New York state has teamed up with actor Sean Penn’s relief organization to open and expand 11 COVID-19 testing sites in and around New York City “hotspots,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.

New York state currently has more than 800 testing sites, but there is still “a problem in New York City in certain ZIP codes,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during his daily briefing Tuesday.

“The virus did not attack equally. It hit lower-income areas, more minority areas harder,” he said.

“And in New York City, that’s probably most demonstrable.”CORE, the relief organization Sean Penn cofounded, has been partnering with organizations and local governments across the country to ramp up COVID-19 testing.

New York is working with the organization to open and expand 10 sites in New York City and one in #Yonkers, #AndrewCuomo said

“I talked to Mr. Penn about this problem in our hotspot ZIP codes and asked if they could help get more testing into those areas, because we don’t have a lot of infrastructure there, and his group came in, they mobilized and they did great work opening up testing sites in a very short period of time that will ramp up the testing in our hot-spot clusters,” Andrew Cuomo said during his briefing.

“That combination of good intent and good results, that doesn’t happen often. But when it does it’s special. And it happened with Mr. Penn and CORE and I want to thank him.”
#SeanPenn made a short, virtual appearance during the briefing, saying he was “very excited about the partnership.”

Testing will continue to be integral as more and more industries across the state reopen, Andrew Cuomo said.

#WestchesterCounty, Rockland County and the Hudson Valley entered Phase II of reopening on Tuesday.

The state plans to launch a new COVID-19 dashboard that will allow state residents to see the daily percentage of positive COVID-19 tests in their county more easily, #GovernorCuomo said.

It wasn’t immediately clear when the new dashboard would launch.