Our guest greg walden of oregon, newsmakers sunday at 10 a. M. And 6 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp participate in in a town hall n atlanta with state and local officials on the states response to the coronavirus outbreak of topics include the Homeless Population, procuring medical supplies, the Academic School year and the financial and Economic Impact on the people of georgia and Small Businesses. He also address coronavirus testing priorities and availability across the state. Coronavirus in georgia. There is no need for people to panic. It change changed life as ww it. Schools shut down. Yes, it is very scary. Stores running low on some essentials. The shells of the into. And medical facilities pushed to the limit. Many of our supplies are running critically low. Tonight member of the Coronavirus Task force and georgias governor answer the most pressing questions and lay out their plans to stop the spread. In this time of need on asking georgians to support their neighbors because we are all in this together. It is the governors statewide town hall. Getting everyone and welcome to the governors statewide town hall on the coronavirus. Throughout this hour we will be speaking with the states top leaders in charge of the task force responded to this crisis and the spread of covid19 is affecting all of us in an unprecedented collaboration, 60 the station are teaming up to bring you the Important Information you and your families need. This town hall is broadcasting and all television markets across across the georgia including atlanta, augusta, columbus, savannah and albany as well as on hundreds of radio stations and online. My colleagues and i will be speaking with Task Force Members in a moment the first lets take a look at how we got to this point. That were 28th, georges Governor Brian Kemp convened the first meeting of the states newly created Coronavirus Task force. We got a great team. I think we all bring a lot of different dynamics to the table. Three days later on march 2 georges first confirmed cases of covid19, a father and son. A week later there were six confirmed cases and another 11 presumptive positive. The same day Fulton CountySchool Officials announced it would close all schools and offices after a teacher became infected. I dont know whats going on but they didnt call me. I dont know. I just came and got my kids. March 10, the number of the confirmed or presumed cases grew to 22 22 including the first in south georgia. On march 12 12 georges officis reported the states first coronavirus related death. May be spreading the virus to others and not be aware. Governor kemp declared a Public Health emergency. Feel like with this unprecedented event with the covid19 it certainly wanted that. With schools close and most georgia felt working from home, this week some cities issued shelter in place orders. And here is where the situation stands to make the number of confirmed covid19 cases in georgia jumped to 1525. To help with that in perspective that are more than 10 Million People in our state. The governor issued an executive order to close Public Schools through april 24. And up limit claims are soaring in georgia and across the country. 12,000 were georgians filed for unemployment last week. Tonight for this tunnel we are joined i the states top leaders in charge of handling is christ the will be hearing from them throughout this hour. We begin with the Governor Brian Kemp adjoins me in our studio. Good evening governor. Good dating. Thank you so much for having me. This town hall like this is unprecedented you really want to make sure to get out this message statewide. Give us an overview right now, where do you think stint in georgia tonight . First of all let me thank everyone for joining tonight. Thank all the Media Partners for the philly unprecedented event of the statewide town hall so we can continue to be transparent with where we are, should information we need to get to our citizens so that their educated because it is going to be us. It is going to be us as georgians to beat this virus back. There is no cure now, no vaccine and it is up to all of us to get educated and to do our part to be victorious in this battle. Also want to take the opportunity to let those families know that have lost loved ones to this virus that we continue to pray for them. We are content to pray for those frontline healthcare workers and Public Health officials come First Responders and a lot of other people all over the state are on the front lines everyday putting their lives at risk. We are grateful for that and we will continue to be grateful for that. But i but i look for to talking tonight about where we are and what we need to do to end this battle and i just want to thank everyone for joining us. Doctor, let me say, our team, the folks joining the town hall tonight have done a tremendous job and we continue to be in touch with communities all across this state and we continue to work with our task force which has the brightest of minds in our state, people from emery and other elk had facilities and georgians close to this pandemic that were dealing with. Ive got a lot of great advice and making decisions on that advice. Im having to govern the whole state and different from what mayor bottoms and other elected officials have done. Im supportive of actions theyre taking much like the president , the vicepresident , are doing. Were following their advice of dr. Birx and dr. Fauci as well and they are supporting the nations governors who have all taken different tacts to deal with this virus, but, you know, the day or monday, i guess it was when we did the recent order with closing bars and restaurants, sheltering in place, the elderly and medically fragile and locking down events with 10 people or more unless they were social distancing parameters in regards it that, i was also