How can i industry sign banking connecticut medical history
Association we have some announcements to make regarding uh banks in just a couple of minutes just give you a brief update sort of on where we are right now we added another five hundred and fifty seven people tested positive for Cove it'd sixteen fatalities 608 hospitalized so those numbers can continue to ramp up in a way that we had anticipated sadly again most of the folks who are found in fact that four hundred in Fairfield County another 145 in New Haven County so you can see that the virus is is heading north Hartford County a right behind but fortunately as you know from yesterday we had you know the hospital leaders here we have capacity and we are preparing for that and doing everything we can to expand capacity going forward one thing I was reminded of today and I try to remind the White House every day is that Connecticut is the fourth most Cova infected state in the country per capita behind New York New Jersey Louisiana and Connecticut and that's why I always impress upon the feds in any way I can think about this virus as a region not state by state a little disturbing today to find out that the National strategic stockpile is now empty we did get 50 ventilators for which I am very thankful but for now we are on our own and for now we are working our heart out scouring the globe for PPE as best we can and I got to tell you as your governor this breaks my heart I've we've got um doctors nurses bus drivers cops firemen beggars at the grocery store and food bank court-martials juvenile detention facility a lot of our frontline heroes I'm asking everybody else to stay at home these are the folks who are what we call essential workers frontline every day going to work and I feel like a general sending our troops in the battle without the protective gear that they that they deserve they don't have the defenses and they're doing ever they can to uh save you and I am working on that every day every day with my heart we talk a lot about all the rules and regulations and orders that we can implement to make sure that those of you who are not essential workers stay at home stay at home stay at home maybe put a picture of one of those nurses or other first responders on your door just to think about him or her as you're about to leave think about the fact that you're not just endangering yourself but you're endangering herb and your greater community I can't tell you how urgent this is we head into April which will be the horrible month I'll tell you a little bit about some other industries we've got that are operating different ways manufacturing we've had good conversations with the manufacturers um most of them are still open you may be saying why are they still open well almost all of them are related in the health care or defense related aerospace industries so the aerospace defense or protected as critical industries but we're working very closely with them and all the other smaller manufacturers that are in their supply chain and trying to make sure that they follow the best practices everybody going into that factory floor take your temperature a good fever tested you know on the way in make sure that everybody doesn't have to be there isn't there on the factory floor so at least they can have good social distancing I'll make sure that between shifts and this is what the other manufacturers are doing there's no overlap and there's maybe an hour between shifts so you can really do the cleanup and antiseptic so you have to do and frankly at lunch most people have closed down their cafeterias and people are going out to their car for lunch these are the type of smart things that our manufacturers are doing especially since they are still in operation by law we're doing everything we can to keep them safe you know transportation I can tell you that not only is Metro North 95% less occupied which is really good I hope that the only people there are essential workers like those first responders the airports are ninety-five percent without passengers now cargo traffic continues to go up I was sort of struck talking to our Department of Transportation today and which is striking to me we still continue to do some of our major transportation projects some of which you know we're in process already we spent a lot of time talking about transportation this year it was interesting to me that now with 30 40 percent less traffic on most of those roads we can close a lane or two and what that means is we could do the construction faster and a lot less cost so where possible we're continuing to do those major construction projects again making sure that there's proper social distancing and only people have to be there you know actually are there I'll tell you that um as we think about our first responders and everything we can do to make their lives easier we had our unified command call again today and I was just struck by the fact that two one one call that's the call people can call anytime they have questions increasingly the number of questions related to day care more than doubled in the last few days and a death by our amazing a Commissioner of early childhood is now working with more daycare providers and many are considering reopening again and we're opening the funnel for who has access to daycare opening the funnel in terms of who is a necessary first responder that we actually have to get there obviously at the beginning was nurses and doctors and we co-located next to those hospitals and now it's a folks and nurse it's police fire corrections officers you know we desperately need people a safe