New York City's government is "absolutely considering" a shelter in place order similar to the one that is in place in San Francisco to control the spread of coronavirus, Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed Tuesday, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo later in the morning rejected that idea.
"Right now we have taken a series of steps to reduce the number of people circulating around," the mayor said on CNN's "New Day." "Closing the schools was painful, closing the bars and restaurants. But we're going to look at all other options. It could get to that for sure. It could get to that for the whole country."
Cuomo quickly stopped the idea of shutting down the city, reports The New York Times.
“It cannot happen," Cuomo said in his Tuesday morning briefing. "No city in the state can quarantine itself without state approval, and I have no interest whatsoever and no plan whatsoever to quarantine any city.”
Even with the "most perfect shutdown scenario," federal intervention will be necessary, said de Blasio.
"The federal government is the only solution" on medical equipment such as ventilators, surgical masks, said de Blasio, and "we need the United States military on the ground . . . we should have the extraordinarily well-trained medical personnel of the United States military deployed forward to the parts of America that are suffering the most."
Meanwhile, he noted that business shutdowns likely will go on through the summer months, and current federal response plans will not be enough.
"God bless Mitt Romney, I'm glad he's offering an idea," said de Blasio, "but a thousand dollars is not going to cut it for people if you're talking about a three-to six-month crisis . . . the federal government prints money. They bailed out the auto industry, the banks, et cetera. Time to bail out the American people."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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