Dobbs and his team. And all that has gone into mississippi being one of the states that is testing at a higher rate than virtually any other state. That has not received significant federal help. When you look at the hot spots in new york and new jersey and even to our neighbor to the west, louisiana, city of new orleans, the federal government put significant resources in there to help them testing. Understandably so. Whereas they had a significant peak that went up very, very quickly, mississippi appears to have at least for now slowed the spread of the virus and we are becoming more and more confident each day that for where we are currently plateaued that we will not be putting the kind of risk on our Health Care System as was the case in those hot spot areas. We are also seeing now that some of those hot spots are spreading out a bit. When you look at the boston metropolitan area, the detroit metropolitan area, and to a certain extent the chicago metropolitan area as well. Those are certainly have potential to continue to get worse and worse. We are praying for them and hopeful that things work out well for them. Where we find ourselves today we are obviously having conversations about what a further reopening of our economy may look like. And i want to just offer a bit of a preview for the people of mississippi. Understand that this is not going to be a light switch that we can turn on and off. There will not be one day where we return to normal as we knew two months ago. Do not expect to wake up on friday or next monday or the monday after that and it be as if a light switch went off and none of this ever happened. That is not reality. That is not what we are dealing with. Our reopening strategy will be continuous, but it will be slow. Opening up perhaps different sectors, perhaps maybe different regions of the state. At different times. As the data and the Public Health experts advise us. There will continue to be rules. There will continue to be rules that we will continue to need to follow. We will ease into it. We are not going to rush into it. But understand, we understand that we have to start heading in that direction. We have to do something. Because for some during this time the way its been somewhat comfortable. But for some you have netflix and you have food deliverry. But for others, this is deeply, deeply painful. Please all of my fellow mississippians, please remember that. Please remember the hundreds of thousands of mississippians that have filed for Unemployment Insurance just in the last three or four weeks. Many of them have never been on Unemployment Insurance in their life. So they are frustrated because navigating the system cab frustrating. Although i will tell you we as a state made great progress and well continue to do so. Every opportunity that we have to give a life line to a worker by slowly reopening, will help save lives in the long term. I truly believe that. But i also know that this virus is deadly. It is spreading. And it continues to spread. I am pleased, as i said yesterday, that our curve is flattening. It appears to be plateauing. And it appears it is going to be much lower than originally expected. Thats good news. That happened because of you. Because you made good decisions. You have made the right decisions. But understand that does not ean that the threat is gone. Im incredibly grateful for dr. Dobbs and his team at the state department of health for their counsel and expert leadership throughout this crisis. We all know that dr. Dobbs has been a steady hand on the wheel. Well continue to listen to our states top Health Experts every step of the way. We know that the ultimate help will be when workers are allowed to provide for themselves. In the meantime, we want to offer any helping hand we can. Understand that there has been a press release thats gone out just recently from the i. R. S. So this is critically important for those of you who are on Social Security. Again, this is a federal program that the state does not have a necessarily a role to play, but i want everyone to understand this. I want to flag this for any and everyone on Social Security. If you are on Social Security and do not file tax returns, you need to take action to get the extra 500 per child payment on top of your 1,200 support from the federal government. You must go to irs. Gov to do that. Let me say that again. If you did not file taxes, if you are on Social Security and you did not file taxes in 2018 irs. Gov you must go to to get that additional payment. That must be done by noon tomorrow. Im hopeful that you are paying attention and that you will do that if you fit into that category. Again, it is not state run. It is a federal program. But if you dont go to the website and file, you will not be eligible for that money if you have any dependents. Why is that the case . Because obviously if you dont file tax returns with the i. R. S. , it would be impossible for them to know that you had dependents. Now, today ive also invited a team from the Mississippi Department of Employment Services to talk about Unemployment Insurance. We do have some good news. And im happy to announce it. That starting today we have started we have cleared the hurdles to make the available the pandemic unemployment assistance program. That means that selfemployed mississippians, independent contractors, church employees, gig economy workers, and others who were not previously eligible can now get assistance. It also specifically lays out benefits for people who are not able to work as a direct result of the covid19 crisis. Now, please hear me say this. If you have previously filed and you werent eligible for the typical unemployment, you do not have to file again. Fill out your weekly certifications and you will get notified if you are eligible for this special fund. As i have said here many times before, we are continuing to staff up and