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Curran announced the declaration early on Friday, March 13, which will permit her office to take emergency actions and increase spending to help contain the spread of COVID-19 on Long Island.
Of the 48 confirmed cases, 34 are in the Town of Hempstead, 10 are from North Hempstead and four reside in Oyster Bay.
Curran’s declaration came a day after Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone called for similar measures. The number of COVID-19 cases on Long Island has now topped 70, with more than 350 in the state.
With the state of emergency declared, Curran also announced that as of 5 p.m. on Friday, all museums, recreational facilities, preserves, and historical sites will be shut down and closed to the public.
Several governmental agencies are also closing, with many county employees expected to start telecommuting and working from home.
"Today I am announcing that Nassau County is declaring a state of emergency," Curran stated. "This is not to make anyone panic. We are doing this as a precautionary measure to access resources, authorize emergency spending and to allow me to take actions that will keep Nassau’s residents safe."
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that coronavirus isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and he hopes to ramp up testing in the coming days and weeks, possibly conducting thousands daily.
“It will be open for the trajectory of the disease, and I don’t believe this is going to be a short term issue. I believe it will be a matter of months and people should start to calibrate their expectations,” Cuomo said. “This could be a six, seven, eight, nine-month issue. This is not going to be over in a couple of weeks.
“This is not going to be over in 30 days, or a couple of weeks. There will be waves. But it’s going to be a prolonged situation and we should be ready for that.”
Cuomo noted that he’s implored federal officials, namely Vice President Mike Pence, to de-centralize testing for the virus, allowing states to take off the handcuffs and go to work.
“I told the Vice President that ‘I think the federal government should de-centralize testing, rather than trying to control it all through Washington, D.C., the CDC and FDA,’” the governor said. “The volume is just too high and states already regularly regulate labs.
“We have 200 private labs in New York alone. Those labs already are doing HIV testing, Zika testing, and all sorts of testing. You could open up 500, 1,000 labs overnight if you just turn that responsibility back to the state, so I hope the federal government is taking this seriously.”
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