04282020 COVID-19 PC



GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for watching, for listening, and thank you for being here in the room if you're one of the media folks present. Yesterday, we obviously gave you a lot more information than normal, so today's prepared remarks are relatively brief, and then we'll get to your questions. So getting right into the latest numbers that we received today, we are reporting 218 new cases. That brings us to a total of 27,286. And so obviously that is a good number to report on a Tuesday because there have been sometimes when Tuesdays were really high. The other good number is that's on a total of 4,119 new tests. So the percentage of tests that were positive was 5.3 percent, which too is encouraging. Unfortunately, however, we do have 61 new deaths to report today. And, you know, you've been hearing me report similar numbers for a long time now, and I don't want anybody to think that these are really numbers. These are obviously people. And this is very tragic. Obviously I and the rest of the state are very much looking forward to the day when the number of death is zero. And it's also true that, as we reported, I think it was last week, the number of deaths is higher than we would expect it to be given the number of cases that we have and the rate of transmission that we really think is going on. And we're continuing to look at that and trying to figure out why that is. Currently, we have 1,666 patients hospitalized with 244 of those on ventilators. And the grand total of tests that have been completed is a little over 151,000. And interestingly, today, we went back to number five in the nation in per capita tests? I'm sorry, cases. Because we had slid down to six yesterday. I think we just traded spots with Rhode Island today. Speaking of testing, I will tell you that the best news that we had yesterday in the White House's coronavirus task force telephone conference one of the nation's governors was the commitment that the federal government made through Admiral Gerard? and if I haven't told y'all this, he is a Louisiana native by the way? that the task force will support our efforts here in Louisiana, starting in the month of May too, reach 200,000 tests per month. That's a significant ramp up from where we are right now. We just told you we've done a little over 151 thousand tests, and that dates all the way back to early March attachment get to 200,000 tests in one month is going to be significant, and it's also critically important because we need to have this testing in place so that we can monitor what's going on out across the state of Louisiana in every community and inform our contact tracing and so forth. So incredibly important that we do that in terms of getting to 200,000 tests per month. We also have new information on the department of health dashboard right now. It breaks down information by gender and sex. Today it's reporting, for example, that 57 percent of the COVID19 deaths in Louisiana have been among men. Obviously they're 43 percent among women. And interestingly, each has 50 percent of the cases. So you can see this and other important information by visiting LDH.. Before I open the floor to questions, a couple of other things, one of which is there is severe weather moving across north Louisiana right now. We want everyone to pay attention to it. That could continue through the day. So please watch for that. It's enhanced risk of severe weather, thunderstorms, some flash flooding, hail, potentially tornados. And I know we've had to make that announcement a number of times over the last several weeks, and it seems to be hitting north Louisiana at a record clip. But I'm asking people to pay attention to that, and certainly keep their cell phone handy because you will get your last and best warning about a tornado on that cell phone. We've also had many generous donations throughout the course of our efforts to respond to COVID19, and it's helped to make that response more successful than it otherwise would have been, and I want to thank all of those individuals. At the state level, we've been working with LSU, LDEQ, GOHSEP, and prison enterprises to produce enough hand sanitizer to fill approximately 48,000, 16 ounce bottles. And all of the raw materials were donated. ExxonMobil, for example, here in Baton Rouge donated 4600 gallons of isopropyl alcohol. In addition, they've been manufacturing their own medical grade sanitizer for our state and for other states. Procter & Gamble in Alexandria has done at 60 gallons of glycerol and Solvay Industries in Baton Rouge has donated 100 gallons of peroxide. Additionally, we've received more than 2 million cotton masks from Hanes which have been distributed to parishes based on population. Some of those masks were kept by GOHSEP in case we have to do congregate sheltering in the hurricane season or for any other natural disaster. So it's very helpful with those masks. I think you were here sporting one of those today, weren't you? Okay. You'll no doubt see and have seen parishes giving these masks out to the public. Each parish will have the ability to decide for itself how to distribute its masks. And obviously if you have the ability to make your own masks for you and your family, I hope that you will do that and leave those masks at the parish level for those who don't have that ability. The 10 cent foundation has donated nearly 400,000 KN95 masks to GOHSEP for distribution to the 504 health net in New Orleans and to the biomedical research foundation of northwest Louisiana. You know, I've said many times that prayer and faith are really important to me, and I know to the