New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he plans to sign an executive order that would allow the state government to take personal protective equipment and ventilators from hospitals with less need and redeploy them to areas harder hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
The governor said he has spoken with hospital administrators and understands the reluctance to give up essential equipment, but that he wants to avoid a situation where COVID-19 patients are dying in one part of the state while ventilators sit unused in another part of the state.
"The theory is that if the government gets them, they will never get them back. I understand that, but I don't have an option," Cuomo said.
The move marks an expansion of a broader effort to coordinate the state's patchwork of regional health systems and public and private hospitals. The state is surveying hospitals nightly to determine case-loads, personnel needs, and inventories of needed medical supplies.
"Those institutions will either get their ventilator back or they will be reimbursed and paid for their ventilator so they can buy a new ventilator," the governor said. "I can't do anything more than that."
Several hundred ventilators could be shifted from upstate to downstate New York, according to Cuomo, though the exact amount remains to be determined. He said he's banking on hospitals' goodwill and pushed back against the use of the word "seize" in describing the policy.
"First of all, don't use the word seize," he said. "That's a harsh kind of word. It's sharing of resources. We're not going to have any part of the state not have the resources we need because we didn't share resources."
Cuomo also announced that the 2,500-bed emergency field hospital at the Javits Center in Manhattan will transition into treating COVID-19 patients. It was formerly intended as an overflow hospital for non-COVID cases, but there hasn't been enough demand for those cases.
"As it turned out, we don't have non-COVID people to any great extent in the hospitals," he said. "Hospitals have now turned into, effectively, ICU hospitals for COVID patients."
He said that the general shutdown of the state economy has led to a downturn in other types of medical needs, due to a drop in automobile-related injuries, violent crimes, and other incidents.
The latest numbers on the outbreak include 102,836 total cases, 14,810 hospitalizations, and more than 2,900 deaths, up from 2,300 deaths, which Cuomo called the "highest single increase in the number of deaths since we started."
Award-winning journalist, entrepreneur, and host Soledad O'Brien spoke to Cheddar about empowering women through her own podcast on financial literacy this Women's History Month.
Six House lawmakers are calling on Meta to stop paid ads from Chinese news companies that push Russian misinformation regarding the war in Ukraine. Matt Skibinski, General Manager, NewsGuard Technologies joins Cheddar to discuss the role of social media in this war.
Reva Shakkottai, Senior Vice President and financial advisor at RBC Wealth Management, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where she elaborates on factors besides Wednesday's Fed decision that led to gains across the major indexes on Thursday, including new home construction and jobless claims data.
Art Hogan, Chief Market Strategist at National Securities, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he breaks down Fed Chair Jerome Powell's speech following the U.S. central bank's decision to raise rates and explains why Powell's comments move the markets more than the Fed decision itself.
Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif. 29th District) joined Cheddar News at South By Southwest to discuss the variety of sanctions that the United States has placed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine began last month and the impacts they are having both domestically and abroad. With rising gas prices, especially in states like California, Schiff noted that the American people are willing to make sacrifices in order to uphold their values and suggested that crisis may be a warning to shift away from fossil fuels. "At the end of the day though, this ought to be a wake up call that we need to stop our reliance on this oil economy and move to renewable sources of energy," he said. Schiff also explained his remarks about the January 6 commission investigating those closest to former President Trump and touched on a disturbing case in San Francisco where the police department used rape kit samples to ID a murder suspect.
Markets opened lower as the Federal Reserve announces plans to hike interest rates by a quarter point, while signaling six additional rate hikes later this year. Gary Schlossberg, Global Strategist, Wells Fargo Investment Institute, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
Apple's Racial Equity and Justice Initiative is a $100 million program aimed at combating systemic racism while working to advance racial equity across the country. Alisha Johnson, director of the initiative, joined Cheddar at SXSW to discuss the work being done. "We focused on three critical areas. The first is education. The second is criminal justice reform, and the third is economic empowerment, really looking first in our own supply chain, how can we really increase our spend with Latinx, Hispanic, and indigenous-owned businesses," she said. "And then how can we go further to empower entrepreneurs who have been cut out of access to funding and capital and really help them to get the funding."
What you Need to Know on Thursday, March 17. Updates from Ukraine, President Biden refers to Putin as a ‘war criminal’ for the first time, Walmart has ambitious hiring targets for Q1, and Netflix takes steps to crack down on password sharing.
