40 THE QUEENS COURIER • HEALTH • MAY 7, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
health
Cuomo mandates that every hospital has 90 days of PPE
BY MARK HALLUM
mhallum@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Hospitals in New York now have up
to three months of personal protective
equipment (PPE) on hand at all times
going forward, according to
Governor Andrew Cuomo, who
attributed the severity of the situation
in the northeast to travelers
from Europe.
During a May 3 briefi ng,
Cuomo said that while the
United States was focusing
on the coronavirus threat
from China, they should
have been looking to
Europe and could
have avoided overloading
the hospital
system.
Th e overarching
message
of today’s
a p p e a r -
ance was
that the
health
system
in the
United States did not act fast enough.
“We were looking at China, and the travel
ban on China might have been helpful,
but the horse was already out of the barn
in China. Th e virus had left ,” Cuomo said.
“Meanwhile we have European travelers
coming here and they’re bringing the
virus which is now a diff erent strain of the
virus to the East Coast … Th e timing of
our travel alerts should have been earlier.”
Cuomo said that New York may have
been struck by a diff erent strain of coronavirus
than other parts of the country
or the world in that it was not a deadlier
form, but a more virulent form.
As he conceded that it is not his area
of expertise, he pointed at the density
and the fact that over 180,000 people
from Italy had passed through
New York and New Jersey airports
unabated in February, citing data
from the Centers for Disease
Control.
Healthcare capacity in the state is
dependent on the 176 private hospitals
which don’t include the 12 in NYC
Health and Hospitals or four others on
Long Island. Organizing the hospitals to
operate as one system in the early days
of the pandemic was a challenge widely
discussed by the Cuomo admin- i s -
tration. “It was a lot to do on
the fl y and we need to institutionalize
these lessons …
Th is was just a situation that
nobody anticipated, it happened
all across the country,”
Cuomo said. “We’re
going to put in a state
requirement now that
every hospital needs to
have a 90-day supply
— their own stockpile
— of all the
equipment they
could need at
the rate of usage that we saw with this
COVID virus.”
Th is circumvents the “mad scramble”
of supply chain breakdowns that took
place from diff erent states and private
parties buying up PPE, according to
Cuomo, which led to prices being driven
up — about $2 billion has been spent
on medical supplies by the state of New
York in 2020 alone.
But capitalistic problems require capitalistic
solutions, in the governor’s eyes.
Th e seven-state coalition will buy up to
$5 billion of PPE, ventilators and medical
equipment to increase their “market
power” and be more competitive on the
international marketplace.
“I believe it will save the taxpayer’s
money. I also believe it’ll actually
help us get the equipment because
we have trouble still just buying
the equipment,” Cuomo said.
“Th ese vendors on the other
side, they’re dealing with countries,
they’re dealing with the
federal government, why
should they do business
with one state when they
can do business with an
entire country.”
Th e consortium of
states will organize
which vendors are
trusted to buy from
and will put states in
the northeast at an
advantage to turn to
supply chains that are
not in China, Cuomo
said.
Courtesy of Cuomo’s offi ce
Thousands of COVID-19 testing kits to be produced by New York City government
Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Offi ce
BY MARK HALLUM
mhallum@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Believing that testing is the key
to avoiding reopening failures in
Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan,
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that
New York City will produce tens of
thousands of COVID-19 test kits
through local institutions this week.
Nostril swabs will be 3-D printed by
Print Parts, while the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine will produce a
“transport medium” for the samples —
de Blasio announced during a Sunday
press conference — in order to track
cases at a greater capacity.
By the end of the week, the de
Blasio administration expects there
to be 30,000 test kits available and
50,000 produced every week on a rolling
basis.
According to de Blasio, this is a fi rst
for New York City in creating a “strategic
reserve” of supplies for pandemics.
“What we’re building up will be a
massive testing apparatus and the ability
to isolate and quarantine people to
make sure we put the disease in check
and keep it in check. Th e bottom line
is that we have to get this right,” the
mayor said. “We’re going to beat back
this disease, we’re going to do it with
testing, tracing, isolating, quarantine,
all of these strategies that work. We’re
going to do this on a large scale.”
Th e three components needed for
the test kits are not only the swabs and
the transport medium, but also screwtop
tubes to protect the samples from
contaminants.
De Blasio says the screw-top tubes
are in ample supply, but the swabs,
made in northern Italy, have been in
short supply.
Th e swabs, properly administered
by a medical professional, are long
enough to reach deep into the nose to
obtain a sample. Th e transport medium,
specifi cally, is a fl uid the sample is
kept while being taken to the lab.
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