Now, more on the coronavirus outbreak with the Connecticut Governor who discussed the late bearishness the preparedness in his state. 36 testing positive is slightly higher, but that is a number that goes up and down and we will talk about why that may not be the best indicator. Me, you seerest to the 79 people hospitalized. That is a number that is going up not exponentially but going up on a linear basis which is i think good news. 17 fatalities is never good news. It is a number that is not going up exponentially. Plan,ives us capacity to that is following our modeling. I start with our Health Care System. Our Health Care System is bending but not breaking. We did build up capacity in terms of everything we are trying to do. That capacity in terms of other briefings in terms of beds, people, and terms of icus, we are planning accordingly for what we have to do. This allows us to plan even more. Capacity is important in terms of the other functions we are performing in the state as well. We talked about Nursing Homes. Obviously, the infection rate in the Nursing Homes is high and continues to grow. The good news is we have several Nursing Homes, a thousand beds, we are getting them online, we will have covid only Nursing Homes. That means we will have covid free Nursing Homes. That gives us a lot more confidence that we will be able to contain the virus. In a kirkland, washington type situation, it is likely less likely to occur. Other settings include the homeless. Again, there are folks living in close quarters where we have to be able to quarantine those who tested or come into contact with somebody who is covid positive and get them quarantined. We have created about i think 1500 beds spread across 14 hotels. Again, so that we can get the homeless taken care of in a safe and quarantined area and are much less likely to be able to disperse Walking Around the community. Roland cook is our great commissioner. There has been a lot of talk about corrections. I will ask him to speak in a few minutes. What is important to know there is like with Nursing Homes and the homeless, over the last three or four or five years, we have extra capacity and are Nursing Homes. Over the last couple of months, over 700 people have been released. The lowest risk folks who are incarcerated there for minor probation related issues. On the other side of the break equation roland is looking out the oldest of our folks who are incarcerated. Those who might be most likely to be at risk to a covid infection. Again, see where they can be treated most safely. Is there a safe place outside of the correction facility where they can be taken care of . Or perhaps one of our negative pressure zones in the correction facility itself which is quarantined. That is what our real priorities are. I want to talk about the demand curve. And what you see in terms of the increase in folks who are infected in our state. It is a little tough to see you, but this was in the president s briefing over the last couple of days, and i had dozens of people say i cant read it, can you describe what is going on, especially as it impacts connecticut. You should know is that when new york city sneezes, connecticut catches cold. That is what happened in terms of the spread of the virus from new rochelle. We talked about it. The pandemic in and around Greater New York city. You will see going up further on, i will break this down county by county. But this chart gives you some very interesting things. You will see the rate of increase in new york city, new york state, is a misnomer. It is really new york city going up. Followed by new jersey. Followed by louisiana. I think i mentioned they have a real pandemic in their new orleans area. Followed by massachusetts. Connecticut, our rate of increase is not going up quite as quickly. There may be a variety of reasons for that. One of which is social distancing. Another which may be we are less dense than downtown new orleans and new york city. That advantages our efforts at social distancing. The rest of the chart, you can see other states all the way down to vermont and colorado and illinois. But i think that gives you a little bit of sense that our social distancing may be having a positive impact. Next slide, please. For those of you, like me, who maybe had a hard time reading the print, we have broken this down a little bit more just in terms of five states that are most impacted. Obviously again, you can see new york and new jersey. You can see connecticut versus Washington State. That is interesting where Washington State got into this lets say a couple weeks sooner than connecticut, and it could be that they are flattening out, it could be that they have really exceptional social distancing. It could be that they got people in Critical Care faster. But they have flattened out that curve in a way that connecticut is attempting to flatten out that curve. It is too early to say that is as successful, but making progress. California, they were early on and they were early on in terms of social distancing distancing as was connecticut. You can see they really have flattened out that curve in a meaningful way. I think we have some information that indicates the degree to which you think testing and infections is a good barometer, which i can counter in a second. We are beginning to make some progress, thanks to our social distancing effort. Because we are able to slowly flatten the curve, not going up quite as fast, and gives our hospitals and corrections in nursing a little more room to plan accordingly. This is important because we were on with ambassador birx today who you have seen on the white house briefings. It is misleading to talk about this pandemic in terms of states. Obviously, southern connecticut, you are 10 times more likely to be infected then you are in new london county. You have to think about this in terms of regions. We have this issue here for you to look at, positive cases by county. Again, you can see