>> c-span has round the clock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. it's all available on c-span.org demand at c-span.org/coronavirus -- c-span.org/coronavirus. briefings, updates from governors, track the spread throughout the u.s. and the world with interactive maps. watch on-demand anytime, unfiltered, at c-span.org/ coronavirus. ♪ a specialnight, evening addition of washington journal on the federal response to the coronavirus crisis. 8:00 p.m. eastern, dr. anthony and a member of the white house coronavirus task force. -- on thechael s national fight against the coronavirus, and his own's.

contracting recovering from the disease. join the conversation on washington journal primetime, monday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> new york governor andrew cuomo gives an update on the pandemic response in his state from earlier today. this is just over 45 minutes. gov. cuomo: let's go through every right now. the good news is the curve of the increase is continuing to flatten. the number of hospitalizations appears to have hit an apex and

the apex appears to be a plateau. which is what many of the models predicted. it was going to be straight up to the top number and then you plateau and that looks like what we are doing. the hospitalization rate is down. that's important more people getting infected still. more people going to the hospitals, but we have a lower number. people are going to the hospitals still net positive. the 300 average, which is what we look at because day-to-day deceiving, especially towards the weekend because we can reporting gets a little different. all the numbers are on the downward slope. infected,ple getting people going to the hospital but

a lower rate of increase. the number of icu admissions is down. the three day average is down. this is a little deceptive because at one time hospitals wards or icuicu beds. now in a hospital all the beds are icu beds. it is like the end hospital -- the entire hospital has turned into an icu facility. i don't know how enlightening this is. is still aer discrete category. the increase in the number of into patients. as we have discussed, the fromations are a bad sign a health diagnostic perspective. when we talk about the number of

deaths, those are people that have been integrated for the longest time. beds may not mean anything anymore in the hospital system. integrations are still into patients. and this is a good sign they are down. about the spread from new york city to long island and upstate. chart,look at the bar you can see the way where it did start to move. hard withen working the surrounding suburbs of new far we have had hotspots but we attacked them weressively and we believe have stabilized the situation upstate and in the suburbs, which is what you see in that chart. terrible news is the number of lives lost. 783 yesterday.

that is not an all-time high. and you can see that the number is somewhat stabilizing. but it is stabilizing at an horrific rate. 783 people, 777, 799, these are horrific numbers depicting that wele loss and pain week allspecially this , 783 individuals and their families are in our thoughts and prayers. the total of lives lost, that is up. people ask, well, when is it over? when is it over? when is it over? my children ask that everyday.

i'm sure everyone is living with the same question. every time you wake up you say, when does this nightmare end? and everybody wants to hear that it ends in two weeks or three weeks or four weeks. or, here is when i can tell you that it is over. just give me some certainty, some closure, some control over my life back. i also said from day one, and when i raised my hand to take the oath originally i would never tell you anything but the truth, even if the truth is inconvenient or painful. winston churchill is a hero of mine. his granddaughter sent me a portrait, a tribute to winston churchill. i thank her for that. but, winston churchill said, now this is not the end. , it is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

it is just a great churchill quote. it is precise in how he uses language. i think that is a fair statement of where we are now. this is the beginning that we are in. this was a beginning phase. we are all trying to adjust. but it is the end of that getting phase. what we do now? we stay the course. what we are experiencing as a product of our actions, period. we do something different, you will see a different reaction in those numbers. everyone wants to turn to the question of, when will we reopen? i get it. i think the first caution for me is as we enter this new phase, when we do it, how do we do it, this person's opinion is here, this person's opinion is here. the best thing we have done to date is we have kept politics out of the discussion.

even though this is a hyper-partisan time, even though we are in the middle of a presidential election, even though it is one of the ugliest political periods i can recall, we have kept politics out of this crisis. i have worked very hard to do that, worked very hard to keep myself out of the politics. i have no personal politics, not running for anything. i'm governor of new york, thank you, and that is where i'm going to stay. i have worked very hard with the president of the united states. we have had our political differences in the past, no doubt, but there is no doubt i have worked hand in glove with the president here and he has been responsive to new york and responsive to new york's needs. he has done it quickly and efficiently. i have literally had conversations with him in the morning when he turned around a decision by that afternoon.

