good afternoon everybody and thank you for being here or for tuning in wherever you might be i am joined again today by dr joe canner he's going to go over some of the gating criteria slides with you in just a moment but i can summarize the information that you're going to see and it's going to show that we're currently moving in the right direction and have been for several weeks now um [Music] and and certainly we're all gratified by that all of the gating criteria that we typically look at percent positivity cases and hospitalizations much better than they were for example on january the 8th which was the worst point in any surge thus far in louisiana for example you're going to see that the percent positivity today is about five percent that's about a third of what it was then hospitalizations um about a third as well case growth is down deaths are down but still way too high but we are doing better and that doesn't just happen it happens because people make a concerted conscious effort to change their behavior and not do the things that cause the search to begin with um and and make sure that they follow the restrictions and mitigation measures and so i want to thank everybody for that uh we know however we still have a lot of work to do before we get out of this pandemic but for the reasons that i just announced we are announcing today that pursuant to a proclamation that i signed a few minutes ago that's effective tomorrow we're going to be moving to phase three and it will look much like the previous phase three that we were in uh in the early part of the fall there may be some differences and i'll go through some of that information with you all in just a moment so the current order expires tomorrow and the proclamation i signed a few minutes ago will go into effect then it will remain in effect for 28 days uh will not expire until march the 31st and i do want to pause here and say that there are some reasons to be concerned first of all the nation appears to have plateaued so that most places in the country have been doing better for several weeks and in terms of cases and in terms of positivity and and deaths and so forth that that appears to have plateaued but we also know that there are multiple variants uh out and about across the country including here in louisiana principally the one that we've detected most frequently is the uk variant which is more easily transmitted and it also pursuant to at least some data that we have it's more likely to lead to worse outcomes meaning serious covid hospitalization and death and we know that that's happening here in louisiana with that with that variant and so for those reasons the mass mandate will stay in place because as you ease restrictions on occupancy for example and you bring more people into a venue it is more important than ever that that you wear a mask as a way to not increase transmission of the virus and cases of the disease don't increase as well so the mass mandate is going to stay in place um so the phase three order uh will look like this and of course the the proclamation itself is going to have more specific information the majority of businesses including restaurants and salons will now be able to move to 75 percent of their capacity and indoor gatherings and event centers will be capped at 50 percent of their capacity and limited to 250 people social distancing masking will be required at all times except when eating and drinking in those places religious services will not have capacity limits on them going forward again the the mass mandate remains in place and social distancing meaning six feet between uh people who are not in the same household is still strongly encouraged and we are especially asking that everyone be mindful of those who are more vulnerable to the disease because of their age or comorbid health condition but there will not be a capacity limit a fix to places of worship in the next proclamation gyms and fitness centers will remain at 50 percent of their capacity and that's based on recent research from the cdc that raises concern about the spread of cobit 19 in these settings bars in all parishes will be able to open for indoor service at 25 percent of their capacity however 50 percent of capacity will be allowed in parishes where the percent positivity is less than five percent over two weeks alcohol sales must still end at 11 pm nobody younger than 21 can enter a bar and patrons must be masked at all times except when eating or drinking and they have to be seated at tables that are properly spaced out i do want to remind everybody that outdoors remains far safer than indoors for any activity and as we get into the spring and the weather becomes better certainly we would hope that individuals and businesses would take advantage of this and and have as many of these activities take place outdoors as possible additionally live music will be allowed indoors under additional guidance that's provided by the state fire marshal there is an extensive set of guidelines available on opensafely.la.gov that's opensafely.la.gov the same website we've been using all along but it uh directs businesses on how to bring uh music back uh safely uh and the fire marshal's gonna focus thing on things like air quality the hvac system the distance between the performers and the uh audience and potentially using barriers uh between uh those two um and uh i think it goes without saying but all audiences of indoor live music have to be seated at all times indoor meetings and event venues may operate at 50 of their