Public service and brought to Cable Television provider. Announcer 2 Florida Governor ron desantis held a briefing on the States Coronavirus pandemic. Joined by representatives from the community and state and local officials, the governor discussed testing in the state, the need for testing and adhering to medical protocols like Wearing Masks and social distancing. Gov. Desantis well good , afternoon. I want to thank everyone for being here. Blake Medical Center randy , curran, ceo of the Medical Center, and also my friend, bill, for being here. We also have representative will robinson, dr. Shari, Florida Division president. I want to thank him for being here. We have sherry, the Manatee County administer, and we have dr. Scott south, the doctor here at blake Medical Center. I think we will offer some interesting talks as well. From the beginning we wanted to do that. We are 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 entire pandemic, and they are 23 million people. We are definitely doing a lot of testing. Practicing social distancing, and supporting hospital and health care workers. A couple updates on some of the things we have been working on. Today, hospitals throughout florida will be getting additional shipments of the therapeutic remdesivir,. That has been something a lot of physicians have been using. We got positive responses for it. Of course that is a new therapeutic developed and given in emergency use authorization by fda. We are scheduled to get more later in the month. But there was a need to be able to expedite that. I worked with the Vice President and i worked with secretary azar to get that expedited so there would not be a treatment gap. Those will be arriving today, and that will be a lot of files, lot of vials and hopefully able to serve patients needs. We also have more than 1000 personnel, Contract Personnel who will be deployed around the state to offer support for Different Services that are being undertaken. Some of it will be longterm care in covid only facilities, some of them supporting normal medical operations. Some of it may be supporting testing. When we talk to people around state, particularly with the Hospital System, a lot of it is making sure there is enough personnel to do all of this. Covid is laborintensive. There are a lot of procedures in terms of isolation. Obviously they have a lot of personnel who are involved in testing people those who come , into the hospital and people who are participating in some of these drivethrough or walkup test sites. Personnel is significant. We are doing a lot of that to be able to help. 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. I think florida probably had more results in one day yesterday than probably the country did as a whole and the in the beginning of march. We had a 10 point a Positivity Rate 10. 8 Positivity Rate, in may. That went down, and we had a good stretch from kind of the end of april through june 13, where we were 5. 1 or under, sometimes we were at 3 in terms of the positivity. As the case has expanded, or as the testing expanded, the positivity was manageable. You have more cases. That was kind of what you would expect. You test 200,000 people at 3 rate, you will get more cases than if you test 100,000 people at that. And then i think as you see, you know when we started to see more wes, yes, we started have been testing more last three weeks by far than we had before, but you see that 614 to 620, positivity goes up to 9. 6 , next week in june, 12 , then 14. 8 , for the ast part of june, beginning of july. You look around the state, there mayareas where we think we be seeing declining positivity, and there are other areas that have been pretty consistently 20 range, like miamidade. Here in manatee they have been about 10 the last two days. A majority of their new cases have been under the age of 45. Sarasota is reporting 5. 2 of tests positive. Yesterday was 9. 5 . And i think i think some of the folks here will attest we may be seeing some seeing decline in this part of the tampa bay area. Some of the other areas, north, down in places like pascoe, you may be seeing more positivity. This is something we are looking very seriously. We will get test results. Complete a week 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. You know there is obviously going to be some prevalence, in the single digits, that is something that is 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 just go up and up. We have tested 2. 4 million people. That is one for every nine people in the state of florida. It will be interesting to see what other things have been tested at this level in our country, in modern times but this is something that something as a whole, the country has done 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 age groups that are producing significant fatalities. In fact is if you are under 55, you dont have significant comorbidities, the fertility rate fatality rate is incredibly low. 85 , those are where the bulk of the case fatalities are in terms of those who are positive cases. And a lot of that is Nursing Homes. I will talk about some of 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. But this is a pretty dramatic i think picture of showing how this virus operates and who tends to bear the brunt when they get infected. And the 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. I mean there have been positive tests for sure, but that has been a