NYC Starts Coronavirus Test And Trace Program Despite Setbacks

NEW YORK CITY — The city is launching a mass new coronavirus test-and-trace program even as it battles a slow decline in spread and a lack of basic resources, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday.

New York City Health + Hospitals will lead the citywide initiative to conduct 20,000 tests a day by May 25 at 33 testing sites by late May and 50,000 tests per day at more than 300 sites in June, de Blasio said.

"We're going to take the next big step with this test-and-trace initiative," de Blasio said. "This disease is put in a very bad place if more and more people are tested and isolated."

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The 1,000-member corps will begin testing New Yorkers for infection, trace cases and contacts, and help isolate people who would not be able to do so otherwise, the mayor said.

By June, more than 12,000 hotel rooms will be made available to New Yorkers who need to isolate, according to the Mayor's office.

The team is expected to increase to 2,500 tracers by June and the city has received almost 7,000 applications for the job, de Blasio said.

Johns Hopkins University will provide COVID-19 contact tracing training with support from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to lead the statewide initiative.

New York City will test 140,000 people between next week and early June as local businesses manufacture up to 50,000 test kits per week, de Blasio estimated in April.

De Blasio said New York City needed hundreds of thousands of daily tests but would be unable to provide the necessary supplies without federal assistance.

"We have enough to put together a serious test and trace program," de Blasio said. "We'd like more."

De Blasio did not appoint the city's own Health Department to lead the test and trace initiative, a decision he denied was linked to an ongoing feud between him and top officials over handling of the pandemic.

"You don't rest on tradition or traditional lines between agencies," de Blasio said. "I can tell a mile away, an agency that runs a huge amount of on the ground work ... is a better fit for what we have to do here."

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said he was deeply troubled that the Health Department would not be running the initiative and vowed to investigate the decision further.

“This plan raises a lot of alarm bells," Johnson said. "This is a distraction when we need to be focused on battling this virus."

It remains unclear how increased testing will impact the reopening of the city as COVID-19 antibodies may not provide immunity to the virus, according to researchers.

"The antibody test will still help in the larger equation," de Blasio said. "That still gives us a hell of a lot to work with."

The mayor's three tracking indicators — which he has said would need to show two weeks of unwavering improvement — showed stagnating progress again Friday.

COVID-19 hospital admittances rose 1o 102 Thursday, up from 79 the day before, and ICU admittances increased by one to 568, de Blasio said.

New York City reported 174,709 confirmed cases with 43,744 hospitalized, 14,162 confirmed fatalities and another 5,378 likely fatalities, city data from Wednesday show.

The team will be lead by Executive Director Ted Long, vice president of Ambulatory Care at New York City Health + Hospitals, and Deputy Executive Director Jackie Bray, Director of The Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.

"They are going to bring together a huge amount of expertise," said de Blasio. "Expertise gained from fighting this disease at the front line."

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