Transcripts For CSPAN Kentucky Gov. Beshear Holds Coronavirus Briefing 20240713

I know it looks a little bit different today. And that is because we are over at our Emergency Management Operations Center. This is the area where so much of the work that we do in response to battling covid19 and also the work we do responding to natural disasters and other challenges that we face. Some of it so much of it happens here. It gives us an opportunity to show you a little bit of the inside of our response. Inside of our response. And i want to start today by introducing the head of Emergency Management here in kentucky. Give him an opportunity to welcome you to the center. s name is Michael Dossett and he has been doing a great job. Michael . Michael thank you, governor. Welcome to the state eoc. We christened the building in 2013. We have about 25,000 square feet. We are currently at level three for this operation. We are under unified command. We have 100 personnel working. If you have an opportunity to see some of the floor, they are spread out over a number of building so we can social distance and do our work. We basically do management. For this event, we are in support of our department of Public Health, also corelated colocated with us, our chair one partners, the national guard. They have the joint Operations Center here. We work in concert with all cabinets. Every cabinet in State Government is representativ represented on the floor. We work shifts seven days a week. We assist in procurement for ppe, obviously that is a strong issue throughout the nation, certainly for our state. We also do resource management. We are in support of all 120 counties. Thank you, governor. Gov. Beshear michael has been an invaluable part of this team, as has all of his staff, in everything from securing ppe, to coordinating our kroger testing sites. We appreciate his work. And he is renowned across the inntry for his experience running an Emergency Management center and in responding. We are very grateful. We start every day by saying we will get through this, we are going to get through it together. Because every single day we remind ourselves of how we are going to get through it. And that is by following the 10 steps to defeating the coronavirus. We talk about it every day because it has got to become part of our muscle memory. Even when we are able to be healthy at work, we have to remember that we start being healthy at home. Healthy at home is still the key in social distancing and reducing your contacts to making sure defeat this virus. It is going to become even more important. As we have a gradual and slow phase reopening of our economy. When we do that, we increase the contacts that we have. We have to make sure when we are not at work or at the grocery store, we are not getting supplies that we need, we are otherwise at home. So healthy at work doesnt stop being healthy at home. Social distancing. We are in a different building today. Making sure that even while we are here, any meetings that we are doing, doing as much telework as possible, but still maintaining that social distance is critical. Avoiding crowds and gatherings. We are going to talk about when we can ease that a little. But a crowd is still going to be dangerous until we are further virus. N defeating this it is going to be something that again, we need to continue to avoid. Even as we are able to phase back to work, remember, you dont need to have an in person meeting because everybody has a telephone. Lets make sure we continue to think in this way. Knowing when to seek care. Kentuckians have done a great job at this. Lets just make sure that if you are sick for another reason and it serious, you do get some help. We have seen some, maybe for fear of covid19 or for the better reason of wanting to to make sure there is a bed available for that person who is suffering from the coronavirus that has not gone in when they are seriously a. We need to make sure that you do. Now that we are starting to open up health care, we know that we have the capacity to take what we are going to see, make sure you see your doctor if you need to. Covid19. Kw. Gov. It has been important for us to be healthy at home. It will also be the main source of information for being healthy at work. Services. Hands and if you have been in your house for a period of time and we will be able to transition to other areas, it will be really important. Washing your hands, cleaning surfaces there. Applying for benefits. Wehave gone from yesterday, have gotten our unemployment claims from march down to 37,000 from over 100,000. They are now down to 29,000 just in the course of today. Annow we have helped additional 8000. These are the ones left at that either have Identity Verification issues or some other real issues too. But this is where the focus is going to be this week. Also make sure you sign up for medicaid, really important for the providers that are helping you out, whether it is with the coronavirus or anything else. Prioritize your Mental Health. Do not travel. And report noncompliance. Stepsalways have the 10 plus one more that is absolutely critical. Fill out your census. This is going to be absolutely critical to our rebuilding. It is how many federal dollars come into kentucky. And the federal dollars are just based on our population, filling out a very basic survey. For every single one of you that fills out the survey, the state will get dollars we can use to help people out. Youve been so generous, you have sacrificed so much. It is that same generosity and sacrifice that i hope leads you to fill out the census. And we are so close to being in the top 10. I would like to make that happen. Once we are in the top 10, let same even a little bit higher. And then i want to mention something that i mentioned a book yesterday that i think some a fourth grade class had ascend in. I do want to thank during these times the thousands of letters that we have gotten from people across kentucky. Talking about their situation and encouraging us to make the right decisions and understanding that we are all in this together. And the sacrifices that we make help other people. So ive got a letter from harper. And harper wrote me a letter to me personally. I want to read the letter but then i want to talk about what she did. Harper says, thank you for all youve done for us. It must be hard with some people complaining. Harper. Art of the job, thank you for trying and working your hardest. Im happy with whatever you want all of us to do because im on your side. And i like that. But this is a copy of her allowance. She sent one dollar to the Team Kentucky fund to help other people. Think about that. That is truly special and seeing that type of response out of our kids absolutely