Of tests that were positive was 5. 3 , which is encouraging. Have 61 newy, we do deaths to report today. You have been hearing me report similar numbers for a long time now. I do not want anybody to think that these are really numbers. These are people. This is very tragic. Forwardy much looking to the day when the number of deaths is zero. It is true as we reported last week that the number of deaths is higher than we would expect it to be, given the number of cases that we have and the rate of transmission. We are continuing to look at. Hat and figure out why that is currently, we have 1006 hundred 1056tients hospitalized patients hospitalized. Interestingly, today we look back to number five in the nation. We had slid down to six yesterday. We traded spots with rhode island today. Speaking of testing, the best ins that we had yesterday the White House Coronavirus task force telephone conference with the nations governors was the commitment that the federal. Overnment made native. Louisiana the task force will support our efforts in louisiana, starting in the month of may to reach 200,000 tests per month. That is a significant ramp up. All the way back to early march. To get to 200,000 tests in one month is going to be significant. It is also critically important because we need to have this testing and place so that we can monitor what is going on across every community. We also have new information on the department of Health Dashboard that breaks down information by gender. 57 percent of covid19 deaths have been among men. 3 among women interestingly, each has 50 of the cases. You can see this and other important information. The floor to questions, a couple of other things. One of which is, there is Severe Weather thing across louisiana that we want everybody to Pay Attention to. It could continue to the day, so please watch for that. Enhanced risk of Severe Weather, thunderstorms, flash flooding, hail, potentially tornadoes. We have had to make that announcement several times over the last several weeks. It is hitting north of louisiana. I and asking people to Pay Attention to that and t. Cell phone handy. Thewill get a warning about 20 80 on that cell phone. A warning about the tornado on that cell phone. It has helped to make the response more successful than it otherwise would have been. I want to thank all those individuals. The state level, we have been working with Prison Enterprises to produce enough Hand Sanitizer 48,000 16proximately ounce bottles. Donatedbil, for example 4600 gallons of isopropyl michael alcohol for our state and other states. Procter gamble and alexandria donated 60 gallons of glycerol. Haveton rouge, they donated 100 gallons of peroxide. We have received 2 million cotton masks from haynes, distributed to parishes based on population. Some of those were kept in case we need to do congress yet sheltering during the Hurricane Season or any other natural disaster. Very helpful with those masks. I think you were supporting one of those today, werent you . Parishes giving these masks out to the public. Each parish will have the ability to decide for itself how to distribute its masks, and obviously if you have the ability to make your own masks for you and your family, i hope you will do that and leave those masks at the paris level for those who dont have that ability. The Tencent Foundation has 400,000 in 95 masks for distribution into the Biomedical Research foundation of northwest louisiana. Ive said many times that prayer and faith are really important know you are the best group of people in louisiana. Many churches and places of worship have had to come up with creative ways to reach their parishioners as a result of this Public Health emergency, and many of them have done so, and im grateful for all of their hard work to do that in the work they are doing to help us fight against this disease. And i want to let you know that the times new orleans and the advocat in partnership with raising canes has created an online directive a legislative services, you will be able to find information on how to stream virtual services. You can get that information by nola. Com faith in the community. That is also where churches will directoryster on that. They want individuals to be able to find where they can find their services. Finally, there are a lot of people who are disappointed, and did notthem, that take place this year, however the roughly 2 million chervil impact of that tournament will still happen. Critically important for the state of louisiana and the new , so i wanted to call them out on that and just let them know how much we appreciate them. Its very generous. From the very beginning of this crisis, ive talked about how every person in louisiana has a role to play. We have a responsibility to stay home, to wear masks, in order to protect ourselves, our families, and some have a very critical role, obviously being on the front lines, healthcare workers, and they have been tremendous fashion all across the state of louisiana. Behalf of the entire state, i want to again thank them for their heroic work. My commitment obviously is the governor is to do everything i can to protect the people of louisiana in this Public Health emergency. We will continue to do that as best we can, guided by science and working with stakeholders across the spectrum. With that, we are going to get to a couple of questions from the public. I will take the first one and then ill ask the doctor to take the second one. We received a lot of questions this week about masks, which are critical to protect each other as we continue to work to on the spreadrve of covid19. Unfortunate, mass will be