Transcripts For CSPAN White House Coronavirus Task Force Briefing 20240713

[indiscernible] pres. Trump thank you very much. I just had a great conversation with the leading faith leaders of our country. It went extremely well. I learned a lot. We are working on things that are very interesting and very positive. I thank them for being on the call. Yesterday we unveiled detailed guidelines for governors to initiate us a safe, gradual reopening of america. The guidelines provide governors with the factdriven and sciencebased metrics they need to make decisions that are right for their own particular state. To view the guidelines you can go to the website atwhitehou se. Gov openingamerica. The treasury sent out Economic Relief payments to more than 80 haveon americans who direct deposit information on file with the irs. An incredible success it has been. If you have not received your v, getplease visit irs. Go my payment. That way the irs can get you your payment within days. They have done a fantastic job. You will not have to wait for a check in the mail. I have good news. We sent out 80 million deposits. Less than 1 had even little problems. A couple had minor glitches, but substantially less than 1 . Out of 80 million deposits, less than 1 , and that gets corrected immediately. You will get that quickly, easily. Today i am announcing secretary perdue, happens to be right next to me, handsome man, and the department of agriculture, will billionmenting a 19 Relief Program for our great farmers and ranchers as they cope with the fallout of the global pandemic. Very honored to be doing that. Our farmers, ranchers. These are great people, Great Americans. Never complain, they just do what they have to do. The program will include direct payments to farmers as well as mass purchases of dairy, ema meat and Agricultural Produce to get it to the people in need. Will receive another 14 million in july to continue helping this will help our farmers and ranchers. It is money well deserved. Not only were they targeted at one point by china, that was over a period of time, and they never complained, but that worked out well. 12 billion they got and 16 billion they got. Now it is 19 billion. I will ask secretary perdue exactly how we are going to handle it. Thank you. Mr. President , you may remember earlier this year you tweeted a message to our farmers and ranches ranchers that no matter the circumstances, you pledged to stand by them. None of us could have anticipated this pandemic, but todays announcement is proof you have our farmers backs and will continue to do what it takes to support them and they are grateful. We heard a lot recently about our Food Supply Chain. American now knows more than ever the wholesome food our families depend upon starts with americas farmers and ranchers. Americas agriculture has been hardhit, like most of america with the coronavirus. President trump is standing with farmers to make sure we get through this national emergency. Thanks to your direction and a isership, the usd announcing the coronavirus Food Assistance program, this new, 19 billion program will have immediate actions to assist farmers, ranchers and consumers in response to the covid19 national emergency. The program is divided into two parts. One is a direct payment. 16 billion in direct payments to farmers, ranchers and producers who experienced unprecedented losses during this pandemic. Since we wanted to get the payments out to producers as soon as possible, we decided to use the funds in the ccc, currently 6. 5 million combined with the 19. 5 of covid money rather than wait for replenishment of ccc funds in july. It is becoming apparent we will need the additional ccc funds as we continue to track economic losses. Secondly, and this is important, the usda will be purchasing 3 billion in fresh produce, dairy and Meat Products to be distributed to americans in need through Food Bank Networks as well as other community and faithbased organizations, having to dump milk or other items in market is not only financially distressing, but heartbreaking to those who produce that. We provide Financial Relief to farmers and ranchers, and the purchase and distribution of agricultural abundance in this country to help our fellow americans in need. Theecent weeks we have seen patriotism of our Food Supply Chain workers that have shown day in and day out, doing work to serve the needs of fellow americans. Our farmers have been in the fields doing what they do every spring to feed the American People, even with the pandemic, as we speak. I want to thank you, mr. President , for your unwavering support. They want to thank you, from americas farmers and ranchers. Do everything in our power to implement this program as quickly and efficiently as possible to help our farmers, ranchers, producers and consumers in this time of need. Thank you for having me here today. Americas you, god bless and american agriculture. Pres. Trump thank you, sir. Of agriculture was the governor of georgia for eight years. The only reason he is not still there is that he was [indiscernible] and i said, lets get him for agriculture. Good job. We really appreciate it. Even as we prepare to rebuild our economy, america continues to wage an allout medical ward to defeat the invisible enemy. To date we have conducted more than 3. 78 million coronavirus tests, the most of any country, not even close. In the hardest hit areas, new york and louisiana, we tested more people per capita than south korea, singapore and every other country. The u. S. Has the most robust, advanced and accurate testing system in the world. As of yesterday we distributed ids. 660,000 abbott test, now incredible pointofcare diagnostic test and it has been fantastic. It is the hot one. Problem with this business, it is a hot one until two days from now. We do have a saliva test that just came out and it can be self administered and is said to be fantastic. I want to thank abbott laboratories, they have been incredible. I want to thank roche, they have likewise been incredible. We have seen a dramatic increase in tests conducted by hospitals and academic institutions, which have now performed nearly 600,000 tests. Ofre is a tremendous amount unused capacity in the states available for governors to tap. Unused tremendous capability within those laboratories and i hope the governors will be able to use them. The governors are responsible for the testing and i hope they can use this tremendous amount of available capacity we have. It is up to one million additional tests per week. When you think of that, in the nest in the next few weeks we will send out 5. 5 million testing swabs to the states. They can be done easily by the governors themselves. Is kotten, not a big deal big deal. T a yesterday the fda announced a new collaboration with united ntigen andndation, qua with a new, polyester, qtip type swab for coronavirus testing. This will help our testing capability grow dramatically. We are helping people, even with swabs. We have ventilators. We are now the king of ventilators. We have hundreds of thousands under construction. We do not need them ourselves. We have a great stockpile we will immediately send to states in need. But we have handled that situation incredibly well. I hope people understand it. I wish the media would get the word out. What we have done in ventilators is amazing. They are big, expensive and complex. I spoke to the president of mexico today, great gentlemen. Gentleman. I told him we would be helping mexico with ventilators and other countries, too. Highlevel,t of highquality ventilators. They are here and being manufactured as we speak. Following the announcement of our reopening guidelines, there have been partisan voices in the media who have spread false and misleading information about our Testing Capacity, demonstrating a complete failure to understand the norm us scope of the testing capabilities we have brought online. We started from ground zero. Outdatedd from being and obsolete as a country, from the past. I will say this, if they did not understand it it is unfortunately, i hate to say this, because we have been getting along well, but it would be false reporting. It will be up to the states to use that capability. They have local points where they can go, governors can call the mayors and mayors can call representatives and everything is perfect. That is the way it always should work. It will help new york and all the other states get even better on their testing. We have to do even better. Some people think there are amounts, areast where you have almost very few people and almost no people are infected. Those areas will be looked upon differently by different governors. You will have a lot of news coming out about that over the next few days. Come onlinees will and start the early stages of the puzzle we are putting together. It will be together sooner than later. A lot of incredible things are happening. At some point in the nottoodistant future we will have our country back and with what we are doing on stimulus and helping people keep businesses together and lives, it will be better than ever before. I hope so. The current conversation is reminiscent of what happened on ventilators. Made farests were beyond what was objectively needed. From certainng states that they needed far more ventilators. In one case they wanted 40,000 ventilators. Plenty, out they had 7000 or 8000. We supplied them with a lot. That was the right number. If they need more we are ready to give more, but the surge seems to be over. A lot of governors are doing a great job. We are working together. The research and Development Done at the federal level has been absolutely incredible. Be accepting of these figures when they