of our livess any coverage of the government response to the coronavirus outbreak, watch any time at fromn.org/coronavirus, daily briefings from the white house coronavirus task force to daily briefings from governors. use the map to confirm cases in the u.s. county by county. our coronavirus webpages your fast and easy way to watch c-span's unfiltered coverage of this pandemic. a reporter who is working in louisiana right now to see if we can find out more about what is going on on the ground. adelson, who jeff

is a reporter in new orleans. good morning. guest: good morning. thanks for having me. host: what is going on on the ground in new orleans right now? guest: as the governor said in the clip that you played, we are factg a pretty heavy the -- heavy effects from coronavirus here. rateve the highest death by far on a per capita basis. are pretty intense down here. much fully inetty lockdown. they have shut down the bars and restaurants. everyone is just trying to figure out how we are going to

handle this. host: what is different about new orleans and louisiana? quickly? spreading so guest: that is a very good question. i don't think anybody has a solid answer to that. there have been a lot of theories about some underlying conditions within our population that make people eventually more susceptible to having extreme illness when they get the virus. thatinly there is the fact any federal were warnings, we had mardi gras. that is something some experts think might have helped the virus spread more widely.

what has been the response from local officials in new orleans and the governor for people who have been told to stay at home, possibly losing their job, and the people who may be possibly exposed to ?oronavirus guest: that is a good question. a lot of the help so far has been through nonprofits and community groups. a lot of restaurants are on ading meals for people nonprofit basis. meals fore providing students that are no longer attending schools. uncertaintyot of about what the effects of this are going to be because so much of the economy is based on

tourism. all of those businesses have been shut down. ande is a lot of question uncertainty about what is going to happen to all of the workers and businesses that rely on those industries. what is the mayor of new orleans doing to help slow the spread? doings governor edwards as well the state level? both the mayor and the governor have been very proactive about this ever since the first case was i don't ride. all of the schools statewide are shut down. all of the bars across the state are shut down. restaurants are only allowed to do takeout. both the state and the city have issued orders requiring that

only essential businesses be opened. nonessential businesses scaled back to work from home or the absolute minimum that they can. we are under orders to be at home as much as possible as well. you drive around the city, and it is empty. people seem to be largely abiding by the rules to stay at home as much as possible to avoid spreading the virus further. you can go through the french quarter even at night when it is usually packed with people, and it is completely empty streets. it is kind of a little eerie. host: do the medical

professionals in louisiana feel like they have what they need? what are you hearing from people in the medical industry? guest: that is the biggest concern right now. concerns about protective equipment, which a lot of hospitals say they are really concerned about running out of. frightening,more the state models predict that we could run out of ventilators sometime in the next week just with so many patients needing them. key to keeping people alive when you have serious cases of coronavirus.

the governor has said that we need thousands and thousands more ventilators then we currently have on hand in louisiana. ordersbeen putting in and requesting ventilators from the federal government. in the meantime, they are in the process of converting the convention center, which is a huge building down by the new orleans riverfront. right now, they are going to be putting about 500 beds in the convention center. the idea is that they can scale that up to about 3000, which would almost double the hospital capacity in the new orleans area. host: there has been a lot of conversation about whether marty brought should have been held in new orleans this year. there are a lot of people who are second-guessing the fact

that the parade went on as normal, and now louisiana is seeing all of these cases. what is the conversation going on in louisiana about what state and local leaders to with keeping mardi gras up and going? of that ist hindsight being 2020. at the time mardi gras happened, there were virtually no cases of coronavirus in the u.s. all of the cases that have been identified were directly related to travel -- that had been identified were directly related to travel. other cities were still holding major events. stuff like sxsw was not canceled until weeks after mardi gras. nott of local leaders would have held mardi gras knowing what they know now, but at the

time there was not enough information before hand to act that becausebout nobody in the federal government was saying this is actually a if you go ahead with mardi gras, it is going to cause a problem. thankwe would like to jeff adelson for being with us. stay safe.

>> do you believe that a left wing national healthcare system kingdomy have in united and cuba, for example, could have helped get everybody on the same page. >> could you actually get that from money, being that money many hands. so announcer: share your with thees dealing coronavirus pandemic and ask experts your questions. conversation every morning on "washington journal" a.m. starts at 7:00 eastern and more live conversation week nights at eastern for "washington journal" primetime. announcer: television has changed since c-span began 41 years ago but our mission antinues -- to provide unfiltered view of government. already this year we've brought primary election coverage, the presidential impeachment

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