COVID-19 06012020



GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming out today. Before we talk about COVID19, I did want to remind everyone, today is the 1st of June. First day of hurricane season, and we actually have a disturbance located over the Yucatan Peninsula. It's called invest 93L, and we were told this morning by the national weather service out of Slidell that it has an 80?percent chance of development into a tropical cyclone. That's now been already upgraded to 90?percent since this morning. It is too early to know where this system will end up, how strong it will be, but we are told that one way or another, because whether it's this system or weather that's developing in and around the gulf, we're going to have a very wet end of the week and weekend maybe start of next week. So we need to all be paying attention to that. Very heavy rainfall, so I'm asking everyone out there to be prepared. Go to . Make sure that you are ready. There are differences between responding to a natural disaster when you have a public health emergency with COVID19 as we currently do, and obviously when we do not. So we will continue to update you on this disturbance as we get more information, but we do encourage everyone to follow the weather channel, the local weather broadcast, and local officials and so forth. Moving back to today's press briefing on COVID19, I realize that you didn't have a chance the other day to get all of the numbers because we were having some technical difficulty with our servers or the domain site and so forth. I can tell you today we're reporting 425 new cases. That brings us to more than 40,000?cases total since the inception of this public health emergency. Right now, we are ranked 10th of all states per capita for cases. And you know that at one time we were ranked Number?2 in the country for that. So I want to take just a moment and thank the people of Louisiana for doing what was necessary to slow the spread and flatten the curve and to maintain that effort so that we went from Number?2 to Number?10. So I just told you we have 40,000 or so cases total. You see there, 40,000 341. We also increased today the number of presumed recoveries, and we're reporting 31,728. That's obviously a positive sign going forward as well. Sadly today, we are reporting four deaths. But as you know, from being in these meetings and receiving these numbers for the last few months, that is a relatively low number of deaths. And so that too is encouraging. But for those families who lost loved ones, obviously still a very, very serious thing. And so we should offer up our prayers and our condolences. That is the lowest number of deaths reported since March the 22nd. We have 661 COVID patients in the hospital today. That is the lowest since March?25th. Overall today with the testing effort, we've completed more than 387,000 tests. Today's report, 3.5?percent of those tests for today were positive, and that was on 12,261 tests. As anticipated, and as I announced last week, we did exceed our goal of 200,000 tests administered in the month of May. We ended up with 206,858 tests. So that was well in excess of the 4.3 percent that we had set as our goal. So in the month of May, we more than doubled the tests that we administered in the month of April. And I would remind you that the minimum goal that the CDC recommends is 2?percent. So we're more than twice that, and we intend to continue testing at at least that level going forward. We've also reached our goal of 10?percent positivity or lower on new results for the last 24?days, and we're getting really close to being at 10?percent overall since the inception of the testing many weeks ago. I spent the weekend digging into the data in close coordination with the Office of Public Health, with Dr.?Billeaux and Dr.?Philips at the department of health, with the fire marshal, and with many others, and I'm pleased to report that we are seeing signs of progress. Louisiana is headed in the right direction. But I have to caveat that by saying there's still a lot of COVID19 in Louisiana. It's in every community across the state. And so we still have work to do. We still have some restrictions that have to be in place. And as I've said so many times, we're not going to be fully back to normal for some time, and certainly not likely until we have a vaccine that is safe, effective, mass produced, and then administered to some significant percentage of the population. But we are moving in the right direction. We're ramping up our testing. We're ramping up our contact tracing. And you're going to get much more information about this from Dr.?Billeaux in just a few moments. But it doesn't mean that every region of the state is doing equally well, although we have less regions of the state today that are somewhat problematic than we've had in the past. There are a couple of areas where we need to continue to monitor very closely, but the truth is we plan to monitor every part of our state very, very closely. That's the whole purpose of the increases testing and the contact tracing. But you'll get that information from Dr.?Billeaux in just a moment. But with that being said, I do believe, and have made the decision, that it is appropriate to transition into Phase II on Friday of this week when the current proclamation terminates. And so on Thursday I will be signing a new proclamation to move the state into Phase II. And at this point I'm going to invite Dr.?Alex Billeaux to come up and go through some slides with you. If you've got questions about those particular slides, I would ask you to ask them of Dr.?Billeaux while he's here at the podium. When I come back up, obviously I'll conclude with some remarks, and then I'll take your questions. Thank you.DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: Thank you, Governor. So as we've been doing since before we moved even into Phase I, the department of health, in coordination with the epidemiologists who work for the Office of Public Health and public health experts from academic institutions and hospitals in the state, continue to look at the data about how our epidemic is progressing and use that to really understand what path we're charting and understand and give recommendations to the Governor and his office about how to progress and when to progress. And so just going through the same information, and this will be the third time that you've seen us present the data this way, overall, the top line in consistent with the recommendation that it would be reasonable to go into Phase II is that the state continue to see decreasing symptoms of COVID19. And that's as demonstrated by what we call CLI or COVID like illness, syndromic surveillance, people presenting to emergency departments with signs and symptoms of COVID, and it's the proportion of those individuals in comparison with everybody else coming to an emergency department. So we continue to see that decreasing. Overall, our cases continue to decrease. We look at that through a variety of ways, and I'll touch on some of those in a moment. And we continue to see a decrease in hospitalizations. So