WCCO Investigates: Letters From Gov. Tim Walz To Federal Government Detail Pleas For Help Fighting COVID-19
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- We are getting a closer look at the help Minnesota pleaded for in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis.
WCCO dug into the letters between the Governor and the federal government from last month.
More than 100 pages detail the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis hitting Minnesota. WCCO wanted to see specifically what Governor Tim Walz was asking the federal government for. From correspondence with the President and Vice President to FEMA, the Department of Commerce, and Labor Secretary the letters show what was happening behind the scenes to better protect Minnesota patients and the question marks about the path forward.
On March 13th, Governor Walz wrote to the Vice President that he was "deeply concerned about the availability of the testing kits..." and "calling on the government to ensure access to testing kits and supplies needed to conduct at minimum 15,000 tests per month."
More than a month later, there are plans by the state to test 5,000 more than that every day.
On that same day in March, Minnesota's Department of Health submitted a formal request for stockpile supplies. The state said the supplies would be depleted three days after that letter. They were looking for facemasks, gloves, gowns and ventilators. Take a look at how those numbers have grown over the last month.
588,000 face masks are in inventory, 5 million gloves and 49,000 gowns with millions of more items on order.
On March 18th a letter went from the Governor to Doctor Deborah Birx on the White House's Coronavirus Task Force on testing concerns.
Walz wrote "We are critically low on re-agents necessary for all four methods we have at our disposal to test for COVID-19. We simply cannot test everyone displaying symptoms to monitor the spread. We received 1,000 samples on March 17th , and will need to freeze over 1,700 samples..."
If you'd like to take a closer look at how much has happened in the COVID-19 fight, click here to see the documents.