Gov. Desantis good morning. I wanted to start by just noting that we are in holy week. Over the last few days, we have been in contact with a lot of religious leaders throughout the state, both at the christian and jewish communities. And we want to discuss with them their plans for these upcoming events, both passover and easter. Our message is basically adhere to social distancing guidelines, what a lot of churches have done in terms of online services, some have even done outdoors for people to stay in their car. I think theyve been innovative, i think that will ultimately be something that matters a lot to people, but we also pointed out the risk of having a packed gathering right now, given what we are going through. You look at different parts around the country, there have been different events such as i was talking to the georgia governor, they had a big funeral and that really spread throughout the folks. It would be a potential to have a super spreader, and that would eventually have really Serious Health consequences to folks. We want people during this time to be spiritually together, but to remain socially distant. Please keep god close, but please keep covid19 away. We appreciate all the corporation that weve had with throughout the state of florida. As many of you know, this virus has rocked the economic foundations of our state and our country in unprecedented numbers our country. An unprecedented numbers of floridians who have been seeking help due to the economic opportunities, reemployment assistance program. From august of 2018 to february 2020, they took a total of 2. 3 million calls, the overseas 3. 8 million calls just last week. That dramatic increase in volume has prevented people from being able to connect to deo and then the flood to the website, the website couldnt even handle it. We are in a situation where people have lost their jobs, they are looking for relief, and they are having a lot of difficulty. Some people were on this site, it was timing out, you could go hours and hours upon end and it was just totally unacceptable. If you have a single mother who no longer has a job, she has got to worry about how the rent is going to be paid, how food is going to be put on the table, and we want the system to be accessible to people so that they have a way to do it that is responsive. So we needed to change this. And so last week, i directed even more resources, all hands on deck approach to be able to get this in the right direction. Over the last week and through the weekend, weve had employees working around the clock to be able to make progress, and the major problem with the website, i mean, there is a problem with problems with how it is designed, but that is not really the problem that we face. We just face the capacity issue. Dms bring in 72 new servers, had to go in the middle of the night from orlando to put it in to increase capacity for the website. So, the system can now handle up to 120,000 Simultaneous Connections by individuals filing claims. Recently, weve been in the 40,000 to 60,000 connection range before the servers, that was causing huge stress. The website actually would be down more than half the time, it would take seven seconds just to connect through. That may have been ok in 1996, but not in 2020. So the capacity has improved, and when the system was designed, they did usually build in redundancies. There was a redundancy built in so that if the system went down, a backup would take over and people could still use it. Turns out, the redundancy, the backup was never actually connected to the system. Last night, they were able to actually connect the backup to the system and so that also gives the added protection. Over 62,000 people filed claims last night by 10 00 p. M. When the site went down for maintenance. The previous week, that was just 17,000. And yes, the demand has probably gone up, but the reason it was only 17,000 is because people were having a tough time getting on, the site was down, and so the fact that that has been able to increase, they used to have the latency on the website as high as 72 seconds. Now it is less than one second, and it has been up consistently, which is what we want to do. So that has been a huge effort to do that, to build the capacity. I have actually told them, look, it is being able to handle it now, but you dont know what is going to happen. We are getting even more servers in just to make sure that if we see an even bigger surge, the website is able to handle it. We also had people working through the weekend to train hundreds of Additional Customer Service representative so that when people call in, they are able to get a hold of somebody. And so, they used to take three weeks to train somebody to be in the call center, and i said, what good is that going to do, three weeks . People need to get this done now so that the training was done this weekend, so youre going to be seeing more and more people there, 250 people additionally started this morning at 7 30. The deo is training an additional 500 people today, they will start taking calls tomorrow. We may increase even more from there. This is in addition, an additional 39 individuals already in place, so the capacity there is increasing and again, my instructions are at as these calls are coming in, if you have to add more capacity, youve got to do it. Weve been in contact with both some of the state agencies as well as some of the private companies about it. If that is necessary, how do you do it . But they need to be ready to move on that. In my executive order last week, i ordered all the state agencies to pony up people, to be ready to help with this. Many of these folks have been working from home for weeks now, some of them are considered