Idaho Governor Brad Little Coronavirus Briefing Transcript April 15

Brad Little: (06:44)
Thank you for joining our virtual press briefing. I want to start by thanking and recognizing Idahoan citizens for their profound efforts to slow the spread of coronavirus in our state. I also want to thank all who work in the state and [inaudible 00:07:01] stay-at-home order, I’ve witnessed Idahoans stepping up and making the hard decisions and personal sacrifices to entirely change how they work, live and parent. They have done so out of care and concern for themselves, their families, friends and communities. Thank you, Idahoans for doing the the right thing. We’ll continue to keep [inaudible 00:07:35] fight coronavirus together and I appreciate your widespread support of your neighbors and communities.

Idaho had its first for our case on Friday, March 13th, just over one month ago. Today, we have 1,464 lab-confirmed cases, 39 deaths and community spread of the virus in nearly every corner of the state. We are sad for those who are affected as well as their families and loved ones.

There is no vaccine today. There is no therapeutic to relieve symptoms. We are far from achieving herd immunity to this virus. But statewide order is working. Your efforts are working. We can only imagine how many more cases and deaths we would have today if we hadn’t sacrificed together to slow the spread. We are truly seeing a flattening of the curve.

Today, I’m announcing that after intensive consultation and deliberation, I’ve decided to extend the statewide stay-at-home order to April 30th, with some exceptions to begin to allow our economy to reopen safely. This action is consistent with the guidance President Trump and CDC have given the country.

Idahoans should continue to practice all the behaviors that they’ve been doing since March 25th. However, my amended order effective today allows some previously designated non-essential facilities and services to reopen and offer curbside delivery services between now and April 30th. In addition, my amended order requires out-of-state travelers to self-quarantine for 14 days after entering our state. Excluded from this are people performing essential services for those who live in one state and work or gain essential services in another state.

Many previously identified non-essential businesses can also prepare to reopen after April 30th by developing operational plans over the next two weeks to do the following things: Maintain social distancing for staff and patrons, provide adequate sanitation and protective cover for employees and patrons, limit the number of people in the business at a time, direct the flow of people in the operation, and offer curbside and pickup delivery. To be clear, this excludes some non-essential businesses where people simply cannot safely social distance such as nightclubs, bars and restaurants for dining in, indoor gyms and recreational facilities, hair and nail salons and public events and gatherings.

Believe me, nobody wants to get Idaho back to work more than me. Our goal is for most businesses to open after the end of the month, but with the understanding that it may not be possible if there’s an upward trend in severe COVID-19 cases in Idaho, which we now admit. We will evaluate the order again based on the facts and the circumstances at the end of the month. My amended order and other updated informational materials will be available at coronavirus.Idaho.gov after this press conference.

Here’s what it comes down. Idaho will be better positioned for economic, strong economic comeback because we’re making difficult changes in how we live and work in the short term. Science tells us if we don’t time these measures right, then we can worsen the outcome for citizens health and the economy weeks and months-

… citizens’ health and the economy weeks and months down the road. We know that continued mitigation efforts like the ones we’re practicing now and will continue to practice are effective in slowing the spread of coronavirus, reducing contact rates. We do see in delaying the peak of the outbreak saving lives and flattening occurring. If we fail in these mitigation measures, we can expect a second wave of infections to occur. Preventive measures will be necessary until a vaccine or effective therapeutics become available. I am continuing to push for expanded access to testing. Testing requires trained health professionals, adequate testing equipment, and lab capacity to produce utmost confidence in the credibility of the testing. We are working with our healthcare providers to make any and all efforts to achieve widely available testing. A robust economic recovery will require citizen and consumer confidence. Consumers want to know that businesses will adhere to practices to assure their health and safety.

We may have to go through phases of loosening and tightening of these measures until we have a vaccine, therapeutics, effective evidence of immunity build-up, and until we can expand access to testing. Everyone must ramp up their efforts and do two things, social distancing and wearing face masks and coverings in public places. To get to where we want to be, even our everyday actions, shopping and working, requires increased social distancing and face covering. It is my job to ensure the health and safety of our citizens. That is what I’m doing by putting in place these measures.

