MAYOR DE BLASIO ON COVID-19 - APRIL 8, 2020

  Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. So, yesterday I told you that we were starting to see something very important. We were starting to see some change in the right direction. And I want to really talk this through for a few minutes and I want to make it very real, and very personal to all of you, because this is one of those things where understanding what it means, what it doesn't mean, is really, really important. Understanding that when we see progress, we do need to talk about it, because it tells us something, and it's something I think New Yorkers should be proud of, because it's really about what you have done. It's really about the fact that New Yorkers listened to the guidance from the health care leadership telling you to socially distance, telling you to shelter in place. People really listened, and they really did what was needed even though it was very tough.

But let's talk about what you have achieved, because I think the real heroes here are everyday New Yorkers who had to change their lives. All of you had to do something very, very different in very little time. You know, a month ago this city was in a very different reality and a month ago feels like, you know, a year ago now. I think a lot of us are having that kind of feeling that so much has happened so quickly. There's really nothing I can think of in our lives that has had this kind of reality where we've gone through just massive, massive changes in so little time, with, it seems like, every day there's something very, very different, very new. Sometimes, you know, hour by hour we saw huge changes. This is hard for all of us to make sense of. We're human beings. That's asking a lot of us to constantly adjust to such a difficult circumstance. And we as New Yorkers, we are warm people, we are emotional people, we love our family gatherings, we love our gatherings with our friends, we love to go to restaurants and nightclubs. We're probably the most social people in the whole country. We're used to being close together, and for these last weeks that hasn't been possible, and that's really hurt.

You know, the fear about the disease, the anxiety, the pain we're seeing around us, every New Yorker knows someone who has the coronavirus. So many of us know people who have passed away. That's what's in the front of our minds, and that's what we are every day fighting together. But at the same time, we all feel a sense of loss that we had a life that we in so many ways loved in this city. And it's been so strange and so different in the last few weeks. But I want people to know, the reason I say the heroes are every-day New Yorkers, is because when asked to do something incredibly difficult, when asked to make these massive changes, New Yorkers went and did it. Amazing levels of follow through, compliance with these instructions no matter how hard it was. And it's something everyone should be proud of, because even though we’ve got a long way to go, this is still going to be a very long battle, what we've seen these last few days really proves that social distancing, shelter in place, these are ideas that make a huge difference. And they only make a huge difference when people do them the right way, and New Yorkers are doing that in so many ways. So, this gives me hope, more hope than ever that we can get through this really tough moment and come out together, save a lot of lives and get on to recovery at some point.

But now here's the point I want to make about not drawing too many conclusions, because, again, there's a danger in that. We're proving every day that these smart strategies can save lives, can protect people. But we know from some other parts of the world that he started to see a little bit of progress, took their foot off the gas, let down their guard, and guess what? This awful ferocious disease started to reassert itself. And that's something we have to guard against. We have to beat it back, not open the door again too early for it to resurge and hurt so many people. So, what I'm telling you today is something has started to move. We're going to let you know day by day if we see that that positive pattern is sustained or not, because there's no guarantees. Clearly tells us something about what has been working, but it doesn't tell us when this is going to be over. It tells us we got to actually double down. I'd stick to the strategies that are working, and that is frustrating. I'm trying to tell you the truth based on all the information we have, but it's frustrating because we all want to get back to normal. We all want to go see our family, our friends, you know the weather's getting nice. Everyone would love to go out, be in the park, you know, eat outdoors at a restaurant. There's all sorts of wonderful things in this city, outdoor concerts, all the things that we look forward to as it gets warmer, but we're not there yet and we can't get our hopes [inaudible] up the wrong way. We have to keep vigilant, disciplined, strong, resilient. This is what New Yorkers have done, and this is what we've done in other crises too, and we need to keep doing it.

So, the point about doubling down is the strategies working, stick to it. Even as it gets warmer, you start to feel that pull like you want to go do some of the things you used to do, stick to the plan, stick to the strategy. Over time we'll be able to give you more a sense of how long this will be. I've always said, expect a tough April and a tough May. I'm still saying that. But what we'll do is with every piece of new information we'll update you, give you a sense of what it means. But in the meantime, see the progress as an affirmation that you have done the right thing, and if you keep doing it, it's going to help us through this.

