Governor murphy did you say someone did you Say Something to offend someone . You are all the way over there. Good afternoon, everyone. Not exactly the easter weekend that irving berlin, fred astaire, and judy garland envisioned in 1948. I am honored to be joined to my right with a woman who needs no introduction. The commissioner of the department of health. Judy. To her right, state epidemiologist, dr. Christina tam. And another guy who does not need any introduction, the guy to my left, colonel pat callahan. I also want to a knowledge jared maples, the duck the director of the department of homeland security. Pamela is with us as well as other colleagues. Thank you all for joining us. I got past permission and njssing so i am flying transit colors today. I want to give them a big shout out for all the great work they do. I will find my state police garb sooner rather than later. Lets get to the numbers. Since we met yesterday, we have 3599 moreied that residents have received positive test results and the statewide is. L according to our online dashboard, as of 10 00 p. M. Last night, 7618 residents were reported hospitalized. Another 682 residents were discharged. In 1650 ventilators were in use. Residents were discharged. As we noted yesterday, the dashboard pulls data as it is reported each night by hospitals to the new jersey hospital association. There may be overnight changes or reports that are not reflected. It is a snapshot in time. We know this is a very fluid situation. I would like to note as we did yesterday that while the numbers of our fellow residents in the hospital in critical or intensive care and on respirators is daunting, there are hundreds of people each day leaving the hospital. People who have beaten it and gotten to a much better place. We have to keep remembering that. This should give us hope when the season is spiritual and filled with renewal. We continue to lose members of our tremendous new jersey family to covid19 related complications. We have now lost a total of 2183 members, extraordinary members of our extraordinary new jersey family. For every single one of them, we stand in solidarity and prayer in mourning their loss. Our flags remain at half staff in their honor and memory. Here are just a few. I wish we could Say Something about each of the 251 lives we lost overnight and the 2183 lives lost from the beginning of this crisis. But here are a few of their stories. Viola richardson, there she is. She served the people in jersey city for 12 years as a member of city council, she was a councilmember of ward f and at large. Before that, she was a Jersey City Police officer, tough and outspoken, a fighter for her community and her city. Her life defined the meaning of the words Public Service, and jersey city has paid a big price. I was texting back and forth with the members of the council and the extraordinary resident of our great jersey city. Another guy, john mccarthy, of my town, middletown. He was an army veteran and a Small Business owner and leader on the bayshore. He was a longtime member of the Business Owners association, the Northern Chamber of commerce, and the Bayshore Senior Center in keansburg. He also coached youth baseball. We lost him yesterday. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, donna, and their family. God rest his soul. That is a great shot with his grandchild. And one more today. Here is martin known as marty fox from millburn. He was two months shy of his 96th birthday, but what a life he packed into his years. Amherst college, harvard law, and u. S. Army lieutenant in the second world war, a passionate crusader for social justice during the long, hot summer of 1963. He went to florida to represent pro bono members of the st. Augustine civil rights movement. He was appointed to the new jersey board of education by two governors. In 1978, he accompanied his friend, a governor, on a trip to israel. He never slowed down. To his wife, muriel, and his daughter, sarah, who i spoke with, and rachel and their families, we thank marty for his lifetime of service. God rest his soul. He will not be forgotten. This is not new today. I mentioned this yesterday. But we owe you a picture to put with a name. Here is a picture of nelson perdomo. God rest his soul. I wanted us to pay a proper tribute to nelson. He was a 19year veteran corrections officer. Our prayers are with his wife, fannie, with whom i spoke yesterday with their kids also. God bless them all and god bless his memory. Tremendous lives, tremendous people, tremendous families, tremendous holes in our broad and diverse new jersey family. This is a toll of real lives that the virus is taking on our state. It is for them and for every family that we are committed to defeating this invisible enemy and we must do it together. It is not just up to some of us to continue our social distancing, it is up to all of us. I know hearing the daily numbers can be scary. I know there is continued anxiety as we take every step forward, but we cannot let up. Look at where our work is leading us. We have shown this map before. That is really tough on our monitor. Looks better up there. This is a map that not that many days ago, the 21 counties in new jersey and it measures the virus in terms of each county of how many days it is taking to double. It wasnt that many days ago that we had red and orange. Now as you can see, we have no red and have not had red for awhile. We have three southern counties are in orange. A whole bunch are in yellow and increasingly, including my own county, you have counties that are doubling in at least if not more than seven days or more. That is a very good early sign that we are beginning to beat this virus back. We are slowing the rate of the cases doubling, which is an important metric and the lighter each county gets on this map, the more we are flattening the curve. We