this chart depicts that, but it also depict the other point that the Governor just made, which is that progress continues, but it is not even across the state. And so while we do feel that overall the trajectory is decreasing, and you heard the data about lower numbers of deaths than we've seen in recent days, lower number of cases in general than we had months ago, fewer hospitalizations than, you know, really when we're on the upswing, we do have some concerns about various different areas that I'll talk through at a high level in a moment. But when we look at COVID like illness in general, we can see that across the state, symptoms in people showing up to emergency departments, the symptoms of COVID continue to decrease. With cases, we see a bit more of a mixed bag where we have several areas that are not decreasing or increasing. There may be slow decreases, but we're calling those essentially plateaued area. That's Region?1, the Greater New Orleans area; region 2, the southwest area around Lake Charles; region 8, the Monroe and delta parishes; and region 9, the Northshore and Florida Parishes. There's a lot of reasons we could be seeing those cases not going down, certainly continued transmission of COVID being the most underlying cause. But the other is the work that we've been doing as a state, not just as the state government itself, but as a state with partners in academic, hospital, and private sector labs to increase testing throughout the state, not just in communities, not just in communities that were under tested, like our African American communities and our law Tina communities, but also making sure that we're getting testing into areas where we know that spread happens more frequently and people are more vulnerable, like our nursing homes, our congregate settings like prisons and adult residential settings. And so it's expected that as we see that testing increase, we're going to find more COVID, that's going to mean that you're going to have more cases, and give a little bit of a mixed picture here. But we also are tracking other metrics, like as we continue to increase the amount of testing, what's going on with the proportion of those tests that are positive, that percent positivity that the Governor referenced. And I'll show you in just a few slides how that number continues to improve. And so that helps us as we're looking from a public health standpoint and understanding these plateaued cases and these decreasing cases in some regions sort of balance that with an overall trend to say that yes, even as you're finding more cases, as a proportion of total tests, that's still coming down. Region 6, the central area around Alexandria/Rapides does however show increase in cases, and we're watching that very closely. Some of that driven by outbreaks in congregate settings that are in that region, but we also are seeing a fair bit of community spread as well. And so again as we talk about measures, as I will later on in the presentation, that despite this generally good trend, promising trend, the decreasing hospitalizations, the decreasing symptoms, despite that, general positive news, we must continue to double down on the measures that we know work to decrease the spread and to reduce the risk that we continue to see spread in our communities of COVID, most importantly being staying at home if you're sick and wearing a mask if you're out in public with people who are not from your household, whether you're outside or inside, and certainly if you're less than 6 feet away from each other. When we look at hospitalizations, we have consistently seen, by and large, decreases across most of the state. We've also consistently seen, unfortunately, a rise in hospitalizations in region 8, the greater Monroe area. It is a relatively small net increase in that region, and we have not come close to exceeding the capacity for hospitals in that region, but it is a steady climb, as you'll see when we look at the actual graphs. Now we are also seeing a rise in cases? or rather in hospitalizations in region 6. And so when you put that information together with seeing a rise in cases in region 6, the central Louisiana, that's another area that we're watching very closely and making sure that we're surging testing capabilities, both at the community and congregate level, but also making sure that we are getting contact tracing and messages about maintaining good public health in those areas. So we look at the next slides, I just wanted to show you a few of the regions so you can kind of get a sense of what this data looks like and how we review it. So these are the statewide trends. Again, these are the similar graphs that we've shown you before. Some people may notice that there's a bit of a color change. Sorry for individuals who are color blind because it is a red/green map. But there's a bit of a change to the middle epicurve in that now the CDC is giving us criteria on which to say there is a decreasing trajectory or a rebound, which is red. And so you'll see that alternating red and green in certain regions. But overall as a state, you can see that the symptoms on that curve at the top, cases on that curve in the middle, and hospitalizations on that curve at the bottom, are trending down. If we move on to the greater New Orleans area, Region?1, you'll see that the pattern is the same, maybe a little bit more extreme. We know that Region?1 has done a really excellent job, certainly the place with the earliest epidemic, the place with the highest rate of rise, early in Louisiana's epidemic, but also really great concerted effort to dramatically turn that around and see a decrease. And as you can tell when I described Region?1 as a plateau for cases, that's really because you have this long tail that we do think ever time will continue to decrease. But just looking at the slope, it's relatively flat. Symptoms and hospitalizations, however, are down. Now, if we compare that to region 6, a region where we have more concerns with the trajectory of cases and hospitalizations, you see that when we're looking at symptoms, largely as a result of smaller populations, the graph for symptoms is a lot more active and not nearly as smooth. And we see that in general there's a downward trajectory, but certainly not the kind of smooth line downward and continued decrease that we would want to see. So watching that very closely. When we look at cases, we see that there was an initial increase and decrease, but then subsequently there's been this sort of ungulating rise now since about mid April, and we continue to see that rise in cases, again noting that one of the drivers of increased cases most recently is that we are detecting more. We know that sim law was one of the most under tested areas in the state, and both through the Office of Public Health and through partners throughout that area, through the help of the federal government with specimen collection kits, we've been able to get a lot more testing into that region, and as a result, we're finding a lot more cases. That means there's a lot more to be done on the ground to help region 6. Region 