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[Music] support for this program is provided by the foundation for excellence in Louisiana public broadcasting and from viewers like you [Music] hello and welcome to this special edition of Louisiana public square I'm Natasha Williams anchor reporter for Louisiana at the state were in in just a matter of months a microscopic virus has wreaked havoc around the globe and here in Louisiana the outbreak has caused death and illness while living stress and uncertainty in its wake over the next hour we hope to bring some clarity and calm to the discussion will be joined by Governor John bel Edwards Senator Bill Cassidy and congressman Garret graves and others to answer questions about the epidemic in the state assistance for those in need and financial concerns moving forward during tonight's program we hope to encourage our viewers to join in an interactive survey Tech's CO vid two two two five two six three four eight eight four and share your thoughts throughout the broadcast the panel for our segment tonight on Louisiana's medical status includes Governor John bel Edwards the governor will be present during all three segments of our show dr. Alex bu Assistant Secretary of Public Health for Louisiana's department of health as well as Sarah Berthelot president of the Louisiana sociation of United Way's which also serves as the lead on the state's 2-1-1 Cova night in response Louisiana's to one one is already received 50,000 questions governor I'd like to start with you where are we in terms of cases deaths and flattening the curve and where are the new hot spots if any in the state well thank you Natasha first of all we've added 331 cases today but at our noon update that brings us to 24,000 854 statewide since the beginning and unfortunately we added 77 deaths and so we went over fourteen hundred fourteen hundred and five deaths overall if you look at the trajectory of new cases have they been coming online and you know you know that as a state we are certainly flattening the curve and that's evident over the last six or seven days which is a good thing what that means is the stay at home order is working social distancing is working people are people are complying with all of that and exercising proper hygiene now we could always be better and I'm encouraging people to do that we haven't had really a new hotspot emerged over the last few days I will tell you the last real hotspot we had was between New Orleans and Baton Rouge and the river parishes and and that seems to have flattened out now too and and I will I will say that the are not which is the growth rate that you use in the modeling all of it is trending at about the 1.3 level which is about where we we thought we would be quite quite frankly and and doing relatively well but we've got a ways to go to make sure that we stay on top of the virus that we don't see cases start to spike again and certainly we don't want to have more deaths and it's absolutely necessary well this week you announced that the Department of Health issued a revised order for medical and surgical procedures bring us up to speed as to why elective procedures will be the first thing to reopen well first of all we know that we got to get people back to seeing their doctors in order for them to be healthy especially the people with the comorbidities that make them especially vulnerable to the virus you know for example we know 56 percent of the people who died from cobia 19 have hypertension another big percentage have kidney disease or heart disease or their obesity you name it so we want these people to be as healthy as possible so you've got to be able to reconnect them to their physicians to their care and and that's that's a big part of this it's also essential that that we stand it back up because health care is a big part of our economy as well but what we don't want to have happen is people who don't necessarily have an emergency condition but if they go too long without care it can become an emergency condition and then they start going back into our hospitals at the time we need those beds available for kovat 19 patients so we thought it was the right thing to do but it has to be done in a very smart way that says that's how the Department of Health is issue the order yeah well we're phasing it in but we're making sure they're gonna practice social distancing that they're gonna be temperature testing everybody coming into the clinics that they're going to have adequate stockpiles of PPE for example all of these things going to be very closely monitored but we thought it was the right thing to do especially given the health disparities we have in Louisiana that we're uncovering you know partly because of Cove in nineteen we know that we have to get as healthy as possible to withstand this this disease should they contract it okay this question for you dr. bu where are we in terms of testing and do we really have to have a vaccine really to allow people to go back to work well we're doing pretty well in testing compared to many states around the United States we're seeing a lot of states now surge their capacity I think a lots of people trying to certainly catch up but we know early on we had one of the worst outbreaks in the nation in the first 13 weeks of or rather the first 13 days of kovat 19 outbreak here in Louisiana we were having the fastest rate of growth in the country and so because of that we not only surged testing at our state lab facility but also had had partners coming out of the Woodworks across our healthcare systems really saying how can we help with testing as well and that's meant that we've had a lot more testing come online a lot more coordinated testing here in Baton Rouge we saw the major competing hospital systems come together to support a single drive-through testing site because they knew what was most important was that people get tested and we've seen that in areas around the states that's put us in a pretty good spot but as the governor and I have said previously we need to do much more especially as we start talking about this next phase of testing and contact tracing it's really important that that first step is that we identify who has kovat 19 so we can get them the resources and and identify the people who may have been exposed as quickly as possible talk about the vaccine certainly so I think the the discussion realm vaccine is really a longer-term goal that we have certainly as a country as a state we are going to have to have a certain level of protective immunity meaning our immune systems are gonna have to be able to fight off the virus because none of us have seen it before except for those people who have already had Kovan 19 and so before we can start going back to you know life as it previously was we need to be able to know that people are protected from the virus and so there's a lot we're doing now to protect people from getting the virus but in the long term our goal is and what we're all hoping for is a vaccine that allows us to go back to to visiting our loved ones and nursing homes goes back to having hospitals operate normally and has us going back to you know big events funerals and weddings and the like but we can't wait for vaccine to get the country opened epic that's