nonessential and have been told to stay at home. But we need all hands on deck now, so our agencies, and obviously, the doh, some of the ones that are really involved in the health component, they are not going to be expected to produce employees, but most of the other agencies did, so we have identified over 2000 toys employees in State Government that can step up to help the Unemployment Compensation claims. I want to thank them for their willingness to serve their fellow floridians in a time of need. We are in the process of setting up a Virtual Desktop for remote state employees by tomorrow. This Virtual Desktop will allow state employees to take phone calls and do data entry with the connect system and as the week goes on, we will determine the exact number of employees we will need to ensure the rhodians ensure floridians are receiving the best service possible. Obviously, you need to have interaction with the user on the frontend, whether it is a phone call or a website, then you need to have it processed and the data needs to be there. There are certain requirements, social security, licenses, certainly federal requirements. We got to get that done and then move the checks for the direct deposit, whatever it may be forward. I also instructed deo to create a paper application. Given this time, not everyone has access to internet and a lot of the libraries are closed, it is not always easy. We want them to be able to have access to a paper application where they can send in and are and our folks who have brought on board will be able to process that. Career Source Florida is helping to make sure paper applications are available throughout the state, the gpo is deo is also working to find solutions find locations where people can pick up the application. This morning, i spoke to fred smith from fedex, i asked him, could we use a Fedex Office Location where you guys can print the forms that have been ready for people, people could fill them out and you could fedex than every night to tallahassee . He said they would be happy to help with that, so we are in the process of working on that, putting that together as well. Obviously if the website is functioning, that is going to take off pressure from the paper applications, but still, we think its important under the circumstances for people to be able to have that, and we are also working with different leaders throughout the state. I know mayor jimenez is working thinking about having Library Access for Unemployment Compensation so we encourage folks to be innovative with this. Ive also asked deo to streamline the increase in the number of employees assigned to the application verification process so that the payments can be expedited. So of the 2000 state employees stepping up, the department of revenue, and we have the commissioner here, has offered 518 employees that will be able to help verify employer and wage data and as a result, deo has told me they think they can process 80,000 claims this week. Before now, the average number claims per week processed by the agency was 6000. Granted, they didnt necessarily have a lot of claims of the at the beginning of the year, but this will be a huge increase over just the last couple weeks when you did have more demand. We think that is something that is pertinent and that will make a difference. But at the end of the day, what ive told all these folks is this. We are in an unprecedented situation. You look at any other economic dip that we have had a, some of those are somewhat summit somewhat sudden, but nothing is even close to as some as this. If you look at the claim that are made throughout history with recessions or whatever, this is so far over and above in a very short period of time that just simply doing business as would be done in january of 2020 is not going to be able to get the job done here as we are in april of 2020 fighting the coronavirus. So it is urgent. I think people have been dislocated from their economic security. Many of the people who are most dislocated by this, the folks, the folks that are more affluent, and a lot of them have the luxury of working from home. So its a little bit of a change for them, and obviously there have been some changes in that part of the economy. But i think the folks who have really been dislocated tend to be the more bluecollar folks, tend to be folks who are lower income, who are not able to simply work from home. Those are the folks through no fault of their own who find themselves in this situation, so all these agencies need to be responsive to that, they need to keep those folks in mind because the reason they are in that situation is really because of government policy, fighting the coronavirus. And weve done a lot. We are going to continue to do as much as we can. Just in the past few weeks, we were able to streamline the unemployment assistance by waiving the work search requirements. In january, that would have been a really smart thing, you can look for a job before you apply for unemployment insurance. In this situation, i dont know that youre are necessarily going to get hired right now anywhere until the thing gets back on a different track, so why would we have people go through that and waste time when they need the relief now . We also waived work requirements for snap and directed dcf to work with the usta to ensure families whose children are eligible for free and reduced Price School Lunch received out receive snap benefits. They will also submit a federal waiver to temporarily increase snap recipient benefit amounts to the maximum monthly allotment. We did, last week suspend foreclosures and evictions for people. Weve also suspended renewal requirements for professional licenses and drivers licenses and directed department