Nursing home is dealing with one of the largest concentrations of deaths at a longterm care facility in our country. Our Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities are facing the same challenges as every part of the country. Ppe andd testing and the staff are overworked. The people who live in longterm care facilities are already vulnerable to sickness. Social because of distancing, they cannot even see their loved ones. But these are our parents and grandparents. We have a special obligation to protect them. In addition to our responsibility to protect Public Health. Our doctor am giving a larger role in leading our efforts to help our Nursing Homes and long care longterm care facilities mitigate the cases they have and prevent further outbreaks. Llano, shew dr. For is that Deputy Commissioner for Public Health at our department of health. She is also leading our covid19 mitigation strategy. She will lead a Task Force Made s and several secretariat agencies. She will work with our secretary of finance to ensure our Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities have the resources they need to fight this virus. Second, she will work with the facilities to strengthen their staffing and to increase Infection Control measures. This includes making sure our Nursing Homes have the testing, the ppe, and the cleaning supplies that they need. Ppe, all know, testing and in particular, are a problem across the country. She will make sure virginias longterm care facilities continue to be a priority. And third, she will make sure the public and the facilities are getting the information and data they need about where this virus is appearing. The task force will track data on a number of cases in virginia that are in longterm care facilities, the number of deaths in those facilities, and outbreak data. She will share more in that data in just a few minutes. She will ensure we are doing Everything Possible to help these facilities and that we have an open line of commit occasion with them. Them. Munication with our longterm care facilities are home to people most vulnerable to the virus. Person in assisted living and longterm care is someones parent or loved one. It is vital that we protect them. This task force will help us do just that. She will report back to you regularly. Announcealso want to that we are using more avenues to recruit additional medical volunteers in our medical reserve corps. Hospital ceos are telling me what they expect and need the most is ppe and more stop to take care of people and support the medical professionals more staff to take care of people and support the medical professionals. 13,000 people have signed up to volunteer. Half of those people have medical training. We will work with our colleges and medical schools to reach out to students, especially those who are enrolled in health and medical degree programs. Training is also available for virginia four virginians who want to learn basic medical skills to volunteer. Current Health Professionals who want to get more skills, sncluding skills to work in icu or use ventilators can also get that training. We are encouraging nurses, nurse practitioners, and nursing students to apply. Knowdoctor myself, i nurses are the lifeblood of any medical setting. We also need nonmedical volunteers for support roles in logistics, communication, technology, and other areas. We welcome everyone who can help. This is a chance for virginians to come together and do good for our community. To volunteer, please visit vamr c. Org. Vamrc. Org. On behalf of virginia, we thank you. We are concerned for everyone and congregate settings, in concord settings, including those in our department of corrections. Im proposing an amendment to the state budget that would give the department of Corrections Authority to release offenders who have one year or less left in their sentences. They must have demonstrated Good Behavior and not be a threat to Public Safety. Discretion,their will release prisoners who do not pose a threat to society or the safety of others. The General Assembly will vote on this when they return for the reconvened session on april 22. Between now and then, doc will do the work of planning how these individuals may safely be released. Reentry planning typically happens over the course of months. We are asking our doc to do that in a matter of weeks. Includeslanning ensuring the released person has somewhere to go and has the medications they need for three months. In this situation, we know there are fewer Economic Resources available and fewer rehabilitation and Treatment Centers taking on new clients. Advocates and Community Organizations always play an Important Role in supporting people when they return to the community. That role is even more critical now and i ask they continue to offer all services possible to help people who are released. Led to anh crisis has economic crisis. Our strategy is clear. Fix the Health Crisis first, then the economic crisis. Thousands of virginia workers are now out of a job. In the last week of march, 114,000 people applied for unemployment benefits. As i said then, the number was large but it was would seem small all too soon and i was right. 147,369k, we had initial and employment claims. 