Why are we telling you there's some progress? Well, this is about the facts. First of all, the ventilator use. We've talked so much about ventilators. They are lifesaving. This is the way you ensure that someone, God forbid, they're in distress, this disease is a close to taking their life, and a ventilator can save their life, help them keep breathing, help the doctors and nurses see them through. The question until very, very recently, just a few days ago is would we have enough? And that was based on the fact that we saw some very clear patterns in the use of ventilators. And in the last few days we've actually seen fewer ventilators needed than were projected. And that's very, very important. We expected a really deep intensification of this struggle. We expected the number of ventilators to keep being needed to be more and more going into this week. We've seen actually much fewer needed than we expected. Now, to be clear, we still need more, meaning that they're still each day more people who need them, but much less than expected. That's a good sign. The hospitalizations have stabilized. For a long time, that just kept going up and up. We're now seeing some leveling off. Again, based on only a few days, but something good on that front too. That's telling us something positive. And I want to be clear, we know that means we're not out of the woods. It's too early, it’s to preliminary, but we'll keep telling you each day what the evidence is saying. So far, so good, but a long way to go.

Now, the ventilators. So, I want to just recap to you what was going on as recently as Sunday. I said then we, based on all the estimates we could put together, we talked to all the hospitals and looked at every pattern, all the facts that at that point are about 4,000 New Yorkers who needed to be intubated, who needed the ventilator to keep alive. And as recently as Sunday, we expected the number of new ventilators we were going to need each day to be 200 to 300 maybe even more. But what's happened in the last couple of days is that number has come down, and it looks like that number is more like a hundred or even less in terms of the number of ventilators we'll need new each day. That's a striking difference. It's very early. It's very preliminary. But that is a striking difference. We thought we would need many more ventilators to come in this week just to get through the week. As recently as Sunday, I told you that we needed 1,000 to 1,500. A few days earlier I told you we needed something more like 2,500 to 3000. That's how different things have been day to day. We thought we'd need a huge number of ventilators just to keep the hospital system running, just to save the lives that could be saved. That number went down, and it's gone down again. Still a long way to go, but that is striking.

Now, constantly over these last few weeks, we have appealed to the federal government, the state government to help us with ventilators. I want to be thankful and I want to be clear that our call for help has been heard time and time again. So, we got constantly shipment after shipment, including most recently 500 more ventilators from the state of New York. This now means we have a total of almost 5,500 ventilators available throughout our New York City hospitals of all kinds. We have a small emergency reserve of 135 that we're holding in case something has to be quickly moved to a place where the need is greatest. What it means for the first time in a while, is I can say with assurance that we will get through this week in terms of ventilators. We actually have enough to get through this week, free and clear. We are not going to say that we can accurately predict next week yet, it’s still too early this week to say that. But the fact that we have confidence we can get through this week is definitely a good sign.

Now, there's some other things to report, and some of them are hopeful, and then some of them are very, very tough, and raise very important questions about what's really going on. But one that's good is when it comes to our public servants, our first responders, the people who we depend on to keep us safe. So many of them we know were out sick because of symptoms of coronavirus or because they had a confirmed case, the coronavirus. And that has been something that caused tremendous worry we were worried for them. They're our heroes, we wanted to make sure they came through okay; their families came through okay. But we also saw fewer and fewer of our first responders available on any given day and people got very worried about what that would mean. I want to thank the NYPD and the FDNY for holding the line throughout this crisis, always coming up with another way to address all the challenges out there to make sure that the men and women we relied on were ready, always bringing in new first responders. Of course, the amazing effort to bring in paramedics and EMT is from other parts of the country we're so thankful for that. But here now we're seeing something good start to happen because I've said all along, one thing that's true about our first responders is primarily they are younger and obviously very healthy people. And that meant that they could go through this disease quickly thank God in the vast majority of cases, and I'm not for a moment for getting, we have lost some of our first responders. Their families are grieving, but thank God for the vast majority they've come through quickly and they've come through well.

