For their handling of the coronavirus. Good afternoon. It is great to be back in jacksonville. I was at Dolphin Point this morning. A very great visit. Since i was in town, since we did this last friday, i figured we will do it again. I want to thank the mayor for doing being here and dr. Bonnie white, a pediatrician. Thanks, dr. White, for participating. I am pleased to announce effective immediately, florida will be lifting all restrictions on youth activities, including summer camp and athletics. We believe that this is makes sense based on the data and observed experience. We are not going to be instituting a lot of rules or really any rules. The department of health will put questions that people have questions, well have some q a and best practices. At the end of the day, we trust parents to make decisions in conjunctions with Community Leaders and coaches to be able to do these activities in a way that is safe. Our kids have been out of organized activities for a couple of months. We need to have a path to get it back. When you look at how the virus has a stec affected the state. Heres some interesting observeds, we have zero fatalities under the age of 25 throughout the entire course of the pandemic. More totalo observed fatalities from people aged 90 or above then total fundtech fatalities then those under the age of 65. Florida has had more covid then all theer 90 fatalities under 65 combined. And so we obviously understand it has an impact on the elderly. And fortunately we have not seen anyone under 25 die due to covid. Its also important to point out some of the things we have observed, when the pandemic started in the country moved into mitigation, the schools went to Distance Learning. There was some known about it. It was clear kids were less likely to suffer serious outcomes from this. It really was not known what role kids would play in terms of vectors of transmission. There was concern that was understandable that the kids are not going to suffer generally negative outcomes and maybe they could affect teachers and parents. So the Distance Learning was premised on that. It was basically using the influenza model. If you have an outbreak, the kids in schools, they meet together and intermingle. It can spread. They can be major vectors for community transmission. What we have seen is that is probably not how this coronavirus has ended up working out. Its important to point out kids are not immune from this. Some kids have been infected. Some kids have ended up critically ill. There have been some that have died. I think the data is clear that for whatever reason kids dont seem to get infected at the same rate some other adults get infected. I also think it is clear that kids are at much less risk for hospitalization than they would be during the typical flu season. The cdc put out an update the kids are much less likely to be hospitalized due to covid then at similar points in the influenza season. That is something to put in perspective for folks. If you look at the studies, a lot of countries in europe, the of iceland and switzerland, the netherlands. You look at sweden and australia has looked at this. Kids dont seem to be major vectors of transmission. Investigations, kids usually will get infected by adults. They did not find as many examples of kids infecting adults. Again, this is still a novel virus. You have these eddies. I think the evidence points in that direction. I would also note, we cap to daycare is open. The cdc recommended those be closed. I did not see a way you could close daycare is given we have so many healthcare workers that rely on it. We did not see any major problems with the day cares. Those are some of the data points, if you look at the experience in europe, if you look at the experience in the , it isstates, we can say kind of the picture we are looking at. So i think a lot of parents are going to be interested in being able to have their kids involved in activities. At the same time, this is the parents decision. If you dont feel comfortable, dont do it. That is fine. The parents are in the best places to make those decisions. We are progressing well as a state overall. We have recorded the last five days, if you look at the percentage of test positive in florida, may 17 was 3. 17 . 63 of all the tests came back positive. That is 99 negative. Ishink todays positivity Something Like 2. 8 . We are really getting a lot of negative results. The positive results tend to be in longterm care facilities. We are doing a big push to test their and imprisons and in some communities which are close living arrangements. There have been cases in immokalee and Martin County and some of those communities. That has been a consistent pattern we have been able to observe. As we entered phase one, the number of people hospitalized in the icu with covid has declined by 26 . The number ofed people on ventilators for covid has declined 34 . We appreciate those trends. Florida has received over 815,000 test results recorded to the state of florida throughout this time. A testament to the folks that have been working on that. Almost 27ve sent out Million Masks to hospitals and longterm care facilities. Almost 11 million gloves. 1. 