[captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] everyone inrnoon, for tuning in and listening to this press briefing. I guess we have a little bit of good news and that is that the case count that we announced today is not as drastic as the one we saw yesterday. But it is still very concerning. Is 1147 ase increase opposed to the one yesterday of 2700. However, we did reach a grim milestone because we now have more than 10,000 cases statewide. 10,297 to be exact. We had an increase of 60 deaths. That increases much more in line with what we expect to see day today, not the 42 we saw yesterday. Thats what im trying to communicate to you. But the rate of spread, the number of cases will always depend upon the degree to which our people are complying with the stayathome order, with all of the social distancing guidelines we are putting out and minimizing social contact. We knew and have been telling people that getting through this crisis would resemble a marathon, not a sprint. Im again asking people to be ,atient, to stay in their homes and take the stayathome order seriously. Life depends upon it and so might your own. Another bit of good news is that with more than 56,000 tests in the state, louisiana is second per capita. It does help us to see what is out there and gives us a better idea about how to respond and prepare for the future. There are interesting new tools and dashboards popping up trying to capture whether folks are actually social distancing or not. Itsle just came out with mobility reports and what the report shows is that louisiana and our people started to take seriously around the end of march, which is when i announced an emergency declaration. You can see this goes back to march 29 and you can see the graph there. So, we know the degree to its this activity reduced that the mitigation measures are working and the spread of the disease was actually slow. There would be more cases in louisiana if we had not done that. That was very clear. There are other social distancing dashboards out there. They are based on aggregated that shows a lot of louisiana ends. Perhaps it is because for some reason i have not impressed upon all of our citizens the consequences of not staying at home. You can see there are some bright spots out there. You can see that Jefferson Parish gets to be, so they are doing relatively well. There are large parts of the state that are not doing well and im encouraging everyone to take stock of this. This is a statewide problem with respect to the novel coronavirus. But all buts in now three of our parishes. It is in all of our parishes in actuality. This is a statewide problem. We need everyone to pay more attention and be more compliant. Modeling is something we have talked a lot about and it has been talked about at the National Level and i know a couple nights ago now that from the white house, they did a press briefing where they put up some modeling, several different models, as i recall. We useis essential that modeling to determine how best we can respond to covid, but also to illustrate the people how they should be responding to this and that is through those mitigation matters measures we have been talking about. You helps in terms of what we need in terms of beds and ventilators and when we might we would need as far as lifesaving health care. We are going to go over a chart about mitigation measures and social distancing measures, the stayathome order, impacting our communities by slowing the rate of spread. Regiongoing to focus on one. This modeling is a collaborative effort between the department of , and blue cross, blue shield of louisiana. As i mentioned, the two data points we get every day that are most reliable and telus with the most precision where we are on these curves is the number of individuals hospitalized with covid19 and those individuals who have died from the disease. Tell are the numbers that us how much covid is in our state. And do that to a better degree than the actual number of positive cases, because we know that there are a number of individuals out there who are going to be covid19 positive, but they are not going to be symptomatic and they are not going to get a test, although they can continue to spread the disease. So, we have indications, quite frankly, that are giving us some hope, a glimmer of hope that it is still early, but we do know that the amount of compliance we are getting is not enough to have the best possible outcome. To those of you out there who are complying, thank you very much. I sincerely appreciate and the overwhelming majority of the state appreciates what you are doing. You really are helping. For those of you not taking the crisis seriously, im asking you to do a better job. Save could beould your own. We are not going to enforce our way out of the crisis. Everyone needs to do their part to flatten the curve and slow the spread. The death rate in louisiana is higher than anywhere else in the country. But we are getting much closer to the norm because what we are finding out his we actually have much more covid in our state then we previously thought. Covid isath rate from not that much out of the ordinary. But we do have a higher death and i suspect that the end of this, we will still have a higher death rate than most places because we have Underlying Health problems in a larger proportion of our thelation, including Chronic Health conditions that make people especially vulnerable to this disease and make them more prone to succumbing to it, such as kidney disease, heart disease, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, those sorts of things. The assistant secretary of the office of Public Health will explain in more detail with the chart is telling us here and what it should be telling each of the citizens of our state. Yesterday, in addition to extending the stayathome order until april 30, i signed a proclamation to ensure that High School Seniors and postsecondary eligibleare able to be for the continuation, whichever it may be. Among the things this order does is extend the qualifying act score to september 30. , for Small Businesses that need relief, as a result of this crisis, if you have not already loans,or applied for sba time is of the essence. There is a finite amount that was appropriated and