Or wherever you have to be wherever you happen to be tuning in on your radio or television or your computer. By thebe followed secretary of the department of children and family services. She has updates on nutrition and snap benefits. Doctorstill have the here to answer specific questions about health care testing, that sort of thing. I want to start out by thanking the medical professionals of all types who are working all across louisiana aerobically every single day. I want to thank all of the Health Care Professionals working heroically every single day. I know that today President Trump declared it National Doctors day and i want to join him in saluting our doctors and thanking them. They are absolutely on the front lines today and every day. We would not be able to come close to managing this emergency without our frontline physicians. We still have the same imperatives we have been working on for the last few weeks, to flatten the curve, slow the spread of this disease, and make sure that people dont all seek medical care at the same time. In the time we have available to us, we have to continue to serve to our medical capacity. These remain the imperatives today. Earlier today, i participated in a Video Conference call with the president , Vice President , and Coronavirus Task force that has been assembled at the white house. We had a separate call prior to that from the Vice President. First of all, we are thankful that the president granted our request for title 32 status for the national guard. That will stand for 30 days. It unlocks protections and benefits for National Guardsmen and airmen. This is something we have used previously in disaster response, including hurricanes katrina, ike, gustaf, and again with the bp oil spill. Last week, the president granted us a 60 person medical strike team that was going to come from the u. S. Public health service. We found out yesterday morning that team has been diverted but replaced with the medical unit of u. S. Navy sailors coming out of jacksonville, florida. Between that will be 180 and 200 person strong unit. They are going to augment our staff at the Convention Center in new orleans. The center will have 1000 beds operational by this coming sunday. There will be a personal housing unit across the street from the Convention Center with another 250 beds. That will be for persons under investigation. So inside the Convention Center will be covid positive patients. Persons under investigation will be across the street in the personal housing unit. That detachment from the navy will staff principally at the personal holding unit but could augment the staffing and the Convention Center that we will fill primarily with the staffing contract we have executed for doctors and nurses and other Health Care Providers. We have Navy Personnel coming to louisiana and they will be working with us. We believe it is the first time in state history we have signed a letter creating a dual status commander commanding guardsmen and the navy sailors when they arrive in new orleans. I am proud to announce that general lee hopkins of the Louisiana National guard will serve as our dual status commander. Ventilators continue to be the most pressing need in the short term as it comes to searching our medical care, capacity. Unfortunately, i dont have much progress to report in terms of having received new ventilators over the weekend. However, on michael with the president today in the video on my call with the president today in the videoconference, he acknowledged our need for ventilators and made a commitment that they will send ventilators to louisiana. I dont have a precise number to give you, but i believe he was referring to an allocation we can expect to receive from the Strategic National stockpile. We have been sharing information with the white house and with fema about the timeline we are on to exceed capacity as it relates to ventilators. Obviously whatever assistance we get from them, we hope to get it very soon. I will talk more about ventilators and just a moment as it relates to our capacity. We are obviously going to continue to look for ventilators through manufacturers and vendors. All total, we have ordered 14,000 or so ventilators, including 5000 from the Strategic National stockpile. The number we have received continues to be 191. We do think that at some point this week we will have another shipment. Be 100 or so. Y we will update you on those as come in. As they over the last 72 hours, the flow of personal protective equipment has improved. We know this is going to play out over an extended time. One of the points i made and the and the other governors made today with the president and Vice President was to keep the ppe coming in greater numbers. We are really doing just in time deliveries right now. We are emptying our warehouse every single night, bringing ppe to different regions of the state and different hospitals. The process will work so that as fema brings in additional ppe to the United States from all over the world, 80 of that will be allocated to traditional ppe vendors and Health Care Providers will access ppe in the way they normally have, and a 20 allocation stays with fema and they allocated to the states based on formulas considered on a formula that considers the hotspots as well as the state