COVID-19 06032020



GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for coming out. We do have a lot on our plate today as we manage the beginning of the special session, the public health emergency, a tropical storm, and some protests and demonstrations that thank goodness thus far have been almost exclusively lawful and peaceful and nonviolent and so forth. I have with me today Dr.?Alex Billeaux, as normal, Colonel Wascom was supposed to be here from GOHSEP in case there were questions about Tropical Storm Cristobal and so forth. He may or may not make it up. He's testifying downstairs in the senate finance committee. And then I have Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser who will make some comments at the end of my briefing. Since our last briefing, the tropical disturbance at the time I guess it was that we were watching has actually developed into Tropical Storm Cristobal. You see it there. And it looks like it has its sights set on Louisiana. And all of the modeling seems to agree, as of right now anyway. This morning, I received a briefing from the national weather service. Obviously, it is still too early to know exactly where that storm is going to go and exactly when it will arrive, and when it arrives, what it will be packing. But what we anticipate is that it's going to be a very severe weather event for Louisiana. And this will be compounded by the fact that between now and then, unrelated to Cristobal, we're going to have very substantial rainfall from afternoon thunderstorms. So the ground will be saturated before it arrives. We're looking at sometime on Sunday or Monday for the arrival of the tropical storm. Most models have it centered on the central coast line of Louisiana, somewhere in the Atchafalaya river, Vermilion Bay area. And what that leaves is southeast Louisiana, including Baton Rouge and New Orleans, on the east side of the storm, which typically receives the heaviest rain. And of course it could shift east or west, making some changes in that. I don't want anybody to focus too much on the specific track, but rather the cone, because that cone clearly shows you that everything in Louisiana will likely be impacted. Obviously the further south, the more the impact that you can expect. The most reasonable worst case scenario that we've been told by the national weather service is to expect 10 to 15?inches of rain on the east side of the storm. That's going to fall over a 48hour period. That's a lot of rain. That's especially a lot of rain if it's falling on ground that's already saturated from several days worth of tropical storms. Further west could be 8 to 10?inches of rain, and literally it just sort of depends on exactly where the center of the storm is, but 8 to 10?inches could be what you see in Baton Rouge, or it may actually be further west, and so forth. We should know more, obviously, before the storm makes landfall. I do want everybody to notice that the national weather service has already issued flash flood warnings through Tuesday of next week in some areas of Louisiana. Part of the good news is river levels are much lower than they were last year when we had the hurricane, and so there's more capacity for rainfall to be taken into those rivers before you have substantial flooding activity. And certainly we don't have any threat to levee overtopping or anything like that along the Mississippi River. One of the challenges we're going to face will be with wind. Typically, you don't think of tropical storms producing enough wind to have heavy damage, but when you have saturated ground, it doesn't take as much wind in order to cause real problems with trees and utility poles and things like that. So the wind that we expect could be 60?miles an hour or so, and obviously this could get refined as we move forward. Obviously, storm surge along the coast is one of those things that we're looking at very hard and preparing for. We are tracking 678 gates in the cole zone. 157 of those are currently closed. Every gate in the flood control structures in the state of Louisiana across the cole zone have been exercised with respect to their operation criteria as part of our preparation for hurricane season. Everyone should be following the news and the weather. Updates from their local officials. Now is the time to prepare. Put yourself and your family in the best possible position to ride out the first 72?hours of this storm and make sure that you get a game plan. You can go to . It is obviously not too late to do that. It's really important that you do. And it's also important that you take notice of the differences between preparing for a natural disaster when we have the public health emergency for COVID19 because there are some differences. And obviously there are a lot of similarities too. So make sure that you're stocked with essential supplies like water, batteries, cell phone chargers, necessary prescriptions, masks or other facial coverings, hand sanitizer. The mitigation measures that we have in place remain critically important and should be taken into account as you make your hurricane preparations. And we transitioned to Phase II on Friday, just ahead of Cristobal's arrival. Have a plan if you're instructed to evacuate. If you have pets, have a plan for sheltering them as well. And make sure you're staying informed through the