kathy hochul knows this territory of governor cuomo.lead -- the is the isutenant governor -- she the lieutenant governor. it is not about the beds. it is about the staff and hospitals. how critical is hospital staffing in the empire state? lt. gov. hochul: thank you for having be back on the show again. that is absolutely the situation we find ourselves in. i was just on a control room call with all of the leaders of our hospitals, as well as elected officials. we can put together as many beds as necessary. we can fill a convention center. the governor insists that every hospital have a three-month supply of ppe before they can reopen. here is the situation. we don't have people coming from all over the country to help save new york city and new york state like we did in the spring. we had 30,000 health-care workers answering governor cuomo's call for help in our darkest hour. we don't have that anymore. the people we have now, they are exhausted. they are burned out. they are sick themselves. they are pleading nonstop, saying please, p

hochul: i don't think they are related. that having a vaccine takes the pressure off at all because we have already lost that money. we have already lost the revenues generated from people using our transportation system, sales tax revenues that were not collected, and the extraordinary costs we had to incur just fighting this pandemic and are still paying for now. , thehas not gone away truth is this vaccine will take a while to be widely disseminated and have a real impact. governor cuomo started working very early on to have a widespread distribution plan in the state of new york, one that is quite different from what the white house is proposing, where they say they will give it to doctors and pharmacies, which is great if you live in an area that has a lot of doctors and pharmacies, but large parts of new york city are what we call health care deserts. they don't have a right aid or cvs or walgreens. where they supposed to get it? we are focused on making sure that communities that have been hardest hit, to make sure t

hochul: we won't have that aid immediately, it seems clear to me.ould be pleasantly surprised if we get mitch mcconnell to do the right thing and say that yes, states have suffered. i realize now it is not just the blue states, but the red states in trouble. therefore we will help them now. he will go by whatever is in the political interest of his party. fine. we are at a point now where the interests are all aligned. all american states need help with the testing, with the ppe, with getting more doctors and nurses into some of our remote states that didn't expect to be dealing with this. even if that doesn't occur in this lame-duck session, i do believe that joe biden understands the urgency with this. governor cuomo has a strong relationship with him. we all do. he knows you cannot have a recovery, and we have said this before, a recovery of the nation without states like new york being able to come back strong and reduce the chance of more massive layoffs, and to keep business is prospering. that is our objective. we have to keep that going. und

i'm joined by kathleen hochul.you for being with us this morning. >> thank you for inviting me. >> can you tell us more about that meeting and what might come next as the governors in your region try to coordinate the response and how important it is that everybody is on the same page? >> it's very important, because the northeast states are really like one big area. and people work and go to school and live in different areas. there's a lot of cross pollination among the states if you will. it makes sense to have a coordinated response so you don't have a limit on restaurants in one area and people go to the area where there's no limitations. we learned that early on. the governors will be announced this coordinated response shortly, but basically what we're continuing to do is look for more assistance, as much as we've been so disappointed from the trump administration from the beginning, we need money right now. because we're very much focussed on a distribution plan for the vaccination. and the money they've gi