this afternoon to this press conference joined again today as usual by dr joe cantor he'll be speaking to you in a few minutes we've got quite a bit to go over and today the national governors association is having its winter meeting it's a virtual meeting and that's what i've been doing and i've got to get back to it relatively soon but we're going to get through this presentation dr cantor will make his presentation and of course i'll take a few questions at the end i'll start with an update on the winter weather response and recovery then move to the covit update and finally give a preview of the executive budget presentation that will happen tomorrow at the joint legislative committee on the budget last weekend as you know i traveled to shreveport on saturday i met with local leaders from there in bossier and elsewhere across north louisiana on the needs that they still have following the extreme winter weather the good news is the power has been restored to all but about a hundred accounts and and those aren't in the shreveport bozo area uh those are primarily over in the catahoula area but there remains a lot of work to be done around water systems i can tell you that the national guard has 1949 guardsmen in support of emergency operations about half of those who work in covid missions the other half are working winter weather missions they have distributed as of now more than 2.2 million liters of water we currently have 12 weather related water outages these are water systems that are out that are affecting about 24 000 people and then eight of those are community water systems we also have weather related ball advisories uh 218 of those remain in place and we have about 600 000 residents across the state louisiana who are impacted by the boil water advisories already 170 water systems have had their storm-related water advisories lifted we do sadly have an additional death to report that's attributable to the winter weather it was a 61 year old male in caddo parish who died from exposure i think the coroner in cattle parish confirmed that death yesterday and that it was related to the storm the department of children and family services received federal approval for automatic snap benefit replacements for three parishes those are of oils red river and sabine where more than 50 percent of the snap households lost power for more than 24 hours because of those winter storms this waiver is going to allow households to receive replacement of 45 percent of february snap benefits as a result of the power outages benefits will be available this saturday february the 27th for those individuals all other snap clients who lost power for more than 24 hours and lost food purchased with snap benefits as a result can request replacement benefits individually they'll have to verify their loss from the power companies and then dcfs will send more mass text messages out and communicate with all of those individuals as to how they might access these benefits the deadline to request snap replacement uh benefits has been extended to march the 10th i think i'll shift to coven now today we're reporting 779 cases on 55 753 tests very sadly we're also reporting 33 new deaths which brings the total number of deaths to 9561. i knew it had been a very very long time since i reported zero death so i went back this this morning to take a look at that i think it was march the 22nd of 2020 was the last time that we had a 24-hour report that that had zero there and and so i'm really looking forward to getting back uh to that hopefully that day will come soon especially if we can keep things moving in the right direction they are moving in the right direction at presently the most recent positivity number for the state is five percent for the week that's about a third of what it was six weeks ago consequently we have about a third of the number of people in our hospitals as we had six weeks it goes to cases are down deaths are are declining but still today 33 i mean that that's that's a lot we still have some work to do there there are 679 people in the hospital across the state from covid um that is down eight over the last 24 hours we have 100 of those individuals who are on mechanical ventilators and that's down too so our trends are looking positive we were seeing a tremendous decrease in testing as a result of the mardi gras in the winter storms but just over the last three days we have reported more than 100 000 tests and so our visibility into what's actually happening in louisiana appears to be improving over the last few days we hope that that continues but we won't get to the numbers we had in january when more than 900 000 individuals tested we have administered more than 925 000 doses of vaccine and that includes 5 000 i'm sorry 593 576 series being initiated and 332 415 of those complete we now have 2062 enrolled providers across the state of louisiana partnering with us that means they've been approved by the state and by the cdc to both receive vaccine directly and to administer those vaccines yesterday the fda put out encouraging information about johnson and johnson's covid19 vaccine the full fda panel meets tomorrow if the fda grants emergency use authorization obviously that would give us a total of three vaccines that we will have at our disposal to employ and we could have the uh johnson and johnson as soon as next week but that's assuming of course that the e-way is granted over the weekend and we certainly don't know that that's going to happen but we do believe it'll happen soon and that's a very positive development and i assume you're going to have a lot of questions about vaccine both because of the johnson and johnson but also to the disruption that we've had with respect to the receipt of vaccine last week and this week and then what we're looking forward to so at this time i'm going to ask dr cantor to come up please direct any questions that you have for him to him before he leaves the podium and then i'll come back on the other side of dr cantor and give you some some additional information then we'll wrap up thank you thank you governor thank you for your leadership um good afternoon everyone it's it's uh it's a pleasure to be able to share some good news on a couple different fronts with you today so before i get to that i do want to ask everyone