right the vaccines probably around a year away maybe a little bit longer you know we have seen as a concerted international effort really everybody just is focused on trying to get this done so I think if anything that puts us in a good position for having a vaccine as quickly as possible but we also need to be realistic about what that means and and and in the meantime try to see how we can adapt the way that we live the way that we interact with each other so we can live through this virus until we have a vaccine for this virus okay thank you Sarah let's get into some of the not so common before we actually get into some of those not so common questions that we've been fielding there are some concerns that you're hearing right now let's hear about those well as you've said Louisiana two and one has answered about 50,000 phone calls and a majority those phone calls are opportunities to give people facts about Cove at 19 in an effort to stop the spread about 12,000 of those calls were from callers expressing needs that they had as a result of the economic crisis that's taking place as a result of the pandemic emergency prior to cope at 19 about half of our about 48 percent of Louisiana households struggled to make ends meet to afford the basics and made hard choices every day so the COBIT 19 health emergency and economic crisis makes those choices cut even deeper top needs that are requested and through the to 101 line include food access shelter medical care access and then financial assistance to help with the household to maintain the home and so we this is aligned with what United Way and many of the nonprofit's who provide services and communities throughout the state we're working really hard to provide services and support to these families in addition to ensuring that citizens know how to access public benefits that are available to them at this time so it's a of great concern we we have reason to believe that we need to be in a position to help families climb out of the economic crisis that they they will find themselves in if they're not already there some of the questions not getting answered well we there we are able because 2-1-1 works year-round to mine out information from local nonprofits and other service providers about available help and communities throughout the state we are in a position to providing not only can we provide kovat 19 information but we can guide and make referrals to local sources of help for these families so I'm very proud to be part of the nonprofit sector serving at this time we have area of owe ads and others that are just stepping up and doing everything they can to provide supports to families at this time ok thank you dr. bu we know that poverty can play a significant role in underlying chronic conditions that lead people more susceptible to kovat 19 can you touch on how the virus is disproportionately affecting African Americans and what they can do to protect themselves yeah well as you said I mean anybody who finds themselves in poor economic conditions might have a difficult time accessing the nesset necessary health care but even after something like expanding Medicaid we know that what you eat which you have access to as far as employment the level of stress that you experience every day can have significant impacts on your body and your risk of things like heart attack and cancer but it also can have an impact on your immune system in the near term and we know that there's a disproportionate level of stress and impact on our communities of color and especially our african-american communities so unfortunately what we think we're seeing is higher rates of people becoming infected and then higher rates of death in the in the african-american communities and that's not where it stops it's it really is where it starts for us how do we identify what we can do now to try to reduce the risk of getting infected in those communities the rate of the risk of death in those communities and then the long term how do we try to continue to the work that we've been doing to remove these disparities okay could you touch on the health equity task force and also touch on what's happening with Louisiana's prisoners yeah well the health equity task force is something we stood up and because we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to examine what makes certain parts of our population more vulnerable why is it that there's a prevalence of these comorbidities and what can we do about it both in the short term and in the long term in the short term for example we can we can better communicate with people hey you're more vulnerable to this virus because you have hypertension because you're obese because you have heart disease or kidney disease and these are the things you can do about it right now first of all reduce your salt intake make sure you reduce your sugar intake exercise take the medicine that you've been prescribed get as healthy as you can right now but going forward we also have to make sure that we have more access to healthcare for individuals not less access and then nutrition is a big part of that and it's also true that that poor people may work in settings that make them especially vulnerable to contracting the virus in the first place or maybe they are more dependent upon mass transit where it can be communicated and so all of these things will inform what we're doing with respect to prisoners I can tell you that from the very onset of this in the middle of March we stopped visitation we took those prisoners who are most vulnerable because of their age or because of these chronic health conditions and we reverse isolated them to try to prevent them from ever coming into contact with the virus to begin with as people have shown symptoms we've taken it we've isolated them as well unfortunately today we have about ninety six state inmates who are positive for coded 19 ten of whom are in the hospital we've lost two who have actually died both 69 year old men with several comorbidities and also unfortunately we've lost three direct Department of Corrections employees including the warden at Avoyelles and the medical director at Avoyelles so so this this is a disease that that doesn't discriminate it's very tough disease but I will tell you we're doing what we can to protect our inmates and and those in local jails as well okay Sara I understand that a couple of medical questions Louisiana residents have don't get a lot of attention could you talk to those talk to us about those share them with us sure and I know dr. Bo is gonna help me out and he's gonna he's the expert so he's going to give the answers but we have about a hundred and fifty questions that we receive on a regular basis two two and one some that are not common include if I'm HIV positive or have a condition like HIV positive am i more likely to contract kovat 19 or what if I'm pregnant does that make me more at risk yeah and so you know the point that the governor just made about hypertension diabetes taking your medicines taking care of your health fortunately HIV is treatable it's certainly the primary impact of that virus is to reduce your immune system and so left untreated somebody would be at higher risk for an infection but for the last 25 years or so we've had and even especially the last 15 of those had really great medications that when taken steadily can restore the immune system keep the immune system intact and shouldn't put somebody at a higher risk now that doesn't mean that they're immune from kovat 19 they still need to take all this the previous precautions and with pregnancy it's a similar situation that the challenge for a pregnant woman is that she has to interact with the medical system a little bit more than we're recommending most people do these days so definitely taking steps to make sure that we're protecting people coming to our clinics is key and then for them make sure you're clean up around the house we don't think that there's any particular risk opposed to pregnant women or to their babies either bykova 19 at this time okay that's good news how about another question Sarah well a question it's becoming more common now is I work at an essential business I may have been exposed to Cove at 19 should I report to work and what precaution should I take so yeah this is this is a really important one especially going forward when we start talking about more people you know working we need to be taking precautions are essential workers across the board are really heroes right now showing up despite the the concerns that we all have about kovat our health care workers at first responders still in the line of duty and that means to some extent in the line of fire for being exposed to kovetz so that's why we've prioritized getting personal protective equipment to those providers to reduce the risk that if they're with somebody who has kovat that they themselves are at risk but but the fun'll answer is we need them to continue to come to work and until t ey develop symptoms until we have concerns that they have kovat they should continue to work if they develop symptoms we want to prioritize getting them tested okay Sarah besides dialing 2 1 1 what else can people with questions about koba 19 how can they reach out to your organization and who are you partnering with and making sure that your information is accurate and up to date well they can dial 2-1-1 24/7 all languages we can help them we they could also visit our website where all the frequently asked questions is available at all times that la help la 2-1-1 helped or get has all of the the fa cues and they can also text us at la kovat at eight nine eight two one one and if they want to talk to a live specialist via text and interact via text all they have to do is text their zip code to us at eight nine eight two and one and we'll talk to you via text and so i have to say we have a lot of partners out there that help us to ensure we have correct information for kovat nineteen questions we work closely with doctor bo and his team LDH when we see a new question come through our lines we escalate it up and we work together to curate the facts with the CDC requirements and any other guidances team has so that it's available but also we work every day in every city of this state to collect information about what's available for people and local communities so those two together equip to one one well to serve the any call that comes through if we have the answer or if something's available to you we're gonna be able to give it to you on the on the two-on-one line governor last week the state legislature deferred voting on a bill to postpone the presidential primary and extend voting by mail what is your response to the delay well first of all I think they're gonna receive tomorrow the House and Senate Governmental Affairs Committee will receive a revised plan from the Secretary of State it's my hope and expectation that they will approve that plan and that we will be able to move forward moving from seven days of early voting to thirteen days so we can extend that out and have fewer people trying to vote at any given time the election day will be carried out largely as it always is we'll have to find some new polling places for those precincts that are located in nursing homes for example we don't we don't want to be doing that but that'll take care of itself and then there will be an expanded list of reasons for which you can request a mail ballot but we believe that this has been coordinated now with the leadership in the legislature we've got it in a form that it should secure their passage tomorrow in the committee and then it goes out to all the members of the legislature to actually vote on by mail and the majority of the house and majority of the Senate vote to do that I think we're going to be able to go forward in a way that's responsible and we should be in a position to allow people to vote in July and August and the primary in the general election respectively in a way that allows them to cast a vote without jeopardizing their health and that's what we've been looking for a solution for so I appreciate this the work of the Secretary of State College went and his work with the legislature to try to make that happen okay Thank You governor well thank you governor thank you doctor be you and miss Berthelot for that information while stay at home orders have been protecting our physical health they've also put our financial health and of Louisiana residents at risk when we return we'll explore the state and federal programs to assist those in need and when we will begin to see an opening of our businesses and the economy stay with us [Music] welcome back tonight we're taking the pulse of the pandemic and its impact on our state since the corona virus outbreak Louisiana's unemployment claims have increased from an average of 300 a day to about 10,000 small businesses account for about 99 percent of the employers in the state but their federal relief program has already reached capacity on a positive note last week President Donald Trump announced guidelines for governors on reopening their economies joining governor Edwards to help update us on all this information is US Representative Garret graves he represents Louisiana sixth congressional district we're also joined by Kimberly Robinson the secretary of Louisiana's Department of Revenue Governor before we get into questions about reopening the economy what do we know about the number of unemployment claims filed in the state and the status of the money that's being delivered well right now I can tell you there are about 300,000 claims that had been filed it's a volume that we've never seen in Louisiana before which is why I'm encouraging people to try to do it online between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. at Louisiana works net and the vast majority of the funding paid out to date has been provided by virtue of the cares Act and I want to thank congressman graves and our congressional delegation for making sure that that happened you know so for example we've got 540 million dollars in unemployment compensation benefits that have been paid out the vast majority of that federal money but there's been about 60 to 70 million dollars from the state as well that's been paid out to to these claimants but the $600 a week in the pandemic unemployment compensation there's also 107 dollars a week for the pandemic unemployment assistance and then the state benefit caps out at 247 dollars a week those are big numbers there's there's a it's important because these people are without a job through no fault of their own but these are really really big numbers and that's a lot of claims out there which is one of the reasons why we're gonna move forward as quickly as we can while protecting public health to get people back to work congressman graves what is the status of the stimulus checks and where is Congress and passing legislation to provide more funding for the paycheck protect program sure well the stimulus checks of course of the individual checks up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per dependent child tens of millions of checks went out last week alone primarily electronically there is a limitation on the number of checks that can be printed and mailed weekly so the federal government is encouraging as many people as possible to submit electronic information the electronic payments are expected to be made over the next few weeks the printed checks unfortunately are gonna be taking the next few months in regard to the Paycheck protection program very popular program so far over five point 1 billion dollars in loans approved for small businesses in Louisiana nearly 27,000 small businesses but the program is so popular it did run out of money we are will be voting this week to replenish about three hundred and ten million dollars into the program to allow it to continue moving forward in addition to other assistance programs ok secretary Robinson before we get into your work with the resilient Louisiana Commission are there any tax news information or is there any tax news information that you want to share with businesses and individuals about relating to this pandemic so want to follow up on what the congressman just said for those individuals that are expecting their $1200 stimulus check we got information from the IRS this week for those who receive veterans benefits and Social Security benefits we've gotten a lot of questions about how they go to either a file a tax return most of them don't file tax returns those benefits aren't taxable they don't have to take any action we got that message from the IRS this week they've worked out a plan with the Veterans Affairs Department and with Social Security they simply need to wait they're going to actually get their $1200 stimulus in the same way that they get their veterans benefits or their Social Security benefit the only way they need to take action is if they have that dependent child for the $500 they would go to the IRS website and fill out that information for that dependent child and that would be added to their $1,200 but for everyone else don't worry about taking any action for those veterans that are receiving benefits or the SSI benefits or regular Social Security or railroad benefits no action is needed those $1,200 to payments will be coming out electronically I'm unfortunately some not until May but they will be coming out electronically in the same way that they currently receive their benefits to those accounts so no action is necessary and the most important thing is don't take any calls or provide any information to anyone call again ask you for information to get your stimulus payment the IRS will never call you and ask for information that is not how they operate so do not let anyone call you that will be a fraud fraudulent call so just wait for your payment okay governor while the federal loan program for small businesses has reached its capacity can you tell us about the status of the Louisiana loan portfolio guaranty program yeah which is a good program but obviously it's taken a backseat to the federal program because that loan is actually forgivable if people will use it for certain purposes of businesses we use it for certain purposes and as the congressman mentioned over five billion dollars already claimed by Louisiana and businesses with respect to that so we've got a program at the state level well the state put up ten million dollars it's a 50 million dollar program overall where we underwrite 20 percent of the risk and that's to induce banks to give loans to small businesses that bear no interest for the first 90 days no payments required over those first 90 days and the interest rate thereafter is actually a little lower than it is from the Small Business Administration but I will tell you the businesses aren't focused on our plan yet they're going after the Paycheck protection program which which is what they should do we will have numbers of pretty soon on the utilization of this product that we have we do have a number of banks across the state of Louisiana that have signed up to make these loans we believe it's going to be a popular program but it just isn't yet and it won't be until probably this next allotment that comes out of the the most recent legislation being taken up by Congress actually runs out and that's because basically part of that if you use it for payments to employees is forgiven so it's alone but it's forgivable that's correct so you can as long as you use up to 75% or 75% or more of your loan under the paycheck program to actually pay your employees and you use the remaining 25% or less for rent for mortgage interest or utilities then your entire loan can be forgiven and of course there are other products in addition to the state products out there to offer a lending hand and a little bit of capital access to businesses to help them get through this crisis in Louisiana congressman there's some other funds coming from the state through the cares Act but is there any mortgage assistance or relief for landlords who right now they can't evict people who aren't paying yeah it's a great question you can't just come provide relief to the tenants and not provide relief to landlords otherwise it's a cascade effect and so what happened is back on March 23rd the Federal Housing Finance Agency actually granted forbearance or some relief to those building owners who have multiple tenants and allowed them some more flexibility so that way that that additional flexibility could be granted to the actual tenants of buildings and so this has happened in commercial lending it has happened in residential lending and so there's all sorts of relief and assistance that's out there and I'd urge anyone who is having trouble making ends meet to reach out to their lender and ask for assistance because much assistance has been granted the federal level that allows those lenders more flexibility okay secretary Robinson tell us about the resilient Louisiana Commission and its role it will play in the reopening of Louisiana's economy so the resilient Louisiana Commission was announced by the governor on last week and it is a 15 member Commission that has 15 industry task force sitting under it this commission will provide guidance to the governor and the administration on what are the best things for those industry sectors as we move forward with reopening as the governor was just talking about in the last segment reopening the economy is very important doing so in a safe manner in accordance with meeting those health guidelines that doctor bu was speaking of is also very important but what is it that those industry sectors need as they move forward how do they do so in a safe manner what's important for their employees and what has have they seen from a specific industry as they have gone through the stay at home order some of the essential businesses have been open and so they've had some experiences with their employees coming to work what have they done from a social distancing perspective what have they done to make sure that they their employees have the proper PPE how have they gotten that PPE for their employees what do they want to see going forward for those businesses that have been closed what do they need in terms of support to reopen what do they need to know do they need to do temperature checks for customers coming in do they need to provide PPE for workers coming back should they be concerned about customers that are coming in that may for one be concerned that do the employees have everything that they need before I come in to get service all of those are things that those industry experts will be able to provide us as we look at opening the state back up and so we are looking at industry experts in energy communications information technology real estate all across the spectrum to tell us what do we need to know restaurants because restaurants have been open but they've been providing curbside or delivery but if we go back into restaurants what needs to be considered can we go back in and have tables that are side-by-side do we need to be more spread out entertainment venues everyone has been very interested can we go back to movie theaters college football I know I'm looking at two college football fans on the other side of me those are big questions so we have all of those experts coming in to advise us in those task force and then reporting up to the Commission and we also have most importantly the healthcare sector involved how do we make sure that our healthcare sector can survive if in fact we see an increase in cases coming back what do we expect from the fall everyone has said this may come back in the fall are we prepared can we be resilient which is why this is called the economic resilience Commission governor briefly let's touch on the reopening phases suggested by the president at this point what is the plan for reopening Louisiana's economy and how will we go about that in a safe manner well we plan to implement the guidance that he and the Vice President and the coronavirus task force operating out of the White House gave to us I think it was the last Thursday there's some threshold criteria that need to be meet the two need to be met I should say before you can get to phase one and that they're basically measured over 14 days and you want to see a downward trajectory of all the influenza-like illness being reported in Louisiana the actual cases of Co vid that you're getting and then make sure that you don't have diminished Hospital capacity then you get to phase 1 and it's a gradual reopening where you do what you can while maintaining social distancing making sure employers where necessary or have their employees with a mass ponent they're going to be serving the public those sorts of things and and then you progress every time you meet a new gate you get to the next phase but this is going to be a gradual reopening of the economy it's incredibly important that we get started as soon as we can but you got to do so when when it's safe to do so which is why they've given us these these criteria but attached to what I want everybody to understand it's not going to be like flipping a switch where if if he current stay home order expires April the 30th and we go to face one on May the 1st and that decision has not yet been made because we don't yet meet the 14 day threshold test but if we do that we're not going back to life as we knew it 2 months ago that's not going to happen this is going to be a gradual opening of the economy and it's going to be done so in a way that is smart and with a lot of testing and contact tracing capacity so that if we see cases spike we know how to keep those cases down because we don't want to have to go back we always want to be able to go forward with the reopening over time let's talk about this antibody testing why it's so important well it's really important just like diagnostic testing for presence of Cova at 19 because if someone is developed antibodies to the disease the assumption is and by the way it's still an assumption is that they won't get it again and then those individuals can resume activities just about back to normal so so they can go to work they can in public and so forth now we don't know for a fact that they can't get it again or we don't know for a fact that the virus doesn't come back this fall or next spring mutated enough to where the the current antibodies will be enough to fight it off so there's a lot that we have to know but these serology tests are very important they also can be very inaccurate too so we have to be very careful and only use those tests that are approved by the FDA but those tests are starting to show up in Louisiana and big numbers oxygen for example already has 20,000 of those tests and we'll get another 20,000 before the end of the month so this is a big part of our overall testing strategy going forward to make sure that we can reopen safely congressman graves can you touch on the importance of FEMA's emergency food distribution legislation that you're involved with so many people are struggling people have gone to food banks that have never gone to a food bank in their life they have and so one of the things that I think is really important is instead of going out and trying to reinvent the wheel each time something happens looking at the existing entities that are out there that are doing that type of work and figure out how to enhance or how to expand upon the work that they're doing food banks is a perfect example we saw in the in the big flood in 2016 that the food banks were able to distribute thousands and thousands of meals we change the law in 2018 and it is now being implemented for the corona virus epidemic whereby the food banks are federally funded now working together with the state to help to complement the other assistance programs to make sure that families have the nutrition available to ensure that they can make it through this crisis and so it's building upon those existing capacities and much more efficient than we've seen in previous disasters so there is some concern early on about the additional $600 that people were receiving as a part of their benefits it would just D incentivize them to go back to work you know so what's been done to kind of make that not an issue well it is important because once you get a paycheck protection program loan you have eight weeks to spend three quarters of that money on payroll if you don't you can't have your entire loan forgiven so so that clock starts thinking as soon as you get somebody said if your employees don't come back because they stay on unemployment that creates a real quandary there is a program under the Louisiana Workforce Commission called form 77 it's a document that the employer can submit indicating that they have offered the job back to the previous employee that employee is no longer eligible for unemployment assistance at that point so there is sort of an enforcement mechanism in place but of course all of us just want folks to do the right thing and I know that people in Louisiana want to work and so we're continuing to encourage those folks to get back to work as quickly as possible and get our economy if you don't go back to work do you still get that $600 you you have to self certify each week indicating that you do not have a job or a job offer if those folks do that and say that they haven't been offered a job while they have that it would be fraudulent or illegal and they would be subject to having to pay those on a better unemployment assistance back okay governor some closing comments about this particular issue that we're dealing with as we try to reopen what do we say to folks who are protesting saying open up now you know this is the time we want to go back to our lives look I get their frustration I want to back at work on one our business is open to but we also have to balance the public health and and and by the way we always say Public Safety Public Health comes first well it really does and so we have to listen to the experts and and look they're always going to be people who have different opinions about things and what's great about living in the United States of America and here in Louisiana you can express those views and so so that's that's fine with me but at the end of the day I don't need anybody telling me that folks want to get back to work and folks want businesses open we know that and to the extent that there is a political connection to the protest I want them to understand that I am implementing the plan that was given to us the guidance that was given to us by the president and the vice-president informed by the CDC informed by dr. Burks informed by dr. Falchi so that we can move forward as best we can in a responsible way but this idea that that somehow that what I'm doing is unconstitutional you know I absolutely say that is that is not the case but I like them I'm looking for or today don't know it's how quickly we can get there the day that life is back to normal that doesn't happen till there's a vaccine but between now and then as we are able we're going to transition to opening our economy back up getting our businesses back open and getting people back to work okay thank you well Thank You governor secretary Robinson and Congressman Gray's for all those details as we cautiously move forward with restarting our economy do we know how much damage has been done and what recovery may look like we'll look for answers when we return [Music] we're back and we're taking the pulse of Kovac 19 the pandemic the estimated federal response so far will add one point six trillion dollars to the deficit on over the next decade as of mid-april Louisiana itself has spent more than five hundred eighty seven million dollars on the coronavirus measures and the Federal Reserve says America's industrial output has fallen to levels never seen since 1946 joining the governor to explore the health of the economy now and moving forward is US Senator Bill Cassidy the senator is selected last week for a task force providing input to President Trump on reopening the country we're joined also remotely by dr. lawrence scott professor emeritus of economics from LSU governor let's briefly start with you could you tell us currently how much has a state spent on the rotavirus response and how much is being covered by the federal government well we're just shy of 600 million dollars and until we get to 662 million dollars the federal share under the Stafford Act is 75 percent we're we're going to get to 662 million at that time the federal share will go to 90 percent as provided under the the Stafford Act and I know that there are a lot of states that are asking through the National Governors Association that the federal government go ahead and see if they can pick up a hundred percent but whether it's seventy five ninety percent or a hundred percent the federal government is picking up that the biggest part of the cost of our response and we really appreciate them doing that and I want to take just a moment to thank Senator Cassidy who's working so hard on today with I don't know if you call them that cares three point five or the instrument that actually passed the the United States Senate today by unanimous consent all of that's very very helpful to the state of Louisiana and the partnership that we've had working with FEMA working with the vice-president and in the task force that he leads out of the White House on the coronavirus response and with the President himself that you know the working relationship has been really good and I especially appreciate senator Cassidy because he's he's been to go set we've had discussions and and he's letting me know what they're working on in the Senate some things he thinks that I should be considering here at the state level as well and I appreciate it senator Cassie you just announced proposal this week called the smart fund to further help state and local governments with recovery can you explain that legislation our whole goal with all the cares Act 3.0 3.5 how do we help individuals families and small businesses employers if you will get through this rough patch and so we do it with a check my daughter got a $1,200 check today she lets me know that employers are getting their payroll protection but imagine if folks get through their bills employers get through the rough patch but then we don't have the police the fire department my gosh don't we appreciate the sanitation workers state and local government has taken an incredible hit on their income if if hotel tax and sales tax is how you keep your boat afloat do you keep your police officers employed you're not going to have it if we're going to up those individuals families and small businesses do well on the back side of this then we need to have cities help their first responders be on the streets not a city on its back bankrupt the bill I propose bipartisan with Senator Menendez from New Jersey would give some cash to these municipalities and state governments to make up for that lost tax revenue to preserve that capital is that the human capital infrastructure dr. Scott when you look at Louisiana's economy what sectors are being hit the hardest do you say and how do we see our recovery compared to the rest of the country when it comes down to it well it probably will not surprise people to learn that the hardest-hit sector is the restaurant and accommodations area if you look at the unemployment insurance applications for the last four weeks which have just been unbelievably horrendous like nothing we've ever seen before about a quarter of them those applications came from the restaurant and the accommodations area and then of course the second area which was made of about 12 percent came from the retail trade you won't go around noticing that there's a lot of people that are not working at to stores of marque but macy's dillard's in many of your local retail stores are not working the third area is one that I was surprised that I thought this was going to actually add jobs but the healthcare sector there's a lot of doctors offices that are closed there are a lot of electric surgeries that aren't taking place so about 12% unemployment claims nationally came out with the healthcare sector and then the final area is the construction sector many of our projects have been delayed some of you that live in the Baton Rouge area note the method next project method x3 which is about 1.4 billion dollar project has been delayed for a while and you're seeing layoffs among kind of our key employers like Turner Industries performance contractors in Cajun industries I've done a rough estimate of the number of jobs I think we will will ultimately lose when the numbers come out for April the first full month of this and my rough estimate is around three hundred and almost three hundred and fifty thousand jobs that our unemployment rate will probably be close to 22% when those numbers come out in late May so this is something that I'm professional comments for 40 years I've never seen anything like this really something but the good news is the underlying basis of the economy is in fairly good shape except for one and that is one very important to Louisiana and that's the oil and gas industry oil prices are very low right now and unfortunately a lot of oil is being pumped right now I was hoping it would be cut off in the middle part of April it was not it's still flowing out there it is filling up tanks it's filling up tankers it's fill my pipelines and unfortunately that's going to keep the price of oil low for quite a while now I think which means that we're not going to come out of this as well to say Iowa or New York or South Carolina someplace it doesn't have a big koala gas industry base it'll be a little bit tougher for us let's talk about the northern part of the state which is not so oil reliant yeah well part of it is actually the Shreveport area is has quite a few actually operating wells up there and a lot of people involved you all know gas industry that's active we're drilling started it won't be quite as bad for them certainly not as bad as for Lafayette coma Monroe on the other hand and Alexandria do not have very much of white oil or gas extraction going on so they they all they will not get hit as badly neither room hamon for that matter will not get hit as badly the real hits are going to come especially in Houma which has the highest percentage of oil gas employment of the state and then a Lafayette those are the two sectors are going to be really hard coming back which is terrible because they've just been trying to get out of a recession started back in 2014 so on any positive news as far as like sales tax grocery stores things like that are we getting something positive out of that we're getting something unfortunately for the governor the sector's header that are really enjoying extra sales because of people's hoarding is not subject to the sales tax your grocery stores your pharmaceuticals are not taxed at the state level so that's that's that's a bit of a problem as a matter of fact when you're talking before we started filming with the governor he's got it he's got it he and the legislature have a tough row to hoe going into this legislative session I think you're gonna have to deal with a pretty significant shortfall from this fiscal year and this is the price that will stays low and we're slow to come out of this he's going to have a really human letter you have a really difficult problem in FY 21 senator Cassidy what advice have you been giving the present as far as reopening our country's economy so you know Lawrence gave a statistics on unemployment I have a town hall meeting a woman called in single mom two or three kids at home works at Taco Bell how do I earn a living how do I keep my children safe my spoke when I speak to the president I speak of that balance between physical health financial health if you really emphasize one the others not doing so well we're really emphasizing physical health we've got to for the moment if we don't restore balance people's financial health fails at that point their physical health suffers - what do you do about that I'm now gonna speak as a physician less so than a senator you look like the LDH map hats off to the governor his team on the Louisiana Department of Health website you click over a few places and there as a map of Louisiana broken down on census track you have within each census track the number of cases of kovat 19 within that census track you could also overlay and have an overlay of where we have obesity diabetes hypertension you go into that census track was a trusted figure a pastor a May or somebody you swab everybody you find out who is infected who is not at some point we may also know who is immune and who is not and if they're infected you ask them to quarantine if they need assistance doing so you give that assistance and then you tilt though you tell those who are at risk who are not infected be careful but when you quarantine those at risk you stop the spread you dramatically decrease the death rate and the faster you decrease that death rate the faster you open up that economy so you're basically talking about your immunity registry well you can't have an immunity registry you really does help if you know who's at risk and who's not if you go to an employer and the employer knows that this person is at risk so therefore there's six feet between them and their co-workers and this person is not at risk so they can be at the front desk shaking hands with people when they walk in they don't have to fear being infected or infecting others that's best of all that's what we already do with chicken pox measles hepatitis B we should extend that to this communicable disease as we do it with other communicable diseases let's talk about your herd immunity what is hard what is herd immunity herd immunity is when you have enough people who are immune and right now the best science we think is that once you've been exposed and clear the virus you are immune once you are immune and there's enough people immune they kind of protect everybody else because the infection can't get through them it slows the transmission but there's other reasons why to knows someone is immune I spoke to the CEO of a vaccine company coming out with one he said there's 310 million Americans that will want to vaccinate if we know that 80 million are already protected we'll focus our efforts on the others it would also be as I mentioned to your employer if your lawyer knows that you are at risk they take more protections given you PPE but if you're not at risk you can do something different and it's also for your family if the college student knows that she is immune she can kiss her grandmother and kiss her grandfather and not worry about transmitting an infection to someone at high risk of death if she does not know that she's immune she is not going to embrace or enjoy that experience of family so fully because of that there are so many advantages of knowing who is immune and who is not immune governor you said that when we talk about May first as a date a target date to open it will not be like flipping a light switch we heard dr. Fauci say that as well what do you say to people who can't understand you know what's going on here and just keep pushing to open right now well this is what I'm I'm very certain of you know it was just a month ago that we had the fastest growth in cases in the world had that continued unabated our economy was going to absolutely crash we would not have been able to deliver health care our ICU beds would have filled up and we would not have had ventilators and and so forth and and so we need to make sure that we don't get ourselves into trouble going forward either and and that means you have to have a rational approach and we're doing this in complete conformity with the CDC guidance that we've received from the president the vice president and their task force talking with the the State Department of Health and talking to employers some of whom have already been open because they were essential and what did they do to protect their workforce and then what lessons can we learn and then provide those lessons to the other employers who are going to be coming back online so so people should not expect if we're able to transition to phase one by May the first and I'm not making that announcement today because we haven't met the threshold criteria I hope we will I believe we will and if we make that transition it will not look like it did before co vid 19 and I will tell you dr. Scott is exactly right and he paints a pretty bleak picture which is why the work that Senator Cassidy is doing to try to make sure the state and local governments have some revenue coming in by the way with flexibility attached to it so that it can make up for most revenue I believe the cares act 3.5 which they passed today in the Senate will retro actively provide more flexibility for the 1.8 billion that the state already received but we still have to figure that out because we are not going to have the revenue going forward to maintain you tell my appreciation for people I promise you parents across the state of Louisiana have a tremendous appreciation with KU teachers right now we have to make sure that we can we can pay our school teachers for example and keep them employed and keep our our schools open going forward so this is a very challenging public health emergency this fills over into every aspect of life and every aspect of government it is very difficult to manage but we're doing the very best we can and I have supreme confidence in the people of Louisiana and our businesses and in our workers that we are going to be able to rebound from this but it's going to take a while and and it's unfortunately it's going to be painful between now and then dr. Scott can you briefly tell us about the stock market what it tells us about the economic health of the nation overall well it certainly tells us a lot going down okay because investors are looking at the potential profits in firms and when it comes to making investments and in an environment like we're in right now there's so much uncertainty what do you what you do is you scramble out you get into something else a lot of times what you do is to get into gold as it turns out which drives that price up when when the stock market is going up most of the time that's an indication that the economy is doing better but one of the things is going on now in order to help the economy out the Federal Reserve is driven interest rates down to almost zero when interest rates are almost zero investors are looking for some place to put their money and so even before the coronavirus said i think the stock market was probably over way overvalued and the reason for that was there's no other place to put the money besides the stock market you couldn't make any money in CDs couldn't make any money buying government bonds or bills or that sort of thing so you just you you went that you went to the stock market direction so it kind of depends usually on the downside it's a pretty good indicator that things are bad on the other side it's it's a good indicator but sometimes it over states how good things are let me mention one other thing here you were asking about any pieces of good news and one of the pieces of good news in Louisiana is that we have we have the second highest concentration to chemical industry employment in the state in the United States second only to Texas and the good news about those firms is those firms are 24 hours a day 365 days a year they are constantly operating and number two they are very high wage industries and for the most part I think with the exception of one firm very firm down near New Orleans all of these chemical firms are still up they're still operating they're still employing people that still paying those very high wage rates a lot of a lot of a lot of states don't have that and that's a good solid base for us here in Louisiana that's helped us out thank you sir governor briefly how optimistic are you that the Louisiana's economy can rebound oh it will I have I have no doubt it's gonna take a while and as I mentioned just before you went to dr. Scott it's gonna be painful for businesses it's gonna be painful for employers we're gonna try to minimize that pain while we protect public health and transition back but but quite frankly until we have that vaccine that confers immunity upon people it's gonna be really hard to see us ever reopening fully and and up to the capacity that we have at our various restaurants and and so forth and how we're going to get tourists back to Louisiana you know what what is it that's gonna give them the confidence to travel so that they know if they come here they're coming to a place that's really safe and that's that's another reason why you have to protect public health because if you don't you know the tourists aren't going to come back and the numbers that we need them to to be helpful obviously we need the price of all to rebound considerably was already lower than we wanted it to be by about two-thirds and and then over the last couple of days we've seen what happened so so hopefully we can get the supply and demand issues figured out across the globe know that his economy is open back up there will be more demand for all and for gasoline but how long does it take and I think this was dr. Scott's position we have so much excess capacity because it's being pumped in and they're using it they're filling up pipelines and they're filling up vessels and so so that demand actually has to get to those sources of all before we actually have to get back to more production and so it's actually going to delay the amount of time or delay I should say the recovery in that sector but we're going to get back I am fully confident we have some of the most innovative people anywhere in the world right here in Louisiana with our businesses our employers and I know we have employees who want to get back to work and we're gonna make that happen well thank you so much thank you well unfortunately we've run out of time I want to thank the governor senator Cassidy dr. Scott and all of the panelists who participated tonight remember you can still provide interactive feedback on our program Tech's Cove into two to five to six three four eight eight four and share your thoughts and for all those parents watching just a reminder that LPB is broadcasting educational programs on its main channel each day from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. you can also access online educational resources at LPB org slash at home thanks everyone and have a good night [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] for a copy of this program call one eight hundred nine seven three seven two four six or go online to wwl-tv org [Music]