05062020 COVID-19 PC



GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for being here, for tuning in. First of all, I want to say happy National Nurses Day to all of our incredible healthcare heroes, especially with what's going on right now. A day is not nearly enough to recognize the sacrifices and the contributions that nurses are making across the state and really across the country. And obviously we're all very thankful for them. And I do have a proclamation that I'm going to go ahead and sign now, proclaiming it nurse's day in the state of Louisiana today, the 6th day of May, 2020. And I'm also aware that today is national interpreter appreciation day, so many thanks to our interpreters today and those who come every time to help us during our briefings and our announcements. They are very important, obviously, in making sure that our Deaf and hard of hearing citizens are made aware of the information that we share. And so we have Sylvie Sullivan and Landon Walker here today. We thank them very much for their contributions they make. And tomorrow is a national day of prayer, and so I did want to remind everyone of that. I've already signed a proclamation, but this is something that I think has been observed since 1775. And so we're obviously observing that in Louisiana, and we have a lot to pray about, both to be thankful for and to ask for in the midst of this public health emergency. I do want to go ahead and get to the testing, which, as you all know, the updates came late today. They were having some computer issues, some network issues, over at the department of health. But today we are reporting 403 new cases. That's on 6,439 new tests. That means that we have now exceeded 30,000?cases. In fact, it's 30,399 across the state of Louisiana. Many of those cases have been resolved. As you know, we report once a week on Mondays the number of folks that are recovered. We have 1,465 individuals with COVID19 hospitalized across the state of Louisiana. That is down by 47 from yesterday. And we have 187 on ventilators in hospitals. That's down 7. So it's kind of looks like the trend that we've been seeing, where the cases obviously go up every day. The deaths, sadly, go up every day, but the numbers in the hospital are either flat or down a little bit, which obviously is the good news. The bad news red light deaths. Today, we're reporting 52 deaths, and that brings the total to 2,094. I did want to point out that there are new drivethru COVID19 testing sites opening in Calcasieu parish this week. The parish operated sites are receiving support from GOHSEP, the Louisiana National Guard, the Louisiana Department of Health, and from FEMA. And GOHSEP worked with the leaders in the parish to determine where those testing sites would be located, and that's what they do in every parish where they operate. I wanted to talk about something that's a little different, but it's also good, and I want to highlight this. This week, judge due plan shay in Lafayette performed the state's first zoom adoptions. Four families welcomed children into their forever homes, including Melissa and David Dugas who adopted two daughters. And I want to thank the judge for finding a creative way to proceed with the adoptions, and I especially want to thank the families who chose to adopt and welcome these children into their homes. There obviously is much more work to do. So from the period of March?16 to April?13 this year, there were 44 adoptions. In the same period last year, there were 133. So we're going to continue to work to try to celebrate that and get more judges around the state of Louisiana to take an innovative approach. Finally, I hope those individuals in the New Orleans area got a good chance to see the blue angels fly over today. That happened earlier this afternoon. And certainly I on behalf of the state of Louisiana want to thank the U.S. Navy for this lovely and fitting tribute to our front line workers. And for them to do it on National Nurses Day I think is especially fitting, and obviously we pay tribute to more than just the nurses. It's everybody involved, from EMTs and paramedics to respiratory therapists to doctors to everyone who's working so hard selflessly and heroically on the front lines of our fight against COVID19. Got a couple of questions today from Vidalia. Francis wants to know: Can you please breakdown pediatric cases? We have just over 400 children who have been diagnosed positive with COVID19, and they range from a newborn to 18?years of age. You can find this information by visiting LDH.. And at this time we know that children experience the same symptoms as adults, but children are much more likely to be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic as compared to older people. But obviously they do sometimes suffer serious complications, and they can? thank goodness it's infrequent? but they can die from the disease. Perhaps the biggest challenge with respect to young people is preventing them from transmitting the disease to other people, especially those who may be most vulnerable. The second question comes from Lafayette. Connie wants to know: Can you explain R0, the rate of infection and does it play a role in your team's decision when it comes to creating or lifting restrictions? I will do my best. I am not a mathematician, but I do have at least a limited understanding. So she's asking about R0 and it's a mathematical term that indicates how contagious and infectious a disease is, and it tells you on average every person that would be infected by every person who is themselves