Gov. Mcmaster welcome again. We have signing for us today. For an opening prayer. Henry ford said coming together is the beginning and keeping together is progress. Working together is success. Colossians tohe clothe themselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and forgiveness. Over all of these virtues, love binds them all together. Let us pray. Holy father, we come together today and ask that you might help us to treat each other with that perfect love that brings perfect unity. Father god we continue to look , for your guidance and direction for our state and our nation. Open our hearts. Heal our hearts. Father, we ask that you would give our leaders discernment and wisdom, wisdom like you gave to solomon. We have reminded that you are still in control, as you have always been. Promise now father, heal us father. Eradicate this virus from the world and let us be reminded that we are all created in your image. Help us to relate to each other accordingly. Father, we thank you for how you are going to act and the opportunities that we have. Namee pray in your holy amen. , gov. Mcmaster again, welcome to the Emergency Management division. Again, welcome to the Emergency Management division. We will have some information. We will start with dr. Linda bell. Dr. Bell good afternoon. 520 eight newnce cases of covid19 and seven additional deaths. This brings the total number of cases in South Carolina to 15,759. The total number of deaths to 575. Amave to say that today, i more concerned about covid19 in South Carolina than i have ever been before. For the past two weeks, we have seen some of our highest daily numbers since the pandemic began and there have been recent cases positive. Is why we need everyones help in deemphasizing how critical it is for every one of us, every day to wear a mask in public and to stay physically distanced from one another. Those precautions, masks and social distancing are how we stop the virus. Yesterday a statement was issued , reiterating how vital the important it is for all people in South Carolina to adhere to these measures. We are eager to return to our normal not normal lives, but it will take us that much longer to get there, if we do not stop the virus today. It does not take hard data to observe that many people across the state are not socially distancing or avoiding group gatherings. Inreally need all people South Carolina to take these precautions every day, not only to protect ourselves but to protect others who could become severely ill or die, if they are exposed. Better identified hotspots. This is recently including greenville county. When we identify a hotspot like ville, we dig deep into the data and use the information provided to us to help identify risk factors that could contribute to the spread in these areas. We have determined several cases households, from meaning that family members are infecting each other in their homes. Tot is why it is important stay in isolation and quarantine, if you are diagnosed. This helps to protect your family. We have determined approximately 31 of recent cases have been occurring in a largely tino population. We immediately targeted our outreach to efforts in these communities. This includes interviews on latinoadio stations, radio stations and the redistribution of information and resources in these areas. We continue to increase covid19 testing availability in greenville. Health carep of providers and health care facilities, we continue to work with Community Partners to accomplish that. While we work to identify hotspots in the state and take extra steps to stop the spread of the virus in these areas, i asked everybody listening to me now to ask yourself, how you could possibly help to stop the spread of the virus, what you can personally do to protect yourself and take your communities, so that we can return to normal activity sooner rather than later. This will help reduce the impact of the virus that we are all experiencing, if we take these individual measures and ask if there is more that we could do to stop the spread of the virus. Your community may not be a hotspot today, but there should be no mistake that covid19 transmission is ill highend widespread in South Carolina and it remains a threat to all of us. The onlysures are thing to keep us safe in the absence of a vaccine. We know that what we have been asking everyone to do is not easy, but i cannot stress enough that it is absolutely necessary. We can help save more lives in South Carolina. Thank you. To echo what dr. Bell said, this is a question of individual response billeting and it is something that we all have at our disposal. Ien i was growing up, remembered the Smokey Bear Campaign was relatively new. Smokey bear was a bear that was found after a forest fire out west and he became the emblem of preventing forest fires, the symbol. He said, only you can prevent forest fires. That appealed to children. Ist we are trying to do now appealed to children, adults and everyone between. You have heard just about every almost three months now, coming from this place and others, that we all have to practice social responsibility, not becoming infected or infecting others by wearing , sociallye shields distancing, staying out of confined spaces. It is a question of being respectful of your fellow citizens. That is the only way that we will stop the virus, short of a vaccine. A vaccine is not here yet. It is disappointing to go to places and see people jammed up in