What's Behind the COVID Spike in Brooklyn?

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. All this week, we've been hearing from stakeholders in a complex decision about whether to reopen schools in person in September, and whether your child or you as a teacher or other staff members should go. This is a moving target. Mayor de Blasio in New York City, and Governor Murphy in New Jersey, had both ordered schools to reopen at least for part of the week for each student who wants to attend. Yesterday, we had three New York City public school principals on the show who all said their schools are not ready, and the city should delay the reopening by at least a week. Also yesterday, Governor Murphy changed course and withdrew his order for all schools to have at least some in-person school days. Have you even heard about this yet?

After pressure from mayors and school superintendents around the state, the governor acknowledged many New Jersey districts do not feel ready. Editorial this morning and the Star-Ledger says even that's not enough, and the governor should order all schools to begin remotely while school buildings and test and trace systems become more prepared.

In New York City, the official threshold for closing schools is a 3% case positivity weight. That is, if 3% of coronavirus tests come back positive, that means there's an outbreak, and people need to isolate more. The citywide case positivity rate is only 1%, and that's good, but we also have to look neighborhood by neighborhood. It's not 1% everywhere. Yesterday, the mayor announced what appears to be an outbreak and the Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park with more than 200 confirmed cases in the last two weeks. The mayor called that a warning sign, and announced plans to take a closer look.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: The way we do that is by getting out into the community, deeply communicating with people at the grassroots, literally knocking on doors, talking to local organizations and leaders with a simple message. Everyone needs to get tested. We want to get everyone tested as quickly as possible to see what is going on, and if there's something further we need to do.

Brian: de Blasio yesterday. Sunset Park is at least the second city neighborhood to experience a rise in test positivity rate. With me now, we're very happy to have Mayor de Blasio's appointee as head of the New York City Test & Trace Corps, Dr. Ted Long. In his day job, he's a vice president of Ambulatory Care at the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and now he's the executive director of the Test & Trace Corps too.

Dr. Long, we really appreciate your time. Welcome back to WNYC. We appreciate that you've made this your second appearance already on the show since you took this job. Hi.

Dr. Ted Long: It's an honor to be here. Thank you.

Brian: We'll spread out to a citywide in a regional view as we go along, but to begin, what's the case positivity rate in Sunset Park?

Dr. Ted: In Sunset Park, we were seeing up to a 7% case positivity rate, which triggered for us that we wanted to do everything in our power to do more testing and to do early interventions. A couple of examples there. If you come to Sunset Park now and you get one of our rapid tests, there's going to be somebody on site that will help you to isolate yourself at home, give you resources, talk it all through with you, and we're doing something in Sunset Park that we've never done before, which is also with that positive test result in your hand, we're going to start contact-tracing so that we can reach out to anybody that you may have exposed almost instantaneously to really squeeze the virus down in that neighborhood.

Brian: 7%. That's the first time I heard that number. 7%. That's pretty high.

Dr. Ted: Almost 7%, yes. That's why we check. We check so that we can make it-- so that we could do things differently, and we can really target our approach. That's why we're in Sunset Park, to begin with.

Brian: Do you have any other city neighborhoods that you know of that are above 3% case positivity rate?

Dr. Ted: The vast majority are below 3%. The 7%, I should tell you, is just what we've seen in the tests that we've done just over the last week or two there. The case positivity rate, there was actually, if you look over the last several weeks, has been lower, but when we've been bringing in the rapid testing, it's not to say that 7% is going to be the rate across the whole community or moving forward, but when we saw that blip, that's why we are so aggressive in collecting data as quickly as we can so that we can intervene immediately, and that's what we're doing now. We're aggressively testing everybody else. We're doing thousands of robocalls, and we're doing thousands of door knocks to really invigorate the community and get everybody out to get tested. That's how we're going to keep everybody safe.

