Transcripts For CSPAN New Jersey Gov. Murphy Holds Coronavirus Briefing 20240713

Murphy followed by californias gavin newsom. Following that andrew cuomo of new york and John Bel Edwards of louisiana. Gov. Murphy now as we have done for the past week or so, lets go right to the numbers. Over the past when he four hours, we are reporting an additional 4372 positive cases. That is 4372. That brings the statewide total to 29,895, in total. 29,895. And sadly and with the heaviest of hearts, we have lost another 113 of our fellow new jerseyans to covid19 related couple occasions. To day, we have lost 436 members of our extraordinary, broad, loving, precious and diverse family. A couple of comments in particular and as usual, judy will give you more color on both the positive tests as well as the fatalities. But as it relates to the blessed iuls lost, if you add 113, believe to yesterdays total, you wont get 646. That is because as we discussed, in some cases, cause of death is still being adjudicated. Also want to raise again what we mentioned yesterday. This does not mean that 113 passed since we were last together yesterday at 2 00. Some of this is catching up in terms of cause of death, death certificates, etc. Judy can get into some of that. One of those we have lost was james brown, the principal him,y isthere he is, god bless with his family. He is the principle of Grover Cleveland middle school in caldwell. Posted indes being his memory but the members of the Community Tell just how deeply respected and loved he was. He leaves behind his wife, sh erry, his three children and an entire School Community who loved him dearly. James was only 48 years old. The executive Director Director of the new jersey Democratic State committees kids were in this school. God bless his soul. A guy i didnt know, but was known by i knew generally, i didnt know personally, but was known by millions, we also lost jazz legend bucky pizzerelli. A tremendously respected jazz guitarist, whos two sons have become tremendous musicians as well. Bucky, you can see him there, was 94 years old. We mourn his loss. We mourn with his family and his many friends. I know that there is nothing we can say to truly dull the pain that the brown family and every family who has lost a loved one to covid19 is feeling right now, but we can make them know that we are thinking about them through our actions. So to that end, im signing an executive order today directing that all flags across new jersey be lowered to half staff, Effective Immediately and indefinitely, to honor those we have lost and those who we will lose. And we will lose more, sadly, as a result of this pandemic. I dont know this for sure and i am not patting ourselves on the back, but i dont know that any other american state have done this. We have been struggling with how we can both speak about the jane browns by name and not speak all overnight the 113 we lost by name, and at the same time find some way to acknowledge the totality of this loss. This is one of the greatest tragedies to ever hit our state and our nation indeed. And, we must have a constant invisible memorial of the tremendous personal toll covid19 is having on our communities. And since families at this time cannot even hold funerals further lost loved ones for their lost loved ones, this is a small lake but important way we can make sure their loss is not forgotten. Want to give my friend andy a shout out for coming up with this idea to begin with. Familiesso honor these and the memories of their loved ones by doing all we can to prevent the spread of coronavirus through social distancing. Let me show a graphic that is from the New York Times. It shows we are doing the right thing. This gives you some sense. If you are gray, you are overwhelmingly staying at home. As you scale to the right, the key is that the lower left there, as you scale to the right and you get redder and redder, you see a much more intense amount of travel. This is courtesy of the New York Times. By the way, this is due overwhelmingly to the 9 million members of our new jersey family. We are overwhelmingly gray, as you can see us, and we are in a good neighborhood. If you go, not all of pennsylvania, but east of pennsylvania through new jersey, new york, connecticut, rhode island, and massachusetts are overwhelmingly gray, which means the stay at home stuff in our neighborhood, and most of orally for us most important lever us in new jersey are working. We cannot backslide and we have to hope that these other places that are deep red or not yet red, orange, not the right colors that the rest of the country gets into the same level of compliance and policies that we have in new jersey. Social distancing is by far our best preventative measure. We said it here yesterday. Yes, you can wear a bandana or a scarf or a simple cloth Face Covering when you are out. There is nothing wrong with that, but that is not in any way a replacement for social distancing in terms of letting the curve. Again, if you want to go ahead and do it, no issue, but dont assume that makes you superman or superwoman and you can ignore the social distancing that we are pounding the table on. Minimum six feet from anybody else at all times. By the way, if you do choose to cover your face, please do not medical grader mask until we are confident we have adequate supplies for our heroic Frontline Health care workers and First Responders. Frankly right after them, as we have discussed, folks who are in essential Retail Operations or driving a bus or taking care of our rail service or somewhere in the supply chain. We have to all of us avoid using up these precious supplies. Again, we need to save every single one of these masks for our frontline Public Health responders. And remember, as judy and ed will chime in, but i think we all believe unanimously that social distancing trumps anything else. But remember, a Face Covering is more about you. If you are a symptomatic, lowering your chances of spreading the virus to others. It is not a failsafe measure to prevent you from getting sick. Thats why we need to continue social distancing. I cant say that strongly enough. Social distancing is both our best offense and best defense. In the absence of a vaccine, that god willing, we will have but it wont be here for a while, it is our best vaccine. When you are out when you are in or out, but certainly when you are out, keep that safe six foot distance between you and others. If you are out running or walking and that is ok make sure you are at least that far away when you pass others or when you are choosing to run or walk or hike with others. Sorry, keep regularly washing your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Practice safe respiratory hygiene. If you feel under the weather, even if you are convinced it is just your allergies acting up that is a growing phenomenon this time of year please just think indoors. I know i sound like a broken record on this. Im joined by folks up here with me who chant the same mantra, but we have to because we know social distancing works. If you look at that map, you are seeing it in clear terms that it is working. So hats off to everybody. We need 100 compliance, and as usual, i have a compliance report. It is working, new jersey. We have to make sure it keeps working. This is a marathon. I would love to tell you it is over this weekend. It wont be. We have to hang in together for a while. If we do it and we will do it, we will break the back of this. I havent said this since i have been here, but folks do say behave as though youve got it. Behave as though you tested positive. At one level, that is an awful way to think about it, but it is quite convincing when you think about it that way. If i had it, i wouldnt remotely want to come closer than i am to