infected. So for example if an R0 is 4, then one person with the disease would be expected to infect four more. With respect to COVID19, the R0 that was accepted by epidemiologists was 2.4. And so what you would typically expect is for every person to be infected, that they would infect, on average, 2.4 other people. So it creates an exponential growth. Now, that 2.4 is paced on no mitigation measures. No social distancing, no stayathome, none of that. And so absolutely that is the reason that we put mitigation measures in place in order to flatten the curve. Because what we didn't want happening was to overwhelm our capacity to deliver healthcare. And ultimately we brought the R0 in Louisiana down as best we can look at it from the modeling that we're doing to somewhere between 1.3 and 1. The goal is to get it less than one. Because if on average one person shares it with less than one other person, that disease is going to go away at some point. So trying to get to an R0 of less than 1 is the goal. So with that I'm going to get to your questions. I do want to remind everyone, however, that as we move forward and we try to make sure that we do the best that we can as a state with respect to this public health emergency as it relates to all of the threshold criteria, for example, whether it's the COVIDlike symptoms that are being presented at our emergency rooms across the state, the cases, both the raw number of cases and the cases as a percentage of all the tests that get run and hospitalization capacity, it is really important that we continue to abide by the stayathome order, reduce the spread by doing things like wearing a mask when you're in public, by making sure that you're washing your hands and doing all the proper hygiene. And we do want to remind, especially all those people who are vulnerable, either because they're 65?years of age or older, or because they have comorbidities, that they have to continue to be especially vigilant. And for those individuals who live in a household with a vulnerable person, you also have to be especially cautious to try to make absolutely sure that you don't inadvertently bring that disease home so that it does become spread with someone who is vulnerable. So with that we will take some questions. Leo?AUDIENCE MEMBER: What's the state's plan with regard to contact tracing? And will that include information from businesses and their clients specifically? New Orleans Mayor Cantrell said that that is part of their plan. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: So on Friday we're going to get deep into the testing strategy going forward and the linkage to contact tracing and what that is going to look like in Louisiana. I will tell you that we are looking to bring online 700 workers, working out of three call centers across the state of Louisiana but inside the state of Louisiana supervised by epidemiologists and trained in obviously the information you get from testing is fed to the contact tracing individuals. They then start calling the individual who tested positive and trying to figure out for that time period when the individual who was positive became contagious until that conversation, who have you been in close contact with. And they have all these things that they've learned. They then get those names and contact information as best they can. Then they start calling those individuals. Do you have symptoms? If so, you really need to go get a test. If you don't have symptoms, understand you may have been exposed to someone and therefore you really need to spend about 14?days by yourself. That is so critical. And the reason it's such a great question, Leo, is as we move forward and engage more of the economy and people become more mobile, there's going to be more contact. And even when we take the precautions like wearing the masks, keeping the six feet distance between yourself and people not in your immediate household, all of those sorts of things, the way you keep a lid on cases and try to get to that R0 of below 1 even though you've reengaged the economy is through testing and contact tracing. And we're going to get into it really deep dive on this on Friday. As you can see, I don't have Dr.?Billeaux with me today; otherwise, I'd ask him to come up because he's been working on this practically nonstop for the last couple of weeks. But we have a very aggressive plan that we believe will work. And by the way if we find out that the 700 people isn't enough, we will go beyond that and hire more people and we're working to be able to make sure that we can do that if it becomes necessary?AUDIENCE MEMBER: In New York, it's 1700. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: And that's an indication of several things. One is just how many people are in New York, how many cases they have, and what they're projecting going forward. But we really modeled ours off of initially the state of Massachusetts and looked at how many people they thought they would need based on their population and their case count and the work that we expect that one contact tracer can do. And so we believe it's 700. But, again, if we need to go beyond that, we will. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, in some national interviews yesterday and just in the last several days, you've talked a lot about moving to Phase I possibly late next week. As of today, this very moment, what is that forecast looking like of being able to get to Phase I by May?15th?