with. S for a long time kristen asked, at what age should children start Wearing Masks . Should daycare workers caring for infants and Young Children wear masks . Masks are recommended for every person over the age of two, unless that individual has reading challenges that make it where they should not wear masks. Mask or Face Covering should be worn indoors and outdoors everyone, anytime there have been others who are not members of their immediate household. This does include daycare children. And to the i will ask the doctor to come up and respond to a question from susan and then we will take your questions. Susan asks, please demonstrate how to correctly wear a mask and expand the importance of this. The governor has previously said that he and i wear masks when we are out and about in town separately. We also wear masks when we are working closely together with others. People at home cannot see, but your presser Wearing Masks as well. Mask, imear a cloth virusng the potential spreading to others. You are eliminating the likelihood that if anyone is asymptomatic or symptomatic, that we are shedding our storage other. Its important that we do this mutually. They are not designed to protect you, they are designed to protect everyone else. Wear one, and to its pretty important, because the way you wear a mask and make it more or less effective. If youre not wearing it we recommend you store it in a bag. I forgot a clear plastic bag. I have my mask folded such that the inside part of the mask is covering, is touching together. So im not exposing the part that is going to be on my face. It is over my ear, and critically, try to adjust it as little as possible, and importantly, the mask needs to cover my nose in my mouth. You need to make sure you got the right size mask, do a little bit of adjustment and measuring and make sure its not so loose that the mask is falling down constantly. Also make sure its not so tight that it will irritate you. The idea is to touch the mask as little as possible. Touch your face as little as possible. Next, youre taking off your mask, you need to wash your hands because you are now going to touch her face. Use a little bit of Hand Sanitizer to clean my hands, folded in half, the outside part of the mass, fold it one more time so it fits in my bag. Im putting the mask back in my bag, and then i can carry that with me without any problems. Im going to put the mask on, luckily im keeping mostly six feet away from all of you all. As the governor said, anytime you are around individuals who are not in your immediate household come indoors or outdoors, i want you to stay six feet away and better than that is wearing your mask as well. Its important to clean your mask every day, wash, dry, you can put them in your laundry, you can hand wash and dry them, but that is critical. If they get dirty during the day, you need to take it off and put on another mask. Gov. Lamont that was one of the haynes masks that we distributed almost 2 million of those around the state of louisiana. With that, we will take your questions. You said yesterday, to extend the order. Did you have encountered buys from your senior staff that are not part of the medical team . Looking at the data that came in across all of the criteria that we were looking for in ,erms of symptoms, cases hospitalizations, and then also knowing what the timeline is Going Forward with respect to test weing, 200,000 should reach in may and also the Contact Tracing capacity and all of that working together, and also knowing that louisiana is a hotspot in the state. If you recall, back when the president released his plan for reopening america, he indicated that may 1 was a good date and that it would work for a lot of states, but not hotspot states. There has not been a single conversation that i am aware of and maybe weeks now if youre talking about hotspots when you didnt talk about louisiana. Stretch. Nt a we were all disappointed because we were all hoping that when we sat down and looked at the 14 days worth of data that we would have improved to the point where phaseld safely move to one. That just wasnt the case. That involved a decision which i think led to it being unanimous with the senior look ats that when we how much of the economy we had left open in the louisiana to begin with, compared to some other states, that we already had considerable parts of our economy open. We reopen the nonemergency medical and surgical procedures, we had let retail open if they were not essential, but had been closed, and i was talking about bars and followedps, and we had all the guidance so that everything that was determined, and now it has been through three iterations of their listing Critical Infrastructure had been left open as well. Reasons, wehose felt the right thing to do was to continue to state the stayathome order for two more weeks, make sure we didnt have a hotspot popup until we had the ability to test it and so just, and these two weeks made sense from that perspective. States haver because of budget concerns have started furloughing state workers is that something you are considering for louisiana statewide, or is it something for individual is we good news for us will finish up the current fiscal year, as you will recall, excess insignificant the current year. I was a surplus, but that implies going backwards. So we are running a significant excess, we will have our meeting in the middle of may, i think around may 14 and we will figure forwhat that number is, but the year that ends on june 30, we are in good shape. Where the changes will likely come start july 1 and we have to have that meeting and that will inform the