tim or judy or pat or ed or any of you out here. That is the way you have to think about this. There is no Silver Bullet that we can load to make this go away overnight. As i said many times, this is a war and wars like this are not won in one day or one month or even a few months. It will take all of us over the coming weeks to stay disciplined in our social distancing, disciplined in our hygiene, and disciplined in using our basic common sense. Thats always going to be the case, never mind the fact that overwhelming the amount of Christian Brothers and sisters, we begin holy week which is the most sacred time of the year and historically a time of gathering. We cannot allow that to happen. Next wednesday begins passover for our jewish brothers and sisters. This is always good advice. We are going to have to be especially vigilant during these religious holidays. Ive said this so many times. It is going to require all 9 million of us to do our share, to do our part. And if we do, unequivocally, we will get through this. Not unscathed, sadly. Look at the 646 lost blessed lives. But we will get through this and we will be stronger as one new jersey family than ever before. A couple of notes on testing, if i may. A reminder that the pnc bank, the center drivethrough site, which we are operating in partnership with fema, will be open tomorrow, saturday, april 4 starting at 8 a. M. For symptomatic healthcare workers and Public Safety First Responders only. You must show credentials on your way in. Again, you must be exhibiting symptoms of respiratory illness. Also, we are proud to report that Cumberland County has brought a testing site online for its residents at the vineland campus of Rowen College cumberland. This site is being run as a partnership between Cumberland County and the complete care health network. This site is open by appointment only and you must obtain authorization for a test. Completecarenj. Org and click on request an appointment. Complete the form and choose covid19 telephone screening as a reason for visit. Someone will get back to you. Again, you must be a Cumberland County resident. In essex county, the drivethrough facility for county residents will be providing tests next monday, the sixth, wednesday, the eighth, and friday the 10th. Screenings for appointment only, for essex county resident only who are some to medic. Symptomatic. For more information, visit essexcovid. Org. I thank the county executive. I was on the phone with him yesterday who has been dealing with this himself. He sounded great so we have him in our prayers. Our dear friend brendan gill and Wayne Richardson and the entire essex county leadership team. I got my new list of testing sites. With the 42 sites, assistance of my friend, brady oconnor. 42 sites across the entire state. Some folks think about testing as though we were in i dont know some sort of nirvana that we would all love to be in, but we have not been in since moment one. If i see Something Else about why cant you be south korea i would love to be south korea. I would love to have universal testing. When you look at the sparsity of supplies that we have as a nation, including the specimen collection supplies, the personal protective equipment when you look at the challenges between dedicating Health Care Workers to testing versus the care of those who are sick, we are not operating in a world that we theoretically are in. We are operating in a world where this is the hand we have been dealt. From moment one, we have made a coldblooded decision overwhelmingly to test with limited supplies nationally symptomatic persons. A, that is the right thing to do because they are sick and they need to know whether or not theyve got this. Judy will have updated information on the positives versus the negatives. But it is also the most robust data that the Health Professionals can get. Thirdly, it is a fact of life given a limited resource world. With all due respect to the folks out there who are chanting we are not south korea, believe me, yours truly knows this better than anybody. I would love to have enough stuff to universally test. We never had that from moment one. No state in america has been more aggressive in testing folks than new jersey has. I dont think california has many more thousands tested completed and we do, and they have over four times as many people as new jersey. Just a pick one example. Listen, all bets are off. Some of the innovations come to pass. Have seen some good press around some developments at rutgers of late. We mentioned abbott labs in smallscale recently. If some of these innovations and inventions come to pass at scale, then all bets are off. We would be the first state in america to universally test. Until that, we have to play the hand we are dealt. And, as we have been asking all along and we are still asking for volunteers with prior medical experience to join our team and assist our efforts. Please go to covid1 joingov volunteer to the 5739 folks who have already signed up. Two each and every one of you, we say thank you. I use the phrase we are in a massive matchmaking process. We could use dolly levy. Between needs on the one hand in our Health Care System and folks over here who raise their hand in particular by specialty, by geography, etc. Switching gears for a couple of other thoughts before we turn it over to judy. Yesterday, i had a couple of very good calls, last evening in fact. I had a good private call with apple ceo tim cook to thank him once again for the enormous lift that apple has sent new jerseys way. I reiterated our thanks. I tried to get through him a sense of what he was seeing. He is working from home, by the way. In so many cases, as summoning of us are. We had a good conversation about what they were seeing in china and whether or not, what sort of my recovery where they expecting, what sort of level of any Ongoing Health challenges there were. Again, i want to thank tim. I want to think new jerseys own lisa jackson for being huge with us. Very helpful call last evening with dr. Tony fauci, obviously, an American Hero known to all of us. From brooklyn, but married to a woman from livingston, new jersey, as he reminded me. With dr. Fauci, his world view of how we should behaving and the policy when he rattled off best practice policies, stayathome in particular, social distancing, it matched up almost identical to the approaches we are taking in new jersey. We both agree that huge key is going to be compliant and that is why pats report everyday matters so much. It is why we need each and every one of you, each and every one of us, all of us it is overwhelmingly most of us when we need all of us to comply with the stayathome social distancing that we need to get through this. And we each compared notes about the need for compliance, to stay ahead of this, to flatten the curve. It was a great conversation with hero. Who is an american he looks at us is very much part of the metro new york, as judy and i have discussed a lot, reality. He didnt want to hang his hat on this but it looked to him that we are sort of a weekish behind new york as they go through the reality they are going through. That much is up at a much with what we thought. We are targeting early week. I hope monday to get into much more moneyball data stuff about what we are seeing and where we are heading. Just tim thank not cook and the other private sector players who helped us out, but dr. Fauci was extremely helpful. It is not just dr. Fauci who was married to a gal from livingston but there are other jersey folks in the white house and i want to give them a shout out. We are in a regular backandforth with jared kushner. I had a very productive conversation with kellyanne conway, another jersey, in this case gal. I would just say more often than