capacity up to a cap of 250 people and those indoors events must be seated outdoor events may operate at 50 percent of their capacity with no cap on attendance but we'll be required to have six feet of distancing conventions conferences indoor sporting events fairs festivals may operate up to 50 percent of their capacity again there will be distancing requirements but they have to submit a plan that gets approved by the fire marshal and of course the fire marshal acts uh in consultation with the louisiana department of health the new order will expire in 28 days as i mentioned before on march the 31st and while we're doing better and while we're easing restrictions and no one should think that we're out of the woods um and and the mitigation measures remain important uh and if we're gonna uh keep moving in the right direction especially with the emergence of the variant which is still predicted by many to be the predominant strain of the virus circulating in the country and in the state of louisiana at some point this month in the month of march so wear your mask practice social distancing wash your hands frequently get tested if you've been exposed or if you feel ill and if you feel ill make sure that you stay home and then get the vaccine when it's your turn and in fact more important ever it's more important than ever to do these things as i mentioned before because of the uk variant here in louisiana this is how we keep our numbers headed in the right direction and we minimize the number of people who have to be hospitalized and those who die speaking of the numbers today we are reporting 770 new cases on 26 190 new tests we have gone over the six million mark and tests performed over the course of this pandemic and so that's basically about 11 months six six million tests over the last 11 months other big numbers 431 000 confirmed cases in louisiana and we're just shy of 10 000 deaths at this point today we are reporting sadly 19 additional deaths not since march the 22nd of last year have we reported zero deaths i am eagerly looking forward to that day and i hope that day comes as soon as possible that we can report zero deaths here in louisiana 629 patients are hospitalized across the state of louisiana with covid 19. that is the same as yesterday 89 patients in these hospitals are on mechanical ventilators and that's down two from yesterday yesterday we reached the milestone of surpassing one million shots in arms of the vaccine that's exciting we know that we don't put this pandemic behind us until enough people have been vaccinated but what that means is more than 14 percent of our residents have gotten at least the first dose of the vaccine and that is a good start but we've got a lot more people out there that we have to reach last week i was able on friday afternoon to stop by a community vaccination clinic that was held at the living faith christian center in north baton rouge an area where we know that there had been a gap in our administration of the vaccines they were able to vaccinate 2198 individuals over two days it was a tremendous success because community partners and providers work together to identify barriers remove them and meet people where they are we need a lot more of this and certainly we're going to be moving in that direction i'm excited also to tell you that later this afternoon i'll get my second dose of the pfizer vaccine here in baton rouge at the pennington biomedical center i am incredibly thankful for this opportunity i encourage everyone to be vaccinated as soon as you're in the priority group with whatever vaccine is available to you and i know there have been some questions with the legislative session coming up soon we have been working with the speaker and the president to make a vaccine available to legislators and essential staff who work here in this building before the start of the legislative session and they are talking to their members presently to get this coordinated but we know that some legislators would rather have access to the vaccine in their districts so that they can have media appearance events and and so forth and so we are going to add legislators to the current order of priority uh today so that they can schedule and receive a vaccine in their district if they want or they can take advantage of the opportunity they're going to have to do that here at the capitol with the event that we're working on with the speaker and the president there is also good news to share about the johnson and johnson vaccine a one-shot vaccine that was authorized for emergency use by the food drug administration over the weekend and today the white house announced that there's a partnership between johnson and johnson and merck who will help manufacture this vaccine in order to produce an even greater supply over time louisiana's first shipment is on its way on sunday night we were able to put in orders for 37 900 doses uh those doses may have actually started coming in today but you know they should be coming in very soon and i think dr cantor's got some more information for you but when i told you last week that typically we get a three week visibility and the amount of vaccine that we get in in one week is the floor of what we can expect for the two weeks following that i told you that was not the case with johnson and johnson and it appears that we may not get more johnson johnson until the very end of the the month um and and so that that's obviously is going to uh change the way we we do things uh with with respect to johnson johnson and and