as you can see dr joe cantor from the department of health is with me today and he'll give his update in just a moment uh before i begin i did want to speak just a moment i returned a little bit ago from the memorial service for governor buddy romer and you know he was obviously a dedicated public servant who as a congressman and as governor and as a citizen loved the state very much and it was a very uh powerful i thought and and uh beautiful memorial service and i did want to again express my condolences to his wife scarlett and to his children um caroline and chaz both spoke at the service and did extremely well i know he'd have been proud of them i actually sought out counsel from all the former living governors when i first announced i was going to run for governor and buddy romer was gracious enough to uh visit with me and he was very generous with his time and he could not have been more pleasant and that meant a lot to me then and it means more to me now and so i would ask the state of louisiana to please keep the romer family in your prayers as for today's announcement uh tomorrow the current coveted 19 public health proclamation expires and the new one will mark a shift in how we anticipate this to play out going forward first of all the public health emergency will be extended but most of the remaining restrictions uh will be lifted and that includes business capacity and crowd size guidance masks remain uh recommended strongly for those who've not yet been vaccinated because quite frankly they remain at risk of getting and spreading covid19 to others and mass will continue to be recover required on public transit because that's a federal mandate mass will be required in educational settings until the end of the current academic semester beginning with the summer programs for this year each school district will set its own mask policies licensed health care facilities to include nursing homes hospitals and so forth will continue to require mask because there will be a public health order to that effect and then going forward also jails and prisons as well as always local governments and businesses are allowed and are empowered to set tighter restrictions should they choose to do so and i would encourage everyone in louisiana to understand that when you're on private property you do as the property owner wants you to with respect to these types of things and many businesses for whatever reason will choose to continue to have certain restrictions or mandates in place and that's particularly true if they're part of a national chain and they just have one policy for the whole country so if you're visiting if you're visiting a business that requires mass wear masks if you feel more comfortable wearing a mask in public that's perfectly fine too for everyone the last 15 months have been long and trying it will take some time to transition and to increase our vaccination rate enough that we really can put this pandemic behind us um we're not there yet but there's no doubt that we are in a better place today than we've been at any point thus far during the pandemic and that is because of medical science it's because of research it's because of the hard work work of the health care community and the work of the department of health and our private partners the pharmacies the hospitals and clinics and national guard everyone who've administered nearly three million doses of the covid vaccine over the past five months it's because more than 1.6 million louisianans have at least started the vaccination process in order to protect themselves and their loved ones and their communities and they're doing their part quite frankly to be a good neighbor and help us and the rest of the country move past this pandemic over the last couple of weeks we've had almost 8 600 12 to 15 year olds avail themselves of the vaccine and so if your child is in that age group please reach out to your pediatrician with any questions and schedule a vaccination you know if you just look back where we were one year ago today we were coming down off of that first initial surge that was so traumatizing um there were two more surges that were going to happen where the number of cases the percent positivity the number of illnesses and hospitalizations and deaths would go up tremendously but we are in a much better place i'll give you the numbers here in just a moment and the difference of the vaccines quite simply put and i think dr cantor's going to share more with you in a moment but we know that they are working today we are reporting a thousand forty three new cases on twenty two thousand nine hundred seven new tests um sadly we are reporting an additional thirteen deaths uh that obviously hurts um and the grand total thus far during the pandemics 10 548 louisianans lost to cobia 19. um you know the deaths are actually harder to accept and understand now because they come months after the vaccine have been available and we know that the the vaccine is effective and of those 10 548 deaths 99.9 percent of them were unvaccinated we have seen a steep drop off in deaths among the older population and that's quite simply because the highest percentage of people who are vaccinated in the state are those who are older i think we're right at 75 percent of those who are 65 and older have at least started their their vaccine series and and dr cannon will give you more on that in just a moment we are at an all-time low since the start of the pandemic and the number of hospitalizations were reporting today is 269 across