whole budget process, but that excess that we have along with surplus from the Previous Year will put louisiana in a much better position than other states. The other states, some of them have different fiscal years. Some of them go from january 1 two to simmer 31st. Some go from july 1 to june 30 , the fiscal year october 1 through september 30. We are wrapping up one year and preparing for the next, so thats one of the reasons we havent had to take those actions, along with the fact that weve had surplus from the Previous Year in excess to the current year. How many specific tests also you mentioned the possibility to Start Testing asymptomatic people. Address that timeline . Is 200,000. R that was the plan initiated i want to say last wednesday. Facteen approved, and in when nate made the announcement yesterday in that video telephone conference, i think every states plan has been approved. We expect starting next week or the first week in may, which is next week, that we will start to see weekly allocations will increase over time but will get us to that 200,000. We are talking about those test kits. , but test tubes ,nd reagent, which by the way these are things that have been hardest to get. So the 200,000 that we said we need, they will be providing those to us starting next month. Is that in addition to the current capacity we already have . It will be in addition to what we can get from other sources. The truth is, if you get 200,000 from the federal government, we wont need very many from other sources. The additional testing we will do might involve things like the serology testing for antibodies. But really, this support were getting from the federal government is critically important. Yesterday we probably heard this discussed at the president s press conference last night. They released a blueprint, plan for testing which basically is guidance to the states or things that we should be looking at when it comes to testing. Beenoctor had already working on our plan, the guidance we got from the federal government dovetails pretty well with what were planning to do here in louisiana. As you mention, for the first time, the federal government, at least to my knowledge, dr. Birx started talking about the need to test asymptomatic people and the reason is we have a better understanding on a couple of things. One is that there is a significant percentage of people out there who are either asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, yet they are covid19 positive in producing shedding bowers, i should say, which means they are contagious. As we seek to keep a lid on this and keep case number as low as possible, and in transitioning to testing each individual, especially when you have additional capacity to do it is going to be critically important. Is, andnd part of that this is somewhat of an , is thatn on my part they now believe that these have more accuracy with respect to individuals who are asymptomatic. Initially, what we were told, and we were told this for quite a long time, is that asymptomatic individuals would getting ater risk for false result and the false result would mean they were negative when in fact they were positive. You probably have some more information on that so will not i will ask you to come up and share it. Along the lines of what the governor were saying, we have a lot more information, just looking at data in our own hands , there are significant numbers of people who dont have symptoms that are shedding virus, and most concerning, we talk about places where people are living in close proximity, Nursing Homes, longterm care facilities, prisons, and the like. What weve seen at the cdc doing investigations in Nursing Homes in seattle, a homeless shelter in seattle, though studies indicated that at the time of the initial outbreak, there were some value to identifying that there were a group of folks who they could identify viruses in who had no symptoms. Some never went on to develop symptoms and some did develop symptoms over time. How can we reduce the likelihood that someone is shedding and unaware of it and then continue to spread covid in that congregants setting in that close living environment. We think there is more and more evidence now that a symptom that testing will be helpful for those individuals. Somebody test negative, everything we said before still applies. They could still be in that period of early incubation and not yet shedding virus. We are working on determining how frequently we would need to test. Those people who test negative in a congregant setting to make sure that as someone develop symptoms, theyre not given a false sense of reassurance and saying im negative so i can just go on about my day. We want to make sure its clear that we need to continue to test those individuals to make sure they dont develop, certainly shedding and then once they are symptomatic they would be tested anyway. Talking about those areas where we think people will come in the closest proximity. Risk is much lower in the general public because the likelihood youre going to be around such a large number of people that may have never been exposed to the virus, social distancing, in settings where people have to live close to each other, there may be a benefit to doing that testing. There are still many facilities that do not have any covid cases. I dont think i would start going out and testing entire facilities that have no indication that covid has reach their doors. There will be testing resources coming to the state, but 200,000 is not enough to test 4. 