Texas, louisiana, mississippi, alabama, florida, georgia, tennessee, and South Carolina. D South Carolina. My administration will do Anything Possible to help those communities get back on their feet. We are speaking with the governors and representatives. Fema is already on its way. We got there as soon as we heard the word, i said get out there. You know the great job fema does. It is something very special. , warmestant to say condolences and we are with you all the way. It is a tough deal. Level five, that was a bad group, that is as high as it gets. A bad grouping of tornadoes. Something that is something incredible, the power, the horrible destructive power. America is continuing to make critical progress in our war against the virus. Over the weekend, the number of daily new infections remained flat nationwide. Hospitalizations are slowing in hotspots like new york, new jersey, michigan, and louisiana. This is clear evidence our strategy to combat the virus is working and that americans are following the guidelines. It has been incredible what they have done. You look at the charts. The charts and the models from early on predictions where 100 and 120,000 people looked like if they did well they were going to unfortunately perish. We are going to be hopefully way below that number, so that will thingsgn of people doing right, but it is still just a horrible thing all over the world. This is all a tribute to a Wonderful Health care advisors withxperts who have been us right from the beginning. We appreciate it so much. Dr. Fauci is here. Maybe i could ask tony to say a few words before we go any further. Please. Thank you, mr. President. Couple of things and i want to make a comment about something that happened yesterday. You will hear from dr. Birx about the numbers, how things are starting to balance off. I think as we go by each day, we are going to see again, i dont like to get ahead of myself for dr. Birx, but it looks like even though we have had a really bad week last week, november when i was speaking to you before saying this was really a bad week . There is going to be a lot of death, but we are seeing areas flattening, particularly in a place that was a hotspot like new york. The second thing is i had a really very productive conversation with the Congressional Black Caucus this morning for about an hour. They really wanted to know what exactly are we going to be doing in the immediate as well as the longrange about the Health Disparities and the discrepancies of infection and poor outcome in minorities in general, but specifically africanamericans. I made it very clear to them that what we have to do is focus on getting the resources where the vulnerable are to get testing done, to get the whereriate identification proper and appropriate to isolate and Contact Trace if we can, but also to help mitigate in the communities that are suffering and much more just proportionately. The other point i wanted to make is that i had an interview yesterday that i was asked a hypothetical question. Hypothetical questions sometimes can get you into some difficulty. What would have or could have. The nature of a hypothetical question was if in fact we had mitigated earlier, could lives have been saved . The answer to my question was, as i always do and i am doing right now, perfectly honest. Yes, obviously. Medication helps. I have been here many times telling you mitigation works. Mitigation works. If you initiate it earlier, you will save more lives. You initiate it later, you probably would have lost our lives. You initiate it at a certain time. That was taken as a way that maybe somehow something was at fault here. Let me tell you from my experience, and i can only speak for my own experience. We have been talking before any meetings we had about the pros and cons, the effectiveness or not, of strong mitigation. Discussions are going on among medical people about what that would mean. The first and only time that dr. Birx and i went in and formally made a recommendation to the a,sident to actually have quote, shut down in the sense of not shut down, but strong mitigation, we discussed obviously there would be concerns by some that in fact that might have some negative consequences. Nonetheless, the president listened to the recommendation and went through the mitigation. The next second time i went with dr. Birx into the president and said, 15 days are not enough, we need to go 30 days, obviously, there were people who had a problem with that because of the potential secondary effect. Nonetheless, at that time, the president went with the Health Recommendations and we extended it another 30 days. I can only tell you what i know and what my recommendations were , but clearly as happens all the time, there were interpretations of that response to a hypothetical question. I thought it would be nice for me to clarify because i did not have the chance. Thank you. To be honest with you, i dont remember what the date was. I can tell you the first and only time i went and said we should do mitigation strongly, the response was yes. The travel restrictions . The travel restrictions are separate. That was whether we wanted to go into a mitigation stage of 15 days of mitigation. Travel was another recommendation when we said, we probably should be doing that. The answer was yes. The next time was with europe and the answer was yes. The next time was when you can we said yes. You said there was pushback. Where did that come from . Dr. Fauci that was the wrong choice of words. People discuss, they save, this could have a harmful effect on this, on that. It was not anybody saying you should not do that. Are you doing this voluntarily . Dr. Fauci everything i do is voluntary. Do not even imply that. Ban he travel pres. Trump the travel ban was done earlier. , onou look at statistics january 6, before the dates you are talking about, there were cdc issuing travel notice for wuhan, china. Before there was even a confirmed case of the virus in the United States. That is january 6. It is all documented because we have so much fake news, i like to document things. January 6, well before the days we are talking about, cdc issued travel notice to wuhan, for wuhan. On january 11 we have zero cases in the United States. There are no cases reported that we know of. This is january 11. The cdc issued a level 1 travel notice for health while there were still no confirmed cases. We had zero cases. Im supposed to close down the economy, the greatest economy in the history of the world, and we are going to have one case confirmed in the United States. Thats january 11. January 17, the cdc began implementing Public Health entry screenings at three major u. S. Airports that received the greatest number of passengers from wuhan at my instructions. There was not a single case of in the uniteds states. On january 17, there was not a case. The fake news is saying he did not act fast enough. Well, you heard what happened. When i did act, i was criticized by nancy pelosi, joe biden, by everyone. I was called xenophobic. Pleasesking bided to define that for me. I was called other things by democrats. Some others, not too many others, actually. The media, definitely. Now on january 21, long before the time we are talking there was oneone, case, and at that time, we called it the wuhan virus. In the whole United States we had one case. This all comes from you. A lot of it comes from you people. I am supposed to shut down the biggest economy in the world, we had one case. Seven cases were on january 31. Now, you heard that. Not one person. So you have this massive country, United States of america, the greatest economy in the world, bigger than chinas by a lot, because of what weve done over the last 1. 5 years. Including the virus. So you have the biggest economy, greatest economy weve ever had. Economy we have ever had, the highest employment best employment numbers, the best unemployment numbers also, the best of everything. 31, not one person has died. Cdc, this isted by reported by cdc, confirmed by the news, which does not mean anything to me because they do not tell the truth. But cdc reported january 31, not one person has died, and i issued a travel restriction from china. Think about it. Nobody has died, and i issued it. You cannot get earlier than that. Nobody died and i said china, you cannot come in, i am sorry, because i saw what was going on. It was not so much what i was told, i saw what was going on and i did not like it. I did not speak to tony about it, did not speak to many people about it. I did not like it. So what did i do . Ready . January 31, in the United States, not one person had died because of, again, the wuhan virus. So i issued travel restrictions on that day even though nobody died and i got brutalized over it by the press, because i was way too early, i should not have done it, brutalized by the press, but i have been brutalized the past four years. I used to do well before i was running for politics, but i guess i am doing well, because i am president of the United States despite things that are being said, so the first mandatory quarantine in more than 50 years, we did it. Years,st mandatory in 50 the same restrictions the democrats and the media called xenophobic. Now, joe biden said, he is a racist. He called me a racist because i said that we are shutting down entry from china, we are shutting it down. He called me xenophobic and he called me a racist and other things. Since then, on a friday night two weeks ago, joe biden issued he did not write it, i am sure he does not know it was issued, but the people from his campaign, who are smart, people who write these little pr releases. They are pretty smart, reasonably. Reasonably smart. They issued a statement saying joe biden agrees President Trump was right to close it down to china. He did that. He issued it on a friday night. We have heard about that, right, friday nights, and, in fact, his was later friday night than i ever released mine on friday night. He did it pretty late, like 11 00 in the evening. So joe biden issued it, and it was one of those things, but in february, nancy pelosi said, come to chinatown, we think it is safe, lets all have a big parade, chinatown parade. Probably referring to san francisco. And that is it, but i took this action early, and so the story in the New York Times is totally fake. It is a fake newspaper, and they run totally fake stories. Someday, hopefully in five years when i am not here, those papers are out of business because nobody will want to read them. But now they like them because they write about me. I have a couple interesting we have a few clips we are going to put up. We could turn the lights a little bit lower. I think you will find them interesting, and then we will answer some questions. I will ask you some questions, because you are so guilty, but forget it. Most importantly, we will get to the reason we are here, which is the success we are having. Ok, please. You can put it up. Thank you. [video clip] people should be concerned about the flu and this country. A lot of people are concerned about the coronavirus, because they are hearing a lot about it right now, but the reality is, comparing it to the flu, it is not at that stage. What if it is worse . Is this a point where maybe countries put politics aside, a little bit pride aside, and should u. S. Officials, professionals, such as yourself, get involved . How worried should americans be about coronavirus . Is not a major issue in the United States. President trump well, we have asked them to accelerate whatever they are doing in terms of a vaccine. Dr. Fauci we will be suspending all travel from europe to the United States for the next 30 days. President trump to unleash the full power of the federal government, i am officially declaring a national emergency. Medicare patients can visit any doctor by phone or videoconference at no additional cost. The first one Million Masks will be made available immediately. As there were more cases and it was clear it was spreading out of china where it originated, the president took this move that he was widely criticized for by democrats and some republicans at the time, which was he halted a number of flights from china into the u. S. The idea was to halt the spread of the disease, keep transmissions to a minimum. He was accused of xenophobia. He was accused of making a racist move. At the end of the day, it was probably effective because it did take a pretty aggressive measure against the spread of the virus. Governor cuomo his team is on it. They have been responsive, late at night, early in the morning. And they have, thus far been , doing everything they can do and i want to say thank you and that i appreciate it. He returns calls, reaches out, he has been proactive. We got that mercy ship down here in los angeles. That is directly because he sent it down here. 2000 medical units came to the state of california, these fms, field medical stations. That has been very helpful. The president has been outstanding throughout this. The Vice President has been outstanding. Members of the Coronavirus Task force, very responsive. We had asked if new jersey could have a piece of the beds on the u. S. N. S. Comfort and the president called me to say indeed they would grant that to new jersey. So that is a big step to us in addition to all of the other capacity. That news is literally hot off the press, and i thank the president and the Vice President , who were on the call together. President trump approved arizonas request for a major disaster declaration. I want to thank the president for a quick turnaround. We requested this on a wednesday and we had approval by saturday morning. And we are grateful to the administration for their continued