shows me that we cannot only beat this virus, but we can come out better people, stronger people on the other side, which is going to help us with everything from the economy to how we treat one another. Learn ae are going to little new sign lay which. But first, something i missed yesterday. For the first time, i missed social media yesterday. And i didnt believe it when my staff told me afterwards. They checked the tape and they were right. Every day we try to show this because all of us trying to do the right thing, even when it is not mandatory, is how we make sure that we set the right example. We get other people to follow. And remember how successful we are in addressing this virus, how successful we are at being healthy at work, whether we can continue to do that, whether we have to pull back, it is all dependent on how many of us follow the guidance. When just a couple folks can mess things up for everybody else, we want to make sure we are recognizing those doing it right. So here are our hashtags. We are also going to start healt hyatwork. Especially as we move into those phases. Here is a little bit of what we have seen that should have been shown yesterday. The good work out there that people are doing. So ive mentioned all of leroux countys First Responders have a now, for i believe almost a month, been wearing their green Team Kentucky shirts. These are folks that are on our front lines doing work. And just seeing them every day taking so much pride, not just in what they do, but in what you do too. And being grateful but encouraging, of making sure you are healthy at home, and that we are resilient enough to continue to do what it takes to defeat this virus. Remember, their safety relies on it. All right. This is taylor, of course, working on nontraditional instruction. And keeping busy in different ways in her home. Some kids. Kids are going through a tough time too. We need to make sure we are there for them. But i know parents are also adjusting to a very new normal while our kids are not in school. We know, we now have a study out, but we know that the sacrifice we are making, what our kids are making and our parents are making, is working. Weve got to keep it up. In a phase reopening of health care and ultimately of the economy. Weve got to do this right. I believe we can do it right. Being flexible and always making sure that our decisions are having the right results. This is staff coming together, even though they are not physically together. To communicate with technology, it is very important. To feel a little bit of community. It helps with our Mental Health too. I believe this is wilshire pantry. Meals forre preparing First Responders. We have seen this all over kentucky. ,eople that have facilities doing what they would normally do, are going through a tough time. Light lighting their headquarters up green. Lost,ognize those weve to show compassion, and to remind in this instance the people of frankfurt that they are not alone. And then i love seeing this too. Now some can get a green light that is out there, but they still want to show their compassion so we have seen all types of different ways that people have been a part been apart, even though they dont have that regular opportunity. Lets keep doing it. Even when we are able to get closer to a new normal, we are still going to have those out there that need our help and need our compassion. All right. Bit,ve talked a little and this is going to lead into the sign language we want to learn today, and weve talked a little bit about our test of humanity not being over. We talked about the tests having three parts. First is sacrifice. And we learned that before. Andsecond is patience planning. That is really where we are right now. And the third is perseverance. Remember, it is everything we sacrificed, pausing the economy, doing what it takes. Right now, planning and patience, we are going to lay out a plan today. And perseverance, making sure we get it done. Making sure that until there is a vaccine, we do what it takes to get it done. So today, virginia is going to patience. Lanning and planning and patience. Ok. One last time. Planning and patience. Thank you. Start our lets update today with testing. Testing has gone well today in all four of our drivethrough locations we do with kroger. Those are the direct updates i get each day. They are not closed yet, but louisville had over 264 tested. Lexington, over 242. Bowling green, over 200. Notes borough, over 231. We have to make sure that in all these locations, that we get all of these tests filled. We are going tuesday through thursday in owensboro. Friday in bowling green. We are going through friday in louisville and in lexington. Our states our sites next week with kroger is we are doing a second week for louisville and lexington and bowling green. And our new site is in ashland. So ashland will start tuesday of next week. You can start signing up for these slots right now. Portals are open. We want to make sure that you have an opportunity to sign up. It is open to the entire public. Increasing our testing requires that not only we get people signed up, but you show up. And i want to thank all of our leaders in warren county. They have seen at least a portion that have signed up not showing up, and they are doing a lot to push out in their community. Wanted to take advantage of each and every test. And we appreciate that. Lexington is actually monitoring it during the day and able to push additional people there at the end of the day. That was their innovation and we appreciate that. Be our four will kroger sites next week. And remember, when you look at ashland especially, it is regional. If you are in any of the counties around it, if you are in close driving dishes its distance, sign up and get online. This is just part of all the testing that is going on all around the state. We have more testing locations before, and we believe we will have new testing locations coming online as soon early next week. Many of these now, we are working with local Health Departments or others, where we can provide the testing and they can provide the people. These are all drivethrough testing. Testing hashazards gone up. Their capacity has gone up. Weve had over i think they have had over 130 in the last two days. They can accommodate more. If you are in that area, make sure you sign up. Isray, the county hospital, doing tests and they and Christian County of course have been doing it for a while. They have additional capacity still. And we had it we added a couple yesterday. Oldham county and in maysville. Lets make sure that we get people signed up. So our big news today that we are going to talk about is healthy at work. And giving some more information out. Weve got to start