vast majority of people in Louisiana. And many churches and places of worship have had to come up with creative ways to reach their parishioners as a result of this public health emergency, and many of them have done so. And I'm grateful for all of their hard work to do that and the work that they're doing to help us fight against this disease. And I want to let you know That the Times Picayune and The New Orleans Advocate and The Advocate in partnership with Raising Cane's has created an online directory of religious services called the faith and the community initiative. You will be able to find information on how to stream virtual services, and you can get that information by going to faithinthecommunity. And that's also where churches would go in order to register on that directory if they want individuals to be able to find where they can find their services. And finally there are a lot of people who are disappointed, and I'm one of them, that the Zurich Classic will not take place in New Orleans this year? or did not take place. However, even though the event's canceled, they're leaving the tournament funds in place so that the roughly $2?million charitable impact of that tournament will still happen. Critically important for the state of Louisiana and the New Orleans area and very generous of the Zurich folks. And so I wanted to call them out on that and just let them know how much we appreciate that. It's very generous. You know, from the very beginning of this crisis, I've talked about how every person in Louisiana has a role to play and we have a responsibility to stay home too, social distance, to wear masks in order to protect ourselves, our families, and our neighbors. Some have the very critical role, obviously, being on the front lines as healthcare workers, and they've been doing that in tremendous fashion all across the state of Louisiana. And on behalf of the entire state, I want to again thank them for their heroic work. My commitment obviously as the Governor is to do everything that I can to protect the people of Louisiana in this public health emergency. We're going to continue to do that as best we can, guided by science and data, and working with stakeholders across the spectrum. So with that we're going to get to a couple of questions from the public. I think I'll take the first one, and I'm going to ask Dr.?Billeaux to take the second one. We've received a lot of questions recently about masks, which are critical to protecting each other as we continue to work to flatten the curve and slow the spread of COVID19. Fortunately or unfortunately I think masks are going to be with us for a long time and part of the new normal until such time as they're a vaccine and so forth. Kristen asked: At what age should children start wearing masks and should daycare workers caring for infants and young children wear masks? Masks are recommended for every person over the age of 2 unless that individual has breathing challenges that make it where they just shouldn't wear a mask. And masks or face coverings should be worn indoors and outdoors by everyone, anytime that they're going to be near others who are not members of their immediate household. This does include daycare settings and applies to the workers and to the children who are over 2 years old. And I'm going to ask Dr.?Billeaux to come up and respond to a question from Susan, and then we'll take your questions.DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: And so Susan asks: Please demonstrate how to correctly wear a mask and explain the importance of this. So, you know, the Governor's previously said that he and I wear masks when we're out and about town separately. We also wear masks here when we're working closely together with others and people at home can't see, but your press are all wearing masks as well. And the importance is that when I wear a cloth mask, not a medical grade mask but a cloth mask, I'm limiting the potential virus that's shedding out of my face, spreading to others. And so if we're all wearing masks, we are limiting the likelihood that if any of those are asymptomatic or symptomatic that we are shedding virus towards each other. So it's important that we do this mutually. These cloth masks are not really designed to protect you. They're to protect everybody else. And that's why we need everybody to wear them, so everyone protects everyone else, then you're protected as well. So the proper way to wear one is pretty important. Because the way that you wear a mask could it make or less effective. When you're not wearing a mask, we ask that you do store it in a bag. Here, I've got a clear plastic bag. And I have my mask folded such that the inside part of the mask is covering? is touching together. So I'm not exposing the part that's going to be on my face. Them I put it over my ear and critically try to adjust it as little as possible. And importantly the mask needs to cover my nose and my mouth. You need to make sure that you've got the right size mask. And if you're making your own mask at home, do a little bit of adjustment and measuring. You want to make sure that it's not so loose that the mask is falling down constantly. You also want to make sure that it's not so tight that it's going to irritate you a lot and you have to touch it. The idea is you want to touch your mask as little as possible. And, in general, as we've been saying from the beginning, touch your face as little as possible. Next, when you're taking off your mask? and really I should have even done this before I put on my mask? you need to wash your hands because you're now going to touch your face. So put a little bit of