work to address the 14,000 increase in claims that have caused delays for people. That work is ongoing. There is no simple fix, but i will tell you that i am proud of the efforts of these individuals at the department of employment security. They are working day and night to continue to build capacity. At this point i can tell you that we have increased the number of people answering the phones from approximately 50 to approximately 250. A fivefold increase over a few short weeks. When you looked at what happened last week in overall claims, what you saw is mississippis processing actually processed approximately 50 more claims than the week before. Thats because we are building capacity. If you look at what happened in america, the number of claims filed last week compared to the week before was almost identical. Now, some of you may believe that it was identical because there were not more Unemployed People in other parts of the country. I dont believe thats the case. I believe that the capacity had reached a level two weeks ago, nationally, that for all intents and purposes was not increased. In our state, we continue to increase capacity to answer the calls so that we continue to minimize and mitigate the number of calls that go unanswered. I want to ask director turner and timothy rust to give us an update ton what i believe to be very impressive efforts to deal with this unprecedented surge in Unemployment Insurance claims. Director. Thank you, governor reeves. Its our pleasure to be back with you here again at this press conference. We had the pleasure of coming and being before you a couple weeks ago. At that time we were able to announce that the additional 600 related to those that are eligible for what we call the regular Unemployment Insurance program, those payments were flowing and in the two weeks since we have been here, we have paid out millions. I want to give those figures. Its astronomical and it tells the point, goes to the point that governor reeves was talking about about how the workload and number of claims and people working so hard every day to bring those mississippians the benefits that they deserve. What we have been able to accomplish in those weeks. On a typical unemployment week prior to the pandemic, we may n. This good economy, we may have paid out about 1 million a week. Last week we made out 72 million. 54 million of that was related to the pandemic Unemployment Compensation related to the Unemployment Insurance program. Now the two days of this week we have already paid out 72 72,880,000 and we have surpassed what we paid out all in the last two weeks. Thats strictly related to the extra 600 and the people and eligible for the regular Unemployment Insurance program. Im pleased as you are that we have made Great Strides but its not enough until we reach every single mississippian that needs our help. We are also pleased today to announce the application process for the pandemic unemployment assistance portion of the cares act. Its now available through the mds. Ms. Gov website to file for the benefits that are due to those that as governor reeves described, as the gig economy workers. You may also find yourself eligible if you were uneligible for the regular Unemployment Insurance program because of insufficient wages or other barriers, but because of a covid related reason, there are 10 of them, its listed on our website, and they are listed in the application process, if you qualify for one of those 10 reasons, and found yourself not eligible in the regular Unemployment Insurance program, you may be eligible for pandemic unemployment assistance. For a time so the application process is now on our website, and our call center, Contact Center representatives are available to take your claims through the Contact Center. We have added additional phone numbers. Please see our website for those additional phone numbers. We also have a specific Call Center Number for pandemic unemployment assistance. Ill say i have asked that we can manage it better if youll call one of those options so that others can get through on the other lines. As governor reeves stated, we are adding we have added these people in line so we can help others get to us quicker. As ill recap that, we have our normal call certainty number thats been out there the entire time. We add an additional Call Center Number yesterday for additional people that can take your claims. As of as we speak a press release is going out and information on our website and through social media, and well share it with our state leaders and our partners around the state that there is the pandemic unemployment assistance is now available and there is an additional Call Center Number for that as well. Ill stop now and let mr. Rust take a few minutes to talk about provisions, specific provisions of the cares act. Governor reeves let me reiterate that. There are multiple phone numbers now on their website. The best way for you to reach someone the quickest is to pick one of those numbers, stick with it, and call it. If you keep going from number to number to number, and i understand everybody can be frustrated, if you keep going from number to number to number, you are going to tie up those lines and you are less likely to actually get someone to answer. If we will patiently call the same number, give it a little time if you dont get an answer, and call the same number back. We are building capacity to go from 50 to 250 people answering the phone over a short three weeks has been very good work. We have more work to do and know that. Mr. Rush. Mr. Rush thank you governor, director turner. In addition to that we have upped the number of phone lines, ver 1,000. We are trying to reach as many people and return as many calls and answer as many live calls as possible. In addition to the phone lines, we are as indicated, providing now opportunities for individuals who are in