Florida Governor Ron DeSantis July 10 COVID-19 Press Conference Transcript

Ron DeSantis: (00:00)
Exciting day to be able to make a really neat announcement. I want to thank the legislators in attendance. We’ve got Senator Mayfield, Representatives La Rosa, Smith, Fine, and Josie Tomkow. Really great for you to be here. Last year from the same location on Florida’s turnpike, I announced the launch of Florida’s plan to utilize the 166 million we were allocated for the funds of the Volkswagen settlement for violating the Clean Air Act. And while the coronavirus pandemic has caused some delay, I am pleased to be able to announce today that after developing and submitting a plan to the trustees of the settlement funds, getting that plan approved, and then completing the planning and procurement process, we are now ready to award over $8.5 million in contracts to build 74 additional fast electric charging stations along Florida’s major highways and evacuation routes. The charging stations will span over 1200 miles along I-75, I-4, and I-95 and increase the presence of publicly available fast chargers in the state by approximately 50%. While it will vary by location after permitting, we expect the stations to be built within a matter of weeks.

This investment is in addition to the private investment for charging stations at every service plaza on Florida’s turnpike that I also announced last year. Those stations, while also delayed because of the pandemic, will largely be complete within the next 60 days. The result of all this work will mean electric car owners will not have to worry about where they will be able to charge their car when using our major highways, and this is important obviously for travel normally, but also critically for hurricane evacuation. And this comes as Floridians and Americans continue to purchase more and more electric vehicles. Electrical vehicle purchasing in Florida has increased tenfold in the last nine years and we expect that trend to continue.

The terms of the Volkswagen settlement limit the amount of funds that we can use on EV infrastructure to 15% of the total 166 million, so we can use it about 25 million. That means that this initial $8.5 million investment is one chunk, but we do have more money that we can use for EV infrastructure, and we’re really looking to do that. One of the things that we were really concerned about is making sure that the charging stations that would be on the interstate would be the fast charging stations. You go in, you plug, you go to a gas station or something inside the service store, get a drink, and you come out and the thing can be charged in a relatively short amount of time. Some of the longer charging stations would take sometimes 30 minutes or more. That may be more conducive for residential use or for if you’re within a neighborhood, normal stores. But when you’re traveling like this, we want to be able to get it done quickly, so these are all the fast charging stations.

Now, the remainder of the 166 million will largely be used on electric or alternative fuel school and transit buses and the replacement of other high emission vehicles. I really appreciate the private sector’s involvement in these plans and want to continue to partner with them going forward. Autonomous vehicles, electric vehicle infrastructure, and beyond, Florida will always embrace the intersection between transportation and technology, so we’re glad that this was something we were able to move forward.

I’m going to recognize our DP. If you look at the map here, that shows where the chargers are going to be going into. So you see, there’s obviously a lot in central Florida. 95, a lot, 75. And obviously as we get more into this, we’re going to expand across I-10 more into the panhandle. We tried to focus on the areas that had the most electrical vehicle use, and those tended to be southern Florida and central Florida, so we’re doing that. Obviously we want to continue to make that all the way through I-10, which we have the funds to do, and that’ll be next up. I think it’s really, really exciting. So I want to thank Noah for really working hard to push this through. We did have delays because of the pandemic, but we obviously want to continue to make sure we’re doing the folks’ business. Noah?

Noah Valenstein: (04:35)
Thank you, Governor. My name’s Noah Valenstein. I have the privilege of being the secretary for the Department of Environmental Protection here in the great state of Florida. Thank the governor for his leadership. It was just last week that we were celebrating major accomplishments that the governor pushed forward for legislation to protect our water here in Florida, and would like to thank two of the sponsors here today, with Senator Mayfield and Representative Fine who help champion those major pieces of legislation. Today’s all about air. Again, it’s another day and another step forward for the environment here in Florida. It’s exciting to see what we’ve done here in Florida under the governor’s leadership. Just this March, we met all national ambient air quality standards here in Florida. We are now the most populous state in the nation to meet all ambient air quality standards, so that was a great step forward.