hand sanitizer to clean my hands, and now just using the ear loops, taking the mask off, folding it in half. Again, the outside part of the mask, I'm going to fold it one more time so it fits in my bag. Then I'm putting my mask back in my bag. And then I can carry that with me without any problems. I'm going to put this mask on as soon as we're done with the press conference. Luckily, I'm keeping mostly 6 feet away from all of y'all. But, again, as the Governor said, anytime that you're around individuals who are not in your immediate household, indoors or outdoors, we want you staying at least 6 feet away, but even better, in addition to that, would be wearing your mask as well. We do want to clean your masks every day. It's important that they stay clean. So wash and dry. You can put them in your laundry. You can happened wash them and dry them. But that's going to be pretty critical. And if they get dirty during the day, you need to take it off and put on another mask. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Thank you. So those of you who hadn't seen the Hanes masks before, that was one of the Hanes masks that we distributed almost 2 million of those around the state of Louisiana. So with that we'll take your questions. Yes, sir, Greg?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, you said yesterday, unanimously from your medical expert team to extend the order. Did you have any counter advice from your senior staff that's not part of your medical team?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: No. Of course? and they had the benefit of sitting through all the presentations and looking at the data that we came in across all of the criteria that we were looking for in terms of symptoms, cases, hospitalization, and then also knowing what the timeline is going forward with respect to the testing. I just told you about the 200,000 tests that we should reach in May and also the contact tracing capacity. And all of that worked together. And also knowing that Louisiana is a hot spot state. And if you recall, even back when the President released his plan for reopening America, he indicated that May 1st was a good date and that it would work for a lot of states but not hot spot states. And there's not been a single conversation that I'm aware of in many weeks now, if you're talking about hot spots, where you didn't talk about Louisiana. And so it wasn't? it wasn't a stretch. Now, we were all disappointed because we were all hoping that when we sat down and looked at the 14 days worth of data that we would have improved to the point where we could safely move to Phase I, and that just wasn't the case. But another reason that informed the decision and which I think led to it being unanimous with the senior staff, was that when we looked at how much of the economy we had left open in Louisiana to begin with compared to some other states, that we already had considerable parts of our economy open. Again, yesterday, we reopened the nonemergency medical and surgical procedures. We had left retail open if they weren't essential but hadn't been closed? and obviously we're talking there about bars and barber shops and salons and all of that sort of stuff. And then we had followed all of the CISA guidance, so everything that CISA had determined? and now it's been through three iterations of their listing of critical infrastructure? had been left open as well. So for all of those reasons, we felt the right thing to do was to continue the stayathome order for two more weeks, make sure we didn't have a hot spot pop up until we had the ability and knew we had the ability to test it and so forth. And these two weeks just made sense from that perspective. Yes, ma'am?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, some other states have, because of the budget concerns, have started furloughing state workers or doing hiring freezes or spending freezes on nonemergency items. Is that something you're considering for Louisiana state, or is it something that even individual agencies are considering?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, we are going to consider whatever becomes necessary for us to do things that are fiscally prudent. The good news for us, as we finish up the current fiscal year, as you will recall, we are running a significant excess in the current year. I was about to say surplus, but surplus applies going backwards. So we're running a significant excess. We will have an RAC meeting in the middle of May, I think around May the 14th, and we will figure out what that number is today. But for the year that ends on June 30th, we're in good shape. Where the changes will likely come for will be the year that starts July 1st, and of course we have to have that RAC meeting, and then that's going to inform the whole budget process and everything else. But that excess that we had, along with surplus from the previous year, really has put Louisiana in a much better position than other states. And then the other states have? some of them have different fiscal years. Some of them go from January 1st to December 31st. Some go from July 1st, the way we do, to June 30th. And others I think mirror the federal fiscal year, October the 1st to September the 30th. And I don't know where those states are in budget years, but we're wrapping up one year and preparing for the next. And so that's one of the reasons we haven't had to take those actions, along with the fact that we've had surplus from the previous year and excess in the current year. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, you talked about commitment the federal government made regarding testing. How many specific tests have they committed? Did they commit a specific number to Louisiana? And also, you mentioned the possibility that we're going to start testing asymptomatic people. In recent weeks, you've said these tests don't work right. Can you address why we are now moving to test asymptomatic people?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. So the number is 200,000. That was the plan that we submitted, I want to say, last Wednesday to the CDC. It has been approved. And, in fact, when they gave the announcement yesterday in that video telephone conference, I think every state's plan has been approved. We expect to, starting next week, or in the first week of May, which is next week, that we're going to start receiving weekly allocations that will increase over time but will get us to that 200,000. And what we're talking about is test kits. So these are swabs, this is viral transport medium, test tubes and reagent. Which, by the way, great news because these are the things that have been hardest to get. And so the 200,000 that we say we need, they will be providing those to us starting next month?AUDIENCE MEMBER: And that's in addition to our current capacity that we already have?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, it will be in addition to whatever we can get from other sources. Now, the truth is, if we get 200,000 from the federal government, we won't need very many from other sources. And the additional testing that we will do might involve more things like the serology testing, for example, for antibodies. But really this support that we're getting from the federal government is critically important. And then yesterday, and you probably heard this discussed at the President's press conference last night. I wasn't able to watch it. But they released a blueprint and a plan for testing, which basically is guidance to the states on the things that we should be looking at when it comes to testing. And Dr.?Billeaux had already been working on our plan. The guidance we got from the federal government dove tails very well with what we were already planning to do here in Louisiana. And as you mentioned, for the first time, the federal government? or at least the first time to my knowledge? Dr.?Burkes felt the need to test asymptomatic people. And the reason is we have a better understanding on a couple of things. One is that there is a significant percentage of people out there who are either asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, yet they're COVID19 positive, and producing shedding virus, I should say, which means they're contagious. And so as we proceed to keep a lid on this and to keep the Case Number as low as possible, then to transitioning to testing these individuals, especially when you have the testing capacity to do it, is going to be critically important. And the second part of that is? and this is somewhat of an assumption on my part, and I'm going to ask Dr.?Billeaux to come up and expand on this? is that they now believe that these tests are? have more accuracy with respect to individuals who are asymptomatic. Initially what we were told? and we were told this for quite a long time? is that asymptomatic individuals would be at greater risk for getting a false result. And if they were asymptomatic, then the false result would be that they were negative when, in fact, they were positive. And Dr.?Billeaux probably has some more updated information on that, so I'll ask him to come up here and share it with you.DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: Yeah, and, you know, along the lines of what the Governor was saying, we have a lot more information not only from national researchers but just looking at data in our own hands, that there are significant numbers of people who don't have symptoms that are shedding virus, and most concerningly, when we talk about places where people are living in close proximity. For us, the biggest concerns there are nursing homes, longterm care facilities, prisons, and the like. And I think where we've seen the CDC do investigations in nursing home in Seattle or a homeless shelter in Seattle, both of those indicated that at the time where there was initial outbreak, when they tested the entire population, there was some value to identifying a group of folks who they could identify virus in who had no symptoms, some of whom never went on to develop symptoms, some of whom did develop symptoms over time. And so when we're talking about what's the risk of that population, how do we reduce the likelihood that somebody is shedding and unaware of it and then continuing to spread COVID in that congregate settling, in that close living environment, we think that there's really more and more evidence now that the asymptomatic testing is going to be helpful for those individuals. Now, if somebody tests negative, everything that we said before still applies. They could still very well be in that period of early incubation and not yet shedding virus. And so we are working with the CDC and others on determining how frequently we would need to test those people who test negative in a congregate setting, in one of those close hiving environments, to make sure that as somebody develops symptoms, they're not given this false sense of reassurance in saying I'm negative so I can just go on about my day. We want to make sure that it's clear that we need to continue to test those individuals over their period of potential exposure to make sure that they don't develop certainly shedding and then obviously once they're symptomatic, they would be tested anyway?AUDIENCE MEMBER: So we're talking about nursing homes and prisons and?DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: In the initial phases, we're talking about especially those areas where we think people are going to come into closest proximity. Now, it still could be happening in the general public. The risk it much lower because the likelihood that you are going to be around such a large number of people that may never have been exposed to the virus is less because we're all following social distancing, we're all wearing masks. But in those settings where people have to live close to each other, we think that there may be a benefit to actually doing that testing?