 And get started at this time. I know everybody has a busy day ahead of them. And whatever we think we're going to do today, I'll probably go out the window very shortly and we'll be doing other things. I want to tell you how much I appreciate first y'all being here today as we make our next announcement. And what I want you to really notice is that we are together. We have been talking. Our attorneys have been working together around the clock. And it's, again, a team effort, a collaboration. And we've got to continue to do that along that lines. We met this weekend and put much stricter procedures in place. And today, we're going to notch those up even more. And we've done that after collaboration with our health care professionals. The city is not just Fort Worth, Arlington, and Tarrant County, but we've also included all of the other cities in conversations and trying to give them an idea of what we were looking for and seeking their advice. So what we're going to do is try to outline a little bit of that. But what we're going to say is we're going to really, really, really encourage folks to stay at home. We know that many of you are still working. Our businesses have really put forward the effort to be able to continue to service the needs of our folks and our businesses. But at the same time, do it in a manner not to bring people close together. So what we're asking and what you're going to hear a lot of today is, if you're working, if you go to work, when you get finished, go home. We're not looking for social gatherings. We want you to go home and to rest and then do everything you can to just stay safe. If you're not feeling well, then stay home. And so I'm going to not say much more than that. I'm going to turn it over to Mayor Price and then Mayor Williams to make any comments that they'd like to make at this time. Thank you, Judge. Good morning, everybody. It's nice to see you here this morning as everybody works hard to keep us all safe and healthy. I want to thank the hospital CEOs who are with us here and here and health care CEOs who we've been relying on big time. The mayor of Mansfield, David Cook, is here. Mansfield is in. And my council members are here. Several of them are back here. And they've been very supportive. We want to thank also because it's those who are working on the front line in health care, in public safety, even the truckers, our first responders, even the truckers who are delivering everyday goods to the store really do need a big thank you from everybody. You're our heroes and we're grateful for what you're doing on that. Today's announcement is not meant to be an alarmist or to cause panic. Don't go panic shopping. There's plenty of goods, plenty of foods. The grocery store is told us yesterday. People come one family, one person at a time, not a family, but one person in the store that they get deliveries and stock all day. Today's announcement really is rather about a call to do our part and you do your part to slow the spread of COVID-19, to so-called flatten the curve as we keep talking about, so that we don't overwhelm our health care system, so that those who need it can get care even when the virus begins to spread. We have 5,300 hospital beds in Tarrant County. And at any given time, about 85% of those are full. The estimate is even conservative estimates. If we don't begin to slow the virus, we could easily have 12,000 people who need hospital care. You know this Sunday, the governor called for people to stay home and do their part, but he charged local officials, the city mayors and the county judges with really making the call to move to a stay at home order. We received that message. We immediately began working with the six, seven big cities, the big metro areas. Glenn was working with the county judges from all six areas to get all of us on the same page. Together, the announcements today from those cities will impact 70% of the state of Texas's population. We want to see the spikes begin to fall rather than continue to rise. So today, the stay at home work safe order goes into effect at 11.59 tonight and stays in place in conjunction with the governor's order till April the third. These are tighter restrictions than what we had. No gatherings of any kind. We're telling businesses, if you can work from home, work virtually. If you're not on the essential list, work virtually. And everyone else should stay at home and work safe. Stay at home, stay with your children. All gatherings prohibited and only essential functions. There's a list of the essential functions on our website, on the county's website, on all the cities, a link to those. It's the closure of non-essential businesses and we'll share that list with each of you. Again, if you're at your residence, stay home. Go out only for essential items. Get food, get a relative food or medicine is needed. Get, go to the drugstore for what's essential to your life. And if you must go out to work, you can also go out to exercise, but keep that six foot distance when you're exercising. We're gonna flatten this curve and it will get us back to work faster. Get you who are suffering from lack of work back on the job quicker. It isn't lost on us that these are incredibly hard times, but if you're sick and we can't treat you in the hospitals, we will really be in trouble. So by closing for a short amount of time, we believe we can stop that and make it easier. It'll save lives and save jobs and everyone's life matters, no matter how old or how young you are. I know as small businesses, service industry really is hurting. We've heard from so many of you that these are challenging hard times. There's a list of resources on the city's website and a hotline, but we have to take actions to stop it. We're working to support you and to support those who are on the front line. Please, in great Texas, Tarrant County and Fort Worth fashion, check on your neighbors. Make sure if you're going to the grocery store that you could help them too. This is uncharted territory. We will get through it and hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later. If we come together historically in Fort Worth and Tarrant County and Texas in this