CNN "State of the Union with Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Interview with Mike DeWine

Interview

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TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION. I'm Jake Tapper.

I want to end today's show where we began, the deadly coronavirus that has had such a devastating health and economic impact on tens of millions of our fellow Americans, killing more than 610,000.

The White House is trying to confront a wave of disinformation on Facebook and social media and in MAGA media and elsewhere that has millions of Americans determined to not get their COVID shots, which leaves governors watching their state case counts rise with a big challenge.

Joining me now, Ohio's Republican Governor Mike DeWine.

Governor DeWine, good to see you again.

The Delta variant...

GOV. MIKE DEWINE (R-OH): Good to be back, Jake. Thank you.

TAPPER: The Delta variant is on track to be the dominant strain of COVID in Ohio. Cases are climbing again. Less than half your state is fully vaccinated.

In fact, Ohio's less vaccinated right now, percentage-wise, than Florida, which is currently experiencing an explosive surge in cases and hospitalizations.

Do you anticipate going to -- do you anticipate you're going to bring back any of the public health mandates, capacity restrictions, social distancing requirements for businesses?

DEWINE: Jake, here's where we are in Ohio.

Sixty percent of adults have been vaccinated. If you look at those 12 and above, which we think is probably a better measurement, we're at almost 58 percent. So, we certainly, as you say, have room to grow. We're seeing the vax -- the virus go up.

We think the Delta variant is certainly the dominant one in Ohio yet. But the whole game today is vaccinations. And we have room to grow. We think we can continue to get more people vaccinated.

Let me just give you a couple -- a couple of examples. If you look at where we have seen an increase in vaccination, we have had a significant increase in vaccination in the last week or so. I think it's the fear of the Delta variant is certainly one of the causes.

But where we have seen the biggest increase is in our most unvaccinated rural counties. So, people are making those decisions out there based upon what they're seeing in their county and what they're hearing on the news.

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We have also started a program to really focus on Medicaid members. When we started in January, we really focused on Medicaid members who were in nursing homes and had very, very good success. But what we saw was that the rest of the Medicaid population was really undervaccinated compared to the general population.

So, we have started a few weeks ago an incentive. It's $100 to help people who are on Medicaid, if they're going to -- some of them are fearful, frankly, of being off work.

TAPPER: Yes.

DEWINE: Some of them are fearful of some side effects.

But what we're also working with are pharmacies. I had a call this week with Walgreens, CVS, all the pharmacies in the state, and asked them to also initiate a program of help and counseling when people -- when people come in. So we have seen an up -- a pretty significant increase now in people on Medicaid, people -- members of Medicaid who are, in fact, unvaccinated.

We also are looking, Jake, at something that Columbus Health Department has done. And I talked with Mayor Ginther about this yesterday. And we think it's probably a model that we can take statewide. And that is, what they have done, we now can give them census track data. Our state Health Department can give every health department the state census track data.

So, they can look exactly where they are unvaccinated, what neighborhoods. So, they have started an incentive program there, a $100 incentive, but not just the $100. Everything that they're doing is, they're putting it in very familiar places. They might put it in a grocery store. They might put it in a church. And they do it on a regular, reoccurring basis.

That combination of things seems to have worked very well.

TAPPER: OK.

DEWINE: And we're looking at doing that, to expand it.

So, the game -- I guess my summary is, the game still is with getting people vaccinated. We have room to grow. And we think we have some ways to help people get to that point.

TAPPER: So, no plans right now to bring back mandates like capacity restrictions or distancing requirements of businesses? A complete full-scale, full-court press on vaccinations.

DEWINE: No, I will tell you -- yes, I will tell you what we have done.

We came out last week with recommendations. They are recommendations. We leave it up to the local schools, 600 and some local schools. We leave it up to them. But we have a strong recommendation that, because the population in school -- kids in school, most of them are unvaccinated. Obviously, we can't get any by 11 and under vaccinated yet.

So most of these kids are unvaccinated. And we had great success last winter, last school year. We saw virtually no spread in the classroom, when all the kids were wearing masks. So we recommend, strong recommendation to our schools, that they do that. Now, will do that. Some will not.

But it's clear the evidence shows that that's a way to really slow down spread in the school. And we think it's very important. TAPPER: Let me ask you.

You held the first vaccine lottery in the country a few months ago, giving away millions of dollars in college scholarships to drive up the rate of vaccinations.

Your fellow Republican governor, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, his office tells CNN he considers such lotteries a waste of taxpayer dollars, and he will not institute one in Florida, which also has a relatively low vaccination rate and is experiencing an explosion in new cases.

Clearly, you don't agree with that. How many lives do you think you saved with the lottery program?

DEWINE: Yes, first of all, look, every governor has got to make their own decision. They know their local community. So, I'm not going to quarrel with what Governor DeSantis is doing or not doing.

Here's what happened in Ohio. We were going straight down every week in the number of people vaccinated. When we announced that, we saw it go straight up. And we had, Jake, two really, really solid, good weeks.

A lot of people who were going to get vaccinated sometime later -- we had one mom, for example, that told Fran and told me: "I was going to get my son vaccinated right before school. Because you came out with this, and the scholarship was available, I got him vaccinated right away."

And turned out he actually won.

So, we think well over 100,000 extra people were vaccinated, at a minimum, because of that who either would not have been vaccinated or who would have delayed vaccination. So, it was very, very successful.

It was something that worked. And we're glad we did it.

TAPPER: All right, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

DEWINE: Thanks, Jake.

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