So, the NYPD now reports that they have 276 officers who had tested positive, who have now returned to duty. The FDNY reports that 1,310 EMT, paramedics and firefighters who either tested positive or were exposed to a patient who had tested positive or were suspected of having been infected. 1,310 of our first responders at the FDNY have returned to duty and that's so moving and that's so important for all of us, so we're very grateful. But I told you there's also some things we're learning that really should cause real concern and facts that now are clear and we want to make it very clear to people this city that as facts become clear, we're going to put them out. We're always going to make sure that we believe the information is accurate, but once it's factual, once it's clear, we're putting it out.

So, one of the things that's been discussed in recent days is what do we know about who is being afflicted by this disease? Who are we losing? What does it tell us? Are there some larger realities that we need to look at here? The answer is yes, there are. Here is a disease that has hurt people, hurt families in every corner of our City, let's be clear, every community, every ZIP code has been hurt by this disease, families are grieving right now across every part of the five boroughs. But we also now have information that points out that there are clear inequalities, clear disparities in how this disease is affecting the people of our City. The truth is that in so many ways the negative effects of coronavirus, the pain it's causing, the death that's causing tracks with other profound health care disparities that we have seen for years and decades in this City. So many people have struggled to get the health care they need, who didn't have the money to afford the health care they deserve. So many people have lived with chronic health care conditions throughout their life, so often associated with challenges like poverty. We're seeing folks who have struggled before really being hit particularly hard by the coronavirus. Look, that's a blatant inequality and we don't accept it, meaning we have to fight in new ways we have to come up with new strategies to address what is now a documented disparity. As you're going to see, again, every community feeling this pain, some communities feeling it disproportionately, we're going to help everyone. And the strategies we have in place are meant of course to save the lives of New Yorkers across the board, every part of our City. But we're going to double down on the strategies that reach people who are the most vulnerable now because we're seeing these very troubling facts.

So, here's what the information from our Health Department shows us and this is preliminary information, but it is based on specific records meaning, and this is a tough thing to say, but I want to make sure people understand the facts. This is based on a death certificates, this is based on the work of our medical examiner's office and our Department of Health confirming that someone has died of a COVID-19 related illness and that their specific background is documented. So, what we've learned is that the deaths, because of COVID-19 in the City, first and foremost have affected the Hispanic community with 34 percent of the deaths. That community is about 29 percent of all New Yorkers in terms of population, but 34 percent of the deaths. And, again, this is preliminary information that we'll keep adding to. It's hard to talk about this stuff like statistics, this means human beings, this means families but we have to look in the face, these disparities that we're learning about. So, the Hispanic community, 34 percent; the black community, 28 percent of the deaths compared to about 22 percent of the overall population; the white community, 27 percent of the deaths compared to about 32 percent of the overall population; the Asian community, 7 percent of the deaths compared to about 14 percent of the overall population. This is painful to talk about, but we have to be honest about it, there's a lot more information that will keep coming out as we have information, excuse me, we can verify. We will keep making it public, but it already tells us something we need to know and it tells us that we need to act.

So, now I want to talk about the plan that we will put in place immediately to address this information we now have about disparities. First, the first and most important element of the plan is to focus on our public hospitals in particular and some other hospitals, some of our independent hospitals certainly as well. But first and foremost, our public hospitals because this is about the most essential concept of ensuring that everyone gets health care regardless of their background, regardless of their ZIP code, regardless of their income. That has been the entire idea of our extraordinary public hospital system from the very beginning we have the biggest, best public hospital system in America. It was always built on that New York belief in fairness and equality. We need to double down on that now, we need to ensure that our public hospitals get absolutely everything they need because we know that so many New Yorkers who are in the most vulnerable communities in the most danger. Where do they turn to? They turn to our public hospitals the most obvious example has been Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. We've all seen what's played out there and the doctors and nurses, all the health care workers have been the most amazing heroes because whatever was thrown at them at Elmhurst, they held, they kept that hospital going, they handled an extraordinary number of cases, they kept saving lives. The public hospitals are the greatest guarantee we have that there will be fairness and equality in saving lives. And that's the single most important thing because we know the blunt truth is we know a huge percentage of New Yorkers, no matter what strategy is put in place, this disease is here, it's going to reach a huge percentage of us, most likely over half and even more. So, people are going to have to confront this disease, it's painful, it's awful that's the truth, but that's the truth. But when they need urgent health care, when they need to have the best doctors and nurses there to save their lives, for so many people that means going to their local public hospital. And we must ensure that that hospital has all the personnel it needs, all the ventilators it needs, all the PPEs, everything that's been the core of the strategy. And we got to go even deeper into that strategy because that's where you literally save the lives that can be saved.