who's listening that due to the disruptions in the supply of blood donated blood with the storm we have a critical need for blood across the state so i'd like to ask everyone out there if they would be so kind as to consider donating blood and if you happen to have type o blood alaska twice to do it but we could use a lot of blood across the state um our hospitals are asking that we put this message out there so consider it you can do it if you've done it in the past it's easy to do it's pretty safe and uh you can look online for a blood center near you you can call 2-1-1 it should be pretty easy to find a place to donate thanks for considering that so let's get on to um to some good news as the governor had mentioned there's a high likelihood that um we could have some some more vaccine particularly the johnson and johnson uh variety very very soon so the timeline is as such yesterday morning the fda released their own review of the johnson johnson trial data along with some other documents prepared by the company in advance of the verb pack committee that's the vaccines and related biological product advisory committee it's a committee of the fda meeting tomorrow as the governor mentioned to consider recommending emergency use authorization of the johnson johnson vaccine if they make that recommendation then the leadership of the fda will will consider that based on what we know about this vaccine based on the information that was released publicly yesterday we anticipate that it's going to be authorized but we don't want to get ahead of the horse on that if that authorization is made then the cdc advisory committee on immunization practices will then meet and consider more granular recommendations about how the vaccine might be best used and any other considerations to be aware of if all of that happens if all of those dominoes line up appropriately we could be receiving johnson johnson vaccine as the governor said as early as next week which is very very um exciting for us for a number of reasons and i want to go through these number one um this vaccine is is significantly easier to use firstly because it's a one dose series one and done one shot and you're done don't have to come back don't have to coordinate one shot and you're done which is something that we don't have with the vaccines now the other reason why this will be great for us is the vaccine is a hardier vaccine it doesn't it's easier to transport it's easier to store it doesn't require ultra cold it lives longer in a regular fridge and freezer so it's going to be a lot easier to move this vaccine out into the field to do do events with it do small community strike teams and we've done a number of the smaller events already but there have been logistically quite complicated this will ease that process considerably and the last reason is this is additional doses coming to the state if all those things line up above and beyond what we're already getting with pfizer and moderna and we have been told to this is an unconfirmed number but we have been told to anticipate that if fda authorizes and if the cdc acip committee puts out their wrecks we've been told to anticipate about 37 to 38 000 doses the first week which is a considerable number for us so all of that is really really encouraging to us what we know about the johnson johnson vaccine so far is that just like pfizer and madarina it's a very safe and highly efficacious vaccine it has the benefit of being tried not just in the u.s but there were big arms of the trials and these were about 40 000 people in the in the stage 3 johnson johnson trial split pretty evenly between the u.s latin america including brazil which is important because there's a variant of concern out there in south africa so a very very broad breadth of subjects a little bit different from the other trials from the other vaccines that we've had protection after this vaccine ramps up gradually at 14 days afterwards you have very very good protection and at 28 days you have a little bit even better protection at 28 days and going forward zero deaths and zero hospitalizations in the vaccinated arm of that trial so to put that in other words this vaccine does exactly what we want when we get vaccinated which is protect yourself against serious complications and death that's why we're getting vaccinated and this vaccine as shown in the trials and again the fda is going to review this in a public fashion tomorrow and then the cdc as well highly highly efficacious so very very exciting news for us what it means for people of louisiana is it's going to be easier to access vaccine there'll be more vaccine out there we'll be able to do events we'll be able to supply providers that we haven't been able to supply yet because of supply constraints and logistically again with a one-and-done shot it's that much easier so i'm really really excited about this vaccine this is a good day for us if the fda authorizes and if the cdc makes the recommendations that we think they're going to make we'll all be paying very close attention and those meetings are all public they all get streamed online so this is a very transparent process i will say the data that continues to come in on the existing two vaccines the pfizer and the moderna excuse me continues to be very encouraging data the best data we're getting right now actually comes from israel and the reason is twofold threefold really relatively small population country they got a ton of doses from pfizer they have a lot of doses from pfizer they've been able to vaccinate about 50 percent of the country right now and not only do they have a unified health system they've had electronic health records going back 20 years so they have a lot of good data to mine and they just published a good study in the new england journal of medicine essentially confirming what the pfizer trial data confirmed which is that upwards of 94 95 percent of the population gets vaccinated are protected from covet and they're seeing a commiserate decrease in the amount of circulating virus that's out there in the country which again we are slowly building an evidence base to hopefully prove that these vaccines not only protect someone from getting sick but also reduce transmission we haven't proven it yet but the evidence base is mounting and this israel data is