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you think we're ultimately going to test all nursing home facilities in Louisiana, for instance?DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: We'll have to see. There are still many facility that do not have any COVID cases. So I don't think I would go out and start testing entire facilities that COVID hasn't reached their doors, especially given that while we are excited and grateful that there will be testing resources coming to the state, 200,000 is still not enough to test, you know, 4.7 million Louisianians. So we still need to be thinking about who's priority for testing, making sure that those individuals, especially the most vulnerable individuals to COVID19, get as much testing and have warning as possible.AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yesterday, we talked about the study from the Washington post report. Have you looked at that?DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: I haven't looked at that specific study, no.AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, they're saying that the death rate for this can be way underreported. And then the London times, the financial times in London, did a similar study and they said that they agreed with that, that it might be as low as 60 percent across 14 countries. How could that be? How is it there could be such a lag, or we could be that far off on deaths?DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: Yeah, so I think what a lot of these stories are hitting on is that overall while we're seeing currently COVID related death are a new classification that's increasing, deaths in other categories seem to be down. We don't know how much of that is actually that there's lower levels of deaths, for instance, as we talked about yesterday? heart attacks, strokes? or if it's that there are individuals who are dying, unclear why they died, and they're being put into this unclassified category. Right now, to my knowledge, we haven't really seen that where there's this sort of unclassified group. But I think what these researchers are usually doing is saying if there's a group of individuals who are dying unclassified, those could be COVID deaths. And there's a large number of COVID death that we're not characterizing. Again, I can't tell you with any certainty? and I don't think anybody can. What I can tell you is in Louisiana, we have two policies that I think make that less likely. One is we do encourage our coroners and our physicians and providers to, whenever possible, test somebody who they suspect may have died of COVID while they're still able to, within that three days that they're with the body. And that will give us some testing data that will tell us right off the bat, were they actually positive or negative. And then we've also given? the second policy is we've been coroners and physicians the ability, if we can't test that body during the three days that we have the individual, to say this was a probable COVID related death. And after we gave that authority, in looking through the number of death, we only had, again, I think it's something like 59 or 60 probable COVID related deaths in comparison with the sadly larger number that we have of confirmed deaths. So I think in Louisiana, we're really trying to take steps to really be as conclusive as possible and really sort of measure how much impact this is having?AUDIENCE MEMBER: They said that Louisiana was good because the testing rate was higher than other states. Do they expect a spike in the tests in Florida and Texas, who by the way are starting to open up, they're starting to reopen, and none of the nine states that are reopening right now have met the criteria from the White House? So I guess I'm questioning why are we paying attention to the criteria of the White House? I mean, I understand we're protecting public health, but?.DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: Well, I'll give you my public health answer which is I think the criteria that the White House put out were developed with the CDC and others who were looking at, you know, the same things that we thought were relevant, people who were showing symptoms of COVID, people who were tested and found to have COVID, and people who were hospitalized for COVID. We are fortunate that we have been able to have a significant amount of testing. We want to do even more than that to put us in a better place. But I think those are the core measures. And I think when you look across the state, there's not too many states they're saying We want to look at something different. It's just, that's what you're going to look at for COVID. So I think the White House proposals, look with what we're thinking, are the important things to look at. And when we look at that data, as we showed yesterday, we don't see that we yet have what we need to safely be able to have people, you know, reopen and go back to aspects of private sector?