If you live in the eastern half of the country, those at west, this is your number. Yourt west, this is number. If you are a chicago resident, this is your number. ,e will begin how we always do with the numbers courtesy of john hopkins university. Now 2. 4 million cases around the world in 185 countries. The total deaths, one of six 1000 69,000. Joining us from her office in chicago is the mayor, Lori Lightfoot. Thank you for being with here with us here on cspan. My pleasure. I want to begin with some concerns expressed by deborah birx on the White House Coronavirus task force. We have made tremendous progress. There is still a long way to go. When we started out, we saw cases doubling every two or three days. We are now in a cycle where they are doubling every 12 days. We have to get to a place where we see a decline in cases, a decline in hospitalizations and occupied by icu bed covid positive or people under investigation for having covid. We are making progress because people are staying home. Tight sure that we hold is critically important for us to continue to get to a place where we can even start to have a public conversation about what coming out of these restricted measures may look like. You have been very critical of governor desantis. Saying god help us as he plans to reopen parts of florida. What is your concern . My concern ist the issue that i articulated. The only locality the only way to make progress is to have very high restrictions. It is those congregate settings, apart, a nursing home, a jail, other places that is a breeding ground for this virus. We know that if you have an underlying medical condition, you are very much at risk. Wouldtion that a governor barely a week after imposing a stayathome order say that was fun and now everybody back is what thees, that santos did. That is the height of irresponsibility. Your sanitation workers died. This inyou dealing with terms of those frontline employees that are dealing with essential City Services but also protecting City Employees . We put a number of measures in place from the very beginning. We really pared down central services. Not essential and you can telework, please do that. Have done everything we can to train them. Education him educate them about how the virus spread so they can protect themselves and then provide them with gear. Whether it is masks, gloves, we more traditional that education and retooling and making sure to save that equipment is an ongoing process. We are doing every thing we can to make sure our frontline workers have the resources they need and the education and training and the tools they need to be able to protect themselves if they continue to do necessary work to keep our city functioning. What has been your biggest challenge . You personally. Mayor lightfoot there are a lot of challenges. Just making sure that we are staying ahead of where we need to be. Thinking multiple steps ahead in it feelsanging like a roller coaster a lot of times. We are trying to make sure that we are very focused on what the data tells us but that also that we dont use lose the him an element. What is real is that people feel traumatized. Lots of control over your life loss of liberty, loss of control over your life. Dealing with the emotional side of this is a big challenge. I know people who have been sick. I know people in my city who have died. It feels very personal. I know you have been talking about this with local reporters. The disparity among the minority population, the africanamerican population has seen a disproportionate case of covid19 in those communities. How are you dealing with that . Mayor lightfoot first and foremost with the data. When we made our report announcing the real disparities in the number of cases and the number of deaths that are falling disproportionately on average americans, even with statistics, wee knew we were getting in underreporting of many providers while they were providing information about the number of people tested and with the test results were. They were skipping the important demographic information. We issued an order requiring that every single test has to be accompanied with demographic information. The other thing we did is reform a Racial EquityRapid Response team. We had the first report out to that team. I said to the group that i was swelling with pride. The reason is they organized themselves into a great structure. They are very focused on hyper local education and delivery of services connecting people, solving problems that get elevated up to our larger emergency operation, working groups. Werei saw was people who stakeholders in neighborhoods thecare very much about community, really rolling up their sleeves and getting to work to bring a lot of education and services and problemsolving at the local level. That is what governments should be about in this moment. This is a headline from the chicago suntimes. Saying that your stern coronavirus message is to stay at home and it is exactly what the city needs. This. Icago tribune has amid a global pandemic, chicagoans find a way to left. Homeowners are decorating like it is christmas again. There is an abundance of neighborhood singalongs but it is hard for any of them to counter the unbounded joy found in Lori Lightfoots memes. How did this come about . Mayor lightfoot this sprung up organically. It was an instagram account. I closed it down because