8 is the other region that we have a concern about, and we've talked about in the previous two discussions about gating criteria. Again, syndromic surveillance, the symptoms have been going down since the beginning. In the past, however, we've had concerns about both cases and hospitalizations in this region. Hospitalizations continue to increase, again, albeit at a smaller rate and an absolute smaller increases. Fortunately, though, we're starting to see what we hope is the beginning of a bending of the curve in region 8 with what looks like a plateau over the weekend now if you sort of chart 14?days out on the epicurve, that middle curve. So again it's very ungulating. We know that this stuff can change over time. Region 8 is another area that was significantly under tested for most of April, and May has been a big focus on trying to get more tests there. So we want to continue to see that as we get more testing in these communities that we find fewer cases, and the way that's going to happen, as we find people, as we do contact tracing in every region of the state, is we advise people to isolate if there are cases, advise people to quarantine, stay at home, if they've been exposed. That's how we're going to see these curves continue to flatten and turn, by having people keep COVID out of our public spaces and allow our public spaces to own up more. So along those lines, we do want to share a bit of an update on testing overall and contact tracing. As you heard the Governor announce, we had set a goal of doubling the amount of testing that we did in April at the beginning of May. This was a key goal that we shared with the White House and lent to their support for the specimen collection kits that had helped us achieve this goal, but that's sort of a necessary but not sufficient tool to get to where we need to be with our testing. And the real drive was people across the state? academic partners, private labs, facilities themselves? really standing up and partnering with us to get people tested in large numbers and to reach communities that we hadn't had enough reach to in the past. As a result, we did, one day early, achieve greater than 200,000 tests reported to the state in the month of May. And importantly as we saw that rise in overall tests, as depicted by this yellow orangeish line on the graph, we saw a continued decrease in the percent positive results coming back as depicted by those blue bars in the graph. So that's what we want to see. We want to see that we're getting tests out enough that it's changing our behavior, changing our ability to influence the dynamics of COVID19, and see fewer and fewer cases returning positive back to us. One of the ways that we do that is through contact tracing. We've been doing that since the beginning of the outbreak, but as you all know, because of resource limitations and the pace at which cases were rising early in the epidemic, we have not been able to do statewide contact tracing the way that we wanted. Moving into Phase I and right before, we really surged our capacity as a state to engage in contact tracing so that we could move into a suppressive mode where what we're really doing is, as we're finding out about a case, ideally, reaching out to those people within the first 24?hours being notified of that case, getting them counsel and advice on the protective measures they need to take for themselves and anyone that they're living with, certainly to isolate, and then also trying to find out who might have been exposed as a result of their infection and reaching out to those individuals, those contacts who have been within 6 feet for greater than 15?minutes so that we could reach out to them and also advise them to stay home, take protective measures for themselves and their family from exposure, to monitor for symptoms. And if they already had symptoms at the time of our outreach to be tested themselves so that we can really try to identify, isolate, and sequester or move out of general public the individuals who either are infected or may become infected. We had more than 250 Louisianians online as contact tracers after May 15th and have since been able to hire 613 Louisianians to serve in this capacity with more than 303 of them trained and doing this work. And the training continues. We're trying to get really that full number online. We've also been doing a lot of sharing with the media and other venues so that when people get calls from the Louisiana Department of Health, they're not caught by surprise. This shouldn't be something that causes you a great deal of concern. It's really an opportunity to learn more about what's going on with potential exposure to COVID19 and to do your part as a good neighbor to help prevent the spread of COVID19 in our communities. And this will only be successful if people continue to take part, to answer that call, and then to help ensure that we protect our neighbors as much as possible. This is a real opportunity to do what Louisianians do best and look out for each other by doing our own individual part. Our goal is to make sure that we don't just have the capacity to reach everybody, but that we do reach people and that they do answer the calls and that we're able to not only give them advice on reducing the risk to themselves and to the community but also importantly provide or understand the resources that they may need in order to be successful in staying at home during that period of time because we happen that everybody has the means to just easily stay in their house for two weeks. And so so far we've been able to engage over 219?cases and contacts that we referred for further resource support to be successful in staying at home. So as a result of that, with the data again being promising and seeing the increases in testing, seeing the increases in ability to do contact tracing we felt it was reasonable to move into Phase II as we continued to see these trends go forward were. And so I wanted to touch a little bit on what Phase II looks like. The overall big difference between Phase I and Phase II is in Phase I, to understand how to maintain strict social distancing of, you know, greater than 6 feet amongst individuals, working with the fire marshal's office and understanding how indoor settings are regulated or set up, we initially had an occupancy restriction of about 25?percent for those facility. So now as we move into Phase II, that restriction will relax further to allow up to 50?percent occupancy for most of these venues that you see here, keeping in mind the goal should still be to stay 6 feet away from each other. We can be creative about how we do that, perhaps sitting all on the same side of a table at a restaurant, having other people sitting at the same side of a different table at a restaurant. There's going to be net 6 feet managed between those groups, even though there may be more tables now in that restaurant. So some of that is going to be managed by the people who are the business owners, who are going to be really enacting these restrictions. A large part of it, though, comes back to us, as Louisianians, and how we