Governor murphy good afternoon. We are gathering on what would have been my mothers 105th birthday. And by the way she ended her life for many years in assisted living in a nursing home. And had she been alive today those would be areas that we would be concerned about as i know you are. More on that a little bit. So god bless mom. Joining me up here, a woman to my right who needs to celli. Uction judy peci and christina tan. And colonel pat callahan. Also with us is the Homeland Security jared maples and other members of our team who would be able to answer some of your questions. Over the past 24 hour, so this is since the paper released that we put out yesterday, we have positive 00 347 new positive cases overnight. 3,347 new positive cases overnight. So the statewide positive cases now stands at 16,636. Sadly, i must also report that we have lost since yesterday another 37 New Jerseyans to covid19 related complications again over the past day. Yesterday in our paper release, we had put out that we lost 21 blessed souls. So its a combination of 58 over two days. The statewide total number of deaths is now 198. Each one of them a precious life lost. God rest their souls. You may have heard that there is there is clearly a challenge at the Lakeland Health center in ssaic county. And ive announced to give full support to the mayor. Clearly, we saw in Washington State and were living it in our own reality right now. Longterm care facilities are a particular area of concern and focus. And we have been we know that lots of folks out there are worried about moms and dads, grandfathers and grandmothers who are in facilities around the state. Were doing everything we can to as aggressively to get out ahead of this as fast as pob. We also lost new Jersey National guard captain douglas lynn hickock. He was a thrilling guardsman and physicians assistance originally from jackson, new jersey. He passed a way in a pennsylvania hospital, and while he will not be counted among our states covid19 cases, this loss hurts no less because of that i just got off the phone with his wife mary anne. Bless her and bless them. I sent her and tammy and d. R. The entire states condolences to her and their children alexandra and robert who i spoke to with her as well as noah and shandrea and their family. Captain hickock is prominent in our thoughts as is every New Jerseyans we have lost. Each of their lives were precious. I know their memories are precious. I hope theyre a source of strength to their family and friends at this time. And may god bless them all. These numbers as i have said before never get any easier to report. Theyre never going to be easier until that number frankly stands at zero. But i also shut tore think about what these numbers would be had we not taken the strong stance we have as it pertains to social distancing. As ive said before social distancing is absolutely necessary for us to slow the spread of covid19 to flatten the curve of new cases, to save lives and to protect the ability of our Healthcare System, one of the best in our country if not the world to help those who need the help the most. I try every day, we try every day to hammer this point home. Sometimes with levity, sometimes by standing up to those who have failed this lesson as examples. And before we go to questions today, im going to ask pat to weigh in on a couple of the overnight enforcement news. But well do that well do that in a couple of minutes. I want to make this point and by the way, as i mentioned, i spoke to captain hickcocks wife mary anne and two of their four children and she asked me literally to make the point when we mean stay at home, we mean stay at home. She went through a couple of examples where people were going to the beach, flaunting the clear mandate that we have put in place. And that will not allow us to achieve what we must achieve which is to flatten in curve as much as possible and therefore take the pressure off our Healthcare System and deal with one of these folks in the very best way possible. So ive tried different ways. Today i want to deal with a graphic. Maybe you can pull this one up. This chart, which i think the chart on the left over here, there we go. This chart is built from the actual data that we have received on the ground. S the our best understanding of how fast covid19 would have spread across our state without social distancing as counted in the number of hospitalizations that would have risen. Without social distancing we would have expected to hit our entire statewide capacity for intensive care unit beds on wednesday. In just 10 days from now, we would have expected to exhaust our entire supply of hospital beds. Eventually patients needing ventilators would far exceed the number of ventilators but our entire availability of beds. In and all this assumes that 5 of cases would require hospitalization and only 1 would eventually require a ventilator. This this chart is the nightmare scenario that we are desperately working to avoid and that we are urging every new jerseyan to help us avoid. This is what we mean by flattening the curve and why we have taken all the steps we have taken since january. This is why it is absolutely necessary for everyone to stay in unless you need to be out or unless we need you as part of our response. This is why were going to continue enforcing the prohibition against gatherings and parties as stringently as we have. And again youll hear more from pat in a few minutes on that. And even with all we are doing, we are preparing for the eventuality that we are going to need extra hospital beds. Judy will talk about, if you go back to the chart, if thats ok, i dont know who has that. If you cant see the actual data there, let me tell you what the blue line are persons hospitalized. Thats the top line. And it comes in at just under 80,000. At a peak which is essentially in early to mid may. And you have in the same chart current capacity of hospital beds of about 18,000. And so you can see the mismatch that is before us unless we succeed at social distancing. Theres literally no amount of effort or energy we can apply to that chart that youre looking at. That will close the gap between what we will need and what we have. Literally, theres nothing we can do if we did everything within our power. So the absolute number one weapon at our disposal is the one that weve been pounding away on day in and day out and that is stay at home, practice social distancing. Period. Again, judy will give you a little bit more color on what might possibly be achieved. Let me just say, whats underlying that really graphic chart that you see behind me at the moment, it assume no social distancing. It assumes that infections double every six days. Hospitalizations among the infected is 5 . I. C. U. Among the infected, 2 . Ventilator use among infected, 1 . Average length of stay in a hospital, seven days. I. C. U. Length of day, nine days. Ventilator length of stay, nine days. Theres really, and judy can tell me if she disagrees with this later, theres really only two variables there that we can control. One is social distancing. And then that in turn is the infection doubling time. The more of a social distancing reality that is fed into that model, the longer it takes for cases to double, the flatter that curve becomes. So we can then go to the Hospital Systems. This is why, this is exactly why we are working with our hospital here we are working with our Hospital Systems and heres a map of our acute Care Hospitals and Health Systems to expand their bed capacities in their existing facilities and to reopen closed hospitals to bring online an additional 1300plus beds. And thats why we have partnered with the u. S. Army corps of engineers to stand up three regional field medical stations capable of adding another thousand beds. The first one of which i believe will be up and running by the end of the week. Thats correct. Governor murphy so looking forward to that. I was back and forth this morning with the likes of bob st. Joes, also the chair of the Hospital Association over the weekend. Others over the weekend. Its why weve put not just beds but its