really really encouraging on that a number of pregnant women have been in those experience in those data sets in israel pfizer is now doing a specific study on pregnancy those studies are ongoing there has been absolutely no zero suggestion to date that these vaccines are in any way dangerous in pregnancy and i mentioned that particularly because we are now offering vaccine to pregnant individuals in louisiana and i want folks to know that we have complete clarity right now on what the risk of covidar in pregnancy and that's increased maternal complications and as the governor mentioned last week we already are one of the leading states in the country of maternal complications and an increased risk of preterm labor we know what those are the risks are the recommendations of both the who the cdc and the american college of status and gynecology are very clear they advocate strongly that pregnant women have access to this vaccine because there has been no suggestion that it's at all dangerous to either mom or baby so that's really encouraging i'll tell you um on a very personal level right now my wife and i are expecting and my wife is actually getting vaccinated today she was able to make an appointment a couple days ago it was supposed to be for a couple weeks from now and the pharmacy uh called her yesterday with someone with a cancellation and she bumped it up so i i'm a big believer in this and i think anyone who is expecting should go have a conversation with their obstetrician or midwife this is a good level of protection that i don't want people to pass up i want to move on a little bit and um more and more we're hearing about teachers and other educators and daycare staff getting vaccinated now that the um eligibility is there and that's that's really encouraging i want to make one correction from a number um we gave the other week and sam i think you brought this up so thank you for for raising it the total uh denominator for k through 12 plus day care teachers and staff is actually 160 000 i think i think we had said 95 000 um especially 160 000 that includes some early start um staff and some private schools as well it's interesting going forward when we add new eligibility categories in the future it's actually going to be less pertinent what those numbers are because more and more individuals in future eligible categories are getting vaccinated because they fit a previous category and that's going to happen more and more so i just wanted to flag that as we go forward but sam thank you for bringing that up the other week let me talk a little bit about what we expect in terms of deliveries coming up we are as of today caught up in what we had lost ground on due to the storm last week so every delivery that was due into the state that was delayed last week because of the weather and then delayed a little bit in the beginning of this week because um the feds were catching up their deliveries is now in state right now so and we believe going forward next week delivery is going to happen on time so all of those doses are now in state so so we've we've caught up from there i think people are still having appointments rescheduled and providers are working through those lists so i do think there's still going to be a little bit of a lag in the number of people that get noted as vaccinated you know on the dashboard and i expect next week that those numbers pick back up looking forward what we expect to come into the state in the coming week which will be week 12 of vaccinations we expect for pfizer 52 650 doses that's an increase of about 7 000 from the week prior we expect 45 000 doses of moderna and again estimated if all of those dominoes line up appropriately for johnson johnson um somewhere between 37 and 38 000 doses of um johnson johnson so if all of those line up that'll be the biggest allocation that we've had to date and um it couldn't come at a better time you know because we're the weather has cleared up and we have newly eligible categories as a week and a half ago and um our providers are ready to administer those vaccines so that's that's very exciting um the other good news to share is that cases continue to go down uh both in louisiana and across the country you know it's clear that we had a very big spike the biggest spike we've had to date over christmas and new year's and now as the governor noted particularly with the hospital numbers we're going down impressively percent positivity this week is flat flat excuse me at five percent we did lose a lot of testing last week with the weather and we're picking that back up now so i want to give a caveat with with some of the numbers on that that you can't identify cases when the testing takes a lag like that but by other indicate indicators like hospitalizations and so forth were no question going in the right direction and you know particularly to nursing homes and we've talked before about what we should expect with nursing homes now that we have a good base of protection with vaccine there as of today and again i say this with the caveat that there was a little bit of interruption in nursing home testing with the storm but as of today we have the lowest number of new cases in nursing home residence than we've had since the first spike so that is encouraging that number is 43 new cases over a seven day period so all of those are really encouraging and again by design the intent was to vaccinate the most at risk people first because that's where the hospitalizations are and that's where their mortality is and it's encouraging to see that play out that said um you know despite our numbers going in the right direction we remain concerned about the variance and this continues to be a tip of the iceberg scenario where with the relatively little amount of genomic sequencing that's done in its country when you have some identified cases you know you have more that you just haven't formally identified so to date we have confirmed 18 cases of the b117 or the uk variant there's a those are in regions one four and seven there are an additional 50 cases of suspect pending confirmation with the cdc those are in regions one four five six and seven we anticipate um all or at least most of those are going to end up being positive the cdc is taking more time to confirm these because of the volume of suspect