04172020 COVID-19 PC



GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Good afternoon, everybody. I want to thank you all for joining us. And I especially want to thank LSU for hosting this today here at the PMAC, and really for all of the people at LSU who are putting their brain power to work, their ingenuity, producing personal protective equipment. And a lot of times you hear it referred to as PPE, but that's what we're talking about. And that's helping tremendously to protect our healthcare workers and others in this public emergency, this public health emergency due to COVID19. Specifically here in the PMAC, LSU employees are working with physicians in New Orleans, in Shreveport, to develop and to produce two types of critically necessary PPE. That's heavy duty reusable gowns that they're taking vinyl from bill board material that's been donated by Lamar Advertising. We want to thank them as well as Circle Graphics, and we thank them too. They're also producing face shields with materials and design feedback from Baker Hughes. I was told that there would be up to about 1,000, perhaps more than 1,000 gallons per day next week, and that is truly impressive. And one of the things that I appreciate most about it is it's very timely, because we've actually seen some improvements in the flow of PPE from the traditional venders and distributors, but that mostly has to do with masks and gloves, not yet gowns. And so gowns are the PPE item that is the hardest to source right now, and so we really appreciate all the folks here at LSU for stepping up. And they're also producing hand sanitizer, which is critically important. But remember soap and water works the best. It is also the most available. It's cheap, but sometimes it's not handy. And when it's not, you should use hand sanitizer. But what's going on here really does epitomize teamwork, and I want to thank all the folks here and at LSU, everybody who's responsible for this. And I think President Galligan for his leadership, and we're going to hear from him in just a moment, and since we're in a sports venue, I want to thank Scott Willoughby, our athletic director. We also have a lot of other leaders with LSU. The last couple of times that I was here, this place was jam packed. The room was full. We were celebrating the national championship by the LSU football team, and what a tremendous atmosphere that was. That was an exciting day, full of football players and cheerleaders and the band was playing. All of the tremendous LSU fans, which are the best in the world, we were very proud of the team's accomplishments and how they represented the university and our state. I'm actually more proud today of LSU because of what I've just seen and how important this work is for our state, especially to protect the heroes out there right now. And those are our medical professionals, our doctors, our nurses, our respiratory therapists, all of those allied healthcare professionals who are doing so much on the frontlines in this fight against COVID19. So you all are showing true leadership in very difficult and trying times. And I happen the Alma Mater here says let creative way love unending be for every mind, which is what we're all doing right now, from our healthcare workers on the frontlines to the grocery store employees who are helping to keep everyone fed, for everybody out there who's practicing social distancing and proper hygiene, staying home when we're sick and not going to work and really staying home just about all the time. That is where the unending love for Louisiana and the love that you have for your neighbor, incredibly important. And we have to continue with this because our work is not yet done. We have flattened the curve. We're in a much better place than we would have predicted three, four weeks ago, but we still have more work to do to put ourselves in the best possible position going forward. That brings me to today's numbers. Which at noon we reported 586 new cases across the state. We're up to a total of 23,118. And remember these are the cases confirmed by a positive test. There's a lot more COVID19 out there than that, and we know that some percentage of individuals who get this will never be symptomatic; therefore, they're unlikely to be tested. But they do carry and transmit this virus, and that's what makes this virus so hard to deal with and why some of the measures that we've put in place were so necessary. So we also reported, very sadly, 57 new deaths. That's a total of 1,213. Obviously, that's a very somber number, and that number keeps getting higher every single day. Deaths are a lagging indicator. Some of these individuals would have died over the last 24?hours. Most a couple days ago, three days ago, or even more. The best news comes to us with a reduced case count, but, really, what we're focusing on are the hospitalization dates of individuals with COVID19 and ventilator usage. Today, we have 1868 individuals in the hospital across the state with COVID19, and we have 363 of those on ventilators. Now, that's 46 less than yesterday in hospitalization and 33 less on vents than yesterday, which shows you we are moving in the right direction and that's very encouraging. And that's the case even though the Case Number actually went up. And part of this has to do with some really good work being done by our doctors and hospitals across the state of Louisiana that prevent people from going on a vent today that probably a month ago would have been put on a vent, and they're getting people off ventilators sooner than would have been the case a month ago as well. In fact, there are doctors and hospitals around the country that are really looking to the folks in Louisiana