cy's four of july celebration. that celebration to include fireworks, of course, no details have been hashed out yet. de blasio saying, quote, this is a day we cannot miss. there is no day like the fourth of july. one way or another, the show will go on. >> we're all looking forward to seeing that. we'll see you back here tomorrow morning. i'm poppy harlow. >> i'm jim sciutto. newsroom with john king starts right now. >> hello to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm john king in washington. this is cnn's continuing coverage of it coronavirus pandemic. 2.6 million is where the global case count sits this hour. they're outlawing inbound traffic. lebanon confirming the first coronavirus case in a palestinian refugee camp, and a united nations monitor warns of widespread famines and countries

forced to save people from the virus only to die of hunger. 45,000 plus have died here in the united states from the virus. that is a remarkable rise in just two weeks. 32,000 american lives lost in the past 14 days. today, there is new evidence indicating the virus arrived on american shores earlier than we initially shot. a northern california county said an individual died from coronavirus back on february 6th, three weeks earlier than what was thought to be the first confirmed virus fatality in kirkland, washington. the disclosure adding to the growing stack of information suggesting the case count and the death toll could be far higher than the current count. the president is having a scatter shot morning. threatening iran in one tweet, wishing a gossip columnist a happy birthday in another. the president is out ahead of the facts or trying to create alternative facts. he says states are safely coming back and reopening. fact is, that process is just now beginning. and only in a few places. georgia and florida do want a

quick return to work. texas also taking some first steps. delaware's governor, though, says he wants to double the president's advice and log 28 days of declining cases before thinking about reopening his state. currently, no state meets the letter of the president's own reopen guidelines. and the president's own medical experts are advising caution. the cdc director says a tandem flu and coronavirus assault next fall would, quote, put unimaginable strain on the health care system. and this morning, the fda commissioner echoes the giant concern about a second wave. >> are you worried about that second wave? >> i think that it's certainly a possibility, and the whole task force of doctors is concerned about the second wave. >> the timetable for a vaccine, which would be really a game changer, last we checked in with you was about a year off. that would be march of 2021. is that still the case? >> still the case that the estimate is march, but we're really trying to accelerate the

efforts. >> trying to accelerate the efforts. but perhaps a year or so or more even to get a vaccine to emerge, which puts a premium on finding therapeutic drugs that at least help with treatment. today, one study showing a drug repeatedly touted by president trump is not effective in treating covid-19. in fact, patients who took the drug had higher death rates than those who didn't take it. this as the fda approves the first at-home test for detecting coronavirus. meantime, a leading model upping its projected death toll in the united states up to 66,000 by august. senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen join meez now. what do we know and what does it mean, the fact there could have been two covid-19 deaths in california back in early february? >> it tells us that people were dying earlier than we thought, and also, it's very important, the coroner there saying these two folks did not travel. they had no link to wuhan or any other hot spot, so they got it just out in the community.

community, it appears. john, let's take a look at these dates. these autopsies were february 6th and 17th. no known travel history. the first case of unknown origin was february 26th, so it appears it was actually spreading in the community much earlier. february 29th, the cdc announces the first death. so these two autopsies are significant for both reasons, an earlier death than we had thought and early community spread than we had thought. >> and elizabeth, also today, a lot of discussion about this new test, new study on hydroxychloroquine. what does it tell us? >> right. it's a study done by the veterans administration. it was over 350 people. so by comparison, this is quite a large study. let's take a look. the folks who were taking hydroxychloroquine, they had a 27.8% death rate. the folks who weren't had an 11.4% death rate. and that's after the researchers adjusted for any differences between the two groups as far as how healthy they were or weren't. that was after statistical

adjustment. now, john, i will say this was put up on a website that's called the preprince server. it's not peer reviewed or published in a medical journal. >> we need more evidence but that one study tells you be cautious at a minimum there. a lot of talk about testing. a lot of people thinking if i go back to work, can i be tested first? tell us about the new at-home test. does it work? >> yes, the folks who make it say it works and they have been allowed to marked it. it's very interesting. it's very convenient to be able to do this at home. this could help a lot of people who don't know where to go to get tested. let's look at how it functions. you collect the sample yourself. you put what looks like a q-tip in your nose and you do a swab. and it costs about $119. and you mail in the results. so that this can be something, i have certainly talked to people who are thinking, gee, i don't know if i have covid or not. they don't know where to get a test. they don't know if they want to go out and expose themselves in case they're not already

