afternoon everybody and thank you once again for being here with us today and as usual i have dr joe canner from ldh with me and he'll be speaking to you in a few moments and take your questions today is a relatively good day on the news that we have with respect to cobia but particularly with respect to the increasing allocations of vaccine doses going forward starting next week and uh you know i think uh we're gonna get to a place starting monday that we thought we would be a few weeks from now uh moving to it uh and that's an indication of these increased doses and we know this because yesterday we were on a call with the white house and received positive news about vaccine shipments vaccine shipments and next week louisiana is slated to get more than 148 000 first doses in a dose in addition to all the doses that would come as second doses but also in addition to that there are doses that are going to go directly to the retail pharmacy program which is the federal program and to federally qualified health centers so the vaccination effort really is expanding in a robust fashion you know for example next week i think the total increase in johnson and johnson is 26 600 it's about 14 000 or so more pfizer so in light of this news i'm announcing today that beginning on monday march the 29th covet covid19 vaccine eligibility will be open to everyone 16 and older it doesn't matter about health condition doesn't matter about occupation 16 years and older will be the determining factor for eligibility this is welcome news it's a little bit of a surprise to get here as soon as we did we knew that we were getting close and we had signaled that but we didn't know we would be here when we uh actually monday when we started the week as you know our goal has always been uh to get as many shots and arms as possible and to use every dose at as it arrives or at least within that week a shot sitting on a shelf or in a freezer is not doing anything to help us end the pandemic since the beginning of the vaccine process our weekly allocations from the federal government have more than doubled and that is why we feel confident that we're ready for this next step you may remember that a couple of weeks ago the president announced that he wanted us to take this step by may the first i told you that i thought we would beat that i didn't realize that we would be doing it quite this soon however as we get closer to monday when all this will go into effect i'm asking people to be patient with the enrolled providers as they make their appointments available they have been just tremendous partners with us and their efforts have been herculean to make sure that people are able to schedule appointments and actually receive their vaccine doses and they are working as fast as they can every week to change uh to adapt to changes on the ground and so forth um just as a reminder while we have opened eligibility starting money to everyone 16 and above only the pfizer vaccine is currently approved for ages 16 and 17. uh 18 and above is approved for pfizer for moderna and for johnson and johnson also you must make an appointment and at the time you make the appointment you will know which vaccine is being administered and so i you need to pay attention to that especially if you are 16 or 17 years old uh we're asking you to go to uh covidvacine.la.gov and that's where you will get the the list of all of the enrolled providers the vaccine locations in your parish or in any parish that you might want to go to you'll have access to phone numbers you're going to have access to email and so forth uh i want to make sure that everybody uh understands that all three vaccines are safe all three vaccines are effective and that in the very well in the not too distant future i should say we're going to have enough doses for everybody who wants one what what we need to do is make sure that everybody wants one because doses in and of themselves do nothing to end the pandemic but vaccinations will and so that turns on having the doses making them available in the right locations making them accessible and then making sure that we're doing the outreach necessary so that people feel confident about being vaccinated we do remain in a race obviously against time and against the variance but principally the uk variant the b117 that is present in louisiana and elsewhere around the country and one that is growing in its prevalence and is still expected to become the predominant strain of the virus in circulation soon and as we as we have been telling you is more transmissible but it also is more violent and so we're in a race against that we need people to continue to do what they can to slow transmission by wearing masks and by distancing but also by getting that vaccine as soon as they are eligible with whichever vaccine is available to them first so come monday nobody needs to ask the question as to whether they are eligible they just need to know their age if they are 16 and older they are eligible so please work with one of our providers get an appointment help end this pandemic protect yourself protect your loved ones and be part of the effort to bring back louisiana last week i announced our statewide grassroots effort to meet people where they are to break down barriers to engage in this outreach on a comprehensive level and to ensure that people have meaningful opportunities to get the vaccine since then more than 300 people have volunteered to help us and i'm looking forward to their efforts if you would still