not, whether or not we are getting all we need is a separate question and separate matter from our folks laying down their anything remotely partisan and try to come together and do the right thing. It is my experience we all are. I think that is a tribute to our state and to our nation. Now, switching gears. I know that many residents have experienced delays and trying to file for unemployment benefits. Whether that is from the online lags or long inperson wait times, over the phone. To each of you, please understand this department of labor is working with volumes literally many tens of times greater than usual. They are pulling out every stop try to get to everyone as quickly as possible and to keep that website up and functioning. Im told the department was able to successfully process 33,000 claims yesterday. Please do not give up. No one is going to be denied one penny of the benefit they deserve, including the additional 600 per week through july 31 as provided by the federal cares act. If you are calling by phone, when you do get through, please remember that the person on the other hand of the line is there to help you and is probably also just as anxious for their familys safety. Lets all be good to each other, be kind to each other and understanding of one another. Ive asked labor commissioner rob to join us tomorrow, is that correct . T 1 p. M. Be here a 1 00 tomorrow unless you hear otherwise. I will give you a quick forward look. We will be here at 1 00 tomorrow. Unless there is real news to break, in which case i will personally commit to be on the phone or in front of you, we sad data our the reality available to you online on sunday. I said last saturday unless there was news to report and as i walked in here last saturday, the president was considering a quarantine of this area. We were within a hair of actually seeing you live on sunday. That did not come to pass. Tomorrow, 1 00 here. Sunday, we will be by paper or emailed history should. Monday, we will be here at 2 00 p. M. Because we have the white house video call before that. That is just a quick sense of the future. By the way, we said this before, for those of you who want to work and help us get through this emergency, the jobs portal j. Gov website9. N contains more than 44,000 active job listings from 540 plus employers. When it was large launched on march 21, it had a thousand jobs from a few dozen employers. The site now also has improved search functions so that jobseekers can more easily narrow their searchs either by industry or geography. Since we put it up a couple weeks ago, the jobs portal has been accessed, and i got this data here, by more than bear with me 410,000 unique users. Its been visited more than one million times. If you lost your job due to this emergency, there may be another one out there waiting for you. Again, simply go to covid19. Nj. Gov and click jobs portal underneath the search bar. Or you can go directly to the website at the bottom. Jobs. Covid19. Nj. Gov. This portal has been the result of a tremendous partnership between the department of labor, offainly, but to tim, hats to you and the Economic Development authority. The office of innovation under beth novak. And our private sector partner, i want to give them another shout out. We cannot thank each of you enough. Gov has a truly unique feature. It is called ask a scientist. While we are posting all the Public Information from the department of health and others, we know there are some questions that dont have a catch all easy answer. So the office of innovation, in partnership with the federation of american scientists, has put on the site the ability for you to submit a question directly to an expert who will email directly back and answer. Couple other quick highlights on this extraordinary website. I mentioned the amount of folks who have gone on who are seeking jobs, as well as employers who have jobs. The overall traffic users since the site was launched, 2. 2 million users on this site, which is extraordinary. The Business Information hub, users, over 350,000 individuals who have visited that site since launching, which is extraordinary. Not to mention all the folks who mentioned the Symptom Tracker has 240,000 hits. Switching gears to ppe. Yesterday, we were informed titos handmade vodka is sending us a shipment of 432 gallons of hand sanitizer, in addition to 3000 muchneeded masks and 2000 just as needed gloves for our Frontline Health responders. Nothing normal context in which we are referring to titos handmade vodka, but i want to give them a huge shout out for that. Additionally, last night, i was contacted directly by tom of ubs who is a good friend, who informed me his team had sourced an additional 10,000 n95 masks and will be delivering them directly to pat and tina at the office of emergency management. That is on top of contributions they have already made. I did not acknowledge the head of we are literally going around the world, not just country instate, the terms of trying to source personal protective equipment and ventilators in particular. In addition to lots of traffic i have personally been involved with the new jersey and america within the past 12 hours, active engagement and deep engagement not just by me but our teams with counterparties and the peoples republic of china, the republic of china in taiwan, and germany, just to pick places outside of the lower 48. I have said it, i and everyone up here are doing all we can to get the ppe supplies and other key equipment, like ventilators that we need. I raise this every single day either with a member of the white house team, and i mentioned some of their senior members, but also the president himself, with the Vice President or any members of their team. We have had good success seeing ventilators flowing from the national stockpile. We are doing all we can to source more from anywhere we can find it in the private market. So much of our ability to win on the donations we have received from corporate citizens and individuals across the country in the world. This is as good a time as any to remind everyone if you have any ppe to donate, please let us know. We will gladly reach out to accept everybody who donates is a hero. The heroes in our state come from all over. You toay, i asked for start sharing with us some of the good news stories happening in our state. You are new jersey brothers and sisters and you have not disappointed. I want to give a shout out to a medical whobridge is with her team. There is victoria. Is in the designated covid19 floor. Thousands putting themselves in harms way to save lives. We cannot thank her and her colleagues enough. Hero, a lakewood resident. Sam stein. Operates Nursing Homes across our state. Ventilators he15 had in reserve. In his home community, he is working to spread the word Everyone Needs to stay in. Stay home. Off to each. Please share your heroes with us. Finally, i want to give a huge shout out to a tremendous group of workers who have been on the job throughout this emergency making sure the products and supplies we need get to us. Im talking about the women and men of the International Longshoremens association who are at our ports. New jersey is a corridor state. So much of what we need would not get to us if it were not for these brave folks working in our ports. They are the head in so many ways of our supply chain. They deserve a huge thank you. The leader this morning. I want to give harold and his family a big shout out. I learned something this morning. Elvis fans. Lifelong he shared an elvis nugget with me this morning. To all of you who have taken to heart the need to get through this, thank you. Social distancing at times is frankly not a lot of fun. It takes a bit of work to remember to do it but we are seeing tremendous compliance. We