Lasted a little longer than what i anticipated. I will get to that in a few minutes. First and foremost, i always want to lead off with this difficult is the most of all and it is what should always be on our thoughts and withrs and on our minds all West Virginians. We have now lost 13 people in West Virginia. A second agopdated of a 50yearold female in berkeley county. You know, like i said so many times, all these people, these are not just statistics. These people have names and they have families. A lot of loved ones and friends and everything. So please, lets just dont get wrapped up in a number. We just hate it. Lets all just keep them in our thoughts and prayers. Prayers are powerful, powerful tools that we have and have been given. Join think we all need to in all the time in thinking and keeping these people in our prayers. Amazing, it is just there are lots of stuff that we seem to keep cropping up that we have to cover. Always, if you are a or, you guy or a coach know, just a person but is willing to step up and take a leadership role, there is always times that are the difficult times. Make this as clear as i can possibly make this. And it may very well be that some people are going to be displeased or unhappy with my approach to this. Haveveryone knows that we multiple Nursing Homes across our state. That, addition to everyone should know that we have, although they are good people that are working there in many ways, we have an antiquated system of health care. Because no one, no one could thoughte devised or that we would have a system that would be able to handle a true pandemic. Would ever thought we have to have such a thing. Ways, it isme excusable. In, may note in a haphazard way, but data to come in late. Meaning the data is coming from a certain source and it is reported at one time and data is coming from another source and it is. Reported at another time and before you know it, you get numbers skewed and they look inconsistent. And then they skew back together and everything. And you can tolerate that. But im telling you, this, i cannot tolerate. That we havefact Nursing Homes, and these are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable people. Now, we have told our people pointblank, that when we have one person, one. One person in an outbreak to run to the fight and test everybody there, all the employees and everybody there, now, we have failed in that effort. And who knows why. Everybody can come up with a thousand Different Reasons and throw 8 grow a thousand bushes to hide behind. This is how i feel and this is all there is to it. Im going to get to the bottom of this. And if i truly find out that we have had individuals that purposely didnt do what their job was to do, they are going to be gone. Thats all there is to it. And im going to tell you. If we have any nursing home in student incidents where we have one person that tests positive and we dont run to the fire and test everybody there, we are letting these people down. Theres no excuse for that in my book. And im not going to tolerate it. That is all there is to it. May be our best buddies, may be people that we think are doing good work, may be people that are retired, but i am a real believer that you do not confuse effort with accomplishment. I dont care how tired we are. I have said over and over, we dont rest until it is over. And i mean that. Theres no smoke with this. Theres no nothing theres nobody. Here that is trying to grandstand. I cant stand this stuff. There does that is all there is to it. Now, let me go on to something else. Anyway. Ive just got to calm down about that. That really disappoints me. On,rtheless, if i could go workforce is an area that we have tried and we continue to try stiffen up and stiffen up and make better and better and better. It is another situation where we have had an avalanche of backlogged beyond belief. Unemployment claims. We have people sitting at home waiting on that. Better. Re doing we are doing lots better. Have an incredible effort from the National Guard. The workforce people have been great. Scott adkins is doing a great job. He will be here on monday to update as a lot more. We know this backlog is affecting all kinds of different states and everything else. And we know from the sampling itself and the independent contractors, you cant file yet but we are working on it. You were going to be able to do that real soon and we will catch everything up on you guys as well. All i can tell you is that workforce and getting the unemployment checks out is doing much better. Ive tried to knock down every single, every single roadblock. Even to the point in time of say we were waiting on the debit card to go out. And that was back logging us seven days. Knocked it down. So many different things. That was early on and everything. And now, we are now taking applications on the phone and immediately turning around and getting checks out to those people. And then we will go back and treat ourselves up as we have to. Let these people have to get their money and checks. From the standpoint of paycheck protection program, that was the program that was designed as far as making loans that were forgivable, to the Small Business administration. Flood of Small Businesses that came in. The money is that they allocated in the building i think were 350 million. It is just gone. And now they still have a backlog of businesses and everything that are applying for those loans. Introduced ae has 250 million 250 billion addition to that. And the house, like i said before, i have no clue why in the world, how on earth somebody code to come out and say that we will not come back until may 4. Speaker pelosi, i dont want to do anything here that is political. We dont have time to be political. But for