Cuomo: Coronavirus battle ‘a new war no one has ever seen before’

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is calling on President Trump to immediately deploy the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. military to build more hospital capacity to handle what he says will be a surge in coronavirus cases that will overwhelm the New York health care system’s ability to treat them.

“You have no other option,” Cuomo said. “Otherwise we will be sitting here nine weeks, 10 weeks, 14 weeks from today, seeing a healthcare system overrun. We will be saying, we knew this was going to happen. Why didn’t we provide more health care facilities? Why didn’t we do everything we could to make that a reality? That means deploying the Army Corps of Engineers and the military, he said.

”What better time to use those resources?“ The governor published an open letter to the President in today’s New York Times.

The state is working to slow the spread of the virus to a rate the health care system can manage, the governor said. But he struck a dark tone, portraying that as an unlikely outcome.

“The real question here is can your healthcare system manage the influx of patients? That’s all this is about,” he said. “In China, in Italy, in South Korea, it’s the same lesson over and over again. You get into trouble when the healthcare system can’t manage the rate of intake.”

Some health experts predict as much as 60% of the population will become infected, Cuomo said. He emphasized that it’s impossible to control the total number of eventual infections, but that the country can still try to manage how many people get sick at once so that hospitals aren’t overwhelmed—what health officials call “flattening the curve.”

Cuomo said New York has 3,000 ICU beds, and they are already 80% occupied, leaving about 600 beds free today. People with COVID-19 often need ICU beds because they need ventilators to breathe for them, the governor said.

New York also has about 3,000 total ventilators, which is one of the key differences between a regular hospital bed and an ICU bed. Like ICU beds, there are only about 600 available right now. 

With 729 confirmed cases in New York State, there are already 65 coronavirus patients filling ICU beds across New York.

Cuomo said that there will be a need for “thousands and thousands” more ventilators and ICU beds in order to treat everyone who will need one in the coming weeks, but that the state is currently unable to increase its supply.

“There’s been literally a global run on ventilators right now,” he said. “You can’t find available ventilators no matter how much you’re willing to pay right now.”

Building the kind of capacity that will be needed to handle this public health crisis is beyond the ability of a state, he said. It requires federal intervention, the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. military.

The state must do everything in its power to slow the rate of infection, Cuomo said. He said that means working to “flatten the curve” on the chart showing infections to a level where the health care system stands a chance of not being overwhelmed.

“If you have too high a number of people sick at the same time, when they descend on the hospital system, you will overwhelm the hospital system,” Cuomo said.

“The curve is not a curve,” he continued. “The curve is a wave. And the wave could break on the hospital system. If you have too high a number of people sick at the same time, when they descend on the hospital system, you will overwhelm the hospital system.

“We’re only talking about several weeks before that wave breaks,” he added.

The government needs to ramp up testing so that infected people can be identified and isolated and their contacts traced and isolated, he said.

People must maintain social distancing, Cuomo said. “Reduce the density the best you can.”

Private sector businesses must aggressively consider work-from-home strategies, aggressively conside voluntary closings,“ the governor said, adding ”We could consider mandatory closings later.“

Non-essential personnel in N.Y. state government are asked to stay at home in downstate counties — from Rockland County south. 

The state court system will postpone nonessential services, Cuomo said. He has asked the chief judge to come up with a plan. 

Closing schools statewide is not as simple, Cuomo said. 

“For many families, the school is child care. If you close the schools and the children are home, a large percentage of the workforce may not be able to work, including the healthcare workers essential to battling the virus.

“We can’t have 1199 health care workers not coming to work because they have to stay home and watch their children,” Cuomo said, referring to the health care workers union. “We have essential workers that need to got to work — police, firefighters and health care workers.”

“If you close the school how do you feed the children? For many children the breakfast and lunch are the two main meals they get,” the governor said. “How do you distribute meals to these children if they’re not in school?” He said ultimately it’s a local decision.

Both Suffolk and Nassau county executives today announced that all schools will be closed for two weeks. Counties are working with state officials to establish meal programs and expanded childcare options.

While all these actions are taken, the government and health care system have to work together to increase capacity and increase staffing capabilities, Cuomo said. 

“We’re looking at a new war that no one has ever seen before,” Cuomo said.

“This is a case of first impression for this nation. We have never fought a virus like this with this potential consequence, so plan forward — plan forward. You see that wave, try to reduce the size of the wave, assume you can’t reduce the size of the wave. Assume the wave breaks at a higher level than the hospital system can accommodate. I believe that’s what’s going to happen.”