 I'm Steve Benjamin, Mayor of Columbia. We had our first meeting of the Midlands Coronavirus Task Force. It's a task force and obviously given the nature of what we're all dealing with, this is our first meeting but we expect there will be a number of other different ways to meet and communicate. Next meeting may be physical, maybe indoor, maybe outdoor, maybe online, it may be teleconference, but it's important for the for the men and women and children that we represent to know that your elected leaders, your appointed leaders are effectively communicating as we deal with this growing challenge, public health challenge. Today we had a number of different agencies represented in the list as a bit more robust but they included Richling County, the City of Columbia, City of Casey, Fort Jackson, City of Lexington, Lexington County, the City of West Columbia, City of Springdale, City of Forest Acres, Richland 1, Richland 2, Lexington, Richland District 5, Benedict College, University of South Carolina, the Columbia Chamber of Commerce, Prisma Health, United Way, DHEC and the force transitions in several others, a number of other, of course all of our law enforcement leaders represented us from the Sheriff's Department, from the Police Department, from our Richland, Columbia Fire Department. Police, come on up too, it's important. We see we see our people uniform and makes us a lot to feel a lot safer, regardless of the challenge that we're facing. Obviously it's important to recognize that we are all learning so much as we move forward in dealing with coronavirus. So the more that we're able to operate outside of our silos, that we're able to share best practices and make sure that every institution knows what the others are doing, that we're able to rely on trusted sources, that if you need good information, go to one of our respected news agencies for information. Go to the City of Columbia or Richland County or our law enforcement or our healthcare institutions for good information. Do not rely on on social media alone because obviously one of the major challenges we have is just making sure people have good and solid information. Our focus is going to be as you go forward and making sure that our frontline first responders, the men and women who work to serve you each and every single day, have the tools that they need to make sure that we're safe, that we have systems in place to make sure that our public institutions are able to continue working. Effectively we're going to make sure that our healthcare workers obviously have the tools that they need to move forward. We're happy to have the Chamber of Commerce and other business institutions here with us today, recognizing that all businesses with certainly small business is still the economic workhorse of America and we have to make sure that we have some tools in place as we see some significant disruption in business globally that we make sure our businesses here across the Midlands are fortified. We live in a very different world right now as well with a number of gig workers, people who work from job to job, who work in technology, making sure again that we have systems in place. So we are working closely with our state leaders, working closely with the regionally and also through our respective organizations, working very closely with the federal government as well as we seek assistance as we go forward. So there's a lot of work to do. All of your leaders, regardless of region, regardless of where we are and who we are, irrespective of party or our respective roles working together and communicating to make sure that the people of the Midlands have their needs met. I'm going to step aside and we're going to have a very brief comments from our chairman of the Richland County Council, my friend Paul Livingston. Then the city manager of the city of Columbia, Teresa Wilson, we have Dr. John Saunders give us a brief medical update and then any of our other community stakeholders who are still here with us post our meeting are free also to communicate. We'll have some Q&A and we should wrap up pretty pretty quickly. So thank you. Mr. Chairman. Mr. Mayor, I heard you say it very briefly. I got that. And I also will have Dr. Witherspoon representing our educational institutions in the school district speak to. Let me first thank the mayor for his vision to bring us together in the Midlands. A little bit that's significantly important for an opportunity for us to just simply share our resources, talk about what resources are available, an opportunity for us to learn from each other, new ideas from each other. Well, no, preparation is the key. And what this meeting is about is preparation for our Midlands region. I'm excited about that. An opportunity to collaborate, partnership, work with each other, coordinate resources and think of that particular nature. You know, I want to thank my county ministry here as well as county staff for the preparation that we've gone through for the past couple of weeks. I had a little meeting on yesterday. So we want our citizens in Richland County to believe that we understand and know that preparation is the key. And that's what we're done. We're truly prepared. So again, Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you and I know that we're all going to be better off because of collaborative efforts like this one. Thank you so much. I'd like to ask Leonardo to stand with me. I'm Teresa Wilson, city manager. And of course, it's Leonardo Brown, our county administrator. We were also joined earlier by our Lexington County Administrator, Joe Margo and city manager, Tracy Haker from Casey. I think both of us and all of us in the room acknowledge as practitioners of local government and recognizing that we truly are in the business of public service. We have a fundamental responsibility to our employees first, who are going to be helping our citizens and customers in the Midlands. And so we've already all are in a lot step with establishing strategies of education, communication, prevention and preparedness. We are all doing a lot of the same things already and learn from each other today about some additional things that we want to be proactive in doing. But of course, that is pushing the message. And we