Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced Friday that schools will remain closed through the academic year. The state still has too many new cases of COVID-19 being reported daily — about 1,000 — to risk reopening schools, he said.
Distance learning for all students, home delivery of meals to qualified students, and child care programs for essential workers will remain in place, the governor said. Here on Shelter Island, these initiatives were up and running shortly after the school closures were first announced March 18.
“We are so sorry to hear that we will not see our students again in-person this year,” Shelter Island School Superintendent Brian Doelger said in a statement immediately after the governor spoke. “We will do everything we can to ensure that our students get what they need during this time. We will pay particular attention to giving our seniors the best send-off that we can.”
“My heart really goes out to the whole school community, but especially our students and most especially the kids that are here with us today,” Doelger when just a short while later he spoke at the Town’s weekly emergency update along with a group of high school seniors.
And while schools are foremost on the minds of many, the pandemic has also prompted a mental health crisis, the governor said, announcing new initiatives to help those having trouble coping with the stress.
Power of collective action
Before making the school announcement, the governor reminded those watching of the essential role of collective action in the face of the novel coronavirus.
“I just want people to recall the context for these numbers and remember what we have accomplished,” Cuomo said at the outset of his daily briefing from the state house in Albany. ” We were faced with a situation where the infection rate and those numbers were going straight up. That was only 30 days ago that we saw the number of cases, the number of people coming into hospitals, the infection rate — everything was going straight up.”
“That number would have just continued to go straight up,” he said, but New Yorkers “changed reality. They literally changed the path of the virus spread.”
“All across this country you saw that number change from that up trajectory to the downward trajectory,” he said. The stay at home orders and social distancing measures that were widely embraced by the public resulted in saving an estimated 100,000 New Yorkers from having to be hospitalized “and many likely would’ve died,” he said.
“So all this inconvenience, all this turmoil — for what?”
“To keep 100,000 people out of hospitals, that’s for what,” he said. “Our past actions changed the past trajectory our present actions will determine the future trajectory — it is that clear.”
Hospitalizations dropping, but cases at plateau
While the number of total hospitalizations has continued to drop, Cuomo said the number of new cases arriving at hospitals appears to have hit a plateau of about 1,000 cases per day. While that’s “a lot better than where we were for sure” it is “too high a number of new cases to have every day.”
The majority of cases are being reported in New York City, but Nassau County has 10 percent of cases and Suffolk County, 7 percent. The state will work with county health officials and hospitals to enhance reporting on new cases in an effort to determine how it is that people are being infected. Going forward, hospitals will have to add questions to their intake data on where patients work, are they essential workers, how do they commute and more.
“We need more specific information to have a specific battle plan,” Cuomo said. The goal: “a strategy that is more tailored to the reduction of these 1,000 cases per day.”
Schools will remain closed
Cuomo said the state asked schools to provide three things when he ordered them closed March 18: institute distance learning, provide a home delivered nutrition for students who qualify for free and reduced price meals, and set up school-based child care for essential workers.
“That has actually worked out well,” he said. “Not perfectly — we had to do it in a rush but … it basically functioned well and teachers did a phenomenal job. It was a hardship on everyone but we made the best of the situation.”
All of those initiatives will continue through the end of the academic year at the state’s 4,800 public schools, 1,800 private schools, 89 SUNY and CUNY campuses and 100 private college that collectively educate 4.2 million students, he said. Officials are still weighing whether summer school programs may take in school buildings, or may also continue remotely.
“The decisions on the education system are obviously critically important, ” he said. “We must protect our children.”
But the precautions that would have to put in place in order to reopen schools, he said, are so numerous that simply isn’t possible to put them into place before the end of the academic year in June.
“We want schools to start now developing a plan to reopen [in September] and the plan has to have protocols in place that incorporate everything that we are now doing in society and everything that we learn,” he said.
Mental health crisis
The significant disruption of the COVID-19 crisis has prompted a mental health crisis across the state, the governor said.
“It has caused serious mental health issues,” he said. “You have anxiety, depression, insomnia, loneliness. That feeling of isolation we’re seeing, the use of drugs go up we’re seeing the use of alcohol consumption go up … If you’re feeling these issues, you’re not alone.”
Cuomo said polls show about half of Americans say their mental health has been negatively impacted. And he urged anyone with questions or concerns to use the state’s mental health hotline, 1-844-863-9314.
“People should be shy in any way, or have any second thoughts about calling for help,” he said.
The state is also seeing a significant increase in reports of domestic violence, which rose 15 percent in March and 20 percent in April, he said, encouraging anyone who feels they need it to call the domestic violence helping, 1-844-997-2121.
“You don’t have to give your identity. You don’t have to say where you live. But people who need help should reach out.”
In recognition of the particularly harrowing circumstances facing frontline health care workers, the state will set up a special emotional support hotline just for them. And it is directing insurers to waive any deductibles or co-pays for such workers for mental health support, he said.
Cuomo said the pandemic has served as “the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you area, this impacts your life dramatically.”