Brian: Talk more about that. Because in the clip we played of the mayor, he said you'll literally be having people knock on doors with the simple message that everyone needs to get tested. Does that mean you want every adult and every child in all of zip code 11220, which is the zip code in Sunset Park, to get tested?

Dr. Ted: Yes, you said it and you said it perfectly. Nothing to add, but I will add a few more things. In terms of the door knocking, we actually knocked on 1,800 doors yesterday in Sunset Park, and we expect to knock on 2,000 to 2,500 doors daily. Our message is simple, bring yourself and your family to come get tested free. We're very good at it. We want to give you a great experience there. If you test positive with one of our rapid testing machines, before you leave that building, we're going to give you resources like free food delivery, even offer a hotel stay, and we're going to soon be starting contact tracing right there in person. That's what it takes to keep your community safe. Listen, the reason we, across New York City, have a 1% to 2% test positivity rate, it's not me, it's what everybody in New York has done in sacrifice to get us here to keep us safe. That's what's enabled New York to accomplish more than almost any other city in the country.

Brian: If we're talking about everybody in that zip code, how many people is that, and how quickly do you think you can get basically everybody tested?

Dr. Ted: In terms of the number of people in the zip code, I don't want to speak out of turn, I have a number of my head but maybe you or one of our callers can quickly google it to make sure that I don't lead you astray. What I will say is that we are prepared to bring in as much testing capacity and infrastructure as is needed to test everybody that we can convince to get tested to keep New York safe. We also, yesterday, started bringing in our mobile units, so really converging with testing resources in Sunset Park as we sit here today.

Brian: Listeners, we would love to hear from you, if we have anyone listening in Sunset Park right now, what do you see happening in the neighborhood in terms of a spike in coronavirus cases and why. Are you ready to get tested and traced, or what questions do you have from anywhere for Dr. Ted Long, executive director of the New York City Test & Trace Corps. 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280.

Sunset Park is a very diverse neighborhood, I don't have to tell you, with a variety of languages and dialects spoken. Are there some you're scrambling to get language competence staff to be able to reach out to?

Dr. Ted: Yes, great question. I actually really believe that question is mission-critical. If we don't engage people in a way that makes them comfortable and trusts us, then we're not doing our job right. In Sunset Park, I mentioned we're going to be having tracers there that are going to be starting the contact tracing work, or figuring out if there are people you as the case may have exposed so that we can keep them safe and reach out to them right away. Those tracers speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish, and they're on-site in person, or they will be rather.

Brian: By the way, our massive team of Googlers-- You should see the rooms and rooms of Googlers we have set up to do real-time research during the show. They have come up with this stat, the 2010 United States Census found that the population of Sunset Park was 126,381. 126,000 people in Sunset Park in the 2010 census. That's a lot of people to reach in a short period of time.

Dr. Ted: Yes, it is a lot. Thank you for everybody, for all of our listeners that are much more adept at the computer than I am. I appreciate that. That is a lot of people to reach. Like I said, we across New York City now have the capacity to test 50,000 people a day, and we're converging as much of our capacity as is needed into Sunset Park. Like I said, for anybody in Sunset Park, you can look around now and see our mobile vans have set up shop there.

Brian: In New Jersey, The Star-Ledger quote someone today saying they're seeing incredibly low cooperation with contact tracers right now. Only 55% of infected people in New Jersey are willing to play along. What are you finding generally in New York now that your Test & Trace Corps has been up and running for a little while, and what are you finding immediately in these last few days in Sunset Park.

Dr. Ted: Great question. The secret ingredient to the New York City Test & Trace Corps is from day one. We have kept this a local effort. More than half of all of our contact tracers who deserve the full credit here, I deserve no credit, more than half of our contact tracers have lived through the horrific experience of being in one of the hardest-hit communities in New York City. They know what it's like to have COVID come into your community and affect you. That's who's talking to you on the phone. Because of that, which I strongly believe is the right approach, we're reaching now well over 90% of every single new case in New York City.

