Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, N.Y. Gov. Cuomo Announces 40,000 Health Professionals Have Signed Up to Volunteer as Part of the State's Surge Healthcare Force
I think you know everyone who is here. Let me start to my far right:
We have a lot of interesting news today. Things are moving. Current status, we still have the trajectory going up. We have not turned the trajectory nor have we hit the apex. Remember what that line is going to do. It's going to go up, it's going to reach a high point, it's going to tip, it's going to go back down. We're still on the way up the mountain.
Number of infections that have been coming in, 80 percent still self-resolve but 15 percent of the people who test positive require hospitalization. And then there are degrees of hospitalization. But the total universe that requires hospitalization is 15 percent.
We use projection models. We have
Right now what we're looking at is about 140,000 cases coming into the hospitals. The hospital capacity is 53,000 beds. That's a problem. We're looking at about 40,000 ICU cases coming into the hospitals. We have about 3,000 ICU beds. That's a challenge. What is an ICU bed for these purposes? It's basically a bed with ventilator. The ventilator is the most critical piece of equipment for an intensive-care unit bed because this is a respiratory illness and people need more ventilation than usual.
What do we want to do? Reduce the number of cases coming into the hospitals, slow the number of cases coming into the hospitals - that's what
At the same time, increase your hospital capacity. Try to slow the number of cases coming into the hospital, meanwhile raise your hospital capacity. We are working on both simultaneously. We have been from day one. Reduce the number of cases coming in, flatten the curve, slow the spread of the infection - we are doing everything we can on that. That's banning non-essential workers, that's social distancing, that's closing restaurants, closing gyms, just flatten the curve, slow the infection rate.
One issue we had was in
We'll also enact mandatory playgrounds social density - that's probably a new concept - no close contact sports in a playground. No basketball, for example. You cannot do it. We are asking people to do that on a voluntary basis. If there is non-compliance with that, we will then make it mandatory and we will actually close the playgrounds. We don't want to do that because playgrounds are a place to get open air, but you have to exercise social density even in a playground. Again, it's voluntary. The Mayor is going to make it clear that this is important to the people of the city. If it doesn't happen we will actually close down the playgrounds. I don't want to do that, but we do need to reduce the spread of the infection and that is what is most important.
This is very interesting, because the evidence suggests that the density control measures may be working and again, we're doing this from projections. But look at this because it's interesting: This past Sunday, the projection was that hospitalizations were doubling every two days. On Monday, the numbers suggested that the hospitalizations were doubling were doubling every 3.4 days. On Tuesday, the projections suggested that the hospitalizations were doubling every 4.7 days. Now, that is almost too good to be true, but the theory is given the density that we're dealing with, it spreads very quickly but if you reduce the density you can reduce the spread very quickly.
So these projections - I've watched them bounce all over the place and I don't place a great deal of stock in any one projection - all due respect to all the great academics and statisticians who are doing it. But this is a very good sign and a positive sign. Again, I'm not 100 percent sure it holds or is accurate, but the arrows are headed in the right direction and that is always better than the arrows headed in the wrong direction. So to the extent people say boy these are burdensome requirements, social distancing, no restaurants, no non-essential workers - yes, they are burdensome. By the way, they are effective and they're necessary and the evidence suggests, at this point, that they have slowed the hospitalizations. This is everything. Slowing the hospitalization rates coming in to hospitals are everything so the hospitals can deal with the rate of people coming in.
At the same time, increase hospital capacity. What is the high point? You see that line in the beginning. What we're studying is what is the high point of that line. What is the apex of that line? That is the point of the greatest number of people coming into the hospital system. So that's our greatest load is the apex and when is that going to happen. Again, that is a projection. Again, that moves around. But the current projection is that could be in 21 days. So, ramp up the hospital capacity to be able to handle that apex volume. How do you ramp up hospital capacity? You ramp up beds, you ramp up staffing and you ramp up the equipment and the ventilators are the problem in equipment as we discussed many times.
Where are we on that? Beds, we may need 140,000. We have 53,000 - that's the existing capacity of hospitals. We've told all hospitals they have to increase their capacity by 50 percent. I told them that myself on a conference call yesterday. This is a burden for the hospitals to now say you have to increase capacity 50 percent. But I have to tell you, they were very generous about it and they understood what we were dealing with and they were eager to step up to the plate. If you increase hospital capacity by 50 percent that gets you 27,000 beds on top of the existing, that takes you to 80,000. Some hospitals, I asked as a goal, try to increase by 100 percent your capacity. Fifty percent was the minimum. The goal was 100. I believe some hospitals will actually try to do that and I encourage them to try to do that as impossible as it sounds. But now is the time to be aggressive and do things you've never done before. If some of them do that, and I believe some of them will, that would be an additional 5,000 beds. We would get to 85,000 beds.
