Things as developing data of cases and criteria for lifting the stayathome order. [indiscernible] good afternoon. Thank you for being here with us this afternoon. Yourforward to taking questions once everybody has an opportunity to give an update. We are in the middle of a fight for our state. It is taking a tremendous cost. Us to pushg all of ourselves beyond what is comfortable. What is fair or sustainable for much longer we stay strong, stay in the fight we can see the finish line but the push to the end requires all of us to sprint. We are at her new the peak in mississippi. This is the most painful time this is the hardest time. It is the beginning of a turning point that we have not gotten past our peak pain yet. I pray every day for an end to this crisis and we are acting together to protect our people. We have been to other trials and overcome. We will come through this also. I know that what is being asked of use is not easy. It is not even close to being easy. We also notice the collective work of our people is having an impact. The damage could be far worse. Our projected pain is coming down dramatically. It hurts but it is working. You are saving your neighbors life. When we avoid death we only see the cost of the sacrifice. You are saving lives every day stay in the fight. Our enemy is doing great damage. Not only to those who catch the disease but to those who have lost the ability to survive provide for their families. We cannot fully stop the mental and physical costs to you and your families anymore that we can fully stop this fire is. We can help lighten the load. Today i want to share two new programs that we hope will help. Mississippi Home Corporation has just authorized are hardest hit funds to provide shortterm help with the mortgage for mississippians who lost employment or significant income due to covid19 if you have lost the ability to earn during this crisis and you are at risk of losing their homes we can provide temporary help heard it will not take over your home payments indefinitely. Time to giveour you head above water to find work and become selfreliant again. It may provide a one time payment to make your mortgage current. It may also pay your mortgage for a time while you try to find work. Firsthand the homes that were lost to the tornadoes this weekend. It breaks my heart. There are more who at risk of losing their homes to our nations economic crisis. We cannot stop the wind from blowing but we can try to stop more from losing their homes. Go to mshomesaver. Com to apply. Overike to turn this scott, who is administering the program. Thank you. Program that has been in existence since the financial crisis. These were dollars that were repaid to the treasury. And authorized to provide mortgage assistance in 18 states they will expire next year. We have set aside some for the light of elimination. Going to take this opportunity to move about 10 back over anding reopen the mortgage a system pipeline. It is temporary but it is forbearance iste not forgiveness. And it is not forever if people are putting our mortgages in their forbearance the debt still exist that is the one of the reasons it will be won an Important Program so they cannot have to go into lost vacation or come up with a number of mortgage payments one forbearance is finally over [indiscernible] reeves scott is available for questions. We are working to address one of the most taxing issues. Our essential workers are being asked to do things others are not. They are stepping into the line of fire to provide what we all need it to stay safe. We need to do everything we can to help them. We are not talking about robots whose lives begin and end with their essential work. These are mississippians just like you and me. They have lives. They of homes. And many have children. Children that are now out of school for the rest of the semester. We has traveled and facilities to remain open to take care of their children. Not easy. Today are we providing more guidance and more help. Department ofi Human Services and the department of health are activating their childcare crisis assistance response. This plan provides temporary Emergency Childcare facilities during the crisis for the families of essential workers. People in health care, First Responders and knows keeping food and supplies in our homes. Who do not people have access to typical providers to childcare. The sites will not be around forever but they will meet all the standards of typical child care facilities. Even more during these unique times. The state is working to find potential partners. Chargell get free of training to the Early Childhood academy. And they will be assigned a coach to help them operate throughout this emergency. Anyone, churches and businesses and nonprofits and individuals who have the capacity to operate canrding to the guidelines offer to open one of these emergency sites. We are asking those partners to step up now. If youre are willing to become a partner, please go to am dhs. \cc ai are. Childcare crisis assistance isolation response. Sites begin to operate they will begin out reached parents. If you need Financial Assistance to afford this Emergency Childcare, you can apply for that assistance beginning one week from today. We hope this expanded access to childcare will lighten the load for essential workers. It will not make their jobs easy but it we hope he can make this one highly stressful element a little bit easier to deal with. At this time i will turn it over to mr. Bob anderson. I want to commend him on the job hes doing at the department of Human Services. Stressful circumstances under which he took this job, and how grateful we are for the work he and his team are doing in these challenging times. This obviously is a new concept but it is not a new idea. The idea is that parents who have children and who need to be at work, doctors, First Responders, whether they are sanitation workers, whoever they are, they need to be work and they