Since 2000, we’ve actually seen a 78% drop in industrial emissions, and so really the next step about clean air here in Florida to continue our trend of having the cleanest air on record is putting in electrical vehicle charging stations throughout Florida, making sure we have a robust enough network that we can really take advantage of that, and then have that also play into clean air here in Florida. So it has been a great privilege under the governor’s leadership to partner with the Department of Transportation.

As the governor mentioned, this initial award just a little more than 8.5 million will move forward 74 electric charging stations. When combined with what the Department of Transportation is doing on the turnpike, that’ll be more than a hundred electric charging stations here in Florida. We look forward to this current budget year that just started July 1, the governor’s leadership, and thanks to the legislative support, we’ve got a record funding now for budget authorization for VW settlement. So we’re looking at $67 million this year to quickly move forward with the rest because as the governor certainly hinted at, money doesn’t do anyone any good sitting in a trust account. It needs to be out being put to use in our economy and making sure that we actually have electric charging stations to get going, and we are very excited to see that as a department. So Governor, thank you.

I mean, these Teslas, I’ve got a chance to ride in a couple of them. Really, really phenomenal vehicles. I got a number of updates about actions we’re doing to combat COVID-19. We’re in very close contact with all the major healthcare providers, particularly the hospitals. One of the good things about what they’re doing now, compared to where they were in March is we do have availability of some therapeutics, most notably remdesivir, which was an emergency approval. I think that was within the last couple months.

HHS had sent remdesivir to the Florida Department of Health. We distributed that to the hospitals. Hospitals believe, most of the physicians I talk to believe that it has been helpful, so they’re using it. They like it. They were scheduled to get another shipment, but no longer through the state. They were going to go straight to the hospitals. The problem is the timing of that was not good. Some of them were running low. So I went and spoke, requested through the vice president, through Secretary Azar that we get accelerated remdesivir to be brought down to the state of Florida, and I’m happy to report that on Saturday, our hospitals will be receiving-

… report that on Saturday, our hospitals will be receiving additional Remdesivir. We’ve got 427 additional cases coming. That’s 17,080 additional vials of Remdesivir. That’ll be something that hopefully will help to improve patient outcomes, particularly when the patient comes in early.

I think with all this stuff, it’s found that once a patient progresses, if they’re at the stage of mechanical ventilation Remdesivir is probably not going to be able to do much at that time. But if they come in immediately, early on in the onset of symptoms, this Remdesivir, the physicians I’ve spoken to have been very favorable with it. So we’re working hard to do that. We’re glad that we’re able to accelerate that. That’s really going to make a difference for a lot of patients.

Of course, another, this is actually a positive update, the longterm care facilities obviously is ground zero when you’re talking about COVID-19. We’ve had more fatalities over the age of 85 than we’ve had under the age of 65 in the state of Florida. Nationwide, I think at least 50%, if you counted it honestly, of the COVID related fatalities have been residents of longterm care facilities. That’s been probably the tip of our sphere in terms of protective efforts.

We had tested the residents and the staff April, May the beginning of June. Now that we went through that iteration, we instituted requirement of testing every two weeks. All staff members at longterm care facility have to test every two weeks. And that’s almost 200,000 people because we’ve got over 4,000 facilities in the state of Florida. So that’s a big deal. We have a process in place. We’ve got a company hat’s helping us do it. We now have about 70,000 test results back from the staff. We have 50,000 that are pending at the lab. And then we have many more that are being swabbed and sent in as we speak.

The positivity rate for the longterm care staff after 70,000 tests is 2.4%. And that’s very, very low generally, but obviously when you look in the communities, we’re seeing positivity in places like Dade County, 20%. Orange today was 10%. We’ll see these things, there’s signal noise. That was a good sign. Hopefully that continues. But to have the longterm care staff still testing low, because I think our fear is, when you have community transmission, that’s a reflection of the community. If you’re working at a longterm care, you could still be somebody but it’s doing it. I think having this in place is allowing us to catch it early, and so we’re looking forward to continue getting those results.

That was a big investment on the part of the state, but I think that that’s an investment that’s it’s very well served. We appreciate what’s happening there.