infected. that takes care of a lot of those problems. >> elizabeth cokcohen, thank yo. >> now let's shift to the reopen debate here in the united states. states deciding on their own when they can reopen. the president hopes it's as soon as possible, but in maryland, oregon, west virginia, restrictions now being extended indefinitely. virgin virginia's governor setting june 10th as the date to possibly reopen his state. meantime, georgia's republican governor is going full speed ahead, reopening a variety of businesses in that state, even though as you can see, the number of coronavirus cases not exactly on a steadily decline in georgia. cnn's martin savidge is outside atlanta for us. martin, the governor getting pushback from local officials. where are we right now? >> from the very moment he announced his plan, which was on monday, he's had a tremendous amount of pushback, and it's not all coming from just officials or those in the opposite party. it's also coming from some people who run the very

businesses that could benefit. we're at a strip mall here. there are add least a dozen businesses here that would under the guidelines of the executive order be allowed to open starting on friday. but that's not to say they will. the governor has been going on the defensive. he was on fox news, he was also on a number of local interviews, and he's been doing a lot of tweeting. here's one of them that he put out. it reads, due to favorable data and more testing, gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys and a litany of all those businesses that will reopen. but the first line, due to favorable data and more testing? we have another chart that shows you the number of coronavirus hospitalizations in the state of georgia. they have actually gone up in the last week. when he talks about testing, georgia has ranked nearly at the bottom when it comes to all the other states where testing has been conducted on the general population. so it doesn't jibe with what the medical authorities are

reporting here. and remember, this is the governor who famously not that long ago came out and said he wasn't aware that people who were asymptomatic could be spreading coronavirus even though the cdc is literally around the corner from where he works and where he lives. so a lot of this is being looked at skeptically by business owners who say look, i'm not sure i can actually open by friday, and even if i do, i'm not sure that customers are going to walk through that door. i don't even know if my employees will show up. there are so many questions, and friday is not likely to be the end of them. >> martin savidge for us in atlanta. martin, appreciate it. whether you agree or disagree, they have the mayor pushing back, the businesses pushing back. nice if they could sort all this out. a note, we have invited governor kempt to come here to visit us on cnn. he's been on fox and other networks. the inhavevitation is extended. he's so far declined.

here to join me is dr. malloy. let me start with you. this is a little mix of medicine and politics, but when you see hospitalizations in georgia are up, the case counts on a bit of a roller coaster. you might be able to go back two weeks and say the trajectory is going down. that's what the president says, but you have some bumps. if you were advising the georgia governor, would you say go now or would you say wait a little bit? >> if i were providing advice to the governor, i would say that it's time to wait. we don't have the testing in place. we don't have the ability to do the contact tracing that we need to do. we just do not have all of the things that we need in place that meet all of the criteria that have been set forth of how to be able to reopen. so i know that everybody is champing at the bit to get started again, get moving. but we really risk losing all of the gains that everybody has worked so hard to be able to achieve here. >> and when you look at the latest model out of ihme, the

university of washington, a model often cited by the white house, but they are now, as they have watched this play out, they have more and more u.s. data to put in their model. initially t was based on what was happened in china and italy. they have increased by august 1st the u.s. death toll will be up to 66,000. that's up 10% from the previous model. and these numbers, on the right side of the screen, they're important. they're also depressing. 45,150. if we had the conversation today. what is changing that is leading them to think, okay, it's going to go up a little bit? >> well, it seems that we have now gotten a lot more information here in the united states about how the virus is spreading, what the actual mortality rate is here. and that also, that has improved by going back and looking at some of the nursing homes and really looking to see who had -- who could potentially have the virus and who didn't. they are now classifying

