thank you for being here today good afternoon and thank you for being with us this afternoon and for your continued coverage dr joe canner as you can see is here with me today he'll be giving you an update in just a moment i do want to start by addressing the news that ldh just released so today we have confirmed louisiana's second and third case of the uk covid variant and one of those was in region five that's in southwest louisiana centered around lake charles the other was back in region one the greater new orleans area we know that that variant is now in well over 20 states and again that's the third case here that we know of there are 14 suspected cases that are still being evaluated by the cdc and we'll let you know but the bottom line is this variant is present in the united states it is present in louisiana and we know that it transmits more easily it's i've heard 50 more uh easily transmitted uh and uh so it just bears uh discussion so that we know the importance and and by the way we needed to be masking and distancing and doing all those things before but it's even more critical that that happens you may have seen where previously the variant identified first in brazil had been discovered in the united states in minnesota and then today the cdc also announced that the variant identified and associated with south africa has now been confirmed to be in the united states now to be clear we haven't yet confirmed those variants in louisiana but but we know that the way this disease progresses uh that it's it's very likely that they will move across the country at some point we also know that there's modeling to suggest that the uk variant could become the predominant strain of the virus in the united states in march and so between now and then it is essential that we do what we can to get the baseline numbers down that remain too high we're going to go through some numbers in just a moment but as it relates to the percentage of our tests coming back positive as it relates to the number of cases developing every day the number of hospitalizations and deaths all those baseline numbers are too high and we need to get them down before this variant becomes predominant and potentially causes surges again surges unrelated this time potentially with a change in behavior but just with a virus that is more easily transmitted and of course if that is accompanied by a change in behavior that'll that also facilitates transmission then we're going to be in a very very bad place dr kenner is going to going to tell you more about this in in in a moment but let me stress the take home message as ldh and and i have said before we we all need to take this very very seriously we see some improvements around the country we see some improvements here in louisiana but but we're in a very difficult place because the very high level of our numbers right now and these variants uh are very concerning and we know that they are more contagious we don't yet know whether they are more violent meaning that if you get the disease you you're more likely to have a serious case that requires hospitalization or you're more likely to die they're still gathering evidence on that and they're still gathering evidence with respect to the effectiveness of the vaccine on those variants although i've heard at least as it relates to the uk variant that the manufacturers of the vaccine believe that the vaccine will be effective i hope and pray that that is the case uh also uh i did want to announce today that general keith waddell uh the ashland general the louisiana national guard has announced he tested positive for kobit 19 he is working remotely while he isolates at home and certainly i'll be keeping him in my prayers and he does just tremendous work for the state of louisiana and has for many many years but but since becoming the accident general if you just look at the disasters the emergencies we've had to respond to including covid19 and all the things that we've had our national guard engage with including their normal missions you know we have well over 2000 national guardsmen deployed today to the middle east so he's been working extremely hard i appreciate him and all of the folks affiliated with with the national guard and so let's uh lift him up in prayer and by the way he is asymptomatic i don't know if i said that but as of now he is um i mentioned a while ago we were in a precarious position with respect to cobit the baseline numbers are too high percent positivity cases hospitalizations and the lagging indicator is deaths and that's why even as our numbers have started to slowly improve in these other categories the number of deaths really have not and it is a staggering number of deaths that have accumulated over the course of the pandemic and the numbers that we're announcing on a daily basis literally do take my breath away today we are reporting 2517 new cases of cobid 19 and that is on 35 914 tests sadly we're also reporting 55 new deaths there are 1590 patients in the hospital across the state of louisiana because of covid19 206 of them are on mechanical ventilators the number of patients just to relate to you kind of how high our baseline is a few weeks ago i had in my last conversation with dr burks she indicated that our goal should be to get hospitalization down to 500 in the state of louisiana well we're more than three times that and again that's that's very taxing on our health care delivery system as it relates especially to staffing so obviously we want to do everything we can to get get that number down um so this mask i mean this message that i'm about to give you is one that's very consistent to what we've been talking about here for 10 months or so but you're hearing it from the white house task forces whether it was the trump white house or the biden white house and and from cdc and everybody else it really is imperative that that we wear a mask stay six feet from those who don't live with you avoid gatherings stay home when you're sick wash your hands frequently make sure that you're tested if you're exposed protect the vulnerable and if you are one of the vulnerable because of your age which typically we say 65 and older or if you have these comorbid health conditions that predispose you to a more uh serious uh course of the disease should you get it then then make sure that you protect yourself and that includes not going into any indoor space where one