Coronavirus Update: Mayor de Blasio Says New York City 'Is Fighting Back With Everything We've Got'
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Mayor Bill de Blasio visited the Brooklyn Navy Yard Monday morning and declared a simple message: New York is fighting back against the coronavirus pandemic.
Local companies at the Brooklyn Navy Yard are manufacturing hospital gowns and personal protective equipment.
"It is is inspiring to see how quickly people figured out a way to do something that was needed and not just do it in a small way but do it in a very big way, and to pull together the talent, the designs, to pull together all the equipment they needed, all the fabric. I was just hearing how much it took to improvise this and create this, and it's very very moving," de Blasio said.
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"As I was touring and seeing what was happening, I felt this real surge of emotion that it was clearer than ever that New York City is fighting back. New York City is fighting back. We have an invisible enemy. We have a ferocious enemy. But this city is fighting back with everything we've got," de Blasio said. "It makes me very, very convinced that we're going to get through this when I see these kinds of amazing efforts."
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"By the end of the day, 9,200 surgical gowns will have been created. By the end of the week, almost 19,000. By the end of the month, 320,000. Amazing contribution to this effort," de Blasio said.
For perspective, de Blasio said last week all hospitals in New York City used 1.8 million surgical gowns, and 2.5 million are expected to be used this week.
"So we have to find more surgical gowns urgently," de Blasio said.
De Blasio thanked President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner for supplying 600,000 N95 masks, which is enough he said to get the city through the week.
De Blasio said that New York City needs an additional 45,000 medical personnel over the course of this month.
De Blasio noted that many of those working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard had Asian backgrounds, and spoke out against a recent spike in bias incidents towards that community.
"There's been, in the midst of this crisis, another crisis that we've all seen and we've all been disgusted by it, which is discrimination and hatred directed at our Asian-American communities, particularly our Chinese-American community," de Blasio said. "I think it's absolutely unacceptable."
De Blasio urged New Yorkers to contact authorities if they witness bias incidents.
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