the state 28 of whom are on mechanical ventilators so you may be wondering if we're doing so much better and we're 14 15 months into this now why do we continue the proclamation quite simply because we have an awful lot of work to do and the public health emergency allows the state to stay in the response mode to support local efforts and make sure that that we are moving forward with the required immunizations and testing and and the different things that are required every single day for example the national guard they have nearly a thousand soldiers activated in support of emergency operations they have administered right at 375 000 cobia tests they work at food banks they've packaged about 29 million pounds of food thus far they have administered nearly sixty seven thousand cobit vaccinations to the public the department of health is also using state assets to respond to covet as are a number of other agencies to put this into perspective gosep is tracking more than 1.1 billion dollars in state and local government spending that is fully reimbursable by fema so we're going to keep the emergency order in place and we'll keep renewing it every 28 or 30 days as long as the federal public health emergency also stays in place and i want to tell you covid is not over we are not yet on a one-way street that carries us only away from the pandemic and that's quite simply because we don't yet have the percentage of people vaccinated in louisiana that we need to have to feel that degree of comfort and confidence but every day we get a little bit better and and more people are choosing to be vaccinated but we have a lot of work to do i anticipate that this may be the last press conference where i discuss the actual emergency orders because there's if they change we'll certainly let you know but there just didn't a lot left out there to to discuss i will be with you again next week because the session continues uh next week and the week after as well so at this point i'm going to turn it over to dr cantor and as always i'd ask you to ask him whatever questions you have while he's up here and then when he's finished i'll come back up to wrap up and take your questions as well good afternoon thank you governor thank you for your leadership it certainly does feel like we've turned a corner in this pandemic and it's you know in recognition of the over ten thousand five hundred individuals in louisiana who's lost their lives and in the countless sacrifices big and small we've all made um it does feel good i mean it's it's um turning a corner doesn't mean that you're off the road and there still is reason uh to be careful and vigilant um particularly if you are not yet fully vaccinated but being able to regain even more normalcy is important and i think it's important for us to recognize what we've all been through these 15 very very long months i'll i'll talk a little bit about what allows us to safely uh roll back um some of the measures that the governor alluded to and this has been a uh progressive process you know as as the pandemic has unfolded you know at each step we really have let the virus lead and and when cases have gone down and the risk in the community lessened it has allowed the state of louisiana to to roll back more measures and and regain more and more normalcy and that process clearly continues today what specifically allows us right now to do it are a few things number one cases are down they're down across the state from where they were in months past um the risk is not zero but it's certainly less than it was let's say um around new year's time and and before that and i'll talk a little bit more about those numbers in a second we've now been below five percent positivity for about four months and that's longer than most other states have that's significant the vaccines right now are widely available in fact it's never been easier in the history of the united states to get a vaccination of any type you can get a free uber or lyft ride to any vaccine site there are 1500 vaccine sites throughout the state there are no waiting lists it has never been easier to get a vaccine and that is significant the vaccines that we have available to us the fires are the madarina and the johnston johnson remain good matches for the significant variants that are circulating at this point in time that is significant and we have much more knowledge right now than at any point prior about how this fire spreads from person to person and what individuals can do to protect themselves should they choose to all of those allow us to safely regain even more normalcy with with the new proclamation um that is about to be issued i'll tell you part of this process is going to be trusting each other and if you remain unvaccinated or if you've been vaccinated but not yet two weeks out so you're not yet fully vaccinated you still have risk to yourself of getting infection and almost more importantly you have risk to other people to spread it if you remain unvaccinated the clear recommendation from both the cdc and the louisiana department of health is that you mask particularly when you're in indoor spaces that hasn't changed and we're going to need to trust each other to do that part of this is also recognizing that the virus is in charge here and as we've done every step of the way should cases go up in the future should we have another spike should hospitals get busy again there might be the need to roll some of this back or to get more aggressive with masking across the board and as adults we just need