let's jump in. the white house today is pushing back on a story originally published by "the new york times" that claims russia offered cash payments to afghan militants to kill american service members in their country. president trump responding with a tweet saying that neither he, the vice president, nor the chief of staff were briefed on the matter. but nbc reports it is possible that he may have received intelligence in another form. we'll get to that in a moment. it's another tweet from the president receiving the most attention today. just this morning, the president retweeted a disturbing video purportedly taken in florida of trump supporters chanting a racist slogan while facing off with counterprotesters. >> racist! racist! >> white power! white power! >> there you go, white power. you hear that? >> nbc news has verified the authenticity of the video, which

is also posted on the web page for the villages. hourslier, after making headlines, it appears the tweet was removed. let's bring in national political reporter josh letterman at the white house. josh, what is the white house saying about this video? >> well, alicia, let's start with what the white house is not saying. gnaw condemning this trump supporter who in the video was chanting white power, nor condemning his comments to that effect. but the white house is saying, according to a spokesman, judd deer, is president trump is a big fan of the villages, the retirement communities where you see the protesters and supporters squaring off in the video. the statement from the white house spokesman going on to say president trump did not hear the one statement made on the video. what he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from many of his supporters. that one statement being that chant of white power that comes only eight seconds into that video, alicia. that's raising a lot of questions about how exactly it

is that the president saw something, decided that it was worthy of sharing to his own millions of followers on twitter, yet was unaware somehow that only a few seconds into that video, you have that offensive comment from that supporter. we're hearing a lot of criticism from this, not only from the joe biden, but even from some of president trump's fellow republicans. all of this coming as the president deletes this tweet, the deletion actually took place, alicia, while the president was on his golf course with senator lindsey graham just a few hours ago. >> all right, josh. thank you. meanwhile, nbc news has confirmed a story reported by "the new york times." russians offered to pay afghans bounties for killing americans. nbc news intelligence reporter ken dilanian has been on the story all weekend and joins me now. how persuasive is this intelligence and do we know if a bounty was ever actually paid?

>> a senior defense official told my colleague courty cu ney there was no bounty, and it's not clear how persuasive this intelligence was. it was described as reporting, not an assessment. "new york times" is leaning further forward and suggesting it's a concluz, almost beyond any doubt by the intelligence community this happened. i think we need to be cautious about that. it's curious the white house is saying trump wasn't briefed on this. it's possible it was included in his written president's daily brief, which is like the briefing book prepared by the cia and others. it's widely known he does not read that, but nonetheless, something this important would be briefed orally, verbally to him by his senior officials. he has an intelligence brief as off as three times a week. that raises further questions either about the intelligence or about the white house response to this very serious allegation,

alicia. >> ken, russia also responding to this report. what more can you tell us about their response? >> russia is adamantly denying this, as you would expect them to. but look, intelligence sources have told me if it's true, it's not terribly surprising. i mean, there's a long history of this kind of behavior by both sides. in the 1980s, the cia funded a covert effort to try to kill russians in afghanistan, and there was a military battle that killed some russian mercenaries, u.s. forces did, a couple years ago. the russians doing everything they can to undermine the united states. this would mark a kind of an escalation in the kind of dirty intelligence wars between the two sides, offering money to kill americans. that's a big deal, and a lot of policymakers are saying if it's true, it merits a harsh response. >> all right, ken, thank you. turning now to the coronavirus pandemic. florida, georgia, south carolina, nevada breaking records this weekend, reporting more cases in a single day than at any point during this pandemic.

texas and arizona set records for hospitalizations. and the surge in california is prompting leaders to consider rolling back some reopening measures. nbc's gadi schwartz in los angeles. what action is the governor now proposing? >> well, alicia, so far, the governor is keeping a close eye on what we're seeing here in los angeles where infection rates have jumped up to 9%, which is above one of the thresholds for reopening. while hospital capacity here seems to be holding steady. however, down in impierial county on the southern border, the infection rate is 23%. that's the highest in california. the outbreaks happening among those who work in the agriculture sector, and their hospitals are way overcapacity with hundreds of patients being transferred to other counties. now, the governor is saying that imperial county needs to reimpose some of the lockdown measures there immediately, which would make it the first county that would go back into heavy restrictions during this