dramatic increase in terms of the number of positive cases in that age group. Far and away, they are the number one age cohort, 25 to 34yearolds. And if you look to see each individual age, how many there, we are still 21 and the number age that has the most cases. One 21, absent of significant comorbidity, is very likely to be asymptomatic or mild illness. So one of the things, when we look at these cases, and 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, eight days ago. There are all these companies. The report it. When the 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. So one of the things that you look at is ok, i can get a certain amount of test results reported today, next week, all kind of ways you can look at that, and there is all kind of ways data may not always come a coherentof fashion. When you look at e. D. Visits for people showing up to the e. D. 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 kind of what we have seen the last few weeks, throughout may, it was flat. Statewide we were under 500 visits per day. For a state of 21 million people, it is a small number. Influenzalike illness, 250 or below, pretty much for weeks and weeks. As we got into june it was still low. You see it inch up as we got into the third week of june, when we get into the 614, it goes up. We start to see more visits. The following week, it escalates more. At the end of june, it escalated to where we were seeing more than 2000 e. D. Visits per day. Going to the e. D. Doesnt mean you will be admitted to the hospital, but youre showing up and you are symptomatic, they are testing you. We have seen statewide this start to trend downward, but you know, you 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 e. D. Visits have skewed younger, kind of that 35yearold range, which obviously is a different kind of clinical cohort than 55 and up. Syndrome manic and looking to see, that is very disruptive in terms of what were doing or what is going on in the state of florida. So protecting the vulnerable, you see the fatalities skew 65 and really 75 when you think about it. So this is something that is a priority. Given that you see more prevalence of this in the Community Today than we did, you know, say in the middle of may, it is important for those in at risk groups to avoid crowds and minimize close contact with people they do not live with. Of course if you 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, a lot of crowded housing, 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. And then underlying conditions, obviously, if you are 65 and up, elevated risk. Really any age that has 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 who are under 65 or really under 50, the ones that have things like diabetes, morbid obesity, those are the ones that typically have a harder time with coronavirus. Just understand that and take whatever precautions you can. We talked before coming out here about longterm care facilities, which is really a really significant component of this, when, when we started this in march, we obviously knew the Nursing Homes were going to be ground zero because you have the most vulnerable population there. We did things like prohibiting visitors. You could have could not have visitors in Nursing Homes since the middle of march. That is tough for people, but 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. I think when that was done in other states, that really had negative consequences. And we felt that that was the better course of action. We required ppe, like n95 masks, we sent 10 Million Masks plus to longterm care facilities, face shields, gowns, gloves, all that. And so we required them to use the ppe, but we provided ppe because we understood that was important to minimize spread in those facilities. We also understood as we started to get into april that even with doing all those precautions, you would still have it get in with a staff member maybe not wearing the ppe right, maybe it was not it toective as we wanted be, so you would see cases. We sent the National Guard to do testing in Nursing Homes because we understood we needed to identify cases before they could spread like wildfire. And so we understood there was need for some of these folks, if you do test positive and you are a resident of a longterm care facility, you had to be isolated appropriately so you did not spread it to other residents. And some of these Nursing Homes, longterm care facilities, they are just not set up to do appropriate isolation. And so we said you need to transfer those folks. Now some of them was just sending them to hospitals, basically just boarding, because they are medically stable but we felt that was probably not the best use of hospital resources if we could help it. We have now established 13 covid dedicated nursing facilities in the state of florida. These are nursing facilities that all the patients are covid positive. If you have somebody who tests positive in a nursing home in Manatee County, you can send in the nellis or charlotte in pinelleas or charlotte we are working on a , couple more facilities. This way they can be isolated and not spread it into their home facilities. We started the panamerican or the miamidade care center last week. We think that is going to be filled probably within a couple days. We have a number in south florida, central florida, we are working, i know the tampa bay area. They have dealt with a lot of nursing home