support and responsiveness. Well, first of all, i want to think the president and Vice President for doing a really good job of communicating with all of the governors. [end video clip] pres. Trump we could give you hundreds of clips like that from governors, including democratic democrat, as i call them, governors, which is actually the correct term. We could give you hundreds of clips like that. We have them. We did not want this to go on too long, but i wanted to say it is very sad when people write false stories. Guess ithat case, i was mostly from the New York Times, which is a highly if you had libel laws, they would have gone out of business. It is too bad. You saw the statements. We have hundreds of statements, including from democrats and democrat governors. And if you look, they were all saying, we need ventilators. We need you do not hear ventilators anymore. In all fairness these two people here, dr. Birx, dr. Fauci, they said, i do not think they need that many ventilators. I said, i agree. At one point, and i do not knock this new york asked for , 40,000 ventilators. That is more than they have all over the country. We got them a lot of ventilators and nobody has complained. We got them, as you know, beautiful. We built hospital rooms all over the country. The governor of louisiana, john bel edwards, said you do not have to build a second hospital. Because good news is happening. They are not able to fill the beds. They needed two hospitals. We built one. It was perfect. We were building another one. Do we need to build a second one . He got back, we did not need it. With Governor Cuomo, in all good spirit and good faith, he wanted to have the Jacob Javits Center done, and we built 2900 incredible beds. Incredible. Then we made it covid, or to be covid19,curate, which was a lot of work. We had to change the ductwork, seal up certain areas. Put rooftop things over the beds. We did a lot of work, and we had it but they , never had too much use for it. Mayor de blasio said, would it be possible to get more medical help . So now, not only are we building facilities they are asking us , to help because they are unable to man it. And we got him the help. We got mayor de blasio a lot of help. Then when the Javits Center was , not used much, and then, as you know, the mercy, we took the comfort, and we made them both, los angeles and new york, we made them covidadaptable, which was not easy to do, we did not get almost any people sent there. They did not need them at the beginning because they did not needed for anything but this, and what we did was we did an incredible job, but they did not need them. They were there. We were ready. You know the expression . Ready, willing, and able. What the army corps of engineers did, what fema did was a miracle. What the doctors did. I got a call a few days ago from the mayor of new york. He said, could you help us even more with medical personnel . And we sent i think it was 448 doctors, nurses and respiratory experts. Real experts. I got a call from the mayor and he said, i want to tell you. Incredible, these people are incredible. He said they lifted the spirits of the hospital workers from new york city like nothing i have seen. It was unbelievable, really appreciated. I let them know that, the military people. He said, they went in there so brave, so incredible they lifted , the spirits of everybody. We did all this work, but when you read the phony stories nobody acknowledges this. It does not have to be acknowledged from my standpoint, but it does have to be acknowledged from the great work that these doctors, nurses, the army corps of engineers, fema, all these people they have done this incredible job, and they should not be abused, because if you take a look at what has happened, nobody is asking for ventilators, except outside of our country. Outside of our country, they are calling me. So many countries, and i am going to try to help them, because we have thousands of ventilators being built, but nobody is asking for ventilators. Nobody is asking for beds, we but hospitals. We built 20,000 beds in a period of a couple weeks. The job they have done is incredible. That said i am getting along well with the governors. And if i would not mike pence , had a call today with governors and it was like a 10. I said, how was it question were in he said, it was a 10. He used one of my expressions, actually. He said it was like a 10. I am sure you guys were on the call though you are not supposed to be, in somebodys office listening. For weeks those calls have been very good. But there was not a raised voice. There was not even a statement of, we think you should do this, and it might not be reported that way. I thought that somebody may be slightly did not even raise a voice. I want to get back to why we are here. The press has not treated these incredible people who have done such a great job, they have not treated them fairly. We were way ahead of schedule, and remember this. The times story was a fake. Everything we did i was criticized because i was too early. If i waited longer, if i went way earlier, three months earlier, i wouldve been criticized. Criticized for being way too early, so with all of that being said, we understand it. Educated a lot of people as to the press, and i would love to be able to say we have a very honest press. Honestly, there would be nothing i would be more proud of if the press would work. And i do not mind being criticized, but not when they are wrong, not when people have done a great job. Yes . Talking about the video, i have never seen a video like that before in this room. It looks like a campaign video. Who did that . President trump a group in the office. We just put some clips together. I will bet you i have over 100 more clips even better, they were just pieced together over the last two hours. We have far better than that. That is nothing compared to some. This was produced here in the white house . Pres. Trump by dan and a couple people, put together in a period of less than two hours. Why did you feel a need to do that . Pres. Trump because we have fake news and i want to correct it. We have the governors of california, new jersey, new york. Look, in new york we worked very , close with andrew. Ventilators were going to be a problem, they did not have a problem. They got tremendous numbers of ventilators. You got here you do not hear the ventilators were a problem. Beds were going to be a problem. I am happy about it. The Javits Center is almost empty because they do not need them. I do not want the or people there. We brought in the boat, the helpers, the comfort. It was originally not supposed to be for this, the coronavirus. It was not supposed to be for that at all. Then they said could you get medical personnel to run the Javits Center . Could you get medical personnel to run the ship . If it is necessary, we will. There were medical personnel, the ones mayor de blasio made in his statement. I really appreciated the statement. He was so impressed with them and i am, too. The level of genius and bravery, they are great people, the military people. And we pieced that together. I would say it took less than two hours. This was produced by government employees, people at the white house, this campaignstyle pres. Trump i would not say would not use the word produce, i would say clips, and that is to keep you honest. I do not think it will work, have any impact. But just think of it. You heard the clips, heard what i said. They said i acted late on closing down the country . Some people wished we never closed it down. If we did not, we would have lost hundreds of thousands of people. You know, interestingly, i am against that. Everything we did was right. You think everything you did was right . Pres. Trump governors should have had ventilators, they chose not to have them. We were able to get them ventilators. There was a panic. A lot of screaming, we want ventilators, and you do not hear that anymore, and the surge is supposed to be coming now. If they do need ventilators, we have almost 10,000 that are ready to rock. We have people standing with those ventilators right now. If you needed 2000 in new york, which you dont, but if you did, we could have them here in less than 24 hours. We are ready to rock. This was a great military and beyond that operation. Lets get back to the regular. Should we get back to the regular . We could talk about this, but all i am doing is this. Those are four or five clips i played for you. I could have given you hundreds of people gavin was on Television Two days ago with one of your competitors, singing praises. He says, look. The question was asked in a negative way, and he says, look. I know what you want me to say, but he has been really good. It is hard for me to say that, in fact, it is impossible for me to say that, gavin newsom, the governor of california. I have many clips. I have clips from anthony that i did not want to put up which were really good. I think anthony would be the first to say, when i closed the country to china, when i closed the china ban, whatever you want to call it. Anthony said i saved a lot of lives by doing that. Am i correct . I do not want to put words in anthonys mouth. And i like him. I walk in today, and somebody said i was going to fire him. [indiscernible] pres. Trump i retweeted somebody who said fire. You know . I notice everything. You retweeted it even though it said time to fire. Pres. Trump no, i was called about that. I said i am not firing. You ask your friends in the office, the Public Relations office, i was immediately called upon that. I said no, i like him, he is terrific. Not everybody is happy with anthony, not everybody is happy with everybody. I will tell you we have done a job the likes of which nobody has done. The mobilization, getting of equipment. All of the things we have done. Nobody has ever done a job like this. We have 50 governors and territories, by the way. People never mention the territories. We have 50 governors and territories and many of those governors are democrats and they cannot find anything to complain about. Honestly, many of them did not do their jobs. I will let you no one day. I may let you know who is not doing their job. I can tell you who is doing good, republicans and democrats, and the ones who do not know what they are doing, but we help some of the ones who do not know what they are doing. They should have had their own stockpiles. If they want we can build them stockpiles of ventilators. The hardest thing is a ventilator because it is expensive. It takes a while to get. We got them and nobody believed we did. Many governors were asking for far too many. And we said they were asking for far too many. We talked and said, you said very strongly they do not need them and do not need that many beds. Deborah. That is it. You and dr. Fauci on the same page . Pres. Trump yes, we have been since the beginning. I do not know what it is, exactly, but if i put somebodys opinion up i do not mind controversy. I think controversy is a good thing, not a bad thing. But i want it to be honest controversy. I got a call not very quickly, nobody saw it as any big deal, they said how are you doing with dr. Fauci . I said, i am doing great. And i did not talk to dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci asked one of the people if he could get up and speak and he did. And they totally misinterpreted him. I saw what they did. He said the question was hypothetical, but when he was acknowledging is if the mitigation practices have been put into place earlier. That seems obvious. Do you not agree with that . Pres. Trump but how could you have done it . Right here. How do you close it up . You have no deaths and no cases on 11 . January doctor, would you recommend closing the United States of america . This must be terrible. How any cases do we have . None. How many deaths do we have . None. 10 days before i did the ban less than 10 days. I did a ban on china, you think that was easy . Then i did a ban on europe and a lot of people said it was an incredible thing to do, because you look at spain, and, by the way, we are did looking very well, because when you look at those flat capita,nd added up, per we are doing well, but how do you close the United States of america . January 6, no deaths, january 11, no deaths. January 17, new cases, no cases, no deaths. Up thepposed to close United States of america when i have no cases . In the middle of march, could you closed it earlier . Pres. Trump i closed it down from china. Excuse me. I closed it down from china. And by the way, some people , think i should have waited longer and maybe ridden it out. I disagree with them. Ok . It was an alternative. I will give you the good news. If i would have done that, it would have been, i think, catastrophic, because the numbers are 1. 6 to 2. 2 Million People who would have died if we tried to do that. Cut it in half. Do not say 2. 