second wave. now, the county board of supervisors, they did have an emergency meeting on friday. but in the end, decided not to take any immediate action, saying they would be making some announcements soon. meanwhile, places like san francisco that were looking at relaxing some of their restrictions are now backing away from that, saying that these increases that they're seeing continue to move in the wrong direction. alicia. >> gadi, thank you. leaders in seattle are facing another lawsuit over their handling of the capitol hill organized protest zone. multiple groups now claking the mayor and governor did not do enough to protect residents near the police free zone. nbc's steve patterson is in seattle. what are the police saying they're going do next? >> police aren't saying what they're going to do at all. that's maybe part of the strategy here, obfuscate what is happening here, but the city said they wanted to start moving some of the barriers this

sunday. that got moved. a city official came into the chop zone, where we are now, to talk to some of the protest leadership, and then the plan was to move some barriers on monday. just want to orient you where we are real quick. this is chop. that's the east precinct back there. i'm going to loop around here and show you some of the re-enforcement that's been done. after that announcement yesterday with city officials, protesters got upset, and they started making re-enforcements on the outer perimeter of the barriers. this is all new. these concrete slabs are all new. this fencing is all new. and look down here. you'll see this rebar loop. this is on a lot of the concrete barriers that you'll see. they cut these in order to make it harder for the city to pick up some of the barriers. so the plan now as far as we can tell is that the city is still planning on coming in on monday to try to remove, again, just some of the outer perimeter of chop, but protesters say they're not for that. they will be here. you can see, again, the build-up

of the protective barriers, the build-up of the tents under the precinct, and this is happening in almost every perimeter we see here in chop. protesters saying if you want to make this zone smaller, if you want to shrink chop, you're dpeeg have a fight on your hands. we have to wait and see what happens tomorrow. again, the plan is for the city to come with sdot, not necessarily police, but just to move some of the barriers. they have told protesters, though, just for a moment of orientation, that they want to keep the area around the precinct, effectively keeping protesters able to stay under the precinct, so not moving any of the interior barriers. just the exterior barriers. however, just talking to the protesters we spoke to, they're not happy about the city coming in and doing anything. alicia. >> steve, you look at these lawsuits, and their argument is that the mayor, the governor, have abdicated their responsibility. what is it the lawsuits are trying specifically to resolve?

>> we spoke to some of the businesses on the initial wave of lawsuits. there's now two suits facing the city, two class-action suits. the initial wave was from several businesses in the area. this is one of the businesses right here, this liquor and wine store. there's another one right behind this, kind of a label printing business as well. we spoke to some of the ownership of some of these businesses here as well as an auto body shop up the road. they say they're not necessarily against what the protesters' message is, what chop is about, or what it represents. they're specifically angry at the city for allowing this essentially to happen. row have to remember that this zone, while the movement itself in talking to the protesters is largely one of peace, larngly one of reform, largely one of causing a disruption enough to make a change in the city, it does create a zone in which the 911 response is incredibly difficult, where we have seen some violence on the fringes of this movement, specifically in this area. and so residents are on edge, businesses are on edge, and you

have to remember these businesses are losing business. it's in the middle of a pandemic, and wlou have a situation in which trucks bringing supplies can't easily get in, and some of the drivers are scared. that's what the lawsuits are about. it's about putting pressure on the city so they can come in and do something in a timely matter. again, monday, tomorrow, seems to be the date in which we may see a conflict or some of the city trucks in the zone. alicia. >> steve, thank you. now to virginia where a new law takes effect this coming week that will allow communities to decide the fate of monuments that had been referred to as war memorials. more than a dozen confederate statues and monuments in virginia have been removed or requested to be removed in recent weeks. that's only part of the commonwealth's re-examination of its history. robert e. lee high school in springfield, virginia, just voted to change its name to no longer commemorate the confederate war general. amanda golden joins me now live from outside the school.

