and here's the president arriving at walter reed medical center accompanied by military personnel. >> florida governor ron desantis held a briefing today at the blake medical center on the states coronavirus pandemic. joined by representatives from the medical community and state and local officials, the governor discussed testing in the state, the need for more medical staffing and the importance of adhering to mitigation protocols, such as wearing masks and social distancing. >> good afternoon. thank you for being here, for

the medical center for hosting, randy curran, ceo of the medical center and also my friend, bill, for being here. we have representative robinson, dr. chari, florida division president. i want to thank him for being here. we have sherry, county administer. we have dr. south, the doctor here at the medical center. we will have interesting talks. thank you for being here. cal center. we will have interesting talks. thank you for being here. we will go over some things we are doing in terms of covid response. of course, our mission focuses on protecting vulnerable, expanding testing. we are doing that. yesterday, 95,000 tests. today, over 80,000 tests.

put that in perspective. taiwan has done 78,000 tests the pandemic, and there are 23 million people. we are doing a lot of testing. practicing social distancing. supporting hospital and health care workers. a couple updates on things today, hospitals throughout florida will be getting additional shipments of therapeutic remdesivir, something a lot of physicians have been using. we got positive responses. that is a new therapeutic developed and given in emergency use authorization by fda. we are scheduled to get more later in the month. there was a need to expedite that. i worked with the vice president and secretary azar to get that expedited. he said there would not be a gap in treatment. today and thatve

will be a lot of vials and hopefully we will be able to serve patients' needs. we have 1000 contract personnel who will be deployed around the state to offer support for services undertaken. some of it will be long-term care covid only facilities, some of them supporting normal medical operations, some may be supporting testing. when we talk to people around state, particularly hospital systems, a lot of it is making sure there is enough personnel. covid is labor-intensive. there are a lot of procedures in terms of isolation. obviously they have personnel , involved in testing. those who come into the hospital and people who are participating in drive-through or walk-up test sites. personnel is significant. we're doing a lot of that.

if you look at kind of where we have been now with testing, you know, when we started out, the tests were very scarce nationwide. florida had more test results in one day yesterday than the country did as a whole in the beginning of march. positivity rate in may. that went down. we had a good stretch from the end of april through june 13, where we were 5.1% or under, sometimes we were at 3% in terms of positivity. as testing expanded, positivity was manageable. you have more cases. that is what you would expect. if you test 200,000 people at 3% rate, you will get more cases than if you test 100,000 people

at that. when we started to see more cases, yes, we have been testing more last three weeks by far than we had before, but you see that 6.2%, positivity goes up to 9.6%, next week in june, 12%, then 14.8%, for the last part of june, beginning of july. this week so far did take down a little bit. last two days, about 12.5%. we have seen areas consistently 20% range, like miami-dade. here in manatee, 10% the last two days. majority of new cases have been

under the age of 45 sarasota is . sarasota is reporting 5.2% of tests positive. yesterday was 9.5%. i think some of the folks here will attest we may be seeing some decline in this part of the tampa bay area. some other areas, north, like pascoe, you may be seeing more positivity. this is something we are looking at very seriously. we will get test results. we will be over 400,000 tests easily the week so that is a huge amount tests and a lot of it is positivity rate, obviously going to be some prevalence, in -- prevalence, but if it gets into the single digits, that is something much more manageable. we increased from the end of june into july. it has been plateaued the last two weeks, which is a good sign.

we would rather be plateaued at 4% but we did not want to see it continue to go up. we have tested 2.4 million people. that is one for every nine people in florida. interesting to see what other things have been tested at this level in our country, in modern times but this is something as a whole, the country has done a lot of tests. obviously florida, we are doing a lot, particularly in the last however many weeks since demand has been high. if you look at where cases have been coming from, a lot of cases are in that between 15 and 54, which as you can see, those are not the groups producing significant fatalities. if you are under 55, you don't have significant comorbidities, the mortality rate is incredibly low. plus, and plus, 85 and