or more people are unmasked and obviously when it is your turn and the vaccine is available to you please avail yourself of that opportunity get the vaccine it is safe it's effective it is the only way we put this pandemic behind us i want to take a moment to remind of everyone who is currently eligible to get the vaccine in phase 1a it was hospital personnel nursing home and long-term care facility residents and staff first responders those individuals who who are dealing with medical emergencies who can get vaccinated and then serve as vaccinators and now that was phase 1a they remain eligible because this is not a light switch where we flip off one priority group and go to the next they remain eligible but also phase one be tier one those are people 70 years of age and older health related support personnel providers for and staff for outpatient community care urgent care behavioral health and dialysis clinics home care providers staff and recipients dental providers and staff and schools of allied health students residents and staff the total number of doses administered to date and i think i think this was pulled yesterday is 397 371. so we're right at 400 000 doses administered and the number of second doses do you have that 56 so 50 59 000 individuals have actually received their second dose as well the total number of enrolled providers so if you're an enrolled provider that means that you've enrolled with the state and cdc you've been approved and you can receive direct shipments of vaccine and you can administer a vaccine but the number of enrolled providers across the state of louisiana is 1918. that's a lot that's a that's a large number for a state our size and that reflects the hard work done by the department of health early on to to do that hard work that's necessary to have these enrolled providers in place so that as more vaccine becomes available over time we have the providers that we can ship it to and they can administer and and and all over the state of louisiana is very very helpful now because we don't have enough vaccine yet we don't have all of these providers engaged this week you may know that we're administering vaccine in all 64 parishes using 324 enrolled providers because of the increase in vaccine those allocations that we're getting next week and i'll get into that more in just a moment we will have more than 400 enrolled providers next week administering vaccine doses across the state of louisiana so while nothing is perfect and we certainly have a lot of work to do to improve our processes and get become more efficient and so forth i am very pleased with the the progress that we are making and that we continue to make together we still have a large demand for vaccine in the current eligible population uh and we're going to stay with the current priority groups for now and i don't have an announcement for when we're going to transition out of that but obviously so long as your current group isn't sufficiently vaccinated it doesn't make sense to move forward because then you're not really prioritizing the groups the cdc ranks louisiana 16th as of today i believe in among states for how well we've administered the vaccine and really that's that's a function of vaccine utilizations how quickly shots are getting into arms once we receive allocations and that's a testament to the providers the department of health all the partners out there who are helping to get shots in arms but quite frankly i'm not satisfied with that i know that we can do better and and all the people who are working here in louisiana know that we can do better as well our greatest challenge continues to be the amount of vaccine that's made available to us but the good news is there's a 16 percent increase starting next week because we were basically flat for four states for i'm sorry we were basically flat for four straight weeks and the amount of vaccine doses that we were receiving we will get over 67 000 doses for uh next week uh and that that increase of 16 percent is is with respect to moderna uh and and that's going to be i think 67 000 uh 350 doses i'm sorry that's the total amount and 29 thousand 250 of those of pfizer 38 100 of those are moderna and all of the increase that 16 increase was with respect to moderna the pfizer number is basically uh flat on tuesday i was able to participate in the call with the white house on vaccine distribution they obviously understand the need to both increase the doses that are being made available to the states and we're happy that's happened but they also understood the need to give us information further out about the doses that we would receive so that we can plan and then communicate that and coordinate that with all of these enrolled providers so that when the vaccine comes in we're ready to execute at a very high level and the good news was in addition to the 16 increase we're going to have next week we're now going to have three weeks of data relative to the amount of vaccine that we're going to be receiving and we can take that into account as we do our planning and up to now we would get on tuesday a preliminary number of what we could expect the following week that gets confirmed on thursday and on thursday you start placing your orders for that vaccine that's going to actually come on the following monday and then you have between thursday and monday to make sure the enrolled providers know exactly how much they're going to get that's very very tough to do and the idea that we can have at least as it relates to pfizer and moderna uh three weeks of information relative to those allocations will will really help us uh as we move forward and then of course looking beyond that we still like the rest of the country and really the rest of the world we anxiously await additional vaccines getting approved for use and potentially the next one will come in several weeks it'll be the the johnson and johnson is is most likely to come next and they should be asking for an emergency use authorization uh in in a couple or three weeks that would be very helpful because that is a single dose vaccine much easier logistically because you administer it one time and then that individual is vaccinated completely today the department of health updated the vaccine breakdowns by race gender age and region we haven't fixed all the problems with respect to the data collection and what we're showing but i'm very optimistic