Latest death toll and set hospitalizations continue to decrease. Governor lamont also announced that connecticuts Contact Tracing program will be in partnership with microsoft. Good afternoon, everybody. Daily briefing with paul and josh, and backed by popular demand, dr. Matt carter, our state epidemiologists. He has brought Christine Soto with him. Christine is in expert on track and trace, and that will be the focus of our discussion here this afternoon. You look at our daily summary , i think of most interest to me, i usually dont spend as much time on positive cases because that is simply a function of how much testing we are doing. 2000 test performed, and only 315 positive cases. 315 is the lowest we have had in weeks, and thats about a 16 or so test rate, so we will see if that indicates anything. Only 315, i dont mean it. Tomorrow, folks are going to bye who were both afflicted covid, tested positive, you may , he one is rudy marconi will be here to talk about his , and his personal experience. Also jane, she is a state representative, chamber of commerce, afflicted back in midmarch, quite a while ago. Just to give a little personal perspective what we talk about when we say positive cases. Again, you will see hospitalization is down, the sixth day in a row. That is a trendline we are following as regards our plans for gradual reopening of what were trying to do. That is indicative of the fact hospitals have capacity, they are about two thirds capacity right now and that is a good sign. Our icus have even more capacity. Current hospitalizations, the next slide, is pretty much the same trend as you have seen before. The good news is those lines at the bottom, not going up as fast. Social distancing is working there. And of course our big curves are down now. To bend daytoday changing hospitalizations, again, look at the trendline. That gives us that great line for when we think we can start thinking about opening some sectors of the economy that are not open now. A week from now we will give you a stronger indication, on thursday weve got the reopening committee here to answer any of your questions. , if we get to say into the track and trace discussion, its all about making sure that we contain this virus, making sure we slow the spread, and making sure that as we slowly get back to work, we do it the safest way possible. Im reminded that we have a very high Unemployment Rate, 439,000 people have applied. Imply an Unemployment Rate north of 20 , the likes of which we have not seen since the great oppression. This is not a permanent state, it is a shortterm state. Were doing everything we can to rectify that and thats why were focused on some of the things we can do. Obviously the department of labor has put out rehundred 30 million in claims over the last month. Though 600 claims that true up is the federal government starting to get paid in the last few days. That will inject some money into the economy and inject some confidence into the economy. As you know, we had 18,000 Small Businesses get accepted for the ppp loans, and as youve heard round of those loans are being processed as we speak. Out that connecticuts Small Business continue to do very well. As we think about reopening more and more of our businesses, weve got some safe workplace rules, that includes wearing of masks, and thanks to incredible generosity of a lot of people around the state, a lot of companies around the state, and ability to acquire mask and other ppe strategically, our stockpile is grown, which we are very appreciative. Website,o to the cdi a and i think weve had 5400 Small Businesses, businesses with less than 50 people, who have come in and ask for a couple of masks for employees, just so we can get these businesses going and doing that safely. Another key to being able to operate our lives safely is track and trace. Track and trace sounds a little like big brother, but dr. Carter has reminded me that this is a triedandtrue method of limiting an infectious spread, and it goes back 100 years. This soto has been doing focus on measles, which im told is also highly infectious. What we have done on measles over the last 10 years, im afraid we are doing with covid by a factor of 20. Ramping this up in a significant way. Areill tell you how we working with our local department of Public Health. Weve got 15 of them lined up right now and weve got volunteers, we hope to get i think hundreds of volunteers who are already doing this and another 500 volunteers in the near future. What they will be doing is finding out who has been infected, give them a text or call, find out who they have been in contact with, say 10 minutes of contact within five or six feet apart from each other, and on a voluntary basis, give us that information so we can tell people, you may have been exposed or in contact with covid. This has worked in years past with measles. This is what were working on a regional basis with governor and were beginning to roll that out now in a serious way. That is the most effective thing we can do to reduce the spread and limit the spread and get you back to work. With that, i think i would like to introduce Christine Soto, who has been doing this for some sheriff, nowasles youre heading over to what we can learn from measles and take that to covid. Christine . Thank you, governor. I am in epidemiologists in the Infectious Disease section in the department of Public Health. Today i will be telling you little bit more about Contact Tracing, which is one of the keys to help control the spread of diseases, including covid19. Weve been working closely in collaboration make sure that