I also want Idahoans to know that I deeply care about economic prosperity, getting back to work and our children getting back to school. More than anything, I want Idaho to know how much confidence I have in our people to be part of the solution to this global pandemic. It’s no surprise to me that we have more economic prosperity in Idaho than any place in the country before all this started. What we’re doing now is difficult, but I have no doubt Idaho will be one of the leaders in recovering from coronavirus.

Again, thank you the people of Idaho for doing an incredible job protecting your neighbors and yourselves by following the statewide stay-at-home order. We are truly a state made up of people who care much about each other. With that, I’ll take your questions.

Maher Kawash: (15:15)
Hi governor. Maher Kawash here with KXY News. You’d mentioned that some businesses which were previously non-essential will now be considered essential. Which ones would that be?

Well, the criteria that we stated were that if you’re a business that falls under all of those criteria that you can offer curbside, that you can offer that service just like we do with restaurants now without violating any of the good healthcare practices, then retailers that were basically not on the list before would now qualify.

Clark Corbin: (16:05)
Governor, Clark Corbin with Idaho Education News. Thanks for doing this. As you know, your State Board of Education is going to make a decision about criteria for reopening schools tomorrow. Does your new order affect this at all or intersect with that decision in any way?

Clark, there’s nothing specifically in this order that I’m going to sign today that has any bearing on … I just expect the state board and the department to do their, in conjunction with the school boards and the trustees, to do the right thing.

Maher Kawash: (16:44)
And governor, you mentioned travelers who leave the state for non-essential business have to quarantine for 14 days. How is that going to be enforced?

Well, most of the states around us have language that’s somewhat similar. I know Utah has it and other states have it. The message is if, and I hear this a lot, particularly from the resort communities, they’re concerned about all these other states are shut down. Go to Idaho, and of course a lot of our issues, we don’t need people coming here that are coming from a place that has wide community spread, and in essence going backwards on the great progress we’re making. So if you’re from another state and you’re coming here and it’s not covered by the language that I addressed, we’re asking you to self-quarantine. I believe that those communities that are most concerned about it mainly are resort communities. They’re asking for that action and we’re doing that to comply with their wishes.

Don Day: (17:50)
Governor, this is Don with BoiseDev here in Boise. What do you tell businesses who may not be able to reopen because they just can’t bear the brunt of all these challenges that they’re facing right now?

Well, I am incredibly sympathetic. We still don’t have our arms around the magnitude of the income replacement programs from the federal government, and I’m hopeful that that’s successful. But I can’t open up some of those businesses that fall into that category that have lots of opportunities for community spread until we get further down the road. This [inaudible 00:18:37], the stay-at-home order we’re under now and the stay-at-home order that’s going to be effective today, those in combination should get us to a point where those are going to be able to open up sooner. But we’ll do all we can, work with the Small Business Administration, working with the Department of Labor, working with every everyone else to ameliorate the negative effect. But I’m very sympathetic to their issues, but good epidemiology requires us to go through this and the lab process to make sure that all the good work we’ve done so far we don’t go backwards.

James Dawson: (19:11)
Governor, James Dawson from Boise State Public Radio. In light of the letter that you received from Speaker Scott Bedke and emails from other Republican lawmakers telling you to give up control of the coronavirus response to the public health districts, are you concerned about them undermining your effort to try to keep the people of Idaho safe and encourage social distancing?

[crosstalk 00:19:36] we don’t go backwards.

James Dawson: (19:38)
Governor, James Dawson from Boise State Public Radio. In light of the letter that you received from-

You’re on doublespeak, James. But anyway, I’m always concerned and interested in the opinions of the duly-elected legislators in Idaho, but as I view my responsibility from a statewide basis, I have to do what’s right for the safety of the people in the state of Idaho, and I’m keenly aware there’s places in the state where to their knowledge, they don’t have any spread. But because we don’t have enough testing, we are not fully confident of that, and the other issue is those are the areas with the least amount of healthcare capacity, where that red line is at the lower level of those areas, and that makes what we’re doing even make more sense. I always take their advice and counsel that I got to do what I got to do for the safety of Idaho.