presumptive cases or cases that were suspected to have met all of the clinical criteria but were not tested at the time, now as covid. so that's increasing the number of deaths associated, and so the more we understand the data here, the more we really know what's going on. we put that into the model, and the model then is adjusted. everybody has to remember that models are predictions. and they're only as good as the data that are in them. so that's why the ihme models are being constantly refined and getting better and better, because they're fine tuned to the situation at hand right here. >> and help me and our viewers understand in this coverage, every day, if not every hour, there's a study about this, a controversy about testing here. testing is the big thing before us right now. you hear about the armies of contact tracing. you hear the president say, oh, states have enough. you hear governors saying no we do not. maybe we have the labs, we don't have the supplies. when you're looking at this every day, help our viewers

since you understand it better than most, what is the most important thing you have seen in the last 24 hours on the testing question that you think needs to be looked at? >> well, i think that some of the questions about how well these tests are identifying people who have covid is coming into play now. it's something that we all know, no test is going to be perfect. but we really need to be careful by making decisions on, you know, based on data that is not perfect. so we're still trying to sort out so much about this virus. it is a novel virus. i know people hear that all the time. this is a novel virus, new to humanity. we're still trying to understand what's going on, but it's really true here. it's really amazing how much work has been done and how much science is done on a daily basis, but many of these papers that are coming out are still in preprint, meaning they have not been peer reviewed and gone through the normal process of vetting and questions being asked by other experts. and so i think that this is a

really big issue in trying to digest everything in particular for the general public who is seeing the papers on preprint and not understanding that this is -- these papers are not the same as a paper that is already in a published -- that's in a journal that's gone through peer review. that's why so much is being refined over time. >> the world is seeing on an hourly basis the things that you get to see behind the curtain, but you understand them better. it's confusing for everyone else out here. i just talked a little bit to elizabeth cohen from this. but from an epidemiology standpoint, if you're trying to understand the scope of all this, you have these two cases in california now that they say go back to early february. what does it mean, how does it impact our study to figure out exactly when did it get here, how did it spread, that we could have cases back in early february, weeks ahead of what we thought was the first case at that senior center in kirkland, washington? >> well, i can just amplify what elizabeth said. which is that what it suggests is that this virus was

circulating in the community much earlier than we knew. these cases that were identified had no direct link to another case. and so these -- and were not people who had been to china. therefore, it just suggests this was circulating in the community long before we knew that it was here. >> fascinating as we look forward. i want to thank you so much. we'll continue the conversation in the days ahead. >> up next for us, pandemic policy making trump style. a tweet that is scrambled by aides and in the end a retreat by the president on immigration. >> before we go to break, a dr. from mt. sinai hospital in new york sharing one of the hardest parts of being on the front line. >> it's even more stressful when the young patients come in and they don't end up making it. it takes an emotional toll on everyone. it makes us realize that everyone can be affected and actually kind of scares me a little bit because if i get it, there's really no telling if i'm going to be a mild case or a

serious case.

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some new details today about the policy chaos the president causes with his tweets. even in the middle of a pandemic. this morning, the president promising to sign a new immigration executive order today. that order is borne of another tweet sent late monday promising to suspend immigration into the united states. a declaration that caught the president's own aides by surprise. sent them scrambling once again to write a plan to match a tweet. what the president will sign today falls considerably short of what he promised in that initial tweet. cnn white house correspondent john harwood joins me now. we have seen this play out before, president tweets, aides rush to write a policy to match

it, but not in the middle of a pandemic. >> that's right. but this is a president who has been very consistent in his operational style. as you know, having covered the white house as i have for some time, the orderly policy making process of most white houses is not consistent with somebody who operates on moment-to-moment impulses, much less moment-to-moment impulses at 10:00 at night. the president, having felt the weight of blame from the public, from other politicians, from the media for his handling of coronavirus, was looking for something to change the storyline, give his base something to get enthused about. he talked about immigration since the outset of his political career, so he tweets he's going to ban immigration. now we know that the agra business, which uses immigrant labor to keep the food supply going, is going to be exempted from this. that's the part of immigration that has the most immediate economic impact.