of transportation to expedite over 2 billion in infrastructure projects. You see the lack of activity on the roadways, this is a great opportunity to be able to get in there and make a difference. In terms of getting some of these projects moved up, you can surge workers there now and related done. We really want them to take advantage of that. Ive also directed the Florida Department of management to be flexible with tax filing deadlines and they have responded by delaying filing deadline for property taxes and sales for businesses adversely affected by the coronavirus. Sales and use taxes are now you now due on april 30. Property taxes are now view on april 15. We, of course, activated the state bridge loan program, 50 million set aside for 50,000 loan increments and Small Businesses all across the state are able to apply for that. Of course, we are also pleased with the Small Business relief that was in the federal Coronavirus Relief bill and i think we have had a good demand signal in florida for that. Some of the banks have handled it outer than others. Handled it better than others. I think they will get it right. But that is a great opportunity to be able to get what effectively will be a grant. It will be a loan, but if it is used for payroll, rent, it can be forgiven. We appreciate them doing that. And then in accordance with that because that is so important, today i will be issuing an executive order to where the order that will waive the collection of taxes for Small Business loans issued under the federal stimulus bill. I think we want to streamline this and we want an open roadway for people to be able to use it, so we will be signing that later today. Then, of course, previously we directed the department of canonical opportunity to offer 100 million in infrastructure for communities affected by Hurricane Irma. This was money that had been set aside for some of the other types of assistance, there had not necessarily been as much demand as was allocated, so we are giving them the option to apply the infrastructure. Demjared moscowitz at expedited Hurricane Irma reimbursement, over 170 million cities, counties, and hospital district are facing a financial crunch right now with federal relief bills that does include a lot of money for not only the state of florida, but for the localities. This is important that they know they are going to have that. In terms of testing, one of our main priorities throughout this has been to expand the availability of testing in the state of florida. You go back, i talked to people in february who said i had it the flu, i tested negative, but at that point, unless you had come from china, personally, you could not get tested. Part of that was because they didnt have enough supplies. We worked really hard to get as many supplies as possible, they have worked around the clock on that. Most of the supplies for the last few weeks have been sent to new york, initially to washington, now some other stuff. We have had to fight for our fair share, but we are now over 120,000 individuals tested, which i think is a huge amount. If you look at the improvement in the testing over the last two or three weeks, there has been a dramatic increase in the state of florida. We are now one of the top states for testing. We also have now, some of the s, when the added labs came out with the instant test, it will give you a result in five minutes. This is really a game changer for protecting people in nursing homes, protecting health care workers, conserving hospital space. They have sent that, they only have so many, and i talked with them directly, i spoke to the president. I said look, let us a buys some buy some of this. Fortunately, those machines are in florida now the number of a hospital systems. I was talking to some doctors yesterday, they just started using them. They did not send them to every Major Hospital system, so what were doing as we are working with some of the ones that have a number of these machines and seeing if they can ship them over so that pretty much every Major Hospital system has access to some type of rapid testing. If you are in a situation where someone shows up in a hospital, they are coughing with a fever, you test them and they are negative for coronavirus, you know theyve just got to go home and rest, most likely. When you have to wait 48 to 72 hours for a test result, those are people you got to keep in the hospital, most likely, you dont necessarily know whether they are positive or not. In terms of conserving hospital space, and then the health care workers, if you are exposed, you do the test and you figure out whether you have it or not, and this way youre not having to isolate half of the hospital staff because you will be able to get an answer on that. Hopefully the answer is negative. Ive spoken with some of these hospitals about how we have been working with acca and the hospitals and nursing homes. If you have a nursing home resident at one of these hospitals and there are test there are not test results available and the person is doing pretty good, a lot of time the hospital want to get them back to the nursing home. Obviously that could be a problem because if they are positive, they could spread it. So if you have this rapid test and you have someone in the insing home, they go negative, you know you can put them back and you can alsos contest some of the Staff Members also spot test some of the Staff Members. We are going to continue to try to expand that throughout the state of florida, and that is something that is really important. We are also having a call today with one of the companies that has the fdaapproved antibodies test. The antibodies test will test whether you have developed the antibodies that your