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[Music] good afternoon I welcome on behalf of Lieutenant Governor Brent Sanford and Lindsey the fastest signer in the West thanks for being back again Lindsey terms of updates for today North Dakota Department of Health confirmed four additional cases of the novel coronavirus disease rakove in nineteen one in Burleigh County one in Dunn County two in Cass County has been our practice we're sharing a gender and ages and whether their community or travel in Dunn County man in his 20s travel-related woman in her 40s Burleigh County under investigation with our contact tracing team and the same for the two from Cass County one a man in his 70s another man in his 90s both of those are under investigation for totals that brings us to 1600 and two tested in North Dakota plot that's up 162 from yesterday that are in the system and and again positive +4 from yesterday hospitalizations a sadly also up +3 from yesterday to 7 hospitalized and we've received tests from 49 of 50 three counties and today we're adding a map to the health ND gov a coronavirus site that shows a tests from County in terms of contact tracing which we talked about this is an area where here in North Dakota we're trying to really double down on we as we've said before we're like to say we're well positioned and well-prepared we've got extra lead time because of the spread coming to North Dakota a little bit later but as we've also said we're not immune to that we know that we're going to have more cases coming we have to continue to work hard to do even a better job on the testing front to keep the testing growing and then on contact tracing again we're not trying to find negatives we're trying to find the positives and when we find positives we would then want to make sure that people who either are positive or who have people who have had contact with people who are positive or people who have contact who have contact with people who are presumed positive that we're doing a great job of those people isolating and and so we said yesterday we had added or increased up to 123 people that were doing contact tracing 25 of those from the department of health staff 98 from local Public Health and 16 NDSU students that are coming online Public Health students and today we're in the process of adding 10 to 25 more nurses to that that are being trained today so again the goal here with the more aggressive contact tracing to try to make sure we can isolate those folks that have the highest amount of risk one best practice in this for individuals again if you are waiting for your test results to come back and we know that there are many people that are in that category the pending thing or if you are close to someone who's waiting for the results come back you should be self isolating another best practice would be if you've got any suspicion at all that you might be contacted in the future by one of our contact tracing teams they will be asking you who have you been in contact with most of us you know go through a day and if we go to the grocery store and we check out or we interact with people we probably don't think anything of it but again would be really helpful as part of what you could do in terms of your own individual responsibilities is even consider you know keeping a small Journal of people that you might have had contact with because if you find yourself in the next 1 to 14 days being tested positive or someone close to you test positive you could help save lives by knowing and notifying Public Health who else that you may have had an interaction with so again thank you for stepping up your own personal responsibility and also thanks to those people who are either tested positive family members or those that are pending their tests to do an extra great job of making sure that you are self isolating again with the measures we've taken so far you know we're our goal here the strategy still the same flatten the curve all of you've got access to the national international numbers you can still see that the numbers are skyrocketing in terms of cases number of deaths are skyrocketing and I want to remind North Dakotans that were there's nothing geographically or genetically that will make us immune from those same kinds of curves the thing that will keep that from happening here is that we've actually got the lead time we can increase our awareness we can be North Dakota smart which is again focusing on the steps we're doing to keep physical distance and other elements and so again but while we're doing that we know that as we head into springtime this is also a time with it can be stressful we know there's a lot of farm and AG stress we know there's financial stress we know that there are a lot of people that have just lost jobs because of business closures we know that people are fearful about the unknown nature of this disease but with all that stress even though we're working on keeping physical distance we want people to use other means to stay connected with each other and by phone or text or Skype or email or you know writing letters we're all in this together and we want to make sure that we keep our communities intact and we want to thank all of our all the organizations all the faith-based organizations all the families and all the spontaneous things that are happening on that front I know there's a great article that was out today it started here in North Dakota went out on Facebook about some family at home with some young children that started putting hearts on their windows and now this has become a global phenomena that spread all over the world in terms of people using any items you might have at home to put a heart in the window as a way to sing a shout-out to a neighbor or someone who's walking down the street to say we're all in this together and as part of our our work here at the state of North Dakota we're working tonight to light up the windows in the State Capitol into a Oaks getting the signal now that'll be tomorrow night we'll have the lights up on the Capitol we're which we've done we do that on New Year's and we do that whenever the NDSU bison win a national championship but on the south side of the Capitol we will have a giant heart to participate in that so keep those hearts flowing I want to say to those people that are listening online thank you for your time thanks for being part of the process thanks for getting the information out we know there's a feed that goes on particularly on Facebook live we appreciate your input and feedback we're watching that feed we are listening to the comments that are coming in and one of those things we've heard a lot about from people watching online relates to student loans and so today we're announcing a two-part response to suggestions that we consider providing relief for individuals who've got student loan debt with the Bank of