god sakes, we do not need to have our people waiting and hurting and have someone say, we are not going to come back in until may the fourth. It is ridiculous. Our the standpoint of hospital help and everything, our Community Hospitals have done incredible jobs. They have had to cancel their elective procedures and that has hurt them financially and heard them really bad. But there was no other place to turn. We didnt have the equipment, the supplies and everything else. We surely could not be using them on elective procedures and everything. In order to provide some sense of a directive, dh hr is sending out 69 million in direct Payment Program checks to these hospitals in West Virginia. And maybe that will bridge us to help a little bit because i know a bunch of them are really struggling. Now, let me see. And i an announcement, continue to remind you in regard to the census, be counted. Absolutely be counted. Now look, if you believe that im adding for you as hard as i can bat, and truly, im assuring do im surely doing that, then help me in getting counted. Because we need absolutely for you to be counted in order to be able to get real federal dollars in here. Would. Me in that, if he im going to read something because i have an announcement to make here. It really pleased me and i want to read to you. I want to read this to you. Pandemic hasw this been incredibly damaging to all of us in many ways. But was virginians have found a way to respond and rebuild with success. And we are making some really tough decisions, but with the help of our experts, i know that we will get through this and we will make the responsible decisions correctly. We have closed schools, we have closed restaurants and bars, nonessential businesses and we have ordered our people to stay home. I work really closely with experts from time to time and we made responsible decisions for the safety of West Virginians. The success of these measures weve taken is dear to one thing, and that is the great people of West Virginia. And ive told you that repeatedly. We are doing well on lots and lots of things. We have the discipline to move forward and im going to quit reading. Because i cant do that. Ive just go to speak to you from my heart and tell you this. Way, we have done lots and lots of stuff. And you know that. Way, we have had our experts and ive listened to them every single day. Community and, the help of our people the medical experts are going to win the day with me all the time. I can tell you from an economic standpoint, and a lot of you are out there and have wondered, what is going to happen to West Virginia . You know, i had our financial people come to me probably some, i dont know, 10 to 14 days ago. Heres what they told me. Havetold me, governor, we got to act and weve got to do something really right now. Heres the deal, governor, we are going to end up the year, june 30, with a 376 million deficit or greater. Is governor, this thing totally destroying our states finances. 150vernor, we have got million that we have put into the medicaid reserve fund. And then weve got another few dollars over here, this and that, tax dollars that weve set aside, and we can take all of that, and we can get ourselves down to a number where we are still 150 million upside down. And at that point in time, governor, we will need to go to legislature. And what we are going to need to do is we are going to have to in some way bridge back in and invade rainy day. In order to get us through this, that is what we are going to have to do. In addition to that, governor, what we need to do and what we need to do now, is we need to lay off our people, and we need to lay off lots on lots of our people. And in addition to that, we need to cut social services. Here is the guy that you elected. You elected a business guy. You elected a guy that could sit here and try to guide you through this terrible pandemic, but you elected a guy that was a business guy. Well, i know a lot about what is going on from the federal government standpoint and i dont know that i absolutely you the answers, but in electing a business guy, i said to my financial people, i said, i hear you. I really respect the work that youve done because they have done great work. But i said, let me tell you whats going to happen. None of what you say that we need to do, in my opinion, is going to happen today. It may very well be because we dont know the specific rules and everything as of yet. But i want you to know this because im a real believer in one of the older movies that said show me the money. Well, all of a sudden out of nowhere, the federal government as called us and said, set up bank account just for money as that would come from us. And so we did that. And get this, remember, governor, we are going to be 376 million upside down. And i said, i got it, and i understand it. And then, governor, we are going to have to cut, and we are going to have to send people home, and we are going to have to do all kinds of things that are going to hurt our state and hurt our state very badly. And i said, we are not doing that. Setso, all of a sudden, we up our bank account a couple days ago. And last night, i was informed the federal government wired into our bank account 625 million. And they also said that the other half would be coming next week. You, at the end of the day, we are going to get through this. And we are going to get through this and be made whole. Ive told you repeatedly as individuals and businesses to look to the stimulus stuff and work it as best you possibly can. This, would tell you just that 45 of these dollars are supposed to go to the counties and the cities. The cities. Oftentimes, i forget saying the cities, but i mean it when i speak of the counties. Absolutely i know we