Governor Gretchen Whitmer Michigan Coronavirus Briefing Transcript March 26

Governor Gretchen Whitmer: (00:00)
-Chief Medical Executive. As of today, as of actually 2:00 yesterday, we have 2,295 cases of COVID-19 in Michigan. Just over two weeks ago we had zero. This crisis is ramping up exponentially as you can see in this graph. As of Tuesday, Wayne County had the seventh highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States. Michigan is currently ranked fifth in the nation with confirmed cases of COVID-19. This is a novel virus. It is incredibly contagious and deadly. There is no cure and there is no vaccine and we have too few tests and masks and gloves and swabs and gowns for our medical providers. The only tool we have to fight this and to support our healthcare system is to stay home. When we do, we save lives. That is how we will start to slow the spread of COVID-19. That’s how we shorten the time that we will be fighting this crisis. Stopping the spread is really the only tool we have right now to keep our communities safe. That’s why I signed the “Stay Home, Stay Safe” executive order on Monday to close noncritical businesses and to keep Michiganders in their homes where they are safest.

Of course there are a few exceptions, but it’s important that people know this order is not optional. It is not a recommendation and it doesn’t mean inviting 10 of your closest friends over for dinner or hosting a party at your house. It means staying home with the people with whom you live. It means when you do need to run to the grocery store or the pharmacy, that you observe the six foot distance between others so that you keep yourself safe and everyone else. We must all be smart for our families, for our neighbors, and for ourselves. If we don’t all do our part, more people are going to get sick and more people are going to die and this will go on longer than it needs to.

The stay-home order is an aggressive measure to keep the most people we can safe in Michigan. It is the most aggressive of any state in the country and it will save lives, but it depends on you doing your part. Now I’m continuing to do everything in my power to help Michiganders through this. This is a tough time. I get it. This week I’ve signed a number of executive orders. Executive order, the 22nd, 2020-22 extends the deadline to complete the canvas of the March 10th primary to April 24th. Executive order 2020-23 temporarily allows administrative hearings to be held by video or phone and temporarily allows e-signatures in place of written signatures on relative documents.

Executive order 2020-24 clarifies how the expansion of eligibility for unemployment benefits during COVID-19 will work. Executive order 2020-25 allows pharmacists to dispense emergency refills or prescription drugs for up to 60 days’ worth of supply for patients and requires insurers to cover them during COVID-19 pandemic.

And today I sent a request to the President for a major disaster declaration. If granted in full, among other things, this will help us provide meals to families who need them. It would help us provide rental assistance and temporary housing to families, help us provide counseling and therapy for our residents whose mental health is affected by COVID-19, whether they or a loved one gets sick or hospitalized. It would also provide much needed additional capacity in our state in the event we need to quickly set up field hospitals or other facilities. I’m hopeful that the President will grant my request for a major disaster declaration in full and within a matter of days so we can provide more services to Michiganders who need them.

And I’m working to secure medical supplies and personal protective equipment for our state. The Federal Government has told governors across the country that they were not prepared and able to meet our needs and so we need to work to procure items. To put a finer point on that, we’ve gotten a shipment from the Federal Government’s strategic national stockpile. The allotment of PPE, the personal protection equipment allocated for one of our hospitals was not enough to cover a full shift, not even a full day, but wasn’t enough to cover a full shift. This is how serious the situation is. This one hospital got 747 N95 masks, 204 gowns, 40,467 gloves and 64 face shields. With the exception of the gloves, that allotment of PPE didn’t cover one shift.

And as jarring as the message is that we got from the White House, we took it seriously and have been working 24/7 to procure items. So far we have secured 13 million N95 masks, 226,000 surgical masks, 35,000 hospital gowns, more than 4 million gloves, nearly 100,000 face shields, 250 beds and thousands of gallons of hand sanitizer. We’ve done this by making deals with companies outside of Michigan and working with great Michiganders and Michigan businesses to meet this need and I want to make sure that they know how grateful we are. Assuming all these shipments come in as planned, it’s good. It’s definitely something that is helpful. But it is still not nearly enough to meet our need.