fairfield is leading the pack. You can see new haven is accelerating as well. Hartford, a little bit flatter. New london, litchfield, obviously a lot slower. In part because they are further from what was the heart of this in Greater New York area. And we have had a little bit more time to plan and prepare their. At one point, we thought fairfield and new haven would be like a hockey stick. And right now, that is more linear. It is going up, dont let anybody tell you otherwise. But because it is going up on a linear basis, that gives us more time to plan. This is a chart i want to spend a minute on because it is much more reflective of what is going on. That is hospitalizations. A lot of people take a look at the infections, and you will see they have bounced around a little bit, going up, going down, what does that mean . That is often a reflection of simply testing. Hospitalizations, whether we have tested only 5 of the folks or 20 of the people in say, New Haven County, hospitalizations is a better indicator of what is going on in that greater community, what is going on in terms of community infection. Hospitalizations and sadly, fatalities, are graphs that i think may be a week to two weeks behind infections, but perhaps a better indicator of what is going on and a better indicator for us when it comes to modeling. I think you can see here, it is a little confusing, the date by date change. You will see the day by day change is not going up day by day. The daily count line, the orange line, is going up on a linear basis. I take this as reasonably good news. Reasonable that the situation could have been more severe. We might not have been flattening out the curve or at least making it more linear. This gives us a lot more room to breathe. The next chart is sort of a reflection of what you had before. Again, in Fairfield County, you can see that we had 41 additional hospitalizations. New haven, behind it. Only 12 more hospitalizations. While the infection rate went up a lot, there hospitalizations are going up modestly. Again, which gives us time to plan. No new hospitalizations in new london. That one less in windham. This is one of the things we will be working on over the next couple of days. Im telling you the new hospitalizations, but we will also show you discharges so you can see what the net increase or decrease is. You will see in new york city over the last four or five days. The rate of net increase in hospitalizations actually went down. Theyre building a little more capacity. I think youre going to see a similar trend here, again, which gives us hope. That when it comes to ventilators, when it comes to p. P. E. , when it comes to i. C. U. Beds, when it comes to hospital beds, we are building ourselves some room. And that is what we always tried to do when we talked about flattening the curve. Again, the dr. Birxs analysis, when you saw everything going on with infections, can be a little bit misleading. Theres the denominator and theres the numerater. I think it may mean, in terms of our modeling, that some of our worst case scenarios, the 20 of the people, you know, tested end up going to the hospital, is found to be carrying a virus. In fact, our hospitalization rates may be a lot lower than that because the number of people hospitalized is not based upon just the number of people weve tested. But its based upon everybody thats infected out there. So josh and our team are working carefully as we relook at these models all the time to see how fast we get to that apex, how fast we can flatten that curve. And what the gradual downslope on this will be. We were just on what the it with the Vice President s task force and he gave us some sobering reminders. That when we talk about the next day, it may not be the next day, it may be the next year. And it may mean that there are a series of rolling pandemics over a period of time. So were thinking very carefully about, as we maybe get to the backside of the increase in our infections, the increase in our hospitalizations, over the next couple of months, how can we thoughtfully get people back to work without having another wave of infections . A lot of thats going to be in and around more broadbased testing. Youll probably see from the first graph that while a lot of folks are saying our test something down, we had 3400 tests i showed you came in yesterday. I told about abbott labs, our testing is going to be going up dramatically. What testing allows us to do is to see, a, red, yellow, green, what it looks like in terms of infection and intensity in given areas. And where we might be able to get people back to work sooner. I am working with a number of folks, including our friend, ryan, in terms of antibody testing. And antibody testing, id like to think well be able to roll that out in the nottoodistant future. What does that mean . Its a blood test. That will tell us who was infected, didnt know they were infected . Who was of an age group and they have the immunity, theyre the ones we can get back to work. Theyre the ones that are going to keep our manufacturing going. Theyre the ones that we get back in terms of construction. Theyre the ones that we can get back into our work force sooner. This is something were going to do on a very thoughtful basis to make sure we dont have a second wave, as happened in the spanish flu and other situations. And this is something i talked about with dr. Fauci just a few days ago. Trying to get insight from the federal government as well in terms of what we can do, in terms of antibody testing, and how we can accelerate so we know what people can do when. They have had a half dozen infections on their planned floor as well as the ceo. We work closely with defense, as well as others in the federal government. We tell secretary esper, look, when it comes to testing protocol, other ways when it comes to fever, thermometers, we need your help. You want us to prioritize these workers, we need you to help prioritize these folks so