Good afternoon. It is great to be in Central Florida. The reason we are here today is because so many floridians have asked what else can i do to be helpful in the fight against covid19 . Obviously, folks have been faceently wearing coverings, looking out for senior citizens, and we want you to continue to do that, but there is another way that you can help, and that is for those who have been infected with covid19 and developed antibodies for the disease, to donate your blood. One blood here is really leading the charge on this. When we started this in march, there was not a lot of information about how to treat somebody that was infected with covid19 and required hospitalization, and there has been a lot of Different Things along the way that have been done. There have been a lot of great inroads that have been made. One of the treatments that many physicians around the state believe is very effective is the use of convalescent plasma, so this is blood that is donated from somebody who has cleared the covid19 disease. It has the antibodies. And then that is then used on a patient who is in the hospital, and what they find as well with some of the other treatments, the earlier you do it, the more effective it will be. If you wait until the end, then there is not much that ends up making a huge difference, so the state has had Antibody Testing for the general public at a number of our drivethrough testings for the last several weeks including here at the Orange CountyConvention Center. If you are somebody who thinks he may have been infected in the past, you can go. It is a blood draw, but you get a result in 15 minutes. We have also advised folks who are not experiencing any covert symptoms, most of the people that go to our drivethru sites do not have any symptoms. They think i am curious. Maybe i was exposed. And then they get a pcr diagnostic test and that is fine. That is available. But if you are in those situations, doing an Antibody Test may be a better option because if you had [people chanting] yelling] [indiscernible yelling] gov. Desantis and we will not be defunding the police. Dont worry about that. We will be supporting all men and women in law enforcement. What you have with the convalescent plasma is an ability to be able to help folks who are doing it. If you go into a drivethrough testing site and you want to do an Antibody Test, you will actually be able to see if you had a recent infection, if you get a certain type of antibodies, and then if you get the igg antibody, you will be in a situation where you know that you have cleared the illness probably for several weeks. So it is important to do. That opportunity is available not just at the Orange CountyConvention Center but also at the jacksonville drivethru tests i at the palm beach West Palm Beach site at the miami beach Convention Center and the Hard Rock Stadium in miamidade county, and what we have been seeing over the last couple weeks is we have been seeing an increase in prevalence of people who are testing positive for antibodies, so if you do test positive for antibodies, you will get the result right there. Consider giving blood so that you are able to be in a situation where you are helping patients. I think that is something that is very important. There is an increased demand from hospitals for convalescent plasma, and we want to be able to meet that need. One of the best things you can do if you are somebody who has recovered from covid19, is to donate blood. Your plasma will be able to be , andto help other patients the success has been promising. I think if you look at a hospitalized patient now, given treatment early, they are doing better than patients were doing in march and april when the pandemic really first hit, and also important to know, this is just one way that we are able to help folks who need treatment. The other thing that a lot of the physicians have asked for and have been using is the Prescription Drug remdesivir. This is something that has been controlled basically what the federal government initially sending it to the Health Department and then directly to hospitals, when hospitals started running low on it. They asked me for help and we were able to do that, and we were able to expedite a shipment two weeks ago and then we expedited another shipment that is arriving in hospitals today, which is important. Remdesivir is similar they use it in conjunction they use it with convalescent plasma. It is a regimen. If you do it early, physicians believe there has been a really good sense of support, so it is important to understand that we have really moved the ball on getting remdesivir into the hospital. Folks can get convalescent plasma and also have the opportunity to do that as wolpe. Also important to note that, you know, covid19, while it is obviously an important issue, theres a lot of other Health Issues out there. If you need health care, particularly for things like heart and stroke, what we dont want to see is people deferring that, going to hospitals where there is capacity. Those people in intensive care for things other than covid who did not seek attention when they needed to and their condition worsened, and now, it is a tougher fight, so if you are somebody out there who is experiencing those symptoms, do not shirk from going in to get the medical attention that you need, and statewide, you know, we have 25 of the hospital beds available statewide, and almost 20 of the icu beds are available. Here in Orange County, nearly 26 of adult hospital beds are available and nearly 22 of icu beds remain available, so the capacity there, the Covid Patients represent a larger percentage of the census than they did one month or 1. 