Albany, NY (WBEN) Governor Cuomo is challenging the White House's assertion Sunday COVID19 cannot be controlled.
"The White House believes the U.S. cannot control this pandemic - but New York flattened the curve and we continue to control this virus," says Cuomo. "The data shows that our micro-cluster strategy is working, by stopping small spreads before they become larger. The strategy relies on government being quick, competent and effective - and this is how we are going to control spread through the vaccination period. New York had the highest infection rate in the country, if not on the globe, but New Yorkers came together like no other community and were able to control the virus and flatten the curve."
Cuomo says the federal government forgot about a third option. "That you can control the spread of the virus by having a phased economic reopening. That was the right answer back in January, February, March, and it is the right answer today," adds Cuomo. "It was never binary. It was never let's keep the economy open versus let's attend to public health. It was always both. And not just in the retrospective, it's what they're doing today that's the problem. They're following the same approach today. It has always been both. Remember when we talked about opening the economy. They see the valve as all on or all off. Either it's on, or it's off. We said no. You phase the economic reopening, turn the valve a little bit, let the economy start, and then watch the viral spread on the gauges. If the viral spread starts to go up, then you back off on the valve for the economy. This is not a political debate. It's not a theoretical debate. These are facts, right. We now have numbers and we have facts. New York State controlled the virus, and we're controlling it now. Chief of staff says you can't control the pandemic. New York says you're wrong, because we did."
"Fact: January, February, March, COVID came to New York, we call it an ambush because the federal government didn't know that it was on its way. Fact: every projection model said between 110 and 140,000 people were going to be hospitalized. That was a fact. Every model said that. You let the virus take its course, you're going to have 110, 140,000 people hospitalized. That's Columbia, that's Gates, that's McKinsey, that's all of them. What did we do? We flattened the curve. Rather than the virus going up, we flattened the curve," adds Cuomo.
Cuomo noted that the positive testing rate in all focus areas under the state's Micro-Cluster strategy is 3.25 percent, and outside the focus zone areas is 1.18 percent. Within the focus areas, 10,452 test results were reported yesterday, yielding 340 positives. In the remainder of the state, not counting these focus areas, 71,665 test results were reported, yielding 851 positives.
Western New York's COVID positive test rate is at 1.3 percent.
