Jeff, i was waiting on you. Are you good . [laughter] , and thank you for tuning in. Obviously anus officer Public Health to take specific questions related to the virus and the disease and testing. We will also be joined in progress by a congresswoman who will be here. I do want to thank steve for the work he is doing and for the entire delegation. The work that they are doing on behalf of the country and the state of louisiana specifically the cares act and other things they have been working on, and i do know that the congresswoman has been appointed to the Advisory Council that the president will work with as he makes decisions about the guidance he is going to issue relative to reopening the economy, and certainly i think that is helpful for our state to have someone on that council. We also have the secretary of economic development, don pearson, who is here. He will be able to answer any questions about an announcement i will be making as part of this press conference around the Resilient Louisiana Commission whittle help us as we transition to the opening our economy in louisiana, not just in the shortterm, but in the longer term because we know this is going to be a process. This will unfold over a number of weeks and months. You have heard me say, we will we are notnormal going to give back to normal until we have a vaccine in some effector, therapeutic treatments, but we will not wait until you start to we open the economy and get businesses back open and get workers back to work. So, there is a process we will follow and this commission, the beisiana commission will instrumental in helping us to make sure we do that. I am going to apologize up front because i got more prepared remarks today than i normally do. But i think all of it is really important. As for todays numbers, you dont see them on the dashboard yet because we update at noon. I can tell you that we will report 581 new cases today for a total of 22,532. In addition, and quite sadly, we will report 53 new deaths for a total of 1156. Tests, we number of have a little over 4600 tests that the results of which had been shared with us over the last 24 hours. There will be additional numbers reported at noon related to hospitalization numbers, ventilator utilization numbers handy so forth. Numbers and so forth. We also have information from the department of health. They are going to share based on original projections across the state. State, we areas a going to see new covid infections throughout the remainder of this year. Obviously, we want to see a downward trajectory of cases. After you flatten the curve, you hope to see the curve banned downward bend downward. I will talk about the new orleans region today and what the numbers show there. The numbers show that hospitalizations for Covid Patients and for puis is trending downward and ventilator utilization is trending downward, too. The charts if you look at the hospital charts, and this is region one, new orleans and Jefferson Parish and arebernard parish, where we is on the redline. If you look at todays date on the number of covid of the hospitals, it is 790. Now, had we stayed on the trajectory that we were on before we issued the shelter at home, stayathome order, we would have, just in region one today, according to the modeling, almost 3000 people in the hospital. So, that is 1200 or so people who are not in the hospital today, but would have been. Over on the chart on the right, you can see ventilator utilization at 156 in region one. We would have been over 1000 in region one alone, which is why we were doing everything we could to surge medical capacity related to beds, icu space, staffing, and ventilators because we did not know for a fact that we would get off of that curve. Remember a month ago, we were reporting new cases on a pace that was leading the world. And so, we are in a better place today, precisely because of people of louisiana at in this case, region one, took seriously the stayathome order. They took seriously the need to practice socialdistancing and better hygiene, and it is literally paying off because just as we talked about the number of deaths, not just being numbers, those are real people, these are real people who we may not know the identity of, but they are not in the hospital and they are not dying because of the stayathome order. So, this is really important, and i hope you all will help us to explain to the people of louisiana just how critically important this is. By the way, now is not the time to let up. Need to bei said, we putting the accelerator all the way to the floor and these mitigation measures, especially as we move through the month of april because it is all apart of the president s 30 day plan that was added to the initial 15 day plan, so i guess it is a 45 day plan, to stop the spread, and it coincides exactly with what our plan is in louisiana through april as well. But this is why we are doing this, to achieve this kind of result, and it is still sad we still have people in the hospital on been elated today and in icu and people dying today, but not in the numbers that we thought were going to be the case. And so, i wanted to share that with you all this morning. Also, i have another chart to show you that has the trajectories of where we would be on cases of covid in louisiana. Louisiana,sorry, not in region one. This is the same area, and you can see the redline with 2. 4. That is when you do nothing and you allow people to interact as they normally would. You would have seen cases, along 2. 0, somee, of mitigation measures. Many and not necessarily everybody participated. You can see where you are there. 1. 7 is the blue line. R0 is shelterinplace. The people who are following for the most part. That is where we are trending right now is the 1. 