good afternoon and thank all of you for being here you know we typically tell you when we think the next press conference is going to be and then we say but if we have reason to call you in early we will well this is this is one of those times as usual i'll be joined today by dr cantor and he'll be speaking to you in just a few moments before we get to kovid which is the reason for the press conference i did want to start off with some good news that we received today from the white house president biden has approved my request for major disaster federal declaration for the winter storms that occurred last month you'll remember that the first system of heavy rains and wintry precipitation freezing temperatures began moving across louisiana on february the 11th and the second similar system followed on the 17th we saw some of the lowest temperatures ever recorded along with major power outages and disruption to water systems across the state today we learned that individual assistance has been provided for the following parishes of oils bienville bossier caddo calcium catahoula claiborne concordia de soto east baton rouge franklin rant lasalle madison nakatish washita repeats red river richland sabine webster west carroll and wynn that's a lot and we still have eight parishes that we requested assistance for those requests are still pending i will tell you that they include caldwell east carroll jackson lincoln morehouse tennsaul union and vernon further category b public assistance uh has been authorized for all 64 parishes along with assistance under the hazard mitigation grant program we're very grateful for the biden administration for granting this request and the additional help will be instrumental as we continue to recover from the winter storm but also the mitigation could be very helpful to us in terms of winterizing some of our water systems for example depending on the level of assistance that we actually get from that but that's something we're going to be looking forward to implementing just as soon as we possibly can so back to covid you all are probably aware that it was exactly one year ago today that louisiana confirmed its first case of covid19 through a positive test result since then there have been more than 430 000 cases in louisiana and more than 6.1 million tests have been administered and you can remember how hard it was to get the testing program up and running we just didn't have the test available to us but a year later we've tested again more than 6.1 million people and and of course we're getting close to 10 000 people in louisiana have died from cobit 19. this has obviously been a year of grave loss and heartbreak but we have come a long way since that first case a year ago most importantly at least for me is that we now have three safe and effective vaccines that are going to help us and the rest of the country indeed the rest of the world put an end to the pandemic and for that we can be very thankful indeed there's light at the end of the tunnel the number of louisianans who've completed their vaccine series now exceeds the number of louisianans who've been diagnosed with covid19 that's another good milestone that we're looking uh forward to to having many more of those types of milestones but but that's something that i wanted to highlight for you all today and today we're announcing an even greater expansion of vaccine eligibility probably the worst kept secret in the history of secrets that actually it it wasn't a secret at all and and when you have as many providers as we have in the program uh who are eligible and approved by the cdc to receive and administer the vaccine anytime you're you're making changes you have to be communicating that up and down the line and so we started communicating yesterday because we want these new priority individuals to be able to get vaccine just as quickly as possible effective immediately all louisianans 16 and older with certain health conditions that make them more likely to suffer a serious complication from covid19 so those who are more vulnerable to the disease will be eligible to receive the vaccine the conditions listed by the cdc that place an individual at a higher risk and there are a number of them and they're more than the parishes that i just listed but i am going to go through them uh one time and of course this is all available online um and i'll give you that link in just a moment as well but these comorbid health conditions that make people more vulnerable to the disease are asthma cancer cerebrovascular disease chronic kidney disease chronic liver disease copd or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease cystic fibrosis down syndrome heart conditions such as heart failure coronary artery disease and cardiomyopathies hypertension immunocompromised state that's a weakened immune system from solid organ transplant immunocompromised state from blood or bone marrow transplant immune deficiencies hiv use of corticosteroids or use of other immune weakening medicines other conditions include obesity severe obesity overweight pregnancy pulmonary fibrosis severe neurologic conditions such as dementia sickle cell disease smoking type one diabetes type two but diabetes and a blood disorder thalassaemia say it again what he said um please note that uh as of right now only the pfizer vaccine is authorized for individuals 16 and 17 years old and so if you're 16 or 17 and you qualify because of one or more of these conditions that's the only vaccine that you're going to be able to take the modern and the johnson johnson are