wide range of covid-19 topics but none more timely than getting our children back to school. throughout the last two weeks i have spent countless hours talking with educational leaders around the state. everyone agrees for the future of our children we must do everything we can to have them back in a learning environment again this fall. working with states school superintendent woods, educational administrators and school boards around the state we have guidelines for schools that i am very proud of because it took the assumption we would open schools what do it very safely and ensure that schools have the tools they need to protect students, staff, teachers as well as the community as a whole. we fully expect some cases of covid-19 among students and teachers and we are doing what we can to provide the resources that need it to protect everyone in the setting. working with fema, schools receive less in the coming days. to go back to school, we know schools need to be prepared to respond to cases in the classroom and we worked to develop guidelines so local public health or estate public health department will work closely with schools to follow up on any cases. we are working, reassuring a single case of covid-19 does not require that a school shutdown and a team of contact tracers, 1300 can identify and isolate close contact to continue the educational experience for students not exposed. we don't know children under h.r. at less risk for severe complications of covid-19 and that has been reinforced and we also know that children who are not in the classroom can suffer from any developmental challenges. we want to do what we can to assure that kids have the opportunity to have these learning experiences this year so please do the simple things that combat the spread of the virus, wear a mask, wash your hands, maintain social distancing and work with us to help get our kids back to school this fall. right now we are seeing an increase in covid-19 in communities throughout the state in many sittings, urban atlanta and suburban and rural areas. our test positivity rate on average is 13.6% which reflects community spread at this time and hospitalizations have increased 39% over the past week. fulton has large number of new cases over the past three weeks accounting for 26% of all new cases in the state. we continue to see outbreaks in workplaces and businesses, and any place where there are a large number of people gathering. among the most vulnerable populations long-term care facilities, we've seen some outbreaks. in all these cases, very quickly beginning intervention and follow-up with local health department and contain the spread wherever it may be. wash your hands frequently and wear a mask when out in the community. face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have 2 slow and stop the spread of the virus, it prevents an infected person from spreading chloroquine 14 -- covid-19 to others and it is better when we are all wearing masks, we are protecting each other and our families and our communities. cdc published an interesting study i am sure many of you saw that show the impact of wearing masks. doctor redfield and i talked about that it reinforces not only all of us wearing masks but executive orders we have requiring wearing masks in business settings. there are more than 170 covid-19 test sites statewide and overall testing throughout the state has increased extraordinarily since we first met a number of months ago. we are collecting on average more than 14,000 specimens a day. .. at the same time we also recognize the last capacity needs to be improved. many of the commercial labs are not returning tests in a timely way that it takes as long as two weeks or longer to get tests back. as i said before that delays is unacceptable and it is unacceptable for the individual affected but also for us to do the prevention and interventions would need to do to protect the community as a whole. i have spoken to the governor about this and he shares my concerns and we are working not want to increase our testing capacity but to bring on an additional lab to up improve our turnaround time. i have talked overtimes about contact tracing. we have wrapped up those efforts statewide. we have close to 1300 contact tracers on board and we're going to bring on additional to be a total of 2000 contact tracers in the next several weeks to reflect the need of increase capacity as we have increased cases. we've interviewed more than 40,000 individuals with covid-19 and over 86,200 contacts. we will continue to do that even as we continue to see cases. we need the continued support of the community to make contact tracing successful and to stop for the spread of covid. please remind everybody when you get that call from dph, when we reach out to you about contact tracing, answer the call. work with us to make our contact tracing successful and our efforts to stop the spread improved. but most of all pleas of social distance and wear a mask. those of the things we can do to stop the spread at this time. take you for your support jerk. >> good morning. my name is homer bryson and director of the georgia emergency management and only security agency. we continue to work with our vendors come state partners come private partners and volunteer organizations to provide the necessary resources for george's response to the covid-19 pandemic. as of today, the public health state of emergency has been ongoing for 125 days, and is the longest emergency activation in the state in memory. this drain line delivery operations we recently established the partnership with ups to ship ppe directly to our customers. by leveraging their existing logistical and distribution networks we can distribute supplies faster and free up personal true prayer georgia for any other