to accept that but right now the numbers look good let me talk briefly about what those numbers are and what the virus is doing on the slide you'll see the same four charts that we've looked at each and every time that we've we've entered into a new proclamation and as they were last time we met these continue to be very reassuring to me i'll walk you through them on the top left you'll see what's called covet-like illness or the percent of emergency department visits that are attributable to covet-like symptoms it's a rough measure of our people coming into hospitals with symptoms suggestive of covid and we've been relatively flat for the past two weeks now on the top right you'll see the incidence graph this is the number of new cases positive tests unique individuals so new diagnosis for an individual that get reported to us in the department of health every day smoothed over a seven day rolling average and we've been on a large decline or plateau a low plateau since since the end of february really and then for the past 16 days we've been on a discrete decline they've been decreasing and that's reassuring on the bottom left you'll see the combination graph where the the purple line up top is the number of new tests being conducted across the state every day we've held relatively steady the past month we're on track for the month of may to conduct about 400 000 tests and we know that that's an adequate number to get good visibility on the virus because our percent positivity remains low should the potential positivity go up you really do worry if you're testing enough or not we feel confident that we are testing enough to have good visibility on the virus and then those orange bars on the bottom show a percent positivity we update this every wednesday i just got word as i was walking in here that the number for tomorrow for the week ending today will be 3.3 percent that's down a tick from 3.4 on the week prior and as i mentioned before we've been below 5 positivity for about four months now and perhaps the most meaningful measure to us is the bottom left excuse me the bottom right a number of patients who are covered positive and hospitalized in hospital beds throughout the state day on day and for the past two days we've had new lows in the state of louisiana and today is a new low 269 covered positive patients are hospitalized throughout the state that's the lowest number that we have had since we started counting this in march of 2020 for our first spike that's a marker both that viral transmission is slowing the spread is slowing in louisiana and we have done a good job at incentivizing vaccines promoting vaccines amongst the people who are most vulnerable we've never seen any that more clearly than we have in the nursing homes and if you go to the next slide this is a slide that um one more slide yeah that's the right slide this is something that we um showed a couple times previously but it really does show the the power of these vaccines and that's why it's nice to keep looking at this um you'll see three spikes here on the blue line the blue line is the number of new coveted cases in nursing home residents and the red line and the bottoms the number of deaths in nursing home residents you'll see the three spikes that correlate with the three spikes we've had for community transmission the one back in march and april of 2020 the one in the summer of 2020 and then the run around christmas and new year's and then right after that christmas and new year's spike you see that blue line going down almost all the way to the bottom that directly correlates with the increased vaccination coverage amongst nursing home individuals clearly showing how powerful these vaccines are and as the governor has mentioned a couple times in the past in one of the most difficult to control areas there are nursing homes are challenging for covid because it's a close congregate setting where the virus can spread very easily and the individuals who reside there are amongst the most vulnerable as of today 83 percent of nursing home residents across the state have either initiated or completed the vaccine series and that is profound that's why you see that graph take such a sharp turn down 42 of nursing home staff have initiated or completed the vaccine series and as we've said a couple times before that's a number that we're eager to see increase it's creeped up a percentage point here and there over the past few weeks we would like to see that number continue to go up we watch the variants as we have been and i'll walk you through where we stand with their variants in short i'll tell you that the the good news here is that every variant of concern that we are tracking remains a good match for the available vaccines and that is really important the b117 or the uk variant uh the numbers have not changed from from last thursday when we talked last in the u.s about 74 or 75 percent of all covid is the b-117 or the uk variant in our region of the country which is us texas oklahoma new mexico and arkansas it's a little bit higher at 84.3 percent for the p1 or brazilian variant nationally about seven percent of all coveted circulating is this variant regionally for us it's 5.5 and we have identified 13 cases of the p1 vert in louisiana of course there's there's almost by certainty more than that that we haven't identified but we've we've been able to definitively identify 13 cases last week we announced that we identified the first two cases of the b-1617 or the india variant these two cases were