having access to large amounts of this single-dose vaccine to have the the mass events that we were hoping to have but we'll be getting with all of our providers and making sure that we as we always do uh that this safe and effective vaccine is put into people's arms as soon as possible this vaccine offers certain advantages because it is a one-shot vaccine and so logistically speaking it's just much easier to administer especially to certain populations who may be underserved lacking in transportation maybe in rural areas or whatever the other thing that makes it easier is there is no ultracold storage requirement in fact it doesn't even have to be frozen at all can be refrigerated and so that makes it much much easier logistically to handle and very importantly it's 100 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths at this time i'm going to ask dr cantor to come up he will speak to you all and then he will take whatever questions you might have and then i'll come back up finish out my remarks and then take your questions as well thank you thank you governor good afternoon everyone um congratulations on the upcoming second chat very excited um i want to take a couple minutes and talk about the numbers that we're seeing we've just been seeing over the past couple weeks which i'll just tell you off the bat are on one hand encouraging there's no question about that we we peaked over the christmas and new year's time as did most of the other country we've been coming down since that time and that's informing the the decision that the governor just announced um on the other hand i do want to be be clear for folks out there do not equate the relaxed measures with there being zero risk the governor just said it very clearly we we're not out of the woods by any means and so people need to realize that as we've been saying very clearly throughout the entirety of this pandemic there remains risk there remains reasons for people to be vigilant the only difference now is we know a lot more about how to keep ourselves safe how to keep our families safe and allows people to remember that um try and go into the next slide please we um what i'm showing here um is the typical gating criteria that we look at every time a decision is is to be made and then regular intervals beyond that will convene the health department other stakeholders in state government and the governor and brief out on the numbers that we look at on the top left you'll see coveted like illness this is a measure of people who present to emergency departments with symptoms suggestive of covet it's a proxy for for diagnoses as you can see we peaked right around new years or so and have been coming down very steadily since then on the top right you'll see incidents which is a measure of new diagnosed cases cases rolled over a seven day rolling average again you see a very similar trend a very very large spike over the christmas and new year's time the highest to date for louisiana this was the largest spike that we had and now uh coming down and it's been over 50 days in a downward trend which is significant on the bottom left you'll see two different uh items being displayed the orange bars on the bottom are percent positivity so these are their percent of resulted tests that show positive and we were at five percent which is relatively flat for louisiana also on the downtrend the the caveat to that is the purple line just above the orange bars and that's testing volume the number of tests being conducted per capita and as we talked about last week we have to look with this data a little bit nuanced because the winter storm two weeks ago caused a disruption in our testing we did less testing as a result people couldn't travel the national guard was helping with storm activities there were a number of reasons why testing was was down so when your testing is down it's it's a little bit like you have less less visibility and so i mentioned that as somewhat of a caveat and that's why you see the dip in that purple line on the bottom left graph and then importantly on the bottom right you'll see a graph of hospitalizations these are the number of coveted positive individuals in inpatient hospital settings throughout the state you can very clearly on that graph see the three spikes that we had the first spike in march and april the second spike of the summer surge in july and august and then the third spike in christmas new year's time again going down very very steadily we're at just above 600 people hospitalized and coveted positive right now across the state we've never gotten below 500 since since it's really started for us and we're trying hard to get there but that's that's where we are now so when you look at the measures next slide please we are in a much better spot um than we were let's say around december or november when when cases were were going up substantially next slide after that please great what i want to say to that is a couple points we um despite numbers going in the right direction and despite feeling like the state is an appropriate place to relax mitigation measures the risk to individuals still remains there is still covid being transmitted every day what we do know now is we know we know what works we know how to prevent transmission and we know that very well it's masking it's distancing it's washing hands it's avoiding indoor spaces where that is possible none of that changes today those are those are just as important perhaps more important and i'll come back to that um in a couple of minutes doing a