emergency. this is especially important as hurricane season began in june. we have delivered three mailing system terminals to the department of public health warehouse and trained state employees to offer aid during this transition approximate 850 packages of ppe, testing materials and decontamination were distributed over 200 entities that's about four day predictor medical facility a nursing homes request resources through the ring out the system and local governments and critical infrastructure partners request resources through our web portal. to date the state has processed more than 26,470 resource requests. approximately 80% of those requests are related to ppe, and we've delivered ppe to over 2700 entities in the state of georgia. to put that number in perspective, during hurricane michael, gema processed 1051 resource requests. as part of completing these requests, georgia has to should approximately 7.9 million n95 mask, 9.3 million surgical masks, 2.7 million gowns, 24 million gloves, 485,000 tieback cover all states, 1.3 million face shields, and 172 ventilators. to keep georgia moving forward gema is a fully requests from vertical infrastructure essential workers. to date over 2.1 million face masks were delivered to transportation, energy, telecommunications, government, water, wastewater, and food processing sectors throughout the state. over 1 billion cloth masks were provided to over -- million -- in hotspot areas. this brings the total to more than 3.1 million cloth face mask to protect the citizens of georgia. additionally, , 10,000 no contat infrared thermometers were distributed the 16th local emergency management agencies that were identified by public health as having the greatest need. gema continues to support the georgia department of education and their efforts to safely reopen schools. we have already coordinated the distribution of 2 million cloth masks, and 3000 noncontact infrared thermometers. i second distribution to schools will include 100,000 clear masks for deaf and hard of hearing students and teachers, 1.5 million youth size cloth masks, 1,000,003 ply disposable masks, 16,000 reloadable no touch hand sanitizing stations, 290,000 gowns of sanitizing gel, 62,400 packs of sanitizing wipes, 50,000 face shields, and 15,000 isolation gowns. in addition, at the direction of the governor we are -- foggers and 12,000 gowns of solutions to be distributed to the schools in addition to the ppe listed. to address the concern of medical bed space and incarnation with the governor with an 80 bed facility on standby and are in the process of standing up 120 bed facility at the georgia world congress center. each facility will be ready to receive patients if the need arises. in addition we have four temporary medical pods located at putney hospital in albany, floyd medical center, medical center in macon at the northeast georgia medical center in gainesville. in total response provide an additional 88 medical beds to supplement hospital capacity. making all of this happen has required incredible effort on the part of all of our employees and state partners. i wanted to take a moment to acknowledge their countless hours and hard work spent working to keep our citizens safe, and we remain focused and we recognize that what we do daily affects the safety and the lives of our citizens. and with that i will turn the podium over to commissioner frank berry, department of community health. >> good morning. before i i get started i want o recognize and thank the frontline workers are helping as a battle this illness. we greatly appreciate their service to the state of georgia. i am here to talk about staff augmentation nursing homes, hospitals and for state hospitals through the department of behavioral health and development disabilities. to date we have 15 hospitals statewide with a total of 417 healthcare providers. we have partnered with healthcare workforce logistics, otherwise known as jackson healthcare come to help staff these hospitals. nursing home facilities, with 54 nursing home facilities statewide with a total number of 302 healthcare providers in those nursing home facilities. of the five state hospitals i mentioned, 281 healthcare providers are providing care in those facilities. we also have one community living owned out in the part of the state where we are providing staff as well, for a total statewide number of 970 healthcare providers. the second biggest issue we were challenged with was in a nursing home facilities related to surveying work. cms required we complete 358 surveys by july 31 for focused infectious disease control. of those 358, 291 have been completed with 67 remaining. we should be on target to meet that july 31 deadline. we have partnered with two private companies to assist as, so with a healthcare facilities regulation team along with cms support, along with those two companies we will meet that jul. the additional component we did to help with a nursing homes is 257 nursing homes are participating in the temporary nurse aide program. that was an initiative where we partner with cms to provide online training so we could get more staff involved and engaged in supporting the residents that live in those nursing homes. that is been a significant success so far as people are going out with the elders, we've been able to replenish those step using this temporary nursing aides -- with the illness. i'm happy to entity question at the end, and thank you very much for your time. -- answer any questions. >> good morning. i adjutant joe tom carden. the georgian escort into sparta with the georgia emergency measure agency, the georgia department of public health, the georgia department of the community health and others to execute the intention to keep georgia citizens safe. we have done that now more than 2400 