Video showing mr. Arberys last moments of life. It is horrific and georgians deserve answers. I know they will be working aroundtheclock thoroughly and independently investigating mr. Arberys death to find the truth. In these moments i would ask you continue to pray for his loved ones, the local community, as well as our state. As you all know, we are living in unprecedented times. Here in georgia as well as across the country. Ourd19 has threatens health and wellbeing. This deadly virus has rocked our economy. While we experienced dark days on this journey, i am encouraged by our progress in this war. Are taking the pandemic seriously, Wearing Masks, practicing social distancing and following cdc guidelines. I am confident if we remain vigilant, we will emerge from this stronger, more united and victorious. I am proud to report we are seeing record highs in testing, thanks to partnership with Augusta University, our University System, the private sector as well as local Public Health officials. We have doubled our daily Testing Capacity and have over 00 total tests reported to the states website. A few weeks ago georgia ranked 43rd in testing per capita. According to29th, the covid19 mapping project. Out of 23 states with more than 5 million people, we are now 12th in per capita testing. While i am proud of what we have accomplished, there is more we can do to utilize our potential and enhance our health outcomes. As we continue to expand testing for covid19, we must also focus on lab capacity for testing specimens. We have more than 60 testing sites with more supply than demand. In accordance with new cdc guidance, the department of Public Health and district offices are encouraging all georgians, even if not experiencing symptoms, to schedule an appointment with their health care provider, local health department, or get a screening through the au app. Momentum inon this the days and weeks to come. I am proud to report record lows in ventilator use. Through our shelterinplace slow thewere able to spread and strengthen our health care infrastructure. Because of yourpatience ce ande of your patien compliance, we reduced stress on hospitals and their employees. We were also able to enhance hospital bed capacity throughout georgia. Share ofad our fair challenges over the past several weeks and i am proud of what we have accomplished together. When you look back on our successes in this battle against covid19, they all have something in common, and that is partnerships. During this pandemic, businesses, academia, government and hardworking georgians have come together to address pressing and future needs in our state. A distillery is making thousands of gallons of hand sanitizer. Anddonated face shields countless restaurants provided free meals to Frontline Health care workers. The department of economic georgiaent has over 130 suppliers on list of businesses providing ppe and other equipment to fight this virus. Walgreens ands, walmart partnered with the state and University System to test well over 1000 georgians today. Company has been supplying us with test kits to use across our state. Quest diagnostics also delivering thousands of testa qualified Health Centers around the state so all georgians have access. Google is working around the clock with dr. Toomey and the department of Public Health to increase Contact Tracing statewide. As you can imagine, this list goes on and on. These partnerships have no doubt saved lives in every corner of our great state and i am thankful. Today i am honored to announce another partnership with the private sector that will enhance current efforts to screen and test more georgians. The peach bowl, College Footballs most charitable organization, announced it will donate over 1 million to Augusta UniversityHealth System to scale the telemedicine screening app. This is an incredibly generous gift and we thank them for their support in our fight against covid19. Part operates the chickfila bowl and they have donated and committed more than 57 million in charities and scholarships to organizations in need. They created the chickfila kickoff game and peach bowl proudly serves the as the atlanta system since 1968. Peach bowl joins Augusta National and more in supporting these efforts in Georgias Health and sciences university. I want to personally thank my friend gary at the peach bowl for helping keep georgians safe in our battle against covid19. While our state has taken measured steps forward, we remain focused on protecting the most vulnerable among us. Over half of all coronavirus deaths and 20 of all cases in georgia are related to longterm care facilities. In georgia folks with Underlying Health conditions and the medically fragile account for nearly 2 3 of the deaths in our state. These are heartbreaking statistics and we are doing everything in our power to keep these georgians safe. The Georgia National guard has been the tip of the spear in our efforts to protect the most vulnerable among us. They have received National Recognition for their work, with 12 other states from florida montana replicating their procedures. To date the guard conducted more infectioncontrolled missions in longterm care facilities with 375 out of 790 facilities receiving more than one fission visit. I would like to thank them more