those are where the bulk of the case fatalities are in terms of those who are positive cases. a lot of that is nursing homes. we will talk about that in a minute. we believe those 65 and up age group are at increased risk and we are continuing to advise to limit close contact outside the home and to avoid crowds as much as possible. this is a dramatic picture of showing how this virus operates and who tends to bear the brunt when they get infected. 25 to 34, if we were going back six weeks, it would not have been anything special on this map in terms of how many tests -- there have been positive tests but that has been a dramatic increase in terms of the number of positive cases in that age group. if you look, far and away now

they are the number one age , cohort, 25 to 34-year-olds. if you look to see each individual age, still 21 is the number one age that has the most cases. obviously, 21, absent of significant comorbidity, is likely to be asymptomatic or mild illness. when we look at cases, i know people like to talk, it gets reported, but when cases are reported to the state, that is a positive test that could have been taken seven days ago. there are all these companies. they report it. when that infection occurred is not even clear. infection may have occurred two weeks ago when a test gets reported to a state from a private lab. one of the things you look at is ok, i can get a certain amount of results reported today, next week, all kind of ways you can look at that, all kind of ways

data may not always come in, in a coherent fashion. when you look at ed visits , people showing up to the ed because they have influenza or covid like illnesses, that is evidence of what is going on. the more people doing that, you know, the more prevalence you have. if you look at what we have seen in the last few weeks, throughout may, it was flat. statewide, we were under 500 visits per day. for a state of 21 million people -- influenza-like illness, 250 or below, pretty much four weeks and as we got into june it was still low. you start to see it inch up as , we get into the third week of june, 6-14. we start to see more visits. the following week, it

escalates. at the end of june, it escalated more than 2000 ed visits per day. going to the ed doesn't mean you will be admitted to the hospital but you're showing up and if you are symptomatic, they are testing you. we have seen statewide this start to trend down but look at a couple days and sometimes that can be more noise than signal. we want to continue to look at that. we will talk about here, the ed visits have skewed younger, 35-year-old range, which obviously, is a different kind of clinical cohort then 55 and up. that dramatic surveillance and looking to see that is very disruptive in terms of what we're doing or what is going on in florida. protecting the vulnerable, you see the fatalities skew 65+ and really 75+ when you think about it. this is something that is a

priority. given that you see more prevalence of this in the community today than we did, say, in the middle of it is may, important for those in at risk groups to avoid crowds and minimize close contact with people they do not live with. we are in a multigenerational living arrangement, there are risks with that. we have seen that in different parts of florida where you have multigenerational housing, crowded housing lead to more outbreaks, but obviously, there is only so much you can do. we understand that. there is the risk in the 65 and up category. underlying conditions, obviously, if you are 65 or up, you have an elevated risk. really, any age with some of these conditions, you need to take similar steps and avoid crowds, minimize close contact outside the home. one of the things, when you have

folks under 65 or 50, the ones that have things like diabetes, morbid obesity, those of the ones that typically have a harder time with coronavirus. just understand that. take whatever precautions you can. we talked before coming out here about long-term care facilities, a really a significant component of this. when, when we started this in march, we knew the nursing homes were going to be ground zero because you have the most vulnerable population there. we did things like prohibiting visitors, we haven't had visitors in nursing homes since the middle of march. that is a tough thing for people. we feared you would see more introduction of the virus if you allowed that. we prohibited hospitals from discharging covid positive patients back into nursing homes. when that was done in other states, that really had negative consequences. we felt that was the better course of action.

we required ppe, n95 masks, sent we sent 10 million masks plus two lawncare facilities, face shields and gloves. we required them to use ppe, but we provided it because we understood that was important to minimize its spread. we also understood as we started to get into april, even with doing all those precautions, you have it get in with a staff member. the ppe righting or it was not as effective. you would see cases. we sent the national guard to do testing because we understood we needed to identify cases before they could spread like wildfire. we understood there was a need for some of these folks, if you test positive, you had to be

isolated appropriately so you did not spread it to other residents. some of these nursing homes and long-term care facilities, they are not set up to do appropriate isolation. we said you need to transfer those folks. some of that was to the hospital where they are boarding because they are medically stable. we felt that was not the best use of hospital resources. so we have established 13 covid dedicated nursing facilities. of theiracilities, all patients are covid positive. if you have somebody that tests them to, you can send charlotte. we are working on bringing on a couple more of these facilities. this way they are able to be isolated. and not spread it into their home facility.

