City and our hospitals across the state in the fight against the covid19 pandemic. Placeacility will be a where coronavirus patients no longer require hospitalization and complete their care, and for and fully recover by providing additional 250 beds here, this Field Hospital expands the capacity of Baltimore City health care facilities, reduces the time that patients have to remain in our hospitals, and in turn will free up that critical capacity for other patients who need acute care more urgently. We have already assembled the physical facilities here in a very short time. A 24 7lements including staffing plan are currently underway. Schedule and we will be able to take care of patients here as needed. Undertakingge involving many people and i just want to take a moment to thank a few of them. First of all, i want to thank fema for delivering these hospital beds and other materials. I want to thank the Maryland National guard and their department of General Services team for working around the clock to basically build and stand up this site from scratch. I also want to thank Johns Hopkins and the university of maryland medical system for their partnership on agreeing to staff and run this facility. We are also continuing to make rapid progress on our other hospital efforts across the state to increase our capacity by thousands of beds. We have received ventilators from fema which are now available for use at some of our hospitals around the state and i want to thank Vice President pence for his commitment last night about sending 200 ventilators to maryland. Has, on anf maryland emergency basis, approved 27 newly licensed assisted living programs, 42 residential sites or individuals with developmental disabilities, six newly licensed Residential Service agencies to provide Homebased Services and 14 newly licensed Clinical Laboratories to help handle Surge Capacity. Americans have died from the coronavirus. This morning, maryland now has 4 of covid19 which have been confirmed. This virus continues to spread in every jurisdiction in our state. But the concentration of maryland cases has rapidly intensified, particularly in the baltimore walt washington corridor. There are 459 positive cases here in Baltimore City and so far, 103 marylanders, including nine Baltimore City residents have lost their lives. Over the past 20 days to this deadly virus. Nearly 9000 cases in maryland, d. C. And virginia and 189 people have died in the National Capital region in the past 24 days. Over the past two weeks, i have been sounding the alarm with the president , Vice President , members of the president s task force including dr. Fauci, dr. Birks as well as admiral gerrrar , fema administrators and many other Top Administration officials about the emerging hotspot of the baltimore washington corridor. It was a significant focus of the discussion yesterday with the Vice President , Top Administration officials and the nations governors. I am pleased to report that we have succeeded in convincing the Trump Administration to designate the greater baltimore washington corridor as a priority. This includes maryland in general and 12 maryland jurisdictions in particular. This includes Baltimore City, carol, princety, georges, Montgomery Anne arundel, howard, frederick, calvert anden and, charles counties. Demand urgentich federal attention. In addition to being home to more than 5 Million People and hundreds of thousands of federal workers and nearly all federal agencies, the baltimore washington corridor is also home to the nih, the fda, fort dietrich, Critical Health agencies which are on the front lines of the battle against the coronavirus as well as fort meade, the nsa, the u. S. Cyber command and other federal installations that are critical to the security of the nation. Thank thesincerely Trump Administration for listening to our concerns, for responding to us, and for designating the baltimore andwashington corridor and these 12 maryland jurisdictions as priority areas. Crisis continues to escalate here in Baltimore City, we are continuing to work closely with mayor young and the city leaders to help them respond effectively with 10 confirmed positive cases within the Baltimore City police force currently ffers officers currently in quarantined, the superintendent jerry jones has been in commit occasion with commissioner harrison to offer additional state assistance. Maryland state troopers, Maryland Transportation Authority police, and other state Law Enforcement agencies assignmentsng their and visibility patrols in Baltimore City. Troopers are working in areas of need as requested by bpd command staff and enhanced state criminal enforcement work continues in and around the city. We are also providing Logistical Support for the citys efforts to stand up a new communitybased covid19 screening site at the pimlico race course. I have directed the Maryland Department of health, through its office of Minority Health disparities, to immediately take all actions necessary in order to provide further demographic breakdowns on race of all maryland case data including testing, hospitalizations and mortality rates. I have also directed them to be as proactive as anyone in the nation on this with respect to the private labs across the country that are not currently tracking or providing this data. , on theg this week Maryland Department of health website, i have directed them to publish everything that is available to us with respect to demographicthnic breakdowns on coronavirus cases. Instructions to update as new data becomes available. However, i want to caution