healthy at work with talking about the 10 rules of being healthy at work. Those 10 rules, which you will see in just a second, are rules that apply to everybody. And they are different, and they are supposed to be different. They are not the normal rules that you would operate a business under because we are trying to operate it in the midst of a Worldwide Health pandemic. Remember, for any business in any phase, continue telework where possible. The telework has worked for somebody, and they still are productive, dont bring somebody in just for them. To be in. Phased return to work. Matee this in the plans of of major manufacturers like toyota and ford. And ought to apply to everybody else. Remember you are probably not going to see the same amount of customers. If you are a forward facing business, when you have an opportunity to open up. Lets make sure we are phasing appropriately which will better enable you to meet the cdc guidelines. Onsite temperature and health checks. I know this is going to be new, and to some, it may be difficult. But it is the way that we ensure that the workplace is safe and we ensure somebody who may be infectious at that time, and that we can type can detect, does not ultimately infect others at the work. Workforce. Ect your but also any customers or any then interact with you. Universal masks. This is employees. If you are working inside at a facility, doctors talked about this, this is how we do this. Its different, but this is how we do this and we reduce the spread, even though your contacts are going to go from 3, 4, too many more. Answered another industry and a other industries will require other ppe, depending how close they are to each other. We will be coming out without guidance. Close common areas. We cant do all the things to spread people out and then have a break room where everything ash everyone comes together. Enforcing social distancing. It seems that any Business Needs to have staff management Walking Around ensuring social distancing is being followed. It is not going to be an excuse and it cannot be an excuse to say, we told people what they should do but they didnt do it. Limit facetoface meetings. Sanitize or hand wash stations. Special accommodations. This one is important. This is about many different folks, it is about those who may not be able to find childcare, but it is also about folks that are the most vulnerable. Over 60 with heart, lung or kidney disease. We need everybody to be really thoughtful and make special accommodations for those that are most vulnerable. Bringing somebody back who could be very vulnerable when you have a phasedin plan. You need to make sure that you are taking care of those folks. And finally, you need a testing plan. We are working on having the connections where businesses know where they can send someone to immediately get tested. This is important because if we are going to be able to do this, even with an increased number of contact, we have to be able to test anybody who shows up and has a temperature, and then we have to be able to Contact Trace throughout that business. So this is the piece that is going to be really a partnership between local Health Departments and the state, and business to make sure we can do it and do it right. Today, we are going to lay out in very general in may phased approach about when some things can start , provided they can meet these top 10 rules, and industry specific requirements that we are going to work with those industries on and they are going to have in advance. Those conversations have been going on. And this is not onerous, it is required to deal with the coronavirus. Are industries and associations have been very positive about wanting to Work Together and about wanting it to be safe. So, lets start going through it. It starts on may 11. What we are going to do is every 10 days or so, we are going to be able to add some other areas. The first is manufacturing. Obviously we have had a lot of essential manufacturing that is out there. This will allow nonessential ifufacturing to come back they have the appropriate ppe, if they do the temperature checks, if they do it in a phased, gradual approach, and if they continue to allow telework for areas that can do it. The second piece is construction. A lot of construction has been a central too. But this will open up construction and also set some uniform rules throughout to make sure people are being protected. The next is vehicle or vessel dealerships. So auto and boat. We are working on the last pieces of that direct guidance. There has been a lot of good plans there and for example, in just how things will change, test drives, you will be by yourself. If you are going and trying to purchase a car. Limited numbers of people inside dealership. And the whole process from which you say i will buy it, and Everything Else that goes on from credit to all the rest, it is a process that will be very different, very, very different moving forward. Professional services. A lot of professional services have been able to operate remotely, and to the extent you can, you shed. Again, this is a gradual phase in where they will be able to return 50 of staff. Remember, that should not just be one of every two people. If youve got an area that telework works, if you can do 30 and operate at your top capacity, you ought to. Peopler, if you have coming in just to come in and the coronavirus spreads and we do contact tracing, it may send multiple people into selfquarantine. So weve got to do the smart, not just on our end, but on the end of others. All right, horseracing. We were able to come to an agreement yesterday, specifically with the group that is going to start. They are going to start accepting horses and start accepting folks on the backside of the track on may 11. There will be no fans for racing. And i will tell you that this is the one of the most detailed plans that we have seen about specific security checks everybody has to go through and be temperature checked, to masking, to have a limited group that is there. Finally, groomings. Pet grooming or boarding, apparently it came up there also. A plan that was submitted to us that will be part of the requirements where there is no person to person contact and how this is done. So this will be may 11. One of the main reasons we were able to do some of these as we were able to work with these industries in the midst of this virus with many parts of manufacturing being essential in construction being essential. It has given us the experience where we believe we have the right guidelines to do it safely. Contact,e very low and or have it provided plans that we could work with. This is may 11. Lets go to the next one. All right. May 20. We have both retail, this is many of our