like to join us in this effort and we certainly hope that you will if you have something to offer please visit lava.dhh.louisiana.gov that is lava.dhh dot louisiana dr kander is going to have some more information in a moment about the pilot programs that we announced that that are upcoming on today's report with respect to covid we were reporting 524 new cases on 17 423 new tests sadly we were reporting 19 deaths i got excited i mean this will kind of tell you where we are yesterday i think we reported seven and just to be in the single digits i i felt good about that today we're reporting 19 new deaths um and of course one is too many but we're now at 10 056 deaths since the start of the pandemic here in louisiana it is a hard number to swallow and as we've mentioned before you know those aren't just numbers those are people those are louisianans those are brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and grandparents and grandchildren and aunts and uncles they're our co-workers our friends the church members all of those sorts of things so let's certainly remember that and let's dedicate ourselves again to making sure that going forward as few people die from cobit as possible there are currently 413 people hospitalized across the state of louisiana that's up by nine um you know we we uh since january the eighth we're on a very steady decline downward uh we have certainly plateaued recently over the last seven to ten days in our hospitalizations again up today by 9. it would be really great to get backwards on a downward trajectory again 75 of those 413 patients are on mechanical ventilators that is up one since yesterday statewide positivity is hanging steady at right at 2.8 percent that number is certainly better than it was in early january when it was close to 15 percent for the past few weeks we've been praising our low case numbers and hospitalizations and certainly i would much rather rather report the numbers we're reporting now than we were reporting several weeks ago we have had positive trends but the entire picture unfortunately isn't so rosy we've been telling you for the last couple of weeks about some alarming indicators coming out of the southwest region of louisiana region five and i can tell you that it has the highest positivity in the state right now positivity meaning the percentage of tests yielding a positive result has increased over the week from six point six percent to eleven point nine percent so almost doubling secondly uh over the last month uh they are up in hospitalizations there are 25 more people hospitalized over the last month in region five and and that is contrary to what's happening elsewhere in the state where every other region is either declining or flat and if you will remember we told you that the number of cases confirmed and suspected of the uk variant were were uh disproportionately uh in region five and certainly we believe all of this is linked and i don't want people who are not in region five to breathe a sigh of relief and say oh well that's that's down in the lake charles area uh that's not the way pandemics work uh and so we know that this variant is is everywhere and we know that it's going to be growing in prevalence everywhere and we need people to be vigilant for more on this as well as bring back louisiana the campaign that we talked about last week and to address whatever questions you have i'm going to turn it over to dr cantor and then i'll be back up with you in just a minute thank you governor thank you for your leadership good afternoon everyone it's nice to be with you i'll pick up right where the governor left off overall the state's progress has has stalled in terms of reducing transmission we've made some really good progress over the past month and a half um and over the past week or two it seems to have uh have leveled off which you know in listening to dr fauci and other experts oftentimes can be a warning sign that people need to be you know increasing their their vigilance and being very careful um i have particular concern in region five which is the lake charles area and the governor mentioned percent positivity has increased almost doubled from 6.6 to 11.9 percent they've been increasing in case incidents that's the number of new covered cases diagnosed day by day that's been increasing for the past five weeks fairly steadily um and it's tough because region 5 the lake charles area has had a really hard go of it this year um and the folks have who live there have have been through an awful lot um and and covert probably isn't top of mind for a lot of people that are trying to repatriate there and rebuild their homes and lives and i think we all understand that but with the numbers we're seeing now with the transmission that's occurring in that area i'm going to make a specific ass to to folks who live in the region 5 area to focus the next few weeks on remaining as vigilant as possible masking distancing and now get vaccinated i'm very very thankful that as of this coming monday every adult every 16 year old and above in louisiana will be eligible to get vaccinated this is a great milestone that we are approaching really tremendous milestone and that we can do it this early really um is is very fortuitous to it to us that we have enough doses coming our way to be able to enable that we just got to make sure that we capitalize on that so people need to get vaccinated the um variants continue to grow um in louisiana as they do across the country so to date on the b117 variant