population. They are calling this an air bridge. They are flying in this ppe from all around the world. The first flight started arriving today. This is going to play out for some time. It is our expectation that over the next several days or week or so, that ppe supplies will be ly, in in more robust terms of the frequency and the amounts. On the Video Conference call this morning i also thank the president for extending federal mitigation efforts through april 30, which was announced yesterday at the white house. This is obviously very helpful for states like ours because it sends a clear message that we are nowhere near over the hump. We still have an awful lot of work to do to flatten the curve. I think it creates a realistic expectation in the public about andtime horizon we are on so forth. My current proclamation goes through april the 13th. By the end of the week i will be issuing an additional proclamation to get mine in line with what the president and we willsterday see whether the stayathome order is warranted based on the revisions we get in terms of guidance from the cdc or from the cybersecurity and infrastructure he security. Gency we will also be talking to our office of Public Health in louisiana as we fashion the next proclamation. I also thank the Vice President because he called me this morning to see what louisiana , principally in region one but understanding it will later be other areas of the state. He also extended his personal. Ondolences it was the office of disability affairs. I want to thank him for doing that. In addition to april we have had three other state employees who have passed away because of covid19. Ofy work in the department transportation. Of another at the department transportation. Since last update we have had a 22 increase in test for a total of 34,033 test. Have 4025 positive cases of covid19 in the state of louisiana. Lastis a 14 increase over 24 hours and the total increase in cases is 485. Tragically, we have 185 deaths now. That is an increase of 34 over the last 24 hours. We have expanded Information Available to the public about the cases of covid19 on louisiana Public Healths website. In addition to seeing the paris breakdown of positive cases and deaths, you can access Additional Information on that website as well. We know at the start of this briefing that 59 of our 64 parishes now have confirmed positive test results from covid19. While there is a slight positive trend in our numbers, we still see that according to our modeling, and this gets refined every day with new entry of data , we are able to watch what is happening. Scenario, wesible are going to exceed our medical capacity here in the state of louisiana and in region one first. Region one is in the new orleansjefferson parish area. We believe based on the most recent numbers that came in today that we bought a couple, three days in region one as it relates to Ventilator Capacity, which we should now exceed around april 5. Bedacity we will capacity we will exceed by april 12. This changes not just because number of cases and the percentage of people being hospitalized and the length of stay on average, you know, is changing a little bit as we get more information and the percentage of those hospitalized who need an icu bed, ventilator, and how long they need the ventilators, but on the others of this we are working very hard to increase our capacity ventilators. That is going to feed into our modeling to see when we have clips what are capacity is going to be. We are not just looking at this point for the traditional ventilators you see in icu, all those happen to be the best. We are looking for other ventilators you typically would not see, perhaps one you would see being used with anesthesia in a surgical center, or you in theee some used ambulance with emt personnel and so forth. Those inventorying all of and working hard to make those available in our hospitals as well. While they are not ideal, they are certainly better than having no Ventilator Capacity at all. We certainly need people to honor the stayathome order that is in place across the state of louisiana. We need to continue to practice social distancing. I will go ahead and say it. We need to have better compliance around the state of louisiana than we have had. Based on the information i have gotten, some of which is anecdotal and others we are clearer on, there are certain regions of the state where there is a higher percentage of people complying. And that is where the numbers seem to be the highest because those communities understand firsthand how serious the emergency is, how deadly, and i want to thank all the people across louisiana who are complying, but im urging people to do better across the state. It is in 59 of our 64 parishes. If there is anybody in the state of louisiana who thinks this virus, this disease is not in their region of the state, not in their parish, not in their community, i am just telling you, you are wrong. It may not have been detected yet, but it is out there. We need everybodys help in slowing that spread. It is the nicest thing you can do for your family, the nicest thing you can do for your neighbors, and surely the nicest thing you can do for anybody in your community who might have one of these vulnerabilities we have been talking about because of their advanced