thank all of you for being here today to put out the accurate information as Mayor Benjamin and Chairman Livingston said through all social media outlets, websites, YouTube channels and government access channels. We will be pushing information regularly. Communications have been sent to all of our employees through email, detailing steps for personal protection and steps to take should employees feel ill. And so that is including us gathering supplies like hand sanitizer, putting up stations for hand sanitizers, making sure that our individuals who were outside of the office, which is a majority of our employees who are working daily with citizens are protected to include our first responders. We've already engaged with both of the directors, Director Burr of Richland County, Director Tinsley with the City of Columbia and Jacqueline Richberg, whose director over 911. The protocols have already been established for first responders. As far as when they respond to calls, the call management system is already in place. If people or citizens are exhibiting signs of the coronavirus symptoms, we will ask additionally for continued planning and contingencies to be put in place for our staffing to ensure that we have a continued business processes and make sure that the work of government continues. Well, albeit it may be that we have to do things differently as the situation continues to present itself, but we are making preparations for employees to be able to work from home if that becomes necessary, as well as essential staffing, making different protocols for them as well as nonessential staff members to cross train. So a lot of things are in place. It's a fluid situation. We just want to assure the public that from a government local government perspective, we are prepared and ready. Thank you. Again, I want to thank Mayor Benjamin for coordinating this meeting and having us all come together and share information. As always, whenever there's something that arises, we do all work together because whether we're talking about Richmond 1, Richmond 2, Richmond 5, we share families and workplaces in line. So it's important that we all work together. With regard to the various school systems, we have put out information internally and externally to our parents, to our staffs, and we generally this time of year we have flu protocols that we follow, and that speaks to the wiping down of surfaces, covering your mouth, all of those things that we know to do during flu season, but certainly at this time taking extra precautions and as has been said, that preparedness, making sure that there may be isolation rooms that are needed in addition to our regular health rooms that we have. Preparing for any e-learning in the event that a school or a district has to be closed that we have, the education can continue differently, whether that's with computers, whether that's with packets, and so forth. So we're having those things in place. We're also monitoring field trips and so forth, whether that information comes from the CDC or DHEC in terms of travel for students, field trips, or staff with professional development. We're keeping an eye on those things as well, and also working with our international teachers that we have that come from various countries, and perhaps some of those trips that may have occurred during the spring break and the like may not happen. But again, we're keeping all of our folks involved and informed as we go through and continuing to make sure that in the event, just like what happened in 15 with the flood, our business services continue to operate and continue to have those systems and processes in place. So we will continue to work certainly with the individuals and entities that are represented here to make sure that we're doing our part as the education systems in this area and what we can to work together and support our families, our students as we go forward. Thank you. We'd like to thank Mayor Benjamin for allowing us to participate in his task force today. The one thing that I would like to point out is at this point in time, there are no confirmed cases of coronavirus in the state of South Carolina. In terms of things that we're looking for for symptoms to be on the watch for, we're looking for fever, we're looking for cough, and we're looking for difficulty breathing. In terms of what we can do to take care of ourselves and try to prevent the spread of this, hygiene in terms of making sure that we're covering our coughs to make sure that if we sneeze into a Kleenex, we throw that away to make sure that we're engaging in good hand washing technique in terms of making sure you wash your hands in warm soapy water for at least 20 seconds. And then if you're going to use the hand sanitizer, make sure that it's at least 60% alcohol. Thank you, sir. And we're going to obviously be opened up for questions. Oh, so usually so many of you are in this very space with us when we're having a storm, some sort of some type of inclement weather event or flood. And I have learned over the years, as many of you have, that these women and men are the very best there is in the public or private sector anywhere in handling these situations. New storms will arise and it is time for the very best and brightest to step up and we'll learn, we'll learn some things and we'll be even better prepared when the next challenge comes. Again, my reiterating what Ms. Wilson had to say, I wouldn't thank the media for being here. We appreciate each and every one of you as a trusted source and helping make sure that the people that we not only represent what we know that we love get good information from trusted sources, encourage people rely on trusted sources, not only on what we read on social media to get your information. It's so important. Obviously, that means the major stations represented here. You can always rely on channel two and certainly the official entities that stand before you here today go there for good information, not only to social media. So I'm going to wrap it up there. Unless someone says something to contribute, I want to thank everyone here and I want to thank all of you. And I'm happy to take any questions that you might have. In terms of concerns, I know a lot of people are considering