NEW YORK – The city’s Health Department estimates that between 2 to 3 million people in New York have already been exposed to COVID-19, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said the department is ready to administer the vaccine when it is ready.
In his weekly “Monday With the Mayor” interview with Bobby Koza from NY1 on Inside the city hallDe Blasio did not provide further details and evidence on how the Ministry of Health came to an estimate of 2 to 3 million, but experts agree that the number of COVID-19 cases reported in the country and around the world is very likely to be lower than the number since then Everyone undergoes testing, or because people have been incorrectly diagnosed with a disease that has symptoms similar to COVID-19.
Prepare to be vaccinated
De Blasio’s comments about the vaccine distribution come after President Donald Trump said on Friday he would do so Delaying the dispatch of an approved COVID-19 vaccine to New York Even Gov. Andrew Cuomo authorizes it, although a vaccine will not be widely available until President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
For his part, de Blasio says the city is ready whenever the vaccine is given the green light.
“Our health department is ready to start vaccinating people right away. The facilities are already in place, cooling. Once we get it in quantities, things start to change,” de Blasio said.
A few weeks ago, Cuomo said it would be Up to the stateAnd not the city, to manage the distribution of the vaccine.
“This district says they will. This district says they will. The localities have no legal jurisdiction. This is the law,” the governor said on October 22. “The states will be responsible for administering the vaccine.”
Promote Contact Tracking
Like most elected officials, de Blasio cited the need for a vaccine to bring the Five Quarters back to normal to some extent, though he claimed that Test & Trace Corps in town, with its arsenal of more than 4,000 employees, could still stop the worst effects of the second. Coronavirus wave. Despite concerns that the virus had spread so much in city communities that they were no longer dependent on contact tracing, the flagship argued otherwise. His counterargument: He claims the city has found that most people who test positive for COVID-19 don’t have many close contacts.
“They have one person, two people, three people – not like an enormous number, because the standard of close contact requires some actual close contact and for a long period of time,” said the mayor. “So we already found that Test & Trace can keep up with a large number of cases.”
The Primary Reproduction NumberWhich represents the number of infections a single infection causes to a particular disease, can vary depending on where someone lives, but experts warn that an infected individual can spread the virus to a much larger number of people. If they are and the people who get the infection don’t all wear face coverings and social distancing.
Leave and rest talk
In his NY1 interview, the mayor also confirmed that he took leave in October, and lost a week’s wage.
“A lot of the other team here at City Hall is either already doing it or it is in the process of doing it,” he said. “We had to lead by example.”
In September, the mayor said he and 495 employees will Abandoning the one-week vacation pay Sometime after October 1, it saved about 12% of the mayor’s office budget, on top of previous cuts.
The vacation comes as the city faces an estimated budget deficit of $ 9 billion. For now, the city has avoided layoffs, but the mayor in his interview said they would come “sometime next year” if the anti-coronavirus stimulus package was not passed in Washington, DC.
That could run into hurdles in the US Senate. Republicans in the Senate, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have often obstructed Democratic House of Representatives’ efforts to pass another coronavirus relief package. One sticking point was how much direct assistance would have to be provided to states and cities, as Democrats want the federal government to give more money to localities. While the House and Senate were able to draft incentive bills earlier in the year, Democrats may need to gain control of the Senate to get the domestic aid like New York it wants.