COVID-19 06092020
GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Thank you for being here. Today, I've got Dr.?Guidry from the Office of Public Health to answer any questions related to testing and so forth. We also have general Wascom of GOHSEP here to answer any specific questions you might have related to tropical storm Cristobal. As you all know, that tropical storm did make landfall yesterday at southeast Louisiana near Grand Isle. The storm could have been a lot worse, I'm very thankful to say. We were largely spared from the most significant impacts that had been forecasted. Many weather officials have said we were fortunate, in fact, to avoid many of the flooding and storm surge issues that had been predicted, and some of these issues did materialize, but they were further east, and that's because over the last 48?hours, the track of the storm itself moved east. And we always knew that the east side of the storm would be the worst. That being said, state and local officials are still responding to a few issues. For example, I know that at Fountain Bleu State Park in the Mandeville area, ten people were rescued by the Mandeville fire and rescue team. Nineteen others were evacuated from cabins by park employees. We're very thankful for that. Down in Jefferson Parish at Grand Isle, the city has requested five additional emergency pumps with a fuel truck and an operator. I can tell you the Corps of Engineers is providing the pumps. Jefferson Parish are transporting them. In addition to the 5 pumps already provided by Jefferson Parish and by CPRA and the 11 permanent pumps on Grand Isle, there are 26 pumps that are trying to move the water off of that island. I can tell you that that happened because a taxed levee, the one on the bay side, on the north side, actually was overtopped by a storm surge. CPRA will be working with local flood authorities to be opening flood gates today across the coastal zone as soon as it is safe to do so. At this time, 371 gates remain closed. Thirteen roads were closed during this weather event. Many have either reopened or will reopen very shortly as water recedes. As always, you can visit to see realtime updates on road closures. There were just short of 4,000 power outages due to this tropical storm. I think 3,997 was the last number that we got from the public service commission. And even though the immediate threat from Cristobal has passed, there is the potential for more heavy rainfall as some of the trailing rain bands continue to move through the area. And of course the only danger we have for significant flooding is if one of those bands basically becomes stationary and sits and dumps a lot of rain on one area. If that happens, flash flooding and some river flooding could occur. So everyone needs to continue to be on guard. Tides remain elevated, and a coastal flood advisory is in effect for all coastal areas as inundation of less than 3 feet will be possible during high tide today. Overall, tropical storm Cristobal provided the state with a good test of our hurricane response and preparedness, including adjustments needed to deal with the COVID19 conditions. And this includes all the coordination necessary with our local partners at the offices of emergency preparedness, whether it's for potential nursing home support, placement of equipment such as pumps and generators, the current status of levee work and areas that continue to need upgrading and potentially immediate emergency attention. If you haven't already done so, I do encourage you to please go to and stay prepared with emergency supplies and evacuation plan and emergency communications for your family and for your business. And you should remember, this was only week one of the hurricane season. It is predicted to be a busy hurricane season with above average activity throughout. So please keep your guard up. If you're someone who, like me, prayed that tropical storm Cristobal would not do much damage to our state, now is a good time to offer up that prayer of Thanksgiving as well, so I would encourage you to do that. Switching gears now to COVID19. For today's testing update, we're reporting 234 new positive cases on 8,507 tests. That is a lot of tests for a Monday, and I think that's indicative of the testing effort that we have going on across the state of Louisiana with many partners. That's a 2.7?percent positivity rate on the tests that we're reporting today. Sadly, we're also reporting 6 new deaths, which brings the total deaths to 2,831. We have seven more patients in the hospital with COVID19 across the state of Louisiana, 582 in total, than we were reporting yesterday, with three less on ventilators. We have 71 patients across the state who are COVID positive on ventilators. We always update the presumed recoveries on Monday. You can see that we now are reporting 33,0904 patients have recovered. Some of the mobile testing sites across the state are closed due to the storm, but they will be reopening soon. In fact, I expect them to start opening tomorrow. We will update you as they come back online. Hopefully, many people stayed home this weekend as Cristobal made its way through the area. But as we move further into the summer months, please keep in mind that there's still? there's a lot of COVID out there. We want the positive trends that we've been able to see over the last number of weeks to continue, and I will tell you, one of the most heartening things is we're now two weeks removed from the Memorial Day weekend, and we have not seen the surge in cases or hospitalizations that could have come with that increased mobility and the contact that we saw happening across the state of Louisiana. I think a good reason for that is much of it was outdoors, and many people do continue to wear masks and to socially distance, which is what we're asking people to continue to do. I was encouraged today by a new LSU survey showing that 62?percent of the people say that they either always or very often wear face coverings when outside the home. That's an increase from April when only 48?percent gave that same answer. And 76?percent of people agree that wearing a face covering is the responsible thing to do, and it certainly is. That's why the CDC has recommended it, and that's why the Office of Public Health as well. And to update you further on Monday, as you know, we update the number of deaths by race. As of today, 53.2?percent of deaths from COVID19 in Louisiana are of African Americans, which is lower than it had been previously. You may remember the first time we reported, I think it was just shy of 70?percent. But 33?percent of our population is African American, and so we can still see that this disease is still having a disproportionate impact upon the African American population here in Louisiana, and that's really true across the