Gov. Andrew Cuomo slammed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Sunday for not being better prepared to contain the new coronavirus and for the federal government not allowing private laboratories to process patient tests.

Cuomo appeared at Northwell Health in North New Hyde Park, Nassau County, on Sunday morning to provide an update on the COVID-19 illness, for which positive tests now number 105 statewide. The numbers Sunday morning included one case in a previously unaffected county, Ulster, of a man who had recently traveled to France. The majority of cases are still in Westchester County, where an infected man had attended large gatherings at a synagogue, inadvertently spreading the virus to 81 people as of Sunday.

The governor said that despite the federal government allowing the state’s Wadsworth Lab in Albany to test for COVID-19 — the respiratory illness that develops from the novel coronavirus — demand has now eclipsed capacity. Cuomo urged the CDC to allow state-approved private labs to handle tests. He also called on the federal government to allow the tests to be done by automation, which will speed up processing times. He said there are seven labs the state would authorize to analyze tests.

In an update Sunday night, Cuomo’s office said Northwell Laboratories had since been approved to do testing, with “manual testing of 75 to 80 samples per day” to start immediately. In the updated statement, the governor’s office also seemed to be correcting what agency is directly responsible for approving such testing, saying it was the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that approved Northwell, “While this approval is a good first step, the FDA must increase the testing capacity for the state and private labs,” the statement read.

However, Cuomo said, automated testing still needs to be approved to perform thousands of tests per day. “The CDC, I believe, was slow to begin with. They were not ready for this. They should have been ready for this,” Cuomo said early Sunday. “We saw what was happening in China. Anyone who didn’t realize that someone from China was going to get on a plane and come to the United States was delusional, frankly.”

Cuomo said that if private labs are brought online, the state could handle 1,000 to 2,000 tests per day. Currently, not everyone can get a test; patients are prioritized based on their travel history or their exposure to those already infected, or if they are in the hospital and a cause for their illness has not been determined. “We are trying to contain the spread of the virus. How do you contain the spread of the virus? By testing as many people as you can. Find the positives and then isolate the positive people. That is how you contain the spread of the virus,” Cuomo said.

He said that identifying those infected and quarantining them will help halt the virus’ spread to the elderly and chronically sick and hopefully avoid what China and Italy are going through as mass closings of businesses and schools cripple their economies.

The CDC says the patient outcomes from COVID-19 are not fully known. Reported illnesses have ranged from very mild (including some with no reported symptoms) to severe, and some cases have resulted in hospitalizations and death.

Cuomo also criticized what he called “mixed messages” coming from President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, saying that the federal government has left people confused as to whether there are enough tests and testing capacity for everyone who wants a test to get one.

“CDC, wake up. Let the states test; let private labs test. Let’s increase as quickly as possible our testing capacity so we identify the positive people, so we can isolate them and we can be successful in our containment,” Cuomo said.

Meanwhile, on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said that by early in the week there should be 2 million tests available. He added: “By the end of the week, through partnerships with private industry, over 4 million tests available.”

Adams also told CNN’s Jake Tapper: “No public health doctor who was asked for a test has not been able to get a test. So people should talk to their health care providers.”lstanforth@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5697