that's the one that was first identified in the uk we have 165 confirmed and presumed cases in the state 96 of those 164 are in the region 5 area in the lake charles area we know and we've talked about this many times because the u.s just doesn't do a whole lot of genomic sequencing we know that when you have 164 cases that's that's truly tip of the iceberg and there's many many more there that you just haven't formally identified yet the cdc estimates that of every coveted virus circulating in louisiana right now 3.5 are the b117 or uk variant that's up a little bit from the week prior this data what the cdc puts out is on a couple week lag so it's as of a couple weeks ago without question that number that 3.5 is higher right now i have absolutely no doubt in that to compare with our neighbors texas is at 7.1 percent and florida's at 13.2 percent um we're at risk of getting there if we don't continue to mask and distance also if we don't get the vaccine out as quick as we have the opportunity to do so in some of the other variants of concern we we still have no identified cases in louisiana so of the b1351 variant that's the south african variant it has been identified in 27 states comprising 219 cases none of which are in louisiana the closest to us are texas florida georgia north and south carolina tennessee and now mississippi has a case as well that's new this week for the p1 variant that's the brazilian variant we also have no identified cases in louisiana it has been identified in 18 states the closest to us being texas oklahoma florida and georgia particularly with this b117 that the uk variant we know it is more transmissible perhaps 50 percent more transmissible we know it's more virulent meaning it's more likely to make somebody sick enough to be hospitalized and we know it's going to continue to spread so lake charles area is clearly on the leading edge of this for the state but as the governor said it's not isolated to lake charles and if we're not careful over these next few weeks and if we're not as aggressive as possible with vaccinations the increases in lake charles are at risk of spreading throughout the state so this is a warning sign to us right now that we got to double down our efforts both in mitigating measures masking and distancing and in getting the vaccine out as quickly and equitably as possible i am very encouraged that supply is increasing substantially next week and we have reason to believe that it will continue to do so going forward so for next week's allocations from the federal government and this will be week 16 of the vaccine rollout series so it is pretty remarkable by week 16 we're able to expand eligibility to every adult in louisiana we will be getting 77 and two hundred and twenty doses of pfizer that's an increase of fifteen thousand two hundred and ten from this current week we'll be getting forty five thousand doses of moderna that's a flat number from this current week we'll be getting twenty six thousand and 600 doses of johnson and johnson that's a substantial increase from the um 5 000 or so doses we got this current week giving a total um state allocation proper of 148 820 first doses additionally to that this week we are completing a claw back of 32 010 doses that we initially diverted to the long-term care program that they're not going to end up using so those will be added to our our in-state allocation as well these doses put us in a really good position and certainly enable us to expand eligibility as of monday with full eligibility on monday um folks need to know that this is this is our time no one needs to ask themselves if they're eligible no one needs to parse the list of essential workers and see if they qualify or not no one has to talk to their doctor and see if they have one of the eligible conditions anyone 16 years of age in louisiana and older as of monday is going to be eligible to go get vaccinated get in line get an appointment we have sufficient supply and now it's on all of us to make sure that that happens to make sure that we capitalize on that opportunity uh looking ahead um there's going to be more work to do on on outreach and i'll talk about that in a second um one thing i'm i'm happy to announce is that we'll be putting out some more granular information on the dashboard the ldh cove and the covert vaccine dashboard tomorrow you'll be able to go on a dashboard and see demographic and vaccine administration data by census tract which is a very granular marking it's it's a smaller it's a more granular entity than zip codes are so for each census track in the state you'll be able to look at how many doses have been administered how many uh series have been completed and you'll be able to see that based on key demographic items like race we are going to be using this data to guide where outreach effort has to happen where we put our resources and that brings me to the bring back louisiana campaign which i'm so very excited about because this is how we're going to connect vaccine to every corner of the state particularly corners that need it most by virtue of social vulnerability or by virtue of not having enough people vaccinated already we'll be looking at this data very closely i'm very excited to announce right now the first nine uh pilot sites of the bring back louisiana campaign they will be in the following zip codes in region 1 they'll be in the 70127 zip code in new orleans east in region 2 in the 708 07 zip code in east baton rouge in region 3 in the 70353 zip code in terrebonne