and able to go in and be responsible there you know food we continue to have you know incredible food insecurity issues Salvation Army is setting up a variety of additional local sites and we do need more volunteers folks who can help deliver folks who can help package who folks who can drop that lunch out at um some seniors home we definitely do not want going out for lunch but they have that delivered when it comes to the homeless and nursing homes and corrections all those places where people do tend to be in close proximity we're doing everything we can to decongest get anybody who is kovat in fact there even suspected of kovin we got them self quarantine we have them in separate quarters and that's just incredibly important to make sure that we don't have these congested areas become a petri dish and yes for the folks in Corrections we continue to release those who are you know the most nonviolent and special focus on those who are older those who are most at risk trying to find out where they would be most safe there's a place outside of the corrections facility or is it a or is it a set a separate temperature negative temperature negative air a place that they can be safest going forward just say that from the health insurance folks we've had a very good feedback from them we're gonna be able to make some announcements you'll be able to tell you a very soon but I have a high degree of confidence that anybody who has been distressed by um kovat in any way shape or form I know this is March 31st I know this is a date of um you know some anxiety because bills are due and I have it on very good confidence that your and health insurance and all other insurance will go forward with a grace period assuming that this is a covert related a delay that maybe you have here and you know with that I'm gonna tell you just briefly introduce George Perez our amazing Commissioner banking our banks have been just extraordinary partners for us doing this credibly complicated time and obviously people have mortgages people are worried about addictions people are worried about foreclosures I think George has some good news and how we're gonna handle that Thank You governor early on and this situation the governor made it clear to us that he wanted us to reach out to his respective industry figure out ways we could lessen the impact on our citizens so I've been working with Bruce Adam who's the president of the Connecticut Credit Union League and Tom Angelo who's the president of the Connecticut Bankers Association and and they both represent their industries and would come up with a proposal and initiative and I want to thank both of them because without their help this Saturday and Sunday and before then and today we would not be here today and I'm happy to announce that we have a an initiative that 62 financial institutions credit unions and banks have signed on to it and we expect but in another day or so we'll have quite a few others then going to join us and they have not only since simply because we have not been able to connect with them or there's still some questions that need to be answered especially for the smaller sized institutions but I'm happy to announce that initiative there will be a 90 day grace period for all mortgage payments that are related to Kovach 19 so if you have a mortgage and you wear barber shop worker restaurant work or any workers and you were laid off or furlough or your income has changed your to quote your financial institution or your mortgage servicer and let them know that you have been impacted by Cobra 19 and they will work with you to at least give you up to a 90 day grace period for now there's also commitment that for the next 60 days there will be no foreclosures answer we sort of Corbett 19 again all they were asked me to attest that that's the case they're not gonna ask your doctor's no they're not gonna make it go through a lot of Hoops the oldest institutions have also committed to make it an easy process so most likely the way will be done as you go to their website no bees several questions ask you submit the form and then someone will contact you I will ask consumers who are hearing this please don't and the nest minister calling those banks they're not ready for those calls yet give us a day or two to be able to circle down that the instructions and the directions that those call centers are going to need to be able to service you quickly and as a minimum frustration as possible what I want to show you is that every one of those banks and credit unions are committed to help you and to work with you if your residential mortgage holder as well as if you are a commercial customer in addition to what I already stated they will work with you in waiving fees related to late payments for mortgages early CD withdrawals and other fees associated that's an impact of Kovac 19 last but not least and their other parts that is announcement there'll be no credit score changes for assessing relief in other words your credit score would not be impacted because you were given a 30-day 60-day 90-day or in some cases if it was warranted something different there would now report that as a bad credit and would not report that as a non-payment Tom thank you what you're doing and everybody represent I just like to say that this is another example of a public-private partnership if you will with the business community that your administration has reached out to the third time if I remember correctly so it obviously does work so our banks are obviously deeply concerned about our customers and essentially reaching out to them which they have already