how did this name change come about? >> well, alicia, this name change has been in the works for quite a bit of time. this school district in virginia has previously voted to change the name of another high school that recognizes a confederate leader, jeb stuart high school, that was called justice high school a couple years ago. in light of the continued protests and demonstrations and conversations that have stemmed over the last several weeks, the community here decided it was the right time to change the name of this high school behind me. so the community is going to be grappling with how best to rename the school. there are numerous suggestions already floated, and they'll pho vote to make the final decision this summer. it does come as other symbols and confederate monuments and flags are coming under scrutiny all over the country. i did speak with some legal scholars and historians to better understand what is it about this moment, this social movement, that's impacting both the legal processes and the overall understanding of the monuments. take a listen to what one of the

professors told me. >> when you name something after someone who has a memory, who has a legacy, who has a history, then that name becomes associated with that history, with that legacy, and it's both a benefit and a burden. but as to this just taking out every monument because it stands for this person or that person, well, that's problematic. >> so alicia, as we look ahead to this week, this coming wednesday, july 1st, is the implementation of a new law in virginia that will delegate to localities throughout the commonwealth to best consider for themselves what to do with these monuments. previo previously, they were deemed war memorials and couldn't be touched. it will be interesting to see who starts to take the motions to take them down, to recontextualize, to put them in storage, and just to reiterate, these are symbols that aren't necessarily explicit, but everything from flags that contain confederate emblems to

seeing statues who relate to presidents who were considered slave holders to start to come down and grapple with communities not just here in the south and in virginia. >> thank you. >> now to mississippi where at this hour, history is expected to be made in a groundbreaking vote on a bill to remove and redesign the state flag. on saturday, state lawmakers voted to begin the legislative process for this change. this comes as protests sweep the country and spur discussions over the flag's divisive history. mississippi is the last state in the u.s. to have the confederate battle emblem incorporated into their design. the 126-year-old flag was established at the flag of mississippi in 1894. in the top left corner, it showcases the confederate battle flag, a symbol that has caused tensions between mississippi residents for decades. in a statement on facebook, governor ted reeves said if the bill makes it to his desk today, he plans to sign it into law.

>> still ahead, vice president mike pence is in texas today, where coronavirus cases are surging. we'll talk about his visit as the trump campaign pulls the plug on two of his scheduled rallies in the wake of the pandemic. and with little engagement from the president, governors and mayors are trying to pick up the slack. i'll talk to the mayor of tucson, arizona, about the coronavirus spike in her state and what she's doing to keep her city safe. s s than rheumatoid arthritis. when considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz a pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis when methotrexate has not helped enough. xeljanz can reduce pain, swelling, and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections. before and during treatment, your doctor should check for infections like tb and do blood tests. tell your doctor if you've had hepatitis b or c, have flu-like symptoms, or are prone to infections. serious, sometimes fatal infections,

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vice president mike pence is in texas today, where he spoke this morning at the first baptist church in dallas. he arrived in dallas sporting a mask, a relatively new look for him. his texas visit comes in the wake of a coronavirus task force meeting he led this week where he played up the administration's response to the outbreak. >> we slowed the spread. we flattened the curve. we saved lives. there may be a tendency among the american people to think that we are back to the place that we were two months ago.

that we're in a time of great losses and great hardship on the american people. the reality is, we're in a much better place. >> for more, i would like to bring in anne gearan, a white house correspondent for "the washington post" and an msnbc contributor, and katie rogers, white house correspondent. you look at all of this in the aggregate, that sound of the vice president saying we're in a better place, even as you watch cases in the southwest rage at this moment. you see him going to texas, even though he's pulled events from other states where you're seeing a surge in cases. you see him wearing a mask. what does it all tell you about where this white house is when it comes to responding to this pandemic? >> well, alicia, it tells me the vice president is trying to walk a very, very fine and tricky line here between being a responsible voice of public health, which you saw him doing

in part at that coronavirus hearing on friday, and as you see him doing somewhat today, modeling good mask wearing protocol. but also, you know, trying to do the other part of his job, which is to represent what the president wants, which is very much to move on past this virus. to leave it in the rear-view mirror and start holding large political rallies again, and he's, you know, pence said on friday they were doing to continue rallies. and then a day later, he ended up canceling two of his own. >> katie, so much of this is about the fact that there is all of this polling that shows that you have the president on the wrong side of the electorate on two major issues. the wrong side of the handling of the pandemic, the american public wanting to see the president and his administration put health first and not the economy first. and then also on the wrong side of the protests that we have seen across the country, and so

