ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのVirginia Gov. Northam Press Conference

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Governor Ralph S. Northam:
So I want to thank Dr. Avula. As you may know, Dr. Avula and I are both pediatricians and it was good to have a pediatrician overseeing my care when I was the patient. So Danny, thank you for that. Now I’d like to turn to an update on our health numbers. Our numbers have been doing pretty well and Virginia’s percent positivity has been trending downward, it’s now below 5%, and that’s really a good thing. As always, it is entirely up to you, my fellow Virginians, you are making smart choices, wearing masks, physical distancing, washing your hands. And on behalf of Virginia, I say thank you. The Department of Health has continuously worked to refine its data systems and visualizations to better explain to the public what is happening with the disease in our communities. Recently, they unveiled a pandemics dashboard to help local officials better understand what’s going on in each community.
I’m especially proud of Virginia’s numbers as we’re seeing many other states, as you all have heard, that are seeing their case counts starting to rise, but now is not a time to get complacent. We’re heading into the colder months and all of the outdoor socializing we’ve been able to do is getting harder. People are going to be less likely to want to meet up outside when it’s 40 degrees or below. And in a few weeks, the time will change, meaning it will get darker earlier. All of this means more people closer together indoors. It’s going to feel hard to keep doing the right things, but I know that we can stay strong and get through this winter, continuing to make the right choices.
Now that I’m back in the office this morning, I immediately got to work signing into law bills that the general assembly had passed in its special session. We signed six such bills this morning. I want to highlight two key measures of those bills. Today, I was proud to sign legislation that makes Juneteenth a permanent statewide holiday, and I’m also proud that that legislation passed unanimously. Juneteenth is the oldest celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. It’s time we elevate this, not just a celebration by and for some Virginians, but one acknowledged and celebrate it by all of us.

This morning, I also signed legislation providing immunity from civil liability for home health workers, hospice workers, and others who are treating COVID patients. This provides an important protection for these workers, but it doesn’t negate our existing standards for gross negligence. Essentially, if you are a nurse, this provides protection, but if you’re a patient, you’re still protected as well. I’d like to turn now to how we’re using our Federal CARES Act dollars to help Virginians and our communities. Last week, we announced more than $220 million in CARES funding for K through 12 schools to help them with COVID preparedness and response. We also announced $30 million in CARES funding to fast track local broadband projects, and another $12 million to expand the rent and mortgage relief program. In the coming days, we’ll be announcing at least $50 million for hazard pay for our home health workers in addition to funding for the vaccination program and-… in addition to funding for the vaccination program and for childcare providers. These are all priorities that the general assembly has identified, and we’re working to get that money out the door. We’re also working to expand eligibility for the Rebuild Virginia program, which is targeted at helping small businesses impacted by the pandemic. We’ll have more information about that next week.

Now I’d like to move to another topic on everyone’s mind, and that is elections. Today is the deadline to register to vote. This morning, a Verizon fiber in Chesterfield County was inadvertently cut during a roadside utilities project that interrupted internet access for much of Virginia government, including our department of elections technicians are working to get this back up and running. We have been exploring all of our options to extend the voter registration deadline. That deadline is set in our code, and it does not appear that I have the authority to change it. That is up to the courts, and I would support a court-ordered extension of the deadline.

If you’re eligible to vote but are not registered, please consider registering. Democracy works when everyone participates. It’s important. If you know someone who isn’t registered, please talk to them. Send them the link to the election website when it’s back up and running, and if you’re not sure if you’re registered, go online and double-check. It matters.
You can vote absentee in person. Locations aren’t the same as election day polling places, but they’re often at the registrar’s office and your local registrar can give you more information. You can vote absentee by mail by contacting your local registrar and request in a ballot or doing so on the elections website. And you can vote in person on election day, just like you usually do.

Earlier this year, I worked with the general assembly to pass legislation that would open up early voting and allow any voter to vote early for 45 days before the election, without giving a reason why. I’m proud that we did that because it is working extremely well. As of yesterday, more than 550,000 Virginians have voted early in person. That’s equal to one fourth of the total voter turnout in 2016, and represents one six of total registered voters. More than one million Virginia voters have requested absentee ballots by mail, and more 450, 000 of those have been returned. Virginia, if you haven’t voted yet, go out there and get it done. It’s easy, it’s safe, and it’s very important.

I know there are a number of questions concerning the ongoing threat investigation related to Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and today’s testimony in which my name was mentioned in court by an FBI agent. Because that is an ongoing criminal investigation being handled by the FBI, I will not take questions or make any additional comments related to it. However, I do want to emphasize that the First Lady and I are safe, thanks to the measures taken by the executive protection unit, which is staffed by an extensively trained team of Virginia State Police personnel and the Virginia Division of Capitol Police.

