NEW YORK _ New York now has 105 confirmed cases of coronavirus, Gov. Cuomo said Sunday morning.
Citing testing that occurred overnight, he said the count in New York City is 12. A person in the Bronx newly tested positive for the virus, according to a Cuomo spokesperson. No further details were immediately available.
Eighty-two of the cases are in Westchester, according to the governor.
"Westchester at 82 is the clear issue. That is a warning flag for us," Cuomo said at a privately run laboratory in Westchester County. "What happened in Westchester County is a person who is positive was in a very large gathering and people then got infected and then they went to very large gatherings."
Five cases tested positive in Nassau County, two in Rockland County, two in Saratoga, one in Suffolk County and one in Ulster County, according to the governor. The new state total of 105 cases marked an increase of about 16, Cuomo said.
He repeated his calls for the federal government to allow private labs to conduct tests, saying state-run facilities don't have the capacity to test every case.
"CDC, wake up, let the states test, let private labs test," he said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Let's increase as quickly as possible our testing capacity so we identify the positive people, so we can isolate them and we're successful in our containment."
The governor was speaking at Northwell Health Imaging at the Center for Advanced Medicine, which he called "one of most sophisticated labs in the United States of America."
"CDC has not authorized the use of this lab, which is just outrageous and ludicrous," Cuomo said, adding that the Northwell lab can conduct "automated" tests that process 120 samples at a time.
While arguing "there's a level of fear here that is not connected to the facts," the governor slammed the federal government's handling of the virus.
"You've caused confusion about your testing capacity," he said. "The president says one thing; the vice president says something else.
"We don't have the testing capacity we need. It's essential to containment," he added. "Just do the approval and do it today."
Still, Cuomo insisted, "The biggest problem we have in this situation is fear, not the virus.
"The virus we can handle," he said. "It's the fear, and the fear is just unwarranted."
Nationwide, more than 400 people have tested positive for coronavirus, resulting in 19 confirmed deaths as of Sunday afternoon.
The country's top expert on infectious disease said he doesn't expect the country to need the kind of massive quarantines that have come to China.
"I don't imagine that the degree of the draconian nature of what the Chinese did would ever be either feasible, applicable, doable or whatever you want to call it in the United States," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told "60 Minutes." "But the idea of social distancing _ I mean, obviously, that's something that will be seriously considered, depending upon where we are in a particular region of the country."