so that they can learn what's been developed here as a best practice. So I'm very proud of the work that's being done here. I also want to thank Walgreens, which started operating a COVID19 testing facility today, at 1544 Manhattan Boulevard in Harvey. They're working in collaboration with my administration and with the federal government. This is one of seven sites that Walgreens is operating around the country. The new testing is going to utilize the new COVID19 test, which delivers positive results in as little as 5 minutes; negative results within about 13 to 15minute. Testing is available at no cost to eligible individuals who meet the criteria that have been established by the CDC. Patients do need to preregister in advance in order to schedule an appointment for testing. And I encourage those individuals who are interested in that to visit Walgreens/coronavirus. Walgreens/coronavirus to get more information. And while we're talking about testing, I did want to say again that while we haven't tested as much as we would like in Louisiana, we've actually led the country in per capita testing on COVID19. That is a huge accomplishment, especially when you think where we were five and six weeks ago. Just tremendous work, much of it done by the state, but increasingly, it's our clinics, it's our hospitals, who are stepping up and doing their own testing, really making a tremendous difference in our ability to quickly determine who has COVID19 and then who doesn't. And that's really important because if someone doesn't have it and they're in the hospital, then you don't burn all the PPE because you don't need to. And then it lessens the necessity for things like you see behind me. I'm pretty excited about the sanitizer over here, by the way, that was sanitized face masks. I also want to welcome officially Dr.?Courtney peps. She's the new secretary Department of Health, and she started working today, Burt actually she's been working for a number of days now, and actually over the last several weeks. This isn't the homecoming that I'm sure she was expecting. You know, she's been in Texas for a while now, but we're so grateful and excited that she is here. She's working extremely hard. She's got a great team at the Department of Health. She is not here with me today, but she will be at my press conference on Monday at 3:00. That will be back at GOHSEP. It's not lost on me that the campus is mostly empty, and it shouldn't be. That's a very hard thing for me to accept, and I know that's hard for President Galligan and everybody who's made it their life's work to educate individuals. And it's tough to be here on campus knowing that individuals are not here, but it is incredibly important, the work that is taking place here at LSU and all across the state. You know, we're here today at the PMAC on LSU's campus. I can tell you that there's not an institution of higher education in the state of Louisiana, public or private, that hasn't stepped up in a really, really big way. And my team prepared a listing of all of those institutions to read out, and I'm not going to do that. Suffice it to say, every single institution of higher education, public and private, has stepped up in a tremendous way on helping us all across the state of Louisiana to do it with this public health emergency, better than we would without their help. Yesterday, as you probably are aware, President Trump unveiled his plan for opening up America. I should say opening America up again. That plan looks at three phases. Once an area has reached certain benchmarks related to the spread of COVID19. And I want to thank the President and the vice president and the coronavirus task force for presenting that guidance to the states and to us here in Louisiana about opening up our economies based on what is happening on the ground here, our ability to test, our ability to do contact tracing. And it's very, very clear, and of course we knew this, it's not a onesizefitsall because not every state has similarly been impacted. Not every state has the same capabilities and so forth. And so we're working with all of that guidance. And by the way it was informed by the CDC. It was informed by people like Tony Fauci and Debra Burkes. These are household names now. And we had an opportunity yesterday in about a twohour video telephone conference to ask questions about that guidance. And it's not a onesizefitsall. Here in Louisiana, we've been hit harder than all but two other states. New York and New Jersey each have a per capita case count number that's higher than ours, but we're Number?3. We're Number?1 in per capita testing. It was only about a little over a month ago, we were talking about John Hopkins data that showed that Louisiana had the fastest growth in COVID cases in the world. So that's where we were a month ago, and we're in a better place today because of the hard work done by people all over the state, including just our individual citizens who have complied with the stayathome order, those individuals who have practiced social distancing, and all of the hygiene measures that we've been promoting. We are going to move forward as quickly as we can, but with a balanced approach to preserving public health, which is critically important. Having more testing on hand is really a big part of that. Having the ability to do comprehensive and quick contact tracing of individuals who test positive is also a huge part of this. And I would just flat out tell you today, we're not where we need to be, but we're increasing our capacity very quickly. And, in fact, the reason the folks from the Department of Health are not here with me right now is they're working on a plan that will step up and open up, I