outbreaks, particularly in pinellas county. While this is good we want to , see if there is ways to expand that. This is an important tool to protect residents of longterm care facilities who are the most vulnerable, but also if someone is stable or asymptomatic, having a place where they can go where they will not infect other people and they can be cared for. I want to thank the secretary for working hard on that. And we talked about the new facilities and the additional beds that we are bringing on every day for this. Just to show why this is important, so here in Manatee County, they have had i think as of yesterday or this morning, 138 covid related deaths, 91 of them have been related to longterm care facilities. So that is 66 of the coronarelated fatalities linked to longterm facilities. That is not only just saying 65 and up, but 65 and up and then residents of these facilities. Sarasota county, close by, 100 fatalities, 65 of them were related to residents of longterm facilities. So again 65 . So this is really, really a significant part of this fight. Social distancing. We have a much better idea now than in march about what the virus likes and does not like. And you know closed spaces, and i think you are seeing a lot of this activity throughout the sunbelt, some people have said it is because when it is hot, people would rather be inside in enclosed airconditioned spaces. The point is, if you are in an area where you have a crowd of people in doors in a party or , something, their conditioning, it is going to be a better vector for transmission. There is just no doubt about it. Peoples homes, obviously most people get infected from family members or friends. And essentially in the airconditioning, that is something that will be a good vector. The outdoor transmission has not been as significant. That heat and humidity are generally your friend when it comes to this virus. Likeirus doesnt typically that, it would prefer to be in the enclosed environments. Big crowds obviously provide more risk and then the close contact setting, if you were to stay in close contact with people, you dont even need to cough or sneeze at this point. If you are talking repeatedly, youre there for a long time, really the social distancing is very, very significant. If you maintain appropriate social distancing, you are not going to probably affect anyone or get infected. A facial covering if you cant do that, thats a way that could mitigate some of the particles that you may cough or sneeze or talk with and could produce some of the transmission. So if you are not in the situation where you can avoid s or appropriately social distance, wearing a Face Covering will help you. Low risk versus high risk, which is per the welldocumented at this point. When we talked about flattening the curve back in march, the main reason was when they show the Hospital System could cope with whatever happens in terms of the effects of the coronavirus and in march, this was a very new virus and we kind of knew in january, in florida, we were testing people. Almost all of them were negative throughout february. We got her first case of the variant of february and we now know that it was much more widespread than we thought, we had detecting criteria that was very limited. But there was problems with ppe, problems with testing. Whereere in a situation we got a lot of test sites around the state of florida. The hospitals are all testing, private companies are testing, cvs. In march he was very difficult to figure out how to test. Now its a little easier, which is a good thing for people and of course, we have drivethrough sites, walk up sites. We got all kinds of different ways people contest. Federal government just did recites into ball county, 3000 tests per day. Kind of moving around the country doing different things, but that has been good. Antibodyve free testing at five of our drivethrough sites. Two in miami, the hard rock stadium, the one in jacksonville at the jaguar stadium. Orlando convention center, and then the West Palm Beach site, at a spring training complex. If you are somebody who is not symptomatic and think you may have gotten this, the Antibody Testing may be better because if you got a month ago, you will most likely because it are for the antibodies and then you will at least know that you have it. Could have been infected a month ago and still gone positive even though you would no longer be infectious. Take advantage of the antibody. Its not as easy because it is a blood draw and takes a bit more time, but you get the results in 15 minutes, and it is instructive because if you have the antibody, that is important to know. Situation is much improved and if we speak with hospitals every day, im not with anyone saying ppe is an issue anymore and they have spent a huge amount of ppe, particularly in the longterm care facilities around the state and that is very significant. Ramdesivir, we did not have any of that in march. The steroid, some of the doctors think that has been good. Convalescent plasma has gotten good reviews. Tools in the now toolbox for when somebody comes in, they can be treated for this. And hopefully improve their success. On,her issue we are t working the u. S. Is testing more on a daily basis than any country by far, and the Lab Resources are backed up. Some of these turnaround times that are supposed to be 48 hours, the big commercial labs are running three or four days behind that. Some