The governor said that he wished he had sounded the alarm in January about the danger posed by the coronavirus.
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New York City announced a new grading system for the remainder of the school year.
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Cuomo says he wishes he ‘blew the bugle’ on the virus in January.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said in an interview broadcast Monday night that he wishes he “blew the bugle” about the dangers posed by the coronavirus in January, before the outbreak exploded in New York.
Mr. Cuomo, interviewed on “Axios on HBO,” suggested that when China said its outbreak was under control, the rest of the world should have raced to make sure that was the case.
“Where was everyone?” he asked. “Maybe the United States was waiting for the World Health Organization, or the World Health Organization was waiting for the National Institutes of Health. Or somebody was waiting for the U.N. I don’t know.
“But I wish someone stood up and blew the bugle. And if no one was going to blow the bugle, I would feel much better if I was a bugle blower last December and January.”
He added: “I would feel better sitting here today saying, ‘I blew the bugle about Wuhan province in January.’ I can’t say that.”
The comments appeared to mark the first time Mr. Cuomo questioned his handling of the virus.
He has repeatedly acknowledged that the virus got out ahead of efforts to contain it. “This virus has been ahead of us since Day 1,” he said in his daily Albany briefing on March 30.
But though he told New Yorkers in early March that there was little to worry about (“We don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries,” he said on March 2, the day after New York recorded its first case) and he waited longer to close schools and businesses than leaders in other states with less serious outbreaks, Mr. Cuomo has repeatedly held that he took the best course of action possible.
“Every action I took was criticized at the time as premature,” Mr. Cuomo told The New York Times in an interview published April 8. “The facts have proven my decisions correct.”
And he has said repeatedly that every life that could have been saved, was. On April 9, he said, “The way I sleep at night is I believe that we didn’t lose anyone that we could have saved. And that is the only solace when I look at these numbers and look at this pain that has been created.”
Mr. Cuomo’s memory of early alarms about the virus appeared to be somewhat selective. The World Health Organization declared an international public health emergency in January, and the federal Centers for Disease Control said in February that the virus would spread in the United States.
New York City and State eventually became the epicenter of the outbreak in this country. Over 17,000 people have died of the virus here, and there have been nearly 300,000 confirmed cases.
New York City announces new grading system for public schools.
On Tuesday, six weeks into a profoundly disruptive semester, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced how the city’s 1.1 million schoolchildren would be graded through the end of the school year in June.
With students facing a particularly challenging semester, the city is trying to strike a balance. Educators want to maintain high standards and incentivize their pupils to log on to online school each morning. But the city also wants to keep its high school students in particular on track for graduation, and is aiming to avoid penalizing students.
“It came down to the notion of what we owe our kids at this moment,” Mr. de Blasio said of the new policy at his Tuesday briefing.
Students across the system will not receive failing grades. Children in kindergarten through fifth grade will be given marks of either “meets standards” or “needs improvement.” Because summer school plans are still being worked out, it is not yet clear if children will be left back a year if they are falling behind academically.
Middle school students will be assessed using the same marks but can also receive a grade of “course in progress,” which indicates that teachers do not have enough information to determine whether a student has mastered a class. Middle school students who get that grade in at least one of their classes will be prioritized for remedial help over the summer and fall.
High schoolers will still receive letter grades, but will have until early next year to complete courses that they do not finish to their teachers’ satisfaction this semester. High school students will be given the option of switching disappointing grades from this semester to a pass/fail mark, which the city hopes will keep students on track for graduation without driving down their grade point average during remote instruction.
The City will provide more beds and services to try to get homeless people off the subways.
As subway ridership has plummeted and more homeless people are apparently using largely-empty trains for sleeping, Mayor de Blasio said on Monday that the city would step up homeless outreach at subway stations and provide 200 more beds in shelters.
He also asked the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to temporarily close 10 end-of-the-line stations from midnight to 5 a.m. to allow workers to offer services to riders as they exit trains and for “enhanced sanitization” of subway cars.
The M.T.A. did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the mayor’s request, but the president of its transit arm, Sarah Feinberg, said last week that the issue was “without a doubt, a city obligation and responsibility” and urged the city to “take more aggressive steps to address this problem.”
