COVID-19 Update April 23, 2020

Congress just passed the legislation increasing the funding for the SBA along with other new items. The President is supposed to sign it tonight or in the morning.

Exciting evening if you are a football fan — the NFL draft is tonight!

Here is some great news: many communities have started task forces to get businesses rolling again. I can tell you the state of Louisiana has a taskforce co-chaired by Michael Hecht from GNO, Inc. Jefferson Parish has named Jerry Bologna, the head of JEDCO, as the chair for Jefferson parish’s Task Force. The word out of Orleans Parish is that they are firm on the May 15th date for starting the process of reopening.

Today in a webinar put on by GNO, Inc and the Louisiana Restaurant Association, we learned that they are working on a master plan for restaurants, bars, casinos and all hospitality venues to open.

This will be a tiered process for reopening. I shared the suggestions for reopening from the National Restaurant Association in a previous post. One of the issues they mentioned was the requirement that all staff wear PPE, Personal Protective Equipment. They also said if they had to open today, they could not due to the shortage of masks, gloves, etc.

We have big news that ties in with this — Delta has 2 new resources to get these PPE items, and they are affordable.

We are working on pricing and should be able to share this information with you tomorrow or Monday at the latest (negotiating discounts for our clients).

Just received word from a contact at the SBA about the definition of “utilities” in the PPP loan and whether it will be allowed as part of the 25% that is not payroll. The SBA will allow you to include utilities such as electricity, gas, water, transportation, phone and internet access for services that began before February 15, 2020.

Today’s downloads:

1. John Hopkins Public Health Reopening Guidance – this is information shared with all the Governors around the country about steps to reopen.
2. PEO and Employer COVID-19 Regulations by State – Great Information that our national Association, NAPEO, has compiled. It shows all active legislation by state, along with the links to the status of any changes, proposed or in place, so far. This info changes daily, so we may post this again sporadically as needed.
3. State EOS – this is a similar chart to # 2, but this lists any state Executive Orders that Governors may have put in place due to COVID-19.

Tonight, I would like to send a shout out to our website development team at Bizzuka. They have the job of taking my emails and converting them, so they can be posted to our website and social media. They catch all the things that spell check misses! Thanks for helping our Delta team spread this information to our website and beyond.

Our mission is to help both employers and employees, especially when times get tough like this. Also, thanks to all the people that share information with our team so we can spread the information.

Have a great evening and WHO DAT!!