New Executive Order

Governor Cuomo has issued Executive Order 202.19, his latest directive for all public and private labs in the State to coordinate with the Department of Health to ensure prioritizing of diagnostic testing.  The Order also provides a penalty of $2,000 per violation per day for any nursing home, skilled nursing facility or adult care facility that does not notify family members or next of kin, within 24 hours, if any resident tests positive for COVID-19 or suffers a COVID-19-related death.

Cloth Face Coverings

To help New Yorkers comply with federal recommendations and the State’s recent Executive Order mandating face coverings when in public, the federal government sent 1.5 million cloth masks to New York State.  The State will distribute these masks to the public.

Increasing Testing

The Governor spent a large portion of today’s briefing discussing the nation’s need for testing and tracing on a massive scale, in order to limit the spread of COVID-19 and reopen the economy and society.  Executive Order 202.19 helped address this, but federal assistance is required to achieve requisite testing levels.

COVID-19 Numbers

The Governor is cautiously optimistic that we are on the far side of the COVID-19 plateau, with all of the three-day average statistics being either flat or decreased. The number of deaths in the State has increased by 540 since yesterday to 13,362 total.