Among every single new case in New York City, we're getting 75%, which by the way is what experts and all of the models show you need to hit. We're hitting that today to complete our interview, complete our intake, and go into monitoring. We know that they are isolating at home. We're very proud of those numbers, and they've substantially improved since the program began. If you ask me why we've achieved those numbers, it's our tracers. Our tracers are the most mission-driven fantastic people in the world, and they've earned this for New York.

Brian: Resistance to getting tested and having your contacts traced comes from a variety of fears, as you know, including stigma, and also very significantly loss of income. If let's say you feel well but you test positive and you have to quarantine for two weeks, so that's resistant to getting tested if you feel well and you're being traced. How do you fight those things to get to a 75% rate?

Dr. Ted: I want just to answer your other question about Sunset Park. In Sunset Park, it's a small denominator we're looking at here, but it's around 80% are completing our intake of those that had test positive that live in Sunset Park. It's even a little bit higher than the 75%. That's our average across New York City. We're right there on target. Again, we're achieving higher there than the experts and the model showed that we need to keep the virus squeezed and suppressed.

In terms of the fears about getting tested, I think this is where we need to always keep this as a local effort. There is no one thing I can say that's going to make your fears go away, but if you hear the message from trusted community-based organizations, even from our tracers if you're an identified contact who are more likely than not somebody that lives in your community, I think that that's how we really can explain to people the importance of getting tested. The good news there is 35,000 people a day have been getting tested in New York City. I think that that number which is higher than, I can't think of any other cities that have a higher number than that, I think speaks to the success that we've had, but it's no credit to me. It's a local effort, and it's our community-based organizations and people in our communities that deserve credit there.

Brian: Let's take a phone call from Jennifer who is a teacher in Sunset Park. Jennifer, you're on WNYC with Dr. Ted Long, the executive director of the New York City Test & Trace Corps. Hi Jennifer. Whoops, do we have Jennifer? Can we try Jennifer? All right. Let's see if we can get Ed in Sunset Park also calling in. Ed, are you there? Can you hear me? All right. I guess we're having a little trouble with our phones.

Dr. Ted: It's okay.

Brian: All right. We're going to try this another way. I apologize to everybody for this little glitch. Let's try to put Ed in Sunset Park on again this way. Ed, can you hear me now? All right. You know what? I'm going to talk to my engineer now, everybody. Lehrer, can you try Jennifer. Oh, we lost Jennifer. Can you try to put up line six, Ed in Sunset Park from where you are? Ed, you're there now, right?

Ed: Hi, I'm here.

Brian: Hi. I apologize for the technical snafu. Now you're on the air. Hey there.

Ed: Hi. I'm wondering what the difference is between the tests that were given at CityMD, which took a lot longer to evaluate and dig deep into as opposed to what we have here in Sunset Park. I'm going to go get tested today at 2:00. I was just there and I saw that there was a sign 2:00 PM to come and get tested. I was negative for both antibodies and having a virus on June 27th. I'm just wondering, are these tests just as efficacious as the one at CityMD?

Another thing I wanted to say as far as Sunset Park goes, I have noticed that I'm constantly crossing the street and I'm docking people that aren't wearing masks. That's just how it is in comparison to a lot of other neighborhoods that I've been to that are very stringent with mask-wearing and social distancing. Anyway, that's all [crosstalk]

Brian: Ed, thank you. Thank you. Dr. Long, what about the tests in particular? I know I've been wanting to ask you about the rapid test compared to the swab test that you're using, but what kind of test can Ed expect if he goes to that testing site for his appointment at two o'clock today?

Dr. Ted: First off, I have to thank Ed two times, first for getting tested on July 27th, was it, and, Ed, thank you for coming out and getting tested again today. That's what it takes to keep our community safe, because without testing, we can't do tracing, and we have world-class tracers that are ready to do their work, so thank you Ed.

