ALBANY – In the continuing effort to get a grip on COVID-19, Governor Cuomo announced on Wednesday that he is launching a very rigorous testing and contact tracing program.
He wants to boost the numbers of those tested.
“You test a person. If a person winds up positive, you then trace that person’s contacts; contact tracing,” he said. “You have to start with a large number of tests and we set as a goal to double the number of state tests, to go from 20,000 on average to 40,000.”
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has volunteered his School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins Team to identify and recruit contact tracer candidates, said Cuomo. Bloomberg will also financially contribute to the effort.
The massive endeavor will target the New York metropolitan area as well as New Jersey and Connecticut.
Cuomo anticipated recruiting thousands of tracers from health department staff, investigators from state agencies, and SUNY and CUNY students in medical fields.
“Once you trace, and you find more positives, then you isolate the positives, they’re under quarantine, they can’t go out, they can’t infect anybody else,” the governor said. “The entire operation has never been done before. So, it’s intimidating.”
The program will start immediately.