remember, the president saying he was doing this in the name of protecting american jobs. this is applying mainly to green cards over the next 60 days. and as you know, with 22 million americans having filed for unemployment over the last couple weeks, the number of potential green card holders who would be affected by this is tiny, about 75,000 at the pace of 2019 green card applications. so it's also the case that the bureaucratic activities surrounding green card holders, visa processing green card applications, has all been slowed. travel has been slowed by the coronavirus. so the practical impact of this, not very great. the message sending impact, that's what the president was looking for. his campaign has been putting this out, raising money off it. that's what this is all about. >> this is politics in the middle of a pandemic. john harwood, appreciate the fine reporting. >> meanwhile, the president's attorney general, william barr,

is calling for an easing of social distancing. in a radio interview, barr outlined ways he says the justice department could possibly take action against a governor if it believes the state's restrictions go too far. the attorney general saying, quote, these are unprecedented burdens of civil liberties right now. the idea that you have to stay in your house is disturbingly close to house arrest. barr added that so far he has not seen a need for justice department action. >> more money to help small businesses stay afloat is on the way. the house plans to vote tomorrow on a $484 billion deal that cleared the senate yesterday. it's the fourth coronavirus relief package. and there are some new tensions brewing as talk turns now to what will be needed in a fifth installment. cnn congressional correspondent phil mattingly joins me now. phil, first, small businesses are desperate for this money. tell us, what's in the current package? >> so this will be a replenishment of nony that disappeared so quickly, just 13 1/2 days after the paycheck

protection program set up by the small business administration, that program will get $310 billion more. it had $349 bhl to start with y now an additional $310 billion, which should be good news for the thousands of people who had applications who are essentially waiting in the queue if had got that far to this point. this will be voted on thursday. there are other key elements that are important. one, there are some restrictions put on the $310 billion for the small business program. $60 billion of that will be redirected toward smaller financial institutions, community financial institutions, institutions that are more minority-owned. the effort here to try to get the money to the small businesses that weren't able to the first time around because they didn't have existing relationships with banks. they didn't have credit lines with banks. that will be something to keep an eye on as the money rolls out. also some other key elements. $75 billion for hospitals and health care providers. $25 billion for testing and national testing strategy, more language in terms of how the money would go to states. testing is a huge issue on the

national and state level. money there as well, and another $60 billion for another small business loan program. there's a lot in this package, john. that's one of the issues, you blink and all of a sudden there's another $500 billion about to go out the door from congress, which underscores two things. one, just how deep this economic crisis in the economic pain is, and two, that lawmakers recognize they need to move quickly or at least as quickly as congress can. >> states can't print money. you have the national government jumping in here. we're starting to hear rumblings from mitch mcconnell, as we know there's going to be a round five. the president says infrastructure. democrats say what about aid to big states and cities. mitch mcconnell seems a little weary of all this spending. >> yeah, look, i think this is really important to pay attention to. there's essentially been four legislative relief packages since coronavirus really kind of took hold here. four legislative relief packages that equal close to $2.7, $2.8 trillion. it was only a matter of time before both on the idealogical

front and the deficit front, you start to see divides in the partisanship. take a listen to what the senate majority leader told hugh hewitt. >> what they wanted the most i refused to go along with and the white house backed me up. that is we're not ready to just send a blank check down to states and local governments to spend any way they choose to. we need to have a full debate, not only about if we do state and local, how will they spend it, but also we haven't had much discussion about adding $2.7 trillion to the national debt. >> so john, a couple things there i want to pick out. first, state and local funding has been a huge issue for democrats. they tried to get it in the package that will clear congress tomorrow. they're stopped, and mcconnell tells you why. there are idealogical differences in terms of how many should be dolled out in the states between democrats and republicans. even though the chair of the

national governors association, the maryland governor, mr. hogan himself, is the one ask trg the money, and mcconnell is reflecting with his confidence is. you talk to republican senators and house members, they're not necessarily comfortable with all of the spending and even though the crisis is so deep, you're going to start to see that as they work through the next package, john. >> the leader also has the good memory. it was ten years ago the tea party borne of all the republican and conservative angs over the spending after the last financial crisis. the leader looks around the senate sometimes and remembers that quite well. >> up next for us here, a cnn exclusive. returning to wuhan, china. the coronavirus pandemic began. more important than ever. s at&t is committed to keeping you connected. so you can keep your patients cared for. your customers served. your students inspired. and your employees closer than ever. our network is resilient.

