good afternoon everyone and thank you for being here i'm joined as usual by dr joe cameron with louisiana department of health and he'll go through some slides with you that point out in more detail some of the data that we used to inform our decisions on the proclamation that we will be putting into effect tomorrow overall from a high level we continue to see several months now of sustained improvement with coveted hospitalizations and an increase in the supply and availability of the vaccine and by that i mean the doses we are receiving are considerable we have more enrolled providers than ever around the state to actually administer the vaccine i think that number is actually over 1500 now and i think you're going to see that there are over the last couple of weeks from some small increases in the incidence of coped in louisiana which concerns me and should concern all of us especially when you put it into the context of the variants that are out there our baseline numbers however continue to be low and in the grand scheme of things relatively flat as you'll see shortly and we've made decisions in the past on very high baseline numbers as a reason to keep restrictions and mitigation measures in place even if we had a couple of weeks where the trajectory had been improving and so with basically flat or small increases with a very low and stable baselines i've decided that we are going to take some steps in further reducing restrictions and mandatory mitigation measures another positive trend is the very steep decline in coca deaths of people 75 and older almost vaccinated group and it's now been more than a month since louisiana opened up actually in eligibility that everyone 16 and older regardless of occupation regardless of any underlying health condition we were one of the first states to do that today i can report 26 of louisianans are fully vaccinated and that includes more than 67 of those who are 65 and older now on the one hand we're very thankful that that number of people have chosen to be vaccinated on the other i can tell you that's not where we need to be we're going to have to continue to work hard to increase those numbers but it is a good start especially for our older and more vulnerable populations so taking all this into account we're going to be making some changes to the proclamation i signed it a few minutes ago goes into effect tomorrow and being at that for 28 days instead of a blanket mask mandate we'll be allowing local leaders and business owners to set their own policies regarding mass and of course that's not any real change in the law uh private property owners always get to do things like that that are more restrictive and certainly local political leaders have always had the ability to be more restricted as well i will tell you that because of a federal mandate that mass are still going to be required across the state of louisiana on public transit it will still be required in many state buildings and at k-12 schools in consultation with superintendent brumley and others in k-12 education and colleges and universities and then all license all healthcare facilities licensed by ldh because you have certainly have a preponderance or a large number of individuals in those settings who are vulnerable to the disease based on their age and or health condition and that does include nursing homes which i think everybody can agree especially since it was early in the pandemic 40 of all deaths were happening in nursing homes but i will tell you i am very heartened at the improvements that we have made in nursing homes and i think you're going to see some slides a little bit from dr kenner that will illustrate that for state buildings the mass mandate will stay in place however the head of an agency may opt out in writing to the secretary of the department of health and just put a clear sign up at the doors that they have opted out even if even if they were to hop out obviously people have the ability to wear a mask inside that building should they choose to do so and i would recommend that they do that all of my cabinet agencies will be keeping mass mandates in their buildings it was just yesterday that i received a report of a dcfs worker who actually died from cooking and so we're going to we're going to keep the mass mandate on in buildings that are controlled by state agencies that work for me we know that mass work the evidence is clear the science is well established now and we've seen a very positive impact on our state but at the same time we've had a mass mandate in place since the middle of july of last year i think it's now intuitive for people to wear a mask in order to protect themselves in higher risk settings and also to protect others and you may remember that early on when mass was first recommended it was all about protecting others and then they realized that there's actually a benefit to the wear of the mask because they receive achieve some protections from the virus as well fortunately we have a lot more tools for slowing the spread of code into the controlling the impact of coping as well than we did even a few months ago and these include better treatments and most importantly several highly safe and effective vaccines three pfizer moderna and johnson johnson all of which are available today in louisiana and again anyone 16 and over is eligible to receive a vaccine and just like other states that have lifted the mass mandates it's not an end to mask wearing it's not an end to recommendations that people wear masks especially if they are vulnerable if they're unvaccinated or if they live with people who are unbe who are vulnerable and unvaccinated but i think it is a reflection of where we are at this stage of the pandemic and i saw something the other day dr cantor uh showed it to me and i wanted to relate it to the public all the people of louisiana uh that if it's a rule of thumb to try to determine in in a particular situation whether