Taylor Viydo: (20:41)
Governor, going off that question, Taylor Viydo here with KREM 2 News, Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, any regards or concerns from law enforcement officials such as the sheriff in Bonner County challenging your stay-at-home order and worries about that being undermined in that part of the state?

Well, obviously, duly elected, I just, as I responded to the first question, I’m always interested in their input. Subsequent to that, I got a letter from the entire Sheriff’s Association supporting what I’m doing. But I’m sensitive to the input that I have from other places, but again, I got to do what I got to do for the good of the people.

Jacob Scholl: (21:34)
Governor, this is Jacob Scholl with the Idaho Statesman here in town. What is the criteria that you and your office used to come to this decision? What were all the factors that went into this decision today?

well, I will let Director Jeppesen talk about it, but I will tell you, lots. This is such a dynamic process. If you listened to Anthony Fauci last night, one of the things he said was this virus, and I should have Dr. Holland talk about it, it’s very humbling. Some of the things that we know about viral infections are not playing out in this. What’s our immunity? So we try to take all this data, put it into a decision criteria and play it through this model right here. How do we lower the curve? We have to raise healthcare capacity, we have to lower that, the testing, personnel concerns, personal protective equipment, where we are around the state, what are we learning from other states. What’s our weak link? Is it personal protective equipment? Is it reagents for testing? Those are all the factors that went into it, and we’ve got enough PPE today, but if we have a spike or we have the capacity to do more testing, we may not have. T.

hose are all bits and pieces. I wish I could tell you there was one little algebraic formula we made the calculation, but I’ll let a Director Jeppesen, because he chairs the Coronavirus Working Group talk a little more about it [inaudible 00:23:29].

Dave Jeppesen: (23:28)
Thank you, governor. Yeah. This is a very complex and fluid situation. We follow the best science we can. That science is evolving and changing as we learn more in the country as well as in the state, and just to build on what the governor said, it’s a number of factors that go into that. One is how well the stay-at-home order is being followed, and we’re very fortunate that many, many Idahoans have follow the guidance and direction around social distancing, around staying home if they’re sick. They’ve got good hand hygiene, which allows us to see the number of cases-

[inaudible 00:24:02], which allows us to see the number of cases increasing at a lesser rate. That was an important factor.

Obviously another important factor in this whole equation is what’s happening with our healthcare capacity. We’ve been very fortunate so far that our healthcare capacity has been sufficient for the need that we have. We want to keep it that way. And the other factor that goes in, and the governor already mentioned this, is we do not have a vaccine or a therapeutic yet, and we do not believe we’ve reached the level of what’s often referred to as herd immunity that would protect the population at large.

And so that’s what left us with today a direction to continue the behaviors that the Idahoans have been so good at, which is protecting each other by social distancing at six feet, wearing masks when they’re in public places that are going to bring them in close proximity, many businesses that are essential have implemented many practices. We need to keep doing that. And in fact, it’s really important we keep doing that because the more we do that, the more that we make sure that our healthcare capacity is sufficient, and it allows us to continue to open up the businesses that can operate.

So really the best thing that each Idahoan can do is practice social distancing, follow all those guidance, wear a mask if you’re out, and that allows the businesses to continue to open. It’s a multi-variable equation that has many, many factors.

[inaudible 00:00:25:20].

Dr. Hahn: (25:21)
Thank you. Yeah, I absolutely agree with what the governor and director have said. And I just want to hone in on one particular feature that we think is very, very, very important. The governor has alluded to our capacity of our hospitals, but the other half of that consideration is we do not want to see people getting severely ill. We don’t want to see people getting admitted to hospital, and we’re watching that very closely.

Dr. Hahn: (25:47)
We have information on people getting hospitalized. One just went up on our website yesterday, I believe, was posted. You can see it on the coronavirus.idaho.gov page, which is showing the number of people being seen in the emergency departments around the state. Our system captures 93% of emergency department visits around the state, so we can keep a close eye on how many of those are coming in with COVID-like illness and how many of them are getting admitted to the hospital, which of course is an indicator of our severely ill persons. So we’re watching that very closely, and if we see that start to go up, that’ll be a big concern to us.