5 months ago, but we have the capacity and the states help with some of the folks who are contract nurses and some of the other professional spirit i want to thank the folks for their support. Who area lot of folks working really hard on this to be able to help patients, to be able to generate better outcomes. This is a great way for members of the public to be able to do it, and remember, you do not have to have tested positive in a diagnostic test. There are people that have this with no symptoms. A month or two ago, maybe two or three month ago, you know, who will have antibodies that can be used for this. Even if you never tested positive before, if you think you may have been exposed, go get an Antibody Test and consider giving blood. With that, i want to let the folks come up and say a few things, and we will take some questions. Thank you, governor desantis. On behalf of the 2500 team members at one blood, i want to thank the governor for being here today and helping us raise awareness for the unprecedented need for convalescent plasma. Since the early days of the pandemic, we have been working closely with the governors office. And the Florida Department of health. , theronavirus cases surge need for convalescent plasma is reaching extraordinary levels. Experiencing a 500 increase in demand for hospital orders. People who have recovered from the coronavirus to donate their plasma. It is urgently needed. The surge in the number of people being diagnosed with coronavirus, coupled with the fact that hospitals are providing the convalescent plasma earlier in treatment. Which is driving demand to new heights. Its all hands on deck at one blood. As quickly as donations come in, we process, test, and distribute them, and get them out the door, because the demand is currently unprecedented. One blood is collecting convalescent plasma seven days a week, and we are processing and testing 24 hours a day. But it is a revolving door. As quickly as the plasma comes in, it goes back out because that is the importance of the need at this time. You must register at oneblood. Org to donate convalescent plasma. You cannot walk into a donor center and donate without registering first and qualifying pit once again, that is oneblood. Org. Plasma can be donated every 28 days. There is such a strong ongoing need for convalescent plasma. Please go to oneblood. Org if you qualify and make donation a habit. One blood was one of the first Blood Centers in the country to start collecting and distributing convalescent plasma. Once again, we are here to do our part to support the critically ill. We distributed thousands today to. I hope they never need convalescent plasma. We distributed thousands of units and there is no end in sight. Right now, i would like to introduce our chief medical director. Thank you very much. Thank you governor. We have quite a storm outside so i will try and talk as loud as i can. I would like to dress, from a medical point of view, tell you how important convalescent plasma is. This is a treatment that has been around actually for almost a century, but it is only recently it has only recently been approved as an experiment to therapy for covid19 and it is experimental. Yet still doing studies on it. We are still learning as we go. But the important thing to know is that people who have recovered from covid and are now healthy and have antibodies circulating can actually help save a life and improve an outcome for a person who is fighting the disease. In other words, the antibodies a covid19 convalescent plasma donor can boost the immune system of somebody very sick in the icu or even someone who has just had a massive exposure. We have been using it since the outbreak of the epidemic, and we are finding that we have very positive results from it. They are not published yet. The analyses are still being done, but we are encouraged by what we see. What we are really hoping to do now is use it earlier and use it more often then we had been, and we are encountering an extraordinary rapid increase in orders for this product now, as you have heard several times. We do not have a donor database, so we do not know where to find people who had covid19, and we need them to come forth voluntarily and register on our website at oneblood. Org in order to make themselves available to help save a person who is battling covid19. So please, if you know of anyone or you happen to be someone that had covid19 and you are now healthy, please go to oneblood. Org and register. The need right now is quite urgent. So thank you. Thank you, governor. Gov. Desantis thanks so much. We really appreciate all that one blood is doing. It is very important. This is a great way for floridians to be able to help their fellow floridians, and i think they are going to get a good response out of this. I know folks have been doing it. If you are going through our drivethru sites with an Antibody Test, you will get a result that day. Consider going immediately to donate blood because it can really help folks. Also, i want to just, before i take some questions, just make a couple comments on some of the upcoming events, particularly the school year. Our Guiding Principles have been, number one, that ultimately, parents need to be free to choose the best environment for their students, for their kids, and if that means they prefer Distance Learning because they are not comfortable with having kids in school, then that is their decision as a parent. If people want a hybrid, then they can offer a hybrid. Parents that believe kids need to be in school, we want to provide them an option to do that as wild. We see the problems that have already developed with not letting kids have access to the mentorship and in instruction. We do not want folks to fall behind, and we really want to focus on the best interests of our students and giving parents the maximum amount of choices to be able to make the best decision that they can. I would also say as we think about in person versus virtual, there are some really significant hurdles for certain classes of students when it comes to virtual learning. Students with unique abilities may just simply not be able to learn in a virtual environment at all. Some students, although the Florida Department of work to put out more laptops, but not all students have reliable access to the internet or a computer. Obviously, for some students, schools, the one place where they get access to healthy meals, it is also still the most common location where abuse and neglect are identified, and that is just because the folks in the schools are really looking out, and then obviously, the whole issue of child care will continue to be something particularly for our low income families, so choice is paramount. I know that some of the folks here in Central Florida have submitted plans. Some of the School Districts. I will say