cases being sent into them um i can tell you nationwide this just shy of 2000 identified cases of this variant in 45 states although i would bet anything that it's really in all 50 states it just hasn't been identified that's all the reason to continue being vigilant with our mitigating measures all the reason to continue masking continue distancing we know this variant is growing we know it's circulating we know it's transmitting we need to do all we can now to continue to suppress transmission so that we don't give it a foothold and and the way this plays out if we do a good job of that and suppress transmission enough and buy us enough time to get enough vaccine out there we can avert what what we fear might be another spike if we drag our feet in either one of those we might not be so lucky so that's really what the strategy is now is to continue to drive transmission down so that we can put ourselves in the best position to avert a spike by virtue of having transmission low and and getting enough vaccine out there by the time this this variant increases in numbers beyond what it is now we've not identified any cases of the b1351 variant that's the south african variant yet in louisiana it has been identified in 14 states closest to us being texas tennessee south carolina and north carolina we've not yet either identified any cases of the p1 variant that's the that's the brazilian variant those have been identified in four states minnesota oklahoma maryland and florida we'll let you know if any of that changes so again very encouraged about the johnson johnson vaccine very encouraged by the continued progress that everyone in the state is making at reducing transmission and recovering from from a very damaging spike over christmas and new year's and i'd like to ask people to keep it up it's been good work so with that be happy to take any questions sam it seems like a lot of people are even though it's uh effective the johnson johnson vaccine a lot of people may be wanting to hold off until they can get the more efficacious moderna or pfizer vaccine it's your message to people who may think i'm going to wait around until i can get the better vaccine don't do it that would be a strategic error and their supply vaccine is still is still limited the first chance somebody has to get vaccinated take that chance do not pass up that opportunity these trials are not apples to apples you know and they're not head-to-head trials either so it's very challenging to compare these trials between each other what is apparent with this vaccine again the fda is going to confirm this when they meet i think tomorrow but what looks to be apparent is a hundred percent efficacious the johnson johnson vaccine at preventing death and preventing serious illness that results in hospitalization that's what you really care about i mean when you get vaccinated when your family gets vaccinated when you encourage a loved one that gets vaccinated that's what you care about you care about not having to worry about the most feared complications and that's that's why this pandemic that's why this virus has caused such a disruption in our life it's that we fear for the worst complications if all it was was a mild cold and nothing more it wouldn't justify the response that we've given so very good vaccine again one shot is great and don't pass up the opportunity if someone has the opportunity to get vaccinated don't fall in the trap of trying to parse one versus the other this is a golden opportunity you might literally pay for that decision with your life so don't pass out the opportunity melinda those are the declining numbers including the the steep decline in hospitalizations what are you attributing that to is that does the vaccine have anything to do with that in your mind or is it a change behavior i mean what do you attribute it to yeah i think at this point it does with the vaccine i think it's certainly multifactorial and you know this we're coming down from a spike we've come down from two spikes previously and cases go up cases spike in cases come down and that's you know reflective across the country as well um and that's a result i think of behavior change and people taking it seriously because they're seeing so many friends and family and other loved ones you know being affected by it i think at this point with we've got listen today we have about 13 of the state has initiated at least initiated the vaccine series and it's not a random 13 you know by design it is 13 of very high risk individuals nursing home residents health care providers people of advanced age people with significant comorbidities people who are likely to be hospitalized at this point with that level i think we are beginning to see a reduction in hospitalizations because of who has been vaccinated who has been protected yes sir uh how are the efforts demographics for who's getting vaccinated i know that states that are reporting demographics are seeing black patients are not getting vaccinated at nearly the rate that white patients are they're going um okay i'll tell you our the quality of our data what we're able to get visibility on has improved dramatically and i do need to um give a shout out so to say to the the team at the office of public health um teresa sokol who is our acting epidemiologist lee mendoza who runs the bureau of health informatics and both of their teams have done remarkable and we're actually one of the leading states in the nation right now in how to get better quality data you know nationally about 49 of every vaccine administered does not have racial data attached to it that's the data that the cdc put out a couple weeks ago and actually had the pleasure of joining a big cdc conference on tuesday where we talked about this very issue here we've able we have been able to get that unknown number down to 10.8 percent and the way we've been able to do that is by reconciling data with existing databases that we that we use in the state and we did the same thing with our testing data a number of months back so we're able to get visibility and actually one of the leading states on that right now the flip side of that is we have disparities there's there's absolutely no question about that and if you look at the data now it becomes very clear and i think those disparities are multifactorial