identified in the greater shreveport area excuse me today we can announce that we've identified a third case of the india or the b1617 variant this third case is in the greater alexandria area neither of these three cases are linked to each other they're not relatives of each other i can tell you that neither of these none of these three cases have traveled recently outside of the state which means that in all likelihood they were exposed to the variant here in louisiana and we should assume that there's more of this variant circulating than has been formally identified importantly none of these three cases have been vaccinated and i think that's the take-home message for everyone the best way to protect against the variance circulating now is to get vaccinated along those lines the best way to protect against variants down the road is to get vaccined in now and the reason is every time the virus spreads from one person to another it has the chance of mutating most of the time those mutations are insignificant and irrelevant every now and then a mutation is not insignificant and gives rise to a new variant of concern the less people that are vaccinated the more the virus spreads and the more it has an opportunity to perhaps form a new variant so really the best way to prevent future variants is for more people to get vaccinated right now as of today we have administered over three million doses of vaccine in louisiana that is a um testament to the hard work of providers throughout the state and certainly the national guard as the governor had mentioned 31 35.1 percent of the state has initiated the vaccine series and that breaks down to 45 of individuals 18 and older and 42 of individuals 12 years of age and older of the state's population has completed the vaccine series and 72 percent of everyone 65 years of age and older in louisiana has completed the vaccine series i'll tell you every day that goes by there is more data coming in that shows that the three vaccines that we have now the fires are the modern and the johnson johnson are safe and they are effective that is the bottom line people should be encouraged to speak with their physician speak with friends and family who have already gotten vaccinated but every day there is more data coming in to show that these vaccines are both safe and effective i've actually also saw data today from one of the dating apps out there then this is true by their data that the vaccine also makes you 14 more attractive and i'll remind you it's very easy to get vaccinated you can get a johnson johnson shot today and be fully vaccinated in two weeks in all seriousness protecting yourself and knowing you're not going to spread the virus unbeknownst to somebody else is something that should be attractive to everyone i'll tell you the most stressful thing for me personally throughout this pandemic was the fear that i could unknowingly spread the virus to somebody else and to me that's the most important reason that i got vaccinated so i would not unbeknownst to myself spread the virus and put someone else in harm's way so please consider that um as we work to get more people vaccinated you'll see a shift both in louisiana and nationally away from some of the high volume high throughput sites to to smaller vaccine events these are vaccine events in neighborhoods and communities and churches and partnership with community-based organizations and also an effort to get vaccine into smaller medical practices there are some things that really help us do to do this now a few things that are new and i'll tell you what they are number one last week the fda announced that pfizer has relaxed the cold storage requirements for their vaccine remember pfizer is the only vaccine available to you if you were between the ages of 12 and 16 we can now store the pfizer vaccine safely in a regular refrigerator for up to 30 days that is significant that's going to make it easier for physician practices and other medical clinics to stock the vaccine the cdc told us that we can now safely co-administer the covert vaccine with other vaccines at the same time that's important because a lot of kids in louisiana by virtue of the disruption that this past year have fallen behind on their vaccine serious or other vaccine series and now when they go into their pediatrician's office if their pediatrician has the covert vaccine they can give it at the same time as any other vaccines that they need to be caught up on and the cdc is getting more pragmatic with their guidance around waste we're going to recognize that as we move vaccine to smaller and smaller venues like a small medical clinic there is the chance for for a small increase in waste and that's because once you open up a vial you don't have to use what's in that vial that day or you lose it what the cdc says and i agree with this completely is at this point in the vaccine program we should not waste any opportunity to vaccinate someone meaning if someone comes in the clinic towards the end of the day it might be worth it to pop that vial even if there'll be a little bit of waste because each vaccine given is potentially a life saved right now so we might see a little bit more waste i can tell you to date we have wasted in the city of louisiana or lost just shy of 12 000 doses of vaccine that's on 3.85 million doses delivered to the state so our waste or loss percentage is 0.3 which is relatively low i have made an ask to physician to my physician colleagues throughout the state to talk about the covert vaccine at every