behave and how we make choices about taking part in these various sectors that are expanding access. We'll note that in blue on this list we have sectors that are going to be added to the proclamation now in Phase II that were not open before, and this brings in much more of, you know, places like day spas, tattoo shops, some recreational facilities like controlled swimming. We know that we're in the middle of or entering summer, and it's going to be a hot one and so we understand a desire for people to go out and cool off in any way they can. Again, just reminding people to just be conscious of where they are, be conscious of the fact that pools are going to be required to have individuals watch the pool to make sure that we're not congregating, that we're not in contact, that we're not going to be having just a free, uncontrolled swimming. This will still be with health and safety measures taken to reduce the risk of transmissions. Nothing reduces the risk more than staying at home, as we've said previously. And importantly it's important to highlight that individuals who are at high risk for poor outcomes for COVID19? so individuals who themselves are older than 65. 65 or older, people who have heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, lung disease, people who have severe obesity, and any reason that your immune system is not working at normal, the recommendation is that for you, you're essentially in phase zero. You need to stay at home if at all possible. Reach out to friends, neighbors, families, to help with delivery of groceries and with delivery of medications. These sectors that are opening up are not really intended for people in those high risk categories because, again, there's still a lot of COVID in our communities. We know we estimate about a little over 8,000?cases based on the cases that we know of, but we know that the cases that we know of don't touch all of the cases that are in the state. And so even as we open up these sectors, it's important for us all to be very myself of the fact that the threat from COVID19 still very much remains and that we need to take steps to make ourselves and others safe. And on that last point, I would just point out, even if you're not in a high risk group, you need to evaluate whether you live with somebody or come into a lot of contact with somebody who's in a high risk group. And as you're making decisions about the risks that you take, that you take very much on board that you could present a risk of acquiring COVID19 and transmitting it to somebody who themselves could have a really bad outcome. We've been fortunate to have the fewest numbers of deaths reported since we began, you know, in the last two days, but we want to keep that trajectory. I think nothing would make me sadder than for us to suddenly have that rate increase, and I'm sure that that's true for the Governor as well. So there's some practices to make this work, to be able to reengage the economy, to be able to start this work of restarting our economy, that we all have to do. It's not that we can just return to normal live preCOVID. And the most important thing that we want to emphasize is really the new normal of wearing a mask. That is going to remain until we have adequate, herd immunity. Until enough of us are protected from COVID19 that the risk of spread widely is dramatically reduced. And public health experts tell us that without a vaccine, that could take up to three years. So that's something to keep in mind, that we really need to be building into our mindset. Comfort with the masks and the use of the mask and the comfort with telling each other and reminding each other to wear masks. Because what we've learned, especially since the? in the recent months since the outbreak, is that one of the main modes of transmission of this virus really is through the particles leaving our mouths and nose as we cough, sneeze, yes, but also as we speak, also as we sing, also as we play instruments. These are ways that the breath in our lungs flies out and into the room. And that's how so many cases of COVID are being spread in our communities. Masks are a really critical way of keeping what I'm breathing out, sneezing out, coughing out, from reaching all of you and vice versa. So it's my role as a good citizen to wear that mask and avoid you from becoming infected. Because the other thing that we've learned through this epidemic is that a significant number of us may have COVID19 and not have symptoms. And thus inadvertently we could be spreading. And that's why, even if you feel well, we do recommend you wear the masks. I would also note that all the good hygiene practices that we've talked about before, we need to continue. Stay at home if you're sick. Even if it's not COVID related illness, COVID has shown up in symptoms like an upset stomach. Or as we've seen in younger children, sometimes what looks like an inflammatory syndrome where we have challenges with other body part, other organs in the body. It's really hard to really say something is definitively or not COVID. The safest thing you can do is stay home, call your provider, and get advice from them on what kind of measures to take. Certainly, wash your hands and maintain distance. Again, if you don't need to go out, don't. If you don't need to receive close to people that you don't know, don't. And when you're going to one of these places that you want to engage in in public, if you see nobody's wearing their masks, if you see that there's too many people that are not adhering to the guidance that the Office of Public Health that the state fire marshal has provided, do your job as well as a consumer in not patronizing that area. Don't put your life at risk for something like a bowling game. You need to look and see, does this look safe. And that's how we're going to make sure that we're all doing what we can to reduce the spread. Most importantly, we all want to make sure that we're doing what we can to protect the most vulnerable amongst us. And so I just want us to be conscious and we'll continue to provide more guidance on not only taking measures to reduce our risk we ourselves as individuals, but thinking about the people around us, the people we interact with, the people that we live with, and not putting ourselves at risk if we could transmit COVID to them. And for employers, to think about who do I put on the front lines dealing with customers, making sure that we're not putting high risk populations on the front lines and at risk. Making sure we're also asking people who themselves are not high risk on the front lines, do they themselves have people who are at high risk in their households and are there other positions in my business that I could put them in that would reduce their risk of transmitting something that they get at work to their family members and result in a poor outcome. So there's a part of this that all of us can do, and I appreciate the continued support of the public, who by and large are wearing mask and doing all of these measures. And as we move into Phase II, we need to row double those efforts and continue to work to reduce the spread of COVID19. So thank you. And so with that I'm happy to take any questions. Sam?