infectious control missions in the state of georgia most of which were in a long-term care facility. we continue to support the department of public health with respect to sample collection at the static collection sites in addition we provide mobile sample collection capability as needed. we continue to work at more than ten for mexico's estate will be supported the movement of more than 89.5 million pounds of food and 41.1 million prepared meals. in addition to all that we continue to do detailed contingency plan to make sure your national guard is never late to need. it is our honor to serve our governor, this great team and our citizens at this critical time and our fight to defeat covid-19. thank you very much. >> good morning, everyone. my name is richard woods, , stae school superintendent of georgia. before beginning i want to thank governor kemp and dr. toomey and their respective staff for the collaboration that has taken place since the beginning of the pandemic. i do want to thank perhaps to members of working behind the scenes with my staff from the governor steam, en and miranda, they've done a wonderful job in maintaining contact with us so we could be on the same page throughout this whole endeavor. obviously as we look at starting back to school needless to say this is probably the most challenging back to school time that we have ever seen. the decisions all of us in our districts are having to make an ibc. there's the obvious playbook that we can follow, no guidelines we can look at what probably no historical reference we can pull from to say this is what we are doing is the best and right thing. but i can assure you we are doing the best that we possibly can at this time. and what is right for our students and our teachers. what i do know at a think most would agree is that, that we want our students to be physically back in school. that is the best place for them to learn. there's no doubt when you talk with everyone, this is the ideal situation. but we also know that relationships are better formed in person once they are in school as well. but that being said the safety of our students and our staff will continue to take precedent in all of our decision-making. and that is something we will never let our guard down whether we're in the present of covid-19 or any other thing that we face. to that extent but of pride of education in collaboration with department of public health has released guidance as for as restarting schools for the 2012 school year. we've also released support documents from the governors task force groups to further support the districts as a plan for reopening. these documents layout foundational guidance for reopening schools in a face-to-face instruction, and makes a face to face and distance construction or solely distance instructional model. this information is available on the georgia department of education's website and you can click on george's path to recovery for k-12 schools for all information. all the documentation that you have or need you can find there on the website and it is constantly updated. we have a few districts who are opting to open with the distance model only but most are planning at this time to begin the year with a mix of face-to-face and distance construction. we acknowledge the hard planning decision-making that is taken place within our districts. it is the goal of the department of education in whatever method of instructional method that is out there that we agree to support our districts and ensure that they are successful as we move about the school year. in many cases what we may fight is this may be fluid but the plan we develop in the guides we have developed this definitely flexible and able to adjust as needed is. to support our day six women issued some of the following throughout the past month. received waivers from the u.s. department of agriculture to meet the nutritional needs of students during the summer and also as we continue to make adjustments to do so with the school you to bid on the instructional model. doctor dobson has done a wonderful job and what you think the secretary sonny perdue again for his work and ongoing support of our nutritional program. i think over to date we have probably delivered over 30 million meals throughout the state to our families and students at this time. we also received the waiver to not get precise date testing as a close to the previous school year in concert with governor kemp and appreciate that very much, we've also sent a waiver request to the u.s. department of education seeking to eliminate high-stakes testing for the upcoming school year. at this point with me thinks we need to focus on the sides high-stakes testing do we need to make sure our families are safe and secure, our students, our staff come let anything get back at adjusting a taking something off the plate we can deal with later in a more appropriate manner is something that is very valuable and we encourage washington d.c. to accept this waiver. we are also introducing i'm not high-stakes assessment tool called beacon. this will be made available to all districts so they can support learning throughout the school year. we have partnered with the governor's office of student achievement and i want to thank joyce hawkins, georgia foundation of public education and the private sector to provide grants and equipment to school district to enhance connectivity. we have also allocated $3 million of the cares act fund o persons up to 3000 wi-fi transmitters are george's school districts. it is estimated 135,000 students will receive connectivity through this effort. i want to thank state board of education chairman scott sweeney and a member of the state board of education as they move moveo increase georgia virtual capability to provide online classes for students