are hurting all across the board and all kinds of different places. I caution you this way. And i want you to hear me very, very solidly. We dont have exactly the rules as of yet. On the call just a few minutes ago with the governor, i mean, with the president , repeated governors were saying over and over and over, mr. President , mr. President , will you allow us to use the shortfall in revenue on the dollars we are getting . Was, we are going to do everything we can do to help, but the answer was not done. So from this standpoint, weve got 625 Million Dollars in the bank account right now and we are going to get more. And i dont know specifically how we are going to be able to use it, and maybe at the end of and. Ay, we cant use it if we cant use it, then we are going to have shortfalls and we are going to have to go back to looking at rainy day or whatever it may be. But i come in jim justice, do not think that is going to happen. Believes, as your governor, as a businessman that you elected, that he has got this and hes going to figure this out. You want to ship tell that i dont think ever i have had such a thing happen is 625 Million Dollars come rolling into a bank account. In my first question is what bank is that . Because i cant imagine one of the banks is sitting there with 625 million rolling into the bank. It is a big deal. Not only that, there is going to be more coming. On top of that, theres going to be help. And in another way for the hospitals, there will be help for higher ed, for k12, there will be additional ways to help. It is not even included in these dollars. And on top of that, the last thing i would say is this, every state is to receive 1,250,000,000. That is half of our money right there. The rest of it is coming next week. Now, if we receive 1,250,000,000, every state that receives that, that is 50 states that are receiving that, and that totals 62. 5 billion, i think thats right, i hope ive done my math right, but i think thats right, 62. 5 billion. Has 300gram that billion to be administered to the state, you are to get a minimum of 1. 25 billion. 237. 5re is still billion out there to be distributed to all the states. So if we can find ways to tap into a little bit of that, it may very well be that we end up with greater than 1. 25 billion. It may very well be that we are, because of the rules on whatever it may be, we are not able to use half of the 1. 25 billion. But im telling you, this is what i have said before, this is in my wheelhouse. And we are going to be ok with this. I would like to touch on one thing real quick and then i will be done. In the president s conference we got through, it was about opening up america again. There was a lot of guidelines states,has given us as to use those guidelines, in an effort to open us back up. Ive told you over and over and over. It would be my goal in every way, shape, form, and fashion to get us back to work and get us back to a life that is close to where we were before. And itd here is the but, is but, but, but, my number one job is to protect all of you as best i possibly can. I dont like the fact that we deaths, i am an absolute realist and i know that if we dont get back to work, we will have more deaths from Drug Overdose and suicides or whatever it may be. I know that no matter what you we will absolutely use our experts to the health, the guidelines of the president , we will use absolutely every means possible to make the best decisions we can possibly make. You have done great, West Virginia. And im really proud of you. Weve led the nation in lots of different ways and that is what West Virginians i know will always do. We are going to be fine financially. You are going to be fine financially if you will just work as hard as he possibly can. As you possibly can. Right now, the only people that are not going to be fine is the people who mess up our Nursing Homes and let our people down. And dont think im not going to do something about it. Thank you all so much. We will go from there. Thank you. Thank you, governor. Lets go to majored governor hoyer with the National Guard. Good afternoon. I just want to address an issue that occurred yesterday. While members of our guard were helping with testing of the nursing home income all county, unfortunately, a member of the guard team documenting that took a photo of one of the residents. And unfortunately, that photo got out on a couple of media platforms. That the guard regret that occurred. As i as a Senior Member of the National Guard will take responsibility for that mistake. We appreciate the Media Outlets pulling it down quickly so we can protect the privacy of the individuals involved. I want to apologize to the family, the individual, as well as to the Health Department, dr. Young, for any problems we may have caused with that photo getting out. We put measures in place to ensure that doesnt happen going forward. We appreciate the citizens of West Virginia understanding that sometimes we in the guard will make mistakes while we are doing our best to try to protect our citizens. Today we have 619 members of the guard on duty. We have completed 414 missions. I want to highlight a couple things that have occurred over the past 24 hours. We received a donation from toyota manufacturing of 10,000 face shields which we are currently assembling and will get out as part of the efforts to provide support to our Health Care Providers on the front line. In addition, over the past 20 four hours, we conducted decontamination of 11 ambulances county. Today we have conducted a test on a decontamination sanitization of a kr t bus. As we talked about earlier, these are things as we move, and the governor talked about in dr. Marsh talks about phase two, these are all things that are important to