Now is the most crucial time for us all to do our part. This week I called on Michiganders and businesses to donate any needed items that they might have to their local hospitals and medical providers. Right now medical professionals across the state have no choice but to reuse face masks. This increases the risk of spreading COVID- 19 during a time when we should be doing everything we can to mitigate it. We are still making these efforts 24/7 to procure things and I am still pushing and hoping the Federal Government can ramp up so we have the tests and equipment that we need. But the third most important thing that anyone can do is observe the stay-home order. This disease cannot spread if we are not together.

I want to thank a number of businesses that have stepped up and helped to meet our needs. Ford, GM, and FCA have all selflessly worked to provide their expertise, their properties and manufacturing capacity to assist Michigan and the country in addressing the shortage of PPE, respirators, and ventilators. Each has also joined with other Michigan companies and workers in the sacrifice needed to fight and stem the increase of COVID-19 here in Michigan. FCA has announced plans to produce masks for donation to first responders and healthcare professionals. They’ve already donated N95 masks to Detroit Receiving Hospital and hospitals in Indiana and Ohio.

Ford has partnered with GE to redesign and make ventilators to support patients with respiratory failure and difficulty breathing. And they’re targeting a production of 100,000 simple plastic face shields every week at the Troy Design and Manufacturing in Plymouth. GM has partnered with Ventec Life Systems to substantially increase production of critically needed respiratory care products and have donated over 10,000 masks to Michigan hospitals.

Coppercraft Distillery in Holland, Mammoth Distilling in Traverse City, have been producing hand sanitizer as have other great Michigan businesses. We want them to know how grateful we are. I’m hopeful that other Michiganders and Michigan businesses will be able to pitch in. The items we need most are hospital gowns-

[inaudible 00:09:01] The items we need most are hospital gowns, ventilators, sanitizer, the hand sanitizer and wipes, gloves, surgical masks, masks that are the N95 to N100, no touch thermometers. Donations can be directed to the Michigan Community Service Commission at COVID19donations@michigan.gov or (517) 335-4295. There are other ways that people can help. Donate to your local food bank, go online. Donate blood if you’re able, call the Red Cross and make an appointment. Call 211 to see how you might be able to help someone in need, and retrofit machinery to make sanitizer or gowns or face shields. As I’ve said before, tough times don’t last, but tough people do. Michiganders are tough. We have grit and we’ve been through hard times together. We take care of each other. It’s the greatest thing about the state for the people who call it home, whether it’s by staying home, whether it’s by donating money to one of these causes or food or water to your community food bank or giving blood or collective contributions; they will get us through. This crisis is scary and at times uncertain, but I can tell you I have seen good people across the state who are moving forward and doing their part. Please do your part so their work is not in vain and made more dangerous. Volunteers who pass out food to families, healthcare workers on the front lines, the clerks at the grocery store who are working incredibly hard to keep those shelves stocked so when you show up for food, that it’s there when you need it, parents who are helping their kids manage through this and teachers who are still taking time to read and reach out to their students in creative ways. Yesterday, I posted on social media and asked to hear about teachers who are going above and beyond for their students during this crisis. I received thousands of responses; teachers who are getting on staff-wide tele meetings to plan how to best support their students, teachers who are reaching out to let their kids know how much they miss them, teachers that are recording themselves reading books and sending them to their students to keep them engaged.

I hope you’ll consider inspiring others by snapping a picture or capturing a video of how you are doing your part and use #DoingMIpart. When we embody that spirit, we can bend this curve, we can save our system and we can protect one another and get through this crisis together. With that, I’m going to hand it over to Dr. Joneigh Khaldun.

Joneigh Khaldun: (12:08)
Thank you, governor Whitmer. As the governor mentioned, we have reached a pivotal time in the state when it comes to the COVID-19 outbreak. We are seeing exponential growth in cases primarily in Southeastern Michigan. As of yesterday, as the governor mentioned, Michigan had 2,295 confirmed cases and we also know of at least 43 deaths. We know that many of our hospitals, particularly in Southeast Michigan are at or near capacity. Intensive care units are full. Any emergency departments are overloaded. The only way we’re going to be able to effectively handle this outbreak is by coming together and coordinating our healthcare resources as a state. We have thus, started implementation of the COVID-19 statewide load balancing plan for our hospitals. This is something that we announced just last night.