have children they need childcare. This idea was put together by our division of early child in order topment come alongside existing childcare providers who are still in operation in one of the realities that no right now is of about 1500 childcare providers across the state somewhere around 900 are not 60 of them are not in operation. We understand why they are concerned. Theyre concerned about their safety and the safety of the children they care for. And they are following the governors orders that we shelterinplace we expect the parents to continue to do that ,ut those Emergency Personnel those healthcare personnel who have to be at work, we want this idea to make it one less thing , thatave to think about they have Emergency Childcare opportunities available to them if their traditional provider is no longer operating as the governor has said anybody can put together and stand up one of these sites, church, it can be we have talked with museums about doing this. All role is to simply be a partner with those willing to provide care we have a training packet available on the website the governor mentioned and we want to be a partner to providers who are beingresource to those parents who need this care for their children go thank you for your team for making this possible. There will be a large number of individuals that take advantage. 200 73 new cases of covid19 reported in our state earlier this morning. We reported unfortunately 11 more deaths. We are in the eye of the storm. Please stay smart. Stay safe. Protect yourself and protect your family. We will reopen our economy soon. We have to. It is not going to be an option. Lives are at stake due to a rapid increase in poverty as well as his Public Health crisis. No business is nonessential to those who rely on its paycheck for food, supplies and shelter. Today this posture is preventing imminent death. It is not forever. It is a temporary tool. In the time is coming to safely move beyond it. I hope and pray it is very soon. Askhis time i would like to dr. Dobbs to speak where we find ourselves today with respect to covid19. As the governor mentioned, we have 273 new cases and 11 deaths if we look at the racial breakdown, 56 of the case for africanamericans and 66 of the deaths are africanamericans, something that we find unacceptable. We had a total of 66 outbreaks within longtermcare settings our definition is a single case. Residentmployee or because we take these things so very seriously. As we talk about some of the things the department of health is trying to do i want to make sure Everybody Knows we will target our testing resources in the communities of greatest need to that end we are doing a testing location day in Mississippi Valley state trying to identify individuals who might be infected then tomorrow we have testing set up for lexington and homes county wilkinsonoodville and if you live in one of these areas and you have any of the symptoms, i strongly encourage s website thisc is free of charge and they will give you an appointment. If you lived in one of these areas, and think you might be infected we want as many people as we can to come to these testing locations if we look at these preparations for the surge of hospital resources we continue to see relative stability and a number of patients in the hospitals and in the availability of beds and ventilators. If we look at yesterdays numbers we have 149 patients with covid19 in intensive care. We have to hundred 75 open ofensive care unit heads ventilators we have 100 patients on mechanical ventilation which is similar to yesterdays number. Have 631 available ventilators for future use. Are in the eye of the storm. It is important for us to maintain our vigilance. We are all getting tired of this. Right now it is so important. I want to talk to our young people out there. Socialize. T and you might be sick. Will bring it back to your family members, your friends folks certainly are going to be a lot more prone to have severe illness and even died do it for your families and the ones you love thank you. Teamanks to you and your at the department of health for your leadership has gone tohelle covington in Lawrence County this afternoon he will be in Walthall County in the morning to tour additional damage andere in Jeff Davis County in jones county yesterday he and i and the senators and representatives from our federal team at fema and others one of the things that dr. Dobbs mentioned in an update i cannot give you today is our goal from beginning of this has been to ensure that every single mississippi and that gets covid19 and can get better with quality care has access focus to doour everything in our power to make sure that our Health Care System is not overwhelmed we are beginning to feel more confident that we willhave an adequate number of hospital beds we will have an adequate number of i see you beds and we will have an adequate number of ventilators challenge as everyone has heard over the last weeks is trying to ensure we also have an adequate amount of ppe i friday this past week we did receive 100,000 surgical gowns, and over the last two days, we received 95 masksn that is very welcome news. To say it has been a difficult environment to ensure that we ise adequate amounts of ppe an understatement we are beginning to get more and more of that and we are beginning to feel more confident as we progress forward as it relates to that thank you all for being here and we will try to answer some questions regardinge questions the hardest hit funds we will bring scott back up but for now if you have questions of mr. Anderson we will start to the left. Do you anticipate that the state fair site might come online . Yesterday you mentioned like what you would, out of this and step as we entered it, it seems like this has been put in place now at least some extension as it relates to essential businesses in terms of getting the site up and functional we anticipate eight to 10 days. There is some