NYC 'Test + Trace' Found, Isolated 2K Coronavirus Cases: Official

NEW YORK CITY — A one-two punch from New York City's testing and tracing efforts are knocking down the coronavirus, officials said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday announced the city can now conduct 50,000 coronavirus tests a day — a long-sought goal by health officials aiming to stop the virus.

But de Blasio left it to Ted Long, who leads the city's "Test + Trace" corps, to detail more good news.

Long said the city's coronavirus cases are now at the lowest rate since the pandemic struck. In fact, they've stayed at low levels even after the city went through phases of reopening.

He also said the tracing program has found and isolated 2,000 people with coronavirus symptoms.

"If they'd gone out there and infected 2.5 people each, then we potentially prevented, by not allowing that to happen, about more than 5,000 new cases of the coronavirus across New York City since our program began on June 1," he said.

But those rosy updates given Thursday during Mayor Bill de Blasio's daily briefing have a slight catch — many New Yorkers still wait days, if not weeks, for test results.

Long said the wait times stem from a sharp uptick in cases elsewhere in the country that are now swamping labs. He said the city took steps to cut down on wait times, including by pooling batches of tests together — if they're negative, then that cuts down on test times.

The wait time now is down to two days, he said.

The city is also rolling out "hyper-local" testing in Tremont this week, followed by Sunset Park and the Rockaways, he said.