Watch ondemand anytime, unfiltered, at cspan. Org coronavirus. Announcer next, louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards updates his states response to the coronavirus outbreak. Gov. Edwards welcome to midcity. Welcome. And i want to thank all of you for coming here today so we can share a little bit of what we are doing here today, along with the collaboration with the state government, the local government , and with the military. Each one of these hearts behind patientsents a covid who was treated and released from the midcity hospital successfully. We have about 40 hearts. We hope that over the next several weeks we will have many more of these hearts. I want all of you out there, clinicians, the community, military, state, local government, to know that each one of you is a little bit of the part of the heart in here with us. Without your help we would not have been able to do this. So thank you very much, and im going to introduce governor edwards now, who will have a few words of encouragement. Thank you for all of us, and perhaps a little bit of a briefing in terms of what he is expecting in the coming days. Thank you. Gov. Edwards thank you. Thank all of you for coming out this morning. You, a pleasure to be with although we all wish we were not here in these circumstances. I want to thank all the people at baton rouge general, both at this facility and at the other campus and for the work that you all have been doing for a long time. And the way that you weekly stood back up this hospital and expanded your capacity to take Covid Patients, and doing it in cooperation with all the hospitals in this region, really has been inspiring for me. It has made a tremendous difference. There is no doubt that these hearts on this wall would not be there but for the fact that you did this and all the Wonderful Health care professionals that you have here working, working really across the region and across the state. Just like when i talk about numbers, and im going to do that again in a minute, all of these hearts represent one of our brothers and sisters. This is not just a heart on the wall, this is not just a number. This is somebodys mother, somebodys father or brother or le. Ter, aunt, unckl so thank you for all the work you are doing and your team is doing to serve these each baton rouge parish. I want to thank Lieutenant General for being here with us today. From the u. S. Lks navy you are here staffing these beds here at the midcity campus. And makingimportant a tremendous difference. Welcome to louisiana, each and every one of you. As i said i am grateful for the team here at baton rouge general. If you look not just here in baton rouge but across the state and the country. If you are looking for heroes today, they are our Health Care Professionals. Nurses, doctors, everybody coming together to work so hard and so well to save lives and to improve lives. God that wepray to will provide comfort and peace to these Covid Patients, and healing to them, he sends Health Care Professionals. So it really is an answer to our prayer. And so we need to pray for those individuals too, that they will have the grace and courage and the strength to be able to do what they are doing day after day and continue making that positive difference. And the support that we are getting from the navy is absolutely invaluable and we really would appreciate it. And this is coming from a west point graduate. It is not hard for me to say at a time like this i will say being navy [laughter] i would also be remiss if i did not think the members of the Louisiana National guard who are supporting our Covid National response. 1281 members who are working right now under the excellent leadership of the general and all the folks he has working for him. Another 31 still doing recovery work from tornadoes last easter sunday. This is another reminder to everybody, we have forecasted a great likelihood of Severe Weather again this weekend. Primarily north of louisiana, but we should all be mindful of that for the rest of the day. I want to go through the numbers today. That at noon when we update our numbers on cases in so forth, 348 new cases louisiana. That will bring us to a total of 23,921. Unfortunately, we will also report 29 new deaths, bringing us to a total of 1296 deaths. The number of cases and the number of deaths were lower than they had been the past couple days. That is a good thing, but i would caution everybody that typically on sunday the numbers go down. It is just a function of when the labs report and so forth. So what we would like to see is a continued downward trajectory tomorrow and tuesday and on through the week. I do not yet have the number, but over the last number of days each day we had been reporting, even though the number of cases is growing, the number of people in the hospital with covid19 has actually been on a slight decrease. The number of Covid Patients in hospitals using mechanical ventilators has been decreasing slightly. Those are the most promising numbers. And remember that the deaths are a lagging indicator. For a patients to succumb to covid19 was the symptoms appear. A lot of times the death we are reporting today happened not just in the last 24 hours, but going back several days. But obviously we grieve every time that we report a death. I guess what i am saying is it still appears we are trending in a good direction, and that is a good thing. Because if you have been paying attention a month ago when we were reporting the fastest case growth anywhere in the world, with the