04132020 COVID-19 PC



GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for being here. This press conference is going to serve as a briefing both on the severe weather that was experienced across north Louisiana yesterday, and also my daily briefing on COVID 19. I want to thank all of the local officials who are joining us today. I know we have Mayor Jamie Mayo, Mayor Mitchell, other elected officials, including senators. I know we have Senator Jay Morris, also Representative Mike Henderson. We also have Representative Jones, I think. Good. Right there. Thank you. After I speak, you're going to hear from Congressman Ralph Abraham, and we also have here today with us, as I have been every day in Baton Rouge, Dr.?Alex Billioux from the Department of Health. He can answer specific questions related to COVID19 testing and other things related to the coronavirus. We just completed a tour of some of the tornado damage across north Louisiana. We did have two tornados confirmed here in Ouchita Parish, though the main one was an EF2 that had wind speeds up to 20?miles per hour. I do want to thank everyone for wearing a mask because it's critically important that you do that. Of course I was doing that until just a moment ago before I came up to speak. And what you do is you're being a good neighbor when you do that because you're really not so much protecting yourself. You're protecting your neighbors around you. And I appreciate that because we still have a ways to go with the COVID19 public health emergency. Speaking of emergencies, yesterday we did issue an emergency declaration regarding the tornado damage across five parishes in north Louisiana, and no parish was damaged more than Ouchita Parish. And it looks like there were two tornados with approximate 2?miles storm track. So as we stand here right now, Ouchita Parish has three active emergencies going on. There's a high water emergency that's been in place I think since January. The COVID19 emergency. And the tornado emergency. Search and rescue operations just were completed, and those were the secondary search and rescues. Primary search and rescues happened earlier. And I will tell you, when you see how significant the damage was, how widespread it was, the fact that they're reporting here in Ouchita Parish three minor injuries and no fatalities and no serious injuries is a miracle. And we should all be very thankful of the fact that not more people were injured or killed. The vice president asked me this morning to relay to everyone that he and the President were certainly leaning forward to do everything that needed to be done here, that they would hold people in their prayers. One of the things that has two emergencies playing off of one another is we do happen that the black bayou Pontchartrain in west Monroe took a direct hit from the tornado. It's been without power. And I know that the switches there were destroyed, so we don't know yet whether the pumps themselves were damaged, but we do know that they're inoperable and will be for some period of time. And of course that's a problem because we have the highwater emergency and it wouldn't take much rain in the near future to cause some flooding problems. And those three 60inch pumps are the most important in all of west Monroe when it comes to making sure that the region controls floods. So we will be working with the folks here in Ouchita Parish and in west Monroe to ascertain the damage, but we're going to try to make sure that we can do something about finding some other pumps to come up and supplement the pumping that would take place in west Monroe if there's going to be some rainfall. We have about 8,000 structures in in Ouchita Parish without power right now. That's a significant number. And I know that some of the damage that took place because of the tornado damaged serious electrical infrastructure to the point where it's going to be a couple of days, I think, before most of that power will be restored. I need everybody to be patient and treat every downed wire as if it's live. Many times, it's not the storm directly that injures or kills people; it's people who go out and work to cut trees and they're not mindful of the power lines and so forth. So everybody please be patient. Treat every line as if it's charged. In addition to what happened here in Ouchita Parish, we had two confirmed tornados in De Soto Parish and the damage assessments are currently underway over there as well. And there were a number of individuals who lost their homes in De Soto Parish. We're also assessing damage and possible tornados in Bienville, Bossier, Red River, and Webster Parishes. I do want to thank all the local and state first responders and emergency officials who were helping with recovery initiative. Yesterday, the National Guard delivered 1,026 tarps and ten pallets of water? that's about 22,000?bottles, by the way? to the city of Monroe. The Governor's office and homeland security office of preparedness? prepared a letter that got sent in for the community disaster loan program which provides operational funding to help local governments that have incurred significant loss in revenue due to a major disaster and that could affect their ability to deliver essential municipal services. So we're trying to stand up that loan program. Most of the folks? most of the municipalities in Louisiana are familiar with that program in the past. We've also requested that Verizon provide more cell coverage in the impacted areas and send a USR team to assist in recovery