weather and emergency alerts, local media, paying attention to the national weather service, local forecasts, but also local elected officials as well as the offices of emergency preparedness around the state of Louisiana. Part of getting a game plan is preregistering for disaster SNAP. I am not announcing that we have this disaster SNAP available, but you can preregister. And if we have a disaster and DSNAP is authorized by the federal government, if you're preregistered, it's that much faster for you to receive those benefits. If you have already preregistered for DSNAP, you're going to need to register again because we have a new vendor. Now, if you're receiving SNAP, you don't need to do this. But if you are not receiving SNAP and you want to preregister for DSNAP, you need to do that, even if you've already preregistered before. And it may not be a vendor that changed. It may be be new technology that has been upgraded that's causing that. You can register for DSNAP or get more information as DCFS.DSNAP. Now let's transition to today's COVID19 briefing. We are reporting today 387 new cases, for a total of 41,133 since the inception of the public health emergency. There are 35 new reported deaths today, which bring that total to 2,759, sadly. We have 617 COVID19 patients who are hospitalized across the state of Louisiana. That the the lowest number since about March the 22nd. 86 of these patients are on ventilators. So those numbers are certainly trending in the right direction. In the aggregate, we have tested 402,087 individuals for COVID19. 4.3 percent of the tests from today were positive, and if you look at all tests that have been administered, we're at 10.2?percent. We've told you before that you really want to get below 10?percent. We're certainly tracking in that direction. Early on, our average positivity rate was 30 to 40?percent. It hasn't been above 10?percent in about three weeks, and we've been averaging closer to 5?percent lately. And so we're getting that number down where we would like for it to be. As we prepare to move into Phase II on Friday, please anticipate the impact of the tropical storm and continue to deal with the COVID19 pandemic. And I know that with all of this coming at once, with other things that are happening as well, there may be a tendency to feel overwhelmed. That is understandable. Please know that there is help, and that there is hope. ConquerCOVID19.LA is a comprehensive website with resources and tips to help anyone stay calm and reduce stress. This is for children and families, first responders, healthcare professionals, business leaders. You can obviously also call the COVID hot line to speak with trained and compassionate counselors at 18663107977. So I'm going to yield the podium now to the Lieutenant Governor. He's got some prepared remarks. I'm going to ask that if you have questions for the Lieutenant Governor, that you ask them while he's at the podium, and then I will come back when he completes his portion and take questions from you as well. And obviously Dr.?Billeaux is here to take questions related to testing and cases and so forth. Billy.LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR BILLY NUNGESSER: Thank you, governor, and, governor, I want to thank you and your team and all the reliance committee and task force members for their efforts in getting to us Phase II where we finally can welcome visitors back to Louisiana. And most importantly, Louisianians, for following the rules and helping us see the numbers continue to decline. This Friday, we will open all of our welcome centers to visitors coming back to Louisiana. We will limit the lobbies to ten people at a time. We've got a plan to continue to clean those facilities many times a day. All of our staff will be taking all the measures, wearing masks. We will also be giving out Louisiana feed your soul masks to all visitors and ask them too to follow the rules here in Louisiana so that we can continue to see those numbers decline. I want to thank Sean Wilson with DOTD who has been putting mobile signs at the state line welcoming our visitors back and letting them know the welcome centers are back open. We also will be extending our promotion at the state parks that if you book three night, the fourth night is free, to our guests coming in from outside Louisiana with the code welcome back to get that fourth night free. And we're excited about that. Louisianians, over the last several weeks, safely really supported the museums and the state parks as we had asked them to do. The last two weekends, we saw over 20,000 visitors to our state parks. That hasn't happened since 2008. Incredible numbers, and everyone did it in a safe manner. So we're really proud of that. As we continue to monitor travel U.S.A., the numbers are pretty consistent that 82?percent of travelers are going to stay close to home. We're in a drive market. So we're going to ask Louisianians to continue to support staycation. Take a Louisiana road trip. You won't be disappointed as we venture out and market Louisiana across the state lines as well. We have also rolled out the Louisiana Lagniappe plan where we're offering conventions and conferences that are looking to relocate next year or later this year an opportunity to look at Louisiana, and we'll give them Louisiana seafood prepared by a Louisiana chef. And we'll also give them a Louisiana banner musician. We just landed a national trucking conference to Lake Charles, and we were able to change their mind? they were going to Miami. So all of our tourism folks around the state are leaning forward to fill our calendar next year, and we're real excited about that. So I want to thank you again, governor, your team. We're really excited about Phase II, but we ask everyone to do it in a safe manner so we can quickly move to phase 3. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? Yes, ma'am?AUDIENCE MEMBER: In terms of the conventions and conferences, are you? what kind of requirements are on those conventions if they're coming to the state? When you're offering the seafood and the musician and all of that to try and entice people here, are you also adding that they're going to have a bunch of restrictions? LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR BILLY NUNGESSER: Well, most of them are the end of this year, early next year. We haven't had any large groups. We've had some groups of 10 and 20 that have rescheduled to come end of this summer, but we haven't had any large groups that really? most of the conventions and groups are polling their members to see if they feel? one, if they feel safe traveling, and two, can they get the flights to where they want to go. So most of them? the trucking convention is next year. All the other events, a lot of sporting events that we're talking to, for many of the ball fields around the state, are the end of this year and early next year. And hopefully, we pray, that we will be through the three phases and back operating pretty much to what we'll call the new normal. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Grand Isle. Grand Isle had, I think, over 2000 people. Incredible turn out down on the island.AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR BILLY NUNGESSER: Yeah. Well, we had a great week. I'll tell you, the Louisiana people really responded to that special and booked every cabin and campsite that we had available?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible) I know y'all were losing revenue because obviously everything was shutdown. How does that (inaudible). LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR BILLY NUNGESSER: It's absolutely going to help. We've booked about a 3.$2?million loss up to this point, but those revenues will absolutely help in going forward with what the trends look like in travel? RV sales are up 150?percent. Individual bike sales are up over one hundred percent. People are going to? ATV? everybody's looking to do travel. So we're going to continue to push people to travel to the state parks, and hopefully they'll get out in those local communities and shop and eat in the local restaurants. So we see that as a trend for the next year, so we're going to take advantage of it. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: You mentioned that trucking convention in Lake Charles. Any other big ones, maybe in the Capital City, that have already planned to come back or (inaudible). LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR BILLY NUNGESSER: Yeah, Paula Regal's working on about nine right now. They don't want us giving out the names in case it doesn't happen or someone don't get back and try to redirect that. But the way the trucking one? they polled their members and said, hey, we got an offer to change the convention to Louisiana. We get seafood, a jazz band, and what do you think. And 80?percent of the people said let's go to Louisiana. So it's kind of a great enticement. Nobody can offer the great Louisiana seafood, music. So we're going to continue that, and hopefully later this year we'll have the calendar filled for Louisiana and we'll bounce back a lot quicker than other states. Thank y'all so much. Thank you, ERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Thank you. Lieutenant Governor, I appreciate your work. And I'll tell you, he's spent a lot of time at GOHSEP over the last several months, and just about all of our White House coronavirus task force calls, he's been there. We actually did have another call today, just before I came over to the capital, about an hour ago. And I can tell you that the people in Washington have taken notice of the folks in Louisiana, the progress that we've made on this public health emergency. And to tie it together with respect to Louisiana seafood and our parks, I wasn't one of those people that was able to get to Grand Isle, but I was a beneficiary, because I had a really good friend who went to Grand Isle this past weekend. And he did some good on yellow fin tuna and brought me some, and I've been eating it every day since then. And it's been absolutely delicious. So I happen what you're talking about when you say people want to come to Louisiana in order to enjoy our seafood. Okay. So we'll take a few questions from you all. Remember, I have Dr.?Billeaux here if you've got questions about certain things related to testing. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, have you made any decisions about whether you're going to sign a veto (inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: No. And we're still looking at the bills. I will have my first meeting with my staff later this afternoon to start the bill review. We have some time. We're looking at them. I'm not prepared to guess one way or another, and I certainly haven't made a decision. It's apparent that the bill that Senator Talbot authored managed to make absolutely nobody happy, which is sometimes the sign of a really good compromise, but I don't think that's what the issue is here. But we're going to take a good look at it, and we'll let you know as soon as we can. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, you mentioned at the beginning of the press conference all of the things going on right now? the protests, the demonstrations, the pandemic, the hurricane in the gulf. Can Louisianians handle more trauma?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. Well, we can because we're a tough and resilient people. There's not a hurricane in the gulf, and there's not a forecast that shows that it could be a hurricane when it makes landfall, although I guess you can never rule out that a tropical storm could just inch over the strength necessary to become a Category?1 hurricane. But that's not what we're expecting right now. But I will tell you, I had an opportunity yesterday to speak to well over 1,000 pastors from all over Louisiana of every denomination, and one of the things I asked them yesterday was to make sure that they were praying for our state and for our people because these are tough times. You know, we had a flourishing economy, one that was one of the fastest growing in the country and producing revenue of about 10?percent ahead of the forecast, and then this public health emergency hit and all of a sudden the economy's in trouble. People are not working. People who own businesses have seen their businesses decline and so forth. On top of all that, you've got the public health side of this where we've had, as you saw from the slide, we've had almost 3 thousand people now die and 41,000 test positive. On top of that, there's a lot more COVID out there than that, because somewhere between 25 and 40?percent of all cases are asymptomatic and largely untested. And then, you know, you just start adding all that together, and then you get to the very unfortunate, unnecessary, and illegal killing of Mr.?George Floyd and the protests that have happened. But I do want to pause here and thank the people of Louisiana, because almost without exception, every single person who's shown up to protest and to demonstrate have done so in a way that is an appropriate expression of their concerns about this, and they're doing it in a way that's exercising the first amendment rights in a way that's peaceful and nonviolent. And I happen to think that, as a result, their voices are actually being heard better. And so I appreciate that. But you do have that going on, and now you've got Tropical Storm Cristobal that is approaching Louisiana and probably will make landfall Sunday and visit a lot of rain on us. But the people of Louisiana, and the short answer to your question, are very tough and resilient people. So it's not that I don't worry about them. I do. But I just know. And I'm always amazed at how good and decent and hard working and faithful our people are. So really we're going to be fine, but we are taking nothing for granted. We're working extremely hard to be prepared. We're working with every single region and parish in the state. We have FEMA embedded with us. We knew that as we went into hurricane season we were doing so under a public health emergency, so we already have contingencies in place as to how you evacuate if you need to, how you do search and rescue if you need to, how do you shelter, how do you distribute commodities, all of these sorts of things. And I can't tell you it's all going to be absolutely perfect. I can only tell you our folks, led by Colonel Wascom at GOHSEP, are going to be working extremely hard. I do invite people to pray, however, if I haven't done that yet, that we can pray for our people and for our state in times like this. I think prayer is awesome. Leo?AUDIENCE MEMBER: GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, there's always a plan to call for one because we have that contingency. We know how to do it, and we know what areas, depending upon what the threat is in terms of certain rivers or storm surges. You have inundation maps. All of this will be refined as we move forward. Right now, I'm not announcing an evacuation. And I will tell you, the national weather service told us earlier today, just before I came over, that Saturday night, they believe is the earliest that it could possibly hit. It's more likely Sunday. And then? but when it hits, we know that there's going to be? and this is assuming that we don't have some weather system develop that sort of holds it in place. Because when you get hit by a storm, you just want it to keep moving. But we will get at least 48?hours of very, very heavy rain out of it, possibly more, if it slows down and stalls and just keeps dumping rain on the state of Louisiana. So everyone should be cognizant of this. Most people in Louisiana don't have to remember too far back. It was the spring and then August of 2016 when we had just tremendous flooding across a huge part of our state. So we're encouraging everybody to take this very serious and be as ready as they can be for it?