in region 4 in the 70582 zip code of st martin in region 5 and the 70668 zip code of calcu in region 6 in the 71302 zip code and repeats in region 7 and the 71107 zip code of cato in region 8 and the 71241 zip code of union parish and in region 9 in the 703 excuse me 704 31 zip code in st tammany these zip codes were selected by virtue of social vulnerability and particular need and progress in vaccinations they cover both urban areas and rural and farm communities and this is just the beginning of the bring back louisiana campaign outreaching these zip codes will start next week and then the campaign launches fully thereafter again just the beginning but very very excited this is a novel campaign it's something that louisiana is leading on and it's marrying direct outreach both canvassing and phone calls with local community based organizations with targeted vaccine events and again we're going to look into this campaign to really connect people with vaccine in the areas of the state that need it most looking ahead i want to say a couple comments about the easter holidays and um springtime and and you know what we can and probably shouldn't do in the weeks and month or two ahead i think slowly slowly we're going to see life get back to normal but there are some things that we have to do we have to be very very cautious in that let me start with what you can do when you get vaccinated and um it's more than just getting a free donut so when you can get vaccinated you can visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors in a private setting without masking and distancing that means with your family with close friends if everyone if every person in that small private group is fully vaccinated we mean 14 days out from their serious completion then that gathering can happen without masking and distancing can safely happen without masking and distancing you can visit with unvaccinated individuals from one additional household if everyone else in that gathering that private gathering is fully vaccinated safely without masking and distancing and you can refrain from quarantining following an exposure to someone else who has coveted if you're fully vaccinated and you have no symptoms so if families are asking themselves how they can celebrate the easter holiday safely how can they have a dinner with families safely how can they boil crawfish safely the answer right now is go get vaccinated for yourself go get vaccinated for your friends and family go get vaccinated that is the ticket to be able to have these gatherings safely i have to say that because there is still transmission occurring and i'll note that in the state there are currently nine parishes that still have the highest rank of community transmission risk not in louisiana there still is a lot of virus circulating you still need to wear masks and distance when you're in public settings but when you're in private in a small gathering of friends and family and everyone else is fully vaccinated you can now safely do that without masking and without distancing a lot of people have reached out and want to help with the efforts want to help with the bring back louisiana campaign and this is really heartening work of heartening news because this is going to be a you know community-wide effort we're going to have one if anyone is interested in helping and we are eager to have volunteers in addition to the 21 organizations that we're partnering with if you're interested to help you can go to covetvaccine.la.gov and there'll be a link towards the top of that page that says how can i volunteer that link will take you to the louisiana volunteers in action lava page which will help you enroll we will be calling on these volunteers as we stand up outreach events and community vaccination events throughout the state of louisiana let me close by by making one concerted ask to people um in two parts and the first part is starting monday if you're 16 and above go get vaccinated go make an appointment get in line and get vaccinated and the second part of this ask is if you've already done that thank you but your job is not done because i want you to go be an ambassador to your friends and family get your parents vaccinated get your siblings vaccinated get your cousins vaccinated get your friends vaccinated be an ambassador that is how we are going to achieve herd immunity i can tell you right now 23.5 percent of the state's population has at least initiated the vaccine series 13.8 percent has completed that series and we can do better than that so if you've already done it yourself thank you go get your friends and family covered be happy to answer any questions rural parishes and these rural parishes seem to be lagging some of the more populated places and the share of population that's been vaccinated and some of these people in these parishes have basically said that no matter how much outreach you do a lot of this is just you know it can be political beliefs or beliefs about health care that they're just not going to get vaccinated ever do you still think that reaching hurt immunity in each community is a realistic possibility or goal i do um i do i don't think that it's not a no swish gets flipped when we reach for immunity what i mean by that is i think there's tangible progress before we hit to that mark and there's still some debate about what exact percentage coverage confers her immunity there is still significant progress that happens before we get that but to the larger point of that question i i really