you are relatively safe and and when in doubt first thing you ask is everyone around me vaccinated and you may or may not know the answer to that question and there's a good chance you won't know so then you you if you don't know or you're unsure use the two out of three rule in order to slow the spread make sure that you are as safe as you can be make sure your activities meets two of the three following conditions outdoors distance or mast and if you're outdoors in your distance you don't need to wear a mask but if one of those two things isn't present then and you want to be safe you need to wear a mask i also ask all louisianans to make sure that they are considerate of businesses and other settings where the owners or maybe a corporate policy or whatever will require that that particular business still have a mask mandate in place i i will tell you that i can i will continue to wear a mask uh when in public uh when i am close to to folks and i don't know that they've all been vaccinated and so forth i think it's the right thing to do for public health it's also the respectful thing to do and am i vaccinated yes i am fully vaccinated but dr cantor briefs on breakthrough cases all the time and there is no guarantee that i or anybody else fully vaccinated won't contract the disease or become contagious and and so especially if i'm around people who are not vaccinated i will and in small groups then i will feel the need to to continue to wear a mask the new proclamation also eases some restrictions on live music allows some businesses like salons to reopen their waiting rooms and waiting areas and removes outdoor limitations on on crowds indoors you know event centers theaters conference facilities they will be able to choose between a 75 percent occupancy capacity which is more than they've had up to any point this far while social distancing or they can choose a hundred percent capacity uh with masks with a mass mandate in place for all indoor sporting events capacity is limited 75 percent similarly with social distancing or the individuals in charge of that venue can go to a hundred percent if they want to have a mass mandate for live music new new regulations will require 10 feet of space between the stage and the audience and and so that that will obviously become something that is more readily available i want to point out that social distancing masking are still recommended by both the state of louisiana and by the cdc and there were a number of bills that you will recall that were passed by the legislature last year that i signed into law that confer liability protections to k-12 schools businesses and so forth with respect to claims about individuals contracting cobia in those locations but those protections are only available if the school the business and so forth is following cdc recommendations there's nothing in the mass mandate that changes that law and so businesses need to understand schools need to understand if you want to enjoy those protections from liability you need to continue to adhere to those cdc recommendations i invite joe up i do want to go through today's numbers we are reporting 433 new cases of covet on 23 545 new tests it's a one-day snapshot and and the percent positivity in any given day really doesn't mean anything but when you look at it uh in the context of other days it can start to tell you something but that's a 1.8 percent positivity uh percentage for the cases that are being reported today the test reported in the month of april is right at 462 000 not as high as we were previously especially in the months of december and january and so forth but it's still a robust amount of testing especially relative to other states neighboring us and well in excess of the amount of tests that we need in order to to have a clear idea of what's happening around the state especially when you look at that percent positivity i did want to point out on this chart that you can see that louisiana is now number 30 in the country on confirmed cases per capita if you will remember back in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic starting louisiana was number one for a long time and so i want to thank the people of louisiana i want to thank all of our experts and and the folks at the department of health and um all all of the uh medical providers and and so forth because with the work that we've done since then uh we've actually moved from number one to number 30 among the the 50 states and the district of columbia and that that is was not certainly not easy to do but it's an indication of the degree to which we've been able to more or less manage our response to cobid 19 up to now and i do want to point out too that that we are there is no guarantee that our state or any other state or as a country that we don't go backwards and that is especially true if we don't get our vaccination numbers up you can see some other states that are not doing as well as we are there are certainly other countries in the world that are not doing as well as we are look to brazil look to india uh for example um but i am confident that that the steps we are taking today are the right things to do uh sadly we are reporting 10 additional deaths today and we're at a total now of 10 352. there are 308 individuals hospitalized that's down 11 from yesterday 46 of those are on mechanical ventilators and that's down one from yesterday's report so i'm going to turn it over to dr cantor now he'll come up and go over some more information with you all as normal i would ask that if you have questions for dr cantor ask those of him before he leaves the podium and then once he leaves i'll come back up wrap up the press conference and take your questions thank you good afternoon thank you governor on behalf of the department of health and secretary phillips and thank you for your leadership now and uh throughout this ordeal it's been about 13 and a half months since we had our first case of