us as a state to make sure that we can do those things and continue to open up as the time allows and is the out, at thented appropriate time in maintaining the security and safety of our citizens. In addition, as the governor mentioned, we are making progress at workforce West Virginia, working with our partners there. Additional call numbers will roll over to the amazon connect hours. E next 24 to 48 in addition, next week a Case Management software will be implemented. With great work from the workforce staff, other state agencies and the National Guard supporting those efforts. Yesterday we conducted support to 53 retail operations, again, with helping with sanitization and those things we need going forward. Be prepared to protect our frontline workers as well as be prepared for what we encounter in the next phase going forward. In addition to that, telehealth test was done with see amc and in Pocahontas County to improve the bandwidth to provide telehealth across the state of West Virginia and in underserved areas. We continue to work with abby demeo knology staff at the state office. Ealth they conducted in support 140 contacts with individuals on the Contact Tracing which the doctors continue to reinforce is so important for us going forward. The last thing i would leave you with is we still continue to do our military mission. The secretary of defense recognized a member of the National Guard assigned to our peru. Y in as some people will know, we have a partnership with peru that we have had since 1996. That individual was part of a 60m that helped repatriate 800 american citizens from central and south america who needed to come back home as a result of the pandemic. Great work being done by our folks across the globe as we continue to support not just this effort, but other efforts we need to in the defense of our nation and the protection of our citizens. Thank you. Thank you, general. Next, lets go to our coronavirus czar. Thank you. It is wonderful to be with people today. That general hoyer follows the governor because that was quite a bit of news. And that is extraordinarily good for the state of West Virginia. We aregovernor has said, focused on helping move forward with phase two efforts of trying to reopen the state in a safe and responsible way. Certainly as we look at our numbers into people have asked which numbers are we following, and we are following the number of positive cases that are coming back each day as a percent of the total cases that. Are done. We had a blip with the nursing home that we found, and as the governor expressed, that we look at as a single large case. The last 24 hours, we had 3 positive rate and 4 positive. 20 . Ountry is at about are case fatality rate, number of people that have died of covid here is substantially less than national. Many,rson dying is too but it is about 1. 66 versus nationally about 4 . We continue to do really well. I talked yesterday about the eastern panhandler panhandle and we know there are fewer cases in the northern panhandle. But there are areas of other states that border the northern panhandle that have had more activity. Looks like today, that activity is starting to dissipate which is good for us, as we focus on phase two. I want to comment briefly on what the governor talked about around our longterm care facilities. Certainly, we understand that this is a particularly vulnerable place for people in this pandemic. And certainly if we look around the country and around the world, we see that people who are in longterm care facilities are not only susceptible to infection with a virus, but they tend to have worse outcomes. And if you look across europe, about half the deaths in europe were related to people in longterm care facilities. And although we are committed to make sure that we are very consistent and test people in these facilities because we know now for recent data from recent data that came in the last 24 hours and the journal nature of medicine, that about half of the people who infect other people, in fact before that they are before they are symptomatically. They are 2. 3 days two point seven days before they become symptomatically. We know it is very difficult to define who might be symptomatically and who may not. That is the reason why broad testing is so important. And that is very important and that is very important in our longterm care facilities. And is also very important in our state. As we think about part two, or phase two, i had a question to ask what kind of resources do we need . And we are working with our Testing Centers in the state of West Virginia. Help oftarting with the our innovation teams and our universities to start to produce some of the vital supplies like swabs and viral media to transport samples back to laboratories. And we are expanding our ability to test all the time. So this is something that will be important but we are making a lot of progress on. And i would like to say one last thing in my comments today. Areeople were to ask what the most important parts of phase two . And certainly the governor will instruct us on how he wants to move forward, and i have the most confidence that the safety and the wellbeing of our citizens obey his number one priority. But similarly, we need to restart our economy again. We need to get people back to work. That affects Peoples Health as well. What i would say is the most important component of our ability to get into phase two successfully is not really just the testing, is not the surveillance, is not the only,ty of the hospitals it is really you. And what has happened on the reason why we have done so well is because of the citizens. The people who have committed to protect themselves and each other. We talked about vulnerable people. Ive been told