getting more personnel constantly to help Elmhurst and every other hospital that needs it. This is going to be an extraordinarily tough next few weeks, but we will keep sending more and more reinforcements. And again, we have to get the good people who are there doing such tough work, we have to get them a break, we have to [inaudible] them. And this is why I want to see medical personnel come in, not just from New York City, but from all over the country, including those military and medical personnel. Because we have to give these extraordinary heroes a break at places like Elmhurst.

Also, ventilators – we have added 55 ventilators to Elmhurst over the past two weeks and we will keep adding whatever number of ventilators they need. So, this will be a nonstop effort. Across Health + Hospitals, the whole system, the 11 hospitals, 500 contract nurses have been added already, 500 more coming this week. So, we are just going to constantly, constantly reinforce. Now I want to turn to supplies and the distribution of supplies. And I've already said our first milestone is this coming Sunday, April 5th, we must shore up to get ahead of the challenges. We will start to face that following week. So, this is a race against time. We have gotten some real help. As I said, the ventilators that came in from the federal government – some are coming in from other sources. That's helpful. Incredibly helpful. We need it all. We are thankful for it all.

Yesterday we sent 1,400 ventilators out to our hospitals, to all types of hospitals. That is a huge step forward, but that number we need overall is still 15,000. So, we've made a big dent between different sources to get toward that 15,000. We have a long, long way to go. We still need to see the federal government do a lot more and more quickly. We need the Defense Production Act utilized to the maximum. We need to see a distribution system that's fast and intense. And again, I think the military must be involved. And, again, my specific request to the federal government is 400 more ventilators by April 1st to get us ready for later in the week when we expect the upturn to really intensify and we need those ventilators to be in place and ready.

In terms of personal protective equipment, PPEs, a very moving moment yesterday when the United Nations provided 250,000, a quarter million surgical masks, to the people in New York City, to our health care workers, our first responders. The United Nations, we are their home and they did something very good for their hometown with a quarter million surgical masks and we've asked them, any and all help they can provide going forward we will need it. And those masks are getting out to our hospitals right away.

Dr. Katz will speak to the overall situation, but my message to all the doctors, the nurses, the hospital staff starting with all our colleagues at Health + Hospitals, our public hospitals, but to all of those out there, the voluntary hospitals, the big hospital systems, the independent hospitals – we are all in this together. We're going to go and work to get you every conceivable supply you need and get it to you quick. We have to protect our health care workers and that's what we're working on every single day. And we can only – all of us who are not health care workers can only imagine what you all are going through. We have to be there for you and get you all the help including the additional personnel immediately. That's our job.

In terms of a health capacity. We're all really moved by the fact that the USNS Comfort is arriving tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to greeting the men and women, the medical professionals, the sailors, everyone who is making this possible. I want to thank our colleagues in government at the Economic Development Corporation who played a crucial role for the Comfort to dock and be able to add immense hospital capacity for the city instantly upon docking. Well, they had to be able to dock and they weren't going to be able to dock unless the dock was dredged to allow for a ship of this size.

The operation was supposed to take two weeks. The folks at EDC, working with the Army Corps of Engineers and the State Department of Environmental Conservation that got the job done in eight days. And so, the Comfort will be arriving tomorrow and will right away be making a difference in this city. And we are so, so grateful to the Navy, to the military that this new help will be arriving in our city. Also, very important, in Central Park, we're going to be using every place we need to use to help people. Mount Sinai Hospital, working with a relief organization named Samaritan's Purse, is creating a 68-bed field hospital. So, this is the kind of thing that you will see now as this crisis develops and deepens. The partnership with Central Park Conservancy, our Parks Department, and the Mayor's Office – we all worked together to get this done with Mount Sinai and Samaritan's Purse. Going up now in the East Meadow, should be operational by Tuesday.

Some other quick updates for you and then I'll turn to Dr. Katz and then we'll go to questions. There had been a concern about those incarcerated, update, in terms of our jail system. As of last night, over 650 inmates had been released, again, working carefully with the State of New York and the DAs and being very, very mindful of public safety while also being mindful of deep humanitarian concern. Over 650 released. I can update you and say that since this crisis began, our jail population is down by about 860, not just because of the releases, but because we've seen falling crime and, and lower arrests. Want to thank the DAs and the State for their collaboration and cooperation working all together. And the State I think made an important decision related to those on parole and working through the right approach there. I just want to commend the State for that.

There’s been concerned about our juvenile detainees. A number of actions have been taken. Over the last two weeks, there's been a significant reduction in our juvenile detainee population, there's been a 67 percent reduction in one category, 53 percent reduction in another category. So, when you combine that, obviously we've been able to reduce very, very substantially – it was not a huge population to begin with. We'll get to the exact numbers, but more than half of those who had been detained over the last two weeks have been released, again, while always making sure there is follow-up and monitoring to protect safety. Want to thank our Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, want to thank the Law Department, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, and the Administration for Children's Services for working together to ensure that was done properly and quickly.

Related to transportation – a couple of things. Staten Island Ferry, we had made a substantial reduction in service because ridership was down so intensely. We have seen ridership continue to drop, it is now down 86 percent from the same time period last year. As a result of the lower ridership and the need to conserve resources and a number of factors, we're going to be moving to hourly service on the Staten Island Ferry. That will be 24/7 but it will be hourly service. There's so few people using the ferry now compared to what we normally have that we had to make this move. It will go into effect at midnight tonight.

And then related to our subways. We've gotten some reports of crowded subway cars despite obviously a huge, huge reduction in subway usage. Obviously, there's been service reductions as well. We've had some times where there was a service problem and that led to – in other words service had been delayed and that led to some crowding. We are going to work together, the MTA and the NYPD, to go and do spot checks and immediately intervene if we see any subway cars that are crowded. Want to ask all New Yorkers again if I – that should not be something you see very often. And if you're on the subway, it means of course to begin with, you're an essential worker or you're doing something essential under the rules. There obviously should be a whole lot of New Yorkers who have no reason to take the subway at this point.

But if you do have an actually a central reason to be on the subway and you see a crowded car, we want it reported immediately to 3-1-1, so the NYPD and MTA can act on it. And if you're an individual in the subway and you see a crowded car, please avoid that car. Please go to a different part of the train or a wait until another train comes. It's crucial that we avoid any crowded cars. Social distancing means everywhere, including in our subways. I'll finish up and then a couple of words in Spanish – on a very, very important topic, which is the direct relief that New York City needs from the federal government. I had several calls today and over the last few days with Senator Schumer who is not only our Senator, of course, but is the Democratic leader in the US Senate. I spoke as well this morning with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin.

The two important topics. The first is regarding the third stimulus just passed, ensuring that the resources devoted to New York City could be accessed immediately. That's $1.4 billion so we can keep providing essential services to New Yorkers. I'm very satisfied based on the conversations with Senator Schumer and Secretary Mnuchin that we will have access to that money very quickly and under rules that will be very usable and flexible. So that's good news. But I immediately spoke to both about the need for the fourth stimulus, for action to be taken in the month of April by the Congress to provide real and immediate relief to New York City and New York State, given the vast new expenses that we are incurring to help people, to save people, to protect people. We must get additional support. We all know all parts of government are losing a huge amount of the revenue we depend on to provide services to people.

The Congress, the president have to act to keep New York City and New York State whole. It's the right thing to do morally. It's the right thing to do to protect people. And anyone who wants to see a recovery – you're not going to have recovery if the nation's largest city and one of our largest states cannot do our work and are not going to be solvent, we need that support. So, I spoke to them about that and I feel, in addition to the conversation last week with a Speaker Pelosi, I feel hopeful that additional help will be coming.

Finally, just to say we're having a strange experience, all of us would go out in so many parts of the city and see something we've never seen before or only once in a while during a blizzard or some very exceptional event. We see a lot of empty streets, a lot of empty sidewalks. I’m sure it feels strange. It feels strange to me. I'm sure it feels strange to so many of you – remember that that's a sign that New Yorkers are taking the instruction seriously, that they are doing the right thing. The vast, vast majority of New Yorkers are doing the right thing. The vast, vast majority of New Yorkers are practicing social distancing, are really only going out when they absolutely need to and are staying in otherwise. And I really want to thank New Yorkers, all of you, for the way you're handling an incredibly tough crisis. Again, we will get through this together, it will not be easy, but we will get through this together – quickly in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, I want to turn to the head of our Health + Hospital system. The men and women under his command have been doing extraordinary work and he has been doing extraordinary work keeping the largest public health system in America running in the midst of the biggest public health crisis we've had probably in a century in this country. I want to thank him for his leadership and his spirit and for the great work of the people that he, every day, commands. Dr. Mitch Katz, CEO of Health + Hospitals.

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for recognizing the amazing heroes that are working every day at Health + Hospitals as well as the private nonprofit hospitals throughout New York City. It is extremely difficult work. People know that the vast majority of people who are COVID positive, who get the virus do just fine. 80 percent of people don't need hospital care. Of the 20 percent who need care, only five percent of the total need ICU care. But imagine that the other way – you're a doctor or a nurse at the hospital and what you see is patient after patient coming in critically ill and your actions are determining whether that person has all of the medical care they need. And our staff are performing so well under very difficult conditions. Our emergency rooms are about twice as filled as usual. Our intensive care units are about three times as large as usual and still our staff often using new equipment, working with new colleagues who have never been in that hospital before. People are learning together. People are rising to the challenge. It's extremely difficult work, but they are doing it. I want to be clear that everyone who has needed a ventilator has gotten a ventilator, that people who need the protective equipment have gotten the protective equipment. But there is tremendous anxiety about the coming weeks and that's why we are so grateful to you, Mr. Mayor for advocating for our health care workers to make sure that they have the equipment that they need, both the equipment in the sense of ventilators to save lives as well as the equipment to protect them. We know that there's a lot of fear that that equipment is going to run out and we're so grateful to you for your advocacy efforts. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you, Dr. Katz. Okay, we are going to go to questions and please let me hear the name and the outlet. Go ahead.

Moderator: Hi, just a quick note at the top. We'll ask everyone to limit themselves to just one question in an effort to get to as many outlets as possible. Also, just a reminder that we have Dr. Barbot, Police Commissioner Shea, Fire Department Commissioner Nigro on the phone today. With that, I will start with Todd from AM New York.

Question: Okay. Mr. Mayor, Dr. Barbot, I'm interested in finding out – with the growing loss of life from coronavirus, can you guys speak to what is being done to accommodate the influx of bodies of people we've lost? The relationship with the funeral homes and whether or not there’s any risk to people handling the bodies, or even the loved ones passing on COVID-19 after people have died.

Mayor: Todd, it's a painful topic to say the least. Dr. Barbot can talk about the safety measures in place and the concerns if any precautions need to be taken. I want to say that, look, I'm [inaudible] keep, whenever this topic comes up, I’m going to keep it very broad and very brief. We have the ability to deal with this very, very tragic part of this reality. We have gotten a lot of support from the federal government to make sure we had what we need to deal with it all. I can tell you, I'm not going to go into detail and my colleagues can get you more detail after this press conference, but we have what we need to deal with an absolutely tragic situation. Our job is now to focus on what we need to do to save lives. Dr. Barbot, do you want to speak about how precautions are being taken?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor, and I want to just to echo what you've said in terms of all of our efforts thus far, really being geared at reducing the spread of this virus and giving the health care system an opportunity to absorb the number of individuals that are unfortunately stricken with COVID-19. With regards to COVID-19 and people who have deceased because of it, there is no indication at this point we'll time based on my experience from other countries, based on the science that has been published, that there is any risk to individuals from this respiratory virus. I want to remind you that it's a virus that's spread by droplets and after someone is deceased, there is no risk. We at the Health Department are very focused on working with you know, homes and ensuring that as one of our essential services, our burial desk is working 24 hours a day to help meet the needs of families that have unfortunately lost someone to COVID-19.

Mayor: Okay. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on what you want to see from the fourth stimulus. Do you have a dollar figure in mind and what kinds of things that funding would go toward?

Mayor: Yes, Shant, the – and this is a conversation – look – and I'm always grateful when our federal officials are responsive. Secretary Mnuchin was very responsive. Obviously, on the legislative side, I've spoken to Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer, they've been extraordinarily responsive. There's no question in my mind at this point that a fourth stimulus bill is coming and coming relatively soon. I spoke to as a Senator Gillibrand about this as well and everyone's saying the same thing and that's a very encouraging sign. Our delegation, I spoke to the entire congressional delegation a few days ago. Obviously, Congressman Jeffries is very high ranking in the House leadership as well. Everyone is agreeing that another stimulus bill is coming soon. We have to ensure that that stimulus bill reflects what's happening now, not just in New York, but increasingly tragically all over the country. And you have noticed coronavirus doesn't discriminate, it is now in all 50 states – red states, blue states, big and small. The next stimulus needs to replace the lost revenue that cities and states have lost as a result of coronavirus. There is no other viable path to making up the kind of revenue we've lost: billions upon billions of dollars very quickly, more to come unfortunately. While we're trying to keep essential services going, and I want to remind everyone we're – anything that's about saving lives right now, money's no object. We're going to do everything and anything to shore up and strengthen our hospitals to support our first responders. Whatever it takes to save lives, that costs a lot of money and it is the right way to use money. But if you combine all the huge new expenditures with all the loss of revenue and we have to provide the basics every single day, we still have to fight crime and make sure the garbage is picked up and everything else that the city does. I think it should be literally replacing the lost revenue and funding the additional expenses that were incurred because of COVID-19. And that should be for all states, all cities. But this time instead of a bill that treats everyone, like there's no differences in the reality, this bill must reflect where the actual epicenter has been and ensure that New York City and New York State are truly whole, not just a token amount, but are truly whole.

Moderator: Next, we have Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. You said on Friday that you were considering fines for social distance and violators and you were going to make a decision this weekend. What is the decision to stand on that? And relatedly, when you say NYPD is doing spot checks of subway cars, what are they checking for exactly? The MTA is determining the number of cars being run, right?

Mayor: But the point is, obviously, NYPD is in the subways, always. And the instruction, in addition to everything else that the NYPD does for safety in the subways, is to go out and look for any instance where there's a crowded train car and immediately clear it. So, when we say spot checks, it's not just watch and wave, you know. It means intervene, clear out that car, hold up that train, get people spread out immediately. Do not allow any crowding. And obviously the information is crucial to understand why it's happening and what adjustments MTA has to make.

On the use of fines, I believe, and we set it with the religious institutions – very small number, I want to emphasize there was a very, very small number of very small churches and synagogues that we were concerned about on Friday. Thankful this weekend, we did not see much of that activity. I think they got the message. I authorized fines and closing buildings if needed. I certainly do authorize the use of fines in parks and playgrounds if needed. Again, what we're going to do to begin as we've been doing is – and the weather has been such that I haven't been too many people out, but all of our enforcement officers haven been giving warnings, have been educating. There's been loudspeakers telling people the update, all that. Now it's as simple as this: if someone is told by an officer, disperse, keep moving, you're not distanced and they don't follow the direct instruction from officer or they say they're doing it and then they'd come back right away, I'm comfortable at this point that they will be fined. My understanding is the fines are in the range of $250 to $500. That obviously be, you know, a violation of summons that would be provided. I don't want to see that happen. Erin, I want to just let all New Yorkers know that what we're trying to do is say: you've been warned and warned and warned again, now, if an officer comes up to you, if someone wearing an official city, a uniform official city identification comes up and says, move along, disperse, et cetera, if you ignore that order, they're going to say, if you ignore it, we're going to have to fine you. They're going to give people every chance to listen. And if anyone doesn't listen, then they deserve a fine at this point. And I don't want to fine people when so many folks are going through economic distress, but if they haven't gotten the message by now and they don't get the message when an enforcement officer's staring them in the face saying, I don't want to fine you, but if you don't change what you're doing, I'm going to have to, well, you know, that person then deserves the fine. So, we are going to proceed with that as part of how we intensify our enforcement.

Moderator: Next we have Sydney from Gothamist.

Question: Mr. Mayor, this is Sydney Pereira with Gothamist. I was just calling to see if you could elaborate on whether you're reevaluating closing parks and playgrounds or increasing the scrutiny on congregating and those types of open spaces?

Mayor: Sydney, here's where we are and there'll be obviously an ongoing conversation with the State and the City Council, but at this moment what I wanted, because we've had a little bit of an aberrant situation with the weather but it's very much connected to what I just said. If we see, and I know this from talking to our Police Commissioner who's with us, who's – constantly he and I are comparing notes on what he's seeing, his officers are seeing and obviously what Parks Department’s seeing. Any place where we see any consistent violation of the new standards, we will simply do a series of direct things. If it is, for example, a soccer field, a tennis court, a basketball court, any place where we see people ignoring the rules, we'll just take the equipment out immediately. We've already started to do that with all three of those categories. And I think people will get the message very quickly. If you keep doing things that are inappropriate. There's just, we're taking it all out. You don't have to be able to do it anymore.

In terms of playgrounds, again, we have not seen much noncompliance. If we see any noncompliance, we'll begin by shutting that playground down. If we see broader noncompliance in the coming days at any point, I may give the order to shut all playgrounds. But what I am trying to do is do this a little bit in stages to see what we might be able to keep open, because I'm really feeling how much New Yorkers have been deprived in these last weeks and will be deprived for quite a while of so many of the things that we used to have. I'd like to keep something available for people. But I have to be pretty fast to say if I see and if our police see, if our enforcement agencies see a pattern of non-compliance anywhere, we will take action on those individual sites. If it becomes a bigger pattern, I mean literally over a matter of days we will be watching everything and acting in each situation, we see a bigger pattern, we will take an even bigger action.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, Mayor de Blasio, hope you're doing well. I wanted to thank the City's Health Department and your administration for releasing that map on Friday, but I'm curious if you could release the raw data because as the map stands now it's sort of meaningless to not know the raw numbers and it actually, like you said yourself on Friday, it actually might confuse people. Would you take into consideration releasing more of that information? Because I know that [inaudible] the city has it if they can produce that map? Thank you for considering.

Mayor: Thank you, Katie. Yes. And you heard correctly the map showed something but it's a little hard in some ways to get the true meaning out of it. And we are looking for measures that we think are more give you a fuller picture, give you better, more consistent information. The more we can determine will be actually consistent, accurate that we can put out. We do want to put out more. Dr. Barbot, obviously with the caveat that we understand the imperfection of that map, if you're willing to put out the raw data, that's fine with me, but you know more about the details than I do.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah. Mr. Mayor, I appreciate your remarks and we're all committed to transparency here. And as we've seen before, a lot of this is evolving quickly and we want to be able to produce consistent maps that have reliable, accurate data on a daily basis. And so, we're definitely working hard at ensuring that the next tranche of data that we release, are data that can you give folks a more granular picture of what's happening at the city level.

Mayor: Okay, and we'll follow up. Our team will follow up with you, Katie, on the specifics.

Moderator: Next, we have Myles from NBC New York.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon to you. I'm looking to get some information regarding the Police Department. They yesterday said that they would do some kind of work from home, reasonable accommodation. I think that it came in [inaudible] more information on that.

Mayor: Dermot, are you with us?

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: I am. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yep.

Commissioner Shea: So, since this unprecedented time really kicked off three weeks to a month ago, we've been staggering our workforce, working from home. We have thousands of employees working from home as long as they could do those jobs and still operate at a high level with the Police Department delivering functions. We've given discretion to our frontline commanders in terms of accommodating people, particularly people over 50 years of age with vulnerabilities such as this disease seems to strike harder. So, I think that, that we've been consistent in that we're continuing to look out for the safety of our employees. We did put a message out, already have had some people contact us seeking in a combination. So, we're going to work with not only then with the unions to make sure that our workforce is to safe as it possibly can be.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Craig from the Post.

Question: I'm wondering, Commissioner if you can update on the staffing levels in the NYPD and just with that, if we could – what is the timeframe once an officer is getting a confirming case that they're going back to work? What's the guidance there?

Commissioner Shea: So we can get back to you in terms of – from a medical district – has to do with whether you're tested positive or not, whether you have fever or not, whether you're going to have a fever and you're off medicine, not when the symptoms started. So, there's a series of different protocols that are medical professionals go through. I can tell you that in the last two days we began to have people for the first time that had tested COVID-positive, now returning to work, and we anticipate that that number now as we move forward is going to significantly grow, just as, as this situation matures. When we first started to see the sick numbers grow was roughly on March 12th. So, as you plan out from that day and you'd look at periods of whether it's two or three weeks after an individual goes sick, we know that those numbers are going to continually grow. We're looking at both sides of the spectrum quite frankly. What is the current sick rate as, as officers is still becoming infected and when is that beginning to apply? Tell as well as forecasting out two to three weeks and, and when did those, when is it going to be a person on the other side?

Where we stand as of this morning is – we have – we're closing in on 5,000 members currently out sick, and we have I would anticipate by tomorrow morning close to 900 test positive for COVID.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Mayor: Jeff. How you doing?

Question: Good. How are you? Can you elaborate on the number of lives lost over the past 24 hours? And I don't know if Dr. Barbot can maybe talk about the projections from that number. It seems to be increasing pretty rapidly, every day.

Mayor: Yeah. Jeff, you know, it's really, really painful and troubling and yes, it is growing. It's been growing. It keeps growing. And you know, when, I hate to say it again, but it's just true. April will be worse than March. And I fear that May could even be worse than April. Like we've got to get in our minds against all that rhetoric of, you know, everyone get back to work and we'll be done by Easter, that's just not true. We're going to be in for weeks of this. When exactly peaks and starts to go back down. I think, you know, different projections say different things, but the worst is definitely ahead of us and that's why we are, you know, intensely working to lay in the kind of personnel supplies, equipment, everything to try and save the maximum number of lives. But even with that, we're going to see, you know, a really, really painful number of people lost in this crisis. Oxiris, do you want to speak to that?

Commissioner Barbot: Certainly. So that's far from the individuals who have passed as a result of COVID-19. The vast majority have been above the age of 75 and/or have had chronic underlying illnesses such as emphysema, diabetes, immunocompromised, et cetera. And with regards to the numbers that we are anticipating. You know, I think at this point, as we've said earlier, all of our efforts have been really directed at reducing the number of individuals who can track the illness and becomes severely affected by it. But the reality is that if we think about sort of a typical school season on a yearly basis, New York loses rough to be 1,000 to 2,000 people because of influenza. I think that we are on the scale having many more people pass because of COVID-19. And so, you know, right now it's challenging to give an accurate number in terms of projection because every day that New Yorkers adhere to the social distancing is another day that you buy to healthcare delivery system an opportunity to meet the needs of those that are affected by probate.

So, I think, you know, we're definitely on track for having more deaths than we would typically see in a flu season, and part of the challenge there is that it will happen in a shorter amount of time. And as the Mayor started off this press conference, you know these are unprecedented days and days that are going to be challenging for every New Yorker. And it's really a time for us to dig deep into how it is that we come together, though we may physically be distanced, you need to really dig deep and come together emotionally and spiritually and be there for one another.

Mayor: Amen.

Moderator: We'll take two more. Next up is Samantha, from 1010 WINS.

Question: Yes, hi. This question is both for the Mayor and the Police Commissioner. Has there been an increase in domestic violence calls with the lockdown? And for women or victims of domestic violence who may be afraid because the courts are closed and, you know, services may be limited, are there resources for them? Do have a message for those people who may need help?

Mayor: Samantha, I really appreciate the question. It's something we've been talking about that we're worried about, what happens in a crisis atmosphere like this and, you know, who may be vulnerable at a time like this. We have to make sure that anyone who might be a victim of domestic violence is protected even in a crisis like this. So, the NYPD, and the Commissioner will speak to it, I mean, they've done more and more over the years to try to disrupt the horrible, horrible situation with domestic violence and to follow through when they have any sign of that danger, including the recurrence from previous cases. So, that work will continue no matter what else is going on here. And we need to make sure if anyone feels in danger, and that's a priority, immediately to act on it. And they can reach out to the NYPD. And, you know, this again, the NYPD is prioritizing domestic violence always, but especially in this crisis. Dermot, you want to follow up on that?

Commissioner Shea: Mr. Mayor, you hit most of the points. I mean, the message is domestic violence is an extremely high priority for all members of the New York City Police Department, from the police officer level, to the domestic violence offices that we still have on hand that can aid in this issue and [inaudible] particular situation and the detectives as well. It remains a high priority for us. I think it's a very good question and that it is something that we're very mindful of. We have not seen it manifest in across-the-board increases yet, but it's certainly something that concerns us for the possibility. What we've seen is, generally, a reduction in crime, not just the domestic violence, but many crime types over this last roughly three-month – three-week period, excuse me. What we worry about in some types of crimes, particularly domestic violence, is it occurring and there’s a lack of reporting. And that's certainly something that's on our mind. To try to combat that, we're reaching out to households where we know there has been domestic violence in the past and they’re, kind of, trying to get ahead of things. But thus far, we have not seen a reported increase in domestic violence.

Moderator: Last one, we have Jarrett, from City Limits.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Commissioner Nigro, this is a question for you, regarding the strains on the 9-1-1 system. Can you characterize what the impact of those has been? Are calls being rerouted [inaudible] come with neighboring towns [inaudible]? And related to that, have you changed or are you thinking of changing the types of calls, medical calls that fire companies themselves respond to?

Commissioner Nigro: Well, we're in an unprecedented time, of course. The last five days have been the five busiest days for the EMS in their entire history. And today, no doubt, we will be over 6,000 calls for the day, which is more than 50 percent higher than an average day. So, the impact that that has had is slowing our responses. Of course, our resources are not infinite. And so, 6,000 calls are difficult to respond to. It causes significant delays in the lower categories of calls, the less critical calls for help. And that's happening now. As far as the firefighters, firefighters are responding to the critical calls, the cardiac arrest, the choking, the major traumas along with EMS and paramedics, but the bulk of these medical calls is falling on the shoulders of EMTs and paramedics.

Mayor: Okay. And Dan, as we said, you know, we are going to make a number of adjustments very quickly. And this is this level of activity is unprecedented. Commissioner Nigro and I have spoken in detail, along with Deputy Mayor Anglin about any and all adjustments we need to make to get additional personnel into place, to move people to additional types of work, whatever it's going to take to make sure that those emergency calls all kind of get answered in real time. And whatever it will take to add shifts, we'll keep doing it. And noting that there's ways to make sure that those calls that might be handled a different way and don't need emergency support can be handled a different way. But I want everyone to understand, Jarrett – it’s a very, very crucial question. I'm glad you asked it. We must remember, even in the midst of this terrifying challenge of COVID-19, we still have to fight crime every day, we still have to ensure that fires are fought, we still have to ensure that anyone who calls 9-1-1, having a heart attack or any other emergency gets emergency help. We will keep shifting resources, personnel, vehicles, whatever it takes to keep that going. This is another example of, you know, remembering that this crisis requires of us not only a massive health care response, but a massive response to keep all the rest of life in the city going, and to protect human life and every other way, because human life is threatened by things beyond COVID-19 and we cannot let get down our guard on those other fronts. So, whatever Dan Nigro needs, he is going to get, so that we can keep the 9-1-1 system functioning strong and so New Yorkers can know when they place that call and they have a real emergency help come comment will come quickly.

With that, everyone, thank you. We will be back tomorrow with more updates. Thank you very much.

2020-03-30 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: So, this morning we all watched something absolutely extraordinary, absolutely inspiring as the USNS Comfort entered New York Harbor, coming here to as save the lives of New Yorkers in our hour of need. We've all been through a lot these last few weeks and we needed this boost, we needed this hope that's being created by our brothers and sisters in the US Navy and the Marine Corps, everyone who is here to help us at this crucial moment. This ship arriving is not just an example of help arriving in a physical form. It's not just about the beds and the doctors and the equipment, it's also about hope, it's also about boosting the morale of New Yorkers who are going through so much. It's about saying to our heroes in those hospitals that help has come. That relief is on the way. I can't tell you how much this means, it is so much more than even we realize at this moment that our nation has heard our plea for help here in New York City and there could not be a better example of all of America pulling for New York City than the arrival of the USNS Comfort, some major, major moment in this long battle that we will be fighting against the coronavirus.

I think there've been times in recent days where a lot of New Yorkers have felt alone. A lot of New Yorkers have felt a sense of not being sure of what's coming next, not being sure of help would come. Well, I want to say to all New Yorkers, we have evidence here you are not alone. We are not alone. Our nation is helping us in our hour of need. There's a lot of people to thank and you're going to hear from two of our real heroes here from the federal government who are doing so much for us. You're going to hear from Rear Admiral John Mustin in a moment and the Regional Administrator for FEMA, Tom Von Essen, who's well known to all of us in New York City. But I want to thank everyone who was a part of this many, many people work together. And look, we’ve got to remember, this is a wartime atmosphere, we all have to pull together. We may have differences in peacetime, but to the maximum extent possible, we all have to be as one in wartime. I know our colleagues in the military understand that. We all need to understand that now. So, I do want to thank President Trump. I want to thank Secretary Esper. I want to thank Chairman Millie, everyone at the United States Navy, the United States Marine Corps, the United States Coast Guard, all the people at FEMA, so many people at the federal government who came together to make this happen and so much more for New York City. I want to thank Governor Cuomo, and everyone in the State government, who has joined us in pushing from day one for this kind of support. I want to thank from our administration, everyone to work to get the dredging done, working with the military. I want everyone to understand – and Admiral Mustin will affirm this – this ship is here ahead of schedule because the amazing work of the military, it's here ahead of schedule because the dredging was done faster than anyone knew it could be done to allow this ship to dock. I want to thank everyone at the City Economic Development Corporation, our Emergency Management Team, and also, of course, the State Department, Environmental Conservation, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Everyone pulled together. This was supposed to take two weeks to make it possible for this ship to dock. They did it in eight days and that means help has arrived quicker and we're going to be able to do the lifesaving work right now. I want to also thank from the military, one of the leaders who did the work to make this moment possible – Marine Corps Colonel Brian [inaudible] who's with us. Thank you, Colonel. And from my team, Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, for Health and Human Services, and Commissioner James Hendon, Department of Veteran Services. Colonel James Hendon, thank you.

So, with this ship comes an extraordinary compliment of talented individuals in service to our nation, 1,200 medical staff and sailors here to help us all. 750 beds will be put into play immediately to relieve the pressure on a hospital system. Let me be clear that this is such a crucial part of the plan we are putting in place, but I want you to understand the sheer magnitude of the plan. We need to triple our hospital bed capacity in New York City by May. The number of beds we had at the beginning of March have to triple by May – it’s a daunting task, but we got a big, big boost. The arrival of the Comfort – this is like adding a whole other hospital to New York City. It's like, think of all the big hospitals in New York City – Bellevue and all the other famous hospitals we think of – it's like another one of them just floated right up to help us right now.

And I hope New Yorkers know that this is something we've been fighting for, and we're going to be fighting for a lot more help, because there's just the beginning. My job is always to tell you the truth and I'll tell you when we get the help we need and I'll tell you when we need more help. I'll tell you when we're getting into the thick of the battle and I'll tell you when we're coming out of the battle. Right now, the toughest weeks are still ahead, but we are grateful. We are grateful for every doctor, for every nurse, for every ventilator, for the supplies, for the beds, for everything that's come from the Comfort and everything that has come from all over the country. I have to tell you, it's the federal governments, it’s the State government, of course, but it's also the companies that come forward offering help people we've never met, individuals who come forward with supplies, health care workers who have volunteered, it's the United Nations, which came up with a quarter-million surgical masks and got them to us right away. We're seeing amazing offers of help and people are moving fast to get help to New York City and we appreciate it. We need it.

So, let's look forward. Let's pray. There's going to be a lot more days like this when people can see our nation stand by us. And then, I affirmed to you, when the battle is done here, New York City will stand firm for the rest of our nation. New York City will be the first to donate to the rest of our nation. We will send the ventilators, the supplies. We will ask our doctors and nurses to go to the front, wherever it is in this nation, because our country was there for us and we will be there for our country.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, I want to turn to a guy who’s been a hero before for this city and we need him to be a hero again. And I know he is already rising to the occasion. He helped lead New York City through our darkest hour on 9/11. He was then our Fire Commissioner and he did an outstanding job under the most adverse circumstances our Fire Department had ever known. When he became the Regional Administrator for FEMA, he could never have imagined this day, nor could any of us. But I said to Tom earlier, thank God he is where he is now. I think God had a plan for him because his City needs him again. My great honor to introduce the Regional Administrator for FEMA, Tom Von Essen

Regional Administrator Thomas Von Essen, FEMA: Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, it really seems it’s gotten real personal for me this morning. About two weeks ago, we moved our regional response recovery coordination team down to a Naval base in rural New Jersey where we have an operation center and we're able to get people off public transportation. We have all our equipment down there set up there, it's really good set up. It was built during Sandy, had a Naval base, so we have about 30-35 people working there every day, late, late into the night working to try and accommodate everybody we can in New York City, New York State, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin islands – that's what region two is at FEMA. So, I had been down there the last two weeks and I came back for this today, and I was driving on East River Drive and I looked across by 14th Street and I had a flashback to the morning I was driving in and they told me a small plane had crashed into the Trade Center and life changed at that time. And I remember having the Comfort come then, you know, a couple of – I don't remember when, a couple of weeks later or whatever. And we didn't need it for what we needed for today. We didn't need it for people who needed hospital care, it wasn't necessary, but we brought it in. We needed it for crisis counseling for a lot of fire chiefs and police officers who were really, really overcome with the grief and at that that they faced with their friends and people that they worked with and we needed to house federal workers and give them food and everything. And we got it out of here and we started putting them in hotel rooms, but I'll never forget the feeling, I talked about it this morning the names of perfect, the comfort and the mercy and I was told they were here in 1918 for the pandemic we had then not these particular ships, but their predecessors. So, the federal government has always been here, the Army, the Navy, the Marines, that they've always been here for us when we needed them and they here again for you now and for me.

To the flashbacks, I get knowing that the City is under such stress now, it's real personal for me. The Fire Department, I spent 30 years in it. So, when September 11th happened, it was personal. It was friends, it was leaders, people had worked with, everybody was affected by September 11th. And that's what's happening now – everybody you know is affected by the coronavirus in one way or another. A friend, a relative, a loved one that you can't go and see because there are in quarantine or you don't want to— and I stopped to see a 100-year-old lady last week and just, you know, talk to her from six feet away. And I know everybody's doing that and it's important, but this, this is a big-time visible sign of what our government is like when we put it into action. And the Mayor said it and it's really – I'm really proud to be part of it now, I know how tough the people of this city are and I've seen us take on some seemingly— insurmountable challenges. Once again, we need to do it once again we need to be together six feet apart. I saw the Mayor taking pictures with some of the military folks I never noticed it before, taking a picture with someone that was two or three feet away. It's weird. It's really strange what we're all going through, but it's necessary and it is going to make a difference. The more we separate, the more everybody stays away, the better off we'll be in, the faster we'll get out of this. But thank goodness now help has arrived. It's going to make a big difference. FEMA’s working with the City, with the State to supply everything we possibly can, working with HHS to get as many medical people here as we can. People that help us with the forensics and the mortuary problems that we're going have, because we are going to have an awful lot of folks that aren't going to make it.

But we're doing the best we can. And it's an honor to be back in a middle of such a tough, tough battle that we have in front of us. But September 11th, it seemed like every day we were fixing stuff and it was getting slightly better. The grief, of course, was enormous, but the operation seemed to get slightly better every day with this. It seems to be we're not there yet, it's not going to get better, it might not get better for us here in the City for weeks, maybe a month, I hope not, I don't know. I listened to Dr. Fauci on here about models and worst-case scenario and best-case scenarios. We just don't know. So, we are preparing for the worst case and that's all we can do at this point. And we're doing a good job, and we're here for you.

Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you so much, Tom. Now, such an honor to bring to you the military leader of this effort he comes a family long connected to the US Navy. He is someone we're thinking about right now as one of our saviors, one of the people led the forces who came to help us in our hour of need, but his day job is Vice Commander of US fleet forces. So, he has a big, big job and a lot to think about. But, right now, his mind, his heart, his soul is focused on New York City. And I'm proud to say he is also a resident of Manhattan and has a family here and understands what we are all going through. And I just want to express on behalf of 8.6 million New Yorkers, my gratitude for your leadership and for all the men and women who serve under your command, an honor to present to you Rear Admiral John Mustin.

Rear Admiral John Mustin: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Administrator, Commissioner, thank you for being here today to welcome this great ship to the officers, the crew, the medical professionals of USS Comfort. Thank you for the vital mission that you've undertaken. I'd also like to recognize and thank the many, many contributors who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make this day possible. Each of those who helped to fit out and prepare this ship in record time from the maintenance community to the dock workers, to the ships company, to the doctors, to the dredgers. Thank you, all of you for the agility and professionalism that you have all shown over the past few weeks. That focused collective effort will save American lives. Today, I also want to recognize that not all of our nation's heroes wear military uniforms, especially today we acknowledge that many wear scrubs. Let us not forget, nor fail to recognize that the doctors and nurses across America, those who are treating patients in these unprecedented times, they are all heroes and like those heroes, the unmistakable Whitehall and Red Cross at this great ship had been a welcome site around the world standing at the forefront of our humanitarian missions overseas.

This ship represents all that is good about the American people, all that is generous, all that is ready, responsive and resolute. Like her sister ship the USNS Mercy was recently [inaudible] and is already serving patients in Los Angeles, this great ship will support civil authorities by increasing medical capacity and collaboration for medical assistance, not treating COVID-19 patients, but by acting as a relief valve for other urgent needs, freeing New York's hospitals and our precious medical professionals to focus on this pandemic. So, now this great ship will serve and support our fellow Americans in this time of need, providing critical search hospital capacity to America's largest City. As a resident, a New Yorker myself, I can attest to the invincible spirit of New York from the ships that she built in World War II to are unflappable determination following 9/11 and hurricane Sandy. I have great confidence that New York will weather today's storm as well.

This time with the support of another great American community; the naval families on-board and supporting the crew of the USNS Comfort. Words are incapable of expressing the depth of my gratitude for those on this mission and for the families that they leave behind. The men and women on-board Comfort are mothers, they’re fathers, they’re sons, daughters, sisters, and brothers and while our lives may look drastically different today than they did even a month ago, the circumstances for these men and women are no exception. They left their families during this uncertain time in our nation's history, knowing that they can make a difference. That is what the US Navy does and this is an example of Americans helping their fellow men. I know that for our military families, social distancing is not a new concept, but rather a frequent reality and I remain grateful for all that each of them do for our nation and for our communities every single day.

As you've heard from the Administrator, the last time this great hospital ship – all 70,000 tons of her – was in New York, was in the wake of 9/11 where she served as a respite and comfort for first responders working around the clock. Today, like then, we bring a message to all New Yorkers – now, your Navy is returned and we are with you committed in this fight. Mr. Mayor, every sailor, every Marine, and every civilian on this mission stands proudly, stands ready to serve the people of New York City. We have not yet begun to fight and we will not give up this ship.

Thank you.

Mayor: Beautifully said, Admiral. And thank you so much. All right, we're going to take questions now from the media, just please project your voices so I can hear you well. Go ahead. Oh, we have microphones, even better.

Question: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, what's your, what's your message to President Trump after the Comfort docked here to help New York City and when it came in here to the pier, what was your emotion and what was your reaction, overall?

Mayor: It's a very emotional moment. I went up on the roof here to watch the Comfort come in and I had this incredible feeling of peace actually – that help was finally coming – that we were not alone and I just have a reverence for the military. I come from a family that had a deep involvement in the military – I have a reverence for the military. Feeling the presence of the United States military here it just gave me a sense that things were going to be okay and just, it's such a moving sight. This ship is so impressive and just looming there in our harbor, you know, it was like a beacon of hope and it really felt that way to me.

My message to the President is thank you and we need more help – and that's not because any of us likes to have to say that, but because it's true that the toughest weeks are ahead. We are bracing ourselves for something we've never seen before in any of our lives and the federal government in many ways is the only force that can help us to reach the level of preparation we need to - to save every life we can save. So I'm going to keep calling the President, I’m going to keep appealing to him, to get us all the help we need for these really tough weeks. And then again, we will turn around and help everyone else in this country right after.

I'll go this side, yes.

Question: Mr. Mayor, as you know, normally this time of year we'd be very busy and focused on the state budget and Albany. I just want to ask, I know it's kind of a secondary issue now, but there is a lot getting crafted up there. Do you have any concerns in terms of what you've been hearing in terms of how the City will be affected?

Mayor: I have real concerns. I have deep concerns because what's being discussed is essentially health care for people who need it. When you, you know, we can talk about the Medicaid budget, but that's I think the wrong way to think about it: what it equals is health care for people who need health care, right now and need it more than ever because of the pandemic. I spoke at length last night with Speaker Carl Heastie and Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. I let them know that from the perspective of 8.6 million people in New York City, we cannot afford Medicaid cuts or health care cuts at this dire moment. The state must accept the Medicaid funding that was in the third stimulus bill. We need that money to be accepted and we need to make sure that the health care so many people are depending on is not disrupted. So, I understand that the state has a budget challenge; we have a huge budget challenge, I mean, I'm right now in the middle of cutting a huge amount out of this budget for this City right now, but what I will not cut is health care and I said that the other day, we're going to find some really tough cuts we have to make, but it will never be about health care - it will never be about the fight against COVID-19. So, I urge the State – accept the federal money, do not cut Medicaid, do not cut health care for New Yorkers who need it.

Question: Can you [inaudible] tell us what the what kind of services this ship will be providing and who, how will it be decided what patients will be going to this ship and which patients will stay in the hospital?

Mayor: I'm going to start and I'll let the Admiral join in, obviously. What I have to explain to everyone, I think it is such a shock to hear this that people are still kind of adjusting to it. The Intensive Care Units in our hospitals used to be a small part of our hospitals and again, at the beginning of this month, we had about 20,000 working hospital beds in New York City. What we have to do is convert as many as possible, potentially almost all of those traditional hospital beds into ICU beds. We have to make whole hospitals into Intensive Care Units to get through these next weeks. That's how dire, that's how tough this situation is. If we're going to turn a hospital, I mean think of Bellevue, think of NYU Langone and you go by these huge buildings, they're going to be all ICU if we can bring all the pieces together, the staff and the equipment, everything. Well what happens to everyone else who doesn't need intensive care? We have to have hospitals for them too. What happens to people who've been infected with Covid-19, but are not at the point where they need intensive care - hopefully on the way to recovery? They need a hospital bed in many cases too, but we can't put them in an Intensive Care Unit, which has to be reserved for those we're trying to save. So what the USNS Comfort allows and Javits Center and so many other places being developed right now, is the ability to take all those other patients and give them care and each location will be different, but it will allow us to keep a health care system going while we convert the core hospitals into something we've never done. This is beyond anyone's imagination. I asked the head of our public hospitals, Dr. Mitch Katz, I said, have you ever heard of any place where they had to turn hospitals into all ICU? He said, no, no one's ever come near having to do that in the last hundred years in this country, but because the Comfort is here because of what's happening at Javits Center, we're going to have the ability to do that and save a lot of lives. Admiral you want to join it?

Admiral Mustin: Just in terms of the specifics and the mechanics, we've been working very closely with the local health care officials to determine what that process looks like. So, so frankly we are prepared to receive and we trust the screening process that is in effect at the Javits Center so that we will receive advance notice so that the ship can prepare to receive the patients. But, but in terms of what the health care providers determine are the best patients for us, those are the ones that we would expect to receive.

Question: Question, how can you take us to the mechanics of this transfer of patients? How are you communicating this to the patients? What kind of situations are these patients experiencing and are the families going to be able to visit them on board of the Comfort?

Mayor: Alright, I'm going to start and I'm going to give you the disclaimer right away that all of this is being worked out in real-time. So, I guarantee you we are not going to have all those answers today because we are literally in a wartime situation, building it as we go along. Dr. Raul Perea-Henze, our Deputy Mayor, if any of you want to jump into any of these questions about procedure please do, or Admiral as well. I think the common-sense basic answer is, we are going to work out the protocol between all the players, how to get the right patients to the right locations. Again, reserving the hospitals for ICU to the maximum extent possible. Some places will specialize in convalescent COVID-19 patients, meaning patients on the way to recovery, no longer intensive care. Some places will specialize in all sorts of other medical needs that require hospitalization because remember all the folks with heart disease, all the folks with cancer, there is still so many people that will need hospitalization for other things that are not COVID-19. So, we are working out those protocols right now. As to things like visitation. I think a fair statement would be the normal rules will not apply. Just going to – I’m the non-doctor telling all New Yorkers right now, we are always going to always try respect families, but we have to be clear that the normal rules of going to a hospital, just aren’t going to exist in this kind of wartime environment and people should get used to a different set of standards. It will be determined for each location what that is. But there is going to be such urgency, dealing with a huge uptick in cases that we can’t do all the things we normally do. Admiral you want to add or Deputy Mayor?

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: Yes, as the Mayor outlined, we have stood up, Hospital Executive Committee which includes all the public hospitals, the voluntary hospitals, the independent hospitals, and the Command from Comfort and Javits. There’s a screening mechanism, very complex, in order to allocate who goes where. As the Mayor pointed out we are prepared to convert as many as the regular beds in all hospitals in the city into ICU beds. Hopefully we will get the ventilators so the most severe cases end up being taken care of there. The visitation piece will require a screening like we are doing for everyone right now. So, if there is any risk that a patient that has no COVID-19, that is being taken care of here at the Comfort, has a relative that could be potentially infected, of course there will be screening for them not to come in.

Question: You had said that by Saturday you would decide whether or not to close the playgrounds. Why have you left the playgrounds open, when for example, Hoboken has closed its parks and Bergen County has closed its parks. Why do we not have consistency on that guideline for social distancing?

Mayor: This is an issue that obviously we are working with the State on and the states have all been working together and there is not one uniform standard. That’s just the truth. We are very cognizant, look, 8.6 million people in a very small space, I don’t think taking away parks is a great idea unless we have evidence that people are not following the rules in a really substantial way. I have had this conversation daily with our Police Commissioner. He says overwhelming they are seeing compliance. We know warmer weather is coming, not today but warmer weather is coming. We are going to watch carefully. What I said yesterday is this, right now the police and all of our agencies are authorized to use fines, we have given enough warning, enough, education. Anyone who, if you Andrew, are in the park and an officer said sir, you are not practicing social distancing, I need you to move. And you said I am not going move. They are going to say sir, you are about to be given a fine, this is your last chance. And if you don’t move or if you don’t follow the instruction you are going to get a fine. If we see any basketball courts where there’s games going on and we have warned people to stop. We are going to take down the rims. We are going to take out tennis nets, we are going to take out soccer nets, whatever it takes. On the playgrounds, if we see individual playgrounds where there is noncompliance. We can close the playground. If we see it, broadly, all the playgrounds will be closed. But to date, based on the sheer facts coming back from the Police Department, Parks Department, noncompliance is limited. You will find some instances, I’m sure you will Andrew, but not enough to tell 8.6 million people they cannot have parks. And that’s the balance we are trying to strike.

Question: Thank you Mr. Mayor. Yesterday we heard pretty scary numbers from the federal government. Do you have any particular forecast scenario for the city? I mean particularly for New York City?

Mayor: I have been real honest with New Yorkers that at this point we assume at least half of all New Yorkers will contract this disease, again consistently we see for 80 percent that means, thankfully, a fairly mild experience. That they get through okay and recover quickly. But, right now, at least 50 percent, could be substantially more. We see this horrible increase in the number of deaths. And I have been honest. I think the weeks ahead will be tougher. To date, I still fear that the worst is not going to be April, but actually in the beginning of May. But no projection is perfect. I guarantee you and I wish I couldn’t. But I guarantee you that April is going to be exceedingly tough. And we have to understand that any projection of things being all okay by Easter, there’s just no way that’s true for New York City.

Question: This is a question, actually for the former fire commissioner, Von Essen. Hi, Commissioner, can I ask you a question. Over here. Welcome back to New York.

Regional Administrator Von Essen: Oh, thank you. I never left.

Question: Well great to have you here now. I am wondering, you mentioned mortuary logistics. What are working on right now? What’s the current city capacity to hold the deceased? And is there any consideration of turning places like MSG, Madison Square Garden into a mortuary facility?

Regional Administrator Von Essen: No. Fortunately, we are not thinking of anything like that. But we are sending refrigeration trucks to New York to help with some of the problem on a temporary basis. I was speaking to Commissioner Criswell this morning, we have sent – the military has sent 42 folks to the Manhattan Medical Examiner’s Office to help over there. And we need – you have a desperate, New York City, we in New York City have a desperate need for help over in Queens. And we are working on that as we speak, there’s folks trying to put it all together. There’s only so many of these teams that military has. We have 50 states and a couple of territories and commonwealths that we are trying to, not hold back resources, but trying to make it, make a plan ready that works for the whole country. So, it’s difficult but everybody’s trying. And we will get more help here for New York.

Question: Thank you Mayor. Clearly as you have pointed out, this is a very visual representation of the help that has arrived. But can you give us a clearer sense of how much more help is going to be needed? I mean if you will, how many equivalences of the Comfort does New York City need to get through the worst of this, sir?

Mayor: Yeah it’s a great, great way of thinking about it. Think of this ship, which is 750 beds to begin, has a capacity, potentially of 1,000 beds. So, here’s the way to think of what we are all working on right now. We started with around 20,000 working beds in New York City. We have to get over 60,000 by the beginning of May, according to what we know now – like adding 40 US Comforts, and that’s the magnitude of what we are talking about. And the amazing thing is, that we believe with enough people working together that we can get there. As hard as that sounds, you know, here’s this extraordinary contribution from the federal government, here’s the Javits Center where they are talking about up to 3,000 beds right there. The surge capacity in the hospitals, where every hospital is adding 50 percent more beds, that’s on top of that original 20,000. They are all finding additional beds to add in their facilities. You know creating new spaces. Mitch Katz said a long time ago, he can turn a cafeteria into an ICU if he needs to. He can put up a tent in the parking lot and turn it into an ICU. And then the hotels and the other buildings that we’ll be moving to. So, it’s a herculean task. It’s never been attempted in the history of New York City. We believe that’s the number – we’d love to find out it’s a lesser number – but that’s the number we’re shooting for and I believe with enough work and enough creativity and enough teamwork, we’ll get to it.

Question: Last night your administration made an announcement about all of the supplies and ventilators you have given to the hospitals throughout the city to date. I’m wondering how your administration is handling supply distribution to private hospitals. A lot of it has been focused on going to the public hospitals, rightfully so. But I’m wondering if any of these supplies and ventilators have gone to the private hospitals on Staten Island. And then I have a second question –

Mayor: Absolutely. And I’ve had this conversation daily with Borough President Oddo to make sure that supplies are getting where they are needed. Yes, the City has provided supplies to RUMC in substantial numbers and we’ll continue to do so. The supplies for Staten Island University Hospital come from a combination of sources – State, City, the Northwell Hospital system. But I’m keeping my eye – and my team is – on all of it. We really don’t see a separation between public hospitals, voluntaries, independents in this kind of situation. We’re all working together.

Remember the other day we got in 400 ventilators from the federal government. We sent 100 to the public hospitals, 300 to the voluntaries and independents. And so that’s going to be the pattern – not necessarily that percentage – but that approach. We’re all sharing to make sure at any given moment a hospital has what it needs. Go ahead.

Question: How are you guys planning to get COVID patients from the outer boroughs to the Comfort? Places like Staten Island [inaudible] –

Mayor: The idea is to keep folks who need that urgent care, that ICU care in hospitals that will be converted increasingly to ICU care. Folks who do not require ICU care but do need hospitalization for COVID-19, the goal is to keep them as close as possible, of course, to their home and in their home borough. So, we’re continuing to build out capacity on Staten Island and we will continue as in every borough.

Question: Can you hear me – with rent due tomorrow for many people, wanted to ask about a proposal from some local officials who want to allow people to apply their security deposits to next month’s rent. Do you support that? Are you doing anything to make that a reality?

Mayor: I do support that and I think the – my understanding is that we need some kind of State action to allow that to happen. But I think that’s exactly the right approach. Look, everyone’s hand to mouth – or so many people, at least, are hand to mouth right now. Their income has just been blown away, federal help is coming but that will take time. People need help right now. Applying the security deposits, it actually – it helps the renter to pay the rent, it actually helps in many cases landlords especially smaller landlords because that money is in escrow right now. And the smaller landlords need money to get by as well, so it frees it up for them. There has to be some process to eventually restore that deposit, you know over time – maybe an installment plan overtime. But immediate relief is needed. I think it’s a great idea. We’re working with folks at the State level to see how to make that happen. Okay, go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, in terms of – you talked about the ventilators and the hospital beds, where are you at in terms of the PPE for the hospital workers, nurses, doctors – where do we stand on that?

Mayor: So, on personal protective equipment, this week – and I’m always giving you this update week by week. If it ever turns into needing to tell you day by day I will. This week in terms of personal protective equipment for our hospitals, we do have a sufficient supply. We have sent it out and continue to send it out around the city. Hospitals – this is something Dr. Katz said yesterday and everyone has to keep in mind – hospitals are teaching their professionals, their health care workers, a new way of handling this equipment because until there is a truly ample supply like there used to be in peacetime, folks are being trained to handle the supply differently to stretch it out, to re-use it whenever safe.

That’s a whole different way of life and instead of seeing in the supply closet, you know, a month or two of supply, people are seeing less. They are seeing days or a few weeks. And I think it is understandably unnerving to the health care professionals. But we’re all working together to help everyone understand the new reality for this moment in history. The supply today is sufficient. It will take us into next week. The thing I’m worried about right now is ventilators overwhelmingly.
I have asked the president and the White House for 400 more. We will take them from any source. If 400 more come in some other way, that’s great, but we need that to make sure we will get to April 5th okay. As we approach April 5th, which I’ve said is a very – a day I’m really concerned about in terms of equipment and in terms of personnel – I will update New Yorkers as to whether we have enough to get through the next week. But that’s how tight it has been. Number one concern – ventilators, right behind it the need for more doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists to actually handle ICU capacity and give some relief to these health workers who are going through so much. Yeah?

Question: You said $1.3 billion, you were looking to cut from the budget but that number might need to update –

Mayor: Yeah, it will go up. We will give you an updated number shortly but it’s definitely going to go up.

Question: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And will patients treated on the Comfort have to pay their medical bills as usual or will this be paid for by the federal government?

Mayor: Well, I don’t know. Admiral – well, I mean, first of all, insurance is insurance so whoever has insurance, I assume that’s the go to. But Admiral or Raul, do you know the answer?

Admiral Mustin: Yes, Sir. When the president declared a national emergency, the implication from the Department of Defense is that we provide this service – and we are not looking to check insurance cards or send any invoices or bills. This is an investment by the government on behalf of the people of America. So, there is no additional cost to the patient.

Mayor: Well done [inaudible]. Admiral, that’s a great plan. We thank you for that.

Question: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You mentioned that 750 beds are available immediately on the Comfort. Does that mean patients will start to be moved today and if so or if not, how many patients will be moved in what sort of timeframe?

Mayor: So, I want to make sure they are fully docked before any patients go in. They are still securing it. Between the Admiral and Deputy Mayor, who wants to speak about the timelines? You want to start or –

Admiral Mustin: So, as the Mayor mentioned, obviously, we want to take care of all the regular husbanding services required once the ship comes into port. We’re prepared to begin receiving patients tomorrow. I won’t open the box to say while we may be ready internally to do that sooner, we want to use a very methodical process that’s been developed in conjunction with the local health authorities which is predicated on starting tomorrow.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: Just a quick point, we’re going to do the assessment that I talked about before with the hospital committee, going through the Javits Center, and as the patients start coming from the hospitals, screening will happen today, probably in the next day or two you will start seeing patients here.

Question: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Did you get any results, any outcomes of the drug test which was started last week?

Mayor: I’m sorry, which one? Clarify –

Question: Last Wednesday you were supposed to tell – to start the drug test of the new kind of medications regarding this problem.

Mayor: Yeah, there are several different approaches that are being tested now certainly in our public health system. But I want to make sure we give you a fully accurate answer so I’m not updated on that, I’ll make sure our team from Health + Hospitals get you that answer. Okay, everybody, thank you very much – a good day for New York City.

Thank you, everyone.

2020-03-31 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good afternoon, everybody. Yesterday, in the midst of this crisis, we had an extraordinary moment where the USNS Comfort arrived. And boy, did it bring hope, did it bring comfort already to New Yorkers who wanted to know we were not alone, and that real help was coming. We got to see it all live. We got to feel it. Well today is another example that this city is immediately acting every single day and so many good people are helping us, preparing every day for what lies ahead. Getting ready the hospital facilities we need to protect lives and New Yorkers. Yesterday, it was the comfort basically floating right up to New York City with another full hospital – an amazing feat.

Today, it is this facility here in Queens that, right now, looks like a bunch of tennis courts. Very soon this is going to be 350 hospital beds to protect the lives of New Yorkers. And there are two ways of looking at this. If you want to say the glass is half empty, you would say these tennis courts symbolize what we're all going through right now. We'd all like to go back to the times when things are normal, and people are out here playing tennis. We all feel that. I feel that and we miss it and it's sad, but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever. It will be very intense but, thank God, it will be brief. When I look out here, I see the glass is half full, which is the fact that everyone is rising to the challenge. Everyone is contributing, each in their own way. We have people from organizations all over this city, all over the world calling literally every single hour offering help. When the folks here at a tennis center heard there was a need, they said yes immediately, and all the people who reached out to the Creek, this hospital said the same thing.

So, I'm looking forward to the day when this was going to be a place for tennis again, but in the meantime, I'm inspired by the fact that people are stepping up. And we have set a very, very high bar of what we need to create in the next few weeks in terms of hospital beds in this city. And every time I turn around, I see another person, another organization stepping up to make it happen, and that to me is inspiring, and that speaks to what New Yorkers do all the time. The attitude we have that we will overcome anything and everything. That is on display right here at this tennis center.

We have to, as New Yorkers, deal honestly with the pain we're experiencing, the grief we're experiencing, and, at the same time, keep moving forward. I've unfortunately had to liken this to a war. That's what soldiers have to do in a war. We have to find a way to mourn, but never be paralyzed, because people's lives are at stake, and we have to be there always for those we can save, those we can comfort, those we can help. But we are definitely feeling the pain of those we have lost from our own community here in public service. And I want to particularly focus on the Department of Correction that's doing such difficult work right now. Handling a crisis that's never been seen before by any of us obviously, but with the particular conditions that exist in our correction system. I told you back on Friday that we lost an investigator, David Perez. We've now lost a young IT worker, Hunter O’Kelly Rodriguez and a beloved longtime officer of 20 years as a member of our Correction team. And we're withholding the name at the request of the family, but I know all the Correction officers, the staff, everyone at correctional health services, everyone's feeling these losses right now, and they’re resolute that we have to keep fighting to protect everyone. The folks who work in our correction system, and all those who are incarcerated as well.

Now, we all know that we are racing against time right now, and I felt it is my job to really let people know how intense this battle will be. The fact is coming on fast and it will not be over in an instant. There will be weeks where we are going to have to keep fighting. And every time I've heard any projection of it's going to be over soon, don't worry about it. I always say, no, that's not the truth, and it's a danger to tell people something's going to be easier than it really will be. So, I'm telling you all it will be tough, but it will be something that we will fight through and we will survive. But it begins with a recognition of just how much we're going to need.

So again, before all this started, before the coronavirus in this city, we had about 20,000 working hospital beds in our major hospitals. Public, private, voluntary, independent, whatever phrases you want to use. All the hospitals combined had about 20,000 staffed hospital beds. We now need to in just the next weeks, triple that number. Produce three times that number. And you might say to yourself, how on earth is that possible? And when I first heard the projections, I questioned it myself. But then look at the facts. Look at how quickly a hospital can be created. Whether it is in a place like the Javits Center, or a place like this tennis center, or a hotel. We know how to make any number of buildings into a hospital in a matter of days. So, they need to say, well how does that all add up. Look, the Javits Center alone, thousands of beds will be built out there. The Comfort starts with 750, can go up to a thousand beds, there's 350 beds here, a lot of hotels, hundreds of hundreds of beds each. We're just going to keep going every single day adding and adding and adding to get to the point where we have what we need.

This facility will be crucial. The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, it's going to be handled by the same company. They are going to set it up rapidly and we're then going to go to the next site, the next site, the next site to meet our goal. We're working with the federal government, with FEMA, with the state. We're working with the hotel industry. We're working with folks who own major facilities. Everyone is working in common cause. I have not heard someone say no yet, and that's something New Yorkers should know about and be proud of. No one. I literally have not heard anyone. We say we need your building. I've not heard anyone say no. Everyone understands what time it is. So, right here at the Billy Jean King Center, named after someone who's such a hero to so many of us. Well, I think it's very fitting. I think Billy Jean would agree that this place will be a lifesaving place. This place will not only help folks afflicted by the coronavirus, help them to survive and recover and go home, it is specifically going to help patients who come through Elmhurst hospital and can receive care here. It's going to help take the pressure off Elmhurst. We all know that for a variety of reasons, Elmhurst has been the place that is borne the brunt and the staff at Elmhurst, the doctors and nurses, everyone that works at Elmhurst, they've done an amazing job, but we want to give them as much relief as possible.

Starting next week, this facility will be able to take people from Elmhurst, not folks who need ICU care, but other coronavirus patients. Bring them over here, relieve some of that pressure immediately. 350 beds will be here with all the staffing, the doctors, the nurses, all the staffing needed, that's what the company does that brings all this in, brings in the equipment, brings in the beds. It’ll take three weeks to build out, but as I said, starting next week patients will start arriving. And I want to thank the folks who made this possible right here in terms of this amazing facility and I want to thank him, he's with us, the Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Tennis Association Daniel Zausner. Thank you, Daniel, for partnering with the City and all of us to make this happen. Thank you and all your colleagues and you said yes and I thank you for that Billy Sullivan, CEO of SLSCO the contractor that does this work, Billy is over there, sorry, cause of distancing it’s hard to see people sometimes and they'll be working with us at the Brooklyn cruise terminal as well. And, of course, our partners all the time, the Army Corps of Engineers, New York State and our own Office of Emergency Management. Thank you, Deanne, to you and your team. And special thanks to our colleagues at Department of Design and Construction of the City who do amazing work and they can do it very quick. So, thank you to Jamie Torres Springer, the First Deputy Commissioner who is definitely— Jamie, no one's going to miss you wherever you walk in that jacket. I want to thank you, you're very visible right now, very visible. And we're going to be joined in a moment from Health and Hospitals is obviously the collaboration with Elmhurst Hospital, Dr. Eric Wei, the Vice President, Chief Quality Control Officer for Health and Hospitals will be joining us and we thank them.

I want to give you some other updates real quick and then we'll turn to questions from our colleagues in the media. So, a few days ago we all heard the very tough news about the record number of calls to 911. And— the real challenge is that our first responders we're facing our paramedics and our EMTS through EMS. And we said, we're going to have to make a lot of adjustments, lot of changes to address the demand, but we would do it. Well, at that point we were hoping the cavalry was coming, but I have to say I am so moved and so appreciative to the Federal Government with how they move so quickly here and in great number. And I give all the credit in the world to FEMA and Regional Administrator Tom Von Essen who everyone knows was our Fire Commissioner and I think it's no accident that Tom is really looking out for us and he certainly understands how important EMS is to the City. So, I want to tell you that we announced this morning formally that 250 more ambulances are coming right away to New York City from FEMA from all over the country to help us address our 911 calls. 135 of those ambulances are here already, I want you to understand how unusual it is to hear something's coming, and is here immediately. This is really powerful and it shows how much the Federal Government is getting into gear now full gear to help us. We're going to have approximately 500 more EMTS and paramedics coming in from all over the country, 270 are here right now and they're going immediately into action to help our extraordinary colleagues at the Fire Department and EMS to do the work that they do. I mentioned yesterday that nurses, more and more nurses are coming in. 500 on Friday had already gotten to our hospitals I said, we do want to add another 500 this week. I'm now announcing an additional 1,000 nurses that Health and Hospitals has coming very soon through contracting they've done. So we are sounding the alarm in many places and reaching out to many friends and may colleagues to get help, but these numbers now are going to make a huge difference. Imagine just in the last few days, adding a grand total of 2,000 nurses to help protect New Yorkers, that's just in the last few days more coming and that's going to mean lives will be saved.

Now, I'll always tell you good news, but that does not mean that the battle is over, it doesn't mean we're not going to need a lot more help. Remember, as we speak now, we have a quarter of all the coronavirus cases in the United States of America and— I've spoken several times to the President in recent days to the Defense Secretary, to the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, and numerous federal officials. I've said the same thing to all of them, this coming Sunday, April 5th is a demarcation line. This is the point at which we must be prepared for next week when we expect a huge increase in the number of cases. What I asked very clearly last week was for military medical personnel to be deployed here from the permanent military and from the reserves. I had this conversation with all of them, I’ve said specifically 1,000 nurses, 300 respiratory therapists, 150 doctors and I said, we need as many as possible by Sunday, April 5th and we need to know that any others are going to come shortly thereafter. I have reiterated that need and that request, and I have to say in many ways it's a demand because this is about saving lives in time and I'm waiting for an answer from the White House. And I will always give credit where credit is due the Federal Government in the last couple of weeks has shown us a much more vigorous approach and it's helping us and we are very appreciative. I thank the President, I thank all the Cabinet Officers who have been a part of this effort, especially thank FEMA, but we must have that additional personnel to be able to get through next week and the weeks right after that. So, I'm going to keep reiterating this specific request and I'm waiting for an answer from the White House. It is a reasonable request given that we're the Nation's largest City and we're the epicenter of this crisis.

Now, ventilators, which I'm going to talk about constantly we’re grateful again in the last week or so, the Federal Government really stepped it up. 2,500 ventilators came into New York City, that is amazing, but we're going to need a lot more and we’re going to need them soon. We’re hearing that more help may be on the way shortly from the Federal Government, we're waiting for that to be confirmed, we need it. That number we put forward 15,000 as the total need remains, the total need and it is a very tight timeframe because none of us knows for sure is the worst week going to be in one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, five weeks. We don't know when exactly it peaks, but we know April is going to be very tough and I'm trying to gird people from the possibility it will continue on into May and we're going to need those ventilators and the moment we are done with them we're going to send them wherever they're needed most in this country. Now I’m going to put out a call now to others who can help us and they’re people in our communities right now and I need them to step up some have, but I need all of them to. People who are part of the normal fabric of this City, oral surgeons have ventilators for when they perform surgery, plastic surgeons have ventilators wherever they perform surgery, veterinarians, yes, veterinarians have in many cases, ventilators that we could use every single one of them. If you've got a ventilator in your office, in your operating room, we need it now it should not be sitting there doing nothing. This is a war effort everyone needs to contribute. You'll get it back when this battle is over to donate ventilators to find out how we can immediately get your ventilators where they're needed, anyone can go to nyc.gov/helpnow.

And I want to now talk to you about personal protective equipment this has been such an important topic there's deep concern all over the City, all over our healthcare system. Today our City agencies are distributing to all New York City hospitals I want to make that crystal clear, not just to our public hospitals, Health and Hospitals, but also voluntary hospitals, independent hospitals. We ensure that supplies go wherever the need is in an equitable fashion. So, this day – today – we are distributing 3 million surgical masks all over New York City to our hospitals, 800,000 N95 masks, 600,000 pairs of gloves, 120,000 face shields, 40,000 surgical gowns – this is one day. Now anyone out there who has supplies like this you can donate or has a truly reliable source for these supplies, we need them. And again, if you can donate to this effort, every bit helps. Go to nyc.gov/helpnow or you can call. Obviously, people from all over the country are helping New York City. You can call 833-NYC-0040. And thank you to all who have helped us.

I'm going to give you some other quick updates before we go to questions. An update on our jail system, the efforts that we have made directly and working with District Attorneys and the State to ensure that inmates who have the kind of medical problems that would put them in direct danger and those who could be released for other reasons as well; again with some very strict guidelines and safeguards. As of the end of yesterday, there had been 900 inmates released from our jail system. There will be more ahead. We will give you an update as soon as we know of any additional numbers.

Want to talk about construction. There's been a lot of concern, obviously. We work closely with the State to affirm that only essential construction should be allowed at this point. Non-essential non-emergency construction must end immediately. Our Department of Buildings agents are out as we speak. Yesterday we gave education and warnings; today we are starting heavy fines and closing down construction sites that are in violation. They will be not just fined; they will be closed down immediately. If Department of Buildings has any difficulty from the people at a construction site who are non-emergency, non-essential, they will call into NYPD to shut down that site immediately. There's no kidding around here. All non-essential non-emergency construction must be ended right now.

On tax lien sales, this is a really important issue for some folks -tax liens, property – it was going to be [inaudible] by Department of Finance for unpaid property taxes or water bills or other charges. We understand right now people's lives have been turned upside down. They don't have money to pay bills. We want to be fair. We want to be understanding. So, all tax lien sales are going to be postponed. They were supposed to be in the month of May. They will be postponed to August, initially.

On alternate side parking, and we all know everyone who’s a New Yorker knows few issues stir the hearts of New Yorkers more than alternate side parking. Well, I'm sorry it's because of coronavirus, but let me at least give you a little good news in your day. Alternate side parking will be suspended for the next two weeks – two weeks through Tuesday, April 14th. So, leave your cars where they are. One less hassle and fewer people who have to go out of their homes to deal with it and we'll be looking after the two weeks to see what’s the right thing to do at that point.

On playgrounds, I have been talking daily, in fact multiple times a day with Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and to get feedback from his enforcement efforts, obviously from Parks Department as well. Overwhelmingly, we're seeing compliance in parks and playgrounds with some real problem spots too. So, I've been very clear, if we see a problem spot that's recurrent, we are going to shut it down. I have ordered 10 playgrounds to be closed at the end of today. Those are playgrounds that have had crowding multiple times. They will be shut down. They will be locked. There will be signs put up; there will be enforcement. My goal again is to try to preserve as many as possible if people follow the rules and if people will not follow the rules, we will continue to shut them down aggressively.

Another issue has come up and it is an issue that's causing us real concern. We heard from Staten Island, from the Amazon fulfillment center, a specific charge that a worker who raised health and safety concerns, raised social distancing concerns was fired. The allegation is because he spoke up for the safety of his fellow workers, he was fired. I have ordered the City's Commission on Human Rights to investigate Amazon immediately, to determine if that's true. If so, that'd be a violation of our City Human Rights Law we would act on it immediately. I should also note that the Sheriff's Office did an inspection of the facility to ensure that social distancing is being observed and they will continue to inspect as needed.

So, I'll conclude, and, again, we're going to see a lot of things we've never seen before. I know every one of us has walked down the sidewalk and looked up ahead a whole block and it was empty and we can't remember when that ever happened. I was driving on the FDR the other day and I looked ahead, for a mile it seemed like on the FDR there was no other car on the road up ahead. We're seeing things that are just strange and in so many ways troubling to us as New Yorkers. Some of these things are going to be painful. Some of these things are going to be hard to make sense of, but some things we're going to see – like this tennis center – are to be signs of the fight back. The fact that New Yorkers don't take this crisis lying down; New Yorkers are not people who get defeated easily. So, you go all over and you see this fight back. You see a place being turned into a hospital – it wasn't a hospital. You see people providing food for their neighbors. You see people helping in so many ways. You'll see unusual things and some of them will be things we wish we'd never seen. You're also going to see things that are going to tell you that New Yorkers are not going to accept defeat. I'm very, very proud of all of you for the way you've handled this extraordinary crisis. Something we'd never experienced in our lifetimes, I hope we never do again, but I have faith in New Yorkers; I have faith in New York City. We will see this through.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish] 

With that, again a thank you to all our colleagues here. Everyone is doing so much work so quickly. Thank you all, thank you. The amazing teams at Emergency Management at Health + Hospitals, for all you’re doing and with that, we welcome your questions.

Dave?

Question: Mayor, I know you said this location will eventually in about a week start taking non-ICU coronavirus patients.

Mayor: Correct.

Question: From Elmhurst, but is there a master plan in the city of, Oh, this person goes to Mount Sinai, this person goes to the Javits, this person goes to the Comfort. Is there a master plan or is it each doctor decides or what?

Mayor: No, that's – there actually is a master plan that's being built out as we speak in a cooperative effort between FEMA, the State and the City led by Emergency Management. So, job one Dave, is to build out the space immediately and to make sure as each spaces comes online, that there's a clear protocol. And again, I'll start and if my colleagues want to jump in at any point, just start walking toward me. I'll get out of the way because of social distancing. Stay there Deanne. So, the – but no, in fact the idea is to knit all this together into a coordinated effort, but I also want you to be clear, Dave, we have to immediately start building out the space first. Because to meet these deadlines, before you work out all the protocols of how it's going to be staffed and where the patients are going to come from, you got to get the physical part moving instantly. And that's been an extraordinary effort. But every day, more and more it's going to be started and gotten online. Ultimately, yes, you have to get the right people the right place. But remember the hospitals right now are being converted to all ICU or maximum ICU, but they still have a long way to go before they get to that point. So, while the hospitals can handle, of course other types of cases right now, what's going to happen over time? Every day it becomes -- each one becomes more and more ICU, more and more COVID related. So, it is literally a day by day evolution. Deanne, I'm moving. Okay, no step for you. I'm going to go over here. Now, I don't want to do, I'm going to go here. Okay.

Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Emergency Management: Yeah. The coordination piece is a really big piece and what we have set up is the Health Care Evacuation Coordination Center, which is going to be run out of the Javits. It's actually a system that's been in place and its run by the State that was set up for coastal storm evacuations. That's just being put in hyper mode and being able to do that for this type of an event. What they're going to do is they're putting out protocols to all of the hospitals across the New York City area on how they request patient transfers and then that coordination center will match the acuity of the patient with the acuity of the bed as these beds continue to stand up. Right now the only places that are open are the Javits Center and the Comfort and so they are matching patients to those two facilities, but as we continue to stand up facilities and depending on what level of treatment we're going to be able to give, they will match those patients with the proper space.

Question: Just while you're there. So, it is up and running?

Commissioner Criswell: It is up and running. It's over – it's located at the Javits Center.

Question: Okay and just [inaudible] Comfort and Javits?

Commissioner Criswell: Because those are the only two that are open right now to move patients to.

Question: Okay a quick a follow up. [Inaudible] there is a large set up in the parking lot of Citi Field, is that somehow - what is that?

Commissioner Criswell: Yeah, the tent was originally set up at Citi Field to support the drive through testing clinics that were going to come in from FEMA. But we, through this process, as other clinics were set up. We co-located the FEMA operations with our Health + Hospitals and so we left the tent up there for right now to determine if we needed an additional use for it. So maybe it can be used for some of our food access distribution points. So, we've been in contact with Citi Field on leaving it there for right now until we determine if we have a use for it there. So, right now, it's just staged for us to use for something that we might need because the changes or the requirements continue to change every day

Mayor: So, I want to note with real appreciation to Deanne that you know, she brings an extraordinary background to this work in Emergency Management because she started out as a firefighter. She served in the Air Force, then served at FEMA. So what is amazing is watching everyone be able to work with Deanne, military folks immediately feel comfortable with Deanne because she was in the military. Firefighters of course, she's one of them. FEMA folks from Washington, she knows all of them, including the National Administrator. So, I would really want to give credit where credit's due, not only to our team, which is great, but Deanna herself has been really one of the pivots here because she brings a wealth of experience and relationships and it's really helping New York City right now. It's not a surprise that those ambulances, for example, showed up in record time. That's a lot of her doing and Tom Von Essen’s doing. Yes.

Question: Can you give us an update on Elmhurst Hospital and where that stands? What’s the number of fatalities that have come through there?

Mayor: Dr Wei will join me. I just want to say to preface and then we will artfully in a ballet-like fashion go around each other. It's been a really tough time for Elmhurst but I want to note and I give Dr Mitch Katz and the whole team at Health + Hospitals and Elmhurst credit. They continually made the adjustments. We talk about how the NYPD for example, constantly make strategic adjustments through CompStat. You saw that Elmhurst. They surged doctors there, nurses there, equipment there, four times, they sent more ventilators to ensure that it could save lives. And also moved patients off to other places who could be. So, they got some of the very toughest cases in the city. And in a sudden surge. And that has a lot to do with where the hospital is and how few public hospitals are in that area for so many people. But they really dealt with a sudden onslaught very, very powerfully. With that in terms of the overall situation, Dr Wei, why don't you come over. You go that way. I'll get this way.

Vice President and Chief Quality Officer Eric Wei, Health + Hospitals: All right. So, thank you for that question and thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of Health + Hospitals and Elmhurst. First and foremost, my heart breaks for all of the patients and the families who have been afflicted with this terrible, terrible virus. I’ve practiced emergency medicine for a long time and I'm seeing things that I could never have imagined in terms of what this virus can do to all ages, people who are previously healthy, people with comorbidities. So, our thoughts and prayers are with everybody who's lost somebody, as well as everybody who's in the ICU and especially to our health care workers who have fallen ill. Elmhurst Hospital still continues to make all of us very proud. All the doctors, the nurses, the leadership, everybody is moving heaven and Earth to do everything they can to take on the onslaught of COVID-19 patients. And so over the past two weeks, it's gone from more than double the volume of people coming to the emergency department, to now the volumes actually down. But the people who are coming in are so much more ill and so much more critically ill, with shortness of breath and respiratory failure. And so what we're seeing is more and more ICU type patients. And so, I was just on the phone with the Emergency Department Chief, Dr. Stu Kessler to get a better picture. I speak to him every day. We have an ED action team that means that 6:00 pm every night. I've also spent a lot of time at Elmhurst myself over the past two weeks. They intubated 19 patients in the past 48 hours, 42 patients in the past four days. And that is way more than normal for an emergency department, even in a level one trauma center like Elmhurst. And so many patients are boarding, meaning they're admitted and waiting for space upstairs in the emergency department. Health + Hospitals has been acting like a system in terms of literally flattening the curve. Everybody should be familiar with that term with all the public health information about flattening the curve. What we've been doing is we've been transferring patients, both medical, surgical acuity as well as ICU acuity out of Elmhurst. Queens Hospital, Lincoln Hospital, Kings County Hospital to our other hospitals that have not been – are surging but not nearly as much as Elmhurst and others. And so, we've moved almost 200 patients in the last week and a half across the system.

But the indicators I'm looking at are flashing red. Right? The number of patients that are boarding in the emergency department, the number of patients that are filling our medical surgical units and our ICUs are surging well beyond our traditional ICU units, into step down units, to operating rooms, medical surgical units. And so, this space is exactly what we need. We need to look outside of the four walls of our hospitals and not just tents in front of our hospitals, but where they can take admitted patients. And so, the Javits Center, the Comfort are welcome reprieves. We have teams pouring over every patient in our hospitals, matching it to the inclusion and exclusion criteria to see who we can get to Javits Center, which we've sent multiple people today, as well as to the Comfort. And so, I want to thank the Mayor, OEM, the Governor, FEMA, everybody for stepping up and helping us.

Mayor: Stay there if you would, Doctor. I just want to see if there are any other questions about either Elmhurst specifically or Health + Hospitals. Anybody else have questions about that? Yes, way back.

Question: I wanted to ask, I know you said other hospitals are surging. Which in the system do you say, especially here in the borough of Queens, which is the epicenter, or the city's epicenter, could you specifically talk about Queens hospitals and, you know, the other hospitals here and how they're doing and which ones are an area of concern for HHC?

Dr. Wei: So, Queens Hospital is surging as well. They're about four or five days behind Elmhurst in terms of where they are on the curve but it's a much smaller hospital, and therefore we've been putting a huge emphasis on getting ICU patients out of Queens Hospital to Bellevue to Harlem Hospital, to Metropolitan and North Central Bronx. So, the borough of Queens is clearly on the front edge of this pandemic. But we're seeing it in Brooklyn. We're seeing it at Kings County, Coney Island, Woodhull – are all surging as well. Jacobi in the Bronx and Lincoln in the Bronx are right there as well. So, like I said, it went from being relatively easy to flatten the curve in terms of moving and shifting the surge across the system to now it's much more difficult. But I just really want to give the credit to the H + H leadership, especially the CEOs of all these other hospitals. Every time I pick up the phone and call them and say, can you take 10 med-surg and two ICUs? They say, of course, let me figure it out on my end, but send those patients please.

Mayor: [Inaudible] please –

Question: [Inaudible] understanding about Elmhurst, at this point, is it still receiving heart attacks, broken legs, standard ER visits? Because from what we saw from the inside, there were people at Elmhurst saying, we need this to be essentially COVID triage right now, we can't deal with all these other folks. Has that been straightened out?

Dr. Wei: Yes. So, we – I was on the phone with FDNY leadership yesterday, hospital special surgery has made a generous offer to take all ortho-related EMS runs there. So, we are setting up a call with City Hall, with FDNY to figure out how to operationalize this because this is not normal operating procedures – you take, you know, within 10 minutes of where you pick a patient up. We are stabilizing traumas and immediately putting them in an ambulance if safe and transferring them to ICU elsewhere in the system. So, yes, we are doing everything we can. Memorial Sloan Kettering is offering to take our cancer patients. I mentioned special surgery for our ortho patients. We've also created capacity at Roosevelt Island Medical Center to get other patients. So, we're making space, we're making space for COVID patients and especially ICU COVID patients.

Mayor: Anything else on HHC, please –

Question: Just, is it possible that patients that have [inaudible] that are not being treated specifically for [inaudible]?

Dr. Wei: Yes. I think that was one of the initial, most surprising things for us, that some of the positive tests that were coming back were from those that we least expected. We thought travel, we thought fever, cough, right, all of these respiratory symptoms, but some people with just diarrhea and upset stomach, right? We had traumas come in, so people who got hit by cars, or got beat up on the street, and we put them into the CT scanner. You see ground glass opacities, which show pneumonia that's consistent for COVID-19. And so we're operating under the understanding that anybody could have COVID at this point, any patient that we see.

Question: [Inaudible] when they are sent away from the hospital to other facilities, including here, what kind of precautions have to be taken just because of that –

Dr. Wei: Absolutely, so droplet precautions for anybody who is a suspected, what we call a person under investigation – so they have a test pending, anybody who has a confirmed if they have – yep, that means a mask.

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Dr. Wei: I mean – yep. But if they're intubated, then we take even further precautions called airborne precautions. So that's an N95 mask, that's a face shield, eye protection, gowns, gloves, a hat. And so, for both our EMS and ambulance personnel who will be transporting these patients, they will all be in personal protective equipment as well as the receiving providers at each of these facilities. And we will keep these patients in those isolation precautions.

Mayor: Anything else Health + Hospitals or Elmhurst? Okay. I'm going to go around, you go here, I'll go here. I want to switch around. Okay. Let me get other questions. Go ahead. Over here, first –

Question: On the released inmates, could you say in which agency or agencies is responsible for them and also are any staff or other resources being allocated in addition, in terms of finding them housing, supervising, and support programs.

Mayor: Yeah. So, I'll give you the broad answer and then we'll get you more follow up. There's definitely a follow-up effort between Department of Corrections, Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, NYPD, and then also sometimes other agencies. Some of these folks are homeless. They're going into a hotel setting, for example. That can involve the Department of Homeless Services or sometimes Department of Health and definitely Health + Hospitals because they do correctional health. So, anyone that goes out is given a lesson in how to address any potential health concerns. They can call Correctional health anytime and get support. So, there's actually a pretty elaborate follow-up scheme, but we'll get you exactly the details of it.

Question: [Inaudible] being involved?

Mayor: I think given everything that's happening we're drawing on staff that already exists to do some new things because obviously a lot of what people were doing, a lot of those tasks are gone, and people are doing different things. Obviously, the population on Rikers now is, you know, lower than we've ever seen. It's around 4,500. Rikers and the whole correction system, I should say, is around 4,500. So that is freeing up some time and effort in Corrections that can be applied to ensuring we're doing the proper follow-up and monitoring. Yes.

Question: In your mind, and maybe we can get Danny to weigh in on this, too – can the US Open happen this year? We've already seen the Olympics postponed for an entire year, so that's a July event. We're talking about late August, early September. Can this event happen and when would that decision need to be made and what plans might exist to [inaudible]?

Mayor: Before Danny comes over and I want him to speak for himself about their plans. I'll only say, I mean, look, I think the time horizon that's of deepest concern to New York City is April, May. I think thereafter we pray that we start to come out of this, but it won't be instant. You know, it'd be going – you’ll be going up the mountain, then you come back down the mountain. It's going to take time. Remember it was weeks ago that our Health Commissioner said her best estimate was we would have a chance to return to normal around September, but that's an ever-changing reality. So, August may be a very, very much better time or we may still be fighting some of these battles we don't know yet. But for things that are coming up much sooner, I think it's very tough. By late summer, you know, we may get some good news. Come on over.

Danny Zausner: Ironically, today is March 31st and five months from today is August 31st, which is the first day of the main draw of the US Open. We still plan accordingly, but it seems so trivial in light of what's going on in the city and the state and the government right now. So we want to be as supportive as we can, we will continue to plan every single day as if the US Open is being hosted, and hopefully we'll be in a position five months from today to see players actually practicing on the courts right behind us and playing in Arthur Ashe Stadium and all the other courts on the site. But way too preliminary to be thinking about that right now.

Mayor: Yeah. From your lips to God's ears. Okay. That would be a nice, nice part of our comeback, wouldn't it? Yes.

Question: There was a report today that Rikers inmates are being offered $6 an hour to dig mass graves on Hart Island –

Mayor: I have not heard that.

Question: [Inaudible] on the Intercept [inaudible] –

Mayor: That doesn't sound right at all. Yeah, that really doesn't sound right. We'll have someone get you all the details, but that's a – proceed with caution on that, assuming that is right. Okay. Anyone else over here? Yes, please.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Yeah, there's – look, there's a lot going on and we have to make sure one, that families are treated with respect no matter how intense this crisis. What a painful moment for families. They need all the help and support they can get. Two, everyone's trying to make sense of a new set of ground rules. And we've – you know, it's going to take a little time to get it right, but what I can assure you is, God forbid someone lose a loved one, we want to make sure that the medical examiner gets over there quickly, we want to make sure that if involves a police matter the police get over there with proper protective gear – everyone. And we are getting help from the federal government. It's a topic, as I've said scrupulously, I don't get into the details of, but we are getting help from the federal government. More help is coming to expand on what the medical examiner does. So, I think we're going to need a little time to get it to be the way it should be, as quick and respectful as it should be. But that's what we're going to do. See if there's anything else. Yes?

Question: On Samaritan's Purse, which is opening the Central Park facility, do you have any personal concerns about their organization? Did you choose not to attend because of that?

Mayor: Well, when I heard originally, Andrew, that there was, you know, an organization that was going to help Mount Sinai address COVID-19, I thought, that's fantastic. I don't have – the fact that it was moving so quickly was something that I found positive. Then when I heard more about the organization, and particularly some of the things I read from Graham [inaudible] it was very troubling to me. And I said immediately to my team that we had to find out exactly what was happening. Was there going to be an approach that was truly consistent with the values and the laws in New York City that everyone would be served and served equally. We've received those assurances from the organization. I spoke earlier today with the CEO of the Mount Sinai system, Dr. Ken Davis, who was adamant that they will only continue their relationship with the organization if those rules are followed, that they have a written agreement, that there’s going to be no discrimination whatsoever. We're going to send people over from the Mayor's Office to monitor. So, I'm very concerned to make sure this is done right. But if it is done right, of course, we need all the help we can get.

Question: I wanted to ask – I know you had mentioned that the city would be releasing more detailed data. I wanted to ask for an update on that and when it will –

Mayor: As I said – thank you for the question – I'm comfortable on the raw material that you indicated yesterday. I'm comfortable with its release. I want the Health Department to come up with an answer, if they haven't already, I guess, so Freddi will follow up today. If there's some specific concern, I want to hear it, but otherwise I think it should be released. We've given you the disclaimers and my goal is to get more accurate information that we could actually feel comfortable that in releasing it publicly you would scrub it and find it to be scrupulously consistent – that's what I want to get us to the point of. It's been, as you can imagine, very hand-to-mouth the first few weeks, getting set for this kind of onslaught. But I think soon we should be able to have much more detailed information we can put out consistently that we can have confidence in.

Question: Has [inaudible] changed for you? I know last week you were reluctant to release the data because you were concerned that it might not be accurate. Was there a shift or change to change your mind?

Mayor: The change was, I have been shown more and more information that I believe is getting to the point that it will be consistent and accurate. Early in the crisis we were dealing with very specific cases. You remember those days? It seems like a long time ago. And I was able to get very specific information that when I put through people through their paces, it came back consistently, and I said, great, that's information we can put out. Then as things intensified greatly, I saw too many things were changing every hour and I didn't feel it was right to give out information that was so quickly changing. Now, I think I'm getting a flow of information that's ready to be made public more and more. As soon as it is, we're going to put it out.

Question: Do you want to see anything more from President Trump? He's having his news conference later today. What do you want to hear from him about New York City in his news conference later?

Mayor: I've said, I've expressed my appreciation for the USNS Comfort for FEMA being here in force, for the ambulances and the first responders who have arrived, for the ventilators – this is all moving in the right direction, but this is still the calm before the storm. And so, the request I made directly to the President and other top officials in the administration for 1,000 nurses, 150 doctors, 300 respiratory therapists to arrive beginning as early as Sunday for the next particularly intense week or two. That's what I need a response to right now. That's the urgent need for New York City. And I'm going to update what we need next as soon as it becomes clear, I'm going to tell the President directly, but I need an answer to that question right now.

Okay, everybody. Thank you very much and we will see you again soon.

2020-04-01 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, everyone, very important updates to go over today. And also, as we talk about challenges, we also want to talk about always all the support. We're getting, all the people who are coming forward, not just from all over around New York City, but from all over the nation to help our city in our time of need. We're dealing with a big challenge together, but we are certainly not alone. And there are so many amazing stories. People who want to help and are helping and giving their all for New York City right now. And in a few minutes, I'm going to talk about an old friend who has returned – and we are so happy he's back – coming to our aid at the moment we need it.

But first, let me talk to you about a conversation I had earlier today with the administrator for FEMA, Peter Gaynor. This is the man who the president has tasked with leading the effort nationally to ensure that the efforts to stop coronavirus are fully resourced in New York and around the country. So, he's really leading this extraordinary mobilization all over our nation. And Administrator Gainer was very, very focused, very concerned, concerned about needs in New York City. Very aware of the details of what we're facing. We had a long and detailed conversation. We went item by item related to everything we need here. Timelines, specifics about how to get the job done, and also about how important it is to protect New Yorkers in this moment. To stay ahead of this. To recognize the challenges in the next few weeks, and get the personnel, and the equipment, and the supplies in place in time. I think everyone knows, I've talked about this Sunday, April 5th as a crucial, crucial day, and I've done that for a reason. I want everyone to understand it. It's not to be alarmist, it’s to focus the energies of our national government, to focus the attention of everyone who can help us, to help them understand how important it is to maximize support for New York City by this Sunday. And then in the days immediately following as we prepare for a real upsurge. But I'm happy to say that Administrator Gainer, I could not be more pleased with the conversation. The focus he showed on each and every item, and the ability we had to determine together how we would proceed to the maximum. I express my thanks to him on behalf of all 8.6 million New Yorkers for everything FEMA has done already. And we are so especially appreciative for the amazing support we've gotten with the ambulances that have arrived, the EMT’s, and paramedics to help us address the challenges we're having. And I think a lot more help is on the way. So, it was a very encouraging conversation.

Now, I'm going to talk about our immediate needs, and I'm going to give you some real detail about what we need in the coming days. And then of course, I'm going to be talking about the important work that Jimmy O'Neill is going to be doing starting immediately. But let me say, as I go into the specific numbers, and you'll hear, I should say also after my report, you'll hear from Dr. Katz. And he's going to go over some very specific updates related to Health and Hospitals, and then how we're going to be building out our hospital capacity in general, and then you'll hear from Jimmy O'Neill after that. But I want to emphasize how much effort has already been expended. It's unbelievable. If you look at what's happened over the last weeks, how many people have gathered together to provide support already. And again, the toughest weeks are ahead. But I want to tell you upfront, hundreds and hundreds of people who have worked to ensure the supplies we need have kept coming in. And I'll talk about them more as I talk about Jimmy's new role. But there are so many people at the Emergency Management Command Center in Brooklyn, folks from City Hall who are there at the command center and working remotely who have played a crucial role. Folks who work at Department of Health and Health + Hospitals in their warehouse, in their supply operations – so many people every single day are participating in getting the supplies where they are needed. We talked about huge, huge distribution that happened yesterday. This is going to be an ongoing effort and it's going to be like nothing we've ever seen in the history of the city, and a lot of people are making it happen. I want to thank all of them, and all New Yorkers should have them in their hearts, because this group, they are unsung heroes, but they're doing amazing work to protect all of us.

Now, I want to talk about, since I've put Sunday, April 5th, as that kind of demarcation line, that D-Day, by which we have to get ready this coming Sunday. Let me tell you where there is good news and we said this Sunday to prepare for the entire week of April 6th ahead. There are two types of supplies that we're now confident we will have a sufficient amount of for the week of April 6th for all hospitals in New York City, for all first responders. I want that standard to be really clear. We are all working together. Federal government, State government, City government, nonprofit organizations, charities, everyone's working together. When we think about our hospitals, we are thinking about all hospitals together. Public, voluntary, independent, we're thinking all of them. Everyone is wearing the same uniform. We're also thinking about our first responders who obviously need to get the protective gear, the PPE’s when they need them. We have to make sure that supply is strong. So, we are confident based on all our projections that for next week we will have sufficient eye protection. That means the face shields, and the goggles, and sufficient surgical gloves for all those needs, for everyone who is doing this crucial work. For all our heroes who are out there protecting us. For all those healthcare workers who are at the front line. We will have enough of those two categories.

We need major resupply in some other categories. Now, I want to emphasize, I say this – we have requests out to the federal government, the state government, to private vendors, to the many, many individuals who are seeking help. So, when I tell you these numbers, it's against the backdrop of many moving parts already, many actions already, to make sure we will get the help up. My job is to tell you where we stand, and I'll constantly update you as more supplies come in. So, the need at this moment here on this day thinking ahead to Monday, we still need 3.3 million N95 masks to come in by Sunday to prepare us for the week ahead. We need 2.1 million surgical masks. We need 100,000 isolation gowns. These are big numbers, for sure, but they are reachable numbers, but we have to make sure it happens in time.

Now, those are all very, very important. But the area that I focus on all the time is ventilators. When it comes to equipment and supplies, the number one concern I have is ventilators because they keep people alive and they give our healthcare professionals an opportunity to save lives. We have continued to get a very substantial supply of ventilators, but we still need 400 more to be in place by Sunday to prepare us for the week ahead. So, we have many, many requests out, many efforts that are underway to get those 400 in place in time. That's to be ready for Monday. In the course of next week, and again, we have requests out to the federal government, state government, many sources. In the course of next week, we will need a minimum of 2,500 to 3,000 more ventilators. Now, extraordinary efforts are underway to tap into the supply all over the country and to work to see what we can produce here in this city. But that is the number we're working with at this moment for next week. There's also an ongoing effort to get personnel. This is a growing concern as we go forward, but again, one where we see a tremendous response. So many New Yorkers have volunteered folks with medical training of all kinds. More and more volunteering to come forward and their being act on right away [inaudible]. We'll talk about the many people who have been found. Medical professionals been put under contract, who are joining us rapidly. And the requests that I've made to the White House and the Pentagon for over a thousand military medical personnel. I reemphasize that request to Administrator Gainer of FEMA earlier today as well. I'll keep you updated on that. So, many personnel needs but also a lot of personnel coming our way quickly. But we have to always remember to keep building out that ICU capacity. We need to keep using those ventilators we need, we need the personnel that go with it. And we also have to constantly think about giving some relief to the heroic folks at the front line right now in our hospitals. They need to see reinforcements come, they need a chance to get some downtime so they can finally recover from everything they've been doing and then they can get back into this battle. So, we will keep an eye constantly on that personnel situation and update you regularly.

So, the bottom line, supplies continue to come in at a very rapid rate and they go out right away to hospitals all over the city and to first responders. The speed has become remarkable. The turnaround time very, very quick, to again, all the hundreds of people and especially to that team at Emergency Management, all the folks from Emergency Management, from the agencies, from City Hall, my extraordinary colleagues who came together to create this rapid deployment plan of bringing in supplies and getting them out. I want to give you, again, profound thanks for what you've achieved, and we're going to need you even more in the weeks ahead.

Now, I decided as we built out this apparatus that we wanted to bring in additional leadership and some of the best leadership anywhere in this country, and we know him well. He led with great distinction our Police Department. I was so proud the day I named him Police Commissioner. He did an outstanding job in those years serving us, leading an organization of over 50,000 extraordinary people and keeping this city safe. I'm going to talk about the role that Jimmy O'Neill will play and it's going to connect exactly into what I've just told you already about everything we're doing to keep our hospitals strong. But I want to take a moment to express my gratitude because Jimmy's coming to aid us, because of the willingness of his company VISA and particularly its CEO Al Kelly, who is someone I've known for quite a while, who’s someone who really loves New York City and cares about this place. I want to thank Al. I want to thank VISA for freeing up so much of Jimmy's time so he can do this crucial work, it's going to be a truly lifesaving. So, a profound thanks to you.

Now, that team, as I mentioned, the hundreds and hundreds of people who are moving the shipments constantly, that's been an area where we've seen tremendous strength and consistency. What I want to see now is absolute seamlessness in terms of how supplies, equipment to go into our hospitals immediately get distributed where they're needed in the hospital to the frontline workers that we constantly are able to say exactly which hospital needs what at any given hour. I'm not talking about weeks, I'm not talking about days, I'm talking about any given hour, knowing exactly what each hospital needs. So, we can make those rapid moves those rapid shipments and ensure that within each hospital that distribution is strong and smart and of course we are being honest. We've always been honest, I know Dr. Katz will make this point as well, that as we get into supplies, we have to shepherd them. We have to make sure they're being used properly, support our health care workers with everything we've got, but also be smart about rationing what we have to make it last in this tough situation. I thought about all of those pieces and I thought about the many different kinds of hospitals and I think we've got some of the greatest hospitals in the world. Everyone knows that in this City we've got our public health system, which has really distinguished itself in this crisis and Dr. Katz's leadership and his team has been amazing. We've got independent hospitals there, they're smaller community-based hospitals and they play a crucial role in our City. But a lot of them have gone through for years – financial hardships. They often deal with folks with tremendous medical needs, but— on many, many times people that don't have insurance. So, those independent hospitals are absolutely crucial in our ability to fight this battle, and a lot of them have struggled lately no fault of their own— they've always been there for people in greatest need, but they need special help now. So, I've asked Jimmy O'Neill to develop a system for ensuring that we'll have personnel in every hospital where they're needed. To help make sure that this supply chain is seamless and constant and focused, that the supply usage is just the way it should be and any hospital that needs additional help will be able to get it to them quickly. Jimmy will assemble a team with folks from City Hall and other agencies so we can have that presence in the hospitals and it will allow us to have a much faster and more precise communication and get people what they need when they need it. So, I'm very, very appreciative. You'll hear from Jimmy in a few minutes.

And now, I want to talk to you about looking ahead, this whole month of April. I told you what we're trying to get done by Sunday, I've told you how we see next week. Next week is going to be a very difficult, intense week, and yet the preparations have been very, very strong for next week as well, we'll keep updating you on that. But here's the overall situation the alluded to it many a time, but I want to just remind all New Yorkers about this we're always going to need more of— that supply chain I talked about. We're going to need the masks and the N95s and the gloves, the gowns, all that, every single week we're going to need more of that. We’re going to need the ventilators, especially in that number that we've said I've said from the very beginning, 15,000 for New York City, that number is a very specific number based on the projections we've had. That number continues to be the right number, continue, I've told the President, United States and everyone else I've spoken to in the federal government that is the true number. And the second we don't need all those ventilators we will happily share them with the rest of the country immediately. When it comes to— hospital beds, again, the goal is to take the 20,000 or so we started with the month of March with a normal compliment of hospital beds in this City that we're staffed with professionals all over our hospital system. Those 20,000 are increasingly going to become all ICU beds over the month of April. That's what our hospitals will be for more and more taking on the toughest COVID cases at the front line. We need to build out during the month of April, an amazing number of additional hotel beds 60 excuse me I said hospital beds, I should say, my apology, hospital beds and hotels would be one of the ways that we achieved that. But hospital beds, we need to build out an additional number of 65,000 hospital beds in the City of New York by the end of April. We already have a tremendous start the 20,000 beds, as I say, they were already there. Hospitals are now adding up to 50 percent more capacity just drawing on all the space they have and Dr. Katz talked about this from the beginning of the ability of hospitals to quickly build out more beds, more space, more ICU. That number will add an additional almost 10,000 beds right there, Javits Center we've talked about, Dr. Katz will go over this, thousands of beds there, and then all the hotels will bring online increasingly. So, this is going to be an epic process through the month of April to build out that capacity but this goal is within reach. It's going to take herculean effort, but I'm confident it can be reached.

So now, as I turn to Dr. Katz, we're going to talk about where we are today on our hospital capacity, the building out process, starting with our public hospital system. This is – this growth pattern, this building out I'm talking about is literally going on 24/7 – and a profound thanks to everyone who's participating in it. So, Dr. Katz is going to give you a sense of where we stand today and how we're going to be moving forward over the coming weeks. Dr. Mitch Katz.

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. And thank you for supporting the public hospital system. It's clear in this emergency how lucky we are that New York City kept open its public hospital systems didn't allow them to close the way it happened in Philadelphia and Washington DC and Milwaukee because in this crisis we so desperately need the public system. We have 324 ICU beds that we run on under normal circumstances and a total of 4,428 beds. And while that, those are very large numbers they pale in comparison, Mr. Mayor to what you showed us we're actually going to need in this crisis. But we are prepared to meet the crisis in our immediate surge to handle it. Elmhurst Hospital, which is on the forefront of handling COVID patients, it's in an area of central Queens. Where a large number of districts depend on this hospital because there is no other hospital near it. It has already increased from 29 intensive care beds to 111 intensive care beds and, sir, that’s in the matter of 10 days. I mean, these are changes that you would expect under normal circumstances, would take six months to a year to get the beds in place, to get the staff in place, to get the equipment in place. Every single one of these beds represents a courageous nurse taking care of the patients. Courageous physicians on all of the support intensive care patients need a great deal of support from pharmacy from transport, from radiology. It's a tremendous effort to take care of each intensive care unit patients and yet Elmhurst has magically gone from 29 to 111 beds. At Lincoln Hospital they've grown their ICU from 34 beds to 114 beds with 30 more coming there. And Bellevue Hospital has grown from 66 to 127, with 52 more coming.

And this is really just the beginning of what we need in order to handle this emergency. We have in order to deal with the fact that COVID-19 patients have not appeared evenly across our system as the epidemic hits different parts of our City at different moments. Also, we recognize that some areas of our City like Queens have markedly fewer hospitals, so it's not just Elmhurst Hospital, but Queens, hospital that has also been hit extremely hard by patients and very sick patients. So, in order to be able to do this we have transferred 193 non-ICU patients and 43 ICU patients from the hospitals that have been most effected and moving them to hospitals where we have had greater capacity in the last few weeks. So, we've been moving patients to Coney Island Hospital, to Jacoby, to Harlem, to Metropolitan, and the North Central Bronx have all taken patients in order to make sure that we are able to provide care for every patient who needs it. Every hospital and I speak to them every night knows exactly what space they're next going to open during the night. We've seen a large number of patients needing intubation come in in the evening hours so we open the units often in the middle of the night in order to accommodate them. But in every case, we know what those surge wards will be it fits with the very plans that we started working on in January and February when we first saw the data coming from China. We recognize, Mr. Mayor, that while these are huge efforts, they won't meet the needs as you've outlined them to New Yorkers. So, in the short-term we're going to bring on an additional 762 intensive care beds for a total additional beds of 2,466.

And again, while these numbers are astronomical, they don't add up to the numbers that you showed New Yorkers of what's going to be needed. We intend to convert all of the hospitals into intensive care units because an intensive care patient relies tremendously on the ability of the laboratory, on the pharmacy, on equipment, radiology – you cannot create an intensive care unit, a bed in a hotel. But what we can do is turn out facilities into large intensive care units and then use the hotels and the other alternative facilities for medicine patients who do need support but don't need the same level with ICU need. This is going to require a huge influx of equipment and even more importantly of staffing. The issue is not one of spacing and we've said this right from the beginning. There are many places in New York City that would be available to create additional space. The challenge is having the staff, having the equipment, and in the case of intensive care units, having all of the other services that would be necessary in order to keep people alive. So, it's our commitment to you, Mr. Mayor, that we are going to do everything working with you and all of the great people in New York City to achieve this.

In order to reach just what we've done so far, we've added 165 physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants to the system. We deployed a thousand registered nurses; we have another thousand registered nurses coming within two weeks and we've added another 350 physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants that will be coming in the next week, but this will still, again, not be sufficient. We will need a great deal more staff than this to be able to successfully increase by the number of intensive care beds that New York City's going to need.

We're doing everything possible to support the incredibly brave nurses and physicians and support staff of every kind, who are working long hours often watching their own coworkers become ill. It creates a tremendous sense of distress to both be working hard and know that coworkers have gotten sick, but people are bravely working on. We want to do everything possible that we can to support them. We're making sure that there is COVID-19 testing available free for any of our frontline personnel - that's starting at our occupational health clinics. We've received more than $1.6 million in donations to provide comfort items to our frontline staff. They can't take any breaks to go out to get food. That's not even in, in our rule book about how you get through these kinds of crises. So, having people give us donations so that we basically can bring in food for all the shifts of workers, people do need to eat and we are very grateful. The rooms in the hotels – many people who are working 12, 16 hours and around many, many patients with COVID do not feel comfortable returning home to their spouses and their children. So, we have provided hotel rooms so that they can go to a place where they feel they can get rest without putting their families at risk and come back the next day. We're providing taxi rides. You, sir, provided parking vouchers for people so that they can park their cars easily. Our Helping Healers Heal is extending emotional, psychological counseling to healthcare workers in dealing with the stress; having your patients die despite the very best efforts is so distressing. This is a very fierce disease for a very small number of people. We've put up the for people who wish to donate to support your healthcare workers at nychhc.networkforgood.com and we so much appreciate the support of all of the first responders: fire, EMS, the police, the people at the Office of Emergency Management who have been getting us supplies and keeping us going.

In terms of additional surge Mr. Mayor, would you like to speak about these facilities? Would you like me to speak about them?

Mayor: I'll just say broadly, and Mitch, you can talk about some of the specifics, but broadly, when you look at this list, and remember everyone, this is a series of facilities that just days ago were not outfitted to provide healthcare. So, if you go through the list, which, and, and Mitch will talk about it, but every single one of them is either a place that was doing something totally different or is something brand new in this city. Obviously the most powerful example, the most compelling example, which we all are feeling is the presence of the USNS Comfort. So, Mitch will talk to you about the specifics that we have already moving and then I'm going to talk about how we're going to turn more and more hotels into hospitals. So, you start, Mitch.

President Katz: Sir, I had the pleasure, the pleasure of going to Javits Center and seeing a tremendous number of staff who are willing and able to take care of patients to help us to unload our hospitals so that we can focus on the intensive care unit of intubated patients – located on the West Side of Manhattan. In phase one, a thousand medical surgical beds are currently available with another 1500 medical surgical beds to come in late April. Samaritan's Purse located in Central Park with additional support for Mount Sinai: 65 beds, 10 intensive care unit, and 55 medical surgical beds that we believe will come up in 24 to 48 hours. We were all so proud to see the Navy bring the Comfort ship located in Western Manhattan with 750 medical and surgical beds and a crew of phenomenal physicians and nurses who are prepared to take care of patients. At one of our own facilities on Roosevelt Island we were able to open up 240 medical surgical beds. We already have more than 25 patients who are being taken care of in that facility and during this week we will fill it up. We have, I know you were yesterday at the National Tennis Center located in Corona, Queens showing New Yorkers that you've prepared a facility that can take care of up to 350 medical and surgical beds. At Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook we believe it will be possible to create up to 750 medical and surgical beds that will go up in mid-April. And then finally, we know that the hotel industry is capable of providing us with a large number of rooms. We so far have secured 10,000 beds and 20 hotels and we believe that the capacity is there. Again, staffing will be one of the things we will most work with you, Mr. Mayor, to be sure that the people in all of these facilities are fully cared for.

Mayor: Thank you very, very much Mitch and get ready, I'm going to come back to you on the, the way people can donate to your frontline healthcare workers so get that website ready again. But, let me first say, so, think about the amazing, amazing, fast, intense, passionate effort that's being made here to expand our hospital capacity in record time. Nothing like this has ever happened literally in the history of New York City. Let's go back to that previous slide; I want to work off of that. The, again, think of where we started. We started at the month of March; 20,000 staffed hospital beds in what everyone would say is, you know, we’re the finest hospitals in the United States of America. Take all the hospitals in New York City, take all the professionals, all the amazing talent; you know, this where so many of the doctors of tomorrow train for the whole nation. That was an amazing place to start. No one could have imagined a world in which we'd have to build out so much so quickly but now, when you think about the fact that those hospitals that with their 20,000 beds are basically adding 10,000 more within those hospitals. You look at what Mitch has reviewed on this slide before us, the thousands of beds at Javits, the USNS Comfort, like adding right there in that ship - like adding - another major hospital to New York City. All these different pieces are starting to add up and then we go to the hotels. So, the fact that, right now, the hotels we've already identified and contracted with – and I want to thank everyone in the hotel industry by the way – I want to thank the owners of the hotels, the managers of the hotels, the people that work in the hotels, the unions who represent the people in the hotels, everyone has been working shoulder to shoulder to speed this effort because it has to happen in record time. So, right now, we already have accounted for 10,000 additional beds: you take the 20,000 we started with, the 10,000 more we're adding in the hospitals themselves, look at 10,000 more already from the hotels that will be coming online soon - that's 40,000. The thousands more you see on this slide in specific locations and we're going to keep building and building. The key going forward is going to be more hotels and more big spaces. We've got obviously in the case of the Javits Center, in the case of the Billy Jean King National Tennis Center, in the case of the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, these are large spaces where you can do hundreds of beds at a time or in the case of Javits, thousands. We're going to be looking for more and more spaces like that. I know the State of New York is also doing the same, and we're all coordinated; we're dividing labor. They've got major spaces that they'll be working on. The City will be adding our own.

We've been getting tremendous cooperation from the private sector. Again, I'll tell you the day we ask someone to help fight the coronavirus and they say, no, but I have not had that day yet. So, in terms of finding the additional beds we need, we believe there is enough major venues - bigger spaces in New York City - that we can retrofit, and we can do that quickly. And we're working with folks in the construction trades, contractors, folks in real estate; they're all saying yes, they’re all quickly helping us get this work done. And then those hotels, and I'm very, very sorry for what the hotel industry has been through in this crisis. A lot of people have been put in a tough, tough situation to work in our hotels – they're obviously struggling, but what it has meant at the same time is a huge number of hotels have become available to the City of New York and literally we can go in and lease an entire hotel building and we can do that dozens and dozens and dozens of times until we get to the point that we have all the beds we need. So that is the game plan. It's going to be furious and intense, but we're going to get it done and I'm so grateful to everyone that’s a part of it. As I say a few more words and then we'll turn to Jimmy, I want to remind people again; if you're able to help our frontline hospital workers, these heroes have been doing so much and Mitch’s folks in the public hospitals have borne the brunt they’ve done amazing work. Mitch, one more time, what's the website people can go to if they just want to give those direct donations, the food and the other things that will help your heroic workers get through the day, what's that website again?

President Katz: Thank you Mr. Mayor it's nychhc.networkforgood.com.

Mayor: Say it one more time.

President Katz: Nychhc.networkforgood.com.

Mayor: All right and then to all New Yorkers and anyone in the country who wants to help New York City with equipment, with supplies, who wants to volunteer their time – reminding you anyone can call 833-NYC-0040 – 833-NYC-0040. And we are so thankful for the help. So, let me pull this all together. I think we've known for a long time that New Yorkers are the strongest, the toughest, the most resilient. And in a crisis, we show what we're made of. And it's happening again in an amazing way. I, you know, I don't have to say again what our doctors and nurses and health care workers are doing. Our first responders, they've been exemplary. Our companies, the private sector has stepped up in a huge, huge way, donating so much to help our frontline heroes. What's happening now at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as an example, it keeps coming back to me, really touches my heart. And please go see the video that we've had on my Twitter feed on this @NYCMayer. The – it's unbelievable to see a wartime factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard making those face shields to protect our health care workers and our first responders. And there's more going on in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, we'll be talking about in the coming days. But the fact that PPEs are being built right here in New York City by hand, each piece built by hand, labor of love to help their fellow New Yorkers is so moving. So extraordinary. Everyday people who are donating food to Mitch’s colleagues who are purchasing and donating masks, gloves, you name it, it's been nonstop.

So, this virus is tough. This virus is going to give us a real battle. But this virus is no match for the people of New York City. This city is strong. We will get through this, we will get through this together. We will come out the other side an even stronger city. And I mentioned that we are blessed to have help always. And I want to talk about that, but I realized I first needed to say a few words in Spanish, just to summarize.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

So, everyone, as I said, help has been pouring in from around the country. And I got some help a few weeks back from San Francisco. The second San Francisco put their shelter in place order out, I thought that that looked like the model we should follow here in New York City immediately. But I wanted to make sure it was functioning in a way that would really protect people, make sure we could get ahead of this virus and also work in terms of people's day to day lives. I needed an eye witness to tell me what was happening in San Francisco and someone I could trust to confirm that it would work here in New York City. And once I got that confirmation, I said that this was something we have to do right here. Well that eyewitness happened to be none other than our former Police Commissioner, Jimmy O'Neill, who has been based in recent months in San Francisco working for Visa. And not just every day, but it seemed like every hour, Jimmy was sending me reports, updating me, telling me what he saw, telling me what he thought would work.

And then a few days ago he reached out to me and he said that he would be coming back to New York. And he said he was ready to serve his city again in whatever capacity we needed, no matter how big or how small. And I said to Jimmy that knowing the amazing ability he brings, we need him to take on a major, major role. And we talked about all the ways he knows the city and he knows the city so well from his 35 plus years on our police force. He's been in every hospital, he's been in every neighborhood. He knows the people of this city so deeply, cares so deeply for this city. And so, I talked to him about this vision of ensuring that not only the supplies get to the hospital, but that we could really make sure everything was being used ideally, and that we could resupply instantly whenever hospitals needed it. Needing a leader of that effort to create that network of professionals that we could work with to really make that precise and hone that. So I can tell you that Jimmy O'Neill has answered the City's call before and he's answering the call again. And it is just a great honor to welcome him back, our former Police Commissioner, and now my senior advisor, helping us wage this battle against coronavirus. Welcome back, Jimmy O'Neill.

James P. O’Neill: Thanks, Mr. Mayor. It's an honor to come back to New York City. First of all, I want to thank Chief Bill Scott from San Francisco PD who provided me with a lot of the intel of what was happening. And plus, I took a couple of trips into San Francisco myself and I wish the people out in the West Coast all the best. It's just a – it's the responsibility of all New Yorkers to do their part. I always felt that way and I continue to feel that way. And I want to thank Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you. I want to thank all the great people at Visa that I've been working with over the last four months and I will continue to work with. And I really want to thank the CEO Al Kelly for giving me the opportunity to do this job and to do my job at Visa. And it's important that we all come together as New Yorkers. It’s one thing I saw in my time as a cop, you know, this is a resilient city. Everybody's supportive. Lately, I've just been seeing, reading, hearing about all the great work that's going on in New York City right now. And I just felt compelled to come back and offer to help and do whatever I could.

And basically, what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be helping to manage or managing the supply chain. Supply – making sure that this is an inspection regiment. Make sure that we're sourcing, delivering, distributing, and tracking to make sure that we do our best, continue to do our best for the health care workers that are out there right now, this very minute, doing their best to save lives. And it's a system of accountability and we have to make sure that it's operating efficiently.

Just before I wrap it up and we're going to – some of that equipment is N95 masks, surgical masks, isolation gowns, face shield, goggles, all the equipment that our health care workers need. Just really, I'm truly inspired by what I've seen over the last two months. The doctors, physician's assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses all the other workers in the hospital. Now we have the military involved. Thank you to the Navy, the State police, the Port Authority police. It's, they really - these people truly are an inspiration and I'm thankful for them. And last but not least, I want to thank the men and women to the NYPD who continue to keep the city safe. And in spite of everything that's going on right now, they're out there answering radio runs, doing their best to keep people safe. And I’d like to commend Commissioner Shea, what a great job that you're doing right now. So how could you not want to help this great city and I'm going to do my best and thanks for giving me the opportunity Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Thank you very much Jimmy. Your best is very, very good. So, I know with you here our health care workers are going to get even more support. And I want to thank you. It means a lot to all of us in this city that you are back. Okay. With that we are going to turn to questions from the media. And Olivia, you're going to let me know the name and the outlet of each caller?

Moderator: Yeah, just have three quick programming notes at the top. The first is we're going to do one question per reporter to get to as many outlets as possible. Also, if reporters have additional questions about hospital capacities, we are going to have a technical briefing with Dr. Katz after this press conference. You can save those questions for later. And finally, Commissioner Shea's on the phone.

Mayor: And Olivia just to clarify that reporters who want to be a part of the technical briefing to just stay on the line after?

Moderator: Yes.

Mayor: You want to do that? Okay. And Mitch will standby when we finish the main portion of the press conference. And welcome to the call Dermot Shea. And we will go ahead now with the first question from the media.

Moderator: Gloria, you're up first. Gloria?

Mayor: And from NY1.

Question: Hi guys, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Gloria.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. Thank you. First, I want to ask a question about Queens specifically. And I know that you have been talking about the increased cases that we are seeing there. But I wondered if - for Dr. Katz, if there's anything that you guys as health professionals have found about why there is such a concentration in Queens specifically? And I understand you mentioned today the lack of hospitals, but is there anything else to it? We have been getting some reports today about the situation at Elmhurst, specifically about the lack of ventilators. And I'm wondering if there was any detail from today that you can give us an update on, in terms of what the current status is there as it pertains to ventilators at that hospital?

President Katz: For the ventilators there are enough ventilators right now for Elmhurst and all of our hospitals. As the mayor has been very clear. We have enough ventilators in New York City until Sunday. Beyond that, we're waiting to get help from the federal and State governments. I think what any time people - and we've had at various times at various hospitals, people think that there aren't enough ventilators. That's because at any one area of the hospital, such as within the emergency department, they may not see all of the ventilators that are there in the hospital physically. But I check every night myself before I go to sleep. I look at how many ventilators each hospital has and I'm sure that they will have enough to get through the night. And I restock every single day. So, we are totally on top of it, but the issue that the Mayor has pointed out is that that will not go beyond Sunday when we will exhaust our supply.

In terms of why Queens. I think the clearest answer, and we've looked at this, is that Queens has about half the number of hospital beds per thousand persons, than Manhattan. And especially where Elmhurst is, there is a huge area of population that are extremely dependent on Elmhurst. It's the hospital that's closest is also a hospital that is very well regarded. Where immigrants and the uninsured feel safe to go. So that also plays a role into why people go. And then finally, although it will be a while before we fully understand all of the aspects of the epidemiology, we know that in Queens, many families because of poverty, live together in very close quarters. So that while we are practicing as a city, social distancing. You may have multiple families living in a very small apartment. And so it's easy to understand why there's a lot of transmission of COVID occurring.

Moderator: Henry from Bloomberg is up next. Henry?

Question: All right. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Henry.

Question You know, we're coming up on some religious observances and I want to know specifically whether the City is going to exempt some groups of people, some size of groups? Is there any policy that's set forth?

Mayor: Henry, just to clarify, you mean – do you mean from religious gatherings?

Question: Yes, the Seders, the Easter services, any gatherings to observe these holidays?

Mayor: I appreciate the question very, very much. I mean, it's obviously a sacred time of year for so many people. And I've had this conversation in general, not about the specific holidays, but the broader issue of what's the morally right thing to do? What's the right thing to do from the perspective of faith? With some of the great faith leaders of this city, starting with Cardinal Dolan, who I have consulted with so many times over the years, but also leaders of so many other denominations and faiths, we have a very consistent process of consulting with them on many matters through the organization [inaudible] and through our Clergy Advisory Board. Henry, I have rarely heard more unity and consensus in New York City than I have on this topic. That this is a time in our history where you have to protect the lives of all New Yorkers. And that means there cannot be religious gatherings. And I know that is particularly painful at this time of year for folks who cherish their faith and look forward to these holidays and they are moments of deep, deep devotion. But what I've heard overwhelmingly from our religious leaders is they understand that traditional religious gatherings cannot occur until this crisis is over. And it certainly will not be over until we get through April and potentially well into May. And then we'll still be dealing with it, you know, for months after just thank God not on the kind of constant level of increase that we've been dealing with in recent weeks.

So no, I – look, if a family lives under the same roof already, then social distancing is a different matter entirely. Because once you're on the whole roof, the same roof with people all the time, social distancing isn't the same thing that you obviously are already in constant contact. A family, having a Seder, a family worshiping around Easter is one thing. But we are practicing strict social distancing. And I would just be very, very careful about doing anything outside of the family unit. I don't think we want to see any kind of gathering. The idea is that at this point in our lives, we're just staying very tight with our own families and that is the safe way to observe faith and that's the safe way to go about life. So that's the guidance we're giving.

Moderator: Julia from the Post is up next. Julia?

Question: Hi, can you hear me Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Yes, Julia.

Question: Hi. So, on playgrounds – 24 hours ago, a little over 24 hours ago, you said that there was largely compliance in terms of social distancing on playgrounds and your goal was to try to preserve as many as possible if people follow the rules. So, what changed to lead you to agree with the Governor's decision to shut them down? And what would you say to critics who claim playgrounds are the latest example of you delaying tough decisions and leaving them up to the Governor?

Mayor: Well, Julia, look, first of all, we're all working together. The Governor and I have agreed overwhelmingly throughout this crisis. The strategic direction is something we have constantly consulted on. Our teams talk about all the time. We've just agreed almost without exception on the major things we've had to do. There were definitely moments where there were slight differences. I mean, obviously I wanted to see shelter in place. You know, the Governor and I talked about that. We talked about closing schools and we're always trying to make sense of the different things we were seeing. We've talked about the parks issue. But in every case, it was collegial Julia, that comparing notes, our teams comparing notes. No one takes lightly these decisions. None of them are easy, none of them are or anything you wish on people. But what has been a real agreement that we're going to work together. And we talked several times last week about the playgrounds and agreed that we would, you know, try and give it a few more days. We got to Saturday, we still wanted to give it a few more days to see. But in the last 24 hours, as you know, I decided it was time to implement fines over the weekend. We've been stepping up enforcement. You know, yesterday we announced the particular playgrounds that needed to be closed. Previously we have started to take down basketball rims. But you know, the Governor got to a point where he really thought it was an abundance of caution issue, that to go ahead and move across the board in terms of the playgrounds. And I respect that and I'm going to work with him. The truth that I said is true. We did not see a lot of noncompliance. Commissioner Shea and I talked about it not only daily, multiple times a day. We didn't see a lot of noncompliance. But I do appreciate that the Governor at this point thought, you know, this is a good one to take an abundance of caution and I respect that. And, again, we're always going to seek that consensus. I hope when this crisis starts to abate, that one of the very first things we can reopen is playgrounds. But that's obviously a way in the future.

Moderator: Reema from Chalkbeat is up next. Reema?

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Reema.

Question: Okay. So, as you know, the State lawmakers are trying to nail down a final budget and you know, we just got a chance to look at school aid. Looks like [inaudible] you probably know this, that New York City is set to receive nearly the same need that they received, that they have this year. Part of that, about $717 million is from the federal stimulus package. So, you know, we're still waiting for them to vote on a final budget, but I'm - remember earlier in the year, you and Chancellor Carranza were saying that the Governor's proposal was actually still $136 million less than what you needed. So, what I'm wondering is this budget, if passed as is, is that going to, you know, is that going to force New York City to look at layoffs or other kinds [inaudible] and tell me more about that?

Mayor: Yeah, Reema let me respond to - I heard your question pretty clearly. Just so you know, your line was kind of skipping in and out, but got enough of your question. What we said back in February was true, that the budget as was proposed then was going to lead to you know, the need to cut the budget for the New York City Public Schools. And I was very worried about that and commissioner - excuse me, Chancellor Carranza was as well. Obviously, the world is entirely different. That's, you know, I think about that day, I gave my testimony up in February, up in Albany, that seems like a century ago. We've all gone through so much. So, the budget as proposed, it does not shock me that the Governor felt, and apparently the Legislature apparently also feels there wasn't an ability to even keep the schools the way they were practically speaking, that we're going to take another hit here. I don't – how can anyone feel good about that? But we don't have a choice at this point. It's just the reality we're dealing with. We are going to have to make tough, tough budget decisions going forward. I have announced a $1.3 billion initial PEG program and I've said very clearly that number will go up.

But Reema there is something very, very important that could happen in the coming weeks, well before we adopt our budget in June. And that is the fourth stimulus, which again, I spoke to Speaker Pelosi, to the Democratic leader of the Senate who was also our Senator Schumer. I spoke to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. There's a clear understanding there's going to be another stimulus bill. And that one of the elements of that stimulus bill will be aid for localities and states. And I think that has to be money to make up for all the massive expenditures that we're putting out to protect people from coronavirus, but also all the lost revenue because we need that money back to keep basic services going in the city, to make sure that everything people depend on our police, our fire, sanitation, education, hospitals, parks that everything can keep going. Because I keep saying if we're going to have recovery, it will be because our hospitals are functioning, our city governments are functioning, our state governments are functioning. If you don't have all those things, we're not going to have recovery. And I do believe that our colleagues in Washington understand that. So I'm very, very hopeful that those resources are really going to help us out and help us avert bigger cuts before June.

Moderator: Katie from the Wall Street Journal's up next. Katie.

Question: Hey everyone. I wanted to ask if, Dr. Katz wants to weigh in, and you too Mayor de Blasio, you know, you laid out why Queens was hit so hard, but I think the stat there that's so alarming is that there are so few hospital beds. So if, Dr. Katz, do you want to talk about why this is, I'm sure you know when you get into state funding in that, but also for the Mayor, you know, how many hospitals in Queens private but still hospitals had closed when you were at Public Advocate and the Mayor and the actions the city could have done to keep these hospitals open?

Mayor: Katie it's a good question, but I will also say the obvious you know, in the middle of a crisis, it is not unfair to say, you know, what could have been done way back when on issues like hospitals. I mean, you know, I felt for years and years long before I became Mayor that the city had ways it could have intervened to stop some of these closures and the state as well. But they did happen. And the issue now of course is to take everything we have and use it as well as possible and then, you know, continue to build out from there. So I would take – before turning to Mitch, I'd say, Katie, I think the meaning I would take for your question is not can we, you know, I know you're not suggesting this, but we can't go back in time and undo what was done over the course of the last 20 years. But we can learn the lesson going forward. And I think what we're seeing in this crisis is a very profound lesson to our city of what we're going to need in the future – our state, you know, what we're going to need in terms of health care in the future. In fact, this is a moment in history where we have to invest more and more in health care. We have to make sure that folks get covered – this is really – this crisis has been a powerful message to us about the need for universal health care. We're going to deepen as we recover, we're going to deepen our efforts with NYC Care and with guaranteeing health care to all New Yorkers. We need to push for universal health care around this country. This crisis is a powerful illustration of if we don't get this right, there's going to be other challenges ahead that could be even worse.
And it's a real wake up call to our nation.

I've now talked to every major leader of the United States of America in the last few weeks, and we are all scrambling to find ventilators among many other items. There's no conversations that have been more powerful than with our military leaders who I think also are coming to a deeper realization of what it's going to mean to protect our national security in a different way, which is our health care security going forward. I think when we get through this crisis, this country has to reassess everything. Starting with what kind of a stockpile nationally we're going to put in place, of ventilators of, you know, equipment, supplies, how we're going to build up a national health care corps that's much, much deeper than what we have now to prepare for the future. So, I think, I think there's a lot that has to change when you get through this crisis. And I think it's a wake-up call for this city, this state and this country. Mitch?

President Katz: I would just add Mr. Mayor that when I first came to New York City, health care consultants told me my focus should be on closing public hospitals because there were “too many empty beds.” And I so appreciated that that was not your perspective at all. And your direction to me was to make the public system work. And that's been our focus and I can't imagine what I would be doing right now if we had closed public hospitals. That is one of the things that's saving us is that we – I'm able to expand to areas because I did have empty wards. I would also say that in order to help Queens, our first steps were okay if the patients are at Elmhurst because there aren't other hospitals in that area, then I need to send the staff to Elmhurst to take care of those patients. And whenever Elmhurst or Queens has gotten overwhelmed, we have transferred patients out and that's where the 193 non-ICU transfers and 43 ICU transfers comes from. And again, that's part of, along with checking the ventilators, every night before I go to bed, I look at who, who is most hard hit and we determine how to level the patients across our system.

Mayor: Yeah. I just want to add one more thing and real thanks to Mitch – over the last few years, Mitch Katz took Health + Hospitals, which was struggling financially for years and put it on a very strong footing financially, managerially. When I came into office, that conversation about the need to potentially close hospitals was very, very active. And I remember in budget meetings, people would say, we have to think about that possibility of maybe we have to close some public hospitals or lay off frontline health care workers. And I'm proud to say that my administration and I said from day one, we're not going to do that. So, we kept every public hospital open. We employed all the health care workers we needed. We had no idea that would ever be a COVID-19 crisis. But thank God all of those people, those buildings, everything was in place and ready.

And I also have to tell people that for years, unfortunately, Health + Hospitals Corporation needed massive infusions of support from the city government through the city budget just to keep afloat, while it was being modernized and while it was being improved to be able to deal with the future. And we made that investment. Again, we had no idea what was coming up ahead. But we made that investment because it was right thing to do. And then Mitch has put this amazing organization on much stronger footing for the future. So, a long answer, Katie, but you raised a very important point. I wish over the last 20 years there had been moments where there was more foresight about protecting hospitals that we've now lost. But I can at least say from the perspective of City of New York in the last six years, we made a priority of protecting every single one of our public hospitals, every single one of our public hospitals has stayed strong and now we need them more than ever.

Moderator: Sean from the Daily News is up next. Sean?

Question: Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. I understand the sticking point on the budget in Albany has been making it “adjustable” and giving the Governor power to make cuts as he sees fit throughout the year. I just wanted to get your take on the idea of an adjustable budget and if you're concerned that would give the Governor too much power.

Mayor: Sean. I would just say this, we all understand it's a crisis, but it's also a democracy, and you know, the power of America, the power of New York is no matter what's thrown at us, we stay by our values. We stay by our laws. And so clearly even in a crisis, there has to be checks and balances. And it's crucial that the legislature have the kind of oversight it has traditionally had and has the ability to ensure that it agrees with what the Governor's doing. So, I understand and I respect that the Governor's going to have to make a lot of tough choices in the middle of crisis, just like I'm going to have to. So, I want him to have the freedom to make tough choices. But I also believe in those checks and balances as I always have, and we can do both at once. I don't think there's a contradiction – that balance can be struck. I think the important thing to remember is that thank God the previous stimulus bill, the second stimulus bill provided a lot of support, particularly in terms of Medicaid. Thank God the third stimulus bill provides so much support to everyday New Yorkers directly into their lives, into their wallets and real support that's going to help the state government in particular. And I am convinced there will be a fourth stimulus. So, I think beyond just the issue of how the different branches of government work together is the fact that there could be a lot of help out there. And let's remember if you take every single dollar that New York State needs to make up its budget deficit, to make it 100 percent whole, every dollar that New York City needs to make us 100 percent whole, the federal government could achieve that in a heartbeat.

The stimulus bill went to a lot of trouble to bail out you know, bigger corporations. There's question in my mind that that next stimulus can very, very easily reach a New York City, New York State with everything we need. And it should be the same for other cities and states in need. We, you know, we all say the federal government bailed out the auto industry, once upon a time, bailed out the big banks. They can bail out America's cities and America’s states, but we all need to fight for it. And by the way, I think it's going to be a bipartisan fight. I think you're going to see Republican governors, Republican mayors shoulder-to-shoulder with us Democrats fighting for it in these next weeks in Washington.

Moderator: Matt Chayes from Newsday is up next. Matt?

Question: Thanks, Olivia. Mr. Mayor, last week I asked you for the triage plan to ration care and you said “I don't think it's appropriate to start talking about. [Inaudible] called it a theoretical. You said you didn't think it's fair.” Well it's no longer theoretical – NYU Langone has a plan like this, according to the Wall Street Journal. The State’s had recommendations since 2015. So hospitals are making these calls, but it's behind closed doors with no public input. In Alabama and Washington, people with intellectual disabilities are a lower priority and [inaudible] for being out of ventilators. So, my question is this, is it your position that it's inappropriate, unfair for hospitals to have these plans at all? Or that it's inappropriate or unfair for the public to know what these plans say?

Mayor: No, I mean – look the underlying question, I obviously disagree with your wording, but the underlying question is a very powerful one. What I was saying is I think we have to be careful in this crisis. It's going to be a tough battle. And I know the media has to ask tough questions and ensure that all the concerns of the public are being aired. But I also think in an atmosphere of crisis, we have to remember that we're trying to really respect people's humanity, trying to help everyone to know all the things are being done to protect them, to help them. And be careful not to give people an impression of something that's just not the reality. And so sometimes I fear that the, you know, the questions or the representation leads people to think things are different and even worse than they are, and I'm very concerned about that.

Of course, we understand and it's not a new thing, and Dr. Katz will speak to it. There are medical ethics around what to do and really, really tough situations where tough choices have to be made. And I respect the profession to work that through. But the goal is not to talk about what to do when it's too late. The goal is to fight every minute to avoid ever having to get to that point. And that means having enough medical personnel, enough ventilators, enough beds. That's what we're focused on. And honestly, I think talking about these horrible choices and contingencies just distracts from the mission, which is to protect every life and save every life we can. If you say it in terms of – I don't know what's happening in Alabama or any place else, but if you say is government making a decision that would a separate different people the way you're suggesting? No, of course not. And I don't know what some of the private hospitals are doing about their ethical choices, but I respect that they're very professional organizations. In terms of our public hospitals, in terms of what we are doing as the City of New York. Our goal is to save every patient that can be saved, and that's the basis of this fight. You want to add?

President Katz: I would fully agree with that that at this moment we can be saying as a City that we have enough ventilators till Sunday and we need for ventilators to be released from the federal and state caches to keep people alive. Well, we could be saying let's focus on allocation decisions. I think it's much better to focus on getting enough ventilators so that we don't have to make an allocation decision. The state guidelines that you refer, which are thoughtful, have never been promulgated into law. So as of now, they stand as some very thoughtful guidance by a very learned group of people. But they're not applicable as law. They cannot be – you cannot make decisions based on those guidelines and say, well this is how we are governed.

Moderator: Sydney, from the Advance is up next. Sydney.

Question: Hey there, Mr. Mayor. So, you and Dr. Katz outlined your search plan for all of the public hospitals in the four boroughs, but you didn't mention any plan for Staten Island. As we know, it's the only borough without a public hospital. And from the numbers we know today for Staten Island’s two private hospitals, it looks like they're operating at more than 50 percent of their combined capacity. Today, there were 458 coronavirus patients alone being treated at the two hospitals and from what we know about the two hospitals’ search capacity, they can expand to a total of 829 beds. The State, Congressman Max Rose, federal government won't give us any information on when the new field hospitals are going to be opening on Staten Island, and it looks like, you know, the private hospitals will need some relief soon. Does the City have a plan in the interim to relieve Staten Island’s private hospitals before the field hospitals open in the event they reach capacity before they open and who's in charge of, you know, putting together that plan? So far, nobody, no one's been able to articulate it. Is it the City? Is it the State? Is it the job of the private hospitals?

Mayor: Okay. I appreciate the question very much. And I think we have articulated to how this entire endeavor is proceeding. The federal government, through FEMA, is constantly providing us with support. The State government and the City government are coordinating constantly to make sure each hospital gets what they need. A massive amount of supplies is being distributed all the time to all the hospitals. I want to emphasize that again, public, voluntary, independent does not matter – all the hospitals. What we are going to do in terms of Staten Island, of course keep constantly supplying the two hospitals. I've mentioned to you there's a conversation I've had with Borough President Oddo pretty much every day over the last week, constantly monitoring what's happening, working with the State on building out capacity on Staten Island. The State's got some pieces they're working on. We're going to work on other pieces. Again, one of our focal points will be hotels. And it's just going to be a constant effort to keep building more and more capacity to protect Staten Islanders. Commissioner O'Neill in terms of using RUMC as one example of a hospital that serves a lot of Staten Islanders, a lot of people in need. We're going to make sure that they have what they need. This is the kind of thing where the team that Jimmy puts together will be present in hospitals on a regular basis to make sure that flow of supplies is exactly what they need, make sure they're being rationed out the right way to get the maximum support for the health care workers and make sure there's always what they need for the next day. There's going to be a very dynamic process, but that's the process that our team at Emergency Management and H + H are working on every single day. That's why you've seen millions and millions of items already flowing out to the hospitals. And the exact pattern we talked to you about was not at all just about H + H – when I talked about all those hotels we’re expanding, that's every single borough and public spaces as I mentioned – large public spaces, we’re going to constantly find more and bring them online. And, Sydney, the amazing thing is how quickly they can be brought online. Yesterday, I was at the Billie Jean King Center – the tennis center in Queens – that's going to be open for patients as early as Tuesday. So, we're going to move rapidly and Staten Island is absolutely going to be a part of this plan

Moderator: Erin Durkin from Politico is up next. Erin?

Question: Hi there. I was just wondering, you mentioned briefly that Health + Hospitals [inaudible] going to be offering of all staff testing. I know previously the Health Department was saying this wasn't necessary for people without symptom. Can you explain why the change in policy and why it wasn’t done sooner?

Mayor: Yeah. I'll start and then Dr. Katz will add. One, we're starting to get more testing capacity and, Erin, boy, if you look back – you know, my first press conference on coronavirus was January 24th when I called for more federal testing and the ability of the city to do its own testing. And I wish to hell the federal government had listened to us back then. But finally, we're actually starting to get a lot more testing capacity. And so, we have the capacity that we can use a different strategic way. The other thing that's true is our health care workers who are just fighting so hard and going through so much for, a number of them – they are requesting testing as something that will give them a greater sense of confidence as they do this extraordinary work. We want to accommodate them. And since we have the capacity now, Mitch thought this was a smart time to make it available for those who want it. It's not obligatory, but for those who want it. Let me have Mitch [inaudible] –

President Katz: I agree with all of those, but I would add another major reason that we are not encouraging the general public to go for testing if they're asymptomatic is that we want everybody to shelter in place. So, we recognize that if people are seeking a test, then they're going to be leaving their home, they're going to be going out to going to go to another health care facility, there’s going to be a need to use protective equipment on the person who's doing the test. In the case of our health care workers, they are already at the hospital, which is where the tests are being done, so it no way results in more people being out and communicating in ways that could cause transmission of the virus.

Moderator: Yoav, from the City, is up next. Yoav?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Hi, Dr. Katz. I wanted to ask about something Governor Cuomo said today. He said, once you go on a ventilator, you only have a 20 percent chance of coming off. And Dr. Katz, I wanted to ask you whether you're kind of seeing the same figure on a city level and, I guess, if there's anything you can say about that. It's just, you know, we've been hearing the ventilators are kind of our best hope and, obviously, every life is worth saving, but, I guess, what does it say that our best hope perhaps only has a 20 percent chance of succeeding?

President Katz: Yes. the Governor is right. In fact, the estimates that I've seen are closer to 15 percent, but the issue is that you don't know when people come in who's that 15 percent that can survive. This is a fierce virus for a very small number of people and part of when I talk to people in the hospital – part of what's so hard for them is they only see the people who are so sick on the ventilators. The reality is, again, most of us are going to be – who are exposed to COVID are going to have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Only 20 percent of us are going to need the hospital's care. Only five percent of us are going to need to be in an ICU. Only about three to four percent of us will need to be on the ventilator. But it is true that those people who have gone on the ventilator, the chance of getting off it is only about 15 percent. We have seen successes and we celebrate – we have at Health + Hospitals had people come off the ventilator and that is so rewarding for the physicians and nurses.

Mayor: Yeah. And, Yoav, our goal is to – I just want to be really clear, because it's really important – sort of the mission statement – our goal is to save every life. And any life that can be saved, we will save. Mitch just made it real plain, when someone comes into that hospital, they don't have an ID badge on them saying, you know, what's going to happen to them in a week or two weeks. Our health care workers fight for every single human being, doesn't matter who they are or where they come from. So, that's how we're going to go about this. And, look, a ventilator is just – we know it, we know it can be the difference between life and death. We know there are other people who are not going to need a ventilator, but they're still going to need health care. We don't take an attitude of, you know, any way de-valuing each life. We value each life tremendously. And we're New Yorkers, so we value everyone equally. And that's why we're going to fight to get every ventilator, to get all the staffing we need, and to save every single life. And I want to never have a day where I say, you know, the help we ask for wasn't there and someone died – someone died who didn't need to die. That's the standard to me. Did everyone get saved who could be saved? Or, did anyone die who didn't need to die because the ventilator wasn't there? That's why it's so sacred to get every single one we need in time.

Moderator: Last two with the Mayor – Jeff Mays, from the New York Times. Jeff Mays?

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. Quick question on the playground issue, does that mean that the rest of the parks remain open? And do you plan to open up any more spaces such as streets to allow people to have more space? And finally, are you at all concerned that not making this decision shows that you are slow to make certain critical decisions during this crisis?

Mayor: No. Jeff, just look at the facts please, respectfully. January 24th, I started fighting to get us the testing we needed and kept throughout February for it. The day that I came to the decision it was time to close the schools, as painful as that decision was, that same night I also made the decision to close bars and restaurants, make them go to only takeout and delivery. Those decisions, closing schools, closing bars and restaurants, obviously way ahead of so much of the country. It was then shortly thereafter – and again, I give special thanks to Jimmy O'Neill who helped me think through the shelter in place issue because of what was happening in San Francisco – I called for shelter in place ahead of the vast majority of public chief executives in this nation. So, no, I can make decisions all day long, but there's sometimes, Jeff, where the data tells me that we have an opportunity to try and strike some balance. And again, I have tremendous faith in the NYPD, and tremendous faith in Commissioner Shea, and we looked at the compliance levels in the playgrounds and we did not see a particular challenge. But, again, I understand why the State wanted to go to an abundance-of-caution stance and I accept it and want to work with the State and always be united. So very, very comfortable with that. Once I think something needs to be done, I will – I remind you of this last weekend, saying that any houses of worship still having services, we would shut down and disperse, announcing the fines for folks who were violating social distancing. Not problem in the world when I think something is justified, and we've thought about the consequences intended and unintended, I will pull the trigger every time when it's time to take the next step.

Moderator: Last call with the Mayor, Jennifer from the AP. Jennifer?

Question: Hi. Thanks for taking this. I know that [inaudible] questions about the H + H surge plan [inaudible] technical briefing and I appreciate that, but I just wanted to ask you, as the Mayor, how confident do you feel about getting [inaudible] –

Mayor: How confident – what?

Question: Do you feel about getting the number of beds that are needed?

Mayor: On the beds – so, Jennifer, it's a great question because it also points up the larger dynamic around the beds, which has everything that goes with the beds. So, I'll start and Mitch can elaborate. And then, again, Jimmy and I will leave and Mitch can stay on for any other technical briefing matters that journalists want to go into. But, Jennifer, the education a lot of us have received during this crisis is that all the pieces have to fit if you're going to save every life. So, the beds are one thing, the equipment's another thing, the supplies are another thing, and, most importantly, the people, the health care professionals are the crucial piece of the equation. The great, powerful truth is you can't achieve the goal without all the pieces come together. So, the beds in some ways are the easiest part of the equation. They're not hard to do in the sense of, for example, you take a hotel while you've got, you know, a building full of beds – you’ve got to make some modifications, you've got to build a nursing station on every floor and things like that, but it's not a ridiculously complex. It takes a lot of work quickly, but it can be done. We know how to do it. And when you're talking about a lot of supplies, they're out there, it's just getting them here in time. When you're talking about ventilators, a much tougher equation, because we all know there's just not enough in the country, but we obviously have the greatest need, we should get the most and then pass them on later. You talk about personnel, endless need for personnel, with a lot of people unfortunately out for a period of time because of the virus, with folks who need time off cause they've been working so hard. That's where I've been clear that we must have an infusion of personnel, not only from the private sector in the New York area, but also from the national level. I've had this conversation with the President, with the Defense Secretary, with the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the FEMA administrator, and I could go on and mention others as well. And I've said, we must have a national mobilization of our doctors, our nurses all over the country like we've never seen before. Something much closer to a wartime dynamic – and if not a draft, per se, something close to a draft in which every available doctor, nurse health care worker who is needed at the front is moved there by the military to serve for the time they're needed and then moved on to the next location and the recipient city will send a lot of our health care professionals to the next place that needs them. That's how serious it is. That's how unprecedented it is. I have asked the President and all the other leaders I've mentioned to get us, starting on Sunday, 1,000 nurses, 150 doctors, 300 respiratory therapists, and that's just the first request. And the President, I talked to him and to the other leaders about calling up the military reserve across the nation. The President did that last Friday. That's the level we're at now. So, the point – I'm sorry for the long answer, but it's a very, very crucial topic. The beds, we can do. It’ll take – it’ll be a race against time, it'll take a lot of hard work, but I'm confident we can get there. But the bed is only as good as the supplies, the equipment, and especially the people that go with it. And that's – that's the tougher part of the equation that we need to see a lot more help, particularly from the federal level to achieve. 

Mitch, do you want to add?

President Katz: You did it.

Mayor: I did – okay, Mitch has trained me well. Okay, we’ll continue with the technical briefing. Thank you to everyone. And thank you, again, to Jimmy O'Neill. Welcome back. Thank you so much for all you're going to do for us.

Thanks, everyone.

2020-04-02 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, everyone, there’s a lot to report on and a lot to tell you about today. But the first thing I want to talk to you about is something we all need to focus on this crisis – and that is hope. And I'm going to be talking about it a lot, because there's a lot of reason to hope. No matter how tough it's going to get, there are so many reasons to be thankful for all of the people who are helping our city, all the good people around the city, all the good people around this nation who are helping us. We are not alone in the least. And I got an incredible, incredible experience today this morning in Queens. It was two parts, really. The first part was visiting our EMS Station 50, meeting some of our extraordinary EMT’s and paramedics. They have literally in the last few days gone through the biggest surge in 9-1-1 calls in the history of New York City. And I’ve got to tell you, these brave individuals, they were so strong in the way they were dealing with this crisis. They were confident. They believe that their training and their partnership, their comradery, were going to serve them in this crisis no matter what. They let me know they were up for any challenge and they were also very grateful that help was arriving.

And that's the second part of what I experienced this morning at Fort Totten in Queens. It's a FEMA staging area now. And I met EMT’s and paramedics, came from all over the nation to help us in our hour of need – folks from states all over. You know, at one point, I was talking to these EMT’s and paramedics. I was thanking them on behalf of all 8.6 million New Yorkers. I was telling them what it meant to us that they had driven from all over the country in their ambulances and how powerful that was to us and how that gave us such a good feeling in this city – what it meant to our brave EMT’s and paramedics that this help was coming. And at one point I said to them, please call out the states you're from. And I just had – a shiver went up my spine. I felt this sense, this really profound sense of appreciation and faith as I heard this roll call of States. You know, Kentucky, and Alabama, and Indiana, and Illinois, and California, and Michigan, one after another, people called out the names of their states with pride, and they were so proud to be here in New York City, and they knew that New York City had often been there for them. The FDNY have been out many times around the country helping other parts of this country during natural disasters and that is appreciated, and people wanted to return the favor.

So, it was really something stirring about our nation at this moment that people are rising to the call in such a powerful way. And that helped, those hundreds of EMT’s and paramedics, and the 250 ambulances that are coming or here already. And I got to watch so many of them roll out of Fort Totten. That's amazing what that's doing immediately to help us to deal with all the emergencies we're facing around this city. Want to give a special shout out to two guys from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I had a good talk with them, Andrew and Jeff, and they literally gotten their rig and had gotten their ambulance in Kalamazoo and drove all the way to New York City, and they were just ready to go to help us out. And so special thank you to our friends from Kalamazoo for being a part of this.

I spoke earlier today with the President and a group of key members of his administration that he had gathered. They were having a strategy session and they called to ask me what was going on in New York City and how the federal government could continue to help. So, it was the President, Vice President Pence, the FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor, Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Response Director, Admiral Giroir, who's the head of the Public Health Service, the equipment czar, Peter Navarro, the President's senior advisor, Jared Kushner, who's obviously a New Yorker, and knows a lot about the city and cares about this city. So, we got into a very detailed conversation about where we stand. First of all, I thank them deeply for what they did for the NYPD and they called it operation blue bloods. I think that's a great name. Helping the NYPD to have the protective gear they need at this moment. Deeply appreciate that special effort the White House made. But the real difficult part of the conversation was talking about the days ahead.

We went into great detail about a number of New Yorkers in ICU’s. The number we projected coming up this Sunday and Monday. The facts that were so powerful and challenging about what we're going to face next week. I talked to the president about the need for ventilators. I talked to them about the need for N95 masks and other PPE’s. I talked to them in detail about the personnel reality, and the whole group of leaders assembled, the fact that even with the equipment, you always need the personnel all these doctors and nurses and extraordinary healthcare workers, we need more and more help. I talked to the president about the expansion of beds, and I will say the president knows something about real estate in New York City. And I talked to him about the fact that we had 20,000 hospital beds just a month ago, and we're going to be adding up to 65,000 more to handle this crisis. And that's going to happen all in the course of about four weeks. And I think he understood that that will be a herculean effort. But I said to him, we believe we can do that, taking a huge number of public spaces, converting them, hotels by the dozen, that we can actually build out that capacity, but it won't save us unless the personnel is there.

So, we had a very good conversation. I was thankful for the help we’ve received, and I immediately told them just how much more we're going to need. And I told them we will fight every minute of this crisis to get through it, and then we will turn around and give everything we have and send our heroes to other parts of the country to help. And I really appreciate the conversation because it was detailed, and it was sober about the facts. But I was also clear with them that I believe at this point we have to come to a recognition that anything short of a full mobilization of our military will not serve this nation sufficiently. Just going over the situation in New York City and pointing out, imagine for a moment we had 20,000 hospital beds, we're talking about needing three times more that, just to get through the next four weeks or so. Imagine that pattern in other parts of our nation. What that's going to mean for the ability to build out our healthcare system and protect our people in many places simultaneously. The only way that can be achieved is with the leadership of the United States military. They have the talent, the logistical capacity, the professionals that can play a crucial role. There's no other way it will happen.

So, I had a good and respectful conversation with the President, but I also had an urgent conversation with him. I told him, I just think this is the only way we're all going to be able to get through this and save as many lives as possible is to use the military much more deeply. I reiterated to the President what I talked to him about several times last week. The fact that we need personnel right now, and we need military medical personnel right now. And that I had asked repeatedly, and in writing many times for help by this Sunday. We had asked for military medical personnel, 1,000 nurses, 300 respiratory therapists, 150 doctors. These numbers, I've been over with the President, with the Secretary of Defense, and with General Milley numerous times. They are quite familiar with request. I had a follow-up conversation with Secretary Esper, and General Milley again this afternoon. I'm going to be talking to the FEMA administrator again to reiterate that this is crucial, and he will have the ultimate say over whatever military medical personnel are made available.

But again, it comes down to this. This is a wartime dynamic, and everyone in Washington has to understand that right now, too much of what's happening is on a peacetime basis. There's a disconnect, and I want to just be blunt about that. We're in the middle of a war. We can feel it here in New York City. I could feel it this morning when I stood with those good men and women, those EMT’s and paramedics went all over the nation. It didn't feel like business as usual. It felt like we were in a war and people were coming to save us. We need a lot more of that, and other parts of the country will need the same. It's not going to happen unless we get on a war footing. So, it's the mobilization of the military for sure, but I also think we have to remember in the wars of the past when we were really fighting for the survival of our nation and our ideals, we called upon all Americans to serve, and I think it's time for that in a different way now. I think it's time for our nation to enlist our medical personnel on a national basis. We don't have the same kind of draft we used to have, but we're going to have to create something new right now at this moment in history to enlist all available medical personnel around the country, and I mean civilians. Anyone with medical training anywhere in the country who can be spared by their city, their town, their state to come to the front. And right now, it's New York City, and we see it starting in some other cities as well. But I guarantee you, all 50 States will have their own battle. The only way we're going to get through this truly, if we're going to save every life we can save, it means taking health professionals of every kind with every skill, every training, no matter where they are in their career, and enlisting them in a national service, creating something we just don't have right now, but we could have, and we need to have.

So, that's what I talked to the President about it, the secretary of defense, General Milley, going to a place we've never been before, because we are actually dealing with a crisis we've never experienced before, and we have to innovate. We have to see possibilities that we just didn't see before, if we're going to really protect and serve the American people. So, I hope these conversations will lead us to another place, because right now I've been really honest about the numbers. I do want to give the president credit. I told him the numbers, and I could tell there were some real silences during the conversation, and some real acknowledgement of just how tough it's going to be in the weeks ahead in New York City. But we know there's other places about to face this same reality. If we're all starting to fully, deeply recognize the extent of the crisis, then let's act like one nation. Fight this crisis together, enlisting everyone possible into this cause whether they be the men and women of our military and our reserves, or whether it be civilians who could bring their extraordinary skills to bear where needed most, it's time for that in this country.

I did talk to the President about the ventilator situation, as I mentioned, and the 400 ventilators that we found out late yesterday would be coming in time and be in place by Sunday morning. That was the number I mentioned yesterday that we absolutely have to have to ensure we could protect everyone in need. Those ventilators came out of the federal allotment that went to New York State, I want to thank both the federal government and FEMA and New York State for quickly making those 400 ventilators available. So, the good news is we will get through Sunday, but the tough news is what I told you yesterday is still true, we will need 2,500 to 3,000 more ventilators next week, during next week to get through next week. I explained this to the President and his entire leadership and everyone heard it and everyone took it seriously and I said, I'm not going to sugar coat this, it's a very tough number to reach. I know everyone's fighting to get more ventilators, create more ventilators, and manufacture them. But for all those folks who are about to arrive in hospitals around the City whose lives we must save their simple need is not for us to talk about it, but to find those ventilators somewhere, somehow. And I put that clearly on the table and said to the leadership of our Nation that it is, I think a National priority to find those 2,500 to 3,000 ventilators and get them to New York City over the next seven days. So, we talked to also here in New York City about other tools we're going to use the BiPAP machines, which are something that could be really helpful ensuring that for some patients they can be kept off the ventilators or at least for a period of time. We're getting some of those in, we're training staff and how to use them – that will be a part of the equation that will help as well. The fact is people want to help us, as I said, from all over the country. If you can help anyone out there, if you can help please go to our website, nyc.gov/helpnow or call 833-NYC-0040. Folks all over the nation that want to help, we're particularly – if there's anybody anywhere who has a ventilator they can get to us that is particularly important to anyone who's a medical professional wants to come here and help us, we have the accommodations, we will immediately plug you in, we need your help right now.

Now, I want to talk about some new guidance. And I want to emphasize that I start and— we'll talk more about it with the questions with the media, with our Health Commissioner, Dr. Barbot – but I want to emphasize that we, throughout these last few months, this city, this state, this nation, the global community of nations, the global medical community, everyone has been trying to learn as rapidly as possible everything they can about the coronavirus. And we still know there's a lot we don't know, and that's a really challenging reality one of our heroes at this moment, our Nation, someone I'm very, very proud of as a New Yorker is Dr. Anthony Fauci. And even with that wonderful, reassuring voice and that knowledge and that wisdom, he’s first to say there's a lot we don't know, but we are learning every day and every week more. We're trying to act rapidly on what we learn, sometimes you reach that point when there's just enough confirmation, enough new information to say, okay, it's time to do something different. So, there've been studies recently on people who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic and whether they could transmit the coronavirus to others. One particularly important study coming out of Singapore yesterday, our Health Department, our health care leadership have looked at these studies. There's been several in the last week or so, and I've come to a conclusion that it's time to advise New Yorkers to do something different. I want to emphasize what I'm about to tell you is very, very important, but it does not in any way change the basic guidance that you've received now over many weeks. The most important things are still the basic hygiene covering your mouth when you cough and sneeze, wash your hands a lot, use hand sanitizer still that's the frontline way to protect yourself. The social distancing that’s the way to protect yourself and everyone around you and that must be observed no matter what. And we've obviously put shelter in place here in place in New York, and we have strong enforcement through the NYPD and other agencies and we're even now at the point of finding people who do not abide by social distancing. So, all of that is just as important as it was before, but now we're adding a new important point we're advising New Yorkers to wear a face covering when you go outside and will be near other people. So, let's be clear, this is a face covering, and again, we'll talk about the details in a moment, but it could be a scarf it could be something you create yourself at home, it could be a bandana, it does not, not need to be a professional surgical mask. In fact, we don't want you to use the kinds of masks that our first responders need that our health care workers need. Don't use those can't be clearer, leave those alone, leave those to the people who need them the most who are saving lives. But you can create a face covering with anything you have at home right now any piece of cloth— and that will give the protection to others. And I want to emphasize this I think there's been, you know, a certain amount of misunderstanding and we're all dealing with so much information and so many things that are kind of tough to understand and confusing. The reason for this guidance is because the studies are showing that some asymptomatic people, some pre-symptomatic people appear to actually be transmitting this disease. We don't have perfect evidence it doesn't conform with what the initial showed us weeks ago, but it does seem to be more and more evident. What that means is when you put on that face covering you're protecting everyone else. You're making sure that, you know, you don't inadvertently, if you happen to have this disease and you may not even know it, you don't end up giving it to someone else. Now, remember, with community spread with the projections, we've told you over half New Yorkers will contract this disease for everything we know. It means that a lot of people are out there right this minute don't even know they have it, we want to make sure that anyone who doesn't have to get it doesn't get it. So, face covering is just a simple way to protect other people and to reduce the speed of that community spread, and hopefully keep a number of people from being affected who don't have to be affected. Again, you can create your own version you can be creative and put whatever decoration you want on it. It can be as homemade as you want, but that's what we want you to do something homemade, not something professional, not something from the supplies we need for our heroes and that's going to help protect everyone.

And a few other updates, we've talked a lot about the fact that there are more and more people need food because let's face it, even though thank God there is some federal help coming now through the stimulus bill, there's still so many who people lost their jobs, lost their income, don't yet have that help, are struggling to pay for food. We can't have that in New York City we have to help people more and more, I named a few weeks ago our foods [inaudible] Kathryn Garcia who's done an amazing job for the city on many other crucial missions. And her job is to make sure that food is available to everyone who needs it and to build out a bigger plan for the weeks ahead. She's working, especially now with Department of Education that had feeding sites up for our students, even though there weren't schools the way they've normally been, they were turned into sites to provide meals to kids in need of them.

So, we've got about 435 sites around the five boroughs where young people can go and get meals for free. They can get breakfast, lunch, and dinner all to go, grab and go, and they can bring them home and eat them when they're ready. If other people at home need food, they can get it for them as well. So what we're doing starting tomorrow is we're welcoming adults, anyone who needs food, anyone who's hungry can come to these 435 sites— you can get all three meals for yourself and your family for free. No one will be turned away, I want to really emphasize that there's no charge and no one will be turned away. You can go online nyc.gov and get the sites you can call 311, 24 hours a day and get the sites. But we know people are hurting, we don't want anyone to go hungry in the City, so there's 435 places starting tomorrow, not just for kids, but for adults as well everyone, everyone who’s hungry, has a place to go to get food. Just to tell you for kids and for families with kids, we're going to do the, the early morning hours for pickups at 7:30 to 11:30 AM and then from 11:30 to 1:30 for any adults who don't have kids with them you can go in that timeframe. So again, 7:30 to 11:30 AM for children and families with children, 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM each day for adults. And if you want to find a school in your area, you can text the word FOOD or if you speak Spanish, the word COMIDA to 877-877 and they'll get you to location.

Okay, couple of quick things. Small businesses this is a heads up to all the small business owners that starting tomorrow, the Federal Paycheck Protection Program opens up is a key part of the stimulus $350 billion loan program. It's for businesses and for nonprofit organizations that have employees up to a number of 500 people. So, it's a lot of businesses will qualify and we know how hard hit our small businesses and our nonprofits have been these last weeks – it’s been horrible. You deserve this opportunity to get these loans to keep afloat - build for the future. But here's the punchline; this is a first come first serve basis. So, first come, first served. Therefore, you need to apply as early in the morning tomorrow as possible. So, New Yorkers, the early bird gets the worm here – go to sba.gov – sba.gov. And these are loans on very good terms and they are forgivable loans and there's specific categories that you can get going online. They’ll talk to you about all the ways that these loans had been made flexible and forgivable, and they cover a lot of different things, not just costs related to your payroll, but also interest on mortgages, your rent, your utility payments, a very flexible program to help people through this crisis – so please sign up immediately.

I'm going to close now and I talked to you about a lot of reasons to hope, but I also always owe it to you to tell you when we've lost a friend and, and to mourn with. Particularly all of us in public service, when we lose one of our own, it hits home, especially. Our Department of Citywide Administrative Services, they've been doing so much work these last few weeks to help everyone else to get the help they need. Well, now, they've lost a dear colleague and a leader in that agency, Lenin Fierro, Director of Safety and the Vision Zero Director for Fleet Management at DCAS. This is an amazing story – he immigrated from Ecuador, a total New York story and American success story – immigrated from Ecuador, served 10 years in the United States Navy joined our team five years ago, helped get Vision Zero off the ground in its beginning to protect people and save lives; personally trained thousands of city drivers on how to drive safely – amazing contribution. To his wife, Brenda and his two daughters – we grieve with you and we have truly lost a great man.

And every New Yorker right now, we all have a story. We all know someone who we've lost or someone who's sick. Pretty much everyone could say that right now. We are doing all we can to help those who are sick and we are grieving for those we've lost and, and mourning with their families. But, as much pain as we're going through and, and even though the worst weeks are ahead, we, we just don't give in in this city; it's not who we are. I have to tell you with those EMTs and paramedics today I saw a resolve, I saw a toughness, I saw a belief that we were going to get through it and the same is true with our frontline heroes, our healthcare workers, same is true with the folks who work in the grocery stores and the pharmacies to make sure their communities are safe and have what they need. So many New Yorkers – by the way, the vast, vast majority of New Yorkers who are practicing social distancing, who are doing it right, who are looking out for each other – everyone has shown an incredible spirit of perseverance. I'm very, very proud of all you. I have no question we will see this through together. I have no question, in the end, New Yorkers will watch out for each other and every time that someone comes to our aid from around the country it’s going to give us that boost we need to fight our way through this crisis and come out together.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will turn to questions from the media and please let me know each name and media outlet.

Moderator: Hi all, just a reminder that we have Dr. Barbot here in person, and on the phone we have Commissioner Shea, Commissioner Garcia, Chancellor Carranza, Deputy Mayor Been, and Dr. Katz. With that, we'll start with Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor, I'm, I'm wondering if you can just go into a little more detail on this mask or face covering guidance? You know, if you have old masks sitting around, paper ones, can you use those? Do you need to use them once and then discard them? How can you sanitize cloth - you know- homemade masks? Just kind of the practicalities of how this is going to work if everyone's supposed to be covering their faces now.

Mayor: Thank you Erin. I'm going to ask obviously Dr. Barbot will go into the details, but just, I think you raised a really, really helpful set of questions there. Reminding everyone - face coverings - so I want to actually not use the word masks because I want, when you think of masks, you're talking about what our healthcare workers and our first responders need and those precious supplies that we keep bringing in - those PPEs. That's for them; that's for all the people at the frontline that need it. If you've got something around the house already, Dr. Barbot will talk about how to deal with that, but I'm talking about face coverings to distinguish, things you can create yourself – like I said, scarfs, bandanas. I think Dr. Barbot will be the first -she's a good New Yorker, grew up in the Bronx - she'll be the first to say it doesn't have to be fancy to work. It can be real homegrown and it will still help protect others. So, Dr. Barbot.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Yes, I think that's a good thing, the less fancy, the better. So again, these face coverings are intended to do two things. One, is for individuals who may be at the very, very beginning of an illness and don't yet know it and so they're pre-symptomatic; to ensure that they don't transmit infection to other people when they have to go out for essential activities. The other thing that these face coverings do is again - if someone has to go outside - I want them to be a reminder for anyone that they may come in contact with to keep the distance of six feet. These face covering shouldn't be seen as an invitation to come closer. They should actually be an indication to keep six feet distance. And so, in terms of the materials for these face coverings and the upkeep, et cetera, if someone has a paper face covering that can cover the mouth and the nose, then certainly what I would recommend is that they use it when they go outside and that they can continue to reuse it as long as it doesn't get wet and as long as it maintains its integrity. I would remind individuals they shouldn't share these paper face coverings and that when they are done using them, they should store them in a place where no one else can touch them.

What I would actually recommend is that individuals use cloth [inaudible] face coverings and that they can use old bandanas or new bandanas, they can use a scarf and again, the important thing is that it covers the nose and the mouth. What I recommend is that for these face coverings to be used for a day, and then you can hand-wash them in soap and water, just regular soap and water, nothing fancy and that the important thing is that they dry completely. And so, you know, we would recommend that you have more than one face covering so that you can alternate them. The important thing to note is that there are a number of different potential designs if you will, that individuals can use in terms of these face coverings, but again, you know, remind - thinking back to when we were kids and, and playing games and/or Halloween and covering our faces with a cloth, it really is as simple as that. And again, one of the reasons that we want to make it as basic as possible is to remind folks that these face coverings are not a substitution for all of the layers of prevention that we've been talking about since the beginning of this outbreak, which are hand washing with soap and water, hand cleaning with alcohol based hand sanitizer, covering your mouth and your nose when you cough with your elbow, and the most important and evidence based intervention is the social distancing. And so, these face coverings are just one more layer to those layers of prevention. None of them will work a hundred percent in isolation, but all of them together, I think provide the greatest opportunity for us to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Mayor: Thank you, doctor.

Moderator: Next, we have Rich from the Post.

Question: Yes. Hi. Could you just explain, Mayor, is spring break on or off and why haven’t parents been formally told? Can you clear this up and what are your feelings on the subject? The DOE website still has it listed as from April 9th to April 17th. Why wasn't it updated?

Mayor: Yeah, it's a great question, Rich. So, there's been a back and forth with the State. We're all trying to figure out the right way to handle, you know, the really, really unusual situation here. The Chancellor will jump in if he has anything he wants to add after I've gone over this. But here's the deal. We said originally, of course, that our hope was we could bring school back up by April 20th, after the spring break. We all understand how tough that looks right now and we'll have more to say on that as we figure out what the future looks like. But originally people were thinking of spring break in traditional terms. Well, guess what? There are no breaks at this point. There's no vacations. There's no place to travel. You know, our kids, we're asking them to stay indoors all the time with – you know, except for a little bit of exercise each day.

It's a whole new dynamic. So, the more people thought about it, both at the City and State level, the more they realized, wait a minute, that idea doesn't make sense anymore. We're kind of in a very, very different environment. There are obviously, you know, crucial religious considerations if you're talking about a religious day, a day of obligation for people are truly devout, but we've got to rethink that week and we're working with the State on how to do that right this minute. And then the second that that's all confirmed, it will be updated. Chancellor, you may have more breaking news than I have on that, but obviously whatever the final decisions, we will update the website for sure. Chancellor, you want to add?

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Yes. Mr. Mayor, thank you. So, we will update our website. This is obviously an ongoing conversation. We just want to – you know, all of the projections say that this virus is going to be hitting its peak around the time of spring break. So, while we want to be optimistic, we also have to be very, very grounded in what we're doing. So, we want to make sure that students are actively academically engaged. And Mr. Mayor, I know that you and I have had many conversations about this. We really appreciate how above and beyond our teachers, our administrators, our food service workers, the custodians have gone to make sure that our students and families are being served. We honor that work. But we also know that we need to flatten the curve and in order to flatten the curve, we want [inaudible] indoors and we want our school communities to be actively engaged at home. So, we're working actively with our labor unions around finding a way to honor their contracts, but at the same time, making sure that we're also taking care of the [inaudible]. So, we will have more information as soon as we can get that out. But at this point we want everybody to understand we're going to be actively engaged and we want to make sure that academically students have opportunities to be engaged as we go through next week.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Debralee from Manhattan Times News, Bronx Free Press.

Mayor: Debralee, can you hear me?

Moderator: We'll circle back next. Next, we have Yoav from the City.

Mayor: Yoav?

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. How are you doing?

Mayor: Good.

Question: Just wanted to ask you on a host of issues we've confronted with coronavirus, your administration has taken some steps that you've described as being out of an abundance of caution. And I'm just curious now with, kind of, the change in the advice on the masks, why a more cautious approach wasn't taken when clearly there wasn't a lot of evidence one way or the other? And it seemed that the message coming out of the administration was that the prime concern is symptomatic transfer. I guess what, why on that issue wasn't more caution kind of voiced?

Mayor: It's a fine question. And I've obviously had this conversation repeatedly with my team every step of the way to determine what we think would make sense. So first of all, the first answer is there just wasn't evidence. And for the first time, and you know, we obviously have a great Health Department and they've been scrubbing evidence from all around the world for weeks and weeks. And for the first time in just the last days, there have been studies that actually started to show some meaningful evidence about asymptomatic transmission. By the way, those were some studies. That doesn't mean everything is known about it. It just, for the first time, gave our health leadership a sense that there was something more tangible here than they'd seen previously. Second, there was a real concern all along about focusing people on the most important things. And that really is the basic hygiene that we talked about. The shelter in place, the social distancing, those are still the most powerful elements of the strategy. And to make sure that we did not send a message that made people overconfident the other way. Because, Yoav, I think there's a real balance always in this that you don't want people thinking, ‘Oh, I put on a face covering and now I have nothing else to worry about in the world’.

No. In fact, the face covering idea is just to help make sure you're protecting everyone else around you. The ways you protect yourself and everyone else are those basic hygiene practices, the shelter in place and the social distancing. So, it was really about making sure that the most important messages were being acted on, the most important strategies were being acted on. But once people felt, look, there's something here, there's some evidence at least, that's when it made sense to put it out there to folks but in a way – and this is the last point, Yoav, and I’ll see if the doctor wants to add – we were very concerned all along about the supply. And this was really – again, Yoav, you've watched the work of the Governor for a long time – this was really a big factor as well. We've been fighting for those PPEs.

We're finally starting to get a better supply, but we've got a long, long way to go. It was very important not to give the impression to people early on that everyone should go grab everything and hoard everything when we knew that there was no way lives would be saved if our first responders and our health workers didn't have the personal protective equipment they needed. So, without a lot of evidence we didn't think it made any sense to suggest to people something that for some people might be interpreted as, you know, go grab those supplies, in fact, deprive others of them. That's why we're saying face coverings, homegrown, make your own. You can make it with stuff that's already in your house. You don't need something that a first responder or a health care worker needs. Dr. Barbot –

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I think you got it just right. So, I'll add just a couple of other things. One is from the very beginning we've been saying that as the evidence grows, because it is a new virus and there was very little known, as the evidence grows, we will adapt our guidance. And so specific to masks, you know, I think we have seen a progression on our guidance as the evidence has grown, but it has always been based on the evidence. And so, we've also tried to sort of measure that with, although the evidence isn't there, if New Yorkers want to wear masks, as we were saying at that time, then we're not going to stop them. I think the shift now is twofold. One is there's scientific evidence that people can transmit infection before they realize they are symptomatic. And then the second one is that we are at a different point in the curve, meaning that with widespread community transmission and the new evidence that people can transmit when they are in their pre-symptomatic phase, makes the extension of our message of, wear a mask if you're sick, a logical step, meaning that don't wait until you're symptomatic. Now assume you've been exposed and use a face covering to ensure that you don't contribute to the ongoing acceleration of this spread. That along with physical distancing and staying home, a face covering can be an additive measure.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey. Mayor, I just wanted to ask – Mr. Mayor, sorry, I wanted to ask you, you know, kind of bouncing off of Yoav’s question. If you're just asking people, you know, to recover their faces with scarves and pieces of cloth, couldn't that directive be given sooner? You know, I mean, [inaudible] on bandanas necessarily, but you know, I guess the question is on March 15th you said asymptomatic people don't transmit, which didn't turn out to be true. When did the shift sort of happen, recognizing this as an evolving thing [inaudible] shift really happened for you?

Mayor: In the last 48 hours really is when our health leadership, our Health Department has gotten information and analyzed the information and provided this specific proposal. So, literally just in the last days, but I want to emphasize, and again, you guys, you know, we're going to go through a long difficult journey where we don't know everything we want to know and need to know. We're always going to be doing our best with the information we have. But what's abundantly clear is literally only in the last day or two did our health care leadership come to the conclusion that the studies were finally providing some evidence that face coverings helped prevent the spread. And again, I'm going to say it very clearly and bluntly. This is not, put on a face covering and you can't get the coronavirus. That's not what we're saying.

We're saying put on a face covering, abundance of caution to help prevent further spread. But the evidence just wasn't there before. And I explained a moment ago with Yoav, the other reasons, the other factors in the decision that we were evaluating a lot. We've always valued in this discussion protecting our health care workers and our first responders. And what they needed, that was a big factor here to always be cautious about that. Because that piece of – if that piece isn't right, nothing else is right. But now that we have some evidence, it was time to say, okay, we're giving advice. It's an advisory based on new evidence – March 15th or whatever date you said, we just didn't have the evidence.

Moderator: We're going to circle back to Debralee, Manhattan Times News, Bronx Free Press.

Question: Hey there, Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Good.

Question: So, I want to ask – it's sort of a tangent but a related question about testing. You know, we're having reports that frontline workers, including transit workers, including nurses and doctors and folks that are out there every day who are actually essential workers, are just unable to access these tests. They're being rerouted to their primary care physicians who are overwhelmed. They're being rerouted to testing of sites and it just seems to be not enough. And yet we've got enough boldface names reporting that they have been tested positive and within hours we know it as well. So, you've spoken about there being this ending of this divide between public and private care as regards the pandemic, what exactly can you speak to? And I'd also toss this to a Commissioner Barbot. What is the directive now from the City and medical guidance as regards to testing? What is the point of testing? And in fact, if anyone seeks out a test, are they just wasting their time?

Mayor: I really appreciate the question, Debralee. I'm going to start and pass too – I want actually Dr. Katz to jump in and then Dr. Barbot. And the reason I want to go to Dr. Katz is that Health + Hospitals has now changed its approach now that it does have sufficient testing, its approach to its own health care workers. I want him to talk about that because I think it's a valuable example for the whole city. But look, to answer this properly, we’ve got to go back to the origins and I know my colleagues feel this deeply. We started on January 24th calling on the federal government to give us testing here in New York City. It took weeks and weeks and weeks to even get the beginning of the ability to test here. And by the time it was here, it was already bluntly right on the verge of having community spreads.

So, all of the virtues of testing that could have been strategic to help us address this crisis more fundamentally like a few other parts of the world had done, that window was lost and the federal government just didn't act. But then we went through a phase over weeks now where there wasn't enough testing available anywhere and we kept trying to say the priority needed to be for people who are really sick and for first responders and health care workers. And to some extent that has happened, but you're right, Debralee, there've been some exceptions that make me very angry when I see folks who use their wealth and power to get a test who didn't even need a test. Rather than all those tests going to people who are really in danger and particularly they're a – those tests being available for health care workers and first responders.

I mean, it just makes no sense for someone who's privileged to look out for themselves ahead of all the other people who need it more. But now we've got a phenomenon of more testing coming in – more capacity, I should say, coming in, new interesting possibilities now starting to finally take root like the 15-minute tests, like the antibody test. There's a lot coming together that could revolutionize the approach and make it much more widespread and much more effective. And what I want to see is that it be as widely available to first responders and health care workers and any other essential personnel that, that be the first thing we do – really make sure that anyone who wants that test among those crucial, crucial workers we’re depending on, that they can get it when they want it. So, that's where we're trying to go rapidly. Mitch, would you talk about what you're doing with testing for Health + Hospitals workers?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: Absolutely, sir. So, starting today, any of our frontline workers can be tested at their facility in occupational health. And we're doing that because we recognize the tremendous heroism of our doctors and nurses and other support staff. We want to make sure that they have the ability to get a test when they want to have a test. We recognize that many of them worry about the possibility that they will bring the virus home to their spouses, to their children. We feel strongly that people have the right to know. We appreciate all the work you've done to give us enough access so that we can now do this. Thank you.

Mayor: And Dr. Barbot –

Commissioner Barbot: So, in terms of testing, as we've said many times before, in a world where we have widespread community transmission, for the average new Yorker, 80 percent of people will have a mild course and having the results of a test aren't going to change the recommendations that your doctor is going to give you, which is stay home and call me back if you're not getting better. I think the situations for health care workers are different because from the beginning we've also been saying that all of the measures that we've been putting in place are to slow the transmission and reduce the burden on health care delivery systems because we need them to be whole in order to take care of the vast number of New Yorkers that can get sick from COVID-19. We've also said that in a clinical setting, the most useful way in which a test can be helpful is if it's going to help a doctor make a treatment decision about his or her patient. And so, those recommendations remain.

Mayor: Okay. Who's up

Moderator: Next, we have Jill from NY1.

Question: Hi, Mayor. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Jill.

Question: I wanted to ask you about the death of Sandra Santos Vizcaino. She was a teacher at P.S. 9 in Prospect Heights and I believe she may be the first teacher to pass away from the coronavirus. I wanted to see if you or the Chancellor had anything that you might want to say about her, but also wanted to ask, you know, as far as we know she was the first teacher to pass away because the City has not been tracking or publicly releasing any information about how many teachers have become ill. I understand the teachers aren't reporting to work in a school right now, but obviously some of – they're all still teaching. Some may be ill and calling out [inaudible] why that kind of information has been made available or haven't been tracked. And then a somewhat related question just are you also recommending face coverings for children?

Mayor: Okay. Let me let me have the Chancellor speak to the first part and Dr. Barbot will speak to the second part. I mean, look, I just want to say as a parent whose kids went through our public schools there are so many teachers who I can right now name, you know, dozens of teachers who had just a profound impact on my children's lives and the notion that we've lost, you know, a teacher, it's very painful. These are people who devote their lives to our kids. And you know, losing someone who's that good a person who's giving that much is just very, very painful. We lost a principal last week, a young woman full of extraordinary promise. This is, you know, I wish I could say we were not going to have to tell these stories of these incredible people anymore and it was all going to be over tomorrow, but it's not, we're going to be at this for a while and we're going to lose some really good people and we have to fight to try and save every single life. So, Chancellor, why don't you take it from there?

Chancellor Carranza: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to say this is a devastating tragedy. And Sandra was a beloved teacher at P.S. 9, and our heart goes out to P.S. 9 and that community and her family. As you said, Mr. Mayor, this is not going to be the first or the last of beloved community members that are going to succumb to this unfortunate tragedy of a virus. This is the first teacher death that is self-reported by a family that is being linked to COVID-19. We are working on a protocol to capture these kinds of informational strategies. We know the NYPD and the Fire Department, these are first responders that are out in the community right now serving our community. We know that our teachers are at home but serving our students. So, it's a little more complicated for us to get those numbers. But the other thing is it's important to understand that we have to respect and recognize the wishes of families during these trying times. Some families don't want us to publish the names of their family members that have been afflicted by COVID-19. So, we want to respect the wishes of the families, but we also want to be transparent as much as possible. So, I will just say that to Sandra and her family, we are incredibly – just incredibly thankful for her service. And we are devastated by her death.

Sandra Santos Vizcaino, we know that she's made a lasting impact on her community and her family, and we are going to work to make sure that we honor her work with her students and we will be there to support the family and the community of students and colleagues at P.S. 9 with this devastating news.

Mayor: Dr. Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: So, on the question about whether face coverings should be used for children, I would say yes, and I want to go a little bit further than that. I think that in engaging children in making these face covers, I think it's an opportunity to teach them about COVID-19 and, beyond that, to really instill in them the role that these face masks play as part of our civic responsibility in ensuring not only our own health and the health of our family, but really the health of our communities and that when we are sick, or potentially symptomatic, it's our responsibility to take definitive measures in order to protect those around us. So, I would really encourage parents to take this as a teaching opportunity for all of the city's children.

Moderator: Next, we have Jennifer from AP.

Question: Hello? Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Jennifer.

Question: Thanks very much. I was wondering whether the city has had any discussions with the federal government about the potential of switching the Javits Center and Comfort facilities to take COVID-19 patients rather than only others of which there may be some [inaudible]?

Mayor: Yes. I had that conversation with several of the admirals in the command structure and with, as I talked to you earlier, I talked to a Secretary Esper, I talked to General Milley. So, it's a conversation that's been going on over the last 24-48 hours. I know we are all trying to figure out the right balance, but I think what makes sense is to – because the number-one, biggest community of patients we have to deal with are those who have the disease but are not in ICU. The ICU patients are most sensitive, by far, and those are the folks that are going through a life and death struggle, but there's many, many more who are not in the ICU. So, I think it's smart to say let's use those facilities in whatever way makes sense, whatever proportion makes sense for COVID-19 patients who are not folks who are going to be in ICU.

Moderator: Next, we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. On the face coverings, just wanted to ask if you're contemplating any kind of enforcement there. Is it possible there could be fines or maybe just police officers or others encouraging people to cover their faces?

Mayor: I'm going to start and want to certainly let Dr. Barbot add. No, I am not anticipating enforcement at this point. This is an advisory. We – you know, we're very, very clear when we're giving you an order, when we're giving you something that's required in this city under our emergency. We're very clear when something comes with penalties and when it doesn't. This, right now, is an advisory and I would say to you I think it will remain an advisory for the foreseeable future because we have much more important things to achieve with enforcement. Enforcement, right now, has to be focused on, you know, shelter in place and social distancing, ensuring that people only go out when they have to go out only for the time they need to and that there's not gatherings, there's not violation of social distancing. So, that's where I want to see the enforcement go. This is about giving people some helpful advice based on new evidence we think will help protect other people.

Commissioner Barbot: I agree with that, Mr. Mayor. And just to add, you know, 11 years ago when we had H1N1, before that no one ever really coughed into their elbow and it was a huge cultural shift and now it's the norm for most people to cough into their elbow. And so, I see this as a similar sort of cultural shift so that giving New Yorkers this advice, giving them opportunities to reinforce that with their own loved ones, with their neighbors, I think will be probably the best way in which we can have an opportunity for this to really take hold and become part of the cultural shift of more civic accountability for our community's health.

Moderator: Next, we have Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor and Dr. Barbot, just a quick question about the masks. The CDC, I guess, is issuing similar guidance today and I'm wondering about the timeline. Dr. Barbot, did you ever think about doing this in advance? Was there a time where you thought about issuing this guidance and, you know, how much of your guidance is related to the change that the CDC is making? And for the Mayor, just wondering, when you talk about the, sort of, guidance, can you talk about how your language, whether it's couched in a way that tells people that this may change eventually. How do you go about doing that? Because there have been, you know, a few changes in guidance over the past few weeks.

Mayor: Yeah. Jeff, first of all, I just want to keep saying, everyone, face coverings, because I want to strongly differentiate from the surgical masks, the N95’s, all the things that must be protected for our health care workers and our first responders. So, I just want people out get a real clear line in the sand there. A face covering, you can make out anything you’ve got home and Dr. Barbot gave you the news you can use about how you take care of it. A facemask, to me, is something that, you know, is for professionals and the people who protect us. Jeff, I think – Dr. Barbot will talk about the CDC element. Jeff, I don't know how to say it more clearly than this, we have said from the beginning, and anyone who's honest to send from the beginning, we're dealing with a disease that the entire global medical community still does not fully understand. We said that back on January 24th, and we're still saying it today, because it's true. There is no cure. There is no vaccine. And new information is coming in. I remember sitting here weeks ago when we talked about the study from China, that was the most definitive study to date, saying it was not airborne, it was droplets. You know, now these studies have come in, including in particular study from Singapore, saying, look, we don't have perfect evidence – we don't have exhaustive evidence, but we have some meaningful evidence that there could be a symptomatic transmission – doesn't mean that's what's happening a lot, doesn't mean that it's happening most of the time, but it's saying something different than what we've seen before. So, guidance will change, Jeff. I just want to be as blunt as I can be and I need people to understand that, that we are on the ever-changing situation. And if we're used to – all of us, I understand that we're used to a world that was very, in many ways, you know, clear and straight forward and certainly was a lot more comfortable a few weeks ago than what we're dealing with now, and we all strived to want everything to make sense all the time. We're dealing with something that unfortunately is a bit of a great unknown. The honest truth is to say, this is what we know now and we're going to act on what we know now and we're going to tell you how to protect yourself and your family with what we know now. And we're also telling you all the time, it could change if we learn something new. That is the honest truth. Anyone who wants, you know, the perfect definition of everything related to coronavirus right now – if anyone tells you they can tell you everything about coronavirus and know it perfectly, they're lying to you, because I have not met a single person, starting from Dr. Fauci, who will tell you that they fully understand this disease at this point. But we're always going to get in the information we have when we think it's a confirmable and real, we'll say it – when we think it determines actions we need to say, need to take, we're going to tell you.

Commissioner Barbot: Yes. And to add to what the Mayor just laid out. I have scientific advisors on staff at the Health Department and we have scientific advisors in the academic community all of whom have been, since the beginning of this outbreak, really scouring the medical literature to learn as much as possible on an ongoing basis. And so, I think this evolution of this guidance is an extension of that. And, as the Mayor mentioned during his remarks, there was a study that just came out yesterday in terms the – what was found in Singapore. And we put that together with a study that Dr. Daskalakis, who's been leading the day to day operation of COVID-19 was actually a part of reviewing. So, we are intimately involved in the scientific community to make sure that whatever guidance we bring to New Yorkers is based on the best science available and is done in a timely a manner as possible, because in this fight, you know, hours and days really make a difference.

Mayor: Amen.

Moderator: Next we have Sydney from the Staten Island Advance.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Sydney.

Question: So, today, you made the announcement that the City's public hospitals are going to be getting 3,000 ICU beds by March 1st – sorry, May 1st – more doctors and nurses are going to be going to the public hospital system, there's going to be free COVID testing, and you keep talking about how you're going to be adding more beds on Staten Island – it's not part of the public hospital system – and sending more supplies there. But the only problem is, you know, there's no – these beds haven't come online yet. You haven't identified any sites, Staten Island’s two [inaudible] hospitals are nearing capacity. We don't know if [inaudible] after two fields of hospitals are going to be ICU beds, and the Health Department doesn't disclose how many supplies it sends to local hospitals. So, there's really no way of knowing if the hospitals are getting what they need from the City. So, I just want to know is that an Island going to be getting the ICU beds, the free COVID testing, doctors and nurses like the rest of the hospitals, and, if so, like, when? And do you know if the two field hospitals are going to include ICU beds or a mix of both? And since you're –

Mayor: Sydney – Sydney, wait a minute – too many. You’ve just got to stop there. I cannot keep track of so many different pieces, and, you know, what you've said is very important questions. Let's just stay on that. Our team will follow up on anything else you need. Okay. The central – I think you've asked the question before. It's a very important question. And this is part of a build-out plan I talked about at length yesterday, Dr. Katz talked about – every part of the city, I'm going to keep saying it to you and you will see the evidence through the doing of it – every part of the city is going to be reached in our hospital build-out plan. Now, remember, first on the ICU issue, because I think you – respectfully, I'm not sure you're remembering the original plan that the City and State agree on, on ICU’s. Hospitals are going to be converted more and more to ICU. RUMC is going to be converted more and more to ICU with the existing beds that has, the same with Staten Island University Hospital, and all hospitals public and private have to have an expansion plan – a 50 percent expansion of their capacity within their building, within their campus, again, for the purpose of expanding ICU beds. So, I think your question suggests that we're looking for ICU beds out of our main hospitals. That's just not a fact. We've been talking about this over and over again. The hospitals – there's three areas to think about and I really want people to feel this. ICU is for the people in the greatest danger, the lives that we're fighting to save. That work will be done in hospitals, public, private, voluntary, independent, whatever words you want to use, in existing hospitals in the city. That means initially about 20,000 beds, but with the order to build out capacity by 50 percent, it means almost 30,000 beds ultimately will be ICU. That includes every single hospital. Those two Staten Island hospitals have to do that by State mandate, and I'm certain they are doing that. But what will happen every day in all sorts of hospitals is, it doesn't matter what the ICU capacity was a month ago or a week ago, what Dr. Katz went over in great detail yesterday was how a lot of his hospitals are blowing by any numbers of ICU beds they've ever had, and they're expanding daily into numbers of ICU beds they never had in their entire history. Every hospital's going to do that. Then, there's the question of the COVID convalescent folks, folks who have the disease but do not need ICU. And then, of course, there's a question of everyone else who needs hospitalization for, you know, a car crash or trauma or a heart attack, you name it. So, the division of labor is the hospitals – first and foremost, ICU, and then these additional facilities that are being built out, whether it's a field hospital, whether it's a college dormitory, whether it's a hotel, will be for the other types of medical needs – that will be done all over the five boroughs. The goal always be to keep people in their home community to the maximum extent possible. So, that's how the build-out plan is going to go.

Moderator: Next, we have Brigid from WNYC.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I think the face covering guidance, I think, it's fair to say, is going to be jarring to a lot of New Yorkers. And it's hard to think that with some of the additional guidance that, you know, including among the essential activity, the ability to go outside for exercise. And so, I'm wondering if you and Commissioner Barbot can speak to, you know, how much time is it really safe to be outside? And what we say that now we should be [inaudible] covering that all times? You know, if someone goes out for a run, should they be wearing a face covering? If someone brings their child who's under two years old is outside, you know, are they safe without a face covering? [Inaudible] the CDC recommendations are expected to be not for children that young to wear them?

Mayor: So, I'll start and pass to Dr. Barbot again. Brigid, the first thing we're saying is this is based on new information. The second thing is, this does not in any way replace the much more foundational protections for yourself. To protect yourself is the washing the hands, the hand sanitizer, the way you take care of your own hygiene. Obviously, protecting other people too with the way you cough and sneeze in the right way. The social distancing, the shelter in place are about protecting yourself and other people. That face covering is about protecting other people. So, I really want to make clear – that's the what the studies are telling us. It's not that the face coverings will miraculously keep the disease from reaching you in your life. It's about making sure if you happen to be affected by this disease, even if you don't know it, that you're not going to inadvertently spread it.

But I think you're right, it will be, in one way, jarring. But I would also say to you, Brigid, again, I got to say this, honestly, I think there's a disconnect that I see. And I don't mean any disrespect to anyone. I think the media's job is to look at the problems, look at the challenges, you know, portray what people are feeling and their fears. But I also think what I'm seeing is everyday New Yorkers are making extraordinary adjustments. Everyday New Yorkers are incredibly resilient people. I have been through everything and with my fellow New Yorkers, 9/11 and Sandy and everything – what I constantly see is – I never fault the media for talking about the pain or the difficulty or the anxiety or the fear. But then what I see in everyday people is much more of the resilience and much more of the sense that they're going to find a way to get through and they have to find a way to get through and they're going to make those practical adjustments and they just go on with their lives. That's who New Yorkers are. Even after terror attacks, people go right back to business.

So, this has been extraordinary and more difficult and more painful in many ways and more jarring. But I still think people can keep up with these changes. They've been doing it. We've seen a hell of a lot of compliance with the new rules that have been put out. I think people are, you know, to some extent you got to respect everyone's definition, but I think the definition is pretty clear and it's like if you go outside, you go outside for enough time to do your shopping, get your medicines, you know, the basics you got to do, get some exercise. You know, get done what you need to get done and get back inside. And that's what I see people doing. So, I think what you're going to see in the coming days is more and more people in face coverings doing exactly the same things.

Commissioner Barbot: I agree, Mr. Mayor. It is a message that we have been sort of conveying to New Yorkers in terms of the physical distancing, in terms of all of the other preventive measures over the last couple of weeks. And yeah, I think, you know, each time we've given new guidance, it's another thing that people have needed to get adjusted to. But like the Mayor says, I think New Yorkers are incredibly resilient and adaptable and people have been rising to this unprecedented situation. And so, with regards to face covering, it's not so much the time but physical space. And so, I would focus on ensuring that even with a face covering, people are adhering to the six-foot distance. And you know, in the past we've also said that if a parent and their child go out, we're not expecting the two of them to adhere to a six-foot distance because they've already been in close quarters. And then to answer the question about whether someone should wear a face covering during exercising, the recommendation would be again, if they're able to keep six feet of distance between themselves and everyone else. There's no need to wear a face covering.

Moderator: Last two for today. Next up is Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Henry.

Question: How are you doing?

Mayor: Good, how are you doing man?

Question: Okay. My question is whether or not you knew whether this company in Texas that's going to be building out these temporary hospitals is also building the Mexican wall at the border.

Mayor: Yeah, I heard that after. I think it was – we did the event with them a couple of days ago and then the next day I heard it. I don't agree obviously with what the President has done with the border wall. I think it's a mistake. I think it's was a waste of money, but I also think all of the soldiers involved in anything involving the building of the border wall should be at the front fighting coronavirus, I've said that before. But it's immaterial to me, honestly, if the company was doing that work on a federal contract, they also, I know they've done disaster relief work and set up shelters after hurricanes. I'm not really worried about which federal contracts they've had previously. I only want them to create hospitals for us here in places like the Billy Jean King Tennis Center and the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. Right now, what I care about is, are they going to help save New Yorkers lives? The answer is yes.

Moderator: Last for today, we have Jeff Colton from City & State.

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor, there's an ice cream truck in the background. Sorry about that.

Mayor: Okay. That's a good thing. That's a positive sign, Jeff.

Question: Absolutely. Just one of the – in the previous months you were really worried that the State would try and balance the budget on the back of the City. Have you had a chance to review the State budget yet and do you think the City is getting screwed?

Mayor: Well, thank you for your clear question, Jeff. I have been worried about that and I was worried about that obviously in normal times and we're not in normal times. Look, I think the most important thing that happened in Albany was that because of the actions federally to support states and cities with the Medicaid money, and I give a lot of credit to Senator Schumer for that, the State was able to take that money and tide itself over. And then what we need to focus on is that fourth stimulus and making sure that that really helps states and cities fully address their lost revenue and fully address the extraordinary expenses that we have from coronavirus. So that, to me, is really the essence of what happened. That's the big story. And the big next step will be the stimulus, getting that done.

Look there some cuts in there I don't like one bit. We're still toting them up, but you know, we don't have another, $100 million to give for example, to Access-a-Ride. And I've expressed real concerns about how that program is managed. I would like to have clearer goals for reform of that program before we ended up being put in a situation where we have to spend a lot of money. But, you know, the Governor and the Legislature in their wisdom, did what they did. We will deal with it. I think in a perfect world it would have been, you know, the State holding the City harmless. We were not held harmless, but we will live to fight another day. That's the way I look at.

Okay. Thank you everybody, and we will have more updates for you soon.

2020-04-03 NYC Mayor de Blasio Brian Lehrer

Brian Lehrer: It’s the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. And we begin as we usually do on Fridays with our weekly Ask the Mayor segment, my questions in yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio at 212-433-WNYC – 433-9692. If you have a question for the Mayor that you want to call in or you can tweet a question, just use the hashtag #AsktheMayor. And good morning, Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, Brian.

Lehrer: So, Jared Kushner announced at the President's daily briefing yesterday that he has secured and is having shipped to New York hundreds of thousands of N95 masks that he says will be enough for the whole New York City public hospital system for the next month. Can you confirm that?

Mayor: Yeah, the – well, first of all, I appreciate very much the effort. I'm going to be clear, Brian, when I think the white house in the federal government needed to do more, and overwhelmingly they need to do more because we are not ready for next week in terms of the supplies from the federal government when it comes to ventilators, when it comes to medical personnel. I have a specific request in to the White House, to the Pentagon, I've had repeated conversations with the President, the Defense Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the FEMA administrator, telling them all that we must have 1,000 nurses, 150 doctors, 300 respiratory therapists immediately. I started this conversation and documented it over a week ago, said that we needed them by Sunday. We don't have anything yet. And I've said we need 2,500 to 3000 ventilators by next week and we do not have a resupply for next week yet. But I do want to say, Jared Kushner, to his credit, specifically reached out to Dr. Mitch Katz, the CEO of Health + Hospitals, our public hospitals, asked about the N95 supply. The base-level supply that we needed was a 200,000 N95’s to get through April. Now, I think, honestly, that that number is going to probably grow intensely as the number of COVID ICU cases go up, but Mitch gave him the number as it was at this moment. Jared Kushner said he would get that supply. We need to get that in hand. But I very much appreciate, you know, that there's at least a pathway to action. I want to see it now arrive and get where it needs to go.

Lehrer: And what about those health care workers? I saw you called for almost like a wartime draft of health care workers to be deployed to New York now, to be deployed elsewhere if maybe New York passes its peak and then other places reach their peak. Is anybody doing anything like that in a centralized way?

Mayor: No. Brian, you said it perfectly. Again, I've had this conversation with the President, with the military leadership. I have said that we are literally, I think, days away from missing the window for the military to mobilize, first of all, their own medical personnel – tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, highly trained medical personnel in the U.S. military. Obviously, the military right now is at their basis, they are not mobilized for action – they should be. The Commander in Chief, the President has to give that order right now. If he gave it right now, there would be time to actually mobilize them in a way that could save lives here and elsewhere. So, just having those military medical personnel, and that's the group I asked that specific set of requests from – I said – I didn't ask some crazy number that was unattainable, I asked them for numbers they have for the nation's largest city that's the epicenter of the epidemic. And they could do that right now, they need to do it. But the bigger point is to mobilize the military more broadly, get all the medical personnel in the play, all the reserve medical personnel into play, use the logistical capacity of the military, the organizational capacity to do just as you said – a peace time call-up of civilian medical personnel who can answer the nation's call. Look, some of them are going to be urgently needed where they are, obviously. Some of them may be people who, because of their own personal health, couldn't do it, but there's still going to be many tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, other medical personnel who are in parts of the country that are not feeling this crisis yet, who could be mobilized, sent to New York, send to New Orleans, to all the places that are struggling and then moved immediately, as you said – moved immediately out to another frontline location. But the only organization that could possibly make that happen is the military. They have not been given that order. It has to happen now for them possibly to ramp up in time.

Lehrer: Locally, you are now recommending that all New Yorkers going outside should wear masks. The City's position used to be that healthy people don't need masks because they're not very effective at preventing the virus from coming in, they're mostly for keep you from spreading it. So, explain this new recommendation.

Mayor: Exactly. It's still the fundamental truth. So, we have, you know, a renowned health department here in New York City, the largest public hospital system as well – all of our health leadership had been going over this issue and only in the last really 48 hours or so do they feel they've seen evidence from around the world, particularly a new study coming out of Singapore, that shows more evidence that this disease can be spread by asymptomatic people. But the point is exactly what you said, by saying face coverings – I'm really going to use that word very carefully – face coverings, because we do not want anyone anybody who's not a first responder or a health care worker to go anywhere near surgical masks or N95’s – those are only for the people fighting the frontline battle. What I talked about yesterday, advising the people of the city, use a scarf, use a bandana, use something that you create at home. But it is exactly what you said still, it is not about an average New Yorker using that scar for bandana to stop themselves from contracting it, it is to make sure that if they happen to be – if you happen to be someone who has a disease and you just don't know it yet, it just helps make sure that you won't inadvertently spread it to another person. So, it's a smart move in am age of community spread of this disease when we're trying to do things like a shelter in place and social distancing as preventative measures. Let's take another step, just abundance of caution and make sure that no one's spreading the disease inadvertently.

Lehrer: Didn't we know weeks and months ago that asymptomatic people can spread the disease?

Mayor: No. The fact is – and, you know, I've been at so many of these press conferences where our top doctors from New York City address this issue and they said, we just didn't have evidence from all the global medical community that was studying this issue. There was suspicion, but there was not evidence. And the concern throughout was, we did not want to have a situation where people were taking the supply of surgical masks and N95’s away from the people who are doing the life and death work who must be protected. We did not want to create an artificial demand there, nor did we want to create a sense that if you had something over your face, you didn't need the practice social distancing, you didn't need to shelter in place, which are much more profoundly important strategies. This is a new approach based on new data that says this is an additional measure. It makes sense to protect the whole community somewhat more. But it's still an area that is – where we have imperfect data, because we have imperfect data bluntly about coronavirus in general. It's a smart precaution. Now, you don't need to do it when you're around the people that you're in your own household with, you don't even socially distance with people you're in your whole household with.

Lehrer: Well, maybe somebody who's being internally quarantined, but we're actually going to talk about that in our next segment. But go ahead.

Mayor: Right, but the last point I'm making – if you're out on the street – this is what Dr. Barbot said to the whole city yesterday, our health commissioner – if you’re out in the street and you're truly alone, you're distanced, you don't do it then either. It's when you think you might come in closer contact with people despite social distancing as a precaution, that's when you put a face covering on.

Lehrer: Two things about masks and gloves for that matter. One is just, I will reinforce, and I presume you will too, tell me if you don't, that masks and gloves can give people a false sense of security when these items become contaminated themselves. So, you still have to keep six feet. You still have to wash your hands and many people don't realize we actually have to treat the masks and gloves like contaminated, dangerous themselves when we take them off. So, masks and gloves in some cases can do more harm than good unless people use them exactly right. And the second thing is, I know people can make masks themselves, but they need the right materials, and the quality of protection of a homemade mask might vary widely. So, what's your vision of how 8 million New Yorkers are going to get masks without competing with the health care workers for them?

Mayor: So, the first part of your question I think was right on the money. The second part of your question, honestly, I think is inadvertently misleading. It's not about protection. That's what I'm trying to get across. And it's not me talking, it's our health commissioner, it's our deputy commissioner for disease control who are folks who are studying everything that's been produced by the global medical community. Putting on a scarf, a bandana, a homemade item to make sure that you're not inadvertently spreading the disease to others because you have no indication you even have it, that's all this is and we were very blunt about it.

Lehrer: Only that, not for protection, incoming, even minimally –

Mayor: Yes, correct. There's just not enough evidence to suggest otherwise based on what the doctors are telling me. So, we are going with – we're trying to tell people what we know, which changes as more studies come in, obviously, in a disease that no one ever heard of six months ago. But here's the bottom line, so you can use household items, you can use a scarf or bandana – it’s to just keep your own breath from not inadvertently spreading this if you happen to have it and don't know it. That's the name of the game. That's why it's just additional smart guidance. What you said in the first part of your question is 100 percent true. First of all, the way to stop the spread, the way to slow, you know, and bend the curve, is shelter in place, it is the social distancing, and it is the constant cleaning hands, hand sanitizing, you know, covering your mouth when you cough and sneeze. All those fundamentals are much more important than anything for the every-day person that a face covering could achieve. In terms of the strategy for how to protect this city and bend this curve, the previous policies are the core strategy still. This is something – additional abundance of caution. Now, your point about when people – some people have – had some kind of gloves or some kind of mask and they've thrown them on the street, you're right, that's fundamentally dangerous. Not only is it littering. it's dangerous littering. Anything that you've been wearing needs to be discarded. Some things are cleanable, some things are not. There's guidance out there about that. But the point is, you don't – when something needs to be discarded, you can't leave it around because it could create its own danger. That's exactly right.

Lehrer: You know, we have a call coming in about this throwing masks and gloves on the streets. So, let's take Que in the Bronx. You're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Que.

Question: Hi, yes. Thanks, Mayor de Blasio and Brian for your efforts in keeping the people in the New York Tristate area safe. So yeah, you did answer my question about the gloves because I'm finding lots of gloves all over the street. People are taking them off and just throwing them in the street and sidewalks and I'm having to pick them up. I either sweep them all with gloves because being a homeowner, having the disposable [inaudible] you know, other people's [inaudible] thanks for addressing that and telling people to put them in the garbage. The other three important things I think would be helpful for people. One is, essential stores, the 99 cent stores, I'm wondering how come they've then shuttered and not included in the essential services? And why that is, because grocery store, I mean, often – I mean, in normal time, essential stores have often served – have often –

Lehrer: 99 cent stores have often been a center – if you're going to do three, you got to do them as bullet points. What's number two?

Question: Yeah, well, I'm just saying, just have them open so that, you know, people can buy the essential stuff at those stores, because often their prices are cheaper than regular local neighborhood stores. So, that's why their stores are essential [inaudible] –

Lehrer: Got it.

Question: The other thing with parks, I know the Governor yesterday in the news conference said he's going to close the parks and leave open areas, and I'm assuming he's talking about bigger parks. But in communities we have local parks, rather, with open spaces so you can close the playground areas or group play areas and leave the open spaces with tracks where people are getting their exercise. I have a track near me where it's never crowded and people do use it. And those – and sometimes people cannot run in the streets for whatever medical conditions or whatever their rehabbing. So, have those tracks open. The fourth thing is, I don't, it's not pertaining to you, but you can help the Congressional representatives and maybe City Council people – it's regarding the stimulus check for individuals. I mean, I think people forget that there are people who don't have bank accounts – excuse me – and then they go cash their checks in check cashing places.

Lehrer: Absolutely. And Que, I'm going to leave it there so we can get to some other people, but every single one of his questions is a good one. Can we go through them quickly? 99 cent stores, are they ordered closed?

Mayor: It's a good question. And to the best of my knowledge they are, but I want to check that carefully, Brian, and we'll put something out publicly today to confirm. And one, are they closed now or not, and, two, should they be conceivably allowed open? It’s a good question, because they are cheaper in a lot of cases –

Lehrer: And they do sell a lot of food and cleaning supplies, I know the ones in my neighborhood do.

Mayor: Yeah. So, I'm going to – that's a very good question from Que, and I'm going to check on that and we'll get an answer up immediately. On the parks, so, again, parks remain open. The State’s action was related to playgrounds specifically, not the larger parks. The larger parks remain open, but you must practice social distancing. NYPD and Parks enforcement are enforcing, and if people do not abide by the rules, even when given a warning, fines are being issued now. So, we want people to go get the exercise they need and get right back home and do that quickly, but we're going to enforce the rules very, very vigorously. On the stimulus for individuals, I think the question was about the check cashing places, which are still a huge problem throughout our city, because they really put people over a barrel. I didn't get the end of the question to know what the –

Lehrer: I think he was concerned about people who don't have the means for direct deposit or who don't have social security numbers and getting them their checks, which is a more cumbersome process.

Mayor: Yeah. I will get my team that's working on the stimulus to get out some public information on that, because I don't want to give any information I don't yet have ideally. So let me, let me get that out on how people can go about addressing that if they don't have a bank account or a social security number.

Lehrer: Que, thank you for all that. Amir, in Jackson Heights, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Amir.

Question: Hello. Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. How you doing today?

Mayor: Good morning.

Question: Very good, very good. I'm calling today because I just don't understand it, it's beyond me to understand why it's taking so long to get a rent freeze for New Yorkers as well as a commercial rent freeze for small business? We’re suffering here, it’s April 1st, the first of te month, thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers are going to have to pay their rent and they can't. They don't have the money. And now on top of that, the commercial rent is still due the first of a month and a lot of small businesses still – and they’re closed, and they got no income coming, and they have to pay rent.

Lehrer: Right. And so, what's the best you can offer now for this? I know the State policy now is no evictions for the next 90 days, but the rent would have to be made up after that. Can you do any better at the City level?

Mayor: Well, first, for the residential side, I have requested that the State at the – again, this is at the City's request so the State doesn't feel that they're doing anything inappropriate – at the City's request, at my request, that they suspend the Rent Guidelines Board that would allow us to do a rent freeze for well over 2 million New Yorkers who live in rent stabilized housing. So, that's the first thing that could be done with a stroke of a pen up in Albany that just would allow us to ensure that there's no increase authorized to this year for those 2 million-plus New Yorkers. The second thing is to figure out some kind of moratorium structure for other renters, because it's obvious – and certainly at least for those who can't pay – and I'm obviously aware that some people can pay and they should – but for those who can't, giving them a structure they can work with. And there's the point about security deposits, the State could take action to authorize that for those renters who need, who don't have the money to pay the rent, that they could draw on their security deposit and that would give the renter the money to pay the rent, it would give the landlord money in their pocket to pay expenses. It would have to be in some ways replaced over time that, you know, an installment plan or something like that. But, right now, by law, the renter can't do that and the landlord can't do it. They can't draw on that money, that's in escrow. The State should change that right away, give renters and landlords that ability to do that. And then on the commercial side, as well, I think there needs to be some kind of moratorium structure to help those small businesses that cannot pay the rent to get through. You know, the stimulus right now, people should go to the SBA website, all small businesses, and apply immediately for those loans.

Lehrer: That's the federal Small Business Association, right?

Mayor: Yes, I’m sorry – Small Business Association. Small businesses, right at this minute, if you haven't applied yet this morning, apply right now, it’s open. Those loans are on favorable terms and those loans can be forgiven, so getting that money in your pocket might allow you to pay the rent. But for those who can't pay the rent, there has to be a forbearance structure. And crucially, you know, there's no evictions happening. There should not be any because the court system is shut down effectively. And extending that no eviction as long as we need to, because, Brian, that's the bottom line for anyone who literally – they just have no choice, they can't pay and no relief is coming from the federal government or State government in that particular case, then so long as they can stay in their apartment, we can sort it all out later. So, keeping that no eviction policy in place until this crisis is over and then, you know, we'll worry about settling up the financial score later on.

Lehrer: Willa, in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Willa.

Question: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. My question is about FDNY EMS. Specifically, last week on March 26th, FDNY EMS responded to over 6,500 calls surpassing the number of calls that they responded to even on September 11th, 2001. Last year, when FDNY EMS’ union went to renegotiate their contract, the Mayor said that he values the work that EMS professionals do, but that he sees it as fundamentally “different” than the work that other first responders do, namely FDNY [inaudible] and NYPD, in essence justifying a $40,000 pay gap after five years on the job between the services. So, this is what these men and women signed up for – this pandemic – and they will meet this moment. They will be here to help us heal and rebuild after we beat back coronavirus and they're risking real sickness and death and doing so. But they need to know that you have their back. So, my question is, do you still value the work that FDNY EMS [inaudible] less than other first responders in terms of real dollars and cents?

Lehrer: I'm going to leave it there, Willa, but your question is very clear. Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Willa I appreciate the question. And look, I was with EMS members yesterday morning out in Queens, paramedics and EMTs, and 100 percent value their work and we're trying to support them in a lot of ways now, including getting reinforcements for them and from around the country, which we pushed FEMA to do. FEMA has now brought in 500 EMTs and paramedics and 250 ambulances, and that number has to grow and we have to do everything to shift the burden that we can off the paramedics and EMTs. They are doing an amazing job and they're very brave people and they are in this time and they always are.

Again, we have a different reality in each of our services. They do different things, different challenges, but respect all, we're trying to support all, we will continue to try and support all in different ways. But the bottom line, to me, is that the burden that's hit in these last days, it is extraordinary. But what the FDNY is doing is they're shifting personnel on to the 9-1-1 calls. The – again, bringing in the out-of-state personnel, shifting internally personnel, getting a better system in place to take a number of those 9-1-1 calls that actually don't need, I will not go into detail, but I'll tell you that in talking with the EMTs and paramedics out in Queens yesterday, they said they're still seeing people call 9-1-1 for things that are not in the least in emergency or because they are worried or because –

Lehrer: Right, but she's drawing attention to the pay disparity between EMS workers and firefighters. Does this crisis disprove that that’s a fair pay disparity?

Mayor: I – it's just not – we want to take care of these workers and support them. Of course, have their backs, but this is a bigger issue in the labor dynamics of the city. It's not the time to you know, make something up on the fly in the middle of crisis. That's just the truth. We'll figure this out when we get through this crisis.

Lehrer: Question from our newsroom regarding first responders, could the city provide quarantine housing for first responders who are worried about bringing COVID-19 home to their families? I read they have something like this in China.

Mayor: Could we say – clarify? Could we provide quarantine housing? So, we have a number of hotel rooms for first responders and health care workers who want to stay separate from their families, and, in some cases, who are working so hard they just can't even get home to their families. Yes. Those are available and we're making more available.

Lehrer: David in Rye Brook, you're on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hello David.

Question: Hey, good morning everyone. Mayor de Blasio, I'll make it pretty quick. We thank you for all of your service. We appreciate it. We know you're very overwhelmed. I have access to millions of masks and gowns because my father represents factories in China and we will of course – and I listen to every day Brian – and you said over the last two weeks that you are running out of supplies you would have –

Lehrer: That the city is, yeah –

Question: You would have an order already going if somebody from your team had responded. So, we'd love to get in touch directly with someone in order to get these supplies to our front line. Can you help?

Mayor: David, right now, I'll tell you if you please give your information to WNYC. I'm going to have our chief procurement officer reach out to you immediately who's been accessing supplies from all over the world. Reach out to him right now and he'll be calling you. I also want to tell all listeners, anyone who can offer supplies, equipment, who knows – who is a medical professional who is ready to volunteer or knows one, you can call 833-NYC-0040 or go on our website, nyc.gov/helpnow. So those are the two universal – and Brian, if you guys would keep getting that out there throughout your shows –those are the two universal ways that people can offer. We want these offers, we need them, David, I'm very, very appreciative. David, I'm sure you know, we are dealing with a struggle. China is, you know, the government in China it kind of seems to be changing the rules as we go along about the exports. So that's a real concern, but we want to get those orders in and see which ones we can expedite. We need that – we need all that material immediately.

Lehrer: And we're still taking them too, and if it's a significant donation, we will try to match you with the city or with the hospital or whatever's appropriate. But that number again to get in touch with the city directly again was 8-3-3 – what?

Mayor: Yeah. Again, it's 833-NYC-0040.

Lehrer: All right, you're – and David, thank you so much for offering this through us. You're using the NYPD to enforce social distancing now, we have the worst spread in low-income areas according to the neighborhood zip code by zip code numbers released by the city. I've heard of police cars blasting sirens and lights at teenagers of color congregating. The Intercept has an article about police without masks approaching people to disperse them. So, what direction would you like to give the NYPD about the softest, affective touch to not wind up with disparate policing by race and class in the emergency?

Mayor: Yeah, I think right now that goes with everything that all of our training at NYPD over the last six years and everything about the neighborhood policing strategy is about communication with the community, respect for the community, building relationships. This is – and this is something Commissioner Shea has said really clearly. This is about educating people, helping them understand the new reality, warning them if they're not following the guidance that they're actually creating a danger for themselves and others. So all officers can approach if they keep to social distancing, they can approach a group. They don't need to be wearing a mask to approach a group if they're six feet or more away from the individuals. The guidance we've given today is if you're approaching more closely to anyone, you know, put something over your face for everyone's benefit. Again, that could be in the case of everyday in New York or something like a scarf or a bandana.

The NYPD has been sent hundreds of thousands of masks for when officers do need them for their protection in situations where they're closely in encountering people. So I hear your underlying point, Brian, but I think NYPD has been, you know, really evolving to be much more about communicating with communities. If a group of young people are congregating, I want officers to go and address that group of young people make really clear that's unacceptable. I don't want to give fines unless we have to, but fines will be given if warnings are given and folks are told if you don't disperse, we're going to start fining you, then they're going to get fined. So our officers have to be urgent about it. And they have been, they’ve been doing a great job, but I think they've been doing it in a way that really is respectful of the people in the middle of a crisis.

Lehrer: One other NYPD thing that's also related to the White House, President Trump's advisor, Peter Navarro said at the briefing yesterday, they've also procured more than 1,700 Tyvek suits from Raytheon, specifically for NYPD homicide detectives after being asked by NYPD Chief of Department, Terrence Monahan, so that the detectives don't have to go into homes with possible COVID cases and put themselves at risk to investigate murders. So one, can you confirm that one? And also important as the homicide detectives are, we don't have more than a few hundred murders a year in the city these days - thank goodness – is that where 1,700 Tyvek suits are most needed right now?

Mayor: Yeah. Look, first of all, Peter Navarro has been very, very responsive over these last weeks and actually gotten this a lot of the things we need here in New York City, so he and I may disagree on some bigger policy matters, but on this one I want to give him credit. He's been moving a lot to New York City. On that one, I think that as with everything there is a need and the NYPD, if some of that need isn't readily, you know, something that needs to be tapped into right away, it should be moved to other agencies, obviously health workers or others who need it. There's been tremendous coordination between the agencies. Chief Monahan has been right in the middle of all that. So I assure you that, you know, we wanted everything we'd get our hands on in terms of every form of protective gear. We'll work with the NYPD to make sure if some of it is not being urgently used that it gets moved where it's needed most.

Question: Last question from a listener for today. This one comes via Twitter. I'm a FedEx employee. Every day we go to work with less subway cars. The trains are full, again. We could drive but we can't park near facilities in Manhattan without paying high fees. We're asking for free parking specifically for essential employees and workers so we go to work safely, maybe even just suspending parking meters. What do you say to this FedEx employee?

Mayor: It's a great question. I say I want to get an answer for that employee. We have different ways that we can address that and I want to figure out, because obviously they are essential employees and we have to make sure that they can get around. The MTA – look to the train's point and I'm perplexed by this because the MTA has something like, you know, only 10 percent of the ridership it had a couple of months ago. I don't understand why we have these persistent reports of trains being crowded. I do know they've lost a lot of staff obviously, and they've lost a lot of money, but I don't understand what the MTA is doing in terms of their planning that they can't put out the trains where they're needed to handle such a small number of people without crowding. We've also asked the NYPD to intervene to go to the places that appear to be hotspots and literally, you know, direct people to spread out across the train or keep people from getting on the train if it is too crowded.

And I would say that to all New Yorkers, if you're waiting for a train or bus and it is crowded, don't get on it. You know, if you're worried about what's going to happen at your job or something that's fair. But we cannot, you know, you can't be in harm's way. It's not right to have anyone get into a situation like a crowded subway car or bus at this point. We've got to figure out – I just don't understand the situation with MTA and I'm asking them to give us a better answer on why they can't adjust for this, so that everyone can have the assurance who those essential workers, that they get on a train, they're going to be safe.

Lehrer: And last thing for me for today, and then you can say anything to the listening public that you want going out the door. You appointed a Food Czar, Kathryn Garcia who's usually the Sanitation Commissioner. Are you concerned about the food supply?

Mayor: I am, but first reason I'm concerned, Brian, is that, you know, we think in the short term it's going to be something like a half million New Yorkers who lost their job as a result of COVID-19. Even though there was action in the federal stimulus bill, that money won't instantaneously be in people's pockets. You got a lot of people – it goes back to your rent question too – you got a lot of people who just don't have any money. So my first concern is that even though there's food on the shelves, a lot of people can't afford it. So that's – today we announced at 435 public school sites that were feeding kids, they're starting today they will feed families as well, meaning any New York families who need food. You can go online nyc.gov, get the sites, you can call 3-1-1, find a site near you.

Anyone can walk up during the hours of operation, which I believe are 7:30 am to 1:30 pm. You can get breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's all to go. No ones sitting down, obviously. But you can go in there and say, my family needs food. You'll get breakfast, lunch, and dinner for as many people as you indicate you need it for. The, you know, there's going to be absolute respect that families are in need and everyone, the workers there have a green light to give people whatever they deem appropriate. And that's going to be every weekday for the foreseeable future because we want to make sure there's a very widespread network of food. This is something Kathryn Garcia put together with the Department of Education, and we're going to go farther than that because I just think you're going to see with every passing week, people are just going to run out of money and need food. So we have to ensure that we have a very strong delivery mechanism and we have to make sure that food gets where it's needed.

And that's another thing, we're in a wartime dynamic and this, you know, thank you for the offer of a chance to finish with something and I'll put the two points together, this is a wartime dynamic, but the federal government's not acting like we're in a war. A war time dynamic is this. We've lost 1,500 new Yorkers lives already. There's going to be a lot more tragically. You've got people getting sick all the time. You got this city among other cities around the country struggling just to keep our health care system going. If that doesn't describe a war, I don't know what does. And yet Washington's on a peacetime footing right now when they should be on a wartime footing. So even to the point of not just the medical personnel we need, the surgical supplies, the ventilators, I'm concerned also, how do we make sure that food gets to everyone who needs it? You know, how do we make sure it is actually distributed properly in a situation where people don't have money to pay for it?

We are in a crisis that combines a lot of what we've experienced in a war with a lot of what this nation experienced in the Great Depression, but the federal government is not on that footing. So, I'll finish the way I started. Everyone who’s listening should raise their voice to our congressional delegation and directly to the leaders in Washington and say, this is unbelievable that this many people are suffering and our military is at their bases, they have not been called up, and there is no effort, literally no effort right now by the government to take doctors from other parts of the country that are experiencing little or no COVID-19 and get them where the need is greatest. We would have done that if there was a hurricane, we would have done that if there was a crisis in another country and humanitarian aid was pouring in from around the world. It's not being done for our own country and the only chance we have to fix this is if the federal government acts in the next days. Otherwise, we'll already be in the thick of the worst of it and it'll be too late.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor, I know you're holding extended news conferences every afternoon. We appreciate that you're continuing to come on with us on Friday mornings. Talk to you next week.

Mayor: Thank you, Brian. Take care now.

2020-04-03 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Everybody, this Friday afternoon, we are beginning now a race against time as we prepare for next week. I have said to the federal government, I've said to all New Yorkers that this Sunday, April 5th is an absolutely essential day as we prepare for a very, very difficult week ahead and I've called to arms all New Yorkers who can help in this fight. And I've asked our federal government to recognize, and I've told them this now over the last two weeks, that this was going to be an essential moment where we had to be supported and prepared for a really difficult battle ahead. We have to think about all of the pieces that we need to get through this important challenging moment in the history of this city. And I want everyone to understand that – it's not just one thing that we need at this point. We have to pull together all the pieces if we're going to save every life that we can save. We need the supplies. We've talked so much about that. The equipment, the PPEs, all the things that we need to get through this fight. We need more than ever, the personnel, the people, the doctors, the nurses, all of the medical personnel that will help us through this fight. We need the beds, the hospital beds, the hospital capacity, and we're going to be building it in every conceivable location to get us through.

I'm going to go over with you the details so that everyone understands what New York City is up against, what it's going to take. We've obviously looked at every piece of the equation and the PPE's, the personal protective equipment, is something that has been rightfully focused on deeply because that's what protects our doctors, our nurses, all our health care workers, who are heroes fighting at the frontline. And that matter is crucially important, but I'm going to focus even more on the pieces of the equation that we're struggling with even more right now. So, everyone understands it's been a dramatic fight to make sure we got enough PPEs. But I want to be honest with everyone that making sure we have enough ventilators is even tougher. Making sure we have enough beds is going to be an extraordinary race against time with only a month to produce a number of hospital beds. It's almost inconceivable in the modern history of the city, but we believe we can do it if we get the help we need.

Possibly the toughest part of the equation is the personnel. And we're going to need help not only from everyone in this city but from the entire country if we're going to meet this goal in time. So, I will not focus as much in this update today on the PPEs. They're vitally important. But we're even having a tougher time with the other pieces of the equation. I want to lay that out in specificity. I will say, and I always try and give thanks when people help us. I'll be critical when we don't get help, and I'll be thankful when we get it. And later on, we'll go over a number of organizations and people who step forward, but I want to give a special thanks to the President and to Jared Kushner. They told me yesterday that they would get to 200,000 N95 masks to our public hospital system. The part of our health care system that has been bearing the brunt in places like Elmhurst Hospital and Lincoln Hospital, Bellevue, Queens Hospital – all of these places have really been the tip of the spear. And I was on a call with the President and Jared Kushner yesterday. They said they would produce these things immediately. And lo and behold Dr. Mitch Katz sent me a photo a couple of hours ago that they had been delivered to Health + Hospitals. So that's going to really help us get through a lot of the month of April. And I'm very thankful for that. 

Now, what are we up against now? Well, here are the numbers. We said from the beginning, we would need 15,000 ventilators to get through this crisis. Basically, think about April and May. That's the right way to still think about this: to get through April, May to get through the worst of it, to save every life that can be saved, we will need 15,000 total ventilators, 15,000 more than we started the month of March with. We have gotten some ventilators in, but right now we're struggling to have enough for next week. We will need approximately 45,000 new medical personnel over that which we started the month with. And I'll go over those details with you as well. We will need 85,000 hospital beds beyond the 20,000 we started March with and again, I will go over those details with you. We had a presentation from Dr. Katz about that, so you've had a lot of that before. 

The ventilators, why are they so crucial? Because as you'll hear from our doctors, and I want to keep emphasizing this, just think about the person in your life who you love – could be a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a mother, a father, a brother, a sister. Think about that person, a spouse, that person who needs that ventilator right then to live. Doctors do not have the luxury – if someone's gotten to a point where they cannot breathe out ventilator, the doctor can't say, the nurse can say, hey, could you hold on for a few hours while we try and find one? You know, could you come back tomorrow? They can't say that. When a medical professional needs that ventilator, they need it right that moment. So, the ventilators to me are one of the clearest examples of life and death. If we're going to save every single life we can save, we must have the ventilators we need exactly where we need them, when we need them. 

What do we need for next week? A minimum of 2,500 to 3000 ventilators. Now we will update these numbers every single day and let us all pray that we start to see better news and we start to need less than projected, but we have to plan on the very toughest assumptions, 2,500 to 3000 ventilators more than what we have right now. That is a part of that overall 15,000 I mentioned.

Now you'll ask the obvious question, where could we get them? Well, the federal government is the single most important source. We have only an approximation, and let me hasten to say the federal government has to cover the needs of the entire nation. I do understand that. I've had this conversation with the President, the FEMA administrator, the military leadership. I understand the entire nation has to be served, but I also understand we are the epicenter of this crisis – still about a quarter of the cases in this entire country right here in New York City. And we are the tip of the spear. And everyone I talked to in Washington acknowledges it. We're about to hit a huge surge in these coming days. They all know it. There's not a single leader in Washington, whether in health care, FEMA, military, white house, no one denies that we are bearing the brunt and it's going to hit in the next few days.

So, when I talk about the 10,000 ventilators in the federal stockpile, it stands to reason that they should go where the need is greatest in our nation, and right now that's here. And the second we don't need them, we will happily work to move them to any other part of the country that does. The New York State stockpile – to the best of our information at this point, there's about 2000 left in that stockpile. Again, I understand the State has to think about every part of this state, but we are overwhelmingly the place in the state where the problem is greatest. So those are two places to turn. 

Now, where else can we think about? Well, today there was something really positive that happened and that was that the Governors of both New York and New Jersey took a crucial step and that was to order private companies to release any stockpile they have of crucially needed supplies. Ventilators, obviously PPEs, we're waiting for all the details, but I want to be crystal clear. This is exactly the kind of thing we need. In fact, I would urge every state in the union to exercise the same approach. Any private medical facilities, doctors, any industries, construction, manufacturing, any place that's holding back personal protective equipment or ventilators at a moment of profound crisis. We have to be clear, this is a wartime dynamic. People's lives are at stake. There is no reason in the world to hold back that equipment. If that equipment is meant for someone who's fighting at the front line, someone who's one of our health care workers, our first responders, that's one thing. If it's part of fighting COVID-19, that's great. But we know for a fact there still a lot of equipment, a lot of supplies that have not been applied to the struggle.
They are sitting in offices and warehouses and that's unacceptable. So, I commend both states for taking action and we will act in tandem with this effort. I am authorizing the NYPD, the Fire Department of New York City, the Sheriff's Office of New York City to immediately support the efforts to acquire these supplies from these private sources. I am certain many, many companies will comply with the new order readily. In that case, we want our law enforcement agencies to help make sure that the deliveries are done promptly and that they are secure. We all know how valuable these supplies are. We want them to be secured. But in the event that any private organization, any company, any individual attempts to resist this new instruction from the State and does not provide those crucial lifesaving supplies and equipment, then I'm authorizing the NYPD, the Sheriff's Office, the FDNY to use their law enforcement capacity to make sure that those items are turned over immediately and brought immediately to where the need is greatest in our hospital system.

Now, another part of this equation, and this one's tough because it's never been done before. We don't have any companies in New York City that make ventilators. It just doesn't exist. But I have asked our Economic Development Corporation to attempt rapidly to answer this call with some form of local production. They have developed a plan. We will have more to say on that in the next few days as soon as the details are perfected. But this is an important part of the equation. It has never been done, but we have to see if there's any viable way to produce ventilators locally that could help us achieve this goal. 

Finally, the alternative devices. These devices, and the doctors will talk about this. Later. Dr. Katz has given me a tutorial on this. They do help, for sure. They can help in several ways as part of a variety of tools we use to save lives. They are not the same as a ventilator per se, but they are still a very valuable piece of the equation. We've secured 1,780 of these devices. We believe there's about 3000 in New York State reserve, and we're going to certainly work with the State to maximize the use of these items as we get ready for this very difficult week ahead.

Let me now talk to you about our heroes, our health care workers. Our health care workers – I think this is their toughest hour, but it's also their finest hour. They have been going through so much the last few weeks. They've been extraordinarily valiant. We've got to make sure we protect them. We've got to give them the equipment they need to do their jobs, but we also need to give them a lot more reinforcement. Look, think about it. These folks have been working night and day through very tough conditions, seeing a lot of painful realities. A lot of them have not gotten any break at all. And they've watched as a lot of their colleagues had gotten sick and had to go offline. That just put more pressure on so many of the health care workers, they had to do even more work. We need to bring in additional personnel rapidly to relieve them, to support them, to rotate, you know, give them a chance to get a break, but also because the need is just exploding in terms of the COVID cases. 

So where did we start? Well, at the beginning of March we had about 125,000 citywide clinical staff. All our hospitals combined. And just for all of us who are not doctors, and I'm constantly asking these questions so I can understand better, and I can explain them to the people of the city, clinical staff, here's the broad definition – doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, dieticians for the purpose of dealing with COVID, that's the core group of professions we're talking about. So again, the beginning of March, about 125,000 folks in our hospitals, all our hospitals, public, private, every kind from those categories of professionals, about 20,000 of them – within that larger group, about 20,000 worked in our public hospitals at Health + Hospitals. 

Now here's what we need to get through April and into May and to really help save lives all through April and May, we need to build out rapidly, additional staffing, and the number is really substantial and it will tell you just how tough this is going to be. We will need the additional 45,000 clinical staff. That means about 7,500 who will be in our traditional hospital buildings and another 37,500 who will be staffing all the nontraditional hospitals that are being created. You see already places like the Javits Center, the Billie Jean King Tennis Center, we're going to be in the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, we're going to be in hotels all over our city, whole hotels converted to hospitals. All of this is going to take staffing. Now some need a lot of intensive staffing, like of course intensive care units, but others, the hotels in particular, given the patients they'll be handling can get a lot done with less staffing. And there's a phrase I've been hearing these last days that all New Yorkers need to understand: this crisis staffing, crisis protocols that we're going to be staffing these medical facilities, not in the ideal way, not in the way we all wish we could, but in the way that makes sense in battle, when we have to make smart choices and smart compromises to be able to save the most lives and serve the most people. We're asking our medical personnel right now – they don't have the ideal in terms of the kind of numbers of personnel they deserve. They don't have all the equipment they deserve. They don't have all the PPEs they deserve. We've have been now for weeks and weeks on a crisis footing and the CDC recognizes this, that there's one standard, if you will, for peacetime, there's another standard for wartime and we have to make tough, tough choices and get by with less in wartime. I keep saying to everyone this is like a war that hasn't been declared and needs to be declared by our national government because if you go to one of these hospitals what our health care workers are going through shirt looks like a war to me and they deserve the best, but they're doing their best even with the limits that had been placed on them, and we need to recognize that and acknowledge that and say to them, we know what you're going through. We have some inkling, even though none of us are walking in your shoes, but we know you don't – being given everything you should and we're going to try and get you more and more. But even if we do, well, it's still not perfect.

But I'll tell you something about health care workers, just like our first responders, they keep showing up. They keep doing the job no matter what. We need to get them these reinforcements and we need to do it quickly. So, we will do it in a variety of manners, through contracting. We've already in recent weeks, added an additional 3,600 medical personnel. Our goal is to double that quickly through the contracting process. This means bringing in medical personnel from all over the country under contract a lot from this part of the country. Volunteers – we've been working with our own New York City Medical Reserve Corps through our Department of Health and with the State through its a medical volunteer system. Together that's almost accounted for a thousand new medical professionals. We need to get a lot more out of that. We intend to.

FEMA. I've been talking to the White House, to FEMA, to the military since last week. I request, I've said many times, I ask for 1000 nurses 300 respiratory therapists and 150 doctors by the end of the day, Sunday. I spoke just about an hour ago to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Millie. That request is being acted on actively. I'm not going to be able to tell you at this hour exactly what the numbers will be. I expect to hear that by the end of the day. My message to all of – to FEMA and everyone as we thank them for all they've done and we need more and I need as much as possible that this request be fulfilled in total by Sunday. If it is not fulfilled by Sunday, we are going to start to have challenges immediately. So, we have to get the maximum help from Washington and I'll have that report soon. 

In terms of what could happen to truly enlist all the medical personnel of our country. Look, we are going to do everything the old-fashioned way, if you will, to the volunteer recruitment efforts. You're going to see an alert go out shortly asking for all medical personnel in New York City to volunteer to sign up – and I want to emphasize when we say volunteer, they will be paid for their time. I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression. We're asking them to break away from whatever else they're doing, sign up now, join this effort. So that alert will go out on top of all the other efforts to pull together volunteer medical personnel. But I want people to understand this is not what will get us through this crisis here in New York City nor any place else in the country. Again, we're in the middle of a war, a war against an invisible enemy. Look, if another country were attacking United States of America, if I told you that a country was attacking United States of America, attacking our largest city and simultaneously attacking Florida, attacking Louisiana, attacking Michigan, and that thousands of Americans had died, and I said to you, do you think the military would be called up to fight that enemy? I know you'd say yes. It would be so obvious and they would've been called up a long time ago, in fact. We're dealing with an enemy that is killing thousands of our fellow Americans and a lot of people are dying who don't need to die, who should not die if the right medical help and equipment were there for them. While you cannot say every state for themselves, every city for themselves, that's not America. America is a place where we look out for each other. When there's a disaster somewhere in America, everyone goes from all over the country to help, whether it was Katrina in New Orleans or Harvey in Houston, or all the horrible hurricanes that have hit Florida, or even when we experienced Sandy or, or even more, 9/11, people came from all over the country to help. Right now, we have these wonderful ambulances, paramedics, and EMTs are here from around the country to help us. It's an American belief that we go to help. But usually what happens is a disaster hits one place or a few places in the whole rest of the country responds. This is something very different. We have to wake up to the reality we're facing. This is a war with many, many fronts, and we cannot ask each city to try and somehow improvise while dealing with the greatest health care crisis in a century. And we cannot ask each state to just go it alone when the only possible way of getting through this is with the full support of our federal government, our military, and the medical community of our entire country. Right now, there are doctors and nurses and other medical professionals all over the country going about their normal lives and they're doing good work, but a lot of them could be freed up in a crisis to help save lives. And the lives to be saved are right here in New York City. So, I have called for today something unprecedented – a national enlistment effort, a national effort to bring all available medical personnel into the fight against the coronavirus, wherever that fight is raging the most; to recruit doctors, nurses, and medical professionals from all over the country, send them rapidly where they're needed most, and then move them rapidly to the next biggest problem, the next biggest challenge. And what we will do, and I know every other city and state will do the same, is we will then offer our personnel to go to the next front to help as well. That's the only way we're going to get through the months ahead. It's never been done, but we know what it looks like because this country has been through war. And we know who could organize it and that's our military because they've done it before. Our military has the ability to put together a national structure to mobilize its medical personnel and ensure they get where they need to go rapidly and to make sure the priorities are right. But our military has not been brought into this fight, in anywhere near the way they could be.

And let's be clear about that. I'm really thankful that the USNS Comfort is here. I'm really thankful for all the members of our military who are here in the city, helping us. But they are few in number compared to the might of the American military. When you think about our standing military, our reserves, right now there's a very small presence in New York City. It should be a huge presence. Right now, the tens of thousands of medical personnel who are part of our military and our reserves, they have not been called up to action across the board. It's time for the Commander in Chief to give the order. If we're fighting a war, let's act like we're fighting a war right now. There's a peacetime approach in Washington and that won't cut it. So I'm urging the President to do something that no president has had to do in our modern history – to create an enlistment effort for our medical personnel, civilians all over the country, and to ensure that our military medical personnel are not left on their bases, but are brought to the front. That's what our military does. That's what they believe in going where they can save the most American lives. Well, we need them now.

Few more points and I mentioned to you there's some wonderful people who have been helping us out, but before I go to that very positive, hopeful roll call, I do want to offer personal condolences to our City Comptroller Scott Stringer. He lost his mom, Arlene Stringer-Cuevas. And for a lot of us in public service here in New York City, well, we've all known Scott and many of us for many decades and we appreciate him and the work he does for this city. But we also have known his mom. His mom did so much, a trailblazer in public life in this city, a New York City Council member, a woman who often was one of the first women in the role she played. Someone who served in our City government, in Social Services, did so much to help others. Raised a great son and a great family. We've lost her to the coronavirus. A vibrant, amazing New Yorker, a true New Yorker with a lot of personality and our condolences. All of us here in City Hall are feeling this. And we offer our condolences to Scott and his whole family. And it's another reminder of how personal this crisis has been for all of us. Every single New Yorker knows someone who either has this disease or has lost a loved one to this disease. It's very personal for all of us. And, and we mourn with all the families who have lost a loved one.

I told you that again, in the midst of the challenge, we keep being inspired by the generosity and the good works of so many people. This gives you a lot of hope when again, I keep calling that role of heroes, when the Comfort steamed into our harbor. When we saw the amazing efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers at the Javits Center, when we saw those ambulances arrive from all over the nation, all of that has given us hope. All of that is helping us fight back. But there's a lot of companies and organizations, even foreign nations who are stepping up to help New York City in our hour of need. I'm just going to say it quickly just to give you the sheer magnitude. I want to thank Facebook, 25,000 face masks, 48,000 pairs of gloves. The UN Mission right here in the city, of the nation of Qatar, 60,000 surgical masks [inaudible] 70,000 respirators and surgical masks. The Met, 33,000 gloves, great New York City institution. The municipality of Shanghai, obviously China has gone through so much, now they're helping us – 20,000 surgical masks. Right here from New York City, New York Road Runners, that sponsors our wonderful marathon, 20,000 pairs of gloves. Rudin Management 20, excuse me, 10,000 pairs of gloves, a million masks, wonderful organization has sent us a thousand respirators. Ford has sent 50,000 face shields and they were made by Ford and delivered. And that's fantastic. American Express, 36,000 N95 masks. Louis Vuitton, 21,000 N95 masks.

I mean, this really adds up and it shows you, even when we look at daunting numbers and daunting challenges, look at how many people are stepping up and helping. And each one of those helps us and think about all the health care workers, everyone who is going to be protected because of these generous donations. I want to thank all of them and there are some more. And these are not supplies and PPEs. These are other types of things. Discovery has put up public service announcements. They did this as a contribution to the effort to make sure that our young people will get food they need for free. We've gotten some donations to our schools. Rihanna, her Clara Lionel Foundation has helped our public schools and our kids in their hour of need. Goldman Sachs the same. Uber has provided $750,000 in free rides to health care workers and first responders. Uber Eats, $250,000 in food codes. And one that I'll end on and it's one I'm very, very personally appreciative of. Obviously, you've heard how deeply I feel we need to get health care workers from all over the country to help us. And I think our military are about to play, I hope, a very crucial role. But you know what it's also great to see civilian airlines stepping up. So thank you. A profound thanks to JetBlue, which is our hometown airline here in New York City, based here. But thanks to JetBlue. Thanks to United, they're providing flights for free to medical workers who volunteered to come here and serve. And that really, really helps us out.

So, all of that, even against this tough, tough backdrop, all that is good news. And I want to remind everyone we need help from anyone and everyone of every kind. And if you want to help New York City, please call this number, 8-3-3-NYC-0-0-4-0, or you can go online nyc.gov/helpnow. And I'll only finish before I say a few words in Spanish. Then we'll go to your questions from the media. That I talk to New Yorkers all day long who are fighting this fight. Their resolve is unbelievable. It is a, there's a power in the people of this city, a strength. I'm seeing it every day. I do not see people running. I did not see people letting the legitimate fear overcome them. I see people standing and fighting. That's who we are as New Yorkers and that's what we're going to do. And all we ask is that our nation stand by us to the fullest.

Few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we welcome questions from our media colleagues. And please tell me name and outlet.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder. We have Dr. Barbot and Dr. Katz here in person and Commissioner Criswell on the phone. With that, I will start with Josh from ABC-7.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, how are you? Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah. Josh, how are you doing?

Question: I'm well, how are you doing?

Mayor: Good man.

Question: I'm curious, Jared Kushner yesterday at the podium made the comment about the federal stockpile being "ours," you know, and that it's not really – it's there to support the states, doesn't belong to the states. And in the context of that today, you know, the Patriots are driving through the city in a big brand of tractor trailer with 300,000 masks, I think N95 and dropping them off to the Javits Center. That is, if I'm not mistaken, completely supplied by the federal government with federal health care workers. And I'm wondering if those masks for which they're taking a lot of credit for delivering to New York should instead be sent to Health + Hospitals or some other facility in New York. Your general thoughts on this.

Mayor: Josh. Yeah. Josh, let me just keep the line open so I can get clarity. Josh, I just want to make sure we're speaking the same language here. You know, I talked to Jared Kushner yesterday and that particular shipment that, you know, there was a real focus on our public hospitals. I know Jared talked to Dr Katz to get clear about the need. And the agreement that 200,000 N95 masks would play a crucial role, protecting our health care workers at Health + Hospitals. And we received that. We're very, very grateful. But I'm not clear about what you're talking about specifically. So just clarify.

Question: So, the New England Patriots just in the last hour, I think they had a big public flight. They flew to China, they got, you know, like almost 2 million masks and they apparently drove 300,000 of them according to them, into the city and they dropped them off at the Javits Center. And there's a video on Twitter of like this motorcade, an NYPD motorcade with this truck. And I'm wondering if you know where they are really destined. Are they destined for the federal workers at the Javits Center who presumably came with their own material? Is that material that the city should be able to use or a combination of both?

Mayor: So, first of all, thank you. And there's been a lot going on today, so I did not know about that being done by the Patriots. I want to thank the New England Patriots for that extraordinary donation. As many of you know, I was born in New York City to a New York City family, but I grew up in Massachusetts, and am a fan of the New England Patriots through thick and thin. That's a fantastic donation. And Josh, I think the assumption that anyone comes with the supplies I need, I just want to challenge you on that. Everyone around the country is struggling, including those who are working as part of the FEMA response to make sure they'll have enough supplies for the duration of this crisis here in the city, which really could be as much as two full months. The worst of it. So no, when you get a huge amount of supplies like that. That's just a wonderful thing and it will absolutely be used and needed. And Javits Center is a great place for it. How it will be specifically utilized, we'll get back to you. But no, anyone who wants to show up to one of our hospital sites and has something that's helpful. We have, you know, an organized system that we obviously want people to go through. That's the best way, by calling 8-3-3-NYC-0-0-4-0 or going online nyc.gov/helpnow. But if, you know, if someone wants to show up with hundreds of thousands of masks, and I know that's happened at Bellevue in one case. And you know, of course we're going to accept them with great gratitude. So, we'll get you the details on the use, but that's a fantastic development.

Moderator: Next we'll take Julia from the Post.

Question: Mayor, how are you doing?

Mayor: Good.

Question: Good. So, the appointment of former Police Commissioner Jimmy O'Neill, just kind of begs the question about why that role is not being filled by Commissioner Criswell, who I understand she's on the call today, but we really haven't seen her and visible as we've seen say, Dr Katz or Dr. Barbot?

Mayor: So, Julia, I'm not sure I understand the question, so I'm just going to try and explain how this is all working. You know, I've been working with all of my colleagues over these last weeks, even months now. Deanne Criswell as our Emergency Management Commissioner has been, you know, with the deputy mayors, you know, and the lead organizing this entire operation. And she also happens to have tremendous relationships at the federal level and has helped us to bring in a lot of the resources we have and work out the operational plans with the federal government, the State government. She's doing exactly what you want an Emergency Management commissioner to do. She's working on all aspects of the crisis as is her team. You're seeing the health care professionals more Julia, I think this is pretty straight up, that because many, many, many of the questions and concerns that we raise in these press conferences are about the health care issues and the science and the actions that are going on in Health + Hospitals.

Jimmy O'Neill's playing a very specific role. And I asked him to play this role, which is to ensure that in the hospitals themselves, that given the dynamic-ness of what we're about to go through the next few weeks, that upon the arrival of supplies, we know that the utilization, the security of the supplies, the turnaround time in terms of what we need for resupply, that everything is very tight and there's eyes on the situation with people that he'll have in each hospital. And we've got a very, very strong coordination structure. That's a piece of a much bigger equation, but he's perfect for that piece of the equation. I'm so grateful that he's taken that on. But Deanne is one of the people who was one of the conductors of the whole orchestra. And I want to thank her for the extraordinary job she's doing.

Moderator: Next we have Gloria from NY1.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing? I want if I may, two separate questions. First, I wanted to follow up on the City's guidance yesterday about New Yorkers wearing face coverings. Will the City be providing workers and people in homeless shelters with the necessary equipment or masks? And if I may follow up?

Mayor: Yeah, just do it all at once. That one's easy.

Question: And then I wanted to ask you if there's any update on a rent freeze. I know you spoke about that this morning and I, and you talked about the role that Albany plays here. But is there anything that the City is looking at or planning? As the days continue to go on and people are having trouble making their payments and so on, what kind of power does the City have here beyond folks who live in rent stabilized apartments?

Mayor: Yeah. Gloria, thank you. On the first part, the answer is yes, we will be. It'll take us obviously a few days to fully implement, but we will be providing bandanas, scarfs, whatever kind of face covering makes sense in the facilities that we control that people live in, in our Correction system, in our homeless shelter system, et cetera. So the answer's yes there. And on the second part, and hold on, you know, Gloria, we have not enough gotten so much sleep lately. What was the second part again? Oh, you can cue me – rent freeze. Thank you. On that part. The question you're asking is the right way, which is that the City's power has to do with the Rent Guidelines Board, which I've asked in fact the State to suspend. The fact is, you know, that would create a de facto rent freeze. I think that's the right thing to do. But unless the State suspends by law, that process, we would have to go through the whole process, which would take months. So that's something we can do immediately with State support. The other thing we've done is through the power of the City, obviously anyone who was threatened with eviction originally, we were going to provide free lawyers for in this crisis. But then the, the reality, a very good reality in a sad backdrop is we got wave after wave of agreement from the real estate community, from the court system, from the State, that there would not be any evictions. Now that's for a time limited reality and we all have to make sure that that no eviction policy continues as long as it needs to. And that's something we'll be watching and acting on very closely.

But the bigger answer to your question, Gloria, is it is overwhelmingly the State's legal domain to act on things like potential, some kind of rent moratorium beyond just the rent stabilized apartments. That's 2 million plus people, but there's obviously a lot more people who are not rent stabilized. And I really like the proposal that says for those renters who need, it's not everyone, some people do have enough money to afford the rent, but for those who need to pay the rent and can't, let them use their security deposits and then have some kind of repayment plan, installment plan or something. That also requires State action. So we're very clear as we go through this. There's certain things that only the State can do. There's certain things only the federal government could do. But we've been very clear about what we think the State can and should do immediately. I know they just got through their budget in the last 24 hours, a lot going on in Albany, but I hope this will soon be something that will be acted on.

Moderator: Next we have Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to ask about the 45,000 medical staffers you're trying to recruit to come help us out. I'm just wondering if there's, if you're going to be able to guarantee that they're going to have enough PPE to keep them safe, rather than rationing? Because they're going to want to go back to wherever they're from when this is over and take care of their neighbors obviously. So how are you going to keep them safe, given the city's PPE shortages?

Mayor: Yoav that's a very fair question. And I don't mean this in any way to be disrespectful. I really don't. It's a peacetime question and this is not peacetime anymore. It really isn't. It just isn't. People are dying and they need to be saved. And one thing I've learned about people in the health care field, like my colleagues here is they don't, they don't think the same way a lot of everyday people do. Everyday people of course have to think about all day, you know, their immediate family and protecting their health and wellbeing. And certainly, we want every health care worker protected. But I have to tell you, there's a selflessness, there's a heroism to health care workers, to first responders. They - we don't want them taking any chance they should not take, but I need you to understand what I hear all the time is that they understand - they don't like it, who would like that there's dangers lurking. But they're doing it because it's what they believe is the right thing to do. So, we will be honest with people about what we have and what we don't have. When you say will we have to be rationing? Yeah, we're already rationing for God's sakes. I've been very honest that we don't have enough ventilators for next week. We have most of the PPEs we need for next week. We're still trying to round out that supply and make sure we will have absolutely everything we need for next week. As you add more and more health care workers, you'll need more and more protective equipment. Look, I want to believe Yoav that time is a little bit on our side in the sense of there's production now happening everywhere. I mean, you know, you saw those face shields being made in Brooklyn. All sorts of production is happening all over the country trying to help us in other areas. You know, we've gone all over the country, all over the world contracting to get stuff in. It is coming in. So, I think there'll be a regular resupply. Will it be perfect? I'm sure it won't be. Will we have to ration? Absolutely because we're doing it now and we're absolutely going to have to keep doing it. And I think the doctors should speak to this, but the health care professionals will make their choices. If some ever feel it's not appropriate. That's something we will respect if they come here to help us. But I think what you're going to see is the vast majority of people who signed up for that profession intended to save lives and they didn't think it was going to be easy and nor did they even think it was always going to be safe. But they did it because they're that kind of human beings. They're just that good. Dr Katz, you want to jump in?

President and CEO Mitchell Kats, Health + Hospitals: Mr. Mayor, I can assure you, Health + Hospitals is full of heroic doctors and nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers who are doing their very best. We are definitely not in a best-case scenario when it comes to protective equipment, but we have enough to keep people as safe as we possibly can.

Mayor: You want to add, doctor?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Sure. And what I'll add to what both of you have said that I agree completely with, is the fact that as the Mayor said, we're not in peacetime, we're in wartime. Which means that we have to let go of that throw away culture that we've had previously. And to really think about what we use, why we use it, and how we use it. And, the guidance that we have put in place is to preserve the life of and extend the life of PPE, always keeping in mind the safety of our frontline workers. And so, I think that's important to note here as well.

Mayor: Thank you doctor. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Joe Anuta from Politico.

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah, Joe.

Question: I was wondering if you could give us a little more detail about what types of private businesses you think might have ventilators, PPE that potentially if they don't want to voluntarily give it up [inaudible] why people go [inaudible], sort of, how do you find these people and who are they? And do you have an estimate of how much they have?

Mayor: Joe, first of all the categories. We know a lot of the construction industry uses PPE's, especially various types of masks. Clearly a lot has changed in that industry just in the last few days. I want to emphasize, I think there's a lot of people in a lot of industries who will come forward readily, but we need them to feel urgency. We need these supplies immediately, immediately. And I think it's like everything else in human life, there'll be a whole lot of people that do the right thing, there'll be a whole lot of people who follow the directive and just want to help their fellow New Yorker. There'll be some who aren't acting quickly enough and they'll be others who, you know, try to resist that. That always happens. Some people would be more motivated by greed than they will by helping others.

So, the construction industry for sure, there's different types of manufacturing that require people to have protective masks and other gear. Obviously, there's elements of the private healthcare sector that are dormant now, either entirely dormant. For example, I think it's fair to say about something like cosmetic surgery or, you know, much more limited than it normally would be. So, we need to get all that in. And what I'm trying to say is, again, I agree with Governor Cuomo, Governor Murphy, they did the right thing. I think it should be absolutely for every industry, not just healthcare, every industry that has them now. In a wartime mentality, whatever people are doing, they should just give the supplies they have up right now so they can get to the front, they can get to those who need them. And once we have them in, I can't give you an exact estimate. I can tell you it will all help, and I think it's going to be substantial, but when [inaudible] we know the supplies are available. I'm also clear, and this gets back to the role that I've mentioned with Jimmy O'Neill, we want the supply chain to be very secure. So, if people have supplies, we want to make sure that the NYPD, FDNY, Sheriff's Office are making sure those supplies are getting where they need to go. You know, working with the state directive. And anyone who is not complying, then we'll use the power of our enforcement agencies to make sure they do, because this is about protecting human lives, I mean, this is an emergency. So, we'll have more knowledge of sort of the sheer impact soon, but I have no doubt it's going to be a very helpful amount.

Moderator: Next, we have Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. How are you doing?

Mayor: Good, Henry, how are you doing?

Question: I'm doing well. I wanted to ask you about the status of EMS workers who are really upset that they're making salaries as low as $16 an hour. They're risking their lives in situations that you've already described as heroic. And I don't, reading their letters, or the letter their president [inaudible] the morale of this workforce is in jeopardy. I mean, he's written you a letter or has put out a statement saying that it's shameful. That their salary of $16 an hour for the work they're doing is shameful. What's your response to that?

Mayor: Henry, I appreciate the question, and we will get you offline all the facts about how are very brave, very strong and effective EMT's and paramedics are compensated, so you have all the facts in front of you. I spent time yesterday out in Queens with a group of paramedics and EMT's. I talked to them about everything they were experiencing, what they were feeling. I talked to them about, you know, how their spirits were after everything they were going through. And I'll tell you something. There was, they were absolutely resolute. They were proud of the job they were doing. They were certain that EMS and all the FDNY would handle this challenge. They knew that reinforcements had come in from around the country. They were very grateful about that, really happy about that. They knew more was coming.

There was not a hint of anything but a total devotion to the work and understanding this was a moment where their city needed them. And I believe that's the pervasive view in this incredibly noble workforce. We're going to work with that union going forward. Always, the doors always open. That's the simplest way I can say it. We're always going to have the conversation about ways we can support the workforce. But the big issues that are being raised now, those are long term issues that can't be decided in the middle of a crisis. We're happy to talk about them when the crisis is over. But anything we can do right now, I support the workforce, that I can do, I'm looking to, and obviously making sure this was something that Deanne Criswell worked very hard on getting those ambulances here from around the country. And I have 500 more EMT'S and paramedics is a big deal. That's a big, big addition to the team, and that's a lot of her handiwork with FEMA. And we thank FEMA. That's real direct support and we're doing a number of other things with Health and Hospitals to take a lot of those 9-1-1 calls away in the sense of peeling off the calls that really are people looking for medical advice. People are scared, people looking for guidance who really don't need an EMT or paramedic to show up and every time we can lighten the load of our EMTS and paramedics we're answering that point of how we can support them. So, we're going to keep doing that, my door will always be open to talk about what we can do for them now and then when the crisis is over, we can talk about the future.

Moderator: Next we have Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, quick question about the volunteers. Is the City able to use any of the 85,000 people who've already signed up to help the medical professionals, are they insufficient or unqualified? Is there any reason you're calling for an additional 45,000 volunteers?

Mayor: Jeff, right now, we've had lots of people sign up. But still as you saw from the numbers I outlined earlier, still relatively few have turned into actual placements in our hospitals where the need is greatest. Look, you're going to have people sign up who really, really want to help. But some of them because of their professional experience or background or maybe their own health reality, some of them will not be the kind of folks who could put in an ICU for example, or an emergency department. But we're going to need them in different ways and I'm going to welcome everyone that we have an immediate role for. So, we're going to keep working that list for sure like any other lists of people who come forward, some will work, some won't, but you know, that's going to be a big part of the equation. But we know right now with the numbers we're talking about and the speed that we have to achieve this, and this is unprecedented, I think, I think we've all acclimated to crisis, but we're still not really, really seeing what's happening, which is why I keep trying to say it's wartime, you know, to talk about we are trying to add on top of the 20,000 hospital beds that were the normal reality in New York City for decades. We're now saying we're going to put 65,000 more on top of that in the month of April. That is a staggering endeavor, and then they all have to be staffed and it has to be consistent throughout April and May. And in the meantime, we're losing a lot of healthcare workers to the disease for a period of time and some of them have worked their selves to the bone and they need a break.
So the numbers represent an incredibly dynamic situation we need those people, we need them exactly when we need them, we need exactly the capacity and experience. And that's part of why I've had the conversations with the White House and with the military about the power of bringing in the military medical professionals, first of all. A lot of whom literally have battlefield experience and we need them, I really value the comfort, I value Javits center, I value all of these pieces. But what I have asked for directly to the President, to the Defense Secretary, to the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff is people go right into the ICU and emergency departments starting with our public hospitals. That request, I put out the 1,000 nurses, 150 doctors, 300 respiratory therapists is all for our Health and Hospitals, those 11 hospitals. So we need that, but I don't believe we'll be able to make all the pieces come together as quickly as they need to and sustain ourselves through the thick of this crisis without that deeper national structure for bringing in civilian medical personnel as well, the only way we can guarantee it with this magnitude and knowing that people will be going down the whole way there. You're going to see people come in, they'll get sick, they'll be on the bench for a period of time— before we get them back. We need a much bigger apparatus that could possibly be generated just locally, that's where I think— the military needs to work and the White House needs to create a civilian medical enlistment system immediately. Jeff, I just put an op-ed in your publication, just came out in the last hour, stating the case for something we've never had before in this nation. But if we do that, then I could see us getting these numbers to actually align in real time and again, when our crisis is over, then moving those folks on to where they're needed most.

Moderator: Next we have Brigid from WNYC.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, I wanted to get an update on Rikers Island and specifically reports that there have been five corrections officers who have died from COVID-19 and many more who are out sick. Do you have those numbers? And can you confirm that? And then also when we talk about the face covering guidance that you showed yesterday, is that also going to apply to inmates and staff there?

Mayor: So, Brigid, on the first part— I've talked about the other day we were mourning the first correction officer to pass away. In addition to the investigator passed away, there's IT person for correction department. I don't have the latest update and— I care about every single one of our colleagues in public service we've lost, but I don't have the latest update. We'll get that to you right after. We have to do everything we can to keep everyone safe in our correction system, and— the thing we believed was the right thing to do. In addition to correctional health, which is run by Health + Hospitals and a very, very strong capacity, we had to reduce the population in our jail system. We had to get out inmates that were in immediate danger because of their own health conditions. We have to get out inmates with low-level offenses there was no reason to keep them there in this crisis. We worked with the States, we worked with the DAs, right now, Bridget we're over a thousand inmates who have been released there are more coming. We'll get an update to you when we have that, but that means that— the jail system now is well below 4,500 inmates and if I'm doing my math right and I think that's right now and that will keep declining at least meaningfully. And that is one of the best things we can do to just create more space, more ability to distance, more ability to isolate when needed fewer cases, fewer people obviously for correctional health to deal with. That's the strategy that we're using, obviously that'll help keep the personnel, the officers and other personnel safe as well. So that's what we've been doing and we're going to continue that.

Moderator: Next we have Anna from the Daily News.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Hi, Anna.

Question: Hi, I'm wondering if you guys have any update on any delays in issuing death certificates, either for people who have COVID and have died or for just run of the mill deaths that the city sees all the time? And as a quick follow up, have you guys hired any additional drivers to carry the bodies or transport bodies of those who have died?

Mayor: Anna, you know, I've said previous questions about some of this reality, I'll give you broad stroke answers; that's just something I'm going to be very adamant about. I won't get into a lot of detail in these press conferences on that topic, I don't think it's helpful to the people in the city, but we will have the team - our City Hall team - get you detailed answers. The big strokes here, I can't answer the death certificate issue, I don't have those details. I can tell you we will hire whatever personnel we need to address this very painful reality. I can tell you that I've had extensive discussions with FEMA and the Department of Defense and to the credit of both of them they have sent in all the personnel and, and equipment that we asked for to help deal with this challenge; it's over a hundred federal personnel, including military personnel who've come in with the equipment needed to help deal with this crisis on the mortuary side. You know, we will have the ability to, to handle this, but to the question of the certificates and the timing, we'll get back to you on that. I'll take the occasion, Anna, to just clear the air on something that was raised a couple of days back when we were over at the tennis center - you know, which is being converted obviously to a non-traditional hospital - and someone raised a story, I believe from the Intercept and I said at the time, the story really seemed entirely inaccurate to me and I want to report the story is entirely inaccurate. So, going forward we're, we're going to figure out how to deal with this painful reality of those we've lost. What will happen in the future will be all based on treating each individual as an individual. We believe we'll be able to come up with a system to accommodate families over time. We will not be using any inmates from our corrections system in any way to address burial needs and so again, I'll, I'll leave it at that and say there is a plan in place, there is lot of support from the federal government, we'll find our way through and our team will get you any other answers.

Commissioner Barbot: Mr. Mayor, can I add to the burial death and the [inaudible] and the death certificates? We have reorganized our workforce to ensure that we have Health Department staff readily available to work with funeral directors to make sure that we can proceed with, they can proceed with the disposition in a timely manner. So, we've got staff at our offices at 125 Worth Street that are working with funeral directors on an ongoing basis to make sure that we get through those in a timely way.

Mayor: Thank you, doctor.

Moderator: We'll take two more today. Next up is Sydney from the Staten Island Advance

Question: Hey there, Mr. Mayor. So, I have a question more for Dr. Barbot, I talked to a number of people who have tested positive for the Coronavirus and they're recovering at home, but they feel like after they're sent home, they're not really given any guidance on what to do next. No calls from the Health Department checking-in on them, not a lot of information on how long they're contagious for, no efforts to re-test people to know whether they're still contagious and I feel like this lack of guidance is contributing to the virus spreading in the community. So first I wanted to know what your response is Dr. Barbot and second is the City doing any contact tracing when somebody tests positive for COVID-19 or working with the state or the federal government on developing a COVID tracing app like that countries like Germany or [inaudible] are on board with?

Mayor: And doctor, you'll go through those answers and then I have another update I want to give Sydney after that. You go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: Certainly, so in terms of the first part of the question, we have lots of patient information on our website that encourage any New Yorker who has questions about their COVID-19 status, but the, the bottom line is that we have shared with New Yorkers that when we have widespread community transmission, we want people to stay home for at least seven days since the onset of their symptoms or three days after their fever has gone away, whichever is longer. And then after that period of time they are free to go about their normal routine and before we had directions on sheltering at home that would mean going about their, their normal lives. So, there is no special directions that are needed after someone recuperates from COVID-19. And it's an opportunity to remind folks that 80 percent of the individuals who do contract COVID-19 will have a mild course and they will be able to self-treat at home with rest fluids and medications if they do develop a fever. With the other question, which I have also not been able to keep in my brain.

Mayor: It's okay. We're all allowed at this point. Let's get as Sydney up for that question again. But just to say before Dr. Barbot, could you explain – you mentioned the point about people who can self-report their information, might be good to just explain that a little more.

Commissioner Barbot: Right. And so – that's right, the contact tracing. So, at this point in the outbreak when we have every day in the high hundreds of the low thousands of people developing positive tests and when we have probably that many more, if not more people who don't get tests, we are not doing contact tracing. It is not a good use of our resources. And yes, other countries are based on where they are in what we call the epidemic curve, meaning they're early on enough in their epidemic curve, there are places that are still doing contact tracing as a way to do what we call containment. And if you'll recall early on in the outbreak, we were working on containment. That was the whole investigation that was happening with the Rochester outbreak, that was what we were doing in the early part of this outbreak.

Mayor: Westchester, think you said Rochester.

Commissioner Barbot: Rochester – sorry, Westchester. Thank you. But again, at this point we are not in the containment phase of controlling the outbreak. We are in what's called the mitigation phase. And in the mitigation phase, when there is no proven treatments, when there is no vaccination, the most effective way to slow the spread of an outbreak is through social distancing. So, that's where we are right now in telling New Yorkers to stay home. If they have to go outside for essential services, that we want them to be wearing a face covering. So, we are past the point of contact tracing.

Mayor: You want it to – just the portal also, is that – people want to self-report information –

Commissioner Barbot: Yes. If they want to self-report information, they can go through nyc.gov/coronavirus.

Mayor: Excellent. Thank you. Sydney, also following up on a previous question. So, the expansion of health care capacity of beds for Staten Island, just give you a quick summary. At the two hospitals, like every one of the 56 hospitals around the city that are participating in the front line of the COVID-19 response, every single one of them is required by the State, and we agree with this 100 percent, to maximize capacity – that basically means a 50 percent increase in beds through a variety of means. Mitch Katz early on in this crisis talked about turning a cafeteria into an ICU or putting a tent in the parking lot or whatever it takes. You know, taking – getting beds online that had been understaffed and out of commission. So, both the hospitals have to increase their capacity and constantly increased the number of beds that are being classified as ICU so they can serve the most urgent COVID-19 cases.

That's part one. Part two – and obviously, as we've talked about, we are going to constantly be resupplying both of them. Part two, the State has two locations they're working on to create additional nontraditional hospital capacity. And part three, I mentioned that the City was focusing on hotels. We have a hotel, we'll get you the details once it's public – hotel on Staten Island that we will be leasing first to provide space for health care workers who need a place to be away from their family so they can keep doing their job. But as the needs on Staten Island grow, if it needed to be converted into something where we're providing direct health care and turning into a de facto hospital, we can do that. And again, we will keep expanding into hotels and into other public spaces in every borough, including Staten Island to match whatever the need is. As it grows, we're going to keep adding. And I want to say something about hotels and public spaces. Hotels can be converted very rapidly because it's a kind of a battlefield conversion. There's not a lot of additional work done to turn a hotel into a non-traditional hospital that can serve people convalescing from COVID-19, for example. You'll need the staffing, you need some equipment, but you actually don't need as much as you might think. And there are other buildings that can also be converted rapidly. So, we're going to keep expanding constantly to meet need and the idea here is to just not stop it until we are certain that we have enough beds for everyone.

Moderator: Last question for today, we have Seth from City Journal.

Question: Looking at the data from your Health Department on new hospitalizations, it appears that the numbers have stabilized and are dropping. At peak – and this is due to the lockdown, I think – at a peak, they were 820 hospitalizations in one day. Now, your projection that will need an additional 85,000 beds –

Mayor: Total. Total. I'm sorry, Seth. Total – 85,000. 20,000 we started with, plus 65,000.

Question: Okay, another 65,000 beds. We would still really need to be past peak hospitalizations for two months with no one recovering or dying. So, it seems like your projections aren't really matching the current data. And I was wondering if I could get some clarity on that. I don't – the number of new hospitalizations appears to have peaked and is going down. It would have to be accelerating for us to need so many tens of thousands of new beds.

Mayor: Well, let me contest that. I'm going to start as layman, and then we'll go to Mitch, and then if Oxiris wants to add. So, first of all, I'm going to say, these two are much more scientific in their training than I am, but I think they'll agree with this opening statement – it is too early to make any – I'm not trying to say – I think your question is a great question, I'm not trying to say this about your question, I'm trying to say this about anybody observing, particularly in public life – it's not time to pronounce the direction that this is going in, because it's still early. And we are preparing absolutely for worst-case scenarios. So, Seth, if it turned out, you know, a month from now, your question was, wow, you know, it turned out to be a lot better than you projected, and you had too much ready to handle the problem, I would be very, very happy with that question. But we have to plan for worst-case scenarios. We've seen this – this is a ferocious disease, and the number of cases, the way they've grown, the number of hospitalizations and ICU admissions, you know, we, again, we are projecting that at some point next week we could be as high as 5,000 people intubated simultaneously in New York City. You know, that's an astounding figure. So, I don't see it as we have any evidence yet that things are turning in our favor. The other thing I would say is, whenever you reach the peak, and certainly from our conversations I've had, at least, with a national health care leaders, that they think we're still a ways from it and that's just the infection piece – there's still a lag time in terms of how that turns into hospitalizations and particularly in the ICU. I think there's a lot tougher times ahead, as I've been saying, but, also, remember, you're talking about people who may need to be in the hospital for weeks, folks who are on those ventilators many times – that's three weeks. And Mitch and Oxiris will go into more detail. And you've got to think about the bed through the lens of a human being and what they go through, and a human being who's in that bed for, you know, a month or more, or someone who's convalescing for a period of time. All of that takes the bed and the staff, the equipment, everything. And there's another person coming in and another and another and another. So, I would argue when you look at the whole equation, we're going to need a whole lot and it's going to sustain for certainly weeks on end. You want to add, Mitch?

President Katz: I think the Mayor has characterized it correctly. The huge [inaudible] still continues to be intensive care unit. So, a good example, Elmhurst, right at the forefront of this pandemic in New York City, had an ICU of 29 beds under normal circumstances. This past Monday, they were up to 110. Today, on Friday, they're up to 150. So, these are all patients who are extremely ill. At least 85 percent of them are on ventilators. And the level of intensity of staff needed to care for somebody who's on a ventilator, often they are on also multiple medications by vein at the same time in order to maintain the blood pressure, requires an extreme amount of staffing. I think some of the overall census increases as you were asking – I checked myself in Health + Hospitals for the last three days, we're higher each day than the day before. But I do agree that the real boluses are around the ICU more than on the regular medicine patients.

Commissioner Barbot: And then I'll just add that in terms of looking at the broad trends that we're looking at data from emergency departments as well as data related to admissions. The overall trend is that this is not slowing down. And the Mayor's absolutely right in terms of the bolus to the system. The other thing that I will say is that, it's normal when you look at the upward trend to see a sawtooth pattern into that. And so, I wouldn't make too much of a curve going down one day because we're on a trajectory for it to continue upwards.

Mayor: And obviously, look, everyone, that the day that we can say – and this is a conversation all of us have quite frequently – the day that we are convinced the worst is behind us and things aren't going to truly consistently get better, we will be right here at City Hall telling you that for sure. But until that time, we don't want false hope we don't want people, you know, relaxing prematurely or losing focus. This is, we're going into the thick of battle and I think it's absolutely crucial that people that. I've had this conversation with a lot of New Yorkers and a lot of people who are really deeply, deeply involved in the life of this city. And what I've heard consistently, and I had this conversation with one of the greatest of all New Yorkers, Cardinal Dolan, and he said, you know, tell it like it is, New Yorkers appreciate that. They want to hear the truth. They want to hear what we're about to go through, even if it's going to be tough. People would much rather hear exactly what we know and then be ready for battle than have it sugarcoated. But we know New Yorkers can get through anything, and people are really shown tremendous solidarity and strength. And we also know that this is a battle that will not go on forever. It will go on intensely for weeks, as I've said, April and May, and then we'll start to get some relief, and then one day life is going to get back to normal. It is a battle that will end at one point and then we'll all recover together. But in the meantime, we'll tell you every day what we know to keep all of our fellow New Yorkers informed.

Thank you. Everybody.

2020-04-05 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Today is Sunday, April 5th. And this is a day that we have talked about now over the last week or more as a crucial day as we prepare for an even tougher battle next week against this virus. This is a day that I called upon our nation to help us, coming forward to this day, I said to the President of United States and all the leadership in Washington that they needed to focus on Sunday, April 5th, to help us prepare for the onslaught next week, obviously to the State of New York, to so many organizations and companies around the country, around the world that came forward wanting to help. This is the day we focused everyone on and I think that was the right thing to do because the facts demanded it and I think it was also the right thing to do because it helped to focus attention and action. There is nothing more powerful than giving people a deadline in life.

And this was an honest deadline given everything that we have seen. The deadline referred to the whole range of needs that we had. Ventilators. We've all come to know how crucial those are to saving lives. Personal protective equipment, personnel – all the pieces of the equation necessary to be able to address this crisis. So, what I can tell you now that we've gotten to this crucial moment is there is definitely some good news. Our call for help, our call for people to focus on the needs in New York City, we're the epicenter of this crisis, but people in this city are doing everything possible to fight this virus, to do the right thing in terms of shelter in place and social distancing. The people of this city are doing the right thing, helping their fellow New Yorkers – our first responders, our health care workers are acting heroically in this crisis. I called for everyone else to come to our aid. And the good news is that our call was heard and acted on in so many ways, but that does not mean we're out of the woods for next week. There is still real help we will need to get through the week. And I'm going to go over that with you now.

So, first, let's go over how we got to this moment and what we saw coming. I gave people the honest truth about what we were seeing all through last week and this week as we led up to Sunday, April 5th, to today. And a quick summation is that we thought as early as tonight there was the possibility of running out of crucial equipment like ventilators – and ventilators, I keep saying, when you need one, when the doctor needs one for a patient, there's no time to wait. It is needed that exact moment to save a life. That's why we've been so precise about exactly what day, what hour we will get to that point where the city might run out. Well, now I can tell you, and this is certainly good news, we have bought a few more days here. We believe now we can get to Tuesday or Wednesday with the supplies we have.

We're going to update the numbers constantly and update the projections. But in human terms, this is very important. It means that the ventilators that we've gotten are going to stretch farther than we originally projected. And I want to be very clear. I want everyone to understand this. My order to my entire team, to all my commissioners, everyone who's doing this crucial work dealing with this crisis, my order is always to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Not the best-case scenario, not what you think might be an average scenario, but to get ready for the worst case because God forbid, the worst case happens, we can't say at that point, 'oh gee, we underestimated'. We have to be ready for everything and anything. New Yorkers think that way. We're ready for anything and everything in our daily lives. That's part of what makes us great. But I've said to all my colleagues, we're preparing for whatever is thrown at us. So, it's good in one way that the original projection was cautious and that we have a few more days, but I want to be clear, it only means a few more days. Nothing more I can guarantee beyond that. And we have real work to do to fill that gap going forward.

On personnel, I've been saying, increasingly sounding the alarm that we're going to need more and more personnel to deal with the growing number of cases and also the growing number of hospital – alternative hospital facilities that are being created, more and more beds being created. That's a good thing. We have a very, very ambitious plan to create more beds, but we're going to need the medical personnel to go with it. The overall goal is 45,000 additional doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, dieticians, pharmacists, you name it. This week we need to keep adding to our total. The good news is that we are seeing a real important surge of military medical personnel. This is something I've been calling for over these last two weeks vehemently and pointing out that this is necessary to help save the people in New York City and it will be necessary beyond in all the cities and states that will experience this crisis up ahead. We are now starting to see as of today a real sharp increase in the number of military medical personnel coming to New York City. That's a very good thing.

And then on PPEs, we all know how important it is to protect our heroes. That's everything from N95 to masks, to surgical gowns, gloves, eyewear, a whole host of things. The good news is there are several categories where we do have enough PPEs to get through the weekend. I want to emphasize when I say enough, that means on the crisis standards we're working with. I want to be very clear to all the health care professionals out there, all the first responders, I'm not saying this is the ideal we wish we were dealing with. I'm not saying we had the kind of supplies we're used to when we're in peace time, but by the crisis standards set by the CDC, we have enough of most items to get through this week ahead for our health care workers, for our first responders. There are two areas where we need additional delivery during the week, that's N95s and surgical gowns. We do have orders in. We're reasonably confident about the timeline of that resupply. But we do need it to happen on a timely basis. Let me go over some overall numbers with you now and I'll start with ventilators.

So, what's happened so far, in addition to the ventilators that hospitals had, we have delivered 2,865 ventilators to hospitals throughout New York City in addition to 1,780 BiPAP machines. And these are machines that can be very helpful. As I discussed with the CEO of our public hospitals, Dr. Mitch Katz, they are a part of the puzzle. They don't do the same thing that ventilators do. But they can be helpful in dealing with some patients in some ways and relieve some of the pressure on the overall situation in terms of ventilators. That said, we still need the number of ventilators we need in any event. So, having distributed those 2,865 ventilators, having now stated that we can get through to Tuesday or Wednesday, what's left? We have 135 ventilators in our reserve. We are holding those for very rapid deployment to where they're needed most around the city. And that obviously can happen in a matter of hours, but that's the entire reserve we have left for all of this city of 8.6 million people.

I want to tell you why these ventilators, the supply of ventilators is so crucial in particular at this moment because what we're seeing lately is between 200 and 300 more patients needing to be intubated every day lately, just specifically patients related to COVID. We believe at this point, as of this morning, that the approximate real number of patients, COVID patients who are intubated in New York City, we believe that number is actually approaching 4,000. When you add up all the information we have and information that's coming in – and everyone understands this is a rapidly changing situation – we think that number is about 4,000. The math is clear between today, tomorrow, Tuesday we could add almost 1,000 more in that timeframe. That's why we believe we will hit that 5,000 mark in truth on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Again, I would love it if it proves that our projections were too cautious. That would be a very good thing, but we are bracing for the reality that that's the number we could hit. It's a staggering number. And remember for so many of those patients, we've got to fight hard to save their lives. Our health care professionals are doing an amazing job, but it's a tough struggle and a lot of those patients will be hospitalized for many weeks. They could be intubated for two, three weeks easily. Once someone needs a ventilator, they need it for as long as they need it. And that's another part of this equation we have to keep in mind.

So, to get through next week, based on these updated projections, we believe we will need between 1,000 and 1,500 more ventilators for the period roughly Wednesday to Sunday. Again, those dynamics will change daily, hourly even. So, we will keep updating the assessment. But that's the plan that we have going into this week to find 1,000 and 1,500 more throughout the course of this coming week to make sure that there's always a ventilator for every patient who needs it. Now, as you see on this chart, this is the whole health care system in New York City. And this composites what we're seeing against – across, I should say, a variety of health care providers. This includes our public hospitals. It includes the major – five major hospital systems that are part of the Greater New York Hospital Association, it includes the smaller independent hospitals. When you look at the whole system, some specific hospitals and systems running out quicker than others, we're working to make sure that everyone who needs resupply gets it promptly. But what's true in every single case is that every hospital system in a matter of only days faces the danger that they will run out. That's what we have to stay ahead of.

So, where would we get additional ventilators? Well, there's two obvious places right now. The federal stockpile, which our understanding is numbers of about 10,000 ventilators, and the New York State stockpile, we've heard that number is roughly 2,800. Obviously, we are the epicenter of this crisis. So, I would certainly appeal to both the federal and State government to help us get the ventilators we need rapidly. We will get them in place and remember, everyone, we need them in place before that new patient comes in, who a doctor has no choice but to put on a ventilator. That ventilator has to be there, has to be up and ready in time for that one next patient. So, it's not a matter of them just arriving in the warehouse. They have to be in the hospitals and ready. We're going to ask, certainly, our federal and State colleagues to advance more of a supply to us so we can be ready for this onslaught next week.

I've said it many, many times. When New York City is done with these ventilators, when the crisis starts to pass, we will happily send them wherever they're needed in this state or in this country. And we will work hard to help everyone who needs our help and to thank all the people who have come forward to help us by actually giving them the aid and support they need in their hour of need. But those are the two obvious places to get what we need for next week. We're continuing to look on the private market. We're continuing to hear from some people who are making very generous offers of contributions of ventilators, we're talking to companies all over the world. I, myself, have talked to companies all over the world to try and get us additional ventilators on the open market, but right now for the immediate needs next week is the federal government and the State government that we'll focus on and certainly we'll be talking to all of the appropriate federal and State officials to get this going quickly.

Now I want to talk about our public hospital system and specifically the personnel that I've been requesting for it. Everyone knows there are so many hospitals out there that are fighting so hard, the health care workers fighting so heroically. But everyone would agree that amongst the toughest battles have been fought in our public hospitals, our Health + Hospitals system. So many people in this city but also literally around the world have watched with admiration the really noble health care professionals at Elmhurst Hospital, which has borne the brunt more than any other hospital in the city. We've seen an extraordinary surge in the number of patients at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, at Bellevue in Manhattan, and many, many others in our public health system. So, I have been, for the last two weeks, fighting to get direct federal support for our public hospitals.

We have the biggest public hospital system in the country and we are the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis and our public hospitals are bearing the brunt. You've seen the information recently put out by the Department of Health. That makes very clear that so many of the challenges that we're seeing from the coronavirus track very, very sadly with where we've seen historic health disparities, where we've seen historic problems with communities whose health profile really suggest really, really tough situations, even in peacetime. In this crisis that's only amplified the reality. Where are there the hospitals that deal with those communities and deepest need? Well, those are our public hospitals, so they're at the frontline of this crisis. Absolutely the front of the front line. I appealed to the President of the United States, to FEMA, to the Defense Department for very precise support. I asked for 1,450 medical personnel from the United States military, specifically 1,000 nurses, 300 respiratory therapists, 150 doctors.

I've repeated that request publicly in writing, in numerous conversations with the president and many others in Washington. What we have as of today, literally just coming in now at this hour of the day, for the first time, a response. I asked that those personnel be in place by today, Sunday, April 5th. At least today we are seeing a down payment. That's the way I would phrase it – 291 medical personnel from our military dedicated specifically to our public hospital system arriving now in New York City. That's 174 nurses, 104 doctors, 13 respiratory therapists. That's a very good start. We have bought ourselves a few more days, so we have a little more time and that's great. But I want to say to everyone in Washington, that's a start. It's nowhere near what I requested for our public hospitals. I know other medical personnel coming from the military to do other important work in New York City. And I say amen. Thank you. That's tremendously helpful for all our people. We need that too.

But part of why I've called for the military to be fully mobilized and for national enlistment and system for our health care professionals is our needs are growing in this city and they'll be growing everywhere else. So, this is great news, but it doesn't end here. I'm going to go back to the president, to FEMA, to the Department of Defense, and let them know we need a lot more help for our public hospitals as they continue to bear the brunt.

Finally, I want to say there's some, as per usual, we've seen New Yorkers step up in amazing, amazing fashion. But it's also great to see the stories of those who step up for us. And it – this one warmed my heart because our friends in the State of Oregon, they are starting to see a crisis there, although much more limited, thank God than what we're seeing here. I spoke to Governor Kate Brown yesterday. Everyone knows that she did something just extraordinary, an act of kindness and generosity, that really should make all Americans feel very good about this country. But all New Yorkers should feel a great sense of gratitude and appreciation to the people of Oregon and particularly to Governor Kate Brown for, literally, spontaneously stepping up and offering 140 ventilators for the people of this state. That's a selfless, powerful act. I talked to her yesterday and said, we're going to remember what Oregon did for New York State and New York City and we're going to return the favor and then some, because this is going to be crucial in our hour of need. So, it's something people should really feel good about. People are seeing what we're going through and they're really trying to help. And I want to say to anyone who wants to help, whether you're a New Yorker or you're from any other part of the country or any other part of the world – please, we need your help. We need supplies. We need medical personnel to come forward to volunteer. We will compensate them, but we need them to come forward and give us their time and energy where it's needed most. We need so much help to get through this crisis. Anyone who wants to donate can go to nyc.gov/helpnow or call 833-NYC-0040.

Also, another really wonderful story – and again, amidst the pain and the challenges, there are some beautiful stories. Two hospitals, two of the most renowned hospitals, not just in New York City, but anywhere on the earth, they have stepped up to help our public hospital system. Sloan Kettering, Memorial Sloan Kettering, known as one of the greatest hospitals on Earth dealing with cancer patients and supporting them and saving them, and a hospital for special surgery, which is unparalleled anywhere in the world for what they do. They have agreed to take non-COVID patients in their specialty areas from our Health + Hospitals institutions to relieve pressure on them so our Health + Hospitals hospitals can focus on COVID patients, particularly those who need ICU care. This is a kind of act of partnership, collegiality of kindness that's a game changer. It's going to save lives because it's going to allow Health + Hospitals to focus on those in greatest need while these other patients will get great care in the meantime. So, it's another example of hospitals – some New Yorkers have been to these hospitals and, you know, and including in their hours of greatest need. A lot of New Yorkers have only heard the names and know they're extraordinary institutions, but wouldn't have necessarily assumed they would form this partnership with our public hospitals. And they have, and it's incredibly powerful. I want to thank both those hospitals for really, really stepping up in a crisis.

Just a few more things I want to talk about. Some more unsung heroes. I like to always remind us of the people who are doing amazing things for us. And in this case, it's our social service workers. Don't forget what they do in this crisis to ensure that the families that don't have food get food, that families that are in crisis get support because their crisis doesn't pause for the coronavirus. It continues and they still need help. Children who are in danger get support. The folks who are homeless get help, you name it. Our social service workers have been extraordinary in this crisis, stepping up in so many ways. They deserve our admiration and our gratitude. And, of course, I, every single time will talk about our doctors, our nurses, our health care workers, our first responders.