need to bat 1000. Where we do not see compliance, where we are cracking down, we will continue to crackdown. Dr. Fauci said clearly not just the policies we are doing which line up seamlessly with his recommendations. Compliance of those policies,articularly social distancing is key. Staych of you, please safe. Please be smart. This is without question the fight of our lives. This is war. It is nothing less than that. Not by panicking but not by business as usual. Eaching straight with other about what the facts are. Is going to get worse before it gets better. I would love to say it wont but it will. I would love to say we will be through this tomorrow or next week, but we will not. If we all worked our tails off. If we comply at 100 . The fight of our lives and we will win this fight unequivocally, stronger than ever before as one new jersey family. Please help me welcome the woman , theeeds no introduction commissioner. Covid19 can cause serious illness and hospitalization. Particularly for those with underlying conditions. This week, cdc released data that confirmed there are higher percentage of patients with underlying conditions admitted to the hospital. That is true in our statistics as well. The cdc study included smoking as a factor that might place individuals at higher risk for severe disease and death. We already know smoking and vaping can cause damage to lungs. This new data is just another reason and you know i cannot help myself to give up those habits and protect your health. To address the upcoming religious holidays. Normally many of us would be preparing to come great for religious services and family gatherings. However, i want to as the residenceid urge the to abide by the ban on social gatherings. I know this will be difficult. We understand while this may be disappointing to many who look forward to spending time visiting with relatives and friends, it is imperative to limit face to face interactions in an effort to slow the spread of this virus. We hope our faith leaders will reach out to the members of their congregations and remind them they should not be gathering for religious services or for meals until the ban is lifted. Of another time when we need each other more. We encourage leaders to notify their congregations of any livestreamed or televised services that may be available. And provide them with suggestions on how they can create meaningful celebrations at home without gathering with others. Social distancing is vital to slowing the spread of covid19. We must all take this seriously. It is the only tool in our toolkit. All residents need to take steps not only to protect their health but the health of loved ones. Particularly vulnerable populations. You may not feel sick that it is possible you could transmit covid19 to someone you love. As the governor mentioned, we 4372 new cases for a total of 29,800 95 cases in the state. 113 of these cases sadly our deaths for a total of 646 deaths. From of the new cases are longterm care facilities. 59 are male. 40 are female. Percent have documented underlying conditions. In the state, we have completed withal of 64,827 tests positive for a rate of 41. 99 . Slightly up from yesterdays rate of 41. 11 . Deaths were from essex county. 16 from hudson. 11 each from passaic and union. Eight from middlesex. Seven promotion. Six from somerset. Three from morris county. One each from burlington, camden, gloucester, mercer, and salem. We are still determining the county of residence for two additional deaths. From long three are tam care facilities. We offer our condolences to all of the families who have lost loved ones. Of the new cases, the breakdown i have to date is atlantic, 25. Bergen, 576. May cape may, 10. Gloucester, 15. Hudson, 382. Mercer, 91. Mel muth, 256. Morris, in hundred 63. Ocean, 231. Salem, five. Somerset, 77. Sussex, 24. Union, 351. Warren, 33. We are still gathering details in over a thousand outstanding cases. Currently, we have 3000 and 16 individuals who have tested positive in our hospitals. That is 3016. The number ofy puis. Persons under investigation. Awaiting their testing results. This represents 12 of the total hospitalizations in the state today. Hospitalized,are or 41 are in ventilators. Covid19 outbreak continues to affect our state, we all know residents are feeling concerned. Healthcareand partners are working around the clock to implement efforts to protect the public. Please do your part. Socialinuing to follow distancing steps. As the governor reminded you, Practice Good Health habits. Stay home when you are sick. Wash your hands frequently. Avoid contact with people who are sick. Even if they are in your household. Cover coughs and sneezes. Disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces. I encourage you to call or visit covid19 these are great resources for the public to get information. In this spring holiday time election, all of us offer our thoughts and urge you to stay safe. Stay connected and stay healthy. Thank you. Forhank you as always extraordinary leadership. Longterm care facilities, positives, 132 of them. And growing. About eightt was days ago it was in the teens if i recall. It Positivity Rate is up but has basically been in a similar neighborhood. Everyone,we remind two things about testing. I have experts over here. Less healthy than the average new jersey and. Arewhelmingly they symptomatic. Just because you test did did not test positive, you still have to use your head. Take care of yourself. The most days since aggressive steps we have taken. Of shutting the state. We are 13 days away from that. Perhaps the New York Times map is beginning to show indications from that. It is fair to say the positive test results we are getting are also dated. Maybe a week or two as much. Datae going to get more heavy and that is not a coincidence. Judy has already started to give you a sense of that. Not a coincidence. It is consistent with the time we feel the data is becoming more meaningful. Two other quick things. Top fivees, the counties, bergen, number one. Hudson, three. You sort of have that northeast cluster of counties leading the way. I would love to get my slide to make sure everyone can see it. I dont know whether my boss would agree, but the New York Times is doing a county by county. How long is it taking for you to double cases. This is way too early to draw conclusions. But that map is interesting. Perhaps we can look at it. We should regularly show that. Im not sure you have to show that every day. Lets look at county maps to give folks a sense of what that looks like. Is that ok with you . Thank you for everything. A quick report on compliance and any other matters you have. Was cited. Ner her second offense, she was also cited. Advised by the woman involved she had tested positive. It was later determined she had not. She was charged with assault and creating false public alarm. 