why weve put the call out to retired Health Care Workers among many others to return to service to help us. And i thank the many volunteers who have already stepped forward. As of right now, we have had 3,611 individuals respond to this call and were incredibly grateful for their selflessness and patriotism. I welcome anyone else with prior medical experience to visit the website you see, covid19. Nj. Gov volunteer to join our army against covid19. And it is why i have turned my focus and my ongoing and daily discussions with the Trump Administration to our dire need for more ventilators. This is right now concern number one. Following a number of conversations, and this as you can imagine, given the weekend, we had a flurry of them, including a couple with the president himself, with the Vice President. We just got off a video transmission with the president and Vice President and their teams. But after all of this back and forth over the past number of days, i received word last night that a shipment of 300 ventilators from the Strategic National stockpile is on its way to new jersey. This is welcome news. And we are grateful. And i thank the administration. But to be absolutely clear, this is far, far from what we ultimately will need. I am going to continue advocating constantly for more and in addition to that, turning over every stone we have, both in the state and our networks around the country, and around the world. We know that our hospitals are quickly running toward full ventilator capacity. We are working with them to ensure the supply given. What we know we have in state and whats on the way. Even knowing this, we are working with our hospitals and fema to allow them to covent or have two patients connected to the same ventilator. This is a necessary step that will buy us precious time. This is real life. And this is life and death. We need more ventilators and i will continue to say these four words in every phone call i have with the president and Vice President and the administration until, god willing, we get them. I just repeated them on the video call we just had. Along with everyone up here, ill keep fighting for the equipment we need, whether it be more ventilators or personal protective equipment, and through state procurement, millions of articles of p. P. E. Will be coming to new jersey for distribution this week. We continue to accept donations of p. P. E. Through covid. 19 sorry, covid19. Nj. Gov ppedonations. Thats covid19. Nj. Gov ppedonations. And i would like to thank i want to give a shoutout to, again, our corporate citizens have been huge. I want to give a shoutout to sherwin williams, who contacted me over the weekend to report that theyll be donating an additional 2500 n95 masks and 1,000 gloves, on top of what they have already done. Tammy and i hosted a call this morning with a whole range of philanthropic and corporate interests to repeat the need for p. P. E. And other ways that folks can participate. Im looking forward to a call later this afternoon with the johnson and johnson folks. Again, it takes a village. We cant do it all on our own. Again, i hope to give a fuller accounting on p. P. E. In the next day or two. So please bear with me. But together as i said, as New Jerseyans, our mission must be to flatten the curve. We need you to do your part and take the necessary steps so you dont land on any graph. Switching gears. A quick announcement on testing. Tomorrow, tuesday, march 31, the Bergen County college drivethrough site will be open beginning at 8 00 a. M. For all residents, again, exhibiting symptoms of respiratory illness. Again, you must be symptomatic to receive a test. The p. N. C. Bank art center will be closed tomorrow. Regardless of where you live, if you are exhibiting symptoms of respiratory illness, call your primary Care Practitioner and they can assess whether you need to be tested for covid19 and if so, where you can be tested. The Bergen Community college and p. N. C. Bank art center sites are public mass testing sites operated in partnership with fema. And a list of all public testing sites is available at covid19. Nj. Gov. But tests are available elsewhere. And in every region of the state. I also encourage you to visit covid19. Nj. Gov to take a selftest. Theres a symptom page in that website. I encourage you to go there first perhaps if youre wondering yourself whether or not you are exhibiting symptoms. Also, i want to thank senator joe cryan, who reached out to me earlier today, and also senator nick scuderi. Union countys drivethrough testing site is open to all frontline healthcare workers and members of Law Enforcement, fire personnel, and emts from across the state. Not just from union county. If you are experiencing symptoms and believe you need to be tested, visit ucnj. Org for information on making an appointment. This site is open six days a week, again, to all frontline workers and i thank our brothers and sisters in union county for doing this. I want to hold up an exhibit i held up the other day. This is an expanded list of all the testing sites in the state. With all due respect to some of the stuff you may read about testing, we completely enormous demand a folkswanting to get of wanting to get tested. This is a time of high anxiety. We also appreciate the fact that folks are stepping aside overwhelmingly to allow folks with symptoms to go forward and get tested. That is the way it should be. That has been our focus from day one. We made the decision right out of the blocks and weve been as aggressive testing symptomatic people as any state in america. E made the bet what we like to be south korea . Would i like to have unlimited specimen collection material . Would i like to have all the Health Care Workers at my disposal . Would i like to have tests that turnaround in 45 minutes . You bet. But in the absence of all of the above, and a limited supply theity, particularly from federal government, you have to pick your spots. There is no doubt that testing symptomatic people is the place to hang your hat and that is where we have chosen to hang our hat. Obviously if somebody is sick, we want to make sure they know whether theyve got this virus or not, for their own peace of mind and also for their own health care, if in fact they have got it. But it is also the highest quality data that the people to my right need to allow them to try to get our arms around this virus and project where it is headed. With all due respect to the Perfect World which we do not have, i dont control the amount of federal supplies. I wish i did, but i dont. The reality is, given what we have and recognizing there is overwhelming demand and interest in getting tested, which we completely understand, lets make a meal out of testing symptomatic individuals, addressing folks who are sick. It gives the epidemiologist and other Health Care Professionals the data they need to get our arms around this. Bless you. Into your arm i hope. I also have a few updates to provide. First, speaking of the pnc bank proud toer, i am announce that pnc bank has signed on to the mortgage relief plan, meaning more homeowners financially impacted by this emergency will be able to take advantage of the 90 day grace period on their mortgage payments. Homeowners to work, if theyve got a mortgage , to go directly and work through pnc bank and if youve got a mortgage with any of the banks weve listed, deal directly with them. Second, pursuant to the executive order i signed saturday mandating daily reporting by our Health Care Facilities of their ppe inventories, ventilator inventories, and bed counts, we have established an online portal for that reporting. We have opened our online portal for all impacted Health Care Facilities at report. Covid19. Nj. Gov. Thats report. Covid19. Nj. Gov. And we do intend to make some of this information public. Attorney general, i think we may have jumped in the queue a slide. The acting state comptroller, in partnership with the u. S. Attorney, have announced the formation of a joint federal state task force to investigate and prosecute misconduct ranging from unlawful hoarding of medical supplies and price