Using data rather than emotions during the coronavirus pandemic helped to decide not to shut the state down, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum told Newsmax TV.
"As we think about opening up, we've got less to open up because we shut less down," Burgum told Wednesday's "Greg Kelly Reports." "We're trying to make data-driven decisions. We're making decisions without emotions and we're making decisions on behalf of all the people in North Dakota."
Burgum said hospital beds in North Dakota had a 1% occupancy rate, so there was no need to shut the whole state down.
"We've kept the vast majority of our economy open. All of energy is open. All of health care is open, including elective surgery. We never shut that down because we always had enough PPE. We've never reached more than 1% of our available beds used for COVID patients. So the whole point of shutting down was to preserve health care capacity. So we did that."
Not to mention, he said North Dakota is currently ranked ninth among all states per capita coronavirus testing.
"We know that testing is kind of our navigation system. It's our steering wheel. It's our windshield wiper. It's our accelerator on the vehicle we're driving to try to stay between the ditches," Burgan said. "So testing really matters and we've done well so far. But we intend to get even more aggressive in terms of testing going forward."
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