Please keep those people in your thoughts and prayers. Yesterday was a really important day, a national day of prayer. I am sure those families and those people, the great West Virginians we lost appreciate you. I am not going to read you through what has happened in week two and three of the reopening plan, which will begin this coming monday. Guidelines for those businesses up on our website or itw website. The four will begin monday 18th great we will divide guidance at that time. I promise you today that we would give you guidance and a date on the hatfields and mccoy trail. Gotten an awful lot of feedback from a lot of different people from our tourism people to our medical experts, to people in other states. Ghed a lot of different factors and we know how important the hatfields and mccoys trail is to us economically and at the southern end of the state. The biggest thing we can do, i think it is an outdoor activity. Im aware of the fact people from out of state come here and enjoy those trails and everything. As well as our people within our state. That, or goingng to move now that we open the trails on thursday may 21 before memorial day weekend. Today is a part of my West Virginia strong, come back reopening plan. I am announcing that. Limitationsng to be and we will enforce them as best as we possibly can. I will read through them, because i am confident we can do this. Riders are encouraged to wear face masks. Riders must wear a helmet by law. Selfscreening, to the screen for covid19 and guidelines. Areerature checks, riders encouraged to check temperatures. If they are over 100 degrees, sick writers of any kind riders of any kind, we will ask you to move yourself immediately and go home. Grouping, riders are prohibited from congregating along the trail. Shared vehicles, riders are discouraged from sharing a vehicle. Riders are discouraged from sharing Safety Equipment or mass. Masks. It is as simple as this. Anyone who is coming to our trails, we respect you to respect us. Respect our people who are here. Protect yourself but protect us. We will watch this like a hawk to the very best of our ability. There are some people who will mess up. We have to remember, we cannot stay closed forever. We have to try to reopen as we go forward. We have to somehow live with this pandemic as we go forward. Justnnot all as a nation stay at our house. We will slip into the most awful depression we have ever seen. That, there will be food choices, neighbor against neighbor. Many of us have lived through that depression before. My parents surely did. Who livedstill people through the depression. They know what it is like. We think the best thing is not to reopen in any way and to stay at how, absolutely, you cannot do that forever. West virginia knows how to protect itself. All of the people who have businesses or whatever it may be. Follow the guidelines that are already out there. Cleanliness has to be supreme beyond belief. People out in public have to wear masks. Do what wenue to need to do. There are two sides to this coin. It is a difficult decision. Anything we do is a difficult decision. It is as simple as i have said over and over. And you have the possibility of an out and out depression. Somewhere in between is where we have to land. We have to protect ourselves as best as we possibly can. We will protect you. We will be ready to keep up. We have to recognize the economic benefits of what we have to do. We have to move north. We have to continue to move forward. I ask you to try to help and participate. I am happy about reopening the trails. But im also concerned. I will leave it at that. We are going to monitor in every way. I hope each and every person who is on that trail or in our buildings or whatever it may be, respect every single thing about what West Virginia has already done. Our numbers look even better today. We are above our trendline. We are back to where we were yesterday. As far as our active cases versus our recovered cases, you can see the blue line is the active cases. Around 488. E it is we have now tested 3. 3 percent of our population. We are putting out an order to test at all assisted living places and day cares. We want to ease our way back into reopening. We are moving back into opening our trails. But we have to be very careful. Couple of touch on a other things will quit. I have a note on city and county guidance. I know they need our help. Us to a concrete date. Night evenlast though the house has worked on this from our congressmen and women, they are going to come back next week. The only thing i want to add is every day i encourage you more about the senses. It is a simple thing. To get more more dollars to the state of West Virginia. That is all you have to do. Just follow the guidelines. Get counted, please. Lets now go to the West VirginiaNational Guard. A couple things i would like to highlight today. As they begin to go back to production next week. I want to thank toyota. They have made and donated over 32,000 face shields during this downtime. I thank them for the great work to help protect our First Responders and frontline medical folk. I want to highlight the stabilization. We continue to have great success. As well as the School Feeding program. And our workforce efforts. We understand we may have had bumps in the. The nation across right now, West Virginia is doing a very good job of meeting the governors objective. Working with our citizens to make sure they are taking care of. Today is Military Spouse appreciation day. I want to thank my wife and all of the other spouses of military members. Military families sacrifice more than any of us in this country. I want to take this time to thank them. Today is also victory in europe they. I know the governor had a member of his Family Service in the war. We are going through challenging times. There are children who are struggling with not being able to graduate in a normal sense. A father ofer was four who left at the age of 35 and went off to war. My on coal left before graduation and went to war. We want to thank all of thoses world war ii veterans who are still with us today. We thank them for the sacrifices they have made on behalf of our nation. Lets go to the West Virginia dh hr. Good afternoon. I want to say that sunday is mothers day. It is a great opportunity