approved at 18 and older for a list of these conditions and a list of locations where you can schedule an appointment to get the vaccine as well as the contact information that you need in order to schedule that appointment please visit covid vaccine.la.gov you will need to complete a form for your vaccine provider that will be available at the location that certifies that you have one or more of these health conditions obviously it is extremely important that people be honest and that only the people who have these conditions are in this age range actually avail themselves of the vaccine otherwise they will be depriving someone who is at greater risk to having a severe complication or severe case of covid19 from having access to the vaccine as soon as it would be available to them otherwise so asking people to to be honest obviously as we have been throughout we came to this decision after hearing from our providers over the weekend that there's a little slack in the appointments and that they were able to accommodate and ready to accommodate more people we also have had a very stable supply especially of the moderna and the pfizer so we feel comfortable about what's coming ahead and then operation warp speed has told us and i'll be speaking with them again in just a short while that that those amounts are going to be steady going forward and then eventually probably towards the very end of the month we will get an additional allocation of johnson and johnson as well that should be steady from that point on out so the availability of the vaccine is such that it's the the right thing to do and the time to do it i do want to remind people that appointments are always required for a covid vaccine in it but it's not just that the supply of vaccine has become stable and and actually increased over time it's also the fact that uh when you look at our gating criteria baseline numbers whether it's percent positivity cases hospitalizations and unfortunately deaths they've all become stable so so we're no longer getting better not getting worse with the possible exception of region five and we announced that to you all uh when we uh made the change to the current restrictions and and mitigation measures in the proclamation so so we we've stopped improving um and and then every previous instance when that has happened there was another surge we don't want there to be another surge and we certainly don't want any increased cases uh to be among those people who are more vulnerable uh so that's one of the reasons that that we're doing this right now as well and then the last part of this is we know that here in louisiana and across the country a larger percentage of cases are being driven by the variant strains of the coronavirus particularly the one from uk the b117 and we know that it is more easily transmitted and that by itself means it's more deadly because uh there's a certain percentage of people who get co-bid that are going to die and the more people get it the more going to die but it's in addition to being more transmissible it is also more virulent and and so we are literally in a race against uh transmission of the virus especially the new variants and so that's one of the reasons that we wanted to to expand these eligibility uh for the vaccine at this time so it is good news that we're able to do it um and we didn't want to wait we would normally wait and and do this after the weekly press conference as it is regularly scheduled but our goal is to not have any vaccine sitting on a shelf any longer than is absolutely necessary uh and so these this new priority that i'm talking about is effective immediately it's another reason we had to communicate with all these providers yesterday with the increasing presence of of the more contagious more virulent strains of of the virus it also underscores what we told you all from the very beginning our primary goal in establishing priorities for vaccination would be to preserve hospital capacity and to save lives and that is why we are working with individuals with the comorbid health conditions that predispose them to a poor outcome should they contract the virus this is fully consistent with what we've been telling you all along and there are certain groups that are listed in in the approach that we're going to be taking eventually that really go by industry group or occupation and so forth and and i do expect that we will get to those at some point in the meantime there will be people all across louisiana in every industry grouping every type of occupation who are going to be eligible for the vaccine and so it'll be eligible for those who most need it regardless of where they work or whether they work so if you have one of these underlying conditions and you are 16 and older you are eligible period that's where we are today um and everyone who is in the prior eligibility groups remain eligible so teachers health care folks and all of that usually remember tell you it's not like a light switch where we're going to flip certain people on and then off once you're on you continue to be on for the duration of the program we're also expanding eligibility for any staff working in congregate facilities such as prisons or jail staff shelter staff group home staff because of the especially high level of exposure they have and and you don't want individuals bringing the virus into a congregant setting if if you can do anything to prevent that from happening today with respect to our co-vid numbers we are reporting 631 cases on 18 0017 tests that brings us to a total of 434 926 cases to