about this virus. Like, you know, like the governor managed to tell some people to take it easy, like what can you tell people just to make sure that they can ease their fears? Well, I'm not sure if the answer is taken easy. But I think the, I'm sure the governor's admonition is everyone, just do the things that we know we're supposed to do. As Dr. Saunders laid out, listen to your medical professionals, listen to your public health leaders. There are all, there are a number of very simple things that we can all do to make sure that not only we stay healthy, but that those around us that we know and love stay healthy. Very simple things. Let's do that. But this, but this is a reason for great concern. We're talking about a serious virus. We're talking about potential epidemic and pandemic level. So we have to treat it with the gravity that it requires. But also, I think with the ease and calm that allows us to communicate. And obviously, the question is not if the coronavirus will be here in the Midlands, it will be here. The question is when it will be here and whether or not we're organized as a community to properly respond to it, to properly meet the needs of our citizens who may be affected by it. That's our job. And to make sure we're communicating very well. So that's what we're going to do. And we look forward to working very closely with the governor, with our federal officials, and certainly with all of our local officials and making it happen. Yes, sir. Oh, a couple of questions. I guess I'll just slide it to one. And you only get two, so. Fair enough. All right. Same passage break is in two weeks. That's a lot of public events coming up now. You're not putting in any advisories right now, restricting, changing the hours or the planning. That's still on this short. But we don't plan the St. Patrick's Day event, but certainly we help facilitate that having worked very close with the Five Points Merchants Association. We did have some robust discussions. Some of you were able to participate in that downstairs, and which is a very specific question to a few came up about out of state travel. And the other was about large assemblies and how we should handle those going forward. That is a very large assembly of folks. And I think we're probably going to have to kind of just see how things proceed in working with the proper stakeholders to see if things have turned into something rather significant. Maybe it's something that we all need to strongly urge a different path. But right now, no, we don't see any changes in plans. Second? Are you in close contact with public college officials, USC Allen, Benedict? Sure, too. Absolutely. So both the University of South Carolina and Benedict College were both present at the meeting today. Midlands Technical College as well. So yes, we'll be certainly communicating there. Obviously unique situations that we have with young people, particularly young people who are far away from home. They may not have their parents present the cannon for us. So we got some really good advice and counsel from our institutions of higher learning early the day. And we're going to continue staying engaged with them. Mary, do you have a like a five step plan? And you have something that kind of shows the guideline of what will happen in the case of the current bias here in Columbia? Well, right now, sure, in line with what the rest of the nation is doing. Sure. Well, obviously our goal just with any type of situations to have some type of a critical incident response protocol, those are all segmented out between the various different institutions that are happening here. Obviously, some of the dialogue downstairs was how will we react on post if this happens? How did we work with our certainly we got an update from DHEC as the only place now in the state where you can actually get tested and got an update from Prisma. Each of our various institutions we have other plans already developed or plans that are developed. And the goal is just realizing how we can work across our jurisdictional lines to make sure that if something is working really well on post that we don't have to reinvent the wheel in the state of Columbia that they know exactly what we're doing, you know exactly what they're doing. If something is going well at Richmond County, Lexington County has the benefit of that. So it's just constant communication, constant communication. Ms. Wilson, you just look about having Kansas and its hyzer stations for employees from the city. Are there any plans in place for having those stations for people who just want it around downtown? That's a great point. I think we started obviously with city personnel that are particularly engaged with the public on a daily basis for their protection because they're not able to, you know, wash their hands regularly because they're working in our communities, literally whether that's public work, staff, police, fire, water and sewer staff. And that's very important to us to have continued to push that message for them for their own personal health and hygiene. But because they are the central employees that will continue to keep this community running in the event that things become worse as far as the coronavirus. What I think we would probably do is then continue the audit throughout, you know, city center and maybe the hospitality districts and work with those different hospitality district representatives to see if any additional stations are needed for public use. And we can certainly do that. Thank you for what you do. We know that obviously this is probably the major, if not one of the major issues of public concern right now. Please continue doing the great work you're doing sharing the good word. Make sure it's it's something we can all we can find edifying after we read what's on your post and see what's on the news. And let's stay constantly kind of keep holding each other to account. So thank y'all. God bless you. Hey there. Mayor Steve Benjamin here. Thanks for watching this video. Make sure you give it a like right below the video and don't forget to subscribe. Also, while you're here, be sure to check out one of our other videos or follow on our social media platforms. Thanks again. And remember, we are Colombia.