of the supplies are starting to run low. Im working with the white house to try to get some more reagents hospitals, ive spoken to a number of them that are concerned about this. Part of the reason, we are testing a lot of Healthy People and those numbers add up very quickly, and i think the consequences that you seen some of the supplies dwindle across the country. Something we are really concerned about. Ive mentioned before, hopefully we will have an announcement at the beginning of the week, we are sensitive to getting these test results back as quickly as possible. When we did our contracts, they were guaranteeing a 48 hour turnaround. That is just not in the cards anywhere in the country for what were seeing. We do have some companies that have the ability to do selfswab tests and they can turn it around in 36 to 72 hours. Thats we are doing with our longterm care testing. Once we tested all the residents of longterm care facilities, we tested the staff, we said going forward, we need to just test the staff every two weeks because if they are as ymptomatic, it can spread and infect. We have an arrangement where we do these tests every two weeks. So far theyve sent in about 130,000 tests. Rate for8 positivity staff in longterm care facilities, which is a little surprising because they see other parts of the state, in some places youre at 15, 20 prevalence. 2. 8, quite frankly that was somewhat of a surprise because its a sign that we are be going to going in 190,000 test results every two weeks just from staff of longterm care facilities. This has been a good model. We want to be able to try to figure out how we can get people results back as quickly as possible. Were focusing not on symptomatically. Most of the people coming to test dont necessarily have symptoms, they kind of just want to know if they had it. If somebody has symptoms, we are going to work on dedicating some of the drivethrough lanes for those people and then having to some of theswabs, companies that may be able to turn it around a little bit quicker. That is something that would really make a difference. The thing about testing the asymptomatic people, you could spread it. And you can isolate. The problem is, you wont get your result act for seven days, so what are you supposed to do . Most people probably are not doing that. Theory, bute in just given the resources with what were seeing with commercial labs, and then the contact tracing. Inyou get a result back seven days, its going to be a lot harder to go back and contact who you are with two weeks ago. Its a lot different if you get a quick result and you can say two days ago i was here. The reagents are running down because of the total, massive amount of testing, and that is not just in florida, that is nationwide. I want to thank everyone for coming. We are going to pass around, make some comments, and we are going to have a little bit of a discussion and we will open it up to some questions. The floor is yours. Much, andou very welcome, we really appreciate you being here. Thank you for having us here at blake Medical Center this morning. I remember very clearly several months ago when we were in session and you called me and said we had our first recorded cases of covid19 here in the state of florida. And one of those is right here in the county. And so it began. And from there, we had to in a changing landscape, a challenging landscape, one that is very, very serious and changed the way of our lives and the way we conduct business. Id like to thank you for the way you handled this. Youve been very measured and very patient in terms of what weve done to respond. There was not a shoot from the. Ip mentality and because of that, i think we responded well. I would like to underscore the message that weve been sharing when you have been speaking with public, that when you analyze data, you have to analyze it all. You have to understand every aspect of it. Many tests are being taken, how does that compare percentagewise to the death rate for the hospitalization rate . Too often, what im hearing is just a single message. One message that is here is what has been tested. That doesnt really give the clear picture of how we are doing here in the city of florida which is frankly, better than most of the other states in the union. That same type of measured approach, it was a real pleasure working with you on the budget. As you recall, we got out of and said we should probably take ava more time, which we did. And then we monitored and we watched and we collected data and because of that, we were able to sustain the budget that can out of this last session with many, many programs that represent the creative goals and desires around the state of florida. And here we are now, very securely into our next fiscal year with that budget. Granted, you had to be more , butssive with your vetoes nonetheless, that same type of patient, measured approach the day and proved to be successful. We had our challenges, as you pointed out. They are within our nursing home but weve had tremendous leadership here. They have responded in a very professional, reasonable, and practical way. Our medical community, as well. In all of theart standard that you set for us in your executive orders, in terms of how we responded. We have been in pretty good shape here. The department of emergency toagement was very helpful the entire district in terms of making sure we had testing sites, the ppe, other