that 90 of the testing is being done by doctors and hospitals who are sending tests to private labs outside of the state which have not been keeping such data. Havingo anticipate significant gaps in the initial data that will be available to us. Our top concern continues to be casesct that we now have possible cases that 90 Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities across the state. We were one of the first states in the nation nearly a month ago to issue strong directives to state nursing home facilities, to restrict visitor access, to update Infection Control protocols, and to limit all staff travel. Two days ago, and acted an additional executive order to further bolster mitigation and suppression efforts at maryland Nursing Homes. All longterm care facilities are required to direct all staff who interact with residents to wear personal protective equipment. All Nursing Homes are required observationparate and isolation areas for residents and to expedite all testing through the Maryland State Public Health Laboratory in order to get results in 24 hours rather than waiting up to seven days to get results from private labs. In addition, today we are teamsing statewide strike composed of members of the National Guard, representatives of local and state Health Departments, the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services systems, and Hospital Systems to bring triage, emergency care, supplies and equipment to overburdened Nursing Homes. We are the first state in the nation to launch such a coordinated response effort. We are activating three distinct types of strike teams. Will, testing teams which identify those in close contact with a confirmed case, collect and send out specimens for the fastest test available and provide expert instruction on how to keep confirmed and suspected cases of staff separated. Second, assistance teams made up of members of the National Guard who will quickly assess the situation on site, determine equipment and supply needs and triage residence. And third, clinical teams which will include doctors, Nurse Practitioners and registered nurses from major Hospital Systems who will be tasked with providing onsite medical triage and stabilizing residents in the nursing home in order to avoid unnecessary transport to hospitals. The goal here is not to replace the Nursing Homesmedical teams but provide immediate support and assistance to help protect residents of these facilities. The state teams will provide assistance and care to patients immediately in order to slow the spread of this virus among our most vulnerable marylanders. These strike teams will be activated in response to requests from nursing from Nursing Homes, local Health Departments, and Maryland Department of health and Infectious Disease experts. 15 days ago, i issued an executive order which closed all nonessential businesses, organizations and facilities in maryland. Eight days ago, i issued a stay at home directive. I want to thank the overwhelming majority of our citizens who have remained at home, avoided crowds and practiced muchneeded social distancing. That is the single most important thing that each and every citizen can do right now to help save lives. We have already seen that these actions and sacrifices are making a huge difference. I also want to thank all the businesses that have complied with these orders and those who have found ways to provide muchneeded services while also observing social distancing guidelines. However, there are reports of a few businesses that are failing to comply with the law and who are potentially putting their customers and their staff at risk. As a result, i issued an additional executive order which directs that any local Health Department which determines that any business, organization, facility, or, instruction site in their jurisdiction that is unable or awilling to cooperate in manner consistent with social distancing protocols and that, in their judgment poses an unreasonable risk of exacerbating the spread of covid19, then that jurisdiction shall have the power to require that unsafe facility toa, immediately modify its limitions, b, severely movement to and from that facility or c, they can shut them down altogether. This new order also empowers state and local Law Enforcement agencies to assist local Health Officers in the enforcement of this order. Failure to obey the order may be punishable by up to one year in jail or up to a 5,000 fine or both. Isle social distancing keeping us physically isolated from one another, there are so many examples and so many ways this crisis is actually bringing marylanders closer together with compassion and generosity. Like kavanaughes bell, a sevenyearold boy in gaithersburg, who used his savings to buy care packs for the elderly and started community pantry. And there is a group of more than 100 pranksters who came together through facebook with a forion of sewing masks healthcare workers and First Responders or the thousands of meals that local restaurants have made and volunteers have delivered to the doctors, nurses and staff at Howard County general hospital. Places like sailing specialties inc. , a marine parks factory in maryland, hollywood, not california, which has converted its operations to produce 500,000 face shields for medical workers treating coronavirus patients and hardwire inc. , which is an armor manufacture in Pocomoke City on the Eastern Shore which in the span of one week went from building armor to protect soldiers to making face shields to protect Health Care Workers on the front lines of a different kind of