remain confident that the course we are on is the right one and if we all continue with what we need to do, keeping our social distances, wearing a Face Covering when we are out, which we all do and we only take off for the purposes of this press conference, and otherwise staying home, we will win this war. Wars are not won overnights or by set dates, they are won through perseverance and hard work and together we are doing that hard work. Again, remember, and i keep coming back to churchill in many respects, never have so few done so much for so many. It is both ways right now in this war. We have two fronts, one for the many and one for the few. One for the many is all 9 million of us staying home and keeping our distances, Wearing Masks and basically keeping that social distance mantra as we pound this curve into the ground. Remember the positive tests i mentioned, the curve is flattening but they are still going up. We are not in the end zone. We cannot spike any footballs. We are not even first and goal. If we keep all nine men of us pounding on that curve downward, you will have fewer infections, fewer hospitalizations, fewer intensive care unit hospitalizations, fewer needs for ventilators, and please, god, fewer fatalities. That is what the many of us could do. The few of us are the First Responders and those at the front lines of the war, working on behalf of all of us. They are showing the heroism every day and we have to let them continue to build up the capacity in our Health Care System, such that we have enough beds, ventilators, medicine. Intensive care beds, personal protective equipment, all that contribute to the Health Care Capacity such that as we pound the curve down over here, the 9 million of us, the heroes over here that we can get lines that cross in a reasonable level at a reasonable time, such that the folks who do get infected and require hospitalization and require intensive Health Care Oversight that we have a system that has the capacity to manage those persons. We are literally at the edge of all of what i have just described. Our job must continue. I know it is hard. The weather is warmer and tomorrow is easter. Please, god, stay the course and to stay with us. Keep pounding the curve down or lets get that map to be all light gray. Lets get a light gray state and then some and then we can say to ourselves, we are on the road to victory. Unequivocally, if we all do our part, and i know we will because we are new jersey and nobody can touch us, we will beat this virus and will come through this stronger as one new jersey family, stronger than ever before. As it pertains to our continued efforts, today i am announcing another step, building on the step on the first day to stop the further transmission of coronavirus. Today, i am signing an executive order directing nj transit and other drivers to cut capacity on trains, buses, light rail vehicles and paratransit vehicles to 50 of their maximum. The order requires nj transit and the private carriers to supply workers with gloves and Face Coverings. The order also requires all riders to wear Face Covering, whether it be by bus, train, light rail, or paratransit vehicle, unless they cannot for medical reasons. Right now, for many of our essential workers, Public Transit is how they get to work and we need to protect them during that trip. Nj transit will put out guidance specifically on this executive order so that we have a rational execution of this order. There will be a fair amount of discretion left up to our drivers. Part of the same executive order, i am expanding the departments were a Face Covering to all customers heading into one of the restaurants in bars that remain in our operation as they get takeout orders. If you are not walking into an establishment, doing it curbside or if your order is being delivered, a Face Covering will not be required. We will require restaurants and bars give Face Coverings and gloves to all of their food service personnel. All of this is effective monday evening at 8 00 p. M. Thank you for that. It bears repeating, a Face Covering does not mean a medical grade mask. We need to keep those for the frontline Public Health and safety responders and they remain in short supply. There are any number of short ways you can cover your mouth and nose with a bandana or a homemade fabric covering. I know that for some of you, you may view this as another inconvenience. Remembering to bring your Face Covering to the supermarket or to pick up your takeout order may be a hassle. But do you know what would be inconvenient . If you ended up in the hospital with covid19, or you inadvertently infected a family member, and if you did that, just because you didnt take to heart the need for us to take every precaution and for all of us to keep working together. We accept this is inconvenient and we accept the level of anxiety and that we all want to be doing as we would normally do. Here is the problem. If we do any or all of the above, we blow our chances of flattening this curve. You will put your family members or yourself at risk and i can promise you we put our Health System at risk. We just cant do that. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know we are going through this and we will get through it together. Speaking of working together, we continue to benefit from the generosity of countless businesses and individuals who are donating muchneeded personal protective equipment and other supplies for our frontline workers. I must give a huge shout out to joe and Clara Foundation which has stepped forward and delivered 150,000 surgical masks and nearly 198,000 n95 masks. They are sorely needed for our professionals and First Responders. I had the honor of speaking with them a week ago today and it was back and forth on a text with joe this morning and they are each extraordinary individuals. They have jersey roots in their lives. I can say this because it is public knowledge. They gave the largest gift to the lawrenceville school, which is not too far from where we are sitting. Joe is the cofounder of alibaba and is the owner of the brooklyn nets. Clara is a leader of the Reform Alliance and a graduate of stanford, as is joe and they have given mightily to stanford and work with stanford on a whole range of issues. To joe and clara if you are watching, from the bottom of our hearts, we say thank you. In the same vein, we are grateful for precious cosmetics for their donation of 100 bottles of Hand Sanitizer as well. Thank you for precious cosmetics. If anyone has more ppe or supplies to donate, let us know. Please reach us at our website. Also, this is a big one, yesterday a total of 78 ambulances and ems from states across the country that were carrying 139 emts and 56 paramedics came to assist our local teams, and not a moment too soon. 53 teams were basic life support and 25 were advanced life support. These folks in these ambulances came from places including california, illinois, ohio, pennsylvania, and maryland. Among other states. And last night, they were already on the streets across our state, including in newark and jersey city, paterson, east orange, irvington and new brunswick. They know how hard our ems quads are working and how overloaded many are and they came in mutual aid and support. This is a true brotherhood and sisterhood and we have already lost four precious and tremendous emts to covid19. Yesterday showed that we all have each others backs. And to those who have come from afar to help us, we will return the favor in your time of need. We planned for this. This is not a coincidence or an accident. We planned for this weeks ago and i give a lot of credit to the folks on either side of me. We knew we would have ems capacity, emt and ambulance capacity challenges so we planned for this. We worked with fema and the National Ambulance contracts and i want to give a shout out to the new jersey ems task force. Two the squad in jersey, to my colleagues, to my friends in fema, and the administration and the folks who have come from afar in our hour of need, i thank you from the bottom of our hearts and we will never forget it. From across the country and around the world, we are moved by the generosity of so many. We continue to be overwhelmed by thousands of people who have contacted us willing to step up and volunteer in our fight in any way. 18,000 folks have raised their hands. Some of you have asked what we are doing with those folks who raise their hands, and judy will give us that. We continue to have direct and essential needs for Health Care Volunteers to assist, in particular in the field medical stations, we continue to need individuals with experience to help run these sites as well as for physicians and respiratory therapists. Judy will go through an update on status on the usns comfort which is captained by a jersey guy. Switching gears, i am happy to say that the National Governors association will make an explicit ask on behalf of all states for 500 billion in direct state aid which would come directly to states that we could backfill the extraordinary efforts at which we are on the front line of attack. Everything from unemployed folks to Small Businesses to caring for those in our Health Care System. I have said this now on many occasions, we are desperately in need of direct cash federal assistance directly to states. I am happy that it will be made explicit at a number that we think is what is required around the country and new jersey needs its share of that. I think that we were the first state to raise our hand. I am joined in this by Governor Cuomo and speaker pelosi. Please, god, in washington, if you are listening, lift the tax on the Salt Production but lift it for some period of time. It was a crushing blow to homeowners and property tax owners and we need that lifted, so please help us in that regard. Let me switch gears to testing. Easter sunday, our fema testing sites at the Community College and pnc bank will both be closed. Next weeks schedule will be posted on our information hub. You can also find information of the 18 other public testing sites in counties across the state. There are quite literally dozens more testing sites that are available to you if your primary Care Practitioner determines you meet the requirements for testing. That number is at least at 57 around the state. Before i hand to the briefing over to judy, i would like to keep highlighting them of the good things happening in our state. I want to give a shout out to all of the essential workers out there, especially those who remain oncall this weekend, this holiday weekend. A special shout out to the child care workers who are making sure the kids of our essential workers are being properly looked after. It does indeed take a village. As my late dad used to remind me of the famous quotation, i am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. As we sadly commemorate the loss of life in this state, it is important for us to remember in other respects the National Course of history goes on. And for the deaths we mourn together, we also acknowledge and celebrate those births among us. I want to shout out to our good friends david and laura for their new baby. Bless those who are born into our state when we mourn the loss of life. To each and every one of you, keep sending us Great Stories on social media by using the njthanksyou. Keep on doing it. Let me give you a couple. Here is a picture of david. He is a landlord with a dozen tenants and he stepped forward to give everyone of them a rent holiday for june. Three months rent free. Certainly not every landlord is in a position to do the same. We get that. But david exemplifies the spirit we need to see right now of people stepping up to ensure w