Cuomo taps Mike Bloomberg to run New York's coronavirus test and trace 'army'

<p>Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City and failed presidential candidate, will help the state develop and lead a program to test for Covid-19 and trace people who have had contact with infected individuals.</p><p>Cuomo says if people test positive for coronavirus, the “tracing army,” will trace all the contacts of that positive person, and then putting those people in isolation so no other people are infected.</p><p>"How do we do it?” Cuomo said. “I don’t know, we’ve never done it before. Michael Bloomberg will design the program, design the training, he’s going to make a financial contribution also, put together an organization that’s going to help hire the people. ... This has to happen, you don’t have months to plan to do this, you have weeks to get this up and running."</p><p>Bloomberg has committed $10 million to the project, he said.</p><p>Cuomo promised to build a “contact tracing army” in partnership with Connecticut and New Jersey, as the region attempts to move past its coronavirus outbreak.</p><p>“It’s best to do this tracing on a tri-state area,” Cuomo said. “Why? Because that’s how our society works. The virus doesn’t stop at jurisdictional boundaries.”</p>