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Testing for the coronavirus will dramatically expand across New York under an executive order Gov. Cuomo announced Saturday — a critical element in the move toward eventually reopening the state.

The order allows independent pharmacies to offer walk-in diagnostic tests, and will initially be made available to first responders, medical workers and “essential employees” such as bus drivers, grocery store clerks and laundromat workers, who are “carrying the load” of the crisis, the governor said at his daily press briefing in Albany.

Pharmacy employees will administer the test swabs, and then send the samples out to any of the 300 state-approved labs for processing.

The tests — which will determine if someone is actively infected and typically take up to three days to yield results — will eventually be offered to the public at large.

“Hopefully, one day we get to the point where anybody who wants a test can walk in and get a test,” the governor said.

Allowing some 5,000 independent pharmacies to voluntarily offer screening for the virus will double the number of people tested daily, currently at 20,000, the governor said.

News of the drugstore testing program came as the Navy’s USNS Comfort, which has been docked off Manhattan’s West Side since March 30, prepared to leave for its homeport in Norfolk, Va., officials announced.

The final 12 patients were being discharged or transferred this weekend.

The 1,000-bed ship only ever accepted 182 patients for treatment, to the outrage of healthcare workers at overburdened hospitals elsewhere in the city.

Meanwhile, two other testing initiatives were also announced by Cuomo.

Starting Saturday, four Big Apple hospitals — Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, and the city-run Bellevue and Elmhurst hospitals in Manhattan and Queens — began offering antibody testing for front line healthcare workers.

Elmhurst Hospital made national news when its emergency rooms became jammed with COVID-19 patients.

And SUNY Downstate is now dedicated solely to COVID-19 patients, Cuomo noted.

“You want to talk about God’s work, that’s where it’s happening,” he said.

Also, the state this week will phase in comprehensive antibody testing for all MTA workers and for State Police and the NYPD.

Learning how many people have been and currently are infected will add to researchers’ understanding of the spread of COVID-19 — but won’t necessarily shed light on who is immune, scientists warn.

The presence of antibodies doesn’t mean that people who have recovered from the novel coronavirus are safe from reinfection, the World Health Organization said Saturday.

“There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection,” the WHO said in a statement.

The information runs counter to what many COVID-19 survivors hoped could be their ticket to freedom from lockdowns.

At his briefing Friday, Cuomo had sounded shocked as he described the tenacity of the coronavirus, despite weeks of well-publicized research revealing that it survives on plastic and metal surfaces — and in aerosolized, airborne particles — for as long as three days.

“I thought it was a droplet and then it falls, right?” he said. “It’s a droplet that can hang in the air for three hours.”

On Saturday, spokeswoman Dani Lever insisted the governor had been well aware of prior research when he spoke.

“As we look toward opening up the economy, we are reminding New Yorkers about the 101 of this virus, and that people need to remain vigilant,” she said.

News of the state’s testing efforts came as the number of current hospitalizations and new positive cases ticked downward — further indication that the coronavirus is on the decline in New York state.

Another 1,100 new cases were detected in the state on Friday, and hospitalizations across the state stood at just over 13,000 — the lowest number in three weeks and the latest sign of progress in containing the virus.

The hospitalization total was its highest at 18,825 on April 12. It has fallen every day since then, officials said.

“All of the numbers are basically saying the same, that we are in fact on the downside of the mountain,” Cuomo said.

Still, 437 people — 19 in nursing homes — died of COVID-19, for a total of 16,599 lives lost statewide so far during the three-month outbreak.

Friday’s death tally was up from 422 the previous day.

“This is just terrible, terrible, horrific news,” the governor said of the spike.

Citywide, 150,576 people have tested positive for the virus as of Saturday afternoon. There have been a total of 16,270 deaths of patients who either tested positive for the virus or who died from COVID-19 symptoms.