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. But what we know is the rivers? the Atchafalaya river itself and the Missouri river? are a few feet lower than what they were? and I say lower. I think it may be 2? lower than what it was last year when the hurricane hit. And so we know that there's more capacity for rainfall. Yes, ma'am?AUDIENCE MEMBER: In terms of sheltering, if that's needed, what sort of plans have y'all developed for sheltering in light of COVID? Obviously it seems like a Mega shelter might not be the best situation. GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, first of all, we do have plans that involve Mega shelters as an option, and we have prepositioned there some tents within the shelters so that people can have an area in the shelter that is sort of self contained, if that's necessary. And we've prepositioned those at our large shelters around the state. Your point is well taken, and it's not the optimal time to do congregate shelters, because people may come into the shelter with COVID19. And so many weeks ago, GOHSEP, led by Colonel Wascom, who just came in, started working through FEMA to get early approval for sheltering that we would typically put into these large congregate shelters, put more of those individuals and families in hotels and motel rooms which happen to be available right now. Because of the public health emergency, you don't have a lot of those? well, I should say you have a lot of vacancies and so forth. So we have that option. Another challenge we have is, quite frankly, the American red cross volunteers aren't going to be available to us as they normally are because many of those volunteers are in that vulnerable age category with respect to COVID19. And then the last real hurdle that we have is we typically have reciprocal agreements with other states to shelter some portion of our population if we? I'm not talking about all of this as it relates to this weekend, but we have a long hurricane season coming up? where if we have to evacuate a large segment of our population, other states will take the individuals in. Well, we're still working through that, because in a public health emergency, as you can imagine, just like we don't want to do congregate sheltering here, they don't want to do congregate sheltering of our people in their states either. And so we're having to work through all of that, and we're making good progress. And, again, as it relates to this weekend, we are not announcing any evacuation. We're not announcing any shelters. But if that becomes necessary, we certainly will. Jim, did you have anything you wanted to add to that? COLONEL JIM WASCOM: No, sir, I think you covered it. I was just remarking to Christina, you could be a great FEMA ERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. Thank you, but, no, thank you.AUDIENCE MEMBER: Governor, I think on Monday? about the protests, you mentioned you were working with the federal government as far as the preparations for these protests. Can you talk more about what agencies you were working with, what exactly the federal government is telling you in regards to these protests?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, I can't tell you exactly what they're telling me because the information that we get is? and that's primarily the assistance that we're talking about, is the sharing of information? and so we have federal partners in law enforcement who will share information with the state police, with local chiefs of police and share offices and that sort of thing if they have specific credible information that indicates that there could be a problem associated with a particular protest or demonstration, what to look for, and that sort of thing. Quite frankly, we haven't had very much of that in Louisiana. And so with the information we've been getting from our federal partners here in Louisiana has been very generic in nature, things that they're seeing in other states that we might want to be prepared for. But that's really the type of assistance that I was referring to?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you expect to mobilize the National Guard in response to protests here?GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: You know, I don't expect to. Obviously, that remains an option for me, as it is for other governors. What I expect is that we will continue to see peaceful, nonviolent demonstrations and protests where people properly exercise their first amendment rights. That's what we have seen in Louisiana up to today, and I don't expect that that's going to change. And I will tell you, our law enforcement is doing a really good job of working with the individuals who are organizing the protests and demonstrations, and the individuals who are showing up. And you see, I think, a lot more dialogue happening, and so forth. And it's not? it's not the really raw, contentious nature that you sometimes see. And I'm not saying there isn't some of that in Louisiana with respect to these demonstrations and protests, but we're seeing less of that, and a lot more dialogue and communication, which I actually think is helpful. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: Obviously a lot of things taking precedent. I kind of want to go back to (inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Okay?