The testing overall is obviously very robust. We’ve got back today reported 95,000 test results in one day in the state of Florida. You go back at the beginning of the pandemic, our country initially wasn’t even doing 95,000 in a day. I think it probably took them sometime towards the middle or end of March to even be able to reach 1000,000. This is a robust level of testing. Positivity was down. We’ll see. You got to do this over four or five days to really know.

But the Orange County Convention Center site here has done about 64,000 tests during the course of the pandemic. That is the most tests of any single site anywhere in the state. And we actually had some sites that started earlier, because the outbreak was really most significant initially in South Florida, Broward, Dade. So the first site was in Broward, because that’s where most of the cases were occurring. Orange County. Obviously we did that relatively short order, but some of these sites have been operating longer and Orange County is number one. They’re putting through between 1500 and 2000 people a day on that test site. So it’s been very, very successful.

I mentioned yesterday, we’re continuing to work on figuring out ways to get a faster turnaround. The US is testing between 6-700,000 people a day now, in terms of the results coming back. That has really put a crush on all these labs. Every lab that said they can get you in 48 hours, it’s taking more than 96. If they say 72, it’s taking a week. And part of that is just they’re getting overwhelmed. They’re running lower on some of the reagents and some of the supplies.

We have some ways with self swabbing and certain labs that are dedicated to that to potentially improve the turnaround for at least some of the test takers. What we’re going to work on doing, we’ll do that at the Orange County Convention Center, is to have lanes for people who are actually symptomatic. Most of the people who are testing now are not necessarily symptomatic. If somebody is actually ill, they need to know whether that’s coronavirus or not as quickly as possible. So if we can dedicate that, they can go through, hopefully get it turned around in decent time, because what are you going to do, isolate for seven days while you’re waiting for test results? That’s not what we want to see. So we’re working on that. It’s important. But that will definitely focus on our symptomatic test takers.

We’re also supporting and monitoring. Our pillars have always been protect the vulnerable, expand testing, social distancing, and support our healthcare system, hospitals, and the capacity. We have COVID only nursing home units all across the state now. We’ve got 12 of them. We didn’t have that, nobody had that, in March. In fact, Florida is one of the only states that have gone this route even now.

Now Orange County really has done a good job. They’ve had relatively few cases in their longterm care facilities compared to some other parts of the state. But it’s very, very important to have those facilities. We’re expanding beds in those facilities. We had started with all told about 750 beds. We’re looking at ramping as many of those up as we can.

What happens in these nursing homes is you’ll have folks test positive, not all of them need hospitalization. In fact, fortunately, a lot of them don’t. But if they’re contagious, we need to move them to a safe environment so that it doesn’t spread further in the facility. Those COVID only nursing home units are very, very important.

We have had, at the Department of Emergency Management, a number of contracted healthcare workers, and some of them have been working these test sites the whole time. Others are just contracts that we can then execute. We are moving some of them to the longterm care COVID only to help expand beds, and we’re also helping with personnel at some of the areas that are most busy with hospitals, such as Jackson down in Miami-Dade, we’re also doing Tampa Bay. We’re going to end up having, in very short order, an additional thousand boots on the ground that could assist in a variety of ways. Testing, helping out different hospital systems, longterm care, you name it. That’s a real force multiplier.

When we’re talking to the hospitals, I’m talking to a lot of the CEOs all the time, and they have capacity. We’ve got the census today, I think between 10 and 12, 13,000, somewhere like that, beds are available even at a place like Jackson Memorial, which is in the center of where we’re seeing the most cases down in Miami-Dade. They’ve calibrated with how they’re doing electives and everything to have a nice cushion of beds. But it’s the staffing, because of how labor intensive it is when you’re doing the COVID isolation procedures. We’re sensitive to that. We obviously plan for that. And so we have it. But I think it’s an important message for folks throughout the state of…

So we have it but I think it’s an important message for folks throughout the state of Florida to just know hospitals have capacity. I mean there will be articles saying, “Oh my gosh, they’re at 90%.” Well that’s how hospitals normally run. I mean you don’t …

