Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, good morning, everybody. I want to give you an update. The night before last, there were some real problems in the Bronx, in one part of the Bronx in particular. I was on the phone yesterday morning, speaking to the Borough President of the Bronx, Ruben Diaz, Jr. He was out in the street where the violence had occurred, and we were talking about, and he said, I at least want you to know even though we had a tough night, he said, I'm looking at something very positive. There's a lot of young people out here cleaning up. They're out here, because it's their community, they’re out here cleaning up the damage that was done by a very few, a very negative few who don't represent the Bronx, don't represent that neighborhood, don't represent this city. And he said they were cleaning up. He said, it's good to see young people care about their community and are doing something positive. So, I said, well, borough president, what organization are they with? Who organized? He said, let me find out, hold on a moment. And he reaches out, he's got a couple of young people there. He says, hey, excuse me, which organization are you from? And the kids say to him, we're not from any organization. We live here. And these young people, this is their neighborhood, and they are the future of the Bronx, and they are the future of New York City. There are so many good young people in this city who I want to tell, all of them, all the youth of New York City who care about your neighborhoods, care about this city, care about creating a better world, care about creating a more just world. Thank you. Thank you to these young people in the Bronx who wanted to create something positive, even in the midst of a crisis and a challenge, they wanted to move their neighborhood forward.
So, look, it's an example to us all. I went to the scene yesterday, myself later on the day. I met with store owners who had had their stores looted, and I heard their stories. And these are hardworking people. People who epitomizes the heart and soul of New York City. It's a primarily Latino community. Some people own stores who were immigrants. Some grew up in the area. But what they had in common was working people who had created something to serve their own community. And I talked to a lot of store owners in their stores, and I asked them what they were feeling. And they were, they were angry. They were frustrated. They needed help. And then every single one of them said, but we will rebuild, and we will come back, and we're not going anywhere. And I want you all to hear that, because that is the spirit of the Bronx. And that is the spirit of New York City. We're not going anywhere. I was in a neighborhood that went through such tough times, decades ago. And a lot of people I was with yesterday, elected officials, community leaders, store owners, everyday people in the community referenced how tough it had been in the Bronx a few decades ago, and yet, they stood their ground, and they brought the Bronx back and they will do it again. So, this is a setback, but it's not anything that will change the heart and soul of the people of the Bronx, and the people of this city.
Last night, we took a step forward in moving out of this difficult period we've had the last few days of moving to a better time. Just off the phone with Commissioner Shea and First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, and I want to thank both of them. We have all been talking constantly over these last six days. Both of them have shown tremendous leadership in the midst of this crisis. We went over the facts of last night. We saw a very, very different picture around New York City last night. We still have more work to do. Let me affirm that right up front, we saw a peaceful protest during the day. Yeah, some tense moments, undoubtedly, but overwhelmingly peaceful protest, and the NYPD respecting the peaceful protest. We saw a few incidents where people decided to do something illegal or violent around the protest, but that was rare. We saw some acts in different boroughs of people attempting to attack property, and the NYPD was positioned to address that rapidly. We'll get the exact details out as we get more information in the course of the day, but overwhelmingly, it was a very different reality in New York City last night. And the areas that had been particularly affected in Midtown Manhattan, and in part of the Bronx the night before, did not see that kind of activity in any meaningful number last night.
So, a step forward, and working closely with Commissioner Shea and his team, a series of strategies were employed yesterday. And those strategies I think by in large were effective. Those strategies were created in light of the evidence of what happened from 9:00 PM Sunday through Monday night. Again, things we had not seen previously, adjustments were made. NYPD really stepped back yesterday morning and said, okay, we're dealing with something different here. We have to defend differently. We have to address it differently, and they did. And I want to thank the commissioner and his team. I want to thank the men and women of the NYPD. They've been asked to do a lot the last few days. A lot of them are exhausted from working so hard, but they are going out there doing their job, protecting all of us, and showing a lot of restraint in the process, and that's what we expect. And I want to be clear. Everyone who puts on that uniform takes an oath, agrees to a higher calling, and agrees that restraint will be a part of their life. And keeping the peace means every sense of those words. That's what our officers and their commanders understand. So, we expect a lot of police officers. We expect them to live up to the highest standards of our society. And I saw a lot of good last night, and I want to see that continue. So, I emphasize that the standards, the rules we put in place last night, the curfew beginning at 8:00 PM, and going until 5:00 AM the next morning, that will be in place including Sunday night to 5:00 AM Monday morning. At that point, we hope to lift the curfew, move forward just as we're starting phase one of our restart. We all now need to turn our attention to the hugely important moment coming this Monday, June 8th, where we take phase one of the restart.