pause there and uh let me talk a little bit um about the johnson johnson vaccine which uh continues to give me great excitement this is just a tremendous tremendous advance in our fight against coveted i could not be more excited about this on friday of last week uh the what's called the the verppak committee the viola vaccines and related biological product advisory committee of the fda meeted and voted unanimously to recommend to the head of the fda that the johnson johnson her jansen vaccine received emergency use authorization head of the faa granted that authorization on saturday on sunday the cdc's advisory committee on immunization practices voted to talk about more granular recommendations on the johnson johnson vaccine and they voted unanimously to recommend to the head of the cdc dr rashel welinski that the cdc endorse the johnson johnson vaccine for any everyone 18 years of age and older and that's what dr olenska the cdc did so we now have two evidence-based bodies comprised of independent experts unanimously recommending the use of this vaccine let me tell you a couple other reasons why this vaccine makes me so excited i know we talked a little bit about this last week it is a incredibly well studied vaccine so again this is a very very large trial in fact the trial that supported the johnson johnson application to the fda was the largest vaccine trial to date over 40 000 individuals and importantly not just in the u.s it covered latin america particularly brazil which is of importance because there's a variant we're watching there and it covered south africa as well so a very very very large trial and a very diverse trial a very very diverse trial so of all of those study participants 17 self-identified as black 45 percent self-identified as hispanic very very diverse trial this is a safe vaccine it's a safe vaccine across a number of types of individuals it's also a very effective vaccine and after 28 days post-vaccination against a single dose at 28 days after and onwards not a single person in these trials that got the vaccine died not from coven not a single person in these trials who got the vaccine was hospitalized because of copen not a single person and that's why we take the vaccine again if if all kova did was was was give you a mild call that would not be why our lives have been disrupted we we've been living in fear for 12 months about the worst complications of covid and this vaccine 28 days after getting a dose is 100 effective it's quite effective before that too it's very very effective at 14 days a little bit more at 28. this is substantial this is absolutely substantial and as we talked about last week this is going to be a game changer in our fight against covid there is a little bit of disappointing news in that and excuse me this is late breaking for us because we just heard it on on a call with with the white house uh coronavirus team a couple hours ago in that we were hoping expecting to get some more shipment of j j vaccine next week and that's not going to happen there'll be no shipments directly to the states next week and likely not the week after that either so what we were told this morning is that there might not be additional shipments of jnj vaccine until the end of this month we have our shipment in state now the 37 900 that we were expecting those will be used as quickly as possible what this means to us is we just have to do that much better of a job at using every vaccine that we have right now as quickly and equitably as possible and we need to be in a real good position so that when we do get resupplied with j and j we'll be able to use it as quickly and equally as possible then too we've met plenty of challenges before this is just another small bump in the road but we'll be ready to meet this one when we do get more supply coming in i can tell you we are getting a little bit more of the pfizer vaccine next week so these are these are estimated allotments that are visible to us now they'll be confirmed on thursday of this week but i'll tell you what they are right now for pfizer our allotment has gone up a little bit to seven thousand three hundred and thirty that's just shy of five thousand more than a week prior and that is as we're doing now accounting for six doses of vial at a pfizer our modern allotment is going to hold flat at 45 000 doses so that gives us a total estimated allotment for what will be week 13 the week starting march 7th of 102 330 doses and just like we've been doing we will use those quickly and equitably throughout the state taking a step back now i do want to talk about the variance and this is this is one of the reasons why i am so cognizant of couching the talk about our improved numbers with some level of of concern because as our numbers are going down as the governor has said we know the variants are increasing they're increasing across the country they're increasing here in louisiana so as of now for the b117 variant that's the one that was first identified in the uk there are 18 confirmed cases across the state an additional 58 that are suspect pending confirmation with the cdc in all likelihood all or or most at least of those will be positive they're now covering all regions except regions three and eight in the state and again as we've said before they're likely there too we just haven't identified it because the country doesn't do a whole lot of genomic sequencing so the variants are out there the cdc still thinks they're doubling a number every 10 days and we still believe at some point in the month of