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exclusive report now you can see only here on cnn. a return to ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic. our international correspondent david culver is in wuhan, china, for the first time since that city went into lockdown three months ago. >> returning here to wuhan, you get the feeling this is a city

trying to navigate a new normal. life post lockdown, trying to figure out how exactly they will be able to move forward and yet at the same time find some sense of normality. it's become a struggle, and quite frankly, folks here are realizing that it won't be the same as before. especially after you consider what was a 76-day brutal halting of life in some cases. people sealed inside their homes, unable to leave for that long stretch of time. now, you can notice more and more people are starting to come out. starting to enjoy the outdoors a little bit more. but also, as one american told us who has lived here on and off since 2009, they're very cautious of a second wave. >> this makes you happy to see all this. >> it makes me happy, but i don't want to see people get complacent. like, we are afraid that there is going to be the second wave. i think everybody here knows -- >> you think it's coming? >> absolutely. whether or not it's the severity

of it, but it's definitely going to come. and it's just, you know, because people are going to come back outside. they're excited. they're finally allowed out. it's been almost 80 days, 90 days, say, locked up inside the house. >> to be able to go outside was just that explosion of light, excitement, but then you have the fear of can i go outside? should i go outside? is my family going to be okay if i go outside? you know, you have to start thinking about other people. we have our distance, you know, even as we speak. >> you also notice little things like washingtlking into certain buildings like a hotel, for example, where they have put in some extreme measures to prevent any contamination. for example, walking into an elevator, you now have to pick one of four squares to stand on to keep some social distancing. you also can pull a tissue that's provided in there so as to touch the buttons. the idea here is to be as sanitary as possible. even walking into the hotel, they sprayed us from head to toe

each and every time with a pesticide like spray bottle full of sanitizer. the idea here is to keep things as clean as can be. david culver, cnn, wuhan, china. >> fantastic reporting, david culver. thank yous so much. >> still ahead here, the coronavirus crisis in nursing homes, sadly, from coast to coast. >> before we go to break, a chaplain reflecting on the toll of this pandemic, saying good-bye to patients was hard enough. now the job includes losing colleagues. the front line health care workers. >> the hardest thing to deal with it seems to be when we lose one of our own. it really, really -- i think that's because it really makes the struggle -- it brings it home. work then goes home. and this is a nurse that's been with us for 21 years, and what do you say to that? i don't have any words for that. i was fighting back my own tears, and i never met her, but

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there's no obligation. call now what many people don't realize is your biggest asset might the daily briefing of the governor, andrew cuomo. >> tense, terrible situations for a long time in the past. but it feels very long. and it's very stressful. and that's -- that's across the board. you know, you have families that haven't had a paycheck come in in a couple months. and meanwhile, the bills keep coming in. that's tremendous economic anxiety and insecurity, and by the way, it's exactly right. when do i go back to work, when do i get another paycheck? that's a pressure that people feel in the household. even the good part of it, well, my family is together. i have all my three girls in my

case with me, and that's nice, and that's good news. but you put even the family together, and you lock them up, cabin fever, and everybody has their own stress that they're dealing with, and everyone is trying to figure out their life and they're all together in this intense period. even that is stressful. i feel it in my own household. my daughters are getting tired of my jokes. believe it or not, how that can happen, i have no idea, but somehow they manage to do that. even have trouble now picking a movie at night because the rule is if you pick a bad movie, then you are on movie probation. you don't get to pick the next movie. everybody is on movie probation in my house now. so that's a problem. even the dog, captain, is out of sorts and relating to stress. maybe there's too many people in the house, and he's having trouble adjusting.

captain doesn't like the boyfriend. i said i like the boyfriend, so it's nothing i said. but all sorts of tension that people are living with. real tension. and then just the day-to-day stress. so yes, it's a terrible period of time. i get it. but we have to deal with it. and when you look at the reality of the situation, we are actually in a much better place. we're not home yet. but we're in a better place. the really bad news would have been if we concluded that we couldn't control the spread of the virus. that was a possibility. you looked at all those initial projections. how do you know that we could control the spread? we could have done all those close-down measures and it didn't work. and the spread continued. that would have been bad news. so relatively, we're in a