North Dakota as you know we're fortunate to be the only state in America that has its own Bank and one of the things that that Bank does it has over a billion dollars of student loans out so effective immediately if you're a student loan borrower with the Bank of North Dakota you can defer your student loan payments for six months interest will continue to accrue but there'll be no you know payments or penalties if you're not paying your loan to do this borrowers and co-signers need a simple online form at bein DMD gov slash kovat or call the Bank of North Dakota at eight hundred four seven two two one sixty six but this is an opt-in program so if you want to participate in this you've got to either go online or call and borrowers can decide if it's the right time for them to move or not because some people may be in a position where they want to keep paying and get their student loan paid for as quickly as possible but this is totally up to you the second part of this is has to do with interest rates interest rates for variable rate borrowers on student loans is going to be decreasing on April first people had signed up for that that's part of the contract they had as a variable rate borrower those interest rates are going to drop by just a little bit over 1% and their payment amounts will be updated at that time additionally and not a requirement but on a decision made by the Bank of North Dakota leadership and affirmed today by the North Dakota industrial commission which includes Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem and AG Commissioner Doug Goehring and myself is that all borrowers that had a fixed-rate student loan that had a fixed rate will receive a decrease in their interest rates by 1% at the time when the bank is able to get the software systems to do that that may be June June first before that happens there's apparently 69 thousand of student loans in that category that would have to be modified but again that's a a in total almost a five million dollar decision made today to again try to support students with that decision accounts of borrowers who were delinquent are being brought current their payments will be deferred for six months but again I want to give a shout out to the BND team who's been working around the clock on this and other items and also to president CEO Eric hard Meyer for their work and in in that they've been doing including meetings with them last night and again today we know this is a challenging time for borrowers of all kinds and especially for students we want to provide assistance that has a meaningful impact the federal student loan program is automatically providing deferment a payment for all borrowers we're in North Dakota approaching it a bit differently so instead of assuming that everybody wants to defer we're giving those students a choice because again some of them may want to postpone others may want to keep paying right now to take advantage of this reduced rate next topic if you're not from North Dakota you're not from transportation you probably have never heard what a frost law is but frost laws as they're known I have to do with transportation have to do with weight limits on our roads and and we have a executive order that we've signed today relating to this to changes within our Department of Transportation n DDOT first thing doesn't have to do with frost laws but n DDOT conducts administrative hearings and those administrative hearings include things like suspensions or revocations of driver's license for if for violations that may have occurred moving violations they do that in person before do T hearing officers generally these are but generally these have been held over the telephone option hearing live hearing officers available the new executive order enables the OT to continue these administrative hearings by telephone or by videoconference if the appropriate technology is available to facilitate the regular and under up didn't of goods and traveling within North Dakota the second one a part of this executive order relates to frost laws so all state highway restrictions have been lifted however the director of d-o-t under this executive order if any state highway is being negatively impact due to load weight he may reinstate restrictions on state highways as needed so that's executive order four do t two things video conference or telephonic administrative hearings and elimination for now suspension of the all the weight limits or a ka frost laws next up I want to introduce Lieutenant Governor Brent Sanford as you know he's been shoulder to shoulder with me through this entire emergency process for those that might not be familiar with all the duties of lieutenant governor in North Dakota the lieutenant governor's got a full plate constitutionally the lieutenant governor chairs the state Investment Board which manages billions of dollars chairs the capitol grounds Planning Commission is president of the Senate when they're in session leads the Aeronautics Commission which is the group that is got broad range of responsibilities related to all the things that North Dakota's doing to lead the nation in unmanned aerospace and other duties as assigned which is about another hundred hours a week of stuff that I give Brent but as the former mayor of one of the fastest growing communities in the nation and someone who is a budget whiz he's been a great help as we work our way through this and one of the things that Brent's been doing is holding regular calls with over 250 mayor's from across the state I think these have held three of them had another one today Brent is going to give an update on that and will be available for questions afterwards here's Brent Sanford Thank You governor usually we would shake hands at that point but not today we're getting good at distancing but before I give some remarks I want to thank you governor on behalf of all North Dakotans for your calming leadership during these challenging times we feel a lot better with you at the helm I can tell you I hear about a lot of words of gratitude every day on that affect so thank you but as the governor mentioned I was able to be on a call today with over 250 mayors and city auditors from across North Dakota we updated the group on the executive orders in the current situation at the state level from testing status as always to remote work initiatives making sure that the state staff will be out doing their work as always we're continuing governance but we're actually letting people work from home where necessary and where they can we also answered a lot of questions and provided guidance on how to best inform and support their communities in these in these challenging times questions are focused on our public space executive orders where the bar is a restaurants the gyms the theaters etc were ordered to be closed and in what type of affect you might have in rural