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Dr.?Billeaux, is there a scenario or a phase to the new testing when eventually people in the general population who are asymptomatic who will be tested, not necessarily people in nursing homes and prisons.DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: So there's no easy answer to that. What I will say is that any test that we do in a medical setting, actually, the way that that test works or how much we can rely on it really depends on what we're testing for, how frequent that is in the community. So the longer we continue doing what we're doing, the less COVID there is in the communities, the harder it makes it to make that judgment about that false positive or false negative test. A situation where you have lots of people with COVID19, we can rely a lot on those results. As we get fewer and fewer people, you worry that the chances of what I'm seeing are false positive or false negative increases. So what I would say is over time we're increasing our capacity to test many more people, we want to focus on those people in those high risk settings, but what may also be happening at the same time is that the amount of COVID in our community should continue to decrease. And so it's going to be something we're going to have to look at over time. What probably will continue to increase, though, is our interest in looking at the serology, if people have been exposed to the virus, have developed an antibody, an immune response to it. That's one I think where over time we're going to want to see more and more of those tests deployed. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Y'all are looking at me, so I'll come back up. One point I did want to make, because this gets lost on people sometimes. A negative test, and let's assume that it's a negative test for COVID19 and that it's accurate, that individual does not have COVID19. It doesn't mean that individual wouldn't be positive the next day. And so people need to understand that. A negative test doesn't mean you don't have it and you're never going to get it. So if you test negative today and develop symptoms tomorrow, you need to go get tested again because that's just the nature of how these tests work. And so I wanted to share that with you. With that, I will resume my questions. Yes?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, has the legislature prepared to resume its work maybe as early as Monday, the President told me this afternoon he didn't feel the event forthcoming with him and with the speaker of information he said. He's very disappointed in the level of communication and that he understands that you might have called mayors and other people before you called he and the speaker. Maybe he said 10 minutes before. I don't know. Is that something that surprises you?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: It surprises me and disappoints me, because last week, I met here in person with both the speaker and the President, talked about the White House guidelines that we would be following in order to figure out whether we transition this week to Phase I or not. I told them exactly what that process would look like and that I couldn't make any commitments at that time but that I would follow the science, look at the data, and either we satisfy the criteria or we don't. And then had a conversation with him yesterday before coming into here. And so I don't? you know, I think I didn't tell unfortunate that he said that, and I'll be happy to talk to him and to the speaker some more about that, but there wasn't anything as far as I'm concerned that should have been a surprise or caught him unaware because we made a decision based on 14 days. You have to wait until it's time to make the decision to look at the 14 days. It wasn't a decision that I made last week when we had met, obviously?AUDIENCE MEMBER: On that point, it seems as though legislators are questioning why, if you made the decision Sunday night and just wanted to get confirmation that the White House didn't change its guidelines Monday, why you didn't start notifying the leadership Sunday night when it seemed like things were shifting in the wrong direction for reopening. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, you know, we had met with? I had conference calls last week with all? well, any legislator who wanted to participate. We had two calls. I had a separate meeting with the speaker and the President and explained to them the criteria that we would be using when we would make a decision and when we would be announcing it. In advance of announcing the decision, I got back on the phone with the speaker and the President. If that's not enough communication for them, then I'll call them and figure out how we do that differently going forward. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, in an interview earlier, Mayor Cantrell said in regards to 2021 Mardi Gras, that's several months away, that it's something we have to think about. That's something that's obviously so far down the road, landscape's going to change a lot between now and then. Is that something that just has to be decided at a later time?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah, I think? from the, I didn't hear the question and I didn't hear her response. I'm just hearing what you're saying. Obviously Mardi Gras 2021 is far enough out that we don't know enough today to hazard a guess as to what the circumstances are going to be at that point in time. You know, I've declined to answer questions about what this fall is going to look like, so I'm certainly not going to go to next January and February and presume to know. But there will be plenty of time to take those questions up once we know more. And when it would be I think a better time to address those questions. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, on the order that's going into effect I guess Friday, with the restaurants and allowing them to have outdoor dining, for those customers, are the inside bathrooms available to them if there are any? I've had questions about this. And then what did you think of another New Orleans mayor Latoya Cantrell, she's saying she's not going to allow that? What's your reaction to that?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, first of all, it is always within a local mayor's prerogative to be more restrictive if he or she chooses to be. And so she may have particular concerns that I'm not aware of, or it may just be the open nature of New Orleans and how? if she has particular concerns of how that might look and function and so forth with outdoor seating and so forth. With respect to the restrooms, I will have to get with my team and talk about that. That's not something that we had a discussion of. And obviously we're encouraging people to wash their hands as frequently as possible, so we may need to go back and revisit it. What we were trying to do was to create just one more option, and that is for individuals who are going to a restaurant to pick up a meal and leave, that if there is an outdoor table where they can sit at and consume that meal, they can do so before they leave, just to try to make it a little more convenient for people and do so in a setting that Dr.?Billeaux and other healthcare professionals believe is much, much safer. Outdoors, the risk, especially if you are a safe distance away from the closest people and you're not having people wait on you? so you wouldn't have an employee bringing you things back and forth from the kitchen or going from one table to the other and contacting different individuals. So that's what we were trying to do. That's one of the reasons we made the announcement on Monday, by the way, so we would have an opportunity to take questions and get those things clarified before Friday. And we'll take a look at that. But I do, since you mentioned the word bathroom, I want to tell you, it is still recommended that people wash their hands with soap and water as frequently as possible. And so that's something we'll have to look at. Yes, ma'am?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, looking at the unemployment numbers, is there a concern that the state is can depleting its unemployment trust fund at a rate that is going to make it either run out or problematic to refill?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. Well, there's always that trouble when you have a situation like this. You know, we started out at over a billion dollars in the trust fund. I think we're still over 9 hundred million dollars in it. And when it gets to right around 750 million dollars, there's a reduction in the weekly benefit that gets paid and also the incumbent worker training program gets discontinued. And you have different thresholds like that. So it certainly is something that we are watching and concerned about and looking for thing that we can do to shore up the trust fund in the shortterm and looking at different options that we may have, none of which are terribly appealing, but some obviously better than others. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you know of any local parish officials that are creating reopening plans that are less restrictive than the state order, which I would take to mean they're in violation of the order? And also, a twoparter, sorry. The 1.8 million dollars in federal aid, have you made any decisions on how to spend that?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: The answer to the second question is no. And obviously the guidance that came from secretary of the treasury was such that it can only be spent on expenditures related to COVID19. It cannot be spent for? to make up lost revenue. Consequent be used for that purpose. But now we are working with our congressional delegation and through the National Governors Association and directly with the White House to try to figure out what flexibility Congress may create the next time they pass an act that may retroactively make that funding more flexible. Because if they do that, then it's going to be something that more local governments can take advantage of. And as you will remember, 45 percent of the 1.8 billion, it was the intention of Congress, that that go to local government. We intend to be faithful with what that architecture will look like coming out of Congress where 45 percent will go to the local government and 55 percent would stay at the state. But we're looking to see if there's additional flexibility granted, because right now, quite honestly, local government is not really presenting expenditures. They're telling me they need the funding to offset loss of revenue. That's not an acceptable use. And so we haven't made any decisions on that yet. And I'm sorry, your first question?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Oh, the parish officials? GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Oh, yeah. I haven't heard of that, and certainly that's not the way it works. If a local official who has the authority wants to do something that is more restrictive than my orders, then they can do that. And that has been done in some cases. But that's not? it's not up to a local official to be less restrictive. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: We just crossed over a million cases in the United States, more than all the cases around the world. Are we any closer to a vaccine?