10,360 new cases
■ Florida had its third-highest day of reported COVID-19 cases on Saturday as Gov. Ron DeSantis said more people, drugs are on the way.
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced deployments of health workers throughout the state as well as new shipments of a promising antiviral used to treat the novel coronavirus as the state continues to see a resurgence in new cases.
At a Saturday press conference in Bradenton, the governor said about 1,000 personnel will be sent to hospitals around the state to support local efforts to combat COVID-19.
“COVID is very labor intensive,” DeSantis said. “There’s a lot of procedures that go into place [to test and treat it] … so the personnel is something that’s very significant.”
He also said a new shipment of Remdesivir, an experimental drug that may speed up recovery from an infection, was arriving Saturday with more expected from the federal government in the coming weeks.
The announcement comes a day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he would send enough supply to “help the state care for 280 COVID-19 patients until the federal shipment arrives.”
“When New York was climbing the COVID mountain with no end in sight and resources were scarce, we were incredibly moved by the generosity of states around the country that stepped up to provide supplies and medical personnel in our time of need,” Cuomo said in a statement. “… We will stand by our fellow Americans every step of the way as our nation fights COVID-19 together.”
DeSantis praised the work being done to expand the state’s testing regime, touting it for testing “probably more [people] than anywhere in the country” — an estimated 400,000 by the end of the week. But he also addressed the delays faced by those awaiting test results.
Often testing sites tell patients they will receive results in 48 hours, but many have had to wait up to seven days before finding out whether they’ve contracted the virus. One reason, DeSantis said, is a quickly dwindling supply of reagents — chemicals used to test samples for coronavirus — caused by expanded testing around the country.
DeSantis added he is working with the White House to meet demand in the state and hopes to make an announcement early next week on improving turnaround time for delivering test results.
“We want to be able to try and figure out how we can get people their results back as quickly as possible,” DeSantis said. “We’re focusing that on symptomatic people. Most of the people who are coming in to test don’t necessarily have symptoms, they just want to know if they have it.”
He added, “If you’re asymptomatic, you can spread it. So [you] get tested, then if you’re asymptomatic, you can isolate. The problem is, you don’t get your results back for seven days. What are you supposed to do?”
The governor has been hit by critics in recent weeks for allowing bars and restaurants to reopen too early and rejecting calls to issue a statewide mask mandate to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
On Thursday he was called out for ordering schools reopen in the fall, comparing children returning to a physical classroom to people going to businesses like retail stores and restaurants.
He doubled down on the need for students to return to school on Saturday, saying he would send his own children if they were school age and reiterating that students will be safe because they are less likely to contract and spread the virus.