get to see the end result. They are already seeing it. That includes not only ventilators, but beds. We built far more than they even needed. We wanted to err on the side of caution. They wanted a certain amount. In louisiana i talked with the governor. Think you will need the final hospital . They did not need it. I appreciate it from the governor. Hospital. Uilding a in new york we did a spectacular job at the javits center. Wen sending the ship up, brought it into covid, but they did not need it. Did not get much use, but it was ready. It was not supposed to be used for that purpose. We changed it into that purpose. Ready it was there, ready, but they did not need the beds we produce. We produced almost 2900 beds. I would rather tell you we were over prepared than underprepared. That was a good faith effort by new york. It is nice we did not need it. It was ready to go. Still they are should something happen. I think they have it under good control. As you will hear from our experts today, we have built sufficient Testing Capacity nationwide for states to begin reopenings. You will hear a lot about reopenings reopenings in the coming days and months. Youll see some very dramatic steps taken and very safely, putting safety first. We may be opening, but we are putting safety first. When you look at the numbers, the possible number of deaths, it couldpeople have well been that. I am looking at numbers where it could have been higher than that. Dying, if youople figure with those 500,000, maybe 600,000 in the civil war. Million people, at a minimum if we did nothing. In half, you are talking about a million dying. But we did a lot of work. People of this country were incredible. I think we are heading to the other category. Successful, between 100,000 to 220,000. I hope we will be substantially below the 100,000 number. 60,000,w we are around maybe 65,000. One is too many. It is a horrible thing that happened to our country, to 184 countries. It was a horrible thing and there was no reason for it and it should never happen again. In a few minutes you will be hearing from dr. Redfield, dr. And an admiral. Newfda authorized two Antibody Tests to determine if someone has been previously infected with the virus, bringing the total to four authorized Antibody Tests already. This will help us assess the number of cases that have been a mptomatic. Cally asy we can get americans back to work by showing us who might have developed immunity. This will be made possible by americas scientific brilliance. There is nobody like us. I wish i could tell you what powerful country say to me, the leaders. They say it quietly and off the record, but they have Great Respect for what we can do. Four or five weeks ago we were at a level nobody had obtained. The best job numbers, the best economy. Wasy company virtually doing Better Business than before. The stock market was at an alltime high. One day they said you got to close it up. We did the right thing. We saved may be millions of lives, but we are paying a price. That price is unimportant compared to the number of lives we are talking about. The nih and others are conducting trials. It is so exciting to me because if something happens, you will get better. Reasonably quickly. Horrible dealch a as some people have to go through. Launchingced they are a publicpray for Publicprivate Partnership with pharmaceutical companies. And the european medicine agency. We are working with a lot of different countries. The partnership will marshall and coordinate vast resources, knowledge, assets and authorities of more than a dozen organizations and agencies to accelerate development of the most promising therapies and vaccines and is coming along really well. Johnson and johnson is really well advanced. Success,having great but we have to test them and it takes a long period of time, probably over a year, but therapies are coming along well. When we get that, that will be a big day. We are equipping medical warriors on the front lines. We have the project air bridge. It has been incredible. The National Strategic stockpile, and every other channel the federal government has deployed. Masks, 524n n95 million gloves, more than 10 million gallons. 500 Million Masks coming in soon between manufacturing and orders. 500 Million Masks. The last few months have been among the most challenging times in the history of our nation. Toughnvisible enemy is and smart and vicious, but every day we are getting closer to the future we have been waiting for. I talk about the light at the end of the tunnel. We are getting very close to seeing that light shine brightly at the end of that tunnel. It is happening and i want to thank everyone in the room. I want to thank some of the media. We have had some fair coverage and i appreciate it. I will introduce our great Vice President , mike pence. He will take over. I will leave and come back. We will take questions over our tremendous testing capabilities. Again, i will be right back. Thank you. V. P. Pence thank you, mr. President. Good afternoon, all. The president just reflected it remains a challenging time in the life of our nation, but because of the extraordinary efforts of the American People, because of a strong partnership, the federal government has forged with states across the country, we are making progress. Despite the tragic loss of more than 36,000 americans. According to our best data reporting this morning, we continue to see new cases low and steady on the west coast and cases and hospitalizations declining in the greater new orleans, area, new detroit and elsewhere. This is a tribute first and foremost for health care doctors, nurses, all those working the front lines, but also a great tribute to the American People who put into practice social distancing, the guidance of state and local officials. Ishope every american encouraged by the steady progress we are making. We are continuing to bring at the president s direction, the full resources of the federal government. Aday the president approved disaster declaration for american samoa, so now all 50 states and territories are under disaster declarations for the first time in american history. At this present moment, 33,000 National Guardsmen are on duty. 5500 active military personnel deployed to nine states, including 716 medical professionals, doctors and nurses who deployed out to 14 different hospitals. Among those, 10 in new york city and military personnel were also serving today in hospitals in connecticut, texas, louisiana and new jersey. Yesterday as the president reflected, we unveiled the guidelines for opening up america again. There were two parts at the beginning of the guidelines. First, criteria we hope will guide governors in their decisions about reopening their states on either a statewide level or county level. Believeoutlined what we will be the most important state responsibilities to have in place before moving into a reopening plan. For phase one the president s guidelines advise states with a downward trajectory and cases time, 14 day period of and ensure they have proper capacity in their health care facilities, could move to phase one, with easing of some social distancing criteria in place. For states that meet the criteria, we outlined responsibilities, protecting workers and critical industries, particularly the most vulnerable, those who live and work in senior care facilities. We also encourage states to have symptomaticesting individuals and ensuring testing to our most vulnerable populations. As the president made clear, governors will decide the time and manner their states reopen. We will look to support them in that effort. As we showed the American People yesterday, the president s direction, our administration will work with governors across the country to make sure they have the equipment, supplies and testing resources to reopen safely and responsibly. On the subject of supplies, we issued a letter summarizing all the medical equipment and supplies distributed to the states from fema between the first of this month and april 14 through project air bridge and the commercial supply network. We will be speaking with our nations governors monday and detailing that information. The president , as reflected, fema coordinated delivery of millions of pieces of medical equipment including respirators, 63 million medical masks, more than 10,000 ventilators and more than 8600 federal medical station beds. On the subject of testing resources, we will take time to speak about our administrations approach and partnership with states to continue to expand testing across the country. From the outset of this epidemic, President Trump made efforts to reinvent testing in america. Traditional testing in this country takes place at cdc or for thebs, was designed kind of diagnostic testing routinely were required. The president brought leading labs in america, forge public and private partnership. Six weeks ago, we performed 25,000 tests. Today we have performed 3. 