battle. There are everyday heroes just like this stepping up all across our state. Our marylandched you initiative three weeks ago, we have had an overwhelming response of volunteers and donations but we still need more help. We need more people volunteering to step up while the doctors, nurses and others are out there risking their lives on the front lines, fighting this virus for us. You can sign up to volunteer in all kinds of ways that are safe and effective like helping the Maryland Food bank were giving blood through the red cross by going to governor. Maryland. Gov maryland unites. Hundreds of unprecedented actions that we have taken over the past 32 days since i declared a state of emergency have been to protect the health, the safety and the lives of marylanders and they have all been guided by a Coronavirus Response team and we are proud to have a new member join our team just this morning. Gottlieb who recently served as the u. S. Fda commissioner. We have an incredible Coronavirus Team that is made up of some of the smartest leading doctors and Public Health experts, not just in the state of maryland but, frankly in the world. I have asked a few of them to join us here today to talk directly with marylanders about where we are in this fight right now, what we are doing and what we must continue doing in order to stop the spread of this deadly virus. I will start by turning it over ther. Tom inglesby, director for the center of at the johnsty Hopkins Bloomberg school of health. Thank you. Thank you, governor hogan. Its good to be with you and your team and to see the truly impressive work that has gone here going on here in this facility. I have a few comments that are about the importance of social distancing that has been put in place in maryland. The abilityirus has to spread rapidly and widely in society and in our state. Without social distancing measures in place, on average, one person can infect two or three others in each of those can infect two or three more and so on. New generations of cases could have for could occur every 57 days without social distancing measures. Without therapy to stop this disease, the only way to slow the virus down is through social distancing measures the governor has put in place in maryland. If this virus were left to spread without social distancing on this scale, the number of sick people, especially the critically ill, could overwhelm our health system. This pattern is the same around the world. The Health Systems of the major city of wuhan in china were driven into complete crisis by this virus. But social distancing measures put in place reduced the spread to now a very low level in that city and in other places in china. Other places in the world like singapore and taiwan and south korea have also used social distancing to keep their epidemics under relatively better control then we see in most places around the world. If our Health Systems were to become overwhelmed, the mortality of this virus would go sharply up and hospitals would have a difficult time providing medical care, the usual lifesaving medical care they do on a daily basis. We are hopeful that the peak day of our epidemic in maryland is sometime soon, given how early and aggressive the social distancing measures were put in place. Usesodel the white house has air peak occurring about 10 days from now. And some models have the peak coming a bit later. But models are only best estimates and models dont necessarily take into account how seriously maryland has put social distancing measures in place. So we do hope our peak day will be sooner and there are some encouraging signs. Elsewhere in the world in italy where the epidemic has been quite serious and great for that country, we have seen daily case counts begin to gradually come down in recent days, believed to be the result of social distancing efforts. In Washington State and new york and california, the number of new cases daily seems to be leveling off. Its too soon to say but it may be a trend driven by social distancing. In maryland in the last 24 hours, we will hear more about this in a moment, we have seen lower numbers of new cases and lower numbers of hospitalizations. But ifly one day of data confirmed over time, it would be a very good move in the right direction. Once we are able to bring cases down to smaller numbers in our state, it will be time to consider how to begin to ease a social distancing. We will need to have expanded diagnostics to the point where even the mildest possible covid cases can be diagnosed on the possible. We will need to make sure take care of future potential surges of Covid Patients as they occur and we will need to make sure our Health Departments have hired the people and gotten the technology to close the track and isolate all cases and their close contacts. Meantime, in the short term, the kind of medical Surge Capacity that has been built in this Conference Center is an important way to expand our states capacity to provide medical care for the Covid Patients in the time ahead. Thank you very much. Thank you and just introduced two more members of the Governors Task force, the Coronavirus Strike team, we will start with dr. David marcosi who is an associate dean and executive director at the university of Maryland Department of Emergency Management followed by dr. Mitch schwartz who is the president and chief medical officer at the Luminous Health system. Thank you. Thank you very much for allowing us to speak here today. Under your leadership, maryland is a safer state as a result of the significant actions you put in place, the early