Hospitals outside of Southeast Michigan are being asked to serve as relief hospitals offering 10% of their usual bed capacity to accept patients from other hospitals that are currently overwhelmed with critically ill COVID-19 patients. We already have hospitals who are stepping up to be a relief hospital and are starting this process. As we continue to monitor the outbreak and hospital capacity across the state, we will remain flexible so that every community has the healthcare resources that it needs to address the spread. We are incredibly lucky and I’ve spoken to many hospital CEOs to have really strong hospital leadership in Michigan. They have been great partners in the COVID-19 response and we will continue to support them as their teams battle this disease on the front lines. We also know we may need to use alternative sites outside of the usual hospitals to care for patients who may have COVID-19. We don’t at this time, have details on those alternative sites; however, we are actively working with our state leaders on developing and implementing plans for these sites should we need them.

We also need, as the governor mentioned, to increase our ability to test in the state and we’ve been working diligently with our partners to expand this testing capacity. Our latest data shows that we have run at least 9,100 samples across the state as of yesterday and that includes our state lab, our hospital labs and our private lab partners. We also have additional hospitals coming on board to be able to test every week, and we also know there are several local leaders who are stepping up and developing additional testing sites so that people are able to get a test easily without having to go to an emergency department. We are confident that testing in the appropriate manner will be able to give this state a better understanding of who has the disease so that we can slow the spread as much as possible.

We’re still in the up slope when it comes to the spread of COVID-19 in Michigan. We are doing everything we can to make sure people stay at home as much as possible, that our hospitals get the resources that they need and that we most importantly, protect our most vulnerable from becoming ill. With that, I’ll turn it back over to you governor Whitmer.

Okay. So I’m happy to open it up for questions.

Speaker 1: (15:55)
[inaudible 00:15:55] You said last night, that Michigan is nowhere near the apex of this. When are you projecting Michigan’s cases will hit that apex and what kind of modeling do you have?

I’m not the doctor at this table. I’m going to hand part of this question over to Dr. Khaldun, but I think what you can see here is how quickly an exponential growth we’re seeing here in Michigan. The fact of the matter is it’s going to continue to go along these lines. We are a few weeks behind where what we’re seeing play out in other states. The order that I issued on Monday will take a little while before we see the impact of it. COVID-19 is highly contagious. It can last, and you can not even know you’re carrying it for a couple of weeks or up to a couple of weeks and that’s why we continue to see the numbers increase. As our testing capabilities get better as well, we are actually detecting it more frequently and that’s a component of why you’ll see the numbers continue to increase, but I just wanted people to be very clear headed that where we are headed right now.

That’s why in order for us to reach a point where it starts to level off and decrease, everyone has to do their part. This disease cannot spread if we’re not out and about. The best tool that we have with a novel virus that is highly contagious, that is deadly and has no cure and no vaccine is our ability to slow the spread and that is this aggressive social distancing that we have led the nation on in a lot of regards. I don’t know, Dr. Khaldun, we do have some models. The inherent problem with some of the models is there’s just not a lot of data because there’s not robust testing, but we do have brilliant people in the state of Michigan who have put together some models and Dr. Khaldun can share a little bit more about the small pieces of information that we’re able to.

Absolutely. So the governor is right. As we improve our testing and get more targeted with our testing, meaning quite frankly, te-

Dr. Khaldoon: (18:03)
… Our testing and get more targeted with our testing, meaning quite frankly, testing the people that are actually more likely to have the disease our model will get better. So we’re working with the University of Michigan and some other private partners to get better ideas on when we may hit that apex, as you said. Right now, we’re probably a few weeks out from meeting that apex, but again, it all depends on what everyone does. If we do appropriate social distancing and people listen to the governor’s executive orders, we will be able to flatten that curve, and so we will be working with our partners to get better models as far as what that’s going to look like for Michigan.