this. The trends at in Central Florida, brevard, positivity, seminole has gotten down, orange is trending well. Those are very good signs. You look at this indicator in terms of visits, those have declined, so i anticipate that to continue, and as we get into the school year, i think the numbers will be even lower because folks have been doing a really good job, so we are really looking forward to being able to give parents a choice, and i think that that is the most important thing that we can do, and with that, i will take some questions. [indiscernible] gov. Desantis no, it is a really important point. Who if a parent has a child may have underlying conditions, of course they should be able to offer virtual, and i think they want them to be in there with special accommodations, absolutely, School District need to make those accommodations, and the same with employees. This is something that has been in our guidelines from the very beginning regardless of employers. If you have a Business Owner here at the School District in the state has followed this too with our employees. If you have somebody that may have an Underlying Health issue, they absolutely need to be given the option. Maybe they take a sabbatical. But those folks who are higher risk, you need to have accommodations for it without question. I have not seen it but i think anybody who, if there is an adult or instructor who is concerned from a health perspective, i think accommodations need to be made, absolutely. If a teacher does not feel comfortable there, and they want to maybe do their job distance, if that is what comfortable, i think some may be have more chronic conditions. If they want to say, you know what, i think they should be given as much options as possible. Look, these are unique circumstances. Lets be flexible. Lets try to give parents the choices. Lets try to do whats best for kids, but then lets also recognize that although i do not think the School Children are the primary vectors of spread, you know, any employment situation, you have got to take precautions to make sure people are protected. [indiscernible] gov. Desantis first of all, i did not give any executive order. That was the department of education. They have a board and they do Different Things. My view is that we have got to Work Together and i want to work with all the School Districts. If you look at the epidemic throughout florida, it is more severe in some parts than others, and i think you should recognize that but i also think we just got to be guided by the evidence and the data and make sure we are putting the interest of kids first and give them what they deserve. [indiscernible] gov. Desantis which lab was that . [indiscernible] gov. Desantis ok. [indiscernible] gov. Desantis no, it is a great question. I think people we went into the spirit all the labs were promising when we went into phase one 48 hours. We figured it would be 72. What has happened is the country is testing more than anywhere else, so they have hundred 700,000 to 800,000 tests a day and labs have gotten back out. The Emergency Management, they are going through and making changes as they see fit. And we debuted on friday, Orange County was one of them, is most of the people that are testing now, and this is fine, but most of the people testing now do not have symptoms. Maybe they were exposed. Maybe they were a person who got it. Some of them were curious. 25 of them coming through our test sites are just curious. They dont know that they have been exposed. They want to do it. We do have people who have symptoms and you need to know whether you have it or not, and so, we started special lanes for symptomatic people. Orange county, jacksonville, broward, and miami. On friday,taken package sent. I believe the results will come to people today. We will check with Emergency Management to confirm that. Labs,work with specific we understand there is a certain class of testtakers who are symptomatic, who really need to know one way or the other whether they have it. That is the most important thing and it is also just a test of a symptomatically person which will be much more instructive. If it is positive, you have symptoms, you are infectious. If you have no symptoms and you test positive, that could be dead virus. The rna will be there for a a while. You may not even be infectious anymore so that is why this and the medic testtakers are really important. I think that is a good model. What we are going to do is see how much capacity can we build in that model, and if we can continue to build capacity there, then really, anyone that has a symptom, we would like them to be able to go. It gets sent out the same day. If we can get it back within 36 hours, that is a huge deal. [indiscernible] gov. Desantis yep. [indiscernible] gov. Desantis no, they should not recruit. When you do the percent positive for new cases, it is the total number of tests minus those who have previously tested positive, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. If you tested positive and youre trying to get out of quarantine and you have two negatives, those are not counted. If you test positive, those are not counted, because that is not telling us about anything with the spread so it is a more accurate barometer because we have had people who tested positive five times, six times, while they are in isolation, so that skews it. If you test negative twice, you have already had it. That is not necessarily meaning theres more negatives. That is how it should be done. They should not be counting it. I asked the department of health to follow up. I know it has been reported about some of the lab. Traditionally, they only report the positive. With covid, we instructed do the negatives. Most of them have done it but i think as it has been pointed out, there are some labs that submitted 100 positive and there are some labs doing that. Part of it is they want to get the positives out as quickly as possible so that people know and the negatives can get backlogged. Sometimes, they dump a bunch of negatives, but still, if you are actually going to use this as a metric, you have kind of got to get all the negatives as well. The other thing i have asked the Department Health to look at is there was a case here in Central Florida where