mission and submit a request for a sanitization machine. This morning, FEMA administrator Pete Gaynor called and I spoke to him and told him we would be submitting requests for individual assistance and public assistance. We also requested that the preliminary damage assessments for all the homes be allowed to be done through photographs so that we're not out there with COVID19 having to physically inspected all these properties and interact with more people than is absolutely necessary. We have receptive to that idea, and I think we're going to be able to get that done. I can tell you that I was personally struck by just how much damage we saw today in Ouchita Parish, how widespread it was, and, you know, these tornados have a mind of their own because every time I go out and look at the damage, one home is completely flattened and next to it is a home that looks like it didn't get touched. But to see so much damage, again, without anybody being killed, we do have that to be thankful for. And I know that that doesn't just happen either. People were mindful of the fact that there were severe weather warnings, and I think that they took seriously the alerts that they got on cell phones and so forth. So I do appreciate the people of Louisiana, particularly here in Ouchita Parish, for doing that. Now, with respect to COVID19, we do have some new numbers to report for you. I will tell you, they do continue to be encouraging. Over the last week or so, we've been talking about how we will flatten the curve, and our trajectory was really improving. That continues to be the case. Let's see. We reported over 4,000 new tests today and produced 421 new positive cases for the state. That brings us to a total of 21,016?cases statewide. Unfortunately, we added 44 new deaths. That's 840 statewide. And you remember just a few days ago, we were reporting 70 deaths. So even that number, even though as tragic as it is, it is trending in the right direction for us. Hospitalizations and ventilators each went up, but not at an enormous growth. So we have 50 new individuals with COVID19 in the hospitals across the state of Louisiana and three ventilators were added to what was already in service with COVID19. So even though there's more people there, the growth rate there was not particularly alarming and indicates we're moving in the right direction. I will tell you that anecdotally and somewhat not anecdotally, I've received reports that the people of Louisiana over the Easter weekend did not take social distancing as seriously as they should have and as the stay at home order and the mitigation measures weren't practiced as they had been previous to that, and I am encouraging everyone to get back to taking this very seriously. The reason we're trending in the right direction, the reason we have a slowing in the growth of cases and so forth, and deaths, is because of the social distancing, the hygiene practices, the stayathome order. And all it takes to have a spike in cases and go back in the other direction is for too many people to violate the order, too much social contact to spread this disease. So I'm asking everyone to do better. And I can tell you that the Unicast social distancing dashboard, which tracks movement by cell phone GPS data, the state actually wasn't doing that well before. We had a C, but we now have a D because there are too many people moving around. And so I'm asking people to take that seriously. As we announced Los Angeles week, we are seeing racial disparities in the outcomes with respect to deaths across the state of Louisiana. And it was? we have reported 70 percent of COVID19 deaths were among African Americans even though they made up 33 percent of the state's population. That was the right percentage, but that was the percentage of known? of the races of the individuals that were known. We've actually been able to update that a little bit. 60 percent of the deaths were among African Americans. 30 percent are white. 8.8 percent are unknown. And so some of those are going to be African American. Some will not. But what we know is that the percentage of African Americans dying make up at least twice what their percentage of the population as a whole is. And what we learn with the task force that's going to study these racial disparities will benefit everyone, but we know that we have an obligation to figure out exactly what's taking place here and better communicate during this COVID19 emergency and then make sure that the task force pays dividends thereafter in improving upon those health disparities that we're seeing across the state of Louisiana. What we know? and this is true for everyone? if you have an underlying chronic health condition such as hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease, and many others, then that makes you especially vulnerable to this particular virus, to this disease, and we know that generally speaking African Americans have these chronic health conditions in a larger proportion than other races, here in Louisiana and around the country. Since we're here in Ouchita, I did want to speak for just a minute about Ouchita Parishes. There are 384?cases here of COVID19 as of noon today, and that's informed by 3,896 tests reported, and that includes the state tests and private labs, and five deaths. The parish ranks tenth among parishes in the number of COVID19?cases across the state. In region eight, there are currently seven testing sites. That consists of union, Lincoln, Jackson, Caldwell, Franklin, Tensas, Madison, East