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During his daily COVID-19 news briefing on Thursday, April 23, Cuomo said that 3,000 New Yorkers had been randomly tested at grocery and box stores in the first phase of antibody testings, and 13.9 percent had been infected by the virus.
The majority of cases were in New York City (21.2 percent), Long Island (16.7 percent), Westchester and Rockland (11.7 percent). Just 3.6 percent of cases were reported in the rest of New York State.
“We’re testing to see if people have the antibodies, that can they donate for convalescent plasma, which is a therapeutic treatment,” Cuomo said. “With testing, you can also tell the infection rate, see where it’s highest, and lowest, and that will inform you on a reopening strategy.
“Then you can watch that infection rate to see if it goes up, slows down, that’s how we determine a reopening strategy, it’s all-important.”
Cuomo said that the testing took place over two days in 19 counties and 40 localities across New York State. Rolling testing is expected to continue throughout the state.
“It is vital for any state to get a baseline study of where you are on the infection rate,” he added. “All we know to date is the hospitalization rate, how many people are coming into the hospital. We’ve only been estimating that the infection rate is this or that.”
According to Cuomo, if the infection rate is 13.9 percent, that means approximately 2.7 million people statewide have been infected, meaning the death rate is approximately .5 percent of people infected.
“This basically quantifies what we’ve seen anecdotally, but puts numbers to it,” he said. “These are people who developed the antibodies to fight the infection three, four, five, six weeks ago, and have now recovered.”
There were 438 more COVID-19 deaths reported on Day 54 of the pandemic - the lowest in more than a week - though the death toll statewide has climbed to 15,740. There were 1,359 new COVID-19 patients hospitalized, which has remained relatively steady for three days, as it continues to decline.
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