signed into law we could go today. , ihough it is a large amount think as you see more businesses around the country apply for these loans, that amount is going to dwindle down. We are encouraging people to go to sba. Gov and fill out an application for the paycheck and protection program. This is a loan designed to provide elect assistance to Small Business to keep their workers on payroll and the sba will forgive the loan. This is important because it is alone at first but it can be forgiven if employees are kept on the payroll for eight weeks and the money is used for payroll, rent, mortgage interest, or utilities. So to find out more, please go to sba. Gov. I would also like to remind everyone yesterday we launched an alert system that will provide timely updates for covid19 and other critical critical guidance from the governors office. To sign up please text lacovid to 67283. Already 100,000 people across the state have signed up for the alerts. Additional information is available at coronavirus. La. Gov. At this point i will ask the doctor to come up and explain more about the chart that was up there with the modeling because i know some of you were wanting more information about our modeling. Thank you, governor. As the governor said, since the earliest cases in the state we have been working at the department on the academic side and with health items and insurers to build a model that would help us understand what to expect and how to reject what covid19 would mean for the state when it comes to our most Important Health resources that need to be there for those most severely affected by covid19. That is hospital beds and ventilators. You have been hearing us talk a lot about those. The governor also noted we recently heard from National Leadership in the white house about a model they released. This model was focused on looking at the number of cases across the nation on a daily basis and using, essentially fitting that to a mathematical equation. To see how things are changing over time. In the model we are sharing here, this is slightly different from that because this is a model based on the actual dynamics of the way the infection works. This is the standard way that we and Public Health look at an epidemic. It models out a population that is susceptible to infection and looks at the model as a population becomes infected and we see the numbers start to rise. Eventually it reaches a peak where there is nobody else able to be infected easily and then those people are then removed from the model, either because they recover and they are better or, as 370 louisiana to have, they die, and are no longer able to be infected. So that is why see the lines come down. So there are variety of scenarios depending on how we react to covid19 to stop the spread of the virus. Because we do not have treatment that we know can stop covid19, our only weapon we really have is social distancing at home. Not coming into contact with somebody with covid19. We know from international and national and state data that on average, if an individual has covid19, they are at risk of transmitting that to 23 people. So, left unchecked, that leads to a rapid rise in cases. If you look at the graph, the thin red line is the baseline that depicts that scenario. Where anyone who has the virus is not doing much beyond potentially staying home if they are severely ill, to stop the spread of the virus. To plot the number of daily hospitalizations on the vertical access and showing your Time Starting in march with our first cases and going through until march of the next year. So this is a yearlong look. When we look at that baseline, if we had done nothing, what we see is that by early may, the end of april, we would be at the hospitals, in orleans and Jefferson Parish where they have been seeing upwards of 3700 per day. That is not total hospitalized, that is people needing to be hospitalized every day. And the day before it was 3600. These numbers are staggering. And at a certain point it would decrease. Unfortunately we know that the capacity to in our region would not be able to accept that. That is a situation where we would have people showing up to the hospitals and hospitals not having access to necessary therapies like ventilators, and highlevel people passing away, higher than we are seeing. We have taken measures through the governors orders to change how likely it is that anyone person with covid would infect somebody else. It is incumbent on us to act on those orders, to not go out and annette with other people or spread the virus. That is what is predicted here on the other graph. I will first take you through the blue line. That is next to where it says effective social distancing. If you remember, after our first week of known cases, we put in social distancing roles and people were encouraged to stay home when they were as sick and to wash their hands and cough and sneeze into the elbow. And stay six feet away from people and not have big gatherings. That graph depicts what happens to hospitalizations if we just did that. And we reduce the number of people gathering. It pushed the peak to midmay, further way. And now rather than 3800 per day, we are seeing 1500 per day per hospitalizations in the new orleans area, the region one area. That is a large number to sustain. Following that, a week later, we had stricter role in place. We have added that on top of a situation where all of you hopefully are staying home and not going out unless you are an essential worker or have an essential visit. That does not mean every day but as needed going to get like groceries, gas, going to the pharmacy. And while you are out, taking these same commonsense measures. Staying bunching up in lines. Gatherings of less than 10. And for anyone who has symptoms, youre not leaving but are asking somebody to bring things to your house and you are staying in place. The best scenario we see further pushing out the peak and decreasing the number of new hospitalizations. There we see the peak pushed out to early july and at the peak point of admissions seeing 500 per day. That is a large number but different than 3800. That is why we are pushing for this policy because it will allow us to push the date away to known beds and allow the search efforts the governor has put