system develops the antibodies to fight the coronavirus. If you are positive for the antibodies, that means you had the coronavirus. We are in a situation now where we test 120,000 people, we are really focusing those tests on people who have symptoms, not only 65 and above, but obviously that is the main area we are really trying to help people. I know they are doing research at stanford to try to figure out how prevalent are these antibodies throughout the population both here in the state of florida and elsewhere. And if it is really prevalent, that is really going to affect how we approach it. If it is not really prevalent, that would give us some insight into how this virus actually spreads. I think initially, the cdc said looked at, you are probably not going to spread it if you are not showing symptoms, that was initially the guidance they gave. Now, i think you see it with the revised guidance on wearing a face mask, if you are not symptomatic but infected, you very well might be able to spread it just like if you had symptoms. I think the view has shifted a little bit in that direction and the reason that is important obviously is because how many people have had mild or no symptoms but have had this thing . If you think about it, this thing was in china in november. I dont think it takes four months to get to the united states, we have flights every day, there were hundreds of thousands of people that came from china in december and january before the lights were shut off. Obviously, people from all over the world. I think it will be very beneficial to be able to do that. Also for hospital workers if somebody does have the antibodies, that obviously would give them potentially more freedom to be on the front lines in those situations. We have put in a big order, we are not sure when that would come, but obviously that could be a real positive development if we were able to do it. The final thing and im going to have our folks here offer some comments, in the state of florida right now, weve got about 44 availability in terms of hospital beds throughout the state of florida, miamidade is 43. 5 , and Broward County is 45. 26 . These are things that are monitored every day in terms of how those beds are being used and we had contingency plans in place. Some of it has been executed with the field hospitals. You will see some other things that will be done, but that is being monitored thereafter day. Finally, i would just tell the people of florida, youve thank you for all youre doing. You are seeing take seeing people take the social distancing to heart. I know our elderly, from the very beginning, because we knew that this was a virus that really had a disproportionate impact on the elderly, weve really made terrific strides to not only protect themselves, but their families. Just keep doing that. We are in this, but more people are doing that, the better off we are going to be on the other side. I want to thank everyone who has worked very, very hard over the last many weeks. We have more time ahead of us, but hopefully, we will get through it as best we can. But you do have my appreciation, i know a lot of appreciation from the state of florida. With that, let me give these folks the opportunity to offer what they are doing. Commissioner, will you just give a little color to what revenue is doing to be able to help in the capacity that you are able to bring to bear . A little bit of history. I have been a Public Employee for a long, long time. Been through every recession since 1970. The great recession. I know this may be hard to bear, but for me and my team in revenue, these are exciting times. We get to work early every morning, we work weekends, we worked nights. Only one challenges not the Child Support side, the property tax side on the general tax side, but leadership, if you just for the governor, it is exceptional. A microphone, thats bad. Its exceptional. When you get the all hands call, ive never seen that happen before since 1972 and ive been here a long time. You dont know how your staff is going to take that when you reach out and say those that are unemployed in the state of florida need help. We are uniquely situated in the department of revenue because the nature of Child Support has many of our employees on the Child Support side already working daily with the databases over at the department of Economic Opportunity. On the tax side, we administer the tax part of the Unemployment Compensation tax. We are securely networked. The entire Child Support program is logged into that computer system, as well as many of those on the general tax system. But when you reach out to say they need help, you dont know what kind of response you are going to get back. I know this is difficult to believe, they are really enthusiastic about helping out. I dont say that with any due difference to politics, they are excited about helping out. I was a little shocked when the staff came back and said we found 518 people that are trained professionally in the area that are in a secure network able to start logging on to that system very soon and want to get in and help as quickly as possible. I think its important to know that the part of the system, the department of revenue is going to be working in the final verification step, the final verification step before they do the calculations and mail out the checks. Its really technical. Its complicated. We have been working with deo for over a week so far. We had only eight people trained last friday to make sure we can make this connection work. It will work. We will be working over the next few days to make sure all 518 have secure logon and sign owns. Sign on. We are going to minimize training and use train the we only had eight peopletrainers