age or a Chronic Health condition. We are asking everybody to do better. Lets be Good Neighbors and understand we can show our love now by staying away. We can show our love by staying away from people. In closing, im going to ask that everyone continue to join me in praying for those who are ill, those who have lost loved ones, for our frontline leaders, our First Responders, all of our medical professionals. Doctors and nurses. Respiratory therapists, all of them. I will tell you that tomorrow, until this emergency is over, on tuesdays, we are going to have a lunch period that i am asking all louisianans who are likeminded to join me in, a time of fasting and prayer. Over lunch on tuesdays. With that, i am going to ask secretary walters to come up and talk about the snap program. I will come back to take your questions. If you have questions about the snap program, i would ask you to ask those to the secretary while she is up here. When youre finished with that we will come back and the doctor and i will take your questions about the Public Health emergency. Thank you,s governor. We want the people of louisiana to have food during this time. We are announcing today that those snap recipients that are not at the maximum they are allowed will be put to the maximum. This will automatically be loaded on their cards. They dont have to do anything to receive this. Only about 47 of louisiana households are receiving their maximum benefits. This is helping 63 of our families get to the maximum level. Again, they dont have to do anything. This will be loaded on cards automatically. It will be loaded tomorrow night for the march benefits and it will be loaded again on april 17 for the april benefits. We have also, during this time, temporarily waived the redeterminations. Every six months you have to be redetermined to get your snap benefits. That has been waived. You do not have to do anything. Your benefits will automatically come to you in march and april. You do not have to call, email, text, or worry about that. If you are a current snap recipient, that will automatically be loaded and the timeframe will be waived. We are not doing interviews right now, either. You dont have to worry about snap an interview for recipients. We have tried to eliminate every deadline we possibly could to make this process easier. We have also suspended the work requirements. There is some population that receives benefits that has to work a certain amount of time in order to be eligible for those benefits. That has also been waived. That is not true for that population that many of you know as ablebodied adults without dependents. The ablebodied population does not have to honor a work requirement right now. The call center is at limited capacity. We are having three and a half times the normal amount of applications as we do, normally do, so the very best way to get information is to go to the website, dcfs. La. Gov getsnap. That is the best way to go. Or you can text get snap to 898211. Either of those will get you into the application process. If you are already a recipient, you know how to sign onto the cafe portal and you can just do that and that will give you all of the information. Is a long wait time at the call center. It will be easier for you to go straight through the electronic measures to get that information. . Ith that, are there questions what percentage will get an increase . Sec. Walters 63 will get an increase because only about 40 of our current recipients get that maximum number. Anything else . Thank you. Gov. Edwards thank you, marke ta. I will take your questions now. Have you heard from the department of education on what will happen if School Closures are extended and whether students will be passed along or not . Gov. Edwards i have not. I know betsy and the interim superintendent is working on this. As i mentioned earlier, i will, i the end of the week, extend the current order for shelter at home and School Closures at least through april 30. That only leaves the month of may. I am not sure what the situation will be, what the facts will be when we need to make a decision about extending, but that would leave less than a month in the current academic year. I gave betsy a heads up this morning that she should start planning accordingly, and i expect in the near future there will be information forthcoming from the department. She is working with the School Superintendents from around the state of louisiana as it relates to graduation and promotion to the next grade, all of those sorts of things. I do not want to get in front of her. Obviously, they are going to make the smartest, most Strategic Decisions they can for the maximum benefit of our young people. Other governors have started using clemency power and releasing inmates from jail. What have you done regarding letting prisoners out of jail . Letting inmates out of jail to alleviate the crisis. Do you plan on using clemency powers or regulatory powers . We have folks in process because they are pretrial detainees. I can tell you the sheriffs have been working with the das and with the courts to make sure that the number of people they are holding us pretrial detainees around the state of louisiana is as low as it can be consistent with public safety. They are doing that. They are doing it in a smart way. We