throughout the state. again, gema has major with the dense white preshift the partnership insecurity masks, sanitation stations and also the temperature, thermometers i guess that would be used to screen people as necessary. as i close people i think are asking what is the first day of school going to look like? i have been involved with education and i've opened up schools 22 times in my career. the first day of school be the first day of school. you can expect pickups. you can expect challenges. but i guarantee you your kids will be safe, your teachers will be safe and we will learn. this is just the first day that is all but enhanced because of covid-19. a lot of things we will be looking will be new, transportation, you know, meals, student drop-off and pickup, moving from class to class. so i do ask that everyone, you know, , please make sure you communicate with your school district. school districts make sure you're communicating with your parents, making sure what is at first a look like when it comes to enrolling school for students at that time. we have to be prepared and we have to communicate. but i'm sure this that we will be successful and having a great school year in the state of georgia. our districts have done a wonderful job in prepared. we have done a great job as far as putting out guidance and support. we are working as a team throughout the state and we are going to beat covid-19 and we will do so in the manner that is stating for the state of georgia. at this time i like to bring to the podium an individual who is a strong supporter of public education, and a great partner and all things in an individual has never hesitated to meet a request, that is come from the department of education and that is our governor mr. brian kemp. >> good morning, everyone. let me first thank everybody for being with us and i want to start by thanking dr. toomey, director bryson, commissioner berry, general carden and superintendent woods for the strong leadership during the pandemic. also would like director bryson did come didn't want to take ja moment and thank your teams, too. i know we don't do that enough but they've been grindingly every day in the trenches, for those of you watching this morning thanks for all that you were doing. these continue to be challenging times in our state and our country, and the recent uptick of covid-19 dean -- covid-19 cases is literally from coast to coast. it's clear this fight is far from over. we have come a long way since the pandemic begun but we also have incredible challenges that remain in front of us. over the last several weeks as you know we've seen a rise in cases, a rise in hospitalization rates and a rise in the percentage of georgians testing positive for covid-19. hotspots have been popping up at churches, manufacturing plants and long-term care facilities. and as a state where literally tracking this data hourly. while much has changed we also remain laser focused on protecting both the lives and livelihoods of all georgians. early in this pandemic we worked closely with hospital administrators to enhance surge capacity. we built a hospital within georgia world congress center free of that space, and as homer was talking about we deliver mobile units to target regions throughout our state. we have also identified facilities that could flex as patient population increased. and now as hospitalizations rise, we're rolling out our strategic plan that we had in place for a long time to ensure that supply meets demand. last week as mentioned earlier we reactivate the george i could georgia world countess in which a service step a year for area hospitals. we continue to work closely with members of the white house coronavirus task force to plan for future needs. weeks ago we were en route to a u.s. surgeon general jerome add-ins and just last week i spoke with admiral giroir about testing capacity and supply. yesterday i met with dr. deborah birx and cdc director dr. robert redfield to discuss school preparedness as went into the fall as superintendent woods midget and earlier this week we announced that piedmont about the will and 62 beds in the market started i want to thank kevin brown and his whole team at piedmont as well as the vision of bernie marcus and many other that the philanthropists for their forward thinking this in planning this tower over five years ago. moving forward will continue to add beds where needed. because a patient profile and treatment options available, hospital stays are now shorter than they were when we first started. we are confident in our plane which provides the best possible care without bankrupting our hospitals. rest assured, safeguarding surge capacity remains a top priority of my administration. in the last several weeks we have witnessed record demand for testing as dr. toomey mentioned. while georgia is reporting nearly 20,000 test every single day, we know more is now needed. we have more than 172 statement testing sites open and we will continue to partner with local and private entities to expand access in targeted communities. this was another area we discussed yesterday with ambassador brooks and dr. redfield, and have estates and fed continue work together. as many in this room have reported, national labs have become backlogged causing many georgians to wait days if not over a week for the result. this is simply unacceptable and georgians deserve better. in the coming days we will announce a new regional partner who will expand capacity, adding 10,000 more tests tests a day and providing faster results. as i've said from the beginning, the accessible, accurate and timely testing are key to winning the war against covid-19. we will continue to do whatever it takes to shake up the status quo and fix this pressing issue. as georgia continues to boost