220ce officers issued summonses and closed nine businesses. In lakewood, a subject was cited for operating a retail clothing store. Another for selling alcohol out of a uhaul truck. Police locatedy, that motor vehicle, made a subsequent stop, and recovered a 38 caliber revolver as well as controlled dangerous substances. All five were arrested and charged. To date, 79 offenses have been charged in relation to the executive order. I mentioned in a radio turnsiew, and the input out to not have been accurate. Hospital had received ventilators unquote none of them were working. It turns out somewhere were working. Could you give 30 seconds . I know nationally, the stockpile has been under criticism. Ventilators that are not necessarily working. Can you walk through, what did they look like and why it is hard to predict whether they will work or not. I think the report, first i will speak to how they arrive. They are in a sealed package which is sanitized. To go in and take them apart, have our logistics folks doing that would be inappropriate anyway. Im not so sure they would know if it is functioning or not. 14 at two different hospitals experienced issues with met the missing parts. Eight of them were able to be repaired by staff on hand. We are working with the private sector to make sure there is a process in place. This outside company could assist us not only in the assessment but the repair should they be found in operable. Ready to go live with who the particular partner is. It is a player in the region. Let we are, we will everyone know who it is. Judy, for your, leadership and for everything. Healthcarejust a crisis, it is an economic crisis. I saw Governor Cuomo say new york was broke. I feel his pain. This is an enormous challenge. To workers out there who have lost their jobs. I mentioned an article the other day. Up in aolks, showing food bank, the first time they had ever gone. It is hitting Small Businesses. We need the feds. We cannot do this on our own. Our team, theyf were not waiting for the feds to act. They had begun to put programs in place. Honored tim would join us to walk through again exactly what it is we are doing and what sort of reaction we have had from our Small Business community. Small businesses employ about 60 of the people with jobs in the state. This is incredibly important to be there for them. Lease help me welcome the ceo of the economic realm and authority. It is an honor to be here. Thank you on behalf of all 9 million of us. As the governor said, first and foremost this is a Public Health crisis but behind it it is economic. You can see it in the data. 350,000 new claims. We did a survey in advance of rolling out the programs. This data is a little stale. We got about 2000 responses two weeks ago. 73 of them reporting a significant loss of revenue. Have had either had to undertake layoffs or were in range of reducing staff. The pain is very real. The human suffering is first and foremost. Governor on down, i think we recognize that. To stabilize Small Business through this challenge. The governor announced a package ministering. Nd throughout the administration. 40 million direct package of supports which we think will leverage or result in 75100 Million Dollars public and private support. But as a first wave in advance of what is coming down from washington. Private sector will be doing via the banks. The programs we announced last week or a grant program, a loan program, and supporting the banking sector. And make morelend money available to Small Businesses. Stretch public dollars we could put into this and leverage that. Advance of a broader set of resources. The first of those programs was smallestor the businesses. Folks with 10 employees or less. The smaller you are, the likelier you are to be hardhit by this. It is a 5 million pool of up to 5,000 per company. Application window at 9 00 a. M. I dont think even in our wildest imaginations did we think it would go as quickly as it has. By 10 16 am, we had 10,000 applications. As of 1 30, we had 116,500. We are oversubscribed. We are reviewing them as we speak. Awards aspefully make early as next week. A shout out to beth novak and her team. Least, may be had broken the last 45 minutes, so far it has gone well. Far, so good through the first applications. The next program behind that is a zero interest loan program. To 10,000 pool up per company. To get a little larger. Not Large Businesses by any stretch. We announced earlier we are going to publish the application for that on monday. And then take applications first thing in the morning. We like the model of giving it out in advance. Let folks get their ducks in a row and have that application be ready on april 13. There will be other programs to come. Including direct support to Community Support institutions and they will be making their own programs available. News istional good there are significant federal resources on the way. I dont have any Real Time Data on that. It is a 350 billion program. It is through the private sector. That is up and running as well as the Economic Injury and thatter loan program turned upon a result of the governor seeking a disaster declaration. We know these programs can be challenging for folks to make sense of. What do i qualify for . In the business portal the governor mentioned, there is a wizard. You can enter your information, i am a Small Business with however many employees. Heres what you might be eligible for. We have wanted to make sure consistent with how we try to do things, make sure communities that have historically had the biggest challenge accessing these resources are a focus and a priority, particularly communities of color, veterans, earlystage companies. Into earlystage contracts. A group called Rising Tide Capital to make sure folks can navigate the sba programs. To see those programs up and running. Becauserought to bear we know there is significant pain in the marketplace. We are going to continue to do whatever we can to be supportive and stabilize as many businesses as possible. Thank you, governor. Leadershipu for your and the whole team, thank you. Think we are doing as much and we are as proactive and as innovative as any american state. Money that amount of can come close to making folks whole and allowing them to get back on their feet. I think you are leading the way. We are nowhere without the feds. We have had countless conversations over the past several days about the need to in the much flexibility federal direct money to come into states. We are at the point of attack. We are trying to be there as best we can for someone who has lost their job. Somebody who is sick. Perhaps critically ill. We are going to continue to be there but boy do we need the federal government to come in in a big way. And phil essentially the expenditure as well as the lost revenues. As a hotspot state, secondhighest cases in the country, we are only behind new york. Need not only what was done by the president that cannot be the last step. There is a significant ways to go in terms of federal support to states like ours to allow us responsiblyto react for our people and our businesses. Thank you. Questions, ito read a bunch of newspapers every day. I mentioned david brooks. I am one of the last people who reads the physical newspaper. Here is the article i cut out. You do not do this, i am sure. The article is Mental Health in the age of coronavirus. He makes two points. One of which we have made consistently. The other, i went to thank christine for giving us a window. The point that is sort of the fulfilling one is we are finding extraordinary ways to come together up and down our state and across our country. Even as we are isolating. Even as we are distancing ourselves. Solidarity is what is happening as a reality just as much as social distancing. There are examples of this up and down. The amount of viral communication, small v viral communication, the feeling we have we are all in something together. It happens once every 50 or 100 years. We know it is a call to arms, a call to each of us. This is our moment. We have to step up together. I was wishing a guy named michael whose mom is a distinguished Public Servant a happy birthday today. What is he doing . Lemonadeing a virtual stand sale. He is giving all the money, all the proceeds to a good cause. He raised 1600. The other point in this article that we cannot ignore and we have not hit often and we need suit for folks subject to depression. Folks in a household where child abuse or Domestic Abuse is more prevalent. Folks who have addictions. Is a challenging time. Be throughf us may this crazy paradox of social distancing and coming together in common cause, this is a world of