To answer your question. Different labs have different turnaround times. Some labs, now I believe it's most labs, are doing something called pooling, which is where because we have such a low rate of tests being positive, you can run multiple tests at once, and if that batch is negative, you don't need to run each one individually, so you save tons and tons of time, and can turn the tests around faster.

The reason for the test turnaround time being longer is, as we know, the horrible surges that are going on for COVID in other parts of our country. Our hearts go out to all of those cities because we know what that's like. For the places that you would get tested in Sunset Park, Ed, the sites that we run, we have a much faster turnaround time than we did before because we've been aggressively promoting things like the pooling strategy. On the rapid test, you'll actually get your result back in a matter of minutes. On the PCR test, the traditional one, you'll have a turnaround time that's on the order of, we're trying to drive it down to the median turnaround of two days in the City now, is our goal.

Brian: Can you scale up the rapid test, the saliva tests that come back in a few minutes, to test all of Sunset Park now, since that's your goal, test all 120-something thousand people in that neighborhood, and do it in a matter of days? Do you have enough rapid tests? That, of course, is the ideal, that we convert from the swab tests, a, because you have to put a thing up your nose, and with the saliva test you don't, and b, because the saliva test results come back right away. I know there's a big problem with supply. What's the latest on that?

Ted: I have nothing to add, Brian. Let's just do that. That's our plan. To be more specific, we're expanding the use of our point of care tests, and we're going to be, as soon as we can, bring in even new ones, and we're expanding the use of point of care. That's the mainstay of our plan. I completely agree with you.

Brian: Should the Sunset Park positivity rate, 7% you said, almost 7%, mean that schools there should not open unless it gets back down below 3% by September?

Ted: That's a good question. The policy that we've set out for the City that the mayor set out, is a stringent and safe threshold of 3%. The reason 3% matters is it's actually more stringent than even the State is requiring in order for schools to contemplate reopening or closing, if the test positivity rate should go up. For New York City, we wanted to keep a very conservative number. If across New York City we go above 3%, the schools will not reopen, and if they are open, they will close.

The reason the 7% matters now for Sunset Park, is it enables us to do a ton of effort now to really control the virus in that community, much better to know now than later on. That's the reason we started our hyper-local effort in Sunset Park in the first place, is we were seeing that there was an opportunity there for us to make more of a difference. The fact that we've seen a 7% test positivity rate, is not necessarily a bad thing. It's an opportunity for us to intervene now. Ask me again in a couple weeks what it is. Our goal is to drive it down.

Brian: Let's take another caller from Sunset Park. Angela in Sunset Park, you're on WNYC with Dr. Ted Long, head of the City's Test & Trace Corp. Hi Angela, thanks so much for calling in.

Angela: Hi, Dr. Long, and hi, Brian.

Ted: Hi.

Angela: Thank you for all that you do. Just a quick question. Sunset Park has a very popular pool here. Anecdotally, I have walked around there a couple of times. For example, when they close down for an hour or so during the day to clean or whatever, there are a lot of folks waiting around, and a mask may not be present because these folks are coming out of the pool, going back into the pool. Could that be a contributing factor to the recent spike? The pools, I think, opened maybe a month ago or less. Any thoughts there?

Ted: First off, that's a great question. What I really appreciate about your question, which is a personal thing for me too, is the use of masks, we talk about it, but just to take a step back, it is critically important that we wear masks. I'm going to give you one clear piece of evidence why. In New York City, we've achieved the lowest rate of people with coronavirus since the epidemic began, and we've maintained that rate. It's because people are doing things like, and this is one of the key things they're doing, wearing masks. For you to point out it's a problem that people don't, I 100% agree with you.

We all need to be wearing masks. I know that people have in general because otherwise, we would not have been able to as a city come together to drive down the rate as far as we have. This is to the credit of New Yorkers. To your specific point around, should people be wearing masks in that scenario? The answer's, yes [laughs]. Please wear a mask yourself. We're happy to hand out masks, and if there's anything more we can do, let me know because I agree with you.

