New hot spots are emerging here in the U.

S.

Among them Louisiana.

Last Sunday, there were 837 confirmed cases in this state.

Today there are over 3300.

Joining me now is the governor of Louisiana, John Bell Edwards and Governor Edwards.

Our condolences to you this morning with this sad announcement that you lost a young staffer to complications from the virus.

33 year old April Done.

She is part of an alarming rise of infections and deaths in Louisiana.

Tell us what you are seeing this morning in your state and again, our condolences.

What?

Thank you very much more than Martin.

It's good to be with you.

Um, we obviously have a spread that is growing faster than we would like to see.

We remain on the trajectory, really To overwhelm our capacity to deliver health care.

By the end of the first week in April, we think the first real issue is gonna be ventilators, and we think it's about the fourth or fifth of April before down in the New Orleans area were unable to put people on ventilators who need him.

And then several days later, we will be out of bed.

Now we're surging our capacity now, both with our existing footprint of hospitals, but also in the convention center down in New Orleans.

And so we're gonna be able to get those beds up.

But but the staffing remains very difficult.

And the ventilators are what we need right now.

You know, we've had orders in for more than 12,000 ventilators, some through the national stockpile on and others to private vendors.

Thus far, over the last several weeks, we've been able to get only 192.

And so we continue to work this extremely hard.

But in the meantime, my message to Louisiana is really no different than the message that you're seeing out of the New York governor of New Jersey Governor.

We need people to practice the mitigation measures we have in place the shelter at home that we have statewide now, eh?

So that we can slow the spread.

We cannot have everybody presenting to the hospital at once, which is what will happen if we don't slow the spread.

We should know in the next three or four days whether the stay at home water that I put in place is gonna have the intended effect.

But we know that mitigation works, but it only works to the extent that it's actually complied with.

And so we're hopeful that these that the curve does start to flatten here in the next few days.

But we're in a very, very difficult place here in Louisiana with the number two case count per capita in the United States.

And I'm sorry, Number three for capital case count number two with per capita deaths.

And so they were in a very difficult place.

Martha and governor, you said in your press conference on Thursday.

We are not going to enforce our way through this, meaning keeping people home.

People need to comply, You said if the outbreak continues to worsen and residents don't comply, will you consider stronger enforcement measures?

Oh, sure.

And when I said that, it's not like we don't have law enforcement out going to businesses and telling them whether they are supposed to be closed or not, or this, or if you have a large group of people that they're telling them that they have to leave, but we have 4.7 million people.

We have tens of thousands of businesses we have 4.5 1000 churches on.

So my point to the people of Louisiana is, Look, don't look for us to come in force this.

We need you to take it upon yourself to comply, because, really, that's the only way that we're going to be successful.

And so it's not that we're not going to enforce these measures at all, But but we shouldn't be be made to enforce.

It misses the point that I was trying to deliver to the Louisiana people and governor Mardi Gras is now believed to be one of the sources of Louisiana's outbreak, Dr Fauci said.

You're starting.

Your state likely should have issued a stay at home order sooner.

In Orleans, Mayor said just yesterday it wasn't canceled because the federal government said it was contained.

Is that the reason?

Well, look, there was never any hint from anyone to me or to the mayor of New Orleans that there should be any consideration to downsizing or canceling Marty Girl.

I think if you look back there were about 15 cases in the country, all of which were tied directly to travel indirectly to travel.

And there was never any hint of this.

And if you'll go back, you will see that the federal government was saying things were well under control.

And so this is some Monday morning quarterback and going on.

And quite frankly, I believe it's likely that that Marty Graw contributed to the seeding of the virus in around New Orleans.

A 1,000,000 1/2 people just 13 days before the first confirmed case here on March the ninth.

But that's looking back right now.

We need to spend our time, my energy.

We need to be focused on doing what we can do right now and going forward on.

And I'm sure that that somebody is going to do this.

A study about the impact of Mardi Gras on this particular public health emergency later.

And thank you very much for joining us this morning, Governor.

And we wish you all the best.

Hi, everyone.

George Stephanopoulos Here.

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