Information in a moment. He will be here to present information in a moment. We also have the commissioner to answer any questions you might have that pertain to what he has been doing. That will become more apparent in a moment. Anxiousverybody is about todays announcement. I will try to get to it. Data withussing the Public Health experts in the department of health, with epidemiologists, and the state of Louisiana Commission, and really, reviewing the data that we have been accumulating over the last couple of weeks, we will be moving to phase one on friday, may 15. But is this friday. So we will be lifting the stayathome order. The next proclamation will likely be issued on thursday, be effective on friday, and we intend to leave it in place for 21 days, which i think is the fifth. So the next time that we anticipate having an announcement like today will be on monday, june 1. Obviously we will not know what that amount will look like until we get there and have the most recent data to look at. Decisions,like all this one involves a lot of time and work. I want to thank the folks at the department of health, especially dr. Bu and his team. We wanted to make absolutely sure that we were following the cdc plan that was issued by our task force and President Trumps phased approach to reopening the country. I do believe we are striking the right balance with this plan. Now it is obviously between Public Health on the one hand and Public Health emergency, and reengaging more of our economy, getting more of our businesses opened, employers back to work, customers and our stores and restaurants, and so forth. Moreou going to get some data and you are going to get some more data in a moment. We meet thell you criteria steps from the white house, based on declining covid19 like illnesses being presented to hospital Emergency Rooms based on cases. And you will see in a moment that is particularly true with respect to cases in tests administered, which is one of the white houses criteria. And with respect to hospitalization. In addition, as we outlined on friday, and this too is part of the president s plan, we now have more Testing Capacity in state. And in fact, in the first week of may, the federal government wanted to resource the state with collection kits that will allow us to get to 200,000 tests per week. Im sorry, per month. That would be a tall order. And so we feel much better about that as well. And that capacity we have for testing, for Contact Tracing will be in place by this friday, it greatly exceeds that which was available to us several weeks ago. The bottom line is the people of louis as a of louisiana have worked really hard since the Public Health emergency was first announced, in order to slow the spread of covid19. And i am proud and i want to thank the people of louisiana for doing that. Complying with the stayathome order and had they not, we would not have seen the progress that we have been able to see. I also want to remind everybody that until friday, the stayathome order is still in place. I mentioned that the doctor will come up in a moment. I did want to explain a little bit more about what phase i will look like. Again, we are doing this on monday. So that we have an opportunity to answer any questions throughout the week. The proclamation will be issued on thursday, effective on friday, and im encouraging people to read the product the proclamation itself because it will be a complete document that will give you links to different places that if you need to go see certain things, such as, we will still have three categories of businesses in louisiana. Those b deemed essential, the Cyber Security and Information Security agency that works in the department of Homeland Security at the national level, they are on their third edition of what constitutes essential infrastructure. We have embraced the full scope of those businesses that constitute essential infrastructure. They will continue to operate as they have without restrictions as to the number of persons that can be present and so forth. But they do have obligations, obviously, to employees and customers with respect to safety and social distancing and the use of ppe and so forth. Then you have a second category of nonessential businesses. I will get back to those in a moment. And you have a third category, and those that are closed businesses. There will be fewer of those but there will still be business types that will be closed in louisiana. For example, during phase one, tattoo parlors and such establishments, spas, unused meant parks amusement parks, children museums, bars without permits, they will remain closed. That isnd category, everything in between. Essential not infrastructure and you are not going to close, you are in the middle. Just like we had a middle before, but the middle will be larger because there will be more businesses that are allowed it to open and they will include things like hair and nail salons, gyms and Fitness Centers. But there will be restrictions in place. Most notably, these businesses will operate with a maximum occupancy of 25 , and must practice social distancing. In fact, the 25 of that that we know, that they can practice social distancing when they open. There should be enough Square Footage in the establishment so individuals can stay six feet from one another. Employees interacting within close proximity to customers will have to wear a face mask or face covering. Expect thated, i the proclamation that moves us into phase one and ends the stayathome order will last for 21 days through june 5. That is that anticipated announcement will be on june 1. I also want to know that as we make decisions about things like salons and gyms, we received input from the Louisiana Commission task force, but also from the different trade associations, about protective measures that they will put in place for the safety of their customers and their employees. And we fully expect that they will be cautious as they have been all along. And that is why, at this time, i think it is safe to take this next step statewide. It from a regional basis. I know there are a lot of different business uses and building types out there. We are aware that for some, the new guidance, it may not be as easy as for others. And everyone can read the proclamation closely and understand how it applies to them when it is released this week. I would remind the Business Community about open safely. La. Gov. This is a resource that will informationtional to help you to establish how many people you can have inside at a certain time. Once you register, you will be notified. As we move from one phase to the next and the guidance changes, you will not have to go looking for it. It will be sent to you once you register. Are trying to understand what the 25 means, occupancy capacity is based on gross Square Footage. In the particular use of your building. Is 25 generally speaking designed to allow between six feet between people and 10 feet between tables. Will still encouraged you encourage you to closely interact only with members of your household. Into aou are dining restaurant, u. N. Your immediate household puts it at one table. But you need to be at least 10 from the next table so you have six feet between people. What you cannot do as a business or church or Something Like that is say, if im limited to 25 of my occupancy, i will put the 25 of my Square Footage. That doesnt work. We are trying to do this as from the next table so you have six feet between people. Safely as we possibly can. It includes customers and employees. The Square Footage does not include outdoor or patio seating that many establishments have been utilizing over the last couple of weeks. So social distancing for patty is sitting patio seating will continue to be required. Its different for our businesses in different for our public than the way we operated before the Public Health emergency. But it is required if we are going to cautiously move forward, while giving our businesses, to serve more more people, bringing in more employees while also keeping everyone safe. Again, the occupancy guideline is based on science and it is in law with the white house guidance for phase one that caused for physical distancing protocols. One, i donthase believe there is one, i dont believe there is any distinction to be made between what is in the proclamation on thursday or what will be, and what was in phase one of the white house guidelines. So we have embraced those guidelines. If there is an extension to be made it is that we moved early in some areas like the resumption of nonemergency medical procedures and surgical procedures, and a couple of other areas as well. Guidance to the examples i just gave can be found by visiting opensafely. La. Gov. To get that information to prepare your business. I do want to make something very clear because i think there has been some confusion about this. With the exception of gaming establishments, no Church Leader or Business Owner is required to register or to get approval on their plans in advance of may 15 in order to open. So you dont have to go there open withwith opensafely. La. Gov in order to open. We are asking you do so if you are a business so you can get more information sent to you automatically without you having to ask for it. As we look at the latest numbers, i would ask you to keep in mind that they are typically lower on mondays because we are reporting testing that came over the weekend. Also want to point out that we had an issue with the server on friday, which is why i think we were late updating on friday as well. So the way that played out on saturday, we had a larger number of tests and positive report of positive reports than we had over the previous several days, and we are fairly certain that about half of fridays results were reported on saturday. So if you average those days out, you will see that things are pretty level overall. And that issue has been resolved. We have a to today, report of 215 new cases. Daily ofwas on the 4958 tests. Daily of 4958 tests. Those 215 cases bring us to a total of 31,815. We updated today for the number of people who are resumed to recover. 22,608. So you have got about 9200 or so active cases among those around the state who have tested positive. These numbers do not include people who have never been tested. There is a certain percentage of people out there with covid19 who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatically, having been tested. The amount of covid is certainly in addition to the numbers you see on the board in front of you. Sadly, we have 29 new deaths to report, for a total of 2242. We have now conducted and tests inalmost 221,000 the state of louisiana to date. With that, im going to yield the podium to dr. Beeyou. He is going to come up and discuss the latest data. He will take questions about any of the data he presents. And then ive got the fire marshal here with additional information, should you all have any questions for him. And i will be back in a moment. Dr. Beeyou . Dr. Beeyou thank you, governor. Im going to walk you through some of the data that we looked at and talk a little bit more as we prepare for transitioning into phase one. As we did two weeks ago, the team at that apartment of health, the office of Public Health, including our epidemiologist and internal experts and internal experts in bios stat biostatistics, met with academic partners from two lane, lsu, and went over the data we have. Some of which we will show you to understand the trends we are seeing in the criteria for cases that, we are looking at for the epidemic that we are looking at. Go to the next slide. The first i first wanted to show where we were on the 27th. This was the slide we showed on april 27 after we had the initial discussion. And what we conveyed at that time looking at the data was that covid like illnesses, people presenting to Emergency Departments of covid as a percentage of all visits, were increasing across the state. Cases per hour assessment at the time were increases increasing in a few regions. Region 2, 4 and eight. And in region seven, the shreveport area, we were seeing a general plateauing in cases at that time. Us, we saw ang to increase in hospitalizations over time in region two. Baton rouge, capital area, and area, eight in the monroe as well as plateauing and what we were seeing in hospitalizations rather than a decrease in the southwest near mick charles in region five. As well as in shreveport in region seven. At the data two weeks later, what we see is generally improvement in trend. When we look at syndrome x surveillance, the covid like illnesses, we did note that the areas around alexandria and covering others, it showed a plateau in people presenting as a portion of total emergency visits. However, overall, the syndromes symptoms were down for covid like illnesses across the state. Cases. Here we saw only two regions, region six and eight in the monroe area where we saw an increase in cases just looking at actual cases reported. I will show you some examples of that any a moment. As wellas well as a general plag on the state level overall and in regions two, the baton rouge area, and region nine, the north shore. That willlk about why be and we have talked and we have talked in past news press conferences and other engagements about the fact that the last two weeks also coincided with an increase of testing overall in the state. Are assessment as we were looking at cases, we have taken into context the increase in testing. I showed you those numbers on friday. As well as the general decrease in the present of positive cases per test performed. I will show you a graphic that depicts that. In general what im saying is we did more testing and fewer of the test results i came back were positive. While we were seeing cases expand, we did think some of that was a function of having more testing in the state. We continue to have more testing, i would expect that to be the case in multiple regions. When we turn to hospitalizations, we did see that region two where we saw an increase now is in a decreasing trajectory. And region five, the southwest, where we had previously seen that, has started to decrease. Region eight continues to increase on its previous trajectory. Region seven where there have been a plateau in hospitalizations, we have seen an increase. I will take you through some graphs to show you what we are looking out on the next slide. This is what we look at the state level. The top graft is depicting the percentage of covid like illnesses, to the Emergency Department as a proportion of total Emergency Department visits. You can see that certainly has a peace that comes up toward the beginning of april and has been coming down statewide. The middle chart is an epidemic curve. Here, we are seeing the change in new cases being reported. As an average a running average over time. And the colors really depict whether that change is increased or a platform a plateau from the previous day. The brown color, you are seeing growth. The purple color means you are seeing a plateau. There is not a significant change in the number of new cases reporting across those days. Then where you see the light purple, maybe blue in the middle, that is where we see a sustained decline. I will note that in addition to epidemic curves, we also look at total testing being performed, we look at the number of positive tests that are being performed. It is one way to depict to depict how we look at cases at the state level. Here you can see that there has been this undulating growth to plateau potter pattern. Most recently in the context of significant increase in the amount of testing statewide. Hospitalizations may be easier to interpret as a graph. This is the threeday running average of total daily admissions to the hospital where somebody is admitted i should say people in the hospital with a diagnosis of covid19. As you can see, that has been on relatively steady, if not steep, decline. Previously, we know that the first hotspot in the state and the hottest in the state, and one of the hotter spots in the country, was that area. What we see when we look at region one, the greater new orleans area, is really a largely good story here. We are seeing the surveillance of symptoms have been coming down steadily since the peak. We have seen the cases also coming down. Obviously some plateauing especially as we have seen increasing and in increasing in testing. That is one of our most robust regions. Hospitalizations, a steady decline, steeper than the overall state decline. Have. One continues to farther to go but they drive a significant amount of the improvement in hospitalizations. I wanted to highlight the two regions that give us concern. We will start with region seven. We see that symptomatically, we are seeing the same decrease we saw in other regions statewide, fewer as aare proportion covid like illnesses, when we look at cases, you have this plateau, may slightly decreasing trend. In cases. If we look at the last 14 days or so, we think that is probably decreasing. What i think is important to point out is region seven is another region that has a fair bit of testing going on. This is in the context of fairly good testing as a percent of the total population. Hospitalizations wise, you can see what we were looking at before where you have this plateau graph, but then the tail moves where there has been increase over the last two weeks. The study increase steady increase is definitely there. Given the numbers in the region of the population is less than region one, what is being depicted there is an increase of 44 total admissions over the last two weeks. So it does not mean that there are hundreds of people in the hospital showing up each day more and more. 380ver, i will note we have admissions between region seven and region eight that were had at net. During the time of the last two weeks. If we look at region eight, we see again a similar plot when we look at surveillance, because it is all about the volume of tests. The greater the numbers that are showing in the Emergency Department, the smoother the be. E will in general, we see smaller numbers of people presenting to hospitals or Emergency Rooms. But the general trend is down for symptoms. And we will at mississippi, have more sites there, like an ease carol, medicine. Madison. We expect to have flattening of the trend in monroe. We hope that we see an increase we see a decrease over time. Hospitalizations, we have seen this stable increase with some movement around this trendline that shows the last 14 days. Emphasize, while the trend is increasing over the last two weeks, that is a net of four hospitalizations. People are coming and going from the hospital, coming and going and being discharged. On the whole, there has been an increase of four that cases over the last two week period. Hospitalizations cant be absorbed by the Health System in the greater monroe area. 44 being absorbed by the Hospital System in shreveport. What i want to convey here is these are trends and we are watching them closely. Especially as now as we are taking steps to relax restrictions, it is incumbent upon all of us, especially in these regions, to take seriously the opportunity to social distance, to where our masks, to stay home if you are sick. And as we are going to see as we see contract Contact Tracing in these areas, to work with us on abiding by isolation or quarantine recommendations and staying in your homes for that 14 day period. Because we dont want to see these numbers rise to crisis level. Moving on to talking a little bit about phase one. The governor already highlighted many of these sorry, i skipped a slide. I promise that i would come back to this idea. As we presented on friday, with the increasing amount of testing going on statewide, this is the same graph that i showed on friday where we are seeing week to week, there has been a significant increase in the amount of testing that is at the state level. Meaning the percent is coming down even as we increase testing. Positivee percent would also be lower. The general trend makes us more comfortable about what we are seeing in the epidemic curves. We have to take that into consideration and encourage members of the public that have questions to engage with the epidemic and meteorologists who have a tremendous amount of knowledge and can give you the same assessment we had when we looked at this data, which is this is complex. I will not talk about what is in phase one. Through the Resilient Louisiana Task force, the office of the governor, looking at the white house guidance, the following is open hase one and can the 25 needs to be to accommodate spacing for the individuals to be six feet away from each other, tables 10 feet away from each other so there is room to walk by. Here you have churches, contact sports. Museums, zoos, according, especially where they do not have tactile exhibits. If you are keeping space in between the party in front of you and behind you, you are not touching things, Wearing Masks, sanitation and symptom checking is have any net the entrance of these facilities, we think these can open. James and Fitness Centers in entrances exterior will be able to have people coming in as well. Restaurants, coffee shops, cafes, bars, breweries, with a food permit, with people city seated at tables. There will not be standing allowed in the facility. Casinos, video her, and racetracks notably racetracks with no spectators. I do want to point out that though we are opening up these on the next friday want to reemphasize that does not mean everyone in the public should go out and enjoy these open businesses. We certainly want the businesses to reopen and to thrive, but we want to continue to message to the public that if you are in a high risk group, 65 or older, if you have significant, Underlying Health concerns, the risk still remains a need to take measures to keep yourself safe and certainly would recommend that they not go out, that they stay out at this point as well because there is a significant amount of covid in the state more than 9000 active cases. The risk is still remaining there for covid. We want to make sure that those individuals that highest risk are taking control over keeping themselves safe and their family members who are part of the household with those individuals should be thoughtful about the risks they take and bring back to their home. On the next slide what we wanted to emphasize is what we are talking about is not a return to precovid louisiana. What were talking about is a new normal Wearing Masks. That is how we keep each other safe. It is not how i stay safe, it is how i do my part to make sure you stay safe. We want to make sure people continue to monitor themselves. If you have symptoms, stay home. Seek assistance. Dont go out and do a unnecessary visits. Dont go visit a restaurant if you are symptomatic. We are going to do our part at the state level through Contact Tracing and testing, increasing the opportunity for people to be tested in our communities, and the andrease construction we have to reach out to people who test positive. Find out who may have been exposed, reach out to those people and encourage them to quarantined for 14 days. Our systems will only be as effective as the public complies with them and adheres to them. Out of a desire to stop the spread and to move into phase two, we have to take that upon ourselves, and that is something we can do as citizens for this estate. Again, Wearing Masks in public, staying apart from each other, and staying home with the sick are key components with it. Theres a lot of information we conveyed. On the next slide we wanted to highlight to the general public to 11 has been the beginning. We have encouraged members of the public to reach out to them. We continue to give them updated guidance. They continue to be your best resource for guidance. We also have coronavirus. L. A. Gov. We will also put guidelines. Businesses, the fire marshal thated the open safety should be practical. If you go there, you are registering your business and you will get information that helps you understand how to keep patrons safe, which is what patrons will want to cook of the book im back to your facility and is a it is what we can do to make sure he continued to open safely. As the governor said, will continue to monitor the data over the next 21 days and hope that we continue to see improvement over time, knowing that we are also doing our part to do Contact Tracing and testing. To what. Im happy to take questions. Sam. Announced two weeks ago that you were you had athe order similar chart with increases and plateaus. I am wondering why we have the increases and platitudes, two weeks ago it meant we could not be open. It seems to me them and we not meeting the 14day threshold the white house recommends. While he still allowed to reopen now . What i was trying to convey when we went through the spreadsheet, through that table, if you look at cases, you see there are more plateaus listed. Fewerk there are actually increasing parishes, but more importantly, what happened over the last two weeks, we significantly increased the amount of testing. We understand as we increase testing, we will see more casey cases. What we presented is the truth that we are seeing plateaus in cases, increases in certain regions. When you then have to assess what does that mean moving forward, we have to look at that in a different context. This discussion, during press conferences before, and actually in committee in the legislature. As we increase testing and see more cases, does that mean we will forever be shutting down the state. What is going on with hospitalizations. Both of those are rosier pictures than they were two weeks ago, even with the plateaus in symptoms in region six. Overall, the state continued to show a downtrend and when you look at hospitalizations, yes, we are certainly not happy that region seven, the shreveport saw the trend and increase. There were other regions that were concerning because of the plateau and also changed to decreasing. There is no playbook, even with on howte house guidance, you deem that your state is able to reopen. Do we see the trend in the right direction with less adherence to stay at home. We know more people are out and about over the last couple of weeks because we have been encouraging people to go out and about and enjoy the outdoors. We have seen more traffic on the roads. If we see general trends decreasing while we see more activity, it is a heartening sign, even if you just look at the actual metrics. Outside of the opposite can see limits optic incident occupancy limits, are there any other limits on gatherings . Gatherings, we are still recommend in small gatherings at four facilities, we are getting the occupancy level. I dont think there will be any change to the gathering guidance in this phase. The occupancy level is for people coming into establishments where we are controlling the amount of spacing, the symptom checks at doors and the like. A check forhis is the governors, but i see criticism from various business groups and the idea of 25 occupancy some people cannot afford to reopen. Edwards that is unfortunate. The goal is not to keep them from reopening, it is to balance safety on one hand and the need to open more stores, get people back to work, and get people into the stores and restaurants. I have not done an exhaustive analysis statebystate, but if is look out of 25 , it pretty common across the country, and in states that never reached the level we did in terms of cases per capita and the hotspots we have had around the state in new orleans and in jefferson parish. Designed to allow allow for the strict social distancing that is called for in the white house guidelines. It was not arbitrary. It was not a number picked out of the air. It corresponds to the Square Footage of the business, trying to make sure people can engage in those distances safely. Would point out a couple of things on the safer at home slide for phase one, the 25 limit on solo and noncontact sports does not apply to the team. You dont have to feel 25 of the baseball team, for example, but it does reply to the stands. If you are outdoors and you can spread the spectators around, that would be fine. That, i will take more questions. Circumstances would cause you to roll this back . Ou will keep monitoring what would you have to see to roll back . Governor edwards were looking at the data every day. If we saw a spike in cases and it was more than what you would , that actually caused an increase in hospitalizations, we have to take a serious look and tried to figure out is this something we can keep a lid on because of the additional Testing Capacity and the Contact Tracing capacity we have. Talking were also talking to the elected leaders from whichever region that might be taking place in. That is the scenario in munro with cases increasing and hospitalizations increasing. Is that because testing results theynot coming in, or were not adhering in that hearing to social distancing . Governor edwards i cant know for certain. I have no reason to think that the folks in region eight, the munro area, were less adherence to the stayathome that people elsewhere. Not every place is affected to the same degree and at the same time. Saw the huge increases in cases in new orleans and jefferson parish, that didnt didnt play out everywhere. I would submit to you that things dont really happen in isolation, so if you want to look at munro and shreveport, for example, you probably also need to look at dallas and jackson mississippi just to see what is happening along those corridors, but i would point out there is a net increase of four hop hospitalizations over the last two weeks in munro. We showed it as an increase because that is where it graphs out, but it is a net of four. You can continue watching this briefing at cspan. Org. Take youeave it to live to the white house were President Trump has an announcement on coronavirus testing