7 million face shields. Shoe covers,ion goggles, coveralls. It has been the biggest Logistics Mission in the history of the state. It has been very worthwhile. Particularly with the Long Term Care facilities. We were with Vice President pence yesterday delivering ppe. We had been delivering it for a while now because we understood if you can limit the transmission and longterm care facilities, you have less people hospitalized, which is good. I instituted the quarantine of people coming from new york, we have screamed travelers by air and by car. This has left hot zones like the new york city area. If you look at the analysis, florida was the number one place where people fled to come to the state of florida. That quarantine deterred more from coming and then limited the spread once it got here. Inhink that was critical reducing the number of infections and the number of casualties. Will be good for folks over the summer. Theview at the state level, department of health will be putting out some general faq to think about. I really trust parents. I trust the physicians that work with the kids. I trust our local leaders and coaches and the people involved in these camps to really do things in a way that keeps people safe. That is a much better approach than having the State Government do 100 rules for tennis camp. Not of these things are sensible at all. With that, i am going to turn it over to the mayor and then i will turn it over to dr. White and then we will answer questions. Thanks, governor. Home of a golf course, skate park, and athletic league. Thank you for being back in jacksonville. Today isannouncement consistent with all of the announcements made as a relates to our city. The collaboration between the governor and his senior team, we herea state representative today, always advocating to my office for all the things we need to do to be safe and smart as we deal with this crisis. This is an important announcement as we move toward reopening. To echo a number of things the governor said, we have to deal with facts and data and how this spreads. The science they have on young people, mortality rates, etc. I have a number of parents reaching out to me and my office , stopping me in stores, ive got three kids of my own. 15 years old. Was getting ready to be in track. It would have been her second year. My oldest was going into spring football. The disruption of the schedule creates a mental strain and a disruption of routine. Its important that we let kids be kids. Again, parents and coaches and local leaders, use our best judgment to do it in a way that is safe and use data to let kids be kids. A reminder, the virus is still with us. With more testing you will see numbers go up. Hospitalizations. We cant live in a perpetual locked down. Weve got to be smart and get back to the economy functioning. Gov. Desantis thanks, mayor. My message is talk to your doctors. I thought, what would i do as a parent . Talk to her pediatrician. We asked dr. White if she would talk about what she sees with kids. Not only in terms of covid, some of the things that may be impacting our youth as a result of some of the mitigation and school closures. Dr. White, thank you for being willing to come. Dr. White i am a pediatrician at st. Vincent and ive cared for kids for over 30 years. This is a unique time for all of our lives. As we learn more about this virus, the guidance we get from the experts, the cdc, the health desantis, governor we are becoming more focused. Fortunately for florida, we have seen less disease than other states thanks to the great guidance we have gotten. As the state reopens, its imperative we dont forget the children. They have been home for three months with no social interaction. We dont see them at the Grocery Stores with their moms. We dont hear them playing outside in the neighborhood. If they are lucky, they get to see their classmates at a Virtual Conference or they might see them driving by with a parent as they are waving and singing happy birthday. Thank goodness weve got social media, but its important we get kids socializing again. They need to see their friends. They need to be active. They need to be able to laugh with their friends. And they need to explore and learn from all the talented teachers we have. Summer camps and sports camps open, they have to follow the strict precautions that have been recommended. The temperature checks, good handwashing, wearing masks, social distancing. Parental due diligence. If your child is sick, stay home. If you decide not to have your camp, its a summer important to get outside and play with the neighborhood kids. We are seeing lots of kids with anxiety issues and depression. I think thats because they have been isolating themselves. Obviously i am asking all parents to set an example and abide by the evidencebased advice we are getting from the experts to follow the professional, i mean the personal protection. If schools open, they need to follow these same precautions and possibly change as we learn more about this horrible virus. It is time for our kids to get back and it is time to allow kids to be kids. Thank you. Is andow you guys work hard not letting immunizations fall behind. That has not been the case statewide or nationwide. Can you talk about the importance of getting the immunizations and what type of if ah risks we could see lot of kids fall behind . Dr. White absolutely. Have decidedents not to come into the office. Kids are falling behind on vaccines which makes that herd immunity we are looking for to keep certain infections out, we are fearful we will see again. The academy of petri pediatrics is nervous measles is going to come back. They are having viruses in california that are similar to polio. Concerns. Huge you need to come in for your wellchild checkup. Kids need to be fully vaccinated. Mayor, what is the yearning how that there is for some activities. It has been tough. Kids have been at home. Distance learning. Taken out of a routine. The kids in high school had their season cut short. Seniors did not graduate. Is this something you think a lot of parents are going to be happy to have the opportunity to do . Absolutely. Constituentsfrom on things from baseball, ballet, football, track. You