Dr. Hahn: (26:21)
Secondarily, we’ve been working with a lot of the hospitals to get more robust information from them, not just if they came in and got admitted, but how many of them are in the intensive care? How are they faring? Are they being discharged? And we have that information [inaudible 00:26:35] in two routes. One is directly from those hospitals. Some of them are sending us that directly, and they’re also completing a survey called the Idaho Resource Tracking System, daily, which tells us the burden. So those three things are our best indicators right now for how many Idahoans are being severely impacted, which is really an important measure for us.

Thank you.

Speaker 4: (27:02)
Governor, one more question for you. I’m sure you’ve seen the surrounding states like Washington, California, and Oregon building a plan together to eventually reopen the states. Obviously you guys were not included in those talks. Is there a reason you guys think that is, and how are you guys going to go about reopening things once this comes about?

Well, I just laid out a framework for what’s going to take place at the end of these two weeks. [inaudible 00:03:32]. I think I’ve got a call with Governor Brown in the next day or two and I’m delighted if they… to communicate about it. But we are vastly different than the three states on the west coast because their concern is predicated on large urban areas where they have a lot of mass transit.

We’re different. Some of the questions that we’ve had so far about rural Idaho. And so I’m always interested in cooperating with other states so that collectively we can address this issue, but there is quite a bit of difference between Idaho and those other three states. But I have no problem cooperating on data, cooperating on research, cooperating on supplies, but we are pretty different than those other three states.

Speaker 4: (28:33)
Are you worried about any elected officials like we’ve seen in Bonner County who have kind of opposed the stay at home order?

Yes, I mean, I want people to comply with the stay at home order, and I try and do all I can from outreach to the people. I’ve got great help around me. I’ve got a great team, so they understand that. I get it. Somewhere in my DNA, there’s some libertarian bones, and that’s my nature. But this particular issue requires an incredible amount of leadership to make these hard decisions to get over this. This is what a chief executive, this is what your job is, is to collectively look at the best thing to do for your community, and I’m going to continue to do that.

Speaker 5: (29:25)
Governor, leadership in Boise and Ada County has expressed frustration at the inability to get modeling data from the state. And Boise’s mayor yesterday came out during a city council and was very upset that information about a death in a skilled care facility here in Boise went to the media, but didn’t come to the city. How do you think the communication’s going with cities and counties, and are there places that can be improved?

Well, I’m on the phone with them. We reached out to a lot of them this morning. My staff was on the phone with them yesterday. They have a call with them every week. If one of your loved one dies, you can go post that on social media and tell everybody. We have certain legal criteria that we have to go through to be compliant with laws, and to be compliant with the rules, with HIPAA, with just good sense from people.

I mean, everybody, and a lot of you on this call, are dying to know what the data is at this very moment. And we want to do that, but we’ve got certain criteria. Has it been perfect so far? None of us, the three of us up here think it’s been perfect. We’re trying to make it better every day. And I can’t promise anybody that somebody that dies in the next five minutes in an assisted living center, we’re going to make that available to everybody until we go through the proper protocols. Do you want to add to that Dr. Hahn?

Dr. Hahn: (31:02)
Yeah, thank you. I’ll just say that under normal circumstances, as you may know, people die in Idaho of various conditions. Sometimes they may be of interest, and we will release information sometimes. For example, you’re all aware that every year we talk about how many flu deaths we’ve had, and we try to make that an important item for people to be aware of, so that they are aware that flu is impacting us.

Dr. Hahn: (31:26)
So we certainly try to put information out there. On the other hand, we have, as the governor alluded to, a very strong obligation to protect the privacy of the individuals, so it is always considered to the decision how we release that information. You do know that we do put the total number of deaths up on our website. And as we’ve had more deaths, we’ve been able to actually release information, for example, on the race and ethnicity. Knowing that that’s a big concern around the country right now, we’ve added that to our information so people can be aware of the race and ethnicity, and not by individual of course, but as a group.

Dr. Hahn: (32:04)
So we are trying very hard to find that balance as are the local public health districts. And that may evolve over time, we understand the public interest in this issue. But our nature and our history has always been to work very hard to protect the privacy of individuals while giving the public the oversight, the big picture, on what we do know.