i have been in the federal government. i know what it is like to make a decision. he has really responded to new york's needs. so, keep politics out of it. focus on government and focus on policy and keep politics out of it. it is very hard, especially at this time. you start to hear this dialogue on reopening and you start to hear people with political theories on whether we should reopen faster, whether we should reopen sooner, why are people against reopening, or people in favor of reopening. that is corrosive and destructive. if we don't stop it, it will feed on itself. there are no political conspiracies here. all of the projection models have basically said the same thing. everyone has basically said the

same thing. first of all, no one has been here before. second of all, everyone, all the experts -- i didn't have an opinion, because i am not an expert -- all of the experts had higher projection numbers that -- than we actually experienced. they all said, cap yacht, government action could flatten the curve but we don't know if people will even listen to what governments will do. but, almost all of the experts when you go back and look at it had the same basic heightened fears. from the new york state projection point of view, columbia university, highly credible organization, 136,000 new york only. mckenzie, great organization, 110,000 statewide.

level.on a moderate gates, 73,000. gaetz funded ihme. 73,000 statewide. gaetz funded model is the one the white house most relies on now, currently. all those models were projections. they all said, depending on what people do. not even government. what people wind up doing. but it was not just these academic, private organizations. the white house task force was talking about 1.5 million to 2.5 million deaths, without mitigation. with mitigation they were 100,000 240,000 deaths as the best case scenario.

this is the white house task force. the actual estimate has now been adjusted down, but they are still at 60,000 deaths that they are projecting. the peter navarro white house memo was talking about loss of to 2 million souls. infecting as many as 100 million americans. cdc was talking about 160 million to 214 million people infected. the whole population is only 328 million. the cdc was projecting that more than half of the population would be infected. they were talking about 2.4 million to 21 million people being hospitalized. we only have 920,000 beds in the

united states. how would you hospitalized 21 -- 2.4 million to people? 21 million that was the cdc. so, there was no political conspiracy theory. there is no political conspiracy theory. it is uncharted waters for all of us. let's focus on the facts. let's focus on the data and , let's make decisions that way. also, if someone says, well, cdc was wrong and the white house task force is wrong and peter navarro was wrong and they were all wrong. if i am representing them, i say it is too soon to tell. it is too soon for monday quarterbacking because the game isn't even over yet. what do you think we are in? sixth inning for baseball?

do you think we are halftime if it is a football game? you don't know yet. -- yet what the actual issue is going to be. you don't know yet how this turns out because many decisions have to be made. you have to reopen. you have to decide how to reopen . you have to decide when to reopen. and that is going to be impactful. we don't know if there is going to be a second wave or not. all these things are yet to come. anyone who wants to say well, here is the score at halftime -- and i'm going to now claim that, -- try to collect my bet because it is halftime it doesn't work , that way. the game has to be over. this game isn't over. what do we do now? well, we need to do more testing

and more advanced testing, and we have to do it faster. that is both diagnostic testing and the antibody testing. but we have to get better have both and we have to be able to create a higher volume faster. we have to be more prepared. we should never go through what we went through on this preparation drill. the federal stimulus bill is going to be key. and that legislation has to be , better than the past legislation. it has to be less political. less porkbarrel and more targeted to the actual purpose. you want to help the places that were impacted? i will tell you what the federal legislation should do. we should repeal salt. you want to help new york? by the way you think you are , going to reopen the economy without the engine of the new york metropolitan area? you're kidding yourself. you want to help new york?

you want to help the places that are affected? repeal the salt provision, which was a gratuitous, offensive, illegal in my opinion action to begin with. which literally targeted new york and some of these places, michigan, detroit, california. repeal that if you really want to help places that are affected. and to my delegation, they know this issue very well. as does the california delegation. as does the michigan delegation. that is what you can do if you want to stop with the politics and help people. in the meantime, here you are going to have many people who are struggling many , businesses who are struggling. we have government programs. yeah trying to access a , government program is like trying to break into a bank sometimes. right? it is not that easy. the new york state court system and our chief judge is going to organize lawyers statewide to do

pro bono legal assistance. -- legal assistance to help people with issues they may have had. housing issues, access to government program issues, etc. and many legal issues are going , to stem from this. many places where people need help. lawyers who have time on their hands, who were not working, they are looking for volunteers. most of all, we have to think before we act. these are all big decisions. reopening. reopening is both a public health question and an economic question. i am unwilling to divorce the two. there is no economic answer that does not attend to public health. in my opinion, you can't ask the people of this state or this country to choose between lives lost and dollars gained.