7 million tests. We believe labs and hospitals are performing more than 120,000 tests per day. We have a team from walter reed under dr. Deborah birx working around the clock to identify additional Testing Capacity across the country. We believe states could more than double the amount of daily testing happening today by activating all the labs. Dr. Birx will outline some of those resources today and we will go over those specifically with governors on monday. We have been promoting the development of new and innovative tests. We know about the 15 minute abbott test, but the fda is working on an Antibody Test that could add 20 million new tests to our supply before the end of april. I want to assure the American People we will continue to work with your governors and state Health Officials to scale testing. As you will hear from all our bestts tonight, our scientists and Health Experts assess that states today have enough tests to implement the criteria of phase one, if they choose to do so. Let me say that again. Guidance in the president s new guidelines for opening up america again, states that meet their criteria for going into phase one, and then are preparing the testing by contemplating going into phase one, our best science and Health Experts assess that today we have the sufficient amount of testing to meet the requirements of a phase one reopening, if state governors should choose to do that. You will hear more detail on that in a moment. At the president s direction we will have an outline of our approach for testing and partnership with states. Our approach will continue to be locally executed, state managed and federally supported. Dr. Fauci will give us a brief introduction to the overall approach to testing that is contemplated to deal with the coronavirus. Dr. Redfield and the cdc will describe our plan to mobilize cdc officials in all 50 states to specifically monitor that occur incidents in every state. Dr. Deborah birx will describe not only our tests, but the current capability we could expand to. Gerard will admiral summarize our approach. Direction weents will continue to work every single day to make sure our states have the testing may need to reopen at the time and manner of their choosing and we will work every day to make sure our states have resources and their stateseopen and america in a safe and responsible way. With that, dr. Fauci. Thank you very much, mr. Vice president. I will give you a brief introduction to answer the question we have been asked a lot. Productivery teleconference with the Senate Democratic caucus a few hours ago. They asked a number of questions which were reasonable, questions on the mind of a lot of people. Ago. As posed a moment be are there enough tests to able to go through this for a phase in a way that is protective of the health and safety of the American People . I want to spend a couple minutes clarifying a few things, and may broughtding information. You may hear more granular information from my colleagues following me. I think they asked me to give the 40,000 foot one because i am not a testing person. I did not run a testing lab, but i am part of the team looking at this, at how we can best make sure this happens in the right way. Let me Say Something i said before and i apologize if i am repeating things you already know. I think it is important to do that so people have clarity in what we are talking about. There are two general types of test and within each, subgroups. One is to actually test for the infectious infection. Is a person infected . If someones to test has been infected. Usually someone who has been infected has recovered. We assume, but we need to make sure they are texted against subsequent exposure and infection with an identical organism. What are some of the pluses and minuses of each . The pluses and minuses will impact how we best use the test, and how the test should be used. Lets take the test whether or not you are infected. The test of whether or not you are infected is called the nucleic acid test. It is not an easy test to do. There are some that are more rapid. There are different groups within that. It good news about that is, is a sensitive and specific test. If you are infected, you know you are infected. If you need to do something with care,but that person in get them out of circulation, that is important. The part about that that i think is misunderstood is, if you get a test today like i did, today, it is negative. If you get a test today, that does not mean that tomorrow or the next day or the next day or the next day as you get exposed perhaps from someone who may not even know they are infected, that that means i am negative. If you take it to an extreme, in order to be really sure, you would have to test somebody either every day or every other day or week to be absolutely certain. That is an issue. The problem i talk about when i try to compare this to other situations with what testing means to you, i have been involved in hivaids for 39 years, from the very first week of hiv. That is what i do. If you get a test for hiv, and you do notve, and practice any risk behaviors, you can be guaranteed that next month, six months, one year from now, you will be negative. If you do not have a risk behavior. It is a big difference about what testing means. The point, though there is clearly a place for needing to test somebody for a given reason, a test means your negative now. The other test is an Antibody Test, a test that tells you you have been infected. That is really good and you will hear more about that from my colleagues in the moment. That will give you a broader view of two things. One, what the penetrants of the effect infections have been. We are assuming if you have been infected and have antibody, you are protected. Based on ournable experience with other viruses. , howe need to make sure long is the protection . One month, six months, a year . We need to be humble and modest that we do not know everything about it, but it is an important test. The difference between testing the difference between what we really need it for for phase one to identify, isolate, Contact Trace. A very important part of when you are pulling back gradually and slowly on mitigation and have people who might be infected, you want to know they are infected and put them in care. That is something we absolutely need to do, but there are other ways. I want to make sure people understand not to underestimate the importance of testing. Testing is an important part of a multifaceted way that we are going to control and ultimately end this outbreak. Please do not interpret that i am down pedalling testing. We have been hearing testing is everything, but it is not. It is everything we have been doing, mitigation strategies. A couple things before i handed over to my colleague. No doubt early on we had a problem. I have publicly said we had a problem early on. There was a problem that had to be corrected and it was. It was a technical problem from within that was corrected, an issue of embracing, the way we have now and it should have, the private sector, who clearly have the capability of making and providing tests at the level we need them for any of the so, having said that, right now, i totally understand, and i am not alone, my colleagues understand that when we say there are x number of tests out there, the fact is there have been and still are situations that are correctable and will be corrected and some of which have been corrected. I know, i get on the phone a lot with my colleagues because believe it or not, some long ,ime ago, i was where they are in the hospital, in the emergency room, looking at very sick individuals that you need to take care of. I know what it means when someone tells you you have what you need and you look around and you think i you think i have what i need but i dont have what i need. We have to figure out how do we close that gap . There are a lot of things we have learned and we are correcting and going to correct. Namely, you have a situation where tests are needed and appropriate and people have found either there are no tests or no reagents or no swabs or a person needed a test and they were told there was a restriction, they could not get a test. These are the things you already know because you have heard them. Or there is a delay of five to seven days and what does that mean if you want to get someone out of circulation . We understand that existed, but on careful examination, what you are going to hear, many of those have already been corrected and other of those will be corrected i think people dont appreciate through no fault of their own is that there are two issues. There is supply and demand. If you have a supply that can meet the demand, but the supply is not connected to demand, then supplydemand falls apart. What do i mean by that . I mean there is existing capacity that we have that for one reason or another may be has not been fully communicated as to the availability of that existing capacity, and you are going to hear about that now. There is Production Capacity that gets better and better and better. That is what we are talking about. For what we need now, we believe with better communications, we will be able to make that happen. I know there are going to be a lot of questions about that and i dont want to go on too long. Given what i have just said and what i believe you are going to hear, for what we need in the first phase, if these things are done correctly, which i believe they can, we will have and there will be enough test to allow us to take this country safely through phase one. Thank you, mr. Vice president. I want to make a few comments here. First, i want to talk a little bit about cdc has developed multiple systems to monitor disease outbreaks. I think many of you are familiar how we monitor for foodborne illness or how we monitor for antibiotic resistance in hospitals. Developed a system to monitor for upper respiratory tract disease. If i can get the first slide there. This is an example because when we talk about what we know about this current pandemic, the reality is we have we know a lot because we have developed these systems. On this slide is a system we initially developed for flu. You can see there are multiple different flu seasons and they tracked them over the course of the year. I want you to look at the redline. That happens to be this years respiratory season. You see that there is a peak over the 5052 week. Oft was when we had a peak