that we have in place what is necessary to have this improve greatly over the coming next week or two and then we'll have a much better idea as it relates to race uh we we certainly can't address uh what we don't know and and so if there's the next inequity out there we're we're not aware of it um but i do know that the department of health is working aggressively uh to address these data challenges and again i'm looking forward to tremendous improvement over the next week or two with respect to our visibility into that now i'm going to turn it over to dr cantor he's going to share more about what we know and and also a little bit about what we don't know about the uk variant in our state he's going to tell us what the department is doing to address some of these data reporting challenges that i just mentioned and talk a little bit more about the covid vaccine and then i will come back up after he is finished dr kenner thank you governor good afternoon everyone everyone's having a good day so far um i'll share a little bit of additional information about where we are in terms of the pandemic and the spread of the virus i'll talk about the variant of course talk about a vaccine update and then i do want to spend some time uh discussing some myths that are out there that um have been causing me to lose sleep no question about that so um it definitely appears at this point that uh we've peaked in terms of viral transmission and are now going in the right trajectory meaning the cases are coming down a little bit i say that with a little bit of a caveat because um trajectory is encouraging but we're awfully high we're still about as high if not higher than we were at the peak of the surge in july and august so in terms of risk what someone in the community should know what their risk is of being exposed to covet it's it's still i mean in all things being equal about as high it's ever been in louisiana and that's really the message for families is it's still a very risky environment and as the governor had mentioned with regards to the amount of deaths that we report every day we cannot accept as a new normal that we're going to be reporting anywhere from 40 to 80 new deaths every day today was 55. that cannot be something that we accept it's reflective of the amount of risk and transmission that's happening out there so very encouraged that our cases seem to be rounding the bend so to say and going in in the right direction although the level's very high as of yesterday we're now below 10 positivity that number is 8.6 percent which again is encouraging but a very very high number i mean anything above 5 is dire and we're still well well above that um hospitalizations are likewise we've stepped a little bit away from the cliff you know we were able to weather this past surge without completely overwhelming the hospitals which is encouraging and really a testament to those health care providers who work so hard but still very very busy very busy no doubt looking forward we have a rough road ahead as the governor alluded to and we we are unfortunately confirming today um two additional cases of the uk b117 variant this is uh one case in the region one of the greater new orleans area which is where the first case was identified about a week or so ago and a third case in the region five or greater lake charles area in addition to those three confirmed cases as the governor said we have 14 additional cases eight in region one six and region five that are pending confirmation in the cdc right now we don't do a lot of genomic sequencing and surveillance in this country that's been talked about before some european countries do a lot more than we do that creates a iceberg type scenario where when you have one or two identified cases that's the tip of the iceberg and you know there is a mountain below that so we should all assume that there is significantly more of this uk variant circulating in this state than has been confirmed to be identified so far that's going to continue to spread we anticipate those cases are going to grow as the governor said we anticipate based on the cdc's projections sometime in march that the uk variant will be the dominant strand here that means more transmission is ahead for us this is very similar to the situation we found ourselves in in the run-up to christmas and new year's folks will remember we had a very high level of cases coming off of thanksgiving and we knew it was a rough spot because looking ahead we had the holidays and we knew it was going to happen that's exactly the point that we find ourselves in now this variant is out there we know it's spreading it's going to continue to spread and so we need to do everything we can now to set ourselves up for that we gotta gain as much yardage as we can while we have the cases going in the right direction so that when the variant does take over and become the dominant strand in louisiana and likely increases our cases again that we've set ourselves up for as much mitigation as possible that's what the real ask for families now is to do all you can now to prevent spread not only to protect you and your family now but also to set ourselves up for as much success possible for just down the road when we think this variant's going to become a much bigger challenge for us we do believe it's more transmissible it's questionable whether it's more virulent more likely to make people sick and and we do believe at the moment that the fires or maduro vaccines are a good match for it so it's about mitigating the spread at this point talk a little bit about where we are with the vaccine and um i'll share the latest updates in terms of how much we have in state how much is coming to us and it was encouraging to hear um the announcement from from the white house a couple days ago that we'll be getting a little bit more both in this next week and and we think for the few weeks after that so it's 9 200 additional doses of moderna that we'll be receiving so next week's allocation which again we'll place orders on tonight it'll begin to ship over the weekend for arrivals starting on monday will be twenty nine thousand two hundred and fifty doses of pfizer that number has been flat going back three weeks and thirty eight thousand one hundred doses of moderna which is where the additional comes into play so that'll give us a total of 67 350 doses next week as the governor mentioned at the conclusion of