Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday the city’s medical supplies are in increasingly dire straits as coronavirus spreads across the five boroughs, with 4,000 confirmed cases in New York City and 26 people dead.
De Blasio said the city now constitutes 30 percent of the reported coronavirus cases in the United States, and called for the federal government to take immediate action to provide essential supplies like ventilators and surgical masks.
“The lights are on but nobody’s home at the executive branch,” de Blasio said on MSNBC, adding “a lot of people are going to die who don’t have to die" if the Trump administration doesn't move quickly in the coming days to increase medical supplies.
The mayor has called for President Donald Trump to activate the military to provide aid and invoke the Defense Production Act so manufacturing facilities produce needed supplies “24/7.” But he said those, and other specific actions to address the city’s public health concerns, have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
“Right now, Trump and [Vice President Mike] Pence are weeks — if not months — behind this crisis,” de Blasio said.
He said the city requested supplies from the strategic national stockpile, but got a “paltry” amount and a lot of expired material. The city needs “millions” of surgical masks and 15,000 ventilators, he said.
De Blasio said he reached out directly to Pence “several days ago,” who sent him to HHS Secretary Alex Azar. Although he said he had a “great conversation” with Azar, de Blasio said he hasn't gotten any responses to specific requests for assistance.
“There’s a point at which as more and more cases grow, the medical community can do everything and anything, but they can’t create supplies out of thin air,” he said.
De Blasio is still pushing for the city to enact a shelter-in-place order that would ban “nonessential” activities — something California enacted statewide Thursday night.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has resisted such calls, warning it would create needless panic. He has increasingly restricted access to leisure activities, and Thursday night ordered personal care services like hair and nail salons to temporarily shut down by 8 p.m. Saturday. De Blasio has repeatedly downplayed the notion the two are fighting over the matter, including on Friday.
“To his great credit, while the president has been asleep, Governor Cuomo has really been leading,” de Blasio said.