what we are doing in terms of contract Contact Tracing aligns with strategies for returning to normal. Im excited to tell you about a system wetion of are developing in partnership with microsoft for at risk identification. As the department of Public Health as well as we will be working closely with microsoft to implement this solution over the next month. , please. Governor and dr. Carter have emphasized, Contact Tracing is not something that is new. It is something we routinely use for other Infectious Diseases including measles. A strategyg to adapt for covid in order to help stop the spread of infection in our communities and prevent individual cases from turning into Larger Community outbreaks. Tracing, people the virusract unknowingly. Although people can choose to stay home if they are sick, oftentimes people might spread disease either even before they start to have symptoms or can even be symptomatically even if someone follows all the Public Health regulations, there is still a chance they could unknowingly spread it to their closest contacts and those contacts can spread it to others in the community. Contact tracing, on the other helps stop exposures from happening. When youl terms, its identify positive case, we will speak with them to determine their potential exposure, including coming into contact with immediately before they became sick and within hours of showing symptoms. The tests are made at home, therefore stopping the spread of covid further in the community. I would now like to talk a little bit more about the Contact Solution specifically and how we will be using this technology to leverage our Contact Tracing plan to have a coordinated statewide effort. Local Health Departments as well as the department of Public Health will continue to receive information on all individuals in the state that test positive for covid19. Is part of ourn reportable conditions and it is common database. We will integrate with our contract Contact Tracing system. This work will be done by Public Health professionals who work either at the Department Public health, one of our local Health Departments, or with credentialed volunteers. [indiscernible] medicine, nursing, and schools of social work. This will identify their exposure and also give them guidance on what they can do to prevent spreading the infection to others around them. Additionally, by leveraging this , in partnership with microsoft, we will be able to rapidly share information so if a person resides in one jurisdiction and test positive in another, that can be instantly shared. [indiscernible] letting us know about their symptoms, when they became sick, and who they may have exposed immediately before or while they were asymptomatic. Toill help identify stop the spread of covid in the community. Contract contact tracers were working with will be able to answer general questions about the disease as well as referring individuals to social services as needed, and also making sure were handling information in a confidential and secure manner. Next slide, please. I think it is important to point local Health Departments can only do so much, even with the best technology in the world, and for Contact Tracing to really work, we need the support of you in the public to help us in this endeavor. First of all, if you test positive for covid19, you should know that somebody from the Public Health department or from an Academic Institution will be contacting you to talk about your illness. This contact may be occurring via text message, email, so were asking if you are either if you receive communication from the Department Public health are one of our Public Health partners, it is important to work with us, fill out the questionnaire, and let us know about your illnesss as well as potential exposures to really help protect those around you. So,ou are asked to do please selfisolate or selfquarantine. People who are not showing symptoms are capable of spreading covid to others, so staying home when asked to do so really is the best way to prevent the spread of the infection in the community. We are currently in the early phases of this in limitation. We officially kicked off development today. We expect to have the ready within the next week. Then we will do a week of training and Pilot Testing with many of our local Health Departments before rolling this out publicly by the third week in may. We will be keeping you posted with further announcements as we get further in this process. Thank you. Gov. Lamont helpful and fast work, appreciate that. We are happy to take questions. Dr. Carter is here as well. We will start with first connected media. [indiscernible] do we have information on nursing home discharges and recovery and things . As of today, we are up to 158 residents admitted into three active Recovery Centers and we have already had five discharges, just today we had five discharges, some great news there. Do we have any overall figures . We will share the usual big data list of Nursing Homes with infections on thursday, as weve been doing over the last couple of weeks. One other quick update, as we discussed the last couple of days, our team of Public Health along with support from the have beenuard and cdc outfitting Nursing Homes and assisted living facilities and they have completed 216 visits by close of business today. A lot of great progress helping support the teams doing such important work. Do we have a ballpark figure on the number of tracers who may be involved . Currently approximate 300 individuals across the state as well as local Health Departments , we anticipate recruiting an additional