This marylander was infected with a virus through community transmission. And i know that all marylanders joined me in praying for his family and his loved ones. Unfortunately, we are only at the beginning of this crisis. And while this is the first death here in maryland, unfortunately, it will not be the last. As of this morning, we now have 107 confirmed cases of covid19 here in maryland, an 88 increase in the past 48 hours. Among todays new cases is a fiveyearold girl in Howard County who has tested positive for covid19. The first case of a child contracting the virus here in maryland. As of this morning, there are more than 220 confirmed cases in the washington region here in maryland, washington, d. C. And virginia. And 9500 cases across the country and more than 220,000 cases around the world. The president yesterday announced that he will invoke the defense production act, the first time this power has been used since the korean war. Which gives the president the authority to direct private industry to manufacture medical supplies and equipment needed to combat the covid19 pandemic. Yesterday afternoon, as chairman of the National Governors association, i convened and led a call with my fellow governors from across the country to discuss the unprecedented actions being taken in various states and our efforts to help slow the spread of this infection. The governors have agreed to five immediate priorities that we are requesting of the federal government, which we will be taking directly to the president and the Vice President on a call with all the nations governors today. And i will then be reaching out to leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress Later this afternoon. First, we will push for dedicating at least 50 of funding in the phase three supplemental directly to the states. Second, increased access, production and supply of ppe, test kits, ventilators, and other supplies. Third, the authorization of title 32 to give governors maximum flexibility for the use of the National Guard. In maryland, i will be working to appoint a dual status commander who will command both National Guard and activeduty military that the department of defense will soon assign to our state. Fourth, the governors will urge federal leaders to provide guidance on how the defense production act will be implemented. Fifth, the governors are requesting a delay or a greater flexibility for the completion of both the 2020 census and the transition to real id. We need all levels of government working together to get through this crisis. Later today, i will be convening a call of regional leaders with d. C. Mayor murial bowser and Virginia Governor ralph northam. I will also be convening our second call with all of the county leaders from across maryland. This fight against this Global Pandemic is a race against time. And we must take action now. We cannot afford to delay. Which is why here in maryland, i am continuing to take whatever actions are necessary to protect the health of millions of marylanders and to save thousands of lives. Earlier this week, i strongly urged all maryland citizens to avoid unnecessary travel. And we discouraged anyone from entering bwi Marshall Airport unless they are actually a traveling passenger or reporting to a job. That is no longer a recommendation. At my direction, the Maryland Department of transportation will now restrict access to the bwi terminal to ticketed passengers only and badged airport employees only. Exceptions will be made for those visitors who are assisting disabled passengers. No one else will be granted access. Maryland Transportation Authority police will be strictly enforcing this policy effective immediately. In addition, we are urging the use of all of our transit assets for essential travel only. No one should get on a marked a marc train, metro, amtrak train, or bus or any of our transportation assets unless you are an emergency personnel, a Frontline Health care provider, or your job is essential to the supply chain. And we have installed Critical Public Service announcements on signage, on all of our modes of transportation across the state, including major highways, the airport, all of our transit facilities, urging all marylanders to stay home to help us slow the spread of this virus. Following updated cdc guidelines, today we have amended our previous executive order to prohibit any events of more than 10 people in close proximity. At all locations, establishments and venues anywhere across maryland. After working closely with our county executives and getting their input and guidance, we have jointly made the decision to close all enclosed shopping malls and all Entertainment Venues across maryland effective at 5 00 p. M. Today. Despite all of our repeated warnings for weeks and despite the rapid escalation of this virus across our state, the region, the nation, and the world, some people are treating this like a vacation or a spring break with parties and cookouts and large gatherings at some of our parks. Let me be very clear. If you are engaged in this type of activity, you are in violation of state law, and you are endangering the lives of your fellow marylanders. This week, Johns Hopkins university and i believe today, Morgan State University in mcdaniel university, have announced that they will finish their spring semesters online. I have been in communication with the board of regents with the University System of maryland and asked them to take the same steps for the entire University System. And to keep, while the campus will remain open, that they should discourage people from coming back to the campus and to take their courses online for the remainder of the semester. As part of our Public Health surge, i am enacting an executive order to allow trucks to exceed their legal weight limits in order to facilitate the delivery of important equipment and supplies. On tuesday, i enacted an executive order directing the Maryland Department of health to conduct an immediate assessment and come up with a plan in order to open closed hospital facilities across the state, and to take other measures necessary to immediately increase our capacity by an additional 6000 beds, to meet the demand created by the escalating spread of this virus. Through phase one of the surge plan, 900 beds have already been made immediately available and Mercy Medical center in Baltimore City is opening a new floor to add a greater capacity. By early april, we expect to have an additional 1400 beds open as we work to continue to