and either related to inequities health inequities that we know go back decades if not generations everyone in the losing department of health and the governor's team is is committed to addressing that above really anything else right now we want every single community in the state to have access to the vaccine and access to the right information so that they feel empowered to avail themselves of it this is going to be this is going to be work that's we have cut out for us going forward you know and i think we need everyone's help in this this is not something that the health department does alone this is something that we do in partnership with community-based organizations churches leaders we need everyone in the state on this and that's what i hope happens going forward there are and a lot of these i want to give working closely with the coveted health equity task force and um and there'll be significant community organizing events and and immediate strategy to follow that i don't want to get too ahead of that right now but there is a big cornerstone of this work though is working in partnership with folks on the ground because i know you know me as the state health officer or even health department this is not something that we can do on ourselves so we're working really hard to make partnerships now and that will be what we base this on going forward yep and nursing homes since we already have a large portion of our seniors having an opportunity to get vaccinated yeah you know a couple of things in that they're actually much more relaxed now than people might realize and there's there's if a family doesn't feel like they have visitation access i think there's probably some communication barrier going on because the actual rules right now are very very flexible for indoor visitation and outdoor visitation there's a lot of ways to visit particularly now with the case counts 10 percent positivity going down but the other point is they are federal rules at this point so the visitation rules right now are cms or federal rules so everyone in the state is bound by those rules i do expect those to be relaxed particularly as more data comes out about the risk of transmission once one is vaccinated they haven't relaxed it yet but i would expect them to do so i'll wrap the other again i want to thank everyone for the hard work just remind folks that um it's not over and we have a work cut out for us to continue reducing transmission particularly with these variants that are out there so thank you thank you dr kenner and congratulations on the upcoming birth i didn't i didn't realize that that was going on but i'm happy for you and your wife with respect to the vaccine and and its safety i think now that we have administered hundreds of thousands of doses here in louisiana and millions across the country we can absolutely dispel some of the concern that that was out there at the outset that people would have immediate and severe allergic reactions and considerable numbers we're just not seeing that at all um and and so it is they are safe and effective and i'm convinced that if the fda issues the emergency use authorization for uh the johnson johnson vaccine that it too will be safe and effective and we encourage people to take advantage of the earliest opportunity once you're able to do so uh to be vaccinated that really is the way we put this pandemic behind us there is no other way and so we're encouraging people to to do that i do want to lend my voice to something that dr cantor mentioned and that is the need for blood donations um i speak with doctors quite frequently all around the state about covid about capacity and different things testing and vaccinations a number of them have mentioned to me this week that the situation on blood is serious and so we are encouraging people to donate lots of ways to be connected with these blood centers but please call 2-1-1 if you have any questions a lot of people donate on a regular basis and maybe they can just go ahead and speed that up and and donate again now and it is safe um there's there's nothing dangerous about giving blood right now so i would encourage people to do that um i'm going to turn now to the budget so tomorrow the commissioner administration jay darden will be presenting the executive budget proposal to jlcb um and uh you know it's been a challenging year for us and for our country in a lot of ways and and certainly at the outset [Music] we didn't know exactly how this is going to impact health the economy so many other things that are going on and therefore it might come as a surprise to people because of these challenges that we've been able to put together a budget proposal that is balanced and that requires no cuts now that doesn't mean that we aren't still challenged by cobit and there will be a number of co-bid related expenditures going forward every business every family every government has more expenses associated with operating during a pandemic and we also know and i think i'll speak some more about this in a moment that we really need further assistance from the from the federal government and i do hope that the stimulus bill that is under consideration will pass in some form or fashion that certainly has state and local funding attached to it to help meet those expenditures that i just mentioned but also we know that our unemployment insurance trust fund is is backed down i think today's number in the ucg this morning had about six million dollars in it so clearly that's going to be completely exhausted again very soon we'll be borrowing money and even though you're able to borrow money interest-free it does have to be paid back at some point we've already borrowed about 133 million dollars the payback starts in september and so would be it would be really uh helpful if we could replenish the trust fund pay back what has been borrowed because if we are unable to do that then there will be at some point in the not too distant future a tax hike on all employers who pay into the unemployment compensation trust fund that's obviously not something you want to do as you're coming out of a pandemic and the economic troubles that were related to it um so we're in we're in a better place than many thought possible i can illustrate it another way we were right at 300 000 jobs lost after