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Democrat Tom Suozzi (Nassau) and Republican Lee Zeldin (Suffolk) are among the lawmakers chosen to join the White House task force to reopen the economy during the pandemic.
“Honored to have just been appointed by @realDonaldTrump to the @WhiteHouse Task Force on Reopening the Economy,” Zeldin posted on Twitter. “We need to get our economy roaring again. Honored to get to work to do so precisely & carefully, avoid another outbreak & help our nation emerge stronger than ever!”
Suozzi said that “it is positive that a bipartisan task force has been created.”
“When it comes to reopening the economy, ubiquitous testing, contact tracing, and heeding the advice of experts will be essential,” he added. “We must also understand that opening the economy in New York is very different than reopening it in North Dakota.”
The task force will seek to advise the president and his aides on when the best time to kickstart the economy will be as the virus continues to spread, despite hospitalization rates leveling out in New York.
Health experts have advised in recent days that the country lacks the necessary COVID-19 testing capacity to roll out widespread diagnostic testing, which would allow people to get back to work and businesses to open.
“We had to get our private hospitals to work with our public hospitals and government in a coordinated way that’s never happened before, and it was extraordinarily difficult,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “The Department of Health will be coordinating with labs that are licensed by the state of New York to perform virology testing, but we cannot do it without federal help.”
As of Friday, April 17, there have been 222,284 confirmed COVID-19 cases in New York State, including 53,547 on Long Island. Since the outbreak began, 12,199 New Yorkers have died from the virus, though the hospitalization rate and infection rates have been dropping in recent days.
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