name it. The arts. And from people i know. There is a demand out there and a yearning to get kids into sports and activities and out of the house. Back in routines. And handheldion devices. I think this is a really important step for the health and wellbeing of our kids and families. Gov. Desantis great. [inaudible] will that be included in the dashboard as well so we can keep track of that . Gov. Desantis let me turn it over to dr. White. She has been looking at this. Dr. White we have not seen any cases. They are monitoring seven kids for possible symptoms. As of yesterday they had not had any cases. I have not heard that. Gov. Desantis just for parents to know, how common would this be . Very rare foris kids to have this. Extremely rare. Says it does not know how kids are getting this. Theres a lot of questions surrounding this. The underlying commonality is the kids have been exposed to covid19 or have had covid19. And usually symptoms are couple of weeks after. I dont think anybody knows unfortunately. It is still an evolving virus and infection. There have been things put out by cdc, i think it is something parents should consider. It is extremely rare. Theres other Health Organizations like the Cleveland Clinic that has seen a couple of cases. Not anything out of the ordinary. That was their view. People can take a look at that and make the decisions that are best for them. Is it statewide to the restrictions will be lifted . And will there be protocols in place . Will they require players to wear masks . Gov. Desantis we are lifting state restrictions. Locals can do as they see fit. To,akes more sense for them i mean i dont think different regions what approach at the same way. A lot of the individual activities, to say here is what you have to do and apply it to dave camp and tennis, apply to all these things, i dont know we would be able to. There will be things on the department of health website. A lot of frequently asked questions. Things to think about. I think it is a better approach to let people like them mayor work locally and figure out what makes the best sense. I just think i have seen other jurisdictions do 100 rules for how to pick up a tennis ball. You you do that and overcook it, you get less compliance. Because people throw up their hands. I think it is just, we trust parents to use common sense. We trust local officials. We trust to the doctors that work with the folks to fashion this in a way that is safe. As a parent, i would not want my kids involved in things now. If for some reason i did not think it was safe, obviously we would not do it. That is how we will do. It does not prevent if a county wants to do certain restrictions that they think makes sense, they are free to do that. I have heard from hundreds of people that say their unemployment claims are pending. You said 97 had been paid. Was that people with complete applications . How many claims are still pending . Gov. Desantis we have paid out about 2. 8 billion in the last 10 weeks. That is more than the state paid out in the previous five years combined. We are getting close to a million applicants. By the time the weekend is over, we will be over that. Millionally had one unemployed by the end of the month. So it has been a top priority to be able to do it. There have been some folks that had problems with the applications. We have worked with them to try to get that in good order. Also looking at what they are going to do in this next federal bill. One of the ideas, which would make sense, you had people that were laid off because of mitigation that could probably go back to work soon if the industry gets back out. They may not have the financial incentive. I think they should consider letting people take a lump sum. Give it to them and then let people go back to work so they get the lump sum and they can go back to work and make money that way. That could create a good incentive. I know that has been talked about in washington. I think it makes sense. Not everyone would need to exhaust the unemployment. But you remove the concerns about disincentive. I think they should consider that. I think workers would appreciate it. Yes, sir. 12. 9 percent unemployment. Your reaction to that . Are you bracing for more . Gov. Desantis obviously we knew it was going to be significant. It has been really difficult. I remember when the mitigation started getting the unemployment report, which we knew would change. It was 2. 8 two months ago in terms of the report. For this one, but we have to do and one reason why i wanted to do a stepbystep approach is if we can get people back to work and get some confidence back in the community. To see a lot of these jobs to be recovered. When you look at some of them, look at theme parks. Thats over 100,000 jobs. Universal has committed a plan to reopen. I am going to be real reviewing that. We met with disney. There is definitely a path to get those people back to work. That is what we have to do. That is why our plan is built on keeping people safe and making sure we are doing what it takes. O protect Nursing Homes an understanding this National Mitigation has come at a major cost. And weve got to work hard to get about going. I would love to see the economy bounce back as quickly as possible. Its not that simple. Theres confidence. , somef these businesses got loans from the state. Its still very difficult. Some businesses will not be able to open again. We will work on Small Business aid that may make a difference. It is a dramatic change. We have never seen a change this dramatic this quick in american history. My hope is states like florida and texas and others move forward and we can lead the way in recovery. I hope it has. You have to look