Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms joins Gov. Cuomo’s coronavirus briefing

[NEW YORK POST]

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday promised to help Atlanta conduct testing and contact tracing of people exposed to the deadly coronavirus amid a record surge in cases there.

During a coronavirus briefing with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Cuomo, speaking from Manhattan, said he would send a team of experts who were trained with the help of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Johns Hopkins University, where Bloomberg is a major donor.

Cuomo also wished Bottoms “100 percent Godspeed” in recovering from her own infection.

“You have an open offer: whatever you need,” Cuomo said. “But we are also 100% behind you.”

Bottoms said that Atlanta was “headed in the wrong direction” with “numbers that I haven’t seen since April.”

“As of yesterday afternoon, we were up over 23 percent,” she said.

Bottoms — who last week mandated masks in her city — blamed the surge in the disease there on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and also called for federal intervention.

“Unless we have a coordinated approach across this country, we are going to watch people unnecessarily die,” she said.

Cuomo noted a cluster of coronavirus cases in upstate Rensselaer County that officials have tied to a trio of residents who recently returned from Georgia.

Bottoms said she and her husband tested positive for the coronavirus because “we had an asymptomatic child in our home for eight days before we knew that that child was asymptomatic.”

“Thankfully, by the grace of God, we have no underlying conditions,” she added.

By Bernadette Hogan and Bruce Golding