hurt. We heard from christine the amount of reported child abuse numbers was off dramatically. We would like to think that is because the reality has changed. Sadly it is more likely than not because they were not around teachers or coaches or nurses as they would have been in school. Together, letng us remember there are brothers and sisters out there under enormous stress and challenges. Them. E to be there for with that, we are going to start with john. Are going to sweep across once. Buzz around quick opportunity. Lets do that once if we could. I have a couple of quick ones. We are getting a lot of calls from people with emily members in longterm care facilities. They are frustrated with the localf information from departments. They are wondering what you can do to make information public. Find outstruggling to about family members. The use ofk about the antimalarial drugs treating Covid Patients . For privateotocols Ambulance Companies taking patients out of state . About tiereded facilities. There are four counties in new jersey that are not giving breakdowns of cases. Should they be doing that . Mercer, union. And i lost track. You said, it depends on the data. Nearly two weeks into the social distancing, have the variables changed . Model atee a new curve some point . You mentioned the number of people in ventilators. That hoping you change the projections at all . Will we see new curves at some point based on the data you have gotten so far . Sure you could go on. A couple of general comments and then to you and ed. Judy said this. Two things that have been said. I guess three things. We appreciate the concern people have. We have similar concerns. Are, this is a residence for these individuals. That information, coming from the government side, there is a certain amount of quite rightfully discomfort with that. Thirdly, as recently as yesterday, there are obligations reportinglities have any outbreaks that may happen. Judy reiterated that requirement. It is first and foremost their job to do that. I wanted to go right to the end. Be more datato heavy. Bear with us. I think we are going to be talking more to the data early next week. To make because we want sure we are comfortable with it. The curves are based on historic compliance. The maps we show, the map we showed of america israel. The county map is real in terms of how often cases are doubling. Not a coincidence. We are going to be tomorrow a couple of weeks from the most aggressive steps we have taken. In theuple of things chime model. It is one of the models out there. Theye looking at the model are using in new york, trying to bring them together. In the chime model, that changes every day as we get more information. Now arendividuals right in ventilators. I thought that was lower than expected. I think i heard you say it is high. I thought it was lower. Patients are coming probably into the hospital sooner than later. They are being supported in different ways that are perhaps helping them more. 41 . I thought in the beginning, it would be 50 . We are planning for every critical ventilator. We have to break down how many are in Critical Care and how many are not. 41 is a number we can work with. County t about the there are four providing town by breakdowns. We let the counties do what they want to do. Can we run that down . What about antimalaria . Hydroxychloroquine. They are certainly being studied with great interest at this point. We are very early in this process. There are studies that have come out that are somewhat conflicting as to how effective they are or maybe. Unfortunately, the answer is it is too early to tell for sure. They are not likely to be miracle drugs. It to somebody who is deathly ill and they are cured in a couple of days but anything that could help would be welcome. We are supporting studies going on in new jersey right now. We feel studies that can give us specific the specificity are good things. What about private Ambulance Companies . Protocols thatve of thede the requests person in the ambulance. It would be under consideration if we wanted to decrease movement more. May i add a little bit more color that i think is somewhat relevant. Back a couple of questions and i am sure this is something he would feel comfortable saying privately. Are we collectively write to say a vaccine that is safe and salable in one to 1. 5 years is reasonable . There will besay therapeutics that are say bytively applicable the fall into winter. Is consistent with what we have heard. That was particularly interested because it is constitutionally difficult to put state troopers at our borders and not let people in from other states. Dammed if we put our state through hell and let people come in from states with lax or lower protocols. Crackswer is aggressive began to slowly, responsibly open back up again. He made the point which judy has made before. At that point, context tracing becomes hugely important. Isolating, quarantining. That is how you solve the riddle of folks if you see something bump up again. Thank you. How are you verifying the supplies you are ordering exist . Acquire the plies from china, how long does it take to get here . Is it requiring detective work to know who you are dealing with . Have you backed off any suspicions purchases because you are suspicious . Arriving and gloves from the federal stockpile in good shape . You have said new jersey spent tens of millions of dollars in ppe. I wonder if you have a more precise figure. Also, have you started to collect the vents and other supplies from the ambulatory centers and elsewhere . Let me start. You can come in behind me. Arduous, nimble, trust but verify. We verify aggressively upfront. I would say, sadly, the amounts of lead we have gotten. Today, i get multiples a day. More often than not, these do not pan out. Is that fair to say . That is true. We have a procurement team. It is daily. I have one million ventilators. 100,000 masks. That process, sometimes they overpromise. And would under deliver. Costs . Peak to the 100 . Directed to thinking about the recovery at the end of this process. Just about all of those purchases come to the office of emergency management. The money we75 of have spent so far. Fema has been gracious to advance us the cost share. To thank femat for that. Weekly from each individual department so we can reconcile and make sure we get every single dollar that is eligible to us. I would add, it does take some amount of detective work. Virtually everybody in our front office is in one form or another , not to Mention Health and state police. We are full time on this. Team aree economic literally vetting. I was in just now, checking my phone. This is japan. These are largely masks. To bere estimated midmonth, april 15. We find ourselves increasingly dealing with people we know and have had some amount of confidence in. ,e are much more quickly able able to suss out the real from the fake. Ande are a lot of folks who just want to advance me 1 million were ones who are jacking prices through the roof. There are legitimate players out there. Masks and gloves, have they been in good shape . They are in constant order. 