that is the other story that we're following today. right? this retweet of the president where you have someone supporting him, but also declaring white power. what are you hearing from inside the administration about how damning they believe that was? >> i mean, the administration is already spinning it to say the president was really ecstatic to see supporters. he didn't watch the whole video before he tweeted it. it was pulled down. i think there are people in this administration who have urged him to take a step back from the tweeting that is divisive, that retweets hate speech, that retweets internet trolls, that retweets white supremacists. he will not do it. for whatever reason. and the white house is left to try to spin this as he loves his supporters. but he might not condone the content of their message. >> right, and anne, then you look, there's no apology, no sense of this shouldn't have been done. of course, we would never do

that. i condemn any statements of that kind. i mean, it gets back to, i think, part of what katie is saying, which is there's a question of, can anyone in this administration, can anyone in the re-election campaign really control this president's worst instincts? >> well, i think there are many people who try. but the short answer is no. i mean, this particular tweet was something the president did by himself at the white house this morning before he went to play golf, and then, you know, there was a giant explosion after he retweeted it. and i would note that although the white house says, as katie mentioned, that he was not aware of the white power statement being part of this video, it comes, you know, second in to quite a lengthy video, and it's very clear what the man is saying. he says it twice. he raised a fist, and it is at the beginning of the video. i noticed some other people,

including some who were not necessarily trump supporters, including john bolton this morning, saying this is perhaps indicative of one of the president's impulses, which is to tweet first and think later that he liked the sign on the front of the golf cart, a pro-trump sign. that was enough for him. >> at the same time, you have, katie, tim scott this morning saying he shouldn't have retweeted it. have you heard pushback from any other republican, specifically congressional republicans? >> no, i mean, that generally comes out in a steady trickle. it never amounts to much as the day goes on, but i think that at this point, people know what they're getting with this president. i think it's getting a little worse, and it's sort of all indicative of even with the virus as we were just talking about, it's indicative of a sloppy messaging strategy that is not coherent, that is

divisive, that is intent on dividing americans at a time when he has an election to win, and this is only making the amount of die-hard supporters smaller. >> anne, this russia bounty story that we have been covering all weekend, the white house claims the president, the vice president, were not briefed. why would that not be important enough to alert the president to giving his ongoing discussions with putin, his efforts to get russia back into the g-7, does this make any sense to you? >> well, it strains credulity that he wouldn't have heard of it ever, but the president doesn't get an intelligence briefing every day, as many presidents have done customarily, but for the last couple decades. but he does get them. at least a few times a week. and certainly, this seems like a thing that would have been included, at the very least, included in the binder that was available to be presented to him. since we don't ever know the

contents of those briefings, it is, you know, they can say and then it is not able to be disproved that he was not told about it. but certainly, this is something that the u.s. intelligence was aware of, and would have at least had available for him to be briefed on whether or not he was. >> katie, how concerned is the white house about these reports? >> i mean, outwardly, the white house is concerned with calling them fake and shooting them down, and i think that goes back to what anne is say, that this information is always available since the beginning of this administration, though aides have been very -- they have tried their own tipped and tricks to get the president to pay attention to information, whether it's visual aids or one sentence bullets. this is more than a one-bullet visual aid sort of issue, so in the face of not paying attention

and pretending that, you know, it wasn't known, they're falling back on sort of this knee-jerk response, to call it fake. >> anne and katie, thank you both. >> one of the rallies vice president pence postponed was slated for tucson, arizona. up next, i'll talk to the mayor of that city about the rise in cases of coronavirus there. did you know prilosec otc can stop frequent heartburn before it begins? heartburn happens when stomach acid refluxes into the esophagus.

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people are indeed exhausted and here in arizona we're very concerned about what's coming. i feel very lucky to work with the people i work with, but it's getting more difficult in the hospitals. admissions are really getting backed up in the emergency department. >> i had a moment that i just, i'm not a crier, i'm not. but i just broke down, and it's -- it's those moments that you feel the just the weight. and the sadness of it.