306,000ns we have had claims inoyment the past three weeks. That is more than the same weeks in 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined. Last week alone, the Virginia Employment Commission has issued totaling more000 than 57 million. Next week, we will launch the federal pandemic unemployment assistance program, which will boost weekly payments to those who have filed for unemployment. This is an additional 600 a week, which should be a great help to folks trying to figure out how to pay the rent or buy food. Us torogram allows provide unemployment assistance to people who did not previously qualify, such as gig workers, temporary workers, and selfemployed people. It is important to note you still have to fill out the state unemployment application to receive that assistance. We have some 75,000 virginia workers who were previously denied unemployment assistance, many of whom held the types of jobs that do qualify under this federal program. The vec will be reaching out to these workers and will update its application website in the next week so that it can collect Additional Information to process claims. We are putting every resource we can into supporting the volume of unemployment claims we are receiving. The vec is hiring more staff, hiring a private call center, and upgrading the claims website. We know that people are dependent on this Financial Support and we are committed to making sure every claim is processed. Pandemic, with the might ministrations has also bills to deal with a 1291 passed by the General Assembly. Deadline is midnight tomorrow night and i will meet that deadline. Today, we announced i have signed landmark gun safety legislation as well as the womens Reproductive Health protection act. I will have acted on all the legislation before me by tomorrow night. I want to end on a hopeful note. Yesterday, Virginia Commonwealth University announced they have come up with a way to clean the n95 masks in our hospitals. Toy are using uv radiation decontaminate and clean masks so they can be reused. Vcu is not the only Hospital System or university to explore this method but we are proud to have them innovating in this way right here in virginia and i hope other Hospital Systems will reach out to vcu for information on how to do the same thing. These masks protect our Frontline Health care workers and being able to clean and reuse them could be a game changer for doctors, nurses, and hospitals. Finally, we have all seen reports that social distancing seems to be working. I hope this is the case. But social distancing will not continue to work if we stop doing it. I have had some folks call me and say, ralph, we see the curves are flattening. Isnt it time to ease the restrictions . And that is absolutely the wrong thing to do right now. As a doctor, i thought i would give you an example or an analogy from my previous work. It is like perhaps someone came in with a new diagnosis of cancer, which is never good. And after making a diagnosis, we sit down and talk about the treatment plan and the treatment plan is a very bitter pill, a bitter medicine, but we can also say that if you follow our guidelines and take this medicine, we can together cure your cancer. And so that patient may start taking that medicine for three or four weeks and start feeling better, numbers look better, xrays look better. There cancer is going away their cancer is going away and the 10 tatian is to say. , i think it is time and the 10 tatian is to say, i think it is time to take stop taking my medicine. Andcancer will return sometimes be even worse. We are in that period where we see hope and promise but this is not the time to back off from our guidelines. This is no time to let our guard down. We need to continue to stay home and to stay safe. That is especially true this weekend we expect nice weather across much of virginia, and many people would normally be celebrating easter together. Please stay home this weekend. The social distancing, the guidelines we have provided, they are working. To speakk dr. Furlano and after that, we are happy to take questions. Good afternoon. As we continue to fight the virus together, its clear that while we have taken a lot of steps across the commonwealth to protect residents of Nursing Homes and staff working in Nursing Homes, we need to offer them or help. Residents that live in these facilities are often among the most vulnerable to the virus due to their age or Health Conditions and on top of that, social distancing is pretty difficult to achieve in a congregant care living situation or facility. We also know that staff that work in these facilities often work in multiple facilities. I do want to take a note to acknowledge those staff and the Health Care Providers that work in those facilities. They are doing not under incredibly challenging circumstances. , we aredging that committed to making sure these facilities to continue the funding continue to get the funding they need and the supplies they need to protect the people who live there and to protect themselves and their staff. We want to ensure open communication between our local Health Departments in these facilities. The task force that i will be honored to work with are also committed to ensuring facilities and the public have the most uptodate information possible. This includes data on the proportion of facilities that have had a positive case among residents or staff and we will be providing data on deaths in longterm care facilities. Some outbreak data is already available on our website. I will provide a couple of data points right now. As of today, we have counted 45 outbreaks in longterm care facilities out of a total of 82 total outbreaks in the commonwealth. That is up 55 . In addition, as of today, in our outbreak database, we have 525 reported cases that represents approximately 10 of all cases and 32 deaths, or about 25 of reported deaths. I do want to explain a little bit the numbers. The 525 comes from an outbreak database system which is different than our disease Surveillance System that produces the case counts you see on the website every day. We are working to build out functionality and the fruit in the