this week we will have sent to us for our in-state allocation as a total of four hundred and thirty eight thousand one hundred first doses of which we've diverted ninety three thousand six hundred to the long-term care partnership leaving three hundred and forty four thousand five hundred first doses for true in-state allocation at the conclusion of next week with those numbers that will bring the total number to 505 450 first doses minus that same 93 600 that got diverted to the long-term care program leaving a total in-state distributor allocation of first doses at the end of next week of four hundred and eleven thousand eight hundred and fifty i wanna clarify a couple of parts that have been confusing over the past week the cdc has a very nice vaccine tracker out there you can look across the country and compare states and see how much has gotten the numbers that they show for in-state distribution are inclusive of both first and second doses numbers i've been sharing here for simplicity's sake are just first doses because the way that i think about it each first dose is someone knew who's going to get eventually vaccinated so the cdc does do both first and second doses they also have a few day lag for when that tracker gets updated so folks will notice there's a little bit of a discrepancy between the numbers we've shared here and what's on that cdc tracker that's that's really what it's happening they're showing both first and second doses and with a little bit of a lag on that as the governor had mentioned we have our work cut out for us to improve the quality of our demographic data it's not um when we have greater than 50 percent unknown or other it's hard to make any type of conclusions about racial breakdown we will be doing that over the next couple weeks no question a big part of that is encouraging our vaccine providers to pay more attention to the data that gets entered this is important data and the only way we can address inequities if they do exist are to know about them and have eyes on them so we're going to be reaching out to our vaccine partners more to encourage them to enter in quality information into those demographic fields i want to spend um actually one more item to update on is the the progress of the long-term care partnership program so um as of uh the last ad that was posted um to us in our operation warp speed portal where there's been a total of twenty eight thousand thirty eight two twenty eight comma oh three eight total doses administered in the long term care partnership program overwhelming majority of those are in nursing homes um that breaks down to nineteen thousand one hundred and forty nine in residence and eight thousand eight hundred and eighty nine in staff we are on track to complete the first round of vaccine administrations and nursing homes by february 8th i want to move a little bit now and talk about some myths that i have heard shared with me over the past couple weeks and they give me a great concern because there's disinformation about these two vaccines that is hurting our effort and you might ask yourself why are we talking about this right now if demand so clearly exceeds supply of vaccine and there are two reasons why it's important for me to talk about this right now number one i've heard a couple examples brought to me the past week of individuals who had an opportunity to get the vaccine and did not because they bought into one of these myths and that just breaks my heart i really makes me sad when someone has the opportunity to get vaccinated and and they don't because they don't have the right information at hand or for for another reason so i want to let people be empowered to to make the best call for themselves the the second reason is because um we're looking ahead to when we're going to have more supply at some point in the near future the johnson johnson variety we expect to be authorized you know we'll be getting to the big type of mass events we'll be extending out eligibility once we have the supply to do so and i want to set ourselves up so that people are ready that no one misses a heartbeat in that so i'm going to go through a few myths which i've heard expressed to me over the past week or two and talk about what the facts are in this the first myth is that the m or messenger rna technology of this vaccine is new um it is not that is not true at all and the messenger rna technology has been around for years in fact we have used it in cancer therapeutics for years now one of the differences we've never produced these cancer therapeutics at the volume that we're going to need to produce these vaccines but the technology has been there in fact there was research uh invested in following the sars epidemic sars was a coronavirus ii to develop vaccines for acorn the virus which led directly to where we are now so the messenger rna platform actually is is something that's tried and true being able to use that having the technology available to use that in a vaccine of this scale that's an exciting new development but the platform the technology has been around it's been studied and it's a very safe way to devil over deliberate vaccines the next myth that i would like to cover um has to do with what type of symptoms or what happens to someone after they get a vaccine um you know these vaccines cannot give you covet it is not possible it is not possible for these pfas or maduro vaccines to give someone covet there is no live virus involved in it at all some older types of vaccines used a virus as a host one of the great things about these new vaccines is it does not rely on using a virus as the host of the vaccine either a live virus or a dead virus it's just a little bit of genetic material that happens to degrade in your body very quickly after it goes in so it is not possible at all for someone to get covin from the vaccine now it does take some time for the vaccine to build efficacy and you're not 100 protected the minute you get the shot that's that's that's logical so what you'll see in the news is someone might be exposed and contract covert a day after the vaccine but that's just because it takes a little bit of time for the vaccine to build efficacy but it cannot give anyone covet what it does do is in produce an immune response in your body gives your body just a taste of what the one part of the virus looks like like showing a picture to say hey take a look at this person remember