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We've compiled all the latest stories about the coronavirus pandemic here so you can find them easily.We've also compiled a list of informational resources that can guide you to more coronavirus information.

Bloomberg to head New York's new contact tracing program to help contain COVID-19 spread

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and staff at the daily COVID-19 briefing at the State Capitol in Albany on Wednesday.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and staff at the daily COVID-19 briefing at the State Capitol in Albany on Wednesday.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has offered to take over the complex and labor intensive process of contact tracing after someone becomes sick with coronavirus, and is putting up $10.5 million to help do so.

Cuomo and health experts believe that contact tracing will be very important during a predicted second or even third wave of the virus. Along with more widespread testing of those who are experiencing symptoms, the method can help isolate those who are at risk of becoming sick or spreading the virus without having to shut down the entire economy.

The governor said details still need to be worked out. He said no one has ever attempted contact tracing on such a large scale, and called it a “monumental effort” that will also involve coordination with New York City and its suburbs, upstate regions and neighboring states, including New Jersey and Connecticut.

“We have to expand this number tenfold, and get this all done, like this,” Cuomo said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. “You don’t have months to plan and do this. You have weeks to get this up and running.”

Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s chief of staff, said Bloomberg won’t be doing it alone. He’ll be working with Johns Hopkins University’s public health program, of which Bloomberg is a major funder, and which issues the definitive map of coronavirus cases worldwide.

“They, in partnership with us, are creating an online curriculum to train the tracers, to recruit them, to interview them and to perform the background checks,” DeRosa said.  

The state also will be recruiting people to work as tracers through existing health department staff, investigators who work at state agencies and medical students at State and City University of New York medical schools.

Cuomo said he hopes that if it's successful, it can serve as a model for other states.

In a statement, Bloomberg said people are "eager to begin loosening restrictions" on the economy and their lives.

"But in order to do that as safely as possible, we first have to put in place systems to identify people who may have been exposed to the virus and support them as they isolate," he said.

State health officials have been trying to get more data about the existing rate of infections among New Yorkers, and have been conducting random tests at grocery stores around the state to see if shoppers have the antibodies in their blood to show that they already contracted the virus and recovered. Cuomo said it’s the largest study in the country, and will hopefully put to rest speculation on what has been the actual spread of the disease in the U.S. so far.  

“What percent of the population has been infected? Nobody knows,” Cuomo said. “Nobody knows the facts.”

The results will not be known for several more days.

Karen DeWitt is Capitol Bureau chief for the New York Public News Network, composed of a dozen newsrooms across the state. She has covered state government and politics for the network since 1990.