we saw so many people violating the stayathome order and people congregating like a sunday in the summer. I knew that was too risky and dangerous for us so i shut the whole lakefront down from north to south. I did it with a priest or an message that i thought was appropriate. I was very concerned about people getting sick. Websitehat act, a called where is lightfoot started to spring up. This local Graphic Designer designed a few memes. I see myself everywhere. On the tops of buildings. Face. Ing like it is the signal for bat man. On refrigerators telling people they have eaten too much. We put out a set of videos about staying at home and taking advantage of the moment. What it said to me is a couple of things. People are incredibly innovative. The number of places that have been popping up in memes but also cut out, lifesize versions has been extraordinary. It saysnk it has that people are hungry for hope. Something to take her mind off of this very dark circumstance. I think that hope is what propels us forward. I enjoyed it tremendously. My family has enjoyed it. Emailstting texts and from people across the country and the world that i know. It has been fun. Your jumpshot is always going to be weak. Stay out of the park. There is the chicago skyline. Chicago describing you as stern,s grumpy, steely and unrelenting. Would you use those words . Mayor lightfoot i think some of those are accurate. There is no playbook for this pandemic. I am not even a year into my term. I think it is important for me to stand up a very robust response to this pandemic. Luckily i have a great team around me. People say you should smile and laugh more. It is a little hard to do that in the midst of a circumstance when so many people are losing their lives but we do have to find the humor in life. A very great and sarcastic sense of humor. I have been having fun with this but i am tough. There is no question about it. I think you have to have a certain level of toughness. I think the mayors across the beenry have really recognized not only locally but on national or international scales. They are people very similar in demeanor to me. This is serious business. You have to have a real fortitude to take on and not be by the pain that people are experiencing. That pain israel and i feel it. That gives me more resolved to come up with solutions. The mayor of chicago joining us from her office. We welcome our viewers on cspan radio. Melrosego to dennis in park, illinois. Dennis good evening. I am a Senior Citizen in a retirement community. You may have heard of it. It is in northlake. Great job here. I just want to commend you and everybody in the city of chicago. It is starting to break all over the United States and the world. I am optimistic but im trying to be realistic as well. I just wondered if you heard any reports about how the melrose park area is doing concerning the rise . I have not heard anything and i am anxious to make a plan. This is a wonderful place. They are enforcing all of the precautions. I am privileged and honored to be here. Thank you. I have heard of that facility. I know to be a good place. I have not her specifics of how they are doing but heard specifics about how they are doing but we will look into it. In chicago, we had a very particular focus on senior centers, nursing homes. Vulnerable ofst the populations we are concerned about. Seniors, people with underlying medical conditions. We have been working through our department of Public Health to combine a lot of Technical Support to those kinds of settings. That is a focus of the state. That youre doing well. As a person of faith, we do need to pray. I pray multiple times a day for lord to and for the wrap his arms around people that our that are vulnerable. Allison is next from worchester in massachusetts. Im calling from massachusetts. I thank you all for what youre doing. Called is why i because there is such a need for ppe. At the same time, i find somewhat of a breakdown as you go from one location. You hear about the ppe needs and then you hear other spots that just have not gotten any resources. It would be nice if there was someone in the region that directto delegate and those donations so that sources are not left out. I know this is new for everybody but there was quite a disconnect between some of the same hospitals within the same framework. And would do it one way some would do it another. Some have a lot more resources that are not being sent to other sites. That is an issue. Thank you, allison. Allison points out a real issue. The uneven distribution of resources is a real issue. That is something the federal government should be taking a lead on but a lot of that has fallen to mayors like me. I am fortunate that in our city that we have a Public Health department that stockpiles longials like ppe all year. In chicago, at least in terms of ppe, we are doing fine. Normally, hospitals provide their own ppe to their healthcare workers. It is unusual in this time that Public Health department are ually pushing out ppe tip to hospitals. This goes back to the essential issue of preparedness. It is tough in the middle of a crisis if youre not prepared to scramble for resources. We have not seen a lot of that in chicago because we really play a huge premium on preparedness. The thing i would say to your viewers is that you need to make sure youre asking your local elected officials