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible).DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: Those are individuals who are getting resource coordination. So of the people that you reach out to, most people are able to stay at home through their own means. They have family members opener others who can support them. 219 is the number that needed other resources, whether it's housing support, food support, there's other social supports that are really critical to being able to be successfully? or successfully staying at home for isolation and quarantine.AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: I don't off the top of my head. I can tell you that we do have challenges with people not answering the phone, even though it says LDH. I can tell you that when we do reach people, many people don't always remember the numbers of people or the names of people that we're trying to reach. And so one of the things we talked about before we started contact tracing and we continue to do is try to gather as much data, not only from within the state, but from other states about what's successful, how can we improve the impact of contact tracing. Because that is really a critical weapon against COVID19. And so we are continually trying to learn from it to make it more effective. Other questions?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible).DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: So in general when we think about congregate settings, there's sort of two risks that we worry about. One is the risk of transmission within that setting. We know that there's a significant amount of asymptomatic spread from COVID19. Studies from the new England journal and others have shown very high levels of people who have no symptoms that are later found to have had COVID or have active COVID. That presents a real risk in a setting where we're going to be in very close contact, but we're not necessarily able to keep ourselves separate. So in that way, an assisted living facility is somewhat similar to a nursing home. Nursing homes present another specifically unique risk category for bad outcomes for the people who actually live there because either they're more likely to be 65 or older, or they're more likely to have one or more of those underlying condition that put them at a higher risk for a severe case of COVID and potentially death. And we've had a significant number of our deaths in the state associated with those nursing homes. So we're trying to certainly address both of those, and we do make a distinction between nursing homes and assisted living and other adult congregate settings where we report the data, because it's not fair to paint everything with the same brush?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible).DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: So one of the thing we have to think about is what's going on in a settling and what makes a certain one high risk or not. And it really comes down to how is COVID spread. So when we think about any of these settings, it's spread through the air, by things that are coming out of our mouths and noses as we sneeze, cough, and breathe. So generally walking through a museum where you're not touching anything, you're reading tableaux, and you can be spaced in an orderly fashion, we think that presents a lower risk than in a setting where there's a lot of congregating around, you know, certain objects, or in this case where you're specifically touching or playing with communal items that are really hard to keep clean. And that's been the cause of a lot of discussion as we think about moving children's museums back into Phase II, thinking about those exhibits. So it's not enough to say that they're just, again, open for normal business. They're going to have to look at their own exhibits, present ideas to us on how they're going to limit the risk of spread because people are touching objects and then inadvertently touching their faces. I think nobody wants their facility to be the cause of a spread of COVID19, and so what we're trying to do both with the fire marshal regulations and with OPH recommendations is help people to need the best practices to reduce the spread. Please?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible).DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: So it remains to be seen. I think there's really a general agreement that that group really presents the highest risk for COVID spread, and so even if you look at the White House guidance, they clearly say no visitation in hospital and nursing home settings in Phase II. What we don't know is what next month is going to look like, several months down the road. As we said before, we know there's work on a vaccine that's probably a year away. What we also have seen though is that in a pretty short amount of time, a medication could come on board that suddenly changes the way we manage the disease. Remdesivir is not a silver bullet. It's not enough to say if somebody gets the disease, we can cure them. We're not at that point like we are for, say, Hepatitis C. But we don't know what later in the summer, what early fall will bring. Not only that, also just the ability to have more and more personal protective equipment is another area that we don't know. So you could menacing a future in which we had adequate ability to protect individuals in those nursing homes and to have very closely monitored, closely coordinated visitation where people are wearing high grade personal protective equipment because we have to balance the risk of COVID spread with the risk of loneliness. And in an older age group, the risk of loneliness can be deadly. But there's a lot of factors that change over time. So it's hard for me to predict when we would allow? when it's okay to say it's safe under certain conditions to reallow visitation, but I can tell you those are active conversations that we have with those communities, with the healthcare settings, all the time.AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible).DR. ALEX BILLEAUX: So, again, this is an evolving epidemic. We learn more and moreover time. Even since the White House guidance first came out, we've seen settings like bars in the UK, and especially in South Korea, actually be big driving forces of outbreaks of COVID19. And so in those settings, they've actually shutdown having bars opened up. So they had opened them up, and then they had to go back later and say, this caused too many outbreaks. We have to shut these facilities down. We'd rather open in a slow, steady, straight manner rather than having to pull back restrictions. And so as we were looking at the White House's guidance that says bars should open up, and at more recent data that clearly shows bars are very high risk for spread of COVID19, how do we move forward and try to engage as much business as possible while reducing the risk as much as possible. And, again, that's not to say that bars are going to be safe. People are going to be very