dont use medical terminology. We know people that are older have a much higher chance of being in the icu and dying from covid. People over 75. People 65 to 75 have a higher chance of being hospitalized. People that are overweight, much higher chance of being hospitalized. People that have high blood pressure, any kind of heart disease, who smoke, who have lung disease, all are at higher risk. We have a high risk population as you have heard. As long as you keep doing the things that you now know how to do very well, we are staying in, when we dont have to be out, we are staying distant as much as to takewe are trying care of our hands because we know the virus can live on things that we touch and washing our hands and not putting our hands next to her face. Those are the things and the reasons why we have not seen the surge and West Virginia that many places have. Thats why our mortality rate is low. Thats why our case Conversion Rate is low. I would say to people in the state who are watching, thank you, well done. And this will continue through two. And whatever other phase we need. And by staying together and staying connected and all of us being smart and focused on supporting ourselves, each other and our community, we will be just fine. So thank you. Marsh. K you, dr. Lets go to secretary bill crouch with the West Virginia dh hr. Secretary crouch good afternoon, everyone. A couple of things quickly. I want to announce that dh hr bureau of Public Health this morning filed an emergency rule to implement uniform social distancing guidelines to all retailers in the state of West Virginia. For standard regulations dope for social distancing and retail space is to make sure that they are consistent rather than have individual guidelines from county to county. This aligns with our initiative to slow the spread of covid19 in communities maintaining that six foot social distancing everywhere, including in Grocery Stores and retail stores. We want to make sure that happens. The only other thing i want to mention again is during this pandemic, many people experience stress and anxiety. The National Helpline is free, it is confidential, is available 24 seven. Sources ared available on that line. Those seeking mental help and Substance Use services can call the number which i think we may put up here. 1800662help. 4357. Mental Health Services are providing services in your community. Website hrs covid19 4wv. All 18 1844 help stay safe and take care of your families are thank you. Thank you. Once again, we are holding todays briefing with media members joining us virtually to practice good social distancing. The first question we have is tailor stuck with the herald dispatch. Reporter hi, it is taylor with the health dispatch. Following up on the Nursing Homes and testing broadly at Nursing Homes, was this a state policy from dh hr to have people ask for testing . Did Nursing Homes have to approach dh hr if they want the testing and how was that changed now . And will there be more Nursing Homes that are getting help from the state . All actually, they posted of the Nursing Homes that have had positive cases. I was wondering if the governor was going to do something along those lines. Gov. Justice i appreciate your question. I think youve got the answer better than anybody, is that correct . I will be happy to address that. Thank you. And maybe secretary crouch for any additional comments. We are certainly committed and have created our guidance which would say that if there is a nursing home that has a positive case, that we would come to that nursing home and assist the county Health Officers to be able to plot get samples from each person in the facility. The patients and the staff, because as we said before, we are uncertain today about being able to predict purely from symptoms who exactly may be covid positive and who may not. And as we know, the nursing home long Long Term Care facility is vulnerable. As we as i said in europe, half the people who have died from covid are in that population. But because of the great work of folks here and getting on these cases quickly and doing good Infection Control our mortality rate in the longterm care facility facilities is 7. 6 , which is really quite good. And certainly that doesnt mean we are complacent at all. When it comes to listing the covid positive patients on a website as ohio has done, i will ask secretary crouch to make any comments and to clarify anything to us. Sec. Crouch thank you. Yes. Let me say that we i agree with clay. And we all agree that that is population. Nerable we have spend an hour on a call this morning with 400 people, 400 individuals from longterm Care Committee community. We heard from all of them in terms of how we go forward in the state. We started out with our state lab the only entity to test individuals from West Virginia, to test our citizens. But has expanded as our hospitals have come online with testing and as commercial labs have come on. We still have problems with commercial labs, get a long time to get a response. It has been difficult to move forward in the way we want. What we want is to test more people. And we are to the point where we are going to test more people. We are going to make sure that our longterm care population out there is tested when there is a positive in the facility. We have moved that policy orward each we have moved that forward each day this week and we want to make sure we protect our folks and protect our employees. Without the employees in the facilities who take care of our vulnerable population, we are at a loss in terms of their care. We want to take care of both and we will do that. Thank you, taylor. Up next, amanda baron with wsaz. Reporter hi, everyone. Amanda baron with wsaz. I want to go back to