talking to local officials in parts of our state that have not even had a single case as of that time, and we still have over 50 counties that dont have a confirmed case yet. So, you know, trying to balance all of that all of those things, continuing to go on the data that we have and supporting local elected officials. I did that in albany. I asked over a week ago if they wanted me to take action to help them with the hot spot we have down there, they asked me not to do that. They wanted to handle that locally. A week later i was on a call with all of the local elected officials not only in doherty county, but surrounding counties as they came together to take action and we have a lot of resources on the ground down there. But thats why ive made the decisions that ive made. I still have arrows in the quiver, if you will. If things get worse, but my case tonight to georgians in, if youll help to stop the spread, continue to fulfill the 15 days that the prize and the vicepresident and the National Task force to stop the spread, weve got a few more days to go, we have about 10 days to go on the recent action i took. Theres a lot of great things going on at the local level. If we can get our is iz citizens to follow this, we can turn the curve and get on the other side of this and its critical for our Health Care System. Were working across the state to procure the supplies they need, whether its ventilators, ppe material, extra beds were preparing for if and when a surge occurs. So, you know, all of those things, but its really up to the public to cut down on the number of people that we have to go to the hospital and we do that by what i targeted in my order to protect the elderly and medically fragile. Thats the key to this right now. Governor, thank you for answering that question. We may touch back on that topic in the hour. Let me ask you, testing, you talk about Health Care Workers in the system right now. Talk about testing, are there enough kits in georgia . Where do we stand on the test kits right now . You can watch the numbers and i would tell people, dont get too alarmed by the number of our positive cases going up, the number of our testing every day is going up exponentially as well. Dr. Toomey and i both talked about that weeks ago, as we did more testing were going to see more confirmed cases, so thats proven to be true. I think youll continue to see and dr. Birx talked about this at the federal level the other day, weve got to get to a level in our state and in our country where were doing the same amount of tests and basically across the state and across the country, so that we can continue to measure the data. I feel like, you know, hopefully well be there in another four or five days, maybe six or seven. I think youre getting a good handle on the data at the federal level and we have whole teams of people working on the data that were looking across the state. Right now, we have 10 counties in georgia that make up 60 of the cases that we have. And there are six counties across the country. When you think about the whole United States, there are six counties across the country that represent 50 of the cases in the United States. So we have to continue to test more. Dr. Toomey and her team have done a great job. The private sector is now testing. I had a great conversation with something that were working on that well hopefully ramp that up further in the days to come and that will continue to give us more data. One of the problems that we have had, is and youll hear this from hospital officials, its a private sector test, its taken it used to be taken six to seven days to get the results back, now in some instances and probably more than not, its still taking four to five days to get the data back. We need that to get back in two days or a day and there are some tests coming out now approved by fda, and talked to dr. Hahn the other day, you can get the results in 15 to 45 minutes and thats where we need to get to be. We cant be so focused on testing that were not focused how we curb and flatline of spread of this virus, which is us practicing social distancing, and other things. Right now were still getting guidance from c. D. C. And im sure dr. Toomey may relate to this, and reply on this as well in her comment. Still preserving those for frontline Health Care Workers. We absolutely have to keep that work force in the game to be able to do that, we have to be able to test them and make sure that theyre not working in a hospital environment, if they are positive, so thats critical. Our First Responders, we need to be able to test them and then as well as those really medically fragile patients, and then the rest of the population will come after that from the protocol thats coming from c. D. C. Now, thats going to change as we continue to get more private sector testing. The good thing is, you know, a week ago we didnt have 23 testing sites up in every region of the state and today that we do. And we do today. Were making more progress on that every single day. Governor, thank you for that insight and your explanation so far. Well have more questions for the governor and hell be with us throughout this hour. Were now joined by russ spencer with waga. And standing by with dr. Kathleen toomey, commissioner of Public Health. Thank you. And doctor, the Fulton CountyHealth Department before her role. Shes an epidemiologist and means shes a detective. And shes been in botswana and working with hiv and were grateful. Thank you. The news for us, higher, you have access to the Health Department. The numbers will continue to go up and youll see that this is something, as the governor said, as we do more testing and as the virus does spread in some communities, we will continually see increasing numbers. What is the number now . Its about 1600, 1650. Its going to by morning, it will be higher, but thats im less focused