2 million. Cut it in more than a say one half. Million people died, that is much more than the civil war. Cut it in half. Take the 1 million and cut in 500,000 people half. Would have died. That number we would have reached. That would have been easy to reach if we did nothing, so we did the right thing and our timing was very good. But here is the one thing and you have to say this, when you asked me, why didnt you do this, how come when i did the ban on china and instituted very tough things, how come nancy pelosi a month later is in chinatown saying, lets all march, this is not going to happen . How come we have experts from cnn and many other networks, if you call cnn a network. I do not, personally, but cnn and other places, and they are all saying, he does not need to do it . All i am saying is this, how do you close down the greatest economy in the history of the world when on january 17 you have no cases and no deaths . When on january 21, you have one case and no deaths . One case. Think about that. Now, i am supposed to close down the country . On january 31, i instituted the ban and joe biden went crazy and said you do not need the ban. He did not even know what the ban was, so he did not go crazy. But he did say he did call me xenophobic, he called me a racist because he has since apologized and said i did the right thing. So when you say, why didnt you this, every democrat thought i made a mistake when i did it. I saved tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of lives when i did it. The argument is you bought yourself a time but did not prepare hospitals or ramp up testing. You are so disgraceful. It is so disgraceful the way you say that. Listen, i just went over it. I just went over it. [indiscernible] unprecedented crisis. Pres. Trump nobody thought we should do it and when i did it what did you do with the time you bought . February . Pres. Trump what do you do when you have no cases in the whole United States . Excuse me. You reported it. Zero cases, zero deaths on january 17. I said in january. What did your administration do in february from the time of the travel ban . Pres. Trump a lot and we will give you a list. In fact, a lot of it is up there. We did a lot. You know you are a fake, you know that, your whole network, the way you cover it is fake. And most of you. Not all of you, but the people are wise to you. That is why you have a lower Approval Rating then you have had before times probably three. And when you ask me that question let me ask you this. , why did biden apologize . Why did he write a letter of apology . That is very important. It is not important. Pres. Trump why did the democrats think i acted too quickly . They really thought i acted too quickly. We have done a great job. Now, i could have, i could have, kept it open, and i could have done what some countries are doing. They are getting beat up pretty badly. I could have kept it open. I thought of keeping it open because nobody has ever heard of closing down the country, let alone the United States of america, but if i would have done that, we would have had hundreds of thousands of people that would right now be dead. We have done this right and we really we really have done this right. The problem is the press does not cover it the way it should be. One more question. There is debate over what authority you have to order the country reopened. Pres. Trump i have the ultimate authority but we will get to that in a minute. We will finish this up, tell you about other things we have done right. But i will say this. Had we said, lets keep going, and lets not do closing, whether it is 2. 2 million projected or 1. 6 million, you cut it down to 800,000,r 700,000, take just a fraction of the number, it literally would have been more than the civil war. It would have been a disaster. The minimum number was 100000 and i think and i feel pretty good that we are going to be substantially below the 100,000. And i think we will. Ok, so today the department of , health announcing five new contracts to procure large numbers of additional ventilators under the defense production act, which we used a lot, by the way. Did not like to talk about it. In addition to the 1300 we received, today, we received today 1300 additional ventilators. We probably will not need them, but we can add them to our we are ready to rock. The contracts are with general electric, resmed, vyair, combined with the dpa contracts with General Motors and phillips , and two others with hamilton and zol. We are adding 1690 ventilators added to the Strategic National stockpile to which we have already close to 10,000. This will be added by may 8. Another 29,000 by the end of may , and more than 129,000 total by the end of the year. Now, we will help other countries, help states if they need it. We may help some states stockpile. They are supposed to buy their own. They have eight stockpiles, they are supposed to be using them and unfortunately most of the states were not there. People did not want to talk about it. But they werent there. We will talk about it at the right time, if you want to. Am more focused on getting past at this point, i this nightmare of an epidemic or pandemic, anything you want to call it. We have to get past it. Nobody who has needed a ventilator has not gotten a ventilator. Think of that. You heard all about ventilators, we need ventilators. Because they didnt have them. The state should have had them. No one who has needed a ventilator has not gotten a ventilator. No one who has needed a hospital bed has been denied a hospital bed. That is not even really a our responsibility. If we can help, we will do it. That is where the army corps of engineers did such a good job. We built over 20,000 beds, we built thousands more than we needed, to be safe. We wanted to be safe, and they rose to this incredible occasion. We built more beds than we thought. We thought in louisiana we were going heavy. And again, when i called the governor, i said maybe we should not build that second hospital. We dont want to build it if you dont need it. He called back, i do not think we are going to need it. They had 1000 rooms, 1000 beds and they used a lot of them. But they didnt need the other one, so we stopped it because they do not want to waste. But we are prepared to build thousands more should we need it. I dont think we will need it, because it looks like we are plateauing and in many cases coming down. In addition, we ordered a total of 16 mobile decontamination systems. So, the decontamination system from ohio is an incredible thing. Because it takes the masks and up to 20 times you can decontaminate a mask. And i have been asking from the beginning, why cant we sterilize and sanitize these masks . It turns out we can. There was a Great Company in ohio that sent us great equipment and they are doing that now. Now we are going to have more than 33 million n95 masks per week. They will be cleaned, decontaminated and it will be great. It is something that frankly i think people should have thought of a long time ago. Five more flights landed as part of the air bridge. A massive airlift operation to bring personal protective equipment into the United States, which has now delivered nearly half a million n95 masks, 370 million gloves, millions of surgical masks and 4. 99 million gallons. We have millions of gallons, gowns, gloves, masks, surgical equipment, should the states need it. States are supposed to be buying their own stuff, but should they need it, we will give it. We are building our stockpiles like crazy. Remember, you saw the stories. I inherited this administration, we inherited a stockpile where the cupboards were bare. There was nothing and i will say it again, just like we did not have ammunition, we did not have medical supplies, ventilators, a lot of things that should have been hand. You can read your own stories on that because you know what happened. They did not want to spend the money. But we did. To date, we have facilitated the supply of more than 38 million n95 masks nationwide. This week, we will send n95 2 Million Masks to the commonwealth of pennsylvania. The Vice President will go into more detail. He has great detail on that and it is a Pretty Amazing story. We have a lot of masks already in stock and more coming. We are further expanding hospital Surge Capacity in key areas. We have a portion of certain v. A. Hospitals and nonveteran patients including at the east orange new jersey , Medical Center and in manhattan and brooklyn. They are ready. They are able. They are beautiful. Hopefully we will not need many. Because frankly, we built everything the governors wanted, and in many cases it is too much. We told them it was too much. But we wanted to err on the side of caution. The United States has conducted 3 million tests for the virus. 3 million, the most of any nation. We are performing approximately 115,000 tests every day and our rate of testing is especially high in areas hardest hit by the virus. If you look, it has hit some areas very hard. Per capita testing in new york is higher than the rest of the world. The nih cdc and fda are currently validating several Antibody Tests that will allow us to determine whether someone has already had the virus and potentially become immune to infection. We are looking at that, the Antibody Tests are going to be very interesting over the next short while. A lot of things are being developed as we speak. In the race to develop effective treatments, the Drug Company Gilead announced its drug remdesivir has shown very, sing promising results in compassionate use settings. In addition, the fda granted emergency authorization for a device that removes certain proteins from the bloodstream, possibly preventing a patients immune system from overreacting to the virus and damaging vital organs. Which is a big problem. Furthermore, over the last seven days my administration deployed 28 million doses of hydroxychloroquine from our national stockpile. We have millions of doses we bought. Many people are using it all over the country. Just recently a friend of mine told me he got better because of the use of that drug. So who knows . You combine it with zpack, combine it with zinc. Depending on your doctors recommendation. We are having some very good results. I think if anyone recommended it other than me it would be used all over the place, to be honest with you. I think the fact i recommended it set it back a lot, but a lot of good things are happening, a lot of good tests. Scientists are pursuing a blood therapy known as convalescent plasma. Convalescent plasma. This therapy uses antibodies from the blood of recovered patients to treat those who are sick. This is something that is a very old procedure done in a very modern way. During this difficult time we are working to ensure the 2020 census is completed safely and accuracy. We may be asking for an extension, because obviously they cannot be doing much right now. They were not even be allowed to do it. The census, we will be asking for a major delay. How can you possibly be knocking on doors for a long period of time . The Census Bureau made a decision to suspend field Data Collection activities to stop the spread. While millions of americans continue to complete their questionnaire online, the Census Bureau asked congress for an extension. I dont know you even have to ask them. This is called an act of god, a situation that has two the, they have to give it. I think 120 days is not nearly enough. My administration is also taking bold action to help American Workers. On friday, americans began receiving Cash Payments authorized by the historic 2 trillion relief bill. By the end of the week, nearly 80 million americans will receive a total of 147 billion. From what the secretary of the treasury tells me, it is going nicely. He will be speaking in a moment. These payments go directly into the banks, the Bank Accounts of these people. Millions of additional payments will follow. The typical family of four will receive 3400. Thats for a family of four. Additionally, through our paycheck protection program, a tremendous success, and they should extend it and increase it. This has been a tremendous success. So successful that the banks are taking longer to distribute the money, but it is going rapidly. We have now processed over 200 billion in loans to help Small Businesses retain workers. Now, we urgently need lawmakers to set aside the partisan agendas and replenish this program with new funds because it is really something that has been an incredible success and they need more money to keep it going to take care of these businesses and keep them open. I want to thank the many governors, health professionals, scientists and Business Leaders for their incredible hard work and input over the last month. Even long beyond a month, i would say. Weve been working together with a lot of them for it seems like forever. I have been having many discussions with my team and top experts. We are very close to completing a plan to open our country , hopefully even ahead of schedule. And that is so important. We will soon finalize new and very important guidelines to give governors the information they need to start safely opening their states. My administrations plan and corresponding guidelines will give American People the confidence they need to begin returning to normal life. That is what we want. We want to have our country open. We want to return to normal life. Open, andy will be successfully open. We will be explaining over a short number of days exactly what is going to be. We have also as you probably have heard, we have developed a committee, calling in a number of committees with the most prominent people in the country, the most successful people in various fields. We will announce them tomorrow. This week, the u. S. Also help facilitate an unprecedented agreement among the 23 nations of opec plus. That is opec plus additional energyproducing nations, representing many of the Worlds Largest oilproducing countries , to stabilize oil markets. We have in fact, and i think you have seen, stabilization over the last couple days. Together, countries around the world will cut Oil Production by approximately 20 Million Barrels a day. People were saying 10 million, but we think the number they would actually hit will be closer to 20 Million Barrels a day. That will help a lot, saving jobs all over texas and oklahoma and north dakota and many of other of our big energy states. This historic action will help nearly 11 million American Workers who are supported by the u. S. Oil