background background investigation, criminal checks. On the website, there is a nine step process that lays out exactly how to become a site. Is staffpart of that background checks, immunization and going to the training that we are offering for free. Anyone who wants to become a site. About a week to 10 days we could have the site up and running. How it relates to where we find ourselves in the cycle, we found that even under our executive order which did not require shelter in place, that kept some nonessential businesses open it, some health care, some childcare versatility shutdown they did it for whatever reason they chose and that is certainly asa private business that is their prerogative i will tell you we were having conversations every single day and two or three times many days about how quickly we can get our economy back open we are also planning to contingencies, not unlikely planned in terms of facilitiesat shelby and Community Colleges we want to make sure we have contingencies in place if things were continue to get worse than what we expect them to get do not get worse are essential businesses will continue to fund our Health Care Workers will continue to function ,nd the further along we go there are Health Care Providers for instance that are working every single day they have childcare facilities that for whatever reason some of the cave are not coming no we are a little bit concerned as we always everyone else in this new economy we are dealing with that some of them financiallycould find themselves of the typical circumstance this does just another tool in the toolbox to deal with some of the circumstances with the Financial Assistance only apply to these facilities or some still in operation . If i understand your question we provide a Financial Assistance to existing childcare facilities that will still continue to feel available to those operating trains andilities stand up and become a Training Facility and the children are they are entitled to Financial Assistance they will continue to get it you might find is their facility that exists out there and we are going to supposition but they may have had 100 kids six weeks ago. Effects, thee number of effects, one of which there issome nonessential workers that are not going to work that that facility may have gone from 100 kids down to 20 they may have found it not financially prudent to stay open this may be a way for which to them for them to reopen so this help is provided some more kids get there so it is more financially feasible for them the childcare centers, and that be free of charge . The range of possibilities for the facilities in terms of whether they charge a fee or whether they are made available for free is depending on who is sponsoring that facility they can fund them by donations or fun them by charging a fee, they can take our assistance vouchers as children qualify for vouchers, and they could be free the short answer is it depends on who is providing the funding for the facilityonce it is put in place i have got a threepart question the Economic Recovery Task force e what are they going to be doing and what oversight will they need . [indiscernible] reeves my brain is not working as well as it was before this aroundtheclock 24hour a day task we are doing. Individualt to the members committee, they are representative of the best in the brightest minds in our business community. They are going to be making recommendations to me and to our Leadership Teams in the State Government. They will have direct ability to spend any of the federal funds. They are going to make recommendations and we will make decision based upon what we believe is in the best interests of mississippi citizens how about hello, governor reeves thank you for calling me have a twopart question im wondering when we will be making a decision on the children order ending specifically the [indiscernible] reeves my timeline is yesterday. As soon as it is safe to do so. We have to do it as soon as we are comfortable that our Public Health x are comfortable with where we are in the cycle dr. Dobson i had multiple conversations over the last several days dr. Dobbs and i had multiple conversations. Where we find ourselves in the cycle. And how quickly we can get back ,pen as i mentioned yesterday we are looking at a number of Different Things but for the people of mississippi here is the way i explain it. Back over the last four weeks we got into a shelterinplace by taking numerous steps that got us to the shelterinplace we close school initially for a week then we close schools for four weeks family when into an executive order which mandated social distancing, which eliminated the ability for groups of 10 to get together, and 10 days after that we went into a shelterinplace for a 16 day time for two weeks my anticipation is over the next 34 weeks we will see a similar approach in which we loosen the restrictions over multiple decisions so as to come out of this as we get on the other side after having flatten the curve one of the things that many people look at in terms of the data, the easiest thing to look at and that is how many new cases did we report today . Just keep in mind that is a bit of a lagging indicator because reported today were actually tested a day ago or three days ago or at a private lab and it was three or four or five days ago, and the actual onset of their systems their symptoms occur to week ago so there is a number of Different Things we have to look at as it relates to that but we feel like at a minimum where we find yourself today we are at a plateau phase we are not seeing significantly new additional cases then the other thing many people look at is the daily number of deaths the keep in mind and this is been true everywhere in the world and we have seen it in america in new york the number of daily deaths is a lagging indicator there is no doubt in my mind that the things that we have put in place has significantly reduced the total numbe