forward facing businesses that will be able to open in a reduced capacity, along with our houses of worship, where we will where they will be able to do in Person Services again at a reduced capacity. We are working on that. It is likely to be a percentage of the occupancy that is allowed. All of this is contention on being able to keep social distancing, on the type of cleaning that needs to occur, and what our hope is is that on the 20th, what it will allow is just the Worship Service itself. And then we will be working with faith leaders. We have already been talking with them and encouraging, but working with them to see a gradual schedule where we can go from the one experience to some of the other pieces that typically happen, like sunday school, for instance. That right now would create a very different contacts. So lets start here and then lets have a good dialogue where we can work with those that run our houses of worship to get a plan to be able to do more as we go. We have may 25. And provided the virus is where we think it will be at that stage, we are going to be able to do some more things. First, we believe by may 25, using social distancing, masking where necessary, we will be able to allow 10 or less social gatherings. I know we have all been cooped thisou want to see is an opportunity to potentially get there. We want you to know that we think this is possible. But it is all contingent on all of us doing this right. On making sure that we dont see a spike in the virus. But there is at least a light. I hope you see it at the end of the tunnel, where we can get more. Er a little bit and then barbers, salons, cosmetology, businesses and Similar Services we see on the 25th. Now, i know that there are some things that are not included up there. Just because you are not included up there, it might just be that with all the Different Industries and associations, we to. Not enlisted you a couple things that will not be in phase one that we want to work directly with associations and industries to talk about. Number one is restaurants. This is hard on two ends. Number one, seeing how the virus spreads. It is hard to have a mask on when you eat. Number two, i know it is hard on the restaurant and. If it was based on limited capacity with the margins that they have to make that work, i know that might not be for everybody. We want to work with you in the industry to try to figure out how to do this and how to do this safely. I know we only want to do it if we have a safe experience. Another we want to be in phase two is gyms. Movie theaters, campgrounds, youth sports. We hope in this summer, and we dont know if it would be june or perhaps early july, we hope we will be able to do some youth sports. It depends on how the virus reacts to changing temperatures and the rest. It cant be in phase one. But we do have hope. Public pools are not in phase one and will not be in phase two. The ability, even when we are able to expand groups that can get together, a public pool we will never be able to contain that to the size we need. I know people look forward to it, i know it is important in the summer, but that will spread the coronavirus and it would prevent us from doing all of this. Summer camps. Unless we see Something Different in the data, certainly not in phase one. It is going to be hard to have it in phase two. It would not it would be nice to have summer camps. We will show you a visual tomorrow. We cannot do this reopening if we had it the last one is really hard. We are not going to be able to do daycare in phase one. Thats hard. I know its hard. But heres the best example i have for you and we will show you graphically tomorrow. Right now, if im at home with my family and im healthy at home, theres four of us. So ive got a four contacts if i myself. If i go to work and i work with 10 other people that have the same number of contacts, i go to for to potentially 44. I hope following this guidance that we cut that down. But if one of my kids goes to a day care with 30 other kids, each of which is having at least one parent going to work, and having 44 more contacts, we get all of that back. So we go from a controlled amount of contacts, to almost an exponential growth. I know this is hard. But if we allowed it right now, we cannot even do this. So were going to have to look for solutions. We are going to have to work at hopefully a june solution to that. But i want to be transparent, i know it is going to make it even this difficult. But if we did it right now, we cannot do this. So i hope people will stick with us and work with us, see this as a way forward. See this as truly being able to see steps being taken, which they are. I hope everybody also sees that these are cautious steps that will be done with strict compliance. And i would not be suggesting these if i did not think that we could not do them safely. And if it proves that we cannot do any of them safely, it is always subject to pause. We cannot allow ourselves to have that second spike that we see in the philadelphia versus st. Louis. Im not going to let us have that spike. When we see it coming, we will do what we have to to adjust, and i know everybody is with us on that. So just a little bit of an outline on where we are going. Again, there is going to be need to be a lot more detail. I will give you an example for timing. For the may 11 groups, i will have the final, from our end, recommended requirements tomorrow. We will turn them around and get them to associations. The chamber has been working really well with us on this. We hope to have them final. So that everybody will have a week to get ready. And all of this allows people to get ready. Because if you cant get the masks or the other ppe you need, you cant get the sanitizer oars handwashing stations, you cant open. Again, we cant, regardless of the reason, not have an unsafe environment simply because it is difficult to get what is necessary. I know we are working on providing on trying to create the private sector is trying to create a supply chain for sanitizers. Are distillers have done a good job. They have a lot more sanitizer that they can get out. We showed you the video yesterday of how you can make a mask. So lets make sure that we get those things done. And if you are excited about this and you are ready, or if you are a little nervous, these masks are going to become more and more important. One of the ways we can stop a spike, even having more contact, and it is a way that if you think we are moving too fast, that you can make sure you are protecting yourself and everybody else is too. Alright, lets move into our numbers for today. I want to reserve enough time for questions since we have outlined that. Reporting 184 new cases of the coronavirus. Around where right we believe the plateau is, up one day, down another. Some are still trickling in that would have been reported over the weekend, or monday. But again, we are not seeing an escalation day over day. Which means we are either at the top, on the plato, or we could potentially be declining. We wont know that until we are into it. Total number of tested, 54,101. 