date we're also very sadly reporting 11 new deaths so the total deaths now i told you earlier it's approaching ten thousand is nine thousand seven hundred and sixty nine currently there are 543 individuals hospitalized across the state with cobia 19 that is plus nine and while it's only one day and it's a smaller number than we've seen before that's the largest daily increase in quite some time we hope that does not begin a trend ventilated patients are flat at 75. as you know yesterday's the cdc put out new guidance on activities that fully vaccinated people can safely resume i know that's going to be welcome news for a lot of people it also can be confusing and and i think it's a function of human nature that sometimes people hear what they want to hear in the this guidance and so we're going to ask dr kenner in just a minute to come up and kind of walk through that and what it means in layman's terms but what we know is the more people who get vaccinated and the faster this happens the more life will return to normal and we're certainly not back at normal yet but this is some really good news as we start moving in that direction and in fact i think i'm going to ask dr cantor to come up now and go through that and some other information with you and if you don't mind while he's at the podium if you've got questions from him go ahead and ask him and then i'll be back on the other side of his presentation good afternoon thank you governor thank you for your leadership throughout these past 12 months it is it is remarkable to think um what we've been through in the past 12 months and what we've endured and to look forward of what's what's coming ahead i want to take a moment and um yeah as the governor did acknowledge the 9769 louisianans who lost their lives from coven uh their family members who who suffered incredible loss everyone who has sacrificed tremendously during the past 12 months and you know particularly the healthcare workers who have uh really been there the whole time um trying trying to care for other people so um if folks have had a chance to um take a look at the the the flag memorial on the front lawn of the capitol building it is quite striking when you see you know almost ten thousand flags out there and think about what each of those families had to go through so it's important you know 12 months into the day i think to um to recognize that i also think it's important to recognize that we have better days ahead there's no question about that with the vaccine rollout going well with three very efficacious very safe vaccines and now with new guidance giving us some some more latitude of what we can do with our families and friends once we do get vaccinated all of that is is really encouraging and i anticipate these type of welcomed advances to continue in the weeks and a couple months ahead so uh with that let me talk a little bit about what the cdc announced yesterday this is very welcome news to all of us we had been um hearing from from dr fauci for a couple weeks now that he felt it was about time that that that he kept referring to to grandparents being able to hug their grandkids and and i know he's very happy about this news he shared that with us the other day um on a phone call so the cdc announced three um three things that people who are vaccinated fully vaccinated can now do so i'll walk through those things it's important to say what fully vaccinated means fully vaccinated means you are 14 or more days out from completing your vaccine series so if that's pfizer or moderna it's 14 days out from that second dose if it's johnson and johnson it's 14 days out from your one and done dose you're not fully vaccinated uh until you've completed those 14 days after getting that last or that single dose once you are fully vaccinated number one if you are gathering in a small group with other people who are fully vaccinated you do not need to mask do you don't need to distance so uh an example of if a grandparent comes over and grandparent's vac's fully vaccinated and the family they're visiting are fully vaccinated then they don't need to mask and distance as long as no one in that group is showing any symptoms the second thing is if someone who is fully vaccinated visiting with one family unit who is not fully vaccinated and no one in that unit is showing any symptoms and no one in that unit is high risk for complications of cobit meaning no one in that unit has one of the 23 conditions that the governor just enumerated then they do not need to mask and distance that's that's that's really important that that gives a lot of latitude to people who want to get together with family um and the grandparents might or their parents might be vaccinated and they haven't seen a family in a long time if it's one family unit that's allowed if it's multiple family units that have not been vaccinated then everyone needs to mask and distance if it's multiple family units that haven't been vaccinated everyone continues to mask and distance but if it's one family unit that hasn't been vaccinated and no one is showing any symptoms and no one is high risk then then folks do not need to mask and distance in those circumstances and then the third thing result relates to quarantine previously up until yesterday the cdc advised that people who are fully vaccinated should they come in close contact after becoming fully vaccinated with someone who's positive for covid have 90 days at which point they don't need to quarantine and after 90 days i would have to go quarantine again they've lifted that 90-day recommendation