Bill Spence: (32:31)
Governor, this is Bill Spence with the Lewiston Tribune. I’m curious, with your new order today, do you have an estimate of kind of the percentage of the economy that you think now can get back to work?

Well, the 14 day order now, the group that’s impacted in this next 14 days is not going to be a huge number. But what’s more important is the guidance that we’re giving to people for the next period of time. Good epidemiology, as I’ve been taught by Dr. Hahn, goes in 14 day increments because then you can see an action taken today as we did when we did our stay at home order 21 days ago, now we’re able to see the results on it.

This order today will open part of it up. The guidance that we’re giving, and that’s why we’re putting it out today, is for people to be able to plan, people to be able to procure PPE, people to be able to reformulate how their business works. The bigger percentage will be in the next [inaudible 00:33:49] of loosening if everything goes as we expect and as we hope.

Joey: (33:54)
[inaudible 00:33:56]. This is Joey from KTVB. Wanted to ask you, you mentioned that some non-essential businesses will have to come up with plans to reopen after April 30th. Are those plans going to have to be approved by Idaho Health and Welfare, by your office, or will they just have to have this plan, and then they can reopen by themselves without any sort of approval?

We hope that we’ll have enough meat on the bones with the guidance that they’ll be able to do that. And that was one of the reasons we announced it today, to give us, to give the health districts, to give the cities the time to put in a system to make sure they do that. The health districts today, one of their jobs is to go around to restaurants and make sure that the restaurants are complying with food safety rules. The health districts are pretty loaded right now, but they would be a good place for cities, for counties, for businesses to ask about that guidance. And we will get the health districts more resources to do that.

Joey: (35:22)
Governor, can you give examples… Governor, can you give some examples of some nonessential businesses with your previous order that are now able to open up under this new order?

Well, some of the garden shops, some of the flower shops, jewelry stores, I could go through a whole list of them. What we’ve heard from them is, we can provide the same security as restaurants that you’re allowing if you take home, if you’ll let us do that. And those are examples. You have any more [inaudible 00:12:01]?

Sure, it’s…

You have anymore [inaudible 00:00:02]?

Sure. It’s really those businesses that are currently on the nonessential list that have some type of ability to take care of those transactions, either through delivery or curbside pickup. So pet grooming is a topic that’s come up a lot here in the governor’s office, or businesses that have transacting goods might be an excellent choice. The thought there is that similar to a restaurant, we don’t want people going inside and milling in those spaces and congregating there. But if they can transact either through delivery or through curbside drop off or pick up, those are the businesses that will be able to do something different over the next two weeks.

Betsy: (36:50)
How many more businesses will be able to reopen?

Betsy, I have no idea. I have no idea. It’ll be a class of businesses. Some of them … The answer is the same answer as how many people were going to be curbside restaurants or curbside delivery of groceries, food. They did that individually as businesses. So I don’t have a spreadsheet of businesses are there in that category, just like we didn’t have a spreadsheet for the city of Boise or Blaine County of businesses who were going to go out and change their business model to where they can deliver. So I have no idea.

Speaker 8: (37:40)
What’s your message to the residents who are kind of getting restless, staying home, especially when you see some lower numbers, despite the lack of data that’s reporting? What’s your message to those residents that are getting restless?

My message is that we are making incredible progress because of the current behavior of the people of Idaho. And if you look at other states, you look at other areas, you look at what we’re doing here, continuing to do that is the right thing to do. Continuing to self-isolate as much as possible. But go ahead and go out and go for a Walker or run or go somewhere, but maintain social distancing. Do all the things you’re doing. We are waiting for testing. We are waiting for therapeutics. We are waiting for vaccine. We’re waiting for healthcare capacity. We’re waiting for all these other things to catch up where we can continue to expand. And I hate to tell people to be patient in these trying times, but that’s the message.

Betsy: (38:48)
Governor, I’m trying to understand the difference between what happens in the next few weeks and what happens in the time period following that. So during the next two weeks, some non-essential businesses that can open with curbside delivery and social distancing can do so. What changes then after that next two weeks? What more can occur then? Or have you decided?

