Blaz & Andy hit over early moves in crisis

Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo went on the defensive Sunday over their initial responses to the coronavirus outbreak.

“We should not be focusing, in my view, on anything looking back on any level of government right now,” Hizzoner said on CNN. “This is just about how we save lives going forward.”

As recently as March 13, de Blasio told New Yorkers, “We want people still to go on about their lives. We want people to rest assured that a lot is being done to protect them.”

But the mayor refused to take any blame for contributing to the spread of the highly contagious virus, which had infected at least 30,765 New Yorkers and killed 672 as of Saturday afternoon.

“Everybody was working with the information we had,” de Blasio said, adding that his priorities then were to “avoid panic” and “keep the economy and the livelihoods together.”

Cuomo issued the first of a series of orders effectively shutting down the state on March 12, when he barred large venues from hosting crowds of more than 500.

“You want to do it in a way that doesn’t create more fear and more panic,” Cuomo said

Sunday at a press conference in Albany, explaining his earlier approach to the crisis. “You need to manage that fear and the panic, and you also need to deal with the virus.”

De Blasio said the city has enough medical supplies, with the exception of ventilators, to last for a week.

He repeated calls Sunday for the federal government to send medical personnel from the military and civilian sector to reinforce exhausted workers in the Big Apple.

“Our front-line workers … are giving their all,” he said. “They’re in harm’s way, and we need to get them relief.”

While the military is sending a Navy ship to alleviate the burden on the city’s hospitals, Defense Secretary Mark Esper has voiced skepticism about activating military doctors, saying many of them serve in the reserves and are already fighting coronavirus in their own communities.

Speaking in his daily Twitter video to New Yorkers, the mayor said the city shipped 1,400 ventilators to city hospitals on Saturday, but repeated his plea for more pieces of the vital equipment.

“Anybody who can get a ventilator, we need it now and we need to get it to the front line,” he said, urging anyone who can acquire or donate medical supplies to call (833) NYC-0040.