do and for a couple of reasons number one the polling data is encouraging and even in areas where there is less vaccine confidence the trend is in the right direction and it seems as time goes on and more and more people get vaccinated and people know about that vaccine confidence goes up the other reason that i'm encouraged is when we talk to individuals when we do focus groups we actually don't hear a lot of i'm not going to do it period we really don't what we hear much more of is i don't know i'm unsure i'm on the fence i want to wait and see i want to talk to people which tells us that we have an opportunity to have that conversation that people just need to be connected with facts need to be connected with experts need to have an opportunity to have those questions answered and the point of this bring back losing a campaign is to allow people that opportunity to have those questions answered so i really am encouraged that those percentages go up i just know we have our work cut out for us to get there yeah so a big reason that you guys have expanded eligibility over um the past few times just being because you guys said that uh you know there are a lot of like vaccines sitting on shelves and everything um so i was wondering if you had the numbers on hand for how many vaccines have gone to waste not because of you know an outage or you know something like that but just because you know a pharmacy or hospital just couldn't find enough people to administrate it to if any uh question being how many have been wasted just by virtue of expiring i don't have i can probably get back to you on a number i can tell you the total loss number right now is 1946. that's of all doses you know sent down to the state um i don't know off hand how many of those some number of those i think it's a minority of those were just expired because someone couldn't be found but it's not the majority of that number melinda to the point of is herd immunity realistic it seems like okay so y'all are clawing back 32 000 doses from the long-term care program which seems to be because nursing home employees are not interested in using them so isn't that an indicator that that there is going to be a broader problem in reaching um the large numbers that you need it's i mean we're already hearing about appointments that don't get filled so i guess i'm wondering how do you combat how do you combat that in a way that gets you to hurt immunity before the dosage before the variant overtakes the available doses and it doesn't really matter anymore yeah that really is the challenge that you articulated there i mean we and the governor said this last week we're in a race against time right now or in a race to get vaccine out as quickly and equitably as possible because the variants are out there um you know the what the clawback was from the long-term care there really was you know the feds did an estimate of how much they wanted to divert there some of the staff there got vaccinated through other avenues you know not in the first round but as time went on so it really was an estimate i don't i don't view that as predictive of what's happening in the community it also was the first few weeks and vaccine confidence you know has has grown not at the pace i would like it to but it's certainly grown as the as the vaccine administration endeavor has gone on so i i really am encouraged that confidence continues to increase that more and more people get vaccinated i'm just not naive that it's going to happen automatically i think it's very clear right now to us it should be clear to everyone that there's going to be a lot of work that has to happen between now and then a lot of outreach a lot of um connecting with people meeting people where they're at and letting people have questions answered we have the opportunity to do it i mean it's it's kind of within um within our hands right now i i really do think we'll get there i just know it's going to be a lot of work to get there sam a lot on where you live are you guys seeing that maybe in orleans parish there's still a ton of demand and long wait times and then in some you know maybe rural parts or even suburban areas outside of there it's pretty easy to get a dose it's pretty variable even in you know region one or leans has administered the most vaccines per capita right now but even with that it's relatively easy you can get an appointment within a couple days time so um i think in terms of is this the right time to expand eligibility i think it is particularly with the increased doses coming down i think there's no question that there's geographic variability right now in in vaccine uptake and you can go on on the front page of the vaccine dashboard and see that pretty pretty clearly i mean to me that just means that we have we have an opportunity we have more work to do and again i'm the point of putting all that data out there is to know where we need to hone in with the outreach effort thank you thank you dr kenner and and i continue to appreciate your work and that of everybody at ldh and all of our partners around the state um you know this month we mark a full year in the battle against cobit 19. and there are a lot of heroes out there but chief among them are our health care professionals and i know that they're tired and i know that that they would very much appreciate putting this pandemic behind us so that they can go to work and experience some normalcy too and we need to do that and with respect to the questions around herd immunity you know