the governors comments. Nursing homes were among the first to be locked down to the public my question is, did something specific happen at a nursing home today where they werent following the rules . Also when you talk about Community Spread, wouldnt one of those covid cases have had to have come in from the public . And then also create potential for Community Spread . I know yesterday, dr. March, we talked about how Nursing Homes, that those numbers arent as significant when it comes to the overall numbers for transmission but i just wonder it has to come from outside because people avent been anywhere around. Gov. Justice amanda, breaking up a little bit, i guess the wind outside and everything. I think i got enough to be able answer it. We did have an incident that happened today. I really feel like that i was not getting all the information that was necessary for me not proper. We sent the National Guard. Im not going to you know, name who and where, but we sent the National Guard in to find out and our Health Department to find out what in the world was going on. We its just as simple as this. Have got, everybody has got to know that when we have an issue especially at Nursing Homes that we are running to the fire. Were not kind of, you know, waiting and delaying and maybe having opinions or whatever it may be. We should be running to the fire. To try to do any and everything we possibly can. Because we know. We know the risk. And we know how vulnerable it is. We know the rr first thing i did was say visitation, we had to eliminate it and everything. Thats way back when and everything. So i agree were doing better. But better is not good enough to a family losing a loved one. You know. And these are all moms and dads to somebody and yelly just better is not good enough for me. We did have a problem. Were kind of in our infancy as far as investigating it. And im not going to mention where it is. I did send the National Guard in as well as our Health People to figure out what was going on. Thank you, amanda. Next to phil with the charleston gazette mail. Reporter hello. You indicated that the receiving the 625 million in federal stimulus funds but states are still waiting direction on whether that funding can be used to backfill budget shortfalls. Did you get any indication on when the guidance will come down as to when states either can or cannot use that money . Gov. Justice i can give you think best guidance i have and heres the thing. On the call, as i said with the president , you know, just a few minutes ago, there was repeated governors that were saying, you know, led off with the governor in new orleans and everything, hes the head of the whole governor show and all theark said right off the getgo, he said in his state they were ing to have like a 3. 2 or Something Like that billion dollar shortfall. He said we have to do something about this from the revenue side. He asked about it, the guy from utah, the governor from utah, i think, asked about it. Maybe the governor from louisiana asked about it. I sure asked about it. Put it back on his plate and everything when it came for me to speak and so with that being said i think the rules are supposed to come out next week. The one thing i believe is just. This you know, when it was announce and it was announced early that each state would receive 1. 25 billion, its like , you know, its like something thats a dream that never seems to ever really become reality. But when they actually send the money to our states bank account, it gets really serious, real quick. So i believe that theres going to be a way to work through this problem that we have of this tremendous shortfall in the state as i believe that theres ways for individuals and businesses to work through as well. Literally when somebody sends to your bank account this kind of dollars, i cant imagine that the federal government is going to call back up and say, no, we dont want you to spend that in your state. We want you to send that back to us. You know. So with all that being said thats about all i can give you is gut and not real live rules yet. Because the rules dont come out until next week but it was a tremendous first step. Sure was good news to me last night. Thanks, phil. Up next, kenny bass of wchs. Reporter hello. I have a question for the governor and possibly for dr. Marsh and maybe yen hoyer can chime in and maybe even its kind of an allencompassing question. Were reporting the elder care facility in Jackson County over the last few weeks seven residents tested positive and eight Staff Members for a total of 15. Weve been receiving messages from people in that community for several days that no information was coming from Jackson CountyHealth Department nor from the facility itself. So working today, we were able to confirm that this was actually happening. Now it appears things are moving along. Governor, ill start with you and then move to yen hoyer. Is it a question of someone in the administration didnt have the information . Of what was going on in jackson count y i . That information didnt get to the right people . Was it adjustment call for some reason that we didnt start tethsing testing there as we have every other nursing facility . And as far as the National Guards involvement, is Jackson County requesting that . Asking for that . Or saying they want assistance from the National Guard . Gov. Justice from my standpoint theres a lot of a lot of variations in your question but from my standpoint, again, i dont know any way to speak other than the way i speak. Everybody says, you know, maybe its false or whatever, but its pretty correct. I think that we have issues that we need to resolve. And i believe without any question you and there are others that feel the same way. And the one