and gas industry. It is a monumental agreement. I want to thank saudi arabia, and the king of saudi arabia, the crown prince of saudi arabia both. I want to thank president putin of russia. And i want to thank a very good friend of mine, a man who has become a friend. The president of mexico showed great flexibility, president lopez obrador. He showed great flexibility and tremendous intelligence, doing what he did. It was not that easy for him. I want to thank mexico and the president. This is a very historic deal. Very historic. We will see how it all goes. Challenge, wein are certainly in a time unlike probably we have been in in many, many decades. We are strengthened and sustained by the bonds of love and loyalty that unite all americans. I am so proud of the American People. Everywhere you look, you see the patriotism of our people shining through and the courage of our doctors and nurses on the front lines. In the dedication of our food supply workers and in the commitment of every citizen to achieve victory over the virus. That is what is going to happen, its going to happen sooner than people people think. But we will be very smart about it, safe about it. We will be listening to the great doctors and medical professionals. Together, we are beating back the invisible enemy and paving the way for great resurgence, a great resurgence of american prosperity. Our country wants to go back to work. They will go back safely. Thats what we want. I would like now to ask Vice President pence to say a few words, followed by dr. Fauci and dr. Birx. I think before we do this, because i know there is an emergency where they want steve to come, so what i will do, i will ask steve to come up, secretary of the treasury. Talk a little bit and maybe take a couple questions about whats happening and tell them the success we are having. Thank you very much. Sec. Mnuchin thank you, mr. President , Vice President. As you announced, we are very pleased that we are ahead of schedule on delivering the Economic Impact payments. What are known as the checks in the mail we want to deliver in direct deposit. This is ahead of schedule. We started processing those last friday. We expect over 80 million hardworking americans will get the direct deposit by this wednesday. And we know how important it is to all those hardworking americans, many of which are at home not working at the moment. If you do not receive them by wednesday, on wednesday will be launching at irs. Gov, go to get your payment. If you filed a tax return in 2018 or 2019, have that information available. Youll be able to id yourself, put in your direct deposit information and within several days we will automatically deposit the money into your account. We want to do as much of this electronically as we can. It is very important in this day and age. It is more secure, and you dont have to go to the bank. If you are a Social Security beneficiary, you do not need to do anything. You will get a direct deposit. If you have not filed and did not need to file a 2018, 2019 return, you can go to irs. Gov now and enter your information and authenticate yourself. Again, we are very pleased that that is ahead of schedule. I would also like to announce the progress we are making on the new sba program, the p. P. P. Let us remind everybody. This is a brandnew program that is now one week old. We have distributed and confirmed 230 billion of loans to lenders participating. That is multiples and multiples of anything the sba has ever done in one year before. Thepecially want to thank Community Banks that are participating, again, over 4600. If you have not gotten a loan processed, you will get it processed this week. We have gone back to congress to ask for more money to make sure that every business has access to this. Theme also comment for states. We are distributing half the money this week to the states, a week ahead of time, and will deliver the other half of the money to the states next week, and let me finally comment, weve been working very closely with the federal reserve. Last week, we announced expanded facilities and new facilities that totaled in liquidity. 2. 3 trillionin particular, i would like to highlight a main Street Lending facility for companies between one worker and 10,000 people, midsized businesses. Also, a municipal facility for states and local governments to be able to access funds given the shortages they have. So with that, i am happy to answer questions. Thank you, sir. Both Speaker Pelosi and minority leader schumer have said they are in negotiations with you right now on additional funding for Small Business loans. For that package. Leader mcconnell said there was nothing that should be added to the package and it should just be Small Business loans. What is the opinion of your administration . Should it just be Small Businesses . Sec. Mnuchin this was a Bipartisan Program. This sba program was not a Republican Program or democrat program. It was a Bipartisan Program we have committed to Small Businesses. We should top up that program now. I know the democrats want to talk about more money for hospitals and states. Right now, we are just sending the money out to the hospitals and states. They havent come close to using that money. The president and Vice President said once we get s. B. A. Done we can go to another funding bill, the president has talked about potentially adding infrastructure and other things. We think there is a likelihood we will need more money. We will sit down and try to get a bipartisan bill. But this is important, that we deliver on Small Businesses. 50 of the people work for Small Businesses. What is the emergency the president said you had to go for . The president said you had an emergency situation. Over this bill . Sec. Mnuchin because we do not want to run out of money, we have used 220 billion out of the 350 billion. We do not want to run out of that money or create panic. Thats why we want to top that up and ask for another 250 billion for that program. And again, let me remind you that every dollar we spend on this program, we save a dollar of unemployment insurance. Even though we are asking for 250 billion, it will not cost that much. Aboutyou have concerns lifting the guidelines too soon . The Economic Impact, i understand the economic argument for giving people back to work, but what is the economic risk of lifting them to early and seeing a spike in cases . Sec. Mnuchin there are Economic Risks in both directions. We reviewed with the president today a broad list of over 100 Business People that will help advise the president on what needs to be done to reopen the economy. We want to make sure, and again the combination of Economic Impact payments, Small Business payments, and unemployment insurance, the president made clear that we want to make sure hardworking americans have liquidity while we wait to open the government. Do you believe the country should be reopened on may 1 . Sec. Mnuchin i had discussions with the president. I know he is considering it. Pres. Trump everything has to be safe. What is your advice to the president . Sec. Mnuchin as soon it is safe ready to open based on the medical professionals. We are working closely with the president and outside Business Leaders to develop a plan. Sketch for us what reopening the economy looks like . Do you think it is going to be everything open . Pres. Trump over the next few days, we will probably be making a statement about exactly what that looks like. I know what that looks like, but i also want to get advice, in a sense. We have some of the biggest from every business on this council. We are setting up a number of councils, committees guess you could call them, and we have a lot of smart people. I think they will give us good advice. We want to be very safe. At the same time, we have got to get our country open. A do you think theres possibility that what you do is open it incrementally . Do you think people will go back to restaurants, concerts, the cinema . Pres. Trump yes. Eventually i think they will do that. I think it is going to go quickly. People want to get back to work, and i think there is a pentup demand like there hasnt been in a long time. Thats what you see the stock market. I mean, to think the stock market is at the level it is now with all of this. And look at the European Union. How badly decimated they have been. Look at other countries. Look at china, by the way. I have seen the numbers. Look at how these countries have been decimated by this. And to think that the stock market is at this tremendously high number. Not that much, you know, it was looking bleak for a wild, but it hit a certain point and started going up. I think thats a great tribute to the fact there is demand. In regards to some of your tweets earlier today, my question to you is, what provision in the constitution gives the president the power to open or close state economies . Pres. Trump numerous provisions. We can give you a legal brief if you want. We will be looking forward to that, sir. Following up, what a for instance you say that we want states to reopen but california or new york do not reopen . Pres. Trump i think everybody wants to open. That could happen, but i dont think that would happen. For states that have voted businesses like restaurants pres. Trump i would have preferred that. If i wanted to, i could have closed it up, but i let them. I like the way they have done that. The seven that remained really in sort of a semilocked down, if you look at those states, they have done a good job. They are much different from new york or other places that were hit hard. Will you say, i order you to open your schools . Following up on that. There are two consortiums of states, california, oregon and washington on the west coast, east coast states, in total representing 100 Million People who said they will cooperate and decide when to reopen. Pres. Trump they can decide, but does that undermine what you are trying to do . Pres. Trump they can decide. No, not at all. The president of United States has the authority to do what the president has the authority to do, which is very powerful. The president of the United States calls the shots. If we werent here for the states, you would have had a problem in this country like youve never seen before. We were here to back them up, more than back them up. We did a job nobody thought was possible. That said we will work with states because it is important. You have local governments pinpointed. It is like a microchip, they are pinpointed. We have local governments that hopefully will do a good job and if they do not, they cannot do anything without the approval of the president. Reopen, all powers that do not reside in the president reside in the states. Pres. Trump i would like to see that person run for election. They have to get open. They have to open. Now, some are in a different situation. I wont name states now, but i will over the next two or three days. I will be very specific. But you have some states, where this is not the kind of problem it is in new york or louisiana or michigan, or other places that got hit very hard. Illinois got hit very hard. But all states want open as soon as possible, but they want to open safely and so do i. Today, the french president Emmanuel Macron said they will stay shut down in france until the middle of may. Does that mean you will keep the band pres. Trump france got hit very hard. He has to do what he has to do. Hes a friend of mine. But france, spain spain has been decimated. You look at what happened in italy. It is a wellknown fact what happened in italy. They were hit very hard. A question for secretary mnuchin. Has everybody you would like, the 100 Business People on the economic council, have they been invited already . Have they all agreed . Sec. Mnuchin they have not been invited yet, we just reviewed the names. From all sectors . Sec. Mnuchin verticals, every single area of the economy we want to be represented. One other thing. Is there anything needed to be done to work on saving Oil Industry Jobs . After the deal this week . Sec. Mnuchin we are working with larry kudlow, we have economic plans for every single part of the economy. Obviously in the case of the oil industry, they have been hit especially hard because you have both the supply issue and the demand issue. Will you use bailout money for the airlines . What the allocations for the airlines are . Sec. Mnuchin i am pleased to say we worked very hard. As you probably have seen, we put out a press release that we have now had discussions with almost all the airlines, i personally had discussions with all the Major Airline ceos. We specifically created an exception for Small Airlines that we could process very quickly. I think he see very quickly decisions coming out. I am pleased with the discussions we had. Mr. Secretary, do you see a need for more stimulus . Pres. Trump we had a discussion. Excuse me one second. We had very good discussions with the owners. Very good discussions. Is it possible to reopen the economy on may 1 . Pres. Trump youll be hearing over the next few days. In lieu of another stimulus . Sec. Mnuchin congress on a bipartisan basis approved an unprecedented amount of money to help American Workers and american business. Because it was no fault of their own that business was closed down. We have been diligently executing on that. Everybody said it would take months. We are executing very quickly. We created a whole new sba program in a week. Our job right now is to execute the 2. 