Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday that “there is an industrial testing complex now” that could be inflating positive results from the COVID-19 test.
DeSantis made the comment after host Ainsley Earhardt noted that “some people” in Florida have said, “They never had a test, but now they’re on the positive test list.”
Then he asked, “How did that happen?”
“Fortunately, it didn’t happen at any of the sites that the state of Florida is running,” DeSantis said.
“There is a test industrial complex now. There is a lot of money at stake here, people are doing these tests. There are private companies involved. ”
“So what we have asked is for someone who has received a letter, an email, anything, a text message to present it because we want to hold people accountable if they do fun business like that,” he continued.
“Obviously you hear a lot of things, but I’ve heard this many times from people who really don’t have a reason to invent something, I think there’s something there, so we want to get that evidence.”
DeSantis made the remarks a week after a Fox 35 News investigation found incomplete reports from some Florida labs that resulted in errors in the state’s report on virus positivity rates.
“Countless labs have reported a 100 percent positivity rate, which means that every person who tested positive was positive,” Fox 35 News reported. “Other labs had very high positivity rates.”
On Thursday, DeSantis pointed to another Fox 35 report “where he had someone in a motorcycle accident [who] died, unfortunately, but that was classified as a COVID death only because the person had previously tested positive. ”
“If you are in a car accident, and we’ve had other cases where there just wasn’t a real relationship [to COVID-19] that has been told, so we want to see that and see how widespread that problem is as well, “he added.
DeSantis also responded to the fact that a surge in Florida coronavirus cases has allegedly maximized dozens of intensive care units (ICUs) in hospitals across the state, following an attempt by local officials to institute a gradual reopening of the economy. .
Host Brian Kilmeade noted, citing statistics, that 53 of Florida’s ICUs are “at zero percent capacity.”
DeSantis intervened, saying he wanted to “correct that.”
“What they are doing is identifying hospitals, some of which do not have an ICU because they are rural hospitals,” Desantis said. “There are others who have a very small number of beds that have ICU people who are not COVID patients.”
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“We had some doctors the other day to talk about the registry,” he continued. “We have between 20 and 25 percent of beds [that] have been constantly available and between 15 and 20 percent of ICU beds statewide [that] have been available. ”
He went on to say, “We have capacity.”
When asked to respond to criticism that DeSantis reopened Florida “too quickly,” he said, “We had six weeks of Phase One where we had our lowest numbers yet, it’s a five-day incubation period, so if that outside the cause I have seen spikes “.
“And then in South Florida, which is where we’ve had most of our cases and hospitalizations, or a significant portion, have had a completely different schedule,” he continued. “They are still in Phase One. They were basically closed for two months. They’ve never had pubs or anything like that open. ”
Then he said he believes “people are always trying to make political blame, but I think the trends are much more positive today than they were two weeks ago.”
“We peaked in visits to the emergency department for COVID-like illnesses on July 7 and we’ve seen a general flattening in the hospital census for COVID, so those are the kinds of indicators you see that you are beginning to stabilize. Our positivity rate is slightly below where it was, which we believe will continue, “DeSantis said.
He also noted that “when we do all of these tests, it is very different from how people were doing tests in March and April.”
“We tested everyone,” said DeSantis. “Most people who test positive for new cases are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and don’t require medical attention, so I think that’s an important context for people to understand.”
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As of Thursday, Florida reports more than 389,000 coronavirus cases and more than 5,500 deaths, according to the state health department.
Kayla Rivas and Nick Givas of Fox News contributed to this report.