actions you put in place to protect our state from this virus. I am here to talk to you about how the Health Care Delivery system is working aggressively to ready ourselves for this virus and the potential surge of patients that we may be seeing. Governor, you asked us to build 6000 beds and we are working and standing in one of those federal medical facilities that Johns Hopkins and the university of maryland medical system worked together in partnership with the dip the Maryland Department of health, the National Guard, the Baltimore CityEmergency Medical Services to stand this up, to make sure its ready when and if we have the surge of patients. Other Health Care Systems across our state continue to have readiness built into what they are doing on a daily basis. Ris, medstar, we are all working in collaborative efforts to address the potential capacity limitations that we may field as a result of the burden of disease and the illness that may be presenting to us over the course of the next few weeks. Now is the time for readiness and i think governor, as a result of your leadership, you have demonstrated to us the actions we need to put in place now to make sure our state, our Health Care System responds optimally to this event and this crisis. Three specific things we are putting in place one of them as building Surge Capacity within our hospitals. The second is sites like this which are external to hospitals but allow us to decant our hospital so the lower acuity patients can be moved to facilities like this so we, as hospitals, can make sure we have the capacity to meet the demands of those who are severely ill. And lastly, governor, you asked us to make these strike teams and we are building efforts to make sure a doctor, a nurse, a team can go out when you request them to make sure we can stabilize patients right at locations to make sure we can test, do the right assessments and provide the right medical care on site so the folks who may need it get it. Thank you for your leadership, governor, and we look forward to partnering with you for the rest of the response to this crisis. Thank you everyone and specifically thank you, governor, to stand by you as you manage this pandemic across the state of maryland. My name is mitch schwartz, im the president of the lumious Health Enterprise might come here to speak about a pandemic based on a virus that is cruel, that impacts all of us whether youre working at a hospital, staying at home or you are an essential worker. This we need to coordinate care with our government, local, state and federal partners. Luminous, we have a critical priority and that is to safely staff, supply and equip our hospitals to provide care to our communities. We were formed last july with the merger of two hospitals, Doctors Community hospital in Prince Georges County and Anne Arundel Medical Center in Southern Anne Arundel county. We have 9000 employees and hundreds of physician offices throughout the area. We would like to actually give you three specific ways we are managing care in the community during this pandemic. First, we have scaled our telehealth abilities dramatically. All of our patients were told to stay at home and it is our priority to provide access to them during this pandemic. When faceave access to face interactions are required but we have scaled telehealth and are now doing thousands of visits per day. Working, we are closely with local, state and federal governments and partners to prepare for what we believe to be a massive surgeon volume over the next weeks. We have looked throughout our hospital facility to develop space typically not used for redefine carend process to enable our staff to care for all of those patients safely. Developed ae have massive plan of redeployment for our medical staff, Nurse Practitioners, physician assistants, and nurses, retraining them to provide care for the Patient Population we believe is coming. Plan, wey, we have a are executing that plan, and we want to provide patient care with appropriate supplies and equipment at our hospitals. I want to thank you, governor, for allowing us to support you and i also want to thank all of the Health Care Workers throughout the state, all those workers who care for patients and, more importantly, care about them as well. Thank you very much. All just want to thank three of these great doctors and their Health Care Systems, but all the others that also serve on our response team. There are another of other ones who are not here today but they are credible. The secretary Fran Phillips has been a leader. You have seen her and every one of these press conferences. And we have the Major General from the National Guard here with us as well. Our team at the state level has done an incredible job. I talked to our state leaders every day, i talk with the smart doctors from all the hospitals, we talk to a bunch of other folks. You do not see all the stuff going on behind the scenes, but every one of these folks is a superstar, and they havent stepping up. All the people who and they have been stepping up. The doctors and nurses and technicians, all the people on the front lines, there is an awful lot of other folks, too. Soldiers,oulders all of our agencies who work hard to put up this facility, i want to say thank you. With that i will take a few questions. How will we know [inaudible] gov. Hogan maybe i will let one of the experts to answer that. That will be the hardest question of all. What we have got to do is do a lot more testing, and we are going to have to really study the numbers day today. Daytoday. We are anxious to get