Cuomo: Pharmacists To Collect Samples For Coronavirus Tests

NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday he will be signing an executive order to allow pharmacists to collect samples for diagnostic coronavirus tests. The goal is to raise the amount of tests being conducted in New York State. Cuomo also announced that the total hospitalizations down again, bringing the number back down what it was in the beginning of the month.

He said that after the past 21 days of "hell," he believes that all numbers saying we are on the "downside of the mountain." However, Cuomo is still hoping to get the numbers of hospitalizations back down to the hundreds.

"What we need to get back to the point where only several hundred people showed up to the hospital everyday with the COVID infection," Cuomo said. "That's what we need to get back to."

The number of new cases also decreased, down to 1,100. However, the number of deaths did increase slightly from Friday, with a total of 437 deaths reported on Saturday. Out of those deaths, 418 were reported in hospitals and 19 in nursing homes.

Cuomo then spoke about testing, saying he is now focusing on both diagnostic tests and antibody tests. Currently there are 20,000 diagnostic tests being conducted in New York State per day but with a federal partnership, Cuomo says the goal to test 40,000 per day. The partnership would require states to work with the federal government, with the states being responsible for getting labs and federal government responsible for providing equipment.

With the 300 labs in New York getting more equipment and supplies to do more tests, Cuomo says the focus is now on getting more collection mechanisms to send samples to the labs to be tested. That's why he is issuing the executive order to allow independent pharmacists across the states to now be authorized to collect samples to send the labs.

"I assume and my educated guess is that independent pharmacists will take us up on this," he said.

According to Cuomo, there are 5,000 pharmacies in New York State and some of the larger chains have already been doing diagnostic testing, but he is now hoping to make more local drug stores a collection site, which will also allow the testing criteria to be more broad.

"Since we now have more collection sites, more testing capacity, we can open up the eligibility for those tests," he said. "We had a protocol, not everyone was eligible for these tests which was a big complaint."

The expansion in testings will help those most directly at risk for getting infected, such as first responders, health care workers, essential employees and "people in the prisons," among others.

He said he hopes that one day testing will be expanded to the point where anyone who wants to get a test can go and get one. In addition to the diagnostic testing, antibody testing for first responders and healthcare workers will be expanded with four new facilities opening in downstate New York hospitals to provide this type of testing.

Cuomo then went on to compare the current pandemic, which is now on day 56, comparing it to different moments in history including the 1918 pandemic which went on for two years, World War I which went on for four years and the Great Depression which also went on for four years.

"Generations are called upon to deal with high levels of difficulty, we are called upon to deal with this crisis," he said.

He also emphasized that with these measures, New Yorkers are saving lives with projections showing that if it had not been for the social distancing guidelines and PAUSE initiative, there could have been 100,000 more people infected with the coronavirus.