thing i want everyone always know, that youre going to get consistency and youre going to get truth out of me. And thats the way its going to be. Now it would be premature for me to give you any more specifics. Ill let yen hoyer and dr. Marsh secretary crouch or the doctor to give you more detail. All i can tell you, i feel like that weve got an issue and im trying to take care of it because im not trying to take care of it, im going to take care of it. The governor directed earlier in the day for the National Guard to move assets forward to Jackson County to be prepared to support the Health Department and the facility to conduct testing. Those assets were en route and have arrived at the location. It is my understanding that this point in time, that the Health Department and the facility have are in the process of completing the testing. And the National Guard will provide support to those two entities to move those tests back to charleston to the lab for processing. And thats the latest information i have available at this time. All right, thanks, kenny. Up next, Steven Allen Adams with ogden newspapers. Looks like steven might have dropped. Lets go to haley with wowk. All right, lets try annie moore. Did they give you insight today on what the guidelines might be for the return to work . Guest is this annie, im sorry. This is annie with wv wvba. In your discussions with president trump, did he give you any insight as to what those guidelines are going to be for he return to work . Gov. Justice he gave us a lot of insight. I dont want to preempt them releasing it. I think theyll release it around 5 00 today or 6 00 today. Gave us a lot of information, a lot of guidelines. I think the guidelines, youll find conservative, primarily without one upping our president because im sure not going to do that. But you know, primarily in the beginning, to progress to what they would call phase 1 which would be some easing and some beginnings of us going back to work or whatever like that, i think what youll see is being curve orustain a lower lowering curve in everything that will prompt you toward progressing into what they call phase 1 and then from that you know, you can go you can move as you move gradually, you move into a phase two area and then a phase three area. But theres a lot of information like i said, ive got the book right here. Theres paming after page after page, you know, on it. Its very, very clear. Its a really its a good plan. And i said this to our president today. I said you know, mr. President , you know, ive seen over and over and over, you know. The amount of mountains of stress and worry on your face. But today our president was pumped up and he was, you know, hes trying to address us moving on, you know, weve lost an awful lot of people, you know. Well north of 30,000. So and thats terrible. But at the same time, you know if you just think about this, and i go back to this. On day one, all the scrambling around that you saw happening, you know, it had to be big. And truly, i know without any question from talking to him directly that the c. D. C. Was advising him that we could lose between two million and three Million People and he was on it. Ow right now, that same man is a few other 30,000 and were probably going to land between 55,000 and 65,000 deaths which is terrible. I mean, no one is overlooking that. But its not two million to three million. And thats because there has been the correct buttons pushed a lot of times. Sometimes youre not going to be able to push 100 out of 100. But today you can see a our ent giddyup in president s step and hesing toward trying to bring us out of this and restart our engine because im telling you, if we dont restart this enin, its going to be really bad. And on top of all that, you know, let me just layer in one more thing. Also, you can see and listen to the president , his very words were, im mad. About how this has happened. Because he really, really thinks that this originated without question in china and absolutely those people let us down, let the world down, and absolutely this has gone all over the world and he is very, very unhappy with that. Thank you. Lets go back to haley with wowk. Reporter you got me this time . We got you. Reporter my question, i missed this portion, ive been working on a million things at one time. When it comes to reopening the , i want to ically dive more into it, where we stand. Do you guys have pressure at this point . Are you confident that well open up the state on our own terms when were ready . Gov. Justice let me say this. Theres plenty of pressure to go around. And as far as feeling pressure, theres been pressure since day one. And i really believe this, you know. I dont say the go tistcally. But i can handle that. But i cab tell you this, im not going to make a decision because somebody is pushing me in a direction i dont think we ought to go. Doesnt matter who it may be. Im going to look out for West Virginians first and foremost because i love you beyond belief, said it over and over. Now at the end of the day, whether the federal government is pushing one direction or Health Officials are pushing another, im going to listen to everybody. And im going to aeroon the side of our Health Officials because ive got that much confidence in them. Theyre superstars. Really and truly. Look at these people on this call with you right now and everything, with you right now in this video transfer, these people are really good. And they are on their game. And were controlling everybody all across who knows where to make sure that we make the very best decision we can possibly make. Now the decision is going to come down to just this. If you dont go back to work if you just sit on the porch and everything and wait, and wait