 Thank you to all the members of the media for joining us today as we look forward to a close to 2020 and incredibly difficult year as the pandemic COVID-19 has altered just about every facet of our lives and has required each and every one of us to make huge sacrifices to keep ourselves and our families and others safe. This has been a difficult year, incredibly difficult year for people not only in Colombia but all across this country and across the world. I will again express my incredible gratitude to the men and women, leaders young and old, who have continued to do their part, continue to wear masks, who continue to sanitize and physically distance and do all the things that we know help slow the spread of this incredible scourge and those who continue to diligently work to slow the spread of COVID-19. Vaccines have begun to arrive and are being administered all across our state. However, we want to encourage all of you to not use this as an excuse to let our guard down. We must remain vigilant over these next several months to truly get to the other side of the mountain. Since Christmas Day, DHEC has confirmed well over 11,000 new cases. I think it just saw before we came online a positivity rate exceeding 31 percent, which is quite frankly outrageously high and indicative of the spread that we have here. Well over 100 deaths since Christmas alone. We are in the throes of a significantly dangerous phase in this pandemic and I was speaking to Mark and Rick before we went online. It does just being frank, trouble me that we still have to have these same conversations with with caring, thoughtful adults that we should be doing more to slow the spread of this virus. But we are here and it's important that we continue to spread the message. For the first time that the Centers for Disease Control issued guidance and steps for Americans to safely approach New Year's Eve this year, we know obviously that the challenges that we have of people engage in crowds and poorly ventilated indoor spaces that the virus spreads significantly. And we have an opportunity to either do the right thing and slow the spread of the virus or do the wrong thing and cause a great deal more sickness and death. And obviously the economic and educational challenges, all the challenges that would be faced. I am a lawyer and a public servant. So we've been doing our part in business and in policy, but I don't have the proximity to the incredible sufferings that Dr. Scott and President CEO Mark Vahala have along with the amazing men and women they serve at Prisma Health System. So we thought it would be prudent to take a little bit of time today using our friends in the media and the Fourth Estate to help spread the message one more time to our fellows to do our very best over the course of these next few days, particularly in New Year's Eve, to enjoy the New Year's celebration from home. Enjoy it from the safety of home with your family, the state advantage of technology and virtual parties and celebrations. Tune in the famously hot New Year this year for the very first time in a decade. We're having it online with the rest of development and a host of incredible performers, so many with great self-convinced ties that you'll have an opportunity to see and view from the safety of your home. It's our turn to say goodbye to probably the most difficult year many of us have ever imagined. We can do it safely or we can do it recklessly. And I would encourage you to let's do it safely and make sure that we can all enjoy our prosperous and healthiest, healthier 2021 together. That is my plaintive plea, my prayer for each and every one of you that next year can be a prosperous year. It can be a year of health and happiness. And the reality is that this is one of the few things that we can only do if we in fact do them together. So I'm going to take this opportunity to introduce my friend and the president and CEO of Prisma Health, Marco Halla. Mark, please. Thanks very much, Steve. And I right off the bat, I want to start just by saying thank you to Mayor Benjamin, the City of Columbia. Frankly, for having the forethought to make the famously hot New Year celebration virtual this year. You know, I understand it's a great event. The community really looks forward to it. But you know, this year, because of all the challenges that the Mayor just got done commenting on, it's not the right time or the right year for a large get together. And we really appreciate the fact that the Mayor and the City of Columbia and everyone in Richland County has been so good in terms of helping us try to get our hands around the spread of this pandemic, which continues to be a massive challenge for us, particularly since the Thanksgiving holiday. And so what I'd like to do is just kind of walk you through just some broad numbers, kind of a 30,000 foot view. And then I'm going to introduce Dr. Rick Scott, who is our Chief Clinical Officer for the Richland community, and have Rick talk to you a little bit about some of the particulars related to the pandemic and where we're at. So first, again, since Thanksgiving, things have just continued to surge. Frankly, we're in a situation that is actually worse today than we were back in July when we hit our highest peak relative to the pandemic across the system. And yesterday, we set yet another new record statewide. We had 1,954 people hospitalized across the state, which established yet a new record that we previously set two days ago. We expect that we're going to get another surge because of the Christmas and New Year's holiday. And so having that combined with already high numbers is going to create some real incredibly