Cuomo: ‘It’s Possible’ New York Will Shutdown Again From COVID-19

Gov. Andrew Cuomo admitted he may be forced to shut down New York State again due to the second wave of COVID-19.

On Monday, Cuomo joined NBC News’ Willie Geist on TODAY to discuss COVID-19. Below is the exchange between the two when Geist asked Cuomo about the possibility of a second shutdown in New York.

Geist: Governor, as you know there are a lot of people who live in this city and state and as someone who works in New York and lives in New York and has kids in school in New York believes it's inevitable things will shut down again because of what we've heard from public health experts about the fall and the winter. Are you preparing for the possibility of another shutdown?

Cuomo: No, I'm not there yet, Willie. I don't believe it's inevitable. I believe it's possible, I don't believe it's inevitable. I think we have to get smarter as a country. We have to get smarter as states. We're dealing with a virus. We have to use the science and get more sophisticated, and that's where we are in New York. Look, we're closing down areas that are about one or two square miles, right? These are tiny areas. But we have that kind of data. And if you can target that way and close down small areas, then it's not inevitable that the spread gets so large that you would have to close down an entire city or a state

Cuomo's COVID-19 book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, was released on Tuesday. But Cuomo says the book's release is no cause of celebration.

"It's not a celebration at all. The game isn't over. It is halftime. We didn't lose, it's only halftime. And we had some success. But we also are making a lot of mistakes," Cuomo told Geist on TODAY. "And when we go into the locker room as a nation and we talk about the first half, we better learn because if we don't learn the lessons, the second half is going to be worse, I can tell you that. We have to stop the denial. We have to stop the politics. We have to stop the partisanship. We're dealing with a virus. The virus doesn't respond to politics. We're seven months into this. The president has a Rose Garden ceremony, gets COVID, comes out and says that was no big deal. I mean it's incredible how little we have learned in seven months, and we have to get smarter and we have to get better.