dr phillips and dr cantor from the louisiana department of health because we are in vaccination mode both for the flu and covet boosters and of course if you have not gotten your actual cova vaccine we're here for you too the objective is to get as many of us vaccinated as quickly as we can i'm happy to report that at the general we moved from about 35 vaccinated for covet to about 77 vaccinated in about a month or so so very happy with that goal and i hope and wish that the general community also gets to those levels of vaccination so we can get to some level of herd immunity what better way to kick things off than with our state health leaders and also by the way we have dr phillips's son langston who's here there you go brave brave uh young man who's gonna get his flu shot too so governor edwards edgardo thank you and i want to thank all the people at baton rouge general mid-city for again making this facility available uh for us today as we do something that i think is very important and we are joined by secretary dr courtney phillips of the louisiana department of health and her son langston but also by dr joe canner and he'll be available to take questions once i'm finished speaking i think uh courtney's going to speak to you all for a little bit and then and then we will take questions uh at the end of that so we're here to receive our annual flu shot and courtney and and langston will get the flu shots as will dr cantor and i but dr kanner and i are also going to get our booster shots because we are both eligible we're more than six months past the second pfizer and and we're eligible we're going to do that but i want to talk first about flu season in louisiana you know getting your flu shot is incredibly important every year it is more important during a pandemic like we're experiencing right now because if you go to the hospital with the flu you are taxing the same part of a healthcare delivery system that that you would tax if you in fact had uh covid uh and so we've had incredibly stressed hospital systems and really the whole healthcare delivery uh apparatus of our state and of our country uh for well over a year and a half now uh and we don't want that to continue any more than it's absolutely necessary and we want people to be healthy and we we don't want people to get sick we don't want to go in the hospital and we certainly don't want them to die we are seeing some relief now from the fourth surge and i'm very thankful for that our case numbers are down the positivity's down hospitalizations are down unfortunately the deaths are a lagging indicator they are starting to come down but they're still unacceptably high but we know that our current trends are going to continue there are some mitigation measures that help with that like wearing your mask but the single most important thing we can do in edgardo touched on this is get vaccinated and for those people who are vaccinated if you have immunodeficiency issues you're eligible for a third shot and if you're vaccinated with pfizer you're eligible for a booster if in fact you are over 65 or if you are 18 and older and you have a comorbid health condition that makes you more vulnerable to the disease or if you live or work in a setting that makes you more vulnerable and we encourage you to get your booster as soon as you can and as soon as you become eligible just to give you some numbers the last really bad flu season we had in louisiana was 2017.

1500 people across our state died from the flu that year and that's tragic with respect to cobid we've had twice that many die just since the end of july so so both diseases are bad both can make you sick both can put you in the hospital both can kill you um but you know what they both transmit the same way uh and so the mitigation measures you take to protect yourself against cobit also protects you against the flu which is why last year with all of our height mitigation measures the social distancing the masking and so forth we actually had a very light flu season well it's within our ability to make that happen again by those same behaviors in addition to getting the flu shot the flu shot's important every year but it is especially important this year and flu shots are available uh they'll be i think our parish health units uh later this week and next week but they're available the same places you've been getting your kobit 19 vaccines as well at at your pharmacies and doctors offices and so forth and if you for some reason haven't yet decided to get your covenant vaccine today is a new day tomorrow will be another new day and you can make the decision to do that uh it is incredibly important that you do it um if you've got any questions about the availability of the flu vaccine or the covid19 vaccine please call 2-1-1 they will answer your questions and they will tell you where you can go in order to get your flu shot and your covid vaccine so i thank you all for being here uh once once dr phillips speaks to you we'll take a few questions and then once once we're past the questions uh you will see me get a flu shot uh and a covid booster so with that courtney thank you governor and thank you eduardo and to the entire baton rouge general team thank you all for hosting this event and kicking off the importance of getting vaccinated for the flu as the governor mentioned we we have made great strides in our state across covid but we are still not out of the wood jet when you think about where we were in mid-august and having more than 3 000 people hospitalized due to covid and where we are today of having less than 640 people hospitalized we know the efforts of our healthcare workers and healthcare entities have made tremendous strides but again we're still not out of the woods we know our hospitals still struggle with staffing and we want to continue to assist them in those efforts but i think it's up to each of us to do our part as well and being vaccinated can help us to do that both the coveted vaccine as well as the flu vaccine and so it we need to take time to make sure that we're following the mitigation efforts and looking at what we can do and again getting vaccinated can do that and just like the cova vaccine the flu vaccine not only protects yourself but it also protects your loved ones your family members your community as a whole and so today i'm here with my son langston my favorite family member because we're going to do our part in getting vaccinated and trying to protect ourselves each other as well as our families and our community i know as parents our children are the most important things to us keeping them healthy keeping them safe and keeping them in school and by getting them vaccinated for the flu is one way that we can absolutely do this and so today you'll see langston and i both roll up our sleeve and get our flu vaccine unfortunately langston isn't currently eligible to receive the cova vaccine because of his age but when it's time he will do so but right now he is eligible to receive the flu vaccine so he can protect himself against the influenza virus and so today he's going to do that and he's going to encourage everybody else to do so again as parents we need to do what we can to help prevent the spread of it especially as we're going into the holiday season this last quarter of the year we can do this we had a success last year we saw a very low volume of flu and it's because we did follow the mitigation efforts for covid we can do it again again vaccination is a big part of this i do want to thank baton rouge general and our other health care entities because of the work they've done over the last 18 months but also about us adding something else to their plate and saying now can you guys help with the flu vaccine one thing that we saw a great success with over the the cova vaccine was getting out and about into the communities and we know bad news general is going to be doing that again and partnering with a community organization such as the ymca we saw great strides in this in helping to reduce health equity our health disparities making sure that everyone has access we know that there are some areas in louisiana that are healthcare deserts that they're not the actual brick and mortar facilities where folks can go to receive healthcare we want to make sure we're providing access and so by doing what you all are doing and many other healthcare entities we help to reduce healthcare disparities and so join me join langston in getting your families vaccinated and helping to stop the spread we owe this to the healthcare workers who have been just in the in the in the trenches doing this for the last 10 18 months we owe this to them so so thank you governor and i'll turn it back over you oh langston do you have anything that you want to add any thoughts on getting your flu vaccine today uh yes i'm very excited and i can't wait to get my cool vaccine thank you [Applause] thank you courtney so if there's a few questions we'll take those any all right well we're going to proceed over and get our shots yes all right so [Music] oh you've me [Music] yes so more [Applause] so [Music] i'm right so [Music] [Music] you