New York’s governor is heading to Washington Tuesday, where he said he will “tell the truth” to President Donald Trump about the need for the federal government to help states carry out large-scale coronavirus testing.
“You tell the truth,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said about how he will approach the president, with whom he has sometimes had a difficult relationship. “I said that to the president from Day One. And by the way, he has done the same vis-à-vis me. He has no problem telling me when he disagrees, and he tells me when he agrees.”
Cuomo wants Washington to step up and assist U.S. states with both diagnostic testing — to know if an individual has COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus — and to do antibody testing to learn whether a person has some immunity to the virus.
Specifically, the governor wants help procuring the pieces to the test kits — nasal swabs, test tubes, chemical reagents and solutions. These are needed in vast quantities to make large-scale testing possible, and Cuomo has said it is too big a job for individual states to handle.
He has also repeatedly complained that the purchasing process pits individual states against each other in shopping and bidding wars, especially when purchasing overseas.
“I think the federal government has to take that national manufacturers’ supply chain issue,” he said, of the domestic firms that cannot meet demand. “You shouldn’t expect all these governors to go run around and do an international supply chain while they are trying to put together their testing protocol, in their state.”
New York has been the hardest hit U.S. state by the pandemic. The state crossed the 250,000-case mark on Tuesday, and while new case numbers are stabilizing, and new deaths dropped below 500 for the second day in a row, the crisis is far from over.
The southern part of New York has been hardest hit by the outbreak than the upstate region. Ninety-three percent of all confirmed virus cases have been in the southern region; only 7% have been upstate.
The governor spoke to reporters in the town of Buffalo in the far western part of the state. He said he would consider reopening upstate businesses first, once the infection rate has stabilized.
“It’s more the ‘when’ and the ‘how’,” he said of reopening the western part of the state. “When do you reopen it? Look at the data. Look at the hospital rate. Look at the infection rate and tell me where you are.”
He said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines also say a region must be stable or declining in coronavirus infections for at least two weeks before loosening restrictions.
Cuomo also emphasized that reopening should be data-driven, not based on political pressure.
“If you don’t want to take the political heat, you shouldn’t be in the political kitchen, which is called being an elected official,” he said.