into place to be able to absorb the admission strain we are seeing. Going back to the start, the blackballed line says current midpoint, showing you where we currently project where we are. This is because people have covid19, they can be infectious for two weeks so we have to give a twoweek. To see these policies have an impact on numbers. We are tracking along as people have been doing the work that you saw with a heat map of staying at home and not going out and coming together. There, we are between that scary scenario with a redline and the first scenario we would like to achieve, which is the blue line. We have indications we continue to see movement in that direction, especially in those areas that correlate with that map, areas that overlap with the map the governor show you. Orleans, jefferson, east baton rouge, those areas are showing the impact of limiting contact with others. Our hope is that as we continue to do that and to spread that to the rest of the state so every buddy is taking that seriously, taking measures in their own neighborhoods. We will see that line get closer to the purple line. We will push away the peak and decrease the number of daily hospital admissions and get more likely we are actually able to have the surge measures that the governor has put into place actually be able to absorb those extra admissions. We are showing you hospitalizations but the governor said we are talking hospitalizations and deaths and we want to avert deaths. Thank you, governor. Gov. Bel edwards at this time we will take your questions and i assume you may have questions on the modeling. The way i am reading that, we do not look good. Where we are right now, we are not even close to the social distancing let alone where we want to be in the shelterinplace. It sounds like we are not even close yet. I do not want to speak for the governor but i think that is why you here every day he comes out to speak that this is still concerning. This is still something that we are here every day looking at numbers, talking about what measures can be taken. I agree with you that it is not good. But there is a glimmer of hope, in that we can act to change where that is. We can act to move this graph further over, away from us and down. That is incumbent upon us, and only we can do that. What does the midpoint projection mean . I mentioned at baseline we think one individual can in fact 2. 4 people in that current midpoint is saying that right now one person is infecting to two other people. We have nudged but we need to go further. Gov. Bel edwards that doesnt sound like big news, two point five to two people, but when the growth is exponential, though those small differences make a really big difference in the aggregate and over time. Because it is not just that an individual might infect three, those people could turn around and infect others. But if you get it down from 2. 4 to 2. 0 to 1. 7, the better off you are. The thing i have been trying to communicate consistently is that under our best Case Scenario it is a extremely tough situation for our hospitals and we do expect that at some point we are going to exceed our capacity as it relates to beds and ventilators. You still have noncovid people who have to be in the hospital. Heart attack victims, Motor Vehicle accident folks. All sorts of people have to be in the hospital. Some of those people require ventilators as well and intensive care beds. So this is really serious. We are doing this every way we can to get the attention of people to get more compliant so we can get the lowest transmission rate possible. I am gratified that it appears over the last several points with the talking points we have been delivering here, have been reinforced by washington. There is no daylight between what we are saying to you in the state of louisiana and what is being said coming out of washington, d. C. Yes, sir . Going back to the strict shelterinplace line. That is not you implementing stricter shelterinplace rules without more strictly following them . Gov. Bel edwards that is if people follow the order already in place. More than they are doing now . Gov. Bel edwards yes, and we can have better compliance. In places like new orleans where it is better than elsewhere in the state, we know that it is not 100 . Everybody can do better. If we did adhere in a really positive way to the current orders around sheltering in place, keeping schools closed and that sort of thing, we will be down along the purple line. So where we are right now is between the worstCase Scenario and best Case Scenario. But as we get complaints we start to move and keep moving and get closer to the best case , and less people will die and it is that simple. We can lose ourselves in the numbers and graphs and so forth, but to the degree people comply with the orders, less people are going to die. It is literally that simple. Jeff . Is that for the strict shelterinplace through september or october, based on what that graph is showing . Gov. Bel edwards it would have to stay in place in order for that line to follow all the way. Now, look, we do not know if we are ever going to get on that graph. So we do not know if we stay on the purple line or on the blue line or somewhere in between them, and that is why we have to continue to monitor where we are and we will make announcements about what the future looks like based on where we believe that we are. And by the way, the underlying assumption for at least one of the models shown by the president the other day how the mitigation measures staying in place for the month of may. I know that his current emphasis, and by the way, my order too, takes us through april 30. But in order to keep deaths in the country between 100,000 and 240,000, that assumes the full mitigation measures stay in place for the full month of may to the country. For the projections did they take into account the way forward, and when hospitals be overwhelmed in early april . April 7 or april 12, as you mentioned yesterday . So this can be even worse, up to 2500 hospitalizations . Gov. Bel edwards im not sure i follow. This is a point i have been trying to make when we talk about things like ventilators. The governor has said it is not just ventilators that we need a few more and we are good, it is that every