relatively good place. in downstate new york, the curve is on the descent. the question is now how long is that? is it a sudden dropoff, is it one week, two weeks, three weeks, six weeks? we don't know, but bet toter to going down than to be going up, right? let's keep that in mind. and we are going down. how fast, we'll find out. but we're in a better place. hospitalization numbers are coming down. intubations are coming down. number of new people going into the hospital every day is still troublingly high. but better than it was. but still problematic. number of lives lost is still

breathtakingly painful. and the worst news that i have to deliver every day and the worst news that i have ever had to deal with as governor of new york. but at least it's not going up anymore and it seems to be on a gentle decline. but make no mistake, this is a profound moment in history. our actions are going to shape our future, and you're not going to have to wait for a ten-year analysis, a retrospective to find out how our actions affected our future. what we do today you will see the results in three, four, or five days. okay. you tell me what the people of this state and this country do today, you will see the results in the number of hospitalizations in just a few days. we get reckless today, there are a lot of contacts today,

unprotected contacts today, you'll see that hospitalization rate go up three, four, five days from today. it is that simple. and it's that pressing that every decision we make is going to affect how we come out of this, how fast we come out of this. so in this moment, more than any other, truth, not what you would like to see, what you hope to see, not emotions. truth and facts. truth and facts. that's how we operate here in the state of new york. truth and facts. give me the truth and give me the facts. and that has to guide our actions. period. we had a productive meeting at the white house yesterday. productive, sort of everybody says productive. very few people come out and say unproductive. what does it mean? to me, a productive visit means

we spoke truth. we spoke facts. we made decisions, and we have a plan going forward. and that was accomplished yesterday. and i feel good about it personally. because it's what should have happened. right? big issues on the table. in the political process, well, he said this, she said this. then you get into a he said/she said, or you get into a blame game, finger pointing. but the meeting was very productive. and by the way, these are people in the white house who politically don't like me. you know, that's the fact, right? you see the president's tweets. he's often tweeted very unkind things about me. and my brother. politically, he does not -- we have had conflicts back and

forth. but we sat with him. we sat with his team. and that was put aside. because who really cares how i feel or how he feels? who cares? get the job done. i don't care if you like him or he likes you. you know, we're not setting up a possible marriage here. just do the job. right? when you're at war, you're in a fox hole. nobody says, well, do you like the person you're in the fox hole with? who cares? you protect the other person in the fox hole, then you get out of the fox hole and you take the hill. charge up the hill. and that's how we should be operating now. i don't care what your politics are. i don't care what you think about my politics. it doesn't matter. we both have a job to do. let's do the job. that was the spirit of the meeting yesterday. and it was very productive on what were very contentious unclear issues. so it was very good.

the main issue was testing, which i'll talk more about in a second. but we also talked about state funding. all the governors are united, democrat and republican, national governors association, every governor is saying the same thing. we have to have state funding. the states have a role basically in a deficit situation, and we need funding from washington. they have passed bills that help a lot of americans. that's great. help small businesses, that's great. but you have to help state governments, because state governments fund people that the federal government can't fund. you know, state and local governments, we're funding police, we're funding fire, we're funding teachers, we're funding schools. you can't just ignore them. when you don't fund the states, you're saying to the states, well, you have to fund them, and the states have already said in one united choir, we can't. we can't. so we talked to the president about that. the president gets it.

the president says he's going to work very hard in the next piece of legislation. but you know, i have been in washington. i was there for eight years. the congress has to insist that this is in the legislation. and yes, they passed funding for small business and funding for testing, and that's good. that is a good thing. it's not a bad thing. but it's not enough either. and they don't come back every day, the congress. it's hard to get them to come back. and this was not the time for baby steps. this is when you should be taking bold action. right? the action is proportionate to the issue. and you haven't had a problem that is any bigger than this that any of those senators or congress people have ever dealt with. well then, your action should be proportionate and responsive to the problem. and it wasn't. the president also agreed, which

is a big deal for new york, to waive what's called the state match for fema. normally, a state has to pay 25% of the fema cost. that would be a cruel irony for new york and adding insult to injury. new york had the highest number of coronavirus cases in the country. therefore, our cost of fema was the highest cost in the nation. and therefore, new york should pay the highest amount. how ironically cruel would that be? you're going to penalize us for having the highest number of coronavirus cases in the country. and at the same time, the congress passed a piece of legislation not even funding the states. so the president agreed to waive that. that is a very big deal. that's hundreds of millions of dollars to the state of new york. but the big issue was testing.