This last week, or in the course of this week, I should say, I've spoken to literally tens of thousands of health care workers on tele-town halls organized by the unions representing our health care workers. I expressed my appreciation on behalf of all New Yorkers and talked about the ways we're going to give every conceivable type of support to our frontline health care workers, what we're doing but what we have to do even more in the weeks ahead. I want to just recognize a really beautiful moment this last Friday night where a group of firefighters went to an NYU Langone Hospital in Kips Bay and they went there specifically to cheer on the doctors and the nurses and all the hospital staff. And that's a really, really beautiful thing. Our firefighters are so admired. And to see the first responders show up, not because there was an emergency, but because they wanted to pour out their hearts to our health care workers to thank them, that is a really beautiful New York City moment. So, I want everyone to recognize that.

Let me just say a few words in Spanish, just a quick summary and then we will take questions from the media. I'm joined by Dr. Barbot here in person and we have by video Chancellor Carranza and our Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell. But first in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we're going to take media questions and please let me know the name of the reporter and the outlet. Thank you.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder, as the Mayor just said, we have Dr. Barbot here in person, Commissioner Criswell and Chancellor Carranza on the phone. With that, I will start with Samantha from 1010 WINS.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, there are some reports that you took a walk again in Prospect Park yesterday, but not seen wearing a face mask. Are you going to be wearing a face mask? And also, why so far to take a walk when you're – Gracie Mansion is right in a beautiful park?

Mayor: Yeah. Samantha, look, I think we have many, many things to talk about today that are about saving lives. I think what – everyone who needs some exercise should get the exercise for the amount of time they need and then get back to home or work if they're doing essential work. That's what I do. And I was using a scarf as a face mask and following the exact instruction – face covering, careful that I use the right phrase, face covering. Thank you, Doctor. I could see you were thinking it. Face covering, a scarf that I had on – and exactly the rules if you're distant from everyone, there's no one near you. there's not a specific need. If you think you're going to be near people, you bring it up and cover your face. That's what I did. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. Governor Cuomo this morning said there's reason to think the State might be approaching its peak or peak that's plateauing. Wanted to get your assessment of that both at the state level, and if you think at the city level, the city is nearing a peak.

Mayor: Shant, although I want to say that – I'm going to be really careful because the last thing I want to do is say, you know, we're turning the corner and then we get surprised. I see some positive indicators. Clearly the fact that we thought we could run out of ventilators as early as tonight or tomorrow morning and now we believe we're going to get to Tuesday or Wednesday. That's a good sign. And the number of people being intubated each day additionally is high, for sure. It's nothing to treat as a minor matter when you have 200 or 300 more people per day getting intubated. But it's actually less than we feared it might be in terms of the increase each day at this point. So, my simple answer to you is I see a few signs that are a little hopeful, for sure. And as soon as we get to a point where we think they are consistent enough, if they remain consistent, Shant, if we really see the kind of progress that Dr. Barbot and Dr. Fakelakis and Dr. Katz and Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze and others, like, can have a consensus that, hey, this is sustained progress, we will say that for sure, but I think it's early to be able to declare that. Let's hope and pray, but we're not quite there yet. Doctor, did I summarize well?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Absolutely.

Mayor: Okay, go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Todd from AM New York.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, my question is about the release of prisoners from Rikers Island. Some the probation union members say they don't have enough people or resources or PPE to work with, with the release. Some law enforcement sources are saying many of the people being released have drug problems and are returning to crowded homes, and some have no housing whatsoever. What follow up is the City doing with the people who are being released from Rikers?

Mayor: Todd, thank you for the question. It's a good question. From the beginning, look, we saw as this crisis emerged a very particular challenge, thousands of individuals incarcerated, obviously, by definition in limited space. And there's been concern not only in New York City but all over the world about incarcerated people in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. So, what we did was we looked at a couple of things who had minor charges that they were in our jail system for, who had very little time left on their sentence, who had health conditions, preexisting conditions that put them in particular jeopardy according to Correctional health, who, because of age, you know, very advanced age might be in jeopardy or both. So those were the criteria we worked with as did the State of New York and the District Attorneys. The release was engineered to ensure that anyone who needed a supervised release, which across the board there was some kind of supervision structure for everyone, but those who needed particular intensive supervision that that was created.

So, right now, over a thousand individuals have come out of our jail system. That obviously means for correctional health, they're dealing with fewer inmates. That's good. There's more opportunity to socially distance. There's more opportunity to treat people and isolate those who need isolating. Those are good things. The specific individuals who need follow-up are getting follow-up. And remember the way the release worked for those awaiting trial, when the crisis is over if the DAs deem inappropriate, there's a process to bring people back to jail awaiting trial. And equally if someone needs to continue further, a sentence. So, this was calibrated to be a humanitarian action and I think has been done in a careful way. And again, we have gotten to a number based on a careful process as has the State and the DAs. On the concerns of the probation union, I'll check on that. I don't know the exact amount of how much of the follow-up is being done by their members versus other elements of law enforcement, but we can give you a more detailed follow up on that soon.

Moderator: Next, we have Brigid from WNYC.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask a question about the data the City is releasing related to people who are diagnosed with coronavirus and the deaths. We know that there are inequities built into our health care system, other cities that are releasing more information specifically around the racial breakdown of some of the diagnoses and the deaths. Why isn't the City releasing that information?

Mayor: I'll start and Dr. Barbot can add. You know, Brigid, look, I said at the beginning and I stand by it. In the first days we had, first of all, a central concern to set up all the systems to protect people's health and save lives and get supplies where they were needed. I mean this thing went from zero to 60, very, very fast. Getting out the public data was not the first concern compared to, you know, rapidly mobilizing and ensuring that those who need health care were getting it. Second, when we started to put out data, we were concerned to make sure it was accurate and not a constantly moving target. I think you guys would have every right in the media if you got a piece of information that was invalid a few hours later to say, wait a minute, why have you given us this information? So, we were trying to figure out how to give you information that would be more consistent and that sort of was keeping up with the numbers more effectively. I think that situation has improved. That's why the Department of Health has started to put out more and more. We want to go from here and go farther now – put out more fine-tuned data, more per capita data, sort of showing the real specific impact on all communities, certainly demographic breakdowns to the extent we can. I've certainly – I've had this conversation with Dr. Barbot and her team. I think we're going to be able to do more and more with every passing week. But what we do know from what was put out just recently is and we had a long discussion about this with our whole team, a striking overlap of where this virus is doing the most damage and where we've had historic health care disparities – a very, very strong overlap. And again, that overlaps also with where our public hospitals are in particular. So, we will keep getting out more and better data as we go along, but I think some of the conclusions are already becoming clear.

Dr. Barbot.

Commissioner Barbot: So, yes, Mr. Mayor, to add to what you said, which I completely agree with – you know, I couldn't agree more that it is important to also report on the racial demographics of the individuals that we're seeing who are diagnosed with COVID, who get hospitalized, et cetera. But the reality of the matter is that our ability to report accurate and consistent data is only as good as the data that we get in. And so there have been significant challenges in consistently getting that complete data from laboratories and from our health care delivery partners. But what we're doing is we're working with those partners to try and to tap into other electronic sources so that we can augment the data that we get. So, we are working on that. We've been working on that and I am hopeful that we will get to a place where we can consistently and completely report on the racial demographics, because again, we're very much committed to the transparency of our response and we are very concerned as the Mayor mentioned about the inequities that are getting magnified with the severity of COVID-19 and we want to make sure to address that in its totality.

Mayor: Yeah. Just to finish on that, again I think no one should underestimate what it means to be the epicenter of this American crisis. Being the epicenter meant for us, extraordinary, extraordinary, huge number of cases out of nowhere. And again, that's – other cities are doing other things, but by and large, you know, not dealing with the whole onslaught we are, but we are absolutely devoted to getting better information out.

The other follow-up just on Todd's previous question because I realized Todd also asked about masks. Todd, any probation workers, any of our workers who need to do work that involves any kind of personal protective equipment – we're devoted to getting it to them. We're finally starting to get a better supply, as I mentioned just days ago, we were not sure about the PPE supply for this coming week. And again, I'm saying that based on the crisis standard, not the ideal standard, but the crisis standard of what people need to be able to keep functioning in their jobs. We are encouraged, I'm encouraged to see the supply start to increase, start to improve. We're getting some new types of PPEs in that previously were not approved by the FDA, now have been approved. So, there's a lot going on that's given me hope that we're going to be able increase that supply. But definitely if our colleagues at Probation need them my team will be following up to make sure we can get them to the appropriate types of PPEs. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. We reported on the Bronx having a higher rate of hospitalizations and deaths for coronavirus relative to its population than the rest of this city. Some of the elected officials we spoke to said there's no testing site in the South Bronx where a lot of these more serious cases are suspected to be. You know, like a public or a big testing site there that would allow people to know to self-isolate and also to communicate to others, you know, that they've tested positive. Why isn't there a large testing site in the South Bronx, and has the Department of Health taken a look at the Bronx statistics and come up with an explanation for the discrepancy?

Mayor: So, I'm going to start and then pass to Dr. Barbot who importantly grew up in the Bronx and is very attuned to the needs of people in the Bronx. I think we're in a moment where the testing dynamics are starting to change, but we're certainly not all the way there. I mean, Yoav, I think if we could replay this entire horrible history we've gone through, we would say what differentiates us from some of the places that actually were able to really get ahead of this is that there was not testing available when it was needed early on, when it could have been strategically crucial. And that's obviously at the feet of our federal government that as we know now had a lot of information about the danger of this crisis and the ability to mobilize and get the testing out and they didn't do it. So that's where we could have had the strategic opportunity to potentially change the trajectory. Once it was already a full-blown crisis with a community spread and all, we got very clear about the need to focus the testing on health care workers, first responders and people with the most severe medical problems to help save their lives. We're starting to see signs of greater testing supply coming into play, but I don't, that changes the core reality that as there's more testing, we still have to first and foremost make sure that we're maximizing the impact on health care workers, first responders and those in greatest need. And remember the numbers are continually climbing in terms of cases, in terms of number of people in the ICU. So, we can't act for a moment like any one piece of this equation is static. The crisis keeps growing. Even as we're getting more testing supply, we kept to keep applying it to the highest priorities. If one day it was truly, truly abundant, I think we could have a different conversation, but I don't think it changes the guidance and I suspect you're going to hear this from Dr. Barbot. If someone's not feeling well, we want them to isolate and go home and they don't need a test to follow through on that. And that's still the thing we have to get really, really across to people. That's the most valuable thing, it's responding to what their body is telling them.

Doctor?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, Mr. Mayor. So to add to what you correctly laid out, I think there are a number of different issues happening here and really we can't overemphasize the fact that we've been telling New Yorkers that if they have developed the symptoms of fever or cough, any other sort of feelings of malaise, if you will, that they should assume at this point in time that they have been exposed to COVID-19 and that they have COVID-19. And what we want them to do is to remain home, if their symptoms are not getting better, to then reach out to their health care provider. And so again, as the Mayor mentioned, whether or not a test is done doesn't change that guidance. The important thing is for self-isolation and to seek care if they are not getting better. I think specifically in the Bronx, what we're seeing is the reality of unfortunately what happens when we have a high density of individuals with lots of chronic underlying illnesses. And you know, we know from historical data that there are high percentages of individuals in the Bronx with heart disease, with diabetes and the like. And so unfortunately when you have a virus that tends to affect those with chronic illnesses more severely, we have what's playing out.

That being said, we are working very closely with our health systems partners in the Bronx including H + H, including Montefiore, to make sure that those who are in need of care certainly have access to it in a timely manner. I think the important thing for us to be mindful of is again, for folks to be staying home and especially those who have chronic underlying illness, not to go out if they don't have to have someone else can buy their groceries, get their medications for them. And if they do have to go out to ensure that they are wearing a face covering when they're unable to keep six feet from their fellow New Yorkers.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Hey, Gersh, how are you doing?

Question: You know, the playgrounds are closed and parks like Prospect Park as you know, are overflowing as the weather gets better. Now, you've experimented with four short car car-free streets, but they expire today from what I remember. You've said you're limited because of the need for police enforcement, but Streetsblog's own review plus conversations with residents in those neighborhoods show that this experiment is actually working and could be done with far fewer cops. So will you expand this popular street safety strategy as you've been urged by people such as Dan Rather, and New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg?

Mayor: Yeah. Gersh look, we're very interested in seeing what can be done with that strategy. What I think you would agree, we ran into an unusual situation that just as we started it, we had day after day of bad weather and folks just didn't show up. So, I'm certain they want to see us continue to experiment with it going forward, but we have to figure out the right way to do that. It does take a lot of personnel. Like I keep saying, you know, you've got to be clear that when you do this, you have to create enforcement or it could end up being another place, unfortunately where people gather. So, we're going to look at that again. But right now, my concern is this, the first and foremost concern is that we focus the NYPD and other enforcement on ensuring there is social distancing in all the places that people have to go. They have to go grocery stores and supermarkets, pharmacies, the places that we know are really essential. Our parks are a place where people are going, they're getting their exercise, but they're also does need to be enforcement. Generally, what I hear from Commissioner Shea and other key leaders of administration is they've seen a lot of compliance, but there's still areas where we need to do better and we're going to continue to deepen the enforcement. So, looking at those streets, that's still an open question because we didn't get a great control model, but we did end up using up a lot of NYPD personnel that we don't have to spare right now. So happy to look at it again. But I think we first have to focus on job one, which is making sure all the places we know people are definitely going have the enforcement they need.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, everybody. This question is for Chancellor Carranza and it's about the DOE's decision late Friday to prohibit the use of Zoom and Google's video conferencing. Spoken to a lot of teachers, parents this weekend who are really disappointed and I'm curious from them and then from myself, you know, why hadn't the DOE looked at some of these privacy concerns before setting up this program? And are there concerns that particularly students with special needs who got related services and rely heavily on Zoom for them, that they won't get these services – I mean some people are upset that Microsoft Teams is very confusing and they don't even know if they can download them. So, if you could speak a little bit about the DOE's process. Thank you.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Yeah. So, look, we are very concerned about all students getting the support they need. Does anybody really think that we want students' personal information out there for anybody to see? For anybody to access? That's absolutely unacceptable. So, we put out guidance and it doesn't go into the effect – it doesn't go into effect tomorrow. We want people to gradually transition to another format. Zoom – and we've been working with Zoom – is unwilling and unable to meet the security needs of our students. We will not put our students' information out in cyberspace for anybody to access – that is unacceptable. So, the notion that we would let that happen is just not – it's not reality. Now, that being said, we want students and all of our families to get the support that they need, so we're going to transition. It's not going to happen tomorrow. It's a transition to another format. The good thing is we have teachers that have bachelor's and master's and doctorate degrees that can figure this out. But we're going to make sure that our students' information is not out there for everybody to access. So, work with us. We're going to do this, you know, in a very, very thoughtful manner. But that being said, we also want to be very clear that we're going to keep our students' information safe and secure, and when this was brought to our attention, like it's been brought to everybody's attention across the country – I'm in conversation with colleagues across the country that [inaudible] school system. This is not an issue in New York City. This is an issue across the country. We are going to make sure that our students' information in safe during this time period and going on. So, it's not going into effect tomorrow. We're going to have a time to transition. Listen to our guidance. We're going to help you make the transition, but we don't want students to go without the services that they need.

Mayor: Thank you, Chancellor.

Moderator: Next we have Harry from the Daily Beast.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Understanding the stress on saving lives, what is the City's plan [inaudible] for burying bodies as needed? Is there land identified? Are there City workers who be digging those graves? Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you, Harry. Look, I know the questions I asked in goodwill. It's a painful topic, it's one I've said repeatedly I won't go into great detail on. The bottom line is there is a plan. One of the key elements was to get support from the federal government, from FEMA, from the Department of Defense, from all of the parts of the federal government that had expertise in this area. They are providing all the support we're asking for. Yes, we will have available places to deal with this. I'm not going to go into detail now. I'll just say to you, we do have the capacity. We sure as hell hope we don't go anywhere near as our worst-case scenarios. Think of all the human beings, think of all the families that that would mean have lost someone. But we will be ready in any eventuality and we're getting exceptional federal support.

Question: Last two for today. Next, we have Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. I'm wondering if you guys could talk a little bit about how you came up with the calculations for the number of ventilators you need. Is there, you know, are you guys like crunching actual numbers? Is this projections? Maybe you can go into a little more detail. And then in addition, I'm wondering about whether you have any concern about being seen wearing a mask at all? Or, a face covering?

Mayor: On the second point, Jeff, again, my doctor is sitting right there and I asked because this decision came out of several studies, most especially the one from Singapore a few days ago, which, any of you, if you haven't seen it, should look at it, that led our health team to decide that they had evidence that should change the guidance we provided. Obviously, shortly thereafter, a day or two later, the CDC did the same thing. So, I think this is smart guidance, but it's something we all needed to get used to. And I, like every other New Yorker, had an opportunity – every New Yorker is asking, what does it mean? And I had the opportunity to ask the City's doctor directly. And I said, what does that mean for anyone, you know, going outside? And what she said was, you know, you use it when you're near people. If you might get less than six feet from people, that's where it matters, because you're trying to protect everyone else. Again, I think it's understandable folks hear it and they think, oh this is something that will protect me from COVID-19. That's not the way it works. It is an abundance of caution guidance based on new evidence, really new evidence that led to the conclusion that it's a smart effort to prevent the spread in the community. It is not the only strategy. No one is saying it's perfect. It's a thing we can do that's helpful, but it only is pertinent when you're near other people. It's not pertinent if you're with the people you live under the same roof with, because you're in so much contact with them anyway. It's not pertinent if you're out there alone on a street, for example, because there's no one else to experience you, you know, within six feet. It just doesn't matter. So, what I've done the few times I'm out is, I take a scarf and I have it ready, and if I'm getting near people, if I think I might get a as close as six feet or less, I bring the scarf up over my mouth and nose as I was trained to do. And I think a lot of people will do that. You'll have it available. You don't have to wear it every minute if there's no one near you, but you bring it up if you need it. So, I'm going to answer the second part of your question. But doctor, for the record, did I summarize your instruction properly?

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely correct, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. I've passed the test today. Thank you, doctor. So, on the very good question about the ventilators. So, Jeff, we're been scrubbing this equation for weeks and weeks and it's constantly getting updated. So, it is based on specific reports from each and every hospital against a base of 56 hospitals in the city that treat adults. That population of hospitals, consistently surveyed to determine the number of ventilators they have working ventilators that they have – crucial point. And we separate in that number ventilators, we do not count the ventilators that are being devoted to other types of non-COVID patients. So, I want to remind people, there are – you know, we only heard about the coronavirus just a few months ago. Before that, there were obviously lots of people who needed a ventilator because of their own health conditions. They still do. So, a certain number of ventilators already were devoted to non-COVID patients. They must continue to be a devoted to non-COVID patients. So, we continually, literally daily, weekly are looking at the numbers and how they're moving, taking every hospital's report on what they got that's working and, obviously, how many people are intubated, how many people need a ventilator and projecting, of course, how long people will be on ventilators, because we have a lot of information on what those patterns have been. That's how we got to a sense of what we were dealing with. And then, of course, the other factor was what was the growth pattern, the number of cases, and what it meant for more and more people needing ventilators. So, what I mentioned earlier that we are lately in the last days seeing an increase each day of about 200 to 300 patients per day more going on to ventilators. Now, we had feared that that number was going to go up, that that 200 to 300 could be more like 300 to 400 growth per day. We're not seeing that yet. I'm knocking on wood. I'm praying that we have a level off here. But we don't know that yet, it was just too early to tell. For the last days, that 200 or 300-person increase is holding. We believe based on all the information we've gotten from all the hospitals that when you really get to what's happening, real world conditions and look at the trends and everything, we believe we're somewhere in truth around 4,000 people intubated right now. And again, with that 200 or 300 person per day growth, that will get us to Tuesday or Wednesday when we'll cross that 5,000-person mark. And then, as I said, we're assuming the same kind of growth pattern that would require us to come up with another 1,000 to 1,500 in the course of the week ahead to make sure we got to Sunday, April 12th with everyone having a ventilator who needed one. Jeff, I hope and pray that in the next couple of days as I'm reporting that that number not only stays stable but actually might decrease. But until it happens, I can't bank on it. As I said, I've told my team work from a worst-case scenario because we cannot ever have a moment where a patient needs a ventilator and there is not one available. So, that's how the numbers were put together.

Moderator: Last for today, we have Aaron from the Post.

Mayor: Aaron? Aaron's not there. Do you have another? Aaron, can you hear us okay? Okay, do you have another lined up?

Moderator: I think that's all for today.

Mayor: Okay. That's all for today. Well, everyone, thank you, and we will continue to give you updates. And, everyone, keep fighting.

Thanks so much.

2020-04-06 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. So, 11 days ago – it seems like a long, long time ago, but 11 days ago we were here at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and we were here looking for solutions in the midst of this ever-changing, ever-growing crisis. But we are also here looking for hope, looking for answers, and the answers came from everyday New Yorkers who were stepping up, who are doing something amazing to create the products that will protect our frontline health care workers and our first responders. So, what we saw a few days ago with the face shields was moving. I was totally, totally moved to see these everyday people of all backgrounds, all together, creating something from scratch. Companies working together that never had previously built anything like a face shield, and they create it by hand, and that was part of the power of what we saw was everyday people piecing together these PPEs by hand to protect their fellow New Yorkers who are serving all of us.

Well, we're back 11 days later and what we're seeing today is equally inspiring. Two companies that got together here in the Brooklyn Navy Yard to create, again, a product they never created because our frontline workers needed it. And it is inspiring to see how quickly people figured out a way to do something that was needed and not just do it in a small way, but do it in a very big way. And to pull together the talent, the designs to pull together all the equipment they needed, all the fabric. I was just hearing how much it took to improvise this and create this as very, very moving. And it shows how much heart, how much soul people are putting into protecting our health care workers in our first responders. So, as I was touring and seeing what was happening, I felt this real surge of emotion that it was clearer than ever that New York City is fighting back. New York City is fighting back. We have an invisible enemy. We have a ferocious enemy, but this city is fighting back with everything we've got. And this is strong city and a resilient city and people are showing it in so many ways and we're seeing it today at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

It makes me very, very convinced that we're going to get through this when I see these kinds of amazing efforts. Now in the midst of a moment where we have to tell people constantly, it’s a strange thing to tell New Yorkers, we are a warm and emotional people. It's strange to have to tell people all the time, stay apart and break with all the traditions that we have had for our whole lives. But we keep telling people stay apart for your own protection, for the protection of the community, for the protection of those you love. But today we have an example of people coming together, coming together in common cause, doing it the right way, doing it the smart way, the healthy way, but coming together in common cause to help other people. And I really want to thank these two amazing companies and they're very, very different. Lafayette 148 is a high-end fashion brand and Crye Precision is a company that particularly focuses on making gear for the U.S. military. Two companies that started out with very different approaches, very different mission statements. They may not have seen that a lot in common, but they immediately found common ground and decided that together they could create something that would really help everyone else.

This creativity and this ingenuity are New York traits. Not surprising to us, as New Yorkers, to see this kind of thing happen, but it's very moving. It's very beautiful to see it go through all those rows upon rows of sewing machines and seeing the surgical grounds being sewn that very soon we'll be protecting our frontline health care workers. Want to thank of course, all the good people, all those on those sewing machines, on those assembly lines, all the working people who are making this possible. And extraordinary thanks to the leaders who had this vision and pulled it together in record time, to Gregg Thompson, Executive Director at Cry Precision, to Deirdre Quinn, the CEO at Lafayette 148, you'll hear from both of them. I want thank someone who's really been the matchmaker here, David Ehrenberg, the President CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, who keeps looking for ways to get all the amazing capacity of the Navy Yard to put it together to support this cause, and I want to thank you David. Excellent job.

Now, I want to say a number of companies here in Brooklyn Navy Yard are working with Crye Precision and Lafayette 148 to help them do their work. They're all joining in. Anyone who can pitch in is pitching in. So, there's a real community here that's working together to get this done. I also want to thank our colleagues at EDC, which plays a crucial role in all of these efforts to produce our own homegrown supplies to fight this war. Thank you to James Katz, Executive Vice President Chief of Staff at EDC. And, of course, we have with us here today as well. Two of the leaders in the fight from the health care side, our Health Commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot and the Vice President Chief Quality Officer at Health + Hospitals, Dr. Eric Wei, thank you to you and your teams always.

I mentioned the folks who are doing the work and I want to say something that needs to be said in this moment. There's been in the midst of this crisis, another crisis that we've all seen and we've all been disgusted by it, which is discrimination and hatred directed at our Asian-American communities, particularly our Chinese-American community. I think it's absolutely unacceptable and I know legally it is unacceptable by the laws in New York City and I keep saying to everyone, if you see a act of discrimination, if you see a hate crime, you see anything that is about bias, call 3-1-1 immediately or if it's an urgent situation, call 9-1-1. We want to find the perpetrators of these crimes. We want to find anyone who's discriminated and throw the full weight of the law at them. But today was a poignant message in the midst of this crisis, in the midst of this discrimination, to see so many of these workers who happen to be Chinese-American who are doing something for everyone, who despite the discrimination they have faced, they're standing up and they're joining this effort to save lives and support those who are protecting us. I want to thank all of these good working people for what they are doing.

So, like I said, when I was here last, this is a wartime factory. If you look at it, it immediately is clear. This is something that was put together from scratch with a sense of urgency created for a common cause, not for a profit but for something higher. Nine days ago. It was just nine days ago that this started to come together. By the end of the day, 9,200 surgical gowns will have been created. By the end of the week, almost 19,000. By the end of the month 320,000, amazing contribution to this effort and it protects our health care workers. These gowns and Dr. Wei can explain to you in detail, they are absolutely crucial to protection of our health care workers and these are reusable, which is crucially important and a point where we're on a crisis footing and we have to conserve every item we have.

Now it comes at a critical time, this new supply, because as I said to you yesterday, this is one of the areas where we're seeing a real problem, surgical gowns. Our public hospital has enough for this week, but some of the private hospitals and nursing homes are running low and this is an area we're very, very concerned about. Last week, all hospitals combined used approximately 1.8 million surgical gowns in New York City. This week they are projected to use 2.5 million as the crisis grows. So, we have to find more surgical gowns urgently. There are orders out, we believe that there's a good chance these orders will come in time, but we're also working intensely with the federal government to see if we can get additional supply in time. So, this is an area of real concern as we start this week.

And again, we will leave no stone unturned. We'll be as creative as we need to be to create new surgical gowns or use anything else that may be appropriate as a surgical gown to get us through this crisis. Now the other thing I talked about yesterday is the N95 masks. This is the other area of real concern for this week. We got – at the time I spoke to you all yesterday afternoon, there was still an outstanding need for N95s to get us through the week. Very appreciative that we got a major supply from the federal government. My thanks to President Trump and to Jared Kushner for the role that he played as well. 600,000 N95 masks coming today for our independent hospitals. Those are some of our hospitals that have the greatest need and serve communities in greatest need. That's on top of the 200,000 arrived for our public hospitals on Friday. So now we can say that our supply of N95s for the week is sufficiently secure. Again, it's going to be a tough week. People are going to have to be careful and conserve on the crisis standards we're working on, but this has definitely changed the dynamic for us for this week and that's a very good thing. So, we continue to focus this week on finding more surgical gowns and of course on ventilators to get us through.

Now, more and more the challenge is going to be personnel and we need these supplies, but we also need to heroes to wear them and more and more personnel than we needed from every source. Remember, our overall need is 45,000 – from where we started, the additional need is 45,000 clinical personnel over this month, an ever-increasing number to get us through this crisis. I've been pushing particularly for more and more military medical personnel to come in. My requests for our public hospitals again is 1,450 clinical staff from what's – that's what I've requested from the federal government, 291 arrived yesterday – that's a good start, but we need more. I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday. I will be speaking to more federal officials and the President today to let them know how much our public hospitals have really borne the brunt of this crisis. We'll need more of those medical personnel from the military. Those I greeted yesterday upon arrival. It was very inspiring that came from states from all over the country. They were ready to immediately go to where the need was greatest in our ICUs, in emergency rooms, in our public hospitals. I'm so grateful to all of them. It was very, very moving to greet them as they arrived in New York City.

Again, this is just the beginning for this city and for many cities and states all over the country. I'll continue to say we need to have an enlistment structure to find medical personnel from all over the country, civilians who would come forward as volunteers, be compensated for sure, and then be mobilized by our military and sent where they're needed most. I remind you again, over a million doctors in America, almost 4 million nurses in America – thank God we have many, many medical personnel, many ready to serve where the need is greatest but no mechanism right now to get them where they need to be. And I will keep pushing the federal government to achieve that.

So, I want to finish before a few words in Spanish and then we'll hear from our colleagues here at the Brooklyn Navy Yard who've done this amazing work. But I want to finish with a point about the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Those of you who have looked at the history – so this place is heroic by its nature. In World War II, it was one of the single most important places in the United States of America fighting the war effort. This was a place that so many of our troops left on their way to battle. This is a place where so many of the ships were built and repaired. This was a crucial, crucial place in the war effort. And it comes with an incredible tradition of service in a time of crisis. And you know, when the Navy Yard became a civilian facility and became a place synonymous with jobs and economic development. People might've thought, well, it's years of service are over. But now we're seeing once again, the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a symbol to this city and this whole nation of extraordinary and selfless service leading the fight against the coronavirus. So history has come around in a very, very powerful way. And I remind everyone, a lot of us heard stories maybe from parents, maybe from grandparents of the epic times of the past, World War II, the Great Depression, what people had to fight through as a full community. Now it is our time. We are living that reality now. It's our generation that has to make that imprint on history and fight that fight now. I don't think when we heard a lot of those stories, we ever thought it would be us one day, but now it is us and it's time for all of us to show what we can do in this moment of crisis and that's what folks are doing here at the Navy Yard.

Everybody out there who can help, try to emulate the amazing work of the folks here at the Navy Yard. Not everyone happens to have a clothing line of their own or a company that makes military gear, but if you have a company that can help us, we need you. If you have access to surgical supplies, we need you. If you're a health care professional who can volunteer, we need you. Anything you can donate that will help us to continue this fight. We need you. If you want to donate food to our frontline hospital workers. If you want to donate money to pay for the kind of support they need, whatever it is we need you and anyone who wants to help can go to nyc.gov/helpnow or call 8-3-3-NYC-0-0-4-0.

A few words in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

So now I want to bring up Gregg Thompson. And Gregg has done so much, his company has done so much for our heroes in the United States military protecting them – now taking that same expertise to protect our doctors and nurses and frontline health care workers. Great pleasure to introduce the cofounder, Executive Director of Crye Precision Gregg Thompson.

Executive Director Gregg Thompson, Crye Precision: For sure. Great. It feels good. Yeah. Yeah. I'm starting to recognize people by their eyes alone and looking around, it's nice to see. Sorry, I have to read off paper.

Thank you, Mayor de Blasio. And again, thank you to the DOH, Department of Health, and EDC, and of course thank you to the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation who has provided us with a fantastic home for the past 18 years. They are a top-notch team both in difficult times like these in what we remember as our normal lives as well. It's been an inspiration to work with our partners here in the Navy Yard, including Lafayette 148 and about 10 other companies who've all banded together to help make this happen. Some of them are sitting right in front of me now and [inaudible] New York and Cambridge.

Again, this effort started only a few days ago. But in that time, we've been lucky enough to witness such tremendous support and generosity, not only from the domestic supply chain, such as MMI Textiles and Tweed, but from resources right here within the city itself, including Brookwood and VAR Test Labs. Again, it's really simple. We at Crye Precision are incredibly fortunate. Every day we get to create and manufacture products for our heroes in the law enforcement and military communities, people who have made a far bigger sacrifice than we could ever imagine. This is no different. So with that, I'd like to thank all of the brave men and women who are winning the fight and our hospitals and medical facilities. It is an absolute honor for all of us to work for you. It is an absolute honor to continue to get to work with my amazing team here at Crye Precision and it is absolute honor to work with everybody here in the Navy Yard. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. You go that way, I’ll go this way. There we go. Okay. Thank you so much Gregg. And now I want you to hear from Deirdre Quinn, who is a leader in the business community in a bigger way. She was the recipient of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award a few years ago and someone who brings a lot of vision to what she does and when we needed help, when our health workers needed help, she was quick to act. So, a great pleasure to introduce the CEO and Owner of Lafayette 148. Deirdre Quinn. I think I'm going to give you a little extra height.

Deirdre Quinn, Co-Founder and CEO of Lafayette 148: Good morning and thank you. It's an absolute honor to be here and it's an honor to make a difference in New York City. Our company moved to the Navy Yard two years ago and I would say by far the best move we ever made. Not only is it great to be in Brooklyn, it's great to be part of this incredible community. So, when David called me and asked me what we could do to get patterns quickly, we made them over the weekend, digitized them, and got them to Gregg who took the ball and ran with it. I am on the board of the Brooklyn Hospital Center and so I've got to see firsthand the tragedy that's going on over there. And we will do anything and everything to make a difference for New Yorkers, for this city, and for the good of what the gowns can do for people. So, it's not exactly fashion, but it's definitely needed. And it's what we want to do. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you so much. Okay. With that, we will now turn to questions from our colleagues in the media. Yes.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Just – yeah, there you go.

Question: [Inaudible] social distancing. I'm sure you saw the stories yesterday about [inaudible]. Are there any plans to change of that [inaudible]?

Mayor: You know, we're going to be a – I've spoken to leaders of the community previously and we're going to do that again. We're going to be very clear with people we just cannot tolerate, at this moment in history, any gatherings and unfortunately, we have no choice and the NYPD has no choice but to immediately break them up. They're dangerous even though I know people are trying to, you know, deal with a very painful moment. I understand that it's not easy for people to give up traditions, especially when they're in mourning, but it's just too dangerous. So, we'll go back, tell community leaders we need them to step up as they have so far. And the NYPD will be very aggressive and anytime we get an indication – I need people to understand this, you're doing a service to other people. If you know something like this is going to happen, please call 3-1-1 and report it so we can stop it before it happens. And I'm going to ask that of the community leaders as well, if they know that there's some group individuals who are not following this guidance, we need to know in advance and the NYPD will absolutely intervene to stop it. Yeah.

Question: [Inaudible] treatment [inaudible] going on right now in the [inaudible] tests or not [inaudible] –

Mayor: We'll get Dr. Wei to come over and address those.

Vice President and Chief Quality Officer Eric Wei, Health + Hospitals: Thank you for that question. So, our thoughts and prayers are still with all the patients who are fighting for their lives in ICU. So, that's why we show up every day to reduce the number of lives lost. And more good news of people getting excavated, going home, kind of like the good news and what gives us hope from touring this factory today and seeing what New Yorkers and Americans can do to help our frontline heroes. In terms of treatments we are still learning every day about this virus, this terrible disease. We have multiple types of treatments, studies underway to see what's working best. Many of our patients are receiving hydroxychloroquine, or Plaquenil, as part of those treatment regimens. But these are all done with appropriate kind of IRB approval and – it's an institutional review board – so we're making sure that we're following science, right.

Question: [Inaudible]

Dr. Wei: I think it's still too early to tell. I think we are still looking at the data but right now we're willing to try just about anything to save patients

Mayor: Testing center [inaudible] –

Dr. Wei: Testing centers on weekends – I am not sure about the hours on the weekends, but I can get back to you on that. We are shifting from broadly testing in New York City to making more testing available to our employees, our heroes who are in the hospitals fighting COVID-19. Testing is, you know, ongoing 24/7 in our emergency departments. We are following Dr. Barbot and DOHMH’s advice of testing those who are being admitted to the hospital. And so that goes 24/7.

Question: What do you have to say to parents, teachers who have expressed unhappiness that Zoom is no longer being used?

Mayor: Thank you for the question. And, again, I was a public school parent for the whole time that my kids went to school and I want to amplify what Chancellor Carranza said yesterday that there's been an effort by the Department of Education to work with that company to ensure the privacy of our students, to make sure their information could not be accessed wrongly. And the Chancellor and the team at the Department of Education did not believe the company has cooperated. And we're not going to put our students' privacy, our students' data at risk. It's just as simple as that. So, we'd all like to use that capacity, but only if we can do it in a secure way.

Question: [Inaudible] –

Mayor: I think – Doctor, can she take it off for the question? The doctor has allowed it. The truck came at just the wrong time. Hold on a second. Maybe we can move that truck just a little, give you some better ability to be heard. Go ahead, Erin.

Question: [Inaudible] this morning that you’re going to be ending the open streets pilot. Can you speak a little bit about the rationale for that and in particular is there anything else you’re considering [inaudible] sidewalks [inaudible] stay far enough away?

Mayor: Yeah. Again, I consistently talk with Commissioner Shea and other commissioners who are looking at social distancing and compliance. Consistent reports we're getting is that we see a very good consistent effort from New Yorkers. There's obviously some areas we're concerned about, but the overall reality is that people are observing this. But we do need to keep the enforcement efforts strong. The problem with the additional street closures is you have to attach enforcement to them. If don't attach enforcement to them, we're very concerned they become new gathering points and we do not want to seem to be solving one problem by creating a new one. So, right now, keeping the NYPD and other enforcement entities focused where they are, is what we believe is the best strategy. Remember, they do have fewer personnel themselves than usual. And that's why we're sticking with what we got. We'll certainly assess as we go along.

Question: Just to follow-up on the enforcement piece, is there a protocol in place to make sure the officers are able to maintain a distance when they’re [inaudible] how does that work especially considering the high rates of NYPD officers [inaudible]?

Mayor: Right, the – first of all we've made sure that whenever, and I've had this conversation with Commissioner Shea multiple times and we've all been united – our Health Commissioner, Dr. Barbot – we've all been united that when the NYPD needs PPEs, they get them. It's a priority in our supply. Second, everyone is learning a new way of being. So, the Commissioner has told me there's been multiple rounds of training officers how to approach each situation, what protection they need. It's not surprising that people are still getting used to it. It's a big change, but that training continues and we want to make sure our officers are safe, and certainly the standard for going and telling people that they're not in compliance and what – we don't want to have to give a fine. We've been very clear. I've been clear. The Commissioner has been clear. We want to tell people they're doing something out of compliance to stop it. We want to warn them they're about to get a fine. There's been very few situations, Erin, where officers have had to intervene more than a warning. There's only been a small number of situations even where there’s been a fine – a couple of examples have come up where there was a more aggressive intervention needed, but it's been very rare. Let’s see if there’s anything else.

Question: [Inaudible] City Hall committed to covering the costs for providers and foster care, front line workers [inaudible] and how exactly is that going to work [inaudible] –

Mayor: I don’t know – when you say that phrase, and I know she's not here, so I'm having trouble interpreting it, the enhanced pay point. Let us get you an answer on that. Whatever commitments we've made, we'll keep, but I'm not familiar with what the phrase means in this case. Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No. I spoke to Commissioner Shea this morning, we went over the situation with absentees, but we also went over the return rate, which has gotten very strong. I'm going to say it again. Remember, the vast majority of patrol officers in the NYPD are younger and very healthy people. So, the extent they've been exposed to the virus, they're coming back rapidly, they’re coming back after, you know, somewhere between a week and two weeks. He's seeing a steady flow of officers returning. And what we hope and pray is that once you get this – we don't want anyone to have it – but once you get it, you're done and you can continue your life and be immune. So, no, we can handle the situation with the very deep bench that the NYPD has now. There's no consideration of bringing in outside forces.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: It’s going to be a very tough situation. We are going to on April 23rd, I believe it is, unveil the executive budget. It's going to be a very sober day. But I'm not going to foreshadow.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Right now, again, we, the enforcement efforts by law enforcement are working. As you know, as Commissioner Shea has reported, we've seen a decrease in crime, thank God, and we've seen a high level of compliance with shelter in place and social distancing. There's literally no better expert at data that I've met in my entire life than Dermot Shea, and I have asked him every single day for the last few weeks, what are you seeing on compliance? And with all the capacity at NYPD, also layered over with everything we're seeing from 3-1-1, Parks Department, everybody, we do not see a major compliance problem. We see some hotspots that we deal with. We see some places where we need to do extra warnings and enforcement. But, overall, I think right now our – what we're seeing is, our law enforcement is doing a great job with their current structure, with their current personnel. We're getting the results we need. We have more work to do, but we're getting the results we need.

Yes?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: It's going to be a large number of hotels. So, first of all, Van Cortlandt Park, yeah, that's another example of a field hospital that’s being set up by FEMA. You're going to see a constant growth. So, it will be, again, hotels on the one hand – what I would call big public spaces on the other hand. Sometimes it’ll be a field tent kind of thing in a park. More typically, it will be a big open public building. We use the example, the Billie Jean King Tennis Center that I was at a few days ago. We're looking for any large spaces that we can put a lot of beds in simultaneously. But the hotels – so, the City now has at least one hotel up and running for medical use. We have a number of hotels up and running for, if you will, dormitory use for health care workers, especially those who do not want to go home to their families because they want to be careful for their families. We've got a lot of hotels up and running for people who need isolation. We're just going to keep growing that. It's going to be – when all is said and done, I think we're going to be in, you know, a hundred-plus hotels, in most cases, taking the whole hotel on a lease. But as they start to become medical facilities, we'll give you updates. It's still going to be a few days before you see it in a large scale, in the hotels, the medical use, but it's coming very soon.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: What about?

Question: [Inaudible

Mayor: As I said, I'm never going to go into a lot of detail. We have the capacity. It's going to be very tough, but we have the capacity. The military, the federal Department of Health and Human Services have sent us a lot of personnel, a lot of equipment. And we will keep dealing with this very, very tough situation. And I just don't want to go into detail because I don't think it's a great thing to be talked about publicly, but we have the capacity we need.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, I'm not going to go into those kinds of details. I'm only going to say we will have the capacity we need. As I said over the weekend, we may well be dealing with temporary burials so we can then deal with each family later. But again, I'm just not going to detail. When we have something to say on it, we will.

Okay, here we go.

Question: Nonprofit workers in the [inaudible]?

Mayor: Yeah. I will get you a more specific answer from my team. We need to get that support there, obviously. And we also have a number of City employees, nonprofit employees who we've kept paying explicitly to be able to move them to wherever the need is greatest. So, if we're finding a shortage there and we have people qualified, we can surge in some additional people. But let my team look into what we have to do to sort it out. We'll get you an answer today.

Yes?

Question: Mayor, you mentioned temporary burials. What does that mean exactly? Are you talking about public cemeteries, or –

Mayor: Again, it is what it says. If we need to do temporary burials to be able to tide us over to pass the crisis and then work with each family on their appropriate arrangements, we have the ability to do that. That's all it means.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, I'm not going to go into detail at this point in time. We're not to the point where we're going to go into that.

Okay. Anything else? Yes.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Dr. Barbot – the nature of what happens with bodies [inaudible] –

Commissioner Barbot: Yes. So, let me start by saying that all of our efforts to-date, from social distancing to all of the educational materials we've been providing New Yorkers is to really slow the spread of the virus and to protect our health care workforce so that they can absorb the large number of people who require hospital services because of COVID-19. And it is a sad reality that we have many New Yorkers that have died because of COVID-19, and to say that our hearts and prayers go out to those families really doesn't give it the justice that it deserves, because it is a very difficult time that we're all in and it's a reminder of our collective humanity and the need that we have to come together and to be there for one another – even though we're physically distanced, to be spiritually and emotionally connected. With that being said, and I've said this before, there are no special precautions that need to be taken with individuals who have died because of COVID-19. And so, we, and the OCME office and the hospitals and the funeral homes are all working with the dignity and the respect that these families deserve during this very hard time.

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah. There are no special precautions that are needed to be taken with people who have died because of COVID-19. You know, we've made the comparison to other infectious illnesses in the past. You all may recall that with Ebola there were very sort of specific precautionary measures that needed to be taken so that the – it would not continue to be spread. This is in no way, shape or form like that. So, there are no special precautions. People who die because of COVID-19 are treated the same way as someone who dies from, let's say, a heart attack or any other reason.

Mayor: Okay, last call? Yes –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, let me just – obviously, the place we have used historically is Hart Island, but I am sorry and I say this respectfully – this topic is something that a lot of folks in the media want to ask me about. I'm just going to draw a line on this one. We'll put out updates when is the time. I am telling you the thing that I believe is what New Yorkers need to hear. Do we have the capacity to handle it? Yes. We've been working closely with the federal government to make sure we have the capacity. Yes, there will be delays because of the sheer intensity of this crisis. We're going to try and treat every family with dignity, respect, religious needs of those who are devout. And the focus right now is to try and get through this crisis and obviously also put all of our energy and resources into saving those we can save. So, that's how we're going to go about it. We will have the capacity for temporary burials. That's all I'm going to say.

All right. Thanks, everybody.

2020-04-07 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Everybody, all along I've said this would be a tough fight against the coronavirus and it's important we understand more and more we are fighting this war on two fronts. First, in our hospitals to save lives, but the second front now is more and more an economic one as well, where folks are struggling to make ends meet, running out of money, New Yorkers who don't have enough money to pay the rent to get the medicines they need, to get the food they need. So, we're going to talk today about our efforts to get food to New Yorkers who need it because this is a growing problem. This is a problem that's going to more and more affect the people of our city as they run out of money. And even though there is some federal help coming, it's not that much and it's going to take too long for many people. So just as we deal with the most important moment in the fight against the illness in our hospitals to save lives, there's a new front opening up and we have to be there for people who need food, cannot have any New Yorker go hungry.

Since we're talking about two fronts, I want to open on the first one and I'm going to say to all of you, it is way too early to draw any definite conclusions. I want to really make sure none of us in public life tell you we have turned a corner until we are absolutely certain. We are not there yet and I want to make sure no one stops practicing social distancing and shelter in place. We must continue those strategies if we're going to protect lives, but I can say in the last couple of days something is starting to change. We don't know if it will be sustained, but it is meaningful now. We projected to you even on Sunday that we had seen a little bit progress in terms of when we were going to need ventilators. We've seen more progress now. That means the number of people showing up in our hospitals who need a ventilator, that situation has improved a bit in recent days. I'm hopeful, but I'm not drawing conclusions until I'm 100 percent sure and my health team is 100 percent sure, but the good news is it is giving us some more time. It is giving us the opportunity to get more ventilators in and know we get farther into the week, so that's very good news. Just the fact that we know we've bought a few more days and we can absolutely protect lives because ventilators will be there. That's crucial news.

We'll have to see in the days ahead if it's something sustained and something that deepens, we will give you daily updates to tell you what's going on, but I want to at least note a little improvement last few days and thank God for that. But as I said, when it comes to the economic battle, when it comes to battling to make sure that people have the food they need, that situation is not getting better, it's getting worse, and think about why, because all of those people lost jobs. All those people still work, but not as much. All those people not getting a paycheck or getting reduced paycheck. The number is staggering. The initial projection is at least half a million New Yorkers are either already out of work or soon will be. That is the kind of level of unemployment and economic distress, the only comparison you can make for that is the Great Depression, which scares me to death to even say that and, and it's right where we are here. Here in Manhattan I am reminded of what this city went through in the Great Depression. I'm reminded of it because of the stories I heard from my family, my older relatives who went through the depression right here in this part of New York City. And the stories they told about how difficult it was, how painful it was, how disorienting it was, we have to understand that what we're going through now and what we will go through, that's the only parallel we can look at and we cannot underestimate the problem for everyday New Yorkers, especially when it comes to food. We're having a lot of people literally having to ask that question, where is my next meal coming from? More and more people are in that situation, so we have to act very aggressively to address that.

Now I want to be clear, I've given you the extent of the problem, but I want to be clear what the mission statement is. I want to be clear what our resolve is. We will not let any New Yorker go hungry. Literally, we will not let any New Yorker go hungry. We have been planning from the beginning of this crisis to address the hunger problem and because we understood that this would be a profound part of what we faced, and this is something that we had seen in other crisis as well, but this is a whole different scale, but we knew this was something we had to prepare for. I named a few weeks ago, an extraordinary public servant, Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, as our Food Czar with the responsibility to come up with a system that we've never had to have in decades in this city, but a system to feed people on a mass scale if it came to that. She has been working closely with Department of Education, Department for the Aging, and Emergency Management to immediately put into action a food plan, but also build for anything bigger we may need to do.

The Chancellor and I had opportunity, a very special opportunity to spend some time with the food service workers here at P.S. 1. They've served 3,100 meals in the past week to people who need it. They’re good people. I said in there, there are another kind of first responder they've showed up to help people in need and they've been a lifeline for people in this community. So, 3,100 meals in the past week for children and families right here in the Lower East Side. This is a part of something much bigger and I want to thank of course everyone at P.S. 1, all the teachers and staff, everyone who's been part of this effort here, the food service workers, the principal, Amy Hom, everyone who has done this work and this whole team that has come together focused on food. Chancellor Carranza again, from Department for the Aging our Commissioner Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, of course our Health Commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, all of them, our Emergency Management Commissioner, Deanne Criswell, working under the leadership of Kathryn Garcia who's been helping to coordinate all the agencies and common cause. And as always, our elected officials are helping us spread the word, helping us find people who need help, helping us to make sure we have the resources we need. Thank you to state Senator Brian Kavanagh, who's with us now for everything he's done.

So, I want to give you a sense of the scale of this effort and this is just the beginning. In the last three weeks, the efforts of Department of Education, Department for the Aging, Emergency Management, all coordinated by Commissioner Garcia, those efforts have provided 2.6 million meals to New Yorkers who needed food. 2.6 million meals in the last three weeks and that is just the beginning. Now everybody, the site you see here, there are 434 other sites around the city just like this where anyone can come get breakfast, lunch, dinner, all three if they need it for as members of our family as they need. So, we're asking for students or students with their parents to come earlier in the day, 7:30 to 11:30, we're asking adults who are alone to come later in the day, 11:30 to 1:30, but it's the same exact standard everywhere. No one is turned away. No one has to pay anything. You get as many meals as you need. This is about making sure people have food.

Now there's a different initiative for those, for the senior citizens who need help for folks who are homebound, for folks who are vulnerable and that the only solution for them is a delivery. There's also a growing delivery system. This is something Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez has been working on from the beginning and it's building all the time. So, anybody who truly needs a home delivery can call 3-1-1 and we'll get them that delivery. Or they can go to nyc.gov/getfood to sign up. There's a lot of different things that we can get for people. We've got these grab and go sites at the schools. There are a lot of food pantries. The home delivery, we can make sure people who do not get food stamps sign up if they're eligible. Lots of different things we can do to help people. So again, anyone who needs help can go 3-1-1, you can go to nyc.gov/getfood or text the word FOOD or in Spanish they can text the word COMIDA to 8-7-7-8-7-7 to find the site nearest to them. So, if anyone needs it, you can use that text. Again, the word FOOD or the word COMIDA to 8-7-7-8-7-7 and find out a site near you where you can get the food you need for yourself and your family.

Now that's about helping all New Yorkers, anyone in need, but I also want to mention something very particular about our heroes, our health care workers who are at the front lines dealing with this crisis. It's been a very, very difficult month for them. The month of March into April has been very, very tough. These folks are working so hard, under such adverse circumstances. They often don't even have time to go outside for even a few minutes. They don't have time to go to the deli like they used to in the hospital, or the cafeteria. They need help in every way they can get it and we want food to get to them. So many people are responding in communities all over New York City and getting food to hospitals, helping our health care workers directly. But I want to mention some very special efforts, really appreciate these efforts. For example, Lavazza Coffee, that company is helping hospital staff. They're donating 60,000 bags of coffee for doctors, nurses, and hospital workers. And we all know how important it is to have coffee in the middle of this fight. So, I thank them deeply for that.

On a very big level, amazing announcement today. This is something I'm announcing as brand new: I want to thank Deborah and Leon Black, two New Yorkers who are showing extraordinary generosity. They have teamed up with the Mayor’s Fund. They have donated $10 million to help get food and crucial household supplies for the families of the health care workers. So this initiative is called Health Care Heroes and Deborah and Leon Black had put their $10 million forward. They are looking for matching donations from others who can help. If more comes in, they're ready to provide another $10 million to match up to $10 million in donations from other donors. So an incredible, incredible effort. I want to thank both of them on behalf of all 8.6 million New Yorkers. They teamed up with the Mayor’s Fund and in turn they have partnered. Everyone's partnered with the company, Aramark that does food services. They will be putting together at least 300,000 packages of food and household supplies for doctors, nurses, hospital workers of all kind to ease their burden and to help their families. The Red Cross will be doing a lot of the deliveries for the Health Care Heroes. The Robin Hood Foundation will be managing the matching funds to make sure that as other donations come in, we activate that match. This entire initiative will be beginning to deliver these crucial supplies and the food to the families of the health care workers hopefully no later than Monday, maybe even sooner.

So that's an amazing effort. We also have an effort by New York Road Runners. They're a wonderful New York organization. Last week they have 20,000 pairs of gloves to help our health care workers. Now they're donating 10,000 meals for doctors and nurses and frontline staff. So, we see so many different efforts coming together. Every day New Yorkers standing up, people doing everything they can to help our heroes.

Now, one more point I want to make before some quick summary in Spanish. I talked to you over the weekend. It was very moving to me that the Governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, volunteered ventilators from Oregon to help New York. See another great act by a governor, Governor Newsom of California who has taken 500 ventilators that they were using in California, had a very tough time, we know it in many parts of that state. They're taking 500 ventilators returning them to the national stockpile so they can go to places like New York and the other places that are hard hit. So, I want to thank Governor Newsom. There is something happening all over this country where people are pouring out their hearts to New York. They're standing with us. People all over the world are standing with us and I think New Yorkers are feeling it more and more. We're in a deep, deep fight, but New Yorkers know we can win this fight. We see more and more people helping us and our own toughness as New Yorkers. Our own resiliency is coming through more and more, but look at all the ways that people are lifting each other up. It's absolutely amazing. So, we're in a fight, but we will not lose this fight. We will prevail and I have great faith that with all the help we're getting, we're going to see this through together. A few words in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, and again, with great gratitude to everyone who's helping us in all my colleagues here for the amazing work they're doing. Want to take questions from our colleagues in the media.

Yes?

Question: So, we’ve been talking to Fire and EMS folks and they’re telling us they’re not getting dedicated [inaudible] there’s no 12-hour shifts to sort of alleviate how long they have to be working. N95 masks –

Mayor: Wait, just speak up a little more. I'm sorry.

Question: Supplies are scarce for Fire and EMS. I know we talked a lot about hospitals getting resources, but what about for EMS. What about for paramedics?

Mayor: Yeah, I spoke to Commissioner Nigro yesterday. He affirmed – every time he has said they need additional N95 masks or any PPEs, they're getting them instantly. It's a priority to support our first responders. Everyone is working on a crisis standard. I keep saying this, it is so important. There's an ideal standard we'd all like to be at. We're not there now because we're in a crisis, because of the shortages is all over the country. So the standard, the crisis standard held by the CDC is what we're matching consistently and Fire Department, EMS have those N95 masks to meet that standard. Anything more they need, they will get period. Dan Nigro calls and says, I need something more. It will be immediately provided from everything that we have. So we want to make sure that happens. Testing has been prioritized for first responders and we're continually trying to add to the amount of testing. We all know that's been an uphill battle from the beginning, but as we get more testing capacity, first responders, health care workers are a priority. So I think literally with every day particularly, we get a little bit of relief here in the progression of disease, we'll be able to get more and more supplies in and be able to help more and more people. But there's no question in the world. They are priority.

Question: Did Commissioner Nigro ask for [inaudible]?

Mayor: Commissioner said he had the N95s that he needed. I said, whenever you need a resupply, you'll get it immediately. Period.

Yes?

Question: You mentioned at the beginning seeing something start to change [inaudible] and I was hoping you could go into some more detail about that? [Inaudible]?

Mayor: I spoke to Dr. Mitch Katz and obviously Health + Hospitals has been the hardest hit. Elmhurst has rightfully been focused on as this – kind of the epicenter of the epicenter. But we know that Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, Bellevue, Queens Hospital, many others have borne the brunt. For the first time in many days we did not see a major increase in the number of ventilators needed in those hospitals yesterday. Very striking when you go back about two weeks, every day there was a substantial increase. Some days more, some days less, but every day there was a substantial increase. We needed more ventilators than the day before, every single day. For the first time yesterday, they were pretty much breaking even. That's not the end of discussion there and there's going to – again, we have to watch out. This is a disease that, you know, if you take your eye off the ball, there's nothing that stops it from reasserting. So, we have to be careful. And no one should let down their guard, no one should stop taking the precautions. But just on the sheer numbers, some improvement was evident yesterday. Again, that's buying us some time to get more ventilators in and get ahead of things. That's encouraging, but we’ve got to see it happen for a number of days before we can declare it a bigger trend.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: The number intubated, I believe he said they were around 830 across their system. So, they’re about 20 percent of the health care capacity of New York City, is Health + Hospitals in terms of hospital beds. They had about 830 people intubated, so that number was pretty stable from Sunday into Monday.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Correct.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: We are tracking the State – the State information is what we are using. And so, we agree with the State on that, but also – and I think the State's in the same place – we want to report something good just like we have had to report the tough stuff, but it's too early to call it a pattern or trend because we don't want a situation where you know you could see something change rapidly the other way and we don't want to give people the wrong sense of things. Also, really crucial, this is a testament to the fact that social distancing, shelter in place clearly is having an impact. We’ve got to keep it tight if we're going to consolidate our gains here. If people suddenly start loosening up, you're going to see those numbers shoot right back up.

Yes?

Question: We’re talking about social distancing, what is happening in laundromats, supermarkets? I see people, like, into laundry, like four people without wearing a mask. And this is getting like, people not getting the message. What do you think about this? Because I know that laundromats are essential –

Mayor: Yes.

Question: So, there isn’t a limit for the people that can be outside, but can the government do something about the implementation of more rules, because nothing is being done –

Mayor: Well, I don’t think nothing’s being done. You’ve seen some examples, I'm concerned about that, I think, in general, because, look, our enforcement agencies – NYPD, FDNY, Sheriff's Office, Buildings Department, you name it – they've been out there constantly now for weeks. Hundreds of thousands of times they've gone to businesses, they've gone up to everyday New Yorkers to do enforcement and what we're finding consistently is people do respond to the enforcement. If they're told break up, if they're told, spread out, they do it with very, very few exceptions. What we've got to keep tightening up is that if you see something, call 3-1-1 and that enforcement is supposed to come rapidly. I had this conversation with Commissioner Shea and the other commissioners – that has to be very fast. So, yes, people need the laundromats. They were kept open for a very specific reason. We want people to have clean clothes. The cleaning of clothes actually kills the coronavirus, that's a good thing. But you can't crowd into a laundromat or a supermarket or a pharmacy or anything like that. So, it means that the people who work there, I have to remind people, and if they're not getting cooperation, they need to call 3-1-1 immediately. I need you to say this, please, everyone – anyone who sees crowding or people are not socially distancing, call 3-1-1 right away and we will send enforcement agents immediately. And again, we're going to warn people, if they don't follow the warning, they can be fined now and those fines can be very substantial. But what we want to do is, if someone shows up to the laundromat, it's too crowded, hold back, you know, form a line. If you can't wait, come back another time. People should be really smart, only go to laundromat as little as you can. You know, don't go all the time. Go as infrequently as you can. The same with the grocery store, go as few times as you can, stock up, and then stay home. But that ability to send enforcement over quickly is what will make all the difference here. Who has not gone? Okay, Jeff?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: We are releasing data this week. The data in an atmosphere of crisis is less precise. This won't surprise you, Jeff. Gender is immediately available. Age is immediately available. The ethnicity data in a crisis atmosphere where health care is being provided rapidly to everyone that can be reached, that's been less of a focus to get the ethnicity data in that environment. So, we have enough data to put out, I'm not sure it is as perfect as it could be and I think it will take time to make it better, but we're going to have something out this week for sure. And what it will show, and I've already spoken to this from the maps that the Health Department’s put out – this is clearly tracking health disparities in general. I've said that before, I'm going to say it again. I cannot be more blunt. This disease is affecting people disproportionately in lower income communities, in communities that have had more health problems historically, and in communities of color. The extent of that disparity we're still trying to fully understand and the data we'll give you will help us understand, but it will not be the final word because again it is preliminary and imperfect data in the middle of a crisis. But there's no question in my mind, we've already put that out publicly, we've already said there is a disparity dynamic here. It is real, it is meaningful. Now, how do we keep addressing that? First of all, on the question of beds, there is no question, we've been tracking beds to [inaudible]. Beds have been available, are available right now. I've had this conversation with Mitch Katz literally every day with a whole team of people at OEM. We projected the worst-case scenario, we prepared for the worst-case scenario. We are not experiencing worst-case scenario right now. Thank God. There is no place in our public hospitals – and, Jeff, you would agree that public hospitals are explicitly the place where so many people experience those health disparities go for their care – that's the number-one venue. There are beds in all of our public hospitals. Some have had to transfer patients at times, at peak times from one public hospital to another, but there's always a bed. So, we know there's disparity. The whole effort to keep ahead of this with the ventilators, with the PPEs has been for everyone. But clearly, if this is tracking health care disparities, it means that all this herculean effort that all the health care workers are putting in, all the supplies around the country is explicitly to help everyone in need. And therefore, if it's in an atmosphere of disparity, thank God, all of this effort is being expended for everyone. And that's not showing disparity. Where we're not seeing disparity is the full court press to help everyone in need everywhere. The amount of help has gone to Health + Hospitals, that’s gone to Elmhurst in particular has been overwhelming – the number of health care personnel that have moved over there, been sent over there, the supplies – there's no disparity in that. The military, when I made the request of the military to send medical personnel, it was explicitly for our public hospitals, for frontline work in the ICU and emergency departments. We've gotten about 300 military medical personnel. I'm expecting more, but that's going right to where the need is greatest, so all of that speaks to the situation. The testing issue, this is the –has been the worst part of the equation from the beginning. If we had the testing, January, February is when it could have made a huge strategic difference. Once it finally started to arrive, we essentially found out that within days it was too late and we already had community spread. Testing now cannot allow us to change the basic trajectory. At some point, there may be a role strategically for testing again, but right now it does not allow us to fundamentally change the reality. It does allow us to ensure the maximum number of health care workers and first responders are available to save everyone else. It does allow us to focus on the more severe cases, which are still very numerous. It does not allow us to stop the vast majority of people out there who will get infected from getting infected – testing doesn't do that, because, obviously, if you got tested one day, it could be your negative and the next day you could be positive. Testing is not prophylactic. It's not preventative. If you had 100 percent universal testing, that would be a different matter. We're nowhere near that right now. So, I understand why people are yearning for testing and they see what feels like disparities in the provision of testing, but I want to say – and there are, clearly, but that's not the same thing whether the testing would save lives the way we need live saved. That train left the station a long time ago. But we're going to try to figure out if there's anything else that we can do and I'll have more to say on that in the course of the week. I do think there's strategies that we might be able to innovate to try and figure out where we can get particularly more education efforts and more multi-lingual education efforts to communities that need them.

Let’s see over here, if there's anyone, going back over here –

Question: Have you talked to Commissioner Shea about how the department's doing today with the number of the officers that are sick or the ones that still need testing? And do you know if there are any specific testing sites that have been opened around the city for cops, firemen, paramedics?

Mayor: I don't know. And we can get back to you today on specific locations. I do know that both police and fire, from talking about commissioners, report a substantial number of their members coming back from the disease. What we've talked about before, their frontline forces are overwhelmingly younger, healthier people, officers on patrol, firefighters, EMTs, paramedics. Any of those that are getting sick, the vast majority are coming back rapidly after a week or two each, some not. And we're very, very concerned about anybody who's suffering or anyone whose life is in danger. But the vast majority are coming back quickly. But the absentee level, the sickness level is still very high. Both Commissioner Shea and Commissioner Nigro are absolutely consistent in saying they have the forces they need to have a deep bench. They're able to make moves to keep things moving, to keep providing the service that we needed to provide. We'll get you the specifics on how testing is done. Clearly when first responders need testing, that is a priority. Okay. Way back, I'm sorry –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Little louder, can you take the mask down so I can hear you? There you go.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Couldn't hear the beginning.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Yeah, so we've talked about this before – and I'm looking at my lineup, yes, you can join in Dr. Barbot – Dr. Barbot, behind your bandana. I wasn't sure for a moment there. The City is continuing, the Health Department, Health + Hospitals continue to look at this issue and try to determine how helpful it could be. What Dr. Katz said, I believe it was yesterday or Sunday, is that it is being administered to certain patients who are COVID positive because of the extremity of their sickness to see if it would be helpful. But that is in reaction to a particular dynamic that individual is having with the disease, not a broader effort because so far as I understand it, Dr. Barbot will comment, there aren't the kinds of studies to clarify what you would gain from it versus the dangers and the negative side effects. As I understand it, there are side effects that could be very severe, particularly for older or more vulnerable people. And so, trying to strike that balance has been a big question in the health care community. Dr. Barbot let me, hold on, I'm going to go back, get out of your way.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So, I want to echo what the Mayor said in terms of the use of hydroxychloroquine. I think the main point here – I think the main point here is that Health + Hospitals, in collaboration with other hospital systems throughout the city, have been looking at any and all potential therapies to help save as many New Yorkers as possible. And hydroxychloroquine is one of those early medications. I think that there have been, to date, very few patients actually able to take the medication. So, it's too early to say what the clinical benefit has been. Dr. Katz has been clear that the focus of using hydroxychloroquine has been to try and have individuals who are currently suffering respiratory distress from having to keep them go on ventilators, which I think is a really critical component. But, again, it's still too early to know what the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine will be. And again, that's why it's really so critical for us as a city to adhere to social distancing because what we're trying to do is not only slow the spread but reduce the potential impact to individuals who may be adversely affected, especially those above the age of 50 with chronic underlying illnesses.

Mayor: Okay. Anyone else? Erin –

Question: [Inaudible] number of deaths undercounted [inaudible] –

Mayor: I’ll start and then if Dr. Barbot, you'll let me know if you want to add. Look right now, and I want to say this as a non-doctor, I am assuming the vast majority of those deaths are coronavirus related. It's understandable in a crisis that being able to make the confirmation is harder to do with all the resources stretched so thin and with the central concern – Erin, I think you would agree that the concern, the first use of all of the everything we've got our professionals, our health care workers, our resources, the first thing we are focused on is saving the next life. So, we do want to know the truth about what happened in every death at home. But I think we can say at this point, it's right to assume the vast majority are coronavirus related. And that makes it even more sober the sense of how many people we are losing, how many families are suffering, how real this crisis is. So, again, why I'm trying to be very careful, even while saying we see some good news that we not overrate the good news. So, I think we'll, over time, be able to get a clearer picture. But I don't even doubt for a moment what that broader reality is and how we should think about it to drive our action to keep saving lives. If you want to add, you're good. Okay. Last call. Anyone else? Yes.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Again, I'm going to be very clear that I'm just going to draw a line on this question. I'm going to say what I said last night on NY1 and I really am not going to keep getting into detail. We have the capacity we need. We don't want – you know, we are hoping and praying we never have to come near using it. We're getting tremendous support from the military and the federal government. Everything we have asked them for, they've given us. We have a lot of capacity to deal with it. But remember, this is about human beings. This is about families that are suffering. And the reason I don't think it's something that we should dwell on is I think every time we talk about it, we're talking about families that are going through a lot of pain right now. To them, it's their loved one. It's not some bigger discussion. It's about the person in their life they've lost. And we want to be really dignified and really respectful in our support for those families. So, we're going to do everything we can to handle each case one by one respectfully. And we will be able to deal with whatever's thrown at us, but right now that's – I just want to leave it at that and say the focus is on being respectful to those families while always putting everything we have into saving the next life. Last call.

Okay. Thank you, everyone.

2020-04-08 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. So, yesterday I told you that we were starting to see something very important. We were starting to see some change in the right direction. And I want to really talk this through for a few minutes and I want to make it very real, and very personal to all of you, because this is one of those things where understanding what it means, what it doesn't mean, is really, really important. Understanding that when we see progress, we do need to talk about it, because it tells us something, and it's something I think New Yorkers should be proud of, because it's really about what you have done. It's really about the fact that New Yorkers listened to the guidance from the health care leadership telling you to socially distance, telling you to shelter in place. People really listened, and they really did what was needed even though it was very tough.

So, I want to talk about that and what it means, but I'm going to also say numerous times, we have to be careful not to take this initial information and make more of it than we should, because it is only based on a few days, and it's only initial information. It's not something we can draw much bigger conclusions from. In fact, it would be dangerous to take a small amount of information and decide too many things based on it. That actually could create some new problems, and new dangers, and we don't want that.

But let's talk about what you have achieved, because I think the real heroes here are everyday New Yorkers who had to change their lives. All of you had to do something very, very different in very little time. You know, a month ago this city was in a very different reality and a month ago feels like, you know, a year ago now. I think a lot of us are having that kind of feeling that so much has happened so quickly. There's really nothing I can think of in our lives that has had this kind of reality where we've gone through just massive, massive changes in so little time, with, it seems like, every day there's something very, very different, very new. Sometimes, you know, hour by hour we saw huge changes. This is hard for all of us to make sense of. We're human beings. That's asking a lot of us to constantly adjust to such a difficult circumstance. And we as New Yorkers, we are warm people, we are emotional people, we love our family gatherings, we love our gatherings with our friends, we love to go to restaurants and nightclubs. We're probably the most social people in the whole country. We're used to being close together, and for these last weeks that hasn't been possible, and that's really hurt.

You know, the fear about the disease, the anxiety, the pain we're seeing around us, every New Yorker knows someone who has the coronavirus. So many of us know people who have passed away. That's what's in the front of our minds, and that's what we are every day fighting together. But at the same time, we all feel a sense of loss that we had a life that we in so many ways loved in this city. And it's been so strange and so different in the last few weeks. But I want people to know, the reason I say the heroes are every-day New Yorkers, is because when asked to do something incredibly difficult, when asked to make these massive changes, New Yorkers went and did it. Amazing levels of follow through, compliance with these instructions no matter how hard it was. And it's something everyone should be proud of, because even though we’ve got a long way to go, this is still going to be a very long battle, what we've seen these last few days really proves that social distancing, shelter in place, these are ideas that make a huge difference. And they only make a huge difference when people do them the right way, and New Yorkers are doing that in so many ways. So, this gives me hope, more hope than ever that we can get through this really tough moment and come out together, save a lot of lives and get on to recovery at some point.

But now here's the point I want to make about not drawing too many conclusions, because, again, there's a danger in that. We're proving every day that these smart strategies can save lives, can protect people. But we know from some other parts of the world that he started to see a little bit of progress, took their foot off the gas, let down their guard, and guess what? This awful ferocious disease started to reassert itself. And that's something we have to guard against. We have to beat it back, not open the door again too early for it to resurge and hurt so many people. So, what I'm telling you today is something has started to move. We're going to let you know day by day if we see that that positive pattern is sustained or not, because there's no guarantees. Clearly tells us something about what has been working, but it doesn't tell us when this is going to be over. It tells us we got to actually double down. I'd stick to the strategies that are working, and that is frustrating. I'm trying to tell you the truth based on all the information we have, but it's frustrating because we all want to get back to normal. We all want to go see our family, our friends, you know the weather's getting nice. Everyone would love to go out, be in the park, you know, eat outdoors at a restaurant. There's all sorts of wonderful things in this city, outdoor concerts, all the things that we look forward to as it gets warmer, but we're not there yet and we can't get our hopes [inaudible] up the wrong way. We have to keep vigilant, disciplined, strong, resilient. This is what New Yorkers have done, and this is what we've done in other crises too, and we need to keep doing it.

So, the point about doubling down is the strategies working, stick to it. Even as it gets warmer, you start to feel that pull like you want to go do some of the things you used to do, stick to the plan, stick to the strategy. Over time we'll be able to give you more a sense of how long this will be. I've always said, expect a tough April and a tough May. I'm still saying that. But what we'll do is with every piece of new information we'll update you, give you a sense of what it means. But in the meantime, see the progress as an affirmation that you have done the right thing, and if you keep doing it, it's going to help us through this.

Why are we telling you there's some progress? Well, this is about the facts. First of all, the ventilator use. We've talked so much about ventilators. They are lifesaving. This is the way you ensure that someone, God forbid, they're in distress, this disease is a close to taking their life, and a ventilator can save their life, help them keep breathing, help the doctors and nurses see them through. The question until very, very recently, just a few days ago is would we have enough? And that was based on the fact that we saw some very clear patterns in the use of ventilators. And in the last few days we've actually seen fewer ventilators needed than were projected. And that's very, very important. We expected a really deep intensification of this struggle. We expected the number of ventilators to keep being needed to be more and more going into this week. We've seen actually much fewer needed than we expected. Now, to be clear, we still need more, meaning that they're still each day more people who need them, but much less than expected. That's a good sign. The hospitalizations have stabilized. For a long time, that just kept going up and up. We're now seeing some leveling off. Again, based on only a few days, but something good on that front too. That's telling us something positive. And I want to be clear, we know that means we're not out of the woods. It's too early, it’s to preliminary, but we'll keep telling you each day what the evidence is saying. So far, so good, but a long way to go.

Now, the ventilators. So, I want to just recap to you what was going on as recently as Sunday. I said then we, based on all the estimates we could put together, we talked to all the hospitals and looked at every pattern, all the facts that at that point are about 4,000 New Yorkers who needed to be intubated, who needed the ventilator to keep alive. And as recently as Sunday, we expected the number of new ventilators we were going to need each day to be 200 to 300 maybe even more. But what's happened in the last couple of days is that number has come down, and it looks like that number is more like a hundred or even less in terms of the number of ventilators we'll need new each day. That's a striking difference. It's very early. It's very preliminary. But that is a striking difference. We thought we would need many more ventilators to come in this week just to get through the week. As recently as Sunday, I told you that we needed 1,000 to 1,500. A few days earlier I told you we needed something more like 2,500 to 3000. That's how different things have been day to day. We thought we'd need a huge number of ventilators just to keep the hospital system running, just to save the lives that could be saved. That number went down, and it's gone down again. Still a long way to go, but that is striking.

Now, constantly over these last few weeks, we have appealed to the federal government, the state government to help us with ventilators. I want to be thankful and I want to be clear that our call for help has been heard time and time again. So, we got constantly shipment after shipment, including most recently 500 more ventilators from the state of New York. This now means we have a total of almost 5,500 ventilators available throughout our New York City hospitals of all kinds. We have a small emergency reserve of 135 that we're holding in case something has to be quickly moved to a place where the need is greatest. What it means for the first time in a while, is I can say with assurance that we will get through this week in terms of ventilators. We actually have enough to get through this week, free and clear. We are not going to say that we can accurately predict next week yet, it’s still too early this week to say that. But the fact that we have confidence we can get through this week is definitely a good sign.

Now, there's some other things to report, and some of them are hopeful, and then some of them are very, very tough, and raise very important questions about what's really going on. But one that's good is when it comes to our public servants, our first responders, the people who we depend on to keep us safe. So many of them we know were out sick because of symptoms of coronavirus or because they had a confirmed case, the coronavirus. And that has been something that caused tremendous worry we were worried for them. They're our heroes, we wanted to make sure they came through okay; their families came through okay. But we also saw fewer and fewer of our first responders available on any given day and people got very worried about what that would mean. I want to thank the NYPD and the FDNY for holding the line throughout this crisis, always coming up with another way to address all the challenges out there to make sure that the men and women we relied on were ready, always bringing in new first responders. Of course, the amazing effort to bring in paramedics and EMT is from other parts of the country we're so thankful for that. But here now we're seeing something good start to happen because I've said all along, one thing that's true about our first responders is primarily they are younger and obviously very healthy people. And that meant that they could go through this disease quickly thank God in the vast majority of cases, and I'm not for a moment for getting, we have lost some of our first responders. Their families are grieving, but thank God for the vast majority they've come through quickly and they've come through well.

So, the NYPD now reports that they have 276 officers who had tested positive, who have now returned to duty. The FDNY reports that 1,310 EMT, paramedics and firefighters who either tested positive or were exposed to a patient who had tested positive or were suspected of having been infected. 1,310 of our first responders at the FDNY have returned to duty and that's so moving and that's so important for all of us, so we're very grateful. But I told you there's also some things we're learning that really should cause real concern and facts that now are clear and we want to make it very clear to people this city that as facts become clear, we're going to put them out. We're always going to make sure that we believe the information is accurate, but once it's factual, once it's clear, we're putting it out.

So, one of the things that's been discussed in recent days is what do we know about who is being afflicted by this disease? Who are we losing? What does it tell us? Are there some larger realities that we need to look at here? The answer is yes, there are. Here is a disease that has hurt people, hurt families in every corner of our City, let's be clear, every community, every ZIP code has been hurt by this disease, families are grieving right now across every part of the five boroughs. But we also now have information that points out that there are clear inequalities, clear disparities in how this disease is affecting the people of our City. The truth is that in so many ways the negative effects of coronavirus, the pain it's causing, the death that's causing tracks with other profound health care disparities that we have seen for years and decades in this City. So many people have struggled to get the health care they need, who didn't have the money to afford the health care they deserve. So many people have lived with chronic health care conditions throughout their life, so often associated with challenges like poverty. We're seeing folks who have struggled before really being hit particularly hard by the coronavirus. Look, that's a blatant inequality and we don't accept it, meaning we have to fight in new ways we have to come up with new strategies to address what is now a documented disparity. As you're going to see, again, every community feeling this pain, some communities feeling it disproportionately, we're going to help everyone. And the strategies we have in place are meant of course to save the lives of New Yorkers across the board, every part of our City. But we're going to double down on the strategies that reach people who are the most vulnerable now because we're seeing these very troubling facts.

So, here's what the information from our Health Department shows us and this is preliminary information, but it is based on specific records meaning, and this is a tough thing to say, but I want to make sure people understand the facts. This is based on a death certificates, this is based on the work of our medical examiner's office and our Department of Health confirming that someone has died of a COVID-19 related illness and that their specific background is documented. So, what we've learned is that the deaths, because of COVID-19 in the City, first and foremost have affected the Hispanic community with 34 percent of the deaths. That community is about 29 percent of all New Yorkers in terms of population, but 34 percent of the deaths. And, again, this is preliminary information that we'll keep adding to. It's hard to talk about this stuff like statistics, this means human beings, this means families but we have to look in the face, these disparities that we're learning about. So, the Hispanic community, 34 percent; the black community, 28 percent of the deaths compared to about 22 percent of the overall population; the white community, 27 percent of the deaths compared to about 32 percent of the overall population; the Asian community, 7 percent of the deaths compared to about 14 percent of the overall population. This is painful to talk about, but we have to be honest about it, there's a lot more information that will keep coming out as we have information, excuse me, we can verify. We will keep making it public, but it already tells us something we need to know and it tells us that we need to act.

So, now I want to talk about the plan that we will put in place immediately to address this information we now have about disparities. First, the first and most important element of the plan is to focus on our public hospitals in particular and some other hospitals, some of our independent hospitals certainly as well. But first and foremost, our public hospitals because this is about the most essential concept of ensuring that everyone gets health care regardless of their background, regardless of their ZIP code, regardless of their income. That has been the entire idea of our extraordinary public hospital system from the very beginning we have the biggest, best public hospital system in America. It was always built on that New York belief in fairness and equality. We need to double down on that now, we need to ensure that our public hospitals get absolutely everything they need because we know that so many New Yorkers who are in the most vulnerable communities in the most danger. Where do they turn to? They turn to our public hospitals the most obvious example has been Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. We've all seen what's played out there and the doctors and nurses, all the health care workers have been the most amazing heroes because whatever was thrown at them at Elmhurst, they held, they kept that hospital going, they handled an extraordinary number of cases, they kept saving lives. The public hospitals are the greatest guarantee we have that there will be fairness and equality in saving lives. And that's the single most important thing because we know the blunt truth is we know a huge percentage of New Yorkers, no matter what strategy is put in place, this disease is here, it's going to reach a huge percentage of us, most likely over half and even more. So, people are going to have to confront this disease, it's painful, it's awful that's the truth, but that's the truth. But when they need urgent health care, when they need to have the best doctors and nurses there to save their lives, for so many people that means going to their local public hospital. And we must ensure that that hospital has all the personnel it needs, all the ventilators it needs, all the PPEs, everything that's been the core of the strategy. And we got to go even deeper into that strategy because that's where you literally save the lives that can be saved.

The second is, we're going to do a major campaign to educate people, to give them more and more detailed information on how to address this crisis. There'll be a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, a traditional media digital campaign focused on communities of color, focused on communities where English is not the first language. In fact, these ads will be in 14 different languages with a deep effort to get to folks who have gotten some of the word obviously, but not all the information we want them to have so that we can further protect them. We're going to keep investing in this kind of effort to make sure we get much deeper into communities, including immigrant communities with real valuable information about how to navigate this extraordinary challenge. Third, you know, the media efforts everything we're trying to do to educate people every day are crucial, but they certainly will not be enough and now comes a part that's going to be very challenging because the nature of this crisis, but we have to do a grassroots outreach again. This is something we're going to develop over the next few days, we're going to have to work closely with community based clinics where there are health care workers who have a deep sense of their own communities who speak the language in every sense of their own community, who have the relationships and the trust. We're going to have to find a way to get health care workers out into communities to educate people, to answer their questions, to help them address their immediate challenges, but in a way that's safe for those health care workers. We are absolutely, as you heard earlier, sticking by shelter and place a social distancing. But we need to find a way to get health care workers in a safe, smart, strategic way out into communities for direct communication with people in greatest need. So, we'll have more on that plan in the coming days, clearly those health care workers will need to have proper protection and that has to be absolutely secured for this plan to work, which is why we will continue all our efforts to bring in a huge amount of additional supplies to the City’s PPEs to protect all our health care workers and first responders and everyone who needs them.

Fourth point is to deepen our efforts that have started, but I think they can go a lot farther. When you call 3-1-1 for example, there are many times when you're patched through to a Health + Hospitals clinician, a doctor or a nurse or another health care worker who can answer questions and determine - for example - why people call wondering if because of how they're feeling if they need testing. That's been something that people have been able to get through 3-1-1, but we need to deepen that and make it more possible for people to call just to talk through their situation more, to get more advice. And not just because they're wondering whether they need a test, but to actually have a dialogue with the health care workers – again in multiple languages – about what they're feeling, what's going on, maybe it is not someone even just calling about their own condition; maybe it's someone calling about their grandma, their grandpa, maybe it’s someone calling about their mom or their child. We need to create more of an opportunity for every-day New Yorkers who many of whom don't have a doctor that's their everyday doctor - to get someone on the phone right away; a trained professional who can talk through the details and give them guidance. That has to be much more available and that's what we're going to do.

Now, to ensure that we protect that first key part of this plan, are public hospitals. We just need more help, particularly when it comes to personnel. The frontline health care workers have gone through hell, but they've held the line. They've been heroes in every way. Some of them have gotten sick themselves and been out and we look forward to them coming back healthy - we're praying for them, we're hoping for them and for their families. But in the meantime, the many, many health care workers who are continuing to fight this fight, they have really borne the brunt and they're tired and they need relief and they need support, which is why I've repeatedly asked for military medical personnel and it's been a plea I've made to Washington repeatedly. We've seen some progress; we have almost 300 who have come in now out in our public hospitals. These are doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, highly trained people, highly effective medical personnel, many of them with a kind of military experience that makes them very, very ready to handle the toughest situations. Almost 300 of them now, deployed out in our Health + Hospitals public hospitals. The Navy has sent health care professionals to Elmhurst, Bellevue, Woodhall, and Kings County hospitals. The Air Force has sent health care professionals to Lincoln, Jacoby, and Queens Hospital. I'm very grateful that our armed forces have come forward to help our public hospitals, but we will need more help and we need it quickly.

Now, let me talk to you about building out even more health care capacity for people who need it. And this is another area where there's some real progress and we got to make sure we keep building. We're still working always, always from the worst-case scenario to make sure that whatever happens with this disease, New York City is ready. So, one of the crucial things, again, is adding additional beds to relieve some of the pressure on our core hospitals. Last week, about eight days ago, I was at the Billy Jean King Tennis Center in Queens. When you looked at it then it was a bunch of tennis courts – indoor tennis courts. Now, right now, it is being converted into a hospital facility. We'll start receiving patients this week. We will convert 20 beds in the new facility to ICU care and the total number originally was going to be 350 beds, will now be 470 beds. So, this is a case of continuing to go faster, add more to make sure we can serve people in need exactly when they need it.

On the Personal Protective Equipment, a lot of us didn't really use the phrase PPE before a few weeks ago, and now it's something we talk about all the time. We've gotten a lot more in to protect our first responders; to protect our health care workers. And yesterday we made a delivery out to the hospitals of this city; over 3 million surgical masks, over 2 million surgical gloves almost 1.2 million N95 masks, over 100,000 pairs of eyewear – protective eyewear – 61,000 surgical gowns. It's very important that this material has come in and gone instantly out to the places that need it. And we're working hard every day to make sure each and every hospital gets what they need, distributes it effectively, constantly gets resupplied when they need it. But we have one urgent need and that is these surgical gowns. I was at the Brooklyn Navy Yard yesterday talking about an amazing homegrown effort to produce them here in our city. A really heroic effort by companies in the Navy Yard and the folks who work there to protect all of our heroes. They're creating a lot of surgical gowns, but this is an area where we need a huge new supply. So. we have asked the federal government for over 9 million surgical gowns to get us through April and into May. We are hopeful that we'll start to get deliveries from that request quickly. We need them even to get through this week. We need more and we're going to have fallback options in place to make sure we can protect people this week.

So, the final thing I want to do is talk about some of the people who are stepping up. And even amidst the challenges we see nonstop everyday New Yorkers helping each other, people feeding our health care workers, our first responders, businesses stepping up - amazing efforts. I want to keep talking about them because it's something people should be really proud of and it's something that's helping to sustain us. And one that's very special I want to talk about today because it's from a foundation that was born out of our city's darkest hour and it’s a foundation that [inaudible] means so much to us all, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Born out of 9/11, symbolic of the strength and resiliency of our city, Tunnel to Towers has done so much for so many people - always there for our first responders and their families. Now stepping up again, we've just heard of a $3 million pledge by Tunnel to Towers to help our health care workers and I'm so appreciative of yet another heroic action by that amazing foundation.

Also, crucially, Senator Schumer has unveiled something important, the COVID-19 Hero's Fund and this is an idea that would give the essential workers additional pay up to $25,000 and would give a one-time $15,000 payment to health care workers, home care workers, first responders. This is an idea that needs to be made real to help those who are suffering the most. I keep reminding people - the federal government - we did see some progress in that last stimulus bill -we need a lot more. Spoke to Senator Schumer this morning about the next stimulus bill. I know he is proposing to his credit, I know Speaker Pelosi is leading the way as well, that in the next stimulus there be money for our hospitals, there be money for food banks, money to support small businesses, not big corporations, small everyday businesses, and money to help localities and States that have borne the brunt; obviously that means all of us here in New York and New Jersey, especially. Crucially, Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi are focused on ensuring that all the cities and States that have lost not only lives, but they've lost so much of the resources to save more lives and protect people and recover, that those resources would be restored through a fourth stimulus bill, hopefully as early as this month. So, I want to thank Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi for their leadership. Now we need to get the Congress to come back and pass that bill, so we can still fight this battle and win this battle and then start on the road to recovery.

Look, I'll finish just affirming the point that we all need hope - we all need hope. And when we see good news, when we see something that's working, we need to talk about it, we need to feel good, and we need to especially feel good that everyday New Yorkers built this progress with their hard work, with their sacrifice. Every one of you, when you're hearing today that we see some progress, you should feel that was because of you because it was. At the same time, recognize we're not out of the woods. There'll be a long time before we're out of the woods. We've got a strategy that is working, let's go deeper into it. Let's double down so we can get through this together. I am confident, really confident, always felt in my heart that New Yorkers would rise to this occasion and you have, you have it in a remarkable way - let's finish the job. It's not going to be days, it's going to be weeks and months, but let's finish the job. Just a few words in Spanish and then we'll take questions from our colleagues in the media.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that let's turn to questions from the media and please let me know the name of the reporter and the outlet.

Moderator: Yeah and just a quick reminder for folks we have Dr. Barbot in the Blue Room and, on the phone, we have Dr. Katz, Commissioner Grillo, and First Deputy Commissioner Torres Springer. And with that, we have Shant from the Daily News up first. Shant?

Question: Yeah, thank you Mayor, just wanted to get a little more info about the, the very troubling data about communities of color from you and Dr. Katz and Dr. Barbot, can you say what the understanding is now for the cause of this disparity?

Mayor: I'll start with a very basic point and then turn to both doctors. You know, in the beginning of this crisis, we all were rushing to set up the ability to handle a huge number of cases. One thing we knew from the beginning, and we saw it around the world, is that this is a disease that could escalate quickly. So, we were securing the ability of our hospitals to fight this battle. But then as we got more and more information – and you saw the map a few days ago, and that was striking, and this new information is striking – it became clear that these disparities were real and sharpen and needed to be talked about and needed to be acted on. One thing I think is clear, and I've talked this through with our health care leaders, is that people who have had less health care available to them are more vulnerable. If throughout your life you haven't gotten the care you deserve or if you've had preexisting conditions that weren't addressed the way they could have if you had had more resources, because, again, health care still in this country is based on how much money you have. And in this city, all of us have tried to change that in some very real ways, but there's still a reality that folks with more resources get more health care. So, I would say, the first thing to know is that, you know, there are a lot of people, particularly seniors in communities of color that were more vulnerable because their conditions had not been treated the way they could have and should have if the resources had been given to them that they deserved. Dr. Barbot?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So, I'll add to what the Mayor just laid out, which is something that I agree with. I think it's important for us to note that where we are seeing these inequities are places and populations that have historically had higher rates of underlying chronic illnesses. And certainly, those chronic underlying illnesses put these individuals at greater risk for poor health outcomes. The other thing that I will say, and, you know, I think that we are still really digging into this is, I am very concerned where when I see the large percentage of Latinos who have died of this illness, and even though we have made lots of efforts to reassure people that all of our public hospitals see individuals independent of their immigration status in the independent of insurance status, that, you know, the overlay of the rhetoric across this country I think has real implications in the health of our community. And certainly, concerns about public charge are some things that I think we need to dig deeper into it. Commissioner Mostofi and I have spoken out about the importance of suspending a public charge during this time. And I think, you know, it's something that, again, we will be digging into deeper to better understand. But the overall, you know, concerning aspect of this is the fact that these are communities that have had higher rates of underlying chronic illness and that it's a reminder that these chronic underlying illnesses in peace time, as the Mayor has spoken about, contribute to higher rates of premature mortality from those chronic illnesses, but that in this particular war-time scenario are really very concerning for higher rates of mortality.

Mayor: Dr. Katz, do you want to add?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: Let me just to add to what the two of you have so smartly said, that lower income people also live more likely and multigenerational housing because of the high cost of apartment rentals in New York City. And so, multiple families may be living together in very small spaces, which I think facilitates the transmission of this virus.

Mayor: Yeah. And to finish, Shant, I’ve got to tell you, when I saw this, it made me very angry. I want to be clear, we're all trying to fight this battle and keep focused and keep, you know, calm in the midst of a battle that we must win. And as leaders, we have to stay calm. But it made me angry to see that the disparities that have plagued the city, this nation that are all about fundamental inequality are once again causing such pain and causing people, innocent people to lose their lives. It's just abundantly clear. It's sick, it's troubling, it's wrong, and we're going to fight back with everything we got. And, right now, all we have to think about is saving the next life and getting through this crisis, but someday there's going to be a reckoning about what all this taught us, that, obviously, our nation was not in so many ways prepared. But more importantly even than that – I would say literally more importantly than that, that our nation has still not come to grips with the fact that health care is provided so unevenly and all based on how much money you have. And until we get to some form of universal health care, until that's the reality, this kind of danger will exist not just when there's a pandemic, obviously in people's everyday lives. But you know what, we should be worried about the future. This is not the last time we're going to see a new disease. Here's a disease we never even heard of, it literally didn't exist six months ago and now it's ravaging us. If we're really going to prepare for the future, we better recognize that if we don't create equality and fairness in health care, there's going to be people vulnerable always who didn't need to be.

Moderator: Kathleen from Patch is up next. Kathleen?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Wonderful. I was hoping that we could talk for a moment about food disparity or food accessibility? You said you've said yourself that more than half-a-million New York City dwellers have lost their paycheck. NYPD data is showing that half of the thousands of supermarkets they're visiting are closed. Are you worried that New Yorkers aren't going to be able to access food? Is that something that your office is working to fix and what would the potential solutions be?

Mayor: Kathleen, I really appreciate the question. I'm very, very worried. I want to make this crystal clear. When I announced a few weeks ago that Katherine Garcia would be our food czar, it was explicitly because I saw a gathering storm that with so many people losing their income. In the first weeks, you know, you could presume people might be able to get by, but with each passing week is getting harder and harder. And yes, I'm glad there was that money in the stimulus to help people directly. But it's not that much money in the scheme of things and it's not in people's pockets yet. So, I'm very worried. When you're talking – you're not talking about a few thousand people, you're talking about half-a-million people who lost their job and very soon that is going to mean more and more people who cannot find a way to pay for the food they need. So, I think you make a really good point that if supermarkets are shut down, thank God there are a lot still going on. I want to thank the supermarket workers, the grocery workers, these are folks who are doing something really heroic too and we’ve got to thank them – thank the pharmacy workers, all the people out there making sure that the basics are available for people to have enough money to pay for it. Thank God those workers are there, making sure that people get what they need. But I'm worried about more and more people literally not having any money at all to pay for food. The plan that Commissioner Garcia is putting together is for a largescale feeding effort, a largescale effort to feed hungry New Yorkers such as we've never seen before. I hope that when it comes down to it, it won't be as bad as we fear but we are preparing for a very largescale effort. That will be a priority in everything we do, where we put our resources, where we put our energy, our focus, making sure people have food is going to be a central, central priority. We haven't felt the fullness of the danger and the need yet, but I unfortunately believe it is coming. So, that means the initial efforts we're doing expanded home delivery of food to seniors and vulnerable folks, folks who can't get out of their houses, anyone can call 3-1-1 and sign up for that who is in – one of the folks who is vulnerable. They can get that. We announced last week that we are now at 435 sites, schools that were previously just providing food for kids are now providing food for any and all adults who need it. So, I just want to make this crystal clear. I was at P.S. 1 on the Lower East Side yesterday. Any adult in New York City can go to one of these 435 sites and get three meals for yourself and as many family members as you have. You can ask for – if you have a household of five, you can say, I need breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five people and they will give it to you. It's going to be available at all 435 sites. It is high-quality food. I saw it yesterday with my own eyes. I saw the food service workers who are also doing valiant work. They want to make sure people not only fed, but there’s quality nutritious food. So, they're out there doing that. You can call 3-1-1, you can go to nyc.gov to find those locations. So, that's going to be a crucial part of the equation. But I think we're going to even have to go farther than that. We're definitely going to be supporting in a variety of ways local food banks, food pantries to keep them going, and then just keep building from there. My order to Commissioner Garcia is, whatever it takes to feed New Yorkers, whatever the expense, whatever the effort, no matter how many City workers it takes, no matter how many volunteers it takes, we're going to do it.

Moderator: Julia from the New York Post is up next. Julia? Julia, can you hear us?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, how are you –

Mayor: Good? How are you doing?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Julia?

Moderator: Julia, we can't hear you.

Mayor: You're going to come back?

Moderator: Yeah, we'll come back to her. Yoav from the City is up next. Yoav?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask, you've made it clear beforehand when we've asked about the racial and ethnic data that providing the data was of secondary concern to saving lives, but here in response to producing the data [inaudible] it's clear that the city is taking steps that are intended to save lives. So, why weren't you able to do that beforehand? You know, because clearly the data is important in determining how the city responds. Why was it secondary – why was it secondary in nature, you’ve always said you can walk and chew gum at the same time. Why wasn’t that possible here?

Mayor: Because we were all walking in chewing gum on many, many levels. This is nonstop crisis and everyone, everyone on the phone with me here and all my colleagues are working nonstop. The concern – and Dr. Barbot can speak to it – is the Health Department was very concerned that there'd be something verifiable, that you have to make sure there was enough evidence that it was confirmed, that we not put out something that was unclear or not based on enough data. So that is absolutely crucial. If we’re going to tell people something, we better damn well be right about it. Also, as I said, what's happened out there, there is more data we'd like to be able to provide and some of it has been hard to get as clear as we'd like because in a crisis atmosphere, I assure you, that folks at the front line are not focusing on, you know, recording data when they're trying to save lives. So, there's been real crisis dynamics that have mitigated against getting the kind of data we would in peacetime. And then there's been real concern to make sure that what we had was accurate and consistent and enough of a – enough evidence over what's really been just weeks. Now that we believe it, that we really have something hard and fast, it's telling us what we got to do. But as I said in the beginning, the one thing that was unquestionably job-one and remains job-one for folks experiencing the disparity and everyone is to protect the hospital system. That's where the overwhelming majority of our efforts were going, to protect and build up our hospital system. And that was more important than anything, because that's what every New Yorker needs.

Dr. Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: So, to build on what the Mayor laid out, I think, you know, we've been focused on having complete data and I've spoken before about the fact that our reporting is only as good as the quality of the data that we get in. And it's been a challenge to work with hospitals who are overwhelmed with patients in the intensive care unit, on the floors, in the emergency department to focus on the more granular importance of data. And as I've said in the past as well, we've then resorted to alternative data sets in order to augment the data that we have, meaning that, you know, we are going directly into electronic health records at hospital systems because we recognize that, as the Mayor laid out, you know, these folks are overwhelmed with taking care of patients, but it doesn't take away from the importance of needing to know this information. And so, the other thing that I will say is that, you know, in spite of all of those efforts that we've made to have complete data, the percentage of reports that we have in terms of race related to people who have died from COVID-19 is slightly less than two-thirds. So, we are still dealing with incomplete data. But I think it's important to note that we are, as the Mayor likes to say, not making perfect be the enemy of good. And so, we're not waiting until we have 100 percent. We are acting now. There are other aspects of our data that we are also looking to improve the racial demographics of, but, again, it is an ongoing effort in collaboration with the State as well as with our health care partners.

Moderator: Back to Julia. Julia?

Question: Hi. Can you hear me, Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Yes, Julia.

Question: Hi. So, I found the numbers you gave on the ventilators very interesting. You know, that we were projecting we need 300 more but we're only needing about 100 more. Could you give us kind of similar numbers to show how hospitalizations are, you know, either leveling off or down? And then I'm just wondering if you could follow up on what you said on TV this morning that you think that the statistics for folks dying at home, which are overwhelmingly being driven by coronavirus should be included in the official death toll. Do you expect that to happen soon?

Mayor: So, on that one, look, it's a very, very painful reality. I just want to say, imagine what a family goes through, struggling to help a loved one, and, obviously, hoping and praying it's something that’ll pass, and then suddenly someone's gone. I mean, it’s just horrendous. But the numbers speak for themselves. I've been over this with our health colleagues that this used to be a very, very rare thing in New York City and suddenly it's jumped up. And, obviously, the only thing that's changed is COVID-19. So, the Health Department knows what they're doing, but what I would say as a layman is, let's assume that with this kind of increase, the vast majority of these are related to COVID-19, you know, directly, indirectly and start counting them. And I'm sure the Health Department, you know, can figure out what's the right way to do that. But I think it would be more accurate to just acknowledge what is, to me, a growing truth. On the question of hotels – excuse me, the hospitals – I'm saying stabilization, because I think it's fair to say that the hospital admissions numbers and people going in and out of ICU, there's still a lot of variability there, meaning we get data. But again, what we're finding from a lot of hospitals is there's a lag in their data because they are first and foremost focused on saving lives and the data is a little bit uneven for that reason. Also, the improvement we've seen is only over a few days. So, I think the word stabilization is right to say, that we, for a period of time, we're seeing a constant increase. We're not seeing that now. I'm not clear yet if we're in the territory of any kind of sustained reduction. The ventilator pieces actually, in some ways, much clearer, because it's a real finite number. It is specifically about people who are intubated, people in those ICU’s. We can literally know how many ventilators out there and we can get very quickly updated on how many are in use. So, that one, where we thought it would be 300 more each day and it's looking like a 100 more each day or less – that's striking, because that moved rapidly in a matter of days. Again, I want to see a lot more days and weeks before we draw any firmer conclusions.

Moderator: Dave Evans from ABC-7 is up next. Dave?

Question: Hey, Mayor, this is Dave Evans. Can you hear me okay?

Mayor: Yes, Dave.

Question: Yeah, I just had a question about antibody testing, and I know it's a State function, but I wanted to ask you because when we are the epicenter of this crisis. And the Governor talked about it yesterday, Dr. Birx talked about it this morning and they call it a game changer. I just wanted to see if you see it the same way. And my other question about this is, since we are the epicenter, has the FDA, the CDC, has anyone in the federal government contacted the City to see if we can start moving in that direction? I mean, how in the world are we going to do all these tests? And do you see it as a possible game changer?

Mayor: Yeah, it's a great question, Dave. I'll start and Mitch, who's obviously thinking about this from the perspective of the frontline hospitals and their heroic employees, and, of course, Oxiris, thinking about this in terms of the whole city – they'll join in. So, I think it's a big deal. I think that the first thing that I understand about the antibody testing is it's not here yet in the kind of numbers we would ideally want. So, I want people to understand that with everything with testing – and testing has been sort of the big problem, the big X-factor through this whole crisis, is anytime people are wishing for testing, the most important thing to understand is does it actually exist in the numbers we need it to or not? Right now, the answer is no for antibody testing. But at some point, and that might be, you know, in in weeks that might be in a month or two, you could have antibody testing available on a much bigger level. I think it would be very, very helpful, because, to begin with, it would help to strengthen the folks who are doing all this heroic work in the hospitals. And the first responders, if they knew for a fact they were exposed to this disease, and, you know, we all presume that means some immunity. It's not a perfect equation, Dave. I'm sure the doctors are going to say this, there's no one who knows the answer yet on this question because there's still so much about the coronavirus that there's no one on earth has definitive answers on. We don't know for sure that if you’ve been exposed to it, it means you cannot get it again. It seems likely that if you'd been exposed to it, you wouldn't get it again this year, this season. But we don't know that 110 percent. But we know enough to say it would sure as hell be helpful if people knew, it would give them a lot more confidence and would tell us a lot. So, I'm hoping that's something that could be a big part of the strategy when it's really available on a broad level. I think the bigger point about testing is what we should have had in the beginning was universal testing. It's one of the really crucial strategies we've seen that has worked in the world. It clearly was something the federal government did not have ready to not provide somewhere in the future universal testing could be part of the way out of this crisis, but it's still clearly – again, the numbers aren't there yet and they won't be there for a while, but that's something we should be focused on as one of the potential ways to recovery.

Mitch, you want to start with anything you want to add?

President Katz: I think you've gotten all the big points. I know Mr. Mayor that you yourself spoke with the head of the FDA, Dr. Hahn about having enough access to these tests and they've indicated that they will facilitate it. There are tests that are on the market from other countries that have been developed. Only one has been approved by the FDA so far. The State is interested in using a different one at their state lab. But as you say, I think the, the most important issue is getting the reagents. Having an approved test is no help if we can't get the reagents to perform it. I think that will change in the next week or two. And I do believe that it could be a game changer, as you say. We won't be able to assure people that they're immune, but we certainly will be able to say to them, look, you've been exposed to this virus and your body successfully dealt with it. And I think that will keep people a sense of confidence that they don't need to be as fearful.

Mayor: Yeah, and Dave, just a quick thing to add before Oxiris. So, I want to give real credit to Dr. Steve Hahn, the Commissioner of the FDA. Mitch has talked to him a bunch of times. I've talked to him. He's been incredibly accessible and really trying hard to speed approvals. And I'm a layman, but I think we could say FDA was never known for speed historically. I've been really pleased at how responsive he's been and how much they seem to get it now that they have to move quickly if they're going to be able to help us in this crisis.

Commissioner Barbot: So, what I'll add is I think we need to remind ourselves of a very fundamental question and that is what are you going to do with the results of an antibody test? And so, I agree with Mitch on the individual level that it can help in a number of different ways. However, when we think about the – what we're going to do with the results of those tests at the population level, I don't think we know enough yet about what it means with regards to immunity. The concept of herd immunity is something that I think as a city we've become familiar with through the experience we had with measles. But the reality is, you know, what does it mean to have a whole group of people who may potentially be immune? We just don't know enough about that. We don't know enough about how long that immunity remains. And so, I think we just need to temper our expectations about in what arena the use of antibody testing can be a game changer. I think there's a distinction between at the individual level and at the population level.

Moderator: Erin from Politico is up next. Erin?

Question: Mr. Mayor. Hi, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Okay. I heard what you spoke to earlier about, you know, communities with a history of disparities being the worst affected here. I'm wondering if you could speak more specifically to the Hispanic community since it seems like in the city specifically, they're the largest share of deaths. I've seen a lot nationally that the black community has been the worst affected. So is there a reason why we're seeing this particular effect in the Latino community here?

Mayor: I'll turn to Dr. Barbot because obviously the statistics come out of the Health Department and she has been for her whole life focused on fighting health care disparities and with an obvious focus on the community she comes from, the Latino community. But I think just first of all, it is a huge community in the city getting close to 3 million people in terms of total population. And second of all, I think it's fair to say language means for some people they're not getting as much information as they need and we want to keep addressing that aggressively. And then immigration status, what's happened in the last few years has really driven a lot of immigrants, undocumented in particular, but even folks who are documented, has driven them away from a lot of the places they would have turned for support and for health care. And that's another story that I think will come out as this whole painful history has looked at. I think that's another one of the reasons here. Doctor.

Commissioner Barbot: And so to add to what the Mayor laid out, I think fundamentally what we're seeing across the country relates to the additional burden that poor people have in terms of dealing with underlying chronic illnesses, either because of their insurance status and the additional burden of copays, a whole host of reasons that we typically talk about with regards to what we call the social determinants of health, but that in reality translate into the impact of where we live, work, learn, and play has on our ability to address and manage underlying chronic illnesses. And so I think what we may be seeing here played out, which is also being seen in Chicago, LA and other places, is that cycle of those underlying drivers to poor health outcomes. You know, essentially on steroids because of the acuity of this virus.

So that in combination with issues related potentially to immigration status and the mixed immigration status households that we have here in the city. I think there are many potential contributors to why we may be seeing the disparities and inequities in this particular situation. But clearly, I think we won't know fully until we have more data. And you know, as I've said before and the Mayor has said before, we're not waiting until we have perfect data. We need to act now in urgency. And it's a reminder that it's not just about what the Health Department can do. It's not just about what the health care delivery system can do. It really is about what all sectors of civil society can do to contribute to the ongoing improvement and slowing of the spread of this virus. And that, you know, the work that's been put in place and being led by Commissioner Garcia addressing food has implications on not just, you know, everyday survival, but on people's ability to manage their chronic underlying illnesses. What we're doing around housing, et cetera. All of that plays out in terms of how successful we are in, in beating this COVID-19, which obviously we're all engaged on as a team in doing so.

Moderator: Gloria from New York one is up next, Gloria.

Question: Thank you Mr. Mayor. I have two questions, but if you could indulge me, I want to give Dr. Barbot an opportunity to talk about the data in Spanish specially for our Spanish-speaking viewers. I want to make sure that they're getting a chance to hear this information in their language. If she could summarize what you have found up until this point, and also talk about the campaign that the City's putting together to reach those communities. And then I have two questions for you if I may.

Mayor: Okay. Wait, that's Gloria. I need you to tighten that up a little bit just because we're trying to have a same standard here. So absolutely. Dr. Barbot will give you the Spanish summary and I will describe the campaign a little bit more, which we're just putting together now. Let's stay there and we'll do that. And if you can, I'll give you a one, one follow-through right now on that. Is there anything else you want to add to that?

Question: Sure. If I could ask you if you have an update for us on whether Correction officers and inmates have received masks. We're getting some reports including some folks in the union that they have not.

Mayor: So, I'll be quick and then Dr. Barbot, we'll do the quick summary in Spanish and I'll come back and, and just clarify the new initiatives we’re putting in place. So, the Corrections Department, for the officers who require any form of mask or face covering, yes. That has been sent and will be continued to be resupplied as needed and for inmates the same. For, again, folks who I think Dr. Barbot confirmed this, you know, if someone is infected and doctors and Correctional Health want them to be wearing a mask, they’ll do that. For other people, it's the same thing as for all New Yorkers to wear a face covering. All of that has been sent and will be resupplied as needed. You want to do the Spanish summary?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes.

[Commissioner Barbot speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: Thank you, Doctor. So, Gloria on the other point about the campaign, so all of these pieces are going to be laid out individually as they're starting. Of course, the first part, the most important part, the continued support for the public hospitals – that we've been updating you on constantly. The ad campaign, we'll be unveiling those ads again, TV, radio, digital print, 14 languages. We'll be unveiling that shortly. The grassroots outreach is something we are going to do. That's a new and we have to figure out again, a way very quickly to work with the community-based clinics and to figure out how to get health care workers out in the appropriate safe way. So that's something that's literally being put together over these next few days. We'll announce pieces as they are ready. There'll be a texting element of this, which is important and it's something that we've seen to be helpful in other countries, continuing to communicate with people in need information by text. So that's something that will be a part of it. And then the phone [inaudible] as I said, we already have a good experience with this with 3-1-1 with folks who are trying to get information about testing and they got an opportunity to talk to a clinician directly to determine if they actually were someone who had a priority need for testing or not. We have definitely found that people can talk to an actual human being with medical training. It makes a big difference. We want to go deeper now we're going to figure out how to do that through 3-1-1 and make clear that there will be enough clinicians available. But what I want to get to is the point that we really feel confident that anyone who needs to talk stuff through in multiple languages can have that kind of back and forth with a clinician to make sure that they know if they do need to get to health care facility, to know how they can handle their own situation. But I also think crucially for family members, I think this is one of the missing links we have to address. Family members who are trying to figure out how to take care of a loved one properly while also protecting themselves, who a lot times are just, you know, doing what they would do historically. Just taking care of someone. We want to help them to take care of their loved one, but also be safe doing that and having someone that can talk that through with. So those are elements of the campaign. Each piece will be unveiled a very quickly as they are ready to go public.

Moderator: Katie from the Wall Street Journal is up next. Katie.

Question: Hey, good morning Mr. Mayor and good morning New York. My question for you in the administration and everyone there. You know, you laid out the longstanding disparities here in the city, in certain communities, particularly the immigrant communities and communities of color. Last week or two weeks ago, Dr. Katz noted the lack of hospital beds comparatively to other boroughs in Queens, which is the most diverse county in New York City. My question for you is, knowing this pandemic was coming and seeing that as far back as January, what did you and the administration do to ensure that these vulnerable communities had better access? We're hearing now today on, you know, almost in mid-April about grassroots outreach. Why wasn't this done before or earlier? Why weren't community-based organizations and health centers engaged earlier? It just seems to be a little late compared to how quickly this is moving.

Mayor: Look, this has been a hugely moving target, first of all. This entire reality with coronavirus. There's no one alive who has experienced a pandemic on this level. The last one was a hundred years ago. So, everyone's been trying to rapidly figure out strategies to address something that's just beyond anything we've ever known and beyond anything we ever could have imagined, honestly. The fact is from the first time we started talking about it, Dr. Barbot, Dr. Katz and I, our folks at Emergency Management, our Deputy Mayor, everyone was saying one to start warning people was coming and that we were putting in place the strategies to protect ourselves, which meant reinforcing our public hospitals and getting them supplies, getting them ready for what was coming. It meant a lot of public education, which we were doing constantly and Dr. Barbot has led the way on in multiple languages. A lot of the foundation was laid, but the notion of the kinds of strategies it was going to take, we didn't have a – I don't think anyone had a perfect plan of when you were going to go to each piece and how to prepare people in advance for each piece because we have never been here before. What we do know is the kinds of outreach we used to do, which we would have done immediately, couldn't be done in the first instance, meaning sending health care workers out door to door, having a deep grassroots effort. You couldn't do it. One, you had the challenge of course, of shelter in place and social distancing. But two everyone was needed in the hospitals. In – a few weeks ago, we were projecting that not only would today be as bad as it is, but it would be much, much worse and every health care worker was going to be needed in the hospitals, and then some, all the PPEs would be taken up there. Again, we're not out of the woods, but we are seeing an improvement in our PPE supplies. We are seeing more and more medical professionals come in. The notion that we actually could get people out into the communities that the need is greatest is not impossible now as I think it would have been even a week ago.

So, it's a very dynamic situation. We're learning from experience, what we need to do more of, as in every situation. I understand your question, I really do, but I've also watched everyone trying to stay ahead on the most basic level and that was protecting the hospitals. I can't say enough. There's been a conversation over weeks and weeks and weeks at all costs, protect the hospital, surge everything we had into them, particularly the public hospitals and only now are we even able to think about using our personnel and some different ways to try and go at some of the real specific problems, the deep problems that we're seeing emerge.

Commissioner Barbot: And Mr. Mayor, if I can add to that. You know, I would say that we from the beginning have engaged our partners both in the health care delivery system, hospitals, ambulatory centers, but also our CBOs to deliver much needed information. We've done a lot of outreach with regards to the ethnic media. I think what we're talking about now is using the data and adjusting our approach to add yet another layer. I think none of us could have anticipated, and we said this from the beginning, not only how the virus behaves, but then how are New Yorkers behaving in terms of what we're asking them to do. And this is an acknowledgement that we then now need to leverage those same partners that we used at the beginning in a different way.

Moderator: Matt Chayes from Newsday is up next. Matt.

Question: Olivia, thanks a lot. Mr. Mayor, doctors, good morning. I'm wondering how exactly is your staff calculating the numbers of ventilators needed in New York City? Can you take us through the specifics of the models you're using, the assumptions you're making? I'm not asking for a general or kind of conclusory statement [inaudible] I'm asking you specifics. Basically, please show us or rather tell us your work.

Mayor: Yeah, Matt it’s a good question. I think it's pretty straight forward. A regular survey of each of the 56 hospitals to understand the exact usage, that has been deepening. Obviously, the team that Jimmy O'Neill has put together. It's directly in the hospitals working with the leadership of the hospitals, working with the people who are managing equipment and supplies, that's giving us, you know, very, very tight, consistent information. And it's the number of people intubated, cross checking against that. So, one part of it is literally the number of machines and the other part of it is obviously the number of people on the machines. And the supply side of the equation is straight forward because the supply comes in to a central warehouse and we act from there. So, I think it's as straightforward as that. The – we are asking very specifically direct into the hospitals – how many people are intubated today? How many ventilators are you using, how many ventilators do you have left? And constantly rechecking that count. That's how we're doing it.

Moderator: Brigid from WNYC is up next. Brigid?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to make sure that I understand stand some of the challenges associated with and some of the new data that your – the city's providing to the demographics and some of the COVID death. I spoke with an emergency care doctor in Brooklyn who had talked to me about how he has a regional health information exchange and that all of our electronic medical records collective racial and ethnic demographic data so that this is information that the city had. So, can you or Dr. Barbot explain, you know, is it that the Health Department needed to start doing something differently or why was it not possible to publish this information sooner? And then on top of that, when you do begin releasing more information about some of those home deaths that are presumably related to coronavirus, will you also leave the race and ethnicity of those deaths as well?

Mayor: Yeah, I'll start and pass to Dr. Barbot look anywhere where we have definitive information. The answer is yes. So, the home debts are again, a painful, awful reality for those families. Clearly, ultimately each one will be we'll have the information and when we confirm a death in New York City, yes, we do know the background of the people involved and when that gets factored in as it should to the COVID-19 deaths we’ll absolutely provide the data. I think the other piece is, do not underestimate the part I'm telling you about, I'm trying to be careful to draw conclusions where we thought we actually had enough information to speak to. It's very – this is, as I said, the last month felt like a year. But where the first case, not the first death and someone can check my facts, I believe I’m right, the first case was March 1st. The first death was a while after that. So, we're really talking about a universe of about three or four weeks and most of that has been the last couple of weeks. We had to be really careful to make sure that we were providing accurate information based on enough to go by. And I think that's really important because otherwise it could have been something that did not represent a bigger reality and then that would have been misleading. And the other point, which Dr. Barbot can go into much more specifically is there are some kind of data that they do not feel the Health Department – they're getting full data on yet – and some of that is because in the heat of battle the folks who normally would keep the data and collect the data, one, just are busy fighting, you know, busy trying to save lives and to the flow of information has been disrupted compared to normal times. And there's other factors as well, but it's not as simple as the information that we would normally rely on is happening as quickly and reliably as normal. Go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: So yes, I think the most concise answer that I can give is we have had to do a lot of new and different things with regards to data that we've never had to do before. And it speaks to the way in which we have all needed to adapt to our new reality. And so, in that we have approached the regional health information networks and tapped into them. There are some networks where that was a fruitful endeavor, there were other networks where there were technical issues, where the – it wasn't as easy as just tapping into [inaudible] – and so we needed to then make arrangements to go directly into their electronic medical records. I think the point is that all of that is work that needed to be accelerated. There were technical issues that had to be addressed as well as legal issues. I think that we are in a much different place now and my hope is that when we begin reporting on the probable COVID deaths that we will be able to similarly report on the racial demographics as well.

Mayor: And just finishing the point, I just got the facts provided to remind me, the first death, this again is such a painful reality, but also just a shocking statement on the time and how long each day has been for all of us, the first death was March 14th. So, literally 25 days ago. So that's the world in which we're dealing with that, that the information we have is based on a very brief period of time. But again, now we believe it is unfortunately enough information to say that there's this clear disparity and that tells us something that we can act on

Moderator: Jeff Mays from the New York Times is up next. Jeff?

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to ask about again – about the preparations regarding the potential disparities. I mean you announced on January 24th that it wasn't a matter of if, but when the virus would arrive in the city. So, you know, what was done in those weeks leading up to March 1st during the first case, especially if the city knows that these disparities are existing, was there not a plan put together in those beginning weeks to address that potential disparity. And then secondly, you know, you ran on ending a lot of inequality in New York City. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about whether your efforts were focused enough in the health care area in terms of inequality to help end some of these disparities that are causing these deaths now.

Mayor; The first point – the whole point of going out early and saying that it was not if, but when was to try to do the thing and achieve the thing that really could have protected people so much more deeply, which was the testing and for weeks and every – I mean this is all very documented – the whole idea was to try and get the federal government to send the testing that would allow us to get ahead of it while there was still a chance. And then it quickly turned into a non-stop effort to get the aid we needed from the federal government to prepare our hospitals, sustain our hospitals, the ventilators, the supplies, now more and more of the personnel. The point about education, I don't think it should be missed, and I want to really make clear the Health Department's been doing this non-stop, that the education about how to handle this virus, how to protect yourself and your family has been non-stop for weeks and weeks and weeks and it has been focused on all communities.

The Health Department in fact by its nature historically focuses on communities that have gotten less health care and less support. So, I think you go back and look at all the messages, all the efforts made to educate and inform people, get them help, to help people know where to turn. There's a huge amount that was done, but it's quite clear now, we have to go to another level and we have to do some things now that we would never have been able to do a few weeks ago. Like I said, the grassroots outreach would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago. It's still going to be tough now. If we still – I would have to have enough medical professionals in the hospitals to allow for that and we'd have to find a way to do it safely. But if we could get more in-person activity out there, it would be in terms of health care professionals being out in communities, it would be, I think, profoundly helpful. So, I think it's quite clear, there's been huge amount of communication, huge amount of direction given to people, huge amount of guidance in multiple languages to many, many communities. Now it needs even more and we'll do that.

On the other question Jeff – yeah, the battle against inequality takes many forms and I think what Oxiris said a few minutes back is really important. There's a deep connection between whether people have affordable housing or not and what happens to their health. There's a deep connection between how much money a family makes, including working people, do they have decent wages? Do they have things like paid sick leave? Do they have paid family leave? All of these things contribute. Obviously, you're talking about a combination of income, benefits, housing, all of these things that come together, food to say the least, making sure people have available food and nutritious food.

So, and we see all that interconnects with education, all the pieces come together. So from the beginning what we've tried to do is do, bluntly, a massive amount of redistribution of wealth to help working people and help poor people to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. And it's quite clear, all of the things that we did whether it's, you know, a massive amount of affordable housing or subsidizing people to stay in their affordable apartment or a rent freeze, that kind of thing, straight on through to all the food oriented programs, all the efforts to increase wages and benefits, $15 minimum wage, paid sick leave, all of those things contributed to try and get people healthier and address the disparities. But then on the pure health care front, a lot of the efforts and initiatives that have been supported at the Health Department, including, you know, the fight against tobacco for example, which clearly is pertinent here, but also what we did a year and a half ago with guaranteed health care. Creating for the first time in this city, the notion of every single New Yorker would either be given an insurance plan that they could actually afford and use or given direct health care through NYC Care. That to me is a kind of initiative that gets really even deeper to the root of the matter. We worked on that for years, we were finally able to get it to be something that could work in this city about a year and a half ago and now it's being implemented.

And lastly, and crucially important, Health + Hospitals was nearing collapse a few years ago, it was nearing bankruptcy, and we put a huge amount, billions of dollars into restoring Health + Hospitals and Dr. Katz and his team had done an amazing job turning it around. I had no idea, Jeff, at the time that we were putting those billions of dollars into the turnaround at Health + Hospitals, that they would be, you know, the vanguard of fighting off a pandemic, that the eyes of the entire world would be on places like Elmhurst hospital. I couldn't have imagined that in a million years, but that's exactly what happened. So, all of those efforts were based at fighting disparity and preparing to have a more fair and equal city and especially to get all the pieces, including the health care pieces. And we didn't know we would confront this to say the least, but thank God we invested in Health + Hospitals because it's the only reason they're able to hold the line.

Moderator: Last two. Henry from Bloomberg. Henry?

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, Harry here.

Mayor: Good. Henry, how are you doing?

Question: On this ethnic disparity, these statistics, I'm struck actually on how close they tracked to the city's tomography. Yes, there's disproportionate impact, which, you know, can't be surprising to anyone who has eyes and ears open, you know, there's institutional racism, there's social disparities. But when you look at Chicago, 68 percent of the deaths have been experienced in the black community, which represents about 30 percent of the population. That's disparity. And the question that is in my mind is whether or not these city statistics, even the reality of racism, are actually accurate or whether the disparity is much worse than this data would indicate? It's one question I had. And the second question which relates to it is how much is city's network of community clinics engaged in this pandemic? We hear nothing about all of this work that was put into community care and decentralizing care outside of the hospitals. Where is the surveillance there? Those are my two questions.

Mayor: Yeah, no, they're good questions. I appreciate it, Henry. The – on the community clinics, again, I think in a situation that went from something like normal to total war time in the period of a few weeks this was an element of the equation that was really important. But it was hard to focus on, to be truthful, when we were first and because first and foremost trying to save the hospital system and I really need people to hear this point. There was a period there where it looked like our hospital system across the board could be overwhelmed and again, we're not out of the woods. We're not out of the woods to say the least, but there was a period of just a few weeks ago where the numbers were tracking very dangerously that even with all the reinforcements we could bring in, our hospital system might not be able to hold and might not be able to save every life that could be saved. That's where we just put supreme energy and effort, because that was what mattered most, was saving those lives. And the local clinics were not in that immediate equation obviously, and a lot of them were disrupted by a shelter in place. They're disrupted, their economic reality is disrupted.

Now we want to go back and try and build out more of a grassroots strategy, now that at least thank God today we're in a better position to hold and maintain and strengthen our hospital system. This grassroots piece becomes more powerful. We've got to go back and work with those clinics to see how we can do it, but again, I'll be the first to say, if God forbid there's another surge or our hospital system needs to help, then everything's going to go back that way. But if we continue to get some breathing room, figuring out that grassroots effort absolutely involves those community based clinics and it makes their role more central again, and that's what we would love to get them in the game and provide them the resources to do that kind of outreach the right way, the safe way. Some of it can be done remotely, but some of it really can't to be effective.

To your very good question about the disparities. Look, I don't want to talk about the pain other cities are going through some of the numbers we've seen about the loss of life, the cases, but also the disparities are just disgusting and troubling and deeply, deeply un-American, really. I don't want to talk about their pain and their challenges. I do want to talk about something that's right about New York City. I think here we have the strongest public health system in America by far. We have the strongest Health Department. We have the strongest public health system with health and hospitals by far. We also have these amazing community-based health providers, which like everything else in the non-profit world in New York City is just much, much deeper and richer per capita. I'm not just talking about grand total, I'm saying per capita this is a city it's always believed, it's been a compassionate place since well before Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. This was a city that put a huge amount into those community non-profits and the charities and all the organizations that did such important work at the community level. And I think that means that even with real disparities, our disparities are nowhere near some of the other places that just don't have anything like that or some of the cities that don't have you know, cities and states that don't have particularly expansive public health capacity. It's just a real profound difference and something New Yorkers should, even in the middle of this crisis, should be proud of that. We've always invested in things like this. We've always invested in helping people at the grassroots.

I think this information we've given today, is today's information, Henry. Meaning to say, as we get more, we're going to update people as we take into account those home deaths. I think those will probably add something to the disparity. I don't know that yet, but I think that. But I think it's not going to be a massive change. I think the template you're seeing here is likely to be pretty consistent. I don't think it ever is the kind of thing that you're talking about has happened in a few other cities, but we will keep updating it and if the numbers shift because – the facts shift, the reality, the human reality is shifting, we're going to talk about it and we're going to talk about what it means. But this today is the best information we have. We'll keep updating it from there. Doctor, anything you want to add or does that cover?

Commissioner Barbot: It covers. The only thing I will add is that of all of the indicators that we track in public health and that we are tracking in this response the number of deaths of people who have passed because of COVID-19 documented by test is probably the most pristine. And as we add, as the Mayor said, the, the number of individuals who have died from likely COVID-19, I think it may end up showing a somewhat different picture. I don't think, as a Mayor says, it will be that much different. But I just want to draw the distinction between a piece of data that is fairly absolute versus a social political construct that is inherently biased if you will. There is no definitive way on how to collect someone's race, right? If you look at my name on paper, you would never think that I was Latina. If you saw me and I didn't say anything, you would never, you might think that I was white, and I'm not white. And so there are inherent biases and how we as a country categorize people, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we are focused on everyday saving lives and that if there are communities – and this is the very definition of addressing inequities – if there are communities that need that much more, than we use our data to drive what in addition we provide to those communities so that we can continue to save lives.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Last call, Mary from the Brooklyn Eagle. Mary?

Mayor: Mary?

Question: Hi. Can you me?

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: Yeah, hi. I have two questions. The first is, is the city considering doing a random sampling at various spots around the city to see what percentage of people who may not even know they have a virus have it? That's my first question.

Mayor: Well, say them both, say them both.

Question: Oh, okay. And the second one is a totally different one. I know the city is not in charge of the post office, but we've received reports here in Brooklyn of an awful lot of people not getting their mail or getting it only very sporadically. And in the main post office on Cadman Plaza East, a large percentage of the delivery people are out for various reasons. They only have like six out of 60 left. So, is there – do you have any word on the mail delivery service, getting them personal protection equipment, anything like that?

Mayor: A great question. So, I'm going to say we do not run the post office. That is a very true statement but I want to speak to it. On the random testing random sampling, I'll pass to you because that's something I've not heard said like that. But let me say on the post office, look, we all depend on the post office. If they're in trouble, that affects us all. We got to figure out how we can be helpful and how the federal government could step up too. So if they're having that kind of a problem with their personnel we're going to certainly talk to the folks from the postal service to see if there's something we can do. Now we got to first take care of obviously so many other people. Our first responders, our health care workers, as I said, people at grocery workers, pharmacy workers who need whatever they need. But if we can help postal workers as well, we certainly will. But I'm also going to push the federal government to step up in that because that should be their first responsibility. They're in charge of the postal service. Bottom line, we have to protect those workers. We're all depending on them. Dr. Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: So, on the random testing, I think that the concept of random testing is more useful in the very early stages of responding to an outbreak. And unfortunately, we were hampered by the fact that the testing at the federal government’s level was really not readily available as early as we would have liked in order to have done that early surveillance. I think that the concept of testing will take a different level of importance as we get to the other side of the apex, but it's probably too early to start talking about that just yet because we don't have a good sense in terms of what the overall distribution and availability will be of tests that are being slated for approval.

Mayor: Okay. You very much doctor and thank you to my colleagues and everyone. We obviously have a lot of updates that'll be coming up on things we've talked about here, but we're going to be very, very careful to constantly update you on what we're seeing, the things we've talked about now, the ventilators, the hospitalizations, all the trends. Again, I'm happy we're seeing a little bit of progress. I don't want any over-confidence, anyone jumping the gun, anyone taking their foot off the gas. Let's stick with what's working. New Yorkers should be proud of the fact that your efforts are working. You are the heroes here. Stick with the shelter in place. Stick with the social distancing, double down on it. That's the best way for us to overcome this virus.

Thank you, everybody.

2020-04-09 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. Yesterday I talked to you about some of the first signs we were seeing of some progress of some change. And, I want to go deeper into what it means, what we know, what we don't know at this point, but also how we are going to prepare for the weeks and months ahead. Because the fact that we've seen some initial change, we shouldn't overrate it, we should not count our chickens before they're hatched. But it does remind us that if we do everything we need to do as new Yorkers we can hasten the day when a bigger change happens, when we can go even farther. What this all is saying to me, the more our team researches the situation, the more we learn from experience, the more we really understand this horrible disease through actually dealing with it here at the front line, the front line of this entire nation, what we're seeing as how much the people matter, how much the future will be determined by all of you, by the people of New York City.

What you're doing so far is absolutely on target. It's very, very tough to do social distancing. It's very tough to stay home and practice shelter in place. No one thought it would be easy. I can certainly say, I think for all of us, it's even harder than we imagined. So, for everyone who's frustrated, for everyone who's already feeling, you know, cooped up and like, it's hard to imagine doing this for a long period of time. For a lot of people, actually, one of the things I hear constantly from people is they feel bored. They feel held back from doing the things they love. Obviously, we all feel deeply disconnected from loved ones that we would normally travel to see, particularly at the holiday season. So, there's a deep feeling in this city of the frustration with dealing with all of the changes we've had to go through. And I remind everyone, it's only been in a matter of weeks that we've had to make these massive adjustments.

So, for anyone out there who feels frustrated, who feels confused or angry that all this had to happen, I share that, we all feel it. But we also know that you've been finding a way, in an incredibly noble, consistent manner. The people of this city have answered the call. You are practicing social distancing. Is it perfect? No, of course not. We're the most densely populated city in the United States of America. We've the worst spaced place in the world to try and achieve social distancing, but people are actually doing it. You know, if you wanted social distancing to be perfect, there are places where people don't live so close together. Maybe that's where it could be perfect. But you know what, it may not be perfect, but New Yorkers are doing it in an amazing way. People really are going out of their way, and you see it all the time, to find new and creative ways to live with the reality of social distancing.

Our police officers and all of the public servants who are enforcing this law are doing an outstanding job. Again, is it perfect? No. Are there problems? Yes. And everyone sees the problem. I remind you, please do everyone a favor. If you see a store that's overcrowded or you see a line that's close together, not distanced each person six feet apart. If you see anything where social distancing is not being practiced, call 311 right away and NYPD or other agencies will come there quickly and make things right. But the fact is the NYPD, the FDNY, the Buildings Department, the Sheriff's Office, the Parks Department, they've all been out there doing enforcement and what they're finding time and time again is a very high level of compliance with the rules of social distancing. And they’re finding that, yeah, sometimes people need to be reminded, particularly younger people, that's not a shock. Teenagers having to be reminded to follow the rules, for all of us who are parents, that's something we're very, very used to. That's something we did or do every single day in dealing with teenagers. I certainly did and Chirlane did when we were bringing up our children. So, it's not a surprise that all the adults in the lives of our young people have to remind them constantly to follow the rules. And that our enforcement officers go out and see people of any age, they're going to have to remind them, particularly younger people.

But what we're finding is when the police show up or any of the other agencies, the reminder is working, the warning is working. We're not in a situation where we have to give a huge number of fines, but we do need people to call 311 the second you see it. Anyone who is frustrated, angry, or they see a lack of social distancing, or they see people crowding. You know what? Don't be angry. Just pick up the phone. Now you can still be angry, but the most important is don't be angry and hold it into yourself. Act on it. If you really believe it's a problem, and you don't make that call, then I have to say, I guess you don't think it's that much of a problem. So seriously, all it takes is a call to 311 and then help will be sent immediately. This is a highest priority for the NYPD and all the enforcement agencies to get this right.

I say that to a point. Generally speaking, people have actually been following these rules. Folks have been staying home. They understand you go out, you do just what you need to do your, you get food, you get medicine, get a little exercise, get back. People have been doing that. I've been in many places in this city, and you feel like it's a ghost town. People have been following the rules and that's why we're starting to see some improvement and we are far from out of the woods. But we're seeing something because you did that, you earned that. And I want people to think about it this way. We, all of us, 8.6 million of us have to earn our way out of this horrible situation. Do we deserve what we've gotten? Of course not. No one ever heard of this disease six months ago, didn't even exist. And yet it's visited upon us in a way that's the worst in our nation, one of the worst experiences in the world. But that, when I say we need to earn our way out of it, it's not because we did anything wrong, it's actually because you're doing everything right.

New Yorkers are answering the call, but we need to understand, we have to save ourselves here. There's clearly a lot more our federal government could be doing and I'm going to talk about that, particularly when it comes to testing. But we have to fight back this virus and we have the power to do it in many, many ways. And if we do it the way we're capable of as New Yorkers, the toughest, strongest, most resilient people in this nation, we actually can push this virus back. We actually can overcome this phase we're in. And I'm going to show you what that means. I'm going to lay it out today and we actually can get to a point where we start the pathway back to normalcy and it will not be easy. It won't be like a nice straight line. I want to warn you right now. It's not like we're going to, you know, each week it's going to get a specific easy, clear milestone and it's all going to go perfectly and cleanly. It's not going to be like that if we're not careful, if we're not strong, if we're not disciplined. In fact, this is a disease that can reassert, resurge. You should be very worried about resurgence. We all are. The last thing we can afford is to let down our guard and let this disease back in the door even more and then see the numbers spike up. The pain, the illness, the death spike up even worse because we let down our guard. So when I say earn, I'm using the phrase to make a point. You didn't deserve this, but we're in it. As New Yorkers like to say it is what it is.

But we can fight our way out, and we have been, and we have proof of it. The fact that we saw some improvement in the dynamics with hospitalization, we saw some improvement with the number of ventilators that we had to use versus the number we expected to use. That says that shelter in place and social distancing are working. And now, it's not, let's, you know, let down our guard and take it easy. No, it's the other way around. It's let's double down, let's intensify. Let's take these new standards, these new approaches we've all learned together and really tighten them up and make them as strong as they possibly can, because that's the way out of this. All of us together and everyone has to be a part of it and everyone has to help each other get better. We're one team as New Yorkers, we are one team. Think about that for a moment. 8.6 million people, we all are depending on each other now. So, if someone in your family, someone in your life, or someone on the street isn't doing what's right, you got to help them, you got to remind them. And if there's some people that are trying to figure out how to do it even better, help them too. Because the rules are out there, the standards are out there. We have to help people, literally each person do it better. Think of it this way, every time you practice shelter in place and social distancing the right way, you're literally reducing the chance of transmission to another person. If 8.6 million people do that in unison, the whole trajectory changes. Are we going to be perfect? No. But we can do amazing things together if we feel that we're all in this together and we surely are. And that's a spirit New Yorkers have shown many, many times in times of crisis. And I know, I have total faith in the people of this city that we can overcome this by helping each other to be the best we can be in fighting this disease. So, we need to win our way to the next phase. And I'm going to talk to you today about where we are now and then what it would look like to go forward.

Now, obviously we have a long way to go. Long battle. I've said from day one, this is going to be a long battle, it’s going to be a tough battle. So, the first thing I'm going tell you is to not expect instant gratification or expect something easy. I don't think you do, but I'm just going to make it plain. We still have widespread transmission, clearly. We still are seeing horrible, painful realities for so many New York families. We've got a long way to go. I don't see anything getting easier in the month of April. I think it's going to be a long, tough April. I said for a long time, get ready for a long tough May. Now, if we continue to make progress as we've seen, at least a beginning of, May might be easier than what I originally feared it would be. And I want it to be easier for all of us. But I think the way to think about this is, April and May are when we have to win this phase, we have to push back this disease. We have to open that door to the next phase where things get better. We have to fight for it. And what we're going to do, all of us, particularly our health care leadership, is constantly give you updates. More and more specific updates so you can see the progress yourself. So you can see the fruits of your labor, what you have done to help bring about the change. But the one thing I guarantee you is we will not jump the gun. Unless we have sustained hard evidence that things are getting better, we will not relax any of the Tufts standards, the restrictions in place now. So I want us all to get to that next phase together. But it's going to be based on the facts and those facts are going to be very public.

But we can say, now that we have had a chance to see what a little progress looks like, we can say that it's time to start planning for the next phase very overtly, to talk about it, to give you a sense of what it looks like, and to make sure that we all understand together, everyone, what the common objectives are. The more I think New Yorkers understand the game plan, the better off we'll be. Look, we all understood the beginning of this crisis, no one on earth understood the coronavirus fully, and there was no roadmap. There was no playbook just sitting around for every city, and state, and country to use. But now for the first time, as we've learned more, as we experienced more, we're starting to be able to put together a game plan for the future. So, while we're in this phase, the toughest phase, is the time to plan for the next phase when things start to get better, and to lay out the goals very clearly for everyone to understand.

So first, number one, we cannot allow a resurgence. This would be the single most powerful goal. Whatever you do, don't let it get even worse. And we've already talked about, we know what we have to do to nail this down and not let it spread even further. We have to be tough and disciplined.

Second, our health care system. Protecting it, protecting it is paramount. So much effort in this last month and more went into providing the support, the personnel, the supplies, the equipment, really beefing up our healthcare system for the onslaught that we've seen in these last weeks. And our healthcare system is strong. It's holding our healthcare workers, our doctors, our nurses, everyone that works in our hospitals, they've gone through hell, but they've held the line. They've saved a lot of lives. We’ve got to keep the health care system strong, the one thing we cannot afford is for it to buckle. We can't afford to have a single day where a patient is brought in, his life could be saved and there's not a doctor or a nurse or a ventilator or what they need, so far, we've held that line we got to keep holding that line. And then we've got to keep ensuring that we do everything we can to help people practice shelter in place, practice social distancing and get the support they need. And one of the things we talked about yesterday, and we'll talk obviously about the clear evidence of the disparities that are showing up with this disease and I've been existent for healthcare for way too long in this country and in this City. We've got to help people who need more information, more support, whether it means doing it by phone or whether it means doing it in person, whatever it means. We've got to help people who are struggling the most with this disease and find a way to communicate more information to them, get them more support, get them the ability to talk to healthcare professionals more frequently, more in depth, whatever it takes.

Now, that piece of the puzzle, helping the most vulnerable is something that again, has been hard in an atmosphere where we're all supposed to be practicing social distancing and shelter in place. And we felt very strongly that our health care professionals, of course had to be first and foremost devoted to our hospitals, which for a period of time it looked dangerously close to being overwhelmed. I'm hoping, I'm praying that we can continue to hold line in the hospitals and free up more healthcare personnel for that frontline outreach, whether it be in person or by phone or whatever way it is to help the most vulnerable, I think we can.

And the other thing is to understand as a common objective that the restrictions, the ground rules, the guidelines that we're all living by, they can be adjusted when there's real evidence, but that evidence goes down, hopefully, meaning better progress, more proof that we can start to open up more or bluntly if we don't do it right or if this horrible, ferocious virus hits us in some new way. Unfortunately, restrictions might have to go up, meaning if things really get worse, we might have to tighten up further. It's not what I envisioned today, it's not what any of us want, but the truth is the truth. You should not, and I don't think anyone out there listening or watching wants to be told, you know, pretty lies you want to hear the truth. And the fact is, if we do things right and we get the help we need, especially including more testing from the federal government, we could make some real steady progress, not perfect, not always linear and beautiful progress, but still steady. If we don't do things right or if we get thrown a curve ball, we might actually have to tighten the restrictions further, no one wants that. But we have to be honest to that is a real possibility and what we'll tell you what's going on is the facts laying out to you the exact indicators. So you'll know, you'll see, you'll literally be able to judge all of us, not only the leaders of this City, your leaders, but all of us, all New Yorkers, we're going to be a judge together, whether we're getting it right or wrong, or whether our strategies are working or not because the numbers will be out there for everyone to see. So, it's going to be participatory, it's going to be everyone in it together, we do it right and we never have to get to worse restrictions, tougher restrictions. If things don't cut our way or if we're not tight, then tighter restrictions are an option, an option I hope we never have to use. So, let's be clear about the things that are in place now and the fact that clearly we see initial progress from them and that they are all necessary. And I don't think there's a lot of people doubting that right now but if there is anyone doubting that, let me make it straight for you, make it clear that all of these restrictions were necessary and continue to be necessary. So just to remind us all, we restricted large gatherings, restricted visits to hospitals and nursing homes, obviously all of this, a combined effort between the City and the State. Closed bars and restaurants, closed non-essential businesses, called for face coverings in public, six-foot separation, social distancing, closed things like schools and daycares, limited outdoor recreation, and of course most importantly instituted shelter in place. Now these things happen at different times in different ways according to the information we had, the evidence, we had our coordination with the State, but all of them have proven necessary and all of them will be with us, certainly in my view through April and I think for much of May. Now, it's not all or nothing in the future, it's not like you take this menu and say, okay, none of it can ever move. No, if we do things right, if we make progress, some of these pieces can start to be changed and relaxed, but again, it could go up or down depending on how well we do. So, let's talk about the phases and I've had really extensive conversations with our healthcare team and I want to thank all of them— all of them have been great. Our Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, Dr. Raul Perea-Henze, the team of course at Department of Health, Dr. Oxiris Barbot and our Deputy Commissioner, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis and all of their staff, Health and Hospitals, Dr. Mitchell Katz and his great team. We've had some great help in recent weeks from the Senior Advisor we brought in to advise us on the COVID-19 strategy who is an internationally recognized expert, Dr. Jay Varma, who's with us here today. Many, many people and I'm not even mentioning a lot of others who have contributed, but the constant conversations over the last few days have allowed us to want to really go into depth about these three phases of the epidemic and to help people understand it more clearly want all New Yorkers to be a part of this and to feel again invested in the solutions and the actions we have to take.

So, let's recap where we are now, again, in the first phase that we're experiencing widespread transmission. What it means you're seeing constantly new cases regularly just consistently and we're at a point because of community spread where we can't trace the origins of individual cases to their initial source. We do need in this phase the strong guidelines and restrictions and we have to ration testing, we have to prioritize testing because we have a very limited supply of testing. Where is it going? Again, testing is being focused first and foremost on saving the lives of people who are already in danger of losing their lives. Folks in the hospital in danger or people who it's quite clear are already experiencing disease in a direct dangerous way and the healthcare professionals need that testing to know what's going on. Job one, job two, our healthcare workers testing to protect them, to know who should be at those hospitals and who shouldn't to keep them in the game, all those who can be. We desperately need our healthcare workers, we've obviously lost a certain number of them temporarily to disease and— it's such a tragic, painful truth we've lost some permanently and we know it's so painful that some of these heroes are gone forever, because they sacrificed for all of us. We have to make sure they have the testing they need period, high, high priority to make sure our healthcare workers have the testing they need so they can do what they're doing to save everyone else. And then our first responders who were depending on deeply in this to save lives in so many ways, including all the ways they do that have nothing to do with COVID-19 to be the backbone of getting people to the hospitals when they need and to enforce these rules that are keeping this disease from spreading.

Those are where the priorities are, in this phase where we don't have a lot of testing and we have to think about the most basic things that we can do to make sure healthcare is— there and help is there for those who need it most. As the testing supply increases, we're looking at additional strategies that could be used with the testing here now even in this phase, but we're going to need more testing if we're going to use testing in any other strategic ways or pinpointed ways. We've got to have a bigger supply this has been— the underlying challenge from day one and we've never had a satisfactory answer from the federal government, not one single day since this began, have I felt that the federal government has proven to us they are doing everything to get us the testing we need. Because if they had done it, we would be in an entirely different situation and bluntly, I'm not going to let bygones be bygones to say the least, but I can tell you we still need them to produce in a way they have not done, because if we could get widespread testing, it would start to change the entire— strategy and allow us to do so much more. So, how do we get to the next phase? How do we get to a phase where there's low-level transmission and our lives start to get better, and obviously many, many lives are saved. Continuing to practice the social distancing, the shelter in place is the pathway to the next phase. So when I say earn it, I want people to hear this in a good positive way, we all keep doing what we're doing we actually can work our way to that next phase where things get better and our lives take a step towards normalcy and we're not talking necessarily a huge period of time. This is something, again, I don't think it happens in April, I think if we really work hard, we have a chance of seeing change in May or June so that hard work and everyone in the government has to lead the way and we have to support it in every way possible and force it in every way possible, but we need 8.6 million teammates to do it. That's what gets us to low-level transmission, what does it look like? In low-level transmission, again, I would love to believe this is something you could see later in May or going into June. You're seeing, yes, you're seeing some new cases and you're seeing them regularly, but there's a very profound difference. You can actually trace them again, what we were able to do in the very beginning of this crisis, remember when we used to talk about a individual case and then we'd say, Oh, we're talking to the family of that person or who they worked with and we traced them, we found out these people are okay there, they tested negative. We knew exactly how to trace the map of people that they came in contact with we actually could go back in that direction, which would be a very good thing. So with low-level transmission, you're actually able to use those disease detectives again, because there's few enough cases that you can trace the whole universe of anyone who may have been exposed and get them whatever help they need. In that scenario, with low-level transmission, you can do some relaxing of the restrictions. Not all, not all at once, but you can start to make life a little more normal and people have to be smart about it, not overdue but if we're patient, if we're measured, we can actually sustain that low-level transmission phase and work our way towards the next even better phase. To do this we would need a more substantial amount of testing, if we tried to do a low-level transmission strategy with just the testing we had now, we would constantly run up against the problem of lack of testing capacity. So we need some greater capacity, it's not clear how and when that happens, it's not clear if there'll be enough technological advances or if somewhere on the international market we can get the right kind of tests. It's not clear at all if the federal government will really have the—breakthrough of that they need to, that they'll focus their energies on getting testing to all the places they need it. I think the federal government is still the single most important piece of this equation and when it comes to testing, so we would need more testing and we don't have it yet. But since that phase is not likely until May or June, there's time and now we're going to work very hard to get that testing one way or another, we're searched the whole world to find it, whatever will get the job done. And then they'll next phase is the one we all want to get to, and that phase where there's no transmission to speak of— is when we actually can get back to normal. And always being vigilant, always guarding against the resurgence, always realizing we're up against a very ferocious and clever enemy in the coronavirus. But there is a phase and we can actually describe it now, where you have the ability to see very few new cases so much so that you can basically say it's a no transmission dynamic. To get to that phase you need a lot more testing, that phase requires testing whenever needed, however needed, again, we would need that federal help to get there. In a no transmission phase, what it basically means is there's very, very few cases and essentially the cases that do emerge come from outside the City, not from within the City. So, someone travels or comes here and that's how someone contracts it, but again, rare and traceable that kind of phase means we're out of the social distancing business if we really work hard, we get to the point where we don't have to practice the same kind of restrictions that again, is months away but it is something we can at least envision. And in that phase, you do a lot of testing, you test anyone who might potentially have been exposed, even if they're not showing symptoms, you test anyone who has any kind of symptoms that might relate to the coronavirus. It's a very aggressive testing approach and it is very, very much focused on a lot of information and a lot of support for anyone who needs it. That's a phase we could get to, but it's going to take a lot of work.

So, let's go back on this whole idea of how we go from here to there, to that no transmission phase we all want to get to as soon as possible. So, this graphic is on purpose showing you that it is not a beautiful straight line. In truth, we've talked to all of our health experts and I mentioned Dr. Jay Varma, who's worked all around the world fighting the Coronavirus and other infectious diseases and he's brought back lessons from a lot of different countries and what they've seen and what is one of the most important lessons is it doesn't go in a straight, perfect line. In fact, there's always the danger that people start to relax a little bit and you see the disease start to come back and then you have to fight it back. Our job is to try and make it as straight a line as possible; to stay focused, stay disciplined, practice whatever the standards are at that time and practice them really well and enforce them. And that's where all of us - I keep saying that this is participatory - everyone's in it, but the government, this is piece where the government 100 percent has to always create the right kind of enforcement. And that's my job and the job of all my colleagues, but we need you always. Again, if you see it, call 3-1-1. We used to talk about in the fight against terror; if you see something, say something. Well for right now the enemy is a disease; the terrorist is a disease and if you see something, call it in immediately. Crowding helps this disease to grow and where people are not social distancing, the disease grows. We need you to call 3-1-1. Just call. Don't even think about, just call, report it and help will come right away. That is something I'm guaranteeing and if there's any place where it doesn't come, I will deal with that agency or that official who didn't get the help where we needed it. So, I need the report so I can protect you. So, resurgence, I've addressed, this is a real thing, this is a danger always, this is why we have to look at this and feel it. I'm asking people to not just think about it, but to feel it. We get too loose, we loosen our grip, we get overconfident - this is what can happen. You think things are going good and then suddenly it's back with a vengeance. That does not have to happen, but God forbid it ever did happen, then restrictions go back on and in fact, restrictions may get to a higher place than we've ever seen them before. That to me is incentive to all of us. None of us are enjoying the restrictions we have right now. Lord knows we don't even want tighter restrictions. Let's get out of this phase and get to the better phase. Get up, but let's hold it. Let's stay firm with it and never let that resurgence happen.

Now, let me talk to you about the way we will be giving you the information going forward so that you will be able to watch in real time along with everyone here at City Hall, everyone in the Health Department, Health + Hospitals, Emergency Management, all the people leading this effort to fight the coronavirus, you'll be seeing the same data they see in real time and this will start on Monday. And the goal here is that everyone together, all New Yorkers can watch the movement of this data and have a common goal, a common standard. When all of the data, all of the lines move in the same direction for a sustained period of time, that's when we can start talking about changing some of the rules and making life a little easier. So the goals will be clear and the three indicators are these; we're going to show you every day the number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 conditions. We will also show you, second, the number of people admitted to the ICUs for suspected COVID-19 conditions and then we will show you the percentage of people throughout the city who tested positive - the specific positive tests for COVID-19 throughout the city. Now, what do we need to start to discuss moving to the next phase, that better phase and to start to discuss any change, any relaxing of restrictions; we need to see all three of those indicators move in unison in the same direction. We cannot see two of them get better and one of them get worse. That doesn't work. All three have to move together down; all three have to move in a better direction together. They have to do that for at least 10 days to two weeks -sustained, consistent. If it's one day gets good and the next day goes bad, that doesn't count. We need to see a clean, clear pattern that sustains itself for several weeks to then say it's time to even discuss some of the positive changes we'd all like to experience. So you will be watching in real time and I think it will be inspirational to all of us to realize we're all in this together. We all have agency here, we all have power here, we all have the ability to make a change. You're going to see in real time if it's working for all of us or not working or what we have to do next to drive that down- drive all three of those numbers down.

Okay, what do we need as a city? What do we need as a people to get to where we want to go? That promised land, low level transmission; that's where we want to go and want to go there as soon as we can and it's not going to be easy - long battle - we're going to be at it for a while, but we need to get to that place - all of us - and we need to sustain that. What do we need? Testing, testing, testing; number one, we need a whole lot of testing. We need the federal government to step up. We need them to do it quickly. You can't just snap your fingers, they have to work on it now so that we get more and more and more of it and we get it when we need it. We already have been suffering since January, a number of us on January 24th pleaded with the federal government to get testing in New York City in substantial numbers immediately so we could do tests here. From that day to today, there's never been a single day where our federal government has provided the amount of testing we need. That has to change if we're going to beat this disease not only in New York City, but everywhere else in the country.

Second, we're going to need to take a lot of people power. A lot of staff, a lot of human beings are going to do the outreach; talking to people constantly, primarily by phone of course and text, constantly keeping in touch with people as we get into those better phases where we want to stay in touch with anyone and everyone who either has the disease, might have the disease, needs to be quarantined or isolated. Lot of communication, a lot of follow-up, making sure people have what they need, making sure we're finding out what's going on, making sure people know how to handle things or if they need additional medical advice or care. A lot of staffing, which we will provide. We're also going to need to use information technology to constantly communicate with people in a very advanced way, constantly tracking what they're experiencing - what they need - using IT as a tool where everyone will be able to log-on and say what's going on and what they need and it will allow us to keep so much more information and get so much more information out to people. We're going to need more options for quarantine and isolation. So, we've been building out hotel capacity to create temporary hospitals. If we get to those better phases, particularly to the best phase, to the one we want to get to - low level transmission. That in the end to low-level transmission, again to no transmission I should say, that requires being able to have a lot of capacity for people, for example, say someone needs to be away from their family, from their family because they have the disease or they're symptomatic -we need to isolate. We're going to be doing that on a really big scale; someone needs to be quarantined, we'll do that on a big scale. So were going to have to build that out. Hopefully we'll need less of those rooms for hospitals, but we will need a lot of those rooms for isolation and quarantine. Either way, we have a lot of hotel rooms at our capacity and we will do what it takes to have them available.

And then finally, what we don't control, but we're trying to support with all the efforts of our health team and we're praying that the national and international medical community advances on the front of treatments and vaccines. These are two areas where there could be real progress. I think most of the professionals I've talked to, say the vaccine is probably at least a year away, if not more, but treatments, there's been some interesting efforts going on, research going on, trials going on, maybe that changes the picture and that is happening in large measure in the city of New York. So we are a part of that effort and hopefully that will help to change the whole situation for everyone for the better.

So, we understand what it’s going to take and we understand we're going to need a lot of tools to get there. Some we can create ourselves, some we're going to need help from the outside, especially the federal government. So, the testing capacity that underlies all of this – solve that problem and you can solve a lot of other problems. The ability to isolate people when they need to be isolated; that's something we have more control over and we can build out that capacity. The ability to trace and quarantine folks who need that - that's something that this city does well - our Department of Health and Disease Detectives do well, when they can get to a point where they can actually have a number of cases that they could reach, not an overwhelming number like we have now. But we have a lot of that capacity and we can build more and continuing to do the right kind of social distancing when we need it. We've already proven that, people in New York City have proven they can meet that standard. We just have to show we can hold it. So, we can get to a better place - that's the bottom line - we can get to a better place. We have the ability in so many ways, yes, we need help, but we can do it. People are already showing that we can win – were going to have to do a lot more to get there and we're going to update constantly. Me and my team will update you constantly so you’ll [inaudible] see exactly how we're doing and all the questions, all the concerns that New Yorkers have, you'll be able to ask those questions against all the facts before your very eyes.

As I conclude, then we'll turn to questions from the media. I want to just say, you know, we've talked so much and rightfully so about our health care workers and so many New Yorkers have poured out your hearts to our health care workers and they feel it. I've talked to so many of them; they feel your love and your appreciation. Please keep showing it all the time. Let's sustain them, let's support them, but so many individuals and organizations are stepping up to help our health care workers. I don't think I've ever seen in, in all the years of public service in the city, I have never seen more love, more support, more appreciation for our healthcare workers than at this moment. You know, they, they've been through it after Sandy, they were saving lives after 9/11, and this every day - you know - dealing with the toughest situations. But I think for a long time we sort of took for granted, we had these amazing doctors and nurses and hospital workers and they really haven't been given the thanks that they deserve for a long, long time. Finally, this horrible, horrible crisis is at least bringing out into the open just how amazing they are. So, thank you to everyone who is supporting them. Even the smallest act of appreciation and generosity towards our healthcare workers really helps and they feel it. And there's been some big acts of generosity, I want to thank Goldman Sachs, which already had been very, very helpful - made a major donation to our public schools - now have given a half million dollar grant to Health + Hospitals for staff and supplies, staffing and supplies - that's very much appreciated. And I want to thank a very civically engaged couple, Mark Gallogly and Lise Strickler, I’ve known Mark a long time – he's done a lot for the city. Well they've given a very generous gift to our healthcare workers to make sure that they get food and care packages to make their days a little bit easier while they're fighting this fight. So, thanks to that great couple and so many other people who are stepping-up. We're going to keep celebrating that piece of the love and generosity of New Yorkers for our health care workers.

Okay, so I think I've said it and said it again; you have the power. It doesn't always feel that way in this fight, it really doesn't, and for a lot of times I think we felt confused, pain, powerless, but in fact, you have the power in so many ways to fight this disease back. Our job is to build up a strategy, get the resources in place, get the enforcement in place, do all the things to support you. Of course, get you the healthcare you need when you need it. Everything we're going to do from this point on is to protect you, to protect the people who do protect you - our healthcare workers, our first responders - to enforce these rules, to get you the things that allow you to get through this crisis and for so many people, that means the basics like food, make sure you have shelter protected from eviction. All the things we have to do to protect New Yorkers and also to empower you with information, with support to get through this crisis. We can do it. I wanted you to see those phases ahead, I wanted you to feel those next phases. I wanted you to see where we could go and I know we can get there together. Let me say a few words in Spanish before we take questions from our colleagues in the media.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that we will turn to our colleagues in the media and please let me know the name and outlet of each reporter.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder that we have Commissioner Barbot, Dr. Daskalakis, and Senior Advisor Jay Varma here in person to answer your questions as well. We will take one question from each reporter in order to get to as many outlets as possible. With that, I will start with Andrew from NBC New York.

Question: Hello, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Andrew.

Question: How are you? Hope you're doing well. My question is, you did state the scenario where there could be a loosening of the rules by mid-May. If that plays itself out, do you envision restaurants opening with limited seating? What can you describe to New Yorkers as a good case scenario should this play out forward?

Mayor: Yeah. First of all, you've interpreted – we've known each other a long time, Andrew – you've interpreted very generously. So, I want to make clear that I'm saying from what we know today, at this hour, April, we're going to have to fight this fight the way we are now into May – and that could be a lot of May, in fact – and I would love it if some change could happen at some point in May, but it may not be until June. So, I want to make real clear, this is based on what we know today. It's always changing. So, I don't want you or anyone to hear that as, oh, we got some hard and fast date in May where things are going to start to be easy – not in the least. Let's win April. Let's go into May and try and get to the change as quickly as we can. It may be May, it may be June – I just want to make sure that that's very clear. But I would say – I'll begin and then our health colleagues will jump in – again, to see those different rules, Andrew, as like a menu, and you may relax one a little and another one not at all. There's different things you can do. We want to be very careful about letting the foot off the gas. And this is something we would obviously coordinate very closely with the State of New York. We all have to work in unison. But the point is to understand the possibility and understand we only get there if we meet some very, very high standards. So, I think what is fair to say is, you know, I'll give you an example. We, I think in any scenario, want to see the maximum people – maximum number of people work from home for a long time. So, that's something that I would say is unlikely to change based on what we know now. We would like to keep anyone who can work at home, continuing to work at home. But there may be some other things where we can start to loosen up a bit, but still with real social distancing and real clear boundaries because we cannot risk the resurgence. So, I don't want to say to you, you know, oh, here's what it looks like and it's real easy. I want to say to you, no, let's first get there. As we get there, if we hit those three indicators I talked about, that's when we can paint a picture more of what might change. But there's some other things that will not change. The last thing we want – and this is kind of a points to this national discussion of how we get a recovery – you know what would really screw up a recovery? Is if we let everyone come back to “normal” too quickly that we cause the resurgence of the disease. That's something that would be intolerable. You can't have recovery if the disease is reasserting. You can't have recovery, if the hospitals are getting overwhelmed. You can't have recovery if, you know, your State government, your City government can't sustain basic services, which is still a challenge because of the massive budget problems we're having and that obviously must be addressed in the next federal stimulus bill. So, for all the voices out there, sort of, painting an easy way back, it's not going to be an easy way back. But what I can tell you is, you get to May, June, and you've made enough progress, you can start to make some changes. But only if we see those three indicators moving the right direction for a sustained period of time.

Any of my colleagues – and I'll open up, Dr. Barbot is here, Dr. Daskalakis, Dr. Varma if you want to jump in, because I've tried to paint the picture but now let's see if the experts want to tighten up any pieces of it?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: No, I think, Mr. Mayor – I think you got it just right. I think it's important to also note that there is no set cookbook to this, right? We've never been here before. And so, the intent with regards to starting to loosen up some of the restrictions around social distancing is to allow the City to take early steps to getting back to a new level of normal. We don't know exactly what that new level of normal will be and so it may include loosening some restrictions so that perhaps different types of businesses may reopen so that we can maybe have some very small number of gatherings occur, all the while maintaining the preventive measures that we have put in place from the beginning with regards to hand hygiene, with regards to covering your mouth and your nose, likely continuing to recommend the use of face coverings for individuals that are high risk. But the most important thing, Mr. Mayor, I think is really critical that you said – is that we need to really take measured steps, because I think what would be detrimental to this response is to have those measures come off too quickly or have New Yorkers feel like everything goes back to normal and we have a resurgence. That, I think, would be the most detrimental to this response.

Mayor: Either doctor, you want to join in? Open chair – you're good. Okay, go ahead. Who's next?

Moderator: Next, we have Anna Sanders from the Daily News.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes. Anna.

Question: So, you've repeatedly said that you don't want to go into details about how the City is handling the bodies of people who have tragically died of this disease. For a week now, I have been waiting for specific answers from the Medical Examiner's Office about this process and what the City is doing. I have not gotten specific answers for many of those questions. It's been several days. I’ve followed up many, many times and I just wanted to see if there's any way you can promise to me that all of my questions will be answered, you know, outside these public briefings because if you're not going to answer these questions then your staff certainly should and I really do think – I want to say that for people who might lose someone from COVID-19, they would probably feel a little better to find out what's going to happen before they are mourning someone.

Mayor: I agree, Anna. Yeah, Anna, I appreciate that point a lot. The reason I don't want to get into sort of deep and graphic discussion on this issue is I just don't think it's fair to New Yorkers and I don't think it's fair to families who are grieving or families who are afraid to spend time talking about something very painful. And I think the dignity that we have to give to all families who are suffering is not to make this a public issue and an issue that causes graphic descriptions publicly and blaring headlines and pictures of dead people. I mean, really, I do understand what a free press has to do in a crisis, but I also think there needs to be real sensitivity to the families that are suffering. So, I think the question – the number-one question to me is, are we able to address this painful reality? My answer to all New Yorkers – yes, because our Office of the Medical Examiner is very strong, very professional, you know, nationally renowned. We've given them every resource they need. There’s still going to be challenges, there's still going to be delays, but we'll support them with whatever they need. And we've gotten tremendous support from the federal government. Of all the areas where I've asked the federal government, from the White House on down, to help us, this is one where every single request has been answered. Everything we've asked them to send has been sent. And we clearly have, you know, painful, but real contingency plans to deal with anything that might come up ahead, but with a very clear standard – dignity for the families. Every family is treated individually. God forbid we lose anyone, but they will be treated, their body will be treated individually. And specifically, that will be something we can do with each family. And some of the rumors and some of the reporting have suggested something much more horrible and inhumane, and that's absolutely false and it should not be reported. With that, to your question about specifics, I agree with you that if there’s specifics that can be answered – not here, but in other setting – it is appropriate to get you answers. But I don't know every question you've asked. I can't tell you every question our folks are feel is appropriate or can answered this time, but I can tell you that our team here at City Hall follow up with you and every single answer that is available and appropriate to give and is specific we'll make sure to work with the Medical Examiner's Office to get you those answers.

Unknown: [Inaudible]

Thank you, Freddi Goldstein. Freddi will follow up with you this morning to make sure we can give you all we can. Go ahead –

Moderator: Next, we have Julia from the Post.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Julia.

Question: Hi. Good morning. So, you know, you're talking about we're going to be going, you know, through May, maybe even June, so I'm wondering when you're going to make a call about schools given that, I guess, for now, they're closed through the end of April per the Governor’s order. And then if you could just touch quickly on why we didn't have that real-time data that we're going to have on Monday. I know it was a wartime footing and everything, but you [inaudible] vast bureaucracy with hundreds of thousands of employees. Why couldn't we have gotten this information earlier?

Mayor: Julia, it’s the same – on the first point about the schools, a series of conversations happening right now to decide do we have one last chance to open them up, you know, in person before it's too late for the school year. The school year goes to, you know, the last few days of June. Do we have a realistic opportunity to get the schools back up for a meaningful enough period of time? I think we are a couple of days away – two, three days probably away from getting to that decision. You’re right that, for sure, April's already gone in terms of our in-person education. We'll decide soon if we think there's a window to still save any part of the year and we'll obviously announce that as soon as that decision is made. The question of data – look, I'm only going to keep this simple. I think what I've said repeatedly is the reality. This has been a wartime footing. We are dealing with a pandemic. We are dealing with something no one has ever experienced – any of us – in terms of how you deal with a brand-new disease, a ferocious disease that has hit us extraordinarily hard with no playbook. We're doing our damnedest to do the most important things and that means saving lives and protecting the hospitals. And that's been where the energy is gone. And in some cases, there was some readily available data. In other cases, it wasn't as readily available or it wasn't as consistent as we wanted. We weren't sure that putting it out would not confuse matters. And that was a real concern, that it wasn't going to be accurate and consistent enough to shed light rather than create confusion. And when you're on a kind of wartime footing, you have to be careful about that. We're now convinced that this is the most important data, the clearest data, and that we can provide it on a very regular basis. And we think, as we've also experienced this – and the doctors – I'm taking from what I – conversations we have daily. So, I'm trying to kind of translate them from doctor into English here, but the – and you all can – anyone can add – but I think more than ever, having fought the fight – one of the things Dr. Barbot said weeks and weeks ago, it feels like years ago, when the disease detectors were dealing with the first cases, they were also getting a whole lot of information about what was truth and what was fiction or what was more true and less true compared to the international literature or experience other places. We're having our own particular experience. But we've also learned a lot about statistics, if you will, along the way, which measures are more important and tell us the most, which had been less crucial to understanding the picture, which had been more accurate, which had been less accurate. There's a lot of different measures out there, some we have found to be lagging more, others are more real time. These we are convinced are the ones that will tell us what we need to know and that we can produce for you constantly in real time. So, long answer to say, I'm just not going to go back and litigate the past, because we're fighting a war right now. But that is the truth. We now have confidence that these are the right measures and we can provide them to you regularly. Anyone want to add, or if I have translated –

Commissioner Barbot: You got it just right.

Mayor: Okay, good enough. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next, we have Joanna from News 12.

Question: Good morning. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Joanna.

Question: So, we understand that you spoke to people one-on-one yesterday outside Lincoln Hospital, people who were demanding for more testing in the Bronx. Could you tell me a little bit about what you spoke about with people who you spoke with inside the hospital, and, honestly, just your reaction?

Mayor: Yes, absolutely, Joanna. Well, first of all, I want to thank the three individuals I sat down with. I want to thank them because it was a very important conversation. But the reason first I was up there, I want to focus on, you know, I've spoken to all of you a lot about getting military medical personnel for the city. There has been progress. I still want to see more. I've had this conversation with the President, the Defense Secretary and many others. We do have the Comfort here. We do have a military medical personnel at Javits, but now we have about 300 also directly going into our public hospitals, and I'd like to see a lot more because our public hospital, doctors, nurses, health care workers need support and the medical military folks are top of the line and they can plug in right away and we need them.

So, yesterday I was with doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists from the Air Force all starting their efforts at Lincoln Hospital, which has been one of the toughest hit in the whole city. And I’ve got to tell you, the health care workers at Lincoln Hospital were applauding them and the Air Force doctors and nurses and therapists were applauding back – literally applauding back. For the health care workers at Lincoln Hospital to literally see the Air Force arrive, to see the cavalry come – and it was very moving to me, dozens and dozens of health care professionals in their fatigues, people who served this nation, they were from all over the country. Literally, I asked him to call out the states they were from – California, Colorado, Florida, you name it, Michigan – it was so inspiring to our health care workers to see those reinforcements arrive. And as I was walking around the hospital to see them all over the place, like plugging in immediately to help – what a shot in the arm. But, Joanna, there were three people who, you know, when they saw I was there, they called out and they said they were really concerned and they were having problems and they wanted to talk about it. And I said, I want to hear what their concern was. And what they really talked about was a lot of the same disparity concerns that we talked about yesterday and feeling like there were a lot of people in the city who needed help getting more information, particularly if they didn't speak English. There were a lot of people who are afraid. And this – the individuals I talked with spoke a lot about immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants who have been pushed away. And, unfortunately, this is what President Trump and the federal government has done and ICE has done, and it's been horrible unto itself, but another thing we've been warning about for a long time before this horrible disease is pushing undocumented people away from health care, away from education, away from things that they had access to is dangerous to everyone. When we announced guaranteed health care in this city a year and a half ago, we said explicitly it was also for undocumented New Yorkers because they're our neighbors too – half-a-million people who are part of our community. But what the Trump Administration did, kept scaring immigrants undocumented and documented from getting the help they needed, like the public charge policy. There's so many things that pushed people away from care and away from help. So, this is what a lot of the conversation was about, that we have to somehow make up for that with more grassroots outreach, more information, particularly in other languages and just a recognition that a lot of people, no, they understand there's a crisis going on, but they don't have enough information on how to respond to it or where to turn for help. And that's why that telephone service we're going to start where people can reach a clinician on the phone in many languages is going to be crucial. We have some of that, but we need a lot more. So that's what the conversation was about. And I thanked them. I told them, even though they, you know, when they first met, they were agitated. I said, you're actually helping me to see things that we're feeling, but you're giving it some real specific shape that's going to help us to deepen our strategies. So, I was very thankful to them.

Go ahead.

Moderator: Next, we have Alex from Chalkbeat.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask a question about student attendance. Some other school districts have already started releasing some top line attendance data. I know that the Department of Education has started collecting that information, but [inaudible] we're already in week three of remote learning here, there still hasn't been any data released publicly. I'm wondering if you've seen any top line figures about student attendance that you could share or if you could provide a timeline for when those will be provided?

Mayor: Thank you, Alex. Yeah, we should provide that. I think, again, what I'll remind everyone, this is the single biggest effort, the single biggest experiment in distance learning in the history of the Republic all put together in a matter of days. So, what the folks at Department of Education are doing, what our educators are doing is really heroic in another way and it's reaching a lot of kids, but there's clearly an issue with attendance. We know a lot of kids still don't have the devices and that's been an ongoing effort. We know a lot of kids aren't logging on as much as we want them to and that's something we projected. I said it very bluntly, it’s one of the many reasons that closing schools was a painful decision, is that we knew even with the best distance learning we didn't have every kid ready for it, we didn't have every teacher ready for it. And we knew – I know plenty about kids and particularly teenagers – that you were not going to get not only not perfect attendance, you going to have a real problem keeping attendance if you couldn't supervise. So, we will get your data. I imagine what it will show – and what I've gotten is really only very top line, which is it's a problem. It's a problem we predicted, unfortunately. It's problem we assumed. And I think we'll get better in the sense of more kids will get devices and in a world where kids don't have a lot of choices of what to do because they're sheltering in place, hopefully more and more will choose to engage in distance learning. But there's an issue there and we will get you a data as soon as it's ready.

Moderator: Next we have Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Mr. Mayor, a very joyous and weird Passover to you.

Mayor: Gersh, I want to wish you a zissen pesach. And I hope – I want to see you one day throw me a curve ball and ask a non-transportation issue. I really believe it's in you.

Question: It is in me, but as you know, I cover a very narrow lane and this is a COVID related question. You know, we all know that a budget is not just numbers, but it's an agenda, a signifier of priorities. You issued some PEG cuts that were, that slashed Vision Zero programs by about $10 million yet may have no cuts to any Department of Transportation, expense, budget allocations for road building or maintenance. So I'm wondering what that says about your priorities during this crisis and beyond this crisis, that cyclists and pedestrians are sacrificing key programs but drivers are not?

Mayor: No, it does not say that. And I’m – perfectly fair question, but it doesn't say that because – and I would contest you on your understanding of what's been put out or we'll put out clearer information. A lot of work of the Department of Transportation has to continue because the most basic maintenance like keeping, you know, the classic New York question of keeping our bridges intact and strong, road maintenance, that's about immediate safety issues. All of that has to continue. But there's a lot that isn't continuing as normal. And clearly the Vision Zero work required a certain amount of consistency in the overall work on our streets. If that was being reduced in different ways it was going to affect our ability to do as much Vision Zero work as quickly. So in truth, I think your initial assumption that everything else is the same except the Vision Zero couldn't be farther from the truth.

The Vision Zero work is continuing in many, many ways. As we get back to normal and DOT ramps up more by definition, we're going to prioritize Vision Zero. But what you're seeing in a lot agency in the budget, Gersh, is things that we care deeply about are being held off because this – normal operations don't exist. I mean, look at professional training in our schools, something that's been the absolute foundation of how we make schools better. We can't do it if teachers are not in their schools. And there's many examples like that. If you look carefully and we'll – our folks will go over it with you – a lot of things in the budget proposal that's been put out so far are about money that just can't be spent because normal operations are not going on. Hopefully that's a very limited period of time and then we can ramp back up. But Vision Zero has always been a priority, always will be a priority.

Moderator: Next we have Gloria from New York 1.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask quickly two things. One, do you have an update on how the city is handling people who are dying at home? And what I mean by that, I know that – I understand your reluctance to discuss some of these things in public, but what I'm simply asking is we understand that a lot more New Yorkers are unfortunately passing away at home and that because of the system being so taxed at this time, there are delays. But I am also assuming that there is, as a result of a massive undercount that's happening. So what are the city's plans to count those people? And can you talk a little bit more about how New Yorkers will be able to access this new data that you'll start publishing on Monday?

Mayor: Okay. Yes. I'll start. And then Dr. Barbot, Dr. Daskalakis, Dr. Varma, anyone who wants to join in on any of the pieces or clarifying any of the pieces. Okay, the new data and my colleagues can talk in detail, but it, you know, it'll just be available on DOH website is the easy answer. And again, we'll be not only putting it out publicly every day, but talking about it a lot because it's going to be the prism through which we interpret everything. So again, now that we've had these weeks of very painful experience, Gloria, and we have a sense of what we really think tells us the larger truth, we're going to be putting it out and then telling you what we're seeing in it as a regular part of our discussion.

On the question of this painful reality for our families. So let me frame it this way because I think it's really important for people to understand, anything related to COVID-19, my approach to my whole team to the people in New York City is whatever it takes to help people and protect people and to support families that are going through this, if we can do it, we're going to do it. A lot of other things that we used to do in this government are going to be on hold, as you just heard, or some things we won't be able to do in the middle of crisis. But when it comes to addressing this crisis, protecting people, protecting their health, protecting our hospitals, making sure people are safe, making sure our first responders are there when people need them. All of these very basic things are going to be the priority and that's where we're putting our time, our energy, our money, everything.

So whatever the Office of Medical Examiner needs, they will get, and one of the first things they said they needed was a huge amount of federal personnel and federal support and they got it. But they'll get anything they need from us as well. Because I don't want families to go through this pain more than they already are. I want us to make sure to the best of our abilities, we can get to families quickly and provide them support. We know that'll be tough at the height of this crisis, but it has to always improve because people deserve to be treated with tremendous dignity. So that's just to let you know, my message is whatever they need, that we can get them, they're going to get so they can provide that support.

On the question of the data, absolutely, I want to say there's no question in my mind and the doctors can speak to this, the driver of this huge uptick in deaths at home is COVID-19 and some people are dying directly of it and some people are dying indirectly of it, but it is the tragic X factor here. And I want us to count it in the facts we're putting out, not because I – any of us should be involved in that morbid exercise, but we're forced to, because we have to be open with people about what's really going on. So I say, let's state what I think is the truth. Yes, those deaths overwhelming and not everyone necessarily, but overwhelmingly every because of COVID-19, we should count them towards a total as quickly as we can get the full facts about them and include them in the demographic data. We must. But we understand there's going to be some challenges and some lag in that just because of the sheer nature of the crisis we're going through.

Commissioner Barbot: So Mr. Mayor, if I can add to that, I think Gloria, the only other thing that I would add to what the Mayor laid out, which is absolutely correct, is that we are first and foremost focused on ensuring that every New Yorker who dies because of COVID-19 gets counted. I think that as a city, it is part of the healing process to be able to grieve and mourn for all of those that have passed because of COVID-19. And to date, we have only been reporting on people who have had the test. We recognize that there are many people who have not gotten a test and may have, as the Mayor said passed for other reasons, but likely in this period have passed because of COVID-19. So we are committed to ensuring that that data goes up on our website.

We anticipate that that will happen in the very near future and we are committed to also ensuring that we maximize the amount of racial demographic data that we're able to report along with that. Though, you know, we are facing some of the same challenges that we have faced with the other data that we are reporting, but the, the magnitude and the importance of having this data out there so that it becomes part of the healing process for the city once we get to the other side of this horrible outbreak, I think is going to be crucial.

Mayor: Either doctor, are we good or you want to add? Okay. Good. Next.

Moderator: Next we have Sydney from the Staten Island advance.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. So, Staten Island's Political Delegation sent you a letter this week calling on you to treat the borough more equally during the coronavirus crisis after you left Staten Island out of the latest surge planning for the public hospitals and the recent announcement of more military personnel. When Staten Island hospitals need these things too, especially at the new South Beach Psychiatric Center, what is your response to the letter? Have you seen it? And do you plan to send Staten Island military medical personnel or any of the free coronavirus testing for health care workers? If so when? And which hotel have you selected on Staten Island to house medical staff and use for more hospital beds?

Mayor: Okay. On the hotel, Sydney, we'll make sure that something that's ready to be public, but we do have one hotel ready to go and we'll add as needed. So our team will follow up because we just need to confirm that that's ready to go public. Sydney, your questions always are framed a certain way, you have every right to do that, but I just want to aggressively disagree with the way you're framing it because I honestly don't think it's fair to the half million people of Staten Island. We have been supplying constantly the Staten Island hospitals. I've been constantly talking to a Borough President Oddo about what Staten Island needs and what it needs, we're getting it. When we talk about ventilators, N95s, surgical masks, everything we provide, what the Staten Island hospitals need, we are sending them. And I understand the history.

I've lived it a long time as you have of why people on Staten Island, some people are very concerned about making sure Staten Island is not ignored, but I want a protest when actual constant shipments of needed supplies and equipment are going to Staten Island hospitals that should be reported too, because it's not fair to the people Staten Island to only show one side of the picture. It's just not. All the efforts being made to support health care workers, to support first responders, also are for Staten Island. Everything we're doing is for Staten Island, like all of the five boroughs.

So the question of the military medical personnel. First of all, what I said was the hospital's bearing the brunt of the crisis in New York City, and is true by the sheer numbers that some of the very toughest situations at Elmhurst Hospital, Lincoln Hospital, Bellevue Hospital, that the military medical personnel going right into the ICUs and the emergency departments was a high, high priority. And I think that was the right priority because those were the places bearing the brunt the most. And we've gotten some of those personnel nowhere near what I'd like to see. I am continuing to push the White House and the Defense Department for many more military medical personnel. And if we get more and more, of course we should be applying them beyond the public hospitals into places like Rumsey, for example. But we don't have that yet. I'll keep fighting for that.

The question of the testing. Yes, I think this is a very fair question. I did appreciate the point raised by the elected officials from Staten Island that because there – this is a case where I think the point about not having a public hospital is very fair, where we know that Rumsey in particular handles a big burden making sure that testing as we have it is available for health care workers in Staten Island, I think that's fair though. The point, Sydney, and I want this accurately reported is the as we have it. Right now, we're trying to take what is still too limited amount of testing, use it to address the most serious cases everywhere, Staten Island and everywhere. Save lives, protect health care workers, protect first responders. We got to keep building that out and we're continuing to deepen that. So we're going farther with that than where we were even a week or two ago. But it still has to be within the amount of testing we actually have.

So presuming we have it, I would love to see a place like Rumsey and ultimately a place like Staten Island University Hospital have that testing as well. We will work to make that happen. The whole thing hinges on increasing our supply of testing so that we can actually use it the way we want to going forward, not just for the health care workers and the first responders, but actually just start to be part of those strategies to get down to low level transmission and no transmission as well.

Moderator: Next we have Isseu Diouf Campbell? Isseu Diouf Campbell from African in Harlem.

Question: Good morning. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes. How you doing?

Question: Good morning Mayor. I have questions about the data that was released yesterday –

Mayor: Oh, I'm sorry?

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah, but get close to the phone.

Question: Okay. So I have a question about the data that was released yesterday?

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: I have a question about the data –

Mayor: Yeah, no, I heard you. I heard you, go ahead with the question.

Question: Okay. So, it seems like it's more complicated than just checking a box to know who is dying of COVID-19. It seems like 37 percent of death wasn't clear who those people were. Would you be releasing that data soon and is it possible to make it mandatory? So maybe these types of things will not happen in the future? I had a follow up question about the juvenile centers, will youth be released also because I know that you released some people from Rikers Island but not [inaudible].

Mayor: Thank you, on the last part – and one of the doctors, whoever wants to speak to it will speak to the, the work to make sure that the information is accurate. But let me just speak to the juvenile facilities. First of all, to compare with the adult facilities corrections, we're now between 1,100 and 1,200 inmates have been released as part of the humanitarian effort to make sure we are protecting lives of everyone who's in our correction system. And obviously when we do these releases, we are looking at who can be appropriately released, particularly those who have the most serious health care conditions. We want to be very careful about any human being, even if it's someone who happens to be an inmate who has those serious preexisting conditions, particularly, they're older.

But that is also to protect everyone, to protect correction officers, to protect the inmates who remain by reducing the population overall in corrections. So that's a substantial number who have been released and some releases are continuing, in this case, we need the decisions from the DA's or decisions from the State of New York to be able to do additional releases. And, you know, we've been pushing that those answers need to happen very, very quickly because this is a crisis here and now and we need all of those other parts of the government that have to make decisions to make them right away.

On the juveniles, a very substantial number of juveniles have been released. That has happened. That work has already been done, focused on those who could be released because of lower offenses or those who had any kind of health issue that might be compromising, that has been completed. I want to thank Dr. Perea-Henze and I want to thank the Law Department played an important role, Corp Counsel Jim Johnson, our ACS Commissioner David Hansell. They did that work. They completed that work days ago. We can get you the specific numbers on that. Now to the question about how we try and make sure the information is accurate on those who have passed away. Dr. Daskalakis?

Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Thank you, sir. So, in an effort to get the data around race and ethnicity out, we achieved a threshold of quality data that allowed us to show an initial view of deaths among individuals based on race and ethnicity. We continue to improve our data sources and you will see that we will have more and more available data. So, I think you were referring to the 37 percent other or incomplete. As we increase our data sources, as we're building this, those data sources will become more and more clear and there'll be fewer individuals who are in that category.

Mayor: Okay.

Moderator: Next we have Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor, on the testing. When you say we'll need to go to widespread testing, can you clarify what exactly are we missing? Is it kits? Is it the criteria from the federal government? What exactly is lacking there? And are we being as aggressive as we could be with the amount of testing we have now? Because you know, I've heard you and your administration repeatedly say, doesn't really matter if you get tested. Don't even try to get tested unless you know you're gravely ill. So can you just sort of explain the divergence between those two messages now that you're saying it'll need to be really widespread before we can start to move on?

Mayor: Yeah, this is a very good question. I appreciate it, because you're raising a couple of different points that I think make the testing discussion a little difficult. So on my colleagues here in a moment, you all will figure out who wants to jump in on, I know Jay Varma has done a lot of work on this to sort of how you get the testing and what you need for the testing. And one of the most frustrating parts, Erin, when I was talking to Jay about this last night is that it's I wish it was like one thing, it turns out that, you know, the problem with the testing is you don't just need the kits, you need the reagents. And I wish I could even tell you fully what a reagent was and there's plastics involved in all sorts of things. I've heard the phrases, but what it adds up to is a lot of component parts to be able to mix the recipe together or as Jay was saying last night on the phone, if you want a cup of coffee with you know, cream and sugar, you need the coffee, the water, the cream, the sugar and the mug to put it in and we don't have all those pieces, if you will when it comes to testing to get that cup of coffee with cream and sugar.

So the problem is the supply chain is complex, the availability is very uneven to get to the point you'd like to be at, which is what we wanted on day one is what we want today. Nothing has changed. We would like the ability to test anyone, any time, for whatever purpose and know it would be there and it would be quick turnaround. If our entire health team and I know everyone at Health + Hospitals feels this to, if we had that from day one, this would have been an entirely different reality. If we have that in the future, we will have extraordinary tools to lock down the situation and protect people going forward. But what we've been reduced to – for a lot of time, we had nothing. Then we had very little for – you know, you remember at the beginning we had to wait for stuff to go down to Atlanta and come back and it took like three days, four days. You know, we finally got it in New York City, we never had enough. It's expanded in New York City, it’s still not enough, but at least we've had enough to say we can focus on the people in greatest need, that the testing is actually about saving lives. And I'm going to ask Dr. Varma to jump in on this part to help people understand that part – the sort of, if you will, the tactical use of testing in saving lives that are in real immediate danger.

Clearly the testing to help health care workers and first responders to know when they have to leave work, to know when they can come back to work, to help reassure them so they can stay on the job, which is mission critical for everyone. We're trying now to deepen that and take the testing we do have and get to more and more health care workers, more and more first responders and then ultimately if we really had a better supply to start to think about the best ways to use it strategically in communities that need it most. So that we'll get into, Jay can talk about some of that. But the other point, Erin, you put a lot into one question and I commend you, is not to see testing as a false idol. Testing is one part of the equation. It's a complex part of the equation itself, but there's only one part of the equation. Because if I tested you today, Erin, you could be a negative. And then if I tested you tomorrow, you could be positive. So the test doesn't tell you everything. It tells you a point in time.

The antibody test is interesting, which we still don't have, obviously, in sufficient amounts either. It’s a little more interesting on one level that it could tell you at least historically if you've been exposed or not, and that's valuable information, but that's not perfect information either, but it is at least a little more a broader time-frame. I think the challenge is that testing helps as part of an overall strategy, but it doesn't per se save a life. If the testing is negative today positive tomorrow, the person positive tomorrow now still has the disease and our focus is on how can we help them through it. The testing can give people some valuable information for sure, and it can be part of a larger strategy, but it isn't unto itself enough to save the life. And that's where I think some of the confusion comes in. So I've tried as the layman, let's let Dr. Varma get in and Dr. Barbot, anyone could help clarify further.

Dr. Varma: Great. Thank you very much. I do think the kind of key messages to think about are that we use different tools for different types of epidemics. Right now, we're in this storm and the tools that we might use when it's just a little bit rainy or when it's a sunny day have to be used differently. So I think the Mayor has as clearly described that that testing is just a tool. It needs to be combined with the fundamentals of public health. We need to find people who are sick, make sure they're separated. We need to find people who are exposed also separate them, but also monitor them carefully so that if they do get sick, we can get them the care that they need. So I think it's very important for people to understand that during this very difficult time where there is a major storm we can't use all of those tools the way we want to, but we need to plan for that. We don't know if the technology that we want is going to be there. We don't know if all of the supplies are going to be there, but if we don't plan aggressively now, we won't be ready to turn that on the moment they are ready. So I think one of the key messages for people to understand is different tools for different times. But we also need to plan to use those tools as effectively as we can when the time comes.

Mayor: You go, and then I want to ask you both something to add to the question.

Commissioner Barbot: So what I'll add to what Dr. Varma laid out, and Mr. Mayor, what you laid out is if we look at this from the big picture, if you envision the curve of this epidemic as a rough bell shape curve, the utility of wide-scale testing in the very beginning is to contain the outbreak and to try and minimize the number of people that are affected and our efforts at that were severely hampered by what happened at the federal government and not having testing widely available. Strategically, again, on the big picture perspective, the utility of having large scale testing as you're going the other end of the curve is to help speed that process up so that if we think back to the weather chart that the Mayor put up and, and looking at, you know, is it cloudy or is it sunny? That wide-scale testing is going to help speed that downward trend as much as possible, so that as Dr. Varma said, we can find individuals who are symptomatic, provide them the opportunities and the wraparound services for them to remain in isolation, in quarantine so that we can further accelerate having fewer and fewer infections in the city.

Mayor: So thank you doctor. So this is just a playoff of Erin's question. I think, and again, the fact that this is so for all of us, hard to make sense of all the pieces, it’s not just testing everything else is because, I keep coming back to this: here's a disease – if I had said coronavirus to you six months ago, you would have any one of us would have stared blankly back and say, what are you talking about? It's a disease that didn't even exist as far as we know in this form half a year ago. And there is literally no one on the earth who fully understands it. So we're all playing catch-up here but I think what is clear, and I'm going to try it as the layman and let my two colleagues respond to it, is since we don't even have the testing on the level we want and we have had to from day one ration testing in a way, none of us wanted to do. We have that problem. But then there's also the problem of what the testing can tell you. And what it can't tell you. As I said none of it is perfect. We don't have the antibody testing on a wide scale and that will tell you something about people's past exposure, but it doesn't even guarantee you couldn't get sick again. We think it suggests it, but we don't know it. On the regular testing, that doesn't guarantee what's going to happen tomorrow.

So one of the things that all the doctors have talked about is, you know, to focus on symptoms which is least tangible. If someone has symptoms, then you want them to immediately isolate. You want them to, you know, have a different situation with the people that are living in their household with. And this is something we're going to really focus on. If you're living under the same roof with someone, a positive test tells you something for sure, but symptoms tell you something also. And symptoms are really obviously visible, and that's when you want to make sure there's as much separation as possible to help people through and make sure more people don't get infected. But now, you know, the evidence from the last week or so about asymptomatic transmission, you know, that finally now has some scientific backing. Well that's another curveball too. And the fact that someone can be on that scale of, you know, starting to, I'm going to use again my imperfect layman's words, but starting on the pathway to being infected and being able to infect others, but it might not even show up on a test. So we're constantly trying to figure out how to make this simple and common sense that people respond to that, what they're experiencing even when we don't have enough testing. But even that is complicated because this disease, it is, you know, I keep saying it's a very clever disease. It doesn't give you a clear target a lot of the time. So I'm trying to bring something out. Maybe the doctors can help me about the fact that we know testing would help, but part of why it's not a silver bullet is even with the testing, you don't get always the full picture. You want to try that one.

Dr. Varma: Yeah, I’ll sort of emphasize two points. One is to remind people about – for this type of infection, there are really two types of tests that we have. One tells you whether the person has like an active infection and is likely to infect other people. That's the test that you're hearing about most commonly. The second is a test to see whether or not you've been exposed at some point in the past. And it may also help you know whether or not you’re safe and won't get infected again. Unfortunately, what makes this challenging for us and what makes this challenging for all of you is that there is a lot of uncertainty. Everything we're telling you has a but, or, except for. And so, we really need, you know, everybody in this fight. We need the scientists in this fight to help us get clarity to all of that. So, I think that's one point.

The second point is, in addition to the innovation that we need in testing, we need some innovations to our regular tools. Our normal approach, whether you have a, let's say, an STD or HIV or tuberculosis is to find the person who's infected, interview them carefully to find out all of the people who might've been exposed to them, and monitor them and inform them also. But when you have a disease like this, which is so contagious, that it spreads through everybody. We need to figure out a way to do that, not just with the people that we have, but with modern technologies. And so one of the things that we're working very actively on is trying to learn from the practices that are being used in other countries that are going through this as well as find out our own innovations that are adapted to New York. So, it's innovations in the testing and it's in innovations in the information technology as well as our tried and true experts in public health that together are going to really make us move to those first to the rainy session and then ultimately to the sunny days.

Mayor: Both of you, one more thing, I’m just playing off this. On the point that and again, I think the asymptomatic, again, another horrible wrinkle in this and still not fully understood to say the least. The guidance that was put out by the Health Department was based on, you know, initial research. But that doesn't mean we have the full picture in any way, shape, or form. But this point about – in the absence of the testing that we should have, the kind of numbers and quantity, you know, availability, that can only happen as best we understand it with a strong federal intervention, and we've never had that in the absence of it, trying our best to help people protect themselves and their families. I think the symptoms has been the one thing that's been evident and strong and a lot of people can make sense of, but we've got to keep communicating more and more what you do once someone in the household has the symptoms and how to navigate that.

I think in a world where there's not enough testing and there may be substantial asymptomatic transmission, you know, it's incredibly frustrating and challenging and difficult for everyone. But I think it's fair to say the one thing that you kind of have some consistency on is when it does manifest, there's something you can do and we've got to help everyone. We've got to keep getting more information out. We got to keep getting people in more dialogue about that. We've got to help people navigate it and people have to take that guidance and work with it right in their own home. Can either one of you speak to that?

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, no, absolutely, Mr. Mayor. I think that we have over the course of this outbreak evolved our guidance as the science has become available and it's important for individuals to have a low threshold for recognizing the early onset of symptoms, cough, fever, sore throat. We're learning more from our frontline colleagues that you know, what happened during the allergy season sometimes got misconstrued as allergies. So things like postnasal drip may have been early symptoms of COVID-19. That being said, recognizing symptoms early, isolating early, and ensuring that if you are unable to self-isolate at home, away from other family members, to use face coverings in the home and ensuring that if you are a caretaker of someone in the home that you are taking the proper precautions. And so I think to your point, Mr. Mayor there is as we prepare for coming over the other side of this epidemic, we will need every single New Yorker to be able to recite these recommendations in their sleep. And so we're focused through the Health Department on ensuring that we're leveraging our partners, that we're working with media and we're open to suggestions of any other ways in which we can really spread this message even further.

Mayor: I think that's very important and want to emphasize all the new ways that we announced yesterday we're going to try and reach deeper into communities, but also this point about for those who can isolate in their home and those who can't. I think one of the things we've got to keep focusing on, again – let us pray that our number one focus, which has been preserving and protecting our hospitals to save lives, that we continue to get a little bit of relief on that front and we can put so much more of our energy and resources out into communities, but continuing if, if, if that we continue to have that opportunity, this point about helping family members understand, particularly in a multigenerational home if one is sick of any generation, how to properly isolate and support that individual without creating challenges for the rest of the family members.
And being able to do that with the right information and the right support and literally have someone being able to call a human being a trained clinician and talk it through and get advice on how to do it. But also, as I mentioned in the overview of where we're going to go through these phases, taking that hotel space and using it more and more to support families who need to have a loved one out of the home for a period of time to create more protection for everyone else to date the hotels, the focus again has been preserving and protecting the hospital system and being ready to address the huge percentage of people who are in life and death situations. That's been the focus on the use hotels, using them as places that health care workers could go who couldn't go home to their families, those types of things. Over time particularly we don't need the hotels as much for hospital space. We can open up more space to allow family members to have isolation if they need it. And I think to the discussions that we've had Dr. Varma on what it looks like to move into the new phases, you use things like hotel rooms and quarantine and isolation more and more in that kind of strategy. That's something that could relieve pressure on folks who are in really tight quarters.

Dr. Varma: Yeah, absolutely. I think the, the experience from around the world has been that until you can stop transmission from one person to another, you're never going to get a hold of this. And a lot of that transmission does occur in homes. And New York City is similar to some very, you know, large East Asian cities where we all live in apartments and we live close together and we live with multiple family members. So we need to be able to create opportunities not just for the public's health to be protected but for your family's health to be protected. And so that means if you develop symptoms and there is no way for you to safely be kept in your own apartment in a way where you're not infecting others, we have to create those opportunities. And, and I think as the Mayor has highlighted those opportunities are often a privilege. And we need to recognize that there are so many communities that are so vulnerable to this disease not just because of existing disparities, but also because they don't have the opportunity to do these things in their home. And so it's really incumbent upon us to not just have a strategy that innovates, but also that really addresses the equity issued as well.

Moderator: All right. We're going to finish up there for today.

Mayor: Okay, good. Yeah. Thank you. And everyone just to finish to say this I said the other day, but I want to keep emphasizing this is a long, tough battle. But there are a lot of heroes. Health care workers have been heroes. Our first responders have been heroes, but really everyday New Yorkers, you've been heroes too because you've really done an amazing job practicing social distancing, handling shelter in place, making it work. God bless you all. It has not been easy, but you're doing it. You're the heroes in this fight too. And we can get to that better place. We really can, but it's going to take a lot of hard work, lot of devotion. Keep doing what you're doing. Simple message – keep doing what you're doing, double down, and that's the way we get to a better place.

Thank you all.

2020-04-01 NYC Mayor de Blasio Brian Lehrer

Brian Lehrer: It’s the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. And I think we’re going to begin as we usually do on Fridays with our weekly Ask the Mayor segment, my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio. But our line to the Mayor is not yet connected. So, you can give us a call at 212-433-WNYC with your questions for the Mayor. We assume this will be rectified momentarily in the socially distanced world here. 212-433-9692 – or, you can tweet a question, just use the hashtag #AsktheMayor. And the Mayor is here now. Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you very much, Brian.

Lehrer: And, you know, before we get into the latest news and next round of policy decisions, can we take a moment together to simply acknowledge on this Good Friday, day of the crucifixion, whether it's historical or not, and, you know, with the universality of human suffering that it's supposed to represent, at very least to Christians, of a situation behind the numbers. Today, we're likely to hit 5,000 New Yorkers dead from the virus, but that's 5,000 individual lives with therefore tens of thousands of New Yorkers in mourning and who can't even grieve together. It's hard to have the words, but how have you been finding them to express the humanity behind the numbers?

Mayor: Brian, thank you. Thank you for what you said, because I think we're all in the middle of fighting. It literally feels like fighting a war. The number of people we've lost feels like a wartime reality. It's far surpassed the number of people we lost on 9/11, and that's seared in our memory, all of us, that day. And so, I think we're all struggling to make sense of it in the most human terms, because, at this point, you know, every one of us knows people who are suffering from this disease or have suffered. Many, many of us, most of us know people who have passed away, and their families. And it's very personal now. And I think, somehow, we have to – there's this sort of – some struggle going on in all of us to figure out how to acknowledge that humanity while fighting this war, because everyone's in this, everyone is in one form or another trying to save each other and help each other and help their families, because even a person who, you know, goes out with a face covering on, or a person who makes sure everyone around them is socially distancing, or any of those things is contributing to finally pushing back this disease and saving lives. But, at the same time, we all are in, like, a suspended state of grief, because it's so intense, it's so total, it's hard to even make sense of. It's so, just, constant, and it grows. And so, I think the holiday season is a very, very important prism to understand this, because when you think about Passover, when you think about Good Friday and Easter, there is an eternalness to the messages that come with those days and the faith that tell us of people's struggles and how they overcame them, and tell us of people's values, sort of, triumphing over the adversity and the pain in the world. So, I think it's – this whole episode has been so horrible, but the fact that it is overlapping these holy days and these days where people really, kind of, dig deep into their faith. And someone said it a few days ago, that we're all almost being pushed back toward what our ancestors lived in those biblical times, in the sense of there's scarcity, there's fear, there's so much less, and yet people are holding on to their faith and their values and each other and supporting each other. So, even in this pain, there's like – there's something noble – there’s something noble in this city.

Lehrer: That's a good thought. Thank you for that.

Mayor: Thank you.

Lehrer: I read you're now saying social distancing will continue until at least mid-May and it'll take widespread testing of New Yorkers to safely reopen things very much. Is that scenario, widespread testing for the virus or antibiotic antibodies to the virus, of the general population by mid-May, not just people who are sick at that time?

Mayor: So, there's basically two phases here. We'd be very lucky if it's mid-May. I want to first level set for the people of this city.

Lehrer: That's new isn't it?

Mayor: Well, no. I think some heard my remarks yesterday where I tried to really put a lot of guardrails on it and cautions on it and they sort of jumped in the most optimistic version. So, I've been saying – unfortunately, I've had to say it for weeks, you know, expect a very tough April. And for a while there it looked like May might even be worse. Knock on wood, Brian, it’s looking like May could be better than April, but we just don't know enough yet. We've had some good days of progress in terms of what's happening in our hospitals. At the same time, as you said, we're losing a lot of people, you know, who had gotten infected earlier. So, it's just not time to get in any way to assume we now have like a clean, clear picture of what's going to happen in the next few weeks – that's premature. But what is possible, what is possible is to go through April into May and see enough progress to start, you know, thinking about and start acting on some changes to take small steps towards normalcy. But they'd get to the testing, we would need a lot more testing to get to that next phase. So, the three phases we talked about are right now this kind of community transmission, widespread, which is what we're experiencing right now. Low level transmission is the stage we need to get to next where it's much less frequent and we can actually trace each case, and this is where the testing, you know, must be available on a broader level than anything we have now to be able to do deep – you know, that disease detective work we talked about in the beginning of this crisis. And it was possible when there were only a few cases.
We need to get back to that level where we can trace every single case, find everyone who might've been exposed, test all of them, contain them, give them a quarantine if they need it. And then, that pushes us down to the point of basically no transmission, where there's basically no new cases except for occasional ones that come in from people traveling into the city or traveling out of the city. That's the sequence we have to go through. That last part, to sustain it, you need really widespread testing to be available. And that's what we saw to some extent in South Korea, that was part of what they used to overcome this, or, at least, to, you know, have some success. So, Brian, right now, the history of testing is just so painful here. If we had it in the beginning, it would have changed everything. It might've allowed us to really contain this disease. We all know the federal government was, you know, not doing what we needed them to do, did not provide the testing here or anywhere else. And we still don't have it. We still don't have it on the level we need even to get to that next phase to really be secure, that we can trace every single case as they come up while protecting our health care workers, while protecting our first responders. So, we need more and we need everyone to stay tight, tight with the social distancing, with the shelter in place in the meantime to really double down on it to get to that next and better phase, somewhere between May and June.

Lehrer: And I read that you'll begin to publish real-time information on COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations beginning Monday to better track data that will determine when coronavirus restrictions can be lifted. The Daily News has that, maybe others – will you be putting out new kinds of data?

Mayor: Yeah, so what we're doing is in some ways new and in some ways we think clearer and more reliable than some of what has been available previously. And this has been how – this crisis, someday we're going to go back and understand that how little time passed between it being just an initial crisis we were all trying to make sense of and then being in the thick of it. It was literally just a few weeks. And the data, although crucial, was not always accurate and consistent, because data collection, obviously, was a lot less of a central point – a central focus, I should say, compared to saving our hospitals, saving the lives of people who needed the ventilators and the doctors and the nurses to be where they need them to be. But now, because we've had a little bit of a pause here, a little bit of an improvement and it’s allowed people to regroup, we will be putting out data starting Monday. It'll be very clear about COVID-related or suspected COVID-related hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and percentages of people testing positive. And looking around the city, it's quite clear it will portray the disparities that we're already seeing. There's no question about that and that's very sad. But what is important strategically, Brian, is that we've said if those three indicators – this is what our health leadership believes very, very strongly – if those three indicators go down in unison for, say 10 days to two weeks consistently, that is when we can start to discuss changes in the restrictions we have. But even then, it's partial, it's careful. We're not going to – no one is saying “go back to normal.” I don't even know what normal will be after this and I think we're all going to have to work to define that. And I'll be talking to New Yorkers about that in the coming days. But the point is, you're going to see it very publicly, daily, three indicators. If they're moving unevenly, if some are going up, some are going down or they're only flat, not enough. All three have to go down in unison for at least 10 days to two weeks to be able to see our way to the next phase.

Lehrer: So, that's a good frame for our listeners to know how to begin to watch the numbers, starting next week. And also, a good warning for how long it's going to take. Gideon in Englewood, you're on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hello, Gideon.

Question: Hello. Hello, Mr. de Blasio. I wanted to ask you a question about the subway system in the city.

Lehrer: And Gideon, forgive me, just for the reference for the context for our listeners. You told our screener, you're the director of a medical clinic in Brooklyn?

Question: Yes, I am.

Lehrer: Okay. Go ahead.

Question: Okay. I'm a doctor. I direct a medical clinic in Downtown Brooklyn and every single member of my medical staff and clinical staff – a total of 14 people – use the subway system to get to work. And also, many of my patients, the ones who can't be seen by video, have told me about intolerable overcrowding on the subway platforms while waiting for long periods of time for the trains, which are routinely packed with passengers as well as containing homeless people who are lying down on the benches occupying multiple seats. This makes your mandate to observe social distancing impossible, Mr. Mayor –

Lehrer: Whoops, go ahead. Finish that thought.

Question: And endangers dangerous my staff of essential workers and often medically impaired patients of advanced age – makes as social distancing impossible.

Lehrer: And let me get you a response, Gideon. And, Mr. Mayor, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that we've been getting calls like this. I'm sure you've been getting reports like this with the subways running as infrequently as they are now largely because of staff shortages because of subway workers out sick. The subways are actually not a good place to do social distancing and these are the people who have to go to work or are sick.

Mayor: Yeah, Gideon, thank you for the call and it's very, very painful to hear. And I don't think we're getting the whole truth on this one. I'm very frustrated by this because I spoke to the head of the MTA, Pat Foye, I think it was actually after the show last week, I believe, when these issues came up as well. And I know him a long time and I respect him and he affirmed to me that this was a very limited problem. And I don't understand how we can say that when I have all through the week heard these reports. Again, look, we have got to be clear here, this is a crisis and we all have to work together. The MTA is run by the State of New York. I'm going to immediately go back to Pat Foye, to the State, and ask them how on earth if people are experiencing this, how come it's not being more clearly acknowledged so we can act on it together?

Lehrer: And what could be done?

Mayor: Well, look, I mean, I think we’ve got to, all of us, work together to figure this out, but it begins with if the frequency of the trains is a problem, is there anything that could be done? I mean, at this point, it's horrible what everyone's going through, but, you know, is there any way to run more trains where they are needed? It may not, of course, be everywhere. It may be certain times a day or certain lines, but if that is what's going to protect people, we should do that. If the trains can't be run, can we run buses on those lines as an alternative? Again, I don't run the MTA, I can't speak for them, but I can say that the solutions to me would be either more trains in the right places or more personnel to avoid the overcrowding and make sure people are spread out, or more buses. Now, I've told the NYPD I want them to be at are part of the solution to. This is the part of the equation I do a control, that the NYPD needs to be where there are problems. For example, I know there were certain stations in the Bronx, 149th Street, as an example, where there were specific problems and my instruction to Commissioner Shea was send the NYPD in to make sure there is not overcrowding on the trains or the platform. Spread people out, tell people, you know, don't get on that train yet, hold people from getting into the station of the stations too crowded – the kinds of things that can be done if there's leadership and supervision on site.

Lehrer: [Inaudible] have to wait for an hour and a half to get on a train in that scenario?

Mayor: It's horrible, Brian. But look, we are talking about protecting people's lives. And I know a lot of that people on the train are health care workers, first responders, people we need to get to work, but we also can't endanger them and everyone else by failing to practice social distancing. And it's like – it's literally, to the extent where you’re seeing any progress, and we are seeing some, it is because people took social distancing and shelter in place seriously. So, we cannot break out of that without endangering – one of the things, Brian, I really warned people about yesterday morning when I went in detail over these phases and where we're going is, if we are not careful, this is a disease that can reassert and you can have a resurgence and that's the worst of all worlds. So, we have to practice social distancing. I would say, I'm going to talk to Pat Foye at the MTA, can they increase service on certain lines, especially I would assume, during certain hours or shift changes of medical workers and other folks? Can they – if subways are not a good option, can they do buses and really publicize that that will be available. If they need more PD help, we will provide it where they need it. The homeless piece is very real too and we have sent out our outreach workers even in the midst of all this to try and get homeless folks to come into shelter, and some have, but there's some that, unfortunately, you know, because of mental health and other reasons are very, very resistant. But you have to have enough space, for example, on the subways, really clear limits to how many people can be in each train. So, that has not been done yet. I think to do it more clearly, that there should be no more than whatever it is – 20 people or whatever it is – is the right number on a subway car that allows proper distancing. I'll talk to the MTA about making that standard clear and more public, because I think it's got to be abided.

Lehrer: Okay. Amir in Jackson Heights. You're on a WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Amir.

Question: Hello. Good morning, gentlemen. How are you today?

Lehrer: Okay.

Question: So, I have a couple of – I have two points. So, last week I called in and I asked you, Mr. Mayor, about having – canceling rent. You see, this should have been in my opinion, priority number one, two, and three.

Lehrer: If you got on with the Mayor last week, I just want to say, you're a lucky guy on call-in roulette. We might have to start a quota, so lots of New Yorkers have access to the Mayor on different weeks. But go ahead and ask your follow up.

Question: So, I called and I tried to – I asked you about having a canceling the rent. You're telling us that this might go on until May – excuse me, I'm a little sick – this might go on until May. And I feel like we need to have to cancel the rent. That's just my first point, I want to see where we are on that. And then two –

Lehrer: And you're a NYCHA residents, so this is why your question goes to the Mayor – not a private landlord, correct?

Question: Exactly. So, my second point is, how about trying to get the rent canceled for NYCHA residents at the very least? [Inaudible] suffering, I lost my job, I still have to pay rent, and I'm just wondering why can't we get that? At the very least, NYCHA residents are some of the poorest residents in New York City, the most vulnerable residents in New York City. Let's get the rent canceled for the very least until June.

Lehrer: And Mr. Mayor, we get one form or another of this question for whatever public official is on every single day.

Mayor: Of course, you do. And it's – so, first of all, Amir, I want to start at the beginning, you said you were sick. I want to make sure you're okay and, you know, that you have the information you need and you know what to do if your sickness has anything to do with the symptoms of coronavirus. So, I just want to check, are you okay?

Question: I'm fine. I’m taking the quarantine seriously and staying home and wearing a mask. So, I'm fine. I had a little fever a few days ago, but nothing life-threatening so far so good. I’ll be here to call you next week.

[Laughter]

Mayor: Amir, if there's any problem, and if you have your own doctor, that's great. But if you don't, you can call 3-1-1 and get connected to a doctor at Health + Hospitals if you need any guidance. Okay. So, there's a broader idea of a rent moratorium. That's something that the State only has the power to act on. There's this specific idea of a rent freeze for the over 2 million New Yorkers who live in rent stabilized housing. I think that's an idea that makes sense. We're working through how to act on that because that's something that has been done in the past in times of economic distress. Clearly, this is the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. I think it's quite clear why a rent freeze makes sense. And then on NYCHA, it's a really good point. NYCHA is obviously, Amir struggling in general to keep going because of all the history of disinvestment over decades. So, what I will do is get an answer today. It's a very fair request. It's against the backdrop of, you know, an organization that 400,000 people are depending upon for their housing. And it's something I'm pretty certain we could only do with federal approval because all the public housing is chartered by the federal government. But it's a very, very fair request and I'll get an answer on that today.

Lehrer: And Amir, thank you for your call. We may block your next week, but thank you for your calls. I'm glad you said that thing about 3-1-1, if you don't have a primary care physician. Because the WNYC and Gothamist report this week that I know your administration has noticed, that the number of people dying at home has gone from about 20 a day to 200 a day in the city. Presumably a lot of that is because COVID patients who aren't in the hospital are succumbing at home. And I have a theory about that, which is that people who don't have private primary care physicians, who are there to be attentive to them and give them the warning signs about what they're walking or breathing might feel like for when it's time to go to the hospital or take that next step toward going to the hospital. People who don't have those primary care physicians might be primarily the ones who are dying at home because they're not going for in person medical attention quickly enough. I don't know if that's the case, but I have that theory. So, I think that it's important that people know that 3-1-1 is a last ditch option for getting to a primary care physician.

Mayor: Yes. And let me, you're making a powerful point. I’m just going to take a second to explain this. You're right on the money that there are so many New Yorkers, let's be clear. You know, a year and a half ago I announced that we were doing guaranteed health care for all New Yorkers and it really brings out the larger facts here, the disparities that we're talking about that are underlying this crisis. So, a year and a half ago, the number was 600,000 New Yorkers who had no insurance at all. And about half of them were because they're undocumented folks who could not legally get health insurance. What I put in motion then was a plan that's been growing since then that everyone gets coverage. If you can afford health insurance, we came up with lower cost and easier options. If you couldn't afford it or you didn't qualify because you're undocumented, you could get an NYC Care card, get assigned a primary physician at our public hospitals and clinics and get regular care like everyone deserves. So, it's a version of universal health care.

And I think what's happening in this whole horrible tragedy with COVID-19 is that we are seeing just how devastating it is when a country does not have health care available to all, regardless of income and regardless of documentation status, that people are made very, very vulnerable. So, I think you're exactly right. Brian, I think it's one part people who don't have a primary care physician. I think that's another part, people who are immigrants, undocumented or documented, who have been made afraid by the actions of the Trump administration, they're afraid to go and access services that were, once you know, much more common for them to turn to. We have things like the horrible public charge rule and of course the ICE raids that have contributed. And I think a lot of people have gotten into a culture of understandably, a culture of fear where they hold back. And I think its endangered lives.

So, the answer, first and foremost, to the point you raised about can people turn for help? Yes. You can always turn to 3-1-1 and if you say, you know, I'm in danger. If it's a right now danger, you're going to be transferred to 9-1-1 and an ambulance will get sent. If it’s a danger where you're trying to get help from a doctor, see if it might be a situation where you're in enough danger, you might need to be tested or hospitalized, then 3-1-1, we'll plug you in, we'll sort of patch you through right away, live to a Health + Hospitals clinician who will talk to the individual and they can do it in multiple languages, to see if they need immediate care or coach them through. Now, we announced a few days ago and seeing all these disparities fully documented now and clear and the Latino community, unfortunately particularly bearing the brunt and then the African American community. That we're doing a new plan that's going to involve a lot more grassroots outreach in multiple languages, to educate people, get them support. But also try to much more deeply provide that calling capacity, that a person can talk to a clinician. I want this to be much more widely available because I think a lot of people need answers, need coaching, need to just, need reassurance. But they also need to be able to ask questions and have a trained person answer them in real time. And I think that's going to help protect folks who otherwise are just living with a lot of fear and confusion and they need a trained person to help them through it.

Lehrer: Good. I'm glad we got that out clearly and in a little more length. We're getting a number of tweets from people in the Streetsblog community asking why you can't close miles and miles of streets to allow for easier social distancing while walking? They say Oakland, California did it. I know I've had the experience walking around in my neighborhood with, you know, me and my neighbors bobbing and weaving around each other on New York City streets so we can keep six feet. And most people are trying to do it. And not everybody is as attentive to keeping the six feet from the people in their neighborhoods. So it is a challenge when you go out, you know, in a lot of parts of the city, even if everybody's trying to do it, to keep that social distancing. So, can you do something like that or what would the impediments be?

Mayor: So, it's a very fair question. I'm not familiar with the Oakland model. I'll look into that today. The original proposal was to have – sort of based on the Summer Streets, where certain ones were closed off that people would use and, in many ways, congregate around. That, although it was a noble underpinning to that idea, the fear that I had and the NYPD had, and our folks at Emergency Management and our Health people, everyone was worried that we would create new focal points for gathering. And that we couldn't properly enforce it. Because remember, in the beginning of social distancing, we were really trying to teach people a new way of being. And we had to focus on all the places that people go. I mean you just told the story of the subways, which is very distressing and so we need to keep enforcement because enforcement is crucial here, focused where there are problems and we only have so much enforcement available. And obviously, you know, the NYPD had a lot of personnel out. They are starting to come back in bigger numbers, thank God.

But it's been a challenge where there's been a lot of enforcement to do and fewer people to do it with and a huge city. So, the original concept of having those Summer Streets, we tried it. We didn't get a great control model because of weather, but we also realized it was taking up a lot of enforcement. So, we said this just can't work at this moment, certainly with NYPD and other agencies depleted. But I do get the point like wouldn't it be great if just there was lots of space for everyone to walk around? It would be great if it did not cause gatherings and therefore create new problems. And it would be great if there was not the problem of all the stuff that still has to keep happening. Obviously emergency vehicles are being called on constantly. All the food deliveries, the things that have to keep happening. We have to be careful that we cannot create a situation where we clog all of that up. So, I'm going to look at the model further, but to date the answer is, and I'm going to hold with this answer today -- it is not enforceable, the way we need it to be. And it disrupts other things we need desperately in this moment. And finally, Brian, I think people are going through the bobbing and weaving. I've done it. Everyone's doing it. I know it's inconvenient and strange and some people are not perfect at it, but I've seen really, really good follow through by New Yorkers. I said the other day, New Yorkers are the heroes of why we're seeing this change. The fact that we've seen even a few days of progress is because 8.6 million people in unison, actually stuck to, overwhelmingly, the overwhelming majority stuck to shelter in place and social distancing and learned an entirely new way of life in a matter of weeks. And they're doing it and they're doing it with just tremendous decency and kindness. So, we can make it work under current conditions. But I'll always be looking at, you know, any other innovations going forward that would help us do it better.

Lehrer: One more call Mustafa in Harlem, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Mustafa.

Question: Hello. How are you doing? Good morning Mr. Brian, good morning Mr. Mayor.

Lehrer: Thank you for calling.

Question: Thank you very much. Long time listener, first time caller. [Inaudible] pass away, God bless them. [Inaudible] I live here in Harlem. I was homeless for the last three years. [Inaudible] Everything is closed now, so I [inaudible] very difficult time. I know it's difficult to talk about that but I will need help. I'm 60 years old. I just don't have [inaudible] but that's my problem. Okay. [Inaudible]. Too many people die. I said God bless. [Inaudible]

Lehrer: And Mustafa I hear your concern for the whole city. Is your concern for yourself that you're homeless and with the restaurants and stores closed where you might've taken some shelter before, you have nowhere to go that isn't too crowded like a City homeless shelter where you'll be in close quarters with people? Is that your question?

Question: Yes. Like I said, I was homeless for last two years, it's a long story. I used to [inaudible] my homelessness without problem because everything is open. I could go to the mosque, you know the [inaudible]. But when COVID came, everything is closed. I have no more chance to [inaudible] I need help. I am a 60-year-old [inaudible].

Lehrer: And what a New York story, Mr. Mayor. He was managing, his words, if you couldn't hear him, managing his homelessness well enough for him over the last several years through the mosque, through stores. Now, he has nowhere to go that isn't crowded.

Mayor: Mustafa, thank you so much for calling and please, please stay on the line. So WNYC can help us find a way to reach you today. And we can, two nights have you in a safe place. We have right now, we've made sure there is a lot of safe, clean places available for people who are struggling. And I want you to be in a safe place tonight. I want our people to follow up with you today. Come find you and get you the help you need. I think what Mustafa said and thank you for your concern Mustafa, for everyone else too. I heard your words and they were very powerful. But I also think Brian, it is a New York story and it's a – there's a bigger point here I'm feeling as I listen, which is, here's Mustafa, who obviously is a very heartfelt, a decent human being and an intelligent person who, you know, whatever has happened in his life, whatever way he ended up being on the street, we have to help him back from the street permanently.

And this is something that we were working on before this crisis. We announced a vision called the Journey Home to end permanent street homelessness. There's no reason anybody who's been on the street for a long time like him should be when we now have Safe Havens and permanent affordable housing we can get people to. But it takes an intensive effort to reach people and convince them that it will be safe for them and it will work for them. But what a comment that someone like this who is so composed, so clear in what he's saying, somehow something that his life led him to the street. It should not be that way. And the one thing I can say in this crisis is we have a place for everyone. I guarantee you we have a place for everyone. More than ever, we have gone out of our way to make sure there's more capacity for anyone who needs a roof over their head. No one will be turned away. And we need -- and then going forward out of this crisis I want us to end that long term, that permanent street homelessness. That has been a horrible feature for decades in the city. As we think about the future, as we think about rebuilding and recovery, we need to disrupt the patterns of disparity that have dominated this city for generations. And it begins with not allowing the street homelessness that somehow became a norm over decades. It should not be a norm going forward

Lehrer: And Mustafa hang on. We will take your contact information off the air or in, you know, with whatever it takes, put you in touch with the Mayor's Office so you can take that invitation to get personal help. And we're over time. Mr. Mayor –

Mayor: Just one point, Brian, about Mustafa who – when your people talk to them, tell them to say exactly where he is. Our people will be calling you right after this. And we want to send outreach workers to him right where he is right now.

Lehrer: Great. And we are over time, but one policy follow up to that is I know that advocates for the homeless have been calling on you to open 30,000 of the 100,000 vacant hotel rooms, estimated 100,000 to prevent the spread or COVID-19 among both homeless New Yorkers and shelter staff. Can the City make those 30,000 hotel rooms available to them? That's from Vocal New York.

Mayor: Yeah. There's, clearly first of all, the first reality I want me to clear - what are we doing with hotel rooms? We are creating hospitals for the potential that we're going to have a real massive surge still in this disease. We are making sure that hospital workers and first responders have a place to be if they need to be away from their families. But that is to say that, you know, we have some immediate needs we must take care of to protect this city and protect all the people in this city. But we also have to make sure of course, that we ensure that any time there has to be a use of hotels to keep people safe who are in shelter, we'll do that. We have in shelter now, a lot of specific procedures have been placed to protect people. We should be careful that in moving large numbers of people around, there are their own challenges. And we have to be really smart about that. And I think Commissioner Steve Banks, who's been a champion for the homeless for literally 30 years or more, he is the person managing this and making sure that where we need to use additional hotel space, we will. But there are other cases where that would not be the best thing in terms of keeping people safe. And we need to be really balanced in that approach. So, where we need beds, we'll use them. I trust Steve Banks and the people at Homeless Services to figure out when they need them, when we can keep people safe where they are. We don't want to artificially move large numbers of people around because again that creates its own dangers in a time of social distancing and shelter in place.

Lehrer: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I hope you and your family find your ways to enjoy Easter and talk to you next week.

Mayor: And the same to you Brian. Same to all New Yorkers. A happy Easter. Let's find a way even though it's not a happy time, let's find a way to celebrate each other, people of all faiths in this holiday season and support each other.

2020-04-10 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Before we get started, I just wanted you to see this. This is what one of the hospital beds will look like here in the center opening today. And again, a lot of you were here eight, nine days ago – it was all tennis courts. And I want to just thank everyone who did this work so quick. I'll talk about some of them in a moment, but this is an amazing transformation. When we were here, it felt like, you know, normal times – a sports facility. I heard they were going to change it and get it ready quickly. I didn't expect this much to happen so vividly. I mean, this is amazing that this was all here now, ready to see the first patient coming in today. It’s going to build out quickly. I wanted you to just see that out of a tennis court suddenly we have a hospital and it's a testament to everyone who has been doing this work that they could do this so quickly and so effectively.

I also want to say meeting the medical personnel was very, very moving. These are folks who reminded me of the experience I've had in the last few days meeting the military medical personnel. These are civilians, but they came here because they love New York City and they wanted to help New York City in our hour of need. They came here because they knew this was the epicenter of a national crisis. And in fact, the group that is joining us here, the doctors and nurses, all the medical personnel that are here, they understood exactly that they were coming here to relieve Elmhurst Hospital and Queens Hospital that had been through the toughest stuff of any hospitals. And they wanted to be a part of that fight, they wanted to help where the need was greatest. And I went around and asked people where they're from and we have a lot of people from Florida, South Carolina. We had folks from Oregon, just talked to the guy from Omaha, Nebraska who said he left his wife and three children because he knew – he told them this was something he had to do for his country and for the country's largest city, and he'll be back when this fight is over. But he did it because he cared about saving lives here. And the most interesting of all was a woman from Anchorage, Alaska, who has come all the way here to help folks in need in Queens. So, it was very, very moving.

So, everybody, let me start – there we go – let me start by saying obviously today on Good Friday, it's a very holy time of year for so many New Yorkers. People are celebrating Passover. Today, Good Friday, Easter is this Sunday. For so many New Yorkers, it is a time of year that in normal times we look forward to, we plan the whole year around, and what do we think of, we think of not only faith and not only tradition and things that guide us in good times and bad, but we think of our families. We think of those gatherings that are some of our fondest moments every year. The things we really remember and feel throughout our lives. Every one of us. When I say to you, think about Easter, think about Passover, you have memories going back your whole life, your childhood, and for the first time that I can remember for so many families, we can't do that. And thank God people are using, you know, FaceTime and Skype and Zoom and whatever they can get their hands on to connect with each other. But it's not the same. It's painful to not have that closeness to each other the way we're used to. But there's something about this time of year that I believe is fortifying and strengthening New Yorkers because we're listening to the meaning of those stories, of scripture, and of all the traditions, and of all the family rituals, everything that we've known all our lives in some way prepared us for today. And when you look at faith and when you look at the lessons, so many of them are about people fighting adversity, fighting overwhelming odds, trying to find something in themselves that was strong and good even when faced with massive challenges. And the message through all of our faiths is to love each other, to support each other, to be charitable to each other, to understand each other, to feel empathy for each other. All of the faiths come back to that.

So this is a time that we could be angry. We have every right to be angry and frustrated. We can't do the things we're used to and we need our families right now so much and we can't have that connection the same way and yet all that we've learned from our families, all that we've learned from our faiths and our traditions was telling us exactly how to persevere in a moment like this, to dig deep and find that wellspring of hope and belief and that ability to be there for each other. And that's what New Yorkers are doing. I keep saying the heroes are everyday New Yorkers who are finding a way to do things I think we would have thought literally impossible. The people who turned this tennis center into a hospital in a matter of days, the people who every day are protecting and serving us. The first responders, the health care workers, all these people going so far above and beyond, but it's the everyday people who are helping us turn the tide and fight back this disease. The everyday people deserve credit, to everyday New Yorkers who are taking to heart this common mission, 8.6 million people, the most diverse place on Earth with one goal in common to fight back this disease and save each other. That's what I'm seeing every day. And then to know that help is always coming from the rest of our nation, that only reminds us further that our faith is well placed in each other.

So, here we celebrate against the backdrop of pain, the goodness in each other. And it brings us right back to this place that was a tennis center and now is a hospital. So, we're right here in the epicenter of this disease and we've learned a lot in the last few days. Sometimes we face a challenge or crisis and we say everyone is equally affected. Sometimes a crisis is the great equalizer. Well, that's not true with the coronavirus. Yes, every community is affected. No doubt, every ZIP code, every neighborhood, so many families of every background. True. All of New York is suffering. We all know someone who has been lost. We all know people who are sick. We all know families that are suffering. But in the last few days, the disparities are sharper and clearer than ever before. And unfortunately, this disease has found every problem in our society, every inequality and gone right deep into it and exacerbated it. And so here in Queens we see that folks who are low income are suffering. Folks who have not had enough access to health care because health care is still given out according to how much money you have in this country, and especially immigrant New Yorkers have suffered some because of language barrier, but many I am convinced because they've been pushed away in recent years from the support that they deserve just as human beings and New Yorkers, they've been told to be afraid because of what's happening all over our country. A lot of them had been so fearful, whether it's an ICE raid or any effort to take away their rights, their benefits, the things their family depended on. A lot of folks have turned inward out of fear. There's no question in my mind that's part of what's happening here and part of why this part of Queens has been hit so hard.

Everyone at Elmhurst Hospital, Queens Hospital have been just amazing heroes in this fight. We need to support them all the way through. No one thinks this is going to be over soon. It's going to take a lot more fight but getting them some relief, a place like this, to draw off some of the patients, getting them the military medical personnel who have served so nobly already, all of that is helping us against the backdrop of those horrible disparities. It's helping us to make sure that one thing is fair and equal, that every New Yorker will be treated the same. When they come to get health care, they will get it regardless of ZIP code, regardless of background, regardless of ability to pay, no one will be turned away. That's what we believe in. That is what we are doing.

So here, this originally was going to be a 350-bed facility. The team here has done an outstanding job. They are now going to create a 470-bed facility. Last week we believed there would not be capacity for ICU beds. Now they are adding ICU beds – 20 to begin with. As I said, first wards, beds opening today, first patients coming today, and then they'll build out in the coming days. I want to thank everyone, all the good working people who did the work to get this ready. All our good friends at the Department of Parks and Recreation, a lot of parks workers while being careful and practicing the right distancing, they did the work. A lot of work was needed around the site to get ready and they did it. I want to thank all of them and I want to thank them for also helping all of us to stay safe by the work they're doing in the parks to keep everyone enjoying them, but the right way. I want to thank Danny Zausner, the COO of the Billie Jean King Center who's been a fantastic partner in this and his whole team. Billy Sullivan, the CEO of SLSCO, the contractor that's worked to put this together. Thank you to Billy and his whole team. Obviously, Commissioner Deanne Criswell and everyone at Emergency Management, Dr. Mitch Katz and everyone at Health + Hospitals, and the Department of Design and Construction that jumped in here to help make things happen quickly and they're doing the same at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. Thank you to Lorraine Grillo and Jamie Torres Springer and everyone at DDC.

So, New Yorkers have watched as we've transformed – all of us, the City, the State, FEMA, everyone together transformed sites that we think of in everyday life and now they're all turning into medical sites. The Javits Center, of course, up and running the Coler Center on Roosevelt Island, that was a medical site, but one that was not full, now filling up rapidly, relieving the pressure on other H + H facilities. This site in Queens, the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal next week. All of this is building capacity. Now I want to emphasize, even though we are seeing some progress, and we are, we don't know what comes next. With this horrible disease one thing we've learned is to expect the unexpected. So I warned yesterday, you never know when you get a resurgence, you never know if it doesn't move in a straight line. So, we want capacity ready, no matter what and let us pray we don't need some of these facilities to be as much for medical use. Where are we going ahead to those phases I described yesterday with low transmission or no transmission, you need a lot of capacity to quarantine people and isolate people to make that work. So facilities like this, if they're not needed for medical, will be turned into quarantine and isolation facilities to help people get through their own experience with the disease while making sure we don't infect the other members of their family or the people in their life.

So this good work is going to help us hopefully only for a limited time on the medical side, but very much in our progress in fighting this disease as we go into the next phase of low-level transmission. Again, we're not there yet. We're not going to ever suggest we're there until we're there, but we're going to be planning for that phase and this facility will be a part of that phase too. It was said throughout, the goal is to always make sure if we need to, our hospitals can keep building out more and more ICU capacity. They've been doing that. They're going to keep doing that until we're sure that it's not needed. And other kinds of patients would come to places like this.

Now, yesterday I talked about the fact that if we're going to make that next big move – maybe it starts in May, maybe it starts in June – to that low level of transmission, we will need testing and we will need a lot of testing and we'll need more testing than we have right now. And the federal government must step up. We must have not only the antibody testing, which is certainly valuable. We need the traditional coronavirus testing to be able to really implement a strategy to achieve low level transmission and start to get us back to normal. So, I'm going to keep calling on the federal government to focus and produce large scale widespread testing for this country so we can get to the next phase, so we can really start to normalize over time.

But once again, while we're waiting for the federal government to act, we see others coming forward. We've seen private companies come forward in an amazing way. And we're also seeing our colleagues around the country in public life come forward. And this is a beautiful story – a guy I've gotten to know, he's part of the leadership of the U. S. Conference of Mayors, so I've worked with him on the leadership body of the conference of mayors for years now and really like him and really respect him. Mayor Jim Brainard of Carmel, Indiana – this man has been mayor for a long time in Carmel, Indiana. He's someone I respect greatly for what he’s achieved. I've been to his city. He's done amazing things there. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I will let you know that he is a Republican and someone who, as we talk together, our partisan differences melt away all the time. He's someone that I just respect as a good public servant who cares about people. Well, he made the great decision to make sure that his city would help New York City. And we've seen that before, we saw that the Governor of Oregon, Kate Brown; the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, helped make sure that more ventilators would be available for New York. Well now, Carmel, Indiana steps up and they're sending us some of the components that will be needed to provide 50,000 coronavirus tests to New Yorkers that'll be coming over the next few weeks. We’re going to need other components to make it work, and we talked about this yesterday, used the analogy of making a cup of coffee with cream and sugar – we’re going to need all the different pieces. But what Jim is sending us is going to help us immensely. And with the other pieces in place, we'll be able to reach 50,000 New Yorkers. So, Jim, and everyone in Carmel, I want to thank you. It is wonderful to see the support from the heartland of our country. You're doing something really important for New York City. We're all feeling it, especially at this holiday season. We are so appreciative for your wonderful kind gesture and it's going to help save lives here in New York City. So, God bless you all. Let's see if our federal government can be as effective as Mayor Jim Brainard in Carmel, Indiana in getting us testing.

Another important piece of the puzzle will be thermometers. Going forward, as we move into lower-level transmission thermometers are big part of it, because you will do a lot more monitoring of people. But in the meantime, we are delivering more and more thermometers to our agencies, our city agencies to make sure we're constantly testing. Folks are on the front line, doing such vital works – so there’s thermometer's now that have been delivered to our Department of Education enrichment centers for the children of first responders and health care workers. Thermometers have been delivered to the Department of Corrections; to the Administration for Children's Services for the work they do, including the juvenile detention work; to our 9-1-1 call centers, which is so important, because they're keeping so much running; obviously, for first responders as well – a central goal to make sure they get whatever support they need. So, today we're delivering thermometers to every NYPD precinct and headquarters and command office, to every firehouse at the FDNY, to every sanitation garage. And we'll keep delivering more and more as we get them. We’re getting in a big supply, going forward, and we've got to keep getting them out around so we can maximize that kind of monitoring and support people.

One other point, and this is about – I've talked about the way the coronavirus attacks our health, but also hurts us, fights us in another way. It's taken away our livelihoods. So many New Yorkers are struggling right now. I hear from people all the time who are, right now, running out of the little money they had. The last paycheck is long gone. So, we must protect people. We must protect people when it comes to their health and we have to protect them when it comes to just being able to live life, to have a roof over your head, to have enough food to eat. We've got to protect people in every way and we will in this city. We will not let any New Yorker go without the help they need. So, I have to say, when you think about the reality of people just not having enough money for food, for medicine, for the rent, and this many people, hundreds of thousands, unemployed at the same time – my heart goes out to every family dealing with this pain, because just weeks ago your life was pretty normal and then bang, it's gone. And the shock, the pain, but also the fear – I'm hearing the fear everywhere. People are literally wondering, am I going to be able to stay in my home? Am I going to be able to get enough food? So, my message is we will keep everybody – keep a roof over your head, protect you, make sure you have the food to eat. We will do that. The City of New York will have your back. We're making sure there's no evictions, and that's a start, but we have to go farther. So, I had asked the State of New York to consider for over 2 million New Yorkers who are in rent stabilized apartments, and that's governed by a Rent Guidelines Board – I asked the State as a legal matter to suspend that board so we could achieve a rent freeze. There were complex legal matters and the State wasn't sure if that was the right approach, so I have made the decision that we will proceed with the Rent Guidelines Board process. We'll do it all remotely. We'll do it quickly in the coming weeks, but I am calling upon the Rent Guidelines Board today to issue a rent freeze to ensure that New Yorkers that are going through the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and were covered by the jurisdiction of the Rent Guidelines Board – again, that's over 2 million of us – that all of those good New Yorkers who are struggling right now get a rent freeze, because, Lord knows, people do not need another burden at this moment. And I want to see the Rent Guidelines Board act quickly, to say the least. If you look at the facts – and I do give the board credit, they've always looked at the facts, the objective facts – look at the facts, the greatest economic crisis in generations and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers with no livelihood overnight. I think the facts are clear and we need that rent freeze and we need it now.

I also say again to the State of New York, please act quickly. Let New Yorkers who can't afford the rent pay it with their security deposit. That's going to take a legal change. I'm asking the State to do that right away, so folks who have no money can draw upon that security deposit to pay the rent right now. By the way, for a lot of landlords, they would applaud that too, because if the tenant has no money, they have no money and, therefore, the landlord can't get the money they need to pay the bills either. Let's unleash those security deposits for the good of all.

Let me close, and I'll say a few words in Spanish, and then we'll take questions from the media, but close with this. And we talked about faith in the beginning, I talked about what the season means to all of us, people of different faiths. But it's also clear, it's a moment that tries us and challenges us so deeply and makes us fearful and makes us doubtful. It's a moment that tests our faith, but whatever your faith is, whatever you believe, whatever your values, it's a moment to lean into them even more strongly. This is a week where we reach milestones we could never have imagined – 5,000 New Yorkers lost – so many more than we even lost on our worst day of 9/11 – a number we literally can hardly imagine. And every single one of the people we lost, a human story, a family grieving. At some point today, we will get to the point of 100,000 cases that have occurred in New York City – 100,000 cases of coronavirus, a disease that literally did not exist six months ago in the experience of human beings all over the globe, and now 100,000 New Yorkers infected. And that's only the ones we know about. It's likely that hundreds of thousands more have already experienced this disease that we don't even know have gone through it. But, thank God, so many – the vast, vast, vast majority survived. So, it's a moment where we could be doubtful. No one could be blamed for being doubtful. And we don't have a roadmap here – there's no one who has a roadmap, this is the great unknown. But our faith, our belief, our values, our humanity should continue to guide us. And what I've seen these last weeks, I don't think New Yorkers could have done anything better or more heroic than what they've done. I think every one of you should be proud of how you all have answered the call in one way or another. I think people all over the world are looking at New York City with renown – with renewed admiration. People all over the world are feeling a new respect, a new admiration, a new love for New York City. I think we've always been a place that people felt something special for. There's always been a sense that New York City was an expression of the best of humanity, but what all of you have done is proven even more deeply and the world watches with admiration, the world is applauding. Let's show the entire world that we will complete this mission, that we will stay true to the lessons we've learned, we'll go even more intensely into the work we're doing together to protect each other, and that's how we'll come out of this together.

In Spanish, just a quick summary –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, let's turn to our colleagues. And I know you're far-flung, but I'll do my best to see you and just speak loud so we can all hear you.

Question: Two questions there. The first is this flood of volunteers of health care professionals from around the country. We've heard that many have not been assigned to do anything. They're sort of just waiting on the sidelines. And then another complaint they have voiced is that there's no one coordinating where they should stay, where they should live. Should they be paying out of their own pocket? Is the – are you – is your office coordinating all that? What can you tell [inaudible]?

Mayor: Yeah, Andrew this is obviously a rapidly moving situation. So the bottom line is this: everyone who comes to help us, we will make sure that they have accommodations and have support and Lord knows, we'll make sure they quickly had an assignment. I'm going to let Mitch, Deanne can speak to pieces of this, but look, when folks come in, it takes sometimes a few days to make sure that they get the right place, they're trained, they're oriented, et cetera. But that's what I'm seeing – only a few days to get them from arrival into action, overwhelmingly. Anytime there's someone who is not being placed quickly that I don't want to see that, I won't accept that. So, I've charged my team repeatedly in the last few days to go back, call through everyone who's volunteered, make sure they've gotten their assignment, make sure it's moving quickly. Talked to Mitch and Deanne numerous times these last few days about making sure that the folks who are coming in to Health + Hospitals are quickly being applied to the task at hand, and Mitch can describe to you what that process has been, but anyone who's coming in, we want to get them accommodation make sure that what they need is covered or anything that they pay out that we need to get reimbursed. We will. So, no question the world, again I'm sure there's some growing pains and something being done this quickly, but everybody needs to be applied quickly and get the support they need. Let me let you go. I'll come right back to you. But Mitch, why don't you talk about your experience and Deanne, you want to –

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Certainly, at Health + Hospitals we've been able to bring along more than 2,000 doctors and nurses who are currently today working in our hospitals. So, we've been able to deploy them. We have a pretty much an instant credentialing system where they basically show their ID and we sign them up. So we've had a lot of success.

Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Office of Emergency Management: And the one thing that I'll add is that we had a number of volunteers that were part of our Medical Reserve Corps. Again, they are volunteers. Many of them could not volunteer for this because of their own circumstances, but we have placed, I think as of this morning's report, over 900 of those volunteers out of our initial pool into the system. And that's just a great success.

Question: My quick second question, why is it that other cities like Minneapolis have been able to close so many streets to allow safer social distancing, but your pilot program ended. As the weather improves shouldn’t you be doing more to give New Yorkers the space to socially distance outside?

Mayor: It's a very fair question. We're going to keep looking at it, but I want to tell you what – certainly NYPD felt strongly after – we had a very initial experience. And I want to say it was an initial and also affected by weather. So it wouldn't – didn't give us the clearest example of what would be achieved, but NYPD, everyone knows has lower staffing right now than normal – guys I'm going to come to you just don't, don't worry. They have lower staffing than normal. They're very concerned about being able to enforce in all the places that already exist and do it effectively. And I've talked to Commissioner Shea daily about this, that, you know, all the places we – the supermarkets, the pharmacies, the parks, every place where we're depending on PD and other agencies that get out there and force and really make sure there's social distancing. The concern consistently from Commissioner Shea is, if you open up a lot of those spaces where people can congregate, they're not going to have the ability to monitor all that and do enforcement. I understand the very logical point, well if you open up spaces, it’s easier for people to walk around each other, one thing, another. The concern so far has been, yeah, but there's a real unintended consequence about gathering. Think about a block. If you close off a block, people have that impulse to come out and gather. We want to be really careful about that. And then there's also the question of being able to get emergency vehicles around and deliveries and everything else. So we'll keep looking at it for sure. But right now I will think that makes a lot more sense when we have more of our enforcement personnel back than it would right now. So we'll look at it, but we're not ready now. Go over here. You can take it down. You're just, just enough. I can hear you if you choose to.

Question: Khristina Narizhnaya from the New York Post. I have a few questions about Hart Island. So burials, according to the Department of Corrections, burials increased by five times from one day a week to five days a week. To what do you attribute this increase?

Mayor: Okay, so I'm going to look to Freddi. I think we put out very detailed tweets to make sure that this was all clear, because I think this is an area, and again, I'm very careful to speak broadly about this whole topic because I think it's a very, very painful one for New Yorkers. And again, for the families who have lost people. This is not, you know, a policy matter. This is their lives or family members or loved one’s life, and we want to speak very respectfully about it and keep it a very broad, respectful conversation. So what we have seen is an increase in the number of people passing away overall. And what it means is there are more people who are passing away who just, we unfortunately we've seen this throughout our history, but it's being made deeper by the fact that more people are passing away because of this disease.

That there are people pass away and there is no family member, no loved one, no friend, no one who we can find, who our Office of Medical Examiner can find who has a connection to that person and is going to take responsibility for their burial. So this is something that has existed for generations in this city. When that is the case, the City of New York steps up and says, okay, that person will be buried at Hart Island. But if a family member comes later or a loved one comes later, that individual, that body can be returned to that loved one. So because there's just been unfortunately more people passing away, including those who are not claimed by any family. That's what's been happening at Hart Island. But that's the only thing that's been happening in Harlem.

Question: Are these COVID victims that are being buried there?

Mayor: It’s any kind of person who passes away. This is not a new procedure is what I'm trying to make clear to you that this is, it's a sad topic. Imagine anyone who passes away and there's no one there to claim the body. This has been the truth for generations. So anyone who was passing away now from any cause, that's what's happening. But more people are passing away obviously in large measure because of COVID.

Did you finish?

Question: I have another question.

Mayor: Okay, go ahead. Finish it.

Question: So I mean these people, are they – is it possible that they’re COVID victims temporarily buried there because funeral homes are overwhelmed or you know –

Mayor: No, this is not what I'm saying. I'm going to – I thought the tweet was clear so let me just answer it really clearly. No, these are people who no one after a period of time has claimed them and not just COVID victims but victims of all diseases, all reasons for fatality and they are being buried. But if at any point a family member returns or shows up, they will be, you know, the body will be given to the family as we would always want to do. That's all that is happening. And if you – you choose if you want to, if you're going to keep that on, just speak even louder. No problem. Just speak loud so I can hear.

Question: So, can you give more details on the quarantine and isolation facilities and is it an acknowledgement that perhaps the earlier hospital bed estimations where off? And then I have a second question.

Mayor: Sure. I would love nothing more than for the hospital bed assumptions to be off. We, Katie, we're 100 percent clear. I gave this order to the team. We were planning for the worst-case scenario. I did not want to have a single day where a New Yorker couldn't get a hospital bed or there wasn't a ventilator, there wasn't a doctor nurse. So I said, show us the modeling and I want to see the toughest version. I want to see the one that we believe is the worst-case real scenario. And particularly at the Department of Health as they looked in the models around the world and looked at what was going on in New York City early on, we saw the ferocity of this disease and thought we're going to need an extraordinary amount of beds and medical personnel. Even last week – sadly last week for the pretty much the whole week it looked like those projections were tragically on target. And then only in the last few days have we seen something very different.

I hope this is sustained, but I need people to hear there is a profound danger of resurgence if we all don't handle this right and we've seen it in other parts of the world. So, we're going to be in a stance of having lots of capacity ready and lots of capacity that we could turn on quickly even if we don't fully activate it, that it's in reserve and ready. And we're going to be ready to convert it to a different use, which is that isolation and quarantine use if needed at any point. So, the bottom line is I'd love the initial projections to be wrong. I'd love it to be that this disease is causing much less damage. I love to see that we can move into the next phase, the low-level transmission phase in May or June. And as we move into that phase, we're going to need a lot more space for isolation and quarantine and these spaces would be perfect for that.

Question: My second question is, I know you're talking about freezing rent. You’re a landlord, have you frozen rent for your tenants in Brooklyn?

Mayor: So, our tenants all are employed and are all able to pay.

Question: Mayor, you mentioned it this morning on the radio. I just wanted you to clarify if you could, you were asked if mid-May is the goal, I think getting things back to normal to get to the low-level trends, but anyway, if you could clarify and also what is mid-May, that we would – what would happen mid-May, and are we talking June, July?

Mayor: Right. That's – Dave, it’s a really fair question, but I remember when I gave that I tried to give a very complete presentation. I know it was long yesterday, my apologies, but I was really trying to, I had talked to so many health care people and tried to distill it down into one thing. Now what I was saying is this: let’s start with April. April is going to remain tough. The fact that the number of additional hospitalizations lowered and the number of additional ventilators we needed lowered still doesn't mean we're not seeing new problems every day. We're just seeing fewer than we expected. So there's a lot of people coming in who need a ventilator. Fact that's still more each day in recent days. It's still been overall more each day than the day before. And a lot of what we're experiencing in our public hospitals and independent hospitals is not, I don't want anyone to think there's a decrease in the number of beds, we've actually seen, unfortunately an increase but less severe than what we saw before.

So there that tells you that April, do not for a moment imagine April is going to be easy. We thought it was going to be absolutely, positively hellish everywhere. It's less bad, but it's still bad. When you go into May, we start to have an opportunity to have that moment where we can say if we do enough – if all of us together do enough of the right things that we could, and again, those three indicators I talked about, if they all move together for 10 days to two weeks, that's when we start to talk about some changes in restrictions but only changes, not like on-off switch. It's like careful, smart changes always guarding against resurgence. So there could be a point in May where we can start to make those moves. It may not work like that. Remember my chart that showed the bumpy ride, the kind of roller coaster up and down. It could be that we get better for a while and then get worse for a period of time. So that's where I don't want anyone thinking there's a magic date or, you know, a guarantee. We've got to all fight for it. But it could be May or it could be June. But at that point you get all the indicators moving the right direction. We then would decide here's some changes we can make. And then when we make those changes Dave, we have to prove that we're still able to drive down cases. So you wouldn't want a situation where you're saying, okay, we lighten up a little bit. And then suddenly there's a resurgence of cases, you have to constantly sort of, it's like the foot on and off the gas. You have to sort of constantly figure out how much pressure to apply and if it really works then you're starting on the pathway starting on the pathway to normal. You get to the point where you have very few cases and you can trace them and contain them, which is where we were at the very beginning. Again, you know, getting back to where we were those first days. And then that's the pathway to the eventual day where there's effectively no transmission. Go ahead.

Question: Mayor, [inaudible]?

Mayor: Belt it out. If you have the mask on.

Question: I have a follow up with the Hart Island question and then I have a separate question. On Hart Island, the Medical Examiner's Office says on their website, it still says right now that they will hold a decedent for up to 14 days. You sit your tweets, it doesn't matter if it's weeks, months, you know if you have family to [inaudible] the body we’ll hold it. So can you clarify which of those is correct? Are they changing their policy or what is it?

Mayor: Okay. I'll give you the best I can give you and we can always get a clarification later. Again, here's the bottom line. And again, this is a topic I just don't, I'm not going to be able to dwell on with you guys. There's other people who can give you more detail on this is we're really need to focus on saving lives and respecting the dignity of each family. Any family member, any individual who's passed away and no one claims, they can always be claimed at any point in the future. That's the bottom line. And any individual who, even if they individually are temporarily buried, they can be brought back to their family member. It's as simple as that. So we will, that's open-ended, Erin. That's – it’s anytime the family shows up after this crisis, we will work with them and we will support them. But it's all individual.

Question: Yeah, because in your tweet you say we will hold the remains and until they're ready days, weeks, month. It doesn't matter.

Mayor: The point I just made, that they will be available at any point for family members.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: If they have not, if no one has claimed them, no one has communicated, no one can be found in any way, shape or form, they will be very temporarily awaiting to hopefully the day when we can find the family members or loved ones. If family members and loved ones communicate, even if they can't come now that will be handled differently.

Question: Okay. That makes sense. And then my second question. In regards to the distribution of meals to seniors, a number of seniors are reporting that they're not getting the meals they're supposed to be getting. Can you address that?

Mayor: Yeah, I'd love – I need to make sure that every senior who needs a meal gets it. Period. So, this – you're literally the first person who has said that and I've been talking to, and I'm not belittling or disagreeing, I'm saying I've been talking to our folks who are at our Department for the Aging, our commissioner. I've been talking to the community leaders, I've been talking to clergy, I've been talking to elected officials. I've not heard a single person say that a senior who needed a meal delivery is not getting it. If you know of someone, I want to make sure that person gets a meal immediately. And anyone who needs a meal can call 3-1-1. If anyone is vulnerable, cannot get out, cannot get to a meal, they call 3-1-1, we will make sure it is delivered. I appointed the Food Czar Kathryn Garcia to set up a huge feeding program to support all New Yorkers, to make sure no one went without a meal. So anyone who's not getting it, we need to fix that today.

Question: One in particular, Independence Plaza Towers, they say that all of the seniors there who have signed up haven’t been getting their meals.

Mayor: I couldn't hear the last part. Independence Plaza.

Question: Yeah.

Mayor: And what did they say?

Question: That more than two weeks ago people at their senior centers signed up and the shipments have not come. A few dozen members have not received their meal shipments since they were signed up.

Mayor: Alright, we will get those done today. We'll go. That's, that is unacceptable. I'm going to assume what you're saying is accurate and it's unacceptable. People must get their meals. I'll talk to the Commissioner today and we will make sure that happens.

Go ahead.

Question: Mr. Mayor, early on the White House, criticized the projections from New York in terms of how many hospital beds that they would need. Do you think, were you guys using the same models as the White House and can you go into a little detail what the models were that you were using? Did you guys hire a consultant? How are those models created?

Mayor: So, I guarantee you we were not using the same models as the White House. And with all due respect to the White House, I think for much of this horrible tragedy we've been through, there's been a constant underestimation of this problem. So I think that's the story of January and February in the United States of America, that the President did not acknowledge the fullness of the threat and we didn't get the testing we needed.

The team here at our Department of Health, at Health + Hospitals, all of the people they consulted with around the world, they consulted the World Health Organization, CDC and many others. A composite of a lot of different sources. And I'll have my colleagues follow up with you because it's a very extensive effort. But the modeling was sobering and I encouraged people to give me the sober, you know, version. And I kept saying to people, you have to plan for the worst-case scenario. That's the only way to do planning in a crisis. So a lot of times I feel like the White House has been pushing for the best case scenario. Remember the famous statement by the President, that we would reopen by Easter. How off-base does that look now?

So definitely in that sense, a conservative model that was preparing us for the worst. And I'm glad we did that. And I don't know at this moment, no one doesn't. I don't know if Mitch has a view on this as someone who's done so much in his field, but we're not out of the woods, for all we know. This thing could surge again and we'll be very happy we have a very conservative approach, but we'll get you, you know, folks can follow up with you directly on all that modeling and how it was created.

President Katz: I would agree with the Mayor's assessment. While things are definitely flattening, meanwhile the hospitals keep growing because what's flattening is the amount of increase every day. So the need, and that's why at facilities like this are so important to create.

Question: City Council Health Chair says that very sick people are being turned away from—

Mayor: Very sick people what?

Question: Very sick people are being turned away from the hospitals, people with pneumonia, who need oxygen and other issues. Do you know if that's the case?

Mayor: Who are you referring to?

Question: The City Council Health Chair.

Mayor: Who is that?

Question: Mark Levine.

Mayor: I want to make sure we're [inaudible] same thing. I know who it is, but I want to hear you say the name. Listen, with all due respect to the Council Member, who is someone I actually appreciate and admire over years, but I was very distressed by his statements earlier in the week that were patently inaccurate and actually very unhelpful to the City of New York, and I had a very blunt conversation with him about it. So, I don't know what is going on with him, but saying that our hospitals would turn away someone with pneumonia is irresponsible, inaccurate, and unfair. Mitch, would you like to comment?

President Katz: We are not turning away anybody with pneumonia who is short of breath. We do tell people who have mild symptoms that they are safest and most comfortable at home, but anybody who has shortness of breath needs to be in the hospital.

Mayor: Yeah, I think it's really an insult to our health care professionals. I would ask the Councilman to think about the import of his words. He is suggesting that doctors and nurses and clinicians would not care enough about a patient, pneumonia for God's sakes. These people are working night and day, giving their heart and soul to save everyone, of course, if someone has pneumonia, they're going to help them. And if he has evidence of a specific case, I want to hear that evidence. I want names and dates and places. Not this madness. It's irresponsible. Wait, who hasn't gone?

Question: [Inaudible] first one is, have you spoken with MTA board about [inaudible] –

Mayor: I’ve spoken to Pat Foye earlier today of the question of overcrowding. I told him I was very distressed that I keep getting reports. I will give him credit that he was responsive and he went into detail with me about why he believed that any such situation was very rare and unexpected, if you will, that they were trying to keep as much service going where they'd seen a lot of need. Obviously, we all understand the MTA is suffering in every way including a number of MTA workers who are suffering and out. But Pat felt strongly that those situations were rare. I want to make sure that there's anything that – any evidence of where it's happening or how it's happening, that we address it urgently. And one of the things we've talked about is the need to have bus service as an alternative and he said that something the MTA has done and will do more of whenever they need. So that's about the overcrowding.

I'm very concerned about anything involving our transit workers and their safety. And I would say simply if there's actions that the MTA still needs to take to ensure their safety, there should, because that's a morally right thing to do, these were hardworking New Yorkers who need to be kept safe, but also if people are out in our subways and buses continue to provide less and less service. But still so many essential workers have to get around, it's just going to create a worse situation for everyone, more overcrowding, fewer people can get to their work that we all desperately need. So, I would ask them to keep putting those protections in place.

Question: Also, the Spanish language and multi-lingual campaign [inaudible] New Yorkers who learned English as a second language, how is that going? [Inaudible] –

Mayor: Yeah, you're going to hear in the next few days the specific elements, the media piece of it, the advertising and TV, radio, digital, 14 languages, we'll unveil that in the next few days. The tele-health, if you will, element of it, the ability of New Yorkers to call clinicians, and again, this is predicated on continuing to see the relief so we can free up some of our clinicians to do that tele-health work and thank God, let us pray, they don't need to be in the hospitals. That was our first concern. Hopefully we're going to be able to free up more of them to do that ability to call – you know, have people call them and talk through what's going on, get support, get advice, get guidance. That we will announce in the next few days and then the grass roots piece. This one's a little more complex where we're going to really try and maximize the use of community-based clinics and send the health workers out in the communities with protections, of course. That's going to take a little more organizing and obviously a little more security in our supply of PPEs just better but not where we need it to be. So we'll have more to say on that next week, but I think it's going to be a little slower rollout because we have to guarantee we'll have the personnel and the PPEs for that.

Question: [Inaudible] workers that will be sent out into the field, so to speak, are they volunteers or [inaudible]?

Mayor: I know we have community-based health clinics that are offering their employees and do this work already that are very connected to their communities, trusted, speak the language in their communities. Obviously, people would do it who are willing to do it. We're not going to ask someone who works for a non-profit to do something they're uncomfortable doing. And again, as we can free up any other health care workers or folks who are used to being providing health care information and guidance, we will. So my details to be announced, but I would say it will be heavily grassroots. So, it's people serving their own community, not needing to commute obviously. And obviously those who are willing, this would be something people would do who are willing to take on that kind of work, and it would be careful. We can do a lot by phone, we can do a lot with digital and advertising. There are certain things you just can't, and I think that's particularly true in immigrant communities. Some of it has to be in person, but still with careful protections and social distancing. Go ahead.

Question: You mentioned 50,000 tests coming to New York –

Mayor: Components for 50,000 tests. Not the whole thing, but go on.

Question: Can you talk about how many tests are available now and what does widespread testing look like? How many tests do we need to, you know, for it to complete widespread testing?

Mayor: We needed a lot more. I can – we're working right now on the exact numbers to talk about how to get into that second phase. But you know, we're talking in that case, not the ability to do thousands a day, but you know, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands a day. So we can give you a clearer outline as we prepare for that phase. But right now testing is still a rarity and it needs to be much more widespread to get to the next phase. And then really what we'd like is universal capacity, meaning that anyone who needed a test at any time could get it. Anyone. Because when you think about what we've learned from other parts of the world, and no one has a perfect solution, but what we have seen is when you can test people, anybody, anytime and when there's lots and lots of follow-up, lots of communication with people including people need to be isolated or people who are trying to figure out if they might have the disease, you want a kind of ubiquitous-ness of the approach, which has been done to a substantial degree in some of the Asian countries in particular. We want to emulate that within the context of our society. But that requires a huge amount of testing capacity each day.

Question: Do you have an update, I guess for all the students, parents, caretakers and teachers listening in at home for what's going to happen? Will school return for the school year and if any update on that?

Mayor: Between now and Monday I'm going to make a final decision with the Chancellor and we'll announce it. Did you have a follow up?

Question: Is it possible at this time to have the person cremated, COVID victim cremated, or [inaudible] funeral homes having issues?

Mayor: Yeah, I'll again, I'm going to stay broad on this and then we have to move on to other topics. The most funeral homes are still operating and they're operating the way they have. Okay. Last call. If there's anything else. Yes?

Question: On the quarantine centers. Is there a timeline for when your current space might be available either in the hotels or in this type of foster the facilities people want a place to go?

Mayor: So, there's a lot available right now in terms of first responders, in terms of – but I mean just to sort of show you the segue – first responders, health care workers and as we've talked about folks who need it if they're living in facilities that are run by the government or sponsored by the government, supported by the government, we have folks in isolation who have come out of Rikers, for example. We have some homeless folks in isolation. There's different people already in that kind of model. But to build it out much further, we clearly have a huge amount of hotel capacity and we would use it and we have the spaces like this that could be converted. So capacity is strong. We are still, you know, for sure weeks away from that kind of moment in this – hopefully in a trajectory towards a much better situation. We're still weeks away from being able to do that wide-scale. Okay. Please, go ahead, Deanne.

Commissioner Criswell: Just so you know, for today we had just about 2,000 people in hotels, in isolation, in the categories that the Mayor mentioned and we still have capacity to use that space if the need does get any larger.

Mayor: Okay. We're going to shut down. Did I see one back there? I see one there. Okay. Last call.

Question: How far are we from widespread testing?

Mayor: It's a great question. I don't think anyone has the answer. I think it is, and I put aside the antibody, which is a different thing and a valuable test and the things that Mitch and I have talked about is antibody testing is particularly valuable for helping our first responders, our health care workers, to have more information about their situation and more confidence in going about their crucial, crucial work. But antibody testing is not enough. We need the coronavirus testing itself. We need it in a vast scale. I've not heard any estimate of that being less than a month or two, but that's very broad answer. We just don't have a clear answer from Washington and we don't have an easy way to get on the global market. So this is one of the big X factors, one of the great unknowns in figuring out how we get to that next phase and then ultimately back to something like normal.

Okay. Everybody, I want to thank you and just to say to all New Yorkers as you look around this facility, a lot of people coming here to help us, folks from all over the country, making a big difference to protect us. We want to do everything we can do to make sure that this hospital is one of the last ones we need to set up. The more New Yorkers do the great, great work you're doing with social distancing and shelter in place, the fewer of these new hospitals we're going to need, the quicker we get back to normal. So, thank you for what you're doing and let's do it even more to get to that day where things get better.

Thank you.

2020-04-11 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. Here we are, in the middle of this crisis but we are also in the middle of a holiday season that is one of the anchors of our year, any year, even in the time of pain and sorrow and challenge. Or Jewish community continues to celebrate Passover and our Christian community prepares for Easter, we are all feeling the strange pull of traditions that we cling to and care about and ground us on the one hand, and then pull of this crisis contradicting that, working against it feels like all the time. We are trying to have our deep connection that we all cherish to our traditions, to our faith, to our family and at the same time, working against so many things that hold us back from being connected to each other. I think one of the toughest parts of this is for all of us who are parents and I know even in some ways even more deeply for grandparents, who are not going to have the same connection that they might have and would have in a normal year to their children and grandchildren because people can’t travel, people can’t gather. I think there is a deep, deep yearning and a deep pain when on top of everything else, we are kept apart from the people we love the most and the people who give us so much joy. And all the adults are feeling this crisis and particularly when they can't be near their children and grandchildren, it just makes it even worse, even tougher.

But again, we keep reaching back for our faith, for our beliefs, for our values, for our traditions to help us see our way through. At the same time, we got to think about what our children are going through. This has been such a tough time for them. Such a disorienting time. Our kids, we all know are resilient and we all know that our children can feel our love even if we can't be in the same room with them or even in the same city with them. They can feel our love. But for so many children right now, this is a really difficult, challenging time. And think about what we've asked of our children. It's a lot, nowadays just in normal times, to deal with all the challenges of modern society. I can say as a parent, our children deal with challenges today that I never dealt with when I was growing up and they grow up kind of faster nowadays and there's too much information available, too many real difficult things put before our children, even in normal times. Now think about what these last weeks have been like for our children. Think about the disruption. Think about the confusion and in so many cases the trauma.

A lot of our children have lost a loved one. A lot of our children have seen their families racked by disease. A lot of our children know that someone in the school community they come from, has been real sick or even has passed away because of the coronavirus. I know our children are resilient, but I also know they feel that fear and they feel it in a different way than the rest of us. On top of that, think of what children are going through when they can only spend a little bit of time outdoors. They can't really see their friends the way they are used to. They can't go to school, they can't play team sports. It's been a tough, tough time. But at the same time, we know everything we're doing is to protect our children, our families to help end the pain and the trauma. We've all been through so much, but we have to work constantly to make sure that this ends. This is the thing we all have to be focused on. I know every New Yorker feels this. People are always asking when will this end? And to get to that point we have to work together and we all have to do our part. We all have to support each other. And in this season of faith and this season of love, the highest love we can show for each other is to protect each other, support each other, practice these new rules, these new realities that have actually started to help us get safer. The social distancing, the shelter in place, the things that have been really difficult for everyone and probably in some ways the most difficult for our children are also how we protect our children and our families and we get to that point where we can start to turn the page and work towards a day when we get back to some kind of normal. We get back to the lives we once knew.

So, this conversation about how to protect everyone and how to really keep bending the curve of this disease and how to move us forward. It's been something we've been talking about every day, every hour here at City Hall. And I've been having these conversations with Chancellor Carranza particularly in terms of our schools. And we all have felt that the real pain of knowing that our kids are missing out on so much of what they could have if they were in a school building. But we've also been more and more sure every day that keeping this policy, this strategy of social distancing and shelter in place, keeping that going and deepening that is the best way forward to protect all of us. At the same time, we've seen really heroic efforts by everyone at the Department of Education, by our educators, by all the people who work in our schools, to find every way to keep educating our kids and keep supporting them even through these extraordinary times. And I have to remind everyone, our educators were asked to learn an entirely different way of teaching. And they weren't given a year to get ready. They weren't given a month to get ready. They had a week to quickly retool and turn to distance learning, online learning and make it work. And it's been really an amazing story. And I think when this crisis is over, this is going to be one of the heroic passages. This is going to be one of the amazing moments that will be looked at with admiration. The New York City Public Schools, even in an hour of crisis, managed to come back so strong and create a new reality online to support our kids.

When I made that very tough decision, and I know the Chancellor felt the same way, it was literally a painful decision to close our schools because we feared that moment that we would not be able to bring them back. And I said it bluntly from the very beginning that if we close the schools, there was a very strong likelihood we wouldn't be able to bring them back for this school year. We knew that would be a really huge problem in terms of what we would lose and the education of our children, what families would lose. So many families who depend on, depended on, and still depend on our school system for food, for their children, for a safe place for the kids to be. We knew a lot was being lost, but we also knew, painful though it was, it was the right thing to do to protect everyone, our children, our parents, our families, our educators to protect everyone. And I had a real faith that even though we were asking our educators to do something they'd never done before, that they would rise to the challenge. And they have. You know when you make a decision, it's with the information that you have at the moment. I felt my gut, and I know the Chancellor did too, that our educators would find a way, even with the little time they had to prepare, they'd find a way to do something amazing with distance learning. They have surpassed every expectation. And everyone at DOE, all the folks who are in the leadership at the Department of Education, all of the technology people, everyone who had to put together this amazing system and all the companies we turn to for help who really, really stepped up. Everyone went above and beyond because they realized they had to help our kids. And we didn't know how long this crisis would go on. 

So, before I go on to tell you how we're going to go forward, I just want to say a real thank you. Thank you to Chancellor Carranza, thank you to the whole team at the DOE headquarters that work so hard and I can tell you everyone, whether I called them at midnight or I called them at seven in the morning, they were all working. Because they knew this was sacred, if you will, to make sure that every child got the help they needed. I want to thank all the educators who have done so much who just never gave up, including all those educators who came in and continue to come into our regional enrichment centers to protect and teach the children of first responders and health care workers and essential workers that we need so desperately right now. I want to thank parents. This has not been easy. As I said, it's not easy to be a kid nowadays. It's not easy to be a parent nowadays and parents have really had to dig deep and create and deal with really challenging situations. It is not easy to have a child cooped up at home, I assure you. But our parents have really stepped up and they've been great partners in the distance learning that the DOE has done and we're going to work with them to become even stronger partners. And I want to thank our kids. I want to thank the children of the New York City public schools. There's no, I've said to people for years and years and years, there's nothing more wonderful than a New York City public school education. Not only for what it gives you academically, but for what it gives you in your heart and soul, how it teaches you to deal with every kind of person, the whole world. And our kids, they're finding a way as well.

So, everyone, thank you. Thank you for stepping up and I'm going to ask you to keep stepping up. I'm going to ask you to dig deep and help us through to the end of this crisis. We originally said the best-case scenario would be to come back on Monday, April 20th at the end of the spring break. We could see already, that was not going to be possible many days ago. And then the State put the pause on until April 29th. But we've had conversations in the last few days to say, is it viable? Is it safe? Is it smart? Would it work? Would it help our children? Would it be fair to the entire school community to bring our schools back at this point, at any point between now and the end of June? And after very careful consideration, I announced today that the New York City public schools will remain closed for the remainder of this school year.

Again, there is nothing easy about this decision. I can't even begin to express how much for all of us, the goal of making our schools better for all our kids and fighting against the inequalities that were so clear in our school system. You know, that was the first mission in so many ways of this administration and making sure that kids, including so many kids who have been left behind, got much greater opportunity. That's what we've been so focused on for six years. So, Lord knows having to tell you that we cannot bring our schools back for the remainder of this school year is painful. But I can also tell you it's the right thing to do. It clearly will help us save lives because it will help us to guarantee that the strategies that have been working, the shelter in place, the social distancing, all the focused strategies that are finally beginning to bear fruit, they need the time to continue to be effective. And when I talked to you the other day about the stages we would go through, I reminded everyone, the worst mistake we could make is to take our foot off the gas and end up in a situation where this disease had a resurgence and threatened us even more. We're not going to allow the coronavirus to start to attack us even more and to make sure it doesn't, we have to, we have to be cautious. We have to be smart about the moves we make and we can never get in a situation where we end up jumping too soon and regretting it later.

I had a conversation last night with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who's really been a hero in this entire national crisis. And I said to Dr. Fauci, that I had talked to the Chancellor and to our health care leadership, and really increasingly we were thinking it did not make sense. And he said to me he agreed and he appreciated the sense of being cautious and careful because the most important mission for all of us in New York City and all of us in this country is to end this crisis. To not let it reassert and keeping the New York City public schools closed is a way to contribute to finally beating back the coronavirus. And of course, what we think about every single day, and we think about this during normal times as well, protecting our kids, protecting our families, protecting our educators. From that perspective, this was obviously the right thing to do. So, it's not an easy decision. It's not a decision that is satisfying for all of us who have devoted so much of our time to try and make sure our kids got the very best education. But it is the right decision. And it's also a decision made a little clearer by the fact that the distance learning is working more and more every day and we're going to have more and more good ways to reach our kids and help them over the next few months.

Now we'll be working with the State of New York. We want to work with the State in many ways as we have throughout this crisis. But one of the specific ways is that the State regulations officially require that all school systems around the State have kids in the classrooms for 180 days. Those regulations have been waived to date all over the state. We're going to work with the State to continue that waiver so that we can see the school year through, but again, with distance learning, not with our kids in their school buildings.

Look, the other thing to recognize here is that the timeline says it all. I told all New Yorkers over the last few days, we got to assume that April will continue to be real tough. We're going to go into May, we don't know yet what this disease will do. We may get the kind of relief in May that allows us to begin to make some changes, but that may go into June. But the one thing that was clear to us was if we even want to consider bringing our schools, there was going to be a lot of lead time, a lot of work that would have to be done including in the school buildings to get ready. And again, it was not realistic to believe that that work, which would have to start in just a matter of weeks, would be appropriate given the challenge we face, given the timeline we're looking at.

We also knew that if we just brought kids back for a few weeks, it really wouldn't add that much to their lives academically. The risks simply – the risk did not outweigh the reward. It just proved to be that there was not a clear reason of what we would gain to help our kids. But the challenges and the problems were very, very clear. And we knew that there was a real danger that if we came back, some schools would have to close because of individual cases of coronavirus and it would create so much disruption and confusion. But there's another factor that's really important to point to and it's where I started about what our kids are going through. Our kids have gone through a lot of trauma here. We all know, again, kids are resilient and sometimes they don't show it, but look at what they've had to witness. Look at what they've had to experience and think about those kids who are grieving right now who've lost a grandparent or aunt or uncle or a member of their school community, an educator or another member of their school community. Think about what that's doing to our kids and we want to help them through that. We want to support them. And we don't think the best way to do that is by bringing them back into the schools between now and June. We do think there's much that we can do to support them in the meantime. 

And there's a lot we're going to have to do starting in September that's very different than what we've ever done before. I've spoken with the Chancellor about this, we're going to have to think about September in a way that really is a new era for the New York City public schools and a new approach. And one that's going to have to be very, very mindful of all the trauma that everyone's been through. And really, we're going to have to all work together to overcome it.

So, I'm going to lay out quickly, a five point plan for how we get from here to the opening of school in September. And again, we're going to ask a lot of parents, of teachers, principals, all educators to help us through this path together and work together to help our kids. And it's going to get tough. And not because of the disease alone, but because of the weather. As it gets warmer and warmer, our kids are going to get more and more restless. We know that. So, we have to help you through and we have to give you the best possible tools, the most compelling options to keep our kids focused on the distance learning and keep them safe and indoors for a lot of the day until we really see things change with this disease.

So, the first point is to make sure that the devices, the iPads and all the other devices that we have given out, will give out to kids, that every student who needs one gets one. And we will ensure that that happens by the end of April. I said at the day we had to shut down our schools that we knew a lot of kids just didn't have these devices and there would be a lag time. But we've gotten great cooperation from the companies involved and again, the team at DOE has stepped up. We now need to get devices distributed on a very fast pace. We already can say that 66,000 devices have been distributed. We have to get 240,000 more in the hands of our kids over the next couple of weeks by the end of April. And we will do that. And then I've said to the Chancellor, whatever it takes, the entire City government will assist to make sure this happens. So that's point one, devices for every child by the end April.

Point two – parent help line, we're going to take the helplines and hotlines we already have for parents and that they can reach through 3-1-1. We're going to expand them, we’re going to add more educators, add the ability to get much more coaching and support for parents in multiple languages and expand the hours. And we'll have a further announcement on that shortly. But a lot of parents, since they're dealing with an unprecedented challenge, they need coaching, they need help, they need support, they need ideas. And a lot of educators and trained professionals that they can reach at any hour of the day in multiple languages to give them that support.

Third, we're going to provide a lot more creative at-home programming. So, teachers already – teachers have always known how to be creative, but they have been extraordinarily creative in this crisis. So, DOE’s been creating new programming. Teachers themselves have been creating all sorts of important new ideas to help our kids. The Parks Department has put together some great new programming online and our Children's Cabinet is doing the same. We're going to be working with a number of media companies here in New York City and creating a variety of free programming to help children and help our families get through this, and more and more compelling options to make that stay at home a little bit easier, but also supercharge the education process in the meantime.

Fourth, we got about 75,000 seniors. They were looking forward to graduation, want for every child who we can help to meet the requirements in time, we need to do that. So very, very important mission and one that the whole DOE family feels deeply right now. We do not want to see these seniors robbed of their future, robbed of that joyous moment when they graduate high school. We have no idea, at this point, if there's going to be anything like a graduation ceremony this year, but we do know that so many of our seniors can graduate on time if we support them properly. So that's going to be a very important focus. We will have a full plan out next week that will allow us to focus on each and every senior individually, help them if they're on track to graduation right now, see it through. If they're not on track, do all we can to get them there. We have a lot of focused capacity to help these seniors. That's going to be a primary objective. So, to all the seniors out there we are going to help you and we're going to communicate with you and figure out what you need. We want the maximum number of seniors graduating on time by June, and we want to support them in every way possible.

And then the fifth point, we are working now on a comprehensive plan to reopen the schools in September and as I said, it will be unlike any other reopening of schools we've ever seen because we're going to have to ensure the safety of all our students in a new way. We're going to have to make sure our vulnerable students get maximum support. We're going to have to do so much for the mental health of our students who have been through as trauma and the mental health of the whole school community. Our educators have been through so much – everyone who works in the schools. We're also going to need to address the emotional impact on parents and families. All of that. This focus on mental health and support for everyone who's been through this crisis will be crucial to our plan to reopen in September. And next school year is going to have to be the greatest academic year the New York City public schools have ever had, because we're going to be playing a lot of catch up. So, we're going to be looking for every conceivable way to make it the richest, most powerful year we've ever had to really help our kids move forward. I'm going to turn to the Chancellor. I think it would be good to let him weigh in now and then I'm going to come back on just a couple of other items before we take questions from the media. So, Chancellor –

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want thank you for your leadership. This is not an easy time, but I also want to echo your words of thanks to all of our educators, our administrators, our food service workers, our custodians, everyone that has been out supporting our students and our families. I've had the opportunity to participate in a number of online forums with families and parents. And the stories that they share with me are both inspiring but also challenging. So, I want to thank our families who have really stepped up and moved mountains to support all of our students. A special thanks to all of our colleagues and friends that are volunteering at the Regional Education Centers, our food service workers, who are also demonstrating true heroism every single day. I want to thank you for your service to your fellow New Yorkers. Without you, this city would grind to a halt. So, thank you for what you're doing. You are true heroes and every night at 7:00 pm when you hear all of those claps and cheers and pots banging, you're part of the heroes that they're celebrating. So, I want you to remember that.

I know that this news today may come as a bit of a shock to everyone out there, but the Mayor and I absolutely agree that this is in the best interest of all New Yorkers. We know that the past few weeks have not been easy. And we've asked a lot of our teachers and our administrators and our families and our students, I know you're exhausted. But thank you for continuing to do the work that you do. While we may not be together in school buildings, I want to be very clear that schools remain in session because of our teachers and our administrators and the learning continues. We just don't do it in person. And that'll continue throughout the rest of the school year by this announcement. I also want to reemphasize what the Mayor said. We are going to be here to support you, both our teachers, our administrators, our students, and our families, through this transition. We're staffing up our parent hotline, we're speeding up device delivery. And I want to thank you, Mr. Mayor, for helping us work with the supply chain. We, literally, when you think about what is happening around the world, every school system in the world is ordering devices right now. And we are at the top of the list because of your intercession, Mr. Mayor. So, thank you.

We're staffing up and we're going to be there every step to support you as we finish this school year in remote learning mode. We know what an undertaking this has been. But we want to thank you. Remember the two words that we've continued to emphasize. Number one is flexibility and the second is patience. So, thank you for your flexibility and your patience. We will also be reaching out to families to get your feedback about how remote learning is not only going but what that should look like as we go into the rest of this school year because we truly want it to be as an enriching experience as possible. You are truly our partners in this effort and we want to thank you.

[Chancellor Carranza Speaks in Spanish]

Mr. Mayor, thank you.

Mayor: Thank you very much, Chancellor. Let me just turn to a couple of other quick items, important matters, but I want to get through them quickly and then we'll say a few words in Spanish and we'll turn to our colleagues in the media for questions. So, another area where we are focused, of course, on protecting people, protecting their health, ensuring that we do everything to address this crisis is with some are almost vulnerable New Yorkers who are homeless. And our shelter system is an area where we are focused on ensuring that those who do not have a home are protected, that they are given the support they need through this crisis. It's tough enough to not have a place to live. We want to keep people safe and healthy and make sure all the support they need is there for them.

So, first I want to announce that by Monday, April 20th, we will have 6,000 homeless people in our shelter system who were in other settings, will now be in hotel settings. So, 6,000 single New Yorkers, meaning single adults, will be in hotels, not traditional homeless shelters. That's about one-third of the single clients of our overall shelter system moved into hotel settings. We are doing that because we think that is the right balance to strike as we ensure that people get what they need to be safe. And I want to remind everyone, when we talk about the health and safety of homeless people, we have to protect everyone from COVID-19. We also have to support the needs of homeless folks well beyond COVID-19, folks who have serious physical issues that they might need support with, but also a lot of whom have mental health issues and need support and need services available to them constantly. And that's what happens, of course, in so many of our homeless shelters. So, we're going to keep that going while also recognizing a number of people need to be in hotel settings. We'll strike that balance.

Those who will be prioritized across our shelter system for transfer to hotels, will include seniors, will include, of course, anyone with symptoms of COVID-19, or who tested positive for COVID-19. They, of course, will be isolated in hotel settings. And anybody in shelters where it's been difficult to achieve social distancing. So, I want this to be clear. Some shelters have a lot of space, some do not. Where it's clear to our Department of Social Services and our Department of Homeless Services that social distancing cannot be achieved properly, a number of those clients will be moved to hotels to achieve the balance, to make sure there is the proper social distancing. So, we will use those hotels aggressively as a tool to support homeless individuals, to strike the right balance in our shelters to make sure people who need to be isolated are isolated. Commissioner Steve Banks is with me here, our Social Services Commissioner. I want to thank him and his whole team. They've done a remarkable job of keeping people safe in the shelter system and we have all agreed on this plan as the best way forward to use hotels to ensure that we can strike the balance and achieve those health and safety goals that are paramount right now.

We are also at the same time in this crisis working to continue what we talked about before the coronavirus hit us, which is getting more and more New Yorkers off the streets who have been permanently living on the streets. To do that, even in the midst of this crisis – and I commend everyone at Social Services, Homeless Services – we’ll open 230 new Safe Haven beds and low-barrier beds. These are the kinds of beds and facilities that help us get people immediately off the street who have reached that point where they're ready to finally come in and accept shelter and change their lives and hopefully never, ever go back to the streets. A lot of our street homeless folks are going through a lot right now like everyone, of course. We're going to remind them and show them that there's a better way and it's available to them now. And those outreach workers, those hero outreach reach workers continue to do their work while being safe. And we're going to work hard to get more and more people off the streets into shelter, particularly those who are older. That will be a focus – an intense focus in these next weeks.

Finally, I want to do some thank-yous every chance I get. I want to thank people who are doing amazing things. So many New Yorkers have been heroic, so many New Yorkers have dug deep to help each other. I want to do a special thank you to everyone at the Parks Department. We have asked a lot of them and they've been doing amazing things. The one thing I don't think people think about is, the Parks Department has part of how we help our kids who have to stay home because of shelter in place. But they have been, they've been coming up with great, exciting content to ensure that kids have something new and exciting to participate in from home. If you go to nyc.gov/parksathome, you can see the great content that Parks Departments put together.

But I also want to thank all the Parks workers, everyone at the Parks Department, especially the frontline workers in our parks. They've been working, despite all the challenges, to keep the parks safe and clean. They have been absolutely teaching and enforcing social distance and it's been remarkable how well they've done that. The results we've heard consistently from the Parks Department, from the NYPD have been really striking how well they've done it, convincing people that we all have to do social distancing together. This was not, I assure you, what Parks workers thought they had signed up for when they took their jobs, but they have been adapting and doing a hell of a job, helping to ensure that our parks are safe for everyone. So, thank you to everyone at the Parks Department.

And always want to thank those who are supporting all of our frontline heroes. And a lot of people have stepped up. Someone that New Yorkers know well from his illustrious career on the basketball court, John Starks. He has dished out an assist, and this time it's not with a basketball. This time it's 3,00 sets of scrubs for our city hospitals to help out our health care workers. IBM has provided a half-a-million dollars in [inaudible] technology to the Department of Health and a million donation to the Department of Education. Apollo Global Management, and cofounder Josh Harris, have provided 100,000 N95 masks. That's outstanding. 100,000 N95 masks to our public hospitals, particularly to Elmhurst Hospital. We are so grateful for that. And Salesforce has made a half-million dollar donation as well to help the effort to fight COVID-19 in New York City. So, a lot of people stepping up, a lot of people helping from all over the city, all over the country, and we are so appreciative. And I'll close, before a few words in Spanish by saying, look, even in the midst of this challenge and this pain another thing that people are doing that brings out the beauty of the holiday season is they are living out their faith.

All of you are helping each other, respecting each other, supporting each other. All of our faiths, all of our beliefs, no matter what your belief system is, they almost all come back to the same place, which is love each other, help each other. And that's what we're seeing New Yorkers do. And it's beautiful even amidst the pain and the struggle. So, thank you because you're showing the whole world something very beautiful in this time of challenge. In Spanish, just a quick summary.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, let's turn to our colleagues in the media. Please let us know the name and the outlet of each person calling in.

Moderator: Hi, all. Just a reminder that we have Chancellor Carranza and Commissioner Banks here in person, and Dr. Barbot on the phone. We'll take one question from each reporter in order to get to as many outlets as possible. With that, I will start with Christina from Chalkbeat.

Question: Hi, Mayor and Chancellor. Thanks for taking my call. Looking ahead to September, we would like to know whether there's any talk about extending the school year. And also, if you could talk more about what reopening schools might look like in terms of helping students catch up academically.

Mayor: I'll start and pass to the Chancellor, Christina. We're still dealing with the great unknown, obviously. So, the first thing to say in any attempt to project the months ahead is we first have to see what happens with the fight against this disease and ensure that we're making steady progress and ensure that we can get into those next phases that I described earlier in the week, the low transmission and the no transmission. For us to be effective at educating kids in person, we have to really prove that this crisis is effectively over. So, that's going to be the determinant more than anything. The DOE is working on all sorts of contingency plans depending on how that timing goes. But the one thing that is certain is we can at least plan for the scheduled opening of school. We have to make sure the disease is beaten back, but we can plan for it because as we've been saying from the beginning, and our Health Commissioner has been saying, we think September is a good date to think about when things get more fully back to normal. And we know it will take a different kind of approach than we've ever had, particularly as I say on the mental health side, but also on the academic side because we're going to be dealing with challenges we've never had on this scale before and we're also going to have to find a way to make up a lot of lost grounds. So, it’s going to be real tough. Chancellor.

Chancellor Carranza: Thank you, Sir. Christina, so as the Mayor said, we're working on multiple scenarios and again, caveat is always depending on the public health, how this COVID virus is promulgating or hopefully not throughout our city. That's going to be a huge determinant. That being said, we're also working very closely with our labor partners, CSA, UFT our food service workers as well because we want to make sure that their voices are included as well in terms of what makes sense. And as I mentioned in my comments as well, we will be soliciting the feedback of parents as well. Because obviously they're going through a very difficult time as well. I can say that everything is on the table but nothing has yet been decided because again, circumstances in terms of the public health are going to determine when we open again. But we are very, very concerned about making sure that our students’ mental health, the trauma that they are suffering and families are suffering, is well taken into account, as well as the academics as we go forward. So, more information will be coming next week and in subsequent weeks.