influenza b. This year was a little different you can seer that, we had another peak and that is when influenza a was active through our country. You can see influenza a started to drop but then, you so i third peak. That peak, you were looking at coronavirus 19. We have systems all the way down to the county level where we can see there are respiratory tract illness. Its not just taking a test, it systems that the have been developed over decades. We have multiple ones. This is monitored in emergency rooms, looking at syndrome diagnoses and they show the same thing. Equipped toell monitor to see when respiratory tract viral disease will come and it becomes a very good surrogate for when you can begin to understand we need to be looking more ideologically about what is going on. You can see in week 15, we are coming down to the baseline background in terms of our flu Surveillance System from the overall coronavirus situation right now. The second thing i wanted to say is cdc continues to enhance the states Public Health capacity to accelerate their ability, as tony talked about, as critical as we open america again, to diagnose individuals that present with influenzalike illness or coronaviruslike illness, to diagnose them, to be able to isolate them, and to Contact Trace around them and diagnose the contacts and those that are coronavirus positive, to go back and do their contacts. This is the traditional approach which was started in this outbreak in january and february and was quite successful and, as i mentioned before, through february 27, this country only had 14 cases. We did that isolation and contact tracing, and it was very successful, but when the virus more exploded and not be on the Public Health capacity. Right now, the cdc is enhancing that capacity and defy can get the second slide, this is showing as we sit here today that cdc has embedded in these Health Departments and states across the country more than 500 individuals. Additionale an almost 100 individuals working on coronavirus outbreaks going through these states. Finally, at the direction of the president , we have been asked to further enact this deployment across the states so there is additional personnel to accelerate the states ability to basically move forward assist them and we so they can operationalize the president guidelines to open up america again. I wanted to make those points today. Dr. Birx thank you mr. Vice dr. Ident, dr. Fauci and redfield. If we could have the next slide, i want to go back to what dr. Fauci was talking about about the two types of tests and im going to talk about a third one. We all know about sampling in the front of your nose, to all of the labs out there and providers, you dont have to use the nasal swab anymore. You can do front of nose sampling. That is sampling for the virus itself. That replicates in your nose and throughout some of the respiratory tissues. The second test is your immune response to the infection in your nose and that is the Antibody Test. Those are the two tests we want to talk about, but i want to talk about something both dr. Fauci and dr. Redfield said and we covered yesterday. Testing is a part of the exquisite monitoring that Needs Partnership with cdc and state and local government, utilizing the Surveillance Systems that are available what we just talked about, the flu Surveillance System because we no longer have the flu and the syndromic respiratory system. That is across the United States and you can see it is going back to baseline so we can see at the Community Level any deviation from that baseline. In addition, what we talked about was adding that asymptomatic component. As more and more articles come out for surveillance and monitoring that other states have done, higher and higher antibodies in multiple individuals who dont remember having a sickness. Asymptomatic monitoring in the sentinel monitoring sites. We talked about Nursing Homes, we talked about indigenous people, and we talked about Vulnerable People in the innercity, really ensuring something that is so small that cannot even be seen on the surveillance monitoring will be able to be seen in the asymptomatic. Tests we have. Wo one available now, to that have been approved, three by the fda. I want to leave you with my last concept on the Antibody Test. Differentests have specificity and sensitivities. That we have made the fda has been very cautious about the Antibody Test because i know you see reports every day of countries that have ordered the Antibody Test and found they were 50, 60, 70 faulty. So we are taking that very seriously because you never want to tell someone they have an antibody and potential immunity when they dont. Better whenperform there is a high prevalence or height incidence of disease. Mayorswant to work with around the United States as those Antibody Tests become available to really see what it is in First Responders and Health Care Workers in the highest prevalence states so that we can know about the quality and the reallife, real field experience. Things can look good in the lab and then when you take them into the field, sometimes they are not as good. I have learned this lesson repeatedly working around the globe. Next slide. Askeds what we have commercial and diagnostic companies to be working on. When you talk about multimillions worth of tests, the way we do this in the United States today for strep, influenza, and malaria is we test for the antigen. Now if youow right shed antigen in the front of your nose. That is the question scientists and companies are working on right now. That becomes a simpler test. The flu test, i think many of you will look it up tonight, you will see outside of the flu season, because of the specificity of the test, it does not work so well. These are tests we are working on that would be like a screening test. If you are positive, its a good tests, but it may miss that you actually have the flu, so then you would move into the nucleic acid test. We are trying to build an algorithm of tests that bring the full talent of the science of the United States into the reality of the clinic. Bench clinic. Slide. , both the senators and the governors, this is the United States current platform high and designated as low throughput. We have talked about the high throughputflat hi platform of roche, abbott and others and the gene expert that may be moderate to lower throughput. I want you to see how it is distributed through the United States. These are the current platforms available today throughout the United States for covid19. As you heard from dr. Fauci, everything has to be working from the swab to the transport media to the laboratory to really get those tests run and the results back to the client. Next slide. Then, we looked at all the Testing Capacity from those platforms and this gives you an idea of what that capacity is. See inkest red you can texas and new york, those are states that have lots of different platforms, as you saw on the plier on the prior slide. If you add up the potential for tests of over a million tests per month. This is what we are working with each of those states on unlocking that full potential. How are we doing that . We are calling on the American Society of microbiologists. They work closely with 300 Lab Directors around the country. We talked with them this morning. And the walter reed team who developed the entire hiv Testing Program for the military 35 years ago and called them into service. They are calling lab my lab to find out what are the technical difficulties to bring up all the platforms that exist in your labs. Is it swabs . Is it transport media . Worked through 70 plus laboratories to understand and the American Society of microbiologists and the academic societies of the laboratories are working together to ensure all of this potential can be unlocked. Axt slide please we talked little bit yesterday about new orleans and the president talked about how many tests new orleans has done. As you can see, it is waning. They have done throughout the 1000month, 27 tests per new orleans and louisiana and. 27 per thousand. That is a good mark and that is what italy has done, about 20 per thousand. In evaluating an outbreak and to get control of this outbreak, they did about 27 tests per thousand. Measure, wes a looked across all the states of the United States of america and looked for states that had 30 or more, ability or ability to do 30 or more tests per thousand of their inhabitants in each state. You can see across the country, it for oregon and maine worked overseas way too long thank you. Those are the three states we are working on building capacity and. This is to give a perspective of how seriously we are taking the testing issue. We measured every single platform in every single state. We know exactly where they are by geography, address, zip code, what their capacity is, what their roadblocks are on that ability to run their full capacity and we are addressing this because each one of those is different and you have to address each of them one by one with the governors, with the state and local labs and with all of the hospitals. I have not come across one laboratory, one Laboratory Director or one society that doesnt want to contribute to solving this issue on testing and ensuring this testing is available for everyone. Just as all the americans have social distance, in kind everyone, we dont always talk about the laboratories, behind all of them are the Laboratory Technicians and directors who are coming in every day and putting things together to be sure every Single Person that needs to be diagnosed is diagnosed and hopefully you can see from these slides that there is capacity out there. It is our job working with the states and