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Miami Mayor Suarez on President Trump's response to coronavirus

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez joins Yahoo Finance Live highlighting his experience as a COVID-19 survivor, how the virus is impacting the city, and how he is trying to slow the spread.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: We're joined now by Francis Suarez, the mayor of the city of Miami and a confirmed COVID-19 survivor. Mayor Suarez, thanks for joining the program. I guess I would start with how you're feeling-- what your experience was like with COVID-19. And, you know, you've been public discussing this experience. And what can you share with us on that front? I think a lot of people are anxious about what this disease does and doesn't do.

FRANCIS SUAREZ: Yeah, I feel great. I'm very fortunate. I was blessed to be one of those people that are in that category that experiences mild symptoms. I never got a fever. I never got a sore throat. I basically had cold-like symptoms throughout. The most medicine that I took was Tylenol. And like you said, I made a decision early on, which was somewhat risky, to video blog of the experience.

But since it turned out well for me, it gave people a lot of hope. And it-- I think reassured people that if they became COVID-19 positive that it wasn't a death sentence. It wasn't something that was hopeless. And so for me, you know, this has been a tremendous process. I mean, I've also been writing sort of the same virtually.

And I think we have now entered this new world where everything is being done so much more virtual than it was before. And that's something that I'm not so sure we're ever going to fully go back to the way things were now that we have uncovered this capacity that we have to do things so efficiently from the comfort of our own homes.

- Mayor, good to talk to you again, and glad to hear that you have recovered. I want to talk about the response or how Miami has responded to the outbreak. You sent a letter over the White House last week calling on all flights into Miami from some of these hotspots be halted.

I'm looking at the numbers today. You've already got 4,000 or more than 4,000 cases there. So what is the rationale behind calling for all flights to be halted when you've already got the virus in your community?

FRANCIS SUAREZ: Yeah, we definitely have the most cases in Florida. What I have looked at is our risk profile. And so what we've done is we have-- we're one of the first cities to institute a stay-at-home order. We're the first city to institute a curfew. We're the first city probably in America to cancel large events. So as I look at what else can I do? People are often asking, what more can you do as mayor?

You look at Miami International Airport. We have-- normally speaking, obviously, this is not a normal time. We normally have 50 million people coming through MIA every given year. And so the fear was that, you know, that's 2 and 1/2 times the population of the entire state of Florida coming through one airport, a guy from a delegation of officials that came from Brazil.

And so we have people coming from all over the world all over the country from-- who may be fleeing hotspots and unfortunately may exacerbate the situation in our city as we're trying to get control of it.

RICK NEWMAN: Mayor, hey, Rick Newman here on the other side of the internet. Are the cities in Florida on the same page as the state at this point because you were not for a while? And when you look at these projection curves, it looks like Florida is going to peak later then places like New York. That's just the timing of it. How long are you anticipating it until you can begin starting to get back to normal there?

FRANCIS SUAREZ: The latest projection curves I have seen have it peaking in late April, which was sort of an improvement over the last few days. Obviously this is something that we're monitoring on a day-to-day basis. We see fluctuations. I can tell you that today, one of our testing sites got about 33% more tests than it's done in the past.

And so, you know, every time we feel like we can sort of let our-- sort of breathe easier, and we think that maybe we're over the worst of this, unfortunately, what we've seen happen with this virus is we sort of get scared back into apprehension vigilance. And so I think for me, I like to see more-- more data-- a little bit more data from a few more days and also consult with our medical experts before we make some sort of prediction.

But we're taking this day by day. Our emergency powers only go into effect for seven-day periods. And then, you know, obviously everybody wants to return to normal, because this has had a crippling impact on our economy. But we have to be vigilant. We have to be disciplined. The more disciplined that we are as a community and as an urban community, the faster I think we'll be able to return to normal.

- Mayor, you pointed out that you are one of the first cities within Florida to put in place these stay-at-home orders. Your governor, DeSantis, certainly has gotten a lot of criticism for acting more slowly. He was more than a week or out from the initial stay-at-home home that you initiated. How is a slow response from the state level complicated the city's response?

FRANCIS SUAREZ: Well, like I said, you know, we have-- our threats come from a variety of different places, right? They're not just threats that come from home. And so one of the issues that we're dealing with is, is just people who are coming into our community. We are a community that, normally speaking, has a tremendous amount of tourists.

When I canceled Ultra, and I canceled [INAUDIBLE] which were the two main festivals-- one of which has 150,000 people coming from 105 countries that's Ultra. And the other one was 250,000 people. I was actually criticized by some the local leaders as being premature. And then we saw those dramatic images throughout the country of spring breakers partying in our beaches, which, unfortunately, I don't have any control over.

And so it creates a lot of confusion, because people see images. And they assume it's, for example, the mayor of Miami's fault. People-- some people don't even know exactly where Miami begins and ends. Some people think that Palm Beach and Broward are part of Miami when, in fact, Miami is-- it's a large city. But it's a larger city in a county of 3 million people. So it can be very confusing and very difficult to lead in an environment like that.

JENNIFER ROGERS: Mayor, Jen Rogers here. So we've been all watching everything out of New York City and the pleas for ventilators and PPE, masks. Do you have everything that you need in Miami right now?

FRANCIS SUAREZ: Right now we do. And I say right now very, very cautiously, because, as we saw in New York, it all depends on, you know, how systematic the virus continues to propagate. We have, like I said, like I was telling Rick, we had a couple of days where we dipped. And we almost started to feel like, well, maybe this is the worst part. And now, we just had 1,200 cases yesterday.

So every time we think we're kind of reaching the pinnacle, we start going up. And like I said, in one of our testing sites locally, we went up by 33%. It's the most production or the most tests that we've done on a given day on one of our testing sites since we started. That indicates to me that, you know, we're doing symptomatic testing right now.

So that indicates to me that there's still-- we're still on the uptick. So we're going to continue to do everything that we can to try to control this. But our residents are, by and large, respecting our stay-at-home order. They're, by and large, respecting the social distancing ones, of course, or not uniformly. And that's another challenge that we're dealing with.

- And Mayor, finally, as a coronavirus survivor, you donated your plasma last week to, as I understand it, a patient who is struggling with the virus right now. Can you talk a bit about this experimental treatment in, you know, how effective this is likely to be? As I understand it, you are one of the first to do that.

FRANCIS SUAREZ: I was the first in Florida, I think, only a first, fourth-- fourth or fifth in the entire country. Part of the reason why is because I had to follow a very strict regimen, a testing protocol. And so I think one of the things that we've got to look at as a community and as a country is testing people as they come out of this, right?

So we're obviously struggling to test people on the front end-- people who are symptomatic or maybe or even asymptomatic and should get tested just to get a sense for how prevalent the virus is in our community. But we also have to test people after they test positive so that, A, they can feel comfortable. And they can prove to their employer they can go back to work safely. And, B, so that they can help others who have a more dramatic form of the virus in them.

I was lucky. I had a very mild form. But now hopefully with the antibodies that I have built up in my blood, we can use that either to, A, create a vaccine or, B, help people who have a severe case. In my case, I was able to donate to someone in critical condition. And my hope and prayer is that they're able to rebound.

They had some-- they showed some signs of rebounding. And they may have had some other medical complications. But it's something that we're hoping that will be a door that opens and a call to action for those who have defeated COVID-19 in their own bodies.

MYLES UDLAND: All right, Miami Mayor Frances Suarez-- really appreciate you taking time. Glad to hear you're feeling better. And we'll talk to you soon.

FRANCIS SUAREZ: So much.

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