Moderator: Next, we'll take Doris from NY1. Hi.

Question: This will be in Spanish for NY1 Noticias. This is for Chancellor Carranza –

[Question asked in Spanish]

Chancellor Carranza: [Speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: I got a lot of it, but not all of it. Is there anything you didn't say previously that you need to highlight in English?

Chancellor Carranza: I just want to say again how are parents – the question is how are parents going to take on this challenge of educating students and having them home through the end of the school year. I just want parents to understand that you're not alone and we recognize, and this is part of what weighs so heavily on the Mayor's decision-making authority is that we understand that families – this is a crisis. This is a traumatic event for families as well. All of the things that you may be dealing with on top of now you're been drafted into the Teaching Corps. But you're not alone. If you go to our webpage, schools.nyc.gov, you will go to Learn at Home. There’s a Learn at Home link with lots of guidance for families, lots of activities, lots of things that families can do.

I've also been privy in some of my conversations with parents to learn that parents are forming their own support groups and they're sharing activities. For example, this coming Wednesday is going to be a Fitness at Home Wednesday where our New York sports teams are doing fitness videos that families will be able to log on to and participate in. There's a lot of creativity that's happening out there, but what we want to be able to do is put people together. You can also call 3-1-1, and that'll put you in touch with folks at the Department of Education that can also help you navigate what these next few weeks and next few months will look like.

Moderator: Next we have Myles from NBC New York.

Mayor: Myles? Let's see if Myles is there. Myles, can you hear us all right?

Moderator: Sorry, apologies. We will circle back. Next, we have Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I was just looking for an update from yesterday on the issue of delivery of meals to seniors. You had said that you hadn't spoken to anyone who had heard of a senior going without delivery. Have you heard anything differently since then?

Mayor: Yes. And thank you for the question. I'm looking to Freddi Goldstein. I thought we put this out publicly. Yes, we did. Okay, did you tweet it out or, okay. Freddi, so check what Freddi put out last night. The – in fact it is a true statement that previous to yesterday I did not hear of anyone not getting their meals. This a real mistake what happened with the seniors in Independence Plaza – it should not have happened. I want to apologize to those seniors. Something went wrong in the application process and we are aggressively fixing it. Meals will be delivered today. I've asked our Food Czar Kathryn Garcia to work to make sure that that will not happen ever again, anywhere. If someone calls 3-1-1 and they sign up for those home deliveries again, there's certain particular characteristics we're looking forward to ensure that someone gets a home delivery. But if someone qualifies, they must start getting them immediately. And so our leader who's proven herself many a time before, she will ensure that all agencies involved and the 3-1-1 operation are tightly coordinated to make sure that anyone who signs up, any senior signs up get those meals right away, this is literally crucial. We cannot have a senior in this moment where there's been so much dislocation – if a senior needs a food delivery at home, it has to happen instantly. And I've made that really clear to Kathryn Garcia. Let me be clear, when I say instantly, meaning as quickly as humanly possible from the time they sign up to the time the meal arrives, I want that to be the fastest conceivable timeline. I have told Commissioner Garcia that this is an area, even though we're dealing with a lot of challenges you know, human, especially logistical, financial, this is an area where we're not going to spare any expense. If people need food, you know, it's going to be one of our highest priorities to get them food. So we will fix that going forward. If anyone has a problem, you sign up with 3-1-1 and you have a problem, please call 3-1-1 back and alert them immediately that if you have not gotten a delivery you were supposed to get, so that can be fixed. But the Independence Plaza situation will be fixed today.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor and Chancellor and everyone on the call. I'm curious if you could outline if there's any changes or plans to summer school. As you know, particularly the District 75 students, they have school for 12 months out of the year. Will there be any plan to open some of these buildings during the summer or will you have a further plan in the coming days?

Mayor: Thank you Katie. Great question. I'll start and pass to the Chancellor. We care a lot about making sure the kids who go to the District 75 schools are supported and protected and given what they need, but it's the same larger reality is the first question for us all. We don't know what the summer will mean for anything we do because again, we have to first get to – out of this widespread transmission phase, which according to, you know, all the information we have to date is something that only happens in May or June. And then we have to sustain the effort to get into low transmission and hold that and keep making progress to that to get to the point where we're basically at no transmission.

You know what our Health Commissioner, Dr. Barbot has said from the beginning is we could see in September being back in a state of something like normalcy, but that's very initial and preliminary based on what we know. There's still a lot more we don't know and I keep warning against that possibly of a resurgence in the disease, which is really one of the underpinnings of why I made this decision on the schools to really help ensure that there is not a resurgence. So I would say right now, it's hard to know for sure. It's hard to see a summer programming until we have a lot more answers. I feel a lot more confident about anything starting in September than I do something starting in July. But to the last part of your question, yeah, we're certainly going to be planning and ready for different options and when we see something definitive, that's when we would talk about any possibility for the summer. Chancellor?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, I will only add to what Mayor de Blasio has said – is that there are two other operating words that we're operating under. One is optimistic and realistic. So optimistically yeah, we want to get students together, we want to have them with their teachers as soon as humanly possible and where it's safe. Realistically, given the modeling that the Mayor has talked about we are going to be in remote learning phase through the summer and for students with disabilities in particular whose Individual Education Plan, their IEP, calls for services, we are working with families and with their teachers to make sure that those services are being provided. The good news is that in the vast majority of cases, we are able to provide those services remotely. There are some things that are just much more difficult and – but even then, we're working through those, those particular situations as well. So again, as public health information dictates, that's how we will then determine what those programs look like for in-person instruction.

Moderator: We're going to circle back to Myles, Myles from NBC New York.

Question: Mr. Mayor, Good morning.

Mayor: Good morning Myles.

Question: I'm happy to be back here. Just a question about how do you envision and the Chancellor as well, the Regents working. In order for these seniors to be able to graduate, they need to pass these Regents exams and you're envisioning them coming into a central building and getting them done? Or could they be done remotely?

Mayor: I'll pass that Chancellor by just say, I think and everything we're going to be dealing with, with the Regents, with the State, I think we're all sensitive to the fact this is a place we've never been to four, we're dealing with a crisis that, you know, literally on a health level we haven't seen anything this in a century. But in terms of impact on young people, we have to be creative and strategic because the last thing we want to see is a lot of young people who were literally well down the road to their plans to go to college or to go onto whatever else they were going to do next, you know, being interrupted and being stopped on a path that they had been working on, you know, for years and years and their families had been working on for years and years. So, whatever it takes, and I would imagine the state and the regions feel the same way, we come up with creative solutions so we don't disrupt the lives of these children any further. But Chancellor you take it from there?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah, good question. So the State Education Department has already,
I would say eliminated the June administration of the Regents. So students that were going to sit for that in June do not have to take the Regents. They have not yet made a decision on the Regents administration for August. We suspect that they will take that up in a matter of weeks. The State Education Department has also put out guidance for those seniors that still needed to sit for the Regents. And we've distributed that guidance to schools. So anyone that's listening that has a high school senior should be in touch with their guidance counselors and with their high school for more specific information because again, this is all very individual to individual students. But I want to thank the State Education Department for really keeping an eye on how do we realistically get students to cross that threshold and get their diploma.

Moderator: Next we have Sophia from Gothamist.

Question: Hi, good morning.

Mayor: Okay, good morning. Go ahead Sophia.

Question: Okay, good morning Mayor and Chancellor. I wanted to ask about attendance rates so far with remote learning, especially if as you said, 240,000 students still don't have the right technology yet. And is there any way to move some of the learning components offline to help relieve the pressure?

Mayor: Yeah, great question Sophia. I'll pass the chance to, but say one the DOE has been also doing a work offline and he'll describe – the Chancellor will describe it. But yeah, attendance is a very challenging dynamic when you're dealing with distance. But that is also being worked on. I want to remind everyone what we asked of educators. It was almost like a military situation to say you have to mobilize in a week's time and put together you know, something and get it going. So at least there was something for kids. And then as we said, literally the day that we, you know, that painful decision to close the schools, this will get better each week, literally meant that with every passing week there would be more devices in the hands of kids with every passing week. The educators would come up with new and better ways to do distance learning with every passing week we'd find more and more ways to engage kids and keep track of what they are doing. But it is, this is a work in progress. So, Chancellor, if you could explain sort of what's possible and what's not so far on attendance, that'd be helpful.

Chancellor Carranza: Yes, sir. So, this week we put out guidance for taking attendance. Obviously, we're not taking period by period attendance. It's a full day one, once a day schools are reporting their attendance. We can get you the details of what that attendance is looking like. What we're trying to pay particular attention to is students that have not been in contact with us. We're spending a lot of time, our teachers, our administrators are really taking time to get in touch with those students. We want to know where every student is. What's also important to really be clear about is that when we originally talked about device distribution, we had put out a number of about 300,000 devices based on a number of modeling scenarios. Since that time we've actually had parents fill out a survey and I'm going to give you the information because if you haven't filled it out, and I'll tell you why this is important in a minute, you need to. You can do the survey by calling 7-1-8-9-3-5-5-1-0-0 and press the number five. Okay, 7-1-8-9-3-5-5-1-0-0 press the number five, if you don't have internet. If you do have internet, it's very simple: coronavirus.schools.nyc/remotelearningdevices and that's available in all nine languages. 

Now the reason that's important is that the families that have taken that survey, we now know who you are, if you need a device and the reason that becomes really valuable is that this, this week we have mailed over 40,000 packets to families that don't yet have devices. And we know they don't have devices because they filled out that survey. So they have learning packets that have been mailed directly to them. It's also important to note that we've given out 175,000 devices that were school devices. They’re loaned out to students, they're in their hands.

We've also, as of this week, shipped 70,000 Wi-Fi equipped iPads to students because we know who they are because of that survey. So that means that in the hands of students are about 245,000 devices. If that was a school system, that would be the sixth or seventh largest school system in America that we've put devices in the hands of those students already. And as the Mayor has said, our goal is by the end of April, every one of those students that have identified themselves or families that have identified themselves as needing a device based on the survey will have a device in their hands as well. So it's really important that we know who you are because we need to get you in the queue, but it's also important so that we can mail you those learning packets so that you're not losing any instructional time as you wait for your device.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Christie from News 12 New Jersey.

Question: Hi, good morning. Mr. Mayor panel. Quick question about food distribution where – well, actually the money towards food pantries and soup kitchens we're hearing that $25 million is being designated from the city, which I assume is actually mirroring what the state is giving the other $25 million. Just a question that collected $50 million, how long is that expected to last? You know, you're saying hopefully by September at least schools will be back on, but do you think this $50 million collectively from the state and the city will last even as long as you hope it will?

Mayor: Well, Christie that’s a great question. We – I'm very, very worried about the food situation. I think we're only beginning to see the impact of this this piece of the coronavirus crisis is going to have on people. It's remember – kind of, it kind of will get worse with each week because folks have lost their income and people have lost jobs and will continue to lose jobs and then, you know, whatever they had still coming in that runs out. So I think it unfortunately, tragically it gets worse going ahead. There is some help coming from the federal government. That's a good thing in terms of, you know, the money coming out of the stimulus and certainly these particular new initiatives that you referred to will help a lot. But no, I'm not confident yet that everything is going to be needed is in place. That's why I named a foods are Kathryn Garcia and that's why I've said to her, whatever it's going to take a, we're going to put forward the resources to make sure that everyone has food. We literally have to have a simple standard. No New Yorker goes without food and what the folks in the Department Education are doing, which is amazing, 435 sites that have now been up over the last week or more where anybody, any adult can come in and get breakfast, lunch and dinner, grab and go as for as many family members as possible. That to me is the kind of thing we're going to have to do on a really big scale going forward to make sure that everyone has food. 

Christie, this is something that could go on for months before – think about, I mean, when are people going to have normal incomes again, you know, even when you're factoring in unemployment insurance, things like that, it's still a lot less obviously than people had. When are they going to have normal incomes again, you know, we hope and pray that it's no later than September, but we don't know that yet. So we're going to have to do a really constant, ever-growing food effort to make this work.

Moderator: Next we have Sally from Politico.

Question: Hi Mayor. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Sally.

Question: Apologies if this was asked already because I was cutting in and out. But do you have an update on the number of homeless people who have been infected and have died from the coronavirus? And also, I had a second question. We reported last night that your administration has been having some difficulty getting timely information from the Cuomo administration on the number of positive cases and deaths and that sometimes you have to wait until his press conference to get the updated daily number. So, I was wondering if there's any hope that that might be changing?

Mayor: I think everyone is working together to try and deal with information in a very, very tough, painful, ever-changing situation. So, we certainly work with the State constantly. The two health departments communicate a lot. We're constantly working together to try and get the best information, the most timely information. You know, so, I think that right now I'd say, everyone is together trying to work – and we've been honest about it with our health department. I know Dr. Barbot is online, if she wants to comment, that we've had to make sure as we've collected information that we thought it was a consistent and accurate. And there's been lag sometimes that probably wouldn't have been the case in a more normal time. But I think, overall, you know what the State is finding out, what we are finding in many ways is the same information, even if it, you know, comes in a different hour, it's the same conclusion you can draw from it. And then, what we're going to do on Monday is put out these three indicators that we think are the truest measure of how we proceed. And I've said publicly, we need to see all three of them move in the right direction, meaning downward together for at least 10 days to two weeks before we can even consider changing any of the current rules and restrictions. So, before I turned to Commissioner Banks, on your first question, I'm going to see – Dr. Barbot, I did my best to summarize. Is there anything you want to add to that answer? 

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: No, sir. You got it just right.

Mayor: Okay. Thank you, doctor. And now, Steve Banks on the other question.

Commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Social Services: Let me give you an update. We've been putting out information each day and want to make sure that you have it. So, we will make a note to make sure you're on our distribution list. So far, we've had 343 positive cases, 20 deaths among those 343 cases; 19 of those deaths were after a period of hospitalization, and one after someone was self-isolating. Within that 343 positive cases, in addition to the 20 people that passed away – and my, my heart goes out to them and their loved ones – there were 37 individuals who've been discharged, meaning their cases have been resolved. 139 are in isolation, a space that we created within our shelter system portfolio; 81 are in the hospital; 35 are self-isolating – that means they're in families with children or families where the individuals – I'm sorry, where the individual is in a family that has a self-contained living unit; and 31 have made other arrangements and reunited with family or friends in the community.

Mayor: Steve, I didn't – I may have missed, did you say what the overall census right now in shelter is roughly?

Commissioner Banks: The current overall census is 58,000. And then, of course there are, you know, roughly 4,000 people on the streets. We've conducted more than 12,000 encounters, outreach encounters on the streets since the middle of March. And our outreach teams and our frontline staff have really been doing a tremendous job in this effort and questioning individuals on the street whether or not they've got the symptoms, observing whether they've got the symptoms. Out of all of those engagements, 12 individuals from the street have been transported to the hospital for testing and all of them thus far have come out to be negative.

Moderator: Next, we'll have Matt from Newsday.

Question: Good morning, all. For the Mayor, you said Thursday there could be even stricter restrictions, depending on the infection rate.

Mayor: Wait, Matt, I'm sorry. I couldn't hear your beginning, Matt. Start again.

Question: Sorry about that. I'll say it a little slower and louder. You said on Thursday that the restrictions could, depending on the infection rate, be stricter. What specifically are some of those restrictions beyond the status quo. And for the Chancellor, to what extent are students being graded for this semester?

Mayor: So, Matt, look, I think – it’s a good question, I appreciate it – the way to think about this is that with the social distancing, with the shelter in place, we're obviously right now at a situation where we've changed life in New York City profoundly. And people are trying to live in a very, very different way and it's been real difficult for a lot of New Yorkers. But clearly, if we have to even tighten up further, we could. We don't want to – who on earth would want to? But if we felt that we we're seeing a resurgence and a danger to the health and safety of New Yorkers, and we have to tighten up the rules further, we would do that and we would obviously work with the State on that as well. So, you know, I don't want to project what all those different things may be, but, you know, the easy example is the interpretation of what's essential and non-essential. I think it's a good interpretation right now. You could tighten that even further. You could take some of the work that is now considered essential – excuse me, considered non-essential – let me say it again, I can do this, Matt – you could take some of the work that's considered essential now and limit even that further or limit the number of people that were allowed to do that work. So, that's one area where you could tighten further. But the fact is, I don't think it's real healthy to do theoreticals either way. Some folks in the media have asked me, you know, describe exactly how we might loosen up at a certain point. And I said, no, it's – we can't do that, because we don't know if we're going to get to that point when we're going to get to that point and it's not healthy, I don't think, to say to people, well, this is what might happen and then raise expectations unduly. I don't think it makes sense to do it the other way either. What I think makes 100 percent sense is to say, here is a plan that New Yorkers are actually making work. As tough as it is, it's working. We have seen some really great indicators in the last week. It's not – we're not out of the woods by any stretch, but something's working. It's clearly because people took shelter in place and social distancing to heart and they're doing it really, really well. Now, Matt, another point is, we have to keep enforcing all of that all the time and the NYPD and a lot of other agencies mentioned – Parks Department, Fire, Sheriff's Office, Buildings Department, they’re are all a part of that. The Buildings Department did a great job when a lot of the construction was deemed a non-essential, did a great job getting out there and shutting down those construction sites and making sure they didn't come back. Parks has done a great job. NYPD is doing it all the time – grocery stores, pharmacies, streets, parks, you name it. In fact, thank God, as we're seeing today NYPD is starting to see real progress in terms of a police officers coming back who had been sick. We're seeing finally a little a decline in the absentee rate as we beef up the NYPD again, the ability to get out there and do even more enforcement. So, I would argue, Matt, that the singular focus should be the rules and restrictions we have now that are working, enforce them really, really consistently, New Yorkers double down on them. And then, when we see that sustained progress, let's assume the positive with those three indicators go down all in a row, we can talk about some loosening up. If, God forbid, those indicators went in the wrong direction, then we're going to talk about the things that might mean tightening up. And I think that means for everyone, do what you're doing, do not take the foot off the gas so we never have to get to that tightening up. The second question, go ahead.

Chancellor Carranza: So, on grading – work is being graded, but, again, we are emphasizing flexibility in this time period. And the reason for that is we understand that there are students that may not have devices yet. We understand that there may be students that are taking care of their younger siblings and the next door neighbor siblings because their parents or guardians are out doing work for the city. So, flexibility is key. We are – we've put out guidance to the field about grading that will be further refined as we go into remote learning for the remainder of this school year. The bottom line here is that we want students to continue to engage academically, but what we're hearing very strongly from our parents and from our teachers is that there also needs to be a very strong emphasis on trauma-informed curriculum so that students can process what's happening to them. As the Mayor has said, we haven't done this in a hundred years. So, it's important that we are also focusing on the social and emotional learning needs of students as well. And there are many – listen, as a teacher, I had many ways of monitoring student progress and were they actually mastering the concept. Our teachers are being very creative in that regard as well. Grading will not look the same as it would in a traditional in-person classroom, hence flexibility. And that's okay. So, grading is happening, but it doesn't look like it was happening even last semester.

Moderator: Next we have Debralee from Manhattan Times-Bronx Free Press.

Question: Good morning, everyone. How are you?

Mayor: Hey, Debralee.

Question: I wanted to follow up, Mayor, on the conversation that you've been having with labor leaders on this discussion, and also with Chancellor Carranza. What was the precise response from the UFT on this decision? When did they know and what has been their response to you on this? And then also, given the fact that these schools that we're talking about in terms of closure are going to disproportionately impact families that, given your own data – the Department of Health data – is already impacting families that, as you noted, have been disproportionately impacted by illness or death by COVID-19. What contingency plans, what formal steps can the City speak to that will, beyond just looking at remote learning options and looking to bolster the academic support for students? Can you speak to specific reinforcements for students in the Bronx where you're seeing this COVID-19 virus really hit so hard and their families that go beyond the scope of what the DOE is already doing for everyone?

Mayor: Great question, Debralee. Appreciate that very much. I'm going to start and pass to the Chancellor on both parts of your question. On the question of the folks and the families, the kids in the Bronx, I think you're exactly right – as we said, there's this real clear disparities in how this crisis is playing out and folks who have borne the brunt of so many other challenges for, you know, decades – poverty and health disparities long before coronavirus are now bearing the brunt with the coronavirus. It's a cycle of unfairness that's playing out very clearly and deeply and painfully. So, we have to double down. You know, one of the things that Chancellor led the way on was the Bronx Plan. This was, you know – last year, before we ever heard the word – literally, before the coronavirus existed, one of the great things this Chancellor has done was the Bronx Plan to ensure that the best teachers in a lot of subject matters at had not been – literally had not been available in schools in the Bronx – and some of the schools in the Bronx having the toughest time, had for years and years, not had the teachers they needed in math and science and foreign language – and because of the initiative the Chancellor created and agreed with the union on, we were able this last September to get a whole new group of teachers into the Bronx schools and start to make them better and stronger. And you could see the evidence right away. We're going to have to do all that and more, going forward. So I would – I know the Chancellor will go into a little more detail, but I think we have to think right now about with a distance model what we can do to support kids in the Bronx and kids who are going through the most, including how we can help with mental health. And we already have 888-NYC-WELL to help anyone with mental health challenges, 24/7, multiple languages for free, but we have to think about how to pinpoint that to kids who have particular needs around mental health or obviously any other ways we can help them academically. So, that's part one. And I'd say, of course, in September, doubling down on our investments and our focus in the Bronx so we can come back very, very strong, because this – again, this next school year is going to have to be the greatest school year we've ever had to overcome what we've lost. On the decision process and the workforce, the Chancellor can certainly speak to that, because there's been ongoing discussions. Of course, the people that do the work, our educators and the people who staff our buildings, have been wanting to know what was going to happen next, have been expressing real concerns about health and safety, and just about effectiveness, whether they could – if we came back, we could do it effectively and have any real impact on our kids' education, you know, whether it was going to be worth the risk. And I think consistently what the folks representing our workforce have said is that they're not convinced at all it's worth the risk. And that certainly was important in our thinking. But really, I want to make clear that in making this decision, which we solidified last night – it's something we've been talking about for days, but we really came to the full conclusion last night after long conversations with the Chancellor, with our health leadership, and, as I said, with Dr. Fauci last night. And I think Dr. Fauci is like the great health conscience of America right now and he was so clear about the importance of a careful, cautious approach in fighting back this virus and how keeping schools closed would be a really important component of an overall strategy to beat the coronavirus once and for all. So, when I added up everything I'd heard from the Chancellor and his team, including the discussions they'd had with labor, what our own health leadership was saying, and then ultimately with what Dr. Fauci said, it became clear to me last night that this was the right thing to do. And, of course, we wanted to announce it right away because so many parents, so many educators, everyone's been looking for clarity and we wanted to give it to them.

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah. So, I'll only add that I've had many conversations, daily conversations, multiple conversations every day with the labor leaders that I get to work with and not one of them has expressed anything but support. Let the data drive the decision. So, they are all very supportive of this decision. I think more than anything, students and families and our colleagues, our teachers, administrators, food service workers, custodians, everybody just wants to know what are we going to be doing? And so, I think this is important for – and I want to thank the Mayor for making this decision and us putting that decision out there. That being said, there is an incredible team working in the Bronx led by the executive superintendent Meisha Ross Porter and her team. The superintendents, the high school superintendents, District 75 superintendents, the principals – and there is so many wonderful stories of resilience and enrichment that is happening in the Bronx – people doing things that are creative but supporting each other. I will also say that, you know, to every dark cloud there's a silver lining. And it's unfortunate that we are in the state of public pandemic that we are. However, when we get to the other side of this pandemic, we will have bridged the digital divide for our students – that is particularly egregious in communities like the Bronx. Students will have laptops, students will have devices, there'll be connected, they will have the ability to explore the world in ways that they didn't have this past August. So, again, it's unfortunate there's a crisis, but we are looking at this from a perspective of how do we continue to make the learning experiences of students even better. And if there is a silver lining that'll be the silver lighting, not only in the Bronx but in many communities that have been disproportionately not connected with devices and connectivity.

Moderator: Last two for today. Next, we have Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I know you on Streetsblog to ask a non-transportation question, but the ability to move around while also socially distancing is itself a vital issue for fighting the spread of this disease. So, on Friday – so I will ask this question – on Friday, multiple business improvement districts, and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, asked you to open up many more streets, including Broadway, which is virtually car-free right now anyway. And given that you are asked about Oakland's 74 miles of car-free streets yesterday, maybe you can give us a timeline beyond your answer yesterday, which was no.

Mayor: Yeah. Gersh, thank you. Again, I want my team to evaluate the Oakland plan. Look, all over the country, people are learning from each other and people are creating in a crisis atmosphere. So, I want to absolutely understand what Oakland has done and then see what it tells us. I want you to – even though, Gersh, you have a specific mission and I respect your mission, you're very smart person, so I'm going to ask you to take in the fullness of what I said, not just say, you said no, but listen to why I said what I said, which is, we have an NYPD that has been diminished in terms of workforce, although continues to do a great job. We have a concern about enforcement at grocery stores, supermarkets, pharmacies all over the city that is so crucial right now to ensuring that social distancing and shelter in place will work. The NYPD strongly believes, in addition to everything else it has to do to keep people safe, that it needs to focus its enforcement efforts on where people are right now rather than open up a whole new vein of places that have to be enforced and could be gathering points. And that's where we are right now. Now, to be fair, as I said, for the first time, we have seen, and it's been reported by the NYPD, beginning of some progress and getting the workforce back to fuller strength. That's an important factor here. So, we will evaluate the Oakland plan for sure. I'm happy to give you an answer next week on if we see something there we can act on. But for the meantime, I'm saying this is about enforcement, making sure that the enforcement we need in every other way is sufficient, watching the amount of workforce we have to work with the NYPD, not creating the danger of new potential gathering places. And I'm also concerned – and I'll ask the DOT to look at this – you know, we have to, unlike Oakland, which is a noticeably sized city – obviously, a big American city, but it's not New York City. It has nowhere near the population, of the density we have. So, what do we need to keep open for first responders, for ambulances? What do we need to keep open for food deliveries? We have to look at the whole picture and decide what makes sense. So, my straight forward understanding with you will be, we'll have an evaluation on the Oakland plan. We'll have a sense of what we think of it and whether it's applicable here and we'll give you an answer next week.

Moderator: Last for today, we have Jessica from WNYC.

Mayor: Jessica, can you hear us try again? Jessica, you said WNYC? Jessica?

Moderator: Okay, we'll take one more. We have Alyssa from NY1.

Question: Good morning. Forgive me [inaudible] some connection issues, but what the City working with the State on the 180-day waiver, does this mean the school year is shorter? Is June 26 still the plan as the last day?

Mayor: Yeah, I'll start and pass to the Chancellor. The State's been granting waivers to all school systems to-date. We're obviously going to ask them to keep extending that and keep going with the timing of the school year, but not the in-person reality of the school year. We clearly want to see our kids get the most education we can give them. And we want to take it through to what would have been the natural end of the school year.

Chancellor Carranza: So, yes. Mr. Mayor, I also want to emphasize again that while we have not physically been together in schools learning and teaching is happening, teachers are teaching remotely, students are learning remotely. So, we've also been working very closely with the State education department so that they know what our remote learning plan is so that they can see that we are still teaching and students are still learning. It's not in the optimal environment that we would all like, but teaching and learning is still happening. So, we're going to continue to emphasize that as we work with the State around the waiver, but no change in the end of the school year on based on the waivers we've received.

Mayor: Thank you. And everyone, thank you. I know a lot of people all over the city are getting ready for Easter tomorrow. I want to wish you a Happy Easter in advance, even though it's against the backdrop of something very tough and very painful. And I know people can't gather in so many cases the way you want to, but I hope you have your loved ones either with you or on Skype or FaceTime or some way are connecting with the people you love. And even if you can't be in the same place, the spirit, the love of the holiday, the faith is with you all. God bless all New Yorkers in the middle, this incredibly difficult crisis. But again, I am so proud of all of you and the way you're helping us forward out of this crisis. So, keep doing what you're doing and God bless you all.

2020-04-12 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. A very happy Easter to all New Yorkers who are celebrating this joyous holiday, even in the midst of this pain and this crisis. It’s a time to think about renewal and to think about what comes ahead, a time to think about how we support each other, and to everyone continuing to celebrate Passover, a zizen Pesach to all. I just want to say this simply upfront, this is a season where we focus on faith and so my message to all New Yorkers is keep the faith, keep the faith in this time of challenge, not just your faiths that you practice your beliefs, your values, whatever they may be – keep your faith in New York City. Keep your faith in your fellow New Yorkers. I'm watching what all of you are doing with such pride and admiration because you're showing this whole nation what it means to act as one to help each other and protect each other. That's faith. That's something greater than any one of us. That's something powerful. That's something beautiful. That's something worthy of this season we are in, a season where we reach for our highest ideals. So, thank you, New York City. Thank you for the way you have shown everyone that no matter what's thrown at you, you keep the faith, you support each other, you stand up for each other. We're going to need it. We're going to need it in the weeks and months ahead. That faith will sustain us and then we're going to need that faith to build something better in the future. Not just to get to a day when we're over this disease, but a day when we reach for something higher and I have faith in you and I have faith that we will get there.

So, this week we went through a lot in New York City. It was a very, very tough week in our hospitals. We lost some of our loved ones. We lost some of our fellow New Yorkers. It's so painful to think about, but I also want you to remember what we thought this week was going to be like originally. We thought it was going to be something, honestly, even much worse. And we have never, ever underestimated this enemy we're fighting. Coronavirus is ferocious and has presented us with challenges that we have never ever seen before. And that certainly our nation has not seen anything like in a century. So, this was a tough and painful week, but it was also a very different week than the one we expected. And thank God for that. You know, last Sunday was a moment that we were preparing for the worst and then we started to see some improvement and we're thrilled – I'm thrilled to be able to tell you that just when we thought it was really going to get even worse, we started to see some improvement, and I'm a first one to always say, let's not overrate that improvement, let's not draw too many conclusions too quickly, but let's be very clear and let's be willing to, of course, not only see the good, but see hope in the good.

Last Wednesday, I told you we had seen something real that was the beginning of change and that has continued over these last days. Starting tomorrow, we're going to give you a new set of information, a new set of indicators that will help us to determine where we go in the future. I've said it's going to be three indicators we are going to watch every single day and you're going to watch all of you because it's all going to be public. We need to see those indicators move in the right direction consistently to be able to start to talk about changes that we can make to move us towards the next phase of fighting this epidemic. But what's so important to recognize is that even as recently as a week ago, we were seeing in our hospitals, people coming in and needing to be intubated more every single day, more and more people in need of those ventilators, more and more people would not live without them. A week ago, it was 200 to 300 more people each day coming in, every day, 200 or 300 more than the day before. We thought that was even going to go up more. And then by Wednesday we were able to say no, in fact, thank God that number had come down to about a hundred people more per day. Still way too many, still more each day, but fewer than projected by a lot. Today, I can tell you that number has gone down again – 70 more people per day now is what we're seeing on average. But again, I don't want anyone to mishear it. It's not, things are definitively, clearly, permanently getting better. It's still 70 more people each day, but it's a lot fewer than what we feared.

When it comes to the equipment and the supplies that we need to get us through this next coming week, I'm very pleased to say I want to thank everyone. Let me just say everyone in our team has been working so hard – an incredible operation at our Emergency Management Office where people from all agencies are working together, all of our colleagues in the private sector have been helping us, the federal government, the State government, FEMA, everyone has been part of this. Thank you, because we are now at a point where we can say for the week ahead based on everything we know now we will have enough ventilators to get through this coming week. I will keep updating you because we never know when something may change and we always have to have our guard up and we're always looking for new supplies to get ready for what's ahead because this won't be over tomorrow. This is going to be weeks and months ahead. So we're not letting our guard down but we do have enough ventilators based on what we know now to get through next week. Also, on personal protective equipment, PPEs – for the coming week, and I'm going to talk about the crisis standard. I want to emphasize – and I say this to all New Yorkers, but particularly to our heroic health care workers that we've got to be always honest with you – no one can tell you truthfully that we are providing what would be the peacetime time standard where we'd love to have a true abundance of PPEs of every kind that could be used once and thrown away. We would love to be in that situation. That's the situation we were in for a long time. We're not in that situation over these last weeks.

Once this crisis hit and earnest, we went to a crisis standard and that means always protecting our health care workers, always protecting our first responders, and anyone who needs these PPEs. But with a standard that our CDC says and our Health Department says is acceptable but not the one we would use in peacetime. Based on that crisis standard, we will have the N95 masks, the surgical masks, the gloves we need for this week ahead. And I will say we will have the surgical gowns and coverings of different types and we'll have the face shields, but barely enough in those two categories. It's going to be a struggle this week to make sure that we get them to the right places to make sure that they are conserved. This is something I've spoken with Commissioner Jimmy O'Neill about, that he's playing such an extraordinary role making sure that our hospitals at the front lines in the hospitals are receiving what they need, distributing the right way, doing what they have to do to support each other. This week's going to be one where we're going to do very dynamic and precise, making sure that each hospital gets what it needs in those categories. But for the next week we absolutely must have resupply in surgical gowns and face shields. I've had this conversation with the White House. We are continuing to press the federal government. We'll, of course, press the State government, private sector. We're contracting everywhere we can, but trying to get those deliveries in on time, which is always a challenge in this environment right now. So, this week we will get through, next week we have real challenges we must address over the next few days. And again, when I say this week, I mean this coming week, the week just beginning Monday, we will get through. The week after that, we have a lot we have to work on in advance.

Now let me talk to you about testing, this is an area where there's so much concern obviously, and I just want to remind everyone this basic history and these basic facts. The basic history is we pleaded for weeks and weeks for the federal government to provide testing upfront in the kind of quantity that could have helped us contain this crisis and change the whole course of it. We never got that help. We continue to plead for more testing. Still has not come any anywhere near the numbers that we need, but we will not stop. We're continuing the conversations with the White House, with FEMA demanding the testing. We are the epicenter of this crisis. We must have the testing to help us move towards that next phase where we get out of widespread transmission of the coronavirus and move to low-level transmission and on to something better. We also have to remember that testing helps us in many ways, but it does not provide all the solutions. It is a fact that someone could test negative one day and a few days later, tragically contract the disease and test positive. It's a fact that if you test negative, it doesn't mean let your guard down, you still have to take a lot of precautions. And it's a fact that if you test positive, you have to follow through and we have to help you follow through to protect your own health and the health of everyone around you. So, there's a lot that has to be done to take testing and make sure it is used in the best way possible. But there's still – it remains the fundamental problem, there's just not enough testing.

The priority has been clear. We have focused on hospitalized patients, those who were in greatest danger, those whose lives we have to work hardest to save. That was the testing priority. Protecting our health care workers, keeping them doing their lifesaving work, protecting our first responders so they could protect us all. That's been where the priority has been in what's essentially been phase one of what we were able to do with testing. But now we're going to talk about phase two where we intend to expand testing more to the community level as we get sufficient supply. And I want to emphasize every time I say the word testing, that it is contingent upon getting the supply we need. This is something that has to come from, I'm sad to say outside the city, we cannot produce here in any kind of way that anyone's explained to me, at least. We need to get these supplies in from elsewhere. And the testing must come in for us to do phase two the way we intend.

But here's why phase two is so important and this'll be targeted testing in communities with the greatest needs. I said the other day, this virus is not the great equalizer. It does not, in the end, have the same impact everywhere. It hurts people everywhere. Every community, every ZIP code has been affected, and we all know people who are suffering or even people who have passed away. But we see disparity. We see a clear disparity in the impact, who's been hit hardest, communities of color, lower income communities, immigrant communities, folks who are vulnerable already because they haven't had the health care they needed and deserve throughout their life. We cannot accept this inequality. We have to attack it with every tool we have. So by the end of next week, we will create community testing sites and these are targeted to have the biggest impact. We will create these sites in the following locations – and these are all Health + Hospitals locations in these communities, existing locations – in East New York in Brooklyn, Morrisania in the Bronx, Harlem of course in Manhattan, Jamaica in Queens, and the Vanderbilt Clinic on Staten Island. We will be setting up a system, we'll announce the details soon, for people who live in those communities particularly hard hit to be able to access this testing. There will be a priority system focused on those who are most vulnerable. And again, to do this effectively, we're going to have to keep getting the supply of testing we need and we're going to have to keep getting the PPEs we need. Because remember for the professionals who administer the test, they must be protected. We need those PPEs so we are going to work on a game plan that says let's keep finding the tests. Let's keep finding the PPE so we can get this up and running by the end of next week.

We will update you on the details. And obviously if there's any changes in the specifics because of supply, we will update you on that. But here's the key point. The federal government really needs to step up. Again, they have not been doing what we all needed and this is true all over the country. We have not gotten the help we need on testing. Here's a chance to get it right. I will be asking the federal government today for test kits to allow for 110,000 individualized tests. That will allow us to get started with this community effort and to continue everything else that we are doing. Specifically, 25,000 of those individualized test kits would be focused on Health + Hospitals for their current needs and for the new sites that I have just described. And we need to get these test kits in this week. If we can get that done, then we can keep building out our testing program. Now this is a beginning. Want to emphasize, those bigger phases we talked about a few days ago, to get to that next phase, that low-level transmission phase, we're going to need much more testing. To get to the phase where we've basically defeated the coronavirus and there's basically no transmission, we're going to get a lot more testing, really, really widespread testing. We're nowhere near that now. This is what our national government should be focused on first and foremost, if we're going to really help us get to those next phases here and everywhere, so I will have that conversation today with the White House again, but this is going to be the decisive in determining, not only have we got through the next weeks, but how we get to something much, much better. Couple of other points –

A week ago, I shared new guidance with New Yorkers, said we’re advising all New Yorkers to wear face coverings in public and that it was about protecting other people. It was about protecting all of us. That was the idea. It was an idea of doing something that would help reduce the spread, doing something that would help hasten the day where he could get out of this crisis. It was very clear that by putting on that face covering you're protecting everyone else. And that was for the good of all. I want to say thank you again to all New Yorkers. It's been amazing. Wherever I've been around this city, I see so many people wearing face coverings and you know, they made their own, they use bandanas, they use scarves, whatever they had. But it's been really impressive how many people took that guidance and ran with it immediately. And everywhere I've gone, I've talked to my team, people are seeing the same thing. Tremendous follow through on the guidance. So, thank you. I want to add to the instructions we're giving. Starting tomorrow, Monday, I am requiring all City workers who come in contact with the public while on duty to wear face coverings. This'll be a requirement of their work. We've already provided 1.4 million face coverings to City workers. We will provide as many more as are necessary for our City workers to consistently, constantly have a face covering on when they interact with the public. So this will be a requirement starting tomorrow Monday.

On another topic, I've said that unfortunately and painfully we're not just fighting COVID-19 as a disease and in terms of health care and protecting lives and saving lives, COVID19 has also robbed a lot of people of their livelihood. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have lost their jobs. Today we're announcing a new initiative to help some of the folks who have lost their jobs to get work again. And I want to do everything I can to give people back their livelihoods, to protect people not just in terms of health and safety, but in terms of their ability to pay for the basics, to support their family. In times of distress what our government should do on all levels, especially the federal government, is step up and provide support for people and help them continue through the crisis and get to the other side. And that includes putting money in people's pockets.

So we are establishing a new initiative to hire New Yorkers to do absolutely crucial and heroic work in our hospital system, starting with our public hospital system, Health + Hospitals. But we're also going to be expanding that effort, working with the voluntary and independent hospitals as well. So, I want to say to all New Yorkers who are looking for work, join a team of heroes, help out in our hospitals, fighting back the coronavirus and saving lives. Right away, Health + Hospitals will be hiring 500 non-clinical staff. So not medical staff – folks who can help transport patients, who can work on the clerical team, who can help the hospitals running with critical work, including cleaning and maintenance. Health + Hospitals is starting with 500 jobs immediately that will build out to thousands. And as I said, we're going to also have jobs available in the other types of hospitals, all of whom are going to need this support and help.

These will be temporary jobs starting with a 90-day assignment. But for so many families that do not have enough money right now, they're going to be a real lifeline. So, I want to ask anyone who wants to help us out and wants to get that opportunity to get employed again. Go to nyc.gov/coronavirus – again, nyc.gov/coronavirus. You can apply right away and we need you right away. And I want to remind everyone even while we're trying to get new employment opportunities to New Yorkers, we will not let any New Yorker in this crisis go without the food they need. We will not let any new Yorker be evicted from their apartment. I want to be very clear that the City of New York, we will protect our people and anyone who needs food and can't get it, call 3-1-1. Anyone who's being told by their landlord, they have to leave their building because they're sick or they're being threatened with eviction, call 3-1-1. We will get you a lawyer, we will stop it. Our job is to protect our people.

Now, another point, just a few more before we turn to questions from our colleagues in the media. Yesterday, Chancellor Carranza and I talked about the painful reality that our schools would not be able to open up again for this school year. And we explained, obviously, why that was the right thing to do in terms of health and safety, why it was the right thing to do in terms of recognizing what would be possible academically with only a few weeks in person. But we had a reason in making that decision to know that we could keep supporting our kids. And we had laid out a five-point plan of the ways we're going to support our kids and our parents, prepare for this phase and beyond. One of the reasons that Chancellor Carranza and I are confident in the decision we made is that we have had amazing partners working with us really, really deeply and with great passion, great energy to create a distance learning system, an online learning system that New York City has never had before. And again, this was put together very rapidly, but I want to give credit where credit is due. Not only is it the great folks at the Department of Education leadership who put together this plan and implemented it so rapidly, not only the educators who have been absolutely outstanding in taking on a whole new approach and starting to make it work - and I said from the beginning and Chancellor says, not going to happen overnight, it will get better with each week – but our educators have been front and center very devoted to making this work and I thank you all again, but I want to also thank the private companies that stepped up.

You know, we ask these companies to come in as partners to work with us. Yes, it's part of their business, but to work with us in very, very different ways than they even had before, to do it very fast, very agile to really work with government as partners, think the way we had to think in a crisis and follow through in real time. And I want to thank these companies who have done that because it's allowed us to keep making distance learning work. First of all, Apple they have been outstanding partners. We said from the beginning, we needed 300,000 iPads. They were very quick to prioritize the children of New York City and I want to thank them for that. And yesterday I talked to the CEO Tim Cook, and the outstanding challenge was we needed 50,000 more the iPads to fulfill our order. We needed them really quickly to be able to meet our deadline of putting the iPads in the hands of each child by the end of April. I spoke to Tim Cook yesterday and he said, no matter what it takes, Apple will get those iPads to us in time. So I want to thank him and everyone at Apple for all they are doing to make sure our children will have these iPads and to make sure every child has an equal opportunity to learn. And I know that is a labor of love for them. So I want to thank you, Tim, and thank you everyone at Apple.

T-Mobile has been supplying the LTE data plans. They've been great partners. We ask them to move quickly. They did. Thank you. IBM, setting up our iPads with apps and resources for learning. Everything we've asked, they've been doing. Thank you, IBM. Microsoft, Google, ProTech, creating apps and tools for learning. They've all again been willing to answer the call, answer it quickly, make sure that we could give a rich experience, a powerful experience to our kids. It's not the same as being in a classroom, obviously, but we are trying to make it the very best it can be even if it's distance learning. And then the folks who actually get the devices to our kids. And I want to not only thank the companies, but thank all the hard-working delivery workers. These folks are unsung heroes in this crisis and you don't think to stop and thank the FedEx guy or the UPS guy, but just should because they're actually helping things keep going and so many cases delivering vital supplies. So, thank you to FedEx, to UPS, to NTT and Deluxe, all of whom have been delivering these devices to our students.

And finally, our library systems, Queens Library, the Brooklyn Library, the New York Public Library, all had been working to make sure the apps are loaded on the iPads, giving kids access to thousands of wonderful books they can use. So think about that for a moment. A lot of kids who would never have had that access at home, families that could never afford to buy a lot of books, a lot of kids who have never had the opportunity to have their own personal extraordinary library. It's now happening because of all of these combined efforts.

So I'll close before a few words in Spanish wishing everyone again a very happy Easter. Continuing to wish everyone a zizen pesach. I know today and every day in this holiday season, people are finding a way, whether it's FaceTime, whether it's Skype or whatever it is, to connect your loved ones, to stay connected as best we can. Thank you for keeping traditions alive, even when it's hard. And again, thank you for your faith. And the last thing I want to say about that word of faith is we connected to the word endurance. Boy, New Yorkers have shown us that we can endure even the hardest times and our faith traditions always talk about what our ancestors went through and they went through so much. But we're showing that we in our time can endure as well and that's what our faith helps us do. So, everyone, continue to keep that in mind as you fight your way through this crisis.

Few words in Spanish, just quick summary –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will now turn to questions from our colleagues in the media.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder that we have Commissioner Barbot here in person and Chancellor Carranza and Senior Advisor Jimmy O'Neill on the phone. We will take one question from each reporter in an effort to get to as many outlets as possible. We’ll start off today with Debralee from the Manhattan Times Bronx Free Press.

Question: Hey, good morning everyone. How are you?

Mayor: Morning.

Question: So quick questions on this new roll out of the testing plan, Mayor, and also to Commissioner O'Neill. Essentially, I know that your role will in ongoing conversations with the federal government. Are there tests though in place, additional tests the way you've described to actually begin testing in a more expanded fashion to these communities essentially in five days?

Mayor: Well, again, Debralee, we want to, if we can get the testing in, we want to be up starting the end of this coming week and it may not be the same exact start date in each location and it may alter a bit depending on when the testing comes in. The testing we've had to present has been overwhelmingly taken up by the - again, the patients in greatest urgent need, the health care workers who we needed to protect, the first responders we needed to protect. So we've got to get more to sustain an effort like this at the community level. I'm going to remain hopeful that we will find that supply and start to be up and running at the end of this coming week. But I'm also being honest that – we have the locations, we have the personnel, we have a game plan, we're going to lay all that out, but we have to make sure we have the supply of tests and PPEs to actually make it start. And again, right now we're going to need more to be able to guarantee that. But this'll be a day to day thing. We'll keep updating as we go along. I know you said something about Jimmy O'Neill, I want to make sure that's put in that upfront next time just so we can make sure we get it. What was your Jimmy O'Neill point? Can you hear us?

Question: [Inaudible] Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah, just go ahead and finish on the point about Jimmy?

Question: Right, just sort of a reflection of the same query. If in fact, what is in place now and what deployment - what could deployment possibilities are in place now? When we talk about waiting for the federal government and having these ongoing conversations, that's one thing I understand, but what's in place now in terms of the supplies, the testing, and the equipment to actually be able to start? What's in what's in place now?

Mayor: Yeah, so again and I think Jimmy – this is less about what Jimmy is doing, which is obviously about making sure that at the hospitals the supplies are there and usable and getting to the right people in all the hospitals. This is more something new we're creating, of course, through Health + Hospitals. Debra Lee, we’ll give an announcement later this week on the specifics. What I'm trying to signal very clearly is we will need the PPE supply to be secure and we'll need the testing capacity to be secure. That varies. The testing, the amount of testing we're doing, even with the current capacity varies, of course, by week depending on what's happening with this disease. So, it's literally something we'll know more about as we get into the week. I can say with assurance to sustain what we are talking about here and build it out the way we want to we will need additional testing. Now the federal government is my first destination, but we're continuing to work on private market constantly. So, I don't want you to think it's the only, we have been working with private companies constantly over recent weeks to try and find additional testing supplies. So, we'll have more to say on the specifics in the course of the week.

Moderator: Next, we have Myles from NBC New York.

Question: Mr. Mayor, happy Easter to you.

Mayor: Happy Easter, Myles.

Question: Just the question about the time table from yesterday's announcement. I know the Governor's Office told us yesterday that they had only been made aware of the decision to close schools five minutes before your press conference. Can you talk to that and about your thinking behind that?

Mayor: Myles, Chancellor Carranza and I, as I said, consulted widely with health care experts, with the folks who do the work in our schools, the unions that represent them, and we had those conversations through to Friday evening and we came to the firm conclusion that this was the only thing possible, honestly, the only right thing to do and that it had to be done. And as soon as we were convinced that to be done, it was important to tell our community and tell our parents that this was a decision so people could plan accordingly. It's as simple as that.

Moderator: Next we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. Just wanted to ask a little more about the dynamic with Albany. You know, Governor Cuomo, since the outbreak has said that [inaudible] not a time for politics as usual to ask if you feel he's lived up to that? And also, just what you would say to New Yorkers who might be vexed to see you clashing with the Governor over schools?

Mayor: Shant, I respect the Governor. I think the Governor has done a very good job in this crisis. I've said that before. I want to say it again. We've talked a lot during this crisis. Our teams talk literally many, many times a day. I think there's been a lot of agreement on the direction that we've had to take. So that's my statement. We've been managing to work everyone in common cause. When it comes to a decision like this, I know the Chancellor feels the same way, our job is to protect the children in New York City, to protect the families in New York City, to protect our educators, and our job is to make sure that we beat back the coronavirus once and for all. It's abundantly clear that to do those things we have to keep our schools closed for the remainder of the school year. So this is just about doing our jobs and making sure people are safe.

Moderator: Next we have Sydney from Gothamist.

Question: [Inaudible] This is Sydney with Gothamist. Just on the schools matter. I'm wondering, do you have a – my understanding is there's about 175,000 devices that need to go out to families and I'm wondering, is that the correct statistic or up to date number that you have and how do you – how does the city plan to do that by the end of April, considering the rollout of devices so far and has anything changed to be able to do to distribute devices more quickly?

Mayor: Sydney, I'll start and pass to Chancellor Carranza. So when we started and we announced there would be distance learning and obviously being created essentially from scratch on a vast scale. There's no places tried to do it on this scale before in this country that I know of, certainly. We said expect that the first few weeks would be tough because there was not time to distribute in the schools. We had to obviously, immediately get out of the schools. We didn't have all the devices. We knew it would take some time. The pace has been picking up. Chancellor will go over the exact numbers, but here's the reality with Apple, which is obviously been crucial to this equation with the iPads. They have been expediting and prioritizing supplies for New York City kids. We had that last piece, that 50,000 we needed, that was outstanding until yesterday, when we got the affirmation from Tim Cook that they would be here rapidly. We're just going to be turning them around constantly and getting them out to families.

So we're in a position now to do something we couldn't have done a few weeks ago, including that we had to get the supply. There wasn't 300,000 iPad sitting around in a DOE warehouse. And as the Chancellor keeps saying, 300,000 kids is bigger than, you know, any other school system in America basically except for our own. So, it's a massive, massive undertaking, but now it's really gathering steam and we set that deadline because we need kids to get them and that deadline is going to drive action. Chancellor, you want to jump in?

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, Sydney, yeah, the – we've actually distributed a little over 175,000 devices. We've shipped approximately 70,000 devices of the 200,000 that we need to still distribute. Yesterday's conversation with Tim Cook is critical because it's been really a supply chain issue. If you think about every school system in America right now is transitioning to online, remote learning as well. It's not – we're not the only ones in need of devices. So this is – it was just a game changer for the Mayor to have that conversation with Tim Cook. And as soon as we get them, and we get them set up, we're shipping them right out to students and families. So it's important that we have their information and we know who needs them, and I'll just keep repeating. You can go onto our website, schools.nyc.gov, there's a link right on the landing page for the survey – tech survey, or you can call 3-1-1 and they'll put you in contact so we get that information.

Mayor: I want to ask all our colleagues in the media who are reporting on this issue, please let people know that website and they can call 3-1-1, because we are doing this very, very rapidly and we have obviously a good sense of kids who need them but we don't have a perfect sense. We need parents or the young people themselves to let us know immediately if they don't have a working device so we can get them one.

Moderator: Next, we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, good morning and a happy Easter to everyone who celebrates. I know you've asked this, but if you could just explain, Mayor de Blasio, for the sort of everyday anymore for listening who maybe isn't as well versed in the kind of interpersonal conflict that the City and the State often find themselves in, can you just explain what happened with the closing schools? when the Governor was notified? And also, why this weekend, it was a holiday weekend, was there a reason why this was announced yesterday as opposed to maybe Monday? Thank you.

Mayor: Katie, thank you and happy Easter to you. The decision was made on Friday evening. It was imperative to announce it as soon as it was made. People have been asking for days and days. I think you're one of them in fact. Many people have asked us for days to help people know where we were going, to give people that measure of security, of knowing the direction we were going in, and to allow everything to be planned accordingly. I was a public school parent, obviously, for the entire upbringing and my kids and whenever we get to a decision we owe it to parents to announce it immediately. Again, the decision was made based on the health and wellbeing and safety of our kids, our parents, our families, our educators. So we were quite certain it was right thing to do. The state was notified yesterday morning and we made the announcement. I believe that even though New Yorkers are observing this holiday weekend, obviously against the backdrop of a painful crisis, it's not stopping people from wanting clear information and it's something also Katie, that I told people from the very beginning, I thought this is what was going to happen and I feared it was going to happen. And it was just important to make it as clear as possible as soon as we were certain.

Moderator: Next we have Yoav from the city.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to clarify, and forgive me if you explained this, but the expanded testing and H + H is that going to be a new city ability to test or are you moving resources from somewhere else and is the capacity going to be there?

Mayor: So, Yoav, good question and it picks up on Debra Lee's question. I think people have understood that a lot of times in recent days and weeks we've had to say to you, this is what we project, but we're going to talk to you again, you know, in a day and two days and three days to tell you what the latest is. Sometimes we've had to tell you the projections came back very negative, very tough. Sometimes we've been able to tell you the projections came back better. So this policy that we're announcing today, community-based testing, focused on community's greatest need, focused on people who are most individually vulnerable, starting later this week. Specific locations, five locations, and again there will be targeted testing for people who are particularly vulnerable. That that will be contingent upon two things like so much else in this crisis has been that we give you a game plan then we tell you there are realities that we have to adjust for according to supply. So, we need to make sure that the testing capacity is there. We need to make sure the PPEs are there to protect the people doing the tests.

The PPE supply in general has improved in the last few weeks and we have a huge number of orders out around the world that if we started to see a little more consistency on the deliveries, we would be a much better shape. I’ve told you, you know, this week where we stand, which is we will get through, but on a crisis standard. Next week, we still have this coming week again, we will get through on a crisis standard the following week. We have a lot of work to do still, but our goal is to reserve enough PPEs to make sure that we can do this testing properly. And then with the testing supply we have now, to see how much of it would be available to put into this new effort while simultaneously working federal government and private market to get more testing. So this is the plan, we feel good about at this hour that we're going to be able to get this plan moving by end of the week. Although, as I said, different sites may start at different times. If we need to vary the days of start a bit because of supply, we will. But this is what we plan on doing.

Moderator: Next we have Alex from Chalkbeat.

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor, happy Easter. Two quick questions. One just on the device numbers, just wanting to make sure I understood that correctly. The 175,000 number is that the number of devices that have already been distributed. And my second question is just, have you and the Governor spoken since his press conference yesterday? I mean he seems to be under the impression that the final authority about the school closure decision is his. So, I'm just wondering if you can comment on that at all.

Mayor: I'll start and I'll pass to the Chancellor on the specific numbers. It's as simple as this. This is something the Chancellor and I had to do. We had to protect our children, our parents, our families, our educators. The New York City Public Schools have to remain close for the remainder of the school year. So yes, the Governor and I communicated, our staffs communicated, but the bottom line here is it's about health and safety and it's about getting us out of this horrible phase we're in with widespread transmission and getting us safely to the next phase and we have to be real smart. And I've said cautious, careful to not allow resurgence of this disease. So, this is the right thing to do and we're going to keep moving forward. On the question of the exact numbers around the devices and that 175,000 number, Chancellor, do you want to pick that up?

Chancellor Carranza: Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor. So, the 175,000 devices – it’s a little over 175,000 – these are school-based devices that have been distributed. We've also now shipped a little over 70,000 iPads that are Wi-Fi enabled as well. Those are the specific numbers.

Mayor: Okay. Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Abu from Bangla Patrika. 

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, thank you.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Just speak up – I’m sorry to interrupt, speak up a little more.

Question: Are you hearing me now?

Mayor: Yes, I am.

Question: So, this is Abu Taher from Bangla Patrika [inaudible]. Do you know [inaudible] –

Moderator: Sorry, Abu –

Mayor: There’s something wrong with your line. Something’s moving that’s causing a sound. Could you stay real still and stable so we can hear you better?

Moderator: I think you have to stop typing.

Mayor: Yeah, don’t type during it – that would be real helpful.

Question: So, my question is, do you have any program for the people who are undocumented in New York City? Because there is a lot of undocumented people that are here. They don't have any programs where they can apply for an unemployment or, you know, any other benefit, which is a government benefit. But they're staying in the home, they don't have money to buy the food, they don't have any place to go for help. So, do you have any program, anything you can offer for the people who are undocumented in [inaudible]?

Mayor: Absolutely. Abu, it's a great question. Thank you for it. Look, there are hundreds of thousands of people – let's be really clear, there’s a half-million of our neighbors, our fellow New Yorkers, our coworkers, the parents who go to – you know, whose kids go to the same schools as us – there's a half-million human beings who are undocumented in New York City. They're very much a part of our community. And we in this city have for these last six-plus years tried every way we can to respect them, to acknowledge them, to value them, to support them. Right now, in this crisis, what do people need most? They need to be protected. They need to be protected in terms of public safety and they need to protect in terms of their health. We are going to make sure always – and this is something that NYPD has done, I think, with extraordinary skill and respect and compassion – people will be protected regardless of documentation status. Health care, our health and hospital system – anybody who needs help and support, it will be there for them regardless of documentation status, regardless of ability to pay. Having a roof over your head – no New Yorker can be evicted at this point. And if anyone is threatened with eviction, they should call 3-1-1. If anyone is told to have to leave their apartment, even temporarily because they're sick, they should call 3-1-1, we will get you the help you need. Food – anyone who is hungry, we will get food too. It does not matter what your documentation status is, we're all New Yorkers. Anyone who does not have food can go to any of the 435 sites all over the city. You can get them through 3-1-1, you can get them that nyc.gov. All three meals for a day will be provided for all family members every day those sites are up and running. Anyone who's vulnerable at home and needs a food delivery can call 3-1-1 and we'll arrange it quickly. That is all regardless of documentation status. So, I know how much fear there is in immigrant communities right now. There are people who are undocumented who are very, very afraid. There are people even who are documented, who are afraid because of all the fear that's been created around this country, particularly coming out of Washington. And that fear has exacerbated this health crisis and exacerbated the disparities, because there's a lot of people who have been so fearful they, they haven't even been going to the doctor, they haven't even been going out to health care facilities because they're so worried about being deported and put in danger. So, Abu, the bottom line is, on all those really basic things the human beings need, the City of New York will protect and support all immigrant communities, including undocumented folks. And please let people know that all that help is there for them regardless of documentation status.

Moderator: Next we have Maya from Patch.

Question: So, on the topic of City workers, are there any plans to institute – like, if policy is at all city agencies to protect essential city workers who are older or have underlying medical conditions, like authorizing all of them to work from home? Because, right now, it seems to differ by agency. Just last week, I was talking to DEP workers with preexisting conditions who said they still had to report to the office while, at the same time, the City's Board of Elections had announced that all employee is over 60 or with underlying health conditions could work from home.

Mayor: Good question, Maya, and I'll certainly get our Health Commissioner into this one. Let me make it clear, any city worker who has underlying conditions that pose a direct threat I'll give – I’m a City worker, I'll give an example. I have asthma, but it's not the kind of asthma that causes a threat in this situation. Other people could have very severe asthma and it would be a threat to their health in this crisis. So, any City worker who is particularly vulnerable, we do not want to make them more vulnerable, to say the least, and we're very comfortable ensuring that they can work from home. Or if they even are in a position where it's impossible work from home, but it's not safe for them to be at work, we want to get them home and we'll obviously continue them on the payroll during the period of this crisis. We just have to make clear with every agency a single standard. And I think you're raising a good point, we have to quickly make sure all agencies are working off a single standard. But what I can tell you immediately is, anyone who has any of those serious preexisting conditions that might create a threat I don't want them any place that might be a danger to them. I want them home. And we'll make sure that guidance has given again tomorrow.

Commissioner, you want to add?

Commissioner Barbot: Mr. Mayor, I think you got it, obviously, just right. The only thing I would add is that we have been giving guidance to our City workforce to ensure that everybody is safe and giving guidance about the use of face coverings and ensuring that if and when, at all possible, remaining six feet within someone that they may come in contact with. And so, obviously, many of our essential workers don't have that opportunity. So, certainly, working with individual agencies to see what can be done based on those priority groups I think is an important thing to consider.

Mayor: Right. And, obviously, look, I want to be very, very clear that job-one is to protect lives. And I don't want any City worker who is in a compromised state to be in a situation where they may be in danger. We have a huge workforce, and even though we've seen a lot of people go off duty for a period of time because they were sick, we're seeing more and more than coming back now. So, anyone who is threatened, we're going to take care of we. We do not want any confusion in any agency or with any supervisors about that. It’s first and foremost about protecting our people. And again, it's about protecting each other, which is why, starting tomorrow, we are requiring the face coverings for all City employees come in contact with the public.

Moderator: Next we have Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you? Happy Easter.

Mayor: Thank you, Henry.

Question: I wanted to ask you about these – about the online schooling. As I understand it, no attendance is taken. Is there any exams? Is there any way to gauge whether students are engaged in this? How do you – how do you quality control this kind of education experience?

Mayor: Yeah, it's a great question. I'll start and I'll pass to the Chancellor. I think a very important way to think about this, Henry, is, you know, this started just a few weeks ago on an unprecedented scale and it's being – you know, this is a classic example of building the plane as it's going down the runway. But you know, ridiculously large scale – 1.1 million kids. Every week, we're seeing more and more capacity, meaning more and more kids with devices, more and more teachers figuring out the best ways to work with their kids, connect with our kids. We need to take another big jump in terms of working with not just educators, but with parents to really ensure that kids are engaged. It's not shocking in the first weeks where there was a lot of disruption and everyone was learning a new way of life that it was hard to know who was engaged and how often and trying to get the system up and running was the first priority. But what we need to do now is really ensure that parents are close allies with their teachers in a way, honestly, that we would love all year round in a school year in peacetime. Maybe in this wartime dynamic, a new cohesion will occur where educators and parents will get to communicate more and think together about how to best serve the kids and make sure the kids are focused. Kids are going through a lot right now. It's really tough time for kids cooped up in doors and all, but with the support of parents and other adults, you know, helping them get focused and then we'll have a better ability to engage them and know when they're part of the learning experience. So no, and we do not have an easy traditional attendance measure. What we know so far is there's nowhere near the participation that we would like to see, but we do expect that to change with each a week as a devices are in hand, as the parents are engaged. One of the things we announced in our plan yesterday was to have a much higher level of engagement with parents too who are looking for answers, meaning to be able to have a number they call constantly through 3-1-1 where if they want to understand how to approach getting their kids connected to this and keeping them connected, they have problems, they have questions – that parents have a place to turn and they have a help line in multiple languages that's available to them constantly. They have, like, coaching, if you will, how to figure out how to do this best, because, you know, the parents are going to be, and the, and the family members are going to be eyes and ears to make sure the kid engages. So, we're going to have a lot more beefed up capacity to do that, starting in just the next few days. Chancellor, you want to follow through on this?

Chancellor Carranza: Yes, sir. And with a great deal of respect, I'm going to disagree strongly with the premise of the question. Attendance is being taken. What we've had to do is shift the system of taking attendance because, obviously, students aren't in class and we can't take it the way it used to be taken. So, we've started a new way of collecting attendance. We'll report that out this coming week. But attendance is being taken. And grading and academic standards are still in effect. What we've asked teachers to do is to be flexible in terms of what they're doing and how they're assigning grades, only because, as we've mentioned, not everyone has a device yet. So some students are working off of packets, some students are working online. So the two words that I keep emphasizing during this time period is flexibility and patience. We also are looking at our grading policy. I have mentioned that I've been speaking with focus groups of parents and the number-one concern that parents have expressed to me is it's fine that we are continue to have academic standards, that we're doing homework, that things are getting graded and collected and students are getting feedback, but the real need that they have is around trauma-informed supports for students. Parents are very, very vocal with me that their kids are going through a lot, their families are going through a lot, and whatever we can do to help them to help their students navigate, they would appreciate. So, there's going to be a lot more of that support commune as well to our teachers. Finally, the other thing that I would say is that, I have seen just many examples of teachers going above and beyond in terms of what they're doing in terms of engaging students and how they're engaging students, and being creative, and while still being flexible, they're being innovative. So, I can assure you, that as students are engaged there's some, there's great learning happening. It's just not the same as when we're in person.

Moderator: Next we have Roger from 1010 WINS and then we'll take one more after him.

Question: Mayor, how are you? Happy Easter. I'd like to ask you – and forgive me if this is something I should know – but what exactly are the rules and the laws when it comes to who has the authority to close schools? Because that seems to be, you know, I think, confusing to a lot of New Yorkers who are hearing something from you yesterday and then something different from the Governor.

Mayor: Roger, thank you for your question and Happy Easter to you. Roger, look, the more important even than the question of the rules and the laws – I'll speak to it – but again, it's sort of the moral question. What's the right thing to do for our kids, our families, you know, our parents, our educators to protect their health and wellbeing and all of the people that they come in contact with? The right thing to do is to keep the schools closed and the right thing to do to beat back this pandemic is to keep the schools closed. And that's really what it comes down to. And that's why the Chancellor and I believe very simply, this is something we have to do. Obviously, what's clear is, I'm responsible and the Chancellor's responsible for the health and wellbeing of all our kids. And we are dealing with something that is different from pretty much any place else. I want to absolutely respect the fact that the Governor has an important, crucial role to play in a crisis and particular powers in a crisis for sure. And again, I think he's done a very good job and he has to think about the whole State for sure, he has to think about coordinating with other States. But my responsibility is to the children of this city, my responsibilities to the parents of this city, to the educators who serve this city. That's my singular focus. And, to me, this is not about legal or jurisdictional questions. This is a moral question. How do we protect people best? The best way to protect people is to keep our schools closed.

Moderator: Last question for today. We have Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, good morning. Happy Easter, Mr. Mayor. Wanted to ask, again, this is not the first time that you and the Governor have had the sort of spat during a crisis. Is there anything you think that can be done to improve you guys’ as relations, especially during moments of crisis?

Mayor: Jeff, I think respectfully – and Happy Easter. First of all, most importantly, Happy Easter to you. I think it is not surprising – and I respect the media deeply and I think you guys understandably focus on what you see as exceptional – but I want to remind you that this is exceptional in this sense. From the beginning of this crisis, from the beginning of the challenge of coronavirus, the Governor and I have agreed on the vast majority of things. I have been supportive and appreciative of his leadership. I've said many times I think he's doing a very good job. We agree – and we've looked at the main strategic things we had to do throughout – it's been a high, high level of agreement. Our teams are working constantly together. So, you know, there may be times when people have different perspectives, that's not unusual. My singular focus is on the children, the parents, the educators of this city. The Governor is thinking about other parts of the equation, that's fine. But I don't think if you literally look over the whole course of this thing, you're going to find very many times where there was a substantial disagreement. You're going to find on the vast, vast majority of the moves that were made, agreement on the nature and the timing of what was done. And the teams work together constantly. And so, in the end, when you think about what do we all tried to do together? We've all, City and State together, we have worked to make sure that our hospital system was strong and could sustain this crisis. Thank God for our health care workers, our doctors, our nurses – our hospitals are holding. That's been something we've all worked on together. We've all worked together to get the, the supplies, the ventilators, the PPEs, that's been moving. We all work together making a lot of the big decisions on how we would address this crisis and it has shown in terms of the fact that we're seeing some progress. You know, we believe, all of us, City and State, we believe in social distancing, we believe in shelter in place. It's been working and New Yorkers are the real heroes, obviously, they've been the ones following through on it. So, I think if you really do the composite, if you really do the big picture of what's happened over months now, there's a hell of a lot more of agreement than there's ever been any disagreement. And sometimes when there's a difference of perspective, it's just because there's different jobs to be done. I'm always going to tell you what I think will protect my people and I'm going to be real, real clear about that. Keeping our schools closed will protect New Yorkers, period. But we're all going to keep working together for sure.

Okay. Thank you, everybody. A very Happy Easter, again. A zizen Pesach to those continuing to celebrate a Passover. One last thought, and I think it's on the theme – again, so many powerful themes in the holiday season – and another theme is renewal. That is part of the faith traditions. That's obviously something we feel at this time of year. As spring begins, renewal is coming. It's a tough moment we're going through, but renewal is coming. One thing we've known from the beginning, this crisis would have an end point. We still don't know exactly when it is or how it'll happen, but we know this will end. We know we're going to come out the other side and we're going to be together. The renewal has to be true to the word, not just a replacement of what was, but something different, something more fair, more just, something that addresses the problems of where we were before the coronavirus and helps us towards something better. So, renewal, because we will come out of this. But, renewal, because we will build and create something together different and new and better. I am convinced we can do that. And again, God bless you all New Yorkers, you should be so proud of what you have done throughout all this pain. And on this very holy and special day, I say, God bless you all and keep the faith.

2020-04-13 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. Talked a lot the last few days about faith in a season of faith and how we have to keep the faith because we're all doing something together that is so important at this moment. And it really depends on all of us. New Yorkers have really been stepping up. And even though sometimes it's hard to see, it's hard to feel we are making some real progress, and it’s because of all of you. It's because of the hard work you're doing with social distancing, with shelter in place, because of the changes you've had to make in your life. But you've done it and you've done it really, really well under very tough circumstances and very fast changes in your life. So, faith is when we believe we can get somewhere, we can get somewhere together and I want people's faith to be rewarded. I want you to see the fruits of your labors.

And today we're – in a moment we're going to unveil some really important new information that gives you a sense of how things are progressing and how it directly relates back to what you have been doing, the hard work you've been doing, all of us have been doing. But I want to put it this way. We are now one big team, New York City, all of us, 8.6 million people all together. One cause, one destiny. We're one team. And when you think about it, this is the most important team you will ever be a part of, fighting the coronavirus, the greatest health care crisis in a century. Greatest crisis of any kind in our lifetimes. We all together need to fight this. So, every single one of us is on the same team here. There will never be a moment that's more important to act as a team, to believe that together we can be greater than the sum of the parts.

New Yorkers are proving that right now. And I want to thank you for that. And so, as I said, it's important to show you that what you're doing, every single one of you, affects the information about the show you because every time you practice shelter in place, every time you practice social distancing, you're reducing the spread of this disease and you're saving lives, you're protecting people, you're reducing the number of people who end up in the hospital, the number of people who end up fighting for their lives in the ICU, you're reducing the number of people that test positive. Your actions will be reflected every single day in the information we provide and we'll all watch it together and act on it together. So, let's go to this new information now and talk through what it means. 

I talked about it last Thursday when I said we're going to go through phases here. Right now, we're in the widespread transmission phase, the one we don't want to be in, where the coronavirus is deep seated in our communities. We want to end this phase. We want to move forward. But to do that, we have to keep doing the hard work, the shelter in place, the social distancing. We have to keep earning our way out of this. None of us asked for this horrible disease. None of us deserve it, but we still have to fight our way out, earn our way out of it through our actions. So, that means staying focused, staying buckled down on the rules that actually work and continuing to stick to them. No matter what's going on around us, this is the way forward. 

Now, three indicators I said we would roll out today and you can see them live right now at nyc.gov/coronavirus. I’m going to go over them but again, this'll be information that's always available to you, updated daily, and we'll all watch the progress together. And I want to note right there, I want it to be steady progress. We all want it to be steady progress. It may not always be steady progress, stating the obvious. Sometimes the numbers may go up, sometimes down. We want it to be down, though, a lot, but we can't guarantee every day is going to be perfect. Sometimes one will go up, another one will go down. We’ve got to see them all move down in unison over a prolonged period of time to be able to get to that next phase where we have low level transmission and then we can start on the path to a more normal life. So, let's go over these indicators.

Number one is the daily number of people admitted to hospitals in New York City for suspected COVID-19 conditions. So, again, we're going to show you the progression from day to day. And the data, I should tell you upfront, is typically about 48 hours lag between when the information that we're talking about – when the actual admissions to the hospital or the ICU, et cetera, when it happens and when it's reported. And that is because different hospitals report at different times in different ways and our Health Department has to get all the data collected and consistent before it's published. So, there will be a lag. We’re always going to see if we can reduce it, but, for now, assume about a 48-hour difference. But it's still going to tell us what we need to know. So, for April 11th, that is Saturday, you had 383 people admitted – new hospital admissions for suspected COVID-19. The day before that was 463 people, so that's a really meaningful improvement. That's a step in the right direction, the second number of daily number of people in the ICU across our Health + Hospitals hospitals. That's 11 hospitals, public hospitals, the number of people in the ICU for suspected COVID-19. So again, going back to April 10th, 857; by April 11th, Saturday, 835 – also moving in the right direction. And then the third indicator of the percentage of people who tested positive for COVID-19. So again, that number going back to April 10th, 59.3 percent citywide; by April 11th, 58.1 percent, moving in the right direction. And then a very specific subset of that, the tests done by our public health lab and they focus those tests specifically on a certain type of case, and the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner can go over that in detail in a moment. There we see the public health lab testing again the same good pattern, April 10th 80.5 percent of those tests were coming back positive; by April, 11, 78.4 percent.

So, day-one of this new effort, I'm pleased to report, we do see all the indicators moving in the right direction, moving downward together. This is a very good day. This is day one. Now, we’ve got to keep working all together to keep these numbers moving the right direction. And I want everyone to take it personally. I want you to feel like when you see these numbers – numbers are abstractions, but they represent human beings and they represent the future of the city and what our lives are going to be like. When you see these numbers, take it personally. Recognize this represents the progress that you have achieved, but we've got a lot more to do to keep that progress going, to get to the point where we might be able to ease some of the restrictions and move towards normalcy and have a low transmission dynamic with COVID-19. And I always will keep saying, if we don't get it right, or, God forbid, this disease resurges, we're going to have to potentially tighten restrictions further. So, we don't want that to happen. Obviously, best way to avoid that is to stick with what's working and keep our discipline and New Yorkers have been absolutely outstanding.

So, the next topic I want to talk about, this is the question of how we make sure that we address everything we're seeing in this crisis. This crisis has had so many negative effects on so many New Yorkers, but more and more we're learning, we're finding out just how much there's been a painful disparity. So many people have suffered across all communities. Some communities have suffered very particularly in a disproportionate manner. Now, we know we will get through this. We know this is a crisis that will end at some point, but the disparities that we have now uncovered are deeply, deeply troubling. They reflect historic disparities and they remind us that we must do something different, going forward, if we're going to stop these disparities. We can't just see it and consider it something that's unmovable or something we have to live with. We should never live with these kinds of disparities. We should in every way we can today and in the future to end these disparities. Right now, we have a lot of work to do to address the needs of communities of color right this minute. And what I announced when we put forward the information proving the disparities was a four-point plan, and I'm going to talk today in more detail about two parts of that plan. There will be more announced going forward over the coming days, but I want to start to fill in the information as we have it for everyone. So, one of the key pieces of that plan was a really large scale, a media campaign to educate people about the coronavirus to help them know what they can and should do to protect themselves and their families and all of us.

And we had an original campaign that we launched in the middle of March, as we were seeing the first deaths from this horrible disease. We launched an $8 million media campaign, TV, radio, digital ads in 15 languages, subway ads in English, Spanish and Chinese, print ads in 15 languages. $1.5 million of ads that were put putting community and ethnic media that are so important in this City and trusted in so many communities. We put that out there to try and really get people a lot of information that a lot of people weren't getting from other sources to start clarifying what was going on with the coronavirus and how people could respond. We launched an advisory committee of 80 community-based organizations, every kind of New Yorker of all five boroughs to help us make sure we were doing the right message, the right outreach. And we did outreach and other forums on WhatsApp, on WeChat, on KakaoTalk, which is Korean focused. So, we used a lot of methodologies, but what we're announcing today is a new campaign and this one is laser focus on the communities that have been hardest hit and where the disparities are greatest. This is going to be a $10 million advertising campaign to not only get the information out again, but to get it out in a deeper way, meaning to focus on a very pinpoint—manner on where the need is greatest. So, we've targeted 88 ZIP codes in New York City where we see the most disproportionate negative impact of the coronavirus. That's where the focus will be to get this information out, to make sure that some of the confusion that everyone's feeling about coronavirus is addressed head on. That some of the myths and misunderstandings are addressed, that people are given more information about what they can do or where they can turn if they need help and to do it in the languages that so many New Yorkers speak.

So again, a $10 million campaign, 88 high impact, high needs zip codes will be focused on, TV, radio, and digital in 15 languages, but beyond that now direct mail pieces to homes giving people information that will go right to their doorstep in a very accessible format. So that's on the media side, but as I said a few days ago, traditional media and digital are very powerful and we need to use them fully. But we also need to go to the grassroots, especially if we're going to reach communities that are not necessarily hearing all the messages and that need more help and reassurance. There are many communities that that describes, but particularly immigrant communities, particularly communities that in recent years have felt very much that they were in danger and in many ways have receded in terms of how they connect with the rest of our community, pulled back out of fear. We've got to reach out in a really compassionate open manner to communities that need a lot more information and some of that has to be done on the front lines media alone can't do that. So, we're going to be doing two targeted communities, we'll be doing robocalls, we'll be doing live calls from people who have the information calling directly into households, we'll be doing a texting campaign. We'll make sure at places that people still are going essential businesses, grocery stores, supermarkets, pharmacies, those grab and go meal locations, the 435 locations where people can get free food we'll have information posted there. We're going to also work with community-based health clinics and these are organizations that do such important work and they know their communities, they speak the language, they know the culture, we want to bring them back into this work more deeply. A lot of them been disrupted in recent weeks, we want to get them back in this will have more to say on that in the coming days. And we want to see ultimately the restarting of the kind of grassroots outreach literally people out in the community educating, answering questions, but to do that, we have to keep our health care workers safe. We have to have health care workers who can move into that type of work and not just be needed at hospitals and that has everything to do with those indicators I talked about earlier and we need, of course, the protection for all of them, the PPEs. So, a number of pieces have to come together, but our goal is to soon have that grassroots outreach moving to really make sure the information reaches communities deeply and widely and people feel it, understand it, act on it. This is how we can help protect folks who are really bearing some of the brunt here.

Now, speaking of bearing the brunt, I've said many times, this is unfortunately not just a health care crisis, it's something worse it is also the greatest economic crisis since the great depression. That's what we're seeing unfold right now, and for a lot of us, we used to hear those stories from our parents and grandparents and never thought we'd live through anything even slightly like it. Well, guess what? Very, very sadly, we are living through something like it, the number of people who have become unemployed just in the last few weeks is staggering and unbelievable we're just still beginning to understand the magnitude of it. And the only parallel is the Great Depression and the suddenness with which this happened in some ways was even worse than what happened 80 years ago. So, we need to move aggressively and I'm going to tell you always what the City is doing, there's a lot of things the State needs to do, there's a lot of things the federal government needs to do. The federal government did come along with the stimulus and that was good cause that were important pieces directly for working people, but we need so much more and we need the next stimulus to happen quickly this month to keep getting support to working people, keep getting support to small businesses and to the City and State governments that directly support everyday people and protect them. That has to happen, we need to do a lot of other things quickly to catch up with the totality of this crisis. So, what's happened already? There's been a moratorium on evictions, that's a very good thing and that continues. So, you know, what's, what's basic and essential here? Having a roof over your head, even if your livelihood is gone. Well, no one can take your home away from you, there's a moratorium on those evictions to protect you. The 2 million plus New Yorkers who are rent stabilized, I've called upon the rent guidelines board to act quickly to give all of you a rent freeze. It's something Rent Guidelines Board has the power to do is something they have done before in times where the facts merited it. I think this is absolutely a time where it's 100 percent clear people are hurting like never before, they deserve a rent freeze. I want to see that happen quickly, that will provide some relief for over 2 million New Yorkers and rent-stabilized housing.

I've urged the State of New York to act, change the laws and rules to allow renters to use their security deposit to pay rent, there's no reason at this point given how much dislocation has occurred that a security deposit is sitting in a bank account, not helping anyone when it could be used to pay the rent, help the renter, help the landlord have money to pay their expenses. That is the kind of thing we need to do in the middle of a crisis and I want to see the State act on that, we need to think about and act on some other pieces as well. So, we're launching— a tenant hotline for tenants in all five boroughs through 3-1-1 because a lot of tenants right now don't know what their rights are, they don't know how to navigate this, they're running out of money, they want to know where they can get relief. And remember, what we can help you with is all the different you can get income, making sure you get money from the stimulus, making sure you get unemployment insurance, if you qualify for food stamps that's another way to put money in your pocket. We want to make sure that if there's anything that people can get, they're getting it and that your rights are being recognized – no landlord can attempt to evict you - no landlord can tell you, you have to leave temporarily because you're sick. You have clear rights as tenants. We want to protect everyone, so we're setting up this hotline through 3-1-1 to make sure people can get those answers and that support and if it raises to the point that someone needs a lawyer right away through 3-1-1 we can get you free legal assistance and assign a lawyer if you need one to protect your rights – so that will be up and running immediately.

And then two other things I think would be really crucial in this situation given the magnitude of what people are experiencing. I’m urging the state of New York to take a very good thing – the moratorium on evictions - and extend it to 60 days after this crisis. And so, I'm very thankful that the state acted to protect renters and I know to protect other folks to keep a roof over their head, but we need to make sure that that moratorium on evictions doesn't run out and it doesn't run out prematurely. We need to see this crisis end and then give period a grace period to people to protect them so we don't have a horrible situation where we finally get out of the coronavirus crisis and then see a massive wave of evictions. We need a period of time to help people get things back together and to protect them and make sure that they still have a home. So, the State should act on that right away.

And then also something I think the State of New York could do that would help everyone – let tenants who lost their income defer their rent. So, if a tenant can document that they lost their job, which I'm so sorry to say so many people can at this point. If you can document you lost your job and you don't have income; give tenants the ability to defer their rent payments and repay over the next 12 months on a payment plan. There's, I think some clear ways to put this together that protect tenants and respect the rights of landlords and make sure that everyone is whole in the end, but we can't have a situation where folks just have no money and no way to pay and they're living with that constant insecurity. Let's acknowledge the extent of this crisis and give our tenants a clear way forward. That's something I think the state should do as well, as quickly as possible.

Alright, let me move to a very different topic and on this one again, one that we all care about and one where I can at least give people a little bit of good news as we fight through this crisis together. As we've seen with alternate side parking, folks obviously want to know where we're going with this and want the security of knowing that they don't have to worry about moving their cars. I've always said the one thing I cared about was making sure we didn't end up in a situation where our neighborhoods weren't clean, especially in the middle of a health crisis. I'm happy to say we've been monitoring, our Sanitation Department has been out there; the neighborhoods remain clean in a large measure because so few people are out and about the way they normally are. So, we actually see a level of cleanliness that is the right one for our city, and therefore I'm announcing we are suspending alternate side parking for another two weeks and this will take us until Tuesday, April 28th. So, we're going to continue to update you, but right now - rest assured - no alternate side parking until Tuesday, April 28th. We'll update you again as we get close to that and to the maximum extent possible we can give people this relief, I want to do it.

Okay, now going back to where I started with how we are making the progress we're making. Look, every single person is a part of this, as I said, and it's not just what you do. What you're doing is working - people are practicing social distancing, they're practicing shelter in place. And you know, we've sent out a lot of enforcement agents; we've sent out the NYPD and, and we've constantly followed up on any concerns and we're seeing really pretty amazing levels of compliance by New Yorkers and sometimes when there's a report of a problem and the police show up or another department shows up, folks immediately fix the problem is what we're finding, and that's what we want. So, the best way to make sure that everyone observes social distancing and continues to follow these rules for the good of all is to make sure you're doing it yourself, but if you see someone who's not, that, I want you to think about that, that phrase we have used for years about protecting ourselves in this case from a different enemy; when we say, “if you see something, say something”. In this instance, I want you to see that you can make a real impact; if someone's not doing the right thing, if a line has developed that's packed too tight together, if a store's too crowded, if people are gathering someplace they shouldn't be not practicing social distancing, please let us know right away. This is about saving lives - no one should hesitate - this is about saving lives. Every time we practice these rules, it helps us forward. So, you can call 3-1-1 at any moment, tell them exactly what you're seeing, where it is, what time you saw it, and we'll send out the NYPD and the other agencies to enforce and fix the situation. And another option is you can go on nyc.gov/coronavirus and you can just quickly put down just a little bit of information and that will instantly register, so all of our enforcement agencies can get on it right away. And in the next few days we're going to add another option where you can just submit a photo on the 3-1-1 app or the 3-1-1 website and just indicate, you know, the location and just by the virtue of having that photo and knowing what time it was and the location, the NYPD and all our other agencies will be able to act quickly to address the condition. We want to make it easy, we want to make it fast - we want to make sure the enforcement is fast. Everyone has a role to play in this and we need everyone to help us. You are the eyes and ears; it's your city, it's your fight against the coronavirus. We're all in this together. Letting us know if you see a problem is one of the best ways to contribute to getting us out of this really, really tough phase and onto a better future.

So, I'll conclude and then I'll just say a quick few words in Spanish and we'll turn to our colleagues in the media. But I'll conclude on this important point about being a team. A lot of us are feeling right now, the absence of sports. We, you know, so many New Yorkers, we love our teams and we love team sports; we love playing team sports. I'm missing it all the time; I bet a lot of you are missing it all the time. We're not getting to watch the teams we love, but in fact we are now part of a team. As I said in the beginning, this is the most important team you will ever be a part of in your whole life, right now. And we, you know, we watch sports and we have heroes who play on teams that we love and they do amazing things and they show strength and they show resilience and they do things we thought couldn't be done and we love them for it. Well, guess what? That's you now. You are actually in the middle of such an extraordinary fight. You get to do the things that you have admired in other people. You get to be the player on the field who makes a difference, who does the extraordinary, who does what people thought couldn't be done.

So, this is where we are now – all 8.6 million of us on one team and people have been acting like they're on one team and have been making a huge difference and we see it already. Those three key indicators we’re all of us going to be able to watch them together. We're all going to be able to talk about what it means, but you saw even on day one, that what you've been doing has had an impact; what you've been doing is working. We're all going to keep watching them together to get us through to the next phase. So, everyone, we right now in our time, we've been shown a challenge we could never have imagined, but you have been doing everything that we need you to do to win. This is, you know, this is a battle. This is something we've never seen before, but together we can overcome it. And instead of just saying, you know, here's some vague ideas, we're going to show you the facts that prove we can overcome it and prove what it means for you to be in this game and fighting hard and fighting to win. So, thank you for being a team and acting like a team. It's making a huge difference.

Just a few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will now turn to our colleagues in the media.

Moderator: And just a quick reminder to folks that we have Dr. Barbot in the Blue Room and Dr. Katz and Dr. Daskalakis on the phone. And with that, Andrew Siff from NBC New York is up first. Andrew?

Question: Mayor, good morning. Hope you're doing well.

Mayor: Thank you, Andrew.

Question: Question about the reportage shortage of swabs for COVID tests – wasn't the reason you brought on Jimmy O'Neill to sort of get ahead of these gear shortages? And how severe a shortage is this? What will it do to the goal of ramping up testing to the point that it makes a difference?

Mayor: Great question, Andrew. Okay, let me separate for a moment the reality in the hospitals, which is where Jimmy O'Neill is focused with his whole team. He's got dozens of people working with him versus the broader question of testing, which is really central to our strategy going forward. So, in the hospitals, Andrew, the question has been this week-to-week, day-to-day struggle to make sure the equipment and the supplies, the PPEs, are where they're needed when they're needed. I always say – and I hate to have to emphasize it, but it's true – this is a crisis standard with the PPEs. It's not the ideal standard. It's not what we wish we could do. It's a crisis standard to protect our health care workers. But Jimmy and his team have been working to make sure that flow of supplies is constant, the materials, the things that are needed in each place are in the right place at the right time, being distributed effectively, and when there have to be adjustments, which is normal when you've got 56 hospitals and an ever-changing dynamic. Those adjustments made in real time. That's the central focus of his team. We’re, obviously, all together, watching personnel levels as well to make sure that is accounted for with our hospitals. The testing – the testing has been in a dynamic – scarcity from day one. The weeks and weeks and weeks that we all pleaded before things got so bad for the testing that could have helped us stave off this disease, the week since then we've been pleading for more testing so we could make more impact, the amounts we've had have caused us to be essentially limited to the patients with the greatest problems who are right now in a life and death situation where the testing was crucial to protecting them, protecting our health care workers, determining who could be on duty, who couldn't be at any given point, and trying to keep as many health care workers in the game as possible and making sure those who needed care got it. And the same with our first responders, to make sure that we were handling them and supporting them properly. That's where the emphasis has been. We are now trying, as we see a little bit of progress with this disease to open up more and more of the testing capacity for strategic use in communities where the need is greatest, communities that have been hardest hit and the vulnerable individuals within those communities. And we're going to give out more of those details soon. But even that testing, remember, the tests kits are one piece of the equation – and they come with lots of components just to make matters more complicated, we need all the pieces – the swabs and everything else, but then you need the personnel to administer them who are trained and you need the PPEs. So, until very recently we were struggling to have enough personnel and we still are fighting that fight, but we hope we'll be able to free up some more personnel for testing. We hope to be able to free up more PPEs, but that, again, is going to be a day-to-day decision. If we can put those pieces together, we can start this grassroots testing in the places that have been hardest hit. But as you can hear in my answer, Andrew, it's still an atmosphere of tremendous scarcity. What we need to get to low transmission – that next phase we all want to get to – is much more widespread testing. And I have appealed consistently to Washington. I spoke to the President yesterday and other key members of the administration, the FEMA administrator and others, to say, this is the crucial need if we're going to transcend to the next level and really reduce the presence of this disease. We have not gotten yet any guarantees from Washington about how and when we will get a much greater amount of testing. So, right now, I at least want to keep us doing what we're doing, start to get into targeted community testing, but I know that until we get a much more ample supply of testing, we can't sustain what we need to to get into that next phase.

Moderator: Next up is Debralee from the Bronx Free Press and Manhattan Times. Debralee?

Question: Hey. Good morning, everyone. How are you?

Mayor: Hey, Debralee.

Question: I want to follow up on that question, and also, just generally, as we talk about amplified testing, both in resources and personnel, Mayor and Commissioner Barbot, you know, the question becomes when will we have these resources, because you know, one thing is pie in the sky in terms of what we need, what we need now and what we don't have, what the requests have been. But in order then for us to return to some semblance of normalcy, as per administration, we've got to get to zero transmission and we'd have to really ramp up testing. When you look at it in light of opening up the city and the region for business and particularly for schools as well, how can we achieve that with the resources in hand? And then, specifically, can you tell us what kind of testing needs to be in place? When you talk to school leaders, they talk about these buildings having to be safe for the gathering spaces for the community, for families, for parents, for teachers. How will you in fact be able to assure that come September – that’s the end goal now – that these buildings will be that. What will testing look like at that point when you have strangers coming in and out of the buildings all the time?

Mayor: Great question. I'll start and I know Dr. Barbot will certainly want to comment on this. So, Debralee, you've done your homework, obviously. I think you really framed it powerfully. Okay. So, first of all, what I talked about last week with the phases, you know, from widespread transmission now to low level transmission to, you’re right, zero – no transmission, effectively no cases or only very occasionally. Dr. Barbot has said from the beginning to give us some guidepost – and we all understand it could change, but she said, look, September is a viable thing to be talking about really getting back to normal, but no one's guaranteeing that. We're saying it's something we can shoot for that we think is realistic. And remember, when we talked about coming out of the current phase, you know this month we're going to be unfortunately in the widespread transmission no matter what. Next month, undoubtedly, for some of May, if not all of May, we'll still be in widespread transmission. We go into June, I hope we're either already moving out or start to move out in June. This puts – again, you know, you raise the issue of the schools – this puts the school's point in perspective again given that it's so unclear when we even start on that pathway to low level transmission. This is another reason why it makes sense to keep our schools closed. But then you talk about what would it look like? Well, we keep demanding a real timeline from the federal government. And look, unfortunately, from what we know right now for the kind of level of testing we would need – really widespread – the federal government is the only place where we could get the impact we need. We're working on the private market and every other tool we can find, but to really guarantee a constant supply, the federal government’s got to do something very different than what they've done so far. I was clear they're still not using the Defense Production Act to the maximum, it's clear there's still not the level of coordination that we need to see on the federal level. We need to know a lot of testing is coming and it will be sustained. I don't think any of us believe that's happening, you know, in the next few weeks. I think that's something that looks like a month or more away and we just don't have clean answers on it. But it can be done, it's a matter of, you know, using all their powers to make it happen. Because, again, Debralee here is the fallacy – if the President of the United States or anyone else wants a recovery – and we all want it, right – but if you're serious about it, you can't do it without widespread testing. You cannot have a real recovery if you can't test people and you can't get this horrible widespread situation reduced so we can get down to low level. If you don't get down to low level, you're not going to have recovery. If your hospitals are constantly on the verge of being overwhelmed, you're not going to get a recovery. If your cities and States can't function, can't provide basic services, because we're still in the middle of crisis and there's no revenue, you can't get to a recovery. You actually have to get the health care part of this equation, right to be able to get the rest of the economic equation right. And I fear a lot of the time hearing the President, and some others in Washington, that they kind of want to skip a step and say, hey, let's just reopen regardless of what it's going to take. And I think if you listen to some of the really great health experts, including Dr. Fauci, you hear the constant warning, get it right, do not take your foot off the gas, do not jump the gun, or you'll regret it when this disease reasserts. So, that is my way of saying to you to actually get to the day where we can get to low level transmission, that takes a lot of testing so that anytime you need to test anyone, anytime you need to test people, you're tracing in a group of people like those disease detectives from the Department of Health do. They need a test available, you know, anytime we're trying to make sure that someone who has been in quarantine or isolation can come out. You need a test available. We have to be able to have it when we need it. That would then put us on the pathway to showing that transmission had gotten so low that you could have confidence in doing things like reopening schools in September.

Doctor?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So, to build on what the Mayor just laid out, what I would say is, first and foremost, the most important thing that we are doing right now to get us to that point of reducing transmission is the social distancing, is all of the things that are currently in place. Beyond that, this tightening of the supply chain for the swabs that are necessary for testing are part of a national and international challenge. And that's why we have been focused on ensuring that we target testing to those most in need and that the testing of others is sort of ramped up as supplies allow. But the most important thing is that as we get to the point – or let me rephrase, the most important thing is we won't be able to get this over the finish line, if you will, if we don't have the supply that the Mayor was calling for and the assistance from the federal government, because that's when testing is going to become that much more critical for us to ensure that when we have identified additional individuals who do contract COVID-19, we're able to put the control measures in place to ensure that we go from low-level transmission to no transmission and testing is going to be critical at that juncture.

Moderator: Marcia Kramer from CBS New York. Marcia?

Question: Can you hear me?

Moderator: Yes, we can.

Mayor: Hey, Marcia. How are you doing?

Question: How are you doing, Mr. Mayor? So, the question is this, there's a big fear that if we don't get businesses open soon, you may have widespread business failure in New York City. I wonder if that's something that keeps you up awake at night, if you're worried about it, and how do we get to the point where we can do it so that we have, you know, both healthy New Yorkers and a healthy economy?

Mayor: Yeah. Marcia, excellent question. I do worry deeply about our businesses, particularly our small businesses surviving this and being able to employ, you know, our fellow New Yorkers and keep us all going. So, that worries me, but what worries me even more is all the people whose lives are in danger, making sure we do everything to protect them and making sure we do not make the mistake of letting this disease come back even stronger. And there is evidence around the world that sometimes governments took their eye off the ball and they paid for it in a really bad way when the disease reasserted. So, to save those businesses, we actually have to get the health care part of this right. And Marcia, I don't think that means forever. I think that means doing it right for, you know, weeks or a few months and really making sure we've shut the door on this to the maximum extent possible, moving into that phase of low-level transmission, getting through that to the point where we basically don't have cases. We’ve got to get that right, that's the best way to make sure that businesses can come back. In the meantime, it's incumbent on our federal government to keep supporting small businesses. I'm done with the corporate bailouts. The big corporations are going to find a way, but the bailouts we need, the support we need is for small business. I know this is something Senator Schumer keeps talking about. There's more that needs to be done in the next stimulus. So, let's get health care part right and that's the way to actually save the small businesses and revive the economy.

Moderator: Yoav from The City is up next. Yoav?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I'm just wondering if you can detail some of the City's efforts to ramp up testing? The last public-private partnership I can recall being announced was March 17th with BioReference. That was on the analysis side. If there's a swab shortage, is there anything the City can do possibly to tap local manufacturers to create it? So, you know, leaving the federal government's role aside for a second, what has the City been doing and what have been the obstacles here?

Mayor: The City is -- we're definitely looking for anything that can be done effectively to either create components or in any way expand capacity. We got to do a lot of expansion and we've got to keep it sustainable. But yes, we are trying right now to figure out if there's a way to do it. I think the truth is that from what we're seeing so far, the only way we could have the really big supply we need on a sustainable level is if the federal government was able to do something very different to help us. But we will keep looking to see how we can help ourselves for sure. And as we have any progress, we'll announce it. The challenge has been since that announcement from -- with the great help we got from BioReference, which was absolutely fantastic, how much of the testing has been needed to address the ever-growing number of cases and then ever-growing number of people whose lives are in danger, to address the needs of the health care workers and keep them going and the first responders as well. So even though we built out a lot through BioReference, there was a whole lot of need too. The other thing to remember is since then the number one preoccupation has been keeping the hospitals going. And only in the last few days have we begun to feel that situation is improving. But it's only improving, you know, to an extent. And we're still struggling on the supplies, the PPEs and that's where a lot of focus has to be. So the answer is, you know, that's where we, that's where we've been over these last few weeks. But we are going to see quickly if there's more we can do in the city and how far that could take us.

Moderator: Katie from the Wall Street Journal is up next. Katie, Katie, can you hear us?

Question: Can you hear me?

Moderator: Yes,

Question: Hi, thanks Olivia and thanks Mayor de Blasio. My question, and I've kind of asked this previously, but hearing again about the increased advertising and the robo calls in 15 languages to communities, particularly the most vulnerable communities. I just, I'm so struck by how late it all seems and I want to know Mayor, why this wasn't done a month ago, why this wasn't done sooner? You know, you look at the number of the sick and the dead and the communities and I just can't help but think that this all feels a little late when it could have been done a month ago. And I just want to know why, you know, the City knows which communities are their most vulnerable. They know the languages people speak, they know the health care realities that they have. So can you just explain to listeners and to viewers why now and not last month or not even two weeks ago?

Mayor: Well, Katie, again, I said just a few minutes ago that the first major campaign was mid-March and it was an $8 million campaign. So clearly, in 15 different languages and much of it was in community and ethnic media. So in fact, it did happen right as we were seeing this crisis take a new direction and that's when that happened. This new one is targeted even further given what we've learned in the last days. In addition, the central thrust over the last few weeks has been to protect the people of the communities hardest hit by protecting the hospitals that serve them. The public hospitals and the independent hospitals. The last few weeks have been day to day, hour to hour, making sure we had the ventilators, the supplies, the doctors, the nurses, the health care workers where we needed them, when we needed them in a crisis that took on an extraordinarily fast trajectory. That was how we could make sure to save the lives that could be saved. And that's always been the core guiding light here is save every life that can be saved.

So that's where a huge amount of time, energy and resources went. And again, it builds upon, thank God, the billions of dollars we put into our public health system to save H + H years ago. That now has given us a foundation to be able to save lives here and now. But no, we've been out there with these messages deeply into communities. We're targeting them even more now and we're going to keep fighting with everything we've got. We're going to try and get the new testing out there. Again with a clear understanding, it depends on the supplies, the PPEs, the personnel, but everything has been about trying to get what we need to keep things going and protect the health care, protect particularly the hospitals that save lives.

Moderator: Brigid from WNYC is up next. Brigid?

Question: Morning Mr. Mayor. You know, there was a lot of reporting over the weekend about the decision to close schools for the rest of the school year. You said the decision was made, the Governor said the decision wasn't official. You two haven't appeared together since March 2nd. Respectfully, what do you think went wrong in terms of the communication in this particular case? And respectfully, what's the way forward so that your messages are in sync and New Yorkers don't have to experience the disorientation they feel when you're saying different things?

Mayor: Yeah, Brigid, respectfully back, as I've said many times, the vast majority of issues the City and State have been absolutely on the same page. Again, you guys will report on the exceptional. I understand that, but I'm going to strongly ask you to look at the whole trajectory through February, March, April, where the City and State and we've all been talking constantly, have agreed on directions together constantly. It is not shocking that sometimes there's this differences of perspective because what I need to do to protect kids and parents and families and educators in New York City, it may be a different reality than what the Governor's thinking about if he's thinking about the whole state or the whole tri-state region. But what I did, what the Chancellor did was to protect our people. Schools clearly need to stay closed. They will stay closed because the reality is just what we talked about before. There's not going to be a context to reopen schools with so much we're going to have to deal with on the health front to get to a better place and a more stable place. So we're always working to make sure that we get to the same positive outcomes. Sometimes there may not be perfect agreement, but we're still going to get someplace together. And I actually think the – respectfully, I think the media is very sensitive on this topic. I think everyday people just want to know where we are ultimately going to go. And I'm telling you the schools are not going to open because it won't be safe to open them.

Moderator: Sydney from the Advance is up next. Sydney?

Question: Hi there Mr. Mayor. So Borough President James Oddo said over the weekend that you agreed to send more medical staff supplies and coronavirus testing to RUMC and SIUH. Can you tell us a little bit more details about these commitments? What specifically are you sending, when they will be arriving at the hospitals and also why it took you so long to commit to sending these things to Staten Island? And just one more –

Mayor: Sydney, it didn't take long. And again, I, you know, I think very highly of the Borough President, we've had this conversation, he and I over many days, every single time. And Dr. Barbot will attest to this. Every time the Borough President has said there's a certain supply needed, we've made sure the supply got where it was needed. Or we made sure that the State or FEMA or someone was getting the supplies where they were needed. The personnel situation we've been working on, that's been a hard situation for everyone because we're still trying to get more personnel. But no, I'm sorry, I'm just not accepting the way you're phrasing the question. Staten Island has been a priority with all the other boroughs to get constant supplies PPEs ventilators, whatever hospitals have needed. And every time I've checked in on what's going on with the Staten Island hospitals, I keep getting the report back that they, like everyone else have been sent all of these basic supplies, what everyone is grappling with is that it is not the standard any of us want to be living with, which is to go back to a kind of peacetime standard. We are in this crisis standard. No one loves living this way, but all hospitals are being supplied and served.

Moderator: Gloria from NY1 is up next. Gloria, can you hear us?

Question: Yes, can you hear me?

Moderator: Yes, we can.

Question: Okay. I have a question from my colleagues who are covering the education beat during this time. And they're specifically wondering, the UFT has said that they have knowledge of at least 40 school staff that have passed away as a result of coronavirus. But the Department of Education has not released any data or any numbers about it. So what is taking so long? How are you tracking deaths within the DOE? And why hasn't the information been released yet?

Mayor: Yeah. And Gloria, every piece of information that we have that's been confirmed should be released exactly as we're doing today with the new indicators. So the Chancellor is not on the phone with us. But the bottom line always is that we want, once something's confirmed, we want it released. So I'm told that today the DOE will put out an update, it’s a very painful update. I mean, this is about people who are beloved in their school communities and have done so much good and now they're gone. But today the DOE is going to give that update.

Moderator: Erin from Politico is up next. Erin?

Question: Mr. Mayor, on the school closing or opening issue. I heard you say that they will remain closed and that, you know, most people just want to know what the outcome is going to be, which is definitely true. You know, so can you explain – it would seem in normal circumstances at least, the schools are controlled by the mayor. If you say they're closed, they're going to be closed. Have you done any kind of analysis as to whether there's anything in the Governor's emergency powers or any other contingency that could require them to open? Or as far as you understand, is your authority simply to close them because they work for you?

Mayor: I appreciate the question, Erin. And I think it's a real question, but I also think in many ways it's a hypothetical question. I'll tell you why. Because the health reality, the safety reality is just overwhelmingly clear. In the final analysis, we have to protect our kids, our parents, our families, and our educators. The only way we can do that with assurance is to keep our closed. The only way we can help make sure that we actually get out of this horrible phase of this disease is to keep our schools closed. Now, think about it this way. Who is presenting the opposite view? Well, I'll tell you when I talked to national and local health care leaders, they all say keep the schools closed. When I talk to educators and union leaders, they say, keep the schools closed. When I talk to all of the people who have been in the middle of fighting this crisis and want to see us turn the corner and beat back the coronavirus, they say keep the schools closed. I literally don't hear any voice saying we need to open these schools in the middle of so much insecurity and such a huge fight. I don't hear anyone saying, Oh, don't worry. It's going to be fine. It's going to be safe for 1.1 million kids. So I understand the question, but I'm only going to say it this way. I think in real terms, in practical terms, like bottom line, the schools are not going to reopen.

Moderator: Jeff Mays from the New York Times is up next. Jeff?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Just a quick question on the disparities, your plan to address the coronavirus disparities. I wanted to ask is are there any other plans to do things such as increase access to health care for people in these underserved communities? Or provide more PPE to sort of the frontline workers who tend to be from some of these underserved communities? What else are you going to do other than the ad campaign to address these health disparities?

Mayor: Okay, so Jeff, you'll remember that we said there were four points to what we were doing right away. Protecting and continuing to support the public hospitals that have borne the brunt of this. Elmhurst being the most prominent, but many others as well. Making sure they had the personnel they needed. We've gotten a lot of those military medical personnel to them. Hundreds which have been very, very helpful, giving some relief and support. Getting a lot more contract personnel in there. That's been thousands. Making sure they have the supplies, the PPEs, the ventilators, anything and everything to protect the public hospitals that are really at the front line, the tip of the spear of addressing the disparities. And obviously true for a lot of the independent hospitals as well. And we're supporting them directly to make sure they can keep doing their work.

So this is the most important piece of the equation. If you are going to fight disparities, you have to actually ensure that the hospitals that have borne the brunt and historically didn't have enough, because this is a blunt truth about the disparity. These are all the hospitals that were under-resourced for decades and have borne the brunt of this crisis, but all the disparities for, for years and years before. As I said the other day, we put billions of dollars way before this crisis, into saving Health + Hospitals, saving our public hospitals. Thank God that was done because now those hospitals can be in the lead of this fight. Second to make sure we were communicating more deeply, more in a targeted fashion to the parts of the city, to parts of the community that needed even more communication. Third, the grassroots outreach that I described, which ideally is going to take a very direct physical form in the meantime. It will be, you know, through things like texting and direct phone calls into individual households to help them get information, to have a way to get guidance. Fourth to do the telehealth model on a much deeper level. So anyone, but particularly folks who are in communities that have really suffered particularly and need more information, need more guidance, need a health professional to talk to, that they can reach someone readily at, you know, a broad range of hours a day and get the help they need. So that's the immediate plan. But it is connected to years of trying to shift, and I told you, billions of dollars redistributed towards communities of greatest need and we talked about it the other day, not just for the hospital system, but for housing, for employment, for benefits, wages and benefits being improved. All of the things that come together, the public health people will attest to this and I'll turn to Dr. Barbot, how all these things come together.

If you're actually going to go at these disparities, you have to spend years redistributing wealth and creating a whole different foundation for communities that have been left out to have some potential to get what they deserve, including the health care they deserve. And then most notably, what we started a year-and-a-half ago, a guaranteed health care effort for anyone who didn't have insurance, to either get them better lower cost insurance or get them the NYC Care card so they could get health care directly through our public hospitals and clinics. Physical health, mental health, obviously the entire Thrive initiative has been about getting mental health services to people who never had them, who never could afford them. That has been working on a big scale. The demand for Thrive mental health services is skyrocketing, unfortunately, sadly, because of this crisis, but no one has to pay for those services. You know, that mental health services used to be largely for those who are well off. And those who did not have money, didn't get mental health care. Thrive has been changing. That is particularly true now.

So, all of these things are about addressing disparities in health care. We've got all the things we did before, we've got the things we've announced more, and then as we look to recovery, we have to continue to change this city. We have to see the recovery effort as a fundamental moment for further redistribution and further equalizing and creating a fairer and more just city. We cannot just take a bad broken status quo and report it – and repeat it again. We've got to do something different. So, we're going to go through all of these stages rapidly. But anything that we have that we can use to help people, we're going to. And you made the point about the PPEs, the whole concept of getting the PPEs to protect our health care workers and our first responders has inherently been addressing the historic inequities because so many of our health care workers come from lower income communities, come from communities of color, need the protection. This has been the obsession to get it to them. We want to get it even more widely out into our workforce and into communities. But the first thing has been to protect our health care workforce and our first responders so that everything else can happen. Dr. Barbot.

Commissioner Barbot: So, Mr. Mayor, just to add to what you laid out so comprehensively is that in tackling the inequities, it's not enough to deal with what is on the surface, but it's also important to deal with the underlying drivers. And so, the fact that there has been attention paid to supporting the infrastructure, the health care infrastructure that serves communities of color and serves poor people in the city and the infusion of support to Health + Hospitals, infusion of support to the underlying educational system, all of those things really drive to support an equity agenda. You know, the sad reality is that these inequities have been for generations, hard-baked into the way in which this city works. And undoing those takes much more than just dealing with what's on the surface. Doesn't mean, of course, we don't deal with what's on the surface, but if you don't deal with what's underlying it, then we're always going to have those inequities. And so, this equity plan that we're laying out that the Mayor really talked about is going to be a phased approach and there are going to be more components to it. But we're starting here and now with doubling down on the direct mailings, on the robo-calls, and we're ensuring that we leverage the trusted voices of the community-based organizations that serve these communities so that we can then go even further into delivering the message that's going to help to save lives.

Moderator: Last two, Anna from the Daily News. Anna.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor Yes, Anna. How are you doing?

Question: Good. I hope you're doing well, too. I'm wanting to know if – whether the Correction Commissioner, if there's any reason why Commissioner Brann hasn't spoken publicly about the pandemic, given what's happening at Rikers and just the high rates of infection and the number of workers and inmates who've gotten sick and died. She doesn't appear to be at any briefings and I don't think she's ever appeared on television speaking about it. So, can you address that?

Mayor: Sure, Anna. Of course, I don't know everything about her schedule. I know about her work. I think Commissioner Brann has continued over the last couple of years to really reform and improve our Correction system and it's a huge, difficult job. But she and her team have been moving the jail system forward and making it, in so many ways, safer and more humane for everyone. But it's against a backdrop of making up for years and years of bad policies and disinvestment well before we came here. In this crisis I know she's been working very closely with Dr. Katz and everyone from Correctional Health to make sure that health care is provided. She's been working with our team here at City Hall and with the NYPD on determining what were the appropriate releases of inmates, which is now a number somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 who had been released, including those released with the agreement of the State and the DA's.

Everything to ensure that inmates who needed to be – as they were released were handled properly, supervised, gotten to isolation if they needed that, got the health care they need, she's been in the middle of all this and leading through all this. So, whether she is, you know, a public face all the time or not, I just don't know how and when she addresses the press, but I can see her work and am very sure it's effective. Certainly, want to make sure if she's got something that she wants to say publicly, she gets the opportunity to do it. But that's why, you know, I'm convinced having watched what's happened, that the work that we need done is being done.

Moderator: Last question goes to Henry from Bloomberg, Henry?

Question: Yes, how are you Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Hey, Henry.

Question: Hi. I want to get back to the subject of these neighborhoods that have had a disparate impact. These neighborhoods, I've been calling people in these neighborhoods for the last month and they've really had no information at all for the last five weeks. I mean, they literally have – some of these politicians have constituents who have had no clue as to what to do about the virus and people were getting sick. But my question really goes to the neighborhood clinics where, you know, you set up this health system and you touted it very highly that you were going to save the public hospital system by going into the neighborhoods and having clinics. And when this crisis hit, the clinics were gone and people couldn't walk to get medical care. So, they stayed at home and their conditions became much more acute and they wound up overwhelming hospital emergency rooms. Isn't this a complete reversal of what you saw as the salvation of the public health system in New York?

Mayor: No, it's not. It is a response to an unprecedented global health crisis. And I'll start and then Dr. Katz is on the line and he can add, and if Dr. Barbot wants to add as well. First of all, Henry, just following the track of what you said. Obviously, we've been incessantly trying to get information out very, very broadly. And on the one hand there's been a non-stop flow of information, whether it's these daily briefings or all the outreach that the City government does in so many ways to make information available to people. We've actually asked the elected officials, community organizations, faith organizations, everyone to be our partners in getting information out as well as the advertising and the other ways we get information out. I think there's been a lot put out. I think it's true, however, that with an ever-changing crisis and a confusing reality because there's no one on Earth who fully understands the coronavirus, that some of the information still needs to be amplified, clarified, done in other languages, you know, reached in a more targeted fashion. That's what we're doing now.

But there's no question about how intense and total the basic effort has been to get good information out, including a lot of direction. I've heard Dr. Barbot say in English and Spanish more times than I could count in the last few months exactly how people should address the situation personally in their family, in their lives. So, that's been happening. We're going to just do more and more targeted all the time. On the question of the community-based clinics, Henry, the fundamental conundrum here was we had to fall back to the hospitals. I mean this was a very explicit discussion over weeks and weeks right from here at this table that the trajectory we saw for this disease was so bad that we had to hold the hospitals as the last line of defense to save lives.

And that meant focusing everything we had on supplying and protecting the hospitals and making sure that they were never overwhelmed. The community-based clinics couldn't do, of course, what the hospitals could do. There's also the problem of trying to make sure that people didn't travel in the ways that they historically had. It would have been another danger if that had happened. We had to try and limit what people did in the right way by making sure at the same time that people who needed the help the most got it. So, it was a very challenging equation. Now that we have a little bit of breathing room, we want to go back and reinvigorate those community clinics to the maximum extent possible so they can go out into communities. We're still not saying to people do a lot of traveling around, go back to your regular patterns, but we do want to get the clinics out in an outreach way, out into communities to maximum extent possible as we work our way out of this phase and get to a better phase where we can then start to loosen things up.

So, to conclude, and I'll turn to Mitch, Henry, this is absolutely the result of going from peacetime to wartime. What you saw was a radical shift because it was the only way we could guarantee that our hospitals could function and save lives. And we had to make some very, very tough choices in an atmosphere where we knew there would be profound scarcity whether you're talking about hospital beds, personnel, PPEs. Until a week or so ago, it was entirely hand to mouth. It's still pretty damn hand to mouth. You know, as I said yesterday, I only can say that the city has the PPEs to get through this week. I can't guarantee you next week yet. So that's the backdrop against which we made the decisions, concentrating all of our capacity where it would have the biggest impact and protecting the core of our health care system. Dr. Katz.

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: I would just add, Mr. Mayor, that through your efforts, we have 3-1-1 sending all phone calls to Health + Hospitals with anyone with a clinical question. We've answered more than 50,000 questions. And that's a real doctor, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And because of the language capability of 3-1-1 it's in all languages. So, I think that's one of the ways we've tried to stretch ourselves during these horrible times. Also, all of our clinics are open. Our doctors make telephone visits to their patients. I called all of my patients last Wednesday that were on my schedule, including a new patient who had not previously been seen to check out if any of them needed refills, that we maintain enough staffing so that if people do need refills of chronic medications or they need to be seen because they have a problem they can still be seen. So, we are doing our very best, as you explained, to keep things going during this horrific emergency.

Mayor: Thank you, Dr. Barbot, do you want to add?

Commissioner Barbot: No, I think the two of you covered it just right.

Mayor: Thank you so much, Doctor.

Everyone, thank you. Again, I'll conclude with the point that we have today for the first time, these new indicators that are going to give us a very clear picture of what's really happening and where we are going. Today you can see, thankfully, thank God some proof we're going in the right direction, but we got a lot more to do. And finishing on that point of team, when you're on a team there's that feeling, that very good feeling, that sense of camaraderie, that sense of everyone pulling together. We're all used to thinking as individuals, but when you're on a team, you think about something bigger. That's what I see New Yorkers doing more and more. And sometimes you see, if you're a sports fan, you see a team that's got some good players on it, but somehow achieve something even greater than you would think that group of players could achieve, greater than the sum of the parts, well, New Yorkers were already great, but you're achieving something even greater with the way you're working as a team. We are really moving mountains right now because people are sticking with social distancing, sticking with shelter in place. It's not easy. We've been really clear, it's not going to be easy, but you can do it. You've proven you can do it and God bless you all. Keep going.

2020-04-14 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. Well, today, we have some very important news for all New Yorkers. We've had some real breakthroughs, and one in particular I want to talk about related to testing, which has been the topic we've all been focused on now for months and months. So, I'm going to give you some important news and some good news, but I want to frame it first because this really comes down to how New York City and New Yorkers are responding to this crisis. Now, this is a city that has always been a special place, has always been a place full of energy, creativity, entrepreneurship. This is a place – everyone knows it all over the nation, all over the world – this is a place where people make things happen. And even in the midst of this crisis, New Yorkers have been making things happen. You know, small things in the neighborhood to help people out; big things that could change lives and save lives as well. The spirit of ingenuity, the spirit of fight has been so clear over these last weeks in this city and it's growing all the time. People are not – not only are New Yorkers not giving up, New Yorkers never give up. New Yorkers are forging ahead to find new ways to fight back against the coronavirus. And, look, this is who we are, this is a place where we believe in getting things done. And I have challenged the members of my team to do things that were previously not doable, not thinkable, but now have to be in light of the crisis we're facing and all the problems we've had getting our federal government to respond, getting the markets all over the world to be reliable, all the challenges we've faced trying to get the supplies we need and the help we need have create a reality for us where we have to defend ourselves. We have to fight for ourselves. We have to create things here even if they were never created before. So, that's who we are as a people. And that's what New Yorkers are showing once again in one of the greatest crises we've ever felt.

Let me talk to you today about how we got to what I'm about to tell you about. Over these last years, we've seen in New York City more and more the growth of advanced manufacturing, the growth of biotech, the growth of the technology sector – over these last years, more and more capacity growing in this city and it's allowing us to do things that before would not have been imaginable. So, let me start with the crucial, crucial supplies that we depend on to protect our health care workers and our first responders, the personal protective equipment. I've taken several trips out to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I've tried to show all of you the amazing work happening there. But what I first want to tell you about today is that this work is now being supercharged. The face shields, which are so crucial to keeping our heroes safe, started modestly, people in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, making the face shields by hand with the components they could get – a wartime factory for wartime conditions. I told you a few days ago on Sunday, that when it came to face shields. We really need them, but we only had enough to get through this week when you look at all the hospitals of our city. But now, we are having a real breakthrough. The companies that came together have now been joined by more companies. Now, we have eight companies in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Brooklyn Army Terminal, and in Manhattan, all working together to create the maximum number of face shields for our heroes. They started very modestly, but now they can produce 240,000 per week. That will grow to 465,000 per week by Friday, April 24th. And then the goal soon thereafter will be to produce 620,000 face shields per week right here in New York City, made by New York city workers in New York City companies. That is enough to reach the crisis standard we're working under right now. What this means is we will be able to fulfill our entire need for face shields right here in New York City. Now, we're going to keep working to get more outside. Obviously, we want a bigger supply. We want to make sure we're secure for the future. We want to someday move off that crisis standard and go higher to an even, better standard. But for long as we're in the middle of this war – so long as we're fighting the coronavirus in the kind of crisis dynamics we are in now. For the first time with something as important as face shields, one of the major PPEs, we're going to be able to say we are self-sufficient – New York city will be self-sufficient. We will no longer be at the whim of either the federal government, the international markets. We won't have to import things from overseas. We will be self-sufficient. That's the first point.

The second point – surgical gowns. Now, we need a huge number of these every week, this is an area where it's not possible yet to be self-sufficient, but where we're making huge, huge strides. Again, on Sunday, I told you this was an area I was deeply concerned about where we had enough to get through this week, but we couldn't tell you yet about next week. We're moving to get major supplies in from all over the country. So, this is an area where we do see some relief coming, but, again, we will be best off if the most possible surgical gowns are made right here in New York City. Five companies are now participating in this effort to protect our heroes.
They're in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they're in Sunset Park, they're in the Garment center in Manhattan and in Long Island City, Queens. They're currently only making 30,000 per week, but by next week that will go up to 1,000. Soon thereafter, we want to get to 250,000 surgical gowns per week. And then, we're looking to go even farther. So, this is an area where we're going to make a lot of progress. These are particularly important to protecting those who are saving our lives – another great example of New York City ingenuity and the speed with which New Yorkers can move. Both these items I just told you about – face shields, surgical gowns – were never in recent memory made in New York City. These are brand new production lines created from scratch by companies here, by New York City workers in an atmosphere crisis, and they've surpassed any possible expectation we could have, and they're going farther.

But look, as much as we've been so deeply concerned about the PPEs, and we're going to be concerned about them until this crisis is over, because they mean protection for those who are saving our lives, the number one issue from day one has been testing. When we started fighting the coronavirus here in the city, we said we needed the federal help with testing. It never came. We have scoured the world looking for a test kits on the open market. It's been extraordinarily frustrating. We've had so many good people searching everywhere just to buy the test kits, to get a reliable supply. It has not been possible. So, over months now, the place we turn to for help, Washington DC, we never got a straight answer. We never got a consistent approach and we wondered when would the day come that we could actually get the test kits we need so we could start on that road that I talked about a few days ago from this widespread transmission of the coronavirus to low-level transmission and eventually no transmission. To get there, you must have testing in large quantities. And we knew that, as recently as yesterday, we did not know when and where we would get those test kits.

Now, we've had one breakthrough on the open market and then another breakthrough right here in New York City, and I'm so excited to tell you about this. Our friends from Carmel, Indiana, I talked about them a few days ago, they donated test kits – a biotech firm there donated test kits to us. But now, they have confirmed they can produce them regularly for New York City. So, on top of their donation of 50,000 kits, which we're so appreciative for, Aria Diagnostics, Carmel, Indiana is now going to be producing test kits for New York City. We will be purchasing them, starting Monday, April 20th – this coming Monday – we'll be purchasing 50,000 full test kits per week from Aria Diagnostics. I'm sure New Yorkers wouldn't have thought that the cavalry would come from Carmel, Indiana, but it has. This is going to be a big piece of the solution, going forward. We're going to get a whole lot more, I want to be clear, because to really get to that point where there's no more transmission, we're going to need a huge number of test kits. But even being able to know we can rely on 50,000 a week from a supplier that we believe in, that's going to be a major, major step forward for this city. I want to thank Mayor Jim Brainard of Carmel, Indiana, who I've gotten to know over the last few years very well at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He and I are on the leadership of that body, and he has been an extraordinary friend, and ally, and really stepped up for New York City. So, Mayor Brainard, again, thank you. Thank you to everyone in Carmel. Thank you to Aria Diagnostics. This is a big step.

So, that's 50,000 per week, but we're going to need a lot more. And remember, a test kit – and I talked about this a few days ago, I used the analogy of a cup of coffee with cream and sugar – you need the coffee beans, you need the water, you need the cream, you need the sugar, you need the coffee mug. Putting together the full test kit takes three basic components, the nasal swab, the liquid solution – that's what you keep the sample in, it’s called a viral transport medium – and a tube with a screw top that keeps the sample secure and sanitary. You need all three of those things to perform a test for the coronavirus. And then, of course, you have to get that test to a lab that then processes it. So, we're talking right now about just collecting the test itself from an individual – whole other part of the equation is continuing to increase the capacity in labs to process these tests and give us the answer person by person, positive or negative. And again, we'll have to do that on a mass scale, going forward. But to get these three parts together so you can collect a test from someone, well that's – you can't get the first base unless you have the actual test that you can collect from people. So, needing those three pieces was crucial. Again, our efforts to get them consistently from Washington DC – no result; our effort scan from the open market – never could get a reliable partner until today with Aria Diagnostics. So, as we went through these last days and saw New York City companies stepping up, our local government, particularly our Economic Development Corporation, bringing together partners from the private sector, figuring out how we could do surgical gowns, figuring out how can we do face shields, starting to figure out other equipment that we need to build – and we'll have announcements on that too – constantly figuring out new ways to support our hospitals and get them the supplies and equipment they need. More and more what's happened is the members of our team here at City Hall, Economic Development Corporation and companies, and even universities now, all talking about what can we produce here? How can we do it more and more? How can we do things that have never been done in New York City?

So, just a few days ago people started saying, wait a minute, if we can make all these other things, could we say no matter what's going on in the international market, no matter what's going on in Washington, could we actually make the test kits here? There's nothing like it in New York City being made right now. Nothing even close, but could we make them here if we just throw in the kitchen sink and tried all the ingenuity that exists in this city? At first, of course we didn't know what the answer would be. We had to pull together a lot of smart people to figure out could it be done? Could it be done quickly enough? Could it be done in the quantities that we needed? And we thought about what New Yorkers are facing. We thought about this crisis and what we have to get through, and we said, well, if people can make them around the world, why not us? Why couldn't we make them, even if we've never done it before? Companies all over the world could make some of these components. Why couldn't the most innovative city on earth figure out a way? So, I'm here to announce to you that we have found a way. And, starting in a few weeks, we will be producing here in New York City, 50,000 test kits per week with components put together right here with companies, universities, New York City workers right here, building a brand-new supply chain to feed this industry that will now develop in New York City. 50,000 tests per week to begin, and if we can go farther, we're going to build it up rapidly. It means commercial labs and academic institutions in this city working together to produce that liquid solution the right way. It means local manufacturers and 3D printers, coming together to make the testing swabs and the tubes. Something as simple as us testing swabs, the entire international market has been struggling, because those swabs had been less and less available. In fact, a lot of them are made in places that were deep in the middle of the COVID crisis themselves. So, the whole international supply was disrupted. But now, through the ingenuity of New York City producers, figured out a way to make them right here. Production will begin in a few weeks at the beginning of May – 50,000 a week to begin. Add that to the 50,000 a week from Aria Diagnostics, we'll have 100,000 full test kits per week that New York City can rely on, 400,000 per month, and that's just the beginning.

So, we will have to take that new capacity, ensure that there are labs that can handle all those tests and get us results in real time. And remember, we're going to need the personnel to administer the tests, we're going to need the PPEs to protect the personnel who administer the test. There's a lot of pieces to this equation. And, all the while, continuing as a city to make the progress we're making through social distancing and shelter in place. So, even while we're building out this brand-new capacity and it's going to help us to the next stage, we will not let our foot off the gas. We will not relent in the successful strategies that are now opening the door to getting out of this horrible crisis. But I want to keep cautioning, it takes all these pieces coming together.

Now, the good news is as we see some progress on the hospital front – and we're far from out of the woods, but as we see some progress, that's going get us a little more ability to free up some medical personnel for testing. As we see some progress getting more PPEs, that will allow us to devote more PPEs to testing. But all of these pieces have to come together and we're still not in a situation where we can say it's going to be easy, it's not, but we need to find a way to keep building up the testing because it's one of the foundations of gained that next phase. When you get to that next phase, when you get to low-level transmission, remember, then you're able to constantly test people, figure out who has the coronavirus, needs to be isolated, needs to be quarantine on, get them the support they need, keep them away from other folks that they might infect. You have to know how to constantly trace anyone who has been infected, the people in their life who might've been exposed – you can get to them, test them, isolate them if they need it. It's a constant moving machine to ensure that the cases, each and every one individually are addressed and you go back to a containment strategy, which is where we were weeks ago when we had the very first cases here in New York City. That's where we want to get back to. But to do that, we need a whole lot of testing. For the first time, we're going to have a truly reliable, major supply of testing. And I'm so proud of my fellow New Yorkers. I'm so proud of the people in the companies who are helping us. So proud of the people in my administration who put together this plan. You know, a lot of folks would have said this was impossible. They're making it possible, and that's what New Yorkers do.

Now, I want to be crystal clear. This does not let the federal government off the hook. So, please, even though I'm telling you good news and something unprecedented and a real breakthrough, it does not take away the responsibility the federal government has. Not only do they have to deal with the fact that for months and months, they didn't do what they needed that could have helped us stop this crisis from growing the way it has, but they still have to come through now because the amount of testing we're going to need, the amount of testing is going to need it all over the country is vast. But hopefully the example New York City is setting will be recognized in Washington, that if we can do it here – a place that doesn't produce tests is figuring out a way to do it – then why can't it be done all over this country? Why can't we build up a supply that could protect all of us? If the federal government can't figure it out, then get out of the way and let us at the local level get this done, but support us, get us the components, get us the help so that we can do this rapidly and protect ourselves.

So, I want to see how far we can go, how quickly we can go. 50,000 test kits produced in New York City per week, starting in the beginning of May is just a beginning from my point of view. I want to see how far we can take this and I want to challenge all New Yorkers who could contribute to this effort – I want to challenge the academic labs, I want to challenge the research labs, I want to challenge the manufacturers, I want challenge the 3D printers – all the companies with 3D printing – the biotech companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the research universities that chemical companies – if you're in New York City or you're in any part of the New York area or anywhere in the country and you want to help build this effort, we need you. We're going to get a lot of help to make this work. You can be a part of history. You can do something unprecedented. You can save lives through this effort. So, everyone who can help, please, right away, communicate with us. Let us know you're willing. Let us know you're ready. Email us at testhelp@edc.nyc. Again, testhelp@edc.nyc. We need you. We will be responding to people. As soon as the emails come in, we're going to be reaching out to people, because this needs to move immediately. And anyone out there that could help us, I want to say thank you in advance, because this is going to be a huge step forward.

So, again, everything I just talked about is about taking us on that journey from where we are now – high level of transmission, widespread transmission of coronavirus, deep in this crisis, to low-level transmission where we go that containment strategy and we get to trace each case, get people isolated, quarantine, support them, reduce the number of cases all the time, and then no transmission – the place we all want to get to where coronavirus is a rarity in this city and life goes back to normal. That's the journey we're on. The testing is crucial, but also making sure we use the right strategy. And, again, the social distancing, the shelter in place – it is working, New York City. You're doing an amazing job. You, again, are the heroes, because you're following these rules in unprecedented manner – 8.6 million people, together. We need to keep doing it. And I said, every day we'll go over those three indicators that we announced yesterday to tell you where we stand. We'll all watch them together. We'll all know where we are. We've got to see consistent progress to be able to talk about any changes in those rules and restrictions that are working. So, we're going to stick with them until we see really sustained progress.

So, going over the numbers today, the new numbers. Again, you'll be able to see this online, a nyc.gov/coronavirus. So, when it comes to the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected a coronavirus conditions, that number has gone down, I'm happy to say. Remember, these statistics have been verified, there's a two-day lag because of when the information comes in from the hospital. So, this goes back to April 12th – that's the latest confirmed information. But April 12th, two days ago, we saw a reduction from the day before – it went from 383, April 11th, to 326, April 12th. That's the corrector a direction, that's a good thing. But now here's a situation where we don't have good news, on this statistic. The daily number of people in ICU across our health and hospital system, our 11 hospitals for suspected COVID-19 – that number from April 11th to April 12th actually went up from 835 to 850. Then the other measure, people – percentage of people tested who are positive for COVID-19 – citywide, that number again went up – April 11th, 58.1 percent; April 12th, 59.6. The public health labs tests – again, that number went up – April 11th, 78.4 percent to 84 percent on April 12th. So, look, again, this is the real world, real talk. We had a really good day yesterday, progress in all those indicators, all went down together. Today, no such luck. It does not mean you should be discouraged. It's just a reminder. We're going to fight our way out of this. It's not going to happen overnight. There'll be good days and bad days. We got to start some momentum here. You need to keep at it. We all need to keep at it with the social distancing, with the shelter place because it's working. Every day, we have to win that battle to prove that we can reduce the spread of this virus, get those indicators to go down in unison over a longer period of time. And then we'll be in a position to talk about our next steps. But I think what's clear is people will be able to see what we're doing and what's working and be reminded there's going to be ups and downs, but sticking to the strategy is the best way forward.

Okay. I'll summarize now with a few words in Spanish and then we'll take questions from our colleagues in the media.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that we will turn to questions and please let me know the name of the reporter in the outlet.

Moderator: Hi all, just a reminder that we have Commissioner Barbot and James Patchett, President and CEO of the EDC on the line. With that, I will start with Debralee from Manhattan Times and Bronx Free Press.

Question: Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, indeed.

Question: Great. So, this is good news obviously on the testing front. Can you speak specifically, both Commissioner Patchett and Mayor, on what efforts are being done to make sure that this first wave of new testing capacity is going to go right to the front lines of these hard0hit communities, the 88 ZIP codes that you spoke about now for the past week. And then secondly, to the degree that you're looking to deploy a workforce that's going to respond to this new capacity, the personnel, the creation of PPE, what efforts are being made to make sure that these communities are also being engaged directly, that beyond the Brooklyn Navy Yard that you're also looking to call, recruit, you know, really attract from these communities. Again, they're also being hit with these unemployment numbers. And again, are being affected so disproportionately by the virus.

Mayor: Excellent questions. I'll start and if the President of EDC, James Patchett, wants to add, he will jump in. So, first of all, yes, of course, one of the things that's so powerful about this new announcement is it's going to allow us, in combination with everything else we need, to focus on the communities that are being hardest hit and get them more testing, but also to build the framework for the bigger effort to do, again, as I said, that constant tracing and the constant efforts to take us out of this period of widespread transmission and into a better phase of low level transmission. So, the targeted piece in the communities that are hardest hit is crucial. For everyone, having the ability to transfer our efforts, to evolve our efforts to a containment strategy is absolutely necessary. That's how we actually save lives the most, getting out of this period of the crisis and being able to apply testing anywhere and everywhere we need it as part of a containment strategy.

So, in terms of the first part as you heard over the last few days we plan to get additional test centers up later this week, but we have – also it was very clear that we needed to ensure the test kits, we needed to ensure there'd be the PPEs, we needed to ensure there'll be the personnel. Every day changes. And Debralee, it is something that's hard to describe, but I've been trying to, that literally the supply dynamics change by days. We have good days and bad days. We have days where supplies come in. We have days where we get more than expected. We have days where a company steps up or the federal government or state government or FEMA come through with something. We have days that are bad days too, where an order that we were promised from a company in this country overseas suddenly evaporates or is delayed. So, to get the PPEs to the point that we know we can sustain testing is still a challenge, but we're fighting that fight all the time and being able to make more of them here obviously is going to help.

The part about personnel, too. We've got to see this crisis beat back enough to free up medical personnel who can be devoted to testing. Remember a few days ago, really, when it looked like the hospitals were going to bear the brunt, even worse, we were surging all available personnel with any medical training into the hospitals. We are getting ready to expand ICU massively. And again, Debralee it’s hard to think about, like, the – it feels like a day is like a week or a month nowadays because things change so rapidly. But literally just days ago we were preparing for a vast conversion of our hospitals to ICUs and taking every available medical personnel in this entire area and surging them into hospitals, which would have taken away, of course, from the ability to be out testing the communities. We're getting some improvement in that situation. That is freeing up the potential of getting more personnel who could be out doing the test. You do need people with a certain amount of medical training to do these tests, but I'm a little more hopeful now.

So, to finish the first point, this now improves our ability to do the grassroots testing. We certainly will make it a priority. We do need to add those other pieces to the puzzle. We obviously need to make sure there's also the lab capacity to process the tests. Every day we'll be working to perfect that equation, every day we'll be giving updates on when and how grassroots testing is progressing and how much will be done at each site, which also will vary according to all these supply dynamics and logistics. Our goal is to get as many tests done where they're needed the most and that's we'll keep driving towards.

On the job front, I think that's a great point, a lot of the companies that we are working with, of course, the first thing they did was they brought back their own workers who really do represent working people all over this city. When I was at the Brooklyn Navy Yard a couple of weeks ago, you know, you could not have had a more beautiful picture of all of New York City, all people of all backgrounds in one place, working class people who had been out of work because those companies didn't make essential items. Then they converted to making face shields. They brought their whole workforce back. So, that's going to be a kind of thing you'll see that will employ a lot of people who have been out of work particularly from communities of color. But we can target further, to your point. And so, I'll ask James Patchett and the team at EDC to ensure when we need to do more hiring, we focus on the communities that have been hardest hit. And I certainly want to remind everyone that there are also our jobs being made available now at H + H and, again, we want people to take advantage of those jobs. We need the help, we need the labor, but we also need people to get a paycheck. But, yes, we will target those new hiring efforts as they emerge to the places that need them most. James, do you want to add at all?

President James Patchett, Economic Development Corporation: Sure, I'll just add primarily on the second point. I think, you know, the Mayor has visited the Brooklyn Navy Yard two times, but I don't want folks to over-index on that as the sole producer. We have over 15 different firms across gowns and face shields that are producing across the city that represents four boroughs. So, the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. And one of the – although Staten Island is not represented, one of the organizations we're working with is run by two Staten Islanders, although their organization is based in Brooklyn. So, all five boroughs are well-represented. Just to give you an example, one of our largest gown producers, it's an organization called Course of Trade, and not-for-profit organization based in Sunset Park who does [inaudible] training of seamstresses. And they are bringing back over 400 seamstresses from the Sunset Park and greater community to construct these gowns. So, it really is an across the city effort. And the great thing about a lot of these jobs is they’re people, as the Mayor said, who were put out of work and are now back to work doing this type of manual labor that is both a good-paying as well as being available and accessible to a lot of different New Yorkers.

Moderator: Next we have Andrew from NBC New York.

Question: Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Good, Andrew. How are you doing?

Question: Good. Since you've spoken about New York and the ability to innovate and come up with creative ways to do things, I want to re-ask about why you have not come up with a way to close more of the streets given that there are very few cars on the streets, streets like – cities like Oakland and Minneapolis have closed block after block. And I know your answer before was that the NYPD wouldn't have the personnel for that, but do they really need the personnel for that? Could you not find ways to get people outdoors safely with more space?

Mayor: Well, yeah, I've heard the concerns and the questions from people in communities and also from the media. I asked the NYPD and Department of Transportation to analyze the Oakland plan, which was the one that was raised a few days ago. Adamantly, the answer back was, we are just profoundly different than those other cities. In Oakland, as I understand it, they said that streets were closed off, but they didn't put up any barricades. They didn't have any enforcement. They just depended on drivers to not go on those streets and everyone to look out and be careful and that's, you know, noble and hopefully that would happen anytime, particularly in a crisis, but we are not comfortable saying that we are going to just assume that people are going to be safe because that's our good intention. You know, this is all about safety, Andrew, the whole concept right now, everything we're doing is about people's health and people's safety. That's where we're going to stay focused. And I do not believe we can do that safely. I do not believe that we can do it in a way that does not undermine enforcement of other things we need to do. So, I heard it. I've been elected by the people to make decisions including at a time of crisis. I have heard the concern, we've analyzed the concern, we've analyzed the possibility. The answer is, I do not believe it will work, period. We'll continue to look at it if situations change going forward. But right now, I am convinced that we need to take the NYPD and the other enforcement entities, keep them focused on where people have to be, the grocery stores or supermarkets, the pharmacies, the parks, the subways, the buses, make sure those are being enforced properly, get the NYPD back to full strength – that's where our focus is – and protect lives. The last thing I want to do is have a situation where we end up endangering people because we put a plan in place that we could not enforce properly. So, that's where we stand now. We'll keep looking at going forward.

Moderator: Next we have Marcia from CBS.

Question: Morning, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good morning, Marcia, how are you?

Question: I'm good. Mr. Mayor, there's been a raging debate about when and how to reopen the economy and businesses. I wonder who should be making the decision? Should it be the Mayor of New York City, the Governor of New York, or the President of the United States? And will you follow the decisions made by the governor and the president?

Mayor: Marcia, great question. Marcia, I think you'll appreciate – we've known each other a long time – in this case, I'm going to declare myself a conservative. The fact is we cannot jump too soon. This is all about safety and all about health. That’s all we should be thinking about. That does not mean we don't need to restart the economy. We do, of course. People's livelihoods depend on it. We've got to, over time, get back to normal. But, Marcia, my profound concern is that if we do this the wrong way, if we do it prematurely, we will see a resurgence of this disease. And this disease is a ferocious one. It has put the entire nation, the entire world back on its heels. So, we would be fools, I think, to ignore the warnings we have received and including in places that did act a little prematurely and ended up paying for it.

My view is job one, health and safety; job two, restarting the economy. You can't restart the economy effectively until you perfect the health and safety equation. If you do attempt an artificially early restart of the economy, you'll end up having to shut a lot of it down again because the coronavirus will reassert. That's the worst of all worlds. So, my view is, smart, cautious approach, beat it back, prove that we've beaten it back, get to that containment strategy, that low level transmission phase I've talked about, secure that phase. That's when you can start to loosen up. But don't do it artificially.

In terms of who makes the decision. Look, it's a federal system. The founding fathers are really clear about this. Of course, the president has a crucial role to play, particularly a time of national crisis. Of course, the governor has a crucial role to play at, particularly in a time of crisis in this state. Localities still play a crucial role in our federal system no matter what. That's how this country was built. So, I'm going to defend the health and safety of New Yorkers. I believe in a lot of ways people will – all levels of government will find some consensus. That's my hope, especially because I think the disease will give us a lot of information, you know, literally, because if we do things right, we'll beat it back. If we do things wrong, unfortunately, the disease will prove its power to us. But in the end, my job is to protect the health and safety of New Yorkers and I will do that no matter what.

Moderator: Next we have Julia from the Post.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Hey, Julia. How do you feel?

Question: Good. I'm wondering if – a follow up on Debralee's question, who exactly will be prioritized for testing because we know that, you know, 100,000 is a great start, but based on what the Governor said, we may need tens of millions of these tests to get to the next phase. And then I wonder if you have a cost of the tests from Aria and if you can name any of the companies and universities involved in New York City's homegrown testing efforts.

Mayor: Okay, good questions all around. We'll get you what we can on Aria. I don't have it in front of me. On the institutions involved – absolutely anticipated that question – we are, right now, in conversation with a number of organizations to get this done. Want to make sure they are comfortable with their names coming out before we just start talking about them. And again, we're trying to recruit a lot more. So, over the next few days we will announce the different partners in this initiative. On the question of the testing priorities at the community level. Again, what I said was, here's the plan to get this done by the end of the week, at least to start in as many locations as possible pending getting those PPEs and the personnel. The exact priorities we're going to announce shortly, Julia. It's obviously going to be a focus on the most vulnerable. So, the exact criteria we will announce, we've said what the locations will be, the tests will be for people from those communities because those had been amongst the hardest hit. But the general criteria we've discussed previously, folks with pre-existing conditions, folks who are older, and particularly those who have both. And that's the number one concern. Folks who are over 50 and have pre-existing conditions. So, we'll lay out the exact focal group, the exact priority group for the grassroots testing. It's going to be limited to begin, so we want to make sure it gets to those who need it most. And we'll have more to say on that in the next few days.

Moderator: Next, we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Thank you, Mayor. Wanted to follow up on the regional working group a bit more. Have you spoken with Governor Cuomo since the regional working group was announced? And what would you say is your role either formally or informally in that group?

Mayor: I have not spoken to them. I think it sounds like a good idea. You know, I love the notion of everyone trying to solve these problems together. And again, the states have their role to play. Here's the truth about cities and localities. We provide the services to the people. You know, the federal government does its role. The state government does its role, but in the end, this is where the rubber hits the road. So, when it comes to protecting people it's our police force, it’s our fire department, when it comes to the health of everyday New Yorkers, it's our health department, it's our public hospitals with Health + Hospitals. We've obviously been mounting the constant effort to get supplies to the hospitals that need them, to get help to people who need them. It's our EMS, obviously, that brings people to the hospital. And our EMS workers have been extraordinary and valiant in this effort. And by the way again, a thank you to FEMA. Thank you to the federal government. Those 250 ambulances we've gotten, 500 EMTs and paramedics from around the country. I visited with them a few weeks ago. They've been amazing. They've helped us deal with this crisis and, clearly thank God, we see the number of 9-1-1 calls starting to go down. We have, by the way, more ambulances and EMTs and paramedics coming in from around the country to augment further. I'm told by our OEM Commissioner, Deanne Criswell, we have another hundred ambulances and 200 paramedics and EMTs coming in, I believe, next week to add to those ranks further. So, that's been crucial.

So, Shant, that's just my reminder to everyone that what we do is actually directly serve people and directly protect them. So, if the governors of all those states have particular ways that, you know, I can work with them, our city can work with them, we want to for sure, but whatever they're doing together – and I'm glad they are working together – my job is to protect New Yorkers every day with all the resources of this City government. And that's what I'll do

Moderator: Next, we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, good morning everyone. And Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask you, I know that the City eliminated the Summer Youth Employment Program in it's a budget saving measures, and now there's been a push to save it. I was curious because I know last month before you canceled schools, one of the major factors you cited for not canceling was what would the youth do, you know, especially teens. So, I'm curious if things improve, if there is, you know, widespread containment of the virus in the summer, would you consider bringing back this program, so teens and the youth can have something to do in the summer. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you, Katie. It's a great question. We thought a lot about this. There's been a great expansion of the Summer Youth Employment Program in the course of my administration. The City Council’s made it a major priority. We've worked with them. It’s, I think, more than doubled from when we came into office. So, you know, it's painful to take away something like that. And it's not just that it's the other summer programs that we have well beyond summer youth, all of which are valuable. I talked about it in the State of the City, we wanted to do even more of that kind of thing. But here's the truth. And again, I'm going to declare myself a conservative on this point – when I say conservative, I'm not talking about ideology, I'm talking about strategic conservatism in light of this crisis. I want to make sure we get the health piece right.

I want to make sure we protect people's health and we actually know we've beat back this virus and we're actually in that new phase. We’ve talked about somewhere between May and June, we hope to have the proof that we've moved forward enough to be able to start to change some of the restrictions. But that's just the beginning. And even then, we have to watch like hawks to make sure things don't go back in the wrong direction. The numbers today, you know, we really believe in these indicators and as you saw, unfortunately, today they went in the wrong direction. So, we don't yet know the trajectory. What I do know is the kind of planning that you would normally authorize and the spending you authorize for summer initiatives of all kinds would be happening right now. We can't do that. We cannot spend a lot of money and put people through a lot of trouble for something there's no guarantee at all could possibly happen. And there's a real chance – and remember our Health Commissioner, Dr. Barbot, talked about September as really the time that we think is realistic to think about getting back to normal. We're confident, at this moment, we can reopen the schools in September, but we're not confident about June. We're not confident about July. We're not confident about August, that we could have people gathering together again in large numbers. And that's what Summer Youth is and all these other youth programs. So we're going to take this very slow and carefully to make sure we get it right. In terms of your question, what should young people do? It's tough. It's tough, look, I'm a parent. I vividly remember when my kids were teenagers and it would have been really tough to say to them that you got a whole summer ahead and you still have to practice social distancing and you still have to stay in a lot, but that could well be the case. We're going to try to provide every conceivable kind of online programming we can. We're going to try and be ready to in any way we can help kids through it. DOE is preparing contingency plans for each and every scenario for what might happen over the summer. So the answer to your question is I don't see that scenario at this moment. And I'm always going to first focus on how do we guarantee the health and safety of New Yorkers and make sure we don't take our foot off the gas too soon.

Moderator: Next, we have Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Good Gersh. How are you doing?

Question: I'm great. And Mr. Mayor, we can all appreciate the good news you shared today as we fight this war. But let's look ahead for a second. Residents are saying they don't want to return to streets filled with traffic. Sky polluted by car exhaust, hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists killed every year, the result of how we allocate public space to the automobile. So just as FDR, Churchill and Stalin repeatedly met to discuss the future even before they defeated Hitler, do you have someone in your administration, perhaps it's your talented Transportation Commissioner who we haven't seen during this crisis, who is planning for the car light future that residents will demand when this is all over?

Mayor: Well, Gersh, even with some editorializing there in the question, I don't agree with your entire frame. But I think your underlying question is a very good one. And the answer is yes. Real work is starting now to plan our future. So I want to affirm, I think the point, the basic point you're making, which is that we are not looking to simply bring back the status quo that existed before the coronavirus. I think that'd be a huge mistake. Now Gersh, my first concern here is the health and safety of New Yorkers. So one, the planning has to recognize that we have to get it right on ending this crisis. And if you look around the world, coronavirus is not linear. It doesn't like just have an on-off switch. We may be fighting it in different ways for an extended period of time. So I want to be careful that people not think we turn a corner and we're done necessarily. We have to be smart about that. But when you think about where we are going forward, when we think where we are now, and how we have to move forward, the first thing I would say we need to do is fight inequality. This is what I came here to do. This is what New Yorkers, I think fundamentally believe in. We're still a city racked by inequality. We must do so many things differently. And it starts with making sure that working people have better lives and have the ability to really take care of their families in a whole new way. And this is where I think the health care disparities have been pointed out here, so painfully are a call to arms. That when we come back, when we start our recovery, it has to be also about a redistribution. It has to be about fundamental changes in the direction of fairness and justice and equality. So I think the first question is about health and safety, is about economic justice. But then talking about how we address the future of the city in terms of sustainability, in terms of transportation. Unquestionably we need to make more changes. I have a real feeling that this horrible, horrible crisis, unprecedented, at the same time as it's so horrible unto itself, it’s such a jolt. It’s the worst health care crisis in a century. It’s the worst economic crisis in 80 years. I think it's also preparing us for something ahead. And I wish it wasn't, I really do. But I think unfortunately it is preparing us for something. Which is the battles we'll have to face in the future in the fight against global warming. We all understand how dangerous that situation is. So it comes to your point to fight global warming, we have to, we have to get away from individual automobile use a lot more. We have to build a city that more and more will rely on mass transit. We have to double down on everything we've done with Vision Zero. I intend to create a plan that will do all of that. Because when we finish beating this enemy, we've got another enemy up ahead that's fierce. And that is bearing down on us quickly and we're going to all have to work together to fight. And getting out of our cars to the maximum extent possible is part of that fight. So yes, you will see those plans for the future of the city.

Moderator: Next we have Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I'm wondering if you're going to explain the rationale for requiring medical staff at the city's public hospitals to provide a doctor's note when they get sick? Relatedly the NYPD has been releasing daily updates of how many officers get sick, how many are confirmed positive. If the situation at H + H is so bad that you're requiring medical staff to prove they are not faking an illness, why can't we get the same data for H + H?

Mayor: Happy to get you that data. And I don't agree with your inference. I look at it the other way around. We need them. We need those key health care workers right now. We just need a system that creates consistency of verifiability. In fact, in a crisis, you need it more than ever. So yeah, we'll happily get out statistics. But the intention here is one thing to make sure we can save lives. We need to make sure every available health care worker is where we need them. We also need to make sure that anyone who is sick gets the support they need and is not at work but is at home getting well.

Moderator: Next we have Brigid from WNYC.

Question: Good morning Mr. Mayor and thank you for the news about testing. It feels a little bit hopeful today.

Mayor: It is, it is.

Question: I have a question on a different supply chain related to food security. Particularly for our seniors, we are hearing from people who signed up for meal delivery who are getting texts saying a delivery is coming and then nothing arrived. First, what should a senior do, you know, when they can't go out and they're not getting what they need? And I know you have Kathryn Garcia in this role as the City's Food Czar. Does that mean that she also has oversight of these supply chains, including, you know, these types of meals that are supposed to be delivering?

Mayor: Yes, Brigid. Every piece of the food equation DFTA has played a historically crucial role feeding seniors at senior centers, Meals On Wheels, that type of thing. HRA has played a crucial role with food stamps and food pantries, soup kitchens. All of that and every other piece that can be brought to bear is under the umbrella of Kathryn Garcia's leadership now, as the Food Czar. We are going to present this week a much more detailed plan on the work she is doing. There is a lot more ahead. The blunt truth is I'm very worried about the ability of New Yorkers to get the food they need because so many of them are running out of money because they've been out of work. And so what I've said is we will not let any New Yorker go hungry. I want to emphasize this. We will not let any New Yorker go hungry. Any New Yorker who needs food right this minute, we can get them food, either of those 435 programs we have through DOE. Right this minute where any family can go get three meals a day, grab-and-go, as many family members as they have. All of the soup kitchens and food pantries that we're supporting in the effort we announced with the City Council, $25 million effort we just announced. All the other ways that we get food out, including the direct deliveries to seniors and vulnerable folks, which have been growing all the time. So we will have much more to say on that this week. But to your question about if you will quality control, make sure that anyone who signs up gets them right away. I have been really clear with everyone that it needs to be an immediate turnaround and we can't miss, because people are depending on this. There was a situation in Independence Plaza. I'm glad several of you raised it last week. You were right. I apologize to the folks at Independence Plaza. It should never have happened. And I've told our team we have to tighten up, that can never happen again. If there's individual instances we need to know about them immediately. So any journalist or anybody who hears of a situation where someone signed up for the food and didn't get it, our team here at City Hall needs to know that so we can get Kathryn and her team to fix it. And the fix can be very quick. There's constant deliveries being made all over the city now and we'll give you those details. I think you'll be struck by how much is happening. So you know, quickly making sure that if a delivery was missed, it is quickly fixed and get the food to the person in need. We can do that, but we need to know where the problems are and if it's just individual or something more systemic that we need to fix. So please Brigid, if you'd share that information with our colleagues at City Hall and again, we'll have a bigger outline for you of everything happening this week.

Moderator: Next we have Juliet from 1010 WINS.

Question: Yes. Good morning Mr. Mayor. Good to talk to you.

Mayor: Good morning, Juliet. How are you doing?

Question: Hi, fine, thank you. My question is this, now that you have this capacity to do a lot more testing, do you think there will come a time when every New Yorker should or needs to be tested? And I'm asking because there were concerns that there are people that are asymptomatic that may not know that they're carriers. So what happens? How would people know if they've had it with mild symptoms or they're carrying it or they have an immunity? How would that work and how would you go about doing that?

Mayor: Great, great question, Juliet. I'm going to start as the layman, Dr. Barbot will jump in, but I'm going to – she's been teaching me, so I'm probably going to immediately summarize some of what she would say. Look, again, we're fighting an enemy that we never even heard of six months ago. I mean, let's be clear about this. The coronavirus did not exist in human beings to the best of human knowledge, you know, half a year ago. And there's literally no one in the world who understands it enough. The entire international medical community is still trying to understand it. I have talked to every health expert I could find from Dr. Fauci on down. And what you keep hearing is that honest hesitancy about what they know and what they don't know. So this gets to your question, first of all, now we don't even know for sure if someone has had it and they cannot get it again in the near term. We think you can't get it again. And this goes to the antibody testing, which is its own topic. We think that would tell you something valuable, but it's not 100 percent clear if it is the final word. The same on the other side with the main coronavirus testing, the PCR testing. It tells you at that moment if you have it or not. It doesn't tell you if you're going to have it tomorrow. So some -- we’re obviously getting people who are negative one day and a couple of days later they're positive. That whole point about asymptomatic transmission, which is still not sufficiently clear. You could even have someone somewhere on the pathway to infection, but it doesn't necessarily show up in the tests. I'll let Dr. Barbot speak to all of this. But the point is we're dealing with imperfect knowledge of the disease and imperfect tools to fight it, but they still give us something. So to your question, I think what I would say is the first thing we need is testing for everyone who needs it. So obviously we have struggled to just have the testing for patients who are really sick, for health care workers, for first responders. That situation's getting better and now especially that we'll be able to have our own supply. Then of course we wanted to target communities that are hardest hit and the most vulnerable individuals specifically, not just to everyone, but the most vulnerable specific individuals in those communities. But when you go that next phase, you need testing all the time to make sure that you know exactly who can work, who can't, who should be contained and isolated, or a quarantined, who shouldn't, who's coming out of quarantine. It's like a constant assembly line, if you will, where you're constantly having to test lots of people to know exactly where they are and make sure they get the support they need. I don't know, and I don't believe in the many, many conversations we've had here at City Hall with all the health experts. I don't believe I've heard the idea of every single person, 8.6 million people needing to be tested. But I don't rule that out either. I'm thinking of this in stages where the greatest concern is to have the testing, to actually keep track of the people who need testing and have that kind of dynamic situation where anyone needs isolation or quarantine, we can get it to them. Anyone who's ready to come out of it, we can confirm the rate who come out of that, that kind of thing. Dr. Barbot take it from there.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Thank you, sir. And so, I'll build on what you have just laid out. And I want to just sort of back up a little bit to remind folks about what I've said in the past regarding testing. The reason to test is because we want to be able to then use that information for decision making. The second thing is that the importance of testing depends on where in the curve you are and then what decisions it'll help inform. So, right now, when we have widespread community transmission, what we have said to individuals, all of our fellow New Yorkers, is assume that if you've got these symptoms you have COVID because it's so widespread. And whether or not you get tested is sort of secondary because we want to make sure that people stay home. We want to make sure that people pay attention to their symptoms. If they aren't getting worse, we want you to reach out to 9-1-1. That being said, as we start seeing a decrease in the number of new people being infected with COVID, that's where having more testing available really makes a difference. Because it then helps us identify who are those individuals that have COVID and how can we then move more quickly to slowing the spread of COVID, by ensuring that not only do we make sure that these folks stay home and isolate, but anybody who's come in contact with them also then self isolates. And so right now I think it's premature to think about the value of every single New Yorker being tested. I think it's a combination of ensuring that, as we've been saying along, the folks who are at greatest risk for poor health outcomes as a result of COVID-19 get tested. Meaning the intersection of age and underlying illnesses, as well as, individuals who may be in particular communities where we see ongoing high levels of transmission so that as a city we can start cutting off those chains of transmission.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. I'm wondering, have you asked for authority – we reported that your administration was considering borrowing for the operating budget because of the budget crunch that you're in currently. Have you asked yet for the SRD to do that or do you, sorry – begun that process in any way?

Mayor: Thank you for the question Erin. It's something we have to think about. Obviously we'll be presenting the executive budget soon. And we've had to go through a really tough process around cuts to the budget and savings and PEG program. But we're going to have to look at everything to figure out how we get through this. There's a lot of uncertainty ahead, revenue we're seeing everywhere going down, very painfully, more and more expenses. Look, protecting the health and safety of New Yorkers, that's the priority. We'll throw everything we got at it, but it is obviously costing a lot of money. The State budget situation is real bad. So it's a tough, tough time ahead. So we're going to look at all options. But I'll have more to say when we do the budget presentation. And we'll talk about if and when we're going to seek any formal authority to do that.

Moderator: Next we have Kathleen from Patch. And we'll take one more after that.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Kathleen.

Question: Oh, great. So I'm following up on a question from my colleague on Sunday. Maya asked whether – about your blanket policy across city agencies to protect essential workers with preexisting conditions. She wondered if you had a follow up on that and what's been instituted?

Mayor: Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you. And I have – I appreciated the question. It turned out it was a very good question because it did point out that different agencies had somewhat different standards, all pretty much pointed in the same direction, but somewhat different standards. We'll be issuing guidance this week for a uniform standard for all city agencies. And basically it will be that the first consideration is to protect those with really serious health challenges. And we want to be clear that anyone whose particular health reality would put them at serious risk, we want to keep them home. Some of them can work from home, some of them can't. But whatever the case, the number one thing is to protect our city workforce. If someone by coming out of their home and going to work, even if they're doing essential work, if it would endanger their health, if they have the kind of serious specific conditions where it would endanger their health, we don't want them to take that chance. So we'll clarify that. Thankfully there are other folks who, you know, are not in the same kind of risk category. Of course anyone who can work from home, we want working from home. But there's other people who would not be running the same kind of risks, that's a different story. But we're going to send out guidance defining that if you have those serious risks, we do not want to put you in harm's way. And we will of course continue on the payroll, anyone like that on the payroll. So that guidance will be coming out soon and it will be made public.

Moderator: Last question for today. Alejandra from AMNY.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Alejandra.

Question: Okay. My question has to do with the announcement from the DOE yesterday that at least 50 staffers have passed away due to coronavirus. And I'm just curious to see when you were first made aware that it was at least 50 and how much of a role did that news play in your decision to keep New York City public schools closed, last a few days ago?

Mayor: Thank you Alejandra. I had been hearing honestly day by day, the updates so long before it reached such a painful number. You know, I was hearing each day when we lost any member of a school community and that definitely is something that I had in mind and the Chancellor had in mind. The Chancellor talked about this when we announced that we keep the schools closed, that school communities are hurting right now. There's a lot of pain, there's a lot of trauma. It's something we are going to have to address now and it's something we're going to have to address very deeply and you know, intensely in September. You're going to have kids coming back who have lost people in their families, in their neighborhoods and even of course in their own school. And that's going to be really, really difficult. We've not faced something quite like this in a long, long time in this city. And it's going to be very, very painful. And pretty much every neighborhood and every school will be affected in some way. So yeah, that is a painful, awful number that we've lost so many people who were devoted to uplifting our kids. And absolutely weighed on not only the decision that the Chancellor and I had to make, it weighed on our hearts. You know, my life and public life has been very, very focused on education and Richard's whole life has been focused on education and it's horrible. But I do think it puts a point on the fact that it just is not safe to bring back our schools until we are absolutely certain that we have moved out of this crisis. You know, we're talking about places where you bring together a lot of people and the safety and health of our kids and our parents, our families, our educators, that's what we should be focusing on in making every decision we make. And it's certainly was paramount in why the Chancellor and I decided to keep our schools closed for the school year.

So everyone I'll conclude by saying yes, we had a big breakthrough today. Really exciting news. And again, I've said many times the heroes are the New Yorkers in this fight, starting with our doctors and nurses and health care workers and our first responders, everyday New Yorkers who the whole nation, the whole world is watching as you do heroic work. The heroes are all of you who every day, no matter how tough it is in the biggest city in the country, you're practicing social distancing. You're doing shelter in place. It's making a big impact. But now we have a new set of heroes. The folks in all these companies, all these innovative, creative people, including the folks on our government team who said, you know what? It doesn't matter if it's never been done before. We're going to do it here in New York City. We're going to make something happen. We're going to make something out of nothing. People said, there's nothing here to work with. We're going to still find a way. And they've actually figured out now how to make us self-sufficient in face shields. How to make a big step forward in those surgical gowns that protect our health care workers and most notably, most powerfully, how to create our own test kits. How to make up for all the mistakes that we've seen from our federal government by taking matters into our own hands more and more. And starting to produce test kits on a mass scale here in New York City. It’s very powerful. It's very exciting. It's going to help us save lives. And it's a tribute to all New Yorkers.

Thank you, everybody.

2020-04-15 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. This time we're living in, it's causing us to experience so many challenges, so many painful realities, things we never could have imagined. There is such uncertainty. There's such confusion. There’s such a sense of insecurity. I want all New Yorkers to understand what all of us here in the City government are devoted to doing in this crisis for you and it's really basic. Our mission is to make sure we protect your health. Our mission is to keep you safe. Our mission is to make sure you have a roof over your head, and that your home is safe and secure. Our mission is to make sure you have enough food to eat, and that's what I want to focus on today. That last point, because what is more fundamental than being able to put food on the table for your family. And for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, that is now a question. That is not a certainty, and that's because somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-million New Yorkers have lost their livelihood in just the last few weeks, and money's running out. Whatever savings people have is running low. A lot of people already have run out of money. And yes, there's some help that's coming in. We all appreciate that for sure, but we all know it's not enough to sustain people. So, for more and more New Yorkers, we're hearing this all the time, people are literally asking, where's my next meal coming from? That's something painful to consider in the greatest city in the world, but it's what's happening. More and more people are experiencing that kind of insecurity. That's one of the most basic, and particularly for families, parents worrying about how they're going to feed their children. That's a reality that's now gotten sharper and sharper.

So, I want to affirm to everyone out there who is feeling that fear, everyone who's dealing with this problem, even if they couldn't have imagined just weeks ago, they'd be dealing with it. Here is the simple mission of your city government, and I pledge to you, I'm very confident in making this pledge, we will not allow any New Yorker to go hungry. This is not only a mission we are devoted to because it is the right thing to do, it is the moral thing to do, we must do it. And we must do it as your City government. We must do it working with all those at the community level who for years and years have helped to make sure that people are fed. The food banks, the soup kitchens, houses of worship, the nonprofit organizations. So many people have been devoted to making sure that New Yorkers had enough to eat. We're going to need them more than ever. We're going to help them more than ever. But the city government is going to take the lead, because we will not allow anyone to go hungry.

Now, yesterday I was out in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and I saw something moving and remarkable, but also it was a warning sign. I was with the wonderful people who are part of the campaign against hunger. It's an organization that's been around for decades. Started at the grassroots to feed people, help people. I want to thank Dr. Melanie Samuels and her whole team. Devoted people from the community who keep coming out, and they know that they're taking a risk doing it, but they keep coming out with the proper protection on, to feed the residents of their community who need help. Melanie told me that even just a few weeks ago, typically 250 families per day would come to their food pantry to get help. She said now it's more like 500 families a day. Doubled in just a few weeks. And this is just the beginning, because when we look at this coronavirus crisis, we understand we're trying to make sense of something brand new, a disease that didn't even exist for human being six months ago. But we're also trying to understand the huge negative impact it’s had on the rest of our lives. And we know when it comes to something like unemployment, the effects get felt more deeply week after week. It doesn't all happen at once. It actually gets tougher as we go along. So, I think what's coming up is going to be even more of a challenge. And that's why we're preparing right now to feed everyone. And as you hear this presentation from me today and from our new Food Czar, Kathryn Garcia, I hope everyone listening will understand, literally, we will not let anyone go hungry. And if anybody in your life needs food, we will get it to them. We have to make sure that word is spread. We have to make sure that no one thinks they're alone. We will not let anyone go without food. We need to make sure everyone gets that message.

Now, I was in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, but this challenge is literally in every neighborhood, because if you have no money, how do you get food? And we know that the massive unemployment that we're experiencing is literally every zip code, every part of the city. So, whoever you are, wherever you are, if you need food, we're here for you, and there should be no shame. I want to emphasize this. There's no one's fault that we're dealing with this horrible crisis. Anyone needs food? We're here for you. You don't have to think twice. Of course, it's for free. Just pick up the phone or go online. And if you need information, you can go to nyc.gov/getfood. You can call 311. You can find all the places, all the ways we'll get you food. Please do not hesitate and spread the word to everyone you know.

Now, this is an unprecedented moment. This is something beyond even our imagination in some ways, but we have to fight back. That's what New Yorkers do. We're going to find a way. Yesterday I talked about the amazing work that's being done right here in our own city, to do what our nation's not been able to do, to create our own test kits, to create our own PPE’s, that’s the New York City way. If no one else is finding a way, we'll find a way ourselves. We'll take care of ourselves. We'll support each other. Well, this is the same idea. We are dealing with an unprecedented challenge, in terms of people needing food. So, we're going to create an unprecedented response. Today I'm announcing $170 million initiative to make sure every New Yorker gets what they need, and no New Yorker goes hungry. Now, thank God we have a strong foundation to build on. All those food pantries, and soup kitchens, all the amazing organizations out there that have been doing work all over the city for years and years. Meals on wheels, all the things that we know that are part of the compassionate approach that we take as New Yorkers to those in need. We'll be building on all of that, and we will be adding many new components, because the situation we're in now calls for a whole different strategy and approach, and one that will grow with every passing week.

So, let's talk about the sheer scale. Before this crisis, before we ever heard of coronavirus, there are about 1.2 million New Yorkers who were food insecure, who didn't regularly have the ability to get all the food they needed. And that very, very painfully included about one in every five children in this city. This crisis is now adding to that number of people who are food insecure every day, because literally people are running out of money every single day. So, we expect it to grow. And yet there is some relief coming and we're happy for sure to see the relief that's coming from the stimulus, from the unemployment benefits, this is all very, very important. But we know not everyone's going to get that money right away. We know there's a lot of red tape that some people have to navigate. We know there'll be time lags. We know some people don't qualify, and whether that's fair or not, we know there are lots of people in this city who will never get that kind of support. And I would say it's not fair, but it's the reality. So, we know that the food crisis will grow, and that's why we had to do something different.

So, I'm going talk to you about four things that will be the essence of how we go about this new strategy. And then you'll hear from our food czar who will go over more of the details. So, first, this has to be done on a grand scale, a really massive scale to reach everyone who needs it, and even more people up ahead. Since March 16th, when we really got in the thick of this crisis, there have been 4.5 million meals served to New Yorkers through all of these approaches we're now taking, and that's just the beginning. We're scaling this up very fast. You know, we've talked about the operation through our school sites. We've talked about what our senior centers are doing. So, the Department of Education, Department for the Aging. We’ve talked about the operation that's been set up through Emergency Management, led by our food czar. All of these efforts together during the month of April, will account for 10 million meals being provided to New Yorkers who need them. All for free. Now, I don't like having to tell you that number, because it says how big the problem is, but it also says how big our response is. That's April, we're ready to do even more in May.

So, the second piece of the equation is making sure that as we're providing food, we're also putting people to work, because so many people need a paycheck. So many people want to help. So, three weeks ago we launched emergency deliveries, and this means getting food to people who can't get out. Who literally can't get out physically, maybe they're disabled or seniors who can't get out and get food, and don't have anyone to get it for them. Folks who are scared to go out, because they have one of those preexisting conditions or they're immunocompromised. A lot of our residents in public housing, lot of people who if they don't get a delivery, it's not clear if they're going to get food. What we've done is we've reached out to drivers in the for-hire vehicle industry, so many of whom have seen their livelihoods upended by this crisis. We've now registered 11,000 drivers who are TLC, licensed taxi and limousine commission licensed, and they are all taking on shifts to deliver food directly to people in the greatest need who can't get out of their house, who need that delivery right to their door. These drivers are doing that, helping us feed people, they're being paid by the shift, show the game money back in their pockets to feed their families in turn. This is something that's going to have a huge positive effect on the people doing the work, but even more they're doing something absolutely crucial to help the vulnerable, most vulnerable amongst us.

Third point, we have to make sure knowing that, as I said in April, we think we will have served 10 million meals by the end of April, that's going to go up in May and it's easily going to be somewhere between 10 million and 15 million meals in May at the rate we're going, we have to make sure there's enough food to ensure we can make those deliveries, keep our food supply strong and stable. Even a small disruption in the food supply would have a huge negative effect on New Yorkers we won't let that happen. So, in our $170 million plan is a $50 million investment in an emergency food reserve for New York City this will allow us to purchase and store 18 million shelf stable meals. This means we'll have a failsafe, we'll have a reserve that's just for New York City to protect us no matter what else happens 18 million meals ready at all times. Keeping that in reserve while continuing all our regular programs to feed New Yorkers it's important to have that backstop so we can keep everyone safe.

And then fourth, protecting the people who we depend on for so many other millions of New Yorkers to get their food that's our grocery store workers, our supermarket workers. I want to just say thank you to them first, you know, they are among the groups of unsung heroes in this fight. We talk and we rightfully talk about the heroism of our health care workers, our first responders they've been absolutely amazing battling through this crisis, keeping the health system going, keeping us safe. But let's give a lot of appreciation, a lot of respect to the people who make sure we get fed those grocery store workers, those supermarket workers, they get up every day, they go to work it's a tough job we need them and they keep coming through for us. So, first of all, anytime you go to the supermarket, you go to the grocery please say thank you to them because it's not easy for them or their families, we appreciate them. But also remember this is not what they expected, these are folks just trying to make a living for their families they did not expect to be on the front lines of an international crisis, but they're acting with the same resolve and the same spirit as all our other heroes. Now we have to protect them, so we've been working with the different companies, supermarket companies and the grocery stores to make sure that their workers get the PPEs they need of one kind or another, there's all different kinds of PPEs, different kinds are needed for different situations. We're working to make sure those supplies continue to get to those supermarket workers and grocery workers so they can be safe and confident. And finally want to mention in this category we're giving some new guidance today and it— about when you go to the store, when you go shopping for food what makes sense to do. So, I'm giving the guidance to all supermarkets and groceries require customers, require customers to wear face coverings when they come in. Put up a sign at the entrance around the store making clear that that's the right way to do things and that's a requirement of your particular store that is legal and appropriate, the City will back you up. This will help everyone to remember when they're in that kind of space, it's so important to protect each other, to protect the whole community that face covering is a smart thing to do. Every store has the right to put up that guidance and make it a requirement in terms of entry into the store and anybody who will not, any customer who says, no, I refuse, I should not be allowed in. And again, we will back up those stores; we will help you to enforce the rules. You have a right to have those rules in place, it's the smart thing to do for the health of all New Yorkers, and the City of New York will back you up. We need to keep each other safe, we need to keep these groceries and supermarket workers safe so they can keep serving us, this is the smart thing to do. So, that's the big picture and I think you hear throughout that big picture, our resolute commitment to feed all New Yorkers and to make sure it happens.

I turn to one of our most effective public servants, and, again, she has delivered for New York City as our Sanitation Commissioner throughout all the challenges the City has faced, including the biggest blizzard in the history of New York City on her watch and we came through. And thank you to all our sanitation workers, that was one of their finest hours and right now is one of their finest hours now, keeping the City going, keeping it clean in the midst of this crisis. But her leadership there was outstanding. She did an amazing job addressing the lead issues and helping to create a plan to keep all of our children safe in a way that's unprecedented and that's having a huge impact— time and again, she's answered the call and now she's doing it again as our foods czar. My pleasure to introduce, Commissioner Kathryn Garcia.

Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, Department of Sanitation: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It is my pleasure to serve New Yorkers in this capacity we are facing a difficult but important challenge right now, feeding New Yorkers and also maintaining our supply chain in a rapidly changing environment, and I really want to get right to the details. So, as many of you know, we stood up the grab and go meals at the Department of Education. Over 3 million meals have been served at those schools and they are now serving over 250,000 meals daily, I want to really say thank you for the folks at DOE who have stood this up they've been amazing, but this is serving all New Yorkers, students, families, adults. We are also continuing to do senior meal deliveries over 300,000 meals have been delivered and they are now serving— 250,000 meals daily serving seniors, seniors who were eating at department for the aging senior centers. As the Mayor mentioned, we stood up the get food portal and we are giving emergency food delivery to the most vulnerable New Yorkers and this has been a great partnership with TLC and all of the TLC drivers who have made sure that they are showing up to get those deliveries done. And so, it's boosting earnings, but it is also serving an absolutely critical purpose in terms of making sure that there are meals available for these populations. So, we have delivered in the last three weeks over a million meals to the most vulnerable and we will continue serving 100,000 daily and growing and our primary focus is on seniors, NYCHA, the medically fragile and anyone else who is vulnerable.

As the Mayor mentioned, we are building an emergency food reserve I want to make sure that New Yorkers are clear, our supply chain is stable, I know that many of you have seen items on store shelves, not there. The supply chain is adjusting to what we decided to buy that was very, very different than what we had ever bought before and so it is rapidly adjusting to this new reality. So, we are ramping up the food supply to make sure that we can take care of the most vulnerable. So, we have $50 million invested and we will be purchasing 18 million shelf stable meals, which means that they will last to protect New Yorkers from any temporary disruption.
As I mentioned that we are taking steps to secure the food supply it also is really critical that our central grocery store workers are protected coordinating their non PPE to make sure that they had the protective equipment that they needed, making sure that we were issuing social guidelines and making sure that people are following them. And then today talking about the fact that we really will support grocery stores who require their customers to wear a face. So again, I think that this is another group of unsung heroes I will echo what the mayor said, they have been doing amazing work. We are also focused on the fact that we need to prevent store closures, one of the challenges that this industry is having, as are all of us, is that people have been sick or people have been afraid. And so, we are connecting these grocery stores with our small business services to give them wraparound service and connect those who are newly unemployed with opportunities in this sector.

So, as the Mayor also mentioned, we want to make sure we are supporting our first line of defense, which is the 800 plus food pantries and soup kitchens who have converted to take away. So, we have put $25 million in and this is $25 million that is meant to be more flexible than funding for these establishments has been in the past, this means that they can use it for staffing, they can use it for equipment or they can use it for food. This was a partnership that we did with the City Council. I want to thank the Speaker for the work that he did advocating for this. But, there also are large other parts of the puzzle that we are putting together – the DonateNYC app [inaudible] and large in-kind donations to pantries and now we are seeing about 20,000 pounds move through that portal daily. We have moved city staff to support our pantries who are short on volunteers; many were supported by volunteers who were older and obviously they should isolate and stay at home and we continue to recruit volunteers through city service.

In the next phase of our emergency delivery program, we're going to concentrate on registering entire buildings, senior affordable housing buildings, senior NYCHA buildings, and other nonprofit buildings because we know that that is where the most vulnerable will be. And also making sure that we are using a case work style with other social services to directly enroll New Yorkers because it will give us an opportunity not only to make sure they're getting food, but making sure that we are addressing any other needs that they might have. So for those of you who might know, about 90% of all of New York City's food comes-in by truck. We want to make sure we are supporting the long haul truck drivers across the country who come here and are delivering our food and we have stood- up to rest areas; one in Staten Island and one in Hunt's Point to make sure that they can get the rest they need after their long haul drive.

We need to be partners though, so federal food aid will be critical going forward. Having the amount of benefits that SNAP provides, which was formally the food stamp program, to make sure that we're maximizing that benefit and getting that funding into people's hands. There also are two additional programs that are available; one is called P-SNAP – Pandemic SNAP – and our State application is before the federal government, we look forward to having that approved, which will also put funding into families’ hands. And then, D-SNAP, which is disaster food relief, which would require a federal declaration of disaster, but we know that our congressional delegation has been advocating for that. So, we think that those will be key pieces of the puzzle as we move forward into the summer and the fall.

We have a lot of work to do, but as the Mayor said, we will not let any New Yorkers go hungry. We will not compound the tragedy of the pandemic with the tragedy of hunger.

Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you very, very much, Commissioner. And thank you for all you're doing on your team. This is the plan – just want everyone to see it. They’ll be available online today at nyc.gov, but this plan summarizes the ways we're going to make sure everyone gets the food they need.

Now, this brings us to the bigger picture again, which is if we're going to make sure that we work our way back to something normal, it's going to take a lot of work, but we can do it. New Yorkers have proven what an impact you can make and if we want to get people back to work, if we want to restart people's livelihoods, if we want people to have more and more money so they can afford food again, we have to get this part right, we have to get the social distancing right, we have to get the shelter in place right, we have to keep doing what we're doing. In fact, double down on it, tighten it up every way we can to keep ensuring that we get out of this current phase. Right now, again, we're in this widespread transmission of the coronavirus. None of us wants to stay in this reality; we got to work our way to the next reality – low-level transmission. And what we've said is back to these three key indicators, when we can get the three indicators I'll talk about now to all go down in unison, all in the right direction together for 10 days to 14 days – that’s when we'll be able to talk about some other changes we can make, hopefully a little bit of loosening the restrictions. But, if we can't get them to go down together, it will tell us a lot. It’ll tell us that we have to stay tough and also make sure in some cases that are things we do even better. So, let's keep talking every day about these numbers and what they mean and we'll again always post them publicly so all New Yorkers can follow along together.

So, today, we have a mixed bag. The first day things were moving in the right direction; the second day, not so much. Today, we have a mixed bag and again don't get discouraged because it's going to not be a perfect, clean line the way forward. There'll be good days and bad days, but we got get to the point where we string together a bunch of good days so we can get to the next phase. Here's what we have today; first indicator daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 cases – and again, this is a two-day lag in the data – so on April 12th that number was 326 on April 13th, it went to 370. Unfortunately, that number went up. On the second indicator, daily number of people in ICUs across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19 cases – again, unfortunately this number has gone up from 850 to 868. On the third category, the numbers have gone in the good direction. When it comes to testing positive for COVID-19 – the percentage of people that tested positive – this went down – April 12th, 60 percent; April 13th, 53 percent. So, that's a good sign. The public health lab, the specific tests they do on some of the folks with the toughest conditions, April 12th, 84 percent; went down April 13th to 76 percent. That's going in the right direction. So, mixed bag today, this'll be a day-by-day fight. But the fact that we can show you every day that there continue to be signs of progress - these indicators and others - is a testament to what all of you have done and it's just a reminder; keep doing it. Don't let up on the gas. Hang tough with these standards, with these restrictions, with these approaches, because they're working.

Now, I talked about how New Yorkers, we're all helping ourselves and New Yorkers doing amazing things to create what we need to protect ourselves and I thank everyone who's a part of those efforts. But I also want to always note when we get help from outside and a lot of people care deeply about New York City and are stepping up. I mentioned Apple, I talked to the CEO, Tim Cook again and they've been amazing getting us the iPads we needed for distance learning for our kids, but Tim said they wanted to go farther and they wanted to help New York City directly with PPEs. And so, not only did he say he'd get us what we needed, but he got it to us in 24 hours, which is deeply appreciated; 100,000 N95 masks, 127,000 face shields, that's one of the items we needed the most this week - those face shields. So great effort by everyone at Apple, thank you, Tim Cook, we really, really appreciate this donation to New York City. And I want to thank my predecessor, Michael Bloomberg. We're really appreciative that Bloomberg Philanthropies made a $6 million donation to World Central Kitchen, specifically to provide meals for our extraordinary healthcare workers in our public hospitals who have gone through so much who have borne the brunt; great donation to help make sure that our heroes have the food they need and it also shows, you know, real appreciation and support for them at the same time. So thanks Mike, that that really helps a lot.

I'll wrap up and then of course a few words in Spanish before we take questions from the media. But, when you look at this plan, here's the bottom line – you look at this plan - one, I want all New Yorkers to recognize that Kathryn and her team and all the folks who are doing this work at all the agencies, they are resolute. They are not giving up and they've created a plan to feed people on a huge scale that few cities have ever attempted in history. This is something really powerful and I commend them all, but it comes down to that basic promise; we are going to feed every New Yorker. We're not going to let anyone fall through the cracks. We have to do it; it's the right thing to do and we will do it. Quick few words in Spanish to summarize –

[Mayor de Blasio Speaks in Spanish] 

With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media. Please let me know the name and outlet of each reporter.

Moderator: And just a quick reminder to folks, we have Dr. Barbot and Commissioner Garcia in the Blue Room and Dr. Daskalakis on the phone. And first-up is Mark from CNN, Mark.

Question: Hey everybody, how you doing today?

Mayor: Hey Mark.

Question: So, I had a couple of questions about the, the data from the weekly report. I was hoping you could clear up or just add some more context to a couple of these numbers. The first was the almost 60 percent of the probable deaths that happened in the hospital in the ER. And the other one was any type of the distinction between the home fatalities and the ones that, that were classified under [inaudible]?

Mayor: Thank you. And look, I'll turn to our health experts. Just say this is, you know, you look at these numbers and again, a reminder, it's human beings, it's families, and it's tragic. And we thought it was very important to portray this larger reality as more and more information was coming in. And I just want everyone to remember, it's, it's another one of those sobering moments, understanding the sheer totality of what's been thrown at us and what we're fighting our way through. But, let me turn to Dr. Barbot and Dr. Daskalakis to answer your specific questions.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So I want to begin by echoing the Mayor’s sentiments in terms of really the sheer magnitude of the loss that we're experiencing as a city and the importance that there is in ensuring that we make sure every New Yorker is counted who has been taken by this vicious virus. And so, what you'll see in the data that we have on our website is that the number of individuals who have died because of probable COVID really is in many ways reflective of what we have been directing New Yorkers to do. The vast majority have been diagnosed in hospitals and emergency departments. But we do see a significant number of individuals who are dying outside of hospitals and emergency departments. And so, the way in which these deaths are categorized is by grouping where the location has been determined either by the Office of the Medical Examiner or the funeral director or whoever the person was that registered the death. And so, that's how we have categorized them.

Mayor: Demetre, anything to add or did we cover it? Okay. Guess we covered it.

Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: [Inaudible] covered it.

Mayor: Okay. Thank you.

Moderator: Next is Juliet from 1010 wins. Juliet. Juliet, can you –

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, good to talk to you.

Mayor: Good morning, Juliet.

Question: Hi. So, this is my question. There are clusters and encampments of homeless on the streets. Is this considered a public health issue and should they be removed for health reasons?

Mayor: First of all, Juliet, we do not allow encampments in New York City. I want to be very blunt about this and make sure no one misunderstands. For several decades, somehow encampments of homeless people were tolerated, meaning literally homeless people created like little villages, sometimes it was on railroad tracks or, you know, deep in parks or industrial areas and set up, you know, places with, you know, almost permanent structures and tents. And one thing or another. What I said several years ago – and I brought in the NYPD, Department of Homeless Services, Sanitation Department and we said, we're just not going to allow that anymore. It's inhumane. It's not fair to homeless people. It's not fair to everyday New Yorkers. It's not fair to the quality of life in the city, it’s not healthy, it's not right. And I said, we will not tolerate any encampments. And since then I've asked all of our commissioners on a regular basis, including our police commissioners over the years to guarantee that they did not see any encampments reasserting.

So, sometimes you have a few homeless people gather. And we address that for sure. And sometimes people try and put up, you know, cardboard boxes or things. We address that right away. But when you say the word encampment, it means to me where people have tried to create something kind of ongoing or permanent. That is literally not tolerated, will not be tolerated. If you know of a location, if any New Yorker knows a location, call 3-1-1 and we will send out the NYPD, Homeless Services, Sanitation immediately to take it down. If you're talking about, Juliet, a smaller number of homeless folks who have gathered temporarily, we don't want any gathering, obviously. We want people to observe social distancing. If anyone tries to even begin to stay in the same place on the street, that's not acceptable. It's not healthy or safe. So, we would send out our Homeless Outreach Teams, send out NYPD to address that.

So that would be true even before the coronavirus, but it's even more true if it means anybody gathering in close proximity. That's not healthy or safe. So, please, anyone who sees something like that or any homeless person on the street in need call 3-1-1. We are getting homeless people in, off the street in record numbers and keeping them in. And our outreach workers are doing really amazing work. They're out there through this crisis. And actually thank God they found that very few people on the street, of those several thousand – very, very sad reality of several thousand New Yorkers who are street homeless, permanently homeless – we have not seen much incidents of the coronavirus among them, thank God. But we are trying to get people to come in, in this crisis more than ever to say it's not safe to be on the streets, come in where we can get you health care and protect you. So, that work continues constantly, but we want those reports to 3-1-1 so we can act on them quickly.

Moderator: Gloria from NY1 is up next. Gloria.

Question: I wanted –

Moderator: Gloria –

Question: Yes. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yep.

Question: Okay. I wanted to ask a question again about the numbers that were released yesterday. There's an additional number in the data set that the City released, it's a little over 8,000, and it says that it's the number of people that the City at this time can neither confirm where a victim of COVID or a suspected COVID death. I wonder if any – if either you or any of the other health officials can clarify what that number means, and is the City taking any look at how many people have died that could have been saved but weren't simply because the hospital system has been so overwhelmed for days. So, I'm talking about maybe a person who had a stroke at home and help didn't get there fast enough and they did not have COVID or any of the other conditions that might have put them at risk, and simply because of the delay and the overwhelmed system, passed away as a result. Is the city doing any kind of tracking for that?

Mayor: Okay. Let me give you a couple of responses and then turn to Oxiris and Demetre to add. First, we are trying to get out data constantly and more and clear, and more accurate data, and data that portrays the whole truth. I want the whole truth out. Whatever the facts, wherever the facts take us, I want the whole truth out now. Gloria, that's inherently always second to saving lives right now. And as the indicators we just talked about made clear, we still have a lot of work to do to protect people and save lives right now. So I'm never going to say to our health leadership, hey, you know, focus on the data of what happened before more than focus on how we can save lives right now and what we need to do to stay ahead of this virus and beat it back. That's always going to be the first priority. But I do believe there's more information to get out and will constantly get out.

Absolutely, I believe there are more people who died because of COVID-19 in one way or another because of something that happened to them related to COVID-19. And I think it's important that we just recognize there will be more that comes out and we should assume that not with anything but pain and sorrow, but we should assume that And when that information can be verified, it should be put out. I want to caution though about part of your question because I don't think it necessarily portrays the whole truth. Job-one in this whole crisis was to hold and protect and preserve the hospital system so that we would never have the situation you describe where someone needed care and couldn't get it. That's why we fought so hard to get more ventilators and the PPEs and keep the personnel, and when we lost personnel, get new personnel in. I've asked this of Dr. Mitch Katz, the head of our public hospitals, they've borne the brunt. I keep ensuring that anyone who needed care and was in a real danger got the care they needed. We never had a day where we ran out of ventilators. We never had a day where there wasn't the personnel we needed, even if they were stretched real thin and fighting very hard. So, the thing I warned us about constantly, the people of this city and warned the nation honestly about, was the day when someone came in, needed a ventilator, there was no ventilator or someone came in, they needed a doctor or nurse, there was no doctor or nurse. We did not, thank God, experience that and we're still fighting to make sure we never experience that.

But the point you're raising about EMS, obviously we know our EMTs, our paramedics have gone through such a tough time these last few weeks and they had to prioritize in really tough ways – and thank God we got reinforcements in from around the country, 500 EMTs and paramedics came in before, another hundred are coming – but what EMS tried to do was immediately prioritize the cases where people were in danger, not the ones where people were just asking for information or were, you know, scared and needed to talk to someone. They tried to move those calls off. They tried to focus on people who were in direct danger the most and get the response to them as quickly as possible. And from everything I saw the cases that were really life and death, the EMS, as usual, not only prioritized them but did an extraordinary job saving lives.

I think there's a different issue about cardiac arrest, for example, with a relationship to COVID and what was happening to people's bodies who were dealing with extraordinary physical stress and health challenges. And the doctors can talk about that, but we will certainly keep analyzing exactly what happened with EMS. You know, Gloria, those numbers, thank God, are coming down in terms of the number of calls they are getting, it is reducing and a lot of calls have been moved off that were just people seeking medical advice and support, not needing a paramedic or an EMT to show up. But I want to emphasize how much EMS constantly prioritized the folks whose lives are in immediate danger and rushed help to them. To Dr. Barbot and Dr. Daskalakis, if you could speak to issues like where cardiac arrest may have been in some form or fashion related to the coronavirus that would be helpful to put this in perspective.

Commissioner Barbot: And I want to just build on what you've laid out to really start off by saying that each of these deaths is a tragedy and we all feel it as New Yorkers. And what we have been putting in place as a part of this response is really to maximize the number of people that we save. And the unfortunate reality is that there have been people who have died either directly because of COVID or indirectly because of COVID. And we've talked a little bit about that in the past, but I think seeing it in black and white, so to speak, with regards to what the numbers show, gives us, really, a moment of pause and reflection on what we, as a city, are going. And, you know, I just want to start off by saying that in the Health Department we have started a moment of silence to really acknowledge the New Yorkers that have died because of COVID and to remind ourselves of the mission that we have.

And so, to answer your question more directly, Gloria, I think that the importance of this number in terms of deaths not known to be confirmed or probable COVID is important to take it within the context of the same number of deaths during that period – or excuse me, let me start again. The number of deaths during that same time period in the previous year. And what we find is that there are roughly 3,000 deaths above what would have been anticipated. And I think only time will tell about what that number really means. We're still learning. As we have been saying about the – I was going to use a fancy word – the pathophysiology of the virus, meaning how the virus truly affects the body. And, you know, one of the things that we still have to learn more about is how does this virus affect the heart?

And are there potentially cases where, you know, someone registered a death as a heart attack because the person hadn't yet developed symptoms of COVID-19 and truly should have been categorized as a COVID probable. I don't know that we will ever be able to answer that question fully, but I think it's something that still needs to be looked into further. The other thing that, you know, the Mayor sort of alluded to, which I just want to build on, is that part of what we have learned from previous disasters, be it 9/11, be it Superstorm Sandy, is that the load of stress, prolonged stress on a body has consequences. And so I think that we will then also need to take into consideration how this then plays out with individuals who may or may not have chronic underlying illnesses. So, I think you'll understand that there are still a lot of underlying questions that will need to have more in depth analysis. But that will likely not be fully revealed until all is said and done.

Mayor: Demetre, do you have anything to add?

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: No, Sir. I think Dr. Barbot covered it. I think the important idea, again, these are humans, I think all of us will take that moment of pause to remember that these are lives, but then I think it's important that not only are we showing the visible deaths, but also the ones that would be invisible even at this point in the pandemic. So, as we learn more about the virus, we will understand the impact but really critical to make sure that we're counting all of our New Yorkers.

Mayor: Yeah. And the last thing I would say, and this also reflects on our public hospital system, the emphasis always was that if anyone was showing signs of something that was an immediate danger, of course they were going to be admitted. And what public hospitals did, and I think they did it very well, was they made sure if someone had lesser symptoms, they made sure to guide them and support them. But anyone who they saw signs of danger, they brought in. And even when the going was toughest at places like Elmhurst Hospital, Lincoln Hospital, Bellevue, they would bring in anybody who was in danger and kept fighting. And that I think has been consistent throughout this crisis.

Moderator: Julia from the Post is up next. Julia.

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Hey Julia, how are you doing?

Question: Good. I have just a two-part question on testing maybe one for the doctors and one for you. The first part is we saw with the data you released yesterday that of the probable deaths 60 percent of them died in a hospital or ER room. And I'm just wondering what that says about, you know, our lack of testing given that the city had prioritized testing for people in hospitals and yet that big percentage of people still weren't getting tested in hospitals. And then just lastly on your announcement yesterday on the 50,000 homegrown coronavirus tests, James Patchett said that you're just in active conversations, but no one's actually signed on yet. So, was that announcement premature?

Mayor: No, it is a wartime environment. We are absolutely certain – we wouldn't have made the announcement if we weren't certain we could make that happen. We're talking to enough players who have shown enough willingness to do it and we're just assembling the final group that will actually proceed together. But we talked about this in detail. A lot of capacity has been brought to bear. This is going to happen. Remember we were in a similar situation in terms of the face shields, in terms of the surgical gowns just a few days before I went to the factory that produces the first one that was producing the face shields and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was just an idea and they had to blitz to bring everyone together to make it work. The same with the surgical gowns, which involved actually a pretty elaborate production process.

It went from idea to execution in a number of days. Because of 3D printing, we know that things are possible now that would have taken, you know, immense effort and time in the past can now be programmed into a 3D printer and acted on very, very quickly. And there's a lot of 3D printing capacity in New York City. There's actually something that the Economic Development Corporation has been working on for years now, is expanding that piece of our economy. So there's a lot of 3D printing capacity in New York City. So, we said beginning of May and we mean beginning of May. On the previous question, I'll turn to the doctors.

Commissioner Barbot: One thing to clarify – that 60 percent refers to the totality of those who were probable COVID related deaths. But when you look at it from the perspective of individuals overall who died in hospitals, you'll see that the vast majority were confirmed. So I want to just clarify that interpretation of the statistics and again, of the people who died in the hospital related to either confirmed or probable COVID, the vast majority had tests done. That being said, you know, I think how did tease apart what happened with the probables is something that will take us a fair amount of time to tease out if we're ever really able to do that because what we won't have is the breakdown of, you know, severity of underlying chronic illness, et cetera, et cetera. So, there's a lot of variables there that are, I think, to be determined. But the important thing here to note is to not misinterpret the way in which the table is laid out and to really focus on the fact that the vast majority of folks who died in hospitals did have tests.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Moderator: Marcia from CBS – oh, sorry.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Sorry. Just one thing to add if that's okay.

Mayor: Yes, please.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: Mr. Mayor, so I would also add that the table also shows really what trends were and availability were of testing throughout the entire pandemic. And I think we'll all remember that early on in the pandemic because of various issues with testing kits that we received from the CDC, capacity lagged a bit behind. And so, another possible explanation for more probable cases that weren't diagnosed is also the limits to testing that we had early on. Which had at this point at least for inpatients, have been resolved. So, our volume of testing on the inpatient side is now great as does the capacity. So, it really represents also a snapshot of what happened with our ability to test.

Mayor: Thank you very much Demetre.

Moderator: Next up is Marcia from CBS New York. Marcia?

Question: Good morning Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Hey Marcia. How you doing?

Question: I'm good. I have a two-part question having to do with your food announcement today. The first is this, since you've asked that all people going into supermarkets wear masks, will you be asking the NYPD to enforce it? And my second question is, given the fact that you've pointed out that the best way for people not to need the food is to have jobs, what steps are you taking to help create jobs so that people won't need the food that you're offering?

Mayor: Yes. Excellent questions. Marcia on the first one. So, face coverings, I want to keep using this phrase appropriately. You know, the PPEs, the personal protective equipment, the highest grade of those like the N95s. I mean, obviously those are meant for health care workers dealing on the front line with COVID-19 and others who have, you know, real vulnerabilities. So, you know, when we talk about masks, we're thinking about things like N95s and surgical masks. When we talk about face coverings, we're talking about things like bandanas, scarves or the kind of masks you can buy, you know, in any hardware store for example. So those face coverings I want to see anyone who goes into a supermarket or a grocery store wear one of those. By the way, huge, huge percentage of New Yorkers are doing it already based on the guidance we gave them previously. But I want to see people, if you go into a place as important and as sensitive as a grocery store or supermarket, just put on a face covering. Protect the workers there who are doing such important work, protect each other. Now, what I'm saying is every store just put up the sign saying you're required to wear a face covering. One of my colleagues at City Hall made the point, for all our lives, you go into a diner or something like that, you see a sign, you know, no shirt, no shoes, no service. It's the same exact concept. Put up a sign that says, unless you're wearing a face covering, you can't come in. Then the store has every right to enforce that rule for its own premises. People don't, aren't willing should be told, hey, you have a face covering? Can you get a face covering? Or if they have one that can offer them, great. You can shop if you have a face covering. If you don't have a face covering, you have to go back out until you get one. If there’s any problem with that, of course the NYPD will help. And all the store owner has to do is call 3-1-1 to get that help. Or if they have a connection to their local precinct or they're a neighborhood coordinating officer under neighborhood policing, they can reach out to them directly. But we have to be clear, this is another one of the things we have to do to protect each other. And anytime the NYPD or any of our agencies are needed to help enforce, there'll be there. And NYPD is as we know, is starting to get back more and more of its officers coming off of convalescence from COVID-19. So, their strength is gathering, we can do more and more enforcement.

But that segues perfectly into the other part of your question about restarting the economy. I want to restart the economy desperately. I want to make sure that people get back to their jobs and get back to livelihood. But the best way to do it is to be careful. So, Marcia, in this case, I'm going to call myself a conservative. You know, I want to make sure we do this right. The worst possible scenario would be to take the foot off the gas, think we're out of the woods, let people come back too quickly and have the disease boomerang back on us. And that has happened in some parts of the world. Then we're going to have to step back all over again and deal with more and more people getting sick and more, more people dying and more and more restrictions. And the economy won't be able to start. If you want to restart the economy, get it right, actually make sure that we've contained this thing. So that's going to take being slow and purposeful, not too slow, but you know, cautious until we get it right. That will take some time, not weeks, but months to really get to the next phases. But that way when we actually start to restart in earnest, full scale, we'll be able to hold it and keep it and people's livelihoods will come back and stay back. That's what I want to achieve.

Moderator: Alex from Chalkbeat is up next. Alex?

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Hey, Alex how are you doing?

Question: Good. I'm going to keep in the tradition of two-part questions. This one is on school spending. The first part is in your proposed budget you had suggested cuts to Single Shepherd and College Access For All. And I'm wondering if that means that those programs are on pause right now? Or whether there will be personnel cuts to those programs? And my second question is you're also proposing about a hundred million dollar cut in Fair Student Funding. And I'm just wondering if you have any sense of how those cuts will be distributed? Obviously, some schools receive more than 100 percent of their Fair Student Funding. Others receive far less than that. So I'm just wondering if you have a sense of how those cuts would be distributed?

Mayor: Yeah. And we'll get you more details when we go over the executive budget. But to your second question, yeah. The idea is to say, look, everyone is having to sacrifice now. Everyone's having to give something to get us through this crisis. So, the schools that have done very well on funding, I mean, every dollar that's been worthy. Every dollar we put into education is a good thing. And some schools have gotten more than others. And I don't begrudge a school that is doing great work at educating kids and has some more resources to do it. I want to see maximum equality obviously. And we keep raising that floor as you know, on Fair Student Funding. And we look to the day where every school is at 100 percent. But for schools that have had more than a 100 percent in a time of sacrifice, we're going to ask them to help and sacrifice and cut back some so that we can, you know, get this together.

On the Single Shepherd and the College Access, which are both really good elements of Equity and Excellence. They both have been areas where we fought inequality. We helped kids get support where they didn't have before. We helped families to navigate through a lot of challenges and particularly to help kids get to college who often didn't have a lot of exposure and support to what it would mean to get to college. And it's really been very, very productive. But those are on pause because of the kinds of choices we have to make. Now we got to stay on the basics. Right now, the whole message you'll hear in the budget presentation is sticking to the basics, protecting people's health and safety, making sure there's food, you know, food on their table, a roof over their head. And with education it will be about the basics, making sure we can be safe, healthy in our restart of school, making sure we're providing the most important elements of education to our kids. We're going to have a lot of mental health challenges as the Chancellor has indicated that we're going to have to address and we are going to have to provide the resources to address. So initiatives like Single Shepherd, College Access, they will be paused. But the personnel will certainly be needed for other important work. So we'll just, and we'll keep, you know, as we go along, evaluating what we can do and keep updating our budget accordingly.

Moderator: Melissa from NBC New York is up next. Melissa?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Good to see you.

Mayor: Hey Melissa. How are you doing?

Question: Okay, thank you. My question was about the fact that the deaths classified by the Health Department as non-COVID were up by 3,000 for that same time period. And it was largely asked by Gloria and answered, but what do you say to people, Mr. Mayor, who are concerned about an undercount? And who wonder why that comparative spike of 3,000 cases, it's not a small number, was not specifically pointed out in yesterday's announcement? And do you think it's likely that the number of deaths caused either directly or indirectly by COVID could be closer to 13,000?

Mayor: Yeah, I think the, to your question again, understanding Melissa, this is about human beings and you know, we want to be respectful of the families, not say more than we are pretty sure about. Remember in the case of those, a very, very sad reality of the probable deaths that in many, many cases, health care providers suspected it was COVID-19, but there was not the time or the reality, you know, the condition to get a test done before the person passed away. Some people passed away very quickly, for example. It's very, very sad. But you know, there was already some indication it might be COVID-19. In the case of other deaths of people we've lost. I again, I believe that that gap you're talking about is made up overwhelmingly of folks who, if it wasn't that they had COVID-19, you know, that had manifested, it still was some part of the equation. It affected the fact that there were so many deaths. It seems to me like that's the obvious truth. As there's time to make sense of the details and put more out, the Health Department will certainly do that, but there's also some of the information that may not be reachable anymore because things happened weeks ago and we've been in crisis. But I think the bottom-line answer is clearly so many people have passed away. It was bigger than we even fully understood or could document. And I think it'll be bigger still. We have to be honest about that. We have to be open about that because it tells us just how big a crisis we're in. But much more importantly, we have to move forward. We have to keep saving lives and constantly figure out what more we can do and where we can get the help we need to keep doing that because we're going to be at this for a long time. So that's how I see it. Anything you want to add Doctor?

Commissioner Barbot: No, sir.

Moderator: Henry from Bloomberg is up next. Henry?

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. How are you doing?

Mayor: Hey Henry, how are you doing?

Question: I'm okay. How are you dealing with the loss of baseball? It's not my question.

Mayor: I think a lot of us, I know you're – I'll wait for your full question, but I have to comment. A lot of us are like pulling our hair out over the loss of baseball. It's a very, very strange, I associate spring with baseball. So, it feels really, really strange. But I'm also in the camp that we have to do our recovery careful, you know, really careful way. And so as much as I want to see a baseball game deeply, I don't want to see a baseball game until everybody's safe. That's the way I think about it. But go ahead. What's your question?

Question: Well, I just, I also want to just tell you that as much as we give you a lot of tough questions and give you a hard time and criticize you, I think most New Yorkers appreciate the hard work you're doing and understand how difficult this is.

Mayor: Thank you.

Question: The IBO today came out with a report that said almost $10 billion in revenue will be lost through Fiscal Year 2021 and they're forecasting as many as 475,000 jobs lost, including a gigantic number just in this quarter. Your budget modification included something like $1.3 billion in cuts. The IBO, the CBC and others say that that's way too low. How are you going to fill this gap?

Mayor: Okay, Henry. First of all, thank you for what you said. I appreciate it personally, but I also want to say thank you on behalf of my whole team because I hope New Yorkers have a some sense and I hope when it's all over, they'll be able to look back and understand that you know, so many people at City Hall, at Emergency Management and all our agencies, certainly the Health Department, H + H, they have just been working nonstop since day one of this crisis. And everyone understood that we were saying goodbye to anything that was normal and just working every single day, nonstop to try and save lives. And they, you know, the team has done a really, really outstanding job. So, I appreciate what you said and I receive it as appreciation for this whole team.

The IBO report I think is pointing in the right direction for sure. We'll talk more in the budget presentation, but the bottom line is, you know, and I said it earlier, absolutely we're talking about a revenue loss, 100 percent in the category between $5 billion and $10 billion. And again, I'll provide more detailed information very shortly. But even when we try and peg that number now, we're going to lose much more after that. Remember the revenue losses are deepening. Remember that we have taken a big hit from the State government. We got a $800 million cut from the State government and their budget. This is going to get tougher. And I also agree with them, you know, I've been saying about a half million people I think are unemployed or will be. So I agree with the IBO. We're very similar in our count.

But to the question of how much we're cutting and when. Job one is to protect people. Henry. I got to come back to the basics here. This budget will be about keeping people healthy, protecting their health, protecting their safety. Making sure there's a roof over their head and making sure people have food. That's how we're going to go about this. And whatever it takes, we are going to constantly focus on those goals. It was tough to make the cuts that we've already announced. As we need to make cuts we will do all we can. But there's a lot of things we just can't cut. So we have to keep fighting for the support we deserve from Washington. We have to keep fighting for a stimulus bill that will actually address the needs of the places that have been hardest hit. I mean, the billions and billions of dollars of revenue we've lost, that isn't the fault of everyday New Yorkers. And New Yorkers deserve the support of our federal government in the time of crisis. Henry you and I remember the famous headline, you know, back during the fiscal crisis, Ford to the City, drop dead. Well, you know, it's Donald Trump's time to decide what kind of headline he wants. The stimulus bill is being discussed right now. And we all know the Senate could act very quickly and we need to see the President's leadership. I criticized them in the past when I thought he was letting his hometown down. There's been some progress in recent weeks in terms of getting us things like ventilators and PPEs. And I've been thankful when we get those things. Well now it's another one of those litmus test moments. Is the President of the United States going to step up and tell the republican Senate that they have to pass a stimulus that will make New York City whole, that will make New York State whole. That will make all the other cities and states that have lost vast amounts of revenue whole. It's up to him now to provide some leadership. So again, is he going to be there for his hometown or not? But he's going to be there for everyone else or not? So we cannot, there's no way to balance this budget with cuts alone. It's impossible. Unless, we're talking about not providing basic services to New Yorkers. And if we're not providing basic services, then you can kiss your recovery goodbye. If this city – this is one of the most important cities on Earth. We are the economic leader of the United States of America. We are the financial capital. We're one of the economic engines of this nation. If we can't provide basic services to our people, if this city can't function, there will not be a recovery for everyone else. So we need that stimulus and we need it quickly so that we can remain whole and we can actually help lead the recovery. And that's what I'm going to fight for in Washington for sure. But the President has to lead.

Moderator: Brigid from WNYC is up next. Brigid?

Question: Good morning Mr. Mayor. And I wanted to follow up on your food announcement with questions to you and Commissioner Garcia. I'm wondering particularly around the home deliveries, can you talk about any of the challenges you've faced up to this point? And is the City able to check in with clients or just is it about relying on the information delivery vendors provide? And then what should people do, particularly seniors, if they don't feel like they're getting what they need?

Mayor: Very good question. I'll start and pass to the Commissioner. So this is being attempted on a scale that we'd never seen here in this city before. We have to make it work. Calling 3-1-1 is the way for people who want to sign up, who can't get out and get their own food, they should call 3-1-1. We're trying to not make it a bureaucratic process. We're trying not to make it complicated. We're trying to make it fast. Someone needs food, we have to get to them fast and then we have to keep bringing it to them until the crisis is over and they have a way to get food that's secure. So, you know, we expect the numbers to grow. We're ready for the numbers to grow. But if anyone signs up and then doesn't get it, they also have to call right back to 3-1-1 right away so we can make sure that every case is being followed up on. Commissioner Garcia is very rigorous, and this is something we've talked about. We cannot have – you know, of all the things in the world that cannot miss, this can't miss. So, anyone who needs to sign up, call 3-1-1, will follow through. Anyone who's not getting it, call 3-1-1, we need to see that addressed instantly by all the agencies working with the Commissioner. And I have faith that she will make that happen. Commissioner.

Commissioner Garcia: Thank you Mr. Mayor. And particularly, we know our seniors are the most vulnerable and I want to stress that if today you need food that you should call 3-1-1or go to nyc.gov/getfood. As we move forward, we will continue to strengthen all of our systems to support that delivery mechanism both through the Department of the Aging and through the Getfood portal and make that more seamless for everyone involved and ensure that we are getting the senior centers back in the mix between the seniors that they know so well and the food that they know needs to get delivered. And so we have been standing things up very quickly. But I see that we are going to be able to make those matches and have that information available to us to ensure that all of the deliveries are getting made. And if they're not getting made that we have a backstop to get them done.

Mayor: Yeah. And Bridget, I want to also note, I mean again, amidst all these challenges, the fact that we have 11,000 TLC-licensed drivers signed up to do whatever shifts we need – so, this is really, really important – not only giving them and their families a break by giving them some additional income, but that's an army. If the Commissioner needs more drivers, she can get them anytime she needs. So, we can just add shifts, add drivers. So if demand increases, we're going to be ready. Commissioner knows that she's been given a green light to make sure that the food is purchased to keep all these initiatives going. The food pantries and the soup kitchens, as we discussed, everything the Department for the Aging is doing, everything DOE is doing, all that is being constantly funded. That's all part of that $170 million plan and everything for the home deliveries. The answer is yes, whenever the Commissioner needs something. And then additionally to have that huge reserve – 18 million meal reserve – unprecedented in the history of this city, so that she'll always know there's something there no matter what else happens in the world. So this is aggressive. But in terms of your question about making sure people get it when they need it, you know, anyone who has a problem they call 3-1-1, it’s as simple as the team at Emergency Management just finding another driver and getting them to where the food is and gain that delivery made.

Moderator: [Inaudible] –

Commissioner Garcia: [Inaudible] scale we started a little bit over three weeks ago. We had distribution sites in each of the boroughs. We now have three in the Bronx and we are adding two in Manhattan. So, we are making sure that we can expand our capacity to move the meals to the people.

Moderator: Yoav have from The City is up next. Yoav –

Question: Mr. Mayor. I'm wondering about the city's assessment of its needs. The 15,000 ventilators, the 45,000 personnel, and the upwards of 85,000 beds. Have you revised those projections at all in the face of the most recent data? And one of the reasons I ask is there was a report today of medical workers coming to the city on contract who are being told kind of abruptly their services are no longer needed. And the other related issue is you mentioned last week the possibility of EDC working with local companies to build the ventilators locally. But we haven't heard anything further on that. Is that still – I guess what's the status of that? Are you still looking to do that and is there still a need?

Mayor: Yeah, great question. Yoav, look, your question kind of gets to the heart of the matter of where we stand in this crisis and really bluntly, how this crisis just doesn't go in a straight line. And this is one of the toughest things for all of us to accept, but it's the truth. We talked about the three phases last week. We're still obviously in widespread transmission. I mean, look at the data today, our three indicators. Clearly we're still in the throes of this crisis and I said many, many times, April was going to be tough, you know, be ready for May to be tough too. We just have to keep understanding that even if we see some improvement, even we see some positive signs, we're far from out of the woods. You know what we're talking about, just with our three indicators over the last three days that we've been talking about them, haven't been stable. So, no one should think, you know, that we've got this perfect trend in the right direction. We don't, we just don't, which means to your bigger question about all these different elements of our response, the answer is everything is being kept ready for the danger that we could see a resurgence. We do not know where this disease is going. It is the great unknown, Yoav, this is what we've seen all over the world. There were places that thought they had it under control and then suddenly it was coming back. There were places that prematurely started to relax restrictions. It started coming back. We don't know – this is a disease that's brand new, did not exist in human beings six months ago, to the best of our understanding of the medical history and we don't know what pattern it will follow.

We'd still don't fully know. Is it truly seasonal? Can you get it again if you've had it? There's so many open questions we don't have final answers to. So, we got to be ready for resurgence. We got to be ready for an uptick. So, to break the pieces apart that you talked about, first of all, any health care worker, we need them. So, anyone who's turning away health care workers, I've not heard that at all. I've been on daily calls about personnel. There's unquestionably a need for personnel. The personnel we need the most are those who can go to the front line, to emergency departments and ICUs. But we need other types of personnel as well. So, if you would please share with our team here at City Hall, if you've heard that kind of report, we need to track that down and address that. Because I have literally not in any meeting, any place heard of a health care worker being turned away. We still need health care workers for – and remember not just for front line, but we're trying to expand testing. You need health care workers to do testing. And the big question has been, would there be enough if there was such a demand in the hospitals, you know, both the traditional hospitals and the alternative hospitals. So no, no, no, no. We need to health care workers. If they're available and somehow not being used, we got to fix that immediately.

The ventilators – EDC has been progressing with that effort. It's a tough one because creating a ventilator is a very, very complicated enterprise. What I've said to them is keep pressing, keep pursuing it because, again, today things have been better. We don't know where the future's going. We want to make sure that God forbid we were in a tough situation going forward, we had as much of our own supply as possible. So that effort is ongoing and as it progresses, we're going to have more to say on it.

On the beds, the personnel, the PPEs – here's the bottom line. We've seen improvement on beds for sure, and we have slowed down some of the schedule for opening new facilities, but we have a strong reserve structure because we know we may need those facilities, God forbid if there's a resurgence of the disease, but also we know we could turn them into quarantine and isolation locations as part of that movement into low level transmission and the strategies we would need for that. In terms of personnel, as I said that big number we were going for, right now we don't need all of that as scheduled because we saw some slowing. And remember our fear had been after April 5th – Sunday, April 5th – there was going to a huge intense upsurge. We didn't see that, thank God, but we still have to be ready for up surges. So, we don't need all those personnel right here this minute. But we need a plan that we could activate as many as that if things got bad.

In terms of the ventilators, the supplies holding, the last I checked, we were between 4,500 and 5,000 people intubated and we had more ventilators than that and we had some buffer. That's holding. But remember, even though the number of people who needed a ventilator each day, the increase was less than we expected, thank God, there still is an increase each day citywide. So that does not mean we're out of the woods on that issue. And the same with the PPEs. There've been some we've been able to get more of, some we've had big problems with like face shields and surgical gowns. We're going to solve some of that with our own production. But when you talk about PPEs, I can tell you, you know, we are making it through this week. We're looking a little better for next week than I thought a few days ago, but we're still not 100 percent secure for next week. That's how tight it remains. So, we're going to be at this for a while trying to perfect these supplies, really get them to be ample, really make sure we have enough for any scenario. And we have to watch carefully to make sure this thing doesn't reassert and until we're sure we're out of those woods, all of that fallback capacity is going to be kept available because we might need it.

Moderator: Last two, Erin from Politico. Erin –

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I want to ask another question about the probable deaths. So, these 60 percent that took place in hospitals, that's over 2,000 people, can you clarify if you know, are these people who died while they were waiting for care before they got, you know, in the emergency room, before they were able to get care? Or are we talking about people who are admitted to the hospital but still are not actually getting a test because of the lack of testing?

Mayor: I'm going to start with just a very simple point again reconstructing in the midst of a crisis is always kind of hard. But remember, I have had these conversations with Dr. Katz about what Elmhurst experienced and other places. We had people who came in – and this is not unheard of, obviously, sadly with emergency rooms, but it happened in really substantial numbers in this case. People came in, you know, right on the verge of death – people came in and you know, were lost in minutes or hours after coming in. There's all sorts of – that's just one of many realities to recognize. It was this – such an intense upsurge over those weeks and everyone's situation was different. So, just to give you some perspective, but I'll let the doctors go into detail.

Commissioner Barbot: So, to build on what the Mayor just mentioned, I think one of the things that we need to keep in mind is that these data represent a quantitative picture of a snapshot in time. They don't really give us the qualitative texture of the stories behind them. And so I think that with time we will be able to tease apart the type of question that you’re asking. So, for right now, all that, you know, we can say is that these were individuals who were seen in the hospital or the emergency room and died because of probable COVID-19.

Moderator: Last call is Anna from the Daily News. Anna –

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I was wondering, you know, given that so many people are losing their jobs and therefore might be losing health care, is there any plan to allow for online marriage licenses? Because you know, when people get married, they can share health insurance. And you know, I've actually got a couple of questions from New Yorkers about this. Is that something that you might consider? I know that, you know, you'd have to create some sort of system for that, but it might increase access to health care.

Mayor: That's a real interesting question, Anna. The – one, I would certainly consider it. Now, I don't know enough about how you do it in this atmosphere and do all the things you need to do to properly ensure that a marriage certificate is done the right way. But I think it's something we should look at, for sure. I want to emphasize though that people do not have to only think – I mean obviously there's lots of ways to get health care if they need it and we don't want people to feel like, oh my God, unless I'm married, I can't get on someone's plan, I have no options. The whole idea when we did the plan a year-and-a-half ago to guarantee health care for New Yorkers is anyone who is eligible for insurance if they can't find on the exchange a plan that works for them, what we're doing with the city's public option, with MetroPlus, is to make sure that plans are very, very affordable and very easy to use and easy to sign up for. So, that's something that people can tap into now. For folks who are not eligible for insurance, there's – for a lot of people, we've expanded NYC Care. So that's building out. And that means even if you're an undocumented person, you can get a health care card, you can get a primary care doctor assigned to through the Health + Hospitals hospitals and clinics.

Clearly in this atmosphere crisis it's a different reality. But that underlying point that anyone who needs health care, we will provide it. If they cannot pay, we'll provide it. If they can get – if they need health care and we can get it and we can get them on an insurance plan as they come in for health care, we'll do that. H + H is now doing all the time. Someone comes in the door, they need help, they're giving them help and then they're saying, hey, I noticed you don't have insurance, let's sign you up right now. So, we'll keep getting more and more insurance to everyone who does qualify. Anyone who doesn't qualify for insurance still is going to get health care no matter what. So, I just want to give people that reassurance and anyone who's not sure, you can call 3-1-1 right now. Anyone who needs health insurance and is eligible, could call 3-1-1 and we are continuing to sign people up for health insurance through this crisis. They could be getting it right now, even if they're not getting married. Anyone who doesn't qualify, could be getting help right now, health care they need right now, again, even if they're not married.

But I think your question's a good one. If we could allow people to get married through some creative online approach, maybe verified by, you know, people calling behind it and talking it through with a couple, maybe there's a way to do that. If we can find a way, I certainly would like to see that. I don't want to see people's lives disrupted any more than they need to be. So, we'll look at that and come back with an answer in the next few days and I appreciate that question.

Everybody, I'll just finish with this. You know, in these extraordinarily challenging times I just keep emphasizing how New Yorkers are rising to the occasion. Everyday New Yorkers, of course, social distancing, shelter in place, finding a way to make it happen, but also look at what's happened in just the last 48 hours. Here are a bunch of New York City companies, research labs, universities led by our City government and our Economic Development Corporation coming together to create test kits here in New York City. You know, doing something that a lot of people thought was impossible, but doing it with that kind of that creativity, that entrepreneurship, that energy that New York City is famous for. People just making it happen.

And then the same with our food plan that we're talking about today. This plan, it wasn't, you know, something that was easy and just obvious to do. People had to work hard in our team, working with all our partners at the community level to say, what do you do in a crisis of this magnitude? How do you create something new? And think about the ingenuity of saying, well, wait a minute, let's take all those TLC drivers, let’s take all those for-hire drivers that are out of work, they're going to become the new heroes, getting food to a senior citizen or disabled person who has nowhere else to turn.

I mean, that's a beautiful ingenuity, putting these different pieces together to make sure New Yorkers are safe. Again, we've never had a food reserve in our history. We're now going to have, you know, $50 million spent to get us 18 million meals there in the reserve no matter what happens to our city to protect our people. These are the kinds of things that are being created. So it's a very tough, painful moment, but there's also a lot of heroism, a lot of creativity, a lot of fight back. And I want to just thank everyone who is a part of all of these efforts and every one of you for everything that you're doing to get us through this. And we will get through this.

Thank you very much, everyone.

2020-04-16 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. The crisis we're going through, it's been real tough on all of us. Some families have suffered so much, in particular. The challenge has been so great and on top of it, there's been so much confusion, because no one, no one anywhere, still fully understands this disease that’s afflicted us. So, we're all trying to make sense of that and we're all looking for anything that's clear and concrete in the midst of this fight, in the midst of this painful crisis. So, I want to offer something today that's just crystal clear, and this is about how your city will approach this crisis. How we will approach making sure that we do the things that matter most for New Yorkers. And it's often said that a budget is a statement of values. So, I'll be very, very clear about the values that I'm bringing to this process. This entire administration is bringing to this process, and it really comes down to four things. There are four things that we will focus on. Four things that I care about profoundly as we fight this battle. Four things that we will prioritize in the way we spend our resources.

First of all, keeping New Yorkers, healthy. Number-one job, keeping New Yorkers healthy. Second, keeping you safe. Third, making sure there's food on your table. Fourth, keeping a roof over your head. These are the basics. These are just fundamental basics. And look, even just weeks ago, we would've been trying to talk about a lot of other things, we’d been thinking about a lot of other things. Our lives have changed just so profoundly in very, very little time. But these four things are what people are overwhelmingly focused on, rightfully so. And your government needs to be focused on these four things too. So, things that might've been a priority, you know, two months ago, three months ago, can't be a priority right now. Things that we would love to focus on in peace time, we don't get to focused on in wartime. And this in effect is wartime. But what I can tell you is, these four things, we will spare no expense. I'll spare no effort. Whatever it takes to keep New Yorkers healthy, we'll do it. To keep you safe, we'll do it. To make sure you have enough food to eat. To make sure you have a roof over your head. Whatever it takes, we will protect you. And that's going to be clear in this presentation I make today. And everything we do thereafter when it comes to the city budget, which will be finalized in June. Whatever we do is going to follow these four priorities.

Now, let's be clear, because we're going to talk today about what we need our federal government to do for us, to help us make sure we can protect all New Yorkers. If the federal government fails us in our hour of need, then these four things that we must do get harder and harder to do. If the federal government fails us, then I want to be really clear, the notion of this city recovering, it doesn't work if we can't do the basics. Everyone wants a restart. Everyone wants our economy to recover. I know everyone in Washington feels that too, but it has to be a really clear understanding. If we can't provide the basics for our people, then you can kiss your recovery goodbye. It's as blunt as that. The only way you have recovery, is if places like New York City in particular, the great economic leader and engine of this nation, if we're strong, our nation can be strong. If we're not strong, if our people are not safe, then this nation can't recover. And that's true for cities and states all over the country. So, as this debate starts raging in Washington D.C., I would ask the President, and Leader McConnell, in particular, in the Senate to remember the first thing you should be thinking about is the human cost. The moral question, what should we be doing for our people? What should we be doing for our fellow Americans who are New Yorkers and Americans everywhere to protect their health, their safety, the ability to put food on the table, and a roof over their head? That should be the moral question. That should be the straightforward question. But if they need somehow a pragmatic motivation, if they need a motivation that's about the economy or the restart, then I offer this. If you don't do those basics right, you won't get your restart, so why don't we do it now? Why don't we help people right now? Why don't we make sure that these basics are there for every New Yorker, every American, so we can move forward together?

When you think about what we've had to do over the last weeks, and it feels like it's been months or years, but it's really only been weeks. We had to shut down our retail stores. We had to shut down bars and restaurants. We had to change our life fundamentally in a city that's so famous for all that, all go on, all altered profoundly. We had to close our schools, that painful choice, which has meant such challenge for our families, for our children. And we had to go to shelter in place and social distancing. A way that would've been unimaginable just weeks ago. We made these decisions. I made them, New Yorkers made them too by taking these new rules and living by them, and again, you've been absolutely outstanding in your adherence to these new standards. We made these decisions. They were the right decisions. It was all about keeping people healthy and safe. But it was impossible to ignore, at the time those decisions were being considered, it was impossible to ignore all the other impact it would have on people's lives. The fact that these decisions would mean a lot of people would lose their livelihood, and we didn't know for how long. The fact that our economy would be set back profoundly, that would mean we would have a lot less to work with. We would have a lot less revenue as well to serve our people with. But again, we put the priority on your health and your safety. And now as we're feeling the effects of this crisis, those decisions we had to make, but it all comes back to the sheer ferociousness of this disease, the worst health care crisis in a century. Now, we have to do everything we possibly can to make sure that people are safe, and to protect them in all the ways I've outlined, and that's what this budget is all about.

Now, over the last six years, we talked frequently about preparing for a rainy day. We got much more than a rainy day. We got a pandemic, we got something unimaginable. I've been in many meetings where there was discussion of preparing for a recession. There was discussion of preparing for hurricanes and blizzards, all sorts of challenges. No one foresaw a pandemic of the extent of this. Something we haven't seen in a century on this earth. But getting ready for a rainy day still helped us, because we had created profound reserves, and we'll talk about that. We've had right before this horrible disease struck us, the highest fiscal reserves in the history of New York City, and thank God we did. And that work happened over the last six years, and with the great partnership of the city council that was very devoted to that process of ensuring we had ever-growing reserves. The extent of the problem, however, so unprecedented, is such that it immediately makes clear getting out of this problem will take solutions unlike any we've seen before. They must come from Washington. This is just the honest truth. We will do our share as we are going to see today, over $2 billion in very tough budget cuts, very unfortunate budget cuts, but they had to be done. We're taking the actions that we can take, but the only force that can ensure that we get through this the right way, is the federal government. They have the ability to provide the resources in a way that no one else, no organization, nothing else on earth can help us the way the federal government can, and now it's their hour of decision.

We had those great reserves, and you'll see today, they have been deeply affected by this crisis. We have been making cuts, and those cuts are painful, but they pale in comparison to the challenges ahead, and this is not a solution going forward to cut your way out of this crisis. If you cut your way out of this crisis, it comes at a huge cost in terms of our ability to provide for those four basic things all New Yorkers need. Let's be very clear. If we don't have the resources to ensure people's health and safety, their housing, their food, this becomes a very different city. We have to make sure those basics are there for people. So, where we can cut, we will. But when it comes to protecting New Yorkers, we will not cut that.

Now, the backdrop here is painful the loss of the revenue we need to protect our people. Sales taxes are way down because people aren't going out, they're not buying things, income tax, obviously way down, people have lost jobs, lost income. We believe based on the kind of careful forecasting that our Office of Management and Budget does every year that right now this is a horrible figure and— I'm very sorry I have to tell you this, but over this current fiscal year and next, we will lose $7.4 billion in tax revenue. That's today's estimate. We don't know what the future brings, but that's what we know right now and that's a horrifying figure. And on top of that, we have a lot of new things that we have to do and costs we have to incur to protect people. There are huge new costs in terms of our hospital system, medical personnel, supplies to save lives this all must be a priority and we're spending whatever it takes to make sure people are protected. Food, we talked about this yesterday, $170 million in new spending to make sure that New Yorkers have enough to eat because we now have to ask that question. How many more families won't have enough to eat in this crisis? We have to protect them and we don't know when this crisis ends, we do know it will end that much we can say thank God, but we don't know when. We don't know how and we know that the impacts that's been made on people continues to grow and we know that the loss of revenue could be even greater. So, it's a very sobering situation, but we keep coming back to those basics that's what's going to guide us.

The executive budget I'm presenting today was built for this moment in history and a moment unlike any other, literally the budget totals $89.3 billion for Fiscal Year ‘21. It is balanced. Again, focuses on four things – overwhelmingly health, safety, food, shelter. It’s that simple, health, safety, food, shelter. As I said, we found ways to save we found cuts we could make even if we didn't feel any anything about pain in taking away some of these things. Two billion-plus in cuts through our PEG program that's a mandating that agencies find cuts to their spending additional almost 700 million in other savings we've found so a total of $2.7 billion in savings across both Fiscal Year ‘20 and Fiscal Year ‘21 and there will certainly be more tough choices ahead and to get us through this immediate phase. We are drawing down on our budget reserves, we built them up we hope this day would never come, but it has. Thank God those reserves were carefully built, they will now help us get through if ever there was a time to draw on reserves it's now. And on top of all the challenges brought to us by the coronavirus directly that are part of why we have to draw on those reserves, there's yet another challenge what we've seen already in cuts from the State of New York, $800 million already and we obviously are watching carefully cause we have to be ready for what the future brings in terms of the State budget. Now, the one way that you can get out of this without causing immense human pain and setting back our recovery, the one way is to get the kind of direct federal aid that we deserve.

No New Yorker – no New Yorker is responsible for this horrible crisis, but New York has borne the brunt, we have been the epicenter. When you look at the impact here, anybody with a heart would recognize that the federal government has to come to the rescue. We lead the nation's economy, we're the biggest City in the country, we constantly send resources out to the rest of the country year after year. There are so many reasons why it's clear, but just humanly, this is the reason that should matter the most because people are suffering because no Americans should have to go through what New York is going through and the federal government should be there for us. I remind you federal government was very quick to bail out the banks a decade ago, no questions asked, federal government was very quick to bail out the auto industry. How about bailing out the nation's largest City? How about bailing out the epicenter of this crisis where people have been suffering? That is what our federal government should do for every reason morally, practically as any question of fairness, as any question of how we move forward and we're still waiting. Now, what we're going through is what other cities are more and more going through other States are going through, we're not alone they haven't seen the help they deserve either.

There's been $2.2 trillion in stimulus funding so far – $2.2 trillion – of which only $1.4 billion has been indirect aid to New York City. To give you a comparison, we got $1.4 billion and we're the epicenter of the crisis – 8.6 million people. The airline industry got $58 billion, so corporate bailouts, huge. But a bail out for the place that needs it most has been minimal. I want to be very clear, the leadership that we have seen, and I want to commend Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi, I spoke to both of them yesterday, I want to commend them for the work they're doing because they have led the way in pushing for all the elements of the stimulus that were needed, not just for Cities and States, but for everyday people. Those checks are going out to help working people, so much of that came from the leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer. We know where the roadblock has consistently, Senator McConnell, the majority leader of the Senate has stood in the way so many of the things needed. He has to hear our plea, he has to understand what it means for human beings that is not allowing the kind of aid to flow that we need, but it's also clearly time for President Trump to speak up. I spoke to the President yesterday, I let them know what's happening in his hometown. I let him know that we're experiencing a huge budget problem and I said to him in the clearest terms, if we don't have any more resources, how can we provide for the safety, the protection, the health of New Yorkers. And I was clear with him and the Vice President that the only way to recovery is if New York City and all our cities are able to come back strong and if they can function as they can't function, there is no recovery.

So, right now, there is an opportunity right this minute, literally negotiations are going on in Washington and what's being called Stimulus 3.5. There's another even bigger stimulus package up ahead, number four later apparently in May. But right now, there are negotiations going on stimulus 3.5 with a focus on small business and paycheck protection. Obviously, our small businesses have gone through hell and only the federal government can help them in the way that's needed. Working people need to know that their livelihoods will be preserved, that piece of this stimulus 3.5 is crucial, if there's a discussion right now, proposal two point, excuse me, of a 250 billion, 250 billion for small business and for working people through paycheck protection. There's 100 billion on the table for hospitals and health care workers crucially needed here and many, many other places and 150 billion and I think it should be at least 150 billion. I know the governors, to our credit, the nation's governors – bipartisan consensus – are calling for even more and we need more. But, right now, even to begin a discussion of 150 billion in locality at aid directly to localities and States. But I'll be clear, that formula must be based on need, it must be based on what localities and States have actually experienced with COVID-19, not just some generic distribution for political purposes, but actually addressing the needs of this City, this State, what people have gone through. You know, if we were talking about a hurricane, we were talking about natural disaster, you wouldn't put money in for the entire nation equally, if the natural disaster help happen in one place, this is a different reality because this disaster of COVID happened many places, but thank God there are some parts of our nation have had very little impact, some parts that have had a moderate impact and then a place like New York that's borne the brunt, that's been the epicenter. This funding must reflect that reality it's just common sense, it's about helping people and about helping us back on our feet.

So, I made clear to the President that its hometown needs him, and I've had this conversation with them before they all New Yorkers, 8.6 million are watching the White House right now to see if the President will lead. Will the President speak up, if the President United States— speaks up, let's be clear, if President Trump raises his voice, the Republican Senate will follow period. Haven't heard his voice yet, I want to give him an opportunity to do the right thing. So, President Trump, here's my appeal to you, help us back on our feet. Tell Mitch McConnell that we need stimulus 3.5 and we need a directly to New York City directly to New York State so we can keep providing the help that people need, keep them healthy, keep them safe. If you lead, the Senate will follow, if you are silent, they will not. It's on you, Mr. President, as true for every City and every State in America as well. So, anyone who wants that national recovery, better take care of the places that have to build that recovery. And that's why we need this stimulus 3.5 and it could be agreed to today – literally today – and passed by the Senate by unanimous consent, and that's what we need.

Now, that is a very broad summary of what we are presenting today in the budget. The details have been posted publicly now, showing you how we made the difficult cuts we had to make – the specific programs and initiatives we had to cut back in this time of crisis. Some of them, thank God – you know, many of them, will be able to hopefully restore one day in better times. But so much of it is also about just the reality, a lot of what we're doing just can't happen now. Any expenditure that was related to people gathering as part of their normal year - there are no gatherings. So, there's a lot you'll see in these cuts that were obvious, a lot that were difficult of course; all that were necessary so that we could keep the resources for those basics I described. So, the facts, the details, are now public. How we got to the specific numbers that now dictate this budget. The toughest part will be ahead and that will all be about what happens in Washington and we have time, thank God, to see Washington decide if they're going to act or not. If they're going to save New York City and America’s cities or not; we have time between now and June for those decisions to be made and they better be made right and that will dictate everything else we have to do.

So, that is a very broad overview of the budget. I want to talk about a few, couple of, few other areas and then we will turn to questions from the media. So, right now as we fight this battle against the coronavirus, we're learning every day more and more about it, more and more about the reality. And one of the things we've talked about in the last week or two is we're seeing some real disparities in how this horrible disease is affecting our city. We're seeing some places hit particularly hard; we're seeing lower income communities hit particularly hard, we're seeing communities where people have not gotten enough health care historically hit hard, communities of color hit very hard, immigrant communities hit hard. So, we're making additional adjustments to our approach and one of them is to increase the number of free hotel rooms available for isolation and quarantine. Right now, 11,000 hotel rooms are being readied for this new effort. And this will be focused on people who need a place because of the reality of their living circumstance. For example, there are many people in multigenerational homes, particularly lower income communities that just don't have a lot of space and if there is a threat that someone might get infected in the home and it might spread amongst the members of that family, we have to guard against that. So, we are making sure that people in those multigenerational homes – many of them overcrowded homes – will have a place to go. If a member of a family, for example, is symptomatic or if a member of a family is high-risk, we will have a hotel room that will allow them to isolate from other members of the family. This is something that's going to help us protect people and slow the spread further. We'll work with community health centers and all of our public hospitals and clinics to identify who needs this particular support. This will begin this coming Wednesday and we will move those who need that help to those hotel rooms.

We're also continuing to make sure the hotel rooms are available for all health care workers. I want to emphasize this, whether they work in public hospitals, whether they work in any of the other types of voluntary hospitals, independent hospitals - any health care worker who needs a place to stay while they're doing their work, who needs to be isolated from their family for fear of spreading the disease to their family and obviously they, these incredibly heroic health care workers are exposing themselves every day to that potential risk and a lot of them do not want to take the risk of bringing it home to their families. Those hotel rooms would be available, regardless of which hospital, there’s 56 hospitals in this fight – regardless of which one you work at - they will be available to you if that's what you choose. And obviously, as we discussed a few days ago, making more rooms available for homeless individuals who are in shelter settings where we need to create more space; wherever it's not possible to have the space that we need, we are going to use hotel rooms as the better option. This is made more possible by the fact that we see the reality with coronavirus somewhat differently, affecting us somewhat differently, today than it was a week or two ago. We are far from out of the woods, but bluntly at this point I had expected a number of these hotels to already have been converted to field hospitals. Our projections told us we might have to use a vast number of hotels - dozens and dozens - to be able to accommodate all the medical needs. So far, thank God that has not been the case and we will not let our guard down; we will always be vigilant. We are never ruling out that this disease might throw us another curve ball, but because there are [inaudible] hotel rooms now available, we're going to turn them to these uses more and more to keep people safe.

Another area where it's been a lot of concern and understandably so, has been about our jail system and keeping everyone safe; the people who work there, our corrections officers and all the other folks who work there, the inmates as well – there's been a real humanitarian concern. Well, what we've been devoted to from the beginning is reducing that jail population in whatever way we appropriately could, whatever way was fair and humanitarian, but also always kept public safety in mind. So, at the beginning of March, there were 5,447 inmates in our jail system and that it bears remembering, was already less than half the number compared to the day I took office when we had over 11,000 inmates – so, beginning of March, 5,447. Three weeks ago, we announced that we had gotten under 5,000 inmates and yesterday. Another historic milestone – jail population is now under 4,000 inmates. That is the lowest in 74 years. You have to go back to 1946, the year after World War II ended to have had so few people in our jail system. And again, under 4,000 people compared to a city of 8.6 million. So, thank God, we're able to find a way to do that the right way and that means there are many fewer people in the space that remains – more ability to socially distance within the jails, more ability to ensure that if people need isolation or quarantine, they can get it and this is how we're going to protect the health of everyone involved and with of course, the extraordinary efforts of our correctional health system, a part of Health + Hospitals. And I thank everyone at correctional health, they don't get a lot of attention, they don't get a lot of kudos, but I want to thank everyone in correctional health who has been making sure that everyone in our jail system, employees, and inmates, are safe. And again to all of our correction officers and everyone that works in our correction system, we know how tough your work is and it's been really tough in this period, but you've stuck to it and you've all worked together to keep people safe and we really appreciate that deeply.

Now, we're at the point where each day I tell you about the indicators that tell us how we're doing and I think you're going to see again that we should never underestimate this disease. We're hoping for sustained progress. We believe these indicators are the truest indicators to tell us where we stand and where we're going and how to approach it. But these indicators tell us a tough truth some days about the fact that it won't be easy, it won't necessarily be fast, it won't be all in a straight line. So, we believe this is the truth and New Yorkers always want the blunt truth and it tells us we've got a lot more work to do, but it's also a reminder that the progress we have made is all because of you and stick to it with those social distancing standards and with shelter in place - stick to it cause we're going to need it. So, in terms of the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, unfortunately that number went up. And again, these are based on numbers from two days ago that have been verified - went up from 370 to 386. Daily number of people in ICUs across our Health + Hospital system for suspected COVID-19 – went up 868 to 887. The percentage of people who have tested positive - went up from 53 percent to 55 percent. And our public health labs testing, the number who tested positive went up from 76 percent to 78 percent. So, this was a tough day; this is not what we're looking for, but we know we're going to do this stage-by-stage, step-by-step. We'll get there and it just reminds us we have to stick to it.

So, before I conclude with a few words in Spanish, I'll just say, everything we've tried to do over years and years is about making people's lives better and bringing more fairness to this city. Now it is about that for sure, but it's really about four things, four basic things – your health, your safety food on your table, a roof over your head. That's what we are going to make sure all New Yorkers have. Whatever else happens, that's what we're going to focus on. Not even a pandemic can stop us from protecting New Yorkers, and that's what we're going to do.

Quickly in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media. And, as always, please give me the name and the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Just a quick reminder for folks that we have Budget Director Melanie Hartzog, First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, and Dr. Barbot on the line as well. And our first question is Andrew at NBC New York. Andrew?

Question: Yes. Good morning, Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Good morning, Andrew. How you doing?

Question: Good. I wanted to ask, this is the second day this week that you've described as a tough day with the metrics not going in the right direction. I wonder, was the Governor premature to say the worst is over? And secondarily, is it contradictory for the mandatory masks to be in place now that we've flattened the curve? Is that not a mixed message for New Yorkers?

Mayor No. Good questions, Andrew, but no. First of all, I think these numbers that were given out that we – I want to emphasize, we believe these are the true numbers, meaning these are the numbers that tell you the most. There are many things – it's all about human beings. I always keep coming back to this, this is about human beings in their lives, but the numbers tell us something and we set up this kind of rigorous standard so there'd be, you know, no overconfidence. This is disease to take very seriously. I'm stating the obvious. This is disease that has thrown us curve balls before, can throw us curve balls again. So, we set up what we thought was a really smart careful way to measure where we're going. So, we never took our foot off the gas prematurely. Requiring face coverings – you know, we put out that guidance on face coverings as soon as we saw evidence that that would help protect people. And I said we required it for city workers who came in contact with the public and I was glad that the Governor acted additionally. In fact, this is exactly the time to double down. This is exactly the time to take the standards we created and make sure we're applying them very intensely, in a very disciplined manner, because we got to get out of this. And we're not going to get out of it easily, we have to get out of it through hard work. It's no fun, but we have to do it. I do think when you say something like the worst is over, that there's a truth to that in terms of what we thought was going to happen, for sure. I told you that – remember that line of demarcation, Sunday, April 5th? We thought that next week was going to be so much worse than it turned out to be. It was still horrible. We still lost a huge number of our fellow New Yorkers, but we thought it was going many times worse. So, we definitely averted at that point what we thought was going to be something much worse. We can't entirely say where we're going. But I'll tell you something, I keep coming back to this – we know that some places took the foot off the gas and paid the price. We know – and I said this to the President and the Vice President yesterday – I said very squarely – I said, you know, I know you want to restart the economy, so do we, but the worst possible scenario is take your foot off the gas prematurely, the disease has a resurgence, then everything you were doing to try and restart, you have to stop, you have to go backwards, you have to add more restrictions, you have to slow down the timeline further, and you're going to end up waiting a long, long time before you can get people back to normal. The way to get back to normal is with careful, patient, smart actions to work our way through those phases we've discussed to the point that we can have something like normal life again. So, no, I think the face coverings is smart. Keep using them, everyone. We really need to do this. And if we are smart and disciplined, then the worst definitely will be behind us. But we really have to make sure that happens.

Moderator: Jeff Mays from the New York Times is up next. Jeff?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Good morning. I'm wondering if you have a projection on how much federal aid you need to continue balancing the budget? And, secondly, IBO has called a slightly larger budget deficit, I believe it's close to $10 billion. How do you reconcile those differences? Are you cutting enough in order to stabilize the City's finances?

Mayor: Well, I respect the IBO a lot – the Independent Budget Office, they do good work. I mean, it's not the first time to say the least, we've had different projections, and we stand by ours. We think ours are careful and cautious always – our OMB projections. If you said to me, is there a chance that this revenue loss could grow? Of course, there is, and I'm very, very worried about that. It could grow by a little, it could grow by a lot. It could grow by billions even. But, right now, this is based on the facts as we know it and obviously it will all be connected to how and when the economy restarts. We need the federal government to make up all lost revenue, period. Period. Think about this model for a moment – we can't achieve new revenue in any coherent fashion at this point. We can only get revenue from the federal government. The State government is in no position to give us revenue. The federal government's done over $2 trillion already. Of course, they can make up our budget gap. Right now, if that lost revenue stands at $7.5 billion, of course they can make that up. Again, if they had $58 billion to airline industry, I assure you, they can find $7.5 billion for the nation's largest city. It's not even close. Of course, they can do it. I also think that the FEMA aid, which we deeply appreciate, and FEMA has been a fantastic partner, but right now we have to do 25 percent reimbursement – I mean, 25 percent, I should say, of the costs we have to cover – that shouldn't be in the middle of a pandemic. The federal government should cover all those costs. So, right there, to me, is the immediate issue of what the federal government should cover. And then, you know, the exceptional – anything that's exceptional related to COVID-19. It's a pandemic, it's international, it's the responsibility of the federal government. And we're fighting this fight here – there are so many cities and states that – no way they can afford to protect people unless there's federal aid. So, Jeff, it's as simple as that. The federal government should cover all lost revenue for cities and states, should cover all COVID-19-related new costs, should make sure cities and states are whole and get back on their feet. That's in everyone's interest.

Moderator: Todd from AM New York is up next. Todd?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I hope your family's doing well.

Mayor Thank you, Todd. I hope the same for yours.

Question: Yes. Anyway, my questions in regard to the of Rikers Island’s prisoners because of COVID-19. Commissioner Shea said yesterday, he was very concerned that some of the committing bank robberies, intimidating witnesses, one who set fire to the door of a witness. The unions [inaudible] concerned as to who's monitoring the mostly convicted felons. We spoke to Parole, Department of Corrections, your Office of Criminal Justice had no answers. With all due respect, maybe you can answer just not for me, but for your commissioner and your unions what's going on here?

Mayor: Todd, I appreciate the question. You and I have known each other a long time. I want to contest you and say, I do not believe they had no answers. So, I want to make sure we connect you to the right people, because I've heard the answers directly from them. So, with all due respect to, I know they have answers. There is a clear monitoring program that's been set up for anyone released. This is something that – a supervised release structure existed already. It's being utilized in this case. There are a number of measures that have been put in place to make sure that people are monitored, including in some cases using electronic monitoring. Our team can get you those details. The NYPD, Corrections Department, our Office of Criminal Justice all worked together on this. We've been talking in constantly to the district attorneys and the State on this plan and they've obviously approved releases as well. This was about making sure that anyone with a profound health danger was not put in harm's way and making sure that those who could be released were released to keep everyone else safe in that jail system. I'm concerned too. Anytime we release someone, we have to make sure we work to keep it everyone as safe as possible, but we had a real imperative about saving lives that came first. But the fact is, we're going to keep doing whatever it takes to monitor these individuals. And then, as soon as the crisis is over, the way the releases occurred, if anyone needs to be brought back to jail, they will be. So, for example, someone who was awaiting trial and there were no trials. This is a country by our constitution where they're supposed to be a speedy trial. These are folks accused of a crime, have not yet gone through their trial. If we deemed it appropriate to let them out in this crisis, but then the system comes back to normal and there are going to be awaiting trial again, we bring them back to jail awaiting trial. So, that's how the process will work going forward.

Moderator: Julia from the Post is up next. Julia?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Good, Julia. How are you doing?

Question: Good. I see in your budget that all outdoor pools will be closed for the summer. And I understand that City Hall has told the Parks Department to prepare for every scenario, including the possibility that beaches will be closed for the season. You know, yesterday, you talked about not being able to envision Yankee stadium opening until later in the trajectory. So, at this point, how likely is it that beaches will remain closed all season? And give New Yorkers a sense for what will summer in the city look like?

Mayor: So, Julia, very good question. I appreciate it. On the question of the beaches, which I think we have to parallel to the pools – it's a little different, of course, because, you know, someone can walk along the beach even if the beach is not open. But, right now, I don't see us narrow anytime soon where we could – you know, imagine Coney Island the middle of summer, hundreds of thousands of people. You know, I've been on Coney Island on that beach many times – hundreds of thousands of people packed tightly together. Like, I don't see that happening anytime soon. So then, obviously, you could have a situation where people can go to the beach to walk along the beach, but not in large numbers anytime soon. We still have to observe social distancing. I know people are doing that now. But the notion of having lifeguards and people coming to the beach like normal, we don't have that in our sites yet. I think it's going to be tough to project. Right now, I'd say, lower expectations – just for everyone's sanity, lower expectations. We're at a point right now in the middle of April where we're practicing intense social distancing. Everyone's being very careful to only go outside as much as they need to, and just to get basics and get back inside. To go from that to mass gatherings of thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people – that's a big jump. And that jump should only happen when we're sure is not going to exacerbate the disease, because, again, the worst of all worlds would be to see a resurgence. So, I need to see those indicators start to move to even talk about some loosening of restrictions and they have not been moving yet. So, I would say, every one of us would love to have our summer or some part of our summer, but keep expectations low for now. Let's not have any false moves. Let's not jump the gun. Let's make sure we get it right. The things that would have take – that would have required spending money now to get ready for the summer we're just not doing, because we don't have yet a clear roadmap to how we get to those summer activities. So, right now, cautious approach focused on beating back this disease. That's where we're at.

Moderator: Yoav from the City is up next. Yoav?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask about the 11,000 new hotel rooms, particularly when it comes to the families who are living in overcrowded houses, et cetera. What prompted this move now, I guess? Was it – were you seeing a lot of transmission among family members where some of the people trying to isolate in places like hospitals? So, what were you seeing that made this seem like a necessity? And what – I guess, why wasn't something like this implemented sooner?

Mayor: Thank you. Yoav, I mentioned it, but I'll emphasize it. First of all, even though these last like six weeks or so have played out in a way that feels like, you know, more like months or years, it's been just rapid, constant changes, and, you know, shocking developments in the course of six weeks that we've all been trying to make sense of. But I go back to that warning I gave about Sunday, April 5th, which, again, seems like a long time ago. It was, you know, 11 days ago. On Sunday, April 5th, even as that day dawned, I thought the likelihood was a horrendous week that week ahead. And we got into that week and things got a little bit better for a few days and I didn't know of a sort of a false dawn or something real, but it proved to sustain and we've had a better situation since that Sunday than we expected. But still, plenty of challenges, plenty of pain, plenty of things to deal with. Since that day, we've gotten to think a little bit differently. And in those 10 or 11 days, we went from thinking every hotel room – and I want you to hear the word every – every hotel room was going to be converted to hospital space. Obviously, there'll be some for dormitories for health care workers, but otherwise it was hospital, hospital, hospital. The projections we made when we talked about having to add 60,000 hospital beds, that was going to be massive use of hotels. And we were trying to build it rapidly on top of Javits Center, and the Comfort, and the Queens tennis center – all the things that were happening. In recent days, we've had more and more assurance that we didn't need all those hotel rooms and we've been starting to use them more and more for other purposes. We talked a few days ago about using the opportunity to take those hotel rooms and get more and more people out of shelter. But now this piece we're talking about today correlates with what we learned about disparity over the last week or more. And the fact that the disparity dynamic seems to also connect to the multigenerational families and the crowded households. And you see that particularly in some lower income communities, particularly in immigrant communities. So, we're trying to come up with another targeted strategy, just like the targeted testing that we'll be starting as early as tomorrow. The targeted focus on the families that are really crowded together where we want to make sure if someone's in danger that we can give them an alternative. So, it's all been coming out of our experience, but most especially the fact that we have – we built a strategy – and the State did as well, to their credit – that was all about saving lives and saving hospitals so we could save lives, and having hospital beds, having personnel, having ventilators, having supplies to save lives. Luckily, we've been able to move a little bit off that strategy and do some other things now with those rooms so we can protect people a different way.

Moderator: Henry from Bloomberg is up next. Henry?

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. How are you doing?

Mayor: Good, Henry. How about you?

Question: I'm okay. I'm trying to understand how the budget was balanced in the absence of a budget book. We don't really see a balancing of, you know – we don't see the arithmetic. So, you're saying we've lost 7.4 – or we will lose $7.4 billion in revenue. You're cutting the budget by $6 billion compared to January. How do you – where is the arithmetic that balances more than $13 billion?

Mayor: We will get you – I know some has been put out, we'll make sure that more has been put out. We’re obviously in a very different situation than our normal budget process and today's presentation certainly reflects that, but we will there'll be plenty of detail filled in. But to hear it – let me give you the basics that I think speak to your question. So, remember, we had the, the crisis hit, you know, in the fiscal year we're in right now, Fiscal Year ‘20, obviously starting in March. And we had to address the impact on this fiscal year, and on next year. You know, for six years as we've had these discussions, we were pretty much always looking at the fiscal year ahead, and the year we were in a was balanced, and we were going to send money forward. That's been the tradition. We're in a very different situation here because the crisis hit immediately and it's undermined this year's budget, as well as next year. So, what we are dealing with now, that revenue loss that has been projected throughout the calendar year, and, of course, the $800 million we lost from the State. The gaps we had to close for this fiscal year, currently $2.5 billion, for next fiscal year, $6.2 billion. So, a grand total about $8.7 billion. How we did it. Again $2 billion in the PEG program. We originally talked about $1.3, we added to that, it got up to over $2 billion, another $700 million or so in other types of savings, debt service savings and others. The reserves were drawing down about $4 billion on the reserves. And then over the two fiscal years there's about $2 billion in various types of federal aid accounted for from the previous stimulus packages and also from FEMA aid directly. But again, reminding you that right now we're required on any expense that's FEMA eligible, we're required to pay 25 percent of it. And I think that's a horrible mistake in the middle of a pandemic and we should not have to pay for FEMA eligible expenses. The federal government should cover those, but we have budgeted on the assumption that we're still having to pay that 25 percent. So, Henry, that is the way the math comes together. Obviously, this is profoundly different than what we were expecting. You know, just weeks ago when we had the preliminary budget and it's kind of like thinking about the time in February when the preliminary budget was presented. Seems like again, another century That was projected to be over $95 billion. This budget is $89 billion. We are literally $6 billion less in what we were planning on spending than just as recently as February. So that's the basic layout. But we'll make sure we get you, you know, all appropriate charts and take questions going forward on those.

Moderator: Juliet from 1010 WINS is up next. Juliet?

Question Yes. Hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Good, Juliet. How do you feel?

Question: I’m okay, thank you. So, my question is this, I called 3-1-1 this morning to inquire about, you know, the process of the food program and the delivery program. So I have to tell you what happened. I was on hold for 10 minutes. And I did time that. And then when I did get through to somebody who was very nice, I was told that there was – they couldn't process anything or register me or whoever would call and I would have to call back at 11 o'clock because the system wasn't available. So how can people get through if they need and specifically seniors who really probably rely on their phones more than, you know, going to a computer to look something up or register? What can people do?

Mayor: Juliet, I'm glad you did that. I appreciate it. I'm very frustrated by the report you're giving me. I have a lot of respect for the folks in my team who had been fighting this battle. And a lot of respect for the good people at 3-1-1 and I visited with them a few weeks ago and really, really appreciate their work. But I have been saying to my team incessantly, we have to make sure that people get served immediately and we need quality control on 3-1-1 and bluntly, you just proved what I've warned people about, that no one should have to go through what you went through. I understand sometimes there's a surge in demand and we in fact yesterday emphasized to all New Yorkers that food would be available for anyone who needed that delivery because they were vulnerable or a senior couldn't get out, a disabled person. We made that very clear yesterday, so it does not surprise me, Juliet, there'd be a spike in the number of calls after I told all New Yorkers this food is therefore you, no matter what, we're going to feed you. And maybe the system, maybe they did not put enough personnel on to address that spike. I don't like that, but at least I can understand that. But it is not acceptable to me and I'm going to deal with it right after this press conference. It's not acceptable that anyone would be put on hold for 10 minutes for anything in the middle of a crisis. It's not acceptable that people be told to call back later. It's just not the way we're supposed to do things. So, I'm going to be really honestly, pissed off at the people who are supposed to be handling this, who I have warned repeatedly to not let this happen and we will fix it today. I'll just order more personnel – this is exactly the kind of thing that I'm making a priority. We will spend whatever the hell it takes and get as many personnel as is needed to ensure that doesn't happen.

And you're totally right, Juliet, that seniors are much more likely to use the phone. I mean we can, you know, we can give out the website till the cows come home, but in the end most seniors are going to pick up the phone. And a lot of people don't speak English and they need to have the translation too when they call. So, I will get this fixed today and I want you to test it again tomorrow please. And call in and I'll turn to our colleagues and say, when you call in to give your report, I want to make sure that call gets through so I can see if people have made the changes they need to make.

Moderator: Marcia from CBS New York is up next. Marcia?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Marcia, how are you?

Question: Good. My question today is about relaxing the standards for social distancing. President Trump has said today that he's going to announce new guidelines for relaxing social distancing and for reopening the economy. I wonder, two parts – when you spoke to the President and Vice President yesterday, if you discussed this issue and what your views are about how that would apply to New York City, which is clearly the epicenter?

Mayor: Yeah, and in fact, Marcia, I always am careful not to characterize in detail what other people said to me in a private conversation. I want to give them that respect. I will be very broad in characterizing their view. I'll tell you what I said though. I told them it would be madness to rush the restart in a way that would cause, you know, a boomerang effect, where the disease reasserted, we got setback even farther, the day when the economy could reopen got pushed back much worse, much farther because they moved too soon. I had A conversation with the Mayor of San Francisco, London Breed last night, and she talked about she had been studying the history of 1918, the Spanish Influenza epidemic and how in San Francisco, they had like a false dawn in 1918, where they thought it was going away and everyone came out and started doing big gatherings again. They literally had like a big, like city celebration that the flu was over and everyone came flocking to the celebration. And days later there was a massive outbreak and it got worse than ever and put off much longer, any recovery. That was a hundred years ago. Different situation. But it's a cautionary tale, Marcia.

So I told the President and Vice President it would be a huge mistake to restart too early. It would be a huge mistake to take our foot off the gas and to start taking away the things that actually were working before we were sure that we had turned the corner. Now I do think they – and I’ll let them speak for themselves. I think they do think New York's in a particular situation. To some extent that's true. But my warning was don't see New York City as so unusual that you think the same thing we've gone through isn't going to happen in one form or another in a lot of places.

The social distancing was necessary. The shelter in place was necessary and you have to come out of it carefully and smartly or you'll regret it. So my answer is we've got these indicators, Marsha. These three indicators are going to tell us a lot. We have to be smart. We have to be cautious. I think if the President artificially, if you will, ignores the warnings we're getting on this disease and rushes to do a restart that ignores the danger, he will regret it. I think he has one chance. I think the President has one chance to get it right. If he is smart about it and careful about it, we can actually get to a restart of the economy we can sustain. If he jumps too soon, it'll be horrible, it’ll set us back further. And everyone is going to judge him by how he makes that decision. Rightfully so. And that's the decision I have to make for my city too. And I'm going to be damn careful in making that decision.

Moderator: Kathleen from Patch is up next. Kathleen? Oh, never mind. Reema from Chalkbeat is up next. Reema, can you hear us okay?

Question: Yeah, can you hear me?

Moderator: Yes, we can.

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Reema.

Question: Okay, great. Hey, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing?

Mayor: Good, how are you?

Question Good, good. I wanted to ask you about just a couple of things here. Is there going to be summer school for kids who are behind, as well as the enrichment programs that are available to kids for extra classes? And also you know, unless I'm missing something, we see a lot of programs and school-based cuts here, but I don't see much at all on the central level or you know, cuts to capital projects and I'm wondering why there's not more cuts there so they don't fall on programs?

Mayor: So, Rema a combination of points I'd make. Definitely on the capital side a lot is being delayed. You know, things we want to do and believe in. We, obviously, you know, I'm someone who started the initiative and I believe in deeply, to put air conditioning in all our classrooms. But things like that just inherently have to wait compared to food, shelter, safety, health. You know, there are things that have to wait. But the capital spending, it will happen eventually, but a lot of it's going to be delayed. The, in terms of, you know, central costs, administrative costs, we've been making cuts to that already in previous savings plans. That continues. The summer issue, we can't plan on summer right now. So the simplest way to say it, our schools are closed for this school year. The things that we would normally plan for the summer, we cannot guarantee, we only at this point I think, can truly plan on the reopening of schools in the beginning of September. That's where our energy is going, actually start the schools up right. Coming out of this horrible crisis, really amplify the academic side, but also address all the other challenges including the mental health challenges that the whole school community is going to go through. In the meantime, the focus on online learning, the focus on mental health needs of kids and families now, but summer's a giant question mark. So we are not announcing anything for the summer at this point. The Chancellor said they're planning all sorts of scenarios including online scenarios for the summer. But we don't have any assurance yet that we can do anything in person this summer, you know, in school buildings. And we're going to look at every option and then as we get some actual proof of where we're going, we're going to decide. But again, I'd say watching those three indicators, that's going to say a lot about whether we even get to think about summer programming in some form going forward.

Moderator: Anna from the Daily News is up next. Anna?

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor. Happy Budget Day.

Mayor: I guess you could call it happy, but I don't know if it is so happy. Go ahead, Anna.

Question: It’s my favorite day of the year. So just back to the beaches issue, I think a lot of people are interpreting your comments a few moments ago that the beaches are likely to be closed. And I just have like a logistical question about that. Given, you know, the issues with enforcement of social distancing and the limited workforce, how can the City guarantee people won't go to beaches? And especially since you know, even before the summer season starts, a lot of people still go and there have been drownings because no lifeguards are on duty. How do you guys protect against that issue?

Mayor: Okay, so what you said is an important beginning. There's a whole lot of the year where beaches, you know, we do not have lifeguards, we do not permit swimming. And there's signs to warn people and there's all sorts of messages telling people it's not safe. And thank God the vast, vast majority of people honor that Anna. But a few people don't. And so many times it's young people and it's very, very sad. And we've lost some young people because they went and they went swimming someplace where it wasn't safe and there wasn't a lifeguard on duty. And that's been true, unfortunately for years. And all we can do is keep telling people it's not the right thing to do for their safety and keep telling families that. And hope that people understand. That's what we deal with every year. But in terms of the summer, I do not want, and again, until we have a much, much better sense of where this is going, I don't want to create a situation where people start gathering. So if we bring out lifeguards and it's a situation where people think it's safe to go to the beach and it's safe to start resuming normalcy, it's going to endanger people based on what we know now. So no, right now we do not have a plan to open the beaches. Just like we don't have a plan to open the pools. People, you're absolutely right. Someone could go right now and walk on a beach and if they do it while practicing social distancing, okay. But right now I don't want to create a situation where people think they can go back to something like normal and be beachgoers this summer. I don't like saying that, but it's just a blunt truth. It's not safe. If things evolve, we'll assess our options going forward. But I can't project it now because it wouldn't be safe to project it now.

Moderator: Erin from Politico is up next. Erin?

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor, quick follow up on the budget and then I have a question about the hotel program. On the budget, did you end up requesting any authority to borrow for operating expenses? And then with regards to the hotels, can you go through what are the criteria to qualify one of these? Just as a lay person, it seems like most of our apartments are too small to not transmit the disease in close quarters, so what threshold do you actually have to meet to be able to go to one of these?

Mayor: We will get the specifics out, Erin. The idea is to address where the dangers are greatest. So we already are seeing it. You've seen the maps, you've seen the -- we understand there are some neighborhoods that are bearing the brunt of this disease. So if we combine the notion of, we know where some of the most challenged places are and where people are in danger, and we know people in multigenerational homes in crowded conditions are in particular danger within those neighborhoods, that's where we're going to focus. Overwhelmingly, that means lower income folks. I think you're right, many, many New Yorkers deal with much more crowded situations than most of the country, but for lower income folks, you know, it can mean doubling up, tripling up all sorts of things that folks were a little more money tend to not experience. So we're going to really focus on those in greatest needs and those who are most threatened. And that will be the priority in terms of these hotel rooms.

In terms of borrowing, we have not yet activated or work to activate a new borrowing capacity. It's certainly a conversation we will have going forward, the possibility of doing some kind of long-term borrowing that is fiscally smart. That's under the kind of terms that would be fair and smart. An example from the past, a 20-year repayment timeline for example. But right now we have not yet acted on that.

Moderator: Brigid from WNYC is up next. Brigid?

Question: Good morning Mr. Mayor and two questions, one related to the budget. Just can you talk a little bit more about the decision to dip into the reserves? And you know, whether you feel like the current plan goes far enough in terms of long-term planning for, you know, some of the challenges you envision ahead? And then separately, a question related to health care workers. I'm wondering if the City has an estimate of how many health care workers and hospital employees have died at City and public hospitals? And are you tracking that information? Will you be releasing that?

Mayor: Yes. We do. And of course, it's a very painful topic because these are folks who worked heroically to save lives and put their own lives in danger. We have information, I don't get every daily report on what's been released publicly and what hasn't, but that certainly needs to be released and we will. But my heart goes out to their families because these are people who did something very, very heroic. On the reserves and the long-term planning. The decision to use the reserves was to get us through this moment, understanding that the discussion on what would be the right thing to do, the federal support given the nature of this pandemic and the fact that we're the epicenter, that that discussion was happening now in April and would happened in May, but our budget would be determined finally in June.

So this was to get us through now. We're going to fight hard to get that stimulus funding we deserve. And that's the big X factor here. In terms of long-term planning, right now obviously the immediate focus is on saving lives, protecting people, all those basics I talked about and then figuring out the right way, the responsible way to restart our economy. We will be doing more and more long-term planning as we go along in this process. But our urgent consideration with this executive budget was to make sure we could address the immediate needs of New Yorkers, keep our budget intact and you know, build a foundation for the future. But we'll have much more to say on the long term going forward.

Moderator: Sydney from the Advance is up next. Sydney.

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you doing? Why did you decide to move forward with a reduction in overnight service at the Staten Island Ferry in the executive budget and what do you think reduction in overnight service is going to look like through 2021? Do you have an idea of which hours will be affected?

Mayor: I will get you details. Sydney, look, I very much believe we have to keep consistency in Staten Island Ferry service. People depend on it. It's a lifeline for Staten Islanders. We will do that. What we found, of course, was a massive drop in ridership in the midst of this crisis. I mean, it's truly massive and they were running boats with very few people on them. So, we're trying to just create a consistent schedule that will be the one people can depend on going forward. And I don't think we can yet say through 2021 at all on anything. My hope is that, you know, we're able to do something better before 2021. If we can handle this disease properly and only restart when we're ready, you know, it's conceivable for sure to start bringing some things back to normal piece by piece carefully. So, I don't want to project anything about 2021 right now, but what we're trying to do here is just say, here's a baseline people can depend on, this makes sense given very, very low ridership right now. And then we'll figure out the future as we start to see the health care situation change.

Moderator: Gloria from NY1 is up next. Gloria.

Question: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Bridget sort of got to my question, but if I could ask a follow up and just for a point of clarity, did I hear you say that you're asking for $7.5 billion from the federal government and what are you doing – if you don't get a response from the [inaudible] if you don't get the exact amount that you are asking for and looking at what you've proposed so far, I realized [inaudible] an immediate crisis and this is [inaudible] with those immediate crisis. But what about the impact this will have on the following year and how much planning is your budget team doing now to balance some of that? This is a – you haven't made any kind of cuts [inaudible] since you've been in office, like, it's the first time that you proposed a budget that’s –

Mayor: Gloria. I got you, I got you. The stimulus should be – for us, New York City, the epicenter of the crisis, for New York State, for all cities and states affected – it should be the amount of lost revenue due to the coronavirus. That lost revenue should be replaced dollar for dollar by the federal government. The federal government can do it. Again, $2.2 trillion so far that they have put into various stimulus programs, only $1.4 billion directly to the City of New York to address this crisis in the epicenter. Clearly they can make up that $7.4 billion that we have now projected as our lost revenue. If that grows, they should fill that gap further. There's a stimulus 3.5 now. There's another one coming in May. They will have in each one the opportunity to keep making cities and states whole and it should be done according to need, according to the impact of the coronavirus.

Also, the FEMA aid should not be 75 percent federal, 25 percent local cost. It should be 100 percent federal because of the nature of what we're dealing with. If they want a recovery, and I believe the president does, I believe everyone does, if they really want a recovery, if they really want to restart the economy, make that choice to make us whole and help everyone move forward. So that's what I'm saying to them. In terms of planning, yes, of course, this is what OMB does all the time. And pandemic or not, they keep doing it. These choices are to address the immediate situation. The cuts that were made were very substantial and very necessary and very unfortunate. The reserves, this was time to use the reserves and thank God we had built them up over the last six years. But there are many, many tough choices ahead. It will all depend on what Washington does. If they do the right thing, we'll still have tough choices to make, but we'll be able to get through and protect all those basic services I talked about. If they do the wrong thing, it's going to be a very, very tough scenario. But we're planning for all eventualities and then we're planning, of course, years ahead. That's what OMB has to do. And does do.

Moderator: Leslie from the Wall Street Journal is up next. Leslie.

Question: Hi, thank you. Are you planning any furloughs or layoffs for City employees?

Mayor: Leslie, I would call that the last resort. And again, I think honestly that decision rests in Washington. There's just no way to make up for this level of lost revenue, which has happened almost overnight because of a global crisis we've never seen the likes of in history and Washington has to step in so we can provide basic services. And I said this to the president and vice president, I said this to Speaker Pelosi, I said this to Senator Schumer. It's this simple, for New York City to be able to provide basic services to our people and participate in the recovery, we must have that stimulus money or else we're going to have to make horrible choices going forward. So those kinds of choices are absolutely the last resort.

Moderator: Gersh, from Streetsblog is up next. Gersh.

Question: Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Hey, Gersh.

Question: Hello.

Mayor: How are you doing?

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Gersh. How are you doing?

Question: I'm good. You said earlier the things that might have been a priority cannot be a priority right now, but you also said that a budget is a statement [inaudible] values. All of the cuts are not yet online, but some are. If you cut, for example, your placard corruption team or you cut your Better Buses initiative [inaudible] you cut millions to divisions of your programs – are you saying that these kinds of programs are not currently a priority even though two days ago you said you will create a plan for the car reduction that many New Yorkers will want?

Mayor: Yeah, there's clearly – let's go over it again. The most basic things are health, safety, food, shelter. So, we're going to focus there first. The question you asked a few days ago was a great one. As we move forward into a recovery, how do we have a recovery that moves us forward beyond where we were before? I agree with that entirely and I've said very clearly the recovery must include profound changes to address a host of injustices, and we've seen it deeply with these health care disparities. We have to address injustices, we have to create a more fair society coming back, and we have to address the huge crisis of the future, which is still global warming. And that means getting people out of their cars. That we will address in the recovery plans. But right now with the choices we're facing, it goes right back to those basics and it is a statement of values to say we're going to make sure people have, you know, a roof over their head, food to eat, that they're safe, that their health care is protected. That's where we're putting our focus now. There's no question that a lot of the other things you mentioned are very important. That's why we put him in the budget to begin with and they will continue as we have more resources in the future. But we got to focus on the basics now.

Moderator: Last two. Kevin from the Brooklyn Paper. Kevin.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Kevin.

Question: My question is about the testing sites. Brooklyn Community Board Six, which overlaps with your former City Council district in Park Slope, sent you a letter yesterday saying that the drive-thru testing centers aren't cutting it for the majority of New Yorkers given that, you know, the majority of New Yorkers don't own a car. I know the City is looking to open a new center in East New York and I think the State is opening one in Brownsville. Can you talk a little bit about the status of these new centers for people that don't have a car and want the city is doing to make it at least equally as accessible to get tested for coronavirus if you don't have a car?

Mayor: Yeah, Kevin, look, the testing situation has to change profoundly. And this is one of the biggest, saddest stories of this whole history of the coronavirus. You know, from January on, we were demanding that the federal government give us the right to do local testing and that took a long time and then they put huge restrictions on it. Then we were demanding the actual tests and that took a long time. And we still aren't anywhere near the amount of testing we need. And it'll be a long time until we get there. I did announce a few days ago, you know, a major breakthrough that we found a way to get some test kits that we can purchase from the open market and others that we're going to create right here in New York City, and that's really exciting, in the beginning of May. But even that will be only a piece of what we need.

So I think the way to think about it is, there's been very limited testing. The focus to date has been on patients whose lives needed to be saved, though the testing was crucial to saving their lives. Health care workers, first responders, and now in recent days we're starting to expand it – and again, we'll have sites up starting tomorrow, some of the sites I talked about in some of the most hard-hit communities. That is the next piece we are trying to build out, but it still requires us to have the test kits, the PPEs which had been tough to come by, and the medical personnel, then we can apply to testing, and that situation's a little better, but there's still challenges for sure. Over time we want to get to a situation where we have really widespread testing available and that's part of how we get to that low level transmission phase we're talking about, and on to, effectively, zero transmission, but we don't have all that in hand yet. We got to keep building that.

So the notion of people saying, hey, I just want to make it really easy to get testing in my own community, I get that 100 percent why people feel that. We got to do something more strategic than that. We got to figure out how to get a lot more testing, apply it where it's needed most, and then build toward the day where we use it as a strategic tool to actually contain this disease, to focus it on people who have – are symptomatic, to focus it on people who we need to determine should not go to work, people who can go to work again, to focus it on who needs to be quarantined, and to make those quarantine spaces available in large number. That's the next phase. That all has to be tightly organized and prioritized. So, we’ll have more to say on that, as testing supplies start to increase, but I want people to think about this as strategic. This is about how we end this crisis. Not so much just, you go someplace and you get a test that tells you at one point in time how you're doing. I understand why people want that, but we've got to do something more strategic for everyone to get out of this crisis.

Moderator: Mark Morales from CNN. Mark.

Question: Hey, everybody. How you doing today?

Mayor: Hey Mark, how you doing?

Question: Good. Good. So, I had a couple of questions on a couple of different topics. The first was – it's about the probable cases. What if anything, can or is the City doing to check up on or help the people that say maybe haven't tested positive for COVID but have gone back home and need help there or maybe in fact even die at home. And the other question I have is about the DOE and about reporting is happening now amongst the administrators and teachers and principals [inaudible] –

Mayor: Mark, I'm going to cut you off. Just Mark, go back on your first question. I want to make sure I understood it. Could you just restate your first question?

Question: Right. It's about the probable cases. What can the City do about them? So, it's like, let's say you have somebody who's at home who ends up dying at home and they get – their bodies get picked up or services end up coming too late, what can the City do to help them to sort of prevent them from being casualties of COVID?

Mayor: And then what was your DOE question?

Question: What's being done about the reporting at DOE like as far as administrators? Like are they reporting positive numbers of COVID cases to the City, to the Health Department? Is that being done in a timely manner?

Mayor: Okay. On the second piece, I mean, we'll definitely have the Department of Education follow up with you, Mark. Look right now because essentially, you know, very, very few of our employees are going to a school building except for the folks who are doing the food programs and the very small number of enrichment centers for the kids of essential workers. To the extent we pray, no more DOE employees suffer. But if everyone does, that's, you know – that's going to the Health Department most likely directly. But we'll get you an update on that and we're obviously – everything we can do to try and protect, you know, the people who do such important work we will do.

On the folks – God, it's such a horrible scenario that there have been people who died at home. It's something that existed in the past, but obviously nowhere near on the level we've seen it with a coronavirus. But I think what we want to do, and as part of this intensive effort to communicate again to people including what appears to be, you know, a certain number of people who, even though there's been constant communication, still need more and we want to get it to them. That huge campaign we talked about advertising, you know, TV, radio, print, digital, the community health outreach – so, the texting and calling campaigns that we're putting in place, hopefully eventually health care workers out in communities talking to people. I think a lot of this is people who don't have access to information as much through mainstream media, a lot of people who don't speak English. We've got to get more information out to make sure that anyone who needs health care knows it is always available to them. And we're going to do that follow up with telemedicine more so people can speak to a clinician live whenever they have questions, they need anything in multiple languages. We have that but we're expanding that as part of the plan.

So, I think it’s just going to be more outreach to help anyone know if they fear for their lives, if they think they're in danger, we will get help to them, unquestionably. We have to make sure they know it is there for them, no matter what.

Moderator: Last question goes to Jose from Univision. Jose.

Question: Hi, there. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Jose.

Question: Oh, fantastic. So, Mr. Mayor, thank you for doing these daily press briefings. They're very helpful. My question is about this paper from an economist at MIT, it came out earlier this week and it asserts that New York City's subway system was a major disseminator, if not the principal transmission vehicle of the coronavirus infection in the city. So, what I want to know is if your office has taken a look at this paper, I don't know if I would call it a study, but it's definitely a paper. And what your office makes of those assertions and if you can, whether the City has tried to come to its own conclusions.

Mayor: I appreciate the question. My health care team looked at it. I think you're right. It does not appear to be – I haven't seen it myself so I'm working from their summary. It doesn't appear to be a full-blown study. It appears to be sort of an effort to look at some broad data and draw some initial conclusions. I think the part that is evident is, you know, this is why early on we said to people, if you don't need to go on the subway, don't; if you can work from home, work from home; if you can walk or bike or anything else, do so because there was a concern to start clearing out the subway to the maximum extent possible while recognizing that we also depended on the subway to get essential workers to do the lifesaving work they do.

So, we had a challenge from the beginning, but I think what is fair to say is it's, you know – I haven't seen it, but my sense is it sort of is broad in telling us that any place people gather is a place of concern. There's no question about that. And there's been, obviously, efforts now since the beginning of this crisis to have less and less, fewer, fewer people on the subway, less and less crowding on any place, including subways. And we'll keep that going I think for a substantial period of time.

Okay, everyone just wanted to say this is a very unusual day. It's not like any other day that I've ever experienced not only as Mayor, but in my life before that in public service, never seen a day like this where we're announcing an executive budget against the backdrop of a global pandemic and with so many challenges and so many question marks. But what's clear at least is we know where the help has to come from, it has to come from Washington, and it really has to, or else we're left with horrible, horrible choices. But what we will do, no matter what, no matter what, is protect New Yorkers health, protect your safety, make sure there's food on your table, make sure there's a roof over your head. That's what we will do. No matter what is thrown at us. And anyone who needs that help, it's there for you. A budget is a statement of values. Our values are clear. We're here to protect people and we will do so, and we will get through this crisis. It will not be easy, but we will get through this crisis.

Thank you very much, everyone. God bless you all.

2020-04-17 NYC Mayor de Blasio Ask the Mayor

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone and now our weekly Ask The Mayor segment my questions in yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our phones are open at our new call in number which allows our producers to screen your calls from home. It's 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0. 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0. Or you can always tweet a question. Just use the hashtag #AskTheMayor for these segments. And as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, and a few times already today, Ask The Mayor has now moved for the foreseeable future from its old 10 o'clock slot on Fridays to here around 11 or a little after 11 because of a coronavirus-era change in the Mayor’s schedule. And with that, good morning Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning Brian and thank you to everyone at WNYC for your flexibility because we are doing morning press conferences so everyone can get the latest updates. So, I appreciate you helping us to set this new time.

Lehrer: Now, you used to do your daily press conferences in the afternoon. So, let me ask you a political question. Is that so you can set the day's news agenda for New York by going before Governor Cuomo daily briefings?

Mayor: No, it's just about making sure that we get information out that is fresh at the beginning of the day. We've -- in the beginning we all were trying to make sense of so much incoming, so many changing circumstances. And now, you know, we've had a little bit of improvement, I emphasize a little bit. It's allowed us to create more consistency and I think it's just valuable to start each day giving people the updates that they need, giving them the latest. And then everyone can go on from there.

Lehrer: And I see that in the press conference that just ended among the other things you announced five additional test sites for frontline health care workers at a rate of 3,500 tests per week. And also opening up 11,000 hotel rooms for people who need to quarantine away from loved ones. You want to talk about those additional testing sites?

Mayor: Yes. And that'll all be available on nyc.gov, the details. It's actually a new City program through our public hospitals and clinics. That will start at about 2,500 a week at five sites around the city. But I expect that to ramp up intensely quickly. Another set of five different sites, a partnership we're doing with a private health care provider and with a 1199 SEIU Health Care Workers Union. That's going to be about 3,500 a week. Those are both targeted to the communities that we've seen specifically hardest hit in this crisis where we've seen the highest level of incidents of this disease and particular challenges among folks who are older with those preexisting conditions. So they will be the specific target for all of this testing. With the addition that with the sites we've done with 1199 and One Medical, the private entity, those will be focused both on community members who are over 65 and have preexisting conditions and on health care workers, adult home workers, folks who work with the disabled.

So these are very important new initiatives, but they're just a beginning Brian of something much bigger as the City is now starting in the beginning in May, we'll be producing our own test kits. We're finally getting some test kits in from the open market. We are going to be able to do a lot more testing and we'll use it strategically for now. But what we really need to get to is very, very widespread testing. That's part of how we get out of this tough, tough phase with the disease. And then the hotel rooms compliment this point for folks who are particularly vulnerable and folks who are in many cases what we're seeing in the neighborhoods hardest hit, which we've seen are lower income communities, immigrant communities, communities of color, places that have had much less health care available even though people deserved it, they didn't have it because of economic injustice that folks in those neighborhoods who live in crowded conditions in their home, often multigenerational homes, need opportunities to isolate. If obviously they're symptomatic, if they test positive, that have been around someone who tested positive, the hotel rooms will help us give an option for anyone who needs to isolate from the rest of their family. They'll be able to get that support for free.

Lehrer: And do I understand that the hotel rooms are going to be prioritized for people who live in crowded housing circumstances or am I over interpreting that?

Mayor: No, you're interpreting it correctly, Brian. So look, all New Yorkers, I mean, we know every New Yorker deals with having less space than we'd all like, but you know, there are certainly people in the city who live in homes, live in apartments where there's some space, there's others who live in just horribly crowded dynamics. Again, many times multigenerational families, some of them doubled up, even tripled up. That's a result of poverty and many other challenges. For folks that are in sort of extremely crowded conditions, we're making a priority for sure, that if someone in one of those situations, if someone is symptomatic, if someone's tested positive, if someone's been in close proximity recently to someone who tested positive, we want to make sure to particularly get anyone out of those homes who may be vulnerable. And if for example, any member of a family, let's say there's, you know, ten people under one roof. If one gets sick, we want to isolate that person from everyone else to protect everyone else. So we're going to be using this very strategically and we'll constantly build the supply as needed. But this is also targeted, especially at the places where we've seen the problem growing because of these very realities.

Lehrer: And before we get to phone calls, when you talk about ramping up testing, any reactions to the three phase reopening guidelines the President and his team announced last night? They acknowledged that New York and New Jersey are not ready for this at this time, but they also did say a sufficient availability of tests in any area of the country is going to be one of the prerequisites for doing it, you know, without flying blind. So did they give you any helpful tools to work with for gauging when and how?

Mayor: You know, minimally I think is the answer. You know, this just in, we need testing, right? Breaking news. I mean it's been the strangest and most troubling part of this whole equation from January on, because I first demanded testing from the federal government on January 24th. And we've still never seen it. So I think what you saw is there were some broad strokes to that plan that I think made some sense and clearly they acknowledged the differences that different places are experiencing. But the problem with the Trump administration to date is they haven't provided the testing and they're not acting on the stimulus. And these are two things, there's literally two things where the federal government could play a decisive role, getting testing to all parts of the country that need it in really great quantities. And moving right now on Stimulus 3.5 to provide the relief to cities and states that need it right now that have lost billions and billions of dollars of revenue so we can maintain basic services and start to work towards a recovery. These are two things they could be doing right now they're not doing. And particularly the stimulus, that is literally right now – I mean, the word from Washington now, Brian, is that if Donald Trump said to Mitch McConnell, you need to move this Stimulus 3.5, the Republican Senate will go along. It could be signed today, tomorrow. It could be moved on immediately by unanimous consent in the Senate. So that is the productive thing the federal government should do. Instead, we're not seeing action on that and we're being told, Hey, testing matters, but we can't help you. You know, that’s just not going to do much for us.

Lehrer: Right. They made it very clear again last night that testing is up to the states and localities around the country. And when you combine that -- and we shouldn't harp on this because there are things at the city level that you have to deal with, but when you combine that with the President's statement earlier in the week that he has total authority to tell the states what to do if he chooses to. We have a President who is claiming total authority but zero responsibility. So there we are. Dr. Harris in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hello.

Question: Hi. Thank you. Good morning. So I have a question based on science. So is that we know, as a health professional that N95 masks and gloves properly used prevent infection in nearly all cases. So the question I have –

Lehrer: And you know that – Doctor, you know, eight o'clock tonight, it takes effect in the city that everybody who's out in a public space needs to be wearing a face covering. So then what's your question?

Question: Right. Thank God. But that's not N95 masks, which is the problem. [Inaudible] why the City is not providing free, every New Yorker N95 masks and gloves and providing the instructional videos to wear them properly is beyond me. And of course [inaudible] enough. So why the City does not force factories in the city, like in World War II to provide those masks free to everyone and then actually people can get back to work and be safe.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor, Dr. Harris, I'm going to leave it there and get a response. But even before getting back to work, which is down the road, even just for going out in public under the current stay at home conditions, you are requiring the masks at eight o'clock. And he's asking you to use a kind of municipal version of the Defense Production Act and make companies in the city ramp up mask production because I don't know where to get a mask, do you?

