Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. A very happy Easter to all New Yorkers who are celebrating this joyous holiday, even in the midst of this pain and this crisis. It’s a time to think about renewal and to think about what comes ahead, a time to think about how we support each other, and to everyone continuing to celebrate Passover, a zizen Pesach to all. I just want to say this simply upfront, this is a season where we focus on faith and so my message to all New Yorkers is keep the faith, keep the faith in this time of challenge, not just your faiths that you practice your beliefs, your values, whatever they may be – keep your faith in New York City. Keep your faith in your fellow New Yorkers. I'm watching what all of you are doing with such pride and admiration because you're showing this whole nation what it means to act as one to help each other and protect each other. That's faith. That's something greater than any one of us. That's something powerful. That's something beautiful. That's something worthy of this season we are in, a season where we reach for our highest ideals. So, thank you, New York City. Thank you for the way you have shown everyone that no matter what's thrown at you, you keep the faith, you support each other, you stand up for each other. We're going to need it. We're going to need it in the weeks and months ahead. That faith will sustain us and then we're going to need that faith to build something better in the future. Not just to get to a day when we're over this disease, but a day when we reach for something higher and I have faith in you and I have faith that we will get there.
So, this week we went through a lot in New York City. It was a very, very tough week in our hospitals. We lost some of our loved ones. We lost some of our fellow New Yorkers. It's so painful to think about, but I also want you to remember what we thought this week was going to be like originally. We thought it was going to be something, honestly, even much worse. And we have never, ever underestimated this enemy we're fighting. Coronavirus is ferocious and has presented us with challenges that we have never ever seen before. And that certainly our nation has not seen anything like in a century. So, this was a tough and painful week, but it was also a very different week than the one we expected. And thank God for that. You know, last Sunday was a moment that we were preparing for the worst and then we started to see some improvement and we're thrilled – I'm thrilled to be able to tell you that just when we thought it was really going to get even worse, we started to see some improvement, and I'm a first one to always say, let's not overrate that improvement, let's not draw too many conclusions too quickly, but let's be very clear and let's be willing to, of course, not only see the good, but see hope in the good.
Last Wednesday, I told you we had seen something real that was the beginning of change and that has continued over these last days. Starting tomorrow, we're going to give you a new set of information, a new set of indicators that will help us to determine where we go in the future. I've said it's going to be three indicators we are going to watch every single day and you're going to watch all of you because it's all going to be public. We need to see those indicators move in the right direction consistently to be able to start to talk about changes that we can make to move us towards the next phase of fighting this epidemic. But what's so important to recognize is that even as recently as a week ago, we were seeing in our hospitals, people coming in and needing to be intubated more every single day, more and more people in need of those ventilators, more and more people would not live without them. A week ago, it was 200 to 300 more people each day coming in, every day, 200 or 300 more than the day before. We thought that was even going to go up more. And then by Wednesday we were able to say no, in fact, thank God that number had come down to about a hundred people more per day. Still way too many, still more each day, but fewer than projected by a lot. Today, I can tell you that number has gone down again – 70 more people per day now is what we're seeing on average. But again, I don't want anyone to mishear it. It's not, things are definitively, clearly, permanently getting better. It's still 70 more people each day, but it's a lot fewer than what we feared.
When it comes to the equipment and the supplies that we need to get us through this next coming week, I'm very pleased to say I want to thank everyone. Let me just say everyone in our team has been working so hard – an incredible operation at our Emergency Management Office where people from all agencies are working together, all of our colleagues in the private sector have been helping us, the federal government, the State government, FEMA, everyone has been part of this. Thank you, because we are now at a point where we can say for the week ahead based on everything we know now we will have enough ventilators to get through this coming week. I will keep updating you because we never know when something may change and we always have to have our guard up and we're always looking for new supplies to get ready for what's ahead because this won't be over tomorrow. This is going to be weeks and months ahead. So we're not letting our guard down but we do have enough ventilators based on what we know now to get through next week. Also, on personal protective equipment, PPEs – for the coming week, and I'm going to talk about the crisis standard. I want to emphasize – and I say this to all New Yorkers, but particularly to our heroic health care workers that we've got to be always honest with you – no one can tell you truthfully that we are providing what would be the peacetime time standard where we'd love to have a true abundance of PPEs of every kind that could be used once and thrown away. We would love to be in that situation. That's the situation we were in for a long time. We're not in that situation over these last weeks.