we we've been saying for many months now that everybody has a role to play in slowing the transmission flattening the curve making sure they're protecting themselves and their neighbors and so forth and until recently that was principally directed at distancing and masking and washing your hands and staying home when you're sick everybody has a role to play now and it's getting vaccinated and that vaccine starting monday will be available to everyone who is 16 and older and so i'm asking people to do what is necessary and don't sit back with the calculation well i'm just going to let other people be vaccinated so that at some point we get to this so-called herd immunity because if enough people take that approach we're not going to get there and secondly when we do it isn't like the coronavirus and kovid 19 are going to go away completely that's not going to happen in people who are not vaccinated are going to continue to be susceptible to contracting the disease getting sick being hospitalized and dying and so it really is counterproductive for people to talk about hurt immunity in that fashion as if we're just going to sit back and wait and let other people get vaccinated and we'll benefit from that you're always going to be at greater risk if that's what you do and therefore your family is going to be at greater risk if that's what you do so we all have a role to play now that role has changed somewhat since vaccines have been administered to the states it is still important if you're not in that situation that dr cantor described and that the cdc has sanctioned about being in a small gathering where 100 percent of the people are fully vaccinated and you're able to take off your mask and not worry about social distancing it is important that you continue to wear your mask it's continued it's important that you continue the distance and it's really important that you get vaccinated last week when i spoke i was a day early and i mentioned that the cdc had changed its guidance on the safe operation of schools with respect to students social distancing at six feet when they are all masked and in fact on friday they did what i mentioned and that is reduce that to three feet i did have the opportunity to speak to a young student at hammond west side montessori school named evan and we had a conversation this week and he was excited about how this represents one more step back to normalcy and in fact it does and i envisioned that there would be many small steps that we take over time on our journey back to normal i'll take questions in just a moment i do want to talk a little bit about the weather we've been under a flash flood and severe weather watch since tuesday that flash flood watch will remain in effect for all of southeast louisiana through midnight on thursday because of that two testing sites are closed today that's this those are the sites of the lario and at nichols um and the sites at uno and mahalia were delayed in opening we're going to continue to keep the public updated on weather related disruptions as it relates to testing the good news thus far is that we have not experienced any weather related deaths or injuries haven't had power outages reported with this most recent weather either but the ground is saturated a quick burst of heavy rain could cause additional flooding pretty quickly and we know that winds can easily cause trees to fall onto houses and cars and power lines and so forth when the ground is saturated the new orleans region experienced street flooding yesterday and last night uh also anywhere from eight to ten inches of rain fell in saint charles lafourche and terrebonne parishes uh 21 structures that we know of were flooded the majority of which were in lafourche damage assessments are underway there are still multiple road closes closures in those parishes in lafourche pumps are operational parish field offices have pre-filled sandbags for those residents who might need them as a result i'm sorry it's the threat of more flash flooding continues i cannot stress enough that if you see water on the road please do not attempt to drive through it if you're not absolutely sure how deep it is and that you can safely navigate through it and don't try to go around it that's when you'll end up in a ditch uh turn around and go the other way as best you can this is where many drownings occur historically we don't want that to happen for real-time information on road closures please go to 511la.org there is also a slight risk for severe weather statewide not just in southeast louisiana potential impacts could include damaging wind gusts in excess of 60 miles per hour tornadoes are possible as as is hail we encourage everyone to stay alert heat instructions from your local officials and weather experts please keep your cell phones charged and on because many times that's how you're going to get the last possible notice of an approaching tornado please make certain you have a game plan in place you can always visit getagameplan.org for more information lastly today is equal pay day i am supporting my red tie in support of equal pay louisiana unfortunately uh remains at the very bottom of the country when it comes to equal pay for women here who own who earn 72 cents on the dollar on average and for women of color the numbers are even worse black women earn 49 cents on the dollar latino women earn 53 cents on the dollar we should all be outraged by this and and we need to fix it and of course we will once again present bills to the legislature