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible) huge part of the state's economy has taken a hit over the last several months. Is there any fear or precautions that it may be difficult to start persuading people to come back here (inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Well, first of all, I absolutely think we're going to get back to where we were before COVID. And I say that because Louisiana is so special, so unique in the United States of America, that this is where people want to be. And as soon as they feel safe coming, they're going to come back. And with the things that we're seeing out of the business community, the faith community, individuals, the local elected officials around the state of Louisiana, I just believe people are going to feel safe coming back. Don't know exactly when that's going to be. We are going to have a new normal for some period of time. But you all can remember in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and there were people saying, oh, New Orleans is never coming back; Louisiana has just been decimated, and there's no return from that. Our people are much more resilient than that, and our state is more special and more unique. And so I always believe we're going to come back, and I think it will happen sooner and bigger than other people think. But I also know that it's going to be conditioned upon several things that we're just not in control of. When is that vaccination available, and what does the virus do between now and then? And anybody who tells you they know, they're guessing. And I don't want to guess about when it's going to happen, but I will absolutely tell you that it's going to happen, and it's going to? and Louisiana will be back. Yes, sir?AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible) does the state have a plan to extend the deadlines (inaudible). GOVERNOR JON BEL EDWARDS: Yeah. Well, we are working on that. And as you will recall, we suspended evictions, but we didn't suspend? and you can't suspend? the obligation to pay rent. And I know the hardship many people have endured and that they've faced and they don't have the funds available to them that they would normally have. I do encourage all of these individuals to work with their landlords to try to work through that and come up with a plan to catch up and so forth. We are working right now in my office with the office of community development, the Louisiana housing corporation, the Division of Administration, and the governor's office to try to identify funding that we could make available for renters' assistant program. I think it's important that we do that. I don't have an announcement for you at this moment, but it is something that we are looking at. And as you know, from legislation that just recently moved through the regular session, the CARES Act money is largely spoken for. And so we're looking at other funding that we may have available, but we're also looking at measures that Congress is still considering, because I do believe that there's at least one more piece of legislation that will move through Congress that will make funding available to states and local governments.And we have to see how much and what the strings are and what the intended purpose for those funds are to see if we might be able to use them. But I can tell you we are actively working on this issue. It's not as easy for a state like Louisiana that was so adversely impacted by the public health emergency, or has been, as other states that were less impacted because the formula allocated money, you know, primarily based on population. And so you have some states out there that didn't have anywhere near our per capita cases, they didn't have our expenditures, and they haven't had the economic consequences that we've had, but yet they may have gotten as much or more funding. And so it's a little bit more challenging here in Louisiana, but we do understand the importance of such a program, and we're trying to find out whether we can stand one up. And we're going to obviously work with the legislature in that regard as well. So I want to thank you again for coming out. I'm going to ask you to do what you can to keep the citizenry informed between now and when Cristobal makes landfall so that everybody knows what to expect; they're not surprised; and that they have done their very best to prepare for the arrival of this tropical storm. We will be speaking to you all again on Friday at 2:30, and so we should have the? an updated forecast at that time and other information to share with you all on the day that we go to Phase II. And that was one of the things that the vice president remarked on today during the call, was that he pointed out the fact that Louisiana would be going to Phase II and how broadly that had been applied across the state of Louisiana in terms of the various types of businesses and entities who were impacted. And he asked me again yesterday in a phone call to express to the people of Louisiana his appreciation, and the President's appreciation, for the work that's been done here to flatten the curve and to really make a positive difference on the trajectory as it relates to COVID19 and hospitalizations because, as you know, a little over two months ago, we were headed in a very, very bad direction. So thank you all. I'll see you in two days. ................
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