nation, we do tackle the hard things and we get them done. Together we'll prevent more suffering and save lives. Y'all stay safe, stay healthy and y'all stay home. Now I'm gonna turn it over to Mayor Williams. Jeff. Thank you, Betsy. No, I just need to begin by thanking the entire leadership team here in Tarrant County. Thank you, Judge Whitley. Appreciate the leadership and your team there. And then you can see today that we have a united front here in Tarrant County but also throughout our major metropolitan areas throughout Texas. And Mayor Price, I know you've been making difficult decisions over the past few weeks to ensure the safety and health of our residents. And I appreciate you and the many other cities here in Tarrant County as we continue to maintain a strong and great partnership. In fact, yesterday was just another reminder in which Judge Whitley was leading a conference call with the mayors. And again, we were in lockstep as we move forward to try to help our citizens. Also wanna thank our Arlington City Manager, Trey Yoverton, our fire chief, Don Krausen, and Dr. Simmons, who have been leading our way in Arlington for providing incredible, outstanding leadership during this uncertain time. They are symbolic of cities throughout the state of Texas and great leadership. We all know as citizens that it's so important that we are reassured but that we have great leadership and we definitely have seen that because they are performing their jobs to the highest ability and working around the clock to help keep us safe. What an amazing thing here to help us. And in fact, our Office of Emergency Management here in Arlington is one of the best in the country. And they're doing everything they can to keep our community safe and work with medical experts at every level to make smart decisions. And y'all, that's both from the public and private sector. It's been so impressive how we've seen our medical experts step up and work together. Now today's action is a tough call for all of us leading our cities and our counties. It's an important measure that is, and again, using that term, flatten the curve. But remember, flattening the curve means that we have less exposure to the coronavirus and less opportunity to contract it and then a greater opportunity for us to have hospital beds open to be able to take care of not only the virus but also other illnesses and accidents that may be coming our hospital's way. But it's gonna take all of us, and by implementing the Stay Home Worksafe Order for Tarrant County, we are sending the message to all of our citizens that we want to defeat the virus and get back to business as usual and sooner rather than later. And yes, in Arlington, our city council will be following this strong action that Tarrant County is announcing today and we'll be meeting to discuss an expansion to our own local disaster declaration to reflect this Stay At Home WorkSmart Order. But it's not to say we are shutting down. That is not the case. Actually, it means exactly what it says, a smarter way for us to work. And when we talk about WorkSafe, imagine you are there in your home, not being exposed, but also we need you to work. We need you to be productive. And those of you that still have jobs, you're working for your family, but remember you're working for the families where people do not have jobs. We need you to be productive because it will help us when we come out of this to have a stronger economy. In the many businesses that we can continue going, the better off we're going to be. So remember, it's a responsibility and it's something we can do. We'll always, many times in things like this, people say there's nothing I can do. There is, there's a lot we can do. We can follow these guidelines and not get exposed to the virus. And then we can work and we can help others. And that leads to the next thing and you see all of us saying that. Remember your neighbor, Skype, telephone. There's so many ways for us to contact each other without being present and still showing that generous spirit to each other and still keep that distance. And then I've got to say to those that are in our essential services that do need to go out to work. Remember to practice your social distancing and keeping clean. And then also we thank you for what you're providing and especially our first responders and our medical providers as you're out there. But the citizens of Arlington and Tarrant County have always been defined by resiliency, hard work and that can do attitude. And we still want to display as more of us work that work from home. And this is about decreasing the overall spread and potential exposure so we can win this fight. And that goes for outside the workplace too. Limit social gathering, don't do it. Say, make sure that we do not have social gathering and only make the essential trips. Y'all stay home. Did I get that right, Mayor Price? Y'all stay home and let's come together to take care of everyone right now. And during this stay at home, work smart order, let's all remember to support our small businesses. Take advantage of to go delivery options for the many wonderful restaurants throughout our area. I've already seen so much kindness and generosity from our citizens, please continue that. And I know it hurts right now, but we will all come out of it and be stronger in the end. And we have faith in you, the residents, to pull together and help each other. From Arlington to Fort Worth to Mansfield, thank you for everyone doing their part to make our community safe. We're stronger together and today's action is a necessary step to get back to normalcy and continue on the momentous path Tarrant County is forging for future generations. So y'all stay home, work smart, be productive, take care of your hygiene, do your part to keep yourself well and don't be making any non-essential trips, but perhaps the most important, let's continue to pray. Thank you. What I, we do have a number of our healthcare folks here who've been working. If any of them rubbed early or if any of y'all would like to just make a couple of comments, please come forward at this point in time and we'll let you do that. I think the first thing I'm