also have probation and parole working so they are not revoking individuals and bringing them back into custody if its a technical matter. If the revocation that would spring from a nonviolent offense, for example. As a matter for which they were on probation initially is also a nonviolent offense. We are minimizing the number of people we are bringing back into the system. I will work with secretary leblanc at the department of corrections on any recommendations he has. I know he is taking a look at individuals who are in prison for nonviolent offenses who are nearing the completion of their sentence and trying to see what additional flexibility he might want. Or what actions he might want me to take. I dont have anything beyond that right now. The locations for drivethrough testing, there seems to be less demand at some of them. Initially, they were running out of tests within two are three hours of opening. Now that two new orleans sites are merging into one site. I wonder, what does that indicate . Does that mean testing gotten to the people who need it the most . Should we look at a change of who we are testing and how we are testing . Gov. Edwards the doctor will address testing. In every state, we want more testing, not less. We need to have a better idea of the percentage of our people who have covid19, and where they are across the state of louisiana. That requires more testing, not less. In new orleans they decided to consolidate two testing sites. It will all be out at uno tomorrow. They will still administer the same number of tests. They were doing 250 at two sites. Tomorrow they will do 500 at the one site. That continues, along with the other drivethrough testing site. These were the first three sites set up in ortner ship with the federal government anywhere in the country. Partnership with the federal government anywhere in the country. We were doing 750 tests a day among the three sites. Between two sites, we are still going to do 750 tests, and they are open for symptomatic individuals. It remains the case that asymptomatic people should not seek or be given a test. The test is not designed for an accurate result for an individual who is not yet symptomatic. It does not make sense to give that test to those individuals. For symptomatic individuals, regardless of their age or whether they are a Health Care Worker or First Responder or have an underlying Chronic Health condition or so forth, they will be tested if they are symptomatically and they will be asked about that when they show up for the testing. Us anctor will give update on the testing. Dr. Billioux as it pertains to those sites in new orleans, in the city looking at traffic patterns between those two sites, there may be more traffic going to the uno site. When they saw the traffic going to the other site, it made sense. Everything we are doing in this fight we need to consolidate and use our staff wisely, and that is why they made the decision. As far as the total volume, it also speaks to the need for greater access beyond these sites to testing. The governor mentioned we were one of the first sites in the nation that had fema support. In the meantime, we have been working with private labs and our Hospital Partners across the state to increase their capacity to test locally. Our hope we are still seeing high levels of testing. We want to see more. We are hoping it is taking the pressure off the single consolidated testing sites. We definitely want to see testing more so than other parts of the state. You heard the governor say for the last couple of weeks, even if you do not have a case in your neighborhood, there is probably covid across the state. We know there is covid across the state. We are looking now at all of those areas where we are not seeing high volumes of testing and trying to look at nontraditional partners or existing partners we could be working with to get testing in those communities. Were not asking people to travel large distances. Thats a big focus we have now. To facilitate that, we just updated our own public facing dashboard. If you go to the parish level information tab, you can see the total tests that have been performed in that parish. It will be apparent when you go to the bottom of the list where we need more tests, and that is what we are working on. We talked about the timelines of getting test results back. I know you said commercial labs had six days, state labs around 24 to 36 hours. Are you seeing the same return times . Dr. Billioux it is a moving target. We have seen some commercial labs increase their pace. We are bringing new capabilities into the state as early as tomorrow. We have to validate this new machine we are getting. Once we do that, we think the turnaround will increase dramatically in the state lab. That is for individuals in the hospitals, healthcare workers, folks in nursing homes, people we want a quick answer for because we have to make a decision about their care or get them out to the front lines. I will note we have seen in the last week and over the weekend, news about faster testing modalities. We are actively talking to the fda, time to learn as much as we can about those tests and how quickly those can be deployed around the state as well. What would that new pace, what would that look like . Dr. Billioux my understanding is the