guardsmendsmena and women, and our Critical Infrastructure workers. Truly georges heroes and we cannot thank them enough for what they have been doing. Theerday i spoke with center for medicare and Medicaid Services administrator seema efforts to georgias protect vulnerable populations. She thanked us for our strong shared with the Trump Administration is doing to enhance transparency and support on the front lines. Of frank leadership berry and his team, they have begun planning for in person inspections of longterm care facilities to assist with Infection Control, monitoring and compliance of federal and state regulations. Safety to our staff, employees and residents remains a top priority. The department will continue to work with fema to ensure care workers have appropriate ppe. Ofdate the Department Community of health has deployed to Health Care ProfessionalsSkilled Nursing facilities with more in the pipeline. Rest assured we will continue to do everything in our power to protect these vulnerable georgians from harm. With record testing numbers, lownced surge capacity, ventilator use and favorable data from the department of Public Health, we continue to take small, measured steps forward as a state. We want to remind people to get important medical appointments and procedures done to maintain their health. Times, wesaid many must protect both the lives and livelihoods of all georgians. There are many people today who cannot afford to put food on the table. We must fight for public and alcan Economic Health of our state. As we celebrate the success of our partnerships today, Augusta University, peach bowl and georgia businesses large and small, remember that building a stronger, safer, more prosperous state is a team sport. We may not agree on certain policies or belong to the same political party, but we all want the same thing, a state where families are healthy, businesses are thriving, communities are flourishing, and people are optimistic about tomorrow. We want a georgia where your zip code does not define your potential, where opportunity exists for all hardworking georgians. Now more than ever we must put our differences aside and put georgians first. Georgias families, workers and businesses need us. Their future and hours hangs in the balance. I am honored to bring up the Augusta University president dr. Brooks to give you an update on the partnership we have with Augusta University. Thank you very much, Governor Kemp. Strongthank you for your support and unwavering leadership during this unprecedented time in our lives. We are thing for for your support of Augusta University. We are a proud part of the University System of georgia and i wanted to acknowledge the leadership. I also want to acknowledge collaboration we have received from the Georgia National guard. Hank you, general thank you for your steadfast support. I am proud of the work of Augusta University. Providers and researchers have been on the front lines of the battle, enhancing the states ability to test and slow the spread of the virus. Their effort has been nothing short of herculean. By leveraging telemedicine mobilese, au launched a application to provide access to covid19 screenings for all georgians everywhere. Through the au app, which can be downloaded to your smartphones, individuals can receive our virtual visit from a licensed provider 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from the comfort of your home and at no cost to your patient. As of yesterday 14,400 georgians had received a free screening through the app. Some have been referred for testing. An additional 3000 were referred to testing when needed. In addition to other testing sites, in collaboration with the National Guard, we have set up 11 drivethrough locations throughout the state. 20,000,ollected increasing testing more than six fold in a matter of weeks. We continue to make important contributions to the lives of the citizens of our state. Augusta University Health cannot do this alone. Withnnot provide georgians the level of testing they deserve if they have to do it alone. Extraordinary work requires all of us, state, public and private entities, must come together when the fight against this disease. I am pleased to welcome a new partner in this fight. Stepping up in a tremendous time of need, peach bowl inc. Partnered with Governor Kemp and Augusta University to provide spending to scale up the make screenings available statewide. I want to thank the ceo of the peach bowl for the generous donation helping save georgians across our state by providing improved access to covid19 screening. Through publicprivate partnerships like the one through the peach bowl, our ability to augment the department of health in their commission to provide covid19 testing to all georgians who need testing is dramatically enhanced. Governor kemp, thank you once again for your leadership. We stand with you in this important and lifesaving effort. We are all in this together, and together we will win this fight. Thank you, sir. Thank you, mr. President. I hope you will pass along our gratitude to the folks working hard in the call center and the folks helping with the testing. We are grateful along with our Frontline Health care workers. I want to turn it over real quick to our insurance and fire safety