As the number of cases statewide rises to 105, the governor said it’s “outrageous” that a Long Island lab has not been authorized to test.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo criticized the federal government on Sunday for delays in allowing private laboratories in New York State to test for the coronavirus.
At a news conference, Mr. Cuomo also announced 16 new confirmed cases of the virus, bringing the total number in New York State to 105. But he said that the state would not know the full extent of the spread until it could do more testing.
“I would get nervous if the number didn’t go up,” he said. He added: “The more tests we run, the better.” In his most pointed criticism to date, Mr. Cuomo said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been slow in responding to the epidemic and then too slow in allowing states to do more testing.
Mr. Cuomo, speaking at the Northwell Health Labs at the Center for Advanced Medicine, a private laboratory in North New Hyde Park, on Long Island, said seven labs in the state could begin testing immediately for the coronavirus if given federal approval.
“The C.D.C. has not authorized the use of this lab, which is just outrageous and ludicrous,” he said of Northwell. “C.D.C., wake up, let the states test, let private labs test, let’s increase as quickly as possible our testing capacity so we can identify the positives, and not using this lab and other private labs makes no sense.”
When asked why the labs had not gotten approval, Mr. Cuomo said, “I think it’s bureaucracy.”
Barbara Osborn, a spokeswoman for Northwell Health, which has 23 hospitals across the state, said that lab hoped to get approval on Sunday to start testing.
“We’re literally waiting by the phone for approval from the F.D.A.,” Ms. Osborn said. “We have samples right now that are waiting for testing.”
Initially, Northwell will be able to handle about 75 to 100 tests per day, according to the lab’s executive director of testing services. But once the lab is able to automate the process, moving away from manual testing, it could eventually raise capacity to 1,000 tests a day.
On Friday, Michelle Forman, a spokeswoman for the Association of Public Health Laboratories, said the agency was not aware of any testing shortages.
Hospital and private laboratory testing would add significantly to the capacity across New York. Since last weekend, the public health laboratories in New York City and Albany have been able to test for the new coronavirus.
Yet testing remained limited: As of Saturday only about 120 people in New York City had been tested for the virus. And it has been become clear that the new coronavirus was spreading faster than testing was increasing.
In New York City cases are emerging of people who seemed to have been infected locally. They had no known contact with previously identified coronavirus patients, nor any travel to places with widespread transmission.
By Friday, city officials had issued an urgent plea to the federal government for more testing supplies, saying that the city’s limited capacity to test had “impeded our ability to beat back this epidemic.” City officials said they had only been given enough supplies from the federal government to test about 1,000 people.
By the following morning, their request had been answered. On Saturday, New York City’s public health laboratory had received more tests. “This morning, the N.Y.C. Public Health Lab received 23,000 tests and declined offers for additional shipments,” a federal Heath and Human Services spokeswoman said.
The 105 cases across the state include 12 in New York City; five in Nassau County; two in Rockland County; two in Saratoga County; and one each in Suffolk and Ulster counties. Westchester County, the epicenter of the epidemic in New York, now has 82 cases, up from 70 on Saturday.
On Saturday, Mr. Cuomo declared a state of emergency, which allows the state to respond more quickly by lifting regulations.
The state would be able to speed up purchasing supplies and hiring workers to assist local health departments that have been monitoring of thousands of self-quarantined patients, Mr. Cuomo said on Saturday.
Separately, health officials in New Jersey also reported two additional cases on Sunday, a 70-year-old health care worker from Teaneck and a 32-year-old man from West New York, bringing the number of cases in the state to six. Both men had begun to show symptoms on Feb. 28, according to state officials.
“As you can see, from north to south, the coronavirus seems to be spreading,” said Judith M. Persichilli, the state’s health commissioner.
The 70-year-old was admitted to the hospital on Friday. He is in stable condition but remained in intensive care, health officials said.
The 32-year-old, from West New York, was admitted to the hospital on Thursday, they added.
The officials also updated the case of another 32-year-old patient, a doctor from Fort Lee who was New Jersey’s first coronavirus case. They said the doctor had attended a medical conference, run by Empire Medical Training, at a Westin Hotel in Times Square from Feb. 28 to March 2.
In total, New Jersey officials said, 27 individuals were being tracked in nine counties, including Sussex and Camden, which are at separate ends of the state.
Also on Sunday, Connecticut reported its first case of coronavirus involving a resident, a 40-to-50 year old from Wilton, who was most likely infected with the virus during a recent trip to California, Gov. Ned Lamont said in a statement.
On Saturday, Mr. Lamont said a New York doctor who commutes to work at Bridgeport Hospital tested positive for the coronavirus. Mr. Lamont said the physician did not show visible symptoms while treating patients and isolated himself.
In the United States, as of Sunday morning, more than 400 people have been treated for coronavirus in 32 states and Washington, D.C., according to a New York Times database, and at least 19 people have died.
In New York, the Westchester cases were mostly, if not all, related to a cluster that first came to the authorities’ attention after a New Rochelle resident, a 50-year-old lawyer, was confirmed as New York’s second coronavirus patient.
Mr. Cuomo on Saturday did not say how many New Yorkers were now isolating themselves at home over fears they might have been exposed to the virus. But as of Friday, New York officials said they had asked about 4,000 people in the state to self-quarantine.
About 2,300 of that quarantined group were in New York City, and most of them had recently returned from five countries where the outbreak has been most severe: China, Iran, Italy, Japan and South Korea.
Joseph Goldstein and Tracey Tully contributed reporting.
source https://betterweightloss.info/coronavirus-in-n-y-cuomo-attacks-c-d-c-over-delays-in-testing/
No comments:
Post a Comment