BUFFALO (WBEN) - "We have a severe shortage of testing kits, and we're going to continue getting as many as we humanly can to this area,'" said Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul on Thursday morning, as she paid a visit to Western New York.
"I'm also very pleased that the governor announced (Wednesday) that one of our New York State businesses, Regeneron, is creating 500,000 testing kits and is donating those to New York," she continued. "There has been a lag time that we are not happy with because the federal government did not start putting out the call for tests."
One of the major problems in New York State right now is the inability or difficulty for people to access unemployment benefits. Hochul joined Sandy Beach on WBEN for a brief interview to further discuss this issue and what the state is doing about it.
"We had 2.1 million hits on Sunday, and in terms of calls, the volume is up to 8.2 million calls when we normally have 10,000 calls, so just the scale of that is astronomical," said Hochul.
In response to the overwhelming volume, the state has hired hundreds of new workers as well as reallocated much of the existing workforce, whether they worked in a DMV call center or a different agency.
"This may not solve everyone's problem today if they try, but the good news is that your benefits will be retroactive to the day that you were first unemployed and not the day that you got through to the Department of Labor," she said. "We've now set it up so that there's certain days of the week based on the first letter of your last name...when you should be making those calls, and the other days are left for other calls as well.
"I just want to take the pressure off people who are really stressed out right now and let them know that money will be coming to them even if they haven't applied just yet."