work to reopen closed floors and hospital facilities across the state. I want to thank those hospitals who have stepped up and been a large part of this massive undertaking. In order to advance this plan, we have also today issued an executive order to provide regulatory flexibility, to allow Emergency Medical Services personnel to augment other health care providers. I am issuing an executive order today allowing for delivery and carry out sales of alcohol, by restaurants, bars, distillers and wineries, subject to local liquor laws and local regulations. We are doing this to help Small Businesses and restaurants in and to protect Vulnerable People from having to leave home. But i want to urge people to be responsible and to avoid large crowds in stores. Finally, i am pleased to report that we have now more than 350 Meal Distribution centers open and operating for our students across the state. This truly is one of the most daunting challenges that our state has ever faced. But sometimes, the worst times have a way of bringing out the very best in people. And marylanders are a shining example of that. We have seen so many examples of compassion and generosity in recent days, and there are dozens of them. But let me just tell you a couple. A number of our distillers across the state are now, instead of producing alcohol, they are producing hundreds of bottles of Hand Sanitizer for the local communities. Yesterday, the owners of pasadena boat works donated 14,000 respirator masks to the Maryland Department of health. And a group of Baltimore City residents has come together to form a quarantine response network, to run errands and check in on their elderly neighbors. In places like hampden and Charles Village and winchester. In these times of anxiety and uncertainty, the people all across our state always look for ways to reach out and help their neighbors. To encourage that generous spirit, today, we are launching a new maryland unites website at governor. Maryland. Gov marylandun governor. Maryland. Gov marylandun ites to highlight the ways and opportunities marylanders and volunteer in assisting their neighbors and their communities in the days and weeks ahead. I spoke yesterday with gail mcgovern, who is the National President of the american red cross, who told me that they are experiencing a severe blood shortage across the country and here in maryland as a result of covid19. The red cross has implemented additional precautions and strict protocols to ensure the safety of donors and staff, and yet they continue to see a dramatic decline in the number of donations. And the need for blood will continue as this outbreak grows. So if you are healthy and you are feeling well, please consider donating blood. You can go to redcross. Org to learn more about how to do that in your community. I know at the actions that we have been taking may seem extreme and they seem frightening. But as i said before, they are also absolutely necessary to save lives. Of thousands of marylanders and hundreds of thousands of americans. And we are all in this together. And if we all do our part, and if we rise to this challenge, to meet this moment, we will get through this together. And i just ask that you continue to pray for each other. And for our state and for our nation in the days ahead. May god bless each and every one of you. May god bless the great state of maryland. With that, i will take some questions. One of the things we will be talking with the president is making sure we get the dollars right out to the states. I think we are in a better capacity to help those Small Businesses and it is why we have that on the list. The federal government is working all the branches of government are working together. Some of the actions they took to get money out to the people that need it, to get Unemployment Benefits out, to provide some backup for Larger Industries that we do not want to collapse is great. But the Small Businesses and the people in our states that are being hurt, we are in a better position to understand who needs the help now. That is one of the things the governor will be asking for so we can implement it. I agree with the comptroller. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Hogan i dont anticipate that at this point. These are discussions they are having at the national level. I think some of the folks in yesterdays press conference in washington at least talked about the fact that that is being discussed. Some smaller segments of the country have taken some of those steps and actions like europe. Look at San Francisco bay area. They are talking about things in new york city and boston. We are not at that point yet. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Hogan today we are talking about the universities. I will maybe let carol and sam talk about that when we go for a round of questions. Right now, the superintendent of state schools is talking with all the superintendents on a daily basis, getting input. That is what we said when we implemented the order over the two week period. They would get input on how we on what we would do after that and how we would potentially provide education to kids in that eventuality. The decision has not been made. They are working on what do we do in that case as far as online learning, and or with younger kids or people without access to computers, how we provide instructional kits. That is not for todays announcement but it is something a lot of people are working on and taking a look at. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Hogan its a really good question. Look, we are just making the decisions as quickly as we can, as aggressively as we can, i think more aggressively than most people are. Look, a week or so ago, we said that we wanted to limit, based on the federal guidelines, gatherings of 250 or more, we talked about people staying out of bars and restaurants and crowds and then we had the massive crowds and the bars and restaurants because nobody paid attention. We had to shut down the bars and restaurants. We then, based on cdc requirements, lowered the capacity to 50 and we have people totally ignoring that. We are lowering it even further. We are trying to avoid locking down society and we are trying to keep things as normal as possible. But if you look across the country at what other states are doing, and in the discussion with the governors, people are making decisions almost every hour of every day in different and different places are taking different actions. We are taking the best ones we believe are right for our state at the time. We think they are right to make. Reporter some people are saying they are having trouble getting Unemployment Benefits. Gov. Hogan the legislature yesterday past emergency legislation to help with unemployment. The congress has passed legislation in washington. We are asking for waivers of waiting periods so we can process unemployment rather than making people wait a week or two. We should do it immediately. Theres going to be a lot of people impacted. At every level of government, we realize it and we are try to fix it so we can get people money faster. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Hogan there were actually probably 25 things, but we narrowed it down to the ones we are going to try to talk about today with the president and Vice President. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Hogan right. Reporter active military members. Can you tell us that would look like . Gov. Hogan maybe i will let the general address that. I dont know how many states have activated the guard. I think there are a number of folks that have activated certain portions of their National Guard. Our maryland National Guard has a dualpurpose role. When the president calls them up for service, for the nation, and when they go assist us overseas to fight for our nation, they work under the command of the president. If i call them up as commander in chief in maryland, they work under my direction. I think when they are joint command, they are talking about having some active duty military be activated to come out to assist the states in some of their missions and to back us up. And i think in that eventuality, the request, the things we will work out will be that the adjutant general here in maryland and or in other states would control the response with assistance from the active duty military. Is that about right, general . [indiscernible] gov. Hogan no idea. They have talked about the possibility of sending active duty military. And we said, if that happens, we want to be prepared for that and how we would utilize them. But there has been no decision from the federal government to my knowledge. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Hogan im sorry. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Hogan i mean, there is a proposal in washington about sending checks right away. I have not seen the proposal on that. We are going to try to get as much help as we can. I think we have about 1 billion in the rainy day fund, but we have to figure out where the dollars will be spent. Reporter you mentioned possibility for the census and real id. Gov. Hogan yes, we shut the mvas and said we do not want people crowding into our Motor Vehicle administrations because they have to get their licenses renewed. Almost every other governor agreed with that. They were like, yeah, we dont want that either. We waived all the state requirements, saying no ones license is going to expire, we will give you a waiver until the end of the state of emergency and then you will have 60 days to update and renew or whatever you have to do. The federal law says you have to get a real id by october 1. We, i believe, are either, number one, we are way ahead of almost anybody. We have Something Like 80 compliance. 70 compliance. Some states are down to 20 . We still probably right now dont want people coming into the mva with their birth certificates and all the stuff they have to have that they cant do online. All the other governor said that is a problem for all of us. They are asking us to push the pause button on all of these things that require interaction with people where they could spread the disease. That will be discussion for later today. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Hogan governors have been taking actions across the board. This is a combined response. That every leader, and i said earlier that im talking with leaders in the region, the leaders in the nation, at the white house, the administration, and the congress, with our locals, county leaders, it is going to take every single one of us working together. There are certain powers and authorities and responsibilities at the federal level. But the governors of the states the states rights and powers, we have the ability and the need to do certain things and we have been taking those actions. But we also need to Work Together with the folks at the levels below us and the levels above us. It will take everybody working together to fight this crisis. [indiscernible] gov. Hogan we have not seen the proposal. I read something about it, but no proposal has been sent to us. On the surface, it is something we will consider any proposal that comes from any one of our states attorneys. But we are now asking citizens to stay in their homes, the people that are in our correctional facilities are kind of protected and in quarantine. If we tell people to stay home and let people out of prisons, that seems like the opposite impact, were putting people out on the streets theyre safer where they are, is what im saying. Thank you very much. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] a lot of transportation right now. Theres a lot of assistance required to distribute things like Strategic National stockpile distribution when thats ready to go. Were also able to augment a little bit, just a little bit, with our medical capabilities as we said before, a lot of my medical units also work, of course all National Guard so we work as civilians. We do have some capabilities, we have the structure in place to stand up and work with the Maryland Department of health to augment some counties out there. Were an agile force. We have a lot of capability and a lot of things. Theres things we havent discovered yet that were capable of doing, people ask for help and we figure out a way to get it done. Reporter [inaudible] im going to have to defer to the Maryland Department of health. Theyre the ones that have that mission. We assist them when theyre ready to distribute. Anyone else . Thank you. Earl yore governor andrew quo hoe held a press conference. He announced he was imposing a mandatory, statewide requirement that no business could have more than 25 of their work force report to work outside their home. Up from 50 a day ago. From albany, this is 45 minutes. Gov. Cuomo good morning, everyone. Let me introduce everyone with us. To my far right, our health commissioner, dr. Sucker. O my right, a special guest. To my left let me make a couple of points if i can today