so now once you're fully vaccinated 14 days out from that last or single dose if you come in if you're close contact with a known case you do not need to quarantine this is the result of really two things number one there is now a growing body of evidence not conclusive but a growing body of evidence a lot of data from the uk a lot of data from israel showing that vaccine not only prevents that individual from getting sick or dying but it prevents also or reduces the chance of asymptomatic infection and the chance for transmission to others a growing body of evidence showing that something that we we presumed and certainly hoped but we're waiting for the data to come in and secondly just looking across the country cases in general have gone down substantially from where they were over new year's which means the risk out in the community while still not low i think is much lower than it was a couple months ago the cdc also is cognizant that you know it's important for people to get some semblance of normalcy back and it's important at this point in time to be very clear about what the gift of vaccine affords us and that all of those factors inform these recommendations so let me just review quickly um what you can do now if you're fully vaccinated 14 days out and what we would still ask you to continue to do you can visit indoors with other fully vaccinated people without masking and distancing you can visit indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household who are all low risk for severe covert disease by the virtue of any underlying conditions they might have without masking existing distancing assuming no one has any symptoms at that point in time and you can refrain from quarantining following known exposure to a case of covet we would still ask you after being fully vaccinated to continue to do the following continue to take precautions when you're out in public like wearing a mask and distancing and washing your hands continue to wear mask distance and adhere to other preventative medicine measures when you're visiting other unvaccinated people who are at increased risk of complications continue to wear masks and distance when you visit with unvaccinated members from multiple households continue to avoid medium and large size gatherings if distancing will not be allowed or alum able to be accomplished in that setting continue to get tested for covet if you do show covet-like symptoms continue to follow whatever guidance your your employer issues for that workplace setting and continue to pay attention to any travel recommendations put out by the cdc i will say these guidelines are general guidelines that the guidelines of this nature are never going to be absolute so if a particular family has particular concerns about an individual or specific health concerns for anyone involved or just concerned in general it's never never wrong to be more conservative never wrong to be more safe never wrong to mask and distance if you want to be extra careful but again i think this will allow families who are vaccinated to get a little sense of of normalcy back and it's it is it is nice to have these announced you know um so close you know one day shy of our 12-month anniversary which is what the cdc did i wanted to also give an update we've added some new visibility to the corporate vaccine dashboard that will now allow people to get more granular information not just on a state level but by region and by parish as well so by region and parish now you can go on to the kova dashboard on ldh's site and see a total number of people vaccinated both initial initiated the series and completed the series and you'll be able to see racial demographics for both of those two measures you know what we're going to be looking at with increasing frequency going forward is honing in on particular areas in louisiana and trying to see where we need to do more work to get the vaccine out are we going to be able to see which parishes or which localities are have a larger coverage of people vaccinated which have a smaller coverage and that's going to inform where we put resources because at the end of the day we want to bring all of louisiana up to vaccination and we're going to be looking at data to help guide where we put our resources as a state level of 17.3 percent of the state's population has now initiated the vaccine series and 9.9 percent have completed that series and every day that number grows and that is truly truly exciting i'll give you a little bit of um an update of what we anticipate with vaccine deliveries in the coming week with the caveat that as the governor mentioned our our call with the white house typically is um tuesday morning get pushed back the tuesday afternoon today so it hasn't happened yet and typically we'll get notified later in the afternoon on tuesdays what amount of vaccine to to expect the following week and that number gets confirmed on thursdays as it stands now we are expecting um flat shipments from this current week so that would be 57 330 doses of pfizer 45 000 doses of madarina and unfortunately no additional doses of j and j that is what we received this this prior week it's certainly possible and i think we're hopeful that those two numbers will go up a little bit after we have our checking with the white house later today but that's that's what we can um that's a conservative estimate of what we can expect next week which is totals to 102 330 doses um i want to thank everyone that helped put on the large scale and smaller scale events for vaccine particularly johnson johnson