1359. Alized, currently, 325 kentuckians. In the icu, 636. Currently 176. That is up. Lets make sure we are thinking about those people. 1668. That have recovered, also up and we are glad to see that. New cases by county, 60 in jefferson. 50, warren. That is why we are there. And it is why we loop we will be there next week as well. Davis, 16. Kenton, six. Fayette, four. Allen, campbell, graves, just a man, muilenburg, and simpson, three aps. Two, butler. Edmondson, grayson, and wayne, breckenridge, clark, has still, floyd, hart, henderson, laurel, mccracken, mclean, munro, oldham, spencer, trigg, and woodford, and we are tracking down four of those cases. We have had a tougher day in terms of deaths. We have had a couple days where it was lower and a lot lower than we had seen. But today we have lost 10 people. 10 new individuals. 10 kentuckians that were loved by their families and their communities to this coronavirus. 10 is the number we dont like to see. This continues to especially take those that are most vulnerable from us. In theinues especially Senior Living facilities, to be as deadly as we were told that this virus could be. Again,hat we have lost, are more than an age and a gender. And that is the information we have. 58yearold male from jefferson. 56yearold male from oren. 94yearold male from jefferson. 96yearold male from grayson. 94yearold male from jackson. 72yearold male from jefferson. 94yearold female from hopkins. 84yearold male from jefferson. 66yearold female from jefferson. Female fromarold grayson. And all of in all of these instances, people that would have still been with us, at least we believe that but for virus. Lets make sure we light our homes and institutions up green tonight to remember these 10 new kentuckians weve lost. And everybody else weve lost along the way. After making the adjustments and audits that we do every day, our total number of cases officially is 4539. That includes lab confirmed, 4538, and one probable case. Total deaths, 235. That is lab confirmed, 234 and one probable case. We are breaking it out to be fully transparent in what those numbers are. Race and ethnicity and ethnicity information. White. Ases, race, 74. 62 13. 6 7 black or africanamerican. 6. 68 asian. 4. 88 multiracial. About 91 is nonhispanic. And 9 hispanic. On deaths, 78. 90 white. 18. 13 africanamerican. 1. 96 asian. 1 multiracial. Deaths, 91. 5 nonhispanic. And 1. 5 hispanic. Now, there are days where we get to talk about individuals that we have lost, where they are not just a name and a county. They are not just a county and an age but we get to provide a name. Yesterdays was a little emotional to me. So thank you for bearing with me on that. The way i felt yesterday is the way that countless people feel about each and everyone of the individuals that have been lost. Dolets make sure we everything for them at a time where it is harder to go through this, probably than ever before in our lifetime. Today, i want to honor the life of another kentuckian that we have lost to this terrible disease. This is vicki lynn Collins Brown of boyd county who was 68 when she passed away. Vicki was born in ashland and spent her life in the city, retiring from Kentucky Farmers Bank after 26 years. Her daughter cindy said she was loved by all her customers and she had loved them all dearly as well. Cindy told the ashland beacon, her smile could light up a room. She cared about everyone. She was married to the love of her life, kenneth. The two had been together for 32 years. Cindy said the family was most important thing in vickis world. For the last five years, her favorite hobby was spending time carter. Grandson, cindy said she urges everyone to listen to the restrictions and safety precautions in place. And considers stories like her mother before raking the guidelines. Like all families grieving, she understands restrictions are hard. She was unable to be in person with her mom during the hospitalization. But the Safety Measures are important. Cindy said she would like to thank the incredible nurses and Health Care Workers at Kings Daughter Medical Center on three a and four d that took care of her beloved mom. Cindy, thank you for this beautiful tribute to your mom. And today, im glad that all kentuckians can honor her. Taken far too early. It is not fair to any individual, any family when this happens. I cant help but think that cindys mom is younger than my parents. And this is very real. Need to make sure, even when we are making decisions where we can open up a little at a time, that we do it the right way so that we can prevent more families from having to go through this. Asouple of specific updates we go that we go through each time. Longterm care facilities continue to be the most challenging area where this virus is most deadly. 29 new residents. Eight staff. And 18 deaths. I know we announced 10 today. When we get them in for the first time, we have to go back and ascertain if they were in a longterm care facility. Directly is working with so many facilities. A lot is being done here. More can and will be done. But this is the challenge of this virus. This is an area where we have to be careful about every single day. The second one is a green river. Updatehere isnt any new on numbers, at least that i have, i can report that when we saw what was happening in green river, i instructed our folks to test every single person. It was a mandate. We needed to make sure the that with everything that happened, knowing that people in the facility were scared, knowing that people who worked at the facility were probably scared, we wanted to test every single one. And that is by far the biggest testing in any group that we have done. So a testing is underway as of this afternoon. 