somebody, i think they were in their 20s, and they were in a motorcycle accident, and that was counted as a coronavirus death and a lot of the people are like i was that possible how is that possible . You get hit by a car and then you are a true bidding it took coronavirus . You are attributing it to coronavirus . Testsc said anybody who positive, if they die, that is a death amongst cases. I think the public should know to say, ok, if somebody commits suicide, for example, and then they turn up positive, should not be attributed to the coronavirus . For the states reporting, they will keep doing it the cdcs way. I think the public should know how many of those types of fatalities there are because we have had families who have been a little frustrated that they had maybe an elderly relative who had a really chronic condition, was in hospice, and then got infected in hospice and that was being attributed to corona when they had alzheimers or some other things, so people have had questions about it. I think it just needs to be, ok, here is what the cdc is requiring. Here is what this means. And then here are may be some instances in which, clearly, it was somebody who died with rather than died because of. Obviously, most of these cases, you are dying because of. I am not diminishing that. There are some cases when you Start Talking about things like Car Accidents which i think people scratch their head and say why would that be something . The reason is because they are following cdc guidelines, and i think cdc was just like, well, instead of us parsing this and trying to figure out, why not just include it so maybe you can parse later . I think people see that and they get a little frustrated and they wonder, come on, that is not really what should be there. So [indiscernible] gov. Desantis they want a test site which was symptomatic. Well, we are doing it here in orlando. Jacksonville, whatever. I think, assuming we get the test results back in good order, this may be a model that we expand, and maybe what we can do is have them dedicated just for symptomatically with your symptomatically you know what will happen is you will get through much quicker because instead of having this Orange CountyConvention Center, they have had up to 2000 in a day, certainly 1800. It has gone down a little bit. Our test sites have gone down a little bit which is somewhat of a good find because it may mean that we are turning a corner here but i think it would be something that i would support if we could figure out, ok, which sites will be for symptomatically and obviously, we do want to have access for other folks as well, like in miami. They have a lot of test sites down there. Maybe dedicate one for symptomatically may be dedicate one in Orange County and get quicker results. I think a lot of people would like that. One more question. Yes, sir. [indiscernible] gov. Desantis i have asked them to look at that because i heard it, too. If people that have told you that are willing to provide their name, we are interested in investigating this because it is ridiculous. You know, some people sign up and then for whatever reason, they do not go through with the test and then say you tested positive when you are not even swamped. I know every time a test is run, theres a lot of money that goes through these labs. It is 100 a test. For that to come out positive when theres no specimens submitted is problematic. I have heard it enough to be concerned about it and i would just say to the public, you know, if you are somebody that this has happened to you and you are willing to come forward and give us the details, i think that that needs to be corrected. I mean, if somebody is getting a test result without being swamped, what is that saying about some of the other stuff that is going on . I also want to know which labs is that happening at . If theres one or two that it is, it is a big problem. Donate yourerybody, plasma. Its very important. You can make a difference in Peoples Health and in their lives. Thank you. Cspans washington journal, every day, we are taking your calls on the air on the news of the day, and we discussed policy issues that impact you. ,oming up Tuesday MorningAmerican Federation of teachers president , randi weingarten, discusses the unions position in the debate overview opening schools amid the coronavirus pandemic. And American Conservative Union chair will be on to talk about campaign 2020. And president trumps reelection strategy. Watch cspans washington journal, at 7 00 eastern, Tuesday Morning, and be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, and text and tweets. Join the discussion. Tuesday on the cspan networks, the house continues work on the fiscal year 2021 defense programs and policies bill at 9 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. At 9 30 a. M. On cspan2, the maryland governor, along with the former fda commissioner discussed marilyns coronavirus pandemic response. The Senate Returns at 10 00 a. M. To work on their version of the defense programs and policies bill. At 10 00 a. M. On cspan3, a house subcommittee looks into the development of a covid19 vaccine. Witnesses include former cdc director dr. Julie, representing and representatives from several pharmaceutical companies. At 1 45 p. M. , joe biden talks about the coronavirus pandemic and economic recovery, speaking from new castle, delaware. At two 30 p. M. , a Senate Commerce subcommittee investigates covid19 scams. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app, and be part of the National Conversation three cspans daily washington journal program, or through our social media feeds. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies as a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. Up next, it is question on Voting Rights. The National Constitution center held an event on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote and the 1955 Voting Rights act. They talked about the contributions of congressman john lewis and access to voting during the coronavirus pandemic. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the National Constitution center, and to todays version of americas town hall. I am jeffrey rosen, the president of this wonderful institution. As folks who have joined us bere