careful and take these precautions on board. It's really in their, in an individual's hands, how high risk or how unsafe any facility is that they go to. But for bars, the restriction is essentially that the patrons will have to be seated at tables at 25?percent capacity. That both reflect the fact that overall capacity in a bar is regulated differently than in, say, a restaurant. But it also means that you're essentially turning the interior space of that bar into similar to what restaurants were doing as far as having to be spaced, having to be seated. We hope that that will reduce the risk of what we've seen in these other settings where bars present a very high risk of transmission for ERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: That's a lot of information, and you did a great job, Dr.?Billeaux. I want to thank you. So while Phase II does, under the White House guidelines, does say that bars should be open, it also says at reduced capacity, especially as it relates to standing room. And so that's why these additional restrictions on bars. Obviously those bars are LDH food permits, they will be treated just like restaurants. And that continues in Phase II as well. A while ago you asked about nursing homes being closed. I'm assuming you meant closed to visitation, and he answered that question. And obviously we want to reconnect family members, loved ones, with folks in nursing homes as soon as it is safe to do so. And when that happens, it will probably be subject to additional measures to make sure that that's safe. And we don't know exactly what that's going to look like yet, but we do know that under the guidelines that were issued by the White House, that is not a Phase II activity. With respect to children's museums, they are not closed in Phase II, but they will be allowed to open but with certain changes in the way that they operate so that they are going to close down periodically to make sure that they are cleaning and sanitizing. And there may be certain tactile exhibits that they're going to have to close in order to be open. And, in fact, there will be a call with the children's museums in about 30minute or 45minute, or something like that, to really go through all of that. So obviously ongoing data collection and analysis is going to continue to be a part of our COVID19 response going forward. You've just heard the key differences between Phase I and Phase II. You know, so? and in this phase, day spas, tattoo shops, and just a few will be able to operate. And by the way that will be under certain restrictions. And as it relates to those, and really every sector of our economy, we have received tremendously valuable feedback from the task forces operating within the resiliency commission that we created. And everywhere that we've been able to, we've been able to incorporate their recommendations into what we're doing as we move forward with this phased reopening approach. This proclamation will be in place for 21?days. So it will be? it will expire on June the 26th, and we will go through another analysis to see about the gating criteria and what comes next based on what we learned, both as it relate to the data and what we learned about the virus itself over the intervening time period. While we are moving into Phase II and lifting restrictions, I do want to emphasize that, as Dr.?Billeaux mentioned, there's still risk involved. There's no way for me to stand up here and say that if everything operates just as we prescribed it, that renders it completely safe. And by the way there's nobody in the world that can do that. So everybody needs to take personal responsibility. Make sure you're doing what we're asking you to do. You probably shouldn't patronize businesses and establishments that don't engage in the types of risk mitigation that we've talked about here today. In deciding whether or not to do an activity, it's helpful to have a way to think through how much risk that you would be taking, that you're comfortable with, and that depend upon your individual circumstances as to whether you're more vulnerable because of age or chronic underlying health condition, or because you may live with someone who is. What we know is as more businesses open, more customers go back in, more employees return, as people make more contact with one another, it is more important than ever that individuals wear masks when they are in public and not dealing only with people from their immediate household and they're unable to stay more than 6 feet away from one another. And as Dr.?Billeaux mentioned, the more we learn about this particular disease, we know that the greatest risk of transmission is of an aerosol nature. And so the masks really do tamp down on that. I would encourage you to, again, patronize businesses that are engaging in the basic safety measures. And I encourage every business out there to make sure that they're doing what we're asking of them. I can tell you that in addition to requirements businesses must follow to reopen in Phase II, the department of health has worked with the fire marshal's office to include in the open safety guidance for Phase II good business practices that businesses can consider to help keep their employees and their customers safe and to make their customers feel safe so that they will return in the orders that they need in order to be successful. These include reservation symptoms, symptom checking of customers, strongly encouraging masks among customers and so forth. LDH in fact has created a thank you for wearing a mask poster that businesses can download from the LDH coronavirus webpage so they can print and hang those in their store fronts to show that they care about their employees and their customers. More specific guidance will be provided by the fire marshal's office via opensafely.. And I want to thank everyone who's been taking the necessary precautions. Because without doing that, this next step wouldn't be possible, and we would not have made all the progress that we've made over the last number of weeks and months. And so I would encourage everyone in Louisiana to keep up the good work and to remember we all have a role to play. And that continues to be the case going forward. Before I take your questions, I do want to take a moment to speak about the civil unrest that we're seeing unfold across the country. Here in Louisiana, we've had a number of protests and demonstrations. They've been almost entirely peaceful and nonviolent. Our citizens are appropriately expressing their concerns and exercising their first amendment rights. I want to thank the faith leaders, community leaders, political leaders across the state who have been in good communication with our office but with the public at large and for the role that they're playing in helping our citizens. And I want to thank everyone for keeping their focus on the issues of concern. Obviously what we saw captured on the video and the unnecessary death of George Floyd, the behavior of that Minnesota police officer was egregious. It was very far below what's appropriate and acceptable. I don't think any reputable member