Surveillance System. That will take a little bit of time. In the interim, we are pulling data from this outbreak system so the numbers may not always match but we have good confidence in the number i am providing today. We are building additional tools to track these data and those will be available probably lit next week probably late next week or early the following week. The task force will help ensure that we are coordinating with art facilities to get the help and supplies and the information they need to protect the people who live there and i look forward to working with a lot of colleagues and partners in network. In that work. Gov. Northam we will be glad to answer your questions. [inaudible] when does that go into effect . Gov. Northam great question. It would go into effect immediately if the legislatures agree to that. As far as the numbers eligible, i will let our secretary of Public Safety address that. Thank you, governor. With respect to this extra and daring action by the governor extraordinary action by the , we anticipate the legislature acting favorably on this proposal. It would last for the duration of the governors executive order and it would apply to approximately just less than 2000 inmates that have one year or less remaining on their sentence. That sometimes fluctuates a little bit depending on who was released because we release 1000 prisoners per month based on their release dates. [inaudible] good afternoon. The legislature is set to reconvene in richmond on april 22, which could land during the worst stretch of the coronavirus. That is less than two weeks from now. Does this large gathering concern you . Should the legislature influence other ways . Gov. Northam is the legislature is scheduled to return on april 22 and does this raise concerns regarding their health . Absolutely. We want them and their staffs to be healthy. The house of delegates has made arrangements to meet outdoors underneath the tent and i believe the senate will be meaning in the Science Museum on broad street. They are taking into account the dangers of this virus. They are making arrangements to keep themselves safe and to promote the social distancing that we need to maintain as we fight this pandemic. [inaudible] there has been National Reports of the federal government seizing orders of equipment from hospitals and states paired i was wondering states. I was wondering if you could speak specifically about whether that is happening in virginia. I have heard from nurse making them less flexible in responding to hardhit areas. Are there any plans to waive those requirements . Gov. Northam equipment, ppe, ventilators began taking from our Health Care Facilities being taken from our Health Care Facilities fema. I have heard those reports from other states. We have checked with our ceos and to date, we have not had that issue in virginia. Regarding the relationship between nurse practitioners, pas, and their providers, i would be interested in hearing from those individuals, as would our secretary of health. We would be glad to work with them if there are challenges out there with the relationship as it is. I think a question was asked about that, the relationship we have now between our pas, nurse practitioners, and our physicians is working well and will continue to work within that model. [inaudible] do we have allen on the line . The next is from mallory. Good afternoon. I will ask about immigrants being held in detention facilities in virginia. Advocates are concerned that hundreds of detainees are at risk. Center has asked the administration to inspect both facilities to make sure testing is available, proper sanitation. Is the Administration Planning to do any of those things . What steps is the administration taking to make sure immigrants are kept healthy . Gov. Northam brian . The question is with respect to ice facilities. We have two ice facilities in virginia. The state does not have jurisdiction over those facilities. When we have heard reports, we have shared those with our congressional delegation as well as the department of Homeland Security and inquired as to the care of those individuals in the custody. Again, they are not under our jurisdiction. We will continue to pursue that and take whatever actions necessary to ensure the safety of those individuals. [inaudible] Law Enforcement action to enforce the restrictions around the state. Has there been much need for enforcement like that . Gov. Northam has Law Enforcement needed to get involved in forcing enforcing our guidelines across the commonwealth . We have been in daily contact with our state police, sheriffs and deputies, officers on land and water, and there have been reminders to breakup gatherings. I think the individuals, when they have been reminded, from what i have heard, they have cooperated. I do not know if any citations that have been written. I think i am correct in saying that. Northern virginia daily. I have a question about one specific juvenile facility in virginia, the bonaire juvenile justice facility, they have two staff that is tested positive. Others,facility and when there is a confirmed case, will everyone there be tested to see how widespread it is . What is the timeline for that testing . Gov. Northam the question is about our department of juvenile justice and one of our facilities and positive test results. I will let secretary moran address that. Thank you, governor. Reduced years, we have our population of residents in our juvenile category 21 facility in the commonwealth and that is the bonaire facility. We have 205 residents. Done widespread testing and we are following Virginia Department of health guidance. And it wasen units built for capacity of over 500 kid