this guy's face if you ever see him again that's what the vaccine does and your body recognizes that and starts going through the motions of building up your own antibodies that's what makes people feel perhaps a little feverish a little bit sore in the arm a little run down the day after they get the vaccine that's what i felt when i had both of my doses of the vaccine that's not people getting coronavirus that's just a natural immune response it's your body telling you the vaccine's working the next myth i'd like to cover is to talk about what really this mrna material does and this mrna material actually never enters in the nucleus of the cell the nucleus of the cell is the command center it stays outside of the command center it never gets integrated into someone's dna in fact it actually degrades very very quickly after entering in all this mrna material does is it basically is enough to show your body that mug shot that picture of the person say this is what this is what the virus looks like and then your body degrades it and then it's gone but your body already has seen it so they're starting to make antibodies against that it is not possible for this mrna to get introduced into someone's genetic material or dna it never even enters the nucleus of the cell that's one of the reasons why it's such an extremely safe virus and the last uh myth that i'll talk about has to do particularly with women of child bearing age and this is this is a really important one and there is zero zero evidence that these vaccines have any impairment of a woman's fertility um a couple people ask me this question this this week and i know it's important question to ask but there is absolutely no suggestion of evidence that these vaccines do anything to impair a woman's fertility women of childbearing age if they are eligible to receive the vaccine should a hundred percent receive the vaccine they're doing themselves a disservice if they do not out of this unfounded fear there's absolutely no evidence nor is there a plausible mechanism by which these vaccines would impair someone's fertility so really women of childbearing age if when they do have the opportunity to get vaccinated should not pass up that opportunity at all i think i'll stop right there and be happy to answer a few questions if there are any melinda did you go through the numbers again on the long-term care partnership program and can you talk about that seems like a fairly low percentage of people who have been vaccinated so far based on the numbers we were previously given are you seeing i know a lot of states have reported seeing complaints about the slowness of the cbs walgreens participation can you just talk about that a little bit yeah the numbers were and again that the program i'm pulling them from is on a few day lag so they're markedly higher now no doubt but those numbers were 28 000 038 total broken down to 19 149 for residents and 889 for staff no no doubt and we i think all of us would prefer that the program's going faster i'm encouraged that the uptake rate amongst nursing home residents so far is about 69 um which is which is fairly encouraging the uptake on the staff has been lower it's been about 26 percent but we believe that when they go back for the second visit they actually make three visits total to a nursing home they make a first visit for the first dose they make a second visit to do second doses for anyone that got it and then offer first doses again for anyone who missed the first round and then they go back for a third time to get those other second doses taken care of we believe a lot more of the staff are going to take part and get that second dose when it comes so i'm actually optimistic that that staff number goes up a little bit i think they're doing i mean all in all the program's going well in terms of it's getting good reviews and when we hear from nursing homes that have been visited and the majority of them have been visited at this point um they like the program and the residents like it we all wish it was going faster no that's questions when they're going to stop um making the visits at the various facilities is that right look no not gonna stop that's when they're gonna finish that's when the the last remaining nursing home will have had the first visit the first dose visit and then the second dose of visits are actually happening right now and well then there'll be third dose visits after that so it's it's a rolling program what i meant to say is by february 8th every nursing home in the state will have had at least the first dose visit what happens if nursing home residents or staff decide later that they they want vaccines what will they have to do once cvs and walgreens are sort of done making these visits there'll be opportunities we haven't exactly figured out what that looks like but they're absolutely will because you know the population of a nursing home is not 100 static people come in and get discharged so there will be opportunities while we're still in the program it's less important because they just have that second visit opportunity to get it but there'll be opportunities we just haven't figured out exactly what that looks like sam the by demonstration said you guys would have a three week window and how many doses you're getting you've given us the next week but i'm wondering what the shipments are going to be for the two subsequent weeks are we still going to get that 16 bump above our baseline for those following weeks and also will this three week window mitigate the cancellation of appointments among providers because they cite largely the lack of information or lack of steady stream of information coming from the state or from the feds so do you think that'll mitigate any canceled appointments moving forward yeah i think so i think yes to all all those questions we haven't actually been told definitively what those um allotments two or three weeks out are going to be yet i think they're going to be posted on the system that we look at sometime soon we've been led to believe that it's that number one it's it's going to be relatively steady to what we had this week which means that the 16 increase of the additional 9000 or so 9200 uh moderna is going to be baked into what we get for the next few weeks which is which is encouraging um it just hasn't been 100 confirmed for us and to the other question i do i mean like it's um as the governor