Speaker 2: (18:38)
Governor, you’re facing criticism for not declaring or asking for that emergency declaration from the federal government earlier. Why did you wait too long? What does that [inaudible 00:00:49], what does that bring in the state?

Well, a good couple of questions, Mackenzie. First of all, it’s really important that we get these requests to Washington right. The benefit of watching and seeing how other states have done it is we know what they have been able to procure and what they haven’t been able to. Unfortunately it hasn’t entered to a lot of help from the federal government in terms of getting everything that is in the scope of these requests. And that’s why we wanted to make sure that we wrote ours in a way that learned from other states, frankly.

Number two, it is … We are working 24/7. And moving forward in talking with all of our experts, we knew that our best energies were first and foremost doing everything we could to mitigate community spread. The request to the federal government, whether it’s a request to FEMA and our national stockpile allotment or it is a request for a declaration amongst … As a disaster are important pieces. But right now we know that our actions to get people in Michigan to stop communicating this disease amongst each other was the highest priority, and that’s where we spent our energy. And I think that’s the thing that we know. When there aren’t enough masks at the federal government and there aren’t enough gloves and there aren’t enough tests, that the best thing we can do is to mitigate spread through interaction. And that’s why we spent all of our energies in that part first.

Speaker 3: (20:18)
Can either or both of you outline how this load balancing system is going to work among the hospitals, so that someone would ordinarily be going to, say, something in the Beaumont system, how is it going to be determined where they get sent to based on where they live? And so forth.

Ask … Dr. Khaldoon will help answer that one.

Yes, absolutely. So we already have a really strong regional healthcare coalition system across the state. They’ve been meeting for decades and it really works well. So right now they are, as part of those healthcare coalitions, going to be identifying at a particular hospital what patients could potentially be transferred. They will work through the normal transfer process as far as needing an accepting physician. And then we will be coordinating as far as where those patients go and making sure we are offloading in the best way possible.

Speaker 2: (21:11)
You mentioned working with some other off-site field hospitals and things like that. Can you [inaudible 00:21:17]?

Well, we know that the most important thing is that we’ve got bed capacity. So as we work to ramp up and working with our hospitals to prepare for surge, we are looking for additional space that is adjacent or close to a hospital. So I don’t know that there’s a lot to share in terms of specifics at this juncture. The Army Corps has told us it takes three to four weeks to set up one of these hospitals. We are trying to get it done in a lot less than that. The urgency is real. The situation is getting more serious by the day. We would anticipate to see additional cases today, and sadly more people losing their battle with COVID 19. And so we are really putting as much pressure as we can on the Army Corps to make sure that we are … We’re moving as swiftly as we possibly can and working with our partners. Mayor Duggan has been helpful in the city of Detroit in terms of trying to identify where we would have really an option that made sense. Anything to add, doctor?

No.

Nope? Okay.

Speaker 4: (22:27)
Governor, you’ve discussed the main things are try to get PPE to the doctors and nurses and others. Very good friend of mine who’s an ICU doc is what he’s wondering is when are they actually going to see it? When is it going to arrive? Can you provide some projection or assurance on that?

Well, I think part of the struggle that we’ve had, Zack, is … There we go. So ordinarily in a crisis, in a crisis that is like a geographic one, everyone pitches in and helps each other out. We send … When there’s a hurricane that happens, you see lots of Michiganders go down and help and that happens across the country. With a pandemic that is hitting every single one of our states, our ability to meet the need is severely compromised and when the national stockpile is not able to meet our needs and we are told to go find it on our own, we have to become a procurement agency unlike any that’s ever been created. We know that of the contracts that we’ve been able to secure, we’re lucky. We’re ahead of where a lot of other seats are and Governor Pritzker in Illinois said we’re bidding against one another, that this is the Wild West, I think is how we phrased it.

