Nursing home is dealing with one of the largest concentrations of deaths at a longterm care facility in our country. Our Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities are facing the same challenges as every part of the country. Ppe andd testing and the staff are overworked. The people who live in longterm care facilities are already vulnerable to sickness. Social because of distancing, they cannot even see their loved ones. But these are our parents and grandparents. We have a special obligation to protect them. In addition to our responsibility to protect Public Health. Our doctor am giving a larger role in leading our efforts to help our Nursing Homes and long care longterm care facilities mitigate the cases they have and prevent further outbreaks. Llano, shew dr. For is that Deputy Commissioner for Public Health at our department of health. She is also leading our covid19 mitigation strategy. She will lead a Task Force Made s and several secretariat agencies. She will work with our secretary of finance to ensure our Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities have the resources they need to fight this virus. Second, she will work with the facilities to strengthen their staffing and to increase Infection Control measures. This includes making sure our Nursing Homes have the testing, the ppe, and the cleaning supplies that they need. Ppe, all know, testing and in particular, are a problem across the country. She will make sure virginias longterm care facilities continue to be a priority. And third, she will make sure the public and the facilities are getting the information and data they need about where this virus is appearing. The task force will track data on a number of cases in virginia that are in longterm care facilities, the number of deaths in those facilities, and outbreak data. She will share more in that data in just a few minutes. She will ensure we are doing Everything Possible to help these facilities and that we have an open line of commit occasion with them. Them. Munication with our longterm care facilities are home to people most vulnerable to the virus. Person in assisted living and longterm care is someones parent or loved one. It is vital that we protect them. This task force will help us do just that. She will report back to you regularly. Announcealso want to that we are using more avenues to recruit additional medical volunteers in our medical reserve corps. Hospital ceos are telling me what they expect and need the most is ppe and more stop to take care of people and support the medical professionals more staff to take care of people and support the medical professionals. 13,000 people have signed up to volunteer. Half of those people have medical training. We will work with our colleges and medical schools to reach out to students, especially those who are enrolled in health and medical degree programs. Training is also available for virginia four virginians who want to learn basic medical skills to volunteer. Current Health Professionals who want to get more skills, sncluding skills to work in icu or use ventilators can also get that training. We are encouraging nurses, nurse practitioners, and nursing students to apply. Knowdoctor myself, i nurses are the lifeblood of any medical setting. We also need nonmedical volunteers for support roles in logistics, communication, technology, and other areas. We welcome everyone who can help. This is a chance for virginians to come together and do good for our community. To volunteer, please visit vamr c. Org. Vamrc. Org. On behalf of virginia, we thank you. We are concerned for everyone and congregate settings, in concord settings, including those in our department of corrections. Im proposing an amendment to the state budget that would give the department of Corrections Authority to release offenders who have one year or less left in their sentences. They must have demonstrated Good Behavior and not be a threat to Public Safety. Discretion,their will release prisoners who do not pose a threat to society or the safety of others. The General Assembly will vote on this when they return for the reconvened session on april 22. Between now and then, doc will do the work of planning how these individuals may safely be released. Reentry planning typically happens over the course of months. We are asking our doc to do that in a matter of weeks. Includeslanning ensuring the released person has somewhere to go and has the medications they need for three months. In this situation, we know there are fewer Economic Resources available and fewer rehabilitation and Treatment Centers taking on new clients. Advocates and Community Organizations always play an Important Role in supporting people when they return to the community. That role is even more critical now and i ask they continue to offer all services possible to help people who are released. Led to anh crisis has economic crisis. Our strategy is clear. Fix the Health Crisis first, then the economic crisis. Thousands of virginia workers are now out of a job. In the last week of march, 114,000 people applied for unemployment benefits. As i said then, the number was large but it was would seem small all too soon and i was right. 147,369k, we had initial and employment claims. 