Once this crisis hit and earnest, we went to a crisis standard and that means always protecting our health care workers, always protecting our first responders, and anyone who needs these PPEs. But with a standard that our CDC says and our Health Department says is acceptable but not the one we would use in peacetime. Based on that crisis standard, we will have the N95 masks, the surgical masks, the gloves we need for this week ahead. And I will say we will have the surgical gowns and coverings of different types and we'll have the face shields, but barely enough in those two categories. It's going to be a struggle this week to make sure that we get them to the right places to make sure that they are conserved. This is something I've spoken with Commissioner Jimmy O'Neill about, that he's playing such an extraordinary role making sure that our hospitals at the front lines in the hospitals are receiving what they need, distributing the right way, doing what they have to do to support each other. This week's going to be one where we're going to do very dynamic and precise, making sure that each hospital gets what it needs in those categories. But for the next week we absolutely must have resupply in surgical gowns and face shields. I've had this conversation with the White House. We are continuing to press the federal government. We'll, of course, press the State government, private sector. We're contracting everywhere we can, but trying to get those deliveries in on time, which is always a challenge in this environment right now. So, this week we will get through, next week we have real challenges we must address over the next few days. And again, when I say this week, I mean this coming week, the week just beginning Monday, we will get through. The week after that, we have a lot we have to work on in advance.
Now let me talk to you about testing, this is an area where there's so much concern obviously, and I just want to remind everyone this basic history and these basic facts. The basic history is we pleaded for weeks and weeks for the federal government to provide testing upfront in the kind of quantity that could have helped us contain this crisis and change the whole course of it. We never got that help. We continue to plead for more testing. Still has not come any anywhere near the numbers that we need, but we will not stop. We're continuing the conversations with the White House, with FEMA demanding the testing. We are the epicenter of this crisis. We must have the testing to help us move towards that next phase where we get out of widespread transmission of the coronavirus and move to low-level transmission and on to something better. We also have to remember that testing helps us in many ways, but it does not provide all the solutions. It is a fact that someone could test negative one day and a few days later, tragically contract the disease and test positive. It's a fact that if you test negative, it doesn't mean let your guard down, you still have to take a lot of precautions. And it's a fact that if you test positive, you have to follow through and we have to help you follow through to protect your own health and the health of everyone around you. So, there's a lot that has to be done to take testing and make sure it is used in the best way possible. But there's still – it remains the fundamental problem, there's just not enough testing.
The priority has been clear. We have focused on hospitalized patients, those who were in greatest danger, those whose lives we have to work hardest to save. That was the testing priority. Protecting our health care workers, keeping them doing their lifesaving work, protecting our first responders so they could protect us all. That's been where the priority has been in what's essentially been phase one of what we were able to do with testing. But now we're going to talk about phase two where we intend to expand testing more to the community level as we get sufficient supply. And I want to emphasize every time I say the word testing, that it is contingent upon getting the supply we need. This is something that has to come from, I'm sad to say outside the city, we cannot produce here in any kind of way that anyone's explained to me, at least. We need to get these supplies in from elsewhere. And the testing must come in for us to do phase two the way we intend.
But here's why phase two is so important and this'll be targeted testing in communities with the greatest needs. I said the other day, this virus is not the great equalizer. It does not, in the end, have the same impact everywhere. It hurts people everywhere. Every community, every ZIP code has been affected, and we all know people who are suffering or even people who have passed away. But we see disparity. We see a clear disparity in the impact, who's been hit hardest, communities of color, lower income communities, immigrant communities, folks who are vulnerable already because they haven't had the health care they needed and deserve throughout their life. We cannot accept this inequality. We have to attack it with every tool we have. So by the end of next week, we will create community testing sites and these are targeted to have the biggest impact. We will create these sites in the following locations – and these are all Health + Hospitals locations in these communities, existing locations – in East New York in Brooklyn, Morrisania in the Bronx, Harlem of course in Manhattan, Jamaica in Queens, and the Vanderbilt Clinic on Staten Island. We will be setting up a system, we'll announce the details soon, for people who live in those communities particularly hard hit to be able to access this testing. There will be a priority system focused on those who are most vulnerable. And again, to do this effectively, we're going to have to keep getting the supply of testing we need and we're going to have to keep getting the PPEs we need. Because remember for the professionals who administer the test, they must be protected. We need those PPEs so we are going to work on a game plan that says let's keep finding the tests. Let's keep finding the PPE so we can get this up and running by the end of next week.