of society or of law enforcement would disagree with that assessment or find that his actions were acceptable. You know, not long ago, it was less than four years ago, Louisiana experienced similar protests. I can tell you that Louisiana citizens then handled themselves very appropriately in the way that they demonstrated, and I want to thank them and tell them we're here to work with them going forward to try to make sure that everyone can exercise their first amendment rights and give voice to their concerns, which are obviously sincere, about that we protect one another when we do that. And we don't engage in violence and property damage and those sorts of things. We're going to continue to work with local officials, federal officials, and all the state agencies to monitor the situation so that we can be aware of, and hopefully stay in front of, developments. And, you know, since 2016, we've made some strides here in Louisiana. We've worked hard. We've reformed the criminal justice system. We've done it in a bipartisan way. We've also worked to improve the relationship between the community and law enforcement. Law enforcement has changed the way it trains officers and so forth. Still, we know that it's not perfect. We have more work to do, and we're committed to making sure we continue that work. So I do ask for everyone's continued prayers for our state, for our nation, and so that we would focus on the changes that we need to bring in our society and get those done. So, with that, I will take some questions for a little bit. And that was a long briefing, y'all. That was about 50?minutes. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, on the George Floyd case, the President addressed the governors. I assume you were on that call. And he said the Governor's actions have been weak. They need a more firm crack down on protests and those committing, if not violence, committing damage to property and things like that. Do you believe that the governors overall have been weak? Do you agree with the President's impressions?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Look, I'm not going to engage in that. I was on the call. I think the President was directing himself to certain states where there were obviously many more problems than we have experienced here in Louisiana. I've got all that I can say grace over here with a public health emergency, a legislative session ending today, another one starting tonight. We have got an economy that is not performing because of the public health emergency, and we have our own issues related to these protests. And so I'm just not going to engage in that at all, Greg?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah, and I suspect? and your question could potentially be better addressed it a law enforcement officer. I don't know that you have to change the standards, because what that officer did is not in any training that he ever received. That was inappropriate. It wasn't standard police work. It was a grows departure from what is normal and so forth. And it was bad enough with respect to that officer. It's made worse by the fact that you had two or three other officers standing by who didn't intervene and correct the situation on the spot before it ever got to the point of Mr.?Floyd's death. And so I don't know that new standards have to be developed. We have to make sure that we're training our officers according to the standards that we have and that we're not employing officers who shouldn't be police officers?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Sure. And I think you should revisit the way that we train on the standards that we have. And maybe I misunderstood your question. What that officer did is not appropriate police work anywhere. And so that's not a standard that that officer was engaged in. But we need to train them on what the appropriate standards are, train other officers to intervene if they see something like that before it gets to the level of someone's death or serious bodily injury, and then probably we need to do a better job at the outset of hiring officers who ought to be police officers, and then monitoring that over time, to make sure that someone who demonstrates that they probably shouldn't remain employed, that they don't get that opportunity to remain employed. Leo?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Look, we;we've got a proclamation we'll issue Thursday. It's going to expire three weeks from Friday. What is that, on the 26th of June? And we will determine between now and then whether we meet the gating criteria again for an easing of restrictions. And I don't know how to be more precise than that on June the 1st. I can only tell you that if the people of Louisiana will continue to do what they have done and follow these protocols that we've put in place, then I feel really good about our opportunity to move forward. And we know that in August schools need to resume. Colleges need to have student on their campuses and all of those sort of things. And we're not there yet, either in terms of the calendar or in terms of knowing what the circumstances are. But as we get closer, we will know more, and I expect that we will continue to get additional guidance from the CDC and other areas that we can take into consideration as we formulate our plans and make our decision. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, first of all, sleep away camps are not going to be allowed. There's just too much physical contact for too long of periods of time and so forth. Summer camps, actually, in Phase I were allowed. If you will recall, we put some restrictions on that with one adult and no more than nine children, asking that they not do assemblies of all the kids present and that they, whether it's for enrichment activities or for recreation or even for feeding. That's going to change because I think now we're going to be one adult per 25? 24. So it would be 25 in the group, but one adult for 24 students. But, again, they were open in Phase I. We're just going to increase the number of individuals. With respect to the letter that I got? obviously I got, I think, the letter delivered to me over the weekend. I was happy to read it. And like the people who sent the letter, I too want to make sure we can reengage the economy as much as possible, but as safely as possible. There are reasons why businesses of different types are treated differently, and that's because of the risk involved with respect to the public health emergency. And the decisions that we made all along the way have been consistent with the White House phased reopening guidelines that were vetted by the CDC and which themselves treat different businesses and different activities differently. And so that's why we did that. That's why we continue to do it. And, you know, it didn't just happen in those guidelines. The U.S. department of homeland security, working through the cybersecurity and information security agency, has actually promulgated three? at least three; it may be more? essential guidance on what is essential infrastructure related to businesses. And so