having the state in leadership role and Laboratory Directors and the leadership role to provide support to ensure all the potential for testing in the United States is brought to bear. These areend with nucleic acid tests. Abilityll never be the on a nucleic acid test to do 300 million test today or to test everybody before they go to work or to school, but there might be with the antigen test. That is why there is a role for nucleic acid test, a role for Antibody Test and a role for the future development of these key tests to bring the full ability to the United States. So when we finish this, we will be talking to all americans because there are other tests americans should have and this has brought to light the importance of diagnosis. We will talk to you further about hepatitis c, tb, and other things we can do to ensure every american is healthy because this has raised the Awareness Among all americans about how you do tests for different parts of your Disease State and what is longlasting immunity and what may be longlasting immunity and what is a nucleic acid test and what is an antigen test . With that, admiral gerard . Admiral gerard vice pres. Pence let me clarify one point to clarify our approach and the efforts to put it away. Governors across the country have been working very closely with us to rollout the level of testing we have today. All of the information we presented to you is going to be reviewed in the days ahead with all of our governors. Our objective is to connect every of americas governors and state Health Officials to all of the labs currently able to do coronavirus. As dr. Birx, dr. Fauci both described, we believe today that we have the capacity in the United States to do a sufficient amount of testing for states to move in two phase one in the time and manner they deem to be appropriate. With that, i will allow admiral gerard to complete our briefing and we expect the president to return. Admiral gerard thank you, mr. Vice president and thank you to all of my great colleagues. Can i have the next slide . I wanted to start by where we are today, just to visit where we have come in such a short time. As everyone on the stage as said before, our testing right now is well over 3. 7 8 million tests that have been completed. If you are impressed by bar graphs, that is over 1. 2 million tests reported just in the last week. Ambassador burks talk to me earlier and said we only do about 2 million molecular tests a year for hiv, something that has been done for developed, 435 years. We are now doing twice that number of tests in a month for a disease that has never been known before, that there has never been a test developed before, and that is where we are. Idea ofo give you an the lighter blue or lighter gray is our id now test. Becauseabout them a lot they are a pointofcare test that can be between five and 15 minutes and they have a very specific role, but they are not for everybody. If you have to screen a few thousand people, for tests and our doesnt get you there on a machine. You have to use the higher throughput items. Coming into the market at 50,000 a day is an important adjunct to us. She talked about the gene expert , its very important, we dont talk about that very much, but it is one of the backbone mobile pointofcare, not as easy to do as abbott, but it is a pointofcare test that carries tuberculosis screening all through africa. There are these machines, you saw that on her slide every one of the 50 states has this and they have done over seven thousand tests 700,000 test on that relatively low throughput. Next slide, please. Ofant to give you an idea how the tests are distributed and how they are changing over time. On the left are the state Public Health laboratories. Although their numbers are relatively small, about 350,000, the state public laboratories are absolute critical. They are a critical core component of our testing. Not only were they there early and first, but they do things like support outbreak investigations in Nursing Homes or investigations in certain plants that have a close proximity with everyone because of their work environments. They do testing on many people who do not have the opportunity to be tested elsewhere. They are performing outstanding as well. Clinical Laboratory Association is americas commercial industrial backbone that we are standing behind the president and Vice President , and when i was there a few weeks ago in the rose garden, this is the labcorp, the quests, the bioreference laboratory, mayo, sonic and a rup. 2. 3 have done almost million tests. This is a highthroughput machine that dr. Birx talks about. I want to be clear about this group it doesnt matter where you are. I just took one of the largest labs and said map out for me where you are within 10 miles every site in the country and when you do that, within 10 miles of a site of one of these, 93 of the u. S. Population is covered. These are truly National Reference labs that cover almost everybody within the United States. If you cannot get a test at your hospital, the chances are overwhelming you can send this to these labs that are fully caught up now. They have no backlog of tests. They have ramped up their production, so their turnaround time is about 48 hours because you may need to transport it from the middle of america out to a lab and result that, but that is very good. The american saw the American Hospital association, as the Vice President and president have said, is as more and more labs, online, they are increasing the amount of testing done at the hospitals or academic medical centers, now almost at 600,000 tests. ,atching the other slide i had just to give you a distribution. That pointofcare test is being used very importantly in very select populations where a pointofcare test is needed. That could be in some hospitals where someone needs to know exactly if a person needs to go on a Clinical Trial or nursing home investigation or to get people screened to go back into the work environment. Notpointofcare test does replace the millions of tests here on the other slide. Next slide. Yount know how interested are in swabs. I did not know a whole lot about swabs before a few weeks ago, but there are a few points i want to make. Yes, there have been constraining elements and they have been constrained for a couple of reasons. This is an unprecedented scale up of this type of sophisticated molecular test that has never put a demand on the system like we have. When we started a few weeks ago, theres very specific, one type of swab, you can only get one place in the u. S. , one place in italy, and we were stuck with that for a while because its not just the quantity, its the quality. What i dont want to do is put a lot of things in the system to make people think it is a good test when it hasnt been validated by the fda. Over the past week, but the scientific community, the gates foundation, academic medical centers, the fda have really opened up our ability to not stick all that back into your pharynx, but to put it in your nose and on the amount of swab types available. Thate at a point right now over by the end of april, we will put another 5 million swabs in addition to everything out there now, and by the end of may, over 12 million new swabs in the system, more than enough to attain the capacity we need. Next slide. These molecular tests, you take a swab and stick it in a test tube. That test tube has to have a specific kind of liquid. It was a viral transport media, a special kind of media. The cdc has a make your own recipe. It has a lot of ingredients that go in there, but still very limiting. We have worked with many different laboratories, we have worked with the fda. A Laboratory Grade salt water can be used for this. This greatly opens the ability to expand the tests to support the capability dr. Birx talks about. By the end of april, we will have put well over 5 million new tubes of transport media or saline into the system. I am going to get to a conclusion here, but this is more of a technical briefing. Next slide. Fact that about the the science tells us that we have and will continue to have enough tests to safely go into phase one. Let me be very granular about this. That it iseady heard beyond the possibility to test everyone in this country every day. It is not possible. What it is also a bad strategy because testing a person now just means they are negative now. Dr. Fauci could be positive tomorrow because it is brewing in his system right now and we dont know it. That is not the way we go about things. The way we go about things, as dr. Redfield said, think of the weather radar. If the weather radar is clear, you are not going to have a thunderstorm or tornado. When something pops up, thats when you have to go where the action is or no that your Warning System is up. Think of that in the background, that is monitoring. Let me talk about how much testing we needed just for overall testing. Im going to give you a number. Take a number we are going to enter phase one when there month0,000 new cases per in the United States. Dont get hung up on that. Lets just say 200 cases. How many tests we need . We need to test the 200,000 people. We have to do that. What is a safe number over that . Everybody if if everybody i test has the disease, im not testing enough. But if im testing 100 people and one person has the disease, that is over testing. We assume a safe number is about one out of 10 people are positive, we know we are oversampling the population enough that we are getting all the positives. If there are 200,000 cases, i need about 2 million tests. Are one of those that positive have contacts that need to be traced. On average, the cdc tells me for every positive, there are five contact that needs to be traced. Lets assume those 200,000 people have five contact, so now we have an extra million tests. 