Governor hogan, thank you for joining us. How is your state doing . Weve had one of our biggest tolls in the number of people getting the virus and weve had some pretty difficult situations but like the rest of the country, we are come to deal with the best we can. President said earlier today we are in for a painful two weeks ahead. You are talking to the experts. How painful . I think it is going to be pretty painful, and we believe here in the maryland, d, and virginia area, maybe about two weeks behind new york and we think we are going to see some pretty dramatic escalating numbers in our region, and we are dealing with the same kinds of issues everyone around the country is faced with with looking at hospital surges and the lack of availability of ventilators and personal protective equipment and masks, testing. We are working around tk with a dedicated team of incredible we are working around the clock with a dedicated team of incredible people that are trying their best to save as may lives as they possibly can and keep people from getting sick. Steve there was a story in the Baltimore Sun that at least one pastor is going to continue to hold Services Despite the order you put in place this week in maryland. What do you tell that pastor and others who defy the order, the stayathome order . T i haventt report, but we will make sure that does not happen, because it is against the law for them to hold any kind of a gathering over 10 people, and we will make sure the state or local Law Enforcement will shut that down. Host we also heard from governor andrew cuomo, indicating the states are competing against each other in terms of getting these ventilators, and now fema is getting involved. Have you had that problem in maryland . Guest it is sort of an issue not just with the ventilators but with all of the things, from the white house and the folks at the federal level, theyve been saying the governors are on their own and they should go out and secure these things on the open market. Which weve all been trying to do. But governors are all out there trying to compete for a very small number of these various have the and so now we federal government and each of the states and other countries trying to compete for what is basically not enough of all of these various things that everybody desperately needs. I think we are having discussions with all of the nations, governors and the federal government about how to set up a better system and improve that. Weve got to figure out how to best allocate some of these limited resources, and this overwhelming demand. The bottom line is there just are not enough to go around for what everybody desperately needs. Weve got to figure out the best way to fix a really bad situation. Host how would you fix that after the pandemic is over . Guest i think in the future, weve got to be better prepared both at the federal and state individualour Hospital Systems and hospital levels. I dont want to monday morning quarterback and take a look at what went wrong 10 years ago or last year or last month or last week, i just want to focus right now on what we can all do ether to do the best while best job we can for today and next week into two weeks from now, so we can make sure we dont lose so many folks in america. After this is over with, weve got to look at what happens when this thing comes back again in the fall, or when we have another pandemic. We cant be caught flatfooted like this again, it cannot happen in america. Host a nursing home in mount airy, maryland had multiple cases, i believe more than 60. What happened . Why so many . Guest it is a tragic situation. One of the most difficult things we have been dealing with, and it is very similar to the situation in the state of washington, and which has just repeated itself in the past day or so in georgia and tennessee, and minnesota and another of other places. We actually shut down access to all of the Nursing Homes and assisted living so they could not have visitors, but one of the health care workers, who are being screened and tested and checked to make sure they dont have temperatures, one of them somehow, who was asymptomatic, came into the facility and brought the virus in and infected the population. It went like wildfire and we now have a situation where nearly 70 of these patients have tested positive, and a whole number of staff persons. We have a number of deaths already in the facility and a number of people, nearly half of the patients have been hospitalized. It is a tragic situation. We have had to send in the National Guard and Health Department officials, and a team of folks just trying to get a handle on this. , as tragictunately as it is, its not an unusual situation. It is happening in other places around the country. Host i want your reaction to what the president said yesterday at the White House Briefing on the issue of testing and get your response. President trump we reach a historic milestone in our war against the coronavirus. Over one million americans have now been tested, more than any other country by far, not even close, and tested accurately. Host based on what the president said yesterday, is the testing problem fixed in this country . Guest no, it is not fixed by any stretch of the imagination. Look, we have made progress, the , theal government Coronavirus Task force, the team there are a lot of great folks that have been working around the clock. The Vice President s leadership, bthony fauci, ambassador irx. Labs have been stepping up but we cant get these things out fast enough. There is a lag time. While we have made dramatic improvements in the past few weeks, we have not done enough testing. No state in america has enough testing, and it is a big part of the problem. But we are making improvements. Its just not fast enough. I want to