2 trillion and we can add several trillion with the fed. The area we are concerned about is the Small Business program. Quite frankly, it is even more incredibly popular and successful than we anticipated. So the president wants to be clear we have money for that. Once we get done with that, we will review it with the president. If there is more money then needs to be to support this economy, hardworking americans, we will work with congress. Steve, talk about page four . Page four, the president has talked about infrastructure, weve talked about to the extent the hospital need more money because of medical issues, we will monitor that. We want to make sure there are incentives for restaurants, entertainment, people to get back to those kinds of things. We will be looking at very specific provisions to stimulate parts of the economy. Some may be money issues. Some may be regulatory issues. Mr. President , to clarify your understanding of your authority visavis governors. To be very specific, for instance if a governor issues a stay at home order. Pres. Trump when you say my authority . The president s authority. When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that is the way its got to be. Your authority is total . Pres. Trump it is total. The governors know that. So, excuse me, excuse me. You have a couple of bands of democrat governors, but they will agree to it. They will agree to it. The authority of the president of the United States having to do with the subject we are talking about is total. Go ahead. One of the things we saw in your video, the travel ban from europe. As part of reopening america do you want to reopen the borders so people from europe and the u. K. Pres. Trump at the right time. Very good question. I would have to take a look. I wouldnt say italy is doing great right now. I wouldnt say spain is doing great right now. We just heard france is extending its stay inside order. I think for a short period of time. When they are back, we want to do it quickly. Right now, we have a very strong ban. We will keep it that way until they heal. Weeks, months . Pres. Trump i cannot tell you right now. I have to see how they are doing. France just went for another two weeks. We have to see. You took his advice on the question of mitigation. He made the recommendation and you accepted. As you make this next decision pres. Trump i am not sure who really gave me the advice on the ban. I think i took my own advice. Distancing iml talking about, the shutting down. My question, this next decision which you say may be the most difficult or important decision of your presidency. Will you assure the american takee that you will again the advice of the doctors, of dr. Fauci, dr. Birx, the Health Experts, before you do that . Pres. Trump i will, and many other people. I will absolutely take their advice. Would you go against their recommendation if they say you need another 15 or 30 days . Pres. Trump i dont think it would be likely, because i think we are not far from being on the same page. One thing Governor Cuomo said today, states do not have the capacity to do mass covid19 testing ahead of a reopening. Pres. Trump well they have to do it. Diagnostic tests or equipment at the federal level, will they get that . Pres. Trump they have local mayors, representatives, people who do it. What we did last time was unprecedented. We literally rebuilt the whole industry, because we inherited nothing. What we inherited from the Previous Administration was totally broken, which somebody should eventually say not only were the cupboards bare, we inherited broken testing. Now we have great testing. The top executives at abbott, who would have thought that would happen where they have such a great test . Unless you have any further questions for the secretary . Anybody for steve, the secretary of the treasury . We have to get him back to wor. For secretary mnuchin, a question from a colleague not able to be in the room. They are curious about the fda casinos sba rule preventing small casinos from getting some of this relief. Not small casinos, but there are such things as small taverns and restaurants that have small gaming things, and we are coming out with some Additional Guidance on that. Not casinos. Was a letter there Top Republicans sent this weekend about mortgage services. Can you explain what youre looking at on that front . I think i commented on this a week or so ago. We have a subcommittee task force that is specifically studying this issue. We have all the people on it. Fannie mae has automatically taken some action. Weve had conversations with the fhfa about what they will do for and to thefreddie, extent they need Certain Authority from the treasury, we will accommodate that. Frankly, we have been studying this way before covid and concerns about some nonbank servicers not being looked at. But we will make sure that the market functions properly. Thank you, sir. Weve seen in a number of relief bills that democrats and republicans have been able to push forward noncoronavirusspecific funding priorities. Are you trying to keep funding specific to coronavirus, and is there going to be other additions, for instance a change to labor rules, many on the left, some on the right, are wondering if you should push for their preferred path. Sec. Mnuchin our expectation is this will be covid related. Some people have a broad view of what covidrelated is, because it has impacted almost every business. I think the president talked about the kennedy center, which is a good institution. Obviously, that was not a major priority of the bill, but they were hit with covidrelated. The president instructed we want to be very specific in the next bill. Pres. Trump on the kennedy center, so you understand, the democrats wanted it. We didnt want that, but they wanted it in and we had to agree to get something done for the workers. We want this to be for the workers and the companies. Thats what we are looking for, not looking for extraneous nonsense. Ban wasrgued the china disruptive to the Global Economy . Nothing ton i had do with the china ban. I was on the task force at the time. I was traveling. I did become very active after the china ban, but that report in the New York Times was not accurate. I was not part of the task force at that time. I was not involved. As a matter of fact, i think i may have been traveling. To get direct payments to employers to pay for people who have been laid off, keep them on payroll . Sec. Mnuchin that is the p. P. P. , sending money to Small Business, 50 of American Workers, to keep those people paid. Its the most efficient way. Every dollar we do through that is one less dollar of unemployment, and more importantly, we want those people to be associated with the business, so that as soon as the president is ready to open up the economy, those businesses are together. We dont want those businesses to fall apart. Thats why it is such a successful program. Pres. Trump talking about the unemployment. Sentuld prefer it be directly to the people. The democrats wanted it to be sent through the unemployment system. Ive talked to you about it, we have 40yearold equipment in many of those systems run by the states. Sec. Mnuchin some of them are. Some of the states arent. Were working with the states to try to update their computers. Thank you. Pres. Trump phase four, steve, phase four. Someone as with president of the United States, their authority is total. That is not true. Pres. Trump we are going to apers on this. The governors need us one way or another. Ultimately, it comes with the federal government. That being said, we are getting along very well with the governors, and i feel certainly it will not be a problem. Pres. Trump have any governors agreed you have the authority to decide when their state [inaudible] pres. Trump who told you the president has total authority who told you the president has total authority . Enough. Pres. Trump Governor Hogan of maryland urged your administration to ask congress for 500 billion to stabilize budgetary shortfalls. Pres. Trump i appreciated Governor Hogans statement. The cares act ignores steate pres. Trump what are you saying . He said the cares act ignores the budgetary shortfalls. Pres. Trump they are looking at things in phase four, where they talk about states, hospitals. States who have been battered and hospitals. Were certainly willing to look at that. [inaudible] pres. Trump they are talking about states and hospitals. O. A. N. . Michiganvernor of Gretchen Witmer banned the sale of nonessential goods. Pres. Trump what . She has banned the sale of nonessential goods. Many are calling it draconian, unconstitutional. As president , do you think if other states followed her example in the coming weeks that the federal government should intervene . Pres. Trump i dont think thats going to happen. I think its very extreme, but shes doing it and i think it will be over long before we have to start thinking about it. It is a very strong position to take, but they are making a lot of progress in michigan, so we will see how it all works. Funding for the World Health Organization . Pres. Trump we will be talking about that very soon. Im getting a full report. Im not happy with the World Health Organization. Im not happy with the wto. We have been ripped off by everybody. This country for so many years has been ripped off by everybody, whether it is world health or world trade. The twins. They look at our country. For years and years, we had people who did nothing. We are doing a lot about it. We will have a report, also talking about the wto. But weve made a lot of progress. We are winning cases for the first time, because they know i believe if we are treated fairly. This country, our country, was at a point where we rarely if ever won lawsuits within the wto, but now we are winning a lot of them. They know i am not playing games. We will pull out if we have to. We just won a 7 billion lawsuit. You expect a decision this week on cutting funding to the who . Pres. Trump by the end of the week, i will make a decision. Right now, theres a lot of things happening. On china, why are there no consequences for china, for the misinformation . Pres. Trump what do you mean there are no consequences . How do you know there are no consequences . China will find out. Why would i tell you . People are concerned. Pres. Trump you started off by saying why are there no consequences. Why are there no consequences . Pres. Trump how do you know there are no consequences . You will find out. I wouldnt tell you. You would probably be the last person on earth i would tell. Go ahead. This is for mr. Vice president. Do you agree with the president s statement, his understanding of federalism, that his power is total, the way he described it . Anything you would like to add . V. P. Biden i support the v. P. Pence i support the president s leadership. We are standing before you today for the first time in American History when all 50 states issued emergency declarations and the territories. This is an unprecedented time. Fortunately, as the president has reflected and are Health Experts will continue to reflect, because the American People have heeded the president s coronavirus guidelines for america, because state governments have taken those and implement it them, even in states where there was not a significant outbreak, and implemented additional measures as we provided them with data about cases and best practices, we are making Real Progress as a country. Make no mistake about it. The long history of this country, the authority of the president of the United States during National Emergencies is unquestionably plenary. You can look back through times of war and other National Emergencies. As the president said, we will happily brief them. But in the days ahead, as the president has charged us to do, to work with our Health Experts, bring together an Extraordinary Group american Business Leaders to counsel the president , and working with the we will produce new guidelines based upon the data for every state and territory in this nation. We are going to give them guidance, and as the president has indicated, we will continue to respect the leadership and partnership we forged with every governor in america. But this is an unprecedented time. I have to tell you, when you look at the fact, despite the heartbreaking loss of more than 22,000 americans, when you look at the fact of what the Health Experts told us this could be, i think, i can only feel a sense of gratitude in the American People. Gratitude to the Extraordinary Team that has canceled this president , the steps President Trump is taken, the policies that governors implemented all across america. We were discussing today at the task force that when you look at the European Union as a whole, they have nearly three times the mortality rate the United States of america has today, and that is a tribute to our Extraordinary Health care workers, their dedication, their tireless work. But it is also a tribute to the fact the American People put into practice the mitigation efforts that the president canceled the nation to do on the advice of our best scientists, more than a month ago. And our hospitals were not overwhelmed, and are not overwhelmed at this hour. I have to tell you, standing here today, i could not be more proud to stand alongside this president and to be a part of this team that has served the American People during this challenging our. I just say to every american looking on, as we see the numbers leveling and maybe even beginning to go down, i just encourage you to keep doing what you are doing because of the sacrifices americans and American Families have made through mitigation efforts, you are saving our lives and seeing our nation through this. You have been talking to the governors quite a bit. A coalition of states on the west coast, did they tell you what they were going to be announcing before they announced it . V. P. Pence governor