46 weeks is general. No issues as far as any ppe. Your question in ventilators, i am sorry. Take anyou started to ventilators or other ppe from the ambulance or centers . We have not done that. Process is in place. For how thattocol would take place. I did mention, sam stein was my example. Have we had ton, commandeer it . The answer is not yet. The attorney general and u. S. Attorneys have announced a joint task force. One of the things they are looking at is procurement fraud and we are actively cooperating. Thank you. Do you have a question . Wondering if there will be rental relief for new jersey. Which relief . Rent. This a lot. Ked it is not as straightforward as i have a mortgage and a payment due. Let me remind folks what we put in place. Number one, most people rent from someone who has a mortgage. Playerly every mortgage we can think of nationally as well as state chartered have granted a 90 day holiday. It is up to the person who has the mortgage to work out what that looks like with a Mortgage Bank and mortgage provider. In the overwhelming amount of cases, and we hope this is the case, the threemonth holiday is 91st day. Due on the landlords who are getting relief over here from there Mortgage Lender to provide symmetric relief to the folks renting from them. We expect that to happen. You may recall i signed a law a couple of weeks ago. No one is allowed to be thrown out of their house. Foreclosure, eviction. Including for not paying rent. Thirdly, the department of committee a affairs. Community affairs are continuing to work on other programs, whether it is federal money or other programs that can further help renters. Thank you. And thening to go here to you, sir. Reporting you told democratic county chairs you are considering delaying the june primaries. Info on theany more Skunk Works Team and whether you are considering any man sue amy to head the team . And how many awards do you expect to give out . The numbers look like at least a thousand but im wondering if that has changed . Has the application time changed . In the first one, i mentioned an obvious point. Im not making news. Democratic party decided to move their convention back so we have more flexibility. I will be stunned if right here we stay. Yet. Cision skunk works, i love amy. Lets make sure she is on our list. I have not made any decisions about that. I mentioned at least in social media i spoke to a close friend. She said, there with us. As you think about putting in place your team and your way forward, she said we have a report about to come out. 10 minutes ago, it came out. No more detail on that yet. In the amount of awards . The awards. N not everyone who applied is going to be eligible. Everybody is going to come in for the full awards. It is firstcome, firstserved. We are letting people take essentially a daily ticket. They will be in line if they have a complete application. That is how we would approach it. The application is going to stay open. If it gets oversubscribed, we will probably close it. When you make that decision . That will start doing first in first out. As early as the next couple days. First electronic checks late next week. Do you have like a ballpark figure . A couple thousand, a few thousand . Flex 12000 is probably our best guess. We dont know that data yet. Cities like new work, people who are not invited, are you stricter lockdown laws . For folks who do not obey more or less . What we have decided to do so far, and the director and the mayor who are doing great work, with our blessing have been upping their patrols and activities as an enforcement matter. In other communities including lakewood. Where was the bar we had to shut down the second time . Blairs town. Been with the aid of the state police. Thing, further enforcement and Law Enforcement presence, i believe i said this the other day, the eligible penalties have gone up dramatically. That was the attorney general decision. Toelieve the fines are up 10,000. Up amount of time in jail is to 18 months. We believe that is a significant deterrent. And i attorney general got on with the prosecutors of the larger cities in new jersey, understanding each city is unique and has its own challenges. I know the attorney general doesnt want to demand every Large Police Department does things exactly the way newark does, but we get to some level of understanding what enforcement looks like. Letting discretion play a part. With atrying to come level playing field. 100 need enforcement, compliance. Judy said, particularly with two of the biggest religious holidays coming upon us, ramadan holyar on the heels of week and passover, we have got to make sure people comply. I have a question. Those whoalled continue to hold gatherings not a heads. Some of these violations are larger social gatherings like weddings and funerals. Would you use the same language to describe people who gather for these events . Can you address this larger scale disregard . Cuomo says he is converting a hospital into a covid hospital. He said there are not enough to vote for. His new jersey prepared to do the same with its popup hospital . Is there any consideration to making it only Covid Patients . I will answer the first. A knucklehead is a knucklehead. I dont discriminate based on age. We need everybody to get with the program and comply to get us to 100 compliance. We were going to have the pop up as a noncovid pop up. We are going to see if there is the number of patients necessary to fill the hospital. As our cases increase overall, it may be we have to change our original projection and have it be a mix. Patientsld require us that had a discussion on this morning to plan for it because we do believe it is going to happen. How many ventilators are currently in like how many do we have and how many more do we need . What can be done for people who also Lose Health Insurance because they have lost their jobs . Report ifpeople landlords are telling them they have to pay them . Do fertilitys have to be closed . Have already closed for nonsurgeries. I know in the ventilators, the standing is 1650 for the federal stockpile. We look atll you how how many events are used. Believe haveters i been deemed essential, have they not . Ive not been asked this question. I think there are two questions. Executive order 107 has a blank you carve out for health care facilities. Are you referring to the executive order on elective surgery . The question is since the state has shut down nonurgent about facilityt centers . Are you issuing separate guidelines or was it assumed they would be closed . What would your directive be if a fertility clinic is doing nonurgent patients from out of state . I will let judy weigh in on whether any of those we would have to know the specific procedures. Any comment on Health Insurance . Was estion when people lose jobs, they also Lose Health Insurance. We have to make sure we are dealing with everybody whether they have Health Insurance or not. It is a right, not a privilege, i will put that speech aside. We have to bring everybody along regardless of whether status may be. Petitioned the feds for a special enrollment time. We are actively looking at options for what we can do for folks who have lost their jobs. Isif you have a landlord who screwing you, my advice is to go to our website and i think there is a complaint page. Somebody asked that to make sure i think we have put forward items that if you have a situation where you have a series of things that have to be done, whether it is Cancer Treatment or fertility, that that certainly would be acceptable. I have answered what the ask is in terms of more ventilators. I would like to say we dont have enough ventilators, personal protective equipment, or Health Care Workers we have got a plan to do our best to get ahead of that, but any sense of how many are being used at the moment . We dont want our hospitals to spend all of their time reporting, so we give a little flexibility in this. But today, and that would be early this morning, they were reporting there were about 2400 ventilators available, but 1600 were in use. 800 thatwere about would be available throughout the state to be used. Last two days, nine hospitals have reported they were at max for ventilators. We reported we got calls in the middle of the night and were able to move ventilators around. Hospitals are starting to understand that movement of equipment to take care of patients appropriately. And