should say, more of our hospital capacity and our clinics for those procedures that are non? that? because right now, we're not allowing them to do nonemergency surgical procedures and medical procedures. Well, we're going to open that up sooner rather than later. And in all likelihood, ahead of May the 1st. And we'll be making more announcements about this next week, but it's critically important that we make our citizens as healthy as they can be. And we also know that what is not an emergency procedure today, if you put it off too long, it will become an emergency. And so we want to open these hospitals, these clinics back up for more of the elective procedures so people can get access to care that they need before it becomes an emergency. And we also know that this is a big part of our economy. The healthcare sector in the economy here in Louisiana and across the country is huge. So this is critically important. We're going to do that part of it first, and we're going to have more announcements over the coming days and weeks with respect to the economy as a whole. There's a lot about the future that we captain predict right now. We don't know what things are going to look like here on this campus. I'm not sure what is going to happen around Labor Day and what the LSU football team is going to be doing, what the games are going to be looking like. We do have every reason to believe it's going to be very different than it's been in the past, and I kind of want people to get prepared for that. We can't predict with any precision what that's going to look like, but I can certainly? as I said yesterday, I can see myself at LSU tiger stadium cheering on the team as they defend their national championship, but that may be more aspirational than anything else right now. But what I can tell you is the work we do now is critically important to putting ourselves in the best possible position so that we can be in tiger stadium sooner than later, so that we do get a chance to do those things. And by the way I'm an LSU graduate, so I talk a lot about the LSU tigers. This is true for all of our universities across the state of Louisiana and things that are not necessarily related to sports. It's just getting back to normal. We don't know exactly when that's going to happen. It won't happen fully before we have a vaccine, and the in the interim, hopefully we get a good therapeutic treatment, or a set of therapeutic treatments that will be effective and safe. But until those things happen, we know that we're going to have a different way of life. But eventually we're going to get through all of this, and we're going to be able to celebrate together, and you're going to be able to graduate your classes here in the PMAC again and all of that stuff. We just have to be patient in the interim. Before I give the podium to President Galligan? and it pains me to do this, because I did this a week ago and it proved to be? well, it proved to bear out with respect to the weather that we saw on Easter Sunday. So like I said last Friday, we have the potential over the weekend to have very bad weather. It's difficult to determine with any precision the location that this weather's going to hit, or the exact time, but we're in all likelihood going to have more dangerous weather over the weekend. So I'm encouraging people to prepare now. Stay alert. Heed any warnings from officials. Pay attention to what the weather man's saying on the news and the TV. Keep your cell phones handy because when tornados happen, there's an alert that goes out over cell phones that are sometimes the most effective and most timely way to get your attention where it needs to be to protect yourself and your family. But for the northern parts of the state, there's the potential for severe thunderstorms to ramp up late Saturday night and continue through much of the daytime hours on Sunday. The severe threat will increase by or after day break on Sunday, mainly coming over east Texas, north Louisiana, and extreme southern Arkansas. That's the area of our state that was hit last week the hardest. For the southern part of the state, confidence continues to increase that strong to severe storms will be possible Sunday? I'm sorry, Sunday and Sunday night with more widespread, severe storms along and north of I1012 corridor, across south Louisiana. So, again, this sounds a lot like my press conference from last Friday, and we know that we had multiple tornados on Easter Sunday. So everyone should have a game plan, and that's especially true because we're only 45?days from hurricane season. So have a game plan. Go to for more details. And with that I'm going to turn things over now to President Tom Galligan, who is in his very short tenure here as President, has presided every university system that was at the highest of the highs with a national championship that we all recently celebrated, but also with some of the biggest challenges that we've ever had in the history of this university. And I want to thank him for his leadership because he's done a wonderful job in navigating all of this, including the new normal that we are living through right now and seeing at this university. Once he finishes speaking, I will come back up and take your questions. So President Galligan.LSU PRESIDENT TOM GALLIGAN: Thank you, Governor. It has indeed been a busy four months for me, and it is indeed an honor and a privilege to serve at LSU's interim President. So I say good afternoon and welcome to the PMAC. I want to thank you all for being with us today to learn about the important work that our LSU family is doing right here in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center and at all of our eight campus