types of supports that were necessary for us to continue and sustain ourselves through this crisis and pandemic and i feel confident that we will continue this and be able to handle it to it. K forward thent to congratulate county that we are in. Thank you, again, for what youve done in terms of managing this pandemic, and i know we are going to hear from medical experts here at blake, and i guess you want me to turn it over to our ceo here. Go ahead, absolutely. Governor, i appreciate you coming in today. I think if i was to say one itng about this problem, changes, sometimes hour to hour. Focus on protecting our workforce so we can ensure that they are supported throughout all this. We did that with four main focus areas. That has a couple of different pieces. All individuals in the facility, caregivers as well as medical staff and any visitors go through a screening process and wear masks. Ppe, the governor mentioned that. Weve been able to manage our ppe to practically ensure that our caregivers have perfect ppe. The second is access control. We have a screening process with our points of entry where everyone enters the facility , andgh a screening process we ensure that those individuals are masked and remain masked. And weve also limited our visitation. Inpatient visitation has been limited here. Limited to certain situations. That said, we are helping to ensure the Community Spread has not gotten to them. Distancing is third, we focus on social distancing just like everyone else does. Patients t those and finely, we want to ensure that our patients are moved throughout facility in the correct manner so that we can ensure that we are limiting potential exposures. Thank you, we appreciate the time. Grade. This is working . Is this working . Well, i want to start off by thanking the governor for being here today and thanking the president for being here as well. Patient ind with a florida, and i remember the monday after that, when the governor came down through tampa and had his first press conference, and i was so impressed with him at that time. And then today, hearing him speak about his understanding, i was so impressed and continue to be impressed. He knew what page to turn to right away, he knew what was going on. Thank you for that. I want to talk a little bit about our division, basically in florida, and talk about some things and reflect on the context in which the governor as well as spoke about. Coast of the west florida, treated last year over 1. 2 million patients. E have 50 hospital androus Physician Practices over 750 graduates of medical education in our program. So we are among the largest programs in the state for that. Lab as well. Ional we are part of a system within the state of florida with over 50 hospital. And there are a couple of things i think are really important. One i will reflect on what the governor said. In our system, weve had 4000 positive patients in her 50 hospital. Things, we see Different Reasons regions. The governor said we see different ranges of activity. We see the activity he talks he is helping us achieve. The other thing i would like to say that would give perspective of may the leadership hew, sends a message to everyone else that we are safe and by the way, we are open, also. If you have any other significant medical emergencies, we are treating those as well. The last thing i will end on with respect to hysteria is a most of very proud of our sister hospitals, competitors, i guess the right words in the usual time, that we pulled together in a very unique way in my opinion, a unique way to support our community. We share data every morning. I know how many patients there are in the sister systems. System has a unique report, 12 counties cannot everyday was seven sets of hospital. We are working together and in areas that we work together, clearly the governor is where those. Number one is the staffing and the support we need to ensure that we are able to on this rise in cases. The second area that is very close to us is nursing home and the ability to move patients too other areas and continue expand that and continue to work with him. Testingd area is around , the awareness and knowledge that weve got to have the reagents, weve got to make sure were getting these tests back in a kind of way that we can minimize the effects and length of stay. Then, i want to thank governor for coming here, thank him for his leadership and continue to work with him and his team to improve our ability to care for patients in the region. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, governor. E appreciate the opportunity about 411,000 people here in the now is our goal right about 12. 