areas versus City versus large cities is differs as you can imagine they asked questions about the k-12 status unemployment claims workers comp claims processes and of course budget planning and I can tell you I'll tell you the same things they told them it's is that's definitely a work in progress for all of us you can look forward to more information coming as we get through the forecasting and look at what the effects might be from this downturn our office is also having daily briefings with legislative leadership as we all know legislators are fielding a lot of calls from constituents as well and we have had an open dialogue with them to help address those concerns as well so I want to assure citizens fellow elected officials and businesses that we are fully committed to working with our local all state and federal partners for the best possible outcome so thank you very much thank you for your patience thank you for your calm and we look forward to working through this we feel we will come out better in the end thank you very much Thank You Brent and I also want to take this time to thank all those mayors all those City auditors all those city commissioners as we know in North Dakota that even in our largest cities the mayor jobs or part-time times we really got citizens that step up and help lead their communities and we there we like to say earning their paychecks right now because a lot of them don't get paid but they're definitely there's a lot of hard-working people out there in the communities and Brent thanks for for working with them and getting their feedback into our decision-making next topic it has to do with with the long-term care we've discussed many times here about trying to flatten the curve and the reason why we're doing that is to try to protect the available medical resources so that if we get people get into critical care situations that we've got enough staff we have enough hospital rooms we've got enough ventilators we've got enough personal protective equipment to do that to be able to take care of them because we can lower the mentality rate of this this deadly virus if we're able to provide proper care so when we think about all the actions that we're doing as a state we're doing that to try to protect that our most vulnerable and we've given that sizing before in these in these conferences and these briefings that that represents about 20% of the people in the state of North Dakota because we've got such long lifespans in North Dakota and so many people that are you know over th age of 65 and we also you know unfortunately have a number of people who've got underlying health conditions particularly diabetes in our state where again we want to make sure that we're protecting them many of them live in long-term care facilities we have 80 skilled nursing centers and other assisted living around the state and one of the directives that we gave over a week ago was to conduct site visits of every long-term care facility in the state we did that through our Department of Health with to make sure that they were following the Department of Health's memo which was issued way back on March 12th recommending long term care providers limit access to those home as recommended by the American healthcare Association on March 16th our division of health facilities brought together its entire survey staff but they did that virtually to train them on this new mission they crafted a series of 30 questions to review with each long-term care facility and in and again in addition those 80 skilled nursing the 64 basic 75 assisted living total of 218 facilities the 20 staff members were trained and assigned almost 218 facilities they hit the road this Monday or excuse me last week and by Wednesday they'd cleated they could buy in three days they competed all 218 visits the visits took one to two hours consisted of collaborative visit with staff areas of weakness were identified and discussed and suggested health and prepare for what was likely coming with kovat 19 the Health Department North Dakota Department health has heard many positive feedbacks from these visits we'll continue to assist these facilities in any way we can we'll continue to work closely with long-term care association and again this is about protecting those that are most vulnerable you know our parents our grandparents our great-grandparents including many military veterans including many Vietnam War vets you know and going Korean War and a few that are going all the way back to the greatest generation but we want to make sure that we're caring for all these individuals so this is a shout out to the the 20 staff members that made it to all 218 facilities and to all the frontline staff at those nursing homes so far we have not had any reported Co vid within those nursing homes and we hope to keep it that way so again thanks we know it's hard for families not being able to visit your loved ones but reach out to them another way and let's let's keep them safe last thing do a couple things to close on here other kind of tidbits but one is has to do with personal responsibility we've talked about this thing before but again in North Dakota we're doing this with a mix of two things I mean if you have you know massive mandatory required shutdowns which some people clamor for but no one follows those orders it doesn't work if you have no men Nitori government shutdown but everybody's practicing personal responsibility you know that could work great we're trying to do a blend here of the right the right touch in terms of government guidance and restrictions at a state level delegating authority the locals but also you know strongly relying on what's made North Dakota great forever which is the people that have lived here have always exhibited tremendous personal responsibility and so as we think about that again washing your hands is the number one best way you know best way to get things done we know that that you have an opportunity to get outside walking could become your new best friend as a way to enjoy and sort of learn humans were built for walking we've kind of built a society around moving around in automobiles and walking might seem like a chore sometime but I would recommend if you haven't gone for a walk for a while I might recommend it try it for people and you might turn out that you'll rediscover what humans were actually built for again on in terms of contact again learning the right way to cover a coffee cut with you know either a Kleenex or tissue or into your sleeve and if you do end up coughing in your hand make sure that you are washing your hands quickly and and then again use an opportunity to clean and disinfect surfaces and then again as we're saying keep social distance six feet people are you know asking all the time about what they can or can't do you can do just about anything you want to as long as you're