 Durham County's General Manager for Strategic Planning and Innovation. Thank you all for joining us for this important news conference. As you all know, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a pandemic earlier this week. Before that announcement, our public health professionals had been working to understand the potential impacts and effects of coronavirus, what it would pose, and how to develop a response. The health and safety of all of our residents and visitors is top of mind and as is transparency. With that said, we're bringing forth our department head who is leading our response. Public Health Director Rodney Jenkins is our point person on coronavirus and will come forth to summarize how we are working with state and federal partners at this time. And Rod, Dr. Pasco Mubanga, Superintendent of Durham Public Schools will come forward to detail what went into the recently announced decision to close all schools effective Monday, March 16th, and other important information that families need to hear. And after those two statements, we will have a brief period of question and answers. Rod, please come forward. Good afternoon. I'm Rod Jenkins, Durham County's Public Health Director. Since January, Durham County Department of Public Health has been operating a team to coordinate efforts around the local response to the coronavirus disease 219, also known as COVID-19. Durham County Department of Public Health is working with federal and state health officials, health care providers, and emergency management officials to protect the health and well-being of Durham County. COVID-19 is a new infection that is particularly severe in older persons and those with medical conditions such as heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, and weakened immune systems. At this time, there are no approved treatments and no vaccine to prevent it. There are known methods to reduce and slow the spread of infection. Everyday prevention measures like frequent hand washing, staying home when you're sick, and covering coughs and sneezes are effective methods. Community-based interventions can also slow the spread of COVID-19. This includes measures collectively known as social distancing. Social distancing measures aim to reduce the frequency of contact and increase physical distance between persons, thereby reducing the risk of person-to-person transmission. These measures are most effective when implemented early in an epidemic. We are at a critical inflection point. We may have the opportunity to slow the spread of this epidemic by taking proactive measures now. North Carolina has currently 17 presumptive positive cases, with one confirmed case. One of North Carolina's presumptive positive cases is a Durham County resident who tested positive in another state. Public health has diligently worked to serve Durham County residents in the following manner. We have monitored return travelers and other potentially exposed persons for symptoms. We have traced contacts of known presumptive and confirmed positive individuals. We have facilitated testing of people who meet testing criteria. We have worked with Duke's infection control and Duke's emergency management divisions. We have engaged in regular communication with federal, state and local partners. We have shared guidelines on how to proactively prepare and respond, including guidelines for health care providers, childcare providers, employer schools, colleges, universities and many others. We will continue to work alongside Durham Public Schools to provide support and guidance. We have provided guidance to EMS, law enforcement and other county city agencies. It is important to make sure that the information you receive about COVID-19 is from trusted, reliable sources like the CDC and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. You can visit their websites for more information on COVID-19. Durham County Department of Public Health follows the guidance of both state and federal public health authorities to reduce the spread of infection while we are still in this early critical stage. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is making these recommendations for the next 30 days and will reassess at that point. For symptomatic persons, if you need medical care and have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or suspect you might have COVID-19, we ask that you call ahead and tell your medical provider you have or may have COVID-19. This will allow them to take steps to keep other people from getting exposed. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services recommends that persons experiencing fever and cough should stay home and not go out until their symptoms have completely resolved. For high-risk persons with symptoms, people at high risk of severe illness from COVID-19 should stay at home to the extent possible to decrease the chance of infection. People at high risk include those individuals who are 65 years of age and older, those individuals with underlying health conditions including heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, and most importantly those individuals with weakened immune systems. For congregate living facilities, all facilities that serve as residential establishments for high-risk persons should restrict visitors. Citizens should include end-of-life care or other emergent situations determined by the facility to necessitate a visit. These establishments include settings such as nursing homes, independent and assistant living facilities, correction facilities, and facilities that care for the medically vulnerable children. For the workplace, we encourage employers and employees to use teleworking technologies to the greatest extent possible. We encourage them to stagger work schedules and consider cancelling non-essential traffic. Workplaces should hold larger meetings virtually to the greatest extent possible. Employers should arrange workspace to optimize distance between employees ideally at least six feet apart. Employers should urge high-risk employees to stay home and urge employees to stay home when they are sick. Employers should maximize flexibility and sick leave benefits. Citizens pertaining to mass gatherings, community and social events. Events that draw more than 100 people should cancel, postpone, modify these events or offer online streaming services. These events include large gatherings where people are in close contact less than six feet. Examples include but are not limited to concerts, conferences, sporting events, faith-based events, and other large gatherings. For mass transit, mass transit operators should maximize opportunities for cleaning and disinfection of frequently touched services. And of course, people should avoid using mass transit like buses and trains while they are sick. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Board of Health and I also want to thank the men and women of the Durham County Department of Public Health for their endurance, their motivation, and their resilience as we endeavor to work together to protect the health and well-being of Durham County. I will now turn it over to Dr. Mabenga for updates from Durham Public Schools. Thank you, Roy Jenkins, for your collaboration. Responding to COVID-19, Durham Public Schools students will be out of school from March 16 to April 3. To maximize time for instruction through the remainder of the year, DPS students will be on break the week of March 16 and will be provided supplemental instructional material beginning March 23. DPS will evaluate when students will return to school in consultation with state and local public health authorities. Durham Public Schools facilities will be closed to the public, including facility rentals. Meals. DPS will begin a daily feeding program for Durham County children on Monday, March 23, similar to our summer meals initiative. We will provide locations for families to pick up meals details will be available next week. As far as staff are concerned, DPS has arranged staff workdays and holidays to maximize available funding and minimize the use of leave during the COVID-19 closure. While we await possible action by the State of North Carolina during this state of emergency, spring break for students on the traditional and year-round calendars has been moved to the week of March 16. We are granting our staff the flexibility to work from home. If possible, in order to increase social distancing and we are developing a plan for distributing food and classroom materials to the community as well as other options for classified employees. Magnet schools. Families with children received seats in the magnet school lottery for 2021 being given additional time to communicate their acceptance. DPS is standing, the magnet seat approval window from March 20 to one week after student returned to school. Magnet school welcome events will be postponed and families will receive information directly from schools about rescheduled date. Student with disabilities. Student with disability we have individualized education program that we call IEPs will have access to all the resources being made available to all students in DPS. In addition, students instructed on the standard content standards will have access to the unique learning system online platform curriculum. Schools and resources provided are supplemental to enable opportunities for practice during the school closure period. I'm going to pass it on back to half department folks and we will be ready for your questions. Thank you both very much. Now we will entertain a period of questions. If you will please state your question and identify yourself. Can you tell us about the process of going through those discussions about how you handled it? Thank you for the question. It's a really tough question. I think my colleagues are really struggling with that same question at this point. The way we came to that conclusion as we are hearing from our parents, concerned parents wanted to pull the kids from schools and as we heard the guidance from our governor as well, we cannot gather more than 100 folks in the place. Just keep in mind some of our schools have about 300 or 500 students one time during lunch. So this was not really an easy decision to come up with. It was really a public meeting yesterday with our board as we are really rustling with a particular question. I think we made the best decision for our parents as well for our community. We are not there at that point as I said earlier or we are going to consult with our health departments as we are making those decisions. We are still working on some details. I am very proud of Durham as a community. As we made this decision yesterday, I received tons of emails of folks saying how can we help and we are still working on those details and I think our community is going to be really proactive. I know there are some elected officials here as well. Everybody is going to chip in to make sure that our community is really well taken care of. That is going to be a combination of our online platform as well, the materials that we will be sending home. If I am going to elaborate a little bit here, we are still on the face of developing a plan. We really want to make sure that all our classified employees, they are going to get paid. We have our yellow buses. We are going to use our bus drivers to drive, to deliver foods, as well deliver learning materials. We have all these details that we are still working on and we should be able to deliver the plan next week. No more questions. Thank you very much for coming. This is an evolving issue and we will do our best to keep you informed. We don't know when we will schedule another news conference but certainly the situation dictates changing times and as we have more information that needs to be shared jointly, you can count on us to bring that to you and we thank you so much for helping to get this important information out to our community. Have a good day.