But the virus has also taken a stark toll at the city’s homeless shelters, especially in dormitory-style ones where social distancing is difficult if not impossible, and homeless people and their advocates say they avoid shelters for fear of getting sick.
In an interview Tuesday morning on WCBS NewsRadio 880, Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea, called the idea of asking the M.T.A. to take trains out of service at end-of-the-line stations a “common sense” measure that would prevent people from riding the train endlessly overnight.
“I’m troubled when I see those pictures,” Commissioner Shea said of images that illustrate the current conditions on trains. “You see the people that need help so much.”
“We’re going to get back to work soon,” he added, “and we have to have workable trains, clean trains.”
The New York attorney general is scrutinizing Amazon for firing a worker.
Amazon may have violated federal worker safety laws and New York State’s whistle-blower protections when it fired an employee from its Staten Island warehouse who protested the company’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a letter the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, sent the company last week.
The company has faced protests at several facilities from employees who have said they feel unsafe.
The case that Ms. James’s office has been looking into involves Christopher Smalls, an employee in Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse who agitated for more worker protections at the facility as co-workers began getting sick. On March 28, Amazon put Mr. Smalls on quarantine for being in contact with a worker who had contracted the coronavirus.
On March 30, Mr. Smalls led a protest calling for Amazon to temporarily close the warehouse and provide workers more protections. Amazon fired him, saying he had violated policy by leaving quarantine to attend the protest at the site.
Amazon has rolled out some safety measures at its warehouses across the country, such as temperature checks and mandatory masks.
Still working at airports, uninsured and scared.
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Since the coronavirus outbreak began, dozens of workers from the three major airports in the New York City area have been infected, and at least 17 have died, union officials said.
Those still on the job are afraid they could be next.
Most of the workers earn under $20 an hour and do not have health insurance, because the cost of the coverage was more than they could afford on their salaries.
Four who died worked for LSG Sky Chefs, a catering operation at Kennedy International Airport, and two worked for United Catering at Newark Liberty International, their union said. The others had a range of duties, from pushing travelers in wheelchairs to restocking airplane galleys. It’s not clear if they contracted the virus on the job.
But workers who got sick said they had been worried about their working conditions.
Manuel Fernandez, 64, had given little thought to medical bills while he struggled to survive at a Manhattan hospital.
“I was basically saying goodbye to the world,” he said.
Mr. Fernandez, who was released from the hospital on Wednesday, works for LSG Sky Chefs in a building at Kennedy that cleans and restocks serving carts for airplanes.
“We were all worried about the conditions because we work very close together,” he said.
LSG Sky Chefs said in a statement that it had “developed and implemented comprehensive safety measures throughout all our facilities to safeguard our employees against health risks.”
Mr. Fernandez said his employer did not tell him if co-workers were sick and only provided a mask when he demanded one.
Fighter jets will fly over the region to salute essential workers.
The roar of fighter jets will fill the skies above New York City on Tuesday, when pilots from the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds will honor essential workers.
A formation of a dozen aircraft is scheduled to fly over New York City and Newark starting at noon. Another flyover will pass over Trenton at 1:45 p.m. and Philadelphia at 2 p.m.
Officials encouraged people to watch the flyover but to follow social-distancing guidelines.
Last month, the arrival of the Navy hospital ship Comfort prompted people to gather in bunches along the Hudson River to gawk and take photos in apparent violation of state and local orders.
The flyover announcement was greeted less than enthusiastically by some on Twitter, where one user suggested that government resources might be better spent on direct aid and personal protective gear:
Are you a health care worker in the New York area? Tell us what you’re seeing.
As The New York Times follows the spread of the coronavirus across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we need your help. We want to talk to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, emergency services workers, nursing home managers — anyone who can share what’s happening in the region’s hospitals and other health care centers.
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Reporting was contributed by Jonah Engel Bromwich, Michael Gold, Patrick McGeehan, Andy Newman, Eliza Shapiro, Matt Stevens, Nikita Stewart and Karen Weise.
Cuomo Says He Wishes He ‘Blew the Bugle’ Sooner on Virus: Live Updates
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