what the Preparedness Plan is. It is hard to do it in a pandemic but there are a lot of Lessons Learned in this and we all have to make sure that we are ready for the next wave if it comes. But yearround preparation is the only way to stay ahead of the curve. We are going to mary beth, joining us from chicago. Good evening. Mary beth hello. I would like to know what is going to be the response in chicago for all of the hospitals that are laying off nurses and doctors . In the city and in the suburbs. We will get a response. Mayor lightfoot i have not heard of a hospital laying off personnel in the city. If anything, theyre looking to expand their staff because the need is so great. We have been trying to provide Additional Support to hospitals around staffing. That need has escalated in the midst of this pandemic. I am not aware of that being an issue in chicago. I know there are some suburban hospitals that have been compelled to lay people off for a time but that is not our experience here in chicago to my knowledge. The next is from spokane, washington. I want to congratulate mayor lightfoot on what she is doing. Really going to help mankind if she can get these people to stop. Thank you very much for listening. I am from spokane, washington. Goodbye. Thank you. Let me ask you about Upcoming Events in chicago. Whether it is the july taste of chicago, cubs baseball, white sox baseball, what is the summer going to look like as we speak tonight . Mayor lightfoot it will look very different than any other summer we have experienced. We are not in a place where we can come back together in a congregate setting that you identified. Large outdoor concerts, a sporting event. I know there has been a lot of discussion regarding sporting events, about how they might come back, when, when they will have fans and spectators in the stadiums. That is a conversation they are having but it will obviously be dictated by where we are and whether or not from a Public Health perspective that we believe it is safe enough for those kinds of gatherings to take place. This summer will be very different looking than it has been at any other time. In terms of the impact on the city, tourism, business, how big of a hit the respective take . We are not in a position where we can quantify it but we know it will be significant. We knew that from the first few conventions that were canceling. That our hospitality industry, restaurants, bars, the Service Industries have really taken a significant brunt of the closures. We are thinking about what the impacts have been. Not just the economy but really across our city and looking at ways in which we can come together in the city to move to another place and doing it in a way that recognizes the harm and the loss. Not just businesses but the death we have experienced. Whether as a result of covid or otherwise. When funerals have to be limited to 10 people or less, including the people at the funeral home, that is a real hardship. That is a great psychological hit on families. There is a lot we need to address if we think about getting beyond this pandemic to heal the experience of people in our city. Jake is next, he is from texas. Thank you for waiting. You i wanted to know why violated your order to get a hair transplant that looks that bad. I apologize for that. We will go to lauren and sturgis, south dakota. We will try one more time. Please go ahead. Curious what the president of china is going to about i must be on tv right now. I apologize for that. Let me go back to some of the news of the day with senator tom cotton. They are asking if china could be sued by those americans impacted by covid19. What is your reaction to that . Mayor lightfoot i dont think that will be any kind of viable lawsuit. Ist we should be focusing on our town, our cities, our states. In terms of your corroboration cooperation with the governor, do feel that illinois and the city of chicago is getting everything you need from the federal government . Mayor lightfoot we are not. From the beginning we have been talking about getting more ppe. It has been a big recurring issue, testing. We dont have enough testing at all in the states, certainly in the city. That continues to be an area where we are challenged. We clearly need help from the federal government on that. I also feel like we need to play the hand that we are dealt. We cant wait for the cavalry in the form of the federal government to come and rescue us. Our residents demand immediate action. Rightfully so. We have been trying to work hard within the constraints that we have to be able to move forward. I am grateful for the cares act and some of the other stimulus that has come so that we get reimbursed for the money we would have to lay out in response to covid19 but there is a lot more work than is to be done. There are many Small Businesses that will not be helped. We need to talk about how our depletedd towns have revenue as a result of these closures. How we address that at the federal level. Magnitude. There is a lot more that needs to be done. Coordination at the federal level. In these to be a lot better in cities and towns. They need to have a seat at the table because everything the federal government does, the implantation of a, the mandate all fall on mayors and village president and township governments. All across the country. They need to listen to us more and bring us into the