Governor Andrew Cuomo described his meeting with US President Donald Trump as productive and the two leaders agreed to double New York's testing capacity to 40,000 tests a day as the death toll from the COVID-19 surpassed 15,000 in the state.
Cuomo, giving his daily press briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic, said numbers in the state of hospitalizations and intubation are coming down.
"We're in a relatively good place in downstate New York, the curve is on the descent. The question is now how long is that descent. Is it a sudden drop off, is it one week, two weeks, three weeks, six weeks we don't know, but better to be going down than to be going up, he said.
Cuomo said the daily death toll, while continuing to decline, is still breathtakingly painful.
New York lost 474 people on April 21, the lowest number of fatalities in about three weeks but the overall tally for the state stands at 15,302.
And the worst news that I have to deliver every day, the worst news that I've ever had to deal with as governor of New York. But at least it's not going up anymore and it seems to be on a gentle decline, he said.
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Cuomo, who met Trump in the White House Tuesday, described his meeting with the president as productive.
We spoke facts, we made made decisions and we have a plan going forward. And that was accomplished yesterday and I feel good about it, he said.
Cuomo said he and the president set as a goal to double the number of the tests in the state to increase from 20,000 on average to 40,000.
That is just about the maximum capacity for all of the laboratory machines in the state, he said.
The Governor announced that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has volunteered to help the state develop and implement a massive tracing program that the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will be undertaking.