everybody back to their normal lives as quickly as we can. The last thing we want to do is bring them back too fast where we just ramp this back up and have the virus spread. We are going to rely on the experts. Tom, if you, anyone wants to touch on this. There are a lot of smart guys who can probably give you a better answer. It will be a hard decision based on the data. We cannot give you a specific time yet. We have these smart doctors, but none of them want to give you the answer. I certainly agree with what the governor just said. In other countries they are beginning to experiment with easing social distancing, where they have had measures in place. For example in china, they are now beginning to reopen Public Transportation and f people have people travel around more than they were allowed to before. One of the preconditions is getting numbers down quite low. Never 20 probably, but to never to zero probably, but to a manageable level so Health Departments can isolate them, track their contacts. It depends on capacity we can build in the state to get control of that. As the governor was saying, we have to have really available diagnostic testing so people even with mild symptoms can be diagnosed quickly and put into isolation. That is not quite possible yet, but that is being ramped up in the state. We need to prepare our Health Care System so if there is a surge in the future, they are never in it position where they are short on masks, space and ventilators. We have to be ready for that too. Why is personal Protection Equipment so tough to get . [inaudible] it . Dont we have mark, why dont you answer that question. Thank you for the easy question. So, i think it is all of those. I think that we have a limitation with regard to how our nation can be importing and the ability to get the personal protective equipment. We are looking at across whether or not we have the National Capacity to be able to have that, as far as able to produce it, and or import it into our nation. There are limiting steps. In addition to that, the Health Care System has to respond to a surge of patients. The burn rate is higher. All of those cascade into making sure we have enough personal protective women for our nurses, respiratory equipment for our nurses and everybody to make sure they are the right people who have the ppe when they need to respond. As all those people peace is going to factoring to make sure the responder has on is right, and they have it throughout the entirety of the event. [inaudible] can you expand on how bad things are really going to get . Gov. Hogan a really difficult question. The question is how bad is it going to get, are we going to need all those things. Fema put in those requests based on i believe what they felt was a worstcase scenario, and they are taking steps. All of theinstituted dramatic and unprecedented actions have taken over the past 32 days, based on the models that we are hearing about from smart people like dr. Birx and modeling,and all the if we just let this run its course and we have the spike in the Health Care System, that we would need those kinds of numbers. In the death rate and infection rates would be ashen michael. Would be astronomical. We believe, although we do not have exact numbers, that we have dramatically lowered the potential for that, both hopefully in america but particularly here in america. So that that worstcase ontario will not happen. We do not scenario will not happen. We do not know exactly how may people will be hospitalized or how many deaths, but at least my hope is we will not get near the worstcase scenario. That it will be hopefully a lot closer to a best case scenario. I do not know if any of you want to take a shot at that. Get a handle that one . Did i handle that one . Sure. Thank you, governor. I think all the actions taken by the governor have depressed the volume. Case and that saves lives, particularly when hospitals could have been overwhelmed in a way we hopefully will not. But i think we have to recognize that when the peak is lower, the spread of time is still significant, and the resilience of hospital workers, healthcare workers, is going to be called to the table. [inaudible] actually, i am not sure the validity of that report. There have not been two ice rink s leased. I know that is a possibility of maybe one, but it is not happened yet. But that has happened in other places around the world. Its just something that is being considered, but it was a false report to say that two ice rinks had been released. Let me follow up on what the doctor just said. Its important, had we had all this right away, it would have overloaded the system and it would have happened faster. The fact we have dampened down and flattened the curve means it is a longer period of time and we have a longer plateau. While we will not have an overload of the system, it also means it will take a while for us to get back. Bad, so time but not as people have to get ready for that. [inaudible] the testing continues to be the primary frustration. Our state lab turns around to testing within 24 hours. Many of the other labs had a backlog and were taking up to one week. I think they are now catching up to speed. But the Rapid Testing that you keep hearing about announced, about 45 minute testing and fiveminute testing and 15 minute testing, is coming has not come to either maryland or anywhere else, i do not think. In your conversation with the Vice President , what was it that convince them that this was a top priority . What advice do you have . I wasogan the mask wearing was made by presenters at