306,000ns we have had claims inoyment the past three weeks. That is more than the same weeks in 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined. Last week alone, the Virginia Employment Commission has issued totaling more000 than 57 million. Next week, we will launch the federal pandemic unemployment assistance program, which will boost weekly payments to those who have filed for unemployment. This is an additional 600 a week, which should be a great help to folks trying to figure out how to pay the rent or buy food. Us torogram allows provide unemployment assistance to people who did not previously qualify, such as gig workers, temporary workers, and selfemployed people. It is important to note you still have to fill out the state unemployment application to receive that assistance. We have some 75,000 virginia workers who were previously denied unemployment assistance, many of whom held the types of jobs that do qualify under this federal program. The vec will be reaching out to these workers and will update its application website in the next week so that it can collect Additional Information to process claims. We are putting every resource we can into supporting the volume of unemployment claims we are receiving. The vec is hiring more staff, hiring a private call center, and upgrading the claims website. We know that people are dependent on this Financial Support and we are committed to making sure every claim is processed. Pandemic, with the might ministrations has also bills to deal with a 1291 passed by the General Assembly. Deadline is midnight tomorrow night and i will meet that deadline. Today, we announced i have signed landmark gun safety legislation as well as the womens Reproductive Health protection act. I will have acted on all the legislation before me by tomorrow night. I want to end on a hopeful note. Yesterday, Virginia Commonwealth University announced they have come up with a way to clean the n95 masks in our hospitals. Toy are using uv radiation decontaminate and clean masks so they can be reused. Vcu is not the only Hospital System or university to explore this method but we are proud to have them innovating in this way right here in virginia and i hope other Hospital Systems will reach out to vcu for information on how to do the same thing. These masks protect our Frontline Health care workers and being able to clean and reuse them could be a game changer for doctors, nurses, and hospitals. Finally, we have all seen reports that social distancing seems to be working. I hope this is the case. But social distancing will not continue to work if we stop doing it. I have had some folks call me and say, ralph, we see the curves are flattening. Isnt it time to ease the restrictions . And that is absolutely the wrong thing to do right now. As a doctor, i thought i would give you an example or an analogy from my previous work. It is like perhaps someone came in with a new diagnosis of cancer, which is never good. And after making a diagnosis, we sit down and talk about the treatment plan and the treatment plan is a very bitter pill, a bitter medicine, but we can also say that if you follow our guidelines and take this medicine, we can together cure your cancer. And so that patient may start taking that medicine for three or four weeks and start feeling better, numbers look better, xrays look better. There cancer is going away their cancer is going away and the 10 tatian is to say. , i think it is time and the 10 tatian is to say, i think it is time to take stop taking my medicine. Andcancer will return sometimes be even worse. We are in that period where we see hope and promise but this is not the time to back off from our guidelines. This is no time to let our guard down. We need to continue to stay home and to stay safe. That is especially true this weekend we expect nice weather across much of virginia, and many people would normally be celebrating easter together. Please stay home this weekend. The social distancing, the guidelines we have provided, they are working. To speakk dr. Furlano and after that, we are happy to take questions. Good afternoon. As we continue to fight the virus together, its clear that while we have taken a lot of steps across the commonwealth to protect residents of Nursing Homes and staff working in Nursing Homes, we need to offer them or help. Residents that live in these facilities are often among the most vulnerable to the virus due to their age or Health Conditions and on top of that, social distancing is pretty difficult to achieve in a congregant care living situation or facility. We also know that staff that work in these facilities often work in multiple facilities. I do want to take a note to acknowledge those staff and the Health Care Providers that work in those facilities. They are doing not under incredibly challenging circumstances. , we aredging that committed to making sure these facilities to continue the funding continue to get the funding they need and the supplies they need to protect the people who live there and to protect themselves and their staff. We want to ensure open communication between our local Health Departments in these facilities. The task force that i will be honored to work with are also committed to ensuring facilities and the public have the most uptodate information possible. This includes data on the proportion of facilities that have had a positive case among residents or staff and we will be providing data on deaths in longterm care facilities. Some outbreak data is already available on our website. I will provide a couple of data points right now. As of today, we have counted 45 outbreaks in longterm care facilities out of a total of 82 total outbreaks in the commonwealth. That is up 55 . In addition, as of today, in our outbreak database, we have 525 reported cases that represents approximately 10 of all cases and 32 deaths, or about 25 of reported deaths. I do want to explain a little bit the numbers. The 525 comes from an outbreak database system which is different than our disease Surveillance System that produces the case counts you see on the website every day. We are working to build out functionality and the fruit in the Surveillance System. That will take a little bit of time. In the interim, we are pulling data from this outbreak system so the numbers may not always match but we have good confidence in the number i am providing today. We are building additional tools to track these data and those will be available probably lit next week probably late next week or early the following week. The task force will help ensure that we are coordinating with art facilities to get the help and supplies and the information they need to protect the people who live there and i look forward to working with a lot of colleagues and partners in network. In that work. Gov. Northam we will be glad to answer your questions. [inaudible] when does that go into effect . Gov. Northam great question. It would go into effect immediately if the legislatures agree to that. As far