said across the state to help in the continued coronavirus fight. I will echo the Governor. I will talk about LSU's effort, but all of higher education has risen to the occasion. I want to give a special thanks to our great Governor and my former student at the LSU law center, John Bel Edwards. Governor, I appreciate you taking the time to be with us this afternoon. Indeed, Governor Edwards was my student in an admiralty class in the fall of 1997, his second year in law school. And by the way as he did in most of his classes, he did very well. Governor, I think I just violated FERPA, but you were a great law student. I've taught many students since I first arrived at LSU in 1986, and I'm proud to have had the privilege to do so. But no teacher could ever be more proud of a student than I am of you. You have led Louisiana through this terrible crisis with intelligence, tireless dedication, respect for the people, and compassion. So we are all most grateful for your incredible leadership through this public health emergency. Thank you, Governor. Turning back to LSU, from the very first moment that it was clear that our great state and our university would be impacted by COVID19, our LSU family has been working steadfastly to leverage our medical expertise, research, ingenuity, and facilities to fight the virus on every front, from providing testing and treating patients, to providing our heroic medical professionals with critically needed personal protective equipment or PPE. This is a statewide effort that has involved all eight of our LSU campuses and virtually every college tour flagship campus right here in Baton Rouge. What you see in the PMAC today is an important piece of LSU's statewide COVID19 fight. This is what I like to call our new manufacturing division. Since Monday, our team has been producing reusable vinyl gowns and masks here in Baton Rouge that are being delivered to healthcare professionals across Louisiana, healthcare professionals who are on the frontlines of the corona fight, including those at our health science centers in New Orleans and Shreveport. At full capacity, about 40 workers will produce upwards of 1,000 gowns every day. And I want to stress, as you look around, that our team is practicing maximum physical distancing with the best practices possible. What you see here today is practical research in action that is making lives better and helping save lives across our state. It's an example of why great research institutions like LSU are a vital part of our community, both in the good times and in times of crisis. And it's an example of the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of our researchers. Now, as you may have heard, this entire effort is the result of work that Dr.?Wayne Newhauser started in his Baton Rouge garage just a few weeks ago. Wayne's standing right over there. Wayne, there he is. Wayne is the LSU medical physics program director. And when he heard about the shortage of PPE, he took it upon himself to do something about it. He began designing a prototype for reusable a vinyl gown and then making it with LSU students like Megan Moore and his friends like tray bowman. Now, Wayne is a rock star, and it was our job to turn him from a garage band into an arena rocker, and that is what we did. We designated a COVID19 response team to evaluate his promising technology and LSU rallied to the cause. In a single week, LSU staff scaled the operation that began in Wayne's garage into the PPE production facility you see here in the PMAC. That's a lot of Ps. Nearly every unit on campus participated in the effort to make PPE production possible. The college of engineering, coastal studies institute, the college of agriculture, the college of science, the school of theater. Yes, theater. The office of research and economic development. Facility services. Environmental health and protection. LSU's national institute for biomedical research and training. LSU PD. LSU athletics. Scott, thank very, very much. And the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. I hope I didn't miss anyone because everyone participated. We've had wonderful partners in the community, and I want to thank Lamar Advertising, Circle Graphics, Baker Hughes, Exxon, Vivid Ink, Paper, Formosa Plastics, Lettermans, and CocaCola who is providing us with beverages. We also sincerely thank the state of Louisiana for financially supporting this endeavor, and we thank the Governor's office of homeland security and emergency preparedness which is helping us deliver the PPE produced here to the places in Louisiana with the greatest need. So what you see here today is the culmination of a huge, collective effort with creative, cando beginnings in a faculty member's garage. But this is also just one part of our ongoing PPE production efforts at LSU. Outside the manufacturing division, experts are custom building UV sterilization cabinets, the Sanitiger. We're producing large quantities of hand sanitizer. And research is being conducted on additional PPE as I speak. At the same time, we continue to develop even faster and more advanced COVID19 tests. We're working towards a vaccine. We've been doing COVID19 testing at the vet school for over a month. Pennington has been doing social outreach and donating PPE. The agriculture center, which is literally all over the state, is researching, advising farmers, advising crawfishers, advising industry, and providing virtual 4H to thousands of students. We are testing, researching, and treating at our health sciences center, and LSU A, E, and S are donating PPE, supporting their students and communities, and teaching remotely, like all of us. As output at the PMAC expands, LSU will continue to