Brian: Angela, thank you so much for your call. That's one theory, and I have that coming in on Twitter from a couple of other people too, so people are asking about that pool. What else do you think is contributing to, and you have not established that the pool is contributing, I want to be clear about that, but that's a question that people are raising. What do you think? What does the evidence suggest as contributing to Sunset Park, in particular, having a spike?

Dr. Ted: Yes, that's a good question, and that's what we're investigating now with our Department of Health, which is, by the way, the best Department of Health, potentially in the country, potentially in the world. What we need to figure this out, is we need to do as much testing as we can to get the data we need to see what people's risk factors are, see where people are getting infected, and then we'll be able to make clear interventions. Right now, we're in the stage of gathering as much data as we can, and people are coming out and getting tested.

Like I said earlier, Brian, 80% of people that are testing positive right away in Sunset Park, they're completing all of our interviews. We're getting the data we need, and you can believe the Department of Health and the Test and Trace Corp, as soon as we identify anything intervenable, will be intervened upon immediately.

Brian: I see you had previously seen a spike in the Tremont section of the Bronx, and undertaken a similar effort there. Is that still ongoing? What was the high point of case positivity rate that was reached in Tremont, and did you come up since that happened earlier, did you come up with any reasons there that might also connect to Sunset Park?

Dr. Ted: Yes, good question. The reason we went to Tremont, was at least two factors. One, is that we were seeing that there was a higher test positivity rate, so in other words, more people testing positive that got tested, but also, there were fewer people being tested. You put those two puzzle pieces together, there's a clear intervention, we needed to do more testing, and we needed to help people that are testing positive. That's where we started to do things like the Point-of-care test and the in person.

If you tested positive, our resource navigation to give you the resources that you needed. I think the latter piece is one of the things we weren't that made a tremendous difference in Tremont, and I think that had been a barrier to people in terms of really being able to-- I think it's something we learned about things, it's something that people didn't have before that was potentially contributing. I think once we were able to give them the resources that they needed, like free food delivery.

I think in person, in that same moment where they received the positive test result, I think that went a long way. In my mind, a principle of New York City is the people [unintelligible 00:23:38] and I'll tell you that we set out an aggressive testing goal in Tremont. We surpassed that goal. I do not think-- You can't tell a New Yorker to come out and get tested if they don't see a value in it, if they don't believe it's going to help them, their families, or New York City to stay safe. The fact that so many people in Tremont came out, I think that number speaks for itself.

Your other part of the question, "What are we doing now in Tremont, and is the effort over there?" The effort's never over for doing testing. We want to be doing testing in every community. My goal is that any New Yorker would be able to come to get a free test near to where they live, and I will not sleep until that goal has been met.

In Tremont, we're continuing to do a tremendous amount of testing there as well, but we are moving some of our resources over to the next community because we hit the target that we had set for ourselves as the number of people that we wanted to test there.

Brian: Another Sunset Park caller. Joseph, you're on WNYC with Dr. Ted Long, head of the city's Test and Trace Corps. Hi, Joseph.

Joseph: Hey. Good morning all.

Dr. Ted: Good morning.

Joseph: I am a resident of Sunset Park, and I'm a community health worker that has been working on real risk, relief, [unintelligible 00:24:55] for distribution and helping people get access to clinical services. It's just a part of a Tracing and Testing Corp outreach effort. A couple of weeks ago, my face was in the mayor's press briefing yesterday. Personally, from what I've heard or what I've seen from the community, partly definitely is there's more testing. I feel that will bring attention to more positive results.

There's definitely a disconnect between the information that is being provided to the area. I think earlier on in epidemic, there was a disconnect from the city to understand that just providing leaflets with different languages was not going to be enough. The reliance on non-profits and other organizations on the ground, I think were overlooked.