they can keep defending america on the front lines, but do it safely. With that, let me introduce to you commissioner cook. Hes been a great friend, hes taken over our real efforts at criminal Justice Reform in our corrections facilities. Right now like a laser beam hes focused on Public Health for all of our people, including those in our correction alpha silts. Correctional facilities. Thank you. Good morning. Im the commissioner of the department of corrections. I want to take just a minute to describe covid19 response efforts that are under way and all of the states at all of the states 14 correctional facilities. Immediately following the declaration of Public Health emergency, the agency began implementing policy to protect our employees and the offender population we care for. These efforts include ongoing cleaning and disinfecting on all three shifts. Basically constantly going on. Modified operational plans at all facilities. Suspension of all social visits. 14day isolation policy for new intakes at all jails across the state. Limiting nonessential interfacility transfers. Taking temperatures of all staff at each facility entrance. Making masks available to all staff in the offender population. To minimize the impact of these necessary restrictions, weve also provided two free phone calls per week to the offender population. And currently in discussions to expand those. Weve suspended the copay obligations associated with medical services. Weve enhanced the menu for the meal cycles. Weve maintained laundry and commissary services. Simultaneous to these efforts, weve continued with discretionary releases which include placing people in Halfway Houses and returning people to their homes with a sponsor under the supervision of an agency parole officer. Prior to any staff or offender covid19 cases, my direction was clear. Review all eligible and suitable lowrisk offenders for release without circumventing routine protocols that support Public Safety as swiftly as possible. And add a lay of review that will prioritize offenders considered highrisk per the c. D. C. Guidelines. In addition, we are collaborating with the Judicial Branch to analyze the pretrial population and sending information to the board of pardons and parole for the review of candidates for compassionate and medical parole. I would not classify our efforts as a mass release. However, the early focused attention on releases is evident. As of this afternoon, our overall population count has dropped by 727 since the first of march. The onset of covid19. This is the largest onemonth one reduction in the states history. To further express the ongoing the ongoing really on 20 2020 release efforts, on march 20 6, time in 27 the first years. Last witnessed on 5 1 of 1993. Todays count is down to 11,713 and dropping. We have our entire reentry unit working on the complexities involved with leaving a prison during a pandemic, to ensure that they have appropriate supports. We will not approve discretionary release for anyone under my Statutory Authority without a home plan. We understand the concerns covid19 creates for shelters. Ill close by thanking the dedicated First Responders, our Health Services personnel, our correctional if officers, our support staff within the department of correction. I cant overstate their dedication throughout this challenging time. Theyre truly the Unsung Heroes of this pandemic. Thank you. Governor lamont thank you. We can take some questions here. I will call on reporters individually and you can unmute yourself. I ask everyone else on the teleconference to remain muted. Well start with fox 61. Question for the governor. Commissioner cook or chief of staff. Fox 61. Reporter hi. We had a question in regards to the unemployment backlogs. Last week governor, you actually agreed that there was a major backlog at the department of labor. Is there any guidance for the people of connecticut worried about when they may receive assistance for unemployment . Governor lamont yeah. The guidance is a number of applications for Unemployment Compensation went up about 20 times compared to anything thats happened in a comparable period during a recession. 20 times. Kirk and his team at the department of labor are focusing like a laser beam on this. But thats not good enough. Were throwing people at this. Were trying to do better to get that backlog down. And kirk and his team are working on a technical fix that i hope well be able to announce in the next few days. So be able to get those checks out in short order. Im sorry you have to bear with us. As you know, before, everything is retroactive. Just because were slower in getting those checks out to you which you deserve, you are going to get the full amount that youre due. Reporter is there any guidance for people worried about when they may receive any guidance for people exhibiting symptoms but their doctors are telling them theres no need to be tested for covid19 . Governor lamont right now i would tell you, rely upon your doctors best advice. Thats how its been working. We are able to test more and more people. Our focus, our priorities are those who are there at the hospital. I told you we would open up a number of beds, especially with the abbott lab, 15minute test. Our First Responders are a real priority. Make sure theyre safe going in and not infecting themselves or anybody else. Were going to continue to widen that lens but follow the dictates of your doctor. Thats the best advice. Next question will be from matthew campbell, channel 3, wfsb. Reporter speaking about the tests, are the abbott lab tests here right now . We know that rhode island, theyre rolling it out in conjunction with another. Where do you stand on those 15minute tests . Governor lamont im certainly i certainly know were doing them down in stanford hospital. I think other hospitals, as far as i know, josh is nodding, and weve had a good relationship, we talked to abbott labs Senior Executives at the end of last wee