give credit where it belongs, the states, private sector and federal government have made dramatic improvements over last week in the week before, but we still have a long way to go. Host you are the chair of the National Governors association, and maryland, new york, ohio, pennsylvania, the number of states with blanket stayathome orders. Other states have a different approach, most notably in florida, were only some south florida counties are included in the order. What does that mean for the spread of the virus and what are you hearing from other governors . Guest right now, about 80 of the people in america are under a stayathome order. Obviously the federal government has decided not to take those actions and left it up to the individual governors. Certain governors have made different decisions than other governors. Somenk we just heard discussions from the federal level where they were saying if we dont take these actions, we will see a dramatic spike. These kinds of things could make the difference between 100000 and 200,000 deaths at the low level to up to 2 Million Deaths if we dont take the action. Our state and many others are the side of doing as much as as we can. But i will let the governor of florida speak for why he hasnt taken those actions. We are certainly about as aggressive as anybody in the country and we think it will be important to take those steps. Host Governor Hogan from the statehouse in annapolis, maryland, when you see the numbers, up to 200,000 potential deaths in the country, how do you wrap your head around Something Like that . Guest it is really hard to fathom. It is impossible to wrap your head around it. Even on the lowest end, if we do everything these are the federal leaders, the smartest guys in the room, they are saying if we do everything perfectly right, the best we can hope for is 100,000 deaths. That is more people than all the americans we lost in the vietnam war and the korean war added together. We are talking about that over a short period of time. It boggles the mind. But if you look at what has happened in places around the world, you look at what happened in china and italy, you look at what is happening in new york, it is just hard to wrap your arms around it. It also tells you why we have to take some of these drastic actions that would have been unimaginable a week or two ago. Every single day for the past 25 days, we have taken unprecedented and aggressive actions we never would have imagined last month or last year. But they had to be done. We will continue to do whatever we think is necessary to keep our citizens safe. Host when did you first realize how serious this virus was going to get . Guest it was an evolving process. We started talking about this in our state back in early january. By the end of january, our Emergency Management teams were strategizing about it and meeting about it. I brought in a team at the beginning of february as the chairman of the National Governors association, we brought an dr. Fauci and another and a number of other leaders who gave a presentation. We had the winter meeting of the nga in washington. They gave some frank talk. This was quite a while before a lot of people were focused on it. I came back the day after that and we wrapped things up dramatically. One of the first governors i think i was one of the first governors in america to declare a state of emergency, the second person to close all of the schools in the state. Institutedhave now 26 or 27 executive orders. Each one was taking more and more action, things like shutting down all but essential businesses, now stayathome directives and things that would have nobody would have imagined we would be thinking about taking. But we had to do it because as we talked to the experts, the doctors, we have a Coronavirus Response team here in maryland made up of the smartest epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins and the university of maryland medical system and medstar health, all of these guys ive been listening to, doctors and scientists telling us staggering numbers about the crush on our Hospital System and the inability to handle it, and the numbers that could be possible, the people we can lose in our state, the deaths and the people that could be safe if we did not take these actions. We felt we had to do it. It has been involving for months. Evolving for months. Host final question, what keeps you up at night . Guest keeping up a lot at night and there are some neat things we are worried about, but probably the scariest thing, or the lack of resources in the hospitals, this surge everyone talks about, if we dont flatten this curve, and too many people get sick at the same time we dont have enough ventilators, we dont have enough personnel in our hospitals, another icu beds and Emergency Rooms to handle that, that is the scariest part. There are a lot of things that keep you up at night, but that is the one that we really have to get a handle on and thats what you are seeing in new york city right now, trying to stop maryland and the washington region from being like new york city, that keeps me up awake at night. Host capital in annapolis. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, philip rascher discusses the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on u. S. Agriculture and supply chains. Americanmergency medical Doctor College of Emergency Physicians talks about the latest in the u. S. Response to the virus. On how operators of the power grid are responding to the pandemic. Watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Abbotts governor greg briefed reporters in austin on his estates response to the coronavirus pandemic. A announced the extension of social distancing order through april 30, but stressed this is not a stayathome order shelterinplace order. The