cova diagnosed in louisiana and thankfully we are in a much different place than we were back then the overarching trend of the data that i'm going to present to you in a moment is that as an absolute number the amount of covid circulating in louisiana is considerably less than it was and that makes for a safer environment low risk or lower risk does not mean no risk and that is why while the mandate of masking is being removed in a number of settings the public health recommendation of masking very much remains and i'm going to talk a little bit more about how and why that is um next slide please every time that we um advise the governor on a renewed proclamation we present the epidemiologic data that we track in the department of health and what we see really across all the measures that we look at is historic lows throughout the 13 and a half months that we've been responding to and sacrificing because of the coveted pandemic i'm going to walk through some of that data right now on the top left you'll see a graph that represents covert-like illness this is the percent of all emergency department visits that are attributable to covet-like symptoms this is analogous to how we track flu influenza every year and we peaked um right around christmas and new year's have declined steadily since then and now have been relatively flat for the past five or six weeks on the top left you'll see incidents which is the number of new cases diagnosed or people that test positive unique people that test positive unduplicated every day rolled over a seven day rolling average you can see the three spikes that we had in louisiana the initial spike in march and april the summer surge in july and august a very very large christmas new year's spike and then sustained progress since then to a very low baseline level in louisiana we have seen the beginnings of a little bit of an uptick over the past week or so but overall that level the amount of covet out there the amount of coveted being diagnosed every day is at a very low point for the state of louisiana we are currently counting 64 cases of covert per 100 000 residents over a seven day period the cdc marks as high anything above 100. we're at 64 over a hundred thousand on the bottom left you'll see a compound graph that i'm going to walk through the bars the bar graph the orange bars on the bottom represent percent positivity or the percent of all tests are all cases that are found positive uh last week we reported our result to be 3.5 as of now and this is will be reflected in the dashboard update tomorrow at noon we are down to 2.8 positivity which is a very very low number historic low number for louisiana on that same graph the la purple line on top is testing volume at the moment we are ranking at 149 tests per 10 000 residents over a seven day period in march as the governor mentioned we had 527 000 tests conducted on april to date we've reported 462 000 tests conducted you can see the testing volume uh has gone down noticeably since that surge in christmas and new year's one of the things about testing is that more cases typically be get more testing when you have more cases out there you have more exposures more reason for other people to get tested people have symptoms more it's being transmitted and more people get tested so we typically do see testing volume decline as cases as transmission goes down as well if you look around regionally we think we're doing a good job with with testing really the point of this is to have enough visibility to have confidence in these pre these numbers and these projections when you don't do enough testing you can't trust your data that much you feel like you're somewhat blinded we are doing a significant amount of testing in louisiana and that gives confidence to the conclusions that we can draw from this data probably most notably is the bottom right graph which is the number of hospitalized covered patients at any given point in time in hospitals throughout louisiana currently we went down today 11 hospitalized patients to 308 that's almost a a new low for us i think we got close to or just broke 300 a couple weeks ago but um just at that christmas and new year's search that peak all the way on the right side of that graph we hit a high for louisiana of 2035 hospitalized patients across the state and we have gone down precipitously and steadily since then to 308. this is as a result of two things really number one transmission has gone down across the state number two vaccinations have gone up particularly vaccinations people who are vulnerable likely to be hospitalized have gone up that's a very reassuring number to get our hospitalizations down steadily to a number like 308. the governor had mentioned some rankings compared to other states we get weekly reports from the white house that gives data for louisiana and also compares us to other states across the country i want to run through a couple rankings with you right now based on the late the latest white house weekly report we are 13th lowest in the nation for new cases day on day we are 11th lowest in the nation for percent positivity and that's with doing a decent amount of testing too we are sixth lowest in the nation for hospitalizations i think the people of louisiana have done a good job controlling the spread of kovid it's been the result of a lot of hard work a lot of sacrifices but we have gotten to a police that is much better than where we were certainly this time last year the other thing that's particularly changed from this point last year is we now have the strongest possible tool to protect ourselves and protect our families and that's the three vaccines that the governor mentioned the pfizer vaccine the madarina vaccine and the johnson johnson vaccine for the bulk of this pandemic we did not have those and we were all vulnerable and susceptible we have these tools now and that is an absolute gift it is the hope and the goal and the