Running at 60% or 70 is not how they normally run or they’ll say, “Oh, there’s these counties that have no ICU beds.” Yeah, we have a lot of rural counties that don’t have any ICU beds at all. That’s just not how they operate. They send people to bigger systems. So we have a situation where you’ve got a lot of beds available, no major system or nobody that we have been seeing yet has even gone to like a surge level, and these are all contingencies that are there but the important message is if you have symptoms, aside from coronavirus, heart, stroke, we don’t want to repeat the situation that we saw across the country in March and April where people were deterred, whether it’s because of fear, whether it’s because they didn’t think there would be beds available, from seeking the type of care that they need, particularly for those conditions like heart, like stroke, which are some of the leading causes of death in the United States and what we’ve seen over the last month or so is a lot of those patients who did defer care are now presenting in the hospitals and ICUs with more severe heart problems or more severe problems because of stroke symptoms than had they gone in and gotten treated.

So please, if you feel like you need care, do not be dissuaded. Hospitals do all … That’s one of the safest places you can be in terms of the isolation with all the procedures they have in place and they have the capacity to be able to treat people and we want people to be able to get the care that they need.

We need to continue working on protecting the vulnerable, particularly those who are 65 and older, particularly those that have underlying medical conditions. Of course our longterm care facilities which we’re putting a lot of emphasis on, but if you’re in those at-risk groups and you’re not in a longterm care facility, our advisory is still to avoid crowds and limit close contact with people outside the home. That is going to be higher risk, particularly as you’ve seen more cases in the community. Now look, Orange County had 10% today, we’ll see if that trend, there’s some other counties that are down from where they peaked at with the percentages. These things take some time to do but regardless of that I think that this is something that’s very, very prudent.

Just know that this is out there and particularly what we’re finding is these multi-generational households in different parts of the state, particularly in some of the areas in Dade County where you’ve seen a lot of cases, you have somebody who may be asymptomatic, maybe younger. They maybe have a parent, a grandparent, inside that home, that’s going to be a very powerful vector of transmission of this virus and so be very cognizant about that if you’re in those at-risk groups. For the folks who may not be as at-risk, our message is is to avoid the three Cs, closed, poorly ventilated spaces, and here in Florida, as you see, I mean we’re out here, I’m sweating, most of you are probably sweating a little bit, it’s hot. I get it. People want to be in the AC, but if you’re having friends over, if you’re having a party, you’re doing something and you are in an enclosed environment, it is going to be increased risk of transmission in that vis-a-vis outdoor environment with sunshine, heat and humidity.

I think that’s abundantly clear. Where we’ve seen cases come from and you’re seeing it over and over again. If somebody ends up at the ED, what have you been doing? Friends, family, friends, family. Either getting a home or being with friends. That’s pretty much what we’re seeing overwhelming. Not entirely obviously there’s different other ways, but that’s overwhelming what we’re seeing. So those closed, poorly ventilated spaces increase risk. Big crowds obviously increase risk and then a lot of close, sustained contact when you’re inside that six foot radius, especially if you’re with someone for a long period of time. Fleeting contact, not really significant source of transmission but if you’re there 30 minutes or so, 15 minutes, [inaudible 00:20:17]. Now if you can’t do the proper social distancing, we’re recommending that you wear a facial covering, but just understand that’s in addition to doing social distance. The social distance, avoiding the three Cs, is the best way. If you don’t do that, if you’re in a close space, if you’re in a crowd, close contact, the facial covering is not going to stop all the droplets. It could reduce, but that physical distance really is significant as well so it’s a complement but not a substitute and I think if folks are doing those basic things, we’re going to continue to be able to hopefully see good trends that develop. Like I think Orange County has done a really good job from the beginning. Maybe too soon to say for sure, but I think you definitely noticed a slowdown in terms of some of the positivity and that’s a really, really good sign. With that, I’ll take some questions. Yes sir.

Speaker 1: (21:15)
Governor, quick question for you. Dr. Fauci has said that Florida may have skipped some steps in opening too quickly. What do you say to parents who are concerned about schools opening too quickly next month?