march this particular variant is going to be the dominant variant in the u.s all told it's in 46 states with over 2 400 confirmed cases and then a number of other suspect cases pending confirmation this variant is a threat to us because it's more transmissible it's likely more virulent likely makes people sicker as well so um we have to be cognizant of that i'll let you know at this point for the south african variant or the b1351 variant we have not identified that in louisiana it has been identified in 16 states across the country the closest to louisiana of which being texas tennessee florida and north and south carolina likewise we've not identified the p1 or the brazilian variant either that's been identified in five states the closest to us being florida um these variants particularly the b117 will continue to replicate and continue to increase in transmission what we hope to do is build up enough of a base of vaccine enough protected individuals to fight against that variant when the variance numbers increase as of right now we've initiated the vaccine series and about 15 percent of all louisianans 18 or 19 if you just look at louisianans over the age of 18. that's not in significant that's a substantial number we're going to keep building on that and keep building on that what we need help from the public with is use this window of opportunity where cases are going down and a variant has yet to really overtake us use this window of opportunity to continue to suppress transmission because if we can suppress it just a little bit longer just a little bit longer we're going to buy time to have more people vaccinated again we've given over a million vaccine doses so far it's an incredible milestone if we suppress it a little bit longer we're going to set ourselves up to whether any potential surge that is a very it might bring but we need people to remain vigilant do all the things that we know work masking distancing hand washing staying outdoors as much as you can keep vigilant just a little bit longer because we think this is a real window right now to set ourselves up for what might be coming with this variant with that i'll be happy to answer any questions if there are any same what specific plans does that disrupt is that going to put any plans for community vaccination centers on ice and where exactly are you going to be sending the j doses that we got this week is that just going to be folded into the normal allocation to pharmacies and other providers not exactly the normal i mean the j j vaccine will go to all nine regions of the state there are a number of events that had been planned have been working on plan and the team right now is working with with this late breaking news to make sure that those events can continue so we'll get back to you to confirm exactly which events where and when but the events that were being worked on were really trying to hard to make sure those can those can continue you know obviously this threw us for a little bit of a curve because we were expecting some vaccine to come the next couple weeks but it without question it will go to all nine regions of the state melinda in terms of the the waist numbers can you provide an update on how many lost doses we've had sure um the total number right now is 972 doses uh lost and that's for for everything that has been received to us to date so it's just shy of i think around 0.01 percent or maybe just a little bit below that and i'll let you know as well there's been um two so far confirmed that were related to the storm a couple weeks ago both of them were related to electricity issues and and the the refrigeration went um out of capacity and again the way these processes work is um when a provider realizes that vaccine perhaps has gone out of temperature range um if that is the issue it's not always the issue but if there's the issue they'll reach out to us and ldh we will involve the manufacturer whether it's fires pfizer madeira or now johnson johnson and run through what happened sometimes the manufacturer will come back and say you can actually continue using it because it didn't go outside of some parameter sometimes just say you have to waste it that's what happened in those two there's a number of other reasons why vaccine would be wasted sometimes it's simple human error like dropping a vial and it cracks and sometimes vials get damaged and transport well thank you everyone again have a have a good day mind the weather today and remember it's um there still is transmission happening so the message to folks across the state needs to be that we know how to keep people safe and um that needs to be the number one goal for families right now thank you dr kenner and i'm going to wrap up very quickly and take your questions but i do think that it bears mentioning that the one region of the state were over the last 14 days when we looked at the gating criteria where you had increasing cases and hospitalizations was in region 5 which is the lake charles area and that also happens to be the region where we have detected and suspect and suspect the most uh cases of the variant and in fact if you add up the confirmed and suspected cases one third of those are in that lake charles region um and and we wanted to make sure that people understand that this is a very real threat and it's it's one that we need people to be cognizant of and it's also one that should i think lend credence to this notion that we need to do all that we can by masking and so forth to make sure that we prevent that variant from gaining