at, i mean, i am not saying that will happen. I think we are in uncharted waters. We can do our best to provide a path back to work for people. That is really what we need to do. I think a lot of people are itching to get back into it. We had a meeting with the hospitality folks a couple of days ago. Clearly that is a breadandbutter thing for florida. Even the cdc came out and said things like pools, there is no real risk of transmission with the virus. We have different water parks. Obviously the beaches. Something people want to come to florida for. All that stuff seems like it is low risk. Obviously we remember the stuff that was thrown at jacksonville. You have not seen any outbreaks from that. So we do have a pathway back. Its not going to be easy. What i tried to do and was criticized for it was to have a lighter touch. Had i took some approaches that were more . Any and, i think those numbers would be worse. Way worse. We tried to mitigate that. Obviously when the National Shutdown was happening, that will affect florida. Fewer people will come down. We worked hard to mitigate it. I understood when you are these measures, it is not free. Very few people were talking about what could happen on the other hand. I was one of the few willing to do that. What is the plan . Gov. Desantis we monitor the numbers every day. We have seen pretty consistent that if you see anything out of a trickle, southeast florida has more. Anytime anything moves, it has been Long Term Care facility, which is not the worst thing. We are going in and testing people that are not even symptomatic. A numbering, theres of seniors that are not symptomatic. You would think they would be in the icu. That is not the case. We are identifying cases doing that. Cases in prisons. Weve had hundreds of prison cases. Anytime you see these rural counties, theres 50 cases, you can bet your Bottom Dollar its a prison. And then we have taken testing into areas that were underserved. So you will start to identify cases and it tends to drop off. The only time we have seen any type of increase has been with the data dumps. Got 400week ago we cases that were backlogged from miami. Positive from three weeks ago. Yesterday we got 55,000 test results. Most of those were miami, some of them from my lab. You look inside the data. Our Positivity Rate is very low. It go inued to see that direction. Even though we have expanded testing, you do not see as many cases as you did at the beginning of april. That is a good sign. There areso note, some states that did draconian policies. You see them, they have spikes. They have massive spikes, michigan, michigan is half of floridas size. Theyve got 5000 plus tallies. We have about 2100. Illinois, major spike. They have stringent policies. So i think the more moderate approach is more effective. It is also more effective at getting people back to work and getting society functioning. So we monitor it all the time. We have the ability to contact tracer and isolate when needed. Continuenk if you working with these longterm care facilities, that does seem to be where most of the ballgame is. From the beginning we have put emphasis on that. They are starting to talk about it. I still dont think they want to at the national level. We had a choice in florida with longterm care facilities knowing we were ground zero for this with our older population. Approach,a new york which is take a covid positive patient out of the hospital and force them into the nursing home . Youo you say actually cannot return a covid positive patient to the nursing home. When you send the covid positive patient back, it spreads in the nursing home, the most Vulnerable People in our society. Massive infection. Huge numbers of fatalities. In florida we capped it out of that and were able to reduce the number of infections and the fatalities in those facilities. Those are the types of things that really make a difference. We will continue along that way. Jacksonville, its not easy. Things have trended about as good be expected. Anytime you see cases, its connected with longterm care. That has been the number one priority. That is a discrete issue. That does not mean you cant have people going back to work. There were states that did significant clampdowns on the general population and put the Nursing Homes in jeopardy and they failed. Florida was more moderate but really focused on Nursing Homes and had more success. Florida has really done well. A lot of people said over a month ago how everything was going to be so bad. Never happened. No one talks about it. You come through and you do a driveby smear from outofstate and you move on. When it is clear you are wrong, theres never an opportunity or interest in correcting the record or showing you are wrong. You just go off and find the next community to smear. I dont forget what they did to the people of jacksonville and the things they said about them. I have been pointing out how wrong these people were from the very beginning. Because i knew the mayor was doing it right and i knew the people here were going about it the right way. Thanks, everybody. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] will be issuing guidelines for places of worship to reopen. Governor gavn newsom in california. Conflict and in words, not just those that lose their lives in the battlefield, it is those that lose their lives coming home and never left the battlefield. I want to express my deep respect and admiration on memorial day come also to veterans and those that have come back from the more contemporary wars overseas and to extend our heartfelt thank you and deep respect and acknowledgment to the challenges and
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