South Florida Under Stay-At-Home Order As Cases Grow
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Florida's governor has now issued a state at home order for south Florida. Coronavirus cases in the state have now spiked to almost 5,500 and 70 people died. A major concern in Florida is the state's vulnerable elderly population. Joining us now is Dr. J. Glenn Morris Jr., professor of infectious diseases and director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. Dr. Morris, thank you for being with us this morning. How much sense does it make for a state like Florida to issue stay at home orders in certain parts but not other parts?</s>DR. J. GLENN MORRIS, JR., DIRECTOR OF EMERGING PATHOGENS INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA: Well, again, Florida is a very large state, with -- covers a lot of territory with a lot of people. Again, University of Florida, we're looking at North Central Florida, we have been doing community-based testing. Just as one example, this past week, we were doing aggressive testing, drive through testing in The Villages, which is probably one of the largest health developments, 55-plus persons in the country. And what was interesting is that we screened about 1,400 individuals who were asymptomatic, and of those, only two were positive. And both of them had a history of recent travel from another part of the country. We did have around 900 symptomatic persons, we did have 25 positives. But, again what it suggests is that at least for the villages and areas of north Florida, we are at the very beginning of the epidemic curve, just as things are getting under way. This contrasts with what they're seeing in Miami, where they are further along the epidemic curve, where clearly they are reaching a point where hospitals are stressed, and they are encountering major difficulties. And so, again, fortunately, in the villages, there has been a strong emphasis on social distancing, and we are hopeful that by, if you will, catching it early we may be able to reduce the overall impact within that community. One of the problems we have at this point, however, is that to get back to an old topic, we are basically running out of supplies to do any further testing. And so, rather than being able to fine-tune the response, we are left sort of flying blind. And I think under the circumstances, in terms of state wide orders, it needs to be recognized that each part of the state is different. And they're on different places of the epidemic curve.</s>BERMAN: Understood. It's interesting what you're saying, though, if you want to rely on testing to slow the spread or at least identify the spread, if you run out of tests, you can't use testing there. That's something we heard. We had Governor Larry Hogan on before, Governor Steve Bullock of Montana. As much testing, as much as has ramped up in this country, we still need more supplies there. Obviously, Florida, the concern is, you talked about The Villages, the concern is for the older population in the state. It is an older population in the state. Harvard did a study of Florida right now, and found that Florida's hospitals will face bed shortages under various projected rates of spread from 6 to 18 months even in the best case scenario, 20 percent of Florida's adults needing hospitalizations over 18 months, hospitals will be close to 100 percent capacity. Basically the study is saying, you know, if this spreads the way, we think it will, that Florida could run out of beds. How much of a concern is that to you?</s>MORRIS: It's a major concern and I can tell you in our medical center near Gainesville, the University of Florida, we are already looking at very carefully at the bed situation and, again, back to a common theme, we are starting to get very concerned about availability of supplies, simple things like PPE, we're not in a crisis situation. Want to say in New York and New Orleans, but when we start counting, you know, the number of PPE -- the amount of PPE we have available, and looking at how far we potentially are going to have to go, this is becoming a major concern. Again, as I said, I think the key really are being able to put the social distancing and other interventions in place early enough that you hopefully stop the spread. And as I said, because we were able to do testing in this one community, we're hopeful that at least there we will be able to have an impact. Again, I think hopefully throughout the north Florida area, because there has been an increasing emphasis on the social distancing, we will be able to slow things down enough that we'll be able to keep control of the situation.</s>BERMAN: Let's hope you're right. We wish you the best of luck going forward and thank you for the work that you're doing, Doctor.</s>MORRIS: Thank you.</s>BERMAN: So healthcare worker in New York City is trying to help her sister as she fights for her life. She shares her story next.