CNN's Sanjay Gupta breaks down how Ron DeSantis' failure to lock down Florida put millions in jeopardy

On Wednesday, finally bowing to public pressure and pleas from experts, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced a shelter-in-place order for his state.

But the delay likely made the pandemic worse and needlessly put people in Florida and around the country at risk, said Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN.

"The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, today, Sanjay, announced a stay-at-home order for the state," said anchor Jake Tapper. "This is after much criticism and weeks and weeks of cruise ships landing and spring breakers packing the beaches. Shouldn't the governor of Florida have done this weeks ago? Just empirically, didn't his delaying this mean more cases and possibly more deaths?"

"I mean, there's no question that's the case," said Gupta. "You look at what's happened around the world, you look at other places within the country. I think Florida now has the fourth — is fourth in terms of overall number of infections. You know, I hope that — and I know, I'm sure this will make an impact now that there's a stay-at-home order. If nothing else it gives a level of seriousness to people who would say, there's no stay-at-home order, let's continue our vacation."

"Jake, you and I have talked about this for some time now," continued Gupta. "If you look at places like Germany versus Italy, places that isolated people sooner, did testing sooner — people always think of a drug or vaccine, and hopefully those things will come soon, but we didn't minimize the impact of these what are called nonpharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing. We'll wait and see, I hope this makes a difference, I know it will, but I think most people wish it had been done earlier."

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