as the numbers eligible, i will let our secretary of Public Safety address that. Thank you, governor. With respect to this extra and daring action by the governor extraordinary action by the , we anticipate the legislature acting favorably on this proposal. It would last for the duration of the governors executive order and it would apply to approximately just less than 2000 inmates that have one year or less remaining on their sentence. That sometimes fluctuates a little bit depending on who was released because we release 1000 prisoners per month based on their release dates. [inaudible] good afternoon. The legislature is set to reconvene in richmond on april 22, which could land during the worst stretch of the coronavirus. That is less than two weeks from now. Does this large gathering concern you . Should the legislature influence other ways . Gov. Northam is the legislature is scheduled to return on april 22 and does this raise concerns regarding their health . Absolutely. We want them and their staffs to be healthy. The house of delegates has made arrangements to meet outdoors underneath the tent and i believe the senate will be meaning in the Science Museum on broad street. They are taking into account the dangers of this virus. They are making arrangements to keep themselves safe and to promote the social distancing that we need to maintain as we fight this pandemic. [inaudible] there has been National Reports of the federal government seizing orders of equipment from hospitals and states paired i was wondering states. I was wondering if you could speak specifically about whether that is happening in virginia. I have heard from nurse making them less flexible in responding to hardhit areas. Are there any plans to waive those requirements . Gov. Northam equipment, ppe, ventilators began taking from our Health Care Facilities being taken from our Health Care Facilities fema. I have heard those reports from other states. We have checked with our ceos and to date, we have not had that issue in virginia. Regarding the relationship between nurse practitioners, pas, and their providers, i would be interested in hearing from those individuals, as would our secretary of health. We would be glad to work with them if there are challenges out there with the relationship as it is. I think a question was asked about that, the relationship we have now between our pas, nurse practitioners, and our physicians is working well and will continue to work within that model. [inaudible] do we have allen on the line . The next is from mallory. Good afternoon. I will ask about immigrants being held in detention facilities in virginia. Advocates are concerned that hundreds of detainees are at risk. Center has asked the administration to inspect both facilities to make sure testing is available, proper sanitation. Is the Administration Planning to do any of those things . What steps is the administration taking to make sure immigrants are kept healthy . Gov. Northam brian . The question is with respect to ice facilities. We have two ice facilities in virginia. The state does not have jurisdiction over those facilities. When we have heard reports, we have shared those with our congressional delegation as well as the department of Homeland Security and inquired as to the care of those individuals in the custody. Again, they are not under our jurisdiction. We will continue to pursue that and take whatever actions necessary to ensure the safety of those individuals. [inaudible] Law Enforcement action to enforce the restrictions around the state. Has there been much need for enforcement like that . Gov. Northam has Law Enforcement needed to get involved in forcing enforcing our guidelines across the commonwealth . We have been in daily contact with our state police, sheriffs and deputies, officers on land and water, and there have been reminders to breakup gatherings. I think the individuals, when they have been reminded, from what i have heard, they have cooperated. I do not know if any citations that have been written. I think i am correct in saying that. Northern virginia daily. I have a question about one specific juvenile facility in virginia, the bonaire juvenile justice facility, they have two staff that is tested positive. Others,facility and when there is a confirmed case, will everyone there be tested to see how widespread it is . What is the timeline for that testing . Gov. Northam the question is about our department of juvenile justice and one of our facilities and positive test results. I will let secretary moran address that. Thank you, governor. Reduced years, we have our population of residents in our juvenile category 21 facility in the commonwealth and that is the bonaire facility. We have 205 residents. Done widespread testing and we are following Virginia Department of health guidance. And it wasen units built for capacity of over 500 kids. We have only 205. Isolate them and use quarantine methods pursuant to cdc guidelines. We have seven units and we are spreading them out to make sure there is not the interaction. It is unfortunate and we are doing everything we can. To ensure the health and safety of the residents of the bonaire facility. Questions. Of i know we talked about it last wednesday. Has anything been done in terms of opening some of the Community Centers in africanamerican communities . The president talks about keeping the glass halffull. Openlks about wanting to the country. How do you rationalize that style of leadership . Gov. Northam it is a good question. I will let our secretary of health and to the first one. I will address the second. There is nobody out there that wants us to get back to our life as normal more than me. But we also have to deal with reality. I think there is a difference in leadership styles between to say we will do this and we will do that but not backing it up with science. I am a doctor. I understand the importance of keeping people healthy. I am looking at the data and there is a lot of data and i will make the comment about our models and just a bit. I am looking at the number of individuals that are in our Nursing Homes right now. I am looking