CNN "The Situation Room" - Interview with Mike DeWine

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

BLITZER: Joining us now, the governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine.

Governor, thank you so much for spending a few moments with us. We're grateful to you.

Do you believe the FDA's authorization of this drug remdesivir for emergency use, does it give you more confidence in your ability to protect your citizens while you fight this virus?

GOV. MIKE DEWINE (R-OH): Well, we're always hopeful, but I'm certainly not counting on that.

We're not factoring that in, in the decisions that we make. I mean, I'm an optimist. I think that the scientists out there are working very hard, and some things are going to come up, and -- but we can't count on that.

I mean, we have to assume that the original prediction that it's going to be 12 to 18 months before we get a vaccine comes up. And if there's anything that helps mitigate this virus, then that's great.

But we're not we're not counting on that.

BLITZER: The other news today -- and I'm sure you saw it, Governor -- is this new report from the CDC that finds that international travel, a lack of testing accelerated coronavirus transmission here in the United States in January, in February.

Did those factors, do you believe, contribute to the spread of coronavirus in your state of Ohio?

DEWINE: Well, we don't have a huge international airport.

And I think that's probably one of the differences that you saw between what's going on in Northern Ohio and, say, Detroit. It could have been speculated that's one of the differences.

But we're just now in Ohio, in the last week, coming so that we now have good testing as far as numbers. I mean, we're going to be up in a couple weeks to over 22,000 tests per day. And that's a significant change.

We signed a contract. We got the reagent. We have got our own companies in Ohio that are making the swabs. So we're now in a place where we can be very vigorous in regard to the tracing. And we're very excited about that. We're standing up a group of about 1,800 around the state to do the tracing, and with this more robust testing.

We're very excited about this. We think, frankly, it's going to make a difference. It puts us on the offense, Wolf, for the first time. And I like being on the offense. And I don't like being on defense.

And, finally, we're on the offense.

BLITZER: Well, you have been in the forefront in this battle from day one, ahead of a lot of other governors out there. In fact, you were the first governor in the country to close schools.

You warned about the spread of coronavirus long before the White House actually took some hard action.

You're now facing a little bit of criticism, though, for your decision to reopen slowly. What do you say to the business owners? And we can totally understand where they're coming from. They want to reopen a lot more quickly.

DEWINE: Well, we're trying to walk this tightrope to get it right.

And we know that a down economy -- and this is a real down economy, obviously, it really hurts people, and that a lot of bad things happen, health-wise, as well as from an economic point of view.

And so we want to get back. What we're starting with in regards to business is where we can get the most bang for the buck, so to speak -- not really bucks, but the most impact for the less chance that we're taking.

So, we have got manufacturing that has not been open yet. That part of manufacturing has not been open will open up on Monday. And we're going to roll forward on that. We're not going to open up retail until the 12th of May.

So, we're phasing this in. What we have done is, we have put business groups together to come up with best practices. So, what we want to be able to assure people is, if you walk into a retail establishment, that, if they're open, they're following the best practices that anyone can come up with.

There's always risk. We know that. But we owe it to the workers there and we owe it to the customers to come up with the best practices. And so that's what we're doing. As we look forward to rolling out in different businesses, we have brought in people from those businesses who understand the businesses, put them with health people to come up with the best practices.

But we're doing this over a period of time. And, candidly, we're going to continue to monitor the numbers. Hospitalization has been fairly flat for a couple weeks. We had a downturn. We had a little upturn, but it's been pretty flat for a couple weeks.

So, we like that. We obviously would like it if it was going down.

BLITZER: Yes, well, these are life-and-death decisions, not easy decisions.

We're grateful to you, everything you have been doing. As I said, you have been in the forefront in this battle against coronavirus.

Governor Mike DeWine, thanks so much for joining us.

DEWINE: Thanks, Wolf. Appreciate it.

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