the onset of the pandemic and that was at the worst all but about 80 000 of those jobs um have have returned um now we still have an awful lot of people out there who are not employed who want to be and need to be and some people are underemployed we've got a lot of families but that's just a measure of how things are in fact improving and things have been improving in louisiana for a number of years now if you go back to the structural budget deficit that was created in over a number of years but really got to an unsustainable place in 2015 2016. and in fact moody's recently upgraded our credit uh rating from stable to positive the outlook i should say from stable to positive uh and this is the first step uh towards getting a bond upgrade which is obviously what we want and and they discussed extensively the responsible budgeting that has been happening in louisiana recently the stable revenue the fact that we're paying our bills we're paying back into the rainy day fund the budget stabilization fund and so forth the rec has improved our revenue forecast for next fiscal year obviously the year that starts on july 1st of 2021 we have benefited from the cares act that was passed earlier in in 2020 and in particular i will tell you and this is something that we're very appreciative of and it started under the trump administration and has continued under the biden administration is an enhanced f map of about 6.2 percent of the the portion of the medicaid program paid for by the federal government uh that has been extended to all states at least through the end of the calendar year and that has had a big impact on our ability to fashion the budget we're going to present on tomorrow so we were able to balance the budget we're we're not proposing cuts and in fact we're going to propose some critical uh investments especially in education so this is some hopeful and bright news and a period of time that really quite frankly hasn't been so bright the budget we're proposing includes modest but meaningful pay raises for k-12 teachers and support staff as well as higher education faculty an increase in the higher education formula and more dollars to go grants the need-based aid for higher education [Music] and obviously there will be an increase in tops too just given the number of students who will be participating in tops next year specifically under our proposal educators will see a 400 increase next year and support staff would receive an additional 200 and we obviously know that our teachers support workers deserve more than that i am absolutely committed to delivering more teacher pay over the remainder of of this term but we always knew that it'd be a multi-step multi-year process but this is another step in the right direction and that would be funded by 1.375 increase to the mfp that portion of the funding formula that typically goes to to pay i would point out that this budget does not take into consideration anything that's presently pending before congress um and and so you every day you're seeing news about whether this can be state and local aid in the next package and if so how much and all the other various uh forms of funding whether it's for k-12 or or higher education or health care delivery system another round of ppp another round of unemployment obviously until something's passed we don't take it into consideration in terms of our budget we do know that as part of the package congress is considering an increase to the federal minimum wage and i know this is also one of the things that makes that particular package somewhat controversial for some you all know that i have supported an increase in the minimum wage here since before i was governor we have asked for one every single year the minimum wage at the federal level remains dollars and a quarter an hour it's been at that level since 2009 and that's what it is in louisiana because we're one of just a handful of states that don't have our own minimum wage so i have written a letter to our congressional delegation encouraging them to find a way to increase uh the minimum wage and hopefully it'll happen in the reconciliation if not some standalone bill because seven dollars and a quarter in 2021 simply is insufficient and on top of this studies have shown that we have the second highest percentage of workers in the country who actually work for the minimum wage so for all of those reasons and the fact that the pandemic is actually exacerbated the problems caused by such a low wage that i believe it's time that we increase the minimum wage there will be additional efforts in louisiana this year in the session that starts in april quite frankly i support them they're going to be multiple bills and hopefully we can find a way to do this and and the vast majority of people in louisiana support it i'd ask you to to look at what happened on the first day of january of this year i think was about 20 states started with an increase in the minimum wage because of work they had done previously just last year at the same time president trump won the electoral votes in the state of florida i think it was 60 percent of those voters voted in favor of a 15 minimum wage of course staged out over four or five steps so so it's something that that we need to do i'm encouraging the congressional delegation to pursue this at the federal level and i'll continue to support it at the the state level as well obviously with respect to the budget proposal the commissioner jay darden will be there tomorrow there'll be a lot more details there at his presentation so i'd encourage you all to tune in but the bottom line is we are in a much much better place than we thought might be the case and and i want to thank our federal partners the trump administration now the biden administration for making that possible the work that our congressional delegation has done for the assistance that we have received and we're going to continue to receive for for some time going forward before i take your questions i'll let you know that our next press conference will be next week on tuesday i'm thinking we're going to do that around one o'clock in the afternoon here we'll let you know for sure i do get my second dose next tuesday afternoon as well and in fact as i was preparing to come in here i received a text message from fmol uh reminding