2 million tests to detect 200,000 cases. An extra million traced as contacts, so we are up to 3 million cases. If you want to put a fudge factor, say thats 4 million tests. Those are generally done at the main hospital labs, commercial labs, state and regional labs. As well as some of the labs talked about by dr. Birx. Next slide. The second group of testing fits exactly perfectly with the influenzalike Surveillance System dr. Redfield talked about. This is the radar, the weather radar that would be out there. We are not testing people who are symptomatic. We want to do people we want to do testing on people who are asymptomatic. You could have this virus and shed it and not have symptoms or only mild symptoms stop so what is the strategy here . This is an unprecedented strategy. Betweenare going to do 300000 and 500,000 tests per week in the most vulnerable populations that we know the virus could circulate and what are they . Number one, nursing home and longterm care facilities stop we know that from the history of this virus that it can circulate and be devastating and it could circulate in a way that you dont have symptoms. In a are going to survey controlled way, driven by the , we surveying in the areas to cover the 15,000 or so Nursing Homes. Secondly, we want to work in vulnerable members in cities. The way we think about that is Community Health centers im a huge fan of Community Health led by led by herself hersa. They take care of 30 Million People, children, adults, they care for about one thirds of america ends americans below the pop below the poverty level. We want to survey asymptomatic people in those Community Health centers. We also want to do and some of our indigenous populations and you know i was bringing machines to the Indian Health service and 1800 members provide care to the Indian Health service and their director and chief nickel officers are both in the Indian Health services. Particulate for workplace environments that may have close contact or may have a high risk. Some of those could be agricultural facilities. So lets total that up. We have 200,000 people who need a diagnosis. To make that diagnosis, we want to test 2 million. We are going to Contact Trace with a million. Lets throw in a fudge factor of 25 , so that is 4 million. Then we have this background testing of about 400,000 per month. Testing, we the need to be in the range of 4. 5 million you followed my numbers, i want you to understand, per month. For phase one. And that is how it adds up and that is where we are. Right now, we are doing one million to 1. 2 million per week. We are going to continue to push that further and further as we open up the laboratories and are able to open all the supplies we need for that and i think that is where i would like to end. Thank you. Vice pres. Pence i will ask the team to step back up for questions. We do anticipate, schedule permitting, that the president will be returning momentarily. Talking about phase one, when would be enough testing for phase two . Do you have to ramp up . How do you deal with that . Dr. Birx that is a great question and what we will be doing is monitoring how much we have to use in phase one to help inform phase two. The unknown in this, to be completely transparent, is symptomatic and a symptom attics spread. If we find there is a lot of asymptomatic individuals in this active monitoring and we are concerned about the most vulnerable, we will have to have increased testing to cover all of those sites. We haves. Pence and as made clear to the governors and other Health Officials, we are going to continue to scale testing. As the president has made clear, we want governors and states to manage the Testing Operations in their states. Criteria, we have given guidance for how we think that would best operate, but we are looking for the states, for the governors to manage it. In the midst of that, all of these great experts working with all of these great facilities will continue to work that great work with that Great American ingenuity in testing for states to be able to implement as they move closer and closer to that day the president speaks of often where we reopen america and put all of america back to work. Pres. Trump please, go ahead. Earlier today, jay inslee d your tweet encouraging jay inslee said your tweet encouraging liberation in misses in minnesota and virginia were fomenting rebellion. Im wondering how that squares with the sober and methodical guidance yesterday. Do have ap we sobering guidance, but i think some things are too tough. If you look at some of the states you mentioned, it is too tough. Not only relative to this, but what they have done in virginia relative to the second a minion Second Amendment, they did a horrible thing. He is a governor under a cloud to start off with. When you see what he said about the Second Amended Second Amendment, i feel very comfortable. Go ahead. Talkst to be clear, you about michigan, minnesota, virginia, do you think they should lift their stayathome order . Pres. Trump i think what they have done is just too much. I have already said. Certainly the Second Amendment having to do with the state of virginia, what they have done in virginia is just incredible. Ok, please. Are you concerned people coming out in protest are going peoplead covid to other congregating in ways that Health Experts have said they should not . Are people these expressing their views. I have seen where they are. They seem to be very responsible people to me. That they have been treated a little bit rough. Them curious about dynamics we might see as the country begins reopening. As you mention, we have seen the curve begin to flatten, but other laces like florida or more rural parts of the country, you are expecting the curve to continue. Can you talk about some of the difficulties the later peeking states face if they need to stay locked down longer if some states around them are starting to open up . Pres. Trump we are seeing great numbers in almost every state. We are seeing big drops in terms of beds, the numbers we have to look at are the beds being occupied, which is essentially people going in. That means you have fewer people that are sick, fewer people that feel they have to go to a hospital, and those numbers are dropping precipitously. We are just seeing a lot of good signs. A place like new york, new jersey and certain parts of louisiana, louisiana has been incredible lately when you look at that drop. That drop has been great. Michigan has had a hard time but it is starting to do well. I just think illinois is another one. You look at some of the numbers. Everyone is dropping and they are dropping rather quickly. We dont have any hotspot that has developed where all of a sudden other than we had a meat plant or two where, incredibly, you saw the number was rather incredible that took place in that plant. People would ask about that. I wonder who owned that company . There is a weird situation, but generally speaking, the numbers have been really improving greatly. Saying intelligence is the coronavirus likely came from a level four lab in wuhan. Theres also a report that the nih under the Obama Administration gave that lab 3. 7 million in a grant. Why would the u. S. Give a grant to china . Pres. Trump the Obama Administration gave them a grant of 3. 7 million and we have instructed if any grants are going to that area, we are looking at it literally about an hour ago and also early in the morning. We will and that grant very quickly, but it was granted quite a while ago. They were granted a substantial amount of money. We are going to look at it and take a look. I understand it was a number of years ago. When did you hear the grant was made . 2015. Pres. Trump who is president then, i wonder . We know negotiations are underway for the next round of funding for Small Business. Tens of billions of dollars went in a matter of days the first time. Will this next relief package be enough . Pres. Trump certainly it is going to get us to a point that is going to be rather beautiful. We think thats going to be the point but at a certain point we are going to stop. It has been a tremendous success. It has been executed flawlessly. Sba has done a good job, but the banks have done a great job whether it is bank of america or wells fargo. The Community Banks have been incredible. I think we have 4000 banks a lot of people didnt know we had that many banks. It is so organized and it has been such a great program. Essentially, we are waiting for 250 billion. The democrats are refusing to this is money essentially going to the workers. Its going to keep these companies whole. Restaurants and a lot of great companies. It is a small amount of money relative to what it represents because it represents Small Businesses, it represents them staying in business. Small businesses represent approximately 50 of the power of our business enterprises. Its not all the big monster business as read about every day. All of these Small Businesses when added is something that should be approved by the democrats. The republicans want it badly and the people want it badly. Nearly 10 of the loans given out were 5 million. Some Small Business owners say they cant get a loan for 100,000. Pres. Trump nobody knew it was going to be the successful. Dont forget when you say that money is gone, it has been a tremendous success as a program. They really wanted and some people wont be able to keep their business open unless they get that money. It has been a tremendous success. It has been executed flawlessly. With few exceptions, it has really been good and i think the