>> medical care workers in arizona, a state that's quickly becoming a hot spot for coronavirus, are addressing their concerns as hospitals see an influx of patients. in maricopa county, officials say more than one third of all cases have been confirmed in the past week alone. according to az central, the county had fewer than 7,000 known cases when the stay-at-home order expired in mid-may. now, maricopa county cases have exceeded 40,000. that's partly why the trump campaign announced this weekend they were postponing vice president mike pence's planned rally in tucson this week. with me now is the mayor of tucson, arizona, regina romero. mayor, your icu beds near capacity. what are you doing to help your city brace for what is next? >> hi, alicia. thank you so much for having me. we were preempted by governor ducy earlier on in his executive order that was issued in march,

and basically, he said that cities, towns, and counties cannot do more than what the state orders in terms of measures to protect our public. just about a week ago or a week and a half ago, he untied the hands of mayors throughout arizona so that we could do masks mandatory. but to the day, he has not made mandatory mask wearing a priority in arizona. it is alarming that today we see 3600 cases reported, the highest reported since the pandemic first started. and what i would like to see the governor do is take leadership, because this is happening throughout the state of arizona. here in tucson, what i have done through executive order is that we keep the city of tucson

buildings closed. we are strongly advising all employers to keep their employees teleworking. we're strongly advising that people stay home as much as possible. and that they wear masks. we're mandating masks. i was prepared to send a letter to the trump campaign and vice president pence that here in tucson, they had to wear a mask because it's mandatory, as well as in pima county. i just wish we had much more leadership coming, not just from the trump administration on this pandemic and this crisis, but also from the leader of our state, which is governor ducy. >> there are two major national stories that we're following. we're following both this pandemic and the protests that are happening across the country. and both stories are sort of playing out in your home town. you have been pushing for police reform after body cam footage from april of carlos ingram lopez's death while in police

custody recently became public this week. the 27-year-old father died in tucson in late april after being restrained by police officers for about 12 minutes. the tucson police chief said ingram lopez's grandmother called the police around 1:00 a.m.oon april 21st and told the police operator her grandson was drunk, yelling, and running around the house naked. police body cam footage shows ingram lopez frantically running around a dark garage before officers handcuffed him face down on the ground. he pleaded for help and told the officers he couldn't breathe. in the wake of that incident, the three officers involved have resigned from the department and the chief of police has offered to step down as well. mayor, you have decided not to accept that resignation of the police chief. you have also been talking a lot about the need insteadreconcili your community. what has this exposed and what does reform and reconciliation look like? >> well, the family of carlos

ingram lopez called me and the city manager and asked that we not accept the resignation of our chief of police. up until this point, the chief had instituted a lot of reforms already in our department, was moving in a very progressive place. and the family of carlos want the chief to help us find solutions, reform, and move into the direction where we can avoid any type of unnecessary death as carlos's death in our community. i'm devastated. people in tucson are mad and rightfully so. and so what i want to make sure is that we approach community safety in a different way, that we transform how we offer community safety in tucson, arizona, and make sure that the people that actually need help,

what we saw in carlos is a person that needed help. and not every call in our community should be responded with a police officer with a gun. there needs to be continued investment in public health, in drug dependency specialists, in homelessinous, in mental health crisis specialists. we just have to view policing and community safety not just in tucson, arizona, but throughout the country in a different way. and we have been for far too long, this country has been defunding public education, has been defunding mental health crisis investment, has been defunding homelessness programs. we need to restructure and reinvest in programs that will help families and those living

in low-income communities in our areas, in our country. so that's what i would like to move forward with as a city and as a family of carlos, we'll bring the chief of police along so he can help us find answers for what happened here in tucson. >> mayor romero, thank you. it has already been a dramatic season at the supreme court. and there are still some key rulings to come on abortion and the president's taxes. we'll talk about them next. my name is trisha.

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this week could be another pivotal week at the supreme court. with several major rulings yet to come. that includes its first major decision on abortion since neil gorsuch and brett kavanaugh joined the court. a case challenging a louisiana law which required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. the high court will also likely issue a series of rulings that will determine if we see president trump's tax returns before november's election. with me now is melissa murray, professor of law at nyu and a former law clerk to justice sonia sotomayor. trump's taxes, what do you think the chances are the court resolves this the. >> they'll definitely have to resolve it before the end of the term. the real question is when does this term end? typically, the court is usually winding down at about this time in normal years, but this hasn't been a normal year. they took a break between march

and may to get themselves together and figure out how to conduct the rest of the term which they did, but that means we're basically a month behind on things. so this term may go as late as july. so we expect decisions tomorrow and on tuesday, but it's unclear whether the trump tax cases, which were among the later ones heard this term, will be in the group announced tomorrow. >> you also have six federal courts that have already ruled against the president on this question. does that give you any indication of what will happen at the supreme court? >> well, based on oral arguments, which were in may, it seemed that a group of the justices were very concerned about the congressional subpoenas, and specifically that if they allowed the subpoenas to go forward, that future congresses might be able to use the possibility of oversight as a method of harassing the president. even some of the liberal justices had questions for the representative for congress who was arguing on behalf of congress on that point. in terms of the request for documents from the manhattan