done and also having their customers that may be impacted by koban 19 reaching out back to their banks whether it be their branch managers whether it be their commercial lending representative so that they know exactly what's going on with their situation the goal is to essentially do an early triage if you will as George was talking about before don't wait essentially go right in and contact your institution especially when this program is up and running in a couple of days you know these past couple of days has been an amazing amount of collaboration and you know I think our industry is built on collaboration I think back to you know FDR signed the Federal Credit Union Act in 1934 to pull people out of hard times and that's that's really our purpose in some ways we feel like we've been training for this our whole lives and you know for the past couple of weeks now or a few weeks we've been modifying and doing all sorts of creative options for our borrowers mortgages non mortgage loans and were were really grateful for the opportunity to come together under your leadership and and and really give some good service to the residents of Connecticut you know an old slogan for credit unions is a not for profit not for charity but for service and we're here to do that today Thanks government heavy-handed the governor was clear he wanted relief for the consumers but his preference was there doing a collaborative way and that's what we're talking about today and I also want to sure all the consumer is that your deposits are safe if you're having deposits in a federally insured sure by federal the FDIC in case of a bank or the NCUA in case of a credit union they're safe I would like to encourage you to be careful with a lot of different scams that are going out there people trying to take your money where there is because of the $1,200 we're supposed be getting or because they're trying to get you to buy golf if you want to buy clothes because you think is a good investment not because the war is coming to an end so I want to encourage consumers to be careful doing this time because we've got a lot of complaints about scams just follow up well Richard I I know the note of desperation we're here talking to many people all the calls we get and we've talked a lot about what we're doing in terms of healthcare and I just wanted to give people a little bit more confidence that you've got um government's got your back the banks are doing everything we can no foreclosures to be able to help you get through this what we're trying to do with the health insurance companies we get through this federal bridge which comes in that covers um you know interest payments borage payments and health insurance payments so doing everything we can to give you confidence that even though you don't know what tomorrow will bring at least you know that we've got your back going for at least uh for the next four months when hopefully we'll be on the back side of this crisis any questions if you are actually a worthy or a restaurant working whatever in other words you maybe you got your mortgage three years ago you switch jobs you don't necessarily tell that to your back what what is the level of verification I call up my salmon a restaurant worker is it pretty simple and I'm going to get it how does it work it is - then we're gonna mimic Karen which is we're gonna ask you to attest that you've been impacted by corporate 19 meeting you were laid off and so forth if there's a reason to doubt you or to think that's fraud and they will ask for additional information but we don't you know we're not I mean we're in a crisis and we're not thinking people are gonna simply try and call me naive I guess you know but wait too many people too much work so we're going to try to facilitate it for everybody you know saying that was an addictive and and since we've never been here before we never done something like this some of those details are still being worked out but what I can tell you the goal is to make it as simple as possible so it is the discussion we had with several of the bankers and the two leaders of Association is we're gonna ask people to attest to it and unless we have reasons otherwise within a 24-hour span it's not like a catch-up the only talk about the change in methodology we're actually including an additional 17 reported deaths in the total which are catch ups over the last two weeks of deaths that were reported to the office of the chief medical examiner that were not had not been captured by our Department of Public Health so as we've gone through this we've been constantly looking for ways to get the most up-to-date information and so there's a there's a additional 17 so the total will report today's is 69 actually but there are 16 deaths that actually occurred in the last 24 hours and again that's 16 that occurred in the last 24 hours and then 17 that are essentially catch ups over the last two weeks that had not been recorded to DPH 3128 how many people have been tested are we still running behind and testing we're u