difficult challenges, not only for Prisma, but for all of the healthcare systems and hospitals across the state and across the country. So to put that into some perspective, yesterday, Prisma had 453 patients hospitalized due to COVID across the system to put that into a context. In July, the single worst day that we had from an inpatient hospitalization perspective for the system was 310. So we have flown by our previous high in July. 128 of those patients are in the Columbia marketplace. Those numbers are now fast approaching the high water mark that we set in July for the Columbia marketplace. We're doing everything that we can to manage through this. We're utilizing our size and scope as a 12 hospital system to move patients from one hotspot to an area that we're not seeing because there's quite as much traffic that we make sure that we are able to take care of all of our patients and we have been successfully able to navigate that. The big challenge and it's not unique to Prisma nor frankly to the state of South Carolina is staffing. We have bed capacity. The problem is we're having trouble staffing those beds and part of that is just the normal supply and demand equation when you're looking for registered nurses and respiratory therapists and other things. But the biggest part of it is just the surge that we witnessed because it's hit everywhere in the state. So it's not like there's a pool of nurses who are free to move from hotspot to hotspot because everybody's got a hotspot. And so in that context, staffing has become an issue. At Prisma we have a total of 263 team members that are currently out with COVID. Out of that 263, 92 of them are clinicians, mostly registered nurses, physicians and APPs. That obviously exacerbates the surge problem because we now have fewer clinical workers to help us deal with the incremental volume of patients. We have gone out and acquired temporary staffing. What we in the industry refer to as agency nurses and we've been able to bring in over 100 agency nurses but basically all that's done is kind of kept us afloat to offset the 90-some providers that we lost. What we're trying to do now that the vaccines have come out is immediately get all of our clinical people vaccinated so that we can hopefully prevent more people from getting the virus. And then as the people that have already got the virus go through their 14-day quarantine period, but we get them back into the facilities that we won't lose anymore people because of that. We have vaccinated over 6,000 of our team members as of today and we're continuing to accelerate that process. We've been focused initially for the first nine days since we got the vaccine. We were focused on all of our clinicians, nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, the housekeeping staff that are on the floors in the hospitals, maintenance folks that are on the floors in the hospital. And now we're just getting ready to shift gears and get to all of the rest of our clinical staff at our physician offices, ambulatory centers, and then the rest of our Prisma Health family. In addition to the Prisma folks, we are also providing vaccinations to our community first responders as well. And we're going to continue to push that initiative to make sure that we can get all of those folks who are in the front lines of caring for patients that have contracted the virus vaccinated. All of our vaccine has been from Pfizer. I know that the Moderna vaccine is starting to get shipped out. We have not received any of the Moderna vaccine at this point. We have received a total through three shipments to date, a total of 27,300 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Now that is enough to cover all of our Prisma employees for their first dose. And I just want to remind everybody that the vaccination process is a two step process. You get your first shot and then 21 days after that first shot, you get a second shot. It's the same vaccine. It's the same dose. And the combination of those two shots gets you up on average to a 95 plus percent vaccination rate. And I think the last thing, the last comment that I want to make is frankly more of an editorial comment. And then I'm going to hand it off to Dr. Scott. We've seen a dramatic, dramatic increase in patients all across the state. And what I've been trying to describe to folks is everybody in South Carolina is very concerned about the hurricane season. And, you know, if somebody told South Carolina that we had a category five hurricane that was going to make landfall, I'd be willing to bet that every single person in the state would do everything they possibly could do to safeguard themselves and safeguard their family and do whatever was necessary to get out of the way of harm. And what's happening right now with COVID, it's a category five type of situation. And so we need everybody to be smart. Take it seriously. Wear your mask, socially distance, wash your hands, and particularly in light of, you know, where we're going with the, you know, the New Year's holiday literally right around the corner. You know, I've got over 30,000 dedicated healthcare workers who have been literally working night and day for the last 10 months, 24 seven taking care of patients. And we get it. We do it. That's our job. That's what we're here for. But you know what? We do all of that. We don't really ask for much. But we are asking now. And what we're asking for is for everybody to please dial back on the New Year's celebration, stay at home, stay with your family, celebrate with your immediate family, and follow all the guidelines. Because if you do that, that will help us get the spread of this virus