commissioner. General king is part of our Coronavirus Task force, leading the preparedness committee. With them. Ing close i have asked general king to lead the charge in gainesville, georgia in hall county with the situation we are facing there. I want him to give us an update. Thank you, governor. Appreciate you having me here today. Appreciate the work you entrusted me to look at ways to tackle the hotspot in northeast georgia. Yesterday i had the pleasure of meeting with local leaders up in gainesville, led by the northeast Georgia Latino Chamber of commerce. To discuss ways to stop the spread of the virus, particularly in the hispanic community. There are some great folks that attended that meeting. The district two director of the georgia apartment of Public Health. The northeast georgia Health System. A doctor, president of the medical association of georgia. And an associate of the poultry federation. A local pastor, among others. Together, they formed a task force, gainesville against covid19. This task force is focused on developing locally driven solutions to ensuring covid19 we have some effective strategies in hall county and surrounding areas. Priority one is to find ways to communicate effectively the Safety Measures to including practicing social distancing, Wearing Masks in public, and avoiding large social gatherings. This work involves coordinating with local businesses, radio stations, churches, and other organizations to stop the spread using thesease hispanic community, which has been especially hit hard. This task force will focus on speaking to them in their own language. They wanted to communicate that covid19 testing is free and share that information with people so they can be tested. Local poultry plants to see the measures put in place to protect workers while maintaining our food supply. The next step is making sure workers continue these practices while at home in their communities. I am especially excited about the work, because it is locally driven. It is led by people who work and live in gainesville. Governor kemp and the rest of the georgia team is completely focused on this fight. But we know the solutions have to be locally driven. I am excited about the efforts of the Gainesville Task force against covid19 and i know they will do a fantastic job in stopping the spread of this disease. Thank you, governor. Gov. Kemp thank you very much, general. We appreciate what you are doing in hall county. Also we will open it up for questions. I want to make sure everyone can answer here questions about anything, as well as dr. Toomey and others. With that, we will open it up for questions. Reporter governor, in a recent teens with aaid drivers permit will be allowed to have their drivers license without a drivers test. Do you think this will make the roads more dangerous . Gov. Kemp that is a really good question, something we have been working on for several days now. We should have a resolution to that. The department of Driver Services team has been focused on basically this new norm we are experiencing, so we certainly appreciate the feedback we have gotten. I think it is limited in scope, but we should have resolution on that real soon. Reporter a model created in part by your tech shows by late summer by georgia tech shows by late summer we could see 10,000 deaths in georgia. If cases continue to rise, would you be willing to reinstate a shelter in order that you currently ended a short time ago . Gov. Kemp dr. Toomey and i made it clear we will follow the data and Science Behind this as we take our measured steps forward. Turn in athe numbers different direction we would like to see him a we will take further action. I will let dr. Toomey speak to these models. One model said we will have 20,000 deaths by august. I have seen other models that dr. Birx i think it was the last press conference president the models are not incorporating all the social distancing requirements that the stakes have in their regulations states have in their regulations. It is important for citizens to know we are following a lot of things. The more we test, the more positives we are going to see. We know there is community spread. All the in all of this, measures we had was to flatten the curve, build the Hospital Capacity and intrastructure we needed. And infrastructure we needed. We continue to watch the numbers every day. Our numbers are continuing to look better. Our percent of positives to the number of tests taken has gone in a week from the low 20s today it is around 15 . It has been fluctuating between 14 and 16 . Our numbers continue to look very good, but that does not mean weve got to quit doing what we are doing. Going all georgians when to public places, wear your mas ks. I wore one when i got a haircut this morning. Has been doing the same thing. That is what we need georgians to do to protect themselves. Avoid large gatherings and lets continue to drive the numbers down. It is important for georgians not to get scared or panicked because somebody has a new model that says something. I will tell you the model we were following, as soon as you make a change following the gating criteria, the model changes and penalizes you for moving forward. That is just the nature of the world in some of these models. I get that. All the models are