gonna do when I leave here is I'm gonna Google the person that invented conference calling because they need to be thanked. I really appreciate all conference callings and we should emphasize that. I have the luxury of being at JPS with some of the finest workers like a lot of my colleagues have and I'm gonna listen to what doctors and nurses tell me to do and I'm gonna listen to those doctors and nurses when they talk to this community and tell them exactly what you heard today and that is stay away. I wanna personally thank the two leaders of our cities, the largest cities that we have in Tarrant County and I wanna thank our county judge. There's nothing easy about making the decisions they're making and I wanna thank them for doing what they're doing. I wanna thank the other cities in this community. I wanna thank our school superintendents and I wanna thank those that are on the front line. I particularly wanna thank my colleagues, the other CEOs that run health networks. Again, I listen to doctors, I listen to nurses, that's what we should be doing and they're telling us, me and everybody in this community, stay away, do not gather, stay at home and that's the smartest thing to do and that's what I plan on doing. Mike Sanborn from Baylor, Scott and White. Morning everyone. This decision is really about public health and more importantly the health of each and every community and we've been collaborating the hospital CEOs as well as all of our city and county leaders for a number of weeks now as it relates to this and I can tell you without concern that today we have capacity, we're able to care for people that are infected by this virus. However, as we've seen in New York and even more significant in Italy and other countries, that capacity can be easily overwhelmed and the way we prevent that is by staying home and doing exactly as we're told, social distancing and hand hygiene and all those important things. So we're committed to that, we're committed to the health of the community and we're here to serve each and every person but we've gotta have you take care of yourselves and adhere to the guidance that is coming from our city and county leaders. Thank you. Michael Williams from UT Health Science Center for Keith Argan, Dr. Argan Bright from Mon Creek Cancer Institute and then we've got Rick Merrill from Cooke's. So thank you Mayor, thank you Judge Mayor Williams. Thank you for your leadership with this and I think it was about a week or so that Dr. Anthony Fauci from the NIH said in these cases you're always behind where you think you are and I think that the actions that were taken first on Saturday and then again today are an effort to close that gap and to catch up. And so the leaders of our elected leaders but also our healthcare leaders are committed to working together to support you and to support our patients and to support our citizens and so thank you for the opportunity. Rick Merrill from Cooke Children's who takes care of the youngest among us. Well, I too echo our thanks to the leadership. It's not easy making these decisions but these are the right decisions given where we are right now. You've heard over and over again these are unprecedented times but I would also say to you that these are unprecedented times among the hospital leadership and our healthcare systems working together collaboratively and the communication that's going on is truly unprecedented. I would want the public to know that all of the hospitals are working together to ensure that we've got adequate staff, we've got adequate supplies and we've got adequate beds. Now that said, if we don't flatten the curve we've got a real concern over our bed count. So that's the reason we're doing this and that is why this is the right decision at this point in time. Again, we will continue to work very hard and collaborate to provide all of the needed healthcare and services that this community needs and we appreciate your cooperation with what you're being asked to do. Thank you. Dr. Williams from UNT Health Science Center. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to echo what my colleagues have said. The health really strong support and thanks to the three leaders here behind me, Mayor Williams, Mayor Price and Judge Whitley. These actions are difficult to take but they're absolutely the actions that are necessary and it's all about doing things that feel like we're overreacting at times but actually they're absolutely the right time to do these tough actions. I also want to echo what's already been said from the perspective of continued love of Fort Worth and the way we come together and I've seen that in the health system leaders and how all of us are working together and all those who lead health systems. I don't have a hospital but I have a university where we take care of patients and I can tell you that we're all working together. Our focus has been on taking care of the first responders and in an effort to help the health system focus on their teams as well. And lastly, I want to leave with this. When there's uncertainty, there's fear and when there's fear, there's loss of hope. We will come through this. You can look at what's going on in the curves of the other nations. This is a time limited thing and it's only a matter of time before we are out of this and we will have learned a lot of new lessons. I want us to stay hopeful and optimistic at a time of uncertainty. So thank you all again. Kind of in closing, I want to echo what Dr. Williams just said. We are going to get through this. We need to remain positive. We need to, again, stay at home, work safe. And one of the last things we'll say and the reason I absolutely for sure know that we're going to come through this strong is that we're beginning to see the generosity of our volunteers. Delivering meals, whether it be to older adults, whether it be to shut-ins, whether it be to school-age kids, we're seeing as the demand grows, we're also seeing the volunteerism grow on that. And that's going to continue. We need to think about those kind of things. I saw the mayor giving blood the other day. Think about that. Now I know we're saying, stay at home but if you can get