testing, add hospital beds,, deliver ppe and provide medical staffing, i'm asking georgians to do their part. after all, it's the community at the feet this virus, not the government. this has been a long, difficult battle for all of us. we have sheltered in place. we've had to distance ourselves from loved ones, and everyone has to make incredible sacrifices along the way. but we now must reaffirm our commitment to flatten the curve. we need all younger georgians to recognize the importance of following public health guidance to realize that their exposure can have serious consequences on their loved ones. we must all do our part to stop the spread. today i am encouraging all the georgians from every corner of the state to do four things for four weeks. one, wear a mask when out in public or when you cannot distance yourself inside. two, practice physical distancing. stay 60 from those you don't live with. three, continue to wash your hands throughout the day with warm soap and hot water. and, format, follow the executive order of and heed the guidance provided by public health officials. if we do these four simple but effective actions on a daily basis we will make incredible progress in the fight against covid-19. we can protect our loved ones if we can revive our local economy, and we can continue to take measured steps forward here now i know that many well-intentioned and well-informed georgians want a mask mandate. while all agree that wearing a mask is effective, i'm confident that georgians don't need a mandate to do the right thing. i know that georgians can rise to this challenge, and they will. and i know that georgians will do the part to defeat this deadly virus. last week on a call with mayors and commissioners around the state, i issued a charge to local leaders and i will do it again today. instead of issuing mandates that a confusing and unenforceable,, i'm asking all local leaders to enforce the current executive order. enforce the rules that we put in place to keep employees and customers safe at local businesses. enforce the provisions that assure folks are staying six feet apart at large gatherings. enforce measures to protect the medically fragile. and use your bully pulpit, your social media challenge and your connections with the local media to build support for wearing a mask when needed. for our local chambers of commerce camaraderie clubs and other community organizations, please help us echo this call. in courage of those you represent an urge to those you serve to double down and mask up this pandemic has threaten the health and well-being of our friends and neighbors, creating economic hardship that we haven't seen like this in a very long time. businesses are literally on the bank of bankruptcy. thousands have filed for unemployment, and many are left wondering how they will put food on the table as general carden just mentioned. to make matters worse, some have decided to play politics by exploiting the difficult, emotional moment for political gain. yesterday we filed a lawsuit against the city of atlanta on behalf of business owners, their employees and hard-working georgians throughout the region who continue to struggle to make ends meet. men and women have seen their paychecks disappear. fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers are barely hanging on. mayor bottoms mask mandate cannot be enforced but her decision to shutter businesses and undermine economic growth is devastating. the atlanta businesses are hurting. violent crime is up and families are rightfully worried. just like cindy at the national guard to protect those living in our capital city from crime and violence, i refused to sit back and watch as disastrous policies threaten the lives and livelihoods of our citizens. we will fight to stop reckless actions and put people over pandemic politics. in closing i will leave you with this. we all know it's been an incredibly tough year, and that's quite an understatement. this crisis has threaten our health and well-being. it's undermine our economic prosperity. there's justice that we've seen with her own eyes that must be fixed. there's violence that must be quelled, and when i travel the state iq the stories of pain and suffering. but i still since optimism. and i know that all hope is not lost. i am confident that we're going to weather this storm and we will emerge better for it here i have faith that every georgian will do their part in the days ahead. i'm confident we are stronger now than we have ever been, and we cannot let politics divide us. i know that our best days are not very far away, and i also know that we live in the greatest state in the country in these united states. we can overcome obstacles ahead of us. be strong and courageous, as the scripture tells us. hunker down and keep shopping. thank you very much, and we will open it up to questions for any of us that are here this morning. >> good morning, governor. thanks for taking time to speak with us. direct wayne. my question to you is obviously there's been a lot of things that take place within the past 24 hours. you said you don't agree with a mask mandate in making mask mandatory but there are lots of pros and cons to different situations. so my question is, what are the cons that you see in the making masks mandatory? and and i guess like house makig masks mandatory hurting people? >> it's like i said earlier audibly georgians need to mandate to do the right thing. dr. toomey and i've been on the road for the last two weeks encouraging georgians to wear a mask with a can't socially distance when they go out in public. but i also have been telling local elected officials that we've had current orders have been on the books for months now that worked before, they will work now. we just need to enforce them. but this is not