Good afternoon and thank all of you for coming. Thank you for joining us at home or wherever you might be tuning in on the radio or television or at the yeutter. I will be followed in just a few minute by the secretary of the department of children and family services. She has updates around nutrition , particularly snap benefits. Obviously, we are still answering specific questions related to health care testing, that sort of thing. I want to start out by thinking the medical professionals of all types working all across louisiana heroically every single day. I know that today, President Trump declared National Doctors day saluting our dog ears and thanking them. They are on the front lines today and every day. We would not be able to come close to managing this emergency without our frontline physicians and i think it is entirely important that we have National Doctors day today. We still have the same imperatives weve been working on the last you week and we have to continue to flatten the cliff disease soow this the more people than necessary dont seek medical care all of the same time. With the time that we have available to us, we have to to search our medical capacity. , i same imperatives participated in a Video Conference call with the andident, Vice President the task force assembled. I had a separate call from the Vice President. First of all, i want to say that we are thankful that the president granted our request for title 32 status of the National Guard. That will stand up for a 30 day period and unlocks protections. This is something we have used responsey in disaster including hurricane katrina, hurricane ike, hurricane gustav. As youek, the president , recall, granted us a 60person foundl strike team we that early yesterday morning. That team has been diverted. Sailors will be coming out of jacksonville, florida. We think that will be between 180 and 200 person strong unit. Be at the Convention Center in new orleans. That center is going to have 1000 beds. This sunday. Y there will be a personnel housing unit. With another 250 beds. That will be for persons under investigation. Inside the Convention Center will be for positive patients. Persons under investigation will be across the street in the personnel housing unit. Navydetachment from the will staff principally at the pui at the Personnel Holding unit, but could augment what we have in the Convention Center. Because we have navy activeduty title x Navy Personnel coming to louisiana, they will be working for us, we believe it is the first time that we created a letter setting a dual status commander commanding both guardsmen and the navy sailors when they arrive in new orleans. Im proud to announce that the general and the National Guard will serve as our dual status commander. Be thetors continue to most pressing need in the short term. When it comes to our medical care capacity. Unfortunately, i dont have much progress to report. On my call with the president in the video teleconference, he acknowledged our need for ventilators and made a commitment that they will send ventilators to louisiana. I dont have a precise number to give you, but i believe he was referring to an allocation we can expect to receive from the Strategic National stockpile. We have been sharing information with the white house and with fema about the timeline we are on to exceed capacity as it relates to ventilators. So hopefully we will get those very soon. I will talk more about ventilators in just a moment as it relates to capacity. We are obviously going to continue to look for ventilators through manufacturers and vendors. All total, we have ordered 14,000 or so venter ventilators, including 5000 from the Strategic National stockpile. The number we have received continues to be 191. We hope that it some point this week we will have another shipment. How will probably be another 100 or so. That will probably be another 100 or so. I can tell you that for the last 72 hours, ppe has improved. We know this is going to play out over an extended time. 1. I made and other governors made today, the president and Vice President , was to keep the ppe coming in greater numbers. We are really doing just in time deliveries right now. We are emptying our warehouse every single night, going to different regions of the state and different hospitals. And the process will work so that as fema brings an additional ppe to the United States from all over the world, 80 of that will be allocated to traditional ppe vendors and Health Care Providers will access ppe in the way they normally have, and a 20 allocation stays with fema and they allocated to the states based on formulas considered hotspots. They are calling this an air bridge. The first flights on the air bridge started arriving today. This is going to play out for some time. It is our recommendation that over the next day or so, that ppe supplies come in more robust in timing, frequency, and amounts. On the Conference Call this morning, i also thanked the president for extending federal mitigation efforts for through april 30. This is obviously very helpful for states like ours because it sends a clear message that we are nowhere near over the hump. We still have an awful lot of work to do to flatten the curve. I think it creates a realistic expectation about the timeline we are on. By the end of the week, i will be issuing an additional pot proclamation. And we will see what the modifications to the stayathome order, if any are warranted based on revisions we get in terms of guidance from the cdc or the Security Agency thats part of dhs. As it relates to essential businesses and essential workers. I also think the Vice President. We talked principally about region one, but later its going to be other regions of the state. He also talked about his personal experience with our office of disability affairs. I want to thank him for that. We have three state employees who have passed away because of covid19 and they worked in the department of