gouging to Charity Scams and procurement fraud among other unlawful misleading activities. Residents may anonymously report any instance of these unlawful practices at the numbers behind me. Make sure you make note of that. I also wish to amplify an announcement made friday by the department of Human Services that over the next two months, 70 million in additional snap for food stamps benefits made available by the federal response bill will be given to qualified new jersey beneficiaries to help with the purchase of groceries. These supplemental funds will be loaded directly onto a family ebt card. And the division of alcoholic Beverage Control is issuing guidance to allow breweries to provide Home Delivery to their customers. Home delivery has been prevented because of a ruling that abc issued last may. Today abc has decided to relax that ruling and allow for Home Delivery. Also this morning, we issued an administrative order updating and clarifying executive order 107, specifically pertaining to which businesses may be allowed to operate during this emergency and the ways in which they can operate to ensure social distancing. We will allow auto dealerships to conduct online or remote sales and authorized dealers to deliver vehicles directly to their customers or to arrange for curbside or service lane pickup at a dealership. We also made two clarifications. The first allows realtors to operate and show houses to prospective buyers on a oneonone basis or to immediate families, but continues the current prohibition on open houses. The second reiterates that golf courses are closed and will remain and should remain closed as recreational businesses. And in accordance with the guidance released over the weekend by the federal department of Homeland Security, we will allow Firearms Retailers to operate by appointment only and during limited hours, to conduct business which under law must be done in person. We are doing this in light of the federal guidance published saturday night which includes these retailers as part of critical infrastructure. It wouldnt have been my definition, but that is the definition at the federal level. We will enforce all gun safety laws and all gun owners are reminded of the need to keep their firearms locked in safe storage and anyone who sees a Firearms Retailer acting in violation of this order should report them through covid19. Nj. Gov and Law Enforcement will respond. Finally, i wish to close by reiterating the words i said yesterday regarding the travel advisory the cdc announced on saturday. We are already living what the cdc is calling for and their advisory does not impact what we already have put in place to protect our state. My stay remains firmly in effect. Unless you are absolutely needed to go out or your job is critical to our response, please please please stay home. We will get through this. There is no question in my mind. But we will get through this more quickly and stronger if us,yone, all 9 million of does our part. Dont think that because someone else is staying in that you dont have to. You have to do the smart thing. You have to do the right thing. You wanted to clarify the amount of members of Law Enforcement who were exposed or had coronavirus. On saturday, i indicated basically just the wrong information. I had overstated the positive tests. Theres actually three categories we are providing now. Today, to clarify for the record, theres 288 Law Enforcement officers tested positive. 2477 are at home on selfquarantine and 618 are out for other reasons, whether sick or injured. If you want to, we can report them. The reason we are keeping those is to keep operations planned tactically and operationally. If a squad or station or Police Department needs assistance, we wanted to plan for that. With regards to the overnight, a male subject was arrested for driving under the influence. He was charged with eluding, obstruction, and driving under the influence. While being processed, he coughed in the direction of the officers and claimed to be covid positive. There was also an incident in lakewood. Lakewood Police Department responded to a gathering of 40 to 50 people. It was a bat mitzvah. It was a celebration. That resulted in a child neglect charge as well as violating the executive order. In bridgeton, there was a gym herbalife session going on. The runner of that gym was charged. And in woodridge, there was a barbershop that was open. Over the time that executive order restrictions have been in 70ce, there have been complaints issues compliance issues which have resulted in indictable offenses. Gov. Murphy thank you. The attorney general is not here, but i want to ask my colleagues, i would like for us to consider the have to the heft the penalty that one has to pay in these times in some extraordinary fashion, particularly it is one thing to be ignorant. But for somebody to willfully ignore this and put someone elses life at stake, and you are doing it in a more benign way than if you cough on somebody and say youve got coronavirus, but in both cases, you are wrong and it is illegal behavior. And i want to tighten the screws on the price those folks will pay. With lots to talk about, with cases overnight, fatalities as charts that i already began to refer to, please help me welcome the commissioner of the department of health. Thank you and good afternoon. As i mentioned previously, the department has been modeling when the peak of covid19 cases will hit our state and when we expect this surge to be at our hospitals. This is directly related to the availability of hospital beds and the resources needed to care for our patients. That is medicalsurgical beds and Critical Care beds and things like ventilation. We are using the chime model developed by penn medicine. It stands for covid19 hospital impact model for epidemics. It projects how many patients will need hospitalization and it projects the resources that are needed. So just before we go over the charts, right now, if we did nothing, we have 18,000 medical surgical beds and about 2000 Critical Care beds. If you look at the chart with the greatest peak, the highest peak, that is the chart that we are calling premitigation. That was before the mitigation interventions. In other words, we did nothing at all. I think you can see by looking at that chart, the peak is the hospitalizations, we would have a little bit shy of 80,000 hospitalizations. Certainly far higher than the available beds that we have. The icu capacity would have to have 40,000 beds. And, you know, if we did nothing, we would have 2000. So we show this because it really points out that the only tool we have in our toolkit is social distancing. And the impact that it can have. If you look at the second chart, this identifies the impact of social distancing at 31 . You might ask, why did you choose 31 . That is in the literature of the compliance rate of social distancing by history. By other epidemics. Weve identified the infection doubling rate. Remember, this is a point in time. We run this a number of times a week because it changes. The infection doubling time, the rate of new cases doubling every so many days, weve identified that as six days. The hospitalization rate among infected individuals, weve identified at five. The number of individuals who would then need an intensive care bed is at 2 . Half of them would need a ventilator. Then you factor in the average overall of the hospitalizations, and then the icu length of stay and the ventilator length of stay. So if you look at the chart with 31 social distancing, we reach icu bed capacity on april 11. That is pretty soon. This assumes that weve done nothing. I think i reported last week that we asked all of the hospitals to double their icu criticalcare capacity. We asked them if they had 10 criticalcare beds to move it up to 20. If they had 40, move it up to 80. 