NY Gov. Cuomo to focus on coronavirus testing in Trump meeting

NEW YORK — U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at the White House on Tuesday as the hard-hit state seeks a road to recovery via extensive antibody testing, to which federal help is crucial.

Testing will be the meeting’s focus, Cuomo said in his daily coronavirus briefing.

“I agree with the federal government’s position” that states should be in charge of testing, but “where it gets hard is when the labs that I regulate say the manufacturers have the problem,” he explained.

“And then I call the manufacturers and the manufacturers say I can’t do it because it’s an international problem,” he said.

“That piece is where the federal government can help us,” said Cuomo, who called on the federal government to “figure out South Korea and China in international supply issues, rather than have 50 states now figure out … how to buy tests in South Korea.”

New York state, now on a descent from its coronavirus apex, accounts for roughly a third of confirmed cases in the U.S. Its case count topped a quarter million Tuesday, including more than 18,000 deaths, less than two months after the first case was reported.

The state is starting to plan its reopening. But “planning the reopening is just that — plan the reopening,” Cuomo warned Tuesday. Last week, he extended the state’s stay-at-home order to May 15.

During the coronavirus outbreak, the dynamic between Cuomo and Trump has been one of tension punctuated by conciliatory messages.

As New York state prepared for its coronavirus apex, Cuomo repeatedly criticized the federal government as slow to provide hard-hit states with personal protective equipment and ventilators.

Republican leader Trump has fired back, saying the Democratic governor should “stop talking” and accusing New York state of being unprepared.

The two men have also sparred over when to unfreeze the economy and who can make such a decision. When Trump claimed April 13 that “when somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total” over states on this matter, Cuomo was quick to point out that the president is not a king and warned of more deaths should lockdowns end prematurely. Legal scholars said the federal government lacks the authority to make states lift such measures.

“Nobody disagrees that we want to get out of this situation — nobody,” Cuomo had said in his Monday briefing. “You don’t need protests to convince anyone in this country that we have to get back to work and we have to get the economy going and we have to get out of our homes.”

His remarks came as an apparent response to protests calling for an immediate reopening in such stay-at-home states as Michigan.

Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” this past Friday in a move seen as encouraging protests against the state’s lockdown, despite having said the day before that governors will decide when to open their states back up for business.

Michigan has more than 32,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and a death toll of nearly 2,500 — higher than even California, the most populous state and one of the first to record a coronavirus case.