Governor Andrew Cuomo says he's fielding calls from numerous town supervisors and county officials from around New York, asking when the state will reopen for business. Cuomo said at his Monday briefing that reopening depends on the results of a statewide coronavirus antibody testing program that began Sunday.
Cuomo says the testing program will give us the first accurate snapshot of who has and has not had COVID-19, which he says is vital information for deciding where and when reopening from the cornavirus shutdown can take place.
Cuomo says he wants to end the New York "Pause" as much as anyone, but he says nobody yet knows when and how fast without causing a rebound in the COVID disease. public services, mainly for downstate.
Cuomo said New York State has a budget gap of $10-to-15 Billion because of the money it's spent fighting the pandemic. He says the federal government needs to create a stimulus bill reimbursing all 50 states for their losses. Without, he says New York will have to cut education, local government and public hospital aid by 20 percent.
Meanwhile, the governor says hospitalization numbers from COVID-19 are still dropping slowly. But he says every downstate emergency room is still over capacity, and 478 people died over the past 24 hours. That number has finally dropped below more than 500 per day.
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