Beaches. Well, good morning, everyone. As you can see, i have got a great team assembled with me here today, and i am certainly grateful for each one of them. For their service and participation in this process. First he we couldnt even be here talking about this order that expires if it had not been for the people of alabama abiding by the regulations and guidelines, for their sacrifices, their patience and their understanding during the last six weeks. What our citizens have done is work it, and i appreciate that so many people have been willing to do the right things to keep themselves healthy as well as to protect others to be well and healthy, too. This has not been an easy not in the we are Perfect World that we want to be. However, the people of alabama are to go the hard things to ensure that we can get back to our routines just as soon as possible. And today we are taking another step in that direction. Before i announce the changes that we are making, i would like to first acknowledge a few people that are with me today. Dr. Harris continues to be a great partner in this venture, and i know it has not been an easy task, but i sure do thank you, dr. Harris, for your wise council and your for your wise counsel and your realistic approach during this process. Your measured and balanced approach a have given the people of alabama confidence, the people that you and i both serve, and i know i am not alone in expressing our gratitude for your leadership during this time. Dr. Harris has worked diligently to ensure that we have more testing capabilities. As we work to begin reentry into our work places and return to daily routines, it is essential that we keep monitoring those infected with the covid19. Roping alabamas economy is certainly not as simple as flipping a switch or snapping your fingers. Like any good leader should, i have sought counsel from many avenues and received many, many recommendations. In fact, these are just some of the many reports and suggestions that we received in the last few days from the Small Business commission to each member of our congressional del desperation in washington. These suggestions are very broad and included many different scenarios, but i truly appreciate every one of them and the hard working partnership that they represent the the Seven Members of the executive committee and my Coronavirus Task portion are with me here today, and these folks have been differently diligently working to help me incorporate these ideas into the plan. This Committee Led by kelly butler has recommended to me a thoughtful, well planned time table on how we can open our economy back up. On april 30th, our current stay. T home order will expire issuing this order in the first place was not something i did lightly, and it was extremely difficult to tell businesses to close their doors. But it was done out of a need to get a handle on the spread of this virus. On march 13th i originally issued guidelines, strongly urged recommendations you might say, that if we all just did our part, then hopefully that would have been enough. At that time i spoke about my reluctance to issue a stay at home order because i have always known that if a government kills a business, washington cant print enough money to bring it back to life. I offered information we had at the time to slow the spread and to mitigate the hospital surge. Folks, i believe that all business is essential and truly regret any suggestion to the contrary. No matter the size, if you are conducting commerce and providing a paycheck, you have tremendous value to our state. On march 13th we select the a list of specific bills toss remain open based on their risk of spreading the virus due to specific functions. Our intent was never to pick winners and losers as some have wrongly suggested. We enter a safe at home direction on march 27th that we had hoped would eliminate a stay at home order. But unfortunately it did not. For that reason we enacted a stay at home order on april 4 due to the continued spread of the virus and the fear of hospital surge. As of this week we no longer believe our hospitals will see an overwhelming amount of i. C. U. Patients who need ventilators as we once believed, and that is good news for sure. While we have not seen a decrease in the amount of newly diagnosed covid19 patients, we have seen stabilization, a leveling off, if you will, in the amount of cases. Like everyone else, i look forward to easing back into our routines with caution. Just like we eased into this current stay a lot home order, we will also be thoughtful and careful as we ease back into our social interactions. Today i am announcing that we will once again enter a safer at home order that will still require social distancing and urge our people who continue taking all Health Precautions necessary as some people will return to the work place. While maintaining focus on our personal health, it is now time that we also focus on our Economic Health. This, too, will be a thoughtful, methodical process. Alabamians, i am pleased to say that we can roll back many of the row strikes thags have been placed on certain social gatherings and businesses. Own april 30th at 5 00 p. M. , our safer at home order will go into effect. All individuals, and especially vulnerable persons are encourageed to exercise personal responsibility in slowing down the spread of covid by minimizing travel outside the home. You will be urged to wear face coverings around people from other households when you leave your house. Obviously no one is going to arrest you if you dont, but it is just good sound medical advice, and it is for your safety as well as for the safety of those with whom you come in contact. You also are urged to continue propper hand watching and other common sense hygiene. All nonwork related phat gatherings of 10 persons or more or nonwork gatherings of any size that cannot maintain a consistent six foot distance between persons are prohibitted. However, some toplevel changes in this new order are as follows. Employers should take reasonable steps for employees to avoid gatherings of 10 persons or more, to practice social distancing and make strong