said we're asking an awful lot of our providers and we're asking them to um with really a couple days notice ramp up appointments not do it by a walk-in basis and all of that with a very fragile vaccine that requires um cold chain attention and specific handling and it's it's not easy so certainly don't fault anyone for trying to lead into it um the way that we've seen but i think this will give people the added um predictability to help avoid that yes sir so you and the governor at the moment it's mostly been in vitro which means laboratory tests really and it's it's primarily been the the companies running lab tests against against the variants or particles of the variant to see if it's a good match it's usually the first step in this type of development and of course what we really want to see is is population data we want to see an area that has you know particularly like the uk right now that has a lot of variant we want to see exactly how effective it is and we'll get that data in time most of the time it follows closely with this type of laboratory data it's similar to how we evaluate flu vaccines you know we the flu vaccine actually is a combo of a number of different strands every year and sometimes it's a good match sometimes it's not so we feel encouraged and in conversations we've had with federal partners particularly dr fauci he's encouraged as well perhaps a little bit less so for the brazilian and the south african variants although um something about that is even if it's not 94 or 95 efficacious the way it is with the dominant strain even if it's i'm just going to make up a number 70 that's still significant i mean that that's not something to to disregard so i think we'll be in in good place about that it is certainly possible down the road that we might need to have a booster or an adjustment but you know that's that's a small problem to have if it comes to it so even if it's not as effective that's absolutely right and i'm talking now specifically to the brazilian and the south american south african because we do think the uk one's good match for those other two even if it's not as effective as it is with the other strands we do think it's going to be somewhat effective so it's not all or nothing yes sir about is the department of health working on a system where the average citizen can easily find what pharmacies are out and which ones have extra doses that are not being used are y'all working on anything with that we've had a lot of discussions about that and the inventory does change quite quickly the other end of that is a couple states have gone to a unified scheduling system one number and it's it's i tell you i talk all the time to health officers in other states and the feedback i've heard is when those systems work well it's nice but they oftentimes don't and then when they go down they go down for the entire state i've heard twice now of states that have lost entire days worth of vaccinating because those systems went down and talked to another state that is now on their third vendor of those type of programs because the first two didn't work that well so we're trying to balance those those decisions um and do something that's that's more robust so i think the jury's still out uh miss the answer to that okay listen um again it's uh it's encouraging that we're going in the right way the right direction on cases here but as the governor said this this this variant is circulating it's circling a lot more than we're able to see so we have to do everything we can now so that we um are able to to mitigate the increased spread of that when it does come around thank you everyone thank you very much dr kenner um i do want to remind everybody to please download your covid defense app this is louisiana's new exposure notification app by adding this free app to your phone you can help protect your friends family your community from covid 19 by getting alerts to tell you if you've been exposed we announced this last week no personal information is required to use the app it never tracks your location there have been more than 30 000 downloads of this app in louisiana since we launched it last friday you can download the app from the app store or google play and visit covid defensela.com to learn more about it so for many months now i'm guessing close to 10. you've heard me saying many of the same things over and over and and i know you're tired of hearing it i'm tired of saying it but it's important that we continue to say it and continue to hear it and hopefully more and more people will actually do the things that we're talking about and i'm talking about wearing your mask social distancing from those who are not part of your household washing your hands frequently staying home when you're sick protecting the vulnerable and now get the vaccine when you're able to do so these things remain critically important and while we're spending a lot of time talking about the vaccine the simple fact of the matter is the supply does not meet the demand there's not a vaccine dose for everybody who wants one there is a mask for everybody who needs one and that happens to be everybody anybody in our state who wants to be a good neighbor will wear a mask it is really that simple and by the way it does confer a benefit on the wearer as well so you protect your own health when you wear that mask uh so we'll have our media briefing next week on thursday if we need to get with you all sooner than that for some reason we will let you know and at this point i'll take a few questions yes sir um i do not i'm going to let dr kenner have that one you missed your opportunity to ask that a minute ago it's 295 as of this morning which um look it's it's that's a shame in the grand scheme of things we have about 400 000 administrations so far so it's it's a it's a small number of that but again we take every one of those to heart the majority of those have been uh small numbers you know one two or three because um a vial dropped and cracked or someone made an honest mistake when they were diluting it they had a couple left over they got spoiled we had a handful that came out of temperature when they were being transported so you know we do our best job when these happen to go back and you know really do a full review and find out what the cause was and how we can address it and and make it a more robust program going forward and and the biggest thing we've done so