De Blasio plan to ‘defeat’ coronavirus in NYC requires ramping up widespread testing

Mayor de Blasio’s plan to “ultimately defeat” coronavirus in New York and enter a new phase of the pandemic relies on a dramatic increase in testing capacity that the city doesn’t have yet and massive effort to trace infections and isolate patients across huge swaths of the population.

Starting with ramped up efforts in public housing developments, the “test and trace” campaign would theoretically require the city to screen as many people as possible, immediately isolate and care for those with the disease and then rapidly track, assess and quarantine anyone they came into contact with who they may have infected.

The first steps of the endeavor begin Friday when the city opens three new coronavirus testing sites near NYCHA developments.

But de Blasio admitted the city doesn’t have anywhere near enough coronavirus tests yet to actually execute the plan in full.

“To get to low-level transmission and to hold onto it, you need a huge amount of testing…not just tens of thousands of tests per day, as many as hundreds of thousands of tests per day for a city of 8.6 million people,” he said.

De Blasio didn’t know the city’s current daily capacity for coronavirus testing when asked during a briefing.

But he said the city has only found one company to provide a steady stream of test kits and noted some would also be manufactured in the five boroughs -- stressing the federal government must help New York reach the level of screening needed to trace all infections and eventually reopen parts of the local economy.

“We’re not there yet, but we’re going to show how we get there pending being able to get, of course, the help we still need from the federal government to get that vast amount of testing or, somehow, to find it in the international market, which to date has been extremely difficult,” he said. “But we’re going to keep looking under every stone to get the quantity of testing we need.”

In the meantime, the city will lay the groundwork for the apparatus that relies heavily on testing.

The city is identifying public buildings that can be converted into testing centers next month where New Yorkers can be screened by the thousands.

The tens of thousands of people who will likely test positive at the centers will be immediately assessed and put into isolation at home, hotels or hospitals, de Blasio said.

“If you can’t isolate at home properly, we’ll get you a hotel room,” he said. “We could be talking about thousands of people in isolation at a given point, tens of thousands.”

The city will then identify all people they came into contact with and test, isolate, quarantine or treat them.

Thousands of city and nonprofit workers will be enlisted to help trace these contacts, on top of the “disease detectives” who typically do this kind of work with a higher level of training.

The city will also need health care workers to administer tests and look after patients in isolation at hotel rooms – and enough protective gear and other equipment like swabs to do the screenings.

“As we fight to get the testing we need, we’re going to be building this apparatus every single day,” de Blasio said.

The city’s initial efforts will on public housing residents.

Six free, walk-in COVID-19 testing sites will open at or near NYCHA development and prioritize screenings for tenants in the coming weeks.

Testing sites will open Friday at Cumberland Health Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Belvis Health Center in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx and Governor Health Center on the Lower East Side. Sites at Jonathan Williams Houses in Williamsburg, the Woodside Houses in Queens and St. Nicholas Houses in Harlem will open next week.

This week the city and state announced eight other public housing complexes will have COVID-19 testing: Queensbridge Houses, Hammel Houses and Red Fern Houses in Queens; Brooklyn’s Brevoort Houses; Highbridge Houses, Andrew Jackson Houses and Edenwald Houses in the Bronx; and Washington Houses in Manhattan.

State officials will also send hand sanitizer and cloth masks to all public housing residents.

The city will also spend $5 million to provide free tablets and internet service for 10,000 seniors in public housing to help them remain connected with family during the pandemic. The service will roll out next week in Brownsville, followed by developments in central Brooklyn, South Bronx, Eastern Queens and Upper Manhattan.

NYCHA will also expand the number of “wellness checks” to seniors and other vulnerable residents and automatically enroll all senior buildings into the free food delivery program in the coming weeks to make getting meals easier.

A city contractor will also sanitize common areas at family developments three times a week and those in senior complexes five times a week as part of new cleaning schedules.

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