efforts to disinfect their office space. Under this less restrictive order, all Retail Businesses would be allowed to open with a 50 occupancy rate and not allow customers to Congress Gate within six feet of one another. Our state beaches will be opened, providing people abide by social stancing and the gatherings guidelines. The mayors of our coastal towns have assured me thole take the lead and be proactive in enforcing the guidelines. Elective medical procedures can resume if providers take offside lines from their state regulatory boards or c. D. C. Guidance. Y fellow alabamians, let me be abundantly clear. The threat of covid19 is not over. We are still seeing the virus spread, and all of our people are susceptible to the infection. The greatest disservice for the people who might be watching me here today is to think that by lifting the comprehensive health restrictions, that this must and sign that there is no longer a threat of covid19. Folks, we must continue to be village dantoni e rant in our social stance vigilant in our social distancing today and in the future. I encourage everyone to practice teleworking if possible and be as innovative as you can as you open your work places. Own sure you are taking every precaution while getting back to work. It has certainly been a challenging month for sure. But better days are ahead of us. I am sure of that. I just want to thank the people of alabama for being disciplined and patient as we move into what i hope will be a better season for our state. Now let me call on dr. Harris to give his update. R. Harris . Thank you, governor. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Let me just briefly remind you of where we are right now. We are around 6,600 confirmed cases. That is over the last month and a half, with about 242 deaths so far reported here in alabama. Like we have mentioned to you before, we see that our africanamerican alabamians are disproportion naturely represented in those deaths. They represent close to half the deaths and that is pause we lieve this disease has a predelection for people with heart problems, diabetes and other health problems. These are still Vulnerable People and people we need to protect. I do agree it is very reasonable for us to begin a gradual opening like. This we appreciate governor ivy and what she has done on this. This has just been really difficult decisions, and she has done a terrific job of keeping everyone safe and trying to balance all those factors that are important. We believe there are certain times of activities that it is safe people to resume. People certainly do need to return to work, and we want to make that as safe as we possibly can do. We feel like we have seen a number of improvements recently as the governor mentioned to you. Our case numbers are relatively flat. We are somewhere around a couple of hundred cases a kay over the past few days. We have seen numbers of about 48, 209, 189, 261 and so on. We are occasionally always higher or a little lower but send to stay around that baseline of around a couple of hundred cases a day. The death that is we have seen have been fairly flat as well. We continue to see some of those, unfortunately, but they are certainly not accelerating at rates like we saw earlier on. We are very pleased at how hospitals have been able to preserve their capacity. Ey have not had ventilator shortages, or when they have had that short term, they have been able to share among themselves and manage that. We do have i. C. U. Beds and ability to care for people in the four wallace of the hospital and have not needed the alternative care sites that we had prepared for. All these, are very encouraging to us. We have mentioned more than once to you about the white house gating criteria for moving to a phase one reopening of the economy. We have met he two of those three gating criteria. We have not met all of those cry tear yafment we feel good about criteria. We feel good about the criteria related to symptoms and hospital casualty. We have yet to meet the 14day deadline that is in the guidelines. I would say for that reason we are not proceeding to the full phase one opening comes tents with the white house plan. The white house Plan Suggested opening entertainment venues, gyms, restaurants and a number of other things that we are not doing at this time. Ut we do think, like the governor mentioned to you earlier, is commactsly the right approach. It is a very gradual and reasonable way to safely get people back to work and get the economy going again. We will continue to monitor the case numbers that we have. As people get back out in public again, we certainly hope they can maintain the things that they need to do to keep us all safe and healthy. We believe that a gradual reopening makes a lot of sense. But as the governor mentioned, this really is up to the people of alabama to keep doing the right things as they have been doing so far. I have appreciated so much the ertz that i have seen from people. So many folks have really done their very best to make sure they are keeping themselves safe and keeping their family members safe. We realize that has been done at great personal cost for many of them. Even as we open things back up, we need to continue to ask alabamians to continue to work with us and do things a little differently for future. We are going to recommend that people wear face cofferings like this or coughings like this and like those you can mack at home. For a number of reasons, this was not an order, but this is a very strong recommendation, and we think it is the right thing to do, and we want all of you to do that. This is the mask i wore in the car on the way up here and this is what i wear to go out for takeout. I would encourage you to do those sorts of things as well. Most importantly maurice remember that we need to protect the most Vulnerable People in our society. We have seniors who represent about threequarters of all the deaths that we have seen so far, but we have a lot of people with chronic disease in our state. People with Heart Disease and lung disease. They are much more likely to do poorly if they are exposed. So please keep that in