day the number continues to increase. And it increases at an exponential function. That is why it is so important we move off that curve. Still more and more people needing those resources. You are saying earlier the local municipalities need to enforce curfew. The number of parishes including the area, they have started to implement a curfew. Would you recommend that . Do you think it would help with those numbers . Extending the stayathome order for another month . Gov. Bel edwards first of all, we crossed the decision threshold about expanding when we get there and we are not there yet. Second, i can see where having less social contact with a curfew, but that assumes people will not do during the day what they were going to do at night. If people are staying at home the way they are supposed to and only going out for essential work, if they are going to and from work or going out for essential things like going to the Grocery Store and doing it once week and so forth, a curfew would not matter so much. Where the curfew, i think, could help, is in conserving resources at the local level with respect to Law Enforcement. So maybe you have an overwhelmed Law Enforcement agency with a number of people in isolation or quarantine because of exposure or because of actual cases. Implement aant to curfew so that for certain time periods, for example, 2 00 a. M. To 5 00 a. M. , they would need fewer Law Enforcement officers on the street and could marshal a greater percentage of their available deputies to work during noncurfew periods. That is why in the first proclamation i issued we granted that authority to the chief Law Enforcement officers of the parish, the sheriffs. And you have mayors and parish president s who can issue those curfew orders as well. Mayor de blasio has called for a National Draft for health care workers, and he wants them in new york. Is there anything like that here . Gov. Bel edwards we have not considered a draft and i do not know how we would stand Something Like that up. We have requested through the state board of local examiners and the nursing board and to the hospitals, that retired doctors and nurses and other Health Care Professionals are able and still have current certifications especially, to come back to work. And to go back to work at the entities where they previously worked. And we are not just asking for people to come in from the louisiana, we are reaching out to other states where they may have medical professionals where their work is not needed yet because they are not at the same place that we are at present we are asking that those individuals come to louisiana. As much as i love new york, i am not interested in having our professionals drafted and sent to new york. We have real problems in louisiana with respect to our capacity to deliver health care, dependent on bed, ventilators, and staff. This is one of the hardest things about these standalone hospitals. You have to find the doctors and nurses, very difficult to do. In terms of the modeling, if it shows it is flattening, does that change the projections for beds and ventilators . That is coming in the next week that we would be exceeding the number of ventilators available. We announced that we have had some reason to push those dates back already. I dont know i am prepared to say it is different. Maybe you can talk about that . Every day we look at the data. We want to make sure we see a solid trend. We are hoping what we see continues. We are saying that in areas making these moves. As we feel that is a credible move, we give that recommendation to the governor. Hospitals are talking about two patients using one ventilator. Also talking about retrofitting other devices to work like a ventilator. Are we still on track to use those tools in the next week . I do not know about the next week. We have been aggressively using anesthesia machines, looking at anywhere we can get a ventilator, bringing that to the front line. We do think over the course of what is going on, we would need those things. And our ability to be successful in future allocations of ventilators out at the National Stockpile would depend on those things. We have to justify our requests with information about the actions we have taken to make use of these machines and ventilators, identify them, round them up and we are doing that now. I have some good news. 100 ventilators did come in today, on route to hospitals as we speak, not from stockpiles, but a vendor that we have been able to get ventilators from. That is about 300 we have sourced from this one vendor over the last three weeks. We will do that everywhere we can. When we do that, we generate a little more capacity, and then tomorrow, they will look not just at deaths and hospitalizations, they will look at the number of ventilators on hand. Even when you are inching back in terms of the date we will exceed capacity, there comes a time in every model we are seeing where we do exceed our capacity to deliver health care. The degree to which we see that capacity will depend on our social distancing and whether we adhere to mitigation measures. We have it with in our collective power to decide whether more work. People will die from covid19. It is just that simple. I know people are not accustomed to it, but those are the facts of the matter. Yes, sir . What is our capacity, how many hospital beds in region one . Gov. Edwards i did not bring that information today. It changes every day. In aggregate there is something around 4000 icu beds, maybe 10,000 total beds. That information is on her on our website, on a dashboard, available beds and available vents. You got 2000 today in 1900 yesterday, 3900 . In two days. It accumulates. You have to be careful because you have to back out the nicu beds because they will not be suitable for the patients coming in with covid19 either. I do want to point out it is not just we are searching now as it relates to ventilators and our medical monitoring hospital, which will be open tomorrow in new orleans, if you want to take a look at that, and i hope you will. We also have asked our hospitals to expand their capacity within our existing footprint, doing everything they can to stand up more icu beds in new orleans, here in baton rouge, baton rouge general, shreveport, so we have been