Former three-term New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg will coordinate contract tracing efforts on behalf of New York State, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced Wednesday.
The billionaire and his philanthropic foundation will provide “upwards of $10 million” in support of a new program being created with Johns Hopkins University, home of the Bloomberg School of Public health. Another partner in the endeavor is Vital Strategies, a global public health organization.
The new program will hire and train an “army” of tracers in what Cuomo called a “monumental undertaking” to follow up on those who test positive for COVID-19, track down the people they were in contact with, and arrange for them to be tested, and/or isolated, as needed.
“Mike Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies have committed organizational support and technical assistance to help build and execute this new program,” the governor said. “The contact tracing program will be done in coordination with the downstate region as well as New Jersey and Connecticut and will serve as an important resource to gather best practices and as a model that can be replicated across the nation.”
“You don’t have months to plan this, you have weeks,” Cuomo said, adding the project, which will start immediately, was a “super ambitious undertaking.”
Protests notwithstanding
The governor expressed impatience with those pushing for a faster lifting of regulations put in place to slow the spread of the virus, including protestors who were demonstrating outside the statehouse.
“We can’t make a bad decision and we can’t be stupid about it,” Cuomo said. “This is not going to be over any time soon. I know people want out, I get it. I know people want to get back to work. I know people need a paycheck. I know this is unsustainable.”
“I also know that more people will die if we are not smart, I know that,” he said. “We’re not going to have people lose their life because we acted imprudently. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to do that and I’m not going to allow the state to do it.”
“I’m not going to have the obituary of this period be, well they felt political pressure, so they got nervous and they acted imprudently,” he said. “That’s not who we are.”
Funds for state governments
The governor said a meeting Tuesday with President Donald J. Trump at the White House focused not just on testing but also on federal funding needed by state governments to maintain operations.
Despite their political differences, Cuomo characterized the meeting as “very good.”
“We both have a job, let’s do the job,” he said. “That was the spirit of the meeting yesterday. And it was very productive on what were very contentious, unclear issues.”
He thanked the president for waiving the expectation that the state provide a 25 percent match of funds from Federal Emergency Management Agency. And, he praised federal administrators and elected officials for working to provide funds to Americans through various programs.
“They’ve passed bills that help a lot of Americans, that’s great,” he said. “But you have to help state governments because state governments fund the people that the federal government can’t fund.”
Among those paid with state funds are police, firefighters, teachers and other school employees. “You can’t just ignore them,” the governor said. “And when you don’t fund the states, then you’re saying to the states well, you have to fund them, and the states have already said in one united choir, we can’t.”
“The president gets it,” he said. “The president says he’s going to work very hard in the next piece of legislation.”
However, the governor cautioned, “this was not a time for baby steps. This is when you should be taking bold action.”