NEW YORK — New Yorkers should be prepared for the city to remain in “pause” due to coronavirus through May even as President Donald Trump gives Americans “false hope” the country will reopen by Easter next month, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday.
“We have to be ready for that and I think it’s going to spread in the country,” de Blasio said when asked if the city would be closed through May on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “This idea of Easter is, unfortunately, a false hope. It would be better for the president to be blunt with people that we’ve got a really tough battle ahead.”
He said the president should “throw in the military who are not being fully engaged” and once again called on Trump to use the Defense Production Act to force manufacturers to make ventilators, face masks, protective gear and other necessary medical supplies.
He also urged Trump to make contracts with companies for ventilators – and blasted the president for suggesting on Fox News Thursday that New York doesn’t need thousands of them.
“When the president says the state of New York doesn’t need 30,000 ventilators…he’s not looking at the facts of this astronomical growth of this crisis,” de Blasio said on ABC. “A ventilator…means someone lives or dies.”
The city alone needs 15,000 ventilators. De Blasio told doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers Thursday that the city will get them the supplies they need “one way or another” if “we can get our hands on it” while admitting restocking will be “a day to day, hour to hour reality.”
“We have enough supplies to get through this week and next week in our hospitals,” de Blasio said Friday morning. “After that, unfortunately, we think this crisis is going to grow through April into May.”
New York City had 23,112 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of Thursday night when the death toll reached 365.
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