democrats are going to do it. Nancy pelosi is away on vacation or something and she should come back and get this done. I dont know why shes not coming back. The fact is shes not doing her job and theres nothing unusual about that for her. Considering adding funding for more hospitals hospitals are a good thing. Hospitals have been decimated. They have given up their business, which is good because they did the right thing in order to take care of the covid19. The way. That all if they want to add hospitals, we can add it into phase four if we do a phase four. Hopefully that would be infrastructure. A lot of people are talking about the best thing we could do for this country would be the payroll tax cut that i have been suggesting. A lot of democrats like it, believe it or not. The payroll tax cut. Tremendous,who is in fact he recently got the president ial medal of freedom, economist, he was with ronald reagan, he looks like hes 45 years old but i think he might be older than that, he looks so great. Art laffer said the single greatest thing you can do is the payroll tax cut and i would just about agree with that and i would like to see it. Im not sure we are going to get it, it is simple, it is good for the company that employs these people and the people that are employed. We will see whether that happens, the payroll tax cut would be a tremendous incentive for this country. China says the coronavirus death toll in wuhan is 50 higher, up to about 4000. Does that sound like a credible number two you . Pres. Trump i listen to the press every night we dont have the most in the world deaths. The most in the world has to be china. It is a massive country. It has gone through a term in this problem with this, a tremendous problem. They must have the most. Today, i saw they announced they are essentially going up on the numbers and that is only in wuhan, they are not talking about outside of wuhan. It is what it is, steve. What a sad, sad state of affairs. The investigation into whether the virus escaped from this lab in wuhan, how accurate is that . Pres. Trump a lot of people are looking at it. It seems to make sense. They talk about a certain kind of at but that bat is not in that area. If you can believe it, that is what they are down to, bats. That bat was not sold in that wet zone. That bat is 40 miles away. A lot of strange things are happening, but there is a lot of investigation going on and we are going to find out. All i can say is wherever it came from, it came from china in whatever form. 184 countries now are suffering because of that. It is too bad, isnt it . And it could have been solved very easily. When it was just starting. The 80 million payments thanhave gone out less 1 have had snafus, but that could be 800,000 snafus. Than 1 ump its less and the snafus are very minor. They were 80 million payments went out over a few days. They caught certain mistakes they made, but this is a tiny amount of mistakes. I can tell you mistakes were made in government where whole countries were signed. 80 million this has been a tremendous success. Any mistake that was made, they have been caught and it is less than 1 . Thats a very good percentage. How about the obama website, the obamacare website where they spent 5 billion where they built a website you could have built for peanuts . Can the government get that back . Pres. Trump sometimes you to send a check to some buddy wrong. A check,e and they get that can happen. I guess the number is about 80 Million People. Everything we are going to get back, but it is a tiny amount and they have done a fantastic job. This was done in a few days. Areour Campaign Said they planning on doing rallies before the election. Is there a timeline you are looking at . Would it be restricted to certain states . Pres. Trump i hope we can do rallies. Its great for the country, its great for the spirit. For me, its a tremendous way to get the word out. If you look at our success rate, we have had tremendous success. Our success rate is unparalleled. Theres nothing like it. I certainly hope we can have rallies. We will find out. I dont like the rallies were we are sitting like you are sitting. You have many reporters trying to get into this room and it loses a lot of flavor. It loses, to me, a lot of flavor. I hope we are going to have rallies. I think they are going to be bigger than ever. The rallies we are having until we had to stop with regard to the problem we had here, the rallies were bigger than they were i even think substantially bigger, we go into the biggest arena and we turn away 20, 30,000 people. In one case in new jersey, we people show up for an arena that holds 9000 people and they showed up. And the reporters even reported that. That was almost shocking to me. I hope we can resume rallies because i think they are an important part of politics. Some workers can go back to work in phase one, but many parents dont have an option to work from home. How can you get businesses back up and running as long as schools are closed . Pres. Trump i think businesses are going to and weve given businesses a positive jolt. They are able to keep their employees. If the employees leave that area , who knows where they are going or if they get into the job maybe someplace else. You are not going to have the same business. We gave them money to hold their employees. We hope they can do 250 billion more. It is so inexpensive and we hope that is going to happen but i really think look, you see it with the stock market. 8 hundred was up 700, points today. If you would have told me if we would have a virus the likes of which this world has not seen 1917, which was the spanish flu where anyone from 75 to 100 Million People were killed and we have a stock market that is not far below its alltime high, and it is starting you had a thousand point increase and a 1200 point increase now we have a stock market that is at a point where it is not very far away from where it wasnt and we have gone through, it closed remember this also we have had a closed economy. We had the best economy anywhere in the world. We had the best economy weve ever had. Remember this the dollar is very strong. Strong dollars are although very good but it is harder to sell outside of the country, its harder for manufacturers, sometimes its a lot harder. Everybody wants to invest in our country. We are paying almost zero in interest. In some cases, zero. Weve never had that before. People want the safety of our country. But if you would have told me we had the market where it is today and we had almost a 700 point increase and we are at a point that it is not what it was but it is not that far off, i would have told you thats got to be an impossibility. The reason that is is because theres a great, pent up man. This country is going to come back and come back strong. We got to get rid of the virus, we got to open up our country, it up ining to open quadrants, some of the states should get together and work on their own borders because you dont want to have people pouring through the border of a state that is not infected and you have people coming it up oue thats one of the reasons i was asking tony two days ago about masks. Why in wyoming or montana would they have to wear masks . Their numbers are very good. The reason is if somebody comes from outside, you know, which is very severe, but, and again, its going to be up to them, its a recommendation, but we will see. If you would have told me how well we are doing after we went through the worst event of its kind since 1917, its pretty amazing. Americans are not sure how they cannot go how can they have their kids taken care of in addition to helping employees stay employed pres. Trump i think the schools are going to be opened soon. I think evan ors are already talking about schools being opened. We do have to take care of our seniors because we learned a lot about this disease. We learned a lot about this plague and we have to take care of our seniors. We are going to take care of a lot of people. The schools are going to be open sooner rather than later. Some governors are already thinking about getting the schools open. I have a young boy who goes to school. Its as good as home is we would like to see him go to school soon. I would like to know about some of these areas you would like to open up you singled out virginia, michigan they dont have a declining cases yet, yet you tweeted out today you would like to liberate them. They what they have done is very powerful in terms of you can get the same results doing a little less, what they have done to some people is very unfair. In virginia, im going above and beyond what we are talking about with this horrible plague. They want to take their guns away. They want to take their guns away. Thats the Second Amendment. Thats virginia. You have a governor i guess he should be under siege. He seems not to be. If he were a republican, he would be under siege, but he seems to have escaped something that is really bad, including what he said about many different things. At whatou take a look is going on in virginia, they want to take away Second Amendment rights and thats what they want to do. So when you talk about liberate or liberation, you can certainly look at virginia go ahead, anybody else . So which states are ready to open in your mind . Pres. Trump i want to let the governors make that decision. If we see something happening bad that is wrong, we are going to come down very strong on them. Very, very strong. The federal government has a lot to say. We have a lot to say beyond what anyone understands. And ive gotten to know many of the governors, many democrats, o. I knew some of the democrats, but i got to know some of them. Its going to be in the hands of