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: You know, the working assumption that I have is that every day we're closer to a vaccine because I think one's coming. I just don't know when. I did see something? and I wasn't able to watch the segment. It scrolled across the bottom of the screen. And I don't remember if it was fox or CNN. That said there are seven human trials of vaccines underway right now. So I'm going to pray for success with a vaccine that will prove safe and prove effective and that would be fielded just as soon as possible. I know from conversations that the White House has had going back for many weeks now that they're not promising that before another year or so. And so? and that is one of the real tricky things about trying to get back to normal when you have a virus that is so contagious and so deadly and you don't have a vaccine and you don't have yet an approved therapeutic treatment either, unless one just came out. I don't think the FDA has approved a therapeutic treatment for this virus either. And that's really what makes this so different than other things that we deal with and make it so hard. And it's why we try very hard to keep the cases down, increase our testing capacity and contact tracing and all that sort of stuff, because we don't yet have that vaccine. Question?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Have you heard from people, other small business people, or mid sized businesses saying, you know, what, I just can't hold out anymore? And yeah I filed for PPP, but the future just looks so bleak that I just can't hang? I know I didn't tell no point in getting my business up and going again? Have you heard from them? Have you had any kind of contact with those businesses?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, certainly with the resilient commission that has 15 task forces under it that we've created, and that's every economic sector in the state, obviously we're getting reports from them, and some individuals have expressed that. We are trying to make sure people are aware of the array of things that are out there that could potentially help them, whether it's the PPP, whether it's the program we have here at the state level on a loan guarantee program that we've put together, making sure that they know that their employees can receive unemployment compensation until such time as they can go back to work and so forth. But it is a very difficult time. There's no doubt about that, especially for businesses who are of a certain type, that their businesses have been interrupted. You know, if you own a hotel right now, extremely hard. All of those things related to tourism and so many restaurants for example are related to tourism. This is an extremely difficult time. I happen to be someone who is optimistic, and I know we hear the President say this. I believe that we're going to bounce back quicker than some people might think, but they're just not there yet. We have some work to do. But I also know that if you try to forge a path forward too quickly and cases spike again and look something like they looked several weeks ago here in Louisiana, you actually do more damage and more lasting damage to our economy than if we try to get it right to begin with and keep those cases down and then reopen in a way that can be sustained over time and can continue to grow. Because if you keep going back and forth between hitting the accelerator and hitting the brakes, I think that's the worst thing that can happen. So it's sort of like? and I think this analogy was used at the national level. This is not a light switch where you go from dark to complete light. It's a dimmer switch. And that's what we're trying to get right and balancing the need to reopen the economy as we can with the imperative to protect public health. And those things are obviously somewhat in conflict. And striking the right balance can be very difficult. And wherever you strike it, there are obviously going to be good people on either side who say you went /TAO*FRTS or you went too slow. That's why we decided to take the guesswork out of it and apply the science, look at the data and see whether it met the criteria. But doing it in that approach, we think, gives us the best chance to not have to hit the brakes again and to bring everything to a screeching halt and allow us to hopefully move forward in a way that can be sustained while protecting public health. There will not be a? well, we're not going to schedule a briefing tomorrow. That could change. And if it does, we will certainly let you know. And then we will advise you when the next briefing will be, which I suspect will be Thursday at 2:30. Thank y'all again for coming. I want to thank the people of Louisiana because they have been incredibly strong throughout this and done a tremendous job in getting us from where we had the fastest case growth in the country, and really in the world, according to Dr.?Wagoner using the Johns Hopkins data, to where we are in a much better place today. And if we can continue this for a while longer, I am very confident that we're going to meet the criteria, transition to Phase I while we have the testing capacity and the contact tracing capacity in order to ensure that we can continue down that road in a way that is safe for the public. So I do want to continue to express my appreciation for the people of Louisiana. I know this is tough, but I also know that we're strong and resilient and we're going to get through this. So thank all of you and God bless. ................
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