from our Academic Institutions. Will continue to evaluate the need for additional volunteers. Could you repeat the first number . Im sorry, i am getting an echo. 300 and aretly have 64 local Health Departments. Then we anticipate recruiting 400500 academic volunteers and will continue to evaluate the strategy moving forward to see if additional volunteers are needed. Carter, do you have any updates on immunity of people who are coming out of the covid infections . Thank you. As you probably have read, this is a Million Dollar question. What we do not know is whether. R not immunity will be many people who recover from this infection will have immunity for months. Maybe a bit longer. We will not know until studies have been done. Thanks. Tic news. O w tracing. Rter, on the how many people do we have to track and trace to be able to prevent further spread . What percentage of the population . I would like to take that question. Essentially, Contact Tracing is difficult to do when we are near the peak, which is where we are right now. Where it is going to play a very important role. Right now what we see is a flattening of the curve. That is occurring because of community mitigation, the social distancing, staying at home. That is what is driving case numbers down. Needed is really mid may to late may, the numbers theases will decrease, number of tests being done will dramatically increase, and our goal is to contact investigation of every confirmed case. Know not everybody will participate in Contact Tracing, but our goal is to reach every and ask them to participate in Contact Tracing and to selfisolate or stay at home in selfquarantine. Out we arepoint getting massive reverb on the audio . Is to the point the audio may not be usable. Any suggestions . Perhaps log out of the Microsoft Teams call and log back in. Next to the water very republican american. I have another question for dr. Carter. Perhaps you could give us your what we have been seeing, it has been a while since we have heard from you, another day of hospitalization decline. Thegovernor has pointed out number of positive cases. Perhaps you could give us an assessment. Dr. Carter has logged out of the call to fix an audio issue. If you have another question, i would start there. All right. We have heard more objections raised to the composition of this reopen Advisory Board and its operations outside the freedom of information act. The House Minority leader of the publicative caucus, policy, they say it is a matter of Public Confidence and trust that people most affected by the discussion and recommendations be able to hear it. I will take that question and dr. Carter, maybe you can talk about the trendlines we have seen since last you were here. I am making the call in terms of how fast we open, how we can do that safely, but i had to work quickly in terms of getting the best and the brightest from around the state to volunteer casestime working in many 16, 18 hour days, email, phone, whatever it may take so we can get this going. They are going to be reporting and able to answer every question you have on thursday and i am here every afternoon to do this as well. That is why we have set it up as a purely Advisory Board. So we can get this going quickly, so i can get track and trace in less than a week, so we can start our reopening strategy decline from the hospitalizations. I do not want to slow this up. I think it is too important. That is why we have set this up the way we have. I am the person at the end of the day making the call surrounded by some really smart people. Dr. Carter . Could you repeat the question please . And as my audio better . Sounds good to me. I just wanted to hear your perspective on the trendlines we have seen, the decrease in hospitalizations. The governor spoke about the , positiveily tests tests. Your thoughts on the trendline . Dr. Carter i think it is clear that social mitigation, what we have done in terms of distancing has had a dramatic effect on disease transmission. We certainly have seen a much lower spread of covid19 in the state of connecticut then we thought we would see a month ago. I am concerned, however, that we the trends are encouraging, but the number of cases that we still have are far too many. Arehould not think that we through this at this point in time. If you look at the number of hospitalizations, they are continuing to happen. The number of deaths that are continuing to happen. New york city, connecticut, new jersey, the tristate outbreak is some of the largest covid activity in the United States. We still have a ways to go. There is always the chance of a second wave. One of the things that we have is thatabout covid19 it is very unpredictable. We are probably going to see an increase in covid activity in the southern hemisphere, in australia, south africa, etc. , places that are just now entering their winter season. Covid is going to continue to exist, even if our numbers go down here in the United States. And it is likely we will see a second wave in the fall. We would all wish that was not the case, but if we do have a second wave, i think we have time to prepare to make sure we have enough personal protective equipment. We may have an antiviral treatment at that point, something to actually treat the infection, which would be a tremendous advance. We will not have a vaccine by the fall, but we will be in a better place. I do not think any of us would look forward to reentering quarantine again the way we have. But it is something we need to be prepared for. T newsmove on next to c junkie. This is for the governor. Why has the department o