The fact of the matter is we as Americans shouldn’t be bidding against one another. We should be able to harness the federal power to ensure that everyone’s got what they need. That’s not happened. And so we are in this position. My hope is that all of these deals we’ve made come to fruition, but what we have seen is some suppliers is that, “Oh, now we’ve got to send them to the federal government. We can’t fulfill your needs.” This is a reality that we’re confronted with and that’s why the more we can produce, the more that we can find here in Michigan, the better for Michigan hospitals and Michigan doctors, like your friend who is a doctor in the ICU. This is a moment that we’ve seen play out around the globe and I do still believe that we, as a nation, we’re not as prepared as we should have been.

I think the cuts to the CDC, the attack on healthcare generally, the evisceration of the pandemic offices across the country have put us in a position where we are behind the eight ball. And that’s why this is important. But this is … There’s no guarantee that every one of these comes into Michigan and that gets there. But we are hopeful, we are pushing, we’re going to continue to try to provide things here within the state and hold these partners accountable and make sure that they get in there so your friend doesn’t have to reuse masks like we see some doctors are having to do right now.

Speaker 5: (25:12)
[inaudible 00:25:12] about school teachers, parents, kids don’t really know what to do with what’s going on. Do you have any plans for any orders or working with the legislature to allow for credit for schools that are doing online learning right now? What’s going to happen to these kids when they move on to the next grade? Is there a timeline of it’s too late to reopen at this point? Where are we at?

So one of the things that is very clear as well, the powers of the executive office are immense, especially in times like these. I cannot unilaterally address the issue around the education of our kids. So we are working. We’ve already … We’ve had a lot of meetings with the legislature, with the Michigan Department of Education, with our experts on the front line, superintendents and teachers, to make sure that we have a thoughtful solution. We know that the capacity for our schools to meet the needs of our children is different based on the district, based on resources. We’ve got to have an equitable solution that meets the needs of our children and that we can communicate as a group who all has a stake in defining what it looks like and a role to play in that process.

So it does take a little bit longer than I know any parent would like and any teacher and any administrator. But we’ve got to get it right and we are well under wager in those conversations and I would hope to have something to communicate in the next week or so. But at this juncture, or week two into what we know is that the very least a four week hiatus from school, and as we see things play out, we’re making decisions based on what’s in the best interest in health of our kids and we’re divining a solution that’s in the best educational aspect for our kids too.

Speaker 4: (26:54)
Governor, have there been any enforcement actions on your stay at home order yet? As I’m sure you’re seeing and hearing, there’s a lot of folks wondering if they’re essential, non-

Speaker 6: (27:03)
… hearing there’s a lot of folks wondering if they’re essential, non-essential. So I guess first would be any enforcement actions yet, then do you plan any clarification kinds of orders to clarify essentially that?

So a couple of things. First, the vast majority of businesses are doing the right thing. These orders, while there may be some areas of uncertainty, they’re pretty clear. If you’re a not a life sustaining entity, you should not be out and about. You should be home and your employees should be home. The vast majority of businesses are doing that. There are some that I am concerned aren’t clear, and we’re working to make sure that they understand. But if you are a landscaper, if you are a florist, if you are home construction, none of those is a life sustaining business that should be open.

There are opportunities for each of them to manage their inventory so that they don’t lose their inventory. For instance, the florists can go in and water their plants. But if you’re not a life sustaining business, you’re in violation of the law and you’re needlessly exposing your employees to COVID- 19. You’re needlessly endangering our communities by putting more pressure on a healthcare system that is very close to the maximum already and you’re risking your business license and fines. So I would encourage any business that is not sure if their life sustaining to probably assume that they’re not. If you don’t know, if you’re responsible for people keeping their lights on, getting their prescription drugs, getting food to feed their family, then the odds are that you’re out of compliance if you’re continuing to work and that you’re exposing needlessly your employees. So we want to encourage businesses not to play fast and lose with the rules, but to do the right thing. I think for the most part people are.

Speaker 6: (28:58)
Any enforcement actions so far?

As I mentioned, we are getting lots of reports from across the state. Employees who are scared, who feel their business is not an essential and are asking for assistance. So, I don’t have numbers to report right now, frankly, but we are monitoring it and we take it very seriously. This is a public health crisis that we have. The more porous the policy, the longer we’re going to be doing this, the more people are going to die, the more likely our healthcare system cannot meet the needs of people.

