The following is from the Wednesday morning press conference with Mayor DeBlasio:

Moderator: Next up is Reuvain from Hamodia.

Question: Good morning, Mr. Mayor. I understand that the Governor – he has a press conference scheduled soon – there’s a possibility that he may announce that he’s allowing schools to open, assuming there’s a rigorous testing program, which would be overseen by the City. So, my question is if the Governor indeed does announce that how soon would the City be ready to implement such a program and with students who have already been sick previously, still need a negative test?

Mayor: I’m going to turn to the doctors on your second question. On the first question we have not been given any details from the State as to what they intend for schools. We have a huge testing apparatus, and we’re going to work with the whole community to help ensure that people are tested. Depending on what the Governor specifically intends, we may need some material help from the State, either in terms of testing capacity or funding, we may need something to help us achieve it quickly. But in terms of the overall ability to move a lot of testing quickly, we’re in a strong position.

In terms of the standards, and again, we don’t have any written guidance from the State to work with yet, but in terms of the standards, Dr. Chokshi, Dr. Varma, why don’t you jump in?

Commissioner Chokshi: Sure, I can start Mr. Mayor. To the second part of your question, Reuvain, the most important thing is if a student is not feeling well, if they have symptoms and they’re feeling ill, they should stay home. That is first and foremost. If they have not gotten a test than they should be they should be tested. The only exception to that is if they have gotten a test within the last 90 days, and it was positive. In those cases, we do not recommend that the student get retested. But most cases will be of a student feeling ill, making sure that they stay home, and if they haven’t gotten a test in the last 90 days to make sure that they do go get tested.

Mayor: Dr. Varma, you want to add?

Senior Advisor Dr. Jay Varma: No, nothing.

Mayor: Okay. Go ahead, Reuvain.

Question: Councilman Chaim Deutsch tweeted that there was a store that received in his district – that received the summons simply for having their doors open. They were just open for takeout, and I’m wondering if you’re familiar with this incident, and if in general, there’s a feeling that some inspectors are just looking for technical violations and flooding places with tickets even who are following the rules. I’m wondering if you’re familiar with this particular incident or the complaints in general?

Mayor: Reuvain, I’m not familiar with that incident, but I’m going to make sure we follow up on that incident. I don’t want to see any store penalized on a technicality that isn’t about health and safety, obviously. So, we’ll follow up on that case, but let me talk about the bigger situation. The meeting I had night before last with community leaders. You know, I think there was a tremendous concern that there was enforcement that was arbitrary, and we don’t want that. This is something we’ll be talking with the State about of how to strike the right balance. We all understand we need enforcement especially when there is willful decision not to follow the rules and to put people’s lives in danger. But you know, the vast, vast majority of store owners don’t do that nor any other community institution. As we’ve worked with the community overwhelmingly, we’ve had support from community leaders and organizations to make sure everyone is healthy and to follow social distancing and work with these rules and work together, to get people tested and to get out of these restrictions as quickly as possible. I really want to see us get ahead of these restrictions for everyone’s good, and so if the enforcement is becoming the kind of enforcement that you know, I’ve talked about for years, where it was to arbitrary towards small businesses in general, long before the coronavirus, we don’t want that, and we don’t want to penalize people who are struggling to keep going during such a tough time. So, we’ll be talking with the state about how to create that balance properly.

Certainly my message to all my agencies will be, I don’t want to see people penalized if it isn’t something that’s truly important, and I also heard from the community leaders, a real concern about discrimination, and I want to speak to that because that’s absolutely unacceptable. We cannot in this moment have any enforcement or anything else that is unfair or unequal. Concerns were raised about whether stores of one background were being treated differently than stores or another background. We can’t have that. That’s just not acceptable. There’s – I want to tell you it’s, to me personally, offensive that anyone would show discrimination towards the community in this moment, and all of us need to understand that we’re fighting a challenge together, shoulder to shoulder, and so we’re going to send a very clear message to all agencies to make sure that enforcement is fair and is equal for all and anything that might trigger discrimination, we have to fight vibrantly intensely. We cannot allow discrimination against this community. It’s a community that is suffering through this crisis and we all want to work together to help every community to get out of this crisis together.

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