250 tests have been conducted. Entire prison staff and inmates will be tested by friday afternoon. Department of corrections has started to update their website daily. At six clock p. M. , with a confirmed covid19 cases by institution including the key initiatives that have been implement it. By friday, we should have the full extent of how far this is spread in that institution which will help us to continue to try to make the very best decisions that we can. All right. We have about 15 minutes for questions. We have four of our journalists today. We have joe csonka, daniel derosiers, bill pendleton and delton stokes, a u. K. Journalism student interning for the state journal. Given that, i think he ought to go first. States, in other considerable advantages has been given. [indiscernible] person hen one where an infected person will in fact only an additional person, is each case calculating these rates and if so, what are they . And is there guidance being taken from the website created by instagram counters, that has estimated statebystate . Gov. Beshear it is a very technical question which will require a very technical answer. So i will ask dr. Stack to respond to that and if we can, to respond or talk a little bit in general about our approach at healthy at work and why we believe that it is safe and we are making good decisions. Dr. Stack thank you, governor. So it is a technical question. Its a good question. One thing ive tried and the question is, how are we going to calculate whether we are having increased or decreased in the disease . And the reporter asked the question about values called rnot. It is the doubling or transmission rate of a disease through a population. You wanted to be less than one which means it is decreasing. If it is over one, it is increasing. If it gets too high, it increases very rapidly. Is between two or three we think, or closer to three when it is unchecked in a close community. The steps weve taken to keep ourselves socially distant from each other in the last two months have dramatically lowered that. In fact, the projections weve had a going into this when we looked at what happened in china and what happened in italy and what happened in western europe and other places, suggested a really terrifying increase. We got it way down. Weve done a great job. Team kentucky came together. I think we have to be careful not to confuse science with pseudoscience. There a lot of detail and uncertainty. We try to calculate those numbers but i dont have any great confidence in them because it depends on the size of the population you test, the rate, where you are sampling. We have a drivethrough program that is different than the hospital program. Yes, we do look at those things so you can have confidence in that. But i dont have something to share. For the governors question, we are trying to do the best we can to balance the societal needed to resume activities that are so but tont to society, keep people safe. That is what we have been trying to do for the past two months. Its what we are committed to doing going forward. I think we owe a debt of great gratitude to the governor for following the science, follow what we thought was the best possible science, and keeping people safe. What i just said, it is a tragedy that so many people have died. So many, many, many more would have died had we not done these things. We have done a great job. We are going to try to navigate that going forward. We ask everyones patience. I will say, some folks send me proposals directly. Im not being rude by not replying. Please send them to the healthy at work website, right on the website there is a team who will be able to process those and look at them. That is the way i would ask you to submit it. I dont want you to feel you are being ignored. The best way is to submit it at healthy at work. I used to give kenneth a hard time. James is over there on his phone, missing the slide. A question here from tom latex, asking about my reaction to the university of kentucky released today, that indicates healthy at home and other restrictions have cut down on the number of cases by 90 . What we were seeing in our data. But i want to say it indicates that healthy at home gets the credit. I dont get the credit. Everybody out there, every kentucky and gets the credit, for being willing to do what it takes. I dont know in any other state that people have come together in the way we have seen, that have followed a set of restrictions in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. It is everybody out theres work that has this result. Now weve got to keep it going forward. That is our challenge. Making sure that as we change the restrictions a little to be healthy at work, if we can follow them just as well, we can have those good results. So lets make sure that we keep that up. Phil . Reporter everyday, i probably get, probably not less than half a dozen people in unemployment claims. I got one very specifically, she specifically wanted me to say her name. Her name is edna mccoy, and shes very concerned that she is going to miss out on her bipolar medication because she has not been able to get her unemployment taken care of. She says it costs 300 and she said the last time she went off of it, she ended up in a Psychiatric Hospital for 12 days. So she wants to know when what she can do to make sure she gets her medication . Gov. Beshear do you know when she filed . Im trying to help her find her claim. Reporter she basically said she waited feeling gov. Beshear gov. Beshear get that for us and we will see. It is a question about a specific individual. Not having their unemployment claim filled yet, or not having the dollars come in yet. And the fear that she will not be able to afford Prescription Medication that she needs, and has had some really bad outcomes if she has not gotten it. First to edna, we are going to get. Your claim fixed. We are down in the march claims to about what did i say earlier . Down from 37,000 two 20,000 somethingish. This is just 29,000. And this is marge. We need to get that number down further. But know that there will be some in there that are legitimate disputes between employers and an individual. But there is at least another core part of that where it is identification issues. So make sure that you have your cell phone on and you are checking your emailed too and you are checking your spam box or others because we have had instances where we have tried to email people and have not gotten a response. I will tell you that more dollars are going out, more claims are being resolved. It has taken too long. That is not an excuse. It has been a real challenge but it is our job to live up to the challenge and help everybody in the time they needed. We are going to have a full update on this from josh penton tomorrow. But i believe tomorrow, that number from march will be down further. I will say that i have instructed the march claims to be the most prioritized of all the claims. And my goal is to even have the very oldest claims, that people individually called, not you call in and you spend a long time, long time waiting on the phone. But that you get specifically called so we can try to resolve those as quickly as possible. Response to the potential of President Trump signing an executive order to force the meatpacking plants to stay open . I have not been following his part of that. What i will say is weve