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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

What’s Happening in Florida’s Nursing Homes?

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

Daily News, News, News Commentary

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ever since COVID-19 surfaced in Florida, local journalists began wondering how the virus was going to impact nursing home residents and employees. For weeks the facilities and the state's health department were reluctant to release data on the more than 600 assisted care centers. On Saturday, Governor Ron DeSantis finally released a list of nursing homes with confirmed cases, but only after pressure from news outlets and the public. Guest: Mary Ellen Klas, capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald.   Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Jayson De Leon, Danielle Hewitt, and Mara Silvers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

The best way to introduce you to Mary Ellen Klaus is with this video.

0:08.8

You can look it up over at the Miami Herald.

0:11.1

She's a reporter there.

0:12.3

You can't see her face when you watch, but you can hear her voice.

0:17.3

You're because I requested social distancing.

0:20.1

You are telling me I can't come in.

0:22.1

No, I said we are having the coordinates to you for the two.

0:25.3

She's asking a Florida State spokesperson why she's been excluded from a press conference

0:30.2

with a governor.

0:30.9

And this decision was made by whom?

0:33.4

I have nothing else to add.

0:35.4

Okay.

0:36.4

Okay.

0:37.4

Yeah, well, that was a frustrating moment.

0:42.0

We're having these press conferences and the emergency operations center where reporters

0:46.1

were crammed into this room, shoulder to shoulder, and you know, people were coughing

0:52.5

and you're thinking, wait a minute, do they have COVID?

0:55.7

What do we know?

0:57.1

Mary Ellen asked to have press conferences in a bigger space so folks could spread out.

1:02.5

Instead, the governor's staffers just started inviting fewer reporters.

1:07.8

And so I showed up and they wouldn't let me in.

1:10.9

So I confronted them and they said, well, you asked for social distancing and we are

...

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