5 of the population tested, and obviously we are following then plan and it includes the ongoing testing. That ally happy to say lot of that does seem to be coming online. A greater understanding of what is happening here locally. Level, we are so proud of the relationship that we built both with our utilities such as the Medical Center and our work county commissioner earlier on we be relying on some of those testing areas and we had some local emergency funds in conjunction with and the Governors Office came through with the regional testing site. Facility. E walkin averaging about 3000 tests per , we feel that we have come online with some of the measures and one of the, other interesting things going on at a local level for us and and ire across the state, know the other county administrators would want me to get the managing care zach on out to the local government for balancing, bringing the economy back. We roll outhe 14th, so let meogram emphasize that in the early stages of that, it will focus on itizing, imitating innovating your facilities. Having staff having access to and also for their boys to come back. It has just been a very rewarding experience. I have to say that our emergency along with ourf Departmental Health negatives, theyve been fantastic and it has really been a group effort, so we want to thank you. They check in regularly with me in the county administrator and work with the board to try to make quick decisions. Thanks. Have blake Medical Center director of emergency management. Go ahead and take it away. , as weve one message that includesier,. Hings like masking the concern is that these were chest pains, strokes. It has gotten better, were seeing heart attacks and strokes. [indiscernible] i had zero doctors contract the virus. We are here for you, we are going to help. Thats all i can say. I think its a really Important Message and i appreciate that. The coronavirus emergency began in march, obviously there was a it, i discussion about think there was a sense of fear and a lot of those members of the public about what the virus meant to them. I think a lot of people were very apprehensive and consequently, you saw a real significant drop in things like heart and stroke. Those things dont just get , cdc looked at it. That people may be scared to come in to the hospital because they thought they could actually get infected with coronavirus, which is not going to happen. This is one of the safest places you can be, but they were fearful about. Again, thats not true. Moreas weve seen prevalent in the last three weeks, more traffic in the hospitals, the bulk of what they do is not coronavirus, they are doing the other stuff is so important. When you have those symptoms, you need to go in and get the medical care. Every hospital in florida will tell you, we want you to come in. We dont want to see that what happens now, i think it probably assess this, but ive spoken to other doctors and ceos of hospitals, tons of people who are in intensive care now, their condition worsened because they didnt go win when they needed to go in. You dont want to be in a situation where you are doing that. Do you agree with that . Is that what you guys are saying . Absolutely true. A lot of delays, certainly that is improving now. Right after the lockdown, there was a lot of folks with symptoms. Dont ignore your symptoms. Survey bytioned a region, you got sarasota where the prevalence seems to be a little more stable. And north of that which was quiet for a while. I think the governor said over the time we looking at a little more active south , there was a lot of activity. However, the last two weeks north of the bay, we see increased rates right now in the growth rates of the last seven days of 12, 13 . Another way we think about it is doubling is roughly about 12 days to double the number of cases. We are clearly watching that area. How are you doing on ppe compared to march . I know weve sent out a lot with emergency management, but it seems like those distribution increased. Mentioned, we have put in a very tight process around ppe management, so we manage it well. Along,resurgence is come certainly the allegations have been very helpful along the way. Again, we tighten their system over the last several weeks to ensure that we have inventory on hand. Instructing the longterm care facility that weve established both in terms of a step up from our longterm care. But also a step down, because a lot of these folks who are positive dont require hospitalization, they become stable, which is a good thing. You are utilizing that the transfer some of your positive but medically stable residence . Absolutely. As we talked about over lunch, we appreciate your help in any way we can. We have patients coming in, we need to make those improvements. Place is about 60 beds, we also have over 100 beds. We have a facility in charlotte county, but we would like to get another one in the tampa bay area. I know they are working with some folks to try to do that. How is the economy doing here . Obviously the beginning of march, things were chugging along really well. A lot obviously changed as that month when on. Are people getting back, what is it like in the area . You are exactly right. Back on. Like the rest of the state, we in thatt humming along and then ofcounty, course, we had to shut down and what was being experienced around the rest of the state. We are coming back with a stepbystep measured approach that we worked on, i appreciate the opportunity to work with you on that approach coming back. It helped us begin to rebuild little by little our county commission. I have to recognize their in making sure we maintain that balance between public safety, which of course, is paramount, but to understand the implications of not reporting the not opportunities that come online when they need to come online. Back, it isg a come slow but steady, and were going to stay on top of it and make sure were not taking steps that a failed to put us in position and frankly, governor, we are learning everyday about how to handle was pandemic and our economy still needs to move forward. Great. Could you talk a little bit more about the demographic, age breakdown . Youve mentioned some of