driving aim of the department of health to encourage more people in louisiana to avail themselves of those tools make no mistake we have the tools now to protect ourselves and protect our families and the reason why we can say that is because without a shred of doubt vaccines work evidence is mounting the the strongest evidence now actually comes from the nation of israel and looking at how they've really driven transmission into the ground through mass vaccination vaccinations work they drive down transmission and they make people safer that is not cl any more clear than it has been in nursing homes across louisiana next slide is if you look at the nursing home graph over here there's a number of new cases diagnosed in nursing homes over time and we've marked out when the vaccination clinics were offered in nursing homes across the state and you can see really from the beginning of the vaccination campaign in nursing homes the number of new cases diagnosed has gone down considerably for the past eight weeks we have been in the low double digits between 10 20 maybe 25 cases a week diagnosed in nursing homes that's down from hundreds earlier in the in the pandemic we know the lion's share of mortality is in this type of area this graph right here again as the governor mentioned offers extraordinarily compelling proof of how well these vaccines work and not in any setting this is the highest risk setting there is vulnerable elderly individuals in a close congregate setting where viruses of any nature can spread quickly and look at all the progress that has been made as a result of the vaccine campaign next slide please we're also encouraged by the number of deaths and the decrease in the deaths reported day on day now make no mistake and this goes back to what i said earlier lower risk does not mean no risk and we still have unfortunately people dying from coveting today the governor reported 10. we'll likely report more next time that we talk but the number of deaths as you can see has dropped considerably since about the new years and since we've been able to ramp up the vaccination campaign it's most pronounced in elderly individuals next slide this and what you see here is two lines the gray line is individuals age 60 to 69 the purple line is individuals aged 70 and above the number of deaths that they have day on day and again you can see since the beginning of the new year since the vaccine campaign really picked up fatalities from coveted and elderly individuals have dropped off considerably these vaccines work these vaccines work and they don't just work for people in nursing homes they work for everyone who takes the shot next slide please while risk is considerably lower in louisiana than it has been at other stages this pandemic it is not zero and that is an important point for individuals to understand one of our responsibilities in the department of health is to be as transparent with the data as possible and give people the tools to protect themselves and protect their families this two of three rule is one of those tools if people want to do all they can to ensure that they are safe from coven an easy way to achieve that is to follow this two of three rule and what that means is of the three following items make sure you're always obtaining two of those at least two outdoors distanced and masked if you can obtain two of those three at any point in time you can be relatively assured that you're in a safe environment if you're outdoors and you're distanced you really don't need to wear a mask if you're outdoors and you're masked you can be closer together if you are indoors it's safer to be distanced and masked if you're ever unsure if you are in a safe environment from a covered perspective this two of three rule outdoors distance and mass is a handy way to do a risk analysis for you and for your family more important than this is to get vaccinated because the single best way to protect yourself and protect those around you is to get vaccinated i can tell you as of today there's been 2.7 million doses of vaccine administered in louisiana 32 percent of the state's population has initiated the vaccine series of 18 years of age and older individuals 41.4 percent have initiated for people 65 and above 74.2 percent have initiated the vaccine series 26 percent or 1.2 million louisianans are now fully vaccinated i've completed the vaccine series 33.18 percent of those of us 18 years of old and older have completed the vaccine series and are fully vaccinated 67.6 percent of individuals 65 years of age and older are also fully vaccinated right now we're also and i'm proud to say making steady progress addressing racial disparities in vaccine administrations and this has been a big focus um of ours in the department of health and on behalf of the governor and his team each and every week the percentage of vaccines have gone to black louisianans has increased slowly and we certainly have more work to do without question but each and every week we've been able to report more progress today 21.8 percent of all vaccines administered in the state have gone to black louisianans that's compared to 32.7 percent of the of the population is black so as a percentage of predicted that's 86 predicted by population i wanted to compare that to the national measure because we're doing better than the national average on this nationwide 8.6 of vaccine administrations have gone to black americans while black americans constitute 12.4 percent of the nation's population or 69 percent of predicted compared to the 86 percent predicted in louisiana that's the result of a lot of hard work and i think we should be proud of that yet know there's still much more work to do in that area also the quality of the data on racial demographics is significantly better in louisiana than it is across the country we have racial demographic data in louisiana excuse me on 91 of each vaccine administered in the state nationwide