In terms of our reopening, so I sent mine to the task force. I spoke specifically with Dr. Birx, and if you look at, we did Phase I at the beginning of May. Our best test results were May and the first two weeks of June. We were 5% or under that whole time. This is a virus that has a five day incubation period so it wouldn’t take six weeks before you started seeing something if that were the cause. So there were no steps. We had very, very low prevalence and particularly in the 64 counties outside of Southern Florida and we did put Southern Florida on a different pathway so I think … There was really no justification to not move forward because of the low and that continued all through May, continued in the early part of June, and then we’ve now seen more cases and transmission at the exact same time that the rest of the Sun Belt is. Los Angeles, didn’t exactly open very soon there. They’re seeing it. Texas, Georgia, Arizona, South Carolina. So this is something that we’re dealing with. We’re in a better position to deal with it.

In terms of the schools, my view is is let’s look at what the accumulated data has shown us about how coronavirus affects different groups. I don’t think there’s anybody who can make an argument that this is especially risky for kids. For whatever reason, if you look at the H1N1, that was definitely more risky for kids than the COVID-19 and yet we didn’t do. So my view is is parents should have the ability to make the decisions they want and if they want to do the online stuff, that’s fine but just understand the cost of not giving kids an option to be able to have in-person instruction is enormous and I get there’s a lot of views in the community. What I would hope is it should not be a political issue. It should be based on the facts and if we see that this is very low risk and we see I think overwhelmingly in every study that the schoolkids are not vectors of transmission, well then we have to accept that and then figure out how you fashion policy around it but the places that have done this in other parts of the world have not seen major problems.

Look, you can always have an outbreak. We’ve said that from the beginning and you do what you can to put it out but in terms of the risk level to schoolkids is very low, the cost of not at least giving them the opportunity if their parents want to do it I think is very, very high and so it doesn’t mean that you don’t do things to create safe environments

It doesn’t mean that you don’t do things to create safe environments. And I certainly would recommend that folks, if you have somebody, school aged children that have real serious medical conditions, they obviously need to be protected and treated accordingly. And the same thing with people who may work in these things, but the cost of what we’ve already seen with the academic lag has been really, really significant. And this is from a state that has put more into online learning than probably any state in the country. We’re proud of it. A lot of states copied us. We think we did a good job mitigating some of it, but there’s no way that you can actually substitute that.

And then I also worry about kids just not being able to have the normal type of interactions that we’re used to. There’s social costs to that. Obviously activities that many of our kids like to participate in. I mean, I’d be really concerned about not letting our athletes compete. Look, kids particularly in high school. That’s one of the things that keeps them going in a good direction because they have the ability, they have mentorships by coaches, they’re working hard, they’re learning discipline. So there’s a whole host of factors. So let’s just follow the data and the actual science. Let’s take the politics out of it. Let’s take some of the emotion out of it. I mean, I’ve said before, my kids are three, two and a newborn, so they’re just too young to be in school now. But if they were seven, six and five, I’d have no problem. I view it as incredibly low risk as somebody who reviews this data for hours every day. I would be totally comfortable with that.

And I would be concerned at what they would be losing without that, so it’s a really significant thing. It also though doesn’t mean that every single school district in every part of the state is going to approach it the same way. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We have a diverse state. There’s going to be some places here, they’re going to be full throttle, we know that. And then there’s others that are going to be a little bit more cautious, that’s fine too. But I think the goal needs to be, let’s do what’s best for the kids and let’s make it happen.

Speaker 2: (26:08)
[crosstalk 00:26:08] Governor, tens of thousands of Floridians are unemployed and they can’t afford a test, so let alone rent next month. What would you say to them about this major announcement?

Well, that’s a separate issue from this announcement. I mean, this is an announcement about infrastructure, about modernizing Florida’s transportation system. But in terms of people that are unemployed, we had a nice increase in May. People didn’t think that was going to happen. We don’t know specifically for Florida yet for June, but the country’s numbers were good, so we anticipate seeing that. Hopefully some good numbers for Florida are there too. We are going to put people back to work. I mean, we’ve got to have society function. We know a lot about this virus. We know the at-risk groups, we know some of the things that can be done to be effective. But we’ve got to give people that ability to get back to work, to be able to provide food for their families.

