Gov. Noem are we ready . Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us, i am joined by the secretary of Labor Regulation marshall holtman and our department of Health Secretary kim. A couple of quick things before i turn it over to update you on things going on across the state. I had a phone call this morning with the Vice President talking about supplies a lab testing capabilities. I also followed that up with a conversation with dr. Birx about getting supplies necessary to be more aggressive in communities across the state in testing. Those are encouraging and i appreciate their help. They have been amazing to be responsive to the situations not just in south dakota but across the country. I want to talk about our development program. It is a Small Business loan program we passed legislation for on the last day of session. That fund was set up by senate bill 192. We are working on getting those loans out the door as soon as possible to get people through this difficult time. They are about 5,000 alone up to 75,000 alone. Thousand dollars. We have done less than 100 so far, they add up to 5 million, roughly 3 million already out the door to help Small Businesses across south dakota. The Different Industries that have gotten relief so far are hotels, restaurants, retail, tourism, manufacturing and many more. From communities such as keystone to sioux falls. All the details for these loans , how they are decided, the loan criteria, processing details, all of that will be on the website. If you are curious about how these loans are working, how they are approved or denied, that criteria will be on that website. I want to touch on the care act, a lot of people are asking when it is available for android phones. It is now available for android phones. Previously you had those capabilities on your iphone, now if you own an android phone, download the app to make sure you are helping the state of south dakota. Im going to turn over to marsha who will give us an update on unemployment in the state of south dakota. Thank you, governor. For weeks we have been talking about the unprecedented unemployment claims we have seen in the state. We continue to see high volume, and we will have new numbers on thursday, as we do every week. It has come to my attention, i am no longer asking individuals to be patient because i is wearingatience thin and people are anxious to receive the benefits. I am asking people to be considerate. The reality is there are many claims to be processed, and so for the public to please her member the person answering the phone is not responsible for the rules or regulations or delays or determinations that may be relevant to your claim. They are trying to help you navigate this process. We have been Training Staff across the department who dont normally work with Unemployment Insurance to take calls. Staff thatg existing , is the quickest way to staff up, we are taking individuals that know something about ui, about our mainframe, our computer applications, and we find training them to take and process claims takes about a week. Whereas if we were to hire somebody new off the streets, it would take upwards of 30 days for them to process anything. We are sensitive to the needs and demands, and are adjusting numbers appropriately. We have added capacity to our call center and have greatly reduced our wait times in our call center for taking claims. We are looking at processing claims. I am not trying to be defensive, but set realistic expectations for the public so they know what we are dealing with and can plan accordingly. The good news is 74 of the claims we received have been processed and paid in a timely manner. 26 of the claims we received have had issues. If a claim has an issue, it does increase the time to get a payment. For the 74 it takes about 14 days for somebody to get a first payment. For the other 26 , it may take upwards of four weeks before you get the first benefit. The issues with claims, there is a question about the separation from the last employer, did you quit, or you laid off, was a covid related. There may be information about wages from another state that we have to collect. All of those things take time when processing. Oftentimes when individuals are unfamiliar with the system, and they have entered their information incorrectly, and when we have an issue like that, it requires a human to interact to process it and keep it moving. Again, it can take up to four weeks to process a claim if there is an issue. We are working on training or staff. We have trained already 20, and another 20 this week. Next week we will train an additional 20. That is an area we need to focus, and we are doing that with staff training. For the week of april 1317, we paid out 11 million in state benefits, and an additional 9. 6 million in federal benefits. This put us at 26 Million Dollars into our economy last week, and the week prior was 8. 5 million. In two weeks we have processed and paid 30 million for the residents of south dakota. One other thing to clarify, a lot of questions of people who had a fulltime job in parttime job. A typical scenario is somebody who works fulltime for the state and maybe waits tables on the weekend. If you lost just that parttime job, you will most likely not be eligible for assistance. It created a lot of confusion, when we said individuals with parttime jobs might qualify, but those are the individuals whose parttime job was their only employment. We did start yesterday taking poa claims, and those are claims were individuals who are independent contractors, Small Business owners. We had a lot of interest in that program, and now those claims can be filed. We are one of the first six states to get that up and running. We are doing everything within our capacity, and increasing our capacity every day, and we ask you to be considerate when you file those claims and work with us so we can help you get everything done as smoothly as possible. With that, i will stand by. Thank you. Gov. Noem we will open it up to any questions you may have. Governor, is there anything you can do about car races . Gov. Noem the car races in southeastern south dakota . The question is if there is anything i can do about the car races. I can encourage people not to go. I do not think it is a good idea for them to attend. I still recommend we follow the plans i have laid out for south dakota, where we do not gather in sizes over 10. And then folks to continue to social distance. Certainly that is something that is coming up in the future, but i encourage all south dakotans to follow the plans i have given to continue to flatten the curve. We in the media are hearing from an increasing number of people pushing back on us, saying this is being blown out of proportion, they are ready to get over that. What would you say to them . Gov. Noem i would say nothing has changed, from the projections i laid out several weeks ago. We still expect our peak infection rate will happen in the middle of june. That means we need to continue doing what we are doing today. Staying home, not going out and taking unnecessary trips, not gathering in large groups. We have to practice social distancing, stay six feet apart, that is incredibly important. If people no longer do that, then we have an opportunity for virus infections to spike and increase. If everybody were to ignore those guidelines, we could overwhelm our health care system. I encourage people to continue what they have done for several weeks, take this seriously, protect themselves, families and communities and stay home. Is there a question on the phone . [indiscernible] gov. Noem i did not know who any of those people were. We will see if one of you can power through. [indiscernible] two questions. About the racing. Do you take any personal affront to people going to the racetrack, considering all you said about social distancing . Gov. Noem no, there is a lot about my job that i choose not to take personally. I strongly recommend to the people of south dakota that they not go and stay home. It is wise and smart to continue on the plan we laid out for south dakota for several more weeks. This one is for kim. A story was out today that the arch in sioux falls has 14 positive residents, and two positive employees. I have it from good authorities that the employees have never been contacted by anyone, be it the state of south dakota, the city of sioux falls, or their own management. Can you shed any light at the arch, and why those folks have not been contacted . Thank you for that question, i am not aware of individuals not being contacted. Our process is when we get positive results either from our Public Health lab or commercial labs across the state or out of state, is that we make contact with those positive people most of the time within the same day, for sure within 30 six hours. I will certainly go back and look into the situation. I am not aware of 14 cases at this location. We have reached out because there is a handful of cases among residents of the facility. I will be happy to follow up on that. I would question anybody who is not able to share how they found out about their positive test results. Just to follow up, madam secretary, should the people who work there, the employees, should they tell fellow Staff Members that they have tested positive . Two again, there is guidelines for what to do if you test positive. You should be quarantining yourself for 14 days, that would be first and foremost. We tell people to stay home, stay away from other people, selfisolate even within your home you do not get other people sick that you share your residence with. That would be first and foremost. We work with employers on what they need to do to help make sure they have a safe workplace for their employees. In situations like you described, we want to make sure people are practicing good hygiene on a regular basis, that they have symptom checks for employees as they come in. A lot of things can happen at the workplace to keep people safe, and we work with employers on those strategies. Thank you, madam secretary. I think steve from the ap was trying to get in. Cut him some slack. Gov. Noem go ahead. [indiscernible] gov. Noem we certainly have been talking and visiting with folks around the smithfield situation, and when the facility is shut down, if there is spread happening, it would happen in the community. We believe that to be true, and we are continuing to take action and work with those on the ground and nonprofits in the community to give folks all the materials they need on what to do to protect their families and neighbors as well. [indiscernible] gov. Noem we did have positive cases of employees and contacts that were positive pretty quickly. We knew there was spread happening outside of the plant, because the contacts we were making at the department of health, Contact Tracing, was identifying those individuals as well. Rapid city journal. On fox news they said 99 of the spread at smithfield where did you get this number . Was it from the department of health . Gov. Noem we are continuing to work with smithfield and their employees and family members and Community Members to make sure we are aggressively testing, and we are isolating those who were testing positive so we can slow down the spread. Is 99 accurate that you shared on national tv . Gov. Noem we can continue to look into the percentages, if that is what you would like us to do. Im just wondering if its fair to say [indiscernible] gov. Noem at the time of closure, that certainly would be where the spread was happening, because there were not employees in that plant. Another question on the phone . This is andy here in sioux city. We spoke to the county commissioners earlier today, and they said there is nothing they can do to shut down the races this weekend. My question is, are you worried about the message this might sent to outofstate promoters who want to hold events with this many people in south dakota . Gov. Noem we will continue to carry the same message we have carried throughout this covid19 response we have had across south dakota. We encourage people to stay home. We did attempt to bring a bill to give counties the authority, but the legislature did not support that bill. The county is accurate wishing they had more tools to deal with this situation, but i am recommending people not go. We have several weeks ahead of us were we need to continue to mitigate the situation and take action to protect the people of our state, and i encourage folks to stay the course. I was going to follow up on that same topic, that you are strongly recommend people not go to the races. Can you do something stronger than that in order the race is not to go forward . Gov. Noem i am going to continue to recommend that people not go. That will be the course of action i will be taking. Is there a question in the room . On the phone . Bob, go ahead. Any news from the cdc in terms of the smithfield report . Gov. Noem we still do not have the cdc report in regards to mitigation action smithfield can take. As soon as we receive that report, we will make it available for all of you in the public. As some of the trials for hydroxychloroquine come out, [indiscernible] the team that is working on the trial and the registry study in south dakota is looking at all available studies, we have robust safety protocols in place to help make sure anybody who participates in south dakota will be safe. We feel it is appropriate to move forward. We think the drug holds promise. For both the treatment of folks who are positive and we are excited to see if it has a preventative effect. The one thing i would add about one youis, for every see, you have to go through the fine print in detail to understand how different studies are structured, understand different types of hydroxychloroquine in combination with other drugs. More than often the studies are not comparable. I do believe sanford indicated they were doing other Clinical Trials at the same time. This is not the only Clinical Trial they are conducting. In terms of perspective, what you paid in the last two weeks, how does that compare for last year . Payments from a year ago would have been about 504,000. So, more than 20 times . Correct, which is what we which is consistent with the claim numbers we have seen. Gov. Noem further questions . Ok, thank you, have a wonderful day. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer television has changed since cspan began, but our Mission Continues to provide an unfiltered view of government. Already we have brought to primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment, and an out of the federal response to coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or on our radio app. The conversation through washington journal, or through our social media scene. Cspan, americas Cable Television company. Brought to you today by your television provider. Up, georgecoming mason universitys Mercator Center on the use of Contact Tracing technology to identify and contain coronavirus. Ther that, we discussed constitutionality of house members voting remotely during the pandemic with Daniel Freeman as council30 years and parliamentarian for the house judiciary committee. Joins usia velasquez to talk about congressional efforts to pass another Coronavirus Relief bill and its potential impact on Small Business. Later, we hear from governor doug burgum about his sta