we have followed that as well. And so it wasn't just in the guidelines. It was also in the department of homeland security information that they have now put out three times. So we're doing what we can to strike the right balance between reengaging as much of our economy as we can, reopening business, getting more employees back, getting more customers in, all of those sorts of things, with the demands that we have based on the public health emergency. And we're doing it in a manner that is fully consistent with the CDC vetted White House reopening guidelines. And I would remind the folks who sent the letter, and everyone else, that at the outset of this public health emergency, unlike many, many other states? in fact, every state that had the kind of cases that we had on a per capita basis? and, in fact, no other state had the case growth that we had here at one time, but we left all manufacturing open; we left all construction open; nonessential retail wasn't closed here. There were many other states that still haven't come close to our per capita cases that when they reopened retail, nonessential retail, they did it for curb side pickup. Well, we never closed the stores here. So I would just encourage the folks who wrote the letter to take those things into consideration, and we're going to continue to work with them and others as we move our state forward. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, what would you say to the people who? (inaudible) masks are recommended and that goes back to the original science (inaudible) and now CDC, you, and Dr.?Billeaux, all says masks are? it's confusing. People are hearing different sources with different science. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. And quite frankly, I'll accept as true what you just said. I didn't know that the WHO may not be advising individuals to wear masks. I will tell you that the guidance here in this country changed on that a long time ago. The CDC initially advised against it, but as they learned more about the virus and the means of transmission, they changed that to advise that we wear masks or face coverings regardless of whether or not we were symptomatic, by the way, and that's something that I can tell you the Office of Public Health here in Louisiana agrees with. And as we have learned more about how this is spread, and the fact that the biggest risk of contracting the disease comes from exposure to airborne particles, the aerosol that happens when people speak and cough and sneeze and so forth, it just makes it pretty clear to me that wearing a mask is essential if we're going to keep a lid on the cases as we bring more and more people into contact with one another and reopen businesses and get places of worship functioning at a higher percentage of occupancy and all of those things. And so I guess there's always going to be some degree of confusion as guidance changes over time, but the guidance on the masks has been clear for many weeks now. It's consistent here in the United States of America, and everything we're learning only makes it more important, not less, going forward. Yes, ma'am?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, you know, I know that there was meetings that continued to happen. I'm not aware of an agreement on Senator Talbot's bill before I came in here. There are discussions taking place. Obviously the legislature is going to go into a special session tonight because it didn't take up the money bills and many of the essential things that we need as a state to move forward. And I will have more comments about what the legislature did when it concludes its work and we know the bills that passed and have an opportunity to review them. I will tell you, it has been a very unique session in the sense that it was interrupted by such a long recess and then the lack of access that the public has had and so forth over the last several weeks. And we're going to take a good look at all of the different bills that get sent up to me by the legislature, and we look forward to having a productive special session. Because, as you know, Melinda, we have to have a budget come July?1st. We can't run a deficit. And so we have to have a budget in place when the new fiscal year starts. That's critically important. And so we're going to be working with the legislature to make sure that those essential bills that they didn't get to in this regular session are the things that they focus on and get those done in the special session. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, it looks like the legislature is going to (inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, if you will recall, when we submitted the? both the supplemental bill to the legislature and the appropriations bill to the legislature, it included all the CARES Act money. So there was never a time where I or commissioner Darden didn't anticipate and try to have all of that money appropriated. We think that that's the best way to do it. And so I'm not sure where that confusion ever came up. I don't have that bill yet. I haven't been able to read it. I don't believe that it's finally passed, and I don't ever sit up here and tell you what I'm going to do or not do before I have an opportunity to read a bill. And so it will depend on what the conference committee does, what that final product looks like. One more question. And, Leo, you get it?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, I don't know that? I want to make sure I understand your question? I don't know that the offer to settle has been tabled. I think that still remains pending, and obviously it is contingent upon some other things happening. The bill that was introduced that was, I believe, an effort to derail that is what got tabled. So we have to see how that plays outgoing forward. As you know, these lawsuits started in 2013 by parishes who were filing suit under express statutory authority given them in the coastal program. And the state hasn't filed any such lawsuits. So I believe that the best thing that the happen is for the court to determine whether or not there's liability and damages, and if so, what that looks like, and go forward. It would be my hope that? and by the way I don't? I've never heard anybody say anything other than if damages are recovered, the damages ought to be spent on the coast where the damages occurred in order to do as many coastal restoration protection projects as possible. And I know that that was what animated some of the concern that we heard about in this session. I think that that's the way this is going to play out. But going forward, you know, we have cases that have been filed, some as long as seven years ago, and I think it's time that we find out whether the courts believe that there's liability and damages, and if so, how much that is. But any recovery needs to be spent on the coast. So we will be back with you all when, Christina? Wednesday at 2:30. Some of the questions you asked today will probably be more appropriate Wednesday at 2:30. But thank you so much. ................
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