Our personal Protection Equipment for Frontline Health care workers who are battling this terrible virus. It goes into effect at midnight tonight, so all offtive surgeries will be as of tonight and that is what the executive order is. Today, i am issuing an executive order to shut down all private campgrounds to all new arrivals by outofstate residents, and what i mean by that is just this if you are now residing and living in a campground, youre good to go, a private campground. If you have been there in excess of over two weeks and quarantined yourself or whatever, if you have been there and everything, we are good to go. No problem with either one, but if you are at a private campground as a new arrival from an outofstate destination or whatever, we are shut down to you. Were doing it again in an effort to try to protect us as West Virginians from someone coming in from another state and basically contaminating or infecting thousands. We are really moving in the right way here. All the statistics show just that. Yesterday, we went through about ee pointed percent or 3. 9 3. 8 or three point 9 . We have been trending about 4 . If we can stay there, we will be in great shape. New york city is trending at 30 to 50 . Unbelievable. The thing we have all got to realize and go over in our minds over and over and over this is a terrible inconvenience. I get it. But we have been really good at what we have been doing and weve got to keep on doing just exactly that. Weve been serious about what were doing, and that is why we keep kicking out this 4 , 4 , 3. 8 now. The nations kicking out 8 to 10 , and someway, somehow, they are hanging on. New york city is kicking out 30 to 50 . That means of those people nearly half of them are testing positive. If that were to happen here, our hospitals would be overrun and we would be in a catastrophic situation. It can happen here because we are the highest risk state in the nation, but yet, we are trending and doing all the right things at this time. We need you. We need you so bad to keep up. Keep up what were doing. Stay the course. This will pass, and then we will all feel wonderful about it. We have already lost one too many lives, period. Weve lost one person and thats lets pray inand every way, shape, form, or fashion we dont lose another. Weve got another situation that is a critical, precious commodity to the state of West Virginia, and thats the williamson hospital. Williamson williamson is a county that it is the only topital, and weve got absolutely, you know, try to keep that hospital open. This private negotiations going on right now between two parties, but i want everyone to know that i stand ready to try to help in any and every way we possibly can. We pulled it off with fairmont to be able to give them some life in ourl of seventh largest city in our state, and we need to pull it off with williamson hospital. We got too many people that are employed. Weve got an area of our state that desperately needs at community hospital, and i will try to work in every way possible that i can work to see that we get that hospital open. Last thing i will say, and they are all important. It seems like this is a little bit insignificant, but its not. Before this happened, i told you about the census and we put a lot more people to work. The census actually counts the number of us that are here, and for those that dont get counted in the last go round, a lot of us did not get counted, and for those that do not get counted, it really hurts because federal dollars in so many different ways can flow to us, so absolutely, if you have not gotten a little card, you know, in the mail, then look on our screen right now and respond to that number because you should have already received that little card. If you get that little card, please, please respond to it and be counted and that will prevent people from having to come to your house and try to count you, but literally, please get counted in this census. Thats really all of got right now. Every day, it seems like its an lot of stuff. Anyou think signing executive order to stop elective surgeries in this state is not a big deal, its a big deal. If you think really and truly that shutting down our private campgrounds is not a big deal, its a big deal. Everything from the williamson hospital to all the Different Things were doing, but i will remind you of this one thing and end with this whatever we are doing is working. Run the play. Run the play. Just keep running the play. Lets stay at 4 . Lets stay at the minimal amount of debts we can possibly stay at. The one we have right now is too many. Anyway, i will turn it over to your questions now, and we will go on. Thank you, governor. Ladies and gentlemen, as part of our briefing, our friends at the media are joining us by teleconference. We will take their questions in a moment, but first, we will take comments from a few of our panel members. First, dr. Clay marsh, our coronavirus czar. Thank you, and its good to be with everybody. I will limit my comments as well because we talked a lot yesterday. We are seeingt around the country that metropolitan areas of the United States are starting to see the same surge that new york city saw. What the governor has said and the moves that have been made to help people stay home and stay separated and reduce the spread of the virus is really, really important. We have seen great and if it from the work we have done so far, and this is all of us. Each one of us needs to take responsibility, not only for ourselves, but for our communities, for our states health, and also for the Health Care Workers. That when we have so many people that spread the virus rapidly, that starts to overwhelm the Health Care System to be able to operate well. I want to also thank our medical centers, our universities, our hospitals, our longterm care owners and leaders because everybody is really coming together in this state, and we are focusing on creating a single entity in the way that we are working, communicating. Theres nobody competing against each other. We are all part of West Virginia. We are here to try to make sure we protect our citizens, as the governor said. Try to reduce the number of people that die of the covid virus infection to an absolute