in the upcoming session that will address this and i am committed as ever to ending pay and equity i know that when women succeed louisiana succeeds as well so with that i will take some questions yes sir obviously with no more um expansions of eligibility really to be made and with the supply versus demand issue at least for the time being does combating hesitancy which the state has done in some form those whole four months or nearly four months does that really come to the forefront now that everybody's eligible that hesitancy is the next chapter of this pandemic well i think that's that's the uh right way to frame it uh and of course we've anticipated that we would get to this point at at some time and not just in louisiana but around the country every state and the federal government as well all looking at plans to address this and what we know is that people who remain hesitant today they lack confidence they really want to hear from someone in their community uh perhaps a physician who is trusted um somebody who has credibility and talking about the importance of being vaccinated that these vaccines are in fact safe they are in fact effective they're the only way to end the pandemic that people will protect themselves and others by being vaccinated and and then have an opportunity to ask questions and receive answers to those questions and then we know that confidence increases hesitancy diminishes and more people get vaccinated so this we always knew that we'd we would reach a point where outreach was going to be critically important we are just about there in fact you can see that that our outreach efforts are reaching a new level and you're going to see many more manifestations of this over the coming weeks and months because we have to get people vaccinated um and and i am not at all um at the point where or i believe that that we're going to fail to get enough people vaccinated we just have some work to do like dr cantor every reliable survey indicates that confidence is growing over time not as fast as we would like hesitancy is diminishing over time again not as fast as we would like but from the very beginning a relatively few people have been saying they will never get the vaccine most have said we just don't want it now um and and maybe they were saying that back in december and january well now we're getting towards the end of march about to be in april they've had an opportunity now to see their friends and neighbors and relatives uh vaccinated um in large numbers and they can see the safety of the vaccine for themselves and the efficacy numbers really should speak for themselves the highest percentage of people anywhere vaccinated or nursing home residents nursing home cases are at an all-time low the two things are related the vaccine works it confers immunity from covid 19 on 95 percent of the people who get vaccinated and it it protects against hospitalization and death for 100 percent so this is our way forward up so nothing nothing that has developed is was unanticipated and not nothing is overly troubling but we just all have some work to do but at the end of the day nobody's going to be able to make that decision for you and i'm talking to the people of louisiana i strongly encourage you to make this decision for yourself and reach out to your physician if you have questions and in the meantime we're going to be trying to give you as much information as possible and then to make available to you uh people who can answer your questions yes sir why do you think that is is that a lack of confidence that you've talked about and if so why are louisianans less confident about the vaccine than some other states yeah i don't know um and there are different ways uh to measure that and and i'm not sure which measure you're you're looking at and whether you're looking only at for example of the vaccines that come to the state or whether you're including the vaccines that the federal government is administering directly through the va system for for example but i'm not going to quibble with the number we we want more people to be vaccinated the doses are here we have all the enrolled partners that we need there are vaccines available every day in every parish there's appointments available we we just need to get people to be vaccinated and we're going to do everything that we can to facilitate that and we need people at the local level uh to do that as well and and certainly we're we were never going to be satisfied whether we were first in the country or or 50th in the country with where we are we we always want to do better yes ma'am governor on a on a different subject the attorney general filed a lawsuit against the biden administration over the moratorium on new oil and gas exploration on federal lands and waters and i know you have been critical of that moratorium do you think a lawsuit is the appropriate way to move forward on that well i haven't had the i was told about the lawsuit just before walking in i haven't had an opportunity to look at it and certainly the attorney general didn't call and discuss it with me in the meantime i have been engaging in outreach to stakeholders here in louisiana and elsewhere about the the moratorium and and what it means for us especially as it relates to the gulf um and then i've also been in conversations with various officials in the biden administration including earlier this week when i was elected chairman of the governor's group on the outer continental shelf and had an opportunity to speak to the