miami-dade care center last week. we think that is going to be filled within a couple of days. we have a number of south florida and central florida. tampa bay, they have dealt with a lot of nursing home outbreaks. that has been a concern. so while this carrington place wegood, we want to see if can expand the footprint. this is an important tool to protect residents that are vulnerable. if someone is stable or asymptomatic, having a place where they can go where they are not going to infect other people and they can be cared for. i want to thank the secretary for working on that. we talked about the additional beds we are bringing on every day for this. just to show why this is important.

yesterdayve had as of 100 38 covid related deaths. related tohave been long-term care facilities. 56% of the corona related fatalities have been linked to long-term care facilities. up.only 65 and and then residents of these facilities. close by they've had 100 corona related fatalities. 65 of them related to residents of long-term care facilities. 65%. this is really a significant part of this fight. distancing. we have a better idea now then in march about what the virus likes and doesn't like. close -- close spaces, you see this activity throughout the

sunbelt. some have said when it is hot, people would rather be inside. you are in anf area where you have people indoors, in a party or something. it is going to be a better vector for transmission. there's no doubt. homes. most people get infected from family members or friends. going toonditioning is be a good vector. the outdoor transmission has not been as significant. the sunshine and heat are generally your friend when it comes to this virus. the virus does not like that. it would preferred to be in the enclosed environment. crowds provide more risk and close contact. when you are and sustain close contact with people. you don't even need to cough or

sneeze. if you are talking repeatedly and you are there for a long time. veryy social distancing is significant. if you maintain appropriate social distancing, you are not going to get infected. facial covering, if you can't do some ofu can mitigate the particles that you may cough or sneeze or talk with and could reduce some of the transmission. if you are not in a situation to social distancing, low risk versus high risk. this is pretty well documented at this point. when we talked about flattening the curve in march. the main reason was to make sure the hospital system could cope with whatever happens in terms

of the effects of the coronavirus. in march, this was a new virus. january.f knew in in florida, we were texting people as they came back from asia. endot our first case at the of february. we now know it was much more widespread than we thought. the testing criteria was limited. ande was problems with ppe testing. there were all these issues. so now we are in a situation where we've got a lot of test sites. hospitals are testing. private companies are testing. cvs is testing. difficult towas figure out how to test. now it is easier, which is a good thing. and we have drive-through sites, walk up. we've got all kinds of different ways people can test. the federal government did three

sites. 3000 tests per day. they are not going to do it for very long. they are moving around the country. that is good. antibody testing at five drive-thru sites. two in miami, the hard rock stadium. marlon stadium. the one in jacksonville at the jaguar stadium. the orlando convention center and west palm beach at the spring training complex. if you are not symptomatic. you think you may have gotten this, the anti-body testing may be better. if you got it a month ago, you will pop for the anti-bodies. you will know you have it. could havet, you been infected a month ago. even though you would no longer be infectious. take advantage of the anti-body. it is a blood draw. it takes more time. you get the results in 15

minutes. it's instructive. if you have the anti-bodies, that's important to know. the ppe situation is improved. we speak with hospitals every day. i've not had anyone say ppe is an issue. the florida department has sent ppe to the long-term care facilities and also around the state. that is very significant. i mentioned remdesivir. we did not have any of that in march. we now have remdesivir. they are using this steroid. some of the doctors think that is good. the convalescent plasma has good reviews. tools in the toolbox so if someone comes in, they can be treated. and hopefully improve their success. another issue we are working on is the lab reagents. the chemicals when you test the