phil murphy, the governor of connecticut, announced today they would be speaking, discussing on a regional basis what they recommendations would be. We assured them today on our Conference Call, i think with 48 governors that were with us today, for the better part of an hour and a half, we told them that the president would be guidelinesdditional for the states, certified by the cdc, that would inform those governors and local communities and mayors about the best way forward based on the unique circumstances that those states and communities are facing. I think whats clear, the American People have seen the experience in washington state, where this really all began for us, and in california, and now the extraordinary challenges in the Greater New York city area, including new jersey and connecticut. Challenges in new orleans, louisiana and detroit. Still chicago, parts of houston. They are also seeing, and each one of those cases, that the mitigation efforts are truly working. So we will work with those it willnd in some cases make perfect sense to work together. I amhe president will be, sorry, i didnt hear your question. Can you tell us . V. P. Pence i didnt hear. Pres. Trump we would like to have their cooperation. We are going to have their cooperation. They will cooperate perfectly. V. P. Pence i agree. We heard it again today, what i think was our ninth Conference Call with governors. I think every american would be proud, to see the partnership this president has forged across the country. It is an extraordinary statement. You will see some data in just a few moments. But the flow of resources from around the world that we moved into areas that faced challenges, i mean, this president has directed us to ensure that every state has what they need, when they need it. I heard from republicans and democrat governors today was reflective of that partnership. As we move forward to the president s goal of reopening america, we expect the same kind of partnership in the interest of the nation. I hope you can hear me through the mask. The District Of Columbia argued they were shortchanged in the most recent funding bill, because they were treated as a territory instead of as a state. Will that be made right in phase four . Pres. Trump we are looking at that, certainly. The mayor seems to be very happy with everything. She was on today saying very good things. Go ahead, in the back. Being aalked about this difficult decision you were going to have to take about whether to reopen the economy. I wonder how much it weighs on your mind, the thought that if theres a second wave, if you reopened the economy, that you might have to shut things down again. Pres. Trump it does. I hope that wont happen. I certainly hope that wont happen, but it does weigh on my mind. In the back . Go ahead. Question for one of my colleagues who wasnt able to be here. China deployed an Aircraft Carrier to the South China Sea this weekend, amid claims by Chinese State media that covid has reduced u. S. Military readiness and training in the region. What kind of responses are you thinking out . Will you have a response to this action . Pres. Trump china has their own difficulties. We have a relationship with china that we are not happy with certain things that happened over the last period of time, as you know, and ive been very explicit on that. We know all about that. China, we have seen what they did. We have seen many other things they have done, both pro and con, and we will be just fine. You said you thought the recommendations did you mean that it might be more pres. Trump we will be putting out guidelines and recommendations quickly, in a few days. Im not going to say. Certain states are doing very well. Certain parts of the country are doing really very well. So we will be putting out recommendations and guidelines. What they fit each area, or be uniform . Pres. Trump i dont want to tell you now, but right now we have a strong indication that we know pretty much. We have some good ideas. Live videot a conference or at least a Conference Call with a lot of good people having to do with certain areas, energy, entertainment, restaurants, etc. We have to get people back into restaurants. Weather whether it is deductiblity or not, but it should be deductibility. You will get it back so fast. We used to have deductibility. The Restaurant Business was one of the hot businesses. Ago,ended it many years but we may need that to get people back into restaurants. Nationwide, possible solutions [inaudible] pres. Trump absentee ballots, youre talking about . On a massive scale. Pres. Trump i didnt see that. When did that happen, today . A nonpartisan group. A little confusion about your phone call yesterday with president putin. The kremlin is saying you discussed Current Issues of ensuringtegic Strategic Security. Can you enlighten us . Pres. Trump among many things, we discussed china. We discussed many different things, but primarily it was a call on the oil, as you can imagine, and they were very helpful in getting a stabilization of the number of barrels. I think the number will be closer to 20. Maybe 15, but closer to 20 than 10, and i think it was a very important call. I also spoke to the king of saudi arabia, a very important call. The bottom line, opec plus, it is called opec plus because there were other states, other nations. The part about Strategic Security . Pres. Trump i would say mostly we were talking about china, about their borders and our borders with mexico. As you know, mexico is a big part of the deal, and mexico really, it was very complex from the standpoint of mexico, not an easy deal for mexico and the president. We appreciate it. We talked about borders, talked about mexico. We did talk about the arms, yes we did. A very important part of the call. Good point. On abbott labs, you said testing is going great. Saying theym are dont have materials to conduct pres. Trump the governors have to get the material. If they cant get it, talking about local government, governors have to get the material. Have veryes, they powerful machines they dont know they even have. Not talking about ad bit, talking about the governors. They have machines, you know what im referring to . Very powerful machines. Case, theyn states are only using 10 of their capacity and they didnt know it. That happens to be illinois. Please 15minute tests, the new ones in the rose garden, they said in New Hampshire they dont have cartridges you actually conduct the tests. When will they get the cartridges . Pres. Trump rapidly increasing the numbers, rapidly. Pretty quickly. You have other machines. A lot of states have the big machines that can do a lot. They didnt know they had been. Mike is going to be talking about that. You mentioned several weeks ago, google was putting together that website. Pres. Trump google and apple. A a lot of people dont like i, from the standpoint of constitutional rights. A a lot of people dont like it. Some people think it is great how about some people think it is great. How about the testing website . It is only operating in five counties in california. Pres. Trump google is looking at it, working with apple. We have the greatest companies in the world looking at things that in a year from now everything we are looking at now will be obsolete. Thats how good it is. We have things happening that are unbelievable. I saw a presentation today i cannot talk about yet that was incredible. Tony, i think they are doing very well on the vaccines, and i think you will have an answer for vaccines. I believe those great things coming out with respect to that. You will have some great things. On the Contact Tracing that google and apple are doing, a different subject. Pres. Trump this is the google and apple, i dont know if it is a partnership, but they are working on more than one element, working on a couple of different things, google and apple. Google is also working on something having to do with testing. I believe they are doing that in a singular fashion. My question is not about drivethrough testing. On google and apples contact if you, where they can, opt in, you can be alerted if you have been in contact with someone with coronavirus. How do you feel . Pres. Trump it is an amazing thing, but a lot of people have constitutional problems with it. You know that. Its an amazing thing, and it would be, as you know other countries are thinking about using something similar, but not as good. I hear singapore is. Singapore had a setback, because they had a break. But they will take care of it. I know the folks in singapore are doing a great job, and they will put it back very quickly. But singapore and other countries are looking at other things, and some countries are doing other things. I dont want to get into that, because we have a whole constitutional thing. We have more of a constitutional problem that a mechanical problem. But we will be making a determination on that. Thats something we will be discussing with a lot of people over the next four weeks. It would be a very accurate way of doing it, but a lot of people have a problem with that. A question for dr. Fauci has well. Can you talk about where the Antibody Test is, and how quickly . Pres. Trump i have to leave. Moving along quickly. Moving along well. It is a test thats been going on for many years, except now we have very modern, very incredible versions of it. Moving along very well. Any more covid19 . The uss Theodore Roosevelt has died. Have you determined pres. Trump that is going through the navy. The navy will be making determinations on all that. I dont think the ship should have been stopping in vietnam when you have a pandemic, to be honest with you. I dont think the captain should have been writing letters. Hes not ernest hemingway, as i said before, and should not be writing letters. I dont know who gave the orders to stop in vietnam, but they stopped in vietnam and all of a sudden you have over 500 sailors and people on the ship who are infected. I dont know whose idea that was. That wasnt such a good idea, in the middle of a pandemic. This question of constitutionality. I was wondering, what changed your view . Pres. Trump nothing changed it. The fact that i want to rely on states or maybe will or maybe have, thats one thing. The fact i dont want to use the power is another thing. Look. From the standpoint of the constitution. Pres. Trump constitution. You can look at constitutionally, you can look at federalism, you can look at it any different way. The fact that i dont want to exert my power is what is different. We have the power. You ask, does the federal government have the power . The federal government has absolute power. As to whether i use that power, we will see. I would rather, i would rather work with the states, because i like going down to the local governments. That is why i guess it is now seven states, South Carolina went away from what we discussed the last time, that is why i look at the individual states. They are doing a very good job, really doing a very good job. Id rather have them make the decision. Now, the fact i would rather have, thats fine, but i have the absolute right to do if i want to. I may not want to. We have very good relationships. We will see what happened. The states you are talking about, you will notice they are all democrat governors. But if governors are doing a good job and control it better, because you dont have somebody in washington saying to set up a testing site in the parking lot of walmart. We are in washington, and they are in a state thats very far away. Thats really, it should be, and it should have always been, and ive always said it was. But the relationship we have with the state and governors is very good, and we will be announcing over the next very short time exactly what we are going to be doing. Ok. A couple more. Joe biden is the present of democratic nominee. Do you have any plans on when you will start sharing, when the white house will start sharing some information about the coronavirus . Pres. Trump look. Swine flu,e h1n1, and that was a tremendous failure. They had a lot of failures. You take a look at the history. You know, 17,000 people died. And you talk about late. They were so late, they were late like it never even existed. That was a big problem. Caused a lot of other people a big problem. So, if joe biden would like a briefing, i would certainly get him a briefing. I dont know what he would do with it. For jared and ivanka serving on this task force pres. Trump they are not. Go ahead, please . I want to clarify. An earlier conversation you said he would have multiple councils or taskforces . Can you explain what structure . Pres. Trump the White House Task force, which has worked up to this point brilliantly i must say, dealt with governors and dealt with governors all the way through. I was on many of those calls, and every call got better and better. It was hostile at the beginning. , by the time we finished todays call was a good call, a very friendly call. You dont have anyone driving you crazy saying they arent getting ventilators, arent getting multiple things they need. They have a lot of beds right now. Always err on the sake of give them more. We didnt think that new york the beds they were asking for. They didnt need the beds they for, we were right. On ventilators, were ready to ventilators, 000 ready to move them anywhere in the country if they need them. Building a lot of ventilators. Stockpiles, including state stockpiles if they want to kind of some arrangement out of it. France,lping out italy, germany, they need ventilators. Well have a lot of ventilators. Numbers, we have a lot coming next week, a coming. Us amount next question. The task force is structured pres. Trump in addition to