a foothold before we can be vaccinated in the numbers that we need to be to make sure that it can be contained and that leads to the second point people need to be vaccinated as soon as they are able and they need to access the whichever vaccine is available to them at the earliest opportunity so with that i'm going to take your questions yes sir governor i'm sure you guys have heard but the archdiocese of new orleans catholics not to get the jonathan johnson vaccine so i guess two questions with that one do you guys have a response to that and two um is there a way for someone who wanted to choose to get a certain type of vaccine um is there a way for them to you know see that oh this pharmacy is giving up this vaccine logo there or choose which kind of dose they're going to get would you believe me if i told you i hadn't heard about that statement now uh to get to the second part first i don't know of any state and certainly not here in louisiana are we giving two or more vaccine types to the same provider to be administered at the same time in the same locations and the reason is there there's no way to do that and be a model of efficiency in terms of spreading the vaccine out across the state making it available to the most number of people but also trying to make sure that you don't have the wastage that we got the question a while ago i think from melinda and then each vaccine has to be administered a little differently and so it's just that's not going to happen so for the foreseeable future at least until such point is as perhaps the demand doesn't exceed supply it isn't like you're going to be able to go to a vaccination site and and be given a menu and you say i want the pfizer or i want the moderna or i want the johnson johnson so that that's just not going to happen for some period of time we are going to make sure uh that individuals at the time they scheduled their appointments know which type of vaccine is going to be administered at that appointment um that's that's something that's important to us is not actually something that came up today on the call with the white house this morning at 10 we had a call i think just about every governor in the country was on the call and we had individuals from the white house covid a task force that was working that's working this issue and encouraged all the states to make sure that when people schedule an appointment they know the type of vaccine that they're going to get now um obviously i have tremendous respect to for the archbishop of new orleans and archbishop amen and i spoke on sunday afternoon and i would point out that i don't read his statement as as completely telling people who are catholic or otherwise not to avail themselves of the johnson johnson vaccine i would also point out that there was a different statement that came out from bishop duke here in baton rouge and and he uh has a little different take on it and and certainly acknowledges that there are some moral concerns um for catholics and i happen to be one of those uh but but talks about a little bit differently in terms of what what catholics can and should do and and i would say that but if for reasonable circumstances you are only able to receive the vaccine from johnson and johnson you should feel free to do so for your safety and for the common good in addition i've consulted with catholic health care representatives and understand and appreciate their serious challenges as to the acquisition and equitable distribution of all three vaccines therefore support their policy of administering any of the vaccines as circumstances require so you do have to weigh this with the common good of ending a pandemic you know and there's an imperative that we do this uh the fastest way to do this is to employ uh all of the vaccines and have the uptake and those vaccines be as great as possible so and i've also by the way looked at documents available from the united states conference of catholic bishops and i've also consulted the congregation for the doctrine of the faith which is a vatican-based source of information and and so i'm encouraging everyone out there to uh take the first vaccine that is available to them whether it's pfizer whether it's moderna or whether it is johnson and johnson yes sir governor the rules you laid out seem to be less restrictive than the previous iteration of racism you mentioned lake charles seems to be having issues right now and previously you had to show you were under a certain threshold of percent positivity to operate the bars now bars and lake charles can open 25 regardless i'm wondering why that decision was made to be less strict on the bar front when as you know your administration has said bars are the most risky steps out there well and they are which is which is why they still in terms of occupancies are more restrictive than than most other venues and secondly we're having other rules associated with them no one under 21 everyone has to be seated tables and parties have to be distanced and all of those sorts of things but we believed i believe that there's been enough progress made and and that the the reduced positivity is sufficiently spread across the state that we were able to take this step responsibly at this time um so that's that's why we did it and and i'm very hopeful uh that the restrictions that do remain in place and the mitigation measures that remain in place will be practiced and and that that we will not see an increase in transmission and so forth with these venues we're obviously going to continue to