clinical encounter at every opportunity because i think a lot of people would benefit from hearing from from their doctor what they think about it i've made that ass to doctors across the state but what i'd like to ask you is don't wait for your doctor to raise it in conversation if you have not yet been vaccinated or if family members of yours have not yet been vaccinated take the initiative if you have questions reach out to your physician or your medical provider ask the questions that you need to ask to feel comfortable i guarantee you're not going to be the first person to ask those questions a positive be happy to answer any questions if there are any yes sir um are you aware of uh what the timeline is looking like like for the other uh vaccines to be approved for 12 for residents 12 years in august absolutely the question is when are the other vaccines going to be available for younger individuals we got some good news late last night so modern announced data on their trial of individuals going down to 12 and their data from what this is self-reported by the company so we haven't verified it yet but it looks very similar to the fizer data which is extremely efficacious and safe for those younger individuals moderna plans to make formal applications of the fda to amend their emergency use authorization in the coming weeks and then we'll see how long it takes the fda to decide on that it took about a month for them to render a decision on the pfizer so i would expect between one or two more months time for us to be able to use pfizer down to 12 years of age if the data turns out to be what they reported it to be last night haven't heard yet yes sir you know how do you think the pandemic will change as the summer months carry on and things get hotter and maybe more people are together inside i mean what do you expect to happen yeah that's a great question and and the short answer in all honesty as i don't know i can tell you how we're going to proceed and that's letting the virus lead the way and continue to you know regain normalcy and be prepared to to roll back if we need to one of the concerns of mine is you know what happens in the summer months here is analogous to what happens in the in the winter months up north which is the weather drives people indoors more and we know that that can increase transmission so that's a liability for us on the other hand what we have going for us is that the vaccines available are plenty full on supply and they're still a good match for the variants out there it's really easy to get vaccinated so i think that's going to be you know what determines i'll tell you if more vaccinations happen if more people choose to get vaccinated and if people follow the guidance which is if you're not fully vaccinated yet still wear a mask when you're indoors i think we're going to be well protected if either those two things don't happen i think we'll be at liability but we'll have to wait and see what happens thank you thank you dr cantor and one other piece of information i want to point out and it was actually put up today but the national rank in per capita cases for our state is now 31. that's the best we've been at any point in the pandemic and if you remember that we started off number one and we're number one in the country for a number of weeks at the outset of the pandemic i think that indicates the um manner that we've managed the public health emergency and i want to thank the office of public health because you all have been primarily responsible for that um and that certainly could change before everything is over but when i see that we're number 31 today in per capita cases and we were number one for so long i can't help but be very thankful for all the professional public servants and all of our wonderful partners uh and health care providers and and so forth all across the state i know that this week we finally have some nice weather and so people aren't wanting to focus on bad weather by the way the weather's good this week but we still have several parishes and we're the low-lying areas where they're still engaged in a flood fight uh because of all the rain that we had last week but hurricane starts one week from today i'm sorry hurricane season starts one week from today so please everyone do what you need to do to make sure that you and your family are fully prepared go to getagameplan.org it's got a listing there of all the steps you need to take the supplies you need to have on hand the rule of thumb is to make sure that you and your family can stay in place successfully for 72 hours obviously we will always endeavor to deliver assistance as soon as possible and hopefully long before 72 hours but that's that's what we're asking uh families to be prepared for in addition this year having a game plan means getting a vaccination because if you have to shelter whether it's with friends or family or whether it's at a shelter for example our mega shelter in alexandria or shelter in shreveport we want people to be safe for all the reasons dr cantor was talking about we want you to be safe we want your family to be safe and everyone that you all come into contact with so in addition to visiting get a gameplan.org we also ask you to visit vaccines.gov it will give you a listing of more than 1500 locations around the state that you can receive a vaccine they're available now but it'll also give you an opportunity to schedule those vaccines if you call the hotline one eight five five four five three zero seven seven four that's eight five five