transportation. Another worked for the department of corrections. Since the last update, we have had a 22 increase in tests. The totals are shown on the dashboard to my left, youre right. We have a 14 increase in positive cases over the last one he four hours 24 hours. The total increase in cases is 485. Tragically, we have 185 deaths now. We have expanded the Information Available to the public about covid19 on the department of healths website. In addition to the parish breakdown of positive cases and deaths, you can access Additional Information on that website as well. 59 of our 64 parishes now have confirmed positive tests for covid19. While there is a slight positive trend in our numbers, we still see that according to our modeling and the new entry of data where we are able to watch whats happening, under any feasible scenario, we are going to exceed our medical capacity here in the state of louisiana and in region one first. Thats the new orleansjefferson parish area. We believe based on the most recent numbers that came in today that we bought a couple, three days in region one as it relates to Ventilator Capacity, which we should now exceed around april fifth. This changes not just because of the number of cases in the percentage being hospitalized, the length of stay on average, you know, is changing a little bit as we get more information. And then the percentage who need an icu bed, ventilator, and how long, but also on the other of this, we are working very hard to increase our capacity of ventilators. That is going to feed into our modeling. We are not just looking at this point to the traditional ventilators you see in icu. We are looking for other ventilators that you typically would not see, perhaps once you see being used with anesthesia in a surgical center, or you might see some used with emt personnel and so forth. We are inventorying all of those and working very hard to make them available in our hospitals as well. While they are not ideal, they are certainly better than having no Ventilator Capacity at all. We certainly need people to honor the stayathome order that is in place across the state of louisiana. We need to continue to practice social distancing. I will go ahead and say it. We need to have better compliance around the state of louisiana than we have had. Based on the information i have gotten, some of which is anecdotal, there are certain regions of the state where there is a higher percentage of people complying. And that is where the numbers seem to be the highest because those communities understand firsthand how serious the emergency is, how deadly, and i want to thank all the people across louisiana who are complying, but i would urge people all across the state, if there is anybody in the state of louisiana who thinks this virus, this disease is not in their region of the state, not in their parish, not in their community, i am just telling you, you are wrong. It may not have been detected yet, but it is out there. It is the nicest thing you can do for your family, the nicest thing you can do for your neighbors, and surely the nicest thing you can do for anybody in your community who might have one of these vulnerabilities we have been talking about because of a Chronic Health condition. We are asking everybody to do better. Show your love now by staying away. We can show our love by staying away from people. In closing, im going to ask that everyone join me in praying for those who are ill, those who have lost loved ones, our frontline leaders, our First Responders. Respiratory therapists, all of them. I will tell you that tomorrow, until this emergency is over, on tuesdays, we are going to have a lunch period that i am asking all louisiana and who are likeminded to join me in, a time of fasting and prayer. Over lunch on tuesdays. With that, i am going to ask secretary marquita walters to come up and talk about the snap program. Then i will take your questions. If you have questions about the snap program. I would ask you to go ahead and ask those to the secretary while she is up here. Thank you, governor. We want the people of louisiana to have food during this time. We are announcing today that those snap recipients that are not at the maximum they are allowed will be put to the maximum. This will automatically be loaded on your card. They dont have to do anything to receive this. Only about 47 of louisiana households are receiving their maximum benefits. This is helping 63 of our families get to the maximum level. Again, they dont have to do anything. This will be loaded on cards automatically. It will be loaded tomorrow night for the march benefits and it will be loaded again on april 17 for the april benefits. We are also, during this time, going to temporarily waive the redeterminations. Every six months, you have to be redetermined to get your benefits. That has been waived. You do not have to do anything. Your benefits will automatically come to you in march and april. You do not have to call, email, text, or worry about that. If you are a current snap recipient, that will automatically be loaded and the timeframe will be waived. We are not doing interviews right now either. You dont have to worry about doing an interview. We have tried to eliminate every deadline we possibly could to make this process easier. We have also suspended the work requirements. There are some population that receive benefits that have to work a certain amount of time to be eligible for benefits. That has also been waived. That is not true for the population, ablebodied adults without dependents. You do not have to require the you do not have to meet the work requirement right now. The call center is at capacity. We are having three and a half times the normal amount of applications as we do, normally do, so the very best way to get information is to go to the website, dpfs. La. Gov getsnap. Or you can text get snap to 898291. Either of those will get you into the application process. If you are already a recipient, you know how to sign onto the portal and that will give you all of the information. It will be easier for you to go straight through the electronic measures to get that information. With that, are there questions . What percentage will get an increase . 