Capitol Police and State Police work closely with our law enforcement partners at the federal, state, and local level when it comes to sharing information about threats related to my office, our family, our capital square. All threats are taken seriously and thoroughly investigated by those law enforcement agencies.
Fortunately, in regards to today’s developments, there is no imminent danger to me or my family, and I’m continuing my work for the Commonwealth as I would any other day. And finally, I just want to close by again thanking everyone for their well-wishes. When that test comes back positive, it is frightening. This is a dangerous virus. It is very contagious and it is very stubborn. It’s too easy to think, “Oh, this will never happen to me,” but it can. For me and Pam, it did. And that’s why it is disheartening to see people being cavalier about it. Please take this virus seriously. Please continue to abide by public health guidance, washing hands, wearing masks, and avoiding crowds. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And I know everyone is frustrated, but we’re not out of the woods. We are in this together. And that means we must act to protect not just ourselves, but each other.
Now I’d like to ask our Virginia Health Commissioner, Dr. Norm Oliver, to give a more detailed update on our health data, and then we will be glad to take your questions. Dr. Oliver, thank you.

Dr. Norman Oliver:
So very briefly on the numbers of … regarding the cases of COVID-19 in the Commonwealth, new cases reported in the last 24 hour reporting period or 1,235 cases, there were 11 new deaths reported. We now stand at a total number of cases of 160,805 cases across the Commonwealth, and deaths at 3,372. Our testing continues to go really well, with more than 15,000 tests on average per day. We stand at 2,468,715 PCR tests. In the last reporting period, we clocked another 20,720 PCR tests, and the antigen tests were 554, and antibody tests were at 383. Thank you, governor.

Governor Ralph S. Northam: Thanks, Dr. Oliver.
Henry: So Governor, thank you for …
Governor Ralph S. Northam: Yes, thank you, Henry.
Henry:
I did want to talk about the investigation itself. Can you talk big picture about rhetoric that you’ve seen [inaudible 00:19:25] about what is happening that [inaudible 00:19:26] about you?

Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Well Henry, it’s unfortunate, and I will let you know and let all of Virginia know, I will not work under a cloud of intimidation. That’s not who I am. I was elected to serve the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that’s what I plan to do. And there have been threats. I know you all are well aware of some of them that happened back in January. And as I said, we take those very seriously.
Henry, I have been in harm’s way. As you know, I served in the United States army for eight years. I was involved in a conflict against Iraq. We knew who the enemy was. We knew it was dangerous. We knew we were in harm’s way, but I wasn’t intimidated by that. And I was proud to fight for my country. What is different now, which is concerning to me, is that the people that are making comments and the rhetoric about our elected officials … not just me, it’s not about me, the governor of Michigan … these threats are not coming in, this rhetoric is not coming from another country. It’s coming from Washington, and that I regret, and it needs to stop

Speaker 1: Luanne Rife at the Roanoke Times.
Good afternoon, Governor and welcome back. I was hoping that you could walk us through your thought processes when you learned that you were exposed to the virus and touch upon the concerns you had about your own health and the people you had been in contact with. Did you have any regrets about any of these events or meetings that you attended and would you have done anything differently?

Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Absolutely. That’s a great question. That’s a loaded question now. Let me see if I can answer just a couple aspects of the question. Number one, it is frightening when one is notified. I’ve been a doctor for over 30 years and I’ve had to give people some fairly devastating news, but to be on the receiving end of it, when I heard, and even more importantly, when I heard that Pam, my wife of … she doesn’t like me to tell how many years, but a lot of years … so yes, it is very impactful. I commend the department of health … the way this kind of all happened, I’ll kind of go through it just briefly, is that on Wednesday, I believe that was the 24th of September, we were notified that one of the workers in the mansion that we had very close contact with had had symptoms and had tested positive, and it was recommended that that Pam and I and the rest of our staff be tested. And so we were tested the following day at 2:00, and at about 7:30 that night, we were notified that we were positive. And fortunately, we’ve had mild symptoms. It’s interesting. Pam had some symptoms, cold-like symptoms, early on. And her isolation, as Dr. Avula has reviewed, was 10 days from the beginning of her isolation. My symptoms, which were also very mild, they were cold-like symptoms. No fever, no cough, no shortness of breath, came about eight days into my diagnosis.

And so following the CDC guidelines, my time of isolation actually restarted on that Friday. And thus I was in isolation for a total of 18 days, the last day of that was yesterday. So I’m glad to be back at the office. We continue to work. I think a lot of you saw that I was in daily contact with our legislators. We’ve been working with police reform, criminal justice reform, voting laws, and the budget, and that is moving along quite nicely. So just to kind of sum things up, Pam and I were very fortunate that we had mild symptoms. There have been in the ballpark of 215,000 people that have died in this country from COVID-19. And that is a lot of people, and every one of those deaths has had an impact on their family. So …… has had an impact on their family. That bothers me. The second part of it is that anybody that tests positive or has been in contact with someone goes into isolation or quarantine, and imagine the impact that has on individuals and families, whether they have children at home, whether they need to be at work and can’t work via virtual work, and so it impacts families. But looking at the big picture, what this really has emphasized and put into perspective, think of what this pandemic is doing to us as a society. People that have lost their business, that have lost their jobs, that don’t have a roof over their head, that don’t know where their next meal is coming from, that are worried about their children not being in school. That’s why we as a Commonwealth, as a society need to take this virus seriously.