Carroll, West Carroll, Morehouse, Ouchita, and Richland Parishes. We have some good news in north Louisiana coming out of LSU Health Shreveport. They have opened the emerging viral threat called the EVT lab which can process COVID19 test results in 24 to 48?hours and has a highend capacity of 1500 tests per day. And the Cleo CMS CDC approved lab is receiving samples from all over the state and may take some testing from out of the state once Louisiana's peak has occurred. This lab literally went from an idea to testing samples in less than two weeks and is now one of the highest capacity and largest throughput testing centers that we have in the state of Louisiana. LSU Health Shreveport researchers recently administered the first convalescent plasma therapy in Louisiana to a critically ill COVID19 patient, and I think we're about the third state in the country to do that? third facility, I should say, to do that in the country. This investigative therapy uses convalescent plasma from individuals who have recovered from COVID19. It's possible that this plasma contains antibodies to COVID19 and holds promise in being effective in treating those critically ill with the virus. LSU Health Shreveport was also the first site in Louisiana and the second in the U.S. to offer inhale nitric oxide clinical trial, joining Harvard university and University of Alabama at Birmingham in that regard. LSU Health Shreveport was awarded $175,000 by the Caddo Parish commission and will begin COVID19 testing in rural areas of north Louisiana this week. The testing will be accomplished by repurposing mobile vans previously used for cancer screenings. This morning on our weekly Governor's call with the White House, the vice president led the task force on that call, and he and his advisors on the task force talked about the need to get with me to continue to improve on reagent in swabs so we can support our testing all over the state because nobody wants to be in the dark and the more testing you have, the more, you know, about what's going on, in the state as a whole, but in particular regions of the state. We know that there will be some additional news coming out this week about serology testing, which is antibody testing, which I think will be really important for us to have available when we start talking about relaxing restrictions, reopening the economy, and so forth, because it will measure who has antibodies in their system, meaning that they had the COVID19. And we know that's significant because a lot of people are going to know they had it because they had a positive test result, but there are a lot of people out there, some significant percentage of the population, who will have COVID19 and not know it. But because they had it, they will have the antibodies and it will be easier for them to go back to work and to reengage sooner than it will be for other people. Dealing with devastating storm damage on top of a public health emergency is very, very difficult, and I want to thank all of the first responders again who have done a tremendous job of managing the response to the tornado, managing the public health emergencies as well, and I continue to be very appreciative of all the doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists, and other healthcare professionals all across the state of Louisiana who are doing just tremendous, tremendous work. And I will assure you, we are going to get through this, but we do need people to be vigilant. And I'm just going to hit on this one more time today before I leave. I'm encouraging people all across the state of Louisiana and here in northeast Louisiana to be patient, to be mindful of the stayathome order, to be mindful of social distancing, wearing a mask when you're out in public. And just because the grocery store is left open doesn't mean you need to go every day. Go once a week. And when you go, you don't need to bring everyone in your family. And make sure you continue to practice social distancing so that you wash your hands more frequently with soap and water, that you use hand sanitizer when you can't get the soap and water, that you're controlling your cough, that you stay home when you are sick. All of those things that we've been talking about remain very important to help us get through this. A little bit on unemployment. We know that as of today more than $89?million in benefits have been paid out across the state of Louisiana. That includes more than $21?million in state funds, and then the federal pandemic unemployment compensation that pays that enhancement of the $600 per individual per week, that amount comes to more than $66?million in the state of Louisiana. And I do want to encourage people that? who are eligible for the federal benefits? gig workers, 1099 workers, selfemployed? you may have applied previously and you were told that you were not eligible for state benefits, put you may, in fact, be eligible for this enhanced benefit. So we need you to continue to pursue those and make sure that you do recertify every week as well. So, with that, I'm going to turn over the podium to Congressman Abraham who will make some remarks, but as he's coming up, he is a doctor. He understands this stuff better than I do. I do want to say that Louisiana's gaining 124 new medical professionals today. 