at the number of admissions to our hospitals, especially the number of icu admissions. I am looking at the number of covid19 patients on a ventilator. While i would like to be aspirational and i would always want to provide people hope, because i will tell you that want to take someones hope away, you have taken away there will to live. Im a big believer in hope. Im also a big believer in telling the truth and letting people know what were up against. This is a biological war we are fighting in this country and we need to take it seriously and we need to as best we can use the science and the data we provide these guidelines because at the end of the day, my job as your governor is to keep virginians safe. That is what i will continue to do. We setquestion was, have up Community Center based Testing Programs . The short answer is no. The longer answer is we need to develop Testing Capacity greater than we have now. There is a national shortage. It is not that we dont want to test more people. We are having trouble testing our folks in our Nursing Homes adequately and our hospitals who could have covid19. The delay is far too long. As we develop more Testing Capacity, we will want to reach out into the community, reach out into detection from a Public Health perspective, develop a role model of this disease. We do test about 25004000. Those are the numbers of results we get each day. Depending on where they were tested, in a hospital that may have a 24hour turnaround or it may be seven or eight days if it is a commercial lab. Our number one job is to increase the capacity and the rapidity of testing. We mentioned that we have received from fema 15 devices that can do testing within 15 minutes. But not the adequate supplies to do any significant testing at all. I think your point is well taken that as we develop capacity, we will need to develop those plans to best use those for communities at high risk as well as for better Public Health understanding so we will know from an evidencebased perspective how to reverse and get back to normal life in the appropriate, safest, and most responsible way. [inaudible] about testing ask capacity. Governor hogan announced they have made an investment to ramp up to 20,000 tests per day. National reports have virginia toward the bottom for per capita testing. It is to both the quantity and the delay in testing. Immediately following the session, we are brought together a consulting group, how can we get better in virginia . With otherrsations states, whether it is michigan, maryland, or north carolina, they are doing very much what those states are doing . How can virginia be the leader in testing . We do not know those answers but we are aggressively seeking those answers. Great question. [inaudible] with phil atkinson. Bill atkinson. You spoke about the releasing of some inmates. Mentalout at the States Health facilities . What guidance is being offered to those facilities in terms of social distancing, patient moving restrictions . Central state has had one confirmed covid case among the worker but nothing among patients. What sort of guidance is the state offering the mental Health Facilities to dealing with this outbreak . Gov. Northam our mental Health Facilities or those with psychiatric illnesses, what are we doing to take care of them . We are using the same guidelines that we are using in our Nursing Homes. To our penitentiary, the 10 tatian temptation would be lets get those individuals out of the facilities. In the case of the mental Health Facilities, there is really not a good option other than where they are. That is the safest place they can be with a roof over their head, good nutrition, and people who care for them on a daily basis. They will stay at those facilities but we will use the same criteria that we use in our Nursing Homes with isolation, testing, ppe that is needed to make sure we take care of their health and wellbeing. The next question is from insideth insight nova nova. Some are wearing their face masks half the time. There are a lot of people not wearing face masks at the Grocery Store or out in public. Other places in the country are shifting to a mandatory policy for face coverings. Is that something you would be considering . Gov. Northam the question is, will we consider making the wearing of face protection mandatory . There was some reluctance even to move in that direction initially because we had some such a shortage of face protection for our first responders, hospital caregivers, etc. What has happened over the week is that we now have ways we can protection. The department of correction has made thousands of these. You can take a bandana and fold it and use rubber bands. We do encourage individuals when they are out and about to where this facial protection two wear this facial protection to protect themselves and others. To date, we have not made that mandatory. It is a strong suggestion. I want to commend virginians. You are doing the right thing and we appreciate you being part of the solution. As long as we can continue to Work Together and as long as we continue to see the subject social distancing is working, the curves are flattening, we will continue with our present guidelines. Reported deaths when are deaths reported by locality . [inaudible] is, why arent the deaths reported by locality . We report the deaths by region and we now are rearranging our dashboards so we can report those deaths by the Health District itself. Areasmaller geographic than the seven regions in the state, which is how we have been reporting it up till now. That should be online fairly soon and we will get people in more granular view of incidents 19. Deaths from covid the general reason for restricting at all the reporting of disease is to protect the confidentiality of the individuals. Numbers are relatively small when you get down to a small if a patient or their family decides they want to release that information, that is one thing. But for us to do it without their consent is not something we do. [inaudible] gov. Northam the question is about workrelease in virginia. Workrelease prior to covid, that is something we