under control. Because if it stays on the trajectory that it's currently on, we are going to have a really, really difficult, difficult time finding enough beds and enough staff to care for all of the patients that need us. So please help us take care of our community and just follow the rules and follow the guidelines. And with that, I'm going to hand off to Dr. Scott and let him talk to you a little more specifically about what's going on in regards to that care. So thank you so much. And thank you, Mayor, for having this forum that we can help get the message out. I would only echo Mr. Ohala's words. The teams have been working extremely hard for 10 months, double shifts. We appreciate the community acknowledging that. Many of the people who will watch this press conference have family members who are in healthcare who have been putting themselves at risk. The signs on the lawns are inspiring and the team appreciates it. The best thing anyone could do though is to bring that sign in and stay home inside with it on New Year's Eve. We look at the Midlands part of Prisma as really being one big thousand bed hospital because we look at all of our facilities at Baptist and Park Ridge and Richland and out at Toomey as being one. We share staff, often equipment, PPE. We are blessed that we have enough PPE and that we've had the forward thinking to acquire more and more even as the summer waned. But as Mark said, we are now in a place we haven't been before and the new numbers from Innocent Command say that we have now surpassed in the Midlands our July peak and are at 148. In the last couple days up 20 more. That does strain us to the edge of our capacity. Do we have beds? Yes. Can we accommodate more? Yes. We don't want people to panic over that. They're not infinite and we need everyone to understand that everybody has to do their part. The great thing that has happening right now is the vaccine is available and rolling out to tier one a healthcare workers as per CDC guidelines. It will rapidly move on to larger groups of critical infrastructure workers that people who deliver our food and grow it. And very quickly after that, to the general public, first with attention to the over 75s and then over 65s with comorbidities. But there is ample supply of vaccine. So I would ask everybody as they think about what they want this New Year's Eve to be, to just imagine you can finally hear the cavalry just over the ridge. And for us to falter at this moment would be catastrophic. We can look back at New Year's Eve in July as one that we remember the sacrifice we made or we can look back with with regret that we didn't and lost yet another family member. So I really commend the city for going virtual on New Year's Eve. Nothing would make your healthcare team happier than for everyone to do the same as we go forward. Our emergency rooms continue to be virtually full. We are moving the patients into beds and still have some capacity, but that will not be infinite. So we just ask people to remember the statistics that Mayor Benjamin led with. A positivity rate of over 30% is like a five alarm fire. And if you imagine yourself at a New Year's Eve celebration with a hat and a horn and 100 other people, 30 of them are positive and may not know it. So the chance of us stopping this is much better when we start to see that number go down to 28, 25, 20. Remember the CDC's ideal is under 5% positivity. So we sit here today at six times that. And I think that should send a message to all that the best thing we can do is to dial it back. And I thank you for that, Dr. Scott. I think one other comment that I'd like to make to everyone is that, you know, we have limited resources. We're doing everything we can with what we do have. We're actually opening up a new step down unit at our facility in Lawrence, which is what we're going to use to move patients who are not yet ready to go home, but they're not acutely ill anymore. And so we'll be able to discharge people from our acute care hospitals and move them into the step down facility so that they can continue to be looked out for until they're ready to go home. But it'll free up capacity for us at our acute care facilities like Baptist and Toomey and Richland. But there are all limitations. There's a cap on all of this because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many beds we have if we can't find the staff to take care of the patients. And that's where we're at. And that's why we're asking everybody to please help us try to rein in the spread of this virus. Well, thank you both, Mark and Rick. And I think we're going to take some questions now from the media. I think they're posting them. And I'm not sure, Taylor or Justin, how we're going to get them. Or Tammy, are you going to be managing that process? Yeah. Hi. I'm Tammy Epps. I'm the manager of media relations at Prisma Health. I was actually looking in the chat, Mayor Benjamin, and right now there aren't any questions. I did put out a new query to the media to see if there are any questions, but maybe we've done such a good job. Maybe there's not any right now. You don't know this crew. This crew is pretty inquisitive about that. I will say this, because I got the question earlier from a friend in the media, and I did have a subsequent conversation with Chief Jenkins. The fire department, fire marshals will be out in force, will be aggressively enforcing the mask ordinance. So if you use the poor judgment of going out, please pack extra 100 bucks in your pocket to pay the fines associated, the civil attraction associated with the violation of the mask ordinance, if you're not smart enough to wear a mask as well. So