following these rules and staying more than six feet away from from other people and again as the weather gets nicer there's a lot of things that you can do I mean again if you want to take your kids to the playground go there bring along a bottle a hand sanitizer and and then and and again you have an opportunity to keep physical distance but still get you know activity people have been asking us about mass gatherings again we've we've been encouraging people to of to not hold or avoid mass gatherings and and again our faith-based community this last weekend you know complied I think almost completely across the state found other ways to deliver their messages and stay connected with their congregations and we applaud them for that for that work and so the you know non-essential gatherings again the guidance remains the same so we've given but we've had had some springtime is when the ranchers in our state or moving moving their calves and heading to the sale barns and again the the but the in terms of the sale barns themselves if you're there because you're a buyer or a seller you should be there if you're there because this is where you like to go hang out and you're just part of the public you might be considered non-essential to that activity and out of respect for the the ranchers that we need to keep healthy in our state again if you're if you've got don't have actual business activity to transact there we would ask you to stay away and and again if the sale barns are providing food at those gatherings we'd ask that that be served by whoever is hosting that in a manner that's acceptable for food services or asking you know people to bring their own or discontinue for its food service but figure out a way to get it done but just use common sense as a way to mitigate risk you know create opportunities some sale barns can do you know video and have offered that in the past if you haven't this is good time just like our school is just like anything else to think about how do you up your technology game to do that but make sure again the main thing is make sure there's adequate space to maintain and accommodate social distancing and of course if you're sick if you're a buyer or seller and you're sick again just like we would ask people to stay home from work I know that ranchers might say there's nobody else I can send but this is a time when maybe neighbors can help neighbors or you've got family members or you know that son or daughter that's you've always wanted to come back the ranching business stay home if you're sick maybe they'll come home maybe they're out of college right now maybe they're not at work maybe they can come home and help out but again working together we can work through these in a common-sense way and allow people to keep their their livelihoods moving particularly in the important area of Agriculture and food because this is a essential we're at the beginning we're at the end of the supply chain for a lot of medical supplies we're at the beginning of the supply chain for feeding the world and North Dakotans have to keep doing our end on feeding the world another topic as you as you know from these calls we've been connecting with all of our neighbors and had reported had report outs yesterday on calls we'd had with Governor Christie gnome and Governor Steve Bullock from Montana were working to schedule call with the governor of Minnesota for tomorrow and today had a great conversation with the premier Palliser Brian Pallister who's the premier of Manitoba they've been doing a great job up in Manitoba and when our neighbors do a great job we benefit so we always want to be grateful for the work that they're doing Manitoba is among the provinces in Canada near the top in terms of testing per capita they've completed 4,300 tests up there and they've they are doing a great job in terms of how they're managing things so shout out to them for being a great great neighbor on our northern border and we know that for a lot of North Dakotans that live close to the border there's a lot of economic activity that goes back and forth the Canada is our largest trading partner billions of dollars of trade going on every year and across all the ports where we move back and forth across the borders and so again we're thinking about our friends and neighbors that are on the other side of the border and knowing that this virus doesn't really pay attention to borders it's important that we understand that we're all we're all humans living together on the Great Plains and it's important that we stay connected with each other so in closing for our formal remarks today you know I've always opened with gratitude today I want to close that there's so many people to be grateful for but rather than me going on on that list I thought it would just one of my favorite quotes people often ask me about how gratitude is you know built into my life and I try to think that it's built in everywhere but this quote by melody Beatty really I think sums it up and is really appropriate for today so this is a gratitude note for everybody in North Dakota gratitude unlocks the fullness of life it turns what we have into enough and more it turns denial into acceptance chaos to order confusion to clarity gratitude can turn a meal into a feast can turn a house into a home a stranger into a friend it turns problems and gifts failures into successes the unexpected into perfect timing and mistakes into important events it can turn a existence into real life and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons gratitude makes sense of our past brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow gratitude makes things right and that's a quote by melody Beatty but I think there's a number of things in there that are important when we talk about gratitude make sense of our past brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow I would just say again we've got so much to be grateful here in North Dakota including all the people that are working around the clock to make sure we're prepared as best we can be for for the situation that we're in I want to thank all of them you know from health care providers first responders mayors leaders everybody in state government team North Dakota thanks for all the great work you're doing we had another day to day with a small increase in positive counts but every day that we every day that we have one of those days is buying us time to make sure that we can both expand our available medical capacity and flatten that curve and if we can do that we're going to be working together to save lives so thank you all and now Brent and I are available for questions 7/7 have been hospitalized how many is seven are still in the hospital all of those question was a question from radio legend Dave Thompson was how many are still hospitalized and that's plus three from yesterday so seven but everybody that we've reported earlier this week still remains in the hospital could you give the ages of those who are in the hospital I can I do not have the ages at hand and we have not been releasing those conversations with mayor's yes did prairie-dog come up question is did prairie-dog come up in the conversation with the mayor so operation prairie dog is one of those last buckets to fill if you follow legislative session where infrastructure dollars are going back out to local jurisdictions and so it's off it's a quite a bit of concern as to with the drop in oil prices if the prairie dog bucket will fill and if there's projections being worked on we're not ready to put those out but we've got you know sensitivity analysis on if the if the oil prices at such level what does it look like as far as the the trust funds are working also what is the sales tax budget look like going forward and so we're we're optimistic that there might be some movement on the oil price if there could be some work at OPEC plus in the time being but it's all part of the equation as far as where the sales tax comes in but the yes the municipalities are already planning on what might be an option because their plans had been made for for the dollars that were shown as to what they might use those dollars for so it was a concern that's was my comment about budgeting will be a topic going forward for the state and how it affects the locals governor the president alluded that he said he wanted to start relaxing a lot of the regulations around Easter is that a deadline that you have discussed but the question was have we discussed relaxing any of the guidelines or any of the restrictions around Easter and and it's being discussed the national level so we discussed the answer's no I think it's difficult for for us we're on the tail end of this pandemic I mean it's you know it's it's moving across the world we've saw it moved from China to Europe that's the United States and you know picking one date for the entire United States you know likely wouldn't make sense because I think again this is why it's great that we got 50 state leaders and 50 states 50 governor is doing a great job leading stuff because each state's going to have a different situation or at least regionally we're gonna have different situations and so our you know we may be put on controls later than some places and we're still ahead of the game but that may mean that we have to keep them on longer here in North Dakota than play other places that that that are that are relaxing them people being hospitalized with 36 cases how many of recovery question was we have 30 we have 36 positive and the question is how many is recovered what we know is that there are likely many people in North Dakota who have coronavirus who were not not tested you know we had very few tests at the beginning we have we have another group that we're through our expanded contact tracing that we're trying to track down and this is a group will call presumed positives we don't have any numbers but I'm sure maybe if some of you have seen on social media where people said hey I did telemedicine and I talked to the doctor I described my symptoms I described where I went and they were told by a medical professional a you likely have coronavirus there's no treatment for it unless you your symptoms escalate so the recommendation like would be if you get the flu which is you know stay home isolate drink fluids watch your temperature all the guidance they would they would give those individuals and so then if there's no difference in medical you know in the medical recommendation some of those people early on did not get did not get tested were presumed resume positive those folks we are we know are we're recovering and we know from some of the medical organizations the way they're handing their protocols is if they have someone who's a presume presumed positive they ask them to stay home they keep checking on them if they become worse then that's when they would come and be you know become hospitalized so we we we don't have the data but we have a presumption that just like other places in the country the majority of the people that that can that contract covet the majority of the people if you don't have an underlying health condition and you're not elderly majority those people are recovering and they're recovering at home you had an update on the unemployment claims made further I guess that would be yesterday or today and if there had been any shift in the industries from which those people were applying for unemployment a two-part question from Jeremy Turley from foreign news service any updates we'd given the unemployment counts earlier which again a run rate of four hundred a week two weeks ago six hundred last Wednesday sixteen hundred Thursday 2594 Friday 2224 over the weekend that's a record Friday was a record Monday 1941 and today as of just before walking in here nine sixty seven so what that gets you to in one week is about 74 shor of 10,000 so nine thousand nine hundred and twenty six unemployment and claims in just one week that would also be a record spike in terms of any change and that was still still the majority of that through the weekend was energy-related I don't have the data Jeremy today from but we can get it for you on if we've got industry breakdown on the stuff coming from today Lane this question might be more suited for Milan but one of our reporters was in Minot today for their press briefing that they're gonna start doing weekly it he said somebody there mentioned that they're changing the guidelines for how they test people and he was we were curious what that what those guidelines were being changed to and if that was just a might not thing or if it was statewide question from Wayne Hankins of KX News was press briefing in Minot might not indicate it they were changing some testing protocols and wondering if that was a change in the state or just a Minot thing I think that was the question and the answer would be that would be that would be the medical provider in Minot that made that same weave Qi made no changes on our guidance here from the state of North Dakota and the guidance is my Linh is did come on up if you want to add to that if there is a change that I didn't know about in the last few minutes or Milan Milan Tufte our state health officer with a clarification so with this afternoon we did send out a health advisory and that updated the guidance just to provide a little bit more insight into the symptoms for individuals to look for and also relax the epidemiological risk and transmission risk to say if you have these symptoms and no source of exposure has been identified police tests and then it also just reinforces that prioritization that we had listed before but it was more about letting people know about which symptoms to look for yes fever and cough shortness of breath sore throat chills myalgia which is that body ache and then fatigue so fever just to it describe that a little bit more we're looking at fever right now at 100.4 but if you're older like around 60 and older we you might have a lower core body temperature and that temperature that we might see a fever at is ninety nine point six and our healthcare providers know that thank you governor of the weekend your office and dpi will be evaluating a lot of distance education plans that are coming in from around the state what exactly is that evaluation process going to look like question was we're going to be evaluating a lot of distance education plans that are coming in and what's the evaluation it look like dpi is going to take the lead on this with the governor's office as a as the back up the those are due by this Friday some of them are have already been submitted dpi has been split into a set of teams so they'll be you know one plan for each of the hundred and seventy-five different school districts that we have in the state and those plans will be you know grouped in terms of different criteria I think one of those will be you know the largest school districts might be evaluated say by one team and you know small class B rural districts by another so we're not comparing small to large we are looking to make sure that we're you know meeting all the mission requirements that we're looking for because again we've got the the you know the important mission of our districts that includes you know trying to reach those hundred and thirteen thousand students that are in our k-12 system includes an A academic mission which they need to fulfill they've got the nutrition mission they need to fulfill and a special education mission and of course nutrition relates to USDA the Special Education Department of Education so we're trying to work through some of the new federal waivers that are coming on nutrition just to make sure that all the plans are incorporating the new flexibility that k12 has been given and but importantly we're going to try to make sure that that they've got the delivery mechanisms they are that they can and then if again if we've identified shortfalls if we've got places where again there may be equipment or broadband you know where can we team up with private sector partners to help make that happen to make sure that we've got a equitable opportunity for all students to continue their their learning we're also looking for we're looking for innovation we're looking for creativity and we're looking for people that are using I must say good old-fashioned techniques you know including reading books and book reports you know those things are all it's all on the table in terms of how we want to try to keep delivering educational experiences during this time frame we talked earlier again the legislature had wisely passed this innovation in education bill two years ago in some school districts and that's another place again where we're you know pointing people towards to take a look at that legislation because that some of the school districts through their innovation education waivers had essentially done much of the work that we're asking them to do now as part of this planning process but we're looking forward to seeing those plans and we know there's we know that there's great innovation happening by our classroom teachers and by our you know building principals and by with great support from school boards and we know that there's a lot of great work that's going out there this during these 12 days of school that are waived and we you know grateful for for all the leadership that's happening at the local level to make sure our students get a great education during this interesting time will you be signing off on that too or it will be up to superintend basis all right we're gonna be looking at them together but we're gonna we're going to review next weekend all of those plans that are coming in and make sure they're meeting the the criterion and dpi has sent out a set of criteria that they're looking for in those plans so there's guidance on their website of what needs to be included in those plans teams meet present the plans then you'll have a chance to look at a question was what's the process you know that teams me the teams will meet and the teams will do go through essentially the checklist the taxonomy the framework and say does it meet all of the plans if it doesn't they're going to be sending them back and saying hey we're missing some spots and we need to to fill those in and then hopefully we'll be you know seeing a set of some really good interesting plans and and from that again with one great things is there's there may be great ideas that pop up from these that over the course of this spring we can share from one district to another share statewide because I know there's going to be some really innovative things that come from the work that's being done Jacob I'd like to go back to the hospitalizations asking bluntly how are they Jacobs asking how are the people that are hospitalized I don't have an answer on that and again we I we're not intending to provide personal medical information here and but you know our hearts go out to them if you're someone who's hospitalized with this disease is a serious thing we know that there's in the rest of the world there's there's a mortality rate that's significant from this and you know I'm sure that families are very concerned about those loved ones that are in the hospital and we hope that we recover you know we've got one coming in online in the back and then Lane after next after you question is what impact on state revenues do we see from the coronavirus impact on oil and coal industries and as mentioned with with Dave Thompson this is something we're looking at as you speak we'll have we're looking for reports coming in from OMB on what an updated forecast could look like but I was standing there thinking beforehand that the prairie-dog numbers the syph numbers the the oil tax distribution numbers are heavily based on on that oil price and so that's actually an OPEC plus decision that we're looking for to see if that could make a positive impact on the oil price whereas sales tax is also is very has a lot of oil impact but it also has just the general the populace which is what we're so concerned about with the corona impact now the shutdown of these retail facilities what what effect is that going to have on sales tax so it's like two things happening at once but the oil price if we start seeing that move with if actions from from the US government from OPEC plus with Russia and Saudi Arabia can have a positive impact and you can see some drilling continue but if the price stays the way we have it now it seems like a repeat of the 2015 16 17 time period to me and so I know what that felt like as a mayor I know what that felt like coming down talking to legislators and OMB at the time governor at the time and basically f sales tax and oil tax is dropping at the same time so the planning we're doing is making sure that the budget stabilization being full you know what is the strategy for exercising our statute that we have the statute built the building we have under statute to read to have the allotments bringing in funds back in the general fund with reduction of spending and then matching the drawdown of budget stabilization and then as has been separately what does the oil tax impact look like so it's it is actually two different processes so hopefully it answers Scott Ann's question I would great answer by lieutenant governor I would just add to that that we in North Dakota should be grateful for the Supreme Court ruling a few years ago that paved the way for all states to collect sales tax on online sales because you know it doesn't help a local retailer that may be shut down right now a small business owner they're in tough shape but we know a lot of people at home or are doing a lot of online purchasing and so it'll be interesting to see the mix at the state level that come what comes in from you know how much is made up on online sales tax versus on-premise Lane several states have already issued a stay at home order have you thought about doing that and if not what would have to change for you to do so question was you know several states have issued to stay at home Warner order and what would it take for North Dakota to do this as I've said at previous briefings yeah I think it has to do with with where we really see widespread community spread if we think that the you know the things that we've done to date and the personal responsibility that we talk about every day if that's not working then you have to step it up but I would would say for right now again at the case rates that we're coming in right now we feel like the controls we have in place who are putting that curve on a level where the future cases and the future critical cases are going to be below what our medical capacity is so right now we feel we're on a path but this is something we monitor we monitor every day to try to do that but again you know we'd love to not have to go to that because if everybody's exercising personal responsibility then maybe we're gonna have you know fewer government mandates Jacob my final question I promise in reference to the frost laws obviously over the fall and winter there is a lot of excessive moisture that put a lot of county roads in danger with lifting these weight restrictions is there concerned that it might expedite how quickly these roads wear down come springtime Jacob's asking the question about the frost laws and and given the heavy moisture content last fall the frost going out you know could this rapidly deteriorate some of our state roads and the answer is yeah it's something we have to watch out for I mean it's the reason why frost laws exist because when you've got the frost going out and it creates a uneven structure and then you got heavy loads working over it that's what can really deteriorate that's the why frost laws exist so we so that's why we've included in that order for the head of n DDOT as part of the executive order he can put those weight restrictions back on if we see that there's a section of road because we don't want to be overly short-sighted here we're trying to help out industry who maybe gets back to a staffing I mean why raise the load limits I mean we've already gotten feedback this executive order went out it at you know like an hour before this conference we're already getting feedback from industry by saying hallelujah because if you're short of drivers this is one way and if you can run on your regular summer load limits during the spring it helps you with your workforce shortage it helps moving you know Goods and transportation and food because we know there's a lot of demand on the food supply chain coming in so that's why that's why we're doing this but I would say you've also heard Brent and I talk a lot about the importance of automatically collected information one of the things that we did we do have a project going on in McKenzie County in the heart of the Bock and where we've got the Y's road system Wis e which is the weather information system we're talking about and we've now for the first time ever we've got about over 50 frost probes that are over five feet deep that go into the ground so we're gonna actually make data-driven decisions and that kind of that kind of data collection if we had that statewide then we wouldn't be you know picking a date off the calendar for a frost law saying hey you can drive after May first we would know whether or not the frost was out and so again I envision a future for North Dakota where we'll be doing data collection where you might not even need these executive orders because we love real we'll have real data lane we had a couple questions from viewers earlier today the first one being with it getting warmer out and nicer with spring coming up is there any concern for snowbirds returning from areas like Arizona and Florida and do you think that'll spike the number of positive cases here in North Dakota a question was with warmer weather coming and all the the snowbirds is they're called people returning from Florida Arizona and North Dakotans that may winter down there do we have any risk for for transmission I think any time we've got travel with people coming you know into our state we would ask them to you know the same appropriate thing if you've got it doesn't matter if you've been a resident of North Dakota for 50 60 70 years and you feel fine if you're coming from a hotspot area or you think you may have had contact with someone was a positive case when we would ask those people when they come to North Dakota to practice all of the things we talked about here in terms of personal responsibility but maybe even further I do know people that have returned I know college kids that have come back to our state and they're practicing self-isolation for 14 days I mean they got themselves set up and they're really making sure they reduce their contact so I think that that's a just good public health practice if people can do that but again they may some people I know may come back as they want to come back to a place where they say fewer positives than in Florida or Arizona but I also have know people that are saying hey we're comfortable where we are we're set up and we're just gonna stay here and they might extend their time so I think we're gonna we may see an acceleration of some coming back we may say some that just stay where they are and shelter in place in warmer states for a longer period of time net net net net North Dakotans are always welcome here and and we want to take care of everybody but with if you're coming back or you've lived here the whole winter same rules apply about personal responsibility question was about cashiers at grocery stores and their fear of contracting the virus from touching all the things that the shopper has touched do you encourage grocery stores to promote more of their self checkouts in this time question was you know checkout personnel at grocery stores and the possible risk of transmission from touching foods or cans or other products that others may have you know I think it's a the self in the part of the question was what do you think about self checkout I think self heckout is great because you know this is one of the ways in a state where we had 30,000 jobs open three weeks ago and we're short of Labor one of the ways to do that is to you know automate tasks that you know any wherever we can and that's certainly one of those tasks that can be automated where people can do that self checkout so I think that's a I think we're gonna see I said an earlier press conference disruption like this creates an opportunity for innovation and it actually accelerates innovation and I think that we're gonna see whether it's in education in terms of delivery of academic missions whether it's in healthcare through telemedicine whether it's more self checkout I think I think we're going to see a step function shift in terms of adoption rates of these things because once people say hey that was that wasn't a good idea just when you're having a pandemic that's just a good idea period so I think we'll see more of that but I would encourage all of those employers to make sure that you know they're protecting their their employees and and if they feel they've got to do masks and gloves for people that are in high contact situations I mean that's totally appropriate for the employer to think about doing that one more coming in online with state employees potentially going into homes to visit with clients what measures is the state taking to make sure state team members and their clients are see a question from April Baumgartner was with state team members going into people's home to meet with clients I'm I'm what precautions are we taking I'm not sure what state function would be causing people to go into people's homes but maybe my Lynn's got if that relates to the health department or is there anything is April have any other drill down on he was here I could ask her but social services behavioral health my linh do you want to talk about precautions we're taking protect state employees so the Department of Health has been working with the Department of Human Services and all of our partners that do deliver homecare services in the home and the precautions that we you've heard the governor talk about washing your hands stay home when you're sick calling ahead and seeing if there's anyone sick in the household doing all those social distancing things to help protect themselves that's been our advice to individuals how many of the 300 Cass County tests have come back based on the best information that I have before I came in here is that I think there's about still 270 of those pending and we say Cass County they were taken in Cass County but we don't know of those pending those are pending from the quest lab that we talked about earlier they were sent to a national lab they're still held up but a number of those could have also been Minnesota but they were collected in in Cass County but were you there and then we know that testing is accelerating in Cass County at the the local site we're gonna roll those numbers into the state numbers but there's a another set of tests that were taken yesterday when they started to ramp up their testing so there's those 270 plus more that are still pending so again if you've got the possibility of as many as 350 or more tests pending in Cass County again I would just say as I said the beginning if you are someone who's been tested you should be self isolating until you get the results because you you you likely had all the things that myelin talked about if you were if you were to get tested if you are in close contact with someone who's waiting for their tests to come back you should be isolating if you know somebody or worked with somebody that that is that has told you that they are going and getting tested you should probably be self isolating and you can again we're trying to get a team out there to do contact tracing to try to go back and connect with who might have been in contacted me but again on personal responsibility for those three hundred plus people with tests pending in that County we could if although if depending on how those came back we could be having a very different press briefing tomorrow so again we would just ask everybody to that's in that bucket too you know the best way to act is when you're waiting for your test is presume it's positive and act accordingly and then be super relieved and when it's negative but again that's what personal responsibility is is taking the the most thoughtful course of action okay I think that wraps it up for today but again thanks to the media that's present here thanks for the questions are coming online thanks to all the people that are watching thanks for everybody that's doing a great job on on personal responsibility and and again when we talked about gratitude today keep encouraging people when you've got if you got a little extra time as we move through this if you have an opportunity to thank someone your life that's made a difference now is a great time to do that I also want to also give a shout out again to my linh give me the my closing comments on the quits the quit smoking quit vaping topic go bid 19's a respiratory disease the people that are dying are dying a you know due to a respiratory function and and one of the this is there's never been a better time to quit smoking and quit vaping than right now and we do have a quit line and can somebody get that for me know what by heart put it up on the thing someone's looking it up right now so on the North Dakota Department of Health website but there are resources there on the website if you go to the Department of Health website you can go there and get all the resources to help you quit and quit now and people might say it's hard yeah it's hard but there's a lot of benefits and the benefits actually start accruing quite rapidly after you quit and phoning a friend it's coming up here now I see we got it it's being delivered boy wow that is how could I forget that 1-800 quit now 1-800 quit now I don't think we even had to write that one down but anyway that's a closing thought today and so gratitude and quit smoking is what we're wrapping up with today so and quit vaping - because vaping puts stuff in your lungs that you don't want to have in your lungs okay be healthy be safe thanks for practicing personal responsibility we'll see you all tomorrow at 4 o'clock [Music] you