100 increase. This chart,look at you see that we reach our all bed capacity on may 8. But you also see the delta between the existing beds of 18,000 and the requirement of over 30,000. So if we were doing nothing with our hospitals, no planning, we would be short. But what i can report is that we are increasing our criticalcare beds. We are increasing the availability of additional medical surgical beds for lower acuity patients. In discussions with the ceos, they are prepared to accept the fact that the primary hospitals will become large criticalcare units and that we will be decanting to lower levels of care into Field Hospitals, opened general hospitals that have been closed within the last five years, and increasing our additional bed capacity between 1500 and 2000 beds. Additionally, we are looking at dormitories and hotels. To be able to take care of our patients in the safest way possible. This modeling relies on the impact of social distancing, the number of positive cases reported daily, the number of cases in our hospital and their criticalcare in and then medicalsurgical, along with the number of positive cases and cases under investigation. We are assuming that every case under investigation is a positive case. It is probably not 100 , but it gives us a marker. So i assume the next question is, social distancing is the only tool we have in our toolkit. What should that percentage be . At 50 , we have more than adequate beds right now. But 50 is pretty aggressive social distancing. So the real number is probably between 40 and 45 . It may not be that much of a reach considering the compliance we are assuming right now. So this is a projection. Again, it is based on the available data we have. It is a point in time. More beds will be brought online. We believe the infection doubling rate will increase. We believe that social distancing percentages will increase. We believe we will significantly flatten the curve by the initiatives and interventions that we have already initiated. As the governor mentioned, today we are reporting 3347 new cases for a total of 16,636 cases in the state. And sadly, new deaths have been reported to the department. They number 37. Four of those deaths are associated with longterm care facilities. I have shared with you repeatedly our concern for longterm care facilities. Right now, 73 longterm care facilities report at least one covid positive case. In longterm care facilities, we have identified approximately 34 deaths associated with covid19. However, in longterm care facilities, we have reported a total number of deaths of over 80. Its about 81 or 82. I point that out to share with you that every reported death in a longterm care facility is not necessarily due to covid19. The county breakdown of new cases is as follows. Atlantic, five, bergen, 249, burlington, 28, camden, 36, cumberland, one, essex, 280, gloucester, 17, hudson, 289, hunterdon, 10, mercer, 45, middlesex, 171, monmouth, 184, 134, mars, 74, ocean, 84, passaic, 124, somerset, 147, somerset, 47, sussex, nine, union, 226, and warren, 10. I also am reporting that another of new jersey states Psychiatric Hospital employees has been affected. There is one staff member at ancora that tested positive for covid19 and we now have one resident in a psychiatric facility testing positive. As of the date of this morning, of the major labs sending us results, and we are getting results from over 95 of the major labs, there have been 40,806 tests performed, of which 15,582 have tested positive, for an overall percent Positivity Rate of 38. 19 . That ends my report. We believe that our social distancing mitigation interventions, our ability to slow down the rate of the doubling of the infection, and the increase in the number of beds that we are bringing online will prepare us to handle the surge that we are expecting imminently. Thank you. Gov. Murphy thank you. A couple things before we go to questions. I mentioned on the video call with the president and Vice President , and i mentioned it again with Speaker Pelosi, as significant as the bill that the president signed on friday was in terms of direct help to everyone from folks who are out of work to small businesses, hospitals, transit systems, and the state government, as weve said, we need more. We need a lot more help. And our ability to understand both the rulebook by which the money is dispensed that was signed by the president last week, as well as planning for next steps, which is why i was on the phone with Speaker Pelosi, are incredibly important. Secondly, you mention 73 longterm care facilities have at least one positive. Just to remind everybody, 375 in the state, that is just under 20 . That number, if youve been listening to us, thursday, was 15. That number has gone up and that is not surprising. It is an area of i know a concern. The top counties, bergen, florida way number one. Far and away number one. Essex, number two. Hudson, three. Union has now jumped to fourth. And middlesex, fifth. Could we put the charts back up, please . Folks, this is going to be im going to do my best to channel Winston Churchill when he took over as Prime Minister on may 10, 1940 when it felt like all hope was lost for everybody in Great Britain and he gave his first speech and three days later basically said, i have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat, but at the same time implored his countrymen to hang in there and come together and do what many thought was impossible. That is what i want to use as a launching off point. Look at these charts. What this is saying is basically, if you have average social distancing compliance based on past epidemics or pandemics, you can reduce the peak of the curve by about 57 . So in the chart you are looking at, you are just under 80,000 if we had let this go unfettered, and bringing it down to just under 35,000 with an average relative to history, an average social distancing performance. And you still see, relative to today, and ill focus on total hospital beds because it is the easiest chart to read. The difference is about 17,000 beds. That is an average relative to history performance on social distancing and staying at home. I implore each of us, we are not an average state. We are not an average 9 million people. This is jersey. How many times in the past have we done what folks said was impossible . We have lived our lives punching above our weight. We have lived our lives defying the odds. No state has more attitude or character. No state has been smarter in figuring out what seemed to be impossible and yet getting there and achieving nonetheless. So i ask each and every one of you to look at these charts and ask yourselves, are we average or are we a lot better than average . We are a special place. We can crush the top of that curve if we act as one. If each one of the 9 million of us does our part, including the little things. No more knucklehead parties or gatherings, please. No more aberrant behavior. We have got to stay home. We have got to stay away from each other. We have got to set a bar in terms of our social distancing that no other state has set before. And who is to say we cant . We are new jersey. We can do this. We must do this. Judy and her team will find every available bed they can find, from opening wings to opening hospitals to opening with fema and the army corps full popup Field Hospitals, converting dorm rooms and hotels. I know that she and her team will do their part. We have to do our part. We have to stay home, stay away from each other, do the little things. If we do that, we will remind everybody how special, unique our state is. We have got this within us. And please, god, lets not let it slip to the left. We want, if anything, that curve on the right to go to the right, to flatten the top of that blue line. Our job is to bring that blue line down. And we will do this because nobody is like the great state of new jersey. With that, lets take some questions. Dante has the microphone. I cant tell if hes got a glove on. You should have one on. You are up. Good afternoon. Gov. Murphy we can barely hear you. For these first two questions, they come from daniel. He asks, for the lending agencies that your administration has no control over, how can you get them to come on board, or is that just not possible as far as the mortgage arrangements, and his second question, he says he called for a stay on rent increases and for banks