bring expertise from every area of our eightmember family to support new initiatives. Now, none of us signed up for this pandemic, and we're all anxious for the day when we emerge on the other side of the crisis, at tiger stadium. Given the breaks, it may favor running football teams this year, but we'll see. That's the end of my prediction, Scott, about sports. Until that day comes, I promise you that LSU will continue leveraging our unique capabilities to fight this virus in every way we can. What continues to give me hope every day and what fills me with pride is the way our state and our LSU family have stood up during this historical moment to help keep the great people of Louisiana standing up and fighting corona. We may be fiscally distant, but we are socially connected. So, everyone, thank you for being here. Stay safe. And go tigers. [APPLAUSE]GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Thank you, and I appreciate that Mr.?President. I do remember my time in your class. That was not my highest grade, I want you to know. You were tough. He's done a tremendous job here at LSU, and I really appreciate your leadership. It has been inspiring. I'm in touch with people all over the state every day. The health science folks up in Shreveport, for example, second or third in the country to do convalescent plasma transfusion. One of the first to do nitric oxide treatments. Just really leading the way. Graduated healthcare workers early. And they're joining the fight against COVID much sooner than they otherwise would have. So you all have been involved from the very beginning, and I want to thank you for that. And with that I will now take your questions. Yes, sir.AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah, well, you know, it's an easier question to ask than to answer, and the reason is you've got a phased approach for reopening the economy is what we've been asked to do and the guidelines that the President gave us yesterday. But before you can ever get to Phase I, there are some thresholds that you're supposed to meet, and you're really measuring certain things like hospital capacity, case growth, and other things over a 14day period. And 14?days was picked because that's sort of the natural cycle of COVID19 when most people are exposed to it. What I can tell you right now is we don't meet the threshold requirement, although we're moving in that direction, but we don't have 14?days where all of those metrics have moved in the right direction. I think that by the time we get to may the 1st, we will be in that situation. It really depends on what people do between now and then and I guess with more precision, what people don't do. Because if people will stay at home and not interact with others, if they will continue to make sure that there's social distancing and so forth, we're going to keep the case growth on the current trajectory, which is flat, and hopefully it's going to start coming down pretty soon. We will meet those metrics. And then we're going to be able to move forward with reopening the economy. Now, when we do that, it won't look like flipping the light switch and everything goes back to the way it was a couple of months ago. It's going to look very different, and we're going to require individuals who are wanting to reengage to do certain things that just make sense. We're going to maintain the social distancing for a while. You're going to see a lot more individuals who are wearing masks. You go to a grocery store, the cashier, likely to be a mask on. People stocking the shelves, people cleaning the floors. The next time you go to a restaurant and you're having dinein service, your waiter or your waitress is going to have a mask on and those sorts of things, and there won't be a table as clothes to you as you would ordinarily expect it. And this is just sort of the new normal as we transition back towards opening our economy, but I can't tell you today exactly when that's going to happen because the key things that you have to have in place to give confidence to the health community, those professionals like Dr.?Alex Billioux, who's normally with me, who's leading our effort for the state, and Dr.?Jimmy Guidry, is you've got to have testing in a robust way and you've got to have contact tracing capacity in a very robust way because you've got to continuously monitor for spikes in suitcase growth and then you've got to isolate those individuals and isolate the people that came into contact with in order to keep that down. And that allows you to continue to open up your economy and be successful at it. So we have a lot of work to do, and we're working hard right now. Some of the guidelines actually pointed us to guidance from other federal agencies like the CDC, like CMS, for example, and that guidance is coming out, some of it perhaps today and over the coming days. And we're going to be looking at that as it becomes available. And then using our best judgment too. Because this is not a onesizefitsall. We're still the case, the state with the third highest number of cases per capita, and when you hear the President and Dr.?Burkes and the vice president talk about hot spots, they always mention New Orleans. And so we have to be very careful, and we know that we have a problem across the state. It's not just in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish. It's all across the state. But we have a significant issue with COVID in Louisiana, and so things won't happen as fast here as they might happen in Idaho or Utah, and that's for good reason. We're just not in the same place?