conversation. What is your process in trying to gradually reopen in chicago . What kind of Comfort Level with that give you as the mayor . Mayor lightfoot we have to see some things that we have not seen yet. We need to see the number of cases declined significantly. We need to see hospitalizations go down. Number of newhe debts being occupied. We are making progress. That is going to be critically important. We have to really think about what coming back together on the others of this pandemic looks like. People are not going to be comfortable getting untrained, coming downtown, being in an office unless there are wetifications in place that can be in a congregate in setting in specific locations. We have a long way to go. We are seeing the numbers slow in terms of cases. It has not started to go down yet. We cant even think about reopening up the economy, our businesses, our restaurants, to our prior life until those numbers go dramatically down. Do you worry that in the short term, the next couple of years, 35 years that it will change chicago . It already has. We are not the same city. We learned about the strength of our city. It has really been shining through. We also know the areas where we have great vulnerability. Se are flashing like flashing like a neon light as well. We are trying not to just put up temporary scaffolding but we are trying to build a foundation for the future on which we can make even more progress on huge issues like income inequality. Poverty in the city. Access to health care and life expectancy. Those are all the things were learning a lot about. We knew about them and we were working on them, private organizations, philanthropy but this virus made us substantially accelerate the discussions and problem solving on a range of some issues that i think will ultimately be for the good. With all of that in place, as you deal with the possibility of another type of pandemic down the road, what are the Lessons Learned in terms of the Health Component of all of this . One of the things we did when is Racial Disparity equity rep response. What we are learning from these hyper local intervention discussions is how those statistics on diabetes and heart conditions, all of those things were about, how those played out at a local level. The scale of this is significant. Are really starting to think about budgeting and planning and how we put into action the things we are doing now over the longer term in smaller form at the local level. We have to build up a Real Infrastructure to deal with the generations of inequality that are manifesting themselves as a result of this virus. On a personal note, how are you doing . How is your family doing . How is your daughter doing . How has this been on a personal level . Mayor lightfoot it has been hard. I am not going to say anything else. Day trying toy problem solve and making key decisions that are meaningless and death for people in the city. That is a humbling responsibility. When i get home, i try to be present for my family. My daughter is still very actively involved in school. It is not the same as interacting with your colleagues and your school classmates. We try to take some family time to decompress from everything. I make sure every day that i time so i can lay my burdens down. They are still there when i wake up in the morning. I am working every single day to ake sure that i am working to make sure we have our family time. Host have you become a homeschooler, a teacher as well . Guest most of that burden has fall on my wife. Which neither of us signed up for. I do try to engage my daughter, try come up with activities that feel more like playing a game and being with mama and not school work but its a challenge for all parents. We have really good network of friends that we know through my Daughters School and that is a constant story line and conversation. This is really challenging all of us. Host Lori Lightfoot is the mayor of chicago. Thank you very much for your time and taking the viewers an listeners calls. We appreciate the update from your city. Guest thank you. Host our phone lines continue to be open. 442 l professionals, 702 guest heres a clip from brian kemp about reopening his state. Given the enhanced testing, we will allow gyms, fitness centers, bowling alley, body art studios, barbers, cosmetologists, hair designers, nail care artists, ayes the cisions, their respective aestheticians, their respective schools and massage parlors to oh reopen their doors this friday. Unlike other businesses these entities have been ahn able toing more inventory, deal with payroll, and take care of administrative items while we shelter in place. This measure allows them to undertake baseline operations that most other businesses in the state have maintained since i issued the shelter in place order. This measure will apply statewide and will be the operational standard in all jurisdictions. This means local action cannot be taken that is more or less restricted. Over the next few days we will cant to closely monitor existing and potential hot spots in our state. I stay in regular contact with local leaders across georgia, especially those in daugherty county and surrounding counties to ensure were providing adequate sport. Right no albany and daugherty county, we are seeing great improvement. I talked to commission i talk to Commission Chair chris cahillas on a regular basis