me of that second dose appointment and and that's part of the logistical challenges um around a a two dose vaccination series that we don't have with johnson and johnson is getting people back on that 21st day if it's pfizer and it doesn't have to be exactly the 21st day but or the 28th day of of moderna but i do look forward to being vaccinated with a second dose next tuesday afternoon and i think you're all going to be invited to come out to that as well so with that i will take some questions yes ma'am in terms of the um the money that's used to balance the budget and avoid the cuts is that all is the federal assistance mainly coming from the fmap increase or are y'all using some of that second round of congressional aid that was passed in december to help offset something well the biggest part of it and and again this will this will be detailed tomorrow by the commissioner the biggest part is the f map as you all know the medicaid program and this isn't unique to louisiana but to every state is the single biggest expenditure item and so anytime you get relief on the medicaid program and lower the expenses that the state incurs in that program it provides a tremendous amount of flexibility and so that that is the the biggest effort now i will tell you that the cares act funding for state and local government that was all appropriated that was all allocated out uh in december of of last year so uh i'm not going to tell you that there aren't some dollars still being brought to bear but for the most part that that is behind us yeah in december that had like a billion dollars for education for example yeah and and so we have a a little over a billion dollars for k-12 education we have uh you know and my numbers are going to be a little bit off but more than 100 million dollars for early childhood about 250 million dollars for a higher ed uh no this we're not taking that into consideration because those those dollars have specific strings attached to them and things that they can be used for and can't be used for and quite frankly some of the rules by the federal agencies that actually dictate how those dollars can be spent are just now starting to come down and so you had an appropriation in the last congress that was overseen by the last administration but now you have a new administration and new people who are writing the rules so so for example just the other day i believe we got the rules associated with the emergency rental assistance program funding that was funded in in the appropriation in december but the rules just came down the other day about how the program has to be structured with with those dollars and that's continuing to happen around the uh all of the funding that came down in in december we're very thankful uh for that funding uh but and there's there's considerable funding there for k-12 and i know superintendent brumley for example has been talking about uh their approach to that and and much of that money flows directly down to the districts by the way yes sir you said you've contacted the congressional delegation it appears that uh the louisiana's house congressional delegation will unanimously vote against this package how can you be so far out of you know out of step with why do you why do you think that both of you are so opposing ideas well the letter as i mentioned asked them to support an increase in the minimum wage that could be possible with this particular instrument it will depend on how the senate parliamentarian rules and what amendments get offered and so forth um you know i as to whether they vote for or against it and why they make that decision you'll have to address that question to them i am 100 confident that the vast majority of people in louisiana support an increase in the minimum wage it's been demonstrated time and time again with polling information it's been demonstrated time and time again in other states when they're given opportunity to vote on it the most conservative states in the country overwhelmingly support an increase in the minimum wage and we're one of just a handful of states that haven't created our own minimum wage and we're still on the federal minimum seven dollars and a quarter an hour uh 12 years later we we can do better than that and and i'm i'm encouraging our congressional delegation to do that and i'm encouraging our legislature here in louisiana to take this up this year as well yes sir the hospitalizations and case numbers continue to go down do you still see any sign of loosening restrictions next week for businesses well as you know i don't i don't make announcements about what the next proclamation looks like until after i have the benefit of a gating criteria meeting and recommendations from the department of health and the office of public health and and i haven't done that yet obviously uh when you look at the trend lines they are good and and so i would anticipate that we will have a new proclamation meaning not just an extension of the current public health emergency proclamation with with its restrictions in mitigation measures but that we will there will be new uh features in that but but i will make that announcement to you all on tuesday at one o'clock as to what that looks like i'm just not going to get there now but one of the things that i'm most gratified about is typically you just look at the trends and and quite often as soon as things start looking better people start saying okay you better you got to lift restrictions now and do this that and the other well if you have a really high baseline the fact that you may have a week or two of improving trends doesn't mean that you're in a materially better place but when you have lower baselines and good trends that's when you can feel confident about moving forward and and it appears to me that that's that's what we're going to see but but dr cantor gets the opportunity on monday of next week as we always do to present a very detailed set of uh data points to inform the decision going forward and he will follow that up with with the recommendation and i'm just not going to get in front of him by announcing something today because that's just not the way we do things yes sir there's plans for a mass vaccination site at the convention center in new orleans you've talked about how the johnson johnson's going to enable