After 21 Days Long, New York Governor Expands Covid-19 Tests

New York: New York will on Saturday begin conducting antibody tests for workers at four hospitals hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic and will allow local pharmacies to begin collecting samples for diagnostic tests, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

The move is part of a broader attempt by Cuomo to get a better grip on how widely the virus has spread across his state now that its 300 laboratories have ramped up capacity, with the aim of doubling output to 40,000 tests per day.

The recharged center around testing comes as the emergency seems, by all accounts, to be dying down in New York, with hospitalizations for COVID-19, the ailment brought about by the infection, tumbling to their most minimal in three weeks, Cuomo told a day by day preparation on Saturday. 

"Twenty one days of heck, and now we are back to where we were 21 days prior," Governor Andrew Cuomo said. "Testing is the thing that we are impulsively or fanatically centered around now." 

Cuomo said immunizer testing of laborers at four downstate medical clinics would start on Saturday, including at Elmhurst Hospital, where at any rate 13 patients passed on from COVID-19 of every a 24-hour range toward the end of last month in an improvement that brought the profundity of the emergency into center for some Americans.

It is one piece of a broader roll-out of antibody testing of nurses, police officers, firefighters, bus drivers, grocery store clerks and other essential workers who Cuomo said had been "carrying the load" of keeping people fed and safe.

Cuomo said it was important to test these "public-facing"



groups of workers for both their own safety and also to protect the public as New York, in coordination with neighboring states, begins to look at when and how to reopen its economy.

Earlier this week Cuomo disclosed initial results from a survey of 3,000 people across New York showing that 13.9 percent had tested positive for antibodies, suggesting the virus may have spread more widely than previously thought.

At the same time, Cuomo said he would issue an executive order allowing thousands of independent pharmacists to collect samples for diagnostic tests, expanding collection beyond the national pharmacy chains already providing that service.

He said New York would look to expand the testing universe as capacity to process tests increased.

"The more testing we have the more we will open eligibility. Hopefully one day we get to the point where anybody who wants a test can walk in and get a test. That was the dream."

While hospitalizations continued their downward trend, the number of deaths increased by 437 on Friday, up from 422 a day earlier and the first tick higher in four days, Cuomo said.

Noting that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, lasted two years, Cuomo called on New Yorkers to remain vigilant with social distancing and to view their hardships in the context of the greater good.

"We are called upon to deal with this crisis. We are in day 56," Cuomo said, arguing that New York staved off 100,000 serious infections by shutting down businesses and staying at home. "I believe everything we did was worth it."