crowds, celebrating the beautiful weather, celebrating being in South Carolina, but at the same time exposing themselves and possibly others to these risks. The ultimate price for this lack of care is death. It is serious. We have already seen 575 people die from it. I am not saying they are the cause of their demise. Perhaps it was somebody else come but you do not want it to be you. Has in our power to be careful. Whatever happens, we cannot keep is this is closed forever. We cannot isolate South Carolina from the rest of the world. What it comes down to is, we must be careful individuals. We are asking everyone who works on this every day, i am asking everyone else to take these requests to heart and be careful. This virus is with us. It will not disappear. The cold weather or the hot weather will not kill it. It might these seasonal or it might not be, but it will be here until a vaccine is created for it. We have to be careful. In South Carolina, we have taken steps to see that South Carolina accelerates back into the economy. Carolinamy in south was way up at the top in the country. Economies were booming across the u. S. And we were at the top, but we want to get there again. The virus has slowed us down, but we cannot stop, and we cannot remain shuttered or restricted much longer. I am asking the General Assembly. We have had meetings. Today, from the accelerated committee, it is a tremendous report. They had about 30 permanent members that participated. They came up with plans to keep the people safe and healthy, reaccelerating and idolizing revitalizing the economy. We certainly slowed down. Wen in this situation, where are still faced with a deadly virus, we must accelerate our economy. Do not just think of businesses and buildings. Think of the families and the people dependent on their jobs. Think of the people taking their children to school in august, who just look at those workers and the people you see in the stories, the grocery stores, bank tellers, people working in the streets. All kinds of people in South Carolina. Many in the tourism or service industry. Think of those people young and old. They need to work and they need money to pursue their lifes plans, to feed the children, pay the mortgage, keep the electricity on. We have to get back to work. Ofhave a variety recommendations to the legislature. Unemployment Insurance Trust fund. Unemployment Insurance Trust fund is money that is paid i business, based on their payroll. When the employees are laid off, weeks. Ve a fund for 20 326mum is about 326 a week. In this virus period, authorities have added a clause to that. It is a hefty amount going out, but our trust fund started out at 1. 1 billion. In 2008 and 2009, it was just about drained from unemployment then. This state borrowed money from the federal government, and a couple years ago, we ended up paying it back, and we were able to reduce taxes. March,e virus struck in we had 1. 1 billion. Estimates are that by the time we will beecember, over 600,000 600 million short. What we are asking the General Assembly to do on that 1. 9 billion, to immediately, when they arrive this month for the first session, to provide at least 500 million into that trust fund. That will take us the most optimistic picture will hold true. That will almost bring us back up. If the economy is worse than we million will 500 not need ash will not be nearly enough. We are hoping to go back to work, but we need at least a hundred Million Dollars to go in immediately. We would like to have more than that. 215 millionding from the fund, from the 1. 9 billion to be used on Public School districts. Expanding the hours before the school year. What this will do is it will bring five days of ended hours to the children, who have missed it because of the closure of the schools. Bring those children up to full deed, so they will be able to enter school. They will be able to absorb and learn. You miss things over the summer anyways, but with the virus closing down the schools early, we had terrific distant learning , but there were a lot of students who still need help. We are asking for a 215 million for that. For 220 5 million be directed to reimbursement for the jim mcgovern 19 related expenses incurred after march 1 for state agencies, local governments, first responders, half bills, institutions of higher education. Tot will allow agents reconcile their books by the end of the fiscal year. Plan at the time. We have had conversations with leadership in the house and the senate, as well as agencies. I want to thank those who have participated. Assembly ofue talent, to find the best way to. E accelerate the economy accelerating the health and happiness of the people of South Carolina. That is our goal. With that, i would be glad to answer questions. Massu want people to where masks . There are some limits to what we can do and what we can enforce. Have heard from this put him many times that it is very important for people to wear masks and face shields. If you are in a room full of people, particularly a ballroom small room. If you have gotten into elevators, you probably have the sensation that you are glad to have a mass on. On. Ask we know that it is transmitted from coughing and using. There was one example of a choir. I do not know how many people were in the choir, but there was one lady who tested positive. Wholek just about the choir got the disease and tested positive. The point is, when you have ,eople exhaling vigorously perhaps