the gig economy who are selfemployed, who may be working for charitable organizations or faithbased organizations. The pandemic unemployment assistance. We are hoping that will be available by the end of this week and payments will go out as early as the weekend or monday of next week. There is a specific number that we encourage you to call. As director turner indicated that number will be posted on our webpage. I would like to share that number at this time. Sorry, 8331 18339190334. Thats 18339190334. That line is specifically nor those who are part for those who are part of the gig economy. Those who are selfemployed part of the faithbased community, those who are not covered for regular Unemployment Benefits. Fpuc there is the the pandemic emergency Unemployment Compensation program. So we have essentially three programs which most of the claimants have filed and received additional 600 which is under the pandemic Unemployment Compensation. E emergency Unemployment Compensation program is for those individuals who may have had a claim prior to march of this year, and those benefits would have expired or ran out, or individuals who have exhausted benefits or in a current benefit year, and are not able to receive benefit as a result of covid19. If you file your claim, there may be a notice on the system indicating that you are not eligible because you exhausted benefits. There is no need to file an additional claim. The system will notify you of your eliblibility for benefits. It is important that you do file the weekly benefit certifications. We have noticed that quite a few individuals have not filed those and we encourage individuals to go in each sunday morning or each stun and file the weekly certifications. Thats how you get paid on the debit card or direct deposit. Ill yield at this point and entertain any questions if there are any. Governor reeves wellcome back to questions in a second. Ill give dr. Dobbs the opportunity to bring us up to date on where we find ourselves with covid19 in the state of mississippi. Then well open it up to questions. Dr. Dobbs. Dr. Dobbs thank you, governor. A quick update, we reported 204 new case was 14 additional zeths bringing us to a total of 4,716, and 183 deaths. Of note 90 of those deaths are individuals over 60 years of age. 51. 3 of our total case burden is africanamericans, and 4 of our deaths are among africanamericans. As of yesterday, we had completely a total of 52,364 tests for mississippians. Still wonderful progress by the Public Health lab and the private dogs and clinics have done a fantastic job. As far as hospital capacity, yesterday updates report, we have 79 could he develop patients on mechanical ventilation, with 668 available ventilators. Covid i. C. U. Patients, 144, with 277 open i. C. U. Beds. With relative stability some mild plucks wations, but the ventilator number is the lowest we have seen in a little bit a couple quick messages to share. We have flattened the curve, which is fantastic, but we still havent dropped. There is still a lot of cases out there. Nows the time to be vigilant. We dont need to let our guard down. Make sure when we are in public we are wearing masks, maintaining social distancing. Although we are looking to try to grasp some sense of additional normalcy, we are just really dont need to let our guard down. Your individual behavior is the most important thing that will protect you from covid. A couple other things we are working diligently with medical and dental community to try to find strategies for eventually improving access to care sor. So thats something that will be evolving. Appreciate the guidance from the Governors Office as we work through that process. As we look to the future, we are very worried about ongoing highrisk outbreaks. There are a lot of environments such as longterm care settings, nursing homes, places where people live in close proximity. Anticipate seeing more outbreaks. Thats part of what we are concerned about. Its also part of whats being seen nationally. That will affect our numbers as we go forward. Speaking of outbreaks, certainly we know that in some of these scenarios businesses will be affected by cases or outbreaks. We will be putting on our website Additional Guidance for businesses so they can understand what to expect when maybe one of their employees is infected. Or maybe one of their employees needs to be placed on quarantine orders to make sure they have a clear understanding how long they will be out of work and can make plans to that effect. We have put Additional Data on our website around lornl care centers. If you havent checked, we are trying to get as much information as we can. By county. Number of deaths, number of cases, by race. Thats information that you have available to you. Then just lastly, please know that we have one of our major folks making sure that we try to reach Africanamerican Community regard to testing, messaging, access to care. We know how important that is. Thats going to be a major focus of our effort as we go forward over the ensuing weeks. Thank you. Overnor reeves, thank you, dr. Dobs. I sat here yesterday and made the case to the people of mississippi that the fact we had gone from approximately 180 cases couple days towards the end of last week to 300 cases yesterday was not a reason to panic. Let me make the for consistency sake. The same argument today we went from 300 cases yesterday to 200 cases today is not a reason to celebrate. The reality is there are large variations from day to day. New testing results on a daily basis is not a perfect thing to look at. Because we know that we have delays in testing results, etc. There is not a consistent test whereby we are getting these results in 15 seconds. What i would simply say is we are in the same posture today as we were yesterday which is the same posture we were in the day before even though the actual number of te