to get as many people on board as we can. This is the final step before we start getting checks out. All the good work you heard the governor say on the computer system, getting it logged on and sending it automatically, we are dealing with the tough work at the end to make sure everybody gets a check. Public employees that deal with the Child Support side deal with these clients on an ongoing basis every day. People on the tax side know how important it is that the Unemployment Compensation checks ultimately make it to the citizens that need the money. So we are raring to go and we are very thankful for the leadership governor provides. Gov. Desantis thanks. Ken . Thankould like to Governor Desantis for taking extra efforts to ensure our agency cancer floridians during this can serve floridians during this pandemic. Also thank you to the secretary. You and your team have overwhelmingly given support during this important time. In just a few days, you have helped us increase our training capacity so we can bring on more resources in record time. Also, your team has helped us coordinate and implement Significant Technology advances that allow the system to respond in a matter of seconds. To give you a perspective on where we are, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity has seen an historic increase in flirty ands filing in floridians filing for unemployment assistance. Last year, our agency received a total of 326,000 applications for employment assistance. We received 520 thousand applications for reemployment and assistance. In less than a month, we received more applications than we did in a year. Because of the governors leadership, he has made it easier for people to receive reemployment assistance by iving work requirements. I have more than 200 deo employees working on this issue. As of today, and beginning tomorrow, we will have more than 500 individuals providing support for a process. This includes 280 individuals at contracted call centers. And folks from career sources across florida. By next week, there will be more than 1000 individuals. 750 contract call center employees, 500 department of avenue employees along with call from the governor. As the governor said, this is all hands on deck. As he directed my department, we created a paper application for floridians to fill out to assist with taking the pressure off the system. Which is now increasing the capacity. Paper applications can be downloaded at www. Floridajobs. Org covid 19. Beginning this week, career source locations will be providing paper applications and assisting floridians. Who have completed their applications for reemployment assistance. Going back to technology and the investment made by the governor deo has worked with dms to , enhance the capabilities of our online systems. This includes the servers. 72 servers have increased capacity. Last week we had 17,000 applications. As of last night, 68,000. 62,000. That shows increasing speed and our ability to help floridians. In closing, i thank the governor and both secretaries. I ask our floridians to utilize our assistance because our state is committed to working together to help our people to receive the funds they need to get through this crisis. Thank you. Gov. Desantis obviously, we have state money that will go out. What is the timeframe on the federal unemployment piece . Yes, sir. We are waiting on the federal government for an additional 600 on top of the state benefits for anyone who has lost their job by virtue of this crisis. We have received guidance this weekend and we are working on a system to tell people how to apply to get that money. Gov. Desantis what is the timeframe . Do they recognize this is urgent . They do, sir. They do. We have been in Constant Contact with the federal government. We are pushing harder to get the money quicker. Gov. Desantis it seems to me that the money is worth a lot more over the next few weeks then it will be two months from now. Hopefully they will be able to do that. John sutter, i want to thank you for getting your resources here and using this opportunity. And i will offer you this opportunity. Good morning. As i relayed earlier today, this has been my first year in public service. After spending 20 years in the private sector, i have never ever seen the personal commitment by state employees that i have over the past 72 hours and probably before. Folks are working 20 hours days to get these systems up and operational. I would like to thank the governor for his guidance as we work to diligently provide these important benefits. I would like to thank the scores of deo and des team members who have worked aroundtheclock to improve workflow and implement additional initiatives to care for fuller indians at this time of need. Thank you to our private sector partners for providing 24 hour response to Technical Resources and capacity in order to provide the level of service that floridians expect and deserve at this uncertain time. Thank you to the thousands of state employees who have registered to provide back up to deo staff at this time of unprecedented volume. All of us understand that those in need our neighbors, friends, and acquaintances who have been significantly affected by the economic challenges dealing with covid19. Our mission has been focused on two buckets. Number one, customer service. Number one, get the connect system up and running. Yesterday, the system processed 62,000 applications. As of 10 00 this morning, the system processed shy of 22,000 today alone. Number two, paper applications. At the governors urging, paper applications were posted to the deo website. On saturday, 13,000 paper applications were downloaded. On sunday, in excess of 6000 were processed. We have state employees