BUFFALO, N.Y. — The last time Kathy Hochul addressed the media was on Thursday, when she delivered the news that Western New York failed to reach the benchmarks needed to reopen.
New York's Lieutenant Governor, who will oversee the reopening of the region during the COVID-19 pandemic, delivered a far more hopeful and optimistic message on Sunday.
"This is a positive day," she said during a Zoom news briefing. "We are in a far better place than we were just a few days ago."
Earlier Sunday, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz announced on Twitter that Western New York has met all hospitalization metrics for reopening. The region includes Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany counties.
The one metric the county must meet before starting Phase 1 of the reopening process is to add more contact tracers.
"We have the capacity to do testing. What do we do with the testing?" she said.
She also urged people to warn against getting too comfortable, even as the region's numbers improve, and more metrics are reached.
"If we start getting complacent and say, 'Well, we hit the metrics, we're all done,' that's not going to work," Hochul said.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said in his daily news conference that Western New York still needs to increase the number of people who are prepared to conduct tracing in the region. He says this is a purely administrative function.
Cuomo says the state will be working with regional heads Sunday afternoon to find more personnel and to get those people trained and ready.
The governor says Western New York needs 521 contact tracers in total. At this time, we need another 352 people. According to Poloncarz, Erie County has provided the state with the names of 291 employees to be trained as contact tracers.