7 million louisiana ands. We need to make sure those individuals, especially the most vulnerable individuals to covid19 get as much testing and warning as possible. Yesterday we talked about the yale study, did you choose to look at that . I have not looked at that. They are saying the deaths have been way underreported. A similar study said they agreed with that, it may be as low as how can there be such a lag . Would a lot of the stores are hating on is that overall, covid related deaths or a new classification that is increasing. It t know how much of heart attacks, strokes, or just that there are individuals who are dying and theyre putting in this unclassified category. To my knowledge we havent seen where there is an unclassified group, but i think with these researchers are usually doing is saying there is a group of people dying unclassified, there are large number of yes that were not classified. I cannot say with any certainty, i can tell you that in louisiana, there are policies that make that less likely. We do encourage our corridors and physicians and providers whenever possible to test somebody they suspect may have died of covid while they are still able to come within that three days they are with the body. That will give us some testing data that will tell us right off the bat if they were actually positive or negative. Weve given corners and physicians the ability if we cannot test that body during the three days that we have the individual, to say this was a probable covid related death. After looking through the number of deaths, is Something Like 59 or 60 probable covid related deaths, in comparison with the larger number that we have in confirmed yes. In louisiana we are tying to take steps to really be as inclusive as possible and measure how much impact this has had. They said the louisiana testing rate was higher than other states. Texas is starting to reopen and none of the states are reopening have met the criteria from the white house. I guess im questioning why are we i understand we are protecting Public Health. I will give you my Public Health answer per the criteria the white house put out were develop with the cdc and others who were looking at the same things we thought were relevant. People were tested and found to have covid and few were hospitalized for covid. We are fortunate that we have been able to have a significant amount of testing. We want to do even more than that to put us in a better place. But those core measures, theres not too many states at her saying we want to look at something different. That is what youre going to look at for covid. ,hink the white house proposal we look at that data, we dont see that we yet have what we need to safely be able to have people reopen and go back to aspects of the private sector. A scenario for testing people in the general population . What i will say is that any test we do in a medical setting, actually the way that test works or how much we can rely on it really depends on what we are testing for, how frequent that is in the community. So the longer we continue doing what were doing, the less covid there is in the community, the harder it is to make that judgment about that false positive or false negative test. We can rely on a lot of those results. As you get fewer and fewer people worry that the chance of what im seeing is a false negative or positive. Over time we are increasing our capacity to test many what people. We want to focus on the people in high risk setting it at the same time the amount of covid in our community should continue to decrease so it will be something we have to look at over time. Continue to increase his looking at the serology of people who have been exposed to the borrowers have developed an antibody. We will want to see more and more those tests deployed. 1. I did want to make, this gets lost in the public sometimes, lets assume its a negative test for covid19 and that individual does not have covid19. Doesnt mean that individual will be positive the next day. That, aed to understand negative test doesnt mean you dont have it and youre never going to get it. If he test negative today and develop symptoms tomorrow, you need to go get tested again, because that is just the nature of how these tests work. Saw wanted to share that with you. With that, i will resume my questions. [indiscernible] the president told me this afternoon that he didnt go you had been for as forthcoming with understands you might have called mayors and other is that something that surprises you . Gov. Edwards it surprises me and disappoints me, because last week i met here in person with both the speaker and the theident, talked about white house guidelines that we will be following in order to figure out whether we transition this week to phase one or not. I told him exactly what that process would look like and that i cannot make any commitments at that time, but that i would follow the science and look at the data and either we satisfy the criteria, or we dont. And then have a conversation yesterday before coming into i think it is unfortunate that he said that, and i will be happy to talk to him into the speaker some more about that, but there wasnt anything as far as im concerned that shouldve been a surprise or call him unaware, because we made a decision based on the 14 days. The decision i made last week when we had met. Legislators are questioning why if you made the decision sunday night and just wanted to get confirmation that the white house would change its guidelines monday, why you when it seem like things were shifting in the wrong direction for reopening. Gov. Edwards i had conference we had week with two calls, i had a separate meeting with a speaker and the president and we slain the criteria