The covid study here in indiana, but i also want to say just an aside here at the outset that we are still in quarantine. We are following orders. We are fine. No symptoms developing for either of us. I have learned that i am somewhat of an inpatient patient. This is one of the first times i have been pinned down, but , december 1chnology will get here when it gets here. In the meantime, we will be celebrating thanksgiving home alone. Better safe than sorry. Maybe we will make up for it next year with emily from around the state and around the country coming in and maybe do two thanksgivings next year family from around the state and around the country coming in. We are wishing a lot of others good health and strength and food and clothing and shelter they need because we know so in india are stepping up to help and fill that need. This year has reminded us both of everything that we took for past. D in years even the most basic things like at sporting events. All those traditions and annual rituals or routines that have had to be adjusted or postponed we no longer take those things for granted, and we look forward to the day when we can see that light at the end of the tunnel, when we can get back to normal next new normal when vaccines are readily available to the public and therapeutics. We are so practicing everything we need to do in the meantime. We are going to round that turn, so to speak, in indiana at some point, but we have to do all the necessary things to get there, so i just wanted to put an extra shout out of thanks to all those who are doing just that. I really have been encouraged lately by so many folks who are doing even more than they were , putting others of of self and doing everything they can to do individually to help slow the spread. That means mask up and physically distancing, washing hands. You will know the drill you all know the drill, but cannot say it or do it enough because all those good actions add up. I am thankful that over the last what . For days now, we have seen our average sevenday Positivity Rate take down. Ever so slightly. Way too early to say this is a way toand we have a long go, obviously, but when you go to 11. 8 , 11. 4 percent, 11. 2 , i really do attribute that decline to more and more hoosiers individually stepping forward and recognizing the stress and strain on our Health Care Network, on all the doctors and nurses and caregivers,on our and really doing all we can, and that is what is going to that will continue if we continue. We have a long list of communities that are doing just time thatat the same sevenday average Positivity Rate is ticking down, the number of people hospitalized continues to rise, and the number of daily hospital admissions is continuing to go up as well, so while on one hand we see a decline in on the other, and inclined, and weve got to be able to muster the strength and the wherewithal to make sure that over the course of the next few weeks, when it is getting colder and colder and theres goingravel, people inside, in a few months, before we get to that ultimate light at the end of the tunnel, that we are doing all we can to help our Health Care Network and all those care workers so they can continue to care for those who are in the greatest need. We will continue my office, before next week, wednesday, two 30, same time 2 30, same time next week, i will be meeting with businesses and hospital officials. Again, we do this on a day in day out basis, but i want to have a very organized set of data and get those updated perspectives and input from local Community Leaders about their status, about what they see that the state and local communities could be doing more in terms of our partnership as next week get here. We will continue to make sure our county getting that tricks out and in place and sharing those with those local. Fficials again a long list of communities with me all the time, and every day, there is another local Community Road the rubber meets the that is asking us for support and help. As i mentioned last week, the department of Homeland Security and atc have both been performing regularly scheduled inspections of commercial properties, etc. The state fire marshal, who has a staff of 40 code inspectors, have been working with counties, with local officials, with businesses to promote those good practices and that education. The fire marshal staff has visited over 70 sites, including facilities, as i just mentioned. The state have inspected more alcoholpermitted premises. Of those 1500, by the way, 47 were found not to be in compliance with masking or social distancing, and so we have seen through those 1500 and only those 47 with education efforts nearly every one of come intoave compliance. This can only work if we are doing it together and sharing what works, again, individually, if thats a person or a small town or big city, so look for more of that type of partnership. With that, i will cease to drone on, and i will turn it back over to you to introduce our guests after your full report. Dr. Fox unfortunately, we continue to see high spread of covid19 across our state. Our colorcoded maps have 17 counties this week in red, down from 21 last week. Once again, one county in yellow. Community spread is approaching very high levels in these communities. Thats very concerning. We know many people are ignoring our pleas and the cdcs pleas to stay home and limit thanksgiving to your immediate household. You can see that in video images coming out of airport around the country. Based on the spikes we have seen after our holidays, im concerned any of these orange counties will wind up in red in the next few weeks. I cannot repeat this enough bringing together large groups of people from outside your immediate household puts everyone at risk for covid19. Beingspitals are inundated with covid patients. There is still time to make the hard choice today so that you can enjoy many more tomorrows