got to make sure that these facilities are safe. And we cant force people to go into a facility when it is not safe. So we are working with a number of facilities across kentucky. One of them is shutting down for a period of days which is important to get it sanitized, to make sure that when people come back, that it is a better situation. But if you know that youve got a problem, and you are unwilling to pause, to fix it. You have a bigger problem going forward. A loss of a workforce. It is the same as any of these regulations we are talking about. If we dont follow them and do what it takes to lessen the spread, then you end up with a worse result. Daniel . Reporter a quick followup. [indiscernible] gov. Beshear no, it is a wednesday. Just like our phase reopening. The questioning is on the date of what we put up today. In health care we did the first piece. And then 10 days later, did the second piece. Especially for houses of worship, that comes on a wednesday where many of them could start that. Reporter [indiscernible] on may 4, then they can Start Services again . And with the social gatherings, people should not gather on saturday or sunday . Gov. Beshear we will work through that. Everything up there is fluid depending on the coronavirus. And is fluid depending on what we are seeing coming in. Positive, we are may be able to move some easy ones up a day or two. But most of these we put up here are going to require specific rules that we ultimately i hope we can come to an agreement on with everybody. But ultimately, it is our job to ensure it is safe. That gives us time to do them too. Because getting all of these in place by may 11, we want to get it right and we have to turn around and get the next piece right as well. And then do some forward planning off of that. Our goal here is to give people advanced notice to where they can start doing the things they need. The 10 rules are not easy. Just the 10 rules. Meet. Re not easy to they are important to get it right. This hopefully gets gives people time. Reporter my question relates to parents taking care of kids. Talent yes, come back to work, but they have no day care workers, what do you say to those families . Gov. Beshear the question is, what happens in phase one if the employer says youve got to come back to work, but you dont have day care options . That is the hard piece of this. My hope is that no employer will wouldt to somebody that have to find that doesnt have a good option. Ist i would say is it unfortunately an issue with numbers. We cant do any of this at all if we open a daycare right now. It is not fair. And its hard. But if we opened a daycare right now, then we would see a spike that ultimately would set us back. Why is kentucky behind intestine capacity compared to neighboring states like tennessee . Matt goes through what different go through what tennessee is doing. So first, let me give you the good news. This last week, we had 14,239 tests conducted. That shows we are stale we are scaling up. That is really important. One of the differences between us and tennessee is the amount of private testing from probably Large Health Care companies that are there. I believe tennessee, about 5 of their total testing is being done by the government. Thats a rough number, may be five. With us, it is over 30 . So it is falling on the me,rnment, it is falling on and everybody in Public Health and everybody else to get more and more of it down here in kentucky. We hope to see more private sector testing. It would certainly increase our capacity much faster. Even with that, the rates we are seeing, are promising. We think they compare well to other states, whether that is the total number or the percentage. When you look at the total number of cases we have, remember, as opposed to a state that had widespread testing, we are just testing initially the sickest folks out there. The fact that we have the number of cases that we do, when most of the people we were testing for the first month we were pretty sure had it or could have had it. Our overall number is a very positive sign that compares well with anybody. Do i have any comments on ports of research . About working to block the covid19 infection . It is promising anytime we have any type of that news. I know it is research. I care about eight Companies Working on a vaccine. I want to make sure it is going to work before i talk about it but i am proud of you have l and then the other institution out there that is stepping up and putting resources towards this and trying to help. I can answer this next one real fast. What will the recommendations for masks be while eating inside a restaurant . That is one of the things we on. To work restaurants are a tough piece, we want to work directly with the association and others to make sure that it is safe. Got another one . You give us a really detailed one the first time. The website [indiscernible] do you guys agree with that . Is that accurate . Gov. Beshear dr. Stack, do we agree with that . Sure. Yeah. Dr. Stack here is what i would like to answer it as clearly as i can. The question is if we think our key number is. 9 or lower. What we have seen is that the curve, i learned i have to do this the other way, it should have gone up. It should have gone up like this and increased. What we have seen is our curve went up to a lower plateau, and now it seems plateaued for a period of time and hopefully it will start going down. What i can say is we substantially, we profoundly blunted what should have been a mount everest. The philadelphia spike that the governor shows repeatedly, we we have done a great job. That is what we have to do we have to be careful about how we do this. We dont want the second bunk. We dont want that second bump. We have to be very careful that we dont create that. I hate to see a new case any day. I hate to see a new death any day. Are the governor of a state and that is happening to your people, it is hard but i will tell you there is a time where we were seeing or we thought we would see a doubling every three days. The factor that that has been blunted, i am so grateful for everybodys work. It is markable. It also saved so many lives. We answer as transparently and bluntly as we can. We hope that in june that that is a real possibility. That we need to work with those facilities. I saw an article about an Insurance Company trying to turn them down. That is upsetting. These are really important institutions. We will need them again. I saw somebody commenting on how tod if not impossible it is have social distancing inside a daycare. It is. That is one of the challenges with certain sports. With pools. It takes all of the work that we have done to reduce contact and expands it really quickly. The outofstate