to offer some kind of credit card relief. How would you handle landlords that are still increasing rent and how are you going to get Financial Institutions to sign onto that . Gov. Murphy those are both daniels . Those are daniels. Gov. Murphy tell daniel we will answer his questions as best we can. My own question is, when do you expect to deploy equipment, and when do you expect any coventing . Gov. Murphy matt is with us and i want him to help me here. We added pnc bank, which i think is a great move to the list of Financial Institutions that are compliant with the 90 day mortgage window. Matt, on the lending agencies, what is the answer for daniel . They have their own policies. They put out guidance and it was codified in the cares act. Obviously, we will be working with lenders who issue federally backed loans. Gov. Murphy on landlords, we are quite displeased with that. What latitude, either with landlords who continue to raise rent or Credit Card Companies who continue to charge fees or raise interest rates. We are reviewing all options with respect to lending. We are working with states regionally as well as with california. You have obviously implemented an eviction removal prohibition for anyone who would take action against the tenant, but we are exploring all options in regards to other forms of activity. Gov. Murphy excellent. So you will report that back to daniel. On getting equipment from ambulatory and outpatient, that is happening i believe, is it not . We are encouraging all ambulatory Surgery Centers to send in their ppe and also their anesthesia machines. Theres a possibility that anesthesia machines, with implementation of certain valves, can be used as ventilators. We are collecting that now. I do not know how much we have collected. It is probably not as aggressive as we would have liked. Gov. Murphy how about coventing . This week, a medical team from fema will be visiting new jersey to a video education and Training Session for physicians to share with them what they have to do to covent. We cannot sorry. We could not predict when that might occur. If our social distancing improves, for example, to around 45 , we will probably never have to use coventing. So we are just keeping an eye on it to be prepared. Gov. Murphy can we put the charts backup . The problem is we just cannot count on that. That is why i am just having a go, fight, win. The extent to which we can smash that blue line on the right down meaningfully, we have a different reality with a different set of choices. But we cannot count on that. Personally i am counting on it, and i know what we are capable of. But the fact of the matter is we have to expand capacity and take steps that are unusual. Pat used the phrase it is to train the trainers. The department of Homeland Security as well along with fema, this is a video, this is how you do it and do it safely. So thank you. And docs will be available to travel to hospitals that want more facetoface education. Gov. Murphy i have interrupted you twice today and i try never to do that, so i apologize. I also meant to say this earlier. The president and Vice President today spoke about abbott labs coming up with a new shortterm turnaround testing reality. I have said in several of our sessions of late that were testing, and this is the right place to start, symptomatic folks. If we were in south korea, we would have all the federal support we would have hoped for and that would look differently. Its not just the stuff you need to collect the specimen. It is Health Care Workers, it is personal protective equipment, both of which are in short supply. One more time, healthcare workers and our First Responders are our heroes right now. And i meant to say this just because you reminded me, with the fact that they were coming up actually to demonstrate. If Something Like this abbott test were to get approved and become mass available or some other testing regime like that, all bets are off in terms of that fork in the road reality i have outlined before where at a certain point we are going to have to make tough decisions between, do i put more resources into testing . Or do i have to take in a limited resource world coming out of the federal government and a limited pool of healthcare workers to apply all that to care . I am really encouraged by the amount of folks who have answered our call to arms, over 3600 of them, and god willing that number goes up so that becomes less of a constraining factor. I think it would then come down to materials. I meant to say that earlier. Apologies. With regard to the coventilating issues, i believe you said we are getting 300 from the national stockpile, the strategic reserve. Where else can we possibly get the ventilators . Where else are we looking for more ventilators . Commissioner, perhaps you could talk a little bit about how effective coventilating is. Is it as good as a single ventilator . Does it actually work . Is there a percentage breakdown that shows that is effective . With regard to the anesthesia machines that can be transformed i guess, do we have a sense how many anesthesia machines we have in new jersey . How long does it take, and how effective is it to switch over to ventilators, and will that cause another problem with a lack of anesthesia machines . Gov. Murphy is that all you got . I just want to make a general comment, and then maybe ask both of you to come in here. We have 300 ventilators coming out of the strategic stockpile and im grateful for that. We need it and we need it desperately. We will take it. I think our total ask was 2300 out of the strategic stockpile. So we would have still, on balance, an ask of 2000. I look to pat, because you have an order to buy 2000 as well and that is some number of weeks away. Is that correct . That is correct. I spoke to the regional administrator and fema about any additional on the air Bridge Program that was discussed today. Gov. Murphy we are trying to buy them as well on the open market. Do you want to talk about efficacious in this of covent and anesthesia machines . We are definitely going to get 2000 more or we are trying to get 2000 more . Gov. Murphy trying. We are trying to buy them as well, as a separate matter. I was transposing two different realities. We have an ask for 2000 more from the federal stockpile and we also are out trying to buy on a parallel basis 2000. If we have too many that will be a mistake i can live with. Eds, we wanthe b to move from 2000 criticalcare vents to 4000. And we want every criticalcare bed to have a vent. If that does not occur, we go to coventing. Apparently, the efficacious ness is similar. There has to be some training. That is why we are bringing the team up to speak directly to our physicians. They sent me a number of pictures and information. I have not sorted through all of it but the bottom line is the fda has approved coventing. So we believe it is efficacious and we just want to be prepared, as i have said in prior press conferences. We are definitely going to be perfect for the worst preparing for the worst. We are preparing for the best and this is just one other thing that we are just going full steam ahead to make sure if we need it, we will know about it. How about anesthesia . Even in a hospital, if you s,e a hospital with 10 o. R. They usually have two anesthesia machines per o. R. In case one malfunctions. We have 71 hospitals, many surgical suites, and almost 1000 ambulatory Surgery Centers. So we have thousands of anesthesia machines. So we have backup. So our backup has backups. Apparently, the transformation from an anesthesia machine from a biomedical engineer is a 24 hour situation. It is not long. Governor, any chance that operations will change at the states gas stations in light of the social distancing recommendations, temporarily allowing people to pump their own gas . And also in the Field Hospitals, when you say lowerlevel patients, i may have heard it ere these be w Covid Patients who have lesser symptoms, or nonCovid Patients . Gov. Murphy i will take the gas stations. We have given no thought to changing that for the time being. Field hospitals . Let me tell you