testing machine would be anywhere from two to four times the volume we currently have. You have to consider we still have steps before that but we are hoping that really brings us down to our goal of a 24 hour less turnaround. We have some pace to make up there, but that is our goal. Not sure if this is for you or the governor, but we saw a flattening in the number of hospitalizations and patients on ventilators from yesterday to today. Is that noise . Any information about it . Is the State Hospital developing triage plans if we get in a situation where we start overwhelming our health care capacity, who gets karen who does not . Can you speak to that a little bit . Dr. Billioux there is a lot going on right now and we are looking at data every day. It is hard to say that something that is noise or not. Yesterday we talked about, and today, the total volume of test results we got versus the number of cases that came up. I think we would all feel happier when we see the large number of test results are coming back and we have a proportionately smaller number of cases. That gives us a sense that we are reaching out adequately. From a testing standpoint, we are seeing these things move up and down and trying to make sure we do not overcorrect, overreact day on day. But when we see the trends, that is a good sign. Same for hospitalizations. Hospitalizations are less likely to be affected by how long it is taking the commercial lab to get test results back to us and more steady on did this person need to be admitted or not . Knowing we are watching hospital capacity, we are hopeful the smaller number coming in proportionately is a good sign. Same for ventilators. It is what we need to have happen just because we do not have the capacity right now to expand ventilators without the shipments coming in. Whether that is a trend that will continue is a question we have open, and back to the governors main point, it is still incumbent on all of us to make that a reality by continuing to stay at home, by continuing to do the measures we can to make sure we are not fueling the spread of covid. We are putting that into our models. Aheadd to not get out of not get out ahead of a change daytoday. What about triage plans . Dr. Billioux individual hospitals are already doing this. I know i saw images of some hospitals putting triage out in front of their Emergency Department so they are actively making sure they are managing the patient populations that come in. A lot of the front end triage, there also managing patients across their systems. Our focus has been on the medical monitoring and how we can decompress the hospitals. They have good systems for that triage upfront. We want to get patients ready to be at a lower level of care out of the hospital beds as quickly as possible so we can prioritize the people that need to be in the beds as quickly as possible. Governor, what pressure have you put on the mayor of baton rouge, the sheriff, to limit large gatherings that happens every weekend at the tabernacle. What have you done . Gov. Edwards as i mentioned, we have tens of thousands of businesses. We have 4500 or so churches across the state and 4. 7 Million People. The first message to everybody out there, and this applies to citizens but applies doubly to leaders, whether they are in elected leader, community leader, business leader, a faith leader, is to comply with the stayathome order we have had, the crowd limitation in the executive order, and so forth. I have not put pressure on any officials to enforce that in any particular situation, whether it is in baton rouge or elsewhere. But i do implore those folks to comply. Obviously, this virus spreads very easily and very quickly. Much more easily, for example, than the flu. We know for all the reasons we have been talking about how essential it is that we slow the spread and that we do that by minimizing social contact. So we are asking everyone, including our faith leaders, and pastor snell, to discontinue the services and do what the overwhelming majority of the faith leaders have done, and that is to transition to other ways to carry out their ministry. They are doing it online. They are doing it in much smaller settings and so forth. So we encourage him to do that as well. It is one of those things where, you know, we just need more compliance. And we are asking people to do what is i believe their obligation as a citizen. Leaders have an even bigger obligation to comply. Yes, sir . You want everybody to stayathome, which is understandable. What about the thousands of people that have to go to work every day and interface with the public . What kind of assurance do they get that they are being protected . Gov. Edwards first of all, the way they conduct themselves when they are out and about is the only thing that should give them any peace of mind on that. As you mentioned, we are asking the vast majority of people to stay home pursuant to the stayathome order. We did identify essential infrastructure and essential workers that need to be able to go to work because people need to be fed. You have to be able to go to a Grocery Store and get groceries or make groceries as some people would say. You have to be able to go to a restaurant. You have to be able to get your money from the bank and get your car fixed and get gas and so