NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript Interview with Jared Polis
Interview
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CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. As we mentioned earlier, 41 states have seen an increase in cases in recent weeks. Among them are Colorado, where Democratic governor Jared Polis issued a statewide mask mandate this week and Ohio, where the Republican governor Mike DeWine has put roughly 60% of his state's residents under a mask order. Both Jared Polis and Mike DeWine join me now. Governor Polis, I'd like to start with you. Cases have been on the rise in Colorado since the middle of June. Why this week? Why not sooner? What took so long?
GOV. JARED POLIS:
You know, before we had the mask requirement, we had about 60% of our state under municipal or county mask requirements. But what we realized that we needed at the state is just clarity of message. You're in Colorado, you're visiting Colorado, we're a mask-wearing state.
This kind of statement really provides that in terms of requiring mask wearing statewide. The other thing we found Chuck, this is really interesting in our state, in the areas that had mask-wearing requirements, that 60% of our state, it had about 15 to 20% more mask wearing than the areas of our state that hadn't taken that simple step. And we found that those areas with mask wearing had less spread of the virus in our state. So based on those two data points, it was a clear course of action to take it statewide.
CHUCK TODD:
You had been a little hesitant, both I remember on the stay-at-home order and with the mask, both times wondering how enforceable these things are. And you came around to both of them. But let me ask you this, how enforceable is your mandate?
GOV. JARED POLIS:
Well, I think any governor, Democrat or Republican, should be hesitant to do any of these
things. I think people want a governor that is going to hesitate and double check things before they do any of these overarching orders that no governor ever wants to do. There's a number of ways local municipalities have enforced it. One of the things it allows our businesses, our small businesses, our retailers, our grocers to do is if somebody is trying to trespass without a mask and they ask them to leave nicely and they don't, they can call upon local law enforcement with trespassing to try to help remove them from the store so they're not threatening and endangering the employees and the other customers.
CHUCK TODD:
What explanation do you have for the new rise in cases in your state? What do your health officials tell you?
GOV. JARED POLIS:
First of all, I'm proud that Colorado's doing better than some of the hot spot states in the Sun Belt. We need to do better than we're doing because cases are going up. That's clear.
America as a whole is not doing well. People are lapsing in their caution, right? They're lapsing in their need to engage in social distancing. And as you know, Chuck, masks are not a substitute for social distancing. We can't live like we did in January plus masks. That won't work. We also need to not have large get-togethers, parties, groups, and really make that deliberate effort to stay six feet away from others. So I think a lot of people wish, I wish too, you know, you wish too, we all wish that this had been past us, we could go back to normal. I think people are waking up to the fact that we have to be very careful in our everyday lives and take social distancing and mask wearing very seriously to be able to get through this.
CHUCK TODD:
What's the explanation for why Colorado, why does your state, you only, according to the COVID tracking project, you only beat ten other states when it comes to testing. There's a lot of other states that are testing more per capita than you are. What is that about?
GOV. JARED POLIS:
Well, I would say generally the states that have the highest caseload are going to have the highest testing, the highest positives, probably also the highest negatives. We have for several weeks a major free testing site that Denver runs at the Pepsi Center, home of the Broncos. We also have about 48 free community testing sites across the state where anybody, no questions asked, no insurance questions or anything else, can get tested.
CHUCK TODD:
Yeah, but are you getting these tests back fast enough? I mean, it seems as if the inability, you've got to saturate testing, and get them fast enough, and do the contact tracing. Do you have that up and running in Colorado?
GOV. JARED POLIS:
So the national testing scene is a complete disgrace. So every test we send out to private lab partners nationally, Quest, LabCorp, seven days, eight days, nine days, maybe six days if we're lucky, almost useless from a epidemiological or even diagnostic perspective. Fortunately, our state lab has done yeoman's work. We're running three shifts a day there 24 hours a day. So while some are still sent out of state and unfortunately that takes a long time, and we can't count on it, and our country needs to get testing right, we're trying to build that capacity in Colorado to process tests at that one to two-day turn around. And we already are able to do two, three thousand a day that way and even more along with our private lab partners in state like U.C. Health.
CHUCK TODD:
Alright. It's July 19th though. You're still trying to get testing up and running and getting it quicker. You just mentioned the federal problems that you had, the private lab issues. You think you can realistically reopen schools without getting this testing situation under control?
GOV. JARED POLIS:
Well, whether schools reopen in a particular area has more to do with whether there's a hot
spot or outbreak in that area and also with the precautions that those schools are taking. So in Colorado, we have some districts that have delayed the start of school by a couple weeks. Others are beginning with the hybrid model. But many of our districts are going back as planned, as normal, taking the kinds of precautions that health experts and scientists recommend, including keeping cohorts isolated, meaning individual classes don't interact with other classes during recess or passing time. And the state is also sending medical-grade masks to teachers. So every school district will get, for teachers and other faculty that face students, school clerks etc, they're going to be getting medical-quality masks from the state, along with any additional masks or protective equipment that our districts have purchased.
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