to ask if further action is warranted. And rest assured if any Community Needs the state to interveen well do so with their input as well as their partnership. The next point is a very important one. The entities which i am reopening are not reopening as business as usual. Each of these entities will be subject to specific restrictions, including adherence to the minimum basic operations, social distancing and regular sanitation. Host thats from Governor Kemp in atlanta. Joining us from los angeles is dr. Ann ramon, professor of epidemiology at the university of californialos angeles. Part of the Geffen School of medicine, pals art of the center for global and immigrant health. Thank you for being with us. Guest its a pleasure. Host lets begin with your research you did a lot of research especially in the con go on animaltohuman viruses. What can you tell us on covid19 based on your research in the past . Guest this is a novel virus, were learning about it in real time. I spent my career working in the democratic republic of the congo on ebola, monkey pox, looking for new viruses, crossing species between animals and humans. You know, most of these viruses that we have that ive been working on are viruses even though they are unusual and they may have emerged, you know, a decade or so back, they are not completely new. And certainly the viruses ive been working on did not become a pandemic. So this is something that is, you know, weve never seen anything like this before. In our lifetime. And this its a very, very difficult situation. I will say i spent my career trying to raise the alarm bells saying we need to be preventing pandemics before we start. I think people thought the whole thing was an exiss ten rble threat, it wasnt something that they could imagine happening. Its really, you know, its very trying moment for everybody because we just are not prepared. Host was there a moment when you was there a moment when you realized the severity of what were dealing with today . Guest thats a very good question. I think that when we started to see the data come out of china suggesting that this was humantohuman and then seeing it start to spread so quickly, you know, i think we all realized that this was this was very, very serious. I mean, you know, the idea of the virus crossing species is not new. This happens probably much more preektly than we ever think of. But the thing is usually these diseases are not that transmissable and are not, you know, so easily spread. This is something that i think we all imagined could happen, but did not anticipate how swiftly it would happen, number one, and then number two, how the strain on our health system. I think that many of us had not realized with the constant, you know work the chronic lack of funding for all these essential services, all this Public Health infrastructure, how poorly prepared were actually were. Host can you shed some light on one of the stories that continues to dominate the headlines in comments by a number of leading senators including tom cotton of arkansas that this virus was established in a lab, that china is culpable for what happened, and yet others saying it had to come from an animal. Based on your expertise how would you answer that . Guest well, you know, the question is always, is this something natural . Was it accidental . Or was it intentional . I think that the question of whether or not it was intentional is not on the table here. And i think that the sequence data that weve seen does not suggest that its a mix of viruses so that it looks manmade. So this seems to be something that jumped from animal to human. Now whether that happened in a laboratory, as a result of a laboratory zeant or poor safety conditions, oif it happened in nature, you know, that mechanism is the same. And where we are now really doesnt, you know, the genie is out of the bottle, its too late. And the mechanism is the same. It crossed species from animal to human. It does bring up the point that we need to be sure that labs everywhere in the world, you know that lab safety is really important. And whether or not this came from a laboratory or came naturally, you know, good to remember that Laboratory Safety is critically important. Globally. And that you know, were all interconnected and that, you know, a hypothetical lab accident somewhere in the world could spark a pandemic just as easily as a natural event of animaltohuman transmission in the community. So you know, i know thats not a perfect answer to this question but its, you know, at the end of the day does it really matter where it came from at this point . We can do all the finger points we want and you know, the armchair quarterbacking, armchair discussion later, right now, what we really need to focus on is how were going to deal with it. And you know, there are a lot of reagents and supplies we need from china right now and from places all over the world. I think that the most important thing to do is to focus on whats the plan. How are we going to get testing up and running . How are we going to make sure that everybody as the p. P. E. They need . How are we going to make sure that we have the right Contact Tracing in place . How will we fix all the thing this is pandemic has highlighted as a very big problem in our country in terms of the lack of Public Health infrastructure, or the support that we need to really to gear up for