stuff. the u.s. is testing more on a daily basis than any country. resources are backed up. some of these turnaround times, some of the commercial labs are running three or four days behind. some of the supplies are starting to run low. i'm working with the white house to get some more reagents for hospitals. i have spoken to a number of them. we are testing a lot of asymptomatic and healthy people. those numbers add up. the consequence of that is you have seen some of these supplies dwindle across the country. the lab reagents are something we are concerned about and thinking about. i've mentioned before. sensitive to getting these results back as quickly as possible. our contracts, they

were guaranteeing 48 hours. in the not in the cards country. for what we see. we do have some companies that have the ability to do self swab test. they can turn it around. they say 36-72 hours. that is what we're doing with long-term care testing. residents,t all the we tested the staff. we said going forward we need to test staff every two weeks. if they are asymptomatic and they bring it in, it can spread. we have seen that happen. we have an arrangement where we do these tests every two weeks. so far they have sent in 130,000. 86,000 results. rate2.8 percent positivity . which is surprising because if

you see the prevalence and other parts of the state, some places are at 15 or 20%. 2.8, that was somewhat of a surprise. it is a good sign. we are going to get 190,000 test results every two weeks from staff of long-term care facilities. this has been a good model. we want to figure out how we can get people results as quickly as possible. we are focusing on symptomatic people. most of the people don't necessarily have symptoms. they want to know if they have it. if somebody have symptoms, we are going to dedicate the drive-through lanes for those people and have them do the self swab test send it to companies to turn it around. that is something that would make a difference. the thing about testing asymptomatic people, you can

spread it. get tested. you can isolate. you don't get your results back for seven days. what are you supposed to do? most people are doing that. it made sense in theory. given the resources with what we see with commercial labs, and contact tracing, if you get a result after seven days, it will be harder to contact trace who you are with two weeks ago. it is different if you get a quick result and you can say i was here. are running down because the total amount of testing being done on a daily basis. that is not just in florida. that is nationwide. i want to thank everyone for coming. we are going to pass it around and then we are going to have a discussion and then open it up for questions.

the floor is yours. i remember we were together and our firstill, we have recorded cases of covid-19 in the state of florida. one of those was in this county. the other was in hillsboro north of here. and so it began. from there we had to navigate what has been a changing landscape and a challenging landscape. serious and isy going to change the way of our lives and the way we conduct

business. i would like to thank you, governor. you've been very measured and patient in terms of what we have done to respond. there was not a shoot from the hip mentality from your office and in the leadership of the legislature. because of that, we have responded well. i would like to underscore a message that you have been sharing, when you have been speaking with the public about the data. when you analyze data, you have to analyze it all. you have to understand every aspect. how many tests are being taken? how does that compare to the death rate of the hospitalization rate. all of those things. too often as i am hearing just a single message. one message. here is what has been tested and here are the positive rates. that does not give a picture of how we are doing in the state of

florida, which is better than most of the other states in the union. approach wassured a pleasure working with you on the budget. we got out of session and had a budget together. we decided we should take more time to put buffers in there for a reserve. which we did. and then we monitored and we watched and collected data. we were able to sustain the budget that came out of this lab session with many budget programs that represent the desires of the constituents throughout florida. securelyre now, very into our next fiscal year with that budget. granted you had to be more aggressive with your vetoes. nonetheless that same measured

approach ruled the day and proved to be successful. we had our challenges. in a nursing home communities. we had your leadership. leadership from the county commission and elected officials. in ahave responded practical way with the issues we have spaced here. our medical community as well. and a large part have followed the standards you set forward in your executive order in terms of how we have responded. because of that we have been in good shape. the department of emergency management was helpful to my entire district. in terms of making sure we had testing sites. we had ppe and other support

andssary for us to continue to sustain ourselves through this crisis and pandemic. i feel confident we will continue to handle it and look theard to working with director and yourself, governor. thent to congratulate county we are in and thank you, governor, for what you have done in terms of managing this pandemic. i know we are going to hear from the medical experts here. i guess you want me to turn it over. or do you want to go back through the chair? >> governor appreciate you coming today. it is an honor to host you today. if i could convey one thing throughout this process.