The second is, we're going to do a major campaign to educate people, to give them more and more detailed information on how to address this crisis. There'll be a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, a traditional media digital campaign focused on communities of color, focused on communities where English is not the first language. In fact, these ads will be in 14 different languages with a deep effort to get to folks who have gotten some of the word obviously, but not all the information we want them to have so that we can further protect them. We're going to keep investing in this kind of effort to make sure we get much deeper into communities, including immigrant communities with real valuable information about how to navigate this extraordinary challenge. Third, you know, the media efforts everything we're trying to do to educate people every day are crucial, but they certainly will not be enough and now comes a part that's going to be very challenging because the nature of this crisis, but we have to do a grassroots outreach again. This is something we're going to develop over the next few days, we're going to have to work closely with community based clinics where there are health care workers who have a deep sense of their own communities who speak the language in every sense of their own community, who have the relationships and the trust. We're going to have to find a way to get health care workers out into communities to educate people, to answer their questions, to help them address their immediate challenges, but in a way that's safe for those health care workers. We are absolutely, as you heard earlier, sticking by shelter and place a social distancing. But we need to find a way to get health care workers in a safe, smart, strategic way out into communities for direct communication with people in greatest need. So, we'll have more on that plan in the coming days, clearly those health care workers will need to have proper protection and that has to be absolutely secured for this plan to work, which is why we will continue all our efforts to bring in a huge amount of additional supplies to the City’s PPEs to protect all our health care workers and first responders and everyone who needs them.

Fourth point is to deepen our efforts that have started, but I think they can go a lot farther. When you call 3-1-1 for example, there are many times when you're patched through to a Health + Hospitals clinician, a doctor or a nurse or another health care worker who can answer questions and determine - for example - why people call wondering if because of how they're feeling if they need testing. That's been something that people have been able to get through 3-1-1, but we need to deepen that and make it more possible for people to call just to talk through their situation more, to get more advice. And not just because they're wondering whether they need a test, but to actually have a dialogue with the health care workers – again in multiple languages – about what they're feeling, what's going on, maybe it is not someone even just calling about their own condition; maybe it's someone calling about their grandma, their grandpa, maybe it’s someone calling about their mom or their child. We need to create more of an opportunity for every-day New Yorkers who many of whom don't have a doctor that's their everyday doctor - to get someone on the phone right away; a trained professional who can talk through the details and give them guidance. That has to be much more available and that's what we're going to do.

Now, to ensure that we protect that first key part of this plan, are public hospitals. We just need more help, particularly when it comes to personnel. The frontline health care workers have gone through hell, but they've held the line. They've been heroes in every way. Some of them have gotten sick themselves and been out and we look forward to them coming back healthy - we're praying for them, we're hoping for them and for their families. But in the meantime, the many, many health care workers who are continuing to fight this fight, they have really borne the brunt and they're tired and they need relief and they need support, which is why I've repeatedly asked for military medical personnel and it's been a plea I've made to Washington repeatedly. We've seen some progress; we have almost 300 who have come in now out in our public hospitals. These are doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, highly trained people, highly effective medical personnel, many of them with a kind of military experience that makes them very, very ready to handle the toughest situations. Almost 300 of them now, deployed out in our Health + Hospitals public hospitals. The Navy has sent health care professionals to Elmhurst, Bellevue, Woodhall, and Kings County hospitals. The Air Force has sent health care professionals to Lincoln, Jacoby, and Queens Hospital. I'm very grateful that our armed forces have come forward to help our public hospitals, but we will need more help and we need it quickly.