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Correct. And, look, it's my hope, it's my expectation, that we're going to get there. But as I stand here talking to you right now, we don't meet the threshold to each get to Phase?I. That underscores the importance of everybody doing what we've been asking them to do, and that is continue to comply with the stayathome order. Make sure that you're practicing the hygiene measures that we've asked you to do and maintain social distancing when you're out in public. And I'm very heartened to see people wearing masks here today, because when you're going to be in close proximity to others, when you do have to go to the grocery store to the bank or to the gas station or wherever, first of all, don't go more often than you need to, don't bring your entire family, but when you do that, wear a mask. And the CDC is really clear on that. So you're right. And that's just where we are today. Next week, we may be in a different place. And if we are, I'll be sure to tell you. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: The low grade, like my grade in admiralty? No, I'm joking. So what he's referring to, there are some entities out there that are using data from cell phones because cell phones have GPS information. They can be tracked. And you kind of know which states and which parishes and counties and so forth are actually doing the best job of maintaining social distancing and not travelling and so forth. And there have been some areas in Louisiana that have been extremely well. I will tell you that New Orleans is one of those that's been really, really well, Bossier being another. But around Easter weekend, the data shows that people kind of lost their discipline, lost their focus a little bit. Trying to get that back so is that we can be in the best possible position to move forward, reopen the economy, do so safely, and never risk the ability to deliver healthcare. That's the nightmare scenario. That's the path we were on a month ago, where if our case growth had continued to way it was when we had the highest case growth in the world, then we would have, right now, we would have exceeded our capacity to deliver healthcare. People wouldn't have been able to get mechanical ventilators when they needed them, and I have no doubt that we would be having hundreds and thousands of individuals who would be dying that they're not dead today. And some are, and that's tragic. But the reason we're not seeing that is because of the work that people in Louisiana put in. And we need them to continue to do that, because we can go back to where we don't want to be if we're not careful. And so that's why the grade makes a difference. And obviously, you know, that's one of the things that I look at when I tell people, please, refocus. Be patient. Make sure that you're doing what we ask you to do so that we can continue to slow the spread and make sure that we're on the trajectory we want to be on so that we can safely reopen certain segments of our economy sooner rather than later. And that app has been very, very helpful by the way, to kind of draw attention to who's doing what and who isn't. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. Actually, what the mayorpresident of Lafayette is fully consistent with the current stayathome order that I put in place. And it gets a little? because people think it's on the businesses that we have are closed and the ones that we deem to be essential and that could continue, although they had to do certain things to protect the workers, there was that third category of businesses that were allowed to stay open but they had to comply with things around social distancing, minimizing the number of people in the stores at any one time. And what the mayor did there in Lafayette is fully consistent with the order that has been in place for some time now and the order that's going to stay in place until the 30th of April. And to the extent that he made for the additional, more strict requirements on businesses, I can absolutely support that. But there was nothing in his order that was inconsistent with what we had done previously. And I appreciate the mayor for doing that. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: You know, first of all, I appreciate the question. And I don't look at it as the President putting it on our backs. I think that that's just where the authority is by virtue of the Constitution that we live under in the United States of America. And I think the President hit exactly right yesterday when he issued guidance and he said, look, I want you to open as quickly as you can as much as you can but consistent with public safety. And he was talking about how aggressive action early on in those states with hot spots, and particularly New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, undoubtedly saved thousands and thousands of lives. And so states like that, where you still have a lot of virus, a lot of the COVID19 disease, you're going to be slower than others, but that's the place? I think it was entirely appropriate, and I thank him for the guidance. And, you know, the way he approached this yesterday was 100?percent consistent with my understanding of the Constitution. You didn't teach me Constitutional law, but I had great professors, and so I think he did exactly right there. Now, with respect to the protesters, look, you know, we have 4.7 million people here in Louisiana. We're not always going to agree on everything. If we did, it would be a boring place. But to the extent that they're saying, hey, we want to open up the economy, we want businesses back open, we want people going back to work, nobody wants that more than I do. But unlike them, I'm also charged with making sure that we promote and preserve public safety and health, and this is a public health