out and volunteer and get an appointment to give blood, do that because these hospitals are going to be in need of that. So think about that. Think about if you're available and can volunteer, there will be plenty of opportunities. Watch the websites and we'll be able to take care of that. And with that, I want to, again, thank all of y'all who have been helpful and collaborating and helping us to reach the decision to be at this point. And we're going to take questions from y'all at this time. Well, I'll let the cities also talk, but basically it's ordinances through the cities or we'll be going out and we'll be seeing, if our sheriff department or anybody's going out and they go across the playground and there's a pickup game of basketball, we're going to stop it. We're going to tell them, go home. We're going to have to watch through that. Ours is not, we're not out here trying to find people to find. But if folks just want to ignore what we've set in place, then we're going to warn them and ask them to disperse. And if they choose not to do that, then they'll either visit their jails or my jail and we'll go from there. Ours is essentially the same. Our code compliance has already been out in our police department, our NPO's passing out flyers, giving businesses information on it. The first, obviously we're not going to arrest people and ticket them in hard times, but we're going to strongly warn you. And if they have to make a second call to you, then you'll be issued a fine. But hopefully people, this is a city and county that generally complies with requests. So hopefully everybody will, and if they're open, then it's just a mistake. They didn't realize they were covered. The major differences here are not as significant because we were already very tight, but the major differences will be any business who can work virtually should. And everyone else, when you're home, stay home. Don't be out on farm and play dates at the park. Don't be out in big gatherings. Don't go see your friends for dinner parties at home. Stay home, we mean it when we say you're safer at home. The other is essential services is more well-defined in this and a tighter recommendation. So you can see the list on the website. Let me make one other comment about that. I don't know if Mayor Williams has to say anything, but if you're not feeling well, stay at home. If you're not feeling well, stay at home. I've had a couple of people say, well, our employer said we got to come in regardless. What I'm saying to you is by this order, if you're not feeling well, you stay at home. And then I'm sure at some point we'll have to have some discussions with maybe some employers. We've had unprecedented cooperation here. And even when we have seen violations reminding the people to do what they need to do, people are responding. I think also our citizens are hungry for guidelines and want to do and I think they'll be there. Now there's one exception and that's at the grocery stores. Y'all, we have got to practice social distancing there. We've got to pay attention to that and be sure and wash our hands with all the ways that the different boxes and cans are handled. Wipe your hands, wipe your products down there that you buy. That is really the biggest problem I see, but I'm very encouraged that we are able to strictly be able to put the rules out there with some reminders and people are responding. And that's the way it is here in Tarrant County. One more question. Please encourage your viewers to have one person per family where at all possible go to the grocery store. I know if you've got small kids, you don't leave them in the car, you take them with you, but don't take your bails with you. I think you had the last question. I'll just say from the city's point of view in the counties, we're working closely with our hospitals and we're working with the feds and the state to do everything we can. We're looking at options from our fire department to our police department, but I'll be glad to let Mike and them address that also. I think as far as PPE currently, I think we're all in pretty good shape as far as N95 mask availability and different procedures because of this virus to protect that PPE. And so we've been working with all of our physicians and healthcare staff to make sure that they're protected when taking care of these patients or when taking care of patients that may be at high risk for the disease, but haven't yet tested positive. So currently we're in good shape. I think what I'm optimistic about is the supply chain and a lot of manufacturers are converting to only N95 manufacturer, but that has not made it into the supply chain. So I think this is another reason to do the stay at home because we don't want to overwhelm our supply chain as well as it relates to some of these things. So currently we're good. As long as things don't escalate too dramatically, we're gonna continue to be good, but that could easily be overwhelmed as it has been in some of the other countries. And so we're absolutely trying to prevent that. We've had several businesses who are impacted by this who are not gonna be operating, reach out to us and say, we've got PPE on our shelves now and we have been taking those donations. A lot of the food service industries who aren't preparing as much food but still have that PPE. So I encourage, especially dental offices, if you've got unused PPE that you would be willing to donate to this effort, we will take that gladly in any other industries as well. No residents of Fort Worth or Tarrant County regardless of whether they're here undocumented or not will be left out. It's the same for healthcare. Even if you don't have healthcare insurance, you'll be able to receive healthcare. They need to just feel free to reach out and we'll get them to the resources where they need to go. Without a doubt, Mayor Price put it very well, we're gonna take care of all of our people there in our community and we are. In fact, I'm seeing that happen now but we need for people that need help that if you haven't been contacted, please let us know because we have so many volunteers wanting to try to help and reach out. So let us know if you need help.