Now, we have paid out over 9.5 billion in the various types of unemployment benefits, which is way more than this state has ever done, even over the last, I think, five years combined. That’s not obviously something that… Most people want to work. But that was something that has been put a lot of effort into, because we had a lot of problems. But we want to put people back to work and yes, look, I can’t afford a Tesla either. But it’s something that as these things become more affordable, more widely available, having that infrastructure there, I think will be really, really positive.

Speaker 3: (27:32)
[crosstalk 00:27:32] [inaudible 00:27:32] and unemployment tax increase next year. Do you anticipate that happening from lawyers or you think there’s a way to avoid that?

I hope we can avoid it. I mean, I think that this is a unique economic occurrence because it was basically a national shutdown that caused people to lose their jobs based on policy. And usually these things happen organically, there’s over leveraging or there’s this or there’s that. So I’m hoping that because it was artificially induced, we can get people back and, we won’t have that happen.

Speaker 4: (28:15)
[crosstalk 00:28:15] today. Are you considering-

Can you repeat?

Speaker 4: (28:18)
Sorry. 120 deaths reported yesterday, 93 today. Are you concerned there’s a lagging indicator of death numbers is catching up to the caseload?

Well, we obviously are working hard to minimize the morbidity and mortality associated with this virus. I mean, if you look at what we’ve done with our longterm care facilities, I think had we not done what we’ve done, you would have thousands of more fatalities in our longterm care facilities. Certainly, if we would have put the contagious patients back in there, it would have just been a disaster, like you’ve seen in some of these other states. So yes, we want to reduce as much as possible. Now when the deaths are reported, just understand this stuff, some of these go back to April, May. And so it’s not that it happened the day before, but yes, we want to reduce, limit as much as we can, reduce mortality and morbidity. I think if you look at the numbers, the 65, and the longterm care, that is overwhelmingly where we’re finding the most significant clinical outcomes, not only, but overwhelmingly.

And I think if you look at the cases which have just piled up under 45, I think we’ve got, I think in the last five or six weeks, I mean, we’ve probably had 120, 130,000 cases under 45. And if you look at the mortality rate for that, it is incredibly, incredibly low and probably close to zero for people that don’t have underlying conditions. So I’m concerned, obviously the cases are… It’s an indicator, but who is getting infected is the most significant indicator about how those trends will go. And so if we can continue to focus, protecting our longterm care, protecting our elderly, and obviously the messaging about limiting the crowds and the contact for those most at risk, that is going to make a very, very big difference. So I really though, appreciate what people have been doing across the state.

I mean, if you look at the folks who’ve been working in our hospitals, they were on alert March, April. Obviously we had, kind of a ripple come through and then we were very quiet, relatively quiet in May, and the beginning of June. Now we’ve seen it pick up. So folks are working really, really hard. And the state of Florida very much appreciates everything everyone’s doing, both in the health care field, also our Florida National Guard. I mean, they’ve been on this since the middle of March and they’ve been deployed, they’re doing all our testing sites, they’ve gone and tested the nursing homes. I mean, they’ve just done a bang up job and it’s been… When you have a flatter curve, which Florida has. I mean, if you look at kind of Northeast, they went boom, Florida, Texas, I mean, we’re just much flatter.

It means it goes on longer. And you said you wanted a flatter curve, but it’s drawn out over a longer period of time. There’s no question that has given our healthcare system a better chance at dealing with the clinical consequences of this. We have PPE, we have a lot of stuff that was tough at the beginning, but it does mean it goes on longer than if you had a boom or bust. So I’m very appreciative for all the hard work that people have put in on this really since probably the beginning of March, because we were seeing this in February and I know it’s been a lot. So thanks everybody, and I’m going to have an update soon, another update tomorrow about some more next steps. Thank you.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis July 10 COVID-19 Press Conference Transcript

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