minimum, but also to make sure that we are providing safety for our essential workers, for our first line medical care providers, for our First Responders, our police, emts, and even people that are working in essential industries, doing the work that is helping us keep our place clean, help keep ourselves stocked with groceries and the food we need and the different resources, so this is absolutely a team effort, and to that level, it is very inspiring for me, but as the governor said, it is easy to become complacent, and we want to make sure that every day, we wake up and we stay just as committed as we have been today to try to protect the state of West Virginia, and currently, i think people have done an amazing job, so my thanks. Those are my comments. Thank you. Next we go to Major General hoyer with the West VirginiaNational Guard. Good afternoon. Today we have 370 guardsmen on duty. Forstabilization efforts our feeding program continue to go well. Under logistic support, we did receive a shipment today from the National Stockpile as being broken down. We see distributed tonight in the morning, in addition to that, the information related to the specifics of this will be in the National Guard press release at the end of the day. Dr. Efforts in supporting marsh with the Data Analytics continues to move forward, as does our effort to provide support for the epidemiology team. I will leave you with this on behalf of the members of the our firstuard, responders, healthcare workers, those essential workers out in the field today, we ask you to please, please voluntarily follow the guidelines from the governor so we can continue to keep our curve flattened and continue to do the things we need to do to keep West Virginians. Thank you. Thank you, general hoyer. Up next, we go to secretary crouch with dh hr. Hello, everyone. Things. Of [indiscernible] from the federal government for the snap program or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program as part of the ongoing response to covid19. One will provide an extension to the renewable period for those already receiving snap benefits at another waiver will allow for Supplemental Benefits for who qualify without working. Yesterday, we received our emergency medicaid waiver from cms. In one week. Around we thank them and the administration for a quick turnaround. Medical services approved to remove prior authorization, so we are working with the mcos in the state. We will be removing prior authorizations april 1. Existingon, all three authorizations will be extended. Greats also done a provision of services at an alternative care setting and provider enrollment have been approved to immediately increase access to expand the provider network. We are streamlining that process. I want to thank our Health Care Workers. Please stay safe. Thank you. We certainly have teams regionally working with local Health Departments in collaboration with the national doing outbreaknd investigation at the community level. That is moving forward well. 185 testingt locations identified across the state. Probably around 4000 West Virginians, so that is moving forward. The other thing i just want to clearly,lks of, theres a lot of support going on. Weve been hearing from our partners, the types of activities people have available. I want to remind people that there is a new case of the onavirus at the wvb. Gov wv. Gov. They do not require insurance to attend or to visit, but also theres information about seeing children and managing the stress of your own lives, so please do use that website and the resources available. Thank you. Once again, we are holding todays briefing with media members joining us virtually to practice social distancing. When we call on you, please remember to unmute the microphone on your end before asking your question. Today, some media members will be asking their question through video chat. The first question are today will be kenny bass from wc hs. Question for governor justice. The aclu of West Virginia has reacted fairly negatively to your statements yesterday on the private park situation and outofstate residents coming in to West Virginia. What would you say to their what you are doing would be limiting peoples Constitutional Rights . Want to be all, we really respectful of Constitutional Rights, but people are dying all over this itntry right and left, and is beyond belief what all of us are trying to deal with. We are dealing with a worldwide pandemic, and people are dying all over the place, and im trying to do everything i possibly can to protect our people, and im going to do that. Im going to do that to the fullest extent that i possibly can do it and from the standpoint of people coming in from new york or wherever, new jersey, connecticut, italy, china, wherever they may be coming from, if they did not quarantine themselves for 14 days, i will take a bigtime issue with it. At the end of the day, im going to try to protect our people, and right now, we dont want people coming in from any state, but we especially want people to know that people coming in here, you know, from new york, new jersey, connecticut, we are going to expect them to selfquarantine for 14 days, and if they dont do it, they will get a visit real quickly from one of our Police Officers demanding they do it, and then if they dont, they will be obstructing justice, and that is a really serious issue. We want to tell people from new york we love them. We love the people from new jersey. We love the people from connecticut. One of my best friends growing up my whole life, mike and i play golf. We did everything together. Highup together, went to school together, and he is a surgeon in connecticut and everything, but we cannot have mike here right now. Thats all there is to it. If he comes, he will have to quarantine himself, and that is simply that. Governor, can i make one comment . Please. I want to also say to that question we are really trying to fulfill the direction and guidance from the centers. An internal toly travel,ed states ban on and theres clear guidelines for people that come out of those areas should selfquarantine for 14 days. In my opinion as well, this is also following the guidance of the Health Leadership for the safety of our population. Ok, thank