124 graduates from the LSU Health Science Center Shreveport will be graduating early today, and so they're going to be able to help support the surge across Louisiana. And some of them will actually leave the state, but we are especially proud of the majority of them who are going to be staying here in their state. Unfortunately, they can't gettogether because of social distancing, and they're going to receive their diplomas electronically today, and they can begin their careers as early as May the 1st due to extradited licensing that's going to take place. We've got 57 out of 124 LSU Health Science Center Shreveport School of Medicine seniors. They matched in Louisiana. Of those, 51 matched to LSU health residency programs in New Orleans and Shreveport, with 34 matched to Shreveport specifically. So all of these people are going to get on out out there and help us with this public health emergency, and I really appreciate them for doing that and I appreciate the licensing board for expediting the licensing, just as the health science center expedited their graduation. So I'm going to ask the congressman to come up, and when he gets finished, we're going to take your questions. And remember we do have Dr.?Billioux here who can help answer your questions as well.CONGRESSMAN ABRAHAM: Thank you, Governor. And I will just want to thank you Governor Edwards for your quick response for us, literally for as soon as the tornado left the ground, the Governor was sending supplies out this way. I had a conversation with him yesterday. Also thank you to President trump and Vice President Pence. We've been in contact with them yesterday and today. They stand ready to go at a moment's notice. I'm just going to simply echo what the Governor has said. I'm looking out at the crowd here. Our National Guard, state police, local police, fire, EMT, nurses, physicians. The first responders, you bring calm to chaos. In the uncertainty, people see that you are doing your jobs, they appreciate it and know that you're in their prayers, you're in their hearts, and you are really, really in their minds right now. Because when they see you in the community, again, this is a calm that they need and they look forward to on a daily basis. We've been through tough times before in Louisiana, we will again, but Louisianians have always relied on hope, faith, and hard work. We'll continue to do that. We'll get through this as we've gotten through other disasters. And this too shall pass. So Governor thank you for what you're doing. We want to thank President Trump's administration for what they're doing. And as important, and maybe more important, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you, ERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Thank you, congressman. And, look, the partnerships are working. The communication is working. The congressman and I had a phone call yesterday. This morning, I was on the phone with both the vice president and a separate call with Administrator Gaynor from FEMA. And yesterday had very quick communications from mayor Jamie Mayo. So it's local, it's state, it's federal, and it's all working. That's not to say it's perfect, but I can tell you people are working extremely hard to bring the relief to the folks here in Ouchita and across Louisiana with respect to the tornados and with respect to COVID19. With that, I'll take a few questions if you have them. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah, I did not. I did not. And it was a purposeful decision on my part, and it had to do with the COVID19 emergency. And even though I had a mask on, I come from a different part of the state, and I was trying to make sure that we didn't have too much interaction. And it's always a delicate balance because I saw people who were out cleaning up and working hard already to get past the tornado damage, and I saw some people in some homes that were obviously not going to be habitable tonight or anytime soon but chose not to stop and talk to them because of the COVID19 public health emergency. And that is, again, a very tough decision on my part because it's the first time I've shown up? and we've had plenty of natural disasters since I've been Governor, but this is the first time I did not interact with folks who had sustained damage to their properties?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah, so the question has to do with the difficulty of compounding the emergencies all at once. And I guess we're really going to see that if we get some rain here in the near future; right? And then the absence of those 360inch pumps at black bayou will really come into play. So it becomes hard. So yesterday? it's not good news, but it was helpful that we knew 48?hours in advance of the chance of very severe weather. And so we were actually leaning forward. But as we're talking about getting tarps and getting water to the Ouchita Parish, we're also thinking about PPE for people who are going to be handing out the tarps and handing out the water and trying to make sure that you can do things and maintain social distancing and hygiene practices that we need to have so that we don't inadvertently have more people catching the disease and presenting to the hospital than we need to have. And so it just makes everything much harder. But the good news here is that we did not have serious injury or fatalities and, you know, I think at last count, for example, next door in Mississippi, which was the same weather system, and right after it left Louisiana, it started having its impact there. Last I heard, they had 11 fatalities and the Governor there previously indicated this morning, he thought when they finished their search and rescue there, they would have more than 11. So we do have a lot to be thankful for. We need to keep those folks in our prayers as well. Any other questions here? Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. Well, first of all, they need to know we have not just declared a public health emergency for COVID19. We declared yesterday an emergency related to the tornado. This morning, I was on the phone with FEMA letting them know we will be requesting individual assistance, which most of the people are familiar with because of the number of times we've had to do this, public assistance and we're moving as quickly as we can. But, you know, as to whether those things become available, in terms of how much damage there is. And so we have to get the preliminary damage assessments done, and we also talked to FEMA today about being able to do those damage assessments virtually so that we can look at photographs of a particular structure and not have to send people into that structure because of the COVID19. So this is a little bit unique. This is a little bit different than we've ever done it before. I can only tell you that we've got FEMA's full attention of this. I've had a conversation with the region 6 administrator today, Toby Robinson, with Pete Gaynor who is the federal administrator working out of Washington. And I believe we're going to be able to bring assistance to people pretty quickly. One of the things I'm most worried about is we would typically have a congregate shelter set up so that everybody who lost their homes and didn't have a relative or a friend who could take them in would typically go to a school gymnasium or something like that where we had set up a shelter. Well, with the COVID19 public health emergency, that is not the most appropriate way to shelter people. So we're trying to get people into hotel rooms as quickly as possible. And the Red Cross is actually been helping with this as well, but this is something that we can do as well through Category?B, protective measures, that we have in place because of the declaration that we've gotten from the federal government on COVID19. So we're working with FEMA on that. And, look, some of these people are going to need a place to stay for quite some time. Because while many of the people were renters, it isn't like they have a lot of rental stock here that they can just move into. So we have no shortage of things to do, and I just want to assure people we're moving as quickly as we can because we understand the challenges that this presents to everyone. Any other questions? Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: The President has indicated plans to loosen or lift social distancing measures by April?30th. If those federal guidelines were relaxed, would you follow suit here in Louisiana?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, it's just too early to know. And, look, he's talking about some time after April the 30th. Don't know exactly what timeline that looks like. And he's also indicated that what he does may not be uniformly implemented in all states at the same time because you have some states that are obviously more impacted than others. You just look at the case counts. And I know they typically are referred to as hot spots. Well, Louisiana is known as one of those hot spots. So we're going to continue to work with him, with the White House task force, and I know that tomorrow he's announcing a council that is going to be advising him. And it's going to be comprised of doctors and scientists as well as business people as to how to open the country back up. As Dr.?Fauci said last week, it's not like flipping a light switch where you just go from being dark to light all at one time. So this is going to be done in some sort of a transition, and we're going to be doing doing it that way here in Louisiana. I cannot tell you exactly what that's going to look like yet, but we will be working really hard with all of the experts to get that figured out. And when we have something to announce on that, we will. We will be announcing later this week an economic resiliency recovery task force that we're going to stand up here in Louisiana. They will advise me and local officials as well. Senator?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, first of all, we do have testing available for all symptomatic people. And so we're talking about those symptoms that are associated with COVID19: The cough, the shortness of breath, fever. And so we do want all of these individuals to be tested. And in any individual out there who is watching this, if you have questions about whether you should be tested and how you would go about that, you can call 211. And 211 will answer those questions, specifically with respect to? and it was a little hard for me to hear you. These are elderly people who may live by themselves and they're not going to be able to drive themselves?