that we would be using when we would make a decision and when we would be announcing it. In advance of announcing the decision, i got back on the phone with the speaker and the president. If thats not enough communication for them, then i will call them and figure out how we do that differently Going Forward. Governor, in an interview earlier, the mayor said in regard to 2021, something we have to think about, is that something that is obviously so far down the road, is that something that just has to be decided at a later time . Gov. Edwards first of all, i didnt hear the question and i didnt hear her response. Is farly mardi gras 2021 enough out that we dont know enough today to hazard a guess as to what the circumstances are going to be at that point in time. I was inclined to answer questions about what this file is going to look like, so im certainly not going to go to next fall and january and february. There will be plenty of time to take those questions up once we know more. A better time to address those questions. Order that goes into effect this friday, if a restaurant is going to have are bathrooms going to be available . Ive had questions about that. She saying hes not going to allow that. What is your reaction to that . Gov. Edwards first of all, it is always within a local mayors prerogative to be more restrictive if he or she chooses to be. Concernsave particular that im not aware of, or it may just be the urban nature of new hasans and how she particular concerns about how that might look and function and so forth with outdoor seating and so forth. Restrooms, ito the will have to get with my team and talk about it. That is not something we have had a discussion of, and obviously we are encouraging people to wash their hands is frequently as possible. So we may need to go back and revisit. What we were trying to do was create just one more option, and that is for individuals who are going to a restaurant to pick up a meal, if there is an outdoor table where they can sit at and consume that meal, they can do so before they leave. Just to try to make it a little more convenient for people and do so in a setting that Health Care Professionals believe is much, much safer. Outdoors, the risk, especially if you are a safe distance away from the closest people and you are not having people wait on you, so you wouldnt have an employee bringing things back and forth from the kitchen going from one table to the other in contacting different individuals. So thats what we were trying to do. Sos one of the reasons we would have an opportunity to take questions and get those things clarified before friday. We will take a look at that. The word mention bathroom, it is still recommended that people wash their hands with soap and water as frequent as possible, so that is something we will have to look at. Governor, on the unemployment numbers, is there any concern pleading itse is Unemployment Trust fund at a rate thats going to make it either run out out or be problematic to refill . Gov. Edwards there is always at trouble when you have a situation like this. We started out with a Million Dollars in the trust fund. 900 we are still over million in it, and it gets to write around 750 million, there is a reduction in the weekly benefit that gets paid, and also the Training Program is discontinued and you have different thresholds like that. So it certainly is something that we are watching and forerned about and looking things that we can do to shore up the trust fund in the short term and looking at different options that we may have, none of which are terribly appealing, but some obviously better than others. Are there any local parish officials with reopening plans that are less restrictive than the order which i would take to mean is they are in violation of the order . [indiscernible] the answer to the second question is, and obviously the guidance that came from secretary mnuchin was such that it can only be spent on expenditures related to covid19. It cannot be spent to make up lost revenue. It cannot be used for that purpose. But now we are working with our congressional delegation and the National Governors association in connection with the white what to try to figure out congress may create that may retroactively make that finding more flexible, because if they do that, then its going to be something that governors can take advantage of. Billion, it was the intention of congress that that go to local governments. Faithful withe what that architecture looked like coming out of congress were 45 went to local government and 55 would stay with the state. But we are looking to see if there is official flexibility granted because right now, quite honestly, local government is theyesenting expenditures, need the funding to offset loss of revenue. That is not an acceptable use. So we havent made any decisions on that yet. Im sorry, your first question . I havent heard of that, and certainly thats not the way it works. A local official who has the authority wants to do something that is more restrictive than my orders, they can do that, and that has been done in some cases. But its not up to a local official to be less restrictive. We just crossed over a million cases, one third of the cases around the world. Is there anything about being closer to a vaccine . Gov. Edwards the working assumption that i have is that every day we are closer to a vaccine. One is coming, i just dont know when. I did see something, i wasnt able to watch the segment, scrolled on the bottom of the areen, that said there seven human trials actually underway right now. Successg to pray for with a vaccine that will prove safe and prove