about masks. we all agree it's good to wear a mask in the right situation. this is about protecting the livelihoods of our citizens. i was told this morning that california's unemployment rate is 17.5%. ours is 7.5%. you could check my numbers to make sure i'm right, and i'm pretty sure it's in that ballpark. that is because we are fighting to battles, and we continue to fight 24/7 with this whole team over here to protect the light lives of our citizens. we have done that before. albany, georgia, is a great example. that community embraced the guidance avery getting without mandates and flattened the curve, they did what i'm asking people to do now, and that's encouraged people to wear a mask. we sent masks down there weeks ago for them to hand out to their citizens. we need our citizens to be the solution to the problem that we're facing right now, and they have my commitment that i will stand every single day to make sure that we have the resources we need in our state from hospitalizations, from ppe and other things to make that happen. >> good morning. thanks for taking our questions today. you said a minute ago you thought mayor bottoms was playing politics with her mask mandate. are you the one playing politics, and what does the lawsuit say about your priorities given the rise in the covid numbers. >> was well, my priority with a rise in cases has been very clear for weeks now you know, if you look back at what happened and when, some in the media are accusing us we reopened too fast. we were open for two months before this latest rise. and if you look at when you started i think there are several reasons for that number one, was the demonstrations. number two, because of the demonstrations that sent a message to people that hey, it's all right to get out again. we can let our guard down, we've got this thing beat. i think were all guilty of that. i'm not pointing fingers anybody. my focus during the time was to keep our city from getting burned down and protect the protesters that were protesting peacefully as they did at the capital. we worked with those groups to do that. but this is about the lives and livelihoods of all georgians. when you have citizens that literally take away someone's ability not only to operate and create confusion but also to have been calling us saying we've got food in the freezer can we got food in the coolers and if we shut down, that money is all gone. you know, that's not the right way to handle this. i am moving forward on guidance as i have from dr. kathleen toomey and her whole team that literally is in conversations daily and weekly with hospital ceos, the business community, local elected officials. we can argue about a mandate for a mask or not but all the people arguing agree, people should wear a mask and i agree. i've been doing that for weeks. dr. toomey and i been on the road from extended. we have to protect the light is because when i been talking to the hospital ceos they are saying we cannot shut down again. we cannot survive what we went through before, not doing elective surgeries. it's bad for the financial stability but it's also bad for all those georgians after that put off vertical procedures, screenings and other things for weeks and months because they were scared to go out. we know so much more now than we did. people don't need to be afraid to go get a medical procedure at hospital. it's probably one of the safest places you can go because of what they learn and how to handling covid and nine covid patient. i would urge them continue to do that. >> good morning, governor. i was hoping to get your response to mayor bottoms tweet yesterday regarding wraps the taxpayer dollars would be better spent on contact tracing and testing rather than legal fees. also in terms of the other cities who have mask mandates come if they continue to defy your executive order will also sue those cities? >> the mask mandates or unenforceable. what people should be thinking about is the livelihoods of those businesses, those hard-working georgians that are in those businesses. they are paying the taxes that we are using to respond to this as well as cares at funding that we have gotten from the federal government in which we very appreciate the relationship and helping us with the response. but if we shut our economy down, arming them with the press at the start of the rant session after the suspension about how devastating the budget cuts are going to be. imagine if we do that again what they're going to be like. we are in a very tough position for our state agencies, , for or schools and universities. so we have got to balance both of those things. we cannot be afraid of this virus. to be smart and to be scared of it, that's the good thing. so you should wear your mask. but we also have to learn to continue to operate and i will tell you there's many businesses have been able to do that for months that and i've not had any problems here that's what we are working so closely with dr. birx, superintendent woods, dr. toomey and dr. redfield on school reopening spirit as well as our local superintendents and educational leaders. >> governor kemp, good morning. next-door beauty grew. a short while ago mayor bottoms spoke about the research saying governor kemp and team are not using data from the cdc and only relying with augustine university. how do you respond to that criticism about using science from those institutions? >> well, i think it would be a false statement to say i'm not using science. there's a lot of data out there. we have a great director and the department of health, dr. kathleen toomey, that is been a 40 epidemiologist. she's worked on things -- >> you can watch the georgia governors briefing online anytime at c-span.org. we leave the now to

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