Mayor: No. And let's be clear. So first of all, you want to really help your listeners to understand the huge difference between the N95 mask, which is a top of the line medical mask that our health care workers need to be safe in many circumstances. Versus a face covering, which I've said from the beginning, until only, you know, a couple of weeks ago there was not even evidence that the face coverings would have the impact and that that was something that was important as we understood the disease. When more data came in, our health care leadership said, you know what? Face coverings would help. Now let's tell people to use them. But that meant for an everyday in New York a bandana, a scarf or the kind of mask you can buy in a hardware store, not a sophisticated medical N95 mask. So I want to really make that a clear, sharp distinction. To Dr. Harris's question, which I appreciate, but I think it's leaving out a crucial part of the equation. N95 masks have been very hard to come by for months. We have literally been in a hand to mouth situation. I've reported it very publicly through my press conferences Brian. There were days where we were not at all sure we would have enough N95 masks for our health care professionals, for just a few days ahead. I can say at this point it looks good for next week, but it doesn't yet for the week after that. And I'm just talking about the needs of health care professionals and first responders. So I think Dr. Harris's question is a good one, but needs to recognize that the supply all over this country has been stressed and N95 masks were not something clearly made in New York City. And we've tried to ramp up production in New York City on a variety of things we need including things like the face shields for health care workers and first responders, the surgical gowns. We've been working on ventilators and now of course test kits. I’m going to see what we can do and those all have to be created from scratch because there's no homegrown industry. All of that has to be created. I’m going to see if there’s a chance to start up N95 production on a big scale.

There are other ideas out there as well about ways to sterilize N95 masks and put them back into operation. There's a lot we're looking at right now, but the only way we could talk about N95 masks for the general public is if we had a massive supply. And right now, we literally don't have enough on a regular basis and a sustained basis to even give people what we want to give them. Right now, we're on what's called a crisis standard for our health care workers and first responders. We want to get to a higher standard of protection for them, that would be job one. But for everyday New Yorkers, as our health care leaders have said in this city, the homemade options, the bandanas, the scarves protect other people, protect the community. That's the goal right now.

Lehrer: Nic in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Nic.

Question: Hi, Brian. Hi, Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much for taking my call and for everything that you both do for the city. I'm calling with regard to the situation right now at Columbia University with grad students in housing. They are in apartments, not dorms. And they find that they will be unable to pay their rent over the summer because they’re not able to sublet out their apartments, they can't get the extra jobs that they used to get, and many of these are international students who cannot leave because, you know, there are restrictions in their home countries, the borders are closed. And Columbia has made it very clear that they will not offer any rent relief during the crisis. The only thing they've done is offer $500 in a case-by-case basis for reimbursement to move out by April 22nd. So, my question for the Mayor is if the students are unable to leave and can't pay rent, how can the City protect them from retribution from the university, which is both their employer and their landlord?

Mayor: This is – I really appreciate this question and I'm astounded as you lay it out. I have not heard this before, and I'll get my team on it immediately. I'm going to ask my general counsel to follow up. I am perplexed why, if these students don't have other options, particularly those who cannot go back to their home country – why Columbia would not be more flexible. Columbia University obviously has a vast financial endowment. So, I'm going to be mindful that I haven't heard all the facts and I haven't heard the university’s side of the story, but I will work on this today with my team because something doesn't sound right about asking people to pay who can't pay or telling people they have to leave, if they don't have some place to go, especially if it's, you know, one of the wealthiest institutions in the city. So, we will follow up on that. If you’ll give your information to WNYC, I'll make sure our team follows up with you today and keeps you posted on how we're handling this.

Lehrer: Great. So, Nic, hang on, we'll take your contact information off the air. And even more widely on the question of housing – you probably know by now that tenant activists are trying to organize a widespread rent strike for many people who will owe May 1st rents in the city. As it's reported on Patch.com, for example, it says housing advocates hope as many as one million New Yorkers will participate in the May 1st rent strike to pressure Governor Cuomo to cancel rent for the duration of the stay in place order extended to May 15th and through June. Their demands also include a rent freeze for 2020 and housing for about 92,000 New York City dwellers currently without homes. Do you support the rent strike from May 1st?

Mayor: Not per say, no. I do believe the State has to act. And so, let me separate the two pieces. Look here in the city, first of all, no evictions are being allowed. We need that to be continued and we need to make sure that the eviction moratorium – we've been working with the state on this – that eviction moratorium needs to go not only through this crisis but 60 days past this crisis to protect people. So, we've ensured no evictions up to now. We need to keep that going for this crisis so that anyone who legitimately can't pay is obviously not in a situation where they would ever be evicted. And anyone who feels that is happening to them needs to call 3-1-1 because we will get you support and we'll get you a lawyer if needed to make sure that no landlord is trying to get you out of a building. That's absolutely unacceptable.

We've been pushing the State – and, again, there's been good conversations and I think there is some progress starting – pushing the state to allow the use of security deposits. So, that would immediately free up money so tenants could use their security deposits to pay rent. We've been pushing the State to come up with a plan that if you're unable to pay rent, you don't have to until you have income back and then you pay on a payment plan to repay over time. All of those changes are needed. So, I do think the state needs to act. I agree with those saying the State needs to act. I don't agree with a rent strike because there's too many folks who are trying to keep their buildings going. There’s a lot of smaller landlords in particular who if they don't have any income coming in, they're not going to be able to keep their buildings going. And then you have a very bad situation for everyone. So, we've got to strike a balance here.

On rent freeze, that's what I've called for our Rent Guidelines to do for over two million New Yorkers who live in rent stabilized housing. I'm hopeful that action will be taken soon. And then people know that they have a rent freeze for this year. But bottom line here, the State should act quickly –

Lehrer: Could there be a rent freeze for non-rent stabilized rentals?

Mayor: Again, I don't know if that is within the State's power. It may be, but I think the other things I've suggested would achieve the same impact. If the State would allow renters to use their security deposits to pay rent now and would put a clear plan in place that if you cannot pay, you have up to a year until you have to start paying and then you pay on some kind of payment plan, that kind of approach would make sense in a crisis like this.

Lehrer: Question via Twitter from listener Carolina, she asks, can someone ask him about how undocumented New Yorkers apply for the one-time payments from the immigrant emergency relief fund that you announced yesterday?

Mayor: Yes. It's a great question. Thank you, Carolina. Carolina, I'm going to speak broadly about this on purpose because I want to make sure everyone is protected in this process. The goal of this fund is to help immigrants, including those who are undocumented, who were left out of the national stimulus programs. And again, want to thank the Open Society Foundations for providing the support, thank George Soros and Patrick Gaspard who led the way on this. Those resources will go to the Mayor's Fund, they will go to grassroots organizations that work with immigrant communities, and people will have access to that to keep their families going during this crisis. I think the right way to say it is a lot of great community-based organizations that know how to reach people in need will spread the word and do so. There's not a single point of application for obvious reasons but we will make sure and those – much more importantly, those grassroots organizations know their communities, know how to reach people. The word will spread, I assure you, rapidly for those who can't get other forms of support that this is the way to get it. And I think it's something that will be very, very helpful for everyday New Yorkers who happened to be undocumented.

Lehrer: You also announced this week that beaches and pools will be closed this summer and I want to read to you from an email I've got –

Mayor: Yeah, Brian – I'm sorry Brian, I need to interrupt you because that wasn't what I announced. I announced that pools –

Lehrer: Go ahead.

Mayor: Pools are not in the City budget.

Lehrer: Okay.

Mayor: One, because we don't have any money, two because pools mean people gathering in a small space and we did not feel we could do that safely for anything we could project [inaudible] summer. Beaches I've said we are not able to open them when they would be, which is Memorial Day, which is very soon. I don't see any time soon being able to have large numbers of people on the beaches like normal, but I have not said that that's ruled out for the whole summer. I've simply said we're not in a position to open them on schedule.

Lehrer: I apologize. I always want to be as accurate as I can so thank you for that clarification. With respect to the pools. I want to read to you from an email I got from former Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, who served under Mayor Bloomberg, as you know. He sent me this this morning and he writes, “I've been very grateful for and supportive of pretty much everything Mayor de Blasio has done in response to coronavirus.” He called it spectacular, heroic, sage, and compassionate, so he doesn't hate you. But then he writes, “However, his announcement on Thursday that the City will close all of its public pools this summer, raised some serious alarms for me.” Then he goes into citing science that shows water does not transmit the virus. And he cites not only the stresses on kids in the city who can't cool off, but also the history of kids drowning, he says, in places like the Bronx River when they don't have access to safe and lifeguarded places to swim. So, have you heard these arguments and is that something you might be reconsidering?

Mayor: Well, look, I do – I appreciate the point and I don't take it lightly. I think the way it was – to be honest, I didn't see the original, I got the interpretation of it and certainly the notion of New Yorkers swimming in the rivers en masse, I just don't think is a reality. I think the Bronx River situation is real and I appreciate that point and we will have to be very careful about that and we will have to be careful about the beaches. Here's the bottom line – we've got to start from a health and safety point of view. The coronavirus has killed a huge number of New Yorkers. We are far from out of the woods and we must defeat it or else, you know, you're going to see a lot more people die and a lot more people sick and no ability to restart our lives.

So, job one is to defeat the coronavirus and if we start allowing mass gatherings at pools and beaches before we're ready, that will certainly contribute to a boomerang where the disease starts to reassert. That's unacceptable. So, when you then say, okay, we're not able to do those things yet, how do we make sure that young people in particular don't choose dangerous options? We're going to have to do a lot of education and warning to young people and their parents, we are going to have to make sure there's a lot of enforcement out at the places where they might go. And those are, you know, finite. It's not everywhere obviously. There's certain places where there's been – you know, where you could get into the water, which would be the obvious places. That's where we would put NYPD and Parks enforcement and others.

It is a very tough situation, Brian. First of all, I would love for the beaches to be opened on schedule. It's just not realistic. But I understand if you say we can't do it one way, we've got to then compensate for it with really smart enforcement to protect people. So, compared to thousands and thousands, you know, tens of thousands of more cases in the coronavirus and hundreds or thousands of more people dying from it, I think it's better safe than sorry to limit these big public gatherings. But that does not negate the point that Benepe is making that we want to be careful that there is enforcement so we don't lose a single young person who is seeking some other kind of alternative and that'll be a tough balance to strike. But that's what we'll do.

Lehrer: I know you got to go in a minute. Let me ask you two quick ones. If short answers are possible to these. One is Dr. Fauci, in his briefing last night with the president, estimated that the country would be in good shape maybe in the fall for very widespread testing. Do you have an estimate for New York?

Mayor: I want to do better than that because until you have widespread testing, you cannot get back to normal. I mean the absolute – you know, we've seen some of the good examples from around the world. You need it. I hope we can do a lot better than that. And that's including, you know, building our own homegrown test kits and trying to do that on a bigger scale. I want it – for kids to come back to school in September, we would have to have had a lot of testing in place ahead of that.

Lehrer: So you see a prospect for that for New York?

Mayor: I'm saying we have to do it if we want to get to that in September. So, one part is what we will do, but the federal governments still have to step up or I don't see how we get there.

Lehrer: And last thing, a little presidential politics. I don't see that you've endorsed Joe Biden yet. Did I miss it?

Mayor: No. I said the other day – I was asked a question, I don't know what show was on, but I said absolutely. I always said I would support the Democratic nominee. He's going to be the Democratic nominee. I absolutely support him and I'll do anything I can to help him. I have not been focused on presidential politics right now. I've been focused on keeping New Yorkers safe and healthy. But absolutely I look forward to supporting and helping Joe Biden in any way I can to become our next president.

Lehrer: Thank you, as always, Mr. Mayor. Talk to you next week.

Mayor: Take care now.

2020-04-17 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. So, everyone I talk to, New Yorkers of all walks of life, wherever I go, everyone has the same exact feeling – we all want to know when can we get back to normal? When can we get out of this? When can we start living our lives again? I think it's amazing how much people have, in the midst of this crisis, figured out all sorts of new ways to keep going, all sorts of new ways to keep connected to their loved ones, their friends, all sorts of new ways to entertain their kids and teach their kids. You know, folks are staying connected and sort of creating a whole social life, even if it's virtual. People are doing amazing things to keep that sense of community, keep that sense of heart and soul of this city alive even through this crisis. And it is a beautiful thing. It's a horrible backdrop, none of us wants to be in this, but what's beautiful is the way New Yorkers have responded. The creativity and the warmth and the kindness and the sense of making something out and nothing – even if we don't have the things we want, still finding a way to keep going and to stay connected and to stay hopeful. So, everyone wants our freedom back. We all want our lives back. We all want to experience the things we love about this city and the question is always when, when, when – how quickly can we get there? I feel that too. I want us to get back to normal as quickly as possible and I'm going to move heaven and earth to get us there. It's my responsibility to as quickly as possible take us through those stages, but I want to remind everyone we got to go through those stages. We’ve got to get out of this stage of widespread transmission of this disease. We've got to get to a much better place to be able to start getting back to normal. And that means sticking with the things we're doing that are working. And I will always say thank you to all of you for what you have done, the way you've adopted shelter in place and social distancing and made it work, made it come alive in the probably the hardest place in the whole nation to do it. But you've done it and it is moving us forward. But we have to be smart about what we do next. To get back to normal, we have to be really smart and careful about how we go through those stages. We have to make sure we move steadily and carefully and don't create a boomerang effect where we go too fast and then the disease reasserts and then we set back the timeline much longer for when we can get back to normal. So, I feel what you feel. I miss it too. I want to get us there, but I want to make sure we do it safely. In the meantime, I talked yesterday about the four things we're focused on, making sure people are healthy, safe, have food on the table, have a roof over your head. That's the focus now, beating back this disease, doing it smart – smart stages until we can get there.

Now, to get there, here's the thing. Here's the truth, there is no way to get back to normal without a huge amount of testing – testing on a citywide level, something we have never had, we've never seen since the beginning of this crisis. Now, undoubtedly, we need a lot of help from the federal government to get that done. We are not just sitting back waiting because we've been waiting a long time for that federal help that still hasn't come. We're taking matters into our own hands more and more. We finally found a way to get a large number of test kits on the open market. We finally found a way to produce our own here in New York City, which is very exciting, we're going to see how far we can take that. But we still need help from the federal government if we're really going to have the testing on the scale necessary to get us to the point where there's much, much, many fewer cases of COVID-19 where it becomes a rarity and where we can get back to normal. In the meantime, we're building out testing every day as we're finding a way to get more kits in for testing, we are building out testing every day. And what I announced earlier in the week, I want to give you some important updates on how community-based testing is going to grow over the next few days, going into next week. And this will be something you'll see more and more of, but, again, this is just a beginning compared to where we need to go, which is very widespread testing so that we can really turn the corner.

Now, to really think about what that looks like in the future, imagine that any time we needed to know if someone had this virus, at any given moment there was a test available for that person immediately when they needed it and that we could get a quick response. When someone had the corona virus and we needed to guarantee they were ready to go back to work, that we could have the test we needed exactly when we needed it and a quick response, that we could use that testing to make sure that anyone needed to be quarantined was quarantine right when they needed to be. Imagine that – how different that has been than what we’ve experienced, but testing everywhere all the time. That's where we have to get. But this additional community-based testing is going to help us a lot, because at least in the meantime we can focus on addressing some of the greatest needs in the city and some of these very painful disparities that have become clearer and clearer in this crisis. Now, to remind you, where did we focus initially? We didn't have enough testing, but the testing we had, what did we do with it? We focused on saving lives, testing for the folks who are most vulnerable, who are literally the patients in the hospitals that the doctors and nurses were most concerned about saving their lives and the test would tell them what they needed to know. That was job-one. Protecting those health care workers was the next thing we had to do to keep the hospitals going, to make sure they could serve us and if they needed to be home, if they needed to be quarantined, that they would be. And, of course, our first responders, keeping them healthy, keeping them safe, knowing who could be on the job, who needed to be home, who needed to be given care. That's how we set up with the limited testing we had. Now, we're focusing on the groups of people in this city who have been hardest hit by this disease and they're very, very pinpointed way. So, we're talking about folks and some of the lowest income communities in this city, people in communities of color that have borne the brunt of this crisis, immigrant communities, but very targeted to the places we've seen the biggest problems and the individuals who are suffering the most – obviously, we've said this for the beginning, folks who are older and have those preexisting conditions – those have been the folks who've been most vulnerable throughout this whole crisis, that's where we want to make sure the testing goes first.

So, last Sunday, I told you we'd be opening up these community testing sites around the city, all run through our public health system, Health + Hospitals, and directly serving those hard hit areas. So, today, the first centers open at Gotham Health in East New York, in Brooklyn, at Gotham Health at Morrisania in the Bronx, and the Vanderbilt Health Center in Staten Island. These will open today. On Monday, at the Sydenham Health Center in Harlem, in Manhattan; at the Queens Hospital Center on Monday as well – Health + Hospitals’ Queens Hospital Center in Queens. Those five locations, some opening today, some opening Monday. Now, what's the way it's going to work? This is specifically again about focusing on people with those preexisting conditions who are 65 or older and live in those particularly hard-hit areas. So, these test sites will be walk-in sites. It will be based on serving people who meet those particular criteria. And we'll get more details out today. The way for people to access that testing is to call 3-1-1, so that people going in, we know exactly who needs the test, who meets those criteria, comes from the community, we can tell them when to come in. There will be initially 2,400 tests per week across those sites, but that's going to ramp up quickly. I want to see that number double quickly. And that will depend, of course, on getting the test kits in that we expect momentarily. But once they're in, that will give us that supply. And the PPEs – and this has always been a bit of a struggle, to say the least. We're looking better for next week, but we have to make sure we have everything we need and, of course, the personnel as well. So, those are the things we need to put together, but I'm feeling more confident today than even a few days ago that those pieces are all going to come together, that's testing capacity up and running for those communities. As I said, some opening today, some opening Monday, and then we're going to ramp that number up as rapidly as possible. We want to reach everyone we can reach to keep people safe, that's the bottom line, and to particularly keep those safe who are most vulnerable.

We're going to accompany that with information and education, because the test is important, to say the least, but people need to know what to do with the results. And I want to remind all New Yorkers, if you test negative today, it does not mean you're out of the woods for good, and you still have to be very, very careful and cautious, particularly if you're one of those folks who is most vulnerable. It does not mean a negative test today is an all clear for the weeks ahead. It's not – got to still be very careful, still take those precautions. Positive test tells us something, of course, very important. And for folks who are vulnerable, that's a very tough moment when they get that positive, but it tells us immediately what we need to do to help them. It also confirms how important is for anyone who tests positive to isolate from the people in their life and in their household to the maximum extent possible. Now, some households can do that more easily than others depending on how your apartment or your home is laid out. There are a lot of people in this city who don't have a hell of a lot of choice because they're in a very, very tight circumstance in their home or their apartment. Some families doubled up, tripled up, particularly for folks who can't socially isolate at home properly, especially if they're symptomatic or even more so if they have a positive test, we want to make sure there's alternatives available. So, I announced yesterday, again, 11,000 hotel rooms coming online immediately to help folks who need to be quarantined. This is all moving quickly. So, anyone who needs that quarantine, who's in a situation where they can't properly socially distance from the people around them – again, they're symptomatic or they have a test positive – if they want to be in one of the hotel rooms, it will be provided to them for free. So, that's available now. We'll be acting on that immediately and it will fit directly with this community-based testing.

Okay, so that's one important piece. We also have to keep our focus always on our health care heroes. And they already are a priority for testing for sure, but we want to keep deepening those efforts. So, we are partnering with a private health care organization, One Medical, and with labor union 1199 SEIU that represents so many health care workers, and, together, we'll be opening five new sites beyond the ones I mentioned previously – five additional test sites, one per borough. Brooklyn and Queens will open now, Staten Island, the Bronx, and Manhattan will be open on Monday. So, these sites will be up and running quickly. Their testing capacity will be about 3,500 per week. And again, this is one we're going to be really clear about eligibility. The frontline health care workers who are members of 1199 SEIU, will have the opportunity to go there. Essential workers, including employees of adult care facilities and employees who care for people with disabilities, this'll be sites where they can get tested. And these people do such important work, I want to say to everyone who was in those adult care facilities, everyone who's caring for people with disabilities right now, again, you are among the unsung heroes of this crisis. It has not been easy for you. You deserve praise and appreciation and you deserve the opportunity to get the protection you need and the testing you need, and this'll be part of how that happens. And then beyond that, these sites will be open to New York City residents in each borough, 65 years old or older with preexisting conditions. So, sticking to that notion of the focus on folks who are older and have preexisting conditions. So, thank you to 1199 SEIU. Thank you to One Medical for this great effort. We're happy to partner with you and that will expand capacity greatly. Anyone needs to schedule an appointment and fits those criteria, you can call 1-8-8 – I'm sorry, 1-888-ONE-MED1 – it’s O-N-E-M-E-D, the number one. Or, go to onemedical.com and use the code NYCCARE30. So, between those two efforts, 10 new community-based testing sites in the places that need it most, scaling up fast. But again, this is a small beginning of where we – an example of where we really need to go, which is truly widespread testing so we can get out of this phase and move forward.

Now talking about getting out of this face, it's important to recognize it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to be a long fight. But if we get it right, we will thank ourselves. If we get it right the first time, months from now, we'll look back and say, thank God, we did that. One chance to get it right – that is what I believe is true for New York City. And this is a conversation I had with the President United States. I said, there's one chance to get the restart right. If you rush it, if you ignore the warning signs, if you minimize the dangers, you’re going to end up with a boomerang effect, and that's the last thing we want to see. So, we're going to do this step-by-step, be smart about it. And we understand it's going to take awhile, we understand it won't be pleasant. No one wants to go through this, but we are going to appreciate it because we're going to get it right. We're going to appreciate it when we're down the line a few months and we actually are able to steadily move towards normal and not see that boomerang effect. And so, we’ve got be smart about what to prioritize. I told you over and over, safety, health, food on the table, roof over your head – those are our core priorities. When we think about what we're going to allow and not allow, going forward, it fits those priorities exactly. So, one of the things we think about that we love – we love about this city, but doesn't fit those priorities, to be honest with you, is a lot of the special events. We look forward to them all year – the parades, the street fairs, the concerts, the festivals. It's a lot of what makes New York, New York. It's a lot of what we cherish. Literally, you know, we look forward to it 12 months a year until that day comes. We love those events, but what do we know about those events? It inherently means large numbers of people crowded together in a pretty small space. That's New York City, that's who we are, but guess what – that goes against everything that we need to do to fight back the coronavirus. So, we have to be smart. We love those things. We'll miss them when we don't have them, but they will be back. They will be back. And by knowing when it's time to temporarily let them go so we can get to a greater goal, we're going to actually look back and say that was the smart thing to do. So, right now, events in this city that had been permitted by our City government through April, those were already canceled. And we miss those already, but now it is time to be clear that non-essential City-permitted events for may need to be canceled as well. Not happy to tell you that, but I want to tell you the honest truth. It is the smart thing to do to protect the health and safety of New Yorkers. I don't think many of you watching right now are particularly surprised by this concept, but I think it's important to say it out loud and lock it in so people know what's really going on and so, people can plan, including these people who put together these amazing events. And we really honor them, we appreciate them, they know they do something so special for New York City every single year. They deserve some certainty too. So, things like the Brooklyn Half Marathon, things like Summer Stage in Central Park, things that were going to be happening in May or starting in May, we are making clear we're not issuing any permits for the month of May, We're canceling those events. Now, I want to be clear, these kinds of permits are for special events, community events, cultural events. This does not mean permits necessary for any kind of medical site – those, of course, will continue to be approved; for hygiene stations, those will be continue to be approved; and for anything related to food, one of those four basics we're focused on – farmer's markets, meal preparation, meal delivery, any sites needed for that will, of course, be permitted. And the same goes as I said, medical sites, those field hospitals, all that, of course.

Now, June will be here soon. And again, June is when we start to really feel the summer and even want those, those big, wonderful events more. But we’ve got a lot we’ve got to get done to be safe for June. We are far from out of the woods. So, we're talking to the people organize those big June events and a lot of really, really major events in June that we cherish. But we're talking to the people who really have the most important ownership stake in those events, the folks who organize them, put them together, a lot of them, spend the whole year planning them. We're talking to them now. This is important decision to make, whether it really makes sense to have those giant gatherings – and some of them are huge in June – whether it makes sense to have them or not. We'll talk it through the organizers. I'll come back soon with an update for all of you. But this is an area, again, if we have to make particular sacrifices, I think those huge gatherings which run so much risk for the health and safety of New Yorkers, those are things we're going to have set a real high bar on whether we want to continue that in the short term, because job-one is to get out of this crisis and move us forward.

Now, I want to talk about another thing that we need to do to get us out of the worst of this crisis, and it gets back to what New Yorkers have done so well. You have been absolute heroes at social distancing at putting on those face coverings. The shelter in place, stay at home, people have been amazing. You all had to learn how to do it in a few weeks, it goes against everything we're used to, but you've done it. Now, one of the things that I've emphasized is to keep us all moving forward, we got to keep doing that and we need enforcement sometimes to make sure that everyone understands. And NYPD, FDNY, Parks Department, Sheriff's Office, Buildings Department, many, many agencies have participated. They've done a great job. Part of why they've been able to identify and act on any problem – you know, a group of people gathering on a street or in a park; there's an overcrowded subway train; there's a grocery store or a supermarket that has aligned that's not socially distanced – we've seen these problems. Part of why we've seen a fast response by enforcement agencies is that people have been calling 3-1-1, and we need that. We need those calls to 3-1-1 to target where a problem is so we can get enforcement out immediately, solve the problem, save lives, protect lives. Okay. That depends, of course, on the 3-1-1 system functioning well. And, historically, it's functioned very well. It's actually a great part of New York City, something that actually has worked for so many New Yorkers, to have that place to turn 24/7 and get real answers and guidance. But there are problems that have emerged in the 3-1-1 system and I have been asking my team over the last weeks to do more and more quality control to check, because it seemed quite evident that we were depending on 3-1-1 more and more and we have to make sure it was working for everyone. And I want to just take this opportunity to thank everyone at 3-1-1, those folks who every day answer your questions and follow up on your needs and connect to you the right people. They are doing incredible work. I visited with them a few weeks ago. Thank you to everyone who works at 3-1-1, we need you more than ever. That is the obvious truth. But there are real questions about whether people can get through the right way, get the information they need in this crisis we're in. So, I want to thank one of our journalists on this city who's a veteran journalists – done great work for years, Juliet Papa of 1010 WINS, who raised the question to me yesterday at my press conference. And I want to say, today I'm praising a Juliet, but I want to say to all journalists out there, anytime you raise these concerns, I want to make a point to say thank you. Several journalists raised to me a similar issue – this was related to food – both what Juliet raised and some of our other colleagues raised about food delivery is not happening at Independence Plaza. That issue got addressed quickly, but I'm very appreciative that it was raised. This is, you know, the free press at its best, seeing things that need to be addressed, raising them so they can get fixed. So, Juliet, special thanks to you because you did the smart thing and you tested the 3-1-1 system yourself, and you found it was not providing the service that was needed for someone who was hungry that I said has to be the standard. A New Yorker is hungry, they need food, they call. If they're the kind of person who's vulnerable, who can't get out of the house, a senior can't get out of the house, a disabled person, they need a delivery, we need to make that delivery happen quickly, or we need to help get them connected to a local food pantry or soup kitchen who can get them food quickly. Whatever it takes, we need a system that works and works every time. So, as a result of Juliet's call, some important work was done yesterday. And I want to give a special thank you to Commissioner Jesse Tisch, who is our information technology leader in this administration. She did some great work helping to address these issues along with Deputy Mayor Laura Anglin. Thank you to both of you. So, here's the deal, 3-1-1 calls have grown exponentially during this crisis. Before – so, go back to a February – typically, 3-1-1 got something like 55,000 calls a day. The peak in April was 200,000 calls in a single day. So, to be able to address this level of demand, we're taking some immediate steps literally since yesterday morning. One, more and more we're going to prioritize for 3-1-1 that it'd be about the response to the coronavirus. There are a lot of other things that people turn to 3-1-1 for. We're going to more and more encourage people to go online and get that information, or use the 3-1-1 app. That's where we want to try and get people who have non-COVID-19 concerns more and more. But what we're doing specifically at 3-1-1 for folks who call in – and remember, a lot of folks are going to use the phone, the go-to for a lot of people will be the phone, particularly for seniors. We want – if you need food, you get an immediate response. Not be put on hold for 10 minutes, you get an immediate response. You get immediate clarity about when food will start to arrive.

So, that's going to be the standard, going forward to 3-1-1 – if you're calling about food, you go to the front of the line, you get an immediate response from a human being. We also want to make sure that things are absolutely crucial, like calling in those social distance violations, those must go to 3-1-1, or, if someone can report it online, that's even better, faster. You can go to nyc.gov. And now, you can send a photo directly. If you see a social distancing violation, take a photo, text it to 3-1-1-6-9-2. So again, just take that photo, text it to 3-1-1-6-9-2, or through the 3-1-1 app. All we need is the photo and the specific location. Just put the address down and we're good to go, and enforcement will happen right away. And then to keep 3-1-1 keeping up – to make sure, keep up with this demand, particularly the COVID-related issues, we're going to hire 120 more staff for 3-1-1 immediately. So, again, anyone who's got any concern related to the coronavirus, if you can go online to nyc.gov or use the app, that's ideal. But if you need to call 3-1-1, of course, the priority will be on 3-1-1 for coronavirus calls. The non-COVID, calls, if you do need to call through on one of us, the only way that you can communicate and you have a real concern, even if it's not related to coronavirus, please, whenever possible, try and do that later on the evening or on a weekend when it's a little slower. That would be really helpful if you can do that. So, you're going to see a much stronger a capacity at 3-1-1 immediately, because I am 100 percent clear with all of my colleagues in City government, those four basics, keeping people healthy, keeping them safe, making there's food on people's table, making sure there's a roof over their head. That's what we're doing. That's how we're going to handle this crisis. The food part we cannot miss on. If someone needs a meal, they need a meal, they need it right away. We've got to make sure that happens.

Now, I want to do the part of the report, the update each day that is in many ways the foundation of everything we'll do going forward, which is tracking our progress and what's going to help us on the pathway to getting back to normal. We have a high bar. We have a high bar here because we have to make sure we get it right. So, look at our indicators today – and the first one, again, is the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 cases and that number went down, thankfully. Again, two-day lag in the data, so from April 14th, 386; to April 15th, 329 – that's very good. The daily number of people in ICUs across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that number went down as well from 887 to 874, also moving in the right direction. Now, percentage of people tested positive for COVID-19 – citywide, the number went down from 55 percent to 46 percent. The only indicator that went in the wrong direction, and only by a little bit, was the public health lab testing – went up from 78 percent to 82 percent. Look, this was a good day – definite movement in right direction, not a perfect day yet. We want to have those really clear, positive days, good days, moving in the same direction over the course of 10 days to two weeks to start to then talk about the next steps we can take. But this is progress nonetheless. It all goes back to what all of you are doing and this is clearly a better set of indicators than what we saw over the last couple of days. So, definite progress and thanks to all of you for what you're doing.

Okay, speaking of thanks, want to thank some people who have really stepped up for us. And the, the big story here is what New Yorkers have done for each other, and the heroism of New Yorkers, and the ingenuity of New Yorkers, but we also want to thank everyone who's come forward to help us. And a lot of great examples today, helping our health care workers in particular. I want to thank Delta Airlines and Southwest Airlines that are providing free flights to get doctors and nurses and health care workers here to serve us, that we appreciate that deeply and previously have thanked United and JetBlue – really thank the airlines for stepping up to help make sure we have the health care personnel we need. To Harry's, which specializes in men's grooming, I want to thank them, because we all know so many of our medical personnel barely have had any time to take care of themselves in the middle of this fight. Harry's has donated a $500,000 worth of razors and lotions to Health + Hospitals health care workers. Thank you, very much appreciate it. Target just gave $50,000 to our fund for public health – thank you. Peloton – 90,000 N95 masks – this is fantastic. This is really one of the personal protective equipment that we need the most. So, the N95 masks, particularly appreciate it. Thank you to Peloton. Americares has sent us 300,000 pieces of PPE equipment. That includes masks, gloves, eyewear, very, very much appreciate it. Thank you, Americares. Now focusing on our students, our young people, In Motion Entertainment, donating 6,400 pairs of headphones to students in homeless shelters and temporary housing to help them really do well with remote learning. That's very much appreciate. And now many, many good examples today.

Here's the biggest, and this one's really fantastic, I want to thank the Open Society Foundations. They are working literally all over the world to address COVID-19 and I want to really appreciate the Open Society Foundations. They're so often looking to how to help people where, you know, they're not getting the help they deserve and need and they're oftentimes there even before governments are there and protecting people and uplifting people that others don't, so I'm so appreciative. $35 million flowing through the City of New York to help people in need. $20 million for the Immigrant Emergency Relief Fund and that will work through our Mayor's Fund. That is to help immigrants who are bearing the brunt of this crisis in so many ways. And that includes those immigrants who will not be getting any of that federal relief, and we have to be clear, there are neighbors, that are follow New Yorkers, they're part of our communities, but they are not being included in a lot of those important relief programs. I am so thankful for those relief programs to help everyday working people. We need them. But there's a lot of people who are working people that happen to be undocumented, who've been left out. This money will help them to have the basics for their families and keep going through this. And $15 million for our Fund for Public Schools for online learning, and to help provide support and care for the children of essential workers. That's fantastic. That's going to help us a lot.

A deep and profound thanks to George Soros for his kindness and generosity and everyone at the Open Society Foundations who made this happen and a special thank you to a dear friend of mine, Patrick Gaspard who runs the Open Society Foundations. Patrick used to work right here in this building. We worked here together during the administration of Mayor Dinkins and loves the city he grew up in deeply and has really come through for us. So to my old friend Patrick Gaspard, thank you brother. This is tremendously helpful and it's going to help so many New Yorkers.

So that shows you that a lot of people are stepping up, and that shows you that people see New Yorkers fighting back. They see New Yorkers helping each other. They see the amazing heroic health care workers, first responders. We see the world stirred by what New Yorkers are doing and the fact that folks are coming to the rescue in so many ways is because they see what New Yorkers are doing and they're moved by it. They're inspired by it. They're touched by it. We need our leaders in Washington to feel that same feeling. They're the missing piece here. Look, the federal government has been the elephant in the room in this entire crisis. We needed the testing. It wasn't there. We still need it. It's still not here, but the federal government has a chance to get it right and they could get it right literally today.

So I'm appealing directly to President Trump and to Senate Leader McConnell, here's a chance to do something heroic. Here's a chance to be as good as New Yorkers, and particularly in the case of President Trump, here's a chance to step up for your hometown. Look, all of you like to praise our health care workers and our first responders, all the leaders in Washington, but President Trump, Leader McConnell, don't just praise our health care workers, don't just praise our first responders, actually help them. There is right now an opportunity, negotiations happening right now in Washington on what's being called Stimulus 3.5. With literally the stroke of a pen, you could ensure that our health care workers, our first responders, all the public servants of the city have the security of knowing that their work can continue. That New York City will be able to provide the basic services necessary to help us out of this crisis and to help us towards recovery. Anyone who wants to see a recovery, anyone who wants to see the economy restart needs to understand that the American economy does not restart without the nation's largest city, without the economic center of this country. This is one of the great economic engines of America right here.

So morally, Mr. President, morally Mr. Leaders, you should want to make sure that that Stimulus 3.5 includes the money to make New York City whole, New York State whole, all cities and states hold that have lost billions upon billions of dollars in revenue and will never get it back and won't be able to fund basic services without it. You should want to do it because it's the right thing to do, but if you need a pragmatic reason, you will not be able to restart your economy, our economy, unless you get this right. This could happen today, literally today. So look, I've asked and I've asked nicely. Mr. President, your hometown needs you. Leader McConnell, your nation needs you. Let's get this right, right now. Everyone knows right now you two could get it done. And Mr. President, I dare say if you were to say out loud, we need to Stimulus 3.5 and we need to make sure that all cities and states are made whole, that are lost revenues replaced by the federal government. If you said it out loud, I guarantee you the Republican Senate would go along, so it's time to say it out loud.

With that everyone, let me turn to a few words in Spanish before we turn to questions from our colleagues in the media.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Okay, we will now turn to media questions and please let me know the name and the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: We'll now begin our Q and A. As a reminder, we have Dr. Barbot and Dr. Katz also available answer questions.

Mayor: Speak up a little more.

Moderator: The first question, we'll go to Andrew from NBC.

Question: Hi Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes. Andrew, how are you doing?

Question: Good, thanks. I hope you're doing well. A question is about the June events and the discussion you're now having with the organizers. Based on what you said yesterday, which is that you cannot envision a scenario where the beaches could be open this summer with groups of people. What is the discussion even about with these June organizers? Is there any scenario, for example, where the Pride Parade takes place?

Mayor: It's a great question, Andrew. Look, and again, I'm the first to say – it's important to frame this – none of us knows yet the future of what's going to happen with the coronavirus because Lord knows the coronavirus has thrown us a curve ball more than once and there's still no one on Earth or fully understands this disease. What I said about the beaches was we can't give you a plan to open the beaches because we don't know what's going to happen going forward. I would love it if we had sustained good news and progress and we could drive down those cases to such a small number that then the day could come where we could open the beaches. That would be amazing. But I'm trying to be honest with New Yorkers that I can't see that yet because we don't have the facts to back it up. As you just saw, we did the indicators for today, they were better but they're still not even beginning to be what we need them to be.

So when it comes to the events, again, we're doing them step by step. It's – now we’re in the second half of April, there's time to make sense of things. But I think your underlying point is fair. Can I envision as early as June mass gatherings like some of these huge events, they're beautiful events, but they're really mass gatherings. Hundreds of thousands of people, in some cases more than a million. I can't see it. But I want to talk to event organizers. I want my team to talk to them. I want to see what they're feeling. Look, I suspect a lot of them, from what I've heard so far, they don't feel confident that they can do the events properly. They don't feel confident that they could keep them safe.

So I want to hear what they want to do and I suspect some of them are going to say, hey, we're just not – we just don't feel good about it and we would prefer to have certainty, but we want to have that conversation because these again are truly huge important events. We'll do that quickly and we'll have the announcement quickly because we want to give people a clear picture going forward. But I think this is the thinking we're going to have to do from this point on is what kind of decisions do we have to make when to stay ahead of things, but to always focus on this number one truth, we got to get it right. We got one chance. We cannot allow the disease to boomerang back. So I don't see it for June, but we're going to have the conversation carefully and then have an announcement real soon.

Moderator: The next question is, Juliet from 1010 WINS.

Question: Yeah. Hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Good morning, Juliet.

Question: Yes. And thank you for your very kind words and your response. You know, we're all out here trying to help. I followed up, as you asked, and I have a two-part question. I made the second call this morning to 3-1-1 and this is after WINS received many emails and tweets regarding, you know, various problems with the food distribution system. So I am glad that is being addressed as you said. So the call went much better today. I was directed to a food specialist who could register me, provide an interpreter, and directed me to food pantry locations, all well done and all I was – I was on hold for like a minute. We did have some emails yesterday involving language barrier, however. A Mexican family in the South Bronx had a language issue trying to get through on 3-1-1 and another pointed out that the Arthur Cunningham School in Brooklyn is listed as a free meal location, but that it’s stores were closed and that there was no personnel there April 6th and April 8th. So I guess I'm asking how will you be addressing that? What's online in coordination with what's out there on the street?

Mayor: Juliet, I give you points for persistence. I'm very much appreciative because this is exactly what helps us, honestly. We – I keep telling everyone on my team and they're all working through this crisis, you know, literally every day, 12, 14, 15 hours a day, nonstop since the beginning. So people are doing their damndest. But I keep saying quality control, a thing from the perspective of everyday New Yorkers trying to get access to this. So I again appreciate what you're doing to make sure that things are really what they're supposed to be. And I'm the first to say in a crisis, you know, it's understandable sometimes things are not what they're supposed to be because just there's so much going on, some signals get missed, but that's not acceptable to me. I understand it, but it doesn't make it any better. So the school you mentioned, we're going to follow up on that immediately. That's unacceptable entirely because we need people to go to those free meal locations and have total confidence that the meals will be there when they're supposed to be. If not, I have family who go hungry. That's unacceptable. So we'll follow up on this immediately to understand what happened to that location and fix it.

The translation is supposed to be available instantaneously. So again, that's another issue we'll address. If that isn't, there's something profoundly wrong because that's an – way before the crisis that was supposed to be available for anyone and everyone who asked for it or obviously needs it. We'll fix that immediately. That should be easy to fix. But I'm glad you are only on hold for a minute. I don't even want you to be on hold for a minute, is the truth. I'm going to keep pushing people that sometimes I get it, if just a whole lot of people called in simultaneously, you know, just dumb luck. I get it. Sometimes someone might have to be on hold even for a very, very brief period of time. But my goal is to not even have that and I'll tell you why, Juliet. Because I'm particularly concerned about a senior or someone vulnerable who is feeling worried, who's anxious, who doesn't literally know where their meals are going to be coming from and many of whom are not going to be confident when they're making that call. I wish they would assume that everyone's going to care and be there for them. But a lot of people, you know, understandably feel a little hopeless or feel like they're not being seen and heard. I don't want anyone to ever feel that.

So if someone calls, I want them to know immediately they're getting help. So I'm glad you had a better experience today. I want to make it better than that, even. But we will follow up for sure on these particular missteps and get them fixed. And again, thank you to you and to all your colleagues in the media. I will always endeavor in this crisis to say thank you, when you point out these things to us because I'm telling everyone we need quality control and I know people are trying to do it, but we're going to need even more and you guys are helping us to do that. So anytime you helped me do this work better, I will make sure to thank you.

Moderator: Next is Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. My question has to do with the focus on low-income neighborhoods for testing. I'm interested, first of all, how soon the test results will come. But mainly, I'm trying to figure out what's the rationale for focusing on a few neighborhoods other than to demonstrate that your administration cares about them. Now I don't see you yourself, said you test negative one day, you can test positive the next day, and we're a city in which, as you know, is a mosaic in which people are traveling around the entire city. So I'm not sure I understand exactly why a resident of the Upper East Side or Upper West Side or Dumbo isn't as important to the city in terms of testing as these neighborhoods.

Mayor: Now, Henry, respectfully, I know it's an honest question. I appreciate that you often ask very thoughtful questions. But this one I'm just going to contest. It's not about whether people are important. Now, everyone's important. Every New Yorker we're here to serve and everything we're doing is for 8.6 million people. This is about sharp, clear disparities that are becoming clearer all the time, that align immediately to things that we know that are facts. We know more and more, not only what general kinds of communities are bearing the brunt, but specific neighborhoods that are bearing the brunt. We know the kind of people, the kinds of individuals who are most vulnerable are folks who are older, have preexisting conditions, and in so many of those neighborhoods, lower incomes, less access to health care for a long time, particularly vulnerable people. That's what we've been seeing with all the data that's coming out. By getting to people quickly, as often as we can with the limited testing we have now, but again, something I expect to grow greatly over time, we're going to be able to protect people. 

If someone is infected, we have a greater chance of protecting them if we know that. If they're not, that's good news, but we're going to keep educating people to never get overconfident about it. It is not perfect. Perfect would have been 100 percent widespread testing from day one, but it will help in a targeted fashion. And what we're talking about here, 6,000 tests a week to begin between the two initiatives, that's going to ramp up greatly. If you're one of those 6,000 individuals who's vulnerable and you're getting the testing, it's very important to you and we're going to keep getting it to more and more people over time. So no, it is not a statement of anything but focusing on the people whose lives are in greatest danger. And that's what we'll continue to do

Moderator: Next, we have Anna from the Daily News.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to see if you had any response to some Council legislation that Corey Johnson is introducing next week that would require the city to close streets to cars. They say up to 75 miles is the goal. I wanted to see if that's something that you would be willing to work with them on and if you could talk about it in context of a lot of the stuff happening in summer that is going to be canceled or potentially canceled like pool hours and beaches. So maybe streets would be an alternative for kids to just get some air.

Mayor: Yeah. Anna, I'm always, always ready to talk with the Council, with Speaker Johnson and the Council about any idea they have. Over these last years there’s been a real partnership and a lot of good work together and we've always been able to resolve issues positively.

On this particular issue, the important point for me is safety - health. That's what it comes down to. The safety issue, the health issue. Whatever we do isn't helping us to turn the corner on this crisis. Is it keeping New Yorkers safe? The proposal – I haven't seen the details. I'll look forward to seeing the details, but the proposal I think builds on some of the notions we've seen in other parts of the country. But again, and we talked about Oakland the other day, very, very different realities and plans that would not work here, if adopted the way they were in other places.

So I want to make sure that anything we do with our streets keeps in mind the following, that we do not put any New Yorkers in danger, we do not create a situation where people think they can walk in the middle of the street, but in fact there's still vehicles there. We do not create a situation where emergency vehicles and crucial deliveries can't get through. We do not create a situation where we need to use enforcement personnel we still don't have enough of drawing them off of other things that are crucial. These are my concerns. This – you know, we're going to look at how everything evolves – maybe the situation opens up over time and we have other options. So I’m going to hold a high bar for that. But we look forward to a real conversation with the Council.

Moderator: Next is Marcia from CBS.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Marcia, how are you?

Question: Good. I actually have a follow-up question about summer. I'm wondering, you know, given the fact that we often have a lot of hot days, heat-waves, hundred degree days in New York City, I wonder if you're working on a plan or you're going to work on a plan to what you will do in terms of, you know, opening up streets, opening up parks, allowing cooling centers to open because people have no – right now there's no pools, there's no beaches. You've canceled a lot of public events. People are going to want to leave their hot apartments. What will they do? Will you need to have the NYPD do special enforcement? And also if somebody were to give you $12 million to open the pools, like a private donor, would you accept that as a possible solution? Especially in these hot days when you know probably tempers are going to flare, people are want are going to want to go out and get out of their hot apartments. What's the city going to do?

Mayor: Excellent questions. So, okay, thank God it is April 17th. So we have some time to plan, but this is exactly the kind of thing we're going to be going into planning mode on now. Your first question, absolutely crucial. While we're dealing with one crisis, one problem, we can't take our eye off of other problems. So today we're not dealing with heat waves, but we sure did last summer, so we should be ready. You know, when you think about June, July, August, that's when we have to be ready for and I think you're exactly right. If we don't have some of the options we're used to having four providing cooling, what do you do? And I think what will be important in the discussion with our health care leadership is how do you balance the factors. If we're at that point where we still need to practice social distancing, you could in principle have a cooling center, for example where folks could go to get cool but with clear social distancing rules.

Now the pools are hard and this is something we're grappling with. We did not put the pools in the budget at this point because of everything. Because we have taken a huge hit on revenue and we just don't have the money to spend. But also because if there's something that defines people getting together in a small space, it's, you know, lots and lots of – I've been to the pools in summer. Last summer I visited a number of the public pools. I mean it’s a huge number of people crammed together, there’s locker rooms, there's lines, it's everything you don't want if you're trying to still use a strategy of shelter in place and social distancing. So the pools didn't make sense for a variety of reasons.

It's not just if a donor came along, we would be very grateful for anyone who wanted to help us out, but the pools until we are in a much better situation, health and safety wise with this disease, the pools present immediate challenges. But I think your bigger point is an excellent one. We have to have a plan to prepare for the potential of a hot summer and make sure we can keep people safe in that vein. We will, we will for sure. And we'll publish it when we have it, but it will be a different kind of plan than what we've had in the past.

Moderator: Next, we have Julia from the Post.

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor. Good morning. I'm wondering if you can tell us where do you see the city coming in on the reopening scale for President Trump's plan? You know, he listed June, July, August, September. Where are we at? And then I just wondered if you could respond to former Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe who said that if you close pools, city kids, largely minority kids who don't know how to swim, are going to get relief in the city, rivers and, park ponds and lakes and drown.

Mayor: Yeah. I just fundamentally disagree with him. We've seen already, New Yorkers of all ages adapt to this really, really tough crisis and we have to protect people and we cannot set up a situation where we gather large numbers of people together and then exacerbate the coronavirus crisis again. We're going to make sure that whatever we face up ahead, there's going to be a lot of enforcement out there, a lot to protect people. But no, we do not see, and we've never seen our young people swimming in city rivers in large numbers that just, I don't buy that. I think it's right to say whatever we do, we have to be careful. Yes, we need enforcement. Yes, but no, no, you cannot say, let's do something that's going to exacerbate the coronavirus crisis and put people's health and safety in danger because we fear some other outcome. No, let's do the smart thing and then make the adjustments we need to, to keep people safe. That's to that point.

To the point about where we are on the spectrum, we're obviously different from any other places. Julia. We have to be smart and careful. We have borne the brunt. We've been the epicenter. We're the most densely populated city in the country. We have special challenges here. We're going to be careful. We're going to be smart. So I think, you know, the plans that have been put forward so far are very broad, obviously. It's clear that we're going to take this slowly and carefully and we need our indicators. One of the things we have, which I actually think predated some of what the President's put forward is we put out very clear indicators that we've said have to move in the same direction for 10 days to two weeks to even begin to start trying to relax some of the standards and then to do that to see if it's working. [inaudible] keep watching those indicators. It has to keep working. So no, I think we're going to slow and careful. Other places may feel that can forge ahead and they better be right if they do that, they better make sure they know what they're doing and they're doing it right and they better be watching their indicators carefully. We're going to make sure we prove that we're getting out of the woods before we take some of those steps.

Moderator: Last question for today goes to Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Mayor: Hey, Mr. Mayor and everyone on the call. I wanted to ask – it's a two-parter. I'll be quick though. The first is the city's Health + Hospitals announced today that 26 of their employees working in city hospitals died but they haven't released where they were working or who they were. And I'm curious why there is this sort of lack of information being shared, and the second is and it's bouncing off Julia’s question, do you really think that you can responsibly say that people won't go in the ocean when it's 95 degrees if there's no lifeguards, they go in unguarded beaches even when there isn't a global pandemic. So do you have a plan to expedite this plan? You will you expedite the release of this plan because you have a lot of worried people about what's going to happen at the city’s beaches this summer? Thank you.

Mayor: Yeah. So wait, Katie, on the second part, I'm going to speak to that about the first part again. I'm sorry I was distracted for a moment on, did you have that or do you want to just to repeat it.

Question: Oh, which one do you need me to repeat? I'm sorry.
Mayor: First part of your question.

Question: First. Is Health + Hospitals, 26 employees. It was announced that they died. They won't release where they work or who they were. I want to know why this data isn't being released. And the second is safety.

Mayor: Thank you. Look, again in the middle of a crisis, the first thing has been saving lives and you know, making sure we were doing all we could to protect people. And I remind you as recently as Sunday, April 5th, we expected it to be going into a huge upsurge and that's where all energy was going to make sure the hospital beds, the equipment, the doctors and nurses were ready. In the last days we've had a chance to have a little bit of a relief and do more work on things like giving updates about specific things that happen and where they've happened. And that's important. So yes, I agree with you. We need to keep getting out more and more information. I'll talk to Health + Hospitals and certainly let them know it's important to put out the details. We'll do that.

The question of the beach, that I want to separate the point that was made about the rivers versus the beaches. My point was we have not seen over the years – I've been watching for a long time, we have not seen large numbers of city kids swimming in our rivers in generations. So that was my point. I do not believe that is going to happen. If we saw anything like that, we would create the enforcement to deal with it. I think your point about beaches is a very different point. I understand that there'll be a temptation and we have to guard against it and that's going to be a lot of enforcement. The beaches are there, but they are a finite area. We can put out a lot of enforcement to protect against it. But again, when you think about not doing something that makes the crisis worse, this is the bottom line. The pools don't, I don't even think I have to lay it out to people. I think people are smart. Lines of people to go into the pool, then they go into the locker room and the pool, which is a small area. Then they go into the pool, which is a small area. You could attempt to do that with social distancing. Good luck to you. I think you'd have a very, very tough experience and we don't have the money for it. The beaches are big open spaces. That's true, but big open spaces historically where a huge number of people gather and we are not in a position to do that yet. I'm now simply making sure the opposite problem doesn't happen, that people go there of their own volition and they're hot and they want to go in the water and it becomes dangerous – we have to guard against that. We will have a plan to guard against that and we will have a plan to deal with heat waves, but we're not going to exacerbate the crisis before us because this is what's killing people right now. This is what's putting people in danger right now and if we don't turn the corner, we'll be in this state for a long time. So I'm not going to, you know, say yes to something that I think will make the situation worse, but we will protect people. If we have to come up with new ways to do it, of course, we will.

Anymore?

Moderator: We have time for one more. Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask you about some of the budget cuts. There's been some concern about how the cuts affect young people specifically lower-income young people and you've already been asked some of these questions about the pools and some of the other programs, but do you have any sort of plan to mitigate that specifically for young people or lower-income young people – the impact of some of these programs not being available that summer?

Mayor: Yeah, Jeff, what we are working on now is, you know, different scenarios. We just could not both because of the financial crisis we're in, but also just because it was so unclear what would be possible this summer. We couldn't move ahead spending a lot of money when we're still at a point where literally no one's supposed to be traveling around who’s non-essential. No one's supposed to be gathering. It just didn't make sense. We're going to have ready a variety of options. Department of Education's working on this right now. If we're in a very tough situation like we're in now, what would we do to continue distance learning and to do things to engage young people from home over the summer? If the situation improves, what are our options? That's being planned out right now. But the traditional summer programming was just, it was not possible to approve it in this atmosphere.

Again, I think our path out of this crisis will take time. So we'll do everything we can possibly do online and giving kids options they can use from their home. And then if we see, you know, a real break in the clouds, if we see real sustained progress, actual indicators that are factual, telling us we can start to turn the corner, then we'll do that carefully, slowly. We'll keep watching those indicators. That might open up the possibility of doing some things differently. Even as I said with the beaches, I'm saying right now we're not going to be in a position to open them next month when they would normally open. Let's imagine a scenario where we had absolute proof that we had turned the corner where there's very few cases anymore, there’s strong containment. That's a scenario where you could talk again about opening beaches and other activities for young people. So we'll have different scenarios ready. But the physical ones, the ones where people gathered together in large numbers, those just can't be approved until we see constant progress. We'll have plan A and plan B ready for sure.

Okay. Everyone. Thank you. And just, you know, remembering that we know that what we've been doing is helping us towards that day. We want to get back to normal. Stick to the plan, cause it's working. We're working every day to get that testing we need. Again, we need the federal government to come forward, especially with that stimulus support, that's going to be absolutely crucial to getting back to normal. Think of it this way, New Yorkers, every one of you are doing what you're supposed to do. Our health care workers are doing what they're supposed to do. Our first responders are doing what they're supposed to do. So many people are stepping up. Washington needs to step up, make us whole financially so we can survive so we can provide basic services. Help us, help ourselves with testing, and that's the pathway to getting back to normal. Won't be easy, but we will get there together.

Thank you.

2020-04-20 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. Well, we start a new week. And as we start this week, it's a chance to really, think about something that's kind of different than what we normally think about. I want everyone to just take a minute, really take a minute to break out of whatever you're doing right now, whatever you normally would do this time of day, even the middle of this crisis, and put yourself in the shoes of the people who are saving lives right now. Think about our doctors, our nurses, our health care workers. For a moment, try to feel, try to imagine what their lives had been like for these last two months. You, every one of us has some kind of daily routine, and we're trying to make sense of our daily routines in the middle of this crisis, but think about the daily routine for a doctor, for a nurse, for anyone in one of our hospitals and how it really is anything but routine what they're going through right now. They wake up each morning and go directly into battle. That's the reality they face today and they have been for weeks and weeks. They all are in the places that are the epicenter of this epicenter that is New York City. And you think about this crisis affecting our whole nation, our city has been the epicenter, but our hospitals have been the place where this horrible, painful crisis has played out most deeply. And they, these heroes, have been the ones who just every single day walk through those doors to confront whatever is thrown at them. Now, they are fighting an enemy they've never seen before and they're fighting an enemy that the rest of us fear. But they go to face every single day. They do that thing we always talk about with first responders, then run toward the danger. Day after day, these heroes are saving lives, and it's even more powerful, more profound to think about the fact that they're fighting an enemy, they cannot see. They're fighting an enemy no one fully understands, but they have not for a moment run from that responsibility or shirk from that responsibility. They keep fighting.

Now, these are warriors fighting a different kind of war than we've ever seen. And we would never send our warriors into battle without armor, without ammunition. We would never do that. When you think about a soldier, when you think about our armed forces, we would never imagine sending someone to battle and saying, oh, you know what, we don't have a helmet for you, we don't have a gun for you. That would be literally unthinkable. So, we have to understand that for these heroes in our hospitals, the personal protective equipment is their armor, is their ammunition. All the things they need, the equipment, the supplies, are to keep them alive and protect them, protect their families so they can keep fighting this war. And we work every day to get them what they need. And yet, we see the profound challenge that every city, every state, every country on earth is trying to find the exact same things for their health care workers and there's simply not enough in this country, there's not enough in this world. And so, it's always a race against time. So, we're going to keep talking about these PPEs. But I don't want you to hear, you know, think of a product on a shelf somewhere, I want you to think about the armor for our heroes, the ammunition for our soldiers in this battle. I want you to recognize how hard they have been to come by and how we have to fight every single day to find everything we need. And that's why we're going to build more and more of these things and manufacturing and create them right here in New York City because it's the right thing to do. And we literally don't have a choice. We're going to keep demanding the federal government provide us what we need for these heroes, but we know those demands sometimes are met, sometimes they're not. We're going to scour the market all over the nation, all over the world, but we know how unreliable that has been. So, the point is to think of each of these. These items is exactly what we say, the personal protective equipment – think about protecting our heroes. And now, I'm going to talk to you about where we stand. I think it's yet another reminder of how every week, every day this is a fight to stay one step ahead of this crisis to make sure we protect people. But it's never been easy since the very beginning and it won't be easy going forward either until we get to a very much better place.

So, let me update you on where we stand with our supply of personal protective equipment and the other things we need, the equipment we need. And there is good news in the first instance, because, compared to a few weeks ago, we definitely have a better situation. I've talked to you a lot about Sunday, April 5th. That was a crucial day where it looked like the supplies and equipment were not going to be there when we needed them and the crisis was going to grow. And, thank God, the crisis to some extent has leveled off and more supplies and equipment have come in. But, again, we are far from out of the woods. We're just in better shape than we were at the worst point. And remember, I want to say this because our health care professionals deserve for all of us to understand this, what we're providing them is still have that crisis standard that the CDC has set – the Centers for Disease Control. It means in a wartime dynamic, in a crisis dynamic, this is a level of protection that will still help them. It's by no means the level of protection we want to achieve in better times. We want to give them so much more. So, by that crisis standard, we do have a sufficient supply for this week. We have begun, it'll get us through to Sunday and that means the N95 mass, the surgical masks, the face shields, the gloves. These things are constantly being delivered to hospitals more and more to nursing homes as well, and to first responders, to all of our agencies that protect us. Those supplies, by the crisis standard, we have enough for this week. We also, thank God, have enough ventilators. We’ll be saying more about ventilators this week. And that's an area where we came from behind and we've made a lot of progress and the situation is much better than what it was a few weeks ago.

But there's been a growing problem, and this problem we have not found a solution to yet – that is the surgical gowns. And these are crucial because they protect our health care workers when they're doing some of the most sensitive work and some of the work that really makes them most vulnerable. Now, it got to the point where it's very clear that we were not going to be able to buy enough on the open market no matter what we did. It got to the point where it was clear. Sometimes the federal government has gotten us supplies or the state has, but those have been very uneven. And we always appreciate it, but we can't say it's reliable or an abundant supply. So, we made the decision to manufacture our own here in New York City, and that is now starting to become a major part of the equation, because it's the one thing we can depend on. But even with that, we do not have a secure supply. We're using fallback items like coveralls that certainly provide protection, but, even with the fallbacks, we are not sure we're going to have enough to get to Sunday of this week. We're fighting every way we can to find more, but that's how tight this situation is. This is an area I'm really concerned about and we're going to work every way we can. So, I want to immediately say, I'm making an appeal to the federal government, because if there's any place that might be able to find a supply that is not yet been tapped, it is the federal government. We need more surgical gowns in New York City and we need them now. And I have reiterated this request over the weeks. I will go today and reiterate it again, but we're trying our best to create our own in the numbers we need, and those numbers are very, very large – that's the truth – but we need the federal government immediately to try and help us find solutions even just to get to the end of this week.

Now, I want to give credit. When the federal government does something right, I'll also say that. And here's an example of them doing something right. They did not have a substantial supply. We asked over a week ago, knew that this was a growing crisis, and I do want to say what they did come up with is deeply appreciated – 265,000 Tyvek suits to help our public hospitals. And that is helpful for sure. And I want to thank everyone who was involved in that effort. I particularly worked with Peter Navarro in the White House, who has been very responsive. I want to thank Peter and everyone who worked to get us those Tyvek suits. That helps a lot. But again, we need a much, much greater number to move forward. So, the other thing that we asked for, we said, if you can't get us actual surgical gowns – and imagine, the greatest country in the world, you know, the richest, most powerful country in the world, and we can't get surgical gowns for our largest city to even get through a week. It says so much about what we're learning from this crisis about the madness of so many of the supplies we need for health care and for protection of our people are not even made in this country and not even available or can't even be moved quickly. It certainly speaks to the lack of use of the Defense Production Act to build these kinds of supplies on a much greater level. There's a lot of things wrong here. But I will say, that when we couldn't get the surgical gowns, I said to Peter Navarro, can you get us fabric, because at least we have fabric, waterproof fabric, we can start to manufacture more and more of our own gowns here. And he did come through, and a group of other folks from the industry – the textile industry came through. I want to thank everyone who's a part of that effort and we'll list them out soon so we give all the thanks that are due. But we've got enough fabric in now to make 400,000 gowns. That's substantial, but, again, nowhere near the need we have. But I'll still say, if we can make 400,000 gowns, that's 400,000 times that our health care workers are protected. And I certainly am very appreciative for that. 40,000 will be made now. That full 400,000 will be made by May 23rd. We're going to try and speed that up, but we're literally building a new industry right away in this city and my goal is to see it expand rapidly. This is not a product that was made here in New York City. We want to see it become a major, major part of what we do as we fight this battle. But we're going to need a lot more than that to get through.

Now, let me talk to you about another piece of this reality we've been facing. A few weeks ago, we went through something that was a huge challenge. We saw a major, major uptick in the number of calls to EMS – 9-1-1 calls on a level we had never seen literally in our history. The kind of records that were set were the kind of records you never want a set of the most calls to 9-1-1 ever. Our EMTs, our paramedics fought back. I want to thank Commissioner Dan Nigro and everyone at FDNY for the really powerful, smart, you know, calm, steady way they handled this crisis in a way they fought back. And now, I am really pleased to say we've seen a rebound. We've seen really big improvement, Still, a lot to do, but FDNY held the line, EMS held the line. Our EMTs and paramedics worked long hours. They saved a lot of lives. They fought back. There's no question that we are not out of the woods yet. So, I'm saying there's been a rebound, but there's still a lot more to this game. But the numbers are coming down substantially and getting much closer to normal. So, I want to give you an update on that and just a sense of how extraordinary the surge we saw was, going back to March 30 – a number that's just astounding – we got 6,527 medical emergencies in one day. Never seen anything like that. By this last Saturday, April 13 – excuse me, April 18th – this last Saturday, April 18th, the number was down to 3,485. So, not quite half, but getting close to half the number of calls that came in just about three weeks earlier. So, Saturday was 3,485. When you compare that to the average for last year – the average day last year, it was actually below the average. The average last year was 4,196 on a typical day. So, thank God, that number has come way down. There’s still a lot to do, but that's giving us real relief. We also, of course, had a huge challenge, ensuring that we could respond in this crisis with so many more calls. And, obviously, the most urgent, the most life and death calls got prioritized, but if you take the average across the board, in March, that average was just over 10 minutes on the response time. In the last two weeks, it's gone down to – up until Friday of this last week, it went down to eight minutes, 46 seconds. Now, on Saturday, April 18th, that went down to six minutes, 43 seconds. So, something’s, again, profoundly changed. Many fewer calls, much faster response time, thank God for that. Also, the number of FDNY personnel who had been on leave – a sick leave continues to go down. So, again, 1,446 and returned to service – a much lower sick leave level now than we saw at the peak. The same with for fire and for EMS – the same thing. So, EMS has now almost a thousand members who have returned from dealing with COVID-19 and we see the number of folks on sick leave going down. Long way to go, but real progress for sure.

Now, one of the things that tied us over, I want to give a lot of thanks to FEMA. And so, this is the federal government doing something really good, and I want to give credit where credit is due. And I've talked to Pete Gaynor, who's the administrator for FEMA nationally – a really, really good guy who's really been there for New York City many may times. Tom Von Essen, our former fire commissioner from the days of 9/11, who now is the FEMA regional administrator. They've both been absolutely fantastic. When they saw that FDNY, EMS were struggling so much, they reached out immediately and got ambulances, and EMTs, and paramedics from all over the country. And I had that real amazing experience going to meet a lot of these good, good people who came from around the country to help us and to thank them on behalf of all New Yorkers. And folks came from California and Alabama and Florida, all over the country. And particularly met ambulance crew from Kalamazoo, Michigan – two really good guys that drove all night to get to New York City because they just wanted to help out. And that has made a huge difference. That's really been one of the X factors and giving relief to EMS and helping them through. I'm happy to report the FEMA has helped us again, and just in the last week we've added another hundred ambulances from around the country. So, now, from FEMA, we have 350 ambulances active with 790 EMTs and paramedics that come from 19 states of the union. This is truly America's stepping up to help New York City, just like New York city has so many times sent our heroes and our first responders out to help folks all over the country in the middle of their challenges and disasters, and folks are really coming to bat for us. So, we expect this group now to take us through basically the month of April and continue to provide a lot of relief and support for our EMTs and paramedics, help them through – I'm sorry, I should have say past April, another 30 days, my apology – into May – to the end of May – and to give a lot of relief to our EMTs and paramedics who, again, they've done so much in these last weeks. They continue to need that support and that teamwork and it's continuing to come thanks to FEMA. So, very good news.

Now, a couple of days ago we talked about the fact that as we evaluate where we're going, going forward, we keep recognizing the power of what people are doing, what every-day New Yorkers are doing. Again, I'm going to say thank you a lot of times because you've been amazing at social distancing. You've been amazing at shelter in place. It's not easy, but you've been doing it really, really well. I want to be very clear, we're going to be smart about how we come back. We're going to be smart about how we turn a corner. We're not going to let our foot off the gas prematurely. We're not going to run the risk of this disease reasserting itself. So, we're going to be going in stages as we work that slow, steady road back to normal. And we already miss so much of what was part of our everyday lives. A lot of us are missing sports, both playing sports, watching sports. We're missing all sorts of community gatherings, family gatherings. There’s so much we miss right now and it's almost like it's impossible to count all the things that are gone that we love and we miss. And this is the time of year where you start to have more and more big public events, the street fairs, the festivals, parades, outdoor concerts, outdoor plays, things that are really a beautiful part of the year in New York City. That's all true, but we also know compared to all the basics we're focused on right now, compared to people's health and safety and food, shelter, all the things we're trying to guarantee for New Yorkers, and especially compared to the big question – how do we come back safely, smartly? These kinds of community events, we love them, but they're not what we need right now, they're not the most essential things, and we have to be smart about it. And we have to also recognize when thousands and thousands of people gather in one place, of course that goes against everything we're trying to do with social distance in a shelter in place and everything we're trying to do to bring ourselves back.

So, a few days ago I said that a city permits for events scheduled for the month of May have been canceled. I told you we were going to talk to the organizers of events in June, which includes some really big important annual events. We have had those conversations and this probably will not surprise you, but I'm now reporting today that we will cancel city permits for June events as well. It's not a happy announcement but it's one we have to make. And look, a lot of these events will be postponed. I want to be clear, the permits are being canceled for June, but the event organizers, a lot of them are looking at doing something later in the year, and we're going to work with them on that. And, again, I think the fact that they're postponing now is actually going to help us get to that point later in the year where things can open up and be better. And then, we're going to work closely with them to find the right time and place to do what they do each year. The bottom line, of course, is to think about safety, to think about saving lives, protecting people's health, speeding us to that day when we get more normal. So, this is the right thing to do and this is what we are doing. But I will say, obviously, I will note three events in particular that are just highlights of the whole year – the Salute to Israel Parade, the Puerto Rican Day Parade, and the Pride Parade. And this was – you know, this year is the 50th anniversary of the Pride Parade, and it's a very, very big deal. That march is such an important part of the life of this city, but this year in particular was going to be something that was a historic moment. Look, we're going to miss all three of them in June, but they will be back, and we will find the right way to do it, working with all the event organizers. And that joy and that pride that all of these events bring, that celebration, will be back. We're going to do it when it's the right time.

Now, to the question that we turn to every day, how are we doing overall? And we have these three indicators we keep coming back to tell us so much. And it’s a high bar, but we wanted to set a high bar to make sure we get it right. So, what I would say, what we are seeing day after day is progress in many of the categories. We still haven't hit that perfect note we want to hit, which is getting all three of categories to go down together for a long period of time. But we see consistently most of the categories going in the right direction. And so, something is moving positively because of everything people are doing and it says, just keep doing it. First of all, the first indicator, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that is down – good news – down from 317 to 212. That's a really good drop. The daily number of people in ICU across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that is up, although it's up by just a little bit – 849 to 853. So, not the right direction, but notable that it's a very, very small increase. The percent of people who tested positive for COVID-19 citywide, down from 38 percent to 34 percent. Public health lab, down 84 percent to 67 percent. So, this is not a perfect daily report, but it's getting better and it's damn close to what we're looking for. Let's see if we can keep pushing. Everyone, keep doing what you're doing so we can get this tracking to start moving consistently in the right direction and that's going to give us the chance to really start to make the moves towards a more normal life.

So, let me close with this. We said from the beginning of this crisis, it's like nothing we've ever seen. We're fighting an invisible enemy, an enemy no one understands, and there's no timeline here, there's no ground rules, there's no playbook. No one knows exactly how this will go. Anyone who tells you they know exactly how this is going to go is lying to you. What we can say though, one thing we have heard universally is this is a crisis that has an end point. Everything we know about the nature of this disease is that there is a point where we turn a corner. That doesn't mean it won't be back in the future. It doesn't mean there won't be challenges. We obviously all want to see that day where there's a vaccine and a cure, but this crisis will end at some point. The question is, are we strong enough? Are we tough enough? Are we resilient enough as New Yorkers to fight our way through to that point? The answer is a resounding yes. You have proven it already in so many ways. The heroic health care workers, first responders, they've proven it over and over again. But everyone in this city who's contributing in so many ways to this fight has proven it. So, I've no doubt we're going to get there. I know it's going to be a tough road. I know it's not going to be simple. I know it's going to be a long road. Now, how do we get there? We'll keep coming back to the testing we need to allow us to make that transition to when we have a low level of transmission of this disease and we can really start to get to normal. Can't do it without the testing. But the other thing is, we cannot do it if we don't get help from Washington DC, it's as simple as this. Think about it for a moment, this city, this heroic city that has been fighting this battle, epicenter of the crisis for the United States of America, fighting so often alone without help from the federal government from the very beginning when the tests weren't there, to the many may times we've asked for help and it hasn't come. I will always give credit for when the help did come. I'll always say thank you for that. But we still don't have a clear picture on testing. And the one thing that I've asked the President for lately that should be the easiest part of the equation is to help New York City through this crisis, give us the financial support to make us whole, to actually balance our budget, pay our first responders and our public servants who are doing this work, because, you know what – and I'll address this to the President again – you know, Mr. President, you know what we're doing right now? We are saving lives here in New York City. We are spending hundreds of millions of dollars now, it's going to be billions of dollars to save lives. We are not hesitating. We're not for a moment doing anything but what is right to protect New Yorkers and to protect all Americans by beating back this disease. We estimate by the end of this calendar year the City of New York will have spent $3.5 billion to save lives and protect people in this city. The federal government is not stepping up. You, Mr. President, are not saying, I see your burden, I see the fight you're waging, let me offer a helping hand, let me save the day by taking that burden off of New York City. In fact, Mr. President, you know, it was quite clear when the airline industry was in trouble you were quick to act. You gave them $58 billion. But when New York City, and cities all over the country, states all over the country had been pleading in the middle of a huge budget crisis where we can't provide the services that our people need going forward, we're not going to be able to have a recovery, you are absolutely silent. I'm challenging you to open your mouth. I think I may be the first person in history to challenge Donald Trump to speak up. He's not shy. But it's amazing, he was asked yesterday at his press conference and he barely could say a word about the need for a stimulus program that would actually help America’s cities and states.

So, everyone's watching. Mr. President, you say the word and Mitch McConnell will act, the Senate will act, we can be made whole and we can actually help restart the nation's economy and move a recovery. But if you don't act, we're just not going to have what we need to move this city forward to help our people, to protect our people, to help our nation. We're not going to have it. So, I don't know what more I have to say but that is the truth. And there's still time to act right now in Washington. That stimulus bill is being discussed right this minute. You know what? There's even some bipartisanship. I'm hearing it from mayors all over the country, Republican and Democrat. You're seeing it from governors, Republican and Democrats saying the federal government has to provide this help. Even yesterday, two senators – Republican Senator Cassidy from Louisiana, Democrat Senator Menendez from New Jersey put forward a $500 billion plan to help cities and states recover. Even in Washington, there are people trying to act in a bipartisan fashion to move us forward. Mr. President, you're the only one who's missing an action right now. Why don't you step up and say this is the right thing to do? And you would be doing something for this whole country in our time of need.

To conclude, let me say a few words in Spanish, and then we'll go to questions from the media.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: With that we will turn to our colleagues in the media and as always, please let me know the name and the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder that we have Commissioner Negro, Commissioner Criswell and Commissioner Barbot on the line. With that we will start off today with Debralee from Manhattan Times Bronx Free Press.

Question: Hey, good morning everyone. How are you?

Mayor: Good morning. Debralee.

Question: So Mr. Mayor, in light of these ongoing cancellations announced today of these large scale public events, of youth summer employment programs and continuing staying at home measures for really the duration, essentially the first half of the summer. You were bound to see these moments of resurgence, of surreptitious gatherings, you know, whether there be young people socializing at our barber shops on weekends or the religious gatherings at [inaudible] and other instances. We heard of both just over the weekend and they were likely to pop up again. But in reports you're seeing young teenagers being arrested and in some instances you're seeing nothing happen where, you know, the police officers show up and sort of shrug their shoulders and ask people to disperse. You know, what are the strictures that are being put in place? What are the assurances that you're providing that there's one standard as folks continue to adjust to the new normal and some communities are not being penalized in ways that others are not?

Mayor: Debralee, it's a great question. I'm going to say that I've asked about the facts and I don't think the facts bear out on equal treatment, meaning we do not have – I'm really sensitive to this point and concerned about it. I'm glad you're raising it. I won't tolerate unequal treatment. I've had this conversation with Commissioner Shea and Chief Monahan, Chief Pichardo, that we – the bottom line is this, before you even get to the question of fairness across all communities, I want to see an aggressive, assertive, consistent effort by the NYPD and all enforcement agencies. No matter where they are, no matter what's going on. We cannot tolerate gatherings. We cannot tolerate a lack of social distancing. There has to be just really fast, consistent enforcement. That's why I want people calling 3-1-1 or giving us information on where they're seeing problems so we can act on it quickly.

NYPD unquestionably has been enforcing in all kinds of communities and I've asked them to consistently put out reports so people can see the whole truth of the many times when enforcement was done across many communities. We don't want to give summonses and violations and fines if we don't have to. But some places people have been resistant, they're going to get those fines. We certainly don't want to arrest people in this environment but if we have to, we will. So, we'll get that information out more clearly because I think when you see the whole picture you see consistency across communities. If there’s any instance where there is not consistency, I will deal with that harshly because I won't accept it. And by the way, to our officers, we all know the vast majority of our officers are out there enforcing these rules and it is part of why we're succeeding. We have to thank the NYPD and all the Parks Department enforcement officers, everyone who’s been doing this enforcement is part of why we see these indicators getting better and they'd been doing it even though they'd been short staffed. But I don't have any hard evidence of any officer failing to disperse a crowd or following through, if I get hard evidence of that, I am going to ask the NYPD to follow through in whatever manner related to discipline they normally would in such a case. But I would welcome you, Debralee and everyone, anyone in the media who has hard evidence that any officer did not follow through on enforcement or that there was unequal treatment in communities. I want it and I won't tolerate it and we'll act on it.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, good morning Mr. Mayor and everyone. I wanted to ask you sort of mentioned it with Debralee's question, but do you have the numbers and I guess if, how many photos and, and tips that have come in on the sort of like three one, one neighborhood watch, social distancing line and how that's been going. And if you've followed up on any of those tips?

Mayor: Of course, there's follow-up on all those tips. We'll happily assemble the numbers and get them out. I'll ask my team to make sure that happens. And again, when I spoke with our NYPD leadership, I made clear to them that I want public reporting on how enforcement is going and I want to show the fullness of it. There are many, many times where they've broken up gatherings across a whole range of communities, but that has not been something that's been portrayed publicly. I want a maximum reporting. I want to show all the times whether it's a line at a supermarket or it's breaking up a gathering on the streets or whatever it is, or certainly a religious gathering. You'll remember a couple of weeks ago I made very clear that any attempt by any people of any faith to gather in religious worship is unacceptable. And I'm sorry it will have to be broken up, but it will. So we're going to get out more and more of both the overall numbers, but also I want you to see the pictures. I want you to hear the stories. I want you to see how much enforcement has been done. I don't think it's been portrayed effectively. I think a lot more is happening than has been talked about. And I'm going to ask NYPD in particular to put all of that out more so you see it

Moderator: Next, we have Marcia from CBS.

Mayor: Marcia?

Question: My question today has to do with when the city gets to the point of reopening, but it has to do with the fact that you've had a lot of people or city workers who have passed away because of the virus, be it transit workers, be it, you know, firefighters, police officers and especially teachers. And I wonder if that's going to make it more difficult for you to reopen. I mean, kids going back to classrooms where their teacher isn't there anymore. Sanitation workers unable to pick up the trash. And how difficult will it be that your workforce has been depleted? What special problems will that pose for you and especially in the classroom?

Mayor: Yeah, Marcia, it's much more of a human problem and an emotional problem than anything. I want to start with that. I think for all of our – all the folks who serve us, the fact that they have lost their colleagues, I think a lot of them are going to go into, you know, the future with that pain. Whether you're at a Sanitation garage or you’re at a school or a police precinct, just you know, the, the loss of someone they cared about and someone that they worked so closely with. I think that's going to be a pain that will feel for a long, long time. And I think in school communities in particular, it's going to be very, very challenging because we have schools that have lost teachers, principals, you know, people who are backbones of school communities and a school community is like an extension of the family. It's very, very tight knit. You're also going to have kids who have lost family members. So one of the things the Chancellor talked about in the last week is how we have to provide a lot of mental health support starting now, and we're going to be expanding that as we go through the spring, for children and families who have been through a lot. But really getting ready for the beginning of school in September, I think it's going to be a painful beginning trying to sort out how to move forward while recognizing the loss and the trauma that kids have been through. So that's where I think the, the real challenge is and it's a tough one and we're going to, you know, whatever is needed to address it. We're going to, we're going to provide.

In terms of, you know, running our city and moving forward. We're going to find a way as we always do, but the losses are great and, and not just in number, in talent, some incredible human beings who did so much, but you know, we will find a way through that problem. I think the emotional and human and psychological problem is going to be in many ways the tougher part.

Moderator: Next, we have Julia from the Post. Hi, good morning, Mr. Mayor. I know we're still months away from reopening the city, but you said on Morning Joe this morning that you thought that workplace temperature checks would be a key point of reopening. I'm just wondering if you could expand on that a little bit. Will those be, do you think you'll require that? Will they be suggested? Will we see temperature checks at restaurants and what are the other facets other than a citywide testing for reopening?

Mayor: Yeah, Julia, we're going to be putting out more and more specifics of the reopening plans as we're working through the details for this city. I would say the important thing to recognize with the temperature checks, they absolutely have a role to play. They've been an important tool in other countries that have – some have had some of the better experiences containing the coronavirus and working their way back. But guess what, there's not enough thermometers right now. So this is another one of these like staggering realities about our country that I just – it's hard as an American to take in how ill prepared this country was in terms of just basic supplies and how little we make of our own at this point. Or to the extent we do make things or can make things how long and slow the process of gearing up production has been.

I just can't make sense of it. I really think there should have just been a full-scale mobilization from the beginning of industry and obviously I think of the military as well to have tried to break through all of this and it's still never happened. So to even get to that point, we'd have to get a really substantial and steady supply of thermometers. We do not have that. That's another thing I'm going to try and see if there's any way to create in New York City. But I do think it's a logical part of the equation and it fits with the testing. I mean, if you think about it, what you want as you come back is the ability to constantly monitor for who might be sick and then get them to quarantine or isolation, get them the support they need to get through, make sure they don't go back into the workplace until they're really well, make sure they are isolated from their family members and other people in their life.

The temperature checks are a great way to see if someone might be starting to show symptoms. Obviously wide-scale testing is needed to make anything like that happen and I have to say, you know, initially I think that's something like hundreds and thousands of tests a day given the scale of this city, as much as we're doing in the whole nation right now per day. So I think it has an important role to play in combination with testing, but we'll put together those details as we get closer and obviously we've got to find the reliable, a huge supply of test kits and lab capacity just like we have to find a reliable supply of thermometers.

Moderator: Next we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Yeah. Good morning, Mayor. I wanted to ask about a plan that some City Council Members plan to propose this week under which cars would be banned from I think 75 miles of city roads. I'm just wanting to ask you if you agree with that goal or even think it's feasible. And also could you [inaudible] what kind of communications you've had, if any, with the Council on this issue.

Mayor: Thank you, Shant. I've spoken to Speaker Johnson several times over the last weeks about this broad concept and you know, we tried a version of it early on working with the Council and it was, you know, not the best time to try it, obviously given weather, but it also, what we found immediately was the real drag on the enforcement needs that we had everywhere else. And with an NYPD in particular, that still is below the strength levels we want to be. So we're – I'm definitely ready to, you know, talk to the Council about it, see if we can find some common ground. But what I've said to date is I'm concerned that it doesn't fit our reality in terms of safety. It doesn't fit our reality in terms of enforcement where we need to put our enforcement. The models have been used elsewhere in the country I think were for places that had a much different reality in terms of, you know, how dense they are and what their sort of driving culture was compared to us, and one thing or another. So, it'll be a real conversation. But I still start with the concern that I have not seen a plan that I think works for New York City yet.

Moderator: Next we have Juliet from 1010 WINS.

Question: Oh, hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Good morning, Juliette. How you doing?

Question: I'm okay. I wanted to get back to the NYPD enforcement of social distancing. What exactly are they doing on the subway to enforce that? Are they limiting people standing on platforms or limiting the number of people getting on the trains? What exactly is their plan on the subway?

Look, it's a great question, Juliet. I think – I've talked to Pat Foye, the head of the MTA about – I think there needs to be a clearer message about how many, literally how many people are allowed on a subway car. And clearly, you know, it can't be more than 50 percent of what the normal capacity is. It may have to be a lot less, but whatever it is I think a clearer ground rule would help everyone. I haven't heard it at least, but yeah, the deal is that the NYPD is out there. If a subway car is too crowded, the idea is clear it out, disperse people throughout the train or get some people off if you have to. If a platform is crowded, you know, disperse people through or spread them through the platform or have some people wait outside the station, whatever it takes.

Now I still think we're seeing kind of an uneven reality where we get kind of sporadic reports around overcrowding and it seems to be in large measure due to the shortages in labor at the MTA and the fact that some, you know, there's some disruptions on some lines and trains don't come for a while – doesn't seem to take a consistent shape or in a consistent place. But the plan that the police are working on or working from, I should say, what they've been doing now for weeks and weeks is just if you see any instance of overcrowding on a subway car or on a platform, disperse, break it up, don't allow it to exist. You can't have a crowded subway car and just leave it be. You have to get people off and dispersed throughout the train or to the platform or whatever will work.

Moderator: Next, we have Kathleen from Patch.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I was just wondering if you could provide us some numbers on those surgical masks. How many do we have right now and how many do we need by the end of the week and how much you know those would cost on the – today's market.

Mayor: Yeah, the cost part we can get back to you on Kathleen. In terms of supply, so surgical masks has actually been – if there's a bright spot in this whole reality, the surgical masks had been the thing we've been able to get the most of and our supply is good for this week and from what I saw earlier into next week as well. The N95s which are, you know, a higher caliber if you will, have been harder to get. But again, at least we have a secure supply for this week on that crisis standard. I'll keep emphasizing that crisis standard is what we're working from. So, we can get you exact numbers. There's a lot – we need a lot to get through each week. But surgical masks, a strong supply, N95s, certainly enough to get through this weekend and next week and we'll get you a sense of what we're finding. We have to pay for these things in the current market.

Moderator: Next we have Andrew from NBC.

Question: Mayor, good morning. How are you?

Mayor: Good man. How you feel? 

Question: Hanging in there. A question about the large public events. You mentioned this morning that when you spoke to organizers, particularly of Pride in the Puerto Rican Day Parade, that they're interested in postponing, but given the size of these events, you're talking hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or more people realistically. Can those events happen in calendar year 2020?

Mayor: Andrew, they might. I mean this one, you know, it's a great question. I think again, for all of us sports fans we’re asking this question, can you know our leagues come back in 2020 at all? I think this is an area where we don't know yet. I'm taking what I think is a cautious, steady approach to how we reopen New York City, but – and we have to always plan on the worst-case scenarios we have to protect ourselves. But there's also, you know, better case scenarios that could come along and could get proven that might open up possibilities for later on, you know, late in the summer going into the fall, there may be opportunities. So I think what was clear was the event organizers really and to their, you know, the folks at Salute to Israel Parade, the Puerto Rican Parade, Pride – very consistently there was a concern for the health and safety of all of the people who come to join these gatherings. That was their central concern. And they knew that it would be very hard for a lot of people to feel comfortable and it just didn't make sense to have them in this environment. But I think everyone does want to consider from what I've heard, the option of going and looking at opportunities, you know, late in the summer or into the fall and we'll know a lot more in the coming weeks, according to these indicators I go over each day and how we see this disease act and how we all act. So I certainly don't rule it out Andrew. I think it is a possibility and every, you know, every organization will make their own choices and, and we will know a lot more as we get through the next few weeks.

Moderator: Next we have Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Well, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to ask you a question about the budget. The budget has some deep spending cuts, but for this year, but a lot of them reflect, not spending on schools, etc. because of the virus. And you've had some critics like the Citizens Budget Commission who says there's not enough recurring cuts and your estimates of federal aid, state aid and the bounce back of the economy may be way too optimistic. How would you answer those critics?

Mayor: Well, I don't understand the part about state aid and federal aid. The only things we have indicated in the way with federal aid are the things that already exist. The amount from the previous stimulus bill, which I'm certainly happy we are getting but is nowhere near obviously what we are paying out in terms of COVID-19 related expenses and the money we received from FEMA, but we still receive it with a 25 percent local payment requirement, which makes no sense in this crisis – by the way, that is much worse than what was true in previous natural disasters where localities were not required to pay 25 percent. They were required to pay substantially less. I know Senator Schumer is fighting for what I think is the right thing, which is 100 percent of FEMA coverage of costs related to COVID-19. This is an international pandemic and we are spending money to save lives and we're spending it wisely, but always when people need help, we're going to be there for them. I don't know why that isn't a hundred percent federally covered. So the only thing we've assumed, Henry, is the 75 percent coverage of the FEMA eligible costs and the previous money from the previous stimulus. We have not made any projection going forward about what future stimulus money should be. It should be a full coverage of all COVID-19 related costs and all lost revenue. If they really want to get New York City and all cities and states back on their feet. And I just want to come back to this point. How do you restart an economy with these big gaping holes on accounted for and they've already done $2 trillion plus in stimulus programs including again $58 billion for the airline industry, why not make cities and states whole if you're serious about a restart and a recovery, but we are not assuming that, Lord knows. So, I don't understand that part of the equation.

With the, the critique you raised in terms of the recurring expenses, look in terms of the recurring expenses, look, we've already done some really painful things including not being able to provide for our young people this summer so much of what we would normally like to and believe is crucial to our city. But when you go forward with all due respect to the Citizens Budget Commission, we – this is not a what they think from their point of view, maybe they think this is a wonderful moment for budget cutting. That's not how I see it. This is a moment to try and protect our people, protect their safety and health, make sure they have enough food to eat, make sure that they have a roof over their head and whatever that costs is what we need to do, and then work our way back to the city that just months ago was succeeding across the board in terms of having a thriving economy and the lowest unemployment we've seen in a long, long time, and you know, the things you would want for this city. We want to get back to that and the formula was working. We want to get back to that formula. So, I would argue, you know, we were on the something very good. We want to work our way back to it. But no, we're not for a moment – we're not assuming any State aid. In fact, the state cut us $800 million and we have to guard against future State cuts. So, I think we're being very realistic about that. I think if there is not federal aid, you're going to see many tougher decisions that are really going to hold us back and undermine our ability to provide even the most basic services.

Moderator: Next, we have Mark Morales from CNN.

Question: Hi everyone. How are you doing this morning?

Mayor: Hey Mark.

Question: So, I had a couple of questions. The first was about a report that happened over the weekend about folks that are [inaudible] –

Mayor: Mark, Mark, you're coming in and out. Let me – let me interrupt you, Mark. You're coming in and out a little bit. Can you get closer to the microphone and speak a little more steadily?

Question: Sure. Is this any better?

Mayor: Yeah, let's try.

Question: Oh, cool. So, the first one is about inmates at Rikers Island that have left the jail system and have gone out, committed crimes, and are back in the jail system now. Can you just speak a little bit about that and what have you seen? The second question I had was about testing.

Mayor: It's about? Go ahead, say it.

Question: You mentioned on Friday that you were going to be opening up new testing centers and I just wanted to know how did that work out? Who was tested? Do you have any data on that?

Mayor: Okay. Thank you, Mark. On the second question, we'll get the data and start to put out that data as we confirm it. Some of the centers were opened Friday, some are opening today and we gave the projections on what they'd be able to do each week. But again, said I want to see those numbers go up rapidly. So, we'll get a report out later today on how Friday went and on how today is going and what the numbers look like. On the folks who have come out of Rikers, look when this crisis began, the issue was how could we address the humanitarian crisis in our jails appropriately? Let out people who could be let out safely, deal with the fact that there were individuals with profound, you know, major, major health problems who had been particularly vulnerable to this disease, but also always keep public safety in mind. And obviously by getting people out of the jail system, it was going to allow a safer environment for everyone who was still in, including very much the folks who work there, and we depend on so much of our officers.

And that has proceeded to happen, about 1,400 people have been released, and that has certainly improved the overall situation in our jail situation – in our jail system. But we said there would be, you know, a rigorous monitoring effort as well, and that has been built up. We do see some recidivism. I don't have the exact numbers, we see some, I've not seen a huge amount, but any amount is obviously troubling. And I think it's unconscionable just on a human level that folks were shown mercy and this is what some of them have done. But, you know, it's a small number of people. We're going to keep, you know, just buckling down on it, making sure there's close monitoring and supervision to the maximum extent possible, and the NYPD is going to keep doing what they're doing. They've obviously been driving down crime these last few months and they're going to keep doing that. But if anyone commits the kind of crime they have to be rearrested, of course they will be. If they have to be re-incarcerated they will be. But I think, you know, against the backdrop of what was a real humanitarian crisis it was the right approach. Now we're going to deal with everything going forward.

Moderator: Next we have Sydney from the Staten Island Advance.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. Good morning. I have two questions if I may, about the medical personnel you announced yesterday and the 3-1-1 number. So first can you explain what exactly the differences between the 600 medical personnel and volunteers and 535 medical military staff? Our medical personnel, more nurses and technicians and our military medical staff - staffs specifically more like doctors and nurses. And why didn't you send any of the medical military staff to Staten Island hospitals? And my second question is yesterday I tried out the 3-1-1 Social Distance Enforcement number and I received an error message saying the tech service was unavailable, your office was quick to fix the problem, and I resent the photo and it seems to be working. I got a text message saying that a representative would be with me shortly, but I never heard back. Can you explain how exactly the tech service is supposed to be working? Is someone supposed to get in touch with you after you send a text? And why was the tech service not working at least, you know, yesterday?

Mayor: Yeah, there was an issue yesterday. It has been resolved. So the basic concept is this, if you call in, as I said to the day on anything COVID related, particularly food, we want people to have an instant ability to talk to a human being and register their need and get it acted on. On the calls related to violations of social distancing, that's also obviously urgent. We need people to be able to get that to a human being right away and then get it out to where it can be dispatched by NYPD. So I appreciate – again, I'll keep saying thank you to you and everyone in the media who is doing this quality control because I think it helps us to keep monitoring. Obviously, the city does it’s own quality control, but anytime you find a gap in the system that's helpful because we want to fix it. So in terms of the calls, that's how it has been working on, should work, and again, many, many additional personnel have been added in the last few days to beef it up. In terms of the photos, I know I've spoken to Commissioner Shea about this, that the photos are being monitored constantly by the NYPD for action. In terms of whether there's a response back to the person who sends the photo, I don't know that, but we will get you an answer on that today.

On the question of the military personnel and the volunteer medical personnel. So the military are a variety of specialists. There are doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, dieticians, pharmacists, there are a whole range of specialists, primarily doctors and nurses. They are – the original request was for our public hospitals that unquestionably were bearing the brunt. Elmhurst, Bellevue, Lincoln, so many others, and that's where they'd gone and they'd been absolutely outstanding. The personnel coming in through the Medical Volunteer Corps, which is a city function created by our Department of Health, our folks who bring a wide variety of medical skills, they are being distributed out to independent hospitals that need help and to – including obviously thinking about hospitals on Staten Island – at any hospitals, whether they're a part of a bigger system or they're independent, but the ones that need help the most we have found are the independents and two nursing homes that need help. And that system, again of wide variety of health care professionals, we're applying that wherever the need is greatest.

But I think the simple point here is, which we've talked about before, Sydney, and I know you're advocating for Staten Island, I appreciate it. The hospitals that bore the brunt of this overwhelmingly were those public hospitals, that's where we sent the help from the military. Obviously I'd like to see a lot more help come in and then we could expand it more broadly. But we have been able to get that medical volunteer group, which is a lot of the same exact medical professionals in terms of training out to a broader swath of the city and our health care institutions, our nursing homes, and we're going to keep making adjustments as the need is clear. I think that's the central point and again, I appreciate the advocacy, but it's really going to come down to us as where are the gaps that we need to fill and we will move people according to the gaps. Whenever we see a situation where, you know, someplace just doesn't have enough personnel and another place has more than they need, we're going to move them around accordingly to address that need.

Moderator: Next, we have Gloria from NY1.

Mayor: Gloria?

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yup. Can you hear us?

Question: [Inaudible] thank you. Oh yes, I got you.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: I wanted to follow up on our report that we got this weekend about three men who were discharged COVID-19 patients and they were sent to the Hilton Garden Inn in order to isolate from their families. They – the three of them have passed away. I wanted to see if you had an update on that specific situation and if there's anything you would tell us about these, why these men were discharged, and how was the city monitoring this and what happened here?

Mayor: So we are doing a review right now to understand what happened. My understanding very initially and it's obviously tragic, I mean as I understand it, Gloria, these are three people who were in hospitals for COVID-19, got care, recovered and were released. And my understanding is one was from a Montefiore in the Bronx, one was from Maimonides in Brooklyn, one was from Harlem Hospital. And then we – you know, all three have passed away and we need - we're doing a full review right now to understand what happened. If they were all discharged and all from different hospitals, something doesn't make sense here, and why are these people – why have they lost their lives? So we're doing a full review to understand that.

We're also going to add as an abundance of caution, add additional medical personnel and other personnel to do more checking in with people even if they've been discharged. You'd think if someone has been discharged from the hospital, it's an all clear and the reason they're in a hotel is simply transitional, particularly if they happen to have a family situation that's not conducive to go back to or something like that. But we're going to add additional personnel to ensure that everyone is being very closely watched and supported. But I don't know – we don't know yet what happened here and why it happened and when we do, we'll certainly let you know.

Moderator: Next we have Brigid from WNYC.

Question: Thanks Mr. Mayor. First I just want to follow up, I have two questions, but I want to follow up on Gloria just to clarify the hotel where those three individuals were staying, you know, wasn't like isolation hotel. So I'm curious if the city is planning to increase any screenings for the other guests who are still there beyond just a wellness check? And then my second question relates to the Governor's announcement over the weekend about statewide antibody testing. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the plan and how the city fits into it?

Mayor: Yes. On the first point, yes, I tried to say – I'll say it better that we absolutely are going to check on people more deeply in that facility because we want to know that hotel – we want to know exactly what's going on and we're confused how this could have happened. And again, don't know if there's a connection between the three deaths or not. We just don't know enough yet to give you a definitive answer. But we again, we’ll be beefing up the amount of personnel devoted to consistently working with people who are staying in those hotels. You know want to make sure we're constantly checking on them and if people need something, it's evident, real quickly enacted on.

On the antibody tests, again, this is an area I think we can say where there's some real promise. There's also a lot of open questions. There's different kinds of tests of different kinds of quality level and quality levels and accuracy. We'll have more to say very soon because our goal is to do more and more testing, both the PCR testing, you know, the kind of main coronavirus tests. We want to see that on a vast scale as part of our recovery. We need a lot right now, but we want to see it. It's prerequisite to making a recovery. But the antibody testing could play an important role too. There's still some open questions, but we do anticipate using it in a substantial manner and as soon as we have the specifics worked out, we'll be announcing that hopefully quite soon.

Moderator: Next, we have Javier from Queens Latino.

Question: Good morning. I'm Javier Castano for Queens Latino, and in Queens, Corona, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, [inaudible] of undocumented immigrants are waiting for the money from the Open Society Foundation. They don't have the money to pay the rent, to buy food, or even to pay for [inaudible]. So when and what they [inaudible] New York City is going distribute those dollars?

Mayor: Javier, just to keep the line open there so I can make sure we're saying the same thing. You're talking about the money that we announced a few days ago from the Open Society Foundations?

Question: Yes.

Mayor: Yeah. Yeah, as I said that money is flowing quickly. Community based organizations that work closely with immigrant communities will be providing that support to people who need it. And again, given the nature of what's being done here to help folks who have not gotten federal support and obviously have often been mistreated by the federal government, we're going to be very careful about handling this, and the best way to think about is, the money's going to flow quickly. It's going to be available at the community level through these grassroots organizations that work with them in immigrant communities and we have faith in them having worked with them in the past that they'll know how to get the word out to their communities rapidly and make sure the money gets in people's hands who need it. And that's the smart way to handle this.

Moderator: Last two for today, we have Reema from Chalkbeat next.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Reema, how are you doing?

Question: I'm good. How are you?

Mayor: Good, good.

Question: Good. I just wanted to follow up on something you said earlier about students needing mental health support right now and especially into the following school year. Given the need for those supports, but schools also facing potential big budget cuts, how do you sort of reconcile those two? How are schools – I mean, schools might need to potentially cut counselors and social workers. So how will schools be able to support – schools that lose that, you know, those staffers – how will they be able to support students going forward?

Mayor: Reema, look, you're asking a very, very important question because it kind of frames the whole discussion we're having now about how are you going to have a functioning city? How are you going to have the largest city in the country that the entire country depends on? How are we going to have a recovery if we cannot even provide the basics? And that's the danger right now and this is why the federal support from the stimulus is so crucial. I mean, how are you not, if you can't even have enough personnel for your schools, you know, that does not look like a restart and a recovery to me. So what I would say in the here and now, the mental health support that kids need right now, families need right now, I put that under the category of emergency COVID expenses. You know, mental health is part of health. We know there's a crisis happening. We have to support those kids.

We'll be talking more in the coming days about the ways we're going to do it. Just like we're doing, you know, distance learning. Just like we're trying to help the seniors who we hope will graduate by providing them extra support from guidance counselors. And we know there's a lot of traumatized kids out there and we have to help them, now, we will. But going forward, you know, if we don't get support, we're going to have a really big challenge ahead. So we're going to do whatever it takes right now. But you know, again, this is another one of many, many examples of why folks in Washington should not, you know, toy with this city and other cities that are simply trying to fight our way through a crisis and get back on our feet

Moderator: Last for today. We have Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask you about the small business loan program. The $20 million interest free loans the city put together and just wanted to ask you – we just heard about a lack of communication from SBS for the applicants once they submitted. There's been no word. And I'm also curious if you have a handle on whether any of the businesses have received the funding yet, and if so, how many?

Mayor: I don't have those numbers at my fingertips. I do know we expanded the loan and grant program and it ended up being almost $50 million. I do know that both those programs, all applications went in, a number have been funded for sure, we can get to exact facts. I'm certain there were more people applying than we could necessarily reach, but we can get the exact details on how many we were able to reach. But knowing that that resources have been flowing it's a great question. You know, what exactly is still outstanding and are other people that have had problems, what we can do to help them.

So, the – we will get you the facts as they are today and Yoav if you know of folks who had a particular problem, we want to follow up with that and see if it's someone that, you know, we still can reach with this effort. So please, if you are getting reports of people who applied and did not get communication, we want to know about that. We want to follow up with them, but we'll also get you the overall status where we stand with the grants they've gone out and the loans that have gone out.

Okay. Well, everyone, look as we conclude just to say this you know, again, I take solace from the fact that this is a situation we will work our way out of. I take solace in the fact that unlike some horrible, horrible moments in history where people never knew if there would be an end in sight, there is an end in sight here, thank God. And I take a lot of solace in the fact that New Yorkers have done such an amazing job during this crisis. I have absolute faith that New Yorkers will fight their way through. I don't have such faith in Washington D.C. and I'll keep coming back to it. I just want the people in Washington to try and be as good as what they see here. I want our elected leaders to be as honorable as New Yorkers have been, as diligent as New Yorkers have been, as devoted to others as New Yorkers have been. Folks we elect in Washington are supposed to help us in a time of crisis. The President has to step up. Senator McConnell has to step up. Their silence is deafening. So, imagine for a moment a government as good as the people, and that's all I'm asking of the President and the Senate Majority Leader. Just try to be as good as the people of New York City and help them out in their hour of need as we all fight through this crisis together.

Thank you, everyone.

2020-04-21 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. We’ve got some important things to talk to you about today. And really what it comes to is understanding New York City, understanding who we are, understanding how we confront the challenges we face in normal times, but even more so in a time of crisis. There's something about the city that when the going gets tough, just the best comes out in people. And, you know, I've said before, but it bears saying again, this is a city where people make things happen. Folks don't shirk from a challenge, they meet it, and then they go farther than they ever thought they could. And it is part of who we are. It's in our blood as New Yorkers, there's a reason we are known as this great capital of entrepreneurship and creativity and ingenuity. It's been proven time and time again over generations and it's certainly been proven in the middle of this crisis. I've seen amazing things, and no one for a moment can underestimate how much pain there has been, how much loss there has been, but that has not stopped New Yorkers from doing things big and small to make a difference and to fight back and to prove that nothing and no one and no disease will ever stop us. New Yorkers, by our nature, we're resilient, we're tough, and we know how to take care of ourselves. Well, now, I think it's a time in our history where we're learning an important lesson about how self-sufficient we're going to have to be, going forward. We have watched in these last few weeks when we called for our federal government to help us, sometimes we got an answer, sometimes we didn't. When we went out on the open market, internationally even, trying to find the things we needed to protect our people – sometimes they were there, a lot of times they weren't. So, what we're seeing right now are the profound limits – limits to a globalized world. We were all told how many things would come from globalization that, in theory, are going to help us. We're starting to see the things that don't help us at all, in fact, have made our lives tougher, because so many of the things we need, the medical equipment, the medical supplies aren't even made here, not only in New York but in the United States anymore, and that's left us vulnerable. And we New Yorkers are learning that lesson and we're not going to be fooled again. We're going to be ready. We know we have to protect ourselves and we know we have to be ready for whatever comes next.

Now, I’ve got to tell you, even though it feels like this has been going on for months and months, it's only been six or seven weeks we've been in the thick of this, and what's happened in those six or seven weeks is absolutely remarkable. New Yorkers, creating products we didn't make here at all. New Yorkers, coming together to do things to protect our heroes, our health care workers, our first responders out of love, out of a deep, deep concern for those who protect all of us. And that compassion didn't just come out in words, it came out in deeds. So, we have seen amazing progress in just a few weeks, and I've taken you to some of those places to see the face shields being made in the Brooklyn Navy yard. I showed you the surgical gowns also being made in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but now more and more parts of the city are coming into the game to help out, more and more companies are doing remarkable things. I talked to you a few days ago about the fact that when we found, despite every attempt, we found we couldn't get the test kits we needed from the federal government. We couldn't purchase them anywhere in the quantities we needed. We said we're going to make them right here, and you're going to be seeing the results of that in just days. So, it has been a remarkable journey against a very painful backdrop. But now, today, I want to tell you about another important step and it has a lot to say with how we will protect ourselves now, but it also says a lot about how we will protect ourselves in the future. And today I want to talk to you about ventilators. You see one here and we're going to get a little demonstration in a moment, but as you can see immediately this is not a simple piece of machinery. This is something complex. This is something challenging to make. Nothing like this was being made in New York City just two months ago, even one month ago. Nothing like this was being produced here, but extraordinary entrepreneurs came together for the good of all New Yorkers and said, we can do it, we can do something. Whether it's seems possible or not, we're going to find a way.

So, I want to take you back just to remind you, just a few short weeks ago – and I use that specific day, Sunday, April 5th was the day where we felt based on every projection, based on all the evidence that we were going to be at a point where we might run out of ventilators. The number of people who needed them was growing every day and it was a very fearful time. Supplies were running short. We needed answers. At that moment, it looked like we could get to a point where there might not be that ventilator needed for the next patient. Thank God, right around then was when things started to improve and it's all because of everything you have done, all of you, the social distancing, the shelter in place, all of the things that are making a difference. So, today, we can say that, thank God, we have the ventilators get through this week. We have the ventilators for the immediate future. But as recently as the first days of April, the numbers were staggering. Approximately 220 more New Yorkers each day – more each day needed a ventilator. That's what it looked like at the beginning of April and that's when this valiant effort was going full bore to make sure that ventilators would be available and would be ready if they needed to be pressed into emergency service, these homegrown ventilators. And this is the epitome of that kind of wartime production model, people coming up with an idea and making it happen. Because if it hadn't been for these ventilators being ready, we might've been in a situation where there would not have been one for someone. By April 10th, we were still seeing an increase in the number of people needed them each day, 75 day, but it was slowing, thank God. Now, today, it's actually leveled off and we hope to see a situation where it really declines consistently the need each day. But having gone through that terrifying moment, I can tell you, I am determined to make sure that New York City never ever is in a situation in the future where we need ventilators and we can't get them. We have to protect our people. And so, these bridge ventilators that have been created are part of what will protect us now and into the future. This is something we now have that can never be taken away from us. This is something we make here that no one else in the world can deprive us of. We are now increasingly self-sufficient. We've got a long way to go, but this is a remarkable achievement. You're going to hear from some of the people who made it happen. I want to tell you, these ventilators, right now, ready to go being moved into hospitals so they will all have a reserve that need them. FDA approved – and I want to thank the FDA. I want to take a moment. I always try and give credit where credit is due. Dr. Steven Hahn and his remarkable team at the FDA. I spoke to him several times, I know Dr. Mitch Katz did as well from Health + Hospitals. They moved this process in record time and I will really want to give them credit. FDA is not historically known for speed, but they have in this crisis really stepped up and they were tremendous partners in getting this ventilator approved and ready.

Now, this story, again, it is about making something out of nothing, and that is a New York tradition, doing remarkable things against the odds. And there's three guys who deserve particular credit – Scott Cohen of New Lab; Marcel Botha of 10XBeta; and Charles Boyce, of Boyce Technologies. These individuals had a remarkable civic spirit, a remarkable desire to get something done. And I want to give special credit to Charles, because he also was one of the driving forces behind making those face shields that, right now, when you see them out there in our communities – in fact, just yesterday I was in Staten Island, deliveries of PPEs were being made to RUMC, to the in Staten Island, and there were those Brooklyn Navy Yard face shields being delivered. And that made me very, very proud to be there with those delivery workers, seeing the response from all the health care workers to that help coming. So, a special thanks to Charles for being a part of both these efforts. So, when we think of this city, we think about chutzpah, when we think about the incredible verve, the drive, the ability to do something no matter how brash or unlikely. So, literally, people who are part of this effort at to say to themselves, hey, we've never made a ventilator before, we're going to have to figure out how to do it, and then we're going to have to figure out how to produce thousands of them. You know, if you talked about a normal timeline to try and create a brand-new product like this, you'd think it would take a year. You know what they said? They said we have to do it in a month or less. And they went and did it. So, they put together a team, an extraordinary New York City team of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, physicians folks who knew the regulatory system, all sorts of folks who work together, nonstop work, literally alone, round the clock, 24-hour efforts over the past three weeks and they got it done.

So, what are these bridge ventilators do? Well, what they mean is, when someone needs that urgent help, that ability to breath without which they simply won't survive, these bridge ventilators are there to keep someone alive. They can play different kinds of roles. They can buy time to keep a patient alive who might need a more elaborate kind of help from a full-service ventilator. They can help to stretch out the capacity of a hospital so that as they're getting more of those full-service ventilators available at any given moment, they buy time to save lives. They also work with a number of different kinds of cases where there are less severe issues, but that people need that help breathing. So, there's many things they do. To make this possible, to save lives, to make sure we could be self-sufficient, we, the City of New York made the decision to work with these companies, to help coordinate their efforts, to work with the FDA on the approval, but also to make clear that we would fund the effort. And so, we placed an order for 3,000 of these ventilators – a $10 million order. And that raises of crucial point, that what these extraordinary New Yorkers did was not only create a great product and a necessary product, but a product that was affordable – $3,000 for each ventilator and that compares to $40,000 or $50,000 or more for a full-service ventilator. This means that we have already reserve in the event that this crisis continues, or, God forbid, this disease becomes stronger. It means we're in a position to protect ourselves and to help others who may need our help.

But it also is now the beginning of something much bigger that will help frame our future. Today, I'm announcing that we're going to create a New York City strategic reserve. We have learned the hard way that we cannot depend on the federal government in the future. I hate saying that, but I think it's quite evident. We certainly cannot depend on the global market. We can't depend on our nation to produce products that, tragically, are not being produced enough in this nation as we've seen in our hour of need. I hope that will change. I hope our country gets the message that we have to start producing these things all over the country again and be self-sufficient as a nation. But until that day comes, New York City, we will protect ourselves. With the leadership of the Economic Development Corporation and working with our health care leadership, we will create our own reserve. We will take the production that's now been created in those four areas, the facials, the surgical gowns, the test kits, and now the ventilators. We're going to create a ready supply of those so we'll always have enough in the future and we'll purchase what we need and create a stockpile so we will never be in a situation where we turn to those who are supposed to supply this and they say, sorry, we're all out. We, New Yorkers, will take care of ourselves. Now, I have to say this all was created from scratch. And I remember the day I first went to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and I saw those face shields being made by hand. There's no machinery. It was all by hand. It reminded me that people would do whatever it took. We've seen it now for whole different kinds of products being produced in large quantities, protecting our health care workers, saving lives. This is our future to be able to take care of ourselves. And now, that we figured out we can do these things, whatever we need in the future, we can use as a blueprint to build more and different supplies and equipment, whatever the occasion may be, whatever the challenge may be.

I also want you to know that in the process of these good people figuring out how to create this ventilator, they found out that there was a lot of interest in this ventilator from hospital systems and absolutely in other parts of the world as well. So, in fact, there will be a market for hospitals and for parts of America and other countries that need lower cost ventilators. This has started to open up a new possibility of getting people help who aren't getting it right now because the cost is so prohibitive. And any of our fellow cities and states that need help, our reserve will be there to help them, just the way they've helped us. So, we've been so appreciative to other states, other cities that have stepped up to help New York City. Any of them that need our help in this crisis, we will be there for them, because we will have a reserve that's available and that we can depend on.

You're going to hear a little more in a moment about these ventilators, but let me give you a couple of other updates first, because we know – and this is part of why we want these reserves – we know we're not out of the woods by any stretch of imagination. We've got a lot more to do. And we also know that the impact of this disease is being felt right now. Still, too many people dying, too many people going into the hospital right now, too many people going into the ICU right now because of COVID-19. This fight is raging, and it's raging, especially in the parts of the city that have been hardest hit, that have unfortunately had the worst disparities, the biggest burdens, the least health care available historically – and that means our communities of color and our immigrant communities, our lower income communities. We need to fight back and we've got to do that in a lot of ways. We've talked about all the community outreach we're going to do, the telehealth programs, everything we're going to do to reach people, but, obviously, it also will take more and more testing at the grassroots level.

Yesterday – we, as of yesterday, had five community-based sites open in some of our hardest hit neighborhoods. Those sites will be performing 3,600 tests this week. So they're all up and running. I'll go over them in a second, but they will do 3,600 tests this week. Next week, we'll add five more sites in hard hit areas and we will get that total up to over 7,000 tests per week and we're going to keep growing from there. If we can get the supply of testing we need, plus the PPEs and the personnel, we're going to keep going farther and farther with the grassroots testing where it's needed most. The five centers are now open in Brooklyn, and they're all Health + Hospitals, I should say – the Gotham Health Center in East New York; in the Bronx, the Gotham Health Center in Morrisania; in Staten Island, the Vanderbilt Health Centerl in Manhattan, the Sydenham Family Health Center in Harlem; in Queens, at Queens Hospital, the testing center there. All of these are walk-in sites. So, I want to emphasize, anyone from the community – and these are targeted to the immediate community – you can walk up. We are prioritizing people who are 65 years old or older and who have those preexisting conditions that we've talked about so much, those serious conditions that put people in danger. So, please, if you meet those criteria, if you are someone who is in, particularly – in a particularly vulnerable situation, we want to get you tested. Go to one of those centers, walk up. That testing is starting – is started, I should say – has started, is available today, and then more will be announced next week.

And now, I want to talk about what we do every day, looking at the indicators that tell us where we are. And I keep telling people, it's going to be a long battle. We want to see them all move in the right direction, it’s not always going to work that way, but it doesn't change anything about how we approach this. We keep fighting, we keep sticking to what's working, and we will see progress. And overall, we have – even though these indicators have not been everything we wanted to be, we definitely see some real movement, and that's really good news. So, first, the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, well, that went down from 212 to 2-4 – that's good news. The number of people in ICU is across our Health + Hospitals facilities for suspected COVID-19, that went up, but by very little, from 853 to 857. The percentage of people who tested positive for COVID-19 also went up, but, again, by very little, from 34 percent to 35 percent. The number of people who tested positive through our public health lab test went down from 67 percent to 63 percent. So, again, you see some progress when some of the areas going up, they're only going up by a little. Overall, we are seeing definite progress. Not everything that we're looking for to get to the point where we can relax some of the restrictions but definite progress for sure. So, keep doing what you're doing, New Yorkers, it is working. Just let's keep with it, it'll take some time, but we can do it.

Now, I always want to offer my thanks to anyone and everyone who stands up from New York City. And, today, we're talking about great stories of New Yorkers doing things for their fellow New Yorkers, but also a lot of the time people have come to our aid so we could help ourselves. And I talked to you about surgical gowns yesterday – this is our toughest situation right now with PPEs and it got to the point where we couldn't get – it was just quite clear that the global market isn't functioning right no matter what you try, you can't get the kind of supply that we need. But we said, okay, if we can't get the gowns ready-made, can we get the fabric? I mentioned yesterday, we worked with the White House, particularly with Peter Navarro and his team who have been fantastic, and they put us in touch with leaders in the textile and garment industry who have been really helpful. A special thank you to Kim Glass, who's one of the leaders in the industry who has been giving us great help. They connected us to a health care supply company, Owens & Minor in North Carolina, and they went to bat for us. A special thank you to Chris Lowery and everyone at Owens & Minor. I was on the phone with them several times. They have already delivered – in a matter of days, they produced and delivered to New York City, 1 million square yards of American-made fabric. And I want to emphasize what a refreshing reality this is, that we're not searching for something in another country that may or may not let us have it. This is American-made fabric, waterproof fabric that we can turn into surgical gowns. So, 1 million square yards already here that will create enough for 400,000 more surgical gowns. And I have an update on the day by which they will be produced – they will all be ready and done by May 10th. And that production is going to be expanding constantly as we create more and more of these gowns in New York City. Special thank you to folks at UPS, Laura Lane and everybody at UPS, they jumped in immediately to make sure that the delivery from North Carolina – 570 miles away – and it happened a second, that the fabric came off the assembly line. It came to New York City in record time. So, incredible team effort to help us help ourselves. And we're very, very appreciative.

I want to say one more thing before I close. We gathered today and, you know, normally if our society was functioning as normal, there would be a very solemn remembrances today because it's Holocaust Remembrance Day. There'd be solemn ceremonies, moments to reflect, and not just for the Jewish community and our Jewish brothers and sisters, but for everyone to learn the lessons of the Holocaust, to think about what it means and to always gain strength from the incredible examples of people who fought their way through. You know, one of the most painful realities of these last weeks is some of the people we lost to the coronavirus were Holocaust survivors. Think about that. They lived through one of the greatest atrocities in human history and then succumb to the coronavirus. We have to learn a lesson from all of them, even those we've lost and certainly from those who still survive. And I have met so many of them, particularly in Brooklyn, in areas I used to represent in the City Council, where I constantly would meet people who would tell me their stories of fighting through and surviving the Holocaust. And it was extraordinarily inspirational. We’ve got to realize that there are people right now in our city who stared down unspeakable evil, who dealt with unthinkable pain and terror and overcame it and fought through it and decided that they would not only survive, but they would create a new life with new families, new hope, they would sustain their people, their beliefs, their faith, and they did it. And some of those stories, when you're talking to some of these individuals, you are humbled. I am humbled, I know it, because it reminds you of the greatness that's possible in each of us and what those who have gone before have done, and it inspires us. So, we need to endure right now. We need to overcome and we need to learn from all of those who went before, but particularly those extraordinary, noble Holocaust survivors. They're teaching us a lesson right now that we should take to heart in this moment.

Lastly, you know, the last days I've made it a point to be very straightforward, very honest with all New Yorkers, with all of you, about what we face, the fact we have a long battle, the things we can do and the things that we can't yet do. You know, it was no fun to have to tell you that May events had to be canceled and then June events had to be canceled, including some of the events we love the most each year, we cherish, we look forward to. It's no fun to tell you, you have to keep social distancing and staying home, but it's the right thing to do and you're doing it, again, with extraordinary ability. We had to say that those things couldn't happen, those parades, those concerts, those street fairs, we had to. I had to say it just isn't time for them yet, there's still too many unknowns, there's still too many threats. There's a lot we don't know, but there's one thing we do know for sure – the day is coming when this city will fight our way back, when this city will get back to normal. The day is coming when we will overcome this disease. The day is coming when I'm going to be able to tell you we can gather again. The day is coming when I'll be able to tell you, in fact, we will be having the concerts and the street fairs and the parades again.

But I want to guarantee you one thing, that when that day comes that we can restart the vibrant, beautiful life of this city again, the first thing we will do is we will have a ticker tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes for our health care workers and our first responders. We will honor those who saved us. The first thing we will do before we think about anything else is we will take a time, as only New York City can do, to throw the biggest, best parade to honor these heroes. And many, many great heroes have gone down that canyon to be appreciated and loved by millions of New Yorkers, but I think this will be the greatest of all the parades because this one will speak to the rebirth of New York City. This one will speak to a kind of heroism that is intrinsic to who we are as New Yorkers, to our values, to our compassion, to our strength, our resiliency. This parade will remark – well, mark, I should say – this parade will mark the beginning of our renaissance, but it will also be, most importantly, a chance to say thank you to so many good and noble people, so many tough, strong people. They're fighting right now, and they have to keep fighting and we have to keep supporting them and showing them our love and appreciation. But one day, we will be able to start back on the road and we will honor them as they deserve, and that will be a beautiful and joyous day in the city.

Everyone, I want to just say a few words in Spanish, and then I'm going to turn to one of our heroes of this great ventilator efforts, Scott Cohen, and he's going to talk about how this amazing effort came together.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, in the spirit of doing for ourselves and protecting ourselves, a man who had tremendous vision. And I just want to say, what an amazing thing to look at what's happening around the world and say, wow, we need ventilators, how about we create our own? What an amazing spirit, how much creativity he and his colleagues had. But that will to get it done and that tirelessness, not waiting for one hour and not resting for one hour until the job got done. So, my great pleasure to introduce the cofounder of New Lab and the Lead for the Emergency Ventilator Response Initiative, Scott Cohen.

Scott Cohen: Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate that.

Mayor: Thank you, Scott.

Cohen: Yeah – sort of a few words about the journey we've been on.

Mayor: Please.

Cohen: Well, I just really wanted to say that we really wouldn't be here today without the partnership with the City. Really early on when Marcel – and Charles Boyce, from Boyce Technologies and Marcel [inaudible] on the end here from 10XBeta who's been a founding member of New Labs since the very beginning, we all started talking about the resources we had around us and the engineers and roboticists and inventors that were around New Lab, the engineers and experts over at Boyce Technologies, and we all started talking very early on at the impetus that was actually another New Lab member who was watching what was going on in Italy – was Italian and asked us could we help Italy? And we really started thinking about it, and we weren't sure – both Marcel and I were quite skeptical whether we could do something like this. But then when it started coming to New York, we were like, well, we have to, we have to lean into it. And so, the three of us came together and very early on we reached out to James Patchett at the EDC. We let him know what we were thinking about and that we really needed to know there was some sort of partnership with the City, because this was a very risky and fluid endeavor. I don't think we ever knew at any given instance, whether we were going to get this done in the timeframe that we set out to, but we all navigated through it. And I mean, there were – there were really, I'd say, hundreds of people involved in this effort. There were engineers from New Lab and from Boyce. There were engineers that reached out from other communities in Silicon Valley. There were engineers from MIT up in Boston, that were shuttling down to New York to help us work on the software for the device. And so, I do think this is about the agility of New Yorkers, but it's also about the inventiveness and commitment of Americans coming together and the type of training that's happening in our engineering schools around this country that, I think, is really paying off for us. So, I'm grateful for the City and grateful that we had the benefit of having the City invest in New Lab years and years ago. And I don't think any of us knew where we'd be today, but it's an asset.

Mayor: And I just want to ask, I know our colleagues in the media will ask questions in a second, but to all of you, there is an audacity to saying we're going to make something we never made before, not even close to making before, and to do it on this timeline. And you said at first there was doubt, understandably. What helped you overcome the doubt?

Cohen: I just think we all really felt this was something that had to be done. And I think there were different moments. I mean, one moment was when we had something that looked like it was working and all the critical care physicians came down with folks from the EDC to look at where we were and give us kind of some input. And they sat with Marcel and all the engineers and gave feedback and just seeing what they were going through and seeing how this was a glimmer of light for them, gave us a real charge, gave all the engineers a real good boost when they were exhausted to push on. And I also think that, you know, that's, that's what engineers do all the time. That's what everyone, that's what Marcel's group at 10XBeta does. We walk up to his studio all the time with a napkin sketch and say, you think we can build this thing?

And that's not something – that's not a new thing at New Lab. That's something we do every day. So, I think we all felt this was possible. I also really appreciate the fact that in 2010, a group of engineers led by Dr. Slocum at MIT, were thinking about building a low-cost ventilator that could address this kind of problem in the developing world. And I don't think they realized that it could have such a service to New Yorkers and to this country at the time. But when we were searching around the internet for like, what would be something that could be responsive, we found what they were, they'd worked on 2010 and a close friend of ours, Saul Griffith on the west coast weighed in with us and said, yeah, I think that's the one. We all kind of triangulated on that device, and then we reached out to the folks in MIT and I think they had started mobilizing three or four days before and then it became a round robin of sharing and kind of cooperative competition between lots of engineers and so they were really amazing and I think whenever we hit roadblocks, we'd call other folks at MIT. When they did roadblocks, they called us. We built some hardware devices for them that they brought back up there. So it was a lot of real kind of competitive cooperation between a lot of really smart people.

Mayor: Yeah, I love that. And it reminds me of things we've seen in different movies of folks racing against time to come up with some solution. But this is real life, this happened here and now and the fact that you are so inspired when you heard from the health care professionals what they were trying to do and the people they were trying to save and that moved you to even higher levels of inspiration and action. I mean, that's very, very powerful. And I just have to thank you so deeply for sticking with it no matter what. And I want to see Marcel or James, if you want to add, you're more than welcome. We appreciate it so much.

Marcel Botha: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think all of us we're sort of, I think intimidated by the complexity of a full scale of ventilator six weeks ago and then four weeks ago we realized that, listen, put that aside, find a solution. And I think that the beauty of this bridge ventilator is that it replaces a hand that’s squeezing an Ambu bag or wearing a resuscitator bag, that's an existing process in the clinical care stack. And what we learned in the last four weeks is that the hand is a very complex neuro- skeletal muscular system trained by a brain. So we tried to replace all of that, not just the mechanical function. And that's why this stands head and shoulders above most other bridge devices out there.

Mayor: Well done. Well done. James. You want to add?

President and CEO James Patchett, NYC Economic Development Corporation: I would say it was a – Scott described it well. It was a process where there were a lot of days of doubt. There were moments where, you know, I would call Mitch – Dr. Katz at the Health + Hospitals and say, how soon do we need these? Do we need these tomorrow? Do – and he said, I have five more days. You have five more days. And then I would call Scott and say, okay, we have five more days to perfect this device. And it was a day in, day out thing and fortunately the day never came where Mitch said we need these tomorrow. But it was a constant process where they were working to make the device better and better to be more functional every day while we were watching the clock. And that was, and there were times I think when all of us felt like this would never come together and it just an inspiration now to see this device here working, to have seen it at hospitals already with doctors and clinical care settings. So it's a tremendous inspiration to see these folks and the team at EDC, frankly, it's, you know, a team of over 20 people who a month ago didn't know what a peep valve was and today can tell you all about the different components that are necessary to construct a device. And we're just an honor to be a part of this team. And I think it's an inspiration and just as you said, an example of what it's possible for New Yorkers to do when they believe in something. We have an amazing creativity in this city and it's amazing to watch.

Mayor: Thank you and well done, James, you and your whole team at EDC and all our colleagues who did this amazing work and please thank your teams and all those folks who spent all those long hours and everyone they consulted with. It was an extraordinary group effort. So the fact is to the point James made that I was on a number of those calls with Dr. Katz too, and it really was coming down to a matter of days and we even thought at one point it would come down to a matter of hours, whether the next ventilator would be ready. This ventilator had it been needed on an emergency basis, would have gone into action during the week of April 6th because it would have been literally a matter of without it lives would have been lost. So this effort succeeded on that kind of wartime footing. They were ready at the moment where there would have been no other choice. This machine would have been ready. And that's an amazing testament to the work that folks did, but also, thank God it did not come to that moment. But I remind everyone, again, not out of the woods by any stretch and we're dealing with, I always say a ferocious enemy in this disease. So it is something that gives me a little relief on behalf of all New Yorkers to know we will now have that reserve in place to protect us no matter what is thrown at us. With that, let's turn to our colleagues in the media and please let me know the name and the outlet of each reporter.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder that we have James Patchett, President and CEO of the EDC, Scott Cohen, co-founder of the New Lab, and Marcel Botha, CEO of 10XBeta here in person, and we also have Dr. Katz, President and CEO of Health + Hospitals on the phone. So, with that, I will start with Matt Chayes from Newsday.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I'm wondering, what have you told the NYPD to do to address the increased rate of speeding motorists? What benchmarks have you established and are you satisfied that those benchmarks are being met?

Mayor: Yeah, Matt, it's a good question because obviously, look, I want to start at the beginning of this to all my fellow New Yorkers. Look, I know there's a lot fewer cars on the road. I understand the temptation people have. They think, oh, there's, you know, no one here, I can go faster. It's dangerous. You have got to recognize in the middle of this crisis, this coronavirus crisis, we cannot afford another crisis, which is people speeding, getting into crashes, harming other people, harming themselves or lives being lost. And we've already seen some of that. We cannot have that happen. So, the first point is slow down, it doesn't matter if there's not a lot of cars on the road. You've got to protect yourself and others. The second point is the NYPD has been instructed to crack down, as is always the case and the NYPD has been, I think over the last six years with Vision Zero extraordinary in their devotion to the concepts of Vision Zero. We still need a lot of enforcement. Now let's face it, the NYPD now has multiple tasks they're trying to undertake simultaneously. And I do want to express not only my appreciation, but my understanding - the NYPD is short-staffed because of the number of officers who are out sick, has to deal with everything that normally deals with in fighting crime and helping people. On top of that, we have the new reality of having to enforce social distancing rules and shelter in place on a vast scale. That's a lot to do. So, we're not always going to be able to do everything to the level we perfectly want because there's just limited numbers of officers. But definitely have said to the Commissioner, we need aggressive enforcement related to speeding. We cannot ignore the problem. We got to be present, we got to let people know there will be consequences and that will continue and we'll do everything we can and as more and more officers come back, well we'll be able to expand that further.

Moderator: Next, we have Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. I have a follow-up about the ventilators, then I have a separate question. On the ventilators, how many are going to be in the strategic reserve and is it is it all bridge ventilators that are going to be in the reserve? Are you going to put full-service ventilators in there as well?

Mayor: So, we're going to put a lot of different things in the reserve over time and I’ll – in the coming weeks I'll detail what we intend to have and how we're going to go about it. But this purchase of 3000 of the bridge ventilators, that guarantees us a lot of strength going forward if we ever deal with, again a rebound, God-forbid, a rebound of this disease in the here and now or next year, but also for the future protects us against many other challenges. We definitely want to make sure we have enough full-service ventilators as well going forward. And the other items, I mean, we've all seen things like the N95 masks that have been absolutely crucial. So I think it's going to be a combination of what can we produce here so that we know, and this would be, Erin my preference, what we can produce here that we know we can not only have a reserve amount but a reserve capacity to create a lot more on short notice. And then some things I'm certain that we will have to purchase in quantity to fill our reserve. But my perfect model, the thing I want to drive toward is a physical reserve of equipment and supplies and even more so the ability to produce here at a large level.

Question: Then my other question was—

Mayor: Erin, can you hear me? I want to make sure just everyone just for consistency, just get your questions – normally in our regular press conferences where there's a different format, I tell people split it up. I just want to always say to folks, basically we're letting people do two questions up front. Just get them both up front. It’ll just make the process easier the way we're doing things now.

Question: Yeah. Sorry, I think I got muted. Anyway, is there anything the city can do to help municipal workers who are struggling to get death certificates that they need to claim the benefits they're entitled to? I'm the head of two major union said this has become a major obstacle for those who have passed away.

Mayor: Yeah. We got to get – we have to resolve that. I don't want to see anyone waiting who doesn't need to wait and you know, unless there's a very specific reason causing the delay or whatever – we've said this to Medical Examiner, we said this to Health Department, whatever they need in the way of personnel or support – this is such a painful moment for so many families, including our public servants. We don't want people delayed. There's some things we're all dealing with here that are beyond anyone's reach because of the nature of this crisis. But anything that we can fix, anything we can do to lighten the burden we need to. So on something like that, I want to see that sped up and we will make sure that happens. And that anything those agencies need to do, we will make sure they have the personnel to get it done.

Moderator: Next we have [inaudible] from Hamodia.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. While the state has banned visitors – in most cases banned visitors from hospitals because they don't want overcrowding, there've been reports of from hospitals across the city of neglect and patients not getting lung suction properly, being found with empty oxygen tanks, taking hours and hours to get food or water. Again, some of these are confirmed, some aren’t because no one's allowed in to the hospitals. Would the city consider what some people are asking for is allowing in some sort of outside monitors where not on hospitals’ payrolls to ensure that there is proper care.

Mayor: I appreciate this question a lot because we understand, and I think what I'm hearing as the core of your question is that, you know, as good as our hospitals are and our health care workers are, they're also incredibly busy and stressed right now dealing with so much. And it is always helpful for a family to be able to advocate for their loved ones or anybody who's a loved one in their life being able to advocate for them and understand that that's been thrown off by this dynamic. Let me speak to what we can do to work on that, but I first want Dr. Katz to jump in and talk about how at our public hospitals, how you are addressing that challenge, understanding that we're trying to save lives every single hour of every single day and that comes first. But I know Mitch, you are very sensitive to the realities of the people in someone's life who matter to them and the important role they play in helping and protecting someone. How are you balancing that at Health + Hospitals?

President Katz: Sir, it's such a difficult question. In regular times I advise people never go to the hospital without having a family member with you. All right. Just to think that things are complicated at hospitals and you should always have someone to advocate for you, especially when you're sick. But these are such extraordinary times. The major reason that we haven't been allowing visitors, and it's not just us, it's all of the hospitals, isn't crowds. It's that we're trying to prevent transmission of the disease. We want people to shelter in place. We don't want them to be in a hospital where there are a lot of people who have COVID and could transmit COVID to them. We don't want to use extra protective equipment because we have to maintain enough protective equipment for our health care workers. And we don't want to introduce other people who themselves could be COVID-positive to the hospital. So it has been an extremely, extremely difficult, we have been trying as much as possible. We have volunteers with iPads who are connecting people to their families which I think is a beautiful thing. But it's been very challenging to weigh the risks of creating more infection in New York by allowing more people into a very high COVID place and trying to also be thoughtful about people's families.

Mayor: So, thank you very, very much, Mitch. That that really paints the picture on the challenge very powerfully. I think to the question of having some kind of monitors in hospitals, I think what I'd say right now is we better make sure, and this is something we will work on with all the hospitals, that family members who are trying to get information, who are trying to advocate, even if they can't be there in person, that there's a way to do that the right way and to support them and to hear them. While again recognizing what Mitch just said, that, that, that is not the same thing as allowing people to have the access they used to have because we have to protect everybody. But I don't want us to miss that that advocacy still has a place. So, we will work together with the hospitals to figure out how we can do that for this circumstance in a better, clearer way. And I'll come back with an update on that.

Moderator: Next, we have Alex from Chalkbeat.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Hey Alex, how you doing?

Question: Good. I wanted to ask a question about school grading policies. Some other large school districts have moved to kind of no harm policies, acknowledging that students are going to have kind of like differential access to online learning. And I'm wondering why that hasn't happened in New York City or if that's something that you're considering?

Mayor: Yeah, Alex, it's a great question. We are considering a lot of things because we're in the great unknown and you know, at the time we closed the schools it was quite clear there were so many questions to answer, and that every school system in the country dealing with this has had the challenge, but we're having it in a way that's beyond any other school systems just because of the size and the complexity, the diversity. So we've got to figure it out. The thing we're particularly focused on is helping our seniors who can graduate to graduate and go on to what's next in their life. And that's been a singular focus, obviously with every week trying to strengthen the online learning. But we got to figure out within that what we're doing about grading. There's, you know, some time, obviously, to figure that out before the end of the school year, but not a lot of time.

So that's something that the Chancellor I know is trying to determine with his team. We’ll come back and say more on that soon. I think the – I appreciate that point you make about the sort of no harm approach and we're certainly looking at that. I think right now the first focus again is to help the seniors who can graduate, maximize the online learning, and getting those devices in the hands of kids who don't have them yet in the next few days and getting more of a rhythm going with the online learning. And then we'll definitely make sense of the grading issue and talk about it publicly.

Moderator: Next, we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. The fact the city is resorting to creating its own stockpile feels like a sort of combination of the federal response to the outbreak since it's the feds who are supposed to maintain or both robust national stockpile in the first place. I was wondering if you can put the city's strategic stockpile in the context of the nationwide pictures on supplies and do you think other cities should emulate what New York City is doing?

Mayor: Yeah, Shant, it is a very, you said a mouthful there. It is a very sobering telling moment when I have to say here before you and say the New York City needs its own strategic reserve because we can't depend on the federal government at this point. It's sobering as all hell. I mean it's just not something I'm happy to tell you, but it is really, really clear. This is a city that, you know, really led this nation over generations in building up the concept of a federal government that would be there to protect all Americans and obviously no one did it more than New York's own Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But that idea has atrophied in so many ways. And now we have a New Yorker in the White House who unfortunately is putting an exclamation point on the idea that the federal government is no longer reliable when it comes to protecting everyday Americans and no place is bearing the brunt of that neglect more than New York City. It's just unacceptable.

So I, you know, the reality, the famous phrase, you know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I mean we've, we've now gotten the point – you know, since January 24th, we've been asking for a sufficient supply of testing that we haven't had one day where we had it. What else did we have to know to understand that going forward, we have to protect ourselves? And so we will build what we can build here. Yeah, that's my first preference to have the production be right here and to make sure that we know how to turn it on rapidly for anything that we think we might need that's viable to produce here. And then on top of that, to buy what we have to buy, but we've got to have our own reserve to protect ourselves. You know, I would hate in the future if New Yorkers faced a crisis and turn to the federal government and they said, sorry, we're all out. And then New Yorkers suffered, New Yorkers died because of it. We cannot take that risk, so we have to do it ourselves. And I'll just preview that when the Q and A is over, we're going to have Scott just show us a little more about how this thing works. So that'll be our finale to give people a sense of how this amazing machine actually works, homegrown in New York City. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask about, you know, the State is rescinding some of its orders for equipment, basically stuff that might no longer be needed and is now giving ventilators to other states. Is the city going to similarly try to perhaps cancel – I know we need a lot more PPEs – but on ventilators, are you going to cancel any of those contracts or will those perhaps go into the reserve –

Mayor: We need –

Question: As far as the field –

Mayor: Go ahead.

Question: As far as the field hospitals, do you still plan to build all the ones that you've announced or might you scale those back as well?

Mayor: So, the quick answer is on the purchasing. Again, we do need to ensure that we'll have enough full-service ventilators for the future. So, a number of come in, some of those are going to be returned obviously when the crisis really is over and we're far from out of the woods. When everything's sort toted up and we know which ventilators are going to remain in New York City at the end of this process, we do need to make sure we have a reserve beyond that, and we will have that as part of our strategic reserve. Obviously, the bridge ventilators as well, the 3,000, but yeah, you said it on the PPEs, we are way far from out of the woods. We're still – we don't have enough strategic gowns to get to the end of the week, so we're going to have to have a really substantial supply to protect us in the future.

On the field hospitals. Yeah, the basic reality now is the ones that are up and running will continue for the foreseeable future. The ones that are not yet built out, some may be built out and be ready in reserve and or to be turned into isolation and quarantine centers. Remember in most of these cases, the same a building, whether it's hotel or some other kind of building that could have been used for a field hospital, can be converted to an isolation and quarantine center. We're going to need a lot of those rooms, a lot of those beds when we go into the next phase of really pushing back to the disease, and then lots of testing, lots of temperature checks, lots of people who, if anyone is positive or symptomatic, isolating them, quarantining them, helping them get through, testing more before people come back. We're going to need a lot of space for that. So those facilities will have more than one purpose for sure.

Moderator: Next, we have Marcia from CBS.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Go Marcia, how are you?

Question: I'm okay. I have two questions for you today. First of all, there are several southern states including Georgia that are thinking of reopening their states. I wonder if that concerns you and if the concerns you have that people from those states might come to New York City and spread more disease, would you consider barring those people from coming into New York in order to protect New York City residents? And my second question has to do with the fact that the Governor is meeting with President Trump today, and I wonder if you were in that room, what you would be saying to the President today?

Mayor: So, Marcia, on the first point, I am really concerned. I don't begrudge any state or any city that has really carefully looked at their health care situations, seen a lot of improvement, they've gotten to that phase where there's only a few cases and they can trace them and contain them and keep the outbreak from reasserting. Any state or any city that has certain that that's what they've got, God bless them. I understand why they would then open up, but if they're wrong about that, if they're not careful about that, then it could threaten all of their residents and then everybody else, and that becomes a problem for New York City. That becomes a problem for all of the United States of America. So, I'm definitely concerned that, you know, you've heard a rhetoric from the President, you know, liberate Michigan, liberate Virginia. That's dangerous in my view because it pushes people to move whether they have the facts or not, and I think the facts are matter here. If you can prove that the disease is really under control, then start opening up more. But if you can't prove it, don't make a false move. Don't take your foot off the gas. So, in terms of the threat to New York City, that's a real threat.

I want to be careful about the notion – and this is something we would work on the State with – I would be very careful about the notion of, you know, being negative to any individual from a state. People tried that towards New Yorkers, I didn't think that was fair. So I'd be very careful about that. I think the more essential point is to push for federal leadership to work with the states to make sure they reopen carefully, slowly, and if they see anything wrong, that they quickly put some of those restrictions back on to protect all of us. We get one chance, Marcia, to restart our economy and restart our lives the right way, and if people jump the gun, we're going to pay for it. We're all going to pay for it.

If I was in a room today with the President, I would say, Mr. President, there's only been two things you need to do this whole time. One, get the testing to New York City and all the places in America that needed it. And two help us through this horrible challenge by providing us the aid we need to get back on our feet. The cities and states that have borne the brunt that are going through this health care crisis, this economic crisis, and aren't going to be able to pay the bills, aren't going to be able provide basic services, help us as only the federal government could do. Well, Marcia, he has got two things he really, really needed to do. The first one, he has blown completely. The second one he's been silent on and right now we're waiting for a word from Washington about whether that state or local aid is going to be in the current package. It's not looking good right now. The President must speak and tell the Senate they have to do it. They have to either do it right now or do it very soon or else you're going to see cities and states start to go bankrupt literally and not be able to provide what our people need, and then you won't have a recovery.

Moderator: Next is Roger from 1010 WINS.

Question: Hi, good morning Mayor. I wanted to ask you what you thought about the President's immigration announcement and what you think the appropriate immigration policy should be during a pandemic? Should there be cuts in immigration if it threats public health?

Mayor: Roger, I want to say what I saw was bluntly and very sadly a just a brazen political move by the President. To introduce the question of immigration in the middle of this when he hasn't done those two things I just mentioned. He hasn't gotten us the testing. He's not getting us the stimulus funding. He's not doing his job. So, he's going to his all-time favorite distraction, immigration, which he uses as a campaign weapon all the time. Remember when, you know, the caravans were all going to be coming to our towns and taking over our towns from Mexico and Guatemala. Of course, nothing like that ever happened. This is his go to when he's in trouble. So that's what I think is motivating it. To the bigger issue, I respect any kind of a plan that is trying to protect us all while we deal with a pandemic. It's an exceptional situation, an honest plan to protect us while we deal with this and get back on our feet and then resume our traditions in this country of being a welcoming open country. That's one thing. I don't think that's what he's talking about. I think he's talking about a political ploy, honestly.

Moderator: Next is Julia from The Post.

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor, and everyone else on the call. A question for you, Mr. Mayor and a question for James Patchett, who I believe you said is on the call. First for you, I'm wondering if you regret not having this bridge ventilator program going weeks earlier when we were in, you know, more dire need of the machines and I'm wondering if they were available on April 6th, why didn't we hear a bit then? And then for James Patchett, I was looking for an update on the homegrown testing. Have any of the contracts with the universities and the private companies been signed and if so, can you make that announcement now?

Mayor: So, Julia on the – I’ll turn to James in the moment – I think, you know, our ground rule, when we have something to announce, we announce it. James will offer whatever he wants to now, but I will remind you that, you know, we've said those homegrown test kits they'll be coming in the beginning of May and that we're going to announce the different organizations that are part of the companies, the universities, anyone who is part of putting that together like this amazing coalition to put together the ventilators. We'll announce it publicly, but when we are ready and when everyone has been notified and they're ready, that's when we make an announcement. But to the question of the bridge ventilators again and we're going to do the demonstration a couple of minutes now because I know time is running short.

These were ready to go into action the week of April 6th. The situation changed radically and for the better, right around April 5th, April 6th including that we got some shipments of the full-service ventilators in at the last moment that we had not been able to depend on, so we didn't need to put them in the service. But if they had been needed, they would have gone immediately into service even though they were partway through the process with the FDA. And I want Dr. Katz to explain this because I think it's hard for a non-medical person and someone who hasn't been here in this kind of a wartime headquarters dynamic to understand just how close it got. Dr. Katz is the one that said to me, look, if, if we get to the point where it's about saving a life, then the rules, the medical ethics are actually different, vis-ŕ-vis something like an FDA approval, if it's the only way to save a life. Dr. Katz, could you explain that?

President Katz: You have it exactly right, sir. And during those days, I remember every night, right before going to sleep, I would be checking to make sure there were enough ventilators at every one of our 11 hospitals and it would be the first thing I would do in the morning. Everything was about making sure that we wouldn't run out of ventilators. In general, we like for all of our machines to be approved by the FDA, we like them to have been gone through clinical practice. And so, when it turned out because you were able to secure those ventilators for us right when we were running out, we did not run out that week of April 5th, but how do we run out? We would not have needed the FDA approval. We would have not needed having done the research studies to prove that it works. Physicians can always use a device to save a life. And so if there were no ventilators to use and the choice was between allowing a patient to die and placing them on a ventilator that had not yet received FDA approval or been proven in clinical studies to work, everyone would favor using the ventilator device. And so that's why I was tremendously relieved when these, I knew these devices could be put into service.

Mayor: Thank you Mitch and I'll add to last point before turning the James quickly that, no, I want you to understand, Julia, the notion in the beginning that we would not have a supply chain that functioned in the beginning of March as this was going on, you know, we thought our supply chain was holding. We also thought federal aid would be consistent. And it was really, as we got into the third week in March that it became abundantly clear that something was getting worse and worse and something was going wrong. And had there been already supply chain and, or a federal effort to either use existing stockpiles or move ventilators around the country, which is something that could have done at any point, and they never did. I kept saying, mobilize the military, create a national supply chain that was federally run, use the defense production act properly. None of that happened. All of that could have given us the security that we didn't need to even think about something like doing a homegrown model. But at a point it became clear, you know, towards the – again, the third week of March that everything had gone haywire, that we couldn't depend on any of the things we normally depended on. And that's where, from my point of view is like if we have to create something ourselves, whether we know how to make it or not, we got to do something, and these folks were amazing in pulling something together. And the fact is they did it so that – and we didn't know exactly how the pieces would align – but had it been needed, it was going to be pressed into service and this ventilator would have saved lives. James, you want to add?

Patchett: Sure. I'll just say on your second question. We've made tremendous progress. We've had a number of our partners sign contracts with us and we are well on our pathway to being able to meet the overall test kit obligations that the Mayor has set out for us to acquire for the city.

Mayor: More to come on that soon. Go ahead.

Moderator: We'll take two more questions today. Next we have Andrew from NBC.

Question: Mayor. Good morning. How are you?

Mayor: Good. Andrew, how are you doing?

Question: Good, thanks. So yesterday you announced the cancellation of all the June events including Pride, which is June 28th, just six days after that is the 4th of July. I wondered, have you already begun discussions about whether there can be any kind of fireworks watching in New York City and can you envision that?

Mayor: We have not begun those discussions. Certainly not at my level. I'm sure our team has been talking to our colleagues at Macy's and everyone else who would have to coordinate an endeavor that size. Hard to see it today, but you know, that is obviously one of the most important days of the year, and boy does it speak volumes to our values and what we're feeling as a country right now. So that one, we have some time to sort out, hard to see right now. But you know, Andrew, we're going to be looking at our indicators every single day to see where we're going. And so, you know, I'm going to reserve judgment on that for a little bit while we see what the health care facts tell us and just recognize that July 4th is a day like no other and want to be really thoughtful about that.

Moderator: Last question for today, Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, I hope you're doing well. I've got two questions. They're related. The first is how is this bridge ventilator different from a normal ventilator? My second question is a lot of the recent research and reporting on this disease suggests that ventilators are not necessarily the most effective treatment of this form of respiratory distress. That really respiratory therapy, moving patients in bed, using oxygen, maybe better techniques for treating this particular new disease than going to a ventilator and intubating a patient.

Mayor: Okay. So, what we'll do is this, I'm going to turn to Dr. Katz to answer your medical question on one, what a bridge ventilator allows and two on whether there are alternatives that are being considered. I can say from being in the middle of this battle I certainly think our health care professionals across the board believed with dealing with the scale of this problem, that it was absolutely necessary to have ventilators available in quantity to keep up with the demand and keep people alive and they have saved many a life because they had the ventilators. But Dr. Katz answer your two questions and then we'll have Scott, just take a moment as we conclude to show us a little more of how this works so everyone can see it. And Scott, you can just describe first in the microphone, what are you going to show people, and then you can do that, but let's have Mitch Katz first answer the questions.

President Katz: Thank you, sir. I'll start with Henry’s second part. So Henry is correct that as we've learned more and more about this illness, we know that it's best to try to avoid intubation. It's best to use other methods like giving people oxygen, doing aggressive respiratory therapy, using a BPAP – BiPAP – and other methods of trying to keep people off the ventilators in part because once people need ventilators, they don't do very well, in general. That being said, no one disagrees that if somebody cannot be oxygenated through other methods, they should be on a ventilator and there is no choice. So, we do everything we can to try to keep people off ventilators, but when they need a ventilator, no choice. And that has not changed anywhere in this medical picture.

In terms Henry of how to explain it, and I think when you see it, it will help. Most ventilators work by pushing oxygen through tube into the tube that people have placed in their mouth and then down into their lungs. So you're essentially - the machine is blowing out, a typical ventilator is blowing out air that goes directly into the tube. This ventilator is based on a robotic squeeze of what is known as an Ambu bag. When we ventilate patients if they only need to be ventilated for short periods of time, we've always used what I call an Ambu bag. You - it's not a ventilator - basically you squeeze it and it pushes in the oxygen. And we've used this for generations. It's a very safe and well-known tool. The problem is somebody has to squeeze it and you need a live person to do that and you need them to do it at a particular rhythm, so that the inspiratory phase and the expiratory phase is the right length of time, the pressure is the right amount of pressure. So firstly, it would take a real human being 24 hours a day to do it. And second, they wouldn't necessarily always get it right the way a robot can. And so basically the way I look at these vents is it's a robotic Ambu bag presser. It presses the Ambu bag the way a human might, but they – it does it with much greater scientific precision. It doesn't require a human and the developers of this have added some amazing bells and whistles, literally bells and whistles, that would tell us if the person were not getting the proper amount of oxygen through the ventilator.

Mayor: I think that's perfect. That's great, Mitch. I think Mitch just gave us the narration we needed unless there's anything you want to add, Scott, and feel free and then show us.

Cohen: Okay. Yeah, the only thing I really wanted to add was that I think what the bells and whistles that Dr. Katz's is talking about we have on here primarily because the – we had physicians, clinicians working with us from the very beginning. Dr. Quan and Dr. Slocum Jr. who were working with Marcel and the engineers, and we were getting constant feedback about you know, what physicians would want on a device like this. So they had the the visibility, kind of a control panel to understand how the device was interacting with the patient.

Mayor: Excellent.

Botha: Okay. So that's good. Yeah, so you switch it on, you set your [inaudible] volume, your respiration rate and your inspiration expiration ratio, and then you hit run. And then once that is going, it's going to be just be like watching paint dry. It's going to go for hours and days. The bags themselves lasts for about three days. So, we replaced the Ambu bag every three days. We have an inline pressure sensor that measures the respiratory or the airway pressure. So that's one of the safety feedback loops so that you get all of that displayed on the interface on the front. If there's any of the thresholds for safety that are surpassed the device will show one of the relevant alarms, run air pressure, if it fails to work or if there's something that obstructs it, it will have a mechanical failure alarm that you cannot silence. And so, it's a minimum viable product around replacing a human hand and it's able to do that with a much higher rate of precision than an untrained hand, for instance.

Mayor: Excellent. Well, thank you again to everyone, really an amazing achievement. And as we wrap up just to say this is New York City ingenuity at its best. This is a homegrown solution to an international problem and it really, really inspires me. As I said, as days come in when we're going to really praise and appreciate and love and celebrate all the heroes of this fight, starting with our health care workers and our first responders. I'm going to make sure we also have a moment in that parade where we get to celebrate the folks who created these ventilators and the folks who built those face shields and the surgical gowns and all the things to protect our health care workers and our first responders because it's just been an amazing effort by so many New Yorkers to help each other, to be there for each other, and that is something that one day we will celebrate like we have never celebrated before –

[Ventilator beeps]

I think the ventilator agrees with me. Okay, thank you so much everyone. God bless you all.

2020-04-22 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. The experience we've all been having these last weeks, something we could never have imagined in all our lives. So many challenges. So many things where people have had to create a new way of living, a new way of thinking. We've all here at City Hall, here in the City government, we've tried to give you guidance, we’ve tried to give you all the information we have to help you through this. But I know for all of you, for every New Yorker, for all of us, it has been a really challenging process trying to figure out our own approach. Every single one of us, every single family, our own approach to this crisis. A crisis that nothing, nothing like this has happened in a century in this country. And we're all trying our best to find the right way to handle it, to help our families, to help each other, to help our communities, to help protect ourselves. And I think one of the most challenging parts of all this has been that there's so much we all don't know. And it has been very frustrating for all of us to not know more, to wish we could know more, to wish the scientific community, the medical community, anyone anywhere had all the answers, and yet we know that's still not the case. We have learned a lot from fighting this virus right here in New York City. We've learned a lot about what New Yorkers are capable of to support each other and to rise to new heights. We've learned a lot about what works, and we've certainly seen the power of social distancing, and shelter in place, but there are so many things we still don't know and so many things that very personally, very humanly gnaw at us because we don't know and we want to know.

Very immediate questions. The most obvious, I ask it myself, my family asked it, have I already had the coronavirus and I didn't even know it, have I been exposed to it? All of us are asking this question. Have we have we somehow contracted this virus already? Have we in some way exposed other people to it? We don't know. And that is the reality of this phase we're in right now. Where this disease is widespread. Where we have had community transmission now for weeks and weeks, and we haven't had the thing that would really be the difference maker, and that's testing obviously on a really broad scale. That would help us all to have a lot more answers. That's been the reality we've been living through the months of March and April. It's not an acceptable reality for any of us. It's been what we've had to make sense of somehow, and again, I credit all of you, you've found the best way you could to deal with a situation where there's just not enough answers. But I want to remind us all and I want everyone to take hope from the notion it does not have to be this way. It does not have to be this way going forward. We can change this situation. We can actually provide a lot more answers if we get the help we need to do it and then we use the extraordinary capacity and ingenuity of New Yorkers to follow through. When we have that testing, a whole world of possibilities is going to open up. We're going to be able to give people a lot more answers, and it's going to help us not only to have more comfort knowing that we know a lot more about what we've experienced, what our families experienced, it's going to give us more power to push on to the next phase to push back this disease and make things better for all of us. We need to be able to envision that next phase, that new reality where things really do start to get better, and it's someplace that will take real work obviously, but we can get there. We will get there. My promise to you is that I will keep pushing us forward. I will do everything in my power. This entire city government will do everything in our power to get us out of this phase we're in, and onto something better as quickly as possible.

We need to do the work now to be able to make that next big jump. So, today I'm going to give you an update on the testing, the approach to testing, the approach to tracing the contacts, all of the things that will take us to that next level. Today, I'm going to give you the shape of what it's going to look like. Broad strokes, but enough for you to start understanding, and feeling the way forward. And I remind you that we talked a few days ago about those phases of this disease. I'm going to go over those again for a moment. Right now, we're in the widespread transmission phase. This is not a place we're going to stay, obviously. We can't accept this reality. We're going to fight our way out of it. The next phase is called low-level transmission. Now, to get to low-level transmission and to hold onto it, you need a huge amount of testing. Not just tens of thousands of test per day, as many as hundreds of thousands of tests per day for a city of 8.6 million people. But when you have that kind of testing, when you have it available whenever it's needed for whoever needs it, then you're also able to do a lot of the other things that continue to contract this disease, and make sure that people are protected. So when you find that someone has tested positive, you're in a position to isolate them, to quarantine them, to trace all the people that they came in contact with who might have gotten the disease from them, the people that came in close contact with, and then help all those people as well. So, we have to be ready to push into that phase, that low level transmission phase that we all want to get to. We have to have all the building blocks in place, even while we're fighting to get the testing we need, we have to have the building blocks in place and that's what we're announcing today.

So, the plan is called test and trace, and it's a very straightforward concept. It's what you have deserved all along. Had there been the testing from day one, this is what we could have done so much more of in the very beginning to contain this disease. But now, this is how we ultimately defeat this disease. You need to be protected every day. You deserve that as a New Yorker, you need to be protected. You need to know help is there for you. You need to feel that sense of protection. Testing is going to allow us to do that, and you need that test to be easy to get. So, it has to be plentiful and then it’s our job to make it available in communities all over the city in lots of different ways, so it's easy for people to access. We're not there yet, but we're going to show you how we get there pending being able of course to get the help we still need from the federal government to get that vast amount of testing or somehow to find it in the international market, which to date has been extremely difficult. But we're going to keep looking under every stone to get the quantity of testing we need. So, the testing will be the key, but I want to give you the sense of the whole plan because you deserve that too. You need to know, you deserved to know, if something happens to you, what is going to be the reality of how we'll help all the people in your life. How is it going to affect the rest of your family? What kind of support are they going to get or the people that you come in contact with, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, whatever it is, we're going to lay this out to you.

Now, even though we don't have the testing that we need today, we're going to keep fighting for it and we want all the other building blocks to be in place more and more each day. So, as the testing comes in, we can plug it in, and get all these pieces working together. So, we have made some progress on testing. As I announced a few days ago, we found one company in the entire world, one company that is providing us now a steady supply of test kits. It's not a huge amount, but it's really helpful. And in the beginning of May, we'll be creating our own manufacturing, our own here in New York City. Huge breakthrough. It's going to help a lot. Every additional test we get helps someone to be safe, but we want to find a way to expand that production as much as we can locally while finding every other source around the world, and especially getting that federal help we need. And that demand has to continue every day, because the one place that could really create the breakthrough is the federal government. They still haven't done it. So, we will then need, once we have more and more tests, more and more sites to do the testing, and we're identifying public sites, public buildings all over the city that will be turned into those test sites, and they'll be ready to be turned on very quickly.

So, we do believe because we're seeing progress from everything, all of you are doing, the social distancing, the shelter in place, everything you're doing is making a difference. We believe every day is getting us closer to the point where having that testing, having the ability to follow through on each case becomes more and more possible, because as the numbers are driven down, then the notion of literally tracing each and every case through knowing everyone the individual came in contact with closely, and helping all those people, every day the number of cases declines, that possibility of doing that really completely becomes greater. But we also know we're not there yet in terms of our overall indicators to what we show you every day. We'll talk about them again in a few minutes. We still have work to do, but we definitely see progress and that makes this plan all the more necessary.

Now, two concepts here, as I said, test and trace. So, testing widely available, here's how the plan would go. Widely available, plenty of sites, plenty of tests. So, what happens to you if you go to a test site. Well if you test negative, that's great, and of course you'll get instructions about how to continue to protect yourself, because even a negative test doesn't mean you're, you know, out of the woods forever. It means, thank God that day you don't have the coronavirus, and we'll remind you of all the things to do to continue the smart precautions to protect yourself, your family, and help drive this disease back. But if you test positive, then we get you care right away. If you can't isolate properly at home, and that's a lot of New Yorkers that just don't have the right space in their homes, in their apartments. If you can't isolate at home properly, we'll get you a hotel room, we'll get you the help you need. The whole idea is to help you to isolate, to get well, to have the support you need, and of course get tested again to know when you're done with the disease, so you can go back to your regular life. Making sure that that is available, that support is available for each and every New Yorker who needs it, that's what this plan is all about, and that's the building blocks we're putting in place now. The hotel rooms, and all the support that goes with it.

Now, the tracing is literally hunting down each and every case, every individual who contracts this disease, following up with them and making sure that they're interviewed about the people in their life they've been in close contact with in the previous days and then following up with those people and it's the same thing, it’s continue following it all the way through. If you were in close contact with your cousin, then we're going to go see your cousin. We want your cousin to get tested, then we want to see— if your cousin test positive, who were they in close contact with and just keep following it through every single time to make sure that everyone who needs that test gets it. Everyone who then because they got a positive needs care gets it. Imagine it just happening over and over again and that's how we constrict this disease. We obviously help people, most importantly help people to know what's going on with their own body, their own health and get them to help they need to get well, job one, but it's also how we just drive the disease back day after day. We have to keep doing it, it's very repetitive if you think about we have to keep doing it to the point where in a perfect world we literally can see every single person in the City who has the coronavirus at that time and we know exactly where they are and exactly the help they're getting. That's where we have to go to the maximum extent humanly possible.

Now, the kind of care that you will need, let's go through an example. If you do test positive, here's a real scenario, while we want to take care of you. As I said, job one, take care of you, get you the care you need, get you the isolation, the quarantine you need. So, you want to know the second you got a positive test, what do I do next? Where am I going to get medical care? How am I going to make sure I get better? How am I going to make sure my family isn't infected because I have the disease? That's what we work with immediately, we get you to, if you don't have, again a place you can isolate properly at home, we get you to a hotel we put that care in place and that support in place. Then that interview immediately, who have you been in close contact with in recent days? And each and every one of us would say, okay, well I was either around my family members, my friends, someone I worked with, someone who’s a neighbor, go through that whole list, go and then literally follow up with each and every one of those people, get them tested. Anyone who's negative, great, we still will give them the information to help them take care of themselves. But if anyone's positive, if your friend, for example, who you just spend time with the day before is positive, then we get your friend to the care they need, to the isolation they need and the support. And we take an interview that friend and go through those contracts over and over and over again. It's going to take thousands and thousands of people to do this right and we're putting that team together now, when you think about what it is to put this whole apparatus together, we're going to need tests and that means the test kits. It means the personnel to give the tests, it means the PPEs to protect those personnel, it means the locations to give— the tests in. It means the labs to process the tests, we need the personnel to do all that— contact tracing, we need the hotel rooms for isolation and then all the services to protect people and give them support while they're in those hotel rooms. That entire apparatus is being put together and obviously a city the size, we could be talking about thousands of people in isolation at a given point, tens of thousands. We don't know the number yet, but we do know that we're going to build an apparatus that will keep expanding to accommodate whatever that true number is because it's the only way we protect people and it's the only way we drive this disease back.

So, if you're someone who test positive and now let's say you're in that hotel, what do you need? We have to get you to the hotel, so we'll provide that transportation of course, you need the place where you can stay. We have a lot of hotel rooms and again, it's very sad what's happened to everyone who works in the hotel industry, not having jobs. Everyone's gone through a lot, but there clearly are a lot of rooms available to us so we have those. We would have to provide food and we're obviously in the middle of a huge food effort for the whole City, so we can use that same effort here. We have to provide a laundry services, just the basics, obviously we have to provide health care and that's something we will do for anyone who's in those isolation settings, making sure they're safe, making sure to well checking on them frequently and again, every day we drive back the disease, we have more and more people, more and more health care workers who can be turned to other crucial tasks like this instead of just having to focus on the front lines in our hospitals. So, again, it kind of all fits together, the more you reduce the disease, the more health care personnel you free up to focus on the isolation sites and driving back to the disease. And then of course, telemedicine, we're going to use technology clearly in many different forms to help update people stay in touch with them, but also direct connection to a human being, to a medical to a doctor or a clinician who you can talk to, who will check in with you, who will answer your questions. So, we want a lot of contact with folks who are in isolation, we want to make sure they're well and if they need anything, they can get it quick. So, if you said, can we do all that this very day? No, all those pieces are not in place today, but they will be in place next month. And as we fight to get all of the testing we need, we're going to be building this apparatus every single day. And again, we don't know the exact number yet of people it will be serving. Absolutely. it's going to start in the thousands, I'm not going to be shocked at all of it goes into the tens of thousands, but we will build an apparatus that can grow with the need. So, as soon as we can start to do those tests in a truly widespread manner, we can start to accommodate people in this fashion as part of that effort to get to low-level transmission. And that's going to be an intense fight, I want to be clear. I think as you're hearing all these pieces, it's a lot to orchestrate some massive operation. We will put it together, we'll make it work, but it also means finding everyone and making sure that we communicate with all New Yorkers and make them really understand how easy it will be eventually to get testing and encourage them to come and get it because we have to know if someone has the disease to do all that tracing and all that follow-up and all that isolation.

If there are people out there who never get tested and might have the disease and we hope and pray a mild version of it, remember then they're still spreading it to other people. So, this is a big, big job and it comes with a certain amount of unknowns, obviously. But what will be crucial as we build it is to communicate to all New Yorkers how important it will then be to engage at constantly. There will be a big outreach effort, there'll be call centers with people constantly communicating with anyone who is trying to get information. There will be a lot more health care workers, as I said, moved into these kinds of tasks, testing people, taking care of them in isolation. We're going to expand that that pool of disease detectives that we talked about back in the early part of March who do amazing work through our Health Department. But we're going to add a whole lot more folks who don't necessarily have that high, high level of training that our Health Department disease detectives have. But they're going to be trained to do the basics and that's going to take thousands of people. And again, we have a lot of City government employees who right now some of them could be put into this work because their regular work is not happening. We have a lot of people work for nonprofit organizations who contract with the City, some of them can be transferred into this kind of work. If we need to hire more, of course we will cause this will be absolutely crucial to our success and we're going to use all of these efforts to collect the kind of data that will allow us to know exactly what's happening with this disease and how we keep finding it back.

So, we'll have a team that puts together that data, analyzes it, helps understand the strategic meaning so we can act on it quickly. A lot to do, but it's a vision that makes sense, you can hear how all the pieces fit together to protect New Yorkers and move us forward. I'm absolutely confident that we can put this together, the missing link is the testing. I have no doubt about New York City's ability I talked yesterday about the self-sufficiency that we are going to exhibit as New Yorkers, we've learned a very powerful lesson in self-sufficiency too often during this crisis. Too often we've been left on our own to fend for ourselves, but New Yorkers have been absolutely brilliant at fighting back. We will set up this entire apparatus, no one's giving us a playbook or coming here to do it for us, we will create this. But where we absolutely must have help is that testing, if we don't get the quantities than all the other pieces don't come together.

Now, that is the vision that we will be implementing over these next few weeks. There'll be growing throughout May and it's how we will get to that kind of transcendent place where we get out of widespread transmission into low level transmission. I can't give you the exact day that we'll get to low-level transmission, I can tell you it's very much a function of how much testing we have and how many New Yorkers we reach and making sure that everyone gets tested, everyone is reached and is communicated with, that we don't miss people to the maximum extent possible. That's going to tell us a lot about how long it's going to take to get to low-level transmission, and then remember we want to get through that phase and onto the even better phase what is effectively no more cases. So, I can't give you an exact timeline, but I can tell you we're going to build a very aggressive effort to get through it as speedily as humanly possible and all New Yorkers once again are got to be part of it, just like you fought back to the disease with everything you're doing in your own life, we're going to need you to fight it back by being a part of this effort, by communicating, by participating, and while have a lot more to say about that as it builds out.

Now, in the meantime, we've got a lot of work to do even with the tools we have right now because we know where some of the hardest hits hit areas are and I want to emphasize the right thing to do is to go where the need is greatest, where people are suffering the most. Where we've seen this disease take hold the strongest and it's all connected to those health care disparities we've talked about before. It's deeply unfair and it's quite clear what's happening here that this disease is hitting hardest, where people have had the least income, the least health care available to them. We need to go there and help people more because it's the morally right thing to do, it's also crucial to any strategy of drive back this disease overall to go where it's having the biggest impact and cut it off in every way we can. So even with the imperfections of the amount of testing we have now, we're still going to devote more testing as we get it in to focusing on the hardest hit areas. One of the groups of New Yorkers who were most concerned about right now who are bearing a lot of the brunt and have borne the brunt even before this crisis, is our public housing residents, New Yorkers who live in NYCHA buildings. Now, I want to say, I've spent a lot of time with NYCHA residents. I’ve spent a lot of time in those buildings over the years. These are folks who are the backbone of our city who work so hard and fight through such tough odds all the time. NYCHA for decades did not get the support it deserved. A lot of people are living in buildings that haven't gotten the kind of support and maintenance they deserve in the sense of, you know, a building, 50 years old, 60 years old that should have been rehabbed decades ago – never got that. And so, a lot of people are living in really tough circumstances and obviously these are among the lowest income New Yorkers on top of that. So folks who often haven't gotten a fair shake and didn't have access to the health care they deserved over the years, but these are folks who are the backbone of the city and we owe it to them to make a special effort. Now that we finally are getting some testing in and building some of our own, this is going to be a real focal point. Everyone in New York City has been hit hard by this pandemic - everyone - but the residents of NYCHA have been hit particularly hard and we want to do a lot more to reach you, to help you, to bring you support, not just the testing, but other forms of support to help you through this crisis.

So, folks in NYCHA have experienced these health care disparities. A lot of folks in NYCHA also have the additional challenge, again, not having had really serious conditions treated sufficiently, whether it's diabetes or severe asthma or heart disease. So, we're talking about a lot of people who have those preexisting conditions - they're vulnerable, especially the many, many seniors who live in NYCHA. We're going to provide new support; so first of all, the testing that we have up and running already, the five community sites through Health + Hospitals, we're going to, we obviously know they are in many cases, very close to NYCHA developments. That's an important option for folks in NYCHA who are older who have those preexisting conditions. We want to make sure you're getting tested so those sites are up and running now. We're going to add six more sites in the next few days and NYCHA residents will be a priority at all six of these new sites and we're going to obviously with the leadership of NYCHA - with all the people work there - we're going to spread this word to all 400,000 residents, but these new six sites are near NYCHA developments and are going to be prioritized so that NYCHA residents can get tests there. So, opening on Friday at Health + Hospitals community sites, so Health + Hospitals will run these community testing sites, opening Friday, three sites at the Cumberland Health Center in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, at the Belvis Health Center in Mott Haven in the Bronx, and Gouverneur Health Center at the Lower East side here in Manhattan. Then opening next week, three additional sites that'll actually be at NYCHA locations in NYCHA complexes - at the Jonathan Williams houses in Williamsburg, at the Woodside houses in Woodside, Queens, and at the Saint Nicholas Houses in Harlem.

Testing, we're going to keep expanding, again, focusing first on where the need is greatest and these six new sites will be a crucial part of that. Second, we've got to make sure that NYCHA residents get more and more support in terms of the supplies to keep them safe and keep everyone around them safe. So we're going to keep delivering supplies as they are needed and that starts with face coverings and gloves for all NYCHA residents. Those will go out next week delivered across all of the housing authorities - so literally every building, every resident - it will help people to stay safe, it will help them to protect others. We're also going be giving out hand sanitizer to seniors in particular, so that'll be the priority to make sure all seniors have the hand sanitizer they need and as we get more supplies, we'll go beyond that.

Third, we're going to focus on the reality of hunger in public housing. I've been talking about this for weeks, everyone in the city is dealing with this challenge more and more - hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. Everyone who doesn't have a paycheck and doesn't have a way to pay for food needs help. We will be there for all New Yorkers; no New Yorker will go hungry. That is the pledge. We've talked about all the ways that people can get help, obviously by going to 3-1-1 or nyc.gov/get food. We're going to do a special effort around NYCHA buildings and senior buildings in particular as the focus. So, obviously NYCHA residents, like anybody else who have been hungry in these last weeks, have been able to go on to 3-1-1 or go online to get help. We're going to do something different now with the senior buildings, the buildings in NYCHA that are explicitly for seniors that have high levels of concentrations of seniors. We're going to just provide the meals directly, meaning instead of anyone even having to call and apply, we're going to go right to their door - right to your door - and bring you meals directly. So, we’ll have enough meals for a whole building of seniors and get them right to them. We don't want anyone to miss out on the food they need. So, we're going to do this proactively.

Now, another crucial piece, a fourth element of this plan is to recognize that there's still so many people who say, understandably, they're not only vulnerable, they don't have all the information they need. They don't know where to turn. This is particularly true with folks who are dealing with serious health care conditions; folks who are disabled, seniors, folks who do not speak English as a first language. There's a lot of folks who are particularly vulnerable and don't know where they're going to get the help they need. We want to go right to them. So we'll be calling through seniors at NYCHA and other vulnerable residents directly. Live calls, folks calling to get them the help they need - if they need food, if they need supplies, whatever it happens to be. Obviously if they need medical care, connect them right away to a clinician. We're going to do that as a proactive approach as well.

And then finally we know of so many seniors in particular senior citizens who are feeling more isolated than ever. Obviously, one of the most painful realities of this crisis, there are so many, but one of the most painful human realities has been grandparents who can't see their grandchildren or their children. Seniors who used to get visits of one kind another; kept their spirits up and got them help they needed, a lot of them feel particularly isolated right now. We want to make it a little bit easier and one of the ways of course is through technology. So, there are so many seniors in public housing who don't have access to technology. We're going to do something about that now; we’re going to make a $5 million investment to give free tablets with internet service to 10,000 NYCHA seniors who are particularly isolated and need that support so they can stay in touch with their family and their loved ones and have more access to the help they need. We'll start in locations in Brownsville and East New York, in Mott Haven, Red Hook, Bushwick, and Coney Island. There'll be a phone helpline if the seniors need any help working with the tablets or figuring out how to get the information they need - there'll be a live phone helpline for them. And I want to thank, I'm often giving thanks these days for all the people who stepped up. I want to thank the folks at T-Mobile who are partnering with us on this project to help these seniors get more connected and get the support they need.

So, a couple more things today. One question that came up yesterday and I appreciate that the question was raised because I had made the announcements and they were no fun obviously, the announcements that the May and June events had to be canceled in the city – the big – the festivals, the concerts, the parades that we had to cancel them. But then the question came up yesterday about the 4th of July. And you know, I thought immediately about the big gathering like we're used to, you know, the millions of people, millions of people coming out and all, I thought, well, how are we going to do that by the 4th of July? But then I started thinking, wait a minute, there's no day like the 4th of July – it's special – and even if we have to do something different, we have to market in a very meaningful way, especially at this moment where everyone's fighting shoulder-to-shoulder to get through this disease. So, I reached out to the CEO of Macy's, Jeff Gennette and he has been a fantastic partner as has everyone at Macy's with the city. We fare a, feel a very special connection to Macy's in this city, obviously because of the fireworks in particular, because of the Thanksgiving parade, but they've been just very, very civically minded for decades and decades. So I said to Jeff, look, we may not be able to do it the way we historically have, but I want to know how you feel about this because we think it would be right, I think it would be right to mark the day in some special way, whatever the circumstance and to the credit of Jeff and everyone at Macy's, he said, we are right there with you. We want to do that too; we're ready to do it. So, one way or another, the show will go on; one way or another, we're going to celebrate the 4th of July in a very special way in New York City. There's definitely going to be fireworks, how we do them, where we do them, how we do it in a way that's safe and keeps New Yorkers healthy - a lot of questions that we have to answer between now and then. Thank God we know that fireworks can be seen by New Yorkers all over the city even just looking out the window or from the fire escape, from the roof, but we have to do it in a way that's safe and smart. We all are going to have to, I think for quite a while recognize social distancing, but this is a day we cannot miss. This is a celebration that has to happen because it's about our nation and it's about all we stand for as Americans and New Yorkers as a symbol of our strength and resilience. But we're going to do it the smart way and we'll have a lot more to say on that as we get closer. But a profound thanks to everyone at Macy's; no one would have blamed them if they said, hey, we just can't do it this year, but their spirit was, you know, come hell or high water, we're going to find a way to do this and do it the right way and do it the safe way, so thank you to everyone at Macy's.

Now, let me, as I start to conclude, go over the numbers we watch every single day. And this really always will tell us how we're doing and what we have to plan on going forward. Again, I've been very honest with folks; these numbers tell us a truth. It’s not always the truth we want to hear, but it’s the truth we need to be able to make the right decisions and it reminds us to stick to our plan. Even against the backdrop where there's been real progress, we still need more progress to get to the point where we can get to low-level transmission and loosen up some of those restrictions. So, for the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, unfortunately that number went up from 204 to 252. Daily number of people in ICUs across our Health + Hospitals, hospitals for suspected COVID-19 - that number went down, good news, from 857 to 821. The number of people tested positive citywide – went down from 35 percent to 33 percent. The number of people testing positive in the public health lab test – went down from 63 percent to 54 percent. So, three out of four indicators absolutely in the right direction; one more wasn't so good today, but overall real progress, let's stick to it.

So look, before I talk to you, just to give you a few words in Spanish and then we'll, we'll hear from our colleagues in the media. The bottom line here is to always be building the next phase, always be building the next step forward. We have proven in this city - all of us that - we can protect and support each other. Now we're going to build something in some ways even bigger. We had to fight every step of the way through the last few days. Now we're going to build something to fight back to take on this disease and push it back. This is nothing, never been done in this city before. Let's be clear, an operation that could reach potentially hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in a single day and have thousands or tens of thousands of people in isolation with all the support they need and constant tracing of everybody who might've been exposed to this disease. Nothing like this has ever been seen before in the history of the city, but we will create it and we will make it work because that's what New Yorkers do. And it will be part of our story of how we fought back this disease and we won the day. So, a lot to do, but we'll do it together and I have no doubt that we will prevail. Just a few words in Spanish -

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Mayor: With that, we'll turn to our colleagues in the media. And, again, please give me the name and the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: We'll now begin our Q&A. As a reminder, we have Deputy Mayor Vicki Been and Senior Advisor Jay Varma also on the line. The first question will go to Juliet from 1010 WINS.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Hey, Juliet, how are you doing?

Question: I'm good. So, I actually have a two-parter for you. Just following up on the ticker tape parade, how do you do this with people standing in the street next to each other? [Inaudible] actually that's so much a part of this parade – if social distancing issues are still there or there are people that are concerned with being close after they're lifted. And also, following up, I called 3-1-1 again this morning to see how things were going with senior food delivery. And I was told that after placing one order, which supplies food for two days, the senior needs to call back to place another order. So, is that something new?

Mayor: That is something we're going to change right away, Juliet. The folks who put together the food initiative were building out the program massively and trying to make sure that they always had enough for everyone each day and trying to make sure that folks got what they needed, but obviously making sure that if someone only needed a brief supply, that they would get that supply of food not assuming they would be needing it every day or every week. What I've said to them is I want to change that assumption immediately, turn it the other way around, ensure that the food supply is constant. We can be in touch with each New Yorker who asks for food to see if at any point they have enough or their situation has changed. But I don't want it to be time limited like that. I do understand why it was created that way, because the situation was so urgent, meaning there were so many people needed food and they were building up the distribution system and trying to make sure that food got to who needed it. And, of course, it wasn't sent if someone didn't need it anymore. But I think in this crisis we have to go with the other bias that it's ongoing until we confirm that someone's in the clear and doesn't need it anymore. So, I've instructed that change to take place and you should see that very quickly in your calls to 3-1-1. And I want to thank you again for being our 3-1-1 monitor, it is very helpful. The quality control that folks in government does is important, but there's nothing like journalists and every-day New Yorkers continuing to check to make sure it's really happening. So, again, I thank you for what you're doing and what your colleagues are doing. On the parade, again, when the day comes when we can have parades again – and we don't know that day yet – what I've said is, this'll be the first thing we do. This will be the first parade when we come back, but we don't know what that time will be. And that time would mean, Juliet, that we'd have to have a much different environment where we could have a parade properly. I mean a parade where people could come out and actually be a part of it and actually celebrate and thank and appreciate our health care workers and our first responders. And you know what a Canyon of Hero's parade looks like and feels like, it works because everyone gets to come together and there's an incredible passion to it for that reason. When that day comes, it will be indicative of the fact that we went not only out of widespread transmission but into low-level transmission and to a point where there were very few, if any cases anymore. So, that's when I want us to be able to have that kind of true, big public celebration, but not until it's ready. So, we'll keep updating you as we go along, but it's another part of the goal we all are fighting for. We all want to get to the day where we could have that kind of celebration, and, if we work hard enough, there's no question in my mind we will get there.

Moderator: Next question is Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Henry. How about you?

Question: I'm doing good. I'm looking at this program, I'm thinking about what you're trying to do here and I have to admit that I'm extremely skeptical about whether the City, or any city of this size, could have the capacity to do this. The testing, first of all, it's not a hundred percent [inaudible]. We have absolutely no capacity to test people by the hundreds of thousands a day. The test results come in hours, if not days later [inaudible] the test is conducted. And the amount of personnel to contact trace people in a city with subways and, you know, dense population and all of the ways in which social contacts can be made – and not even social contacts, but touching a surface that may contain virus on it. It just seems to me that the amount of effort involved and the costs involved in this thing just make it almost impossible to succeed. And so, please explain to me how this is accomplishable.

Mayor: Henry, the question is obviously a heartfelt one, and I appreciate that, and I don't blame you for saying how do we mount something of this size and impact. And I would say, it is like any other moment in history – we have to do it. You know, to borrow Apollo 13, failure is not an option. We have to find a way to do this. This is the only way we can get out of this phase we're in and to a better situation. The shelter in place, the social distancing is having a big impact. It alone will not get us there. So, we have to mount this effort. Now, I think a couple of things you said, I would say you're seeing the glass half empty. The amount and speed of testing, clearly as more and more work is being done on the testing we are looking to a day where results come back much more quickly. So, I want to emphasize that this model is not based on the assumption of long delays in getting test results back. We hope for speedy test results as this model develops. And I think there's evidence out there that there's more and more work being done in that direction around the country. Also, on the question of contact tracing, I hear you if you said, well, wait a minute, what have you had to think about anybody, you know, they were on a subway car with, or anybody they walked down the street past or whatever. That's never how contact tracing has been done here or other places. It's not – it's not focused on any one you might've been anywhere near. It's focused on the people you've had close contact with. And we were talking yesterday, a group of us, with our medical leadership about this, and I know we have Dr. Jay Varma on the line, he can speak to this too. There is an international definition of close contact and that's the definition that we would use where you are really in close proximity and engaging someone and tracing those folks. Remember, in the beginning, early in March when we were able to do this work with the disease detectives, I remember – and I always use real life examples – we had the lawyer from Westchester that was, sort of, the center of so much of this. We were able to follow up with that lawyer’s family, and we knew exactly what was happening with your family member, with, I think it was eight employees of the law firm that had been in close contact with the lawyer. And then, the son of the lawyer went to Yeshiva University, had two close contacts we followed up with. It was actually something that was finite and that we could do. Is it perfect? I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it gets you to the heart of the matter. That kind of tracing we have done in this city we can do on a mass scale and we can follow through on. So, I would argue to you, Henry, your underlying point – is it a vast endeavor? Yes. Has it ever been done before in New York City? No. Is it going to be perfect? No. Is it absolutely, positively necessary? Yes. We have to do it. We have to innovate. We have to find way. We didn't previously have an approach to surging hospital beds and bringing in, you know, military medical personnel and finding N95 mass from all over the world or building a ventilator here in New York City. We didn't have any of these things two months ago. We had to create all of them. We're going to create this too. On that specific question of who you trace, Dr. Varma, could you step in here and just describe what that international standard is to answer that point of Henry's question?

Senior Advisor Jay Varma: Great. Thank you very much. We use a definition internationally that we often modify a little bit, depending on our investigations. But the basics of it are, you have to have either had physical contact with somebody during the time that they were infectious – so, hug, kiss – or spent a prolonged period in close [inaudible] contact. We sort of arbitrarily set a time of about 15 minutes, but, of course, also leave ourselves open to judgment depending upon the symptoms that the person had. So, really, the two most important things are, were you in actual physical contact with the person? Or, where you in face to face contact with them for at least 15 minutes or longer?

Mayor: Right. And that means, obviously – and it gets back to why the six-foot standard has been the norm here and elsewhere – that face to face, direct contact closer obviously than the six feet is what we'd be looking for. And so, it gives us something tangible to work with and to build that contact tracing around.

Moderator: Next question is Jenn Peltz at the AP.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you? Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Jenn, how you doing?

Question: Thanks. A question about the progress indicators – as we've seen, they go up and down day by day. Since even one additional person can be the difference between red and green. How practical do you think it will be for these ever to go down all together in tandem for
weeks at a time?

Mayor: Jenn, that's the whole concept here – it's a very fair question, but I want to emphasize this standard was put together on the basis of, of course, knowing it was possible – for sure, knowing it was possible – and knowing that it was a high bar, but also a smart measure, meaning, you know, we do not want a mistake – make the mistake that I'm worried some other places might be starting to make of reopening so quickly that you could let the disease reassert and set us all back. We want to be smart. We want to be cautious. But absolutely these are attainable measures. And if you sort of think about the common sense of them, you know, if you saw the number of people testing positive going up or the number of people in the ICU going up or the number of new hospitalizations going up, that would not be the time to relax restrictions. You really want to have evidence that something has turned a corner more profoundly. So, they're common sense to me, but of course they can move. We've already seen movement. And interrelates with what we're talking about here. We're going to have to use these new strategies as part of the push. So, the things we're seeing that every-day New Yorkers are doing are clearly working. But we're going to have to do more and these kinds of strategies I just outlined, they help you get to low-level transmission and then secure it and then push on to the phase we all want, which is when there's effectively no cases at all. So, no, I'm absolutely convinced these can and will move, but they're cautious for a reason.

Moderator: The next question is Anna from the Daily News.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Hey, Anna.

Question: I was wondering, given, you know, the cost of putting on a fireworks display in New York City both for Macy's and for the City, you know, for security and other measures, is a fireworks display really worth our time, you know, given that Macy's has also furloughed thousands and thousands of employees?

Mayor: Yeah, Anna, I think those are two – it's a fair question, but I think there's two separate concepts here. Macy's is a massive company that's been dealt a huge blow here by the economic reality and that is a much bigger reality than whether they put on a single fireworks display. The cost of a single display is a pretty limited thing in the scheme of things. Again, we're going to figure out something we can do. We have to make sure it is safe and, you know, we're not going to do something that we think isn't safe. We're going to find a version of it that we think is and obviously would therefore simultaneously limit whatever else had to be done around it. But I think it is right to say it is a sacred day each year, it is a very powerful day. It's part of our effort to fight back, to recognize a day of this importance, but to do it in a different way and it will be a different way. But I think it's very generous and, you know, really patriotic of Macy's to say, no, we had planned on this we were ready to do it, we're not going to back away from that commitment, but we're all going to find the right way to do it. And it will be something that takes into account safety and, obviously, not something that's going to cost a lot of money.

Moderator: Next question is Gloria from NY1.

Question: Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I'm wondering if you have made – if there's any progress or changes to how the City is going to handle other parts of summer. So, you're talking about the July 4th celebration, but have you made any progress on a plan to deal with people going to the beaches, to deal with people who maybe don't have air conditioning at home and need to go to a cooling center that might now not be open because of the restrictions that are in place? What is the City doing to prepare for a summer other than making sure that we have this day of celebration that you're talking about?

Mayor: Yeah, that's something, Gloria, we've been talking about over the last few days. Obviously, in these settings we're absolutely going to be unveiling a summer plan that looks at how we can protect people, first and foremost, because we don't know as the summer begins – I mean, some people mark it from Memorial Fay, obviously, other people would mark it from when school normally lets out. Whatever way you think about it, we still don't know what we're going to be confronting. What we knew was there were some things that would not be ready, certainly like opening a beaches on Memorial Day was not going to be a real possibility and whatever we do has to be with a health and safety focus. So, we'll put together a plan and we'll announce a plan that says this is how we're going to begin as we get into the warmer weather, this is how we're going to keep people safe. Knowing that beaches are not opening in the beginning, we still have to protect people who might go to the beaches, but we don't want to see anything like the normal reality of folks traveling. And let's face it, most people go to the beach, they take the subway, they take the bus. That's not happening right now. That's not acceptable right now. We don't want large numbers of people anywhere near the beaches, but we have to protect if people show up in any number to make sure that they're safe. We do need a process to protect people against heatwaves and there are different ways we could do cooling centers, even with social distancing. There's a lot of pieces. A question was raised a day about blackouts – great question. Again, I think the situation is different this year in a way that will allow us to handle that differently, but we'll speak to that as well. So, a lot of pieces will come together. Now, it is April 22nd. So, this plan is something we would talk about in the next few weeks, obviously well ahead of the hot weather. But yes, it is being worked on right now and it'll be ready soon.

Moderator: Next is Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I was hoping you can give us an update on some of the announcements you've previously made, particularly when it comes to outreach in the most vulnerable communities. In Queens, in particular, the neighborhoods that have been hit the hardest don't have NYCHA developments, so they can't really tap into the relief you've mentioned today. But can you let us know which community groups that your administration has connected with, community health organizations that you've mentioned to do what you described as grassroots outreach? And I'm curious, you know, I know this test and trace plan, how can it really work if we don't have the tests yet? And why wasn't there – I know that there was a lot a shortage of tests, but, you know, a lot of this seems like things – and I've said this before, but it seems like things that we should've done a month ago or even more than a month ago. Thank you.

Mayor: Katie. I appreciate the editorial comment, but I got to tell you it's moot without the tests. I mean, you could say it would have been nice to do it a month ago, but we just didn't have anywhere near the testing capacity. And so, I understand the impulse always is for journalists to wonder what could have been, but I think we all lived through this together and everyone had eyes to see there was barely the testing available to do the most basic work we had to do. And remember, that was protecting the patients whose lives were in danger, that was testing the health care workers, testing first responders. We cannot forget that two weeks ago – a little more than two weeks ago, we thought we were about to go into a massive ascent, unfortunately, with this disease and it was going to take more and more testing just to focus on saving the lives and protecting the health care workers and the first responders. And everything we had was focused on that mission, on saving the hospitals so they could save lives. And it's only been in the last couple of weeks that we have begun to come down from that situation and think about reassigning health care workers to things like community testing, having enough PPEs, which is a constant struggle. We still don't have enough test kits. We still don't have enough lab capacity for tests, going forward. I am hopeful those pieces will keep coming together. But no, there was no way this could have been mounted previously. Now we're building it out rapidly so we will, as much as we have the testing, we'll be able to act on it, but there has to be a sustained supply of testing to do that.

To the other question about the other pieces of the disparity plan, the plan to address the health care disparities. We will have an announcement shortly on expanded telemedicine options and we will have an announcement shortly on grassroots outreach, which again, we want to engage those clinics not just for texting and phoning and things like that. But eventually actual on the ground work and as more personnel are becoming available and as the PPEs are starting, again, not out of the woods, but starting to get a little bit more available, going to be more possible. So those pieces expect announcements on those in the coming next few days.

Moderator: Next question is Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask you about 50,000 tests that were supposed to come this week from, I think it was Aria. Well, I guess what is the current daily testing capacity in the city and will we see those 50,000 tests actually conducted this week so that by the end of the week the city will have tested 50,000 more than it did last week?

Mayor: We’ll get you the testing capacity previous. The Aria shipment, we've gotten half of it in now. The rest will be coming over the next couple of days. But remember before that there was no widespread testing test kit source. So everything was much more hand to mouth and again, the focus on helping the patients in greatest danger, the health care workers, which we expanded health care worker testing in H + H and first responders. So we'll get you those numbers of where we've been up to now. The community testing has just begun. The introduction now of a bigger supply and what we think will be a sustained supply both from Aria and from our own production. That's now going to allow us to go to something much bigger. So we'll get you the update on what has happened previous to this supply arriving, but this is literally the first week where we ever even began to have a supply that would allow us to have something that was more of a community-based approach. Up to now, it's been a very hospital-based approach. Now it's going to start to be more and more a community-based approach.

Moderator: Next question is Julia from the New York Post.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, I want to read you the response from the head of the FDNY-EMT union Oren Barzilay to your ticker tape parade announcement yesterday. He said “a parade does not put a roof over the heads of our men and women. A parade does not put food on our members’ tables. The Mayor needs to stop his irresponsible treatment of heroic work of EMT, paramedic and fire inspectors of the FDNY, heroic men and women at FDNY-EMS have risked their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic and the time is now to pay them what they rightfully deserve. If he can spend millions on throwing a parade, he can do the same with paying EMS.” So, what do you say to first responders who want you to honor their work with a pay raise, not just a parade?

Mayor: Julia, throughout this process we've been honoring all of the first responders by supporting them with what they need most, which is the personal protective equipment, the reinforcements, obviously for the health care workers, that meant getting in the military medical personnel, getting in the contract nurses and other employees, the medical volunteers. For the EMTs and paramedics, it means the hundreds and hundreds of ambulances we brought in from outside, and more and more EMTs and paramedics will get you the exact number. But I think the last I heard was something in the neighborhood of 700 or more that we brought in to support of folks who do such crucial work for us and to take some of the burden off them. And thank God as we talked about just a few days ago, the numbers have come way down. We're at a situation now where our EMTs and paramedics are dealing with a number of calls that are much more like would be normal for this time of year, but that extra support was crucial to help them to take some burden off them and we're going to keep supporting them.

I think Senator Schumer is right. There should be a federal bonus program as part of the next stimulus for all the people who acted heroically here, all of the first responders, the health care workers, the essential workers who are part of this fight. Federal government is in a position which we very sadly are not, but they're in a position to provide bonuses as part of a stimulus. Everyone understands what has happened to the City of New York to our finances in this crisis, but it absolutely should be part of the federal stimulus that's voted in May, and our heroes deserve that. So we're going to fight for that. And I would say I think the notion that when the day comes, and it could be, you know, quite a while from now, but when the day comes when we can honor everyone, I think people in this city, I think our first responders and health care workers will appreciate being respected and honored.

Union leaders do what union leaders do. But the folks who do the work keep showing up, they take their oath seriously. They serve other people and I certainly think for them, for their families, but for all New Yorkers, the opportunity to thank them and appreciate them is meaningful. And we're going to get a lot of support from outside to pull together that parade when the day comes. But that day is off in the future. Right now, we got to support our first responders in the here and now and we got to get them those bonuses through the next stimulus.

Moderator: Next is Jeff from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor. I have two questions. Can you talk about the hotel isolation program and the challenge it's intended to address? How much of a role has family transmission played in this crisis so far? And the second question is about the contact tracers. Has the city considered any use of a mobile applications to trace people? And if you have any idea how large, how many traces are going to be needed. Do you have any sort of more details you can give about the scope of the tracing plan?

Mayor: Okay. So the – Jay – keep, keep Jeff there for a second. I want to make sure I got this right. Jay will speak to the use of what's been done that, and we were borrowing obviously to some extent from models that have been at least somewhat effective elsewhere. How technology is used and how people are used. I can definitely tell you, Jeff, that there will be thousands of people employed whether they are existing city workers, whether they are nonprofit folks who work for the city or if we have to hire new people. But you know, I would say thousands and thousands of people doing the contract tracing, five to 10,000 would not surprise me at all. But we're working on what that exact number would be. Jay in a moment can talk about sort of the technology and all, but the first part of your question about the isolation, you, I think I heard you say, was it indicative of a certain amount of the problem coming from people living in crowded conditions? Is that the question?

Question: Well, two questions. What, you know, can you talk about the challenge that the hotel isolation program is intended to address? And then secondly, what is the role of family transmission in this crisis?

Mayor: Sure. Okay. I'll start and again, Dr. Jay Varma can give you a much more precise answer, but clearly transmission, you know, to the people you are closest to in your life. And we said this from the very beginning, our Health Department team said this from the very beginning that that's, you know, the people you spend the most time with, have the closest contact with. If one gets sick, the chance is substantial it could spread to other people. And when we were doing, that early, early contact tracing that we were doing, remember day by day in the beginning of March over each and every case with all New Yorkers, you could see that transmission within families very vividly. So there's no question that's a real concern. And that concern is amplified if more people live under one roof or they live in particularly crowded conditions. But Jay – I’ll turn to Jay in a second on that and also on the use of technology and the tracing.

On the question of the role of isolation, I think this is one of the things that actually gets in – you know, falls under the category of common sense that anyone who is positive unless they are in the living circumstance where they can really be, you know, overwhelmingly isolated and comfortably able handle to that and have the basics they need, we would rather put them in a situation where they're safe and sound in one of the hotels rather than run the risk that they could infect other people in their lives. So again, some people have a living arrangement that would allow for proper isolation at home. And that's ideal. But a lot of other people, it just wouldn't be possible, particularly if you have a lot of people under one roof, if you're doubled up, if you're tripled up, whatever it may be. So that's where having that option to have people, you know, in a safe, secure place with lots of support and monitoring and no chance that they could spread it to spread the disease to the people immediately in their life makes a lot of sense. Jay, you want to jump in?

Senior Advisor Varma: Great, thank you. So, for the question about transmission in households, we know so many experience in many places around the world that the only way that these [inaudible] contained and you can get to this low level transmission phase is by doing more than just the social distancing. You have to get to a point where you are also making sure that people [inaudible] infection don't transmit it to people that they are close to, either those in their house or anybody else that they socialize with regularly. We don't know the exact proportion of that that is occurring in New York. And in fact, one of the reasons that this program should start now and scale up over time is that we will learn more. We have the scientific basis to understand why people should be separated. But, of course, we're going to also learn from the practical experience about how to do that in a way that is you know, ethical, that is safe and also of course is effective.

Now for the role of technology. New York City has tremendous experience with case contact tracing. This is the basis of how in New York City controlled a huge epidemic of tuberculosis in the late eighties and early nineties. And it's the basis for our also driving the end of AIDS in this city. But of course, what we're talking about here is something that will have to be done on an exponential scale. We use that word exponential cause we see how fast the virus grows. It also refers to the scale at which we need to respond to it. Now, technology may have a critical role here. We've actually had a number of discussions already with the big technology companies that have been developing apps and other things. They're not ready for prime time yet. We also don't know how effective they will be. But we absolutely plan to use technology like these mobile apps. As soon as they become available and it may end up being good. It reduces some of the human contact tracing that that we need. But we have to start on the assumption that we'll use the tools that we know already work and then, and innovate with new tools as they become developed.

Moderator: Next question is Matt Chayes from Newsday.

Question: Hey Mayor, can you hear me okay?

Mayor: Yes, indeed. How are you doing?

Question: Doing okay, sir. How are you?

Mayor: Good.

Question: I got two questions. The first is for Dr. Varma. Doctor, who would be taking these hundreds of thousands of tests. Is every New Yorker at some point expected to do this on a consistent, regular basis? Is there some probable cause that triggers a test? Does a person hang out at the test site and wait for the result? And upon positivity is the person then put into isolation and awaiting transport, either home or to a hotel? And for the Mayor, can you be specific and enumerate the stated reasons that New York City's different from Oakland to Denver and some of the other jurisdictions that have pedestrianized their streets. So like in what specific way doesn't it as you've put it doesn't the plan fit our reality in terms of safety? So I'm looking for specific reasons the NYPD feels that the city is different from these places, not just like a general process answer of who you've talked to and what they said generally. And lastly, did the NYPD generate a written report—

Mayor: Matt, I got you. Hold on. Just parity. Everyone's been pretty balanced about trying to get to as many people as possible. I think you will go. We're going to take the multi-part for Jay. That's a consistent question and I'll answer your question on the streets, but let's, let's leave it there.

The – I think I've been specific about it, so everyone has their own judgment here. But I think I've been pretty damn specific and I'll say it again. The models that have been looked at around the country, the Oakland model as I understand it was assessed by NYPD and Department of Transportation was here are streets that are delineated as pedestrian. They are not blocked off physically– this is what I've been briefed on – they were not locked off physically and there is not an enforcement apparatus in place. So it's something of an honor system, if you will.

And the notion isn't, to be fair in California, I mean, a very obvious specific thing in California, drivers stop at intersections even if there's no light or stop sign. They stop when people are trying to cross the street even in the middle of the street, a lot of time. This is a very different culture. In fact, a number of you have rightfully raised the concern about speeding lately, which we're trying to address, but I'm not comfortable with streets being delineated as for pedestrians and just hoping and praying cars don't go on them and pedestrians are going to be safe. I think there's too much danger that drivers might still go on those streets and put pedestrians in a danger. And then the alternative you could say, okay, well block off all the streets, put in lots of enforcement. Well we can't do that right now. NYPD is still not at the headcount, the sort of troop strength, we want them to be given the number of people out sick and they have a bunch of additional responsibilities in terms of enforcing social distancing, which are more fundamental to the strategy then would be opening up the streets.

So I think it's very specific why the model that, you know, the leading model was Oakland. I do not think that model fits our circumstances specifically. Obviously, we are much more densely populated and we have a very different driving culture. But on top of that, the enforcement piece, which I think is just absolutely necessary if you're going to ensure safety in New York City in anything, it cannot be devoted to open streets. It has to be devoted to all the other places where we have to protect against social distancing. And I've delineated them, the supermarkets, grocery stores, pharmacies, parks, subways, buses, that's where we're putting our energy and that's where I think we should put our energy. So again, I'll happily talk with Speaker Johnson and we'll work on it with the Council and see what we think makes sense going forward, and over time that situation could evolve. But, right now, I think those are very specific reasons why it doesn't make sense for us. Go ahead, Dr. Varma and the other question.

Senior Advisor Varma: Yeah. So, we'll have to understand, you know, what's ideal and then what's pragmatic. So what is ideal is actually the [inaudible] game because this is an infection that we know can be transmitted, sometime before people develop symptoms, maybe two days, maybe even three days, it's quite important to actually in an ideal situation, from what we know right now, that people be tested regardless of the presence of symptoms and that being an opportunity that they be retested. Now, that's the ideal world. The challenge with that, as you've heard regularly is the fact that we don't have a steady supply chain. So many parts of this testing problem still need to be fixed.

So in the pragmatic sense, what we can do now is that we can prioritize our testing sites in those areas of the city where people are most vulnerable. We know that even before this epidemic, and we know that with this epidemic. So, what we will prioritize testing for is people in these areas, and as you've heard the Mayor describe today places and neighborhoods where people, and for too long not had access to all of this. But as we scale up, as we build testing capacity, we intend to make use of it that throughout the State so that it becomes something that every New Yorker has available to them.

We also don't want to overburden our clinics and our hospitals. Right now, a lot of people, you know have to forego an in person visit because we need to keep capacity for you know, coronavirus cases. But as we move further along to a low-level transmission state, we want to make sure people can get tested, but we don't want people at very low risk to continuously being tested and using up space these other clinical facilities. So that's one of the reasons why it's important to start with high priority people in areas and populations, but over time, as our capacity expands make it available to everybody and also make it available outside of the regular clinical infrastructure that we have.

Mayor: Good.

Moderator: We have time for two more. The next question is Sydney from Gothamist.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. This is Sydney from Gothamist. Regarding some of the City Council legislation expected to be introduced today, I'm wondering if you've had a chance to, to review some of that and if you would support some of the announcements regarding essential workers bills, which include premiums for essential workers, prohibiting firing without just cause, paid sick leave for gig workers, and among other things? And also have you considered or would you support hazard pay for those recent medical school graduates who are in their residency programs at city hospitals?

Mayor: Thank you for the question, Sydney. I've only heard that the package is being introduced. I have not seen any of the details. I look forward to speaking with Speaker Johnson about it, want to understand, you know, what he and the Council are looking to achieve. And look, we're obviously kindred. The values are very much in common between both sides of City Hall. We're very, very concerned to protect working people in general and particularly during this crisis. So, I can't comment on any of the specifics because I haven't seen them. I can say I know the motivation behind them is good and you know, want to see where we think we can work together on that. Always the question in my mind will be, you know, what can we do versus what do we need help from outside to do? And that of course means Washington. And I think a lot of our future is going to be determined by the fourth stimulus. We wanted to get a lot done in stimulus 3.5. A lot of what I think should have been there wasn't but I still want to say, you know, nonetheless, some real progress was made in stimulus 3.5 in terms of small business for sure and new money for testing for example. So, there's some very good things in it. Support for hospitals. There's a lot of good in it.

What was really necessary was the help for cities and States to actually be able to get through this crisis and support our people and provide the basic services that wasn't there, but a lot of energy, a lot of fight is being organized to get that done in the next few weeks in stimulus four. Obviously as I mentioned earlier, another opportunity to stimulus four is to provide bonuses, a special compensation for folks who have played a crucial role in fighting back this disease. So I think that's the place we need to focus where it could be achieved and be done as part of a bigger package to make us whole economically because otherwise we're just going to be in a horrible state in this city. So, you know, when I talk to the Speaker, we'll obviously compare notes on how what he's talking about interplays with what we're trying to achieve with stimulus four in Washington. But absolutely looking forward to having the conversation with them and then I'll be able to give you more of an update.

Moderator: Last question for today goes to Aundrea from CBS.

Question: Hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Hi Aundrea. How are you?

Question: I'm good. So earlier this week the governor announced a partnership with Ready Responders to provide door to door testing in NYCHA. Is the city a part of that? Also what would you say to NYCHA residents whose vulnerabilities were well known prior to the pandemic about why they were not prioritized much earlier?

Mayor: Oh, I think it's a very painful truth and I want to always level with people because we just didn't have the amount of testing and the personnel and the PPEs to do testing on the community level the way we needed. That's just the reality. I mean, look the – I want to separate the State had certain initiatives and you know, I appreciated those, but the point is from the city perspective. We were focused on saving our hospitals and I'm going to keep going over this with people because this was just a few weeks ago. So I want everyone to kind of not lose track of history we just lived through. For that period in March where we saw a sudden upsurge into April, the focus was on saving lives and the way to save lives was to keep the hospitals going and a way to keep the hospitals going was to make sure that we were protecting our health care workers and obviously very much related our first responders who were doing everything to get people to the hospital and protect lives in so many ways.

We needed to ensure that we had enough personnel, we needed to ensure we had enough PPEs. That was a struggle throughout. We remember those horrible days where we weren't sure we were going to have enough ventilators. That was until just a couple of weeks ago and those hospitals, particularly the public hospitals and the independent hospitals are the ones who in fact serve NYCHA residents and that's where people were going to be saved. So that's what we had to prioritize. The testing we did in front of the hospitals was to help separate the folks who really needed to come in immediately and be addressed versus folks who did not need to be hospitalized and that was to protect the capacity of the hospitals to keep going and to protect people who, you know, we didn't want anyone in a hospital setting where they might be exposed to the disease if they didn't need to be there.

So, everything was this kind of last line of defense. And I bluntly, I talked about it very vividly in those days. The hospital system in general was our last line of defense and we were trying to hold that. The notion of having the personnel, the PPEs, the pure testing capacity, the kits, to do something really broad at a community level would have been impossible just a couple of weeks ago. So now that we finally are starting to get the supplies and we're finally getting some relief, it makes all the sense in the world to now focus outward and start pushing the resources outward to the maximum extent possible and reach the community level where the need is greatest. We're going to keep doing that. and then that's going to segue into this much bigger plan around testing and tracing and the follow-up we'll do.

Remember the PPE issue here, we are not out of the woods on that. Even this week we're still struggling to get all the surgical gowns we need. So, I want people to remember when we talk about testing is still going to always come down to do we have enough personnel? Do we have enough PPEs? Do we have enough test kits? Do we have enough lab capacity? And that's been a very tenuous reality until just now and it will still be a challenge for us going forward, so we're always going to be honest about that. So that's to the, what I would say to NYCHA residents that we had to do what we had to do to save lives and protect people and protect the hospitals. Now we're in a position to go out to communities much more deeply. The first part of the question, I want to hear that again. I don't know if Aundrea is still out there?

Question: It's about Ready Responders. The Governor announced partnership with Ready Responders going door to door, is the city a part of that?

Mayor: Yes, indeed. So that idea, I want to give credit where credit is due. It originated with Congressman Greg Meeks and he and I first talked about it and I'm thinking something like 10 days ago, 12 days ago, our team has been working with Congressman Meeks and with Ready Responders. In fact, Dr. Varma spoke with the lead medical officer for Ready Responders to figure out how to do it effectively and to make sure that the Ready Responders said they would be able to bring all the resources in, because especially when the conversation started, we were right - we were clear we weren't necessarily going to be able to free up personnel and PPEs. They were talking about what they could bring in independently to mount this effort. So, we fully intend to work with them to get it done and obviously they came to us. Congressman Meeks and Ready Responders came to us because we run, you know, the Housing Authority is something that's run on the city level. But we absolutely think it's a, a very noble initiative. We want to see it build out and as soon as the very specific sites are put into play and up and active, we'll make that announcement for sure.

Okay. I want to thank everyone. The whole issue today - thank you – the whole issue today of thinking ahead while we're still fighting this fight. I want people to understand that we know it won't be one simple, clean, easy path forward. We understand this is going to take some real effort and some real time to get us through to a point where things start to get back to normal, but we can now build this apparatus. Again, it's going to be unlike anything you've seen before in the history of New York City. It's going to be a huge apparatus. It is ambitious. It has to be ambitious. It is very fair. If someone says, can we reach this scale? Can we reach everyone that needs to be reached? These are very fair questions. But the bottom line is we have to build the biggest, strongest apparatus we can during the month of May to reach as many New Yorkers as possible, and we have to keep the pressure on at all times on Washington to get us the testing we need and all the other support we need so we can really make this effort come alive.

But I wanted people today to get the shape of it and to understand this as being built as we speak. Let us pray that the testing supply becomes stronger so we can really start to pump this up and make it something that reaches not just thousands of New Yorkers, but then tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers because that's how we're really going to turn the corner when we can reach those kinds of levels and sustain them. So that is the plan and we're going to get there one way or another. And again, thank you to all of you. The only reason we're able to talk about this plan today is because all of you did so much already in your own lives to fight back this disease and to put us on a pathway to something better. So as always, I expressed my appreciation to all my fellow New Yorkers and this next phase is a chance for all of us to take a big step forward together.

Thanks very much.

2020-04-23 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning everybody. What do we all think about every day? We all think about our families, people we love, keeping them safe, keeping them healthy. We all think about our own lives dealing with this new reality, wishing it was over. We all think about breaking free, and what it would feel like to start to go back to normal. That's what every single one of us has running through our mind all day long. That's what so many conversations are about, so many questions are about. We want to get back to our lives. We want to be able to feel the things that we felt were really part of our everyday lives. Maybe we took them for granted a little bit. Maybe we didn't recognize how wonderful they were, and when we get back to normal that day, not too far from now, I hope, and I pray we're all going to appreciate the little things a whole lot more. But right now, the question is how do we get there, and I don't think people fall into the trap of thinking it's going to be easy. I think New Yorkers are tough. New Yorkers are resilient. New Yorkers are streetwise. We do not underestimate our enemy. We understand this'll be a tough fight. And I do speak about this virus as an enemy, because I think it's important to think about the fact that it's a fight that we all are waging. It's a fight that we all have to participate in. And again, New Yorkers have been outstanding at taking up this fight, doing everything we can possibly do to beat back this disease. But I want to be very clear, this virus does not defeat itself. We have to defeat it. We have to keep doing the hard work. And I think it's important when you think about that, that you not see yourselves as sort of witnesses to history, if you will, or just somehow this whole thing catching you up in it. I want you to think of yourselves as people have power, remarkable power to fight back, to be able to bend not only the curve of this disease, but the future to create a different reality.

Everything you do, and this is sort of clear I think maybe then in almost any situation we've lived through, every single thing every one of us does has an impact. If you add it up everything you do each minute, each hour, each day, and then you add it up with 8.6 million other people, it becomes something much, much greater obviously. But it takes on a power every time someone practices social distancing every time, even though they don't want to go back inside, they still go back inside. Every time people are smart about what they're doing it adds up. Every time you use a hand sanitizer even, you're depriving the disease of yet another avenue, and you do that over and over, 8.6 million people do that over and over each day, millions and millions of times combined, and you actually are fighting back. So, we see in the three indicators that we are displaying every day, we see evidence, real hard evidence that what you've done has had a tremendous impact, and that should be energizing and encouraging to every one of you that you're participating in something absolutely necessary. And I'll tell you something, people, people might have felt defeated, people might have felt overwhelmed, instead New Yorkers just stood on their own two feet and fought back. And I think it's going to be looked at as an incredibly noble moment in the history of the city. And we will come back and we're going to come back with all the energy, all the strength, all the vibrancy that New York City has been known for, for generation upon generation. But the history will show it's because of what you did that we were able to come back.

So, these numbers we've gone over every day. They tell us a lot. And again, the goal here was to give you the power of seeing the same exact measures, and then watch how they vary day by day. So, you're part of this, all of us together. There's no mystery, there's no, you know, secret laboratory somewhere where the numbers are being crunched. It's all out in the open to show you what's happening. And then we all judge together how we're doing. Now, I don't know what's happening in each and every state, each and every city. I don't pretend to understand the details of what they're all going through, but I do know a lot of states are rushing to reopen. I hope and pray they have very clear indicators that back up that decision. I hope and pray they're sharing them openly and transparently with the people of those states. Because if the facts don't merit that fast reopening, and if the facts are not out in the open, then there's a real danger that something else is being made a priority over what should matter most, which is saving human lives, protecting all of our health, making sure that we do this the right way so that when we reopen, we can do it once and for all, and do it for good, not start to reopen and see a resurgence of the disease and then have to shut right back down again or even get more restrictive. So, my fear is that there are people governed more by politics or image or their concern about the economy than they're concerned about the health and welfare of their people.

Now, we're trying to take not only cautious, careful approach, but an approach that shows you exactly what is governing the decisions we're making, and these indicators speak volumes. They help you understand why we're doing what we're doing. They show you obviously some progress. They also give you a real clear caution about how much fight we still have to wage. And I think, look, my view is every one of you would rather have the blunt truth, would rather get the straight story of what it's going to take rather than be given a lot of platitudes and then find out they're false. So, we are being real clear. And again, I talked about the progress, but I'm also going to talk about the underlying challenge. The challenge is, and I say this very sadly, that the coronavirus is alive and well and living in New York City. It's quite clear from the numbers, it has not been beaten yet.

So, the facts just yesterday – 2,519 new cases identified in New York City yesterday; 320 deaths yesterday in New York City. These are really painful facts. These are all indicators of people's lives, families that are going through so much. In recent weeks, we hear numbers like this and we say, look, this is better than where we were a few weeks ago, that's something that shows we're moving the right direction. That's true. But just think about what they mean. These facts, what they mean in and of themselves. And if it was any other time, if it was three months ago or three years ago, and I said to you, we had 320 deaths and 2,500 new cases, we would have been all deeply, deeply troubled. So, we cannot lose the forest for the trees here. Yes, there's been real important progress, and we can and will make more, but we're still very much in this fight. We cannot forget what we're up against and the power of this disease, but if we find our own power, if we act on our own power, I'm also convinced we will prevail.

So, let's talk about these indicators and what they mean not only day by day, but what they tell us over the last few weeks that we've been tracking and publishing this information. So, on the indicator number one, the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID 19 cases. Okay, this indicator is simple. It tells us how many more patients our hospitals need to care for related to COVID 19. And when we started this, showing you these particular indicators, it was right after the very, very worst moments. So, you go back to March 31st, 850 new admissions per day for COVID, astounding number. By April 11th when we started showing you these numbers, down to 383, so honestly huge improvement. And now, in the last 10, 11 days down to 227. So, 227 admitted for suspected COVID cases, that's this morning's report. Much, much better. But it's still 227 new cases in one day. That means we are not there yet. I'm stating the obvious, but I want to just hammer home the point. We're not there yet, and we need to be sober about it, and we still have a substantial distance to cover.

Now indicator number two. Okay. The daily number of people in ICU’s across all of our public hospitals for suspected COVID 19. What does it tell us? Again, shows us how this fight is raging, and for the folks in those ICU’s, they are literally fighting for their lives right now, and it's putting a huge strain of course on our hospital system. And so much of what we have done over the last two months has been to protect your lives by protecting your hospitals, and your healthcare workers. We're in a better place again, but we still see way too many people in those ICU’s. So again, we've seen over time some progress, but in this one, we've got to understand that this is a telling report because it shows, this one has not moved as much and that's cautionary. So, the day we launched indicators, we were already at a really troubling point for our public hospitals. They were more than double their normal ICU capacity, and that looked like it was about to continue to go up in those first few weeks of April. April 11th, 835 patients in our ICU’s and our public hospitals. April 14th, it went up to 887. Now it’s started to come down, but it’s 796 in today's report. So again, 796 compared to 835 10,11,12 days ago. That's not the movement we need. Progress – we see the capacity for progress, but we don't see the movement we need. So, we have to keep working to get it right.

Look, put it all in perspective. Think about all the people we've lost already. Think about how much the hospitals had to do just to hold on. All those ICU beds they added. All the personnel they brought in. All the doctors and nurses and healthcare workers, the extraordinary long hours they fought through. The fact that we had to bring in the military, military medical personnel. We had to hire people from all over the country as well to come in, just to hold the line. And so, we need to understand, just keeping where we are now and making even slow and steady progress that's still putting a huge strain on those hospitals and those health care workers. God forbid there was a resurgence – and this is another reason for caution, if there was a resurgence think about the heroes, think about the people were celebrating every day, every night. Think about when 7:00 PM when we applaud them, think about what a resurgence would do to them and how much pressure, how much stress, how much strain it would put on them if this disease came back. If that were to happen, once again, there'd be more and more people in the hospitals, we go back to having to create new hospitals, new beds. We don't ever want to go there again. Indicator number three, percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19. So, this – obviously, it gives us some sense of how widespread this is in the city. And we've said from the very beginning, you know, I still say that the saddest part of this whole very painful reality is what could have been. If on the first day that I called for testing for New York City from the federal government, January 24th if on that day the federal government had acted for New York City, for New York State, for cities and States all over the country and gotten us the testing in the beginning of February, this entire scenario would have been different. We would have seen so much less pain and so now we have still so many new positive cases, but we don't know even the beginning of it because we can't test anywhere near the level that we need to. What it does tell us is still of course there's a lot of new positive cases, 2,519 yesterday. The more testing we get, the more truth we will find, the more testing we get, the more we can fight back and contain this disease, all roads lead to testing. Literally, the more you have, the more you can trace each person's reality and get them the help they need, figure out who needs to be isolated. All those things become possible the more testing you have.

So, even with the limitations, we still have information that's valuable here. So, when we launched indicators, April 11th, 58 percent of those being tested, we're testing positive for the citywide measure. For the public health lab, it was 78 percent, where we are now much better – 32 percent citywide, 57 percent for the public health lab, but still a long way to go. That's definite improvement, but we needed to keep going down more. So, what can we say? We're decelerating, you're seeing all these charts, they're making very clear the – sometimes charts and graphs and those things don't tell you much, these are telling us something. Yes, we're decelerating, that's a very good thing. But we need to finish the job. We need to go farther because if it were to level off, that's not acceptable. You know, we've heard this word plateau. Plateau is not a good word. Plateaus a dirty word where I come from. This is – in this case, plateau means too many people suffering on a consistent basis and we can't have that. We need the deceleration to go down further so we can link it up, so we can hand off, we need to go through the efforts we're going through now. Everything you're doing that's helping make you safe and healthy, everyone else safe and healthy we have to hand off that effort to the testing and tracing we talked about yesterday because all of what you're doing alone gets us a long way, but we have to be able to test and trace to finish the job. We've got to be able to suppress this disease and contain this disease. So, putting the pieces together, the indicators tell us a lot. We're going to keep showing them to you every day, we're going to keep analyzing them every day, they tell us a lot. They tell us there's progress and they tell us there’s still real work to be done. They tell us, don't give an inch here, do not relax, do not let this disease back in the door, they tell us about the power of social distancing and shelter in place. They tell us that it has been smart to postpone those big events to only have essential workers out and keep non-essential businesses close. They certainly tell us still and it’s sad, but we got to keep our schools close for the rest of the school year. They tell us we have to be smart and careful and then it makes abundantly clear that to get to the pathway to normal, we need the firepower of testing and tracing.

That handoff must happen and we have to have a large-scale testing effort to do it much more than what we have available today in New York City. But we're going to keep fighting because we're finally getting more test kits. We're going to create our own in the coming days here in the City and we're going to keep expanding every effort to get the test kits in, to get the lab capacity, because this is how we get to the next level. And I described to you yesterday a huge initiative in May, unlike anything we've seen in this city ever before, thousands and thousands of people will be a part of it. Testing people, tracing their contacts, isolating everyone needs isolating, supporting them. That is the way forward, it will take a huge effort, but that's how we actually beat this disease and that's when we actually get to relax these restraints and start back to normal. So, I want to just take that from where I started to this point, we all want to get back to normal, we all want to breathe free. We all have to fight together to get to that point it's a very painful struggle but a noble struggle. We can do it and I hope you see the re-progress in the numbers and this idea of the handoff to the strategies of suppression and containment handoff to the testing and tracing. That's how we get to the day where we can actually ease these restrictions and start to have a normal life again. So, I’m going to go over the daily numbers one more time since we do it every single day, just show you the day to day comparison. So again, on the three indicators, daily number of people admitted to hospitals down again, there's a couple of day lag here. So, down April 20th, 252; April 21st, 227 – real progress. Daily number of people in ICU’s, down, April 20th, 821; April 21st, 796 – real progress. Percentage of people citywide testing positive down just by a little, but we still like anything that's moving in the right direction from 33 percent to 32 percent. The only place where we didn't have progress in this daily report is in the public health lab; their test went up, but slightly from 54 percent to 57 percent. So, this is a good day, it's not the perfect day we're looking for where everything moves together in the same direction, but it's a good day and we just have to keep doing what we're doing.

Okay, just a couple more things for your today. So, what a very painful reality in one way and a very emotional reality in another way and a very maybe clarifying reality is the way to think of it at the same time that this horrible, tough journey we've all had to go on coincided with such profoundly important holidays of the major faiths of this City. We all wish that the celebrations of Easter and Passover could have been so different. And yet I talked about at the time, I think a lot of people talked about it, that the power and the meaning of those holidays really came through in some ways even more vividly because of what we were all suffering together. And a reminder of the endurance of our ancestors in each faith and reminder of the messages and the values, and the – meaning of each faith when it came to strength and community and came to belief and charity and being there for each other. And now we find ourselves once again about to celebrate a profoundly important holiday of one of our major faiths. So, tonight marks the start of Ramadan and there's hundreds of thousands of Muslim New Yorkers who for this moment, this is the most important time of the year. And I want to say to all of our Muslim brothers and sisters, you’ve been going through so much as we all have and not able to worship and not able to do the things that you're used to doing as part of your faith, but you shown strength as all New Yorkers have and you've joined with everyone else and fighting back this disease. One of Ramadan's most noble callings is to feed the hungry. It's a crucial part of how the holiday is celebrated to remember to be there for those in need and that is now harder than ever, obviously, people can't go to their mosques. In fact, mosques have often been a place that those who were hungry, those who were poor would know they could go during Ramadan to break the fast. They knew there would always be a meal there for them that's not going to be true in this season. So we want to, the City of New York wants to support this community as we're supporting all communities. We've been making sure there's food for every New Yorker and we've tried to also make sure that for those with a special food needs that we could be responsive. So, we've been creating kosher food programs and Halal food programs to recognize that we're all in this together, we want to respect all the people, all the faiths of New York City. This is part of what makes New York City so great, that we have that mutual respect and we understand that we all come together to create something greater than the sum of the parts. So, for anyone who needs food, again, no New Yorker will go hungry, any New Yorker who needs food, it will always be there for you during this crisis, your City will provide, there's no question. For those who need Halal meals, there will be 400,000 Halal meals available at 32 specific Department of Education sites, remember overall we have 435 sites and I'll keep reminding people, anyone that needs food, whether it's to go to one of those DOE sites or home deliveries, whatever you need, call 3-1-1 or go to nyc.gov/getfood. But for folks who need Halal meals, there will be 32 of those DOE sites in particular focused where there are large Muslim communities. 400,000 meals available, another hundred thousand will be distributed through partnerships with community-based organizations, food pantry, soup kitchens. So, over half-a-million meals will be distributed during Ramadan and it's a reminder, this is a place that truly believes in equality and it's something that is a profound New York City value.

People have come here from all over the world, all over the country from [inaudible], always knowing this was a place where everyone has a chance, a chance to achieve their dreams, their goals – everyone is respected. You know, there are people out there – and I'm not happy when I see this – there are people who are naysayers about the future of New York City. There are people who are trying to suggest that New York City won't come back or won't be as good in the future. I think that's absolutely wrong. I think that people who say that don't understand New York City and New Yorkers. New York City will come back. New York City's been through a lot over many generations. New York City has always come back and New Yorkers are made of something very strong, very powerful. We come back and then we find a way to do something even better. We come back and we find a way to answer the questions that were dredged up by the crisis and create a place that's even more fair, that's even more respectful of each and every one of our fellow New Yorkers. We come back and we find a way to be stronger. That's just who we are, it's been proven time and time again. Anyone who's telling you it's not going to happen this time doesn't understand history, but they clearly don’t understand New Yorkers. So, I am convinced that that spirit of equality that pervades this place is going to sustain us. That is why whoever you are, if you're hungry we're going to feed you, and that has meant in the month of April, we expect about 10 million meals to be served to New Yorkers in need. That could be more like 15 million in May, but we will be there for you no matter what.

So, as I conclude, I want to refer to a phrase I've been hearing lately that I find very troubling on the national scene and President Trump has been amplifying this idea of states being “liberated.” He's been tweeting out, “liberate Michigan,” “liberate Virginia”. Well, you know what? We all want to get back to normal – that's true. We all want to get rid of these restrictions. We all want to start our economy again, get back to our jobs. Who doesn't? Everyone wants that in common. What does liberate mean? Liberate means being free, being free from danger, having the security of knowing you can live your life. Well, you know what? If we don't protect people's health, we're not going to be liberated. If because of political slogans or political agendas or more focus on corporations and the stock market than human beings, there's some effort to “liberate” that forgets about people and their families and their health and their safety. It will not only backfire, it will set us back by months and months. And the recovery we all hope and pray for will be diminished and slowed and people will suffer. So, it comes to everything I've been talking to you about today. We all want to be liberated, but you can only be liberated by the truth. You can only be liberated when it's real and not a lie. So, I know in New York City, when we get to the day where we start to open things up, it's going to be [inaudible] because we're absolutely convinced that we're truly at the right moment to do it and I think you will be convinced too, because you'll be seeing all the facts and then together with confidence we can move into a new reality. But any place that attempts to “liberate” before they have the facts, before they have the proof, they're actually going to be chaining their people to a painful reality and prolonging this agony – that's my warning. Here, we're going to do it right and we're going to look back and be glad we did. Let me do a few words in Spanish and then we'll turn to questions from the media.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, let's turn to our colleagues in the media and please remember to give me the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Quick reminder for folks that we have Dr. Barbot, Dr. Daskalakis, and Dr. Katz, and Dr. Varma on the phone and our first question is Erin at Politico, Erin.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, I'm wondering with the latest models that you've been looking at, you said previously you thought that half of New Yorkers would contract this virus. Is that still the prediction or has that shifted at all? And also, I'm wondering if you could just give us the total number of cases. You gave us the increase yesterday, but the website's down, so if you could just give us the total number.

Mayor: Okay, total number of cases. I gave you the number, hold on one second, make sure I get it right, Erin - 2,519 new cases yesterday. Remember the indicators are on that two-day lag. For some of the indicators, let me just check this here. Yeah, no the indicators on a two-day lag and the, the cases yesterday was 2,519. To the bigger question that you raise, it's a great question, Erin and I turned to the health folks and I am sure they have strong views on this matter, but I think they'll also be the first to tell you we are still dealing with the great unknown in the absence of testing. We don't even a hundred percent know, you know, when the first cases emerged in this city because we didn't have testing in February. We know it was February, but we don't know when; we don't know how many people got it back then that went entirely unnoted. So, I think it is right to assume - this is the way I'd say it as a layman - first of all, we're in the thick of it, right? We're not in this perfect linear descent yet. So we don't know when we get to get out of this widespread transmission phase. Second, unless we are very careful and we have some good luck and some blessings thrown-in, we have to be wary of a resurgence. And then, you know, we still don't understand the seasonal reality. Does this come through in a sort of very clean seasonal pattern? Does it re-emerge later in the year? We're certainly concerned about next year already and being very, very mindful that it will still be a part of our lives until there's a vaccine. So, I think the big answer is we don't know for sure, but I would say the assumption that still more than half of New Yorkers could get this is a safe place to hold because we can't tell you the opposite. We can't confirm to you it's going to be less at this point. That's my layman's assumption based on the conversations we've had, but now we have a fabulous panel of four doctors. Let's see what you guys want to add to that.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: So, Mr. Mayor, what I would add to what you correctly laid out is that currently we are at over 138,000 people who have had confirmed positive tests. But that, really, I think is the tip of the iceberg for a number of different reasons. Primarily because, you know, New Yorkers have been heeding to our advice that if they have mild symptoms at this point in time - when you've got community-wide transmission - having a test result isn't going to change what we're going to tell you to do in terms of staying home and you know, monitoring your symptoms for whether or not you get better or worse over the course of three to four days. And that we want to reserve testing for those individuals who are really sick enough to be in the hospital. So with that being said, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if at this point in time we have probably close to a million New Yorkers who have been exposed to COVID-19. And so again, we're, we're tracking the number of positive test results as a way in which we can then better guide the healthcare delivery system interventions, the way in which we can help emphasize New York to New Yorkers, the importance of life saving measures, like staying at home. But you know, I don't think any of us have any misconceptions of how widespread this virus is and how ultimately it will affect the vast or large numbers of New Yorkers overall.

Mayor: Any other doctors want to jump in? Okay.

Moderator: Kathleen from Patch is up next, Kathleen,

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor and everyone.

Mayor: Kathleen, we need you to speak up a little more.

Question: Sorry about that. Can you hear me better now?

Mayor: Yep.

Question: Okay, so I'm just following up on my question from a few days ago about how many people are projected to become food insecure this year and does the city have resources to feed them without federal help? Also considering the plateau that we're seeing and concerns about how New Yorkers are going to behave when the weather improves, are you considering a stricter lockdown?

Mayor: Okay, so the first point, Kathleen, I'd say first of all, we, we do need to give you an estimate and I think it's fair to say, and I'll, I'll just be very broad now and, and make sure we get the exact numbers out to you. You know, previously over a million New Yorkers just in, in the times before COVID-19, over a million New Yorkers experienced food insecurity with some frequency and that's a horrible fact that directly correlates to poverty levels, obviously. And talk about the tale of two cities that, you know, I've been focused on for a long time. There's still obviously a persistent poverty problem in New York City. This is one of the things we have to fight back when we overcome the Coronavirus. We have to go much further in our strategies to reduce poverty in New York City. We did in the last few years get hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty - that's a very good thing. But there's still too many people facing that challenge and that directly connects to food insecurity. In this environment, the number of people are food insecure as unquestionably going up, and we'll get you the exact number, but I think it's going to be not around over a million, I think there's going to be pressing on towards 2 million, given that you've got half-a-million people who have lost their jobs, almost – you know, we don't have the exact numbers yet of what's going to happen, but, you know, I've said from the beginning, I think between the folks who have lost their jobs and the folks who are going to lose their jobs, or the folks who have lost a very substantial amount of their income, that's a half-million people at least. So, many of them, of course, were the sole breadwinners for their families. And that means the ability to buy food gets massively disrupted. So, again, I fear – and we'll give you a more exact number, Kathleen, but I fear the number is going to be around 2 million New Yorkers who are food insecure as this crisis deepens. And that's a horrifying number. The meals count tells you something. You know, we started smaller, we got to the point now where we project about 10 million meals in April. We are preparing to do 15 million meals in May. Can we do it alone? No, of course we can never – of course not. We can never do it all alone, meaning we need a federal help always. We need a lot more people to be made eligible for food stamps, for the SNAP program. And there are actions being contemplated in Washington right now that would increase the eligibility under this kind of disaster scenario. There specific ways that more people can get that support, but they need to be – it needs to be approved by the Congress. To the best of my understanding, I don't think it can be done administratively. I think it requires Congressional approval. We'll be back you on that. And we need – what we're hearing is coming, I want to get a 100 percent confirmation that FEMA reimbursement will be 100 percent and that it will cover things like this. So, you know, we have $170 million food program we're in the middle of now and that's going to have to grow. So, we need help from Washington to make all that happen. It's a very painful reality. I mean, just think about so many people – it's bad enough for people always were food insecure – that's not acceptable and we need to overcome that, going forward, but think about folks who just weeks ago couldn't have imagined not having enough food to eat and now they're struggling to find it. And there's so many people who need help.

On the lockdown question, what I'd say is – you know, what I've tried to say and I know the doctors have tried to say, and they'll jump in as well if they want to add anything, these indicators are to tell us where we stand. If they keep going in the right direction, that tells us at some point we can loosen up. If they don't go in the right direction, it tells us the opposite. If at some point we saw a resurgence, of course, we would have to come up with even tighter standards, because the reason that we've seen the progress we've seen is because the standards were tight and people lived by them. So, Kathleen, I don't predict it, I don't want it, but if the indicators tell us that things are going in the wrong direction, then, clearly, we would look at tighter restrictions. I pray that day doesn't come, but that's what we would do. Do the doctors want to add to that at all? Are you good with that Oxiris?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, sir.

Mayor: Okay, great. Go ahead.

Moderator: Andrew from NBC New York is up next. Andrew?

Question: Hello. Good morning. How are you, Mayor?

Mayor: Good, Andrew. How you doing?

Question: Good. I have two questions. The first one is – and this this sort of springs off of the lockdown question – are you concerned that there's been an uptake in traffic, people getting in their cars, driving to run errands, sort of a more casual attitude of late? And my second question is, is any City agency, whether it's the NYPD or Department of Buildings monitoring construction? Because we are getting calls and complaints from some neighbors that construction has seemingly resumed all over the city even though that is not considered an essential workplace.

Mayor: No, I appreciate those questions. And Andrew, thank you also for the question the other day on 4th of July, because it helped focus all of us on getting ahead of that and figuring out how to work with Macy's on something as important as that. So, thank you very, very much for that. On your questions today on construction – first of all, non-essential construction is supposed to be shut down period. So, if you are seeing any instances, Andrew, or any of your colleagues in the media, or any New Yorkers, we need to know. Colleagues in the media, please tell our team here at City Hall. Every-day New Yorkers, call 3-1-1. We need to know. This is directly COVID-19-related. So, when you're calling in a complaint to say you see construction happening that may not be essential construction, you're actually helping to protect people's lives. So, please place that call. Remember, what the State laid out was, what was essential, what was non-essential. There may be some cases where people see something, they think it's not essential, but it actually does fit the standards for what essential is. But I'd rather be safe than sorry. So, I want every report possible if people think something looks wrong so the Department of Buildings – and yes, it is the Department of Buildings – they follow up. They were very aggressive when the new rules came out. They sent their inspectors out, they shut down sites on the spot and, at least, as of a week or two ago, we saw pretty consistent results where there was not inappropriate construction. But if any of those sites are trying to reassert themselves who shouldn't, we will crack down on them, they'll find them, we will force the people off the site. We'll padlock it, whatever it takes.

On the uptake and traffic. Yeah, I do share this concern. Now, I will have a deeper conversation today with our police commissioner and our transportation commissioner to understand what they're seeing. But I've been seeing it personally and I am worried about it. Look, to the extent, again, it is essential workers moving around, that's appropriate. If it's folks starting to get a little too loose, that's a problem, meaning folks who are not doing essential things. We’ve got to be smart about it. So, going someplace in your car, if that leads you to a place where you're then going to be with a crowd of people or you're then not going to have social distancing, that becomes a huge problem for everyone's health and safety. We’ve got be really smart about it. So, if someone's going to the grocery store, that's one thing. But if they're starting to get a little looser, we’ve got to really be careful about what that means. The most important thing is what does it lead to, Andrew? If it leads to people being less careful about social distancing, less careful about staying at home, we’ve got to be very mindful of the problems that create and we’ve got to find ways to enforce on that.

Moderator: Sydney from the Advance is up next. Sydney?

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. So, you've been citing these three indicators for the last several days of new admissions, ICU patients and the Health + Hospitals system and the percentage of New Yorkers testing positive for COVID, but you haven't been including private hospitals in your daily ICU indicator count. And by doing so, you know, you're leaving out an entire borough of Staten Island. Why isn't Staten Island and other private hospitals being included in at least the ICU portion of your daily count? And do you think that the count could be skewed if you're not factoring in the number of people in the ICU from an entire borough?

Mayor: Yeah, Sydney, again, I understand you're going to always look at it from that perspective, which is obvious and necessary. I think the way to think about this is, there's 56 hospitals in the city, we're looking at the 11 public hospitals because we get very consistent information there and we're trying to make this tracking system as clear and consistent as it can be. The 56 hospitals all have different ways to some extent – each one has its own tracking mechanisms and it's kind of hard to get the consistency that we need for this kind of measure. So, no, it's not a in any way – [inaudible] the hospitals is different because we serve all 56 in a variety of ways. It is trying to get clear and consistent information out and the public hospitals –and I've been over these numbers recently of the hospital admissions for COVID, and the ICU activity, and the public hospitals, tragically starting with Elmhurst Hospital, have borne the brunt, clearly. So, that is going to give you the slice that tells you most carefully what's happening with the ICUs as a measure of what it means for the overall trajectory of this disease. Any of the doctors want to add?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: [Inaudible] that Health + Hospital data has tracked the other hospitals. When we were getting more and more full, they were getting more and more full. When we started to be less full, they started to be less full. So, I think, as you say, Mr. Mayor, it is an accurate indicator of what's going on in all hospitals in New York City.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Anna from the Daily News is up next –

Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Can I clarify one thing? Sorry, really quickly – I just want to also clarify that the admissions indicator includes all New York City hospitals and not just H+H. I think you probably know that, but just wanting to make that very clear as you get testing parameters.

Mayor: Right. So, just to pick up on Demetre’s point, indicator number-one is all hospitals; indicator number two is the Health + Hospitals, public hospitals; and then indicator number three, again, two measures, one citywide testing everywhere, and, two, public health lab testing. So, different measures, but really important to recognize the goal was to get clean, clear, consistent information that would tell us what we have to do. And that's why it was chosen.

Moderator: Anna from the Daily News is up next. Anna?

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. Yesterday you were asked what the City's current testing capacity is for COVID-19. You didn't have that number, so I'm going to follow up and ask if you have it today, given that your plan relies on that.

Mayor: Absolutely. And I just wanted to make sure, Anna, thank you for asking that. I am always careful to make sure that we give accurate information, because this is another example where we have numbers of course for our public hospitals and the testing they're doing of patients, the testing they're doing of their own personnel. But we want to confirm what was happening in the voluntary and independent hospitals as well, and with first responders. I wanted to make sure we were getting the whole picture. So, I think the simple way to say this is, and I think this puts into very clear perspective, that up until next – I mean, excuse me, up until last week – so, last week's an important kind of watershed – as of last week, we did not have a major source for test kits. We were cobbling together a number of test kits from different sources, but we didn't have a single strong supplier nor a dependable supply. So, that was limiting us. We had been, until very recently, unable to free up personnel from hospitals, unable to free up PPEs to protect the people doing the test. So, again, to do a test, you need the kit, you need the person, that trained person to give the test, you need the PPEs to protect them and then you need the lab capacity. You know, in the first two weeks say April, it would have been impossible to imagine that we could free all that up consistently given what we were coming out of with the hospitals and all. But then, as we got into that second week in April, we saw the situation improving and that allowed us now to be able to free up some of the people we need to do the testing on a bigger scale. But, this is why I go into last week, we still didn't have the tests are reliable supply of tests. Finally, this week we have gotten, you know, the beginning of the shipments in from Aria in Indiana and that looks like it's going to be a major consistent supply. We have our own test kits that are about to be developed here in the city. This is the first time we've been able to imagine a true expansion. Nowhere near where we have to be, ultimately. And, again, the only way that happens is with federal involvement. But the point is to get to the punch line of your question. Up until Friday we were at a point of, we were, I'd say, under 10,000 a day would be a good measure. And – meaning if you combine everything happening in New York City, testing of patients in danger, testing of health care workers, testing of first responders – if you combine everything across the 56 hospitals and every place else that testing was happening, you were coming in and under 10,000 a day. This week, that number is going to start to go up, we're going to add on average probably at least a thousand a day because we have now these community-based testing centers that we're putting up, but we also have all the things that go with it to allow us to increase that number. And that number I hope will start to increase steadily. The numbers I want to get to, certainly begins with many tens of thousands a day. I've projected in a perfect world, we would have hundreds of thousands a day to really suppress this disease. And I don't know when we'll get to that point, but we are at least on the gateway, going into May, where we could get to 20,000 tests a day, 30,000 tests a day. At least that's a major, major step towards the kind of suppression and containment we need. So, I think that gives you some perspective about where we have been and where we're going now.

Moderator: Julia from the Post is up next. Julia?

Question: Hi. Good morning, everyone. I have a question for you, Mr. Mayor, and a question for the doctors. I'll start with your question, I'd like to get your reaction to Governor Cuomo saying yesterday that it's “not our job” to provide nursing homes with personal protective equipment even though, you know, we've had over 3,000 patients die in nursing home facilities. And I wonder if you agree that sick nursing home patients, COVID patients should go back into the facilities or if they should go somewhere separate, like maybe in the hotels you preserved for isolation and quarantine. And then, for the doctors, Department of Health tweeted out the graph this morning on hospital admissions and it says they want to get below 200 a day. I'm wondering what the significance is of that number, and, if you can tell us, it looks like you've got close to 200 on the 18th and 19th, but the number went up again. I wonder if you know why that is.

Mayor: Thank you, Julia. I'll start and then turn to the doctors, and they can both speak to part of the senior citizen nursing home question and the quarantine question, and then they’ll also speak to the indicator question. Look, protecting senior citizens, protecting people in nursing homes is – for all of us, it's our job, it's our responsibility. I think this is a point where we'd say any sense of, you know, which part of the government does what is less important than the moral imperative to protect our seniors and to protect people in need. By the organizational chart, the State of New York is responsible for nursing homes, for regulating them, for ensuring they're doing their job. These are overwhelmingly private profit – you know, for-profit facilities. And, obviously, they have to bear responsibility for whether they're doing everything to serve their patients, their clients or not. So, the way I look at it is, whatever is supposed to be each responsibility of each level of government and of the private owners of the nursing homes and everybody, the most important thing here is to save lives. So, we, the City of New York – we have been providing the personal protective equipment to nursing homes for the last few weeks. The State asked us to help out. We said, of course we’ve got to protect our seniors, we’ve got to protect the health care workers and the nursing home workers. We've been getting them personal protective equipment. We will continue to do that. And anything we can do to help save lives, we will do. So, I think it's all our job. I think this is a time where everyone's got a find a way to help in every way we can until we can beat this back.

In terms of the question of – again, to the doctors, start if you will, on that point, of the other part of Julia's question on the notion that if a senior test positive who lives in a nursing home, do they go back to the nursing home or is there some other alternative place that would be better? If you could speak to that, doctors? And then on the point about the indicator at the 200 level – Mitch, do you want to go first?

President Katz: Yes, sir. It is as you've explained, it's been a tragic issue how many people have lost their lives, seniors in nursing homes. We all feel terrible about that. When someone tests positive, the best solution, if they're symptomatic, is for them to go to the hospital, because we know that people who are elderly with other comorbidities are at very high risk. So, people who are testing positive in a nursing home and have shortness of breath, those people need to go right away to the hospital, they're at greatest risk. People with no symptoms or with minimal symptoms should be isolated within the nursing home. I think what we've read in some of the descriptions is that many of these nursing homes have not had appropriate equipment, they haven't had the appropriate staff, but that's certainly the best way to contain the virus, is to isolate the person within their existing room and to make sure that everybody taking care of them is using the appropriate PPE, personal protective equipment.

Mayor: Mitch, I want you –

Unknown: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Hold on one second. Just, Mitch, if you would expand, and then your colleagues can jump in. I think the question, which is a common sense question, is, would a nursing home resident – and again, as you said, if they need hospitalization, there's no hesitation, right, to the hospital. But if someone tests positive, I think there's a common sense question, would they be better off in a quarantine, like a hotel, or would they be better off in the nursing home? And I think one of the things that you've talked about previously is they still need a lot of other services and hotels, we can provide a certain amount, but not necessarily the same as it's presented – provided, I should say, in a nursing home setting. So, could you speak to that?

President Katz: Yeah. So, you're, you're exactly right that people who are in nursing homes cannot be maintained in hotels or they would more appropriately be living independently. And also many people who are in nursing homes for long time are very dependent on their relationships with their caregivers, their caregivers understand their specific needs and are best able to meet those needs. So, I think all of our effort, should be on how do we make that safe, how do we make sure they're isolated—

Mayor: You still there?

President Katz: —other residents [inaudible] able to protect themselves.

Mayor: Okay. Now other doctors please join in.

Commissioner Barbot: So, Mr. Mayor, I'll just add to what you and Dr. Katz laid out. So clearly what we have done is ensure that when these patients are coming back to the nursing home which is their home, right, because they need higher level of skilled nursing services that we provide the PPE that these nursing homes need as well as the technical assistance to make sure that all infection control procedures are properly in place to prevent any further transmission of COVID-19 in those homes.

Mayor: Okay. And then on the indicators question?

Commissioner Barbot: So, sir, on the indicators – what we have laid out is the rough guideline of 200, which is typically twice the baseline of those types of visits that we would anticipate seeing in previous years for that same time period. So it's a rough measure that gives us a sense of the load, if you will, that hospitals are seeing broadly for the number of admissions due to COVID-like illness.

It's a measure that we have to follow over time. It's not that we get there for one day and all of a sudden, you know, we're in a brand-new game as you have said in the past. This is something that we need to monitor over time and it's over a course of several days, like with anywhere between 10 to 14 plus or minus that we would have to track that number and ensure that it stays roughly around that line or below.

Moderator: Marcia from CBS New York is up next. Marcia? Marcia can hear us okay?

Question: How are you today?

Mayor: Hey Marcia, how are you doing?

Question: Okay. So, I have two questions. The first one has to do with the Fourth of July. I wonder what your concerns are in terms of social distancing and whether you're going to have to get the NYPD involved to enforce that and around that issue, so Stuart Applebaum, a union leader has said that Macy's shouldn't be spending millions of dollars on fireworks when the workforce is out of work. If you have any thoughts on that and also relating to that, why you think, you know, having fireworks on the 4th of July is a really good idea? And my second question has to do with nursing homes. Last week your office told us you were sending extra staff to nursing homes – that sending staff to nursing homes was a state issue. Why did you decide to do an add extra help today?

Mayor: Well, Marcia, it goes back to the previous question that we're going to do whatever it takes to protect senior citizens and the nursing homes are struggling. If we can help, we're going to help. That's the bottom line right now. They needed more personal protective equipment? We got it to them. They needed more staffing? We're getting it to them. It just is a matter of we're in a crisis, people's lives on the line. We're going to do whatever – whatever help we can, whatever it take, we're going to do it.

On the 4th of July. So again, what I'm saying is sort of the central question was are we going to do something? Are we going to do nothing? And I'm saying, no, we're going to do something. We're going to celebrate our nation's birthday, especially in the middle of this crisis.
We're going to take that moment to appreciate what we're all doing together to fight this disease back and to honor our nation. And I think the absence of that celebration would be very damning, would be very troubling, you know, would be, it would hurt the morale of New Yorkers as they're fighting this fight. So, from my point of view, unlike, you know, so many other, there's many other important celebrations and gatherings, but this one is truly universal and it's something that we should not go without.

Now, what the CEO of Macy's, Jeff Gennette and I spoke about was trying to figure out the right version of it for this circumstance. And we don't know what July 4th, that day is going to bring, right now, it's by the standards of this crisis, which is, you know, the worst of what we've gone through here is seven weeks old, you know, that is far enough in the future. We’ve got to go through the rest of April, all of May, all of June into July. We could have very, very different reality or we might be still fighting a very tough battle. We don't know yet. We will calibrate what's going to happen to that reality. So, Marcia, if it's a situation where you, you really can't have any crowds at all, then we'll create something that people can appreciate on television. People can appreciate, you know, from the rooftops maybe we'll figure it out. If it's something where there could be modest crowds with social distancing, we'll figure that out too. But I don't want any assumptions yet about what role the NYPD has to play or anybody else because it's just premature. We'll have more to say on it as it gets closer. On the question – Stuart Applebaum is a great labor leader and he represents working people with real passion. I don't think it's an either or. Macy's put aside the resources to provide this celebration. They're committed to doing it for New York City. I respect them for that. I clearly want to make sure their workers get all the support possible, but let's face it, that goes beyond the question of Macy's. That goes back to the federal government providing working people with the way to get through this crisis providing us the City of New York with the way, the ways to help working people get through it. I think that goes far beyond what Macy's can do. The cost of this one display, and it might be a more modest display, obviously than unusual is small compared to the needs of working people. And clearly the companies have to step up, but the federal government has to step up too.

Moderator: Brigid from WNYC is up next. Brigid?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, last week you were asked about the City's plan to keep vulnerable people cool in the summer. I'm wondering first what the status of that thinking and planning is and Comptroller Scott Stringer is urging the City to expand the cooling benefits program and to even begin stockpiling air conditioners. Would you support those policies?

Mayor: Well, first of all, Brigid, I think I was asked this yesterday, we're going to have a summer plan for sure that will include different ways of keeping people cool and keeping people safe unquestionably. And even if it means in a socially distance manner, we're going to have that. As I said yesterday and we were still a-ways off from summer, so we will put that for a plan out in the next couple of weeks as it's ready. On the question of the air conditioners, I think it's a good question. We have to think about things in a whole new way in this environment we're in. So what role air conditioners could play on a more individualized basis? It's a good question. I think that obviously would raise a lot of questions about how you would put together such an effort. But let's see as we get closer, if we think we can do the right kind of cooling center or something like we've done in the past or we need a different kind of solution and we'll add that question into the plan that will unveil in the next few weeks.

Moderator: Yoav from The City is up next. Yoav? Hey Yoav, can you hear us?

Question: Yeah, can you hear me?

Moderator: Yes.

Question: Okay. Hi, Mr. Mayor. On nursing homes, you've said a number of ways in which the City is supporting nursing homes through staffing and PPE, but is there also an accountability side to that equation? You know, is there anything – I recognize the State has the ultimate oversight of these, but if you see red flags at any nursing home, is there anything that the City has done or can do to ensure that they're following the proper protocol to keep their patients safe?

Mayor: Yoav, we’ll do whatever it takes. Again, I respect the role of the State of New York, especially the role the State plays in the crisis dynamic. It is an area where – the City doesn't have a deep connection to nursing homes. The City of New York government doesn't regulate nursing homes, we don't deal with them every single day. It's just, it's a part of the equation that we've had to learn in a new way to actually be able to be helpful. And it just, I want all New Yorkers to understand that, you know, there's so many pieces that make up life in this City that there's always kind of a division of labor between what the City government does, what the State government does, what the MTA does, you know, what the federal government does, everything is laid out in, in a pattern of who has responsibility for what is the only way you can make sense of things.

So in this crisis, the City's tried to step up and what we've done is even though we don't have a regular working relationship with these nursing homes, we've just tried to say, what do you need? And we're going to try and get it for you. Whether it's PPEs or more and more, we see staffing as a real issue. We're just going to get them what they need to deal with this crisis and to protect these seniors who are in danger.

In terms of figuring out, you know, if there's a specific thing that needs to be acted on anytime. I'm sure if there's a specific problem – there's constant communication between the City and State, we're giving feedback to the State on what we're seeing for sure. But, right now, I just keep it really basic. It's just if there's a need, we're going to do everything we can within the resources we have to fulfill the need and protect people.

Moderator: Katie from the Wall Street Journal is up next. Katie?

Question: Hey Mayor de Blasio, I was hoping you could give some more information cause it's actually not on the website and I'm sure people would want to know which of the 32 schools will offer halal food? It's not on the DOE’s website and the truth will set us free. So, I think it would be good with liberating that data. And while we're on the topic you know, the Department of Health website, it's – sometimes it's down, doesn't always update, you know, keeping with this vein of truth setting us free will you eventually, and will the Department of Health eventually update with more hospital stats, which hospitals have the most deaths? And release more information?

Mayor: Yes. well I like that you're invoking the phrase, the truth will set us free. I didn't use that one before, but I like it and I agree with it. So yeah, the – I'm going to – while I'm giving answer on the second part, I'm hoping that Freddi Goldstein is going to write me an answer on the first part, because I'm confused [inaudible] starts tonight. The – what I need, Freddi is the 32 sites. Are they going to be up or when they're going to be up because clearly we need to – and that's a good catch, and Katie, I want to thank you for it because we're trying to make sure people know where this food is and we have to be smart about getting information out in real time. And sometimes, and you can understand in the rush of events here, sometimes things are missed. So anytime a member of the media catches something that we needed to do and didn't happen, right, I will say thank you and we will make sure this information goes up immediately on the DOE website.

But beyond the DOE website, the WNYC, excuse me not WNYC – sorry, product placement there – the nyc.gov/getfood and folks calling 3-1-1, everything has to be working together today so that if someone's trying to find those halal meals that they know where to get them.

So I am thanking you, I hope to get an update in a moment, but as also a reminder to everyone who's listening from the DOE and everyone is listening in the – our food czar and everyone that works with her, that we will do quality control later on today to make sure that if you call 3-1-1, you go on the City website or you go the DOE website, that anyone looking for halal meals, will find them. And this is yet another example of making sure we are getting information out to people.

On the second question, Katie, everything that we can put out that we believe is accurate we're going to put out. I think the bottom line is there were a few weeks in there we were literally in the throws of a deepening crisis and putting out data was much less important to us than securing our hospitals and everything we needed to survive what looked like it was going to be a truly terrifying number of cases. Now that we have had a few weeks of some improvement, we're catching up on a lot of areas where we need to put out data. We will keep doing so. So, I'll come back to you more on the specifics, but the overall goal and the overall instruction I've given is whatever data we have that we know is accurate and we can sustain on an accurate basis, we should keep giving out.

Moderator: Dan from NY1 is up next. Dan?

Question: Morning. Mr. Mayor. I have a question and a request to respond to what an MTA official said yesterday, both pertain to homelessness in the subway. Interim Transit – New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg said, we urge the City to take more aggressive steps to address this problem. It is without a doubt a City obligation and responsibility. Also saying we stay in close contact with the NYPD and the City, but I think it's safe to say everyone here is losing patience with the situation. So, I like a response to that. But my question is that homelessness in the subway has been on the City's radar since the peak last year, almost a year ago when it seemed like it was out of control and the City announced some steps. So here we are April 2020. Does New York City have a new strategy to deal with homelessness in the subway as essential workers commute or is it going to be the same old?

Mayor: Dan, I appreciate the question, but I'm just going to disagree with you on it ever being “out of control.” And I again, I understand that the media looks at situations and tries to portray them in clear and simple terms, but it's just – homelessness, let's have an honest conversation here. This reality of homelessness in general, homelessness in the subways has been with us for decades. No, it's not just something that got the attention of the NYPD in the last year. They've been working on it for years and years. But it's tough to – again, you can't just take someone and arrest them because they're homeless and that's not what New Yorkers would want and it's not legal. We have to work with homeless people to get them off the streets once and for all. And the NYPD's actually been outstanding both above ground and below ground contributing to the HOME-STAT effort, HOME-STAT’s, gotten thousands of street homeless people permanently homeless people off the streets, out of the subways, into shelter and into affordable housing and kept them there, and the NYPD has been a crucial part of that equation. So I'm not going to accept respectfully a question I think – I don't think you mean to denigrate the men and women, the NYPD but I think your question probably inadvertently does so.

They had been working constantly to address homelessness with our Department of Social Services and Homeless Services with all those street outreach workers who tirelessly go out, even during this crisis had been going out and trying to get homeless people to come in. But an honest conversation about this does not ignore the fact that if someone is in that kind of state, a lot of people with real serious mental health problems and we can work to get them in, but we don't have like the magical ability just force everyone in. It's tough, tough work. But that's what the NYPD has been doing and that's what all these outreach workers have been doing for a long time and with success, there's clearly more to do and we're not stopping. We never have stopped and we're not going to stop. And some day when we get out of this crisis, we're going to go back to what we're talking about with the Journey Home Plan of ending permanent street homelessness because we have the tools now that we think work. This crisis has disrupted some of what we were doing, obviously, but we have the tools that work. In terms of Ms. Feinberg, I don't understand what she's saying because NYPD has been out there in force trying to address this issue constantly. And if she's losing patients, I don't know why she hasn't called me. People who have serious concerns and I assume she's talked to Commissioner Shea, which should be the first stop, and if she thinks his strategies aren't working, she should talk to him. If she's not satisfied with that conversation, she should talk to me. And there's anything more that we can do, Of course we’d do it.

Moderator: Gersh from Streetsblog is up next. Gersh?

Question: Hello Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Hey Gersh, how are you doing?

Question: Well, my, my apartment's a mess and I'm baking bread, but nonetheless, I want to follow up on Andrew's question, the issue of traffic, however, it goes beyond the current situation he was asking about. We're hearing a lot of people say they won't feel comfortable taking transit after the crisis and we're hearing many people even saying they're considering buying cars to get around. The result of that might be tens of thousands more car trips in the city, which would add congestion, pollution, danger, anxiety, and undermine your own heart felt effort to increase the mode share of cycling as a sustainable, clean transportation. So what are you and your Transportation Commissioner doing right now to plan for this possibility?

Mayor: Well, it's a very good question. First of all, before I go into that Gersh, I hope you're doing – you’re live streaming your baking process. I think all New Yorkers would like to see you in this crucial endeavor.

Question: [Inaudible].

Mayor: I'll be watching it all day, Gersh. The – it's a great question. I think we have to come up with a plan to not only avert what you just said, which is hesitancy to go back to mass transit, but to go much farther than we ever went before in terms of deepening mass transit options, deepening the ability of people to use alternatives like bicycles, getting people out of their cars more and more, because – excuse me – because the today's crisis is COVID-19. The bigger crisis has not gone away and that is global warming and we have to take these actions to save ourselves and save our planet going forward. Let alone what it would mean for improvement in people's quality of life and reducing congestion and all the other things we care about. Obviously safety.

So that work is going on now and will go on. I think the – I do not start with the assumption that the vast majority of New Yorkers are going to be thrown off by this experience. In the short term, of course, everyone's going to be cautious to protect their own health and safety and their family's health and safety. But New Yorkers are amazingly resilient and as we come out of this, I think the vast majority of us are going to resume, you know, the lives that we have had. So I do not start with the assumption there's going to be a radical shift, but I think you're right to say it's something we should be concerned about, is something we should guard against, but much more importantly, we have to build an entirely different reality going forward anyway. So we have to find more and more ways to attract people to mass transit, to better options, and I think it goes back to the basics we've always talked about. Frequency, reliability, cost, the quality of the experience, all the things that determine whether people are willing to engage or not. We just have to double down on those investments in the future to make sure that people can believe in mass transit and go back to it in record numbers.

Moderator: Last two, Jeff Mays from The Times. Jeff?

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor. Two questions. I'm hoping to get update on the deaths in the quarantine hotels. Does the city know what went wrong? Did the city know that this is a disease that can kill people who appear to have been on the mend? And what will the monitoring look like from now on? And then secondly, the numbers on the indicators that you give seem to clash a little bit with the States. You know, the slides that the governor has say 1,300 people per day are being admitted to hospitals, whereas you say 227 per day can Dr. Daskalakis or Dr. Barbot just kind of clarify what's going on with those two numbers?

Mayor: All right, let's have the doctors speak to that first and I'll double back on the hotel question. I'll just preface by saying, Jeff, again, there's three levels of government, you know, and we are working very closely with the State government, have a lot of respect for the efforts of the Governor and everyone in the State government have some real differences obviously with the federal government in the way this crisis has been handled. But all that is to say in the end, the City of New York and every city is going to keep their own measures that we think are right for judging our reality and when we can make moves that affect our people. So, we're all working together and everyone's always comparing information but these indicators are ones that our health care leadership believes are the truest, most effective ones in terms of deciding if and when we loosen up restrictions and changes we would make. So, they can speak to the specifics but I wanted to give you that kind of background. Go ahead. Doctors.

Deputy Commissioner Daskalakis: This is Demetre. So, I'd like to - so the indicator about hospitalizations is actually using not only individuals who are COVID-19 confirmed by labs, but also looks at every person who gets admitted to the hospital with a syndrome that can look like COVID. So we think that that indicator is an excellent gauge. It's a different way than how the State does it. So they are actually looking at hospitalizations that are in fact directly COVID related. So this is just a different way of doing it and again, shows a pretty robust picture of what hospitalizations are like in New York City related to this virus.

Mayor: Anyone else want to add on that? Okay, and again, on this one, on the hotels, I'll start and if any of the doctors want to add. So, Jeff, first of all, we have more information but still I don't think all the information we would like to have on these three deaths. Again, confirming three individuals who had been coming out of three different hospitals, in one case, and I want to be respectful of privacy and all, but the person's death may not have been COVID related. In the other two cases it appears it was as I understand it, but what we are still trying to understand is what happened in the discharge process that would have led someone to end up being discharged to a hotel if there was still any kind of danger or maybe something, you know, maybe there was not an evident danger and something very different happens. So, we do not have the full, full picture yet.

What we're doing is adding clinical staffing in these hotel facilities. There was a monitoring process in place and a certain supports in place, but we, based on this experience, which we're still find not only troubling, but there's still unanswered questions here, we're going to be an abundance of caution having a clinical personnel monitoring people regularly in these sites to make sure that folks are safe even if they appeared to be fully and appropriately discharged, out of abundance of caution we're going to keep monitoring.

Moderator: Last call, Reema from Chalkbeat, Reema.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Reema.

Question: Okay, great. So, I have a couple of questions. The first one is, you know, and I know you've been asked this a lot. We're still, you know, hearing from families who haven't received devices yet for school, the internet capable devices, and we know that video isn't a process of handing, you know, hundreds of thousands of these out. But I was hoping you could sort of walk us through why taking so long to get these devices to families? And then the second question you know, there's all this mounting push to salvage some of the Summer Youth Employment Program and providers have been saying that they've been pretty frustrated that the city didn't [inaudible] first and asked [inaudible] if they could develop some sort of [inaudible] option for students? [Inaudible] I know City Council is talking to providers. Just want to see if your team has been talking to these folks to figure out alternatives or where your administration sort of stands on that?

Mayor: Sure, okay, Reema let me answer your two points but also give an update as I lead into this. So, what I'm being told here is a little bit different than what I understood previously this going back on the halal meals. So, I have first of all again, thanks for the catch earlier. I think it was Katie on the – or, someone to tell me if it was or not? But it was Katie. Thank you. Thank you again, Katie. On the website those locations that have additional halal meals, the 32 sites will be clear on the website by noon, schools.nyc.gov/ramadanmeals. Very specific. Now, here's what I did not get clean information from my team on, I apologize. I'm going to give you a good update, which is apparently all sites of the 435 halal meals. The 32 specific sites that are in communities that have large Muslim populations have an additional quantity available to make sure they can meet demand. So what I am getting here is if you go to any of the 435 sites and specifically asked for halal meal, they have something that does qualify as a halal meal. At the 32 locations there'll be ample additional quantity and again, the website will have that by noon.

On the question of the devices. So the latest, and I checked in with the DOE a day or two ago, is they're on track, every student, every family that has reported not having a device and internet service will get what they need by April 30th. There is still – so that's happening. The devices have come in from Apple, they're being distributed out, the delivery systems moving, you know, internet service enabled, the whole nine yards. But where there is still an open question is we think there are still families who need a device and have not reported in that they need a device. And so if anyone is talking about this issue, and all the New Yorkers watching out there could get the word out, any family of a public school child that doesn't have a appropriate device for their child to participate in online learning or doesn't have internet service, call 3-1-1, let them know right away because we can add them to those deliveries instantly. It's just something we have enough of a supply, but we still think there are kids out there who need help and we don't know. We've asked school administrators and teachers to identify any families they think may not have a device and reach out and confirm whether they do or don't. That has been ongoing. But, right now, we're going to have more devices than there are kids asking for them and we want to make sure we close that gap. So that's the update on that.

On Summer Youth, Reema again, there's the first reality with Summer Youth was we had no way to start a process which would have meant right away making arrangements with employers, putting the time and energy into arranging for kids to be selected, all the things that go into building up Summer Youth Employment, that all would have been underway already at this point in April. And when we did the budget, we could not authorize a major effort for something that we thought physically couldn't exist in time based on everything we knew at the time and we know now. A lot of those employers are nowhere near being open. We obviously only are allowing the most essential adult employees right now to do work. All other adults who are working are either doing work from home or God forbid many of them just don't have a job anymore. So we couldn't say, let's start up a Summer Youth Employment Program when we didn't even know what the summer would look like or whether they'd be employers to receive those kids and whether people could gather in one place or any of those things.

The second reason was money. We're running out of money. This is obviously, you know, the crucial question as we look at what's happening in Washington with the stimulus, but even beyond that, we're in the middle of a massive budget crisis. It's horrifying, all because of COVID-19 and of the things that we have to focus on, we had to focus again on health, on safety, on food, and on shelter, and we could not prioritize certain things as a result of needing to focus on those basics. So, Summer Youth was not going to be a financial priority compared to a lot of other things like the $170 million we're spending on food already, again, a number that I think will be growing. So that's the bottom line on how we got to the decision. Look, if this situation improves going forward and we can do some creative things with young people, of course I want to do that. But again, will we have the money for that is an open question. We got a first think about getting the breadwinners and families back to work so they can support their families. That's the first priority obviously. But if we can find some creative alternatives of ways to engage young people, we're very, very open to that discussion. Just not into this point, clear what that's going to look like. It's going to take time to figure out what's really going to be viable.

All right, everyone. Just want to bring it together as we close today and you know, we talked about what these indicators mean. We talked about the approach this city is taking. Steady, careful approach focused on your health and safety, that's what we're doing and making sure that when that day comes that we start to reopen, we're really sure it's the right moment. We're really sure we're ready to do it and that we can do it right and sustain it and not have a boomerang. So that's what we've been doing. The important thing to think about is the month of May, because the month of May is when these pieces now start to come together, keep driving down those indicators and that's our jump off point, do that link up, do that hand off to the testing and tracing program. And as I described yesterday, we're going to build up a massive apparatus that will be up and running in the month of May to reach thousands, and then tens of thousands of New Yorkers to test and trace to really start to constrict and constrain this disease and beat it back even more.

So, we all have a lot to do and again, I'll always say thank you. I want to say thank you again. People have been amazing. I'll keep saying thank you. Stick to it, stay with it. Because if we can keep fighting these next weeks to get to that handoff, that's going to be a point where we really start to make even greater progress. And then we're going to need everyone to participate fully in testing and tracing as many tests as we have, we're going to use. When we need to trace cases, we're going to need the New Yorkers who are part of that to fully participate, to help us do that the right way. When we tell people you got isolate, we're going to need people to follow those instructions for the good of yourself, your family, and everyone. So it's all participatory. We're all in this together. But if what we've seen these last weeks is any indication New York City and New Yorkers are off to a great start fighting back this disease. As we go into May, I think we can do some really extraordinary things and go a lot farther.

Again, thank you everyone. Appreciate you, appreciate all you're doing, and God bless you all.

2020-04-24 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. So, you know, when we started on this road together, none of us asked for it. None of us could have imagined it. But in the beginning, as we were dealing with the coronavirus, there were some phrases that we would hear and some efforts to characterize it and sort of tell us what we were dealing with. And at first, we thought it sounded right. And I remember one phrase we heard a number of times was that coronavirus was the great equalizer. And that's because very early on we saw celebrities getting infected, heads of state, athletes, royalty, literally royalty getting infected by this disease. I remember when all of us think about celebrities, the night people heard that Tom Hanks was infected. It was kind of a shock to people given what he means to so many folks in this country. So, in the beginning we heard about all these very prominent people testing positive and the story kept getting written as this was something affecting everyone the same and no one was immune and no one could hide from it. And it really did seem to be something that affected everyone equally.

But beyond the surface, something much more painful was going on and a larger truth was occurring that wasn't clear at first, but the more facts came in, the more that we got evidence, the more clear it was that this virus in fact discriminates. This virus in fact, seeks out in particular those who are most vulnerable. Now we know about that on a health level alone. We know that folks who are much older and particularly those with preexisting conditions are in the greatest danger. And that's true across every community all over the world. But at the same time, what we've seen here in New York City, and we've seen in many parts of the country, is this virus has a truly disproportionate impact on folks who haven't had as much access to health care. And folks who throughout their lives weren't able to address some of the conditions that afflicted them because they didn't have the money to do it. So, it came back once again to economic reality, to the reality of what so many working people have faced that their health care was determined by the size of their bank account, not by their humanity. It comes back to the painful reality of structural racism where some people in this country have always known they would have health care available to them and many have never had a day where they were secure in the health care they could get. So, this turns out in practice, in reality, this virus does discriminate because it's particularly good at afflicting those who for so long have been afflicted by so many of society's ills

In a sense – and I always hate to treat the virus like it has human characteristics, but I'm going to do it in this case. In a sense, this virus teamed up with the inequalities that already existed in our society and that we've been fighting here in New York City over these last six plus years. And it's very painful to see folks who have worked their whole lives so hard to barely get by, then have to bear the brunt of this in a way that's overwhelming. And that's what we found for a lot of low-income folks. For a lot of immigrants, a lot of folks in communities of color. This disease has had an overwhelming impact. It's hurt everyone everywhere, but it's been an insurmountable enemy for so many, particularly among our seniors in communities of color.

So, we have a choice to make at this point. Every city, every state, our nation all have a choice to make. We can either ignore these disparities or we can throw up our hands and say, hey, that's just part of life. There's nothing you can do. Or we can attack these disparities. We can take them head on. We can fight back when we see something unacceptable and something that doesn't fit our values as New Yorkers. And I think you know where this is going. New Yorkers have a lot of fight in them. It's one of the great things about this city. People don't back down from a fight. People are not intimidated. New Yorkers will fight back against these disparities. We will fight back against these inequalities. We will not accept the status quo that's broken. We didn't accept it before and now it's been laid bare even more and it's time to fight with everything we've got

Now, two weeks ago when we laid out the facts about these disparities, we wanted to show what was really going on. And again, at first it wasn't entirely evident but it became more and more so. And then when we are able to show the whole picture, it was quite clear. So at that time I laid out the outline of a four point action plan and we've continued to build that plan each step along the way. Let me go through it with you now to let you know the things we're doing.

So first of all, again, the outline of the plan. Point one was to protect and preserve our public hospitals to make sure they could be that front line of protection for all people, and particularly those who had experienced the greatest disparities. Point two, a massive public awareness campaign. This disease is confusing to everyone. For a lot of folks who haven't had as much access to information including if they don't happen to speak English, it was very important to really double down with a huge public outreach campaign. Second grassroots – I mean third, excuse me, grassroots outreach. This is a different kind of thing. All the media, the digital, that's one thing, but going out into communities and deepening the connection with communities and helping community providers to reach the people they serve more deeply. And then last -- phone, a clinician, telemedicine, the ability for people to talk to even if it's not the right time to go to a doctor's office, to talk to a doctor or a nurse or trained professional to get advice and to get guidance whenever, however, people need it. This is all about protecting people. This is all about keeping people healthy, but it's about focusing as well on people who need help and oftentimes haven't gotten it in the past. We want to fix that in so many ways right now. And make that help, make that health care, make that guidance more available than ever.

So first, with the public hospitals, we've talked a lot about it, but I want to summarize because it's important to realize when I came into office, the public hospitals were in deep trouble, Health + Hospitals on the verge of bankruptcy, and there was talk all the time, would we have to close public hospitals? Would we literally shut down whole facilities? Would there be layoffs of our health care workers? Think about how strange those conversations look in comparison to what we're going through right now. Thank God we didn't do any of those things and I made clear we would not close public hospitals. We would not lay off doctors and nurses and health care workers, and we didn't. In fact, we invested billions to keep our public hospitals going. No one gave me or anyone else in City Hall a memo and said, Hey, there's going to be a pandemic in 2020, you should keep your public hospitals going for that reason. We kept them going because it was the right thing to do to help people, anyone, everyone in New York City who needed health care. But thank God that those actions allowed us to fortify our public hospital system in advance of this horrible pandemic. Because right now they have been heroic and all the folks who work at Health + Hospitals, thank you. I want to say thank you and I'll say it a lot of other times. You've been heroic. You've been extraordinary. Some of the most famous instances of heroism in this story over the last two months have come from our public hospital system. All our public hospitals, of course, we all know what's happened at Elmhurst Hospital, but at Lincoln Hospital, at Bellevue, at so many, there has been a heroic fight. And this has been one of the reasons we've been able to hold the line and keep our hospitals going and keep saving lives.

So, in the midst of this fight, it was clear we had to throw everything we had into supporting all our hospitals, but that our public hospitals were really the front line of the front line. So we added thousands more personnel. We hired nurses and other medical personnel, not only from around New York City in this area, but from all over the country to come in and help out our public hospitals. We worked with the federal government to bring in hundreds of military medical personnel who have been outstanding and had done so much to help us through this crisis. 

Those PPEs, we always talk about personal protective equipment. We've sent hundreds of thousands of masks, gloves, face shields, you name it. Constantly into our public hospitals and all our hospitals. We've been building our own, as we've talked about this week, literally for the first time in New York City -- face shields, surgical gowns, ventilators, all these things. The bridge ventilators we talked about earlier in the week. All of these things being made to protect our ability to provide health care.

That was what we had to do just to get to the point that we knew that our hospital system would hold and that we could fight back this disease. But now we're going on the offensive with the community testing sites, also run by our public hospital system, by Health + Hospitals, five sites already open around the five boroughs. And now adding additional Health + Hospitals testing sites today, adding – at the Health + Hospitals facilities. Adding three more next week at NYCHA buildings, public housing, buildings run by Health + Hospitals. We also have, it's important to note another part of the community-based testing, working with Local 1199SEIU the health care workers union and One Medical, a private provider. Those are open as well. These grassroots testing facilities all focused on the hardest hit neighborhoods, combined will be able to do about 10,000 tests per week to begin. That number will keep going up as we get more capacity.

So that is about what we've done to strengthen public health care. The first rung of this effort to fight back disparities. Now the second is the public awareness campaign. So I’ve been over some of this before, I want to add back in mid-March we ran the first big campaign, $8 million focused on television, print, digital, 15 languages, but we then found that we needed to do even more to reach the communities that needed more information that weren't always getting it because of language barriers and economic realities. We had to get more and more information out there. And so, we have now initiated a $10 million public awareness campaign, advertisements specifically aimed at the hardest hit communities. And we're hoping that more and more people of course so many people at home, that this will really reach people and saturate and get them all the information that will give them a sense of what to do, but also where to turn for help.

TV, radio, digital, again, 15 languages focus on 88 particularly critical zip codes where we've seen the greatest challenges. An additional piece, direct mail. This is being done on a massive scale. We want to send to people -- another way to make sure the information is getting through and direct mail gives people another option, another way to receive information, for some people better than through TV or other advertising. We will be sending out mailers next week to 3.4 million homes here in our city. They will be in English, Spanish, and Chinese. 

So, the third part of our initiative is the grassroots outreach, the things, the sort of human element that media campaigns cannot achieve. And what it means is to reach people in every conceivable way and particularly from voices that they trust and know. Now it begins with using everything we can to just start to get the word out. So, we've done bilingual robocalls to 1.1 million New Yorkers, again getting the basic information out and helping people know where to turn. And we've used all of the City's social media to reach people in 24 languages and that has a reach obviously, of hundreds of thousands of people to begin. We need to do more now. So, some of the things we're doing particularly to bring into play voices that communities know and trust. Four teletown halls with faith leaders and those will reach tens of thousands of folks. Another crucial voice that people want to hear from, need to hear from giving them the same kind of guidance.

We're creating webinars with health officials and commissioners of different agencies to help people directly hear what's going on. That's reaching thousands of New Yorkers more. And we're going to start soon specific efforts with community-based health clinics, not going to announce those details today, but they will be announced in the next few days. This is going to be a crucial piece of this equation as well.

The last piece – telemedicine, and this again gets to working more and more at the community level in another way. Because telemedicine allows you to have that direct connection with a trained provider and allows people to just ask whatever's on their mind, whatever questions, whatever concerns. I think a lot of times given just the sheer confusion that has been part of this experience for all of us. There's such a kind of every day set of questions that people have about the coronavirus and there's no fully satisfying answers because the scientific community still doesn't understand it enough. But I think people need to talk. They need to get their questions out. They need to ask, what do I do in this situation? What I do for example, if you know, I'm in a crowded home and someone appears to be getting sick, how do we isolate that person properly? Is it time for that person to be sent to a hotel or someplace else where they can be fully isolated? How do I know when it's time to reach a doctor or go into a health care facility? These kinds of questions, people need more human interaction. A lot of folks have their own doctor they can call and that's great. But for folks who don't have their own doctor or can't reach their doctor, we need to keep building the telemedicine capacity. And this is a lot through working with community health providers as well. A lot of smaller community-based health practices, again, have tremendous trust from the people they serve, but they don't necessarily have experience dealing with telemedicine. So, we're working with a thousand small community-based health providers to help them determine what's the best way to reconnect more deeply with those they serve. Now for 250 of them, they've signed up immediately to get trained in telemedicine to make this much more of what they do. We're going to help them quickly get fully involved with telemedicine, particularly for their patients who have chronic conditions. Other small providers need other types of support. Whatever they need, we're going to give it to them because we know they're having that kind of frontline direct relationship with people who need help.

Now we have more, that will be coming out soon on telemedicine because this is going to be a much bigger effort. And again, in the next few days we'll have additional announcements. But one thing I will raise now and it is a good thing and it's something that is historic because it's the first time in the city's history that the City has done this. The City government helping these local clinics, local providers to do wellness calls. So again, this is not just someone calls when they have a question or a problem, but proactive wellness calls as an aggressive strategy to reach the most vulnerable patients, to just check in with them regularly and see if they need something. I want on a very big scale, the ability to anyone who needs to talk to a health care professional to be available so folks can get those questions answered. But we want to more and more pinpoint the individuals who need those proactive regular wellness calls. And that's something we're ramping up as well.

The bottom line on this reality – there are so many good people at the community level, at the neighborhood level who are providing health care or have been providing health care for years and years in their communities. A lot of them have seen their work disrupted, obviously by the coronavirus. We want to help them get back on their feet. We want to help them get stronger, provide them support, but also help them to use new tools to reach all the people they serve in this moment of crisis.

Now I want to switch gears here and talk about another reality of people being hit really hard by this crisis. And this goes now to some of the economic reality. It's hitting the same neighborhoods that are feeling those health care disparities. They're being hit very hard by this economic crisis. Obviously, everyone's being hit hard. This is something where we're seeing the pain very widespread. So many folks have lost their jobs of every description in every community -- working class people, middle class people, you name it. People have been thrown for a loop. And we've got to help people through this crisis. And for so many New Yorkers, that means if you don't have your livelihood, you cannot keep the basics going. How are you going to pay for food? How are you going to pay for medicine? And the question all New Yorkers ask themselves all the time, how am I going to pay the rent? We need to make sure that every New Yorker can stay in their home during this crisis. We got to keep a roof over everyone's head. And so this is a crucial part of what we're doing right now to make sure that that basic human need, knowing you will have shelter, knowing you will have a roof over your head, is something that New Yorkers know as secure as we fight through this crisis.

Now, that begins with knowing the most basic thing, that you will not never be evicted during this crisis. That no landlord will tell you, you have to leave even temporarily. We've heard reports of some landlords saying, Oh, you have to leave because you're sick. Come back when you're, well. That's not legal. If someone needs a place to be because they can't properly be in their apartment while they're sick. Again, we have those hotel rooms available, but that's a decision for doctors to make, not for landlords to make. So, anyone who is experiencing a problem with a landlord can call 3-1-1, get our tenant hotline. You'll get free support. Everything we provide is free of course, support knowing what's available to help you, and the rules, the standards that you need to know about your rights and how you can protect yourself if you're dealing with an unreasonable landlord. Obviously, all the other ways you can get help, whether it's food or any other kind of assistance. But if you need legal help, we will provide it for free. If you're being threatened by eviction, which no one should be at this point, but if it's happening to you, we will get you legal help immediately to stop it. And that is regardless of who you are, it doesn't matter what neighborhood you are in, what your income is, what your immigration status is. Anyone threatened with eviction at this moment, the City of New York will step in and we will stop that eviction. And I want people to remember, when in doubt on something, anything COVID-19 related, I mean we use 3-1-1 for many other things traditionally. But right now, especially the focus of 3-1-1 is anything related to the coronavirus. If you might be threatened with eviction in the middle of this crisis, that is a fundamental problem. Pick up that phone to 3-1-1 so we can help you.

Now as we get to the first of each month, this question of how am I going to pay the rent is coming up for more and more New Yorkers. And people are struggling. Thank God there's been some help finally from the federal government but it hasn't reached everyone by any stretch and it's not going to last for long. So, the bottom line is tenants need more help. And the first thing we have to do is make sure that comes from the City of New York. I'll talk about what the State needs to do and there's a lot the State needs to do and they need to do it quickly. But the City has to do our part of the equation and that comes to our Rent Guidelines Board. The Rent Guidelines Board put out a report late yesterday. And I think it was very confusing to people. And I want to set the record straight now. It's a report they do every year. It is a report that explains in an objective manner what is going on with the economy and what it means for landlords, what their costs are. It's a report that's supposed to take stock of one piece of the equation. But as I said from the very beginning of this administration, the problem historically with the Rent Guidelines Board was, and I'll be blunt about this, it was over decades in the city, it's been around about 50 years. It was more focused on the interests of landlords than the interests of the vast majority who are tenants. And so, when I came into office, I said the Rent Guidelines Board needs to consider both sides of the equation, factually objectively and determine what to do. And the Rent Guidelines Board over the last six years in several instances decided that a rent freeze made sense, in the other instances that our rent increased made sense, but a modest one. It's been a much more fair equation since the needs of tenants were given the weight that they deserve.

The report yesterday I think was misleading because it suggested that the interest was in what landlords are going through and I said very clearly last night, the challenges that landlords are facing right now are real. I'm not belittling them, but they pale in comparison to the challenges that tenants are facing. It is abundantly clear, of course the Rent Guidelines Board will hold hearings. It will go through its processes very quickly and get to a decision. But to me it's abundantly clear we need a rent freeze. The facts couldn't be clearer. Greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. I can't even believe, and I never thought as your mayor, I would be telling you that we were going through something that could possibly compare to the Great Depression. And when I think of the Great Depression, I think of the stories my older relatives used to tell me about, that sounded like something that was so severe, so difficult that we couldn't possibly imagine it happening again. And yet a lot of what we saw in the Great Depression is happening right now, right here. So, my message to the Rent Guidelines Board is clear. Issue your reports, do your research. That's great. Hold your hearings as quickly as possible. Take your vote and give the tenants who are rent stabilized in this city, over 2 million New Yorkers give them a rent freeze. They need it. It's clear, the facts are clear. Let's get this done.

Now the State of New York has a lot more they need to do. And I've said this a number of times, and I know we've all been dealing with a crisis. The State’s had a lot to deal with, but it's time to focus on the needs of renters. First of all, the most obvious solution, let renters use their security deposits to pay the rent now. This is something the State could do quickly and easily and it makes so much sense. Those security deposits are stuck in escrow accounts. The tenant can't use them. The landlord can't use them until someone leaves their apartment for good. It makes no sense given that we're dealing with an absolutely unprecedented crisis. The State needs to act, free up those security deposits, let the tenant use them for rent. That helps the tenant, that helps the landlord. There's no reason not to authorize this right now. It's an emergency action that would help a lot of people. Second, for folks who can't afford it, look, some people can still afford the rent. That's great. Or some people can afford their rent for a period of time and we hope the economy comes back quickly. But for folks who simply can't afford anything and still, you know, hopefully they can get that right to use their security deposits, but especially while they don't have that right, if people just run out of money, let them defer the rent. They can pay it back after a period of time. If people don't have any money, they don't have any money. I believe there should be a plan to allow people to defer their rent and then have a repayment plan that's set that everyone agrees to. So, the landlord knows they will get the money back eventually. But you can't ask people to come up with money they just don't have. And lastly, as I said right now, there is an eviction moratorium. This is something the City and State have worked on in common. The court system, everyone's on the same page, but it needs to be extended not only to the end of this crisis, but 60 days past the end of this crisis because what I do not want to see is landlords – and this is not the majority of landlords, it's only some – but landlords waiting for that moment when the moratorium comes off to then start evictions. And I don't want to see a whole lot of New Yorkers put in that horrible situation. Just as soon as things get a little better, bang, here come a bunch of evictions. No, let's give that 60 days to help people get back on their feet after the crisis ends and make sure we can avoid those evictions. So, people need these things. They need them now. So, I'll just make it clear to the State of New York, it's time to act, people need to know they're going to get through, and this is something that would give so many New Yorkers peace of mind and security at this moment where they need both.