and we have been talking about testing, tracing, and then isolating. and that is going to be the key going forward. that's how you are educated and have some data points as you're working your way through this reopening calibration, right? how does it work? you test the person. if the person winds up positive, you then trace that person's contacts. contact tracing. you have to start with a large number of tests. and we set as a goal yesterday to double the number of state tests to go from 20,000 on average to 40,000. that is just about the maximum capacity for all of the laboratory machines in the state. okay. we have private labs, about 300 of them, that we regulate. they have purchased machines

over time. these are very expensive machines. if you took every machine we had and they had all the supplies they needed from the national manufacturers, and you ran that machine seven days a week, 24 hours a day, how many tests could you do? about 40,000. so that's if you put your foot to the floor and brought the engine up to maximum rpm, up to the red line, you brought it up to 6,000, assuming the red line was 6,000. and you held it there seven days, 24 hours a day at red line, how many tests could you do? 40,000. now, there's a lot of but and ifs in there. but the machine has to stay together for seven days, 24 hours a day. you have to have enough people feeding the machine, but that is our maximum potential. so where did we set the goal?

at our maximum potential. why? because we need to. well, it's unrealistic. might be a little unrealistic, but i would rather set the bar high and try to get there and then whatever we get is what we get. but once you do all those tests, every positive you have to go back and trace. and the tracing is a very big, big deal. once you trace and you find more positives, then you isolate the positives. they're under quarantine. they can't go out. they can't infect anybody else. this entire operation has never been done before. so it's intimidating. you have never heard the words testing, tracing, isolate before. no one has. we have just never done this. there are a few textbooks that spoke about it, but we have never done it. we have never done it anywhere near this scale. so it is an intimidating

exercise. but i say so what, who cares that you have never done it. that's really irrelevant. it's what we have to do now. so figure out how to well, we have to put together a tracing army. yes. okay. we've put together armies before. never a tracing army. but we can put together people. we can organize. we can train, and we can do it. and yes, it's a big deal, but it's what we have to do and it's what we will do. we want to operate on a tri-state basis. i've spoken to governor murphy in new jersey, who's doing a great job, and governor lamont in connecticut is doing a great job, and who have been very great neighbors to new york. it's best to do this tracing on a tri-state area. why? because that's how our society works. the virus doesn't stop at

jurisdictional boundaries. whoop, i'm at the town of brookhaven, i stop here. no, the virus doesn't say that. the virus just spreads. and you look at the spread pattern of the virus, it is in a metropolitan area. so, we'll work together. this is going to be a massive undertaking. good news is, mayor michael bloomberg has volunteered to help us develop and implement the tracing program. mayor bloomberg was mayor of new york city, as you know, three terms. as governor, i worked with mayor bloomberg. he has then developed an organization. he works with mayors all across the world, literally, in providing them guidance. he has tremendous insight, both governmentally and from a private-sector business perspective in this. remember, his company, bloomberg, they went through the china closedown, open up, and

went through the european closedown, open up. so, he's had quite a bit of experience in this area. it's a very big undertaking and we thank you very much for taking it on, because it is going to require a lot of attention, a hot of insight, a lot of experience and a lot of resources. we're also going to be partnering with johns hopkins and vital strategies in putting together that tracing operation. it will be coordinated tri-state and downstate. why downstate? because again, downstate operates as one area. about 25%, 30% of the workforce that goes into new york city comes from outside of new york city. i have a house in westchester. i work in new york city. who's supposed to trace me? westchester or new york city?

if i turn up positive, yeah, my residence is in westchester county, but i work in new york city and i would have contacted many more people in new york city than i did in westchester. because that's where if i work in new york city, that's where i'm contacting people. i live in suffolk, but i work in new york city. i'm a police officer who has a house in rockland, but i work in new york city. i'm a firefighter who lives in rockland or orange, but i work in new york city. i live in new jersey, but i work in the city. i live in the city, but i work in connecticut, right? so, all those interconnections, if you're going to do these tracing operations, you can't do it within just your own county. because you'll quickly run into people who are cross-jurisdictional. so, understand that going in, blur the governmental jurisdictions, because they don't really make sense.