We've had conversations now for days, talking to folks at the MTA about how do we do this right. I had a very good conversation a few days ago with the head of the MTA, Pat Foye, constructive conversation. We've offered ideas to the MTA about what we think will make it work better, and we want to partner with the MTA to get done. So, yesterday I put out a vision of what I believed would help us come back safely in terms of our subways and buses, and I know the MTA also released a plan that showed, I think some very real progress. They are looking to do something we need to do. Get that service levels, get the frequency of the trains and buses up to where it would be during normal times. Because that's going to mean enough opportunity to get around, but also that when you get on a subway or bus much greater likelihood, it will not be crowded. I wanted to see hand sanitizer in all stations. They're doing that. I think that's great. I appreciate that. And they're going to do a great effort to get face coverings out. We've already pledged. We will provide a million face coverings. The city of New York will provide a million face coverings working with the MTA for free to New Yorkers. We want to make sure it's always easy to have that face covering on.
Now, there's more to be done though. There's more to be done because that alone won't get the job done. There has to be a presence on the platforms, personnel there to educate people, remind them, make sure to staying safe. We want to work with the MTA to get this done. So, here's some things that I'm proposing, I want to see the MTA take the next steps on. I want to see that everywhere you go, whether it is in a subway station and on the platform or on the train or on a bus, there are markings telling you exactly where to be. If you're waiting for in line to get a MetroCard from the machine, here's the marketing showing you where to stand in line, if there's a line. If you're on the platform, here's the marketing's telling you exactly where you can stand with enough distance from the person next to you. If you're on the subway, here's how many people should be on that train, on that car and the markings of where you should stand or sit the same with the buses. It is crucial that every other seat be blocked off so that it's clear, you'll never end up sitting right next to someone, there's at least a seat between people. I think it's clear that we need stated public capacity limits on buses and on trains, some as I understand that some subway cards are different from others in terms of capacity.
Now, as we are surging forward to Monday, June 8th, the other big piece of the equation is to protect our health and our safety with a strong test and trace plan. Now we've been talking about this for days, want to emphasize there's a hand off I keep talking about. Just as you start to reopen test and trace moves forward in a huge new effort, that means more and more New Yorkers being tested all the time, anyone test positive gets the help they need. If they need to be in a safely separated place, they need to be in a hotel, or if they need help isolating at home anyone needs to be quarantined has that support. This approach is the offense to keep pushing back this disease, just at a point where more and more people might come in contact with each other. So yesterday we announced we're now going to a stance where testing will be available. It's still not in the number we want it to be by any stretch of imagination, but it's going to keep growing. We're coming up now towards about 30,000 tests per day, I want us to get the 50,000 tests per day soon and keep growing— from then. But here's the bottom-line testing is free; we want every New Yorker to understand it. Your testing will provide to you for free, it will be easy, it will be quick. And now my message is all New Yorkers are welcome to come and get these tests, we've talked before about the different priorities, we've talked before about people who had preexisting conditions or we're older, we've talked about our first responders, our healthcare workers, people work in our nursing homes, all those folks that was crucial to focus on them first while we had a very limited supply of testing. Now we have a lot more, all New Yorkers are now welcomed to come forward— get tested for free, to find out where you can go to nyc.gov/CovidTest, or you can call 3-1-1. We now have over 180 sites and that will be growing rapidly, as we move forward.
Also, testing is combined with tracing someone tests positive, who are the people you've been in close contact with the last few days we're going to now reach out to them. We're going to get them tested if they need help, if they need to safely separate from other people, we'll do that. Now that army of tracers we've been talking about by the end of this week, there will be 2,500 tracers on duty – 2,500 – and we'll be adding more the following week, another 1,200. So, this number is growing all the time, I've said we are prepared to get to as many as five to 10,000 tracers, they're going— into duty right now. And here's the bottom line, if you test positive, you will get a call from a tracer. You need to take that call. I want to emphasize how important this is. If you test positive, you're going to get that call, take that call, tell them about your close contacts, that's how we protect people, that's how we protect your family, and every family. That call will come within about 24 hours of the time that you are tested 24 to 36 hours, crucial that we then follow through. We do that, right, I’ll make this point simple, you do that right, we do that right, we find everybody who needs support and they get support. And the disease has nowhere to go, if people who need to be safely separated from everyone else, and we do that effectively, then other people won't catch the disease and we contain it and we slowly constrain it more and more to the point that we can eradicate it eventually, that is the name of this game.
Let me talk to you about our thresholds, our indicators that we talk about each day to tell you where we are and how well you have done, and congratulations, because today you will see how well you have done. I've said that we have three and the first is a daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19. We need to say under 200 people per day in all of New York City, city of over 8 million people. So as long as there's fewer than 200 going into the hospitals in a day, we think we're okay, we can make it work, we can protect people. Today the lowest number I've seen 39 patients only, 39, for all of New York City went into the hospital for this day, 39 only, that is a tremendous positive indicator.
Now we've said there's a threshold for a number to the daily number of people in our health and hospitals ICU, need to keep that under 375, it's taken a while to get that down. But now we are there 355 for the last few days we've been under that threshold, and we intend to stay under that threshold. And percentage of people who test at citywide for COVID-19 tested positive, again, got to stay under 15 percent to know that we can make sure that we can handle people's health and safety needs, again, best number we've seen so far, four percent, even with more and more testing, only four percent testing positive. So, this is really, really a very, very powerful evidence of everything you've achieved, this has been a tough game plan, it's required a lot of discipline. People have stuck to the plan, and now you see the fruits of your labors.
