DeSantis downplayed New York help his aides 'very much appreciated'

TALLAHASSEE - Florida will start getting shipments this weekend of an antiviral drug that has shown signs of helping severely ill Covid-19 patients - cargo senior aides scored in part from New York just as Gov. Ron DeSantis was publicly dismissing the state's help, emails show.

Fresh doses of remdesivir were expedited with help from Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, DeSantis told reporters Saturday during a news conference at the Blake Medical Center in Bradenton, noting that hospitals across the state will start receiving shipments. While DeSantis was quick to praise the Trump administration, the governor spent the past few days downplaying the notion that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office had come to Florida's aid.

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"They're not helping us," DeSantis told reporters during a Jacksonville news conference on Thursday.

"I think someone reached out to our office about ventilators and we have like, 6,000 just sitting idle. ... We don't need ventilators. We don't need PPE," he said, before noting how his office was in talks with the federal government to get remdesivir.

But a polite set of emails exchanged midday Wednesday between Cuomo's office and the Florida Department of Health, and reviewed by POLITICO, show New York had offered to ship remdesivir to the Sunshine State at a time when the seven-day average positivity rate for Covid-19 testing in New York was 1 percent and Florida's was 19 percent, according to a Johns Hopkins University & Medicine website.

An email sent Wednesday by a staffer in Cuomo's office to one in DeSantis' included the subject line, "Florida need Remdesivir?" The message was forwarded to a senior staff person at the Florida Department of Health, who replied with thanks.

"Any assistance you are able to provide is very much appreciated. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you need any additional information," they wrote.

The course of the pandemic in the U.S. has shifted tides between New York and Florida. DeSantis has offered plenty of criticism of Cuomo's handling of the virus as the positivity rate in his state exceeded 50 percent. Florida began seeing a resurgence of new positive tests in June, pushing the rate from the 5 percent recorded in late May to a high of more than 16 percent last week. The remdesivir shipments were provided by medical wholesaler AmerisourceBergen Corp., according to a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health, which also said the state will receive another shipment compliments of Cuomo.

On Saturday, Florida Department of Health spokesperson Alberto Moscoso said the shipment arriving now was shipped by the wholesaler ahead of schedule.

"Fortunately, AmerisourceBergen has shipped remdesivir to Florida hospitals ahead of schedule and New York's has shipped as well," Moscoso wrote in an email.

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