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: So it remains the case that if you think you were exposed, you need to treat yourself as if you have been exposed and you need to quarantine for 14?days. Now, if you develop symptoms, that's when you need to be tested because it remains the case that the test is not reliable for people who don't yet have symptoms. And so it could give you a false negative when, in fact, you have it, but you don't? you know, you're going to think you don't, and you're going to continue? you're going to take yourself out of isolation, out of quarantine and start interacting with people. But if you become symptomatic, then you need to be tested. So if you make contact, quarantine. If you develop symptoms, then you need to be tested. And you can call 211 for questions. And, Doctor, do you have something? It's time for Dr.?Billioux to earn his keep anyway.DR. ALEX BILLIOUX: Just to echo what the Governor was saying, I think importantly people are encouraged to reach out to their primary care providers as well if they're well enough to stay at home and seek that kind of counsel. Anybody who's feeling severely ill should be contacting 911 because obviously we want to get them medical attention. Somebody needs to know, when they call 911, share their symptoms, as we would expect them to, just so that those first responders who are coming know to be taking the right protective measures for themselves. But as the Governor said, 211 can help connect you with local primary care providers as well. If they don't have one already, there's a network of primary care providers throughout the state, and they are doing testing. AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible).DR. ALEX BILLIOUX: Yeah, so this is a part of the order that's hard for anybody to follow. We understand there's no time when you need to be near other people more than when somebody that you love has passed. However, it can be a compounded difficult time if we gettogether in a small room, especially more than ten people. And so I would, you know, to echo again what the Governor said previously, hope that we don't have to rely on enforcement, especially at a time like that, but ask people to self police. Ask people to be mindful of the ten person limit. It's not because that's not a show of devotion and love to that person, but it's about keeping everybody else healthy. And most importantly, unfortunately, if you're in one of those high risk groups f you're over the age of 65, if you're somebody who has underlying comorbidities or underlying conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, especially if they're hard to control, you really need to be taking steps to not expose yourselves to people. And so we're asking funeral directors, we're asking churches, to be creative in the way that we can stay connected at these times, to use Facebook live or Facetime or any kind of virtual connection device like that, to let people come together without having to physically be together. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Let your pastor friends know that I'm looking to them to help to enforce this as well. These are the kind of orders nobody ever wants to issue. I certainly don't enjoy issuing them. I'm mindful that yesterday was Easter Sunday. But quite frankly, there's not a setting more conducive to the spread of this virus than people sitting in close proximity to one another for an hour or two hours at a time at a church service. And you typically see people of all age groups and people who are obviously older and more vulnerable and so forth. And so I'm just asking people to comply. We'll get through this, and we'll get back to the time when we can be as close as we are accustomed to being, and we can all gettogether and, you know, not just do the crawfish boils and so forth, but get back in our worship services as well. Okay. Another question, and then we're going to be headed back to south Louisiana. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Question inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: So I will issue a proclamation I think tomorrow is the day that we've selected in consultation with BSEE and our superintendent of education. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but the proclamation? and I mentioned this last week. It is my intention now to announce that school will not resume is in the sense that the students are going to be going to school? going to the school buildings. Education will continue. The school year continues. But they're not going to be going back onto the campuses. And so the distance learning and the other things that are going to be implemented in order to try and educate our children, those things will continue. And we're going to have a lot more information coming from the school districts locally about what that's going to look like. But it's? you know, the school? around the 20th of May is the last days that we would typically have school anyway, and it's just not going to work. By the way time this is over? and by the way we don't know what happens after April the 30th anyway, but it's just not going to be feasible to resume the operation of our schools this academic year. So there'll be more information forthcoming tomorrow from me, and then you're going to hear from the Department of Education and your local districts as to what that's going to look like here in Ouchita Parish and elsewhere around the state of Louisiana. So, look, I want to thank y'all for coming out. I want to thank everybody again for your social distancing out there and wearing masks in particular. I ask everybody to continue to be patient. Let's follow the stayathome order. Let's make sure that we're practicing social distancing and good hygiene. And then let's continue to lift one another up in prayer. And as tough as it is right now, remember start with a prayer of Thanksgiving and be thankful, as I am, that the tornados did not cause more injury and didn't cause a single death in the state of Louisiana. And then let's lift one another up in prayer as it relates to COVID19 as well. Thank you all so much. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download