And that's what we're doing on the bed capacity. Protective equipment, we have been shopping around the world, we have a whole team that's doing it. Right now, we have enough protective equipment, gloves, masks, gowns, for all the hospitals statewide that are dealing with it. I put down a shipment into
And again, we are still shopping for more equipment. Ventilators, ventilators, ventilators. We need 30,000. We have, in the existing hospital system, 4,000 ventilators. This is just in the normal operation of hospitals, et cetera. We have purchased. 7,000 and we are still shopping. Federal government has sent 4,000. We're exploring splitting, where one ventilator could do two patients.
You have beds, you have equipment, you need staff and you need staff understanding that some staff it going to get sick. And they're going to be out, so we have been working on putting together a surge healthcare force. Go back to the retirees, go back to nurses and doctors who may not be in the hospital direct medical care occupation, and ask them to sign up for possible reserve duty. God bless them, 40,000 people have signed up as a surge healthcare force. 2,000 physicians, anesthesiologists, emergency room technicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurse anesthetists, respiratory, RNs, LPNs. 40,000 people have signed up. That's a big, big deal because you can create beds, you find the equipment, you have to have the staff. And you have to have the staff for those additional beds, which is not now in the hospital system. And you have to have staff when the existing staff gets ill. Or, by the way, just can't work the hours that we're going to need people to be working. So that's very good.
This is also very exciting. I don't know that anyone else has done this. We've talked about the emotional stress that this brings on people. And the mental health stress, and mental health challenges. No one's really talking about this. You know, we're all concerned about the immediate critical need. The life and death of the immediate situation, which is right. But don't underestimate the emotional trauma that people are feeling, and the emotional health issues.
We asked for mental health professionals to voluntarily sign up to provide online mental health services. Six thousand mental health professionals agreed to volunteer to provide mental health services for people who need it. How beautiful is that?
And the hotline, 1-844-863-9314, you can call that hotline, you can schedule an appointment with a mental health professional totally free, to talk to them about what you're feeling and what stress you're feeling. And again, God bless the 6,000 mental health professionals who are doing this 100 percent free, on top of whatever they have to do in their normal practice. And I'm sure in their normal practice, they're busy. So this is really an extraordinary, extraordinary step by them.
Federal government, I spoke with president Trump several times. I spoke with him last night. I spoke with him this morning. I've spoken to people in the white house who are handling these operations. I've spoken with the vice president. I've spoken with
We're also talking to the
The
Well you're just big spending. We're not a big spending state. I cut taxes every year. The lowest growth rate of the state budget in modern political history. Okay. So, we are frugal and we are efficient. I am telling you these numbers don't work and I told the House members that we really need their help.
In terms of numbers, total tested we're up 103,000 people. New tests we're up to 12,000. As of yesterday about 28 percent of all testing nationwide has been performed by
Number of positive cases, we're up to 30,000. Number of new cases 5,000. Again, you see the numbers, 17,000
Relatively in
Again you see it spreading across the state. Current numbers, 30,000 tested positive. 12 percent of those who test positive are hospitalized. Three percent of the positives are in ICU. Okay. This is deep breath time again. I am anxious, I'm nervous, what does it mean. 30,000 tested positive. 12 percent are in the hospital. Three percent are in ICU. If you look at those three percent. They're going to be predominantly senior citizens, people with underlying illnesses, people with emphysema, people with a compromised immune system. That's what this effort is all about. All the noise, all the energy, its about that three percent.
Take a deep breath. Now, that three percent. That's my mother, that's your mother, that's your sister. These are people we love. These are our grandparents. And we're going to do everything we can to protect every one of them. And I give the people of the state of
Most impacted states, we're 30,000. Next closest state is
Two answers. Answer one is because we welcome people from across the globe. We have people coming here, we have people who came here from china, who came here from
The second answer is, because we are close. Because we are close. We talk about the virus and how it transfers in a dense area. It's literally because we are close, because we live close to one another, because we're close to one another on the street, because we live in close communities, because we're close to one another on the bus. We're close to one another in the restaurant. We're close to one another in the movie theater. And we have one of the most dense, close environments in the country. And that's why the virus communicated the way it did. Our closeness makes us vulnerable. Our closeness makes us vulnerable. That spatial closeness makes us vulnerable. But it's true that your greatest weakness is also your greatest strength. And our closeness is what makes us who we are. That is what
And there's a gentleman who I still look to for guidance and for leadership and for inspiration. He's not here anymore for you. He's still here for me. But he said things more from profound and more beautifully than most other people ever have. And one of the things he said that is so appropriate for today: "We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: The idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings -- reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race or sex or geography or political affiliation." That is
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VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkBtNYCVAv0&feature=youtu.be) and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here (https://protect2.fireeye.com/v1/url?k=d1fb83ca-8dddb77e-d1f97aff-000babd9fe9f-b1ffba509c7947d8&q=1&e=e734b616-f82a-4fd4-9a7a-31bfa26e9e18&u=https%3A%2F%2Fspaces.hightail.com%2Freceive%2F2O8pXCOJ04).
AUDIO of today's remarks is available here (https://soundcloud.com/nygovcuomo/governor-cuomo-makes-an-announcement-032520).
PHOTOS will be available on the Governor's Flickr page (https://www.flickr.com/photos/governorandrewcuomo/albums).
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