to thoseyour mother for times she has been there for you and recognize her role in our lives. Wondering how to celebrate in the midst of this pandemic. Especially those mothers who are. T high risk critical to continue to follow the guidelines. There are ways to honor moms that do not pose a risk or disease transmission. Schedule an online mothers day call. Make mom a video with happy mothers day messages. Nice and your is have plenty of outdoor space, you can see your mother. Keeping social distancing in mind and face coverings. Mothers day will not look quite the same. I have not seen my mother in over two months. But she understands the need for this. Looking forward to seeing her sometime in the future. Happy mothers day to you and to all mothers out there. Thank you for protecting your family. I will say happy mothers day to my mom as well. I want to speak a little bit about the africanamerican data we have been looking at. To lookally important at subpopulations. Know overall we have had 95 individuals who are overanamerican out of the 1002 it and have had it in the state so far. We have had overall statewide 7. 3 of our cases have been africanamerican. Only 4. 2 of our population is africanamerican. Counties who have had at least one case in the African American population. We will be posting that that if on they by county dashboard. If we look at counties with more than one case of covid19 in the africanamerican population, we have seen several counties have a higher amount of cases among africanamericans than their population of African Americans. Those counties include glee, jefferson, mercer, and putnam. That is important to explore further. Areave many counties who reaching out to the africanamerican population. Hopefully we will continue to do so. We have been working on getting the commission up and running. Getting a meeting set up for early next week. Look forward to sharing this. Thank you both. Are coronavirus czar is available for questions. We are holding todays briefing with media members joining us remotely to practice social distancing. West Virginia University is preparing a major furlough of employees. 900 employeesting over the weekend. I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Other states are probably not too far behind that. We are really just waiting on guidelines and rules. I can give you a doom and gloom scenario. They come out with rules from the federal government. We cant use dollars for anything. Is the case, we will have to clampdown and probably waste people off and do the things that are terrible to do. On the other hand, i dont believe that will happen. I believe higher revenue people will find ways to keep these people whole and keep moving forward. I dont know the specifics about that. But we have significant dollars that we know are going to load to the higher ed you. Ommunity. Are 25today there universities across the state onre attorneys are working that the half of kids. They did not get the benefits of being together. They did not get the benefit of being together and the education there. There are all kinds of things that are still unanswered. Wewe continue to go forward, try to knock them down with the rules and guidelines we get. Forward, thatng is all i can tell you. Rules and the the guidelines from the federal government about Different Things we can do. I will be meeting this afternoon with our revenue people. Give you a pinpoint answer until i get the rules. We hope and pray that we will be able to see our universities thriving. If a daycare does have a positive test, what is the protocol for dozing and reopening . Gov. Justice i think one of the doctors can answer that better. In situations where we have , there needs to be cleaning or further action taken. What would you do if we saw further spread . In that situation there is guidance we got their input on and shared with them. We will continue to work to refine that. My question is inspired by an article that was brought to my attention in the new york times. So my trying something called group testing. It allows you to do more testing. It has its pros and cons depending on the percentage of population. D the i wonder if that is something you have been monitoring and something that could be considered for West Virginia . Think of the math. What they are doing is as simple as this. If one of these comes up back and they can go find out and test them individually. Mathematically, it makes sense. But i think we are moving to have the ability to move forward with testing where we do not have to basically cluster in order to move forward. Thank you. I think there are many ways is a wayally that that to amplify the numbers. To hope is to continue expand testing and not only look at populations with really low , but really continue to strategically move forward. Say virginia is the first that tests all nursing home residents and staff. We are now looking at assisted living. We have looked at veterans homes. We are starting to look at other congregate and vulnerable populations. We have talked about the reproductive score. How many people are infected with the virus can affect another. Today the number across the state is 0. 85. That is a bit down from yesterday. What we are hoping is to bring down the positives and negatives at an individual level and counties. For that kind of assessment, we want to have individual assessment levels. As we are expanding testing in in california they started to do that. I want to ask a couple of questions about an article i read. Cases in fayette county, there was a spike. If that county guidance for hotspots. The article goes on to recommend the average number is 25. Talk about your surveillance of counties. For all of the counties you are testing. Thank you. Kathy has more information on the county situation, so we will let her answer that. We were in that county yesterday and working with them actively. That will feed into the designation status and the assessment status that we are moving into. That is being developed and is pretty much ready to go. Monday is the next time they wanted us to do that. We will be able to share more information with you then. We are actively working with them and they are great partners. A question on the food chain. Governorike to get the to give me his thoughts on the overview of this. There were some cases reported from the eastern panhandle poultry processing plants, that is a big industry there. Obviously with seeing some empty cases because of what is going on nationally. What he or thoughts on protecting our role in the supply chain . Do you feel confident that we have a handle on it . Gov. Justice we have to recognize West Virginia is a gigantic importer of food. What goes on on the National Scene will affect us. The situation you are referring plant, the National Guard is on the way there now. Do some extensive testing there. And try to nip that in the bud and stop it as fast as we possibly can in order to keep the plant moving. I caution everyone on this. , it is as forward simple as this. If we do not move forward, we could awaken to just what you are talking about. Real Food Shortages. Do i think there will be Food Shortages . Absolutely not. So dont anyone take what i am saying and misconstrue it. I do not think we are going to have Food Shortages in any way in West Virginia. Nationd that our continues to move forward. Able to manage this terrible disease before we get that bridge drug i have talked about some leadtimes. West virginia is a big importer of food. We have to keep our eye on what is going on in the nation. Governor, you mentioned earlier this week the formulation of a task force for the black population of the state. Can you give us an update on the status of that and more of an idea of what you want the task force to accomplish . Have all of the data on that. Thank you. Good question. Have the task force formed. The members have been contacted. We are working to set up a meeting with the task force monday. We are looking forward to having some assistance with regard to outreach and education. Slemp provided some of the information earlier. We have been trying to get that on the website. We will be sending that to the task force members. We are moving forward quickly here to see if we can get input from them, and we appreciate all their help and the members who are on there, who have agreed to do that. Thank you. All right, thank you, rodney. Mullen. Will go to paul paul good afternoon, everyone. A question for secretary crouch, i go on to the website, and a list of Nursing Homes has a total of 17 on it now. When will that site include all of the Nursing Homes in West Virginia. And have you gotten all of the testing back yet . Yes, thank you for the question. We should have all of the testing back. We are still compiling that. There are a few tests outstanding. We hope to have that this week. As we have reported in the past, the labs are a little slow getting information back. We hope to have that back online. That information on the website, we are going to add all of the Nursing Homes in the state on here. There are 123. That particular slide is those Nursing Homes that have covid positive 19 cases. The others have not had positive staff or positive patients, but we are going to add everyone on there and see if we can provide a little more information. Adding to the website and making changes, our staff has done a tremendous job in trying to keep up with that, but it still takes a little time sometimes to get that information prepared so that it will go on the website and be understandable for everyone, so we are working hard on doing that. Ok, thank you, paul. Next, we go to Anna Saunders with woay. Hi, governor. You talked about the hatfield and mccoy trail could we have gotten a lot of questions, not just economically come about public concerns about outofstate guests, especially as cases have gone from seven to 30 in the past two weeks. Gov. Justice well, all i can tell you is we are watching it. We are trying to move forward as cautiously as we possibly can. There is no perfect solution here. There is no point in telling you that. The last thing i want to do is tell you anything except the truth. You know, we are you can see the hold group of people around me, and you cannot see all of their disciples that are out in all kinds of different areas. You cannot see all of our different interactions with the federal government. You cannot see all of the interactions with the experts, whether they be at universities or hospitals like Johns Hopkins or whatever, you know, you cannot see all of this that is going on. If you could see it all, you would probably feel more comforted and everything, however, you will know that we are, you know, theres no perfect answer here. Theres no perfect answer to a pandemic that no one has seen before, and absolutely we know the downside of doing nothing. We know the downside of doing too much, and what we are trying to do is hit the bullseye but do it in a way of absolutely ining proactively but moving baby steps, and that is what we are trying to do, and that is what we are going to continue to do. Show an a National Radio little while ago, and he was talking a whole lot about what happened in new york. Well, what happened in new york was just one thing. New york got caught in a situation that they had not acted, and they had not acted proactively, and then all of a sudden, they are in the middle of a firestorm like you cant stop. You know, we did not do that. If you just think back about what we did, you know, we first closed the Nursing Homes to visitation. The next thing we closed are schools. We absolutely tested all of our Nursing Homes. Now we are testing all of the assisted living. We are moving really slowly compared to a lot of other states and everything, but yet younumbers would tell us, dont have to do that, West Virginia. You can just open the whole state tomorrow and everything. Your numbers are so good, just open the whole state. No way we are doing that. We are not doing that. We are going slow enough that we to thetect our people best of our ability, and that is what we are doing, we are doing that absolute baby steps, and we will keep doing that and everything and if the numbers and everything allow us to keep moving, we will keep moving, but only in baby steps. All right, thank you, anna. Charles young. O charles this is charles young. Governor, to followup up on what anna just asked and your answers there, you know, but earlier this week you and other indicated that we were at least a few weeks out from government workers back in their offices. But we have the Hatfield Mccoy trail, and you said there would be week for guidance. Can you say what businesses we are considering for week 4 . Gov. Justice charles, i think it is premature for us to get into, you know, the businesses 4 guidance. You can rest assured that everyone is working on it. Charles, withg, regard to businesses and or absolutely state employees, is as many as we can, you know, as we move back into a halfway normal situation, as many as we can, we want to be able to work from home, and, you know, that is what we want people to do all across the state. Really and truly, we if we can just make it, you know, and that is make it on both ends, make it on the end of the protection of our people and everything and the sickness, and make it on the end of the economics, and it maybe three or four months, but it may be only two or three months and everything, but i really believe within a fourmonth window, we are going to have a drug that really slows this thing down. And then i think probably four months after that, we are probably going to have a vaccine, so that is the window we have got to watch here. This nation, this nation cannot afford, if you watch the unemployment rate, we are rivaling the depression right now, if not exceeding it. This nation cannot absorb, you of still moreths shutdowns, you know, because if that happens, we will spin into something that will be much, much worse than the disease, and so so it is tough. It is tough stuff, you know, you have got to figure it out, and that is why we are just trying to take these baby steps. All right, thank you, charles. We have time for one more. We will go to ryan quinn with the charleston gazette mail. Sent outofstate for some reason, foster cases that wasmitted the league the offenses, and they tested positive for covid19. I cannot tell, because the Judicial Branch and dhhr are giving Different Reasons for them being outofstate. Can you tell me why these kids were outofstate, and if they were outofstate for committed offenses, were they truants or Something Else . When did the state learn about positive tests . And why wasnt this previously revealed . And what is being done to keep our kids in dhhr and bureau custody safe . Gov. Justice secretary crouch, you will have to answer this and everything. I think you will have a better answer than i. Sec. Crouch yes, we are aware of this, of course. The reason they are outofstate varies, depending upon their needs. We have some children who we are not able to place in West Virginia. Tests, wepositive were notified immediately from the facilities that they were in, so we were aware of that. Those children are safe. Those children have been quarantined. Provide, because of confidentiality, specific information on these children. Even the state that they are in or the facility they are in, that is confidential. We protect our children and the confidentiality of our children. But please understand that we are in contact with the facilities. We know what is going on with our children. We send people to visit those children. Our staff goes to visit those children and make sure everything is operating correctly, so we are aware of that, but we cant provide information because of confidential the requirements. All right, thank you, ron. Governor, i will send it back to you. Gov. Justice all right, i would one to comment one second the great work that our agriculture commissioner and his good people do. One thing about the good people of West Virginia, you know, our farmers markets and livestock markets continue to be free open, and we encourage like crazy our growers to grow more wonderful produce and everything to where West Virginia and scanned, and so i command, like i said, commissioner lenhart and , and everything they are doing on the ad side. I want to say more and more on the outside that we can do in wizard and income of the better we are and everything to it i think theres Economic Opportunities there from job growth and just a pure economic dollars that we can generate within products that we can West Virginia and everyone is working on that, but this pandemic has got everybody preoccupied at the moment, but i really believe that theres real opportunity in West Virginia. D by justd en saying this, unless you, you know, if there is something that comes up, if there is something that comes up that is urgent in any way, you will see me over the weekend, and everybody continues to work over the weekend. I have said it over and over. We do not rest until this is over, and no one is going to do that, but nevertheless, i ask you, as West Virginians, to keep on doing the great stuff you are already doing. We are going to try to keep moving ourselves forward and giving you a little more freedoms and bring back things to a little bit more of a normalcy, you know, that we possibly can, but through all that, we want so much to be able stay theyou know, course as best we can hear so West Virginians, please, please do that. And lastly but surely not least, i want to say this, i wish to goodness that i could be with her and hug her in every way, and i am sure my wife kathy is the same, but we both lost kathy and i both have lost our just and so, you know, please take time and someway, somehow, whether it be a phone call or a video call or maybe the opportunity to be with your because, youk em, know, there will be a day when your mom will be gone, and, uh, and so, you know, i am as confident as i can be that i will see my mom again, and cathy hers, you know, someday in heaven, but at the same time, i wish to goodness they were here. You know, i say this story a lot, but, you know, in growing up, you know, a lot of times, uh , you know, if you are playing, you know, watching your kids play, you know, a Little League baseball game or whatever, and the sun would be hot, and the bleachers would be hard, and then you think back, you know, and from the standpoint of, you know, kind of a role reversal, you know, i would have been playing, my mom would have been sitting, but i have been sitting and watching my children play, if, you know, that moment, that bleacher is hard or the sun hot, what you would get to have that moment back. And so once it is gone, you cannot have that moment back, so please take time to embrace your mom and someway, whether it be a phone call owh