There have been more than 7.3 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide as of June 10, and the novel coronavirus has killed more than 400,000 people. The United States has been particularly hit hard with more than 2 million recorded cases and more than 6,000 cases per 1 million people. No other country has reached 1 million active cases, while the US has significantly more cases per million people than other densely populated countries like the United Kingdom, India, and Italy, among others.
In the US, individual states have taken different approaches to combating the spread of the virus and relaxing social distancing measures. New daily cases were rising in 21 states as of June 10 and many of those, including Arizona and Florida, adopted relatively lax measures to fight the virus.
Conversely, despite being a hot spot for the virus during its initial outbreak in the US, New York has shown a drastic decline in daily new cases since late April. Daily new cases totaled 10,868 on April 25, fell to 5,678 the following day and have remained below 5,000 ever since. New daily cases on June 9 numbered 768. Below is a look at the COVID-19 response efforts of Governor Andrew Cuomo and his administration.
Andrew Cuomo | Image by Diana Robinson | Flickr
Contact Tracing Program
Contact tracing is an integral public health technique in the fight against the spread of COVID-19. Back in April, CDC Director Dr. Robert R. Redfield cited case recognition, isolation, and contact tracing as the three priorities to ensure the US could open with minimal COVID-19-related disruptions and loss of life. The idea of contact tracing involves determining with whom an infected individual might have been in contact, then informing these people so they can isolate and avoid unknowingly spreading the virus to others.
In April, Gov. Cuomo and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced the launch of an unprecedented contact tracing program with support from nonprofit and civic agencies. As part of the program, the state planned to hire and train thousands of tracers who would conduct work over the phone to determine the network of potentially infected individuals from a single index case. Bloomberg Philanthropies donated $10.5 million to support the program, while Vital Strategies was appointed to advise New York State Health Department staff in establishing protocols for effective contact tracing. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, meanwhile, created a training program for those working as tracers. More than 30,000 people applied to be tracers as of May 20.
Tested at Press Conference
Gov. Cuomo has been a leading voice in the national COVID-19 response due in part to New York's status as a hotspot for the virus and his willingness to directly criticize the federal response to the crisis. He has conducted several interviews with his brother Chris Cuomo on CNN to give updates on the state's actions to combat the spread of the virus and has even gone so far as to get tested for COVID-19 during a press conference.
Gov. Cuomo underwent the test on May 17 to highlight the relative ease of the procedure and to encourage others to get tested. The test was conducted by Dr. Elizabeth DuFort, who stuck a nasopharyngeal swab inside the governor's nose for five seconds. After a swab sample is taken, it is sent to a lap at which a diagnostic PCR test kit is used to determine a positive or negative result for COVID-19.
In his subsequent press conference, Gov. Cuomo said New York has tested a higher percentage of its population than any other state at its 700-plus test sites. This is still essentially true—New York’s testing rate is 137,156 tests per million people, which eclipses every other state except tiny Rhode Island, whose testing rate works out to 173,333 tests per million.
Handling of Nursing Homes
While he has received some praise for his handling of the pandemic, Gov. Cuomo has also been under fire for how he has addressed COVID-19 in New York nursing homes. In early May, the Associated Press reported that there had been around 5,300 COVID-19 deaths in New York's long-term care facilities and nursing homes. This came two months after Gov. Cuomo lauded his administration's approach to protecting vulnerable populations. New York had zero deaths in these senior care complexes at that point and he compared the state's favorable results to Washington state, which had 22 at that time.
"Obviously the way it rolled out here was pretty disastrous for people — for residents and their families," noted Long Term Care Community Coalition executive director Richard J. Mollot, speaking to Politico about COVID-19 in New York nursing homes. "This hit us, perhaps, harder than it should have. Some of this was avoidable, preventable — some of it still is if we take the appropriate actions."
Mollot specifically criticized the state health policy of directing nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients, even after the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine spoke out against this policy.
Gov. Cuomo, meanwhile, later said critics of his nursing home strategy should look to President Donald Trump, since New York followed CDC guidance.
Phase One of Reopening New York City
Several municipalities in New York began the reopening process in May after meeting criteria based on hospital space, testing, declining cases, and contact tracing capability. New York City, meanwhile, met those criteria in June and began the first phase of its reopening process on June 8. During a press conference that day, Gov. Cuomo announced medical facilities in the city could resume ambulatory care and elective surgeries. He also applauded citizens for their efforts in flattening the curve and announced the opening of 14 additional temporary testing sites in communities with a high volume of confirmed COVID-19 cases.