wrong, but they are good guidance. We are also continuing to Pay Attention to our hospital bed capacity, which continues to remain in good shape even as we continue to stand up additional bed capacity with our mobile pods in albany. Dr. Toomey, do you have anything to add . Reporter can you talk about the recommendations for all georgians getting tested . Is there any concern this will contribute to any labs . Gov. Kemp we have been working on the lab situation. The general and dr. Toomey can speak on the lab situation. We did indeed press our labs. This is something we have never been through before. Nobody was prepared, i think, for this widespread testing like we are doing. Thankfully we have ramped up our sampling with 66 testing sites around the state. Labs. Are pushing our i will tell you that is a good thing. We wanted to increase our testing. Now we are working on increasing our lab capacity. Our efficiencies at the lab, expanding labs we are looking at a lot of different options. We had a whole team working on that for the last fews days. Have done a lot better job on testing over the last, but weve still got the last two weeks, but weve still got to keep doing that to make progress in our state. Reporter i have a question about the shooting in brunswick. Do you have concerns about the way the investigation has unfolded thus far . Two, what will your office do specifically to ensure this is a fair and thorough investigation . Gov. Kemp im not going to comment on the ongoing investigation, but i ordered the gbi director to offer assistance to the local d. A. I did that right after seeing i toldrrific video director reynolds to follow the truth and administer Justice Without respect to person. I told him that when i hired him and when i asked him to reach out to the District Attorney that has the case. Thankfully that District Attorney allowed us to continue to do an independent investigation. I have no doubt in my mind it will be fair and that director reynolds and this Seasoned Team he has of investigators will work quickly, but they will also be very thorough and will go wherever the truth takes them. Reporter thank you, governor. Reporter i want to ask a question about the coronavirus and the budget. We saw the tax revenue numbers down by more than 1 billion. What kind of impact is that going to have on the states ability to handle this crisis . We are talking about 14 acrosstheboard cuts. Will you want to exclude the department of Public Health from those cuts so it can continue this fight . Gov. Kemp i will do exactly what i have been doing in regard to the state budget. I will fight for the things that are priorities in our state. Certainly health care has been part of that with our waivers, a signature piece of legislation we got through the legislature to continue to make health care in georgia more affordable, more accessible, and also more efficient from the private sector market and medicaid program. Obviously in this crisis our First Responders, our Frontline Health care workers, as well is continuing to have supporting teachers and educators are my number one priorities. They will continue to be. What that looks like when we get finished with the budget we will have to see what the senate rules out. Rolls out. That is what i will be fighting for in this budget. We continue to be engaged with the federal delegation on everything going on with the previously passed cares act and the current discussions they stimulus, whether that happens or not. I am confident they will work hard on georgias behalf, and i will be doing the same. Reporter how often art residents in assistant are residents in assisted living facilities being tested . Are you concerned they will go out shopping and then possibly bring coronavirus back into those homes . Gov. Kemp that is a concern not only for care facilities, but hospitals and clinics and put whatever the facility and whatever the facility is. Our people are a lot more knowledgeable now than six weeks ago. I will let the general speak to the training he has done not only on cleaning these facilities, but making sure those workers know the protocols. He has seen interesting things with facilities, people are changing close before the clothes before they go to work or come in. They are careful about sanitation and masking and ppe. We have learned a lot. The guidance has been put out. That guidance is being followed now better than it was. This will be a fight in our longterm care facilities until there is some medication or vaccine that can shield these individuals. It is our Elderly Population as well as anybody that is medically fragile. They need to continue to be careful in this environment. That is why we engaged the director to start doing the in person protocol checks to make sure this Infectious Disease control policies are being followed and everyone in the facility is knowledgeable. I had a call with the Georgia HealthCare Association today to had witht the call i the director. They want to do this. Welcomedjority of them the National Guard in. They requested testing when they need it. If they ask us for something, we are trying to get it to them, whether it is cleaning or ppe. General add. E let me tell you how proud i am of the folks that work in our longterm care facilities, having engaged with a