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: You know, I don't like the question. And the reason is you've got to evaluate 14?days and the 14day period that we're going to be looking at hasn't come into focus yet because we'll be looking at this over the next several days. Obviously if you've been paying attention? I know that you have, and I think the vast majority of people across the state have? our numbers are moving? statewide, are moving in a pretty good direction in terms of the hospital capacity, in terms of the new case growth being smaller than what it was previously, especially when it's? you look at it as a percentage of testing. But if you only look at the state numbers, sometimes you don't look beyond that and see that there may be a couple of regions in the state where there? maybe they've plateaued and maybe they're inching up a little bit in terms of cases and hospitalizations, and that's what we continue to have to look at. But we're going to be faithful to the plan, the guidelines that was issued by the White House. They were vetted by the CDC. We think they make a lot of sense. And so we're going to be looking at COVID like symptoms being reported to the emergency room, the number of people testing positive, both as a raw number and as a percentage of tests that are administered. And really look at the disease burden in the state of Louisiana, you know, relative to the population. So it's how many cases per 100,000. And it's a formulation that actually the which could does. And then also we're going to be looking at hospitalization over those 14?days. But where I can tell you we feel much better today than we did a couple of weeks ago is on the testing and the contact tracing side. Because it's not just that you have to meet those threshold criteria. You also have to be in a better place when it comes to the ability to test. We continue to receive additional test collection kits, for example. This morning at GOHSEP at the ECG meeting, well over 30,000 test collection kits were received, and that included swabs and the bottle transport medium. So as we get to where we feel really good about our 200,000 tests per month and our contact tracing, that's really a critical part of looking at those threshold criteria too. Now, as you mentioned, the current order expires on May the 15th. So obviously it will be replaced by something, and that's next Friday. So I'm expecting to make that announcement on Monday if I'm able to do so, which means we will spend the weekend really digging into the data and trying to make sure that we move forward in a way that is appropriate and tries to maintain that balance between public health on the one hand and opening our economy on the other. And that's what I look forward to doing. And, you know, I'll point out again: In Louisiana, we didn't close many of the things that were closed elsewhere to begin with. So for example construction, manufacturing, retail businesses weren't closed except? unless they were on that short list of businesses that needed to be closed. And of course we accepted all of the department of homeland security essential infractures being essential, and they were left open at full strength. So we obviously know the importance of keeping the economy going, and we're going to try to reengaging more and more of that as we're able to do. I'm hopeful, but I'm not going to answer your question because we haven't looked at the data that we're going to have to look at in order to make the decision because the data isn't available yet. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor? (inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, I've actually been working in my office and talking to mayors across the state, reading things that come from? for example, I got a letter today from the Secretary Perdue of U.S. Department of Agriculture, doing other things related to running government and this public health emergency. Obviously, I don't see much merit? in fact, that's an overstatement. I don't see any merit in the resolution. What I know is that a week ago today, I believe it was, I was in Washington, DC with the President, explaining what we've done here in Louisiana and why and how it accords with the guidelines that he put forward. And he had invited me there. Of course, it's him anything he didn't know because the CDC has parish level breakdown of all of this information. And I can tell you, he was very supportive, as was the vice president and the entire team. And not only were they supportive. They went out of their way to tell me that, especially early on when Louisiana had the highest growth rate of cases in the country and particularly centered down in the New Orleans and Jefferson Parish areas? that they were really focused on our state, worried about our state. And then they saw how we were able to come together, put in some mitigation measures, and really start to flatten that curve pretty quickly, to the point where we never exceeded our hospital capacity, which was very much threatened at one time. So I don't see the merit in what Representative Miguez and others may be trying to do, but I will be focused on my job, which is doing exactly what I've been telling you all from the beginning, and that is presiding over this public health emergency in a way that maintains as best we can the balance that we need to strike between public health and our economy. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: As far as unemployment goes, I know in previous weeks in the past you've kind of talked about the pay out and the current unemployment claims. Where does that stand right now? And then I've noticed in some other states that have reopened workers who can go back to work but are maybe afraid of going back to work and getting sick have been told maybe they can keep getting benefits, they can't. When we get to that point of reopening, are workers who are fearful getting the virus or getting sick going to be taken off unemployment if they are eligible to go back to work?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, first of all, you need to understand that there are new sets of rules that were passed by the federal government with respect to unemployment, especially as they apply to the pandemic unemployment compensation and the pandemic unemployment assistance, which are two different things. One is six hundred dollars a month and 1 is $107 a month, I think it is. And then in addition to that, there is a state component which caps out at about? I said a month. I meant a week. ? $247 a week. And so whatever the rules are that the federal government provided are what we have to follow. And I can get you more information on that. Obviously, they are not rules that are in place normally and yearround. And there are more reasons why, according to that legislation, that it is permissible for people to not be at work and to draw unemployment. I can tell you that it's about 1.$2?billion has been distributed in total unemployment benefits, the vast majority of that being federal. And I think from the state unemployment insurance trust fund, I want to say it's about $275?million thus far that has been put out, and the rest of that would be federal. We can get you more information. Obviously it's the largest number of claims filed in our history, and it was an extremely tough thing to try to get on top of. And while I know there were a lot of people frustrated and probably continue to be frustrated because you don't just have to file, you have to recertify every week, our state was among the first two in the country to start paying that $600 a week and the top ten when it came to actually processing all of the applications that we were receiving. That's another reason why I look forward to people getting back to work, because it's just better for the individuals; it's better for the state; it's better for the economy; it's better for revenue, and so forth. But obviously we have a ways to go. We're going to move forward as best we can. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: And 275 million roughly goes back to the start of this?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yes. Yes. And those numbers are going to be slightly off, but I'll get you the exact numbers. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, both the governors of Wyoming and Idaho where they got the benchmark threshold say that they relatively don't have that many COVID cases and they would like to be able to use that money to balance their budgets. Would you join them in that?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. Well, first of all, we had another call today with the National Governors Association and most governors were on the phone. And just about every Governor, regardless of state, regardless of party, believes that some assistance is going to be required from the federal government. And one of the ways you could get at least part of that assistance is to retroactively create more flexibility on the CARES Act funding that states have already received. In Louisiana, that was $1.8 billion. I think the minimum amount any state got was $1.25 billion. And they're not going to be able to show, especially if they're a small state and haven't had a lot of cases, they're not going to be able to show expenditures related to COVID19 that that money can be spent on. So they would much rather be able to take and apply that money to revenue that was lost because of the hit to the economy caused by the public health emergency. I join them in that. We have made that request to the White House through the National Governors Association, and it is something that on Monday of this week that I was able to speak directly to the vice president about. Not so much in the retroactively allowing us to do that with the 1.8, but bringing their attention to the bill that senator Cassidy is going to file with senator Menendez of New Jersey. And I think he's going to file that bill either late this week or early next week. So I do think that that would be very, very helpful for all the states, including Louisiana. And of course we're going to have an RAC meeting on Monday of next week, and I think it's going to become really clear just how dire the situation is. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, your order has shutdown certain type of businesses like hair salons, but we've seen some of those open up I guess in defiance of your order. You said that we can't enforce our way out of this. What's the plan for those businesses? It's not exactly fair if those are allowed to stay open for the ones that are following your order. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. Well, first of all, we encourage everyone to abide by the order. There's a reason why certain businesses are closed, and that is because the nature of those businesses are such that epidemiologists and scientists would expect that the disease would be transmitted more frequently, more easily, and that sort of thing. And so obviously we have the orders in place that we have, and there's a few jurisdictions around the state that I think have a few orders in place that may be even more restrictive for some of these. And then as we move forward, when we get to Phase I, obviously we will be lessening the restrictions on many but not all businesses. But it's not like a light switch. And we've said this before. Where you just go and hit the switch and everything is back to the way it was before the public health emergency. So obviously we are asking people to comply with the order. The other thing is we're asking individuals, the public, don't go to businesses that aren't complying with the order and don't go to businesses that aren't? that may be allowed to be open. But if they don't have their employees in masks, for example, I would encourage you not to go there because it's just important? if we? the mask usage by the vast majority of people in Louisiana and around the country will be critically important if we're going to keep the cases down, keep the deaths down, and preserve our hospital capacity, not just for COVID patients, but for anybody who might need a hospital. And that mask usage is going to be critically important?AUDIENCE MEMBER: I guess what I'm asking is? (inaudible)? a few gyms have opened up. Are you planning to enforce your order and crack down?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, first of all, I know of one? and there may be others? and we are investigating those now and trying to have conversations with them. And we obviously are working with local jurisdictions as well. But I still believe that, you know, we're asking people to comply. There's a very good reason for the orders. It's all based on CDC guidance. It's based on the White House plan. I don't think we've done anything that the White House didn't put out as the proper course of action. And we are asking people to be patient and to comply, and we're going to continue to do that. It's important that they do that. And we're going to be working with local government as well. At the state level, we have the fire marshal's office that really is doing more with this in coordination with local governments, and I just haven't had the benefit today of a conversation with fire marshal bush browning about any of those particular businesses that you're talking about. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Half the lawmakers here aren't wearing masks. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. And really think that that's mistake. If you look at what the CDC guidance is, and if you look at the department of health guidance and how important it is to cut down the transmission of the disease which spreads because of these particles either being airborne or being in the surface? and especially if you're going to be in close proximity to other people who are not in your household; right? That's the critically important thing. I noticed that even the vice president the other day when he went to? I think it was Indiana to look at a plant that's manufacturing ventilators? he had one on. And so I would just encourage people to do that. It really is important. If you? I don't have one on at my press conference, but if you see me working in my office, when other people are in there, you're going to see everybody, including my staff that I've been working with at GOHSEP every single day, for example, around a table, you're going to see them in a mask. Okay. One more, and that will be it?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Really briefly to go back to the contact tracing. Will businesses be required, do you think at this point, will they have to keep records on who they come in contact with on compliance to come in and out of the office?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: I don't know that that's something that we're looking at. If we have an individual who tests positive, we will contact that individual and try to figure out what contacts he or she has had. I am not aware that we're contemplating? and we're going to get more into this on Friday? asking businesses to keep some registry of people who come and in out of their stores or restaurants or whatever it might be. But if I'm wrong, you'll hear it from Dr.?Billeaux on Friday. Look, thank you all very much. I appreciate the work that you're doing, and I'm asking the people of Louisiana again to continue to comply with the stayathome order. I know that there was a poll that was released by LSU that showed that the vast majority of people understand how important these orders are, how important mitigation is to keep the cases down to save lives. And that I think something like 4 out of 5 answered the poll that they had not violated the stayathome order. That has been critical to getting us to where we are today, which is so much better than we were just a few weeks ago. And it's going to continue to be important going forward. So I ask people to stay home unless it's necessary to get out. Make sure that you wear a mask anytime that you're outside of your home and interacting with people who are outside of your immediate family. Keep your distance, 6 feet away from other individuals. And make sure that you're practicing good hygiene. And be especially courteous by wearing a mask, and then be very mindful of those people who are especially vulnerable because of their age or because of their chronic health conditions. And if we will do this, if we will continue to be good neighbors, as Louisianians are famous for, then we're going to get through this better and faster than will otherwise be the case. Our next one of these will be Friday afternoon, and I think we're shooting for 2:30. Thank you all. And happy interpreter's day. ................
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