with your loved ones. You heard last week about the hospital surge and how it is affecting not just people with covid, but individuals who have other conditions such as heart attacks and strokes. The number of people hospitalized with covid or cobitlike symptoms continues to rise and was over 3300 yesterday. Daily hospitalizations also continue to increase at a significant rate. We also unfortunately are seeing an increasing number of deaths, especially among residents of longterm care facilities. Yesterday, we saw the highest number of deaths reported on our dashboard with more than 100 hoosiers losing their lives to this virus. Another 63 deaths were reported today. Seeing these numbers is beyond heartbreaking, especially when we realize that about half of the deaths in the last week occurred among our vulnerable residence in longterm care facilities. In addition to sending the Indiana National guard to these facilities, we have partnered with the bowen center to engage people willing to serve in our Health Care Reserve workforce. It launched its Hoosier Health care heroes call to Action Survey again on november 13. In just one week, more than 12,003 hundred unique individuals responded to the survey. This included 700 52 retired health care professionals. 752 retired health care professionals. Said they could serve fulltime. The remainder indicated they could volunteer for either a totial shift per week or up three shifts per week. Respondents included doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, and many others. Facilities that have a need will be connected with servants to help fill those gaps. We have been able to connect these reservists with local Health Departments also. I have heard from several small Health Departments that are struggling to keep their doors open because their staff are sick or in quarantine. The bowen center was able to connect one department that was at risk of and down to one employee with 10 reservists in their area who had expressed a willingness to help. We also announced the student step up to serve workforce last week that engages College Students. As of friday, nearly 250 College Students had expressed a willingness to assist in hospitals, longterm care facilities, to assist with covid testing or vaccine sites and in k12 schools and other settings. More than 19 offered to serve fulltime. More than 62 offered to help two to three shifts per week. I encourage any College Student who has the availability and desire to help to sign up for the student workforce at the link that you see on your screen. We continue to experience high test volume, which is creating longer turnaround times for results. To help address this, we have sent tests tove local Health Departments to help address testing and we are helping other local Health Departments to address communities in need. We will be working with local Health Departments that have send themd tests to to where they are needed. This is intended to help with community testing. They are not for use in schools, businesses, or other sites at this time and not intended for redistribution to ems or other entities. You must be symptomatically and within seven days of onset to meet the criteria to receive these tests. They provide a rapid result and a positive test in a symptomatically individual is treated the same as a positive pcr test. Having these rapid answers in symptomatically individual allows local Health Departments to quickly inform the patient of a positive result and provide onsite instructions up our isolation. It also allows us to jumpstart the process of notifying close contacts of their need to quarantine to prevent further spread of infection. And it helps to reduce turnaround time for results and ease the burden on labs across the country, including those in indiana that are stretched beyond capacity due to the huge increase in testing. Finally, a quick update on the status of the vaccine. Pfizer has applied for emergency use authorization from the fda and a meeting is scheduled to determine whether to issue that authorization. When that is issued, states have been told to be prepared to receive vaccine in as little as 48 hours. Return a is also expected to seek emergency authorization soon. We are communicating this timing to hospitals and Frontline Health care workers so they will be prepared and we can prepare staff to receive the vaccine. For this vaccine to be effective, people need to ensure they get two doses in the recommended timeframe of 21 or 28 days. The Covid Vaccine is not like any other vaccine and that it provides high protection with a single dose. It does not. Both doses are necessary for it to be effective. The 95 effectivity is only if we get the second dose. A recent poll showed only 58 of americans were willing to get the vaccine. I want to remind any hoosiers who might be hesitant that these vaccines will not be approved for release until a thorough review of their safety at federal and state levels is completed. Both pfizer and moderna vaccines are reporting side effects such as fatigue, headache, and in some cases fever. This is normal. It does not mean the vaccine gave you covid. This is the normal immune response to getting a vaccine. Many people experience similar symptoms after a flu shot or shingles vaccine. These are temporary effects and will wear off quickly and the benefits of the vaccine will far outweigh these side effects. The vaccine will prevent hoosiers from contracting covid19. It will not be a get out of jail free card. We still need to wear masks, practice social distancing, and stay home if sick for the foreseeable future until we are able to vaccinate a large portion of our population, and we anticipate that will take many months. The vaccine is a critical tool in our efforts to resume what resembles a normal life. In the meantime, please stay the course. Continue Wearing Masks, practicing social distancing, washing your hands, staying home