We will update you on the details. And obviously if there's any changes in the specifics because of supply, we will update you on that. But here's the key point. The federal government really needs to step up. Again, they have not been doing what we all needed and this is true all over the country. We have not gotten the help we need on testing. Here's a chance to get it right. I will be asking the federal government today for test kits to allow for 110,000 individualized tests. That will allow us to get started with this community effort and to continue everything else that we are doing. Specifically, 25,000 of those individualized test kits would be focused on Health + Hospitals for their current needs and for the new sites that I have just described. And we need to get these test kits in this week. If we can get that done, then we can keep building out our testing program. Now this is a beginning. Want to emphasize, those bigger phases we talked about a few days ago, to get to that next phase, that low-level transmission phase, we're going to need much more testing. To get to the phase where we've basically defeated the coronavirus and there's basically no transmission, we're going to get a lot more testing, really, really widespread testing. We're nowhere near that now. This is what our national government should be focused on first and foremost, if we're going to really help us get to those next phases here and everywhere, so I will have that conversation today with the White House again, but this is going to be the decisive in determining, not only have we got through the next weeks, but how we get to something much, much better. Couple of other points –
A week ago, I shared new guidance with New Yorkers, said we’re advising all New Yorkers to wear face coverings in public and that it was about protecting other people. It was about protecting all of us. That was the idea. It was an idea of doing something that would help reduce the spread, doing something that would help hasten the day where he could get out of this crisis. It was very clear that by putting on that face covering you're protecting everyone else. And that was for the good of all. I want to say thank you again to all New Yorkers. It's been amazing. Wherever I've been around this city, I see so many people wearing face coverings and you know, they made their own, they use bandanas, they use scarves, whatever they had. But it's been really impressive how many people took that guidance and ran with it immediately. And everywhere I've gone, I've talked to my team, people are seeing the same thing. Tremendous follow through on the guidance. So, thank you. I want to add to the instructions we're giving. Starting tomorrow, Monday, I am requiring all City workers who come in contact with the public while on duty to wear face coverings. This'll be a requirement of their work. We've already provided 1.4 million face coverings to City workers. We will provide as many more as are necessary for our City workers to consistently, constantly have a face covering on when they interact with the public. So this will be a requirement starting tomorrow Monday.
On another topic, I've said that unfortunately and painfully we're not just fighting COVID-19 as a disease and in terms of health care and protecting lives and saving lives, COVID19 has also robbed a lot of people of their livelihood. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have lost their jobs. Today we're announcing a new initiative to help some of the folks who have lost their jobs to get work again. And I want to do everything I can to give people back their livelihoods, to protect people not just in terms of health and safety, but in terms of their ability to pay for the basics, to support their family. In times of distress what our government should do on all levels, especially the federal government, is step up and provide support for people and help them continue through the crisis and get to the other side. And that includes putting money in people's pockets.
So we are establishing a new initiative to hire New Yorkers to do absolutely crucial and heroic work in our hospital system, starting with our public hospital system, Health + Hospitals. But we're also going to be expanding that effort, working with the voluntary and independent hospitals as well. So, I want to say to all New Yorkers who are looking for work, join a team of heroes, help out in our hospitals, fighting back the coronavirus and saving lives. Right away, Health + Hospitals will be hiring 500 non-clinical staff. So not medical staff – folks who can help transport patients, who can work on the clerical team, who can help the hospitals running with critical work, including cleaning and maintenance. Health + Hospitals is starting with 500 jobs immediately that will build out to thousands. And as I said, we're going to also have jobs available in the other types of hospitals, all of whom are going to need this support and help.
These will be temporary jobs starting with a 90-day assignment. But for so many families that do not have enough money right now, they're going to be a real lifeline. So, I want to ask anyone who wants to help us out and wants to get that opportunity to get employed again. Go to nyc.gov/coronavirus – again, nyc.gov/coronavirus. You can apply right away and we need you right away. And I want to remind everyone even while we're trying to get new employment opportunities to New Yorkers, we will not let any New Yorker in this crisis go without the food they need. We will not let any new Yorker be evicted from their apartment. I want to be very clear that the City of New York, we will protect our people and anyone who needs food and can't get it, call 3-1-1. Anyone who's being told by their landlord, they have to leave their building because they're sick or they're being threatened with eviction, call 3-1-1. We will get you a lawyer, we will stop it. Our job is to protect our people.
