Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Executive Order Allowing State to Redistribute Ventilators & Personal Protective Equipment to Hospitals with Highest Need

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo will issue an Executive Order allowing the state to redistribute ventilators and personal protective equipment, or PPE, from institutions that don't currently need them and redeploy the equipment to other hospitals with the highest need. The National Guard will be used to transport the ventilators and PPE across the state. The equipment will be returned to the hospital or the hospital will be reimbursed for the equipment in the future.

Governor Cuomo also announced the temporary hospital facility at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center will now be used for COVID-19 patients only. Yesterday, President Trump granted the Governor's request for the Javits facility to accept COVID-19 positive patients.

Governor Cuomo also announced the launch of www.ny.gov/covid-19tracker, which will provide New York State's comprehensive coronavirus testing data to the public. The website, which will be updated daily with the latest data, presents visualizations of statewide and county-level testing and results. The public can also access the testing data through Open NY at data.ny.gov, New York State's open data portal, which offers machine readable datasets in downloadable standard formats that can be sorted, searched, analyzed and applied to new uses.

The Governor also announced the State will open a critical new COVID-19 mobile testing site for the Capital District region in partnership with Albany Medical Center, St. Peter's Health Partners and The University at Albany. The mobile testing center will be located in a parking lot at the State University of New York at Albany campus - 1400 Washington Avenue, Colonial Quad parking lot, accessible from main UAlbany entry, off Washington Avenue, Albany. The site will prioritize tests for individuals that are among the highest risk population. Residents who would like to be tested must make an appointment by calling 888-364-3065. There will be no walk-ins allowed and all patients must be in a vehicle. The center is slated to be operational on Monday, April 6, at 10 am. Site hours will be Monday - Sunday, 8 am - 6 pm.

Drive-through mobile testing facilities help keep people who are sick or at risk of having contracted coronavirus out of healthcare facilities where they could infect other people. New York is currently testing more than 16,000 people per day, more than any other state and more than China and South Korea on a per capital basis.

"We have taken extraordinary measures to build our stockpile of ventilators, masks and other personal protective equipment, but we still do not have enough," Governor Cuomo said. "Our greatest challenge has been ventilators - we are running out of them in our most stressed regions of the state, and there are hospitals in other parts of the state that have ventilators that they are not using and I will not be in a position where people are dying and we have several hundred ventilators in our own state somewhere else. I am signing a new Executive Order that will allow the state to redistribute these ventilators from institutions that don't need them now and send them to hospitals in other parts of the state that do need them. And when our curve is over, New Yorkers are going to take our equipment, our personnel and our knowledge and we will go to any community in this nation that needs help, because that outpouring has been there for us."

Finally, the Governor confirmed 10,482 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 102,863 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 102,863 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows: