[captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer we take you live to indiana where Governor Eric Holcomb is giving an update on the states response to the coronavirus pandemic. We join this news briefing in common in progress. We need to be there to help answer the calls they have. And i think that our Hospital System is incredibly wellpositioned to do that. They have been amazing partners from the very beginning of this pandemic. Abigail with the brown county democrat. Good afternoon, governor. Happy thanksgiving to both of you. I have two questions. I think they are probably both for dr. Box p i first question is which days data were used to inform the decision to change counties color statuses today . We see for brown county, test results from november 19 to march 4 our preliminary. We know test results were taking as long as a week to come back for people here. Do we have a full weeks worth of data to accurately judge our letter level of spread . Dr. Box we use the data as of night. T on sunday it is a full seven days of data and whatever data has come in in that timeframe with regards to test. Yes, if those tests lagged, if there was a sevenday weight, than that has lagged a little bit. Times seeing turnaround improving and working very hard to make sure that that is the case with our local Health Department turnaround time. We do not have a lot of control over the national labs. We truly redistributing labs across the state of indiana, have looked and sent to labs to an external lab in another state, and are continuing to investigate every possibility. I think the use of the pointofcare test with the cards also at our local Health Department testing sites not only gives individuals an Immediate Response to whether you are soon some to medic, see you need to isolate and we need to know who your close contacts are and heres the information for them. It also helps to take the burden off of our labs or decrease that burden. Pierce with abc 57. Gov. Holcomb good afternoon. Dr. Box good afternoon, governor. It is actually abc 57. Pierces my producer. Back to state representative chrissy sussman who announced her ragged her reg resignation for your coronavirus restrictions on businesses, she runs the barns at napa nini which is a restaurant and entertainment venue. She says it has been so difficult to run that business that she has had to do more work, take on more response abilities so that she cannot be a fulltime state legislator as well. She says there was no input or approval from state lawmakers on these covid restrictions. That they were your unilateral decisions. What is your response to that . Gov. Holcomb i will let her speak for herself. Dr. Box but you will not respond to that . You do not run these kind of things by any state lawmakers, it is your decision to put in the restrictions along with the Health Department . Gov. Holcomb ultimately, it is my responsibility. As i said earlier, we are informed by multiple sources, including physicians, epidemiologists, scientists, business owners, various sectors, legislators, leadership. I checked in with leadership on a regular basis over the last, if know, months, asking there was any appetite whatsoever for a special session. And there was none. Ive been seeking to continue to be collaborative. Ultimately, in a Public Health with whether it decisions, r agency the buck stops at my desk and responsibility. We can debate it and we can certainly, and will continue to i will be doing more than a lot of things this week. And as i mentioned, next week, we are informing businesses in northern, central, and southern indiana, small, medium, and large, with organizations, with local officials. So, i would have welcomed her input. And still would. Cant pretend to understand all of the intricacies of that business or their projection projected blame on anyone individual. We are living through a Public Health emergency. And we have got to rely on one another to get through it. Carly with wpta. Gov. Holcomb good afternoon. Isorter hello, my question county and local Health Officials to make changes in restrictions. What types of things would you recommend county by county to be doing right now . Well, and dr. Box you might want to talk about the local department of Health Office and how we are working with them to make sure that they have the information. I mention capacity limits, and again, this has to be tailored toward each locality and what theyre experiencing and what testing and tracing, and as we get more and more positive cases, tracing gets harder and harder and harder. Maybe dr. Box, you can talk about that as well. But each local community, whether it be a mayor that we are talking to over the state of indiana, one might say we are having issues with in person church services. One might say that we were having issues with sports gatherings. They addressed those origins of the spread. And that is what i would recommend. As we become informed about where this is occurring, addressing those issues. And if it is bars origins, if it is a purview or if it is capacity, there is a whole long list of different approaches according to what is going on in that local community. So that is why we have taken this approach of how do we work with our local government and local elected officials to weather the storm. Dr. Box, anything to add to that . Dr. Box i would only add that i think we had several phone calls this week with not only the local Public Health individuals and the hospital representation, chief medical officers, cnos, and ceos, but we also included elected officials from those areas. And it was really good forum for elected officials to hear the struggles their hospitals in their region were having. And the difficulty in being able to make sure they could give optimal care to every patient that came through their doors. Those kinds of things like, as you mentioned, governor, putting a curfew potentially on the area or making sure that individuals are understanding that you could put a sign on your door and should put a sign on your door that says no shirt, no shoes, no mass, no service. We got used to the no shirt, no shoes. There is no reason we cannot get used to no masks. Encouraging them to make sure that if individuals want to come in and get service, this is what it is going to require. If individuals are not able physically to wear a mask, there is Home Delivery for pretty much anything you want to get these days. And how we can help individuals do that. We just go through bit by bit what those recommendations are and they pick and choose the ones that work the best for their communities. Gov. Holcomb and i would say, if i could, before we move on, what we are trying to do is avoid with the stress and strain of our health care network, we want to make sure folks are justmed and they realize what we might have to give up in terms of potentially elective procedures. Or in a community. Case,e it has been the where i have experienced this personally, where people say i didnt know how stressed our local hospital was. But it does make a difference when you see the positivity rate, when you see the spread, when you see the hospitalizations in your local community and you start to cancer, you know, patients or an elective procedure might be put on hold if we continue on this trajectory. So that is what we are trying to prevent. Right now. Because weg reactive rate. 12 , 11 positivity. Weve got to get back down toward that 5 and then get to some months down. We look at this in the shortterm and longterm simultaneous way. And that is shortterm, daily, weekly, and a month. Longterm, we are looking at one month, three months, six months. We can see i want to give people hope, that we will come around, and there will be therapeutics and vaccines available, multiple, and weve got the plan as you have heard dr. Weaver in the past and dr. Box talk about today to deploy those. But until that time and then through it, we are going to have these precautionary measures. Dr. Box and i think the point you made is really important. We can be very thankful that we do have vaccines that are showing this kind of efficacy and this kind of safety with no occasions. E we could right now be having a group of vaccines coming back showing that they really did not work. We had no idea. And that there are major complications or side effects with it. I feel very blessed and thankful that this year, we do have that light at the end of the tunnel. Weve got to get past this burden right now and these high number of cases we have. The only way we are going to do that is if we start following these mitigation measures. Rachel bob with wt hr. Gov. Holcomb afternoon, bob. Reporter good afternoon, governor and dr. Box. Governor, im very pleased that you and misses holcomb are continuing to feel well. So thank you for taking my question. Gov. Holcomb im eager to get back to work. Reporter i want to make sure you have background for my questions here today. This week, 13 news reported the number of backlogged and pending unemployment claims in indiana had grown to more than 1. 2 million claims by the start of this month, which is a significant increase from the backlog a couple of months earlier. And i have received hundreds of Desperate Measures messages from hoosiers waiting for unemployment. Many of whose claims have been delayed and pending for 4, 5, 6 months. And a contracted worker who talked to these people every day, when they call the department of workforce call the helpline says that the department of workforce of element will not allow the contracted workers to resolve simple issues that could help relieve the backlog of cases. And the whistleblower says those contracted workers who the state has paid 15 million to over the past six months really cannot help anybody at all because we are not allowed to. I actually have a couple of questions for you about that. One, what concrete steps, if any, are being taken to help alleviate the large backlog of pending unemployment cases that the state is facing right now . Second, will the state be shifting any resources so that the 300 contracted workers who answer the phones might instead actually be able to have the authority and frame they need to result pending claims . And third, the state extended the contract for an additional million, when it appears the contractors answering the unemployment helpline really cant provide much help. Im wondering why the state chose to do that . Gov. Holcomb yeah. Fred payne, i think you are at the ready. You have all of those questions. Would you please articulate or share exactly the job descriptions and what navigon beyond has been hired to do, how they are doing it, and how the are following up . Which are two different tasks. And then maybe you could, fred, also add not as an excuse, but yourrt of the education, efforts to make sure that fraud isnt overtaking to have tax dollars as well. Fred yes, governor. Thanks. I think the question, understanding the question, i will start off by saying that now beyond was hired to help with an unprecedented volume of claims to navigate the end employment system throughout our call center. The Contact Center agents have provided significant help to hundreds of thousands of hoosiers. And we are very appreciative of the work they have performed and the dedication they have shown as contract employees during doing that work. But now the aunt is only a portion of the dwds efforts to meet the needs of claims during this pandemic. Significantly increase the staff across the program. The role has been designed placed on federal law and the complexity of the system. In the time constraints of the pandemic. Their work has been adjusted, as appropriate, in our system. Center work at the call that the people are doing is helping folks every day. But they are not all engaged in claims investigation work. That is not what they were all hired to do. Some do help on specific issues that are outside of Customer Service calls. But keep in mind, claims investigation work requires significantly more training then can be accomplished in a short period of time. So we do have the ability and we have and we do continue to move resources around to meet the demands and to meet the needs. In terms of the number of claimants who are continuing to wait on claims that go beyond when he won days, first i will say that again, as we said from the beginning, every eligible hoosier who files for Unemployment Insurance benefits will be paid at their benefits. From. E not wavered. We have had more than about nine hoosiers to request benefit payments. 736,000 ofd over those hoosiers to the tune of about 6 billion in benefits. Now commit the individual now, the individuals who at this point are waiting payment, for a variety of reasons for that. Some of those in that number will include those who just filed for this week. They are waiting because of standard claims, issues, just some standard issues. Some of them are going to be denied. Not every individual who requests payment is eligible for payment. Then, i will also talk a little bit about the massive amount of fraud. If we ended up having a system that paid quickly and that we did not require individuals to jump through a few steps, then fraud would overtake our system. And right now, i think everyone is aware of the amount of fraud that is occurring in the United States right now. Indiana is not one of the states or is not a state that is left out of that. So we are dealing with a lot of fraud. And we have put in a lot of measures to address fraud. Does that slow down our payment process . Absolutely. We want to make sure that we are providing eligible hoosiers the payments that we are not getting payments out to those who dont deserve it. So, we are continuing to work through that. And we are adjusting every week. When we end up seeing some of the downstream impact of some of had to processes that we put in place, or new programs we had to put in place, as you recall, when we put those new programs in place, we did them pretty quickly. We did them in a matter of days and weeks. Not months and years. When you were doing that, sometimes the troubleshooting that would necessarily be in place if you had months and a year to put those things in place, you can do those. So we do find from time to time that there are some downstream impacts of troubleshooting that we have to adjust to. And we are doing that on a constant and consistent basis. I want to make sure that i do confirm that we are still paying hoosiers at a rate of 80 to 85 of those who file claims within 21 days. Our claims that go beyond 21 days, it is not in the millions. That is not accurate. Gov. Holcomb thanks, fred. Rachel that concludes todays briefing. Governor holcombs next briefing will be next wednesday at 2 30 p. M. Eastern. Announcer tonight, Washington Post columnist george will discusses the impact of the trump presidency. The group jews united for democracy and justice host the event. Live coverage starts at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, online at cspan. Org or listen live with the free cspan radio app. Announcer monday, the Supreme Court hears oral argument in trump v new york. The case is about whether President Trump has authority to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census apportionment based. Live coverage begins at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler and the democratic challenger will debate on 6. Day, december the race is one of two georgia u. S. Senate runoff elections that will be held on january 5. We will have live debate coverage at 7 00 p. M. Eastern, online at cspan. Org, or you can listen with the free cspan radio app. Next, air force special Operations Commander Lieutenant General jims life discussed National Security threats at a Virtual Event hosted by the center for strategic and international studies. I am really happy to welcome general james slife, commander of air force special Operations Command in florida. Welcome, general slife. For those of you who dont know a lot about air force special Operations Command, of the air force component of u. S. Special Operations Command, it has approximately 20,800 activeduty reserves and Air National Guard and civilian professionals underneath him
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