forth. We know there will be people who need to be out there working. But they should still practice social distancing. I have not been to a store, but i am told in many places they are enforcing the six feet limit. Youre being told and shown with markers on the floor where you need to be relative to the next person in line to keep that distance. Those are the sorts of things people should do. Just because you have to get out and go to work every day does not mean you should stop at every establishment on the way home as you normally would. And i am encouraging people to limit their contact. So just because you can go to the store does not mean you should go every day. It does not mean everybody in your household ought to be going when you do go. Limit those trips. But you get back to the things we were talking about several weeks ago, and i think sometimes these things get lost. But washing your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds frequently, using Hand Sanitizer to wash your hands when you cant get to soap and water. Make sure you control your cough. Make sure you keep social distancing and so forth. These are the things people need to do. If you are working, you need to do these things while you are working. Do it for yourself, your coworkers, and the public or and do it for the public you are interacting with. [indiscernible] with all this going on, how are you honestly holding up . Gov. Edwards look, i am holding up fine. Obviously, this is not an easy ordeal for me or for anybody else. I think my job is nowhere near as stressful as the doctors we are honoring today on National Doctors day, on the nurses, on all of the Health Care Professionals on the frontline. I dont ask anybody to feel sorry for me in any way, shape, or form. But i do ask people to pray for one another. For all of us to lift people up and support one another, principally by staying away. This is tougher everybody. What makes this, just from an Emergency Management perspective, and i think ive shared this with you before, what makes this so unlike other things we have faced in the louisiana with respect to natural disasters, for example, is typically when those happen, louisiana and maybe one or two other states will be impacted so you have all of your sister states who are eager to do anything they can to help you. And they send you resources, people, trucks, helicopters, all sorts of stuff. And then you have a federal government that can intensely focus on louisiana, too. In this case, that does not exist because every state is simultaneously engaged in the same fight. Some of them are little bit behind us and a couple are a little ahead of us. We remain the number three state in the country for per capita cases. Number two with respect to deaths per capita. But everybody is looking for ventilators. Everybody is looking for ppe, medical staff, beds. That is what makes this particularly hard. The frustrating part is just knowing what you need and the needs have been the same for a long time. And then it is just hard to make the kind of progress that you know you need to make and the you know you need to make in the time within which you think you have to do it. The other part of that is we need people to give us as much time as possible by flattening the curve. Even if that is only a couple of days, the big thing is that while you delay when you will exceed your capacity for health care, you will not exceeded by as much as you would if you dont do these things around social distancing and so forth. This is a tough emergency. It is much tougher on other me and our it is on frontline medical workers. Look, i want to thank you all for continuing to cover this emergency and allows to communicate with the people of louisiana. I know that sometimes you all like a different story every day. The biggest story remains the one we have been talking about for weeks now, and i need your help to communicate with people of louisiana. That is what they should be doing individually in order to slow the spread. That is the single biggest thing that needs to be communicated to them. And do the rest of your reporting as well. But please do not forget to talk about the stayathome order, the crowd limitation, the social distancing, all of those things which will help us to slow the spread and manage this emergency to the best of our ability. So thank you all very much. Journals washington live every day with policies that impact you. Coming up, the director of state theslatures discusses what 2 trillion coronavirus a package means for states and the state responds to the crisis. Doctor talks about the latest developments in u. S. Efforts to combat the pandemic. Hereresident of the international, a labor union that represents 300,000 workers in the Hospitality Industry and how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting his members. Watch cspans washington journal and join the discussion. Monday, President Trump announced from the rose garden that the u. S. Has tested over one Million People for the coronavirus. He also unveiled a new testing kit that is supposed to give results within five minutes. Other topics included supplies for Health Care Workers, his conversations with governors, partnerships with private sector companies, and whether there was a chance for the virus to return in the fall