IS COMING
Warns of med supply shortage in 10 days
Center on the West Side; at the Westchester County convention center, to accommodate the New Rochelle cluster of virus cases, and at the state universities in Stony Brook and Old Westbury on Long Island.
“From my point of view, construction can start tomorrow,” Cuomo said. “There is no red tape on the side of New York.”
He said while the Army Corps of Engineers cannot provide staff, he called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency — which can bring staff and supplies — to set up four hospitals with 250 beds each inside the Javits Center.
Trump on Sunday said FEMA will set up 1,000 beds in New York, with Cuomo’s office confirming they will come to the Javits Center.
Cuomo also announced an order to hospitals to increase their capacity at least 50%, saying the goal is to ultimately double capacity.
The state has about 53,000 hospital beds, but needs 110,000 total, Cuomo said.
Hospitals must cancel “elective, noncritical surgery” under a mandate starting Sunday, the governor added, a move that will free up beds.
The mayor and governor offered differing takes on the massive economic relief bill congressional leaders were hashing out Sunday.
Cuomo said he was fine with relief for corporations — provided it didn’t come on the backs of taxpayers — while de Blasio said big companies aren’t a priority.
“You want to give a corporation money?” the governor said. “Say, ‘OK, here are the rules: You can’t buy back stock, I want the bonuses to CEOs back, I want an equity stake in the company, I want interest in thecompany—aninterestrate on the loan — but something that gets the profit back to the citizen.’ ”
Congress is expected to include hundreds of billions of dollars for struggling industries as part of its rescue package — anathema to de Blasio.
“Put money in the hands of people and local governments and hospitals — not big corporations,” he said. “Forget bailing out the airlines right now. Bail out the people, bail out the hospitals, bail out the cities and states and counties.”
De Blasio warned that NYPD officers will break up groups of people if they are violating Cuomo’s statewide ban on “nonessential gatherings of individuals of any size for any reason,” scheduled to go into effect Sunday at 8 p.m.
“It’ll take a while for people to truly get it. But right now … everyday New Yorkers, everydayAmericans,aremuchfarther ahead of the curve in terms of understanding this crisis than anything we are seeing from the White House,” the mayor said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Saying he was disturbed to see New Yorkers playing basketball and otherwise keeping close quarters in parks on Saturday, Cuomo gave de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson until Monday morning to come up with a plan to reduce the crowding by opening up city streets to pedestrians.
“I think the local officials are in a better position to make those decisions,” said Cuomo. “This is a serious problem. That density has to be reduced, and it has to be reduced fast.”