the cdc only has debt on 55 percent of administrations that also is a result of a lot of hard work that was put in by the teams in the office of public health and the department of health we had a white house call with other governors earlier today where we talked about vaccine allotments in the coming weeks and it was reported to us that we were likely to receive the same amount of vaccine next week as we did this week so this current week we are receiving 119 730 doses of vaccine that breaks down to 69 030 doses of fiber these are first doses um 50 700 first doses of moderna we anticipate receiving the same amount next week i happens to be the same amount that we received the week before as well and i can tell you the week before that was matched six thousand five hundred and sixty first doses brought into the state through the retail pharmacy program the bring back louisiana campaign uh continues to push the vaccine efforts forward and i wanted to talk a second about how folks can avail themselves of this first and foremost there's an 855 number that's open until 8 pm 7 days a week that offers a lot of information and tools for people the number of this is eight five five four five three zero seven seven four again it's open every day of the week until 8 pm you can get information about vaccines if you need to be connected to a medical professional to get even more advanced information about the vaccines that can do that you can get information about where vaccines are available in your neighborhood and again as the governor said we have over 1500 vaccine providers across the state right now and more importantly you can actually get help making that appointment so if you have challenges with computers if you don't have internet access you can call that number eight five five four five three zero seven seven four and get an actual appointment made for you at a vaccine provider close to you to date we've had over 2000 people call that number and about 800 have had appointments made for them we are as the governor mentioned tracking very closely the number of breakthrough cases and these are cases positive cases of covid and individuals who have been fully vaccinated who are 14 days or longer out from completing the vaccine series it's important to track these because while vaccines are extraordinarily effective and in this case 95 94 or 95 effective they're not 100 effective and that's one of the reasons why we work so hard to reduce transmission across the board to date in the u.s they're according to the cdc have been 7157 breakthrough cases in louisiana that count stands at 367 breakthrough cases or 0.03 percent of everyone who's fully vaccinated in louisiana of those 367 cases 65 are women 50 of those cases were symptomatic and 21 of those 367 cases have been hospitalized so 0.002 percent of everyone who has been fully vaccinated in louisiana has been a breakthrough case that has been hospitalized that's an extraordinarily low number we continue also to track the variance very closely and this only adds urgency to the vaccine campaign i can tell you as of now this is a similar number that was reported last week of all covid circulating in louisiana 33.3 is the b117 or the uk variant that's lower than the national mark of 44.7 percent it's also lower than some of our larger neighbors for example florida is at 54.6 percent texas is at 44.7 percent we continue to have every reason to believe based on uh data given by the cdc that the three vaccines we have now are highly effective against this variant and the best thing that we can do to protect against that variant is to increase vaccinations across the state we do not have any of the b1357 variant that's the south african variant of all the coveted in the u.s 0.7 is a result of this variant all states in our region except for us and arkansas do have the south african variant similarly we do not yet have any identified cases of the p1 or brazilian variant in the u.s 1.5 percent of all cases of covet is a result of the brazilian variant and in our region all states except for us in alabama have identified a case of this to date it all comes back to the value and the urgency of of vaccination and the point being that lower risk does not mean no risk and the single best way to protect you protect your family means that anyone who's eligible which right now means people 16 years of age and older should get vaccinated as is clear from the data that we showed particularly the nursing home data the effects are profound the effects are profound and save lives so i want to to close again by encourage everyone if you've not been vaccinated please take the time to do so if you have been vaccinated i'll ask again thank you number one you should rest assure that you now have a significant amount of protection but your job is not done and would like you to think of yourself as an ambassador and talk to the folks around you most people that are not yet vaccinated are not adamantly refusing to do so they just have questions i just want to talk to people they just they're not there yet but i think people that have already been vaccinated can help them get there i'd like to ask you personally to try and do that i'll be happy to answer any questions if there are any yeah what's the difference between the amount of burst doses louisiana could have gotten from the federal government and the amount that was actually drawn down for last week i guess it it it's on on a whole on a on a cumulative level is about 85 percent we can get you a more accurate number on the past week or the past two weeks afterwards 0.02 people that got hospitals for hospitalized after vaccinations are those hospitalized for the vaccine effects are hospitalized for covet it's actually 0.002 so of everyone split in decimal points but but it's important of everyone that's been fully vaccinated zero 0.002 percent of those individuals have subsequently been hospitalized because of coven