that, we have a number of committees. We have a faith leaders committee. Were going to have a few committees, ill call them then ultimately were going to make decisions, were going to make decisions i think theyre going to be the correct decision, i hope so, steve. Task force mic tomorrow, when do you want them to have recommendations . Soon, when they say form, i dont have to give them instructions, these are best ticated people, the people in their fields, i dont have to say, gee, we just met two ere going to meet in weeks. I said here is what i want. We already told them. The best names in the various businesses and professions and i mean, these are the greatest names, the people that best. K probably know the so weve called them and were going to be speaking to them to soon and we want them have, if its questions or statements, we want them to have us and we will have either response or maybe, i to be deally were going learning from them and do that and put them, put everything we calls into those the new guidelines. We have new guidelines coming soon. Think its going to be very good. I think its going to be very smooth. I hope its going to be very safe. All very much. Thank you. A friend of mine for a long time, he is a great real estate passed away, was a great real estate person, great, a legend in new york real estate. He called me a couple weeks ago he had tested positive. In his early to mid 80s and stanley went to the hospital out. He never came he went to a coma, he was for a long period of time and he never made it. A great man. He left very charitable, really philanthropist, a very successful person in manhattan in the real estate business. To know him a lot. He was so excited when his riend from new york became the president of the United States. A young boy and he was not a young boy, but he was like a young boy. Excited. He thought he would do such a good job and he was happy. Proud of what weve done in this administration, but positive and unfortunately he didnt make it. Its a very, to me its a very sad thing. Thank you all very much. Vice pres. Pence thank you, mr. President. As the president mentioned, the to 48 of today spoke the nations governors, on that reflected on the fact that all 50 states had emergency declarations in place which was for American History, 5. 2 billion had been istributed to the stats under the stafford act. Productive call and of President Trumps ongoing direction to work closely with the states to make postimpacted in the areas of coronavirus have what they need when they need it. Of poke about the issue testing and supplies and im deborah birx to ome forward as well as the admiral to reflect on both of for you, dr. Birx has been leading the task force expanding pidly testing. It was early on that the that public med private partnership with commercial labs. Here today, more than 2. 5 million tests have been when we add in the we have of labs that to assume with reasonable projections have not yet reported into the c. D. C. , we think that is closer million tests that have been performed. As has been mentioned, the new 15minute test, we are working closely with Abbott Laboratories team he president and our met with today at the white house to rapidly increase the cartridges. Of abbott is producing roughly day. 00 cartridges a fema acquired an initial supply tothat and distributed those the states. Were working with the states to not only distribute what is but also work with other suppliers to create cartridges. A point that ill ask dr. Birx a moment is in just the fact that beyond the new abbott e test by laboratories, beyond what we a new Antibody Test which may well be approved by in just a matter of days, an Antibody Test that would be produced at the rate of million tests a month. The reality is that those laboratories that the president brought in here the better part of two months ago initiated that public and private partnership with have producing hundreds of single s of tests every week, but as dr. Birx and our apprehended, i believe at this point in time that of he equipment that is out there that does the high speed testing and we informed governors of today, we think that some 0 of that capacity is not being used and with regard to n2,000 systems, we told governors we believe that 75 of that Laboratory Capacity exists in the United States is not being utilized by our governors. A very clear message to out to rnors to reach the hospitals and labs to look testing to get those activated. E literally estimate that although were doing over 10,000 tests a day in the United States, that if our governors and state labs would machines ivate the that are already there, we could double the amount of testing in literally states overnight and so i know that these rs teams watch briefings and well remind them respectfully again to identify those labs. We have a team that now is deploying reaching out to labs see if we can activate all of those labs. On the subject of supplies, i have said it a couple of times from this podium but let me say it one more time. President trumps direction to states oning with the personal protective equipment and ventilators has been to make sure that states have what they need it. They we all nize that while watch the overall curve of the oronavirus in america, understandably, the national numbers, the reality is this taken place in its own individual curves. Then on the west coast, the new york city area, louisiana, michigan, and now we it in e to contend with chicago and houston and other metropolitan areas. The opportunity to insure that personal rotective equipment and ventilators are made available i have tical basis and tell you, were incredibly proud and partnership with states that has us standing has today that no one who required a ventilator has been denied a ventilator in the of america. S at this point, we have just in t of 7,000 ventilators the Strategic National stockpile, but as the admiral detail, were already beginning to receive newly manufactured ventilators, well 1,000 in this week by the middle of may well another 8,000 ventilators available for deployment around the country. To let him describe to you the specific detailing of resources, but i want to these numbers most especially for our healthcare workers around the country in postimpacted by the coronavirus so that you know the surging into the Hospital Systems at the point of the need and we will continue to that. T so let me recognize dr. Birx to also on n the data and maybe some comments on testing will step e admiral up and hell describe supplies. Dr. Fauci again and take a few questions. Dr. Birx thank you, mr. Vice we ident, i dont know if can get the first slide, thank you so much. I want to show you a different looking at it today. Obviously we look at case counts americans in each of our states and metro areas, but to see absolute numbers how much the new yorknew jersey metro area dwarfed all other metro areas. So you cant even see chicago, boston, all of those metro areas are under 25,000 cases. You can see that the new yorknew jersey metro area is 250,000 when you bring thatsases together, and why you hear us talking a lot about the metro area of new york counties rsey and the westchester and news yao and bergen, new jersey, why we want to get resources get to that area. Slide, you take new yorknew jersey metro area out, metro areas other that we have been tracking very closely. This to you so you can see how the curves are already starting to plateau. If you at the choice, look at philadelphia, if you is at louisiana, louisiana in green, detroit is in gray, the board, across across these metro areas, across higher eas would have a concentration of individuals. This is what the American People done,se large cities have where it is more difficult often distance and were just really impressed by the work of the mayors and the governors to make this happen. Wanted you to see this because you can clearly see chicago and boston. And so chicago is in the orange yellow. Ton is in the they are crossing detroit, thats why we have been very of focused on the needs those areas. And providence is also in that category. You to see lt for them because theyre much further down on the slide. Highest, if you look at the axis on slide, its 25,000. Axis on the last slide was 300,000. Thats why i really want people understand each of these small epidemics in the metro areas were as well independently as any epidemics and outbreaks that are happening in some of our other states. Wanted you to have that perspective of how significant issue isorknew jersey and why we have been tracking that so closely. Wanted to assure the other states that were tracking them and really osely working with the governors and mayors and thats why i wanted not only are the curves flattening in some of the metropolitan areas, but theyre starting to decrease. His is what we are really excited about. These are cases. We know that mortality will lag. Tracking a number of individuals who have succumbed to the covid19. Also wanted to really note here, yes, our mortality is less you combine European Countries equal to the size of the United States. Two nk this is really things. One, its the incredible work of also thecan people and inincredible work of our and each ofroviders the system that the hospitals have have the resources and to the needs pond of the covid19 patients. I think you can really see the delivery that re is happening by the low mortality. Quickly about ly testing because you have heard it efore talk about it and was a little bit misquoted and misaligned. Multiple abbott machines, im going to be very clear having spent years in the laboratory, the highthrough put machines, the roech 6300 and the 8800 on roech and the abbott m2000. These machines run between 500 and 1,000 assays at a time. Abbott company worked really hard three weeks ago in getting million tests out there to be utilized. They can make a million tests a all of our laboratories that have these platforms. Date, somewhere around 250,000 tests have been utilized weeks worth of week. Thats why we have been really to the lab ng directors to bring all of those machines on. Ast week dr. Fauci and his Incredible Team of researchers out agreed to really reach nd find additional roche and abbott highthrough put machines also to them Online Supplement the other create ies work to that puts d strategy the platforms together with what through put which is i. D. Now. It is not the answer to the tests we need over the last few weeks. Those run a test every 15 minutes. E can get about 55,000 cartridges a day. I have just got saying these other machines of which we have 500 to 1,000an run in a single time frame. E need to bring all of these assays together and a team has been created to call every every laboratory and Single Research institution to ss the United States define the completely capacity in every single state. Be our expectation that every governor understands everything that is in his state. Everythingunderstand in every state in order to meet the needs of the American People increase testing. Now, i know you all know that in three weeks we went from 300,000 tests total to 3 million tests weeks. In three we know that we have to further increase that. By has been done really h. H. S. And the admiral and the team up there. Supplement that team to really bring on all of the Additional Resources and that we have in the United States of america, just like we did with ventilators to capacity to the bear so that we can also continue to increase testing. Also, of course, as these decrease, you can use more and more testing for surveillance. 19 statescall out the that arent ever represented in and large,ics and by the state can do containment and outbreak investigation. Talk to manyble to of those states. I remind all of us, when i talk each one of these state health officials, where they are nursingoutbreaks are in homes. So we really need to continue to to test in continue Nursing Homes because we know thats a particularly vulnerable a group where often now that were beginning asymptomatic transmission, no one is planning to pass the virus on to others. We know in essential workers the United States, people are unknowingly infected and on. Sing the virus those are the ones that were really interested in finding. Ow do you find them because they dont have symptoms . This is where we have to surveillance in a eliberative and understanding way. We can see when they have outbreaks. We do sentiment surveillance to you find them before they have symptoms. Done for at we have decades in h. I. V. And its right now to g us ontrol the h. I. V. Aids endependic in subsaharan when , finding them theyre asymptomatic and treating them. This is something we know how to to bring the full capacity to the American People. Insights in t some what were working on. Every orking attract single county and community. Im calling on one additional group. Out there of up our h. I. V. Aids activists and Community Workers that that i nd these tests have been talking about. R and a based tests. How to explain to the community about sampling and assays. The they are viralologists, they assays. Nd the they useody assay that across the United States, maybe translator to the American Public and to their local mayors. Tests, derstand knees they essentially understand all virology and were asking them to communicate what the ests are so the community is ready for them. Antibody tests test something very different than the viral your nose front of that were using for diagnosis. Really being able to understand of those tests, when do you use them, how to use them will critical. The great thing is in the United States of america we have these Community Groups that understand tests very well and will be able to discuss them at every level in the community. Vice pres. Pence im going to call on the admiral in just a minute. On dr. Tony call fauci. Let me just Say Something really my heart if i can. I lost my dad 32 years ago today, april 13 is always a tough day for our family. And this morning when my brothers and sisters were sending around pictures of dad we always do, i just thought of the families of the 22,000 americans that we lost and i just want to tell youre in our hearts and youre in the prayers of as you of americans heartbreaking loss. Let me encourage those in the midst of that loss, because the merican people have been putting these mitigation there s into practice, are families that are still together today and i just want you here at roughly the Halfway Point of 30 days to take that to d, heart. Minimize the loss that nation experienced as a and of families, but be see raged to know when you those numbers on the vast majority of states that because f what the American People are doing, its working and dr. Fauci and dr. Birx and the team continually ask us to remind the American People today, keep again doing what youre doing, the 30 and we slow the spread will hasten the day that we heal our land. Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci i just want to make related to that was a question that was asked and well have questions. About how we would evaluate from a purely public standpoint about what i into some sort of norm normalality. People are giving advice to all of the committees that the president was talking about. We do know is as physicians and scientists and Public Health people, i the weekend on one of the shows is that some people may think its going to switch, on and off. Were either out and were in. Its just not going to be that way. We have a very large country and there are different impacts as is very new york different from other parts of the country, from the midwest, region, mountain california and washington, different than new orleans. We discuss and consider the Public Health aspects, it likely will be something they sort of like a rolling reentry. Its not going to be one size all. So i dont know what its going to be yet because we still have to look at it. Dr. Birx who does an amazing job with showing you the data and charts, thats going to likely influence some of the recommendations that we will make. I can assure you there will be recommendations based purely on ublic health and the president will get a lot of other input rom others, but well give the honest Public Health recommendati recommendation. Vice pres. Pence thank you. An update on supplies and then few questions. Admiral thank you, mr. Vice can i have the ventilator slide back up. Ou start with what is in the stockpile this morning. Here are the contracts that will few livering over the next weeks. E had 8,600 ventilators to the pool we already had. Thats the math that you get there. Including the d. P. A. We also th g. M. And issued what would be called these rders with all of vendors to allow them front of the line privileges, so to speak, within their supply chain. We have written a contract. This is the 100,000plus ventilators were talking about and continue to work with them insure that the ventilators actually show up so continue to work there. That, we realized that downstream supply chains needed some additional defense act work as well. Bridge. E air 80 flights scheduled, 37 horizon and on the you can see the numbers of been brought in to supplement the volume thats needed. Im going to go through a series of slides of new york first. So dr. Birx provides me what i geographic a reference to align the supply chain. All of those cities, youll see bit of a theme here. Ill be talking about a lot of cities in the geographic areas, the supply chain to get there and the rest of the nation needs supplies as well. And then the supply chain side hospitals, v. A. , hospitals, first responders, acute care and down the line. Last business week, monday through last week through past , saturday of the week, these are the amounts of into the newt came york, new jersey metro area and you can see the voice mails there. You go to detroit, we talked hot spot. , their here is the volumes of deliveries going into detroit same time period. We go to chicago. Going to run through this kind of quick, you can see the the placesalignment, that dr. Birx has talked about is where were concentrating supplies. You can go to new orleans that will give you the understanding. Washington, d. C. , so talking that, today was a very the of early entry into washington, d. C. Baltimore positioning supplies ahead of we hope in washington. Baltimore and you can see the volume there in trying that. T ahead of philadelphia is next. The next slide is a ninecity rollup, to save a little time, i did not include and houston in there. Of ou can see the volume material flowing through a network. Al air bridge, supplies in the regions and further of care. Ed to site inal topic, n95 masks, the department of defense announced weekend. Action this that came over from d. O. D. On into the white house, and ved on saturday ontract awarded today, 131 illion, five companies, 3m, honeywell and others. Before s act was signed march ended, right towards the two weeks essentially from that money being put into title. Action takes us from a baseline of what was being domestically of about to, as on masks upwards we go through the fall into the winter, 120 Million Masks domestically. So currently were fulfilling overseathat demand from sources. Throughtive masks here, lower ill ramp up, dependence on oversea sources, a big piece of the supply chain. Six cities, s, del rio, lexington, falls,carolina, sheboygan wisconsin, and aberdeen, north producing either more fabric or increasing facilities to have that ramp up. Vice pres. Pence thank you, admiral. I guess t that slide, its still up. Week endingjust the april 11. Have distributed or directed he distribution of 5. 3 million n59 markings, 5. 5 Million Masks, 110 million gloves. Mostly make sure our healthcare workers know that the resources are flowing, were continuing to flow them. These are just the numbers for dont ek and that include, for instance, what the i was able nounced, to tell Governor Tom Wolf of pennsylvania that next week they 2 million n95ng asks so support some of the healthcare challenges theyre facing in the greater area. Elphia a couple well take of questions. Youre going through all of that are making theyre way into the system, useful if have been midmarch aken until for the government to fulfill orders . Came up from the meant gone on 20 march. Ere using the defense production act. I think youll see much more use forward. As we go to talk about d 20 r than from march forward. To ask dr. Fauci, you would be giving the recommendations, you and dr. Birx coming up with a plan youre comfortable with. The ou willing once president has made his decision, are you willing to come here and tell us how the American Public, you actually recommended to him and whether he followed you gh with what recommended . Dr. Fauci im not really what do you mean the president stands up here, and outlines t is his plan, are you willing to stand up here after him and tell us, the American Public what it was that you recommended he do . Dr. Fauci i have to think about that because when you have onversations with the president , sometimes they really should be confidential in what ou give him because he has to make his own choice. To think about that. You would know whether he is listening to health advice. I can tell you one thing, hell listen, but i think what going to happen, i dont know or sure is that we will get input from a number of individuals representing a society. Aspects of health. Them is i will tell you i will give him on evidence and my opinion of what the best Public Health approach would be. Lets go back to where we started today which is where the president seeing frustrations with the reporting about his process inionmaking january and february. He reason the press does that kind of reporting, so that the with a sident who deals pandemic. What watched this unfold do you think were the mistakes early on that future president s could learn from . Use auci i dont want to the word mistakes. When youre in the fog of war when youre doing something, you have to make decisions, you get of t from a number individuals. Its always a moving target. Out t want anything taken of context because i already had one of those already in the last days. Of i wouldnt want to go through it again. Doing something better, of course, nothing is perfect and you can always do better. Hesitate to Say Something say mistake. With king at hindsight that caveat, what could have been done better . Dr. Fauci i cant comment about anything outside of my own when ibut the thing that mynk back on was evolving in mind was something that was a much worse erforms than what i thought it was going had based on what we when it was on first felt it jumped from an nimal to a human and really didnt have much capability of going human to human and then find out udden you hat not only was it not just animal to human, thats probably the way it started. There was go back, probably a lot of infections delved a if we had little bit more, its transmitting human to human, but initially. When i question myself, im not perfect, i wouldnt say made mistakes, but maybe i should into a ed to delve little more. The information wasnt as forthcoming as i would have liked. Sudden, you find out that youre dealing with something, not only what had Worst Nightmare because people ask me that, what s your Worst Nightmare, a brandnew virus that is respiratory transmitted, a high of transmit ability, a is degree of mortality, that a mistake, maybe i should have realized that earlier, im a mistake, its n evolving thing that we finally realize and go, whoa, haveis worse than we could even imagined. You met with abbott today. Ories what did you ask them to do, could do . Hey say they vice pres. Pence we spoke with we tt laboratories of how can increase significantly the number of cartridges for the 15minute test. Remember, were not only scaling testing across the country today, thats one of and dr. Ons you heard me birx say we have an entire team now that is working with laboratories with around the country to identify the machines that already exist and that could be activated and doing tests. We also want to work with abbott wl laboratories for the longer term. F the current trend lines hold and i hope and i literally pray that we will soon find ourselves on the downslope of the oronavirus in this country, this epidemic in its current end, but asome to an we make decisions and in the america, to reopen what President Trump also wants o do is have a policy in place to stay open and having the kind of surveillance testing vailable around the country so the c. D. C. Can do the immediate have a tracing when you positive test, so we can deploy the 15minute test specifically to Nursing Homes. Spoke with governor baker and hogan, we commend them for stopping the spread at ursing homes but being able to increase the manufacturer of hose devices so they can be deployed Going Forward in the months ahead is also a focal point of our efforts. To expand continuing testing today and the governor told me today they per ested at the highest capita than any state in the nion, we congratulate him for that. Going forward, we want the infrastructure of testing all america to deal with the coronavirus should it return in the future. Bid you all a me good evening. We will back tomorrow. About ked the president s the cartridges, the governor said the federal government is charge of distributing them. Illinois didnt have enough, that youretimeline working with . Dr. Pres. Pence let me let birx address that, there was an trawnch that we purchased. Fema acquired a certain amount were immediately distributed across the states. Is producingtories some 50,000 a day. Open are available on the market. Working o going to be with abbott. There is more to that that was perfectly sad. Want to make sure that people understand. Of them went to specifically to Indian Health states thatin these have smaller endemonstratics, public t went into the market, mostly targeted to the is high ere there disease. Only 2 3 went that way so in a them could purchase directly and onethird went to the Indian Health service and small states that really need these. Were tying to balance the testing framework, and highthrough put machines to give everyone the by lute flexibility state state based on what the needs are in that moment. An outbreak and here are 5,000 tests, youre going to the it on your through putt machine. Leave anything everything has been on the table for us to be able to increase testing. We went up by a lot. Increase oing to again, its going to have to be piece of equipment on. Vice pres. Pence thank you all and our time and attention thanks to e american whose joined us tonight. I just want to encourage you, going to continue to lean into this effort to expand to ing across the country, deploy supplies to our incredible healthcare workers done such an amazing job in the middle of the coronavirus epidemic. Behalf of the president and our entire task orce, its 30 days to slow the spread and i know were almost t the Halfway Point and i know its been a month of these mitigation strategies, but i look on, as you see the progress thats made on the pesk, the beginnings of Real Progress in the Greater New York area, louisiana, detroit nd elsewhere, i hope it will do steal your resolve to and do your part. Well get through this. To take all of us to continue to do it
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