It’s not just COVID-19 patients, you get a heart attack, you need to be able to get to a hospital and get treatment and if that hospital is overtaxed and has too few beds and too few masks that jeopardizes your health. If you’re a pregnant woman who is anticipating having to give birth, you’re going to rely on a hospital situation or a midwife and possibly need medical services. Every one of us has a huge stake in us being able to do this and that’s why anyone who is not life-sustaining essential business should not be exposing their employees or their business to that kind of potential.

Speaker 7: (30:11)
The other day the president said that he would like to see the economy open by Easter. It’s April 12th some of these executive orders go through April 13. Do you anticipate extending some of them?

Well, first and foremost I think that we have to take our guidance from epidemiologists, from the best minds in science before we make decisions about when it is okay to start congregating again. I think as we’ve seen other countries go through COVID-19 and then just resume life as though it nothing changed and we see it spike back up. We know that we have to be very smart and thoughtful and careful about what it looks like when we do begin to start to reengage in a number of ways. With regard to an extension of the orders. The powers of this office are real. They are sweeping. I take it very seriously. Each decision weighs heavily on me. Each decision is always going to be guided by the best medical advice.

Dr. Khaldun has been incredible. We also have medical experts across the country with whom we’ve consulted to make sure that we are doing all of the right things here in Michigan to mitigate how many people are hurt and impacted by this COVID-19. So as we get a little closer to those days, we’ll probably have more data, more counsel. We’ll know what is happening here in Michigan. A better picture and we’ll be able to make better decisions as we get closer to those dates.

Speaker 8: (31:51)
Can you assess the situation in Detroit, the numbers there are some very alarming, 30 some percent of the cases, even though it’s roughly 7% of the state’s population. I think 100,000 number there is as high as almost any other place in the country. How much of…. It seems there’s growing concern. This isn’t just good ramping up of testing, but real significant spread. Can either both of you assess the situation there?

I mean, I would just say big cities everywhere, people live closer together, people end up spending more time in close quarters together. That’s how the disease spreads. I’m not the physician sitting here at this table and I’ll let Dr. Joneigh weigh in a little bit more. But I mean it is very clear and that’s why it should be common sense that we know if we all kept our distance, scientists are telling us this would sputter to a halt if everyone froze where they are for 14 days. But the fact of the matter is more interaction is more spread and the closer people live together, the more it spread. That’s what happens in big cities across this country, around the globe. I’m sure there’s a better epidemiological way to explain that too. So I’ll hand it off to Dr. Khaldun.

Thank you governor. I used to be the Detroit health director and I can tell you part of what we’re seeing in Detroit is that there’s such a high number of individuals who have those underlying conditions. Who have the diabetes and the heart disease, who may have obesity. So what you’re seeing now is when you have really generations of concentrated poverty and what we call those social determinants of health and impact a place like a city like Detroit. When you have pandemics like this, it’s going to hit those places harder and not just from the health perspective, but when you talk about even the economic and other things, people not having access to transportation, able to get food, the schools. It all is really hitting Detroit much harder for the reasons I said.

Speaker 9: (33:54)
Perhaps a question for Dr. Khaldun again, looking at recovered patients and numbers. We start to get more numbers from testing negative and positives, when we start seeing the number of recovered patient for COVID-19 and then I’m looking at just the transparency of getting the number of ventilators, CBE equipments and that capacity reporting from hospitals across the state. What [inaudible 00:34:18]?

So we are working actively just talk to my team this morning. We want that data to get out. We want it to be transparent, but we also want it to be accurate. So we’ve been working with our hospitals director Gordon, director of health and human services, issued an order for hospitals to actually give that information to us so we can accurately report it. So we expect it to becoming more and more every day, and we want to get that out to the public.

Speaker 9: (34:42)
Including the recovery patient status?

As we get more people tested and they recover, we will incorporate that. But it’s really so early that we don’t have an accurate number of people who have recovered.

All right. Thanks everybody.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer Michigan Coronavirus Briefing Transcript March 26

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