promoted. It was a wonderful opportunity for inmates to get out and do jobs. We have stopped workrelease programs. If there is a particular surprisedi would be because my communications with the sheriffs, they understand this and they are observing the governors order to restrict as much as possible any movement outside of facility. I would be happy to follow up but we would discourage any workrelease. There would be more movement, more supervision and it could only be followed with strict social distancing and that would be difficult under the circumstances. [inaudible] to i know you have mentioned several of the bills you have signed. I want to inquire about the status of the casino bill. Gov. Northam the question is the casino bill. That is a piece of legislation that there has been a lot of discussion on. I have this afternoon and tomorrow to continue my work so i would say on that particular bill, i have not signed anything. Stay tuned. Tomorrow night at midnight, you will know our final decision. You are going to talk about the modeling and to that end, i believe you said the work should start on those Convention Center and other alternative care centers. Gov. Northam let me answer your second question first. Alternative care facilities, we have been in daily discussions with our corps of engineers and also with our hospital ceos. We are preparing for all different scenarios so all of those options are still on the table. At the end of the day, my priority, my goal, and my job would be to make sure our hospitals, Health Care Providers are able to take care of those who are sick with covid19 and i can assure virginia we are ready. The first question was about modeling. Are there other questions . I will go ahead and finish up on that note. Watched the data every day and this has been such a dynamic process. There are a number of models we follow. I think you all would be interested to see the contrast of those models and the challenges with looking at this particular model or another model. What we would like to do is bring in the data specialist with those models on monday and have those available for the press so that we can allow you to see what we see and also to be able to ask questions to the data experts. We will be between now and monday, we will be making arrangements for a time and place to do that. Hopefully, you can look forward to that. In closing, back to your question on hope, and i want to give all virginians hope that we will get through this together. What we, what you are doing across the commonwealth is working right now. I have talked about how we are going to land this plane. I wanted all virginians to know that we are working every day and night to follow this data and to be able to make that decision of when to ease these guidelines and how to do that. That plan is being talked about and worked on every day. The second part of this is our economic crisis. As i have said all along, in order to get the economic crisis addressed, we have got to get the Health Crisis behind us. We also have plans that we are working on every day to jumpstart this economy, how to get businesses, especially our small businesses, back where they were before this happened. How we can get virginians back to work as quickly as we can. A lot of good work is going on and i just wanted to let you know that we are working hard every day on how we can land the plane and we plan to do it successfully. As i have reminded virginians, we are the number one state in this great country in which to do business. We want to make sure we are the number one state for workers. In ant into this crisis very strong position and we will get through this together and we will come out of it just as strong or maybe even stronger. Keep that in mind over the weekend. In the meantime, i hope everybody has a safe and peaceful weekend and we will look forward to being with you on monday. Thank you so much. Cspan has roundtheclock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. And it is all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors and state officials, track the spread throughout the u. S. In the world with interactive maps, watch ondemand anytime unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. I am signing an executive order to help preserve this balance between health on the one hand and Public Health and Public Safety on the other. Under this order, certain low risk individuals whose current age or Health Status puts them at particular risk for covid19 who had been denied parole within the last year or whose sentences are to expire within the next three months may be placed on temporary home confinement or granted parole if already eligible through an expedited process. I want to stress that no one convicted of a serious crime such as murder, sexual assault, among others, will be eligible for consideration. We are setting up a robust process through which each potentially eligible individual must be determined to be safe to place on home confinement and each will be required to have an individualized release plan to ensure they will have access to all necessary services, medical services, and housing. No one who cannot meet these standards will be released. Individuals on home confinement will be subject to department of corrections supervision. We have twin responsibilities here, protecting those who work in our present and those who are incarcerated in our prisons and those who are incarcerated. Social distancing is extremely hard in prison setting. Tonight, a special evening edition of washington general on the federal response to the coronavirus crisis. 8 00s that join us at with patrice harris. And then Tori Emerson Barnes will talk about the viruses affect on travel and tourism. Congressman on his experience after contracting the coronavirus. Join the conversation. Washington journal primetime tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan. Today, John Bel Edwards held a briefing with reporters on his states response to the coronavirus. From baton rouge, this is 35 minutes. Everyone. Ternoon, thank you for being here. Thank you for tuning in on this good friday. I am