a little bit about the Field Hospitals, because we are all learning together on this. The first one is going up in secaucus. The floor plan shows 250 beds in cohoarded areas but there are no walls between them. So we have to be careful about the types of patients we put in there. The lower acuity patients are still patients who deserve to be in the hospital. The way you look at whether a patient should be in the hospital is the severity of their illness and the intensity of their service. So if a patient fulfills both of those criteria, as being admitted to a general acute Care Hospital, they may be appropriate for the Field Hospital. The Field Hospital overall though will have the appropriate oxygen and suction and electrical power to allow us to put in ventilated patients as well. We have chosen to keep the intensivists, the pulmonologists, the criticalcare nurses all in the general acute Care Hospital working together as a team, because they are going to be so valuable to take care of the very sick, and move the lower acuity patients into Field Hospitals. And even a step down from there, if we have to use hotels. So its definitely the continuum. But these would be patients at the Field Hospital who would be in a hospital. Way, eveny by the while you are pumping gas in the supermarket, at home having dinner, practice social distancing. Please. Do we have an estimate of how many respirators excuse me, ventilators or anesthesia machines we will be getting from these ambulatory Surgery Centers . And governor, do we construction workers are still at work. However, their social distancing requires using commonly one porta potty for 30 to 40 guys. Are there any conversations about putting that to a close or implementing different procedures . I think it is important for you to know that we are doing a full inventory of every ventilator we have in new jersey. Theres universal ventilators, there is adult ventilators, and there is pediatric ventilators. And we are doing a complete inventory of them. Then we are doing a complete inventory of ambulatory Surgery Centers, and their anesthesia machines, and anesthesia machines in all of our hospitals. Elective surgeries have been curtailed, so we can redeploy even within our own hospitals. I have the first part. We do not have all of the inventory of the ambulatory Surgery Centers yet. But we are pretty close to a full inventory of every ventilator in our acute Care Hospitals. And we are moving towards the ambulatory Surgery Centers. Then the inventory of our anesthesia machines in our hospitals is nearcomplete as well. Gov. Murphy we are right now staying with where we came out in terms of construction. We have looked and will continue to look at socalled nonessential construction potentially, but at the moment, we are staying where we are. We are asking everyone to the best of their ability to practice social distancing as much as they can in all walks of life, including construction. Do you have questions . Yes i do. I have to put my glasses on. For the commissioner, have any hospitals run out of ventilators . And are any close . None have run out of ventilators. We have gotten a number of calls. I can tell you one hospital last week put 33 patients in a 24 hour period on a ventilator, then they call us and say they are going to run out. We have been able to fulfill their needs as they have called. We have a small stockpile centrally. We give them out judiciously based on prioritization, and where we see the increases in of disease. S so right now, no one has run out, and we do expect that we will be moving ventilators throughout the state because of the incidents being smaller in the south part of the state. We are moving things to the north part of the state. Gov. Murphy you good . One more . I have a couple more, sorry. Speaking of longterm care facilities, you moved really quickly to close saint joes. Can you talk a little about the decisionmaking involved in, for example, family of caring in montclair or lakeland, who had far more deaths associated with them. To the families of people in those places, what would you say . Sure. That is a great question. The decisionmaking for saint joes related not only to their patients, but to their staff. The decision was made when the sister called us and told us it was only the sisters who were taking care of the residents because the staff were suffering from respiratory illness and 10 or 12 did not come into work. Maybe appropriately so. So there was not only an outbreak, there was also lack of staffing. I hope to reopen that. We are making sure there is a heavy cleaning and decontamination. We need their 200 beds. Like i said last week, it has a strong history and heritage of taking care of patients in that area. So we hope to reopen that. We have to make sure we have the staff to do so. You mentioned a couple other longterm care facilities. We are monitoring every one of them. And if they do not have the ability to cohort their patients, in other words isolate them in a certain wing so that the other patients are safer as a result, we might have to take more deliberate action. We are looking at that every day. We are looking at spaces that could accommodate longterm care residents as we try to keep people in the safest possible situation. But its a struggle, but we are working with them. And we have sent our infection preventionist out to a number of them to work with their staff and move patients around to what they say is cohorting their patients. Did that help . Gov. Murphy judy, if i could add one comment to this. You and i were discussing this earlier. You could envision saint joes it muchg and making more private, taking it from 200 beds to a lower number to cordon off folks more effectively. Exactly. What we want to do is to make sure we have the safest accommodations for the residents of longterm care. They are so vulnerable and we are concerned. Gov. Murphy the other, which i know you mentioned as relates to saint joes, it is probably applicable to some of the other facilities we are talking about. At the state level, you also have to parse through cause of death, which i know is another xfactor here. So lets acknowledge the precious lives lost and keep them in our prayers and god rest them all. But in particular, you have some folks with either endoflife issues or at a minimum, comorbidity. You have to parse through what was the cause of death, sadly. Right . Right . Yes. Gov. Murphy youre good . Matt . So governor, i have a couple. Yesterday, the president called you a quote, terrific guy. You yourself has offered some praise for the president , or the administration, i should say. Ordinarily, youd expect to see the head of the Democratic Governors Association to be going after a republican president , not praising him at this time. What can you say about the relationship right now . Is this like a cristy, obama moment after sandy . And i would like to clarify where you are on hospital capacity. I know that some hospitals are supposed to be reporting that. What can you tell us about where we stand . Also on the popup hospitals, are those ready to go . And one last thing on figures. Do we have figures on people who have recovered . I think at some point we said we will be releasing those. Gov. Murphy ill take the nonhealth, nonmedical side here. Let me just say this. On the popups, i said this earlier and i should have said in passing, the first one i believe we hope to have up and ready to go by the end of the week. Is that fair . Ok. I am not sure about the other ones, but at least the first one at meadowlands by the end of the week. Listen, and i mean this sincerely, i do not wake up every morning with the choice to say ok, who will be my president today. Do i get x or y or z . The president is donald trump and the Vice President is mike pence. There is one federal administration. We need the feds and the feds y, asus, by the wa well. If you are part of the backandforth we had over the course of saturday when there was a discussion of a travel advisory or quarantine, i think we all realized that we need each other. I was on the line with Governor Cuomo and governor lamont