we had that conversation just before the press conference. I see at least one question just came in. Yes, sir. The question is for you, Mayor Benjamin, and it says, is it safe to assume police and firefighters will be out enforcing the city's crowd-sized rules tonight? And if people see large crowds ignoring the rules, what should they do? I don't know this crowd, Tammy. I knew the question before it was asked. No, certainly, obviously, if you see violations of the mask ordinance or large crowds gathering, if it seems like a serious situation, obviously, always dial an emergency number. If it seems like just a violation, you can always feel free to dial the non-emergency numbers from CPD, and the fire marshals will respond and ensure the mask ordinances are being aviapolite and tail someone to post that number. That would be helpful. But, yeah, reported, and we will be out enforcing them with zero regard for niceties. This question is related to the doses of vaccine is for Mr. O'Halla. The question is, we mentioned that 27,000, 300 doses of vaccines are in hand across the system. How many of these have been administered, and when is our next shipment to arrive? Yeah, so the numbers literally are going up hour to hour. We have administered over 6,000 doses so far. We have thousands of more employees who are in the pipeline and have appointments to get vaccinated, and we're going to continue to do that day in and day out until we get through everyone. Our hope is that we're going to be able to vaccinate at or above 1,000 folks per day. That's our objective, and the shipments themselves, I can't give you a specific timeline on the shipments because they're sent to us in a queue, if you will, that is also contingent on all the other health systems across the country receiving their vaccines. So, we've received three shipments already since December 15th when the vaccine was first formally authorized and approved through the folks in Washington, and we will continue to get shipments like that on a periodic basis, but I can't tell you the specifics because we just don't have them yet. Mr. O'Halla, I think you said earlier that we had already administered 6,000 vaccines to our team members. Is that correct? That's correct. And 7,000 by end of business today? Soon to be 7,000, yes, sir. This question is for the mayor. It's very important for people to shop local right now, and New Year's Eve is typically a big night for local fireworks, stores, bars, clubs, breweries, restaurants. How can people continue to support local businesses who depend on them for this holiday while staying safe, and should residents continue to support them? How do they continue to support them? Sure. Well, first, I think this year, 2021, we're going to spend a lot of time, I think, on economic recovery. Just really, we saw some trends happening across the world right now, just on the way in which our economy is changing, future work, jobs, and obviously some of those trends have been accelerated by a decade because of the pandemic. So, we're going to spend some time on short-term and long-term strategies to address that, but I couldn't agree more. We've had an intense campaign encouraging those to shop local. Every single business that I know of, both primarily eateries and restaurants and every other small business has found some way to engage in the marketplace by allowing their services to be either sold online or in a to-go format. Some of the governance orders have given people a great deal of latitude. I encourage you to plan ahead to get your favorite takeout, to shop at your favorite places, but again, to avoid the crowds and in close spaces that we know serve as an incubator for this incredible virus to spread aggressively. From the very beginning, back in March with the help of Prisma and so many of our partners, both in the governmental and across intersectoral lines, we've been focused intently on making sure we support our businesses here locally and that has not stopped or slowed down. Our focus has been data-driven, has been public health informed, but it's been guided always by our One True North, which is a preservation of human life. That's it, and I would encourage all of us. Let's continue to support our small businesses, let's continue to be smart, let's continue to make sure that our healthcare professionals have the latitude that they need to provide for each and every one of us, but let's again stay focused and keep our eyes on the prize, which is that our actions as innocent as they might seem as will likely lead to the preservation or potentially the end of life for one of our fellow citizens. So let's support small businesses. We must make sure that we protect our economy, but let's make sure we stay focused again on One True North, which is let's make sure we all make it in 2021 and through 2021 together. Thank you, Mayor. This question is for Dr. Scott. The question is from about on the topic of vaccinations. Is the process going smoothly? Have we encountered any issues or run into any problems? So I would say the process is really going quite smoothly now, and the first day or two, the VAM system of putting information in before the vaccines was pretty cumbersome. I think that was recognized nationally and the CDC streamlined that quite a bit. We have opened up literally hundreds of new appointments each day and rolled out across the Midlands vaccination at Baptist and Park Ridge and Toomey this week, following Richlands in week one. So I think that it is going pretty well. Doing a thousand a day is not easy because we're calling on the very same team members that staff our units to take extra time and work