Okay. As I start to wrap up here, what we do every day is track the indicators. We talked about this week, understanding our larger trajectory we’re on, understanding the progress we made, but the challenges ahead of us too and how we have to keep working hard, and then link up to that next phase where we're going to do the testing and tracing in May. So, today I am happy to say we have just plain good news. Our indicators are now moving all in the correct direction, which is down. So, let me go over them. We've got – first of all, the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that is down. Again, these numbers on the two-day lag. That's down from 227 to 176 – so that's great, that's a serious decline. The daily number of people in ICUs across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19, also down – it's only a little, but it's still progress – 796 to 786. Now, this is an area again where we need to see much more progress, but I still like seeing a step in the right direction. The percentage of people tested positive for COVID-19 citywide down from 32 percent to 30 percent. The public health lab tests, down from 57 percent to 52 percent.

Okay, just plain good day. Congratulations because you did that. Everyone out there, you did this – social distancing, shelter in place – you made this happen. Now we got to keep doing it. The plan that we stated from the beginning – do this, all indicators down – we need to do that for ten days to two weeks and that's when we can actually start to talk about how to begin loosening up some of these restrictions and taking a step towards normalcy. And again, that handoff to the massive test-and-trace effort. Good day. Keep working hard. Let's get some more just like this day.

So, as I close, and I'll say a few words in Spanish, as always, look, I want to just note, I talked to you honestly about these disparities we're facing in this city. And again, it's something we've talked about for a long time, but it was seeing it in a new, even sharper light, and is even more unacceptable when you see the human toll, what's happened here. The important thing as we prepare for this next phase of life in our city, as we prepare the long road back, but it will be a clear and strong effort to come back to because that's what we do in New York City. We can never look away from these disparities. We're going to stare them in the face and beat them back. I think the important thing is that blunt honesty about what we have continued to learn and why it just does not fit with what we believe in, here in the city, and how we have to fight it every day and we can and we will. And we'll do that together. Fighting these disparities makes us all stronger. Fighting these disparities fits what we believe in as New Yorkers. And there's a reason New York is admired and respected all over the world, and it's because it's a city for everyone. We have more work to do to ensure that everyone gets the same health care, everyone gets the same treatment when they need it, and that's what we're going to focus on as a big piece of our recovery ahead.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media and as I always like to say, please remind me or allow me to know both the name and the outlet of the person asking the question.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder that we have Commissioner Barbot and Commissioner Mostofi from the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs on the phone. With that, I will start with Lisa from NBC News Radio.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I interviewed your son, Dante, a few months ago. He sounded great and I wanted to know how your family's doing through all this. It's been a tough time for everyone.

Mayor: Lisa, thank you. I appreciate that. Well, first of all, I want to say it's been a tough time for all New Yorkers. We're all experiencing the same really challenging reality of feeling cooped up and feeling like we can't live our normal lives and that frustration. But I also admire how people have just shown a lot of toughness and resiliency through it. I can say for my family, you know, we're used to being out in the world. We love this city. We love the people of the city. We love the neighbors of the city. It's really strange to not be able to be out there and connected to people. I particularly miss the restaurants of our city and I can't wait until they come back. But thank God my family, everyone's healthy. Everyone's well. We – you know, we try and stay really connected despite all this.

I will say Dante is going stir crazy. I don't think that's surprising for a 22-year-old. But he's connecting with his friends all over a lot and finding a way to, you know, make sense of it all. But I think in many ways, you know, I'm frustrated, we're all frustrated. I think it's particularly tough for younger folks. I think, you know, there's – I mean he's someone who just loves being out and around the city and has so many friends and loves to go out. And it's really strange that the only connection you can have to your friends is online. And you know, that's – I think there's been a little challenge for him, but he's finding his way through. But I appreciate the question and, Lisa, I hope you and your family are doing well and are, you know, finding a way to make sense of this. And most importantly are staying healthy.

Moderator: Next we have Erin from Politico.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I want to follow up on the lawsuit brought by the Corrections Union, which I think you addressed on Twitter last night, and you said that the 24-hour shifts were going to end. I'm hoping you can speak to if you've looked into at all how that happened and have they already ended or when are they going to end. And then also the other concern that was raised in the lawsuit was about going back to work without being confirmed to be a negative for coronavirus. Is the City going to do anything about that aspect of it?

Mayor: Okay. Thank you for the question, Erin. And I'll just preface by saying when there's a lawsuit, I always have to be a little careful with my words. We always want to try and resolve issues like this with our colleagues in labor. And my door is always open. I know our First Deputy Mayor, Dean Fuleihan, has been talking constantly to the President of the Corrections Officers Union throughout the crisis and before. So, our door is always open and we always prefer to try and resolve things without a lawsuit. And a lot of times I don't think it's necessary, but given that there is a lawsuit, I'll be a little careful. The first part though I can say very bluntly, there never should have been 24-hour shifts. It really was just a horrible mistake. People – you know, our officers, our supervisors are going through so much, they've got a tough job already. This was just a dumb, managerial mistake and one that I do not accept. And that's why I was quite clear in saying, no, it's not going to be allowed from this point on ever. The reality is that, look, in the first weeks of this crisis, I think everyone was trying to figure out how to manage. Workforces all over this city were depleted. I get that that was a real challenge. I don't belittle that for a moment, but there's always an option. Unless there's literally no one else available. You know, a 24-hour shift just doesn't make sense, and my strong impression was there were other options here, and that's what I want to see happen, that we not do that again.

On the testing, look, we've had a pretty clear standard across all of our first responder agencies and public safety agencies and public health care. There's a pretty clear standard of how people who are coming back off the disease, what those indicators are. Dr. Barbot has spoken to it many times. The test is not the only way to know if someone's well enough to come back. So, we're going to stick with the standard that we've been using. When we go forward into the test-and-trace phase, of course, there'll be so much more testing around in general, that will be a different reality. But this situation we're in now, the fact is the standard has been applied, you know, consistently as to the best of my understanding. So that's all I'll say about it right now.

Moderator: Next we have Melissa from News 4 New York.

Question: Hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Good. Melissa, how’ve you been?

Question: Okay, thank you. As you may know, we've been reporting on the situation at the Vernon Houses in Brooklyn. These residents have been without gas for 30 days now. So, as you can imagine, their ability to afford food right now is even further impacted since they can't cook. Can you tell us anything about why have they been without gas for all these weeks and why are they getting snacks from the City instead of meals and what are you doing to help them?

Mayor: Yeah. Thank you, Melissa. It's an important question. It's horrible. I feel for everyone who lives in that development because this is one of the most frustrating realities in public housing when the gas goes out and it requires this massive repair effort. It's not like, you know, most of us think about, there's a gas problem, you know, it's a simple repair, not in public housing in many cases. These are buildings – a lot of them are 50, 60, 70 years old and they are in really tough shape. They should have been rehabbed decades ago. They weren't – the way that the system’s work, to the best of my understanding, I've had a number of conversations with the General Manager of NYCHA, Vito Mustaciuolo, about this. He's worked tirelessly trying to improve the situation all over public housing. But these buildings require going floor by floor and in some cases I even think apartment by apartment, you know, literally going into walls and resetting the apparatus. It's a very, very labor-intensive effort. There's no switch you can just flick. And it's all about just the age and the tough shape these buildings are in.

So, it's horrible it takes so long. But there is a reason it takes so long. And this is why, you know – and when we get back to all the other things we need to do in this city – this is why it's so important to go into this intensive effort that we've put forward to rehab a huge number of our buildings because they need it. The food that's been provided, I understand from our Food Czar, Kathryn Garcia, that it's been more than just snacks to say the least, but that we want to increase or improve the variety of the food that's being provided. So, we'll get you the details, Melissa, on what has been provided up to now. There is a certain amount of variety for sure that's been provided now, but we want to do more and better. Right now, additional food is being brought in, more variety of food is being brought in to help the residents get through the time until we're done here. But I want to make sure – I feel very badly for the residents in this development. I want to make sure they have all the food they need and quality food, and that these repairs are made as quickly as humanly possible.

Moderator: Next we have Mark Morales from CNN.

Question: Hey, everyone. How are you doing this morning?

Mayor: Hey, Mark.

Question: So, I wanted to ask about the antibody tests for first responders. What's the process for that and at what stage are you guys –

Mayor: Mark? Mark, you're coming in and out. This happened before, I think one time. I don't know what kind of – it sounds like you're in a car or something, but if you could get closer to the microphone, you're coming in and out.

Question: Right. Is this a little better?

Mayor: Yeah. Try.

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah. Go ahead.

Question: [Inaudible] for first responders. Where does that stand? But is there a process to be determined yet, or is there any test available for them yet?

Mayor: Okay. We're working on this issue now and I think that, Mark, the simple way to say, and our whole health care team has been working on this, is we are hopeful but there's still unanswered questions that we're trying to resolve quickly. At some point I want to see us use antibody testing. I think it could be very valuable. And again, a number of conversations are underway trying to lock that down. And as soon as we have an announcement, we'll make it. It's been a little hard to resolve making sure that what we get is the most reliable antibody tests. There's lots of different varieties as I understand it from our health care leadership. And we want to make sure that what we get is the most reliable, that tells you the most. You know, as we've said before the science still isn't a hundred percent clear and we want to always be really upfront with anyone who would get antibody testing that it is not a guarantee, it's not a rock solid guarantee, even if you test positive in that case, that yes, you've been exposed to this virus. It doesn't 100 percent guarantee you can't get it again. So, when we get to the point where we can do antibody testing, we're really going to put up front, particularly to all the folks who work at health care, first responders, et cetera, you still need to protect yourself. You still need to wear the PPEs, et cetera. But it hopefully will tell us something important. And it is related obviously as well to the growing efforts to do the plasma treatment and finding people who have previous exposure to the disease is important for that very meaningful effort. So, we'll have more to say soon, but I think the simple way to say it is we're trying to get right, we're trying to make sure we get the most reliable version, then we could do it, obviously, on a big scale and as soon as we have that we'll make an announcement.

Moderator: Next, we have Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Gersh, have you finished baking yet? That's my question for you.

Question: Mr. Mayor. If you know anything about baking bread, you're never finished. I have dough in the fridge waiting for later. So –

Mayor: Gersh –

Question: It’s an ongoing process.

Mayor: Gersh, I know nothing about baking bread. So, my question was asked out of pure ignorance, but I do want to say that we at City Hall have been waiting for our loaf. I think it's sourdough bread, I heard, and we have not received any sourdough bread yet and just wanted to make that note.

Question: I don't want to endanger anybody, obviously, by sending it. Nonetheless. I know you have limited time and I will get you some bread. But the City Council is taking up its bill today to require 75 miles of open streets. I'm wondering two things. Could you give us a preview of what you want your Transportation Commissioner to say in her testimony? And then given that we have Dr. Barbot here, perhaps I could get her to reflect on the health benefits. You know, because this is not just a transportation initiative, it's a health initiative. The health benefits of creating more open space so people don't have to congregate in New York's increasingly crowded parks.

Mayor: S, first of all, as I've said previously, Gersh, we want to work with the City Council. They're trying to figure out ways to address the problem. We are too and we want to work with them. And I'll be speaking to Speaker Johnson about it. I think there's lots of interesting ideas out there we can work on together. Second, I had a long talk yesterday with Commissioner Trottenberg and Commissioner Shea, and we continue to want to find every way to protect people. I think that's a fair point you make. For example, if parks are going to get more crowded in the warmer weather, which we keep hearing is coming but never seems to be here very long, but we anticipate obviously the parks will get more crowded and we want to think creatively with the Council about ways to address that. That's a very real issue.

But we also went into great detail yesterday about the different plans around the country and still feel that those plans do not connect with a lot of our reality. And so, we'd have to create something different for New York City, whatever it may be. And there still again is the problem – and Commissioner Shea, you know, obviously has given us some good news that the number of officers coming back has increased, but he's still far below the amount of personnel he normally has for regular, everyday patrolling of New York City and helping people in New York City, let alone for the new demands because of social distancing. So, we've got a lot of pieces we have to work through here. I want the Commissioner, as always, to say what she knows and what she's seeing. And I think she'll say that, you know, there are worthy issues to look at here, but there are very real safety concerns on the other side of the equation if there's not enforcement and the real issue that I still care about – and again, Gersh, you'll appreciate my Vision Zero orientation – a lot of folks out there who we’re struggling to get to follow the rules, which is why we have had to do speed cameras and so much enforcement, if we say streets are just for pedestrians, but there's no enforcement, I do worry about cars going on those streets. I do worry about the speeding we've seen lately, which we're doing a lot more to crack down on. But I worry about that in any place where pedestrians may think there's not going to be cars and suddenly there are.

That doesn't mean we can't find solutions, but that's something that Commissioner Trottenberg, Commissioner Shea, and I talked about. That's a real worry we have. So, when you talk about health – and I'll welcome any comment that Dr. Barbot has – I think because I believe so deeply in Vision Zero, I'd say Vision Zero is public health to the maximum. It's preserving people from their lives, their safety, from being hit by cars and trucks. And that Vision Zero sensibility has to still be applied in this instance even as we are going to try and find creative solutions because of the crowding that you're talking about. Dr. Barbot you want to jump in?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Sure. Mr. Mayor, I want to echo your sentiments that certainly there are tremendous mental health benefits to having people be outdoors, safely distance between their fellow New Yorkers. And I agree with you that there are creative solutions that we can identify, but that we need to be mindful of minimizing and avoiding unintended consequences that may put us in a situation that the solution is worse than the problem. And so, I look forward to contributing to the ongoing conversation about this, but I think that we are in a position where New Yorkers, having the opportunity to go outdoors, remain six feet of distance, there's plenty of space for them to do that.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Anna from the Daily News.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I was wondering if – I know that this is going to sound crazy, but I would really like it if I'm one of the doctors can explain why injecting yourself with disinfectant, like what can actually happen if people do that. Because I think, you know, people are kind of taking what the president said as a joke, but I want to know, is someone at risk of poisoning themselves if they do that?

Mayor: I don't think your question is crazy at all because if that's been suggested to people, they need to hear the truth from a doctor, not from someone who doesn't really seem to care about science at all. So, Dr. Barbot, you're a real doctor, what do you say?

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely. You know, and I appreciate the question because oftentimes we take for granted directions are going to be followed the way in which they are stated. And you know, I think I've said before that as a pediatrician I often took for granted that when I prescribed antibiotics for an ear infection, that parents knew that the antibiotic was to be taken orally and not put directly into an ear. So, I think it's important for us to have clarity about how products are intended for use. And so very clearly, disinfectants are not intended for ingestion either by mouth, by ears, by breathing them in any way, shape, or form. And doing so can put people at great risk. I think, you know, tragically we've heard of situations where individuals have misinterpreted the type of chloroquine that has been talked about as a potential treatment and ingested chloroquine that was intended for use in aquariums. So, I think it's important for us to be very clear with New Yorkers that disinfectants are not intended for ingestion and they can cause great harm.

Mayor: So, Dr. Barbot, I want to – I might not have heard clearly, but I think Anna said injection not ingestion. I want to – I don't know if I heard that right. But let's ask that one, too. I assume injection is at least as bad as ingestion in this case.

Commissioner Barbot: Exactly. Introducing one of these products in any way, shape, or form be it by injection, ingestion, or application on the skin is harming the body.

Mayor: Yeah. And I would ask all our colleagues in the media, you would be doing a great public service to spread that message far and wide that it's sad when we have to correct the President of the United States on a matter of science and health. But I think Dr. Barbot just did a good job replying to the president, so please let the people of the city know the guidance that she's giving.

Moderator: Next we have Jen from AP.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I hope you can hear me.

Mayor: Yes, Jen.

Question: This probably is a question for Dr. Barbot, but I wanted to return to the subject of the contact tracing program that was discussed a couple of days ago. And since this is to ramp up in the next few weeks or months, I just wondered if we could get a little bit at the nuts and bolts of how this works and will work. You know, if the person were to get on the list of some contacts, should they expect a phone call or a door knock, what kind of ways do the disease detectives or tracers used to start this conversation?

Mayor: Yeah, and I want to just jump in, Jen, as Dr. Barbot gets ready to reply, to say that remember that what we're going to be doing starting in May, it's going to be on a much bigger scale and will involve, of course, the disease detectives the way we saw at the beginning of March. But this is going to go far beyond that with lots of different trained personnel and also with the use of technology to trace the maximum number of people. And all those details we’ll be laying out in specific plans. So, the disease detectives are the best of the best. We'll certainly be using them, but we're going to have a much bigger effort behind that. Go ahead Dr. Barbot.

Commissioner Barbot: So, with regards to the testing and tracing to help us accelerate out of this pandemic, you know, the basics are the same in terms of identifying individuals who are symptomatic with a condition consistent with COVID, testing them to confirm whether or not it's COVID-19, providing isolation so that there is no further transmission and then identifying who they may have come in contact with, reaching out to those individuals, assessing whether or not they are symptomatic and – excuse me – requiring that they remain out of circulation, so to speak, for 14 days. So, those basics remain the same. The how, of how this will be carried out, as the Mayor alluded to, I think it will be a combination certainly of disease detectives, but others as well, and also employing a technology. This is going to be a tremendous effort. It's going to be tracking thousands of individuals. And I don’t think there's going to be just one way of doing it. And then the other thing that I will add to this is that while this is going on, we will still need New Yorkers to remain indoors as much as possible to continue using face coverings and to continuing to limit their exposure to others and remaining with that six-foot distance.

Moderator: Next we have Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Mr. Mayor, my question has to do with the antibody testing that was conducted by the State. I'd like to know what you think of that survey that was done that found that as many as 21 percent of New York City residents may have been – would have tested positive for the virus and what that finding might pretend for the city generally. What's the reaction from the Commissioner and from yourself?

Mayor: Thank you, Henry. It’s a good question. And look, it's obviously – the Commissioner will speak more scientifically. What I'd say is, I welcome any and all information we can get. It's a relatively small sample, obviously, but it is interesting that it kind of directionally points where we've been thinking and seeing as well. You know, Commissioner Barbot said a day or two ago that she thought at least a million Mew Yorkers had been infected in the whole course of this, including the time when we didn't even know it was here yet. I think that number makes a lot of sense that it's been at least that. And so, you know, that's not profoundly different than that 21 percent number. I think we're somewhere in that kind of ballpark, 15 to 20 percent, something like that, of the population I think is what we're thinking too right now. But we don't know for sure. And that is just one measure, but, again, we welcome them all. I think the important thing is to recognize that, you know, we have been preparing on the assumption that over half of New Yorkers would be infected during the life of this disease in this immediate period of these next months. I'd love it if it turned out to be a lower number, but we've been preparing for that eventuality. That was why we did everything we did with the hospitals to prepare them for a very big onslaught. That's why we still have a lot of that capacity and reserve no matter what. I'm hoping and praying we never see a resurgence and I'm hoping and praying that we see a steady deceleration then that hand off to the test and trace initiative that drives it down even further. I would love nothing more than we found that many fewer New Yorkers were infected than were projected. But for planning and preparing and keeping people safe, we have prepared as if it will be a very high number and a longer playout. We'll be ready no matter – you know, no matter what is thrown at us, we will be ready.

Dr Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: So, to add to what the Mayor said, I think from the beginning, you know, we've been clear that every day we learn more and more about this virus, not only from the public health perspective but also from the clinical perspective. And while we have focused quite a bit on the more severe components of COVID-19, I think it's worthwhile focusing on the less severe because this then speaks to a number of New Yorkers who may have been infected with COVID-19 and didn't realize it because their symptoms were so mild. I think we're learning now from our clinical partners that, for example, individuals who may have thought that they had allergies at the beginning of flu season – excuse me, in the spring, may have actually had a very mild course of COVID-19. And early on, you know, we were talking about how because of lack of testing we were unable to, in the early periods, distinguish between the slew that the BioFire identified versus influenza symptoms that were not identified by BioFire. So, all that to say is that I think as we go on in this response, there will be much more that we learn about in terms of the number of New Yorkers that were exposed and infected. And this is one of those pieces of information that we will continue to look at.

Moderator: Next. We have Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, good morning. Mr. Mayor, I had a quick question about the disparities you addressed at the start of the news conference. I know you've talked before about your efforts at keeping Health + Hospitals open. But I just wanted to ask you again, given that the city is – was very aware of how the virus might affect the existing, and longtime existing health disparities in the city, can you point to anything specifically that was done to prepare for that reality that, you know, the idea that any more people in low income, poor black and brown communities were going to be hit harder by this virus. Is there anything specifically the City did other than hospitals?

Mayor: Yeah. Jeff, I think you and I've had this conversation a couple of times, so I want to try one more time and if doesn't work out, I'll just declare a detente here. You either have to understand and believe the basic theory of the case or you cannot, that's fine, but the whole point is this was a very rapid evolution and it was all about protecting the hospitals and the health care workers, and that is in fact about addressing the disparities. We understood from the beginning that those public hospitals were going to bear the brunt and so it was not just about what we did years ago with billions of dollars then, it's everything we threw in from the beginning to fortify the public hospitals in the here and now. The PPEs, the additional staffing, everything – the appeals I made to Washington for the military medical personnel – were all for our public hospitals, therefore all to address the health care disparities. We did not know until the evidence came out the extent to which the disparities were playing out with this disease, but we knew from the beginning that people in lower income communities in particular and folks who had had less health care were going to be vulnerable. So, we overcompensated in the sense of putting a huge amount of effort into strengthening and backing up the public hospitals, and the health care workers who do this work, who also overwhelmingly, largely come from those same communities. That was the game plan because the projections we had suggested that we were going to have a massive upsurge in just a few weeks that was going to put into doubt whether all of our hospitals could hold the line and save everyone who could be saved, particularly the public hospitals. And Elmhurst obviously became the powerful – the painful example, but also powerful example, given the heroism of everyone at Elmhurst, of how that became very real very quickly. So, that was the strategy. The strategy was hospital-centric because of reality. The personnel needed, the PPEs needed, the equipment needed, if we didn't throw everything into the hospitals, we would not have been able to make it through, even with what we experienced, let alone the projections, as you remember, Sunday, April 5th, that we're supposed to go up much higher that following week. So, we threw everything into the breach. The other piece is the public information – the original $8 million ad campaign, again, multiple languages. There were many, many efforts like that to reach into immigrant communities to reach folks who didn't speak English, to try and make them aware of quickly what was going on and that there would be help available. The things we're doing now, like the community-based testing we could not do then because we did not have the available personnel or PPEs, or even for quite a while the test kits. So, it was about applying everything we had to the place where it would do the most good and, at the same time, we knew that would help the most vulnerable people. And then as soon as we started to come out of that phase, that phase of ever-increasing numbers and started to see some level off, we switched, especially on the strength of that data, we switched to more of a community-focused approach, sending out now more and more testing and the other elements that I've discussed today.

Moderator: Next we have Julia from the Post.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, I had two questions for you. One, we heard yesterday that kosher meals ran out very early. The first day, you know, that the program was rolled out we also heard that seniors are still having trouble getting meals. We just heard from Melissa about the issues with meals for NYCHA residents. So, clearly, the meals program has been plagued with problems. I'm wondering what you're going to do to address specifically the issue of kosher meals and that if you're thinking about any kind of overhaul of the program or leadership change?

Mayor: Well, Julia, I think you're – I'd like to know more when you say you've heard problems. We've had some of your colleagues have raised very specific problems, which I've expressed my appreciation for, and then one by one those problems have been fixed. We had the problem that Independence Plaza, that was fixed. We had the problem with 3-1-1, that got fixed. There's always more to do given the sheer volume that 3-1-1 is experiencing. But I just disagree with your thesis that there's a bigger problem. What I'm seeing is some individual things that need to be improved upon, for sure. But this is a program that's providing a 10 million meals in April and it's slated to provide 15 million in May, and from everything I can see it's working. When we find a problem, we address it. If there's something more widespread, I want to know about it. So, I'm not saying it negatively to you. I'm saying I don't – if you've got more evidence, give it to me. The NYCHA development in question, that's a very specific problem related to the gas outage. That is not a larger problem everywhere. That's that particular developments challenge and we want to – and we have been providing food and I want to provide more and better food to that development. I want to see that done better. The kosher food issue, that's what I've heard too, that they ran out in one or more sites that very – we don't want that to happen. We need that not to happen. What they're going to do from now on is stock up more on those sites, that's something we can act absolutely do and absolutely fix. But if there are more examples of seniors who can't get food, give them to me. I want to know them, I want to fix it. And if we find a more structural problem, of course I will address it very, very aggressively. But so far what I'm seeing is specific fixable problems, not bigger structural problems.

Question: Great. And can I ask my second question?

Mayor: Yeah, but please do it upfront. As with everyone else, it would help me just to get it all up front for the format we're using now. Go ahead.

Question: I tried to, but you cut me off.

Mayor: No, I didn't cut you off, actually. So, let's just get clear to our team here running – let's please make sure that everyone's gotten – I thought those were all the questions, Julia. So, please, everyone, try and coordinate to make sure we've gotten out the fair number of questions. Go ahead, Julia.

Question: Okay, no problem. So, on the second issue, I'm wondering if you've discussed what types of businesses could open in the city first, second, and third under of an eventual reopening plan per the White House guidelines. And, if so, can you give us a sense of what those businesses are that could open first versus what will likely have to wait?

Mayor: Right. We have started for sure that discussion and we're going to be laying out more and more plans related to restart. And what I'd say is, you know, I think a good guidepost to begin, this is not a formal plan I'm offering here, it’s just initial – initial thinking that we have that does reflect a lot of what we've seen around the world that works. You obviously want to avoid a lot of people in the first instance coming to work. So, we still want to emphasize telework and telecommuting. We want to make sure that where people do come back to work, there's the ability to socially distance. So, you've seen in a lot of countries, for example, in Europe is they've allowed certain stores to open, but with strict social distancing rules and the kind of stores that could actually implement social distancing rules properly. So, I think it's going to be a – you know, sort of, a careful, steady approach. But that's something we're going to start to lay out in detail. We're clearly not there yet. I mean, today was a good day with our indicators, but as I've said, you’ve got to get to 10 days to 14 days consistent progress on the indicators to be able to even begin to talk about some of those loosening of the standards. So, we clearly have time. I want it to be as soon as possible, but we clearly have time to put out those specific standards and what will go first, what will go second, and that will be something we'll speak about in the coming days.

Moderator: Last two for today. Next, we have Gloria from NY1.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I hear you announcing – some of the, some of what you've said today has been announced over the last few days regarding community outreach and what the city is doing to address these hard-hit communities. When are we going to get the details about these community health centers? Why have only 250 practices signed up for telemedicine? How is the City handling that effort? And I mean these, these tele town halls, I understand that part of it, but people want to know what to do and where they can go be on a computer screen. When is the City going to provide that information?

Mayor: So, on the – three things. So, on the tele town halls, these are interactive obviously. I want to make sure that's clear, Gloria. At a tele town hall, you get a huge number of people actually get to ask questions of the people involved and get a lot of feedback and get to – get guidance that is very helpful and practical. The telemedicine, that is actually a big deal when you think about the reach of 250 community health providers. It's a big deal that so many are immediately taken to the notion of learning how to do telemedicine that has not been part of their practice before. So, your question, sort of, respectfully, minimizes it. I want to put it in its true light. If you've got 250 community-based health providers in lower income communities that are understandably used to providing medicine the old fashioned way, and now we say we're going to show you how to make telemedicine part of what you do all the time and reach all your people much more effectively and consistently – that's a big deal. That has ramifications for tens of thousands of their patients. We have just begun with this. We want to expand that greatly. I think many more providers are going to be taking that up. And in terms of what I've said, we're going to have announcement very shortly on community-based health clinics, which is something we've really wanted to start to activate, just it’s taken some work to get it ready to go. But we're going to have announcements on that in the next few days. On the community-based testing centers, we're going to start reporting regularly on the numbers there and the people that are testing. That's going to keep growing. Again, it's a brand-new initiative. I think everyone has to understand, in a crisis atmosphere, we're putting things in play that have not been there before. We expect them to get up and running quickly. We expect to have real numbers quickly. But what happens in the first week or the second week is very different from when you can do once you really get ramped up. So, all of that is going to be moving intensely and we will give you the metrics on that regularly.

Moderator: Last question for today, we have Debralee from the Manhattan Times Bronx Free Press.

Question: Hey, good morning, everyone. How are you?

Mayor: Hey, how are you doing, Debralee?

Question: I’m well, thanks. I wanted to follow up on the testing conversation. As the City and State both ramp up their capacity and their outreach, can you speak to what degree of cohesion, correlation and real information sharing there is that there is a stratified, reliable set of data rather than needless duplication. We've been out to some of the community sites, including Morrisania, and we understand that there's a limit to the test that can be administered on a daily basis and that that's being increased as well. But between the City and the State, now going into, again, hard-hit areas, what is the concern there and the dynamic that's being used to address, again, the possibility for to publication and information sharing. And then on the second note, there was an ongoing conversation about the accessibility of death certificates. People are still reporting that they're having a very hard time a month later. We have an example of a transit worker in the Bronx [inaudible] who's still – his family is still seeking out a real information and getting some – just not getting the things that they need to be able to have this done a month later. When they do – when they do reach out, they're not getting information they need. That said, what can we speak to that, that allows for people to know there's a reliable manner in which they can access these death certificates. And for that matter, when we spoke about the deaths that were not reported in hospitals, can you speak to the families that have family members who died at home or elsewhere and perhaps were not necessarily identified as COVID-19 victims to begin with and now are facing an uphill battle to getting them properly identified as victims.

Mayor: Thank you, Debralee. Very important questions. Let me speak to this second part, and we'll bring in Dr. Barbot as well, and then I'll double back to the testing question quickly. Look, it's very painful for a family that's already gone through so much, that’s lost a loved one, to then be fighting for a death certificate. It's just unacceptable. I understand everybody was thrown back on their heels in the first weeks of this crisis. It's a pandemic. We've never seen anything like it in a century in this city. I'm not going to blame anybody or any agency that in March, as things were growing and growing and growing, even in the beginning of April, folks were trying their damnedest to make sense of so much. And in so many cases, you know, the part of the equation that got toughest was the things that we're used to in terms of just information being accurate and being kept compared to all the efforts that were being made to save lives and struggle through to protect our health care workers in the work they were doing, et cetera. But even with that understanding in place, Debralee, it's not acceptable that any family has gone through that, that painful effort of just trying to get the truth and get the facts and get the certificates they need. I don't accept that. We need that fixed. I've certainly said both to, and given this direction to the Office of the Medical Examiner and Department of Health, whatever they need in the way of resources, we will give them to get all these death certificates up to date and get them to the families that need them. And if they can reach back and understand in a case that wasn't clearly COVID-19 originally, if there's any way to get the full truth, they should. Some cases they can, some cases they can't, but we've just got to give the families closure and support. So, I know real efforts are being made to fix that. Dr Barbot, you pick up from there and then I'll come back to finish.

Commissioner Barbot: Absolutely. I want to start off by stating that we are committed to ensuring that every person who dies from COVID-19 gets counted. And a few weeks ago, we started reporting on deaths that we labeled probable COVID-19. Now, it took a while for that to happen because of two things. One is, we were waiting for the federal government and the oversight body to finalize the definitions of what it meant to be COVID-90. Additionally, we, along with the OCME, were doing trainings of hospitals, funeral directors to make sure that anyone who was registering a death was prompted to think about could this be a COVID-19 death. And then lastly, we were then also ensuring that all of the death certificates were being registered electronically, and that took us a longer than we would have wanted to get the last remaining funeral homes to register those deaths electronically. Additionally, we put more staff to ensure that we processed that certificates in a more prompt way. And I couldn't agree more with the Mayor that it's unacceptable that we have family who's waited that long to get a death certificate. And I would love to receive that information. We'll follow up right away and we'll look at the systems issues that need to be re-tweaked to make sure that nobody has to wait that long, because, again, we’re committed to transparency and accounting for all of the New Yorkers that have been taken by this vicious virus.

Mayor: Yeah. And let me just pick up on that. And, Oxiris, I'm going to ask you a question as I do this, but first to say, Debralee, and anybody in the media, if you know of a family that is so struggling to get a death certificate, please let your colleagues here at City Hall know so we can let Dr. Barbot and her team know and get that fixed. It's just not acceptable that families are struggling. If we know of individual cases of that, we got to fix it. Dr. Barbot, can you speak now, because, thank God, we are in a deceleration of this disease and we're able to finally make a little more sense of things here, can you speak to how quickly families can expect to get these certificates, going forward, and finishing whatever painful backlog there is?

Commissioner Barbot: Generally, the turnaround time depends on the funeral directors. But from our end, generally within 24 to 48 hours, they should be able to get those death certificates.

Mayor: Okay. So, we will press – to the extent there is the issue with funeral homes, I commit certainly that we're going to press them, that they have to do their piece of the equation so we can make families have some closure and give them support. And if there's problems with funeral homes too, I want to hear about it so we can deal with it. To the other question to conclude, Debra, so, right now, I'd say everything that the City and State are doing is complimentary in terms of community-based testing, because we obviously are trying to work for the day when we can have, you know, close to ubiquitous testing. So, the State is doing certain things, we're doing certain things. Obviously, every single person, particularly in the targeted areas that have borne the brunt, every additional person who gets tested that's a good thing. Our focus has been on folks who have those preexisting conditions and older folks. But, you know, all testing that continues to build out in communities that need it the most is a good thing. So, there's no duplication that I know of. The question, going forward, you know, info sharing, as you said, are we going to all figure out together where we're going? Of course. This is something we work on all the time with the State. We have a responsibility to people in this city and we're going to do everything that we need to do to protect New Yorkers, but we're always working with the State. We share information all the time. We're convinced the way to get through this is with a very, very aggressive test and trace program and that's what we're building right now. And, again, there'll be bigger than anything we've ever seen previously, but that's how we think we push back this disease and really get to that phase of low-level transmission we all want to get to.

Let me conclude and just say, just finish here on this question of disparity. I think the important thing, going forward, is to be blunt about it, to be honest about it. New Yorkers, I've found, over many, many years – New Yorkers prefer real talk. They want us to lay the facts out and be honest about realities, even if they're not pleasant than anything we want to see in any society. This is what we know now. We know how badly these disparities played out with this disease. It's another clear signal that we have to do things very differently. Now, where we were before this disease with our guaranteed health care plan with NYC Care, these are the kinds of steps that actually I think are foundational to making the changes we need to address fundamental health care disparities and obviously continuing to support our public hospitals on a really profound level going forward. But to make all the changes we have to make on health care, we're going to have to have a real conversation about a lot of other things about income and affordable housing and a whole lot of other things – all the structural problems, the structural racism, the fundamental problems that have held people back for a long time. And what I pledge is that I'm going to be blunt about it. I think that's what New Yorkers want and need, and if we're going to do better when we come back, it will require us to be really clear about shining a light on what we've just lived through and how it cannot happen again.

With that, everyone, we're going to keep fighting. And, everyone, you're doing a great job fighting through this. Keep going. Today was a good day on our indicators. I'll talk to you again on Sunday and let's hope we've got more good news by then, but keep doing what you're doing.

Thank you very, very much.

2020-04-24 NYC Mayor de Blasio Ask the Mayor

Brian Lehrer: It’s the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. And now it's time for our weekly Ask the Mayor segment – my questions in yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our phone number is 646-435-7280 – 646-435-7280 if you have a question for the Mayor this morning or you can tweet a question, just use the hashtag #AsktheMayor. And good morning Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, Brian.

Lehrer: So let me start by following up on the clip that we just played in our newscast of you at your news conference earlier where you talked about a massive public education campaign to let people in the most vulnerable communities, meaning including the hardest hit zip codes know about this. Explain it briefly if you would, but I'm also curious if this means that you're relying on sort of a personal responsibility model for fighting the virus.

Mayor: No, I mean, I would not say that at all, Brian. I think the fact is, one, what the City has tried to do from the beginning is make sure that the places that serve our most vulnerable communities, particularly our public hospitals, were strong to get through this crisis and be able to, you know, literally save every life. That clearly was about what we could do to protect people on top of everything else, you know, the, the personnel we've brought in the, the PPEs to protect the health workers. And it's been a very focused effort to protect health care and to protect that sort of frontline ability, particularly when it was very much looking like this disease was going to keep growing and more and more people were going to have to go to the hospital for lifesaving care.

But what's happened in the last few weeks, especially as we've had more and more evidence of these disparities, it's been at the same time as the sheer pressure on the hospitals has reduced, thank God. And now we want to do much more going out into communities to inform people, but also to make it more interactive. It's not just, Oh, you know, here's a piece of paper and good luck. It is – creating ways for people to interconnect with clinicians, particularly through telemedicine, it’s a big part of our plan to teach local health care providers to use telemedicine who haven't really used it before, to work with community based health clinics which we’re going to say a lot more on in the next few days but also to create a bigger citywide telemedicine apparatus and then a huge advertising and outreach campaign to help people understand the disease better, understand that what they need to do but also the helped us there for them. For example, one of the big realities is families and crowded households – God forbid someone gets sick or a symptomatic, they may need to be isolated. We have hotels that we will provide the people and the support to go with it so they can be isolated. That's the kind of information we want to get out of what's there to help people and how they can connect with it and really do that at more and more of a grassroots level because I think we are forgetting sometimes that all sorts of people, 8.6 million people, people get information a lot of different ways. And for a lot of people in the city, if it's not in their native language, it's not as helpful. For a lot of people, if it's not coming from a trusted source, they're not as quick to believe it, which is understandable. That's why we have community leaders and community-based health clinics, faith leaders, we're engaging more and more. So no, it's about, it's about what we can do to help people and also arming people with more facts and more options for where to go to get the information they need to protect themselves.

Lehrer: You know, the last segment that we did just before you came on was about the antibody test results that the State released yesterday. And I have heard from our newsroom that your Health Department apparently sent a notice to physicians cautioning them that antibody tests currently cannot tell people if they're immune because having antibodies isn't the same thing as having actual immunity. It might indicate it. We don't know yet, which is the same thing that our science journalists in the previous segment said. But it appears, I see it reported that you haven't been getting that message out to the general public. People are lining up for these tests and we know that many of the commercially offered ones haven't even been vetted by the FDA. So would you like to get some version of that message out now?

Mayor: Yeah, of course. Brian. And thank you and I said it at my press conference earlier. I was asked when would the City be starting to work with antibody tests and I said, right now we're deeply engaged in that conversation, but we do want to make sure that we get the most reliable version of the test, because there's another topic which is there's a lot of different versions of the antibody test and our health care leadership believe that some are, are substantially more reliable than others at identifying, even if someone's been exposed to the specific coronavirus that we're dealing with now as opposed to other you know, similar diseases. So we're working to ensure that we feel good about the test that we might be utilizing, and when we get to that point where we're ready to act on it, we'll make an announcement.

But I said today, and I'll be saying it a lot going forward. Whatever we do is going to come with all those cautions that this test tells you something – if it's a good test and an accurate test that tells you you've been exposed to this coronavirus. Well that's important to know it does not tell you everything, because the science is clear that we cannot rule out that someone could be infected again. It's probably unlikely because there's not a lot of evidence the other way either showing, you know, large numbers of people reinfected and I want to be clear about that, that you know, that's a vote in favor of antibody testing, but it is not a slam dunk here. It's not clear enough. And for example, for folks who are in health care and first responders who have been using PPEs, we're going to tell them, keep using them. Even if they have an antibody test come back positive and says they've been exposed, we're going to tell people still out of the abundance of caution, keep using those PPEs. So it's a tool, it gives us some information. It certainly tells us people who could be part of providing plasma for the plasma treatments and those do seem promising, so that's important but we're going to be really clear about the limits of it as well.

Lehrer: Lennox in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hello Lennox.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. My name is Lennox, and I'm, thank you, on my high school senior at Brooklyn College Academy in Brooklyn, and I'm also the Policy Team Leader at Teens Take Charge, which is a youth led organization now fights for educational equity in New York City. And my peers and I were really devastated to hear that you decided to cancel SYEP for the upcoming summer. and so are the 28 City Council members, and over 28,000 New Yorkers who have signed our petition calling on you to reverse your decision and we appreciate like that you said that you wanted to make sure young people have opportunities this summer and working – you were working with SYEP providers to create some remote solutions. But is it possible for you to start putting out plans in place when all the funding has been cut because you cut over, you cut the complete $124 million of the SYEP funds, but like how can plans be put in place if there's no money?

Mayor: Thank you for the question, Lennox, I appreciate it a lot. And Teens Take Charge. I really appreciate the work you and your colleagues have been doing. In fact, we all work together on things like social emotional learning and restorative justice and I think we've made a lot of progress and I think Teens Take Charge, it's really been a great, a great voice in the city, so thank you for that. On this question, let me just give you the facts because I think I do understand why you and so many other people would like to see summer youth employment up and running this summer. But I think we got a couple of problems we have to be honest about the first is at the time when we had to make the decision, the question was could we devote money to an initiative that it looked very unlikely could exist? And just think about the basic reality. You know, summer youth employment starts right after the school year and that means you have to have employers and they have to be able to take in young people and be able to give them the option to do the work. And, right now, we don't even know if the vast majority of employers will be up and running by that point. Certainly, they won't – a lot of them will not be up and running the way they would have been. And then what about social distancing? What about the standards? You know, is it going to be safe to bring a lot of people together? So, when we looked at all of it, Lennox, it was like we did not have the possibility of even saying we knew if summer youth employment could work in any way, shape or form, especially could it be safe. And with that in mind, we said, okay, well we can't spend money on something that we don't even know if it'll happen. But beyond that we just had a horrendous budget crisis. We, what I announced last week that we are – we project a gap of $7.4 billion and we still have gotten minimal aid from Washington. We're going to fight for a lot more now in the new stimulus bill. But we have to be clear that, you know, these budget cuts were necessary under any scenario and we had to make choices. And, right now, what I'm focused on is getting literally getting people food, getting people – making sure people have a place to live, making sure they're safe, making sure they're healthy. I mean, that's the priorities right now. So if we get to the point Lennox where you know, things move fast in terms of beating back this disease, we don't know that yet, but let's hope and pray that's the case, and we started to be able to open things up and then we see there are some actual things we could do to support young people. We know we will then look at every option and see how we do that. But we couldn't put money into something that at the time looked like it literally would be impossible. So you, you have my pledge that if the situation changes for the better quickly enough and we think there are creative options that we can put in play, we're certainly going to work with the city council on that. But we just got to, we’ve got to focus on health and safety first and we're certainly not there yet.

Lehrer: What is the situation with the budget? You heard Mitch McConnell this week and you just kind of referred to it say states should consider bankruptcy and cutting retirees pensions rather than get federal help. He called the idea for federal help, a blue state bailout. Obviously, you're going to hate that, but can you give our listeners a picture of the City's financial outlook and how many layoffs or cuts to services we can expect just as there is more demand for emergency services that you're now looking at?

Mayor: Yeah, and I'll start on McConnell. I don't need to, I've already said what he said was profoundly inhumane, that he obviously, you know, he claims to care about the cops and firefighters, but what he said would literally lead to all over this country first responders not being able to do their jobs and it was just sick and insensitive that he would act like it's okay to see America’s cities go bankrupt and America’s states go bankrupt. It means that he is okay with human beings not being safe and not being healthy, but it also means he doesn't seem to worry that it would show a nation falling apart. I think he's contradictory on a moral level. I think he also, if he has any interest in a recovery and a restart, it's not going to happen if cities and states can't provide basic services, and that's what would happen for so many places if they don't get a bail out here. I remind you, Brian, that the airline industry got a $58 billion bailout. He was very quick to approve that. But if cities and states are in trouble, he politicizes it. It's just disgusting. But what it means for us, it means that, you know, which $7.4 billion missing, we're going to have to find things to cut if we don't get a lot in this stimulus. And we'd have to at some point look at cutting basic services and, and that's going to really – it's going to harm a lot of people and it's going to set back the ability of this city to recover.

Lehrer: Do you have projected city worker layoffs for the new fiscal year on July 1st assuming no federal help?

Mayor: I'm not going to say it like that yet because I want to be sensitive. There's a lot of people out there who it's their livelihood, let alone all the good they do for this city, so I'm not going to project. My job is to go and fight for that stimulus funding. I'm working with Senator Schumer. I've been talking to Speaker Pelosi, I've been pushing the President of the United States, and I've had several conversations with them. I'd be very blunt. He's the one who actually could have the most impact here. If President Trump said a full bailout of cities and states, replace all the revenue that they lost, it should be a priority, the Republican Senate would do it. So really it comes down to Donald Trump and whether he's going to help his hometown back on our feet or not, and every place else. But I am, I was clear when I presented the budget, Brian, that I consider layoffs a last resort, but it's all going to come down to does the federal government help us or not? And if they do, there's a lot we can do to get back on her feet. If they don't, we're going to have to make very, very painful choices.

Lehrer: Electra in Harlem. You're on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hello Electra.

Question: Hello. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Mr. Lehrer for all of your work. I'm the director of a youth-based organization supporting youth in their communities in Harlem. We're in New York City owned building, which is solely occupied by nonprofits, community organizations. We've been locked out of a building which we understand in the light of the pandemic, but we have not been offered any relief or any adjustment payments schedule. One of our crucial programs includes a language interpreter helpline, which prioritizes African languages. We support these communities in their everyday function and survival. We were helping them with the census and critical information for overcoming the pandemic and now all of this is service by phone and we've been cut off. So, my question is, is there any way Mr. Mayor, that the city could offer a letter of recommendation to give service organizations in our New York City on building and others like it, the support to get back to the community?

Mayor: Yeah, Electra, thank you so much for calling. First of all, thank you for everything you do and your colleagues do, appreciate that very much. I've come to know the growing African communities in Harlem and around the city and you know, very, very important. We provide people support, especially in their own language whenever we can. And we want to help – definitely want to help you. Everything you said made sense to me that if you have service and support, you can provide the community right now by phone. We have to help you, you know, be able to do that. So, I'm going to have my team follow up with you today. If you please give your information to WNYC, I am certain there's something we can do to help you get back and running and figure out how to do that the right way and if there's other organizations like yours, we want to know about it, and you know, whatever we can do, we will. It's a really important that we get maximum trusted voices speaking to community members, particularly on health care, but obviously on the economic challenges people face and all that we have to provide them the food and all the other services we have to provide them. So, the answer's yes. We want to help you get back in the game.

Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with more of your questions for Mayor Bill de Blasio. And I'm going to ask you, Mr. Mayor, if you support the City Council's new grocery store clerk bonus bill, in fact, mandated hazard pay for those grocery store clerks who have to be on the front lines. So prepare for that and everyone else stay with us as we continue with ask the Mayor.

[…]

Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue our weekly, ask the mayor segment my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio at 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0 or you can tweet a question. Just use the hashtag, #AskTheMayor. And as I said before the break there are increasing calls for hazard pay for people on the front lines. In the private sector, City Council has a grocery store clerk bonus bill. Crain’s which publishes from the business perspective has a headline that says City Council grocery store bonus bill could bankrupt supermarkets. Maybe they're crying wolf, maybe you think they're not? In the public sector, I see it includes doctors, not that same bill, but there are calls for doctors in training at city hospitals and other municipal employees who've had to continue work, first responders, also others to get bonus pay or in effect hazard pay. How much are you for this for city workers who are in those categories and would you support that? Do you support that bonus bill for grocery store clerks?

Mayor: So the biggest sort of way to think about this in my view – the sort of the most universal I guess is the right way to say, way to think about this is I think all of these efforts are going in the right direction. So, you know, all the folks, the frontline workers, essential workers, the health care workers, the first responders, but also definitely the grocery workers, et cetera. Everyone deserves something special in light of this, the challenge is how do you do it the right way? And the best way, and I really think people need to realize just what time it is in terms of what has happened here to the sheer, painful reality of what we're going to be able to do to feed people in the future, given what I told you about previously, the kind of deficits. We're running now, cities and states all over the country are running. I know a lot of businesses are struggling to keep going, really struggling to come back.

The best way to handle all of this is to do a federal bonus program and this is what Senator Schumer is called for, A Hero's Fund for the frontline workers. And again, the federal government's in a position do it and we just have to be real about they, you know, they do print money and they've obviously come up with very, very genuine – generous stimulus for big corporations. I want to see the stimulus reach these essential workers. I think it's right to give them a bonus structure. I think that's the best way to do it. That's the most universal way to do it and would allow that to happen while everybody else, the cities, the states, the businesses that are trying to get back on their feet. So that's – that's the way I think we can resolve it and that's going to be decided in May one way or another. I mean that's the one thing to understand about everything stimulus. There's – everyone said it, the stimulus for which is the one word this kind of bonus pay will be taken up, will be decided in May. So we do not have to wait long to get this answer.

Lehrer: Laura, in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hi Laura.

Question: Hello?

Lehrer: Hi, you're on the air.

Question: Oh, hi, hi, hi Brian, hi Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much for everything you're doing. My question is, is there some sort of move to mandate toilet seat covers in New York City going forward or even as a condition of reopening? We know that toilets flushing aerosolizes feces and that viral shedding from COVID-19 can occur in feces as long as 30 days after infection. So for me, I'm picturing a place like a public bathroom in Grand Central or JFK and that these could be incredible vectors for transmission of infectious disease without toilet seat covers. Is there anything being done about this?

Lehrer: You're talking about public restrooms?

Question: Well, not just public restroom, but even in restaurants and bars and any other places where a flushing could aerosolize COVID-19.

Lerher: Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Well, I will tell you, thank you Laura for the question. I am never going to tell you I'm an expert when I'm not, so this is the first time and I've obviously had a lot of conversations with our health care leadership on a lot of different issues, it's the first time I'm hearing this one, but I promise to follow up. If you'd please give your information to WNYC, I'm talking to our Health Commissioner and our other key health leadership all the time and I'll ask them about this issue. I think if it – if they regard it as a priority, then as something we will focus on and figure a way to act on it. So let me get – let me get their guidance. But I'm glad you raised it and you know, if it was something that proved to be a priority need to to reduce the spread of COVID. Of course, that's the kind of thing we're putting our energy and our resources into.

Lehrer: Question via Twitter from a listener who apparently reads our website, Gothamist, that says, please ask the Mayor about Gothamist reporting on open streets. Other cities don't need a large police force to open their streets. Neither do we. And I guess this refers to the proposal from some people to open up as much as 75 miles of city streets throughout the five boroughs in order to give pedestrians and cyclists room to maintain proper social distance and obviously slow the bread – the spread of COVID-19. And I know that the Gothamist article and question points out that other cities are doing it right now, Oakland, Minneapolis, Boston, Berlin, Paris, Portland, and Bogota have all instituted similar programs according to the Gotham article. What's the impediment for you if all those cities are doing it?

Mayor: So, I spoke to this a number of times, including earlier today. The – you know, we're going to work with the City Council. The council has some interesting ideas on how to look up an initiative like this. We're going to work with the Council on it. I want to make sure whatever we do is safe. I think I heard that list of cities and some of them are more like us and others are more not like us, but I think we are singular in terms of some of our challenges, particularly given how densely populated we are and the question has always been safety. In fact, our Health Commissioner Dr. Barbot was asked this morning, you know, was there a public health way of looking at this? And she said, look, we all of course want to see everything could be done to give people good options and we have to keep going with social distancing.

But the other part of the equation to worry about is what Vision Zero has always taught us, that we have to be careful to make sure that we don't put people in a situation where they think they are safe from cars and trucks and they turn out not to be some of these other models around the country, which I talked to our Transportation Commissioner and our Police Commissioner yesterday jointly about this. Some of the models around the country are more of an honor system kind of model, where the streets are closed off but not in a way that is entirely secure and there's no enforcement and you sort of hoping that drivers do not end up on those streets, and I'm worried about that kind of model. Now if we can find a way to do some of these streets that did not require a lot of NYPD presence but still are truly safe and secure, I would definitely be open to that.

But the problem to date has been we do not want to create a new– we certainly don't want to create a new gathering point because that would violate social distancing. We don't want to create a new safety problem where we would need enforcement but we don't have it. But if we can find a way to address those issues, of course I'm interested and you know, up to date the - I mean up to now the problem has been the NYPD, the personnel levels have been way, way low because of this disease. They're starting to come back, but I think it'll be weeks before they get back to something like normal. But if we can find places where this could work or the right approach that could keep people safe, then of course I'm interested.

Lehrer: One more call, let's see if we can do a quick question and a quick answer and about our remaining minute. Jessica in the East Village, you're on w NYC with the Mayor. Hi there.

Question: Hi Brian. Thank you so much. Thank you for everything you've done. Hi Mr. Mayor. I have a brother in the police department and a brother in the fire department. Five people in my brother's house in Queens have tested positive and he has still not received any antibody testing and that [inaudible] my brother and the police department, can we expect to have our firefighters and police officers tested for antibodies?

Mayor: Thank you Jessica, and thank you to your whole family for all they do for New York City. Please thank them for me. Yeah, that's what we're working on right now. And even though as I said, there are real questions still about the right kind of antibody testing, it is certainly our hope to find an antibody testing quickly that we could feel is reliable and then employ it on a larger level and immediately, you know, the first priority would be our first responders and our health care workers. So I hope to have an announcement on that in a matter of days. But as soon as we have that up and running, it would be something that we'd make available to all members of PD and FD who want to be a part of it.

Lehrer: I see that the high absentee rate from the police department and is starting to ease, quick update on that? And crime stats, I see that crime is mostly down because people aren't out, but some categories are up. I'm curious about domestic violence?

Mayor: Yeah, that's very troubling reality Brian. And you know, this is a horrible crime in so many ways and one – that's one of the very hardest for our police to, you know, see proactively and enact on, because obviously it happens in private spaces behind closed doors overwhelmingly. But look, the thing we have to emphasize here is NYPD has a very aggressive initiative. Once anybody reports someone engaged in domestic violence, they not only follow up with all the charges, consequences, et cetera, but then there's an ongoing monitoring of that household or literally the NYPD shows up regularly on announced to keep clear to the survivor of domestic violence that they'll be protected and the send a warning to anyone who wouldn't consider engaging in domestic violence.

But the problem now is we are not hearing, as usual, we don't hear enough about people who feel they're in danger, and I understand why. I understand how hardly intimidating the situation could be. My appeal to anyone who feels they're in danger of domestic violence is, please pick up the phone. Call 9-1-1. We need to know if you feel you're in danger, you know the NYPD can help you and anyone who knows of someone who's in danger, please ask them to make that call. The other crime realities Brian. Yes, they are going down broadly a few exceptions, but generally crime has been going down and we're going to keep building on that, but on domestic violence, we definitely have more work to do and we need maximum reporting so we can get out there and help people.

Lehrer: Thanks as always, Mr. Mayor, talk to you next week.

Mayor: Thank you, Brian.

2020-04-26 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Businesses are struggling, and are going to struggle to come back, but there is in my mind also no question that New York City will come back strong, stronger than ever. This is what New York City does. This is who we are. This is what we’ve always done. I get very upset when I see people betting against New York City. When I even seen New Yorkers putting down New York City, they need to go and read a little bit of history. They need to go and understand how many times this city has been put back on his heels and fought its way back. They need to spend a little time with everyday New Yorkers, who’ve got a lot of fight in them. We’re going through a lot. We’re going through a lot of pain, but we will unquestionably come back. And we will learn powerful lessons, and we will act on those lessons because that is who we are.

There are so many instances where that’s clear. Think about what happened after 9/11. A lot of places might never have been able to find a way back after something as horrifying as 9/11. This city fought back. We remembered the heroes we lost, but we were inspired by their example. Think about Hurricane Sandy, worst natural disaster in the history of this city. So literally 9/11, worst attack on the city in our history. Sandy, worst natural disaster in our history. People fought back, those extraordinary efforts at the grass roots to help each other just in the hours immediately after the storm hit the way people came together and helped each other in neighborhoods all over the city.

And then the way people fought back and rebuilt, learned lessons, did things better. We will rebuild. We will be stronger. There is no question. That does not in any way minimize or ignore the pain that we are going through now, but it is, to me, so clear who we are and that we will find a way back. And it’s important to remember even as we grieve.

That is the nature of this place to work together and to build something new. That’s always been the history of this city, so we’re going to build something new and we’re going to build something better. And not just better because it’s more modern. We’re going to build something more fair. We’re going to build something for everyone. This recovery has to have that spirit, that New York spirit that everyone matters. Doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from. Everyone needs to be included, and we need to build a better and more just society than the one we left behind. I don’t want to see recovery mean, let’s just go to the status quo we had before. I don’t think that’s what’s going to work, and I don’t think it’s fair. Recovery means making something better, and we have it in our power to do that. Even as we’re in the midst of this pain and this challenge, New Yorkers know in our hearts that we don’t give up.

It’s in our DNA. We don’t give up. And we find a way to create, and a lot of times… A lot of people out there listening have I said more than once in your life, you’ve made something out of nothing. You know what I mean. And this city… Can’t tell you how many times in our history people said it was all over, the ’60s, people were leaving the city and droves. In the ’70s, the fiscal crisis, all the other challenges we’ve faced.

This city was written off more times than I can count. This city came back stronger every time. Now we’re going to come back stronger and fairer, we’re going to learn the powerful lessons of this horrible tragedy. We’re not going to allow the disparities that we’ve seen to exist in the future. We’ll fight every single day. We know these are intractable problems, or at least they seem to be intractable. We’re going to find ways to beat them back and make profound changes, as only New Yorkers can make.

So, today I’m going to start talking to you about how we’re going to approach this. And this is going to be a long effort. It’s going to be the next 20 months of my administration and then far beyond, but today I’m going to talk to you about some of the building blocks we’re going to put in place to get us to that restart and that recovery. I’m going to talk about four specific pieces of our strategy. And again, these are just the initial building blocks, as I said, some of the ways we’re going to put together the deeper plans, the more specific plans that will move us forward. We’ve got a lot of work to do. And it’s going to be for me and my team, a nonstop effort, a race to the finish line over these next 20 months to do the most we can to put the city on the strongest possible footing for the future.

Everyone wants to know about the restart, and that discussion is going to happen over these next few weeks. We’re obviously watching our healthcare indicators every day. I’ll talk about them again in a few minutes. They will tell us a lot about the timing of what we can do. We’re working right now on what each element of a restart looks like, and it will not all happen at once and I keep cautioning. Restart happens in careful smart phases because the last thing we’re ever going to do is allow this disease to reassert itself. We’re not going to risk people’s lives. We’re going to be smart about it, but that work of framing the restart is going on right now. And we’re going to bring in a lot of people to help us, and I’ll talk about that. And then we have to focus on these disparities in everything we do. They’ve been laid bare in this crisis.

We have to talk about how we fight these disparities now in the work we’re doing now, and then in a much deeper, bigger way going forward. The economic and racial disparities that have been made so clear by this crisis. We knew about them before. They’ve been just a powerful, painful exclamation point has been put on them by this crisis. It is a clarion call to us to start right now fighting back against those disparities and to build a deeper plan to fight them, on a more permanent basis. So you’re going to see a lot in the next few weeks about the immediate efforts to restart the first steps and then over the weeks ahead in the months ahead, a deeper vision of what a fair recovery looks like.

So again, not just let’s get back to the status quo that was before, but something different and better and fairer and it’s going to be in a reimagination of what this city could be. We are the greatest city in the world before the chrono virus hit. The city was in an amazing point in our history, with an economy so strong with a constant effort to include more and more people in what the city has to offer and what it can mean for all of us, a growing reality that we could include everyone in our prosperity and our strength. We’ve got to take that and build something much bigger to truly make this a city for all.

And we have to look at our basic laws, our basic government structure. We have to look at the whole thing to think about how we can much more deeply ensure a fair recovery. So I’m going to be talking to you again about some of the initial steps that will help us with the first acts of restarting. I’m going to be talking about the immediate and ongoing effort to address disparities. I’m going to talking about a bigger effort to create a vision for a fair recovery that then can be put into action. And I’m going to talk about how we consider the very reality of our government in this moment of crisis and where it needs to take us in the future. And I’m going to bring in a lot of very, very talented people to help augment all we do here at City Hall and our agencies.

This is a moment where we’re going to invite in tremendously smart, innovative New Yorkers from many, many parts of our city. Many different parts of our life of the city, of our economy. Bring their brain power, their ideas, their perspectives to help us do all we do. So, the restart is the first thing in our mind. We know it directly interrelates with what we’re learning about this virus and its presence in our city and those indicators. We’re going to constantly talk about where we stand each day, what kind of element of restart we can think about now, what we have to think about later. Remember when you think about restart, think about those indicators going down. Let us pray, always going down and then think about the testing and tracing that we talked about a few days ago. That really widespread effort to test as many new Yorkers as possible, trace their contacts when needed.

Isolate people that need isolating. Those strands need to come together and we’re preparing for them to come together in the first two weeks of May, so that we can really go on the offensive. But again, the healthcare indicators have to give us that all clear so we can start that effort, and we need the supply of testing, which is still a big open question here to pull those pieces together. Okay, let’s start with the question of when we restart.

We restart wen we have evidence. Look, we see some states around the country rushing to restart their economies. I’m worried for them. I’m worried for their people. Some seem to be paying attention to healthcare indicators more than others. Anybody, any state, any city that doesn’t pay attention to those factual healthcare indicators that evidence is running a risk, is endangering their own people. And their whole idea of wanting to rush a restart so we can have a economy again and recover, it could all backfire. Because if the disease reasserts, you’re delaying potentially by a long time when you could have that kind of recovery.

We won’t let that happen here. We will focus first and foremost on the health and safety of New Yorkers protecting our healthcare system so it can be there for all of us making our moves when the indicators tell us and then making them piece by piece, testing to see how they’re working, making sure that each step we take is a strong foothold before we take the next step, so that’s the when. How? How do we restart? There’s so many open questions and the people we’re going to bring together are going to help us answer them with their powerful perspective on the life of the city, and the different parts of the city they come from, the different industries, et cetera.

They are going to bring perspective so we can get these decisions right. So here are kinds of questions that we all have to ask. And again, some of these will be things we do earlier, some of these will be things we do later, but here are obvious everyday questions. How do you reopen a restaurant and still do it in a way that protects the customers and protects the people that work there? How do you do that right? What kind of protection will people need? What kind of PPEs will people need to wear in a lot of different parts of the city? A lot of different work that they do to make sure they’re safe. When will they need more? When will they need less? We’ve got to start to fill in those blanks. How much will we be doing temperature checks or symptom checks on a regular basis? Where, how? They’re clearly powerful tools. They fit our test and trace strategy.

How are we going to do that? How extensively? Are we going to have enough thermometers? All sorts of basic questions have to be answered to determine what’s our ideal, but also practically. What can we get done at any given moment? What kind of cleaning protocols will businesses need as they restart? What kind of social distancing will be required in the business? How many customers can be there at any given time? All of these answers need to be filled in. We have some really good information from around the world of some things we see working better and worse.

We’re going to borrow from that and use it as we formulate our plans, and this is all going to move fast because we have to be ready for that moment where the indicators tell us it’s time to open up a little. But I want to be clear there’s no on/off switch here. It’s not like… I think people know it, but I want to say it for emphasis. It’s not like there’s ever one jump back to normalcy. It’s a series of careful smart moves. And then you test each one along the way to make sure there’s not that backfire. And then when you see things working, you take the next step.

Now to help us on this journey and to help us immediately, I am going to bring together people who really know their communities, their industries. People bring a huge amount of expertise. So, we’re going to have a set of advisory councils. And it’s going to be sector by sector in our city, going to get these folks together very quickly. They’re going to start meeting in the first week of May. So, literally in a matter of days. I’ll be meeting with each of them. My team will be meeting with them constantly. We need to get this perspective from the folks at the frontline of every part of this city’s life. We’ll have small business, as its own council. We’ll have larger businesses in their own council. They have different needs. We want to account for both. We need both to come back strong. We’re going to have one for public health and healthcare.

Obviously, so crucial in this fight, but we have to make sure strong to say the least for the future because we don’t know what the future brings. And it’s a crucial part of our city to begin with. Arts, culture, tourism, which we’re so proud of, such a big part of our city, they all will come back strong. We want to figure out the right way to get that started and then build upon that. So these councils are going to get together immediately to help us frame the restart, but they’ll stay with us for weeks and months to come. As we build out our actions to open up and then to envision our future and build our future, there’ll be one for labor. We have to hear from the folks who represent working people and determine what we need to for working people. Nonprofits and social services, huge part of New York City life and our economy often not given the credit they deserve.

They’re going to have a council. I’m going to be meeting with them because we need that part of our city to come back strong. The faith-based community. We already have extraordinary efforts with CORL, The Council of Religious Leaders, with our clergy advisory board. We’re going to bring them together to help guide us in thinking about how we restart the life of faith in this city, but also the crucial role that faith based communities can play in rebuilding our economy, making sure people are protected, making sure people have what they need in their lives even in this struggle. And education and vocational training, obviously bringing back our public schools strong, bringing them back safely, dealing with the trauma the kids and families and educators have gone through, thinking also about all parts of our education system, how we work with our religious education schools, how we work with private schools, higher education, vocational training. All of them will be at the table to help us think through this restart. So, we’re going to start right away. It’s going to be very practical and specific about what we-

Let’s start right away. It’s going to be very practical and specific about what we need to do together and then also be part of how we build our bigger plans. That’s immediate. Another immediate piece, it’ll start with immediate actions the city government needs to take and build out as part of the bigger vision, is a city task force on racial inclusion and equity. This will be made up of leaders of the city government, focusing on the disparities we’re seeing already, making sure that we are addressing structural racism that is obviously present in the realities we’re facing with this disease, making sure we take immediate actions through all the agencies of the city government to address this painful reality. This is a right-now thing. Right now, we can start to address these disparities. We’re doing it in many ways on the healthcare front with the plans that we have announced, the community-based testing and the outreach programs of community-based health clinics, many other things working on right now.

I want to make sure that every agency of the city government is moving in that same direction urgently. The task force will be led by our First Lady Chirlane McCray and by Deputy Mayor Phil Thompson. This is based on ideas that they have both developed in the last few days to address the immediate disparities, but also to make sure that we address these disparities more thoroughly in our recovery plans ahead. We will be naming a group of leaders from the administration who focus on and represent all communities of color in this city. Again, they will think about immediate things that need to happen that work with the community-based health clinics and providers, how we can work right now with minority-owned businesses and obviously deepen our MWBE efforts right now, how we can support essential workers. This task force will focus on those issues but also build out and help us think about the bigger structural changes we need to make going forward.

Now, those are some very immediate things that all build to the future. Let’s now talk about the broader concept of recovery. Restart is necessary to recovery. Recovery means, to me, getting back, not just to a point where life feels more normal, but getting back to a point of strength and additionally, addressing the underlying issues that we still need to address in the city, certainly building back, but building better, building stronger, building fairer. Recovery starts with the restart. It starts with making sure we’re all taking those steps back. We always, in that road to recovery, think about those four basics I’ve been talking about throughout that are governing our actions, our budget, everything, making sure people are healthy, safe, have food to eat and a roof over their head.

We have to get those basics to be 100% secure as we build out. We have to get people back to work. This is central to everything. So many people are clamoring, rightfully, to get back to work the first moment it’s safe. I want people back to work. I want to restart our economy. I want to see people back to work. Whether they work on Wall Street or they work in a bodega, we need everyone back to work. We have to do it the right way and get our bigger economy going, so it’ll support everything else we do. When you think about all the pieces we have to pull together, it’s not just a restart. It’s not just the mechanics of how you start your economy again. It’s not just a recovery in the sense of… Okay, we have a functioning city. We don’t just need a recovery. We need a transformation. We need to go much farther. We need to take this painful, difficult moment and turn it into something that we can build upon for a better city.

This is where I want to talk about the concept of a fair recovery. The crisis has laid bare so many things that are broken in our city and in our country. There have been so many amazing acts of heroism. Let’s praise the good: the heroism from our healthcare workers, our first responders, the incredible things people have done for each other at the community, the amazing discipline and strength of New Yorkers with social distancing and shelter-in-place. There have been many heroic, positive stories, but also extraordinarily painful and clear inequalities.

We see it over and over again. We see working families who have been brought to their knees in a matter of weeks, and there’s not enough safety net there for them. We finally are seeing some progress from our federal government, but our federal government’s always been behind the curve, not dealing with the reality and only coming up with very partial solutions. For so many working families, this has been a devastating time. We see the federal government focusing on the wealthy and corporations before working people. It’s painful to acknowledge how much of the stimulus discussion in the beginning was about big business, not small business, and about a payday for those who are already wealthy and privileged, not those who are struggling.

The federal government here, in this case… It’s been consistently the case, not only behind the curve, but the focus has been all wrong. Our federal government was much quicker to bail out the airlines, $58 billion, than to focus on cities, and states, and working people. These contradictions are now clearer than ever, and they’re more unacceptable than ever. As we fight what’s broken, as we fight these inequalities, we draw upon what we’ve done over these six years, the whole reason we all came here to do this work. It came through in so many ways leading up to this crisis. We’ve seen it vividly during this crisis. Thank God, our focus was on healthcare equity, saving our public hospitals, creating a guarantee of healthcare, and making sure people could get insurance, or if they couldn’t get insurance, had the right to healthcare through NYC Care, building up access to free mental healthcare across the board, through ThriveNYC.

These acts of equity are serving us right now in this crisis. They’re reminders of how much more we have to do as well and fighting for economic fairness: $15 minimum wage, paid sick leave, rent freezes. The things that we have done to try to bring a beginning of fairness and equity to the city, we need to do even more now. As we’ve talked about this crisis, I’ve said it very bluntly. The only comparison we can make in terms of what it’s meant to people’s livelihoods, their family reality or economic reality… The only comparison is the Great Depression. I heard those stories from my older relatives. When they spoke about the Great Depression, it sounded like it was yesterday. It was so vivid. It was so intense: the challenges they face, the pain that they overcame somehow. It’s also clear in those stories… I bet a lot of you have heard them, too. It’s very much a New York story.

When you talk about how our nation fought back through the Great Depression, it was very much through the leadership of great New Yorkers like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia, giants that we can only think of with awe. In our time, we look to them for inspiration. Well, they did not say, “Let’s just rebuild what was happening that day before the stock market crashed in 1929.” I want you to remember this. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fiorello La Guardia, and all the other great leaders in New Deal… They did not say, “We just want to go back to that horribly unequal, volatile, unfair world of 1929.” No, they said, “We’re going to build something transformational and different.” That was the New Deal.

They reimagined what government could be. They reimagined what it could mean for people. They very much made clear that it was not going to be a government for the few, but a government for the many. The visions that they put forward, the policies they created were for all. It was a sea change. It was a breakpoint in the history of this country. By the way, the things that came from that noble fight, we live with today because the ideas were so good, so durable, so right that they still frame, thank God, so much of what we do as a nation now. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, just reach for your Social Security card, and you’ll have a great example right there.

We need to build a group of people to help us come up with the same ideas, the same kind of ideas, I should say, the same creative, innovative, forward-looking ideas. When you think about what these great leaders and thinkers were doing in the first half of the 1930s, they were coming up with ideas that had never been heard of before. They were seeing the world in a whole new way. They were doing things at the time that people said were impossible, but they made them happen. We all have benefited, generation after generation, from it. We have to find the ideas for our time. We have to dream new dreams. We need great thinkers to help us do it.

I’m appointing today a Fair Recovery Task Force. This is an extraordinary group of New Yorkers, each of whom has contributed to this city in really profound ways. They bring different perspectives, different ideas, but all have a common thread. They have devoted so much of their lives to building a better New York City and a fairer society. They all have the impulse to lift people up. They all have the impulse to say, “The status quo is not good enough. We have to do better.” We can do better. Every one of them has that energy and that spirit to build something new and better. I’m bringing them together to help all of us to advise me, to help us create the plans for now and for the future. It’s a group of people I think will make New York City proud.

Let me introduce each one to you. This will be a group of people in common, thinking together. Each of them bring so much to the table. First, Patrick Gaspard… Patrick is a New Yorker through and through. Born to Haitian parents. Grew up in New York City. Went to our public schools. Served in the Obama administration, now president of the Open Society Foundations, one of the most important philanthropies on earth. Someone who served right here in City Hall, loves this city, and believes things can be created, and has been part of it all over the world.

Dick Ravitch, former Lieutenant Governor of New York state, a legend… Dick Ravitch is one of the people that helped this city survive the fiscal crisis of 1970s, one of the great innovators who saw us through. He helped save the MTA in the ’70s and ’80s. He is someone who, time and time again, has seen what others could not see and helped us, not just to come back but come back stronger. His extraordinary experience will bring so much to this group. Jennifer Jones Austin… Jennifer is someone I have such appreciation for. She was the cochair of my transition when I came into City Hall. She helped us build this administration as CEO of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. She’s a leader in this city in so many ways, in our nonprofit sector, in the work of social justice, in the work of the faith community. Her family is four generations. She is the fourth generation of faith and social justice leaders in her family. She understands what it is to run a large nonprofit. She understands how crucial those extraordinary nonprofits are to the city. She brings amazing perspective to this effort.

Her cochair in that transition, off in that transition effort seven years ago, joining us as well, Carl Weisbrod… Carl has done it all for New York City and most recently, serves as the chair of the City Planning Commission in my administration. He has served in one form or another in city administrations, going back to the time of Mayor Lindsay. He is legendary for the work he did, taking a symbol of so many things that were troubled about New York City, Times Square, and turning it into something strong and vibrant. He knows what resurgence looks like. He played a crucial role in bringing back Lower Manhattan after 9/11, as well. I think one of the most respected leaders in government in civic life over the last half century in this city.

Henry Garrido leads our largest municipal union, DC 37 AFSCME, the people who do so much of the work that keeps this city going. Henry is a thinker, and a change agent, and a visionary. I have had many a long conversation over the years with Henry. He’s always looking over the horizon. He also comes from the immigrant experience, his family from the Dominican Republic. He fights for working people and believes we can do much better for working families. He also has the extraordinary experience of running a huge organization that’s there to serve and uplift working people. Henry brings a great mind and a great spirit to this effort.

Maria Torres Springer, vice president for United States Programs at the Ford Foundation… Maria is someone who, in her 15 years of public service to our city, hit the trifecta, if you will. She led three agencies. Very few people have done this and done it so well. She led, various times, our Economic Development Corporation, our Small Business Services Department, and our Housing Department. She understands what it’s like, not only to run these large organizations, but to serve people who need the help now, folks who need affordable housing, the folks in our small business community who are going through so much now and need a helping hand. She certainly understands what it means to foster economic strength, but from a perspective of fairness, child of Filipino immigrants. I remember when I first talked to her, the passion with which she spoke about helping working people and immigrants. She’s going to bring that passion and all that experience to this group.

Liz Neumark, CEO of Great Performances… She is an extraordinary New York city entrepreneur, a great New York City story. She started a small business that turned into a much larger business, now employs so many people all over this city, a New York success story, but not someone who just kept her success to herself. What Liz did was said, “How can we turn business into an engine for change?” She’s led efforts to empower people, to train people, to bring them into industries that previously didn’t have an opportunity to participate in. She’s worked tirelessly to fight hunger in this city. She’s a great example of someone from our business community who every single day asks the question, “How can we take our New York City businesses and make them agents of positive change in our city?” And she has proven it over and over again that it can be done and it must be done.

And finally, Fred Wilson, Fred is a legend in our technology community. Some consider him the godfather of the New York City tech scene. He was an early stage investor in many of the New York City tech companies that are thriving today. He is someone who really had a profound vision, one of the first to have the vision of New York City as a great international tech hub. And now that vision has come to be true. But his true passion is making sure that our kids get computer science education.

I’ve worked closely with Fred, I’ve been so impressed by his generosity, but also his extraordinary entrepreneurship and his drive. He created the Computer Science For All initiative that now has been one of the most successful elements of our initiatives at equity and excellence in our public schools. Because of Fred, every child in New York City public schools is now getting computer science education. And he led that effort and now we’ll bring that same drive and ingenuity to this group.

So an amazing collection of New Yorkers bringing so many different talents, so much perspective. This group will come together quickly and I’m going to ask of them that they come up with an immediate product to frame our work. Now it’s going to be a preliminary product. They’re all very, very talented, but I’m going to ask them to, in addition to their very busy day jobs, to take some time to come up with a preliminary recovery roadmap by June 1st. This is not going to be the final word. This is going to be the first outline of how we build that smart recovery, that recovery, that will work, that recovery that will be fair. I’ll expect that preliminary roadmap by June 1st, but then their work will continue on in the months ahead.

Finally, we need to look at the bigger changes, and I’ve talked about what it’s going to mean that long road ahead, dealing with things like the inequities in our healthcare system, dealing with the challenge that New Yorkers face still finding affordable housing. The profound issues that working people face. The huge issues of protecting this city and our ability to serve people going forward. And obviously the questions that will come back to the fore shortly of how we fight global warming and what the role of this city is. I’m going to expect this group to work on all of these things in the months ahead. Remember, we have 20 months to build this longterm fair recovery. I’m going to depend on them to help in every phase of that.

But the last piece of the equation is the structural question of our government and everything that our government is built to do and what we need to do going forward. So the fourth thing I will do is I will plan in the days and weeks ahead to formulate and announce a charter revision commission. The announcement will come when we’ve put together the team that will do this work. And again, this is something that will happen in the weeks ahead. First we need to deal with the more immediate matters. But I think it is the right time for a charter revision commission because if ever there was a moment, a breakpoint moment in the city’s history, this is it. And it’s time to look a new at everything we do and see what works, what doesn’t work, what about our city government structure might be outdated or less effective? What do we need to build a fair recovery?

Charter revision commission will hold hearings all over the city and again, hopefully someday soon there’ll be public hearings again where people come in person. And anything they have to do in the short term, if they need to do it virtually, they will. But I want this group to really think about the big picture of how our government works, how it serves our people, where we need to go for the future.

So those are four pieces, four building blocks to building the strategies to get us through some of the immediate decisions and on into that broader fair recovery. I am convinced we can pull these pieces together and build something new and better. Now, the part of the day, we always wait for: reviewing the indicators. And this has everything to say, again, with the restart. We’ve seen some good progress the last few days and today is another good day, and I’m very happy about this.

Now the first indicator is unchanged and I want to see it go down, but still it’s not going in the wrong direction. I am a guy who believes the glass is half full, so I’m happy to see it’s not going in the wrong direction. And many days this one has gone in the right direction. Indicator one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID: unchanged.

Indicator two, number of people in ICUs across our health and hospital system for suspected COVID has gone down 785 to 768. Percent of people tested who are positive for COVID-19 has gone down 30% to 29%. now unfortunately this is the one piece of this that is not so sunny. Public health lab tests have gone up 31% to 46%. but still when you look at this day and the days before, overall continuing to move in the right direction, seeing good signs, but I want to see all of these go down consistently for 10 to 14 days. That’s what will signal those first steps in opening up.

So I’m going to conclude before a few words in Spanish, just want to focus on the word normal. So, a crisis will end, and I keep saying it, this crisis will end. We will come back. We will be a great city. We always have been a great city. Will we be normal again? People talk about this word a lot and I understand it and I relate to it the same way. Normal in some ways sounds like a very good thing right now, but normal isn’t good enough for our future. Normal could be interpreted as the status quo we knew before the coronavirus. That’s not the normal I’m aspiring to. I’m aspiring to something different and better.

We have 20 months for this administration to run all the way to the finish line and really make sure we address these inequalities while building up a strong economy, while building up a strong city for all. I think we can do those things. I think we can pull those pieces together and really build something better and that’s what I’m devoted to and that’s what my whole team will be devoted to. A few words in Spanish.

With that we’ll talk to media questions. Please remind me of the name and the outlet.

Speaker 3: Hi all. Just a reminder that we have commissioner Barbot, Deputy Mayor Thompson and Deputy Mayor Been on the phone. With that, I will start with Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Katie: Hey, good morning Mr. Mayor. I have a two parter. I’ll be quick. The first is what’s the city’s immediate plan or just plan in general if they don’t get significant federal aid? Also the state cut $8.2 billion in cuts to localities from the state budget, which I’m sure will hit the city pretty hard. What the city’s plan on that? And looking at, I guess by my count 10 task forces are so, but I don’t see one on things like public transit, which some people seem to alarmed about. What’s the plan for improving that, figuring that out? And will you perhaps add or consolidate more task forces to the list of task forces?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Katie, this is a living, breathing reality, Katie. We’re certainly, if we think something has to be added, obviously we can do that. Public transport is going to be a big issue. Respect that the state runs the MTA and we want to be mindful of that. But as we get more deeply into the recovery thinking, we’re going to do a lot of work on the future of transportation. And again as we talked about previously, how we have a New York City that’s more about public transit, less about cars. That makes sense in terms of saving our environment and protecting against global warming, reducing congestion, and is more fair and available to people. So that’s going to be a big piece of what a fair recovery looks like. These immediate sectorial groups, as I said, it’s very much about what we have to do to restart and then they’ll help us build out division. But absolutely transportation issues will be a big part as we go further into this discussion.

State budget, I’m very, very concerned. I cannot tell you, there’s no words for how much alarm was sounded when we heard of the magnitude of the cuts the governor plans. Now look, I want to immediately empathize with the governor. He is dealing with a horrible situation just like I am in terms of massive lost revenue, and so many people out of work, and so many people hurting, and a federal government that hasn’t been there for us. So I share the governor’s anger at what he’s dealing with in Washington, what I’m dealing with in Washington. We’re both pounding away with so many others for a stimulus four that would make us whole and replace the lost revenue and really support us in dealing with all the huge expenses we have in attacking the coronavirus.

Could Washington do the right thing? Yes they could. And we’re going to fight for it. And in fact I’m heartened that this legislation, stimulus four, is going to start in the House of Representatives with Speaker Pelosi. And I’ve spoken to her and have a lot of confidence that she is doing the right thing for New York and for the whole country.

But if that doesn’t reach the level it needs to and then the state has to make cuts, it will be devastating to New York City. And I’m certainly going to work with the governor’s team, the legislature to say, look, whatever is thrown at us and whatever we do or don’t get from the federal government, we have to remember that New York City, not only is this a huge percentage of the people in the state are right here in New York City, and so many people need help. But if New York City cannot provide basic services then there won’t be a restart of the economy in New York City or New York State. So we have to balance all those factors. I’m very, very worried at the prospect of even deeper budget cuts from Albany.

Speaker 3: Next we have Alexa from News 12.

Alexa: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I have a question about cancellation of rent. Yesterday people were protesting for cancellation. Do you think that’s a real possibility and what kind of burden would it cause to landlords, if so?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Alexa, I don’t think it makes sense for… I understand people’s pain to say the least. I understand there’s so many people struggling and so many people have no money for the rent, but I don’t think we want to compound the problem by saying, if no one acts together to address this problem, it’s going to be okay. I don’t think it will be okay because there are so many landlords trying to do the right thing, including smaller landlords who need to pay the bills too and keep their buildings running.

My first concern always is for working people and tenants. But I want to make sure their buildings are running and so they are getting what they need to live a decent life. I think the answer is for first of all, our rent guidelines board to pass that rent freeze, I’m calling for. That will reach over 2 million New Yorkers. That’s crucial. But the state really needs to act quickly. Allow tenants to use their security deposits to pay the rent. That one to me is a no brainer. It can be done quickly. That would immediately take pressure off the situation. Create a plan for tenants to pay back rent later when they have money. So at least landlords will know the money will be there, but tenants who have no money will know that they are safe. Obviously continue to stop evictions and make sure that no evictions happen during this crisis and for at least 60 days thereafter. So the state needs to act on these things. Folks who are hurting need to see a response. I want our rent guidelines board to do that for the city with a rent freeze. But I want the state tag quickly on these other issues, to finally give some relief to our renters.

Speaker 3: Next, we have Sean from the Daily News.

Sean: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I was wondering if you could speak some more about the task force on racial inclusion. I know you only just announced it, but could you say what are the sort of metrics or goals you might have in mind by which progress would be gaged? Also, could you say why you decided to make a first lady Chirlane McCray, one of the leaders of that task force?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Sure. Sean, we will with all of these things, so on each of these groupings that have not yet been named, we’re going to be putting out the names in the next few days. So on this task force which will be made up of city government leaders, we’ll put out the name and we’ll give you more and more of a sense of the specific work products that’ll be coming from it. The same with those sectorial advisory councils. We’ll be putting out those names in the next few days. They’ll be meeting, all of them, in the first week of may.

The idea here is to be very much focused on the metrics of addressing disparity. Making sure city agencies across the board in this time of crisis are continuing and deepening their work of addressing disparity. For example, how much are MWBEs right now being supported, getting opportunities to continue to stay alive and then rebuild? Are agencies acting with the same energy and focus they need to serve MWBEs? In fact, they should be doubling down in their supportive MWBEs in this moment. That’s one example, it would be very metrical in terms of being able to present what our goals are and holding agencies to those goals.

So we’ll I’m more to say on that going forward, the ideas originated here from Deputy Mayor Thompson of why a task force like this could be crucial at this moment where we have to make sure every part of the city government is coordinated and addressing the immediate disparities. The first lady, when she became involved in those discussions, added a set of ideas as to how this could be played out and the urgency that was needed. And as we had the discussions over the last few days, it was clear to me that the two of them were the perfect people to bring this larger effort together. They’ve both known each other a long time. They work very well together, but they share that sense of urgency.

So they’ll set up the group. It will be focused on all communities of color and the question of deepening inclusion, and then we’ll report what the larger group will be and the goals of it.

Speaker 3: Next, we have Yoav from The City.

Yoav: Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask you, there was a story recently [inaudible 00:47:57] about the medical center on Roosevelt Island and the Coler-

Speaker 4: Medical center on Roosevelt Island and the Coler Nursing Facility, and they basically said that the city brought COVID-19 patients into that facility even though there’s a nursing home there with some vulnerable patients. So I wanted to see if you could just tell us what the situation is there. Do you know anything about an outbreak of COVID and do you know how many folks in that facility might’ve passed away?

Yohav, we will get back to you today with the updates that we can pull together quickly. I can tell you having visited as that facility was being built out, my understanding at the time was there was a very distinct separation between the new medical elements of the facility and what was there previously. At that time, you’ll remember there was an absolute desperation to make sure that we had backup hospital spaces because of the growth of COVID-19 and the need to save lives. So it was very good and smart of health and hospitals to open up space in that facility. But we’ll get you the details on how that separation was kept and what proceeded to happen there. Dr. Katz isn’t online with us now, but I’ll make sure that we get that to you later today.

Speaker 5: Next we have Sydney from Gothamist.

Sydney: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I hope you’re doing well this morning. I know you’ve said before that you feel like New York City is different from other cities regarding some type of open streets plan that that several people are supportive of and city council is hoping the city will look into. But just considering just my own experiences on the waterfront in Manhattan personally, is it’s so crowded, it’s not even about enforcement. I see Parks enforcement vehicles. I see NYPD vehicles, presumably driving around to make sure people aren’t gathering, but it’s not about people gathering in groups, it’s just people taking walks. It’s people just biking or running or walking with their children, toddlers. They’re wearing masks and they still can’t stay away six feet from people because there’s physically just not enough room for people. And so just wondering if you can update us on what you plan to do if you don’t support an open streets plan, because right now it’s not physically possible to socially distance and take a walk in our parks.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Sydney, couple things real quick. Go ahead. I’m sorry.

Sydney: Yeah, yeah, two parter here. Just what would you plan to do if you don’t support some type of open streets and that kind of goes into the larger summer plan you’ve talked about a couple of times that you’ve said is being developed.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Right. So as I’ve said, we will have a bigger summer plan for sure. It’s April 26 today. There’s time to bring that out over the next couple of weeks. We will do that. Your points are very well taken and as I said, I’ve spoken to a transportation commissioner, police commissioner, we’re talking about the ways to address the issues around the parks in particular where there may be very valid areas that we need to open up further. We’re having very productive conversations with the city council, but everything starts with health and safety.

So what I have to make sure, working with the police commissioner, transportation commissioner, parks commissioner, is that we are solving problems, not inadvertently creating new ones, and that we do things in a way that always is connected to enforcement. Look, I believe fundamentally what works in New York City is a whole lot of information and education to people, and New Yorkers have been amazing in the way they’ve approached social distancing, the way they approached the face coverings. Overwhelmingly people are using them.

So you may see, and I see too, some instances where it’s not what it should be, but the vast majority of what I’m seeing is people doing it the right way. But we need to do more. But to me it is about enforcement and it is about making sure people understand how this needs to work, supporting them in that. And then if there are places where we do need to open up new options, we can and will, but with the right enforcement, with the right ground rules. So we’re going to keep working on that for sure. I want to emphasize to Sydney’s point to all New Yorkers taking seriously the face coverings. They help. You should have them on all the time. I see some people when they’re running or exercising, they take them down. I can understand that.

If you can run or exercise or bike with a face covering on, that’s even better. If you take it down, sort of the intense exertion, put it back up after. Every member of the family needs a face covering. Anything will do, a bandana, a scarf, anything you’ve got. We’re going to keep giving this message. We’re going to keep enforcing. But a lot of what I see out there is people, families together, close and again that is acceptable. That is within the boundaries of social distancing, and other folks making a very good effort to socially distance the maximum amount possible. Face coverings matter all the time, but we will be working particularly as the weather gets warmer to look at new options but with enforcement attached.

Speaker 5: Next we have Luis from New Yorker.

Luis: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I’ve got two questions.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Go ahead, Luis.

Luis: Okay there. Going forward as we approach the point when mass testing becomes a true reality in the way that you and the Governor envision it, in light of the families who have suffered through the same predicament that the Chris Cuomo family have gone through, God bless them, would there ever be a time when a person who tests positive not be allowed back to their family, presuming they have a family, and under what circumstances might that be?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Okay, so Luis, the goal here is to work with everybody and work with every family to determine if someone tests positive, to determine if they have a living circumstance that will allow for isolation properly. Some people do. Some people don’t. Someone living alone obviously can do isolation in their own apartment or home. Someone who lives in an apartment or home where there’s enough room determined by the other members of the family could do it too. A lot of New Yorkers can’t. That’s where the hotels come in and providing people the support in the hotels.

So what the test and trace approach means is determining not only if someone’s positive, who are the other people in their life that might be affected or might have been affected, but can they have proper isolation or not? If they can’t, the hotel is there for them immediately. And I think from what we’re seeing so far, people are going to deal with that on a very common sense level. We’re going to always try and work with people to figure out the thing that works for them. But you know, the most important part of the equation is testing people, which we’re still do not have the capacity to the level we want. That’s what we’re focusing on every day, making sure we have those hotels available for people, and making sure there’s a tight process between the test and the tracing and then getting people to isolation who need it.

Speaker 5: Next. We have Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Jeff Mays: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor. Two questions. I wanted to ask a little more about the charter revision commissions. What do you envision them tackling? If you could go into some more specifics, and then secondly on the racial equity task force led by your wife. I’m wondering if there’s any concern in appointing her to this position given some of the questions that have been raised about Thrive and their operation in the past.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Of course not. The reality is, and Jeff, you’ve asked the question several times, about what was done before the coronavirus to address healthcare disparities in New York City. I’ve talked about the kind of physical health changes that were needed, things like saving the public hospitals, creating a guaranteed health care system with NYC Care and getting insurance to people. I’ve talked about a lot of the very immediate physical health realities. But in terms of fighting inequality, Thrive has gone to that point in many ways even farther, because Thrive was about addressing profound inequalities in health care, and in fact even more so, creating access to healthcare that didn’t exist for anyone in a society that never has given proper attention and respect to the issue of mental health. So I think what Chirlane has done over these last six years is take this issue, put it in the light, open up access for millions of people, and then continue to build out a structure that could focus on effective delivery and equity.

I think that’s exactly the kind of mindset needed for this task force. And again want to give credit where credit is due. The initial thinking came from Deputy Mayor Phil Thompson, who has a lifetime of work serving the city and a lifetime of work as an innovator in public policy. As he and Chirlane talked and more of the rest of us started talking about it, it made total sense to me that they would be the leaders and then they’ll bring together a whole team from the administration.

In terms of charter revision, again, we’re going to announce a whole team for that, a charter revision commission. That’s at least weeks away, honestly. We got a lot we’ve got to do in the immediate term. The Fair Recovery task force is a group I’m going to depend on for the initial thinking, and again with that very preliminary June 1st, roadmap is going to be crucial to determining how we act in the months ahead. Charter revision commission, when we get to naming that group, that’s an opportunity to take a more structural look at the work of New York City government and determine if we’re positioned right for the future or if we have to make other changes. And again, that’s a very deliberative process. Bring together a wide range of perspectives, have public hearings. That’s what a charter revision commission is great for, but that will come farther down the line.

Speaker 5: Last question for today. We have Jannen from Cranes.

Jannen: Hi Mr. Mayor. Can you hear me?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Yes, Jannen, how you doing?

Jannen: Good. How are you?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good.

Jannen: The city council last week announced a suite of bills for COVID relief protection. The business community, however, sharply criticized this as a burden on small businesses. Where do you stand? Do you support this legislation?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Jannen, it is brand new and I still have not had the opportunity to carefully review it. I look forward to doing that. I look forward to talking to Speaker Johnson. As I’ve said, some of the elements that I’ve heard, just the broad outline of, I think I share the goal, but where I want to see these things handled is in the federal stimulus, and there is a lot of energy in that direction. Senator Schumer has put forward the Hero’s Fund idea to provide bonuses to essential workers, first responders, healthcare workers, grocery workers. I think that is very smart. I think it is entirely within the reach of the federal government to do that. Remember, effortlessly, they gave $58 billion to the airline industry, a very profitable industry. They were quick to bail them out. I think they should bail out essential workers and first responders as well and they can do that.

So I think that is a live option to be in the stimulus, and that vote in the stimulus, we’re hearing more and more, not even late May, that could come in early May, so that’s where I think the focus should be. But again, we’re going to review everything that was put forward by the council, work with them closely. It is a great working relationship. We’ve all been working closely through this crisis, and I really appreciate that the council is constantly thinking about the needs of essential workers and all working people. I think we have a lot of common ground there. So more to say on that as we deepen our conversations with the council ahead.

So with that everyone, again to conclude sort of where I started, we got a lot to do right away and everyone’s feeling that urgency to restart. I feel it. Everyone in here at City Hall feels that. We’re going to do it when the time is right and in the right way and in stages. But New Yorkers have the ability to do great things. It is who we are and we’re going to do something great over the next 20 months. We are going to figure out how to rebuild, how to come back strong, how to take all the strengths of the city that were so clear just a few months ago and bring them back stronger than ever, but with a fundamental devotion to making sure this is a better city for all, a fairer city, a more inclusive city. It can be that. And look, we’ve shown how fast you can make change in this city.

This place is capable of great things. The people of the city are capable of great things. All of you have participated over the years in making New York City greater and greater. Now let’s make it fairer and fairer. Now let’s go someplace we’ve never been before. In that same spirit of the new deal, imagining a world that does not yet exist and building it. It’s something we can all do together. And that’s what I’m devoted to and I know together we will achieve it. Thank you so much, everyone.

2020-04-27 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. It's a Monday morning, and even with all the changes we've been going through these last months, a Monday morning still can always be a little tough for all of us. So, I'm happy to give you some good news to start your week. It's important to think about this whole fight we're in the middle of, and how many times we've had to emphasize that it's a long battle, there are no shortcuts, to get where we need to get to really beat this disease back is a long, intense process that everyone has to participate in. So, the good news I'm going to give you in a moment is about how we make that easier for all of us. Everyone's been doing a great job. Every time, I'm going to say thank you to all of you for everything you're doing to practice social distancing, to shelter in place, to help each other. It's been absolutely outstanding, but it's not easy, and it's taking a long time. Everyone wants more certainty.

One of the most frustrating parts of this whole experience has been how many things aren't known, how many things aren't known about this disease. We constantly feel like we're fighting an invisible enemy, but not only an invisible enemy, an invisible enemy that we just don't have enough information about. But the thing we all want to know the most is about what's happening to our own families, what's happening in our own lives. Have we been exposed to this virus or not? Are we still vulnerable? These are the questions that people want answered and want to know what it means for their own safety and everyone they love. And we know the question has always been from the very beginning. This goes back to when we first talked about COVID-19 back in January. The question has always been testing, testing, testing. How are we going to get the testing? How are we going to be able to get answers? Even with this difficult adversary, this mysterious adversary, how do we at least get less mystery about our own lives and get answers through testing? So testing is the way forward, and it's been a long fight just to get the testing we need, the ability to give the tests, but today we have good news.

Today we are beginning to see an easier process for testing. I'm going to talk about it by putting it in context of what I experienced Saturday in the Bronx at the Health and Hospitals Gotham Community Testing Center in Morrisania. I went up there to see how the testing was being done. To see how our extraordinary health care workers at the front line are giving people answers, helping them get clarity, figuring out with them what they're going to do next based on the results of the test. Making a lot more testing available in the places hit the hardest like the South Bronx. So, we all know that a few weeks ago we were just trying to save our hospitals, save lives. We couldn't put together the personnel, and the PPE’s, and the test kits, and all to do community testing, but now we were able to over this last week or more, and so as of this morning they'll be eight Health + Hospitals community testing sites around the city, open for business. And since we started this initiative a couple of weeks ago, even less than a couple of weeks ago, there've been now over 5,000 tests at the H + H sites, another more than 2,600 tests at the sites we've sponsored with local 1199 SCIU, the health care workers union and one medical. That number is substantial, but now we're going to be taking it up. There'll be 10,000 test per week or more at these community-based sites, and we want to keep ramping that up.

But the challenge has been, and I saw this with my own eyes on Saturday, that the test process we've known up to now, the test kits that were used, which had a specific long swab, and it required a trained medical professional to administer the test. Not fun and easy, very long swab, had to go way up into someone's nose, had to be handled a certain way, kept in a certain environment to be sent on to the lab. This was a more elaborate process, and not only slower, more elaborate for the patient, but for the health care worker. A challenge in many ways, and our health care workers have gone through so much already but realize even in the testing process how much they had to do. A health care worker, even to do one test, had to put on, if you will, their body armor. They had to put on the whole PPE ensemble. The face shield, the N95 or whatever type of mask was appropriate, the gloves, gown, a whole specific plan to keep them safe, because the problem was with the test we've been using up to now, a lot of times it made the patient sneeze, and obviously it might be someone with COVID 19, and that was going to expose the health care worker. So, it was a laborious, careful process. But of course, a process done with someone who might be infected with a disease that might therefore infect the health care worker. So, we had to take real precautions, and that was every single patient, every single person being tested hour after hour, day after day. And it was a slow process and a process that came with real exposure for the health care workers who have been through so much. We have been working to confirm for weeks now that there was a better way to do this, and the good news I have today is there is a better way, there is a better way to do testing. There is an easier way to do testing, and there is a safer way to do testing, and we're going to start that this week at our Health + Hospitals clinics right here in New York City.

So, we're calling it, just to make it simple, straight forward self-swab tests. What does it mean? It means when you go to one of the community testing sites, instead of the health care worker having to be all prepared with all the PPE’s, and then take that very long swab, and administer the test. Now this is a whole different thing. This means the health care worker explains to the person there for the test how to administer the test themselves. They go into another room for privacy, and the patient takes something that's basically a sterile Q-tip, puts that in their nose. They don't have to go way deep, just enough to get a sample. They, forgive my bluntness, they spit into a cup, and that, those two samples, provide enough information for the testing to be done. Much simpler, much easier for everyone involved, no chance to cause the same kind of sneezing that that long swab way up the nose does. Simpler but also safer, especially for that health care worker. So many of whom had been putting their lives on the line now for weeks and weeks. So, when that's done, just like we've all experienced, many of us, at least at doctor's offices, you hand the sample over to a doctor or a nurse, a health care worker, you do the same here. The clinic or the health care provider sends it off to the lab to get the results. Now, this is simpler, this is better. This is something we're going to start using now aggressively, because it'll improve the situation for everyone.

We need partnership from the private labs that do the processing. We're engaged in these conversations with them already. We need them to step up. What our health care leadership here in New York City have told us is it's a very similar process to what they would do with the current samples. It doesn't take a lot of modification, but we need the private labs to agree immediately to do this on a wide scale. We have enough to get started, but we want to make sure we do this on a wide scale, so I'm asking the private labs, step up, make the small alterations necessary to be able to take these simpler tests. I think that will be a step forward for everyone. For health care workers, this will be a simpler, better reality. Also, think about the PPE’s that will now be saved in this process. They've been precious up to now, that personal protective equipment. We know it's been a fight week after week to make sure we had enough. This will mean we'll be able to conserve our supply a lot more, and make sure we have it for everyone who needs it when they need it. So, there's a lot of virtues here. It will also just take fewer health care workers to administer this kind of test, because we'll get more done in the time we have. So just it helps on so many levels and allows more health care workers to be at the front line where they're still needed so deeply.

Now, it's faster, as I said right now at an H + H site, because you have to process each individual, and explain what's going to happen, and administer the test, and everything has to be done very methodically. They can do about 15 tests per hour for each health care worker taking the tests. But the – I'm sorry, 15, I shouldn't say per person, per site –15 tests per hour. With this new approach that will go up immediately to 20 tests per hour, and then we'll keep expanding from there. Again, we need help. The private labs, we need them to really get with this new approach quickly, help move it forward, because this will make everyone's lives easier, and faster, and this'll give more people answers, and it will simplify, and clarify our steps forward as we move into that test and trace period in the month of May. But we also still need the federal government, I don't want anyone for a moment to think this means the federal government doesn't have responsibility. They still do and the big question now and again, testing has been the big Achilles heel of the federal government from the beginning, but here's the chance to get it right. Use all the tools of federal government to expand lab capacity so we can help New Yorkers and this is needed all over the country. We need the supplies that go to those labs to make them work, particularly what's called reagents, which are part of the process of doing the actual analysis of each sample. There is still a crisis of supply affecting the labs, we still don't see the federal government owning this problem to the extent they need to. It's been the same story from the beginning, not focusing on testing when we needed them to and then even when everyone became clear that testing was the answer. We don't see the federal government using all its powers, all its tools to secure the supply chain and make sure the test kits originally and the lab capacity is there, that needs to be fixed immediately so we can take a big step forward in May.

Now, remember, the more tests you do, the faster you move towards low-level transmission of this disease. It all starts to come together, expand, testing rapidly more and more of the contact tracing, more and more getting people to isolation who need it. That's what May is going to look like, but this is actually going to help us speed that up markedly to be able to do a simpler kind of test. One day and I think it is possible, we'll be able to test everyone we need to, again, we cannot do it without federal help, but one day if we do this right, we'll be able to reach everyone we need to on any given day and you'll see a extraordinary correlation of how every step towards that day connects with pushing back this disease. I'm not saying it's going to be perfect, I'm not saying there's always going to go into a perfect straight line you've seen with our indicators and we'll get to them in a minute. Things go up, things go down. Sometimes we'll have setbacks, that's part of life, but so far New Yorkers have done an extraordinary job pushing back this disease and now the testing is starting to come into play. If we do it right, may not be a perfect straight line, but it will be regular consistent progress. The more testing, the more progress, this will help us achieve more testing, simple as that. So, of course once you have the testing more and more widespread, you need that ability to trace the contacts of everyone who tests positive. And as we've talked about before, when we were tragically seeing the disease spread and spread, and spread, we weren't able to do the contact tracing. We were trying to save lives, protect hospitals, deal with the most basic needs of people, but we couldn't build a whole— contact tracing network that we wanted for something of this size.

Now, the good news is we can, and that's what we're going to build in the month of May. A contact tracing network in this City likes never been seen before on a vast scale. So, every time someone tests positive, immediately we can swing into action, figure out who were their close contacts, get those people tested to isolate anyone who needs isolation. So, I'm announcing today that we are hiring, we are looking for talented, experienced health workers. So, anyone out there listening to me now, watching this or anyone who hears about this, if you have experienced in the health care field, if you're ready to lend your talents, this fight, we need you and we need you right away. We are hiring immediately and we will be hiring throughout the month of May, City of New York plans to hire 1,000 contact tracers immediately. They will be working with all the health care personnel we have already and people we will train from a variety of City agencies to complement this work as well. But, right now, we need 1,000 new contact tracers. We're getting great help from our fund for public health and I want to thank everyone at the fund for public health, for the great work you do and all the people who support you and have donated to the fund for public health. You're going to see that support come alive in a powerful way now, as we fight back this disease here in the epicenter, but we want to get the word out to everyone that we need to hire up right away as work begins. What will they do? The contact tracers, literally, they'll do the interviews to determine who were those key contacts, they'll follow up with those contacts, they'll arrange for each of them to be tested. Folks who need isolation, they'll make sure they're getting it. They'll help make sure that the steps that are needed are glued together and they’ll ask the questions that are needed. And that training will be so important to understand if there's anyone who needs that follow-up, talked about disease detectives before. This is a variation on that, but it's the same concept of knowing how to ask the right questions, knowing how to search for the clues of the people in someone's life who tested positive, that need to be contacted, need to be followed up on, need to be tested. So, again, we'll start immediately and anyone interested should go to the fund for public health website it's FPHnyc.org again FPHnyc.org. Very, very important please, we need you to come forward right away so we can get you into this battle and help save lives here in this City.

Let me switch to a couple of other important topics before I talk about the daily indicators. First of all, something so many New Yorkers ask about and care about and it's important to everyday life, alternate side parking, alternate side parking. In this crisis we've seen something very unusual, there've been so many fewer people out and obviously businesses closed, et cetera, that the reality why we need alternate side parking to begin with has been altered fundamentally. So, we've been watching regularly, our Sanitation Department is monitoring communities to make sure we don't want to see communities get dirty we don't want to see anything that would undermine the hygiene of this City in the middle of a pandemic, been very pleased by what we're seeing. Streets are staying generally clean I know a lot of everyday New Yorkers are helping to make that happen and I thank you for that. So, as we continue to see progress, we can continue to pull back on alternate side parking, we've been doing it two weeks at a time we're going to keep doing that for the foreseeable future and we're going to judge each time what makes sense. But I am here to announce that we will suspend alternate side parking for the next two weeks and that will take us to Tuesday, May 12th again as we get close to that point, we'll have another update.

Very important update I want to give now and it's something that's been worked on for the last few days. The weather has been getting warmer, slowly but surely, we've talked about the changes that when it gets warmer there'll be more and more people outside. Gotten a lot of good questions from every-day New Yorkers and from the media and from elected officials. How are we going to balance this? Well, we're going to have a bigger, for the truly warm weather in summer, but in the here and now we can predict in the next few weeks as we go through May, it will get warmer and warmer, more people out, more challenges. Lot of folks have asked good questions about what can we do differently and I've said consistently, we want to see if there's new approaches but we have to make sure they're safe and we have to make sure there can be enforcement.

The City Council came forward, I think it was Wednesday, with a vision of how we could come up with a plan to open up more streets do it over time and do it in a way that was responsive to the core concerns we've heard from the NYPD for example, about safety and enforcement. We've been engaging the city council over the last few days with a very positive spirit because as I said a few days ago, when you look at the history of relationship between both sides of City Hall, we always come together in the end and find a solution. There's been a collegial, positive spirit always, but particularly during this pandemic, and we share a lot of the same values. So, the city council has been absolutely right to say, let's keep looking for solutions here and I want to thank them for that. I think it's been right to say, let's find a solution that helps open up space, but absolutely keeps people safe, because the first job here is to protect people's safety. So, I want to announce today that we have reached an agreement with Speaker Johnson and the city council. And over the next month we will create a minimum of 40 miles of open streets and then the goal during the duration of the COVID crisis, and we don't know how long that is obviously, but as this crisis continues, we're going to all work hard to keep it as short as possible. But during this crisis, the goal is to get up to a hundred miles of those open streets and the way we will do it, we're going to focus first on streets in and around our parks. Very concerned about the streets on the outside of parks that oftentimes we're seeing that immediate area getting very crowded, that's an obvious opportunity. Those streets adjacent to parks are an obvious opportunity to open up more space, so we're going to work together to figure out how to do that. Some places will be able to expand sidewalks. Use the example of what we did over the holidays around Rockefeller Center where you just open up the sidewalk space into the street more, but with the proper kind of barricades. Some streets will be more local areas that aren't necessarily where you have a major attraction like a park, but they are places where we can safely open up some space and have it be enforced. And another important piece of this discussion is early action bike lanes where we see an opportunity to do more with bike lanes - done some of that already in this crisis, we want to do more. So, the focus here will be to focus – of course, same as we're doing in so many other things, where the need is greatest. So, so many communities that we already have identified have been very hard hit by COVID, we want to be particularly sensitive to implement these kinds of steps - working with the City Council, working with the Police Department, Transportation Department, Sanitation Department, and Parks Department figuring out all the right places we can do this, but first priority are the places hardest hit. And then of course, figuring out where they'll have the biggest impact, where the most people are. So that's good news, from the good work we've all been doing together with the Council over the last few days.

Now let me go into the indicators for the day. And I think today's indicators are broadly good [inaudible]. It's not the perfect thing we want all down in the same direction, but broadly good. And we keep making progress in one form or another. I want to see more and I want to see steadier progress for us to really be able to make some of the bigger moves we all would like to make. So, the first indicator today, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19. This is obviously the root of everything – this one's down meaningfully from 144 to 122. That's very good. Daily number of people in ICUs across our Health + Hospitals, public hospitals for suspected COVID-19 - that's down but, only a little, 768 to 766. Percentage of people who tested positive for COVID-19 citywide – stable, not going in the wrong direction at least, but stable at 29 percent. The one place that was not so good, the public health lab tests went up 46 percent to 55 percent. That is again an important measure, but it's a measure of a smaller group of people. When you composite the day, progress, but not enough progress. But it's a reminder everything we're doing is affecting these indicators; let's keep doing it.

So, as I conclude, and I'll say a few words in Spanish, but first say, look, the test and trace plan we talked about a few days ago, this is really the key. It's going to be very aggressive; it's going to be large scale. This is how we take the good work that all of you have done. We supercharge it by finally getting testing on a wide scale. Tracing people, isolating everyone that needs it. Doing that is the path forward, but we knew the testing piece of the equation was a challenge because we've always struggled to have the testing capacity we needed from the very beginning of this crisis. Finally, we see something simpler. Having an approach to testing that will protect our health care workers more, save time, allow a simpler process. A process that's easier for the person being tested as well as for the health care worker. And the fact that it will speed things up and require less personnel over time is a huge, huge benefit. So, the goal here is to test as many people as possible. This is another step toward that. It's a good way to start the week with some good news and it makes us even more ready to go into May with that aggressive test and trace strategy that I think is going to be a game changer from New York City. Just a few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that we will turn to questions from our colleagues in the media and as usual tell me the name and the outlet of the journalists calling in.

Moderator: We'll now begin our Q & A. As a reminder we have Dr. Daskalakis, Dr. Barbot, Dr. Katz, and Senior Advisor Jay Varma all also on the line. First question today goes to Brigid from WNYC.

Question: Good morning Mr. Mayor, I have some questions that related to the election. Tomorrow would have been the Presidential Primary here in New York. So just a few questions; first, the Governor announced an executive order last week and that the State Board of Elections wants municipalities to mail absentee ballot applications to all voters. Just interested in your reaction to that along with keeping poll sites open. Do you have any concerns there? He also canceled the special elections for Queens Borough President and City Council and I'm wondering your thoughts on that. And then finally, the State Board of Elections is meeting today and may cancel the Presidential Primary here in New York. Given that you’re a base supporter of Senator Sanders, I'm wondering about your thoughts on that.

Mayor: Thank you, Brigid. So, I think the absentee ballot approach is very much a step in the right direction and look, Brigid, you've been very, very deeply involved reporting on these issues for years now. This state was way behind the country for a long time. Last year we saw extraordinary reforms and change. It was a moment a lot of us have been waiting for, for decades; where New York State finally caught up with the rest of America in terms of a lot of crucial reforms to make voting easier and to protect the voting process. In this crisis, to me, the first question is health and safety. I care deeply about the sanctity of our elections, but the first question is health and safety. So I think the absentee ballot approach is the smart way to go. And in fact, you know, it's teaching us for the future if mail-in ballots might be a part of yet another piece of a strategy - which some states use very widely already not just cause of this crisis - to make it easier for people to vote and encourage more people to vote. So, I'm very happy that, that approach is being used here. I think we could go a lot farther with that potentially. I think the absentee approach is what everyone should do. So my advice to everyone involved is let's just focus on folks mailing-in is the safest approach, it’s – so long as it's being made widely available and it will be handled benevolently. Meaning, you know, for years and years, you know, there was kind of a burden of proof on the voter. If my assumption and my hope here is that every absentee ballot application will be regarded as automatically valid; in that case, that's the way to go. That's where the energy should be focused on. Certainly, don't want to see people out and about who don't have to be. On the other issues, I honestly compared to all the other concerns out there, none of this registers to me as something I'm particularly worried about. I respect the decisions that the state has made. I was a proud supporter of Senator Sanders. He obviously made a decision to leave the race and support Vice President Biden. I think that matter is closed. So I think keeping the election activity to a minimum in this environment makes sense. What I'm looking forward to is getting through this recovery the right way and getting our whole society back to normal and having elections again as an indicator of our Renaissance of our resurgence. But I think that's something that obviously is going to happen in the fall, not now.

Moderator: Next question goes to Andrew from WNBC.

Question: [inaudible] How are you? Good morning.

Mayor: Hey Andrew, how are you doing?

Question: Good, I was wondering if you had seen some of the studies which show that outdoor transmission of this virus is extremely low and as a result of that, are you considering assisting restaurants like closing some of the streets, like Ninth Avenue, to when they ultimately reopen, essentially create sort of the maximum amount of outdoor restaurant space in New York City? Have you begun discussions on that and do you think it can happen?

Mayor: Yeah, Andrew, I think that's a very interesting idea. You know, as we've thought about and we have begun discussions, but as I said, when we have firm plans step-by-step, we'll unveil them. But there's something elegant about that solution, we know that when the right time comes for restaurants to reopen there's still going to be real questions about how much distancing, how you protect customers, how you protect the folks who work in the restaurant. And clearly, there could be advantages to having more of it be outdoors. You still have to have those precautions thought through and acted on. But there's something appealing about shifting more of the activity outdoors and adjusting accordingly, obviously, in terms of how we handle streets and sidewalks. So, there's something very, very interesting there. Now, I have not read that particular study, to be fair, and I think one of the things we can say about COVID-19 is we get new information all the time and a lot of unknowns. But I'm very intrigued by the idea and I want to see if it's something we can act on as we think about that piece of the reopening. I don't know of any of the doctors wants to comment further. Doctors? Anyone?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Sir, I'll just add that my team and I actually have begun those conversations to talk about ways in which we can provide a clear guidance to New Yorkers with regards to maintaining distance while we are able to lift early some of the layers of social distancing and certainly maximizing our use of outdoor spaces is one of those potential options, especially when it comes to restaurants.

Moderator: Next question is Jenn Peltz from the AP.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Good, Jenn. How are you doing?

Question: Fine, thanks. I had just some questions a little bit about the self-swab testing that you mentioned earlier. One was, could you explain a little bit further about why there are two samples being collected here, one nasally and one from saliva? And also, a little bit of more about how come this reduces the need for personal protective equipment?

Mayor: I'm going to start as the layman here and then pass to the doctors. So, Jen, so it is two samples, two different samples from the same human at the same time, and that actually is helpful in terms of cross checking and helping with ensuring the validity of the outcome of the test. But the other thing is, just to try – and I'll try and be clear without being overly graphic – so, why is it safer? Because when I was there at Morrisania in the Bronx today, they took out the actual test kit, and here's the swab – and the swab. I don't know if I can get the exact length, one of the doctors probably knows exact – but it's a long swab. It's not a, think about a Q-tip, it looks like most of twice that size. And the idea is to put it really deep into your nose in a way that a human being would have trouble doing themselves, but a medical professional can perform. But the problem is, it also causes for a lot of people a kind of impulse – sudden impulse to sneeze. So, you've got a certain number of people who are going to be COVID positive, they're there with a health care worker and their health care workers right up close to them performing this test, and then the immediate reaction is someone sneezes right at the health care worker because they're right there in front of them. So, that's not great. It's been what we've had. It's been the only option that appeared to be truly consistent and viable. And that required a health care worker – think about it, the face shield, the PPEs, everything. This ain't that. This is, you know, like many of us have experienced at a doctor's office, they give you your instructions and here's the sample cup that just spit into and you put the cover on and here's the Q-tip, and, you know, bring it back and hand it over, and then they can package it and send it for processing. So, it just takes away that, that close contact, that sneeze, the things that would create vulnerability for the health care workers. Also, from what I've heard at least – it has not been done to me, but from what I've heard a lot more comfortable for the patient to not go through that deeper procedure. Doctors, that was my attempt to put it into plain English. You take it from there.

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: Thank you. I think you did really well, Mr. Mayor. Everyone who has the nasal pharyngeal culture done, the one up their nose almost always coughs and sneezes on the health care worker because it's so uncomfortable. So, new methods are really needed. In terms of the multiple specimens, in some cases we may be able to do it just with the nasal swab – just swabbing the front of the nose, something that the patient can do under the supervision of the health care worker. As you keep saying and teaching people, we learning new things about the disease all the time, we may find that adding a sputum spitting does improve the test characteristics or doesn't make it different enough. So, we may just be doing the swabs. But I think the big point, which you've made so well, is that this will be safer testing, it’ll be more comfortable testing for the patients and will enable us to do more testing and reach your goal of being able to open the city safely with enough data to be sure that we don't have a large outbreaks in the future.

Moderator: Next question is Christina from Chalkbeat.

Question: Hi, Mayor. We have seen some reporting that the DOE is considering a grading policy that many advocates think is unacceptable. They don't want to see any grades for high school and they want assurances that every student will graduate from high school this year. Just curious whether the DOE is taking that feedback, when we can expect an official policy to come out, and what the holdup is?

Mayor: Yeah. Thank you, Christina. Now, look, the focus has been over these last few weeks to really get the distance learning moving to the extent that we need it to and to try and consolidate the education of our kids right now under the most adverse possible circumstances – 1.1 million kids spread out over a whole city, not a single one of them, you know, in a classroom in the traditional sense, although some are at the enrichment centers, it's still not the classrooms that we knew – you know, in the school structure we knew. So, that's been the focus of the DOE – get that piece right and start building for the future, for the summer and for beyond in different ways. This week we'll have an update on the grading policy. I've had detailed conversations with the Chancellor and his team. We'll have an update for you. I will say, of course, the voices of the advocates and every stakeholder is listened to. And we want to be fair and we want to be really respectful of students and families in this moment. We also want to strike a balance. I think it is important, as with everything in life, that there be some real standards. I think it helps people to have some clear standards. And we think we can do that in a fair way that accounts for how difficult this experience has been. Clearly, we want to see as many seniors as possible move on at the end of this school year the right way. But we have to structure that in a smart way, and again, we'll have the details this week.

Moderator: Next question is Henry from Bloomberg?

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Henry. How are you doing?

Question: I’m okay. Let me ask you this – have you – I don't know whether you've ever spoken about this, but why do you think New York City has been an epicenter for this pandemic way beyond other cities that are densely populated and act as international gateways?

Mayor: Well, it's a profound question, Henry. I've spoken a little bit to it and I think we're going to keep researching that question, going forward, but I would say you're on the right track. International gateway in a way that very few cities on earth are. I mean, I think we have to understand New York City, you know, who we are, what we are, how we compare to the rest of our country, how do we compare to the rest of the world? We are one of the most international cities in the world, with a handful of cities as the true international capitals that, obviously, in a pandemic makes us more vulnerable. We have, you know, the greatest diversity in the world, so we have people traveling back and forth from every part of the world. And we saw this pandemic growing from different parts of the world. And I think as we look at more and more, we'll see that some of that came in from more than one location and that was more of a vulnerability for us than it might've been for some other places. Yes, there are densely populated cities in this country, but there's nothing that compares New York City. There’s just no city that's laid out the way we are, that concentrates anywhere near as many people. That's a huge part of the equation. When you think of the second biggest city in the country, Los Angeles, it's structured entirely differently. It's spread out over a vast area, you have many, many fewer people concentrated in big buildings. There's many, many reasons why it made sense, very sadly, and the human cost has been profound and painful. There's many reasons why we were particularly in the crosshairs of this disease. A lot more we'll say about over time. I think the other interesting question will be examined over time is, you know, when all those challenges added up and this disease manifested so intensely and we'd never seen anything like it. I mean, again, the only parallel is a hundred years ago. Thank God this city long ago devoted itself to having a very strong public health apparatus, Department of Health, Health + Hospitals, community-based clinics, and that is part of what saved us here, because our hospital system was strained deeply, but it never broke. A lot of other places, if they had gone through the kind of overwhelming growth of the disease that we've gone through, their hospital systems would never have been able to handle it. Ours held, so that's something that all New Yorkers should be proud of and, obviously, the health care workers were the heroes. But those are some initial thoughts, Henry. But I think we'll all be doing a lot more research as we get more information.

Moderator: Next is Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: I'm good, Gersh. How you doing?

Question: Great. I appreciate that. I'm sorry, I do want to obviously talk about this massive open-streets announcement you just made. You did [inaudible] from enforcement, so I need to understand a little about what's different now between what you're going to do and what the NYPD was doing with the original open space pilot. Have you accepted the Council’s position that open streets can be done with far fewer cops and with more trust in drivers to stay out of areas where they don't belong?

Mayor: So, I would say it this way. I mentioned, I think, in one of these settings – it may even have been an answer to one of your questions – a long conversation a few days back with Commissioner Shea and Commissioner Trottenberg and we went deeply into the question of looking at each of the plans from around the country, something you and others have asked, Oakland, Minneapolis, et cetera, things happening around the world, and our comparison to New York City and what it would take here. And I think there is, you know, an assumption in everything we do, and it gets back to Vision Zero, that we want to be very cautious about making sure drivers are constantly given the message, slow down, drive safely, recognize the ramifications of what it means to drive a vehicle and your responsibilities. So that worldview, Gersh, makes us very cautious when it comes to trusting that if you create a situation where there are not protections and there's not enforcement that you could put people in danger, and, obviously, the goal of an open street or safe street kind of structure is that people can enjoy it and experience the virtue of it and the social distancing without having a new danger from vehicles. So, we've always had a concern about enforcement and continued to, but the Council – discussions with the Council, I think, were kindred in the sense that we could come up with places to open – I think the areas around parks are a great example – whereby, opening them up, you are going to capture the natural flow of people. One of the things – many of the questions I've gotten from all of you in the media, but beyond, is, one of the most important places to open might be where a lot of people are going anyway and just give them more space since more and more people will go there when it gets warmer. That also is actually a more straightforward enforcement dynamic than if you're trying to open a bunch of places all over. So, it was sort of a focus on where the need was greatest, both in terms of where people would go and obviously communities most affected, using some of the enforcement we were already devoting to those areas in an efficient way. And then more and more of the conversation revolved -- this is something the Council felt deeply. And actually as we looked at it more, we felt this was a very important piece, revolved around community partners that could be upon to create structures that, you know, if you were going to have a place closed off, there would be a constant effort to monitor it, to make sure it was safe. If there was any problem to get NYPD over there quickly, something with a little more structure than for example, what we saw in Oakland. So, I think there's been a really good consensus that we can do something substantial while keeping the health and safety issues up front and ensuring the right kind of enforcement, more work with trusted community partners. But I would not go so far as to say, forgetting what we learned from Vision Zero, which is to always keep our guard up against the problems of people who drive irresponsibly and making sure we're protecting pedestrians at all times.

Moderator: Next is Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I was wondering if you could share some more details about the street closure plan? I mean, to start with, can you sort of help New Yorkers visualize what the plan will look like? Will there be barricades, police cars, officers enforcing? Also, can you say exactly who's going to be picking the streets? Will that be DOT or the Council or somewhere else? And maybe last but not least, do you know what this stage, what the first streets will be, parts of Manhattan, Bronx, et cetera, anything like that?

Mayor: Okay. So we're all going to work together on the selection. Council, Mayor's Office, NYPD, DOT, everyone's going to work to figure out the places that make sense immediately. Again, I think it's going to be a combination – I think assume first and foremost those streets around parks where that natural ability to expand, if you will, the park space and the places where a lot of people are going to be congregating as it gets warmer. I think in May we're going to see, you know, steady warming and more and more people. So let's get ahead of that. Expand out around the parks. We'll figure out together where to focus. It's one part where you're going to see the most activity, another part where you're going to see the most need in terms of the health reality. So that's obviously a lot of the communities that have been afflicted the most. Yes, there will be enforcement and I think everything you said could, you know, can and will be a part of it, meaning in some places barricades. But one of the open questions is, you know, how permanent for the duration of this crisis, the barricades need to be or how temporary they can be, what will be effective. Yes, there has to be enforcement attached. Depending on the location, it might be more enforcement, other places it might be less, so long as again, there were trusted partners. Bids have come forward as one example. Certain neighborhood entities that work very closely with the NYPD, this is an idea that Commissioner Shea put forward. If NYPD has a working relationship with an organization and knows that they can rely upon them to manage something, and keep in touch if there's a problem. That makes sense. So, and timeline to move obviously as quickly as possible through the month of May. But to start where we think there will be the most activity and then build from there. Details will be announced. You know, we have to deepen this process with the Council and with the agencies as we have the first tranche of the places that will occur, we'll announce that.

Moderator: Next is Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask you about the three indicators the City is tracking for the percentage of people tested who are positive for COVID-19. Why are you guys separating out the Public health Lab? My understanding is that that's a very small subset. I guess if you can tell me how many tests the Public Health Lab is conducting and is that a special group of people? I'm just trying to understand why it's being separated out.

Mayor: It's a great question. Appreciate it Yoav. So the indicators, I'll start and I'll turn to Dr. Daskalakis and Dr. Varma to speak about this. The indicators were developed because we wanted everyone to be able to see in common where we're going. But there was real concern that, and I think this is playing out in a certain states right now in a very troubling way, that if you either didn't have clear transparent indicators or you use the wrong ones, or you didn't give them enough time to develop, you could really set up that horrible boomerang scenario. Where the disease reasserts and disease reasserts, you know, I have no words for how much of a problem that would be if it reasserted in a strong way, both in terms of the people who would be endangered and the lives that might be lost, but also setting back any effort to get to normalcy. I've said we're not going to be in a perfect straight line on our path back, but we need to keep it as tight as humanly possible. So having these indicators, it was a conservative act to choose three indicators. Again Yoav you'll appreciate this, on this matter of how and when to reopen, I'm a conservative, I'm a proud conservative in this matter only. But getting it right, being cautious, being smart, looking for the correlation of the indicators. That was the underlying value. Yes, the Public Health Lab is sort of a rarefied slice in my layman's terms. It's a high bar, but we thought it was right to have it there because we wanted a high bar. We wanted to make sure we were really cross-checking all our indicators and seeing something consistent. We're going to see how it plays out. We always have the option to reevaluate down the line. But so far I think what we've been seeing tracks with what I believe is happening. Which is we are getting steadily better, but we're far from out of the woods. Look at the number of new cases every day and look at the number tragically of New Yorkers who are losing every day. It's better than what it was, you know, a month ago or a few weeks ago. But it's nowhere near what we want it to be and need it to be. So I think the indicators are doing their job right now. But Dr. Daskalakis, Dr. Varma why don't you jump in?

Deputy Commissioner Demetre Daskalakis, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So the Public Health Lab actually focuses on testing in patients. So, it's the sickest New Yorkers who are being tested. The indicator, the reason that they're together in a graph is because we want to look at them in combination of sort of the sickest folks who are being tested, as well as just the general population who is being tested. So, we think it gives a pretty robust view. And again, like the Mayor said, you know, we really will be able to adjust these further if necessary, but the most important message is that the trend is definitely down in both. So day to day variations to be expected, especially since we test fewer folks in the Public Health Lab. But again, since the trend is down, we are going in the right direction and does provide for some cautious optimism.

Mayor: Dr. Varma, you want to add? I guess he doesn't want to add. Okay. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next is Gloria from NY1.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. I have two questions for you. The first, I understand what the doctors have explained about how this test is easier to administer. But is there anything they can say about how you eliminate or prevent the possibility of a person not self-administering this test correctly? If they do it wrong, then is there a possibility that the test might get a wrong result? How do you monitor that, if the idea is to send the person off into whatever space to administer the test? And my second question is about the Streets plan. I thought much of the discussion around this had been about giving people who don't have, who might not have access to say a park or a large area of open space options? So why start with places that are near parks? Why not focus in places where people might not have immediate access to a green space or a place to spread out and take a walk?

Mayor: So, I'm going to speak to that one and then I'll turn to the doctors on the self-swab issue. And I think a very good question you're asking about how do you make sure the tests are accurate? I think the crucial question here Gloria, is about health and safety. So when you think about social distancing and the ability to help people do it effectively, and you know, New Yorkers have been amazing, but obviously space is something we are all challenged by here in general, even when we're not doing social distancing. It stands to reason, the first concern from a health and safety perspective is where are the most people going to be? And how do we help address that? And of course, the warm weather coming on. And this is something we've talked a lot about with the City Council that the warm weather is going to change the dynamic. It's going to make it more challenging. So the notion of going where the people will be, which we know will be a lot of the places they'll be attracted to, we're already seeing that on a few nice days we've had. That's about maximizing the impact to protect people, to give the most people the most opportunity to socially distance. Again, there'll be a focus on making sure we can do it the right way and enforce it. And there is an efficiency to focusing on the places we're already doing a lot of enforcement and just building them out more, if you will. And as I said, there's going to be a real focus on the communities that have been hardest hit. Every community in New York City has some kind of place for recreation. It's by no means even an equal, but every place has some places and folks do congregate all over the city, every kind of community, in those places. So it makes sense to focus there. I think as we think about expanding outward, it'll all come back to where can we find those local partnerships that we can trust to make sure that people are safe? Again, different from the Oakland model, which was I think a more honor system kind of model. As I said, we want something more backed up by a structure and by monitoring and then by enforcement when it's needed. But we can do that in a number of communities obviously, so that'll be an option as well. But I think that the first concern should be to think about where the most people are going to be, how quickly they are going to be there, and try and get there first. And that's around the parks. But we'll do these other pieces as well. We're talking about a substantial amount of space that'll be addressed. And we'll work with the Council on those priorities for sure. Let me turn to the doctors on how you make sure the self-swab tests is done accurately. Mitch, you want to start?

President Katz: Yes, sir. Thank you. At least in the beginning we will not be asking people to go into a separate room. What we'll be doing is setting it up so that they are looking into a mirror and the health care worker is behind them, thereby protected from the health care worker being sneezed that or coughed on, but they'll be able to observe in the mirror and help to instruct the person on how to do it. We may be using for health care workers who need to be tested and who are therefore very familiar with the procedure, we may allow them to go into a separate room. And as you keep saying, as we learn more and more about these diseases and these technologies, we may be able to liberalize it. But I think in the beginning it is appropriate that a health care worker be observing it. But way less risk to that health care worker.

Commissioner Barbot: Mr. Mayor, I'll just build on what Dr. Katz said and if Dr. Daskalakis wants to weigh in. I would say that Gloria, there are other situations where we work with patients for them to do self-collection. So, for example, in our Chelsea clinic, we have a clinic where patients can self-collect samples to do testing for sexually transmitted infections. We provide patient education materials that easily walk them through step by step, how to conduct the self [inaudible] collection to make sure that we have samples that we can test accurately.

Mayor: Good. Okay.

Moderator: Next is Nolan from the Post.

Question: Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Nolan. How you doing?

Question: I'm all right. How are you?

Mayor: Good man.

Question: I have a couple of questions on two separate topics. First of which is I was wondering how your own personal experiences in the park changed your mind or decision making when it came to opening streets around parks? I know when I've been riding my bike on the weekends, especially along [inaudible], the streets and the sidewalks have all been packed with people. I'm wondering how your experiences in the parks shaped any change in decision that you made? And secondly, you’ve repeatedly talked about the importance of testing throughout the entirety of this crisis. The New Yorker published a story yesterday that said that in early March, your broader proposal to test flu swabs that had already been taken to see if they contained coronavirus, I'm wondering if you can comment on that story and why it took your administration according to the story, the better part of three weeks to okay that proposal?

Mayor: So, on the first question Nolan, I've been watching carefully as I've gone around the city and tried to always check to make sure that I was watching for how much people are distancing. As we told people, it's important to use face coverings, how much people are using them, you know, all these different realities, how much people appeared to be out versus you know, different points. And that's part of why I've been praising New Yorkers throughout, I've just been really moved and impressed by what I've seen has been so consistent. How much effort people are going to, to distance and how much adherence there is to the face coverings. There's more to do on that front, but still it's pretty remarkable. And when you think about the places I've gone, when I've gone to different public hospitals or voluntary hospitals, I was at RUMC on Staten Island, Kings County Hospital, Bellevue, Elmhurst, Lincoln, you know, looking around the neighborhoods as I was there.

My own – you're right, I've kept an eye out whenever I've been in a park. I've been in several different parks, getting a sense of that, talking to our different commissioners – but, you know, Commissioner Shea has been particularly focused on this issue of going out and seeing for himself places like Central Park, Riverside Park, Hudson River Park, but talking to all of his commands about what they're seeing. And I think it became clearer and clearer that the parks were filling up in nice weather, but people are still doing a pretty admirable job of keeping distance. When you saw folks together it tended to be people who were family groups or people obviously were in relationships under the same roof by and large. So, the impulse that people were living by was really good, but the question has been coming out more and more, it's going to get warmer.

And we've all been having these constant conversations. When it gets warmer, what's it going to look like, and what new stresses and strains is that going to create? And you know, that's where a lot of the energy came from, to think about what can we do around the parks and particularly to expand them out, if you will. And certainly, the City Council had been thinking a lot of the same things and it was a good consensus. So yes, everything I saw in parks but beyond made me feel we had to help people continue to be able to socially distance. And that a lot of the nexus would be around the parks as it got warmer.

On the question of the New Yorker piece, I have not read the piece. What I've had summarized to me doesn't make sense to me. So, I'll look at it and I can speak about it in more detail. Whenever we've heard of any opportunity to get more information and I remember these conversations vividly, we wanted to maximize anything that would bring us more information on what was going on and anything that would help us reach more people to help them know their health status. So, I'll give you a more thorough answer after I've read it, but from what I've heard so far, it does not bear a resemblance to what I remember. 

Moderator: We have time for two more. Next is Aundrea from CBS.

Question: Hi, good morning. My question is pertaining to the task forces that you announced yesterday. Will the City not consider or delay reopening until those task forces come back with recommendations in June? And to that end, Mr. Mayor, you campaigned on a platform to address inequalities in the city. Are you now using these committees and task forces to make up what you haven't been able to accomplish during your tenure?

Mayor: So, on the first part, no, the reopening will move as quickly as is safe and healthy obviously, based on the indicators and deliberatively. And we're going to be very, very transparent about what can happen in each phase so long as we keep making progress. It’s just a good incentive for every one of us to keep doing the things we're doing and keep showing the discipline that New Yorkers have shown. So, no, these groups will come forward immediately to work on both issues of the immediate restart and the bigger recovery. I've said with those sector specific groups, for example, we'll have one for small business, we'll have one for larger businesses – we're going to start meeting with them right away because we need their input as we're figuring out restarting plans, obviously want to hear from the people who will be most effective and the people who know their businesses best and their employees best. Think about the fact that May is our first chance to even begin any kind of restart, that will depend on the value – the indicators going in the right direction and it will require, you know, careful smart efforts. And then you test them, Aundrea, you know, you do some relaxing say of a particular rule and you watch the impact of it. Is it working, is it enforceable? 

So that's all going to play out starting in May. These groups are going to be meeting in a matter of days to give us initial input and then they'll keep giving us input throughout. That June 1st initial roadmap that I'm expecting from the Fair Recovery Task Force is to set some parameters on how we're going to go through a bigger recovery process and do it in a way that actually helps us address some of the real disparities we've experienced and have a smart and effective recovery that reaches all. So, we'll get down on June 1st, you know, we're clearly not going to be all recovered by June 1st so that will be more than timely. So, no, none of this slows down anything the whole rest of the government will be doing. It augments and advises and gives us more perspective. 

To your other question – no, I'd say the reality is six years we've been fighting inequality and in many ways that have been profound. I mean hundreds of thousands of people came out of poverty as a result of these initiatives and obviously now many, many hundreds of thousands of kids got pre-K and I could go through a whole list of things that have happened that have changed the lives of New Yorkers. No question that that was the right direction. Also, no question that didn't solve inequality. No one said that that's enough to solve the fundamental problem. We just have to keep fighting. We have to keep going deeper. Now, I think this moment is a transformational moment. The first and foremost is to protect the health and safety of all New Yorkers and to rebuild an economy so everyone could get back to work. But remember that comparison, I say it with the deepest humility, Aundrea, that this city was in another crisis, you know, 80 years ago that really paralleled some of what we're going through now. And New Yorkers led the way. And instead of saying, we're going to repeat what we had before, including the mistakes we had before, they were devoted, led by giants like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia, they were devoted to bringing us back, but making our society better and fairer at the same time. That's what I aspire to start. I've only got 20 months, but in those 20 months we're going to take some very big steps in that direction and then leave the city a clear, bigger road map of where we go from here. And I believe these actions can take another big bite out of inequality and move us forward.

Moderator: Last question for today goes to Allen from 1010 Wins.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing? 

Mayor: Good, Allen, how are you? 

Question: I'm fine [inaudible] for me. The experience needed for those 1,000 contact tracers the City is hiring and what does it pay? And then the second one, we have groceries, pharmacies, essential businesses have been open now for some time with the new standard, the mask, the gloves, the social distancing – when do you see other businesses opening with the same protocol? It seems that maybe there are other businesses that could open right now with the right precautions.

Mayor: Let me do the second one first. Allen, I would be careful about that. The – and I think again, there's a bit of a tale of two cities going on here in this country. The places that seem to be putting, you know, economics ahead of human lives, and then those of us who are trying to focus on the health and safety of people first, and then build out our economic restart from there. If we're not making decisions based on health care indicators, there's something wrong. If we're not making sure that, like I said, that sort of foothold idea, if you're climbing a mountain or something, and you get your foothold and make sure it's secure before you go up to the next one. I mean, right now we're still very much in the throes of this. It is better than a few weeks ago, but we're very much in the throes of it and, you know, we're not going to make a sudden move that sets us back. So, when you talk about, you know, what could you reopen safely? We want to be very smart about that because imagine for a moment, you know, you start to reopen a lot of stuff and people start to get looser and they don't do as much social distancing and they don't wear as many face coverings. Now the disease starts to spread again and here comes that boomerang. We can't have that. We have to believe that when we have that jump-off moment, it's one, we've really seen the indicators go down; two, that handoff I talked about, to the testing and tracing – remember the testing and tracing is like an offense. It's like a fight back against the disease because you're finding people proactively, identifying who has it, and then tracing the people in their life and getting them testing, and everyone who needs isolation gets it.

That apparatus is being built right now. That's going to empower us if the indicators are with us to open up more because we’re pushing back to disease constantly through that effort. So, when you get to that kind of point, yeah, you can say here's some places we can start to open up. And, yes, as you said with face coverings, with gloves, in some cases, whatever it might be, with distancing. But I wouldn't suggest that just those precautions solve the underlying problem. I think we have to make progress on the root cause here and then start to open up slowly but surely. And the better we do, the faster we open up, the more we open up.

On the question of that contact tracers. And I don't know if there's someone on the phone of our doctors who can answer right away, pay levels and things like the questions Allen asked. If – hold on, I've been handed a note. I guess I can answer this because I've been handed a note. Thank you, Freddi. So, the pay – the annualized pay would be in the $55,000 to $65,000 range. So, we're talking about folks who have some kind of health care background and can come on board and that is the range. But we'll get more details out unless one of the other doctors can speak to any of the other specifics of Allen's question. What I can say is we're hiring right away and the details would be online at the Fund for Public Health website – unless one of the other doctors has something to add. Let me give them that chance. Okay, so Allen, that's some initial information, but we will get more to you today and we'll put it up online today so everyone can see it. 

Okay. Everyone, look, as we conclude, I do want to say a very pleasant thing to have a good Monday morning and we're having a good Monday morning. We're taking a big step forward here with testing. The fact that we can do testing now in a simpler, faster way is going to improve everything. It's going to allow us to fight back better and faster. It's going to protect our health care workers more. It's going to be a better experience for everyone that gets tested too – not a minor matter. That's a really good thing. I spoke to some of the folks online at the Morrisania clinic in the South Bronx on Saturday morning and you're not surprised to hear they were anxious. They were worried. They were worried for themselves. They were worried for their families. The test was going to be a moment of clarity and definition and the test was going to tell them something. And I talked to the health care workers. They were outstanding. I want to thank everyone at the Morrisania clinic. They really, really impressed me. What they said is you know people – of course they want answers and they want to know what to do next especially if you test positive. How do you stay safe? How do you keep your family safe? How do you isolate? If you test negative, you still have to take precautions. So, the fact is anytime we can make that simpler, people are going through a lot and they're worried that they're looking for answers. If we can make it a simpler process, a better process, more comfortable process. That's a good thing unto itself.

But imagine now the ability to get a lot more tests done, simpler, less danger to our health care workers, thank God, and something that allows us to move forward without being dependent on some of the sources we used to be dependent on. Again, that does not mean we'd no longer need the federal government. We do because we still need the lab capacity and, again, to the labs – help us out, this test is going to make everyone's life better. Join us in that effort. To the federal government, work to make sure the labs are doing that work to make sure we have all the supplies we need at those labs. We expand lab capacity. Testing, testing, testing. When we can do this truly on a bigger level all the time, that's when we're going to be able to beat back this disease even more. So, a good step in the right direction today and a lot more to come in the month of May.

Thanks, everyone.

2020-04-28 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. There's a story that needs to be told about what's happened in these last couple of months with our schools. We all know the basics of the story. We all know that the greatest school system in the country, 1.1 million kids in the face of a pandemic had to be closed. We all know that that asked of everyone an extraordinary challenge, something literally unheard of in the history of New York City or even this entire country to somehow create something new. To create an online learning approach again for over a million kids with very little time to prepare without all the advantages that you'd want if you're going to try such a massive endeavor. If I had said to you, hey, we're going to provide online learning to 1.1 million kids. If I had asked a panel of experts, how much time would you like to prepare for that? I bet they were said, oh give us a year, give us two years, we'll have something great for you. We had precisely a week in which to prepare educators, many of whom had never attempted an approach like this, but all of whom embraced it with tremendous energy and love for the kids they serve. That's why people become educators to begin with, and I want people to understand that. Known a lot of teachers, a lot of principals, a lot of educators. This is the subject matter I've put my heart and soul into over decades, and my kids went to New York City public schools the whole way through and they got a great education from incredibly devoted educators. What was clear to me throughout was people, people don't go into this field because it's a way to make a quick buck I assure you.

People who become educators do it because they love kids, they care about them, they want to help them, they want to build their future. There's an incredible sense of satisfaction when you help a child to realize their potential. And I want you to remember something. I've talked to so many people, I bet you know people in your own life that have had this experience, maybe you yourself. How many people do you know, maybe things weren't so great for them when they were a kid. Maybe they weren't sure what was going to happen. Maybe they didn't have a lot of sense of goal, but one teacher, one principal, one educator gave them that hope, that confidence, that sense of their own self-worth. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a story where it was one teacher started a young person on a very different road. And so many of the people we depend on right now in the middle of this crisis can look back to that one teacher, or maybe it was a group of teachers in their school who made all the difference. Now we're asking those very same people to achieve that same inspiration, have that same impact, but not be in the same classroom with the kids they serve, imagine how difficult that is.

Now, our teachers are tough. Our teachers are strong. The educators in New York City don't shirk from a challenge, and they're used to dealing with some of the toughest conditions in America. So, when told you have a whole week to get ready and you're going to have to figure it out as you go along, they said, we're ready, let's do it. And it's been inspiring to watch them. It's been inspiring to watch the parents, many of whom again had no experience trying to figure out how to support their kids with online learning, but they've put their heart and soul into it, out of love of their children. How about the kids themselves? Let's note the heroism in our young people who are cooped up going through so much, but they've applied themselves to online learning too. There's a big story to be told here about just how good the New York City public schools are, just how good our families are, our educators, our kids. And today we want to talk about how we move forward over the course of this school year and beyond, and how we prepare for next year. And I've already said, next year is going have to be the greatest school year in the history of New York City. I'm not saying that as a flourish of words. I'm saying that because that has to be a sense of mission. We're going to have to do, starting in September, things we've never done before. We're going to have to help kids come into the year with an incredible sense of inspiration, incredible desire to make up for any loss ground, but also to overcome the pain they've been through. I have absolute faith in our educators and the leadership of our Department of Education, and you'll hear from Chancellor Carranza today. I have absolute faith that we will achieve that mission, but I want to set that bar high right now. Say that's going to have to be kind of a historic achievement, what we have to do this coming school year, but I know we're up to it.

Now, everyone, everyone who serves our kids, principals, teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, the folks who work in food service, the crossing guards, the custodians, everybody who makes up the school community, there's so many more. Everyone's feeling this moment. Everyone's devoted to our kids, but everyone has that sense. Our kids are going through a lot right now, and I want to just make sure we're all sensitive to them, we're all thinking about them. Look, I think all of us can take ourselves back to when we were kids, especially those really confusing middle school years, all the challenges of high school. I think every high school student kind of has a self-doubt, fear about the future, anxiety, not knowing if they're going to fit in, not knowing if they're going to succeed. Loving all the good things about being young, but with that constant anxiety. Now imagine you take that, and you overlay a pandemic. That creates so much more fear and confusion and anxiety about the future.

I often reflect upon the experience I've had as a parent, and what my kids went through and now what I even see from them as 20 somethings. This generation came up with a lot, even before this pandemic. The kids who experienced the great recession and the aftermath. There the kids who growing up in the shadow of global warming, they're a tough generation. They remind me of what my older relatives used to tell me about that experience they had grown up in the depression. There's something that I see in this generation too, and I wished they hadn't gone through all this before the pandemic, and I wish they weren't going through everything they're experiencing in the pandemic, but they are, and it's hurting them. It's in some cases traumatizing them. Some kids have already seen so much just in the last weeks, the losses in their own family, in their own schools. They're tough kids, New York City kids, and they're going to find a way through, but we have to be there for them. We really have to understand how much they've experienced, how much pain they're going through.

Our job is to help them, help them with the mental health support and really that effort that all educators do, but it's going to have to be even greater now to raise up their self-esteem for the moments ahead, for the tough times ahead. But what is inspiring to me is even with that tough, tough backdrop, the fact that we have seen our educators rise to this occasion gives me a lot of hope. You know, when I talked about the online learning and everything we've had to create in these last weeks, this kind of gives definition to that analogy that's often used when they say building a plane while it's gone down the runway. This is the ultimate example of that. But the plane has been being built week after week, more and more online learning working better and better, and the incredible adaptability of young people to figure out how to connect with it, and make something of it. We're seeing it and it's given me a lot of hope, but we also know we have to respond to this moment, be smart about it, be flexible about it, understand the changes that are going on and how we deal with them. And that's why today we're announcing the new grading policy, because we want to make sure the grading policy we use now fits the moment we're in now, and the reality of our kids, our parents, our educators now.

So, the Chancellor and his team worked with parents, teachers, elected officials, advocates, listened to all different viewpoints. We've had a series of conversations confirming the direction of this policy, and it came to the notion of what we owe our kids at this moment. First of all, flexibility. This is literally a once in a century crisis, and the pain its inflicting on children and families has to be taken into account. There has to be a sense of flexibility in a moment like that, but there also has to be a reminder of our ultimate responsibility to our kids to prepare them for the future, to make them as strong as they can be, to give them the best education we can. This is a moment, a horrible moment, a moment we'll remember all our lives, but remember our kids have decades and decades ahead. We have to prepare them for that, so we have to continue to have high expectations for them. We have to continue to take an approach that helps them be their best. That work continues, and it will even more going into the next school year. We have to do both. We have to understand the moment, be flexible about the moment, but also hold those high expectations. If we didn't do both, we would be doing a disservice to our children.

So, the policy is built with some important foundations. First of all, we must help our seniors graduate, any senior who can graduate, we're going to help them get there. We have to keep our kids engaged. We have to keep improving distance learning, but also have them stick with it all the way up to the next school year to the maximum extent possible. We have to recognize that some kids are having a tougher time, because there's crisis emotionally and academically, we have to help them catch up and use all the time between now and the next school year to do it. So, that piece, that question of will kids be able to catch up? But that's not in the minds of a lot of families. A lot of parents are very worried about that, so let's talk about that first, because that's so important to address. Here's the bottom line, every student is going to get the help they need. The school year, as we know it is so different now because everything's virtual, so that also means we don't have to see the same boundaries we often did in the past. We're going to help students all the way through the spring, through the summer if they need it into the fall. Some kids will not need a lot of help, some kids will need a whole lot of help, some kids in between, but whatever it is, we're going to find ways to continue education for kids who need it. Those who need the most support are going to get the most help, obviously, the seniors need to graduate and they're having trouble that's our first priority, but there's also going to be a lot of kids in eighth grade getting ready to go to high school, we want them to be ready. Anyone, any child who needs that extra help, we have not just May and June, we have July and August as well we're going to use them to the maximum extent— possible.

So, let's talk about the different grade levels and grades K to five and this is such a crucial time. Obviously, I'm a big believer in 3-K and pre-K, but when we look at the times when we really start traditionally to grade kids, all of this from 3-K, pre-K, K-to-five has all the foundation building of course. So, we want to take advantage every day and we want to give clear direction to our kids. So, in light of the moment we're in now, instead of traditional grades, there'll be two grading standards for kids grade to five, either they are meeting the standards or they need improvement very simple, straightforward. But even kids need improvement, we're going to stick with them because we know we can get them to the point where they meet those standards. The Chancellor will talk about more detail, but it will be an evaluation based on a lot of the same things that we normally would, school projects, assignments, writing entries, the same kind of things we would do in person a lot of that can be done online as well. And any child who we need more time with, we're going to find ways to use the summer, we don't know what the summer holds this is something I'll keep saying to you, there's things we do not know yet. We do know that we can use online learning all the time, so we'll have options for the summer for the kids who need that extra help. Middle school, well, middle school is an incredibly difficult time in general when there is no pandemic, middle school is a tough time, every parent out there of a middle school child, you know what I'm talking about. So, we want to make sure we reflect that reality and we work with those kids one-on-one, get them where they need to be. Stand the grades there again, instead of the traditional grades, we'll have three meet standards, needs improvement and course in progress, that's for a young person who particularly needs more time to finish the schoolwork before them.

Again, not the same as in-person classroom instruction, but a lot of similarities there's still class discussions that happen online. There's still presentations and assignments, they're still the kinds of tests that a teacher gives to their own classroom. All of that continues in one form or another and that can be the basis for the evaluation. We're going to make sure those kids who go through so much get the help they need. We can carry that through the summer, we can carry that into the new school year in terms of knowing kids who might need extra help when everyone does come back together as well.

High school, well again, time of so much hope, but so much confusion and anxiety and regular times even more now kids are thinking about future, that's what high school kids do one eye to the future at all times. So, the big question now is, you know, will the future happen on time? And the answer is yes. We're going to work with all of our high school kids, keep things moving forward but with rigor, with real focus on quality and with support. So, in the high schools we'll use the existing grade scales, it's the most pertinent level to continue the grading scales that we've had previously. The same range of things you're graded on the written assignments to turn papers, exams, the presentations, all that continues online. Teachers will be watching to see if young people have gotten where they need to go. But we want to offer an option, again, the flexibility given the moment. Any high school student that's earned credit by completing a course, traditionally they would get a grade, one of the traditional grading structures and that will go into their grade point average and that would obviously have a lot to say about their future, including things like college admission. In this environment, we're giving young people an option in a high school level that given the disruption that's occurred has been different for each student. They have the option, if they have completed a course, they're going to get the credit, but they have the option to choose and this is for the, again, this half of the school year, not for the previous grading that happened earlier in the school year, but for this half of the school year, they can choose to have a passing grade rather than a specific grade in the traditional structure. If that's what they think makes more sense and they have completed the coursework and they have earned the credit, they have that option rather than something that they think might adversely affect their GPA because of aberrant circumstances. That's a choice for each young person and if they need more time, there'll be a course in progress designation that allows them to keep working on that course into the summer even beyond if they need.

For the seniors, of course the focus is on graduation and traditionally there's been June graduation, but also a lot of seniors have finished in August, so we have more than one way to succeed here. We just want to make sure that every senior can graduate does and they'll get the most intense support of any students in our school system. So, that gives you a sense of what we're trying to achieve, we're keeping standards in place, we're keeping a log continuity, we're adding flexibility for this crisis. And our educators are smart, they're going to use a word we normally associate with business, but I've seen this with educators they're entrepreneurial they're creative. They'll figure out what makes sense for their classroom so long as they have clear standards to work from and these will be consistent standards throughout the school system. Now, I just want to speak for a moment to our high school seniors and to their parents, their families. Wasn't that long ago, I've got a 25-year-old and a 22-year-old, so it wasn't that long ago that I was going through with my kids senior year in high school – what a powerful time. Again, a lot of confusion, a lot of doubt, but also a lot of hope and a moment of profound importance to the future, we're going to be there with you every step of the way. Can't do it some of the ways we used to do it, but we're going to be there for you, we need to foster your future.

You are literally the future of New York City, you're our hope, we're going to be there for you and we need to celebrate you. This disruption has been so intense, but that does not take away our belief in you and our sense of the human moment. This moment is so special to you as you approach graduation, we don't want you to lose that. So, every school will have its own approach and every school will look for the opportunity to celebrate you for sure, and right now that all means virtual, but maybe down the line, maybe we'll get lucky enough that some gatherings can start to occur, but here's what I will guarantee you. We're going to do one big citywide virtual graduation ceremony. We're going to do one big celebration of New York City's high school seniors, we're going to make it something very special. You may not have the traditional ceremony that you were looking forward to, we're going to give you something you will remember for the rest of your life and you will cherish. We're going to bring together some very special guests to celebrate you, to salute you the way you stuck with it, not just in the years before, but particularly during this crisis. And you know what's wonderful, some of the people who will be the special stars of this gathering will be graduates themselves of the New York City public schools. That's an extraordinary roster of talented people who make an amazing impact, not just on this City, but on the nation and the whole world. They're going to celebrate you and remind you of the greatness of the students who come out of the New York City public schools. You're going to have a day of inspiration and support and celebration, no matter what this pandemic has thrown at us. We'll have details announced in the weeks ahead, but expect it to be something very special, very memorable, and all about appreciation for you and family members. Parents, that means you too, because we all know God bless our kids in the hard work they do, but every kid gets there because of the love and support of their family. So, we're going to celebrate the parents and the family members as well.

Now, before I conclude on schools, a big question has come up throughout last few weeks – how could we make sure that every kid got what they needed? The technology they needed to be able to participate in online learning we were honest in the beginning, it wasn't in place. Kids didn't all have it, that's part of the digital divide, it's not good, it's not acceptable it's something we need to fight. And I've talked about this horrible crisis also being a moment where we get to learn what's wrong that needs to be fixed and we will fix it going forward. But in the middle of this pain, there's been a chance to— really deal a blow to the digital divide, really fight back against that divide and put technology in the hands of lots of kids who have never had it. And so, the iPad deliveries, the latest best iPads delivered directly to the homes of so many kids who didn't have access before. We said that for every single child who we knew needed one, they would get that delivery by the end of April and that is precisely what is happening. Right now, 247,000 iPads either arrived at the homes of the students or in the process of being shipped to them as we speak – 247,000. That is many more students – and Chancellor, you'll remind us of the exact number of students in the Houston school system, for example, but that's one of the places that the number of kids getting iPads in New York City through this initiative over the last few weeks is more than there are total students in the Houston school system. It's been a vast undertaking and it had to be created very, very rapidly to reach all these kids in time – it’s happening. Now, we had an order for a bigger supply. That means there's some kids that still have not come forward and families not come forward and I'm saying that with empathy. I want you to come forward. If you for any reason or if anyone in your life, anybody watching, listening, anybody in your life, a kid who needs that iPad, doesn't have that technology at home, needs that access and still hasn't asked for it - all you got to do is pick up the phone and call 3-1-1 or you can go to schools.nyc.gov and we can ship it, have it to you in a matter of days. So, we know there's still more kids who need them. We want to find those kids, we want to get them to them and until the, you know, any, any child who still needs it, we're going to serve. Even if they call today, tomorrow, a week from now, we're going to get it to them. But what I'm so proud of our DOE team and all the folks who helped us in the private sector is we're approaching a quarter million kids who have gotten iPads in a matter of weeks and that's tremendous with the internet service attached. This is how you fight the digital divide and this is going to supercharge the online learning in the months ahead.

Let me go to a few other topics, well one other topic and then I want to go to our daily indicators. So small businesses, I have talked to so many people, small business owners and people who love their neighborhood small businesses and there are, there's so much concern for our small businesses right now. You know, it's going to be hard for everyone to make it through so we can restart our economy and I'm sure bigger businesses are deeply challenged as well, but the brunt is being born by small business. They don't have the reserves and the big apparatus and all the experts that they hire to help them navigate this. Small business has taken on a chin and we need to help them every step of the way. Now look, I've said from the beginning that the city put together a loan and grant program almost $50 million; that's being exhausted immediately. That's what we could do, but what we really needed was intensive federal support and, and some has really come in the previous stimulus and in the action taken in the last few days in Washington as well; that's a good thing. We were all very distressed to see a lot of that money siphoned off by big businesses and some of that is now being returned so it can go to small and medium sized businesses who really need it. But what we saw is as good as it is that the federal government actually is stepping up and putting real money out there for small, medium sized businesses, the way it's being done is creating a lot of problems. First, that those big businesses tried to usurp it, but second, it's a first-come, first-serve basis and some businesses are in much better position to take advantage of it than others. And the ones that need it the most, the ones that have the fewest resources actually are getting boxed out; we cannot let that happen. So, the Paycheck Protection Program – that money – we saw how quickly it was used up the first time around. Now there's another round; came out of what was referred to as stimulus 3.5 and the program is replenished and with serious money, $310 billion. And there's two particular heroes in this effort, one, our own Senator Chuck Schumer, who led the way and fought intensely on the Senate side and then on the House side, the Chair of the Small Business Committee for the House of Representatives for the whole nation, is New York City's own, Congressmember Nydia Velázquez. And she fought not only for all that money and to push back the usurping by big business and make sure it was reserved for the businesses that need it, but she also made sure that the process was much fairer to community based businesses, to businesses that fuel resources, to businesses that don't use big banks, but use community credit unions and other sources of financing, to businesses in communities of color that have for a long time been denied access to credit. Senator Schumer, Congressmember Velázquez, really pushed to change this program to make it more about every day small businesses and make it more fair for all. Now, everyone out there who is a small business owner or close to a small business owner, it's time to get you in the game and get you the support. You deserve this money. You've been hit so hard. We need to help you survive. So, we want to make sure you get access to this federal money. It's first come first serve, so you have to apply immediately and the simple way to apply is the federal government website, SBA, “small business administration,” sba.gov, sba.gov that's where you apply. The application is certainly not the easiest in the world, but you got to do it; you’ve got to do it quickly. Now, we're hearing from a lot of small businesses that it’s tough to navigate that application. We're today putting together an initiative to help you immediately. In the next few hours, you'll be able to call 3-1-1 and get connected to sources of help; experts who can help you navigate the application. This is something we're putting together quickly as we see this need. We're hearing it so deeply from small businesses. So we're going to get you some help, some facilitation. But the most important thing is to immediately start working on the application. So, if you haven't yet small business owners, go to sba.gov, please immediately. Get that application, get ready, the information you need and if you need some special help, call 3-1-1 this afternoon and beyond and we'll be able to help you out.

Okay, it's time for our daily indicators and again, what we've seen is over the whole course of almost two weeks now; definite and serious progress, not the progress we ideally want, which is for all the indicators to go down steadily and in the same direction, but clearly progress and that's getting us closer to the day when we can start to make some of the moves to open things up. But I've said it before, I'll keep saying it – we're going to be cautious, we're going to be careful, we’re [inaudible] governed. We will be governed by the facts and the facts have to get consistent for us to make some of those moves and we're going to be very smart and cautious when we do it. Today a good day, not a perfectly good day, but definitely a good day. Indicator one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID - that went down from 122 to 112. Daily, excuse me, indicator two, daily number of people in ICUs across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19 that went down from 766 to 745. Indicator three, percentage of people tested positive for COVID-19 citywide – that went down 29 percent to 27 percent. The only category went up is in some ways the toughest category, the testing at the public health lab of some of the folks dealing with the most illness - that went up, but only by one percent – that's a good sign – from 55 percent to 56 percent. So, a very strong day – further evidence that what you all are doing is working, keep doing the social distancing, keep doing the shelter-in-place, stay at home, it's working. We're getting closer and closer to those days when we see steady downward trend every single day and that's what we need.

So, I'm going to just say one more thing to the kids in New York City and then a few words in Spanish and I'm going to turn to our Chancellor. So, to every kid out there, every student, every young person, if you feel like you're going through a lot right now, guess what? We understand that you are; you're going through a hell of a lot. I feel bad for you, I do, because you're being asked to shoulder a burden that honestly, young people haven't been asked to shoulder in a long, long time. You're being asked to make sense of this crisis in your own lives while going through everything else you go through as young people; it's a lot. Sometimes parents and family members you think may not understand everything you're going through. I'm sure that's true on one level, but we all try with all our might to appreciate everything you're grappling with and we will be there for you. The times we're living in, they're literally unprecedented. There's nothing like this we can find a parallel for – certainly not in our memory – but what we know is we have to support you. The love we all feel for you has to come out as support and understanding. We have to express it as a real empathy for what you are going through. And so, we're going to be there with you every step of the way. I have faith in you, I really do. I have spent the last six years going to New York City public schools, it's literally the most inspiring thing I do as part of my job as Mayor is meet all of you and see how extraordinary you are. There's a bright, bright future ahead. We're going to have to fight our way through these months ahead, but there is a bright future ahead and it is because of you. So, thank you.

Few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, I have to say one of the things that people may not remember well is at the time that I hired Richard Carranza to lead the largest school system in the country, he had just been a leader in Houston in the valiant, extraordinary effort to bring that city and that school system back after Hurricane Harvey. Again, an unprecedented disaster that afflicted one of the nation's biggest and greatest cities. And then, as superintendent of the Houston schools, Richard Carranza was the man who had to innovate a whole new approach and speed up the process of bringing back education in a place that had been put back on its heels deeply. I was so impressed when I spoke to him about those tough days he went through, and everyone in Houston went through, because he had this clear spirit, this can-do attitude, this belief that any challenge could be overcome. It was unmistakable and it gave me a lot of hope thinking about what he would do as our chance or Lord knows, I never expected him and everyone at the Department of Education to have to deal with a pandemic, but how telling that this man had already brought his school system back previously in another place from another disaster and it was in his DNA to do so. So, Chancellor, what you have done, what your team has done has been pretty miraculous. And I have great faith that we're going to have a strong spring, a strong summer and an outstanding, absolutely outstanding next school year with your leadership.

Chancellor Richard Carranza –

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Mr. Mayor, thank you very much. I am humbled to be here and honored to be here. And I want to echo everything that you said about our students, about our teachers, our principals and our families. But before I say anything else, I want to give – you know, I've spent every week visiting our regional enrichment centers and seeing heroes in action – our school safety agents, our student nutrition workers, our teachers, our administrators – really tending to the children are of our first responders and our medical personnel in a very caring, loving and trauma-informed way. It's been nothing short of miraculous. But I do want to take a moment to thank the teachers who are teaching, the administrators that are supervising and clearing the way and clearing the obstacles for teachers to be able to do what they do, and our parents at home. I have seen countless examples of incredibly innovative and enriching activities that our teachers are putting forward for our students. I've seen teachers engaging every single day with their students, finding their students, making sure they're engaged. So, I want to say to all the teachers out there and all the principals, thank you. One of the fallacies that we often hear is that we've been out of school for a number of weeks. Well, I want to be very clear that school has been in session. We have never stopped being in session. What has changed is the manner in which we've engaged with our students. Instead of face to face, in-person, we are doing it remotely, which is why we say this is remote learning. So, to all of our teachers and administrators that are on the front lines, I want to say thank you to you as well. You also are the heroes that are continuing to keep our students engaged. So, thank you.

What we're announcing today is a result of a tremendous amount of collaboration and discussion. And on this particular topic, the opinions and ideas are vast and wide. On one end, there is the notion that nothing should change, we should continue to have everything as it was prior to COVID-19, that accountability is important; on the other end is, listen, it's a traumatic event, we've never gone through this, so everybody passes, everybody gets an A, everybody just moves forward – and everything in between. We've heard all of those comments, but, at the end of the day, Mr. Mayor, you and I have the responsibility. You and I have the accountability of having a policy that will not inadvertently harm students when they decide to do the next thing in their careers, whether it's going to college, whether it's a scholarship, whether it's a career. So, we have to craft the policy that recognizes the trauma, that recognizes the voice, that recognizes what our students and our community have been through, yet still provides for a path forward for our students, given the fact that we've never stopped being in session. So, the policy we were introducing takes into account all the feedback that we received. We've heard from students, parents, principals, teachers, we've heard from professors, we've heard from elected officials. We've taken all of that input into consideration with a policy, but we've remained focused on keeping our students learning well, taking this into account in this new reality. Mr. Mayor, as you said, we've developed a policy that keeps our students on track, especially our seniors who are about to graduate. And I want to thank you for the commitment of this city to recognize and celebrate our seniors. We will celebrate you. It may not be in the manner that you thought and we know that there are a number of schools that are thinking about what they're going to do as well, we're going to support them as well, but we want to make sure that you know we're proud of you. This policy also accounts for the extra support that students are going to need and helps us to identify those students that are going to need those extra supports. I fully stand behind this policy. I think it's an elegant way to thread the needle of keeping students engaged while still recognizing that our community has suffered trauma. Remember, that this is about recognizing the needs and the strengths of our students as we go forward.

This policy also recognizes that an enormous number of our students are bringing the acute trauma they've suffered that COVID-19 crisis has wrought for them, their families, and for the city. It also takes the current environment into account when assessing students and ensuring that we have a uniform equitable system across the board. The number-one thing that I've heard from every stakeholder that I've engaged with is we need something that is citywide and that is standard. It maintains our standards and require students to complete the work, but recognizes as well that we as educators, we, as a system, an educational system, must be flexible in how we go about that work. Our teachers, as you've mentioned, Mr. Mayor, are our experts in meeting students where they are and responding to differentiated levels, but they need to know and they need to have the information at their fingertips to be able to make those assessments. We're providing and we will continue to provide, but with this new policy, we will provide guidance specifically to schools immediately, and if you're a parent or guardian with questions, don't hesitate to ask. We're here to walk you through this and we're here to support you every step of the way. The extent of this public health crisis has become clear that we need to close buildings. And, as you remember, Mr. Mayor, this was a very deeply painful but necessary decision. However, through all of the ups and downs, our families and school communities have remained resolute while tackling this tremendous undertaking. As always, we know that our students can rise to the occasion, but we've already seen our educators take this on into the largest school system in America, entering our sixth week of remote learning where other school systems are starting today. So, this is kudos to our educators who have made this heavy lift. And, Mr. Mayor, I just want to clarify one data point. You asked with our iPad distribution, we have now shipped 247,000 iPads – Wi-Fi-equipped iPads – that's equivalent to the entire school system of Atlanta, Seattle, Detroit and San Francisco combined is that number – 247,000 iPads. So, we should be very proud of the work that we've done, but also understand that there's much more work to do.

Mayor: Thank you for – thank you for that update very much, Chancellor. Okay, we're going to turn to our colleagues in the media. And please remember to give me the name and the outlet of each journalist. And here we go.

Moderator: Just a quick reminder to folks that in addition to having Chancellor Carranza in the Blue Room, we also have Dr. Barbot and Commissioner Banks on the phone. Juliet from 1010 WINS is up first. Juliet?

Question: Yes. Good morning, Mr. Mayor and Chancellor. How are you doing?

Mayor: Good, Juliet. How you doing?

Question: I'm fine, thank you. So, I actually have a two-part question for you regarding the education issue. There had been about 300 parents on a Zoom meeting, I believe yesterday or last night, that were opposed to this proposal that you're making, the announcement that you're making. And they are supportive of this measure that would allow the lowest grade to be dropped so that students can still receive a grade for, you know, three-quarters of the work that they did during the year. So, that's the proposal – question number one. Number two is, how are you dealing with – will [inaudible] days exist at all for this school year? How are you working at coordinating that?

Mayor: Hey, Juliette helped me just understand that question a little bit better. What are you saying with that second part?

Question: About snow days? Are they going to exist anymore or do you account for them at all?

Mayor: I'll see if I can get that. I mean, the notion for the future certainly exists, but I think the question here has always been, you know, once you broke out – and it was horrible to have to do this, but once we broke out of the traditional model of kids going to a school building, you know, everything changed. So, you know, if we were to have physical schools the way they were, something like a snow day would be an issue, but everything like that is now been subsumed by distance learning. When we come back in the future, we'll resume the focus on education in school buildings and, you know, for next school year, the concept of school of snow days and all will exist. Hopefully we won't have the snow to go with it, but it’ll exists. But to the first point,
I'll pass to the Chancellor, but just say, remember that the work done in the first half of the school year happened and is in the books and what we're talking about really is the second half of the school year, which got disrupted very early on. The kids came back just weeks before, you know, for the – for the second half of the year, they came back just weeks before this all happened. And so, this is about really acknowledging how disruptive this all was for kids and how it makes it really hard to adjust, do what we were doing before with no modification. It was smart to add some flexibility, but that does not affect everything that was in the books previously.

Chancellor?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah. So, we've actually taken into consideration that particular question. It's important, as the Mayor has mentioned, to recognize that three quarters of this school year were in the books when we adjourn to remote learning. So, teachers do have an academic record of students. At the high school level, which is what I read into this question, because it's much more germane at the high school level, there is a provision which is aligned to what CUNY does, which allows students at the end of this marking period – first of all, a student won't get a final grade that is lower than any of the grades they got in any one of the marking periods this year. That's a safety net for our students. But secondly, once a student is ready for a letter grade, the student and family will have the option of either taking the letter grade or instead opting for a pass. Now, the difference is – is that if the student chooses to keep the letter grade, that gets factored into the grade point average, the GPA. But if the student opts to take a pass, then it does not impact the GPA. It just shows credit has been earned. So, it's another flexibility and flexible – flexibility point that we've built into this grading policy that, again, recognizes the trauma. It's aligned to State education department regulations and it's aligned to what CUNY does as well. So, again, trying to make sure our students are being well-served while providing the maximum amount of flexibility as possible.

Moderator: Katie from the Wall Street Journal is up next. Katie?

Question: Hey, good morning. I have a two-part question and it's focused on, you know, the students who have an alternate assessment who have school year-round, if there's any plan to update that program. And I guess it will continue remotely. And then, additionally, what is the DOE working on to provide that additional needed support for students who may need – maybe missed a lot of remote learning – whether it's in September or will they be allowed to kind of enroll in summer school when maybe they wouldn't usually have enrolled?

Mayor: And let me just preface what the Chancellor will answer to both those questions by saying we are working through the shape of summer as we speak. We’ll have more to say on that soon in terms of what summer learning options there will be. We all understand that summer and what summer's going to look like in the atmosphere of this crisis is a big open question. But what we – what is not an open question is that the DOE will have more than one contingency ready for how we’re going to support kids online at minimum. And so, I want to be very clear that, you know, when the day comes when we're going to flesh that out and show the exact nature of that, we will present it. But as we speak, different elements of a summer plan are being put together by the DOE.

Go ahead, Richard.

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, really good question – questions. So, the grading policy and the flexibilities will apply to all students, including students that have alternate assessments. As we know, students that have alternate assessments have individual education plans, IEPs. So, that is being noted in their IEPs and there's outreach to parents, because parents have a voice in what that IEP looks like. That started on day-one when we went into remote learning. That continues to this day. And again, the focus here is to provide the maximum flexibility to students and to parents that recognizes traumatic events that we're currently in. It also applies to our students that are immigrant students, students that are multilingual learners. So, any subgroup of student that you can think of, our schools, our teachers, our administrators are focused on making sure that they're being served to the greatest extent possible. Just to add to what the Mayor said about summer school, there are multiple scenarios that we are modeling and working through about what summer school would look like.

Obviously, the medical advice and what it looks like in terms of this virus in the community is going to have a big role to play in what summer school can or will look like. What is absolutely clear though, is that this grading policy will give us the opportunity to identify students that need additional support, that need additional enrichment, that need additional time, and then provide them the time to be able to actually complete. The goal here is not to fail students. I can't think of any educator that would say, I want to be a teacher because I want to fail students. The goal is to have students master the subject matter. That's always been the goal. So, if some students need more time, this is a perfect opportunity to actually create that system where students get that time.

Moderator: Henry from Bloomberg is up next. Henry?

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. There's a report in Yahoo News that says that the federal government is going to support the City in a massive antibody testing program. And I'd like to know whether or not this report is accurate, and, if it is, how many tests are going to be conducted? When will it start? Who will be tested? And what's the intent of this program?

Mayor: So, Henry, there's been a number of discussions with the federal government on the question of testing, to say the least. I have had the conversation about testing with the President, and the Vice President, and a whole range of the key health officials in the federal government. So, this has been going on for weeks on one level. We are trying to figure out how we can do more testing of every kind – antibody testing, which, you know, I've been clear and our health leadership has been clear, brings some real virtues, obviously has to be done the right way and has to be done with the qualification that it isn't a perfect answer. But – and, of course, the PCR testing that will be the backbone of what we need to do with testing and tracing. And that's really the central strategy, going forward. We need federal help to do all of the above. So, we have been in real conversations about how to do that and how to expand it. My hope is we'll have something more tangible to say in the next few days. But the fact is, as with all things federal, it's been a kind of uneven situation. I'd like to get clear answers so that we can present them to the people in New York City. And I'd like to see a lot of federal support for testing here in the city. As soon as we have something that is ready to go, we're certainly going to announce it.

Moderator: Next up is Marcia from CBS-2. Marcia?

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Marcia. How are you?

Question: Good. I'd like to talk to you about the homeless on the subways. I have a multi-part question, but they're all related. The fact that you've announced this new program, are you now accepting responsibility for getting the homeless off the subways? And since the NYPD flooded the end of line station at the World Trade Center today with cops and workers, are you planning to do it at the other end of line stations? There are 38 total. I know you're focusing on 10. And I just also was wondering, since you've [inaudible] about a billion dollars out of your affordable hose housing plan over the next two years, will that adversely affect the number of homeless in the city because there'll be less places for them to live?

Mayor: Thank you, Marcia. I appreciate those questions. The last piece, I don't think – I mean, look, we're all [inaudible] that we've had the largest affordable housing program in the history of New York City. It's been an incredible success and I want to tip my cap to everyone who has been a part of it from day-one, creating such an aggressive affordable housing program and that has been consistently ahead of schedule and on budget. It's been amazing. It's sad to have to delay some of that. It's very sad, but that is the budgetary reality we're dealing with. And of all the things we had to deal with in the immediate term, that was something that we decided we would just grudgingly have to make a tough choice on, but it will continue, unquestionably Marcia, on that piece, I would say, like everything, the more affordable housing, the better off you're always going to be in terms of fighting homelessness, because the shape of homelessness today in terms of shelter homelessness is more and more, as we've talked about, it's families. It's families who found economic struggles not because mental health or substance abuse, but it was an economic problem, end up in shelter. The more affordable housing you build, the more you can address the shelter homeless reality, unquestionably. But when it comes to street homelessness, which is a painful, painful problem – a very painful and historic problem in the city, but it is a much smaller problem. It's a few thousand people. That has always been about, you know, the outreach efforts in recent years. The HOME-STAT effort, the, the Safe Havens that we've talked about a lot, those smaller places that we bring people in to try and get them off the street and keep them off the street, the supportive housing, which is affordable housing specifically for people who have mental health challenges and other challenges and need social services in the place they live. That work all continues. In fact, we announced yesterday that additional Safe Haven space and affordable housing space for homeless people is being brought online right now.

So, I would separate the two pieces, Marcia and say the pieces that are most focused on the homeless are continuing unabated. The larger reality of our affordable housing plan, some of it, unfortunately, is going to have to be delayed. But here's why I remind you, and Marcia, I know we talked about this back around the holidays, that Journey Home vision of getting street homeless people off the street, those who have been on the street a year, two years, three years, four years. We believe we can consistently get more and more of them off the street. We've seen a lot of success with the HOME-STAT initiative that now we're going to build it out. And even in this crisis, I spoke to Commissioner Banks about this in the last couple of days. Marcia, we've seen a number of street homeless, permanently homeless folks, come in and accept those Safe Haven placements. And we want to do a lot more of that. So that work does not stop now.

Now on the question of who's responsible for homelessness in the subways? It's like other questions I've been asked lately. We're all responsible. It's all of our jobs to get this done. The State runs the MTA clearly. The State has a whole lot of the pieces to the puzzle here. All the employees of the MTA who we need to help in this effort in a variety of ways. We need to be the eyes and ears, the MTA police. There's lots of pieces of the equation that are run by the State. But the City has a big piece of this too because we have the NYPD as the primary element of safety in the subways. Also, the NYPD doing more and more work in recent years on homeless outreach and teaming up with Social Services, with health care providers to do more to help homeless people get into shelter. The NYPD has been outstanding. And, of course, Social Services, all the organizations that do outreach that are part of the City's efforts, all the nonprofits. I see this as a big team effort and the joint responsibility. What we announced yesterday is more places to bring homeless folks from the subway or the street to get them off the street, out of the subway permanently. And what we announced is a vision that we need the MTA to help us with. We'll do our share. We'll devote the police resources, we'll devote the outreach workers, we'll do whatever it takes, but we need the MTA to agree to this plan.

It's a common sense plan, Marcia. Here's how it goes. We’ve got 10 key stations. They're the end points of subway lines. That's where we have a particular problem. We all know for decades there have been homeless people in the subways going from one end of a line back again, back again, all night long. That needs to stop. The way to stop that is to support those people and help them come in and accept housing, but also to disrupt the pattern. The way to disrupt the pattern is between midnight and 5:00 am, close those stations. Deep clean those stations, which is good for everyone in this moment. Have a shuttle bus that takes any customers who need to get on the subway, take some one-stop up to the next station. So literally you're talking about between midnight and 5:00 am, in a subway system that's got a small fraction of the number of strap hangers that it normally would have, so that can be done with shuttle buses. We will help get that done too. But deep clean the stations and everyone has to get out of the stations. Instead of what's happened for years and years, that a homeless person just sits there on the train or maybe gets off the train temporarily gets right back on it. Goes then the whole way back. We want to create a change where everyone gets out of the station. Our homeless outreach workers are there to engage and get people support, take them right away, if they're ready to come into a Safe Haven. NYPD is there to assist and make sure that we get the help to people they need.

This would be a game changer, Marcia. We just need the MTA to say yes. It's not hard. They just need to say yes to this innovation and we'll do our share and then some. I'm going to tell you the stations, just so everyone hears them. It's Coney Island Stillwell Avenue on the D and F, Flatbush Avenue Brooklyn College on the 2 and 5, Jamaica 179th Street on the F train, Jamaica Center, Parsons/Archer on the E, World Trade Center on the E, 96th Street Second Avenue on the Q, Pelham Bay Park on the 6, Van Cortlandt Park 242nd Street on the 1 train, Wakefield 241st Street on the 2 and 5, and Woodlawn on the 4 train. The MTA just has to say yes and we can together, do something really important to reduce the number of homeless people in the subways and get them the help they need. So asking the MTA to join us in that effort and let's get to work on it together.

Moderator: Shant from the Daily News is up next. Shant?

Question: Thank you Mr. Mayor. I gather that homelessness on the subways is just one piece of commuters’ reservations about using the subways during coronavirus. There's still a lot of concern about packing close together. I'm wondering what else you can tell New Yorkers to potentially reassure them once the subway -- once the city reopens that the subways are safe? On a completely different note, graduation traditionally being a time when seniors might indulge in pranks, what would you say to seniors who might be contemplating that and they want to blow off some steam?

Mayor: Well, Shant, obviously we were all young ones and it doesn't surprise me that that moment, it's a jubilant moment when you graduate. But I don't, maybe I'm missing some of the mood, but I don't think so. I don't get the feeling that young people are thinking about pranks right now. I think everyone's pretty sober by this moment. I've watched carefully as I've gone all over the city, talked to so many people who are deeply engaged in their communities. I'm not getting the impression so far that young people have somehow missed, what a difficult moment this is. I think they're, you know, they hate being cooped up at home. I think when they go out in parks and all, they still have a tendency to want to gather together. That's all understandable and we got to keep helping them understand for their safety and their family, that doesn't make sense. But I'm not getting the sense of pranks being on people's minds, but it's something we'll certainly keep an eye on. And I think the message would be, Hey, you know, anything that might be upsetting to people or you know, hurtful to people at this moment, people are going through a lot, it's probably not a great time for most of the things we would have thought were pranks in the past.

On the question of the subways, look, Shant, I think this is going to be a step by step thing. We're going to be real clear about these indicators that I go over, when it's time to do a little more and then a little more and a little more. But we're going to be cautious and I think that's what the people believe is right at this point to be careful and smart and really go by the numbers. Which means I don't expect a subway ridership to turn on suddenly. I expect it to be sort of slow and steady in stages. I think people are going to have to feel their way and I think some people are going to be more ready to go back to the subways. Others are going to take their time. Eventually, I believe, you know, we're New Yorkers, we're all going to come back to the subways over time. But will be in direct connection to a couple of things. How much progress we're making overall on the disease, I think will be the single biggest determinant. What is done to keep showing that the subways are being cleaned regularly and that there's a real sensitivity to the health realities, you know, and I think people just having a sense that when they weigh the options, it's the one that makes sense for them in their lives. New Yorkers are very resilient and I think at first, even some of them might be hesitant, over time the convenience of the subways, the fact it is part of our culture, we'll bring people back. But you know, I think we have to do it in stages. I think that's the smart way to go.

Moderator: Yoav from The City is up next. Yoav?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask you about underground yeshivas. There's been recent reports that the efforts are more organized and not perhaps a rogue operation as initially thought. So, I wanted to ask you how you guys are investigating these complaints? And also, what the protocol is because you've heard in one case the NYPD was investigating but in another [inaudible] we heard that City Hall responded directly to someone's complaint? Just how are you guys investigating it and what's the latest you're hearing? Because initially City Hall kind of dismissed it as these kind of rogue teaching operations.

Mayor: Yeah. Yoav, I don't remember anyone dismissing any gathering, honestly. I think we were very, very clear. As you know, I've talked about publicly weeks and weeks ago I had a conference call with key Jewish leaders around the city. And there was tremendous support on that call for shutting down. And it was painful obviously for people, but for shutting down shuls, shutting down all sorts of community gatherings. And I think the leadership of the Jewish community, the rabbinical leadership have been absolutely united in saying all of that has to change. And I've seen a whole lot of adherence to that. The one we saw some specific complaints about, which was identified from the beginning as a very small number of people who were trying to create services, some in their actual synagogues, smaller synagogue, some in homes, we made very clear, I made very clear in my whole team has, that's unacceptable. And the NYPD was ready to enforce. And in a few cases had to enforce, but there wasn't much that I heard of that needed enforcement in the end.

I put the yeshivas in the exact same category and for any faith, any background, any gathering, no gatherings. We are not allowing gatherings now. So, I'm going to say it to you, Yoav and I'm going to say it to all your colleagues. Someone give me an address. We had a point the other day raised by one of your colleagues from one of the Jewish publications. And I said to him, give me an address of the problem. He gave me an address right there. We sent NYPD out to address the problem immediately and to make clear it's unacceptable. So, if anyone knows of an, I don't know of a specific address of an underground yeshiva. If anyone sees it, knows about it, tell – you can call 3-1-1, you can tell the City Hall team, you can tell the NYPD it's one common approach. It will be shut down period.

Moderator: Alex from Chalkbeat is up next. Alex?

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Good. Alex, how you doing?

Question: Good. I have two questions. One is just whether you guys can explain a little bit more what you mean by in progress, like how that will be determined? And like if you're a student who is just getting an iPad this week, like are you just automatically going to get an in progress grade? And my second question is about screening. Given that obviously grades this year are going to be very different. And attendance is not going to be considered in middle and high school admissions. Like what you're going to tell schools in terms of how they can screen students or whether they will be allowed to screen the students?

Mayor: Go ahead, Chancellor.

Chancellor Carranza: So, on the question of screening and the grades, the Mayor and I have been very clear that we will not penalize students in any way, shape or form because of circumstances out of their control. A pandemic is certainly a circumstance out of their control. We've already said with attendance. So concomitantly with now the grading policy, we will be bringing -- we will be putting forth some guidance in the coming weeks around what that will look like in terms of the screening and admissions process as well. As it pertains to in progress classification that is being used for students where there's just not enough information for teachers to assess where are they. Have they met the standard or have they not yet met the standard. So, in progress connotes to the system and to us that these are the students that we particularly have to engage in a rigorous assessment protocol to assess where are they, what do they need? It could be a number of things. It could be the fact that they in fact did not have access to the technology. It could also be that they did have the technology, but were dealing with a number of family members that were sick. It could be that some of these students, especially older students, were essential workers in grocery stores. So, there's a whole myriad of things that could affect a teacher not having enough information to make an assessment of that student's academic progress. In progress is something that gives us not only a marker, but it gives the teacher the ability to say, we need to do a deeper dive with this particular student.

Moderator: Sydney from the Advance is up next. Sydney?

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor, last week I asked you why you weren't including the entire borough of Staten Island and private hospitals in your ICU indicator portion of your daily count. I wanted to see if you might consider, you know, moving forward at least adding Staten Island’s private hospitals to that count so that the ICU projections from all of the five boroughs are represented? And if you can just elaborate a little bit more on why you weren't including the ICU count from private hospitals? Have you tried to do so or have you not tried at all? And I have another question about the ferry. My paper reported that NYC Ferry will retain all existing funding and not receive a budget cut or a fare change while Staten Island's Ferry's budget was cut in your Fiscal 2021 Budget. Wondering why the Staten Island Ferry’s budget was cut and not NYC Ferry’s? And do you anticipate Staten Island’s new fast ferry route will still be able to launch this year given the financial uncertainty the city is facing right now?

Mayor: Okay. On the ferry. One there will be cuts to NYC Ferry and that will certainly be reflected in the next stage of the budget process. Two – obviously, it's never fun to talk about any cuts, but everything that has to be cut will be cut as we deal with more and more challenges. Two, we're certainly trying to figure out the next stages that had been scheduled for the Ferry expansion. Staten Island was a piece of that, Coney Island, in the Bronx. We're trying to figure out what's going to happen with that now in light of everything going on. So we'll have more to say on that as well in the budget process between now and June.

On the ICUs. What I've said before is that the data related to the Health + Hospitals hospitals is the data that is most consistent and readily available to us for a daily tracking system. As Dr. Katz said over the course of the last two months, we've seen very high levels of consistency between the data in the Health + Hospitals and what we're seeing in the rest of the hospital system. So Health + Hospitals is about 20 percent of all City hospitals, gives us a pretty clear view of what's happening throughout. But it's more readily available, consistent data because 56 hospitals overall, very different systems, very different speeds with which we get their information. So this was about keeping our indicator system going on a regular basis and consistent and informative. We'll check for sure Sydney, to see if there's any dissonance when we factor in not just the Staten Island hospitals but other hospitals around the city if it tells us anything particularly different. But if not, I think you should not see this as an effort to give you a snapshot of what's happening in every hospital. This is a citywide indicator to decide how we're going to approach the restart and what point and which way. So long as we continue to see it as a consistent, accurate citywide indicator, that's what it's there for.

Moderator: Erin from Politico is up next. Erin?

Question: Mr. Mayor, Marcia touched on part of my question, but with regards to the cuts to the affordable housing program, do you know how many units that is going to affect? And why specifically were the cuts chosen to be made in this area?

Mayor: So, Erin, we'll get you more detailed today and obviously we're going to be going through a lot of detail over the next few weeks as we go into the heart of the budget process culminating in the middle of June. But look, I – first of all, the larger vision around affordable housing remains intact. This is about slowing down some investments and postponing some things. It is not taking away the bigger vision and it’s a vision that I really, again, commend everyone from the very beginning of the administration to now, who is part of creating and implementing the affordable housing plan. Because it's been extraordinarily consistent and it's reached hundreds of thousands of people. And ultimately, as you know, at its full extent will reach more than 700,000 New Yorkers. So it's an astounding initiative. It will keep going. But when you think about the budget dynamics, we were dealing with suddenly a massive budget gap. We were dealing with a cash flow crisis on top of that. Anytime that you book a capital project, it has ramifications for the budget. Obviously for the expense side of the budget too because of debt service. We had to slow down a lot of capital investments just to be able to make sure we could pay the bills now. And it's really a horrible situation, but that's what we had to do. But the plan is intact and it will be implemented in the future. 

Again, the big question in the month of May will be the federal stimulus and what that will mean for everything we're doing. I spoke to Speaker Pelosi on Sunday and we had a very good detailed conversation. And I want to thank her for her amazing leadership. And the next stimulus bill will initiate in the House of Representatives. That's a very good thing for all the places that have been hurt so much by COVID-19, because I know the House of Representatives is listening to the reality of what we've been through.

So, the stimulus will really determine what we're going to have to do going forward. There'll be tough choices any way you slice it, but the stimulus, if it actually takes into account what has happened here, all the costs, human and otherwise that have been inflicted on New York City and all that's been lost – and including first and foremost the human loss but then, of course, the horrible impact on the budget that's used to provide services to people – if it's really, really heard and understood and acted on, that stimulus could be a lifesaver for us. And if it's not, we're going to be in an even tougher situation, but that's going to then really govern everything else we have to decide in June.

Moderator: Gwen from Crain’s is up next – Gwen.

Question: So, real estate is a major –

Moderator: You’re really quiet –

Mayor: Yeah. Get close to the phone or – 

Question: Yeah, sorry about that. 

Mayor: There you go.

Question: Okay, great. So, good morning. Real estate is a major part of the city's tax base. What's your plan to reassure the commercial and residential property owners during a time when so many are calling for a rent strike? 

Mayor: It's a good question. Look, I've said the answer lies primarily in Albany and it's time for Albany to act. Rent strike is not the answer, but relief for renters is the answer. So, one, I've called upon our Rent Guidelines Board in the city, this is the piece we can do to ensure a rent freeze for the year ahead. It's the right thing to do given what tenants have gone through. The horrible economic situation we're in. But the State has the power to take other actions, including most immediately to allow renters to pay their rent with a security deposit, which is the ultimate win-win – it helps the renters, it helps the landlords. The State of New Jersey acted on this and I commend them. And I put out a tweet and said, you know, as proud New Yorkers, it's hard to get the words out of our mouths, you know, we're going to follow New Jersey on this one, but we really should follow New Jersey on this one. The State of New York should do what New Jersey did and give that opportunity to renters. 

And then beyond that, create a system that people who have no money – and it'd have to be documented – but if you have no money to pay the rent, you should be allowed to forego it and pay it back later on. There should be a payment plan system. And, of course, tightening up our anti-eviction rules to make sure that there cannot be evictions now during the crisis and for 60 days after to protect people. I think, given that, I know landlords are going through a lot too, and again, the vast majority of landlords go about their business appropriately and fairly. They need, of course, sources of income. But we can't ask tenants who don't have any money – if they don't have any money, they don't have any money. It's not their fault. So, for the tenants who can pay, great key paying on time. If you can't pay, you should have the option to use your security deposit. If you can't pay even after that, you should have the option to defer, but with a payment plan so at least the landlords can plan on that.

Moderator: Last two, Jeff Mays from the New York Times – Jeff. 

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor. The Governor said recently that he wished he had blown the bugle earlier about coronavirus and what was happening in Wuhan Province. I'm wondering do you have any thoughts about that? Do you wish you had done anything earlier in relation to dealing with the pandemic that we're experiencing right now?

Mayor: Jeff, look, I respect the question. I know your publication has already put a lot of energy into looking back and I think it's an important endeavor and as a human being, I'll tell you, you know, of course, I think about all the things that have happened in these weeks and months and think about what did we understand – all of us – what did we not understand? You know, what might've been different? But I will also tell you that right now, honestly, we've got lives to save right now. We've got extraordinarily important decisions to make right now about the future, about how we protect people, and how we bring this city forward, and how we figure out the right kind of restart. I don't personally put a lot of time into dwelling on the past when I have people to serve right now and people to protect right now.

I think there will be a time to really evaluate everything and figure out what we can learn, what it can tell us for the future, what we understood, what we didn't, what we did right, what we didn't. That time will clearly come. But I'll tell you one thing and I appreciate, you know, the Governor, I think, was speaking from the heart and I appreciate that. I do know one thing, on January 24th, a group of us gathered at Emergency Management and were very clear about the fact that this virus was coming to New York City. And I remember vividly saying it was not a matter of if, but when, and that the ability to protect the city hinged on testing and that if we could not get not only the physical tests but the authority from the federal government to perform our own tests, our city was in danger.

Remember the weeks and weeks where we pleaded just to be able to do tests locally. Remember all that long stretch of time where every test had to be sent to Atlanta. I mean, when you look back, there'll be plenty to discuss about everyone's role, but the central issue here, the original sin here, is the question of the federal government's role in testing. Because we had a chance in this city to contain this had we been able to see it. We couldn't see it without testing. But again, we'll analyze and every one of us, you know, if you're a human being with a heart and soul, you're thinking all the time, I'm certainly thinking all the time, you know, not only what was, but every single hour of the day, am I doing the right thing with the information I have, am I making the right choices for my people?

And what I'm crystal clear about is it's about health and safety. That is what governs these choices. And you know, I still am frustrated that knowing that the best way to protect my people would be maximum testing – even this morning as I speak to you, I do not have the cooperation I need from the federal government to do that. So, imagine January 24th, February, March, now almost all of April, asking the same exact question, making the same exact demand and still we're not getting the help we need. That's the big story here. And we're not going to stop fighting until we get it.

Moderator: Last question goes to Gloria of NY1. Gloria? 

Question: Thank you. I just wanted to see if it's – I have two questions – if it was possible to get some clarity on the summer school aspect of this. I understand that you're still working out how you're going to do summer school or if you're going to do it, but have you determined how your goal with the – my point being with the grades changing, how will you determine what students have to go to summer school? And then Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask about the subway announcement. Some of the advocates have talked about the fact that even though you have provided the 200 additional support beds, the Safe Haven beds, the city isn't tapping into the hotel rooms that it could be providing for people and that there just isn't enough being done to provide people a safe option to take shelter in. Obviously with the shelters not being ideal right now with the pandemic. So, can you just talk about that?

Mayor: Yeah. Let's do this. Let me start on the summer school, pass to the Chancellor to add, and then I'll come back and finish up on the subway question. So, on summer school, Gloria, the first thing I want to say is it's hard, I think, for all of us who are used to, you know, a school building and a school year in the traditional sense. And so summer school, we all – and I think the thing a lot of us were used to is relatively few kids needed that extra instruction, and they went to summer school and they were usually not too happy about it. But it was not what most kids experienced. Online learning has changed the whole reality. And it – there's a lot of things you cannot do as well on online learning to say the least.

But one thing it is good for is it's very flexible and for kids who very sadly have to be indoors a lot of the day now it's an option that they can go much more deeply into and they can do it at their own pace and all sorts of good flexibility is there. And it's not just during the school hours, it's the evening, it's the weekend. The online learning really opens up a world of possibility. So, I think to think a little bit more as a continuum then the kind of boundaries we experienced with a regular school year, school calendar. I can't wait until we have that regular school year and regular school calendar back because I think it's the most effective and the most human and the most engaging approach to education. But for now, we have the ability to reach kids in a lot of different ways.

And I think you don't have this – and this is where I'll pass to Richard and say, I don't think it's that kind of binary, oh these kids don't need summer school and you know, these relatively few do need summer school. I think we have a much bigger set of kids who are going to need some more help because the disruption that they went through, the trauma they went through, they didn't yet have the iPad, whatever it is – I think it's going to stretch out the equation into the summer. So, we don't know exactly what summer looks like and there's going to be different options prepared. But I think one thing we can assume is a lot of kids are going to engage summer learning. Some kids are going to engage summer learning, not because they're in a deficit, but because they don't have much else to do and it might be a good time to learn more and get ahead of things. I think we have to see this more of a continuum than we usually do. Richard?

Chancellor Carranza: Yeah. So, adding to what you said, Mr. Mayor, I think that is absolutely on track. It's more of a continuum rather than the compartmentalized way we've thought of school. You have semesters and you have summer and then you have fall and spring. This is going to be much more of a continuum but perhaps to put this in context every grade level and every course at the secondary level there are standards. In other words, there is a body of knowledge that students must demonstrate mastery of to say they've completed the third grade, they've completed the sixth grade, et cetera. So, the in-progress classification as I've said is really an indicator that the teacher is saying, ‘I don't have enough evidence yet of whether or not the student has actually mastered this body of knowledge’. Now that's important because whatever the student has not mastered or whatever information the teacher does not have, then becomes the learning plan that students carry on through the summer.

The difficulty that we've had in the past is that not having this kind of remote learning ubiquitous across the system and having recognizing that there's been a technology gap and a technology divide, the opportunity we have during this pandemic is that we are closing that digital divide. We're closing that technological divide. Our teachers who I give tremendous credit to have been building their capacity to be able to provide instruction, the pedagogy, in very different ways than we did seven weeks ago. That's not going to stop after this pandemic is over. We want to continue to build on that capacity so that we are, as the Mayor has said, providing students with opportunities 24/7 to continue to expand and continue to master the standards. That's going to be the cornerstone of – that is the cornerstone of what we're planning for summer and what summer learning looks like. The nuts and bolts about the who, what, when, and where, those are the models that we're working through based on what the medical advice and the medical situation at the time is. 

Mayor: Thank you, Richard. So, Gloria, to your other question. Okay, first of all, the work we're doing to help the homeless, as I said, it was really not that long ago when you think about December when we announced the Journey Home vision. This is the most audacious, ambitious effort in the history of the city to end permanent street homelessness. And the reason we announced it then was that we had seen for three years progress in finally figuring out what it took to get someone off the street, how much work it took, but the fact that it could be done. And as I said, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Commissioner Banks that even in the months of March and April, we've seen success getting people to come in off the street and stay off the street because of our amazing outreach workers.

That effort is going to continue, but one of the things the outreach workers always report back is they need more Safe Haven options. So, that's part of what we're going to keep doing. And the 200 beds we announced is a crucial piece of the equation. The right Safe Haven bed in the right places is the way you get someone off the street and if you make it stick, you get them the mental health services, the substance abuse services, whatever it is they need, in a lot of cases that person never goes back to the streets again. That's what we're here to do. So, this is crucial to the big equation, but to the other points you're raising, the shelter system now is being constantly reviewed to make sure that it is safe. Anytime where we need to remove people from shelter, we will, and that's what we've said. We will literally make as many hotel beds available as needed. Any shelter that needs more social distancing, has any challenge that requires more access to hotel beds, they will be there period. And there's a constant review being done to make sure that any time that's needed, it's acted on right away. 

But what Commissioner Banks has said as well is that we've got to remember a lot of who people are in shelters need tremendous support. The coronavirus is one challenge, but a lot of them have serious mental health issues and other issues that require a support structure in place and not all of that can easily be transferred to a hotel. So, we're trying to strike that balance, making sure we don't, you know, solve one problem and create another problem, figure out what's the right number of people that should be in any shelter and anybody – anything beyond that, those people go to hotels. So, right now we reached that mark, we talked about 6,000 people who – 6,000 homeless folks in hotel settings. We're going to be adding another thousand this week, going out of shelter into hotels. We will keep adding as needed to that number, but it's not like an abstract number. It's according to the medical needs of folks, the social distancing needs, and what's going to keep people safe the best. Is it to be moved to a hotel or to stay in a shelter, but in many cases just reducing the population in that shelter. So, bottom line is whatever it takes, we're going to do. We have no lack of hotel rooms. When we know we're doing the right thing to put someone in a hotel room, we're going to do it. 

Okay. Let me close us up today with just a point about, you know, where we started. Today was about what we owe our kids. Today was a day to recognize what our kids have gone through and how much we have to be there for them. Every adult with a child in your life, you know what I'm talking about. You're there for them all the time. Parents, aunts, uncles, guardians, grandparents, you know, so much of your life is being there for the children you love and all the people who take care of kids in all sorts of other settings as well and people who – the guidance counselors and the folks in foster care, and everyone who helps kids, and, of course, our educators, all feel that passion for protecting our children and helping our children. And we owe our kids real understanding and sensitivity and love in this moment they're going through. But we also have to think about what we owe this whole city right now. And I can tell you what I'm committed to and the whole team here at City Hall and in the City government – we're committed to protecting you, we're committed to making sure that the testing that we need, one way or another, we are going to get this testing to happen in this city. We're going to make sure that people are traced if someone tests positive. We're going to make sure there are hotel rooms available for people who need to be isolated. We have an obligation to you to build the biggest testing and tracing apparatus this city's ever known, something never been done before, but we're going to do it because that's what we do here in New York City. We create things that have never been seen before. And we're going to restart the city. We're going to do it in a smart way, in a way that's based on the facts and the science, but we are going to restart. 

And the last thing I'll say is to remember why this city is the greatest city in the world. It's because of the people. The buildings are great, love the buildings, the cultural institutions. That's wonderful, but it's you that makes this the greatest city in the world. Your strength, your resiliency, your creativity, your entrepreneurship, all of that is going to be called upon now. So, we in leadership owe it to you to build the framework to keep you safe and bring us back. And also, we owe it to you to unleash all that you do, all that you're capable of because when all that energy and passion and ability and creativity comes to the fore, the city will come back, will come back strong, and will even come back better because we're going to address some of the very contradictions that have been laid bare by this crisis. I don't have a question in my mind of the fact that this city is capable of a great and strong comeback. We're going to give you the foundation so you can paint that picture, build that story for the ages. Something great will happen in New York City and you will be a part of it and you will be the architects of it in the months to come.

Thank you, everybody.

2020-04-29 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. All of you should be very proud of how this city has handled this horrible crisis, and you should be proud of the heroism of so many in this city. I've said before, it's those who we honor so deeply, are health care workers and our first responders. It's also everyday people, who have found ways to get through, to be there for each other, to deal with these new tough rules, but find a way to make them work for the good of everyone, for the good of their own families and the good of everyone. New Yorkers have been absolutely remarkable in this crisis, and I think one of the ways that people have excelled is in a very quiet way that needs to be talked about more, and needs to be understood better, which is the way people have just been there for each other. The way people have remembered that the person they're with, a loved one, friend, a neighbor, a coworker, someone from the neighborhood that everyone's going through so much, and sometimes what's so important is just to be there for someone, just to listen to them, just to see how they're doing.

New Yorkers have always been incredibly social people. And it's true, we have tough exterior's, but behind those exteriors beat hearts of gold. That's what I've seen for decades and decades. How good, and compassionate, and kind New Yorkers are. And New Yorkers look out for each other, and we know it from our buildings where we live or our neighborhoods. So many ways New Yorkers have each other's backs, and in a crisis, it really comes through. So, just those little things, when you say someone, how are you doing? Are you okay? How are you feeling? People need that, they need that moment of empathy. They need to hear that someone's concerned. Sometimes they just need a chance to unburden themselves, all the stress they're going through. Just ask a simple question, how are you holding up? Can mean so much to someone, and I see it all the time, and I appreciate it. I appreciate all of you for having that spirit. For understanding people need that chance to be heard, and just to express what they're going through. And that compassion matters, especially when it comes to people's feelings, when it comes to their mental health, because it's still an area as a, as a society, we're still grappling with how to talk about mental health, how to act mental health. It's still an area where there's so much stigma. It shouldn't be, it's part of human life, mental health’s no different than physical health. It's part of who we are as human beings, and yet that stigma still pervades in so many ways. And so just that act to asking someone how they are and inviting them to speak openly is powerful.

Now, it need not be said that it's not just a New York City reality that mental health doesn't get talked about out in the open, it's true in our whole country. And it's true that there's never been an effort in this country to actually bring this in the open and treat mental health conditions consistently. There's not a place that people know to turn. It's not the way we grew up. And then on top of it, think about that stigma and add to it a pandemic, and all that brings with it. Think what it means for families who have lost their loved ones, pain they're going through and all they want to express and many times they don't know if it's okay to express it. Think about the senior citizens who have been isolated, how much pain there is to not be able to see your grandchildren for example, or just not get the visits your used to having from neighbors. Think of what that feels like and yet what do they do with that? Where do they turn? Think about how parents deal with this incredible anxiety of not having a paycheck and how they express that to their families. What it makes them feel.

So, all New Yorkers are dealing with these challenges and we want to make sure that there's help for everyone. I've talked yesterday about our kids, what they're going through. We want to make sure there's help for them and we're going to focus on them a lot. But I don't think I even have to say, when you think about who's gone through the most in this few months, the most trauma, the most pain, the, the things that would dredge up the deepest, sharpest feelings that somehow have to be aired and addressed. Well, that's so many of our health care workers and our first responders. And for some of them, and you've, you've heard the stories of places like Elmhurst Hospital. For some of them, the only parallel to what they've gone through is what soldiers go through in war. And there's a phrase combat stress. There's a field of combat mental health, because it's understood that soldiers go through so much, and the way to deal with any mental health reality is not to ignore it, but to take it head on, and the military understands that. I just met with some of the amazing officers from the U S army who are doing this crucial work, who have learned the lessons of what our soldiers go through in war, and have understood what they need to address it, and they're going to be helping us, and you're going to hear about that in a moment from our first lady. But that phrase, combat stress, that's a wartime term, and Chirlane and I know something about it, because both our dads served in World War II, and brought back a lot from that war. And I've spoken very openly about what my dad went through. The scars he brought back both physical and emotional, and how much it framed the rest of his life. But that phrase combat stress wasn't really known the same way back then and the support wasn't there, but now our military does provide it in a very powerful way. And I never thought we'd have to use this word in the middle of New York City civilian life, but in fact it is the right word. And we do need the help of our military to make sense of this situation. Think about what our doctors, our nurses, our health care workers have gone through, our EMT’s, our paramedics. Think about the people they've had to watch pass away before their very eyes. Think about the fact that they are surrounded by this virus. And they're fighting it and they're walking towards the danger, but they also have to think about what it means for their own health, and what it might mean for their family. And what happens if they want to go home and see their family. So, they're carrying that burdens. I'm sure a lot of them sometimes feel alone. We can't let that happen. We can't let them carry that burden alone. We have to be there for them.

Now, the idea of providing access to mental health services, it's been a core notion for this administration for the last six years. That's why Thrive NYC exists, to break down the barriers and open up access to mental health. And that initiative was for all New Yorkers of all kinds, but we've also had specialized initiatives for our heroes, because we've known they've dealt with challenges before. No one could have imagined this pandemic, but they were already dealing with challenges. There's two programs I want to mention that are particularly good examples, the Health and Hospitals, the Helping Healers Heal program. And a lot of our health care workers are leaning on this right now. It's a 24/7 helpline for doctors, nurses, staff, any Health and Hospital staff can call it 646-815-4150. And the FDNY has had a counseling services unit. It's renowned, it's gold standard for the whole nation. In fact, other cities have sought out the FDNY’s guidance in how to set up a similar approach. A very poignant example and a painful one was after the Parkland shootings in Florida. Folks in Florida turned to the FDNY to know how to provide that ongoing support to first responders. And our paramedics and our EMT’s have been right there at the frontline of this crisis. They need that help. And so, I want to make sure FDNY members know you can call 212-570-1693. So, these initiatives are up and running, but we need something even more in this moment of crisis, and that's where our military come in. And what they have been doing these last weeks, the military has been helping us in so many ways. I want to thank all those who have come in to help in our hospitals. The extraordinary contribution they've made to fighting back the coronavirus. Now they're going to play a crucial role in addressing the mental health challenges as well.

Now, to tell you about this extraordinary partnership with the department of defense with our armed forces, I'm going to turn to the first lady. And I'm going to say it this simply, she is devoted her time as first lady to breaking down the stigma that stands in the way of people getting the mental health services they need. She's really helped this whole city to have the right open conversation about what's going on inside all of us, and how we have to bring it out in the open and ask for help, and how help needs to be there for everyone with no stigma, no barriers. In this pandemic, she's taking that same impulse, those same lessons, and working to make sure we reach more and more New Yorkers who have gone through so much. And I want to thank her for that, and particularly for the work she is doing to bring these extraordinary military professionals in to help us further.

So now, I’ll turn to our first lady, Chirlane McCray.

First Lady Chirlane McCray: Thank you Bill, for your leadership and especially for your compassion. For weeks now, all our frontline health care workers, who I think of as our soldiers of grace and mercy, have been pushed to the limit inside our hospitals. We've had battlefield conditions with triage and fear in the hallways, but when the emergency field hospitals and morgues close after the TV crews leave and the clapping stops, our soldiers, our healers go home and we have to wonder how do these healers manage their stress after seeing so much death and suffering? Their emotional state is a crisis within a crisis and an urgent mental health emergency and that's why we are working with the Department of Defense, which has brought together a force from the Navy, the Air Force and the Army. They are experts in dealing with combat stress and have a unique insight into how to help those who provide care in this kind of setting. The Department of Defense will train a thousand behavioral health staff and helping healers heal, helping healers heal, champions as trainers who will further train H+H, Greater New York Hospital Association, FDNY and EMS staff. The Department of Defense will also conduct assessments, sharing events, decompression and wellness strategies for combat stress management. This work with the Department of Defense is a critical new piece of what we are doing for all of our essential frontline workers in New York City.

So, how will we provide more support for our health care workers? Well, these DOD trauma specialists will look at individual hospitals and also the entire system. You know, every, every hospital is different. They'll want to talk to frontline leadership to get a picture of the most pressing, mental and emotional needs and they'll add to the programs, training our team on combat stress. At first, they'll do small groups from FDNY, Health and Hospitals and private hospitals will also be trained and next we'll train more than a thousand Health and Hospitals personnel and other staff. The Department of Defense will provide a whole new higher level of trauma care for those on the frontline.

Our heroes will have the opportunity to receive an individual assessment and all of this work is already underway. We're ramping up to be fully operational in May with the program fully in place by June. This is not the time nor is it appropriate for us to hide the level of express of stress that is experienced by our nurses and doctors and medical technicians, we have to face this head on. This is not something that, that we should be secretive about and I have to say that once again, New York City is a leader in this effort. No other city has a comprehensive mental health program for health care workers at this scale and it will not be a one off, this program with the trainers and other resources will be incorporated into our health care facilities. So that even long after this pandemic is over, our health care workers will have these services, I want to thank the U.S. military, H+H, Office of Emergency Management and the New York Fire Department. The service of our frontline health care workers is beyond what anyone could have rightfully asked, they have inspired a City and a Nation, but it comes at a steep price. In recent days, we've lost John Mondello, an EMT working in the Bronx and Dr. Lorna M. Breen, an ER Medical Director at Presbyterian. Please join me for a moment of silence and their memories.

[Moment of silence is observed]

We owe these workers the world that we will enjoy after this virus is defeated and we will not forget them, we will not forget this debt. When people ask our hospital workers, what did you do during the great pandemic of 2020? We want them to say with pride, I showed up, I did my best, I saved lives because my community supported me. I was able to take care of myself while taking care of others and I stayed healthy in mind, body, and spirit.

Mayor: Thank you, Chirlane. That's a beautiful sentiment and it's exactly the spirit we have to bring to everything we do to support our heroes and this incredible initiative with the U.S. military is going to help us do it. And remember every single one of you, every time you say thank you to a health care worker, our first responder, every time you applaud them, every time you ask them if they're doing okay, there's anything they need that helps so much, but what our military is going to do is going to be outstanding because we've seen they bring a special ability and their presence, as I said, in our hospitals, not only their skills, but that extraordinary confidence it gives everyone to see them present has been really, really crucial to get them through this crisis. So, so thankful to everyone who's brought together this new initiative to address the combat stress that's the reality for so many here.

Now, there's another important new approach we're going to take to protect our heroes and it is to give them more information about what they've experienced during this pandemic. I want to talk to you about testing and what we've talked about before is the coronavirus test, it's called a PCR test, and that is the test that answers the most immediate question at this exact moment. Are you infected with the coronavirus? That's the test that is crucial to so much of what we're going to do going forward as the test I wish we had had a lot more of when we needed it earlier on. But there's another test that really will provide a lot of help and support as well and that's the antibody testing and I'm going to talk to you about a new initiative that will reach so many of our health care workers and first responders and I'm going to tell you why this is so important and the sweep of what we're going to do here. I'm also going to give a few qualifications cause it's important to recognize what we know and what we don't know when it comes to antibody testing. But here is what we do understand that a particularly good antibody tests, there's many different kinds, but the ones that are most accurate and effective give you a clear indication of whether you have been infected by the coronavirus previously and they give you some real confidence because here's what we can say anyone who has been infected and came through, obviously I had the ability to beat this disease knowing if you've been exposed to it is powerful information.

Our health care workers and our first responders who are dealing with folks who might be infected, it is going to give them additional confidence to know if they've been previously exposed. Think about what it takes every day to get up and say, I'm going to go where the COVID-19 is, where I know it is the folks go into the hospitals, the emergency rooms, the ICU, the paramedics, the EMTS, all the folks who know they're going to where the danger is. They’re of course thinking of their families, their own families too, so having a sense of whether you've been exposed previously is very important and giving the best answer we can brings a lot of value. On top of that, we are seeing really impressive results with treatments based on plasma that needs to come from those who have already been exposed. So, there's a growing hope that when you identify people who have been exposed, you're identifying folks who can then give blood that then allows for the treatment of more people who are sick help save lives. And we know one thing about our health care workers are first responders they are doing this work because they care so much about saving lives and helping other people. So, knowing that they could be amongst those who give blood that saves other lives, is entirely consistent with everything they've devoted their lives to. And then there's the fact that we're going to get information that can help us fight this disease, we all understand the entire global medical community is still trying to understand the coronavirus, figure out the best ways to fight back. One day there will be a vaccine, one day there will be a cure, but the more information we gather, the more likelihood we get to that day sooner.

So, antibody testing brings a lot to the table and our goal is to reach a lot of people who would like to take advantage of on a voluntary basis, of course. But I'm talking about our health care workers, I'm talking about our police officers, our firefighters, EMTs, paramedics, Correction officers, so many who would like to have this opportunity and now it will be provided for all who want it. So, thinking about our health care workers, thinking about our first responders; we are initiating a plan to reach 150,000 of our heroes and give them this antibody testing to give them that knowledge and that peace of mind and to ensure that they are also helping us take the next step in fighting this disease. We have agreed to a partnership with the federal government, with the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and more details will be announced in the next few days, but the plan is to begin as early as next week to offer the tests in hospitals, at fire houses, at police precincts, at correction facilities, wherever our health care workers and our first responders are to make the tests readily available. Again, this will be provided for free. The federal government is covering the cost and it will be provided to all who want to take advantage of this test. Now I mentioned that I'm going to say the antibody tests - no one is claiming it is perfect. It does not tell you the best of I understand from all of our health care leadership and from listening to Dr. Fauci and others, it does not tell you if you're entirely immune in the sense we all think of that word. When we hear the word immune, we think you just can't possibly get something again. There is not yet confidence that having been exposed to the coronavirus once means you can never get it again. Now, common sense tells us if you’re exposed once and you made it through, you're in very good stead; you're in a very good situation to make it through again if you ever were exposed again, but we don't know for sure if anyone can contract this disease the second time. The good news is honestly, there's not a lot of evidence that people have, but we don't know for sure. So that's a limitation that we have to be clear about and it's also important that even folks who get a positive result do not think that means that they can let down their guard. I'm not saying people would think they're invincible, but they have to be really clear that they still are dangerous because we're dealing with an unknown disease. We're dealing with so many questions. So, for health care workers and first responders, they would still continue in their work to wear the PPEs just as they were previously. And we still need to practice the same concepts of social distancing and we still have to be watchful for symptoms even if someone has tested positive. But again, it's not a perfect test, but it does give real information. It is helpful, tells you something very important and its part of solving this bigger puzzle of the Coronavirus and fighting it back. So, this again, more details to be announced, but a wonderful step forward and a huge initiative. The goal is to reach 150,000 of our heroes.

Now, let me talk about another effort to protect people and this is now about how we protect some of the very most vulnerable in New York City – homeless New Yorkers. And again, the compassion I talked about earlier; New Yorkers feel tremendous compassion for folks whose lives in some way came unraveled and they ended up on the street or they ended up in shelter. So, a few weeks ago I told you we had a goal of having 6,000 homeless in hotels rather than congregate shelters to make sure that people were safe and that goal has been reached and now we are going to go farther. This week we will move an additional 1,000 homeless individuals from congregate shelters to hotel facilities. The priority will be on folks in those larger congregate shelters that are having more trouble with social distancing. There's going to be a constant effort to evaluate all shelters and wherever there are social distancing problems continue to take people out of the shelters into hotels. One thousand this week, we are prepared to do a thousand more each week going forward as the need indicates, because we want to make sure people are safe and again, there are real reasons for people to be in shelters who need the services and shelter. So, for some people that actually can be much, much better to stay in the shelter setting, but we've got to make sure there's enough space. We've got to make sure that we strike that balance. We're also going to provide additional medical oversight; our Health + Hospitals team is going to work with the Department of Homeless Services to bring additional medical oversight to all homeless services sites. The goal is to constantly be vigilant for anything that might pose a danger to homeless New Yorkers and starting this week we will begin a program of testing homeless individuals at homeless services sites. Of course, anyone who tests positive will be isolated. This initiative will begin this week and expand over the next couple of weeks. The goal is to reach across the entire shelter system by the middle of May.

All right, a few more things before we turn to our colleagues in the media and we've talked about some, some serious and somber topics. But now let's turn to something I think people are going to be happy to hear about. And you know, look, when our lives changed so profoundly over the last weeks, it's almost been impossible to take stock of all the things that are different and the things we miss and the things we need that we can't have right now. And some of those things are going to take a while longer, but there are other things that we can start to bring back if only online for now, later in person. But there are some things that we need to make available to people online that could really change their lives for the better. And we know there are a lot of folks in the weeks leading up to this crisis who were planning on doing something absolutely beautiful, they were planning on getting married and Chirlane and I are coming up on our anniversary on May 14th – 26 years. And we know what a beautiful reality marriage is, what it means to people, how it frames their whole lives and yet folks haven't been able to get married in these last weeks. So, the good news is we're going to have a very, very good new visitor in our city. Cupid is coming to New York City; Project Cupid will allow couples to get married online and this will start later on next week and it will be available in 11 different languages. And this is a great team effort and we want to thank Speaker Johnson and the City Council, want to thank the City Clerk's Office and our colleagues at DOITT, our information technology department who all put their minds together in a spirit of love and said, how do we figure this out? How do we get back in the marriage business and help people who are ready to tie the knot do so online? So again, not this week, but late next week, this'll start up and information will be available at nyc.gov/cupid and I want you to know this is such a great example of New Yorkers saying, you know what, even in the face of a pandemic, we're not going to let it change us and we're not going to let a pandemic stand in the way of love. We're going to let people get married and go forward with their lives and look to the better days ahead.

Okay, let's now talk about what we talk about every single day, which is the daily indicators. So, as I go into them, I can say we've had a good day, not a perfect day, but a good day and we got to keep pushing and we got to keep doing better. So, the first indicator unfortunately is up. The daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 went up from 112 to 136, but the other indicators going in the right direction. Daily number of people in ICUs in our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19 - down from 745 to 734. Percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 citywide – down from 27 percent to 23 percent. Public health lab tests – down from 56 percent to 29 percent. That's great. So, progress like most days we've seen progress, but not what we still need fully to get everything going down in the same direction. Now, we’re going to talk I am certain about the challenges of maintaining social distance. I can tell you we have to stick to it and yes, we're about to have warmer weather and yes, everyone's going a little stir crazy, but we have to stick to it because every time you see these indicators going the right direction, that's because of the work you've been doing. But if we loosen up these indicators, we'll start to go in the wrong direction. Now unless there's someone out there that wants to delay the restart and wants to see this horrible crisis continue, I think we can all agree we got to buckle down and beat this disease. And every time you're socially distanced, every time you stay home, you're helping to fight back the disease and save lives. We got to stick with it.

I'll just close before saying a few words in Spanish and then we'll open to our colleagues in the media; that you know, we're going to be spending a long time trying to figure out everything that happened here in terms of the human impact over these last months and certainly the months ahead and the mental health piece of this is in some ways probably going to be the hardest to make sense of. As we always say, it's different than the physical reality or the physical scars; the mental scars take longer to uncover and process and make sense of. But so many people are dealing with these challenges in one way or another. The bottom line, as you heard from the announcement today, whether you're one of our heroes, whether you're an everyday New Yorker, practicing social distancing, whether you're a parent trying to support your kids, whoever you are, you're not alone and we're going to be there for you and 24 hours a day, seven days a week, multiple languages, and for free. Anyone who needs help can call 888-NYCWELL and get a trained counselor and get that support. Lots of people are doing that and it's helping them through. I want to invite anyone who needs that help to take advantage of it. A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media and again, always remember giving the name and the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder that we have First Lady McCray and Police Commissioner Shea here in person, and on the phone we have Fire Commissioner Negro, Health Commissioner Barbot, Social Services Commissioner Banks, and Vice President and Chief Quality Officer for NYC Health + Hospitals, Dr. Wei. With that, I will start with Ashley from the New York Times.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor and everyone on the phone. I wanted to ask a two-part question. One, there was some suggestion by the shul that this – that the funeral in Brooklyn that was broken up last night had been coordinated with the police somehow. I'm wondering, Mr. Mayor if you could tell us if you were aware of those plans? And then for Commissioner Shea, can you tell us in detail about any contact that or plans that the NYPD may have made pertaining to this individual's funeral, and also answer, you know, are there others planned and how do you plan to deal with this in the future if there are other deaths in the Orthodox community?

Mayor: Ashley, I'll start and I'll turn to the Commissioner. I heard about this situation. I believe it was somewhere around the 6:30 to 7:00 pm. I was very concerned when I heard there might be a large gathering. The Commissioner will talk about how the NYPD approached it. But I have to say again, I understand that when people are going through mourning, they're in real pain, but we have to understand what it means to hold a large gathering in New York City today. It means unfortunately that people who go to that gathering, some will be sick with this disease. That's just a fact. We know this. Some will spread the disease to others. People as a result will die. So I have a long deep relationship with the Orthodox Jewish community. A lot of personal relationships, a lot of people I know and respect. I have a lot of love for the community. The notion that people would gather in large numbers and even if they don’t mean to, would spread a disease that will kill other members of the community, is just unacceptable to me.

So we have to do something different and we have to break out of whatever we thought was normal in the past because these are not normal times. So we're not going to be allowing these kinds of gatherings in any community. This was by far the largest community - the largest gathering in any community of New York City of any kind that I had heard of or seen directly or on video since the beginning of this crisis and it's just not allowable. So we have to change this reality. We will work closely with the community to do it, but we have to change this reality. Commissioner?

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: Yeah. Mr. Mayor, I think you hit the nail on the head. Before we get into the specifics of yesterday's incident, what troubles me most is as a department, as a city, we've been through a lot already and members that have gotten sick, members that have given their life, whether it's in the health field, certainly in the police department, make no mistake, this large gathering such as this is putting members of my department at risk and it cannot happen and it will not happen and it's going to be met with very stern as it was last night, immediately being broken up and stern consequences. What we know about yesterday's incident was at approximately 3:30 in the afternoon, we learned of the passing, unfortunately, of a prominent rabbi from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Immediately within minutes, members of the local precinct were in contact with clergy liaisons and members of the Jewish community in terms of what to expect at that location.

Plans were put in place, a detail was put in place, unfortunately, when you look back at some of the past incidents, there's been a lot of work done throughout New York City with every faith and people again have been overly – overwhelmingly compliant. But there has been a couple of incidents that were not so. So contingency plans were put into place, a number of offices with detailed in the unlikely event that large numbers came and we thought that that was a possibility. But absolutely, I think we've been pretty consistent, Mr. Mayor, for what seems like a longer time, but probably months now that there are to be no gatherings in New York City such as what we saw last night. So within – as the time unfolded last night, there was probably several thousand people that that came in and around that location on Bedford Avenue, additional offices. I was in conversations with members of the upper echelon of the NYPD. Additional offices were called in and in pretty short time, that crowd was dispersed and a number, I think the final tally I saw was 12 summonses were issued for a variety of offenses. Certainly social distancing and then including some for a refusal to disperse.

But I want to end where I started with this, what happened last night simply cannot happen and we need all New Yorkers - all New Yorkers have come together during this crisis, but they need to do it more than ever and we need community leaders to stand beside us. We cannot have people unnecessarily being exposed to a disease that is having catastrophic effects on our membership and really New Yorkers as a whole.

Moderator: Next we have Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Mr. Mayor, good morning, my question has to do with how you are going to assess the different levels of risk involved in human activity. For example, why can't people play tennis? Why can't you regulate the amount of people who will be visiting or who could visit city pools when it's 98 degrees in the summer or regulate the traffic going into city beaches and give people maybe a ticket or a rain check for another date, if they can't go to the pool that day and regulate the time period and the amount of use at that pool because we're facing what happened last night is almost like a release of a valve. There's going to be a level frustration in this city, that will be very difficult. I think, maybe I'm wrong, but it will be very difficult to manage the expectations and the needs of this population. I mean, am I wrong? What is your response to my question?

Mayor: Well, Henry, I think you said a couple of different things. I think the issues you raised obviously are being felt all over New York City, but again, I want to say a large gathering, this is a different issue – when you talk about pools or beaches or tennis, you're talking about what individuals do. This – what we saw last night was absolutely unacceptable and would be unacceptable in any and all communities. It was a large gathering. Again, tragically thousands of people. The amount of danger of created by that kind of gathering is inestimable. The fact that people will die because of it just goes against everyone's values. I want to separate that kind of thing from the question you're asking, which I think is a fair and important question about what can we do for everyday people, individual people from all parts of our community as we try to over time work our way back to normal.

So I'd say as the first rule is there'll be no large gatherings of any kind anywhere and anyone who equates a small number of people around, you know, a blanket in a park with what we saw last night is entirely missing the point. We are talking about thousands of people in close proximity in one site. We will never, ever allow something like that to go unchecked anywhere. Now, if you say, okay, people are understandably yearning to get outside and the weather's going to get warm, we're working on this all the time and we're going to have announcements on this soon how we're going to address the warm weather. We've worked with the City Council on one piece of it, which is to try and open up more space in certain key areas with enforcement.

But when you talk about pools, beaches, tennis courts, each thing's going to be looked at individually, there's the whole different piece of the equation, which we've talked about, which is what can we afford to open, and that's going to be all about what happens with the stimulus in Washington, whether we even have money to open some of these things, and that's a big question, Mark, right now. But then beyond is the question of what will keep people safe? The most important question, what will protect people's health and safety? And places where a lot of people might congregate create a real danger. We have to know we can manage them properly and there could be proper enforcement and that the time is right. So the indicators will tell us when we can start opening up and we're going to do it very carefully, methodically, and each thing you mentioned will be looked at in turn when the time is right, but only when the time is right.

Moderator: Next we have Marcia from CBS.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good morning, Marcia, how are you?

Question: I need to ask you about what happened in Williamsburg because a number of leaders in the Jewish community are quite upset that the members of that community were singled out when there's been violations of social distancing in many places. Number one, they're asking for an apology. And number two, they're inferring that the fact that you're singling out a Jewish community could add to the number of anti-Semitic incidents that happen in this city. So I wondering if you will apologize if you feel bad about singling them out? Also related to social distancing, wondering if the NYPD will repurpose some staff like crossing guards who are not being used to help with social distancing? And on an unrelated topic about medical examiners, are you thinking about the possibility of directing the medical examiners to extend the hours on weekdays, maybe to midnight and possibly staying open on weekends?

Mayor: Marcia, respect all those questions, our team will follow up with you on the medical examiner because again, I'm asking everyone in the interest of fairness, all your colleagues have been doing two questions up front, one or two and we're going stick to that rule. So I will speak to your question and the Commissioner can speak to the crossing guard question.

I spoke last night out of passion. I could not believe my eyes, Marcia. It was deeply, deeply distressing. Again, this is a community I love. This is a community I have spent a lot of time working with closely and if you saw anger and frustration, you're right. I spoke out of real distress that people's lives were in danger before my eyes and I was not going to tolerate it. So I regret if the way I said it in any way gave people a feeling of being treated the wrong way. That was not my intention. It was said with love, but it was tough love. It was anger and frustration and what I saw, no, Marcia, it's not happened other places. Let's be honest, this kind of gathering has happened in only a few places and it cannot continue. It's endangering the lives of people in the community.

So to all those, and I understand politicians, everyone has said, oh look, you know, this is like people gathering the park. No, it's not like people gathering the park. It was thousands of people. Can we just have an honest conversation here? It was not acceptable. We will not tolerate it. I also will not tolerate any anti-Semitism ever. And for decades I've made it my business to stand up for the Jewish community and people know that. Won't tolerate anti-Semitism, won't allow it to grow in the city, we fought it back many times. My message was to all communities and that was written in black and white, but it was also to be clear that what I saw I had not seen anywhere else and I was trying to be honest about the fact that there's a problem that people have to come to grips with and deal with or else people in the community will die, and that's not something to get somehow shunted aside. I understand the power of words, obviously. But I'm not going to let that power, that concern about words overcome the value of human life. We're here to protect human beings and people were put in danger last night. Members of the Jewish community were putting each other in danger. They were putting our police officers in danger.

Now, if I see it in any other community, I'll call that out equally. So again, if in my passion and in my emotion, I said something that in any way was hurtful, I'm sorry about that. That was not my intention, but I also want to be clear, I have no regrets about calling out this danger and saying we're going to deal with it very, very aggressively. Commissioner, do you want to speak to the crossing guard issue?

Commissioner Shea: Sure. And if I may – I mean, just to echo the Mayor's comments on last night. There were thousands of people crammed onto one block. And when you look at everything that we are going through as a city, we live in an imperfect world and we, you know -- my department certainly, I have seen instances of not social distancing. But I could tell you Marcia, that as you know, there were two funerals last weekend from members of the NYPD. We would normally have probably tens of thousands of people at that funeral. We had a handful. People have to be accountable for their own actions regardless of what neighborhood, ethnicity, where they come from. We cannot have what we had last night. We will not tolerate it. We are going to break it up immediately. And really, you cannot even go to that event. That's what it comes down to.

Regarding the crossing guards, you know, we've been hit hard throughout the department. We have really positive news. We are still praying for a number of members that are in the hospitals. But we're on the road back, thank God, in terms of our sick rates. One of the things that we are still watching closely is who is at work, who is essential across many titles. And when we look at crossing guards, I think it's well known. You tend to have people that are a little bit older. So we are very cautious of how we use those crossing guards in what capacity and people in terms of age, prior medical conditions and the situations we put them in. Of course, we're looking at any and all employees of the NYPD, how to get the most out of what we use. We've worked with other city agencies in terms of lending some of our expertise to other city agencies. And we would not be against continuing to do that. But we're also going to do it in a smart manner that really watches out for everyone's safety.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, good morning everyone. I wanted to follow up with the question that many of my colleagues – the one thing that I can get some clarity from the Commissioner on is, you know, the NYPD’s involvement with the organization of last night's funeral. So former City Councilman David Greenfield said, I guess that this was allowed. He, you know, he tweeted again, some information that, you know, this was organized with the NYPD’s approval. I don't know if they knew that if you, if your department knew there would be so many people who showed up, but questions on that and more details on that? When these summonses were issued, was it after the Mayor came and asked for it to be broken up or did it happen before? And just for the Mayor, you know, there have been multiple reports, the Governor has cited these reports of funerals and I even drove by a large funeral once on the BQE a few weeks ago. So why were you so shocked that this was the case? Because it seemed to have been a consistent problem?

Mayor: No, Katie, I'll start and pass to the Commissioner. Again respectfully. I'm not – you're, saying I was shocked this was a case. That's not what I'm saying. I've been talking about this issue previously that we won't tolerate – I even said we wouldn't tolerate it. Again, I really want you guys to take the fact that we constantly are briefing you and respect that we're trying to give you a lot of information. And you're all intelligent people. You've heard in great detail, telling people they cannot gather, from all religious communities, in their houses of worship. That's been going on for weeks. Telling people they can't even do services in a living room because that's going to endanger lives. We've been talking about all of these dangers and the fact that we're not going to tolerate them. And we are going to enforce. And we've talked about funerals before as well. That's why I'm so angry. That we have given plenty of warnings, worked with community leaders to ensure they gave the warnings. And they have by the way, overwhelmingly. Let me make sure this is crystal clear. I've said it many times, but I know there are many in this town who love to create confusion and division. So let me try one more time. I want to thank the Jewish community leadership. I want to thank the rabbinical leadership who have consistently said people should not gather for religious services or anything else because it will endanger their own community. I have seen total unity. And I appreciate that unity. And so it's up to everyone in every community to respect these voices of their City government, of the leaders of their communities. There’s been clarity across the board. What is so frustrating to me is after all those messages were so clear that so many people would still choose to gather. I understand that they lost someone very dear and important to them, but this is still a pandemic. People's lives are put in danger when people gather. So what is shocking to me is that after all the warnings, something of this size would happen. And that's where I'm making very clear, unapologetically that the next gathering will be met by summonses and arrests. Period. No more warnings. And that's true in every community, equal opportunity, New York City. If you gather, I'm not talking again about a few friends hang out in the corner. I'm saying if you have a large gathering, hundreds of people, thousands of people that we're not even going to have a discussion. It's just we're going immediately to summons. And if we have to use the arrest, we'll use arrest. Go ahead, Commissioner.

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, Katie and I think I touched on it before. We've been in constant contact with leaders of different communities throughout New York City of different faiths. Just last week I could tell you members of the Muslim community, members of the Jewish community, I spoke to the Cardinal just this week. This is what we do. And in terms of social distancing, probably not a day goes by that myself and the Mayor don't talk about whether it's social distancing in parks, whether it's the sick rate of our employees, whether it's testing that came up earlier today, mental health yesterday, and certainly funerals and religious events comes up. I don't know of anyone in New York City that doesn't know what's going on, two months into this. I think from the Mayor's executive orders, from the Governor's executive orders, from watching the news every night, everyone knows what is acceptable and what is not. And conversations between members of the NYPD and leaders who, by the way, members of the Jewish community, extremely helpful in navigating circumstances with this over the last two months, because there have been a couple incidents. But planning for what shouldn't happen is in no way having a conversation regarding, you should not equate that with having a conversation regarding condoning a particular event. That event last night never should have happened. It better not happen again. It can't. It is, again – we can talk about this until the cows come home. It doesn't get any crystal clearer than this for me. You are putting my cops’ lives at risk and it's unacceptable.

Moderator: Next we have Julia from the Post.

Question: Hi, good morning to everyone. I have two questions. One for you, Mr. Mayor and one for Ms. McCray. For you, you addressed the homeless and the shelters, but I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about your plan for the homeless in the subways? I see that the MTA worked with the NYPD last night to get some people off the trains, but it seems unsustainable to do that night after night? So what's the long term plan?

And then for Ms. McCray, I'm wondering if she can just list her specific credentials for co-chairing the racial inequity task force and the mental health program for frontline workers, given that critics, including Councilman Reynoso has called the first appointment cronyism and nepotism?

Mayor: Well, let me speak to the homeless issue and then I'd like to preface on the question of the commission since I'm the person who decided how to approach that internal task force I should say. And I'll certainly turn to Chirlane then. On the homeless, I had a conversation yesterday with Sarah Feinberg of the MTA to emphasize that we are ready immediately, to implement a plan in those ten terminal stations that I talked to you about in detail yesterday. And this is something Commissioner Shea and Commissioner Banks and others we all gathered together to discuss and have real faith this will be a game changer. But to be a game changer, we have to disrupt business as usual, which means we have to close those stations in the late night hours, 12 midnight to 5:00 am. Replace the service with a shuttle bus for anyone who needs to get on that line outbound. And they'll still be able to use it just like you use a shuttle bus when there's maintenance or anything else. So it won't disrupt service for people that need service. But it will allow for deep cleaning of the stations. And will allow for the NYPD and our outreach workers to engage people in a much more effective manner. And it will change the pattern that Julia, has existed for decades in this city. Where a homeless individual could ride a subway line back and forth and back and forth. And that's something that's just not right. We need to address that. What we are seeing here is a real problem, but it's not because something fundamentally changed compared to all the previous decades. It's that there are very few people riding the subways. There are much – there's much less service. And so the homeless individuals who have been there all along are obviously standing out more. But it's also a clarion call to help them, to do more to get them out of the subways, off the streets, into long term shelter, into affordable housing.

And I feel for all the riders who are distressed. It's painful to watch. It's unpleasant to watch. It's unsettling to watch. We don't want anyone to go through it. But this City has been dealing with this issue for decades. We've got to do things differently. That's why we came up with the Journey Home approach. That's why we came up with HOME-STAT. And these things are working. But this is a new approach, NYPD feels strongly this is the X factor to end that habit of an individual, just being able to stay on that train or maybe only get off briefly and get right back on and go the whole other way on the line. We're not – we're kidding ourselves if we think we can get a different result by doing the same thing over and over again for years and years and years. So I talked to Sarah Feinberg, I said, we're ready to do this. We're ready to cover the cost. All we need is the MTA’s support. We have good conversation. We're waiting for an answer. And we could get going immediately.

And in terms of sustainability, this is a sustainable plan for sure. The HOME-STAT initiative has brought thousands of homeless folks off the street permanently. The Journey Home initiative will transform the reality of homelessness on the streets of this city, I don't have a doubt in my mind. And if we can get the support of the MTA, we'll put in all the people power. We’ll pay the cost to get homeless folks out of the subway in a whole new way. It won't be perfect, but it will be a game changer. It's absolutely sustainable, but we need the MTA to say yes, so please ask the MTA today if they will support this plan. Allow us to pay for it and get going with it so we can really change the reality for not only the homeless but for all the strap hangers who suffer with this problem.

To the question of the internal taskforce on equity and inclusion. We have a disparity crisis in this city. We had it before. It's been made sharper and in some ways even worse by this disease. My goal with the internal task force, which came out of a variety of conversations among members of this administration, was to ensure that all city agencies maximally address disparity. There's been great work over the last six years. There's more that can and should be done. To ensure that happens it was crucial to make sure that the leaders of this task force would be the people who had the strongest understanding of the issue and the greatest vision about how to address the problem and carried the weight to ensure that all city agencies would follow through on the work of the task force. Your idea with all due respect, Julia, of what is a qualification? Well, you have the right to your opinion. I'll tell you what a qualification is. A qualification in my view is who has the weight gravitas? Who has the intellect, who has the vision, who has the standing in this administration? Because this is an internal task force.

Well, this whole administration was created and we talked about it long before you happened to be a reporter here, the way we did our transition, the way we chose our team, the way we've continued to build our team. The person who's been the architect with me has been our First Lady. And I've said many times she's my closest advisor and my partner in everything I do. So who better to co-chair an internal task force to make sure that the government is addressing these issues then her? Deputy Mayor Thompson has devoted his entire life to issues of inclusion and equity. And I also am announcing that we're adding a third co-chair, Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, who brings a wealth of experience and obviously has expertise in some of the issues and agencies reporting to him in some of the areas where there's been greatest concern about disparity. But I'll turn to Chirlane and forgive my long intro by saying I know who will get the job done and she will get the job done. Chirlane?

First Lady McCray: Julia, I would remind you that the primary task of this body is to listen, to gather information and to make recommendations. It is not a decision-making body. It is a position that requires the ability to listen well, to convene and be able to gather information. I'm a volunteer. I'm certainly well-placed within this administration to take on this work. And I have a very committed approach to this work. I've been a mental health champion from the beginning of this administration. And I have been praised by leaders of national organizations around the country. I think that if you want to know more about my qualifications that you should talk to my team and we will let you know all of the things that I have done that would merit such a position and more. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Anna from the Daily News.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Two questions. One, given the budgetary issues that the City is facing, are you guys going to move forward with the BQX project? And also, I'm just curious if the First Lady is going to have to give you a haircut at some point. You're looking a little – your hair's looking a little long these days. So I’m just curious if that’s in your future?

Mayor: I want to give Anna credit. You're – you know, we knew this day would come where a journalist would ask the question. Yes, this has been a topic at home and Chirlane is a long – Anna, you may have seen some of my pictures from my younger years when I first met Chirlane and my hair was at least as long as this. And so she's a fan of the longer hair. But yes, it's getting a little, a little much. So we're going to have to figure out a new approach to hair management. The longer hair’s day I think has is coming to an end.

But on the question – a very good and important question about the budget. You know, something like the BQX which we had just begun a whole phase of environmental impact review. It's going to be looked at now with all the other major capital initiatives. We talked yesterday about some things that have been absolutely essential, like the affordable housing program, which is being, you know, some pieces of it are being delayed because of the reality of this crisis and our budget reality. So, we're certainly going to look at the BQX and make decisions, thinking about those same realities. I don't want to give you a firm answer today. It will be discussed in the budget process and be part of what we say around the budget in June. But it's a very good example of the kind of thing that now has to be thought of very differently simply for the budget ramifications alone. Now, that was going to be obviously an initiative that could only work with very substantial federal funding. But to the extent there was any City exposure, it has to be considered now as part of our budget process.

Moderator: Next we have Steve from Westwood One News.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Thanks again for taking our questions every day and giving us ample opportunity to get responses from you. We really appreciate this. Quick question about a major recreation space in Southern Brooklyn. The Gateway National Recreation area has been a really important release valve for people in Brooklyn and Queens who want to get outside, who want to be out there recreating with their families while maintaining significant social distancing and not having to worry about being close to others. But the MTA has decided to park idle buses because they're using fewer buses at the Floyd Bennett Field facility. And as a result of the entire facility, which had been used for weeks now for safe recreation is now close to the public. It's also cut off 400 people from their community gardens at a time when many New Yorkers are having trouble putting food on their tables. And those 400 people rely on the food that they're growing in those community gardens to feed themselves. I'm just wondering, it seems like the MTA and the Parks Department reached this agreement without the knowledge of City Hall. I'm wondering if that's the case? And if there's anything being done to try to find an alternative such as the Riis Beach parking lot, which is completely unused right now or any other facilities to park these buses? And then one other question about the beaches. Considering that we have people social distancing –

Mayor: Steve, you there? Steve? Well we got, we got part one. I guess if we can get him back, we can do the second part. I'll start answering and you'll let me know if you, if you bring him back. Steve thank you for your comment at the beginning. I want to say, I think for everyone – is Steve back or not? I'm hearing some feedback there. You good? Steve?

Question: Yeah.

Mayor: Okay. There you go. We heard you start to talk about beaches and then lost you.

Question: As a second question, the beach issue was just, you know, it seems like social distancing as it's maintained in Central Park and Prospect Park could also be maintained on many of our 14 miles of City beaches over the summer? Some of them maybe, perhaps not. I'm wondering if that's being considered for approved recreation over the summer?

Mayor: Okay. So, Steve, thank you for the questions. And I want to say thank you for your kind comment about what I've tried to do, my team's tried to do here, which is to constantly make information available and take questions from all of you that would help the people in New York City get a better sense of what's going on. And obviously, you know, answer important and tough questions that the public deserves answers to. So, thank you. I want to thank everyone in the media because this has been, you know, an extraordinary situation where we're doing this so often. And I think the people of this city have appreciated that this dialogue happens so regularly. So thank you to all.

To your two questions. So, I'm not happy with what I'm hearing about, it doesn't make sense to me. Steve, what I don't understand is exactly who all the parties to this were. Obviously, the MTA, my understanding is that situation is controlled, that space is controlled by the United States Parks Service. I don't know enough about what city agencies involvement was or wasn't. I'll get down to the bottom of that today and we can give you more of an answer later. But I can tell you I don't like what I'm seeing for the very reasons you outlined. That we want people to have access to recreation for just the amount of time they need each day. And obviously with social distancing, but people do need access to that recreation, people do need access to community gardens, again following those rules. And I don't understand. It's not anything negative to MTA. I just don't why with so much less service going on, it would be necessary to knock out, you know, those opportunities for everyday people. You know, I have to believe there are other alternatives. So, we're happy to work with MTA on other alternatives. But we'll come back to you today on that.

On the beaches. I think we're starting with the notion that first of all we don't know what the next few months bring. The normal time we would have opened the beaches would have been a matter of weeks from now on Memorial Day. That was inconceivable from everything that we have been experiencing. Because remember, how do most people get to the beaches? They get on the subways, they get in buses, they drive their cars and then a bunch of people congregate. That was not something we could possibly imagine for the near term. We are still fighting day to day to beat back this disease. You've been watching indicators, Steve, we’ve been making some progress but we're still not to the kind of progress we need. So that's why we knew we could not start the beach season anywhere near like normal. As I've said, we're open to later on in the summer where we may get an opportunity. I think your point is well taken. If we get to something, if we get to a point where we could start to open up, how would we do it and how would we do it smartly? I think it's fair to say I could see a scenario where we would do social distancing and limits on the number of people, but I also want to urge people to recognize that won't be easy. That's a lot to enforce, it comes with real problems and potential dangers. So that one would be a high bar from my point of view. We'd have to be really certain we were turning a corner on the disease, really certain we could do it the right way, and that we could enforce it properly. But it's a perfectly fair idea and something we're going to look at as one of the options, but that's not happening overnight. That's something that would be down the road when we've had a lot more progress beating back this disease.

Moderator: Next we have Christina from Chalkbeat. 

Question: Hi, Mayor. Thanks for taking my question. There's obviously, and rightfully, a lot of focus on mental health right now. I'm just wondering if we can expect a specific plan for teachers and students who are also dealing with a lot right now with the shift to remote learning.

Mayor: Yeah. Christina, the – absolutely, yes. The Chancellor mentioned this originally a couple of weeks ago and I tried to amplify yesterday how much we're focused and concerned about the mental health needs of our kids. I've spoken with the First Lady about it. The First Lady and the Chancellor are working together to take a lot of the initiatives that have been created through Thrive and apply them in the coming months with our kids remotely, but also to start the planning for September. We understand that September is going to be a challenge in terms of mental health for our kids that's absolutely unprecedented and we're going to have to do a lot in every school to support kids who have honestly been traumatized. So, you're going to in the not too distant future hear the specific plans to address mental health needs of kids over the next few months. And then as we get closer to the opening of school, definitely a plan is going to be put out on mental health services in all schools for September. And the First Lady and the Chancellor will be working on that together. And the First lady is going to add – 

First Lady McCray: Yes. You should know that the mental health services that are provided to our young people are continuing, that teachers are being trained in social emotional learning, which of course deals with the children's emotional needs so that they are able to continue working with children online to a certain extent. In the fall we hope to have a more expanded program because we know that so many of our young people are going to come back in distress, but we haven't stopped doing anything that we're already doing. We're doing what we can virtually, training the teachers, bringing them up to speed so that they will be ready in September.

Mayor: Alright. Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Melissa from News 4.

Mayor: Melissa? I don't know if we have Melissa – are you there, Melissa?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you doing? 

Mayor: How are you doing? 

Question: Sorry, I was checking on my daughter in school.

Mayor: That's important. You had your priorities right.

Question: Walked away at the wrong moment, so thank you. We've been reporting that a few children hospitalized here in the city appear to be experiencing some of the same inflammatory symptoms that British officials warned about over last weekend. Some of the children have tested positive for COVID-19 while others have tested negative. But we're wondering what you're seeing, big picture. Your Health Department says since the inflammatory symptoms are not required to be reported to City health officials, they can't say exactly how many children are experiencing these serious side effects right now. Is this something you'd want your Health Department to be tracking? What else do you know about this, if anything?

Mayor: Thank you for the question. Look, I'm concerned because, you know, Melissa, we've talked about from the beginning, we're dealing with the great unknown here, and I think we have to be vigilant all the time to any new development that might give us a warning of something bigger because obviously the entire mission here is to save lives and particularly precious is saving the lives of our kids. So, I'm concerned about it. I don't pretend to have expertise on the exact reality, but I'm very concerned. And I think we've got to figure out how to understand it better and if it is something to be tracked. Let me turn to Dr. Barbot and I know we have Dr. Eric Wei who's the Vice President of Health + Hospitals. I want to see if either of them would like to speak to this issue.

Commissioner Barbot: So, Mr. Mayor, I will say that – I'll start with what we've been saying for a while. Every day we learn more and more about how this virus behaves, both from a public health point of view as well as from a clinical point of view. And, you know, recently we have been talking about the way in which coronavirus can affect the heart and the cardiovascular system. To date, we have not heard of ways in which the coronavirus has been affecting children's cardiovascular system. We do have regular ongoing calls with infectious disease specialists throughout the city. We have webinars with them. Additionally, we meet on a regular basis through webinar with doctors and leaders in the intensive care units of all of the hospitals, and we have not seen this to date. I've also been in communication with our Medical Examiner. She has not noticed this in cases that she has seen. But we are in contact with our academic partners to ensure that if this is a trend that's being seen through our clinical partners that we work collaboratively to understand it better. We are always paying attention to what seems to be emerging not only from the worldwide literature but also what we're experiencing here in New York City.

Mayor: Dr. Wei, anything you'd like to add?

Vice President and Chief Quality Officer Eric Wei, Health + Hospitals: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, similar to Dr. Barbot, I am not aware of this being a trend in New York City Health + Hospitals. I think that was one of the things that we were most, kind of, I guess appreciative of and being a father of two toddlers, three and five and a baby who is seven months old – you know, being scared for our children is it – the virus seems to not affect our young patients nearly as much as the older and those with comorbidities. But as Dr. Barbot mentioned, we are paying attention through our Pediatrics Council, our Critical Care Councils, our Emergency Department Councils, and we are not seeing a lot of children testing positive for COVID or getting very ill or ending up in our pediatric ICUs from COVID. But we are aware of the news and the literature that's ever-changing out there about inflammatory changes, Kawasaki disease, and we're paying very close attention to that and also listening to our science and our experts.

Moderator: Last two for today. Next is Matt Chase from Newsday.

Question: Hey, thanks for taking my question. I appreciate it. For the Police Commissioner, regarding gatherings, what exactly will you be doing differently going forward from what you did last night? How will your summons and arrest policy be different from what you did last night? And to what extent has the procedure changed for handling arrestees and folks getting summons physically since the coronavirus? And for Dr. Barbot, can you explain an epidemiology, the difference between absence of evidence and evidence of absence?

Mayor: Okay, Dr. Barbot, why don't you take that first, since that sounds like a question I would certainly not have the answer to. So, why don't you take that one and then we'll turn it to the Commissioner?

Commissioner Barbot: You know, that's a really good question. And when we say that there is absence of evidence, it means that there are not a good amount of studies that have documented evidence one way or another, what the particular finding in question or that particular question in question may be. So, that's an absence of findings. And then the other part of your question, if you could restate it.

Mayor: Do we have Matt still there?

Question: Sure. Can you hear me okay? 

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: I was wondering if you can explain evidence of absence.

Commissioner Barbot: Evidence of absence, meaning that scientific studies were done, clinical studies were done, observations, et cetera, and confirmed that there is, no current association with the particular question in mind. Now, that's not to say that future studies may not find a finding. But that's what that means.

Mayor: Okay. Commissioner Shea. 

Commissioner Shea: So, what I'll say about the gatherings – we're two months into this pandemic at this point and when you look at how we, as a police department, have policed. I am biased, but I think we've done a good job of balancing and using discretion and working with New Yorkers from one end of the city to another. In terms of whether it's in parks, whether it's at religious gatherings, whether it's outside housing developments, or whether it's on the street lining up to buy groceries. I think we've gone into it with an appreciation of this is tough for everyone and we’ve got to get through this together. And we've empowered our offices for years now to use discretion. And I think that that has come through in this. By-and-large you've seen New Yorkers cooperate. You've seen incidents pop up.

Certainly, we've had an increase in 3-1-1 calls. I view that as a good thing that people are letting us know what's going on and taking interest in their city and it is their city. Overall, we've seen really few, when you think of the tens and hundreds of thousands at this point, interactions across this city in a variety of circumstances. Arrests are the far extreme, there have been some summons, it’s really not a lot and usually it's been a mutual cooperation. But here's the only thing that's changed. We are beyond, at this point, asking people to comply. We cannot have, for the third time, what we had last night. And that is irrespective of any religion, any race, any part of this city. It is simply putting you at risk. It is putting your families at risk. It is putting the critical workers at risk that are already risking their lives, saying goodbye to their children and going into the unknown in emergency rooms across the city every day. And it's certainly, for the last time, putting my cops at risk. And what you should take away from that is how really unnecessary it is. We grieved this weekend for two fallen detectives, but we did not come out. We did it from our home by-and-large. And there is no reason that anyone in this city cannot do the same in this unprecedented time.

Moderator: Last question for today, Debralee from Manhattan Times and Bronx Free Press.

Question: Hey, good morning everyone. 

Mayor: Good morning.

Question: I wanted to follow up on the conversation that's being had around testing and how the capacity for it continues to ramp up both on the city and the state level, to the extent that we're talking about expanding testing at NYCHA sites, at independent pharmacies, and the like. In doing so, can you speak to whether in fact the guidance on residents seeking out testing has changed, has more testing, in fact, then led to a conversation about inviting residents in the effort to both test and trace and identify the illness [inaudible] continues to progress. In fact, are we saying to residents, are we changing the guidance and saying, if you're asymptomatic, potentially you should still seek out testing to be certain? And then in light of that, are we looking at a prelude essentially to what's already happened in Chile, and we've heard Dr. Fauci discuss, which are essentially coronavirus certification or some kind of identification that speaks to whether you've tested positive and what that will mean? And then finally, when we talk about this testing and tracing policy, what concerns does the city have about how this will affect undocumented immigrants who are already concerned about, you know, the big brother quality of some of these programs, and in fact the disincentives to come out and get tested because there is this follow-through in a way that potentially might be invasive and they would worry, might well lead to dire consequences.

Mayor: So, Debralee, appreciate it. Let me work through these questions quickly and our medical colleagues, they might want to jump in as well, but let me take the first stab. For undocumented folks – look, this is a city that has gone out of its way to show absolute and total respect for all human beings who live here regardless of documentation status. I think that's something that's deeply understood in immigrant communities that we do not ask documentation status when we provide services, especially things like health care. NYPD does not ask documentation status, we go out of a way to make sure that records are not kept, that would be problematic. People have been told who are undocumented in this crisis, you know, we want to make sure you get food and you get medical care just like everybody else. So – and obviously the initiative that we created with the Open Society Foundation is to provide direct support to undocumented folks who don't have a livelihood, is exceptional and says the level of commitment this city has to all human beings.

So, my hope is when it comes to something as important as knowing if you have a disease that obviously can be life threatening to you and your family, that that is more important than anything else. Folks who have come here, have come here overwhelmingly to try and better the lives of their families often from very, very difficult and even tragic situations where they came from. So, I would like to believe that notwithstanding the fears, there would be – the first impulse is if someone needed testing, they would get testing, and know that it would be kept confidential by the City of New York because we keep everything confidential. In terms of your larger questions, has the guidance changed, in a sense, yes. But in another way, I wouldn't say all the way. It's changed in the sense that we once had almost no testing in the city.

And then we had to try to use the little bit we had to focus on the sickest patients and the health care personnel and the first responders. And now we're able only in the last few weeks to open it up to broader communities. So, that's definitely a change. Our message to people is that getting tested is important particularly if you are most vulnerable, older, and/or have preexisting conditions. So, that's been consistent. But what will change, for sure, much, deeply – much more deeply in the next few weeks is when we go to a huge test-and-trace approach. Then we're saying to tens of thousands, ultimately hundreds of thousands, of New Yorkers, we want to maximize testing, and then we want to test to anyone that if you're positive, if you test positive, we want to test the people that you had close contact with.

So, the guidance is changing, but it's going to change a lot more. I think on the question of certificates that's something we have to think about for the future. It has been used as a tool in one way or another. A certificate or something that's an online registry has been used in different places. I think it's certainly a commendable idea, but we have not made any conclusions on that. It would have to be done in a smart way. There's lots of things we'd have to think about legally – privacy, other issues. But it's certainly on the table as something we're looking at – how you support a really broad gauge testing system and how you get us back to normal with the information that testing system provides. So, those are some answers – doctors, anything you want to add?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, Mr. Mayor. I will add that it's important to tease apart the two tests that we're talking about because I think all too often antibody tests get lumped in with testing for the actual infection. And so, it's important for us to tease that apart. With regards to testing for infection, the guidance remains in terms of wanting to make sure that individuals who have chronic underlying illnesses that put them at greater risk for bad outcomes are prioritized for testing. But then as the availability for testing increases, we want to then test more individuals. In addition to that, we are doing everything we can to maximize the number of ways in which we increase access to testing. And so recently we announced that we are moving forward H + H and then we, through the public health lab, will also do nasal swabs instead of nasopharyngeal swabs, putting less of a strain on PPE. So that's how that testing arm has evolved. 

When we talk about testing for antibodies, we have to be very clear that there is no science that tells us that there is durable protection or immunity if someone tests positive for those antibodies. And so, we want to be very careful not to give false hope for people because there's no correlation with immunity. And in fact, there have been some preliminary studies that indicate that people can be potentially reinfected with COVID-19 in the same season. And so, we're waiting for more studies to be done to tell us whether those findings are corroborated or not. I think where antibodies may be helpful for us in the future is to give us a better understanding in the next season – if people who have antibodies for this season get reinfected next season, then we'll have a better understanding of what those antibodies really mean and whether or not they are protective and if they are protective how long they last.

Mayor: Dr. Wei, anything you'd like to add?

Dr. Wei: Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Yeah. Now I would just reinforce what Dr. Barbot said. The antibody tests, I think there's benefits even to our health care workers in terms of the psychological safety of knowing that I've been exposed and I wasn't one of the ones who ended up on a ventilator in the ICU. But we don't know how much immunity, and so we don't want people to relax their social distancing or their PPE usage. And then on the undocumented immigrants comment, I mean, that really resonates with Health + Hospitals with the Mayor's administration. It is part of our ethos. It is in our mission statement. The two most important words are without exception, we want to help New Yorkers live their healthiest lives. Without exception, we don't ask. I, as a doctor, don't care about your immigration status, I care about your health. And if that health is at risk because of COVID-19, I want you to get a test and I want to provide you the appropriate treatments and results. And so, I don't want anyone to think that at Health + Hospitals, we will be asking immigration status because we don't. We care about your health.

Mayor: Nicely said, doctor. Thank you. And let me conclude by us going back to where we started – the extraordinary work, the heroic work so many health care workers have done, so many first responders have done over these weeks. Unprecedented, unimaginable what so many have gone through and that no one could have foreseen. And yet the heroism has been so clear and so sharp. I want to thank the First Lady, I want to thank our Police Commissioner. The idea that we will all support our health care workers and our first responders in every way is absolutely crucial. So, it's of course everything that's been done up to now to give them protection, to get those PPEs, the personal protective equipment, and that effort is going to be ongoing and we're going to deepen that effort. All we have done to try to support them and thank them, but now going deeper with testing, going deeper with mental health support – we need to be there for them through this whole crisis and then beyond. And this is a good example – when they say that phrase, we'll leave no stone unturned, that's what we're talking about when it comes to supporting the heroes of this fight. There's a lot they need. There's a lot we have to give to them to support them. And everyone recognize, every time you say thank you to one of these heroes, every time you offer to help them in ways big and small, all those wonderful people have come out to applaud at seven o'clock at night, all the people who have brought food and support to hospitals and to our EMTs and paramedics and all of our first responders, every bit of it helps. And we're going to be there for them because they have certainly been there for all of us.

Thank you, everybody.

2020-04-30 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. When you think about what we've all been through, you think about the eyes of the world, the eyes of the nation have been on New York City and all of you in this time of unprecedented crisis. When the nation at the end of all this thinks about what happened here, when they try and put together the essence of what happened, and what New Yorkers did to try and summarize how New Yorkers confronted this extraordinary moment. I think the simple way to put it will be New Yorkers found a way through thick and thin, no matter what was thrown at you, you found a way. New Yorkers, we know for a long time, for generations, we've been a driven people in the best sense of the word. People who get things done, people who set a goal and then go and achieve it. That's who New Yorkers are. It doesn't matter where you come from, how much money there is in your bank account, it's something we all have in common. And think about the way that folks, even against extraordinary adversity found a way. Our teachers found a way. Our educators found a way to reach 1.1 million children without the benefit of school buildings and classrooms. Our entrepreneurs found a way to manufacture lifesaving supplies and equipment right here in New York City. Things that were not built here even just a couple months ago now being produced in New York City to protect our health care heroes and our first responders. And those extraordinary frontline heroes found a way through the toughest circumstances to keep going and keep saving lives.

You certainly deserve to know that your city government has found a way and will always found a way and that's what I intend to do. And all of us here at city hall and all the city agencies intend to do. So, finding a way has taken many, many forms I assure you. Sometimes things we didn't expect and help from places we didn't expect. I never would have expected that we would need to seek test kits for the coronavirus from Carmel, Indiana, but that's exactly what has happened, and that's helping us now to save lives here. I never would have expected to meet a pair of very, very good guys, EMT’s, paramedics from Kalamazoo, Michigan drove through the night to come here and help out our EMT’s and paramedics in their hour of need. Never ever would have anticipated the Brooklyn Navy Yard turning back the clock and becoming a wartime factory again. World War II it was a legendary shipyard creating the vessels that helped to protect us and save us. Today in the Brooklyn Navy Yard wonderful people, from the folks who own the companies to the folks who are sowing the surgical gowns and making the face shields by hand, creating those lifesaving products for our first responders, and our health care workers. Never could have imagined any of it, but each and every time New Yorkers found a way, and there've been some areas where it was hard to find a way to be very honest. Something I, like most of us, didn't know much about surgical gowns, isolation gowns. When we came to realize how crucial they were to protecting our frontline heroes in the hospitals. We set about trying to find a supply anywhere in the world only to find that it was very, very difficult. We needed this armor for our health care heroes, and we looked under every stone, and obviously started producing them right here, but it was nowhere near the number we would need.

Well, it often felt like we only had a few days before we were going to run out. That was the reality we were facing, but today I am happy to share some very good news, and this is one really important piece of the puzzle, because having those surgical gowns is so important to protecting the people who are protecting all of us. And I'll tell you, I want to as I say this, tell you that the local businesses that stepped up so brilliantly, they're now making 125,000 of these surgical gowns each week, right here in New York City. Again, zero were being produced two months ago, 125,000 a week and growing right now. And one company that was part of that, BCI Brands. They've been working closely with the city's Economic Development Corporation. One day, not so long ago, they shared a very important piece of information with the city. They said they had a sister factory in Vietnam that was capable of much greater production. The factory is called Viet Thanh Garment and we immediately knew we needed this help. Again, we had to find a way, but it was not going to be easy. The logistics were not going to be easy. It was not like getting something from just down the street. This was going to be a whole other endeavor, and the questions were many. How would we get the massive quantity of fabric needed to create the gowns far away in Vietnam? Could we get the, the planes put together? We literally have to find 747’s to bring these products back. Could we do it all immediately? Because the need was immediate. And I want to thank everyone at the city's Economic Development Corporation, because when presented with all these questions, some of which seemed extremely daunting, the answer to each and every one of them was yes, and they found a way.

So, we now have, for the first time in this crisis, a large-scale provider of surgical gowns for New York City. Over a million gowns are now on their way as we speak to the city. Another 900,000 will be on their way next week, and 3 million more are being produced as we speak. We're sending fabric to the factory in Vietnam so they can make even more. Now, this is something that I have to tell you, we've been measuring our supply of surgical gowns, isolation gowns. We've been in all these similar protective garments. We've been measuring our supply in days. That's how tight it has been, whether we could even get through any individual week. But now, because we have this strong production right here, and because of this extraordinary partnership with the factory in Vietnam, we are now confident that we will have enough surgical gowns to get us to the middle of May. And that's, I have to tell you compared to any other point in this crisis, that's the best we've been able to achieve, not out of the woods for the long haul, more to do. And clearly want to emphasize to all the frontline health care workers, this is not the ideal standard. We're still operating at that crisis standard where we're providing the PPE’s, but we'd like to provide even more, but at least for the first time in quite a while we can say we have a secure supply for the weeks ahead. And now we can get the hospitals, the nursing homes, what they need on a much steadier basis, and that is very good news for protecting our heroes and helping them save lives.

Now, another place where we had to find a way was when it came to testing. Testing, this has been the central issue during this whole crisis. The absence of testing from the beginning. The fact that testing is still so hard to get now, and the unclear as a charitable term, the unclear role of the federal government, the absence of the federal government as the driving force throughout this whole process when it comes to testing. Remember, testing is how we get to that next phase. Testing is how we get out of widespread transmission of the coronavirus and onto the next phase where we can start to get life back to normal. Testing is key to everything. So, for so long the testing we had was very limited, and the focus had to be on saving lives in the hospitals on protecting our health care workers, knowing who had the disease, who didn't, who needed to get home or get treatment, who was able to stay at work, and the same with our first responders. But in recent weeks, the last couple of weeks, we finally had the testing capacity, and the personnel, and the PPE’s to actually go out and do community-based testing the way we want to do a lot more of. We finally are getting this to grow into something much more important and bigger at the community level.

So, just a few weeks ago, there were literally no sites that weren't attached directly to a hospital. Now, there are 11 community sites open. Eight at Health and Hospitals clinics all over the five boroughs, three at New York City Housing Authority sites. And those three sites are now open at the Jonathan Williams Houses in Williamsburg, at the Woodside Houses in Woodside, Queens, and Saint Nicholas Houses in Harlem. So, that has been a big step forward. We're now going to go a lot farther. This fits beautifully with what we have to do to build up a much bigger test and trace mechanism. So, this is the first of many steps we're going to take. I'm also pleased to announce there will be new sites opening as part of this community testing initiative. Two more Health and Hospitals sites will open this weekend at the Ida G Israel Clinic in Coney Island, and the Dikeman Clinica de Las Americas in Inwood in Manhattan. Starting next week, we will also provide community testing on a broader scale at all 11 Health + Hospital hospital locations as well. So, as you can see, this is really growing rapidly, and it is the precursor to a much bigger test and trace operation that's going to grow throughout May. Again, we're here to serve the communities that are hardest hit, and we're going to be growing out from there to reach more and more New Yorkers across the whole city, every community. And I want to remind you, the first priority always is folks who are older, and folks who have those preexisting conditions, and particularly if someone fits both those categories. So, more and more testing in the communities that are having the toughest time, the coronavirus that then will blend into a true citywide test and trace operation reaching into every corner of the five boroughs.

So, when you add in everything that we have planned, we'll go from the 11 sites now to 30 sites tripling the number by the week of May 18th. So, this is now really moving fast, testing dynamics are changing, thank God, we talked a few days ago about the self-swab test that's going to simplify things and speed up the testing process. We still have more work to do with the labs to extend lab capacity for that test and we need more lab capacity overall, this is still the big missing link lab capacity and the products that go into the lab process like the reagents. This is still where we need help from the federal government on a big scale, but more and more since we're finding more and more sites we can use, we have more and more personnel and PPEs we can apply. We're able to use this simpler self-swab test, the expansion is really moving, so 11 sites now will be 30 sites by the week of May 18th, and we'll be able to triple the number of tests given each week, so now we're at about 14,000 tests per week. Again, getting faster, the more we do it more efficient, the more we do it, by the week of May 4th it'll be 35,000 tests a week, by the week of May 18th, 43,000 tests a week, and we want to go a lot farther from there.

Now, want to talk about the way we link up the things that we've achieved so far. Getting more and more of the PPEs, getting more and more of the testing link that concept up with what all of you have achieved by your extraordinary devotion to social distancing, to shelter in place, to the things that have been working. Another piece of this that has clearly been working is face coverings, talked about this weeks ago when the evidence came in that was time to tell New Yorkers, everyone needs a face covering outside, I want to thank you because overwhelmingly New Yorkers took that instruction and ran with it. When the City gave that guidance initially New Yorkers really moved fast to take it and make it a part of your everyday life and it's helped and it’s helps protect everyone and again, face coverings means a scarf, a bandana, anything you can create a home, not a fancy medical grade mask, just anything that you can create at home. A lot of people are getting mask from a hardware store or something like that, whatever just keeps your nose and mouth covered, people have been doing this really, really well, but we know there's some people that still don't have a face covering and need one or some people that need to be reminded energetically that this is now a rule that everyone needs to follow. So, with more folks going outside the warmer weather coming, we want to keep limiting the time outside as always, but we know as it gets warmer, people will come out for their exercise, that's fine, get your exercise and get back home. We want to keep people safe; everyone needs to have a face covering on. Now, a place where you particularly have to be attentive and I want to remind people these rules, when you go into a grocery store or supermarket, a pharmacy, you have to have that face covering on. You have to, you have to do that out of respect for your fellow New Yorkers, you have to do that to help protect everyone. Remember when this disease is not spreading, it's also protecting you and your family, everyone you love, that face covering helps reduce the spread of the disease. So, you need to do that and if you don't do that, you're actually putting people at risk and if you don't do that, we've made very clear to the owners and managers and employees of those grocery stores, those department stores, excuse me, those supermarkets, those pharmacies that if someone comes in and is not wearing a face covering of course, it's great to remind them, Hey, you don't have your face covering put it on right away, please. If someone doesn't have a face covering with them or isn't willing, they need to get out of the store, let's be abundantly clear. We've said in the City will back them up and if the store owner or manager needs support from any city agency, including NYPD, we will be there right away. No one goes into a grocery store, a supermarket or a pharmacy without a face covering on. If you try to, the people in the store have every right to send you right back the other way out and we will back them up a hundred percent so again, really clear rules, let's all follow them, it's just for the protection of everybody.

Now, again, want to make it easy for people to have face covering, so we're going to start to give them out free in our City parks. We know it's going to get warm; we know people to go to the parks, again, want people to keep some real limits on that, but I want everyone to have a face covering. Sometimes someone just forgot at home that we understand, some people are having trouble finding one, okay, we're going to start giving them out for free. So, a hundred thousand will be given out starting this week and we'll keep going from there. We're going to focus on parks where we expect a lot of people to be, we're going to focus on communities that have been the hardest hit by the disease. Anyone wants to know where these face covering distributions are going to be, you can go to nyc.gov/facecoverings.

Now, social distancing has been absolutely crucial, it's working, and another type of heroism has been the quiet heroism of so many of our city employees who have been out there, our public servants, educating people, reminding people that it was really important to practice social distancing. And it took some time, it's not normal for New Yorkers we understand it's taken a lot of adjustment, but a whole lot of our city employees have been out there doing a great job educating people, very persuasively, reminding them that this has to happen. The NYPD has been in the front line of that effort, I want to thank all our officers who are doing that work and all the members of all our agencies who have been doing that work. Look, we know this isn't easy sometimes and it certainly wasn't what people thought would be part of their regular job, but we need it and it's making a big difference. So, NYPD has been in the frontline of this, we're going to bring more and more other agencies to this effort and we now have over a thousand non-NYPD city workers who are being assigned to patrol parks and public spaces. They're from the Parks Department, the Office of Special Enforcement, Sanitation, Fire Department, Environmental Protection, and the Sheriff's Office. So, this is a big group, a lot of them have been out there already more will come and we're going to keep building this ability to be out there in public spaces, educating, patrolling, but also enforcing. At the same time these public servants will have a lot of face coverings with them and they'll be able to distribute them to anyone that needs them for free. Every time we give out these face coverings, I emphasize it will be for free and they'll be distributing 275,000 face covering starting this week. So, it's going to be really easy to get a face covering and everyone needs to stick with using those face coverings all the time when you're outside.

Now, let's talk about some good news for the heroes who have been doing so much for all of us, our health care workers, our first responders. Something very good happened earlier on this crisis and I want to thank everyone at Citi Bike. They did, they created something called a critical workforce program, they gave first responders, transit workers, health care workers, a free month of membership and 5,500 of them signed up and took advantage of that and were able to get around using Citi Bike. I want to say with great appreciation, the Citi Bike is now expanding this to a one year free membership and it will be offered to an even broader set of essential workers, I want to thank folks at Citi, which provided and MasterCard, both Citi and MasterCard have provided tremendous support, a million dollars to fund this program. This is going to be fantastic for helping people get around who need this alternative. And on top of that Citi Bike, we'll be expanding with a hundred new stations, docking stations in the Bronx and Manhattan, including key locations that have been the frontline of this crisis, including Lincoln Hospital and Harlem Hospital. And it will help everyone, these new stations of course will be open to all and they'll give more and more options to more and more people, so that's a great, great step forward. I want to thank Lyft, which is a company that now owns Citi Bike, this is a great step forward, thanks to everyone at lifts, thanks to everyone at Citi for investing in this program. And again, MasterCard as well for investing in this program, we appreciate this initiative that's going to make a big difference. And while I'm giving some thanks out, I'd like to thank some more organizations that have, and it's just wonderful when people step up from New York City and it really shows that a lot of people, a lot of organizations that have for a long time benefit from their connection to New York City are remembering that and honoring that and stepping up from New York City and we are very, very appreciative.

First of all, our friends at the NBA have donated over a thousand N95 mask and 30,000 surgical mask and we thank them for that. American Eagle has donated 175,000 surgical mask, that's fantastic and the Consulate of Egypt has donated 200,000 surgical mask, 3000 protective suits and 2000 surgical gowns. We are very, very appreciative to all now that's in the category of the protective gear, there's been some other great donations. AT&T donated a hundred thousand dollars to our food for heroes effort through the Mayor's fund. Fresh cosmetics has donated $205,000 worth of personal cleaning products to our Health and the Hospitals locations and to the isolation centers, working on behalf of our homeless New Yorkers. And Facebook – this is really fantastic – Facebook is helping out our small businesses that are going through so much right now. We need all the support we can get and most especially we need the federal government to keep stepping up and putting real money into supporting our small businesses, but this is a great example and we're going to be doing more and more of this to get in every conceivable source of support for small business. Facebook has launched a $6.5 million grant program for New York City small businesses specifically, and it is help our small businesses richly deserve. I want to thank everyone at Facebook. This is a great initiative - any small business owner wants to apply, can go to facebook.com/grantsforbusiness.

Now, on that same note, obviously the key here is the federal aid and we know the first round of the federal support for small business – the Paycheck Protection Program – it did not work as planned on many levels. A lot of big businesses tried to usurp the money; it was a hard process to make sense of. A lot of businesses couldn't get their applications in time; a lot of businesses didn't have the relationships with the banks that made it easier. There were a lot of problems that came up in that first program granted, it was an important program. It was put together quickly in a crisis, but the good news is that, especially through the leadership of Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, Congressmember Nydia Velázquez, the Paycheck Protection Program got replenished with $310 billion and made more available to businesses that don't have those traditional big bank relationships; businesses that use local credit unions more, smaller mom and pop businesses, community-based businesses, businesses in communities of color. A lot was done to improve the program. So, $310 billion, an astounding amount of money, but we need to make sure it goes to New York City small businesses – it's going fast. So again, every small business who needs that help, if you haven’t applied - apply immediately. Go to sba.gov – for the Small Business Administration – sba.gov that's where the federal application is. Get it in as quickly as possible and as I announced any small business that's having trouble navigating the application process can call 3-1-1 and our team at Small Business Services and other agencies will help small business owners to navigate this process, but we've got to get these applications in right away to help our small businesses. So, please pick up the phone if you need help.

Now, let's go to the daily indicators. This is what we talk about every day and so important to track them all together. And so today we have a very good day. We don't have a perfect day, but a very good day. And again, I constantly see progress here because of everything you're doing. I want to get to those days where we hit all the notes and keep hitting them, but, overall, we still see real progress. So, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 – down 136 to 129, so small amount of progress, but still progress. Daily number of people in ICUs across Health + Hospitals for COVID-19 – down 734 to 705. Percentage of people who are testing positive citywide down 23 percent to 22 percent, again small progress, but progress nonetheless. Public health lab, this is again the toughest measure in many ways – went up, not by a huge amount, but it went up 29 percent to 36 percent. So, overall a good day overall moving in the right direction, keep doing what you're doing because it is clearly working.

So, I'm going to close and a few words in Spanish and then we'll turn to our colleagues in the media, but, but just want to come back to that notion of finding a way. Again, it's a very New York City idea; it's a New York City way of life. You know, New Yorkers for generations have known how to make something out of nothing; how to take what looked to be impossible odds and turn them around. It's happening over and over and over again in this crisis. It's been amazing to watch. My respect for all of you was intense before this crisis. It has grown even more because I've watched this city somehow fight back this disease and do it with an incredible strength and a compassion for each other; that's what New York City's all about. So, we're going to find a way, and I can tell you what we're all going to do here at City Hall. One way or another, we're going to find a way to get more testing; we're going to find a way to create the biggest testing and tracing program this city, this nation has ever seen. One way or another, we're going to get those supplies, that equipment that protects our heroes. We will find a way, we will find a way to restart the city and we will find a way to recover. And we actually will find a way to come back in many ways stronger, and fairer, and better. I have absolute faith in the people in this city. So, we know how to find a way that's who we are and we will find a way to beat this disease.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that we will turn to our colleagues in the media. And as always, please let me know the name and the outlet of each journalist

Moderator: And a quick reminder to folks that we have Dr. Barbot and Dr. Katz on the phone. And the first question goes to Juliet from 1010 Wins, Juliet.

Question: Oh, hi. Good morning all, how are you today?

Mayor: Hey Juliet, how are you?

Question: I’m okay, so I have a question. I’ve seen and reported a chronic rat infestation. It has been a swarm of rats coming out of the sewer and crawling on garbage bags left on the street on Sixth Avenue and I was informed by 3-1-1 and then the Health Department that pest control teams are not responding due to social distancing regulations. Now, I don't know whether you've seen the situation in New Orleans where the rats are out in the streets in droves. So why isn't pest control responding and are you concerned about a rat problem getting out of control here?

Mayor: Juliet, thank you for the question. I have to say it's a very graphic question, but thank you. As New Yorkers, unfortunately we know way too much about rats and we are certainly not going to ever let it get to be a worse situation. We're going to fight it back. Look, in the beginning of the crisis, Juliet, a lot of the normal way we did business had to be changed. Remember that for weeks in March going into the beginning of April, it looked like this was going to become an even deeper health care crisis and everything was about making sure the disease didn't spread, making sure we were really forcefully keeping people inside to the maximum extent possible. And we had to be smart about our public employees because everyone that could be kept in and could socially distance, we had to do that. But now we have a situation that's improving. We got still a long way to go, but we have a situation that's improving so we cannot let that situation with the rats you describe get out of hand and we will address it head on. I'll follow up today with the Health Department; we'll assess the right way to address that while still being mindful that we have to use only the minimal amount of city personnel while still trying to keep everyone in who we can, but we're certainly going to address that problem.

Moderator: Next is Andy from the Gay City News, Andy?

Question: Yes, hi Mr. Mayor. Good to see you.

Mayor: How you doing man?

Question: Yeah, I'm okay. I'm 66 and overweight, but, you know, we'll hope to get through this. Two questions, you proposed a rent freeze and renters being allowed to use their security deposits for rent, but the Rent Guidelines Board has always had the legal power to lower rents. The group Housing Justice is calling for a three percent decrease in rents; a roll back given the severity of the crisis. Might this not be the time to roll back rents? And second, the United States Navy Ship Comfort – the hospital ship – is going back to Virginia. What then is the need for Franklin Graham Samaritan's Purse in Central Park? And are you at all concerned that they've been filming dying patients and using them in their fundraising ads on television and online and proselytizing for their religion while caring for the patients?

Mayor: Well, Andy, that one, this is the first-time hearing anything like that and I would be deeply concerned if that was happening. I mean, look, when we all first heard about a field hospital near Sinai Hospital, you know, it was in a moment where the disease was growing rapidly and it was part of an effort to provide more and more care for people as the situation got worse and worse. And honestly, when I first heard about it, I had no idea about the history of the organization. The more I learned, the more concern I got. There've been a number of efforts to make clear, and I want to say everyone at the hospital has been very clear about this, that that no discrimination was acceptable in any way that everyone who worked there had to serve anyone and everyone equally and from everything I've heard that was enforced. I'm going to leave it to the people at Mount Sinai to determine if they still need the help to protect lives; that is the first concern here and whether that, whether that field hospital is still needed. That's something I want them to first pass judgment on. But, on the question of using footage to promote an organization that clearly has exclusionary values, I would be very concerned about that. And I would ask that Mount Sinai lay down the law about that and make clear that that's not something appropriate. They came here in principle to help save lives- that is good. That is something we all agree on, but we do not want to see the experience here in New York City used in some way to proselytize for any kind of exclusionary values. On the question of the rent, look, rent freeze to me makes a lot of sense given what people are going through. The Rent Guidelines Board needs to look at the, what the sheer totality of what tenants have experienced – it's overwhelming, it's unprecedented – the only comparison is the Great Depression. The people that are hurting the most in this equation are the tenants. I am certain, a lot of landlords are going through a lot too, especially smaller landlords. I don't belittle that at all, but rent freeze is the way to go because it protects the interests of renters but also recognizes that the buildings have to keep running and renters need that too. So, that, from my point of view, is the right balance to strike. I certainly think the Rent Guidelines Board should consider all the facts. There's other proposals on the table, they should look at them, but I think the balanced approach is a rent freeze. 

Moderator: Next is Julia from the Post. Julia?

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor and to everyone else on the call – just two questions. One, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said yesterday that the City needs to create a bereavement committee to deal with the surging deaths due to the coronavirus that would bring in more funeral directors, morgues, MEs, and clergy to assure the deceased are treated in a dignified manner. That's after police found dozens of bodies being stored in unrefrigerated U-Haul trucks outside of a Brooklyn funeral home. And then secondly, you mentioned the ramping up of testing. I was looking for an update of New York City's homegrown testing effort given that it's now April 30th and you said it would start producing 50,000 tests a week at the beginning of May. Can you say what labs, universities, or other companies are involved?

Mayor: Yeah, that testing effort is moving forward, Julia. I'll confirm with folks, I don't have all the details in front of me now, but I got an update yesterday. It is definitely moving forward aggressively and we will be able to confirm very shortly the exact participants in it, but they're doing good work. We'll get that out on the proposal by Borough President Eric Adams. I think it's a good idea. Now, this horrible situation that occurred with the funeral home in Brooklyn. Absolutely unacceptable. Let's be clear about this. Funeral homes are private organizations, private businesses, they have an obligation to the people they serve to treat them with dignity. I have no idea in the world how any funeral home could let this happen. The City historically does not have a direct working relationship with funeral homes. They are regulated by the State of New York.

So, it's not an area that we work with a lot, but again, we all have to work together to solve problems. I don't understand in this case, if the funeral home – I heard something about a driver didn't show up or something like that. Why on Earth did they not either alert the State, who regulates them, or go to their NYPD precinct and ask for help, do something rather than leave the bodies there. It's unconscionable to me. So, we will all work together and I think what Borough President Adams has said is smart. Get everyone talking to each other. Bring in our clergy who obviously brings so much perspective about what families need in this moment. So, I think that's a good idea and we'll find some way to create something like that, get everyone communicating and working together. 

Moderator: Henry from Bloomberg is up next. Henry?

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, good to see you again. I'm going to go back to the question I really asked yesterday because I think it got deflected into the problems with social distancing and that incident in Brooklyn with the funeral for the rabbi. And the question that I'd want to focus on is how do you assess the risk to New Yorkers in trying to come back to some semblance of everyday life, whether it's playing a game of tennis, whether it's shooting foul shots on a playground, whether it's, you know, just meeting up with your relatives for some kind of social interaction? When does the City decide to give New Yorkers some kind of break, some kind of relief? And of course, overriding this whole thing is the question of opening the school at a time when we're getting contradictory evidence of whether kids are contagious or not, whether they spread the disease. There are conflicting studies on that, whether asymptomatic kids spread the disease or not. How do you intend to go about assessing the risk and making a move back toward the life that we knew six weeks ago?