emergency. And you have to balance all of those things at the same time. So that's not something that they have to be worried about, but it is something that I am very much concerned about. And, you know, to the extent that it was political in nature, what we've done in Louisiana has been entirely consistent with what the CDC and the President and the vice president and the coronavirus task force has been asking us to do. And all you have to do is watch his press conferences, and he will talk about a number of states and a number of governors and people who are doing things well and doing things right and that he enjoys the working relationship that we've had. And the President talks about Louisiana in that vein. So I hope that's not lost on the people who are out there protesting either. I really can't tell you whether in two weeks on May the 1st we actually get to Phase I or not. I hope that we do. I am fairly certain that we will reopen, as I talked earlier, hospitals and clinics to more of the elective, optional, nonemergency procedures, because we want to make sure that we're preserving health and putting people in the best possible position not to have an emergency later and to withstand this disease if they happen to contract it. And so we have to open up the healthcare sector. We are working really hard with the advisory commission that I established to tell me how they think we can most safely reopen different parts of our economy and be safe with respect to consumers and workers because everybody wants this to happen. We had the fourth fastest growing economy in the country when this hit. We want to get back to there just as soon as we possibly can, but we have to preserve public health. And even the President said yesterday, and you know that he's wanting to reopen this economy. He talks about it all the time. There's some states where that's just not going to be possible as fast as in other states, and we just have to get there. And I'm asking people to be patient, to know that we're working this as hard as we can. And nobody wants to do it more than I do, but we have to do it the right way. And that's what we're focused on right now. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah, no, I'm not concerned about what the other states are going to do. I've got my plate full right here in Louisiana. So testing is critically important, and several types of testing. You want to be able to quickly test people who develop symptoms. So diagnostic testing is critically important. You want to be able to do surveillance testing so that you have an idea of what's going on in the community at large. And then you've got to do the antibody testing to figure out who? because there's some percentage, and it's not insignificant, of people who are going to have the virus, they're going to have the disease, but they're going to be asymptomatic, or their symptoms are going to be so mild that they we don't know they had it but yet they're going to develop the antibodies. Awe believe? we don't know this yet? but we believe that they won't contract it again and they can safely reenter society in terms of working, in terms of opening their business and interacting with others than other people. So all of this testing is critically important. I don't think a single state can say today that they have the amount of testing that they want and need. We know that we're going to continue to try to ramp up our testing of all of these types, and we do have antibody testing available in the state now, but it's not to the extent that we want it to be. We are trying very hard to develop our instate testing capacity, so we're not going to be sending samples out of state and waiting three, four, five days to get results back. And by the way nobody's doing that better than folks affiliated with LSU Health Science Center in terms of increasing that capacity and so forth. There are still real world limitations that we're working through, like every other state, around reagent and around swabs, but again, LSU's producing reagent. And we know that we can actually have 3D printers of certain type produce the swabs that we need. And so we're moving forward, and we're going to wrap up our testing capacity as quickly as we possibly can because doing that is part and parcel of the plan to reopen the economy. And so we're going to be looking at where we are, where we think we're going to be in the coming weeks and months, and that's going to inform our decisions as we move from one phase to the other. And then remember this is a 3phased approach, that you can't even get to Phase?I until you meet certain preliminary benchmarks that we haven't yet met. Yes, ma'am?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: It's a great question, and it's why the work here is so important. So PPE has been a problem, not just here in Louisiana but around the country and around the world. We actually have more PPE on hand right now in our state warehouse, things that we've gotten? that GOHSEP has been able to obtain. Some of it from the national stockpile and others from normal distributors and vendors, but the exception to that is with respect to the surgical gowns where we've not been able to source those the way that we need to. But we know going forward, the demand is just going to increase. And one of the reasons it's going to increase is we're going to open up all of these clinics and optional services at hospitals. That's going to require PPE that currently isn't being used. In fact, the principal reason that they were closed was so that we wouldn't be burning PPE on those patients so that we could send it to the hospitals to deal with the COVID patients. So we know we're going to have