number of these employees. They were working very hard. In the last two days, i have been in a facility in henry county they are working hard to take care of their residents. With respect to the training we are providing, the Infection Control, the testing we provide every bit of that is at the request of the specific longterm care facility. When we provide basic training, some of the things the governor talked about, what ppe do you need, how do you put it on. You come to work in your street clothes, you change into your work clothes and put your work clothes in a ag in a bag. Simple things to prevent crosscontamination. We have done over 1200 missions over missions. Over 300 of them we have done twice. We will continue to do that. We will continue to support our most vulnerable citizens. With respect to testing, when we see the data that tells us a Long Term Care facility is having a problem, that will trigger the call to offer additional support. Our partners will provide that sample collection. That goes back to the lab for testing. It is important to note these folks in longterm care facilities have no requirement to keep ppe on hand before covid19. Their learning curve was absolutely vertical. We are not just working for them, we are partnering with them. We very much appreciate everything they are doing to partner with us and help their residents get through this. I want to take a moment and speak about testing. We know the importance of testing. One of the critical pieces of that has been the availability of test swabs and testing kits. That has been a challenge for the nation as a whole. Through dr. Toomeys work in Public Health we put in place contracts with private labs to increase capacity. I am happy to say that in conversations with fema, the cdc and white house in the last several days, we have a commitment from the federal government to supply georgia with 210,000 test swabs during the month of may. That will be coming into the state in weekly allegations. I think our ability to ramp up testing will only increase in the next several weeks. Said. Ill echo what homer very grateful to the Trump Administration, the task force. They have been signaling that to us over the last several days. They are focused on longterm care facilities like we are. They know the ppe and testing will be a big help in fighting that battle. Dr. Toomey, while we are on testing, why dont you give a quick update on anything you might have. Dr. Toomey good afternoon, everyone. The last time i was here i think i talked about the challenge i gave to our team to do 100,000 tests in two weeks. Tests inone 110,000 less than two weeks by ramping up our test sites, being more efficient. Needed recognize that we to offer testing more broadly. That is why we opened up the criteria, that anyone who wants to get a test regardless of their symptoms can get tested. We will continue to prioritize First Responders and others at high risk. We want to ensure that everyone who wants to get a test can get access to free testing through one of our sites. It is particularly important now as we look at the statistics. As the governor said, we are initiating Contact Tracing. The trigger to begin Contact Tracing is that positive test. We want to identify anyone in the community who may be infected, symptomatic or not, so we can stop that spread. Thank you. I dont know if this is better for dr. Toomey or you, governor, but as more people get out and start returning to businesses, you say you are going to watch the data. What is the metric or metrics that you focus on to determine things are getting out of control again . What are the things you are really watching. Gov. Kemp i will let dr. Toomey come back up. We are watching the things we have always been, watching the curve go up and down, watching our bed capacity, cases of flulike symptoms, emergency room visits. A lot of times you can get more nrom those figures than you ca before the numbers you are seeing on testing. I have also been watching our number of positives to the amount of testing we are doing. Right now we are doing more tests, but the percentage of those positive is going down. You have to keep all of this relative, right . If we start focusing slowly on Nursing Homes solely on Nursing Homes or if we have a situation like an albany that hotspot like, or a we are seeing in gainesville and we start doing a bunch of testing up there, most likely that will drive our numbers up. If it is an isolated area we can control and do Contact Tracing, which is going on now dr. Toomey will be talking more about that next week we can stay on top of those issues. A great example is albany. I went down there yesterday. They have really stayed on top of things. Their community pulled together to take the fight to the virus, to get people to adhere to social distancing and avoid large gatherings. The pastors did the right thing by not holding large in Person Services and doing it online. That is what general king is doing in hall county. We know a lot more now than we whent the end of january this virus seems to have been here and was spreading before that. Realized i will see if dr. Toomey has anything to add. Dr. Toomey you covered many of the things i would have said. In addition, we are looking not only at the numbers coming in in