changing daybeen today sometimes hour-by-hour. at the beginning of all of this, the organization and the facility, we have been focused. one was protecting the workforce so we could ensure our facilities are here to support the community throughout all of this. we have four main focus areas. is prevention. that has a couple of different pieces. universal packing. all individuals, caregivers as well as medical staff, visitors, vendors, they are universally masked. ppe. the governor mentioned that. we have been able to manage our ppe to effectively ensure that

our caregivers had the appropriate ppe for the appropriate patient. and we are focused on disinfection. the second is access control. we have a screening process. everyone who enters this facility, a caregiver or medical staff or a vendor goes through a screening process. individuals those are masked. we have also limited visitation. inpatient visitation has been limited to certain situations. that has been effective in helping to ensure the community spread has not gotten in. third, focus on social distancing like everyone else. and distancing our patients to make sure those patients are known in particular units.

and finally we want to ensure taking care ofe in the most direct manner to ensure we are limiting potential exposures. so governor, appreciate the time. gov. desantis: great. president, thea floor is yours. >> thank you, governor. is this working? ok. i want to thank the governor for being here today. helping with this. one patient, it was one of our hospitals in florida. i remember the monday after that , the saturday and sunday, the

governor came down to tampa and had his first press conference about this. i was so impressed with him. and then today having a chance understandinghis and focus. i was so impressed and continue to be impressed. turn towhich page to right away. he knows what's going on. thank you for that. i want to talk about our division. give me perspective to reflect on the context in which the governor spoke about. we are in 10 counties on the west coast of florida. we treated 1.2 million patients last year. , 13ave 15 hospitals ambulatory surgical centers. numerous physician practices and over 750 graduate as if in his

in training in our program. so we are among the largest program in the state for that. it gives us a great understanding to train the next generation. we have a lab and a nerve center as well. we are part of a system where we have over 50 hospitals. a couple of things are really important. i will reflect on what the governor said. in our system we've had close to 4000 covid positive patients. almost 40,000 tested. is ourthe things hospital has spread north of the bay, west of the bay, and three with four campuses east of the bay. we have seen different branches of activity. in manatee it is not as active as other areas. we see the activity he talked about. very appreciative of his insight

and the help. the other thing i would like to give perspective on, with the , i will underscore our hospitals are safe and open. the message i would send that yes, covid is an important disease that we treat. we are open. if you have other medical emergencies, we are treating those as well. the last thing i will and on with respect to this area, i am very proud of our sister hospital, competitors is the right word. as we have pulled together in a unique way to support our community. we share data every morning. i know how many covid patients there are. this system has 12 counties

every day. 77 hospitals working together to support and the areas we work together, clearly the governor is aware of those. the three areas i brought up to him. number one is the urgency around staffing to ensure we are able to respond to the rise in cases. the second that is close to us is nursing homes. and the ability to move patients into other areas to continue to be responsive as we expand that. we will work with him. the third area is testing. again, awareness and knowledge about doing the test, having the reagents in making sure we are getting tests back in a timely way to minimize the impact it has. i want to thank the governor for coming here and for his

leadership and will work with his team to improve our ability to care for patients. gov. desantis: thank you. did you want to go? governor.ou, i appreciate the opportunity to talk about where we are at right now. is right now about 12.5% of the population tested. we are very focused on following the governor's smart and safe plan. it includes this ongoing testing. that has been key for us. early on with our long-term care facilities, i am really happy to say a lot of these different things the governor has done seem to be coming online and it has given us a richer

understanding of what is happening locally for a lot of our elders. wondercal level, people what goes on behind the scenes when these emergencies happen. we are proud through the relationships we've built with our facilities and the staff here who have been mentioned. important to us as a county. the county commissioners, we were lagging in some testing. reported some local emergency funds in conjunction with the health here. and the governor's office. no came through. we have the walk-up facility at lincoln park. for those the view that need places to go, we are averaging

about 3000 tests per day. and then of course all of the other testing that is going on. we have come in line with some of the metrics that are needed. one of the other interesting things going on right now at a local level for us and across the state, and i know the other county administrators would want me to say thank you to the caresor forgetting the fund out, bringing the economy back locally. on tuesday we were rolling out our business recovery program. let me emphasize we are in the early stages of that. it is focused on renovating your facilities for safety. practicing good hygiene. ppe andving access to have theirable to

employees come back. it has been a very rewarding experience. i have to say our emergency , his emergencyf division, along with our partner , they have been fantastic. it is really a group effort. we want to thank the senate president galvano and representative robinson. they meet regularly and we work with our board to make quick decisions. thank you for letting us update you. gov. desantis: thanks. we also have blake medical center's director. scott, can you take it away? >> sure. thank you for coming.