director of boehm about it and everyone acknowledges that enough leases were stockpiled that a moratorium a pause on leasing is not going to be injurious to the industry or to jobs or so forth the short-term impact would have been most heavily felt on the permitting side if the companies weren't allowed to explore for and produce oil and gas on the leases that they had uh and i'm gratified to say um that and i know this because i've been talking to oil and gas ceos and interest groups but also to the director of boem this week that those permits have started to be issued too so just as you're starting to have the communications get you to a point where where you're feeling better about things and the permits are being issued probably isn't the best time to file litigation but obviously that that's taken place i haven't i haven't read it all i'm going to tell you is i will continue to do the outreach that i've been engaged in with the biden administration to make sure that that they understand that the most carbon advantaged barrel of oil produced anywhere in the world is produced in the gulf of mexico that the man for all is inelastic meaning it doesn't respond to changes in supply and all is going to be produced somewhere and it's going to be used in our economy throughout whatever transition we have away from fossil fuels it could be decades in the making and whatever time frame that is we need to position louisiana to take full advantage of the industry here in our state but we also need to take advantage of the opportunity we have to develop investments in renewable energy and in that move away from fossil fuels so that when you know for example we're going to be refining diesel out of things like corn and soybean and pine trees so so we've got a lot of work to do i don't know how this litigation that you referenced advances our goals but we'll see yes sir since last press conference the women's select committee said they were going to hold a second hearing on the lsu sexual assault cases they said that if hired officials don't implement policies that um that automatically fire officials and faculty who don't like report sexual assault or follow tele-line procedures um i was wondering if that was something that you know you support or you know your comment on that yeah so i've actually had meetings uh this week with several groups of legislators including two groups of legislators today and and had um a discussion just before the press conference i was on the zoom call with a women's group as well and announced that that we will have as part of our legislative package a bill that addresses mandatory reporting on higher education campuses identifies who the mandatory reporters are and imposes on them obviously that obligation to to report and then absent some very compelling reasons any failure to discharge that obligation would result in termination so that is that is something that we've already looked at and and put into our legislative package and we'll be asking the legislature to move that bill ford and to get it to my desk look i want to thank you all for continuing to cover all of these things that are so important to the people of our state uh and and we are in a better place than than we were just a few weeks ago but there are some troubling signs out there principally with respect to case growth and hospitalizations in southwest louisiana the the variant which is obviously having an impact there and we know elsewhere across the state and as that strain of the virus grows in terms of its prevalence we need to be making sure that more people are getting vaccinated as soon as possible that is possible now for everyone 16 and older on monday and what that means is everybody who is authorized by the fda to receive these three vaccines is eligible to receive it on monday and and we we don't want to just focus on those who are newly eligible everybody who's been eligible from the beginning but for whatever reason if you haven't received your vaccine please make your appointment take the first vaccine available to you because we are in a race against time they are all safe they are all effective and this is how we end the pandemic this is how we get back to normal so we have it within our power to do this and to do it relatively soon um and and i believe that we will take advantage of it here in louisiana uh and you know we're gonna work as hard as we can every single day uh to make sure that we're successful so i would ask everybody to to be mindful dr cantor mentioned this we do have easter coming up and passover as well and to the extent that you have more people gathering whether it's in church or whether it's you know in people's homes remember what happened over the christmas period where folks were traveling as if nothing was going on they were gathering and having activities and so forth weren't safe we have an opportunity to safely gather just take advantage of it and then have the peace of mind of knowing that you're doing that without just exposing yourself to the virus into the disease but but exposing your family members or your friends or whoever else happens to be at that gathering so let's take this all seriously we'll do better and we will get back to normal much sooner and i will be able to come out here i pray relatively soon and announce that we've had a day without deaths that hadn't happened since about a year ago look thank you all very much and we'll see you next week when is that uh christina we'll see you on tuesday thank you you