forever, well lose a lot of people. If you go back to work and youve got every duck lined up in a row and every everything from hospital beds to strike teams to everything we can possibly do, this virus is still bad and we got to watch it or itll hurt us there too. Thats why i say, you know, theres no perfect answer here but absolutely we do have to restart this enin and get back to work. I mean if we dont, just envision this just for a second. What if, what if we let our nation slip into a full fledged depression . You know what happens in depressions . We end up with neighbor against neighbor. And then the only way in the world we can really come together is common cause and oftentimes common cause is war. This thing could get way, way, way worse than where we are today. We got to restart the enin. Thank you, haley. We have time for one more question. Athan lane with reuters. Reporter hello. Hello. This is nathan lane with reuters. Question for the governor. Were obviously seeing some issues with Nursing Homes. I know there was a big outbreak in wayne county. I saw on the news. Youre talking about problems in Jackson County. Im not sure exactly whats going on there. I hope you can reconcile that, those issues with some of your comments today about moving forward and getting back to work but also some of your prior comments talking about how the state is doing much better than other states and how, you know, the numbers are trending in the right direction. They may be trending in the right direction but at the same time youre having jut breabs in Nursing Homes that are quite troubling. Im hoping you can reconcile those two issues for me. Gov. Justice appreciate the question. Its a good question. Its troubling to me as well. But youve got to understand and we all got to know that in this situation, a pandemic that none of us have ever dealt with in any way, none of us know how to deal with and everything, in West Virginia we punched a lot of good buttons. Were going to have some short fulls. Theres no way to bat 100 out of 100. Those shortfalls wont just be let go. Absolutely when we have a shortfall were going to do something about it. Really and truly youre exactly right. Weve got a situation at all kinds of different Nursing Homes that weve got a problem with right now and weve got to fix. Thats all there is to it. However if you look at enumbers, the numbers tell the truth. West virginia has done the new mexicoally well. Virginia continues to do phenomenally well. And West Virginians should be really proud of themselves. We got a problem. In certain areas and everything. And those problems have to be addressed. You know, the reporting of our nursing home, the Nursing Homes is done in such a way that its absolutely transparent. The other thing im going to do on this call right new is instruct our national forward and Health Officials and everything to get that up on our website and track it just like its being done in ohio. We need to do that. It makes it more transparent and everything and itll help us. Itll just make it better. So sure. Sure weve got a problem here and there. Were going to fix them. Governor, back to you. Gov. Justice ive said a lot today. I want to underline everything by just saying this. You know, while youve got problems, you know, and while ou have defense, you should be thankful to the people who are giving it their all and everything. Sometimes we make bad decisions. If someone is making a bad decision thats a purposeful bad decision, thats one thing that i wont tolerate at all. If somebody else just makes a mistake and bad decision, we try to help them and all come together and try to make it right. You know. We just dont berate people an everything just because they make a bad decision. We all make bad decisions and everything. I am upset because if someone has purposefully hidden something or made a bad decision, thats not going to thats not acceptable. Thats all there is to it. But i can tell you this. He overwhelming, by far, 99. 999 of the people that have been slogging this out every day, theyre tired. Theyve worked really, really hard. They know were not done. And everything. And they know the level of the pressure and the responsibility and theyre doing great. And i love them and i thank them for it. If we get problems, im going to react and im going to try to do something about it. Ive said that over and ove and everything. I thank you again. And the other thing is, i surely con grg late all of us in the fact that we got a whole lot of money coming into the state and i keep telling everybody to work with similar stuff individually or businesslike and please be counted in our census. Thank you so much. Cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up friday morning, south Dakota Republican congressman dusty johnson will join us to talk about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting his state. Including the recent shutdown of the smithfield pork factory in sioux falls. For more than where more than 600 covid19 cases have been reported. On the latest on u. S. Response to the pandemic, and Howard University president r. Wayne frederick discusses racial dispairs in facing covid19. And watch washington journal sunday morning as we look back on the Oklahoma City bombing 25 years later, with the events of the morning, arrest of the perpetrators and how the attack has been remembered over the years. Cspan has round the clock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. And its all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors an state officials. Track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps. Watch on demand any time, unfiltered, at cspan. Org coronavirus. New york Governor Cuomo extend the shutdown to may 15. He said hospitalizations are