New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the White House has promised to help the state double its coronavirus testing capacity.
Cuomo met with President Donald Trump Tuesday at the White House. New York is the country's coronavirus epicenter and its governor has been one of Trump’s sharpest critics.
But Cuomo and Trump put their bitterness aside Tuesday, meeting face-to-face for the first time since the outbreak. The governor called their talks “effective and functional.”
“It ends the whole back-and-forth and the finger-pointing in a very fair and smart way,” he told reporters after returning to Albany.
“We have a very good understanding,” Trump said, adding that the White House and New York “will work together to help them secure additional tests,” Trump said. “And we hope that this model will work with the other states as well.”
Cuomo said the White House committed to make all efforts to double testing in New York from 20,000 to 40,000 a day – something he said would take several weeks.
Cuomo and many other governors believe listening to the experts along with enough proper testing for coronavirus are the keys to being able to ease lockdowns and get businesses up and running again – not politics or pressure from street protests.
New York has been the hardest hit U.S. state by the pandemic. As of Tuesday, there were more than 250,000 cases. But the number of new deaths dropped to less than 500 for the second straight day.
