When COVID-19 first emerged last year, the early response from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration suffered because New York City did not have an adequate plan in place for how to respond to a pandemic ahead of time, according to a comptroller’s report issued Wednesday.
The findings say the most comprehensive framework the city had to rely on in early 2020 was an operational plan for pandemic influenza from 2013. A city health official described these flu protocols as “not particularly useful” because of a range of questions that remained unaddressed, the report said. The influenza document, which was in draft form, indicated that the city would still need to do key things such as identify triggers for school closures and engage in planning around the supply chain.
Asked about the report at his morning press conference Wednesday, Mayor de Blasio said he had not yet seen it. He defended the city’s pandemic response, saying there were things that could not be anticipated.
“There's no way to fully understand a global pandemic until you're in it,” de Blasio said. He added that an initial lack of federal leadership made the response more difficult, but said there were “people in public service who made things happen and made sure that care was there for people,” including by setting up the Test and Trace Corps and later coordinating the vaccination effort. “There's a lot that says this city responded very powerfully,” de Blasio said.
The comptroller’s investigation into the city’s preparedness and response remains ongoing despite already being underway for more than a year. Comptroller Scott Stringer said that’s because the mayor’s office and various city agencies have refused to provide all the documents and witnesses requested.
“We will never forget who and what we lost and we cannot erase the mistakes of the past but we can make sure we are better prepared for future public health emergencies and the next pandemic,” Stringer said at a Wednesday press conference. “That means making sure we have citywide operational plans in place.”
The city Health Department and Mayor’s Office declined to provide further comment on the report’s findings or the claims that they have not fully cooperated with the investigation.
Preliminary findings from the comptroller’s report indicate that uncertainty reigned over the pandemic’s early days as each city agency figured out their role. These struggles manifested around the process of emergency decision-making.
The city’s early response could have also benefited from more centralized, real-time data on the availability of key resources such as hospital beds and protective equipment, the report said. In mid-March, the commissioner of the New York City Emergency Management Department told City Hall officials that “information [is] needed that we are currently not getting” regarding the total number of open hospital beds. This department also struggled to get a complete count of N95 masks and found that the city’s entire stockpile of N95s had expired years earlier.
Last November, the comptroller’s office sued the de Blasio administration to compel the city to hand over documents related to its COVID-19 response. The following month, a Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice ruled that Stringer has authority under the law to conduct the investigation and request relevant records and testimony.
Stringer will leave office when his term is up at the end of this year and said Wednesday that he hopes the next comptroller will continue the investigation.