63 because only about 47 of current recipients get the maximum number. Anything else . Thank you. Thank you, marquita. Have you heard from the department of education on what will happen if School Closures are extended and whether students will be passed along or not . I havent. The superintendent is working on this. As i mentioned earlier, i will, by the end of the week, extend the current order through april 30. That only leaves the month of may. I am not sure what the situation will be, what the facts will be for us to make a decision about extending, but that would leave less than a month in the current academic year. I gave betsy a heads up this morning that she should start planning accordingly, and i expect in the near future there will be more information coming from the department. She is working with the School Superintendent from around the state of louisiana as it relates to graduation and promotion to the next great, although those sorts of things. Obviously, they are going to make the smartest, most Strategic Decisions they can for the maximum to maximum benefit to our young people. Other governors have started using clemency power and releasing inmates from jail. What have you done regarding letting prisoners out of jail . Do you plan on using clemency powers . Well, we have folks in process who are pretrial detainees. I can tell you the sheriffs have been working with the das and with the courts to make sure they that the number of people they are holding us pretrial detainees around the state of louisiana is as low as it can be consistent with public safety. They are doing that. They are doing it in a smart way. We also have probation and parole working so they are not revoking individuals and bringing them back into custody if its a technical matter. A revocation that would spring from a nonviolent offense, for example. We are minimizing the number of people we are bringing back into the system. I will work with secretary leblanc at the department of corrections on any recommendations he has. I know he is taking a look at individuals who are in prison for nonviolent offenses who are nearing the completion of their sentence and trying to see what additional flexibility he might want. I dont have anything beyond that right now. The locations for drivethrough testing seem to have less demand. Initially, they were running out of tests. I wonder, what does that indicate . Has testing gotten to the people who need it the most . Has he gotten to the people that have we changed how we are doing testing . Have we changed how we are doing testing . We need to have a better idea of the percentage of our people who have covid19, and where they are across the state of louisiana. In new orleans, they decided to consolidate two testing sites. It will be at you know tomorrow. But they will uno tomorrow. But they will be issuing the same number of test. That continues. Along with the other drivethrough testing site in jefferson parish. I believe this was the first site set up with the federal guard set up in partnership with the federal government in the country. We were doing 750 tests a day between the three sites. Between two sites, we are still going to do 750 tests, and they are for symptomatic individuals. A ssent medic people should not seek or be given a test because the test asymptomatic people should not seek or be given a test. But symptomatic individuals, regardless of their age, or if they are a Health Care Worker or First Responder or so forth, they will be tested if they are symptomatic and they will be asked about that when they show up for the testing. Dr. , if you would give us an update as it refers to testing. As it pertains to sites in new orleans, traffic patterns between those two sites, there may be more traffic going to the uno site. We need to consolidate and use our staff wisely, and thats why they made that decision. This also speaks to the need for greater access beyond these sites to testing. The governor mentioned we were one of the first sites in the nation that had fema support. In the meantime, we have been working with private labs and federal partners to increase capacity for tests. As you saw from todays numbers, we still have high levels of testing. We want to see more. We are hoping to take the pressure off the consolidated testing sites. We definitely want to see this more so in other parts of the state. You heard the governor say, even if you dont have a case in your neighborhood, there probably is covid across the state. We know there is covid across the state. We are looking also in areas where we are not seeing high volumes of testing and trying to work with nontraditional partners or existing partners to do cast to do do testing in those communities. Thats a big focus we have now. We just updated our own public facing dashboard. If you go to the parish level information to tab, you can see where tests have been performed in that parish. It will be pretty evident at the bottom of the list where we need more tests, and that is what we are working on. Can you talk about the length of time getting test results back . Commercial labs are saying six days. It is a moving target. We have seen some of the commercial labs have been able to increase some of their pace. We are bringing new capabilities into the state as early as tomorrow. We have to validate this new machine we are getting. Once we do that, we think the turnaround will increase dramatically in the state lab. That is for individuals in the hospitals, healthcare workers, folks in nursing homes, people we want a quick answer for because we have to make a decision about their care or get them out to the front lines. What we have seen the last week and weekend, news about f