sporting events and other people, if you are in an , that is a great recipe for spreading the virus. That is why we had to be so careful. Isthis point, the answer individual responsibility. I was delighted to see that the Hospital Association and others reminding people Everybody Needs to remind their neighbors that this is a serious thing. Some people all over the country, it is not real for them until somebody they know dies from the virus. Late totime, it is too save that person. We are in a serious situation. The current state of emergency the, is that set to end tomorrow . Gov. Mcmaster we will extend it again, for obvious reasons. It always changes, every couple weeks. Dr. Bell mentioned some communities seem to have an abundance of the virus way out either numbers. It is a High Percentage of those , about 80 of the people in our state who have died from the virus are over 60 or 65 years old. With thosebe careful communities. These particular communities a lot of them are rural communities. We need ample testing and tracing. About the columbia area, they were open but then closed after an employee tested positive. We noticed employees not wearing mass or gloves. Gov. Mcmaster do not have enough these officers to go around the entire state and enforce mandates. They may walk in and everybody puts a mask on and then they take them off. We all know those precautions. We have gotten a lot of those questions and third. One is highly contagious and another is transmitted easily. There is nothing else that we can do. Mandates and government intrusion there is a limit to. Ow much that government can do the government has taken that. It is not allowed without compensation. Targetedbeen carefully , deliberately imposed only on thee places that have greatest threat of spreading the disease. We haveare showing that done it very well, but we have to come out of it. We cannot keep mandating things on people. One because the law does not allow it and it is not the best way to do it. Comply with the courtesies, consideration and risk act to others, including their own health and their families. Not push back any potential announcement of opening any of the businesses that have yet to reopen . Gov. Mcmaster we will open things as soon as we can come as carefully as we can. It emphasizes the need for people to practice social distance. That is the answer. It is not closing businesses. I have no intention of closing anymore businesses. What we need to do is practice social distancing. Be smart. There is a lot of stupid floating around out there. A lot of reckless, careless activity. We ask everybody to be very careful. Can you talk about the other seeing . Yall are dr. Bell i would refer you to our website. That. Monitoring for each hotspot, we conduct an investigation to identify root. Auses there are several in the state. Each of those from the individual level is being investigated. What is going on in the community that could contribute to a hotspot . Festivals or Something Like that not a lot of people could have tended attended. Homeu said several were gatherings. With those funerals, parties . They are household contacts. When we identify cases, the highest contact you would have our people in a household with you. A number of individuals from the same household. Like apecial event wedding or a graduation. You are seeing this start to increase again around the same time of reopening. Would you recommend closing more things down . Dr. Bell we provide recommendations that prevent disease spread. Openings v not in ourhis is venus. We continued to learn more about this virus. It is more severe. There are more complications. Our role is prevention measures. Those we know about arctic containd are to droplets with masks. Seeing thisyou have no plans te anything down. You want people to self regulate. Seeing this increase. What else can be done . Gov. Mcmaster they little. ,f closing down was the answer they would be appearing in minnesota and all those other places. A lot of the businesses and industries are still closed down. The cases are way more prevalent. That is not the answer. Businesses. Me we did not do the broad strokes. We did not think that was smart. With close those contact and big crowds. After we have done that and learned, at the beginning of march we know how to keep it from spreading and we know who is the most vulnerable to it. It is certainly not the answer. The numbers show that. Work. E to let people people have to be able to support their families, their children, pay their bills, keep the lights on and all those thousands of things. You cannot stop that indefinitely. We slowed it down in South Carolina, in order to arm ourselves with the knowledge of what to do to be saved. As we have said from the beginning, we need to practice what we have learned. Decreased earlier when we shut down businesses and took measures. Would it work again . The more we test, the more we found happening now. We did notnning, have the facilities or the capacity to do testing. Thosee limiting it to showing signs of the virus. Now everybody is getting tested. If closing all the businesses was the answer, then the places that have done that would be doing great. They are not. That is not the answer. Is takingre doing someones livelihood from them. What they like to do people like to go to work and they want to go to work. Downthe government closes a business, you are taking that away from people. Correlationany between the high number of cases we are