a lot, on the line with the Vice President and their teams a lot. We need them and they need us. They are the administration. Its the same reason i was on with Speaker Pelosi just before coming over here, in terms of wargaming, where do we go next in terms of the economic support. In terms of the economic support. I deal with, we deal with the leaders who are in their seats, not the ones who we might theoretically think about. This is a fact and i have to say that while we still have a big ask outstanding of things like ppe and ventilators, slowly but surely we are chipping away at that and we will not relent until we get our fair share. Judy, anything else . I want to talk a little about the popup. The first one the end of the week, it will not open the end of the week. Tomorrow we have a group of individuals coming to the department of health that have agreed to be the management, administrative staff. So we are going to work through the logistics of that. They will come with three days supply of supplies. Laundry, linen, things like that. And then it is up to the states and the department of health to make sure that we have backup supplies to run for as many weeks or months that we have to run. And i also want to say, and the colonel was at the meeting on saturday with dr. Eastman, the physician in charge of femas response throughout the united states. We had njhj there, near jersey Hospital Association, the oem. And dr. Eastman said he had never seen such collaboration. So this is not just a department of health popup. This is something that as a group we are working together on. Somebody is working on procurement. The Central Command station is working on equipment and supplies. Its really gratifying to know that you are not out there alone, that the collaboration through every department is extraordinary. So, we expect to start accepting patients there the middle of next week. Status about current beds and how many people have recovered . Sure. We talk about the recovery all the time, and the statistics are obvious he lacking because we did not know people with moderate or mild disease at home who have not been tested. What was the question . I am just curious, you put out the call to hospitals to report their capacity. So can you report to us . They will be reporting all of their bed capacity, all the beds, what their occupancy rate is. They will also look at Critical Care, and what their occupancy is, ventilators, and what their usage is, whether they have an inventory on hand. I am looking at jared, because he was involved in the meeting yesterday. Theres a whole list and that dashboard will be updated every day and every morning after every hospital have their huddle. Every hospital has a huddle where they say, what will the day look like, how many employees do we need, did someone call in sick it goes on and on. Then they will report into the rock. Our collaborating institutions, the level 1 trauma centers, will access that information and start meeting the needs of the patients throughout the region. Did that help . Ok. Gov. Murphy thank you. First i have a question from mike. Governor, are you going to direct the south Jersey Transportation authority to postpone public hearings on its toll increases this week. And if not, why not . And i have questions on ventilators on the curve. That 31 isolation still assumes months of at capacity for every level for hospitalization. Given the aggressive social distancing we are doing right now, are you expecting months of at capacity for every level of hospitalizations, icu beds . Given that especially with ventilators, will we have the number of people needed to run the machines and maintain even the care levels you discussed given the emergency . And the 300 ventilators, that is the total number, not in addition to the 200 . Gov. Murphy this is a new 300. So it is 500 . Gov. Murphy i want to come back to clarify that. But this 300 i know is new. When they come from the federal government, are they assessed in working, and how long does it take to assess them and make sure they are operational . Gov. Murphy let me start with mikes answer quickly. Again, i have no insight into the actual hearings in process, but the things i cared about is we did not have people gathering, that we had plenty of opportunity for folks to have comments. So i believe this is the case, at least when i was asked by vote. Stream these, no physical meeting, give a tollfree number with a real person on the other end to take calls to take peoples input, and to extend the period. Those are the three things i said. Stream, a phone number, no gatherings, and extend the period. That was my most salient concern. Judy, the you want to hit that does this mean youre at capacity for manpower . And when these come in, what shakedown do we do for the equipment . Let me talk about manpower. In our planning, one of our reasons for keeping the high security patients at the chief Care Hospitals is we have is to maintain that manpower expertise. If we had them running to Field Hospitals and smaller new hospitals that have opened, or nursing homes, it would not work. So along with the ceos we have decided the highest acuity will be at the main acuteCare Hospitals to maintain the expertise that we need, crnas will be extremely valuable. We do expect perhaps at the Field Hospitals and the smaller hospitals that the advanced practice nurses, paramedics, physician assistants, will be of great help. We are deploying them through different ways of waivers some restrictions on their licensing. As far as the sustained activity, that is going to be dependent on the doubling rate of the infection. If the doubling rate stays at six days, yeah, we will have sustained activity. If it starts stretching out, which we hope it does, then things will lighten up a bit. Gov. Murphy and it does not stretch out without much more aggressive social distancing. Yeah. Do you have anything to add . She is way past me on this one. Again, its a little early to be able to assess what is happening in real curve in the in real time, because the data changes day by day. As the commissioner mentioned, the model is based on point in time assumptions that are plugged into the modeling model itself. So again, we continue to monitor these cases. We have to remember that there are a couple things happening with the epi curve, the number of cases over time where the horizontal axis is generally onset of illness. We have got more testing that is available. We had multiple levels of mitigation, social distancing that were imposed at the same time. So, kind of hard to tease out how this will actually play out in the actual epicurve that we see. Gov. Murphy real quick on the shakedown of the machines. We have had so many meetings and discussions with regard to these ventilators. The meeting with dr. Eastman on saturday, and even meetings since. I would imagine at this juncture it would have come up that, by the way, when they arrive you have to do x and y. I have not heard that in jersey or the whole country. I would imagine that when they get here, they are ready to go. We assume they are coming in in fighting shape. John, you good . Colonel, you mentioned blakely again today. Saturday, there was a party. Is lake wood or just popped up a couple of times in terms of the gatherings . I have to see what it was. 70 compliance issues. I just think that sometimes attention gets drawn to lake wood and ocean county. There was a call with the leadership in lake wood to make sure this is the Fastest Growing community in the state and i want to repeat. There is no time to cross wires and start blaming communities and if that happens, we will be as aggressive as we have ever been. But when you have a community of that scale and that growth rate, we take that very seriously and want to work with them. And there is overwhelming compliance. If you took snap shots of the streets of lakewood, you would see a pretty empty reality, but there have been a few gatherings we were not happy about. Were you aware of any patients being sent to south jersey hospitals . And if so, voluntary or mandatory . Im not aware of any, but we