to watch it um we're still engaged in contact tracing for example but generally speaking uh every every day we're looking at the data um and and so you know again we're optimistic that that we can be successful in fact i i know we can be successful uh with with the rules that are going to be in place uh with the proclamation that's effective tomorrow it's just a question of the degree to which people uh comply with those mitigation measures and with the the restrictions yes ma'am along the same lines why did you change your mind on the live music indoors that's obviously been one of those areas that has not been allowed uh under any of the previous phases including when we were in phase three i don't think and and so yeah why you change your position yeah the answer isn't any different than i just gave sam we're just we're we're in a better place um and and we believe that it's something that if it's done in accordance with um the measures that are going to be uh required by the fire marshal with respect to the distance between the performance performers and in the seated audience whether there's a barrier where the the type of air circulation you have and so forth that it's a safe thing to do presently whereas we could not come to that conclusion before and i just think that's an inevitable consequence of having improved um and and i'm very hopeful that we never have occasion where we have to go backwards but you all know that we will if at some point it becomes necessary and i've said we were primarily interested in preserving hospital capacity and saving lives and i'm very thankful that at no point up to now have we in louisiana lost the capacity in our hospitals to deliver life-saving care to covet or to non-covet patients uh and that wasn't you know by accident because we we've been severely threatened in the capacity both with respect to beds and staffing in the past but we've never gotten there but if if if that's the direction we're headed we we will do what is necessary to make sure that we preserve that capacity to deliver life-saving care so so this hopefully is is uh is an opportunity to us for us to move forward to do it safely but if we have to go backwards i mean we will it's not something that i want to do as you all know but i feel like we've made enough progress to date that this is something that we can do safely with the the restrictions and mitigation measures that we talked about yes sir venues like uh like the box or or baseball parks across louisiana and what considerations went into that 50 in distance uh which is an increase from 25 percent and distance and in addition to that and i'm going to give this an answer to your question because and i don't even know whether it happens um because we're opening bars in the parishes if if they sell beer at alex box they can sell beer and be it fifty percent no i should say alcohol because it may be more than beer i'm not sure but the patrons are gonna have to be seated in order to consume yes sir uh what about the pmac is that are there any talks about expanding lsu basketball i know there's a cap right now i guess indoors of 250 people are you going to work with them on expanding no i i believe that the cap on sporting events is going to be 50 period without without the the the cap and the maximum number of persons so it's 50 percent massed distanced and again um they they can uh they can consume uh drink and eat food without their mascot but they need to put their mass right right back on is the threshold to get to a percent positivity to get the fifty percent occupancy and and the next uh uh information that we're going to release will be tomorrow it should be on the ldh website and so you'll be able to see which parishes qualify don't i don't have that number today but the next one comes out tomorrow and the proclamation is effective tomorrow uh so we'll see local municipalities have to opt in no no uh it it'll be 50 if they're on the list unless the parish opts to be more restrictive so there will not be an opt-in required any other questions well i want to thank you all for continuing to cover the co-vid situation and everything else that's going on in louisiana and i want to again convey my appreciation to the people of louisiana we are doing better but i also want to strongly caution people not to take this good news as a reason to let your guard down certainly don't take it as a reason to not be vaccinated when the vaccine is available we only put this pandemic behind us and get back to normal when enough people have been vaccinated we are in a race against time and against the virus and so when that vaccine becomes available to you when you're in the the order of priority that that is being vaccinated please make sure that you take advantage of that opportunity just as soon as you can all of these vaccines are safe and effective and and i'm just going to encourage people to mask to distance to wash their hands to stay home when they're sick let's continue to protect the most vulnerable among us by age or comorbid health condition and let's get vaccinated when we can when we do that we're going to get through this at the soonest possible time and in the best possible shape so thank you all and be seeing some of you a little later uh this afternoon when when i received my second dose of uh the pfizer vaccine uh and again i am uh extremely happy about the opportunity to do that it's something i've been looking forward to for a very long time and i encourage everybody to get there just as soon as you can thank you you