Now that we're seeing this develop to the degree that it has, we're seeing movements and attention to this neighborhood, but there's still hesitation from natives and people. There's a lot of fear going on in terms of how much can they trust the government overall, but also how much are they actually being taken care of, like how much food is provided? Is rent relief coming? All of these things compound in terms of how people interact with services.

Dr. Ted: Joseph, I completely agree with the points you raised in there. As I said earlier, our goal here has to be, to gain the trust of our communities, to earn the trust of our communities. If our communities don't trust what we're doing, they're not going to come out for testing for sure, but then they're not going to engage with us if they happen to have the Coronavirus, God forbid.

All we want to do is we want to help and we want to help them to isolate, to keep themselves, their families and their communities safe. I'm heartened to hear that you think our engagement with community-based organizations has been the right approach. We did put out a request for-- we put several million dollars, just close to $10 million, of funding to community-based organizations to get the word out about what we're doing as trusted messengers. I think though in my mind, there's no one-way to gain the trust of our communities. I think having our traces would be from our communities, having our CBS, Bureau partners is a good step forward, but if you have other thoughts as a community health worker, I'd love to either hear them now, or we could share my phone number with you after this call, but I think that your points that you're bringing up are right on.

Brian: Joseph, do you want to add anything now? Do we still have Joseph from Sunset Park on the line? No, Joseph went. He suggests some things about the neighborhood at least implies them that might be underlying reasons why there would be a spike in Sunset Park, but these things also apply to many other neighborhoods in the city. A lot of the people there are essential workers, lower income folks who are out doing the jobs that involve more contact with other people. Also more likely to live in relatively dense or crowded conditions. I'm curious how much you think either of those things contribute to the 7% nearly case positivity rate in Sunset Park now. If so, why would it be there in particular? Because a lot of New York City neighborhoods would meet those criteria.

Dr. Ted: To your first point, if you were to think about the highest risk type of scenario for Coronavirus, you'd envision a huge city that's very densely compacted together, pretty much be something like New York City. The fact that we've been able to achieve one of the lowest rates of people getting Coronavirus in the whole country, given that we are a set-up for having some of the biggest challenges in it, people in New York City should really be proud of what they've done together.

Is there anything unique about Sunset Park that does not exist in other parts of New York City? In a lot of ways, no. A lot of ways, what you said is true that everywhere in New York City has a lot of these same risk factors, which makes it even more impressive that as a city, we've been able to achieve so much, and again, it's not me that's achieved this. I just want to be very clear about that. It's every New Yorker that's wearing a mask, and it's making other sacrifices, and the fact that our tracers are New Yorkers here to help New Yorkers.

In Sunset Park, we're seeing a blip, so we're doing the right thing. We're diving right in making tens of thousands of phone calls, door knocks or tests, you name it. We're doing everything in our power, now that we've seen that there could be an issue there, to squeeze out the virus immediately. The same would be true for any other community because every community has different risk factors, and if we were a sprawling city where people didn't really see each other, but again, I just want to really make the point that New Yorkers have earned where we are today, which is one of the strongest positions in the whole country.

Brian: Let me take one more caller before we run out of time. We're going to line 9. Jennifer in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Dr. Ted Long, head of the New York City Test & Trace Corps. Hi, Jennifer.

Jennifer: Hi. I appreciate the conversation today. It felt super important. I appreciate your guest being on and all the work that you've done for testing. I'm finding my experience to be totally different than you're saying people are getting results back in two to three days. I got tested nine days ago, last Tuesday now. I still haven't received the results. I've called. I had one of my employee's adult children that lives with her test positive, so I had to ask everybody, all of my employees to get tested. They waited. This is about two weeks ago. They waited up to 14 days to get their results. Which left us totally blind as to what to do with employees. I'm just not seeing the reality of what you're saying for the testing time. I don't know. Everybody I talked to is having the same experience. I have a friend who's a plastic surgeon who's like, "It's even taking two to three days to get my patients tested, which leaves me vulnerable."

Brian: Dr. Long. Hang on, let's get your response, Jennifer. Dr. Long, go ahead.