in the vaccination clinics. There was no free group of people with nothing to do. I'd also point out that we've recently opened up a monoclonal antibody clinic so that we could provide that therapy that you've read about across the country that many of our nation's leaders somehow have access, unfortunately, because they contracted the virus, but for people with early symptoms who don't need hospitalization, our primary care doctors now have another tool that they can use in the right situation under another experimental use authorization. So I've been saying it's going pretty smoothly and it's about with each passing week it will hit a new speed as the government begins to open up now the vaccination of our senior citizens in facilities and the workers that staff those facilities as the next most vulnerable group. You'll see it more widely available at Walgreens and CVS and Target and Walmart, probably within the next few weeks. I'll add this question to you, Dr. Scott. The question is about if we keep this rate of COVID cases going, what do we think we'll see on the other side of the holiday? Well, I think if we don't make a difference where we still can, since Christmas is behind us and Thanksgiving is behind us, we will literally be teetering on the edge of a place that healthcare has never been in this country. And we're not alone in South Carolina. We're seeing that happen all over the country. The wave just comes at different times. So while the Midwest may be getting a slight breather now, places like South Carolina and the far West are in a new state of urgency. I can only tell you that if the ball continues from Christmas, it will take up almost all of our remaining capacity to handle what happens in the seven to 10 days after New Year's. That is all of the questions that we have today. And so with that, I'm going to go back to the mayor for his final thoughts. And then I'll go to Mr. O'Halla and Dr. Scott for their final thoughts. It still amazes me. I'm sorry. It still amazes me the casual conversations we can have with incredible weight and gravity of what we're discussing right now. I mean, the last commentary from Dr. Scott is not only humbling, it's bone chilling, recognizing where we are, and again, also recognizing the fact that the power to change is in the palm of our hands, each and each and every one of us. If we exercise the amount of collective and mutual responsibility that we know we ought to be showing right now. So just want to use this as a last opportunity to plain and simply support small businesses, go out and buy gift cards and get takeout, but please stay home, be safe, protect yourselves, protect your families, care for each other, love each other, and let's make it through this incredibly difficult time together apart. So I want to thank each and every one of you, Mark, you and your team at Prisma. Thank you. May God continue to bless each and every one of you. Dr. Scott, your continued friendship and partnership and support, and just thank all of our leaders here from across the Midlands and to our friends in the media. Pardon it up with folks like Ms. Epps and Scott Garrick and others in the office. Just keep pushing the messaging out, pushing the messaging out. The more and more people we connect with, the better off we'll all be. So God bless this great city and I'll pass it on to you, Mark. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate it and I don't have anything to add to that other than there has been some things out on social media where people have made comments that, you know, well, I'm a healthcare worker in whatever capacity and I don't see the big deal and going out and, you know, seeing people and being with friends and what. Please just disregard that. It's everything Steve said is just critical for us right now and we are literally pulling every single clinical worker we have regardless of where they normally work. We've got a lot of nurses and other folks who are in what we'll refer to as non-clinical roles. We've pulled them all away from their regular jobs to get them at the bedside. So when you read things on social media, please just disregard it because it really is critically important right now that we do what Steve just said. Follow the guidelines. Wear the masks. You know what? Bring in the new year at home with your family. I can't think of any better way to do it than that and we'll manage through this. We'll get through all of this. Ida Scott. Well, I would just echo what the mayor said. I think, you know, we have a collective responsibility to each other and the best way we can show that is to do our best to keep our distance. Wearing the mask, washing our hands. If there is any bright spot that we can see in today's picture, it's the fact that that social distancing and mask wearing has driven the flu rate down to nearly zero. A positive flu test is now a rare occurrence across healthcare. It's a direct result of the other precautions that we're taking. But I would just remind everybody that the greatest sacrifice we can make right now this week is really a small one and that's to keep your distance and don't let New Year's Eve become a spreader event. I can't tell you how important that is as a physician leader to every member of our team, to our nurses, our doctors, our emergency room staff. We don't want to meet you this year. That's a perfect way to wrap it up. Ms. Epps, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. For the media, if there's additional questions, please reach out to the PIOs and we, of course, will help support you any kind of way we can. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. It'll be well.