Mayor: Yeah. Well, Henry, again, very fair, good question, and a very real-world question. I appreciate that. First of all, we are going to get back. The how and the when are still unclear and the facts are not all in and the science is still – you know, we need a lot more scientific understanding of this disease to get to the point where I would say we are fully normal and obviously what we all pray for, a vaccine and even better a cure. But I think the way you put it's important, sort of, thinking about the stages, thinking about the things that might be more appropriate to do or less dangerous to do versus other things. So, first of all, when I think of schools, schools mean a lot of people in a close space. That's just the reality. This is New York City, 1.1 million kids in our school system. I saw a picture a few weeks ago of a preschool in Denmark. I think they were the first country in Europe to try and bring back at least education for the youngest kids. And the picture had a big open space, a big open yard, and a few kids and they were distanced, and I thought, that's wonderful if you're in Denmark, but that's not what we have here. We have schools, so many of them, that are just filled with both kids and adults.

And in fact, we've been building a huge number of new schools all the time because in many of our communities we still have overcrowding in our schools. So, the notion of bringing back school, to me, that is one of the most sensitive decisions because it inherently means putting a lot of people in the same place. And I think it's absolutely right to say that can't happen until September and it's going to take a lot of work to get it right for September, but that's the right goal. But on other things like you mentioned, you know, I think we're going to see the combination of what does the science bring because there is always the possibility of real innovations, either new information that tells us how to better fight this disease or the possibility, obviously, of something like a vaccine would be a game changer. So, the science is one of the X-factors.

Our own efforts, how New Yorkers stick with social distancing and staying at home is going to have a lot to say with what we're going to be able to do because the more they do that, the more we'd beat back to the disease, the more we get back to normal. So, it's – the painful part about fighting our way through is actually the part about also liberating ourselves. We're not going to fall for these cheap slogans about being liberated. The way to liberate ourselves is to stick to the plan, fight our way through, and get to the point where people can start to resume more of their lives. So, it's following the current rules and then the test-and-tracing program, which is really going to be a big offensive thrust, if you will, to go out there and change the dynamics on the ground with a much greater amount of testing and then the tracing of the contacts and the isolation, quarantine. We do all that right, the day's going to come where we're going to start to lift some restrictions. When you think about how you lift the restrictions, then your question becomes very pertinent. Are there things you can do, piece by piece? 

So, I spent many a day as a child shooting foul shots. Sometimes alone, sometimes like with one other friend, or playing Horse or something like that. You think about that, you're like, oh, that'd be okay. The problem is you put back up, you know, the rim and the net and then it's going to be very, very tempting to kids to start to play full games with lots of kids, and then you got a problem on your hands. So, we have to be really smart about it. We've talked about something like the beach – you say, well, what if we just invite a few people, if you will, and they have to socially distance. It's going to be very hard to do that and not turn into a lot of people, not socially distanced. We're going to have to do this very carefully. 

So, what we will do, Henry, is present the next stage as we're getting close to it, we're not there yet, and you can see from the indicators, we're just not there yet. But when we get close to the point we can do some loosening up, we're going to literally delineate what it's going to be and it will be, do some, a little, try it, see if it works, and then try and do more, but stage by stage, piece by piece. But even the examples you give, unfortunately, they rarely end up being linear, if you will. That something that first seems like wouldn't that be a great individual activity, it could lead to group activities, and that's what we're not ready for. And then the last thing we're ready for is, of course, huge gatherings. That's going to be one of the last things to come online. We're just going to have to do this in stages and be disciplined and the indicators are going to tell us when it's time for that.

Moderator: Marcia from CBS-2 is up next. Marcia?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today? 

Mayor: Good, Marcia, how are you?

Question: My first question has to do again with the homeless on the subways. I wonder if you think that cleaning the subways every 24 hours is really the way to get the homeless off the subway since it seems that they're just going to get back on again anyway. I wonder if the solution is to send teams of outreach workers and NYPD cops to each of the ten end-of-line stations you spoke of, every night to try to convince them to leave the subways and get into some form of shelter or hotel. And my second question has to do with the unrefrigerated bodies. I'm wondering if there's anything the City can do to help these funeral directors. I don't know whether there's anything like a portable crematorium or you can do more temporary burials at Hart Island, but something to relieve this burden that they're all facing.

Mayor: Yeah. Marcia, look, I always am very careful when I speak about this very sad topic and I don't go into a lot of detail, but my strong impression – I've asked this question a number of times – is that the funeral homes know that there's a lot of support available if they need it. Overwhelmingly, they've been doing their job under tough circumstances. You know, I think this was abhorrent. I think this horrible incident, which again, I think it's unconscionable, I just don't understand how they let this happen, but that funeral home shouldn't have let it happen. Like I said, if they really were out of options, they should have called the precinct and we would have found some way to help them. But I do not see that as a widespread reality. They've gone through a lot, but they've managed to keep providing support for people. You know, overwhelmingly the funeral homes have done a very admirable job in this tough situation. So, I do not get the sense that those kinds of extraordinary measures are needed. We will support them anyway we can and we'll keep watching for what they need. But I think they're doing a very admirable job, the vast majority of them.

On the question of the subway – yeah, the idea that I absolutely believe in is the combination of NYPD and homeless outreach workers. It's proven to be very, very effective both above ground and in the subways. But the problem has been when homeless individuals are able to just go back and forth all night on the same train. We've got to disrupt that. What I proposed is have those ten key stations shut down in the overnight hours, have a shuttle bus instead. And that's exactly when we would surge NYPD and outreach workers to those places when the last train comes in and deal with all homeless folks who are there and just use every tool we have to convince them to come into a Safe Haven and stay in and not go back to the street. More cleaning is good. Let me emphasize, Marcia, more cleaning is always good, but I think the notion of the disruptive strategies, this is what we really believe in, to encourage homeless folks not to follow the same old pattern they’ve been following bluntly for decades, but to recognize that a lot of help is there for them and we're going to provide them whatever it takes. If some need mental health services, some need to kick a drug habit, need substance abuse services. Some of them, if there's just enough conversation, enough trust building that they can be safe in a Safe Haven and get medical care, get food, they will become convinced to come in and I'm absolutely convinced if we do that enough times, we're going to change the reality of homelessness on our streets once and for all.

Moderator: Dave from ABC-7. Dave?

Question: Hey, Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Good, Dave, how you been?

Question: Yeah, I've been fine. I wanted to ask you about something that you said during your presentation and that was this thousand City employees who are going to be backing up police on enforcing social distancing and helping out to distribute some of the masks. I found it ironic that we're bringing this up today when one of the messages coming from the White House is to relax these social distancing rules and the requirements that people should wear masks when they're outside. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that, that how the City seems to be going in one direction while the rest of the country seems to be going in another, at least the direction from the White House.

Mayor: Dave, you used an interesting phrase in a very charitable phrase, ‘direction from the White House’. We have not gotten direction from the White House since January. We've gotten the biggest moving target in the history of the United States of America. No two days are the same. I mean, you watch the briefings and it's the magical mystery tour. So, you know, in the end it's sad, it's really sad, but it's incoherent. And the notion – you know, the President of the United States was tweeting those, liberate Michigan, liberate Virginia, all that – incredibly dangerous. So, telling people, open up, there's nothing to worry about, when we see the horrible things happening at the meat packing plants and the horrible stories of nursing homes around the country – what is he thinking? It's unbelievable. So, here's what we know in New York City, we know we have not beaten this disease yet and we're going to take a tough line and hold the line until we do beat this disease because that is the only way to come back safely. It's the only way to protect people's health and safety – is to hold the line and then when we actually do those steps towards restarting the economy, they will hold, they will work. We won't have that boomerang. Dave, that is not to say we won't have some good days and bad days. You know, as we start to open up, we may have some setbacks, but if we're tough about it, those setbacks can be kept to a minimum and we can ultimately get to something normal again.

What I fear, Dave, is when the president tells everyone to loosen up and we're already seeing, you know, people flocking to the beaches in some of these states and, you know, congregating again, there's going to be a flare up and it's going to set them back. But I'm also worried for New York that the more the disease starts to spread around the country, just as we're beating it back, that puts us in danger again. So, no, it is no time to loosen up. There are some places in the country that have real evidence that they can take certain steps, but they should take the first step and then watch to see if it works. Second step, watch to see if it works, and always be ready to pull back if it's not working. But the places that are just saying go with it, you know, good luck out there, they're going to – I fear they're going to pay a steep price and the president is not helping with that kind of language.

Moderator: Katie from the Wall Street Journal is up next – Katie. Katie, can you hear us?

Question: Can you hear me? 

Moderator: Yes.

Question: I'm here. Thanks for taking my question. I was hoping for an update. I know that the City announced opportunities for people to utilize hotels for quarantine. Whether it's people who are sick, have symptoms, or even just live in quarters in some of the hardest hit neighborhoods. Could you just give an update on how many families and individuals have access to the program and just an update – I know apart from some people who say they don't know how to find out about this and actually access this. So, if you have some information on that. Thank you.

Mayor: I have – thank you, Katie. Very good questions and very important questions. And this is – we're at a point on a continuum. So, I want to tell you where we are now versus where we're going. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me. Our team will give them to you, but it's a great question because it really gets to the heart of what we have to do with testing and tracing. So, to date, we started with – remember the hotel rooms were going to be all about hospital facilities. Thank God we didn't need them. Then we focused them first on health care workers getting what they needed, first responders getting what they needed, if they needed a place to stay and they couldn't go home to their families. Then we started opening up to families who needed a place to isolate, individuals who needed to isolate away from their family if they might be sick. Obviously, more and more, trying to reach homeless New Yorkers. 

So, a lot of pieces are now moving aggressively – folks who have come out of hospitals but aren't able yet to go back to their families. There's all sorts of categories. What we have not had to date is that sort of central apparatus to do this on a vast scale. And that's what test-and-trace is going to provide. So, for example, the other day, Saturday, I was at the Morrisania clinic, the Health + Hospitals clinic in the South Bronx – extraordinary operation. And I got into this very conversation with the doctors and nurses there about when they tested people, how did it work to get someone who needed to get to an isolation room. And they said if a test came back positive and someone couldn't properly isolate at home, the social worker for the clinic would then connect them to a hotel room. So, it was a facilitated process. 

We need to do that now on a big, citywide scale that it's all facilitated. Once an individual is identified that they get that helping hand to make the arrangements and then once they're in the room, food, of course, is provided, medical support, laundry, you name it. It's a big, big endeavor. It's a costly endeavor, but it's how we beat back this disease. So, test-and-trace is going to get going really intensely in May, and a key part of it will be that direct facilitation where people know exactly where to call, or they are called, to connect them to the hotel room and make sure the arrangements are made, the transportation is there for them, et cetera. That's what's coming out soon.

Moderator: Yoav from The City is up next. Yoav?

Question: Yeah. Hi, Mr. Mayor, on the funeral home issue – this actually isn't the first case where a funeral home has struggled. The main issue seems to be the lack of storage space. And I guess I'm just wondering if there isn't more the City could do as far as perhaps coordinating with the funeral homes to address some of the systemic issues? You know, if the issue is a shortage of refrigerated trucks perhaps that's something either the City or – I recognize the State oversees funeral homes, but that's something that would be better coordinated on a citywide level perhaps than at the single funeral home level? And the other issue is, you know, a funeral home calling a local police precinct when they're dealing with an issue like this is not really intuitive. I guess I'm wondering if there's a more formal kind of communication, you know area that the City can set up so that funeral homes have kind of a known place to come with their issues?

Mayor: Well, Yoav, it's a fair question. Again, the – remember this is something that when this crisis began just weeks ago, this was not an area the City had relationships in. I mean, the places that we don't regulate, it's not surprising to you – we just don't have those natural relationships. And we've had to start working with the funeral homes and in fact there has been a weekly call with funeral homes and City personnel to go over the support the City was providing and to go over what the latest rules and ideas for dealing with a situation we're in. And to also offer an opportunity to deal with any problems they were having. So there has been an outreach effort.

There definitely is a substantial amount of refrigerated trucks available. The fact is, what I was trying to say about the police precinct is, if for whatever reason this funeral home had not had contact with the City or didn't know how to turn to the State folks they deal with or whatever, anyone in a just a human crisis like that, Yoav – I don't think it's so mysterious at all. If you were dealing with a horrible crisis like that, it was true that the funeral home had something break down and they couldn't deal with the situation. And you're talking about, you know, the, the deceased loved ones of, you know, families, I'm sorry, it's not hard to figure out if nothing else is working call the NYPD. It was an emergency situation. So, I'm very disappointed they didn't do that. And I'm not – they are a private business. They have responsibility here. I'm not going to say, Oh, you know, they don't bear any responsibility. No, they do bear responsibility. They should have figured it out. But we have been able to provide ongoing information and support. We will continue to deepen that. Anything we can do, we want to do. And I think again, the Borough President's idea of a committee that not just is about funeral homes, but clergy and just all of us thinking together – thankfully, let us pray against a backdrop of fewer and fewer people being lost. I think that does make sense, that we'll pull that together just to increase the amount of information and support.

Moderator: Gloria from NY1 is up next. Gloria?

Question: Hi. Good morning. Mr. Mayor, I want to follow up on these City workers who will be enforcing social distancing. If you could just talk a little bit about which City workers they will be? Are they going to be civilians? And how are you going to ensure that they're doing this properly? There are people who have concerns about how social distancing is being enforced.

And then I wanted to follow up on the question around this incident at the funeral home. I guess on a broader scale, is there anything the City is doing or working on to help people who might be struggling to pay for services? People who can't afford to bury their loved ones or to give them a proper service, or they just don't have the money immediately available? Are there any City resources being set up to help with that?

Mayor: Yes. Gloria, we can get you the details, but yes we have been able to provide some help and we want to provide more. There's – it's a somewhat complex dynamic because there's a City element, there's a State element and obviously we also want to bring in private support and philanthropic support. Because it's not something obviously the City has done in the past on a large scale. And thank God it's not something we ever would want to have to do in the future. But you know, for people who need help, we want to make sure they get help. So, our team will get you the details. But we are very clear there are some people who are in a horrible situation, not only first and foremost because they've lost someone, but then on top of that they can't afford a burial. And you know, it just makes a bad situation so much worse. So, we want to be helpful or find other resources that will help them. That's something we're definitely doing.

On the civilian enforcement. So, I'll just go over the agencies again. In addition to NYPD we're talking about Parks Department, Office of Special Enforcement, Sanitation Department, Fire Department, Environmental Protection, and the Sheriff's Office. So all of these are City agencies that have enforcement powers that have the ability to give out violations. And we're talking about over a thousand employees from those agencies who already have that power being applied to enforcing social distancing. We've done a lot of education over the last weeks. We're going to be really clear with people, immediately move, do not in any way shape or form hesitate. If you are not doing something right, you got to stop immediately otherwise there will be enforcement. And there will be violations given, period. So, these workers are going to play a crucial role in that effort, augmenting all of the efforts of the NYPD. And then we're going to be doing more and more to help people in the process like giving out the free face coverings. So I think it's just constant education, making it easier with the face coverings, but then a whole lot of enforcement. And showing that, you know, at this point it's time for people to be really clear. We have got to stick to social distancing if we want to get through this. Folks who don't practice social distancing are prolonging this crisis and we certainly will not allow that.

Moderator: Anna from the Daily News is up next. Anna?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Two questions. What is the current citywide testing capacity for daily testing capacity? You said last week it was about 11,000. And then on the issue of the bodies of coronavirus victims, it's my understanding that the City is temporarily freezing these bodies, but that if a funeral home collects the body, they cannot give it back to the ME’s Office? So I'm just curious if there are any circumstances in which a funeral home collects too many bodies, like without realizing that they're going to go run out of space, they could then go back to the ME’s Office and say, hey ,can you please take these bodies off your hands even though you already released them to us? Because you know, obviously the City is providing the freezing, so I don't understand why that wouldn't add into the dynamic?

Mayor: Yeah, Anna, respect the question. I know you're trying to get information legitimately. I'm just not going to answer any more questions today on this topic. I do not think this is what we should be focusing our public discourse on. I'll have the team get you the answers. Perfectly legitimate question, but I'm sorry. We are here to talk about addressing this disease and moving the city forward. So, and I just don't know the details on the question that you're asking.

On the testing, we'll get you the latest numbers. They're evolving for sure. The fact is that we are seeing some good things happen. More test kits because of the relationship with the company in Indiana. Soon with our own local production more options now that we have the self-swab method. We've seen some improvement in lab capacity, but this still remains the big X factor now. How much more lab capacity can we get going? So that ability to do more testing each day is growing. I'll get you the latest on what the daily number is.

Moderator: Erin from Politico is up next. Erin?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. About the masks and the social distancing enforcers, first of all, the masks, if I understand it from the Governor's order, are in fact mandatory. So, are these – is the City actually going to be enforcing that you have to wear a mask? You know, I know some people don't have them, but there've been complaints about runners for instance, just choosing not to wear them or other people just not wearing them. So, if people just don't want to wear one, what is the City going to do in the absence of a fine? And then also you said yesterday there weren't any more warnings, but you said that applied to large gatherings, I think you said hundreds, but you also said thousands. Can you specify what's the threshold for when there's no warning and you go straight to a fine versus when you tell people to disperse? And finally, what kind of face coverings are they? Are they cloth that you're giving out or what are they?

Mayor: We'll get you the details on the type of face coverings. We've certainly used bandanas in some cases. And the type of masks that are not the medical kind, but the ones for other uses. But we’ll get you the details on that. So, on the question of face coverings, I'm going to keep using the word face coverings because I want to never confuse people. You know, the N95s and all the medical grade masks, that's one thing. Face covering again, could be something very informal, but it still does the job. I'll go over again, the exact details of the State rule. But my interpretation is that everyone should be wearing a face covering when they go outside. We're going to remind people of that. We're going to provide them to people for free. As I said, in terms of grocery stores, pharmacies, supermarkets, those are private spaces, they have every right to eject people or not let people in who don't have the face coverings. And they should do so. And we will back them up.

But I think at this point, everyone should be wearing a face covering. But we can come back to you on the exact interpretation of the State mandate. The central focus here, I think your question puts it in the right perspective. The first focus is no large gatherings. But gatherings in general are unacceptable. I use the point about hundreds and thousands to say that's not even close. If you even think about that kind of size gathering, you're so far over the line there's just nothing to talk about here. We've been at this for two months. Let's get real. Anyone who thinks about planning a large gathering or facilitates a large gathering or participates in large gathering, is really taking a chance with their own health and everybody else's health. So, you know, certainly anything, if you're talking a hundred or above, there's just nothing to discuss. You're going to get fined. And if you resist you're going to get arrested. When it gets lower than that it's the same concept. In a smaller gathering, let's say it is a few dozen people, that's not acceptable either. You have a situation there that if the police or the other enforcement agencies are walking up and people who immediately disperse and stay dispersed, great. You know, that's what we want. But if people try to stay together, they're going to be summonsed. And if they resist that they're going to be arrested. So those are the things, the gatherings are the most dangerous of all sizes. And then just enforcing regular, clear social distancing. Which is a lot of times a reminder to people. And I think that's mainly what people need. I think the big break line is when the difference between individuals who just need to be reminded to, you know, get that six feet and stick to it. Versus when people have made the decision to come together in groups, that's a pretty affirmative decision at this moment in the pandemic. And that's what will not be accepted.

Moderator: Last two, Todd from AM New York. Todd?

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. Sorry, I missed you Tuesday night. My question being, well the police department did a really good job coordinating with the volunteer organization Shomrim, except that they are very young kids mostly. And they don't command the same respect as the rabbis of that community, as you know. We both go back a long way with that community and we know that the rabbis command the respect of that community. So, if the rabbis had told them, told the people in that community to stay home, they would have. So, isn't this an act of defiance? Isn’t this something, did we – did your administration speak to Rabbi Niederman or any of the rabbis there? And to ask them and get an affirmative answer that they would encourage people to stay home?

Mayor: Look at Todd, I can't give you the exact tick-tock of everything that happened. I only know what was done wrong that needs to be addressed. And I do appreciate that some of the community leaders I believe associated with the synagogue involved, came forward and apologized for what happened and took responsibility. I found that very admirable and I commend them for doing that and also sending that message to the larger community. And I think overwhelmingly the community leadership, the civic leadership, the elected officials, the rabbis have sent a very powerful message throughout this crisis. That people should not gather even for religious observance, which is a very tough, painful message to have to give. But the community leadership has been very clear about it. So, whatever happened here, it just can't happen going forward. And I think we've all made that abundantly clear. I think the message has been received loudly all over the city in every community. And we're going to stick to that. And Commissioner Shea said it powerfully yesterday, that everyone is being endangered, including our police officers when those large gatherings – but I reiterate, you know, anyone who loves their city and loves their community and loves their own people should not participate in something that will end up killing people in their own community. A large gathering unquestionably will eventually lead to a loss of life. It will spread the disease and people will die as a result. And the most likely people will die are our elders. So this is a matter where everyone has to take personal responsibility and not engage in that kind of activity. And if anyone does, they will be given a violation and a substantial one. And if need be, they will be arrested. Period.

Moderator: Last call goes to Brigid from WNYC. Brigid?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Just to follow up on some of Erin’s questions and your announcement today about the face coverings. I know it sounds like you don't know the details of what kind of coverings they are yet, but I would add to Erin's question, are they going to be reusable? [Inaudible] to clarify if the 100,000 that are being distributed at city parks are part of that whole 275 number, the 275,000 that you announced? And is this a one shot? Is this the City's going to distribute these 275,000 and that's it? Or are you looking to procure or get donations for more to continue to distribute more widely since obviously they're many more people who need them?

Mayor: I appreciate the question, Brigid. Yeah, to coin a phrase more is more. We are definitely going to do more beyond this. Well the team will follow up with you. I believe the 100,000 and the 275,000 are separate. Any way you slice it, it's a lot of face coverings and we'll keep going from there. Absolutely want to help people to do this. And it's a smart program to get them out regularly to anyone who needs it. The specific ones and whether they're the reusable kind or not, we'll get you all those details. But I think the bottom line here is it's just – look, once we announced this originally and said the evidence was now in that it was important for everyone to use a face covering, you know, I want to be really clear is we said that doesn't mean anything elaborate. And that doesn't mean that kind of fancy masks that the medical personnel use. This was literally something as simple as a bandana, a scarf, take a piece of cloth at home, build your own, create your own, express yourself. That's still true. It does not need to be elaborate to be effective. So I want to keep telling people to do that because it helps a lot. But we will make this supply available and then we'll keep going from there. Because you know, anytime we can make it easier on people, I know sometimes people go out, they forget it. That's understandable. We're human beings. We want to make it easy in every way we can. But I want people to think that it's not a small act to put on a face covering. In fact, it's a very generous, altruistic act. It helps protect everyone around you. It helps reduce the spread of disease. Think about the face coverings as yet another way to inhibit this disease. Which has done such horrifying things to New Yorkers. We need to fight it back. And this is a very simple, powerful way to do it. So we're going to do everything we can to help people use those face coverings. But I want to ask everyone with the people in your life, please, if you see someone not wearing a face covering, appeal to them to realize how important it is. We'll keep sending the message. But I want people to also use their own ability to communicate and influence people and let them know how important this is.

Well, everyone look, as I said in this city, we find a way, and you know, literally in this fight we have gone to the ends of the Earth to find the supplies, the equipment we need to protect our first responders, protect our health care workers. The story I told you today, all the way to Vietnam to get the surgical gowns and then the amazing support we're getting from Indiana, from Michigan, from all over the country. Whatever it takes, we're going to find a way to do it. And I am so appreciative to everyone who has helped us wherever they are in America, wherever they are in the world, the hearts of people all over this world have poured out to New York City. Just like we have been there for people so many times before. So, there's a real love and respect for New York City already. But the admiration for New York City is growing as we speak, because of everything you're doing. People are watching and they feel it and they care about it and they admire the way you're fighting this fight. Let's keep fighting it. We will find a way. That's who we are, and we'll find a way to a better day in this city.

Thank you, everybody.

2020-05-01 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning everybody. You, you may have the same feeling I often have a trying to remember in this new reality what day of the week it is or what week it is to begin with. We, we've all been through so much that's been disorienting and it's very, very strange the way it time flows together nowadays for all of us here at city hall and everyone has been fighting this battle, it just seems like one continuous day from the beginning of this fight, and we know there's a lot up ahead. And I know all of you are dealing with the frustrations of everything we used to think was a routine being disrupted, and we're all trying to make sense of it and everyone's doing their best and trying to help each other through. So, since it's hard to remember sometimes what day it is or what week it is, I thought at least I could do a service by telling you what month it is. Well, this is an undeniable fact, it is now May. Strange as that may seem, it is May 1st, and we are embarking on a new month, and I hope it will be a transcendent month. I hope it'll be a month when we make profound progress. March was a shocking month, like nothing we've seen in the history of this city. The beginning of April was extremely troubling, and it looked like this disease might grow and grow. Thank God, largely due to your good efforts, things started to change in April, and by the end of April we saw a much better situation. We've got a long way to go, but May I think is going to be a decisive month, and a chance for us to do something great here in this city.

So, understanding that May is here, we also know that with that comes the warmer weather, and that's what's predicted for this weekend. We all are noting that the weather reports are talking about temperatures in the seventies. So, the spring fever, we're all going to feel it more and more, and particularly our young people are restless, and I don't blame them, and it's been a tough few months, and now the warm weather is going to pull at them. So, the truth is May can be a great month for the city in terms of fighting back and really starting to turn the tide on this disease, but it's going to require us to be tough and disciplined, and the warmer weather will make that harder. But I've seen so much from all of you already, so much achievement in fighting this disease. I have no doubt that we all will buckle down together and get it right. The bottom line is we cannot let up now, and the indicators that we go over every day are telling us a really important story, a good story, but a cautionary tale too, and a lot of information that helps us understand why we can't take our foot off the gas just yet.

Let me frame this by saying that the indicators, indicators really are the evidence. Think of them as sort of the key to everything. The indicators help us to understand what's really going on, and how to make our decisions, and how we all need to act. And it keeps coming back to the things that you do show up in these indicators. When people practice social distancing and shelter in place, the indicators get better. If at any point people were to be less disciplined, you would see it pretty quickly and start to come true, unfortunately, in those indicators in a negative way. Now, we believe in showing you this information, talking about it constantly. There's some other parts of the country that have not done that. They have not focused on the evidence as part of their reopening and fostered a community conversation about it, and I hope and pray for them that doesn't backfire on them. I hope and pray for the people in those States that their governments did not act in a hasty manner or an evidence free manner, because that creates tremendous danger to people's health, and that distinct possibility of the disease reasserting itself. We're not going to let that happen here. That's the bottom line. As I said yesterday, we do not expect a perfect linear march to exactly what we want in a way of normalcy. It won't be exactly perfect every day, obviously. There'll be some ups and downs, but what I do believe is that by being transparent, we can ensure that we stay on top of this disease and do not allow that kind of really dangerous, big kind of boomerang effect that I think happens if there's a decision to open up before the facts back it up. So, each day when I hold a press conference, we go over the indicators, and then every Friday what I'm doing is to talk about the big picture of what the indicators show us over a more expansive period of time, put it all in perspective.

Okay, so what do the indicators tell us when they look at them in big picture? The first thing they tell us is don't count your chickens before they're hatched. That this virus is tragically still alive and well, and living in this city. We have not beaten it, and we should not take it lightly. It's a fearsome enemy, and we need to understand this enemy if we're going to beat it ultimately. Today when I go over the indicators, you will see some good things for sure, we've seen that many days, but you have to put it in perspective of what's happening around us. So, yesterday in New York City, 2,637 confirmed new cases of the Corona virus in the five boroughs. That is a huge number. The number of people we lost yesterday, 202 New Yorkers lost their lives yesterday to the Corona virus. These numbers, when we look at them compared to where we were a few weeks ago, maybe we feel a little better, but we can't forget that each and every one of these cases, each and every one of these numbers is a human being. And we can't for a moment, forget what we would have thought about this. If I said these numbers to you three, four months ago, it would have been staggering that that's what happened in a single day in New York City. It would have been staggering. We can't get numb here. We have to realize that numbers like that tell us there's still a real fight ahead. Even if we're going to be tugged by that warm weather, even if we want it to be over, and Lord knows we all want it to be over. We got to look at those realities square in the eye.

So, everything I'm telling you is context. The biggest reality, and I fundamentally believe this, we will win this fight ultimately, is a matter of time. No one knows exactly how much time, but we will win this fight ultimately. But we have to be cognizant. We have to understand our enemy. If we're going to win this fight, we cannot forget these realities if we're going to win this fight. So, there's a direct correlation between acknowledging these realities, being honest about them, understanding what that calls all of us to do, and then how we ultimately beat this disease back and open our lives up. Anyone who wants to get back to normalcy, that toughness your displaying, that discipline is the way back.

So, let's talk about the indicators in the context of a longer period of time. So, on indicator number one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, well this chart speaks volumes. It's very striking, and you see it and you get very hopeful, and you should be hopeful. But you should always be sober about the larger reality at the same time. So, this is how many more patients we needed to care for each day in our hospitals. Now, when you look at the progress, the peak that we experienced with this disease, we now know that on March 31st 850 new cases one day, 850 new admissions to the hospital for suspected COVID-19. On April 11th when we started putting out these indicators publicly, so basically three weeks ago, went down to 383 that's great. By April 22nd last Friday, 176, by today 136, fantastic. That's the good news. Real progress. However, remember the numbers I told you a moment ago. Overall, the number of new positive tests, the number of people who have passed away, and that 136 we feel good about that number, but we still have to remember why we shouldn't feel good about that number, because that's still the number of people every single new day that we're seeing go in to the hospital.

So, part of what I think is really important to contextualize this is to say, okay, that kind of progress looks incredibly steady and it is, but at the same time, what would it feel like if we opened up in an atmosphere where there were still hundreds of people each day going into the hospital. It was bad enough to have to go into hospital and be admitted to the hospital for COVID-19. If there were thousands of new positive tests each day. That means every single one of those people potentially could be spreading the disease. For losing people every day and in large numbers. What does it say to us? It says that if you open up too soon, you can pretty much guarantee a resurgence of this disease. That amount of activity immediately tells you that you opened the door a little bit for this disease, it comes back strong. That's what we will not allow.

Now, we've talked a lot about test and trace, and we're going to keep talking about it. This is going to be the game changer. The ability to go after each of these cases and find everyone else that might be affected and test widely, and we're building that up rapidly. But you can see, the numbers we're talking about now, how daunting a task that is, you're still talking about thousands of new positives each day. It just puts in perspective how much we have to do.

Now, let's go to indicator number two, the daily number of people in ICU’s across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19. Now, what does this tell us? Well, it tells us a lot of New Yorkers are still fighting for their lives. And it tells us that our public hospitals, which were born the brunt this crisis, are still experiencing a lot of strain. And we need to get to the day where there are almost no New Yorkers, one day we hope zero New Yorkers fighting for their lives. And we have to get to the day where our public hospitals can rest assured that they can handle whatever is being thrown at them, including all the many, many challenges they deal in normal with in normal times. So, this number is encouraging again, because there's some decrease, but you'll notice the difference between this chart and the last chart. There's decrease, but nowhere near as sharp a decrease. This causes real pause. You know, when we launched these indicators three weeks ago, our ICU’s, our intensive care units and our public hospitals were basically at double their normal capacity. So, there's been improvement since then, but still not back to normal. And again, listen to the numbers, you all like progress, but then you still have to listen to the raw number. April 14th was the day where we saw the most people in these ICU’s, 887. By last Friday was 786; by today, 704 – steady progress, obviously, but not sharp, sharp progress and 704 people is a lot of people.

So, more to do and a particular focus that this, this chart makes you think about the lives of the people right now who are fighting to survive but also makes you think about our healthcare heroes who are there every day supporting them back in them up. Yesterday I had the opportunity to thank some of the folks who came to the defense of our healthcare heroes. We had leaders of our military here at City Hall and General Terrence O'Shaughnessy who has been a key figure in providing help to New York City, he came with some of his other leadership and we talked about the impact that our military medical personnel have had in our public hospitals, which has been outstanding. I want to thank the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, deep thanks to General O'Shaughnessy and also to people I look forward to thanking directly Secretary Esper, General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They really came to the defense New York City, right now we have almost 700 military medical personnel in our public hospitals because remember this shows you that our public hospitals are still strained and our healthcare heroes are still fighting a really tough battle and it's been going on for two months, but they got an incredible boost when those extraordinary medical professionals from the military showed up and they're sticking with it. And we are getting the good news that we expect them to be here during the month of May as well to back up our healthcare heroes, so that's something really, really important. But you look at this and you say, okay, we're really not out of the woods, we got to say lives, we got to protect our healthcare heroes and this chart reminds me, if and it should remind all of us. If you jump too soon, that number starts to go back up, that number goes up too much then you're back into the challenge of trying to expand hospital capacity, you're talking about field hospitals and everything else. Again, that's a place we do not want to go.

Okay. Indicator number three, number of percent, percent of people who tested positive for COVID-19. Well, this obviously is the indicator that talks about how widespread this disease is in our City and we're going to get a better and better picture as we add more and more testing. So, this is a great story, the citywide percentage is really improving pretty steadily on April 11th when we started the indicators 58 percent, by last Friday 30 percent, today 23 percent – that's fantastic, a very, very hopeful sign. And the public health lab, which again is a particularly rigorous standard, we saw a real progress today, this is exciting to see as well. When we launched 78% of their tests were coming back positive, by last Friday 52 percent, by this morning 17 percent, now that's fantastic. Now, this number has gone up and down quite a bit so I want to note it's everyday based on the facts of that day it's been as you can see a much choppier pattern. So again, we should never get overconfident but we're happy to see this progress, it certainly shows we are still decelerating and decelerating is the name of the game and that gets us to that point where we can do that big handoff to test and trace and then take the next big step. We still cannot say with assurance that we're out of the woods when it comes to that point about plateauing. Right now, it looks really good, but we are not to a point where we can say we are absolutely sure we won't have some kind of level off and we do not want that level off. That prolongs this agony we're all dealing with cooped up in our homes and everything else, so these numbers we need to keep pushing down steadily.

Now, how do we get where we want to get? So right now, again, we're in widespread transmission by any measure. The numbers I've been over today, especially the number of new cases and the number of deaths that is clearly widespread transmission, I'm sorry to say we need to get to low-level transmission. Low-Level transmission is when you can trace an act on every single new case, period. So, the indicators tell us a lot about how we get to that point and how we sustain that point. But the indicators again reflect action, it's very organic. It has to do with what you do— social distancing when it's honored, it has an amazing impact, shelter in place, staying at home has amazing impact. If it loosens up, it will show up in the numbers, we've seen some very, very unfortunate examples and we are just not going to tolerate them. We've seen gatherings, well there’s not going to be gatherings, just want to be crystal clear. The minute NYPD knows about a gathering, that gathering is over. So, if you want to get to low-level transmission, you want to get to normalcy you can't participate in a gathering, you can't condone a gathering, you can't tell anyone it's okay, you look the other way. If you hear about a gathering call 3-1-1 immediately, report it.

So, the handoff that I want to get to, is we keep driving down these numbers just as the test and trace is building up and we hit sweet spot. Where the numbers come down, the test and trace comes up in terms of capacity and the test and trace becomes so strong that literally every single new case we can trace the contacts and— act on them with quarantine, with testing, et cetera. Now that takes the pieces coming together, we're making a lot of progress in terms of testing, but we have more to go and we absolutely need that federal role. We're making real progress in terms of building up a tracing apparatus, real progress in terms of building up by quarantine and isolation apparatus with the hotels. Everything needs to move rapidly in the month of May, it's going to be a huge logistical effort. Remember everyone who goes into a hotel for isolation or quarantine needs all the supports that have to go with it. They need the food, they need support from medical personnel, everything, all that has to be provided, that's what's being built right now.

So, all of that will get us where we need to go, and I want to see us rapidly make progress in the month of May. That big apparatus building and these numbers continuing to go down and we'll go over the indicators regularly and if they keep moving the right direction, we're going to make more, we have more and more ability for that handoff to go well. And then to get to that low-level transmission period, that is the gateway to starting toward normalcy. These numbers go in the wrong direction, we're going to stay tight, we're going to stay in a situation where we do not allow the disease to reassert. So, real transparency here and a real warning about what happens if we slip up, but a very positive reminder of how close we're getting to the point where we can start to make even more progress. So, today's daily indicators after all that context, today's daily indicators show you again just how it's still way too gray a situation and it's something we have to fight harder to overcome. Kind of a mix progress in some ways for sure and progress particularly with the public health lab, which has been— toughest measure but not overall progress that we need to see. So, on the first indicator daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID that went up. It went up only slightly 129 to 136 it's not horrible, but it's not what we need, we need it to go down. The daily number of people in ICU across Health and Hospitals for suspected COVID went down but only by one 705 to 704, 704 is not a good number, progress but not the kind we need. The percent of people who tested positive, unfortunately that one went up for citywide 22 percent to 23 percent but again a very small increase. So, we've got a lot of effective break-evens here. The good news, and this is very good news because it is the toughest measure, is that the public health lab went down and it went down markedly from 36 percent to 17 percent. So, that is the hopeful the hopeful reality today.

Now, we're going to do a lot of things in this next phase in May and when I say phase, I don't mean yet getting to low-level transmission, we're going to have to earn that, we'll have to fight for that. But I mean that May— May becomes the time, if March was the time we were dealing with that horrifying unforeseen, unheard of up— swing in this disease, April was the month we were beating back from the worst and making real progress. May is the month where we do something transcendent, particularly because we build up test and trace. Now we're going to use every conceivable tool. Yesterday, I talked about the fact that we're going to have stronger enforcement efforts, not just the NYPD but by a variety of other agencies that we're going to have people out there on top of enforcement, educating, providing the face coverings for free. We're going to do all sorts of innovative things to keep people helping each other through this crisis and supporting them and pushing them. And of course, enforcing, we’re going to use all the tools creatively and assertively to keep making progress. So, whenever we have a new tool, we're going to talk about it and the impact it can make.

So, now, I'm going to talk about the open street’s initiative, and this is something I want to thank the city council for their partnership. And it's been worked on, not just with the council but with of course, the NYPD and Department of Transportation. The open streets are going to be another way we help encourage social distancing, because the warmer weather tells us we're going to have a new challenge and we combine the fact that we have to meet that challenge by understanding where people are going to be. Again, we're going to require social distance distancing face coverings and people only being out for just a period of time they need for their exercise and then get back. But we do know warmer weather, it's going to draw more people, that's obvious. And we also know that, thank God, the NYPD and all our agencies are getting back their personnel and really great numbers. So, they're regaining their strength in terms of being able to enforce farther and farther across the City and better and better. So, with the city council, we agreed that we would put together a plan to open 40 miles of streets in May, a hundred miles overall in the course of this crisis. And the focus would be on those streets in their parks because we expect them to attract a lot of people in the warmer weather. We want to expand the parks, if you will, by opening up these streets. And of course, the hardest hit neighborhoods, the place where we've seen this disease have the most devastating effect. So today we'll announce the first seven miles over seven miles in fact, of these open streets and these will all be opening on Monday. 4.5 miles are inside parks, they are areas that will now be devoted to pedestrians, bicyclists. 4.5 miles and that's made up of Callahan-Kelly Park, Forest Hill Park, Fort Tryon Park, Flushing Meadows Park, Grant Park and Silver Lake Park. And then 2.7 miles of streets that are adjacent near parks that'll help to expand and affect the parks. And that will be a Carl Schurz Park, Court Square, Highbridge Park, Lieutenant William T. Triangle, Prospect Park, Stapleton Waterfront Park and Williamsbridge Oval.

That's the beginning and we're going to build out from there. So, this is a, an initiative where we think it’s going to help a lot. It's going to go where people need it to go and again, this is an initiative that we can do with proper enforcement by the NYPD and the Parks Department and all our other colleague agencies. So, you can expect that this is going to help people to have some more space, but also with vigilant eyes to make sure there’s no gatherings - there are no attempts by people to create a sports or group activities. We're not going to allow that; we’re going to keep making sure people socially distance and keep making sure people have face coverings and anyone that doesn't happen to have one, more and more someone will be offering you one out on the street if you don't have one.

Now, I'm going to close in a moment, but I want to talk about something very, very sad. This really, I heard about it late last night and it really hit me. We have lost someone who came to our aid, to our defense and there's something particularly painful when someone does the right thing; a fellow American comes from across the country to try and help the people in New York City and while working to save lives here, gives his own life. It's very painful, it's heroic. It's something we honor, but it's very, very painful that we've lost this good man. Paramedic Paul Cary from Aurora, Colorado, part of the FEMA relief effort has died of the coronavirus. For three decades he served the people of Aurora and then came very bravely to serve us – he did not have to do it - he made the choice to come here to save lives. And remember when he, and so many other paramedics and EMTs showed up from around the country, it was a very, very tough moment; we were having the highest number of 9-1-1 calls in the history of New York City and the disease was growing and its impact and lives were being lost and we needed every hand on deck and Paul Cary's one of those people who came. And I got to tell you it just hurts that such a good man has made the ultimate sacrifice for us. So, to the Cary family, we honor, we honor Paul’s sacrifice; we honor what Paul did. He clearly saved lives while he was here. We honor all of you. We grieve with you and we're going to find a way to create a special memorial for Paul here in New York City to remember all those who came to our defense; the paramedics, the EMTs, members of the military - so many good people - doctors, nurses from around the country. So many people came to help, but Paul gave his life for us and we're going to honor him in a particular way. So, everyone, look, the – it's a reminder of the sacrifices that we've seen so many public servants, so many people who serve you have been lost. We've lost four of our own members of EMS. We've lost 10 members of the FDNY overall. First responders, heroes have been lost, healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, everyone who threw themselves into this battle. So right now, we need to be there for their families. We need to be there for the colleagues who are hurting. Imagine how tough it is to be fighting still this battle every day and have lost someone who served with you. We will do a lot to support their families and we will do a lot to remember them and honor them, but I want you to remember, if you really want to honor these heroes, then it's up to you to stick to the rules we're living by now. Every time you do, you help stop the spread of the disease. Every time you help stop the spread of the disease, you're going to save lives and the lives you save could include our first responders and our healthcare heroes. So I want to make it personal for you. I don't want anyone separating your own actions from what it means for the people around you. I want you to take it personally and realize that if we do what we're capable of doing, we're going to save a lot of lives and every time we don't, we could endanger someone like Paul and we can't have that.

So, look, we've talked today about the real progress we've made and the challenges ahead. The good news here is we are winning this fight. There's no question in my mind we're winning this fight. The bad news is we have not yet won - that's the honest truth. Declaring victory prematurely has been proven down through history to be a very dangerous thing. And when anyone from the President on down talks about liberating a city or a state without making sure that the facts support it and the protections are in place for people's health and safety, that's not liberation – that's actually damning people – that's damning them potentially to their deaths and we will not allow that here in New York City. We're going to come back, but we’re going to come back safely and 8.6 million people together have been doing something extraordinary. We got some more to do, but I have absolute faith we will get there together.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that we turn to our friends in the media and please remind me of the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Hi, all. Just a reminder that we have Commissioner, Health Commissioner Barbot, Transportation Commissioner Trottenberg, and Senior Advisor, Dr. Varma on the phone. With that, I will start with Sydney from the Staten Island Advance.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. So, my paper has been trying to find out how many people have been tested at Staten Island’s One Medical test site at Snug Harbor. We've heard that the site is empty, the Department of Health and One Medical have not been able to give us any information on how many people have actually been tested there since, since it opened. Can you give us some details about how many people have been tested at the site? Is it, is it really [inaudible]? And you mentioned that one that the One Medical test sites would be able to test 3,500 people a week. Is that still the goal?

Mayor: Sydney, I'll get you a, an update. I don't have those numbers in front of me. I don't know if Dr. Barbot happens to, but if not we will get you an update. Yeah, the goals we've set from everything I have heard, we're sticking to those goals. We want to, as you see, more aggressively build out testing all over the city. And this is again, just the beginning of what would be a lot more testing later on. So, in terms of One Medical and that effort with 1199, again if Dr. Barbot has the answer now, great. Otherwise, we will get that to you in the next few hours. Doctor, do you happen to have that?

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: We don't actually we would need to get it from One Medical which operates this [inaudible] testing site.

Mayor: Okay, Sydney, we will get that to you for sure.

Moderator: Next, we have Melissa from NBC News 4.

Question: Hi, good morning Mr. Mayor. I have two questions for you, please. It's been two days since we asked you about whether you plan to start tracking symptoms of shock or Kawasaki disease as a possible complication of COVID-19 in children. Since then, what have you heard from local hospitals about what they're seeing and what, if anything, are you or your team doing differently to track this because we know there's some concern in the medical community? The other question is from my colleague Andrew Siff, and he wants to know with the forecast for such great weather this weekend, why not open those streets for pedestrians now, before the weekend?

Mayor: Thank you, Melissa. I'm going to turn to the doctors on the first question; on the second question, look, we have to set up obviously to be effective. So, we're opening up a number of locations and in terms of setting up the right physical structure and having the right enforcement. And I think I've been real consistent from day one; all of this requires enforcement and we have to believe it's situated properly. So that is the plan right now for Monday that we believe we can have everything in place and effective and I think we've seen from recent days enforcement is everything. So, that's what we have right now. I think it's a very fair question that being said, and certainly we'll consult with the NYPD and the Parks Department today to see if there's any way to speed it up in light of the warm weather. So tell Andrew please, very good question and I will take it to heart and see if there is a way to speed up, but that would only happen if we were sure we could enforce it properly. On the, the other question I think when we, when you asked a couple of days ago, it was clear from our medical, excuse me, our healthcare leadership that they were not seeing a trend - I should say as a layman - but let me have Dr. Barbot and Dr. Varma speak to that.

Doctors, can you hear me?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, sir. [Inaudible] on mute. Let me start off by saying that we take very seriously any potential emerging trends regarding COVID-19, because, as we've been saying from the beginning, we're learning something new about this virus every day. That being said, my team has reached out to pediatric hospital providers to get more information about specific cases that they have concerns, maybe indicating an inflammatory cardiovascular response in children that had not been previously observed. Beyond that, I have personally communicated with our medical examiner who has put out the call to her international community to see what has been seen across the world. And we're compiling all of that information, again, to make sure that we've put the best science to work here in New York City. So, we are looking closely at this. We will continue to work with our pediatric providers and we will provide information as it becomes available and certainly guidance to the pediatric community.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, good morning, everybody. I have two brief questions. The first is, you know, looking at the map that was released yesterday on where the masks will be delivered, I know will that map – I guess, first, how were those – how were those parks selected? And will there be an expansion? Because I know there's like entire sections of boroughs that are not included in it. And the second is looking at the plan to open up some of the streets within parks. One park that I have some questions about is Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, because inside, you know, there's a hospital there now, there's a food distribution site – which streets in that park will be shut down?

Mayor: So, I am going to on the streets issue turn in a second to Commissioner Trottenberg. I think that's a very fair point, that, obviously, we value opening streets where we can, again, with proper enforcement to keep everyone safe, and I've said before we want to make sure we're additive here – we're not creating a new problem, but we're solving an existing problem and a growing problem with the warm weather – not ending up adding a new problem. But you make a really good point about places where there might be additional medical and other facilities, how we navigate around that. So, in a second, I'll turn to Commissioner Trottenberg on that. On the face coverings – and I'm going to always say everyone please promote that word face coverings, because it is profoundly different from the medical masks, the N95s, the other, kind of, more sophisticated masks that our first responders and our health care heroes need. This is face coverings, face coverings, face coverings – it's scarfs, it's bandanas, et cetera. Definitely, this is just a beginning, Katie. These efforts – everything's being built constantly. One of the things we've learned during this crisis is we just have to be in constant motion. The disease is constantly in motion and throwing us curve balls, we have to be in constant motion. So, this initial effort to really intensify the distribution of face coverings, it will just keep growing as long as we need it to and in more and more places. So, that's just phase-one, if you will. Okay, on the streets, particularly in Flushing Meadows Park, Commissioner Trottenberg? I think she's out there. Commissioner, can you hear us?

Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, Department of Transportation: Yeah, I'm here. Good morning. Just so you know in general how we picked all these roadways, we worked with NYPD, and Parks, and, in some cases, FDNY. So, all those agencies were involved in making the selections. In Flushing Meadows [inaudible] between Model Airplane Field and Meadow Lake Bridge parking lot – I think we will have later in the release all the details about the roads we picked. And this is where we picked – exactly as you were saying, Katie, makes sure we were not interfering with medical operations or any of the other things taking place in that park.

Moderator: Next we have Debralee from Manhattan Times and Bronx Free Press.

Question: Hey, good morning, everyone.

Mayor: Hey, Debralee. How are you doing?

Question: I'm well, thanks. I want to follow up, Mr. Mayor, on the conversation started earlier on the race equity task force. And I know that you had described it as really taking on the work of examining and addressing existing disparities and inequities, and, in some ways, looking to obviate a recovery that would neglect impacted communities and their experiences. So, I wonder if, in the interest of transparency, you can speak how the administration plans to apprise the public on the task force’s meetings, it's progress, and to what degree will the public be invited to take part in those conversations before the June 1st deadline that you set for the roadmap? And then secondly, as you know, nonprofit groups and community stakeholders are extraordinarily concerned about SYP being canceled and have been lobbying of forcefully to have it reinstated in some way and are asking for the city and involved community groups to find a way, a creative, innovative way to engage the youth who were so concerned about having had their school year impacted. And now we're looking at this warm weather and really having these youth engaged in a way that makes sense for them this summer. And when you talk about some of the programs, whether it's contact tracing, the kind of field work that's being described at the city is taking on such an ambitious level, many of these groups point to that and say, particularly on the older spectrum, that many of the SYP participants could actually take up this work and could be trained in ways that could be very, very supportive and helpful to that effort. Can you speak to that as well?

Mayor: Yeah. Debralee, it's – look, it's a very fair question and a question I've heard from a number of elected officials, but I'm going to have to put this in context. I feel deeply for our young people and what they're going through. And the young people who would benefit from the Summer Youth Employment program are of an age that, you know, my own children were not so long ago and I can relate to this reality. And during this administration we built up Summer Youth Employment constantly, year after year with the City Council, and the Council made it a high priority. So, I'm a believer, but I’ve got be real about some of the key facts. First, you know, the historic notion of Summer Youth Employment requires people gathering. We don't know when we're going to be able to do gatherings. Second, it costs a substantial amount of money. We're in a massive budget crisis and, in fact, we're going to turn more and more of our attention in the coming days to talking about the budget reality, because the stimulus in Washington is starting to be debated and that's going to determine a lot of what happens. And if it's not fair to New York City, if the stimulus does not make New York City whole, then you're talking about really big cuts coming far beyond what's been cut already. And so, we have to be clear that right now we just do not have the money to do anything like we've ever done previously with summer youth. I think there are things we can do for young people for sure this summer, but I think, right now, we have to assume they are not – with young people being out in communities by and large, a lot of it may have to be from home. I don't know if contact tracing fits because of the level of expertise needed and I don't think it's something we'd think of in terms of someone so young. We want the contact tracing to be very much people who either have a medical background or existing city employees. That's where we're focused first. And I think we have to remember that there are hundreds of thousands of people responsible for their families who don't have a job right now. And as we try and create more employment, we're going to focus first on the people whose paycheck helps a whole family and that's going to be crucial. So, there's a lot of challenges there. I'm very sympathetic to helping our young people, but I think to the extent we can do it, it's going to look very, very different right now. I will also say, we're certainly going to look at private sources, philanthropy to see if there's other things we can do for young people, and I think there is a lot of interest in the charitable community to help fill some of that gap and we'll certainly be working on that. In terms of the different groupings, so, you know, quick refresher for everyone, we're going to have a group of advisory councils, sector by sector, small business, larger businesses, arts and culture, you go down the list. We're going to be naming some new ones and next week – excuse me – you'll start to see the people are going to be on those committees and they're going to start doing work immediately to advise us on the restart, and then for the longer term. We're going to have the fair recovery task force that will really look at both immediate framework for how we come back and do it in a way that's fair and addresses disparities – that's that June 1st report – but then they're going to be working with us, going forward. We're going to have the internal working group on equity and inclusion that's going to be made up of leaders of the administration from communities of color who are going to focus on the disparities in the work our agencies do to address those disparities. And that's going to be a very tangible effort to make sure agencies right here and now are acting on these issues. And then, as I said, later on down the line, I'm going to name a Charter Revision Commission. A Charter Revision Commission will undoubtedly do public hearings, that's part of that process. The other efforts are going to seek input from people a lot of ways, but I do not anticipate a formal hearings at this point. The advisory councils are, in effect, me bringing in input from a variety of people. The fair recovery group is really eminent leaders of the city that are bringing their thoughts and their energy, but they also have massive networks they'll be turning to. And the internal working group is going to be people who are always working with communities and bringing that back. But down the line I think we're going to have an opportunity to get more into the kind of public hearing model through the Charter Revision Commission.

Moderator: Next we have Juliet from 1010 WINS.

Question: Hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Good morning, all. First, Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you for resuming the rat patrol. We learned from your office that the inspectors will be out to check on the complaints and honor social distancing. So, we updated our story and we've heard from our listeners about that as well. So, thank you very much.

Mayor: Thank you. Well, Juliet, thank you for raising that issue. You have a really good batting average lately when you raise things that action happens. I thank you. But I want the rats to know they are not safe. We're coming for them.

Question: Yeah, that's good. Okay. So, my questions for you this morning, given that there had been differences between you and Governor Cuomo on the school closing issue, did you have any input or discussion with the Governor on the decision he's expected to announce today? And my second question is, what exactly is involved with the monitoring and enforcing of these closed streets? I'm thinking of, you know, will there be barricades for people to walk around or through, you know, will it be sort of like a definitive space or will it just be open space? How's that going to work?

Mayor: Thank you. Let me speak to the school issue and then I'll just say a word on the open streets, and then Commissioner Trottenberg can jump in as well. So, the Governor and I spoke yesterday, but when we did it was obviously a focus on the MTA issue before the announcement. We have spoken in the past on the school's issue. I think the Governor understands fully why I am – feel so strongly. And I'm a parent, you know, my kids went to public schools the whole way through and I feel very, very close to public school parents and educators. It was a big part of life, my life, the life of my family. So, you know, the Governor understands that I fundamentally believe it is not safe to bring back New York City public schools for this academic year, period. I respect, as I said at the beginning, he has to think about the whole state. He's working with the other governors in the region. There's a lot of factors that he has to put together. But I have certainly made clear to him that I believe fundamentally New York City public schools cannot be reopened until September. I've also made clear in every way, including publicly, that we're going to not only see what's happening right now with the online learning as something that goes to June, but we're going to stretch that through July and August in different ways for any kids that need it. Maybe some kids at the end of June have gotten everything they needed out of the school year. They've sure had a lot of time on their hands, Juliet, let's face it. Some kids have engaged distance learning very deeply because they haven't had anything else to do. Other kids that need more help, it's going to be there for them on an unprecedented scale during July and August.

So, I think we have more of a continuum reality of this school year going into the next one then we've literally ever had in the history of New York City and we're going to keep building that. As I said, the Chancellor and his team have contingency plans for how much we're going to crank that up depending on what's happening in the world. But we're going to be there for any student who needs continuing help over the summer with an online methodology. And our goal, of course, is just focus everything we've got on a clean, safe opening in September. So again, I think the Governor's quite clear on my position, I respect that. He's thinking about the big picture and look forward to his announcement.

On the open streets, the goal here is more space, more social-distancing, but safe, not creating a contradiction where we open up space and then it becomes a gathering place or we open up space and there isn't enforcement there, so people start to do things they shouldn't do, or we open up space but cars can still access it. And again, that was a critique I had of some of the plans elsewhere in the country is that they didn't really segment off the cars sufficiently. This is going to be, you know, well-protected and well-regulated space. And that's part of why we have to do this in stages to get it. But, you know, it should be the kind of space where a pedestrian can, you know, and a family can feel very, very comfortable that they're safe once they're there, but we can also make sure that social distancing is observed. Polly, you want to add?

Commissioner Trottenberg: I think you have it, Mr. Mayor and DOT, NYPD, FDNY, while we're working with parks and we hope to be working with local bids and neighborhood groups to use barricades and sawhorses and good signage to remind people that these are what we're now calling open streets for pedestrians and cyclists. They will be if emergency vehicles or deliveries need to get through, they can. The goal is to minimize any vehicle activity and agencies and other partners will help sort of man the barricades and keep an eye on them.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Jacob from Jewish Insider.

Mayor: Jacob?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, you hear me?

Mayor: Yes. How you doing?

Question: Good morning. I wanted to ask you a two-part question if you allow me.

Mayor: Of course.

Question: First of all, how would you ensure that the crackdown of the NYPD – [inaudible]

Mayor: Jacob, can you hear us?
 
Question: - I think that was what first of all taken consideration the observant Jews who do not carry IDs on Shabbat, who would not necessarily know –

Mayor: Jacob, you're coming in and out. Jacob, Jacob, we're not. Hold on Jacob. We're not hearing you. You’re – something's causing your signal to come in and out. Could you start again the question please? And, and try and I don't know if you're moving around or something, but try and stay stable so we can hear you, Jacob?

Question: I'll repeat my question if you hear me.

Mayor: Yeah, there you go.

Question: So, my question is how would you avoid conflict with the Orthodox [inaudible] –

Mayor: Yeah, we're going to come back to you, Jacob. We're not hearing you clearly. We’ll come back in a moment. Try and call from a hardline if you can? Go ahead.

Moderator: Jacob, we'll circle back. Next step is Julia from the Post.
Question: Hey, good morning Mr. Mayor and everyone else on the call. Two questions, one for Dr. Barbot and one for you, Mr. Mayor. And actually, this first question for Dr. Barbot is from a colleague of mine after I tweeted the number of new confirmed cases. She's curious to know if we have any information on where and how people are getting newly infected, are there kind of central transmission points in the city? And then Mr. Mayor, there's a Reopen New York Rally planned for outside City Hall today by a group that vows to bring thousands out to protest the State's locked down. Yesterday you said any groups of over a hundred would be immediately find and those who refuse to disperse would be arrested. Can you guarantee that this group will face a fine and potential arrest if their numbers and behavior warranted?

Mayor: A 100 percent, and I don't want people to hear that 100 number, which I just threw out and as an example of my personal definition of what's a large gathering, but, you know, if you've got 50 people, we're not allowing that. If you've got 20 people, we're not allowing that. We're not allowing any kind of gathering, period. So, let me just make it easier on people. If you are in a gathering and a rally is a gathering, I'm very sorry that at a funeral, of course, historically people gathered to mourn, I respect that, but it's still a gathering when we can't allow gatherings. A party is a gathering. I don't care if it's 20 people or a hundred people or a thousand people, it's not going to be allowed. So the point is, if you gather, NYPD is coming there to give you a summons and if you resist too arrest you, period across all communities. So no of course this organization is not allowed to hold a rally that goes against every rule we’ve got. They can express themselves online. There's all sorts of other ways, but if they attempt to hold a rally, they will be summonsed immediately, and that's true for people of any viewpoint. We're not doing rallies at this point. They spread the disease and help to kill people. It's unacceptable. So as to the other question, Dr. Barbot, go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, Mr. Mayor. So you know what I would say is that when we have more than 2,000 cases per day in the city, we are still in widespread transmission, and so what that means is that New Yorkers, even though a large number are staying indoors and we're seeing that reflected in our hospitalization numbers, we have to balance that with the fact that we still have thousands of people being infected - to me what that means - and happening all across the city. So to me, what that means is when they're going out, hopefully just the essential activities, we need them to be even more diligent about it adhering to the use of face coverings and more diligent about adhering to the use of alcohol based hand sanitizer when they're not close to a water source. So the reality is that we're still seeing, you know, transmission across the city, and what – given the large volume of new cases, we can't track those back to a single point source.

Moderator: Next, we have Kathleen from Patch.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor and everyone. I have two questions. The first is that you've been saying repeatedly over the past three days, if anyone planning a large gathering endangering lives considering that people flocked outside to see that military flyover Tuesday, are you reconsidering your own plans for the 4th of July fireworks? And secondly, I was wondering if you could provide more information about what homeless people can expect if they are found to be on trains at 1 am [inaudible] and make sure that you are a person who doesn't have a home, you're sleeping on a train because you're frightened of catching this disease in a crowded shelter, and two armed cops are walking your way?

Mayor: Kathleen, again, that's one way of painting it. Let me paint it another way. Someone who is sleeping on a train needs help. We're here to help them. We're here to get them to a safe place, a safe haven. And again, we've had thousands of street homeless people in the last three years go into safe havens and find them to be safe. And how do we know this? Because they never went back to the streets. So I appreciate it and I think you're speaking from compassion, but the picture you're painting is one side of the story and it's actually not to me the productive way to look at because I don't want to continue a broken pattern. The fact that so many homeless people for years just went back and forth all night on a subway train, that's not what we should be aspiring to in our city. We should be aspiring to every single person who needs help gets help and safe havens were created in a new way to address the concerns that homeless folks had about safety and it's working and there's medical care attached. And if someone's thinking that the best option they have in life is to ride a subway all night, that's not good, that's not acceptable.

So what it means is that the – when it gets to 1 am, and stations are being cleared out, there'll be plenty of outreach workers there right away, able to get someone to help to get them to a safe haven, to get them the medical care, whatever they need, police officers to help. If someone is able and decides meaning that they are, you know, emotionally, psychologically, health wise able to make their own decision, there's no immediate threat to themselves or others and they decided to not want that help, they still have that constitutional right. If they are a threat to themselves or others as per usual, that's a different situation. But the help will be offered, but they will not have the option of just staying in the subway, period.

On the question of the fly over, look, I think there's been a very unfair parallel made. I don't have every fact of what happened everywhere in New York City during the fly over. I saw images that showed people watching the flyover and socially distancing. I'm sure there were some places where it wasn't good enough and I don't like that. That is very different than an organized gathering where people know they're going to be close together for a prolonged period of time. The fly over, if you watched it, went by very, very quickly. The – we're talking to this funeral the other night, but also parties, rallies, no, that's not acceptable. And when it comes to the 4th of July, what I've said and Macy's has said, is we're going to make that decision as we get closer. It's May 1st, I understand everyone is anxious on so many things, everyone's looking for interesting things to write about, but it's May 1st we have two whole months to figure out 4th of July. The one thing I can guarantee you is the 4th of July will be honored and celebrated and it will be fireworks in some form or fashion. But we're going to have a lot, we have to decide about how to do that safely. Safety first, social distancing first, a long time to work it out. We'll have more to say when we come back, but no, no, no, let's be clear. Right now, we have a clear and present danger for New Yorkers, anytime people gather and especially a prolonged gathering, not acceptable, will not be accepted, will be broken up by the NYPD.

Moderator: We're circling back to Jacob from the Jewish insider.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Sorry for the miscommunication before. I appreciate your assistance. If I can ask two questions? First, how would you ensure that NYPD crack down on gatherings and on social - ensuring social distancing orders are being kept would avoid a conflict? With the Orthodox Jewish community, especially in Shabbot, you know, people don't carry IDs and are not the confined to the home, if they are on the street. And what do you say to those who are concerned that due to the media attention to recent incidents that – of this crackdown would be considered overpolicing? And my second question is have you reached out to Jewish community leaders to clarify and apologize for what they called scapegoating of the entire Jewish community?

Mayor: I have had a number of conversations, Jacob, with Jewish community leaders in the last few days, and I'm going to respect the privacy of those conversations. But a number of them said to me that they understood my frustration and they understood I was trying to protect lives and they understood how close I am to the Jewish community and how much of a personal connection I feel to the community. Some said, hey, you know, be careful – to be careful with your words. And I said I agree and I spoke out of passion and I regret that I, you know, used words the wrong way in terms of giving people the wrong impression, but I don't regret sounding the alarm and I don't regret saying we're not going to tolerate this behavior going forward and a very substantial number of the people who I spoke to agree with that.

And I think everyone heard my public comments and understood that I was trying to strike a balance and show that I cared and I spoke out of concern. The question of how we're going to address this, look, I'm pretty straightforward about this Jacob. If people are following social distancing and shelter in place, which means you only go out for a very limited period of time and you keep a part from other people while you're doing that, although of course family units can stay together when they're outside because they're already have been exposed to each other, but that, you know, in terms of, you keep moving, you think about just life on our streets. You keep moving, you have your face covering on, there's no gatherings, and you stay outside only for a minimal amount of time. No one's going to have a problem anywhere. If they do those things, if people start gathering, they're going to have a definite problem and that's going to be in every community. So we've all understood now this is equal opportunity. Any community, any faith, any ethnicity, any geography, same treatment – there's going to be a crackdown everywhere. If we see gatherings and on the question of Shabbes and, and people not having ideas, that's a very fair point. I'll talk to Commissioner Shea about what we can do in light of that. But I have to be clear we cannot hesitate to enforce. So I do appreciate why people don't carry an ID on Shabbes, I really do. But that will not be a reason why we won't enforce. So I think the smart thing for everyone to do, and a lot of the Jewish community leaders I spoke to said they are spent spreading this word very aggressively, is don't even think about a gathering during Shabbes because it just can't be tolerated and IDs or no IDs, we will enforce.

Moderator: Last two for today. Next is Courtney from NY1. 

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Courtney, how are you doing?

Question: I'm good. Hope you're well. Thank you. You too. So I don't know if you saw, but last night we reported on New York 1 about a nursing home in Washington Heights that had close to 100 deaths even though they have only reported 13 deaths to the state. And I understand nursing homes are obviously State territory and under State oversight, but I'm wondering if the City has any responsibility at all when it comes to the deaths at nursing homes and where the City would investigate this particular facility called Isabella Geriatric Facility?

And then I have another question, which is about the homeless issue and Safe Havens. And I understand that you're going to be sending homeless individuals when the train shut down next week to save havens. The question I have is, do you actually have enough capacity at those Safe Havens and aren't those Safe Havens actually congregate dorm-like settings, which could essentially help spread the virus among the homeless population?

Mayor: You know, I'm going to give you my view, having been to Safe Havens and seeing them – I don't, I wouldn't say, I'm not going to use the sort of formal definition point here. I – what is exactly congregate versus other types of settings. A Safe Haven is a very small facility where I think certainly in many cases proper social distancing can be practiced. And again, I don't want any romanticization of what it means for someone to be living out on the street or sleeping on the subways, which I think one of the previous questions unfortunately could have been interpreted as – it's very unhealthy, not just COVID, we're talking about everything else in the world, all the other challenges. It's not healthy for people to be living on the street period. If you're in a Safe Haven, you're in a place where you're getting a lot of care and a lot of tension and there's medical care available to you.

But again, they are not they are not – when you say congregate, in my mind it talks about the much bigger facilities. I would not put Safe Havens in that same definition, but I'll have, you know, Commissioner Banks can talk to you to clarify that. In terms of capacity, yes. As we said, we added additional Safe Haven capacity just in the last days and we're going to keep at it. And there are folks who are willing to come in who prefer Safe Havens and prefer certain locations. There's also some folks who are willing to come in from the street who actually are willing to go to one of the traditional shelters if the location is right or it's someplace they know. So Safe Havens are not the only answer, but unquestionably everything we have is better than living out on the street or living in the subways. And we have ample options that we can accommodate people and we will keep adding to them. Courtney, it's not a fixed situation. The whole plan, everything we said back in the Journey Home plan was based on more and more Safe Havens. We're going to keep doing that.

On the Isabella Geriatric Center. This is horrifying. I've been there – a few years ago I spent time there. I know that facility. I know that a lot of people will work there. I mean, it's absolutely horrifying. This is a staggering toll that we're hearing about now. And I'm shocked. And so look, first of all, the City has for the last, over a month since I believe starting on March 25th, we started delivering a substantial amount of PPEs, and the numbers I have is, for example, 12,000 N95s to that site. So this is to me, it's inestimable loss and it's just impossible to imagine so many people lost in one place. We all have to work together. It is the State's domain, but the City has been trying to provide help in every way we can. I want to provide more help in any way we can. I want to figure out what we can do better, all of us, and we'll certainly work with the State. I think the one thing we now know about the nursing homes is the status quo cannot continue to say the least and something very different has to happen. We'll offer any and all help we can to the State as we try and figure out a new way forward because it's just horrifying what's happened here.

Moderator: Last question for today, Matt Chayes from Newsday.

Question: Hey, good morning Mayo, how are you?

Mayor: Good. Matt, how are you?

Question: I'm okay. I'm wondering how specifically, please specifics, not generalities, are you going to stop gatherings beyond the status quo? What specifically are you going to be doing different from the policy that was in place on Tuesday in Williamsburg beyond the policy that was in place in Borough Park yesterday? And when you say that it will be summoned in gatherings, you know, ballpark a thousand, a hundred people, are you planning to issue a hundred summonses, tickets, and arrests? And secondly, can you go over whether there's any environmental impact of all of this PPE?

Mayor: I don't have an answer for you on environmental impact. If in a moment I'll turn to our colleagues, both doctors and see if they have an answer on that. Obviously I'm always concerned about any unintended consequences, but right now we're fighting a war and trying to save lives. So that's our first concern. But before I turned to the doctors, Matt, look, I think we couldn't be clearer here and I don't, again, I used a hundred to make an example of what anyone would regard as a large gathering, but if it's 40 people, if it's 20 people, it's the same standard. If people are gathering, they're going to be summonsed. Now, look, if the police started arriving and everyone's scatters and they don't come back, I'm sure a lot of policing experts will consider that a successful mission just to stop the gathering and get everyone to go away immediately. But if people try to continue their gathering, they're going to get summonsed instantly. As many people who are a part of that gathering. If anyone resists the NYPD, they'll get arrested. It's just really, really straight forward. I don't know how to be more than that. So don't gather and you won't have a problem. If someone tries gathering and enforcement starts to arrive, you better go away and not come back at all. But if you linger, you're going to be summoned, every single human being who lingers will be summoned to anyone who resists will be arrested. Every community, period. Doctors, on the environmental impact of the PPEs. Any insights or else we can look into that and get back later?

Commissioner Barbot: Mr. Mayor, I would only say that I'm aware of people littering with discarded PPE and we would ask them not to do that. Right now I would have to get back to the question on the bigger impact – potential environmental impact of PPE.

Mayor: Okay. Well, everyone, look, as we close today, just want to offer a real simple concept. A word that we are all familiar with and maybe in some ways conjures up a positive and other ways conjures up a negative. But to me it's a bad word now. And that word is boomerang, and boomerang when it comes to the coronavirus is a dirty word. We cannot allow this disease to reassert itself. We've come a long way in a matter of weeks. You've been the authors of that success, but we take our foot off the gas, this ferocious disease can come back. We've seen it in other places and they certainly regret that they loosened up the wrong way and they paid for it and people lost lives because of it. We're not going to allow a boomerang here. So when we think about what we learned today, looking over those numbers, something to be proud of, the progress we've made, but also being really sober about the distance we still have to cover. And I think we can all be proud that we're moving forward and I think we'll be even prouder if we land this in the coming weeks and months, beat this disease, and never allow that boomerang to happen. I think that's going to be a measure of our success. So, everyone keep fighting and thank you for all you're doing. God bless you all.

2020-05-01 NYC Mayor de Blasio Ask the Mayor

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone and before we bring on Mayor de Blasio for our weekly Ask the Mayor segment, I want to acknowledge the turn of the calendar out of April to the month of May. We knew going into April that it would be one of the most horrific months in the history of New York City, with the number of coronavirus cases spiking, which meant the number of deaths would inevitably spike thereafter. And it happened. From April 3rd through April 19th more than 500 people a day died from the virus in the city according to the official count. On six straight days in the middle of that, more than 700 people died. That has continued to decline but is nowhere close to zero. I thought we would take stock of the stats a little bit as we move into May. On the last two days of the month, the death toll was down to around 300 but we should not breathe a sigh of relief when 300 people every day are dying from a disease that didn't exist until recently. 300 people is the total number murdered in New York City in a full year and more than the number who die from car crashes in a full year. And we know that we put so much public attention onto reducing those stats. We also know that black and brown and poor and working class people have died at such higher rates than white or better off people, twice the rate according to preliminary data that's been reported. So thank goodness April is over, but what will happen in May and June and thereafter in the city, that remains highly uncertain.

And with that we began our weekly Ask The Mayor segment, my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our phones are open at 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0, 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0. Or you can tweet a question, just use the hashtag, #AskTheMayor. And good morning Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you Brian. I want to thank you for the way you just laid that out to all New Yorkers. I think you said it exactly right. I want to say thank God it is May. You know, I see hope in the month of May and March and April were just extraordinarily tough. So I really think you put it all together right there and now we all got a lot of work to do to make May a much better month.

Lehrer: Thank you. And I talked about the death toll, which is what the data people call a lagging indicator because it takes a few weeks, usually before people who die from the virus do so. We know that. But I want to get your take on a number that reflects the present. And that is the number of new confirmed cases, which is still in the thousands per day, almost 5,000 statewide on Wednesday, if I saw that stat, right. Most of those in the city and the shape of that curve is sloping downward but not as steeply as it went up. So in theory with all the social distancing that we're doing, new cases should be petering out by now on paper. Why are there still thousands a day?

Mayor: Well, look, it's such a central question and what I'd say first of all is, for people to understand that we only have a partial picture of what's really happening to all 8.6 million of us because we have been starved of testing from day one. And this is really just the essence of this history. So when you see those numbers you indicate, that's based on still very little testing compared to what we would like to see. And so it gives us some of the truth, but not all of the truth. The fact is that we haven't been able to do until now and we're starting now finally to get to the place where we can do the aggressive, kind of fight back, which is widespread testing. And then quarantining people and providing them support a course to really start to address this disease at the root, if you will. To date, you know, it's been unfortunately in so many ways it's had to be a more reactive reality of the disease spreading with no way to properly trace its progress. And having to defend our hospitals at all costs to save lives. That's what March was all about and so much of April. As we've come out of that because social distancing and shelter-in-place have been working on questionably, even though I understand your question is sort of like why hasn't that worked even more? I do want to emphasize glass is more than half full Brian. How far we have traveled in just a matter of weeks is unquestionably because of effective social dismissing or shelter-in-place. And New Yorkers have been outstanding at that and we need them to stick with it. But the new phase of heavy testing and tracing and quarantine is where you sort of go on the offensive rather than being back on our heels. We get to sort of turn the tables on the disease if you will, and go on the offensive. We have some of the testing capacity we need. Nowhere near the amount we need. That still requires federal intervention to get us there. But we do have a lot of hotel rooms. We do have more and more personnel, medical personnel who can be a part of the testing freeing up, more and more PPEs coming in. So it is a moment where we are going to get to change the situation. I would say folks have to realize they have to stick with it, with the social distancing and the current rules to allow that strong testing and tracing program to really come to bear. And that's actually going to be the gateway to finally at one point seeing much, much reduced numbers and then some loosening up in the rules.

Lehrer: And I'd say as we reinforce the message that it's not time to ease the social distancing. I would throw in that we should probably warn the listeners and maybe the media should incorporate this in every weather forecast, that there's a dangerous weekend ahead because it's supposed to be sunny and 70 degrees tomorrow. And then 70 again on Sunday. Would a dangerous weekend ahead be too strong language for you?

Mayor: No, it’s exactly the right language. And Brian, I thank you for that as well. It's so counterintuitive and painful in a way that, you know, we all wait for this time of year and we cherish it. And yet, yeah, ironically the nice weather is very much a threat to us. Not if we all handle it right. You know, there's nothing wrong with going out and getting some exercise and getting back home. Having the windows open at home to enjoy the fresh air. That's all great. That the temptation is the problem that folks are going to start to feel that they want to spend more and more time outside. They want to play sports. They want to gather with other people. We can't let that happen. So yeah, there is a danger here. And look, it's hard to think about. But I do think one thing that's been amazing is New Yorkers have been so participatory in fighting back this disease. Everyone in your own life, you know, you need to send a message to your own family, your friends, your neighbors that you know, go out for a little bit, but don't go out for too much. Don't gather, don't try and do the things we would normally do on a beautiful spring day.

And people have to be kind of assertive with each other. They see people [inaudible] have to remind each other to wear the face coverings. And we are going to have a lot of enforcement out. We are going to have a very strong NYPD presence all over the city and a bunch of other agencies that can do enforcement. And Brian look, the goal here is not to give anyone a summons and not to arrest anyone. But I've made very clear this week, gatherings in particular, anything where people are gathered together, particularly in larger numbers, there's going to be one chance. If the police are walking up and that gathering doesn't immediately scatter before the police get there and never come back. If they in any way attempt to maintain a gathering, everyone involved will be summonsed. And I don't like saying that Brian. I really don't, but this is where we are right now. [Inaudible] resist, you know [inaudible] there will be arrests and we really don't want to see that happen.

Lehrer: Beth in Lower Manhattan, I think on this point. You're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hi Beth.

Question: Yes, thank you Brian. Thank you Mayor. I live in Battery Park City and I'm afraid to go outside down here. I have sent in photos and notes to 3-1-1, thanks to the Mayor's recommendation. Yesterday when the hospital ship sailed out, there was a crowd down here. There were at least four police. And right near them people not distancing, not wearing masks. And I asked the police, what are you empowered to do about it? And they said nothing. They said, please ask the Mayor to empower us to do something. So there seems to be a disconnect between what you just said Mayor de Blasio and the police understand. I have also called the police precinct patrol down here. The Battery Park City Commander. I've written to the Governor, I've written to you and I called the Road Runners Club. I have not seen enough people wearing masks and distancing down here and it's only going to get worse as the weather improves.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Thank you Beth. I really appreciate the point you're making and I really appreciate that you went up to the police and asked the question. And I don't know who those officers are, but they need to get the memo that -- you know, the Commissioner spoke very passionately this week about the fact that first of all, let's start with the worst of all things, which is gatherings. No tolerance for gatherings. We're going straight to summons. And again, if someone resists the summons, we're going to arrest. And I don't like saying it, but that's what we're doing. And every police officer in New York City should feel very clearly empowered and all the other enforcement agencies that we're sending out. Period – on the gatherings. On the social distancing of individuals, face coverings of individuals. Look, our goal here is to just get people to do it. So in that instance, if you see someone who's, you know, getting too close to other people and you say to them, hey, back off. Or someone has a face covering and they're not wearing it, put it on. I'm not interested in giving a summons if it's not needed. If people just do what they are asked to do. If they're not doing it, of course they can be summoned. So I want it to be very, very clear that we're escalating now because we have to. This is about saving lives and about beating back this disease. I will call Commissioner Shea today to make sure he sends out yet another formal instruction to the men and women of the NYPD that they can use their discretion. This is, you know, we train our officers more than ever now and we treat them as professionals and they are lifesaving professionals. That's what they do. And they use their judgment. But in this instance they have to feel empowered that if their instructions are not being followed, summonses has to be the go-to now. And so we will use that aggressively.

Lehrer: As a follow up on the intentional public gatherings. I think most of our listeners know of the story in the news this week about the large public funeral for a Hasidic rabbi in Brooklyn on Tuesday in Williamsburg. There was another one yesterday, 150 people reportedly close together and Borough Park for another rabbi who passed away. But Gothamist reports that while the NYPD broke it up on Tuesday, according to Hasidic community leaders, the NYPD actually approved and helped coordinate the Tuesday procession. So is the police department enabling these events with special treatment and then having to break them up because they were too accommodating in the first place?

Mayor: So let's separate the two examples because I don't know in the way you asked the question, I'm not sure your listeners will hear the differences between the two. Clearly all around what happened on Tuesday was wrong. And by the way, to be fair to the leaders of the synagogue involved, they put out a letter to the next morning apologizing and saying that they took full responsibility for what happened in Williamsburg. And that it should never have happened. We understand mourning is a very, very difficult reality. And they lost a revered rabbi. And I do feel for anyone in mourning, not being able to express it in this time is very difficult. But it was a clear violation of everything we said and it endangered the lives of members of that community. And I want to say I appreciate when community leaders come forward and take responsibility and say they were at fault and they will not let it happen again.

But I think what's clear here is the NYPD, while trying to be respectful of the community, certainly trying to be respectful of people's faith and the process of mourning. I get that that's a lot to try and balance. NYPD has to be abundantly clear, there's no accommodation, there's no acceptance, there's no tolerance of any gathering of any kind. So that needed to be done better on Tuesday all around. What we saw yesterday, I don't have all the details, but my understanding from Borough Park is as soon as the NYPD precinct heard there was something happening, they made very clear they would not tolerate it, and if anyone showed up, they'd be turned back and that, that gathering was disrupted immediately and that's going to be the model going forward.

Lehrer: Did the police department make that original Tuesday plan with or without your knowledge?

Mayor: Oh, I don't – first of all, the notion of ‘plan’ I think is a little generous here. I think there is – this was not well handled by anyone, you know, in the community and the precinct by anyone because there was obviously miscommunication and assumptions all around, when what should have been clear from the very beginning was no gatherings of any kind, even the slightest attempt to gather will be met immediately and turned back. But no, I heard about it somewhere between 6:30 and 7:00 pm, that something was brewing and it sounded entirely wrong. And I called the Commissioner immediately and then when I heard the details, I went there right away because I thought it was absolutely unacceptable.

Lehrer: Right. And you did go there yourself. We'll continue in a minute with Mayor de Blasio, more of your calls on our weekly Ask the Mayor segment, stay with us.

[...]

Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, with our weekly Ask the Mayor segment my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio at 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0 or tweet a question. Just use the hashtag, #AsktheMayor – and Vicky in Manhattan, you're on WNYC – hello, Vicky.

Question: Hello. Thank you so much, Brian. Hello, Mr. Mayor. Good morning. I'm calling on behalf of a neighbor of mine in Tudor City. Her name is Danno. The Housing Preservation and Development courts have been suspended because of the virus. And her trial was just on the edge of being heard. She had a flood in her apartment in September and between the managing agent and the landlady, she hasn't been able to have the problem addressed. Sorry, I'm a little nervous. And she's been staying at the Y and in hotel rooms and now hotels are closed and she's kind of falling between the cracks, and as of today will be homeless. I'm calling to ask if the Mayor can take her number and if someone in his office can help address her problem. 

Mayor: Yeah. Vicky, first of all, thank you for looking out for her. I really appreciate that. There's been a lot of really great examples of New Yorkers showing compassion and looking out for each other in this crisis. And you're giving a really good example to the people right now of that, so thank you. Please give your information to WNYC. Our team will follow up with you immediately or with Danno directly, whatever you think makes more sense. We can certainly make sure she has a place to stay immediately. And if the landlord has not fulfilled their responsibilities, that's something that goes beyond just the question of the crisis and whether courts are open. If the landlord has not addressed a condition and someone can't live in their apartment, our Housing Department, HPD, is able to step in, in many cases at least. So, let's see how we can immediately get her someplace safe and then see if we can solve the underlying problem. And share your information to my folks. We'll follow up right away.

Lehrer: Vicky, we’ll take your contact off the air. Just stay there and we'll put you on hold. Ivy in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Ivy.

Question: Hello. Thanks for taking my call to you both. I'm calling because I am a small business owner. I own a bar called Leyenda in Brooklyn, in Carroll Gardens. We have been closed now for six weeks. We have only income coming in from some contactless cocktail delivery that we were able to do. But I want to know, Mayor, what you plan on doing to help businesses like mine. Just according to a report that you did in 2018, the food services industry employs more than 141,000 people, delivering $4.2 billion in wages and $12 billion in direct economic output. I want to know what is going to be happening with the rent abatement, if there'll be any sort of tax relief because we are uniquely vulnerable. We've been talking about gathering on this call so far this morning. My business makes money off of gathering, gathering people together, and I'm not alone. We are the – small businesses like mine that employ less than 40 people are the social fabric of our city and we were already in danger of having every corner turned into a Duane Reade or Starbucks. And I'm worried that we will continue to go that way. So, I'd like to hear your thoughts. 

I'd also like to talk – to invite you to talk to the coalition I am part of, I'm part of New York Hospitality Coalition. I'd like to invite you to speak to us in our group – and thank you. I can take my call off the air. 

Lehrer: Ivy, thank you very much. Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Thank you, Ivy. Ivy, please share your information with WNYC. I'd certainly be happy to speak to your coalition. So, if you'll give your information our team will follow up with you today and we'll figure out a time to remotely gather together, as with all conversations nowadays. But certainly, happy to – I want to hear from you and everyone else what's going on. Look, I think your basic thesis is exactly right and Carroll Gardens is obviously the community I've represented in the City Council and feel very close to and, you know, the kind of business that you own is the backbone of the city unquestionably every way emotionally, culturally, in terms of the identity of the city, in terms of what makes neighborhoods great, in terms of employment, you name it. So, we have to find a way to bring you back. You know that you're dealing with – I think you indicated it – one of the most sensitive elements of life in the city and our economy in this kind of crisis, which is when do we bring back people in sort of really close quarters like a bar. How do we do that? There's a lot of ideas out there. We haven't solidified anything yet. But as we start to normalize, you know, can bars operate with limited capacity, can they have different ways with restaurants, for example? Can restaurants do more outdoor seating? There's a lot of ideas out there that we're working on right now and we want to work with people in the industry to sort through. So, would love to hear your thoughts and the coalition. 

On the relief we can provide – so the City provided about $50 million immediately when this started in loans and grants to small businesses then, excuse me, our just massive budget crisis started and that is unfortunately only getting worse right now. We've been pushing the federal government to keep adding money to the Paycheck Protection Program. They did add $310 billion and we're trying to help New York City’s small businesses get full access to that. And as you know, loans but in many cases, forgivable loans, so, they turn into grants. A reminder to all small businesses, you need to apply immediately to get in line for those at SBA, Small Business Administration, sba.gov, and anyone who needs help with the application can call 3-1-1. That's where the real money is right now to keep people afloat and we need New York City’s businesses to maximally apply for that. 

On your bigger issues, you're asking about what we should do going forward. I'll have more to say on that soon on other ways we can help small businesses to get through to the point where we can really start reopening, which obviously is a few months away at minimum. So, I know the job-one right now is to get people to maximize those federal dollars. I'll say more going forward on anything that the City can do and the State can do to help people

Lehrer: And Ivy may be interested or other people in your coalition that we're going to be doing a restaurant specific segment on Monday’s show probably around 10:30 on Monday morning – what restaurants can do right now, what it will or could look like when reopening time comes at different levels in different places starting whenever it's appropriate to start or various places in our area. So that'll be Monday in case you're interested. Here's a question via Twitter, Mr. Mayor. A listener asks, “What does the Mayor think of the presidential primary being canceled in New York State while local elections are not canceled in that June primary?”

Mayor: Yeah, look, I will start with the most important identifier, which is, you know, I was a very strong, proud supporter of Bernie Sanders and, you know, really passionately believed in what he would have been able to do as president. But, you know, I think he made a choice, understandably based on the facts, to step out of the race and support Joe Biden. And I think at that moment it was clear that the notion of a primary was in many ways moot. In the context of this city where we're going through hell right now, we do not want to see people gathering and we have to conserve all energy we can for fighting this battle. I think the decision made sense. I would separate that fully from the question of the work that still needs to be done to make the Democratic Party more progressive and make the rules of the party more progressive, and a lot of other things that have to happen going forward. But in this context of crisis, I think it was an understandable decision.

Lehrer: We're going to run out of time pretty soon. And there are so many more serious things going on than we can reasonably get to in our available time. Obviously, this is not your only media outlet. I think it's really good that you're doing news conferences basically every day. But let me touch on a couple here in brief that really deserve longer treatment. But this is the situation we’re in – one is, the hospital system may have not gone into official overload, but it looks like the funeral home system has, with reports of bodies piling up in trucks outside some funeral homes at least. Is it merely a function of overload or are some people doing something wrong?

Mayor: I think some people are doing something wrong. I mean – look, most funeral homes kept working through this. They did extraordinary work. They comforted families. We worked very closely. Funeral homes are regulated by the State of New York, but the City works in this kind of crisis, of course, with them and our Office of the Medical Examiner, Health Department, and we've tried to support the funeral homes in a variety of ways. Vast majority of them have done their job and done it very well. A few of them, I think, have been really negligent and one particularly horrible case we heard about in Brooklyn – it's just unconscionable. And if they needed help, they should have asked for it. So, I do not see a situation where most of the funeral homes aren't doing their job. I think they are doing their job, but I think it's imperative – and we're going to – it was a good idea from Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams – to form a sort of council or committee to make sure the funeral homes were talking regularly with the City government and others on anything they need. We're going to do that. But what I've seen, Brian, that particularly horrible case was abhorrent.

Lehrer: And today is the day by which you promise to have iPads to every New York City public school student who did not have the equipment for online learning, it is kind of amazing that we're six weeks into this now and there are still some kids without the equipment to do the online schooling. As we talked this morning, can you declare mission accomplished?

Mayor: Yes, with an asterisk that's actually not a bad asterisk, but something that, you know, you and your listeners can help us with, which is there's still some kids who have not asked for one who we think need one, and we've got to identify them. So, here's the bottom line. The day that I announced the schools would close I was clear, the Chancellor was clear that we knew that the digital divide is a horrible, painful reality in this city and this nation. And we knew one of the really bad effects of shutting down schools would be a lot of kids would not be able to immediately take advantage of the distance learning. And, of course, we had to set up the online learning from scratch to begin with, which was a herculean task. And our educators did an amazing job, but we knew, we just knew there would be hundreds of thousands of kids who did not have either devices or the internet service or both.

And we didn't have them in stock. We did not have them sitting around. So, what's happened in these weeks was getting the actual devices in and then getting them to the kids. And it's actually been a very, very systematic effort. So, I know we are now over a quarter million kids, over 250,000, have received their iPads. I know there are extras left over waiting to find kids who have not yet asked for them. Any family that needs one can just call t3-1-1. Just a simple, you know, quick questionnaire they fill out and if they qualify it's, again, very simple to qualify, the iPad is delivered to them. So, mission accomplished, in the sense that every name that the DOE had, they did deliver to on time, and it was over a quarter-million kids. But if there's anyone else who still doesn’t have one, if you know of anyone in your life, anyone listening, a kid who does not have access to the internet does not have access to a device, we can – one of our public school kids – we can get it to them right away.

Lehrer: And last question, summer camps and beaches, partial openings this summer or none at all, can you say on May 1st?

Mayor: Well, I can certainly say there's no plan for any summer camps in terms of anything that the city funds, it's like the very sad reality we're experiencing with our other youth programs, our youth centers, and youth employment. You know, we just are not in a position to – first of all, we cannot predict at all when anyone can gather. And second, we just don't have the money. We have been hemorrhaging money in this crisis and the whole ballgame of what the City is going to look like going forward is going to be decided in a matter of days in Washington. And I'm going to be sounding the alarm here. You know, the House of Representatives right now is drawing up the stimulus bill. If that bill focuses on where the impact of COVID-19 was greatest, and if it's a bill that's based on the justice of serving communities that were hurt the most, then New York City can be made whole and we can move forward.

If that bill creates a formula that does not focus on the needs of cities and localities as well as states in terms of what COVID-19 did to them. Then we're going to be talking about huge budget cuts. So, the pressure needs to be on everyone in Washington. They're responsible now. They’re either going to help New York City back on our feet or they're not. And we need to see results. But we, that's the youth programs. The beaches are a little bit more of an open question, Brian. Not starting on Memorial Day as we normally would. Maybe – maybe later in the summer we'll be in a position to do something with the beaches, but it's premature to say at this point.

Lehrer: Thanks as always, Mr. Mayor, talk to you next week. 

Mayor: Thank you, Brian.

2020-05-03 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. I want to start by thanking the men and women of the NYPD and the Parks Department and all of the agencies that had our enforcement agents out yesterday, all over the city in large numbers, out there protecting people's lives by making sure there were no large gatherings by making sure that social distancing was being enforced. I am so appreciative for everyone who is out there from all those agencies who are giving out face coverings and I know people really appreciated that, a great effort yesterday and only a beginning because as more and more members of NYPD are coming back on the job, some of whom of course were sick, some of whom are still fighting against this disease or even in the hospital. And our thoughts, our prayers with all of them, all the people who work for the city on behalf of you who are still fighting this disease, our hearts and prayers are with all of them, all of you, all of your families. But what I am so proud of yesterday was a strong effort across the whole city by the NYPD, the Parks Department, all of these agencies to make sure that these rules are being enforced, to make sure people had what they needed. And this is just the beginning. More will come as we get more and more personnel back and we're going to deepen these efforts are going to be more and more efforts to give out those face coverings, more and more efforts to educate people. But as I've made very, very clear and Commissioner Shea has made very clear, more and more enforcement efforts as well in every single part of the city.

Now I have to put that in context. We of course need enforcement is part of life, but the big story here is what New Yorkers have done right. There's always going to be exceptions. There's always going to be some people who don't get the message or are thinking about themselves and not other people, but the vast majority of New Yorkers have really risen to the challenge powerfully. I want to thank you. It's been amazing to watch how carefully the vast majority of you are going about social distancing. How many people are already wearing face coverings – not perfect yet, but by the way, this is something we would never have imagined just a few weeks ago. But when you go out there, you see, and I've been able to, it's all over the city in the last a week or two, noticing that the vast majority of people wearing face coverings, and we're going to make that easier and easier, but people are doing it right overwhelmingly, we need people to stick with it. We need anyone who hasn't gotten the memo to get the memo because that's the only way we're going to get through this. But New Yorkers, you have a lot to be proud of. And that's the big story here.

Now it's important to always remember the direct connection between what you do and what happens to the whole city, and what happens to our future. It comes back to those indicators we go over each day now on Friday, I talked about what we had seen over the last few weeks and it's overwhelmingly good news. We know we're not out of the woods yet, but it's good news for sure. But today I want to focus on the challenge. What today I want you to understand that when I talk about the danger of this disease reasserting, it's not an idle idea. It's not an idea somewhere someone just thought about, but it's never happened. It's an idea that unfortunately comes from the real-life experience that we've seen in other parts of the world. This danger that if you let your guard down, the disease can reassert and setback everything. So, when New Yorkers think about the question I hear so often from people, how do we get back to normal? I want you to think about it is every one of us that gets us back to normal. It's your responsibility. It's my responsibility. It's all of our responsibility to get back to normal. We all play a role in this effort.

And when you think about what would it mean if we didn't do it right, what should we be afraid of? What should motivate us not just because we want to do the right thing and we want to get back to normal? What should be motivating us to be aware of, to be worried about that will keep us, keep us on the mission, keep us focused, and I'll come back to that ugly word, that dirty word I mentioned the other day. Boomerang. That's the word I want you to think about when you think about what could go wrong. I've told you a lot about what's gone right, but I want you to look at that image of the boomerang, get it in your mind and think about, that's the thing you do not want. We cannot afford a boomerang with this disease in this city. Now it's a ferocious disease. I think we've all established the all have seen painfully so many of us have experienced in our own families and our own lives why it's such a dangerous disease, and this is not a disease that will just walk away and leave us alone and go quietly into the night. No, we're going to have to fight it back if we want to rid ourselves of it.

Look, the danger is a bounce back, a boomerang where the disease seems to be going away and then reasserts and the cases come on more and more and the numbers go up and more and more people are afflicted and that would set back a restart and a recovery by a long time. And I'll give you real examples to you what's happened some other places where that's exactly the problem they had. They jumped too soon in various ways and then their restart and recovery took a lot longer. So now the question I'm sure you will ask yourself as well, what can I do to make sure we don't have that boomerang to make sure we don't have that happen here? And the answer is that we need to stick with what's working. We need to understand that the restrictions in place are working and that they only get relaxed carefully and slowly. There's no on-off switch here. It's not like you have all the restrictions one day and the next day you're back to normal. I don't think people even expect that anymore. I think people understand we'll be fighting this disease in different ways for quite a while. Doesn't mean we can't start to get more normal, but it means job one is to beat back the disease. So, since it's not on-off, we would do things in careful stages and make sure that each step we take is working before we take the next step. We have to do this to protect our people. We have to do this to make sure our hospitals are not overwhelmed and they can be there to save our lives. We have to do this so we can restart and recover.

Now I told you when I talked to you about this image and I now hope it's really in your mind, the boomerang. It's not abstraction because it's actually happened in other parts of the world. I want to give you those examples. So, the place to look is to Asia because they have been through many experiences that prepared them for the coronavirus. Many parts of Asia went through SARS and the bird flew in different challenges and we can learn from their experiences – it helps us to understand our future and how we can get it right and what not to do as well.

So many, many parts of Asia have done smart strategies, but they also have made those missteps at times that are instructive to all of us. And the smallest misstep, the smallest weakness is exploited by this disease. So, I'm going to give you three examples of a boomerang and we can learn from each one. First, let's go to Japan. And the lesson of Japan is don't come back too early. This is a raging discussion in our own country right now is some states are rushing to restart and it looks to me like some of them are doing it without a lot of evidence, without a lot of health care indicators to tell them what's really going on. And I'm hoping and praying for them that doesn't backfire horribly on the people of those states. In Japan, there is the example, the region of Hokkaido and it was a region that had initially experience with the coronavirus. And then late in February, after having only about 70 cases, this region declared a state of emergency. For three weeks, there was a lockdown in Hokkaido. And again, I emphasized just three weeks, at which point it seemed like the disease had been contained. Now we all know three weeks is not a long time. So, after three weeks, the lockdown was lifted on March 19th and it wasn't lifted gradually. It was lifted rather abruptly. So schools were reopened, public gatherings were allowed again, there were still some restrictions, but some of the biggest indicators, if you will, some of the places where people get together the most, like our schools and public gatherings, those were the places that somehow were allowed again, almost instantly. 26 days later, there was a surge in cases again in Hokkaido, and guess what they had to do very sadly, they had to go right back to stringent restrictions. And that's what they're still experiencing now. So that's one case study of a place that thought they had it beat, didn't necessarily wait a long time to make that conclusion and then went very fast back into a restart and now unfortunately are paying for it.

Now let's look to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is an example of how even if things look better, small levels of activity can suddenly grow into something much worse. So, by early March it looked like Hong Kong was pretty much done with the disease and normal life resumed. Travelers started returning home to Hong Kong. People were allowed to go out again. Nightlife started again, obviously very, very active nightlife in Hong Kong, a city very much like New York City, lots of bars, lots of restaurants, clubs. People went back out and in late March the cases started to surge. What happened, the government had to now in Hong Kong put a variety of new restrictions in place, restricting travel, restricting gatherings, schools, all sorts of places people went, those restrictions had to be asserted again and then in April even more had to be added. So again, an example of a city very much like ours that found they had to put back restrictions and then go even farther. The last thing we want to see here again, our job is to have a clear, steady march forward, as steady as it can be when time comes to relax restrictions, relax them, and get it right once and for all and never have that boomerang effect.

One more example, Singapore. Now Singapore has been lauded for doing a lot of things the right way early on in this crisis. By the middle of March, there were relatively few cases, Singapore was getting a lot of praise for a very strong, focused effort to address this disease. But again, not every part of the equation apparently was considered in Singapore. And one of the things that typifies Singapore is there's a number of migrant workers and they live in dormitories. The dormitories were allowed to fill up. By late April, there are hundreds of new cases of the coronavirus and the government had to impose a two week stay at home order and now has even increased restrictions on schools and restaurants and other types of public gatherings.

So, three case studies. What they have in common is they're all examples of the dangers that exist if the restart goes the wrong way, and if that boomerang effect is allowed to happen and it's a reminder that we have to be vigilant because even a small number of cases can lead to that resurgence if the right restrictions aren't in place. It's also a reminder that what we're building up – the massive testing apparatus and tracing apparatus and the ability to isolate people, quarantine people, that has to be stronger and stronger all the time to make sure we put the disease in check and keep it in check. So, the bottom line is we have to get this right

Now, testing, as I said, testing is the key. Testing has always been the key and I'm going to talk to you now about something exciting happening right here in this city to make sure that we will have what it takes for wide-scale testing. As of this week, we have begun the process of producing test kits here in New York City and this is a first in our city's history because this was not a place like so many other parts of America that thought we had to have our own medical supplies and medical equipment built right here. But we've learned a tough lesson that we have to create and we have to protect ourselves. That's why we're going to have a strategic reserve going forward for New York City to protect New York City. So, for the first time we are producing now test kits in New York City and this has had to be put together very quickly. A lot of partners brought together a lot of different moving parts that had to be made since that has never been done before. So, we're really an uncharted territory creating these test kits in New York City. And I will tell you like so many other things we've been working on. There'll be moments when we have to figure things out. Sometimes there'll be times when we have to try something even if it doesn't work, try something else until we get there because we are in uncharted territory, but we are confident that we're making progress and we're confident that we're going to have test kit production in this city. That's going to be a key part of what we do going forward. Now, at one point I talked about a test kit and I use an analogy to a cup of coffee. If you want a cup of coffee with milk and sugar, you need a cup, you need water, you need coffee beans, you need sugar, you need cream. You need all the things that allow you to make a cup of coffee the way you want it.

Well, a test kit has something in common with that. You need three parts for a test kit. For the PCR test, the diagnostic test for the coronavirus. You need the swabs to take the actual sample. You need the transport medium, which is what keeps the sample in place on the way to the lab. And you need the screw top tubes to protect the sample from any contamination. So what the lab gets will be accurate. Well, the good news is these screw top tubes are something we have plenty of access to, but the two challenges where the swabs and the transport medium, the fluid that you actually keep the sample in. So the swabs, well, a painful, painful irony that the entire world experienced a shortage of these swabs starting over the last month. Why? Because almost all of them were made in Northern Italy. That turned out to be one of the epicenters of the global crisis. We realized we had to find another source. The global market wasn't working, there weren't sources around this country that were reliable enough. So, we decided we would make our own and this small piece of plastic here it, it's long. I want to remind you that way. This works is it is put literally biomedical professional well up your nose. So, it is a very careful effort that has to be done by someone that knows what they're doing. But this seemingly simple piece of plastic actually proved to be a complex matter because it has to be done just the right way and it has to be kept sterile in packaging like this until the point when it's actually used on a patient. So, getting this right proved to be actually a complex matter. But again, there's tremendous talent in this city and so many people, so many companies, so many partners who came forward and said, we want to get this done because we know it'll save lives in our city.

So, our local partner is Print Parts, a 3D printing company and they are using designs like this one that have been clinically validated. In this case, we found a partner in the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and another partner in Envision Tech, which is a medical 3D printing firm. So, we put together a coalition of different organizations to help us get this right. Now, how many when, well 30,000 will be delivered by this Friday and then we'll be on a track thereafter for 50,000 a week. Now, I mentioned what's called a transport medium, this is the fluid that the samples are kept in our local partners at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a great New York City institution. They worked with what you might call a recipe, which follows a CDC-approved protocol, and the first batch of this transport medium will be produced this week in New York City. Still has to go through a validation process, so that's going to take a little more time. But by the week of May 17th we will begin to pair the locally made swabs with a locally made transport medium and then like that cup of coffee, we'll have all the pieces come together and for the first time in the city's history, we will have our own test kits produced in large numbers right here in the five boroughs.

In the meantime, we're not going to wait. That initial set of 30,000 swabs. That'll be delivered by Friday. We will pair with an interim source of transport medium from outside New York City, and that pairing will happen Friday May 8th. Those full test kits will be delivered wherever they're needed to be part of our widespread testing effort by the week of May 10th. So this is all growing all the time and more and more pieces are going to be brought into play so that we can get to that widespread testing to help us go on the offensive testing, tracing, isolating, quarantine all the pieces needed to fight back this disease and avoid that dreaded boomerang.

Now we've talked about testing from the beginning. First time I asked the federal government to help us get testing was on January 24th that request, that plea was ignored. We still are waiting for the federal government to help us. Now we need their help with lab capacity. We're still not getting the help we need and we're going to keep fighting for it. But I want to take a moment to appreciate the people who work in those labs. You know, we've been rightfully talking about our health care heroes, our doctors, our nurses, all the health care workers and our first responders, our essential workers, folks in the grocery stores and supermarkets and pharmacies. All the people out there doing such important work. But let's talk about the people who actually help us know if someone has this disease or not. The lab techs, let's talk about them. All the people work in the labs, we depend on them and they are unsung heroes too. And I want to thank everyone of course who works in the private labs because we're depending on them. But I want to highlight those who work in our public labs and I want to say – give credit where credit is due. I was on Friday evening, you know, of course the 7:00 pm clapping for all the health care heroes. I went to Interfaith Hospital in Brooklyn, a wonderful institution. Earlier in this decade, a lot of us in Brooklyn fought to protect Interfaith Hospital from closing. Thank God we all did, work with the community and the community stood up strong to protect Interfaith. And Interfaith has been front and center in this crisis. I talked to some of the folks that work at Interfaith, some of whom I knew from that first fight to keep it open.

And we were talking about everything that had happened there. And a couple of people from the lab came forward and said, hey, don't forget about us. Don't forget about the lab workers. So, to all the lab workers, first of all, in all the 56 hospitals in New York City that have been a part of this fight, all the lab workers in all the private labs. All of you are also heroes in this effort. I want to express my deep thanks to all of you, but I want to especially thank those who have worked in our public labs. So first of all, at the New York City Department of Health, the Public Health Lab, you've heard more and more about it. It's been a crucial part of this equation. More than 200 staff work there. And for the last two months, they have literally been working 24/7. It's been a big part of how we fight back to have the Public Health Lab, you know, nonstop getting results for New Yorkers who need them.

I want to thank Dr. Jennifer Rakeman, the Assistant Commissioner, Department of Health and the Director of the Lab and her entire team, job well done. And at Health + Hospitals, our public hospital and clinic system, more than 1000 lab professionals have been in the forefront. Our public hospitals have been the frontline of this crisis. I want to thank the technologists, the technicians, the pathologists, everyone who was part of those H + H labs. You've been amazing. You've worked nonstop, you've been strong and focused, and it's helped us to make the progress we've made with this disease so far. Special thanks to Kenra Ford, the Senior Assistant Vice President of Lab Services and her entire team. Thank you so much.

So, remember when you're thinking of all the reasons to be thankful to be a New Yorker right now, think of all the heroes we thank every day. But think of some of the heroes we may not think about as much. Think about those lab workers. You only get the answer to the test because of them. And we only find the ways that we can fight back this disease because of the information they give us and they never stop. They work around the clock. So thank you to all the great people working in the labs.

Now we're going to beat back this disease. We're going to do it with testing, tracing, isolating, quarantining, all these strategies that work. We're going to do it on a vast scale, but, in the meantime, we continue to fight that other part of the crisis, that horrible reality of people who have lost their livelihoods, struggling to make ends meet. And in so many cases struggling just to get food on the table. Remember the estimates before the coronavirus were about 1.2 million New Yorkers, and this is a very sad reality. 1.2 million New Yorkers experience some amount of food insecurity at any given point in the year. And that's a horrible number to begin with. It's something we've been trying to fight back for years now. That number, even though we don't have all the facts yet and we're still trying to understand the sheer impact of this horrible crisis on everyday New Yorkers, that number may have grown by a million. There could be as many as two million or more New Yorkers experiencing food insecurity now or who will be experiencing it in the coming weeks. So, we have to help people right now and from the beginning, I've been painfully aware there's a lot of New Yorkers who now have to ask a question they never thought they'd ask. And that question is, where's my next meal coming from? The answer from the City of New York, the answer from your City government is we will be there for you. No New Yorker will go hungry. No matter what it takes, we will provide food to everyone who needs it.

So, food delivery is a big piece of this because there are a lot of people who can't get out. They're seniors. They're vulnerable folks that maybe people with disabilities, whatever it is, there's reasons why they can't get out, can't get the food. And particularly in this tough environment, there are a lot of people used to depend on other people to bring food for them who can't right now or dependent on members of their family who were the breadwinners, who don't have an income right now. So, we made it our business to do a massive food delivery effort for those who are most vulnerable. Again, I want to emphasize, a lot of people who need food right now are people who just weeks ago considered themselves solidly middle class or working class. Everything was if not fully under control in their life, certainly something like where your meals were coming from was under control. A lot of people felt a horrible disruption in their lives and we have to make sure that each and every one of them know, no matter what you go through, we're going to be there for you. There is no shame in asking for the help you need and we want to make it as easy as possible for you and your family. Currently we are at a capacity where we can deliver as many as 3.1 million meals per week. Our goal is to keep ramping that up as high as we need it to be. If needed, we can take that capacity as high as 1 million meals per day. A staggering number, but we can do that if that's what we need to do to keep people safe and to keep them fed here in New York City.

So, we continue to expand our Get Food program and particularly our delivery program. But to do this, to keep expanding we are going to need help at the community level. So, I'm going to today be asking people to join in who can help us in this endeavor. We need more personnel at the distribution site. So, if you're a nonprofit organization, a community-based organization, there are a lot of great ways we can partner with you. First of all, we need to immediately find an additional 300 staff members who can manage distribution sites. So we're looking for nonprofit partners with that skill, that ability to manage a site. We need you to come forward right away.

We need help actually preparing meals. Look we are now at a point where I'm talking about going as high as a million meals a day, where all of the places we're preparing the meals are getting maxed out. So, we need commercial kitchen capacity. And this is an opportunity to work with a number of nonprofits and businesses that currently don't have the ability to operate normally. We want to bring you back into play as part of this very noble effort to feed your fellow New Yorkers. We would love to get people who represent all the communities of this city. So we're interested in any organizations that can help us, particularly feeding folks with some of the foods they're more used to in the East Asian community, South Asian community, Caribbean community that will help. We're going to make sure people are fed. If we can help people to have some of the foods that they are familiar with in the process, that's even better.

And we need help with delivery in specific neighborhoods where we need more personnel. And in sourcing available meals in those neighborhoods. The more we can do locally, the better off we'll be. Having the kitchen capacity, having the delivery all happen locally -- the more local, obviously the less traveling around, the more efficient, the speedier, the better. So, I'm going to name some neighborhoods where we are particularly looking for help. We are looking for help in Melrose, in Washington Heights, in Howard Beach, South Ozone Park, in Gravesend, and Sheepshead Bay, in Morris Park, on the North Shore of Staten Island, in Flushing, in Jackson Heights, in Eastchester and in Sunset Park. And we're particularly looking for providers who can help us by producing at least a thousand meals a day. We've put out a request, it's online right now. Anybody from a nonprofit organization or anybody who thinks they can help us with these immediate needs so we can really expand this meal program intensely, please go to nyc.gov/nonprofits, nyc.gov/nonprofits.

Okay. Few more things. So next Sunday, a very, very important day, every year, Mother's Day. It is a day that we cherish in our family. It's a day when everyone remembers to express their deep appreciation to, in our case, the mothers in our life, but every family, remembering how much we owe the moms in our families. Now, this is not going to be a typical Mother's Day to say the least, and, unfortunately, we've gotten some practice here because so many other crucial days in our year, from all different faiths, all different communities have overlapped with this horrible crisis. We went through Easter, Passover, now Ramadan, everyone's trying to figure out how to maintain our traditions and everything that is so dear to us in the midst of this crisis. Well, we're going to have to improvise again for Mother's Day. Now, Mother's Day for so many of us meetings gathering together. In fact, it's a day when our moms expect everyone to come together. Stop what you're doing and just slow down and appreciate the family and appreciate the mom in your life. But to appreciate mom this year, it means keeping mom safe. It means doing things differently. And that's particularly true if your mom happens to be older. We want to protect all the moms in New York City. And the way to do that is to show love and appreciation in different ways.

We used to all flock home to mom. This is not the year to do that. It is the year to show love and support in different ways. In fact, normally the gift we give to mom is to all show up. This time the gift we can give to mom is to give her some space and help her stay safe. So you can celebrate lots of other ways. Facetime, Skype, Zoom. There's so many ways you can celebrate. You can also do that old-fashioned thing we call a phone call, which moms still appreciate very much. In fact, many moms are like you could call more often, they'd like that. You can go outside mom's house and wave from the sidewalk. You can do all sorts of things. But let's remember how important social distancing is for everyone. And let's remember protecting mom's health should be the number one thing we think about on Mother's Day. Our moms have brought us through everything and the way we honor them is to remember what it's going to take to fight back this disease and bring them through safe and sound. And we can do that together

Now, I want to talk to you – something I talked about on Friday and it's such a powerful, tragic story, but also a powerful story of human devotion. I talked about a paramedic from Aurora, Colorado, Paul Cary. And we lost Paul. He came here to help us and we lost him to the coronavirus. And amazing how small a world it is. So, Aurora, Colorado is also where New York City's Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell comes from. And for years in her hometown, she served in the Fire Department. And she served with Paul Cary. And what a shocking coincidence that he ended up coming to New York City to help us in our hour of need and then so painful that this disease has taken him.

Well, first of all, my deepest thanks to the entire FDNY family, the firefighters, the EMTs, the paramedics, everyone at the FDNY, and my deepest thanks to NYPD. After Paul was lost, they gave him a tribute and treated him as one of our own. And a lot of you may have seen the images, but a powerful, powerful respect shown by our first responders to one of their own who didn't come from here and was only here a short time, but gave to New York City so much. And all of our first responders honored him as if he had been a lifelong New Yorker. And I know the Cary family was deeply moved by that. I also want to thank the New York Daily News. Daily News, put Paul on the cover yesterday and it was a very moving tribute to him. And you know, the thing that goes on the cover of the newspaper sends such a powerful message. So to think that one of the most prominent newspapers in the country honored this man who came here of his own choice to protect us and serve us. That was a very beautiful tribute. So thank you to everyone at the Daily News for doing that. And thank you again to Paul's family. And we will remember him and we will memorialize him. But it's so important to remember this great example of heroism.

Now, we have an example of heroism in Paul, we have an example of people doing the right thing every day in New York City. It has become something we are so proud of to recognize how many people are just doing what's right, to protect other people, to be compassionate for other people, to care about other people, to recognize the depth of this crisis and be there for their fellow New Yorker. That's what everyone should do. Anybody – any everyday New Yorker, and especially anyone in a position of authority anywhere in this city, anywhere in this country should feel in their hearts what New Yorkers have gone through and ask the question of what can I do to help, just like all our heroes do?

Well, let me talk today, unfortunately, about someone who did the exact opposite of that. And I was shocked when I heard this. The White House Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett. He [inaudible] talking about the stimulus program, talking about what's needed to get New York City and all cities and states back on their feet. Yesterday morning, he says, well, everything appears to be happening safely. And literally, this is a quote he says, there is a chance that we won't really need another stimulus – a phase four stimulus. Listen to those words. There's a chance we won't need it. Well, let me tell you something, Kevin, why don't you come to New York City? Why don't you go to Elmhurst Hospital? Why don't you talk to our first responders? Why don't you talk to the families who have lost their loved ones? Or go to the ICU where hundreds of people are still fighting for their lives? In terms of your desire, which is pretty transparent to save money rather than to protect people, to risk the future of New York City and this State and so many cities and states around the country. It is outrageous that anyone with a position of authority in our federal government could even breathe these words. Because it's disrespectful in every way. It is an absolute misunderstanding of what has happened here and what continues to happen and the fight we're still waging. And how much it's going to take to get back on our feet. This year and next year and the years thereafter. I was disgusted when I heard these comments because it sounded like the comments not only of a cheapskate, but someone who just didn't care.

So, I hope President Trump will renounce these comments immediately. I don't know why this guy is his economic advisor if you could say something like that. The President needs to speak up and say that's absolutely unacceptable. Right now, we know in the Congress, intense effort is going on to create a stimulus. Why? Because what's happening in cities and states all over the country right now, red states and blue states, red cities and blue cities is mayors and governors unfortunately are having to cut back more and more. And it's soon going to really affect the basic services we all depend on. The kind of cuts we're talking about will lead painfully, horribly to furloughs, to layoffs of public sector workers who are the backbone of our cities, our states, the people who keep everything going. The people we need even more in a recovery. And here's the painful reality I want you to take in. Listen to these very dangerous comments from this White House official and then translate it into reality. If there is not a fourth stimulus and that stimulus does not amply provide for the needs of cities and states this year and next year, then the very people who have been our heroes, the very people who have been saving our lives, those doctors, those nurses, those firefighters, EMTs, paramedics, police officers, the people keeping this place going, the people who keep it going all the time, the sanitation workers, the educators, all the people we are depending on for a restart and a recovery, their futures will be compromised.

Imagine if the very same doctors and nurses working in our public hospitals are the very same EMTs and paramedics who were such heroes in this crisis, imagine if after fighting through this battle, months from now they had to face furloughs or layoffs here and all over the country. If we don't get help from Washington that is what will happen. And I'm talking about one place, one city right here already, $7.4 billion in the hole because of a crisis we didn't ask for and we didn't create. Came to us from another place. But all of you have fought heroically through it. I just want to see everyone in Washington show a little bit of respect for what New York City has gone through and so many cities and states around the country have gone through and just do the right thing and help us back on our feet.

Okay, we're going to go over the daily indicators. And as I've said, the reality of these indicators is what's going to determine our future and directly relates to all you do. We've generally seen progress, not quite enough yet. We have to keep at it. So, today progress, generally, still more to go. First indicator – daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that's up, and that's that one troubles me but it is the truth up from 92 to 113. But the other indicators are down. Daily number of people in ICUs across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19, down from 677 to 645. Percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19, citywide down 21 percent to 20 percent. Only a little but still down. Public health lab tests for COVID-19 – percentage down, 50 percent to 33 percent. We keep putting together good days. I want us to put together great days and consistent days, but we're clearly moving in the right direction. Let's stick with it. Let's stick with it because it's working. But job-one is to get through this steadily, constantly, and get to the point where we can start to get to normal. But at the same time, job-two is always there – never let that boomerang happen. So, avoiding that boomerang, that's up to you, and that's up to all of us here at City Hall to make sure we are prudent and careful in the steps we take. You keep doing your part – and you're doing it great, New York – we'll keep doing our part, we will not let our foot off the gas until we're sure it's time. That's how we keep the boomerang from happening. That's how we move steadily forward together. A few words in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will take questions from the media and I always like to remind people, please remind me of the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: We'll now begin our Q-and-A. As a reminder also on the line, we have Police Commissioner Shea, Health Commissioner Dr. Barbot, Food Czar Garcia, EDC President James Patchett, and Senior Advisor Dr. Jay Varma. First question today goes to Roger from 1010 Wins.

Question: Hi, good morning, Mayor. I'd like to ask about the eventual reopening of New York City. It's going to happen obviously at some time. There may be workers, either older workers or workers with preexisting conditions or those with preexisting conditions in their families who are reluctant to go back to their workplace. Does there need to be legal protections in place to protect them from job discrimination?

Mayor: Well, it's a really interesting question, Roger. Clearly, look, there are tremendous protections right now in New York City against discrimination. We have one of the strongest human rights laws in the entire country and we're very proud of that. We absolutely want to make sure there's no discrimination as we begin our restart. So, I think it's a very fair question. The restart will have to come with really clear rules. Again, it will happen carefully and in stages. We have to make really clear what's expected of people, what types of businesses will begin, in what fashion, which ones will be handled later. So, I think it's incumbent upon all of us here at the City to get the message out clearly from the beginning. But absolutely important to say no discrimination of any kind will be tolerated. We need to make those rules clear from the beginning and we also need to let people know if they do experience any discrimination that they can turn to the City. And that's always true – by turning to our Human Rights Commission or calling 3-1-1. So, great question, we will be making sure to get information on that out as the restart really does begin.

Moderator: Next is Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Good morning. Question for both the Mayor and Police Commissioner Shea. Can you say how many fines were given out for social distancing violations yesterday? Also, were any arrests made in that context? I'm also interested in hearing the Police Commissioner's perspective on how well social distancing is going over in parks.

Mayor: Yeah, I guess we'll start by saying NYPD did a remarkable job as did Parks Enforcement and employees from a number of agencies we had out, both in enforcement effort and in efforts to educate and give out free face coverings. So, I think it was a strong day. I was monitoring throughout the day and saw enforcement actions happening all over the city. But I think the numbers also say that a vast majority of New Yorkers are following the rules as has been true throughout. So, Commissioner, do you want to elaborate?

Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea: Sure. I would echo that in terms of, you know, we had a lot of help yesterday and we appreciate all the other agencies that were working alongside us. In parks specifically yesterday, we issued 43 summonses. We had an additional eight outside of parks for a total of 51. Now, not every single one was socially distancing, but the majority were. So, that's a total of 51 summonses. We also see six motorcycles in an incident in the 1-14 Precinct in Astoria Park. Two of those motorcycles turned out to be stolen. Too many summonses is to count for motorcycles in that incident as well as other incidents in the city. That's more for the moving violation and driving recklessly type of scenarios. And in terms of arrests, I'm aware of three arrests citywide.

Mayor: Okay.

Moderator: Next question is Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask you about the HRA benefits offices. As we understand it, the police that supervised those offices are no longer barring access to individuals if they refuse to accept or wear a mask –

Mayor: Yoav, I couldn't hear that, [inaudible] 'no longer' and then I couldn't hear your words clearly.

Question: Sorry. They're no longer allowed to bar people from entering the building if they refuse to wear a face mask or a face covering. And I'm wondering if you can address that because it kind of contradicts the City's other messages on this.

Mayor: Yeah, I don't – I have not heard that before, Yoav, I want – I think it's abundantly clear that people need to be wearing face coverings and particularly in an enclosed space. We've been abundantly clear that, for example, a supermarket, grocery, a pharmacy, you go in, if you don't have a face covering the manager, the owner can send you right back out. It's just not fair to other people. So, I believe that makes sense at a public office too. Again, we are trying with all benefits, to any kind of benefit program, including things like food stamps, SNAP, et cetera, to get people to do all this online or by phone so there really is not a lot of reason to go in person or into an office. We're discouraging people from going to an office, but if you do go into an office, you need to be wearing a face covering. I don't know the details. We'll follow up. Our team will get you more later on today, but the clear message needs to be, people need to be wearing a face cover.

Moderator: Next is Christie from WCBS 880.

Question: Hi, good morning panel and Mayor. My question was just about these advisory boards that you were talking about last week. [Inaudible] you saying, [inaudible] –

Mayor: Christie, I'm having trouble hearing you, Christie. See, I don't know what's going on with your phone. Could you start again and speak slowly so I can hear you?

Question: Sure. Hello, does that sound better?

Mayor: Yeah.

Question: So, my question is about the advisory boards that you were talking about last week [inaudible] just wanted to know how those [inaudible] –

Mayor: I'm not sure I got all of that. And I just want to say to all our colleagues in the media, please, we're sometimes having trouble hearing you and whenever you can call in, if you have hard lines, it helps or whatever kind of a phone line or headset or lack of headset, whatever will make the calls come in clear so we can hear you is appreciated. But on the advisory boards, Christie, I think you're asking about the sector groups that we have put together. These are going to represent all different parts of New York City in the sense of different industries, different key elements of life in this city. I am going to be personally meeting with each one obviously remotely, starting with the two groups that will represent key elements of the business community, the small business community and the community of larger businesses in this city. But there'll be a number of other organizations, there are a number of other advisory groups I should say. They're all coming together this week. They'll all be announced this coming week and get immediately to work and they will be crucial to the restart, to begin with, advising on how we go about the restart properly. And then they'll stick with us going forward as we have so many decisions to make and we want that input, we want the ideas, we want to test different things, and see what they think about them. So, all of those will be announced in the course of this coming week. They'll get started immediately. And then we can give you some progress reports as we go along on the work that we're doing.

Moderator: Next is Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor and everyone on the call. How are you guys?

Mayor: Hey, Gersh.

Question: I want to ask you about the Open Street launch, Mr. Mayor and obviously Commissioner Shea. It was very noticeable how few NYPD officers or crossing guards were needed to safely create the space for the public. Now we talked to a DOT Commissioner Trottenberg on Prospect Park West, who said the administration's thinking had evolved on Open Streets in the eight days since she and the NYPD testified that such a plan was impossible. Now clearly yesterday proved that it is possible. So, can you talk to us a little bit about the administration's evolution on policing Open Streets and did you get a chance to experience one of these open streets yourself, Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Gersh, look, first of all, what was deeply a concern to us weeks ago was that all of the agencies we depended on for enforcement starting with NYPD were really experiencing tremendous trouble because so many of their employees were out and obviously first and foremost, our concern was for our police officers and all our public employees who were fighting against this disease. But it also meant that a lot of agencies couldn't do what they normally could. And I am still fundamentally a believer in enforcement in all things. We had a good first day with a limited sample size. I don't think anyone yet can say that we know exactly what it's going to take to enforce these things going forward. But I can say one absolute evolution is that a few weeks ago we did not know what kind of capacity we've had in terms of returning officers and how many more would get sick each week and one thing or another, like we didn't know enough about where this disease was going. And overall, we've seen a lot of progress on that front. That means we have a lot more ability to enforce and that gives me a lot more comfort going forward with these open streets. But, you know, day one from what I could see went well, certainly hopeful – we're looking to expand. I think it's going to be great, but it always will require enforcement. We'll find out how much by doing it. And I think it's also fair to say with more and more knowledge of the open streets and warmer and warmer weather, more and more people will come. And again, that's where you do need enforcement for sure. I saw the open street on Prospect Park West and it looked like things were going well. Chirlane reported that the open street by Carl Schurz Park was going well. So, definitely a good day and a good concept and we look forward to broadening it.

Moderator: Next to Sydney from Gothamist.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, hope you're doing well. I wanted to ask about – going off of that bit about crowding in parks. Again, I know that you had expressed that the vast majority are doing it well and the vast majority of New Yorkers are doing it well. But I just wanted to ask about some of the, what seems to be a little bit of possible unequal enforcement, and what the City is doing to avoid that. And there was this particular photo near Christopher Street, the pier there, where there were very large gatherings and I'm wondering also what you all – how to approach this enforcement issue when it's hard to tell, I guess, if people are gathering with people in their households. Do you have any response or comment on that?

Mayor: Absolutely, first of all, I know you mean the terminology in good faith, but I want to contest your terminology instantly because this is literally a life and death matter. No, a gathering is a purposeful group of large numbers of people. We've seen examples of that as part of funerals or religious observances or sports activities or parties, barbecues. Those are gatherings. In some cases, you know, dozens of people, hundreds of people, even thousands of people. That's job one is to absolutely not allow that to exist anywhere in New York City at this point while we're going through this emergency and I've been very clear and Commissioner Shea's been very clear, we won't tolerate that and we are going instantly to break those up and anyone who persists is going to get a summons or worse. What we see in some places is a large number of people in a small area and our job is to make sure they practice social distancing. Even if there's a large number of people in a small area, people have to practice social distancing. If not, they're running the risk of a summons. I heard there were some real issues in the Hudson River Park. I instructed the Commissioner this morning to make sure there were extra patrols today in Hudson River Park. We're not going to tolerate even small groups of people not practicing social distancing.

Now, I want to affirm, if people live under the same roof – this is a matter of the truth. I think New Yorkers understand at this point, this is not business as usual, this is literally about life and death. If you live under the same roof, you do not have the same social distancing requirement. And we've talked about this incessantly because you're already in such constant contact. So, if a family is gathered together in a park, close together, that's because they already have been gathered close together. They should not come in contact with anyone else. They should keep distance from everybody else. A couple lives under the same roof, they are already connected to each other. It's a different reality but they should not come in contact with other people. They should keep the six feet. So, there are some things you see where you can say, 'Oh, look at those people, they are close together', but they are definably members of a family. People need to be honest about this because it's not cute to say, 'Oh, we're all together, we live under the same roof', if you don't, because you're literally endangering the lives of the people around you and then everyone else's lives because of potentially spreading this disease. So, the NYPD and Parks Enforcement, all enforcement folks out there are very, very clear, no gatherings. And even if you see small groups of people too close together, we're going to separate them. And if people have any desire to resist, they are going to suffer the consequences. Commissioner, would you like to speak further to the question of what happened in the West Village?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, I think you summarized what we're facing day-in and day-out. Our priority is certainly large groups gathering for whatever the activity is and then it gets slightly more challenging when you bring up people in households out trying to get a little bit of exercise, and, you know, in close proximity to each other because they are constantly in close proximity to each other. But maintaining that six feet from others. The East Village, a couple of other places in the city too, we saw some incidents. We've certainly seen some incidents in Domino Park in the last couple of weeks and we will be out there again enforcing today and going forward to make sure that people are practicing that safe distance, also that people are wearing masks when out in public. So, it's more of the same, unfortunately, for New York City, they can expect it, but I would just reiterate that we had tens of thousands of interactions with people all across the city yesterday, most of them all without having to issue any type of enforcement activity, whether it's a summons or arrest. So, I think, again, New Yorkers are exhibiting extreme patience for the last two months. We're going to ask for a little more of it but we will be out there in force to remind them that, you know, for everyone's safety, they got to practice these social distance standards.

Moderator: Next is Fern from the Jewish Voice.

Mayor: Fern, you say? Fern, are you there? Hello, Fern. Are you there? Okay, let's get someone else and come back.

Moderator: Fern, we'll get back to you. Next is Ashley from the New York Times.

Mayor: Ashley – hey, Ashley.

Question: How are you

Mayor: Good, how you doing?

Question: [Inaudible] fine, thank you. I wanted to ask the Police Commissioner and you about a couple of things. One, yesterday in Harlem there was a memorial for a young man who was killed about a week ago and there was a really large crowd and the officer seemed to have the street shut off. I'm wondering for, you know – these kinds of vigils are pretty common in the warmer months and also in the winter. And I'm wondering if the Police Commissioner or you have any specific kind of social distancing guidance for officers who are in communities where you have overlapping public health crises – in this case, gun violence and the coronavirus – and where there's still some very strong mistrust of the police. And then the second thing – I want to ask about the incident on the Lower East Side where there appears to be an officer – officers appear to be making an arrest and one of them comes toward a group of bystanders pointing his taser. And apparently with his hand on the trigger, you hear it clicking. And he also – it sounds like he uses the N-word. I'm just wondering if the CCRB or the NYPD will be investigating that incident and what happened there.

Mayor: I'll start and just say that, Ashley, first of all, any incident where there's any potential of something inappropriate, unquestionably will be investigated. I don't know any of the details of this one, it is the first time hearing it, but there will unquestionably be a careful look at what happened there and the Commissioner can speak to it more. But on the question of a memorial, we have to get clear to people that no such events should be happening. We're at a point where when you start to attract large numbers of people, the chance of social distancing being maintained is minimal. And it's clear from the guidelines that both the State and the City have put out that we do not allow gatherings. It is too dangerous. It's too much of a – there's too much of a possibility it will spread the disease and harm people in the community. And I find it particularly painful and frustrating if it's a funeral or memorial, something honoring someone who's passed away, the ridiculous, painful reality that by gathering actually more people might pass away, more people might lose their lives. It's unacceptable in every community. So, no, we cannot allow such gatherings to begin with. We have to not allow them to be created to begin with. It's just they have to be stopped before they even get started. And that is the rule we will apply all over the city. Commissioner –

Commissioner Shea: Yeah. Ashley, regarding the Harlem Memorial, I am not familiar with that incident. I will certainly have somebody look into it. But, I think, that you know, that's the irony of this situation. This isn't an NYPD policy, this is now law. It's law passed down through executive orders that there ought to be no gatherings and it doesn't specify what the gatherings are for here – unnecessary, non-essential gatherings, and that would certainly encompass what you're referring to. So, your answer, we will be out there enforcing it wherever it happens across the city. And we just urge – we continue to urge New Yorkers to work with us. And the last thing we want is well-intentioned gatherings that wind up causing more harm. Regarding the incident in the East Village, when I mentioned earlier 51 summonses in three arrests, that was the three arrests I was talking about. It started out as a social distancing enforcement. There were three arrests made from that incident. I am aware of the video that's out there. It's being investigated currently by our Internal Affairs Bureau as a result of that very preliminary investigation that's ongoing. There was one officer modified and that's where we stand right now.

Moderator: The next question is Andrew from Gay USA.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. This is for you and for Commissioner Barbot. You signed a law in 2016, Intro 552-a, to mandate that the Health Department and other agencies provide demographic surveys to all persons served, including about sexual orientation and gender identity. But we've been given no data on LGBT people hit by COVID-19. Will you direct that the Health Department provide that data? There's a kind of a thirst for it among the LGBT service groups and AIDS groups.

Mayor: Yes. Thank you very much for the question. Certainly, I think that's the right thing to do. And you're right, we long thought it was important to put out information to show people what's really happening and how we can all work together to protect people. Commissioner, would you like to speak to this?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes.

Commissioner Barbot: Terrific. So, yes, we are obviously committed to transparency and ensuring that all New Yorkers are counted during this pandemic and we will work with our partners to ensure that as data is available, we certainly report on it. We do health opinion polls and certainly that's an area where we're looking to provide more information about how our LGBTQ community is being affected by this pandemic. And so, we will be following up.

Mayor: Good. Thank you.

Moderator: Fern, from the Jewish Voice. Do we have you back, Fern?

Question Yes, but can you hear me okay?

Mayor: Yes.

Question: Thank you. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Concerning testing and this question, I go to the Health Commissioner as well. The City is now providing centers in local areas where people can go to be tested. I understand that priority has been given to people over the age of 65, people who have had the symptoms. The question is, do people just go down without making an appointment? That's number one. Number two, concerning health insurance, will they be required to bring their health insurance card? Will these tests be provided for free? And thirdly, especially for elderly vulnerable people, will the places be crowded? In other words, will they be afraid to go down? Will there be, you know, measures taken to make sure that people don't get so close to each other at the testing site?

Mayor: Yes, these are great questions and thank you so much. So, I'll give you the examples from the two sites that I've been to. A week ago, at the Morrisania Health Clinic in the South Bronx and yesterday in Coney Island at the Ida G Israel Clinic, both run by our Health + Hospitals corporation, and I was very, very impressed by what I saw. So, first of all, the testing is free. You do not need to have an insurance card. I want to make that very clear. The testing that's being provided – and, again, first priority is on older New Yorkers and anyone with those preexisting conditions like diabetes lung disease, heart disease. The focus is on those who are most vulnerable, but anybody who comes of course will be tested free. You do not need an insurance card. And people are socially distanced in line and tested individually. So, there is real care taken to protect people during the testing process itself. Let's please spread the word, because this is the beginning of a much bigger effort to test New Yorkers across the board. You're going to be seeing more and more testing in this city. But these sites are for people from communities who need the tests and real care is taken to keep people safe.

Moderator: Next is Luis from New York [inaudible].

Question: I'm hoping you can – hello? Hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Luis. Go ahead.

Question: Alright, thank you. Hey there, Mr. Mayor. I'm hoping you can share what you know about the expanded testing criteria the Governor outline last week. I'm guessing it isn't up and running yet since I know of a number of essential workers, from an EMT and airline steward, to restaurant owners and local pharmacies, yet none of them have heard of thing. So, if or when the time comes, how will essential workers be notified? Will it be through your upcoming public awareness campaign? Will the Health Department reach out to them? Is the Health Department even aware of every single person or merchant that needs to know? And also, Mr. Mayor, have you any details about the pharmacies that are participating in the testing process? You know total numbers, locations and such?

Mayor: Luis, thank you for the questions. So, a couple of things. I want to make sure all New Yorkers understand, we've got the diagnostic testing – what's called PCR testing, which is to tell you right now, anybody, do you have this disease right now or not? And that is the focal point of our effort to do massive testing and tracing building up in the month of May. That's going to be the main thrust. That's what's been used in one form or another around the world as parts of successful efforts to contain the disease and move to a restart. So, testing on a big level, widespread level, tracing each contact, following up with people in need their own testing, isolating and quarantining. anyone test positive. That has been the game plan that has worked in much of the world. That's what starting to grow in the month of May, it will start to be very widespread. We still need that federal support to be able to have all the lab capacity we need, but that's the core of the game plan. Luis, what you're referring to as another piece of the puzzle – the antibody testing. Two announcements in the last few days, the Governor made an announcement about a State initiative which was focused on certain health care workers, first responders – I think you're right, pharmacists. That initiative, the antibody testing that again is a kind of testing that we've said is imperfect. The antibody testing tells you something, it doesn't tell you everything about what you've experienced before. The State is doing that on a wider level. We've announced a collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control. We'll be insuring ultimately – and I hope this is responsive to your question – we'll be ensuring that all New York City first responders, all New York City health care workers who want that antibody test, they will get it. It will be administered through an effort put together by the CDC and the expenses and staffing, et cetera covered by the federal government. Details will be announced shortly, but that's been agreed to. So, that will be literally any and all health care workers and first responders. The State has other initiatives they're working on and certainly you can get the information from them, but that is different from the really community-wide, widespread testing that we are going to be building out over the coming weeks.

Moderator: We have time for two more. The next is [inaudible] from Hambodia.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes. How you doing?

Question: Hi, how are you? There's some criticism of you on Twitter over the weekend by elected officials that I'd like you to respond to saying there's a tale of two cities. On the one hand, you tweeted sharp criticism of a funeral, Williamsburg, and the next day police officers descended on the neighborhood giving out large numbers of summons. I know you mentioned the distinction between gathering versus a bunch of individuals, but those people who got the tickets the next day were just a bunch of individuals out in the street. Yesterday, there were many images of jam-packed parks in the city, people not wearing masks. You had no Twitter comment. Assemblymen Simcha Eichenstein wrote, Hasidism regressively slapped in summons of up to $1,000 for not wearing a mask, a tale of two cities. NYPD tweeted, no mask, no problem – this lady in the park didn't have a masks, we gave her a mask. Councilman Chaim Deutsche responded, I'm confused, when do you give a mask to when do you give a summons? And so my question is, why – if you can respond to this criticism, the politicians are saying that apparently there's one neighborhood that's gets sharp criticism and the community called out by name, while in other instances there's silence or the polite handing out of masks. Thank you.

Mayor: Yeah, Rubin. I just dispute that fundamentally. There has been enforcement for weeks and weeks. And look, I love my city and I understand everyone looks out for their own communities within this city, but I've ultimately heard critique of too much enforcement or not enough enforcement in a variety of different communities. So, we want to make this an entirely consistent reality. I want it to be abundantly clear, the NYPD will be out enforcing and a number of other agencies will be out enforcing in all communities the same way, period. What I saw with my own eyes on Tuesday night in Williamsburg was absolutely unacceptable and was something that we had not seen on that scale anywhere and it was exactly what we cannot allow to happen. And there had been other large funerals before in the community and we're not going to allow that to happen. So, we had a particular problem we had to deal with. But we've had other types of problems in other places, and we're going to deal with everyone equally. So, again, that hierarchy – and I'm sure Commissioner Shea will add to this – the worst thing is a large gathering. And if it's dozens of people, it's bad. If it's hundreds of people, it's worse. If it's thousands of people, it's terrifying. And Rubin, we saw on Tuesday night, thousands of people in close proximity. If they had not been broken up by the police, they would have stayed for longer, many of them did not have face coverings. This means lives will be lost. It is unacceptable. But that's going to be true in any community. You talk about a really large gathering, absolutely acceptable, everyone's going to get a summons. Anyone who stays, summons instantly. Again, whether it's hundreds, same thing; dozens, same thing. We're coming after all gatherings. That is different than a bunch of people in a park who are distanced from each other. If there's small clumps that people are not distanced, we're going to go in and tell them you have to distance immediately. If they don't, they're getting summonsed. Each situation is looked at in degree. If someone doesn't have a face covering, we're going to offer them a face covering. Someone says, I refuse to have it put on a face covering, they have a problem and they're asking for enforcement. So, it is going to be done equally across all communities, one message that we have to save lives and anyone who is not following these simple rules is endangering the lives of everyone else. Commissioner Shea?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah. As I'm listening to the conversation, I'm reminded of – you know, to thank the officers that are out there every day doing this work and across the city from borough to borough, regardless of what neighborhood it's in, officers are out there doing their best to enforce the social distancing, which is something six months ago we certainly couldn't have even imagined it. I think that I would agree, every situation is unique. They do the best they can in certain situations, and, first and foremost, they're trying to correct the condition, they're trying to educate people, they're trying to get compliance. The last thing they want to do is summons and arrest, and that goes from the Bronx to Staten Island. But there are some gatherings that we have said, we are past the point of warnings. And I think we've been consistent from the start, we're out there across the city, engaging people and we get varying levels of compliance, and if it comes to summons, then, you know, wherever at the summons point. But we urge New Yorkers to hang in there with us. We are going to get through this, but we just need your compliance, we need your patients and we need you to continue to work with us. And that goes whether you're in Williamsburg, that goes whether you're in the Mott Haven, or whether you're in Staten Island or Manhattan or anywhere else in between. I think that, you know, you can always find that an individual that's not happy. I rarely come across somebody that is happy after they've received the summons. But I think that in the difficult circumstances that we are in, and we certainly are, the officers are doing the best they can in trying, trying times.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Last question for today goes to Gail from Impacto Latino.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. So, as we all know, the immigrant committee community of New York City has been disproportionately economically impacted, given the types of jobs that they had, restaurant work, hotels, et cetera. It's estimated that 30 percent of some of those businesses will not come back, leaving this community in dire economic distress. Can you talk to us about any plans you have for providing economic support to this community that can't tap into the federal and State programs available to legal residents and US citizens? And then I have one more question on the health side, do you have any estimates on how many Latinos are getting tested? Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you, Gail. Very important questions. So, on the second question, we're going to be able over time to put out, you know, more and more information based on community-based testing. Community-based testing is only started obviously in the last few weeks, but it's going to grow intensely over time. So, we certainly can get you information about how many tests are being performed in our different centers. And that tells you a lot about which communities are benefiting, and these are the hardest hit communities obviously. In terms of, you know, giving out data by individuals and their own demographics, I'm not sure we're structured for that right now. I'll have the team get back to you on that, but we can show you how the testing is growing neighborhood by neighborhood. But, again, this is a very initial piece of the testing program. We intend it to be much more widespread as May progresses, because we have to get into a very aggressive taste test and a test and trace strategy. The way to beat back this disease further is to have very widespread testing, very widespread tracing, isolating and quarantining anyone who needs it. And that's going to be an all communities. We're always going to keep a special focus on the communities that have been hit hardest, but we have to expand that ultimately over all communities of New York City. So, whatever we can get you now to give you a sense of the testing so far, we will get you. We'll come back with the answer on what kind of demographic data we're keeping by individual. On the question of small business, well, I think the fear is very real, meaning the fear that so many businesses might not come back is unquestionably honest, because we're all unsure of what the future brings and a lot of people, you know, have been going through now months where there's no income. I'm very, very worried for so many small businesses and I agree with you on immigrant communities. There's a particular danger to those small businesses. Now, Gail, I would say to you, history would tell us something else, which is that small businesses in general are extraordinarily strong and resilient. Immigrant small businesses are legendary in this city for being able to take very limited means and build something. I don't want to bet against our small businesses. I don't want for a moment people to assume that a lot of them can't come back. In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if the vast majority came back. We're going to have to help in every way we can. For the small businesses that can receive that stimulus support paycheck protection program, again, any small business that has not yet applied, please go to the small business administration website, sba.gov and apply for that money. Those are loans that in many cases can be forgiven and turns and turned into grants. Please, if you need help, a small business needs help with that application process, call 3-1-1. That's a whole lot of small businesses and we want to make sure that they get that federal support and New York City gets its fair share. Now, if you're talking about a business that is owned by someone who is undocumented and they're trying to stay on their feet, there obviously are some special efforts that have been made to help undocumented folks, most notably by the Open Society Foundations. That's a big initiative, tens of millions of dollars, and it's being distributed by grassroots organizations that work with immigrant communities. That's where I think people can initially turn for help, tidying over and eventually getting back on their feet. I think you're going to see more initiatives like that. But, in the end, I think, you know, our job – it kind of comes back to where we started, Gail – is, the best thing we can do for immigrant small business is get through this as quickly as possible and as thoroughly as possible and make sure the restart happens as quickly as possible, but in a sustained fashion where we do not have the restart interrupted at all. And that's what we're focused on right now.

And that will bring me to the close, which, again, I will say the dirty word one more time – boomerang. That's the thing we have to avoid at all costs. I tried today to show you something about this disease in the context of what's been done around the world. This disease, if it were a person it would be a very clever and very, very dangerous person. And the way to think about it in that sense is this is a disease – don't turn your back on it, don't give it an opening. Even the smallest opportunity and this disease might reassert, and that's the boomerang. But the good news is, what we see is a lot of great examples around the world and we'll be talking about them going forward of what has worked. And a lot of times what we see is what's worked is a careful, steady approach based on real indicators, smart steps forward, smart steps to loosen up, but always making sure that the loosening up is working and not having the unintended impact of a backfire. So, we have lessons about that boomerang where places moved too fast or opened up too much and experienced that boomerang and a much longer setback. We also have growing examples of where the restart was handled carefully and slowly and the right way, and that's what we're going to be guided by.

So, we will get through this, but I want everyone to understand that work of creating the right kind of restart is on all of us. That effort to stop the boomerang, we all participate in that. If we do it the right way, we can make sure that we come through this and move together as a city and get to that restart that we all want and need. Thank you very, very much, everybody.

2020-05-04 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. Monday morning, and a morning that really feels different in so many ways. First of all, it's a beautiful morning and really feels like spring is here finally, but also there's a little more hope in the air, because we've seen some real progress, and that's a good feeling every day when we think things are getting a little bit better and we see some real evidence of it. And we know that we're focused on not just what we feel but what we know. Proving to you each day that we are making tangible progress so we can get back to that road to something much better. But again, we're always going to focus on the facts, and when the facts are moving the right direction, that's because of you. That's because of the hard work all of you are doing and doing so well. The warmer weather makes us start to think maybe things are even a little better than the facts suggest, and that's why we have to always keep our balance. Be hopeful, be inspired, be diligent, keep doing what we have to do, because what we're feeling that beautiful weather out in that pole of normalcy, let's make it become real by our actions. So, we understand, all of us, that we have a job ahead of us. And we also have to remember that our reality for each and every one of us is New Yorkers, It feels according to what everyone's life is like a little bit different of course, but for most people there going about their lives, seeing something better, however, not so far away, no matter what neighborhood you're in, not so far away is a hospital. In that hospital is a different reality in many cases, in a reality that keeps us grounded and is a reminder that we don't stop fighting this battle. In the hospitals are our healthcare heroes still fighting to really ensure that not only their lives are saved, but that we fight back this disease once and for all.

Our hospitals do not feel normal yet. While we might feel out in the streets is a lot better than what people are experiencing in the hospitals. There's still a huge challenge in our hospitals. It may be better than what it was a few weeks ago, but it's still very, very real. In our public hospitals, we're still around double the capacity in the ICU’s that we were a few months ago. There are still every single day people coming in in desperate shape who need the help of our healthcare heroes. There are people who have been in the ICU a long time, still fighting for their lives. So, remember that as we start to feel a little better, we have to have a lot of empathy, a lot of feeling for the doctors and nurses, the frontline healthcare workers who continue that battle, every day go toward that danger. We've all heard the heroic story of Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, but there are many, many others like it. And each day, remember these professionals go into a situation, still fighting an enemy that is not fully understood by the medical community. Still understanding that danger awaits them when they go through those doors and yet they show up every single day. We all want to go as far away from wherever COVID-19 might be. These healthcare heroes go right toward it.

So, we need to keep supporting them. And remember this was a war. The body armor for the health workers is those PPE’s, that personal protective equipment that we've talked about so much. That remains such a crucial piece of the picture. And remember for a long time, this has been a week to week, day to day struggle for weeks and weeks to make sure there was enough where we needed them, and so many people have been working so hard to always make sure that our hospitals, our nursing homes had what they needed. I have to tell you it's been very tough and sometimes it got very close to the point where we looked like we were going to run out, became kind of a game of whack-a-mole, trying to get supplies one place and then you hear another place needs him and now you're shifting over there. It was nonstop. We've seen some things move in the right direction. The ventilator situation that looked like the single worst part of the equation at one point, that got a lot better, but just as that was getting better, we had a crisis with the surgical gowns. Another crucial part of protecting our heroes.

So, how did we get to a point now where we're starting to have a little bit of breathing room? A lot of it was good old-fashioned New York City ingenuity. It was those folks at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and other places who built face shields, like the one you're seeing there. That was literally put together by hand in the Brooklyn Navy Yard by New Yorkers who wanted to help our healthcare heroes. That made a huge difference. The folks who came together, you met them a few weeks back who put together the ventilators from scratch, an amazing effort. The surgical gowns that had been both created here in New York City never were produced here, now they are, and sourced from places as far away as Vietnam using relationships that New York City companies had. There's been a lot of good stories here of New York City ingenuity of New Yorkers coming together, but we cannot rest on those laurels, because we know we got to keep protecting our heroes, and we know we're far from done with this disease right now and we also know that this disease later on could have a second wave, and we're not going to be caught looking. We're going to be ready for it.

So, here's where we stand today. For the first time since March, we actually start a week with enough of all of the PPEs we need on that crisis standard, and I'm always going to emphasize that, that basic standard. Not what we'd like to have ideally, but what is workable and usable for a situation like this. We have a little breathing room. We can finally ensure for the whole week ahead that every hospital, every nursing home will get what they need. And that means the N95 mask, the surgical mask, the gloves, the face shields, the surgical gowns, the whole set. It's striking the largest city in the country, the greatest country in the world. And yet this is the first week in a couple of months that we've been able to say we have a solid week ahead of everything. And it's sobering to remember just what a ferocious enemy we're up against, and just how much we did not understand, any of us, that the supplies we depended on, the equipment we depended on was so many cases, not only not made in New York City, not made in the United States of America. This has been a real sobering lesson, and one that we have learned from, and we're going to handle things differently going forward.

So, within this struggle, over these last weeks, what has become clearer and clearer as it's been tough enough for all the arrows and the hospitals? They've been fighting such a tough battle, but we've come to realize that there are also heroes in our nursing homes. The folks who work there don't get as much attention. They need support too. We've come to see very, very painful things happening in our nursing homes and we all need to work together to make that situation better now, and for the future. So, when I think about a nursing home, I think about the people, the parents, the grandparents, the people who those facilities are there to protect. Now again, many of them are private facilities, and I think there's real questions about if they've all done as best they could do, but that's not the question for today. The question for today is how do we stabilize the situation? How do we help right now? How do we build a stronger future for protecting our elders? Over the last weeks, we've sent 10 million pieces of personal protective equipment to the nursing homes to protect the folks that work there, and the folks who live there. This week we are sending to nursing homes across the five boroughs. 1.9 million surgical masks, 170,000 face shields, 760,000 gloves, 173,000 surgical gowns, 15,000 coveralls and aprons, and 10,000 shoe coverings. So, we're going to keep surging those PPE’s into the nursing homes, continue making them stronger so they can protect the precious individuals who are living there and who mean so much to so many families in this city. That's a commitment we're going to keep.

As I said, we've learned a lot of powerful lessons about all of this and the notion that I can tell you we have a whole week supply ahead, and that's big news, that's good news, but it's certainly not the way we can live going forward. We have to do something much better. I never want to see New York City in this situation again. I want New York City to protect itself going forward, because we've come to realize we couldn't rely on the private market, we couldn't rely on the federal government. We need to protect ourselves. There's no place like New York City, and New York City has tremendous ability and capacity, and the most talented people in the world. Going forward, we're going to make sure that we're ready no matter what else is happening around us. So, I told you a few days back about the fact that we're starting a New York City strategic reserve, and this is something that's going to grow, and it's not only going to be about stockpiling, it's going to be about ensuring we have the capacity to build things right here. And whatever we deal with in the future, we're not waiting on factories in another part of the country or another part of the world to the maximum extent possible. We have the plans and the ability right here to build what we need.

So, job-one, of course, is to make sure we can address the immediate needs. So, when we got to the point of having a two-week supply of PPE’s for the immediate needs of our hospitals and nursing homes, we are then going to start the process of building up our reserve. We want to have a 90-day stockpile of PPE’s and crucial equipment. We want to have that ready and in reserve for whatever happens up ahead. Look, I talked yesterday about the boomerang. We want to fight against that boomerang, but that reserve is there, God forbid we ever saw a resurgence of the disease. There's also more and more talk about a second wave of the disease later in the year at the beginning of next year. We want to be ready for that, so we're going to have our own reserves that we control ready at all times to protect our people. Now the strategy will be one that could simply be summarized as buying and building. We'll buy the supplies from all over the country, all over the world whenever they're available, but we'll increasingly have the ability to build them right here in New York City. We will not be dependent on one source, because we have to protect our people. That means we need more than one place to turn to make sure there's always the supplies and equipment we need. Now, the strategy will be one that could simply be summarized as buying and building. We'll buy the supplies from all over the country, all over the world whenever they're available, but we'll increasingly have the ability to build them right here in New York City. We will not be dependent on one source because we have to protect our people, that means we need more than one place to turn to make sure there's always the supplies and equipment we need.

Now, an important piece of this larger puzzle, how we protect each other, how we fight back this disease is something that is a more recent part of the strategy, but I think it's been very, very successful overall, and that is face coverings. You know, weeks ago I said we want New Yorkers to now start using face coverings in public, I have to say thank you to the people in this City. Overwhelmingly, even though it wasn't something you were used to doing, overwhelmingly New Yorkers have taken to using face coverings when you go outside it takes some getting used to as we've emphasized, you don't need a fancy surgical mask, you don't need an N95, you just need something to cover your face. And New Yorkers have been creative and resourceful as always, and the vast majority of people are complying, and we want to see a lot more compliance going forward.

So, remember that protecting each other reduces the spread of the disease gets us one step closer to normal. I know putting on a face covering is not necessarily fun, I know as the weather gets warmer, it may feel inconvenient. Sometimes you don't remember it, but think about this to motivate you, when you put on that face covering, you are reducing the spread of this disease and taking one small step towards normalcy. So, it may not always feel fun, but it's going to feel really good when we get out of this. When we can put this crisis behind us, everyone can contribute, just put on that face covering, yes, don't hesitate to put it on, bring it with you, bring some extras with you so you always have one. Now, we know that sometimes people just forget, or they don't have one or they don't have a way to get one, so the City is going to step in. This weekend is the last couple of days we started huge distribution of free face coverings in parts and other locations around the City, great response, people were really grateful to get them, we're going to now build that up to a much higher level. So, we are now going to ramp up a plan and it will take effect starting immediately to distribute 7.5 million face coverings, meaning wherever you turn you're going to be offered in face covering and it's going to be on an ongoing basis for weeks to come to make sure that everyone has what they need. These of course will be distributed for free, as we work together to beat back this disease. 5 million in this, so there's a couple of kinds, I'll hold up this kind first. 5 million are the three-ply nonmedical masks. So again, I want to, when you look at one of these, and I did not really fully understand it first, these are the ones that have the wire at the top that you can kind of shape around your nose. These are the three-ply non-medical masks, these are not the same as what our health care heroes use, but they really do help. They really do reduce the spread of the disease if anyone happens to be infected it helps make sure that others are not, 5 million of these will be given out. Now, these are reusable so long as they stay dry. And I think there's been a lot of questions – I think some people, again we unfortunately live in a little bit of a throwaway culture here in our country, something we need to start getting away from. People might think, oh, you use it once you throw it away. No, you can keep using it so long as it stays dry, if it's dry the integrity of it holds and it performs the protective function. If it gets wet it might be compromised, but so long as it's dry you can use it, certainly a number of times. The other thing we're going to give out is 2.5 million of the— cloth face covering, so cloth face coverings that are reusable, that are washable, you can use them as long as they hold together. We'll be getting a lot of those as well. Now where will we be giving them out? A lot of places in New York City, a whole different, whole different set of places I mentioned our parks, of course, that will be one focal point. In addition, at public housing developments, at the grab and go food sites being run out of schools, at Mitchell Lama affordable housing buildings, at the Staten Island ferry. Any place that the NYPD and the Parks Department and other agencies are going to enforce social distancing, they'll also be carrying a supply of free face coverings. So, it's going to become more and more given to see it expand this week we're in now. And I think it's going to make things easier and easier for New Yorkers who want to follow these rules and want to keep people safe and that is clearly the vast majority of the people of this City.

Now, let's talk about what we continue to do as we work back towards normalcy. What we continue to do to keep making things happen for our kids. You know, I've said before, our kids have gone through a lot in this crisis. I think in some ways it's been particularly tough for them compared to everyone else, we all feel stir-crazy – I think they feel that many times over. But what has been a real ray of light here is that the remote learning, the online learning that was entirely experimental, trying to build something out for 1.1 million kids in a matter of days. It's really been a good news story, and everyone deserves credit, our educators, our parents, our kids, all the folks who came together from the DOE, the companies, everyone who put this together, they're doing something amazing and it's working. But one of the things that was clear from the very beginning we were honest about is, look, there's a digital divide is something we have to fight against and it's alive and well that means some people have technology and other people don't. Well, in the middle of this crisis, something good happened despite the pain, despite the challenges, and that was something really important for closing that digital divide. Every single public-school student who requested an iPad, got one. I just want you to think about the magnitude of that statement, in a City where for a long time the haves and the have nots have played out in terms of technology and huge numbers of kids just didn't have access to the technology that so many other New Yorkers considered to be absolutely basic to their lives. Every child who asked for an iPad got an iPad for free, that is now total up to 255,000 iPads that have been distributed in a matter of weeks. Extraordinary effort, everyone involved should be very proud of themselves and any public-school child who still doesn't have that iPad, it's totally available on request delivered to the door of the family. But for any reason there's still a child who hasn't gotten one, they can call 3-1-1, the family can call 3-1-1 and get one right away. But the good news is we now want to go further and there's a special group of New York City children we want to help and these are students with disabilities in our non-public schools. We want to make sure since we have some additional iPads available, we want to help them to learn to the maximum during this tough time, take full advantage of online learning. So, we are offering iPads for free to these students as well. Now I've often said kids with disabilities struggle, and they fight so hard and we have to have their back. We have to respect how tough it is for our students and their families dealing with this additional challenge and now a pandemic on top of it, we have to be there for them. So, we will provide a free iPad for any students who have disabilities and are in our non-public schools. We believe that's a university of about 35,000 students and that means students in religious schools, independent schools, any non-public schools, any student needs an iPad and goes to one of those schools and has disability can call 3-1-1, their family can call 3-1-1 or go to schools.nyc.gov, sign up, iPad will be sent to your home for free.

Okay. Now we're going to go to what we look forward to every day, which is our progress report, our daily indicators. And I want to give you an update that we have structured these indicators we say there's three categories, but the third category has always had two pieces. And there was a reason for that originally there was a citywide and the public health lab numbers. And the reason originally was the public health lab was really the leading edge of so much of what was being done in the way of testing in the beginning of this crisis. Remember, January, February, pleading with the federal government just to let us do tests in New York City to begin with and how long it took. And, in the beginning, that were very, very few tests being taken, public health lab leading the way and they did a great job. We needed, especially when hospitals didn't have a lot of testing capacity up and private companies were just coming into play. Now we have a much better situation when it comes to testing, many, many hospitals have access to their own testing. The public health lab is actually down to a very, very small fraction of citywide testing at this point. So, knowing that the public health labs sample has gotten smaller and smaller all the time, and knowing therefore that makes the results more volatile. We're now going to take that public health lab measure out of our indicators, it served us well to now, but we don't think it is necessary anymore. We're going to use that citywide testing number as the sole measure in the third indicator, especially as more and more testing is coming online, we're getting a truer and truer sense of what's happening, and that number certainly will suffice. So, I am very pleased to say we have three indicators now and all three are down today. So, congratulations New York City, this is the kind of day we have been waiting for and it is a beautiful thing and let's put together some more like it and that's our pathway to something better. Daily number of people indicator one daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that is down from 113 to 88. Daily number of people in ICU across our public hospitals for suspected COVID down 645 to 632. Percent of people tested who are positive for COVID-19 citywide down from 20 percent to 17 percent an excellent day. All three down, all moving in the same direction. Let's do it again. Thank you. Well done, New York City.

So, as I close, I want to do a small thought process of empathy, because I think the vast majority of people in the City, you either know a doctor, a nurse, a lab tech, someone, a health care worker, someone who works in a hospital, someone who works in a nursing home. Think of the people in your life, think of your friends, think of your family. Most New Yorkers know someone who works in our extraordinary health care field in this city. Just take a short time to put yourself literally in their shoes, walking through the door of that hospital, that clinic, that nursing home, and as you do that, if you try and empathize, if you try and feel what they're feeling, I don't think you're going to say, oh, I don't feel any fear at all, I don't recognize any danger. I think you would immediately say, no, in fact, you do feel fear. You do feel the danger present, but what's so striking, what's so amazing is not that people somehow make themselves blind to the fear, but that they stare it in the face and they walk through the door anyway; it's absolutely inspiring. It's happening every hour of every day here in this city. Why do people do this? Because they believe in saving lives; they believe they are answering a higher calling than they are. So, lets us answer a higher calling and get them what they need. Get them those PPEs, make sure they are protected and then let's protect them with what we can do by sheltering in place to the maximum extent possible, by going and making sure that we always practice social distancing, by putting on those face coverings; all of that is part of protecting our health care heroes and protecting each other and it works and today's indicators prove it. So, we are clearly winning this fight. Let's keep winning and let's protect the heroes who we depend on so much.

Few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, let's turn to our colleagues in the media and please let me know the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Hi, all, just a reminder, we have Police Commissioner Shea, Health Commissioner Barbot, Social Services Commissioner Banks, and Senior Advisor Dr. Varma on the phone. With that, I will start with Ashley from the New York Times.

Question: Good morning to everyone present. I want to ask two questions. First, I would like it if the Police Commissioner can give an update on the investigation of the event on the Lower East Side including the status of the other officers involved in that incident. Whether he plans to release the demographic data requested by the Public Advocate on social distancing enforcement and what appear to be discrepancies between the NYPD account and the videos? For instance, the NYPD account is that these officers stopped these group of individuals for social distancing, but in the video you see just two people standing outside of bodega or a corner store and discrepancies persist from there. And then for the Mayor and both the Police Commissioner you know, the city has spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars on de-escalation, neighborhood policing and such and we still see incidents like this or officers often times and in this case with histories of this conduct allegation involved in incidents where they have appeared to use more force than what is necessary and escalate confrontations. I'm wondering if the Mayor, if you could address whether you're giving any second thought to having the police as the frontline in enforcing social distancing and if there will be any changes going forward?

Mayor: Ashley, I do appreciate the question very much because I think it gets to the heart of what we have all been working on for over six years now in terms of changing the nature of policing in New York City. Remember the entire police force has been retrained constantly in de-escalation and in neighborhood policing – very, very different approaches than what existed in the past. I'm very confident that these approaches are taking hold more and more in the NYPD. The video was very troubling; what I saw was absolutely unacceptable and obviously discipline was swift by the NYPD, but I want to note that, that video is more and more of a rarity. What you saw there is more and more of a rarity. We still have work to do, unquestionably, but the progress is very clear to see; policing is changing and the city has been changing. The leadership of the NYPD over three commissioners now has emphasized much more training focused on de-escalation, focused on close connection to the people the NYPD serves and a neighborhood policing philosophy. And more and more members of the NYPD are coming into service with this being the entire message and lesson and strategy they learned from the very beginning and I think we're seeing the results of that very positively. That doesn't mean there aren't incidents like this that we don't have to fight against all the time and if any individuals don't understand and are not willing to work with those strategies, the NYPD has the capacity to identify them and deal with them because we're not going to have that kind of behavior in our police force. On the other point about the, the nature of social distancing enforcement, again, this one incident is troubling, but there's been thousands and tens of thousands of interactions between police officers and civilians over the last weeks that went very well where the NYPD went and made sure that people were practicing social distancing when enforcement was necessary. They exercised enforcement in communities all over the city. By and large, we've seen New Yorkers really abiding by social distancing and the rules we're living with; the NYPD has been crucial to that, they will remain crucial to that. So I've said we're bringing other agencies in to augment this effort. More and more civilians will be brought in to augment this effort as well - more and more free face coverings. But you can't do effective enforcement without the NYPD and the NYPD is more than up to the job. Commissioner?

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: So, I would say a lot of the same. I mean, I spoke yesterday about the end of that video and I was not happy with what I saw. I think we can be better than that, quite frankly. But I think you need to look at it in the context of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of encounters across the city; whether it's through routine encounters, arrests, taking guns off people without firing shots, certainly summonsing many people. I think the de-escalation training that was put in place in years past and continues is just yet another tool in the toolbox and I think it's effective. I wish it was 100% effective, but that's not unfortunately the world that we live in. But we'll learn from it as we do from any example, continue to train and try to get better. I would, I would also remind you that de-escalation takes two, unfortunately. There's two people involved in every encounter and what we've seen in the past is, is when people do not comply with the police in the first take down now I'm talking about, sometimes those things are not pretty when they're seen on video. And again, that's something also that we train to, we train to avoid it, [inaudible] we train to take people into custody seeking compliance at all times, but, ultimately, we don't always receive that compliance.

Just very briefly, to tell you what we know about the entire incident. We have three individuals taken into custody, still ongoing. We've recovered several pieces of video beyond the first piece. So, what we can tell you now is that the incident begins with an individual that's sitting on a milk crate in front of the location. He's engaged in conversation with a female. Those two individuals subsequently arrested as well as the third person that the video on the corner takes place. In totality of this incident what was recovered was a taser that does not belong to the NYPD, a small amount of marijuana, and roughly close to $3,000 in US currency. So exactly what was going on there is still somewhat under investigation, Ashley. But I don't think this takes away from what I said the other day. The end of the video, I think we’ve got to be better and that's what was most troubling to me.

Mayor: Yeah. And to the point, Ashley, about data – want to make sure that whatever data we do have on enforcement, we get out. Obviously, enforcement takes many forms. We've talked about this for a long time. If it involves a substantial gathering, we are going to, I've been very, very clear, the Commissioner has been clear - that's straight to summons unless people are gone instantly and anyone who lingers is getting a summons. That's easy to get data on. Other cases of course just the appearance of the NYPD causes people to correct their behavior. So you know, where we have an action that is trackable we will get that data out. I want people to see just how clearly enforcement is being practiced all over the city, every kind of neighborhood. But the good news again is in many cases we don't ever get to the point of summons, because the behavior is corrected instantly and that's exactly what we want.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, good morning everyone. I wanted to ask, Mayor, it was on my mind this weekend with the beautiful weather. I wanted to see if there was an update on the city summer plan. I know it seems that the 4th of July fireworks are all set, but what's the plan for making sure that beaches are guarded, maybe working out a plan to monitor social distancing there? I, you know, it was just on my mind because the weather was so nice and the parks were so packed. So, what's the status on that?

Mayor: We're going to be issuing a plan. The – again, traditionally, beaches don't open until Memorial Day. As everyone knows, they will not be opening on Memorial Day and will not be opening anytime soon, but we're going to certainly keep the option open, depending on how well we do for options later on in the year. But as I've said many times, we're going to be publishing a summer plan soon. And we're going to give people a clear sense of how we're going to keep everyone safe, even if we're doing things differently. Beaches that are not open still require enforcement, clearly. So, those parameters will be put out and then we'll watch to see how things evolve to see if we can do something different as we go along as things get better. The 4th of July, I keep saying, the specifics to be determined as we get more information, working closely with Macy's, obviously, the NYPD. The one thing I will guarantee is there will be a celebration of the 4th of July and fireworks will play a role, but how and where and in what fashion, what it means for people's ability to watch it, what the conditions will be, that's still far in the future – literally, it being May 4th, you know, two months ahead. So, that we're going to have a lot more to say when we get much closer.

Moderator: Next we have a Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask a few questions about homelessness on the subways in light of two apparently homeless men dying on the subways over the weekend. For one, is the City going to do wide-scale medical examinations of homeless people found on the subways? Another thing, can you say how many hotel rooms have been secured for the homeless and how many of those would be accessible to people found on the subways? Just one or two more things would be, if the Bowery residents committee is involved directing homeless people to hotel rooms. And, just in general, what is the overall strategy for preventing more deaths of homeless people on the subways and a potential real tragedy?

Mayor: Thank you, Shant. Look, it's horrible. It's horrible when we lose people whose life – you know, their lives – something went wrong in their lives at some point and they ended up homeless on the streets. And this is what we have talked about over these last months, that this is not a reality we should accept any longer in our city. And, in fact, the specific plan we put out in December, the Journey Home Plan is literally the pathway to ending permanent street homelessness in New York City, and particularly bringing in those folks who have been out there for years. It's an unacceptable reality. It has been this way in this city for decades. We finally believe we have the tools to stop it, to end it once and for all because of the HOME-STAT strategy that's been working, and Commissioner Banks can tell you the exact number as of today of folks who have been brought in over the last three years from the streets, from the subways into Safe Havens, into permanent housing, have stayed there. We have a strategy that’s working. We're going to apply that strategy more and more intensely. It's even been working through the pandemic and I know it will work more and more as we come out of the pandemic. So, that's where we have to go, because this is about human beings whose lives came unglued. We have to find a way to, you know, everybody – something brought them to the street, we have to help them back from the street and to a better life, and we can. In terms of – I’ll turn to the Commissioner, but I'll say that the basics are we will always have a hotel room available for anyone who needs it who's in the shelter system. We will always have a bed available for anyone who's coming out of the subway, has been living on the street, who needs a Safe Haven bed or shelter bed. We will always have one available. We're building out that capacity further. We do already send out teams to check on homeless folks that can do and often do include a doctor or a nurse. Whenever needed, they're available. NYPD and homeless services can call in medical support very, very rapidly. And we want to see more and more of that, going forward. But the real goal here is not to live with the reality of homeless on the streets and subways, but do something about it. I think the vision that was I think a very positive one that I worked on with the Governor and his team to ensure that the subways in this crisis would be closed in the early morning hours and cleaned and it'll give us a better chance to engage homeless folks and get them to shelter, I think that's going to be another important piece of the strategy. Commissioner Banks?

Commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Social Services: Thank you. I would just add a few pieces of information, Shant. So, overall, as the Mayor I committed to, we're continuing to move people out of shelters into hotel rooms. Right now, about 7,000 of the 17,000 people in our single-adult shelter system are in hotel rooms. And we've set a goal to continue to move out people each week until we can have widescale testing in place. And we're going to continue to do that this week and into the future. With respect to bringing people in from the streets, we've recently brought on – beginning to bring on 200 Safe Haven stabilization beds, and we'll bring on more to be able to bring people in. It's just a tragedy when we lose people and these two individuals were people that we've been trying to bring in from the streets. It's a difficult process, it can take, you know, dozens if not more encounters to bring somebody in. The BRC is one of the key partners that's been in place for a number of years to bring people in from the streets and they're part of the effort, along with other street providers, [inaudible] subway provider, they've been able to about 2,500 people to come in from the streets and remain off the streets. We do know about these two individuals who passed away, that they were obviously part of people that we've been trying to bring in. And since the beginning of this – the beginning of March, we've had 20,000 encounters with homeless people, attempting to identify whether or not they have any signs of symptoms of COVID. In that process, 12 people were identified with potential symptoms. They were each brought to the hospital and they tested negative. Of these two individuals, we do know that one of them has tested negative and we're waiting on the results from the other. So, we're going to keep doing what we've been doing every night, which is trying to bring people into available beds that we have, making sure that they have services, not just putting them in rooms without appropriate supportive services where we can help people get on the road to remaining off the streets.

Moderator: Next we have Sydney from the Staten Island Advance.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. Borough President Oddo and Congressman Max Rose called you last week to send military medical personnel to Staten Island’s private hospitals, saying it's inexplicable that Staten Island has not received any. What's your response to their letter? Are you ever going to send any military medical personnel to Staten Island? And what's been holding you back from sending, say, even just a handful or a dozen of them to Staten Island. And if you could elaborate a bit on protocol, who makes the call when it comes to where to send military medical staff? Is that you? Is that the State? Is it a mix of both?

Mayor: Sydney, again, I want to be very clear, the military medical personnel have been absolutely outstanding from the Army, from the Air Force, from the Navy. This all emerged from conversations I had with President Trump and Secretary Esper and General Milley about the need to address the situation in Elmhurst Hospital, Lincoln Hospital, Bellevue, the places that we're seeing an absolutely overwhelming number of cases and where the teams there had been through a particular challenge. We have 56 hospitals that have been in this fight all over the city. Our public hospital system bore the brunt and we got a number of military medical personnel, nowhere near the number that we asked for, but still a healthy number, and they have been devoted to those public hospitals and doing important work. But in the meantime, we have been sending additional doctors and nurses from different sources that we have gotten to hospitals all over the city – not just public hospitals, but independent hospitals as well, including in the case of Staten Island, RUMC. We will continue to send additional staff as needed. So, the military medical personnel, one piece of the puzzle, but in terms of additional staffing – I've been in touch with the borough president, I’ve been in touch with the CEO of RUMC. When they have asked for additional PPEs, we've gotten them to them. When they've asked for additional personnel, we've been working to get them. We'd gotten them some, we'll keep getting them more. We're going to keep working case by case all over the city, but that military piece was a discreet piece of a much bigger effort and those individuals have been outstanding and they've been focused on some of the hospitals that have really borne the brunt in this crisis.

Moderator: Next we have Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I’m wondering if you think that essential City workers who died from coronavirus should be classified as line-of-duty deaths? I know you said the federal government should step up for their families, but, in the meantime, do you have any plans to extent any benefits to them, such as continuing their health insurance? I would love to hear Commissioner Shea’s opinion on this question as well.

Mayor: Look, we obviously care deeply for the families of our public servants and we feel for any family that’s lost someone. We want to figure out how we can be supportive as they’re going through all of this. We’re working now to determine first what the federal government can and will do. Obviously, the City is in a very, very tough spot right now in terms of everything we’re going though humanly and the fact our resources have been drained down in a way we’ve never seen in decades. And we need to make sure we help people, we also need to make sure we can keep providing everything that people need in this city. So, I think job-one is the get that federal support. Job-one is to make sure that our heroes and their families are supported by the place that has ample resources, the only place that has ample resources, which is the federal government. But we will keep working as well to figure out all the ways that we can support those families. We’ll have more to say on that in the coming days.

Commissioner Shea, do you want to add?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, there’s not too much to add to this, Mr. Mayor. It’s certainly a complicated issue. I could tell you that from the Police Department side, we’ve lost 38 members, six of them are auxiliary, six of them are uniformed, and the remainder are civilians, each with different benefits, some with none quite frankly – some are unpaid employees. And what was said from the beginning with this is we’re going to try to weather the storm. The good news is that people have been coming back, we’re getting closer to normal strength, and when this is all over we’ll sort out this extremely complicated issue, working with the unions, working with labor people to make sure we can do everything to support our people.

Moderator: Next we have Gloria from NY1.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. First, I just want to get some clarity on why the City is eliminating the public lab indicator from its data? I'm not sure I really followed the difference between the public health lab and the other category. And I wanted to ask if you – why you're distributing – why you made the decision to distribute PPEs to nursing homes this week and why that wasn't done earlier. And that's it, that's what I got.

Mayor: Okay. Well, again – so, the public health lab, right now, it's less than one percent – I think it's 0.1 percent of the testing that's being done all over the city. So, you know, 99 percent-plus of tests are now being done in other types of labs than the Health Department’s public health lab. So, the numbers have just changed markedly. Originally, we were talking about a situation where it was one of the only places that was testing. I mean, it's really amazing, Gloria, to think about – go back in time two months when there was very little testing and the public health lab is one of the only things we had, and for that we had to beg the federal government to allow us even to do that. The public health lab test loomed very large as a percentage of what we knew. Now, it's an exceedingly small percentage and it's more volatile because it is such a small percentage, it is such a small sample size. So, we came to the conclusion that the much more pertinent measure was the citywide testing and that it was safe – we obviously have a very cautious approach here – it was safe to use that measure alone. And that's why we made the decision. On the nursing homes, again, I'm going to quote what I said back earlier in my presentation. I went over what we have – what we're sending out this week. But the distribution to the nursing homes began in March, and it increased. And again, we have been working with the State as more and more concerns emerged, we stepped in and provided more and more PPEs directly to nursing homes. So, it's been 10 million pieces so far. And what I gave today was simply an update on what we're doing, going forward. But this has been an aggressive effort since March, and we're going to keep building it as needed.

Moderator: Next we have Steve from Westwood One News.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Good morning, everybody, on the call. I have a question for the Health Commissioner. I'm wondering – actually two questions. Where do we stand as far as the mortality rate goes for our critically ill patients in hospitals? Our doctors, have they gained a better understanding of best practices for treating critically ill patients today compared to six weeks ago? Has that mortality rate in ICUs, has it gone down? And then, also, doctor, concerning some of the new medical treatments, like Remdesivir, are public hospitals involved in the expanded use of these experimental drugs? And, if not, why? And then, also I've done a couple of interviews with people who had coronavirus who have some very serious underlying issues and are on immunosuppressant drugs. And this is completely anecdotal, but they all recovered. And considering that a lot of what these critically ill patients are suffering as a result of their immune systems’ reactions to the virus, has there been any study or look at immunosuppressant drugs and the role they play, or possible role they could play in the treatment of critically ill patients? Thank you.

Mayor: So, Dr. Barbot, you start, and, Dr. Varma, if you want to add after that, feel free. Dr Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: Terrific. So, we, as we've been saying all along, have been learning every day about how this virus behaves, both from a public health point of view as well as from a clinical point of view. And initially, there was very little that could be offered with regards to treatments for individuals diagnosed with COVID-19. And, as a reminder, we still don't have definitive treatment for COVID-19 and, obviously, we still don't have a vaccine. That being said, there were several drugs – there have been several drugs that have been utilized to treat COVID-19 on an experimental basis. We have gone through things like hydroxychloroquine, et cetera. Now, this new drug, Remdesivir, has been demonstrated to shorten the amount of time that individuals need ongoing support, [inaudible] support. And so, I think with time and with more studies we will be able to better ascertain how effective this medication is for COVID-19.
Our public hospital system has very much been at the forefront of leveraging medications that have a potential impact on improving individual's health. They are, for example, looking at potential use of antibodies for treating individuals who are severely ill with COVID-19. So, the long and the short of it is that we have a very robust public health care delivery system with H + H being a leader, and they most certainly are leveraging all of the potential therapeutics that are made available in ways that look to minimize the number of people that are on ventilatory support for extended periods of time. That being said, I think we'll have to get back to you on mortality rates of individuals that have been in the intensive care unit. Dr. Varma, you want to add at all?

Senior Advisor Jay Varma: Sure, yeah. I would just try to emphasize that there's absolutely a lot that we're still learning about the role of the immune system in this disease but we also have to be cautious and make sure that different treatments that modify the immune system are, are studied rigorously. We know from the experience in intensive care for a whole range of similar types of diseases like influenza that there's always been a lot of promise to drugs that might modify the immune system, but when they're actually studied rigorously where you compare one group that gets the drug versus another group that doesn't you actually end up finding that you don't have that impact. So, I think we're are going to continue to learn a lot. And one of the real great advances here has been the role of, of our public hospital system in, in piloting this research, as well as collaborations that are occurring all over the world. So I do think the questions that you're raising about the role of the immune system, both in people who are taking these medications before they get the infection and in treating people who then get it – we're going to get answers very soon, but it's most important to keep in mind that they should really be done in the context of research because there's a lot of fog in the middle of a war. And we really need that clarity for everybody that that's already been infected and everybody that may get infected.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Marcia from CBS.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I have two questions. The first one has to do with the role of social distancing and the reopening of small businesses. I wonder, first of all, if you feel that you're satisfied with the level of compliance you're getting from New Yorkers in terms of social distancing, wearing masks, et cetera, and then if when you reach that point where you are satisfied, will you be able to then let small businesses open with the correct social distancing, keeping people six feet away, wearing masks, wearing gloves, et cetera, because a lot of small businesses are really hurting and I wonder if the social distancing part of it would enable you to, to open these small businesses sooner rather than later so that they don't face economic ruin. And my second question is for you and for the Police Commissioner. I wonder if you can tell us about the attempted rape on that out of town nurse, if she's still working on the front lines and living in New York City while the suspect is on the loose?

Mayor: Thank you, Marcia. I'll have the Commissioner speak to the second question and we're obviously very pained any time anyone is attacked, particularly someone who is doing such noble work for all of us and we will certainly bring the individual involved – the perpetrator to justice. There's no question and we'll support that nurse in every way we can. But I'll have the Commissioner give you that update.

On the question of small business. So, you're questioning a couple of different pieces. I'll put them all together. Am I satisfied by what I'm seeing? I am very impressed by what New Yorkers are doing, Marcia, in terms of staying at home to the maximum extent possible, practicing social distancing, wearing face coverings – people deserve high marks overall. There are some people not getting it and those people need to get it because they're putting everyone else in danger. There are some instances where the rules are not being followed, that requires enforcement. There's more to be done. But if I look at where we are over the course of two months in a great unknown, in the middle of a pandemic, no one could have predicted how have New Yorkers done. They've done very, very well. In terms of what that means for reopening small businesses, well, that's a foundational start to reopening small businesses. If that wasn't true, Marcia, if New Yorkers were not doing such an exceptional job at the social distancing and all the other pieces that we need we wouldn't be able to talk about reopening small business.

So, job-one is going pretty well. The indicators that we're putting out, we've been making real progress. We haven't still turned the corner the way we need to where we see those indicators go steadily, consistently down. We still have too many new cases. Too many people we're losing each day. We're not out of the woods, but we are getting closer for sure when it comes to how social distancing will help in the restart a small business unquestionably, it will be a necessary piece of it for small businesses that will have a tougher time practicing social distance. Those are the kind that will probably open later or with even more stringent rules for those, that can practice social distancing more easily. Those might be the ones that open sooner. We have not put those final plans together. We'll be speaking about that soon, but I do see some good indicators from other parts of the world. We certainly see in Europe that there's been a very smart effort to open kinds of small business that have the greater ability to practice social distancing. Those tend to be the first wave. I think that's the kind of thing we'll be looking to do here, but details to come shortly. Commissioner Shea.

Commissioner Shea: Yeah. So on this you can plug right into a NYPD Tips, the NYPD 3-0 Precinct Twitter page, my Twitter page, there’s a very good video of an individual that we're looking to identify from this incident. I can tell you that the incident occurred about 9:00 PM on Friday up in Upper Manhattan. I won't get into too specific about the victim in this case, but she was a nurse that was working, helping others on the pandemic and I have no doubt that somebody knows who this individual is. If you do, please reach out to our Crimestoppers and let's get this person off the street as quickly as possible. Thankfully the individual was fought off and fled. We have again, some good pictures, so I am sure that in short order he’ll be brought to justice.

Moderator: Next, we have Julia from the Post.

Question: Hey, good morning to everyone. Hope you're all doing well. A couple of quick follow-up questions to Shant's questions on the homeless individuals who died in the subway for the Mayor and Commissioner Banks. And then Mr. Mayor, just a separate question for you on the quarantine hotels. Commissioner Banks, you said that one of the individuals tested negative. I wondered if, you know how long ago that was because of course after the negative test he could have caught the virus? And then Mr. Mayor, I'm wondering what you can say about how these deaths within 12 hours of each other – what do they say about how the City is handling the homelessness crisis during the pandemic? And then Mr. Mayor on the quarantine hotels, any update on that City investigation into the men who died in the hotel and have hospitals resumed sending people to the hotel and others? I believe that was pending because of the investigation.

Mayor: Right. We'll get you an update today, Julia, on the investigation at the time, obviously we wanted to make sure it was a very – for us it was an interesting and painful reality. Interesting in the sense that we thought we were receiving people who were fully cured – painful because we lost people that didn't make sense why we were losing them. The fact is that those individuals came out of hospitals, we understood, having fought their way through – something went wrong. We'll get to the update today on that investigation. We need to make sure that everyone is protected. So we'll also you an update on what's going on with the hotels in terms of accepting patients. One of the things we said and are doing is to have medical oversight and all facilities checking regularly on people. Again, it's so strange and troubling that someone would have left the hospital being cleared to leave and then something else still happens. So we're going to constantly have medical oversight to make sure that never happens again.

On the question of what's been happening with our street homeless, again, different reality for people in shelters, but for the street homeless, there's been a constant effort to check in on them. Commissioner Banks can tell you about the number of contacts that the street outreach teams have made. I have to tell you, the street outreach workers never stopped. Even during this pandemic, they kept going out to try and protect the lives of homeless folks. It was an incredibly noble effort. It continues and in fact, we're able to get a number of homeless people off the streets even during this and get them into a safer location. But in general, we have seen surprisingly few instances of street homeless people appearing to have suffered from this disease. But I think it does put a point on the fact that the reality of homeless people living in subways or most of the time being in subways is just unacceptable. It's unacceptable on every level. It's inhumane. It's not right for the homeless individuals who should have a roof over their head, who should have regular access to medical care. It's not fair to straphangers. It never has been. This is why we're now on the offensive with the Journey Home initiative, which is continuing through this crisis and we'll deepen when it's over. This is why I think it's very good that we teamed up with the State and the MTA to do the closures late at night to disrupt that pattern that's been with us for decades because it's just not safe for anybody to be living on the street or living in the subways. And I want to see that end once and for all. In terms of the specifics around these individuals and the testing and anything else Commissioner Banks wants to add. Go ahead, Commissioner.

Commissioner Banks: To answer your question, Julie, the information that I gave her about the test came from the Medical Examiner's Office. So it's, it's fresh information. Just to reiterate what the Mayor said, you know, before the pentatonic, during the pandemic our teams are out there 24 hours a day, literally bringing people in off the streets. You know, there's nobody who's more impatient than I am about trying to get people to help that they need the reason why, even in the middle of academic, we're beginning to bring on more Safe Haven beds more resources to be able to bring people in. And I think the ability to connect to more people on the subways during the shutdown period will get more pathways off the streets. We were able to bring, for example, last Monday night at the World Trade Center station, we were able to bring in almost 30 people and other 30 people got back on the train. And I saw that as a lost opportunity to try to engage people. And that's why I think the initiative that the Governor and the Mayor have will give us more chances to bring more people in from the streets, which is our goal 24/7 to be able to do that and to link them to the resources that we have to get a roof over their heads and get them the services and support that that they deserve and need.

Moderator: Next, we have Todd from AM New York.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I have a question actually for Commissioner Shea and it pertains to gatherings in regards to freedom of expression, freedom of speech. of people who have protests. Yesterday there was a protest over by Mount Sinai on First Avenue and most, there was about a dozen protestors that were there and they were gathered. They're very spread out, very spread out. Most and the media was definitely more than six feet away from the speakers and the people. And yet a lot of the cops that came over to us and came over to us were initially threatening to give summonses and arrests even though we were far enough away. Do you have a policy as to how to approach these protests with maintaining freedom of speech, but at the same time maintaining the social distancing?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah. Thank you for the question. It's – I think it's a powerful, and I think it's a great question. You know you’re talking about some of the values that we hold in the highest regard in this country and certainly this city, the right to people to gather and the right of free speech and the right of protest. But now and now comes the bad news. We're in a pandemic and there's been executive orders issued and these are not policies of the Police Department. These are now laws that have been passed down executive – through executive order to maintain people and keep people alive. So while we greatly, greatly respect the right of people to protest, there should not be protests taking place in the middle of a pandemic by gathering outside and putting people at risk. And that's the short answer.

Mayor: Yeah. And look, Todd, people who want to make their voices heard, there's plenty of ways to do it without gathering in person. And just the question is always whoever has whatever, because they want speak to, are they interested in protecting people's lives? If they are, use all the other tools you have to get your point across but avoid anything that might put other people in harm's way.

Moderator: Next we have Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor. My questions have to do with testing. I am curious as to how many people are being tested per day, how that compares with two or three weeks ago. And your data point on people who test positive, wouldn't it be completely unsurprising if the more people you test, the lower the percentage will be? So why would that be an indicator of progress? I mean, if you're testing 10,000 people and 50 people show up positive, that's one thing. But if you're testing 100 people and people and 50 people show up positive, that's another thing. So I'm curious as to, first of all, like, you know, what's the measure for what kind of progress is being made just in terms of quantity of testing and beyond that, you know, you mentioned the self-testing protocol. Is that moving forward or is it delayed by all kinds of logistical problems getting reagents and other supplies? That's basically the thrust of my question today.

Mayor: Okay, thank you Henry. Okay. First the factual question. So last few days we’re at approximately 13,000 tests per day that is definitely progress. You go back three weeks ago we were under 10,000 a day, so we are definitely starting to ramp up. You know, when you add 3000 more per day, you're adding, you know, over 20,000 more per week. So that's a big deal. But that number has to grow a whole lot more. Unquestionably. I would respectfully disagree on the universe question because you know, we have said now for quite a while and our Health Commissioner has said that you could expect easily more than half of New Yorkers to contract this disease. So I don't think at all it is a given that if you test more and more people, your numbers inevitably go down. With every given day there's more spread of the disease and we look, we're fighting it back now that is true. If you say, well, hey, you know, isn't shelter-in-place place social distancing aren't all these things bending the curve. Obviously, they are, but we still see a substantial number of new cases each day. So, I don't think it's right to say, well, if you do more and more testing, you're always inevitably going to get a more favorable result. We want the truth, whatever it is, and the more people we test, the clearer truth we get. If we're testing more and more people and the numbers keep going down, that means something objectively is happening and that's what we're seeing more and more. And that's a really, really good sign. So I think it means that these strategies are working, that we're going to stick to them, that we're only going to let up very carefully and in a very steady fashion to not allow that resurgence or that boomerang.

But no, I think more is more here, Henry. The more we test, the clearer picture we get and if we test more and more people and the numbers keep going down, that is absolutely meaningful information. And then on the self-swab, you know, that's now being used in our health and hospitals clinics, there is some lab capacity go with it, but we need more and more lab capacity to go with it. We need more and more lab capacity in general. So this is a moving target situation. We're working with the labs to get them all to be able to handle or as many as possible of them to handle the self-swab test because they're faster and they're easier. They're better for everyone involved. They're safer. We're making progress on that front. But the big question, you mentioned the reagents, the big question is we need a massive uptick in lab capacity overall, which can only be achieved with the help of the federal government and the ability of the federal government to get the reagents in from around the world. Maximize production here in this country. Maximize production of the machines that actually are used to analyze the tests. We're still seeing a federal government is somehow is at a lower speed than everyone else when it comes to maximizing lab capacity, even though this has been an urgent issue for two months.

So, it's another case of, I don't know why the Defense Production Act is not being used more fully by the President. We're going to be at this a long time, so if he went into full gear today, it would help us for sure in the weeks and months ahead. We still don't see that. It's absolutely, I just can't understand it for the life of me, but that said, we're going to keep working with the labs and I think in general the labs are trying their best to get us the maximum capacity.

Moderator: Next, we have Andrew from NBC.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Good morning, everyone. Hope you're doing well.

Mayor: Yes, indeed. Andrew, how you doing?

Question: I'm hanging in there. My question is about field hospitals with the closure of Javits and now Central Park. What is the status of the Billy Jean King Center? When do you plan on closing that down? And could you not be using the people currently assigned to that facility right now to do some of contact tracing that you've said is so urgent?

Mayor: Yeah, I think when we were last at the Billy Jean King Center, in fact we said that the goal would be as it was needed less to convert it to an isolation facility and exactly as you say, to use the staffing there for other needs. We'll get you an update today, Andrew, on exactly what's going on. Remember, the Billy Jean King Center is attached to Elmhurst Hospital and Queens Hospital that have really borne the brunt here. So the last I heard they still had plenty to do on the site, but if that has changed and they can start making that transition to being an isolation site, that's great. If some of the medical personnel can be used differently, that's great. We would do that as quickly as we can. So you're definitely right that we've seen a good trend the last a week or so in terms of not needing some of those facilities. But unlike the field hospitals that were only usable for our hospitals, this one was when we projected from the beginning at the right time, would be converted to being yet another place for isolation as part of a test and trace strategy. So we fully expect to see that happening in the coming days.

Moderator: Next is Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi everyone, I wanted to follow up on Ashley's questions about the incident that resulted in the three arrests. First of all, is it confirmed that the encounter started as a social-distancing enforcement? And if so, I wanted to ask more generally speaking, is that the kind of enforcement that the city wants to see, A, should plain clothes officers be involved in that enforcement? And B, do you want enforcement of groups as small as, as two individuals?

Mayor: Yoav, I've all turned to Commissioner Shea, but I appreciate the question, but I also want to call out just the logic here. Look, the NYPD again, overwhelmingly for weeks and weeks and weeks has been focusing on enforcing in communities all over the city. In situations where we needed that presence to make sure that people were safe and obviously, overwhelmingly it's been working and we do not see instances like this. This is a rarity. But clearly there was more going on here as the Commissioner just said, than a typical social-distancing enforcement situation. Commissioner, why don't you go into the details again?

Commissioner Shea: Yep. So, and that's why I was providing some context earlier. When you look at other video cameras, what it shows is before the officers arrived, you see the – I'm talking about the initial encounter now, you see an individual sitting on a milk crate, you see somebody coming up to them, them in the short conversation, the female after a short conversation steps back and is waiting. Then you see a number of other people walking by, milling about. You see a number of people not wearing masks at that scene. And that is the scene that the offices in plain clothes, as you pointed out, initially walked up to investigate. To your question about should offices in plain clothes be participating in these activities. There is no hard and fast rule, but really what it comes down to is all members of the NYPD a very active and in both warning people, educating people, and when it comes to it summonsing and arresting people, which is again, very infrequently happening when you look at the totality of our interactions.

But absolutely, there is nothing that says that they should not be engaging in this. And I would just point out again, while all this social distancing is going on, crime is continuing, you know, those same offices throughout the city this weekend, engaging people participating in dice games where we recover firearms. 16 separate incidents just Saturday and Sunday, 16, where offices engaged individuals on the streets of New York City and recovered a firearm. So, you know, most of those incidents you don't hear about because the arrest is made without fanfare, without a use of force, thankfully, without any loss of life. But you know, this is just what's some of what we're seeing on the streets.

Moderator: Last two for today, next we have Jake from Gothamist.

Question: Hi there, Good morning. My first question is about the city's distribution of free masks. I think the number last week was 275,000, and I heard today it's 7.5 million. So I'm curious how that pumped up so dramatically. And then I have a question for Commissioner Shea as well. I think Ashley asked earlier about data on social distancing enforcement. We've asked NYPD as well for this multiple times. Does the NYPD have that data and would you guys commit to releasing it?

Mayor: So, Jake, I'll start and certainly as I turn to Commissioner Shea, I'll say, look, whatever data is kept on enforcement and demographics and locations in terms of neighborhood by neighborhood, we want to get out there. But I remind you again, a lot of what happens, it doesn't reach the level of something that would be formally tracked like a summons. So, the Commissioner will talk about that in a moment. The face coverings, yeah we put out a huge amount this weekend, couple of different initiatives that between them add up to several hundred thousand that we started this weekend. We have been wanting to build a sustainable approach to distributing face coverings for free to New Yorkers. In the last few days that's come together. So we're going to be distributing 7.5 million face coverings in the weeks ahead and just, we want to keep with it. We want it to be ubiquitous. There are parts of the city that were not in the initial wave this weekend. We're going to be expanding to many, many more locations as I indicated on that list. So any part of the city that's so far didn't get a lot of distribution, this weekend will see the distribution increased markedly this coming weekend and throughout the week.

But the goal here is to make it that it's really, really easy if you need a face covering, get one, which said from the beginning, people can make it out anything they have around the house and can use a scarf, a bandana, whatever, but we want it to be something where it's just constant that you're being offered face coverings as a reminder. But also for people legitimately don't have one or forgot one we want to make it ever more easy for people to have a face covering. Commissioner?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah, we've gotten this question a couple of times in different forms. We are absolutely committed to being as transparent as possible. I would anticipate releasing a quite a bit of information detailed down to the precinct level, possibly as even as different parks. We're just working through the requests that we have received as well as you know, working it through legal. But for the reporters that are on the call listening, I would absolutely anticipate that information being released. Sorry, it's taken so long.

Moderator: Last for today we have Juliet from 1010 Wins.

Question: Oh, hi. Good morning, everyone. So, my question is specifically for Commissioner Shea. You said earlier this morning that you'll be making a lot of adjustments going forward on how to monitor and enforce social-distancing. And I've been seeing photos of the weekend of the West Village and Orchard Beach with people very close together. And I know the police department has plenty of experience with crowd control at big events and even limiting people and location. So, what are your concerns and what adjustments do you think you need to make?

Commissioner Shea: Juliet, I think we all went into this weekend with our eyes wide open that this weekend would be a particularly challenging. I think that's why we had the number of offices deployed that we did, as well as – I can tell you that behind the scenes there was an awful lot of coordination with other city agencies stood up our joint operation center as we do for large scale events such as New Year's Eve to the field the complaints that were coming in, whether it's from 3-1-1 or other sources and make sure that we were operating as efficiently and in a streamlined manner to get resources to where issues might be popping up across the city and to deal with it as quickly as possible. I went into this weekend as well, thinking that every week that we move forward, of course we're going to be making adjustments to see what areas we're seeing increased use in parks. I don't think there's any two parks exactly alike when you look at the landscape of them, the ability to social-distance in them. So that's what I'm referring to. I expect that coming out of this weekend we'll look at what went well, what areas did we see a crowding that was a little too close and we'll make adjustments both in deployment as well as the messaging too. I think the messaging is very critical here in terms of getting the word out as early as possible by the police department in particular areas. But it should be, as always, we'll take a look at what we do with the after action reporting, try to learn from this weekend, and we'll go forward to make sure that we do everything possible to keep people safe.

Mayor: And, Juliet, let me just add, I think you know the really want to commend the NYPD, the Parks Department, all the agencies they days and days before the weekend recognized to be warmer weather, they put a whole lot of personnel out. Obviously, the face covering distribution was a very good thing. A lot of things were done right and there were a lot of places where the consistency around the social-distancing, the percentage of people wearing face coverings were very high. There clearly are some places that we experienced challenges, we have to do better, we will do better, but the Commissioners right, this is a work in progress cause we're all learning a whole new reality here. What I can guarantee you is every week we'll get better in terms of the ability to enforce more and more personnel or coming back from being sick. That's going to help us. We're learning important lessons about what works. We're going to use those lessons to figure out a template and that template will be used everywhere consistently, and I want New Yorkers to have that assurance. We are going to make sure that social-distancing works and all the other rules work so we can – that's our pathway back to normal. It has to work. We have to make it work, but it requires enforcement to do that.

Let me conclude today with a point that's really, really crucial to the future of this city and so many of the things we talked about today are about our ability to move forward, and that means getting back on our feet. That means not only thanking in so many ways our heroes from this struggle, but making sure that their jobs will be secure for the long haul, for the crucial work they do. It means providing the services we need as part of a restart and a recovery. All the things we want to do. We want to thank people, give them security, give everyone a way back. All of that hangs in the balance in the discussions happening right now in Washington DC. I want people to feel this very personally. It really comes down to what happens in these next weeks in Washington with the fourth stimulus bill will determine a lot of the future of New York City and many other cities and states all over the country.

Our nation has a simple choice. Either help cities and states back on our feet, help us move forward, or turn their back on us and leave us in a situation where we cannot even provide the most basic services to our people. This is the same discussion that's happening in cities and states all over the country, red states and blue states. Everyone's going through the same crisis. Everyone has the same question and we're not getting answers certainly from the White House. In fact, the indicators we've gotten from the White House in the last 48 hours are dangerous. And I want to quote again, I want everyone to understand. I want you to take this personally because it's aimed at you, each and every New Yorker, and it's true again for people in cities and states all over the country. Take personally when the White House Chief Economic Advisor, Larry Kudlow says, we're taking quote, this is a quote, “we're taking a pause on additional coronavirus relief.” The Chief Economic Advisor in the White House saying, you don't need any more help, so they can afford to take a pause, like everything's just perfect right now. Or Kevin Hassett, the White House Economic Advisor, who said the President, this is a quote again, “the President is absolutely opposed to bailouts.” So, if he's so absolutely opposed to bailouts, why did he give $58 billion to the airline industry? Why did he create all sorts of giveaways to corporate America if he's so opposed to bailouts? How about a bailout for the first responders, the health care workers, the essential workers who right now are at the frontline protecting lives? Is he opposed to that? Does he want to look them in the face and say, you don't deserve help? I don't think he has the guts to do that. So why doesn't he take a stand and tell his advisors to shut up and actually come out and say, we need a stimulus four that will take care of New York and cities and states all over the country so we can get back on our feet. I mean, just think about it. It's common sense. You can't go through something like this and then snap your fingers and come out of it. You have to get some help to able to move forward and that's what our federal government's supposed to do for us.

So, I'm very frustrated what I'm hearing from the White House and I'm very frustrated the President doesn't speak up and say, nope, he should say I fully support stimulus four, I want to see our city’s and states come back together, I'll be there for them. Instead, stony silence from the President and very dangerous statements from his advisors. That said, array of light here in the Congress, something much better. Over the weekend I spoke with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been an extraordinary leader in this crisis. I spoke with the leading Democrat in the House from this State, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, both of them 100 percent committed to making New York City whole and moving us forward now and in the future. And that is leadership, understanding that people are put back on our heels, you come to their defense, this heroic city that has done so much in this crisis. We only need that helping hand so we can come back and then we can help lead America's recovery because we have always led all the recoveries in the past and we're ready to do it again. So, I see different things coming out of Washington and I just hope the White House is paying attention because here's a chance to do the right thing, but what some of these people are saying is absolutely the wrong thing, and I hope when you hear it, you're as angry as I am. We're not going to – we're not going to allow this to happen. I want to be really, really clear. They are not going to do this to New York City. We're going to stand up and fight and when we fight, it counts for a whole lot.

So, everyone, thank you. Thank you for all you are doing. Thank you for the way every one of you is participating in fighting back this disease. Let's keep fighting and we can move forward together. Thanks so much.

2020-05-05 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. You know, a lot of days I have the privilege of telling you about good things that New Yorkers are doing, heroic things that New Yorkers are doing, the way that New Yorkers are standing up to this virus and fighting back. I try to really focus on that cause it's an extraordinary story of the goodness of this city, the honor, the decency of the people of this city, and we only wish that that goodness, that decency were reflected in the way our national government sees this struggle here in New York City and understands what our people are going through. We only ask that people in Washington show a little respect for the people in New York City have borne the brunt of this crisis who have been living in the epicenter of a national dilemma, a crisis we'd never seen before, a pandemic the worst health care crisis in a hundred years. There are so many ways I could describe it, but we all know what's going on. And anyone with a heart and soul would show respect and appreciation for the people in New York City. For our first responders, our health care heroes, the everyday people in New York City who have fought through this and now deserve some help to get back on our feet so we can move forward. We didn't ask for this disease. It came from far away, but it has knocked us back no fault of our own, and yet we have fought back. All we want is respect and support, and a sense that we're all in this together, but that's not what we're seeing coming from the White House.

This morning I woke up to this President of United States, a former New Yorker who seems to enjoy stabbing his hometown in the back, talking about no bailout for New York. What kind of human being sees the suffering here and decides that people in New York City don't deserve help? What kind of person does that? Well, I'll tell you something. Every day, President Trump resembles more and more Herbert Hoover, the president who ignored the Great Depression, who didn't care to put America back on its feet, who has been now remembered in history as someone who failed at the most basic responsibility, which is to protect the people he serves. President Trump wasn't there for us when we needed the testing to stop this horrible disease. And now, he's talking about not helping us in our hour of need.

He says in this interview, he's not inclined to do bailouts. They gave a $58 billion bail out to the airline industry. A few years ago, he gave a one-and-a-half trillion-dollar bailout to big corporations and the wealthy. So, who is he kidding? He's not inclined to do bailouts now, that means he's not inclined to help firefighters, EMT’s, paramedics, police officers, doctors, nurses, health care workers, teachers, sanitation workers, all the people who are depending right now on the federal government stepping up and making New York City and New York State, and so many other cities and states, whole so we can get back to business, so we can get back on our feet, so we can lead the recovery. So, right there, he says he's not inclined to do bail outs. He's a pure hypocrite given how much money he's put in the hands of the corporations and the wealthy already. He says that it's not fair to the Republicans because all the states that need help are run by Democrats. So, now, he is putting partisanship ahead of the needs of the nation. You know, I referenced Herbert Hoover a moment ago. Even Herbert Hoover in his worst moments didn't try and pit Americans against Americans, one part of the country against another in a crisis, a leader is supposed to bring us together. What the President is doing, is playing politics while people are suffering. He says it right out loud there. The States that need help run by Democrat. Who cares who runs the states? The people need help, there are Americans who need help right now. Do you not care about that firefighter, that EMT, that paramedic, that police officer, that health care worker, because they live in a state run by a Democrat or a city run by a Democrat? Does that make them less American in your view, Mr. President? It's absolutely unacceptable. We've never seen anything like it the entire history of this republic, and people won't stand for it, because we need help. We need help, because people have been fighting and suffering, and all we're asking you to do is get back on our feet so we can contribute to this national recovery. There's not going to be a national recovery without New York City and New York State and cities and states all around the country that had been hit so hard.

Then he says, Florida is doing phenomenal. Texas is doing phenomenal. Midwest is fantastic. Okay, so Texas – here's a letter signed by a hundred mayors in Texas, Republican and Democrat, both talking about how their cities are suffering. How they help, or they will not be able to serve their people. They will not be able to provide basic services. They will not be able to get back on their feet from the great state of Texas right here. He says, the Midwest is fantastic. How about this headline from the Associated Press? Coronavirus cuts deep scars through meat packing cities in the Midwest, crisis growing in Iowa and other states. I don't know what country he's living in, but here in the United States of America, people are hurting. And it doesn't matter what state they're in. It doesn't matter if it's red or blue. It doesn't matter who they are. They're hurting and they need the help of their government. And now, we have the President of the United States trying to back away from his responsibilities.

Look, we cannot allow this to happen and we won't. We're not going to allow one man to stand in the way of what the people of this city, this state, this nation need. The people rule here. The people will not stand for a government that turns its back on those who have fought heroically through this pandemic and are being looked at with great respect all over the country. You know, I talked to the president about Elmhurst Hospital and he expressed sympathy, expressed admiration for the health care workers. He said, oh, I grew up in that area, Queens. Well, Mr. President, if you respect those health care workers, you don’t walk away from them. Help them, because those very same people who have fought this heroic battle are now the people that don't know if they're going to have a job in the future because there's no money left. The only place that we can get the help we need to get back on our feet is the federal government. Mr. President, be as kind and decent to those health care workers as you were to the airline industry, and the wealthy, and the corporations. That's what we're asking. One standard for this whole country. It doesn't matter which state, doesn't matter red or blue, it just matters that Americans need help and they need it now.

Let me bring you back right here. And even though we'd been through so much together, you know what, I've really admired and appreciated that the people of this city want to do things the right way in this crisis. They want to get it right once the first time. We are being guided here in this city by the facts. We're being guided by the data, by the science. And every day I'm going over with you with everyone. Those indicators that tell us what's happening. And you could look at them as just numbers, but I always remind you behind those numbers are human beings and families in the city. When those numbers go down, it means something is happening, and it means you're the reason why it happened, because you're doing the right thing to make it happen. This is a story of New York City coming together in common cause. And the numbers tell you something you should be very proud of. Daily admissions for COVID 19 in our hospitals down below a hundred a day now. Still too many, but tremendous progress. Fewer and fewer New Yorkers fighting for their lives in our intensive care units, in our public hospitals. The percentage of people testing positive, generally going down. Not every single day, but overall going down and going down a lot. You did that. You achieved it. You get the credit, and I'm sure you're proud of it and I want you to feel the pride that causes you to want to finish this fight strong, and take the next step.

So, as we keep fighting that fight, we don't forget for a moment because we're a decent city, a compassionate city, we don't forget for a moment how many people are hurting right now. We're still not out of it and people are hurting. How many people have been hurt? How many families have lost a loved one or dealing with the disease right now? How many families are dealing with the devastating impact of this crisis on their livelihoods? And you see constantly the dominoes falling in this crisis, and it's affecting in one way or another, millions of us. People who literally have to ask, who maybe never asked the question before in their life, where am I going to get my next meal? People who are struggling still to get that unemployment check because the job's not there. People are worried that their apartment may be gone. They’re worried about literally how are they going to keep a roof over their head and their family. People own a small business and they're worried they won't be able to get back on his feet. That's what's happening to so many people, and while we're fighting for fairness and decency and justice in Washington, we're helping our people right now. With all those problems, every single one I just mentioned that a family may face, where do people turn? A lot of times they turn right here to their city government and the number-one way people do that is by calling 3-1-1. And 3-1-1 was created to make it easier for people to get what they deserve, to get the information and get the support, get the services, and throughout its history, a lot of good has been done because of 3-1-1. It's worked pretty well, and when you see our enforcement agents go out to address a problem, if you see a line at a supermarket needs to be spread out, or a problem in a community that call to 3-1-1 sparks action. Whether it's the NYPD, or the Parks Department, or the Department for the Aging getting someone a meal, whatever it is, it is the fact that a New Yorker could pick up the phone and know that something can happen and will happen. That's the power of 3-1-1. But 3-1-1 that system we depend on has gone through an undeniable strain in these last weeks before this crisis, a typical day was 55,000 calls, that's a lot of calls. The peak in April, nearly 200,000 calls a day, four times as many calls, and that just exploded in a matter of weeks. 3-1-1 team did their best, but it's been clear they need a lot more help and now we're going to give them the help that they need to really expand what they do, so more and more New Yorkers can get help and get it quickly.

So, we have a three-part action plan to add support to 3-1-1 immediately. One, we've hired reinforcement call takers, this one made all the sense in the world, so many calls, more people need to take them. 285 more call takers have been added in the last two weeks, 150 are NYPD cadets, what a great training for them and how to serve and help people in the City devoted young people ready to serve people and get them answers, get them help. 120 temporary hires, 65 percent of whom speak Spanish and that's crucial in this crisis, so many folks who speak Spanish needing help and needing that reassuring voice on the land line. Also 15 FDNY employees have stepped up to help reinforce 3-1-1 and now we've added four new call centers because we needed more capacity. Now, 3-1-1 got a lot done before the crisis, but the crisis demanded a different mindset, so we brought in leaders from the NYPD and the FDNY to really strengthen the approach at 3-1-1 to think not just about responding, but about actually preventing problems, preventing emergencies when someone needs food, if they don't get food, there's an emergency that's going to happen eventually. If someone has COVID symptoms, we don't know yet, that means they have the disease, but we do know it's a danger that must be addressed immediately. You talk about urgency, you talk about focus, you talk about getting things done, you're talking about the NYPD and the FDNY. So we've brought in a leadership group of senior officers from PD and FD and they're bringing some very important practices with them, like a morning roll call where they get everyone together and talk about what is coming in the day ahead, what they're seeing, what happened on the last shift, what are the new topics they have, address, how they can get ahead of things proactively. Also, a reliance on data and learning from the data, 3-1-1 has some great data scientists, the NYPD and the FDNY have really perfected the use of data to serve people better, so they're bringing in that expertise to ensure they see a spike in calls at a certain hour, they see a certain problem that needs to be addressed, they're shifting resources, shifting personnel to that problem. They're also creating an express lane and the express lane idea is if you're calling with something related to COVID-19, if you're calling with a need for food, something as urgent as that goes to the front of the line gets addressed immediately. The goal here is to have little or no wait time for people who are calling about anything related to this crisis in English or Spanish and of course we serve people in many other languages as well. So, what's happening now at 3-1-1 is something very different to deal with a crisis we've never experienced before. I want to thank everyone at 3-1-1 for the amazing work you do, and you've been strong during this crisis. I want to thank the NYPD and the FDNY for stepping in and bringing your expertise. Folks who know how to deal with emergencies and challenges better than anyone else on earth to make 3-1-1 much stronger, much faster, able to serve much better. This is something really important, it's going to help hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers right away.

Now, one example— I told, several times, I've told you about the importance of our New York City, small businesses, getting that federal loan program, getting the opportunity to tap into that because the Paycheck Protection Program, it's a good thing. But what we found was the first round, a lot of money went to businesses that weren't the most needy; the second round, the money is going fast. We want to make sure that every New York City small business that needs those loans and that can turn into grants eventually, that every small business that needs them applied. Remember this newest round, $310 billion for small businesses and a special thank you again to our Senator Chuck Schumer, Congress Member Nydia Velasquez, the Chair of the House Small Businesses Committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They all fought hard to make sure there was more money actually for small businesses, every kind of small business in every kind of community, but now we need our small businesses to take advantage of it. You can apply, it's first come first served, so apply quickly if you have not money could run out in the course of this week. So please apply immediately, go to the federal website, small business sba.gov but the reason I bring it up now is because if you need help and you're struggling with that application, you need answers, you need support call 3-1-1 and our small business team will help you to complete that application and get in immediately. There are a lot of ways 3-1-1 can help and that's a great example, let's help our small businesses get back on their feet. So, anyone out there, if you own a small business or you know anyone who does, tell them right away, fill out that application, if they need help, call 3-1-1.

Now I'm going to go to a matter that really deserves attention and I want to tell you what happened here just in the last few days. And, if you're a parent, I want you to listen carefully in particular. I made a point since we're all in this together in this City, we're all working together to protect people, when something is raised by our colleagues in the media that points out something, we all need to know about or something that needs to be addressed. I'm trying to remember to say thank you. So I want to thank Melissa Russo who raised an important issue about a problem we're starting to see and we take it very seriously and in general we know as we've dealt with the coronavirus that we have not seen the same kind of impact on young people that we see on older people, particularly much older people. But something's happened the last few days, that's beginning to concern our Health Department and again, parents pay attention because it does involve our children and I say that as a parent myself, I take this seriously. Even a few days ago we were not seeing much incidents, but now we are 15 cases in New York City now we've identified and that is enough for sure to say even though it's uncommon compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who have contracted this disease is still causing us concern. So, this particular condition, even though it's rare, here are the symptoms and again, this affects children, fever, rash, abdominal pain and vomiting. If your children are experiencing any child's experiencing these symptoms, particularly in combination, call your doctor right away. We want to make sure that if a child is dealing with this reality, they get the support that they need. We will have in a few minutes an opportunity to hear from our health care leaders who can explain in more detail, but again, when we see something, we want to identify it and tell the public about it. This is something that's concern I want to make sure all New Yorkers are aware and we've put out a health alert letting health care providers know that if they see incidents of this new condition that we want to make sure it's reported immediately to our Health Department so we can identify what's going on and how extensive it is and deal with it.

Now, we all know the way for is all about testing and we know there's different kinds of tests, different kinds of approaches, but every test of every kind contributes to the solution. There's still not enough testing available, there's still not enough of the diagnostic testing that we particularly need, there's still not enough lab capacity, the federal government is still missing in action when it comes to testing. But we do have some good news today, talked about a few days ago, and this is a step forward, and I do want to give credit when the federal government does something that helps us, and I've done that throughout this crisis. On the question of antibody testing, I told you a few days back, we had been in conversations over the last few weeks with the Department of Health and Human Services and with the Centers for Disease Control. The focus was on antibody testing on a widespread level for our first responders and our health care workers. Last night I spoke with Admiral Brett Giroir, who is the Head of the U.S. Public Health Service and Assistant Secretary at H + H – sorry, HHS, my apology – HHS. And he was abundantly clear the federal government is ready to move with antibody testing for the heroes here in New York City, any first responder or health care worker who wants to take advantage of it, it will be made available for free. This initiative will be up and running by next week, maybe even sooner, but certainly by next week the goal is to test 140,000 of our heroes and this testing will be done at hospitals, firehouses police stations and correction facilities. So, this is very, very important, it's going to give us much more ability to let all of our heroes know what's happened in terms of exposure to this disease in their own lives. It's going to be really helpful in terms of finding more donors for the plasma treatments that we're very hopeful about. It's going to give a lot of information to the federal government and to us about what's happening out there with this disease that's going to help us fight this disease further. So, this is a step in the right direction for sure.

Now, a few more things before I conclude, it's very, very important, while we're fighting this battle to express our thanks for the people who've really stepped up. And those thank you’s I think are even more important in the middle of a crisis where people are working so hard. So, a couple of different things we honor each year, happen to fall today and this week, and let's take time to thank the people we know who serve us so well, starting with Teacher Appreciation Day. Our educators have done an amazing job. They've never been asked to do anything like online learning, distance learning on a vast scale. They've done it really well. The dedication has been outstanding. Our educators are going out of their way to reach kids, reach parents, help them keep learning no matter what. Any educator in your life, please take the time to thank them today and this week because they certainly deserve it. They've done something remarkable.

Today is also Building Service Worker Day. Now, talk about unsung heroes, the doormen and the doorwomen, the porters, the cleaners, the security officers, the folks who keep buildings running, every kind of building, every place that's functioning right now – that's part of fighting back this disease. Every place that people live that has a staff that makes sure the building keeps running. Everything we depend on every day in this city, in peace time and wartime - these are unsung heroes who are there for us and keep things running. Take an opportunity today to thank them. They don't get the thanks they deserve, but what would we do without them? The city wouldn't work without them. Let's thank them today. Special thank you to our colleagues in labor – 32BJ, SEIU – all over New York City for the amazing work you're doing in this crisis. And yesterday, and this we should be thankful for every day, but yesterday was International Firefighters Day. I went to go meet with EMTs and paramedics at EMS Station Four on the Lower East Side yesterday. Our EMTs, our paramedics, our firefighters, all part of the FDNY family - they've been amazing. They've dealt with things that no one's ever seen before; they have saved so many lives. They have stood firm, absolutely made us proud in this crisis. Keep making us pride, proud. We should be thankful for them all the time, but let's give a special thank you to them this week.

Okay, the part of this press conference at each day we all look forward to the daily indicators to know where we're going. Yesterday, great day; today, a little less great, still some good news. We need it to get better to fully take the next steps. So, three indicators, first one daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 – that is down, that is good. It from 88 to 75. Think about that for a moment – 75 people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19. That is a sea change from where we were a few weeks ago – that's fantastic. Daily number of people in our ICUs across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19 - down from 632 to 596, great news. That still means there's almost 600 people right now fighting for their lives in those ICUs. So good important news, but with something that reminds us, the battle still rages for so many. Here's the one I don't like, the percentage of people tested citywide positive for COVID-19 – up from 17 percent to 22 percent. We know each day can vary for a variety of reasons, but the reason we want all three to go down at once is that tells us we're on a solid, consistent path and that's what leads us to be able to start loosening up. Didn't have the day we needed today, but, overall, we're making progress. Let's keep fighting. Let's keep fighting to bring these numbers down consistently and take that big next step forward.

So, before I say a few words in Spanish, I just want to come back to what I started with. This is just about basic humanity and decency. Anyone watching has seen the pain that New York City has experienced. Anyone watching has seen the heroism of so many New Yorkers. Anyone watching with a heart and soul would say, I want to help those people because they've done something so good, so decent. That's all we're asking of our federal government. We’re just asking the President of the United States to act like the President of the United States and care – actually care about the people of this city, regardless of politics; care about the people of the city like any President should, regardless of where they come from. But you’d think a president who grew up here might have a special feeling for this place, might go out of his way to help his hometown. I'll give him another chance to show that there's a beating heart there, but these comments today show me something very cold, very, very unfair towards the people he grew up around – the people gave him every opportunity in his life. So, Mr. President, you have a chance to atone for what you’ve said here; you have a chance to get it right. Remember, your hometown, and remember every hometown in America – just lend a helping hand so people can get back on their feet once and for all.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media and please remember to give me the name and the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Just a quick reminder that on the phone we have Dr. Barbot, Dr. Katz, Dr. Varma, Commissioner Shea, and Commissioner Kish. Juliet from 1010 WINS has the first question, Juliet.

Question: All right, thank you. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Good morning everybody here on the call. There's now playing, a plan in place to deal with homeless underground. So, what is the plan to deal with homeless encampments? I know Mr. Mayor, you've said they're not acceptable, but I happen to know of three encampments where there are groups of people with sleeping bags, blankets, shopping carts – even one had a tent. A response to a 3-1-1 call in one location indicated, it was indicated it was cleared by police, but that was not the case. So, I'm wondering what is happening with that? What is your concern and what is the response?

Mayor: Well, Juliet, you have distinguished yourself over these weeks in finding things that need to be fixed and I really appreciate that and we're going to go fix it. They're absolutely unacceptable. Again, there's a story that really should be understood for decades encampments were tolerated in New York City. People would see them in different places and, somehow, they were allowed to exist. I found it absolutely unacceptable and I said to the NYPD, to Social Services, to Sanitation Department, I said, if we see any encampment developed anywhere in New York City, we're taking it down period. So, I want you please to give those three locations to my colleagues here at City Hall right after this and they will be dismantled immediately. It's unacceptable; it's not a way for human beings to live. It's not right, it's not fair to anyone; it's not healthy. We will not tolerate it. So just give us the locations and they will be gone. It's as simple as that.

Moderator: Nolan from the Post is up next. Nolan?

Nolan?

Mayor: All right [inaudible] –

Moderator: We will come back to Nolan.

Mayor: Double back to Nolan.

Moderator: Brigid from WNYC is up next. Brigid?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. First, ethical questions about enforcement for you and Commissioner Shea. Excuse me, first for tonight’s historic subway closure [inaudible] by the Governor, how many police officers will be guarding MTA stations overnight from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM since every station that doesn't have a locked entrance presumably needs an officer and do you have an estimate for how much its enforcement will cost? And then separately in the 75th precinct there was another event captured on video of an aggressive police encounter with officers [inaudible] with someone's social media [inaudible] with a teenager for not wearing a mask. Commissioner Shea, do you have details about this incident? How are officers being instructed to enforce the city's guidance on social distancing and wearing masks? It appears that one of the officers actually punched the young man in the head, but that cannot constitute excessive force and does the department need to do additional retraining for officers in –

Mayor: Brigid –

Question: – how to effectively interact with community members on social distancing concerns –

Mayor: Brigid, hold on. Brigid, respectfully, I'm trying to get everyone to really respect the ground rules here. I'm absolutely going to answer your questions, but folks in the – our colleagues in the media, we're trying to get to as many people as possible. We have a clear rule; get two questions upfront. A run-on question that becomes four or five questions is just not fair. We really are trying to be consistent here. We're taking lots of questions in the course of a week. So, we're going to speak to obviously the first question about the subways. We'll speak to the video from the 7-5 Precinct, but I'm going to take that broadly and again, I'm sure your colleagues will have questions as well, but please everyone just respect each other by not trying to stretch two questions into four or five questions.

Let me start and I’ll turn to Commissioner Shea. On the question of closing the subways in the late night hours, this is something I think is absolutely the right thing to do to ensure the subways are safe and clean; to ensure that our essential workers are respected, protected, know they can be safe in the subways with a cleaner environment. The folks who are putting themselves in harm's way, knowing that every effort is being done to keep them safe, but also because I think it will disrupt another decades old pattern of homeless folks, street homeless folks staying on the subway all night in a way that I think is unhealthy, unfair, not good for anyone involved - starting with the homeless person. We want to disrupt that, we want to get them help, we want to be able to be there with outreach services to get them to shelter. So, I really think it is the right policy. Clearly it will require serious effort by the NYPD, but I'll remind you that in those same stations that are closed, there will be people cleaning; so there will be MTA staff there. Those are not stations that from every understanding I have from the MTA, they're not just going to be empty and barren, they're going to be activity going on. But the NYPD certainly is going to support in a variety of ways. The Commissioner can speak to that. I will remind everyone that since there aren't trains running, NYPD officers will not be on trains, so it frees up a certain amount of personnel to address the stations during those hours. Also, obviously, hours that there's generally in this city much less activity than other hours of the day. On the 7-5 Precinct, and I know Commissioner Shea will speak to it, I have seen the video, there's obviously going to be a review to understand all the facts. The Commissioner and I spoke this morning. I think every one of these cases has to be seen individually. I would caution against anyone trying to look at different videos or different situations and see them all the same. They're not all the same. I want to caution that any time that officer asks someone to observe social distancing or put on a mask, the response from any New Yorker, one, should follow the rules and the laws we're living with right now; two, should be concerned about the health and safety of everyone, starting with their own family. The response should be to follow the instruction of the officer, and people have to understand that. We look at every incident carefully, and, as I spoke about the incident in the Lower East Side the other day, when I see something I think is inappropriate, I'm going to say it, and, obviously, that was a case where an officer was modified right away. But I also want to remind people that what New Yorkers need to do is respect the NYPD as well, and respect the instructions, and certainly never ever fight with an NYPD officer. That is not acceptable. People are not ever allowed to use physical force against an NYPD officer. That's just not something that can happen in this city. So, we have retrained our entire police force to deescalate, to respect communities, to work with the neighborhood policing approach, and I've seen tremendous progress. There's still work to be done, but I want to remind everyone it's a two-way street. Respect goes both ways and that's how we create a better city for everyone. And when an officer says, follow these rules around social distancing or wearing a face covering, that is for the protection and health of everyone. And I say, I'm glad that officers are out there making sure that people are safe, because, if not, people wouldn't be safe, period. Commissioner?

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So, on the first part with the transit – as soon as this press conference ends, I'll be on a video conference with senior leadership and the NYPD, including Chief Delatorre, the head of the Transit Bureau, just finalizing the stage-one of this plan for tonight. And, again, this is something that's never really been undertaken to this scale. I expect it to be fluid and we will learn from tonight's, and, as we go forward, try to develop a system that is as efficient as possible to get the job done with the minimum amount of officers. Hundreds of officers will be deployed tonight. And, you know, again, as I said, we’ll learn from tonight's experience and see if we have to adapt and if we can do it with less or have to add more. And all of that will be done in conjunction with our partners from the transit system. In terms of the video in the 7-5, we've seen a couple videos surfaced in the last couple of days. I would just point out a couple of things. The common denominator here is, starting with a lack of compliance. And I think echoing some of what the Mayor said, respect here is a two-way street. We understand that everyone is stressed out under these trying times in two months, but, you know, we need people to work together more than ever. And when officers approach a crowd for whatever the reason, you know, work with the officers. We commit to work with the community, but one thing that we cannot have is – we cannot have individuals having physical contact with our officers. To the comment about the punch, you know, every incident is unique and has to be examined under the lens of the circumstances of that particular incident. A punch is something that we actually trained for in the Police Academy. It is a part of the level of escalation that begins with discussion, begins with the de-escalation, and it progresses up from there. So, to answer your question, no, a punch should not be assumed to be excessive force. It should be examined in the totality of the circumstances and, as any incident is reviewed, we review all of these incidents. But, again, I don't think it's surprising when you look at – start to see some of the patterns emerge here, your individuals that are being repeatedly arrested, and it is not shocking to me that they are not complying with the police's orders at times. This individual, in this particular incident that you mentioned, had just been arrested for a burglary a month ago. So, that's something that the officers are dealing with as well. But we'll work through it. We'll continue to do what we do, keeping New Yorker safe and, you know, hopefully we'll come out of there sooner more than later.

Moderator: Henry from Bloomberg is up next. Henry?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Henry. How about you?

Question: I'm hanging in there. I'd like to try and see whether or not we can get more precision on what you think the timeframe would be on opening up various aspects of city life, particularly schools, the restaurants. You agree with the Governor's assertion that schools and theaters should open in, sort of, a stage four, the last stage that they are equivalent in terms of when they should be opening.

Mayor: Well, Henry, we keep working with the State all the time to refine the approach, because we're all in uncharted territory here. Here's why I'd say, I feel very impressed by the progress this city is making that gives me greater confidence about something that we all should be working towards, which is the reopening of school in September. We’ve got a lot to do to get to that point where we can do that effectively and safely and smoothly, but I'm getting more confident by the day when I see these facts. Now, we are not there yet. You've been watching our daily indicators, a lot of progress, but still not the kind of consistent progress we want to be able to take the first steps to relax some of the restrictions. But I am increasingly hopeful about the ability to open school well and fully in September. Remember, the tightness of the approach that we're using right now is again to ward off a resurgence, a boomerang, and that is the best way to keep squeezing this disease. And the test and trace strategy, which is going to be coming up intensely now is crucial to that as well. So, I think there's broad agreement and, certainly, this is some of what we see from around the world, that certain types of settings lend themselves in terms of reopening to being in the earlier stage, because they have more space available, more distancing to be done. Others are inherently places where people are close together – you would include schools in that, you would include theaters and sports events and all. So, it makes sense that you're going to go on stages. But rather than theorize about it, Henry, we're going to literally lay it out step by step as we are ready. When we see the indicators get close to where we need them to be, we’re going to lay out what the steps will be. And that's something that I think will be constant because we keep making progress, but I don't want to theorize about what happens too much down the line because the first thing is not to get overconfident and to fight off any chance of that boomerang. If there's a boomerang, then all schedules get set back and that's not something I'm going to see happen.

Moderator: Trying Nolan from the Post one more time. Nolan?

Question: Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah, Nolan. How are you going?

Question: I'm doing all right. Two questions – two separate issues, the first of which is, the Governor has frozen wage increases for State employees as a way to try to create some breathing room in the State budget. Are you considering a similar move here in the city? And the second question is, with the city's death toll, you know, approaching – the States rather – death toll, I think, approaching 20,000 at this point. What is does your administration continue to be so guarded in discussing how the city is treating its dead?

Mayor: Well, again, I don't feel we've been guarded. I feel like we've tried to answer a wide range of concerns, but also respect the families involved. I think there is a very big difference of interest here, meaning I think the media, respectfully – and I understand it's your job, but I also understand the nature of the free enterprise system – the media very much wants to report on this story constantly and I think a lot of families are not interested in constantly having their pain portrayed publicly. And we're trying to strike a balance here, where we're answering the concerns functionally without dwelling publicly on something that's very sad and tragic and very human and very individual. So, whereas a substantive issue to address, we're addressing it. The situation continues to move forward as we reduced the number of people we're losing each day, thank God, as we're taking small steps towards getting back to normal. But, you know, I think whenever an issue has come up, we've addressed it and been open about it, just not lurid about it. We're not going to go into a lot of detail. That's just the way we're going to handle this. On the wage issue, the State has different laws and standards than the City. Right now, our central focus is on keeping our city going, keeping our workforce going so we can serve people so we can provide services so we can get back on our feet. Our to do that is going to be absolutely determined by what happens with the stimulus bill this month. If we get help, we can move forward. If we don't get help, some very, very tough decisions are ahead, and much tougher decisions than something like a wage freeze – much harder decisions ahead if we do not get help from Washington.

Question: Christina from Chalkbeat is up next. Christina?

Question: Hi, Mayor. Thanks for taking my question. I was hoping to get some more clarity about the budget cuts to College Access for All and how the City plans on making sure that students who managed to graduate from high school in this very difficult year also continue to go on to college, if they're on that path?

Mayor: Thank you, Christina. Look, there was a lot of things that we do in normal times that we think are really valuable, like College Access for All, but just was profoundly disrupted by not having people together, you know, in a school building and things like college visits. There's many things that could not happen in this environment and in a situation where you have to make tough choices, this was one we had to sacrifice. But what continues is an incredible commitment at the DOE to support high school seniors to make sure that every single one who can graduate does. I know guidance counselors are constantly reaching out to high school seniors. I know the Chancellor and his team have said what whatever else they're doing now, and so many things are doing now, job-one is to really focus intensely on those high school seniors, get them the help they deserve. So, you know, we're going – we're doing that right now with the online learning, with counseling remotely. Remember, that our seniors, we want to see as many as possible get through in June, but if for any reason they're not ready in June, there’s still July and August to keep working with them. And online learning offers a lot of flexibility that we can use in this case, in a good way. And we're going to celebrate all our seniors with a citywide graduation ceremony. That's going to be something very special and we'll be putting that together soon in announcing details as we have them. But I would separate what we had to do with College Access for All, which is, obviously, a big program to acclimate our students to the opportunities ahead versus the pinpointed work to help each senior. That work to help each senior continues intensely.

Moderator: Next is Yoav from The City. Yoav?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to get a greater clarity on what I asked about yesterday, about the enforcement of social distancing for a group, let's say of two people. Is the presumption that those people live together under the same roof? Or, is the NYPD instructing its officers to confirm – you know, check their IDs and confirm whether they should be within six feet of another.

Mayor: Again, this is something we're all learning as we build out the approach, Yoav. This is never something that the NYPD or any enforcement agency has had to do before. And so, we don't have every perfect rule in place. We're learning by experience. One thing that's true is that for anything to work, there has to be enforcement. There has to be some consequences. If you mean to ensure that a place where the 8.6 million people moves forward and fights back this disease and we save lives, enforcement is a crucial part of that, NYPD, Parks Department and all the other agencies that we have brought into play. So, we're going to keep refining our approach to enforcement as always. A substantial amount of any enforcement activity depends on communication, depends on public education, which there's been a huge amount of, depends on the training of the folks who do the enforcing, depends on their professional judgment, which we always depend on. That's just part of any enforcement activity.

So, we're working through to keep tightening up the protocols. We know the biggest thing we're concerned about is anything that's a larger gathering. We know we want to avoid anyone not social distancing whenever humanly possible and we know we want people to wear face coverings and I think that's the sort of hierarchy of need. But we'll have more to say as we refine the specific protocols, but again, some of it is common sense, just talking to people, reminding them of the importance and where folks need enforcement because they refuse to follow instructions then that's what we have summonses for.

Moderator: Shant from the Daily News is up next. Shant?

Question: Morning, Mr. Mayor with the Council doing a hearing on the budget tomorrow, just wanted to ask you about some of the issues that I understand are on Councilmembers’ minds. For one, the Summer Youth Employment Program, I know a lot of them want to bring that back in some form. Do you see a way to meet them halfway or do you basically consider that program dead? Another area is with crime down during the outbreak [inaudible] budget cuts for the NYPD and DOC and last thing –

Mayor: Shant – Shant, I couldn't hear that. You skipped out for a moment there. You said would crime down and then I couldn't hear you.

Question: Yeah. Sorry about that. With crime down, would you consider budget cuts for the NYPD or the Department of Corrections? And last thing if I'm understanding correctly, is that your budget – your revised budget has $2.4 billion for the coronavirus response this year but none marked for Fiscal 2021. So yeah, just what are your thoughts on preparing for Fiscal 2021?

Mayor: Again, I'm going to do this, but I'm going to start to just cut questions off going forward when people go from two into three, we're just – respect, the questions, they are all good questions, but it's the SYEP is one question, the PD and DOC is another question, and the 2021 is yet another question. So just saying it to everyone, I'll start to edit if needed. I would ask people just really respect each other and respect what we're trying to do here to get as many people an opportunity. Two questions, really clear what two questions is. SYEP, always talking to the Council. This is what we do. This is democracy. This is, you know, the different branches of government working together and I will remind you, this is now the seventh time, seventh year that I've gone through this process with the Council. Every single year we've come to common ground, gotten to a budget on time, gotten to a fair, smart, balanced budget.

So we're going to do it again, and the work with the Council has been very, very respectful cause everyone understands what we're going through. The Council cares deeply about SYEP. I care about too. It's expanded greatly during my administration. I've said we one, we don't have money right now two, we don't have a logistical framework to make it work because people can't gather and it is wholly dependent on people gathering in the same place. So I don't see a way to do it right now, but I'm always going to have an open door to the Council and budget adoption is not until the middle of June or later June. Things could change by then so don't see it now, but the conversation is open.

On police department and Department of Corrections, no anticipated budget cuts at this point. Both of them are doing extraordinarily important work and we need to keep them doing it, dealing with a lot of new challenges in this crisis. Again, anything could happen between now and adoption, and the number one question is what's going to happen in Washington with the stimulus. That will frame everything and then what's happening with the disease will frame a lot. So nothing anticipated now, but everything is an open question depending on what happens in Washington. And then absolutely in the following Fiscal Year we're going to be dealing with the coronavirus in a variety of ways, certainly the aftermath of it, if not the real thing again. So we will be definitely thinking about what that means for a future budgets. Right now we're focused on the here and now, but we have time between now and June to figure out how to project our needs ahead. They will be substantial for sure.

Moderator: Sydney, from the Advance is up next. Sydney.

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor, I have two questions. I wanted to follow up about adding Staten Island’s private hospitals as well as the rest of the city's private hospitals to your daily ICU indicator count. I asked you a week ago if you would consider adding at least Staten Island to that count so that the five boroughs are represented and you said you would look into it, but it looks like you've decided not to add Staten Island and private hospitals. Can you explain why you decided not to?

And second, going back to the military medical personnel, it's my understanding that the federal government said that military medical staff could only be sent to New York City's public hospitals. I wanted to know if you ever tried to go back to the federal government and ask if it would be possible to send them to Staten Island because it has no public hospital and is still a part of New York City? Can I read you a quote, I know you don't want us to run on with questions, but it's relevant to the military medical part? So yesterday in response to what you said about not wanting to send the military medical staff to to Staten Island and only to public hospitals, Borough President Oddo and Congressmen Rose said, “the ease in which the de Blasio administration allows the fact that Staten Island has no public hospital to be an excuse for them to avoid their responsibilities to Staten Islanders is stunningly callous and contemptible.” What do you have to say to that? And again, you know, about if you tried to ask the federal government to send staff to Staten Island?

Mayor: Thank you for the questions, Sydney. Look I think we're just in a kind of revolving door here and I'm just not going to play that game. Whatever any hospitals have needed around the city, there is 56 hospitals, when they have needed help, we've gotten them help. In the beginning, we all were struggling just to try and keep the most basic operations going as the disease was growing intensely. Overwhelmingly, the biggest challenges were in our public hospitals starting with Elmhurst Hospital. We needed to reinforce the places that were bearing the brunt. As we got more resources, we started spreading them more intensely all over. Every hospital has been served by that effort. As we got more personnel, we've been sending them all over. You know, I get requests from Staten Island, from RUMCSI, and every request is honored, whenever we have something, we provide it.

But the military medical personnel were explicitly requested for our public hospitals that were bearing the brunt. We got a good number. We got less than half of what we asked for originally. So it was not anywhere near the number that would have been ideal, but we've used them for the intended purpose. So I think this, your questions are trying to suggest something that's just not there which is any difference of feeling and concern. I care about all 56 hospitals. I care about all five boroughs. I think a lot of people don't want to ever let that in because it's politically inconvenient, but that's fine. I'm used to it by now. If the hospitals and Staten Island need something, we're going to get them help. We always have gotten them help, but different hospitals, different communities are dealing with different needs. That's just been clear throughout.

The other question, the indicators, again, as I said to you several times, the public hospital indicators are the most consistent and they tend to reflect what we're seeing from all 56 hospitals, but they are more readily available and consistent information. I'll double check with the team again, but to date, no one has shown me evidence that we need to broaden. You're seeing something in these – this indicator I think isn't there. It's not meant to be what's happening in each of 56 hospitals. It's meant to be a trend line for the whole city and using the 11 public hospitals is a simple verifiable way to do it and appears to be consistent with what other hospitals are experiencing.

Moderator: Last two. Katie from the Wall Street Journal. Katie.

Question: Hey, good morning everyone. I have a question for Dr. Babrot and it's actually about the warning about the Kawasaki disease and the toxic shock syndrome seen in children. I'm just curious what took the city so long, I guess to identify these pediatric cases. I know you said on April 29th that the city had not seen cases of this severe rare illness and children and they were surveying pediatrics intensive cares. So the 15 patients were hospitalized between April 17th and May 1st. So was there just more monitoring being done or what can you explain the gap there? Thank you.

Mayor: Yeah and let me jump in on Katie's question. Oxiris, and obviously if Mitch or Jay would like to join in as well after Oxiris. Start if you would by defining so everyone knows, particularly parents know, what are these syndromes? Explain it from scratch and how do identify and what it does to children, et cetera.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Certainly, Mr. Mayor. Kawasaki's illness is actually a rare condition. When I was a pediatrician in clinical practice, I actually had patients with Kawasaki's disease and what we see is generally children present with prolonged high fevers, several days of very high fevers. They can also have very red eyes very brightly colored lips, and then, you know, one of the hallmarks that we see is called what we call a strawberry tongue, which means their tongue is very bright and red. Then the other symptoms that children can have are rash. They can have swelling of their hands and feet, and generally if the condition is identified early there is definitive treatment, and there are typically no long-term consequences. However, if this, the syndrome is not identified early, there can be long-term consequences, most commonly related to ongoing heart problems.

So the important thing here is though that when you have a syndrome that's not very common in the context of a worldwide pandemic, there are situations where pediatricians may not be thinking, oh this could be an atypical manifestation of what's going on. And so we, when we got the question from Melissa, made sure that our – I directed my staff to reach out to all of the pediatric providers to say, are you seeing these types of symptoms coming in in children? And they're like, oh yes, we actually have seen them, or no we haven't seen them, but we will be on the lookout. And so, you know, in public health oftentimes we say that outbreaks are made or broken by astute clinicians that are paying attention in clinical settings, be it their private practice, be it in the emergency department, or be it in an intensive care unit. And that then signals the call for us at the Health Department to look more widely across the city to see if this is a one off or if this is part of an emerging trend.

That being said, there have been cases identified in the UK and we are learning that there are very small numbers of cases that have been identified in, for example, Philadelphia and Boston. We're not sure what to make of this yet, and as I've said several times in the past or still learning every day about how COVID-19 behaves not only from a public health point of view, but from a clinical point of view. And as we have learned that for example, in adults, the virus doesn't just affect the lungs. It can also affect the kidneys. We are learning that even though children by and large are mildly affected when it comes to COVID-19 that there can be situations where they are more severely affected. Thank God in this situation we haven't had any children who have died from the number of children that have been identified with Kawasaki or Kawasaki like illness. And so we want pediatricians, we want pediatric intensive care specialists to let us know when they have more patients and importantly, as the Mayor alluded to or stated in his opening remarks, we want parents to pay attention so when they see these symptoms to reach out to their doctors early, because the most important thing in this situation here again is not only diagnosing it early but providing the appropriate treatment early. The treatment for this is something called immunoglobulin as well as aspirin and it's actually one of the few, if not the only pediatric conditions where aspirin is an indicated treatment. So kind of a long winded answer, but very important that we not lose sight of the fact that we need doctors to report, it's actually part of the health code to report when they see atypical presentations of common conditions or even rare conditions because it could be, it could help inform our greater understanding of how this vicious virus is affecting our city as a whole.

Mayor: Dr. Katz or Dr. Varma, you want to add?

President Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: I think Dr. Barbot did a great job of responding. I would only add that the city hospitals have successfully taken care of children who have this condition. So it is something that the astute clinicians that Dr. Barbot was talking about did see and provided appropriate care for the children.

Mayor: Excellent. Dr. Varma?

Senior Advisor Jay Varma: No, nothing else from me.

Mayor: Right. Thank you. Okay.

Moderator: Last question goes to Melissa from NBC New York. Melissa?

Question: Hi. Good morning Mr. Mayor. And I want to thank you so much for the acknowledgement. I really do appreciate that. What changes are you making now to make sure that your Health Department is getting the most up to date information on these emerging health concerns? And at this point, how, if at all, does the knowledge that children are impacted by this more than maybe we thought change or considerations about planning safer schools? That's my first one.

And then I have to ask one for my colleague, Andrew Siff, who wants to know, given that studies show minimal outdoor transmission, it seems like the city is expending massive energy on policing outdoor behavior. Wouldn't time and energy be better devoted to testing and tracing?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Thank you Melissa. Melissa, appreciate your question and again, always appreciate when our colleagues immediately bring things to our attention that we want to make sure are deeply focused on. So I think the first question, look, we have to be vigilant. We have seen some things with the coronavirus and I'll start and certainly our three doctors can jump in afterwards if there's anything they want to add. We have seen some things with the coronavirus that have been very consistent from the beginning. For example, that the vast majority of people did not need hospitalization – ended up with something that, you know, was much less severe. But there obviously had been so many people who did need hospitalization and so many people we lost.

That is, you know, there's no consolation on the fact that most people went through it better, but the predictions did hold on that sort of vast majority not having the extreme experience. From the beginning, we heard that the impact seemed to be mostly on those with preexisting conditions and older, particularly much older folks. That again, very sad for everyone who has been affected. That truth has seemed to be consistent pretty much throughout, but we have to have our eyes open for anything that might change and evolve – I mean our doctors have been warning us all along that no one knows everything about this disease anywhere and it's an ever changing situation. There's always new information coming in. So no one is saying we have the definitive understanding that we'd like to, we haven't seen much impact on kids, but when we see something like this, we're going to be very, very vigilant and anything else that might come along like this. So we'll be all over protecting every child who is affected in this way. But in terms of what it means for schools, I think the way to think about is, you know, that decision about how we're going to restart schools in September and exact ways we'll do it will evolve in the months between now and that we certainly want to make sure we come back safe and if we're seeing any other particular challenges to kids, we're going to add that into our strategy. But my bottom line is I believe fundamentally we'll be able to reopen schools in September, but the way we are going to do it has to be a safety first approach and absolutely we'll have to reference the best knowledge we have as we get closer from the health care community.

And on the outdoor question from Andrew, I don't think it's an either-or. It's a fair question for sure. I would say it this way: the testing and tracing operation is going to get anything and everything it needs to succeed. That is a different question than how we use all of our enforcement personnel to ensure there is social distancing. The fact that our numbers are going down is directly related to the fact that people stayed home to the maximum extent possible, practice social distancing, and more and more wearing those face covering. That is why we are seeing the amount of people affected by this disease steadily declined.

So we're going to stick with those strategies and we have to enforce them to make sure they work. That's just reality, especially in warmer weather. So I don't think it's either or. I think we will have a strong enforcement approach, constantly be informing and educating people, but also build an intensive testing, a tracing apparatus. We need both actually to succeed. It's the only way forward.

Doctors, anything you want to add on Melissa's questions? A question about how we stay vigilant to anything that might affect kids and, and as we look forward to school. Anything you want to add to that?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, Mr. Mayor, I would add – first of all, I want to start by thanking Melissa for bringing this to our attention. And it's certainly something that we will continue to pay close attention to. So as a result of this, we issued a health alert that goes to thousands and thousands of doctors across the city. And so my and expectation is that as a result of us issuing [inaudible] as a result of the coverage that this is getting, we will get more cases identified, a Kawasaki’s Illness, as well as Kawasaki-like syndromes in children that are more aggressively infected. And so we will continue to monitor that situation. You know, with regards to the ongoing transmission of COVID-19 and children, I think from the beginning we have said that children are not an exception to this, that they like adults can be infected, they can transmit the illness, but that the learning that has gone on has been that they are not severely affected.

I think one of the new things that we are also learning and I think time will tell how much this will sort of change the clinical course and the public health course is that the strain of the virus that we're actually seeing here in New York is behaving slightly different than the strain that was observed in China. And so hence we're seeing children with Kawasaki's – Kawasaki-likes syndromes. And so the answer is that the preventive measures that have been put in place with regards to closing the schools, social isolation, physical distancing, the face coverings, that the vigilance of around hand hygiene, all of those things are the layered approach that are going to help us when the time comes for safely opening our schools. And I think that we've got a significant amount of time to continue doing that learning, learning from the scientific community and you know, as we've demonstrated to date: as the science becomes available, our guidance needs to adapt to that to ensure that we continue to keep New Yorkers safe.

Mayor: Dr. Katz or Dr. Varma, anything you want to add?

Senior Advisor Varma: I would just like to kind of emphasize the fact that we have to be really humble in the face of this infection. There's a lot that we're still learning. And there's a lot that we'll continue to learn. The fact that it wasn't seen or reported in Asia, may be something to do with the virus. It may be just that there needed to be a certain number of people that were infected until we saw these things. So I think it really does reinforce number one, the fact that we're learning as other people are learning. So we value the feedback and input that we get from providers and patients and need to always be open to consider new possibilities. And the second is that it just really does emphasize how important the efforts that New Yorkers are taking regarding social distancing. We can't be complacent and say that you know, even though kids generally have a mild illness, of course, if it's your child or yourself that gets that illness and it's severe you're more than just a statistic. It's a real dangerous problem. So I would just emphasize that these points about the need to be humble in the face of new information, constantly accepting and learning it, and also emphasizing that we should never take this virus too lightly.

Mayor: Amen. Dr. Katz, anything to add?

President Katz: No, sir. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you.

All right. We'll conclude today and I just want to go back to the point about when people need help, where they turn. I want everyone to understand this has been a time in our lives, in our history, unlike anything else we've ever been through and I think there've been many, many times where people have been shocked to be dealing with something they never would have expected. There are people right now watching right now who have had to worry about food. I did a conference call with a tele town hall, I should say with thousands and thousands of members of AARP and a man got on the line from Manhattan who clearly explained that he had never had to wonder about food before in his life, but now had to and it was a shock to him. There are people who always had a job until the day that there were no jobs because of this crisis. Folks who felt that they had their life together and now are dealing with fears, anxieties they never could have imagined. This is happening to everyone in one form or another. I want people to not feel alone. I want everyone to know we are here for you. Your city is going to stand by you and support you and help you. That's where I talk about 3-1-1 as the way to think about that, helping hand that's always there. You need a meal call three, one, one. You need to know if it's time to, for example, just what we talked about with the Kawasaki syndrome. You need to talk to a medical person about it and you don't have your own doctor call 3-1-1. We'll connect you to health and hospitals, whatever it is. If you – you have a landlord is talking about evicting you, which is not allowed in the middle of this crisis, call 3-1-1. We'll give you the information you need. We'll get you a lawyer if you need. The bottom line is to think that if you can't make sense of the situation, there's some place to turn. You're not alone. And by the way, if you're dealing with the doubts and the anxiety and the fear or even feeling depressed, it's quite a time in history. It's not at all abnormal for anyone to feel depressed. We have another way to help and that's the helpline that's there 24/7 for free, 8-8-8-NYCWELL, for anyone who wants to talk to a trained counselor.

These are the things we do in New York City for each other, and we will always be there for you, and you should never feel alone – even in the toughest moments, there's always helped there for you. And today I particularly thank everyone at 3-1-1, they don't get a lot of attention, but they are always there for us, always helping people to get what they need, always there with the answers. And that means so much to us every day, but particularly in this crisis. So, everyone, we will get through this together, but one of the ways we've always gotten through in this city is by being there for each other. And we will continue to be there for you.

Thank you very much.

2020-05-06 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. Today, I want to start with a word – and it's not a word that is necessarily one that's so common to life in our city – and the word is, moderation. Moderation sometimes may seem like a bit of a foreign word here in New York City, and I mean that in a way that's actually kind of positive. We, as New Yorkers, we tend to think about big dreams, have big plans and do things with a lot of energy. As New Yorkers, we put our all into everything, and you certainly have seen that in the way that all of you have fought back this virus. It's been outstanding and I'm very, very proud of the people this city. Just like we do everything in a big bold way in normal times people have fought back with all they’ve got in this time, and that's why we're pushing back this disease more every day.

Now, it would be natural for New Yorkers to want a big, fast, bold restart. It's natural for us to want to get back on our feet as quickly as possible. We are not a patient people, and that is in many ways part of what makes us great, but this is a time where we need to start appreciating what's good about the word moderation because for us to get to where we need to go, for us to get to that big strong restart and to get to the recovery which I know we can achieve, we have to do this the smart way. This is a case where a little moderation I think would be good for all of us. One step at a time and let's get it right. So, there's no on off switch here. This has to be done in stages, it has to be done gradually. That doesn't mean doing it any slower than it needs to be done. It means doing it just right. When it's the right time to open up a step, we do it. When we prove it's working, we take the next step, the next step, the next step. And there's a lot of questions we will answer as part of this process and we're going to come to decisions, share them with all of you, and together we're going to make them work.

So, for example, what kind of personal protective equipment will people need in each industry, in each part of our economy as they open up. We want to be very specific about what will protect both the folks who work in each industry, and their customers. We have to be very clear about how we're going to use temperature checks. I think this'll be an important part of the equation, but how are we going to use them? Where are we going to use them? Making sure we have enough thermometers. These are all things that we're planning on right now, and as we get the details ready to go, we're going to be announcing.

How do we make sure that cleaning is handled the right way? It's going to be different depending on what type of work we're talking about, but we want it to be clear and transparent. What kind of cleaning is going to be necessary to sustain the right environment going forward and keep everyone safe? And when someone tests positive, what happens next? Well, we all know, we've been talking about it for weeks now and you're about to see it come alive. The test and trace initiative is all about identifying people and then tracing their contacts, making sure everyone who needs to be isolated is isolated. Everyone who needs to be quarantined is quarantined. We want to be clear how that works, right down to the point where someone shows up at work and at that moment finds out they've got a positive test. What do they do then if they find out the night before, what do they do? We're going to lay it out so people know exactly how to handle each scenario.

Now, we already know a lot from the science. Even though no one knows everything about this disease, we know a lot from the medical community. We know a lot about what has been working and not working in other places of the world. We're going to take the good models, and adapt them for what we do here. But we also know there's no place like New York City and we know that we as a city government, we can take all the best information, and come up with the right game plan, but we need to always run it by the people who actually do the work. The people in each business, the people in each sector of our life in this city and our economy, who understand the day to day life of their workplaces best, and can give us real world advice about what's going to work, what's not going to work, what questions they need answered. We want to help each business back on their feet as quickly as possible. To do that, we have to listen to them to make sure that we answer their questions and hear their view of what they need. So, we are bringing together what we call sector advisory councils from different parts of this city. Both in terms of different parts of our economy, but also people represent all of us, all the different neighborhoods, people of all backgrounds, people of different perspectives, to help us understand what is needed to get this restart right. And it's very, very important that we think about everything that makes up life in this city.

So, we're naming a group of different councils. We're going to start with a group of people that I'm appointing to each. If we think others need to be named, we will, if we think any other group has to be formed, we can do that obviously at any point. But I think this initial group gives us a good start at some of the things we have to work on right away. So, today we are going to roll out six councils and then there will be four more on the way after that. The first of these we'll meet tomorrow. All the others will be meeting in the next few days. By next week everyone will have had their initial meeting, and we'll be up and running. And their views, their questions, their input are going to be used immediately in our restart planning, and then continue on as we build ahead towards recovery. Each group will have between 20 and 40 members. Each group will be led by one or two deputy mayors and heads of different city agencies seeking their input. We'll roll out today the names of the first six councils, and then the additional four as quickly as possible, and I'm going to give you some examples of councils we're bringing together that are particularly crucial for the restart.

So, small business, this advisory council will be led by our Deputy Mayors, Vicki Been and Phil Thompson. Now, small business has really taken it on the chin here, and even though I am glad there's been a very robust federal aid program, we need to make that program work a lot better, and we're pushing hard on the federal government on that front. We need to make sure every single New York City small business that can take advantage of it does. We want to figure out every way we can help. We also have to think about the sheer mechanics of how this restart can work best for small business. What small business are going to need, a lot of small businesses are very worried about their comeback. A lot obviously have much less in the way of resources than bigger businesses. Small business owners have poured their heart and soul into their small businesses. Nothing more personal than creating a small business, making it work, making it an asset to your community, your neighborhood, to this whole city. It's never easy, and on top of that, with all the struggles any small business goes through, and they're going through a lot of struggles before this crisis hit. I talked about a lot in my state of the city address back in February. Now on top of this, this pandemic, which has created even more uncertainty. So, we are going to listen. We're going to come up with plans that will help small businesses back on their feet. We need them. We need them because they’re the heart and soul of our city. We need them because they-re so much of what makes New York City great. We need them because that's actually where a huge percentage of employment is in this city. We need everything. We need our bodegas and corner stores. We need our bars and restaurants. We need our startups. You know, that are such an important part of our emerging tech economy. You name it, we need them all. So, this group will be eyes and ears, idea generators, innovators to help us figure out the next steps.

Obviously, the city has a huge number of larger businesses as well, and we depend on them deeply. The larger businesses will be crucial to jump-starting our economic recovery. We're going to be listening carefully for how we can help them to get up and running as quickly as possible. Certainly, from the employers I'm hearing from, that's their desire to hit the ground running. But also, there's a tremendous understanding we have to do it right, and we have to do it in a way that's safe, and we cannot allow that boomerang to happen that we've talked about. With larger businesses in many cases, thousands of employees, huge logistical considerations. Many have big workplaces that have to be thought of very smartly in terms of keeping everyone safe. This group again will be led by our Deputy Mayor Vicki Been, and bring together leaders of large businesses from around this city, and we welcome their input and we need it.

The next group focuses on labor, and workforce development. Look let's face it, who is hurting most in this crisis? Working people. Who is this city? Why is this city so great? Because of working people. Who makes this city great? Working people. And so many working people have been heroes during this crisis, keeping the city going, and they will be the heroes of the restart and the recovery as well. They need to be heard, and their rights need to be protected, and their needs need to be recognized, and their voices often left out when governments make their decisions, this time we have to get it right, and have working people and those who represent working people at the table from the beginning. I am a big believer in the power of our labor movement. They will be front and center. Their voices will be heard as we build this restart and recovery. This group will be led by First Deputy Mayor, Dean Fuleihan and Deputy Mayor Phil Thompson.

Now, something that makes New York City, New York City. Unquestionably all of those amazing organizations and institutions. All the incredibly talented people in our arts community, our cultural community, in the tourism sector. We're bringing together a group focused on those areas, arts, culture, tourism, because it is the essence of so much that makes New York City great in our hearts, in our souls, and what we are proud of. Obviously also one of the underpinnings of our economy, and one of the pieces that we've been missing deeply has to come back strong, has to come back smart, but this is also a sector where some of the biggest challenges exist, because synonymous with gathering a lot of people together in one place. Some of our arts and cultural venues gather thousands and thousands of people in close quarters. How are we going to go about that in the future? When is the right time to do what? That's what we're going to work through with this group. Strike that balance – safety first, health of people first. Making us fight off this disease at all times is job-one, but we want to bring this sector back strong. We want to figure out the right stages to do that. Deputy Mayor Vicki Been will be leading this group, working with great leaders from these fields.

We have seen faith leaders of every background say safety and health of our people first and they've had to do really tough things, shutting down worship services, but making sure that always it was about people's safety, I commend them and thank them for that. The value has been on human beings and human lives and that's been so powerful and commendable. Now, the practical question now comes into play. How are we going to restart worship services and what's the right way to do it, when and with what conditions? This is something that like the other kinds of larger gatherings has to be approached very smartly, we're going to be listening to the voices of our faith leaders as we develop those plans. And again, everything is going to start to move in the coming days and weeks as we put these pieces together, we can project step-by-step their voices will matter immensely, this group will be led by Deputy Mayor Phil Thompson.

A new sector council that we're adding is in the area of construction and real estate. Big, big part of this City's economy, big part of what makes New York New York as well, and people want to get back to work and we want to get them back to work, but here are a set of challenges as well. Different kinds of work, some which might lend itself better to social distancing, some which might be better in terms of health, others present other types of work in this field presents more challenges, particularly indoor work. We got to figure out what kind of personal protective equipment is needed, what kind of distances needed, what kind of schedule needed to get this right, this group will be led by Deputy Mayor Laura Anglin and Deputy Mayor Vicki Been. So, those are some of the initial councils and we'll be putting out those names for more coming behind that. The good news is this is an example of listening to people who are the experts because they live the life, they do the work, they understand what everyone's going through. We want to hear from them, we want to hear their voices helping us understand what will work, also warning us about what may not work. Everyone has that New York energy, that desire to get going – we're never going to lack that, these folks are also going to help us figure out how to strike that balance and based on real experience and they will be pivotal in the effort to get New York City going again. I want to say in advance a thank you to everyone who's agreed to serve on our advisory councils, we're going to ask a lot of all of you and we are deeply, deeply appreciative for your willingness to serve New York City.

Now, that is what I've talked about is the things we have to do to get ready for the restart and the recovery, but right now as we're doing that work, we're fighting every day against this disease. We're fighting every day to make sure that the people of this City are kept whole and supported no matter what this horrible crisis throws at us, and that means both the health care crisis and the economic crisis talked about many times. Our priorities right now four things, people's health, safety, making sure everyone has food eat, making sure everyone has a roof over their head. Well, in that last category, we all know the challenge this City has faced for decades is homelessness and we also know that homelessness is a problem that has often defied conventional solutions. That's why we started to do some unconventional things over the last few years, nothing more powerful than the HOME-STAT strategy and the more recent vision called the Journey Home, which are all about ending permanent street homelessness through intensive engagement with homeless individuals who live on the streets. We've seen some things start to work, but what we've talked about in recent days was something that clearly had not worked for a long time, which was the reality that many homeless people, particularly in colder months of the year will go into the subways and then many cases spend all night going back and forth on a single subway line. What a horrible situation for everyone starting with that homeless individual, not safe, not right, not right for the people around them on the subway train either. In recent days, some really new and important thinking has emerged because of this crisis, because of the challenges it created because we had to think differently about how to keep mass transit running, how to keep it safe and clean, how to support our essential workers. The Governor and I and our teams and the course, everyone at the MTA, we worked together on this notion of closing the subways in the overnight hours for deep cleaning. And also, as a way to facilitate a different kind of engagement with the homeless to disrupt that pattern that existed for decades and was getting us nowhere. Well, I'll tell you something, last night was the first night that we got to see some evidence of what would happen if the subways were closed in those late-night hours. The deep cleaning was happening, and everyone had to leave the stations including homeless individuals. We only have an initial snapshot cause we're talking about something that just happened hours ago, but the initial snapshot is a powerful and positive one. Last night, 139 homeless individuals out of 252 who were engaged by our outreach workers and by the NYPD officers, specially trained in homeless outreach. 139 individuals agreed to accept support, accept services and come in off the streets, come in out of the subways, this number is extraordinary. First of all, more than half of the people encountered and engaged, agreed to leave the subways to leave the streets and come in and that's an amazing reality to begin with. But we have more importantly never ever seen so much success in a single night before, we've never seen this many people, this higher percentage of people who are living on the streets agree to something different and it's only one night. And we obviously need a lot more information, we need to see how things play out over a longer period of time. But this number is staggering because look consistently what federal surveys have shown is that this City, and I don't say it with anything but sorrow, but the facts have been consistently that the federal annual survey shows somewhere between 35,000 and 4,000 people living on the streets of our City streets and subways combined. If in one night 139 people took a step towards leaving that life and coming into a safe haven or a shelter and starting the process of getting to long-term housing and never going back on the streets, that's an extraordinary number for one night and very encouraging. We have to sustain it in many, many ways, we've got a lot of work to do, but I want to say to everyone involved, to the NYPD to everyone at Social Services and Homeless Services, to the MTA, to the Governor's team. We all work together on this vision and hopes it would create something new and the very first night we see a very hopeful sign. So, we've got to keep at it and hopefully this is beginning of something much bigger and really good for people all over the City and particularly for those who ended up on our streets and our subways who we want to get back to a better life.

Now a related point, I've said I want to always give credit where credit is due when our colleagues in the media point out a problem that we need to fix. I always appreciate getting that kind of heads up so we can do something about it. Juliet Papa from 1010 WINS has been particularly active, pointing out problems, and luckily, we're able to fix these problems. So, yesterday she talked about three encampments of homeless people, I want to make sure all New Yorkers understand, whenever you say the word encampment, it means that there are homeless people who attempt to set up sort of a long-term living arrangement. This is something that used to be common all over the City, absolutely unacceptable, absolutely not right for the homeless people, for their health and safety, not right for the communities they lived in and everyone around, just not right for New York City and yet for decades it was a norm that these encampments existed and were not disrupted. In my administration, we made a decision that from our point of view, it was unacceptable to have it as single encampment anywhere in New York City and they had to be dismantled anytime they're identified. And we've been doing that now for years and it's really caused the encampments to become a rarity, but whenever we see a new one, we immediately take it down because again, it's not fair to anyone and it's not healthy and safe. Juliet identified three encampments yesterday morning, I want to thank the NYPD, I want to thank Homeless Services, I want to thank the Sanitation Department, they have worked together to dismantle those encampments. All the people who were living there have been offered help, which is always the goal, we don't want to see anyone living on the street, we want to always offer help. So, those three conditions have been addressed and anybody in the media, we welcome anytime you see something like that, we want to address it immediately. But all New Yorkers call 3-1-1, if you see anything like that, if you see any place where homeless folks are congregating, we need to know so we can get out there and address it and get people help and get them off the street.

Well, speaking of streets some good news today as we continue to build out the open street’s initiative. This is an initiative city council put this idea out there, it's an idea that now is ready to go into higher gear. Want to thank the city council for their partnership, want to thank the NYPD and Department of Transportation, Department of Parks, all the city agencies that are working together to make this work. And thank God all those city agencies have more and more of their employees coming back who had been sick with COVID-19, the workforces strengthening all the time, so we can do these open streets now with the right kind of enforcement and make them work for everyone. So, over the last few days, including the weekend, we have opened over seven miles and now we're adding two more miles that will be open tomorrow, Thursday. And in this case, these are specific sites that are being managed by local business improvement districts. So, local organizations that do such important work for their communities and are taking responsibility for making sure that everything is set up and monitored and is safe and they'll work very closely of course with the NYPD and DOT. I want to thank the Flat Iron partnership, Garment District BID, that Lower East Side BID, the Downtown Brooklyn partnership, and the Third Avenue BID in the Bronx, all of them stepped forward and are going to ensure that these streets that you can see there on the slide will be open streets, again, starting tomorrow. Also want to announce that one open street that was part of the very original pilot program, this one is now coming back. It's a half mile long, 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights pilot location, now becoming a full-time location for the duration of this crisis. And again, this is the next phase, we're announcing more to come soon as we build this initiative out.

Another thing we are building out all over New York City is the initiative to distribute free face coverings to all New Yorkers who need them. This is getting a very enthusiastic response. People are really thankful to be getting these face coverings and the more they get, the more they're using them, which is exactly what we want. I told you this week earlier that we would be distributing 7.5 million free face coverings and that is really going to make a huge impact. And so people who want to know where they can get them, again, we have a map that identifies locations all over the city. We've added a number of locations since the weekend. All you have to do is go to nyc.gov/facecoverings and you can see any, you can see a number of places where you can get a face covering to help protect everyone, your family, your fellow New Yorkers to help drive back this disease.

Now I like to express my thanks every day. There are so many people doing so many good things in this city. This is the ultimate team effort, 8.6 million people pulling together to fight back this disease. Well today is one of those national days of thanks for a particular group that has been just unbelievably heroic and that is our nurses. Today is National Nurses Day. So, listen, unbelievable, just absolutely breathtaking what the nurses of New York City have done during this crisis. They're heroes in this city; they're heroes to this whole nation. So, I think it's a fair statement if there's any New Yorker out there or any American out there who didn't appreciate our nurses before, well they damn sure well appreciate them now. And that is just and fair that nurses are finally getting the recognition they deserve, but we sure want to do more. I've had the joy of going out to a number of our hospitals, places like Elmhurst Hospital, Kings County Hospital, a number of others, to applaud all the health care workers; take a special appreciation thanking our nurses for what they've done here. And everyone today when you see any health care worker, but particularly since it's their day, when you see a nurse say the word thank you and say it with passion because they deserve all the thanks in the world.

Okay. Now, I'll frame what we do each day. Of course, go over our daily indicators. I'll frame this by saying not every day goes the way we plan it. The big trend is good, but day-to-day we still see fluctuations that are sobering and it's a reminder, do not take our foot off the gas. Do not relax our rules until it's time. Get it right, fight back this disease. Avoid that boomerang because today we see some numbers that reminds us we still have some work to do. So, on the first one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that number has gone up. Look, it's gone up markedly, although thank God against a much smaller base than it used to be. So, from 75 to 109, we got to see that go down obviously. Daily number of people in ICUs across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19 - still too large a number overall. The increase is small from 596 to 599. We got to get that number down; that's another key piece of the puzzle. Very good number to go down is the third one, percentage of people testing positive for COVID- 19 citywide – that is down from 22 percent to 15 percent. Obviously, a particularly universal measure – that is a good example. That's good news today. So, more fight ahead. We want to get all these numbers going down together. I am convinced we will, but we got some more work to do.

So this brings me back to that word I started with, moderation. Think of the virus again - give it human characteristics for a moment. This is a virus that seeks out our weaknesses. Talked to you a few days ago about some places, some big cities in Asia that started to open up a little too fast and unfortunately had to clamp back down, in fact add new restrictions. In some cases, it was only one part of the city where there was a problem, but it became a problem for everyone. This disease looks for our weaknesses and tries to exploit them. We can't let that happen. So again, I see all over the city, incredible discipline, incredible adherence to the rules. I want even more. I don't want to let this disease back in the door. So, let's keep fighting because I know we all want that restart. If you want that restart, let's get it right, right now. Let's, and we'll do it in moderation because that's how we make sure that every step we take holds. Then we take the next step. That's the game plan and we'll have a lot more to say on this in the coming days.

Okay, a few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish] 

Okay, with that, we are going to turn to colleagues in the media and as always, let me know the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: And just a quick reminder that on the phone we have Deputy Mayor Been, Deputy Mayor Thompson, Dr. Barbot, Commissioner Banks, and Commissioner Trottenberg. And the first question goes to Gloria from New York One, Gloria.

Question: Thank you. Good morning. Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask we heard from Pat Foy this morning who said he believes 2,000 people were removed from the subways. I'm wondering if you have any information on that and out of the folks that you were able to engage can you give us an idea of exactly where those people were sent? What is the resource that the city is using at this time and what are you doing to ensure that they don't go back on the subways when this crisis is over?

Mayor: Got it.

Question: My second question

Mayor: Gloria, wait a minute. Wait a minute, timeout. Again, we're going to keep – guys, I really need everyone to understand this. Gloria, that's a multipart question. We're going to stay there with that, respectfully. We got this rule where we're trying to give as many people an opportunity in the time we have. There's a lot going on that I need to get back to every day. So, what I meant, I originally said to each journalist, one question. We decided to give people another question. They're turning into three, four, or five-part questions. We can't do that. So, let's make it clear. I'm going to make sure we answer what you just asked - great multi-part question. We're going to answer that and I'm going to ask your colleagues who follow to please do really literally one or two questions. And if people can't do that, then we're going to have to change the format to make it even simpler because we just need to be fair to everyone. I want to get to as many people as possible. So, I'm going to start and then turn to Steve Banks.

Gloria, from what I can see, and I want to make sure we're speaking the right language here about what's going on. First of all, again, very thankful for the collaboration with the state and the MTA. I think something very important is happening. Steve will be able to tell you everything we're doing once people do agree to accept services, because this is something that's now been built over three years – the HOME-STAT initiative. It's really, you know, a pretty well- oiled machine now with great results. Several thousand people have come in off the streets and stayed in and not come back to the streets. So, Steve will talk to you about what we do with people to make sure that they receive those services and stay-in to the maximum extent possible. But to the number, I want to caution that again, the federal government's annual study that's been going on for a long, long time says the total number of homeless people in New York City, on the streets, on the subways, all five boroughs, is somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000. That number has been pretty steady in recent years. In the really cold months not like now, but the more the winter months, you do see a lot more people go into the subways. Steve will give you his view. He's literally one of the leading experts on homelessness, not only in New York City, in the United States of America, and he's been at it for about 30 years. When I hear that number, I respect Pat Foye a lot. I like him and respect him; we've worked closely together. I don't understand how that number could be accurate given what we know of homelessness in the city and this time of year. It's hard for me to imagine that many people who are actually street homeless. Now, that's [inaudible] different from people who might live in a shelter or people who maybe appear to be homeless, but may not be homeless, but that number surprises me is all I'll say. But Steve, you're the, you're the expert. Tell us what you think of that.

I know he's out there. Steve, can you hear me? Alright.

Commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Social Services: Can you hear me now?

Mayor: There you go.

Commissioner Banks: You hear me now? Okay. I mean, I can tell you what we saw last night out in the field and the platforms. You know, we were down at World Trade Center and other locations working with the staff. We encountered just north of 250 people and in about 60 percent of them accepted services and came inside. And, Gloria, we have shelters and safe havens and we're providing the same services to the people last night that have enabled us to bring, you know, 2,500 people off the street who remained off the street, and that's really the key metric. And, you know, look, some people may return, but we'll be back every night, offering that helping hand to bring them off the streets with the same success that we've had over a period of time, bringing lots of people off of remain off the streets – more than 2,500. But I also want to put the numbers in context, and Pat Foye and the MTA have very collaborative with us. We appreciate the collaboration with NYPD and our social services not-for-profit staff. But, you know, half the people that you see in the subways are transient, meaning we'll see them one or two nights and then not see them again. And last night was really a focus on the people that are long-term on the subways. And so, that's why I think the success of last night is just preliminary, it's only one night – about bringing in 139 people is really what we're focused on. The human beings that are in the subways and had been there for a long period of time, as opposed to the people that may be there one or two nights and we never see them again. And then, that's the perception that there's lots of people there for long periods of time. Actually, our focus is on the people that are really there a long period of time and those are the people that were able to bring in last night.

Mayor: Yeah. And, Steve, just, if you could take one more step in that answer, I think we all want to understand a little bit better. Again, hearing an estimate of several thousand, my question is, from your experience, is it conceivable that, that could all be street homeless folks or do you assume that some combination of people that is street homeless and other kinds of folks?

Commissioner Banks: I think, again, experience tells you that people end up on the streets for brief periods of time or are perceived to be on the streets for different periods of time for a whole range of economic reasons, but they're not the people that you see every day. And those are the people that you see every day that we're focused on in the City's plans. And so, someone who might be panhandling, for example, may well have a home. I think that people make a lot of assumptions when they see people and assume that they don't have a roof over their heads. What we're doing with our social services staff is actually determining, through our by-name list, which individual – individual by individual – needs our services and who we can bring inside. And, you know, sometimes this all gets lost in large numbers. At the end of the day it's about human beings. And on a case by case basis, that's who we were able to bring in last night and we'll keep doing that.

Moderator: Next is Marcia from CBS-2. Marcia?

Question: Good morning. Mr. Mayor, how are you doing?

Mayor: Good, Marcia, how are you?

Question: Good. My first question has to do with social distancing enforcement. As you're well aware, I'm sure, Jumaane Williams and Eric Adams say the NYPD enforcement of social distancing has shown racial disparities, that the enforcement has been subjective and selective. And, of course, they want you to release data. I wonder your take on it and if you've given any instructions to the NYPD in terms of guidelines for who gets approached and who gets a summons. And my second question has to do with the homeless again. Homeless advocates are saying that you're taking homeless people off the subway, but not providing them with safe alternatives. Your response to that?

Mayor: Thank you, Marcia. No, I just respectfully disagree profoundly with those advocates. I appreciate their work, but, again, you know, Steve Banks, leading our efforts to help the homeless, one of the premier advocates for the homeless, you know, for decades in the city, in this country, and what Steve has created with his team and with all the amazing nonprofit organizations that do the outreach is something absolutely unprecedented in the history of the city. And it is compassionate and decent and it's about helping homeless folks get to a Safe Haven or a shelter that works for them. We've been adding so many more spaces in places that homeless people – you know, where we find them, where they need to be so that we have places that work for them. We provide medical care, food, substance abuse support, you know, in terms of programs to get them off substances, mental health services. It's extraordinarily compassionate and we know it's effective because over 2,000 people have come in and not gone back to the streets. And I would think the advocates would want to applaud and support something that is ending street homelessness, something that's never been done in the city before. And we put a huge amount of resources into it and is clearly working. And this new opportunity because of the collaboration with the MTA I think is going to open the door wider for getting even more people off the streets.

On the question of the NYPD, I've been in touch with both Borough President Eric Adams and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. We've had very constructive conversations. I understand the concern 100 percent. I want to see fair and equal policing everywhere. That's what we've been devoted to now for over six years, changing the nature of policing in New York City to make it focused on neighborhood policing and being respectful and responsive to every community and more deeply connected to every community. And I think it is working. I think the challenge we all have with this pandemic is we're learning new ways and new approaches. We’ll have a lot more to say on how we're going to refine our approach, particularly with the warmer months, but the message NYPD is be consistent across all communities, you know, communicate with people as always under neighborhood policing, help people to understand this is about their own health and safety and their family. And the vast majority of people, Marcia, are accepting these rules and following these rules. It's actually been quite rare that the NYPD or any other agency encounter as much resistance. The vast majority of New Yorkers get it and they're living this way. And sometimes they need to be reminded or sometimes they need to be offered a face covering, but they accept and they act accordingly. We definitely want to get the data out, so we will make sure the NYPD gets the data out. It's going to show you where there's been, for example, summonses. But remember, there hasn't been a need to do a lot of summonses in the last two months for social distancing – that's a good thing. But definitely that transparency will be provided.

Moderator: Matt from Newsday is up next. Matt?

Question: Hey, good morning, Mayor. Two questions. First, this morning on TV you said that localities, including New York, are “either acting on furloughs and layoffs or preparing for furloughs and layoffs.” How many people are you preparing to furlough or cut? And secondly, absent of crime, that two people who live together have a right to be in public without practicing social distancing – yes or no?

Mayor: So, Matt, on the social distancing issue, the way I've understood it from the beginning, and Dr. Barbot can comment on this too, that if people are already entirely exposed to each other all day long in their household, social distancing is a different concept than it is for folks who are not exposed to each other. If you're already in constant contact with someone, it does not require the same approach as if two people who do not live under the same household – same roof, I should say – come in contact. So, our focus and enforcement is to make sure, first and foremost, there's not large gatherings – not any kind of gathering; second, that social distance is recognized; third, that people have face coverings on – in that order.

On the question of furloughs and layoffs, what I said this morning is I've been talking to mayors all over the country – Republican and Democrat, both – some of them already announced layoffs. Some of them already announced furloughs. Some are planning to, every one of us has to start looking at that possibility if we don't have any money. We have a budget coming up in June. I'm not here to project anything while we're in the middle of fighting for the stimulus funding, because that's what would get us out of this mess, and that's what New York City deserves. That's what every city and state that's suffering deserves, is stimulus funding that makes us whole, that replaces all the loss revenue, that allows us to retain our full workforce, ensure that public services are being provided, basic services so we can get on with a restart and recovery. That's what I'm doing right now. I've been talking nonstop to the members of our Congressional delegation – spoke to Speaker Pelosi on Sunday. We need to get that stimulus done so that people don't have to experience furloughs and layoffs. If it doesn't happen and we're missing $7.4 billion in revenue, then all options are on the table. But it's not time to talk about specifics yet.

Moderator: Erin from Politico is up next. Erin?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. On the question of the subway, the homeless people on the subway – so, if I understand correctly, these folks, if they accept your offer being sent to shelters, is there any consideration of offering them the hotel rooms? You know, if that might be safer than the [inaudible] shelters?

Mayor: Well, again, I'm going to turn to Commissioner Banks, but I want to note that over these last years – this is another thing that didn't get a lot of attention and it really should have, so I want to bring it to light now. For decades, there was a bad division of labor, I think, in this city where shelters that needed the positive influence of the NYPD didn't have it. And some years ago, we made the decision – and I really want to thank the NYPD for seeing how important this was – to have the NYPD go into shelters, supervise the security, train the staff, and have a regular presence in our shelter system. That's been tremendously helpful in terms of making shelters safer. On top of that, we really invested intensely in the Safe Havens, which are much smaller facilities. So, I think we have to keep in mind that the realities of our shelter system are different than what they were a few years ago, different also because we have so many more Safe Havens. And then you have to think about the individual and what they need. Steve can speak about it more eloquently than me, but, depending on each individual, they need certain services and supports. Some people could fit a hotel run fine, others may not and may need a different kind of supervision and support. So, we're tailoring it to each. We have hotel rooms available whenever we need them now, but the decision I think becomes very case by case. Steve, why don't you jump in?

Commissioner Banks: If I could just add to that. I think it's important to understand the range of tools we now have to try to meet people where they are and bring – help people come in from the streets. In terms of our overall shelter system, right now, about 7,000 of the single adults out of the 17,000 single adults are actually in commercial hotel rooms as part of some initiatives that proceeded COVID-19 and some that were put in place since COVID-19. And we're continuing to move people out of our single adult [inaudible] shelters into hotel rooms, that will continue. So, coming into our regular shelters, there are pathways to get into the commercial hotel rooms that we're bringing online literally every day. In terms of the tools that we have to bring people in from the streets in addition to our traditional shelters, with now the availability of commercial hotel rooms through that system, we also have the Safe Haven beds and the stabilization beds, some of which are in hotels now that have enabled us to bring the people in off the streets over the past several years. And people are accepting those beds every night, that we're bringing people in from the streets. And I think we announced a week ago that, even in the middle of the pandemic, we're opening up another 200 beds in the Safe Havens as, again, a pathway off the streets for human beings. So, there are a range of options that our shelter system now has, some of which we didn't have before. And that we're using those – all those tools to try to bring people in from the streets.

Moderator: Debralee from Manhattan Times-Bronx Free Press is up next. Debralee?

Question: Hey, good morning, everyone. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah, Debralee. How are you doing?

Question: I'm well, thank you. I wanted to follow up, Mr. Mayor – and actually I'm not sure if Commissioner Shea is on, but I wanted to follow up on this conversation about the enforcement on social distancing, specifically about the fact that you've got both PBA President Pat Lynch and other thing that there's just not enough clarity around the guidance, that there isn't really a sense of what it is that police officers are supposed to be doing when they approach people who they feel are in violation of social distancing guidelines. Moreover, others are saying that this is just another opportunity for subjective policing and are concerned that this is going to become, particularly as warmer monster approach, that it’s going to become just another opportunity for mistakes. Forgive me. That said, can you speak to the fact that others are calling for other agencies and other individuals to be involved in this other than police officers? That this is in fact not a policing conversation, but particularly, as it deepens, and you've got more people out in the streets, that this should become a citywide conversation across other agencies. And then finally, I wanted to ask Commissioner Barbot, with wellness visits being postponed by parents who are concerned about visiting doctors, what guidance is the City offering for parents who want to make sure that their children are vaccinated on time and are receiving the – receiving the visit that they need in light of the fact that there is now Kawasaki concerns and also that we are asking people not to travel and visit doctors unless they absolutely need to.

Mayor: So, I'm going to let Dr. Barbot answer that and I'll double back to the policing answer, but just to say, as we lead into Dr. Barbot, I've been very struck already, Debralee, by visits to a couple of our Health + Hospitals clinics, one in Morrisania in the South Bronx, the other in Coney Island, that the way they are reporting so much more use of telemedicine in this crisis and that it's actually getting everyone more used to using it, and lot of the patients, a lot of the people who go the clinic are getting more and more accustomed and more and more comfortable with that option. So, even as we're navigating the question of people limiting travel or not being willing to go out, I do think we're seeing more and more use of telemedicine in a helpful way and it's something we clearly want to deepen in our efforts as well. We’ll more to say on that soon. But in terms of how to advise parents, Commissioner Barbot, jump in, and then I'll come back on the other question.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Certainly, Mr. Mayor. And, Debralee, thank you for the question, because I think it's an incredibly important one. You know, when we hear new information that is potentially scary for parents, like something like Kawasaki’s or Kawasaki’s-like syndrome, it can make parents more hesitant or more concerned about what they should be doing for their children. And so, I want to just clarify that even though we are hearing about Kawasaki more and more, it still remains a relatively rare condition, and we want to draw attention to it because during this time it can be confused with other things and we don't want to lose time in terms of children getting access to treatment that can be definitive and avoid long-term consequences. In addition, we want to make sure that not only parents, but New Yorkers in general know that health care is open for business, meaning that we want New Yorkers to seek prepositions that they may have that they've had to put off seeking care for because maybe their doctors weren't open. And, as the Mayor said, it doesn't necessarily mean going to the office in person, but it could mean having telephonic access. It could be a whole host of ways in which medical practices are now objecting to social distancing and how they continue to see patients and ensure that they have ongoing care. And so, that also extends to children going to their pediatricians to get their necessary vaccinations. We want parents to continue taking children to their pediatricians ensuring that they have, you know, the proper face coverings when they go. We are working clinical practices to make sure that they are also open and available to provide patients with necessary vaccinations. I know that H + H is very much actively reaching out to patients to make sure that parents know that they should be bringing their children and to get their vaccinations as scheduled, because we don't want this situation to then lead to children getting infections or conditions that are vaccine preventable. So, I think it's a really important question and that opportunity for us to get out the message that medicine is open for business and that practices are seeing patients for things other than COVID and that there are ways to conduct these visits that don't always need an in-person visit.

Moderator: Jeff Mays from the New York Times is up next, Jeff?