travel ban, is that lifted . The question is about the an and whene travel b it will be lifted. There is always an exception for work. Blackan travel over and over and back. We will make sure we can watch cases in other states. Around us have significant numbers of cases. With the exception of west virginia. They did not do a lot of testing but they had a low number of cases. Every other state around us, they have significantly more cases than we do. The travel ban was put into effect for a very real and important reason. It was put into effect by governors all across the country. Some have been a little more specific. This is something whether you are a democrat or a republican. If you have seen what we have seen, it is put into effect. Can i get any insight give any insight about how testing is going forever for americans versus cost cajuns caucasians, this is the largest percentage of africanamericans in this zip code. Codes with ever in american populations make up over a third. It is over 36 . We want to see that data next week as well. We want to look at other ways we can supplement that to make sure were addressing a lack of testing in that area. Do you plan on testing all Nursing Homes . Also, in terms of testing, is there a specific goal youre . Rying to hit in testing remember those, is their capacity we want to hit before more social things. Before the 24th is when we talk about social gathering. 20,000 to get above the tests per week that we know we can do. We know we can get north of that and we continue to get closer and closer to that. Is testingve to get in three major categories. The first is targeted populations that are at risk. Nursing homes, prisons, our First Responders who are at risk. Healthcare workers and a few others that fall in that. That is part one. We have to make sure there is always sufficient capacity to do that. Especially if theres an outbreak. Part two is the general public. To make this work we have to know how many a symptomatically there are and to be able to catch someone who may be a symptomatically and spreading it. Part three is going back to work healthy. We have to be able to come in, have a temperature check, spiked a fever and then go home. Those are some of the needs. I want to have the structure in place for each of those. We have them for each of these two. We are working on the third. On the nursing home side, while it is a casebycase basis based on the level of care and what actions are taken, we are doing more testing in our longterm care facilities than ever before, we are testing in many instances, everybody in the facility. In other instances, it may be that there may be one wing where people are getting a lot of care. There may be a totally separate there are some facilities in lexington that are huge. Multiple buildings. We would not test everyone everywhere. Direct decisions with the doctor and the facility, having a plan in place. Especially of a lot of the staff tests positive. What will you do . As we look forward, more and more testing will occur there. We have tested everybody in a facility. We are about 33 plus of testing in the state. I know murray callaway hospital is doing a set up full testing at of an assisted living facility there. We are coordinating but they are doing it. Joe there are some waiting on their own employment checks. There have been more reports of black people having two. What would you suggest in that type of situation . Multipart question, our prohibition against evictions will last at least through may. If not longer. In openy both back up the economy, there are a lot of people whose industry or area wont be open and we want to make sure we are there for them. A landlord send summary to a Collection Agency when they cannot evict them. That is not the writing to do. The right thing to do. What about trying to work with them . The other part of the question is they have not received their unemployment. We have to get that done. That individual. We have to get that done for everybody in their situation. We certainly have more people signed up in this time by a factor of 10. Matter, if somebody cant pay their rent and it is being sent to a Collection Agency, we will strive to be better. I want to thank everybody. We are over at emergency Operations Center for a couple of days. We will be here for the for siebel future. It is a beautiful week in kentucky. This wouldto think be derby week. We are missing just one special activity. We are winning this battle. Even though we are losing people along the way, we are winning this battle. We are winning because of you. Our challenge will be a bit greater. Your results on how we have done at healthy at home, i know we can do this. We are going to get through it and we can do it together. We played mild kentucky home. There would have been about race. To take us home tonight, we have mild kentucky home playing on the belle of louisville. Cspan has roundtheclock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic and it is all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Ch white have free savings white house briefings, track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps. Watch ondemand anytime, unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. Washington journal primetime, a special evening additional edition of the washington journal. Our guests are one of marques, a clinical psychologist and president of the anxiety and aggression association of america, joining us to talk about covid19 and Mental Health in the u. S. Of those directly and indirectly affected by the disease. And then the head of the International Humanitarian Group Partners in health will be on to talk about the scope of the pandemic in developing nations. Also joining the program, the Pennsylvania Republican congressman who talks about how the coronavirus pandemic has been felt in his district. Join the conversation tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Ye, o ye, o ye, all persons with business before the united states, here the u. S. Supreme court hear the u. S. Supreme court live. Courts byearing all teleconference. First up, on monday, at 10 00 a. M. Eastern, the justices hear the case of u. S. Patent and Trademark Office versus booking. Com. This is about the travel Companies Fight to trademark their website. Be a part of history and hear the Supreme Court oral arguments live, monday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Ondemand on cspan. Org or listen on the freeseas been radio app. President trump met with louisiana governor earlier today to discuss the response to the coronavirus. They rejoined by dr. Anthony fauci, the director of the National Institute of allergy and infectious diseases. This is 45 minutes. President trump tell them what we did