The Guardian’s Kenya Evelyn with a recap of New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily press briefing:
For the first time in decades, New York City will no longer be “The City that never sleeps.”
The governor, along with New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, who patched in remotely, announced a partnership that the city will halt train service every night from 1 am to 5 am for disinfecting and cleaning.
“We’re going to find a way to make our subway system cleaner that it has ever been in its history, probably,” de Blasio said. “It’s not going to be easy, no one said it would be easy.”
Cuomo and de Blasio have not had the warmest relationship, to say the least. The two leaders have not shared a stage together since 2 March, one day after New York reported its first confirmed coronavirus case.
The governor reported that hospitalizations and new cases are down, and while 306 deaths are down from 330 Wednesday, Cuomo still called the number “terrible”.
“Optimist would say that’s a number on the decline, realists would say that’s a tremendous amount of grief for a loved one,” he said.
New York State had more than 300,000 confirmed cases of the virus and 18,000 deaths as of midday Thursday.
“Today’s another day to be better and do better,” Cuomo said.
Before expanding on details of state tracing efforts, Cuomo reiterated that the key to reopening states is keeping the infection rate down and hospital capacity high.
“If we do this right, this is a science reopening,” he said.
Cuomo was also joined by former New York City mayor and Democratic presidential candidate, Michael Bloomberg, who’ll lead the state’s case tracing efforts.
Jesse McKinley
(@jessemckinley)NEW: @NYGovCuomo says that the contact tracing will be coordinated with NJ and CT.
With no interaction with Cuomo, however, the mayor’s delivery garnered questions of whether the video was pre-recorded.
Corey Kilgannon
(@coreykilgannon)Striking how scripted Bloomberg sounds, next to Cuomo’s fluid off-cuff delivery
Cuomo’s interaction with de Blasio, meanwhile, was obviously polite but noticeably cold – with both leaders taking no-so-subtle shots at each other’s infrastructure and management mixed in with heaps of praise.