okay we're talking about decimal points i suppose that was point zero three when it comes to just breakthrough cases of all the people who've employed bags that's correct that one that's been been vaccinated fully vaccinated 0.03 have had a breakthrough case great thank you joe i think you've outdone yourself today that was the most information at a granular level that i've heard thus far and and i will tell you that that we're blessed to have you and all the other folks working at ldh who working so hard and so well in closing i want to remind all business owners that they can find additional details specific to their type of business and and so forth at opensafely.la.gov that's opensafely.la.gov that's a website that we've been using for many many months now and i did not intend to or attempt to put out all of the information i also want to speak directly to the people of louisiana and say please don't mistake the easing of the copied 19 mask mandate as a sign that the pandemic is over it is not and we are not on a one-way street moving away from the pandemic either it is still very much a two-way street and we don't want to go in the other direction it is still possible uh and so the the central things we have to do is get vaccinated as soon as we're able in large numbers uh and continue to control the transmission between now and then before the mass mandate was put on in the middle of july we were recommending masking you had businesses out there that were mandating masks that will be the case after this order this proclamation goes into effect tomorrow as well and so i'm encouraging people in in louisiana to understand that though the mass mandate is is lifted by me in most respects there will be businesses that are going to require that you wear a mask there will be some governmental buildings where you're going to be required to wear a mask i hope you will understand that and comply it is the neighborly thing to do if you have questions about the vaccine please reach out to your physician talk to your doctor get your questions answered and there is a good chance that your doctor has access to the vaccine and certainly he or she will know how to get you vaccinated at this time we anticipate the next press conference will be not this coming thursday but next thursday afternoon if we have a need to have one before then or if that changes in any way we will certainly let you know so with that and for the next few minutes or so because we're 45 minutes into this press conference already i will take some questions yes governor you implemented the statewide mass mandate last july what were some of the other factors that went into your decision besides just talking with your health experts to lift it totally pretty much today except for in the governmental buildings and stuff yeah well i would i would take a little issue with what you're saying there but so it's on public transit it's k-12 it's higher education and in some governmental buildings uh and all licensed healthcare settings and by the way i don't want to confuse anybody that won't be in my order but it will be in a public health order that comes out of ldh it is just what i told you what dr cantor told you we we are doing much better uh overall and we have even though we're not where we want to be in terms of the numbers or percentage of people who are vaccinated or who have started their series we're well down that road as well and so i believe now is the time to lift the mandate continuing to encourage people to mask especially if they are unvaccinated especially if they are vulnerable and and i understand uh that that that sounds contradictory that we're going to continue to urge people to wear a mask even though i'm lifting the mandate in most respects but it's really no different than it was before i put the mandate in where we were strongly urging people to to wear a mask even though it wasn't mandated and it was at that point in time before we put the mass mandate in in the session last year for example when the legislature enacted a number of statutes conferring immunity upon businesses and schools if they followed the cdc recommendations which include by the way masking and that continues to be the case today if if they want to enjoy those liability protections i just thought it was it was time to do it and and you you see uh the number of deaths decreasing you see the number of hospitalizations very low and stable i think dr cantor did a great job in fact several of those numbers that he gave you in terms of our national ranking were i was hearing for the first time as you heard him he he teased me a little bit before we came out and told me that he had some some really good ranking information uh but we knew we were doing much better and so it just seems like now is the time to do that and and again i'm hopeful i'm optimistic that the people of louisiana are going to continue to respond and do what's necessary they've done that thus far that's the only way we could get to number 30 in the country in cases per capita after leading the nation for so long at the outset of the pandemic it is with the cooperation of the people of louisiana for which i am very very grateful and yes i am mindful that there are some people who haven't cooperated but clearly we've been able to achieve a significant amount of cooperation here in louisiana yes sir okay well today the house committee approved the bill to legalize recreational marijuana now if this lands on your desk governor edwards i mean what are you doing well as i almost always do i i will take a look at the bill as it arrives on my desk seeing what it contains and and what amendments have been added to it and i'm i'm not going to speculate now on that um but i do uh have great interest in that bill and what it says especially if it does make it up to the fourth floor but i'll take a look at it at that point and and then make sure that you all know exactly how i feel