the maryland correctional facility. And they are very happy to be doing this and be a part of the solution, and excited to be in some way helping their federal fellow marylanders. He gave me one of these masks and i wore it today. I just took it off so i could talk. I am going to continue to wear that. It is not the n95, it does not take away from healthcare workers, but it does basic protections. How did we convince the Vice President . I could just say that beginning about almost two weeks ago, i started placing calls to everyone in washington and wringing every alarm bell that i could ring about what all of us were talking about in the numbers we were starting to see, and that while they were focused on new york and new orleans and other places, do not forget about us right here. In thement is we are washington core door and so critical to the Nations Defense that it was not just the fact that we had numbers, but that they should Pay Attention to the maryland,i included d. C. And virginia together, because it is 400,000some workers surrounding all them. I put multiple calls to the Vice President , i spoke to the head of nih, i talked to fauci, i talked to dr. Birx. I mean, i was calling all weekend, late into the night, almost every day for a solid week. Call, the Vice President called me this past weekend and said we are going to make maryland and dca priority. D. C. A priority. Dr. Birx went into a 10 minute discussion with all the governors about each of our counties and what they were going to do. So, i think they were looking at the numbers, and the numbers justified what i was telling them. But theres no question. Dr. Fauci said i am in the white house, about to walk into my coronavirus thing. I promise you i am going to raise this again. He hung up the phone, parked his car, went in. I must have made 30, 40 phone calls about this. Spent a couple weekends doing. [inaudible] anticipate large cuts to State Government or layoffs . Gov. Hogan we are going to be talking with our budget folks. I do not anticipate, i am hoping we are going to avoid major layoffs, but there is going to be massive budget problems. I imagine we are going to i think we are already at the point where we have spent probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 billion to 2 billion, which is a pretty big number. So, yeah, theres going to be massive budget problems for every state in america, just like there are major budget problems for individuals and businesses and the federal government. [inaudible] i can verify that all of us elective surgery in a dramatic way. We are not doing purely elective surgery. I can also tell you, as i described, that we are planning for a substantial surge in volume, and we are redeploying and retraining all of those employees to provide care during that surge. [inaudible] no. [inaudible] gov. Hogan you have got a lot of questions, erin. Where did most of that money go . Gov. Hogan we have spent money everywhere in every agency, but i could not tell you exactly where it went. We could probably followup at a later date. Right now the idea is to keep hundreds of thousands of people from getting infected, and stop 10,000 people from dying. So, we are not counting every dollar being spent. Some insight into the decision [inaudible] gov. Hogan no. The federal government does not do it, the cdc does not do it, none of the National Testing labs do it. In the past day or two a couple city said they would do it, but they are not doing it. D. C. Said yesterday they would do a tiny portion of their numbers. We would be happy to do it. We do about 500 of our tests, we can do that easily. But the other 25,000 tests, doctors send them to National Labs that are not in the state of maryland who do not keep that kind of information, that are not required in their keep that information, that are not required by the cdc to keep that information. So it is hard for us to gather that information. We will try to do that. But the last thing i want to do is to have all these tests, people say we are not going to go to maryland because they make us do something we do not do anywhere else, then people would start dying. We are going to do our best to keep track of the information without killing people. Last question, please. Gov. Hogan no, i think you are done. Anybody else . He got one, you got 10. Likelihood we will have to [inaudible] gov. Hogan that is a good question. We spoke with the doctors about that. We did it over 32, 33 days where we ratcheted it up. I think we will ease back into things. It will not be likely flip a switch and everything will be back to normal. We will have to slowly make decisions based on the facts. It will not be like everything is great tomorrow. When we get back we will still be careful. We are still going to limit, still Institute Social distancing, a good idea for people to still wear masks. But we want to make sure we do not go back to becoming a problem again. So we are going to be really cautious. The decisions on reopening and getting back are going to be even more difficult than the ones that we made to close things down, which were extremely difficult. Thank you all. [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] announcer we will have more coronavirus Coverage Later with California Governor Gavin Newsom giving an update at 3 00 p. M. Eastern. We will have it lie for you on cspan. The whiteill have House Task Force briefing with president trump, due to start at 5 00 eastern. On two nights washington journal primetime, john meacham, author of his book the soul of america will join us. Possibleiscuss the