far i think we mentioned before is we've looked with the public service commission to to ensure that that utility companies can prioritize the areas that have vaccine to minimize any any power disruption they might have and we think that's going to be really good there's been some states that have had large numbers um 4 000 in maine a large number a number of thousand doses in michigan i believe we've had nothing of that magnitude so um we'll we'll keep updating you you know as it comes in next question yes ma'am about that 26 number of nursing home staff i mean that seems really low in terms of interest in the vaccine even if it improves somewhat no we are concerned um i can tell you uh and this is somewhat um this is somewhat better news but it is also somewhat anecdotal and limited i have better visibility into that at our war veterans homes and i can tell you that the number of staff who get the first dose on the second visit by cbs or walgreens is more than twice as many who got it on the first trip and if we see that across the state at other nursing homes that's going to go a long way to getting everybody uh or enough people vaccinated so so i'm i'm somewhat gratified by what we're seeing at a war veterans homes i don't have that level of visibility yet into the other homes and and they're just now starting as dr cantor mentioned their second visits to to nursing homes in louisiana by the way there are the first visits to a few assisted living centers that were actually starting now as well so that was the second step in that long-term care partnership so that is that is starting um and as as we speak as well uh and so i am somewhat gratified about what we're seeing in our war veterans homes with respect to the question that you asked and i do encourage everybody to to have confidence in the vaccine to get it when when you're able and certainly it is eligible to those individuals and with respect to the question about what happens to those staff or maybe some residents who don't get it during the course of this long-term care partnership just like we haven't turned off phase 1a as we got to 1b tier 1 we're not going to turn them off either and we will make sure that they have opportunities to get the vaccine but we do encourage you to get it now but because time is of the essence and it's never going to be more convenient than when we send cvs walgreens to your place of employment and they make it available to you and they give you an opportunity to schedule your second dose at the same time you get your first dose it's never going to be more convenient than that for for these people and and because time is of the essence we're encouraging them to do it now yes based on the numbers it seems like there's going to be leftover doses in this program right and what happens if they're done making their visits and we have tens of thousands of leftover doses because right now you have a huge gap there what happens to those doses we call them back those doses are allocated to louisiana we don't get them because they go directly to the long-term care partnership but to the degree that that partnership doesn't administer the doses that they have we will call them back the other thing that we have done and we've done this for two or three weeks in a row now is we have prevented them from getting the full allocation they requested because it didn't match up with the speed with which they were delivering the doses and we didn't want any doses sitting on the shelf anywhere that could be going into the arm of someone in louisiana so we have tried very hard to match the number of doses that are actually going to the long-term car partnership long-term long-term care partnership i don't know why that was so hard with with the number that's actually getting put in people's arms and if we ever detect that they have been over supplied and won't deliver those doses we'll get them back what's the total number of doses you think they're going to need do you have a estimate and how many have you held back from them so far do you know i don't know uh right now and i don't know whether joe can you well i guess joe can tell you he's got all the information um but how many we need is going to depend on what the uptake is and it is impossible with any precision to stand here and and and say we know that uh once uh all of our visits are made they call them clinics first and second clinics to the to the nursing homes and first and second clinics to the long to the assisted living centers that these are the number of doses that we will have administered because we don't know how many of those residents and staff ultimately will participate but i think we can tell you how many we have withheld from the allocation that the partnership wanted uh to date if if you've got that information so we think all told the partnership and again it's not just nursing homes it's just the first part of it it's also assisted loving and group homes and other facilities but we think all told about 116 000 estimated is going to be the total number of people so that's the total number of first doses so you know i mean it is logical that we'll have to contribute some more than we've contributed already to that but as the governor said we're certainly not going to do that until um they get much closer to the balance that they are and that's in that's just first doses just you know commiserate number of second doses behind that uh resident uptake that's of the people who have been offered it so far the places that's right the clinics have happened there's still people out there who haven't yet had the opportunity to say yes or no that's right of the about um 240 nursing homes that have been visited to date of those residents 69 has been the uptick full right that could get vaccinated that's not necessarily the full pot i mean that would if everybody in that group wanted to get vaccinated that's the full number it's um not exactly it's an estimate that operation warp speed and the cdc puts out and that estimate gets tighter and tighter as experience with the program goes on so they actually are trying to project both on statewide and national experience what they think the uptake is going to be um so it's going to get more accurate day day and day but it's a general ballpark you know i think if this when this program carries to fruition we'll probably end up contributing more doses to it than we've paid in