CNN "Erin Burnett Outfront" - Transcript: Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NY) Discusses About Their Medical Supplies Running Out in 2- 3 Weeks Time

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BURNETT: Breaking news, a dire warning from the Mayor of New York City. The city is just a few weeks away from running out of supplies to fight the coronavirus.

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DE BLASIO: I said very clearly that for the month of March we have the supplies that we need. The city has very strong reserves of the kind of supplies that I talked about. It is going into April that I'm worried about.

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BURNETT: OUTFRONT now, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. And Mayor de Blasio, I appreciate your time, sir. I mean, the numbers that we were sharing earlier in the program that you had put out that you need 50 million masks, 25 million each have many other supplies that medical personnel need. Obviously, they need to use many of each of these per day, but the numbers are staggering and frankly Mayor, they sound frightening.

DE BLASIO: Erin, it is. I mean, we have to be sober about this. You're talking about saving 8.6 million people. Thousand new cases in a day. We've got to be honest about the sheer extent of this problem and where is the federal government? Where is the military? Why won't the president give the order to mobilize our military to guarantee that these products are being produced through the defense production act and get them to the American front in this war, which is New York.

BURNETT: So you're saying you're just not going to have enough of these by April, which, if I'm correct, is exactly when you expect to see a surge of patients. So are you saying these patients will not be able to get treatment?

DE BLASIO: Erin, we're going to do everything we can to treat every patient. We're expanding our medical capacity constantly. We're going to create new ICUs everywhere we can. New hospital beds in hotels or any other kind of facility we can get our hands on.

We're recruiting thousands of medical personnel out of retirement. We're doing everything we can to get the personnel and the space and we're going to be doing every form of freeing up capacity. We cancelled elective surgery. We're discharging people to be discharged from hospitals.

But you know what? If you don't have the surgical mask, if you don't have the ventilators, at a certain point, our doctors, our nurses, they can't do their job and we have been pleading for weeks with the federal government to step in. We're now by far the epicenter of this crisis here in New York State. What does it take to get some attention? What does it take for our

president - Erin, he's from New York and he's betraying the city he comes from. Because all he has to do is order the military to - active duty - to fight this war, to fight this challenge, this enemy and he's not doing it.

Even though he activated the Defense Production Act, not a single factory that I know of has been mandated to go on 24/7 production of ventilators and surgical masks.

BURNETT: And have you been told that they could do that at this point and you would get everything you needed? I mean, is it still possible that that order could be given and you would get what you need in time? Are you sure that?

DE BLASIO: there is no question in my mind? No question in my mind if that order were given now, that the production is out there in the United States of America to at least give us the supply to keep us going. It may not come all in one shipment, but at least get it going.

And there's no question in my mind that the military has the ability, the logistical extraordinary ability to move vast amounts of material from one part of the country to another. And if we just got regular supplies, we could keep going.

But it's clear, I know for a fact, I have talked to the top health officials in this city and they're saying there's a point in the first week or second week of April, when they're just going to literally run out of the things they need to save lives. It's as simple as that, Erin.

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ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: So, you talk about space. The Javits Convention Center, for people who aren't familiar with New York, three floors, six blocks, that has been talked about as a possible hospital. Is that -- is that real? Are you looking at that?

DE BLASIO: We're looking at everything, Erin. Now, the best locations are the ones that are near existing hospital and have the kind of physical layout that they can be converted to hospital wards or to hospital rooms with beds and all.

BURNETT: Like hotels.

DE BLASIO: That might be a great location. We're looking at that. What's that?

BURNETT: Like hotels?

DE BLASIO: Yes, hotel -- actually, a hotel near an existing hospital is great because what you'll do is take any cases of whatever disease that can be moved out of the hospital or the coronavirus issues that are less urgent, you can put them there. You can put in nurses and doctors, et cetera. But the hospitals will be the ICUs for the really serious patients. We

know who they are. They're older folks with pre-existing serious medical conditions. This is who's dying all over the world.

We want to save as many as we possibly can, but we can only do that if we have the combination of space and the personnel and the supplies. Guess what, we can't make the supplies out of thin air.

BURNETT: So, before we go, earlier --

DE BLASIO: A lot of people want to help.

BURNETT: Yes, earlier today, Governor Cuomo said that fear is more contagious than the virus right now. That was the quote -- fear is more contagious than the virus right now.

Would you agree with him on that?

DE BLASIO: Yes, I think he's right to raise it because even though I think we're obligated, Erin, to tell people the blunt truth and to tell our federal government that they must intervene, Franklin Roosevelt said it, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We've got to not be afraid or panicky. We've got to be purposeful that there's still time to fight back but we can't do it alone.

BURNETT: All right. Mayor De Blasio, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much tonight, sir.

DE BLASIO: Thank you, Erin.

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