Now, let me talk to you about building out even more health care capacity for people who need it. And this is another area where there's some real progress and we got to make sure we keep building. We're still working always, always from the worst-case scenario to make sure that whatever happens with this disease, New York City is ready. So, one of the crucial things, again, is adding additional beds to relieve some of the pressure on our core hospitals. Last week, about eight days ago, I was at the Billy Jean King Tennis Center in Queens. When you looked at it then it was a bunch of tennis courts – indoor tennis courts. Now, right now, it is being converted into a hospital facility. We'll start receiving patients this week. We will convert 20 beds in the new facility to ICU care and the total number originally was going to be 350 beds, will now be 470 beds. So, this is a case of continuing to go faster, add more to make sure we can serve people in need exactly when they need it.

On the Personal Protective Equipment, a lot of us didn't really use the phrase PPE before a few weeks ago, and now it's something we talk about all the time. We've gotten a lot more in to protect our first responders; to protect our health care workers. And yesterday we made a delivery out to the hospitals of this city; over 3 million surgical masks, over 2 million surgical gloves almost 1.2 million N95 masks, over 100,000 pairs of eyewear – protective eyewear – 61,000 surgical gowns. It's very important that this material has come in and gone instantly out to the places that need it. And we're working hard every day to make sure each and every hospital gets what they need, distributes it effectively, constantly gets resupplied when they need it. But we have one urgent need and that is these surgical gowns. I was at the Brooklyn Navy Yard yesterday talking about an amazing homegrown effort to produce them here in our city. A really heroic effort by companies in the Navy Yard and the folks who work there to protect all of our heroes. They're creating a lot of surgical gowns, but this is an area where we need a huge new supply. So. we have asked the federal government for over 9 million surgical gowns to get us through April and into May. We are hopeful that we'll start to get deliveries from that request quickly. We need them even to get through this week. We need more and we're going to have fallback options in place to make sure we can protect people this week.

So, the final thing I want to do is talk about some of the people who are stepping up. And even amidst the challenges we see nonstop everyday New Yorkers helping each other, people feeding our health care workers, our first responders, businesses stepping up - amazing efforts. I want to keep talking about them because it's something people should be really proud of and it's something that's helping to sustain us. And one that's very special I want to talk about today because it's from a foundation that was born out of our city's darkest hour and it’s a foundation that [inaudible] means so much to us all, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Born out of 9/11, symbolic of the strength and resiliency of our city, Tunnel to Towers has done so much for so many people - always there for our first responders and their families. Now stepping up again, we've just heard of a $3 million pledge by Tunnel to Towers to help our health care workers and I'm so appreciative of yet another heroic action by that amazing foundation.

Also, crucially, Senator Schumer has unveiled something important, the COVID-19 Hero's Fund and this is an idea that would give the essential workers additional pay up to $25,000 and would give a one-time $15,000 payment to health care workers, home care workers, first responders. This is an idea that needs to be made real to help those who are suffering the most. I keep reminding people - the federal government - we did see some progress in that last stimulus bill -we need a lot more. Spoke to Senator Schumer this morning about the next stimulus bill. I know he is proposing to his credit, I know Speaker Pelosi is leading the way as well, that in the next stimulus there be money for our hospitals, there be money for food banks, money to support small businesses, not big corporations, small everyday businesses, and money to help localities and States that have borne the brunt; obviously that means all of us here in New York and New Jersey, especially. Crucially, Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi are focused on ensuring that all the cities and States that have lost not only lives, but they've lost so much of the resources to save more lives and protect people and recover, that those resources would be restored through a fourth stimulus bill, hopefully as early as this month. So, I want to thank Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi for their leadership. Now we need to get the Congress to come back and pass that bill, so we can still fight this battle and win this battle and then start on the road to recovery.

Look, I'll finish just affirming the point that we all need hope - we all need hope. And when we see good news, when we see something that's working, we need to talk about it, we need to feel good, and we need to especially feel good that everyday New Yorkers built this progress with their hard work, with their sacrifice. Every one of you, when you're hearing today that we see some progress, you should feel that was because of you because it was. At the same time, recognize we're not out of the woods. There'll be a long time before we're out of the woods. We've got a strategy that is working, let's go deeper into it. Let's double down so we can get through this together. I am confident, really confident, always felt in my heart that New Yorkers would rise to this occasion and you have, you have it in a remarkable way - let's finish the job. It's not going to be days, it's going to be weeks and months, but let's finish the job.