i want everyone to know the -- can you hear me? >> not quite. mentioned, things like masking, separating patients. done.hings we have at thecern is that height of this in march and these were folks with symptoms. they have gotten better. we are 20% down. it tells me patients are still not coming in.

know in thebody to so, most months or cases were discharged healthy. doctors contracted the virus. to say we are here for you. i think that is all i have to say. gov. desantis: it's an important message and i appreciate you delivering that. the coronavirus emergency began in march. obviously there was a lot of discussion about it. fear in thesense of public about what the virus meant for them. people were apprehensive. insequently you saw a drop

ed visits for things like heart and stroke. those things don't get stopped. those are consistent maladies. the cdc looked at it and identified the big percentage of wereand theorized, people scared to come into the hospital. they thought they would get infected with coronavirus. which is not going to happen. this is one of the safest places to be. they were fearful. all the hospitals were doing was corona. again, that is not true. even as we have seen more prevalent the last three weeks more ed visits and more people in hospitals, the bulk of what they do is not coronavirus. they are doing the other stuff

that is important. if you have those symptoms, you need to get the medical care you need. every hospital in florida will tell you we want to to come in. we don't want to see that decline because you guys can attest to this, and i have spoken to other doctors, some of the people in intensive care now , their condition to worsen because they did not go in. you don't want to be in a situation where you are doing that. do you agree with that? >> absolutely true. a lot of delays as we have opened up again. certainly it right after the lockdown, folks delayed visits. concerned, don't be. don't ignore your symptoms. you mentioned a survey of the tampa bay region.

we've had a lot of nursing home issues. that,en kind of north of which was quiet for a while. you're starting to see more prevalence. >> over the time we have been looking at this, early on this area was more active. background, a lot of nursing home activity. however the last few weeks, clearly north of the bay, we have seen increases in the growth rates. way we thinkother about it, doubling time is about 12 days. so we are clearly watching that area carefully. how are you doing on ppe? i know we have sent out a lot of

emergency management. it seems like the distribution chains have loosened since the panic in march. have randy mentioned, we put in a tight process around ppe management. we managed it well. as the resurgence has come along, certainly the allocations have been helpful. ourgain we have tightened process to ensure we have the inventory on hand. have been discussing the covid only long-term care facilities we have established in terms of the step up from a long-term care. if they are positive they can be isolated. a lot of these folks don't require hospitalization. which is a good thing. care in somezing

of these facilities to transfer some of your covid positive medically stable long-term care residents? >> absolutely. we talked about it over lunch. we appreciate your help to expand that. it has become a challenge in the hospitals. we have patients coming in and moving out. that is something we need to do to maintain flow. placeesantis: carrington is about 16 beds. we have over 100 beds. we have a facility in charlotte county. we would like to get another one in the tampa bay area. secretary mayhew is working with folks to do that. how isask bill galvano, the economy doing?