the traffic you are seeing lately, the age breakdown, what are the symptoms of life, and within that, the folks who tend to have the most problems in terms of any comorbidities. At first, it seems this was affecting the elderly more, in Nursing Homes. Over the past month or so, between 30 to 45 years old. I would say that patients who have a challenge like this are patients who have diabetes. For the most part if youre. G and healthy, great. I want to thank everyone for coming, thank you for what you are doing here. I think you guys handled it very well. Obviously were not done with it here, but the trends seemed a little bit better here than some of the other parts of the state, we really appreciate that. To thank the folks who have been working hard, healthcare workers and First Responders who have really the basicd just doing things that the people have been talking about to protect themselves and to protect their families. And with that, lets take questions. You mentioned the day before worsening 100 contract nurses to the cap of a area. Could you talk about when they are going to arrive tampa bay area. Facilitiesd19only grew out of an understanding that it is hazardous to be covidpositive nursing residence back into a care facility or if it has all the and they affirmatively go in and test, to leave them there if you can appropriately isolate them. Norske bashed nursing facilities in florida that can isolate no problem. But if you cant do that, and leading a contagious patient there, a nursing home is probably one of the top places where you see rapid spread. We knew we needed to do something, so we told these facilities you got the transfer them to a place that makes sense. Now, their first thought was to send them to the hospital. Fortunately, a lot of these folks dont require that level of care. Many of them are actually a a symptomatic. The first one was in april in a lot of it, do we have the funds . We would like to expand more. Some of it is just a matter of making sure you have enough staff to do it, you have an operator. Theyve got to have the personnel to be able to do it. Its a good tool and especially when you look at the clinical consequences of this virus falling so heavily on the longterm care facilities. We have less than 200,000 longterm care residents in the state of florida and they represent over 50 of the fatalities. Then youve got 21. 5 million people, not even as many as just that one class of people. This really is something that is addressing the most risky element and i think its something thats very important. In terms of the contract employees, at the beginning of this, we rounded up the number of folks, because we didnt know what the eventualities would be. Remember in march, most of the people were thinking the problem was going to be the capacity of hospitals, that there were just not going to be enough heads. Beds. But we found out if theyve got beds, to bring out more beds, they just need to make sure they have enough folks to staff. You learn from things as you go through this. It was everyone recommending that hospitals dont do elective procedures. So we did that free time in florida. The fact was we were doing that to say the Healthcare System for being overburdened but what happened is a lot of people got laid off. The Health Care System contracted. We put the elective back in from the beginning of may, and i told the hospitals, you guys know how to manage this. To just do a heavyhanded thing doesnt make sense. What happens is people need to have enough personnel to be able to do some of these things. You look at some of the Hospital Systems, theyve got a lot of nurses doing testing sites. We could put more people at the testing sites. Its not as big of a problem , like,ut if you go to jackson, Hospital System in admissions,oncovid 30 of them are testing positive. You get in a car accident and you test positive, all these isolation procedures still have to take place. Even if youre not being treated. It,can potentially spread which requires more resources and more manpower that i think is less about beds, its just making sure that you have enough resources in terms of personnel. I know that there are some already on the ground. Lets go ahead and activate another 1000. Isiously, southern florida facing the most significant outbreak, the bay region. This is a place where weve already committed to do 100, and we will obviously do more. One, do you have any plans to reopen bars . Secondly, at least three of the members on the school board said that they do not believe education commissioner richard emergency order is something they can follow. They say that the school board and the school board alone should determine when the schools open. Can you comment on those things . Look. Obviously the local counties are instrumental in this, they are key, the School Boards native involved, the superintendent. Its got to be a collaborative effort. , what is in itis for the kids . Done bym is going to be continuing to keep them out of school of our distance learning, we think we are ahead of the curve. In a lot of states for calling the commissioner when this all started, they were asking to mimic some of the things florida was doing. That,h as we are proud of there is an achievement gap that has developed, theres no doubt about it. Not only be exacerbated. We know there are huge, huge not providing the availability of in person schooling for students. Fortunately,orona, is