events that happened over the past week and a half for what i saw personally and from what i heard from colleagues and other individuals that availed themselves of those events they went very very well a lot of work goes into these and it's a good partnership between the state the department of health local governments community-based organizations vaccine providers like clinics pharmacies and hospitals and i think the experience was was really really good it is very clear as it has been for quite some time now that the capacity of louisiana to administer vaccine far exceeds the supply far exceeds the supply and we are in very good position for when supply does pick up to be able to move that vaccine connected to individuals quickly and equitably which is and remains to be a goal i do want to mention what um some updated numbers on the variants which um continue to give me great concern for the b117 variant which is the variant identified in the uk we're now up to 20 confirmed cases in louisiana and an additional 74 suspect cases that are pending confirmation at the cdc most if not all of those are going to end up being positive what's happening now is there so many more variants particularly the b117 in the us that the cdc is just having a tough time doing all that sequencing quickly so there's a little bit of a backlog by then there's been some data out nationally to suggest that about 20 to 25 percent now of cases sampled in in the u.s are positive for the b-117 variant that's not a definitive number because we don't do a lot of genomic sequencing it's an estimate based on a couple labs sampling but it's a marker of how much this variant has spread i can tell you it's in 49 states right now probably in 50 but at least definitively identified in 49 states and a total of 3037 cases across the country surely many many more just that's what's been identified and again our strategy here is to do two things to bias time to continue to reduce transmission as much as we can and to work as hard as we can to get vaccine out as quickly and equitably as we can so that when these variants increase even more we have we're starting from a lower place and we have more vaccine coverage out there for the b1351 variant that's the variant identified in south africa we have not yet identified a case in louisiana it has been identified so far in 20 states the closest to us being texas florida georgia tennessee north and south carolina for the p1 variant or the brazilian variant we also have not identified yet in louisiana it has been identified in nine states the closest of to us being oklahoma and florida we will certainly let you know if and when that all that changes some encouraging news with the variant is additional data has come out this time from a report in the new england journal of medicine showing confidence that the vaccines are efficacious against the variance against all three variants really particularly efficacious against the the b117 or the uk variant this was an in vitro study so it's not as good as a real-life world study which are tough to do in real time but it adds to the body of evidence now that these vaccines are going to provide good protection against ovarian that's all the more reason that we have to work as hard as we can to get vaccine out as quickly and equitably as possible that's why i'm excited that we're expanding eligibility and i would really encourage people if you have just become eligible don't pass up that opportunity don't pass up the opportunity to get vaccinated this is this is a life-saving intervention nothing short of that these these vaccines are are life-saving interventions if you have just become eligible do not pass up the opportunity go and get vaccinated i'd be happy to answer any questions if there are any yes sir that the doses would have gone unused had the state not expanded eligibility today do we have any idea how many might have gone unused and does that imply also an unwillingness to get the vaccine or give you any cause for concern uh that people are not taking the vaccine as as much as we hoped they would i think they all would have been used i think um you know what we've what we've tried to do every time that we have expanded eligibility is you know we maintain conversations with our vaccine providers like the governor said and we try and find that sweet spot of when there's a little bit of daylight in the scheduling and that's a message to us you know to expand we never want to wait too much we never want to make supply and demand be exactly even because you want to have a little bit of drive the cdc had recommended initially they threw the number 80 percent out as a ballpark of daylight we actually haven't waited that much at all because we want vaccine to be out there quickly so i don't think the doses would have been wasted i do think they'll be used quicker now um you know i think this was this was the right time to expand yeah yeah melinda the vaccine process has started for about half the people who were previously eligible so um i could infer that that means that half the people who were already eligible before this announcement had shown no interest so far in in getting vaccinated so so does that concern you about reaching the number needed for herd immunity if you didn't see enough uptick in the last set of people who were eligible i don't think so i was i was impressed with the uptick that we saw and it's it's really challenging to take a number and and decide what percentage of people got vaccinated because the numbers that we've projected as as the you know