Question: Yes. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. You didn't really answer the first part of Debralee's question about –

Mayor: Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Let me – Jeff, hold up. I meant to and I got caught up in other things here. My apology and then we'll come back to your question. Yes, Debralee on the previous – so look again, we are dealing with something that is entirely new still to all of us. It's going to take time to get it as good as it should be, but I think the core realities are still strong, meaning we have for years now built up a philosophy of neighborhood policing. We have a whole new generation of police officers who have been trained in this. All the entire force has been trained in this philosophy in de-escalation. I think we've seen two months now of the NYPD engaging the people of this city in the context of the coronavirus. And I have to say, and I obviously every day am listening for what's working and what's not. We've seen a couple of really unfortunate and inappropriate instances, but only in my view, a very small number compared to the vast number of interactions between our officers and our communities that have gone the right way. And I want to keep things in perspective. Our officers are trying to understand how to be effective in this new reality, this pandemic. We need to do more to create clear, simple protocols and make sure that our supervisors are supporting them. We also have to remember that for weeks we had the NYPD missing a huge percentage of its officers because of the disease. We're now coming into a situation where the force coming back to its normal levels. We're getting more and more experienced with what works, what doesn't work in terms of trying to figure out the right kind of enforcement. Again, the hierarchy I present is were most concerned about stopping of larger gatherings.

That's where the most danger is and then enforcing social distancing on a more individual level and then the face coverings and most people, this is the bottom line and I've checked this many times over with community leaders and with the NYPD regularly. Most people when asked to create more distance from around the people around them, or are asked to put on a face covering, they're doing it. So, we're not having overall a compliance problem. We do need to give clear guidance. And to the other part of your point, Debralee, we definitely want to bring community leaders and community organizations much more deeply into this. Previously when the virus was on a constant upswing, that wasn't our focus, obviously. Now that we're getting some relief, it's something we can do more and more. And obviously with the warmer weather it makes sense to do it more and more. So, I have more to say on that in the coming days as well.

Moderator: Jeff?

Mayor: Jeff?

Question: Thanks. Just following up on that question just given the interactions we've seen between police and enforcement of the sort of individual social distancing, I mean, do you think that there's a benefit to that enforcement or does it outweigh the risk of these negative interactions you've seen police without masks and some of these encounters. And then secondly on the subway, what are your expectations about a return to 24-hour service? Do you have any sort of timeline and do you do you expect that 24-hour service will eventually return?

Mayor: Yes, Jeff, absolutely. There's a conversation the governor and I had as part of the decision to move to the overnight cleaning. He was clear. I was clear. We were totally unified, that we will return to 24-hour service. Obviously the state runs the MTA, but this was something to me was prerequisite to the city agreeing to this plan and agreeing to the, you know, putting the resources into it that we are, is we want to know that when the crisis was over, we would resume 24-hour service. I think the answer to your question is when the crisis is over and that will be determined by our indicators that will be determined by what happens with this disease. Look, my general hope is that we're going to see more and more normalcy through the next few months with particularly this very aggressive test and trace approach and that it'll get better with each month. And when we get to September, particularly with the beginning of school, I want the beginning of school to happen fully and safely. And that is one of those things I think will signal that New York City is back in a really strong way. I want to get us there again, that moderation approach to get us there. So, I'm not going to be surprised if the overnight cleaning goes on for months because health dynamics require it. But my hope is it's a matter of months. And then we get to a situation where we can go back to the 24-hour service.

On the question of police officers. I've had this conversation with Commissioner Shea. It's absolutely essential that officers wear masks. The idea is of course for their role that they play in our society, it is, everyone looks to them for guidance. Everyone looks to them as an example. We want people wearing masks when they're outside and coming in contact with people. Look the rules clear if you're outside and you're not coming in contact with anyone, that's a situation where you don't, are not required to wear a mask. But I think it's safe to say police officers are in contact with people very, very regularly. And so, the notion of wearing the mask regularly is the right thing to do. And again, I am watching really closely what are we seeing with interactions overall across now two months – the rules have evolved over two months, but the reality of dealing with the coronavirus and the police's role in the coronavirus crisis over two months, we've seen very few incidents. People say, oh, it's getting warmer. Be careful. Be worried about that.

I'll tell you, Jeff, I, from the very beginning of the administration, people have warned me about the warmer months and I think it's something we take seriously. I know I take it seriously, but I don't want to overrate it either because the world has changed a lot of ways before this pandemic. The reality of policing in this city has changed profoundly. The reality of the city has changed profoundly. The summers are not what they used to be in the city. I remember when summer was equated with just vast amounts of crime and violence and tension between communities and tension between communities and police. That has not been the case in recent years. In the city and the pandemic cuts both ways. It has changed a clearly has created a lot of frustration and challenges. It's also changed people's lifestyles profoundly and it's caused a lot more unity, I think, a lot more purposefulness about what can out for each other – a lot fewer people on the street to be policed. So no, I don't think it's, you know, a simple equation that says, oh, we're inevitably going in one direction. I think we have to give clear guidance to our officers and make adjustments and we will do that. But I think the vast majority of interactions between our police and our community are positive and effective and, and I have faith that will continue to be the case.

Moderator: Kathleen, from Patch is up next, Kathleen?

Question: Thank you Mr. Mayor and everyone. I was just wondering if you had a response to the Comptroller's Office report yesterday estimating as many as 900,000 people lose their jobs this quarter. And since my second question was already asked, could I seed it back to Gloria for hers?

Mayor: That’s an inventive approach, but I'm not going to get into that today. I think if Gloria had sent you the question you wanted to ask it, that's great, but we're not going to bring her back on the line. So, if you have a second question, ask it now, Kathleen.

Question: Oh, that's okay. That's what I've got. If you could just focus on the report, I would greatly appreciate it.

Mayor: Great. So, Kathleen, look, it's a staggering number. I mean, think about this in human terms. You know, that's so many families that now are left in doubt for their future. That's so many people who are not going to have money for the basics in their lives. There's so much pain that comes with that. When you hear that number, it's just unbelievable. I appreciate that the Comptroller did this report. It is sobering. Look, we have been preparing for this reality now for the last two months. That's why, you know, just earlier this week I said, we are now ramping up our food program to be able to feed a million people a day. I mean, think about that. A million meals a day.

Unfortunately, we've entered a whole new reality and this certainly puts a point on the human suffering happening in this city, but it also puts a profound point on why we need federal aid and we need it quickly because the situation is getting worse all the time. And because people are suffering, because the ability of the city to reach people is getting strained where we're going to use everything we have, but it's getting strained every additional time someone loses their job, it's more and more need that gets created. So, I take that number very seriously. We're going to build everything we do on the assumption that it's that number and could even get worse. We're going to be there for every New Yorker. As I said, the focus will be health, safety, food and shelter. That's where we're going to keep our focus all time for whatever the number of unemployed people becomes. But if ever there was evidence why the federal government needs to step in now, I mean, we've literally not seen anything like it in our lifetimes. This many people becoming unemployed this quickly. So, we need a much bigger response to be able to really protect people going forward.

Moderator: Anna from the Daily News is up next. Anna?

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. I like your haircut, looks nice.

Mayor: Thank you Anna.

Question: I just wanted to get an update. How many coronavirus tests are being conducted in New York City today on average? Last week when I checked in, it was about 14,000. We obviously need tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands a day. What are we at?

Mayor: We're in that same 13,000-14,000 range the last I checked a day or two ago. We will keep updating on a regular basis and we need a breakthrough, meaning we need the federal government to come in with a real sea change in terms of lab capacity because Anna, what we're seeing right now – so we're around, let's say we're around 13,000. The fact is we would like to be initially, you know, tens of thousands a day. I want to get to 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 a day as quickly as possible. We'd love to get higher than that. Now the antibody testing is coming into play now more and more and that's certainly helpful. So the numbers that you and I are talking about, the PCR test, the diagnostic test, which still I think are the single most valuable tool we have in a test and trace program, but even with the imperfections of antibody testing, we're going to use that information. It's going to contribute to what we do in terms of testing, tracing, isolating, quarantining, making decisions about how individuals can engage their workplace or not. It's another piece of evidence we're going to use. We obviously started without even having any testing and we had to base things on people's symptoms.

That's not the whole story, but that's another piece of evidence we can work with. But to get these tests numbers up really closer to where we want to be, we've got to get a lot more lab capacity. We now have the self-swab test approach, which is easier and faster, but we need that lab capacity whether we're doing self-swab or test kit, whatever it is, we need the lab capacity to really increase and that's what we're working on right now. So I am very hopeful in the coming days when we pull all these strands together, we're going to be able to put up real numbers that will allow us to do the test and trace we need to, that would really have a transcendent impact, but there's definitely more work to do on the lab front.

Moderator: Gersh from Streetsblog is up next. Gersh?

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Good, Gersh. How are you?

Question: I’m doing great. I appreciate that. Listen, two quick questions. The new Open Streets that you just announced are just almost entirely all of them being overseen by business groups. As you know, the City's effort to get a hundred miles will involve community groups and residents to create the open space under guidelines asking for some pretty serious commitments in terms of staffing and monitoring the space. Today's announcement reveals a potential problem with that. Will the only communities that get this vitally important Open Streets program be those that have Business Improvement Districts or neighborhood associations that happen to have the luxury of not being completely preoccupied by matters of life and death for essential workers in those communities? And just the quick question is, I noticed you finally decided to include transportation is one of your recovery panels. I'd like to know about that.

Mayor: Sure. On the first point, Gersh – so, no, we're not, this is a beginning. We expect to be in every kind of community. In fact, you'll remember that when the idea first came up, the central concern was how do we do it safely? Will we have the right kind of enforcement; will we have the right kind of structures? As we have been working with this model, we're finding different ways to get it done that we believe are safe and come with structure. So I really want to emphasize my concern from the beginning was needing structure, needing enforcement, needing safety. I think as we're getting deeper and deeper into it, we're finding more and more ways of doing that. And that's great. We also said from the beginning, this had to be something that focused on where the need was greatest, where this kind of approach would benefit the most, and when we worked with the City Council on the recent package, one of the strands was focus on communities that have been hit by the disease hardest. Another of course focus on the areas around parks and in parks where the demand was growing with the warmer weather. So, these examples you see today are just the beginning. You're going to see these, kind of, open streets in all five boroughs more and more, and you're going to see different kinds of organizations that have the capacity to help make them work and give them real structure joining into it. We'll announce them as they come together.

In terms of the advisory panel, and you raised a couple of good points in some of your colleagues and the media did too, about what is going to mean for the future to come back differently in this city in terms of issues of transportation. When we put together the panels initially, we were thinking about the most immediate restart issues and obviously some of the issues around transportation are going to be dictated by larger realities that are different than what's happening, for example, with small business. A certain amount of our transportation system clearly has – a lot of our transportation system has continued unabated because it had to. So, it's a different reality. It's not the same kind of level of restart as, for example, what we're going through with small business, but we put the group together because even though it's less about the restart, it's very, very important to what happens in the months thereafter. And we want to start planning now and again, some of the questions – I want to thank you, Gersh, and I want to thank your colleagues that raised this point about is this an inflection point, is this a moment to rethink how we get away from too much dependence on cars? And the answer is yes. We need to see this as a transformational moment, even with all the pain, even with all the challenges, we are not going to bring New York City back the way it was. We're going to bring it back in some ways that are different and better. And because we're in a transformational moment, we can rethink some things and do them very differently.

So, what I want to see from this group, again, less about the immediate restart decisions we have to make in the coming weeks, more about how we think about the months and years ahead. I want ideas on how we maximize mass transit, minimize use of the automobile, think about this in terms of fighting global warming and pollution. Think about this in terms of fighting congestion. Think about in terms of equity for communities and really help us take a big jump forward by the end of this administration in terms of how we approach issues of transportation with an eye on the future.

Moderator: Last two, Julia from The Post. Julia.

Question: Hey, good morning, two separate questions for you, Mr. Mayor. One is a follow-up on the furloughs and layoffs, are you willing to sacrifice first responders, teachers and health care workers without first making spending cuts identified by Comptroller Stringer, programs that do not have proven results such as Thrive NYC and unnecessary DOE contracts? And then my second question is a follow-up to what you said on TV this morning about nursing homes. You said that some COVID patients should go back to the facilities because that's where they're known. But how does that make sense if you're also exposing other vulnerable elderly residents to the disease? Shouldn't there be alternative facilities where they can go and get good care to help prevent the spread of the virus?

Mayor: So, Julia, as I've talked to our health care leaders, there has been a recognition that this is a complex question, it’s not a simple question of saying that the best thing for a senior is always the send them into a hospital setting. What I think I would say to take your question and broaden it further, is we need some real serious changes in the approach to nursing homes. Although the city doesn't have a direct role in nursing homes, and because I don't experience these issues because we don't regulate the nursing homes, what I'm seeing on a human level is unacceptable and obviously the city has trying in every way we can to help the nursing homes in the last two months to get them a lot of PPEs and provide whatever support we can. But I think this crisis has pointing out that we need a different and better approach to nursing homes going forward. A lot of them are for-profit enterprises. If that model is going to be continued, it's obviously going to need more rigorous standards going forward, but on the specific question of where should a senior be if God forbid they contract COVID, first of all, a doctor has to decide that the second of all, I do understand that you have to think about the totality of that senior’s life and for many seniors in nursing homes to be away from that place could be problematic and a whole host of other ways. I think the question is can the nursing home support that individual while keeping everyone else safe? If they can, that's a viable option. If they can't, of course the seniors should not be there, but I think it's up to doctors and it's about each individual case.

On the second point, we're going to just disagree from the beginning, respectfully and I respect the Comptroller, don't agree with him on some things as well as to which initiatives are having which impact on people. Anything that's about health and safety as a priority, whether it's physical health, mental health. We’re focused on health. We’re focused on safety. We’re focused on shelter, and we're focused on food right now. So, I'm going to look at the entire budget and for the duration of this crisis through that prism. I said earlier, I'm not going to start projecting what we have to do in terms of the budget. I'm saying that if we are missing $7.5 billion now and then add the projections that the Comptroller just gave us on unemployment, which means horrible things for working people and families, but also means there'll be less and less revenue on top of that for the city. If our revenue picture continues to get worse and worse, not just for the next Fiscal Year, for the one after that too. If we're threatened with potential cuts from the State level because the State has run out of money, we're going to have to do very, very painful things and every option will be on the table.

The way to avert that, the right way to do it, the fair way to do it, is for the federal government to step in and bail out cities and states all over the country, in every part of the country that is hurting. Every place that's lost revenue, not any fault of their own, deserves to see that revenue replaced. The federal government can do it. I keep saying they found $58 billion effortlessly for the airline industry, why are they not helping America’s cities and states get back on their feet? So that's what we're going to fight for. I'm going to remain hopeful in that fight because I think there's a groundswell of support including from Republican governors and mayors. That's the way to solve this problem. I'm not going to theorize. I'm going to say let's go solve the problem in Washington, otherwise any and all options will be on the table.

Moderator: Last question goes to Dave from ABC-7. Dave.

Question: Hey Mayor, I just wanted to ask you two quick things, so if I could please. I didn't quite understand what you, and if Steve Banks wants to clarify or you, the difference between Pat Foye’s number of the number of homeless people on the subway this morning and what your all's tally is? The differences, and I think Steve used the word transient, if they were just on the subway catching a ride, hanging out, they are not counted in your tally but they are in Pat’s, and what you're saying is upon interviewing them that you determined that they are long-term basically living on the subway. And my really quick question to you Mayor is I just wanted to get your thoughts on the president announcing yesterday that the white house coronavirus task force is going to be going away sometime around Memorial Day? It seems kind of early.

Mayor: Yeah, Dave truer words ain't never been spoken. It sure as hell does seem kind of early. I don't understand it. And Memorial Day is right around the corner. I do not understand what he's thinking. Dave, I checked this morning and my understanding is that there are several states where the numbers are increasing markedly, big states. This is – we are not out of the woods by any stretch of imagination. So, thank God things are getting better in New York City, but we still have a long way to go. That fear of the boomerang is something everyone should be having on their minds until you are sure this disease has been fought back down to the point where we call low level transmission, where there's so few cases you can trace every single one in all their contacts, until that point, no one should breathe easy and this isn't a place where the number of cases are going down.

If you're in – if you've got parts of the country a number of cases are going up, that's a profound danger to the people in those places and even more to the rest of the country that it's going to start to spread elsewhere. So, this is far from over. I do not understand what he's thinking. He should not close down that taskforce. He should treat this as the national emergency it is. President needs to understand the coronavirus is not going away right away, no matter how much you wish it was. He needs to understand that the thing he could do to actually fight the coronavirus would be to get us all testing and he still hasn't done it, and needs to understand if he wants a restart and a recovery, he needs to help the cities and states. And as of last night, he is more interested in helping rich people get a break on their capital gains tax than he is in providing relief to New York City and other cities and states around the country. So, I think he is losing touch with the reality and that is very, very dangerous.

On the number of homeless, it's a good – I'm glad you asked the clarification, Dave. I'm going to say it and then Steve can join in again as one of the leading experts anywhere. We know again from annual studies that the number of permanently homeless people, which I think when people are talking about homeless, they're thinking about the street homeless, the person who's on the corner for months or years on end, the personal lives in the subway, and that's a thank God, many fewer people than I think people imagine. But still way too many, and we have to end that phenomenon once and for all, versus a lot of people you see panhandling, they're actually not homeless. They have a home there, they live in a shelter, not homeless in the sense of street homeless, have no place that they go to at night. So, I think there's some confusion sometimes on which is which. We have a very specific strategy for folks who are permanently street homeless versus someone is out on the street part of the day, but has somewhere to go at night. And that number 2,000 just doesn't sound possible in terms of talking about permanently homeless people. So, Steve, again, I'm trying to as a layman explain it. You can do it better than me, but could you finish out that answer?

Commissioner Banks: Yeah, I would just add to that, that the people that we engaged last night were the people that we found in the subway. You know, Pat's a great partner. We work with him all throughout the year, and I think that one of the key realities here is that this work isn't just work we did last night. So, we know the people that are there on a long-term basis and we've been working to bring them off and we've had success on a human being by human being basis, and that's what last night showed as well. But that much larger number is often referenced for, you know, one night the coldest – usually a cold night in January. Sometimes it's warmer and more people in the streets rather than subways or vice versa. But the numbers that we engaged last night with the numbers that we saw last night, as opposed to as the Mayor said, that transient that – that people that, that have somewhere to go that may be seen much or twice and then not again, as opposed to the person you see all the time, and that's the person we're really working very hard to bring in and last night we had success, much more to do in order to really change lives.

Mayor: Yeah, and Dave, I mean look, it's way too early to tell. Obviously, we'll be at this for months cause again, I assume this period of having the subways closed at night for the cleaning will go on, you know, for months. But I mean if it's anything like what we saw last night in terms of the ability to reach people and actually change their lives and potentially get them off the streets for good, this could have a really transcendent long-term effect on this city. If you're talking about the worst part of homelessness is the folks who are permanently street homeless, living in the streets, living in the subways or some combination, but that, you know, at 8.6 million people that 3,000 or 4,000 people at any given point in time or living on our streets, it is one of the most painful things in the city. It's one of the things that bothers us the most morally in so many ways. We believe we can break that, change that once and for all, break that cycle and actually get these people to homes, not living on the street, living in a home. And we've seen real progress in that direction. But last night showed us something we've never been able to see before in history because we've never had a single night where all of the stations were closed for cleaning before. And if those numbers are at all an indicator where we're going, this could be the beginning of something very positive in terms of helping the homeless and improving life in this city overall. So I'm very, very encouraged by what I see.

Let me close it down now and just say to everyone that, and as we come back to that word moderation, I think it's a positive word in this case because it means you're going to get it right. It's a positive word because it means when we make the move to begin reopening, we're going to feel real confident about it. Then we make the next move, we're going to feel confident about that and so on and so on. We're bringing in the voices a lot of folks who bring tremendous expertise to help us make these decisions the right way, but what's going to guide us is the facts, the science and the sureness that when we do something, we really know it's backed up by some rigorous analysis and then when we do it, we watch to see how it's working and confirm it's working and then take the next step. If we can do that right and avoid that boomerang, the two points go together obviously, imagine how good it will feel to get to the point where we're really restarting and we don't have to be looking over our shoulder all the time, wondering if we left a door open for this disease. I want people to have confidence. I want people to feel the comfort that when we make these moves that are right moves and the folks we're bringing together to advise us who are going to help us a lot, and the next few days we'll lay it out more and more of the thinking coming out of these groups so people can literally start to visualize what the restart looks like and how we're going to make it safe and secure for everyone.

Thank you very much, everybody.

2020-05-07 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. This morning, I want to talk about something that really is quintessentially New York. Something that really is the spirit of this place and who we are, and I can summarize it with a simple sentence – New Yorkers do not lack for confidence. We are a people who believe in ourselves. We believe in our city. We have a certain energy in a certain spirit that is renowned all over this world and we need that now more than ever. That essence of who we are is what's going to see us through this fight. I'll tell you something, even a pandemic, even the worst health care crisis in a century, even an economic crisis that only rivals the great depression. Even with these things happening at the same time, I have not seen New Yorkers lose their confidence. Talk to a lot of people, all walks of life. I'm not going to say there are no doubting Thomas’s, but overwhelmingly New Yorkers tell me they are confident that we're going to come through this and come through this strong. They are confident about the role they are going to play in fighting back this virus and bringing this city back to life.

Now, this virus, understandably, this whole crisis we've gone through, it's not surprising if it gnaws at that confidence. If it's sows doubt, that's normal, that's human. Who wouldn't feel some moments of doubt in the middle of something this difficult, and that uncertainty that comes with it, a disease that still is not fully understood by the global medical community. A disease that we all wonder about in terms of our own personal lives. Even though we're confident by nature as New Yorkers, there's uncertainty pervading this whole experience, and the most essential question we all ask is have I gotten this disease already or am I going to get this disease. If I have gotten it or if I do get it, do I put my family in danger? The people I love in danger? The uncertainty is directly related to the lack of testing, that's been the reality from day one, and this has been the central problem in this crisis. The lesson we have to take from this as not only New Yorkers, but as Americans, our nation wasn't in position in terms of testing, and we can never let that happen again. But what we can say for sure is that every day more and more New Yorkers are getting tested. Every day there's a little more confidence, because there's more answers person by person, and they're starting to add up thousands, and tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. And this is going to give us a clearer picture of what's going on. It's going to help people have more certainty in your own lives. And won't happen overnight, but it will happen steadily from this point on, and we'll be moving in the right direction. So, to feel our natural confidence as New Yorkers and to answer those uncertainties, the key is more and more testing, and that's what we intend to do.

Now, there's two kinds of tests. The diagnostic test known as the PCR test. That's been the main part of the discussion from the very beginning of this crisis, and we still need to do a lot of that. And then there's the antibody testing. Remember, there's a clear difference. The PCR test, the diagnostic test answers the simple question, do I have this disease right now? It does not answer what happened in your past. It does not answer what happens in your future, but it does answer clearly, and consistently do you have the disease right now. It allows us to take the actions right now we need to take in a test and trace approach. The antibody test is, really refers to the past. It asks the question, did I get exposed to this disease in the past? And it therefore helps you understand the obvious answer of your own experience. If you did get exposed in the past, were you able to beat it? Well, you know it's, it's a good sign when you know your body's been exposed to this virus and you obviously came through it, it's a good sign. Does it tell you everything? No, and we'll always put that disclaimer on it. There are different kinds of antibody tests, some more accurate than others, some more specific than others. And even the best antibody test does not guarantee that you can't get the disease again. Seems that it's unusual for someone to get the disease again, that's what we've seen so far in our actual experience, but it is not a guarantee. What it does tell you is something and right now we could use all the certainty we could get, we can use all the information we could get. Any step in the direction of more information is better, and if someone knows they've been exposed before, that's helpful. That gives people more confidence to know they came through it. It's also really valuable in terms of the emerging treatment using plasma from folks who have been exposed before. That's a positive development that we want to support more and more, and more and more testing for antibodies does that, helps that along, and it's also part of answering the bigger questions about this disease. The more people test, the more our doctors and scientists have a body of information to help us really understand the disease better and beat it back. So, we are going to proceed energetically with antibody testing in this city as we also build up the PCR testing capacity at the same exact time.

Now, I talk to you before about the effort focused on our first responders, and our health care workers. That is a joint effort with the federal government, with the US Department of Health and Human Services and the centers for disease control. It will reach 140,000 health care workers and first responders, everyone making their own choice. If they want to participate, they will get individual results, but it'll also help us with the larger research we need to do. 140,000 New Yorkers will be tested. It will start next week at hospitals, firehouses police precincts, correctional facilities, and we're going to move that rapidly over the next few weeks ahead.

But now, a new announcement today. Beyond the testing that we'll do for our heroes, we're going to open up antibody testing to a much bigger group of New Yorkers. So, more and more people have the opportunity to get a test that will give them some information, some certainty as we fight ahead. So, as we do this, I want you to remember every time someone gets an antibody test, it's helping them have information. It's helping all of us to have information, so we're really killing two birds with one stone. The individual gets something they need, but the health care leadership, the scientists, they get the information they need to do the research better to answer the questions about the disease. So, real virtue in this. On top of the 140,000 for the first responders and the health care workers, we're adding another 140,000 for everyday New Yorkers. Combined 280,000 people will get antibody tests in just the next few weeks in New York City. Over a quarter million antibody tests will be given. These are numbers that really start to add up, even against the size of a city as big as ours. This initiative, the additional 140,000 that will be available in communities across this city, comes through a partnership with BioReference Labs. They've been an extraordinary partner with our public hospitals, Health and Hospitals. They've been a key part of our response to the coronavirus from the beginning. I want to thank the CEO of BioReference Labs, Dr. John Cohen, who's worked very closely with the City throughout. The first survey will involve 70,000 New Yorkers. It will start next week and continue through the month. It will be repeated again in early June. So, we'll get these 140,000 additional tests done between the remainder of May and the beginning of June.

We're going to work with five sites initially, but then we will be adding, and the goal is to focus on people in the general area of these test sites. I want to be very clear. There's so many people in the city. Any time you set up a test site, tens of thousands of people live very nearby. We want to focus on where the test sites are, not having to have people travel a long way to get to these tests, but we'll keep adding sites as we go along. So, the sites will be in the Bronx, in Morrisania, in Brooklyn and East New York, and Manhattan, upper Manhattan, Staten Island in Concorde, and Queens in Long Island City. 1000 tests per site every day. Again, 70,000 tests will be given in the space of about two weeks, and then we'll repeat that again.

Now, how does someone get this test? You get it by appointment. Again, the priority given to the surrounding communities and the hotline for making the appointments will be launched this Friday, tomorrow. Now, how does it work? You give basic information, because remember this is to benefit you as an individual, but also to get us information on what has been happening with this disease so we can fight it. So, people will be asked demographic information, employment information, very important. We want to understand how the disease has hit people in different parts of our economy, in different parts of the life of this city. It's a simple procedure. A nurse takes a blood sample, you get your individual result back in 24 to 48 hours. So, even though this is the kind of thing, this testing and the PCR testing is what would have made so much of a difference early on, and could have fundamentally changed the history of this disease in this city if we had had it early. It still helps us now to learn more and more, and obviously to give more and more New Yorkers the confidence in knowing their own situation. So, we will keep you posted as more and more details come out, but I'm looking forward to between the two kinds of testing becoming more of a norm in this city every day that people are getting to those tests and we're getting a better and better picture, and it's all going to contribute to our efforts on testing and tracing, which are going to be developing rapidly in this month.

Okay. Next thing I want to talk about is how we continue to deepen our response to this disease using every tool at our disposal. We already know some things – we want all the research we can get, but we know some things already and we've been very open about the very sad fact, the very troubling fact. That this disease tracks with profound health care disparities that we already knew in our City and it's only made them worse. So, when we came out with the information on disparities, when we showed the just painful raw truth about what's happening with health care disparities and impact of the coronavirus, talked about a four-point equity plan to address the needs of communities have been hardest hit. The fourth point in that plan regarded tele-medicine and we are now going much farther with tele-medicine than we have ever gone before through our public hospitals, through Health + Hospitals and the focus again will be on the communities that have been hardest hit by this disease. So, tele-medicine had become increasingly common in private health care, but not as much in public health care— before this crisis, now Health and Hospitals will be doing it on a massive scale. So, first phone clinician, this initiative, very straightforward and it's one of two key things that we are now putting into play. Phone clinician is about what you do individually, it means that, you know, as a New Yorker, if you don't happen to have your own doctor, if you don't have a place to turn to get an answer to a question that you can pick up the phone for free and get a health care provider from our public hospitals and clinics to answer your questions. We want people to get much more guidance even though more and more information is out there about the coronavirus. And again, New Yorkers have listened because you can see and how much progress we made in this City, that's because of your work, that's because you listen, then learned and acted on what you heard. There's still so many questions every hour, every day people have questions, the best thing is to know there's someplace to turn where you can talk to a medical professional and get answers, particularly in communities have been hardest hit. Helping people get the truth about this disease, helping people navigate tough situations, the most obvious being if you have symptoms, what do you do? Or if you have symptoms, how do you deal with keeping the right distance from other family members? Or if you test positive, what are your choices for how to isolate and quarantine? It's really helpful for everyday New Yorkers to have someone to turn to add any hour of the day that they can trust to give them real answers, not just a piece of paper or something they see online, but an actual human being. So, the free hotline is 844-NYC-4NYC – again, 844-NYC-4NYC, and this means that anybody, anytime you need to come pick up that phone and get answers and never leave their home, never have to go through the hassle or the challenges that come with going outside. We keep telling everyone, stay inside the maximum stand possible, therefore, tele-medicine is part of how we give people confidence they can get the help they need without ever leaving their home. Now this initiative is growing all the time, so far, in the midst of this crisis, we've had about 90,000 calls and the result is that over 90 percent of the people make that call, never need to leave their home, get the information they need, get the care they need through the tele-medicine process, and it works, we want to keep building on this. Now, our goal, all of us is to drive back this disease and not need as much help, but we know we've still got a road ahead here. So, our goal is to keep building up this apparatus, we expect to do at least 4,000 calls a day, and if the demand is there, we'll keep building more. So, in the month of May, we're ready to handle 120,000 calls, and again, if this becomes a popular tool, more and more people make the decision to pick up a phone and that is helpful to them, especially again, those who do not have a private doctor or a facility that are already working with that they can rely on. The more people use it, the more we will build it, but expect about 120,000 calls in May – that's going to make a great impact on the lives of those people and their whole families that they have access to that help.

Now, the second piece of this strategy is tele-visits and this is a different approach because this gets initiated by the health care institution. So, think about all those H+H hospitals and community clinics, a lot of them of course have a deep constituency in their neighborhoods of people who have been coming to them, are connected to them. In this instance, this means that the provider reaches out to the patient to check in. Obviously, the vast majority of people are not going to normal appointments right now. Now, previously in our Health + Hospitals facilities, particularly the community-based clinics, tele-visits were pretty rare, almost none, the whole idea was show up in person. Now already during this crisis, there's been 60,000 tele-visits initiated by Health and Hospitals clinics, this is going to deepen, this is going to be a big part of the strategy going forward. So, the goal is to ramp this up to at least a 16,000 per week starting in June. We believe that at least 80 percent of people who need through our clinics for now can do it through tele-visits. So, it'd be aggressive program by the clinics to reach their patients, check in with them, make sure they get whatever appointments they need. Of course, if someone needs to be seen in person, they still can be, but the goal is to the maximum extent possible, lean on tele-visits reach a lot more people a lot more quickly and always give people the option of getting health care without having to leave their home. Now, look for our public health care system, this is opening up a whole world of possibilities because this is now helping us understand things that weren't used so much before, but might be really helpful not just during crisis, but as we go back to normal might allow us to reach a lot more people. So, this is an example, something we're going to refine more and more while we're fighting back this disease, but I think it's going to be a crucial part of our restart and recovery and making a City that works better and is fairer. If we can perfect the use of tele-medicine in public health care, we're going to reach a lot more people and we're going to reach them faster. That could be an example of something that comes out of this horrible crisis that actually makes us a better city in the future.

Now, this crisis has been tough on everyone, but we know not only have some communities been particularly hard hit, we know some New Yorkers are going through a particularly tough time as individuals and this case I'm referring to homeless New Yorkers. People live on the streets, those 3 or 4,000 people at any given day who are permanently homeless. We have been trying intensely in recent years to bring them in and in this crisis again, new ideas are coming to the fore that are actually allowing us to reach people in whole new ways. And I'm going to report something to you that's pretty amazing today. You know, last night was only the second night in which subways were closed down in those very late night hours for cleaning and therefore all passengers had to leave the subway system and that meant that our Department of Homeless Services and our outreach workers and specially trained NYPD officers could be there in places where there were a number of homeless folks to help them out and offer them a helping hand and offer them a place to come in and get the support they need. Yesterday we talked about very, very impressive progress that was made just on the first night, but of course the question is, okay, well what's going to happen the second night, the third night? What does this really tell us? Well, the results on the second night were even better than the first night, which is very encouraging. Last night, our outreach teams engaged 361 homeless New Yorkers coming out of the subways when they shut down 218 of them well over half accepted help. Again, this is the entire core principle of doing this outreach work to constantly open that door. For those who are homeless to realize there's something else that could be done to make their life better, there's a different way that could pursue, 218 out of 361 accepted help, that meant 196 went to a safe haven or a shelter, 22 went to a hospital. Remember a lot of homeless folks out there need medical care, it's about helping them feel the confidence that they can come in and get help. This is an amazing result, now we've got a long road ahead, but this is an amazing result. Again, permanently street homeless, New York City federal studies show year after year in recent years, somewhere between about 35,000 and 4,000 people. When 218 coming in one night and then we hope and we pray that with a lot of good work, the vast majority of them will stay in except long-term shelter. And then affordable housing and all the support they need to deal with whatever challenge they have, whether it's a mental health challenge, a substance abuse challenge, whatever it is. When these kinds of numbers mean that that many human beings who had lost their way now get a chance to live a better life, that's an extraordinary story. So again, thank you to all those extraordinary outreach workers out there night after night, no matter what's going on, they're there. The NYPD officers who got trained to do this work, who are devoted to this work, thank you. Thank you to the MTA, great partnership going now, I think this also is something that could lead to a whole different approach in the future that will make life in the City better for everyone, particularly homeless New Yorkers.

Now, in this crisis, there are some other people who have been really vulnerable and this is a sad additional story within the story and it's not something we can ever turn away from to save people from the disease to knock this disease back to save lives. We have obviously had a policy of shelter in place, stay at home and it's obviously working. For the vast majority of people, it's about keeping them safe and keeping all of us safe, but there are some people who deal with a very different reality at home or home is not a safe place. And it is a painful reality and it has been before this crisis; we've seen some troubling trends that we must address aggressively. We've seen much domestic violence, too much gender-based violence. We can't accept that. We need people to stay home for everyone's safety, but we also have to find a way to disrupt this problem because it's unacceptable – unacceptable that anyone would be in danger in their own home. We do not allow that in New York City. So, there's always help available literally on a moment's notice. If anyone's in danger, not only will the NYPD come to help and they've put immense resources into fighting domestic violence, but anyone who needs shelter will get it instantly - no questions asked – 24/7 anyone who's in danger, we will help immediately get a roof over their heads and be protected. Anyone who feels endangered, there's a particular hotline for people who are facing this threat - it's 800-621-4673 – 800-621-4673. You know the person on the other end of the line will understand your circumstance and will act immediately to get you help. But responding to the crisis is not enough, we have to prevent domestic violence from happening to begin with. The NYPD and so many community organizations, so many providers, advocates have done extraordinary work finding new ways to fight back against domestic violence and gender-based violence. We need to find even more preventative strategies in this crisis and even more ways to protect those in danger. I'm announcing a COVID-19 response taskforce on domestic and gender-based violence, taking some of the leading minds and some of the people who do the most important work in this city to fight this scourge, bringing them together, working with our Mayor's Office to End Domestic and Gender Based Violence. We'll bring together about 20 of the leaders in this field, convening them right away to figure out what else we can do and what's working any place else in the country of the world that we can bring here. But the bottom line is, we're just not going to allow this to happen. No one should be suffering because they're at home; no one should suffer in silence. No one should be afraid that the place that's supposed to be their safe harbor is actually a place where they're in danger. We cannot have that in New York City. This taskforce is going to help us to come up with new solutions.

So, a couple more things and, and when we talk about new solutions, I want to talk about the challenge that this city faces. In fact, cities all over the country, all over the world are facing as we fight back this disease, as we restart and recover and then work together to find a better path for the future. So many cities have in common a lot of realities and we are increasingly working together to solve problems, to figure out what works one place that might work another place; to share ideas and approaches all as one because we face the same exact challenges. There's not a real sense of difference when you're talking city to city. I can tell you talking to mayors around the world; everyone has a common language in effect because we deal with the same issues and needs of our people. And we all know that as we come back, as we recover, we're going to be facing some huge challenges ahead, not just from this disease, but from what's happening all around us in this world. This disease has pointed out disparities and has also pointed out the danger of not being prepared for the bigger challenges ahead. So, we have to figure out all of us, all the cities of the world have to work together particularly to address profound dangers to health and safety when it comes to our climate. We've got to reduce pollution; we've got to reduce emissions. We know if we don't band together, global warming will overtake us and global warming is the kind of threat that literally everyone shares. It's a horrible danger, but let us pray it is a unifier and maybe in this moment as the world has fought this virus together, there's been some signs that the nations of the world might come together in common cause - the cities of the world are doing that already. So, we, New York City have been part of an organization called C40. It's a group of cities around the world that are committed to ambitious action to fight global warming and now C40 has laid out a set of resiliency principles for the cities of the world to follow in terms of coming back and coming back better. We've signed on to these principles because they give a good, very basic roadmap of the things we all need to do together and the things we're going to help each other do. And that means a focus on not just bringing back the employment we had before, but creating new green jobs. It means investing more in our people, in the health and safety of our people, including in communities that never got their fair share. It means reducing pollution, reducing emissions everywhere; obviously focusing on communities that have borne the brunt of pollution and the health care impacts of pollution. These principles are really helpful in guiding our work. They're going to be the kinds of ideas that our Fair Recovery Taskforce works with to broaden them into more and more specific game plan over time. But what's actually inspiring in this moment is I've said to you, as New Yorkers, as individuals, you should never feel alone your city's here for you. We also should not feel alone because all the cities of the world are banding together to fight these problems and to find solutions together. And that gives me a real sense of hope.

As we wind this down, I want to take an opportunity to offer some thanks and it's amazing as you've heard this week, there are many days and weeks designated to thank the people who serve us and are there for us, but those days and weeks don't always get all the attention they deserve. In this pandemic, there's a real spotlight on the people who are our heroes, the first responders, the health care heroes, the essential workers. So, you probably didn't know this before, but you should, it's National Correction Officer's Week and these are heroes who don't get their due. It's a tough, tough job. I've spent time in our correction facilities talking to our officers. They have a very tough job. It's thankless, it doesn't get the acclaim, but it's another crucial part of how we make this city work and how we protect people. Our correction officers have to show a lot of agility, a lot of creativity in doing the work they do because remember, it's not just the work of public safety, it is the work of redemption. The entire concept of why we call it department of correction is to help people come back from their mistakes, never see the inside of a jail cell again and our correction officers do amazing work to achieve that kind of goal every single day. So, to everyone at the Department of Corrections, our Correction officers, all the employees at Department of Corrections – appreciate what you do. It is not easy in normal times; it's been a lot harder during this pandemic. It's been a tough, tough time for all of you, I know, but you keep showing up and you keep making sure everyone is safe and you keep doing that work of redemption. And I want to thank you and I ask all New Yorkers, if you know anyone in your life who works for the Department of Correction, please give them a special thank you this week because they do so much for all, all of us. We don't get to see it that often, but it's, it's something we depend on a lot. Please give them a real heartfelt thanks.

Okay, now time for the daily indicators and again, I'm looking forward to us working together, continuing that strong disciplined approach you've all engaged in to get these numbers to go down together steadily. Today we have progress, it's not perfect progress, but it's damn close. So, this is a good day. I want to see even better days and I want us to string them together cause that's our pathway to opening up, reducing restrictions, and taking the steps towards the restart. So, let's go over to the indicators. Number one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 - that is down from 109 to 79. Isn't that good to hear? Only 79 people, now for those 79 people they are dealing with real challenges. I never want to belittle, even if a single person has to go into the hospital for COVID-19, but thank God compared to where we were only 79 people as of the latest measure. The daily number of people in ICUs across our public hospital system for some suspected COVID-19 that has gone down as well – from 599 to 567. Again, still 567, that's a lot of people, but it has gone down noticeably and that's great. Now, one thing went in the wrong direction, but I will say thankfully only by one percent, so you know, it's still a good day. Percentage of people tested positive COVID-19 citywide – up 15 percent to 16 percent. Overall, right direction – let's dig in and go farther.

Let me offer a few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Okay, with that we will turn to our colleagues in the media and please let me know the name and the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: We’ll now being now our Q&A. As a reminder, we also have Dr. Barbot, Dr. Katz, and Senior Advisor Jay Varma on the line. First question today goes to Andrew Siff from WNBC.

Question: Hi, Mayor. Good morning. Good morning everyone. Hope you're all doing well.

Mayor: Yes, good morning, Andrew. How you doing?

Question: Hanging in there. My question is about the testing. You have set out benchmarks for testing before and then acknowledged that those benchmarks, despite the best intentions were not met. So, I'm wondering, first of all, what assurances can you give New Yorkers that, that 140,000 number for first responders and 140,000 number for everyday New Yorkers will actually be met? And then assuming you do hit those numbers what is that information supposed to tell us?

Mayor: So, the 140,000 that the City of New York will do with BioReference Labs, I'm totally confident that that will get done on the schedule we've laid out and the details will be filled in, in the next few days. The 140,000 that we have been putting together with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control, I feel good about it because all of the steps have now come together and the mechanical process has been agreed to. And I expect that testing to start next week. It still involves the federal government. I think, Andrew, you would agree, it's been an interesting ride dealing with the federal government during this crisis. But, on this one, things have been moving very steadily in the right direction and we've gotten confident answers from the federal government about the ability to have this up and running for next week and to hit those numbers. So, the 240,000 pools I feel good about – that will get us 280,000 of the antibody tests right there in addition to all the other testing that will be going on. Again, it is a part of the puzzle. If we had – Andrew, if we had the perfect world, it would be a totally available, universal PCR testing, diagnostic testing. If we had the perfect world, that's what would tell us what we need to know, when we need to know it. That's what we should have had in the beginning of this crisis or as close to it as possible. The federal government has always struggled on the PCR testing. I don't understand it. It is the center of the fight. I first called for the help from the federal government on PCR testing on January 24th. I know others around the country did as well. And the reality of the testing is, the test kits – we know what it takes to make a test kit. Now, we haven't even easier way with the self-swab – the self-swab testing. We know what it takes to analyze a test in a lab. These are knowable things. These are things that can be acted on by the federal government. This is another area where the President has hesitated to use the Defense Production Act to the fullest. I don't understand why for the life of me, our country was not prepared for this and we don't make the things we need in the United States of America. And this is absolutely a negative result of globalization, a real indictment of all the decisions made over the decades to ship manufacturing out in the United States. And it has to be reversed, bluntly. And we're leading the way right here in the city by creating our own capacity and as many areas as we can to produce our own things. But still the federal government isn't getting it right on the PCR testing and they still need to, and they still need to use the Defense Production Act, and to get us what we need. But until that day, Andrew, we will do as much of the diagnostic testing as we can and we will do as much of the antibody testing as we can, because both tell us something and both are usable in our test and trace strategy and in our pathway to a restart.

Moderator: Next is Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to follow up about homelessness on the subways. Colleagues of mine who've been on the ground have found a number of homeless people refusing to go to shelters out of fears of contracting the virus there and instead sort of setting up on buses. So, I just wanted to get your thoughts on the [inaudible] that the problem is basically relocating from subways to the buses. My second question would just be if the outcomes you've seen from the subway closures are giving you to reconsider your opposition to calls from some homeless advocates who are pressing for the City to provide single hotel rooms to every homeless person. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. Shant, I appreciate the question, but I actually would say that in both instances the results we're seeing in the first two days entirely validate the heavy outreach strategy and the fact that when provided the choice the right way and when there's lots of support there, a lot of homeless people will choose to go into Safe Havens and shelters. This is something Commissioner Banks has been talking about for years. And, again, this crisis and the specific plan with the MTA is putting a point on it, but I remember – I remember the first press conference we did in Tompkins Square Park – and we can get to the exact date of that – when we announced HOME-STAT and how revolutionary it would be to put a huge amount of outreach workers on the task of bringing in homeless folks off the street and just investing whatever it took to gain the trust of homeless folks and disrupt the negative patterns of their lives and give them a better way. And over the last three years, that strategy has been proven and proven improving again, which led to our Journey Home strategy announced in December, to end permanent street homelessness. This new approach is striking to me because it is creating the kind of positive disruption that's causing homeless folks to make that decision to come in. So, no, the results are speaking for themselves. People are going to Safe Havens and shelter. Again, if there's ever a specific situation where our outreach teams believe a hotel is a better option, that's there for them. But we want to help people, Shant. Remember, this is not, like, someone just needs a roof over the head. These are folks who, for whatever reason, their lives ended up bringing them down to the street on a permanent basis, many, many of whom have either a serious mental health issue or a substance abuse issue or both. You can't just take someone like that and put them into a hotel with no support and call it a day. That takes intensive support, which is what Safe Havens do in particular. So, no, I would focus on the strategy we have now. And as for the homeless folks potentially going on the buses, that's something we have to disrupt as well. We have to help people to the better options. The buses, the subways are for essential workers – this is an emergency, that's what they're for. People who need help should get help. So, I am certain we can work with MTA to address that issue and keep maximizing the offer of help. And, as we do, we see more and more people taking it. That's a very good sign.

Moderator: Next is Marcia from CBS.

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Marcia. How are you?

Question: Let me say, I like the haircut. I hope you didn't do it yourself. Anyway, moving on. This is a social distancing question. Yesterday, the family of the 15-year-old involved in that incident and the 7-5 in the Bronx said that police social distancing arrests are the new stop and frisk. I wonder how you feel about that, but also what are you going to do about this? What will the new guidelines be for the NYPD? Are you going to tell them, you know, just not to issue summonses and make arrests, just to give out masks and sanitizers and advice and messaging?

Mayor: Well, thank you, Marcia. First of all, I want to affirm, thank God, I didn't give myself a haircut or the people of New York City would not be able to look at me as I give them these updates. So, I'm happy you like it though. That's a good sign. No, this is – look, I predicted someone would try to make this parallel and there is no parallel. I feel bad for any family that is suffering in any way. And there was one particular incident on the Lower East Side that was just patently unacceptable – I said it, Commissioner Shea said it, the officer's been modified. It bears no resemblance to what policing is supposed to be in this city. It has nothing to do with the coronavirus, it's just inappropriate activity by an officer. Remember, the vast majority of officers their job, do it well, do it respectfully. The vast majority of interactions between our police and our community go well and you never hear about them. So, the number of times that people are talking about a video that's troubling is still a very, very rare occasion. That doesn't mean we don't have more work to do, a number of leaders of communities of color have said to me they are concerned and they want to make sure that we are actually continually doing the work of leaving the past behind because the past was absolutely unacceptable in the way communities of color were policed. But we have made a huge amount of progress over these years and we're going to continue to. What happened with stop and frisk was a systematic, oppressive, unconstitutional strategy that created a new problem much bigger than anything it purported to solve. This is the farthest thing from that. This is addressing a pandemic. They're addressing the fact that lives are in danger all the time. By definition, our Police Department needs to be a part of that because safety is what they do. Now, the vast majority of interactions around this pandemic are officers reminding people what to do, asking them to change their behavior. People, they respond. I've had this conversation with Commissioner Shea and Chief Monahan – the vast majority of New Yorkers, when an officer – not only police officer, any of our enforcement officers says, hey, I need you to create more space; hey, I need you to put that face covering on, people do it. Some incidents have occurred that have nothing to do with social distancing and we should not forget that there's an entirely different activity going on. Police still have to fight crime and they still have to address conditions and neighborhoods when neighbors call in with a complaint. But no, we're going to make the protocols clearer and clearer, but it's that hierarchy I've talked about several times. The thing we're going to be particularly intolerant of is larger gatherings, those are just downright dangerous. When people are too close together, we're going to help make sure that they create more space. We're going to help make sure people wear face coverings – very consistent with what our police do to protect safety in general. But we're going to keep refining the protocol to make it clearer for everyone involved. It's a whole new world we're dealing with. We never had to deal with this in the past. This is a new world. It'll take time to get it better and make more sense of it, but I'm confident that we'll get it done.

Moderator: Next is Julia from the Post.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor and everyone else on the call. Two questions for you on the DOE. One on the fact that the DOE still hasn't presented its final middle and high school admissions plan. Don't you think that parents and students deserve know how seventh graders are going to be applying for high school next year? And then, I'm looking for you to respond to remarks by Chancellor Carranza at a panel discussion recently. He questioned the ethics of screened schools and told fellow administrators not to “waste a good crisis in pursuit of a change.”

Mayor: So, the specific – I don't know the specific panel discussion you're talking about, so I can't respond to comments. I haven't seen the context. We've been clear in this administration that we are reevaluating the admissions process across the board and we're asking important questions about what is fair and equitable, going forward. Many things are going to be reevaluated as a result of this crisis. The whole concept I've been putting forward, that we are not just going to bring New York City back with the status quo that was there before, but we're going to try and make a series of changes that favor equity and fairness. We were already in the process of doing that when it came to school admissions. So, certainly, the screened schools are being reevaluated and we’ll have more to say on that in the future. On high school admissions – look, everything has been disrupted here on a seismic level. Of course, with each passing day we're able to do more and more to clarify to students and parents how things are going to go in the future. So, admissions certainly will be addressed and will be addressed soon. But I want to remind everyone that we've had to remake the entire school system in the last few weeks, to create online education on a massive scale for the first time and the focus in recent weeks has been making sure that was up and running fully and getting kids the technology they needed. I remind everyone and anyone, if there still is a child that doesn't have that free iPad who's a public-school student, call 3-1-1, we'll get it to them right away. And also, for children with disabilities in our nonpublic schools, religious and independent and private schools, we will get them a free iPad as well, and, again, any family can call 3-1-1. But our focus has been getting the education system up and running in this new approach, making sure we're focused on high school seniors, because that's the most sensitive piece of this equation, helping everyone who can graduate to graduate, and starting to build a pathway to the summer and then next year. But as we're able, we're filling in more of the blanks, and we'll certainly have a lot more to say on admission soon.

Moderator: Next is Juliet from 1010 WINS.

Question: Hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. How are you doing today?

Mayor: Good morning, Juliette. Are you going to present me with another problem to solve today?

Question: No, maybe tomorrow.

[Laughter]

Mayor: Okay, good. You're taking – take one day off once in a while, okay?

Mayor: But, listen, now, thank you for the acknowledgement on the encampments. That’s really – we're hearing about more locations, so I'll keep you posted. But my questions today are as follows. What options are you reviewing to avoid furloughs and layoffs? There is a lot of concern about that from working New Yorkers. And the other question is, we had Yankee President Randy Levine on 1010 WINS talking about plans for the possible resumption of baseball. He's hopeful there could be some kind of opening at Yankee Stadium. Now, I know you're a Boston fan, but given that baseball can be a very good things for the city, do you think you'd find your way there for a first pitch?

Mayor: Yeah, you know, Juliet, I am a huge baseball fan and I'm getting to the point now – you know, I just saw that ESPN is going to start broadcasting the South Korean baseball and I'm like, I need baseball. I think a lot of us need baseball, I'll watch it anywhere, any country anyhow. But look, I would love nothing more than to see baseball come back to New York City and I would happily go to Yankee Stadium and be part of that first game. It would be a joy. And the same with Citi Field for the Mets. I don't think that's coming soon. I think we have to be honest about it. I think it would be – the day that baseball comes back to New York City is going to be an extraordinarily positive moment, and I will celebrate with Yankee fans and Met fans alike. But I think we need to set our sites in a realistic place. As we think about restarting, and we see this from the good examples around the world and the bad examples – and the good examples around the country and the bad examples – you start in smart, purposeful ways. You start where you can do the maximum social distancing. You’ve got be careful – the more people you put in one place, the greater the danger until you're really knock down this disease. So, the kind of chicken and egg here, Juliet – you want the perfect time to really reopen big events is when the disease has really been beaten back to, you know, next to nothing. So – and the danger with big gatherings, especially, is that could be one of the things that propels the disease back and gives us that boomerang we really don't want – the example of New Orleans and Mardi Gras – you know, big gatherings cause problems. Could you have baseball without fans or with, you know, a limited number of fans? Yeah, there's different things to discuss, but I want to really emphasize we're not there yet. And I think those bigger gatherings and bigger events are going to be one of the last things that will really fit the equation as we restart. And this one I put in the better safe than sorry category. I know I want to see baseball come back badly, but I want that the day that baseball comes back, everyone is really confident that it's the right thing to do. So, when it comes back, I will unquestionably be there joyously with all other baseball fans, Yankees and Mets alike.

Quick point on the encampments. Again, those are not acceptable in New York City. So, Juliet, if you find others, we want to hear about right away or anybody – anybody watching now, if you see homeless New Yorkers setting up a semi-permanent place to live, we will not allow that. Just call 3-1-1, we'll get NYPD and homeless services and Sanitation over there to clean it up immediately. We need those reports so we can make sure that nothing like that happens. On the furloughs and layoffs, Juliet, this is the last thing I want to do – literally, the last thing I want to do. And the key to avoiding furloughs and layoffs is in the hands of the President and the Congress. So far, the conversation I had with Speaker Pelosi on Sunday suggests that the House will present a stimulus four that is very respectful of our first responders, very respectful of our health care heroes, very respectful of our essential workers, and very respectful of cities and states that will help us fully back on our feet. That's what we need. Senator McConnell has been disdainful of helping out states and cities in need. The President has gone from silent, to now he's throwing all sorts of perverse conditions on – he's literally talking now about wanting to get a tax break to the wealthy for Capital Gains Tax as a precondition for helping our first responders and our health care heroes. That's unbelievably wrong. It's inappropriate, it's inhuman. It's literally – imagine a rich guy wanting to take care of other rich guys rather than wanting to take care of cops and firefighters and doctors and nurses. It’s unbelievable. We're seeing things in this crisis that you can't even believe are coming out of the mouth of the President of United States.

So, I would argue that everyone who wants to see that stimulus so we can be made whole so we can keep our whole workforce intact and needs to raise their voice, whether they're a Democrat, Republican, whoever you are, raise your voice, and our heroes need to raise their voices to remind everyone in Washington of the fact that we need them to be on our payroll serving people. They deserve to be doing the great work they're doing and having the confidence and the security they will do it for years and years to come. But Julia, if you take $7.4 billion dollars out of any budget, which is exactly what we're dealing with now, and even worse without a stimulus, we'll lose more money because there won't be a restart. There'll be lost revenue more and more the state, if they don't get the help, they're going to cut us more and more. This situation goes from bad to worse really quickly. Right now, any government anywhere missing $7.4 billion would have to make a lot of tough choices, but it gets a lot worse if we don't get the stimulus. So it's the last thing I want to see for lows and layoffs, but if we don't get to help, we're going to be having to make a lot of really, really tough and painful decisions here in this city.

Moderator: Next is Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Henry, how are you?

Question: I'm good. You know, I saw a 1969 Mets-Baltimore game the other night. Two to one McNally versus Koosman. I highly recommend it – second game of the World Series. My question has to do with this report and the New York Times today that says that a large number of cases nationally emanated out of New York City. New York City was sort of the source of spreading the virus nationally to an extent that was previously unrecognized. I'm wondering whether you or the Health Commissioner has any thoughts about this, whether, you know, what does it say, if anything about federal policy, about city policy and about the nature of this virus?

Mayor: Well, Henry, I haven't seen the specific reporting you're referring to, but I can say this much. The fact is that we know this virus came from multiple parts of the world into the United States. So, of course, the question will be what was done and was not done to stop the introduction into our country. And then the second question has to be what was done or not done to stop the spread once it got here. And that comes back to testing. There's no question in my mind had the testing been in place that we asked for the end of January of it'd been place in February, this entire scenario for the city would have been different and much, much better. So that to me is the story of what happened here. There were choices made or not made that could have profoundly changed the trajectory of this entire disease in the city and this country. But after that, you know, I think it's clear when something is introduced at the kind of level it became introduced, of course it was going to spread from one place to another and now we're dealing with the results of that.

The lesson we have to take from this is if we ever dealt with anything like this in the future is to be really clear about what would need to be done to keep a disease out of this country, but most especially what would need to be done here to stop it once it got here with every forceful federal response and local response available. But I would also say while we're trying to analyze what happened, how about we get the federal response right now? Again, two things the federal government really needed to do in this crisis: testing and support the cities and states right now, failing still on the testing and failing to step up to support the cities and states. So we'll look back and we'll have plenty of time to analyze what was, what I'm shocked by Henry is the same mistakes are being made right this moment. And this will determine whether this disease continues to spread or not. And I think we need to take every opportunity to stop at dead in its tracks now. And we can only do that with really full federal support. We still don't have it.

Moderator: The next is Abu from Bangla Patrika.

Question: Hello Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Good. How are you doing?

Question: Good. Thank you so much. I have a question, which is you express the frustration and anger a day before yesterday about, I think yeah, about the President who is not helping New York City. What is the alternate plan if you don't get any support from federal government? And then number two, you know, the city is closed, so might be in the future city will be open. What is the plan? How will be the style of [inaudible], restaurant and bar nightclub? You know, I mean if it's open then how it will be authentic – same like crowded or it could be a different kind of shape. What would be the new, you know, the style and system?

Mayor: Great question, Abu. I thank you for that.

So I think it's fair to say the restaurants, bars, nightclubs are one of the most sensitive pieces of this equation. We just talked earlier about Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, you know, there's really big gatherings. That's probably the single most sensitive piece of the equation when you bring huge number of people together. But the restaurants and bars, nightclubs combine lots of people and usually very limited space. So, there's a lot of good ideas around the world now about how you could bring them back properly. I can't give you the exact timing. We're not there yet. We will say much more in the coming days about what we are seeing in terms of the sequencing of each part of our economy and the restart. This is part of why we have our advisory groups helping us now who represent each of the industries of the city, give us real world advice about what they're going through, what they need. But what I can tell you is there's going to be different times for different types of businesses and different conditions for each type of business and it's going to be steady and careful. So when you think about what we were used to just a few months ago with restaurants and bars and everyone's super close together and it's part of the energy we love about this city, that's not happening right away to say the least restaurants and bars we've got to help him back. But figuring out when that can begin is something we have not finalized, but we'll say as soon as possible. And then inevitably with some initial restrictions. So different ideas are out there about a capacity within a restaurant and bar. How many people could be allowed in different ideas about restaurants compared to bars or nightclubs? That's a whole discussion. They may not be treated equally because of different realities. Outdoors is an interesting and promising possibility to rely on more of the service being outdoors. You still need precautions, but that's an interesting option we're looking at. Face coverings, gloves you know, a number of specifics to make the experience safe. Now we have to see that that can be done in a workable manner. And also, for each business they have to decide if that's a set of conditions they want to reopen with or whether they want to just keep focusing on take-out and delivery. But we will put together a plan that gets very specific about the when and the how and the conditions and the precautions. And that's going to grow with time. But don't expect anytime soon that kind of crowded bar or restaurant that we knew before. It will be here one day, but it will not be soon.

On the question of what we would do with no stimulus. It's just tragic, horrible math. I want people to think about $7.4 billion. What a staggering number that is. And you know, a lot of people look at the city budget like, oh you could do this, you could do that. You know, $7.4 billion means a whole huge swath of things have to be cut. And again, if there is not a stimulus and if it's not a very generous stimulus, the situation gets worse because the lack of stimulus hurts, restart and recovery. Then there's less revenue. So the problem we have now, the $7.4 billion becomes a much bigger problem if the state isn't made whole. They've already cut us $800 million on top of the $7.4 billion. So really right now the hit, we've taken a $7.4 billion plus $800 million, which is $8.2 billion. There will inevitably be really substantial additional state cuts. It just gets worse and worse and worse and then we have to think about all sorts of things just to balance a budget. By law, we must balance our budget. So it is a very tough picture and it should motivate everyone to fight every day to get that stimulus and to put pressure on the President and Senator McConnell. Look, if the President of the United States had said, we got to do stimulus four, we got to make the cities and states whole, we got to replace their loss revenue. If he said those three sentences, it would have been done already and we would be much more strongly back on the road to recovery. This is just a sick game that the President will not open his mouth and say, we will make the cities and states whole, that's all he has to do and the Senate will follow. But he's playing politics. So, everyone who cares and needs to raise their voice. And the more the voices come from, you know, a whole range of our society, obviously Republicans and Democrats and people from every walk of life in every industry, the faster we will get this done.

Moderator: Next is Gloria from NY1.

Question: Thank you Mr. Mayor. I want to talk about this antibody testing effort you're announcing specifically what's so much debate and discussion going on around how these antibody tests are being done and what the results actually show the problem of positives and some of these tests not being properly vetted by the FDA. So, what is the guidance, that's my first question, that the city is using? What is the test to be specific? And my second question is about homeless engagements last night. Out of three out of 361, 218 accepted help is the City of recording what happened to those other people?
 
Mayor: So that's a really good question, Gloria. And we'll have Commissioner Banks follow up with you. So again, on the 218, 218 out of 361 is a stunning figure to begin with because I've been watching this, this situation over the last three years with the HOME-STAT initiative and again, well over 2000 people have come in and stayed in and remember that that base we work from, this is again, as Commissioner Banks talked about yesterday, this is not everyone who's ever been out on the street panhandling or someone who's homeless very temporarily or someone who lives in a shelter. We're talking about the essence, the most painful, tough part of the problem is permanent street homelessness, 3,500 to 4,000 people at any given moment. A horrible tragedy we have to fight. Against that backdrop, well over 2000 people in the last three years have come in, stayed in, never gone back to the street.

So, 2,000 over three years is actually pretty amazing compared to the universe we're dealing with and compared to the history of the city where there was never anything like that, they never even got close in previous years to bringing in that many people. This is the single most intensive effort to reduce street homelessness in the history of the city. 2,000-plus in three years. I'm telling you, you heard yesterday's figures last night, 218 in one night. Now that doesn't mean everyone will stay in permanently of course, but if you had 196 accepted shelter, and 22 went to the hospital, that's an amazing start. So, I want to emphasize just how promising that is and the more we do that, the more people who decide to stick with it, you're going to see that street population shrink.

On those who did not accept help, we keep coming back. Remember, think of how individualized the approach is, God forbid you or I were street homeless. The outreach workers would know us by name in the vast majority of cases and they be continuing to work with us coming back time after time, dozens of times, hundreds of times even trying to win our trust, trying to get us to come in, figure out what we need to come in. So Commissioner Banks will fill in the blank for you. But I would pretty much guarantee that some of those people last night who weren't willing to come in, we're known to the Department of Homeless Services and they're going to keep engaging them and just keep coming back cause the persistence is working. That's what was the missing link in previous strategies. The persistence works here.

On the antibody test. We will give you all the specifics of which test we're using. As I said, we're working with BioReference Labs on the city test. The federal initiative with the CDC and HHS will be done with Quest Diagnostics. So, to really leading a well-respected testing entities, we will get you exactly which test each is using. And, and with it will of course be guidance for everyone about what the test tells you. What it doesn't tell you. We've been explicit about this. The test doesn't tell you everything. It tells you something and it's not a perfect measure. It does not mean you don't have to keep practicing social distancing and using PPEs depending on your profession. But it gives you some confidence, some knowledge, and it helps in other ways as terms of our bigger fight against the coronavirus. So, we'll give that information to everyone who gets tested and we'll give them their own results and make clear to people what kind of follow-up makes sense depending on their results. But we want to be very transparent about what the test is, what it means, what it doesn't mean, and what the results are – we're getting as we go along.

Moderator: Next is Mark Morales at CNN.

Question: Hey everyone, how you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Mark. How are you?

Question: Good. I wanted to follow up on the social distancing questions and specifically about what was discussed yesterday. I know we were talking about releasing data as far as someone's is go for the month of April and I wanted to know when is that going to happen? When are you, when is the city going to be releasing the summons data related to social distancing for the month of April and if you've seen the data, what does that show you?

Mayor: So, I have not seen it. I expect to see it very shortly. It will be released for sure. I want to remind everyone – thank you, I've been given the update. It will be released tomorrow. That is certainly shortly. So, I'll see it today. It'll be released tomorrow. Here's what we know. We know there's 8.6 million people. We know we've been at this crisis about two months and we know that in very few instances has there been a need to give summonses. That's the good news. There's certainly been sometimes we had to give summonses, when they were needed, they were needed. But we will give you that breakout. It's still such a small number that I think it tells us something, but it doesn't tell us anything nearly as important as the fact that there has been intensive effort by the NYPD and other agencies to educate and to enforce. And now also more and more to give out the face coverings. And the vast majority of that is worked. And the reason we know it's worked is because we can see it in our daily indicators. We can see how much progress has been made with the social distancing. We can see it with our own eyes the way the vast majority of new Yorkers are applying social distancing and putting on the face coverings. So vast majority of cases this is working, but we will give you that data tomorrow. It'll show the facts as they are, but it'll also be against a pretty small sample size because summons has not been something we've had to do too much, but we won't hesitate to do it when we need to.

Moderator: Next is Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask you about the subway sweeps. Do you have a sense for what percentage of the homeless people at the end of those train lines are being engaged? And, and what type, it's kind of a similar to Gloria’s question about what type of accounting is it for, what happens to them? But you also mentioned that it sounded like offering a hotel room was one of the options that they can be given in certain cases. Can you just say in which cases and have any of the homeless people actually moved to hotel rooms from the subway?

Mayor: So again, I'll have a Commissioner Banks give you more detail, but I can give you just an overview. Let me ask from Freddi Goldstein that just if we have yesterday's numbers too on number engaged – yeah, that'd be helpful. On your first question, Yoav, so again, I've said it, I'll say it again. 361 were engaged last night by our homeless outreach teams and NYPD, 218 of the 361 accepted help, 196 one to shelter 22 went to the hospital. So, when we say accepted help, it means that they actually left the scene with our teams and were taken someplace else where they could get help. So a huge percentage, the remainder did not accept help, but again, we know a lot of them and we'll keep working on them. And I need people to understand that these are human beings. Each one is different. You know, you don't win every time, but you keep at it, you do get a lot of people to move. And I think we're seeing more and more in this crisis, more and more street homeless people are choosing to accept help, and I think it's in some ways related to all the changes that are happening and all the disruption of our normal life pattern, it's actually opening up a lot of homeless people to the possibility of accepting help, and that’s a good thing. To compare to the night before, 252 were engaged and 139 accepted help.

So high levels of engagement both nights and in both cases a majority accepted help and that's a very striking result. Again, there seems to be in my humble opinion overfocus on the hotels. The hotels seem like in many of our questions here, I think the hotels are being put on a pedestal, that's just not the reality, and so let's try and get it clearer here. Hotels work for some things, they don't work for everything. When it comes to a homeless person who needs help right now, this is different than if someone's in a shelter setting, let's just try and get this tight here, someone's in a shelter setting, congregate shelter we've talked about, and there's a need for more social distancing, that's a case where we are using hotels. We've been doing it more and more to make sure there's enough space and we choose according to the person and what they need, and some people do better because they can handle a hotel situation. Other people can't so easily handle a hotel situation. Many are folks who need a lot of support and being in a shelter with fewer people can be the better and healthier option, and that's what's worked on every single day.

The folks who are street homeless and have been spending a lot of time either on street or subway or both are in many cases dealing with really extreme problems, and the goal is not to just take them and leave them alone somewhere, but the goal is to get them the intensive help they need. That's the entire concept of the Safe Haven and that's a concept has been proven now for three years to work. Think about, Yoav, someone who is street homeless with a very high interconnection to serious mental health issues and or substance misuse. They need a safe place. They need a lot of support. They need a lot of medical care. They need mental health services and or substance misuse services. It's not snap your fingers, you know, instant gratification, they were living on a subway or a street and now they're in a building and they're fine and they're going back to normal life. It is a process. It takes time and energy, but we've seen a lot of success. So you don't just take someone and drop them someplace. You take someone someplace where they can get the intensive help they need as part of their rehabilitation, as part of getting them to a better place. That's the whole reality. As I said, if there's an instance where a hotel for any particular reason makes more sense, of course that option exists, but when you're talking about people coming off of the streets, I don't think that's the typical option. The typical option is Safe Haven or shelter. And again, Commissioner Banks will get you more later on.

Moderator: Next to this, Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor. Just two questions. Some of the city’s black elected officials, police reform groups, even some of the police unions are warning that the social distancing enforcement is dangerous, untenable, and it's only a matter of time before some sort of tragedy occurs. Are you concerned about one of these incidents becoming something tragic? And then secondly Commissioner Shea I believe suggested that when the weather gets warm there may be a plan to limit the number of people can go into parks. Is that something that you are working on or have discussed with the Commissioner or plan to put into place?

Mayor: Thank you, Jeff. Yes, on the second piece, yes. Commissioner and I have had extensive conversations with members of both our teams and other agencies as well. And there are certain parks where the – just the configuration of the park lends itself to overcrowding and we're working on strategies right now to address that and we'll have more to say on that tomorrow. But there's no question that in a kind of toolbox of approaches that we could use to help make sure that social distancing works. It – we've got some parks that are just, the way they're set up is it's just too easy to have crowding. We can't let that happen and we have to limit the number of people going in. And we'll, again, we'll talk about how we're going to do that. And it's not that many places honestly, but wherever that is the case, we're going to work with a protocol to do that. Well it will take some experimentation. It'll take some effort to make sure it works, but I think it's a good direction.

On the first part of your question, look, this is our job to avoid these tragedies, and the reason that I do this work, and I know it's true for Commissioner Shea and so many people here, is to fundamentally change things. We have fundamentally changed policing in New York City. There's more change that has to be made, but before we came here, policing was based on a very punitive approach, heavy reliance on stop and frisk, heavy reliance on arrest. There was not a value put on deepening relationships between police and community. There was not a value put on retraining and we've been doing all these things and we're going to do a lot more. We've already trained the entire police force in de-escalation. We obviously put body cameras on every patrol officer. The entire strategy now is neighborhood policing and building relationships with communities. We have de-emphasized arrest to a huge degree, let alone getting rid of the vast, vast majority of stop and frisk. Nothing has changed in this crisis. The whole mission is to protect people's lives and avoid the tragedies of the past.

We have a new threat that we have to put front and center and this is where I parked company from the PBA and some of the activists as well simultaneously, and I'm very comfortable parting company from both, with all due respect to them. The way you keep people safe in New York City is to use the finest police force in the world to protect people. That is a fundamental truth and when confronted with the biggest crisis we've ever known, we're not going to sideline the NYPD. We're going to use the NYPD to the fullest, but with smart protocols, smart training, figuring out what works and doesn't work, and I am not making my decisions based on a very few interactions that were handled poorly or went bad. I'm making my decisions based on the millions of interactions that are going right and the fact that clearly the city is moving in the right direction on social distancing and shelter in place and it's making us safer and it's saving lives. We're here to save lives. I'm not going to sacrifice saving lives because people are fearful of something that loomed in the past. I want to protect people in every way, but it begins with protecting them from the clear and present danger of this disease.

So I hear the concerns, I hear the criticisms. There's been some very positive constructive ideas from, for example, public advocate Jumaane Williams or Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams have talked about bringing in a lot of additional elements of the community to help with educating and supporting efforts at social distancing. I think that's a great idea, we'll have more to say on that soon as well. But no, the NYPD has to lead the way and keeping people safe and fighting this disease is job one and that's what we're going to do.

Moderator: We have time for two more today. Next is Christina from Chalkbeat.

Question: Hi, Mayor. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to know if there are any plans to systematically test teachers to contribute to being able to reopen school and what role also the subway system will play in reopening schools? Obviously now there are shutdowns and lots of students and teachers rely on them to the class.

Mayor: Very important. I would dare say profound questions, Christina, I appreciate it. On the second one, look, everything's going to interact here. I am a firm believer that we can get to a full reopening of schools in September, but I want to keep giving people a window into my philosophy developed through constantly talking to the experts and looking at the conditions in our city and thinking about how we mix all these factors together the right way. My worldview is its mission critical to get our schools up and running in September. It's mission critical to get our economy started as soon as we can do it safely and then build it out in a safe, careful manner. All of that is going to require the pieces fitting carefully in each case and each step being proven before we take the next step.

So, you're absolutely right. It's hard to have that full reopening of schools without the subway system being more available to our students and the people that work in schools. That says to me how important it is to keep tight with our current strategies. If you value the reopening of school in September and stick with the social distancing, stick with the shelter in place, stick with the strategy that work, put a face covering and all the things we're going to do to keep that working is about driving down the disease and then that hand off, as I said to an intensive testing trace strategy that keeps driving down the disease more. We do that intensely enough May, June, July, August, that's the gateway to reopening schools fully. I would also argue that's the gateway to expanding subway service again and doing so many other things. So yeah, there's a deep interconnection and I think the job is to get those pieces to align through the hard work we're doing now.

On the testing of teachers, we have not obviously defined all the pieces yet of what a reopening of schools looks like, but I think a lot of testing will be a part of it by any definition. And the world I like to get to is one where there's maximal testing available for school communities to give people confidence that they can come back into the school community and really know what's going on and that anyone who for whatever reason still might need to be isolated is isolated in a timely fashion. So what that looks like when that can be done, how that can be done, those are blanks we need to fill in. But will testing play an important role in the restart schools? Absolutely.

Moderator: Last question for today goes to Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor – couple quick questions about the antibody testing. Have you received new information or assurances as to the reliability of the results of these tests? I know just a couple of weeks ago the Health Department put out an alert, essentially saying not to rely on them. There's anything changed between now and then. And then can you just give some more details of who is eligible? You said people in the neighborhood are prioritized, but how do you define that exactly? And beyond that is, is everyone eligible or do you have to hit other criteria?

Mayor: Thank you, Erin. So, we'll put out the eligibility criteria. Look, we've got a good thing which is testing, but I don't want to see people start to go too far for testing, especially in a world where we're going to start to make it more and more available and more and more places. So I want there to be a sense of localness to this. That's why it's so important to have a priority for residents in, you know, nearby communities. This is to reach a lot of people. It's also for the research purposes I talked about and if you're talking about you need to do thousands of people at each test site, you know, you can do that in so many parts of the city, in a, you know, an area within walking distance of the test site even, you could get enough people to reach those goals. So, I want it to be very local. People will call and reserve, preference will be given to the local area. Obviously there's additional testing and people can to it from places that are somewhat farther, we're going to allow that, but it's not our preference, our preferences for it to be as local as possible just to minimize travel, because we know more and more testing is coming behind it. We're obviously in an intensive ramp up now.

On the reliability, you know, I think it's a great question. I think it's really important that we are clear. This test is not the end all, be all. Said it a bunch of times, we'll say it every single day, it will be – there'll be written materials given to people. There'll be reminders given by the health care professionals. We are not promising people a rose garden here. We're not saying the antibody test is the last word. It's not, but it tells you something. The most effective tests, and obviously we're working with BioReference and Quest Diagnostics to make sure that we have the tests that we believe are the most fine-tuned, if you will, the most specific to indicating that you've had COVID-19 and you've been exposed to it previously. We will announce exactly what those tests are and give information about the nature of them. But we would only utilize as the City of New York, we'd only work with partners who agreed to use a test that we have higher confidence in, in terms of its specificity, identifying the presence of COVID-19 previously in someone's experience. There are some other tests out there that I think are less reliable. We're not going to work with those so we will be clear about reliability levels.

But even with that said, that what we know, what we don't know, what we can know is if you've been exposed to the disease and you came through it, that tells you something, that is helpful. It tells you something about your experience, it tells you something about your resiliency. It's helpful to know. It does not change the fact that you still need to take precautions. We'll keep delineating all those precautions because we don't have the hardest evidence that you couldn't get the disease again. We don't have a lot of evidence that you will get the disease again or it's likely, but we can't say definitively you won't, so we're going to keep telling people to be careful and safe because of abundance of caution. Certainly if someone has been exposed to disease, that's important again for knowing who could be candidates to provide plasma for that kind of treatment for others and the research is the research and having facts about people helps us on a research level to understand disease, as I said, to understand it demographically, by occupation, all sorts of things we need to know.

So, we'll keep putting all those qualifiers on and if someone comes to get tested, they're like, oh wow, you know, if I get a positive it means I don't need to wear a face covering anymore or if I work in a I don't need PPEs, we'll say instantly, no, you still do. Until this is over, you still do. So we'll keep putting all those qualifiers on, but it still helps. It still tells us something. And again, as we get the final specifics out there, we'll give a lot of detail on which test we're using and what it means and how we're going to move forward.

All right, well everybody, I'm going to finish where I started on a word again, synonymous with our city, confidence. I feel a lot of confidence today myself and I have been taking in so much information from day one. If I was not convinced we were on the right path, I would tell you. You'd be able to see it in my face. I am 100 percent confident that we can and will beat this disease and I am even more confident because of what I've seen you do. There is an interesting line in life between confidence and arrogance. Arrogance is when in many cases you aren't backing it up with the facts. In this case I have confidence and New Yorkers have confidence because we're actually proving to ourselves and to the world that we can change the reality of what's happening in this city and we can beat back this disease. It’s happening literally every single day and the indicators go over it each day show it, and you can see it in the life of the city that things are getting better because people did the right thing.

So, there will be doubts along the way. There will probably be some setbacks even, but you don't have to wonder about New Yorkers. You don't have to wonder about our basic nature. You don't have to wonder about our toughness, our strength, our compassion for each other. You don't have to wonder about the ability of New Yorkers to do big things. It's playing out on the great stage right now. It's playing out before our very eyes, and I am confident we're moving in the right direction and please, I know it's not easy. I know it's too long a battle, but we will get through it. Do what you're doing. Do even more. Spread the word about the power of social distancing, of wearing those face coverings, of staying home to the maximum extent possible. It's working. Let's keep going and that's the way back to normal.

Thanks, everybody.

2020-05-08 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. You know, sometimes I have talked about this virus like it has human characteristics, and I do that to get a point across, to help us understand our adversary. And even though we're fighting every day, it's important to never underestimate your enemy. So, if this virus had human characteristics, it would be a pretty clever virus. Clearly more than once has thrown the medical community a curve ball, and a lot to deal with all the time, especially because of what we don't yet know. But this virus is no match for a group of people who are much more clever in that is New Yorkers. This virus has met its match in fact, in this city more and more. What we've seen from New Yorkers is an extraordinary commitment to a winning strategy of social distancing, and shelter in place, and face coverings, all the things that are clearly working, but they would not work if people were not so devoted to them. And overwhelmingly that's what we've seen around this city. It is not easy to do these things. This may be the single-hardest place in the United States of America to implement those kinds of strategies, for us to live in that way, and yet you have been doing it, all of you in such an amazing, impressive, extraordinary fashion.

Now, I'm going to go over the numbers and take a look at them in the perspective of a whole week, and what we will see is real progress and what we will see is a winning strategy, and you are winning, but it is so important to never rest on your laurels. When you're winning in anything in life, in sports, and anything else, when you start winning, that's not the time to relax. That's not the time to take it easy or take your eye off the ball. When you start winning, it's time to double down, and make sure you keep winning. So, we're not resting on our laurels here in the city. It's not the way we are anyway. We're always striving to be better and better. And so, we're always looking for new tools, new ways of fighting back against this disease. And when we find them, we move really, really quickly, because again, what's more New York than that? Finding a great idea and acting on it would record speed. That's what we're going to do, and I'm going to talk to you about the new ways we're going to fight back. The fact that we're going to go on the offensive against this disease here in this city, and everyone's going to be a part of it, and it's been working already to have everyone be at the same table. 8.6 million people in common cause, and in this next phase we're going to take that even farther.

So, let's start with going over the indicators. And again, it's Friday. On Fridays now, we're taking a look at a longer timeframe. So, when we look at the daily number, indicator one, the daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19. Alright, this is just extraordinary. Look at that progress in such a short period of time. Again, we are probably the place on earth, or certainly in this country with the most challenges dealing with this disease. The biggest population packed into the smallest space, big buildings, an international travel hub as we saw, that's the origins of this disease here in this city. So, many things working against us, and you could see early on in this crisis what it meant in terms of the number of people each day going into the hospital. And now look how far we've come. So, most days lately we've been under a hundred new hospital admissions a day for COVID-19. That's amazing, but we are not out of the woods. And today's indicator – so you see the big picture – but now let's just talk about today's indicator – unfortunately, is up. Another day where we see the big picture is unquestionably good, but still day to day we're not where we need to be, we've got more work to do. So, unfortunately today's indicator is up from 79 to 102. Still overall much, much lower numbers, good sign in the bigger scheme of things. Not yet what we need to take the next step towards loosening restrictions. So, more work to do on that one. Now, number of people in our public hospital ICU’s for suspected COVID 19. Again, the glass half full here is the improvement you can see clearly there. In the last few weeks, we've literally had over 300 fewer people in the ICU’s fighting for their lives. That number is really a crucial number, because it talks about the, the most extreme impact this disease has having. The folks in the ICU’s, are the ones facing the greatest threat. When that numbers going down, it really speaks to the heart and soul of this issue, the one we care about, saving lives. That number goes down, that means a lot more lives are being saved. A lot fewer people are in danger. But again, not yet where we need to be. Now, there's an uptick today by just one. I don't want to make more of that than I should. It went from 567 to 568. So, basically it breakeven, but we need that number to go down, and we need it to go down steadily, and we need to see fewer and fewer people fighting for their lives. So, progress overall today, we didn't get the progress we wanted.

Now, the one that might be sort of the biggest, obviously the biggest indicator in terms of the number of people it reaches and looking at the whole city. Percentage of people testing citywide positive for COVID-19. Now, this is going to be a number that is informed more and more by the fact that testing is coming on more and more each day. So, we're going to get a better and better picture the more testing we do. But you can see massive improvement. I mean, look where we were early on in that chart. Look at the stunning percentage of people are testing positive. Look where we are now, real progress. Today's number, progress as well from 16 percent down to 14 percent, that's great. More work to do, but that's a really good sign.

Okay, so when you put together these indicators and you look at them from the beginning of the crisis, what does it tell us? Well, there's a quote I often refer to from Bob Dylan. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Anybody can look at this chart and say, we're obviously making progress, and that is what we are here to do, and something everyone should be proud of. That kind of progress, that intense speedy progress, and the way we got there is something every single person out there should be proud of, because you all contributed to it. So, the trends are clear, the hard work is paying off. It does not mean we're all the way there, but it means we keep seeing broadly the right direction. Now, as I said, time to go on the offensive. When you're ahead, don't let up when you're ahead, fight harder, go on the offensive.

So, we are now going to take the next big step with this test and trace vision that is going to allow us to squeeze this disease, constrain it further. Remember, the disease flourishes when people who get it are not identified and spread it to other people. But this disease is put in a very bad place if more and more people are identified and isolated properly, their contacts are traced. Those people need isolation, or quarantine, or reach. The more knowledge, the more reach, the more ability to treat each person appropriately, the better off we are in fighting back this disease. Now, we've, the whole way through, not had the testing we needed or deserved, and it's still an issue. Every day, I am trying to get the federal government to recognize they have to do more on testing, and thank God one of the things that folks in the Congress, notably speaker Pelosi is focused on, is making sure that there's a lot more resources for testing, and the federal government will take the lead it still hasn't taken and needs to take so we can turn the corner even more. But in the meantime, we're going to use every tool we have here to maximize testing, to maximize tracing, to change the trajectory even further in a favorable direction. And we put together a great team to do it, and this effort will be housed and will be led by the organization that's been throughout this fight nothing less than heroic, and that is our Health and Hospitals. The folks who have led the way in our public hospitals and clinics. The folks who have been at the frontline fighting this enemy in a way that literally came to the attention of the whole country, of the whole world. I'll use the obvious example of Elmhurst Hospital. When I say Elmhurst Hospital, you're going to conjure up I think a vision of an extraordinary onslaught that that hospital took from this disease, but you should also conjure up the vision of heroes. People who fought back, people who had the wherewithal to hold the line. And our hospitals across the board, all 56 of them in this city, but particular respect for the 11 public hospitals and all the clinics, they held, no matter what was thrown at them, they held in this fight, and I have gained even more respect for the people in Health and Hospitals for the heroic role they have played.

So, considering that in this fight, New York City was the epicenter in this whole nation, and places like Elmhurst Hospital were the epicenter within the epicenter. It is such a statement on the strength and quality of the people at Health + Hospitals that they bore the brunt of the single biggest attack in the whole country by this disease, and they held and they fought back. They also, and I want to give a lot of credit to the folks at Health + Hospitals. They've been leading the way in so many other ways. They had to put together a huge new staffing plan, finding doctors, nurses, clinical staff, overnight, literally to fight back against this disease. They created the community testing program in the clinics literally in a matter of days. Everything at health and hospitals has been based on speed, and intensity, and precision, and they've done an amazing job. So, that is why it makes sense as we build this next effort to use that great leadership and that great organizational capacity of a huge, huge organization would reach into every part of the city, and have them lead the way on our new tool that we're bringing to bear in this fight. And I am so happy to announce today the New York City test and trace corps. The New York City test and trace corps is going to be a dedicated group of trained individuals who will lead the way in creating testing and tracing on a level we've never seen before in this city or this country. And they are going to bring together a huge amount of expertise. The expertise of folks who have spent a lifetime in public service and in health care, but also the expertise gained from these last months fighting this disease at the frontline.

Now, this is how we move forward, creating this test and trace corps confronting this disease, if you will, reaching deep into our communities, expanding, testing, expanding, tracing, really getting our arms around the problem as never before and let me talk to you about the leaders of this new effort. So, first of all, the executive director of the Test and Trace Corps will be Dr. Ted Long. Dr. Long is Vice President of Ambulatory Care at Health and Hospitals. He oversees care at the 11 hospitals and 70 primary care clinics, this is the largest public hospital and clinic organization in the nation. This is the ultimate and Ted is the guy who oversees the day to day care to make sure that millions of New Yorkers get the help they need. He also led the way in putting together the community-based testing program over the last few weeks, literally in a matter of days creating grassroots testing all over the City. Ted has the experience and the knowledge and the spirit to lead this effort and I'm so thankful he's agreed to take on this assignment. Jackie Bray, Jackie Bray has done amazing work during this crisis and long before she will be the Deputy Executive Director of the Corps. She has been one of the unsung heroes with a great team of other unsung heroes and we're going to get a chance over the weeks and months ahead to really talk about the people who put together that amazing effort to get tens of millions of pieces of PPEs to our hospitals, our nursing homes, clinics, amazing efforts. Our first responders, you name it, Jackie was one of the ultimate leaders of that amazing effort that found PPEs all over the world, worked to get the federal government to get us more work to create more here in this City. She's done extraordinary work during this crisis and she has a special understanding of the challenges that vulnerable New Yorkers face from her previous work in City government, most recently as Director of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants, so, she'll bring that sensibility to this work as well. The Chief Medical Officer will be Dr. Andrew Wallack. For more than two decades, Dr. Wallach has served at Bellevue and he knows our public health system in and out, and he understands the lives of New Yorkers and how to make sure they get what they need and how to create in real world circumstances. Bellevue is synonymous and revered all over the country, synonymous with practical frontline medicine folks who deal with any challenge and somehow find a way. I first got to see that so vividly during the Ebola crisis and I got to tell you then, and now during the coronavirus crisis, folks at Bellevue are just tough as nails and they do not bend, and they do not break. So, this is something that Dr. Wallach has been a leader of and a part of this experience and he will bring that attitude, that spirit, this work over sees a staff of over a thousand as the physician in charge of Ambulatory Care at Bellevue. So, again, someone used to working on a very big scale and he'll help to create this extraordinary test and trace effort. Someone you've heard of before, if you've been watching these press conferences, Dr. Jay Varma, my Senior Advisor for public health. Jay brings a wealth of experience literally from all over the world. When you're talking to Jay and you ask him about certain realities we're facing with this disease, he'll tell you instantly about different ways he's understood this disease and other infectious diseases. And he'll reference the places he's been including Hubei Province in China, which is where this disease got its start. He's worked all over the world to understand how to fight back infectious diseases and he's renowned for his work nationally and internationally, but he also has a tremendous sense of New York City having served for seven years in the last administration as Deputy Commissioner for Disease Control, so, someone will bring so much to the table. And then, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, you've all seen and heard his good work during this crisis. He'll be advising this effort through his current role, of course, as Department of Health Deputy Commissioner for Disease Control – before fighting the coronavirus did extraordinary work in terms of reconceptualizing and helping to lead the fight against HIV and AIDS here in New York City. And he has been helping to lead the fight against the coronavirus from day one. So, someone who brings so much experience, but also so much creativity and good new thinking to the process, he'll be a key voice helping us build this unprecedented effort. So, we're all trying to do something that's never been done before and this is the team of people who knows how to think that way, knows how to build something, knows how to make it real and practical and fast and precise and something that can reach all across the five boroughs of New York City.

Okay. Now let's talk about the two magic words, test and trace and what this means. What it means is creating more and more testing all the time. Now we still have one hand tied behind our back because we're not getting the help we need from the federal government and we're still fighting for all the lab capacity we want, but unquestionably, we're going to be able to expand testing greatly. It means eventually being able to trace more and more, in our perfect world, every person who tests positive, we want to find everyone who is positive and then trace all of their close contacts. And then everyone needs help, you got to provide the help and that's what we'll do. So, someone who tests positive can they continue to see this disease through at home or they're in a place where they can isolate from the other members of their home or not? Do they need to be in a hotel? Do they need something more in the way of support to make sure they don't infect others? When you trace their contacts, the second question, someone was in close contact with three people. You interview those three people, those folks need to be tested, those folks need to be asked, can they isolate if they test positive, do they need a hotel room? If they need a hotel room, they're going to need a lot of support, medical support, food, laundry, you name it, this takes a big coordinated team to put all those pieces together.

Now, we decided to call this the Test and Trace Corps because we wanted to make clear the word was chosen on purpose. This is a call to arms; this is a call of duty to come forward and put something together and the emergency basis to help people in a crisis. This is not business as usual, so this team has been charged by me by doing things very quickly, very intensely. They're up against a ferocious enemy that you have to be even more intense in the way they fight back by early June and this is an example of how fast we're going to move. By early June, we'll have 2,500 public health foot soldiers in this corps. So, it would take an entity that didn't even exist and the course of just weeks, it will be ramped up to 2,500 people to begin big number, but a necessary number to be able to build what we need to build that number will grow thereafter and keep growing as large as we need it to be. Now the same goes for testing, today our maximum daily capacity is hovered around 14,000, we need to go a lot farther. This team has guaranteed me that they will get the number up to a capacity of 20,000 tests per day by May 25th so basically in the next two weeks, and by that point we'll be using 33 community-based testing sites. Now, that's May 25th right around the corner, 20,000 tests per day, 33 testing sites, but that's just the beginning. This team is preparing to get us to the level of 50,000 tests per day and the goal is to have that in place in the next few months, 50,000 per day, 300 plus community sites and that will be both public health sites and working with private providers as well. When you get to the level of 50,000 tests a day, a hundred thousand every two days, a million every 20 days, you can see now we're starting to get into the kind of extraordinary levels we need, and we want to keep building all the time. So, the testing crucial at the beginning of it all, but now the tracing, think about what it means. A tracer needs to engage someone who tests positive, they have to say, who have you had close contact with in the last few days? Talk about all the places you've been, let's reconstruct it, then we have to find the people you had close contact with. We're going to use every tool we have, and I'm convinced we'll have a very high success rate identifying those contacts, tracking them down quickly. And then the whole process begins again with those contacts, if they test positive, everyone they've been in contact with in close contact in recent days, et cetera. In the next few weeks, as I said, we're going to build up rapidly, by later this month we'll be at a thousand contact tracers and folks working on the phone bank operation related to it. As I said, by early June 2,500 eventually we're preparing to get to a number of tracers and folks in the phone bank operation, so a corps that will reach between 5,000 and 10,000 individuals. So, this corps is going to be extraordinarily important and we're going to keep adding as many people as we need to get the job done.

Now, I told you we were hiring that first thousand, we want people with a health care background, we put out the call for people to apply. Well, boy, talk about if you build it, they will come – 7,000 applications already and the hiring has begun. We are working closely with the Johns Hopkins university contact tracing and training initiative and that's sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Again, a big thanks to Mike Bloomberg and everyone at Bloomberg Philanthropies for the great work they're doing and for the great partnership, they're helping us quickly perfect this hiring and training apparatus so we can bring people on board rapidly. Now, just like we have this big vision of test and trace and we're using the huge extraordinary capacity of our own agencies and bringing outside help in like Bloomberg Philanthropies. This is just the beginning of something much bigger because what we will do as the city government is going to be the lead, but we're going to start to have more and more partners in the private sector as well. And last night I had an absolutely inspiring conversation with leaders in some of the largest in New York City, I told you, we've created these advisory councils. So we pulled together leaders of some of the largest businesses in the City to both talk about what their businesses are going through and how they were planning to restart and what they needed, what support, what ideas they had, but also talk about this city and the future of the city.

I have to tell you, these are some of the, literally the greatest minds in the business community, not just in this city, but in this country and the whole world. And uniformly people were confident that New York City was going to come back strong and these are folks who are going to have a big impact on that comeback and they believe in New York City. They believe in the spirit of this place; they believe in the talent that's here and they're all going to contribute. And what was so striking on the call was people are not asking what could the City government do for them? They consistently said, we want to help the City government; we want to help the people in New York City; we want to help the smaller businesses get back on their feet; we want to help the people of neighborhoods that have been hard hit; we want to help lead the way; we want to help create testing and tracing in our own organizations that will compliment what the city is doing. So, I just to say, it was very encouraging to see the commitment of our business leaders to getting this right and all of us doing this together and the willingness to contribute to everything the city needs to do.

And I also had another conversation last night, which was also inspirational to me. One of the, I think the most impressive business leaders in America, Marc Benioff, of Salesforce. He's someone I've had the opportunity to get to know over the last few years and I think one of the business leaders in this country who has one of the strongest voices in terms of social conscience and what the business community needs to do to help the larger community. We talked about the work ahead with test and trace and Salesforce; his company is already doing this work with a number of States around the country. And we've agreed that we're going to work together and bring Salesforce into this effort - testing and tracing here in this city. Extraordinarily able company with the kind of technological vision and capacity to help make the test and trace approach as efficient and as far reaching as possible. Then they've been working closely with our information technology department DoITT and Commissioner Jesse Tisch, who's doing an extraordinary job on many different, addressing many different pieces of this crisis, but I want to thank Commissioner Tish and everyone at DoITT. We have called upon them many times in many ways and they've answered the call brilliantly, but the ability of our IT team to now bring in the talent of Salesforce, which will allow us to track every case, analyze the data constantly, keep the right information on each and every case, and manage the whole process efficiently. This is going to be a huge effort. Just think how it grows and grows over the weeks, but it's something that if we do right, continually will constrain this disease. So, Salesforce is coming on board in the next few weeks. Their effort will be up and running by the end of this month and a great thanks to Marc Benioff and everyone there. As we spoke, there was no question in my mind he believed this was a personal responsibility to support New York City. Also mentioned to you before Salesforce has done a whole lot in terms of getting donations of PPEs here to New York City to help our heroes and that's deeply appreciated as well.

Now, when we get to the reality of tracing people that will inevitably lead to folks who need to isolate and folks who sometimes won't be able to properly isolate in their own home. So, look if you live alone, you can isolate. If you live in the kind of home or apartment where there's enough space and you can be separated from other people in the home the right way - people are doing it all the time - that's fine, but there are many, many New Yorkers who live in such crowded circumstances that they simply couldn't isolate properly or they don't feel they could and they need support and that's why we're going to be leaning heavily into this isolation effort through the hotels. So, by June 1st, we'll have 1,200 rooms available specifically for this isolation effort, but we can build that number out very quickly anytime we need. Remember, it is not just here's a hotel room, have a nice day. It is we're going to get you to a hotel room, we're going to transport you, we're going to make sure that you have food, we're going to make sure you have medical care, we’re going to make sure you have laundry, whatever it takes and constant checking-in. Someone who is experiencing the disease we want make sure they're okay and if they need further care, we're going to get it to them. So, that hotel operation comes with a lot of support and all that has to be coordinated and individualized to the person. That's a key part of what the corps will do as well.

So, pulling the pieces together here, we're going to have to do things we never have done before to fight an enemy we've never seen before. We're dealing with an invisible enemy; we're dealing with a disease we've never experienced. No one six months ago on this earth had experienced and a disease that the medical community still doesn't fully understand, but the things we do understand, we're throwing everything we got into. We know testing and tracing works; we know isolation works. When you combine these strategies with the progress we're making already because of social distancing, because of shelter in place, because of face coverings, it's that one-two punch to really push back this disease. We keep doing that right, we get to then start taking those steps towards normalcy and opening up, but this piece is going to supercharge our efforts to beat back this disease.

Okay, couple other things. I want to talk to you about the way we're approaching social distancing because it has been unquestionably successful. That doesn't mean we can't get better at it. We have to keep getting better at it. I do note by the way, more and more people for example, wearing the face coverings, that's a good sign and we'll keep giving out more and more for free. We're not standing still. We need more and more people to wear face coverings more and more of the time; we need social distancing to work better, more and more of the time, not let it go lax. We need to get better; we need to get stronger. That's part of why we have enforcement to keep people on their toes, to make sure people are doing it the right way. We know we have a new challenge, the warmer weather; we've talked about this before. The way to address social distancing is tons of education and of course the right kind of enforcement. But we see in some places the enforcement is made harder by the sheer physical circumstances. So we're going to try a new approach and this is a beginning - this weekend - and we're going to try in a few places where we've had particular problems. It's something we can apply to more and more places if it works. We're going to do a certain amount of experimentation here. Again, we're in the great unknown; we're going to experiment sometimes to try and get it right. And clearly, we've talked about this before. Our police officers are being asked to do something they never were originally trained for it. We're going to keep improving the training and the protocols because no one's had to do this before on this scale. But we know we had some parks last weekend that were more crowded than they should have been. And we know it wasn't just some [inaudible] individuals; it was really the physical reality of the park, so we want to do something different. So, for example, at the Hudson River Park, there are some places in Hudson River Park was one of the places where we saw too many people too close together. Hudson River Park, Piers 45, 46 we're going to proactively limit the number of people who can be in any given area right there. We're going to have the NYPD working with other agencies from the very beginning of the day, limiting the number of people who go in. Obviously offering people face coverings as well and keeping an eye to make sure the number of people never reaches too high a point and when it does, obviously asking people to move out and make more space - make sure there's turnover. We're going to try that approach, see if that gets us where closer to where we need to be. Domino Park, Williamsburg, another place where we've had problems; we're going to intensify the enforcement and monitoring there to make sure the numbers are kept smaller as well. This is what we'll do to get started and try this out. We think that limiting access at the beginning make sense, helps us to stop problems before they begin. Helps us to educate people from the beginning there has to be limited time and turnover. Why? Why are we doing this? Because it saves lives and that's what we're going to tell people from the beginning. If you're going in, you're going in for a limited period of time. We're not going to let it get too crowded. If people don't want to wait and they come and there's a lot of people there and you have to wait – a lot of people are going to move on. If people do want to wait, we're going to make sure they're socially distanced, but we're going to start using this kind of approach in these parks. If it works and we need to use it in other places, we'll do that, but the idea is proactive, early NYPD and other agencies are there before people show up in numbers. We set the tone from the beginning. We think this is going to help a lot.

Now, another really important topic we've talked about last few days, and this is also about saving lives, fighting back this disease, protecting our essential workers, but also protecting some of those vulnerable among us - homeless New Yorkers. We've talked about the subway initiative, what we've been doing with the state of New York, the MTA the last few days. Something we'd never seen before in the history of city, the cleaning out of the subways each night, making sure they're safe and clean. So, we continue to see unbelievable hard data, hard evidence of the positive impact this is having on our ability to reach homeless folks, get them support, get them services, get them to come into a safe, supportive environment. I told you about the last couple of nights. Last night, 163 homeless individuals accepted help. So again, the 163 out of 269 people are engaged. Now, we've had three nights in a row where more than 50 percent of the people engaged, accepted help. This is a very, very striking reality – 163 accepted help, 148 went to shelter, 15 went to hospitals. We have never seen anything like this. I have been working on issues of homelessness now for literally 20 years since I was Chairman of the Jail General Welfare Committee in the City Council going back all the way to 2002. We have never seen results like this in our history; that this many people accepted services and came-in in a single night and it’s happened three nights in a row. This is amazing; this is beyond anyone's expectation. This is good news and it's pointing us in a really powerful direction. So again, totaling the last three nights, 520 homeless New Yorkers have accepted help, have agreed to come in to safe havens and shelters or go to medical facilities; 520 people in three days – it's breathtaking. So again, a thanks to everyone involved. A special thanks to Commissioner Steve Banks, everyone at Social Services and Homeless Services, all the amazing outreach workers, all the wonderful nonprofit organizations they work for. They are doing the Lord's work. They are unsung heroes. But these results are literally historic and I commend you all.

Okay. And let's say a few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Okay. With that, we will take questions from our colleagues in the media. Please let me know the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder, we have Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze, Police Commissioner Shea, President and CEO of Health + Hospitals Dr. Katz, Executive Director of the Test and Trace Corps. Dr. Long, and Senior Advisor, Dr. Varma on the phone. With that, I will start with Steve from Westwood One News.

Question: Thank you and good morning. Thanks for taking my question first. I feel honored, thank you. So, a question about the contact tracing – first of all, what went into the thought process behind moving this over from the Department of Health to hospitals? And considering the history of the Department of Health doing this and having the expertise and the experience in doing this, why make the shift? I'm just curious what went into the thought process and what were the conversations between the two agencies. Also, both the antibodies testing and the contact tracing armies, are these efforts unique to the City or are they part of the larger State efforts that are also taking place at the regional level? And if they are separate from the regional efforts, why would the City be doing their own separate contact tracing and antibodies testing? Why not be part of the larger process?

Mayor: So, on that question I think it's important to remember the basic structure of things in government has not changed, meaning the federal government provides a certain amount of guidance or a certain amount of decisions that affect us, provides funding and obviously should provide a lot more in the stimulus, should be providing much more in terms of testing, but then turns to states do a lot of the decisions on how to handle their state. The State government makes a whole host of decisions, implements certain things, but it is, in many cases, providing the framework, the rules, the guidance and devolves to localities to do a lot of the day-to-day work, just as is true in any normal governance situation, anytime, even outside of crisis. So, we as the locality, it's our job, of course, to provide the health care directly, for example, through our public hospitals and clinics; to provide the PPEs, which we've been doing vigorously for public hospitals, private hospitals, clinics, nursing homes; to do the enforcement efforts, NYPD and other agencies. This fits in that same broader pattern. The test and trace apparatus that the City is setting up is to serve our people on a huge scale with our operational capacity. The State is putting together a big effort working with localities, working with Bloomberg Philanthropies. We're going to connect into that effort in a variety of ways. But what matters is that the numbers add up and that the numbers are shared and coordinated. And that's absolutely what we intend to do. But in terms of boots on the ground, that's what localities do, by definition. You know, the State government – think about all the things the State government does, all the things local governments do. We run police forces, you know, fire departments, sanitation, public health care, schools. I mean, go down the list. Local government runs the day-to-day operations and the things that reach people's lives very directly. So, we're putting together this vast apparatus, but it will be well coordinated with what the State is doing and information will be shared so anything that's being done will be done in a manner that's – where we avoid duplication and it all adds up towards a common goal, and there's been a lot of communication with the State on the approach. We feel good about that.

On the work of putting this together – so, look, throughout this whole crisis, there's been a group of health care leaders that we have turned to, to think through the strategies and then to bring into play all the other folks who can think about the strategic issues, the organizational issues, the logistics. And it's been an extraordinary effort, a whole lot agencies – Health + Hospitals, Department of Health, Emergency Management, but then all sorts of other agencies – I mentioned DoITT – you know, all sorts of agencies have contributed. In building something as big as this, the first question was just the sheer operational and logistical size and complexity and where does that fit? It fits an operational agency. Health + Hospitals – 11 hospitals, 70 clinics, the ability to do things on a vast scale, the ability to manage huge numbers of operational frontline personnel. They provide health care directly to people and so they understand what it means to put together a process that's going to be not just testing a lot of people and tracing a lot of people, but then ensuring a lot of people get to the hotels, get the health care they need, all the pieces. It fits the sheer operational scope and capacity of Health + Hospitals. Department of Health is going to be deeply integrated into this effort, bringing their expertise. They have tremendous expertise and obviously understand so much about the tracing piece in particular. That's why a number of personnel from Department of Health will be involved in this effort directly and be coordinated into this effort under the rubric of Health + Hospitals. And this is how we're going to build something very rapidly. Health + Hospitals also, because of its nature as an independent agency, is able to move very quickly – major contracts, make things happen in terms of personnel and operations faster than traditional mayoral agencies. This is going to take an immense and fast effort. And Health + Hospitals fits for all the reasons I've said, but also just the sheer heroism of what they've done in the last two months. They had an incredible challenge thrown at them and they found a way to fight back and hold, and I think that speaks volumes about their capacity and why they will be perfectly situated to lead this next phase.

Moderator: Next we have James from PIX 11.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Good to see you. Happy Friday.

Mayor: Happy Friday to you James. How you doing?

Question: Great, thank you. I appreciate your asking. I tuned in just a little late, so maybe you covered this at the very top, but, as I recall, you said yesterday we'd get information today breaking down social distancing arrests citywide. We have the Brooklyn where the majority were black and Latino. Could you please respond to that and give guidance about the other boroughs?

Mayor: Yeah, I'm going to respond while turning to Freddi Goldstein to say, please, if we have – if you could bring me that chart on the summonses and if there is arrest data on the other boroughs, just put it here in front of me and I'll speak to it. I've seen some of it, I want to make sure I have the latest.

Question: And this is my first time –

Mayor: Welcome. Welcome.

Question: So, I was told that I get a second question in.

Mayor: Yes, you do.

Question: And it's just this – just a little more on the test and trace corps. You've change it – changed testing and tracing from a Department of Health function to the larger corps, and are including the DOHMH as part of it certainly. But can you talk about the optics of not having anyone from the Department of Health involved in this briefing?

Mayor: Again, this has been something that was built with everyone – team effort, figuring out what makes sense to mount a vast operational effort. The deputy mayor, Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze has under his purview Health + Hospitals and Department of Health. Again, he working with the whole team that's been managing this larger effort has been bringing all the pieces together to make sure that the expertise of those two agencies, but other agencies as well is maximized. This is what you're doing in an emergency. You don't rest on tradition or traditional lines between agencies, you create what's needed to achieve extraordinarily challenging goals in a very, very fast timelines. So, to me, this process really just looked at how we were going to get the job done and what was the right mix, bringing the right talent together in the right setting. And, again, if there's specific questions, the Deputy Mayor can speak to it, but I am convinced this is the way we'll get it done. And, look, ultimately, I'm the one accountable here to make sure that people are served. And I'm the one who believes that the best way to get a vast operational mission done is to turn to an operational agency that has proven its capacity.

Now, on the police data. So, again, I'll speak to what I've seen so far, and, I'll say from the very beginning, we do not accept disparity, period. I've had this conversation with Commissioner Shea, he shares these values. Commissioner Shea has spent a lifetime helping to improve the NYPD, make it more effective make it better able to fight crime, make it more modern and data-driven, but also make it an agency that reflects the values of fairness and equality more and more. And he has been in the lead of creating neighborhood policing and the retraining of the police force and the de-escalation training and body camera usage and all the other fundamental reforms. So, we don't accept disparity. When we see disparity, we’re going to address it. On the arrests and summonses, the thing to focus on first, just the sheer fact is we're looking at numbers across a city of 8.6 million people and across a time span, I believe, was six weeks. And the numbers of arrests and summonses are extraordinarily low. So, I don't for a moment misunderstand folks who raise alarms and concerns or project forward concerns. But I say, hey, start with these sheer facts that we're talking about very few people have been arrested and very few people have been summonsed. And there's been a huge amount of restraint by the NYPD, that's just factually obvious from the numbers, and we intend to keep it that way only using summons and arrest when needed, but we will use them when need. It's also important to note that in some cases – I think some of the data that went out originally included arrests that were not actually related to social distancing but are related to – or, summonses that were related to other types of offenses. So, that just needs to be clarified. But the bottom line is, when I saw those numbers, I found them to be an indicator that something's wrong we need to fix. And we will fix it. Six years we've been seeing things that were wrong, we needed to fix. This is another thing we will fix. We'll give more training to our officers, clearer protocols. I want to make sure every community is treated equally. But that being said, we are going to use the NYPD where – we absolutely must use the NYPD to keep people safe in every sense, but specifically when fighting this pandemic. Job-one is to save lives and enforcement is necessary to saving lives and we're not going to have proper enforcement without the largest, best police force in the country being in the game here. So, we're going to do that, but we're going to keep working to make it better literally every day.

Moderator: Next we have Anna from the Daily News.

Mayor: Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I was wondering if you could explain a little further the need to, kind of, put public hospitals in charge of this? I mean, I know that the public hospital system has turned around in recent years, but, of course, there's been a lot of managerial issues there over the last 10 years or so. And I'm just curious if people in the Health Department, you know, thought that this was also the way to go, because it feels like they're not happy that this control is being taken from them.

Mayor: Yeah. Anna, thank you for the question. So, first of all, my job is not to ensure people's happiness who work for 8.6 million New Yorkers. This is not about happiness. This is about effectiveness. It's about serving people. This is about fighting a pandemic. I'm not going to get overly focused on anyone's personal opinions in the midst of that. I think the question is what's going to get the job done. And getting the job done means taking the best of each agency and applying it in a way that makes sense. Again, the entire effort to date, has been asking different agencies to do different things. We have asked agencies to collaborate, to defer to each other, to join together in all sorts of ways and people have done it and they've done it with a tremendous sense of teamwork. Here, bottom line is simple, massive operational task. I'm giving it to a massive operationally focused agency. That's what makes sense. That's what we're doing. Now you make a good point, H + H of the past, H + H of today – H + H of today is a very different reality. We have provided the immense resources to strengthen Health + Hospitals. Health + Hospitals has gone through a series of reforms. They are becoming a stronger, better organization all the time. Dr. Mitch Katz has worked miracles. Anyone paying attention in the last few years has seen a stunning transformation. And he's renowned all over the country. One of the great health leaders in this country. But remember this is a guy who ran Los Angeles public health system, the second largest in the country and then came here in the last years, has been running the largest in the country. And in both places, created tremendous progress and reform. So, when you have an inspired operational leader, you know, pass the ball to them is my attitude. And the last important thing to say is two months of sheer hard evidence – H + H was put through hell and fought back, held the line, created, came up with solutions, came up with innovations. It was breathtaking. So, whatever happened in the past is in the past, but what H + H has done today, what H + H has done before our very eyes, the people at Health + Hospitals, the talent at Health + Hospitals that's been on display these last two months. That's all I need to see is what's before my very eyes.

Moderator: Next we have Andrew Siff. [Inaudible] apologies. Next we have Andrew Siff from NBC.

Mayor: Hey Andrew, can you hear me?

Question: Yes. Hello, Mayor and everyone, hope you're all doing well. I have two questions. The first question has to do with your crowd control initiative at parks. I'm wondering why that's the policy as opposed to a more strict message that New Yorkers simply not go out for long? Given that hospitalizations tick back up today. It seems that both you and the Governor are talking about people going outside as though it's a reality instead of trying to continue to enforce that people go out for quick exercise and stay home? My second question is on behalf of my colleague Melissa Russo, you know, she broke the story about the impact on COVID and Kawasaki Syndrome and kids. Your Health Department put out an alert on Monday that there were 15 cases of Multi-Inflammatory Syndrome in children in the city. Yet we were told by the Chief Doctorate at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital that they have 15 cases at their hospital alone. So should we assume that the number you put out at the start of the week was incomplete? Do you have an updated number now that more hospitals may be reporting?

Mayor: Okay. Let me come to that one second and I'll turn to Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze and Dr. Varma for anything they want to add on that. But let me in the meantime on the crowd issue, Andrew, I think you're raising a very important question. I'm glad you asked it because I think this is the kind of dialogue we need to have. So we made a decision from the beginning that we had to figure out how to get this whole strategy to work. Asking 8.6 million people to, for the vast majority of day stay inside, when they're outside to practice social distancing. And then we added wear a face covering on top of that. And asking that many people to follow an instruction which was so difficult, so unusual, so unnatural for them in very little time, you always have to ask the question, what kind of balance do you have to strike? What's going to help people do it? How are we going to recognize their honest needs and frustrations and you know, create some bounds? And so to me the notion of saying, okay, you're going out for a period of time each day. Keep it as limited as you can get back in. That makes sense. And that's really what we've seen the vast majority of people do. We've had a couple of really nice days and actually very few really nice days since this crisis began. And it's understandable after days and days and days where people on top of shelter-in-place, we're dealing with bad weather, that on the very nice days people came out disproportionately. But we're going to keep making the point, you go out, get some air, get some exercise, get back in. But the way to do that in my view is a combination of approaches and I think to say to people we're going to start putting these limits on the space in some parks that need it, that are particularly challenged by their layout is another way to say to people just get what you need and go back. This is a way to strike the balance. So no, the numbers we've seen overall have been very good and consistent, but still not everything we need. But the fact is if we're going to get people to adhere to everything else, Andrew, we've got to have some balance in the equation. Because this is not going to be done overnight. We're going to be at this for a while. So we're trying to figure out and something we talk about all the time, what's that appropriate balance that keeps people inspired to do all the tough and discipline stuff but gives them a little bit of a break because we have to sustain this strategy for the long haul? That's what's undergirding this approach.

On the Kawasaki Syndrome. Again, any information we find we're going to put out, we're going to acknowledge. Days and days ago when Melissa first asked and I'm really glad she raised it, we just weren't seeing it in any appreciable number. Then the minute we did, we came forward, said it, put out the health alert. If there's more out there, we want to know it, we want to acknowledge it and act accordingly. So it's not surprising that new information is coming in. That was the whole intention of the health alert to try and encourage new information. But if there's more than we originally saw, we want to know that and we want to see it. Talk about it, act on it. Deputy Mayor or Dr. Varma, anything you want to add?

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: I think you just said it all, Mr. Mayor. We only know what is reported to the Health Department. So, the moment we put out a health alert, it is highly likely the awareness heightens and then we get more visibility to the cases. So, we'll continue to report them as much.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. My first question, and I think it was raised before, but I didn’t hear it addressed. Is there a reason Dr. Barbot is not on the call today to discuss this new effort? And secondly, I believe you said 50,000 tests a day in the next few months? You've previously said we need hundreds of thousands a day in order to reopen the economy. So, does that mean reopening is even further than a few months away?

Mayor: Great question. On the first question, Erin every day we put together a different lineup. You all have seen that. And the lineup for today was to speak about the things that we're talking about today and obviously bring a range of expertise to talk about today's announcements. On the tests. The, you're exactly right that what I want is hundreds of thousands a day. I'm going to keep fighting for hundreds of thousands a day. The only way we are getting to a hundreds of thousands a day is if we have a sea change in the federal approach because we would need an immense amount more lab capacity. And the federal government would have to address that and the problem with the supply of reagents. That is beyond our reach to fundamentally change that reality. Either the federal government's going to step up and do that or we are going to be limited to something like 50,000 – we might be able to get beyond 50,000 but certainly there's not an immediate vision of how to get the hundreds of thousands.

Now, that's the PCR test, the diagnostic test. With all the appropriate disclaimers about the antibody tests and the imperfections of the antibody tests the – hold on technical thing. There we go. With all of those qualifications of what's not so perfect about antibody test, the antibody test still will help in the larger equation. It's something we can use as another piece of information. And as I announced yesterday, just the two efforts that we're working on immediately, that's going to be over a quarter of a million people. So you know, and there's going to be other antibody testing out there too. So that's actually important to think about in the equation. If we're ramping up first to 20,000 then to 50,000 PCR tests per day, as I said, that's going to get you to like a million, 1.5 million in a month. And you have a heavy antibody testing element and it's all being coordinated. That's still giving us a hell of a lot to work with. Not perfect, but a lot to work with. Also remember the good old-fashioned concept of if someone has symptoms, you can act on that too, in terms of isolating someone, that still is a very valuable tool. So I think the best way to summarize it is we have enough to put together a serious and effective test and trace program. We'd like more, but we're going to get plenty done with this approach.

Moderator: Next we have Reuven from Hamodia.

Question: Good morning Mr. Mayor. Considering that patients in hospitals are generally not allowed to have relatives stay with them, with all the stories of neglect in hospitals, there's a lack of communication with the patients and families. Patients in some instances were not receiving basic care -- going very long times without food or water. There's an effort underway to allow volunteers in hospitals or even the patient's relatives who have tested positive for antibodies, who can help and advocate for the patient's needs. 35 council members sent a letter to the President of H + H and the President of Greater New York Hospital Association requesting they put in place a compassionate helper volunteer program. This follows letters from Assembly members and State Senators. And recently letters from many members of New York's Congressional Delegation to have Governor Cuomo pass this as an executive order. There's also an effort underway to have it passed as a bill although in this state an executive order would be faster. I'm wondering, Mr. Mayor, do you plan to push for this program?

Mayor: Thank you, Rueven. Thank you for a very, very good and important question. So I'll preface and I'll turn to Mitch Katz. Preface would be this, first point pandemic, tremendous challenges. Got to keep people safe. So normal rules don't apply and things that are painful, you know, we've had to grapple with families not being with loved ones, not just in terms of advocacy but even just in terms of love and support, in ways that are very painful. No one would ever want to see that. But it has been about protecting lives. The last thing a patient would want is for their loved ones to be compromised and get sick as well. So that's been the governing philosophy and I think it's a pretty common sense, sane philosophy. With that said your underlying point is very fair. If you think about health care in normal times, family being there, loved ones, friends, being there to advocate for a patient is really important and necessary.
I mean it's not just nice, it's necessary. But that's in normal times. So balancing the two is tough. I would like us to move more and more in that direction where there could be more of a family voice, more family advocacy, more information for families. And I think the point about folks who have been antibody tested is interesting. Although again, remember antibody testing is not a guarantee. But it is certainly is a meaningful point to say it tells us something more about someone's ability to get through this disease and fight it back. So I appreciate the spirit of what's being said and I'm sympathetic to it, but only if we can do it in a way that we think does not increase the spread of the disease. So that's kind of the balance I'm trying to think about here. Dr Katz, you have to actually run the place. Tell me what you think?

President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: So, Mr. Mayor, I think you've covered the important issues. People really should have their families with them at a time when they're ill. And as you say, we have to balance that with the realities of this infectious disease. We have distributed throughout H + H, a large number of iPads. We're able to connect people to their families and relatives using the iPads so that people can see their families. We do calls as well while the doctors are in the room. So that the doctors can talk to the families, give updates. We have at all of our Health + Hospitals, a patient hotline so that family members can call and inquire about their relatives. But so far, in part because we are under a State order about visitors, we haven't been able to go further. I'm hoping as you say that in the coming days, perhaps using antibody results as a tool, perhaps just because there will be fewer patients and more PPE, that there will come a time when we can go back to normal, but I don't think we're there yet. Thank you.

Mayor: Okay.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Morning. Mr. Mayor, I was hoping you could clarify the difference between this trace corps and the disease detectives that we heard so much about, I guess in the early stages of this. What's the main difference other than that they were through the Health Department? And I wanted to ask a question – two of my colleagues at the Journal wrote a story earlier this week about the City's lack of vetting of certain contractors, including one man who was convicted of a felony back in February and he received a $14 million contract. They saw this by Googling. That's how they found it out. So, I just wanted to get your take on –

Mayor: Katie, what was – when you say the contract, are you saying something related to COVID or something else?

Question: Yeah, through the emergency procurement. So, obviously it's not going to the same vetting process, but I'm curious if you think that there is still more that needs to be done when giving out contracts related to COVID.

Mayor: Right. Yeah, Katie, that is a really good question. This is a – look, I think in the way, the situation we experienced in March and April, of course, we're always trying to make sure people are on the level and, of course, especially in the middle of a crisis you want to make sure if you're giving people money that you're going to get the product back you need and require to keep people safe. And it has to happen in the timeline they're saying. So, when you're in the middle of an emergency, the vetting and the care you take is about making sure that they will perform the function needed to keep people safe and save lives. Of course, we want to guard against any unsavory background and of course there's always checks and balances, but it's all about saving lives right now. And that was the March, April reality. There was very little margin for error. When you start to get to a somewhat better case, like we are now where things are starting to improve, you want to start to apply the more traditional standards, more and more still understanding, for example, on PPEs, you know, we're still not out of the woods on that and that we that we have to move very quickly on test-and-trace. So, there's a balance to strike. But you know, with every passing day it gets a little bit more possible to apply some of our previous standards. So, you know, I'll get folks to give you a more complete answer, but no, I'd say, vigilant but emergency is still emergency. It's first about saving lives and we have to strike that balance always.

On the disease detectives – they are highly experienced, highly trained people. They continue to do immensely important work. They're a small elite corps. This tracing apparatus, as I said, we're going up to a thousand then to 2,500 then with the likelihood of going to end up between five and ten thousand, it's a totally different situation. The disease detectives are sort of the ultimate expression of this work, but there's only a few hundred of them. Where we're going is to thousands. Ultimately, you know, as many as five to ten thousand. So, it's a different approach to be able to do something on a much wider scale.

Moderator: Last two for today. Next, we have Gloria from NY1.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I want to ask about the tracing effort. You talked about capacity being one of the big reasons for making this change. But I wonder how this is going to work with the rest of the hospital system, obviously accounting for the public hospital part of this, but how do the other private hospitals come into this equation when obviously contact tracing, being about tracing as many people as possible, including those who may have gone into a private hospital. And my second question is about just, you spoke about the heroism and the capacity of Health + Hospitals, but in the past, the Department of Health has led the charge on other contact tracing efforts, including the most recent one I think is when the city was having the measles outbreak. So, what about capacity changed and why is [inaudible] as you describe it, what does it have to do with their ability [inaudible] Department of Health’s ability to do contact tracing?

Mayor: Yeah. Gloria, I was deeply involved in the measles effort – night and day reality, very important effort for sure, and took time to develop, but ultimately a very successful effort. Department of Health did a great job. A lot of other pieces of the equation came into play too. A lot of work was done here at City Hall, but also other agencies to support that effort and build it. Very good and valiant effort, but this is an entirely different scale now we're talking about with test-and-trace, it’s just night and day. So, again I respect all the questions, but I think you all are interested in facts. We're talking about a vast, vast undertaking. Bears no resemblance to the good and important work that occurred during measles. This is a huge operational undertaking to literally test – we're talking about initially, as I said, 20,000 people a day and then ultimately move up to 50,000 people a day, to bring together all the information from the other testing, to trace people, to make sure that people are isolated, get isolated, to make sure they get the medical care they need, the hotel room, the food, everything.

This is an entirely different kind of operation. Different agencies do different things and there are – and anyone who spends time in government knows that some organizations are primarily operational agencies, others do really crucial tasks, policy setting, regulatory work, oversight, public information, all sorts of things. But in terms of a vast operation, I can tell a mile away, an agency that runs a huge amount of on the ground work, 11 hospitals, 70 clinics, has thousands and thousands of employees who engage the public every day and provide direct service – it's an entirely different thing and it's a better fit for the scale of what we have to do here. The question about the private hospitals, we're going to work with everyone. The testing, we're going to have information on test results. We're going to follow up with anybody and everybody. So, the testing that we'll provide as a city is going to happen primarily through public buildings. But we're, as I said, ultimately going to start working with private entities as well. But the follow-up on people, we don't care what we get the positive result from. We're going to follow up with people no matter what, and do the tracing work and then do the isolation work as needed. So, ultimately, this will involve a much bigger swath of the private health care world as well.

Moderator: Last question for today. We have Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask you about the social distancing data from the police. When did you first see that data? It sounded like it might've been yesterday or today. And if so, I'm just wondering why you waited so long to look at six weeks of data. You said that you don't accept the disparity, but if you're not aware of it, obviously you can't do anything about it. And secondly, what are you going to do about it? What are your instructions going to be to the Police Department?

Mayor: Yoav, you are a diligent reporter. So, I would ask you to check my Twitter feed because if I replied to it last night, obviously, I did not see it this morning for the first time. I saw it last night, but last night was the first time I saw it and I immediately responded. You know, again, I wanted to give the context for sure, which I believe fundamentally that this is about health and safety first. That when you say safety, you say NYPD we're dealing with a pandemic, we're dealing with something absolutely unprecedented, and there is no way in hell we are going to be able to keep people safe if we don't use the strongest, best public safety organization in this country. So that's my – you didn't say this exactly, but some folks have been saying, ‘Oh, we should deemphasize the NYPD’. I couldn't disagree more. We have to keep people safe. And this is the organization in the city that knows the most about keeping people safe. The honest truth when you look at those numbers is it's very, very few instances. That disparity, I don't like, I don't accept. We can do a lot about it and I'll certainly talk to you about that. But why did – was that not a priority compared to everything else? Because for weeks and weeks we were focused on saving lives. Trying to keep our hospitals going, trying to make sure people had PPE. This was not where the focus was. The focus was on the most essential life saving activity. Now as things are getting a little bit better, we're looking at a lot of outstanding questions. Last night was the first time I saw the data. First thing that struck me was how few arrests there have been and how few summons there have been.

The number that I responded to last night was an overall number. It turned out was higher than the real number, that the summonses directly related to social distancing are 374 from a period that stretches from March 16th when this thing really started to heat up to May 5th. Let's call that six weeks, 374 summonses in six weeks, 42 days. That's fewer than 10 summonses a day and the arrests. The arrest data I saw was from Brooklyn was 40 arrests. It's so small, not belittling the experience that people go through at all, but it's such a small number. Let's put it in perspective, in a city of 8.6 million people in the middle of a pandemic. So the most important thing to me here is that very little use of summons and arrests has been necessary. But what we'll do about it is what we always do when we see a problem.

We're going to go back, clarify the protocols, more training for officers, more work with supervisors to make sure that they're attentive to these issues. I want to see every community treated fairly, but I want a resolute approach where it's really clear we got to follow these rules. I've said, especially when it comes to gatherings, we're going to be very, very aggressive. It’s just they’re too life threatening. We're not going to allow it, but we're going to work to make sure that the law is applied, the rules are applied evenly in every community. And we know what it takes to help approach that in a more effective manner. Commissioner Shea and I've had this conversation and we're totally united on this point and that's what we're going to do. But you will see our officers out there doing enforcement because that's how we save lives.

Okay, everybody, I'll conclude with this. Sometimes, you know, some people when you hear bad news and good news, some people like to hear the bad news first. Some people like to hear the good news first. I'm the kind of person that likes to hear the bad news first. So, indulge me for a moment. When we talk about test-and-trace in the nation's largest city, big, complicated environment, epicenter of the crisis in this nation, the bad news is we don't have the full partnership with the federal government we want and we need. I'm very appreciative to the Department of Health and Human Services and CDC that they are going to be lending a very important helping hand with the antibody tests for our first responders and our health care heroes. That's good. That's a start. But what we really need is a pure, intense federal commitment to maximizing the amount of diagnostic testing to ensure that it's widely, widely available so that we really could get to that level of hundreds of thousands of tests a day, that the lab capacity is there – only the federal government could do that. They still haven't done it. They need to do it. This is something the president should focus on. I'd love to see fewer words from the president and more action. Just get us testing, get us lab capacity. It will work wonders if we can actually provide the testing we've never had. So, that's the bad news that that's never happened that we don’t know when that's going to happen.

The good news is in New York City, we make things happen. We do it our own way. If we are not given the help we need, we don't give up, we don't throw up our hands. We go and make things happen. So, now you're going to see the biggest testing and tracing initiative you've ever seen in this city, in this country before. It's going to be fast. It's going to be intense. It's going to reach deeply into the city. It's going to be lifesaving, unquestionably. Everyone who's coming together to do this are the – are going to be the next wave of heroes in this crisis. So, I want to thank everyone who's worked so hard to set up test-and-trace, everyone who's coming on board to join us, everyone who will be joining us. The work you're going to do is going to be crucial to fighting back this disease and once and for all pushing it away and bringing us a step towards normal again. This is going to be lifesaving work, but it's also going to be how we break the back of this virus once and for all. So, I thank everyone involved and again, I conclude with a thanks to all New Yorkers. You're doing the amazing work that's taken us forward. Keep doing what you're doing and we'll get to a better place.

Thank you.

2020-05-08 NYC Mayor de Blasio Ask the Mayor

Brian Lehrer: It’s the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone, and as we do every Friday, it's time for Ask the Mayor, my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our phones are open at 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0, 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0 or you can tweet a question, just use the hashtag, #AskTheMayor. I see some people are holding on from our last segment where you want you to talk about other things. We respectfully ask that you please clear the lines so people can call in with their questions for the Mayor at 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0, for our next guest who has to spend his birthday holding coronavirus briefings and doing interviews like this.

Happy birthday, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Brian, you are very kind and thank you for the well wishes. Well you know what, it’s a little-known fact but I, I was born across the street from Gracie Mansion in what was then called Doctors Hospital. Now it's in a classic New York story, it's now condos, but back then it was called Doctors Hospital. Can see it outside the outside the window of Gracie Mansion. And after this whole long life, I've only gone a block away. So, I am celebrating today that I have the privilege of serving the people of New York City and helping us all through this tough time and, interesting way to spend a birthday. But I'm in good company of 8.6 million friends.

Lehrer: There you go. An interesting journey around the world, that lands you back for maybe, your ultimate accomplishment in your life, being Mayor of New York, one block away from where you were born.

So we heard in the news and I know you addressed this earlier today at your briefing, the stat that NYPD, I'm sorry, from Brooklyn prosecutors that 35 of the 40 people arrested for social distancing violations in the borough are black, and of course there were those videos that emerged earlier in the week showing apparently violent NYPD arrests of people of color. And I know you already said this morning that all of this is not who we are as our city, in terms of New York values, and you're going to see that it changes. I want to ask who specifically in city government is responsible for these disparities, getting as far as they have on this and how will you hold them accountable?

Mayor: Well, look, I want to put it in perspective for a quick moment. I don't accept disparity, you know, the whole reason I came here to be Mayor was to address inequality and I think in the context of NYPD and I give a lot of credit to the NYPD leadership up and down the line that there has been a real devotion these last years to addressing disparity in so many ways. That's why we got rid of the unconstitutional use of Stop and Frisk, and retrained the entire police force in de-escalation and have moved to a neighborhood policing strategy, body cameras – I mean, so many fundamental changes. So I want to put it in perspective. I think the NYPD has been constantly improving and addressing disparity in a variety of ways and needs to keep doing more. And I want to also put in perspective that that the set of arrests in Brooklyn over a period of time during this crisis, 40 arrests in the borough of, you know, 2.6 million people. I don't want to overrate what happened, but the disparity is still unacceptable. So we're, look, I'm responsible, the Police Commissioner's responsible, we all have to figure out the strategies that we'll get up and down the line and NYPD the clear understanding that we have to ensure that policing is fair and just an equal that sometimes takes retraining that sometimes takes more work from supervisors at the precinct level. But again, you're talking in this case about very few specific instances and the importance of enforcement in the context of the pandemic. And that's where I will part company with some people honestly on both left and right, who are saying, Oh, pull back the NYPD in from enforcement – no, no, no, we have to have them NYPD enforcing these rules to ensure that we save lives and we get out of this pandemic.

But I think the answer to your question is it's the same exact way we've made as much progress. There's no question. There's been serious de-escalation efforts you see at these videos we've seen lately, one of which was particularly heinous and I was very critical of what happened there. And the officer has been placed on modified duty and is facing discipline. But you see relatively few videos compared to the millions of interactions in the course of a year between NYPD and citizens, the vast majority of which are done in the appropriate respectful manner. So we're going to work on this and we have ways of addressing this [inaudible], but I want it to kept in that bigger context.

Lehrer: You mentioned what people from the left and right are saying about the role of the NYPD. We have the Chair of the City Council Public Safety Committee, Donovan Richards of Southeast Queens on the show this week. And he argued something that to your point, ironically the police union had Pat Lynch, politically very different from Donovan Richards is also for, and that is not using the police for getting New Yorkers to socially distance. Here's Donovan Richards:

Council Member Donovan Richards: I agree with them and you know we should utilize different tools that we have in a toolbox right here in the City of New York. Now first off, we have the Department of Health and they have staff, I think we could utilize them a lot more to do PSAs, to drum up PSAs, to be out in local communities, this is something I've mentioned to the Mayor a few weeks ago, we need to see more of a city agency, city worker presence in a lot of communities. And then we should also be looking at community-based solutions. You know, we as a Council have funded crisis management organizations to the tune of I think close to $30 million, right? Why aren't we utilizing the validators, the people from our very communities to actually be part of the solutions on the ground?

Lehrer: So Mr. Mayor, why use the police at all as opposed to Health Department people as the Councilman refers to there for others who are not law enforcers?

Mayor: Look, this is the broadly, I think we're actually in agreement that we want to see more and more types of efforts beyond just police and that's why I announced over a thousand other city employees – enforcement folks from different agencies would be out. That was a week ago plus, I announced that. And then on top of that, we are going to move to bring into this more and more city employees who aren't enforcement folks and community-based organizations as well. So, actually, moving in the very direction that the Councilman is talking about. But you know, I want to differentiate that from folks who have suggested that you take away the single best enforcement tool we have, which is NYPD. NYPD is in every neighborhood, you know, deeply connected and knowledgeable about neighborhoods, deep relationships all around in a way that there's no parallel in other agencies have that kind of reach and that ability to be present and effective. Again, the vast majority of what the NYPD does is both effective in terms of protecting safety and more and more community focused and engaged with communities. So we should do all the above, you know, the right kind NYPD presence mixed with other agencies mixed with community-based leaders and organizations too. And that's certainly the direction we're going in.

Lehrer: But one more question about this relative deployment of what kinds of city workers and this time with respect to the subways, I know that overnight closures are by the Governor, not you, but I see a thousand NYPD officers are involved to deal with the homeless people being evicted each night. And our reporters from WNYC and Gothamist were out at some stations this week and said the number of police on the scene dwarf the number of social services people there to do outreach, and I asked the head of the transit agency, Sarah Feinberg on the show yesterday, shouldn't it be the opposite? Shouldn't social service workers from the HRA, Human Resources Administration –

Mayor: Not the NRA, definitely not the NRA.

Lehrer: Definitely not the NRA, we’ll both agree about that. Shouldn't the HRA dwarf the number of police? And she said, I would love that. So why is the ratio what it is?

Mayor: So let's understand. I think, I think there's a little bit of mixing of realities here. The – we're three nights into an unprecedented shutdown of the subway in the late night hours for cleaning, which was exactly the right thing to do, Governor and I agreed on this, to better cleaning, protect the essential workers, but also I believed fundamentally it would help us address homelessness in a more effective way. The MTA was very, very concerned to make sure that'd be enough police presence because you're talking about, I think it's almost 500 stations that were going to be closed for that period of time. And there were concerns about what happens when you close them and what kind of support would be needed for the NYPD in terms of preserving safety. And so there was a very extensive NYPD presence made available for the first days to help a deal with, you know, something we've never dealt with before. That was actually something that MTA wanted, and we agreed to it.

But on the outreach workers, we're going to keep sending as many are needed. I want you to hear this number, Brian, this is literally historic: the last three days – the last three nights when the trains were closed, outreach workers engaged hundreds of homeless folks and over three nights, 520 homeless individuals agreed to come in to shelter or to get to a medical facility because they needed medical help. 520 people in three days. We've never seen anything like that in the history of New York City where so many people agreed to come in simultaneously. And that's because the outreach workers were there to engage them on a huge scale. And we'll send more if we need more for sure, but it's – the numbers speak for themselves. The outreach workers are doing their job in an amazing fashion. Now, there were people last night, for example, they engaged 269 homeless people and 163 accepted help more than 50 percent. That's amazing. That's unprecedented to have that kind of success rate. But there's still others who didn't – the outreach workers will stick with them. They're going to stay in touch with those people and keep trying to persuade them to come in. So, we have the biggest outreach effort and the history of New York City and we'll keep building it as needed. But I don't want to get confused on why we also had an important police presence in the first days of something unprecedented.

Lehrer: Let's go to the phones. David in the Bronx, you're on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hi, David.

Question: Yes. Hello. Thank you very much. I'm calling because this is very relevant to a lot of other people I believe. I have had COVID-19. I am recovered. I have a letter verifying that I was tested for a COVID-19. I realized that donating plasma saves lives, which I'm very anxious to do as soon as possible. And the problem is that I keep on getting phone numbers, who gave me websites and with a great expert on computers and websites, I've repeatedly tried to get on the website and cannot get through. So, I am willing to drop what I'm doing now to go donate plasma, but for over a week now I can't and I don't know how to do it. There are problems with the website.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor, can you help David? Good Samaritan and wants to donate blood now that he's recovered from COVID-19, can you help him and if he’s having a problem other people might be too?

Mayor: Of course. And David, first of all, I'm so glad you recovered. And second of all, what a good person you are to immediately say, how can I help other people? So, I commend you. Please give your information to WNYC, our team will follow up and get you connected to blood donation. And Brian, to your point, yeah, I want to understand how we make this simpler. I know the New York Blood Center has been the go-to and I know people can go to their website and get information on how to give blood. But what I'll do is get a clearer answer about the specifically folks who are coming to offer the plasma donations, which is part of what is a very promising type of treatment so far for folks who are have been affected with and are experiencing really, really tough symptoms. The plasma treatment seems to be, you know, part of really helping them. So I'll get an announcement out on where people can turn to want to particularly come in because they've had COVID and want to give blood. We'll clarify that for the public. But I know, again, the New York Blood Center will be part of that. And I know in David's case we will connect him via WNYC. So, thanks David very much.

Lehrer: David, hang on. We will take your contact information and you said it, you're ready to drop everything and donate blood. Now we're going to make you do it. So, hang on. Seriously. Thank you for being such a good citizen. Edward in Corona, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello Edward.

Question: Hello. Wish you a very happy birthday. And I also want to say that you've got a very important historical birthday because today is 75th anniversary of VE Day in Europe, when the war ended in Europe and the allies were victorious, allowing democracy to flourish and to experience the freedoms that we are now experiencing today. So, the question that I have is are you and the Chancellor going to give the teachers back their spring Passover-Easter break that were taken away earlier? And how's that going to work?

Mayor: Thank you. Edward. First of all, Edward, thank you for your kind birthday wishes, but you also, you know your history and yes, Victory in Europe Day, and I will just take a moment to reflect on that very quickly because you know, my parents were both 44 years old when they had me, and so my parents were part of that World War II generation and felt that moment deeply, Chirlane’s parents as well. All four of our parents were in the war efforts. Chirlane’s dad was serving in Europe in the war in the army and her mom worked at the Springfield, Massachusetts armory. And my mom was very conscious of victory in Europe day because she was working at the Office of War Information on a broadcast to Italy at the time. And my dad was serving in the Pacific and the U.S. Army Seventh Division, and for him, Victory in Europe day was a very special day, but unfortunately for him there was still a lot of battle ahead in the Pacific. So for our family, you know, this anniversary means a lot. It's something that's very present for us. So it is a special honor to share a birthday with such an important historical anniversary.

But to your question, Edward, the teachers – look, we asked so much of our educators in the last weeks and, you know, I think the fact is we had to ask people to do some unusual things because it was about keeping the kids engaged, especially as kids were just going stir crazy and we're trying to keep kids in and we're trying to give them something positive to do, keep them focused on their education. And we asked educators to have to make some accommodation for that and the unions agreed to their credit. But we also created mechanisms for some flexibility to try and make sure that it would be recognized that teachers were, you know, being really helpful to the kids in that way and making sure that that time could be reflected in another way. So I don't have the exact mechanics with me. Obviously, we respected any teacher who for purely religious reasons needed to observe, but we did create some kind of accommodation beyond that. I'll make sure, if you give your information to WNYC, Edward, we will get that information to you on how that was handled. But definitely, you know, we're very, very respectful of what teachers have done. And that just last point that you know, I really again appreciate your referencing the history because on a birthday is a day where you remember, you know, who brought you here and who taught you and gave you the strength. So as I'm fighting this crisis, I am really, really thinking about my parents and the everything they taught me because they went through, you know, a really, really tough time in history and maybe somehow those lessons are what is helping me to get through this and help people through this now. So really appreciate you raising that point, Edward.

Lehrer: Edward, thanks. And if you want, we'll take your contact off the air. Terry in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with the mayor. Hi Terry.

Question: Good day, good day, good day, Mr. Mayor. I’d like to commend you on all your leadership and all your good ideas and I know things are moving and change it. But I'd like to say I need some help. I’d like to get in contact with your office if at the end of this conversation and also I used to work at an agency, the Department of Corrections, but I work now at a homeless shelter and I think the homeless shelters who are still having clients there still need some assistance and guidance. Do you have any new plans to help people who work in those environments?

Lehrer: Are you talking about, Terry, in particular that it's too crowded and the virus can spread or, or something else in particular that you want to shout out?

Question: Yes, the virus can spread and also the facility may not be prepared to deal with individuals who might need quarantine and sometimes that information is kept secret away from counselors or case managers, caseworkers, who might be in the facility.

Mayor: Terry, I really appreciate you raising the concern. I'd like you to give your information to WNYC and the people who lead our homeless efforts, our efforts to make sure that people are not homeless in the city and support those who are homeless. Commissioner Steve Banks and the Administrator for Homeless Services, Joslyn Carter, I would like one of them to speak to you today and hear your perspective directly to see if there are things that we need to do better. Look, the bottom line is that there are clear protocols that are being enforced with every shelter in terms of things like cleaning and personal protective equipment, but when it comes to the people you serve, making sure that anyone who needs isolation can get to a hotel very quickly with proper medical support. We’re sending in more medical backup to shelters to keep evaluating the situation. Any place there is need for more social distancing, we’ll take more of the clients out and put them in hotels. So that’s being, very energetically pursued. But if there is any gap, if there is anything that is not being communicated to the staff or that we need to better, we will, so please give your information, because I think your frontline knowledge would be really helpful to understand what we need to do better.

Lehrer: Alright, we’re putting you on hold, we will take that contact information Terry, you bet. Katie in Ocean Hill, you’re on WNYC with the Mayor, hi Katie.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor and hi Brian, thank you for having me on. I was hit by a car in a hit and run while biking on the first day of your new Open Streets initiative. I waited for half an hour for the police to come to file a report and they did not, so the EMT’s advised me to go on ahead to bike over to the precinct. I live in Ocean Hill which is a predominately black and working class neighborhood and I’m calling to say that you need to – you need to open up streets for the people. I do not think that limiting space in parks is the answer and I do not think that you understand or trust your citizens to police themselves as it may be open streets. Mr. Mayor, I don’t live near a neighborhood near a park. I need – I was, I feel very failed by you, Mr. Mayor, and by the way you have wavered on this. I’m sorry – I’m not sorry, because I’m horribly afraid to leave my house and I think you need to do better and I want to ask you how you are going to do better to protect all of your citizens?

Mayor: Katie, look, thank you. Thank you for the question Katie. I only want people to tell me what they feel and New Yorkers usually do tell me exactly what they feel and I’m perfectly used to it. So, I want to make sure we’re constantly offering people more and more options, but I also have a bottom line about what I think is safe and it’s my responsibility to keep people safe. And I, with all due respect, I do not know your history or your sense of this city. You know, I’ve spent my life serving this city. I understand and trust the people of this city deeply, I also understand the challenges in this city and I don’t agree with the approaches that we’re taking in some other places being applicable here. I just don’t. I’ve been over with this with our Police Commissioner, our Transportation Commissioner, and lots of other people in our team who work closely with communities and we just don’t believe that the approaches that don’t involve enforcement are ultimately what’s going to create a safe environment for people, but the good news is that we’re finding more and more ways to open up streets with enforcement. Not just around parks, but far further, with the plan we agreed to with the City Council will ultimately be 100 miles of streets in the course of this crisis, and we’re finding more and more community partners who are going to be part of creating the structure to make sure the people are safe while also having the advantages of the open streets.

So, we are going to move in that direction, we were not able, and I stand by this, we were not able to do it at first because we were hemorrhaging people all over the place that were getting sick. We were losing public servants incessantly toward the end of March and beginning of April. We couldn’t put together the right enforcement mechanism. We were in the middle of a deep crisis where the focus was on saving lives and protecting the hospitals from being overwhelmed and when we got to a situation where we had more enforcement personnel, we could set up structure that actually work, we could find local partners to work with, that’s when started to open up more and more streets, and again I would get to a 100 miles. I’m sorry we disagree, but I think safety in this city, in this context, especially, bluntly, with too many people speeding lately, requires some real, visible enforcement.

Lehrer: But it does come back to the issue that we talked about at the top of the show which is what is the proper role of the police and when don’t the police need to be involved if the streets are open as I think Katie is referring to pedestrians, and not to cars in those cases, you had said originally that it was because you did not have enough available police officers, that you couldn’t open more streets and now we see the disparate treatment, so there is even more of a backlash against having police involved and enforcing something that is not a violent crime, social distancing – failure to social distance, even though we want everyone to do that. And so people say that New Yorkers have continued to see these kinds of racial disparities persist even in your supposedly progressive NYPD. So what will you do differently this time if you’re going to use the police to ensure that this doesn’t keep happening?

Mayor: Brian, you’re putting together the pieces in a way that I understand why you are but I just have to push back and say I don’t agree with the way you’re seeing the equation. First of all, you know, I don’t – I’m really going to remind people, there are literally millions of interactions between New Yorkers and police officers in the course of a year. And in terms of the course of this crisis, which has been, you know, over two months now, whatever the number is, hundreds of thousands, millions of interactions just within this month. And we have seen a few very troubling videos, I don’t take them lightly, and we’re dealing with anybody who is does anything wrong on the police force, and we’ve seen some situations, you know, where people thought the enforcement was uneven and there are some obvious facts to back that up and we can’t let that happen and we’ll address it. But the overwhelming, majority of cases, we have seen effective enforcement. How do we know this? We know this because the vast majority of New Yorkers are honoring social distancing, are avoiding large gatherings, are wearing their face coverings, and then the numbers we print every single day on what’s happening with the disease that have shown constant decline directly related to the success of those strategies. And human beings do need some enforcement and consequences in our life as a general rule, and the NYPD has done it but with a very light touch. The actual number of summonses, since this crisis began, we went over this this morning at the press conference, it was fewer than ten a day for a city of 8.6 million people. And so we will do better on ensuring there is evenness but we got to put this in context.

As for the Open Streets, I stand by the fact that the model for example in Oakland, which was no police, streets were designated as open, there was no enforcement, anyone in theory, if they wanted their car to go on those streets could have, there were not the kind of barriers in place that would have made it impossible. And I know New Yorkers enough to say that if you leave streets available that some people could choose, if they wanted to decide to drive on that street for whatever reason, and there is no one around to protect people, and there’s been too much speeding lately, you could end up losing lives for a new reason, and I just wasn’t going to let that happen. I was not going to allow us to create a new problem when trying to fight a pandemic. But now, we have a lot more officers back, we have a lot more community partners to work with, we will intensify the open streets, but we’re not going to stop enforcing. The number one issue facing the city right now is the coronavirus. The number one threat to health and safety is the coronavirus. We’re not going to stop enforcing on the thing that threatens the most lives, period. But we will keep working to make it as fair and as – with as light a touch as possible that’s still effective.

Lehrer: Last question, we’re almost out of time, we’re going to take this one from a listener writing in via Twitter. It says, I’m an artist, I applied for unemployment starting March 26th, and still have not received anything, can’t get through via calling, what can I do? And Mr. Mayor, I know that’s a State function, that’s not a city function, but we get these calls and tweets every single day, it’s such a dysfunctional unemployment system, and you saw the stats this morning, the national unemployment rate hit an unbelievable 15 percent at the end of April. So, can you help get that State unemployment system going?

Mayor: Well, Brian, I’m always going to tell people the truth. You know, I don’t pretend to be able to solve what’s going on with the State unemployment approach. I do understand and appreciate that the State’s been overwhelmed by, you know, something we’ve literally haven’t seen since the Great Depression. So, I’m not here to, in any way criticize when people are trying to deal with something beyond any scale they’ve ever had to deal with before. But I do want to see it fixed for the good of all New Yorkers and we’re going to try to help in any way can. We do try to help people understand how to navigate it, folks having a problem can call 3-1-1, and at least we can make sure that they're going about the application process properly and help them with some troubleshooting. But my hope and prayer is that the State will be in a position to, you know, add the capacity to allow people to catch up because it's been just terrifying to see so many people go through this, lose their jobs, lose their livelihood, and then not be able to get unemployment. It's, you know, an untenable situation. It has to be fixed quickly.

Lehrer: And I'll just throw in that my producer just wrote that people are apparently having some luck or some people are having some luck calling their State Senators or Assembly Members to get their attention and have them intervene on their cases since it's a State government function. So, we're out of time, Mr. Mayor. Once again, happy birthday. I hope in the midst of all this crisis, you get to eat a piece of cake sometime today and have a little bit of fun. So, thank you very much for coming on and answering everybody's questions as always and I'll talk to you next week.

Mayor: Thank you, Brian. Much appreciate it and good luck to everyone, all your listeners this week. Stay safe, everybody. Thank you.

2020-05-10 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. It is a beautiful, beautiful Sunday morning here in our city and what a beautiful day for Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers of New York City. Right there is a beautiful image of the mother that we are honoring and celebrating in our family today, our First Lady who raised two wonderful children. There are so many mothers all over this city who do extraordinary things every single day. And I want to start by saying, everyone, as you show your love, you show your appreciation, you celebrate the moms of your families and the moms of New York City today, remember, first of all, let's think about the greatest gift we can give besides our love is the gift of keeping them safe. So, if a mom in your life is vulnerable at this moment because of this crisis, if a mom is older or has those pre-existing conditions, remember lots and lots of ways to show love, but let's make sure we keep mom safe no matter what. That's job one today, it’s showing our love and respect by keeping the moms in our life safe. 

Now, there are some moms who deserve particular credit and they are the moms who are on the front lines fighting for all of us, the moms out there who are members of – the doctors, the nurses, the members of the NYPD and FDNY, so many moms who in addition to the everyday heroism, what they do in their families, they've been heroes in this fight against the coronavirus. So, we owe a special thanks to the moms, the essential workers who have been there on the front line while at the same time caring for their families. What an extraordinary thing they have done. Let's give them our love and respect today. By the way, as we say in our household, every day is Mother's Day. So, special appreciation today and then let's continue it the other 364 days of the year.

Okay, let's talk about what it's going to take to get us to move forward here in this city as we fight our way through this crisis and move to a better place. And to get there, we've talked in recent days a lot about what we have to do with testing and tracing. But there's a whole additional piece to this equation and it's the medical side of the equation, the eventual pathway to a vaccine and a treatment. We know right now with the state of medical science that we all need to stay devoted to the things that work now, the social distancing, the shelter in place, using face coverings, while there's time provided to all the people in the medical field to find those bigger solutions and everyone's working hard on them. But in the meantime, there are some new examples of progress. They're important in the here and now. Even though the ultimate goal of course is a vaccine and the treatment, there are some things happening that actually are going to help those afflicted with the coronavirus here now. And some hope this last week when the FDA approved a new drug for treating those with severe cases of the coronavirus, remdesivir. It's a drug that now is being utilized as part of the trials that is going through in some of our public hospitals, Jacobi, North Central Bronx, among others, are starting to use this drug to treat those who are suffering and to make sure that this is hopefully part of the long term plan to help people. 

What we're seeing so far is that this drug has decreased hospital stays for those who have utilized it from 15 days to 11 days. Now that may not sound like a lot to you on first blush, but let me tell you, that means four less days of suffering for that patient, four less days of worrying for their family, four days sooner that each patient can get home to their families and continue their recovery. So, it's a big deal. And I want to tell you the company involved, Gilead, donated over half-a-million doses of this drug to the federal government to distribute. And that's a great thing. So far, however, we've gotten very few doses of the drug provided to New York City. Only 4,000 doses for hospitals here, our public hospitals that particularly need them the most. And we need that number greatly intensified. In fact, we need about 10 times that much just to get started. I've reached out to the White House, I've sent a letter to the president, I've spoken to White House officials to try and speed up the shipment. So, this is something that could really help. And this is an example of something we need here in the city because whether we like it or not, we're still the epicenter of this crisis. So, I am hoping that the White House will hear our plea and quickly get us the additional doses we need.

Now, when we think about the toll this crisis has taken, when we think about the pain it has caused here in this city, we think about the lives we've lost. For all of us who work in public service, there's a particular pain to reflecting on the fact that a number of people who have spent our lives helping their fellow New Yorkers lost their lives due to the coronavirus over these last weeks. People who, their entire mission, sense of purpose was helping other New Yorkers, people we looked up to, people we appreciated, that we've lost. Those that we particularly honor for what they do for others. 260 public servants, 260 City employees have lost their lives. And this includes police officers, correction officers, teachers, EMTs, doctors and nurses, people who have given so much and gave the ultimate sacrifice fighting this disease. Now their families, in some cases, are facing the loss of health insurance and we want to make sure there's immediate support for those families.

So, I am extending, by 45 days, health insurance coverage for families of municipal employees who passed away from COVID-19. This is a specific request we got from the Municipal Labor Council, and the MLC has been a key partner in everything we've done over the last six plus years, believed that it was crucial to get this 45-day extension to families so they could have that piece of security right now as they're dealing with so much else. There is a much bigger effort that we hope to achieve with partners all over the city, all over the country in getting much deeper benefits for public employees and for all essential workers included in the next federal stimulus bill. I'm hearing some good signs that the Congress is moving in that direction, but we still need to see more and obviously we need to see that bill voted out, but I'm more hopeful that we're going to see something really significant in that stimulus legislation. In the meantime, we want to help these families right away with this health insurance extension.

Now, we said many times this is a disease which is so troubling and challenging because it's so new, literally did not exist as far as medical science knew in human beings just six, seven months ago. There's still so many unanswered questions. There are still things we see that confound doctors and scientists. We keep learning every day. And we keep hoping that by learning every day we're going to find solutions. But some of the things we're learning are raising new questions and concerns. And particularly a deep concern is anything that might affect our children who previously have not been affected by this disease by and large anywhere near as much as adults and particularly older adults. But there is a rare condition which we're seeing more of just in the last days and it is causing tremendous concern. I'm deeply concerned. As a father, I am feeling the concern I know other parents are feeling. Our health leadership is deeply concerned. Doctors are now calling this pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome. And what it does is basically in a child's body triggers intensive, almost overwhelming, immune system response. And that actually causes harm to the body. So, as the body is fighting, it fights in such a manner that it actually starts to cause other problems. The symptoms are fever, rash, abdominal pain, and vomiting. 

So, last week our Health Department alerted, doctors alerted the people in New York City that we're seeing cases of this and that we need everyone who experiences this to get help right away, every family that sees a child going through this to get help right away every health care professional that sees anything like this to report it to our Health Department, and we're getting more information now and it certainly is causing us additional concern. So, now as of today, there've been 38 cases detected here in New York City. That's up from 15 at the last count. There are nine more cases that the specifics of the case are still pending, meaning they're still making an evaluation to determine if it is this syndrome or not. Now, of the cases that have been verified, 47 percent of the kids involved tested positive for the coronavirus at that point. Of those who tested negative, 81 percent had the antibody. So, had been exposed at some previous point. So that's telling our doctors and our scientists a lot, this is something we really need to focus on and address. We have lost one child in New York City and previously this is something that we didn't see cases of. Then we started to see a few cases, then we saw more cases. Now, we've actually lost a child to this syndrome and that is deeply, deeply troubling and I want to express my condolences to the family that's lost their child and our hearts go out to you. This is something all New Yorkers are feeling this new threat. 

So, we now are going to make a major priority of addressing this. A set of new actions are being undertaken at our public hospitals, at Health + Hospitals. All facilities will do antibody testing for all children with the symptoms, with fever, with the abdominal pain, gastrointestinal symptoms. That will be done across the board. That guidance is being given to all pediatricians in New York City, calling on all hospitals, not just public, but all private and independent hospitals, to do the same, to start immediately administering these tests when you see these symptoms. Our medical leadership, our health leadership, Department of Health, Health + Hospitals, convening pediatricians from around the city on a video conference to analyze more of this information and learn more together what's going on. We're sending a health alert to the parents of more than one million public school kids to put them on alert of this challenge and make sure anyone who sees these symptoms in their kids gets health care immediately, reaches out to their doctor or gets their child to health care immediately.

Also, obviously, although our schools are by and large shut down, we do have our regional enrichment centers for the children of essential workers. All regional enrichment centers are being instructed to increase enforcement of the use of face coverings and masks and the use of hand sanitizer. So, we're going to take steps immediately. But remember, every parent out there, if you see these symptoms, take them seriously, act immediately. This is a real problem, but it's a problem that can be addressed if it's caught early. So, I want to emphasize to parents, if you see these symptoms, report them to your doctor immediately. If you don't have a doctor, call 3-1-1 to get connected to a doctor, a clinician at Health + Hospitals, we want to make sure everyone takes this seriously and if you see these symptoms, act immediately.

Okay, want to go back to the topic of social distancing and as we talk about the challenges we face, as we talk about the hope for new medical solutions, we've got to keep coming back to the fact that the thing that has worked, the reason we've made progress and can continue to make progress in this city is because of what all of you have done. The extraordinary effort New Yorkers have shown around social distancing, the extraordinary effort to stay home to the maximum extent possible, to wear those face coverings, all of these pieces, they work and you've done it and we need to keep doing it. Now, generally speaking, New Yorkers have just done the right thing. I mean overwhelmingly New Yorkers have done the right thing. That doesn't mean in a city of 8.6 million people, you don't need reminders, you don't need education, you don't need some enforcement. I believe you do need all those things. I believe that's true of everything in our society. No matter how good the people are, no matter how much there's an amazing team effort going on with 8.6 million people, we still need the ability to enforce these rules when needed and only when needed. 

What we don't need is anything that goes beyond the proper enforcement of these rules into something else. And we saw a very troubling video a few days back from the Lower East Side, an instance of the wrong approach to policing that was very alienating to so many people in this city. You know, we've come a long way in New York City to change the nature of policing, to build trust between police and community, to de-escalate conflicts, to train officers to help bring down the temperature. And that has worked in so many ways, but we certainly have seen one video in particular and there have been some others that have raised concern and I think they pull at people in a very real and painful way and remind us of things that were too common for too long that are not acceptable. So, I want to make sure we emphasize the positive, the extraordinary effort that New Yorkers have made around social distancing on their own, listening to the guidance, helping each other to remember the social distance. That's the big story here. The vast majority of the work that's been done by the NYPD and all the other enforcement agencies has been education, going out and reminding people, more and more giving them face coverings for free, which is great, and never wanting to give a summons unless it's absolutely necessary. And in fact, remember the number of summonses given is very, very small throughout this crisis – fewer than 10 a day for the whole city. But that being said, the last thing we want to see is enforcement, if there's any other way to get the job done. 

So, we're going to increase intensely the number of public servants who are out there educating, providing face coverings, reminding people of the rules, helping people to get it right. Enforcement has always been the last resort. It will still be there when needed, but we're going to have more and more social distancing ambassadors. We put together a group of a thousand non-NYPD personnel who have been going out already. We're going to increase that number to 2,300 by next weekend. City employees charged with educating, reminding, providing the face coverings, going out there, and working with people and helping them get to the right place. Again, a positive approach has been working in so many ways. We're going to double down on that. If we ever need enforcement, it's there. And again, we will be quick to enforce particularly in the situations that are most dangerous such as large gatherings. But more and more the emphasis will be on a communicative, encouraging approach through these social distancing ambassadors. And with a team of 2,300 we'll be able to reach deeply into the city and make a very big impact. So I want to thank our good public servants who are going to be a part of this effort. It's going to help save lives. It's going to help so many New Yorkers and really, really appreciate all that you are doing and will do.

Okay. Now, another piece of this has been the important work of protecting some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers in the middle of this crisis. And we've talked about all through the week something very big, something very different that's happening with the changes that have been made at the MTA to do the nighttime cleanings. First night we saw something we had never seen before, literally in the history of this city, an extraordinary number of homeless folks who came off the trains, who weren't going to be able to stay in the stations, came up above ground, saw there were people there from the City ready to help them, ready to provide them support and service and shelter. And a huge number of them accepted that offer. Of course, the first time you see something, you say, let's see if this is real. Next night we saw equally good results. The next night, again, we keep seeing something very special happening.

So to give you the reports from the last couple of nights – on Friday night, our homeless outreach workers and trained NYPD officers who focused on homeless outreach, they engaged 416 homeless individuals coming out of the subway in those early morning hours. 212 of them accepted services. 183 went to shelter, 29 went to hospital. Again, amazing, amazing fact. More than half. We've seen this every night. That's – these are numbers that we have literally never seen in our history happened again on Friday night. So what about Saturday night? 384 people engaged in the subway. 198 accepted services, 175 went to shelter, 23 to the hospital. This is just amazing. I mean, this is about changing people's lives. Think about if someone's life had come apart over months and years to the point they were living permanently on the street. And now in just a matter of days, hundreds upon hundreds of people accepting services, coming into shelter. Now we'll be able to get them the mental health support, the substance misuse treatment. Now we'll really be able to change the lives of so many of them for good. But we have now seen this day after day. We got a lot more to do, but this is an amazing step forward and really, really encouraging what we're seeing. And again, a great thank you to all our partners, the MTA, the State, of course the NYPD and Social Services, Homeless Services, those amazing outreach workers, keep doing this great, great work. It's having a huge, huge impact.

So every day I try and count my blessings and every day I try and remember to be thankful. And I know so many of you feel the same way in this crisis. We've gone through a lot together, but we also remember all the good around us. The people are doing so much good and the people who are trying so hard to help each other. And I like to remember to publicly thank a lot of folks who have stepped forward to help New York City. So a list of thank yous today starting with the skincare company Tatcha and its founder Vicky Tsai, who donated one million non-surgical masks, really amazing donation. Wonderful. Educare, Germany has donated 20,000 KN95 masks. AIG has donated 1,500 N95 masks. Mattel donated 20,000 surgical masks and over 6,000 face shields. Perrigo has donated 50,000 bottles of hand sanitizer. IEDM has donated 50,000 nonmedical masks. The UN Staff Union donated 10,000 nonmedical masks. Project Isaiah donated 400 tablets to H + H. And BNY Mellon donated 150 tablets to H + H. Friends of Rockaway donated 2,000 nonmedical face shields. Center for Professional Education of Teachers donated 7,000 surgical masks and Warby Parker Lab donated 1,900 nonmedical masks. Warby Parker has been amazing, what they’ve been doing for our school kids for years with eyeglasses. Now they are helping in the fight against the coronavirus too. We're thankful to them. We're thankful to all the people and all the companies, all the organizations that keep stepping up. It helps every single time. So thank you from the bottom of my heart and all New Yorkers are thankful to you.

Okay. Every day we go over the indicators and what they tell us about the direction we're going in. So this weekend, generally good. Yesterday, very, very good. All three indicators down yesterday. Today, a mixed bag. In terms of the people admitted to hospital with suspected COVID-19, we had a day, a breakeven day, 69 one day, 69 the next day. Now thank God that number is as low as 69. That's a very good thing. But again, we want to see steady downward trends. People currently in our public hospital ICUs with suspected COVID-19, that is down and that is very, very important. Down from 559 to 540. Still too many people, but that's real progress. Now this is the one that didn't go right today – percentage of people tested who are testing positive for COVID-19 citywide, up from 12 percent to 17 percent. So still a much lower percentage than where we were just weeks ago. But we want to get that going in the same direction. So when you take Saturday and Sunday together, a very good weekend. Not yet exactly what we're looking for, but a very good weekend. And you know what I'll say next. Keep doing what you're doing because it clearly is working. We just need to do more of it and keep disciplined and keep strong. A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Okay, we're going to turn to questions from the media and as always, please remind me of the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: We will now begin our Q and A. As a reminder, we also have Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze, Dr. Barbot, Dr. Katz, Commissioner Banks, and Commissioner Campion also on the line. First question today goes to Jen Peltz from the AP.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, hope you can hear me.

Mayor: How are you doing?

Question: Good, thanks. In light of your discussion of social distancing enforcement, I wonder whether there are any statistics from yesterday on where there were summonses and or arrests and how many?

Mayor: Jen, I don't have anything from yesterday. We will figure out a system for reporting them regularly. Again, I want to keep reminding people the number of summonses and arrests is extraordinarily low given that this is a crisis that affects all 8.6 million New Yorkers. I want to keep in perspective that summonses and arrests still have been used sparingly. When it is absolutely needed, it's going to be used, but it's been used sparingly. But we need to make sure it is used fairly and consistently in all communities. So we will get you an update. We'll put out those stats regularly and we'll figure out a timeline for that. And then we'll keep that consistent going forward.

Moderator: Next is Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, good morning. I wanted to ask Dr. Barbot about the Mayor's decision to move the contact tracing to HHC. And we didn't get to hear from you when the decision was announced. So wondering if Dr. Barbot agreed with that decision or has any concerns?

Mayor: Go ahead, Dr. Barbot.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Yes. Thank you. Jeff, let me start off by saying that I am proud of the dedicated staff that we have at the Health Department, demonstrated expertise in dealing with outbreaks all the way from things like TB, HIV, Ebola, most recently measles. And we are committed to applying that world class expertise to bringing this epidemic to an end as quickly as possible. And we are committed to ongoing collaboration with all of our sister agencies to make sure that we bring this epidemic to an end quickly and continue saving lives.

Mayor: Okay. Thank you. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Good morning everyone on Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome – I know Governor Cuomo said yesterday, the State is helping the CDC develop criteria for identifying and responding to that syndrome. I wanted to ask if you think there's anything else the federal government should be doing? Other than that on homeless outreach, you've given numbers for homeless people at shelter. I was wondering if you could specify if that means those individuals actually went into shelter and spent the night there? Or does it maybe just mean vehicles drop them off there and it was incumbent on the individual whether or not to go to shelter from there? Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you Shant. I appreciate both questions. So let me do the homeless question first and then I'll turn to our health care team to talk about the federal role vis-a-vis the syndrome. On homeless outreach, so before I turn to Commissioner Banks, just say this. Remember that now for three years, this HOME-STAT strategy has about this constant engagement of homeless folks by the outreach workers who are just amazing people, the work they do because it takes such persistence and dedication to keep working with someone whose life obviously took a wrong turn, a bad wrong turn. They ended up living on the street. Winning their trust, figuring out what they need to feel comfortable to come off the street and stay off the street. That effort we've said for three years now, it is painstaking. It doesn't always work, not only the first time. Sometimes it takes many, many times. Sometimes someone comes in and goes back out, comes in, goes back out and you keep at it. It's a real study in persistence. So when someone agrees to come in, particularly if it's the first time in a long time, that is a signal moment. If they will come in one time, it's the beginning. And sometimes it literally works the first time and someone comes in off the street and then they like what they experience in a Safe Haven or a shelter, or get the medical care they need and they decide that they're ready for a different approach and they stay in and they never go back to the street. And sometimes it's not as you know, immediate. It takes several rounds if you will. But the fact is, as Commissioner Banks will tell you, thousands of people have come off the streets and stayed off the streets in the last few years. So, we know it can be done in a big, big scale. But I would expect if you're talking about just the last few nights, you're going to see a mix. You're going to see people that came in for one night. You're going to see people who have stayed in longer. You're going to see people who will some cases go back to the street over time. Others who we're going to keep in permanently. But it's all going to be about persistence. And I really believe if they come in even once, it is the beginning of something much better. Commissioner Banks take it away. I know he's out there. Commissioner Banks?

Commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Social Services: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. A little technical difficulty. Look Shant, let me give you just a context of what we're working with. We are five nights into a brand new approach to try and to bring people in from the streets. And we're building on a body of work as the Mayor said, that's gone on for the last three years in which, look, the gold standard is helping someone come off the street and remain off the street. But we know from our experience in the last three years that even a single night to accept service is a victory for that human being. We also know from the body of work in the last several years that people will come to the front door and may leave. But simply getting you to the front door for that individual is a step forward. Now again, this is a five day, brand new operation. And we saw Thursday night into Friday morning some challenges with individuals who had accepted services and then didn't want to go further than the acceptance of services, even when we brought them to our central intake site at Bellevue. And so, you know, we -- our outreach workers and our staff are literally working around the clock to save lives in the middle of this situation. And we decided, you know what, let's not go through central intake. Let's make placements directly from the platforms and we'll send the buses directly to shelters instead of central intake. And we began to do that on Saturday morning and this morning. And we think that is giving an additional helping hand to those who may be ready to take the hand, but not yet ready to go all the way with that helping hand. But we're going to continue to evaluate every day. We'll make changes and we'll get to a place where we can take a retrospective look back and say what kind of individual success we're having. But I have to go back to what the Mayor said originally. I've been doing this work for a long time before I came into government. And since I got the Department of Homeless Services in addition to HRA about three years ago, a little over three years ago, if we could get five percent of the people who we offered help to actually accept it on any given night, that was just a huge sign of progress. We're getting half the people now at least taking that first step off the platform, onto transport to get the help that they need either to the hospital or shelter.

Mayor: Yeah, thank you Steve. I mean that's – Shant, just take that in from what we considered five percent a good success rate, to these last days, it's been 50 percent. So ten times more. It's striking and again, we need to see it play out over a much longer period of time. But I think the positive disruptive impact of the cleaning of the subways and sort of breaking the cycle that existed for a long time and giving our outreach workers much more opportunity to engage people. This is absolutely powerful and I'm hoping it's the beginning of something much bigger. So good news there. And Steve, congratulations to you and your whole team because I know this is part of work you've been building up to for years and years.

On the federal role dealing with the syndrome affecting our kids – obviously, this is something we are all grappling with – the City, the State, I'm sure the federal government – but in terms of any specifics of what we know so far from the federal government, what they're doing, what they're saying, we have three of our health care leaders on the phone. Does one of you want to jump in?

Commissioner Barbot: Certainly, Mr. Mayor. I think probably the most important thing that the federal government can do in this situation is really help us maximize the number of people that are getting tested. I think, you know, you've been very clear that from the beginning this response has been hampered by lack of universal access to testing and I think this is yet one additional way in which that's being manifested.

Mayor: Anyone want to add from the health care team? Okay. Yes – and, obviously, the reality of testing, because all roads keep leading back to it, and that's what we're going to keep pushing hard on the federal government on to intensify everything related to testing, particularly lab capacity, which continues to be the outstanding concern.

Moderator: Next is Debralee from Manhattan Times.

Question: Hey, good morning, everyone. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Debralee. Good morning.

Question: Excellent. Happy Mother's Day to everyone on the call. Wanted to touch base with you, Mr. Mayor, specifically on how the pandemic and the kind of hit that small businesses are taking has in fact perhaps transformed your own thinking on rezoning? And the fact that the communities that have been hardest hit overlap with the ones that were targeted for rezoning, some of which have been successful, some of which have so far stalled. Have you thought about that in terms of thinking of it as more than just recovery, because many of the small businesses, particularly those that are a small mom and pop and immigrant-owned, are concerned that what gentrification and the powers of the market forces do – weren't able to accomplish before, the pandemic essentially will successfully execute. And then secondly, have you consulted, had any conversations with, and can you share those if you have with the Governor on pause being extended potentially to June and beyond and how the City is also planning for that?

Mayor: Thank you, Debralee. So, in terms of the Governor and the State – I mean, we've been highly aligned on the approach to the pause. So, we're all talking all the time between the Governor and his team, me and my team, everyone's engaged. And I think the approach to the pause is the right one. I mean, we're looking at our indicators and clearly need more time according to just the sheer facts. And the State has its own indicators as well and I think there's a high level of alignment. We need to be confident as we start that it's going to be safe and it's going to hold. Now, I'm going to combine your two questions for a second and then go more fully into the small business question. So, I spoke to a number of small business leaders on a conference call earlier, I think it was Friday, and then large business leaders on Thursday night, and it was very interesting, Debralee, that there was a real continuity in the two conversations on the question of getting the restart right. I couldn't help but notice, you know, sort of, when you see something that looks like a consensus or unanimity among New Yorkers, it's a pretty striking thing. Everyone kept saying, get the restart right, we cannot afford a start and then a stop. We cannot afford a boomerang. We cannot afford what happened in some of those Asian cities, very big sophisticated cities that, for whatever reason, had a kind of false start and then had to double down on restrictions. From the point of view of all of them, and I think the small business owners were particularly sensitive this point, it would be most devastating to their business if they put in the resources and the energy to restart and then had to bring it back down again. So, we've been cautious here in the city. The Governor's been cautious in terms of the state. We’re united that we're going to get this right. And each step, I keep using that kind of rock-climbing analogy – you get your toe hold and you make sure it's firm and secure and then you get your next one – that's going to govern the approach here.

So, we'll keep coordinating on that for sure. On small business specifically, it's a great question. Look, we have a particular challenge in terms of how to help our small businesses and particularly our immigrant small businesses and small businesses that are the most tenuous, the smallest, the most mom and pop. And they’re such an important part of life in this city in every sense in terms of everything from the life of our neighborhoods and the identity and the culture of our communities to the fact there's a whole lot of people employed in them and they're hanging in the balance right now. When I talked to the small business owners, interestingly – rightfully, their first concern was not – not that I'm saying your point isn't a good one, but it wasn't sort of the big playout of what's going to happen in the months and years ahead – it was the immediate question, just how they dealt with the rent and how they just kept going in the here and now to try and get to that point where they could restart. And we're trying to figure out any way in every way we can to help them to just hang in there until we can get to a point where we start and then the sheer force of – you know, the buying power of 8.6 million people starts to lift them up again. And I do think New Yorkers are going to want to embrace their neighborhood businesses when we can go out and engage them again. I think there's going to be a lot of energy for that.

But to the question of rezoning – I mean, the whole land use process now is on hold. When we're able to think about that again, we're obviously going to think about it differently in light of what's happened here. We need to be really, really mindful about anything we do, going forward, what it means in terms of affordable housing, what it means in terms of small business, what it means in terms of working people and more vulnerable people. I think that's going to be a singular focus of our policies, going forward, when it comes to land use and city planning because we're in a whole new reality. So, I think the essence of your question is, is it going to be business as usual? No, it's not going to be business as usual. It's going to be reexamined from scratch. And even the ones we've done previously, we've been studying carefully to understand what the impact is on small business and how we can make sure we get when we do have a situation where rezoning is helpful, putting additional measures to support and protect small business. And there's a lot more I think we can do on that front, going forward.

Moderator: The next is Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, good morning, everybody. My question – I want to go back to Commissioner Barbot again. You know, I guess there's still some confusion about the Test and Trace Corps. I know that the disease detectives are with the Department of Health, but the rest are with HHC. So, Dr. Barbot, do you believe that having HHC lead this test and trace effort will hurt, given the Department of Health’s history of doing this? And do you believe that you and your agency has the full confidence of the mayor? Thank you.

Mayor: Katie, as we turn to Dr. Barbot, I just have to say, it's America, anyone can ask a question the way they want, but I don't honestly think the word confusion is right. There's a plan put forward here to take a huge operational agency, Health + Hospitals, has been at the forefront of this crisis, and use that operational capacity to build a test and trace program all over the city in a way that an organization with that kind of reach and with local outposts all over the city is well suited to, but deeply engaging the Department of Health and bringing over Department of Health personnel to be in the center of the process as well. So, again, confusion, respectfully, that's your word. I think we laid out a really clear organizational plan that makes sense for a massive undertaking that’s never been tried before in New York City and we are going to bring a talent from those two agencies and a lot of other agencies to bear to make this work. With that, turning to Dr. Barbot.

Commissioner Barbot: Katie, thank you for the question. Like I said, we've got world-class expertise in our agency and we're focused on one goal and one goal only, and that goal is to bring that world-class expertise on tracing to this effort. And we are committed to collaborating with any and all sister agencies, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, because, at the end of the day, the reality is, you know, we all need to be focused on saving lives and this is a response that requires all of us to be focused and not to be distracted. So, thank you.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: The next is Luis [inaudible].

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I've got two questions for you.

Mayor: Yes, Luis.

Question: Over two weeks ago, you mentioned that as part of your grassroots outreach there would be four tele-town halls with faith leaders. Anything you'd be able to share about that now? Also, regarding the sector advisory councils, the numbers of those appointed range anywhere from 20-something to 40-something. I'm trying to grasp how all of that works. Do all of these people submit suggestions? Do they get questionnaires? Do they have one big virtual conference call? Can you explain that?

Mayor: Sure. Luis on the first question, I'm going to confirm with the team, but I believe those faith-based tele-town halls happened back around the time that I raised it. We'll get you more information on that. On the advisory councils, so it's kind of all the above of what you mentioned it, you know, through the magic of WebEx and Zoom and everything else, you can put obviously a huge number of people together and have the ability to have a serious conversation with a larger group. And I participated in some of these already and I've found them to be very successful in terms of people sharing concerns and ideas. But then, of course, beyond the group meetings, there is every opportunity for people to put forward written ideas. We definitely circulate things and have people's feedbacks feedback, questionnaires, things like that will be used. So, we've brought together some pretty extraordinary people who represent so much of the city, and what we're finding is, you know, a very, very, sort of, rich experience already of folks bringing perspective, bringing ideas, bringing concerns, saying some things that are different than what we might hear in the regular daily discourse and things we need to hear. I mean, I'll go back to the question that Debralee asked a moment ago about the interplay of, you know, land use policy and small business. I mean, that's exactly the kind of thing we need to think about differently for where we're going. And that's the kind of thing we're hearing from these advisory councils. We're hearing really interesting ideas. We're also hearing people sort of volunteering what they will do, what their organizations will do or their constituencies can and should do to help bring this forward. So, you know, it's understandable that if a group of us here are trying to make the very best decisions for the people that you have, you know, we all have a lifetime experience we're bringing to bear, but we also inherently need other fresh voices to help us see perspective and new ideas. And I find that the advisory councils already are doing that really well

Moderator: Next is Sydney from Gothamist.

Question: Mr. Mayor, good morning. I hope you're well. I wanted to talk about the syndrome that's impacting children. Could you walk us through a little bit of the timeline of like when symptoms were first started to be linked to – when the syndrome was first started to be linked to children and what is the City doing to determine the extent of this and how far back this may have already been impacting children? Or, has the City already found evidence that these symptoms have been happening in children for longer than we've been aware of?

Mayor: Thank you very much, Sydney. I'm going to turn to – again, we have Dr. Perea-Henze, Dr. Barbot, and Dr. Katz on the line, so I'm going to open it up to them in a second. This has moved very, very quickly. Sydney, suffice it to say that, you know, for the last 10 weeks all day, every day, we've all been talking about the coronavirus nonstop and looking at so many different elements of it. And this particular challenge around kids, I mean, it came up literally days ago – was the first time that I remember it in any discussion and Melissa Russo brought it forward in one of these press conferences. And literally at that moment we had not seen a bigger trend. But shortly thereafter, as more and more facts were gathered, it was clear that something was happening that was a real concern. And so, I'll let the doctors speak to that timeline. But, again, it's literally been a matter of days. The question you raised, Sydney, how far back might it have been going on and what research are we doing to better understand it – and, again, we'll let the doctors speak to that. Who wants to go first?

Commissioner Barbot: Mr. Mayor, I'll begin. This is a syndrome that has been evolving over the very recent past, but it first began to be identified in the UK and it was roughly maybe about two or three weeks ago and we hadn't seen any cases here in the United States. We actually had our first webinar alerting health providers to this emerging syndrome on May 1st, because part of this identifying this syndrome – and I've said this before, but it's worth repeating – really relies on a student's clinicians recognizing that something, which is potentially presenting in an atypical fashion needs to be reported to the health department. And Kawasaki's is a rare illness to begin with, but when it presents atypically, that's when we need doctors, whether it's for this syndrome or for others to report to us. So, right now, with this infectious inflammatory syndrome, we're still learning quite a bit about how it manifests. And we issued a health alert that goes out to thousands and thousands of clinicians, doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners rather in the city alerting them to letting us know if they have patients that meet certain criteria that we want them to let us know. And those criteria, as the Mayor listed before, but I think are worth repeating, are children who present with prolonged fevers that have laboratory indications of inflammation and who may be suffering symptoms consistent with shock, meaning that their organs are overwhelmed and they need more intensive support in hospitals. All of those – so you can well imagine that's a fairly broad, yet defined set of potential symptoms and signs that we need clinicians to alert us on. And, as the Mayor mentioned, you know, we're doing ongoing investigations about suspected cases. We do have a series of confirmed cases, 38 that meet the case definition. But the reality is that this is still evolving. We are working in collaboration with our state partners, with the CDC. And it may be that this case definition evolves, and so it may be that we add even more children. But the important thing here is we are very much focused on first and foremost ensuring that parents are aware of potential early warning symptoms such as prolonged fever, that rash, kids being really cranky, having bright red lips, and what we typically think of as a strawberry tongue. These kids look really sick. And when I was a clinician, I actually treated some of these children and the most important thing is for them to then contact their doctors and for the doctors to make the potential diagnosis early and then refer them to specialty care. So that is sort of the evolution of this and I'm certain that we will continue to learn even more over the course of the next few days and weeks.

Mayor: Thank you doctor. Either one of our other colleagues want to add?

President Katz: Oh, I'll add Mr. Mayor. Thank you. I agree with Dr. Barbot’s summary. The only things I can think to add is I don't think we missed children who were at the sick end of the spectrum before because at the, this is obviously a disease with a wide range of manifestations and we certainly would have seen the children who we've seen with the very sick syndromes in the hospital before. We would have noticed that they would have been in the hospital at the sicker end, so I feel confident in New York City to miss those kids. I think the other interesting observation as we learning more and more about this disease as Dr. Barbot says, is that it may not be a coincidence that we're seeing these cases several weeks after the peak in New York City of the transmission of the virus. That this is likely, at least in part, an immunological manifestation that occurs after infection. And so it's not surprising that several weeks after the peak time of transmission of this virus, we may now be seeing a variety of these manifestations in children. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: You next. We have Ruben from Hamodia.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask you the state's ban on plastic bags has been postpone during the coronavirus pandemic. People are hurting financially and reusable bags are believed to carry germs. Many progressive places like Massachusetts and San Francisco have banned reusable bags now. Well, you as part of your emergency powers, at least lift the 5 cent fee on paper bags until the pandemic's over? And my second question is, you tweeted on Thursday, tenants are hurting, we need to let every New Yorkers who needs it be able to defer rent payments for up to 12 months. Last month, Council Member Justin Brannan tweeted “one person's rent is another mortgage payments. I want rent relief for my constituents. I also want to make sure small mom and pop landlords, yes they exist, don't have to shoulder that burden on their own. We can do both and we must.” Now we know what property tax payment was doing first. The grace period ends April 15th. I think it's fair to assume that those who haven't paid as of now having trouble possibly due to coronavirus, what's the city doing to help property owners, perhaps you'll consider waiving interest for unpaid or late property taxes? Thank you Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Thank you Rubin. On the small landlords, look, we know that so many people are struggling right now and small landlords are struggling too. In terms of property tax, we said from the beginning, right now we're in a tremendous crisis in this city. Adjust the ability to pay for the basic services that people need is being stressed deeply right now, and obviously this is why the upcoming debate over the federal stimulus and it can't happen soon enough is so crucial. We have to get support to allow us to keep going in this city, to be made whole to be able to provide those services. But especially since we don't know what's going to happen in Washington, we right now are absolutely dependent on whatever resources we can get and property tax is a part of it for sure. So we can keep this city moving forward and get to that restart. But we've also said from the beginning that anyone who's just not in a position to pay, there are hardship provisions where if someone can document that they are unable to pay there's something that can be done there, there's a process for that. Also the different methodologies that we've been talking about and the State of New York has acted on one of them, which is great, you know, allowing tenants to be able to apply their security deposit so that they can pay the rent if they don't have any other money, that's good for the tenant, that's good for the landlord. That's the kind of reform that I wanted to see and I'm very glad the state did that. But any other of the suggestions that we put forward as things like figuring out a way for if a tenant can't pay the rent, that there's still a payment plan for the future, so the landlords at least know that they will be able to depend on that. So all of these tools are going to be needed to help people through. But I think the single most important question going forward, everything hinges on the stimulus, our ability to support the people of this city. And if it comes, you know, we're going to be able to be helpful in a lot of ways. If it doesn't come, it's going to be very, very difficult.

On the plastic bags and all, we'll work with the state on the question of what makes sense in terms of any short term relief. The underlying ideas are still the right ideas because again, what was done on plastic bags on paper bags was about addressing profound challenges. We're having challenges, we're going to have, you know, this, this crisis, this virus, we're going to beat back this virus. This crisis is going to be over and it's going to be over sooner rather than later. But the challenge we are facing with our environment, with global warming is going to be with us for the rest of our lives. So those ideas around the plastic bags and the paper bags, the right ideas. In terms of anything we might do to modify them in the short term. You know, we'll work with the state on that and come back. But I want to affirm why the underlying ideas are just as pertinent now as they've ever been.

Moderator: We have time for two more today. Next is Todd from AM New York.

Question: Mr. Mayor. My question is actually inspired by our first demonstration, 1982 at NYU and that was against tuition hikes. So question is about, they were eight rallies this week. Two of them were by people who against the, the economic lockdown. One of them was by Reclaim Pride against a Samaritan's Purse. At those, the police were very strong, and nine people were taken into custody at the economic rally, and one person was given a summons at the Reclaim Pride rally in which people were socially distant. Now there were five others. One was by the fire union and four others were by the nurses union. All of them, police were at and did nothing to interfere. In fact, one of them, the nurses rally, there were 50 people there, 50, 60 people and there was no social distancing. So my question is, what right does the government and the city have to determine which organizations, which groups have the right to gather and should the police get out of this business like Eric Adams says?

Mayor: Todd, thank you very much for the question. Your NYU education is doing you good right now because you're asking a very good, important question. And I thank you for reminding me of our younger years when we first knew each other long ago as undergraduates. So look, first of all, I want to start with common sense. We're in a time in history where anyone who wants to get their point of view across, there are so many ways to do that without gathering in one place that will get plenty of attention. You can go direct to the people with Twitter and so many other methodologies. You all in the media will cover any number and sorts of protests and concerns, people do not need to gather in one place. It does not make sense in the middle of a pandemic, for people, you know, to be using a form of protest that could endanger each other and other people and our officers. It doesn't make sense. We're asking people to do things differently across the board. The same goes for protest. If people gather, the NYPD is always going to try and use its judgment like they do every single day in every situation. And if there's a gathering that is carefully, socially distance, I saw one of the earlier gatherings that nurses did, the nurses union did, and they were all socially distanced and everyone had on PPEs. Look, I still would ask them not to even do that, but at least that was a very conscientious effort. But if there's any attempt to gather that is going to endanger people, the police's job is to not let that happen. And that means to tell people from the very beginning that they should not be gathering because it is about addressing this pandemic and any two people that get too close together and there might be a spread of the disease, it then leads to more and more people. It's as simple as that. So I'm a huge believer in the First Amendment. I think there's another way to do it. If people gather and then NYPD gives instructions about social distance and the right way to handle things and those instructions aren't followed, then of course they reserve the right to summons or arrest. But Todd, I don't know why anyone is gathering in this environment. It is a choice. Let's get real here. We can believe absolutely in our constitutional rights, but it is literally out of step with the times we're living in to believe that the only way to get something done is to gather in the middle of a pandemic. It's just idiotic. There are plenty of ways to express yourself, but if you gather, you're inherently creating a problem for other people. And so I would just start at the beginning and say to anyone who's thinking of expressing themselves and working on behalf of whatever cause do it in step with what we're all going through. Do it online. You'll get plenty of attention, but you won't put other people in danger.

Moderator: Last question for today goes to Roger Stern from 1010 WINS.

Question: Hi, good morning Mayor. I wanted to get back to the issue of this inflammatory syndrome. You said that kids going to the hospital with symptoms will be tested. Will they be tested for the actual virus or for the antibodies or both? And how would that then affect their treatment?

Mayor: So I'll start, Roger and then turn to Dr. Barbot or Dr. Katz. What we're going to do in our public hospitals is give the antibody test for sure. Because again, what is crucial to know is have these kids been exposed before. We're going to do that across the board and we're urging all hospitals to do testing. The doctors can talk to you about the virtues of either or both types of testing in this situation but the important thing – again, I want to emphasize the health care professionals can do a lot. Again, this is really important, Roger, to recognize from what we're hearing from our health leadership. This is in that category of early detection makes a huge difference. We all know this from, you know, years and years and years of talking about different diseases, how many times early detection is the difference maker. This is one of those times. So for all the parents out there, you see these symptoms in your child act immediately, pick up the phone right away to your doctor. If it's something urgent, get your child to a health care facility. If you don't have a hospital, or excuse me, if you don't have a doctor, you don't know where to turn. Call 3-1-1, they'll connect you to Health + Hospitals. So the early detection of the early action is the way to then empower our health care professionals to address it. But in terms of the different types of testing and how they're being used, Dr. Barbot, Dr. Katz turning to you.

President Katz: I'll start on this one and then Dr. Barbot will help me out. At our Health + Hospitals facilities children will be tested both for the antigen, which is what people think of as what they get when the nasal swab, a PCR test, and the antibody tests. And the significance is that this is a syndrome that we think may occur after a child is infected. So we don't want clinicians to send just the nasal swab, have it be negative for the antigen. And then the doctor thinks, oh, this is unrelated to COVID, when in fact it may still be related to COVID because the child may have had an actual infection some weeks earlier and had they had a nasal swab at that time, it may have been a positive. So in this case, the antigen and the antibody provide different but complimentary pieces of information. And that's why at our public hospitals we'll be testing children for both. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. Dr. Barbot.

Commissioner Barbot: I'll just add to what Dr. Katz laid out and I agree with him is that really we need to think about this from the broader perspective of both prevention and treatment. And with regards to prevention, you know, it goes back to more wide-scale testing so that we can identify people early, put them in appropriate isolation, quarantine, et cetera. The other thing, it's also a reminder of the importance of continuing to stay at home, continuing to use face coverings because the reality is that for this syndrome there is no way – you know, you develop it after you had this infection. And so the best treatment prevention for it are the prevention messages that we're getting all New Yorkers and it's just yet another reason why we need New Yorkers to continue adhering to social distancing.

Mayor: Thank you very much Dr. Barbot. Dr. Katz. That's a perfect note to end on. Remember how many times you've heard from Dr. Barbot about these really basic things that make all the difference in the world. The basic hygiene, the washing your hands, using the alcohol-based hand sanitizer, the social distancing, that simple act of keeping distance, the use of the face coverings, which have been, you know, another example of New Yorkers taking something that we would not have imagined ourselves doing just weeks ago and now doing it overwhelmingly –go out in the street, you see the vast majority of people are using face coverings. Our job is to keep informing, educating, but also encouraging, letting you know that what you're doing is working. It's having a huge effect and that we want to facilitate it. We want to make it easier. So, we're in the process of giving out 7.5 million face coverings and we'll keep doing that as long as we need to, to help people get it right and to help people protect each other.

Think about social distancing. Think about how unusual that is for New Yorkers to practice that. And yet people have done it. We're going to keep building on that effort with 2,300 social distancing ambassadors. So, you're going to be seeing people constantly reminding people, helping them see if there's something that has to be corrected, making sure if they need information, support, they get it. If they need a face covering, they get it. We're going to use all these tools to keep the progress going.

We're doing really, really well as a city, people, everyone's participating, but we could go even farther and again, everyone wants that reopening, everyone wants that restart. Double down on the things that are working that is the pathway to speeding the restart. So, every time you go out there, just double down on really focusing on the social distancing, on remembering to put on that face, covering on reminding the people in your life the right way to do it. It makes a huge difference. And then our ambassadors will be out there more and more, helping to get the message across, helping to make sure people are moving in the right direction. That's how we move forward as a city. And with that again, ending where we started: Happy Mother's Day to all, have a wonderful day today. Thank you.

2020-05-11 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. Think back weeks ago and remember this – it’s so striking to think about this whole crisis we've been through together. Most of it has happened over the last 10 weeks or so and it feels like such a long period of time, but think back to March where every day brought new shocking developments, things we had never seen before. A lot of times we were just fighting to keep going as we dealt with more and more challenges, and now thank God in recent days we've had much better news. We're still not out of the woods, but much better news, much bigger progress. And now as I talked about a few days ago, the whole idea is to get on the offensive against this disease, fight it back, martial our forces to make sure that we get to the day where we rid New York City of this challenge once and for all.

When I think about that sense of being on the offensive being on the march, I think about first of all, what all of you have done because that's the essence of why we've seen this amazing progress. I also think about the fact that as we fight back this disease, we're going to fight back the many, many challenges it has laid bare, most especially the disparities we see in communities around this city, the health care disparities in particular that have been so striking and painful in this crisis. We were all doing everything we could in the first weeks just to make sure that we could save as many lives as possible. Now we're going to not only save lives, we're going to fight these disparities in so many ways going forward. So, we talked about what it took to save lives, to protect people, particularly in the areas hardest hit – our public health care system, our public hospitals and clinics were really the core of that, particularly in the first weeks of this crisis. That's where so many people turned for help and they did an extraordinary job – to all the folks who work at H + H, all the folks who work in our public hospitals and clinics, they were absolutely outstanding during this crisis and that was many ways. The first place we had to focus. Now we are focusing more and more on all the other ways we can reach communities that have been hit the hardest and need the most help and one of the most important elements of that is supporting community-based health care providers.

Now, community clinics, think about what they mean to so many people. They’re the place that people turn for health care who don't have other options. They’re a place for a lot of folks who don't have a lot of resources, aren't sure where else to turn, don't have a long-term relationship with a private doctor. The community clinics are the place they can depend on. Literally the community clinics know the people in their neighborhoods. They speak the language of the people in the neighborhoods. They do amazing work and they've had to do a lot during this crisis, but with many, many challenges that have been a real hindrance to the good work they do in normal times. Remember these are smaller community-based practices, so their financial situation has really been put through so much. There's been a lot of strain during this crisis. It's been hard to keep the personnel they needed as they've dealt with so many new challenges. They have always a need for more technology to deal with an ever-growing demand. Our job now is to fortify these community-based health care providers because as we go on the offensive, as we go right at these disparities with the goal of helping more and more New Yorkers through this crisis and beyond, they – these clinics become a crucial part of the solution.

So, I talked to you a few weeks ago about a four-point plan to address disparities right after we showed that the facts bore out how deeply the disparities played out in this crisis, we said there was a number of things we're going to do differently in this city. I laid out four different parts. I want to dwell on the third part of it today, which is the grassroots reach of these community-based health care providers. So we are going to be working with over 1000 community-based providers in 26 of the hardest hit neighborhoods in this city.

What are we going to do? Well, first of all, a lot of them need the personal protective equipment, so we're going to make sure it's there for them. Some of them literally couldn't do their work, even couldn't keep their clinics open for the lack of it. We're going to get them to the PPEs they need for the work in the clinics for the ability to go out into communities. This is crucial to protecting the good folks who work in these clinics, but also allowing them to do their work and reach more people. We will be distributing 120,000 surgical masks per week, 115,000 pairs of gloves per week to begin and we'll keep building from there to make sure these clinics have what they need.

Of course, like so many other parts of our health care system, these clinics were often shorthanded during this crisis. They had to deal with those that they lost who are sick and that to deal with the fact that they had immense financial strain and couldn't afford to keep people on their payroll. We are now addressing that head on with members of our Medical Reserve Corps, doctors, nurses, other health care professionals. We're going to have hundreds of these professionals, these clinicians, to the clinics in the coming weeks and provide them with the personnel resources and cover the cost so that they can get back up and running as fully as possible.

Telemedicine, we've talked about this before. This is a crucial piece of the equation. When it comes to the clinics, telemedicine is also important, not just what we're trying to do with our public hospitals and clinics, Health + Hospitals, not just what we're trying to do with phone a clinician. We talked about that a few days ago, but the telemedicine that could be done with a community-based clinic. They know their patients, they know the people they have long-term relationships with, but they're not historically using telemedicine as a crucial tool. We're going to help them now do that more and more. And the wellness checks are a big part of it. Reaching out regularly to the patients from the clinic to just checking on them, see if they need anything, constantly proactively communicating. So last month and continuing this month, the Department of Health is running weekly telemedicine webinars to help these community-based clinics get used to how to maximize their use of telemedicine, and our goal is to train 150 of these clinics to be particularly proficient in telemedicine to help them make it a very common part of what they do, and then we'll expand from there.

We also want to see these clinics play a crucial role in our test and trace initiative. This – testing and tracing is the thing that you're going to see grow and grow in the coming weeks. It's absolutely crucial to how we move past this phase of this disease and move forward. These community-based clinics can play a crucial role. We're surveying all of them this week. By next week we're going to know what each one can contribute to the test and trace effort. I wanted to bring them into it deeply.

And then one more point on federal aid. A lot of these community-based clinics are crucial, not just to fighting this disease, but to the future of the neighborhoods they serve and keeping them healthy against so many other health care challenges as well, but they're going to need resources to keep going. There are literally billions of dollars available from the federal government through initiatives like the Paycheck Protection Program. These clinics qualify, but we have to make sure they get their fair share. Our Small Business Services Department’s going to reach out to each of them and help them in the application process to maximize the federal aid going to them.

Now the focus will be on the places hardest hit by the coronavirus in this city, so we're going to be focused on neighborhoods all over the five boroughs. In Brooklyn, those neighborhoods will be Flatbush and East Flatbush, Brownsville, Brighton Beach, Flatlands and Canarsie, East New York and Starrett City, Sunset Park, Bushwick, and Bed-Stuy. In the Bronx, Crotona and Tremont, Highbridge, Mott Haven, and Morrisania, Bronx Park, Van Cortland Park, and Fordham, Northeast Bronx, Pelham and Throggs Neck, Kingsbridge and Riverdale, Soundview and Longwood and Hunts Point. In Manhattan, Morningside Heights, Inwood, Washington Heights and Hamilton Heights, East and Central Harlem, and the Lower East side and Chinatown. In Queens, Corona, East Elmhurst, and Elmhurst, Briarwood, Jamaica, Rockaway and Far Rockaway and Queensbridge. And in Staten Island Stapleton to St. George and Willowbrook. So, the goal will be to right now maximize the use of these community-based facilities, the providers, the clinics that have such a big impact on their communities. Help them right now to be in the forefront of our efforts to fight back the coronavirus, get them right now more deeply into things like telemedicine and the test and trace initiative and leave them in stronger shape for the future as well, serving the communities that have been hardest hit during this crisis, the low-income communities, the immigrant communities, the communities of color that have really taken it on the chin during this crisis. We want to strengthen these community-based providers now and for the future.

Now, when we think about our neighborhoods – when we think about what it's going to take for our neighborhoods to come back – and we are a city of neighborhoods, so thinking from the grassroots up is the right way to do things. When we think about our neighborhoods and what makes our neighborhoods strong, we think about small business. We think about small business in every way. Part of what makes our lives so good in this city is the small businesses that we depend on that are part of the character and identity and the culture of our neighborhoods. Of course, they're also huge employers. When you add up all the small businesses of New York City, the mom and pop stores, all the kinds of small businesses, it's where so many New Yorkers get their livelihood and small business has gone through so much during this crisis. Small business makes New York, New York. When you really think about so much of what we emotionally identify with, so much about what we care about, about our city, it comes back to our small businesses. So, we're going to have to do a lot to help them back. Many are going to struggle coming back. We've got to save as many as possible help as many as possible on the road back. On Friday, I had a call with a group of small business owners, in this case, smaller bars and restaurants. There are a group called the New York Hospitality Coalition and they wanted to help me understand what they were going through and what they needed to come back. And what was so clear on this call was these are folks like, like every small business owner, they put their heart and soul into building up their business. It was something that was really a part of their identity. It was, they put themselves into it and they would do anything to keep their small business going. And they had a deep sense of being there for the people who are their customers, who are the people in their neighborhood that depend on that small business. They, each and every one of them, wanted to come back not just because it was their livelihood and what they had created, not just because they cared about the people worked at their small business, but because they knew their neighborhoods depended on them. So, hearing their voices – and I going to be talking to many, many other people in the small business community, going forward – reminds me of everything we're going to have to do. In the beginning of this crisis we did what the City could do with a $50 million loan and grant program. Obviously, a huge, huge federal program, hundreds of billions of dollars has come into play since then, although there are many challenges with small businesses accessing it and we're still fighting to help them get that done. But we are going to need much more to help small business, going forward. And we're going to have to find new sources of support for small business. To say the least, this is not going to be business as usual. We are going to have to find ways to help small business that are different than anything we've ever done in the history of New York City. We've got to maximize, of course, the federal aid to small business and state aid to small business, but we're going to have to do some things differently to find a whole new type of support for small businesses to help them back on their feet and help them stay on their feet, going forward.

So, I have two personnel announcements today that are related to a new approach we're going to take to small business in this unprecedented time. First of all, I am creating a new position as senior advisor for small business related to the COVID-19 crisis, and I'm naming to this position Gregg Bishop. Gregg has served as our commissioner of Small Business Services since 2015. He's done a great job and he has been the voice of small business owners all throughout the City government. I've talked to so many small business owners who appreciate deeply what Gregg does. He understands the small businesses of this city. He's going to bring that expertise to bear to help us develop a whole new approach to bringing resources and support to those small businesses. He'll work closely with our public-private partnership czar, Peter Hatch, who's been doing a fantastic job bringing in philanthropic support and support from the business community locally, nationally, internationally for New York City. Now, we need a lot of that support to be focused on how to uplift small business and provide the resources for small businesses to get back on their feet and the ability for small businesses to have new customers, new revenue to keep them going in this new reality. I'll charge Gregg with finding whole new sources of capital for small business. I know from having spoken with people in the philanthropic world that they understand that in less New York city, small businesses come back, our neighborhoods can't come back the way we need them to. I think there's going to be a tremendous sense of generosity from the world of philanthropic organizations, many of whom have a deep focus on New York City already. Gregg is going to be charged with tapping into that desire to help and building a whole new initiative to bring in those resources, but also to deepen the connection between larger businesses and small business. When I had a call last week as well as the heads of some of the largest businesses in New York City, and to their credit, they said they understood small business was hurting a lot more than larger business and small business would be crucial to any restart and recovery and they were already asking themselves what could larger businesses do to patronize smaller businesses, to work with them, to provide them capital to do things that larger businesses hadn't done so much before systematically with small business but needed to do now for the good of New York City. It was a very heartening conversation. Gregg Bishop is who I'm going to turn to, to take that idea and make it a reality and really catalyze that instinct we're seeing in the larger business community and bring it to bear to help small business.

Now, and given the important work that's happening, the every-day work of Small Business Services, we needed a new leader to come in to be the commissioner, following Gregg, to pick up the work that he's done and deepen it in the next 20 months ahead in this administration, because Small Business Services every day is solving problems for small businesses, figuring out new ways to help small businesses. Even in normal times, that reality is going to be more and more complex now, but our Department of Small Business Services has proven itself time and again, it's going to take on more and more responsibility going forward. To fill the role of commissioner, I've chosen Jonnel Doris. Jonnel has done an outstanding job as our Director for the Office of Minority- and Women-Owned Business enterprises. He's led a really systematic, energetic effort to expand M/WBE contracts coming from the city – $14.6 billion awarded since 2015, $1 billion ahead of pace for our 2020 goal. A of that has been because of Jonnel’s energetic leadership. So, as the new commissioner for small business services, I'm going to ask him to look at every way that that agency can help small businesses in this recovery. All the ways that we have to simplify what small businesses go through in their dealings with City government. Here's a moment of crisis, but it's also a moment to rethink what we do with and for small business and how we can lighten the burden on small business. Jonnel, someone has proven himself to be an innovator, I'm going to ask him to look at the situation from scratch and figure out how SBS in its own work, but also as a leader for the small business community in the whole City government can get all City agencies engaged in the work of helping our small businesses back. Look, we know small businesses of every kind are hurting. I've heard particularly concern from immigrant communities and from communities of color about whether their small businesses will be able to come back in this environment, in many cases small businesses that had the most tenuous financial situation even before the coronavirus. We've got to help each and every small business come back. I know it'll be a huge challenge, but I want small businesses all over the city to know the City government is here for them and we're going to find new resources and new ways to help and that we can weather the storm together. So, with Gregg's leadership, with Jonnel’s leadership, I'm confident we'll be able to do a host of new things to help small businesses to get through and then become strong again as we move back to normal.

Now, we've talked about some of the challenges that have been so profound in this crisis. We've talked about what some of the hardest-hit communities have gone through. We've talked about what our small businesses have gone through. Clearly, when you think about who's challenged every day in New York City, our hearts always go to homeless New Yorkers. And in this city, we feel a lot for the fact that some people ended up living on the streets, something happened in their life that led them to that point. Our job is to help them back and to create a better reality for homeless people. So, I have two updates today, and the first relates to our shelters. We've been trying to make sure as we deal with the coronavirus that we're constantly evaluating our shelter system and moving people as needed to make sure everyone is safe and healthy. I told you we were going to have a goal of moving a thousand people per week out of shelters into hotel settings to keep opening up the shelters to keep making sure we could do a proper social distancing. We met that goal last week. We will be meeting it again this week. There's now over 8,000 single adults in hotel rooms and we'll keep doing that as-needed in the weeks ahead, and particularly as we build up our widespread test and trace initiative, which is going to help. Everyone in that initiative will also be focused on our homeless shelters.

Now, the second update I want to give, and this is something we've been talking about over the last few days, is what's happening with homeless folks who have been in the subways. And I keep telling you something historic is happening, and, day after day, the facts bear it out. The new initiative that we put together with the MTA and the State, six days now and six days that have been entirely consistent, something really groundbreaking is happening here, something very different and very powerful. Last night, when a subway shutdown for cleaning, our homeless outreach workers and specially trained members of the NYPD were out there to help homeless New Yorkers, to offer them a chance to come in and get support. 261 homeless individuals were engaged, 139 of them accepted help. 116 went to shelter. 23 went to hospitals. Again, numbers we've never seen ever in the history of the city – such an extraordinary number of people agreeing to take help, agreeing to take the first step towards a very different life. It's early to say the least, just six days, but they've been very, very consistent. And when I look at the sheer number of people whose lives now could be changed, it really gives me hope that we're going to be able to get a number of homeless people once and for all off the streets, into a better life. So, another good day for this new initiative.

Now, let me turn to something that's an every-day thing in this city, something we all think about – or, many at least think about and always want clear answers on – and it’s alternate side parking, a part of every-day life for so many New Yorkers. So, alternate side parking, we've been suspending it quite a bit. Obviously, given everything people are going through, we wanted to make it easier for people to stay home. We’ve said throughout, we’ve got to keep an eye on how our neighborhoods are looking. Are they clean? We want to keep them sanitary. We want to make sure that while we're trying to give every consideration to people, we also have to keep an eye on cleanliness, very important to the overall health and wellbeing of the city. So, we've suspended alternate side many, many times in the last 10 weeks. But now we do see a number of areas in the city where some litter is starting to add up and we're concerned. So, we'll go to do something a little different this coming week and then that will help us reset for the future. So, alternate side will continue to be suspended this week through Sunday through May 17th. And, by the way, this suspension now that's happened over recent weeks is actually one of the longest in the history of New York City. So, this suspension has helped people, made the lives a little easier, help people stay inside. We'll keep it going through Sunday, May 17th. Starting on Monday, May 18th, we're going to do a clean sweep all over the city, a catch-up to make sure neighborhoods are clean. So, alternate side parking will resume on Monday, May 18th and go through the end of that week. So, again, one week, the week of Monday, May 18th, alternate side parking will resume just for that week. We will then suspend for the following two weeks, so it'll be suspended again through Sunday, June 7th. So, the goal here is if we do that one week clean up, hopefully that will last us a substantial period of time. But, again, we have to see how it goes. We have to see what we can achieve to make sure neighborhoods are clean. So, again, everyone – this week, no alternate side; next week, back on for one week only and then suspended again for two weeks after that.

Okay. I want to talk about an incident that happened last night and this is something that we've seen in the context of this whole painful crisis. Remember, there were too many times, way too many times over the last 10 weeks when I've had to talk to you about incidents of bias directed at Asian Americans in the context of the coronavirus crisis. We don't accept bias in New York City. We don't accept hate in any form, any act of bias, any hate crime, we pursue it. We make sure there are consequences for the perpetrator. That's something that people have seen time and time again in this city, that we take it seriously. All of us take us seriously. We take us seriously here in the City government and the NYPD takes it seriously. So, we saw those horrible incidents directed that Asian communities. Now, last night, a different incident in South Williamsburg, two perpetrators, one male, one female ripped masks off, members of the Jewish community who were walking down the street. This is obviously absolutely unacceptable in every way. It's something that expresses hate, but also create danger, and that's unacceptable and we're not going to allow it here in this city. The two perpetrators have been arrested by the NYPD and we are treating this incident as a hate crime. So, there are serious consequences when someone commits one of these acts. So, look, whether it is this horrible anti-Semitic act that we saw or the horrible anti-Asian acts we saw in previous weeks, none of these acts of bias and discrimination are acceptable in New York City. And the fact that the perpetrators were arrested immediately is a reminder to everyone out there, we will not tolerate hate, we will act on it quickly. Anyone who engages in an act of hate will be suffering the consequences of their actions.

Okay. Every day we come back to our daily indicators and this is what we look at every single day to see how we're doing this city and where we're going today. I have good news. And this is really wonderful to report to you, because it gets back to what you've been doing every time I get to give you good news. It's just a reflection on all of you, because New Yorkers are taking shelter in place so seriously, social distancing, so seriously face covering so seriously and it's making a difference. So, the indicators today show it first. The daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that is down from 69 to 55. And look, two things to see here, one down and down substantially – that's great to begin with – but down to just 55. We are not out of the woods, but when you see that number go down as low as 55, that sure is heartening compared to where we were and a credit to all of you. The daily number of people in ICU is across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19 it's down, it's only a little from 540 to 537, but it's still down, and that is progress. And the percentage of people who tested positive for COVID-19 citywide, down from 17 percent to 13 percent. So, this is exactly the kind of day we want to see. Now, let's say we can stretch a number of these days together and that'll be the signal that it's time to start talking about relaxing some of these restrictions. But first, we have real work to do to get there.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media and please remember to give me the name and the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder that we have Commissioner Barbot, Commissioner Banks, Senior Advisor Bishop, and Commissioner Doris on the phone. With that, I will start with Brigid from WNYC.

Question: Good morning. Mr. Mayor, I know yesterday you spoke about the Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome and the number of cases in the city. Just to follow ups on that – one, do you have an updated – are you still at 38 in terms of the number of cases? And is there more information in terms of the specific ages, demographics of the patients, where those cases are located and how the City is tracking this data? Are you actively seeking information from hospitals or as the Deputy Mayor said last week, are you waiting for hospitals to report that information?

Mayor: Thank you very much Brigid. We're all very, very concerned about this situation. I want to keep emphasizing to parents if you see these symptoms and I'm going to ask Dr. Barbot to go over the symptoms at the beginning of her answer. Again, because we want to keep reminding parents and family members to look out for these symptoms and act quickly because as concerned, deeply concerned as we are, it's also important to remind everyone this is the kind of a situation that if it's seen and acted on quickly, can be crucial in addressing the syndrome and protecting a child. So early detection, early action really matters here. Brigid we want to make sure we get clear information out. The number of cases, thank God is still small. So in terms of seeing demographic trends, we have a very small sample size, but we absolutely want to report what we know about the demographics of the cases. And Commissioner Barbot will speak to that. And we mentioned a few days ago, the Health Department sent out a HAN, a Health Alert to all providers, to report in what they were seeing about this syndrome. That is an obligation for them to report. So I think we're in a proactive stance, getting information constantly to understand what's happening and how we can address it. So Dr. Barbot, I'll turn to you to further answer Brigid's question, but again, if you start with the symptoms and a reminder to parents, I'd appreciate it.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Certainly Mr. Mayor. So this evolving syndrome has many of the similar features of what we call Kawasaki's Disease. And those tend to be a presentation that includes high fevers for a prolonged number of days, as well as a rash and very red injected eyes along with red swollen lips and what we characteristically refer to as a strawberry tongue because of the degree to which it's so red. And these children when they present – so the most important thing is, as the Mayor mentioned, are clinicians to identify this early and an order for them to do that we need parents to reach out to them if they have children with these symptoms, not to delay but to consult with their pediatricians. And for the pediatricians, if they have a high level of suspicion, obviously to then refer them for definitive treatment because the treatment that is required is given through intravenous routes.

And so during this process we have in collaboration with our health care delivery providers, confirmed 38 cases. And the case definition is something that is important to have consistency about because we all need to be as a clinical community, clear about what are the symptoms, what are the signs that then confirm or not whether a child might have this new syndrome. And the guidance that we have sent out to the provider community is an individual less than 21 years of age, and thus far the majority of children have fallen within like the five to nine year range. So we have certainly kids younger than that as well as older. Laboratory signs of inflammation and then a single or multi-organ indication of failure, meaning that your kidneys are not working. They're going into shock. Their heart is giving out. So this is something, obviously that is incredibly concerning because the best way to ensure that we limit the number of children that are diagnosed with this inflammatory syndrome is to ensure the prevention. Right? So it goes back to having New Yorkers stay at home, continuing use of face coverings and that early access to care if children develop these symptoms. And then the appropriate referrals for definitive treatment.

Mayor: Thank you, Doctor.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, good morning everyone. And Mayor de Blasio, I've kind of asked a version of this question a few times throughout this. And it feels a little bit like Groundhog Day, not to trigger you, but I'm curious, this initiative to engage community-based health care organizations. Why wasn't it done sooner? Particularly in neighborhoods that have fewer health care? I'm thinking of, especially Queens, which is the epicenter of the epicenter, has fewer hospital beds. Why wasn't some of this work done earlier? I have colleagues who've spoken to these community-based doctors who said that they were really struggling in March when, and in April when it was really at its peak. So you know, why couldn't it have been done any sooner and maybe perhaps prevented some deaths? Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you, Katie. Look again, Katie, the strategy which we've – you've asked it before, I've answered it before. I'll answer it again. The strategy in March going into April was focusing on saving lives at hospitals. That's where we had to protect the most New Yorkers in the most profound way. We know that as the disease escalated, our hospital system was going through intense stress. In fact, the projections were going into beginning of April, it was going to go through much, much more. And everything was about protecting the lifesaving capacity of hospitals. There was a deep concern that hospitals would at some point be overwhelmed, and that meant in every sense, literally number of beds, personnel, PPEs, all of the above, ventilators, you name it. That's where the focus had to be to protect the ability of the hospitals to save lives. We only started to get relief as we got into the middle of April and that's when also the disparity information came out and we shifted a number of our efforts towards addressing the grassroots and addressing the disparities. So now we are going to continue to deepen those efforts. And of course the central strategic thrust now is going to be test and trace and we're going to bring these community-based providers into that as well.

Moderator: Next, we have Gloria from NY1.

Question: Hi. Good morning. Two questions. First on Kawasaki. I just want to get some clarity about the protections that parents should be taking for their children in terms of how this syndrome is spread? And how much is this now being taken into consideration as part of a possible reopening of schools in the fall? I also have a question for -- on testing, if I may. I'm wondering if you could give us an update on where testing is at? And if the City's guidance has at all changed? I know in the beginning the guidance was, you know, not everyone should be going out and getting a test if your symptoms aren't terrible, stay home, ride it out. But has that changed at all as testing becomes more available?

Mayor: Thank you Gloria. I'm going to start on the testing and then speak to the syndrome and turn to Dr. Barbot. The answer is absolutely, the initial reality of testing and remember testing has been the central issue from day one going back to January when we first called for federal support for testing. Still don't have the federal support we need. That's obvious. We are – we have much less testing than we want to, but we do have a growing amount of testing so we will be changing the criteria. Previously, it had to be focused on those who were in the greatest danger of losing their lives, as well as of course, keeping our hospitals going. So testing for our, our health care workers, keeping our first responders going. It was a very narrow construct. And as we started to do even the community-based, we focused first and foremost on those who are older and or had the preexisting conditions. We're going to be broadening that because by definition as you go into test and trace, you want to go as deep into communities as possible. So first concern will remain with those who are most vulnerable. But the goal is to go far beyond them and go deeper and deeper into communities. So right now we're still at that level, 13,000, 14,000 a day. We will get to 20,000 by May 25th, and then we want to get up to 50,000 a day. That's our goal in the course of the next few months. Maybe even get beyond that. If we could get federal help, we could go a lot farther. And that's just on the diagnostic testing. Obviously the antibody testing, which I always say you know, is helpful but has limitations, that will be a whole additional piece of the equation. So the criteria will loosen up. Then you know, for the foreseeable future, first preference always will be to older folks and or folks with preexisting conditions. But we will see an opening up more and more reach into communities as we go along.

On the issue of the schools. Look, we're going to watch this very closely. This is a syndrome that is historically rare. Dr. Barbot can speak to that, but we're taking it very seriously. We are watching it very carefully. And anything we do about schools is going to be led by health and safety first. That's absolutely the first question in any reopening. As of this moment, we believe we can reopen schools safely and well in September. But we have to keep a very close watch on this syndrome to make sure that we attack it in every way possible in the meantime. Dr. Barbot, you want to add.

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, sir. So this syndrome is Kawasaki-like, but it's really beyond that. So we're calling it Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome. It's a mouthful. But it really is a descriptive diagnosis. And the reality is that we're still learning about the way in which COVID-19 is affecting children. And so in terms of prevention, the most important thing is again, for families to remain indoors as much as possible. When they go outdoors for activities, they should use face coverings, children about the age of two should be using face coverings. When a parent, as I mentioned earlier, does have a child who has symptoms that may be consistent with this new syndrome, and they take their child to the pediatrician. One of the things we want pediatricians to be very much aware of is that oftentimes when they get the results back for COVID-19, the results may actually be negative. And so this is a syndrome where it can't really be directed by whether the test is positive or not. Although certainly it should be done. We are encouraging pediatricians to also do the antibody testing for these children. More so to confirm the diagnosis, not as an indication of whether or not it's going to then impact the case moving forward. The most important thing is, as I mentioned earlier, early diagnosis, do the test, the test is positive or negative and you still have concerns about could this be COVID-19 related? Do the antibody testing in the meantime, make sure you refer the child to hospital so that they can be more definitively diagnosed and given the appropriate intravenous medication as needed. The important thing here is based on experience, I actually, when I was in clinical practice actually treated children with Kawasaki's, you find it early, treat it early. The long term consequences for children are pretty negligible. If you delay treatment, then the concern is that children may have long term consequences. Most often in Kawasaki’s is related to the heart. And so we want to take this opportunity again, bring this information to parents, have them be on the lookout, bringing this information to primary care pediatricians so that they can act early. And then with regards to the safety, as the Mayor mentioned in terms of schools, absolutely paying very close attention on a basis. We are reaching out to pediatric providers and intensive care units. And as the science emerges and our guidance, if it needs to adapt, we will certainly adapt it. But for right now continue with face coverings, remaining indoors as much as possible and not delaying in seeking care.

Moderator: Next we have Sydney from the Staten Island Advance.

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor. So businesses along Front Street say that closing down Front Street between Canal and Edgewater streets as part of the City's open streets plan has been hurting their businesses even more during the pandemic. No one seems to be using the street that's been closed off and appear to be using the Stapleton Waterfront Park, which is adjacent to Front Street more than the Front Street area. Would you be willing to reopen Front Street and choose another street in the area to close down?

Mayor: Thank you for the question, Sydney. This is exactly again, I've said to many, you and many of your colleagues, it really helps when our colleagues in the media raise concerns that help us see if there's something that needs to be adjusted or addressed. So I'm going to have my team look at that immediately. Look, we put together these streets working with the City Council, working with NYPD, Department of Transportation where we thought they would be most helpful and where we could of course, keep them safe. Like everything else, if we try something and it proves that there's not that many people who use it, we need to reassess. Or if it has an unintended consequence we need to reassess. So I can't tell you the final result now, but I can tell you right away I'll have my team follow up, see what we're seeing in terms of the number of people using it, see if we think there's a different approach, or a better alternative. Definitely concerned about those small businesses. So we'll assess it over the next few days and have an answer for you.

Moderator: Next we have Andrew from NBC.

Question: Good morning Mr. Mayor and everyone on the call. Hope everyone is doing well.

Mayor: Good morning Andrew, how are you doing?

Question: Good. I have two questions. The first question is, Mayor, what is your understanding of the earliest date New York City nonessential businesses could reopen? Based on the Governor's new executive order, it would seem to be June 7th, but I wanted to know what your understanding is of the earliest that could happen? My second question is on behalf of my colleague Melissa Russo, who of course has been breaking news on the Kawasaki and related syndrome. Are there any changes being made to testing and must the testing now routinely involve children to gauge overall exposure? Do children start to be necessary for the testing samples?

Mayor: Okay. Let me do them in the order you asked them, Andrew. On the reopening look, so we have our daily indicators. The State has their indicators. We're all working together. They're all valuable measures. By both sets of measures, we're clearly not ready yet. It's May 11th today. What we can see in the case of both indicators is, you know, the likelihood right now, unless something miraculous happens and we're going into June. So I think it's fair to say that June is when we are potentially going to be able to make some real changes, if we can continue our progress. Now, Andrew, everyone who asks those kinds of projection questions, it's absolutely natural. Everyone, every New Yorker is asking themselves the question. I get the question all the time from people. we got to keep bringing it back to the science and the data. Because I've been critical, the Governor's been critical and a number of people have been critical around this country of places that decided to make their decisions without facts and the dangers that creates for their citizens. So we're going to always go by the data. It's been pretty good and pretty consistent. It's not quite been what we need it to be, but definitely trending the right direction. But we need to see it sustained in a deeper way. Right now that takes us into June. As we get close to the beginning of June, we'll be able to say, if it's looking like things are really coming together, and then what are the areas where we could be – begin to have some flexibility? But I remind you, I keep using the word boomerang. We got guard against the boomerang. And at any point, if the data started to change, that then delays the moment when you could do any kind of loosening of restrictions. We also know, and I gave the bad examples some days ago, of places that had to not only pulled back on loosening but then have to tighten up even further than where they started. So we have to earn it every day as the bottom line. And I think the right thing to think about is this conversation, end of May beginning of June is when we'll be able to start filling in the blanks.

On the question, passing on to Melissa's question – again with real appreciation to Melissa for the work she's done here. We're going to do, you know, throughout the whole health care system, we're going to be vigilant to see what's happening with this syndrome. And again, it begins with pediatricians and other health care providers, looking for those symptoms in kids. And it begins with parents and family members immediately reporting if they see their children with these symptoms. So that's, I want to really emphasize how we have the best chance of protecting kids and making sure they're safe, that early detection, early action. In terms of testing I'll turn to Dr. Barbot. Obviously the testing is happening now more and more as I talked about yesterday. For example, all Health + Hospitals facilities are now testing kids proactively with the antibody test as one of the measures to take in light of what we're seeing here. But that's in the case of kids who are already hospitalized, already have a problem. So the focus right now again is addressing kids with the symptoms, but definitely testing when you do see the symptoms. Doctor, you want to add?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, sir. What I would emphasize is if a pediatrician in his or her opinion has a child that has symptoms potentially consistent with COVID-19, they should by all means test that child. Do it in the outpatient setting, do it in the inpatient setting. There should be no limitations to a pediatrician's ability to test the child for COVID-19. Now, that being said, if they have a child who has symptoms they're concerned about, could be this new inflammatory syndrome, they should be -- take that test results with a grain of salt. Meaning that if the test does come back negative, then they should also consider doing antibody testing. And really the important part is not delay referral for more definitive treatment if the child has symptoms that they think are consistent with this new inflammatory syndrome.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Jeff from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor. I just have two questions for you. One from a colleague, based on the NYPD’s daily coronavirus reports, the number of summonses issued for social distancing offenses between March 16th and May 5th, is at least a hundred more than what you and the NYPD reported last week. Last week's data did not include instances in which officers used charges such as disorderly conduct to enforce social distancing or when they found other violations such as marijuana possessions. That means the number of arrests and summonses stemming from social distancing seems even higher than you were saying. Why isn't the City releasing the full number and breakdown of these arrests and summonses? And how can you reach the conclusion that enforcement has been used sparingly without that data? And the second question is on alternate side street parking, it's been suspended for weeks and the City has remained relatively clean, you said. Has the City considered any permanent changes to alternate side parking? And are there other things that the City's learned from this pandemic that might change once the pandemic ends?

Mayor: So, Jeff, I mean your last part of your question is, is a vast one. I think there are many things we're learning from this horrible crisis that are going to change the way we do things in the future. That's why you know, everything we're putting together now, the Fair Recovery Task Force, the internal task force on Equity and Inclusion, the sector councils, everybody's going to be looking at restart and recovery, but also lessons learned. Painful lessons, things we're going to have to learn to address. But also innovations and changes that are coming. Telemedicine is a great example. The fact that we're seeing a lot of places now learning telemedicine that didn't before and that's going to actually expand the ability to reach so many more patients. So yeah, that's going to be a huge discussion going forward of all the things we're learning and we're going to act on.

Alternate side, you know, I would say what we're seeing in the short term is that because people's lives changed so profoundly, because there are so many fewer people on the street, there was so much less litter. There was so much less activity that we could be okay with a lot less alternate side. When you get back to something more normal, I think, you know, there's a strong argument that you want to restore it fully, but that's not something we're going to deal with for quite a while. We’ll certainly look to see if there's a bigger lesson that we can learn vis-ŕ-vis alternate side that might change the approach for the future. I definitely think there's some places still in the city where we're doing, you know, before all of this, where we're doing more alternate side than is needed. So I think there's an opportunity here to reassess frequency for sure. But right now we're going to stick to, you know, having this one week, next week we have a cleanup week. And then go back to suspending it. And then as we come out of the crisis, assess what it means going forward.

On the NYPD. I want to again, always begin at the beginning. The NYPD is at this point for years and years has been reducing the amount of arrests. Obviously radically reducing the number of stops. In this crisis, even though we've made clear that we have to make sure that there is the opportunity to enforce when needed, the vast majority of time enforcement hasn't been needed. The vast majority of New Yorkers are following the rules related to shelter-in-place and social distancing and face coverings. Enforcement has really not been needed on anything like a large scale. In fact, when you look at the summons activity, it is averaged out to fewer than ten a day, ten summonses for the whole city per day. It's really, really small. So we got to keep putting this in perspective. Now, the original numbers put out last week actually did combine specific summonses related to social distancing with some other summonses at the same time for other offenses. So that needs to be disaggregated so people can see. But Jeff, it's just standard policing that if another offense becomes clear in the midst of one type of enforcement, of course there has to be enforcement on the new offense as well. We'll keep making sure this information is published and is clear. But the level of activity by the NYPD is minimal right now when it comes to how they're participating in enforcement. And we want to make sure it's there when it's needed because enforcement is part of life. But I think it's quite clear that NYPD has been very restrained in the approach.

Moderator: Next, we have Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. First a quick follow up on the Pediatric Inflammatory Syndrome. Yesterday you said 38 children. I'm just wondering if there's an update on that number? Particularly with regards to the homeless folks being taken off the subways, have you been tracking in terms of those numbers, whether they're unique individuals or whether some of those people are being removed from the subways multiple nights in a row and, you know, therefore ending up back there?

Mayor: Very good question. I appreciate it Erin. Let me first on the Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome, turn to the Commissioner, Commissioner Barbot. I don't have new numbers as of today, since what we talked about yesterday. Commissioner, do you have any new numbers yet? If not, if there's anything new, we'll get it out later in the day.

Commissioner Barbot: We're still at 38, though we have less than a dozen that are pending investigation. So, I anticipate those cases will be resolved sometime this week, early this week. If not today, then tomorrow. And we'll be able to update numbers to see whether any of those actually turn out to be PMIS.

Mayor: Okay. Thank you. Now, I want to turn to Commissioner Banks. I think Erin's question is a crucial one always – are we reaching the same people over and over or are we reaching different people? Commissioner, obviously this gets to the point of when you have folks come into shelter – it's very early, it's only six days, but how many people are staying in versus going back out and then we bring them in for another night. So, let me immediately note, six days is a limited sample size and I know it takes time to gather the information, but what can you tell us so far about whether you think folks are staying in or going back out and then you're bringing them back in again?

Commissioner Banks: Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the framing of this. It’s really only six days into a brand new initiative. Without this initiative we always had people who would come off for one night, return, and then we would bring them in, be able to persuade them to come in at another time. So, this is a phenomenon that we have been working with. What we have not ever seen, though, is this kind of success rate. As I said yesterday morning on a good night, five percent accepting assistance would have been a high night. And here we're getting half the people accepting assistance. We're looking at the trends. We certainly see some people that are staying in. We see some people that are not staying in and we're going to take a hard look at it over the course of this week to see if we can really focus on the people who might've come in for a night or two and then not come back in. Those are the people that we really want to focus on. In addition to the other half of people who are not accepting our services, if there’s some additional help we can give to them to have them accept it. So, you know, Erin, it's a new initiative, it's too early to make global statements, but we're looking very carefully at this because we want people to stay in once we've been able to get them to accept services to begin with and we want to redouble our efforts for the people that are not accepting our services currently.

Mayor: Yeah. And just to finish it, Erin, the – look, the perfect world is, first engagement, someone comes in, you know, gets support, gets mental health services, gets substance misuse services, never leaves again. But we know in the real world there's going to be times where it's going to take multiple efforts to get someone in. So, even if you get someone in for a night, it's still one night less that they were out on the street and that's when you can begin to get them help, begin to show them the kind of help that would be available for them. Anytime someone comes in, even for a night, is something of a victory. But you're absolutely right. The goal here is to try and sustain it and make sure it's as deep as possible. And I think over the next few weeks we're going to have a much greater ability to say how lasting an impact this is happening. But just the fact that so many people, at least beginning to experience the help they could get is very, very encouraging to me.

Moderator: Next we have Julia from the Post.

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor and everyone on the call. I actually just wanted to see if – ask a follow up to Erin's question to see if Commissioner Banks at this point has any numbers or percentages in terms of the people who may have left after one or two nights. And then Mr. Mayor, I'd like to ask you about what alternate side parking enforcement means when it's back in effect next week. Is that just summonses or tow trucks? And what areas have had the dirty streets? Because we've heard from a number of readers in some neighborhoods that streets are actually very clean.

Mayor: Thank you, Julia. On the – I'll do this part first and then turn to Commissioner Banks. So, we'll get you information today on what the Sanitation Department has seen. Remember that for all these weeks, the Sanitation Department’s out there surveying regularly and the fact that we kept extending alternate side was – meaning not having it in effect – was because the Sanitation Department kept confirming that they were satisfied with the standards. Only in the last few days have they said they really do start to see more of a problem. And, of course, the one thing we know about alternative side is it’s applied citywide simultaneously. So, if we see a problem in a number of areas, we have to turn it on everywhere to be able to be effective. But I think, you know, what I've said from the beginning, I do not want to see us, even as we're fighting this bigger problem, end up with a city that gets dirtier and dirtier. There was going to be a point where we had to make sure if we saw a problem, it got addressed. And to do it for one week is, I think, a smart, limited way to do it. But we'll get you the data that led to this decision. And it would be applied the way it normally is applied with the same kind of approach to enforcement as would happen in normal times. Commissioner Banks, do you want to answer the other part of the question?

Commissioner Banks: Yes. Just very briefly, Julia, you know, as I said in response to Erin's question, it's really too early to tell. It's particularly, you know – I had the curve ball in the middle of this, of a Code Blue on two nights in May, which is not something that typically happens. And during Code Blue we typically were able to bring people in for a night or two and under circumstances in which people would not accept services. And I think as you saw in the numbers of engagements on Saturday night into Sunday morning and Friday night into Saturday morning that we had higher numbers of engagements and higher people accepting services on those nights. But if you took a typical Code Blue night, in the winter time, we would see one or – people coming in for one or two nights. So, we had to sort out all of the back and forth over the course of these last several days and we'll be doing that in the coming days as the Mayor said.

Look, our goal is to have people come off the streets and remain off the streets. That's – the tools that we've used with HOME-STAT have gotten more than 2,500 people to come in off the streets and remain off the streets. These last six nights have been opportunities to reach people, to try to help them on a pathway off the streets. We've been offering new tools, including Safe Haven stabilization beds in a commercial hotel. We brought on new Safe Haven beds in the middle of the pandemic in order to offer new tools to our outreach workers. And when we have a body of work that's a little bit longer, we'll be able to reach some conclusions about how we're doing in terms of people remaining inside. You know, if we can get someone in for three nights, it's an opportunity to know them better and to be able to offer things for them in the future that’ll keep them off. So, every night for each human being is a victory to have a roof over their heads rather than be on a subway train.

Moderator: Next we have Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Henry, how about you?

Question: Good. My question has to do with whether or not the City has given any thought to separating the comeback from the lockdown by the amount of risk involved in certain parts of the population, mainly age. Old people are particularly susceptible to serious complications of this disease. Is it possible that you will have a kind of bifurcated advisory in which older people, people over 65, are asked to continue to shelter in place while people who are at less risk may have a little bit more latitude in the amount of freedom, if you will, that they can go about a city?

Mayor: It's a very smart question, Henry. And it's the kind of thing we have to look at as we get toward the point of being able to relax restrictions. But again, I keep reminding people, one, we're not there yet, and two, we have to prove consistently that we get to that point and cannot count our chickens until they're hatched. So, we're constantly looking at these indicators to see if we get to that point we can do some opening up. But remember even if you do some opening up initially, it does not change the basic rules of engagement. You still want people to practice social distancing and wear face coverings, and you still want folks who are particularly vulnerable to take extra precautions. So, I would say your question is a good one because it helps us all start thinking about the fact that the first steps towards reducing restrictions and opening up, certainly those first steps in particular do not change the basic rules of engagement. And in fact, I would argue it will be well along the way, months ahead, we're still going to be practicing a number of these precautions until we really get to a point that this disease is so limited in this city that we can anticipate, you know, something very different. Definitely want folks who are older, particularly those who are much older and, or who have the preexisting conditions to keep being careful and smart for quite a while, and the people around them to exercise a lot of care and caution with those who are most vulnerable. We're at a point now, last 24 hours, over a thousand new cases, we're far from the point where people can let down their guard. So, we'll give guidance for sure. But I think a good general rule is to say that those precautions need to be in place for quite a while, even as we're taking the first steps to open up

Moderator: Last two for today, we have Steve from Westwood One News.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Good morning everybody on the call. Just wanted to ask you something about small businesses since you're focused on that today. I've been talking to small business owners around Brooklyn and many of them are wondering what they'll be able to do and how soon they'll be able to do it. Specifically, they're wondering if they can be open soon for curbside pickup only, in the words of the same way that restaurants can, you know, fill orders for takeout. Would it be possible for small business owners to take orders over the phone or online and then fulfill those orders at the door front without having people inside their stores? Now, they say they're hurting so badly, they have to pay their rent, the City needs the tax revenue, and wondering if that's an accommodation that can be made soon. And then I'm just wondering, also my second question, I want to come back to the contact tracing decision to have Health + Hospitals do this and ask Dr. Barbot, what are your thoughts on this? And, you know, there's been so much criticism from predecessors on this, specifically Dr. Tom Frieden who says that this isn't a wise move. He thinks it doesn't make sense. Wondering what Dr. Barbot’s thoughts are on the criticism that came out over the weekend. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you, Steve. So, on the first point with the curbside pickup, it's definitely the kind of thing we need to look at because when we think about the many different permutations of how you start to relax certain restrictions or start to open up. We're going to look at any and all options, and we're looking at things that have been used around the world and around the country to see what's been working well, what hasn't been working so well. That's the kind of idea that's on the table. But again, it's premature to say exactly what we're going to do because we're analyzing each option, the timing, how it would work in a place like New York City, which is obviously different from a lot of other places. And we have – you know, even something like curbside pickup plays out very differently here than it would in a lot of places around the country that have a lot more space. But it's an idea we definitely need to weigh. And to Gregg Bishop and Jonnel Doris, both of whom, you know, constantly are engaging small business owners and talking to them about their needs, when you – you know, again, you can think about curbside pickup or any of the other specific ideas you're hearing from small business owners, but just wanted to see if either one of you wants to add about the kinds of approaches we're going to take initially as we listen to small business owners and try and figure out the best way to support them. If either one of you would like to add at this point, you're welcome to. Gregg, if you'd like to jump in at all.

Senior Advisor Gregg Bishop, Small Business COVID-19 Recovery: Sure, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for this opportunity. I think it's important for us to get our reopening strategy correct. And so, certainly we will be listening to our small businesses with our task force to figure out what is the best way to get our businesses operating because we want to make sure, as the Mayor's talked about, that we do this smart so that we don't see that boomerang effect. So, whether it's curbside pickup or whether it's helping them with technology so they can actually deliver that material or whatever the product is, we will be looking for solutions.

Mayor: Thank you. Jonnel, you want to add?

Commissioner Jonnel Doris, Small Business Services: Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I believe that the best place for us to find the solutions, as you said earlier and also as Gregg mentioned, is really by engaging our small businesses, trying to figure out what will work for them. And I think part of our role as SBS going forward is really to strengthen and extend our reach and communication with those small businesses, and then figure out ways that we can advocate for them both on the City level, but also on the federal level. And I think some of the resources that is needed particularly from the City and from the federal level, we can help them get there. And so, we are going to be laser focused on this. We are going to increase our communication to those businesses and get greater input and what they think can actually work for them and their particular business because every business is different. One business may ask for curbside pickup, others may need some sort of a different approach. And so, we are open to everything and, as I said before, as we assess, we will definitely come back with recommendations concerning those requests.

Mayor: Thank you, Jonnel. And thank you, Gregg. And again, congratulations to both of you on your new roles. You know, Steve, the question you asked also reminds me of, you know, I mentioned the call I had Friday with the Hospitality Coalition and it was very interesting to say to them, you know, what percentage of capacity do you need to have to be able to come back effectively? What kind of distancing guidelines do you need? And this was one group of small businesses, but they said, you know, from their point of view, they would rather wait until a point where things were substantially more normal, they could have bigger capacity, fewer precautions to be able to create, you know, the atmosphere and the service that they historically provided as close to what they had before as possible. So, it was interesting to hear that perspective that, you know, some businesses I think are going to understandably want to come back as quickly as they can and be able to come back as quickly as they can and provide something like the same service effectively, maybe with a methodology like curbside pickup. Others are going to be much more sensitive to needing to get qualitatively closer to where they were even if that means waiting longer. So, it's all about listening to them. This is why we've set up these sector councils and why we're going to be in such constant engagement with the small business community. Because we got to figure out what will actually work for them and be viable.

 On the second question, I'll turn to Dr. Barbot, but I'll also say, Steve, look, I respect anyone who served in public service, I really do. But folks who are now doing other things and offer their criticisms and critiques, you know, we always understand it's different when you're in the middle of the fight versus folks reflecting back on previous service. We're in the middle of the greatest health care crisis in this country in a century. No one has gone through anything like this in our lifetimes except for the people serving on the front lines right now. So, when we determined how to do test-and-trace on an unprecedented level, we wanted to bring together the vast operational capacity of Health + Hospitals, which is in every part of this city with, of course, the expertise of the Health Department and we've combined those in this effort. But I would just caution, criticism and critics are a part of public life, but it's particularly important to remember when people are criticizing related to something that's unprecedented, to put that in perspective. No one's ever tried to mount a test-and-trace operation on this scale. And it's not just the testing and tracing, it's the hotels, it's the transportation, it's the food, it's everything that has to go into it, the isolation initiative. This is a vast undertaking. And that's why we had to put together the pieces to do something on a scale never seen before. Dr. Barbot.

Commissioner Barbot: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, you know, as I've said before, I am incredibly proud of the dedicated and experienced staff at the Health Department who have been working day and night on this response, and people who have experience in tracing contacts all the way from things like TB, HIV, Ebola, most recently, measles. And so, we're committed to bringing this world class expertise in tracing to bringing this public health emergency to an end as quickly as possible.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Last question for today. Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Morning, everyone – on pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome again. Just given how common symptoms like fever, rash, and vomiting are among children, I'm wondering if Dr. Barbot can give some more specific guidance on when parents should seek or get in contact with their medical provider. For instance, is there a time period they should wait before they should do so? Also, on the new rules in small business, Mr. Mayor, just wanted to ask what you would say to criticism that the City should use, you know, existing infrastructure to deal with the coronavirus response as opposed to, you know, create lots of new task forces, roles, and potentially red tape. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. [Inaudible] go to Dr. Barbot with this preface and I say it as a parent, Shant, I think when we see something like this and we're seeing it come up in the last days intensely, again, we're trying to send a really clear message to parents – take this seriously, act quickly, report it to your doctor immediately. Yes, you're right, Shant, some of these specific symptoms are not particularly unusual in kids, but we're in an incredibly unusual moment in history. So, if a parent sees these symptoms in a child, get your health care provider on the phone immediately. We'd like people to be really energetic about that. Again, because this is a particular reality with this syndrome that if caught early, it can be addressed, and anyone who does not have a provider, does not know where to turn, can call 3-1-1, and get connected to a Health + Hospitals clinician. So, we want parents to do that. Dr. Barbot, you want to add to, you know, the way you would talk to parents about – and you obviously know plenty about pediatrics. How to discern that moment when it's important to pick up the phone to their doctor.

Commissioner Barbot: Yeah, that's a really important question. I'm glad you asked it, Shant, because, you know, as a pediatrician who is in clinical practice, you're absolutely right. I mean, those symptoms in and of themselves are really common symptoms. I think what we're looking for in terms of giving parents that greater guidance is that when these things come together or when their child has a fever that doesn't seem to be going away, the kid is off. I think that's – when I was in clinical practice and I would get a call from a parent, as soon as I said my kid is off, then that is a signal that a deeper conversation needed to be had. And so, I think that's what we're asking parents, that if your child has a fever, they're running around, they look great, their appetite is fine, then you're probably okay waiting it out and seeing. But if they have fever, their energy level is off, their appetite is off, they're developing a rash, their lips look extra red, their tongue is looking extra red – those, I think, are the early signs that we want parents not to discount them and say, Oh, they'll be better tomorrow, but to reach out to your pediatrician, have that conversation, and then, you know, do the testing if your pediatrician thinks it's indicated.

Mayor: Thank you, Doctor. Shant, on the other question about small business. So, look, we talk about the great unknown and this is the reality we are facing with this crisis in general, but for small business it's a profound set of challenges. I mean, when I've talked to folks in small business in the last weeks, you know, they're presenting this series of questions I've never had to deal with before. They don't know what's going to happen in their relationships with their landlords if they don't own the building that they're in. You know, they don't know when they're going to be able to get their customer base back, when they're going to be able to provide a service anywhere like what they did before. And again, for small businesses that don't have a lot of resources, they are profoundly worried about survival. So, we do not anticipate being able to do what we did before and considering enough, we have to do something very different.

So, in these – the two realities of what my colleagues are going to be doing – for Gregg, the idea is to find whole new sources of support because small businesses will need a different kind of helping hand going into these phases ahead than they've ever needed before. We're going to have to find some kind of sustainable sources of support to help them come back, and particularly the smallest businesses, particularly businesses in immigrant communities and communities of color that have very, very little capital to work with. So, we're going to have to find capital to infuse into the situation. And it's exceedingly hard to do from a City government perspective, given that we're in the middle of a vast fiscal crisis. But our hope is to get capital into play from, again, the philanthropic world and from changing the relationship between larger businesses and smaller businesses, have more and more of our larger businesses patronize smaller businesses and support them in a variety of ways. So that's going to be Gregg's mission. Absolutely need to do something different there. So, we needed someone to take charge of that and build that new reality.

Meanwhile, at Small Business Services, they're going to have to do everything they were doing before, but they're going to have to create a whole set of new things too, to figure out what else we can do in the context of City government to support small businesses, to ease their burden. We've already reduced fines a lot and we've worked on some regulatory reform, but there's a lot more that I think we need to do now in light of this, and to streamline the way small businesses can get answers and support from the City government and innovate new approaches. So, that's going to be Jonnel’s task as he runs Small Business Services going forward. And I think the fact is – you know, again, for small business it will not be business as usual. It will be an incredibly tough time. And we're not just talking in 2020, certainly into 2021, even 2022, we're going to have to support the maximum number of small businesses because they are so crucial to life in this city.

Let me close with just a reminder that, kind of a basic truth about New Yorkers. I learned this long ago when I started in public service in this town that New Yorkers like the hard truth, they would much rather hear what's really going on than any attempt to placate or sugar coat. And so, the day we brought out the truth about the disparities that we've seen with this disease and we documented it, it was a day where we devoted ourselves to being really, really clear about the fact that the disparities that this disease both took advantage of and intensified had to be addressed head on. And it started in our public hospitals but now has to broaden out much more deeply to the grassroots. And this is a first step to strengthen and empower our community-based clinics in combination with the other steps we've talked about, the telemedicine and then the advertising campaigns, all the things that are trying to get people more and more information, more and more access to care, more and more access to actual support from a clinician.

But really getting this effort down to the grassroots is crucial in the here and now, but it also is a precursor to rethinking how we provide health care going forward and how we're going to reach many more people. This is a city that is devoted to universal health care. We announced a year-and-a-half ago that this would be a city where there would be universal health care, guaranteed health care for all, including folks who don't have insurance or can't get insurance. We need to take that vision, deepen it, and make it ever more community-based to really go at these disparities. So, this is an example of something coming out of this crisis that's going to cause us to right now make changes to protect lives, but also go deeper into the structural changes we need to address these disparities for the long run. I have no doubt in my mind that's what New Yorkers want and that's what New Yorkers need and that's what New Yorkers will be devoted to with the same kind of devotion that we've seen people really, really do admirable work with shelter in place, with social distancing, with face coverings, all the things that are changing the reality every day for the better. This is another common mission we will go on together. Thank you very much, everybody.

2020-05-12 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. The past few days we've focused on the progress we've made in this city, throughout this city, and how it relates back to everything that you have done, your hard work. I am very, very clear about the fact that socially social distancing isn't easy. Shelter in place isn't easy. Even remembering to wear a face covering all the time isn't easy, but New Yorkers have done it overwhelmingly, and consistently with a lot of strength, a lot of discipline. So, we have talked about how that has given us now a chance, having done a lot to get to a stronger place to go on the offensive, to do the things that will contain this disease further and move us towards a better situation. Now, we've talked about some of the things that we're going to need to do. We're going to need to have the most extensive ability to trace people around the city who have been exposed to disease, to get them the help they need, to get them to isolation if they need that in one of the hotels, all the services that go with that. We've talked about that whole apparatus that has to be built, and obviously the grassroots piece intensifying our grassroots efforts. More community efforts like the community clinics I spoke about yesterday, fortifying them, strengthening them, helping them with new tools to deepen their work. More and more telemedicine, more and more support and personnel to reach deeper into communities. These are the characteristics of going on the offensive. These are the characteristics of being able to move forward in a coordinated way to beat back this disease. All of these elements matter, but the thing that matters most, and its mattered most since the very beginning is testing. Not a surprise to any of you. Testing, testing, testing from day one it's what we needed most. Didn't get what we needed from the federal government. Kept building nonetheless to do the most we could do here. And it is the essence, it's the connective tissue, it's the foundation of everything we're going to do here to fight back this disease, and we have to keep building it up all the time.

So, let's go over where we are right now when it comes to testing. Lately we have been citywide when you combine all the testing done around the city, generally in the neighborhood of about 14,000 tests per day. Now again, that is a much better than where we were, and it shows improvement, but it doesn't show us where we need to get. We have to keep expanding rapidly. Right now, at our public hospitals and clinics, we have capacity for just over 5,000 tests a day across 23 sites. And again, every single one of these tests counts for the everyday New Yorker. It gives you information you desperately need about your own status, but of course it is crucial to our ability to fight the disease everywhere, and to lay that foundation for the ability to trace the disease and follow up with each and every case over time. But we've got to get to the point where testing is much more widespread around this city. It will be done in stages, but it's absolutely a requirement if we're going to win this fight to have testing be widespread.

So, today, I'm announcing 12 new Health + Hospitals sites, and these will be expanding over the next three weeks. So, during the month of May. And let me go through them with you, so you'll see the progression of how these will build over the coming weeks. First, starting next week, week of May 18th, two new sites. In Manhattan in Washington Heights. In Brooklyn, in Midwood. So, when you take where we are today, about 5,100 tests per day in our Health and Hospitals sites, that's going to add another 1,200 or so. That gets us in the course of next week up to 6,300 per day. Then the following week, the week of May 25th, we will add 10 new sites. In Staten Island, three sites, Prince's Bay, Concord and Port Richmond. In Queens, one site in Woodside. In Manhattan, a site in East Harlem. In Brooklyn, sites in sunset park, Bay Ridge and Canarsie. And in the Bronx, in Fordham Manner and Melrose. So, add that into the equation. So again, by next week we get the sites up. It takes us to 6,300 tests per day. When you add those additional 10 sites, that will add 4,400 tests per day more. Therefore, by the week of May 25th we'll be at 10,700 tests per day at Health and Hospitals sites alone. So, we'll be more than doubling our testing capacity in our public hospitals and clinics, and that is the essence of getting out to the grassroots, but it's only beginning. We're intending to do more and more as more and more testing, more and more lab capacity becomes available. And again, as I said, by the week of May 25th when you add everything together, we'll be in the range of about 20,000 tests day. I want to see us in the months ahead, get to 50,000 tests a day, and then ideally go beyond that. The criteria for who gets tested will keep evolving as more and more testing becomes available, and we'll have more to say on that in the coming days, but it stands to reason. As we reach deeper and deeper into the city, we want more and more people to participate. So, we'll keep you updated on that as we build out our testing program at the grassroots.

Now, test and trace. So, remember testing is important for every individual who gets tested, and tells you something absolutely vital for yourself and your family, and helps you know how to handle the situation you're in. But what we want to do for everyone, is build out the tracing element of this. Finding out if someone tests positive, who have been the other contacts that they've had, close contacts who need to be evaluated in many cases will need to be tested as well. So, the goal here is to trace people, and then for those who do require support and isolation, to make sure that happens seamlessly. Look again, some people will be in a situation where they can isolate effectively at home, other people will not and will need help, and will want help. Will want a place where they feel safe, and where they know they're not in a position to spread the disease to other members of their family or their household. That's what the hotels are for, but I keep reminding people, it's not just a hotel room somewhere, you know, here's an address, good luck. No, it's a very, very deeply coordinated effort. Once someone's identified as needing that isolation, and needing that option, to get them there, the transportation to get them there, the medical support once they're there, food, laundry, you name it, all of that has to be put together. It has to be constant. It has to be something that people can access quickly. And when they're done and they're safe, they go back home. And then of course there's more people who will need to take advantage of the isolation. So, it's a nonstop effort, always having a room available for anyone who needs it, and that's crucial. I want people to be very, very clear about this. We're building out a test and trace capacity with the goal of making sure there is an isolation location for anyone who needs it. And we have a lot of hotel capacity that we already control, and we can get a lot more as needed. So, we'll build it as big as it needs to be.

So, as we look at it, what it's going to take to build something like this, and it's never been done on this scale in any American city before. So, when you think about what's necessary, a leadership that can really put together something big and challenging, a big logistical and operational challenge, but also a compassionate challenge, making sure that each and every human being is treated with dignity, with respect, with the support they need. So, the team we have been building very much comes from that tradition of knowing how to get things done, but also people with big hearts, and big appreciation for what it takes to serve all the people of this city. Folks who come out of our great health agencies and have been steeped in that philosophy of being there for each and every New Yorker. I last week announced the executive leadership of our test and trace corps. We are now bringing two more leaders in to build out this leadership further to oversee the tracing and isolation operations. And each of these pieces is a really big job unto itself, given the scale of this city. So, we looked for people who were really good, really talented, really experienced, and could handle the sheer intensity of what we were asking them to do. So first, our new Director of Tracing Dr. Neil Vora. Neil Vora is someone who since 2015 has served in our Health Department as Director of Disease Control Informatics Data and Outbreak Response. That is a mouthful, but, but a very important job. And he is someone with tremendous expertise in tracing infectious diseases. In fact, so much so that in 2014 working with the Centers for Disease Control nationally, he literally went to West Africa in search of information on Ebola and literally went into caves in West Africa to learn about the bats. Who were the carriers of Ebola and rabies. Talk about hands-on, talk about a can-do spirit. Dr. Vora has proven by his actions that he is someone who is going to go out there and get the job done no matter what it takes. He's also overseeing New York City's Ebola monitoring and Zika Testing Coordination Program. So, he has dealt with tough situations before, and brings so much expertise and spirit to this effort. So, we welcome him. We welcome Dr. Vora as our new Director of Tracing.

Now, the team he will lead, the contact tracers, their job will be to identify each and every case. Dr. Vora knows from the work he's been doing already as a key member of our COVID-19 response effort, that we've got to make sure that that is good and precise work, but then we also have to make sure there's the right hand off to the team that will manage the isolation for all new Yorkers who need it. And so, to coordinate our isolation team, the new director of our isolation effort will be Dr. Amanda Johnson. She is currently the Senior Director of Ambulatory Care Integration at Health and Hospitals.

Now, Dr. Johnson is not only a great physician herself, but she has built a career on helping other physicians to build their skills, to really understand their patients and everything that's going to take to get someone through the whole process from the beginning of their challenge or disease identified to full recovery. She was chief resident at the university of California at San Francisco and also there and in her current work at Health and Hospitals. Her focus was on teaching residents, teaching doctors to care for the whole person, to care for the patient from beginning to end, to make sure that there was that continuity, and this is so important to the work she will do directing our isolation effort. Because remember we've got to see people through from the moment it's clear, they need that isolation to the moment that they can go home safely, every piece of the equation has to be covered. So, Amanda brings that mindset, that history, that experience. Also, a bonus qualification, she has a joint MBA, MD from Harvard. So, her background is not only as a doctor but also with an operational mindset, a business mindset of how to make something big and complex come together. A really rare and special— background, a special capacity that will be perfect for this role serving this City. So, the isolation team that Dr. Johnson will put together will make sure that people have a seamless experience and we want to encourage those in need isolation to take advantage of it, to know it's there for them, to know it's free to know, to know it will be an easy, straightforward process. But again, we're building it from scratch, not a task for the faint hearted, but Dr. Amanda Johnson is up to the task. So, these two great leaders joining our leadership team in test and trace and everyone is moving quickly. And in that vein the actual hiring of the tracers is moving rapidly, we have the generals, but now we need the army. And 7,000 applications have come in so far and we're still encouraging more because as I've said, we're starting with a certain number, but this effort is going to grow out easily, could take us to the five to 10,000 range. So, we want people with public health background to apply and apply right away at nyc.gov/traceteam. Again, nyc.gov/traceteam put your application in immediately. And I have an update today that the first 535 contact tracers are now being trained through the Johns Hopkins university training initiative sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. As they complete their training and they're ready to go, those tracers go into action right away. So, this effort is moving quickly, our goal is to have 2,500 tracers in play by the beginning of June on the field doing this good work. So, this has to constantly, constantly move and we welcome more applications all the time.

Now, one important personnel announcement today, and this gets back to one of the big points that we've been talking about over these last weeks, which is the fact that this disease has laid bare horrible disparities that every one of us should find unacceptable that must be addressed more and more aggressively. And that is something we need to work on in the big picture as we think about how to rebuild this City and bring it back, not the way it was, but better, fairer, more inclusive. But right now, there's also crucial work to do to make sure that each and every city agency is doing everything it can do right now to ensure that disparity is being addressed right in the middle of this crisis. So, we put together a working group of city officials, the inclusion and equity task force, and we needed an executive director for this group who really knows the City, knows our people, but also understands how the city government works and understands how to make change energetically and rapidly. And we have found a great leader to serve in the role of executive director announcing day that Grace Bonilla will be Executive Director of the task force. She has been doing an extraordinary job since 2017 as the Administrator of the Human Resources Administration, she'll continue in that role but also take on this important responsibility. Her whole life has been spent helping vulnerable New Yorkers and folks who are not getting their fair share, this is what she has focused on. She is a lifelong New Yorker, born and raised in Queens, she understands life in this City. She also understands the immigrant experience coming from an immigrant family. She has done amazing work before government as well and including as CEO of the committee for Hispanic Children and Families and she was one of those unsung heroes who helped us to put together the pre-K initiative. And the very beginning of the administration, we had a senior advisory group in 2014 that helped us figure out how to rapidly put together pre-K. And it was a group that immensely contributed to that success in the first months of this administration. So, Grace has done so much and we're so happy she'll be taking on this role. The goal here is clear, right now, what can our city agencies do as part of this immediate response to help address these disparities and then go beyond to contribute to all the thinking, the planning, the, the bigger changes that we're going to need in this City that we'll be working on over the next 20 months, the more structural change as well. This group of key city government leaders will be with that every step of the way.

Okay. Let's turn to another topic and this topic, this is really on our minds and it really has grabbed us all just in the last week or two. It's sobering, it's bluntly frightening and I want to say to parents out there of, you're hearing this information about pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome. And it sounds scary, it does sound scary, I'm speaking as a parent myself. It's something we did not see essentially throughout March and April, this was not something that the health care community saw on their radar and then in the last week or two, suddenly we're seeing something that's very troubling. And we're combining the efforts of health care professionals all over New York City to understand what it is and how to deal with it. In this context of the coronavirus, this is obviously, and you know, we'll have an opportunity in the Q&A to talk about more. We're talking about characteristics that have been seen before but now are being experienced through the prism of this pandemic, that's what's causing particular concern. So I'm going to give you an update on the numbers here and they continue to grow and that's why we are really, really concerned and really want to get the word out to all family members to keep an eye on their kids and to act immediately if they see a problem. As of the latest information we have 52 confirmed cases, so that number has continued to grow, 10 cases pending right now for this City. Of the 62 cases, so the 52 confirmed in the 10 they're still being evaluated, 25 tested positive for COVID-19 and another 22 percent – excuse me, another 22 had COVID-19 antibodies. So again, 25 individual children tested positive for COVID-19, 22 had COVID-19 antibodies. We have lost one child and that has made it even more sobering and even more an area of concern to all of us. But again, what we understand so far from our medical community is early detection, early action makes all the difference here. So again, the symptoms, persistent fever, again, persistent fever, rash, abdominal pain, vomiting and if you see any combination, especially be concerned. Dr. Barbot, I thought yesterday I gave a really great description that every parent could understand, or every family member could understand. If your child is off, if your child doesn't have energy of your child, is not themselves, and has at least one of these symptoms, call immediately to your doctor, your health care provider. If you see multiple symptoms even more urgent, we want people not to hesitate here and if you don't have a regular doctor, call 3-1-1 and you'll be connected to a Health and Hospitals clinician. This is something where the quicker a parent reports to them, the quicker a health care professional can evaluate, the more chance of protecting the child and seeing through them, seeing them through this challenge safely.

Now, we've also been talking a lot in the last few days about something that every New Yorker cares about, which is helping folks who are homeless, helping them to overcome the challenges in their life and get to a safe place and no longer live on the street. And we're now one week into the experience of having the subways shut down in the late-night hours for cleaning and experiencing each night, what that means for our outreach efforts to connect with the homeless and bring them in. Consistent results now, every single night, last night, 362 individuals were engaged by our outreach workers and again, specially trained police officers who work with the homeless, 360 to engage 211 accepted help, 178 went to shelter, 33 went to hospitals. Every single night, we're seeing the same things, high level of engagement, large number of homeless individuals being engaged, the majority accepting help. We've never seen that before, it keeps happening night after night, I'm sure it won't happen perfectly consistently every night. But if the first week is any indication this is a game changer and we're going to put everything we've got into making this work because I think it could fundamentally change the future of homelessness in the City for the better and get a really large number of people off the streets once and for all.

Okay, let's now talk about the daily indicators. And this is every day the thing we are focusing on together, all New Yorkers get to see this in common, it's all based on the work you do. Overall, the work you've done has been great and the indicators have really, really moved over the weeks. But we've got to keep going, we had a really good day, yesterday, three going down together. Today, we do not have as good a day, but I'll qualify it by saying where things went up it was very by very little amounts. So that's at least something to note, we want it all to go down, obviously. We want it all to go down consistently when they all go down consistently it says something really profound has happened and that's the gateway to opening up more and reducing restrictions. But today little too much of a mixed bag. So, indicator one daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 that is down from 55 to 51. And I always want to celebrate when only 51 people are going into the hospital for COVID-19 compared to where we were a few weeks ago. But the sheer numbers when they're this good, that is something really to be happy about. That one went down. Let's keep that going down. Now, on the number of people – indicator two – daily number of people in the ICUs across Health + Hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that number went up. It only went up by a small amount in the scheme of things from 537 to 550, but it still went up. That's not what we want obviously. And that's a number that's still higher than anyone would want - that many people still fighting for their lives. So, we got to see more progress there. And then indicator three, percent of people tested positive for COVID-19 citywide – it went up by only one percentage point. Again, not what we want, but only one percent up. So, overall trend line, very good. Daily results, not yet what we're looking for. Stick to it because we know what you're doing is working. Let's just keep doing it. Let's keep trying to do it better.

A few quick words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that we will now turn to questions from our colleagues in the media. Please let me know the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: We now begin our Q & A. As a reminder, we have Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze, Dr. Barbot, Commissioner Banks, and Test and Trace Corps. Executive Director, Ted Long also on the line. First question today goes to Dave Evans from ABC.

Question: Hi Mayor, I wanted to ask you because Dr. Fauci is beginning to testify as you know, in front of the Senate and we already know that he's going to be telling us that early opening around the country, that, that what's needless suffering for so many Americans. I wanted to get your reaction to that. And yesterday you mentioned June as the possibility we could be opening things up in the city. Is even that perhaps a little ambitious, a June opening?

Mayor: Dave, let me ask you just repeat because I got handed a note, my apology, repeat the point you made about Dr. Fauci.

Question: Dr. Fauci will be telling by remote testimony today to the Senate that other parts of the country opening up quickly - earlier than he thinks they should - puts needless amount of suffering to so many Americans. Basically, saying that they shouldn't be opening so quickly. That we will see that second wave - that boomerang that you have talked about. I wanted to see your reaction to that.

Mayor: Yeah, thank you. And obviously the two questions go together. I appreciate it, Dave. I’m very much aligned with Dr. Fauci’s concern. Again, you'll, you'll see here that we are very devoted to our daily indicators and they're, you know, they're real honest indicators because they show you a good overall trend line, but they don't show you enough yet to feel comfortable reducing any of the restrictions. In fact, they keep telling me that, keep doing what we're doing and double down. You know, people can keep doing all they can to stay at home to improve our social distancing efforts to, you know, keep wearing face coverings. I think what folks have done has been outstanding, but I still see room for improvement; all of us can improve. So, just want to see people go deeper and deeper into it because that's the gateway to actually loosening restrictions, but I agree with Dr. Fauci. We are seeing places that clearly are not basing their decisions on the science and that's dangerous. It's dangerous for their people; it's dangerous for all of us because if the disease reasserts in some part of the country inevitably it will spread around again. So, I share his deep concern. I think everything should be based on the science and remember you can throttle-up and throttle-down, so if you set some really clear indicators and they start to go in the wrong direction, you can resume some restrictions. It doesn't have to be as bad as what I talked about with some of the cities in Asia that really opened up in some cases way too quick and then they needed to put restrictions back and then even go farther and clamp down much more. There are more moderate visions of that point that if you stick to your indicators, open-up carefully, decide it's time to try relaxing some restrictions and then you see numbers you don't like you can bring those restrictions back carefully without having to go to a much deeper kind of turnaround. So, we're going to constantly be led by the numbers.

Now to the question of June, what I was saying is that by our indicators, you know, clearly these indicators are not getting us the kind of answers we need to change our restrictions in May. We've said very clearly, you got to have 10 days to two weeks of consistent downward motion. We haven't had that in a sustained way at all. I can just do the basic math, you know, we're going to remain in the state we're in during the month of May. In the beginning of June, that will be the first chance we get to start to do something differently, but only if the indicators show us that; only if they show that we’ve reached the kind of consistent progress we need. At that point Dave, again, we can make very fine-tuned moves. I've been real clear that again, what, what's different between us and some of the places I think may have done it the wrong way is if we make a move, it's going to be piece-by-piece. We're not talking about bringing everything back and kind of, you know, off-switch goes to on-switch. We're talking about very measured moves, that kind of toehold concept; try something, if it works for a sustained period of time, then try the next thing, if it doesn't work, you're not going to obviously take the next step. So, I don't think it's ambitious to say if the indicators validate that it's time to start some loosening-up - I don't think that's too ambitious. But the indicators have to keep telling us that each move we make is working or we can't take the next move. I think that's the bottom line to, that unites it with the point Fauci is making, it has to be based on numbers and science.

Moderator: Next is Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Morning, everyone. On the Test and Trace Corps. leadership, I believe consultant Amy Dickson told Politico that the interviewing process set back the launch of the program by at least a week. So, I just wanted to ask if that makes you feel any regret over taking responsibility for tracing away from the health department. On a separate issue, a colleague of mine wrote that the MTA is using markings on subway platforms to encourage social distancing. Just wanted to get your opinion on that measure and what you can say at this stage about how the city will help prevent the spread of the virus on subways whenever businesses reopened. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. Look on the markings; I think it's a sensible concept. We've certainly seen some good results outside of grocery stores and supermarkets for example. When people sort of know how to form a line that's socially distance, I think it's helpful to people. I think it's a smart idea for the subway as well. Obviously, we're talking about really modest subway ridership now. As ridership increases over time, we've got to think about what will work for that moment, but for this moment I think there's some sense in that. Bringing back the subways, it's obviously the state runs the subways and the MTA, but we're all going to work together to figure out what will work and that's something that has to be done very mindfully. People will come back if they have faith, it's safe and if they're worried it may not be safe, they won't. So, you know, it really puts a premium on listening to everyday New Yorkers - what they need to feel more confident. I think the example of a decision we all worked on together to do the overnight cleaning, which has really, I think given more confidence to essential workers right now that their health is being protected and also a way of addressing in a new way the homelessness issue. I think that's a good example of everyone working together to build confidence in those riding the subways. I think we have to think about what those realities look like going forward and all of us work together to achieve the same thing as more and more ridership comes into play.

On the test and trace initiative, it is being put together rapidly. I don't know what this individual is talking about. All I know is that we have put together a very, very strong leadership team. The interviewing process, the training process as you're hearing is moving very rapidly. This was the right way to make it happen as quickly as possible with the right operational capacity. So I'm satisfied that this is how we can do it most quickly.

Moderator: Next is Andrea from CBS.

Question: Good morning, everyone. I've got a question about the homeless outreach. How can you tout success when they're not concrete measurements about who actually stays at a shelter and truly accept services? Also, Mr. Mayor, you were talking about how there are a plethora of hotel rooms that you can easily access more. Clearly those that are wanting to be in a subway don't want to go to a shelter. Is there a route where they don't have to go through the shelter system to get one of those hotel rooms?

Mayor: Andrea, I'll turn to Commissioner Steve Banks, but I want to caution again, I think there's a real misunderstanding. I respect anyone who thinks a hotel room, thinks how that might be more appealing, but you got to think about everything that that homeless individual needs. This is not just someone who like a certain number of people in our shelter system, were living in an apartment, working and then they just couldn't make ends meet and they end up in a shelter. That's more and more of the people in shelter for really economic reasons. Folks who are street homeless, permanently homeless overwhelmingly are folks with serious mental health issues and/ or serious substance misuse issues. And you can't just say, here's a hotel room, you know that's going to work for you on your own. No, you really have to provide a lot of support, a lot of oversight, a lot of services. And again, Commissioner Banks can speak to it better than I can. The, the fact is that well over 2000 individuals have come off the street and accepted shelter and not returned to the street in the last three years. I'm going to keep talking about it. I hope you guys will look into it because it's a very, very important story for this city. They came-in because the support was there for them. They came in because safe havens have been created that they did feel good about and more locations were created that they felt good about and that is the way to get people in and keep them in with all that support. It needs that intensive heavy support to get someone on a better path and keep them there and keep them from going back to the streets. So, no hotels are generally in that case, not the answer. The success as we've tried, you know, many times to go over – and Steve, again, will do it more eloquently than me – engaging people is success to begin with. You're trying to win the trust of folks who their lives have really come apart to the point that they're living on the street. That is not an overnight exercise, that takes a lot of effort, a lot of repetition. Even someone who in a single instance agrees to come in for a night, that's a step in the right direction. And, as Steve said yesterday, that means we're getting a better understanding of who they are, what they need, and we keep coming back and coming back. So, I would tell you that when you've had this many people accept engagement and come in for anything, that's a victory unto itself. Over time, we're going to be able to see how many of those people stick, in the sense of stay in, and that's going to tell us a lot more. But even the level of this level of engagement is really surprising and positive as a beginning. Steve, why don't you pick it up and then talk about, in addition to anything else you want to say, how we're going to be tracking the longer-term outcomes with these folks so we can keep reporting them.

Commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Human Services: Thank you. Look, I just want to remind everyone, you know, when I was standing on the platform in the early hours of last Wednesday morning and this initiative was first begun, we didn't know what to expect. As I've said a couple of times over the last couple of days, you know, on a good night if five percent of the people want to be engaged and accept services, that was the norm. And the fact that, you know, half the people at this point on any given night are willing to be engaged and want to want to work with us in terms of a pathway off the subway is a significant step forward. I do agree that as time goes on, we will be digging into each individual and what is working to keep them off. As the Mayor said, the tools that we've had to bring 2,500 people off the streets in the last three years who have stayed off are really important tools. But we’ve added to that arsenal of tools for average workers over the last a week or so, we brought on more Safe Haven beds – and those are the low barrier beds that we've had great success of last three years – once people are in those beds, that people actually over time remaining permanently off the streets – but brought on those beds. We've even used a commercial hotel to create Safe Haven beds. But it's not simply a question of a bed, it's a question of the services and the supportive services that are needed. It's also important to remember that we're talking about human beings. Each individual has a different pathway that got them onto the streets, each individual has a pathway that's going to take them off. It’s going to be very individually tailored. So, for some clients that have been in shelter, they have an assigned shelter and something went wrong. We're working with them to either get them back to that shelter or a different shelter. For some individuals that have never been in shelter and they need a higher level of support, we're getting them to Safe Haven beds. So, for each individual, that's the way we've been proceeding. And as we look at this over the next number of days, we'll have more to say beyond simply the victory of getting people to engage and getting people to accept services at higher rates than we've ever seen before. Ultimately though, as I've said a number of times, our gold standard is providing services, providing a roof over your head so someone remains permanently off the streets. And we're, you know, using every tool we can to do that every day.

Moderator: Next is Julia from the Post.

Question: Hey, good morning, everyone. I'll just start with a follow up to Andrea's question and then ask a second question about the City's COVID deaths. So, the follow-up is that several leading advocates from organizations like HumanNYC and Coalition for the Homeless share serious doubts about this so-called historic successes of getting homeless off the subways and into shelter. They say people are being miscounted cause they don't actually spend a night inside. They cycle through the subways and shelters or they're being driven further into the shadows because of the treatment. What's your response to that and how do you know if these figures are accurate if we don't know whether or not the daily account includes unique or duplicate individuals? And then, secondly, last night for the first time since the Health Department started posting coronavirus deaths, they weren't made available until after 9:00 PM. It was the same day that the city's COVID deaths passed the 20,000 mark. Why were they posted so late if it wasn't to try to bury the news?

Mayor: I think we've been – I'm really surprised by that question because we've been constantly putting out more and more information, including really unfortunate and painful information, but we've been telling people what the truth is throughout and New Yorkers have wanted to hear what's going on and have really worked together to fight this back. So, I just don't even understand your question, respectfully. But, Dr. Barbot, why don't you respond to that? And then Steve Banks can respond to the advocate concerns on the homeless.

Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Certainly, Mr. Mayor. I think that there were delays last night in uploading our refresh of data, but, clearly, as the Mayor has said, we've been committed to transparency since the very beginning of this. And, you know, it was unfortunately a matter of a delay in going up on our website, but there's no interest – it doesn't serve anybody for us to try and hide any data. It's all out there. We are committed to ensuring that count every single
New Yorker in this public health emergency.

Mayor: Thank you. Commissioner Banks?

Commissioner Banks: Yes. Let me just sort of address this in the same way that we talked about it yesterday. I think we've been very transparent, Julia, in saying, you know, it's a brand-new initiative and in the early days there were some challenges with getting people directly into the shelters when they had agreed to get on a bus. We made a change by redirecting the buses directly to special shelters and not the Bellevue intake center. That change was made on Friday night, I thought it was an important evaluation of challenges that we had and that where we're making changes as we go along. As I said the last couple of days, and just a couple of minutes ago, when we get a few days for further we think we'll be able to have a broader look at the individuals who have accepted services and actually remained in shelter and the individuals that are need more services in order to remain in shelter. But I can tell you, when I was on the subway platform at Stillwell on another night, last week, we encountered an individual who we tried to engage 50 times – more than 50 times actually – and he had never accepted any services, and he accepted services to come into a Safe Haven that night, and that was a tremendous step forward in terms of his life. And each night we're making those kinds of steps forward for human beings, and we're having a much greater rate of engagement, a much greater rate of people accepting services. Yes, you're right, on any given night, someone's going to make a decision, you know what? I don't want to stay inside. I'll go outside. And we're going to be right back there trying to persuade that person that there are tools, there is hope, there is a roof we can give you and services we can provide to you to have you come in and stay inside.

Mayor: Thank you very much, Commissioner. And again, really, really appreciate what you and all your colleagues, and especially all those outreach workers and the police officers are doing, because I've seen it with my own eyes. I know that each time someone comes in the chance really increases that they will stay in and get the help and support they need and turn a life around. So, I really, really appreciate what you and all your colleagues are doing.

Moderator: Next is Andrew Siff from WNBC.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Hope everyone is doing well.

Mayor: Good morning, Andrew. How you doing?

Question: Good. I have two questions. My first question is, yesterday I spoke with Mike Mulgrew of the teachers union and he indicated that a leading likelihood for kids returning to school this fall would be hybrid scenario where the kids go to school one day and then have online the next. Wondering what you thought of that and whether you're embracing that? My second question is, on behalf of my colleague Melissa Russo, who's been reporting on the illness affecting young people, again, will kids be included in the testing samples, going forward? And are you encouraging families to get their kids tested?

Mayor: So, let me go to the first and then turn to Dr. Barbot and Dr. Perea-Henze, if either wants to comment on the second. The first point is, we're looking at any and all options, and we're certainly going to work, Andrew, closely with educators, with the unions. We're going to think carefully about all the ways we might go about bringing our schools back. The first focus will be the health and safety of everyone involved – kids, parents, educators, everyone that works in a school building. And we've got a fair amount of time – I mean, remember, we were talking about most of four months before school opens. So, there's lots of time to see how things develop with the disease and what we learn about how to address it and how all our other efforts hopefully have taken us to a very, very different place by early September. But health and safety first, unquestionably. So, when we think of it that way, we're going to look at any and all options – of course, something like staggered hours or something like a hybrid approach will be considered. My goal is to return us to the normal school day with the full functioning of schools as quickly as possible. So, what I've said to the Chancellor and his team is, plan-A is everyone goes to school in early September as usual, we're up and running, we're at full strength. We understand a lot has to happen to make that possible. If plan-A can't happen, there's lots of other permutations that still could allow us to give kids a great education and take a major step back to normal. But it's way too early to know which it will be. We'll have scenarios and planning for multiple eventualities on the testing and kids. Again, we're going to do whatever it takes to keep a kid safe. Right now, the most important question is what families can do seeing these symptoms and acting on them. So, remember, testing is important in this equation, but the most important thing is following the symptoms and getting the medical attention immediately. So, I want to just keep that front and center. But Dr. Barbot, Dr. Perea-Henze, do you want to add?

Commissioner Barbot: Yes, Mr. Mayor. What I would also add to what you said, is that the most important way to prevent PMIS – the pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome – is to adhere to the prevention guidelines, which are New Yorkers should be staying at home as much as possible, using face coverings when they go out and practicing diligent and frequent hand washing and use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer. The reality is that the degree to which we minimize potential exposure to COVID-19 for children is the best way that we can protect them. Second is, as the Mayor mentioned, being alert to the symptoms and having early recognition by pediatricians testing as indicated. And this is something that I want to just spend a little bit of time on, because there are – as we have said before, we're still learning every day about how this syndrome presents, evolves, all of those sorts of things. But one of the things that we have noted is that not every child has a positive PCR test. There are children who are positive for the antibodies but not positive for the test, which means the [inaudible] infection a while ago. And so, it's critical for parents to be vigilant about the symptoms that could potentially indicate developing this inflammatory syndrome, which are prolonged fever, a rash, having really red, bright lips, swollen hands and feet, they can have abdominal pains – all of these symptoms, especially if they come together, are concerning indications that these children need to be evaluated for in-patient treatments. And so, again, just to reiterate what the Mayor said, I think we're still learning, we're taking this very seriously and, of course, children who need testing we'll certainly – we'll do everything to make it available for them.

Mayor: Dr. Perea-Henze, do you want to add? Is he there? Dr. Perea-Henze?

Deputy Mayor Raul Perea-Henze, Health and Human Services: Am I on?

Mayor: Yeah, you go.

Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze: I think Dr. Barbot said it all, sir.

Mayor: Okay, great. Thank you. Go ahead.

Moderator: Next is Katie Honan from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Hey, good morning. I have two questions, Mr. Mayor. The first is I know you had said a couple of questions ago about how the City is committed to transparency and releasing the data. That was in response to Julia's question. I'm curious when the City will release more information and data, specifically deaths by ZIP code so we can get a better sense. I know Health + Hospitals had refused to release the number of deaths per hospital. They won't even say of their own personnel and staffers, where they work. When can we expect that data to be released? And my second question is, I know it's about 52 degrees today, but I know summer is creeping towards us. So, I wanted to know if you had an update on the summer plan, particularly once the weather warms up – unguarded beaches, that kind of thing. So, what's the status on that? Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. On the summer, there’ve been a variety of meetings, calls, et cetera, recently to hone that plan. We're going to start to talk about pieces of it in a matter of days. So, very much on our mind and very much cognizant of the need to protect people, whatever ultimately is done with the beaches. Any permutation requires protecting people. So, that's the core of this discussion and the Parks Department, of course, central to discussion, Police Department, et cetera. So, we'll have much more on that in the next few days.

On the Health + Hospitals, we'll get the information out. There has been a concern about people who work in multiple locations and it being hard to identify exactly what has happened with each person in a way that's accurate and not misleading. But we do need to get that information out. So, we'll have a follow-up with Health + Hospitals and get that out shortly.

On the deaths by ZIP code, absolutely need to get that out, want to get that out. Again, a very sad topic, but we are going to always provide transparency. Dr. Barbot, do you want to speak to how and when that information is going to be put out. 

Commissioner Barbot: Mr. Mayor, I think it should be shortly, certainly by the end of this week, if not sooner.

Mayor: Thank you very much. 

Moderator: Next is Jeff Mays from the New York Times.

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor. I have a couple of questions for you. The first one is the police have given 482 summonses specifically for social distancing infractions, according to daily reports, but that's 108 more than the number of you issued for the same period. Why aren't those additional summonses part of your number? And secondly, I wanted to ask about the legislation that the City Council is going to consider tomorrow to vote on, to cap what Grub Hub and other food delivery apps can charge restaurants. That legislation is tied to the state of emergency that you issued. Wondering if you support that legislation. Do you plan to sign that legislation?

Mayor: Yeah, Jeff, I do support that legislation. I want to thank the City Council. They're – been really, I think, focused in a good, smart way on the different challenges that New Yorkers are facing. And this is one where we want to make sure people are treated fairly. And they saw something that wasn't fair to everyday people going through so much, and I think it's smart legislation, so I will support it. 

On the summonses, again, we'll have our team get back to you later on today. As I said, I think yesterday there was an initial set of data put out that aggregated summonses that were specifically for social distancing versus other offenses that might've been given at the same time. And I think there was some confusion about which was which. We'll figure out the specific delta that you're talking about here, the difference of the numbers, and speak to it. But, Jeff, very clearly under either scenario, it's a very small number of summonses in the course of the core of this crisis. The data I last saw was basically mid-March to the beginning of May, the time when the city has gone through so much, and on average the NYPD was giving fewer than 10 summonses per day across the entire city. So, I care about it. I want to make sure it's fair. I want to make sure that they're not disparities. I want to make sure summonses are only given when necessary. But I, again, see that that is such a low level of giving summonses that it gets back to one, New Yorkers overwhelmingly are complying with these standards. And two, when the NYPD has engaged, it's been overwhelmingly with a light touch. That does not negate that we have to address disparity. It's unacceptable. That does not negate that there've been some individual instances that were not acceptable and we will deal with those for sure. But the numbers are the numbers, and summonses have been used sparingly, and we'd love them to be used very sparingly, so long as people follow the rules. But we'll get you those details. 

Moderator: Next is Erin from Politico.

Question: Hi there. Two questions regarding test-and-trace. You said that there was no delay in the contract tracer hiring and you didn't know what this individual was talking about who said that it was pushed back by a week. And you mentioned 500-plus people who are being trained, but if we understand correctly, no one has actually been hired. So, can you explain what's going on with that? And secondly, I believe you said there were going to be 1,200 hotel rooms available by June for self-isolation. Just compared to the number of people being diagnosed, it sounds like a small number. I'm wondering, have you figured out the criteria for who can get one and is there a way to expand that, if more people want one that than the 1,200?

Mayor: Yeah, Erin. So, let me speak broadly and then I'll turn to Dr. Ted Long who is running the entire test-and-trace initiative. Clearly, that projection is based on the hotel rooms on what we expect to need immediately, but I want to be very clear that number can be ramped up rapidly at any point. The apparatus that we're putting together is going to be flexible enough to move quickly. Health + Hospitals has a huge deep bench of medical personnel. So, in terms of providing the medical support, it's available. Clearly there are lots and lots of hotel rooms available and we've engaged a number of owners of hotels because originally, remember, we thought we were going to need them for field hospitals. We are ready to expand to the tune of tens of thousands of rooms. So, that whole infrastructure is in place. We can put together what it takes to take care of folks rapidly if we need more. But that was a projection for just the very beginning. I think there's a big open question as to how many people will need isolation, how many will prefer to stay in their own homes and make the right accommodations to isolate at home. But I think there are going to be other people who don't want to take any chances around their family and would far prefer a hotel. So, that ability to expand will be there. 

And again, the training, hiring, et cetera, has been moving rapidly. Working with Johns Hopkins, and Ted can explain, but it's a process of evaluating people and going through a training process that then leads to the decision on the permanent hiring. But all that has been moving rapidly so we can have people in place in just the next few weeks. Ted, do you want to respond to all that?

Dr. Ted Long, NYC Health + Hospitals: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, the Mayor hit all of the main points there. I'll reiterate a couple. The process we've set out is to move as fast as humanly possible to hire New Yorkers to be contact tracers. In order to do that, we first had them complete the training course, which is the world class curriculum developed by Johns Hopkins. Then we moved them towards hiring. Since the Mayor created this program a matter of days ago, we've already signed up more than 500 people to complete the training, which is a very fast progress, next step to hiring for them. In terms of the hotel rooms, the reason we use the number of 1,200 is that's a proportional increase with the number of new tests that we plan to do. Assuming that many more people would benefit from being able to be in an isolation hotel room. As the Mayor said, the most important point there though is if we need to have more hotel rooms, we can do that overnight. We can move very, very quickly. But we want to give everybody an accurate estimate of what we think our best estimation of the number of rooms true [inaudible] would be.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: We have time for two more today. Next is Brigid, from WNYC.

Question: Morning, Mr. Mayor. Two questions, the first is another follow up on the syndrome infecting children. In your guidance for parents if they're observing symptoms to contact their pediatrician. I'm wondering if you or Dr. Barbot can clarify what the next steps would be there, since so many pediatricians are not actually seeing sick patients in their office. Is the goal just to get some diagnosis that might then send the child to an emergency room? And then my second question is from my colleague Gwynne Hogan, following up on the Governor's announcement yesterday that some businesses will be opening statewide on May 15th including landscaping and gardening and some low-risk outdoor activities like tennis and golf – does that apply to New York City as well?

