Mike Bloomberg teams up with Cuomo to create ‘army of tracers’ in New York

Mike Bloomberg has donated $10million to  the project which Cuomo said will launch immediately 

Mike Bloomberg will work with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Johns Hopkins to launch a contact tracing program to try to track down the people who have come into contact with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New York. 

The tracing program is part of the state of New York’s reopening strategy and, according to Cuomo, will allow officials to control the virus spread. 

As of Wednesday afternoon, there were more than 250,000 confirmed cases across the state. 

The program will recruit and train an ‘army of tracers’  whose job it will be to try to track down the people all of those confirmed cases have come into contact with. 

Bloomberg has donated $10million to it. It will be run by his Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and will take the format of an online curriculum for tracers. 

The tracers will be recruited by the New York State Department of Health and Bloomberg Philanthropies and will include staff from the Department of Health along with investigators from state agencies and medical students. 

Cuomo described it as an ‘impossible’ task. 

‘You will trace as many positives as you can. As the testing number goes up, the number of people to trace goes up. 

‘I don’t care how big an army you put together. How do you start to trace 250,000 people?

‘That’s why it’s an extraordinarily impossible task and you do the best you can,’ he said.  

Cuomo and Bloomberg worked together when Bloomberg was the mayor of New York City

A man is tested for COVID-19 at a drive-thru facility in Staten Island on April 22. There are currently 20,000 tests being done per day. Cuomo wants to double it 

A medical worker at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens tells people lining up to stand further apart on April 22 

It’s unclear how the tracers will find out who the confirmed cases have come into contact with and how they will then go about finding those people.

At his press conference on Wednesday, Cuomo gushed over Bloomberg. 

‘Mayor Bloomberg was Mayor of New York City when I was governor… remember his company, Bloomberg, they went through the China closed down and open up, they went through the European close down and open up. 

‘He’s had a bit of experience in this area. It’s a very big undertaking and we thank him very much for taking this on,’ he said. 

In a press release issued by the governor’s office later, Bloomberg said in a statement: ‘We’re all eager to begin loosening restrictions on our daily lives and our economy. 

‘But in order to do that as safely as possible, we first have to put in place systems to identify people who may have been exposed to the virus and support them as they isolate. 

A protester holds up a sign labeling Cuomo a communist on Wednesday outside the State Capitol 

‘I’m honored to partner with Governor Cuomo and New York State to help do that, by creating a new contact tracing program on a widespread scale. 

‘Coupled with far more testing, it will help us drive the virus into a corner — saving lives and allowing more people to begin getting back to work.’ 

Cuomo visited the White House on Tuesday to ask President Trump for federal help with testing. 

He said it was a ‘productive’ meeting that ended with an agreement to ramp up New York testing from 20,000 per day to 40,000 per day. 

While that happens, a separate study is underway which will test 3,000 people – chosen at random – for antibodies to determine how prevalent the virus is. 

Cuomo said on Wednesday that he believes as much as 10 percent of New York City might have been infected. 

‘My guess is it’s going to be 10 percent, about now, in the high infection areas. It’s a guess but I would guess 10 percent downstate, single digits upstate,’ he said. 

If that is true, that would mean some 860,000 people in New York City had become infected when the current number of confirmed cases is 134,874. 

It would bring the case count across the entire state up from some 250,000 to around 1.9million, and means the fatality rate is far lower than is being reported. 

Across New York state, the death rate when calculated using confirmed cases, is 5.9 percent. If the true number of infections is more than 1.9million, 10 percent of the population, it would lower that fatality rate to 0.8 percent. 

Cuomo said on Tuesday that he would reopen some parts of New York before others, but he has not indicated where New York City sits on that scale.

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk