all for being here for the first press conference of 2021 uh based on things happening around the country today we're off to a pretty bad start but i'm confident that overall 2021 is going to be a much better year for our country and for our state it is certainly sad and tragic uh regrettable what's happening in washington right now and i hope all leaders of both parties will call for uh calm and there won't be any more injuries to people and damage to property or any damage to the core institutions of democracy that we have here in this country i do want to start uh by congratulating devonta smith and they meet native won the heisman trophy last night and i've been assured by everyone in my hometown that it's a bigger deal for them to have a heisman winner than a two-term governor but amede is certainly on the map and i do want to congratulate not just him but but his family his mother christina is actually a supervisor in the tangible parish office of dcfs and she's been a tremendous asset to the state of louisiana for a long time and i also congratulate his father kelvin as well you should know that today i signed two executive orders um to call for special elections for congressional district two and congressional district five the vacancy was created in congressional district two by the resignation of congressman richmond i received his letter yesterday and obviously the vacancy in congressional district five was created by the untimely and tragic death of congressman-elect luke lutlow on december the 29th the qualifying for those offices those elections i should say will take place january 20th through 22nd the primary election will be in march and the general election will be in april later today i will sign a letter that we will send to the secretary of state given my formal approval of the emergency election plan that he submitted to me and to the legislature previously which in all material respects is very much consistent with the elections that we held previously with the exception of not having extended days of early voting and given the lower turnout election that we would expect in these march and april elections i think that that's appropriate i am joined today as usual by dr joe canner who as an emergency room physician did receive his second dose of the pfizer vaccine this week he will be speaking about vaccines a little bit later to you in this press conference and and what has happened this week since we expanded the eligibility eligible priority groups for this week that decision was made last week based upon the allocation once we got it on tuesday for the vaccines that we would receive this week and we saw an opportunity to do that expansion and of course we did it during a holiday week and and so forth but overall very successful and it indicates the positive movement we have to make more vaccine available to more people in more places as we move forward in time and certainly we're trying to get the infrastructure right so that we can just dial it up over time and make sure that more people are being vaccinated i do know that vaccine is the hot topic this week and i want to tell you that that we are gratified thus thus far on the demand that we're seeing for vaccine and and it appears that in uh settings all across the state and really all across the country there is growing demand for it there's reduced vaccine hesitancy um out there and i think that that's warranted because the vaccine is safe it is effective we're not going to put this pandemic behind us in this state in this country or really anywhere in the world until enough of our population is vaccinated but before we get to the vaccine i want to talk about the cobit numbers which quite frankly are not good it's it is distressing uh to say the least um we are again at record highs today in terms of the daily case count that we're reporting 6882 new cases of covid19 in the state louisiana again that's the highest number of daily cases that we've reported at any point in the pandemic and it's also troubling because that's on 36 873 tests so somewhere around 18 percent of our tests last week that we were reporting on today came back positive what that tells you is beyond any doubt we have tremendous amounts of covid in our community community spread is is a real issue right now in the state of louisiana sadly we're reporting 46 new deaths today as well for a total of thousand six hundred and eighty one uh kobe had 19 deaths since the start of the pandemic another record we're reporting today is we actually have one more person in the hospital today than we did at our previous peak during the pandemic which happened during the march april time period that that first real surge we had 1992 coveted in patients uh across the state of louisiana again that's 1993 today 207 of those patients are on mechanical ventilators and so i guess i can sum this up to tell you that we are very much on a trajectory right now of increased positivity increased cases increased hospitalizations that threaten our ability to deliver life-saving care in our hospitals now we are not imminent in terms of resorting to crisis care but clearly if we stay on this trajectory over time that will happen and and so i hope i pray i appeal to the people of louisiana to take stock of where we are and it's not materially different than other states and do what is necessary do do what is necessary do do what will we have to and quite frankly do what we know what works and and that is engage in those mitigation measures religiously mask distance wash your hands stay home when you're sick i had an opportunity today first thing this morning to have a conference call zoom call with about 20 hospital ceos and medical directors across the state louisiana they are all concerned about a number of things they're working extremely hard and they're employing every means at their disposal to preserve the capacity in their hospitals and to treat people who are sick and prevent them from needing the hospital in the first place or to get them out of the hospital as soon as possible and and to save their lives they're doing everything they can with the therapeutic treatments that they have available now that we didn't have to begin with for example rem death severe plus steroids in order to shorten hospital stays we're using the convoluted plasma transfusions and then there is a robust engagement across the state now for my health care providers to employ uh increasing dosages that we're receiving over time of the monoclonal antibodies uh treatments these are infusions um that if if someone tests positive and very quickly after developing symptoms receives these treatments it makes it much much less likely that they will have to be hospitalized and our hospitals are reporting really good results from this and for the few that have been hospitalized their cases appear to be less acute than they otherwise would have been and so these are some things that that are actually positive out there but overall we're in a very very difficult place and one of the things that make this particularly challenging is the non-coveted patient census in our hospitals is much higher much much higher than it has been at any point during the pandemic and so we're stressing our capacity both as it relates to beds in some places but as it relates to staff everywhere and one of the things that compounds this stress on staffing is the community spread that is sending people into the hospital is also causing doctors and nurses and therapists to be unavailable to work because they have co-vid themselves so we are in a very difficult place and and it doesn't do any good to sugarcoat it to pretend um that it's not real i assure you this this is real there's more covid in our state right now than ever before and we have no reason to believe that we've seen the full impact of all of the christmas related travel and activities and gatherings and then coming behind that of those associated with new year's we can't undo what was done yesterday and so what we have to do is focus on what we can do today to make sure that as soon as it is possible we get to a better place and we slow the transmission flatten the curve reduce that positivity rate of our tests slow the cases and and reduce hospitalizations we just have to do that um and and so again i'm appealing to the people of louisiana to even if you don't like them and i suspect nobody really likes them the mitigation measures we know work they're the same ones recommended by the cdc and the surgeon general in the white house task force and so forth and quite frankly they're not that damn onerous put a mask on you owe it to your family you owe it to the community you owe it to those health care workers even if you're not concerned about yourself and we do know that mass can for a benefit on the wearer as well so let's all do better and you know right now we're talking about vaccines as well and that's incredibly important and that's something that should inspire in all of us a sense of hope but we should also be realistic about that we are months away from having enough vaccine administered to make a dent in what is our current problem and that is the surge of covid19 the mask remains the most effective tool we have at our disposal it is not the vaccine but we are going to do everything we can to ramp up our vaccination program as quickly as possible working with the asip recommendations coming from cdc to establish our priority groups and to administer those injections as quickly as we as we can and as efficiently as we can i want it to be going faster than it is i haven't talked to anybody in any state or or i had a conversation with general purna just yesterday about this as well i mean nobody is satisfied this is just starting it is a tremendously complex logistical uh exercise if that's the right word and it will improve over time much like uh testing improved over time in terms of having more tests available not just more tests but tests of different types that some were easier to administer than others and and then all the testing uh places uh that came online over time and this is going to happen with the vaccinations too and we're going to try to make it happen just as quickly as we possibly can so we're taking the doses that we have and the population that we have eligible for the vaccines in accordance with the priorities groups that we're working with them and we're administering those vaccines each week and i think you know this already we get just a few weeks i'm sorry a few days notice of what we're going to get the following week and then we have to refine our plan place our order and then those vaccines if everything goes right on monday or tuesday of the following week arrive at the destinations that we've ordered them for and then in the in the intervening time period we're refining our plan communicating with all of those entities that will be receiving and administering the vaccines to make sure that they are ready make sure that they're taking the right number of appointments that that we're minimizing waste because this vaccine as far as i'm concerned concerned we need to be treating it like gold and and this is all a very involved process i can tell you the people at the department of health are working extremely hard we have a lot of really good partners out there in our hospitals and clinics and and pharmacies and other places and and i can assure you this is going to get better over time as well as you know those who are 70 and older among those eligible to receive the vaccine now and that includes those who are 70 and older in our prisons and we will be vaccinating them as well as a handful of prisoners who are at end stage renal disease and so as we open up priority groups for our general uh population we will vaccinate those same priority groups uh who are who are actually in our in our prisons that vaccination of those inmates should start next week um they're we know how many we have we're in the process of getting uh consents and that sort of thing done now i think there are 489 inmates who fall into that category uh all but uh 39 of them are housed in state institutions state facilities 39 are housed at the local level but we're going to make sure that we get to to all of them in accordance with the cdc and the ldh guidelines and our priorities um the department of corrections has already vaccinated 297 front-line medical staff who work at the prisoners i'm sorry at the at the state-run prisons so this protects the staff who are critical to providing health care for inmates and who will actually be helping to administer these vaccines as well so on that note i'm going to ask dr cantor to come up and share with you all some information about the vaccines and the vaccination program i would ask you if you have questions about that direct those to dr cantor while he's up here and then on the back side of his presentation i'll come back and deliver a few more prepared remarks and then take your questions thank you governor afternoon everyone and happy new year um i'm going to start off just before we talk about the vaccine just talk about where we are in a little bit more detail with the outbreak here and you know i'll preface it by saying um as the governor said there's a lot going on around the country today and i'll i'll share with you one of the things i've had to learn as a as an emergency physician as an er doc is how to in a very chaotic and noisy setting focus on what really matters and what's going to save my patients life and i'm going to ask the state of louisiana to do that right now there's a lot going on out there and it's not just bad we've got like the play officer starting out the best team in the nfl and there's a lot a lot going on on the good and the bad and we need people to keep their eye on the ball right now because as the governor said there is more covid circulating in this state at this point in time then there has been at any point in time in the pandemic there is more covet now than there has been at any point prior to date and you see that not just in the cases that get reported every day as in today where we reported the largest number of new cases to date but we certainly see it in our hospital censuses as the governor said and unfortunately we see it in fatalities and we've come to realize that deaths are really a lagging measure in this uh both when someone actually passes and also when that fatality gets reported to us it's a lagging measure but just going back the past couple weeks we've had new reported deaths every day between 40 and 60 a day 46 today 50 48 51 60 the week prior and um you know at some point we need to recognize that that's unacceptable and it's going to get worse as our cases are going up now and as the governor said continue to go up what we know is that that fatality count will continue to go up just lagging behind and i don't think that's something that folks in louisiana city accept this virus does not spread unless we let it it's spreading more now than it ever has before and on the dawn of a new year despite being in the middle of very chaotic and distracting times that's what's important to us and like to ask folks to take recognition of that if you look on the dashboard today you'll see the map of community transmission risk perish by parish but you might not be able to make out each parish because it's all red 64 parishes are in the highest community transmission risk according to the categorization that the cdc gives us that has consequences people get hospitalized people don't survive that we have to turn it around and as the governor said there's no indication yet that it's doing anything but continuing to go up here so that's a broad broad warning call to folks looking forward to you know a little bit more um happy or optimistic items we'll talk a little bit about the the vaccine and i'll tell you i continue to be encouraged every day since we have started to roll out the vaccine at what i see as the governor said the degree of vaccine confidence in louisiana is very high and on one hand demand far exceeds supply right now on the other hand it's not a bad problem to have it's better than the opposite we're trying to get more vaccine from the feds you know we advocate for it every time that we have communications with our partners in operation warp speed but at the end of the day i am encouraged that people in louisiana want to get this vaccine and for all the right reasons this is a safe vaccine this is an efficacious vaccine and it should tell you something when doctors nurses medical school professors when they're clamoring to get it that should tell you this is a good vaccine to get i was fortunate to get my second dose of the pfizer vaccine yesterday i got it at umc in new orleans with a number of other colleagues of mine in the er and just like the first dose it was it was pretty emotional for the folks that were in the room there um i feel pretty good i my arm's a little bit sore i felt a little bit crummy last night took some tylenol this morning and and i feel good i really want to encourage people when it is your opportunity to get the vaccine don't pass that up don't pass up your opportunity to do so the team is working really hard to make sure that every dose that comes into the state is made available knowing that again the demand is really lagging really surpassing the supply right now a couple days ago we announced to hospitals across the state that they should begin to offer vaccine to their communities that is the process that is starting right now i know a number of hospitals have started to offer that and more and more will in the coming weeks this is primarily with the pfizer vaccine because hospitals have what they need to store and manage that scene appropriately and that's a really encouraging part of this as well so what you're going to see from from the state from the department of health is every effort made to make sure that there's no vaccine on the shelf and that is pushed out as quickly as possible to somebody that can provide that vaccine to folks that need it and again that that's going to pick up week by week i'll let you know what we're going to expect to come into the state next week and it's essentially the same numbers that we had this past week which i understand is what every state is getting right now so for next week's allocation we are expecting 28 275 doses of pfizer uh 27 500 doses of moderna of which 18 700 will be diverted towards the cvs and walgreens long-term care partnership program leaving 8 800 doses for allocation within the state if you total that up at the end of next week that'll give us 293 525 total doses allocated on the broad sense to louisiana of which 93 500 would have been diverted towards the long-term care partnership program i do want to mention in in more unfortunate news we had some reports come in this past week of vaccine loss and i'll tell you it's a little bit of me dies every time that we hear about the dose that's that's been lost because i know how important these doses are and it really does does get at me so it was difficult to receive this news we've had a total of 146 doses lost so far in louisiana the bulk of that i'll just let folks know was 120 doses that were stored in a refrigerator a provider's refrigerator over the weekend this past weekend in the baton rouge area and because of the weather events there was a power outage and it wasn't recognized until folks came back into the office and so 120 doses of modern elapsed their temperature window and it was really really unfortunate to receive that news um we'll update you on that number you know periodically as it comes in um taking a step back i i do want to mention this and the governor said it very well the vaccine is is is important because that's that's how we get out of this but in the immediate term the vaccine is not how we stop the spread right now we're nowhere close to the amount of vaccine coverage necessary to make a public health impact make a very big impact on individuals to make a public health impact you have to have much more coverage than we have right now and when we talk about not being distracted the vaccine work is important essential but right now in order to stop having to report 40 or 50 or 60 lives being lost today that's mitigation measures that's the only thing that's going to affect that it's masking it's distancing it's washing your hands it's staying home when you don't have to be out finding ways to do your activities virtually both socially and professionally that's what we need right now and i can't stress that enough the vaccine is important to get out of this thing long term but right now it's the mitigation measures that are really important and you know we've had every every showing that this is this is important and i'm cognizant of the very tragic loss of congressman elect let low and and and and how young healthy individual who is leaving behind a a wife and two young kids and incredibly tragic and yet there's many many more tragedies like that in louisiana from covid that just a little bit less well-known so you know as we go in to this new year i really would ask people to be cognizant of that and and we think it's going to get worse before it gets better because we haven't we haven't peaked yet so this is the most dangerous time of the pandemic for us is is right now and we haven't even peaked so please please take that to heart and think long and hard about what activities you're going to do for yourself or your family as the governor said what happened over christmas and new year's is in the past at this point so let's take the opportunity in the new year to double down and try and try and stop the spread be happy to answer a few questions if there are sam we missed you last last press conference kanner uh you said 8 800 doses uh will be available for the state of moderna next week are all those or how many of those are going to pharmacies and also who were the providers that lost the doses of vaccine follow up with you afterwards about about the the names of the providers um for the modern doses so there's 800 that's coming in new we're going to combine that with some amount that we have to allocate with uh from our stores in morrison dixon and the ballpark number that is somewhere between 10 and 15 000 don't have the exact number yet we've changed a little bit about how we're running the supply in an effort to really make sure that no vaccine sits on itself during the first couple weeks of vaccine allocation as clinics or some of the tier two hospitals were set to receive some of the more dare they had asked the department hold on to some of their supply to make sure that they had enough storage room and enough that they felt prepared to take it all and we offered that service so some of modern i was at the morrison dixon facility we've changed that policy as of this week so now there will be no kind of supply and hold so all that to say the 8 800 doses that we're getting new madeira next week are going to be combined with somewhere between 10 and 15 000 doses that we're at morris and dixon that will all be pushed out divided largely between pharmacies and clinics won't have the specific list for you at the latest on monday we hope to have it earlier than that but that's the bucket that's going to go to those two entities sorry did you expand you said you changed the policy from having some of these modern doses stored by dixon what's happening with them now and why did you make that change we just communicated to vaccinating partners to clinics for example that we would not be able to hold part of their allocation for subsequent shipments and basically what we're going to ship out now we're going to ship out whatever an entity can use that week or two coming up and and then don't need to re-request to the department to get subsequent shipments i think so i mean it was tough to predict how quickly it was going to be used and i think a lot of providers rightly so wanted to take smaller allotments at first when they were still learning how to handle the vaccine they're rightfully afraid of having any loss and i think that was the appropriate move in the first couple weeks at this point we've had some experience so so now the understanding is there is no you know vaccine on hold so to say it is all from this point forward going to be pushed out immediately yes sir between that eighteen thousand is twenty three thousand is those numbers added together going to pharmacies and clinics next week is that gonna be the same list of 107 pharmacies or more going to be added different lists kind of yeah the hope is that a lot more will be added i think what we're going to try and do is for any pharmacy that is enrolled as a provider which is a process and ready and willing and wants vaccine to give out we're going to try to accommodate them before we go back and kind of resupply the ones that had it i don't know yet how how many it will be but the intent is to increase the circle of pharmacies that have vaccine to to to give out and it's pretty clear i mean at this point i think pharmacies are a and will continue to be a really effective way of moving vaccine out and making it available to the public limited really only by supply how much that we get is the real limiting factor expect to get it again or no not necessarily we hope to be able to but that's far from an assurance right now yeah yeah melinda the vaccine numbers that you'll have so far do you have any information about the percentage of those in the 1a category the hospital workers the ems folks and the long-term care folks who have been vaccinated so far i mean y'all had estimates on the numbers of people in that population so do you have estimates on how many of them have actually gotten their first dose of vaccine so far i don't not yet okay to determine how effective the rollout into these areas is we are you know one of the things that we asked hospitals to do as they had some doses left over of the pfizer after they put it out to their staff was to start and then make it available to community members so it's actually a little bit difficult to go back and say how much was given to their staff versus some of those other categories we certainly are tracking how much gets pushed out in terms of the specific types of individuals that have received it we don't have great data on that yet yep can we get any more information on what needs to happen before we get the kinds of mass vaccination programs involving the national guard that we've been talking about in other press conferences like what's the timeline on that what do we need to stand up those sites great question it's more vaccine all so there's nine regional offices in the office of public health and all those nine regions have been working very hard the past three weeks to prepare um community vaccination events plans you know built on a lot of years of preparation and they do pod exercises and mass vaccination exercises every year usually in conjunction with the flu vaccine so they've been those plans are essentially ready and they involve the national guard and the good plans the challenges we just don't have enough vaccine to do it with and while supply is so limited and you know for example we were able to supply 107 pharmacies with 100 doses apiece and those pharmacies got booked up you know almost overnight that's the real limiting factor now once we have enough vaccine made available to us to make those type of events practical that they'll happen is there any plan to have a certain centralized clearinghouse for where to access a vaccine so that people in the 70 plus group aren't having to navigate the website and a bunch of different pharmacies to actually figure out where to get a vaccine or where to sign up i think it's going to continue to be a multitude of options i mean pharmacies are going to from here this point forward continue to be an access point as will hospitals as will the community vaccination events once those events get up and running and scheduled absolutely there'll be a way to communicate that they're just not with the supply as it is that's not at the point yet [Music] do we yep 70 of the people in the money vaccinated like are there i don't i don't have a clear sense of what the overall plan is and whether there are goals or benchmarks that the state is trying to reach i want a hundred percent of of those groups you know vaccine and i'll tell you i know um in talking to some of my colleagues in the hospital i heard some people say oh just you know i'll wait a couple weeks before i get my vaccine and my message to them is you might not have as good access to it in a couple weeks as you do now so we want a hundred percent what is our trigger to move to the next phase or tier which really i think is is the question is not a certain percentage of people vaccinated it's really what your supply versus demand is so what the cdc has recommended on this is they've said when you start to see your appointments go from 100 capacity like they certainly are now at the pharmacies down to 80 percent capacity that's an indicator that's time to move to the next the next phase melinda um to answer one of the questions earlier so the pharmacies the 107 pharmacies this week that got doses of vaccine are not necessarily guaranteed to get doses next week because my understanding is that some of those pharmacies have been making appointments like for next week and the following week under the assumption they would continue to get a supply that's correct the way that you said that they're not necessarily guaranteed to get subsequent allocations because remember there were 12 or 13 parishes that we weren't able to get vaccine to this week because there were no pharmacies in those parishes that had actually finished the enrollment process so our first goal is to make sure that the distribution is equitable from a geographic and a racial ethnic standpoint so what we're going to try and do for the subsequent allocations is to make sure that we have enough coverage across the state that's going to be the first goal once we're able to achieve that we're going to try and resupply the pharmacies but that's a subsequent goal what's your advice to some of these elderly people who are 400 people down on a wait list at the pharmacy you've got it this week and they think they're in line to get it but now you're saying their forms he might not get vaccine next week what should the world do in that situation yeah i i i hear it's i think staying on the wait list is is good i think wait until the next round of allocations is made public and then continue to call and try and make an appointment this will get better every week remember this is just the first week just the first round allocations there'll be more and more pharmacies with vaccine and there'll be more and more hospitals that are offering vaccine to the community so just the first week the access will get better and i think appreciate folks patience as we kind of get this wrong one more and then i'll turn it back over to the governor yes sir so there's been uh there's some criticism that the federal scheme for privatization is too convoluted and too complex that it's maybe unnecessarily complicating the logistics i don't think it's complicating the logistics i mean i i really feel now that the biggest limiting factor for us is how much vaccine is being made available to the state i think you can take you can have a discussion about what groups should have been prioritized that weren't and have that debate at the end of the day there was an effort to push vaccine both to individuals that were involved in frontline care as well as individuals who are most likely to suffer health consequences severe health consequences it's an imperfect process i think the cdc did a pretty good job you know we tried in louisiana to take the best of that and we did make some changes we pushed it 75 years down to 70 years particularly because we're trying really hard to keep people out of the hospital i think it's you can have that debate and discussion i don't see that as a limiting factor in terms of find out how much you logistics i don't know how i decided to find out where you work you know you know at the end of the day i think providers and vaccine and for example a pharmacist are going to do the best job that they can pharmacists go through with similar efforts when they give out any medicine by the way they're in the business of giving the right medicine to the right patient um as has been shown this week that's not what's limiting us you know what's what's living us is we just wish we had more vaccine to give to pharmacies thank you thank you dr kenner i can tell you that we will have more locations across across the state that will receive the modern vaccine to be administered to individuals who were over 70 than we had this week it was a really good start with 107 locations in 52 parishes that we decided to do last wednesday once we got tuesday's allocation numbers and with the work that they're doing now because we know next week's allocation numbers and we know what we can access uh from the wholesale distributor there will be more sites and and i have instructed secretary phillips to make sure that we are in all 64 parishes not necessarily with the pharmacist with the pharmacy i should say but with a provider it may be a clinic it may be a hospital but there will be some doses available for this priority group next week in all 64 parishes and if we can accomplish that and resupply every pharmacist who received it this week then then that's what's likely to happen but we're working through all of that this week and and we will make the announcement no later than monday of next week and and hopefully uh sooner than that so people will know uh where the vaccine is going to be and where they can call and try to get an appointment um and and you know you you can gather from the questions and the answers and what's happening across the country there's nothing easy about uh this process but i will tell you working in priority groups is absolutely essential because we are trying to preserve hospital capacity and save lives so it's important that the people receiving the vaccine the earliest in the process are those who are most likely to need a hospital bed if they contract the disease and and those are also the people most likely to die and so they help us meet those objectives of minimizing the number of hospital beds and staff that are required and and making sure that we're saving uh lives as well uh so so we've got a lot of work to do i can tell you it is it is non-stop uh and and i want to thank the folks at ldh who are working so hard we had an entire group of workers who didn't go home this past weekend for new year's and and because they're working so hard to make sure that that we are doing the best that we can to distribute and administer this time vaccine on a timely basis i also wanted to share something with you that that i gleaned from my call this morning with the medical directors of the hospitals as you can imagine most of the people in the hospitals with covid19 are those who are older and and they've been talking to these individuals to try to figure out where are you being exposed to the virus um and and what they said over and over to me on the phone this morning is that these older folks by and large who were in the hospital today they're they're getting exposed to the virus and they're contracting the disease because of informal gatherings at people's homes and there's still this idea that if i go to my neighbor's house or my child's house or my brother's house or sister or whatever if i know people well then it must be safe and it's just not it's just not and and at the same time those are the settings that that i mean we can issue all of the the recommendations that we want we can tell you what cdc is saying what the white house chronic virus task force what folks at the office of public health are saying about all this but at the end of the day it is up to people to then act on all of that guidance and and we really have to do a better job we have to do a better job um and and i will tell you that we will get to mass vaccination events as soon as we have the vaccine on hand to stage such an event we don't have it today um and and when we have the vaccine and it lines up with the priority group that's in then being serviced we're going to make sure that we are doing those events around the state as we are able uh working with a variety of partners not just the national guard but for example we may need to do that with pfizer vaccine if half the vaccine that we're going to get going forward is pfizer vaccine then we're going to have to use it and those ultra cold storage requirements will drive us to our hospital partners as being those people that we're going to have to uh partner with in order to have these mass vaccination events so it won't just be the national guard and we are we are right now working through all of the planning necessary to actually do these events but we're not at the point where we can do them because we don't have the vaccine on hand but when it is here we will be making those announcements and and we will be doing mass vaccination of events where we're targeting people of of whatever priority we happen to be on at that time and i know there are a lot of questions this is a big issue um and and there's no doubt uh that we're making uh mistakes we're also learning and we're correcting and this is going to be a never-ending process and we're going to do better but i urge the people of louisiana to get vaccinated when you can to be patient and between now and then and quite frankly even after where you mask uh and and so forth 2021 is going to be better how much better will depend on what we do and what we don't do the decisions that we make uh i want to thank our health care workers our pharmacists our doctors our nurses everybody who is working so hard and has been working for so long to deal with the pandemic and now to stand up a vaccination program and i want to thank all the people in louisiana who have been responsible and who do take seriously the guidance that comes from the cdc and the white house task force the things that we've been talking about and there are lots and lots of those people too um and and i really want to thank them because i know that it that it's not easy and i know this is not the way we prefer to live um but you you do it anyway because it's the right thing to do it's the right thing to do for your family for your community for your neighbor include including your neighbors you don't even know and it's also the right thing to do with yourself okay i am going to pause there and take some questions for a few minutes i know we've already been here for about 50 minutes or so yes sir governor uh it seems that the slow start we got was in large part due to residency among people in phase 1a particularly healthcare workers who didn't want to get the vaccine right away creating kind of a demand issue you know and as we've seen meanwhile there were hundreds of thousands of 70 year in hindsight do you think we should have switched that and started rolling it up to seven-year-olds you know sooner and do you think you know it's that lesson informed us going forward as we decide when to move to the next priority group well every lesson informs what we do going forward and and if if that's a lesson that we've learned that seems to have the application for for what we're about to do then then obviously we're taking that into consideration i am not going to say that it was a mistake to accept the asap recommendations about who gets the vaccinations first and and i will tell you that it is impossible for the people at the hospitals to know how many of their workers are going to avail themselves of the vaccine when it first becomes available but they make orders based on their best guesses they go then go about getting consents and and so forth the good thing there is what we have seen over and over again is that the uh vaccine hesitancy is diminishing over time and as individuals get vaccinated of whether they're medical workers or anybody else and and their neighbors see that they got vaccinated and and they didn't have a significant reaction or significant side effects and they know that it's safe then they are saying okay i'm ready to get it too i think what you pointed out is just the function of the fact that when you first start something like this it isn't going to be as smooth as you would want it to be but it's it's certainly getting better and i want to thank all the folks who've worked so hard to get us to where we are today um even at the same time what i'm saying i'm not pleased with where we are today and that's why we're going to do better going forward but there is not anybody out there who who doesn't want to do better and get more shots in people's arms which is precisely why we're going to minimize the number of vaccine that stays on the shelves at the wholesaler waiting uh for shipment to to uh to an entity that's then going to administer them if they're going to sit on the shelf we're going to go send them out and that that entity that that was was asking the wholesaler to hold them they'll just get more out of the next week's allocation in order to satisfy uh whatever it is that they have to do melinda it's been floated already but have you thought of having someone who is sort of like for lack of a better term of the vaccines are like the person who is the logistics manager of their sole job is to track where the vaccines are going make sure that facilities are using them in a timely fashion and and sort of being able to adjust on the fly as needed is that something that is under consideration you're applying for the job you know we we have a very good team um and and i've been dealing with our team for a long time uh whether it well and and i'm not going to start to call names because that because i would i would um uh certainly leave some out uh but but we've we've got a a good team we developed a a good plan um and i was talking to general perna and this analogy may be lost on you all but you know he's he's obviously a career soldier i spent time in the army you do the very best job you can uh to plan what it is you're going to do in battle but there is no plan no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy because as soon as that happens you are making adjustments but the plan is absolutely essential to getting you started and to having a framework and starting the communication and the teamwork and that's that's where we are right now but i will tell you um secretary phillips is personally involved in every aspect of this um and and she calls me and texts me about a hundred times a day about the different parts of this and she's working with her team and i am not uh presently considering making any changes to our structure over the vaccination program yes ma'am though new tasks keep getting heaped upon the same people who already seem a little overworked in the office of public health in the health department so i guess i'm just wondering are you looking at adding staff over there how many different things can they be expected to handle before something just gets lost in that shuffle well certainly if if secretary phillips tells me that that we need to do staff augmentation and by the way we do that on the occasion now we we can bring in help but sometimes there are things that need to be done in public health and we have folks in the national guard for example who can come in and help with those tasks so we've been we've been augmenting the staff there all along um and and if secretary phillips ever brings to me a recommendation to do something like that trust me we we will do it um but i'm not going to get in front of her at a press conference and say that we're about to do something that she hasn't even asked for julia related to you guys are me the priority groups on the recommendations that come from the cdc groups that i can't remember the acronym but can you be you're making adjustments right when you're lowering the age 70 i saw four personnel is in the next grouping that's not what's been on the cbc backline who at the state level is making the decisions about what are different priority groups and i do it based on recommendations that come from asip i do it based on recommendations that come from the office of public health i do it in consultation with all sorts of people i don't think that there is a trade association in existence that hasn't sent me a letter telling me that their people uh are essential frontline workers and need to be prioritized for vaccines so somebody has to make those decisions uh i am making them um and and we're not i'm not certainly not trying to confuse anybody about those things and we we told you early on that we were going to do everything we could to conform our plan to those asip recommendations because we know that those are experts in the field they're looking at this disease these vaccines uh the current situation across the country and they're making recommendations and and by and large we have accepted those uh the biggest deviation and one that i think we've explained and if we didn't i apologize they were saying started age 75 and above but when we looked at who's going to the hospital in louisiana and who's dying in louisiana the clear demarcation in terms of age was really 70 it wasn't 75. so this was a data-driven decision recommended by oph based on our state-specific data uh that and that was our goal we want to preserve capacity in our hospitals we want to save lives and so to do that in louisiana we needed to start at 70 and not 75. now that was the right decision to make but there are about 485 000 more people in louisiana who who then satisfied that requirement and i think that's a number that was in my head i may be slightly wrong on the number but that means that we have more work to do but that still is the right order of priority uh for us um and then you're going to see essential frontline workers initially in the health care arena and then when we get past those it will be other essential frontline workers that we will vaccinate as well and all of whom believe and all of whom are in good faith that they ought to be first not everybody can be first i mean that's just it's just not possible and we don't have the number of doses available to us to make that happen assuming that we could somehow administer it all at once if we had it all available to us so this is very much a process and it's a process that that we're doing everything we can to make sure that it works as best it can and yes we are going to learn uh from from certain strategies that how to do things better and we will incorporate that as we move forward into the new plans yes sir it's clear from the record-breaking case count today in hospitalizations that people are not acting on the cdc guidance right now or have not been how much longer can the state wait for people to behave themselves before you step in and tighten restrictions to limit communities prep yeah you know um that's a great question and and i'm not prepared to answer it today i'll have to answer it next week right because i have a proclamation that expires a week from today but it sort of begs the question and and this is a different application of something that i said starting back in march and i've been saying it all the way through we're not going to enforce our way out of this either the people of louisiana are going to sufficiently embrace these measures or they're not and if they're not following mitigation measures and restrictions that are in place what makes you believe that if i impose more restrictions in mitigation measures that they're going to follow those and this is the dilemma for me as governor right now the status quo is unacceptable and if i've been unable to articulate that to the people of louisiana sufficiently i apologize if my command of the english language is not good enough to communicate that sufficiently i apologize we have to do better are we going to do better if if i mean what are we going to do start locking people up if they insist on not wearing a mask when they should these social gatherings around christmas i mean how many police officers do we have we're going to post somebody at everybody's home we are not going to enforce our way out of this people we're either going to do the right thing or we're not and if we don't do better we're going to watch a lot more of our fellow louisiana brothers and sisters die it is really that simple now while it's simple it's not easy and i can tell you i will be considering everything that might make sense between now and next tuesday but i'm encouraging the people to do what they can right now there is nobody in our state who can say honestly i wasn't told i didn't know who's going to say that they may say i didn't believe it was that serious the hospital is full of people who didn't believe it was that serious go ask them we have families grieving today because they didn't do what was required to protect their loved ones because they didn't take it seriously go ask them don't take my word for it it's happening all over the state and all over the country all right we've been here for about an hour i want to thank you all for continuing to cover this we clearly have work to do we have to slow the transmission of this disease we have to protect one another we have to administer the vaccine in ever increasing numbers across a broader portion of our population none of this is going to be easy and none of this is going to be overnight but we have something to look forward to and that is if we do the best we can in a few months several months we will have enough people vaccinated to where we can finally start to put this pandemic in our rearview mirror but between now and then for god's sake understand that the vaccine isn't going to get us out of these immediate problems that we're in we can only do that by distancing from one another by staying home when we're sick by wearing our mask washing our hands frequently protecting the vulnerable among us and looks there are some things that we haven't talked about in a while but they didn't stop being true any event outside is safer than that same event inside i want you to support your restaurants but take the food home and eat it go through the drive-through have it delivered always safer than eating in the restaurant if you are 65 and older or you have one of these comorbid health conditions that predisposes you to a poor outcome should you contract the disease don't go anywhere in any room where anybody doesn't have a mask on i mean these are things that we've been talking about all along they still remain true they still remain very very important so i'm asking the folks to do better and let's pray for one another let's lift one another up let's be good neighbors this is the challenge for this generation this happens every hundred years this is our moment are we going to rise to the challenge and do what's required are we just going to say well you know i'm tired of that that's just too much of a bother to put that mask on i'm going to choose to believe what i read on the internet i'm not going to follow the u.s surgeon general or dr redfield who runs the cdc or dr fauci or dr burks i'm just going to choose to believe this information that happens to be convenient because if i believe it it sort of justifies me not doing anything and i understand that that's a psychological coping mechanism but it's not a good way to behave during a pandemic so let's do better let's pray for one another let's lift one another up let's encourage one another and let's get through this together with god's help thank you all you