incredibly low. Statistics. Show under 18, much more likely to be obviously the fatality rate is much higher for seasonal influenza amongst under 18. And so we are fortunate. I said before, ive got young kids. They are not schoolaged, but i would have no problem, i would not be concerned with them being in school. Thinkher issue, and i people realize this in march when we went the distance learning, that they were less risk. But people say maybe the vectors in the communities, thats what happened with the influenza outbreak. They infect everybody, and that it spreads throughout the community. I think it has been found over and over again that people have looked at this and study this, particularly in europe, that schoolchildren are not vectors for this. For whatever reason, they usually get infected by the parents, they usually are not infecting adults. And places that have schools open have not seen the schools contribute to increasing the prevalence of the virus. But just from a student perspective, the risk is low. Obviously, the losses would be significant for them not doing it, but then you look at, ok, is that going to affect the community and there is just not a lot of evidence of them doing a lot of community transmission. Pretty clear in terms of the data and the facts. If people have other facts that they can show, im happy to look at it. Recommend, there was a great pamphlet put out in toronto where they are going through some of the things, talking about what it would look like. The point is the risk is smaller for kids, but the problems, on the other hand, of not allowing them back it would be significant. At the same time, if a parent doesnt feel comfortable, i believe in School Choice across the board. I respect that. I dont know that theres huge amounts of data to say you should keep a healthy kid out, what if thats how you feel. Obviously we have students who have some of the comorbidities implicated by this. That is something that is very significant. Folks are the local going to have to fashion things to look different here than it will in maybe broward. But i just think we should all recognize that there is significant cost of not afforded the opportunity for kids to have in person education. There was a shutdown, a national shutdown. Most businesses still operated. You had most of them across the state of war, you had things that operated every day. And i dont know, if you think theyre the most essential, to me, education is as high amongst them as i can fathom. Very, very important. But i think it needs to be collaborative, i think they should work together. [indiscernible] are the schools mandating to open in august . The answer is yes. The doe order cannot be ignored. Madeoints the governor about the decisionmaking and the safeguards are accomplished in that order. This is very comprehensive. A lot of time went into it. It also includes a collaboration with the department of health. When you say they have to open brickandmortar five days availability brickandmortar schools. Two weeks ago you were in tampa for a book signing and afterwards you responded outside the home of tom brady. Had you been with him while you were here . All i can say is im looking forward to the bucks season. I was a fan of tampa bay when they had the orange uniforms. You would go to the game if they were playing the bears, they would be more bears fans than bucks fans, and i enjoy when the coach rebuild the team. It has been frustrating, a little bit. Think if you got one guy that is going to light it up, it is going to be tom, and i look forward to watching him play. Y one u. S. Of the question why wont you answer the question . Look. All ofout a plan for not counties, some of the counties. Not south florida, for example, that they would be able to operate just like a restaurant, limited capacity seating. The problem is no one was following that. And i get thats not how they want to operate. Ir view was to try to say want as many people in business as can that will have low risk. But when we were getting reports packed partyg situations, that was not part of the guidelines. It got to the point where it was like black mold, or you have all that. I want them to be able to operate, but i want them to do it consistent with the stepbystep plan. We just were not able to get that done. Right now we are not making any changes, status quo. We want to get this Positivity Rate down, we want to continue to hopefully see declining covidlike illnesses. And then as we get to a more stable situation, then we will take a look at it. I dont blame them for this. A lot of people say that the only reason, but that is not true. In self florida, that has not even been happening, and may have the most. At the same time, we try to do these guidelines, we consulted with physicians, we consulted with different people, and we just felt that it is not like flipping a switch, it is going to take some time, but thats the plan. But if the plane was being followed, there was not a way we would be able to do it. Are you embarrassed to answer . During the summer months, reach out your elected officials with cspans congressional all theate, it contains Contact Information you need to stay in touch with members of congress, federal agencies and state governments. Order yours online at cspanstore. Org. The hill hosted a Virtual Health care summit thursday to talk about the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Speakeal