the totals for these eligibility tiers they're really gross estimates and you know for example i really don't know how many teachers were also eligible through a health condition for example or pregnant or anything else that would make them eligible so it becomes very challenging to say x number of people were eligible a next number of people got it because we really don't have a precise number for the eligibility we try and try and project you know i think vaccine confidence only grows day by day that's what the national data has shown and anecdotally talking to individuals talking to health care providers who maybe waited a week or two early on are now getting vaccinated i think the more people see their friends and family get vaccinated the more that they hear about it the more that they have time to do their own research you know these are three incredibly safe incredible efficacious vaccines i think confidence only grows i am not concerned that we are going to be hindered in our ability to get to where we need to go i do think we have to work hard and part of that is getting the message out there'll be more on that coming part of that is working closely with our community-based groups and really creating opportunities for people to have conversations to get questions answered i think we have to work hard but i'm 100 confident that we will get there yep yes sir taking that caveat that you said about predicting how many people fall into these categories do you have any idea how you know what this expansion means for how many people are now eligible you know i really don't because we don't have great data of how many people have two or more of those conditions so i i wouldn't even venture to put a number to it yes ma'am but are we months out from say creating a drive-through vaccine with national guard a bit like that oh no no no that happened this past weekend there were drive-through vaccine events with the national guard this weekend absolutely no question um i think what the what what operation warp speed and the white house have projected is sometime in the middle of may they think um supply and demand will will meet head-to-head meaning that they phrase that there'll be enough vaccine for everyone but make no mistake with the vaccine that we get we've held a number of different types of events from very small community events at a church or community center to a senior living facility to even very very large drive-through events like the one at the shrine on airline formerly zephyr field which is a high high efficiency high throughput drive-through and we know down the road we're going to need all of those you know we'll need the big events we'll need the small events and we'll continue to need our vaccine providers like clinics and pharmacies hospitals yes sir words as well feel free to both answer um i mean clearly this is news in itself in its own right by far but what it what do you say to the level of symbolism if there is one that one year to the day here we are yeah that's that's not lost at all and i think um these have been 12 really challenging months you know and and and we've lost a lot we've suffered and sacrificed a lot um but you know i think we will come out of this stronger as i said in the beginning i truly believe there are better days ahead and to have these three vaccines available right now is an absolute gift and we're going to use that to the maximum potential last question um i don't have an estimate for the for the prisoner question yet total uh wasted today out of roughly 1.2 million doses that have been administered is 1483. we did have a couple um a couple instances of waste that were tied to the storm a few weeks ago and people couldn't get on the roads there was some power outages those sorts of things so yeah 1483 is the number we're at right now and i do want to let people know this i think there might be some misconfusion out there the vaccine providers have gotten very good at not wasting doses at the end of the day for example so you know if certain number of doses are taken out to prepare for an event they're pretty good at taking out only the number that they can get through if there's a few numbers left over that's when it's completely acceptable to go outside of the eligibility range to make sure that the dose don't get wasted and from that regards it's been it's been really effective thank you um in closing uh just wanted to talk a little bit about that anniversary that you just asked about so yesterday and i like dr cantor encourage you to go out and just take a look at those flags and remember that each flag represents one person from the state of louisiana who died since march the 14th of last year and we planted 9758 of them yesterday in the front lawn of the capitol each of those is one of our brothers and sisters from here in our state it includes one for april dunn who was the first employee of the governor's office who died and she died on march 28th of last year and i was able to go out with her mother yesterday miss jeanette dunn and her grandmother as well and we were able to have a moment of reflection and prayer as we planted the first flag to represent april and we were joined by all the cabinet secretaries many of whom also have lost staff members employees to the virus and so every one of those flags represents an empty seat in somebody's home somewhere and also an empty place in many people's hearts today we will plant 11 more this sunday will mark the one-year anniversary since the first confirmed covid19 death and as a result of that i have issued