3. Quite frankly, a couple of weeks ago, we were doubtful that we would ever get to that line. And you have various data points you can use to determine where you are. Cases is not the best of them voted hospitalizations can tell you, and within hospitalizations, we can model on icu utilization and bad utilization as well, but when you put all of those things together, we know that in region one, our line is now down to 1. 3, and so, what that means is we are not transmitting covid the way we would if these measures were not in place, and so, it is really paying off for us. And we are in a much better place than we literally thought was possible. So, just wanted to share that information with you, and if you have questions about that, we will get back to your questions later. Is all good news. It means were headed in the right direction. , come on in, steve. Congress minsk police is here, and appreciate congress minsk police is here and we appreciate you for joining us. We are doing relatively well. We do know however that everyone across the state, and and not every region is complying with the shelter at home order to the degree would like them to to the degree we would like them too. I employ everybody to do that. For the remainder of april. Obviously, we do have essential infrastructure and essential workers working. We have make sure that people have access to nutrition. But we think restaurants we have restaurants and Grocery Stores open, but as you venture out to take advantage of those things, do not do that as often as necessary. You dont have to take everyone to the store every time you go. And of course, we have the delivery and the drive through and take out options that are restaurants. And i know there is a significant concern that if we remove too many restrictions all at once, we will see the cases spike. That is a concern i have as well. So, we have to try to strike the right balance between promoting Public Health and minimizing the spread of covid19. The demand on our hospitals and ultimately the number of people who die, but we do know that we have to transition to opening up more of our economy across the state of louisiana, and we are going to do that. I dont have a lot of precise information for you today. I do have a video telephone conference with the president and the Coronavirus Task was at 2 00 p. M. Today. The congressmen will sit in on that conference with me and as i mentioned earlier, he has been appointed by the president to a counsel of advisors. I dont know what they are calling it, to help the president decide exactly how we are going to open up the economy and moving forward as well, and i think that is very helpful. But we are going to have more information for you all in the coming days as to what that will look like. We do expect the cdc to revise their guidance today. We will continue to rely on that with our and consult department of health and the office of Public Health care. We will continue to look to things like the department of homeland securitys Cyber Infrastructure security agency, what their guidance is and whether it changes on what is essential infrastructure and, which workers are considered essential and so forth. We will have more information for you all about that in the coming days and weeks. I do want to take a moment to thank the farm bureau of louisiana. They gave 500,000 to feeding louisiana. And that is through the association of food banks. That will be shared across five food banks that touch all 64 parishes. They include the greater baton rouge food bank, the Second Harvest food bank, which also covers the acadiana region. And the food bank of central louisiana. On that note, while we are talking about farm bureau, ask for special prayers for Rodney Anderson west and the president for farm bureau for 31 years, and he has been a longterm member of the lsu board of supervisors. He is currently in the hospital in an icu and on a ventilator, fighting against covid19. He is aware and responding to stimulus, but today marks his 29th day in the hospital. In june. Set to retire we ask you to keep him and his entire family in your prayers. He is one of those people who are represented by the numbers that we always talk about because numbers all refer to individuals. Also, i want to thank airbnb for committing 500,000 to provide places to stay for the 350 Frontline Health care workers in the new orleans region. Today, sams club and walmart have donated produced Health Care Workers to University Hospital in new orleans. About 20,000 pounds of Fresh Produce via sams club, so we thank them very much for that. We expect that it will provide over 1000 hospital employees with Fresh Produce, and they will be on site, sams club will be there to distribute that today. Obviously, our Health Care Workers, doctors, respiratory therapists, a lot of professional Health Care Workers , they are on the front lines. They are absolute heroes working long hours to care for those who are dealing with covid19, and people in the hospital, for whatever reason we happen to be in the hospital, so were very thankful to them, and we are thankful for walmart and sams club for recognizing how important they are, and to recognize them and this gesture is relatively simple but i think it does speak volumes as to how important they are. The other thing i wanted to recognize his walmart, they have been helping the state. They are parting with the state to facilitate testing. They are doing that principally right now in st. John, the baptist parish. That is really helping an awful lot. Importantmake an announcement regarding our economic recovery. Life as we know it has been altered for the time being. Or economyour state has been untouched by this Public Health emergency. And we remain in the midst of a fight to defeat the invisible enemy. We are not there yet i, the we are doing better. Health care education, business and government institutions have all been adversely impacted, and i understand we need the best possible game plan for the future in order to foster economic recovery to become an even more resilient state, and and to safeguard Public Health. I am announcing today the creation of the Resilient Louisiana Commission that will assemble that game plan. The purpose is to bring together the very best public and private sector individuals who have expertise in these areas and give them to prepare and guide the state through the next weeks and months, as we deal with the covid19 pandemic. Look at our economy and make recommendations to make businesses more resilient, so that we can open them up, get businesses up, get workers back to work, but do so in a way that adequately protects Public Health. And so, you will see a lot of activity, a lot of recommendations come from this thep, and obviously, intended outcome is a comprehensive game plan that makes our state more resilient, both in the shortterm term and in the long term. And i am excited about the work that they are going to do. We will make sure they do it in a transparent way that includes multiple viewpoints, and is going to have multiple individuals from business and industry all across the state of louisiana, and geographically and by sector of the economy. It is a tall task, but i have confidence that with experience and talent and dedicated divers members of this task force, they will do a great job. Theant government lieutenant government will be joined by other state officials, our commissioner, the secretary of the department of revenue they will serve as members. On the panel will be state senator ronnie johns, the Senate Commerce chair and state representative paul davis, the house commerce chair. The two chairs will be charged with leading the Resilient Louisiana Commission are don pearson and terry sterling. You know don. He has decades of economic experience at the local and regional levels. I cannot think of anyone better than terry sterling to be the cochair. Recovery will be a big part of this in terms of health care as well, and that is where she has spent her career. We need to know what worked and what didnt work in terms of our medical response to covid19. And terry has served for more than two decades with the franciscan missionaries of our lady of Health System in executive roles, and she was instrumental in leading the creation of the new Childrens Hospital here in baton rouge, and she now leads the Health Care Management consulting business. So we got a lot of work to do, and i am asking them to get started just as soon as possible. They will have multiple task forces. They will be formed underneath them by a sector of our economy and im looking forward to receiving their and i am looking forward to receiving their work. Be one and going to done. This is going to continue for some time, and i have no doubt we are all going to get through this by working together. You can track the work of the Commission Online at opportunitylouisiana. Com resilie. Tlouisiana as i mentioned, we are going to have a call with the president today at 2 00. Constances police is going to sit in on that call with me solis will be on that call with me. We will get guidance from him ,nd the Coronavirus Task force and the cdc. Looking forward to all of that. And first, i will see if you want to add some comments before i take questions from the public. Good to be with you, governor. I am sorry we cannot shake hands formally. The governor and i have been working through this crisis together. Our whole delegation has been united in that front. We have all come together. Especially here in the louisiana, we have always had that tradition as a congressional delegation of working together through crises read crises. The focus has been addressing and containing this virus. New orleans became one of the epicenters for the outbreak as well as some of the surrounding parishes, jefferson, st. John the baptist. You saw a lot of effort made from the governors standpoint all the way down. We talked to the president on a number of issues. When we were worried about ventilator shortages, we were able to work with fema to get more ventilators and more ppe for the frontline workers. I cannot say enough about the great men and women working in our hospitals, the doctors, nurses, people cleaning up the rooms and being extra cautious. Also not sure what exposure they have for their own families, but they still want to work to keep our communities safe. It is one more reason why it is so important for us to do our part, everyone of us, to keep ourselves and our families safe, so that we dont overwhelm the hospital systems. You have seen a drop in ventilator use. The number of people on ventilators is coming down. Thats no reason to let up on social distancing. When you go to the grocery store, keep distance. Maybe you are not fighting as much for the toilet paper these days. I think people are a lot better aware of what they need to do to keep themselves and their safe. Es this gets us one step closer to where we can stop start opening up the economy. Hasof the programs that been incredibly successful for Small Businesses has been the paycheck protection program. It is one of the components of the cares act, the 2 trillion package that Congress Passed just two weeks ago. Case where government moves at light speed to set up a program, republicans and democrats coming together, to say we need to save our Small Businesses and mediumsized businesses. There are different components of that for everybody, but the paycheck protection has been the most successful and most effective. We have seen one point 6 million businesses across the country have already qualified for loans. In the louisiana, we have seen more than 17,000 businesses that have qualified for the paycheck protection program. Unfortunately today, just a few , the program ran out of money. This is something we have been working on in congress to renew. In just a few weeks, that program has been completely exhausted. Today, they stopped accepting applications. But there are thousands more businesses