the beginning of march things were humming along. that changed as the month went on. are people getting back? what is it like? >> you are right. it?you break there it is. back on. were humming along as we entered into the new year. a lot of growth. a lot of new businesses. that includes hillsborough county. then we had the shutdown and what was happening and the rest of the state. we are coming back, a measured

approach that we worked on. i appreciate the opportunity to work on that with you. we rebuilded us as little by little. county, i have to recognize their efforts to make sure we maintain that balance between public safety, which of course is paramount and understand the implications of not monitoring the opportunities economically. we are seeing a comeback. it is slow. it is steady. we are going to stay on top of it and make sure we are not taking steps that are going to position.a fail i don't want to go backwards either. we are learning about how to

handle this pandemic. we need to move forward. make sure we're still doing that. gov. desantis: great. can you talk about the demographic age breakdown. you mentioned some of the traffic in the ed. what are the symptoms? and within that, the folks who have the most problems in terms of comorbidity. >> thank you. seen this as affecting the elderly. the nursing homes. we got a handle on that. so, i wouldth or say between 30 and 40 years old. thankfully they are in discharge. say the patient's that

have a challenge would be those with diabetes or obesity. for the most part if you are young and healthy, you do well with this disease. great.santis: i want to thank everyone for coming. thank you for what you are doing. i think you guys have handled it well. we are not done with it. little bitnds seem a better than may be in some of the other parts of the state. we appreciate that and we think the folks who have been working hard. health care workers and first responders and floridians doing the basic things that people have been talking about to protect themselves and families. we will take some questions. abouternor, can you talk

the covid only facilities? sending 100d your contractors to the tampa bay area. can you talk about when they are going to arrive? gov. desantis: the covid only facilities grew out of an understanding it is hazardous to be shipping covid positive nursing home residents back into long-term care facility. or if they test positive and as we go in and test, to leave them there, if you can isolate them. we have some facilities in florida that are phenomenal. they can isolate no problem. leaving a't, contagious patient there. a nursing home is one of the top vectors of where you would see spread. we knew we needed to do something.

we told these facilities, transfer them to a place that makes sense. where they can be isolated. their first thought is the hospital. fortunately a lot of these folks don't require that level of care. many of them are asymptomatic. we said a hospital is going to treat people. we wanted a place where it would be safe. the first one was in april in jacksonville. it has now expanded to 13. a lot of it is we have the funds. we would like to expand more. some of it is a matter of making sure you have enough staff. you have an operator. they've got to have the personnel. it is a tool. especially when you look at the clinical consequences of the on residents of long-term care.

200,000less than long-term care residents in the state of florida. they represent 50% of the talent use. not even as people, many as that one class of people. this is something that is addressing the most riskiest element. it is something that is important. employees, contract at the beginning of this, we lined up a number of folks for prudent planning. we did not know what the eventualities would be. in march most of the people said the problem was going to be capacity of hospitals. there would not be enough beds. is they've got beds. they could put out more beds. they need to enough folks to staff the beds. you learn from things as you go through this. was the cdc

recommending we tell hospitals to not do elective procedures. we did that for a time. the fact was we were doing that to save the health care system. a lot of people got laid off. the health care system contracted. put theaw that, we electives back in. i told the hospitals, you guys know how to manage this. a heavy-handed thing does not make sense. people need to have enough personnel to be able to do some of these things. you look at some of the hospital systems, they've got nurses doing testing sites. we can put more people at the testing site. it is not as big of a problem here. miami,go to jackson or of the non-covid omissions, 40% are testing positive. you get in a car accident and

you test positive, all these isolation procedures have to take place. you are not treated for covid. you could spread it. that requires more manpower. it is less about beds. we have beds. it is making sure you have enough resources in terms of personnel. some on the are ground in this region. jared moscowitz, let's go ahead and activate another thousand. and then parcel those out. facing theorida is most significant outbreak. tampa bay has had challenges. this is a place where we have committed to do 100 and will likely do more. governor, do we have plans to reopen the bars? three of theht

members stated they do not 'slieve the commissioner emergency order is something they're compelled to follow. they say it is up to the school board alone to determine when the schools open. gov. desantis: on the schools, areously the local counties instrumental in this. the keyboards need to be involved. it's got to be a collaborative effort. ok, what isng is, in it for the kids? done bym is going to be keeping them out of school? we are proud of distance learning in florida. we think we were ahead of the curve. a lot of states were calling the commissioner when this started asking to mimic the things florida was doing.