a proclamation declaring sunday to be a day of prayer and remembrance in louisiana for those that we've lost and i do encourage everyone to join me in praying for the family and friends of those that we mourn and who need our support now more than ever and i want to make sure that we work together to prevent more deaths by continuing to do everything that is necessary to slow the transmission while we speed the vaccination that's how we get out of this and that's how we get out of it with the least amount amount of people having to go to the hospital and the least amount of people who will die so it's important that we wear our masks that we social distance that we wash our hands stay home when we're sick and get the vaccine when it is your turn i'm going to take some questions but i did want to address a couple of things that you all raised because i want to make sure there's no confusion when you ask whether a vaccine doesn't get used if an appointment isn't made or kept that vaccine will be used it's not going to be wasted we don't waste vaccine because someone doesn't make an appointment or because an appointment doesn't get made the challenge for us is we want to use that that dose as soon as we possibly can and so if an appointment isn't kept then perhaps there's a delay in putting that dose into somebody else's arm um and and so that's really important uh to us but it is not wasted i don't want anybody to to and that's not what you said but i don't want to make i want to make absolutely sure people understand that we are not wasting doses out there when people don't show up or people don't make an appointment we have wait lists at our providers for that reason to make sure that if they do have a dose that they need to inject into an arm that day they have the opportunity to do that and then i want to reinforce the answer that dr cantor gave to melinda it is absolutely impossible with any precision to estimate the number of people who've been made eligible for that vaccine at this point because you don't know how many of those people are in multiple groups and may have already availed themselves they could be in this group that we announced today let's say they're 40 years old and they've got hypertension but if they're a schoolteacher they already got vaccinated um you know and and so it's just it's just impossible to know with any precision and that's why there's always some guesswork as to how many people are in a group when you make them eligible for the vaccine and then you're also guessing at how long this the uh it will be before you're going to expand again because because you don't know how many people it is and you also don't know the uptake although we're encouraged that here and around the country it appears that hesitancy is diminishing and it should these vaccines all three of them are safe and effective he gave you the numbers a while ago of the people that have at least started and those who've who finished almost 10 percent of of the people of our state have finished uh with their vaccination at this point and you aren't reporting on any really serious side effects because to speak of there haven't been any less than a handful of individuals have had to spend one night in the hospital because of a reaction and so these are safe they are effective this is how we're going to get through this pandemic and and so really asking people to focus on that make sure they're getting their information from reliable sources as well i'll take a few questions i think my white house call starts at one and and so i will be leaving this room in just a few minutes yes ma'am among sort of the lower ranks of state at this point and we're now more than two weeks removed from the winter weather which i know disrupted some supply shipments but can you talk about what seems to be taking so long in terms of getting vaccines and arms and why we've dropped this yeah well i will tell you that that based on our experience we know where we were when the winter weather happened and that we weren't able to get doses here and then and then or to schedule events people weren't able to keep their appointments and so that's when it fell off um and it it's in all these counts are cumulative and so it's going to take us some time to get back i will tell you that our team is working extremely hard with all of our partners including all of the enrolled providers to really expand the hours that we're administering uh vaccine and and the number of events and so forth in order to get caught up i expect that what you're gonna see over the next week or ten days is is a huge step forward in in getting uh caught up again and i think if you look at those cdc rankings and and and and i may be wrong in what i'm about to say because i haven't done it in the last couple days you will see that the states most severely impacted by the winter weather are those who slipped the most in the rankings and have yet to to make that up um and we we certainly don't use that as an excuse it is a fact but we are working really really hard to get back uh and and make sure that these vaccine doses are getting put into people's arms just as quickly as possible um and so i expect that what you're going to see over the next week 10 days something like that is is tremendous improvement in in the efficiency of the utilization of the vaccine doses yes ma'am i know on friday well aware of the title 9 investigation and there were some students that were protesting yesterday saying that the disciplinary reactions that were taken weren't enough and i know you talked to