Johns Hopkins data, we are in a much, much better place today than we thought we were going to be, and it is because of the citizens of louisiana taking the stayathome order seriously, making sure they are social distancing, and they do not go out in public more often than any two. Than they need to. And when in close proximity they are going to wear a mask. And personal hygiene remains critically important as well. One of the greatest things i have seen not just today but since we have begun this covid fight is this wall behind me and those hearts. Represent,what they and i am very thankful. And i hope there will be many more hearts on this wall before this is over with. I believe there will be. This is obvious he is difficult illness. Too many people have lost their lives, but most people do recover. But they are recovering because of the great work that is being done by our Health Care Professionals. Sorry, the i am midcity campus here reopen for the purpose of increasing our medical capacity in response to covid19. While the campus was closed, it was wellmaintained, as you can see. With much of the equipment still in place to make it easy to reopen. There are inpatient hospital just the beds, and work that they have done here to so quickly stand back up an excellent hospital has just been tremendous. The hospital opened just a couple weeks ago due to medical demand in baton rouge, and has capacity to expand with additional beds if necessary. Sometimes it is not the beds that are the hard part, is the staffing it is the staffing. That is why having the Navy Personnel here is so critically important to what we are doing. We are forever grateful for that. Will remind everyone that it is going to take all of us working together for some time to defeat this virus, get back to life as normal. We are not going to see that for a while, and i suspect we will not fully see it until after there is a vaccine that has been administered to the entire population. We can do more to get back to normal between now and then, and we will, but we are going to even more robust testing then we have had in the past, and the testing have to be followed up very quickly with Contact Tracing for those people who test positive. We are working on that right now in cooperation with the federal government, our local partners. And as tough as it has been, i am very gratified to tell you that we have had more testing in louisiana on a per capita basis than any other state in the nation, and that has helped us to turn the spread around and to do better. So i want to thank all of you again for coming out this morning. It is my pleasant chore right now to introduce the mayor, president of east baton rouge. Here,nk you for being thank you for your leadership, and i look forward to continuing to work with you. Mayor broome thank you, governor edwards, for all that you had done to lead our state through this. I am so pleased to see the work here at baton rouge general in this city and seeing all the Health Care Professionals who are here. And how the military, the navy is here providing us with much needed assistance. I have always talked about the importance of partnership, and collaboration. And that has never been more true than right now in this pandemic. Our Health Care Providers are partnering with our local, state, and federal government in this fight against covid19. The residents of East Baton Rouge Parish deserve united leadership during this pandemic, and what you are seeing right here is exactly that. United leadership. So, i want to thank all of our residents for all that they have done to slow down the spread of this virus by staying at home. And that is the new hashtag, stayathome until further notice. You know, these are indeed anxious times, as the governor has stated. We have lost many of our own people. About thewe think sabbath day and sunday, let us remember them in our prayers. Is light at the end of the tunnel. Our community will recover and our economy will rebound. Because as leaders, we are making that our top priority. Thankfully we have a good team in this community and throughout our country. Like Lieutenant General laura richardson, the commander of the United States army north. From being a helicopter commander, to now the leader of the militarys groundfloor against the coronavirus, i am glad to see this effort in such capable hands. Lieutenant general, we welcome you to baton rouge and we thank forand your medical team the badly needed assistance youre providing here at the baton rouge general midcity. Welcome, general richardson. [applause] gen. Richardson thank you mayor and governor. It is my privilege to be here, absolutely, in the great state of louisiana and the support that we are providing to baton rouge General Hospital here. Support,the amazing being able to come into the facility. The staff here is just like a family. And our Navy Personnel could not be in better hands, quite honestly. Its just a pleasure to be able to provide the federal support on the title x activeduty side of the house, and be in support of the governor in the general and the mayor in this effort to fight this pandemic war. We have a total of about 8000 of our activeduty and u. S. Army reservists that are out on the augmenting as well, about eight different states across the nation. This is just absolutely unprecedented, the type of support we are providing. Because normally it is in support of hurricanes or floods or earthquakes. And it impacts maybe at the most six different states, not the entire country like what we are seeing with the coronavirus. So, i absolutely want to support provide that support and our medical professionals. I am so proud of the medical profession ors debt iofessionals, the doctor am so proud of the medical professionals. I get to visit them and see them on the front lines, see the support of they are providing patients, and the much needed support. A lot of folks are recovering from coronavirus, and that is the untold story. So absolutely the support is very much needed. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for this absently warm welcome in absolutely warm welcome in louisiana, and have a great day. [applause] gov. Edwards i would like to open the floor for questions from the media. If any. [inaudible] a question for the governor. You talked about how this is especially difficult because we are all in the same vote. Can you explain the importance of having federal help . Gov. Edwards we are accustomed to natural disasters in louisiana because we get way more than our fair share. Every time we get one of those, typically it is a flood, a tornado, more often a hurricane, and there may be another state or two that are impacted by that, but clearly not a big part of the country. What makes this Public Health emergency so different is that we need exactly the same things as every other state in the nation. About 160 countries around and about 160 countries around the world. So we cannot just put in a request and no our sister states sister states will respond as they typically do, or have them focus entirely on our state like they have done in the past. So that makes all the help you do ultimately get that much more important and more needed. And so, having general richardson here today, having all the folks with the military come to louisiana and help us here in baton rouge and in new orleans is incredibly important to us. With respect to ppe and ventilators and beds and so forth. But just having that help means an awful lot. And it is going to help us get through this. Theres going to come a time, so long as we can keep in check the cases, until such time there is a vaccine and effective therapeutic treatments. And we are going to have to have a certain level of capacity to deal with covid, but also what we have been seeing in our hospitals is our nonCovid Patients really have not been coming to the hospital for a number of reasons. One is we have stopped all the nonemergency medical procedures, and frankly, a lot of people are saying now is not a good time for me to go to the hospital to seek treatment. That can only continue for so long. And those nonCovid Patients will have to come back and we will have to facilitate that sooner rather than later. But when that happens, it makes it that much more important that you have facilities like this one that can continue to take and give excellent care to the covid Patient Population out there. We cannot do it without the military. So it is very helpful to have them here. We really appreciate all the work that they are doing. And as someone who served in the military myself, i have always appreciated the professionalism, their willingness to serve, and the sacrifice. Because all of these people have homes and families elsewhere, but they are here in baton rouge helping us take care of our people, and we really appreciate it. O behalfn of the state of louisiana, we really appreciate them being here. Any other questions . [inaudible] so, what we have today is a complement of nurses and medics. Emt model. Operating one of our dirty bed units. Days we willwo expand to an additional 30 bed unit and intensive care unit. The beauty of the model is in essence we are a whole unit, with some help from our personnel [inaudible] that will allow that to happen. The beauty of the system is we have a flow of patients from the hospitals. Referral relationships and the flow of patients is already there, and that is why they are so busy here. Other questions . A pandemic war. Compare what this war is traditional in the sense and are the responses comparable . Gen. Richardson i think it is comparable but we do not normally think of our doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists and medics having to be on the front lines. So that is what is happening with this particular one. And the gear that we wear, much like if we were in a chemical or biological environment, we have the suit, we have a mask, and we have moodys, booties, and we have all kinds of kits to protect ourselves. That is the ppe in this particular case. So it is actually very similar to everything that we trained for. We train for. All right. Well, thank you to the media, thank you to all the clinicians, thank you to the navy in the army, thank you governor for your support, thank you mayor for your support. And there is light at the end of the tunnel, and there is hope, and for the next few weeks we are going to start thinking em,ut how to take care of th delay care for a little bit. This next phase will be a difficult phase but we are ready for the challenge. We have the general, all the other hospitals in the area are ready and willing to go to the next phase. So, thank you again for your support. [applause] announcer President Trump leads the White House CoronavirusTask Force Briefing this afternoon scheduled for 5 00 eastern. You can watch it live here on cspan. Next, new York Governor Andrew Cuomo holds a briefing on his states response to the coronavirus. He reviewed the latest infection trends and announced a plan for statewide Antibody Testing program run by new yorks health department