you. Up next, david beard with the dominion post. Mont county has some golf drawes still open that people from pennsylvania, and some of the owners have asked us how they should respond to travel orders for outofstate golfers. Let me lead off by saying can pass, and maybe we this by general counsel or whatever, but i would discourage anyone coming in from outofstate from the standpoint of keeping our golf courses open and our outdoor spaces open and everything, thats an issue all to itself. We encourage if the golf course is open, play golf. To do as people commuting essential services that are from outofstate, we have people that live outofstate across the borders and come every day, and we want them to continue to be able to come. We are just trying as hard as we possibly can to not have someone from an outside state bring an infection here. Maybe they dont even know it, and before you know it, they infect all kinds of people and it is a simple as that. Do you have any comment on that . I really dont know how to answer other than just to try to discourage in every way people coming to our state from outofstate. Clay, do you want to weigh in on this . Sure, i would be happy to make a quick comment. I think the governor is wise from the perspective that the more connection you have between people, particularly from endemic areas to less endemic areas, the more likely this virus spreads more quickly. Remember, really, what we are trying to do here is trying to protect each citizen and asking them importantly to protect themselves, but what we are trying to do at the Public Health level is try to resist the rate of spread of the virus, flatten the curve, reduce the surge so we are protecting people in the state and protecting our Health Care Workers. Trying to make sure that we limit traffic as much as possible, but two, importantly, when people are together, if they are doing Outdoor Activities or if they are in stores, whatever, we very much want them to stay that social distance away from each other, and we also want to make sure that we are doing the right measures to protect ourselves in those kinds of settings. A lot of people talked about theres crowds in stores. Theres crowds, you know, outside in parks, etc. , and part of the executive order, as i understand it, and brian can clarify, but it gives each citizen the responsibility to social distancing and to protect themselves and protect all of us, and if that making awork, even call to some of the local authorities, not to arrest somebody, but to make sure that we are encouraging in a clear way that this is not only your responsibility for yourself, this is your responsibility for all of us. Let me jump back in. I would like to add one other thing, and its just that i want people to really understand, it takes a little while they refer me to talk and everything, but we love the people from pennsylvania, and, absolutely, we are very respectful from the standpoint that many people from pennsylvania are coming into all that weand in want to preserve forever. But you just got to understand that from the standpoint of our state, we have a stayathome ofer and from the standpoint we know these other states are significantly more infected than we are in West Virginia, and all we are trying to do is protect the most elderly and the most chronically ill populations that any state has, and we are doing it, you know, and so therefore, i would significantly discourage if i were the golf courses, i would significantly discourage people coming today from pennsylvania. We just had a terrible outbreak in morgantown in that area in mont county with a nursing home there and we are trying to get arms around it and we are doing a pretty decent job, but it. Ould have been super tragic with all that, it is just simply just this if we have a visitor from pennsylvania, encourage them to stay at a distance from one another out on the golf course and ask them as politely as you can and everything that it would be better for now for you not to visit across state to state borders, and we will all be better off for it. Ok, thank you. Next, we have anymore wvva. Moore from you mentioned the positive test results were really good. Is there any plan to step up enforcement on West Virginians specifically . I think we are doing a great job. 3 is great. 2 would be better. 0 would surely be better, but we are doing a good job. Our hospitals are able to handle what is going on right now. We are trying to do away with the elective procedures right now is to be able to preserve the equipment to keep our Health Care Workers safe. We are still short on that, but West Virginians need to be really proud of themselves right now. They are doing a good job, and theyve got to just stay the course and everything and police one another as best you possibly can. If you see a big gathering at whatever like that, if you feel uncomfortable saying something about it, call a local official to come in and help you with that situation and everything because that is what we want to do. We want to continue to stay the course. We are doing a great job. Lets just stay at it. Next, we go to Charles Young with wv news. Tomorrow is april 1. People all around the state are worried about making rent. Theyve been told the federal stimulus checks are on their way, but it could still be several weeks. What would you say to renters and to landlords . Landlords, the surely to god above, you cannot impose a hardship on somebody that is trying in every way to make rent today, and our federal government, you know, i think mandated or surely encouraged you not to do that, and as far as the renters, i would say please take every advantage of this stimulus package. Work it any way and every way you can. We are sending out information. There is information flowing all over your websites and everything. Use those websites to the very best of your ability and in someway, somehow weather the storm. Entering the pipeline. You are going to be ok. You will get through it and you all of our but use agencies and use all websites, see all the dollars coming your way and when they will flow, but as far as landlords, please, for crying out loud, now is the wrong time to thank you, charles of nashville. West virginia public