standing by to process those probably. Finally, the call system. We are training hundreds of individuals to take calls and provide responses to those needing deo services and to process online applications. There are currently in excess 2500 state employees mobilizing for action with thousands ready to support those providing deo response. They care about their neighbors. And it is amazing to see the response provided for support and assistance. Our second bucket is to provide support to deo. With workflow and timing payments. We are reviewing and improving workflow so the state can ensure the benefit payments are expedited and mailed promptly. Without, i would like to thank the governor for his leadership. Gov. Desantis great. You are going to take the mask down and asked the question. The cdc allows up . The governor has time for just two questions. Governor desantis, i have this question for ken. It has to do why people gov. Desantis so heres i i, do whatever they can do to get it. If they have a way to do that, i think people do have privacy issues. That would be a concern. But if they can surmount that, i am totally good with whatever makes this an easy and seamless process for people, especially given the circumstances. What you would do now may not be something that would have been ok six months ago because it is just a different world we are living in. I have told them, be nimble. Dont get bogged down in bureaucracy. We are in a state of emergency. You have to be willing to think a little outside of the box. I think with what is art even what has already been done, i think you are seeing that, and hopefully we just keep doing it. The massive problems with the website, a lot of people are question. S can this state make the eligibility for Unemployment Benefits retroactive to when they lost their jobs . Not when their application was processed. Gov. Desantis i told them to look at that. Because it is through no fault of their own that they were trying to get on the system and the system is crashing, and then they get on the system, and the statistics i am hearing, i am happy with. I was told two weeks ago that online was the way to go. Obviously it wasnt ready. I like what im hearing about this. It seems like they are processing a lot of stuff. But you know, last week, you had a people who tried to get on, they would go through it, it would take forever to load. When i was in the navy, you would do all of these different things, and the amount of time that would be wasted with a bad system, if it times out, you have to start all over. Under the circumstances, it is terrible. But even normally, it frustrates people. I think through no fault of their own, i have told them if told ken if they have been frustrated from applying, and finally the system is better to apply, that should be something that is taken into consideration. It is not like they were just sitting on their hands not doing anything. Hopefully they will be able to do that. And then we have some other announcements that we are going to be making later today or first thing in the morning. We are doing better on some of the supplies that are coming in, particularly some of the treatment. If we can get the antibodies test, if we can sew that up, that will be a big deal. I have to get on with the vice president. These folks are here to answer questions. Do you stand by him . Announcer coming up shortly, ned lamont is has scheduled a response briefing expected to start in the next few months. 3 00 eastern time. We will take you there live when it starts here on cspan. We will have more coverage related to the coronavirus with louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards scheduled to speak at 4 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. Later, the White House Coronavirus task force with remarks expected from President Trump scheduled to start at 5 00 p. M. Eastern paired we will take you live to the white house when the briefing begins. Join us tonight for washington journal when author john berry will discuss his book the great influenza, the story of the deadliest pandemic in history. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the response to the virus in her state. That and your phone calls starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. In campaign 2020 news, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has announced he is suspending inperson voting for tomorrows primary elections in the state. We will continue to follow the story and bring you updates when available. Cspan has roundtheclock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic and it is all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors and state officials, track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps, watch ondemand any time, unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. Tonight on the communicators, from the annual state of the net conference, internet archive creator Brewster Kail talks about documenting the internet. We collect about 800 million pages every day. The total collection is about 800 billion urls. It is actually kind of huge. It turns out, that is only part of what we do. We also archive television, abc, nbc, cbs, fox. But also international television. If you go to tv. Archive. Org, you can search to find clips of what other people said and put those in blog posts. The idea is to make it so that people can compare and contrast think critically about what has happened on television. Announcer watch the communicators tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan two. Scott burris joins us from philadelphia, serving at temple universitys research. Some 300 andris, 11 million some 311 million
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