gap thatn achievement has developed. no doubt. that will only be exacerbated. and so we know there are huge costs for not providing the availability of in person schooling for student. studentsof corona for is low. the cdc will show the statistics. under 18, much more likely to be hospitalized for seasonal influenza. the made -- fatality rate is higher among under 18. areso we are fortunate they low risk. i have said before, i've got young kids. i would have no problem, i would not be concerned with them being in school. the other issue, and people realized this in march.

there was less risk. people say kids may be the vectors. that is what happens in influenza. it is like a petri dish. and then it spreads. it's been found over and over again as people have looked at this and studied this in europe that the schoolchildren are not vectors for this. for whatever reason. they usually get infected by the parents. and places that it had schooled open have not seen the schools theribute to increasing prevalence of the virus. from a student perspective, the risk is low. be significantd not doing it. you look at having them there. there's not a lot of evidence they are doing community transmission. that is clear in terms of the data. if people have other facts they

can show, i am happy to look at it. we have looked at this. i would recommend, there is a great pamphlet put out. they are going through some of the things, talking about what it would look like. the point is the risk is small for kids. the problems on the other hand of not allowing them back in would be significant. at the same time if a parent is not comfortable and they want to opt for distance learning, i believe in school choice. this would be another one. i respect that. i don't know there's huge amounts of data to keep a healthy kid out. if that is how you feel, if we have students that have comorbidities implicated by this, of course that is significant. are think the local folks going to have to fashion things and it will look different here then it will elsewhere.

it will look different in the panhandle. we should recognize there is significant cost with not affording the opportunity for kids to have in person education. in spite of the quote. there was a shutdown. a national shutdown. most businesses still operated. most of them across the state of florida. you had things that operated every day. i don't know. if you look at the most essential, education is as high as i can fathom. it's very important. it needs to be collaborative. they should work together. >> the schools open brick and mortar and the question about the bars. schools mandated to open

in august? >> i will get to the heart of your question. the answer is yes. the doe order cannot be ignored. i have said that. the points the governor made about the choice and decision making and the safeguards are encompassed in that order. it is very comprehensive. a lot of time went into it. collaborationes with the department of health. are you saying they have to open brick-and-mortar? ofthe order says five days availability of brick and mortar schools at capacity. >> two weeks ago you were in you ared afterward outside the home of tom brady. did you have business with him? gov. desantis: i am looking

forward to the season. i've been a long time fan. i was a fan of tampa bay when they have the orange uniforms. you would go to a game and there would be more bears fans and giants fans. enjoyed when the coach rebuilt the team. it has been frustrating. if you have one guy that is going to lighted up, it is going to be tom. i look forward to watching him play. why won't you answer the question? >> we set out a plan for some of the counties. not south florida. they would be able to operate like a restaurant, limited

capacity. no one was following that. want that is not how they to operate. our view was i want as many people that will have low risk. when we were getting reports of having packed party situations, that was not part of the guidelines. was like whack a mole. i want them to operate. i want them to do it consistent with the step-by-step plan. we were not able to get that done. we are not making changes. positivityget this rate down and continue to hopefully see declining covid like illness visits. and then as we get in a stable situation, we will take a look at it. i don't blame them for this. people say that is the only reason.

that is not true in south florida. it is definitely not their fault. guidelines. these we consulted with physicians and different people. we felt it is not like flipping a switch. it is going to take time. that is the plan. if it is not followed, we will not be able to do it. >> governor, did you meet with tom brady or not? why won't you answer the question? >> monday a hearing on oversight of ice detention facility during the pandemic. watch live coverage at 2:00 p.m.

eastern on c-span two. online at c-span.org or listen live on the free c-span radio app. >> representative lauren underwood joins the health care federalo talk about the response to the coronavirus including emergency aid for health care workers and minority health disparities. my next guess is the youngest black woman serving in the house of representatives. she is also a registered nurse about whom we have been talking about nurses and frontline providers all day, so this is a great opportunity. she has been a strong advocate for low-cost, good quality health care. welcome, congresswoman underwood. so great to be with you. thank you. i hope you heard some of what we discussed with the director. he put it out there. every crisis creates an opportunity, and maybe we need to get some of the wrongs we