lsu heads often so in your perspective was the two employees that were suspended was that enough of a discipline yeah you look i'm not going to second guess i believe that the individuals who actually completed the study were able to make some recommendations to the lsu board and president as to what discipline they thought might be appropriate under the circumstances it's my understanding the president adopted that and and i'm not going to to second guess it i will tell you that i was obviously very very troubled by that report i did have an opportunity over the weekend to read it in its entirety and and what i'm about to say is true not just for lsu but it's true for any institution of higher education in louisiana it is imperative that young people know and that their parents know that when they attend a university or college here in louisiana they're going to be safe and we're going to do everything we can humanly possible to make sure that that happens and we're going to have all of the systems in place all the right policies we're going to have the right people we're going to have enough people we're going to devote enough resources to this that we're not going to have the confusion and the ineffective um organizational uh leadership that we've had in the past that were highlighted in that report and and so very troubled by i'm very however gratified by the fact that lsu made the report fully available to the public within a few days of getting it they've already committed to adopting all 18 recommendations and taking action on those um so so look it's a challenging situation but i will tell you that that i was mortified when i read the report and it really made me sick at the stomach to be honest with you and and and i am determined that that we're going to improve not only at lsu but make sure that that isn't happening anywhere else yes sir for the newly eligible people why not require some form of proof that you have high blood pressure or one of these conditions well first of all this isn't the first time we've done this so right now if you're age 55 to 64 you've been eligible uh for a while for the vaccine if you have one or more of these health conditions and that process has worked well um and and so we're going to continue it if you don't go with self-attestation then you're going to require all of these individuals to go to a primary care physician or some to some other medical provider and get a report and then come back and get in line and and that would be terribly inefficient you're putting another barrier between individuals and the vaccine and we're trying to do this in a way that eliminates as many barriers as possible and and i certainly haven't inventoried the approach being taken by all 50 states it is my understanding that all or practically all when they go to health conditions they're doing it on this basis because anything else would just create tremendous inefficiency it would slow the process down and it would put another barrier especially between the underserved population and the vaccine and we're not going to do that in louisiana but but we want louisianans to be good neighbors and that means you don't get the vaccine before you're eligible for it and and certainly that's that's something that that we're going to continue to stress yes sir yeah well look we we didn't reinvent the wheel these comorbid health conditions um have been uh listed by the cdc and emphasized for a long time and virtually since the start of the pandemic it became immediately clear there was a segment of the population that was much more predisposed to a poor outcome should they contract the virus than others and that's because they had these comorbid health conditions that made them more vulnerable and and that list has expanded over time as as the doctors and scientists and so forth have learned more about the virus and the disease and its impacts on people and and so forth but we just took those those conditions directly from the cdc we didn't substitute our own opinion for for any of them um and and i think that being faithful uh to the guidance that's coming out of the cdc is very important if you're going to have credibility with the people that you're serving when you make decisions and so to the maximum extent possible we've tried to do that and and this is no exception so our next press conference will be a week from thursday again unless we have reason to call you back earlier i do thank you again for continuing to cover this uh situation and as we approach the anniversary mark and i want to close out by again uh asking people this sunday um to on march the 14th to observe a day of prayer and remembrance for all of those whose lives have been lost to coven 19 and we have a lot of individuals out there who who live life may not have been taken by this disease but their health remains severely compromised and they are not back uh to normal and so we need to to remember them as well and then let's make sure that we're being thankful at the same time you know we're told to make sure that we rejoice always pray unceasingly and give thanks in all things and we can be thankful for the vaccines we can be thankful for our health care workers we can be thankful for a lot of things that are coming to bear right now on the anniversary of the start of this pandemic so let's let's do that together let's get through this as best we can as soon as we can that happens by people wearing their masks distancing washing their hands staying home they're sick and getting vaccinated when they're able so thank all of you you