Oklahoma’s GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt on Sunday batted back some medical criticism over his decision to reopen his state’s economy, saying “it’s time for a measured reopening.”
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Stitt defended his decision to reopen even though the Trump administration guidance advised it should not begin until a state has seen 14 consecutive days of declining cases.
“You have to go back and think about why we closed down in the first place,” Stitt said. “You know I’ve issued 15 executive orders since March 15 when I first declared a state of emergency, but it was to build capacity in our hospitals to make sure we didn’t overrun our health care system, it was to build supply for PPE, and it was to flatten the curve. The facts in our state are, March 30 we peaked in hospitalization with 560 across the state. Today we have 300 across the state in our hospitals.”
Because of that decline, Stitt said it was “time for a measured reopening,” and said the state would “continue with the social distancing.”
Oklahoma State Medical Association president Dr. George Monks had pointed out Oklahoma hasn’t yet seen a 14-day downward trajectory in cases, but Stitt dismissed his assessment.
“I don’t know exactly who that is,” he said of Monks, and insisted the state had a “steady decline since March 30 in hospitalizations.” He added the state’s “data-driven” and will keep watch on trends.
“In my state we’re seeing the trending going down, our testing going up, our tracing, we put 80 different testing sites up, we’ve tested over 55,000 folks, our positive tests right now are 6.3 percent, and again 300 hospitalized cases across the state with a capacity for 4,600, we think it’s a reasonable time to reopen.”
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