New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo discuss the news that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to help develop a test-and-trace program for New York to help battle the coronavirus pandemic. Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire philanthropist and former mayor of New York City, will help the state develop and implement an aggressive program to test for Covid-19 and trace people who have had contact with infected individuals, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday.
Health officials have said that radically increasing the current level of testing, along with tracing and isolating contacts of infected people, is necessary to prevent a resurgence of infection as states reopen businesses and social settings.
“Michael Bloomberg will design the program, design the training, he’s going to make a financial contribution,” Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany. “He has tremendous insight both governmentally and from a private-sector business perspective in this.”
Cuomo said the state continues to ramp up its capacity to test for Covid-19, adding that tracing and isolating people who have come into contact with those who test positive will be key to containing the outbreak. He also said the state is taking “random surveys” of people at “grocery stores, street corners” to recruit people to volunteer for an antibody test, which can detect whether someone has been previously infected with Covid-19.
He said this data-driven approach will help the state determine when it can reopen the economy.
He added that Johns Hopkins University and public health nonprofit Vital Strategies will also be partnering with New York to trace and isolate the virus.
“This is a monumental undertaking. We’re all going to do it,” Cuomo said. “You don’t have months to do this, you have weeks to do this super-ambitious undertaking.”
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