effective, and ready as soon as possible. I know from conversations the white houses had going back several weeks now that were not crossing that before another year or so. That is one of the real tricky things about trying to get back to normal. When you have a virus that is so contagious and so deadly and you dont have a vaccine and you dont have an approved therapeutic treatment, unless one just came out, i dont think the fda has approved a therapeutic treatment for this virus either. That is really what makes this so different than other things that we deal with and make it so hard, and it is why we try very hard to keep the cases down, increase our Testing Capacity and Contact Tracing and all that sort of stuff, because we dont yet have that vaccine. Have you heard from people whether Small Business people or , midsize businesses saying i cant hold out . Yes, i have filed for ppp, but the future just looks so bleak, i just cant hang . I know there is no point in getting my business up and going again . Have you heard from them . Have you had any kind of contact with those type of Business Owners . The task forces we have, the commission then has task forces 15 under it, and that is every economic sector in the state, obviously we are getting reports from them, and some individuals have expressed that. We are trying to make sure people are aware of the array of things that are out there that could potentially help them. Whether it is the ppp, the program we have here at the state level, a Loan Guarantee program that we have put together, making sure they know their employees can receive Unemployment Compensation until such time as they can go back to work and so forth. But it is a very difficult time. There is no doubt about that. Especially for businesses of a certain type that their businesses have been interrupted. If you own a hotel right now, it is extremely hard. All of those things related to tourism. And so many restaurants, for example, are related to tourism. This is an extremely difficult time. I happen to be someone who is optimistic, and i know we hear the president say this. I believe that we are going to bounce back quicker than some people might think, but we are just not there yet. We have some work to do. But what i also know is if you try to forge a path forward too quickly and cases spike again and look Something Like they looked several weeks ago here in louisiana, you actually do more damage and more lasting damage to our economy than if we try to get it right to begin with and keep those cases down and then reopen in a way that can be sustained over time and can continue to grow. Because if you keep going back and forth between hitting the accelerator and the brakes, i think that is the worst thing that can happen. It is sort of like and i think this analogy was used at the national level. This is not a light switch where you go from dark to complete light. It is a dimmer switch, and thats is what we are trying to get right in balancing the need to reopen the economy as we can with the imperative to protect Public Health. And those things are obviously somewhat in conflict, and striking the right balance can be difficult. In striking the balance, there are going to be good people on either side who will say you went too fast or too slow. That is why we decided to take the guesswork out of it and apply the science, see whether it met the criteria. But using that approach we think gives us the best chance to not have to hit the brakes again and to bring everything to a screeching halt and allow us to hopefully move forward in a way that can be sustained while protecting Public Health. There will not be well, we are not going to schedule a briefing tomorrow. That could change, and if it does, we will certainly let you know. Then we will advise you when the next briefing will be, which i suspect will be thursday at 2 30. Thank yall again for coming. I want to thank the people of louisiana, because they have been incredibly strong throughout this and have done a tremendous job in getting us from where we had the fastest case growth in the country and really in the world according to dr. Wagner using the johnshopkins data, to where we are in a much better place today. And if we can continue this for a while longer, i am very confident that we are going to meet the criteria to transition to phase one while we have the Testing Capacity and the Contact Tracing capacity in order to ensure that we can continue down that road in a way that is safe for the public. So i do want to continue to express my appreciation to the people of louisiana. I know this is tough, but i also know that we are strong and resilient, and we are going to get through this. So thank all of you and god bless. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] wednesday, Federal Reserve chair ron powell talks about the state of the economy in a virtual newscast. Live coverage begins at 2 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Television has changed since cspan began 41 years ago, but our Mission Continues to provide an unfiltered view of government. Already this year we have brought you primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process, and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or listen on her free radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily washington journal program, or through our social media feed. Cspan, created by private industry, americas Cable Television companies, as a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. On tuesday, Connecticut Governor ned lamont gave a briefing on his states response to the coronavirus. He updated the states