Mayor: So, Brigid, every time when there's an announcement by the State, we obviously look to see it codified in the following executive order and that's when we're able to see the specifics and how it plays out for the city. I think the State has been very clear and very consistent with us that the city's situation is different than so much of the rest of the state. And we're going to be conservative and cautious here. So, I'll be able to give you a better answer when we see the codification in the executive order. Anything that the State puts out, we're then, of course, going to look at in terms of our local context and with health and safety as the first consideration in terms of figuring out how to implement. So, we'll get a lot more information in the next day or two and be able to speak about it practically. But the central point will be whatever is being authorized by the State, we're still of course going to look at the practical ramifications and ensure that health and safety are the first considerations in any implementation. 

On PMIS, as I turn to Dr. Barbot, want to be clear, Brigid, very important question and I thank you for it. Again, I want parents to feel with great intensity that, you know, to look out for these symptoms and talk to a health care professional immediately. That is the thing that must happen for a child to be protected. And I keep emphasizing if someone doesn't have a doctor of their own, they can be connected through 3-1-1 to a Health + Hospitals clinician. So, literally 24/7, anyone who needs to have a trained medical professional talk to them about their child, that's available. But the fact is, depending on the situation, of course, if a child needs to be seen by a doctor, that's a given that that would be available starting with our public hospitals. If any child were in danger, we would make it a priority obviously to have them seen in person. But Dr. Barbot, you can give a more specific answer than I, so go ahead.

Commissioner Barbot: So, the reason to reach out to their pediatrician is first and foremost so the pediatrician can take a history, which means get more information about the symptoms, the severity of the symptoms, that duration of the symptoms, assess whether the child has any underlying illnesses that might be accounting for the symptoms or might be made worse by the symptoms. And then also to make arrangements for either diagnostic testing or the PCR test and/or the antibody test. And then depending on the severity of the symptoms to know whether the referral for inpatient assessment needs to be done sooner or later. 

So there are a number of reasons why it would be really critical for a pediatrician to be contacted by a parent when they have concerns about these symptoms. And you know, as you say, we are in a different world where practices are doing medicine differently. There are practices who have available telephonic services. There are others that are doing telemedicine by video. So there are a number of different ways in which parents can have access to their pediatricians. And then you know, as the Mayor mentioned, any parent who doesn't have a pediatrician certainly we encourage them to call 3-1-1 and to see which is their nearest H + H facility. I know that they certainly are open and available to seeing any and all children irrespective of their immigration status, irrespective of their insurance status. There really should be no barriers to parents that have their children assessed, especially if they have concerns about possible Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome.

Mayor: Thank you, Doctor.

Moderator: Last question for today goes to Gloria from NY1.

Question: Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I want to follow up on what Julia asked earlier after we crossed this terrible mark last night of over 20,000 New Yorkers having been lost to COVID-19. The CDC, as I know you're aware, and I know you spoke about this briefly on our show last night, has put out data showing that there's a massive undercount happening. So my question is, what, if anything, is the City looking into to try and do or rectify about the way people are being counted? So that by the time this is over, we have an accurate picture of not just how many people were lost to this crisis, but to be able to use that information for the future so that the City can be prepared and can dictate policy to deal with a crisis like this?

Mayor: Well, I thank you, Gloria for the question. It's very important. And I'll start and I'll turn to Dr. Barbot. So, I do want to say as we've reached this very painful milestone we all have to remember these are human beings and families. So we've all gotten used to looking at numbers we can barely imagine, but we got to keep coming back to the human reality. And as I say it, I'm thinking about the people that I know who we've lost and the families who are suffering right now. And so, to me, in the end, is very human and it's every neighborhood in this city, you know, people from every walk of life. In this city we made a decision to acknowledge the probable deaths weeks ago. And I think you know Gloria, in much of the country that has not been done. And I think it is so important to the point you make about really understanding what happened here and what it means for the future. That to begin with any death where a medical professional thought that COVID-19 was a likely factor that that be acknowledged. And that's what those probable deaths are. And we were very forthright about that.

The question outstanding is about those who have passed away that we are not going to have enough information about by and large. But I'm very clear that I think, you know, a very substantial number of those deaths had some connection to COVID-19 as well. So we do need to know, you know, does it tell us something different, is really the question. Does it tell us something different about how the disease manifested or where, which communities, you know the disparities we've seen? Dr. Barbot can speak to it better than me. I suspect based on what we've seen already with both the deaths that were clearly documented to be COVID-19 related and then those that were probable, the reality has been pretty consistent and very, very sad but clearly consistent of what communities have been hit the hardest. What kind of people by age, gender, everything. So, Dr. Barbot can tell you whether she thinks that the new information might change our basic assumptions or our approach to the future. I don't see a lot of evidence of that so far, but she can speak about it much more expertly.

The only other thing I want to say before turning to Dr. Barbot is that we are focused right now on saving lives now. And so the endeavor to understand what happened before and use it for the future is always important. Absolutely want to encourage that and validate that. But I want to say nothing is more important than saving lives right now. So, my focus is always going to be on the things we have to do today and tomorrow. There's a lot we have to do to keep people safe right now, to keep the progress that we've built and hold it and not jump too soon and not let our foot off the gas and then prepare. You know, we don't know if there's a second wave out there, but we sure as hell know what we have to do to save lives right now and to prepare ourselves best in case there is any potential of a second wave. So my focus is futuristic in the sense of what we can do practically to protect New Yorkers now and ahead. If the research helps us do that, that's very valuable. But I don't want us to get so lost in the past that we forget there are right now things we have to do. Dr. Barbot?

Commissioner Barbot: Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you Gloria for the question. Let me start off by echoing something that the Mayor said that the number of New Yorkers that have died because of COVID-19 really is staggering. And we are committed to ensuring that we count every single New Yorker that has died because of this vicious virus during this public health emergency. And the reason for that is because every New Yorker deserves that dignity. Their families deserve that closure. But as a city it's also going to help our healing process as we move forward.

Second thing is that in the here and now having that information certainly does inform our response. And during this public health emergency, we have made really unprecedented moves with regards to the way in which we report on data. One is again, reporting on probables and not just those that have been confirmed with the test. Beyond that, releasing the race and ethnicity data before it was fully complete. And that's really breaking public health rules, if you will, right? We went against the grain because it was important for us as a Health Department to know, to be able to inform our response. It was important for the City to know to make sure that our messages were tailored and continue to be tailored to the communities most affected. And so you know, as the Mayor and I have said in the past, there are deaths that are directly related to COVID because they were tested. There were deaths that are likely related to COVID because the health care provider, the individuals who are certifying the death certificates have indicated that COVID was related to the death. And then there are those that are not necessarily immediately or approximately related to COVID, but that in the long run will likely be attributable to COVID through a number of different mechanisms. I think we can all agree that this has been an incredibly prolonged and stressful situation for all of us. And we know that stress kills. And certainly, if you've got a chronic underlying illness and you've got prolonged stress, that can contribute to act to premature mortality.

And so there may be also be these situations where, for example, you know, we've been using the example of people dying from heart attacks. We're learning every day about how this virus affects the body. And it may be in the long run that we determined that during this period people who died from heart attacks could have very likely died because of COVID related illness. There would have been no way to confirm that either with the test or with a provider indicating it on its – on the death certificate. And so, we will continue to put out the data on the confirmed, the probables, and what we technically call excess mortality. Which is the number of deaths that are occurring above and beyond what we would have anticipated given the trend of the last previous years and what would have been expected during a particular season. Because again, it's important for us all as New Yorkers to know, to honor, and to grieve those that have passed during this time.

Mayor: Thank you very, very much, Doctor. I really appreciate that sentiment. So let me conclude today and say, when you think about what you just heard from Dr. Barbot, when you think about what we've all been through together, it wouldn't be shocking if a city that has been the epicenter of this crisis somehow allowed itself to be lessened or become fearful or become weakened. And that's not what has happened here. What all of you have done, what New Yorkers have done across the board has had the spirit we have known for so long in this city, of taking the challenge head-on. It's really striking. And I think the history will show this, that when New Yorkers were called upon to step up across the board, you did. And when it was time to do something to fight back, to create things that had never existed before, that's what New Yorkers did.

We have seen it throughout this process. We've seen it in the heroism of our first responders and our health care heroes. We've seen it in the efforts in our hospitals to hold the line against all odds. We've seen it in all of the people who came together to produce face shields and surgical gowns and even ventilators here in New York City to protect their fellow New Yorkers. We've seen amazing contributions. And now building a Test and Trace Corp, something that has never existed on this scale in New York City. It's being put together every hour of every day, building up quicker and quicker to serve people in just a few days ahead. So, the fact is that the talent that exists in this city and particularly in public service in this city, has really become evident in this moment of crisis. I don't know anyone who's had anything but a fighting spirit. There's been no sense of being defeated, no sense of being overwhelmed, just a resolute attitude.

And so, when I've said to this team, we're going to have to build something unprecedented and we have to build it with extreme speed and precision, people stepped forward and said, we're ready. You're going to see this test and trace effort come alive in the next few days. And then you're going to see the impact that it has in terms of protecting lives. And I'll conclude with the point that protecting lives is what it's about. And every single time someone is tested and then their close contacts are identified and we find out if others need to be tested and find out who needs to be isolated, who needs special support, and they get that support. Every time you do that, you're saving lives because you're cutting off the spread of this disease. And you do it more and more and more each day. And this disease has less and less oxygen. And that's what we want to do. Cut off its ability to grow, continue to constrain it, continue to squeeze it, continue to reduce it in the city so people can be safe. And so, we can start on that pathway back to a better life. And every day I see New Yorkers devoted to that mission and I thank you for that.

2020-05-15 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. It's been a really tough time these last weeks. And, as your mayor, I've had an opportunity to really look closely at what's happened all over the city to feel what you're feeling and understand what New Yorkers are going through in all five boroughs. And it's been tough for all of us. But I have to also tell you, for me it's been an honor and a privilege to see the strength and the resiliency that all of you have shown in this crisis to look into your lives and see what's so good about this city. And, as New Yorkers, we are legendary for being tough and we're legendary for being self-reliant. No matter what else is happening around us, New Yorkers make things happen. We always find a way. This crisis has brought that out so deeply. The strength that people have shown, the creativity, the ingenuity. That self-reliance is part of what makes this city so great. And I think we have shown the whole world yet again why New York City is a very special place. So, I commend all of you for everything you've done. And for once again, affirming the beauty and the strength of this place. But just because we prize self-reliance, it doesn't mean we should go it alone. It doesn't mean that we have all the solutions here. We need help. And that's only right when you think about a virus that came to us from overseas, and unfortunately it made us the epicenter of this national crisis. We need help, we need help to get back on our feet. We need help to restart and recover. We need help to be whole again. And we need help to be the leader that we have been for so long in this nation, in terms of our economy, our cultural life, so many of the elements of New York City that are great, and also benefit the entire country.

So, there's literally no such thing as a city that could possibly stand up against a pandemic alone. So, for weeks and weeks now my clear demand to everyone in Washington D.C. is – understand what Washington needs to see – understand what New York City is going through, understand the fight that's happening here. Come to the aid of New York City so that we can be strong again. So that we can be the leader we have always been helping this entire nation. What we have needed is a clear commitment from the federal government for a massive stimulus plan that would put us back on our feet and make us strong for the future. And finally, we see the beginning of such a plan. Finally, we see a step forward in Washington that really responds to what all of us have experienced over these last two or three months, and all that we've gone through.

Finally, we see the beginning of an answer in Washington D.C. This is the biggest health care crisis, the greatest challenge that we've faced in terms of health care in a century in this city, in this nation. The biggest economic crisis since the great depression, and they're both happening at once. So, it's only right that we would see a proposal come out of the house of representatives that equals that moment. That actually speaks to the fullness of what's happening here. The unprecedented health care challenges, and the disparities that have come up so clearly, and the unprecedented economic challenge at the same time. And it's scary to think about, but even compared to the Great Depression, and I always say, I remember so clearly the stories of the great depression from my older relatives and how vivid they were, and how much pain they went through, and how much I related as I heard their stories to what it must have been like to see your world turned upside down. Well, even compared to the great depression, some of what we're seeing now is even worse, where the hit that people have taken was even quicker, even deeper. The number of people unemployed, staggering in this city, in this nation, it’s happened so quickly, even faster than it did in the Great Depression.

So, it is right that the Congress and the president act at a level that actually fits this absolutely unprecedented moment in American history. They call it stimulus four, and what we have seen now proposed by the House of Representatives actually lives up to the moment. I want to thank Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her extraordinary leadership. We've had a series of conversations over the last few weeks, and she has been resolute and clear, and understanding not just what New York City needed, but what cities and states all over the country needed to truly get back on our feet. I want to thank leaders of the House of Representatives from New York, including the Appropriations Chair, Congress Member, Nita Lowey, and one of the top members of the democratic leadership in the house, Congress Member Hakeem Jeffries. Both of them played an absolutely crucial role in bringing this proposal forward, as did all the members of New York City House Delegation who fought hard for us.

So, let's talk about this proposal coming out of the House of Representatives, because it really will be the game changer we need. First of all, in terms of the impact on New York City, and this is over two years and it really defines clearly what we need to be strong again. $17 billion in aid directly to New York City over two years, $34 billion in direct aid to the state of New York. Now, I think everyone knows this, but I want to put a point on it. The city, we've already taken a massive hit in every way. The human toll, first and foremost, what families have gone through the pain, the suffering of this continuing right now, the economic impact, the number of people that don't have a livelihood, the number of people don't know where the next meal's coming from. That's what matters most, the human reality that we're facing. But on top of that, the city government that's here to serve all of you to make your lives better, to take care of you. We've taken a huge financial hit, and it only gets worse all the time. So, to stabilize this city government to make sure that we can pay the bills and keep our public servants at the frontline doing the great work they do and build for a future when our economy actually comes back strong. We need to think about the year, this year, the next year, we have to think several years ahead and this plan by providing $17 billion actually gives us the ability to move forward. But then there's the state piece, because remember the city depends on the state for so much support. Many, many areas, education's a great example, but there's many others where State funding directly State funding that comes via the state, but from the federal government. We need that State funding to be consistent, to be able to do everything that people expect us to do every single day in this city. The State's been going through a horrible economic crisis too. The State's been taking a huge hit on its budget. If the State of New York isn't whole, then the City of New York can't be whole, so that $34 billion for the state of New York, a huge step to making the state whole, so that we can be protected as well so that everyone gets served. The overall package, $500 billion in aid to States, $375 billion indirect aid to localities. This is exactly the kind of assistance that we need to get evil to move forward again.

Now, there are also specialized elements of funding of this, and it's so important. For the entire country, $10 billion increase in food stamps, the SNAP program, and we see already how many people are going hungry because of this economic crisis. I want to remind you our estimate was before COVID-19 a million or more New Yorkers were food insecure. That means they were hungry some part of the year. Now, we think that number is 2 million or more, so it's doubled in the course of 10 weeks. That's the magnitude of this crisis that direct food aid from the federal government through the Snap benefits is crucial and more will be available to New Yorkers because of this new national allotment. Housing, I've said that we have four pillars of everything we're doing right now. Protecting your health, protecting your safety, making sure you have a roof over your head and food on the table. Housing continues to be a struggle always for New Yorkers, affordable housing, and that becomes even more true in the midst of a financial crisis and economic crisis. This legislation would add $4 billion nationally for the Section Eight program. Section Eight vouchers that help people afford housing, one of the most successful affordable housing programs, $4 billion nationally, that would unquestionably help New York as a piece of that. And then transit, we all know the city depends on public transit. We all know the MTA has taken a huge hit. All transit has taken a huge hit. This plan would have almost $16 billion in national grants for mass transit. Again, this is something where we expect New York City and New York State to benefit very specifically and help us come back in the area of transit that we depend on.

So, that's some of the big picture impact. And again, all of it actually responding to the magnitude of the problem. But also, let's talk about our heroes. Let's talk about those who have served us so well. The health care heroes, the first responders, the essential workers who have sustained us during this crisis. The bill includes federal benefits for first responders, for those we've lost in the line of duty related to COVID-19. We of course want to make sure that every public servant lost in the line of duty is covered and not just first responders, but we're very, very appreciative that this action would take us a big step in the right direction starting with our first responders. And then the heroes fund, this is a crucial piece of this package to recognize those who have given so much on the frontline who worked through this crisis no matter what. Listen to this because this is again something that actually speaks to the moment in a meaningful way, $200 billion nationally to establish hazard pay for essential workers and their survivors. This is something that people who are working right now who have fought through this crisis they deserve and it's coming from the place that can actually manage to do it on a vast scale, the federal government.

So, I have been for months now saying this is the kind of help we need. And again, Speaker Pelosi heard she listened to and she heard what New York City was going through and she heard what other Cities and States were going through and she with a Chair Lowey and with Congress member Jeffries and all the congressional delegation crafted a stimulus plan that actually spoke to our reality. They worked from a vision originally created by New York's own Senator Chuck Schumer that we saw in previous stimulus package and they built it out in terms of aid to Cities and States in such a powerful way. Senator Schumer also deserves our thanks, and he now has the very tough job of shepherding this through the U.S. Senate. And that's the fight ahead that we'll be talking about a lot in the days and weeks ahead. Thank God Senator Schumer is in the role he is in as the democratic leader of the U.S. Senate and we're going to be depending on him more than ever. We need this vision that's come out of the house to get through the Senate. We know it'll be a fight, but we also know that Cities and States all over the country, it doesn't matter if you're a red state or blue state, zero small state or a big state and you're in the Heartland and you're on the coast, everyone's going through this. So, we expect that mayors, governors, Republican and Democrat, like we'll be fighting in their States for this package telling their senators, Democrat and Republican, both how important it is to get done. It's going to be a fight, unquestionably, but it's a fight we can win because it's the right thing to do because this whole country is feeling something going through something in common and because they're going to be so many voices and a clear bipartisan message that this is what our nation really needs.

So, I'm going to say it simply today. The difference-maker right now personally could make all the difference and ensure that this plan gets through the way it is. The way that would actually help us to fully get back on our feet is obviously the President of United States. And I'll say it simply today, Mr. President, we're looking to you. Your hometown is looking to you and cities and states all over the country. And again, we're not red America, blue America at this moment. We're one America trying together to recover. We need you. You say the word and the U.S. Senate will follow, it's as simple as that.

Okay. So, that fight will proceed in the days and weeks ahead. But right now, we're engaged in a fight, an urgent, urgent fight this very minute. And this involves our children and protecting our children. And we all remember that the whole trajectory of this horrible disease that we've faced, coronavirus, when it first hit here, we saw the horrible toll it took on the oldest New Yorkers. Horrible toll it took on people with preexisting conditions for a long time, thank God we saw very little impact on our children. Now, we see something different that we did not see in the beginning and the entire medical community is coming together to answer this challenge and we take it very, very seriously and I want everyone to take it seriously. And I keep saying to parents and family members, I need you to be vigilant to protect your children, all our children, because your vigilance will make all the difference in this crisis. Pediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome. Again, Pediatric Multi-system Inflammatory Syndrome, PMIS we're going to keep updating you on it as we get more information. So first, the number of children affected in New York City, we now have 82 confirmed cases. This number has gone up consistently in recent days from a point where we had literally no acknowledgment of this problem because health care professionals weren't seeing it even just a few weeks ago to now 82 confirmed cases. 53 of these cases have either tested positive for COVID-19 or had COVID-19 antibodies. Now, a few days ago we lost a child, that's the first time we saw a child die from this horrible syndrome and we all have to work together hoping and praying that there will not be another child lost and that we can every child going forward. But again, that that vigilance is crucial, it's crucial in the whole health care system, which is why our health commissioner issued an alert to all health care providers to immediately both look for these symptoms in children and act on them, but also report any and all activity to the Health Department so we could understand better how to fight back this problem. But again, it comes down to all of us because the sooner anybody identifies in a child in their life, this problem, the sooner they get to health care, the more chance that a child can be saved. And I keep saying it, early detection matters here, we know this in health care, we know there are certain challenges and diseases where early detection can lead to full resolution. We need early detection in this case because we know can make a huge, huge difference. Now, our health care professionals are learning about this syndrome as quickly as they can and there's still unanswered questions. There's things we don't know – we don't know what makes kids specifically susceptible, why some kids and not others. It's still, even though it's a striking number, it's a small number compared to the number of kids in the City or even the number of kids who have been exposed to COVID. Why are some kids susceptible? How long does it take for this syndrome to manifest in a child? What's the timeframe so that we know what we're dealing with, how much time we have to save a child? What is the likelihood of a child developing it going forward as we learn more about it? Again, that's what we don't know. What we do know is early detection, early treatment makes all the difference.

So, to aid in that effort, we're launching a citywide effort to inform parents to alert parents. We need public awareness to grow rapidly. This is something, remember it parallels the reality of COVID-19, the coronavirus, we had never heard of it. It didn't exist to human beings six or seven months ago and then it suddenly was something happening far away and then one day it was happening here, and everyone had to learn about it and we still don't have all the answers. Well here is P.M.I.S. Something that it was not evident in the beginning of this crisis now is we have to rapidly inform families all over the City. So, a digital advertising campaign will begin today and then over the next week or two you'll see a growing effort to inform people, to let them know what to look out for, to let them know how to act. TV and radio ads, ads and community and ethnic newspapers, bus shelters, new stands, you name it. You're going to see these all over New York City, we need everyone to spread the word. And again, we're going to keep talking about what to look out for a parent, a family member, a professional works with children. This is what you need to look for, persistent fever, rash, abdominal pain, vomiting, those problems, even one of them could suggest the syndrome, but in combination they especially are worrisome. So, when you see these problems, reach out to a health care professional immediately and anyone again who does not have their own doctor can call 3-1-1 get connected to a Health + Hospitals clinician and get to care that you need. The bottom line is we are going to do everything, everything to protect our children. Whatever it takes, we're going to protect the children of New York City.

Well, it all comes back to when it comes to protecting people, protecting our health. It all comes back to deepening our efforts to reduce this disease with the things that are working. Social distancing is working, shelter in places working face coverings are working. We see it every day, we see the facts, we see the evidence. We want to make it easier for people to socially distance, particularly as the warmer weather comes on and the open streets initiative is helping us to do that. We've been working with the city council and NYPD, DOT a real joint effort to keep building out the open streets vision. So, today we announced several waves of open streets opening up total of over nine miles by tomorrow we will double that total 12 miles more of open streets. We'll be opening tomorrow, Thursday. And this will be different types of open streets. There'll be streets managed by local partners like business improvement districts, streets supported by local precincts where the precincts will figure out a plan with community members to make sure the open streets are protected and that there's presence to make sure people are safe and then protected bike lanes. So, we've got a lot of partners in this and we're going to be showing you on the screen different places that they'll be and different people who have been partners and organizations. But let me take the opportunity now to thank all of our partners. The business improvement districts, they've really stepped up here. I want to thank all the BIDs involved. You do so much good for your communities. Here's a time in the middle of a crisis where you found a new way to do something that really helps give people a new and help protect people. Thank you to all the business improvement districts, to all the local alliances that do so much for their neighborhoods, to the local businesses that have stepped up and said we want to be part of the solution in our community and we’ll put time and energy into creating something safe and something helpful for the neighborhood. So, the local partner streets will be adding 1.3 miles of open streets in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan – all will open tomorrow.

Now, I mentioned police precincts are getting involved working with community members, making sure that open streets are available to people, but are also safe. Precincts are working together with community partners to add 7.6 miles of open streets and that will be in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan – all opening tomorrow and then, again that mile, that mileage, 7.6 miles. Then streets adjacent to parks; this is something that's very important, particularly as the weather gets warmer, people are gravitating to parks. We want to make sure there's ample space so there isn't crowding. We'll be adding 2.8 miles of streets around parks. This'll be in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island all opening tomorrow. And then protected bike lanes; this is important, obviously many, many New Yorkers are choosing to use bicycles to get around more than ever as part of their everyday life. Many are using bicycles of course for exercise at this moment where people are looking for the right way to get exercise and the safe way to get exercise. We're adding 9.2 miles of protected bike lanes in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. The timing will be starting tomorrow; the bike lane on Broadway in Manhattan. The rest will be phased-in, in the remaining days of this month. And that's what we're announcing today; more will be added as we go along.

Okay, now, you know, when we gather every morning, we talk about so many things that are specific responses to the coronavirus – specific changes we're making, specific ways we're adapting. And again, all of you have done an amazing job of constantly adapting. That's another great New York City characteristic, that adaptability. But we got to remember at the same time, so much of life does go on as it did before and so much needs to go on. And so I bring you to something that is a joyful topic and one that I feel a special love for and that's what we do for our youngest children; to help them on their way, to help build-up who they are, to bring out their potential, to give them self-esteem and hope, and all these things come together in the world of pre-K. That image on your screen I think captures it all – the way that our youngest kids go into a classroom and blossom and it's part of what works in this city and it's part of what we want to celebrate because we know our kids have been through so much these last few months. I can't wait for the day when school resumes and our kids can go back into all their classrooms. And I have a particular joy when you go into a pre-K classroom and you see those four-year-olds full of life, full of hope – well, that day is coming again soon. So, the good news is that pre-K offers have been sent out to families of kids who will go into pre-K starting in September. We are preparing for the launch of the new school year. We’re preparing to make it the strongest and best school year we've ever had in the history of this city and it begins with our youngest kids in early childhood education. So, the update for you – 61,790 students offered pre-K seats. And very good news, we have a record number of families that received an offer that was their top choice – 77 percent of families got their top choice in these pre-K admissions. And then another record, 90 percent received an offer from one of their top three choices. So, the pre-K program has been getting better and better each year and I want to thank everyone who's a part of the pre-K initiative. It's a labor of love for everyone involved, but this is a great example of progress- getting more and more families their top choice or one of their top choices. Now, that's good news. One thing that's not as good news, it's not surprising though, is the number of applications were lower this year than in recent years and that is not shocking given that there's been an overlap with the exact timing of this horrible crisis – with the coronavirus, that has thrown off the normal admissions process. So, I want to remind all parents, all family members, it is not too late to apply. In fact, you still can apply for pre-K for your child. So, if your child was born in 2016, all you have to do is go online, myschools.nyc or call 3-1-1 and you can put an application in right away. There are still seats available, every child – I guarantee it – every child benefits from pre-K. So, if you haven't applied yet, please do for your child.

Okay, a few more things. I talked about the hope and the joy I feel when I think about our pre-K kids – well, when you talk about hope, you think about faith, you think about our extraordinary faith-based communities in this city. And I cannot say enough, I cannot praise enough the faith leaders of this city – of all faiths – who came together. This is a kind of consensus, a kind of unanimity that you could rarely find anywhere in the world, but here in this beautiful city, people of all faiths came together and their leaders did something extraordinary and said in common - it won't be easy - it will be painful in many ways for people not to have their normal faith services. It was particularly painful around the holidays, the major, major moments each year that have occurred in so many faiths just in the time of the Coronavirus, but our faith leaders did it. They said, look, there is nothing more important than saving lives and we will take the lead. And they did the tough thing and they said, we can't have our services until this crisis is over. And what they did was heroic and what they did changed the history of the city for the better because their leadership helped us to move into this time of shelter in place and social distancing so effectively, so well. I had the real honor last night of calling together faith leaders of every tradition as part of our Advisory Council from faith communities; hearing their concerns, hearing their ideas, hearing their commitment to the city. And it was a fantastic exchange and a very life affirming exchange and a reminder of the extraordinary role our faith communities play in this city and particularly the strength that these leaders have shown in this crisis. So, I just want to thank and commend all the faith leaders of New York City; special thanks to those who are serving our advisory council to help us figure out how we restart the city, how we create a fair recovery, how we address the material and spiritual needs of the people in this city, how we do things at the right time to keep people safe; a very, very powerful discussion and a very tangible discussion. So many of the faith leaders are concerned to make sure members of their congregations get the food they need and they're partnering with us and they've always partnered with us in so many things including helping homeless New Yorkers and so many other people in need. So, it was a great indicator of another strength in New York City, that our faith communities are present and accounted for in this fight and we are all working closely together to fight back this disease and get to a better place.

Now, I mentioned homeless New Yorkers. I want to keep updating you on the efforts to reach homeless New Yorkers related to this new plan to clean the subways each night and amplify the opportunities for our homeless outreach workers to reach homeless people and get them to safety and get them to a better life. Here [inaudible] the results from last night – 370 homeless individuals were engaged, 213 accepted help, 178 went to shelter, 35 to hospitals. Again, I've said it enough times and not going to repeat it; unprecedented results and the trend continues now for over a week very, very consistently. And this, if we can sustain this, it’s going to have a very long-term and positive impact reducing homelessness in New York City.

Before I get to our daily indicators, I want to offer some thanks. I've seen so much greatness in the city. I've seen so much strength and I've also seen so many instances of people stepping- up. We talk about all the heroes in this fight and then we have so many people come to the aid of our heroes, come to the aid of everyday New Yorkers; many companies, many organizations, some of them in New York city, some of them in other parts of the country, some of them in other parts of the world keep stepping-up for us. So first of all, so many organizations have focused on getting us the protection that our heroes need, the PPEs, the Personal Protective Equipment. So, I want to thank them today. That's what I'm going to focus on with my thanks today; the folks who have done so much to provide PPEs. So, AmeriCares has provided 550,000 N95 masks, 13,000 surgical masks, almost a thousand packages of disinfectant wipes. The China General Chamber of Commerce has provided 100,000 surgical masks. Ford and Troy Design Manufacturing has provided 30,000 nonsurgical face shields. A great, great New York City institution, Century 21 – Century 21 stores are providing 20,000 square feet of PPE storage space and help with delivery of PPEs to the residents of public housing. A special thank you to our own Century 21. Anheuser-Busch – well, when I first saw this, it said Anheuser-Busch and it said bottles so I was wondering where we were going with this, but it's actually not beer, its hand sanitizer – 23,000 bottles of hand sanitizer donated by Anheuser-Busch. Thank you very much. The Urban Assembly Maker Academy has provided 24,000 nonsurgical masks. Tivuna, construction company in Brooklyn has provided 14,000 coveralls to protect our health care heroes. The American Chinese United Care Alliance has provided 20,000 disposable masks, 3,000 pairs of gloves, and 500 KN95 masks. Finally, Public Health Solutions has provided $14,000 to help us acquire PPEs. All of these organizations, businesses, institutions, doing something so great to protect people in New York City, particularly to protect those who serve all of us and protect all of us.

Now, for the daily indicators – well, we got a mixed bag today. Again, I want to see us get to consistent progress and this is another reminder, we still have a ways to go. So, indicator one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that is up from 51 to 78. And again, 78 is a hell of a lot better number than where we were just a few weeks ago, but we need to see that number go down and stay down. Daily number of people in ICU use in our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that is up. It's up by a small amount – 550 to 561 – but still up. And, again, that base number is higher than we want it to be, that means actual people fighting for their lives in ICU. So, again, an area where we have to keep doing better. The good news today is to percentage of people who tested positive for COVID-19 citywide, that is down from 14 percent to 13 percent. So, again, a sea change from where we were a few weeks ago. That's the good news today. Overall trends continue good. Today's results not what we're looking for. Let's double down on the things that are working so we can have more of the good days and start to string them together and move towards the first steps in our restart.

To conclude, a few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media. And please let me know the name and the outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Hi, all. Just a reminder that we have Police Commissioner Shea, Health Commissioner Barbot, Social Services Commissioner Banks, Transportation Commissioner Trottenberg, and Senior Advisor Varma on the phone. With that, I will start with Rich Lamb from WCBS News radio.

Question: Hi there, Mr. Mayor. Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah, Rich. How are you doing?

Question: I'm doing okay now. I'm just wondering now – I have not been on these calls, but I'm wondering whether you and your senior staff are being tested regularly for COVID. I know that the White House has come in for some criticism. They say they’re daily testing down there. If you are being tested, how frequently is it and what does it consist of?

Mayor: Thank you very much for the question, Rich. No, I haven't been tested this whole time and we, certainly from the perspective of City Hall, there's not a regular testing program. We do our best to, you know, take the precautions that we talk about with everyone. And, you know, there's not a regular testing protocol. There is a devotion to trying to be careful. We have a skeleton staff here. Obviously, City Hall is usually – you know well, Rich, a place that buzzes with activity, and it's really quiet nowadays comparatively. There's a core group of people here doing a whole lot of hard work and working closely with our colleagues and agencies all over the city. But no, there has not been a need for testing on any greater level.

Moderator: Next we have Julia from the Post.

Question: Hey, good morning, everyone. Two questions. One for Commissioner Shea. The Department has not held its own press conference for the media with you and your executive staff since before the start of the pandemic on March 5th. I'm wondering why hasn't the Department made itself available for questions about crime and other topics, especially considering the recent rash of videos, disparities and social distancing enforcement. And, you know, reporters can come on this call who covered the NYPD, but they often don't get their questions in. And then another crime related question – more than a hundred inmate inmates cut loose from incarceration on Rikers over the coronavirus concerned in late March have had run-ins with the law since being released. Looking for reaction to that, and any concern from the Mayor or the Commissioner.

Mayor: I'll start, Julia. Thank you for the questions. On the first point, I think it's fair to say that business as usual has not been the way we're doing things since this crisis escalated. And so, our focus has been on addressing the issues related to the coronavirus and this has been the main venue. And obviously, we're doing the vast majority of days of the week. Over time, we're certainly going to be re-establishing some of our previous habits. So, one thing we did every month was to go over crime statistics and we'll certainly reestablish that at the first available opportunity. But we know that overwhelmingly we've seen the challenge we face, of course, being first and foremost the coronavirus. Second, we know that in so many ways crime has gone down directly related to the coronavirus. But the Commissioner will speak to it, but I want to affirm that things like those monthly press conferences will certainly resume at the appropriate time, and many other things we used to do will resume. But, right now, we've been doing everything through this crisis mode. On the question of the releases from our jail system – again, I think this was an example of New York City leading in a crisis situation. The fact that we had to do something from a perspective, a humanitarian perspective, a health care perspective, working with the leadership of Correctional health, deciding what was the right way to keep people safe in our correction system – the people work there, the people who are inmates there. And the plan was put together on the basis of specific health challenges and dangers and, of course, referencing what kind of offense people committed. That effort involved the City directly in many cases, in other cases required decision making by the State or the district attorneys. But I am convinced it was the right thing to do because we were thinking about the health and safety of everyone involved and looking to save lives where I'm disappointed in anyone who was shown mercy and then turns around and commits an offense. But everything will be dealt with in the long-term because any offense will meet with its consequence. And, again, when this crisis is over, anyone who is awaiting trial who needs to be reincarcerated will be. So, this was the right approach. But, again, I am absolutely disappointed when anyone doesn't act in the spirit consistent with the mercy they were shown. With that, I'll turn to the Commissioner.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea: Hey, Julia. How are you? Thank you for the question. You're right. I mean we've certainly curtailed our press conferences over the last couple of months intentionally, you know, due to this pandemic. But I would just point out that, you know although we have a DCPI that, like the rest of the Department, is running a little bit of a skeleton crew. We’re certainly fielding questions on a daily basis, incoming and outgoing, trying be as responsive as possible. We've been doing a lot more, I think, pushing information out on social media. We've been doing live social media, whether it's questions that are coming in and we try to address anything there. And in terms of the crime statistics, I think the Mayor hit it on the head that, you know, I think we've, through a number of outlets, put out, and through these very press conferences, the fact that crime has been pretty significantly down in the early stages of this pandemic. We're starting to see some concerns recently. But we've put all of these statistics out, including the end of the month for April through a press release. So, I think we're covering most bases here. There's no plan immediately right now to jump back into the, the “routine,” end-of-month press conferences. We had a standup this week and with that terrible incident in Staten Island, but that would be probably the exception rather than the norm at this point. Just erring on the side of caution and we'll use other means to get the word out.

Regarding the releases from Rikers – look I've said a number of times, whether it's releases from Rikers Island or – you know, we have a serious concern recently with paroles. I mean, we're seeing that core issue that we've seen for a number of years that, you know, 8.6 million – 8.6 million people and most of them commit absolutely no crime. But we have a core group of people that unfortunately do commit a disproportionate amount of crime. And it's usually a challenge to keep that under check and to do it as efficiently as possible, being fair etcetera. But you know, we'll get a handle on it. You know, we'll be fluid and adapt to conditions as more people start coming out. You know, we'll probably see crime rates ebb and flow in different areas and we'll be ready to respond accordingly.

Moderator: Next we have Al Jones from 1010 WINS.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. How are you doing?

Mayor: Good. How are you doing?

Question: Getting by, getting by. This has to do with schools in the fall. You know, Dr. Fauci kind of ruled out any possibility of a vaccine or treatment. So, with all the unknowns about COVID-19 and the inflammatory syndrome, how can schools safely open in the fall? How do you convince parents that their kids can go to school every day and that it's safe, because short of – it seems like short of testing every kid every day, I don't know how the schools could be considered safe.

Mayor: Well, I want it to – I appreciate the question. Look my kids went to the New York City public schools and I think like a parent all the time and I can immediately empathize with the concerns that parents are going to have as we prepare for school. Now, we are most of four months away from school reopening. So, that's a long time. We need to see, of course, how successful we can be at beating back this disease, limiting the number of cases, using all the strategies we've been using already – shelter in place, social distancing, face coverings – but then also amplifying the testing and tracing strategy, and that's a big X-factor here. You've seen the number of cases steadily decline. Testing and tracing is going to bring a whole new sort of offensive thrust to this that could really change the trajectory further. So, let's not discount the element of time here. What is the world going to look like when you get into July and August when we'll be making the ultimate decisions and there'll be based on the facts. We do anticipate more and more testing in general and specifically focused on schools, and lots of methodologies for keeping people safe – the cleaning regimens, for example. And we're going to have a plan-A, which is to open the schools fully as normal. And then as I've said, and the Chancellor said, we'll have plans, B, C, D, different types of options if we don't feel it's safe to open schools fully. But, for now, with this much lead time, my goal is a full reopening with any number of protections in place to give confidence to parents and give confidence to educators and everyone who works in schools. That's what we're planning on. That's what we're going for, but it will all be about the facts and, you know, the proof of what we can do. That's what's going to determine the final decision.

Moderator: Next we have Debralee from Manhattan Times and Bronx Free Press.

Question: Good morning, everyone. I wanted to follow up on the conversations about social distancing and the arrest. The question really is for both of you, Mr. Mayor and the commissioner – Commissioner Shea. Given the interest and the focus on how there have been emerging patterns of what seemed to be racial disparities and how these arrests are being executed, are you looking, Mayor, to change anything, specific guidance for the department? And for that matter, would you consider appointing a social distancing czar or someone on that level that would actually focus wholly on this as we continue to, sort of, go into the summer and perhaps [inaudible] more and more of these kinds of arrests – someone specifically focused on this kind of policy when you're looking at policing specifically, particularly as you're talking about a more just recovery for all communities. Secondly, and related, you haven't spoken about former Commissioner James O'Neill in some time. I know that he was plugged into the pipeline for supplies and for materials that were coming directly into the response, the medical response. Would he be someone you'd consider for this kind of post if you were to consider it to begin with? And secondly, what is he doing these days as we talk about the city and its recovery process?

Mayor: Thank you, Debralee. First of all, Jimmy O'Neill – boy, what an amazing positive story of just when we needed help, he showed up at just the right time. And remember, in his day job, working for Visa, he was based on the West Coast, and when the crisis hit, he relocated back here and then step forward to volunteer. And he and the team he put together, working with our colleagues at Emergency Management did a fantastic job improving the distribution of PPEs and supplies and equipment and making sure they were distributed more effectively and consistently. That work has continued. But I really want to say, at the crucial moment, the moment of greatest danger that Jimmy O'Neill and his colleagues did something outstanding to help the city. And it made a big difference. It made a big difference to protecting our health care heroes and then their ability to save lives of other people. So, job well done already. That work still needs to be completed, because we're not entirely out of the woods by any measure. We still need to strengthen our PPE supply and have the ability to project it forward into the future. And, obviously, we've talked about we're building a strategic reserve. We are always vigilant for any possible boomerang of this disease, so there's still work to be done on that front. Meanwhile, as I said, Jimmy has a day job and he has to attend to that consistently as well. So, the – what we're going to be doing long-term in terms of his role, we'll have more to say on the coming days, but, right now, that's the focus. And again, more of his energy has to go back to his day job as that company is starting to resume more of its activity.

On your first question, and then I'll bring in the Commissioner – look, again, we need to recognize that getting social distancing right, ensuring there are not large gatherings and gatherings where people don't observe social distancing, this is crucial to protecting people's health and saving lives. So, all the other considerations that have been raised are obviously tremendously important, but I keep coming back to job-one is to save lives. And having the NYPD there as part of that plan, as part of the enforcement when needed is crucial, and that's not going to change. Now, that said, the NYPD is really very rarely had to enforce. When you really look at the facts, again, on summonses, fewer than 10 a day for the whole city. So, I'm sorry, people keep raising the question and I keep saying, you've got to look at it in perspective. If it's fewer than 10 a day for the whole city during this crisis, that is light touch to say the least. But it's very important to people understand, if they don't observe these rules, that summons is something we will use when needed, because there has to be consequences here. Again, arrest as the – you look at more and more of the details – very, very rarely utilized and typically for other extenuating reasons. The Commissioner can speak to that. So, the restraint has been there and it will continue to be there. As we go forward, I mean – we have not honestly thought about the notion of a social distancing czar. It's an interesting idea. I would only argue as we think about it that let's not undercount what New Yorkers have done, Debralee, that, you know, without generally needing a lot of enforcement, they really have done an outstanding job of following these rules. I know people think it will get harder in the warmer months. I think that's fair. But I also think the impulse here, people want to do the right thing, they want to protect themselves and their family, they want to get back to normal, they don't want to contribute to the spread of this disease. I think people are pretty locked on now about why this matters and why they need to stick with it. So, that's an interesting suggestion, we'll certainly consider that. But, right now, I think the goal is more and more education, more and more presence out in communities. Our ambassadors and that group has grown to over 2,000 civilian employees will be out there, talking to people, educating them, giving them a face coverings. We're going to engage – I talked to the faith leaders last night about this – more and more faith communities going out in their own communities, educating people, giving out the face coverings. You going to see much more of that grassroots piece come into play. But PD will always be there to back it up. Commissioner?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Debralee for the question, because it gives me a chance to address this narrative that I've been hearing for the last week or two and I think it's very important that I do address it as the Police Commissioner. You know, there's been a lot of talk recently about disparities, about racist policing and quite frankly, and then it's followed generally by a press conference, or maybe even a demonstration about how the NYPD is acting. And I think if we step back and be honest here, you know, I think we can all agree what we've seen on some of those videos is incredibly disheartening, it’s not what we want to see, and it's quite frankly disturbing. When you have a situation – if the police is wrong in an instance, whether it's on one of these videos or not, there has to be accountability. I think there has to be transparency and that's my job as the Police Commissioner to make that happen. And quite frankly, if that's not happening, I shouldn't be in this position. We also have to recognize that police officers are human. They are you and they make mistakes, they're not infallible. So, that's the backdrop. But I will push back strongly on any notion that this is business as usual for the NYPD or that this is “racist police.” I think this could not be anything further from the truth. Let's remember, we are a minority-majority police department – fact. We make fewer arrests than we ever have – fact. We make fewer summonses issued and that's whether it's in a pandemic or not in a pandemic. Our record over the last six-and-a-half years is there for anyone to see in how we police this city with the lightest possible touch. You can continue this discussion regarding civilian complaints, use of force, stops, firearms, discharges – all of these things are either at or near historic lows. I don't think anyone would say that we're racist when we're delivering food to elderly victims that are shut up in their apartments or when we're playing with kids and looking for having things to do in summer through parts of this great city which is going on planning as we speak or when we're visiting the victims of domestic violence or when we're working with homeless or the mentally ill and bringing them to the hospital.

Now back to disparities for a moment. We have issued a small number of summonses, even fewer arrests tied to COVID. Are they mostly to minority members of this city? Yes, they are. And I think you knew that answer before you asked the question, but no one is talking about the disparity of the last ten homicide victims in New York City, and I think that should be spoken about or the victims of robberies across the city. Disparities exist in every facet of life, not just in New York City but in this country and it's rooted in much deeper issues than the New York City Police Department. So, I would urge caution to everyone now to honestly, before a press conference is held on a ten second video of a street brawl in the middle of the day in Brooklyn in broad daylight, by the way, before it's turned into an agenda for a press conference. it is dangerous and I will repeat what I said, I think it was back in January where words matter. We saw this in December of 2014 with Officer Ramos and Liu. We saw this with Miosotis Familia. We saw it this January where two cops were almost assassinated sitting in a police car in the Bronx and then the next day a madman walked into a police precinct and tried to shoot more cops. And now in the last week we have had death threats on police officers in New York City and their families, over ten second videos where the police officers are dealing with individuals that quite frankly fight, not with the police department, they fight with everyone. They fight with their significant others. They fight when they go to court, they have open gun cases, they are gang members, and we expect our police officers to do the best they can. That is exactly what they are doing. So, I would, again, urge caution. Accountability is what we must have from this police department and I, as the Police Commissioner, will not stand for excessive force nor will I stand and defend indefensible actions, but I will also not have my police department called a racist police department. Thank you very much.

Mayor: Thank you, Commissioner. Very happy that you shared your feelings with everyone and put everything in perspective there. I think you laid out the big picture that people needed to hear. And I hope everyone is considering these issues and they're very, very real issues. You made a point there about the history that hangs over us. There's a history of institutional and structural racism that afflicts the city and this country still. We have to weed it out in every way. And as Debralee said, how does this all fit with a fair recovery? We have to continue to improve policing in this city as part of a fair recovery. We've got a lot more to do, but it is also really important to recognize the distance that we have already traveled and the changes that we have made. And the fact that we have made those changes is proof that we can make more changes. So, Commissioner, thank you very much for your comments.

Moderator: Next, we have Mark Morales from CNN.

Question: Hi, everybody. How you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Mark. How you doing?

Question: Good. Good. So, I had a question I was hoping that you and Commissioner Shea could respond to this. The first was regarding line of duty designation. I know that a lot of the members of the FDNY and NYPD have been asking in different scenarios about this designation. And I know that this ends up becoming a legislative issue up in Albany and there's an Assemblyman working on this right now and there's possibly a Councilman who is working on this right now, but I wanted to get an opinion from you both first and where do you stand on line of duty designation? Where should it go, how quickly should it be implemented? That was the first one. And the second one was about reopening as it applies to policing. And at this point, you know, there's more people coming out on the streets, but stores are still not open. Does policing change in any way with an expected ramp up of people heading outside, for instance?

Mayor: Okay. On the second part of your question, we'll turn to the Commissioner, and I'll preface before that. But on this question, on line of duty – look, we want to make sure that families are taken care of and we want to honor those who have served valiantly in this crisis and honor their sacrifice to us. The legislation that came out yesterday was a major step in the right direction with the federal government potentially – and obviously we have to see this get through the Senate and be signed by the president – but the federal government stepping up in terms of line of duty benefits. In a different area but very important the Hero's Fund as well. So, we would need to see the maximum federal involvement in supporting line of duty families and more to say on this as we get a better sense of what is going to happen in Washington. But the goal is to make sure families are protected and are whole, and to make sure the federal government really steps up to its responsibilities. This is not business as usual. I just want to emphasize that, Mark, this is an international crisis, this is a pandemic that came to us from overseas, this is a federal situation, not day to day life in this city. We need the federal government to step up and honor these families and support these families with the resources that the federal government has. But we'll have more to say as we get a better sense of what's going to be happening with this legislation in Washington.

On the question of policing going forward. I just want to remind people and it picks up from the Commissioner’s powerful remarks, that we do expect in the warmer months, different activity, unquestionably, but I don't want to discount how much there is a consensus in the city, the vast majority of people understand why social distancing matters, why avoiding gatherings matter, why face coverings matter. You can see it with your own eyes. When all of you in the media report on something abhorrent, which is the nature of the media reality, of course it gets attention, but then we have to remember all the times when the everyday is happening and the everyday is that the vast majority of New Yorkers have already adapted. And, yeah, in the warmer months it'll come with its challenges, no doubt. But people know this is about their own safety, their family's safety. Everyone who wants to get back to work, everyone who wants to get back to normal, knows that this is part of it now, abiding by these rules. So, I think you're going to see that as the main point. When people are convinced of something, it is more powerful than anything the government can say or do or any form of policing, when people themselves are convinced of something.

We always need enforcement as a fallback. But I do think the die is cast already in many ways. And we obviously have seen a reduction in crime and that's very meaningful, but we will be ready for anything and everything going forward. But it all begins with continuing what has worked, which is the deep devotion to communication. The NYPD of today, working with a neighborhood policing philosophy, is focused on communicating with communities and working with people and notwithstanding some incidents that are very troubling, the vast majority, talking about 99.9 percent of the interactions, are positive and the way we need them to be. And that's where we move forward with that devotion to communication and respect and working on a neighborhood level. Commissioner.

Commissioner Shea: Mr. Mayor, thanks for the question. We've lost 41 members of our family. We still have a number of people in the hospital, some that need your thoughts and prayers from – that's a message to the public. I start every day and I started this morning wanting my executive staff and right down to the precinct commanders, you know, to be resilient and continue to wear masks. We had a couple people in the last day that were admitted to the hospitals, which ticked up a little bit. We had been doing so well over the last month. So, this is first and foremost on our mind. And regarding the line of duty designation, it is – I would echo what the Mayor said in terms of this is a, you know, you would liken this really to what you saw on 9/11 in some regards with the sheer number of people affected. And I could tell you that just in the Police Department, we have uniformed members affected, we have the majority of civilian members each with different benefits. We have unpaid employees, auxiliary members that have lost their life during this terrible time. So, their family's future is at the top of what we are concerned about. And we're working – having discussions with the union. This is paramount on the unions’ minds, I can tell you rightfully so. And I think it's an evolving situation, but nothing to us is really more important than making sure that the families of those that suffer during this crisis are taken care of.

Regarding the policing and whether it's social distancing or traditional crime, I think that like many parts of the city I would expect there to be changes after this. And it's something that's just evolving. We'll have to be very responsive and fluid in terms of our workforce being able to adapt. Whether it's ridership coming back on the trains to what level of businesses opening. You know, we'll be ready for it. I can tell you that the men and women of the Police Department will be ready. Thankfully on our uniform side, we are very close to our normal levels, if you will. So, that's some very positive news. And we are literally monitoring whether it's 3-1-1 calls, 9-1-1 calls, crime reports. Day by day, I can tell you that there's been a drop off, for example, like in people visiting precinct station houses. But as the warmer weather comes out, and as we move further into this, I think that things are gradually going to get a little bit closer to normal and we'll be ready for whatever is thrown at us

Moderator: Next. We have Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing?

Mayor: Good. Henry, how about you? How are you doing?

Question: I'm good. I'd like to ask you a question about the schools and particularly about really young children. The city has been operating a program for several years, been pretty effective from what I understand, in offering therapy to young kids who were developmentally delayed in one form or another – occupational therapy, various speech therapy. And it's pretty intensive. It's, from what I understand, it's one-on-one visits with these kids. They're at a very vulnerable age, obviously. And I've been told that these are pretty valuable experiences for these little kids in rushing their development and helping them catch up. Of course, this has probably been suspended during the time. Since it's one-on-one and it doesn't really involve the risks that would be involved in you know, which would require social distancing, why has the City not moved to increase or restart the service?

Mayor: Thank you, Henry. First, to your characterization, I want to affirm it energetically. The efforts, like the early speech therapy, can work wonders and the occupational therapy, and this is really important and like so many things in life, if you reach a child at the earliest years, you can have the most profound impact. So, these are initiatives that really do work. I want to always tell you when I'm certain of something or when I'm not. I don't know exactly how the DOE has managed these services during this crisis. I imagine some of this actually can be done virtually, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I need to get you a very specific answer. But clearly, we want to keep providing kids the help, if it can be done virtually. One [inaudible] confirm to you if it is being done and to what extent or what it would take to bring it back, if it can only be done in person, in some cases, when we think we can do that safely. But there's no question about the value and there's no question about our focus and this conforms with everything we feel about early childhood education, which is why we did Pre-K for All and why we're on the pathway to 3-K for All, and all the mental health efforts that are being focused even as early as the pre-K level. Everything is about early support for children and the greatest impact that you can make if you get to kids earlier. So, we will get you an answer on where it stands now and how we think it can evolve and how we're going to make sure that as many kids as possible are reached even in the middle of this.

Moderator: Next, we have Anna from the Daily News.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. First, I have a practical question. Does the City put any thought to providing clear masks or masks with a clear opening for the mouth for deaf New Yorkers? I know that obviously many deaf people read people's lips. So, I'm curious if that's something that you guys have thought about. And I also wanted to see if you would address the fact that the New York City district attorneys aren't prosecuting most social distancing arrests and maybe Commissioner Shea can also address that as well.

Mayor: Sure. Again, on the arrest issue, there's been very, very few and the Commissioner can speak about the difference between an arrest that's directly related to social distancing versus an arrest that is related to something else, some other kind of extenuating circumstance. But any way you slice it, this is a really, really small part of the picture over now, you know, ten weeks of this crisis. And I'll turn to the Commissioner in a moment on that. On the issue of the clear mask – it's a very interesting suggestion and I had not heard that previously, so, I don't have an immediate answer for you. I think it makes sense that we have to be sensitive to deaf New Yorkers and support them in every way we can. But let me talk to our team and see what we think makes sense and how we can address it, and we'll come back to you with an answer on that. Commissioner Shea, do you want to speak about the other piece?

Commissioner Shea: Yeah. Regarding social distancing and arrests. I mean, I think I've been pretty clear on that. There really hasn't been a lot of arrests. Again, when we encounter groups, we ask them to disperse, we ask them to comply with executive orders, and all over the city we've gotten overwhelming compliance. That's a fact. Have there been some occurrences? Yeah, there have been some occurrences. Occasionally we've had to write summonses. We've gone through these numbers. It's not a significant amount when you pull out about 10 incidents, where there was a lot of summonses written. And then when you talk about arrests, you're really not talking about the same thing. It's arrests for other offenses. There might've been a few that started as social distancing, but it's really such small numbers. You know, when you look at the district attorneys and what they have to deal with, I do feel for them.

You know, five of them throughout New York City, and including, you know, our partners in special narcotics part. They've had to turn their lives upside down during this, dealing with processes up-ended. I think they're doing the best they can in circumstances. Do I agree every time? No. Do they agree with, you know, everything we do? No, but we have a great working relationship. If I was concerned about anything during this, it would be that small number of career criminals that are committing more serious crimes, like burglaries and things of that nature. And you know, why I'm concerned about it is because it's additional victims. I mean, that's what it always comes down to with me in trying to prevent people from being further victimized. But I think all in all, you know, it's a tough situation when you look at grand juries, when you look at court proceedings, when you look at what the whole city has had to deal with. And I think, you know, we'll probably learn a lot from this and be better prepared next time, but I think everyone is doing the best I can.

Moderator: Next we have Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Mr. Mayor, how are you doing?

Mayor: Good, Gersh. How are you doing?

Question: Two words, virtual schooling, but that's enough on that. Anyway, I got two quick questions on open streets. First is the 9.2 miles of protected bike lanes, are those because of budget cuts, the full list of what we're going to see the DOT accomplish this year. And the second question, the restaurant industry is calling for far more open streets so they can serve the public in a socially responsible manner once the pause is over. I know there's a City task force on this, but do you personally see a time when hundreds of miles of NYC streets could be taken away from drivers and for storing cars for socially distant dining?

Mayor: So, on the bike lane issue, I'll say I'll turn to Commissioner Trottenberg in a moment. Again, everything's evolving, Gersh, to say the least. I think this'll be the understatement of the year. Everything's evolving. Our budget situation is evolving. Obviously, horrid right now, could be deeply, positively affected by the stimulus, but we don't know what level the stimulus is going to reach, when it's going to happen. So, a huge number of question marks. We know the House proposal is exactly the right direction, but we don't know what happens next. So, the budget side of the equation is a question mark, the health side of the equation is a question mark. Steady progress, but still a long way to go before we know what more we're going to be able to do when. So the Commissioner can tell you the vision as of this moment, but I will preface by saying that there's a huge amount of unknowns here.

On the Open Streets look, I'm certainly intrigued and I've begun to have this conversation with folks in the restaurant industry. Intrigued with what we could do with more outdoor dining. We're not there yet in terms of figuring out what that means, how far we could go with it, when we could do it. But it is an appealing idea. It's an idea that may offer some real options. But I'm always going to be cautious in saying, you know, I don't want to theorize and raise hopes unduly. I want us to really lock down step by step what we're going to be able to do to restart when, how it affects each industry. But at least I can say it's a really interesting idea because it stands to reason that if we could move more of that activity outdoors, it would be safer for everyone involved. Give us time to figure out, you know, if we think that's workable and to what scale. Commissioner Trottenberg, do you want to add on the bike lanes?

Commissioner Trottenberg: Right. I mean, look, I'm excited with the nine miles you've announced today, Mr. Mayor, particularly Fourth Ave in Brooklyn and 38th and 39th, another crosstown route in Manhattan. We would like to do more lane miles this year. We’ll, you know, we'll have to see working through that. And one of the requirements we have to work through, we have a Council requirement. These bike lanes are temporary because we have to give the Council a 90-day notice period before we can make any bike infrastructure permanent.

Mayor: Thank you.

Moderator: Next we have Ashley from the New York Times.

Question: Good morning. Good morning everyone. I wanted to ask you two questions, one for my colleague Jan Ransom and one based on the NYPD data and the Commissioner's remarks on this call. First for the Mayor or whomever can answer the question. How many people who went to the hospital while in DOC custody have died from COVID-19 within hours or days of their release from custody? We've become aware of two cases that are not included in the Riker's COVID death total. But we're wondering if there are more and if you're tracking that? And then the second question first a bit of context. I think part of the frustration with using the police to enforce social distancing is that it's a nonstarter because that distrust that you put neighborhood policing in place to fix didn’t suddenly disappear in the pandemic. And that same distress is also an impediment to solving the shootings and murders that the Commissioner mentioned earlier. And that's part of why the City has brought on the Cure Violence groups. So I'm wondering if the Police Commissioner can tell us how many shootings and murders this year have been solved with an arrest? And how the NYPD is tracking social distancing encounters and determining which summonses and arrests to include or exclude from your totals?

Mayor: Okay. Let me start and then I'll pass the Commissioner. Thank you for the questions, Ashley. On the Department of Correction which I want to make sure – I believe I heard DOC, so I want to make sure we're not mishearing here. DOC, Department of Correction? Right? Okay. That, we are going to have to get back to you. We've tried to be very transparent about everything that's happened. Obviously, the strategic decision was to do a substantial number of releases. That number now is about 1,600. And as you know, the jail population is now down below 4,000 for the first time since the 1940’s. So that was a humanitarian decision, a strategic decision to protect the lives of everyone in the Correction system, the employees and the inmates alike. And I think that will prove to have been the right thing to do on so many levels. But in terms of anyone who passed away in DOC custody, we want to be absolutely transparent about that, wherever that happened. And so, we'll make sure to get you information today. If there's any outstanding questions, we'll resolve it.

On the question of the Police Department and social distancing before turning to the Commissioner, I appreciate the frame of your question because clearly the entire vision of this administration has been to fundamentally change the relationship between police and community and fundamentally change policing. And Chief Monahan said it the day he was sworn in in his role as Chief of Department that we've been inventing an entirely different type of policing here in New York City. And it's in its infancy. There's going to be much more development in the years ahead. And a lot of when we talk about fair recovery, we have to keep changing and improving policing. What has started now is only a beginning. But I don't want to lose the fact – I think this is really important. This may be almost an ideological issue where there's going to be differences and we should just surface them and be honest about them. When you say, and I know you say it with a whole heart, when you say non-starter, I just couldn't disagree with that more. Because it is not as if the question of improving the relationship between police and community is existing in a vacuum where there is no coronavirus. Of course, we want to keep deepening the relationship between police and community. We want to weed out injustice in every form. We want accountability. Everything we've been doing has been moving that agenda. But saving lives in an unprecedented context, in a global health crisis, there's nothing that compares in a hundred years in this country. Saving lives is the first responsibility and it's different then what you do in day to day policing in normal times. We have got to make social distancing work to save lives on a vast scale. And you can see it in the statistics because social distancing has been working and shelter-in-place has been working, a huge number of lives are being saved. So, I just call out the quote unquote, non-starter point because I just disagree with it. The NYPD has to be part of this equation. That is my decision. That is what we're doing. Because we cannot have a situation where social distancing comes unglued because there's no enforcement. Enforcement is part of human life. I'm a progressive and an optimist that people again will do a lot of good things on their own. And I said earlier, overwhelmingly New Yorkers have. But enforcement or the potential of enforcement is part of what keeps people devoted to the right rules and the right approach. You can't take enforcement out of the equation, but you can use it very sparingly and you can use it with a light touch, which is what the NYPD has been doing.

And I absolutely agree to your reference to grassroots element of the equation. We are going to use more and more civilians. We are going to engage more and more faith communities and community organizations to be the front – the sort of leading edge of the effort to educate people and remind them and give them face coverings with the PD only when necessary, playing an enforcement role. But I'm not taking that enforcement role off the playing field because we have to save lives in this unprecedented moment. And finally, you can do enforcement in a smart, communicative, respectful way. And that's what happens the vast majority of the time. And the videos of these improper activities which will be dealt with, are very much the exception, not the norm. Go ahead, Commissioner.

Commissioner Shea: Hey Ashley, how are you doing? Ashley? Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yeah, she's there. You keep going.

Commissioner Shea: Yep. Okay. So, I mean you bring up probably what I would say Ashley, is one of the most important things that we think about every day in policing. And it speaks to neighborhood policing. It speaks to transparency, it speaks to the relationships and why we do what we do. And it's trust. And you know, this is not unique to New York City. I think this is what police executives across this country talk about when they start talking about, you know, strategies in fighting crime and dealing with communities and having relationships. Everything is built upon a foundation of trust. And if you don't have it, you're in big trouble. And we recognize this. This is again, what's behind what we've been trying to been trying to do the last six and a half years, and everything that I said before. And the quandary that we're in in law enforcement, and I think this is well-recognized. That you – you know, it's like a bank. You make deposits and you build up trust, but you can lose it awfully quick. And I don't think that that's a bad thing. That's just a fact. It's a reality and we're aware of it and it's why we work so hard and do what we do in all the facets of planning with this police department every day. And you know, one or two bad incidents or public incidents can really set you back. And it's the last thing that we want. And it's something that we're aware of. It's something that we work towards every day. And you know, when we get to that place where we have you know, the nirvana if you will, of police and community working together, community viewing the police department, not as the police department but their police department. That's where we really get to where we want to be. And it's an ongoing process and it's something that we are committed to. It's why we instituted neighborhood policing.

It's why one of my big regrets with this pandemic besides the obvious, is that, you know, the first week we had to cancel the implementation of a youth coordination officers. I think that's, I still think that's the next big level of really making a difference in this city. And we had 200 youth officers in training and we just couldn't go on. There's been a lot of changes Ashley in the last two months. People working out of positions, people picking up the pace, people filling in, whether it's in detectives or police officers or executives for that matter. But no matter who is filling what role, the mission remains the same. It's keeping New Yorkers safe. Doing it in the most fair manner to everyone. And moving forward and getting the heck out of this situation of this pandemic all together as quickly as possible.

You mentioned you asked about five questions there. The one that stuck in my head was the one about the, you mentioned shootings, I believe, or clearance rates? My language, not yours. I can tell you that we were, on March 12th we were up 23 shootings. We really had a drop in shootings towards the beginning to the middle of this pandemic. It's unfortunately started to climb a little as you do have ebbs and flows. So we are now up 29, I believe as of this morning. So it's a slight increase from the beginning. It's way too high, because we don't want any increase. We want to decrease. But that's you know, that's what we are with the shootings. And you know, our detectives are doing amazing work. They continue to work the cases. And I have no doubt that as time goes on now they'll continue to do what they've been doing for the last five or six years -- identifying who's doing it and continue to drive the shooting and violence level down.

Moderator: Last two for today. Next we have Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi everyone. I wanted to ask about the new cases and particularly the new hospitalizations that are coming? Is the City doing any kind of analysis to understand whether there's a particular group of people who are comprising the majority of new cases and new hospitalizations? Whether it's a particular group of workers, or people in a particular living environment like a nursing home? So, are you doing any of that work? And if so, what is it showing? And separately, I wanted to ask about the three public health milestones. Are those a guide to when the city might begin reopening or are those absolute must meet targets? And if they're the latter, what can we expect on the day when all three are met? Currently in the description of them, it says once all of these indicators reach their milestones, the City will likely begin to lift restrictions gradually. So, if you can give any sense of what that would look like exactly, that'd be helpful?

Mayor: Thank you Yoav. I'll turn to, excuse me, Commissioner Barbot and Dr. Varma on your first part of your question in a moment, in terms of what analysis and what we're seeing about who is continuing to get sick. But I'll start on the indicators. The indicators, I'm glad you asked because I thought we had said this a bunch of times, but it's always good to clarify. We're taking them literally. We need to see them go down in unison. We need that to happen for 10 to 14 days. When we see that that's when we're at a point to talk about relaxing restrictions. Obviously, there's also the State's indicators and we're all working together because we want to see all of the above achieved. By definition that's going to put us into June. Now there's no guarantee that everything comes together in June. We got to keep doing what we're doing. Everyone's hard work, the shelter-in-place, the social distancing, the face coverings, all the work that's being done has to continue to be done to make sure we can keep driving down these numbers. And as I said, the test and trace initiative is going to help us even more. And that's coming online in the next days.

So we take these indicators literally, and then when we get to the point we need to get to, we'll take all the information we have from our own indicators, the State, everything we're seeing in the health care data and we'll make a decision about what a relaxing of certain restrictions looks like. We'll certainly be talking about that in the coming days to give people a flavor of it. But the final decision will be based on the details of what we're seeing at that moment. And you can't rule out, unfortunately the things don't start to go in the wrong direction, which means we would delay any relaxing in restrictions by definition. So, take them literally and let's keep fighting to get them to all go down in the same direction. On the question of what we're seeing amongst those who are getting sick lately. Dr. Barbot, Dr. Varma, what do you say?

Commissioner Barbot: So, Mr. Mayor, we look at the data on a regular basis and what we're seeing recently isn't particularly different than what we have been seeing all along in terms of the distribution of cases. I think one of the bright spots is that the number of new cases continues to go down and you know, it's a sort of a testament to the work that New Yorkers are doing every day to stay home, use face coverings and adhere to the preventative guidance that we've been giving. But we're going to continue to look at the data on a regular basis and help to then ensure that we use that data to drive the further reduction of transmission as we go along.

Mayor: Dr. Varma, you want to add?

Senior Advisor Varma: Yeah, I would just also note that one of the important outcomes of the Test and Trace initiative that's been announced will be that we will also begin to have a much clearer understanding of who is getting infected and what the risk factors are. One of the real important outcomes of hiring you know, up to a thousand and possibly more, people who can contact every case is that we're going to get much more finely tuned data. And so, I think we are going to get a better understanding over time, over where people are getting infected and most importantly, how we can make sure to reduce those infections.

Moderator: Last question for today, Jake from Gothamist.

Mayor: Jake? I think we could hear your voice echoing. Let's try – we sure got Jake?

Moderator: Jake, are you there?

Question: I'm here. Can you hear me? Hello?

Mayor: Yeah, we can hear you. Jake, can you hear me?

Question: I can hear you now. Yep. So, my question is for a Commissioner Shea who said a few minutes back that there has to be accountability and there has to be transparency. I'm wondering if Francisco Garcia, the officer who was seen beating a bystander and kneeling on his head has been fired yet? If not, why not? And will the NYPD commit to sharing updates on all officers who are facing investigation for social distancing enforcement? My second question is there are reports of an off-duty NYPD officer who may have fatally shot someone on Long Island. A spokesperson for Nassau County PD told us to ask the NYPD about that. Can you speak on that, either Mr. Mayor or Commissioner Shea?

Mayor: Yeah, I don't know about that, case Jake. Let me have the Commissioner speak to that. And the case of Officer Garcia.

Commissioner Shea: Yep. So, I'll start with the first question regarding Officer Garcia. The Ninth Precinct incident from the Lower East Side a couple a weeks ago. As I stated before within an hour or so, he was removed of his firearms and placed on modified duty pending the outcome of the investigation. And our Internal Affairs officers, Commissioner Joe Reznick coordinating very closely with the Manhattan DA's Office as that case proceeds. We will have more to say when that case is, when that investigation is done.

Regarding the incident last night, or yesterday evening late. In Nassau County an NYPD officer discharged a firearm. That case is being investigated by the men – Nassau County District Attorney's Office as well as the Nassau County Police. I would refer any questions regarding the investigation to the Nassau County DA's Office on that. I can tell you he was a NYPD officer that discharged his firearm. As a result of that discharge, an individual was struck in the head and killed and it's an ongoing and very early part of that investigation. But we were conferred with almost immediately last night. And that is an active investigation and as we work closely with the Nassau County authorities, we will have more to say.

Mayor: Thank you very much Commissioner. Well, as we conclude today many, many topics have been discussed in the press conference today and there's many things going on in this city. But I want to bring our attention back to the thing that will really determine so much of our future and that's what will happen in Washington even in just the next few weeks. We don't know exactly what day the US Senate will take up the stimulus package. We do know that the Senate and the President now have to make a decision about the future of New York City and cities and states all over this country. We do know the difference between a restart and not having a restart lies in that stimulus plan. The difference between a recovery or something much less, lies in that stimulus plan. We know we cannot get back on our feet without that stimulus. The hit this city has taken is simply too much for us to recover anytime soon without federal aid. And that is true for cities and states all over the country. And again, red states, blue states, red cities, blue cities alike. So all the action now goes to the US Senate. But it's actually even simpler than that because it's really one man who gets to make this decision and it’s the President of the United States. The fact is that if President Trump acts, if President Trump speaks out, the Senate will follow. So Mr. President, here is a chance to do something so good, so important for your hometown and for cities and towns and states all over this country. Here's a chance to get it right. Here's a chance to actually build the recovery we all need. Here's a chance to put aside partisanship and do something for the whole country to bring us together as one. So we know you hold the power and we know when you raise your voice, the Senate will follow. All we're saying, Mr. President, speak up. Speak up for the stimulus so we can actually move our city and cities and states all over this country forward. It's in your hands and what we need to hear is your voice so we can move forward together.

Thank you very much. And thank you, everyone.

2020-05-14 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. I want to talk to you today about not just what's going on in our city right now, but what our future looks like. But if you will just indulge me for a moment upfront, something very personal I want to say. Today is the 26th anniversary of my marriage to Chirlane. And Chirlane, I think you're watching right now, so I just want to say – 26 years later, you are my best friend, and I am madly in love with you, and I look forward to celebrating with you this year and many years ahead. So, thank you to all the people in New York City for giving me a moment to send out that anniversary message. And when I think about it – 1994 when Chirlane and I got married, this was a very, very different place. We met actually right here in this building in 1991, and, for a long time, this city was struggling in so many ways. Even in 1991 you could feel the huge impact of the fiscal crisis still hanging over us. We didn't know in those years that horrible things were up ahead like 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy. When you think about the city's history, the strength of New York City, the strength of New Yorkers has been tested so many times, but what has been clear throughout is that what we have here is eternal. What we have built here in this city over generations is much bigger, much stronger than is ever realized, because each time, and you've seen it in recent days, you may have seen different people theorizing, different people starting to talk about New York City's demise after the coronavirus, and I want to say up front, they've got it all wrong. This was predicted even going back to the depression, but certainly predicted after each of the things I mentioned, the fiscal crisis, 9/11, Hurricane Sandy that somehow New York City couldn't come back. Each and every time New York city has come back and come back stronger, literally come back stronger.

So, it is true that there will be changes if there's any place in the world synonymous with change, it's New York City. If there's any place in the world that manages to adapt and improve, that in fact sets the trends for every place else, it's right here. The notion that somehow because things will change, we should be fearful. I just reject that out of hand. Yes, things will change. A lot of folks are saying for example, fewer people might work out of their offices. We'll find a way to make sense of that. We'll find a way to have new and exciting opportunities grow as they have constantly, and if you want a great example, look at our tech sector, which a couple of decades ago didn't exist, and now we're an international tech hub, one of the greatest in the world. We always have to believe in what's next, because that's what we do as New Yorkers. And human beings, we are social creatures. We need to be with each other. We need to collaborate. We need to think together. We need to experience things together. That may not be so possible for the next few months. But remember, the coronavirus crisis is time limited by definition. A day is coming and it's not too far in a future where there will be a vaccine, and then life will be very different in how we manage the coronavirus. Just like we manage so many other diseases that are a part of our world. The day is coming when more and more social activity, and business activity will be possible. It will come in waves. But if we're talking about the big picture, and the future in New York City, what we have is magical. What we have is irreplaceable. People from all over the globe want to be here, and that's going to continue to be true, but we have to have faith. So, I'm not for a moment trying to ignore the tough challenges, the tough questions ahead, but I'll tell you something, you get nowhere being pessimistic and you get nowhere betting against New York City. So, I advise the naysayers to check their history, and recognize the strength of this place and our people. And I predict that we will not overcome only, but we will find a way to come back as a stronger and better city in the years ahead.

Now, let's talk about the things we need to do on that path ahead, and if there's something that from day one has been the most necessary part of the equation, the thing that would have done so much good, helping us beat back the Corona virus to begin with, but now will be the core to any solution, you've guessed it testing, testing, testing. We know that we're still playing catch up, and unfortunately that's because the help we needed from the federal government never was there in the beginning, still isn't here, but we do not let that stop us. We are innovating as much as we can locally. We're working with local partners in healthcare, we're working with labs, we're doing the most we can. We still need that federal support, but we're going to keep building nonetheless. And testing capacity is growing rapidly, and it's going to make a world of difference. And at the same time, we are seeing the great benefits, the human benefits of the deceleration of this disease, the fact that more and more people thank God are safe, and fewer and fewer people are ending up in the hospital. This also means that a lot less of the testing capacity has to be devoted to saving lives in hospitals. That's opening up more and more possibilities of getting testing out to communities. More and more PPEs available, more and more personnel available. The situation is turning so that we can now do much more widespread testing and we're building our capacity with our test and trace initiative. That's going to be huge and it's going to grow as big as it needs to, and I want to emphasize that. Whatever that point is we need to get to, we're going to keep building it out. We'll hire as many people as we need. We'll go as far as we need. The only limitation we face is the amount of lab capacity available. And again, we need the federal government to step up. We need the labs to step up. We need the federal government to push hard to get the labs, the equipment they need, the reagents they need, but all the other pieces are coming together really, really well for more and more widespread testing.

Now, given that we have more capacity all the time, we want to now start to encourage more and more people to get tested. This will all come together, meaning the more testing, the more people can take advantage of testing. The more we know, the more we're able to reach people, the more we're able to put the test and trace protocol in place, trace the contacts, get people who need isolation, isolation. It grows together. So, now, as of today, we want to broaden the guidance on who should take advantage of more and more widespread testing. And again, you will see it growing in communities all over the city in the next few weeks, but this is the direction we'll be going in. We now want to encourage three groups of people to get testing that's available to them. One, anyone with symptoms. So again, what are those symptoms for the coronavirus, cough, fever, shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell and again that those symptoms and remember those symptoms that are particularly of concern if someone's older or has those preexisting healthcare conditions or both. But what we're saying is, even if you're not older, even if you don't have those preexisting conditions, if you have the symptoms, we want to see you get tested, and more and more testing will be available to you. Second group, anyone who was in close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 patient. Now, this is the work that the test and trace initiative will be doing systematically as it grows all over the city. But right now, people know in many cases, if someone in your life has tested positive, and you know you've been in close contact with them, well right away. If they're a household member, they're an intimate partner and you know they tested positive, we want you to get tested as well, regardless of whether you have symptoms or not. And number three group, and these are folks who do such important work. They work in congregate residential settings, they take care of others. Folks who work in nursing homes, folks who work in shelters, folks who work in adult care facilities. Again, whether you have symptoms or not, we want to make sure you are tested.

So, the testing is going to be built out more and more. We're welcoming more and more people that take advantage of it as priority groups of people we want to see tested. And that of course is now bringing to your mind the question, how do I get a test? So, we are building out the locations. We now have 23 walk-in sites through our Health and Hospitals facilities. 23 sites that are open, five more through the collaboration of a one medical and local 1199. So that's 28 sites, more sites coming online quickly. You can call 311 to find a testing location or you can go online nyc.gov/covidtest.

Now, I've said our goal was to get to 20,000 tests per day by May 25th. We are now confident in that goal. In fact, we want to beat that goal, and I will be giving you updates as we go along on how we're doing, but we believe that more and more testing capacity can be put into play quickly, and that's going to allow us to then test people, do the follow up tracing, contact tracing, and for those who need to be in a hotel, make that hotel available to them. We welcome more and more people into this. We're going to keep accommodating everyone we can. When we get the real support we need from the federal government and that additional lab capacity, we'll be able to go much farther. Because remember, the testing process itself has gotten simpler because of that self-swab technique we talked about a few days back. So, sky's the limit so long as we can keep getting more and more lab capacity. But knowing that this month we will get to 20,000 tests a day and I think surpass that number, that is a great start on the road to a truly widespread testing approach for this city.

Now, as I said, more testing means more locations, and they will keep growing and growing. I told you a couple of days ago about 12 news sites, that they would be opening soon. So, now I'm going to announce officially the locations of those sites. So, opening next week, week of May 18th in Manhattan the Highbridge Rec Center in Washington Heights. In Brooklyn, 1223 Coney Island Avenue. Those two sites will bring our overall capacity up to 6,300 tests a day at Health and Hospitals, facilities. And then the following week, week of May, 25th. Two sites in the Bronx in Fordham Manor and Melrose. Three sites in Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, and Canarsie. A site in Manhattan in East Harlem. A site in Queens in Woodside. Three sites in Staten Island, Princes Bay, Concord, and Port Richmond. Those are the specific addresses and that capacity will bring us up to 10,700 tests a day. Again, this is going to keep growing, the more capacity we have, the more labs we bring into the game, the more we'll keep building this program out. And now as it grows and grows, again, anyone in those new categories I talked about today, please take advantage of this testing opportunity. It's going to help you, your family, the people in your life, but it's going to help us as well as we fight back to the coronavirus in this City.

Now, you know, we keep learning about this disease, and it is always challenging to be dealing with something new that medical science still doesn't fully understand. And I've said, you know, in the beginning it really seemed to be extraordinarily consistent and painful that our oldest New Yorkers were bearing the brunt and folks with the preexisting conditions. But we noticed consistently that children seem to have very little effect from this disease until what we've seen in recent days, and this is really troubling and I say it as a parent, it's really troubling to see now after we thought we understood a consistent pattern, something new has been happening and the pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, P.M.I.S this is a deep concern and we're going to throw everything we've got at it. The number of children affected, continues to grow. It is still in the scheme of things a rare condition, but it is something that we take very seriously and we're now on high alert and addressing because the numbers have grown. We now have a hundred confirmed cases in New York City, 55 of those cases again have either tested positive for COVID-19 or tested for the antibodies, tested positive for the antibodies. And we lost one child and that is painful and awful for that family and for this city to have lost a child, we don't want that ever to happen again. So, we're about to do the maximum to get everyone informed, to get everyone the help they need to make sure that parents and family members understood— exactly what to do and when to do it. I told you yesterday we're launching an ad campaign that's up and running and more coming on that quickly. But again, I'm going to keep reminding you of the basics, if the child in your life has persistent fever, rash, abdominal pain, vomiting, or especially any combination of those afflictions, call your doctor immediately. Do not hesitate. If you don't have a doctor that you need to talk to, a clinician, call 3-1-1 and we'll connect you to a Health and Hospitals clinician. It is so important to start that dialogue immediately, if you see these symptoms and then working with a healthcare professional, they can decide with you if the child needs to get to medical care immediately. But the early detection makes all the difference, with early detection, we can save the lives of these children and that's been what we've seen also from the evidence of these cases so far.

Now, we have to make sure every health provider is fully aware of the situation and ready to act. So, tomorrow, the Health Department will [inaudible] weekly webinar. The weekly webinar they do will be focused heavily on P.M.I.S that normally reaches six or 700 providers. We want to welcome as many health care providers to join that tomorrow as possible, particularly obviously focused on pediatricians. And then in the coming days, a special webinar that we put together by the Health Department with all 23 pediatric ICUs across New York City, making sure that the doctors and nurses, everyone in those pediatric ICU has the latest information and all sharing together what they're seeing and what they're experiencing and how best to help our children. And then, every day going forward the Health Department epidemiologists will reach out to all 23 pediatric ICUs on a regular basis following up on literally every case, even new or suspected cases to check on what's happening. This is something where we need to put supreme focus to understand what's happening here. It apparently, you know from the eyes of medical science came out of nowhere in this City, we have to understand it better, we have to get ahead of it. We'll keep giving you updates on what we're seeing and additional steps we're taking, but these steps will immediately ensure that healthcare providers are deeply coordinated, sharing information and finding the best ways to protect our kids.

Now, we focus all the time, we're looking to help each and every New Yorker, 8.6 million of us together. All of us going through this crisis the same. But we know some people are particularly vulnerable and that brings us back to homeless New Yorkers. Again, this effort now that's being undertaken each night to clean the subways, I keep reporting on the results in terms of homeless outreach, the results continued to be striking. Last night, 328 homeless individuals were approached for help by our outreach workers and by the homeless outreach members of the NYPD. Of the 328 approached, 182 accepted help, so again, a very, very striking number of very positive number. 149 accepted help to shelter, 33 accepted help by way of getting them to a hospital. Now we want to make sure as we keep doing this, that we maximize the impact of this moment. We want as many of these homeless individuals are living on the streets, living in the subways, we want them to come in and get the they need. This is the first step and I've told you what we've done over the last three years involved very intensive, very humane, very decent, very careful, thoughtful connection to homeless individuals to try and win their trust, bring them into someplace better and safe and someplace they can get medical care and get help overcoming the challenges they face, including mental health challenges and substance misuse challenges. So, the question has been asked by some of our colleagues in the media is a great one. What do we know of these results so far? What they tell us? How lasting are these results? Well, it's only been a little over a week, but still first we know in the first week, 824 individuals accepted help at one point or another. That's a huge number, when you think that the federal assessment of the number of homeless people in this City is somewhere between 35,000 and 4,000 the street homeless people. If 824 individuals accepted help in one form or another, that's of truly historic figure that says more and more of the homeless individuals are starting to experiment with what it would be like to come in and get off the streets. 201 of them made it to shelter and that might've been for only hours or that might be for a few nights and we'll get more details on that as we do the analysis. But again, 201 staying in shelter for a period of time, that's a big deal because it's the first step towards change. But the number that we should dwell on the most is the 103 who have stayed in shelter. Now again, we're only talking about a little more than a week, but 103 individuals who were living on the street have come in and stayed in so far. That doesn't mean every single one of them will remain in the for the, you know, for months and years ahead, but that's what we're working toward. And the fact that 103 have stayed in so far is a huge step in the right direction. So, we've got to break the vicious cycle that held people in a life that was truly dangerous and unhealthy and not anything we want to see a human being living. This is a very promising sign and again, a deep thank you to the homeless outreach workers and the men and women in the NYPD who do this— homeless outreach work who are trained for it, who do it as a deep form of public service. It's not easy, but both the homeless outreach workers and the NYPD officers of this work, they're doing something so important and so meaningful and I thank them all.

And I want to stay on the topic of the NYPD for a moment. These last weeks have been a profound challenge as we are trying to make sense, all of us in this City of a new reality. There was no playbook for the coronavirus, we've all had to learn together how to do things like shelter in place and social distancing and wearing face coverings. These things don't come naturally to any of us, we're all trying to make sense of it together. Of course, people are feeling the burden of these changes, the burden of so many families not having a livelihood. The— the questions, the fear, the anxiety. It's a tough atmosphere for everyone and we're asking our police officers to figure out how to address all the normal challenges, address quality of life, address crime, assist people in a variety of ways. Every day is different from a police officer, we're asking them to do all that, but also figure out how to play the role we need them to play in making sure the rules are followed so we can beat back this disease. Remember, the rules are to fight this disease, the rules are to reduce the number of people get this disease and the number of people die. There is nothing more sacred than that in terms of thinking of what people in the line of public safety do. So, it's such crucial work and yet there's no playbook we're making up each day. We're trying to figure out better approaches, better ways to figure out how to train officers and how to listen to communities about what's working, what's not working, trying to figure out what that balance should be between what our police do, versus our civilian employees, versus community members, houses of worship, community organizations. We've got to strike that balance and we're not there yet.

So, I want to put this on me and Commissioner Shea that we have to figure out how to strike that balance. We have to figure out a plan and a protocol that works. What we've been doing up to now is trying to address situations as they emerge, particularly the situations that are most dangerous, which are large gatherings, but it's clear we have to improve the supervision, the training, the protocols, the game plan for a very complex situation and not create unnecessary tension between our police and our communities. And you know, some out there raised concerns and I value the concerns and have worried that we might in some way take a step backwards or race so much of the progress we've made over six plus years and bring police and community together. I can tell you I won't let that happen. I can tell you Commissioner Shea won't let that happen. We didn’t all not come here to let that happen. We came here to fix things. We came here to fundamentally and permanently change the relationship between police and community. We will not go backwards, but we have to get it right and that's on us. And I affirm that the vast majority of time, the interactions between our police and our communities are done the right way. There's more and more mutual respect, more and more communication. But the coronavirus has thrown us a curve ball and created situations that no one's trained for and that are really complex and very emotional. And we have to figure out how to deal with those better. So, certainly for all the folks out there have said, can we make sure that in the first instance, the education and the giving out face coverings and the efforts to try and remind people the right way to do things, that those are first and foremost done by civilians and by community members. Yes, that's what we absolutely want, that’s the direction we’re moving in, and enforcement needs to be with a light touch and overwhelmingly it has been, but we've seen a few situations where that wasn't the case and were deeply troubling. We saw another video last night and like every human situation there are complexities, but what was not complex at all was it shouldn't have gone down that way, period. It does not reflect our values. It's not what we want to see in this city. I know for Commissioner Shea and I, we talked about last night, it's painful for everyone involved. No New Yorkers want to see something like that. For us it is painful because it means something is still not working the way we need it to and to say the least whatever else was going on in that video, whatever else was happening in that moment, we should never have a situation where a mom with her child ends up under arrest for that kind of offense. It's just not right.

Now, if you look at the whole story, unfortunately there are problems in the whole thing including, I want to remind everyone, no one should be disrespectful to police officers. No one should ignore the instructions of police officers, particularly when they're trying to protect people's safety and trying do something for the health and safety of all of us. So, we have to work together in this city to try and get everyone to play their role respectfully of each other. But what we saw there did not reflect our values. It did not reflect our goals of de-escalation and we have to do better, and it's my responsibility and the Commissioner's responsibility to find that path forward and we will, and I feel very confident about that. We will figure out a way – if I didn't feel confident about it, I'd tell you. But I do feel confident because we have to do everything we've done for the last six-plus years in changing our department and making it have a closer relationship with the communities and that happened. People said we couldn't get away from Stop and Frisk or the city would end up being more crime ridden, chaotic. The opposite happened as we got away from Stop and Frisk. People said there'll be all sorts of problems if we implemented body cameras or if we reduced marijuana arrests or reduced arrests overall, we are hundreds of thousands of fewer arrests than we used to make and still remain the safest big city in America. So, we've made those changes. We will figure this one out too, but I want the day to come when there are no such videos when people can really have faith in each other, and that's what we will strive for and we will work on that every single day.

Now, a few more points before we conclude. One of the things that matters always, and I said, talking about police in communities, we have got to listen to all the time. I make it a point to listen all the time to people who raise concerns. Well, obviously this coronavirus crisis is one part profound health care crisis and another part profound economic crisis has just done horrible things to families all over the city and the anxiety, the fear, the sheer, not just a lack of a livelihood or the fear of how people will keep a roof over their head or where the next meal is coming from, but not even knowing when the economy will come back and whether their jobs will, their small businesses will still be there. Last night I talked to folks who brought so much to discussion leaders of the small business community of this city who are part of our small business advisory group and we've called together these advisory councils because we need to hear from people their perspective. We need to hear what they're going through. We need to hear their fears and their anxieties and the unknown, but also their solutions, their ideas. What an extraordinary conversation. Small business leaders from all five boroughs, folks who created from scratch, the extraordinary businesses that they run. I want to thank everyone who was a part of that advisory council for the work you're doing, helping all of us, helping your fellow small businesses, helping New York City to bring back the small businesses that are part of our heart and soul. So, it was a very energetic and inspiring conversation even it was against the backdrop of a lot of fear and anxiety. A lot of questions. People had ideas and they had proposals of what would work and a sense of can-do, let's make something happen, classic attitude of a small business owner, and it gave me confidence that if we listen to small business owners, we'll find the solutions and it means the city government's going to have to act differently and do more to work with small businesses and hear small businesses, and it also means we're going to have to find new forms of support from the larger business community, from the philanthropic community to help our small businesses, and we talked about all of that. But there was one particularly poignant moment where an owner of a small business in Chinatown talked about what it has been like since basically the beginning of this year. That against the backdrop of this horrible crisis and the human suffering, that so many members of the Chinese American community and the Asian American community have on top of that suffer discrimination throughout, which is wholly unacceptable and I want to remind everyone we will fight this discrimination. We will fight this bias wherever we see it and we need people to call in if it's any act of discrimination or bias, call 3-1-1. We need to know when anyone has been the victim of a bias crime, if it's obviously something violent and immediate call 9-1-1.

But the point last night that was even more poignant was that people have suffered discrimination while losing their livelihoods, think about this for a moment and let's put ourselves in the eyes and in the shoes of people who worked all their life to create something for their families, created these beautiful small businesses all over New York City then suffered discrimination and then saw their business fall away because of fears that people had. unfortunately fears stoked by misunderstanding and bias that caused everyday New Yorkers not to want to go to a Chinese restaurant. I remember going to Chinese restaurants in Chinatown and in Flushing, Queens to make the point that there was no bias that should be accepted or perceived from one community to another, and what I heard last night was about the pain of a community that has lost his livelihood, not when most others did, but a month earlier, two months earlier than so many other people in the city, many other small businesses in this city.

So, look, it is a reminder to us that we have a lot to do. The city has done a lot to overcome bias and discrimination. We are, we have a much stronger social fabric than we used to even just a couple of decades ago. We will overcome this. We need to embrace and uplift our Asian American brothers and sisters in this fight to bring back our city, but we also need to specially focus on the economic reality of those communities and make sure those small businesses come back and that we all go and make an extra effort to patronize them and help them back on their feet because in many ways they suffered long before everybody else in this crisis.

Okay. It's time for what we do every day, our daily indicators and in terms of getting out of this crisis and moving forward this is the main street right here. This is what matters most and my friends today is a very good day and you deserve the credit because it's because of your hard work that I get to tell you this good news. Every time you stay home, every time you socially distance, every time you use hand sanitizer even, every time you put on a face covering, you're helping to drive these numbers down and get us closer to a better place. Indicator number one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 is down from 78 to 59 that's wonderful. Number two, daily number of people in ICUs across Health + Hospitals for suspected COVID-19 down, markedly down from 561 to 517 so that's a big movement there. That's a big jump in the right direction, bigger than we've seen most days, even when things go in the right direction so that is really important, and that means you're talking about fewer and fewer people fighting for their lives. More and more people being saved. That is a very powerful number, and number three, percentage of people tested who are positive recovered 19 down from 13 percent to 11 percent three for three, a perfect day, New York City. So, let's now put together a bunch of them and that's what's going to help us take the next big step forward. Okay. A few words in Spanish

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, let's turn to our colleagues in the media and please let me know the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Just a quick reminder that we have Dr. Varma, Dr. Katz and Commissioner Banks on the phone and with that the first question goes to Andrew from NBC New York. Andrew?

Question: Hi, good morning, hope everyone is doing well.

Mayor: How are you doing, Andrew?

Question: Hanging in there.

Mayor: Alright, positive spirit.

Question: My first question has to do with testing. You said at the outset that there are now 23 sites where people can essentially get up and go wait in a line and get tested. We also understand that there are some free sites in each borough where people can make an appointment and not have to stand in line. But on those free sites it seems impossible online to get an appointment, and with regard to the 23 sites you have open, there are some in neighborhoods where people cannot walk to them, they'd have to take mass transit or an Uber or something. So are you satisfied that anybody you need the test right now in New York City can get one?

My second question is on behalf of my colleague Melissa Russo, are you satisfied with the job that your Health Commissioner Barbot is doing? And are you responsible for any of the reported tension with her because you didn't take her advice in the crisis early on?

Mayor: So, on the first question, am I satisfied with the level of testing in New York City? Of course not. Andrew, you and I have known each other a long time and I know you're listening to my presentations. I don't think there's anything I've said in these presentations that suggests we're at the level testing we want to be at. I want to be at, you know, to begin with many tens of thousands a day. We've talked about by May 25th, 20,000 a day. We've talked about later in the summer gain of 50,000 date. If I had my druthers, we'd be at hundreds of thousands a day. But I can't get there without the federal government. So, of course, I'm not satisfied. I am pleased that we're making progress and I'm pleased that the labs are working with us to open up more capacity and I'm pleased that we're able to bring more capacity online quickly, but far from satisfied. No, the goal is to have so many sites over time and so much availability that you don't need to see people travel meaningful distances. But that's going to obviously take time and it's going to be imperfect for quite a while. And, again, the federal government has to step up in a very big way.

On the question of the health department – Andrew, look, from the very beginning, all of us have been dealing with the great unknown of this disease and, again, unfortunately without the partnership from the federal government. We have wanted – you know, I asked for widespread testing to be available in New York City starting back on January 24th, and I still don't have it. So, that's made it hard on all of us. But I have worked closely with all the health care professionals on our team, with Dr. Barbot and the team at Department of Health; with Dr. Katz and the team at Health + Hospitals; with Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze, who is also a doctor; with Dr. Jay Varma, who I brought in as a senior advisor – nonstop communication and conversation. You know what, even among the health care professionals, there's going to be different perspectives, which is normal. They're humans and they each have different training, different expertise, different understandings, different perspectives. But the conversation has been constant and we've kept building out a strategy and the strategy, obviously, thank God, is working to reduce the number of cases in this city, and we're going to keep building on it. So, I think there has been a constant consultative process that has led us to get the city in the right direction, but there's a hell of a lot more to do and we still need that federal partnership deeply.

Moderator: Next is Marla from WCBS 880. Marla?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Good morning. How are you doing, Marla?

Question: Good. Glad to ask a question this morning. I want to know where Commissioner Barbot and Shea are at. Why are they not at this press conference? We spoke to both the PBA and the SBA this morning. They want you to fire Dr. Barbot and question why that wasn't done when the comments were made in late March. According to the New York Post, you were at the meeting where the comments were made. Can you tell us what was said and will you ask Commissioner Barbot to resign?

Mayor: Marla, I was not at a meeting where I heard that. What is being reported as I understand it – and I heard about it for the first time last night – is a conversation between Dr. Barbot and Chief Monahan. Now, I don't have the full details yet and I want the full details for sure. I want to speak to each of them and understand exactly what happened, but it's not something – the allegation that something was said that was disrespectful towards the men and women the NYPD, that's not something that was said in my presence. I assure you I would have dealt with it at the time had I heard it in my presence. What I was involved in was the effort to make sure that the PPEs that were needed by the men and women of the NYPD got to them. And I had numerous conversations with Commissioner Shea, Commissioner Barbot, Chief Monaghan and others to make sure that happened. And I felt a deep sense of urgency that I wanted to make sure that the distribution happened and when I didn't see it happening quickly enough, I intervened to make sure it would happen. So, again, I want to get more information. I will state something I feel very strongly, that no public servant should ever in any way saying anything disrespectful about the men and women of the NYPD. They protect us, we need to protect them. So, to me, it would be inappropriate for anyone, particularly in a leadership role to suggest any lack of interest in protecting the men and women of the NYPD. That would be, for me, a real inappropriate statement. But I'll have more to say after I have had the opportunity to hear directly from people. And as for today's press conference or any press conference, we put together the lineup each day according to what we think is necessary and that changes every day.

Moderator: Next is James from PIX11. James?

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Good morning. How are you doing?

Question: Thank you for asking, doing okay. Appreciate that. Now, today, you described as a “very good day” with the metrics. Congratulations to you and the city.

Mayor: Thank you.

Question: You know, you've recently had a few more days with all three indicators coming down. How does that fit into your hope to have New York City be more on course with beginning to reopen possibly by the beginning of next month?

Mayor: Yeah, James, it's exactly what you're saying is right that, you know, the goal of the first steps – and I'm going to keep saying we have to get these indicators right, move down together for 10 to 14 days, we also have to meet the State indicators, but both of them right now could be met in the first half of June. That would be the right time then to lift some restrictions, but carefully, slowly, smartly. And, remember, I keep using that toehold analogy – you know your rock climbing, your mountain climbing, whatever, you get your toe hold, you make sure it's secure, then you take the next one. If at any point things aren't secure at any point, the indicators going in the wrong direction again, that's going to tell us something different and we're going to be very careful and cautious. So – but your question I think hits the nail on the head. The indicators have been moving pretty damn well, not quite as well as I want them to, but pretty damn well. We are getting in range now of hitting all our numbers in the first half of June. And then if it's consistent, that's when we take the first steps to open up more.

Moderator: Next is Al from 1010 WINS. Al?

Question: Well, happy anniversary, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Thank you, Al. I appreciate that.

Question: Yeah, my question has to do again kind of with where James was going with reopening. I'm just wondering as far as restaurants and closing off street, has a decision to made about like Mott Street or Arthur Avenue or Austin or any of these streets that are aligned with restaurants? You know, I know it's been discussed, but is there any sort of timetable for closing off sections of those streets and allowing the restaurants to expand out? Because I know from hearing from our restaurant owners, they're – you know, they grow nerve more nervous by the day. This is hard for them, so they're wondering when can we open and expand beyond delivery and takeout?

Mayor: Al, it's a really appealing idea. I've been talking to restaurant owners too, a number of them on Friday and some restaurant and bar owners on the small business call last night. They're making a great case that this could be a difference-maker, but what I've said is – I want everyone to be clear – first of all, we're not there yet. We have to be convinced that we even get to first base here with these indicators getting to the right place – the City and State indicators. Second, the restaurant piece of the equation, and even more of the bar piece of equation, I would argue, you know, call into question, how do you hit that sweet spot where you have the right social distancing and protections, where you have the right capacity so the businesses can actually be profitable and the right atmosphere, which is one of the things that restaurant and bar owners are raising to me, that they, they need a certain atmosphere to be effective. That's what people want. And so, we have to sort of figure that trifecta, if you will. The streets certainly offer a very appealing option, but they are not – you know, that doesn't automatically solve our problems in terms of when you think about the social distancing, the capacity, the making sure that people are safe and is handled consistently. Even the streets don't instantly achieve all of those goals. So, we have to be smart about it. But I can tell you humanly I think it's a really good idea. I think it is something we might be able to reach. Whether it's something we reach sooner or later, I'm not sure about yet. And I do agree with you, Al, every day matters for these restaurant owners and bar owners. But it's being very thoroughly discussed right now what it would look like, how we would do it. The minute we have a plan, we're going to announce it. But it would not start – if we even got to a plan we had confidence in, it would not start until we were absolutely sure that the health indicators told us it was that time. And we'd still need to figure out the right kind of enforcement mechanisms, working with all the civilian agencies that work with small businesses because we would not want to start something and then have it get so loose that it caused a resurgence of the disease, that would be something that would only setback small businesses much more.

Moderator: Next is Gloria from NY1. Gloria?

Question: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to ask you a question first on behalf of my colleague Courtney Gross, who spent a night of following the process of the engagement with the homeless during the subway overnight cleaning. And we – she spoke with some homeless people who said that they were not giving a place to sleep. I know that she also spoke to the Commissioner who said that they would no longer be taken to the 30th Street intake shelter, but she did see lots of people getting dropped off there. So, I want to talk – ask you about that disconnect, but also how you are defining these numbers. Is it an accurate count of the services people are actually being provided if people are being dropped off at a shelter and still walking away because there was no bed or because they don't feel safe there and it's not sanitary? My second question is about your health commissioner – I don't believe you answered the question about these calls for her to resign. And if you have the confidence in her that she is doing her job well and what do you say about these law enforcement unions that are calling for her removal?

Mayor: So, let me speak to that and then we'll go back on the homeless question. I have not seen all the comments from different unions. And I want to caution that if people are concerned about this issue, they need to express their concern in an appropriate manner and two wrongs don't make a right. And I've heard, but I've not seen that some comments were offensive in their own right. But look, again, I've been working with the Commissioner with the whole health care team. We've been getting a lot done. I need to understand what happened here. I am concerned about it. It does need to be addressed. If what is being reported is accurate, the Commissioner needs to apologize to the men and women of the NYPD unquestionably. But again, I need to hear her perspective, I need to hear Chief Monahan’s perspective. And, you know, we have a job to do here and it's not about – you know, I know many of the questions kind of come down to the personalities in the lineup. And, to me, this is supposed to be a team where it is not about one personality or another or one agency or another, it is about all of us working together as a team to help the people in New York City. And that has to be the approach. So, that's what I'm focused on. Again, I don't want to say more until I've talked to the Commissioner directly. But what I want everyone to focus on, including everyone in my team is how can we support each other in doing the best work possible to keep the people of New York City safe, period.

On the question of the homeless outreach, Commissioner Banks will weigh in now, but I'll say we need to give you very accurate information, not just because you all in the free press deserve it, but we need to be able to understand what we're learning from this experience and what's working and what's not. Now, again, anyone accepting any services is a step forward and that might be hard for people to hear who have not been working on this issue a long time, but if you work on this issue a long time, you know how extraordinarily difficult it is to get someone who's street homeless to accept any change. And, again, we are talking about people overwhelmingly dealing with serious mental health issues and/or substance misuse issues. So, it is a very, very tough playing field. If someone accepts help, that is a very good indicator. It doesn't work necessarily the first time, the second time, the 50th time, it just – you have to stay with it. So, just getting to the door of a shelter is a beginning, but I don't want the presumption to be, people walk away because of X or Y reason. There's been a lot done to improve the shelters, there has been a lot done to make them safer, a lot done to create new options like Safe Havens and each person is an individual and each one needs to be understood individually. So, if there's anything that's inaccurate about the numbers, we got to fix it and explain it. But what I'm seeing suggests major change and it's very early on, but suggests major improvement and a lot that we can work with in a very imperfect world. Commissioner Banks, pick it up from there.

Commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Social Services: Thank you, Mayor. I just want to really nip this in the bud there. We have a bed for everybody. We have capacity in the shelter system. Gone are the days when the shelter system did not have enough beds for everyone. Having said that, I think we've been pretty clear that this is really hard work, as the Mayor said, and to have someone on a subway platform accept help and then when they arrive at the shelter door, make a determination that they don't want that help that night, that is actually a step forward in helping rebuild trust with people who have fallen through every social safety net. It's understandable that they’re distrustful of every system they've ever interacted with because they've been let down repeatedly. To me, at the end of a week or so, that we've got 103 human beings that are actually still in shelter after all of these efforts, is indicative of what we've been seeing for the last couple of years. If you keep looking for what it is that the person wants and you eventually connect with what they want, we can change lives and bring people off the streets. It's certainly true, and we've been saying this since the beginning, that the victory one night might simply be to get someone to say, ‘I'll accept services and go to the entry point of the shelter’ and then not actually go through the process, but that tells us we can really try to reach that person on night-two or night-three. We're not going to give up. Every night we're out there trying to bring people in. We've made certain changes in terms of not bringing people to Bellevue as a default, unless the person said that's where I'm willing to go, but people have free will, they could change their mind, but that gives us an insight into what might work next time.

We're going to keep taking these looks after each week to see how many people are remaining in shelter because those people are on the pathway to coming off the streets permanently as the 2,500 people have come off the streets permanently since we began HOME-STAT. But we're going to have defeats every night too, which is – the acceptance of services on a platform is not necessarily going to lead to the staying in a bed for more than a few hours or even continuing with the process, but we'll know more about that person having gotten them to accept the offer of help to go to a shelter even if they don't stay because the next time we know more about what might be the thing that will help them. And let's not forget we're adding new tools for our outreach workers. In the middle of the pandemic was stood up more than 300 Safe Haven or stabilization beds including a commercial hotel. And we have an active solicitation with providers to bring on even more of beds because we're learning more every night from clients about what it is going to take to have them come in and remain in. But we'll have defeats and we've been pretty blunt about that. Acceptance means acceptance of services, but the gold standard is coming inside and remaining on inside.

Moderator: Next is Erin from Politico. Erin.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. First question is about the test-and-trace effort. We understand that DC37 expressed concerns about it being housed within the Health Department. Wondering what role those concerns played in your decision [inaudible] to Health + Hospitals. Second question, follow up on the homeless issue, I just want to understand if 200-some people went into shelter, are you saying the other 600 were driven to the shelter and then decided they didn't want to go inside? And if so, when you're saying they're accepting services, what services are they accepting, if in fact they don't end up going into the shelter?

Mayor: Okay. So, I’ll bring Commissioner Banks in on that in a moment. On the question of DC37, I want to affirm, I have immense respect for DC37 AFSCME as a union and what the people in that union do for the people in New York City and their day to day work and particular respect for the executive director, Henry Garrido. But I want to be very clear, I did not have any conversation with him about the test-and-trace initiative at the time we made the decisions and the decision was made in terms of creating an apparatus to reach the entire city of New York, that we needed a large operational agency with the capacity to build out test-and-trace. Not on a small level, not on levels we like we had known before in our history, but on a massive level that I believe fundamentally only a major operational agency could do, and one that in the case of Health + Hospitals performed brilliantly during this crisis. And we wanted to bring the best and the brightest from all agencies into it. Obviously, not only Health + Hospitals, but also Department of Health and the work of many other agencies because we're depending intensely on Department of Buildings, on our IT Department, DOITT on so many other pieces of the equation, Department of Design and Construction. We need everyone to be a part of this effort. But the decision I made was about what would work operationally, particularly on such a tight timeline. Not because of any consideration with the union, despite my respect for the union, which is real.

In terms of homeless and what comes in, I think Steve Banks here could help us all with a little more of the human level view of this. Again if all we had achieved, Erin, in the last eight days, nine days, whatever it's been, was a hundred homeless people came in and stayed in, it would be a victory unto itself because a hundred homeless people, that's a hundred human lives, but also again against the reality that's been documented by the federal annual study of somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 street homeless people citywide on any given day – if a hundred people came in in a week and stayed in, it would be worth it for that alone. But all the other people who got medical care, that's good for them as human beings and that also sometimes is the first step towards people coming in. All the people who began to accept shelter, any experience there that opened their eyes to the possibility or started to see the options that we had, the Safe Havens and other options. This is painstaking, slow, difficult work. So, any even marginal step forward helps. Even a single night where someone comes off the street helps. But Steve, I think you could help us by one, the specific question of what happens if someone goes to the door of the shelter and turns away? What do you try and do to convince them or support them even if they get second thoughts about going in? And two, could you help people understand a little bit more about why even that interaction still gives you something you didn't have before with that individual?

Commissioner Banks: Sure. And if I could just reiterate, if you had told me that we would be able to implement that initiative and five to seven days later have a hundred people, you know, a hundred human beings off the street, I would tell you this is a great opportunity to really change lives. And those people are in the process of really making a positive step forward. But I think a couple of days ago, maybe Mayor, the best way is to go back, a couple of days ago, I talked about somebody that we had tried, our teams had tried to convince more than 50 times to come in off the streets. I think that kind of gives you the sense of what happens before someone says, ‘yeah, I'll give it a try to get on the transportation to go to a shelter’. It's not that the engagement issue is, you know, you meet somebody and they say right away, ‘I want help’. And that individual, that was 50 times that skilled outreach workers trying to convince them to accept services and on the platform one night, last week I witnessed, he said, ‘yeah, I'll come on in’. And he's come in and stayed in. But there are other people who are in that continuum where it's been 50 times they've tried to engage – the outreach teams have tried to engage that individual to come on inside and they continue to say no. And half the people on the subway platforms are continuing to say no. We have to look for what's the key to get them to say yes, to have somebody be ready on a particular night. But for the people who are saying yes, they're saying yes because they want to give it a try and then they're not quite ready yet.

And it's incumbent upon us to look for what are the things that will make them ready either that night or the next night or the next time because we won't give up. I think as the Mayor's asking me to focus on, it's a series of options. ‘You don't want to be in this shelter, is there another kind of place we can send you, what kind of place would make sense to you?’ And some of it, too, is we need to analyze what kind of service would make sense for the individual. Someone who's got a serious mental health challenge may not want the mental health services that we think are critical to provide. And part of building trust is to get the person to accept that helping hand that will help them come off the streets. So, it's not a one-size-fits-all. It's a case-by-case, and on a case-by-case basis, we're changing lives but we're not changing everybody's life every night. And that's the frustration of the work and it's the reason why our frontline outreach workers are so dedicated and so critical to this work because they keep coming back night after night to the same person who won't engage. And then night after night to the same person who engaged enough to go to the front door of the shelter but not stay, then night after night to the person who came to the front door and stayed for a few hours but wouldn’t stay more, and night after night to try to get that person to come in off the streets and stay off the streets at least even for a week like those 103 people.

Mayor: Thanks very much, Steve.

Moderator: Next is Brigid from WNYC. Brigid.

Question: Morning, Mr. Mayor. Another question about Dr. Barbot. I understand you want to get more information about this latest report, but I'm just wondering, do you believe she has effectively done her job to this point? And then second question, the NYPD is testifying at the City Council budget hearing today. They have reportedly identified about $10 million in cuts but Council members have ID closer to $50 million, given the lack of scheduled summer activities and lack of OT. Are you willing to ask the NYPD to cut more than that $10 million?

Mayor: So, Brigid, on the NYPD, we're going to look at all agencies with fresh eyes as we go into the rest of this budget discussion. Remember, it's May 14th. Typically, we would be deciding the City budget for next year in about a month. We don't know – the big X-factor here is the stimulus vote in Washington. We don't know when it's going to happen. We don't know how it's going to happen. The House is in the process of doing something very important and putting down the marker of a stimulus package that would actually work for New York City and New York State, and cities and states around the country. But the Senate is going to take it up. We don't know how and when. We don't know if the Senate's going to come back with a different version and there has to be a conference process. So how will that align to our budget process? And Brigid, you know, we have to pass a budget by the end of June. That's a legal requirement. It has to be balanced. So, we got a lot of decisions to make with a kind of moving target reality in Washington. But that will determine what we have to do with each and every agency.

Right now, we're asking the NYPD to do a whole lot. We're asking them to do everything they normally do to protect people and to keep crime down and to provide support to people in terms of quality of life, while also having to play a constructive role on addressing social distancing and all the other realities of this crisis. And again, we have to do better at that, but there's no question that there's a role for the number one public safety organization in the city to play in making sure we are all safe in this crisis. So, I'm not ready to comment on how we're going to handle that budget because it will be absolutely dependent on everything we see with the disease. Everything we see in terms of what our game plan is going forward and what happens with the stimulus. When we get closer, we will certainly talk about what we have to do with every agency. And if God forbid, there isn't a stimulus, then you're talking about really tough decisions that will affect every single agency, unquestionably.

Look again, the situation with Commissioner Barbot in the first instance as you indicated, I need to have a conversation and understand this latest situation. It obviously raises real concerns to me, but I want to hear everyone involved before passing any judgment. On the bigger picture, I keep making the point that I have been working with Commissioner Barbot and her team at the Health Department, Dr. Katz, his team at Health + Hospitals, Dr. Perea-Henze, Dr. Varma, a whole host of people have contributed to where we are now. And I am looking at the progress we've made from a team perspective. I appreciate everyone's contribution. I know there's things that we still have to improve upon. So, you know, from my point of view, I am pleased where we are today because we're continuing to make progress. I know we're not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. I don't spend a lot of time looking backwards. I need to focus on keeping people safe right now and in the future. But again, when I've had a chance to have the right conversations, I'll have more to say.

Moderator: Gwynne from Crain’s is up next. Gwynne?

Question: Hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. So, Crain’s looked at a checkbook, looked at Checkbook New York City data and found that the biggest order the City placed for PPE was with a business who had never contracted with the City. And how the history of tax and other financial issues. I'm wondering if you think the City should tighten its verification process for potential contractors even during the pandemic?

Mayor: Thank you, Gwynne. I mean, look, Gwynne, I would say we have two realities here. Where we were in March and into the beginning of April, where we literally did not know, and I think you remember this and your colleagues remember this. We didn't know many times if we would have enough PPEs for the week ahead. And we – obviously, the folks who do our contracting and the folks who did the effort to put together the PPEs, they did an amazing job. Many, many great people, I want to give special thanks to Dan Simon who runs the Mayor's Office of Contracting. Jackie Bray played a crucial role in the effort. So many good people at the Emergency Management Office who really had to construct something out of nothing to get PPEs on a historic level from all over the world in an incredibly unstable dynamic. And I want to thank Emma Wolfe for her extraordinary leadership, helping to bring together the team that always stayed one step ahead of the situation. And I got to tell you it was so close sometimes, but they always found a way of course. Jimmy O'Neill came in and played such an important role, making sure the distribution was right.

I can't emphasize enough Gwynne that it was touch and go for days and weeks, but this team managed to always find what was needed to protect our health care heroes and protect our first responders. And I cannot fault them for a moment, that even with their instincts, again, since our Chief Contracting Officer was a big part of it, I assure you there were plenty of checks and balances involved, but they had to come up with the materials. But now as we hope we're going to get to a point where we're going to be able to breathe a little bit easier and then start to build up our strategic reserve. Of course, I want any and all checks and balances in the process. So I don't know about the specific business you're referring to. I'll look into that. But again, I'm not going to fault anyone for making sure that the materials were in, in an incredibly difficult environment. And I'm happy to say it is looking better and I think that's going to allow us to be choosier going forward.

Moderator: Last two, Sydney from the Advance. Sydney?

Question: Mr. Mayor this week [inaudible] –

Moderator: Sydney, we are having issues hearing you.

Mayor: Sydney, can you hear me? Sydney? Try again.

Question: Can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, I can.

Question: Okay. I think I'm having Wi-Fi issues. Yeah. So earlier this week, a batch of rotten food was sent to seniors on Staten Island from the City, rotten carrots, bread and potatoes. I wanted to see what you have to say? Do you think it's acceptable that people in need are receiving rotten food in their deliveries during a time like now? And will you commit to resending people who received rotting food, fresh delivery of food right away?

Mayor: Of course. And Sydney, thank you for raising the concern. I heard about your reporting. I appreciate it. We never want to see anyone in need get anything but the best food available. And, certainly, never acceptable for people to get food that's rotten or unhealthy. So, I'm very angry that happened, but I know it can be fixed and I know efforts were taken immediately to replace the food. And look, this is a massive operation, trying to reach New Yorkers on a level that's never been done before with food relief. It's going to keep growing, unfortunately, because of the really tough reality we're hearing about the number of people unemployed and people who don't have a livelihood to pay for food with. So, I need this program to grow and grow and grow and reach more and more people, but always the right way, always with quality food. And if ever there's a mistake and there will be mistakes because there are human beings involved, your point is right. The need to replace it immediately. So, anyone who gets food that's not the right quality, we need to know about it so we can fix it. If there's any vendor who's not doing their job, we need to deal with them. But you definitely have my assurance, we don't accept that state of affairs. We will fix it.

Moderator: Last question goes to Anna from the Daily News. Anna?

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. Two questions about the comments reportedly made by the Health Commissioner. First, I wanted to read you a tweet from the SBA specifically. They called her a bitch and basically said that she should have been fired a long time ago and they're not surprised that an appointee of yours would make comments like that. And then I also wanted to ask – the comment that Dr. Barbot made according to our sources, was the result of NYPD cops trying to commandeer some masks that were otherwise meant for health care workers. Which I can – you know, which might contribute to the strong words that she used. I wanted to see if you could respond to that aspect of it? As well as the SBA calling her a bitch?

Mayor: Yeah. Anna, again, I have not heard the details of this situation. I learned about it last night and I want to hear from everyone involved. So, I don't know what the scenario was. I do know that whatever the scenario was, it is crucial that our first responders have PPEs period. And obviously that our health care workers have PPEs. So, there's no either or here. We said from the very beginning that all of those that we're serving at the front lines needed to be protected. And separate from the question of what people said, the bigger question of, was the distribution happening to the NYPD in the number they needed and the timing they needed. When I heard there was some kind of problem or delay, I stepped in to make sure it was corrected. Because remember, on top of everything else, NYPD was short-staffed, a huge number of people were sick. We were asking so much of the officers on duty, it was crucial to provide them with the protection that was available. So, I don't know the specifics of the context you are suggesting, but I can tell you that what everyone had to do was figure out a way to distribute fairly to everyone involved because there was no choosing among people. Both first responders and health care workers needed help.

Second, what the SBA is saying, what Ed Mullins is saying or authorizing is absolutely unacceptable. He should apologize, but he never does. That language is a misogynist and unacceptable. And I've learned long ago that so much of what comes out of the SBA is divisive and meant to set the city back. I don't know how an organization could be so consistently negative towards its own city and towards its own people, but that's what they do. But no, that's absolutely unacceptable. As I said, two wrongs do not make a right. So that language should be condemned. And I think everyone needs to focus on trying to, in the middle of this crisis, be respectful and try to work together and not divide people. So I absolutely condemn that language.

All right, well again there are some things around us to give us pause, but I want to always come back to the larger truth about New York City. And again, I love this city very deeply and I believe in this city, but I'm also a student of history. And I think a lot of people watching right now, you know your history, you've lived here, you've seen this city through so much. I'm amazed when I see not just naysayers, naysayers are part of life. But some people seem to be taking to it very quickly and assuming like it's an unquestioned fact that somehow the city won't be able to overcome this. And I'm stunned by it because I remember what the city went through in the 60’s and 70’s and it really looked like it would be impossible to be anything like we are today. Or if you remember the days and months after 9/1, there was so much doubt. There was so much fear. People said no one would ever go Downtown again. That never, you know, businesses, offices, people wouldn't want to live there. Well, Lord knows the opposite happened. And time and time again, this city comes back.

So, unless someone wants to root against New York City, I would advise people to look at the facts, look at the history and recognize what we have is absolutely irreplaceable. And we are not up against an enemy that is going to be the same forever. Like every other crisis, whether you're talking about the Great Depression or the fiscal crisis, every other crisis we've been through, it had an end point. This one will have an end point too, history tells us that. In fact in this case we're not going to have a vaccine tomorrow, but we're going to have a vaccine. Maybe it's this year, maybe it's next year, maybe it's the year after, but we're going to have a vaccine. And at some point this disease is going to play a very different role in our lives, a much less role. And the strengths of this place will come to the fore again. The fact that even earlier in the discussion today we're talking about restaurant owners trying to figure out how to open up outdoors and create that energy and excitement again in the city. And they're ready to get going as quickly as possible. That speaks volumes. People are not giving up and people will always want to live here. People will always want to come here. People will always want to do business here because it has been proven generation after generation, there is a magic to this place. So don't get lost in the moment. We're going to overcome this too. And one of the things I think history also teaches us is, the way you move forward is through faith and belief and hope. Not through belittling what the people of this place are capable of. I never bet against New Yorkers. New Yorkers have proven themselves time and time again, and we will again, I don't have a doubt in my mind about that. And again, thanks to all of you who are proving it again by the way you're fighting back this disease. A good day with our indicators because of you and a bright future because of you.

Thank you very much.

2020-05-15 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. You know, we're going to look back on these times and we're going to remember them very, very deeply. And I think there's going to be a story written, a story told of what happened here in New York City and how the people of New York City responded to this unprecedented crisis. And I think it's going to be a story that is filled with a lot of heroism, a lot of selflessness, a lot of compassion, a lot of teamwork and certainly it's going to be a story of people adapting in ways we never could have imagined and with lightning speed, because remember 8.6 million people, all of us together here in one place – and not that big a place, meaning there's not a lot of room, but there's a whole lot of people. We had only days to change our lifestyle, to adapt to a whole set of new realities and New Yorkers did amazing things in those days and continue to.

Now, we have a reputation as New Yorkers that were tough, we’re resolute, we want what we want. Maybe you could call that stubborn sometimes, but New Yorkers have shown incredible ability to create, to make sense of a new reality, to work together. And I’ve got to remind you, this happened almost instantly in the scheme of human life. We're talking about people at a matter of days to make these changes. And they did. You did, and you saved lives in the process. There's no doubt about it. We're going to go over our daily indicators, and it's Friday, so we're going to go over the indicators for the whole week and you're going to see once again the fruits of your labor. And this took immense change and immense hard work and it will continue to. But we also know that a lot of that happened when it was a little bit cooler. And as this morning is already indicating, it's getting hotter. We're about to get into the warm weather in a serious way, starting today and this weekend. And that means summer's around the corner and that's a whole new reality. So, we have been planning intensely over the last few weeks how we're going to address the summer and the warmer weather. I'm going to give you some major pieces of that plan today. There'll be more coming, but we know it's a new reality. And look, the tough part of this is it's going to take more adaptation, more strength, more discipline to get through this next phase. But the good part is we've now proven the progress we can make and how quickly we can change our reality. And everyone wants to see some opening up, everyone wants to see a restart. We're all invested in this. This will be a reminder that we have to lean in and fight hard for the weeks ahead to get us to that next phase. And it will be harder in some ways with summer, but we've also learned how to do it. That's the other great advantage. We know what works, we've already gotten used to it, we just have to stick to it now.

Now, this is going to be a different summer than any summer we've experienced in the history of New York City. And a lot of the things that we love about summer – we love barbecues, picnics, ballgames, going to the beach, all sorts of things. Those things are going to be different for the foreseeable future and there's a lot of things that we would look forward to doing that we can't yet do. Doesn't mean that's a judgment on the whole summer yet, we're going to take this day by day, week by week, but we know right now the lot of the things that we would look forward to doing, starting right away, we're just not ready for. But what we can guarantee is the heat is coming no matter what. And last year we saw some very sobering reality around the heat. It was the 10th hottest July in recorded history in New York City, and you remember those particularly hot days. It's not only uncomfortable, it's not only going to be a challenge in terms of social distancing and everything else we're dealing with, it can be dangerous unto itself. The heat itself, we've learned more and more of the hard way, can be dangerous. We're seeing this all over the country, all over the world. Obviously, because of global warming, things are changing and we're seeing a kind of heat we haven't seen before so much and we take it seriously. We understand the lives on the line. So, we're putting forward today the beginning of a plan to protect New Yorkers – these are the first steps, more to come – and this is all about protecting New Yorkers and helping them through the summer as comfortably as possible and as safe as possible.

So, we have three goals for our summer heat plan. First, protect the health and safety of the most vulnerable. Second, give New Yorkers safe, positive cooling options, different in many cases than what we've known in the past. Third, prevent power outages and, God forbid, they happen, be able to respond to them quickly. I'll go through each of them now. Protecting the most vulnerable – okay, so in every crisis we work to save everyone, protect everyone, protect the health, protect their safety, but we know some people bear the brunt in the heat. It is those who have the least ability to provide options for themselves who are the most vulnerable. Who is that? Many times that's our seniors, many times that's lower-income New Yorkers who don't have air conditioning. It's people who can't leave their home even if they wanted to because of disability or other challenges. It's folks who have chronic health conditions, certainly mirrors a lot of what we're seeing in terms of the impact of the coronavirus, but the heat has elements that allow us to hone in on those who need help the most and literally know person by person, department by department, who are some of the people that need the most help, and that's guiding us in our strategy to proactively get help to people and protect them against any heat wave that might be ahead. So, I'm going to go over some of the key elements of how we will protect the most vulnerable New Yorkers. First, we're going to be providing more and more a growing initiative to provide free air conditioners to low-income seniors who need them. Again, remember, senior citizens often with the fewest options, sometimes limited mobility, a lot of times lower income. These are the folks who are in the most dangerous situation. Many have major preexisting health conditions. Knowing that low-income seniors are the most vulnerable, we're going to start initiative right away to get them air conditioners. We're going to have 74,000 air conditioners in the first wave of this initiative, 22,000 of which will go to residents of public housing. We're going to identify the individuals need the most working with our colleagues at NYCHA public housing, at the Department for the Aging, our housing department, HPD and the Human resources administration, so we'll identify those who need help the most, we'll reach out to them, confirm that an air conditioner makes sense for them, and then we'll begin installations. Those installations will start next week. This is a $55 million investment and $20 million of it will come from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority – NYSERDA. And we are very, very appreciative to everyone at NYSERDA, everyone at the State government for their participation in this effort. It’s absolutely going to protect our seniors and help save lives no matter what mother nature throws at us. The remainder of the cost is – it’s an area of a public investment that is eligible for federal reimbursement. We want to make sure that we get those federal grants to offset the cost.

Second, we want to help lower income New Yorkers with summer utility bills. Now, look, first of all, summer utility bills go up in general. This summer, they could go up a lot more because more and more people are staying home sheltering in place. On top of that, you have so many people who have lost their livelihood. So, we want to focus on people who are struggling to pay the bills and we want to make sure that it can stay safe and stay cool and have the air conditioning they need. So, right now, there are almost half a million New Yorkers who get a subsidy for their air conditioning needs from the New York State public service commission – that's fantastic and we appreciate that. We are petitioning the public service commission to double its current commitment and that would mean for the average customer $160 more typically to help them defray the costs and help them have the air conditioning they need. So, for so many working people, lower-income people, particularly people who've lost their paycheck, this could be a lot of what helps them get through the summer both safely and in a way that helps them pay the bills. Now, again, some of this involves partnership with the State and we are very, very appreciative for all the things that we're doing together to protect lives. New York State gets a home energy funding from the cares act. We're going to reach out to the State and see if this is another area we can team up to magnify the amount of people we can reach.

Okay. Now, that's some of the ways that we focus on those who are most vulnerable, those who both in terms of health and safety and, obviously, economically as well need the most help. Let me go to a second goal, which is to have a variety of safe cooling options in the summer for those who need them. Now, look, again, many people have a place where they can stay cool, but there are too many New Yorkers who don't. And we've always had cooling centers and they've been very, very much appreciated by people who needed a place to go, but there are going to have to be different now because of the realities of the coronavirus. So, we've got to keep people cool to protect their lives and their safety, but we also have to have cooling centers that work for this moment in history. So, we're going to be looking at a number of locations, particularly locations that are larger and allow for social distancing and we're going to be making sure they are places where seniors and folks who are vulnerable can go and be comfortable and have some things to do during those hot days. Again, lots of space will be needed. So, some of the traditional cooling centers will work, but some won't. So, we're going to be looking at libraries, we're going to looking at large community centers gyms, sports venues, auditoriums, arenas, you name it – places that will afford us some bigger open spaces that we can turn into cooling centers, of course, with social distancing, with the right use of PPEs and face coverings. And we want to make sure that there's something to do. If people going to be there all day, especially if it's days in a row, we want to make sure there's programming and things for people that do, particularly if it's families coming in with kids, we want good things to keep those kids entertained, but that are also safe. So, that's the cooling centers.

Second, we're going to be focusing on a variety of ways to cool people and keep people hydrated, this is so much, so much a crucial piece of protecting health and safety in a heatwave is hydration. So, first of all, we know that some of the things that people traditionally do, the beaches and the public pools, that's not in the cards right now. Again, we'll see what the future brings, but not right now. But what our Parks Department will do is create misting oasis – I think that's a beautiful phrase – that misting oasis and spray showers. So, new opportunities just to get people some cooling water on them and keep them cool kids in particular in the middle of summer. And there's a plan coming up in the coming days to take a classic New York City option and use it the right way, which is opening up hydrants. There's a way to do that that can provide cooling for a lot of people, a lot of kids in particular on their blocks, but can be done the right way, the safe way and the way that doesn't undermine the work of the FDNY. So, we’ll have more to say on that in the next few days. And we're going to help New Yorkers hydrate in addition to the other types of food we're providing and beverages that we're providing, either by delivery or pickup, we're going to include a lot more of the hydrating kinds of liquids, the Gatorades and the Pedialyte that will help people during this kind of crisis.

Now, I mentioned that we have a real concern as we always do, but we certainly saw it last summer in terms of preventing power outages and being raised respond no matter what. So, this is a crucial piece of the plan and we know that the more people are using electricity, the more strain it puts on the electrical grid and that's a real challenge. Now, this is going to be a strange summer. By every measure, we're going to see a lot less commercial activity. There's obviously not traditional tourism now, which is a big part of what happens in summer the City, there's not a lot of the big events, you know, there's no big events. And so, the things that often took up a lot of energy won't be there, the whole larger commercial reality, even though it may come back in small pieces, nothing like we would normally see in the summer. But on the other hand, a lot more people home, a lot more people using air conditioning. So, we have to be ready and we've been dealing with ConEd on this early to get ready and we've put new protocols in place with ConEd to see the warning signs earlier to predict problems earlier and take appropriate steps. There are a number of steps that can be taken if there is a danger of a blackout, a looming or an outage looming. And we're going to make sure there's tight coordination with ConEd and a lot more communication between ConEd and all of its partners and government, but also with the people. So, we can address these issues early has been a regular series of meetings with ConEd, a new approach to a situation room jointly between ConEd and our emergency management leadership. Our mandate to ConEd is to alert us even the slightest sign of a problem so we can all act together, and we can inform the public. And the public always plays a role here because the public can make adjustments in the way people are using energy and that makes a big, big impact.

Now, one of the things that happened last summer we saw some particular problems in Brooklyn and what's called the Flatbush network of ConEd. ConEd has replaced a lot of the equipment in that network, 70 power line sections replaced, updated the relay switches on 15 sections that supply the grid. Replaced more than half the rubber cable so far with the rest being done by the end of May. So, we insisted and contacted a credit is acting aggressively that this was the place we saw last summer that needed real structural work and that work has been done and is being done. But again, we will be ready for anything and so in terms of response, God forbid we see a problem. We right now have 60 portable generators ready for emergency deployment, we are going to add 22 more large generators that will be available to us for the summer months. We're going to preset pre-stage those around the City so they can be moved quickly to places that need them.

Also, we want to focus on our seniors, we want to focus on nursing homes and adult care facilities. We need to make sure, and this is something we'll work closely with the State on, that every facility has a plan in place and is ready if there's ever an outage. And we're going to work with the State and certainly encourage the State to mandate that every one of these adult facilities and nursing homes has generator capacity ready to go in the event of a crisis. So, we'll be working on this every day as we get into the summer to prepare to protect everyone, but particular focus again on our seniors. So, this is the beginning of the plan more to come, it's as usual going to require all of us to think a little differently, do some things differently, watch out for each other, something New Yorkers do really, really well. Watch out for their fellow New Yorkers. If the results of the last weeks are any indication, people are going to make these adjustments to help each other out and help us move forward the same way we have already.

Okay. Now I want to come to a very sober topic and it's one we've been talking about now over the last week or more and it is one that has continuing to cause tremendous concern to all of us, which is pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, P.M.I.S. This is about protecting our kids from something that we are seeing differently than we've seen before. And again, a huge amount of energy is being expended in the medical field, not just here in New York City but all over to understand what's happening here and address it as quickly as possible. So, the numbers continue to concern us, we now have 110 confirmed cases, 54 percent of those cases either the child tested positive for COVID-19 or a tested positive for antibodies. And as I've said, we lost one child and I want us all to work together and parents to do everything you possibly can to make sure we don't lose another child in this crisis.

So, we are continuing to build out a citywide ad campaign and information campaign to make sure parents are aware. Health Department is reaching out and holding meetings and webinars with providers to make sure they're aware to get the maximum information back to them to make sure they are vigilant. We have preliminary data on the demographic breakout of the kids affected, but I want to emphasize very preliminary cause it's only 110 cases, that's way too many. But in the sense of trying to understand this challenge, 110 cases is obviously a small number in the scheme of things and that the data is inherently incomplete as you'll see on the ethnic breakout. But we want to give people what we have as we have it. So here you see the age breakout, the number one category has been the youngest kids zero to four. The next category in terms of percentage effected five years old to nine years old. The next category 10 years old to 14 years old. And the category we've seen it the least end is 15 years old and up. So, this is initial information, but we want people to see and be particularly vigilant with our youngest kids. We see as we have seen with the coronavirus itself, more impact on males than females, and that is something that's still obviously being studied. The borough breakout here, the number one impact has been in the Bronx, followed by Queens and then Brooklyn with much less in Manhattan and Staten Island. And then the ethnic racial breakout, which again is incomplete because almost 40 percent of this is still not classified, meaning kids that we're still not getting the details but so far again, sobering – 24 percent African American, 14 percent Latino, 10 percent Asian, 9 percent white. Until we know more about the kids that are not yet identified, we can't give you a fuller picture, but again, very much concerned that this looks like it's tracking the same disparities we've seen throughout this crisis. And that is something have to address very, very aggressively with everything we've got. Now, we are going to go at this with everything we have, but again, this case that we know so far, and this is always based on changing information, but we know early detection matters. We know if it's identified quickly, if a health care provider is alerted quickly, it can make all the difference in the world. And that is why in so many cases, children have been saved and they can recover. But every family member out there, every parent, please you see those warning signs that we've been over. Please, please immediately reach out to a healthcare provider. And again, if you don't have one, call 3-1-1 and we'll connect you to a Health + Hospitals clinician.

Okay. We are spending a lot of time these last weeks preparing for what comes next. And it begins of course, with continuing to move forward on this City becoming safer, healthier because we knocked back this disease. I'll go over the indicators in a moment, but everything we're doing, when we think about a restart, when we think about any lessening of restrictions, start with a health and safety prism. That's where we begin every conversation, that's where we end every conversation. Whatever we do is going to be based on health and safety. Of course, we all want to get back to normal, of course we all want to get people's livelihoods back. It's absolutely crucial and we want to get our lives back. We want to get the spirit of this place, the life of this place, the vitality of this place back. Last night, I was reminded that I met with our arts, culture and tourism advisory council, these are folks who do such amazing work, who have such a big impact on the life of the City who give us so much of what we identify as being great in our City. Also employ a huge number of New Yorkers. So, we want them to come back for every reason and this is going to take real work and real time. This is a sector of our City, of our economy that we're going to have to be inherently careful and slow with some pieces of what make up the sector can come back faster, others slower. But we're going to work together to find solutions and I got to tell you, every time I listened to people talk about what it's going to take to come back, we had a lot of practical suggestions. I get a lot of ideas, I get a lot of cautions about what will work, what won't work. This is exactly what we want from these advisory councils and the folks who are putting all this time and energy and they're doing it to help all of us. I want to thank everyone who was on this advisory council and all the others because it's really helping us to sort these things out and make decisions, but what— I would love you to feel the way I felt last night was the can-do spirit. I talked to folks from all different parts of the arts and culture and tourism sectors and they all said the same thing. Not if, but when we're coming back, we're coming back strong. We’re going to find new ways of doing things. We're going to revive the arts and culture community of this city. It's going to be in some ways different, but it's going to be as good or better. We're going to really focus on our own communities and our own audiences here in New York City because so much of this of course was not just for New Yorkers, but people who would come from all over the world to experience our artistic and cultural institutions and that's going to be different for a while. It will come back eventually, but it's going to be different for a while. But you know what also is going to happen is more and more New Yorkers are going to discover what's right under our noses and a lot of things that maybe we haven't focused on enough, or enjoyed, or experienced enough, we're going to come back to. And that was something that these arts and culture leaders felt very deeply, that a whole new wave of New Yorkers are going to experience all that's here in a new and special manner. So, a hopeful, positive meeting, a lot to be done, but real, real devotion to coming back and coming back strong.

Now, there's been a lot we've talked about in recent days about how to make sure as we continue toward that better situation that we hold on tight to what we've achieved with shelter in place with social distancing, with face coverings, the things that have been working, the things that have been driving down and driving back this disease. A lot of talk about how to do it, how to sustain it, and the role that enforcement plays in that equation – the role of the NYPD. So, we've been talking a lot here and had numerous conversations with Commissioner Shea and his team and a whole lot of conversation with elected officials and community leaders who have offered a lot of insight, a lot of concern, but a lot of insight as well - a lot of suggestions, a lot of ideas. And I think what's become clear in recent days is we're balancing a very complex equation here. Health and safety come first – unquestionably. We're dealing with a pandemic; we're dealing with the biggest healthcare crisis in a century. We have to get it right. Enforcement is always a part of protecting people's safety for time immemorial. But at the same time, we have something very precious that we have achieved here in this city in changing relationship between police and community, in reinventing our approach to policing, in reducing crime because there's more of a bond between police and community. And that's also about protecting people's safety and we need to protect that. So, we do not in any way, shape or form want to slide backwards and undermine that precious bond that's been growing and improving between police and community. As we've talked it through and thought about how to apply a neighborhood policing approach – the strategy that's been working – how to apply it in the middle of a pandemic, it became clear that everyone deserves more clarity. And I said, you know, yesterday that Commissioner Shea and I are responsible to inform the people of the city and our officers, what's expected of everyone and we needed to do that in a way that made sort of clearer, sharper sense to people. And so, I want to talk about a reset in our approach today, which I think will clear things up and make it work better. And as I mentioned, talking to a lot of community leaders, I want to give a special credit to three elected officials in particular offered ideas and insights that really informed a lot of my thinking as we went into this new approach. I want to give a special thanks to Congressmember Yvette Clarke, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, and Assemblymember Tremaine Wright. All of them really gave very constructive ideas and referenced the, the deep trauma that communities have felt over the years and the problems and the history that we have to fight our way out of and why we need to protect the progress we've made in relationship between police and community and come up with a clearer set of instructions. So, the reset will be this, we start with the fundamental notion – the NYPD is here to protect lives, to save lives, and where we see the greatest danger to lives in terms of the Coronavirus and the area where we can enforce is around gatherings, particularly large gatherings. So, that's where we're going to focus, wanting to give people this clarity. And it's literally the bigger the gathering, the more that needs to be done by the NYPD to make sure that gathering either never get started to begin with or is quickly broken up. And again, if we never need to take any additional enforcement action other than the NYPD showing up and people leaving, that's the ideal by far. Summonses are an available tool and they will be given if people do not disperse, but the goal is to not even get to the point of summons, just to make sure that large gatherings don't happen. Large gatherings inherently come with a breakdown in social distancing and the danger of spreading the disease to a lot of people quickly and that's what we have to guard against. That will be the focus of the NYPD. What we will do in other areas is focus all of our energies on educating, on encouraging, on providing free face coverings; that will be done by civilian agencies, that will be done by houses of worship, that be done by community groups and the NYPD will be out there as well, but it's role will be focused again on the positives, giving out those face coverings, giving out reminders to people, helping people to understand what good social distancing looks like. We want to make this a positive approach. We do not want to revive the mistakes of the past. We think we can strike a balance when someone says, I don't have a face covering with me; we want NYPD officers and all these other civilian ambassadors and everyone else to be there with a solution. I think that is the right way to move us forward and strike the balance, but it's also comes with a reminder to all of you that it is a responsibility of all of us to keep doing what we're doing; we have been doing on social distancing and to do it even more. You see a lot of people doing social distancing, right; you see some who are not. Let's all work together to remind people to do it right, especially the people we're closest to in our lives. It's the vast majority of people have face coverings, some don't; sometimes someone just forgets it. That's why we're going to have free distribution, but we got to keep reminding people how important it is and every one of us is responsible and we can create more balance the more responsibility everyone shows in this situation.

Okay, some other important updates in a similar vein of how we're going to maintain proper social distancing, especially as we have a warm weekend coming up. So, in the parks, we've definitely seen some places where overcrowding started to happen. We don't want that to happen. So, in the places where we know we can put physical limitations, we will. So, we'll be limiting access to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, to areas of Hudson River Park, and Piers 45 & 46, and Domino Park in Williamsburg. We're going to create a monitoring approach; NYPD officers, civilian ambassadors, they'll be there, they'll be there early. They'll set parameters on how many people should go into these areas and always be providing guidance, be providing free face coverings. We want to just get ahead of the problem by limiting the number of people in these areas that become crowded and if our approach continues to work, we'll apply it to any place else we need to. And then our social distancing ambassadors, that number is now gone up to 2,260 – that's a lot of City employees who will be out there educating, giving out face coverings. You'll see a lot of presence this weekend. You'll also see in the beaches, which of course are not open; enhanced patrols to keep people safe and to remind people that beaches are not open and to protect against any danger that people will go in the water. You'll see that in the Rockaways, Coney Island, Orchard Beach, and we're going to make sure in terms of addressing those large gatherings, there'll be a dedicated NYPD car in every police precinct that will focus always on being able to get to wherever a large gathering might be to make sure that situation is addressed.

Okay, now we go to the daily indicators and again. On Fridays, we look at the big picture and we see some tremendous progress overall. Today's report, not everything we want it to be for just today, but the overall progress – again, I'm going to keep saying so impressive, so consistent and so much because of all that you are doing. So, the turnaround, you look at this chart, it's breathtaking. We've been consistently below in daily indicator number one, number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, consistently below 100 now for a meaningful amount of time. And again, that's 800 fewer people per day being admitted compared to the end of March – that's just breathtaking. So, that's the good news. The less good news is today's update. Unfortunately, we have a situation where things have gone up from a 59 to 78. So, that is not what we're looking for – still a low number overall, but wrong direction. Daily indicator number two, this is the toughest one to move because it is about folks who are the most sick and fighting for their lives. Again, progress unquestionably – you look at that chart over 300 people, fewer in ICUs than at the peak, that's a very good thing, but still a lot of people fighting for their lives. The good news today, the numbers down from 517 to 506. And then percentage of people citywide testing positive for COVID-19 – amazing progress – again, we've seen consistent improvement, but not everything we need. We still have to keep going. And again, today, wrong direction, only by one point, but wrong direction from 11 percent to 12 percent.

So, concluding that – not the day we wanted today. We've had some very, very good days lately and we've also had some days that were imperfect. Overall direction, absolutely right, but to get to that restart, we need to go further. So, take it personally. That means every time you practice social distancing, every time you put on the face covering, every time you help make sure there are not large gatherings. And if you see or hear anything about a large gathering, please call it into 3-1-1 immediately. We need to do more. We're clearly making progress, but we need to do more to get to that next step. Okay, few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

Okay. With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media and, as always, please remind me of the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Good morning, everyone. We’ll now begin our Q&A. As a reminder, we have Deputy Mayor Perea-Henze, OEM Commissioner Criswell, Social Services Commissioner Steve Banks, and Dr. Eric Wei, Vice President and Chief Quality Officer of New York City Health + Hospitals also on the line. First question today goes to Julia from the New York Post.

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor. And a happy belated birthday and anniversary to you and the First Lady. I would have extended the well wishes yesterday and Friday, but I wasn't called on. So, I'd like to get to my two questions now about the Health Commissioner. One, you said yesterday you had no idea about the exchange between Dr. Barbot and Chief Monahan, but Chief Monahan said yesterday he told City Hall immediately after the incident and Barbot called him 30 minutes later to apologize. So, who at City Hall knew about this and why weren't you informed? And then, you also said yesterday you would speak to Barbot and Monahan to determine next steps. Have you had those conversations? If so, what were the results? If not, when will you be speaking with them?

Mayor: On the first part, Julia, I don't know why I wasn't informed, but I wasn't informed. On the second part, I've talked to Chief Monaghan and I will be speaking to Commissioner Barbot this weekend.

Moderator: Next we have David Evans from ABC.

Question: Good morning, Mayor. I wanted to ask you about two different things. First of all, the reset with the police enforcement that you talked about on social distancing and the expansion at least into Sheep Meadow. I take it [inaudible] what you're saying is that police are no longer going to be doing the one-on-one enforcement, telling people you need to wear a mask, you can't go into the subway, etc. The second question that I have is about the Governor overnight extending the stay at home order, the emergency declaration until June 13th. When did you first hear about it? How did you hear about it and what does that mean? I mean, if you on June 7th say we have all seven categories, we meet those numbers, can you go ahead and open or are you going to have to wait down until 13th?

Mayor: So, Dave, thank you. On the second one, again, we've been closely coordinated with the Governor's team throughout. There's been tremendous agreement on the strategic approach. And I know the Governor takes a cautious approach, as do I. I've said that our indicators consistently both the State and the City ones are pointing us towards the first half of June. But we're – that's when we get to the point where we can even think about relaxing restrictions. Anything we do would be in close coordination with the State. And look, if conditions suddenly became more favorable, we'd have that conversation with the State and obviously we and they could make adjustments. But, right now, I think we're all aligned that the first half of June is the earliest opportunity for even some lessening of restrictions and we'll work together on that. On the police department – yes, I think you have it right, Dave. We are going to focus the police consistently on gatherings, particularly the largest gatherings. We want to make sure that people understand when you gather, you create a danger for the people around you and for the whole city and that's where the police can have the biggest health and safety impact, that's where the focus will be. There’s actually been a lot of good work done in recent weeks, stopping gatherings before they start, getting them to clear out quickly – that's where we're going to focus. But the more individual work, we're going to, again, have a lot of ambassadors out there, a lot of community-based organizations. And a lot of the elected officials made this point – it was a very fair point, that there's a positive approach that can work, and the NYPD can play an obvious role in that too, reminding people, giving out the face coverings. But it's a better way to approach things to focus on where the biggest health and safety problems are and continue the positive collaborative relationship between the NYPD and the community on so many other fronts.

Moderator: The next is Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to ask when the last time you spoke to Commissioner Barbot was? And, if it was a relatively long time ago, why haven't you spoken to her? We're in the middle of a pandemic, one would think you would need to speak to your health commissioner certainly daily, if not more often.

Mayor: Yeah. Yoav, I've been speaking with the Commissioner constantly throughout this. And I'll remind you, we have a team of health care leaders and I am speaking to an any number of them each and every day. A couple of days ago was the last time I talked to the Commissioner. And again, we're going to have a more detailed discussion this weekend. And this has been going on for months now, we've all been communicating constantly.

Moderator: Next is Al Jones from 1010 WINS.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. A two-parter – New Jerseys is set to open its beaches here in about a week. You mentioned though that beaches in the city are not in the card at this time for the summer – why? And then the other one is, estimates as many as 80, 85, 87 percent of restaurants have been unable to pay their full or partial rent this past month. Is there a real danger that when New York City opens or reopens or a lot of restaurants won't?

Mayor: Al, having now talked to a number of restaurant bar owners over the last few days, this is a distinct danger. And, you know, they are realistic about the fact that they don't want to see anything happen that is not about the health and safety of the people of this city, or their customers, or their workers. So, they have been super realistic about job-one is health and safety. And, in fact, I think I mentioned a number of them said they don't feel they can come back effectively until they can get to higher capacity and have fewer restrictions to create the right atmosphere. So, this is an ongoing conversation, but I certainly don't hear people saying, hey, let us rush back prematurely and do anything that might undermine health and safety just for our bottom line. In fact, I think restaurant and bar owners have been very, very responsible. But, unquestionably, some of them are in real danger. And, you know, we're just going to do our best to get them back the first available opportunity and help them in every way we can, but it's all going to be health and safety first. On the beaches, we're just not ready. We're just not ready. We are – as you saw today, you know, great overall progress, not enough progress to meet our goals or the State's goals for when we can reopen. And it's painful, because we would all love to be able to go to the beach with the hot weather, but it's not safe yet. Beaches come with a whole lot of people getting together. We saw what happened in California, in Florida – people started just immediately doing what they had always done. It's very hard to create distancing. It takes traveling to the beach, which means there goes the notion of only keeping to essential travel. That's something that we're just not ready for. We're going to look at it constantly, we're going to be in close touch with the State, and the day may come, but we're not there yet.

Moderator: Next is Andrew Siff from NBC.

Question: Good morning, Mayor. Good morning, everyone on the call.

Mayor: Hey, Andrew. How you doing?

Question: Good. Hanging in there. Happy it’s Friday. Two questions – first of all, sort of following up on what Al just asked you, do you think Governor Murphy is making a mistake in New Jersey to open up the New Jersey beaches? Why is it safe for them but not safe in New York? And the second question is, Dr. Katz wrote an email on March 10th, which said the city is better off staying open, schools open, people keep taking the subway. That email and judgment has now proven to be incorrect. Given that, what do you make of what he recommended then when California officials at that same time were already telling people to lock it down and not go out?

Mayor: Yeah, Andrew, look, first of all, I want to remind people what Dr. Katz and his whole team at health and hospitals did – they have been among the heroes of this crisis, holding the line in our public health care system that bore the brunt and held no matter what. So, this disease we all now know probably was deep seated in New York City before any of our health officials knew it, federal or local, and it was coming on like a freight train no matter what, but the one thing we knew is we had to protect our hospitals and make sure they function and make sure they save lives. And I think Dr. Katz and his team at health and hospitals did an absolutely extraordinary job in achieving that goal. I think everyone's going to look back in the medical community and say they understood some things and they didn't understand some things. I think there's a whole host of medical professionals who were basing their judgements on what they knew at the time, but it's been an ever-changing reality with this disease. So, I have seen in the work he has done – and I judge people by their deeds – he's done so much to save lives in the city, I have a lot of confidence in him. And we're all learning – our health care team and everyone's been learning about this disease all the time and adjusting as we get new information.

Moderator: Next –

Mayor: I'm sorry, the beaches. I'm sorry, Andrew, I owe you with the other piece. Andrew on – look, I think the world of Phil Murphy, he's an extraordinary leader, and he has a very different state. New Jersey's certainly been hit hard by this disease, but New York State and particularly New York City has been the epicenter. We are the biggest city in the country, one of the most densely populated places in the United States of America. Our people don't get around by car. I think it's fair to say about New Jersey – the vast majority of people in New Jersey travel by car, that's not true in new Yorkers. For people to start going to beaches it means getting on buses and subways. You know, our beaches, they have a huge long coastline, arguably ways that could spread people out. You can't spread people out in places like Coney Island that get jammed packed. So, it's just a different reality. We have different realities even in our own state. But New York City is New York City, and we're going to be slow and careful and cautious to get this right and to protect lives.

Moderator: Next is Emily from NY1.

Question: Mayor de Blasio, how are you? How is everyone on the call?

Mayor: How are you doing?

Question: I have a question please for Commissioner Banks on behalf of my colleague Courtney Gross. I hope was hoping he could speak to the photos we saw via The City of the presumably homeless men sleeping in the stairwell of the 30th Street intake center, maskless, close together, and not distancing at all.

Mayor: Yeah. And Emily, I'll lead into Steve and say, I have not seen the photos, but I've heard it summarize. It sounds absolutely unacceptable and that's not something we're going to do allow. We're all trying to deal with an unprecedented situation, but that is clearly not acceptable, and the people who work there have to do better, and if they need help we have to get them help. Commissioner Banks?

Commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Social Services: I would just echo what the Mayor said, Emily. This is unacceptable. I have spent my entire career making sure that the City provides beds for anyone who needs a safe and secure setting, and that's our commitment. Those photos don't represent our work. It doesn't matter that eventually those individuals got shelter. The fact that they had to wait under those circumstances is absolutely unacceptable. And we've refined our intake process to make it more streamlined, efficient, ensuring that the staff have what they need. I would say at Bellevue, just to remind everyone, that we've cut the number of beds at Bellevue in half and we'll do more so that we can make sure that when clients come to us we can promote social distancing. And, of course, as you know, we've been seeing thousands of people out of single-adult [inaudible] shelters into hotels and we've been connecting clients directly off the streets into commercial hotels who have been able to set up stabilization and Safe Haven beds, and we're going to keep doing that. But those photographs, to me, are heartbreaking, they don't represent our work, and we have to do better and we will do better.

Moderator: The next is Joe Anuta from Politico.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Hey Joe, how are you doing?

Question: Not too bad. I had a quick follow up on the beach as well. At the – there was a council hearing yesterday and Mark Treyger who represents Coney Island said he was petrified about this summer and he seemed to say that he was still a little unclear about what he should be telling constituents and sort of what the city's policy is. Can you go into a little more detail about beaches being closed means, maybe there's no lifeguard, but what happens with people just show up? And then my second question is on a NYPD. Most of the videos that I think you and the Commissioner has said – has been, you know, problematic had to do with social distancing enforcing and not mask wearing, but could see that one video subway. So, is the NYPD taking any other I guess, are they undergoing any more changes about how they enforce social distancing specifically?

Mayor: Yeah, Joe, I – the fact is that some of the specific encounters involved, that had been on video, some of them actually weren't first and foremost about social distancing. They were about other kinds of issues and offenses and this is all I think being kind of a little confused and that's why it was really important for us to set the record straight. You know the NYPD has a huge job to do keeping this place safe. A crime has been down overall, but there's still plenty unfortunately that has to be addressed as well as all sorts of quality of life issues. NYPD will continue to do that as they always have, and again, they've driven down crime now consistently over the last six plus years and that will continue.

But in terms of addressing the pandemic, first of all New Yorkers overwhelming have done the right thing themselves and we are asking people to take responsibility themselves. We're asking people to work within their families, among their friends to really be reminders to each other of what we have to do right. But we're going to send out all these civilians and all these community-based folks to do a lot of the education and a lot of the exhortation and the giving out of the free face coverings and all that. Also, NYPD will give people reminders and give people face coverings, but NYPD's best efforts would be dealing with the things that are real danger, which is the larger gatherings.

So, what you're going to see is that's going to be the focus for enforcement, and again, the perfect enforcement is if anyone tries a gathering, NYPD shows up and people immediately disperse. That's what we're looking for. Worst case, we're giving a summonses if people won't disperse, but we're not going to have the NYPD focused on, you know, two people together or three people together. We're going to focus on when it starts to be more than a handful of people and we're not going to be having the NYPD enforcing on face coverings. That will be a positive approach where just you’re going to constantly see free face coverings given out. So hopefully that will clarify everyone's relationship to each other and help us get the best result while also really protecting the progress we've made in the relationship between police and community.

Moderator: Next is Mark Morales –

Mayor: I’m sorry, I'd also have got the beaches one there. I'm having a beach issue today. Joe, so to the Councilman's point. Here we are today and obviously normally beaches would not be open until Memorial Day and we're still not there yet. So, right now, we're in the reality that we would be any time we're at this point in the year pre-Memorial Day. We will come out with further guidance because we need to keep people safe first and foremost. So, we have two safety issues. Now first and foremost, addressing the pandemic. We can't have crowds, we can't have gatherings, we can't have people going to the beach, we can't have the boardwalk get crowded, we've got to protect against the problems that come with people being in too close proximity in this pandemic.

Second, we know there's a danger in terms of people trying to go into the water, particularly young people trying to go in the water, so we have a lot of patrols out to deal with that now. But the way we're going to sustain that in the next weeks and months, we're going to have more to say on that in the next few days about the measures we will take initially to keep people safe and to create a clear set of boundaries and rules, and then that can evolve over time if the situation with the disease improves and we get to a point of reevaluating the beaches. So, we're going to have a way we start the summer that may not be the same way we end the summer, but a more specific guidance coming to the people in the city on the beaches shortly.

Moderator: The next is Mark Morales from CNN.

Question: Hey everyone, how are you doing today?

Mayor: Good, Mark, how are you doing?

Question: Good. Good. So, I have two questions. The first was for the OEM Commissioner, I wanted to ask about those refrigerated trucks. What's the status of them? Are they still in town? Have they left? You know, where are they at, at the moment? The other I had was about contact tracing. And where does that stand right now and the build-up of that program is sort of a joint operation with Health + Hospitals and the Department of Health or is this – where does that stand?

Mayor: Thank you, Mark, I’ll answer your second question and then turn to Deanne Criswell on your first question. So the contact tracing effort again is bigger, more complex, a much greater operational challenge than anything we've seen in the history of contact tracing in this city. So the way we structured is to say we need a massive citywide apparatus testing, tracing, for those who need a hotel room and all the support systems, the ability to get them to that and support them in that. This is unlike anything we've seen before. Previously, and we saw at the beginning of this pandemic, you had a small number of Health Department folks who went out and did very good work on the tracing and the follow-up, but we did not have a massive testing apparatus. It was quite limited. We did not have a massive test tracing apparatus. We did not have an apparatus for giving people hotels and food and laundry and everything. This is an entirely different reality than we've ever experienced.

So, it's led by Health + Hospitals because they are a huge operational entity with all of the strengths that go with being a huge operational entity. They are also an independent agency, which allows them to do a lot of things, contracts and other things much faster than a Mayoral Agency. Department of Health is bringing its extraordinary expertise to the equation. A number of key people from Department of Health have gone into this effort working with Health + Hospitals. So, all that expertise is being brought to the table for maximum impact and as I've said, a number of other agencies, Department of Buildings, Design and Construction, DoITT, our IT agency, all of them working together as one team to set this up. In terms of status, we now have hundreds of people who have been trained and they're going to start their work in the coming days. We'll hit the thousand mark of people ready to go by certainly the end of this month. By the beginning of June, we're going to get up to about 2,500 and then build as needed to there potentially as high as five or 10,000. Deanne on the refrigerated trucks?

Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Emergency Management: Hi, good morning, Mark. So, we're still working very closely with the Medical Examiners’ Office and we have refrigerated trucks located at each of the hospitals throughout the city. We also have refrigerated trucks supporting our operations at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal. We will continue to have these here in the city to support operations for as long as we need them. But we are looking – and we do have some still in staging if we have a need for additional trucks in the future. But, right now, again, working very closely with the Medical Examiners’ Office and our hospitals to make sure we have the right amount of resources available to support these operations.

Moderator: Next is James Ford from PIX11.

Question: Happy Friday, Mayor. We've made it.

Mayor: Happy Friday. It's a - even in the pandemic, we still love Fridays.

Question: Oh, that's for sure. We’re adding more days, which is related to my – to this question, which is kind of a follow-up to a Dave Evans question. With this stay at home order in place through June 13th, can you give us a sense of what that means for New Yorkers? Like what, what will our lives look like for the next four weeks compared to the last two months? And is it possible that the city could maybe reopen, start be reopening before then? Also, do you want to share about the stimulus bill vote today in the House?

Mayor: On the stimulus, very quickly. I mean, the House did exactly the right thing and I want to commend Speaker Pelosi, Chair Nita Lowey, Hakeem Jeffries who is one of the key members of the House Democratic Leadership, Congressman from Brooklyn and all the House delegation from the city. They did outstanding work. I talked to all of them constantly. They did an amazing job putting together a package that actually represents what New York City and New York State need to get back on our feet, and we're talking about a two-year package, you know, the years after that will matter as well. But for something that clearly talks about dealing with our lost revenue and getting us back to a whole place where we can move forward. This is a great step forward. So I want to see them vote today, move it to the Senate and I'd like to see the Senate act quickly and really recognize what is going to take for us to recover.

On the executive order and the timeline, again, I've been saying this for days now, our trajectory both in terms of the indicators we go over daily and what we're seeing from the state indicators clearly it was putting us into the first half of June no matter what. The minute you get to that moment where you hit all your indicators, that's when you can start to make decisions on lessening restrictions. Governor and I have been very united in a cautious, careful approach and we both believe fundamentally in avoiding that boomerang. That's the thing that would set us back for a much longer period of time if that were to happen. It has happened elsewhere. We're not going to let it happen here. So that timeline fits what we're thinking. I do not foresee changes before that. But if anything, if we had a sudden movement in the right direction and we thought it was sustainable again, the Governor and I, our teams would talk, we could always reevaluate. We're always looking at the numbers, but nothing moves until these numbers all hit together in the right direction, hit the right goals and then you have to hold it. Remember, it's natural we think in sort of like a perfect straight line and you know, we get better and we reduce restrictions and we get better, we reduce more restrictions, we get better – that's what we want. If you do that the wrong way, then the disease starts to reassert in a real major way and then you are clamping back down. Some places, James actually went to tighter restrictions later than where they even started meaning they thought they had beat the disease, they loosened up too quickly. They not only went back to the previous restrictions, they added on many more. We just can't let that happen. So slow, steady, cautious, smart, and the first half of June is when we'll make these decisions in close coordination with the state.

Moderator: We have time for two more today. Next is Matt Chayes from Newsday.

Question: Hey, good morning, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: How are you doing man?

Question: You hear me, okay.

Mayor: Yeah. How you doing?

Question: Good, good. I'm wondering, is your administration investigating any potential rule breaking or violations of the law connected with the NYPD, apparently trying to commandeer for itself, PPE intended for health care workers?

Mayor: Matt, I have no indication that happened. Every time there was a concern it was raised up the chain of command. As I said, I intervened to make sure that NYPD officers had the PPEs they needed because we needed to make sure our first responders and our health care workers were served and at various points there were substantial reserves available, and the real issue was putting together an extraordinary operation to get more PPEs and get them quickly, and that's what happened, and I want to commend to everyone in Emergency Management the team that Emma Wolfe has put together that did outstanding work finding PPEs one way or another, everywhere, looking all over the world. But it was not acceptable to me that our police officers and other first responders wouldn't have the PPEs they needed when they needed them. So anything that was done was done through chain of command and specific decisions and directions as far as I know.

Moderator: Last question for today goes to Gersh from Streetsblog.

Question: Hello Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Mayor: Good Gersh. But I miss your recipe updates.

Question: Oh, I'm having – my bread is having a dough-saster right now, but that's just a bad pun and it's a terrible situation.

Mayor: Gersh, you coined a new phrase for us.

Question: My tabloid background, I guess. I do want to say Mr. Mayor, thank you because I did test positive for coronavirus antibodies yesterday because of one of your tests, so I appreciate that.

Mayor: All right, and I guess do you say congratulations in that case? I don't know, but I'm glad you have clarity.

Question: My kids are treating me like Typhoid Mary, but nonetheless yesterday several members of the City Council questioned the NYPD budget in a time when you have cut the budgets to other agencies including funding for some of DOT’s Vision Zero work, which I know is important to you. So, this question gets into transportation in this way: the NYPD has been accused of poorly enforcing public space and also has a huge role even under normal circumstances in managing traffic in this city, which are jobs that are done by Departments of Transportation in many other major cities. So, I wonder if you've considered transferring these current police functions to other agencies that could do it more efficiently and even maybe with less controversy?

Mayor: I believe you are leading the witness, Gersh, but I just disagree with the construct respectfully. I look at what's happened in the last six years of Vision Zero and I remind everyone, with deepest respect to all my predecessors, this administration decided to do something absolutely radical and put Vision Zero in place, and I remember the first months, I remember the naysayers, I remember the people said it would be politically unpopular, it would be impossible, it wouldn't work, it would be too controversial and I'm very proud to say we forged ahead anyway and in fact built it bigger each year and overwhelmingly Vision Zero has worked and Gersh I think you will remember even before he became our first Police Commissioner in this administration, Bill Bratton talked about the importance of the NYPD playing on a more directed energetic focus role in stopping these fatal crashes and protecting lives in terms of traffic and he, along with Polly Trottenberg and her team at DOT, folks at TLC, folks at City Hall, we all built this vision together and there has been consistent success with Vision Zero in large measure because NYPD has been at the table and an active full participant throughout. So that's not changing. In fact, I'm a big believer, you've heard me say it in more and as we get back to normal, we're going to go right back to this. You know more and more and more NYPD enforcement on speeding, on failure to yield, more speed cameras, which have proven to be so effective, and we've been building them out around schools. No, we've got a strategy that's overwhelmingly been working, we're going to stick to it. We're going to build upon it. The only reasons for delays lately have been because of work that wasn't happening, couldn't happen under these conditions. But once we get a little bit better, we're going right back to all the Vision Zero physical work, and on the PD budget.

Now we still have real issues to address in terms of crime. We're not veering away from a strategy that’s worked, we’re the safest big city in America for a reason. We're not going to move away from strategies that have been effective. What we will have to do is make very, very different decisions if we have the kind of stimulus that's coming out of the House of Representatives, if that actually gets passed by the Senate, the city can be whole, the city can move forward. We can fund a lot of crucial things and necessary services. But if we do not get that stimulus or if they cut it to ribbons as some things that you've heard of Mitch McConnell say would suggest, then the NYPD budget, the FDNY budget, the DOE budget, the health agencies budgets, everything is threatened. All agencies are threatened. The kinds of – I think sometimes people hear something like, we're in the hole $7.4 billion and it's some kind of pure abstraction. I don't blame anyone for that. $7.4 billion in lost revenue, and counting and growing means every single agency will suffer and suffer big and therefore the people will suffer, and that's what we have to stop, and that's where I'm going to put a lot of energy in these coming days into working to get the US Senate to actually pass the stimulus we need.

Okay. As we conclude, so it's perfect segue actually off of that question because the reality we have to deal with is the pandemic came out of nowhere, became the dominant reality in our lives, but the rest of our lives didn't stop. And striking that balance has been a supreme challenge, but it's something we'll work on every day. Getting it right – we still have to protect people on our streets. Vision Zero is just as important today as it was before the pandemic. Quality policing, effective policing, precision policing, neighborhood policing, just as effective as they were and just as important as they were before, and the world to come as we get back to normal, all of these strategies need to come back strong.

What I announced today in terms of a reset of our approach to the NYPD's role in enforcement in light of this pandemic comes from the fact that we have to strike a balance – remembering the things that have worked. Neighborhood policing has worked, deepening the bond between police and community has worked. Helping to overcome that horribly divided past, helping to overcome the structural racism that pervaded this city and every city moving forward reinventing policing so it would be more effective and more grounded in our neighborhoods. These are things that work and these are the things we're going to continue with. So, this reset allows us to ensure that that fundamental approach will continue while also recognizing that there are new dangerous from the pandemic that must be addressed, and that particularly comes with the gatherings, especially the larger gatherings. That's where NYPD’s focus will be. But we can do both. We can strike that balance, and in fact I have particular confidence because it all comes back to you. Everything we do comes back to what you do as an individual, what you do as a family. No time in our history I think has that been clearer than this pandemic where we see your efforts making the city safer and better and you have a lot more to do. We all have a lot more to do to get to where we want to go. But it's also because of you that we became safer over these years and became the safest big city in America. You working with our police, our police working with you. We need that to deepen and continue and that's what we will do in this city. So, the one thing I always have confidence in is the people in New York City, and I hope you feel confidence in yourselves after what you've achieved when you saw those charts earlier. I hope everyone felt something warm inside, that was because of you. Now, let's take it the next step, together.

Thank you.

2020-05-15 NYC Mayor de Blasio Ask the Mayor

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. And it is time now for our weekly Ask the Mayor segment, my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our lines are open at 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0, 6-4-6-4-3-5-7-2-8-0, or you can tweet a question, just use the hashtag #AsktheMayor. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, Brian.

Lehrer: I see that you announced earlier today that, absent serious danger, the NYPD will not take enforcement actions for failing to wear a mask or a face covering. And I assume this comes after the very disturbing video of the arrest of a mother with a very young child, as she was apparently leaving a subway station that she was being evicted from for not having her mask on properly. Was this a response to that?

Mayor: Well, it was a response to a number of things we saw. I mean, that was obviously a very troubling video and there's been a number of situations where I think there was just a lack of clarity and that contributed to a dynamic we do not want to see emerge. We've worked for six years to improve the relationship between police and community and really get away from all of the problems of the past that clearly plague us still. But, you know, I think it's fair to say when I came into office there were profound difficulties between police and community largely because of the unconstitutional and overuse of stop-and-frisk. And we’ve worked constantly to change that paradigm and draw community and police closer and create a neighborhood policing philosophy, and de-escalation training, and body cameras and, you know, get rid of marijuana arrests and so many other things.

This moment, a lot of community leaders, a lot of elected officials from communities of color came forward and told me they were very concerned that we might be at a moment where we started to lose some of that progress and that that affected my thinking deeply. And certainly, I know Commissioner Shea understood that and cared about that deeply as well. But also, we looked at the question of efficacy. I mean the vast majority of New Yorkers are practicing social distancing and are wearing their face coverings. And the answer I think is the positive rather than the negative. We're just going to do massive face covering distribution. We're going to have more and more civilian ambassadors out, people educating people, warning people, more and more community-based organizations, faith-based organizations doing that locally, and reserve the work of the NYPD for the most dangerous piece of the equation, which is gatherings, particularly large gatherings. The larger the gathering, the more danger it presents to the health of everyone involved and then everyone else who might be affected by people getting infected at the gathering and bring it home to their families and people in their lives. So, that's where the focus will be, not on these individual situations. I think that's going to be healthier.

Lehrer: How do you explain the backsliding on your watch of progress with the NYPD? For so much of your tenure, you had Police Commissioner O’Neill who had, you know, a reputation as being a progressive, community-oriented police commissioner. I'm not as familiar with Commissioner Shea who hasn't been there that long. But this was one of your priorities from the start. You just acknowledged that community leaders have been saying there's been backsliding and now –

Mayor: Respectfully, Brian, that's your word. I'm not using that [inaudible] –

Lehrer: What was your – what was your word?

Mayor: I'm saying there was concern that this is something that's been going on for a few weeks, Brian. I want to really push back and say we've had neighborhood policing, de-escalation training, all of these things, deep seated for years. The entire composition of the NYPD has changed. It's now majority people of color and increasingly New York City residents. Everything has been changing. The first month or so of this pandemic in March, we did not hear particular concerns around policing, and we've only heard them in the last few weeks. There's no question, the philosophies, the approach haven't changed at all. But what there was, was a lack of clarity. I think our officers were affected by a lack of clarity of where they were supposed to be putting their attention, how to deal with a different situation, a different set of ground rules, and community members and leaders were concerned that if we didn't address it, it could start to cause some diminution of the progress. That's where I'm very clear, we heard it, we're making this – we're clarifying the instructions to the officers, clarifying the expectations for the public. But I do not for a moment – for God's sake, almost six-and-a-half years of incessantly changing the relationship between police and community, that is not undermined in just a few weeks, but if we didn't address it, there was a fear that it could be and that's why we took action.

Lehrer: But then how do you explain the fact that there've been now at least three, that I know of, videos of these bad arrests and those just are the ones where there happens to be a bystander shooting video and the numbers that show overwhelmingly the arrests for social distancing related things are of people of color – when it looks like a pattern like that and you talk about a few bad apples, you have to ask the question, is there something wrong with the barrel?

Mayor: No. And, Brian, I respect you and I respect the question but I think you are not reflecting the facts, respectfully. And I've said this publicly and I'm just going to call out any time I think people are offering an analysis without the benefit of facts. There's 8.6 million people here. There's 36,000 cops. The vast majority of interactions have been positive. In fact, there's plenty of examples we've seen during this pandemic of cops saving people's lives, helping people out in all communities, giving out face coverings, all sorts of things. And there's a handful of videos that have been very deeply problematic and unacceptable, but we are not going to – if I put it the other way around, I think you have to acknowledge the few bad apples and not condemn all the people who are working every day trying to get it right, trying to work with communities. Do not condemn them, Brian, do not undermine their efforts, do not undermine the amount of change that's been made.

And you may not know Commissioner Shea as well, and I respect that earlier point, but he was one of the architects of neighborhood policing along with Jimmy O'Neill and Bill Bratton, and he's been part of our leadership team from the very beginning of the administration. So, no, I don't want people – the number of arrests has been so few. The number of summonses since this crisis began, fewer than 10 summonses per day in the entire city of 8.6 million people. So, there's disparity and I don't accept the disparity. And I made that clear and the Commissioner understands it and we're going to work to fix it. But let's get really clear. When there's been fewer than 10 summonses a day that you cannot indict 36,000 members of the NYPD and the whole vision of neighborhood policing based on so little activity when you have to put that against everything that's been done in six-and-a-half years. So, I just fundamentally disagree. But it was right that when people said, ‘Hey, watch out, if we don't make the right adjustment, it could start to undermine the progress we made’. That was a fair critique. I heard it. Dermot heard it, we acted on it.

Lehrer: And when – last thing on this – when Commissioner Shea said this week that there was a danger of violence against the police and he referenced past assassinations of police officers and assassination attempts, was that going too far? People need to be able to raise their voices in protest when there's something to protest without at every turn being, saying this is inciting people to anti-police violence.

Mayor: Well, I understand that concern for sure. And let me first affirm the positive of what you're saying. Absolutely, people need to be able to raise their voices. And it is crucial that if something's not good enough, people speak up because I'm listening. I know Dermot is listening, we'll do things about it. So, a hundred percent need that democratic process, the checks and balance that comes with a healthy democratic debate, and the cell phone videos are part of what has educated everyone about things that need to be better and about some individuals who are not doing their job right. And that's important, that's crucial. He was saying something else – and I think, Brian, this is a case where the Commissioner really spoke from the heart, probably a, you know, five, six minute statement that was very, very thoughtful and talked about the things that needed to be fixed from the past, the things we're doing now that are working, the things we have to do better.

But he also made clear that there has to be an understanding that we all are in this together. And I think that was what he was trying to get at. That when the concerns are raised, we have to raise them in the spirit of we're all trying to figure this out together and that's what the vast majority of people do. And then we have seen some people along the way who have used rhetoric that's just profoundly violent and negative towards police officers across the board no matter who they are, no matter what they do. And that is dangerous unto itself. And he's raised that because he has seen these tragedies happen to officers as well. So, I wish in this city we could take the kinds of steps in terms of policing, in terms of our mindset that we are seeing us all do together in this pandemic. In this pandemic, people are actually working together as one team of 8.6 million people. We've come a long way on policing and police-community relations but to really break through to the next level, everyone's got to decide that we're going to work this out together. And that's what we've tried to build a foundation for in neighborhood policing.

So, critiques, yes, and in fact, a lot of the leaders I mentioned some particularly this morning, Borough President Eric Adams from Brooklyn and Congressmember Yvette Clarke from Brooklyn and also from Brooklyn, the Assemblymember Tremaine Wright, all reached out to me and the Commissioner and raised very specific ideas, very specific changes that they thought would work, helped us understand where there was a disconnect and we listened to those suggestions and acted on them. I think there's a lot of people in the city trying to get it right, trying to move us forward. And if we take the spirit that has pervaded in this pandemic and we apply it to the next wave of change we need in policing, I think we can actually get somewhere.

Lehrer: Celeste in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Celeste.

Question: Yes. Good morning, Mr. Mayor and thank you to all the work that everybody is doing with the city. I just would like to inform you, I am a home attending and a homecare. I take care of elderly age 90 years old and my agency has never, never give me gloves or masks or not even a call to see how I'm doing. They're not even have a form for us to connect with the agency because they are close and everybody's working from the office and when they call, the call shows no ID so we can call back. They want us to communicate with them via email and not everybody know how to use that. So, they supposed to have a guideline for all these agency, and provide the equipment for us to work, the PPE, we don't have nothing. The family is providing me, the gloves and the masks. Thank you very much.

Mayor: Hey Celeste, I want to make sure you give your information to WNYC so that we can understand what happened here and how to fix it. Celeste, what is the name of the agency you work for?

Question: The first Chinese American Consul on Canal Street.

Mayor: Okay. And Celeste are you a member of a labor union?

Question: Yes.

Mayor: Which union are you a member of?

Question: 1199, I think.

Mayor: 1199, okay, good. Celeste, give your information to WNYC. We will follow up with the union. We'll follow up with the agency. No, this is – to me it makes no sense and it's unacceptable if any agency is not constantly checking on its employees to make sure they're safe and helping to get them what they need. The union, we've had a great working relationship with them. We've been working with them to get PPEs out to members, so, let's make sure you get connected to that. We've also been doing testing initiatives with the union for union members and that's another thing you can take advantage of. But I would say to all the home care agencies, step up, communicate. And Celeste is right, two-way communication, allow the workers to also ask questions and bring forward their needs. And any agency that needs help, we will certainly work with them. But it's also, these are private companies, it's their responsibility to step up and protect their workers. And Celeste, we’ll follow up to make sure you are protected.

Lehrer: Alright, Celeste, we'll take your contact information off the air. Hang on. Ralph in Brooklyn Heights, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Ralph.

Question: Hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. And I'm going to take the opportunity to thank you and all other City employees during this time to keep up the services as best as they can. My question is actually regarding the emergency crisis management in terms of the near future, for the next three to six months when we're going to see the rent moratorium expire all over the city and the state, and we will see a rising wave off evictions and basically also losing lots of the stabilized apartments due to evictions. And I was just wondering when you're going to start addressing this crisis and was hoping that the city would not take the same approach as with the corona crisis and wait until it's at our doorstep to address it.

Mayor: I appreciate it very much, Ralph. It's a very, very important question. First of all, one of the things I want to see the State do, and I've called for it, is to extend that moratorium on evictions, not just to whatever point we determined is the end of this crisis, but then at least two months beyond. We need to make sure that we have maximum opportunity to protect people, to get them back on their feet, to get them in a situation where they will not be threatened with eviction. And of course, anyone who is threatened with eviction, we'll provide legal support to. And before this pandemic, the legal support we were providing for free to people facing evictions had basically cut evictions in half. And that reality was growing, meaning fewer and fewer evictions were happening because landlords knew that tenants would have a lawyer assigned to them by the City and would be protected. And a lot of landlords have stopped trying to evict tenants wrongly. So we're going to be very aggressive about trying to get the moratorium expanded, making sure there's free legal services for any tenants who need it. And by the way, right now, any tenant who, there should not be any question of eviction, but if the landlord is talking about eviction, telling you you have to get out of your apartment if you're sick, anything you can call 3-1-1 and get support and get legal help right now.

But to your larger point, Ralph, I think it's a very good one. And this hinges on a couple of things. One, we need Albany to help us by passing the Home Stability Support Act. This would be one of the most profound things that could be done to stop evictions and to provide the support to everyday New Yorkers who are faced with eviction. And then second, the stimulus in Washington. If we could get a stimulus that mirrors what the House of Representatives is voting on today, if the Senate follows through, we'll be in a position to help a lot more people and protect them. So that's what we're going to fight for. But you're absolutely right. We need a proactive approach to protect people. But it begins with the State lengthening that moratorium and making sure it goes well beyond the immediate timeline of the crisis.

Lehrer: He threw in a dig there, the caller did, at the end of his question about not waiting until -- I don't remember the exact words, but basically not waiting until, again I don’t remember the exact words, by basically not waiting until we all [inaudible] until the coronavirus was actually on us to take action when he was comparing that to evictions. And I want to ask you about an article in the New York Times today. Just one particular thing from it about the public health official who you've put your trust in more than your Health Commissioner, Dr. Barbot. And that's Dr. Mitchell Katz, who runs the Health + Hospitals Corporation. Very respected doctor. But so many well intentioned people got things wrong early on and the Times revealed communications from March and which quote in his March 10th email to top City officials, Dr. Katz made the case that keeping the city open was the best approach at that time. March 10th, his email said, quote, canceling large gatherings gives people the wrong impression of this illness. Many of the events are being canceled anyway and fewer people are going out. However, it is very different when the government starts telling people to do this. He wrote Italy, quote, is having a terrible problem that I do not believe we will have. So how's Dr. Katz's record in the light of day, if he's the one you're giving the contact tracing program to, rather than the Health Department, which already does contact tracing for a living?

Mayor: Well, Brian, the question, I appreciate the line you're putting in the question, but I think the line is not an accurate one. So let me try and redefine here. First of all, every one of the health care experts that I've talked to, whether they work for the City of New York or whether they're federal, like Dr. Fauci, everyone has admitted throughout this crisis that they did not have all the facts because no one has all the facts on coronavirus. Every one of them has changed their estimation of what we should do over time. I literally do not know a single health care expert who's been you know, perfectly aware of everything that was going to happen ahead of the curve throughout all this. So I've listened to a variety of health care leaders in this administration and beyond. Always trying to figure out what is the right composite of information to make decisions. But none of them has had a perfect corner on the market of wisdom. They've all had times when, you know, they saw things according to the information they had. And a lot of times the information was partial and imperfect because that's in the history of this disease. So the question to my mind about Mitch Katz is what has he done in the middle of this crisis? What he's done is taken the biggest public hospital system in America and prepared it for battle and saw it through. Health + Hospitals, our 11 public hospitals bore the brunt of this crisis, starting with Elmhurst Hospital. And under Mitch’s leadership, they held the line. This is a massive human challenge, dealing with a crisis that literally these hospitals have never seen before. A huge managerial and leadership challenge. A huge logistical operational challenge. And his hospitals held and he played a leading role in our efforts to keep hospitals holding throughout the entire city, which they did. So that was what he was charged with doing and he did it, I think brilliantly as did his team. And he has a massive operation. And the contact tracing effort is not what ti was months ago when we were talking about – you remember Brian, the original cases, we had a handful of cases and it became like a few dozen cases. The Health Department did a great job going after those, they have some very, very talented people who do that work. But it was when we were talking about a very limited scope of this crisis.

We are now talking about widespread transmission in this city of 8.6 million people and we have to mount a vast testing operatus. Right now in the next week or so we are going to have 20,000 tests per day, I want to get us up to at least 50,000 tests per day, massive amount of contact tracing and that will involve thousands of contact tracers, easily could end up being five or 10,000 people. Then putting thousands of people into hotels with all the support they need. That is a vast operational approach, a vast operational mission that doesn't bear resemblance to what the Health Department does. They do great work and their expertise and a lot of their key people have been brought over to be leaders in this effort that's housed at Health + Hospitals. But Health + Hospitals runs 11 major hospitals and 70 clinics. It is an operational agency that reaches deep into the city and employs thousands upon thousands of frontline workers. That's the model we need to do testing and tracing and isolation on a vast scale.

Lehrer: John in Manhattan, you are on WNYC with the Mayor. Hi John.

Question: Hi Mayor.

Mayor: Hi John, how are you doing?

Question: Yeah good. My name is John Peters. I've been trying to reach out to the Mayor for a couple of weeks. I’m businessman who's been in the catering business for 35 years here in New York. I have a large commissary. And I've heard the Mayor ask for people who are available to do large numbers of meals. We have that, we are able to do something like that. I have a staff, I have all the insurances, I have mobile kitchens, I have trucks and I have reached out via email via 3-1-1. I've never gotten a response. So I'm hoping that I can be pointed in the right direction?

Mayor: Well, John, you came to the right place. Brian, I thank you and WNYC always because there's been a good number of moments over the years where, because of this opportunity for me to directly connect with the people of this city, that people have gotten through who had great ideas or real needs or you know, things they wanted to do to help others and we were able to make it happen here. So John, please give your information directly to the folks at WNYC. Kathryn Garcia, our Food Czar, she and her team will reach out to you today. We need you, there's no question. The number of hungry people John, this is a very sad reality. It used to be, we thought that something over a million people were food insecure, meaning experienced hunger with some regularity in New York City just a few months ago. Now we think that number's over two million people. We need all the help we can get. So you're in and they will follow up with you and get you and your team in the game.

Lehrer: And you're right, Mr. Mayor, it's one of my favorite things to be able to do here on this show is play matchmaker.

Mayor: You’re the matchmaker Brian.

Lehrer: When there’s somebody with something to offer and somebody who needs to receive it. So John, hang on and we will take your contact information off the air. And I'm confident that that match will get made. Terrence in Queens, you're on WNYC with the Mayor. Hi Terrence.

Question: Good day. How are you Mr. Mayor? [Inaudible] a number of times and hopefully maybe after this conversation or this little question, someone can take my number and help me with my situation. I just want to touch on the young lady who got arrested with the child and it was so big. I worked as an officer for the Department of Correction. I have family members and I think that sometimes an officer in uniform has to take it a step, go outside of the box sometimes. You know I saw the video, I was disturbed by it myself. Sensitivity training over and over again for these times that we are living in. And also when you have long lines and out on 125th Street today, they had one subway entrance that was open and it's just tons and tons of people walking back and forth. It gets very hectic. Officers are on edge. And I would just like to say that if you can get some of the older officers who got big awards in the department, sometimes talk to the guys who have like five years on the job or less. Just prep talk to them, give them some kind of insight and some, you know, not war stories, but just a little history about how to deal with the public and using community communications skills a little bit better. And I just, if you can take my name after the call and I can tell you more about my situation that I need help with. I don't want to say over the air?

Mayor: Okay. Yeah. If you give your information to WNYC, I'll have my team follow up. And to your point Terrence, I think you're hitting the nail on the head. Look, it is tough on New Yorkers right now. Everyone's going through a lot. A lot of families are going through a lot of pain. May have lost a loved one or someone's sick or they've lost their livelihood. There's tremendous frustration. We're all cooped up. There’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear about what happens next. And then you throw into it, our officers are trying to do their best in the great unknown. They're dealing with a lot of frustrations too. I think you're exactly right. The answer is to constantly retrain, to give clearer, better instructions, which is what I announced today. And something again, Commissioner Shea and I are responsible for, when we see something isn't clear, we got to fix it. That's what we're trying to do with these new instructions today.

But the training and the retraining, this is something Bill Bratton started and it's absolutely been the difference maker. This is where the de-escalation, which is unquestionably occurred around the city. You’ve just – I've talked to people in communities all over the city who say they have a different reality with policing. They have seen a lot less of what they used to see in the past. Starting with when we got away from the stops that led to many fewer negative encounters. But the de-escalation training has done immense, has created immense progress in terms of avoiding incidents. And people need that training all the time. And our officers actually, let's face it, the kind of what we do in way of training has been disrupted in this crisis too. A lot of things have been disrupted. So it's up to all of us in leadership to make sure that the instructions are there and really find a way to keep that training happening. And then as soon as we're past this crisis, double down on the de-escalation training because it works. But I think you're obviously right Terrence about using the folks who really understand it best to teach particularly younger officers, the approach. That's a great idea. And we'll follow up with you on, on your concerns.

Lehrer: We've just got a few minutes left and I want to ask you about school for the fall. You said something this week about possible staggered schedules if you try to open? What's your thinking as of today? And I'm curious if you're influenced at all by the news this week that the whole University of California system, 23 campuses announced that they will only have online learning again for fall semester. And I realized that's college, not pre-K through 12, but California is less hard hit than New York. And I'm curious what your thinking is now and if that informs it at all?

Mayor: That's a good question. And we are 3K through 12, more and more I'm happy to say. And in fact this week –

Lehrer: Just after I got used to not saying K through 12 anymore. [Inaudible] Now it’s 3K through 12, yes.

Mayor: You are evolving Brian, I have faith. And in fact pre-K admissions letters went out this week and a good public service reminder to any parents who didn't apply to pre- K because of all the tumult of recent weeks. You still can, you can reach out to 3-1-1 and get information and our website as well and applications are still open. But anyway, quickly to your question, now I want to be clear. Plan A is still plan A. Plan A has been for weeks full reopen. Remember we're almost four months away. I mean it's not tomorrow, it's a ways off and a lot is going to happen between now and then. So plan A is reopen schools as normal. Then you have a variety of plan B, C's, D's. That could be staggered schedules, that could be a mix of in-person learning and an online learning. There's lots of things we have to work out. How are we going to test teachers and give them the help, the PPEs, whatever it takes? But it's going to be a safety first mentality. But plan A is reopen schools on time.

So now the question of Cal State. Look, I noted it but I do think it's really different because in a university structure you can do online learning arguably a lot more effectively and a lot easier. Talking about adults, every single human being who was a student at the university except for very few, is already an adult and in principle can take a lot of responsibility for their learning and can, you know, deal with the flexibility of schedule and one thing another. But kids, especially younger kids, they immensely benefit from being in a classroom setting. And we know online learning is good and it's been a Herculean effort by our educators here in the city, but it's just not the same and it's not as effective. So I'm going to stick with plan A, but it's going to be a decision that we finalize when you get a lot closer and it's going to be about health and safety first.

Lehrer: Quick follow up then we're really done. How does the outbreak of that toxic shock like syndrome among children with three deaths and more than a hundred cases in New York inform your thinking about school?

Mayor: Well, we have one death in the city and that's one too many. The other two deaths happened outside the city. But it's very worrisome. I mean, now we're talking about over a hundred cases. And this is something that was not on the radar of the medical community just a few weeks ago is anything systematic. And now we see something that's really a concern. And the number one thing to say, Brian, to all parents, all family members, is if you see those symptoms, the rash, fever, vomiting, if you see those kinds of symptoms, call your health care provider immediately. Particularly if they occur in combination because early detection can really be the difference in saving a life of a child. But we take it very seriously. It's a hundred plus kids, obviously our school system is 1.1 million kids but we take it seriously and we're going to watch that one very carefully as part of the health and safety considerations before we decide on what happens with the reopening of schools.

Lehrer: Thanks as always Mr. Mayor, talk to you next week.

Mayor: Thank you Brian, take care now.

2020-05-17 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. Happy Sunday to all. Every day I get the honor of watching the people of this city fight back against this disease and it's 8.6 million people working as one. It's really quite extraordinary how much people have banded together to fight this disease as a common front. And what our job is, here at City Hall and all our agencies, is to keep strengthening that fight, giving you more and more tools to fight with, more and more ways to support the efforts that everyday New Yorkers are doing to help us overcome this disease. And one of the things that's been really gratifying, really amazing is all the businesses, all the organizations in the city have stepped up in extraordinary ways to support this fight. We've had some amazing partnerships with the private sector. I've talked to you about over the last few weeks, New Lab and Boyce Technologies, two of the companies that got together to create the ventilators built right here in New York City. Something that was not created here and suddenly it was because of the ingenuity and the commitment of these individuals. All those companies, dozens of companies who got together on5 the Brooklyn Navy Yard and other places to create PPEs, – didn't do them before, they found a way to do it. Right now, in New York City, so many things were being produced to protect our health care heroes, our first responders, everyday New Yorkers because other New Yorkers stepped up, cared, made something happen.

But the biggest challenge throughout from day one has been testing. I don't need to say again how frustrating it’s been that we've never had the partner we needed in the federal government when it came to testing. And this is the central question of this whole dilemma we've been through – where has the testing been? But again, when the federal government doesn't come through, when the international markets don't come through, what do we do? We do it right here in New York City. We make something happen. So, we have a new partnership today that's going to be a difference maker in our effort to get more and more testing to the people of New York City. And the place we turn is to the largest urgent care company in this city, CityMD. And I want to thank everyone at CityMD for their commitment to making something very important happen here. Really appreciate that they've come forward to help this city. They care about this city. They're doing something extraordinary.

So, we've been working over the last few weeks and found a way to come into partnership on a very, very big scale. This is the diagnostic testing, the PCR testing. It will be available at all CityMD sites all around New York City and that's a lot of sites – 123 sites. I'm going to say it again – 123 sites across the five boroughs. We predict to begin, 6,000 tests a day at the sites, 6,000 more tests per day. These are walk-in sites. They're open seven days a week. The hours differ somewhat by site, but basically, it's 8:00 am to 8:00 pm Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Saturday and Sunday. You can get locations by going to CityMD.com. Now, obvious question, does it cost you anything to go get this test? Well, if you have insurance, they'll simply bill your insurance. That's fine. That's easy. If you don't have insurance, CityMD will cover the cost. And I want to thank them for that. That's an extraordinary commitment to the people of this city. They are stepping up and saying, if you don't have insurance, they'll be there for you. And this is consistent with our commitment from day one, whether it's testing or health care, whatever the people of New York City need, we will get it for them regardless of your ability to pay. So, big deal. Thank you, CityMD, big step for the city. And I want everyone to know this now puts us ahead of our goal. We had said we wanted to get the capacity for 20,000 tests per day by Monday, May 25th. I can tell you we have now hit the goal a week early. We are at that capacity now and we're going to keep growing. So, with 20,000 a day, you're almost at 150,000 tests a week. Our goal is to continue to build that rapidly and CityMD’s really helped us take a big step forward.

Now, you need tests and then you need the tracing to go with it. And to do the tracing, we need an army of tracers, and there's also progress on that front as we keep adding more and more contact tracers. We have 500 tracers who have now completed their training and another thousand on top of that have started the Johns Hopkins University training, gold standard training. And again, thanks to Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg Philanthropies for helping us to make this happen and happen quickly. So, in the week of May 24th those who have been trained by Johns Hopkins will go out and do their field training. The field training literally involves preparing for over a hundred different scenarios, getting ready for real life choices that have to be made quickly and then we'll have a thousand tracers ready on the playing field, helping the people of this city by the end of this month. We'll have a group of a hundred tracers that will lead the way starting on May 24th, a week from today. They will start their work in the field doing the case interviews and then hundreds more will join them in the days after that. That first group of a hundred tracers will work with those who have positive at the health + Hospitals testing sites. We believe they’ll be able to trace almost 2,000 cases just between May 24th and June 1st. So, it's going to be a great start, the others coming right behind them. In the next literally two weeks, you're going to see a vast testing and tracing operation come alive like we've never seen before in the city and this is just the beginning.

As I've said, we expect the army of tracers to grow to at least 5,000, could be between 5,000 and 10,000 before this is all over because we want to be able to reach everyone who needs that connection, that support, that ability to find out what's happening in their lives and the people that they are close to it. We need to find those people, get them to the support they need. So, this vast army is coming together very, very quickly and thanks again to everyone involved in this extraordinary test and trace effort. We're asking a lot of everyone, we're asking you to move very quickly and very effectively and you're doing it. We are very, very appreciative. Now, as I've said before, once you test someone and then you find the contacts and you test them and you're going to find people who need to be kept separate from their families and we use the word isolation and it's not a perfect word, it gets the point across, but we got to think about how to explain this in a more positive light. The goal is if someone needs to be in a place other than their home, their home is too crowded, they can't be supported properly in their home, that's what the hotels are for. That's why we have a whole effort, not only to say, okay, we're going to help you evaluate whether you can properly stay in your home, if you've tested positive, if you're symptomatic, to help you figure out if that can work or you need to be someplace else. But if you need to be someplace else, to get you there and get you all the support you need while you are in that setting, getting through the disease, making sure you're not infecting the other people in your life.

This model has shown tremendous impact in many parts of the world. We're going to do it on a grand scale here with all the support that people need and to make that happen by June 1st we're going to have individuals all over the city who are helping everyday New Yorkers who need that facilitation, who need that support to get to a hotel and get all the help that goes with it. And these folks will be our resource navigators. So, we're going to get community-based organizations in all five boroughs to help us do this, who know communities around the city, who understand what people need and how to help them. And with these community-based organizations, we’ll hire between 200 and 300 resource navigators and they'll be the go to people, understand communities of the city, speak the languages of all the communities in the city, understand what their neighbors need. They will be there and the resource navigators will help make sure that people get that transportation to the hotels, get the food they need, the medication they need, everything, the laundry services, you name it. If people need mental health support, whatever it may be, there'll be, obviously, medical professionals also constantly working with the people in the hotels. But we want an everyday connection with anyone who's in a hotel, in isolation so they get whatever support they need for the period they're there. So, folks are going to know who to turn to at all times and have that personal connection to get the help they need.

Now, when we think about test-and-trace and we think about all this big apparatus being put together, that's what the diagnostic testing, the PCR testing first and foremost, but all pieces of the equation are important and the antibody testing is important, too. And we've said many times antibody testing isn't perfect, but it is helpful. It at least tells you if it's a good test, if it's a quality test, it tells you if you've been exposed to the disease previously and obviously you've been able to beat it, that's evident. So, it tells you something important. It does not tell you to let down your guard or that you can never be once again infected by the disease. But it does tell you you've shown before you could overcome it. That's very, very important. So, in these next weeks we're going to reach 140,000 New York City first responders and health care workers with free antibody testing and another 140,000 everyday New Yorkers also with free antibody testing. So, combined, more than a quarter million people will get this testing. New Yorkers in all five boroughs can start signing up for antibody testing right now. It is by appointment only. And remember, it's not just so that you get the results which you deserve and is important, and of course it's free, but on top of that, it helps the medical community and the City of New York to understand better what's happening with this disease here in the city. The survey that's part of this will help us to fight this disease better. So, you'll be helping yourself, but also helping everyone else with the information that will be gleaned from all this testing. So, we have five locations – in the Bronx at 4006 3rd Avenue in Claremont, in Brooklyn at the NYPD Community Center in East New York, which is an amazing facility. I have visited and very, very appreciative to the NYPD for their partnership here. In Manhattan, Manhattanville Health Center, obviously in Manhattanville. In Queens at 3409 Queens Boulevard, Long Island City. In Staten Island, at the St. John Villa Academy in Concord. To make an appointment today, go online, nyc.gov/antibodysurvey or call (888) 279-0967.

Alright, so that's testing, tracing, all the things that we're doing to fight back, all the partners we brought into play, all the ways we're trying to help you and protect you. And now we need you to help protect everyone in this city because everyone in this city who is able to give blood can give blood and make such a big difference. And right now, we have a challenge with our blood supply. This has come up in recent days. We need to address it. And so many New Yorkers are saying in this crisis, what can I do, how can I help? One thing you can definitely do, one thing that will help for sure, is to give blood in this moment of crisis. What we know happened here is that traditionally in a regular year where people gather together, companies and organizations, there's blood drives, that adds up to a lot. We do them at City agencies, too. But this year for the last few months, blood drives have been disrupted. It's now having a real impact on our blood supply. We need to make a comeback quickly. So, the New York City Blood Center now has only a few days’ supply. We need to make sure that we strengthen that supply. That supply of blood helps all our hospitals, they're not in a position to resupply them until they get more blood from people's donations. Each hospital has some blood on hand as they need it for emergencies, but – and they're all practicing very carefully right now, conservation practices. I know our public hospitals, H + H, are doing this. But unless we have a bigger supply of blood some surgeries cannot move forward. Obviously, things that are immediate and lifesaving will, but others can't until there's more of a blood supply.

So, for all those good people out there, so many of you have said, how can I help, what can I do? Right now, you can help, come forward if you can give blood – and obviously some people cannot, but if you can give blood, we need you to make an appointment today at the New York Blood Center, and this is an appropriate reason to leave home for sure. You'll be helping your fellow New Yorker and helping to keep people safe. You can go online – NYBC.org or call (800) 933-2566. So, again, NYBC.org or (800) 933-2566, something very important you can do right away to help your fellow New Yorker.

Okay, now let's go to a tough issue we've been talking about these last days and every one of us who is a parent, every one of us who has children in our lives, we are really concerned about this pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome. PMIS. The number of cases continues to grow, 137 confirmed now, 66 of those cases, there's a positive test for COVID-19 or antibodies detected. And as I've said for days, we lost a child to this syndrome and we never want to lose another child to it. So, we're doing a huge outreach effort citywide. We're coordinating with health care providers and particularly pediatricians all over the city. We want to make sure that there's constantly the latest information flowing to our Department of Health, learning what we can about the demographic dynamics of this disease so we can act more quickly. And everything we see gives us information to act on. We see, certainly, initial indication of real transparent – excuse me, a real disparity. I'm deeply concerned about that. We have only, thank God, a small number of cases, but if we continue to see evidence of disparity, we have to continue to adjust our strategies to address this. But right now, what we need the most is to protect every child. So, every parent, every family member out there, if you see those symptoms of fever, rash, vomiting, if you see any of them particularly in combination, please immediately call your doctor or your health care provider. If you don't have one, call 3-1-1 and you'll get connected to a Health + Hospitals clinician. Early detection saves lives of children. So, please, if you see anything unusual like that in your child, call immediately so we can make sure your child gets help.

Okay, now, turning to something that is both about our health and safety but also about this time of year. Everyone is feeling – this weekend we had some beautiful weather already. We're feeling the pull of the outdoors. We're feeling the seasons changing. We all want to be out there. We all also understand we're in the middle of a pandemic and we have to do things differently. The idea here is to put health and safety first. No one has to be reminded, we are the epicenter of this national crisis with the coronavirus. Some places in this country haven’t been affected much. Other places in this country were actually affected a lot and for whatever reason decided to reopen quickly even if there wasn’t a lot of evidence it was safe, and tragically we’re seeing in some of those places a huge uptick in the disease. There are places that have been hard hit but no place has been hard hit the way New York City has. We are going to be always putting health and safety first. We’re going to be careful and cautious to get it right and so even though it’s beautiful weather, even though people want to be out there, we’re going to be really smart about what we allow, what we don’t allow for the foreseeable future.

So, there’s obviously a huge interest in the beaches and the State of New York has said that different localities can make different choices and some are deciding in the metropolitan area to open beaches for Memorial Day, the traditional start of the beach season. I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again we are not opening our beaches on Memorial Day. We are not opening our beaches in the near term. It is not safe. It is not the right thing to do in the epicenter of this crisis. So, that decision I did not make lightly. We thought long and hard about it but continuing to watch our indicators which don’t have us where we need to be yet, we are going to be very smart and careful about this. So, what’s going to happen is we are going to take it week and day at a time to figure out where we’re going. I’ve never ruled out the possibility of beaches being open later in the summer but we’re not ready yet. And the scene you see there, that is a typical beach day when things are normal in New York City. That cannot happen anytime soon and that’s what we’re guarding against. Because right there you can see a lot of people in danger and a lot of spread of the disease and we’re not going to let that happen after all the progress we’ve made, you’ve made fighting back this disease. We’re not taking that chance.

And by the way, that’s just the beach. Imagine the scene on the A train with people going out to the Rockaways or any other train where people go to the beach, or the buses. We’re not going to allow that crowding to happen. So, the word is no, not yet, not now, beaches are not open for swimming. They’re not open for all the normal things people do in beach season. So, there will not be swimming, it will not be allowed. There will not be lifeguards on duty. We’re going to treat this immediate phase the way we do through the times of year when beaches are not open. For now, we’re going to leave it the way it is that if someone wants to, from the local community, walk on the beach, that’s okay. We’re going to let that happen for now but if we start to see people congregating, if we start to see people swimming, if we start to see people doing things that literally go against everything we’ve talked about in terms of health and safety, then we will take further measures. We’re putting fencing in and in reserve that could close off the beaches if needed. It’s certainly not something I want to do or my team here at City Hall wants to do. I know the Parks Department doesn’t want to do it. But we will be ready if we have to.

So, what you’ll see in the coming days is fencing put in place, ready to be implemented. In the meantime, a lot of NYPD presence, a lot of Parks Department presence and you could go, everyday New Yorkers from the neighborhoods around the beach, just like you are now, you want to walk along the beach or sit on the beach for a while, fine. No swimming, no parties, no sports, no gatherings. We’re going to give people a chance to get it right, and I believe in New Yorkers, I believe in everything you’ve done. If people don’t get it right, if we start to see a lot of violation of those rules, up will come the fences closing off those beaches. No one wants that but we’re ready to do it if that’s what it takes to keep people safe. In the meantime, we will prepare for better times. We don’t know the day yet when in the future we might be able to open the beaches the right way, we will have our lifeguards trained and ready, we will be ready for that eventuality. But we are not there yet.

Okay. Let me do the daily indicators and again, this kind of makes the point progress but still not enough progress. Yesterday, we definitely had a good day, but not a perfect day because two indicators down, one indicator up, but only by a little today. A good day. Still not a perfect day, but definitely a good day. Two indicators down, one unchanged. So indicator one daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 unchanged 77 to 77. Number two, daily number of people in ICU across Health + Hospitals for suspected COVID-19 down and down in a very big way. This is really, this piece of the news is just playing good news and very important for all those folks fighting for their lives down from 506 to 469 and the percentage of people are testing positive for COVID-19 down from 13 percent to 11 percent so a good day, particularly in terms of ICU, but we want even better days and we want to see him strong together consistently. A few words in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that we turned to our colleagues in the media. And please remind me of the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Hi all. Just a reminder that we have Deputy Mayor Dean, President and CEO of Health + Hospitals, Dr. Katz, executive director of test and trace core, Dr. Long and senior advisor, Dr. Varma on the phone. With that I will start with Abu from Bangla Patrika.

Question: Hello Mayor. How are you?

Mayor: Good. How are you doing?

Question: Thank you so much for asking. I have just two questions. Small two question. Number one, the doctors and you know, the people who understand that kind of disease they’re always warning that this disease can come back again. So, I would like to ask you if it's come back again then how New York City prepared to face the kind of epidemic again? And number two, the you know, we face a huge crisis because of the COVID-19. And what is the best lesson you get personally in that crisis?

Mayor: Well, I think the lesson has been the power of the people, Abu. We asked the people at city to do something extraordinary and difficult and unheard of for New Yorkers and they've done it overwhelmingly. So, I think in the end we have to remember that the power in a democracy resides in the people and the ability to change things for the better resides in the people. And this is what I believed all my life, but I'm seeing it much more vividly than ever in this case, you know, the greatest crisis we've faced in generations. People are making the difference, and I think, you know, leveling with the people about what's going on and empowering them to act is the best way to actually achieve our common goal of overcoming this disease.

On your other question, what I refer to as the boomerang the disease reasserting, we are every day concerned to stop this from happening, that's why we're making cautious, careful decisions. But we also are constantly preparing both for times to get better but we're also preparing for bad scenarios and that would mean tightening up the restrictions. If we have to do that, we could don't anticipate it, but we'd be ready. So, I think it comes back to what people do every day. I want people to take it personally. When you follow these rules, the shelter in place, the social distancing, the face coverings, you're speeding up the day when we can open up more. If you don't follow these rules, unfortunately there's a danger of that boomerang and even more restrictions. So that's the balance we strike all the time.

Moderator: Next we have Shant from the Daily News.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, wanted to ask about reporting from over the weekend that New Yorkers were flocking to locations from bars on the Upper East Side to Coney Island and elsewhere. Just want to get your thoughts on that and if you're contemplating any steps to handle that. On a separate issue, I understand the City Council is going to try to pass the bill requiring a hotel room for every single homeless person. Will you veto that if that passes without a veto proof majority? And any other thoughts on that bill?

Mayor: Look, Shant, on that bill. We're working with the Council. We're in constant dialogue with them. We're all trying to get to the same place in the end. We want to protect people, we want to keep people safe. We also have to figure out what's going to be best in all senses for homeless people, including their mental health needs and other needs. How they can get the services they need. We want to use the facilities we have and when we need others, we'll bring them into play. We also have to think about, you know, the costs involved. Everything has to be looked at. But, in the end, it's about health and safety first. And so we're working closely with the Council and I think there's been a good track record of us working through issues and ending up in a good resolution.

On the bars and the beaches on the beaches the report I've gotten from yesterday is there were people walking on beaches and there were very few instances of a problem. But again, we're going to have a lot of NYPD, a lot of Parks Department out to address anything. And if people, you know, if we have sporadic problems, that's one thing. If we have consistent problems then as I said, we will use the fencing on top of all those patrols. Don't want to do it but we're ready to. But the reports I got about beaches yesterday were overwhelmingly that there was compliance and that enforcement was honored.

The bars is a different matter. We are waiting for a full report cause obviously this is from last night, but I'm not comfortable at all with people congregating outside bars. It's the same rule. If you start to form groups of people and then you know, two, three, five and then it becomes six, it becomes 10, it becomes 15, that violates what we're saying about social distancing. I put lives and that puts lives in danger. So the Police Department will be out, the Sheriff's Office will be out watching very carefully on the Upper East Side in particular. I know we had a particular problem there, but everywhere around the city and we're not going to tolerate people starting to congregate. It's as simple as that.

Moderator: Next we have Katie Honan from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Good morning, happy Sunday. Mr. Mayor, I wanted you do to, I guess, expand upon the beaches plan, this new update, particularly about lifeguards. I'm curious, I've spoken to lifeguards. They said they haven't heard of anything about when they'll begin training. When will the training begin? How long will it take? Will it be different? I know it usually involves CPR classes and swimming and in the, you know, in the various lifeguard pools. I don't know if that's capable. And I know you've mentioned a few times this morning that you will allow people who live in the communities to walk on the beaches, but are you suggesting people shouldn't travel, you know, shouldn't go from Manhattan out to Coney Island or elsewhere in Queens to Rockaway? We're in. Is that one way you want to, I guess, try to limit the amount of people on the beaches?

Mayor: Yes, Katie. Exactly right, Katie. The point is we're still – look, nothing's changed in the status of New York City in the last few weeks. We do not want to see non-essential travel. We want to see people keeping things as modest as possible. Get your basic exercise in and get back home, go to the store or go to the pharmacy, whatever you have to do to get your basic goods and go back home. This is working. We want to keep it that way. So we certainly do not – again, I don't want a lot of people on a train. I don't want to allow people on buses going to orchard beach. I want us to recognize we still have to fight back this disease. It won't be forever, but we have to fight it now. So yeah, the point is we don't want to take away from the local communities. A lot of people live – hundreds of thousands of people live near our beaches. We don't want to take away from them the right to just walk on the beach. But again, if we start to see abuse of that, we're going to take tougher measures.

In terms of lifeguards. We'll start them in training immediately. As I understand it, it does take several weeks. We'll get you an exact date. But, certainly, by the time we would honestly consider reopening beaches with all that comes with that, the lifeguards, they'll be ready.

Moderator: Next. We have Debralee from Manhattan Times Bronx Free Press. 

Question: Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me?

Mayor: How are you doing Debralee?

Question: I’m well, thank you. This is the question, Mr. Mayor, regarding last week's reports on tension and discord within the Department of Health and specifically with Commissioner Barbot, who's again not present for today's lineup. I wonder if you could speak – last time we left off, you said he was going to speak to her over the weekend. If you could apprise us of that conversation. And are you concerned that our continuing absence will continue to undermine the efforts of the administration to provide accurate guidance that [inaudible] follow from the city in a unified way on what they should be doing to combat the virus? And then also, I wanted to speak to the degree to which community-based health centers are being involved or not in the testing process here. I know that the State has lined up a number of federally qualified health centers, but we're not really hearing from the City the same kind of collaboration as regards testing, tracing, that kind of one-on-one service with these already established centers on the ground. Can you speak to that?

Mayor: Absolutely. Yeah, we're – look, as you've seen today, the testing effort is growing all the time. The first and most straightforward way to do this was with the Health + Hospitals clinics and all the capacity at Health + Hospitals that already exist out in communities. That was the most obvious go-to. We're going to keep building from there. The CityMD – 123 locations – an amazing, you know, single effort that now brings so many places into play – very, very high impact. But we're going to start working with community health centers of all kinds. I've talked to you all about the ways we're starting to coordinate with them. We want them to play a bigger and bigger role as this goes forward. And obviously, they can be important places for testing as well. So, we are going to be doing more with them on testing and everything else – announcements to come.

On, Dr. Barbot – again, I don't want you to in any way compare what happens at a press conference to the overall work of our agencies. The work of all of our agencies continues every single day. Press conferences, we put together different lineups each day for whatever the purpose of that press conference is. The Health Department is doing its good work regularly. I spoke to Dr. Barbot yesterday. We had a good and constructive conversation. We talked about the concerns that I've raised and others have raised about her conversation with Chief Monahan. I told her I thought it was important for her to address that publicly. I believe she'll be doing that soon. And the work needs to continue, and we talked about how to deepen the work of all of our Departments as a single team and a unified effort for the good of all New Yorkers. And it was a good conversation. I am convinced we're all going to do important and good work, going forward, to keep fighting back this disease. So, a positive conversation and we're all moving forward.

Moderator: Next we have Myles from NBC.

Question: [Inaudible] on the Upper East side, it was more than just being people outside of bars. You had people doing dine-in at some of the Thai places that are just a few blocks from where you live. And it was a different scene that we saw at Domino Park or at the beach. The beach was packed, but at least people, you know, were spread out. This was a different situation and when our cameras went there the people were defiant, they yelled at our photographers, and it just – is it that people just don't understand what's going on?

Mayor: Well, defiant and yelling at your photographers, I'm sorry that happened to you guys. But, again, I think there's going to be a different reality when the sheriff shows up at NYPD shows up and that's what's going to happen, and all the other agencies. When we first – you know, I made the decision – and I remember the day I did it, I spoke to Dr. Fauci for guidance and made the decision to close the bars and restaurants in this city, only allow them to do takeout and delivery, and we've kept to that ever since. And, overwhelmingly, we've seen a lot of compliance. If we have instances where there's not compliance, I want to know about, I want to know about from you telling my team, I want any New Yorker who sees any place allowing a dining in, call 3-1-1 immediately, and they will be visited immediately with inspectors and there'll be serious fines. And if we have to shut places down, we will if they're starting to violate these rules, because it's about health and safety. And the same with congregating outside – look, if a bunch of people are congregating, that's a gathering. What did I say the other day? The NYPD is going to focus its enforcement on gatherings. So, please share with us those locations and we will deal with them immediately.

Moderator: Next we have Luis from New York [inaudible] –

Question: [Inaudible] antibody test tomorrow, it's part of that new survey. There was basically no criteria for us getting the appointment for our test, but looking at the CityMD site, I see the criteria needing to be met in order to get a test through them. Do you hope for a day when every single New Yorker can be tested regardless of having ever been symptomatic or having ever been in touch with anyone who tested positive? And Mr. Mayor, can we approach the future – as we approach the future when more and more and more testing would be made available and the criteria is that adjusted to include more and more people – what else can you say to everyone out there to make them understand the importance of getting tested?

Mayor: Well, look, Luis, again, the PCR testing, the diagnostic testing, which is still in a very imperfect supply – although, I'm thrilled we are now at 20,000 a day capacity and growing, it's still nowhere near what we want. We are keeping some real criteria on that according to greatest need. That will – that is starting to loosen up as we get more and more supply. It will continue. I would love nothing more than the day to come when that could be truly as universal as we want it to be. But we will keep being clear about criteria. Again, the antibody testing, very valuable, but not the same as the PCR testing, but we still want any New Yorker who wants to take advantage of the antibody testing to do so.

Now, the point to my mind going forward is that testing helps us know what's going on big picture, but it's also about the ability – with the diagnostic testing, the PCR testing, the kind we have at City MD, the kind of we have at the H+H clinics – it's our ability to determine what to do with each person, each family. If someone tests positive, then we know how to help them get support. If they need to isolate, how to isolate. The value of testing is it gives you the knowledge then to act. It's not perfect because things change over time and that's where more and more testing would help us to be able to test people as frequently as ideally. But what I can say to people is the most important thing to do is to follow those basic rules on shelter in place, on social distancing, wearing a face covering when you go out, basic hygiene, washing hands, hand sanitizer, covering your mouth when you cough and sneeze, those are still the basics. But for people who meet the criteria we've laid out, we want as many as possible get the diagnostic testing because it's going to help us understand, but most importantly, it's going to help us in their case and their family, help them to do what's safest and help them to protect their families.

Moderator: Next we have Yoav from The City.

Question: Hi Mr. Mayor. I believe on Thursday or Friday you were asked a number of times essentially to offer an expression of support for your Health Commissioner. She has been absent from quite a few of these press conferences lately. She did not attend Friday’s City Council hearing. So I just essentially wanted to offer you another opportunity to essentially assure the public that you believe you have competence in your Health Commissioner.

Mayor: I chose her, Yoav. She is the Health Commissioner that I chose to put in place. I've been working constantly with her during this crisis. I have a lot of respect for Commissioner Barbot. I have a lot of respect for the Health Department. It was important that we have a conversation to clear the air on some of the recent issues and I think we had a good and productive conversation and we're going to move forward together. So yeah, look forward to her doing good and important work, and I think we all understand this is a team effort. And I know and I don't ever blame the media for focusing on personalities, I’m going to state the obvious, having the responsibility for protecting all New Yorkers, it is not about one personality and another, it is about a huge team that needs to work together as a team to protect people with only one agenda, protecting the people in New York City, nothing else, no other considerations. And that's what I expect from everyone and we're all going to move forward on that basis.

Moderator: Last two for today. Next we have Jacob from Jewish Insider. Jacob, are you there?

Mayor: Jacob, can you hear me?

Question: Hey Mr. Mayor, good morning.

Mayor: There we go. We thought we lost you, Jacob. What's going on?

Question: You're never going lose me and I'm sorry if I'm a week late but I want to wish you a belated happy birthday.

Mayor: Thank you, Jacob.

Question: So, I have two questions. Number one, I've been getting a lot of inquiries about the State extending the restrictions on small businesses and local shops opening, and a lot of shop owners have expressed, some say disappointment, but also the frustration at you know, they were given no guidance and they do not know as to when they would be able to reopen even with, you know, some restrictions, if it's letting one customer at a time in implementing some restrictions in practicing social distancing. So, my question is what would you tell those shop owners as how long to wait and what can be done for them to resume business?

And the second question is the ADL recently reported a troubling report about a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic incidents. Obviously, you have addressed that in the past and this is an ongoing battle. However, there have been some complaints recently that members of the Orthodox community who are more visibly Jewish have been receiving insults and, you know, amid this pandemic going to places while practicing social distancing, while wearing masks, as the ones who are responsible for this outbreak. So, what is the city doing, number one, to combat this dramatic rise in anti-Semitism, but also to avoid these incidents from happening?

Mayor: Yeah, Jacob, thank you. Look, it's absolutely unacceptable and we had a horrible incident and there were instant consequences for those perpetrators, the incident where we had someone in the Jewish community wearing a mask and someone tried to pull it off them, which is just insulting, it's anti-Semitic, it's discrimination, it's a really a horrible thing to do to another human being. Think about the implication too of someone trying to do the right thing and protecting their fellow New Yorker by wearing that mask and then someone tries to take it off them, thus endangering everybody, themselves included. Not only is it anti-Semitic and inappropriate, and an act of bias, it's idiotic because it just makes everyone less safe. So there were quick consequences in that case, those individuals were arrested, but we're going to as always ensure that there is a strong NYPD presence, anytime, anywhere we see a bias, and this has been true in many different communities and the answer has always been to make a strong, clear statement that we don't accept bias in this city, that there will be consequences for acts of bias and discrimination, to increase NYPD presence and presence of other city agencies to protect people. We'll do that whenever needed. It has worked consistently and people need to know there's consequences and it will not be accepted in this city.

On the small shops, very important issue. Look, I keep talking about these indicators every day and the State has their own indicators and we're all working together and it's quite clear nothing is going to change in May. It's May 17th, the indicators on the state level and the city level have not moved enough to change things in May for all intents and purposes. So, we're talking about June as our first opportunity, but we have to keep making progress. So, I say to everyone in every community, if you want to open those small shops, keep buckling down on the social distancing, on the shelter in place, on using the face coverings, all these things. It's literally a direct line between what you do and our ability to reopen anything. We will be providing in the coming days guidance on what that first phase of re-opening would look like, so people will have some time to get ready. But I want to say the shop owners and everyone else, there's no guarantee we get to that point until the indicators show us factually that it's safe enough to do. And then once we do it, we're going to monitor very intensely to make sure people follow the rules. If they don't, there'll be consequences. If we see a resurgence of the disease, unfortunately we would have to put back on restrictions. So, we're going to be very smart and careful about this, but there will be time for shop owners to know what's coming, but it's not coming in the month of May.

Moderator: Last question for today, Roger from 1010 WINS.

Question: Hello Mayor. Good morning. I wanted to ask you a little more about these resource navigators and how that's going to work. If someone tests positive for COVID-19 is living with family, when should they reach out to these people? How will they find out about these people and how do they reach out to these people?

Mayor: So I'm going to turn to Dr. Ted Long who's the Executive Director of the Test and Trace Corps, and I'll only say as we turn to Dr. Long, the goal here is to make it really user-friendly, really easy for the people in New York City who needed that support, to get it, and we want it to be a sympathetic positive process. We want people who need to go to a hotel to feel comfortable doing it and feel really supported in it. So, Dr. Long talked to us about the resource navigators and the role they'll play. I know he's out there, Dr. Long, can you hear me?
 
President and CEO Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals: I'm going to fill in until I see him. This is Dr. Mitch Katz, Mr. Mayor, thank you. And Dr. Long was here just a second ago. So I'm thinking it was a technological issue. Yes, we see that our ability to use these resources will really help the effort. We want people to see what we're doing as a service to them. We think that if it's as – if people see it as a service to them and recognizing that our only concern is that they be healthy and that their family be healthy, that they will then accept the idea that they need to be isolated, whether it's in their home or in our hotel room, and then these great resource people that you've spoken of will take care of bringing them the other things that they will need, including their food, help them with any economic benefits, medicines, figure out how they'll need medical treatment. So I think that it really reinforces the efforts that you've spoken of sir. Thank you, Dr. Katz.

Dr. Ted Long, Health + Hospitals: If you can hear me, I agree.

Mayor: You're back, was that consensus, Ted?

Dr. Long: Strong consensus.

Mayor: Strong consensus. Thank you. Thank you, Ted. Thank you, Mitch. All right, well as we conclude for today, I'm going to say one of the statements you can say in this city that probably would get the greatest consensus, in fact, and I'm going to say this, this is the greatest city in the world. There is no one on earth, no group of people in the whole world as amazing as New Yorkers. I believe that in my heart. And I want everyone to understand we've taken on this pandemic. We have been the epicenter and we fought back. You fought back. The success we've had to date is because of you. Now we have to go further. We have earned our way to the point where we even have the ability to talk about loosening restrictions, we've earned our way to the point we could talk about at one point having beach season again, we're not there yet, but if you keep earning it, if you keep fighting for it, if you keep being as great as New Yorkers can be, then we get there. It's everyone's responsibility. We're all in this together. So keep doing what you're doing because it's been amazing. Aim high, be as great as this city is capable of, and that's the pathway to beginning to reopen. That's the pathway to having a better summer and a much better year ahead. We all need to earn it together and I have confidence we will. Thank you, everybody.

2020-05-18 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. Well, we've lived through a lot of history together. This pandemic, the worst health care crisis in the history of this nation in the last century. So much has happened here, so much unprecedented, and so many firsts. And this has been a crisis filled with historical firsts. We are being challenged in this moment like never before, but some of those firsts really speak to what New Yorkers have achieved together. Obviously, we've never had to do social distancing like this in our entire history. It's unheard of and yet, you know, you've excelled, you really have, at finding a way to do it. We've never had to make our own personal protective equipment, our own ventilators. We've never had to even think that way before and yet New Yorkers have stepped up, companies have come forward. It's been a remarkable and successful effort. We never had to imagine being unable to depend on our own federal government and needing our own New York City strategic reserve of PPEs and medical supplies and equipment. But now that's what we are building because we know we have to protect ourselves and we know we need the ability to produce our own supplies and equipment right here in New York City. These are all firsts and not necessarily firsts we ever would have wanted, but they are firsts that say so much about New Yorkers and our capacity to fight back and to adapt to any situation.

Now throughout this crisis, we've said the thing we've lacked from day one, the thing that would have been the difference maker in the beginning and still can be the difference maker if we got the help we needed from the federal government, would be testing, testing, testing. Testing is still the core to everything. While we're still waiting for all the help we need and deserve, another first – building our own test kits here in New York City. These test kits are the way we collect the samples from each New Yorker. And this is something we would have had to depend on supplies from not only all over the nation, all over the world previously, and now we're making them right here in New York City. So, our remarkable team at the city's Economic Development Corporation got together, and I said to them from the beginning, throw away the rule book, throw away the assumptions, even if we haven't built things here, find a way to make them right here in New York City. And to the credit of everyone at EDC, they took up that mission immediately. No holds barred, no hesitation. They had a can-do spirit. I want to thank everyone at EDC and all the companies, all the academic institutions, the hospitals, everyone they've partnered with in New York City and beyond to achieve these goals.

But from the beginning it came down. Where would they find the partners who could make this happen? How would they find the materials? How fast could they do it? And my clear demand of the Economic Development Corporation was, do everything, do it well, do it in an unprecedented manner, do it fast. And that's what they have been doing. So, a dream team has come together from all over New York City to make things happen. In the case of test kits, this is the essence of what we need and this team that’s come together is going to help so many New Yorkers and help save lives of the people of this city. Who are they? Well, when it comes to making the swabs and that is these things, here in their nice protective package. The swabs, that comes from Print Parts, a company in Manhattan. The transport medium, that is the fluid here, that comes from the team at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Worked to get that right because the transport medium holds the sample and makes sure it is safe and sanitary and can be accurately assessed. A company called CoLab in Brooklyn helped provide the design to put together the kits the right way. So, these pieces came together here in our city, things we would have depended on, companies from around the country and many cases outside the country to produce, are now produced here for our people. So, for the first time in our history, New York City is building and using its own test kits, homegrown New York City products, protecting New Yorkers.

Now as of this very day for the first time, the Made in New York City test kits are in use at Health + Hospitals community testing sites, and this is beginning today. By the end of the week, more than 60,000 of these test kits will have been delivered and be in use. And then we're ramping up from there. The production process is speeding up every week. So last week, 28,000 kits produced this week, 33,000. In the week of May 25th, 50,000. The week of May, excuse me, the week of June 1st over 60,000 of these test kits will be produced each week in New York City. That is more than the original projection of what could be produced weekly. And we'll keep going as far as we have to go to make sure that every New Yorker who needs a test gets one. And remember, this is not just about the test kits that are being produced right now for all of you to use now. This is about building capacity in New York City to produce whatever we need in the future to fight this pandemic and anything else that's thrown at us. This is about building the capacity to produce right here and to protect ourselves.

Now we have to do it because we learned we could not depend on the federal government. We had to do it because we saw the entire international market fall apart before our very eyes. And it was shocking honestly in the beginning of March to see supplies that we had depended on previously suddenly evaporate. We had to do it to make sure that we could have our own reliable supply and nothing is more reliable than what you build right here in the five boroughs. So, as I said yesterday, we're now at 20,000 tests per day capacity in terms of our labs and our ability to test out in communities. That's going to grow steadily and having the test kits to go with it keeps building this whole plan out. I talked about yesterday, the fact we're adding sites for testing. We're adding members of our new tracer corps. All of the pieces, the test kits, the test sites, the labs, the tracers, all of these pieces are coming together to give us a huge robust test and trace program we need to push back this disease and move forward in this city.

Now, constant growth from this point on, so more testing sites. We have the kits. Now, we need more sites. Two more Health + Hospitals test sites open today in communities in the city. One in Washington Heights, one in Midwood. That brings us to 25 total Health + Hospitals sites on top of that five One Medical sites. That’s the private provider working with Local 1199 SEIU. And as I announced yesterday, 123 CityMD urgent care sites now all providing testing to New Yorkers. Added up, over 150 test sites now in this city. Remember just a few weeks ago we didn't have grassroots testing. We were fighting just to keep our hospitals going. Now over 150 sites and that will keep growing steadily. To find a place where you can get tested, go online, nyc.gov/covidtest. Everything I referred to here, these kits, again this is the diagnostic testing, diagnostic testing, or otherwise referred to as PCR testing. This is to tell you if right now you have the coronavirus, the other kind of testing is important too, the antibody testing, which helps you understand if you've been exposed previously to the coronavirus and obviously proves your ability to fight your way through it.

So, in the coming weeks, two big initiatives that are starting now and they'll build out – 140,000 antibody tests will be provided to first responders and health care workers, and then 140,000 for everyday New Yorkers on top of that, combined well over a quarter-million antibody tests. This morning our antibody testing program for our first responders and health care workers began and it will run for about four weeks. This is in coordination with the federal government and I want to thank everyone at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control who came to us with this proposal. We worked together in partnership. They are covering all the appropriate costs. So, this is something that's being provided for free to first responders and health care workers and not being charged to the City of New York either. So that's a very good thing. Again, every individual gets the results, that's good. But on top of it, it will help us understand what's happening with the disease more broadly. So, it's part of a bigger study to help us learn how to fight this disease better. So, 140,000 of our heroes will get tested. It's voluntary, it's up to each of you, first responders, health care workers. If you want it, it's there for you. Now it will start with FDNY, with EMTs, paramedics, firefighters, the whole FDNY family. Anyone is welcome to participate. Testers will go to your work sites. Same with the OCME staff, Medical Examiner's Office. Those will be the first agencies reached. You can sign up to get your test right away and then we're going to reach more and more of our first responders and health care agencies over the coming weeks. To sign up, you go to firstserosurveynyc.com – yes, it's a mouthful. Firstsero – S-E-R-O – surveynyc.com or text TESTNYC to 783-78. So, we're really happy that that's up and running. That's going to give a lot of good information to individuals who have served us so well and also help us all to fight this disease.

Now, turning to a topic we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks, and it is a very sober and painful topic because it involves a threat to our children, and I say every time I speak as a parent, I understand what all parents and family members feel when they feel their children may be threatened. This reality, we are taking very, very seriously. Now what we've been calling it, and the Health Department defined it with a simple phrase, it's not a short phrase, but it captures what we've seen – pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, PMIS, that's what we have called it and that's what our health team has been working every day to understand. Working with pediatricians, hospitals, health care providers all over the city. Now, the Centers for Disease Control, federally, has released some key updates. I want to share them with you now.

First of all, important what they are calling this new reality. CDC is now calling it multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children – MIS-C. So, we will from this point on refer to it also as MIS-C for consistency with the federal government. The CDC has confirmed a link to COVID-19. So, this is important. We've assumed it, but they have done additional research to 100 percent confirm it and they've released a standard national definition so that the whole country, doctors, scientists all over the country can share information, common definition, and we can all work together to understand how to fight this back. Now, again, we'll call it MIS-C. We'll work with the CDC, we'll work with the State, we'll work with other jurisdictions around the country. Everyone's sharing information to figure out what to do to fight this. The Health Department is now taking the CDC’s definition and applying it back over the last few weeks to see what it tells us about the cases that we have seen so far and we want to give additional guidance to parents and family members because there's some additional information that will help you identify symptoms and act quickly. And I always say it, early detection matters, crucially, alerting a health care provider if your child needs to get to a health care facility quickly. These things have to happen with real speed to make sure children are safe.

So, it begins with – since it is linked to COVID-19 you've got the immediate point that everything else we do to fight the coronavirus we need to do to fight MIS-C. So, that means the hygiene, the washing hands, the hand sanitizer, the coughing into your elbow when you cough or sneeze, all the basics, using the face covering, staying home to maximum extent possible, social distancing. All of this helps make sure our children are not exposed to this disease. And that's the best way to avoid this challenge because it keeps COVID out of the equation. Now, the symptoms – we've talked about several of them, but I want to add because the CDC research and definition has added additional symptoms to the equation. Persistent fever, irritability or sluggishness, abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting, rash, conjunctivitis, which is shown as red or pink eyes, enlarged lymph node gland in the neck, red cracked lips or red tongue, and swollen hands and feet. So, that's a lot to be aware of. Any of those symptoms you see in your child, call your health care provider, check in immediately. If you see multiple symptoms, especially important to get to your doctor, your health care provider immediately. If you don't have one, call 3-1-1 and you will be connected to a Health + Hospitals clinician immediately.

Now, right now, the number of children affected – the previous definition we use was 145. Under that definition, we've confirmed 145 kids affected, 67 of those cases tested positive for COVID-19 or had antibodies. And we did lose one child – and, again, our goal is to never lose another. We'll have updated numbers with this new definition, the MISC definition, shortly. But the bottom line is, the additional news, the additional information from the CDC allows us to hone our approach more. But the same bottom line, look for these symptoms in your child, act quickly if you see them. If they get to health care quickly, children can be brought through this safely. And that's what we all need to do together.

Okay. So, that's the part of my presentation that, really, again – that hits me like every parent, like everyone who has children in their life. So, I'll come down off of that and we'll move to topics that are a little more mundane, to say the least, but things that still matter to everyday New Yorkers and our quality of life and what we deal with every day during this crisis. So, one of the things that's been truly different neighborhood by neighborhood in this city is that alternate side parking has been suspended for the past two months, one of the longest suspensions in the history of the city. And it worked because it helped people stay inside and not have to deal with the hassle of moving their car, but in more and more areas we start to see litter accumulating as more and more people have been out and obviously a long time has passed. So, we want to do for one week a clean sweep – we want to do for one week a cleanup of all neighborhoods in the city. That done right allows us to then cancel to inside again for a period of time and hopefully for a long period of time so long as we see that our streets and sidewalks remain clean. So, as of today, alternate side parking is back into effect just for this week, from today through Saturday, May 23rd. There is an exception this week where it's suspended on Thursday for Ascension Day. So, basically, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then Friday, Saturday, and then it goes off again. The next period of time will be two weeks from Sunday, May 24th to Sunday, June 7th, no alternate side parking. We've decided that in advance, so you can bank on that. We'll keep reevaluating then in the beginning of June, see where we stand. Hopefully, everyone, work with us, please remember how important it is to not litter as per usual, but if we can keep everything clean, we can keep canceling alternate side in the future for long periods of time. But, right now, alternate side back in effect today through Saturday with the exception of Thursday off for Ascension Day.

Okay. We're go into our daily indicators now. And, again, we've had – overall trend, fantastic, but a lot of days are mixed bags. We've got a mixed bag day today. It's a good day on one indicator, mixed on the others. We still keep making progress overall, but I want to inspire everyone, go deeper. The faster we can get through these indicators, the more thoroughly we can consolidate our success, the more chance of starting to relax restrictions. So, we’ve all got to stick with it here. So, indicator one daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that is down. And this is a great one – down from 77 to 48 – that's amazing. Now, under 50 people admitted to the hospital in a day for COVID-19, that's a really wonderful sign. But the number of people in ICUs across our public hospitals for suspected COVID-19, that went up just a little from 469 to 475 – so, it's not a huge increase, and I keep that in mind, but it's still an increase, we need to keep going down. And then the percentage of people tested positive for COVID-19, unchanged – 11 percent. Again, overall good news, because of the overall direction. Great news on the number of people going into the hospitals, but we need to create that steady progress to get to the next stage.

A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media and please remind me of the name and outlet of each reporter.

Moderator: Hi, all. Just a reminder, we have President and CEO of Health + Hospitals, Dr. Katz, President and CEO of the EDC James Patchett, and Senior Advisor Dr. Varma on the phone. With that, I will start with Steve from Westwood One News.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Hope you had a beautiful weekend when you were able to [inaudible] away from work for a moment. I suppose you had some downtime, I hope you did.

Mayor: Thank you, Steve. I appreciate that.

Question: I suppose you don't have much downtime at all, but even a few minutes helps us oppose, right?

Mayor: Exactly, we'll take whatever we can get.

Question: Exactly. So, I have two questions. One is about non-essential and the decision-making process for when it might be possible for them to return to work. You have companies like Google, Facebook and others extending their work from home for their employees until the end of the year. It seems like you've been looking at this issue on a month to month basis, but it's always helpful and appreciated when people have an idea of when things will change so they can plan for it over the long-term. So, what coronavirus indicators are you looking at and what goals do you want to see reached before you consider allowing non-essential workers to return to the workplace? And will you perhaps follow Google and Facebook's lead and tell City employees who can perform their duties from home to continue working from home through the summer or maybe even later? That's an important decision since so much of the private sector will follow the City's lead. And then my second question, the New York Stock Exchange officials said when they reopened the trading floor, they're going to encourage all returning workers not to take mass transit. How concerning is that? Do you support such an idea given that it would likely create a considerable traffic issues if many private sector corporations issue similar directives and should it fall upon those employers to provide some sort of alternative like commuter vans and private buses?

Mayor: Great questions, Steve. Okay, so let me try the simplest big picture. Right now, we just went over our daily indicators. The State has its seven indicators, three New York City, seven New York State. To get to the point of even the first opening up, the first set of restrictions relaxed, we need to hit all three of the City indicators – that means 10 to 14 days of steady progress in all three – and we need to hit all seven of the State indicators. And we have to be confident – just to make it just a little more rigorous, we have to be confident that we'll be able to hold at that level. My job is to be really blunt and honest with New Yorkers, that when I think we can handle the first elements of relaxing restrictions and hold that position and then move forward to the next point where we can relax more restrictions, that’s the time to do it when you believe not only have you hit the indicators, but that you can make up work and avoid that boomerang. The last thing in the world we want is, hey, take off some restrictions and immediately have a problem, put the restrictions back on. Or even in some places they've gone and had to add more tougher restrictions. So, we're constantly trying to get it right. And I believe it's a cardinal rule that our goal is to get it right the first time. We're not going to have a perfectly straight line, Steve, where everything always goes exactly the direction we want – that would be kind of superhuman. But we cannot have a boomerang. We cannot have something where we have to shut down again. So, we're going to be really smart and careful about it to get it right. And I guarantee you, if we can hit that note right, it'll save us so much time and energy, going forward, to not have to start and then stop and then start again. So, that's the underlying a viewpoint. Very simply that says, well, first of all, there's no way we're getting to the City and State indicators before June at this rate. So, June is the first opportunity – first half of June is the first opportunity to relax anything. The States talked about some of the vision of how that relaxing would look. I'll be filling in those blanks in the next week or two before we get to a point of any decision so New Yorkers have more and more sense of what that first few steps might look like. For now, definitely we have to think about most non-essential workers, of course, are going to keep either working from home or not doing the work they've done until we get to a point that's safer. So, the basic dynamics we have now are going to hold. If there's some loosening up, it'll be in some key areas, but we're not opening up the flood gates at once. We've seen other places do that and they paid dearly for it. So, this'll be in stages.

City employees who right now are working remotely, most of them will continue to for the foreseeable future. But, again, we will lay all this out in stages as we are ready. I think everything's going to be interrelated to the reality on the ground. I think the – obviously, we all want to know will there be a vaccine and when, or will there be elements of treatment that start to work consistently – that's going to change the whole equation. But based on what need know now, we would be careful and slow and maximize remote work for the foreseeable future. As to any company that urged its employees not to use mass transit. Well, some of that isn't surprising to me and some of that people will do on their own until they feel safer. But, you're right, we have to be careful for the opposite problem – if everyone starts turning into cars that will create a whole new problem. It is a legitimate point that companies should think about, ways of creating alternatives to get people around in the meantime. I think that's a very productive thought. But I think we're all yearning for really, really, really clear answers and we'd all like to be able to see exactly what's going to happen. I think we have to be patient about the fact that we're going to learn day-by-day what's real and when the answers are there and they're verifiable, that's when I'll offer them to people. Big picture, I want to get us safely through this summer, some opening up as we go along. And then September, crucial – opening schools, I want to see if we can get it open the whole way the way they are typically. And that's a real natural point to start opening up more if all goes well because that's when everyone normally would come back from the summer and sort of go into high gear. So, I hope that gives you a flavor of it, but it's going to be day by day, week by week.

Moderator: Next we have Alejandra from AM New York.

Question: Hi, Mr. Mayor, can you hear me?

Mayor: Yes, Alejandra. How are you doing?

Question: Good, good. How are you doing? I just had a question – over the weekend, you said that if need be the City would put up fences along beaches to help prevent overcrowding. Can you talk a little bit about what that would actually look like? What those fences would look like? How practical that might be? I mean, there's a lot of lot of beach front in this city.

Mayor: Yeah. Well, people will start to see the initial work – I mean, it's going to begin today – to put the fencing in position. I don't want to activate it – I don't want to implement it unless we need to, but we have to have it ready. So, what I can tell you is, my goal – what I keep saying to people is – folks from the surrounding communities near our beaches – and that's a lot of people, hundreds of thousands of people in this city – if you want to walk on the beach, you know, fine. Enjoy that. But no swimming, no lifeguards, no parties, no barbecues, no sports – it’s just open space that you can walk on take it in and then get back home. But if we see people start to turn it into something, like what happens to a traditional summer wood beaches, we'll give a few warnings, for sure, to the people of this city and to the people of the communities near to beaches that, you know, if we don't see the right thing, we'll have to be stricter. So, the fencing will be in position and ready, but it won't be put up initially. If it did have to be put up, it would simply cut off all the entry points to the beaches. I don't want to do that. That's not something I want to see happen, but this is about health and safety. Everything's about health and safety first. So, if we need to put up fencing, we will. But I'm giving people every chance to still enjoy what they can about the beach without going to the point that we have to take tougher measures.

Moderator: Next we have Katie from the Wall Street Journal.

Question: Good morning, everyone. My question is – I'd asked it last week, I just wanted to check in on an update because I think a lot of people are asking about it. Just more information and data – I know Dr. Barbot isn't on the call again – hope she's okay – but I'm curious if you could – if the Department of Health and the City will release the deaths per ZIP code. I know that's been a piece of information that you said that we shouldn’t receive. So, I wanted to get an update on that, and, you know, if Dr. Barbot will come back on the call. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. Deaths per ZIP code, that is coming out very soon. We’ll get you the exact day, but definitely coming out soon. And, again, we do the daily lineup according to what we need for that day. So, we put out a lineup of folks who can respond to the issues and that's what we'll do every day. And been handed a note – the deaths by ZIP code, again, sorry to be talking about such a sad topic, but we are at this point trying to make sure there's transparency, obviously, even including about painful things – that will come out this afternoon.

Moderator: Next we have Marcia from CBS.

Question: Mr. Mayor, good morning. How are you doing?

Mayor: I'm doing well Marcia, how are you?

Question: Thank you. So my questions today have to do with the city's food program. We've received a number of complaints from people who say sometimes the food arrives rotten, moldy, not properly sealed. Sometimes the deliveries are sporadic and one couple said that their last delivery included and I want to quote “six bags of onions, potato chips and cookies” and that was it. I wonder if you think that's acceptable and if they think that there should be tighter controls?

Mayor: Unquestionably, Marcia, I'm counting my blessings in the middle of this crisis and it is a blessing anytime you or any member of the media points out something that needs to be fixed on behalf of the people of the city. So thank you. No, of course not – onion rings and cookies are not nutrition. We may all enjoy them, but that ain't nutrition. So I want to get all the details to my team, please. Whatever you have of where that's happened, we'll go and fix it. Anything that's not quality food that could mean, you know, not nutritious, and that could be not a food that's up to date. You know, it's unacceptable. We're putting a huge amount of time, energy and resources into getting this right. So if any vendor, any company is giving us food that's not the right quality, we're going to go after them. If anybody in our administration isn't making sure there's high quality food, they have a problem with me. We're going to work on this and fix this.

Overwhelmingly, Marcia, I've heard from community leaders, elected officials, clergy, how much they appreciate the food program, how much they've heard from their constituents, that they are benefiting from the food program, particularly the deliveries to the door of folks who can't get out, seniors and folks with disabilities, and folks who really need those direct deliveries. So overwhelmingly I want to say I think it has been a success and I give credit to our Food Czar Kathryn Garcia and her whole team and all the agencies that have been involved. But if anybody anywhere has fallen down on the job we want to know about and we want to fix it right away.

Moderator: Next we have James from PIX 11.

Question: Mr. Mayor, can you hear me okay?

Mayor: Yes. James, how you doing?

Question: I'm doing okay. Thank you. I hope you're well, and the week is getting off to as good a start as possible.

Mayor: Possible. That is the right word for it.

Question: Look, the COVID tracking center saying that in some jurisdictions nationwide there are more tests than there are people signing up to take them. I'm curious what those numbers look like here in New York City? Do we know what the demand is versus the supply and how is that being tracked here?

Mayor: It's a great question, James. Remember that for a long time we had nowhere near even the beginning of a testing supply to be able to reach people. So we sent a very conservative message for a long, long time there for a long time. There was no testing. Remember it goes back to January 24th when I first asked the federal government to give us the local ability to test and to provide us testing on a large scale. And we've still never gotten it. That's January 24th till now. We're coming up on, you know, the four-month anniversary of that, it’s unbelievable.

But when we finally got some testing, we were very conservative about it because the supply was so limited. It was focused on the folks whose lives were in immediate danger and the hospitals, it was focused on protecting healthcare providers, focused on protecting first responders, those folks who continue to protect all of us and only in the last few weeks that we've been able to go out to communities and start to do community testing. But remember the initial focus was on older folks, much older folks, and folks with preexisting conditions in particularly those who have both. What we said in the last few days is we're opening up those criteria further. We want to reach a whole lot more people, particularly folks, anyone symptomatic we want to reach – anyone who's been around others that are symptomatic or tested positive because we're finally getting the kind of capacity we need, but not because, you know, we got help where we expected to get it from in Washington, because we created our own and because the labs have been helping us to get more and more capacity.

So every time we increase the amount of available testing, it gets taken up quickly. There's a little bit of lag in the beginning as people get used to it and learn the places and all. But it quickly, when people understand there's a testing site available, it's free and that they're allowed to go there, you know, they fit the categories, people take it up. So I think we're going to see a whole lot of take up on this. I think New Yorkers are hungry to get these answers and obviously understand that when people get tested, it's part of the bigger strategy of beating back this disease. So I like what I'm seeing and I'm confident as we have more and more and let people know it's for them and it's free that more and more people will come.

Moderator: Next, we have Henry from Bloomberg.

Question: Hello, Mr. Mayor, hope you're doing well. My question has to do with the city's compliance with the state's metrics. I'm looking at the 16th, May 16th, the city was in compliance or had achieved three of seven of the metrics. So I'm wondering whether this indicates whether the city is really kind of stuck in a position where it's not really moving forward. I mean, where do you see progress here in terms of the city meeting the state's metrics?

Mayor: Well, I'm looking at him now, Henry. Look, we clearly are making progress. There are several we've met as you said, and on the others there has been clear progress. For example, on the number of available hospital beds and number of ICU beds. Those are two areas where we need to go farther, but we're getting close to those goals. And I think there's a point in the first half of June when we'll meet those.

The number of contact tracers we've made very clear. We expect to hit that goal in the beginning of June. Obviously other parts of the state are working hard to catch up on their own version of that goal. We're confident we're going to get there given the number of contact tracers we're bringing on regularly. So you can't guarantee anything in life, but if you're watching the trend lines, Henry, both on our city indicators and the state indicators, both will align in the first half of June. But again, we've got to then make decisions on exactly which restrictions to loosen up, exactly how, and we have to be confident that when we're doing it, we can hold the line. We do not want to reduce restrictions and suddenly see an upsurge that puts us right back in a situation where we have to close down. So there's a real subtle balance that needs to be struck. But if the question is do we believe we'll meet all seven state indicators? Yes. When? First half of June.

Moderator: Next we have Juliet from 1010 WINS.

Question: Oh, hi. Good morning, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?

Mayor: I'm doing well, Juliet. How are you?

Question: I'm fine, thank you so much. So two questions, back to the beaches. I'm sure you're expecting people to turn out, even though you're talking about just people in the neighborhood to come, but what are the specific crowd control plans for people arriving to the beach? Will the fences definitely be up? Will it be police barricades to that effect? Will there be limits to who can get to the beach or on the boardwalk? And the second question is the city budget includes anticipated raises for teachers, police, et cetera. Given the cost of battling this virus, are you considering a freeze on proposed pay increases?

Mayor: Okay, so on the beaches first, so the fencing again available, but we don't want to use it if we don't have to. When you put up the fencing, you're talking about cutting off access to the sand across the board. Don't want to do that if we don't have to do it. Fencing will be there if we need to implement it. But my goal is to see us not have to implement it. Remember, Juliet, this is how we start, you know, normally beach season begins on Memorial Day. So in a week and what's quite clear is we're not in a position to start now. We just talked about the state indicators, the city indicators by every objective measure. We're not there yet. That does not rule out that later in the beach season we might do well enough and show enough progress to do something different, still with some real restrictions, and you've seen the state restrictions on beaches everywhere. There's a whole lot of things that will not be allowed at any beach in the state. But you know, we're holding out the hope that at some point we could open up and we're training the lifeguards and we'll be ready, but we have to be ready to go up or down the scale depending on what's happening. So the fencing will be there, but it won't be implemented at first. We're hoping everyone just listens to the rules, follows the rules, no swimming, no sports, no gatherings, no parties. Just common sense observed social distancing. If you walk on the beach, do it for a limited period of time. Get back home like everyone else.

In terms of enforcement, NYPD will be out, Parks Department will be out. Obviously first and foremost, help make everyone remember, don't go in the water, not supposed to go in the water. It's a dangerous situation to ever go in the water when there's not life guards present. So there'll be a constant reminder of that everyone tries to get in the water, they'll be taken right out of the water. So we want to keep people moving. We want to make sure nothing gets too crowded, don't want to see the boardwalks crowded. Just classic social distancing. I guess I shouldn't say classic because it's something we've only dealt with for a few months, but it feels like it's been a long time. We understand the basic concept of social distancing and crowding and the NYPD will always work to avoid crowds and gatherings. So they'll be out and Parks enforcement will be out, but we're not putting up police barriers or any of that stuff initially because the message to people is it's not beach season, meaning we're in a different reality – we’re in a pandemic, we’re in a global health crisis. It's not beach season like normal. So don't go to the beach. If you live in the surrounding communities and you're used to just going for a walk on the beach, that's one thing. But don't travel to the beach because we don't want to create that dynamic where people do non-essential travel on subways, on buses, which is normally how so many people get to the beach. We're not doing that. Let's keep it simple. But Juliet, we will, if we need more enforcement, we'll put it there. If we need to take tougher measures, we'll well, and if conversely it goes really well and people listen to the rules, we'll keep things more open. And then maybe let's pray. We got to the point later on where we can open up things more and maybe even have part of the beach season again.

On the city budget, we've got a stark choice ahead, Juliet. Our goal always is to help working people. This is what I came here to do. I don't want to take away from working people. I want to protect people's livelihoods. I want to protect their income. And if I get the help that we all deserve from the federal government, we'll be able to do that. This city’s been the epicenter. I mean, I don't know what people, some people are thinking of Washington. This is the epicenter of the crisis for the whole nation. We also are one of the key places in all of America for sparking and building the entire American economy for the good of all. And if we're back on our feet and if we're unable to provide basic services and we can't get the job done, there's not going to be recovery here. And I think in that case it will hinder recovery everywhere else. So all comes down to the stimulus. If the stimulus is the right kind of stimulus. If it's done in time for our budget in June we're going to move full speed ahead to provide all the services we provide, have the personnel we need, provide people with the incomes they deserve. If there is no stimulus in time or it's nowhere near the amount we need, then a whole series of really tough decisions will have to be made across the board effecting all agencies and all personnel in a variety of ways. So we're not there yet. But in that instance, everything won't be on the table. But let's, let's accent the positive. Let's go fight for the stimulus to be the right thing, the thing it should be. And that's what’ll allow us to support our workforce and support a strong recovery here.

Moderator: Next we have Julia from the Post.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor and everyone on the call. Two questions. The first Mr. Mayor, I'd like to get your reaction to an article on today's cover about out-of-state nurses who were brought in to help the city run the adult daycare center on Roosevelt Island. They told us patients had horrific bedsores, unchanged diapers, or even feces smeared on the walls. So your reaction to that and then a second a little bit unusual question, but I know you went to high school with Patrick Ewing. I wonder if you watched the Last Dance series and what you thought about it. If not, what have you been watching as an escape?

Mayor: I did go to high school with Patrick Ewing. He was two years behind me in high school and I used to think I was tall until the day I was walking down the hallway in high school and Patrick Ewing walked by for the first time. And definitely my ego has never recovered since. He’s an amazing player and amazing person. The – I have not seen that series though. So what Charlene and I do is we tend to latch onto one show and see it through. And we for a few, I don't know, six months or a year ago, we went through the Wire, which we had watched originally. We went through it again the whole five seasons. We went through Treme, the whole, I think it's four or five seasons. Then I've been public about this fact. I don't have to always be high-minded. We did Empire, we watched all of Empire, not always the most high-minded show, but in many ways a very intriguing show. And now we are watching Billions, which we never watched when it first came out. So we're going through that from the beginning and incredibly well acted and well-written show. So that's where we've – part of the day we get to take our mind off as something.

On this very serious. And, and you know this very, when you think about the situation at Coler, and I have not read the article Julia, but I've had it summarized to me. I think about the human reality, which is any senior who's in any facility, these are our elders, these are our family members, these are people who deserve the maximum respect and the best care. Now it's important to note and we'll get you all this background. Coler is a very well respected institution. It's been recognized nationally as a quality senior facility. Recent inspections were favorable. There's a lot of very positive things historically we've known about Coler. If something went wrong in the middle of this crisis, I want to get to the bottom of it. So we're going to investigate what happened here. And you know, I've talked to Dr. Katz, we are shoulder to shoulder and we want to know exactly what happened. So H+H is going to do its own investigation with the State is investigating. We're going to absolutely work with them. We want to get down to the bottom of what happened here. Anybody with information should come forward. So it's important that these nurses come forward to our investigators and the States. I'm glad they talked to you because we want all the truth to come out, but we need them to talk to our authorities and the States authorities.

And if it's proven that anything like that happened, that's unacceptable. Yes, it was in the middle from my understanding, the timing, the worst moment of the COVID crisis. Our systems were overwhelmed, there's a lot of staff out. Things were in real, real tough shape for everyone in every facility to handle health care. But still, if something happened that shouldn't have happened, there has to be consequences. It has to be dealt with. So we will do that for sure. But again, this facility historically, I mean as recently October, Newsweek ranked the Coler senior nursing facility as the fifth best in New York State and the most recent state inspection was November and was positive. So you know, if something went wrong, we want to know exactly what it was. We want to find the exact individuals who are responsible and then there of course will be consequences and much more immediately, we have to make sure that everything now, the care there is the best it can and should be for every person there and that there's nothing like that happening anymore.

Moderator: Last two for today, next is Andrew from NBC.

Question: Good morning everybody. Happy Monday. Mayor, I wanted to ask about schools. Last week, you and Mike Mulgrew didn't seem to be on the same page about the timeline for making a plan for the fall. He said that the teachers need to know within two to three weeks whether the plan is full reopening, hybrid reopening, or online learning. So I'm wondering are you closer to making a decision or a recommendation on schools and also have schools been complicated by the emergence of this child inflammatory syndrome?

Mayor: Yes, of course, we need to know a lot more about this syndrome and what it means as we make our decision about schools. Unquestionably, Andrew, again, I'm speaking as a parent and also as someone who believes the most important role I play is to protect people's health and safety, and particularly our families, our children. I'm very, very concerned. So yes, that information will absolutely be factored into any decision we make. The question of the timing, we communicate, our team communicates with Mike Mulgrew and the team at the UFT and also the administrators union CSA all the time and we'll keep communicating with them. I haven't heard anyone state a particular timeline in what is obviously an ever changing environment. So we'll have that conversation, but I say very clearly, the best way to make a decision of this magnitude is when we have all the facts and when we know what it's going to take to ramp up, we will define that timeline, the chancellor will define that timeline.

Now I think where everyone's on the same page is health and safety first. Plan A is unquestionably open the schools as normal because that's what it's in the interest of our kids and our families, but we have to make sure kids are safe, family members are safe, educators are safe, staff is safe, we have to make sure that we are confident of that. For any reason we're not confident in that, then there's a plan B, a plan C, a plan D, you can do all sorts of things from alternating days, staggered schedules, you can just stick with the pure online learning, which is nowhere near what we'd like it to be ideally, but still has been a very, very admirable effort in reaching so many kids. But it's May for God's sakes, this is a decision on something that's you know, it's less than four months away, but not much less than four months away, and we will make the decision at the right time.

Moderator: Last for today, we have Dave Evans from ABC-7.

Question: Hey Mayor, I wanted to ask you if I could just your overall view of this weekend, how things went and how things might change going forward? The things that jump out at me about social distancing from the weekend, Domino Park seemed to go pretty well, those circles, they were interesting. I think we counted more than six people in some of the circles. Then also I think that restaurant in Chinatown that was serving takeout and drinks people seem to congregate outside, without masks, but those things jump out at me. But I just wanted to see your overall view of how things went since we did have such a nice weekend and moving forward and things are going to be changing with police enforcement or, you know, social distancing ambassador enforcement.

Mayor: Sure. Great question Dave, and I appreciate it. So sure, try and pull it all together. First of all, the educational efforts, the exhortation, the reminders from the ambassadors, which now number well over 2,000 city employees, the community organizations, the faith organizations, there's more and more we'll be announcing as we go along, but there's going to be just thousands and thousands of people out in an organized fashion giving out free face coverings, reminding people the right thing to do. You know, a lot of times people just need the reminder. The story here this weekend and every weekend as the vast majority of New Yorkers are doing the right thing, it's been unbelievable. Vast majority of New Yorkers go out for a period of time, get back home. They're staying home because they're hearing the message it's the right thing to do, Dave, is the right thing for everyone else. But also people are staying home to protect themselves and their families. A vast majority of people are practicing social distancing. It's not always easy, but they're doing it really well. Vast majority of people are wearing face coverings, I want to see better, I want to see more of them, and that's why we're going to give out millions and millions of face coverings. Look, I think it's fair to say we've got some individuals who still haven't gotten the message and it's a very small number in the scheme of things of a city of 8.6 million people.

But for those who haven't gotten the message, then that's where enforcement comes in. So for businesses, we heard yesterday some businesses are maybe trying to cheat and do eat-in dining. We're going to crack down on that immediately if we see it. They're asking for serious fines, and if we see it repeatedly, they're asking to be shut down, won't hesitate for a moment on that. The Sheriff's Office, Department of Buildings, and NYPD, FDNY, we have a lot of enforcement we can bring to bear on that, but that we have not seen anything but some stray reports so far. The issue with the bars, Dave, it's just common sense here. You know, don't congregate. What did I say about the NYPD? The NYPD is not going to give summonses on face coverings. It will give out free face coverings. It will give reminders. It won't give summonses, won't give summonses of a few people are too close together or remind them to create space. But if you've got gatherings, anytime you see gatherings, it's real simple, NYPD, Sheriff, any enforcement entity is going to come up and say immediately disperse and that they don't disperse. Then summons begin. So for all those folks in the bars, like just don't even think about it. You want to go drink, get your drink, go home, but do not allow gatherings to occur because it's not safe. It's just not safe. And you're going to, you know, you want to restart this virus growth in this city, you want to make everyone less healthy, do you want to have us all locked up for longer? You know, anytime people are doing that, that's what they're contributing to unfortunately. So let's just get it right. This virus won't go on forever, for a period of time, but if we're going to beat it, we have to be tough and we have to be disciplined. That's what most people are doing.

And the circles, look, Dave, the circles in Domino Park, it's an experiment to see if it's the kind of thing will work, generally what we saw is the efforts to reduce the number of people going into some tight spaces, had some real success, the first time we're trying it. But you know, we're going to keep experimenting to get it right and I want to thank all the folks who are out there, Parks Department, NYPD, all the ambassadors are out there very, very diligently out there and helping people. I was with a great group of Parts Department and DEP and DOT workers in Flushing Meadow Park on Saturday and we were giving out face coverings and you know, they're really into it. They're really into protecting people's health and doing something good for them, and the folks we came across, you know, we're grateful to get free face covering. So we're going to do a whole lot of that and I think it's going to add up. And just to all members of the media, anytime you've got a report of a place where there's gatherings that are not being addressed or a restaurant that's trying to serve food in or anything like that, please let us know and we will go pay them a very immediate visit to address the problem.

Okay, everyone, to conclude, look, you know over the years you've heard the very wonderful phrase made in New York and there's things we're known for and things we're famous for and things we make that people admire all over the world. But there's a whole lot of things we didn't make because we didn't think we had to for years. You know, there was no reason to make certain medical supplies and medical equipment that was made somewhere else and we could get it when we needed it. But the world changed and it changed very, very suddenly, and the things that we thought we could depend on weren't there anymore. What did New Yorkers do? Our backs were against the wall, could have crumbled under the pressure, we could have said, oh geez, there's nothing we know how to do? What are we going to do? We don't know how to make that.

Instead, New Yorkers did the exact opposite. New York companies stepped up, New York experts, inventors, scientists, people stepped up and they found a way. And this is the best of New York City. We always find the way, always find a way to make something happen. And that is an indomitable spirit. It's actually a very beautiful thing. And there's a reason why this place is filled with talented people and people with so much drive and energy, people like that have been born and raised here for generations, and this place has attracted people with those skills and talents from around the world for generations. You add that all together. There's no place that could better fight back this pandemic than this city and you're proving it every day. But I really want to just tip my cap to all the people who said, we're going to do something here no matter what. We're going to build something, whether we know how to do it or not, we're going to figure it out. And lo and behold, they did. And now the medical supplies and medical equipment being built right here in this city is protecting your life, life of the members of your family, protecting our first responders, protecting our health care heroes. It's actually a very, very moving and beautiful story. This is how we win.

Thank you, everybody.

2020-05-19 NYC Mayor de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. There's a word we used to use, but this crisis has made a mockery of that word – the word is routine. What used to be routine in so many cases is no longer, and things that we now do that are routine to us are things we could never have imagined doing. I could certainly not have imagined all of us trying to stay six feet away from each other and socially distance. This is the closest, most emotional, warmest, passionate place anywhere on earth, and we're used to being close together. It's been a really strange thing to have to create a new routine where we have to stay part of a part so often and yet you have done it and done it well. It is not routine for us to work remotely in such vast numbers. And yet people have figured out how to do it as long as they need to. It's not routine to wear a face covering, Lord knows, but people have picked up the habit and gone with it.

So, this has been the reality in these last months. Finding a way despite the uncertainty, despite the confusion, finding a new way and it won't be something we'll be doing forever, but it's something we'll do as long as we need to do to get through. And that's been true in all parts of our city, all parts of our society. But one of the most powerful examples has been with our public schools. What used to be routine isn't happening right now, but new routines have been established, and so many people are working so hard. Students, parents, educators, to make it work and get the best for our kids. Remote learning, online learning, distance learning, whatever you call it, it had never been done anywhere near this scale. And so, it meant that teachers and parents had to work together, and administrators had to lead the way. The department education leadership had to come up with the tools, the resources, working with a whole variety of companies. I mean, all of this had to be to put together in record time. And the core transition took about a week. And I, I hope when the history is written, it will be really focused on that. There was a week between the time in which our kids were going into a school building and the time at which they started to learn in huge numbers online. And that was an extraordinary effort by so many of our educators to get ready.

So, we are now very focused in these last weeks of what would have been our normal routine school year. Very, very focused on ending the current school year as strong as we can through distance learning with a special focus on our graduating seniors. We really want to be looking out for them, and helping them to complete their studies, and to the next phase of their lives. We need to also recognize that this kind of situation, it takes special effort to connect with kids, to keep them engaged, to keep them learning. And that's not just now through June 26 with the traditional notion of the school year, we're in a whole new reality. So, we see the opportunity to keep helping our kids learn, extending all the way through the summer. Remember, distance learning creates challenges, but also creates a world of possibilities. And for so many kids this summer will be a chance to keep learning either because they need a little extra learning and a little extra time, or because it's something they want to do to keep building up their academic strength.

So, let's talk about summer learning. We see it in the positive and glass could be half full or the glass could be half empty. I'll tell you, my approach to life is look for the half full. I know the chancellor shares this view. We see this as a summer where unprecedented learning can happen, and it can propel us forward into the new school year. So, we've had the opportunity in these last months to learn our educators done amazing work with distance learning and in the process figured out what works best and are learning all the time how to do it better. And we're going to apply those lessons this summer. We have a number of students that need to be in summer learning. Students who need summer learning to help them finish out the school year strong and get ready for the next one. It's about 67,000 students in grades three to eight, about 83,000 students in grades nine to twelve, and then students with individualized education programs, special education students, 27,700 when you put that together, almost 178,000 of our students will continue in summer learning.

It's going to be a huge effort, an unprecedented effort, and the goal is simple and we believe we can attain the goal. Give every child what they need. It will look different obviously depending on the grade level, the age of the student and it will take creativity. It will take a lot of innovation along the way. Who better to do that than someone who's not only devoted his life to education and has been a leader of education all over the country, but someone who knows a whole lot about how to bring the school system back after a crisis. Chancellor Carranza previously served as superintendent of the Houston public schools, and he was there when Hurricane Harvey hit and decimated Houston, and disrupted public education, and everything in Houston. And he led the charge bringing public schools back, and making them strong again. So, he brings a special talent for the rebuilding, and for the innovation that we need for this summer and beyond. So, to give you a sense of what we're going to do this summer and how we're preparing for what comes beyond for the greatest challenge I would say the school system has ever faced, but one that I am absolutely convinced our New York City public schools will meet and then surpass. Let me turn now to Chancellor Richard Carranza.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to start off by saying that while this summer will undoubtedly be different than any summer we've had before, I want to give a huge thank you to our teachers, our students, our parents, our families, our administrators, everyone that has made this pivot to remote learning be as successful as it has been. Thank you. We are ensuring that our students will get the support and instruction they need this summer to continue learning. Learning will take place remotely, and is organized to account for different grade bands. I'll walk everyone through that now.

So, for our students in grades three through eight, summer learning will take place four days a week for a total of six weeks. This will either be on a required or recommended basis, and that is because teachers will make the determination based on each student's full year of progress. As always, as a school year closes, teachers will look closely at each individual student to determine whether they have met grade level standards, and this year they will take into account any challenges they've experienced in the past couple of months during the pandemic. Summer learning will be geared towards academic success in the fall. As the mayor has spoken on many times, this needs to be the greatest academic year in our history, and this will ensure that we have a running start to that. Summer learning will be geared towards the academic success of students who need additional supports to meet standards, and they will receive those additional supports over the summer. Teachers will communicate with families, whether their student is required to participate in summer learning in order to be promoted in August or recommended to participate to ensure they've achieved mastery of the standards. Students will also have check-ins with guidance counselors so that someone is always keeping a pulse on how they are doing in this remote learning environment. And it's summer, so we'll be incorporating things that students enjoy into the virtual experience including social emotional learning activities, and virtual field trips. So, that is for grades three through eight.

In grades nine through 12, for our high schoolers, it'll be just a little different. The schedule for summer learning will be five days per week. For a total of six weeks. Students will have up to five hours of instruction daily in subjects they received a course in progress mark for, or if they failed in a prior semester. Like elementary and middle school students, these students will also have one on one check-ins and important enrichment activities as well. Again, we want to make sure that students are being supported not only academically but in their social emotional needs as well. For students with disabilities. Our students with 12-month individual education plans will receive instruction and related services five days a week for a total of six weeks. This is also the same frequency that has happened in every other summer as well. Students will also get daily instruction and related services that are aligned to their individual education plan and remote learning plan. Students will also have check-ins with counselors and with other staff so that someone is always keeping a pulse on how they are doing as well in this remote learning environment. And as a student – these students will also enjoy the same opportunities for virtual field trips, social emotional learning activities that their peers are receiving in the other grades as well.

This, obviously, has been a constantly evolving situation, but there's one thing that hasn't wavered for a moment and that is that the City of New York is focused on accelerating learning and making sure that all students stay on track for continued success the next academic year, and that is not changing when this school year comes to an end. Our priority continues to be summer learning model, that is to keep our students on track and ready to hit the ground running in September. Before I turn it back over to the Mayor, I want to acknowledge our educators, once again, who have worked so hard and adapted to these new realities with unparalleled spirit, and enthusiasm, and dedication. I hope that many of you decide to continue to teach in the summer. We need you and our students need you. Applications will be open this week and we encourage our educators to apply. And to our families, we know this hasn't been easy. Thank you for your help and your continued support in this heroic, your heroic contributions to this effort in remote learning. And we know this means continued contributions over the summer. We can't do it without you. We wouldn't be here where we are without you, and, as always, I say we have the best students, staff, and educators in the world, no matter the day or the season or the pandemic. Nothing will ever change that. And I want to say to you, thank you. And with that, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to turn it back over to you, sir.

Mayor: Thank you so much, Chancellor. And thank you again for your leadership. And the whole time, I can tell you one thing about Chancellor Carranza, he has been positive, clear, forceful throughout that we're going to get through this and we're going to find the way forward and reach all our kids. And thank you, Chancellor, for that spirit and for all you and your team are doing.

Chancellor Carranza: Thank you, sir.

Mayor: Now, we understand, and no one's trying to say here that even though we're positive and we're looking forward all the time, that it's going to be easy. 1.1 million students, they've gone through a lot. We've talked about before, they've gone through a lot of disruption, a lot of challenges, some have gone through even trauma. It's, it's not easy for our young people. And on top of that, they're restless. It's been months that they're supposed to stay inside, especially hard as the weather gets warmer. So, look, I want to emphasize – and I'm saying this as a parent too – it's been tough so far on our kids. It's going to in some ways be even tougher as the summer goes on. We're going to be really creative in supporting them, really aware of all they're going through. Some of the things that any young person would be looking forward to in the summer they'd be looking forward to, you know, all the summer activities, barbecues and baseball, basketball, you know, concerts, whatever it may be. All the things that happen in the summer – going to the beach – you know, all those things now are on hold and it's tough. So, we know that's a challenge, that kids are restless. We know they're feeling let down. We know a lot of kids are feeling isolated. We know we have to watch out for their emotional needs and we also have to watch out for their academic needs because any summer there's the possibility of learning loss over the summer. That could be a greater challenge in a summer like this. At the same time, again, we're going to bring some tools to this that might help us fight back against that learning loss in ways we never have been able to before and in fact give kids who want to go even farther and accelerate their learning the opportunity to do that. So, we got to look at the challenges, but we also have to see the opportunity to do more that this moment affords us.

So, today I'm just going to give you a beginning of some of the ideas we have about how to address the summer and the needs of our young people. There'll be much more to say in the coming weeks, but here are some of the ideas that now are being worked on and these are some of the virtual approaches that young people can tap into and enjoy, even if they have to stay home. Virtual field trips is something that offers kids a whole opportunity to see things that they care about and want to learn about. New educational programming on TV, radio, as well as online – eBooks being made available with lesson plans, all sorts of things that will help young people want to engage in different ways and who need to engage to continue their learning. And then there'll be more structured activities – virtual clubs, ways of bringing kids together where there's a social element, where they're connecting with other young people, but in a safe manner. These kinds of ideas are being worked on. We're working with museums, we're working with libraries, we're working with the private sector to come up with more and more engaging ideas and a lot of people want to help our young people. I’ve talked to a lot of folks in the media and entertainment world, they want to help provide new and better options for our young people. So, this is a little framing of what is to come, much more to say in the next few weeks, but we're going to provide a rich range of options and safe options for our young people.

Okay, now, one of the things that has become clear in this crisis is when you need to do distance learning – when you need to do online learning – you’ve got to have a device to learn on. You got to have internet service. And we've all known about the digital divide, we've all talked about the digital divide, but it became very real and very tangible when this crisis hit because we knew a lot of kids couldn't get what they needed because they didn't have the technology. And so, the Chancellor and his whole team, they really very urgently and immediately said, we're going to solve this problem right now. They went out and acquired 300,000 iPads and we have been reaching out incessantly over the last weeks to find any family that needed one for their student. The original goal was 300,000 to be distributed to public school students. We kept reiterating the opportunity and many, many people signed up, but we saw there still weren't as many signups as there were iPads so we opened it up further and we said, if you're a student with disabilities who goes to a private school, independent school, a religious school, we want to help you too and we'll provide these iPads to you and more and more people signed up on top of that. So, as of today, we met our goal for the end of April of sending out an iPad to everyone who had signed up at that point. But then we – as we opened the doors further, more and more have come forward. So, now, as of today, 284,000 iPads have been delivered, 5,000 more have been shipped and on the way. And there were requests for more on top of that. The number now will reach 297,000, and I want to remind everyone out there that if there's still any young person in our public schools who does not have a device, who does not have internet service, you still can sign-up; call 3-1-1 we'll still make sure an iPad gets to you. The goal is to give every student the ability to learn, every student the access to all of this new programming that's being put together. And we understand the challenge, but we also understand what is called on us as adults, what we're called on to do, which is to create the best, most positive, most usable summer learning approach in the history of the school system to lead into the strongest, best school year in the history of this school system. We have to aim high. We, and I'm saying this from the beginning and I keep saying it throughout, our educators have done an amazing job these last months; our parents have too, our kids have too, we're going to keep building that momentum. When we come back in September, we're going to do things that have never been done before to accelerate the learning of our students so they will catch up from anything that might have been missed in this crisis and then go beyond. Before this crisis, New York City public schools were getting better all the time. We are not going to let that momentum slip. We're going to take this moment, this heroic moment and what we've seen from our educators and we're going to build upon it and create a new kind of momentum.

You know, lots and lots of people are asking questions about what's going to happen in the fall and it's still too early of course, to predict. But I'll tell you one thing, when we look to the fall, when we look to everything we want to do to re-open schools, unquestionably number one factor will be safety – the health and safety of our children, our parents, our educators, our school staff. And we've been looking at that from the beginning and that's going to be the first question in answering all of the challenges ahead. Now, that would've been true had we not seen the developments in the last few weeks, but obviously what we've seen with this new syndrome MIS-C causes us additional concern because it's about safety and health. So, if something new is happening or something has become evident, that wasn't evident before, we're going to focus on it, stay focused on it and it of course will be a factor in making decisions about what we do with our schools going forward.

Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, this is the name that the Centers for Disease Control is now giving it – this is what we will refer to it as. And I told you yesterday, new guidance has come from the CDC and we're working with that now. So, MIS-C, the symptoms are there on the screen, talked about them a number of times. If you're any child in your life has those symptoms particularly in combination, please call your doctor immediately - if you don't have a doctor call 3-1-1. Now, as of this moment with the initial definition we used, 147 confirmed cases – 69 of those cases, kids who tested positive for COVID or had antibodies. One child has been lost and obviously we never want to lose another child. We're going to have more updated information with the new categories, the new specifications we've gotten from the CDC. We will keep updating you on what we're learning as a result of the work the CDC is doing, but the bottom line is it is so important to just get the message out, early detection makes a huge difference. If you see these symptoms in children call it in to a healthcare professional immediately so we can protect that child.

Now, to protect all of us, we need to make sure our hospitals, our health care providers have the blood supply that they need. Normally, honestly, this is something that year-in, year-out, the blood supply is secure - it's strong. We've really not had a situation like this before. I've talked to a lot of our health leaders and they don't remember anything like this, but it stands to reason we've never had an economic shutdown before and a huge amount of the blood supply came from corporate, corporate blood drives, blood drives by different organizations, charitable civic organizations, government agencies typically would do a blood drive. So, all of that's been cut off and disrupted. Therefore, the blood supply has gotten lower than we ever could have imagined. Now, we're going to put additional safeguards in place going forward to make sure that we don't have this kind of situation again and we're encouraging all New Yorkers who can give blood to do so right away. We started talking about this a couple of days ago. So far, 2,500 New Yorkers have made appointments to give blood just in the last few days. That's a great start, that's going to help a lot, but I want to see thousands more come forward. I'm going to do it myself. I want to see thousands come forward to give blood, to make sure our hospitals have what they need. So, all sorts of times I've heard New Yorkers say they want to help in this crisis and I believe you and so many good people doing so much to help their fellow New Yorker. If you can give blood, this is a good moment to give back to the city. This is absolutely a reason to travel, to go and give blood. You're doing a great public service for your fellow New Yorker. So, anyone who can, we need you make an appointment with the New York Blood Center today; You can go online at NYBC.org, let's say again, NYBC.org or you can call 800-933-2566 and make an appointment and give blood and save lives.

Okay, now when we think about what we've learned and we've all learned so much during this crisis, here's a disease that again, less than a year ago, no one had heard of in terms of it being something that affected human beings. And we've all had to make so many adjustments, learn so much, and we still don't know everything that we need to know about this disease. The entire international medical community doesn't know enough, but there's some things we do know and one of the things we've seen here in the city and around our nation is that this disease amplifies the disparities that already exist in our society. And it's painful because we're talking about disparities based on race and class. We're talking about both ethnic and economic disparities that have plagued our city, our nation and once again, we see that those who are suffering the most, lower income folks, folks in communities of color, folks in the immigrant communities. So, that has been the health care reality. But we know, on top of that, adding to the pain has been the economic impact as well – this double crisis, the worst health care crisis in the century in this country and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. What a horrible one-two punch and, of course, communities that were already hurting are now taking the hit even harder.

We, the City of New York, our City government, we're going to fight back. We're going to use all our tools to fight disparity. We've been doing that in so many ways over the last six-and-a-half years. We're going to amplify those efforts. And that means every conceivable form of redistribution, that means making sure that we get resources to folks who have been unfairly denied resources, unfairly denied opportunity. And one of the best ways to do that is ensuring that more and more business goes to minority- and women-owned businesses. We do that through a very aggressive M/WBE contracting effort in the City of New York that's been growing by billions and billions of dollars every year, but we have to go even farther. We have to come up with new approaches, new innovations. We have to reach more and more M/WBE’s, because that is an act of fairness and justice, because we know when we provide resources to an M/WBE that, that money goes right into the neighborhood, and circulates and provides economic empowerment, people get hired, people who learn at one business start their own business. It's important any time, but it's particularly important in light of this crisis. So, we've had extraordinary efforts by those working on our M/WBE initiatives over these last years. I want to thank our Deputy Mayor Phil Thompson. I want to thank the man who led so many of our efforts, Jonnel Doris as director of our M/WBE office who has now become our Commissioner for Small Business Services. Gregg Bishop, who was that commissioner, now my senior advisor to help us build a whole new initiative to help small businesses in this city. They all made major, major contributions. But with Jonnel taking on his new role, I have the honor of naming a new senior advisor and director for our M/WBE office. The important thing to think about here is that we've got to do something transformative, we've got to do something different. And to do that, I wanted someone who had already proven her ability to make change and to take us places we hadn't been before. Magalie Austin, known as Maggie – Maggie has served for years as our Chief Diversity and Industry Relations Officer for our Department of Design and Construction – DDC. The Department of Design and Construction does a huge amount of work around this city. And what we saw as with so many agencies was there were extraordinary opportunities going missed to help minority- and women-owned businesses to get a chance to win those contracts and build up their businesses and serve their communities. Maggie took a situation where there was many missed opportunities and turned it into a situation where opportunities were being fulfilled for so many companies. She did extraordinary work at DDC. She oversaw a portfolio of projects valued at over $20 billion – a team of almost 1,400 employees that she worked with to make change, and she did it very, very effectively. Maggie is a New Yorker through and through, grew up in the city, a St. John's graduate, someone who loves and knows this city. So, she is going to take the work that's been done these last years, and that has included a more than doubling the number of certified M/WBE’s that can get this work with the city and the huge expansion in contracts that has existed, and she's going to supercharge it, take it forward and take us to a new place and that is going to help us address the economic disparities and help communities back on their feet. So, welcome, Maggie. I know you're going to hit the ground running and we are going to be depending on you to help us fight our way back from this crisis.

Okay. So, I am thankful for the very, very talented members of this team who do such good work for the people of New York City. And I like to express that thanks all the time, and I've been noticing lately when there are particular days or weeks or months that celebrate our public workforce and all the people that do so much good for us. So, here is a moment where there's an annual week devoted to some heroes who we should be appreciative any time, any year, but this year in this crisis they have done extraordinary things. This week for 2020 is FDNY’s EMS Week, and it is falling at a very fitting time because our EMTs, our paramedics, our EMS staff have been superstars. So much has been asked of them and they have performed brilliantly. This was literally weeks ago, we hit the point in the entire history of New York City the most calls went to EMS in its history and it held – an extraordinary organization held no matter what was thrown at it. Thank God, the numbers have come way down and things are substantially back to normal. But these heroes, they went through so much and did so much good and they saved so many lives. I think of all the members of EMS who fought so valiantly through this, but I particularly think about the four members of EMS who lost their lives in this crisis. EMT Gregory Hodge, EMT John Redd, EMT, EMT Idris Bey, EMT Richard Seaberry. These were members of our EMS, valiant New Yorkers, gave everything they had to save lives and protect people. We've lost them and we need to honor them and remember them. And we also need to think about a man who came here from Colorado to help us. He didn't have to, he chose to – Paul Cary, serving as a paramedic here in the height of the crisis and we lost him to the coronavirus as well. And we will remember all of them, and there's a special place in our heart for Paul's family. They will always be regarded by us as New Yorkers and we'll always be there for them.

So, the members of EMS have done amazing, amazing work. I've had the honor of speaking with a number of these heroes and thanking them and listening to their stories and understanding the amazing work they do. Please, if you see anyone who's part of EMS, give them a special thank you this week and every week for all they do. And we all know we've lost not just these extraordinary members of EMS, we've lost other first responders in this crisis. We've lost public health care workers. We've lost people who work in City agencies and served us. People who weren't famous, but people who are there for their fellow New Yorkers. We've lost a lot of public servants to this horrible disease that came out of nowhere and has afflicted us so deeply. 270 New York City employees have been lost to the coronavirus – 270. And it's so important for us to say to their families that we will be there for you. Not just words but deeds – we will be there for you. We owe that to you. Your loved one gave their all to us. We will be there for you. A few days ago, we extended health insurance for an additional 45 days to families of City employees that we've lost, that was at the request of the municipal labor committee. And we've been fighting to get more and more benefits for the families who have lost loved ones in the federal stimulus legislation. And there is some very good activity in Washington. I want to be clear, in the stimulus passed by the House, in a separate bill passed by the Senate sponsored by Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, very good steps are being taken to help first responders, to help people who have been heroes in this crisis, and the families of those we've lost, but we need to go farther. We waited to see what was going to happen in Washington and what we've seen is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough, so we need to go farther. Many leaders have called for new and better approaches to helping those that we have lost and their families. And I want you to know, everyone who has been raising the concern, I've been listening. Members of the City Council – I know in particular Council Member Daneek Miller, Council Member Joe Borrelli have been two of the particularly strong voices. So, I've come to the conclusion that the right thing to do is to help the families who have lost their loved ones, to give them line of duty benefits. This horrible crisis came out of nowhere, grabbed this city, and these valiant city employees kept fighting no matter what. The City of New York believes, I believe, they deserve, their families deserve line of duty benefits for any death that was connected to COVID-19. So, to get that done, I'm calling upon the State of New York to act and I am officially asking the State of New York to authorize line of duty benefits for those public employees that we've lost. We'll work with all of our partners in Albany to get this done. We'll work with the City Council. We need to take this weight off the shoulders of the families of these valiant New Yorkers. They need to know their futures will be secure. And look, we can give all the praise, and we mean it – I know I speak on behalf of 8.6 million New Yorkers when I express my condolences to the families who have lost their loved one, my appreciation for all these public servants we've lost and all they've done for us – that these families need to know that they will be protected. And that's why we're going to fight for line of duty benefits for them to protect their futures.

Okay. Now, let's talk about our daily indicators. This is what we every day look to, to help us understand how far we've come and where we're going. Some days are really good, other days are mixed bag. Today is a mixed bag and it's a reminder of how much we have to stick to the plan. So, indicator one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19 is up from 48 to 57. Again, a much lower number than we used to have, which I always appreciate, but still numbers going in the wrong direction today. Daily number of people in ICUs across Health + Hospitals for suspected COVID-19 has also gone up from 475 to 492. But the percentage of people that tested positive for COVID-19 citywide has gone down from 11 percent to nine percent, and I very much like to see that single digit number, nine percent. So, again, mixed bag, more to do. Take some real comfort and some real inspiration from that last number, because that's a real good sign, but let's keep focused on the mission and we will get there together.

Okay. A few words in Spanish –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, we will turn to our colleagues in the media. Please let me know the name and outlet of each journalist.

Moderator: Just a quick reminder that we have Chancellor Carranza in the Blue Room, and on the phone we have Dr. Barbot, Dr. Katz, and Campion. Alex from Chalkbeat is up first. Alex?

Question: Hey, Mr. Mayor. Two quick questions. One, I'm assuming the expansion of summer school is meant to help students who have struggled with remote learning. So, I'm just curious, like, how more remote learning will help – like, will it be different at all from what we're getting in the regular school year? And two, you talked a little bit about situations where it could be mandatory and situations where it wouldn't. Can you just spell it out a little bit more clearly, like when this will be mandatory and when it won't and whether parents can elect into it if they want to? Like, if they think their child might need more support over the summer, can they asked be part of it?

Mayor: Alex, I'll start and turn Chancellor. Look, the question's fair – if a kid hasn't gotten done everything they need to, how does more help them? Well, first of all, I'd say a lot of kids – the disruption, they're having to get used to a new model, there's a certain amount of drag, there's a certain amount of acclimation, and that's true for all of us – educators getting in the swing of it, parents getting in the swing of it, kids getting in the swing of it. Also, a lot of kids, as we said, didn't have the technology. We had to get it to them. But I think it's really true to say with every passing week, everyone's learning how to do it better. So, if a young person couldn't get done everything he needed to do, but we have, you know, more time and a more flexible approach that we can apply in that time, it stands to reason that you're going to see additional gains. So, that's something that I'm convinced is going to work for a lot of kids. With that, on the other questions you asked – turn to the Chancellor.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza: Thank you. Thank you, Alex. I think what's important to understand here is that the people who know their students best are parents, teachers, and principals. So, the recommendations as to who is required to attend summer learning and who is recommended is going to be that individual analysis that teachers in communication with parents are having in terms of their child's academic progress. There are some students that will be required to attend summer learning. For example, students that at the end of the term are recommended for non-promotion, there'll be required to go to summer learning. Students at the high school level that have an in-progress classification will be required to go to summer learning. But there are others – and to your question, that communication, that that back and forth between parents and teachers could lead to a student being recommended because they have more gap