four five three zero seven seven four that's the hot line you can find out where the nearest location is it's convenient to you you can schedule a vaccination you can even schedule an in-home vaccination if you're homebound and if you need to speak with a medical professional because you have questions about the vaccines they can make that possible for you as well so all of that relates to cobid but it also relates to the approaching hurricane season and then if you were one of those uh families who were adversely impacted by last week's weather and you've not yet filed a damage report please make sure that you report your damages you go to damage.la.gov damage.la.gov and you can complete a preliminary self report survey about 1800 of these have been done across the state thus far we know that we're getting close to 500 homes with major damage about five homes have been reported as completely destroyed two of those in eberville one in acadia one in calcutta and one in east baton rouge and this is the information that we need to have so that we can coordinate with the fema officials and determine whether we've crossed the threshold where we can avail ourselves of a federal declaration and the individual assistance that that might provide so we're asking everyone if you haven't done it yet visit damage.la.gov complete a preliminary self-report damage survey so that we can aggregate all these numbers at this point i will take a few questions yes sir can you update us on your plan to possibly institute a vaccine lottery or other incentive program i noticed where the white house gave its blessing on that and it seems like there have been some good success rates in those states you talked about it previously but you said you don't have details can you yeah and i haven't had the the vaccination update meeting uh this week i do anticipate that we're going to soon institute some incentive programs we had a call today with the with the white house um and uh all of the nation's governors were on the call and we heard from incentive programs being offered in ohio governor mike dewine spoke to us about that governor janet mills of maine spoke to us also about incentives that they're offering in maine and they were selected to because they they had some ideas and we're kind of first out of the gate with them i believe they may represent best practices i'm not prepared today to make the announcement but but we're certainly going to be doing some incentives uh in the near future and we'll have an announcement for you i just uh hope people don't wait till there's an incentive uh and that they will take the the as an incentive the promise that a vaccination offers for your health and for the health of your relatives your co-workers people that you go to church with strangers you don't even know but we will be implementing some incentives pretty soon and by the way we we also received some clarification that certain portions of the american rescue plan uh funding that's been made available can be used not all of it but certain pots can be used to pay for certain incentives as well but well well we we always appropriate federal dollars to the legislature here in louisiana and so it would require coordination uh with with uh with the legislature uh and we but this this clarification just came down and so we're starting to look at it right now as to to what we can do yes ma'am conversations with the legislative leadership about what kind of funding you would need and what you're looking at because obviously time is getting short no you're right and and we we have not uh again we were just told i think today and the call that certain funding is going to be available for those purposes and and and i need to to look and see where those dollars are because they're not part of the large as i understand it they're not part of the 3.1 billion dollar large american rescue plan funding stream they're parts of little pockets that have already been made available to us and so we'll be looking at that and getting with the legislature yes sir um so biden announced that he's doubling federal funds for ahead of this hurricane season um so how do you expect um that money to be spent and how it'll help um you know prevent some of the damages yeah well and and i know that uh there's gonna be particular emphasis on um those areas that have um particular challenges because of their socioeconomic conditions and in terms of creating more resiliency i know that there's a doubling of funding to i think it's a billion dollars this year we haven't been surprised as to how much that's going to be available to us or exactly you know where we would would spend it and so forth so i don't have the details for you uh right now but but the resiliency is something that's very important for us as you know in louisiana i mean just last week we didn't have a named storm but we had a number of parishes who suffered flooding and continued to suffer flooding and and we have homeowners and business owners who suffered losses as well and one of the things that we continue to emphasize with the white house and with the congress is the need for a disaster appropriation so that we can not just repair damage but so that we can become more resilient in the future and and not suffer all of the devastating damages that occur from these natural disasters but that announcement came just the other day and it hasn't been broken down in terms of state by state what we're going to get and how that funding can be spent but we certainly welcome any funding