d.a.'s office, there seem today be more consensus. specifically many noted past precedence, which required the president, even a sitting president, to comply with the request for an ongoing criminal investigation. and so here, although this is not -- may not be a criminal investigation against the president, it seems like there's past precedent that would auger in favor of the president complying with requests from the manhattan d.a.'s office. >> i want to get your take on the louisiana abortion ruling. what is the basic premise? >> it's a big case because arguably it's a case the court should have never heard. they ruled on a virtually identical texas law on a case called whole women's health v. hellerson, and they struck down the law saying it posed an undue burden to abortion. the fact they're taking up a case with identical law four

years later suggests much has changed, and what we really know is what has changed is the composition of the justices. anthony kennedy required, scalia passed away, and they were replaced by trump appointees. justice scalia was never receptive to it, but justice kennedy was often onboard with liberals. >> to your point, there was already a decision in the texas case. what are the chances the louisiana case impacts the texas ruling? >> that's the whole question. if the court rules this louisiana law should stand, it is a de facto perhaps even an explicit overruling of whole women's health v. hellerson, and you saw this in oral arguments with roberts and kavanaugh both asking the lawyer representing the abortion clinics whether or not whole women's health could ever lead to an outcome where an

admitting privileges law like the one challenged here could be beneficial to the women that the state said that they were hoping to protect. in the texas case, the court concluded that the admitting privileges requirement was medically pointless and really didn't offer any benefits to any women and therefore wasn't more than just and undue burden on the right to abortion. >> what are some of the other pending cases, melissa, that you're going to be following? >> well, there are two really important cases both dealing with religion, and the scope of title vii's exemptions for religious institutions. it's known as the ministerial exemption, and the question comes from teachers at parochial schools in various states across the country who have been fired or discriminated against in their job and the religious institution or school where they work are arguing that title vii doesn't apply to them because their religious institutions and these employees are quote/unquote ministers within the scope of that religious

exemption. there's also another case from montana involving the question whether public funds can ever be used to support religious institutions. and of course, there's a case a couple terms ago that dealt with this in the context of a public funding program for school playgrounds and a religious school was able to get involved and use those public funds, and this is an outgrowth of that particular case. so two really important questions on the scope of the first amendment. >> all right. melissa, thank you so much for your time. we're coming to the end of pride month, and an openly gay counselman from new york city is on the verge of political history. i'll talk to richie torres about it after the break.

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find and honor your ancestors who servered in world war ii. their stories live on at ancestry. >> we're take you now to florida where the governor is going to be giving some updates on covid-19 in his state. take a listen. >> there's other folks that looked at the studies. whatever it is, i think every one would agree that a positive test, the number of cases you detect is not the sum total of the infections that you have

throughout the community. if you test 25,000 people and your positivity rate remains stable then you can double the testing capacity. you'll probably double the tests. not really anything that would be unexpected. that is something that's very, very important. what we have been doing, if you look at the slide, we were pretty much in that 10% range for positivity when we really started to ramp things up in march and spoo april. now we weren't testing nearly as much as we are now. back then you were testing people who were symptommatic and usually people who were 65 and plus. sometimes a little younger than that but that was really focusing on testing the folks who were going to be most vulnerable to the illness as we got into april, we started testing more but we also saw the positivity rate drop and then really from the beginning of may

through that first week of june, we were pretty stable between 3 and 5% positivity. as we would increase testing, you would have some more cases but the cases were very stable, very manageable. then when we started to see as we got into the second week of june and then now, certainly over the last ten days, yes, we're increasing testing as you have seen this past week. we have done more testing than we ever have by far. that may 17th week where you see the 243,000 test, that was about five weeks worth of backlog negatives that got dumped that week. we were not testing that much in that actual week. it was pretty much a consistent increase. really jumped here in the last week to ten days which is a good thing. when you do that, you'll find more cases. the detected cases are a small fraction of the total amount of infections.