seeing and memorial day weekend . We also have july 4 coming up, which is a heavy, being outside kind of day. Is there any can learn about the numbers spiking after july 4 . Bell the data reflects that. We begin to see the first increasing trend, several days after the memorial day weekend, which would explain you go andugh an incubation period people may experience illnesses. Would partly explain that. It is not an active. We saw a lot of activity with social distancing, very rare use of masks. These findings are not unexpected. Seeing is a sort of slightly ongoing upward trend. Lots of activities going on now. Behaviorsrotests, but and lots of communities, where people do not appear to be paying attention to social distancing. Other. Ot just one or the it should be a mask and six feet. There are many ways people can participate in gathering more safely. Mask and an both attempt to keep distance from other people. Do you have an ideal number you would like to see in terms of daily testing . Dr. Bell we are working towards the goal of testing 2 of our population every month. Goaltually exceeded the and made it ahead of time. We continue to do that every month. Changesome sporadic with the availability of testing. We really do have significant provide capacity to testing. Ofe sporadic occurrences supplies not being available might contribute to that. Peopleyou seeing practice the guidelines . Termsou are expecting in of caseload moving forward . Predictions have you revised your predictions . Dr. Bell we base our predictions on the trend that we are seeing. They are adjusted accordingly. With the responsibility being on restaurants and individuals, does this eight have enough supply of ppe for businesses to have . Is there a number we are trying to get to . Gov. Mcmaster we were looking at some of those numbers this morning. The number of gloves that have come into the state, Something Like 120 million. Beginning, the demand was so great, it was difficult to get a lot of that personal protective equipment. Other manufacturers have switched over now. We have a machine in port jack and that can actually process masks and clean them up, good as new. Inufacturers have stepped and some have changed over from one to another. Is a shame that people are not utilizing it. Having difficulty getting in contact with people to get those supplies . Gov. Mcmaster no. They can go online. There is information there. Like to address those numbers . They are hard to remember. Since the first of march this year to about the fifth of june, to the governors point, direct commercial distribution for gloves was 188 million gloves. Numbers,he other 562,000 for n95 masks. Over 5 million surgical masks. Over 2 million gallons. Gowns. That is direct commercial distribution. Through our system and Emergency Management, we have sourced over 1. 4 million masks, over one million n95 masks and over one million surgical masks. Over 4 million gloves and over half a million gowns. The supply chain vastly improved since we started. He asked where we started with ppe. I said zero. We have gone a long ways. The governor has said that the supply chain, routine distribution and all of that is working. Gov. Mcmaster one of the things that we are one of the things that we are working on now is to create a stockpile for future events. We have ordered quite a bit of that. Over 400,000 n95 masks. Over 1. 8 million surgical mass. That is just an example of numbers that would hold us for 28 days. At the federal level, we will replenish National Strategic stockpile. I do not know what the numbers are, but today they were talking about the n95 mass. As much as 300 million in the stockpile. It is being done at the local level as well and those are looking into his ravishing their own stockpile. We are working very hard collectively to ensure that we do not run into the same problem that we did a couple months ago. Have another question for dr. Bell. I have a number of questions. Positive the10 last few days. Can you explain why that is . The number of cases has risen but the number of deaths have remained the same. Can you also explain why you think that is . Of thel the proportion present positive of testing, when that goes up, that is an indicator that we are detecting more sick people in the population. It is one indicator. Percentee a pretty low positive, like we saw for a wild, that gives us confidence that we radically adequately sampling the people. It tells you that we are looking at more people in the population that are sick. Perhaps we need to ask and testing so that we get that number to go down, as in indicator of adequacy of testing. Cases as the number of going up and hospitalizations itg relatively stable tells us there are more people in the community being tested that have a milder illness. In the past, people may not have sought medical care. There is awareness of the fact that there can be asymptomatic positive. That is a partial explanation for why we see cases going up. Speaking of the world health organization, they sent outbreak out very confusing communication. What do you say that to that message . Evidence thate is transmission occurs from people who are asymptomatic. For this reason, we extended the time period that we can enter contact. If you had facetoface contact with someone, from the time of onset of symptoms, while they were still symptomatic. Now we consider a contact as someone who had close contact with someone in the two days prior to the onset