no one is going to make that quid pro quo. i understand the need to bring back the economy as quickly as possible. i understand people need to work. i also know we need to save lives, and we have. one cannot be at the expense of the other. as we look forward, i am still troubled by what we just went through. if no one sounded the alarm in january and february, how do we know that it is safe to proceed now? there are stories and there is information that says some of these places that reopened too quickly are now seeing a growth in the number of cases. they have seen a growth in the infection rate again or they are

seeing the second wave. there is troubling signs on the horizon. i want to make sure that we know this time that we have learned from the other experiences. we are going to be putting together in new york a team of the best minds that look at what happened in wuhan, look at what happened in italy on reopening, and making sure that what we are doing is based on all of the science available. internationally. and what is the possibility of a second wave happening? what is the possibility of people reexperiencing the virus? there are reports from south korea. because, foolnd me once -- it is one thing to

make a mistake once, but this nation should not go through it again. before we make these decisions, let them be informed by the experiences we are seeing across the globe. but, there is no doubt that what we are doing now is as impactful and as important as anything that has been done. this is a time where our actions literally will determine life or death. i have been in government most of my adult life. on many levels, through many circumstances. this is no doubt the most important period for government in my lifetime. there is no doubt about that. the decisions that we make now. also, the potential for the decisions we make now. these are big questions and we should think about them, both in the short-term and long-term. how do we reopen?

what do we rebuild when we open? how do we do it? did we learn the lessons from the past? did we learn the lessons from what we just went through? and are we the better for it? do we take this moment and get a -- make it a moment of positive growth? it is transformational, yes, but are we fully experiencing the reality of what we went through? learning from it, and actually going to be the better for it? are we doing that as a society and are we doing that as individuals? i know the pain. i know the pressure. i know everybody wants to get out of the house. they want to get out of the house tomorrow and they want me to say we are reopening the economy in two weeks and we beat the beast.

the worst thing that can happen is we make a misstep and we let our emotions get ahead of our logic and fact, and we go through this again in any manner, shape, or form. so that is what we have to do. to all of my friends, enjoy this holy week. i know it is different. i am a former altar boy. this was the hectic, busy week when you were an altar boy. you had good friday holy , saturday, tomorrow is easter. for christians, catholics it is a very high time of the holy year. passover week to our jewish brothers and sisters. to say different, everything has been different. but not going to church, not

celebrating palm sunday, not celebrating good friday, holy saturday, easter sunday is different and hard. but, it is the same message, right? whether you do it from home, whether you do it over a television, or through a computer screen, it is the same message. if anything, that message is more profound during this situation than it normally is. new york paused. we paused. we slowed down. the activity level slowed down. you reflect more, you think more. i think that is important during this holy week. in the meantime, we stay new york tough, which is smart, which is united, which is disciplined, which is loving. and we are going to get through this. questions? >> governor, mayor de blasio

cancel school for the rest of the year for new york city today. could we get a reaction to that, and could that be a precursor of canceling school statewide, do you think? gov. cuomo: i understand the mayor's position, which is he thinks school should be canceled for the rest of the year. when we made the decision to close the schools, we made it for the entire metropolitan region. so far nassau, new york city, westchester, rockland. you cannot make a decision just within new york city without coordinating that decision with the whole metropolitan region, because it all works together. so when we decided to close the schools, i spoke to nassau, i spoke to suffolk, i spoke to new york city, i spoke to westchester, and we closed all of the schools at once. any decision to reopen them will also be a coordinated decision.

the mayor has an opinion on new york city. the county executive of nassau will have an opinion on nassau. sleep alone will have an opinion on the sussex. george latimer have an opinion in westchester. i want to coordinate all of those opinions and reopen them at the same time. i would also like to, ideally, coordinate that with connecticut and new jersey. so whatever we do, we do all at the same time. i know the mayor's position, which is he wants to close them until june. we may do that. if we do that, we may do it with all localities. it makes no sense for a locality to make a move that does not coordinate with others. >> [indiscernible] cuomo: well, that is his opinion. he didn't close them, and he can't open them.

it happened on a metropolitan wide basis. we are going to act on a metropolitan basis. coordinated with nassau, suffolk, westchester. ideally i would like to coordinate with new jersey and connecticut, if we can. the new jersey and connecticut coordination is not a legal matter, it is a mutual basis of interest. legally, i want the metropolitan area coordinated. i don't want suffolk doing something that nassau doesn't do, that new york city doesn't do, that westchester doesn't do. >> to clarify, for parents who have kids in public schools, should they anticipate them going back to school? gov. cuomo: there has been no decision. that is the mayor's opinion. i value it. decision, steve

bellone's decision. the decision will be coordinated among all of them. >> can you speak to any more specifics about the outreach effort? gov. cuomo: there has been no decision on the schools. i know the mayor's position is that businesses will probably open in may. i respect his opinion on opening businesses in may. no decision has been made on whether businesses will open. we are not going to open any businesses in new york city without coordinating it, same as the schools, with nassau, westchester, suffolk, and hopefully with new jersey and connecticut. the mayor's position is that they might open in may.

