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Florida’s doctors and hospitals are calling on the Governor to allow them to resume elective surgeries after seeing a consistent stabilization of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.

New cases have been consistently below the peak for the past 18 days and deaths of Florida residents have been below the peak for two weeks straight.

Governor Ron DeSantis said Tuesday, the projected collapse of the health care system didn’t play out.

“There was an article in March… that said this week, this week in April Florida could see 465,000 people hospitalized throughout the State of Florida. The reality? Slightly more than 2,000,” said DeSantis.

We asked the Florida Health Care Association if they agree with the Governor’s assessment.

“Yes that is correct. The data is starting to reflect very positive outcomes,” said Interim CEO Crystal Stickle.

Stickle told us while hospital capacity has held consistently around 50 percent, the ban on elective surgeries has had other health repercussions.

“Cancer surgeries that have been put on hold, cardiac procedures that have been put on hold,” said Stickle.

And financial ones.

“They do support hospitals financially. Many of our hospitals have taken significant financial hits,” said Stickle.

They’re asking the Governor to lift the ban as soon as possible.

The Governor said he agrees with the concerns of hospitals, but has so far not set a deadline for lifting the ban.

“People are going to get laid off and I think there’s going to be less financial viability for some of the healthcare outfits, which is very important,” said DeSantis. “We have a lot of this stuff in place until April 30th and then we’ll see what it looks like after that, but I haven’t set a specific date because I think it’s more important to do it right than necessarily try to have an artificial deadline.”

Florida Democrats have urged the Governor to greatly expand the state’s testing capabilities before considering re-opening the state.

The Governor has signaled he intends to beef up capacity state labs and announce a deal for high-through testing with a private lab this week.

If the ban is lifted, the Florida Hospital Association says it would fall on local governments to monitor new cases, available beds and access to PPE before allowing elective surgeries to continue.