Question: You're saying we're on track for a phase three a week from Monday, July 6th. At the same time, we're seeing record numbers of cases in other states across the country and the beginning of hospital bed and ICU pressure like we did see here. Are you worried that we could backslide? And are you at all ambivalent that maybe now we're moving too quickly through these phases just a few weeks apart?
Mayor: Worried? Yes. Not ambivalent. Everything was about data. So today we had really good data and it's been that way for several weeks now, very consistently. The most important question is how many people are testing positive. We have been hovering around two percent testing positive citywide. We constantly increase the number of tests, we're over 30,000 tests a day now, we're going to get to 50,000 tests a day soon. The number of people in the hospitals is not going up substantially. Very few are actual COVID cases. So right now I feel like New Yorkers are really handling this. They're devoted overwhelmingly to the social distancing, to the wearing the face coverings. The businesses that are opening are being really careful. But everything is based on the data.
If things start to go the wrong way, we're going to freeze really quickly. If we even have to take a step back, we would. It’s just about watching it every day and communicating with people.
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