of symptoms because we recognize that some people who do not have symptoms and spread the virus. You comment on the number of deaths and why we have not seen a huge bike why we have not seen a spike in deaths . We have not seen a crazy spike. Dr. Bell when we look at one day to the next, it makes for a lot of reasons for variability. We follow what we are accumulating over time, to better ask wayne. It takes time to investigate cases and capture the cause of death. It is difficult to comment on what we are seeing. Magic number that could be reached, where you would , where wea shutdown need to step things back . Is there a number of cases we could see that would cause you to backtrack a little bit . Gov. Mcmaster if shutting down where the end there, these are the state that have shut down and would show zero spread. Shutting down is not the answer. When we shut down, we are setting down peoples livelihood. We cannot do that for an extended period of time. Statistics think of the business. It is not just the building or what they do and it. You have all the people who work there, the cooks, the waiters, have thes and you customers coming into the business as well. When you take someones livelihood from them, you have taken a very big from them. Shutting down is not the end there, except for being smart about it. I think we are doing it the right way now. I can refer you to some numbers, that this is positive cases per 100,000, per state. How many people have tested positive out of 100,000 per state . These are very interesting numbers. In South Carolina, i leave off the decimal. 293 per 100,000. North carolina is 350. Georgia is 496. North carolina and georgia are bigger than we are, but that does not count in this. This is per 100,000. We are 293. North carolina is 350. Georgia is 496. Alabama is 436. Mississippi is 594. Virginia is 599. Florida is 300. 293. , South Carolina is we want it to be much lower than that. This shows that we have made some smart decisions that are working. Montana, north dakota and alaska, they are lower than this. West virginia is lower than this. Michigan,illinois, minnesota, new york and those places, and they are sky high. And they have been locked down completely. There were a lot of issues in the county. Any plans moving forward with elections . Gov. Mcmaster the Election Commission it is the purview of the delegation to make sure that is functioning properly. The state Election Commission, that has bigts there areare some of those where there are plenty of people. My understanding in conversations and communications is that everybody bought the polling places were adequate. Some were combined and were adequately staffed. It turned out that they were not. That is one of the things that we learned. We know that they will be counted. We have had anow, reliable election day. Is up to thet it legislature, and they did not ask hand, but would you recommend, given the shared number of people we saw turnout . Gov. Mcmaster not at this time. We opening businesses, you mentioned there is no reason that shutting down is the answer. How presumptive of this in South Carolina . Know, wester as you took a deliberate, targeted approach and those that we restrict it, limited or shut down. We are going out the same way that we went in. Concerts, theaters and bowling alleys. We are reviewing information that we have. We hope to be able to make some good incisions soon. Decisions soon. We had a lot of problems yesterday. Would you consider taking any sort of rustic steps . Drastic steps . Know that their votes will all be counted. The time he referred to before was not in the middle of a pandemic you referred to before was not in the middle of a pandemic. Recommendations of things that need to be done, but the electiont that commission is gathering information to see what we need to do. They have already determined that we will have more people available for the runoffs. We will not have the bottlenecks that we saw yesterday. Thank you all for coming. Cspans washington journal. News of the day and policy issues that impact you. , authorp this morning of the end of policing talks about policing in america, and republican congressman from texas Michael Burgess will be on to discuss the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Journal liveton at 7 00 eastern. Be sure to join the discussion. Live thursday in the cspan networks at 10 00 a. M. , the Senate Judiciary Committee Meets to vote on issuing subpoenas. The House Administration subcommittee looks that the impact of covid19 on voting rights. Cspan two, the Senate Continues work on legislation to Fund National parks and public land. The Senate Aging Committee loneliness during the covid19 pandemic. The impact of covid19 on nursing homes. There is more live coverage thursday on our website with v. A. Officials testifying before the House Veterans Affairs committee about the departments response. During wednesdays Prime Ministers question time in the british house of commons, Prime Minister Boris Johnson took questions on Race Relations in the u. S. And the u. K. And relations with president trump. I call the Prime Minister to answer the question. We approacher, as the third anniversary of this coming sunday of the tragedy, i know that the whole house would wish to join me in sending our Heartfelt Sympathies and thoughts to the families and friends of the 72 people who lost their lives and to the survivors
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