Well we anticipate there’ll be another wave of people and some of them will comply with the current, I guess loosening if you want to call it that. But you know, the issue is when Director Jeppesen signs this order in a little bit, a lot of them at one time will be able to reformulate how they’re doing things so we can work these out. So I know you always want the exact number, the exact time. We don’t know.

Speaker 9: (39:49)
Governor, Taylor with Crime Two in Coeur d’Alene Spokane again. Some of the state parks in North Idaho have said they’ve seen an influx of visitors from Washington coming over the border to enjoy state parks. A message to those people coming from Washington into the state.

Well the specific part of that speech that I just gave talked specifically about that, and we are hearing from those communities about that the people adjacent to those state parks are Idaho citizens go there and they look in the parking lot, and it’s full of license [crosstalk 00:40:29]

Speaker 9: (40:29)
Do you have a message to those people coming from Washington into the state?

The specific part of that speech that I just gave-. We’re still working this thing out. Let’s see, this press conference is a lot like some of those other questions you asked. In an ideal world it would work perfectly, but unfortunately we don’t have an ideal world or an ideal venue to do online press conferences, but we’re going to get better just like we are about everything else. It looks like Kevin’s in the queue. I see all his trophies behind him on the wall. He’s a bragger. We don’t have an ideal world or-

Jacob Shoal: (41:52)
Governor, this is Jacob Shul at The Statesman again. Is the state doing anything to increase [inaudible 00:41:59] for health districts in some of the counties that are harder hit like Ada County and [inaudible 00:42:05] County?

Kevin: (42:05)
Can you hear me?

Speaker 10: (42:13)
And I’m very sorry. I couldn’t quite understand the question. There was some interference. Could you just repeat that? I’m sorry.

I think the question was are we doing things to help districts with more resources in these areas that are having …

Speaker 10: (42:25)
Okay. Yes. Thank you. So yeah, so resources. Yes, the public health districts, as the governor alluded to, they are under a lot of stress, increased work, and they are working incredibly hard. I’ve had many conversations with them on weekends, late in the evening. We are working very hard to get them additional funding that should be coming out hopefully within the next week, so they can hire more help. We know they’re very interested in doing that, and that’s one way that we can help them, to give relief to some of their staff.

Speaker 10: (42:58)
We’ve been very interested in and talking with Utah already. And some of you may have heard the story this morning on a BSU radio. I did at least. Or see it through other sources, that Utah has been stepping up their contact tracing. And we also recognize the importance of that and the need to have more people working on that.

Speaker 10: (43:20)
So that’s one of the most concrete ways I can think of that we’re working with them. Also, [L. T. Sharholic 00:43:26], our state health official has, several times a week, almost every evening it seems like, a call with the health district directors to talk about where are their needs, how can they help more. So we’re doing everything we can to help them.

Betsy: (43:43)
Go ahead Kevin.

Kevin: (43:46)
Governor, I understand what you said earlier about how this order doesn’t really affect what the State Board may do tomorrow. They’re reopening schools, but philosophically are you comfortable with the prospect of trying to reopen some schools this year or are you concerned that that’s premature?

Well, categorically open all of them, absolutely. I think there’s some pieces that could be. The school districts today are allowing kids back in their schools to clean out their lockers. They’re allowing kids to come back to pick up assignments, pick up devices. So to categorically say no they shouldn’t go or yes they should, the direction from the State Board and the school districts was they should work with their local health district about what’s the risk and what they need to do.

Nobody knows better than you do Kevin, about the disparity in our school districts about online learning and about some of those other things. So each school district has to craft a plan relative to the health conditions in their community and relative to where their students are.

I would love to have all the kids go back to school tomorrow, but prudence dictates that I can’t do that. But I still think allowing the State Board and the Department and the School Boards to work together to move academic advancement forward with as best they can is necessary, and they’ll just have to address it on a district by district basis.

I think that’s it. I’ve been given this sign. Thank you all. Yes, we will get better at this. I prefer the old way, but there’s a lot of people that are having to make changes and put us in that gap. So thank you one at all, and stay safe.

Idaho Governor Brad Little Coronavirus Briefing Transcript April 15

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