more of that because of all the reasons you've laid out can you talk about specifically where else in the state are you talking with lsu about a tiger stadium site or anywhere else in baton rouge or any other specific sites that are going to be up and running here in the next few weeks yeah and so we need to be careful when we talk about mass vaccination sites and what's going to happen what's not going to happen um i believe that if and when and it's going to happen i think and sooner rather than later that johnson johnson is approved that it is a good candidate for mass vaccination events for a couple of reasons one is those are net new doses on top of what we're currently getting in pfizer and moderna and secondly they're one shot so you don't have to try to get those people back and and because there's uh there's a easier way to store the johnson johnson vaccine as well but as i stand before you right now the fda has not granted an emergency use authorization and so to talk about specifically how we would employ them or whether they would go to that specific site you mentioned i think you talked about the convention center it is premature now we do we do anticipate that fema is going to is working with us to create a site in the new orleans area upon request from the the city of new orleans that flowed through gosap to to have a mass vaccination site in louisiana we don't know yet when that's going to happen we don't know the number of doses or the types of the type of doses that will be used and so we just i just don't want to get too far in front but as soon as we're able to do that we're going to let you all know but but i can tell you and i think we've told you before we're looking at these types of events happening all over the state and and working very closely with our regional medical directors and and as to what the right mix is for those particular regions you know because of geography and ability for people to to get transportation to and from the site does it make sense to really have one mass vex vaccination site added for a region or would multiple smaller sites that wouldn't necessarily be considered a mass vaccination site be be better for those particular regions so we're we're doing all of that work now um and it would be my hope and quite frankly my expectation that in the not too distant future we're going to be announcing uh some of this but but what you saw come out of the convention center is a partnership between new orleans the convention center and children's hospital to run a mass vaccination site at the convention center and they they gave us the number of doses that they would be able to administer in a certain amount of time and now we're trying to to make that work but it's it's just too early to say when that's going to happen or which type of vaccine will be used any other questions i hope not because i have to get back to the concluding session of the national government association winter meeting so that i can have some of these conversations directly with the president about a vaccine and hear from his team did you have one more question well you know we just but today is thursday so it was just monday that we added a number of individuals um if you look at the total number of louisianans who are currently eligible for vaccine it's almost a third of the state and so we don't know when we get to the next order priority because it depends on the uptake but what we do is we continually converse with those enrolled providers hundreds of them around the state and try to detect as soon as there's some slack in the appointment system and as soon as there is some slack that's an early indication that we can add some more individuals to the priority group that's that's then eligible to receive the vaccine we're just not there yet um but but i will tell you i was very happy that this week we could get to uh pregnant women that we can get to those 55 and older who have one or more of those comorbid health conditions and that we could get through all the k-12 and early childhood workers not just teachers but but all of the workers incredibly important for our state and then the other reason i can't answer your question is i don't know he told us what we can expect next in the first week the johnson johnson is available is it available next week or is it the week after we don't know yet so you have to make your decisions uh so that so that you're taking all of that into consideration and until something happens you can't take it into consideration but obviously we look forward to continuing as we are able over time to um making the vaccine available to more individuals and and you know i hope to do that sooner than later but i can't give you a timeline but thank you all very much and thank you for continuing to to cover these press conferences we are in a better place and i want to thank the people of louisiana for that um it wouldn't happen uh but for the fact that that many people many people in louisiana take this virus seriously they take this disease seriously um and quite frankly and i think this gets back to a question that was earlier i think there are the earliest signs now that the vaccinations are making a difference in our numbers especially around hospitalizations and and i suspect coming soon deaths because while we haven't vaccinated we started vaccination what 12 percent of our state 70 percent of those shots have gone into the arms of people who are 60 and older and so we always told you we wanted to vaccine people to make sure that we were preserving capacity in our hospital and savings lives 70 of these shots are going into the arms of people 60 and older those were the people who were having the most serious cases of kobit 19 most likely to end up in the hospital and most likely to die and and so hopefully this will continue but we are seeing the earliest signs that that is having its intended uh impact on on what we're seeing in louisiana that is very very gratifying but we still have to wear our mask we still have to get the vaccine when it's available to us and let's all do our part and if we will do that i am absolutely convinced that that sometime mid-summer or so we're going to be in a much much different and better place with respect to the pandemic so thank you all and we will see you on tuesday you