country as well. But that's why we here in Louisiana, several weeks ago, created the health equity task force, and it's also why the work that they're doing is so important. And one of the most important things that we can do is to continue to highlight these disparities, figure out what the underlying cause is, and make sure that we do everything that we can to remedy that so that people are in better health, not just as it relates to COVID, but as it relates to every day life and quality of life. Looking ahead, we're going to have our next press conference on Wednesday of this week, and thereafter, we're probably going to shift to having scheduled COVID press conferences once per week going forward. And we'll make sure that, you know, on Wednesday when the next one will be after that, but we're anticipating having another press conference on Wednesday at 2:30. At this time, I will take your questions, and don't forget, I've got Colonel Wascom here and Dr.?Guidry should you have questions that you want to direct to them. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: No, but obviously we'll be making an announcement on that? on those bills and many others by the end of the week. Yes, ma'am?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, the New Orleans police chief has acknowledged that there were some rubber balls fired at protesters on Wednesday. I'm wondering if you had a conversation with the police chief about that and if you have concerns about the fact that that was the kind of response (inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. Well, I have not had a conversation, first of all. I've had several conversations with the mayor, but not any specific to the rubber projectiles that you're referencing. It's my understanding that the chief has indicated that to the best of his knowledge those projectiles were not authorized. There's an investigation ongoing. He's trying to figure out exactly how many officers, who they were, and why they were used. And really until that investigation is concluded, I'm not going to get in front of it. I will say that the overwhelming majority of the demonstrations and protests that we've seen in New Orleans, and quite frankly around the state, have been peaceful, nonviolent. They haven't engaged in property destruction. And so obviously we would want the interaction between law enforcement and the protesters to be as peaceful as possible as well. I wasn't on hand. I don't know exactly what was transpiring at that particular moment. And so I can't offer any more comments on that, other than to say that as we move forward, if there are going to be more protests and demonstrations, we would obviously want them to be as peaceful as they have been and that the individuals can voice their concerns which, by the way, are entirely legitimate, and do so in a way that appropriately exercises their first amendment rights. And they shouldn't have to worry about the hand of the law enforcement being too heavy, and that's why continued leadership and training and retraining and supervision, all of these things are incredibly important, not just for these protests, but as we move forward, period, both here and around the country. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Going back to the (inaudible) we've seen spikes in general. Texas has seen a lot of spikes in the past few days, and they don't believe they're related to testing. Mississippi and Arkansas are seeing some. We haven't seen them here yet. Is it really just waiting for that one person with a positive case to maybe isn't it a fact? and (inaudible) so should we see a spike, what is your thought process? How do we respond to change now that we've gone into Phase II?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah, we need to know whether the spike in cases is a function of the increased testing, whether we believe that the spike suggests community spread, or whether it's really in congregate settings, whether it's leading to additional hospitalization or not, and if so, are the hospitalized patients more acute or less acute? There's so much that goes into this. And really if we get to where we see a spike in cases, we will sit down with all the experts, both at the state level and at the local levels, and try to figure out what response is most appropriate. And so I can't really judge that. There are just too many factors. I am heartened by the fact that we quite frankly haven't seen them. Now, we still have concerns, particularly up in Monroe and region 8, which is that area in northeast Louisiana, where we're still seeing? and it's not approaching anything that would threaten our capacity to deliver healthcare? but we're seeing more hospitalizations. We're seeing more cases. And so we're trying to figure out now exactly what's going on there and what additional steps we need to take, whether it's testing, whether it's communication, so forth, up in that region. But I'm really heartened that we haven't seen it across Louisiana. And, look, we may see it. You are seeing it in some other places, and it could just be that we were several weeks ahead of these other states and sort of they're behind us and so forth. You know, I don't know. There's so many things that are going on there. But we're going to continue to make sure that we're testing such as we can, no less than 200,000 tests, again, in the month of June, accompanied by the requisite contact tracing when someone tests positive, because we think that's the only way to really monitor what's going on and keep those cases down and try to keep them from spiking going forward. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, have you talked to any lawmakers about police reform initiatives? We've seen some come to life with George followed (inaudible) and then I guess the next opportunity might be a special session later in the year or next year. Are you open to taking on things like qualified immunity or (inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, I have had a conversation with a number of senators last week, specifically senator Cleo Fields mentioned that he was looking at undertaking an effort. It would be a broad scaled effort that he would undertake really with a goal towards introducing legislation in the regular session of 2021. So that's the timeline that I believe he is on. I haven't had conversations with anyone trying to move any legislation faster than that. Obviously, we need to take a look at the situation here in Louisiana, as they're doing across the country, to see if we can do some things that just make sense. I think anyone would have to acknowledge that the frequency of the unreasonable application of force that's happening across the country is growing. It's unacceptable. And whether it relates to the selection of officers, the recruitment of officers and their training, their supervision, their retraining, all of these sorts of things, or all of them, you know, I think it all bears a close scrutiny. And I will certainly work with them to make sure that we're doing our part in Louisiana. And so I do look forward to that being a part of upcoming legislative session, and I also hope that we can achieve broad consensus that action is necessary and what that action should look like. Because we need to do this in a responsible way, but one that doesn't delay unnecessarily the reforms that I believe are needed?