Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Coronavirus Briefing Transcript March 25

Muriel Bowser: (00:00) ... prioritize for people providing medical care, and guards at the D.C. jail are not providing medical care. There are medical personnel at the D.C. jail, and they would be outfitted with the appropriate gear, supplies. Speaker 2: (00:15) Getting back to testing numbers- Muriel Bowser: (00:16) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Speaker 2: (00:23) ... but getting back to tested numbers, how much have the numbers gone up over the last week? [inaudible 00:00:28] I want to quantify them, but also give us a sense as to whether it's a spike in cases, a spike in the disease spreading, as to [inaudible 00:00:37]. Muriel Bowser: (00:41) Sure. Speaker 4: (00:46) We have what's called an epidemiology curve, or affectionately an epi curve, and we map out that epi curve, and it will probably be a few more days before that curve settles. It goes back to some of my comments to Mark. We know that some of our laboratories, and some of our hospitals rather who are using commercial laboratories, have outstanding tests for seven or eight days. Those lab results come to us only after the labs have been finalized. We can only add to our epi curve when we receive that result. Speaker 4: (01:27) In a very basic way, when I get a test result that is positive or negative, we can only map that out and tell you if that individual was tested seven, eight, nine days ago, when their symptoms started, and their date of a positive test at that time that we receive that result. I know I have hospitals that have over 100 or so test results that are pending. These are not people who are hospitalized because they are turning around those tests results in rather short order. Speaker 4: (02:00) On any given day when we post that there are 46 new positive cases, or 32 new positive cases, that does not mean all of those people were tested the day prior or even two days prior. Those tests could be over more than a week old. Speaker 2: (02:14) What is the DC number today? Speaker 4: (02:14) Pardon? Speaker 2: (02:17) What is the DC number of positive tests today? Speaker 4: (02:20) We reported 46 new cases where results came into us yesterday. Speaker 2: (02:27) Total cases. Speaker 4: (02:28) Yeah. Oh, 183 is the total number of cases. My apologies. Muriel Bowser: (02:35) Thank you everybody.