increased demand because of that. But you're also going to continue to see COVID in our hospitals, and we want to make sure that we have the ability to protect our doctors and our nurses and our therapists. And it isn't just them who wear PPE in the hospitals. It's the custodians; it's the food service workers; it's the counselors; it's the administrators. It's all of them. And so when you think about this, the amount of protective personal equipment that we have to have in Louisiana going forward is going to be absolutely huge. And one of the things that we have to make sure of before we allow clinics to open is that they actually have enough PPE because they really need to be treating everyone who comes through their door as if they have COVID19 until such time as they know they don't. And, again, that gets back into testing, and that was the previous question. But PPE is incredibly important. And this is going to continue to be the case until after we have a vaccine and it's mass produced and it's actually administered to the entire population. Yes, Leo?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: No, we have not discussed that. I can assure you that people like the NCAA, the NFL, the SEC, they're all trying to figure out how and under what circumstances they can move forward, have these events, and do so in a way that's safe for the team and the officials and the coaches and all of us folks, but also for the fans. If there are going to be fans there, what does that look like? I don't have any answers to that just yet. We will have the benefit of what some other countries are doing. So I know that you can find in the? in certain areas that are ahead of us by a couple of months, they are starting to engage their professional sports teams in competition. And so we can kind of see what works and what doesn't work and hopefully learn from them. Now, the President did talk about his desire, his aspirational desire to see the NFL season conducted this year and college football and so forth. But in terms of specific plans and what that's going to look like, the answer is no. And, look, you mentioned we're here in the PMAC. I was never a basketball player, and I certainly wasn't a gymnast. This is a pretty neat place for me to be. I don't think there would be any other opportunity for me to be on the court. But I look forward to coming back here and watching the LSU basketball team and hopeful that they will not be deprived of an opportunity to participate in March Madness next year. And some of the most phenomenal athletes I've ever seen in my life are the gymnasts who perform right here in the PMAC. And I encourage people to do that. And again not just here at LSU, but all across the state. We're going to get here. We're a strong people. We're a resilient people. We're resourceful. We're going to get there. It's going to take some time. I don't know what life is going to be like exactly between now and then, but we're going to get there, and we're going to be good neighbors to one another. And in the meantime, in the shortterm, I'm asking everybody to continue to stay at home. Follow the stayathome order. Make sure that you're not out there unnecessarily making contact with other people. Make sure that you're social distancing when you do have to go out. Wear that mask and follow proper hygiene. It's incredibly important. And if we do that, then we're going to? this transition between now and all the way through this period that we're calling the new normal, it's going to be easier. And I'll say this, and then I'll stop. We're not going to be successful reopening the economy if the cases spike again and get out of control and we can't deliver healthcare to the people who are going to need it. And, in fact, that will be worse than if we take this slower. And so we need people to cooperate with us in order to make sure that we are successful and we can get the businesses back open as soon as possible and get people back to work as soon as possible. Because, quite frankly, when we think about the degree to which Louisiana is dependent upon tourism, how are we going to get tourists to Louisiana if we have cases spiking here in greater number than they're spiking elsewhere? They're going to choose to go elsewhere with their conventions. They're going to choose to take their vacations elsewhere. And in my conversations with the hospitality industry and the tourism folks, they fully understand that. And so they want to go as fast as they can while we adequately protect public health, because if we don't adequately and responsibly protect public health, then the economy is not going to work. We're not going to get there. So they have to go together, and we have to get the balance right. And reasonable people are going to say you should have done this faster; other people are going to say you should have done this slower. We're going to do the very best that we can based on the best information available, and I can tell you right now, we're probably going to make some mistakes. But we're going to minimize those mistakes, and we're going to be doing surveillance to know if we need to change. And we will do that in order to get those cases back down. Or if they stay down, to open up just a little bit faster as we move forward. But over the next couple of three weeks, there will be a lot more information about our plan forward and how that phased approach is going to work. In the meantime, I want everybody to have a great weekend. I will be speaking to you all again at 3:00 on Monday from GOHSEP. Be careful this weekend about that weather. Thank you. God bless. And thank you very much. ................
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