i get it. and on schools the same thing. there has been no decision on schools. >> can you provide any more specifics on the outreach efforts? gov. cuomo: you will have a host of legal issues people need help on. we talk about these government programs -- sba has loans available. look at an sba loan application , and tell me how easy it is to fill out. all these federal programs that have been set up, but you have got to figure out how to access each one. you have to figure out how to access each program. accessing the simple programs , you ares.n.a.p. dealing with bureaucracies and applications. there is a host of needs on the legal front. we are hearing about it all across the board. the court system, with jonathan furey working with the new york state bar association, are asking for volunteers, lawyers to help with the myriad of issues. they will coordinate it.

they need the legal volunteers first. so they are asking the lawyers to come forward, and then they will put them together with the clients who come forward. anyone have anything more on that? >> -- a one time thing for those those,ployment, and for how is that being distributed? gov. cuomo: who wants to answer that? rob? the $600 will continue through the period, the 39-month period, and then potentially after december 31, there can be an additional $600 after that, but we are waiting. >> the $200 million that was announced yesterday? >> which $200 million? >> the $200 million that was

announced yesterday? gov. cuomo: the s.n.a.p. funding. >> that will go through the normal process. that will go out immediately. >> in a similar way to the unemployment system? >> similar, we have not had any issues. >> [indiscernible] gov. cuomo: "democrats would like to see me replace joe biden on the ticket." that is, on the one hand, flattering, on the other hand , it is irrelevant. but to the extent that it is flattering, i appreciate it. look, i would to keep politics out of this. you know everyone has been very changing, butis everyone has been very suspicious of government and government officials, politicians. it is always about their politics. they are always trying to take the next step on the ladder,

be very careful about what they say, because nuance. they are deceptive creatures, politicians. i never felt that. i never believed it. but now it is more important than ever before that people understand there is no politics here. sometimes it can work. and it can work right. and sometimes crisis, you actually see people who play to their strengths. there is no politics here. i have no political agenda. period. i am not running for president. i am not running for vice president. i'm not running anywhere. i am not going to washington. i am staying right here. i said to the people of this state unequivocally, when i was running for governor, i will serve as your governor. they all say that and then they do something different.

yeah, i am not that person. i am going to do what i said i was going to do, because that is who i am. so that is what i am going to do, period, end of story. >> [indiscernible] like,offered you, press secretary, would you turn it down? gov. cuomo: i was a cabinet secretary 20 years ago. been there, done that. no thank you. i'm going to do what i said i was going to do. i do not know why it is so hard to accept from an elected official. they may actually have meant what they said and actually believe in sticking to it. no president, no vice president, no going to washington to serve as the cabinet. i said i did it eight years with the clinton administration. i loved it. it was a great experience.

i was hud secretary. housing and urban development secretary. worked in every state in the united states. i loved the experience. but i have, probably, the most important job to me that i could have. and probably more important than ever before, frankly, given what we just went through. >> can we turn to your comments about schools and businesses in westchester, in suffolk, nassau counties, as well as new jersey and connecticut? does that include state businesses and schools? gov. cuomo: we closed the schools, we coordinated it statewide. different school districts were doing different things, and you cannot operate that way at this time, in this situation that is normally designed for flexibility.

a school district makes an individual decision with their calendar. education is basically a local decision. there is a snow day in buffalo does not mean there is a snow day on long island. but this is different. you are asking a society to stay home. well, i close my business, that triggers certain questions. there's a connection between schools and business. and the application does not follow geographical jurisdiction or boundaries. so you live in westchester. how do i tell businesses to close in one area unless i address all the issues in the surrounding areas, right? and the geographic lines between westchester and york city do not

matter, and the lines between new york state and connecticut and new jersey do not matter. it is basically a tri-state workforce. so coordinate school and business and coordinate geographically. and make the decision based on the facts at the time. i reject any elected official or any expert who says, i can tell you what is going to happen four weeks from today. i reject it. i mean, you looked at the models. i mean, i accept it, i hear it, but i am not prepared to act on it. so i talked to all the county executives. they are all elected by their constituents. they all have an opinion. some people believe the businesses will open in may. the mayor of new york city. some people think we should open them in two weeks.