a lot of good people. A lot of good people want to do what is right. The Vice President is traveling soon. When are you going to be in a position to travel again . Pres. Trump they would rather not have me travel. I think ive been in the white house for months. I dont know how long it is, but its for months. I did leave to say goodbye to our beautiful ship, the comfort, as it left virginia, when it got out of drydock. It got out of maintenance very early. It was supposed to be there for four weeks and it was there for a few days, literally we got it to new york. It. Glad they didnt need they didnt need it, that was a good thing. They didnt need the convention center. Depending on your definition we ultimately converted it to covid. The army corps of engineers and fema, the job they did was incredible. But thats a sign they are making progress in new york. We built it, it was ready, it is there now. We converted it to covid. It wasnt supposed to be for that. At the request of our side and ultimately we converted it but there is much less demand, thats such a good thing. Im not complaining about that. That means new york is making progress. Do you know where the Vice President is going tomorrow . Pres. Trump hes going to colorado . I think hes going to the air force to make the commencement . If hes going to make the commencement i hear they are going to have they are going to be i will say they are going to be socially, they are going to be very far apart. It will be very interesting. I will watch that one. They are going to have a good spread, a good distance apart. I spoke to mike about it. I think making the commencement im doing it at west point, which im doing, i did it last year at air force, i did it at the Coast Guard Academy and im doing it at west point. Iassume theyve got it and understand they will have distancing, they will have some big distance, so it will be very different than it ever looked. Do i like the look . No, i dont. Next year, they will have a commencement which will be like it has been, when people like this, our great admiral has done such a great job. When he graduated from where he graduated, people were nice and tight and thats going to happen again. I dont want people to think this is going to be like this forever, but for a time we are going to have to keep it that way. That includes baseball games and Football Games and other things. But eventually, as this virus goes away, its going to be better and better and we are going to get our lives back to the way they were. One thing that bothers me a couple of restaurant tours called and they said sir, i barely made a living with 150 seats. Now, if i do what they want me to do, i will be down to 25 seats and i cant. And i said but you are not going to be there forever. He thought they were going to move it down to 25, 50 seats and i said dont worry about it. Eventually, you are going to be back to the same you used to have, which was look im not going to do it because i didnt want to bring it up, but i can tell you about events that took place and i said things like you will never do that again or you will never do this again, and i dont want to mention the event or what you are supposed to be doing because you know one of them was so horrible. I said a certain industry will be out of business, never happen again. Two weeks later, it was like nothing ever happened. Hopefully we get rid of this. We have tremendous talent up here, all over, including governors, local governments, state governments. I look forward to the time when we can really normalize, but normalizing is being back to where we were. Allies areyour calling for china to be stripped as host for the 2022 olympics. Is that something you would consider . Pres. Trump i just made a deal with china where they are going to put in 250 billion of product, they are going to be i want to see whats happening with china. How theyre doing on fulfilling the deal, the transaction. We have a lot of discussions going on with china. Let me just put it this way, ok . Im not happy. Im not happy. I spoke to them and this could have been shut down a long time ago. They knew it and we couldnt get in and in all fairness, world health couldnt get in. Thats why i wish theyd taken a different stance. They took a very pathetic and weak stance. But ultimately they got in but they didnt report what was happening inside of china. No, im not happy with china. Mr. President , i wanted to ask dr. Fauci, can you address these suggestions or concerns that this virus was somehow man mailed, possibly came out of a laboratory in china . Youve studied this virus. What are the prospects of that . Dr. Fauci there was a study recently that we could make available of you where a group of highly qualified evolutionary biologists looked at the squenlses there and the squenlses in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human. So, i mean, the paper will be available. I dont have the authors right now but we can make that available to you. Weve seen people wanting economies to open. Does that concern you, though, as a health expert, when you see folks congregate and are you worried if thats encourageed . Dr. Fouly im looking at frit a Public Health standpoint. I srnl can understand the frustration of people but my main role in the task force is to make recommendations to protect the health and safety of the American People and i would home people understand that. Thats the reason were doing what were doing and hopefully ell put an end to this President Trump im very, very satisfied with the decisions weve made. Listening to the experts, my gut, the feeling of the Vice President and many others. When we put it all together look, if we didnt do what we did at the time, we could have lost more than 2 Million People. I really believe that i could show you charts of other places that gave it a shot and theyre not doing well. I would show it to you right now. I dont want to embarrass anybody. They gave it a shot. Its an automatic. Everybody would say lets do that until they sit down and start thinking and we could have lost more than 2 million. We had one that said from 1. 6 to 2. 2 but it could have really been more than that. I looked at one country in particular, using the herd mentality. Not working out very well. With all of that being said, we have to get back to work. Well be crossing lines very soon in many cases. In some cases were well on the way down. In other cases were right at the top and heading down. Were heading in the right direction. I saw some numbers from new jersey, which was having a very tough time. Hes doing a terrific job, the governor, phil murphy. Starting to get some really good signs. I looked at some of the new york numbers. Theyve been devastated, obviously, but some really good things are starting to happen. So if we would have done Something Different first of all, it would not have been sustainable. You would have had people that would have been furious at and you me and everybody up here it would not have been sustainable. You look at some of the hospitals as an example. A certain hospital right where i grew up in queens and body bags all over the floor of the hospital. You know the one im talking about. Now, multiply that times 12 or 15 because thats the kind of numbers youre talking about. 12 or 15. There would have been an in screx. Invection. Nobody would have understand understood that. Whereas right now, nobody can be blamed. This is no blame. Weve in a situation that should have been solved long ago. It provel could have been solved very easily. Its a touch enemy but probably very easily if a certain country did what they should have done and were just starting to learn those facts, but what we did was the right thing with. That being said, we want to get back and were going to be opening up state. Theyre being open by very capable people. Its also point of sale, as they say in a different business. Where the testing is going to be taking place. Were going to work with the stats states and help them but think know every inch of land in their states. I watched the governor of arkansas, asa, you saw that. I thought it was he was terrific. I watch it would governor of oklahoma being interviewed over the weekend. It was terrific. Theyve done ate little bit differently. Theyve been very tight and strong and they were very sexrarmede had more beds than they need and would thats a good thing. I think youll have some very positive events taking place over a very short period of time. I think with that well see you tomorrow but really, this has been a situation where a lot of great people have been involved in a and a lot of great decisions have been made. Thank you all very much. Any followup quells . Dr. Fauci, you want to stick around . [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] cspan has round the clock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic and ts all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors and state officials. Track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps. Watch on demand any time unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. Washington journal prime time. For the next hour a special evening edition of cspans washington journal. Your questions and comments about the coronavirus epidemic start now. , host on this friday, april 17, welcome to another primetime edition of the washington journal. As the numbers continue to climb, the white house and the governors looking for ways to reopen parts of the u. S. Economy. As you heard from the president just a moment ago, as we focus on coronavirus and the path forward, we hope youll join in on the conversation. Our phone lines are open. 202 is the area cold. 278800 in the eastern or central time zones