aggregate, but individually. We may be able to identify hotspots as they are emerging and get on top of them quickly. That is the value of Public Health as a statewide system that we have counties working together with the state, looking howhese data daily at things are unfolding. Individuals in hall county identified there were issues before we did in our statewide data and alerted us to that. We will use not just the aggregate data reported to us, but also the individual data. I want to mention Nursing Homes. Nursing homes are a hotspot. To me, one of the keys to ensuring Nursing Homes stay because forward we are looking at covid19 as the new normal of doing business in the Public Health. Infection control is a critical part of what they need to do as part of their routine business. Several of our Health Districts are working in partnership with a local hospital system. I would like to shout out wel lstar in partnership with the Cobb County HealthDepartment Going into Nursing Homes to offer testing, but also to do work on Infection Control. We have to continue that. That should be part of our ongoing work in the future, to continue to ensure Infection Control is meticulously followed, even without testing. That is the key to stopping the spread in Nursing Homes. Particularly, as you pointed out in your question, testing the staff who worked there to ensure they are not unwittingly coming into work with an infection that is unrecognized. As we continue to monitor both temperatures and having access to health care workers, i think we can get on top of these hotspots and increases before they happen. Dr. Toomey, dont go anywhere. Does the state currently have enough staffers to trace every case that arises, or does the state need to prioritize frontline workers and more vulnerable communities due to the sheer number of cases . Dr. Toomey we are in the process of ramping up dramatically Contact Tracing is the question . We estimated we need about 1000. We already have 250 on board and have been able to engage students as part of their work, both medical and Public Health students. We are currently on boarding 200 of those. You may have even seen there is a Job Announcement on our website to hire additional staff. We had 1000 applications. We will be hiring within the next week at least 300 and hope in the second wave to hire 300 more. I will be talking about this in the days to come. We have been able to ramp up our numbers significantly. Reporter the overall goal is 1000 staffers . Dr. Toomey we are aiming ultimately for 1000. We have been able to get between 500 and 600 between the ,tudents, interns, and staff redeploying existing state staff as well. We have a partnership with the cdc foundation. They are getting us a training coordinator starting next week as well as a deployment coordinator. Use metaphors, but this is like a military operation. Logisticalto get our people to deploy. This is a logistical deployment. We want to make sure we have experts to help us. We reached out in a deliberate and creative way to engage in local donor community, as well as our schools. We are bringing on med students is that we will be training the Public Health leadership of the future, not wanting to go into dermatology or some easy thing, but get into something hard like Public Health. We are hoping this is part of the success of our efforts, as well as stopping the spread of covid19. Report changed sincehas cspan began 41 years ago, but our Mission Continues to provide an unfiltered view of government. Havedy this year, we brought you primary election coverage, the president ial pmp between coverage, and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch online or listen on our free radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media feeds. Cspan, created by private industry, americas cable companies, as a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. Sunday night on q a, a look at american president s with a look at the books they have written. Has often been that kennedys father was the one pulling the strings, but that is not true. Won the Pulitzer Prize. There multiple times he brought up a Pulitzer Prize. He even told a historian, i would rather win a Pulitzer Prize than the president. And washingtony, dc, people have been gossiping, did kennedy really write that book . I wonder how much money they are getting out of those royalty checks . But then the pullets are change pulitzer changed. I looked at the letters kennedy was receiving a 1957, and librarians were sending him letters, schoolteachers were sending him letters, saying, did you really write this book . You would not have accepted that prize if you did not write the book, would you . That is not the right thing to do. What sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. The president s from public onairs available now president s from best to worst and features perspectives into the lives of leaders and their leadership styles. the president sg and order your copy today, wherever books and ebooks are sold. Dr. Francis collins of the National Institutes of health testifies, along with the acting director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and development authority. They discuss ongoing efforts to improve Testing Capacity and answer questions on antibody testing,