we can get in louisiana that would enhance our resiliency yes i guess nationally there's a sort of celebration of some kind today about reaching 50 percent of adults vaccinated louisiana's lagging behind obviously and nowhere near that number um i mean what do you think that says about louisiana and is there any you know course correction that you think your administration needs to do to bump that number or why are we lagging well that's that's a great question um i guess i would start by saying why is there more hesitancy here than it is elsewhere i don't think that's tied to our approach at the state level and in fact that seems to be a regional issue and if you look at the percentage of eligible folks who've actually initiated their vaccination series i think were second to last in the region if you look at those who've actually completed the series we're second or third best but that's in the region and admittedly this is the in terms of vaccine utilization the poorest performing region of the country so not not great numbers by any stretch all i can tell you is we're working extremely hard every day to make it more accessible more convenient to instill more confidence and and quite frankly we always knew we were going to get to this point we just hoped and believed it would be much later than it actually came but making sure for example that every physician patient encounter doesn't just allow for an opportunity for the physician to speak to the patient about the the necessity of being vaccinated and how safe and effective they are but also have that that vaccine there so that it can be administered on the spot doing that in emergency departments doing that upon discharge from hospitals for people who are unvaccinated in all the clinics including now the pediatric clinics for example all the clinics where people who are especially vulnerable to disease have to go so whether you have heart disease kidney disease or diabetes you know it so we're doing all of those things we have over 1500 locations in louisiana today where vaccines can be administered if your church contacts us we'll go do a vaccine event at your church if you can get enough employees we'll come to your place of work if you've got other areas where you know that the number of people are going to be gathered and want vaccines contact us we'll come out and do that too so quite frankly uh we're always working to improve we're never going to say that what we're doing is enough or that it's it's perfect and we don't make mistakes but quite frankly it's hard for me to see how the state effort is responsible for the lagging rate of vaccinations we just have to instill more confidence in the people and and again this seems to be an issue in our region and quite frankly it's not one that i can explain very well because it's it's hard for me to understand it we know that the vaccine is safe and effective we know it's the way through the pandemic let me just think about that charlie showed you a while ago with nursing homes that's what nursing home residents at 81 i think now uh who are fully vaccinated these are people who by definition are vulnerable to disease because of their age because of their comorbid health conditions and they live in congregate settings and the cases and the deaths have declined so precipitously and they're almost at the y-axis now and if that can be achieved at eighty percent in that setting just think what will happen if we can get to sixty or seventy percent uh overall uh and so so we're going to continue to work extremely hard and we're not giving up it's just it's just harder and but i will tell you that the people will have to be the ones that ultimately choose to avail themselves of the vaccine we just want to help them make that decision and make it available to them on the spot when they do make the decision yes sir last week louisiana state police released the body cam footage in the ronald green case and the world got to see what louisiana state troopers did on that video um what's your response to that do you think their actions were becoming of a louisiana state trooper no i do not which is why i've always said that after the very first time i watched the video that i found it disturbing i wouldn't have been disturbed had i thought it was professional had i thought that those officers had performed as they should they did not they don't represent what we aspire to in the state of louisiana at the louisiana state police especially once mr greene was not just in custody but but was restrained and that's why this matter is under investigation active investigation by both the district attorney um in union parish where the incident occurred but also by the u.s department of justice and uh you know it is regrettable it is it is unfortunate uh and and obviously we have implemented a number of changes uh with the goal towards making sure that this does not happen again and so no they they were not professional they did not conduct themselves as a law enforcement officer should and quite frankly i'm disappointed in in officers who were on the scene who didn't intervene as well that that evidence is a lack of professionalism also okay look thank you all very much uh the next press conference will be next week thurs yeah all right so not not this thursday but but next thursday we'll see you then um and again i would ask people to keep the romer family in your prayers and let's pray for one another and let's get through this pandemic um let's make sure that we're vaccinated thank you all you