It's Brian Lehrer, and this is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, May 21st.

Now to New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator, we always appreciate you making yourself

accessible to our listeners. Welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you.

I'm delighted to be on your show.

Last time you were on, we had a caller named Scott, who's a paramedic, who called in with a

suggestion to help both paramedics and homeless people in New York, and you had promised him

to look into the situation that he was raising.

I'm going to replay the beginning of that call, and I understand you have an update.

So here we go with this clip from last month as I took this call.

Scott in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Hi, Scott.

Senator Brian, love you both. Yeah, I'm a paramedic in the city, and a couple of times over the

weekend I was called to COVID hotels. They're hotels that have mainly homeless people

that have positive tests for COVID or just

the symptoms but anyway they're there they're stuck in their rooms alone and they have they're not

allowed to leave and they have no access to basic over-the-counter medicines two of them just

wanted some Tylenol that's all they wanted so these people they're tying up the ambulances for

no reason they're registered nurses the ambulances for no reason. They're registered

nurses on site. They could easily give out any over-the-counter medications, but they don't have it.

They just were not supplied with it. I don't know if it's a state thing or FEMA thing, but for

whatever reason, these nurses have nothing to give these people to take care of the symptoms of

...