Dr. Ted: Jennifer, I appreciate your points there. The reality is, and as people went about this, you're going to get a different turnaround time depending on where you go in New York City. The different labs have different turnaround times. Believe me, Jennifer, I wish it was not so. I wish I can have every lab have the same fast turnaround time. The single most important thing I'll tell you is this. Come to one of our New York City Health and Hospital sites. We do not have a 14-day turnaround. Come to Sunset Park. We do not have a 14-day turnaround there.

There are sites in New York City that do have more than a week turnaround. Believe me, if there's anything I could do to immediately fix that, I would. Some labs are just embarking upon strategies, like I mentioned, like pooling now. At those places, which are not small places, you're going to see a longer turnaround time. We're doing everything in our power to have labs do the pooling strategy and to move things along. If you want to have a test done at any of our New York City Health and Hospital sites, you will always have it done that day for sure. You'll never be delayed, never be turned away. It's always free, and you'll have some of the fastest turnarounds in New York City. Test me on that. Come to Sunset Park or come to one of our Health and Hospital sites near you, and then let Brian know how it went.

Brian: Jennifer, you're invited to call back and do exactly that. This is a good principle to repeat and make sure is clear. I know I've heard this from at least some people I know personally who've had this comparative experience, but tell me if you can state this as a fact. The turnaround time for test results at Health and Hospitals Corporation sites, the official city government Health and Hospitals Corporation sites, the test turnaround time is faster than if you go to City MD or another one of the private labs.

Dr. Ted: We have some of the fastest turnaround times in the city, that's correct.

Brian: Last thing before you go, relating to the potential opening of school next month. How will the Test & Trace Corps. interface with the Department of Education for in-person teachers and students and staff? What's the contact tracing protocol for schools when you find a case in a classroom or a building? How often do you think teachers and students should get tested to make this work, and how often will they be able to based on supply?

Ted: Great question. I'll try to answer that as concisely as I can. We want, or we're asking all teachers to get tested before school starts. To Jennifer's point, we've designated certain sites where if you identify yourself as a teacher, you'll get tested immediately and your result will be expedited because we know you have to have it in order for us to do everything we can to keep our schools safe, number one. Number two, for any positive case in a school, if it's a student or a teacher, the entire classroom will immediately go into quarantine for two weeks, which is the amount of time it takes for the virus to potentially become infective in you. If there's more than one case in any school that's not in the same classroom, we're going to do an investigation. While we do that investigation, to have an abundance of caution, we're going to close the school, and we're going to convert to remote learning. That will give us the time where we know everybody's being kept safe in the interim for us to figure out if it's safe to have the school reopened. I can go into much more detail, but we have-- I just wanted to be very clear that even if there is just one case, the entire classroom gets quarantined a hundred percent of time, no question about that, and that an investigation is done then, and if there's more than one case for the investigation to be done, we're going to go ahead and keep everybody safe while we do the investigation so that there's no moment where people aren't safe.

Brian: Very good to know all that information for all the parents and teachers and staff listening right now. I'm going to throw in one more because it seems so relevant and it just came in from Erica in Sunset Park. I don't have time to put her on the air, but she told our screener that she owns a workplace in Sunset Park, and most of the employees don't live in Sunset Park. They come there to work. Should they get tested too as part of your effort to test the whole neighborhood?

Dr. Ted: Yes. A little more detail there. Thank you, actually, that's a great question. My goal is to keep New York City safe, and in order to do that, we have to do a great deal of testing. In my mind, we should never feel there's a barrier to getting tested. The tests are free. They're in more than 200 locations, and we're actually seeing in Sunset Park that people that work there, because it's an industrial area, are getting tested even though they don't live there. That's fine. Not a problem in the world with that. We want to make it as easy as possible for New Yorkers to get tested.

Brian: Dr. Ted Long, the executive director of the New York City Test & Trace Corps. Thank you so much for coming on with us.

 

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