broadcasting. Your mic. Se unusual unmute your mic. We areuestion is, talking about the 4 positive rate here and 10 nationally, including 30 in new york. At the rate we have been testing, if we were to be testing more, is there concern that 4 could be jumping up higher and we are right now missing a lot of positive cases that might be out there . Gov. Abbott ill let gov. Justice ill let kathy or bill answer that, that is for the medical community. Clay. S is let me start and ill turn it over to kathy orbital. The reason we are looking at data the way we are is that we are trying to control the number of people tested. Different states have different capacities to test, but we have very consistently in West Virginia been focused on trying thinkntify the people we either have the highest risk of being infected with the covid virus or people that have key contacts when we look at epidemiological case studies and followup, where you have contact with people that are where you have gone to indigenous areas that have higher rates of infection. As we are expressing this as a percent, we are taking into account differences in the number of people tested, so we portiong at it has a of the people tested. We are biasing our results toward actually having more people found positive than some other states and the reason why is as we expand our testing and we start to do more surveillance testing, we would expect that higher percentage of people we are surveilling that have no symptoms, no real risk factors for developing the covid virus, that percent would have a lower Positivity Rate than the very focusikelihood sort of people we are testing today. Ways, we presume the 4 actually is a higher number than the total percent of people butcted in the state importantly, even if that is not a good assumption, what we are looking for is the rate of change, because we are interested in protecting each person and they have the instructions to protect themselves. We are really looking on a daily basis and to cumulatively to what is that percent of people tested that are positive because we would expect as the virus starts to compound and take off into that surge path that we will start to see those numbers atnge, and when we look other states, as the governor suggested, the 8 to 10 is a percentage basis its takes into account the total number of the relative and part of that population that is positive. Thank you, we have time for one more question. Hi, governor. You mentioned on metro news talk line that there would be an afternoon meeting between yourself, attorney general moores be, and secretary of state warner regarding the election, which is may 12, which appears to be when West Virginia might be coming on the downside of the peak of the epidemic in the states. What im wondering is if that meeting has already occurred and what your current thoughts are on the safety of having elections . Gov. Justice the meeting has not occurred yet. It will occur in about 10 minutes or five minutes, and i look forward to that. Our attorney general and our secretary of state have done a great and marvelous job. Continuing to stay in contact with one another constantly, and we are going to have a real indepth discussion about what we are going to do as far as the possibility of extension or not. Is simpleandpoint, it the way i see it. It is just this. Optimisticautiously about the possibility of getting our kids back in school. If you believe that is a possibility today if you dont believe it is a possibility, it is a different thing, but if you believe it is a possibility, the last thing we want to do in the world is expose our children to all of these people coming into the polls, so that is a really gigantic concern. Whether it be the poll workers or these people coming in to the schools to vote, or whatever, there are so many things weve got to consider here. Moving election is a really serious thing and i dont take that likely in in lightly in any way. Standpoint, i would love to have elections on time and be able to facilitate it one way or another but the president comes out with moving the date to april 30, you dont have a lot of room, so we will discuss it a , but that is the meeting im going to sc and is i get out of here. The only thing i would do is recap real quick. I salute allemost, West Virginians, especially our Health Care Workers, our First Responders for the great work they are doing. Stay the course, West Virginia, please. Weve to somehow got to be sure id like for you to put back up on the screen the cards you should have received in the mail from the census standpoint, and ill keep talking until you come up with that, but again, we are holding at nice levels. Two measure announcements today. Downne as far a shutting the private campgrounds to outofstate people who are new arrivals, new arrivals and everything. So the people that have been there, they are doing great. Thats great, and the biggest thing is the executive order ivepending all electe procedures. Weve got to take care of our First Responders and Health Care People and everything and try to really on all of the supplies we are short of right now and any elective procedure, we are going to postpone it for a while. But i guess that is about it. I would like for you to put that back up on the screen if you can right now and let me remind censusfrom the standpoint, if youve not received this little card in the mail, then please call this number. Nowse call the number right and be counted, because West Virginians are really depending upon those federal dollars and the more that are counted, the more we are going to get. Again, i thank you and just stay the course. You are doing great, West Virginia. Really proud of all of you. Byebye. Live you miss any of our coverage of the governments response to the coronavirus outbreak, watch it any time at cspan. Org coronavirus. From daily briefings by the president and the White House Task force to updates from governors of the hardest hit states. There. L use the charts and maps to track the viruss global spread and confirmed cases in the u. S. County by county. Our coronavirus webpages youre fast and easy way to watch cspans unfiltered coverage of this pandemic. Joining us from annapolis is Maryland Governor larry hogan