about it yes sir governor um this morning on the white house covet briefing they talked about him in the call with governors uh one of the big focuses was kids in college and universities getting access to shots if they go home and whatnot on the college front obviously last week lsu made this announcement other louisiana universities have as well about not requiring a coven shot for the fall semester um it sounds like lsu said they didn't think they had authority under eua but both private and public universities across the country have been making this decision both ways uh requiring it and not requiring it do you have a thought process on if you'd like to see universities in this state require the vaccine for the fall semester well my thoughts are that everyone's 16 and older ought to get vaccinated that that's my thought that that certainly includes all the people on the college campus whether they're staff and faculty or students and part of the the call this morning with the white house dealt with those students who may get the first shot of a two dose regimen before they leave and would the receiving state administer the second and we're going to make sure that that happens and there's going to be reciprocity all across the country so that so that we will give a second dose here in louisiana to any college student who comes in having received the first dose in another state so that that was a big part of it i will tell you that it is it is no secret that if you want to enroll a child today in k-12 education or if a student wants to enroll in higher education they have to produce a vaccine record i believe at some point in the future when the fda grants full approval to the vaccine to one or more of the vaccines right but right now we're operating under emergency use authorizations but if and when and i believe it will happen at some point i can't give you a timeline that the fda issues full approval then i would expect then that the covid 19 vaccine will become one of those vaccines you're going to have to show for that purpose but we're not there yet and and that's what i understand higher education is talking about the difference between not mandating it now but i'm asking people not to get caught up in all that it is absolutely the right thing to do it's the smart thing to do we don't put the pandemic behind us and especially for those college students who who are going to be traveling around the country because they live somewhere else and they're going to be leaving one of our university campuses and so forth please get vaccinated and some young people um believe that this disease has not had an impact on people their age they are wrong uh there have been young people who who have contracted the disease and had very very serious cases and in fact some have died but the other thing is if you contract the disease you're also contagious and then you're going to be giving it to people out there including your loved ones who may be vulnerable and and so we're asking everyone to get vaccinated and we're working very hard with all the higher education leadership just like we are in every part of our society in louisiana but with higher education leadership in particular to get as many people vaccinated as possible before the current term concludes and those those students may start to travel one more question yes state capital under under your purview in deciding a mass mandate or how does that work the fourth fifth and sixth floors are well well the rec they're going to the the speaker and the president will decide what they do with their portions of the capital that that are under their control my recommendation is to keep the mandate in place that's what we're going to do with the portions of the state capital but also other governmental buildings that are under our control that is for the safety of our employees but also the visiting public it's important to me to know that if someone's going to come in and get a driver's license renewed which they have to do that they will be safe and that the state worker who is sitting at that desk to facilitate that transaction is also going to be safe and that should be the case across the board and i mentioned that just yesterday i learned of our most recent state employee death it was a dcfs worker and so i actually had a number of my cabinet officials come to me to make sure that that we left the mass mandate in place in the buildings where where their employees work and they engage with the public and so that would be my recommendation to to the speaker and to the uh president but they will decide for themselves as will other statewide elected officials look i want to thank you all for continuing to cover this obviously we're in a better place but we're not in the best place the best place is when the pandemic is over that is not today and we don't get there until more people get vaccinated and until we can end the pandemic it is incumbent upon all of us to slow the transmission we are still reporting deaths every single day i have not had a day since early march of last year that we didn't report a death from covet i am looking forward to that day and by the way when we get to that day uh we're still not gonna be where we need to be um but but it will be yet another indication that things continue to improve so thank you all for covering this and i want to finish by doing two things again thanking the people of louisiana for working as hard as they have to help us control the transmission so that we can have the numbers that we showed you today that make this decision possible i also want to ask you please get vaccinated and thirdly continue to lift up our state and one another in prayer but especially those family members of the more than 10 000 people who have died from covid and if we work hard and we work fast and we work smart that number doesn't have to grow much beyond where it is right now in louisiana thank you all and god bless