have encouraged to look within their own system to make sure that the patients get the most appropriate level of care and if they have to transfer them, to transfer them. But i dont know any specifics. Dave, come on over here. I apologize in advance of asking this, there has been a lot of information of points, graphs, projections. Assuming that we believe the way this is going to play out in this point in time as the doctor mentioned, if the peak hits, commissioner you and i spoke last week of 1421 days in the north jersey area and go out. If the peak hits in i. C. U. Beds reach capacity 411, do we have enough beds and enough equipment and p. P. E. Right now to handle what we think will be the surge when it happens as it plays out. Do we have enough of a workforce. Do we have enough p. P. E. , no. And we know that. And we havent enough p. P. E. For a long time. And i know i think from the workforce perspective that is the thing that is concerning them the most. Do i think we will have enough ventilators . I do. But im concerned about the p. P. E. And impact on the workforce. Beds . I think we will have enough beds. Everybody is working feverishly and extraordinary effort. The hospitals are now moving out as many patients as possible to be able to free up beds in anticipation of the increase in admissions. They are doing it appropriately. And remember, there is no elective surgical parets in the hospital. That freed up beds. The hospitals are doing they have disaster plans. They are already implementing. They called their disaster plans into effect quite some time ago. You had mentioned that the whole business of cracking down on wise guys who dont follow knuckleheads. Excuse me. In korea, south korea, i know they have gone doortodoor and fine people 8,000 when they were told to stay home. How to get tougher if people dont follow these rules. One hand it sounds like most people are complying, but you have the knucklehead group that are not. I dont anticipate going doortodoor. We are just a different society, but doesnt mine we cant be equally as compliant. I said this in this press Conference Today i feel like when this willful violation of our mandate, we should consider stronger penalties. Count me in that camp. I want to go back to your first question. I dont want anyone to look back and say we didnt say a couple of things. These numbers have gone up dramatically. We expected them to go up dramatically and we expect them to continue to go up dramatically. This is the fight of our lives. Let there be no doubt about that. Secondly, every state in america and i have now a. M. Will evidence and i spoke to Charlie Baker yesterday in massachusetts and on a video call today and all evidence is looking for p. P. E. We are hotter than p most states and we dont have what we need and i think we will go over this in the next couple of days. We have gotten a lot thats come our way both from the federal stockpile and other sources. We are still light. Im not comfortable with our ventilator levels. I feel better than i did yesterday at this time. Because we got 300. Our workforce is heroic. I spoke with debbie, just extraordinary heroism. Not only do we need the p. P. E. To keep them safe but expand the medical corps because we need the bodies. Im with judy, i dont know if it is by hook or by crook, thanks to the brill answer, it was a plan in place including by our Hospital Systems. We will find our way through the beds. I didnt say to this you earlier, bob garrett converted the cafeteria to some sort of a care wing in their hospital. This is extraordinary work thats being done. But we are in the fight of our lives. Let there be no doubt about it and three areas of concern, i would say as a nonmedical professional, one is longterm care facilities. Secondly folks who have adjacent health care challenges, kidney, respiratory, diabetes, et cetera, and thirdly, certain communities. This is hitting harder in certain communities whether it is because of their behavior or Community Spread, but those are areas. It is the fight of our lives and i would plead again not just on flattening that curve, but also in the extraordinary work in our health care community, we are not an average state. We are an incredibly special state and now is the time to show that as clearly as we have shown it before. The gun sales, will they begin immediately and there is a proposal for rental payments to come from security deposits. Is that something. The first question was the gun reality . Is thanking effective immediately, matt . It will be effective by the end of the day. I apologize, i missed the second. The president s in new york city are putting forth of rental payments to come from security deposits, is that something you are looking at in new jersey . Not one that i have been a party to a conversation in, but not one that i would ignore myself. If you could move this way. Matt, that should be on our list of considerations. It is a good idea. With that, everyone. Real quick. This is going to have to be quick and i apologize. We heard about the north versus the south in prevalence in covid cases but you referred to communities. Can you elaborate on that, what communities are seeing this more than others . I think you have the reality in Bergen County which is pretty known. Im not saying Community Extra or Community Wide but notion of Community Spread is a reality. And we spoke about ocean county where we got some particular challenges. But its not one specific Community Versus another as much as it is regions in the state. You arent referring to communities of economic disparity or anything like that . No. No. No. No. Thank you for asking that question and will give me the opportunity to get on my soap box to say that the folks who are typically left behind by society will be yet again left further behind as a result of this crisis if we are not careful and dont have a proactive set of policies for folks who are homeless or near homeless or cant make their rental payment. We are doing everything we can to get out ahead of that, foreclosed homes, preventing evictions from those homes, et cetera. But i did not mean that. Gun sales will be open as of tomorrow morning at 8 00 a. M. Gun sales will be open tomorrow morning at 8 00 a. M. The gentleman who normally asked me about this, he did not come here today. He feels he achieved a modicum of success. What was that . It was not our attention. Thank you all. We are in the fight of our lives. We will win but wont win unless we stand together and do our share each and every one of us and prove ourselves we are not an average state. We know we are not. We can come together and build out the Health Care Infrastructure on the one hand and also flatten that curve by staying home and keeping distance. We are trying to gather more often than not at 1 00 p. M. We did not today because of the video call with the president and Vice President but we will be back here tomorrow at 1 00 p. M. Thank you, commissioner, doctor, colonel, director and to everyone, thank you. [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] washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Discussesive director what the 2 trillion dollars coronavirus aid package means for states. In the state response to the crisis. They talk about the latest developments in u. S. Efforts to combat the pandemic. A labor union that represents more than 300,000 workers in the Hospitality Industry on how the Coronavirus Impact is impacting his members. Journalspan washington live tuesday morning. Join the discussion. Moreming up on cspan, updates from around the country in u. S. Response to the coronavirus pandemic. Next, louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards in baton rouge. Then California Governor Gavin Newsom briefs reporters. Later, we hear from arkansas governor asa hutchinson. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards updated reporters from the office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in baton rouge. He was joined by secretary walter of the department of children and Family Services with an update on the expansion of qualifications for the state