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you explain the effort to, you know, defund police departments (inaudible) how much we're spending on law enforcement and allocating that money elsewhere?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: No, I'm not here to advocate defunding police departments. I mean, we still have crime out there and, you know, when you invest in appropriate police work, whether it's the Sheriff's Office or police department, you are investing in the community. But it does need to be appropriate. And we need to make sure that we're doing everything we can to ensure that our officers are interacting with the public without unreasonable use of force. And that's the most important things that we can do. I think some reforms are necessary, here, as elsewhere, in order to make sure that that happens. Yes, ma'am?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible) are the any ongoing conversations about what they're considering and would you be willing to sign and is that (inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah, no, we've had some conversations. They're generally at a high level. And just discussed the need to be able to pass a reasonable budget to make sure that we can continue to deliver the essential services and meet our most pressing needs and priorities in the state of Louisiana. And do so in light of a revenue estimating conference forecast, that is, almost $900?million less than the current year. So each with the CARES Act, we still have challenges there. So just talking about the need to get the balance right and to move forward. But in terms of specific instruments, we have not had that level of conversation. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, it looks like the numbers for contact tracing of how many people y'all are reaching is similar to other places around the country, but very low in terms of how many people are actually answering the phone. Is that a growing worry as you look for contact tracing, just how many people pick up the telephone?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, it's always something that's concerning when you know that it's important in terms of trying to keep the cases down, as we reengage more sectors of our economy, get more people back to work, get more customers in stores, bring people into contact with one another more frequently, we know that we have to test more and the testing has to inform the contact tracing and the contact tracing has to be effective. It's not going to be effective if people don't answer the phone and allow the contact tracer to share information with those individuals as to what they should be doing in light of the fact that they either tested positive or came into contact with someone who did. So we do encourage people to look for those calls and to take those calls and to participate. It is obviously not mandatory that people do that, but it is the right thing for people to do. And so if to the extent that people are not cooperating, for whatever reason, then that is concerning?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you think it's starting to thwart the state's effort to respond to the coronavirus? Do you think we're still doing that?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah, no, I'm not going to say it's thwarting our efforts. We just know that it's limiting the effectiveness of those efforts at this time. And we hope that as we continue to emphasize the importance of contact tracing and what individuals' roles are in that overall level, that there will be more support and more cooperation. Today's your day?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Have you spoken with LSU officials about (inaudible) student apparently made a racist remark on social media (inaudible). Have you spoken to school leaders over there, and do you have any comments about what's going on?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, obviously, the comments attributed to this individual who I'm not sure is a student? and maybe this is part of what's going on? it may be someone who was offered admission but not yet enrolled. But those comments are vial and disgusting and have really no place in our society today. I would encourage people to reject out of hand that kind of racism and bigotry and prejudice. Now, I spoke with the chair of the board? chairwoman, Mary Warner, this morning. I know that the university is doing an investigation to figure out exactly what the status of that particular individual is and what, if any, official policies of the university were violated and what their next steps may be. And I really don't want to get further than that because I quite simply don't know more than what I just told you. Well, I guess that was it. So I want to thank you all. We will have a press conference on 2:30 on Wednesday. It will be back over at the capitol. We will be having a UCG meeting here that morning at 10:30 as well, and we will have the COVID pres conference update at 2:30 that afternoon. And, again, moving forward, we believe we'll be doing these once a week, although there will be two this week, and we'll let you know what day next week and beyond we intend to hold those, although we're leaning towards Wednesdays for those additional press conferences. So I want to thank all of you for being here, and I want to thank all the people of Louisiana who are taking COVID19 seriously, who are? who took Cristobal seriously, and, quite frankly, who are doing what they can to make sure that the protests and demonstrations that are taking place here in Louisiana, in cities large and small, are peaceful, that they are nonviolent, that we're not engaging in property destruction, and that peoples' voices are being heard. And I think now it's incumbent upon all of us to make sure that those voices are not only heard, but that they cause us to really look at what we're doing in Louisiana and around the country and implement reform as necessary to make sure that police officers are appropriate in their use of force. And we're going to make sure that we're taking that seriously here in Louisiana. So thank you all, and I will see you on Wednesday. ................
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