the larger scheme of things, we are short. At not only what judy enter team do, but where we think we will be 14 days from now. Our estimates are that we need 6000 more. Sir, do you have a question . Hello, governor. There we go perfect. Governor, can you tell us about which inmates are being released from jails . Are detainees going to be released from Bergen County . You know which jails have had confirmed cases . Judy can answer the question on the department of corrections cases. Judgment that was made by the chief justice of the Supreme Court directed at county jails. That process has been ongoing. Secondly, the total number was up to 1000, i believe. , but i make a big speech dont have jurisdiction over the ice incarceration. Dont illd, but i repeat something i said a few minutes ago. About folks who lost Health Insurance, we have to break this virus by looking at the entirety of our state, not just some of us. Judy has talked about the department of corrections and psychiatric hospitals. , we haveit might be got to make sure we are taking care of every buddy everybody. There were federal decisions on ice, we dont have jurisdiction in terms of releasing some in custody there. But the number and estimates, i dont have the exact numbers. It was up to 1000 from the county jails. We certainly monitor that communication with commissioner hicks. Prisons, although we , ie some positive cases dont want to give out the numbers because i dont have them at the top of my head. Our biggest concern, frankly, it is the monitoring is the monitoring of the county jails. They seem to have more incidents of respiratory illness, so we are keeping a close eye on the county jails as well. I just dont have the numbers for you. Thank you, governor, for the opportunity. How many of the 555 municipalities have declared a local giannis local emergency . I asked about the Health Care Data and whether that will be made public or not. Is that data something we will have to oprah to get . Another item i asked about was progress on online voter withtration, especially may 12 coming up. Finally, on the landlord and tenant issue, you said you expect landlords to provide symmetric relief but how will that be enforced . Realistically, tenants will not have access to that information about relief or not. Is there anyway to enforce the symmetry you are expecting . I dont know the answer on how many have declared local emergencies. Do you know . Not off the top of my head. Data, thats part of previewing and more data intensive interaction. Do you want to at this point, we have enough data that we want to work through our local counties and Health Departments on how much data is put out and how they access it. Local Health Departments have all of the data. We get our data from them on positive cases. We really ask them to work locally. Not to punt it to next week, but you will see more of what we are saying in the next couple of days and react to that area online voter registration, i wanted. I dont know if there is anything new on that. We saw that Effective Date was very far out. Its a good question on landlords and tenants. I will have matt answer it from a legal standpoint. A fair amount of what you hear about us talk about his moral persuasion. The notion that there is something bigger than all of us and this is the moment. Whether or notf folks are doing the right thing is when the lights are out and nobody is looking. When you are sitting up here right now, there is an enormous need for moral persuasion here, for Community Action that is bigger than anyone of us. Is there anything you want to add . I think thats right. Its a challenge because you withhouse private actors their own private contracts so we are trying to find ways to encourage them to be good, but its more challenging. Brent, we mayirm, not have formerly sent the submission in yet, but its something we are actively considering. On renters, you have probably got a sense of this. Said, these are gazillion private contracts. Narrow theng to scope of reality and behavior. Asis not as straightforward nobody can be foreclosed, nobody can be evicted. You get two more months to get your drivers license renewed. Real id is pushed off for one year. If you are paying a mortgage, you get three months, assuming your banker is on the list. This is a harder one to get our arms around. Real quick. I wanted to clarify my question. Its not so much the cases but rather the supplies available. You are requiring hospitals to provide that, but i would like to be able to get my hands on that information. This is less a question of if this data is one that everyone has access to. No reason not to. We are trying to get around it ourselves. Its important to know what data people need to see to make good Public Health decisions. Whenever we release data, that is what we think about. Mission,ulfill our does it promote the health of the state . And what will people do with the data . Will it help inform them so that they behave differently . Improve their own health and that of the community . Anyone got anything urgent . Really quick and then we will go to the back area. You should consider track shoes next time we have a gathering. Totalyou have a running of how many nursing home residents have tested positive and among them how many fatalities there have been . Fatalities in Nursing Homes. Do you happen to know . Have tested positive . How many employees are in quarantine, how many employees have tested positive, how many individuals from Nursing Homes have been hospitalized. Then how many individuals from Nursing Homes have died. We keep that for all Nursing Homes. I will email somebody and ask for that. For specificing information from Nursing Homes. Reasonscer, for various , has suggested that putting out individual nursing home data is not in keeping with our statutory obligations. I think you are asking about gross numbers. Gross numbers from those broad categories . Sure. Im sorry, i misunderstood that. Thank you, governor. The cities of newark and east orange are closing their takeout restaurants by 8 p. M. But your executive order says they can resume normal hours and that local governments can alter your order. Is there any comment . I thought there was some confusion on that. Matt, you can follow up. But looks like there is an enormous amount of good being done at the Community Level here. We cannot do all of this ourselves. Opportunity tood say the last word on stuff like this resides with us. Anything to add . No. I dont know if thats happening but it would conflict with eo 107. Youe will come back to someone had raised it but i have not heard it until then. To thank eric commissioner extraordinaire. And toou so much do you your extraordinary colleagues. Thank you for everything you and your team are doing. Crisis this was a health , its also an economic crisis. Again, we will be here at 1 00 onorrow, likely not together sunday. Be back here at 2 p. M. On monday because of the video call. As we have said, this is a war. We dont win it by panicking or by business as usual. We win it by being smart, by being proactive. Sadly, the number of fatalities and folks who have the virus are going to go up for they come down. We are not getting out of this tomorrow or the week after area this is a marathon. We have to be straight with each other. The last thing we need is to turn on each other and new jersey does this better than any other. We rise and fall as one family and we always will. Of the 9 million of us does our share and our part from the Little Things to the big ones, please god stay at home. Thats the most important thing any of us can do. It wont be tomorrow, but we will come out of this. We will win this war and we will be stronger, closer, and more united as one family than ever before. Thank you