mind. Even if you dont feel that you are at risk from this disease, mcgee think about the loved ones and the people you care about and try to protect them as well. We know that we have a ways to go to get completely back where we were, but i think we are moving in exactly the right direction at exactly the right speed. We know there are some close contact professions out there that we have not address today. Those jobs where people literally put their hands on their customers are certainly a risk category that is different from other types of businesses, and we hope to hey dress that very soon. We know people have a lot of questions about that. I will be glad to mention to you later, if you like, about what we are doing around testing and Contact Tracing. We have done some very good things in those areas and believe we are moving in the right direction there as well. Again, just a thank you to everyone for what you have done so far. We appreciate all theer efforts. And thank you, governor, for what you have done as well. Thank you, dr. Harris. S i mentioned earlier, assisting dr. Harris and sifting through all of this has been the executive committee of my Coronavirus Task force. These are the folks that are starppeding behind me today. Leading this group of distinguished men and women has been alabamas fans director, kelly butler. Kelly will have a few words on behalf of the executive committee. If each member is interested and would like to introduce themselves and make a brief remark, then when we get to the questions and answers, you can ask all of the members. They will be prepared to take your questions. Director butler . Thank you, governor. It is a pleasure to be here this morning. I wanted to first thank you, governor, and dr. Harris for establishing this committee of very distinguished members of alabamas community. We have two members who are medical doctors, accomplished medical doctors, dr. Vehiclers is the dr. Vickers is the current dean of the school of member, and dr. Kahn is the row tired director of the Virginia School of medical sip. We have various leaders. Including mr. Tim vines, president of blue cross, second of commerce greg camfield. Speaker pro tempore marsh and speaker mccutchen, all very accomplished people. As i like to joke, we had one accountant, which is me. I really believe that the makeup of the committee contributed to the debate that we had, the conversation that we had. The committee was able to draw on the speaker tees of these members, draw on the medical doctors for speaker tees when it came to those issues, draw on the Business Leaders when this came to those issues, draw on the two highly elected state officials for all that leadership. I believe that led to a careful approach in the committees work based as much as it could be on data and the speaker tees of the members. As the governor mentioned, we looked at volumes of information, including the Small Business commission report, recommendations from the Congressional District members, recommendations from legislators, and individuals. Our task was to review all of that information along with the covid and ht against make recommendations to the governor and dr. Harris so that they could make the decisions they needed to make. The committee did produce a report and deliver that to them, and i believe that the process was helpful and useful, and i want to personally thank all of the members of the committee for their time and effort that they put into that. Lastly, governor, i want to thank you and dr. Harris for your leadership throughout this and for your wisdom in seeking out guidance from as many people as you could. Thank you. We certainly thank the members of this committee for working so hard. You poured through pages and pages of documents and recommendations. Folks, here in alabama, one out of two adults in alabama attend some type of church or ripplingous worship service. Faith is clearly a part of the thread of the people of alabama. And getting back to Worship Services is essential as we maintain our spiritual and Mental Health during this coronavirus he pandemic. Like so many others who call on a pastor, priest or ran eye in good times or bad, i often turn to my pastor and friend, dr. Jay wolf. However, getting back to these Services Must be done with very much concern. Last week as we were discussing this evident to reopen alabama safely. I asked jay if he would reach out to his network of friends across the state from all different denominations and across the state, and i will ask dr. Wolf to come forward now and share the consensus of what the religious leaders throughout alabama are feeling at this time. Dr. Wolf . Thank you so much, governor. We thank fwod for you and for a we thank god for you and for allows ugh to contribute to your decisionmaking process regarding reopening houses of worship in alabama. Like you, governor, we simply want to honor the lord, help and protect gods people and do hat is right and responsible our task force was asked to provide for the governor some helpful and common sense considerings for reopening houses of worship across alabama in accordance with the whitehouse and c. D. C. Recommendations. These guidelines were compiled by a team of ministers and lay leaders and in particular, dr. On williamson, who is the head of the Alabama Public Health department for many ehlers. The process for reopening churches for large inperson gatherings must proceed gradually and in a measured fashion. Because covid19 has proven to and very y contagious dangerous enemy. We must reopen in a way that will not in verrett endly facilitate an outbreak of this virus. Many sad stories from other states have emerged where covid19 has spread through a congregation and even taken the lives of pastors and created community outbreaks. The c. D. C. Is recommending a threefazed approach to reopening houses of worship. It is our opinion that the c. D. C. Guidelines should be followed. Ease visit www point whitehouse. Gov, opening america, and they will give you current information. Now at this time alabama does not meet the tie year ya proposed by the c. D. C. For reopening houses of worship for large inp