on the exact number and more focused on how we can get individuals to think about prevention. And if i could say a few words, just about the virus because i think theres a lot of confusion in the community, even in my own community down the road because what is coronavirus . And somebody said i see on lysol that it kills coronavirus, but that was this was made before this outbreak. And in fact, there are many coronaviruses. The common cold is a type of coronavirus. Sars and mers that happened several years ago are a type of coronavirus. This is a novel coronavirus, which means its new and its brand new, newly recognized. Its originated in china, but its spread throughout the world and it was introduced in the United States and has spread across the country very, very quickly. Let me ask you, do you see anything in the data that suggests that the social distancing weve been doing in georgia is working . I would say yes. The social distancing and in some places began earlier than others and places like rome, which had some of the earlier some of the earlier high case rates, and we saw that related to an outbreak related to church, church attendants and it was large gatherings. We have seen now that cases seem to be levelling off, but it takes a minute. Remember, these this virus takes about two weeks as an incubation period as long as two weeks so youre not going to see immediate action and the idea if the world prevents every case, it will slow the spread. As the governor said, in his opening statement, we want to we want to flatten that curve, the reason you want to do that, you want to keep people out of the hospital. Flooding the hospitals in a way that we cant care for people and thats what youre seeing in italy. Thats what youre seeing in other parts of the europe. Right. Now shall the governor is consulting with you, obviously, but hes got other things to consider. He said he didnt want to do a state wide lockdown in one interview because there are a lot of folks doubting the effects of the coronavirus in some parts of georgia. From a purely scientific point of view, im not trying to get you into an argument with the governor, but from a purely scientific point of view would that be a good thing for the state. Let me say this, im not youre not going to get me into trouble. Ive thought a lot about this. I have friends in cedartown. I have friends in hoboken, north and south, i live here in atlanta. You know, whats good for atlanta, which is, i believe, the correct thing that mayor bottoms did, may not be the correct thing for these other areas right now where they have limited spread. If you look at c. D. C. Guidelines, the guidelines are tailored to the community and what the epidemiology is in that community and how things are spreading. And i think we, in some cases, can be doing Contact Tracing very aggressively. Still, where the spread is relatively slow. And in other areas, like albany, we really need to be doing very aggressive community mitigation. So it depends on the community where youre located in. Governor cuomo of new york, where the problem is the worst, said today no matter what they do, even if everybody locks down, the hospitals are going to ultimately be overwhelmed there, that they dont have enough protective equipment for the longterm or ventilators for that matter. Do we have enough protective equipment for our nurses and our doctors and enough ventilators for those who get critically ill . Were really working hard to ensure that we stay on top of that. Were working with our federal partners, and gema is on top of that. Were working with private vendors as well. Were not just relying on our federal partners to help us. Were stepping the needs of the hospitals constantly. We have our first shipment of ventilators coming in to help some of the harder hit areas like rome and albany and were still keeping track of that. And so thats something that were going to be very, very cognizant of. Were actually looking, i think is a creative thing to be doing, where are other opportunities to identify ventilators in the system, such as technical colleges and our university system. Where theres teachings, ventilators, we can access those now and deploy them as it were to help our Health Care System and we can even use anesthesia machines to help with ventilators so were actually trying to amass the need before it comes to that crisis point. Well, youre wargaming this. How many ventilators do we need in georgia and how many do we have . I cant tell you off the top of my head how many we have or how many well need. We need to continue to monitor and work with the hospital system. Our of our key partners is the Georgia Hospital Association and theyre in a better position to help identify those actual numbers, but we will track that and continue to work hard to ensure we have extra on hand and dont get in that behind position. We are, earlier in our epidemic, than new york is, so we have a chance to mitigate this in a way that perhaps they didnt. And i think that selective testing to try to find the highest risk individuals, aggressive Contact Tracing as were doing in Nursing Homes and other high risk facilities, and also where theres a few number of cases, and just saying some counties are relatively few cases, our epidemiology teams can get in there and stop spread quicker. We cant do that anymore where theres widespread transmissions where the Community Interventions will be our best bet there. Were hearing that folks who are asymptomatic can spread this, young people in particular it seems, they seem not to be affected as badly. If thats the case, why wouldnt it be to test more to make sure that asymptomatic arent were limited by the number of tests we have. And i want to Say Something about young people. They do acquire the virus. They think theyre immune, but theyre not. They do have symptoms, they may