taking advantage of the time to expand icu beds as well. That is the best setting to get this health care, and the easiest place to staff those bed, but not easy. That standalone facility is difficult. Those will be less acute nonfragile patients who dont need to be on a ventilator, but are not ready to go home, but if we can take them out of the tier one hospital sooner, that would free beds and you can service more individuals who need to be in a hospital to receive that topline care. Yes, sir . As far as your conversations with the white house, there has different focuses and priorities. What now is the focus for you as far as federal assistance . Gov. Edwards the same thing i have been saying for several days, the Biggest Issue in the near term is ventilator capacity, so we keep making our case. There remain several thousand ventilators in the National Strategic stockpile. We are doing everything we can to put ourselves in position for an additional allocation of ventilators. I want to tell you and the people of louisiana that these conversations with the president and Vice President and with the head of fema and so forth, they are not unlike the conversations happening with the governors of every state. We have new jersey and new york and additional places coming online with hotspots, so were all competing for limited resources, which highlights the primary difference between managing this Public HealthEmergency Response and recovery from a national disaster. In a natural disaster, you get the attention of sister states who send things you need in the federal government is focused squarely on louisiana. That is not able to happen right now. We are doing the best we can. I appreciate all the work we have been able to do with our federal partners, and they have been frustrated. Am i mad . No. This is the way things are. We will be as aggressive as we can to get the resources we need and as soon as possible. Have you heard from the president about another covid hospital . Gov. Edwards no. I know the president was talking about the assistance he sent louisiana with respect to covid hospitals. That assistance is through fema. We are setting up the Convention Center. We will have 1000 beds ready by sunday, and 1000 by april 20. 500 are coming from the medical stations he did approve for us. That is not staffed, but those are the beds, very helpful. We have a medical detachment coming from the navy, jacksonville, florida. We dont know precisely the number of people. We have their events team in new orleans now. We have 50 people now, but we think it will be closer to 200. We know they can work at personal housing units, about 250 patients. They likely have covid but do not have positive test results back. They require hospitalization. Those are the things we have gotten from the federal government as it relates to the Convention Center, very helpful, and that is with the president was referring to. I know your priority is limiting covid19 deaths, but how much do you think about people with the stayathome order extended through april, the potential for another month after that. What do you say to those people who are out of a job . How much do you think about that . I know you focus is covid19 but so many people are wondering where the next paycheck is coming from. Gov. Edwards first of all, we think about it a great deal. I get briefed on it every day on the number of unemployment claims. I make sure we waive the time you have to wait. I have waived the job search requirements that go with unemployment. We are working hard to expedite taking those claims and getting those payments made. We will add 600 a week to the 247. We are working with Small Businesses to make sure they take advantage of the loans through the sba. We stood up a Loan Guarantee program in louisiana, where the state will incur 20 of the risk of those loans to spur our banks to give Small Businesses loans of up to 100,000. For three months there is no interest and no payments in the Interest Rate , less thanis 3. 5 the sba. We are doing everything we can to stand this economy back up. I got a report of our february unemployment numbers. They dropped 1. 3 in louisiana. We had the fourth Fastest Growing economy in the country when this hit. We had unemployment numbers that dropped seasonally 4. 3 . We were doing well. We want to get back there as soon as we can, but you will not restart the economy when you dont have the Hospital Capacity to render lifesaving care to thousands of louisianans. We are leaning forward in consulting with people in the private sector to figure out what we can do to best position us to move forward as quickly as possible, but these are difficult challenges, and the question was, do i think about them . Yes. I think about them. And we are working to do what we can now, and positioning ourselves to open the economy back up and get people back to work and get businesses open again as soon as we can, but the virus would determine when that is. That is just the fact of the matter. Look, i want to thank you. We dont have another press briefing scheduled. I can assume we will do one for sure on monday. You are invited to the Convention Center tomorrow. There will be more information forthcoming about that. If we have a need to brief you tomorrow or sunday, we will, and we will put out that notice and give you time to get here. Again, i want to thank those in louisiana who are working hard to comply with the stayathome order and social distancing and all the mitigation measures. I want to encourage those who are not to do better, and i ask people to lift one another up in prayer. Together we will get through this. Louisianans are strong, resilient people, and that will serve us well over the coming weeks and months. We are going to get through this. I have no doubt about that, but it will get worse before it gets better. We have the power to determine how much worse it gets. That is what i need people to understand, and that is what i need the members of the press to help with the messaging. That remains the most Important Message for people to get all across louisiana. There is actually hope in that. We are not consigned to some future we have no control over. We can do something. The sooner, the better. As you saw from the model. Thank you very much