to 15,000 600 tests they're being reported into the office of the chief medical examiner governor I'm sure you you must watch governor cuomo he was talking about a peat within 7 to 21 days he's talking about five different we're looking at the same algorithms we see that same chart that goes up and down we see how you can flatten it off you flatten it out it goes a little bit longer but I think it's pretty certain according to every model we've looked at that this is going to keep going in an aggressive way for at least another two to three weeks I've been amazed by our hospitals oh they expanded capacity like I said yesterday by 50% they're working together as one unit now not 26 different hospitals and different associations you know we've got a very little capacity in Fairfield Canada we've got a lot more capacity in the Greater Hartford area that may turn on its head in another month so that's how we're trying to build capacity every day do we have enough No we're looking at ways that we could possibly track that but this is another thing that would have to be manually tracked we don't get there's no automated reporting from the hospitals about that and as you know a lot of people are self recovering at home and so there's not kind of instrumentation around that so we don't have reporting on that now I know that other states are reporting their nursing home numbers separately is there any information in this day's collecting and that they can give us regarding a nursing home yes in fact we are including in our daily release and BPH reporting package some additional nursing home data today that you'll be able to to review but we we are reporting that at this point in time out of the 216 nursing homes that we have in the state of Connecticut 30 currently have at least one confirmed case of kovin 19's that's 14% of the total nursing home count in the state a 14% has at least one case and you'll see some additional charts and graphs in there that we're adding some more data around that now just to our north and Holyoke you know there was a facility of the soldiers home they don't eleven veterans that died and several staff members that were impacted or affected by Kovan what can you just talk about maybe some of the measures being taken here whether it be a nursing homes or vias here in the state to make sure that we have some preventative measures in place one another we were one of the first in the country and to say no visitation in the nursing homes just because the nature of the contagion which could be bringing into the nursing home or taking out of the nursing home obviously now we are screening the nurses going into the nursing home and as I am blood as I said before we now concurrent eeen of folks that are tested or at least been in contact either in that nursing home or we're finding other facilities where people can be quarantined separate from the major I knew that obviously everybody supports the decision not to have family members visit nursing homes is there anything you can do I'm hearing for family members who find it very difficult to get a hold of their loved one virtually or by the phone is there anything that you can do as part of your executive authority to make sure that this happens literally no no y phone would be interrupted in any way shape or form but I can certainly look into that we can also look into a ways we can maybe set up a FaceTime or other ways you can least look your loved one in the face I think that's a good idea Christine we should focus on that I can tell you one thing about renters is there won't be any evictions there's a court is down so I think again renters we're doing their best affected by Co vid just like somebody with a mortgage they're not they're worried about a foreclosure or an eviction you know beyond that obviously we're working with the cities because the cities need landlords who pay the property tax but I think I can give people pretty good confidence for the next of 90 days they're gonna stay in their home they're not to worry about that eviction what percentage of the banks are doing this and what percentage of the sure we've subscribed about 40 credit unions in Connecticut already and I expect more to come on that represents about 650,000 credit union members in Connecticut which is just over or just around about two-thirds of the total approximately 1 million members in Connecticut so it's been a pretty busy past couple of days morning at probably about 8 o'clock in the morning there's about 52 banks that do business in the state of Connecticut of those 52 banks since yesterday morning we have half of those on board we have 25 on board and we expect more to essentially be making a decision to essentially join the program in their future so we're very happy about that that was a very quick turnaround on behalf of the industry especially because they are doing a lot of other things right now especially meeting the needs of all their customers once again whether it be on the mortgage side or whether it be on the commercial side in talking with a few of our bankers just over these last couple of days we've got anywhere between four and ten percent of their you know commercial customers that have essentially reached out to them already and as you know the cares act and the payroll protection piece rolls out we expect that to increase dramatically but we're gearing up for it and hopefully we can do the best we can for the most number of customers if there's anybody want me to give a quality let me know Thank You governor so you go there and then this half-hour will be the most up to date list and that list will get updated on a regular basis at least twice a day for the next few days because we expect it to go up I didn't follow the first part of it 36 hours so if I understand the question correctly so 16 people passed away in the last 24 hours as a result of code 19 across the state in addition we've added to our count today an additional 17 reported deaths that had not been reported to DPH previously but that we were able to identify that had been reported to the office of the chief state medical examiner over the course of the last two weeks so there's a catch up there unemployment checks a lot of people have filed for an employment haven't heard back they haven't received their checks lately obviously there's a whole overload in that department can you just talk about the all-hands-on-deck approach you guys are taking and just kind of a message to people who might be waiting for their next check right now yeah I can tell you that now we have 100,000 claims sadden report that there's a five week lag time part to report that everything is retroactive so even if it's slow for us to get back to you it's not because our heart's not theirs because the technology is 40 years old and we're loading in more folks every day to help catch up with that backlog we're processing as fast as we can but the load is going up but it is retroactive so you're not going to be foreclosing losing any money will take us a little time to process that we'll get it done and hopefully that $1,200 check is what ten days away from the feds that'll help as well yeah I thought we were already but if we're not we will if you feel like you may have flu-like symptoms you've got to stay home that's been our dictate for months now it's tough because we're running short of a bus drivers we're running short of folks to a serve in the grocery store not to mention frontline workers that are hospitals and nursing homes the good news is we had another close to 1,000 volunteers stepping in saying they'll be able to help in the healthcare crisis these are nurses and other folks so we're trying to fill that as best we can but somebody's not feeling right stay home a fourth what is the latest on your timeframe I didn't know we had a timeframe on it but look right now it's for the foreseeable future sherry likes May 4th let's start with that you're still asking more guns and make children in the hall when they're stuck there now less safe are you going to reconsider allowing guns taursus kneel and ask wanted more essential services as I said before I am making every decision right now based on public health you're right I am a strong gun safety person right now my focus is public health and what I really was worried about were some of those gun stores where I saw pictures of crowds in and out hanging around that's why we said it's gonna be by appointment only and that we've asked a public safety they've patrolled and I think people are honoring that commitment so well with testing on the front end and we're still playing a little bit of catch-up on that are you thinking in the future about getting antibody tests to the state so that we can figure out who has had this and who can safely go back to work yeah my understanding and Josh can fill in we're already doing some sampling on that right now in our hospital system and getting the blood plasma in ways that we can check that antidote and more importantly we're talking to the company that's the leader in in that 15 minute test and what that would mean if we could get access to some of that what that would mean in terms of those first responders we were just talking about over here who aren't sure whether they have a slight case of the cold or something more that'll be invaluable to giving them the confidence they know whether to stay at home or it can go to work safely [Music] where the test is being conducted so we many of our several of our hospitals now have in-house testing that they've set up for themselves where they're turning those around very quickly for their impatience the only Haven Hartford healthcare in particular our state lab is a little backed up it's taking a couple days to get through there at this point but we've got additional staff on working through that where you're hearing about some of the really severe lags I think have to do with some of the commercial labs particularly the the labs that are being fed by these drive-through testing centers which are primarily sending those samples to two lab core and to Qwest oftentimes out of state and those commercial testing labs are significantly backed up right now so we've been working to try to bring online additional testing capacity in state so the Jackson labs announcement last week I think it was they're working to increase the volume that they can test in state and we're working with with another lab that we hope to be able to announce in the coming days everybody who gets tested doesn't necessarily have that test run do we have any numbers on that or no there's a prioritization after you actually get the swab so there's your test might not necessarily immediately go into the system to actually be tested yeah so again I think it depends a lot on with the third parties or doing the third party labs I mean in terms of like the state lab or the hospitals the prioritization is all about admitted patients so that the decisions can be made quickly about what type of care they need what room they need to be in as implications on how much PPE is consumed so that's where the prioritization is happening further in state testing insurance in this state you mentioned executives were meeting today you mentioned sounded like some promise would be coming either tomorrow or this week is there any guidance for a lot of these small business owners who have these group plans that maybe we found out that a lot of insurance companies are offering these extended grace periods but they're not really advertised you have to call up and they're doing it on a case by case basis a lot of these employees are being terminated and having to terminate their employees any any guidance or promise you can get they want to do it quietly they they can't with you keeping us on our toes on this but I am very confident that nobody who's got Cova related distress is going to have their health insurance cut off I think the health insurers and frankly all the insurers property catchy as well are stepping up just like the banks have done and I'll be able to be able to state that with more certainty tomorrow thank you for pressing that because you're the guy that carried that water there's really there's been a couple because you know people get nervous but there has not been any anything major as business as usual you know before this crisis if you went there banking when I think hundred thousand dollars out good luck you know because they don't keep that kind of we served in the actual branch if you order ahead of time yes it could be arranged there is no problem with caps there's no problem with liquidity that's what are we serve have make sure that that supply of actual cash is available what we've concerned with is you walk out of our bank we're like sum of money you're you could get robbed you get hurt you lose the money and unless that's a really good reason for that I mean we expect people if you normally take a couple of hours every week or 50 bucks do you may take out a little bit more because you're doing more groceries or you may want to have a little research but we don't expect it if you normally take out 50 bucks they're not gonna take that one $5,000 right now if you want to do that the money is there you know not having any issues whatsoever with the money supply in the 90 days they expected three months back at once or is they kicking the whole loan you can down the road or how does it work every case is gonna be a little different but in general what we expect that's gonna happen is it'll be I didn't have to tell it so if he had a 200 payments left and you had a three months four Berry's now you had two hundred and three payments left you gave a timeframe on when individuals might be seeing that $1,200 check coming from the federal government any information or a time frame on the small business loans I know a lot of small business owners might be waiting patiently to put that money to work and put it to the street any any guidance on when that will be come if somebody is trying to apply today I'm also saying that their federal money the $600 a week will also be delayed since it's part of that process no the federal I believe it's a separate process right Josh so that that's independent from what we're doing in terms of getting our Connecticut checks out some of it will be separate will be together and it depends also on who the filer is and what the program is so it's it's complex but as the governor said despite that challenges were having processing all the claims that the payments will be retroactive of course the toughest group are those independent contractors those gig workers who maybe weren't traditional employees and the federal act was good at expanded unemployment compensation of that group we have to set up that process and so does 49 other states actually the 69 deaths reported 50 ventilators sent to you this morning was it that they came in where any of those deaths specifically because of the lack of a ventilator and present do you know yeah we haven't made any declaration post April 20th and we'll be hearing from Miguel code owner the Commissioner on that very soon but I've urged them give parents give superintendents as much notice as they can because there's a high likelihood that's going to go past April 20th I feel great I have not at this point been tested as I told Chas and AJ I'm at home probably 80% of the time but I do feel some obligation to go get out in front of people every chance I can I've been extraordinarily careful I think with social distancing test us to be determined to last quick questions here we got it we keep getting messages about construction sites in the state what are deemed essential not essential is there a number that you're willing to put on how many people are on a job to make it essential and if these people who are working should continue coming to work and working in closed spaces right now we as opposed to essential non-essential we said as if you can work safely those big outside projects the Charter Oak bridge where you can easily have social distancing those are the type of projects that we want to keep going and I said in some case you're able to do them better now because the lack
f traffic those tighter areas where you can't keep social distancing maybe inside construction work I just think that's dangerous and I think that should stop last question a lot of people in the state might be fearful right now seeing what's going on they have kids at home if they're elderly if their parents they haven't been able to see them what's your message to the people in the state right now who might be scared then I'm a little scared as well that this is something that's totally unique in American history and this month could go a lot of different ways and the only confidence I can give people is everything that we can control I think we have the best people in the world working together armored and armed to get that done be it health care be it Economic Security what you hear here from the banks going forward that which I don't control like the PPE like the ventilators is a source of enormous frustration to me and as I started out you know the fact that I'm asking first-line responders to go to war without all the protective gear they deserve is heartbreaking but we are doing everything we can and I know this state and this country is gonna get out of this stronger thank you everybody
