Baton Rouge Congressman Garret Graves urges small businesses to start filling out the application for the Payroll Protection Act. Kevin Barnhart has the story.
Cut 1 (29) “…I’m Kevin Barnhart”
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The oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia and the coronavirus pandemic has brought the state’s oil and gas industy to its knees. Jeff Palermo has the story…
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Baton Rouge Congressman Garret Graves is encouraging small businesses to get a jump on filling out applications for the Payroll Protection Act. Small businesses can apply to receive low-interest loans, with money that is used for payroll being forgiven. Graves says applications will be accepted starting April 3.
Cut 3 (10) “…applications are accepted.”
The program is part of the $2.2 trillion emergency relief legislation, but this particular allocation is subject to a funding cap, adding to the urgency of filing quickly.
Money used to fund other aspects of compensation like benefits such as healthcare and retirement will also be forgivable. Graves says the funds will help keep businesses from making layoffs and firings.
Cut 4 (07)_ “…families above water.”
Graves says the funding is not intended to float the payrolls of small businesses for the rest of the year.
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As oil prices continue to drop the outlook for Louisiana workers in the industry continues to look bleak. Oil is trading in the low twenties and President of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association Gifford Briggs says the situation is dire and two weeks ago when he surveyed members the predictions were extreme.
Briggs says local companies are taking a huge hit in profits not only from the virus but also from Saudi Arabia and Russia ramping up production. Briggs says the two factors have resulted in a 90-percent reduction in prices for Louisiana Light Sweet Crude Oil since January.
Briggs says if prices do not recover by June first, storage facilities for oil will reach capacity and that’s when the industry will most definitely see a reduction in workers.
Cut 8 (10) “…everywhere else.”
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The New Orleans region could run out of ventilators for COVID-19 patients sometime this weekend. Governor Edwards says they’re scouring the medical community trying to figure out where they might have ventilators that are not in need, even if they aren’t high-powered ICU models.
490 COVID-19 patients are on ventilators in Louisiana as of the noon update.
The state received 150 ventilators from the feds today, but that number has already been factored into models warning of a shortage this weekend. At least…
When you combine requests to the feds and private companies, Louisiana has requested 14,000 ventilators total, but Edwards says that doesn’t mean 14,000 people are projected to need them.
New Orleans is projected to run out of hospital bed space around Tuesday of next week.
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LSU’s DeepDrug team is using artificial intelligence to analyze anti-viral drugs, or drug combinations that could be used to treat COVID-19 patients.
LSU Computer Science Professor Supratik Mukhopadhyay (Moo-co-pod-a) says drugs like hydroxychloroquine appear promising, but cardiac patients shouldn’t take the anti-malarial…
Before turning its attention to the coronavirus, DeepDrug was used to analyze potential antibiotic and antimicrobial treatments.
The FDA has approved about 90 antiviral treatments for general use, and Mukhopadyay says each will be simulated to see how it would treat COVID patients.
Once the ten to fifteen possibilities are discovered, Mukhopadyay says LSU will move to test them in more traditional clinical and lab settings.
DeepDrug is a current semifinalist for the IBM Watson AI X-PRIZE.
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