we have seen the positivity rate increase from the may stand by of 4 or 5% to now 6/14 was almost 10% and now 12% with that. when you see an increase in positivity, yeah, you're testing more, but you're finding more cases at a faster clip than if it was stable. that is something that we're really looking at and as we're looking at the different communities, see iing how that' going on. that positivity increase is really being driven by a big increase over the last three weeks and individuals testing positive throughout the state of florida in younger age group, particularly 18 to 44. if you look at that 25 to 44 age group, that's the leading age group for positive tests in the state of florida.

that's something that's pretty new. a part of it was, we weren't really looking for cases in those age groups when we were doing this in march and april because, as you see there, there's much less likely to see significant clinical outcomes and much less likely to be hospitalized and way, way less likely to suffer a fatality. yes, those fatalities are not all caused by covid. fatalities with covid and it does include more than just ones of that but with that, you still see the numbers in those younger age groups compared to the number of positive tests. very, very low fatality rates. you're seeing it in those groups but test positive at much higher rates.

for most of this, you had a south florida story and other parts. northwest florida has been low and stable. you are seeing south florida, miami has the most cases. from talking to folks, this is socializing. you have graduation parties and doing different things. that's going to be conducive to transmitting the virus. here is the break down where our cases are coming from. they are in the less risk demographics. as you can see, as you get into the particularly 75 and up, the infections fatalities per infection much, much higher than in those younger age groups. part of what we want to do is continue to do things. i'll mention protecting a long

term care facilities. advising the senior citizens to limit contact outside the home as much as they can. for these younger group, they need to be thinking about who they are coming into contact with who may be in the more vulnerable groups. you've seen this thing spread amongst them and their cohert and if if spreads to the folk who is are elderly, that will result to their health. we were able to flatten the curve here. there were dire predictions of running out of hospital space by april and running out of icu and all this stuff. that didn't happen. we had abun dants kpdant capaci. we were able to do that and beat the expectations of what people had said. part of the reason you did to flatten the curve is because you wanted to make sure that the health care system would have the capacity to deal with infeks

-- infections as they came down. you knew they were going to be infections. if you spread them out, then you're in a situation where you can handle that better than in a place where the infection just run wild and it overwhelms the system. i think you can see in june where we're at much better than in march. many march we had seven state supported testing sites. they did about 20,000 tests. over those weeks in march. now we have 41 various testing sites. driver through sites. pop up retail site, walk up sites. mobile rv and they have done close to half a million people now in the state of florida. when we did phase one, we put more testing sites around because we wanted people to get tested. when we were doing this in

march, if you were 30 years old and exposed but didn't have symptoms, there's no way you would have gotten a test. they were too scarce. now people, even if they don't have symptoms are able to get a test. we're in a much different spot in terms of that. also, ppe. one of the reasons why people were concerned about stress on hospitals was yes the patients coming in and did you have enough capacity and beds but also this ppe was in really high demand. there was a worldwide crunch on the supply lines. that has since loosened up. all the hospitals are in a much better shape. the department of emergency management here in florida has sent huge amounts of ppe out to various health care workers and first responders, including more than 40 million masks and over 12 million gloves as well as 1.7 million face shields. in terms of the ppe, we have the ppe. hospitals are in a much better

spot with that and then they will be able to handle patients as they come in in a much better way. also socme of the treatments. we see in covid-19 recently, things like plasma. the remdisivir and other types of therapies. before it was try to put as many people on ventilators as you could. now, you have other ways, i think the physicians have really learned a lot and then you're also in situation where we just have way fewer people that need to mechanical vennlation now as opposed to in march and early april which is a really good thing. learning about the virus, learning about the disease and i think the folks throughout the state of florida and then the medical profession have done a good job. then we're also in much better shape with our long term care facilities. we did recognize this very early as something that was

potentially a weak spot in terms of having a lot of vulnerable residents there to this virus. we acted very early working with the long term care facilities. making sure they were screening their staff, banning visitors and then banning hospitals from sending covid positive patients back into long term care facilities early on in the pandemic. requiring masks and ppe of the staff who are going to interact with the residents and the state of florida because a lot of these facilities were not prepared for this. state of florida has sent more than 10 million masks just to long term care facilities. half a million face shields to long term care facilities. this was something that was a vulnerability and we wanted to do all we could to help protect those residents. having covid