now at the end of the day a couple more yes sir shifting from vaccines some other the big news that we're following uh your stance got on that new moratorium on oil and gas leasings by president biden in places like the gulf of mexico the potential impact it could have on louisiana workers and our economy do you have a stance on that yeah obviously we're concerned about any uh moratorium like that that could adversely impact our state or the energy security of our country and we are talking to different folks in the industry right now to try to figure out what that impact would be there are a number of leases that have been stockpiled over time and so quite frankly the one-year moratorium on the leasing other than some some revenue that would come to the state for example as a percentage of what that lease revenue would be that's going to have an impact on us but but in in terms of what happens over the course of the year if they permit the drilling activities on leases that are have already been obtained then then the impact will will not be as great as it otherwise would be and we're trying to figure out exactly what all of this means as you know it all happened in the last couple of days and we are talking uh to our partners and i'm looking forward to engaging with the biden administration to make the case for uh continued leasing and exploration production in the gulf yes sir in the state make a difference in terms of your decision for mitigation measures i realize a more communicable virus could lead to more cases but i'm wondering if it would bring any additional factors other than the gated criteria well i mean to the extent that it increases test positivity and cases and hospitalizations those are the gating criteria and so the answer is yes based on the three confirmed cases that we've had right now know and and i haven't been given any any guidance from the office of public health with respect to that either and and neither has anything come from the cdc or the white house task force and i'm not sure they call themselves the white house task force anymore whatever there is a there is a covid uh uh group working out of the white house now um it's not called the white house chronovirus task force i don't think but we haven't received any information like that uh that that we should tighten up our our restrictions uh now because of of those variants and in fact we are somewhat heartened to see uh that the the trajectory that we were on is much better today we've at least plateaued perhaps we are we're seeing improving numbers over time the the most alarming thing is that just the sheer degree of disease burden in our communities the amount of covet in our communities continues to be reflected every day in the cases and the positivity the number of patients in our hospitals really really high and sometimes people do focus on whether you're getting worse or you're getting better and and we need to be paying attention to those things but you also have to look at where you're at um and if you are getting better but still at a very very high level of community uh spread then that has to to factor into the decisions we make about what is reasonable in terms of the behavior that we engage in uh in our work environment and and with our family uh with with other activities that we engage in and that's why these mitigation measures are as important or perhaps more important today than they've ever been and and i understand that people are tired of them but again the virus doesn't care particularly these new variants don't care uh and so we we just all have to do better and it would be a shame to get to where we're we're closing in on the date i believe when we're going to put this pandemic behind us and more and more people are going to have the vaccine available to them as we move forward and as we get closer it seems to me like it would make sense to do everything we can to prevent contracting the disease just because we know we have less time to go now than we did last march when all this started so i'm asking the people of louisiana to be more diligent than they've ever been right now well i want to thank you all again uh uh for your continued coverage it is incredibly important the the information that you all put out to the people of louisiana um and i thank you for what you're doing i also want to encourage the people of louisiana to choose their sources of information wisely this goes back to some of the myth busting that was done by dr cantor today these were just some of the myths that are more prevalent there are so many things out there that are spreading around and and i'm just encouraging people to go to the fda website go to the cdw cdc website go to authoritative sources to get information and so that you can make truly informed decisions about what is in your best interest in the best interests of your family or your business and so forth um and and let's let's all pull together uh let's continue to pray for one another and and and work together as we always do in times of crisis in louisiana be good neighbors to one another and and right now it is still the case unfortunately that we can show one another how much we care uh for each other and how much we love our our family members and so forth uh by doing those things that that are that are required we wear our mask we social distance we wash our hands frequently we stay home when we're sick outside is always safer than inside all of those things still matter and those people who have been more vulnerable to this disease over the course of the last 10 months they remain more vulnerable to this disease the deaths we report every day are still comprised of the same groups of people primarily older folks and those with those comorbid health conditions but not exclusively we still have young people and people who apparently were in very very good health without any known comorbid health conditions who have very serious cases of covid19 that require hospitalization and quite often result in death so this is a very serious situation and so let's all do our part and get through it in the best possible shape and in the shortest amount of time we do that by following the mitigation measures and getting vaccinated so we'll we'll talk to you next thursday everybody please have a a safe and nice weekend uh this weekend and remember all the things that we've been talking about thank you and god bless you