Question: The City announced opportunities for people to utilize hotels for quarantine, whether it's people who are sick, have symptoms, or even just live in quarters in some of the hardest hit neighborhoods. Could you just give an update?
Mayor: We're at a point on a continuum. I want to tell you where we are now versus where we're going. Remember, the hotel rooms were going to be all about hospital facilities. Thank God we didn't need them. Then we focused them on health care workers, first responders, if they needed a place to stay and they couldn't go home to their families. Then we started opening up to families who needed a place to isolate away from their family if they might be sick. Obviously, more and more, trying to reach homeless New Yorkers. There's all sorts of categories.
What we have not had to date is that sort of central apparatus to do this on a vast scale. And that's what test-and-trace is going to provide. So, for example, the other day I was at the Health + Hospitals clinic in the South Bronx. I got into this very conversation with the doctors and nurses there, when they tested people, how did it work to get someone who needed to get to an isolation room? And they said if a test came back positive and someone couldn't properly isolate at home, the social worker for the clinic would then connect them to a hotel room. It was a facilitated process.
We need to do that now on a big, citywide scale. They get that helping hand to make the arrangements and then once they're in the room, food is provided, medical support, laundry, you name it. It's a big, big endeavor. It's a costly endeavor, but it's how we beat back this disease. So, test-and-trace is going to get going really intensely in May, and a key part of it will be that direct facilitation where people know exactly where to call, or they are called, to connect them to the hotel room and make sure the arrangements are made, the transportation is there for them, et cetera. That's what's coming out soon.
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