when you are sick. That is the way to get to the other side of this pandemic. Now it is my pleasure to welcome back the dr. And dean heller send. Dean halverson thank you. It is great to be here today and i want to express my gratitude to you and governor holcomb for leading indianas covid19 response. I am grateful for the fact you have put science and data in front of your decisionmaking and allowing that guidance to help make these critical decisions. I am also proud of our partnership with the state. The Fairbanks School of Public Health has only been around for about eight years and our partnership is important because our school was created with the idea of improving the health of hoosiers, especially as we support the state Health Department and local Health Departments across the state. , i am dr. Mentioned paul halverson, a founding dean of the Fairbanks School of Public Health. Since april, our team of researchers has led a statewide study to understand the spread of covid19 in indiana. It has been a complex operation that has highlighted the ability of hoosiers to mobilize quickly and coordinate across multiple state agencies and private organizations to support the health and wellbeing of everyone in our state. While several other states are developing plans for testing on the scale, indiana remains only state that has conducted random sample testing statewide. It is now in three phases and we are going to talk about that in a moment. It is exciting to showcase what indiana can do. I am pleased to introduce my colleague, who has served as the lead scientist on this testing initiative. He will support key findings from wave three and i will highlight some of the overall findings that the indiana prevalence study has revealed and has contributed to the overall knowledge about the virus to date. He is the fairbanks endowed chair of public and Population Health and leads our department of and management. He also is a scientist and teaches at both the iu school of business and iu school of medicine in addition to his responsibilities at the Fairbanks School. To remind everyone that the purpose of the indiana prevalence study has always been to determine the cumulative number of hoosiers that have ever been infected with the coronavirus. Knowing this information tells us how much the virus has infiltrated into our population and can provide governor holcomb and dr. Box with Key Information to enhance decisionmaking. The number of infections is not the same as the number of cases. In a Previous Press conference, i noted cases represent just the tip of the iceberg. Everyone mayclude be positive for the coronavirus at a given point in time. People at the bottom of the pyramid are those who are infected but probably dont know it because they have no symptoms. Above that are people with very mild symptoms. As you move up the pyramid, you find infected people with more serious symptoms who seek medical care. Some will be hospitalized and fewer, but some, will die. Cases are those who under normal circumstances test positive. Because testing most frequently occurs among people on the top half of the pyramid, usually in response to serious symptoms, cases represent a fraction of all infections. It is clear that people on the bottom half are responsible for significant spread of the virus. Utilized two, we exciting new approaches to reliably determine the number of hoosiers that have ever been infected. Similarroaches yielded results and the second approach was validated with experimental data. Despite the findings being preliminary, we are fairly confident in them. The first approach enhances our previous method of random selection and testing by adding historic testing data, including previous positive status on individuals that were randomly selected. Hazardpandemic hazard has progressed and testing has increased, getting data from randomly selected volunteers has been challenging in indiana and around the globe. By leveraging historic testing data with the help of the indiana management performance hub, we are able to get Accurate Accounts of prior infections in our randomly selected group. Those with previously positive results were invited to participate in testing. Our second approach, which yielded similar results, utilized unique in the world information generated in week one of our indiana prevalence study. Using the random sample from april 2020 we were able to calculate the probability of deaths from covid by age, which we published in the leading medical journal. Previously, determining the number of infections that resulted in death was elusive. Lessone had to rely on reliable case counts. Luckily, hoosiers participation in wave one generated the best data of its kind, allowing us to get a reliable rate of deaths by age. During wave one in april, nursing home residents were excluded. Out result, we backed nursing home deaths from our calculations. Specifically, we have to determined we have that of people under 30, 1 death occurs for every 19,500 infections. This risk of death rapidly increases across age groups, such that among those over 65 years we determined that one death occurs for every 43 infections. , onlyhis information possible due to the first wave of the indiana prevalence study, we were able to mathematically estimate the number of team that if infections by analyzing the ages of everyone who has already died of covid19 in indiana. We determined that by the end of wave three in the first week of october, approximately 7. 8 of hoosiers have ever been infected. There was a lower prevalence in the higher risk, older age groups. Given the troubling increase in newly reported deaths in the past month, we calculated the current key motive number of infections in Indiana Using the same approach. As of friday, october 20, we believe the population prevalence was 10. 6 in indiana with worrisome increases in the oh this, most vulnerable age groups. What does this all