some people think we should keep them closed until june. i hear it all. we will discuss it. we will coordinate it. but at the end of the day, the decision must be, at a minimum, for the metropolitan area, hopefully state-wide, ideally regional, with connecticut and new jersey. so that is my goal. coordinate school and business, minimum metropolitan area -- new york city suburbs -- hopefully statewide. it is a little bit of a different situation upstate than downstate. and i hope it stays that way. ideally, i would like to do it with connecticut and new jersey. >> wait a second, are you saying it is your legal authority to make the decision on new york

city schools, not bill de blasio's? gov. cuomo: it is my authority in this situation, yes. that is why when i closed them, i closed them state-wide. it was not just new york city that we closed. we closed at the same time the island and suburbs and coordinated it. is that right? , and jesse,n remember the executive order with the 180-day waiver. schools need a waiver if they are going to have less than 180 days of school. everyone is on the exact same schedule, and we extend that when we extend the 180-day waiver. gov. cuomo: and it has to be coordinated. i understand the debate on when to reopen schools.

i understand the debate on when to reopen businesses. i do not understand how you would start businesses in may but not open schools until june. but keep schools closed until june. i don't get that. i think you have to coordinate the businesses with the schools , because schools do education. schools also do daycare, effectively, for a large percentage of the new york city population. so how can you say to people, "i think you are going to go back to work in may, but the schools are going to continue to be closed, so figure out what to do with your children during the day, but you are going to have to go to work in may." how do i go to work if my kids are home? >> the mayor of new york city said schools will be closed two hours ago, and you are saying no, no, no, that is not the case. i think for parents, that might

be confusing. gov. cuomo: we just clarified it. >> give us some sense of when that might be resolved. gov. cuomo: it is not going to be resolved in the next few days, because we don't know. i cannot tell you what june is going to look like. i cannot tell you what may is going to look like. so no. but i can tell you it will be a metropolitan-wide decision. it will be coordinated with the business decision. it will be coordinated with the rest of the state, and it will ideally be coordinated with new jersey -- it will definitely be coordinated with new jersey and connecticut, because i am not going to operate without coordinating with new jersey and connecticut. but ideally it is uniform with new jersey, connecticut. because this is -- they they are all connected, these things. school, business, and geography are all connected. you have hospitalizations

reported. does that mean we need to change the plans for the field hospitals at this point? gov. cuomo: there is no changing of the plan. i am praying that we don't need a single bed in the additional overflow capacity. i hope javits is empty. well, it's not, there are several hundred people in javits. but ideally we never needed a bed in javits, we never needed a bed on the u.s. navy ships ship comfort, an we never needed a bed in the field hospitals. >> mark levine noted that the number of hospitalizations in new york city is because they are at capacity -- gov. cuomo: that is not true.

people are being turned away from hospitals? >> -- gov. cuomo: no. >> we do a daily call with hospitals, and we get updates from them, and there is no report of that. >> to explain the way we are doing this we are using all the , hospital capacity in the system, so people are moving around as needed. we are managing that process. if there's a problem that one facility, we move them to another hospital. so nobody is getting turned away. we are monitoring this on an hour-by-hour basis. no one is being turned away. i think he realized that now. we have been talking to his staff to make sure they understand where we are in the process. gov. cuomo: it also it defies all logic, right? the high point of hospitalizations was two weeks ago. that is when we have a crush on the hospitals. when you look at the hospitalization chart, 10 days,

that is when there was a crush on the hospitals. we have been on the downslide for a while now. so the hospitals are not -- we have empty beds right now over the past couple of days. they would not be turning away anyone. that is just virtually an impossibility. >> the state prison system is now quarantining prisoners who have been infected with covid-19. can you speak to whether the prison system has the capacity to do that, and whether they effectivelyng that or ineffectively? gov. cuomo: they can quarantine within the prison.

they can "quarantine" within the prison system. you have the prison, but then you have distinct operating wards within a prison. so they have capacity to quarantine within a prison system. >> but they are not moving forward with granting clemency? gov. cuomo: not anything new, no. >> nothing new. it was anticipated to go to about 400, but i don't know if the numbers have reflected that shift yet. >> overnight nurses went on the record saying they do not have proper ppe and that they are being told to ration and wear their ppe masks up to 20 times. they say this is contradictory to what the president and says, to what hospital administrators say. what is your response? gov. cuomo: contrary to what hospital administrators say. , we ask every hospital, every day, what do you need? we have been getting every hospital what they say they need. if there is a disconnect between the nurses and their

hospital administrator, i cannot help with that. now, but they should talk to their hospital administrator. whatever their administrators need, we have done. thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] night, a special evening addition of "washington journal" on the federal response to the coronavirus crisis. join us at 8:00 p.m. eastern with dr. anthony fauci, the director of the national institute of infectious diseases and a member of the coronavirus task force, and dr. michael fay, director of the diseases addition at alabama birmingham on his own experience contracting and recovering from the disease. join the conversation about the coronavirus crisis on

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