Fast, widespread coronavirus testing for millions of people is the key to pulling New York out of its shutdown and restarting the economy safely, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday.
“The key to reopening is going to be testing,” Cuomo said at his daily press briefing in Albany. “Testing of antibodies, testing for diagnostic results — and testing on a scale that we have not done before.”
Both men say the Empire State will need a major assist from the federal government in Washington to secure the supplies and lab capacity needed to test hundreds of thousands of people a day.
The main laboratory for the state government, the Wadsworth Center, currently has the capacity to perform 300 antibody tests per day, Cuomo told reporters. He said that health officials believe they can grow the capacity to 2,000 tests a day in the coming weeks.
“Sounds like a lot, but that’s a drop in the bucket,” said Cuomo, as New York is home to 19.5 million people.
“You could use 10 million tests in New York tomorrow just on the going back to work,” Cuomo explained. “I mean in New York, 30 million tests you could use. As many as you can make, you can use.”
There are two kinds of tests for the coronavirus: antibody testing draws blood samples from patients to see if their immune systems have been exposed to the disease and developed the ability to fight it off; and diagnostic tests, where sick patients are swabbed to see if they have currently have the virus.
And New York badly needs both.
Cuomo wants President Trump to use his executive authority to compel suppliers and laboratories to help New York launch the massive testing campaign.
“If you’re the president, you have something called the Defense Production Act that can fund and mandate actions by private sector companies,” Cuomo said. “We need a tremendous, mind-boggling increase in volume quickly.”
“I don’t believe just waiting for the private sector companies to come up to scale [that] you’re going to see it in the timeframe that you need to get it done,” he added.
New York City’s own testing push got some help from an unlikely source Friday, as Carmel, Indiana — population 92,198 — stepped up to the plate and donated key supplies for 50,000 badly needed tests.
“I want to thank you,” de Blasio said at a press conference in Queens, where he thanked the town’s mayor, Jim Brainard, by name. “It’s wonderful to see this support from the heartland of our country.”
De Blasio declined to say how much testing is currently available throughout the five boroughs, but characterized it as a “rarity.”
The city’s public hospital system, NYC Health + Hospitals, is already testing symptomatic employees who are isolating at home as well as workers who are asymptomatic but providing direct care to COVID-19 patients.
Officials at H+H plan to open testing for all employees later this month.
Widespread testing across the general population is vital to loosening the city’s shelter-in-place restrictions and slowing the transmission of the virus to the point where it can be traced again, de Blasio said.
“We’re talking, in that case, not the ability to do thousands a day — but tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands a day,” he said. “The federal government must step up.”