Hello and thank you for joining us once again. my name is Luke Cape. I have the honor and privilege of serving the director of the Camden County Board of Freeholders soon to be the Camden County Board of Commissioners come January 1st. Um we're honored again today to be joined by our congressman from the first Congressional District. Donald Norcross welcome back. Congressman Thank you once again for taking the time to be here today. Good to be here. I know you have a busy schedule but uh it's great to have you here and carry out last year. Is the supervisor of our communicable disease uh Department of our Health department, so she's our resident expert in Covid-nineteen and it's really given us tremendous guidance and information as we've gone through this crisis. so welcome back and thank you as well um before we get to the congressman to carry out um I just wanna go over a few things uh first we are announcing today a new public health campaign focused on kids and young. On August 31st, the county had nineteen new covid-nineteen cases the average age of those who were infected on that date was 25 years of age. We've seen the average age of residents transmitting covid-nineteen since the start of the pandemic and especially since the start of the summer. Many young people think there are they are immune and I'm sure. I can tell you you are not no matter what your age you are not immune to this virus We have seen this constant trend of younger and younger people consistently bypassing the few simple steps We've asked everyone to follow to stop the transmission. That said the siren song of the shore large parties, or just a general malaise or lack of days attitude has endured because people think this is like a cold and they won't be impacted by it because of their young age. Well everything we are saying from the research and science being conducted is clearly indicate indicative of the of the fact that that is not the case you are not immune. We are seeing individuals in their 30s after hospitalizations that are sick for months from Covey. To paraphrase Howard from a health policy professor from Yale University, we have no idea whether having had this virus means 10 years from now, you'll have an elevated risk of contacting or contact attracting a larger debilitating disease. disease. We know that viruses in general are not the root cause of several other diseases and my point is this. We have not really scratch the surface of the research on covid-nineteen many studies still need to take place. Doctor David Paterno a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai, conducted a survey of long haulers who suffer from a variety of covid-nineteen sentence for months um after they test positive is typically young and healthy folks. We're seeing reports out of Penn State about the link of my cardi from covid-nineteen the Big ten athletes. Bottom line is this. We're gonna start a new campaign and this campaign will be used to drive home The point. No one is immune from Cot and we do not know what the future looks like with this disease We want everyone to continue to be vigilant, especially young people today. we're launching a campaign called Protect your circle. Over the course of the pandemic, we've all tried to do as much as possible to keep our circle small That's and that is really directly related to the uh having this disease relatively under control at this time, That said, there's one subset of individuals where we continue to see growth and that is our young people today. We're asking you to protect your circle young people don't open it up to new individuals or people that are that aren't familiar with to you. And if you do open up your circle, please get tested the board of Freeholders will begin today a multimedia approach to uh providing public service announcements to people to uh especially young people to remind them of how serious this disease is, and as I will tell you um most people are being affected by somebody within their circle. so a lot of young people are getting infected whether it's at the shore or elsewhere large parties. Home and infecting an older person and that's what we wanna stop uh with regards to covid-nineteen in Camden County, we continue to see stabilization of the numbers uh the rate of transmission in New Jersey is now 1.1, which means each person that contacts the virus will infect 1.1 other people to be clear we need to see more data before we can say this is under control cuz I don't think you can say that yet can you carry out? Um we are grateful. The residents of Camden County who've done all the right things wearing a mask social distancing stay in home washing your hands. Um you've done a tremendous job and our numbers continue to stay low in Camden County. We want that to to continue especially in school begins in some students are now going back uh to schools and gathering with other students. We need to continue to be vigilant to save lives unfortunately over this weekend, Camden County uh marked AAA new uh threshold of cases over 10000 cases in Camden County alone. We've reached out this weekend so far. unfortunately we've had 568 deaths We are approaching a number of deaths that will be more than those who lost their lives in World War Two who lived in Camden County. At the end of May, the average age of someone contracting the virus was 47 years of age today. It's twenty-nine. we need to speak very clearly to our youth and young adults, and I hope to any parents watching this will help echo this message to your children and that's what our new public awareness campaign will be all about the good news is it's very easy to control this disease where mask stay home when possible, socially distance and wash your hands if you're sick, Stay home, no matter what. And I just wanna also give an update on the cares uh program that congressman you were so vital in providing $25000000 of aid to small businesses here in Camden County, These are in the form of direct grants today we have 23000000 of this twenty-five uh. $25000000 um so almost 500 small businesses in Camden County have taken advantage of this program, We said. From the outset, our goal is to get to those businesses who didn't take advantage of. Federal or state programs and we've been uh thankfully very successful in doing so um more than 3000 applications have been submitted. um it's literally thousands of small businesses that will receive grants um which is helping them get through this crisis and hopefully I can get through until we have a vaccine and things are are closer to normal. We're talking some more detail about traces, but we're asking you to please cooperate. If you receive a call from a contact Tracer cooperate the information you provide will be very important and I can tell you this last week 62% of the cases uh that participated in an interview refused to provide contact information that is not acceptable. Wow. no harm will come to you. You'll get a no trouble the information you provide will be confidential, Please cooperate with our contact tracers if you have any questions about whether or not someone is a valid contact tracer you. Call one 800 809 0451