Now, another point, just a few more before we turn to questions from our colleagues in the media. Yesterday, Chancellor Carranza and I talked about the painful reality that our schools would not be able to open up again for this school year. And we explained, obviously, why that was the right thing to do in terms of health and safety, why it was the right thing to do in terms of recognizing what would be possible academically with only a few weeks in person. But we had a reason in making that decision to know that we could keep supporting our kids. And we had laid out a five-point plan of the ways we're going to support our kids and our parents, prepare for this phase and beyond. One of the reasons that Chancellor Carranza and I are confident in the decision we made is that we have had amazing partners working with us really, really deeply and with great passion, great energy to create a distance learning system, an online learning system that New York City has never had before. And again, this was put together very rapidly, but I want to give credit where credit is due. Not only is it the great folks at the Department of Education leadership who put together this plan and implemented it so rapidly, not only the educators who have been absolutely outstanding in taking on a whole new approach and starting to make it work - and I said from the beginning and Chancellor says, not going to happen overnight, it will get better with each week – but our educators have been front and center very devoted to making this work and I thank you all again, but I want to also thank the private companies that stepped up.
You know, we ask these companies to come in as partners to work with us. Yes, it's part of their business, but to work with us in very, very different ways than they even had before, to do it very fast, very agile to really work with government as partners, think the way we had to think in a crisis and follow through in real time. And I want to thank these companies who have done that because it's allowed us to keep making distance learning work. First of all, Apple they have been outstanding partners. We said from the beginning, we needed 300,000 iPads. They were very quick to prioritize the children of New York City and I want to thank them for that. And yesterday I talked to the CEO Tim Cook, and the outstanding challenge was we needed 50,000 more the iPads to fulfill our order. We needed them really quickly to be able to meet our deadline of putting the iPads in the hands of each child by the end of April. I spoke to Tim Cook yesterday and he said, no matter what it takes, Apple will get those iPads to us in time. So I want to thank him and everyone at Apple for all they are doing to make sure our children will have these iPads and to make sure every child has an equal opportunity to learn. And I know that is a labor of love for them. So I want to thank you, Tim, and thank you everyone at Apple.
T-Mobile has been supplying the LTE data plans. They've been great partners. We ask them to move quickly. They did. Thank you. IBM, setting up our iPads with apps and resources for learning. Everything we've asked, they've been doing. Thank you, IBM. Microsoft, Google, ProTech, creating apps and tools for learning. They've all again been willing to answer the call, answer it quickly, make sure that we could give a rich experience, a powerful experience to our kids. It's not the same as being in a classroom, obviously, but we are trying to make it the very best it can be even if it's distance learning. And then the folks who actually get the devices to our kids. And I want to not only thank the companies, but thank all the hard-working delivery workers. These folks are unsung heroes in this crisis and you don't think to stop and thank the FedEx guy or the UPS guy, but just should because they're actually helping things keep going and so many cases delivering vital supplies. So, thank you to FedEx, to UPS, to NTT and Deluxe, all of whom have been delivering these devices to our students.
And finally, our library systems, Queens Library, the Brooklyn Library, the New York Public Library, all had been working to make sure the apps are loaded on the iPads, giving kids access to thousands of wonderful books they can use. So think about that for a moment. A lot of kids who would never have had that access at home, families that could never afford to buy a lot of books, a lot of kids who have never had the opportunity to have their own personal extraordinary library. It's now happening because of all of these combined efforts.
So I'll close before a few words in Spanish wishing everyone again a very happy Easter. Continuing to wish everyone a zizen pesach. I know today and every day in this holiday season, people are finding a way, whether it's FaceTime, whether it's Skype or whatever it is, to connect your loved ones, to stay connected as best we can. Thank you for keeping traditions alive, even when it's hard. And again, thank you for your faith. And the last thing I want to say about that word of faith is we connected to the word endurance. Boy, New Yorkers have shown us that we can endure even the hardest times and our faith traditions always talk about what our ancestors went through and they went through so much. But we're showing that we in our time can endure as well and that's what our faith helps us do. So, everyone, continue to keep that in mind as you fight your way through this crisis.