As I said earlier, it is very contagious, it is very dangerous. A lot of people too, by the way, that recover have long-term sequelae from this virus, so let’s all realize that and do what we know works, and that is, wear our masks, keep our distancing, wash our hands, keep the numbers down so that we can get our children back into school, so that we can get our business back up and running. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to move forward. So that’s a long winded answer to your question but it help put things in perspective. [Alan 00:00:25:38]?

Alan:
Does the state have any sort of redundancy on this cable that was cut? This seems like a pretty scary possibility on election day if a road crew can disable [inaudible 00:25:54] entire system. Do you know why there wasn’t some sort of secondary cable or backup plan?

Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Well, I can’t answer that specifically, Alan, but I think it’s just assurance that… It reaffirms why we need backups to a lot of our systems. And Secretary Conner or Secretary of Administration has done a good job updating our technology. Obviously we still have a lot of work to do, but this particular cable was vital to us. There was not a backup to that particular cable. It’s being worked on as we speak and we’re going to get things up and running as soon as we can. And as I said earlier, we’re working with the courts, looking at all our options to extend the deadline for registration so that if there’s time that people have lost they’ll be able to accommodate that. I mean, I’d called you doctor. I’m not sure that’s a promotion. But anyway, Secretary Connor, welcome.

Keyanna Conner:
Thank you, Governor. Keyanna Conner, Secretary of Administration. And this is to address the redundancy question with the cable. To clarify, the cut occurred on the Commonwealth’s 10 gigabytes circuit that we just actually recently installed this spring to enable us to handle the increased workload due to COVID-19 and our shift to remote work. While we do have backup circuits, those circuits are not as large. We have shifted some of that workload, but because of the high demand, it is causing a lot of our web applications to slow. We do have a resiliency plan already in place where we will be upgrading our backup circuits in addition to the main circuit. Later today, we hopefully will have a temporary solution in place by 4:00 PM that will bring our services back online while Verizon continues to work on a permanent full repair of the circuit. Thank you.

Speaker 2: [inaudible
Speaker 3:
Hi. I’d like to ask the governor, are you aware of any specific efforts to extend the voter registration deadline? And if so, can you elaborate on what you’re planning to do to push those efforts along?

Governor Ralph S. Northam:
The question was what are we doing to extend the deadline? And we’re looking at all our options. As I said during my opening comments, as governor, I don’t have the authority to change that. It’s in the code. So it’s probably most likely going to be done through working with the courts. And so I look forward to them assisting us and making sure that we can extend that deadline.

Speaker 4:
So in response to your office’s statement earlier about this alleged kidnapping plot, the White House sent a statement basically condemning the alleged kidnapping, but also blaming you and Governor Whitmer for making these outlandish allegations about… what they would call outlandish allegations about the president being the one encouraging violence. So how do you respond to that? And what specific examples do you see of the president encouraging violence against you?

Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Let me answer the second part of your question. Back in, I believe it was April, the months tend to run together, the CDC offered guidelines on how to combat the spread of COVID-19. And in those outlines, were wearing facial masks, social distancing, and hand washing. Things that we had already been advocating for. And two days later, the president said to liberate Virginia. So that’s an example of mixed messages coming out of Washington which we’ve been seeing since the beginning of this pandemic. But words have meaning to people, and so when our leaders make statements like this, and that’s just one example of many. I know you all are well aware of other things that have been said, but again, when we’re listening to the people, which is what I’ve done as governor, I work with our legislature, they responded to the previous election as well. And I realized I’ve been in this long enough that not everything we do is agreeable to all Virginians, but when language is used such as “to liberate Virginia,” people, they find meaning in those words and thus these things happen, and that’s regrettable.

Speaker 2: David McGee with the Bristol Herald Courier.
Yes. Thank you. And, Governor, welcome back. I wanted to ask you if the personal experience of the perspective of having COVID-19, how that’s going to affect some of your decision-making going forward in terms of easing restrictions or imposing restrictions and things like that on the rest of the state.

Governor Ralph S. Northam:
That’s a great question. And I’ll give you a much briefer answer. This is not about me. It’s not about my wife, my family. This is about Virginia. And so we’re going to continue to do everything that we’ve done. It’s working. Our numbers, as I said, our positivity right now is below 5%. So we’re going to keep doing the things that we know work in Virginia.