put everybody together, work together. harder done than said, but 100% right, there's no doubt about that. we're going to take the initial tracers that people have now. the state has about 225 today. rockla rockland 40, nassau 60, new york city, 200. they're going to work together. mayor bloomberg is going to start with that core, but we have to build on that, because we will literally need thousands. suny and cuny have 35,000 medical students that we're going to draw from, but we have to put together a significant operation because the numbers get very big, very quickly here. today is also the 50th anniversary of earth day. when you look at many of the numbers that we're finding and you look at the disparity between the african-american community, latino community,

that is a higher rate of infection than people in the white community, you start to ask why and you start to study those health disparities. you also find that in those areas where the coronavirus infection rate is higher, they tend to be minority areas. and by the way, those minority areas tend to be the places where we cited plants that pollute. the asthma rates, respiratory illnesses are three times higher among people in the african-american community, three times the asthma rate, the respiratory illness rate. they're getting more coronavirus. they're a higher percentage of essential workers. you see how these two factors come together and make a bad situation worse. let's learn from that. it's one of the lessons that we have to learn and we have to go

forward, and we will. the positive message is look how well we do when we actually focus and we make a decision and we say, we have to do this. if you had told me two months ago that i would be able to stand up before the people of the stay and say, by the way, we have to close down everything, business is closed, everything closes, everybody going into their home, close the door, lock it, don't come out, i would have said, it's not going to work. it's not going to work. you're not going to get 19 million new yorkers, who are just a defiant group of people, questioning everything. they're not going to do it. well, maybe if you give them all the facts and they understand, then they'll do it. and we did. look at the potential! look at the possibility of what you can actually do. well, then, can you really make a real difference on these issues that we've been fighting for decades, but we haven't really made the progress we need to? climate change, the environment. yes, you can.

last point. my phone is ringing. i'm talking to many local officials. they feel political pressure to open. i understand. i said yesterday that we're going to make decisions on a regional basis because just as the nation has different states in different positions, new york state has different regions in different positions. north country has one set of facts. facts. this is about truth and facts. north country has one set of facts. western new york has a different set of facts. capital district has a different set of facts. make decisions based on the facts, and the facts are different than downstate new york in many areas. also, make them on the facts and realize the consequence of what you could do opening one region but not other regions and how you could flood that one region and give them a host of problems they never anticipated. but make the decision on the facts. i get it. don't make the decision based on political pressure. i'm not going to do that.

i am not going to do that. this is a profound moment. we make a bad move, it's going to set us back. and i get the political pressure and i get the political pressure that local officials are under. we can't make a bad decision. i get the pressure, but we can't make a bad decision. frankly, this is no time to act stupidly. period! i don't know how else to say it. and i've said it innumerable times to local officials on the phone. i get the pressure. i get the politics. we can't make a bad decision, and we can't be stupid about it. this is not going to be over any time soon. i know people want out. i get it! i know people want to get back to work. i know people need a paycheck. i know this is unsustainable. i also know more people will die

if we are not smart. i know that. i have to do that count every day of the number of people who passed away. we're not going to have people lose their life because we acted imprudently. i'm not going to do that. i'm not going to do that. and i'm not going to allow the state to do that, and i am not going to have the obituary of this period be, well, they felt political pressure, so they got nervous and they acted imprudently. that's not who we are. so, i've said to them, look, if you look at any of the facts, the 1918 flu, they're talking about it now. there can be waves to this, right? you walk out into the ocean, you get hit with that first wave. oh, great, i'm done.

the wave hit me. i'm still standing. beware, because there can be a second wave, or there could be a third wave. so, don't be cocky just because you got hit by a wave and it didn't knock you off your feet. there can be a second wave. and if you're not ready for the second wave, that's the wave that's going to knock you down. because you're not ready for it. so, that's what i'm worried about. and also, to the local officials and the local politicians, i have no problem with them blaming me. it's a very simple answer! say to everyone, whatever they say, i agree with you. it's the governor. because by the way, it is the governor. it is. these are state laws that are in effect. the local official can't do anything about them anyway. because they can't contradict a state law.