a major pandemic . You know, i think those are the things we need to focus on right now. Host we have some of those number, testing now about around four million nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins university which has been keeping track. New york leading the testing with 633,000, followed by california, florida and texas. Before we get to callers, one other point. We do know mitigation has worked, especially in california. What are the lessons to other governors and communs around the country based on what youve seen firsthand in your state . Guest i think that california was out the gate as one of as the first to have a statewide stay safer at home ordinance. We were the first to mandate masks, cloth masks at all times outside. So i think that what california has been able to demonstrate is that being out the gate first and doing the westest the best we can at mitigating and slowing the spread of the virus pays off. It well really does. So you know, i think that thats just a good lesson for everybody. You know. Today we all watch the press conference and theres a lot of discussion of well, we didnt need this many ventilator, we didnt need this much that or didnt need that much this. But the fact of the matter is when you do Public Health measures correctly everything will look like you needed more than you actually did. What were seeing is the payoff of the work weve done to be able to slow the spread of the virus. Thats really important. Host dr. Ann ramon joining us, professor of ep deemology. Please go ahead. Youre on the air. Caller hello. Quick question. There are 150,000 dental hygienists in the United States and i want to know if the doctor can tell us what we can expect from a p. P. E. Perspective, in addition to what types of new engineering controls we will need in place to practice safety li . Guest thats a really good question. I think the fact that were, dentists, dental hygienists, people who are going to be at very high risk, this is going to be a ealy big issue. Now i can what i can say is that you need to have really good p. P. E. You need to be able to have n95. Youll need to have everything in place to be able to to make sure the shields and everything else, because youre going to be right in the closest contact possible with people. I think that thats going to be something thats going to have to be discussed and have to be organized very well. You know, there was a photo of some graffiti in hong kong that said we cant go back to normal because normal was the problem. And i think that thats what were going to see here. That we cant go become to the way things were. There are going to have to be innovations. Theres going to have to be mass production of p. P. E. s, not crust for testing and treatment in hospitals with Covid Patients but for when we start having all the regular Services Opening up again. For all of these preventionive services that are critical. Dental hygiene is critical for many, many reasons. Ntal hygiene affects our physical health as well. This is a perfect example of Preventive Care that is so critical and urgent and not just preventive, so critical and that everybody has stopped for this period of time, when it comes back up and going and we do not have a vaccine in place were going to have to deal with it. Its very important. St dr. Rimoin is a graduate of Johns Hopkins school of health, a former peace corps volunteer. Ben is on the phone from florida. Caller good evening. My question is kind of, why couldnt we start by building immunities with boost and making them available to everybody, building into like cheese prubblingts where they can be stored forever and off shelf life. We took away b15 from our society and i think we could build a new system where we could fight this stuff inside before we think about going outside. Host is that possible . Guest im not sure i really understand the question. So maybe you can clarify. Host let me can you about the immune system. Are there things we could do to prevent this virus spreading from our immune system . Guest im not an immunologist, but what we know about this virus, people who have the poorest outcomes those with underlying conditions, those who are immunocompromised. So we can make sure were taking ka good care of ourselves and making sure our immune systems are as robust as possible. Host in terms of the work youve done in africa and the timeline to get a vaccine, whats your best estimate of where you think well be with covid19 . Guest the good news is, we have the best scientists in the world focusing on this problem right now. And the acceleration of vaccines an therapeutics has been ramped up. So i think that thats the first thing to focus on. The second thing is to know that there will not be a vaccine or therapeutic available to the public, in particular talking about vaccines right now, theres going to be novak seen available to the public that hasnt gone through rigorous safety testing so were sure the benefit outweighs the risk. I think the timeline dr. Fauci outlined for us, that it could be a year or more, to get to a vaccine that could be widely available for people, makes sense. I think the i think thats probably what were looking for a year to a year and a half. Host jimmy in kentucky. Caller good evening anne. Good evening, dr. Anne. This is jimmy bellamy. We pray for the people we have lost already and with the reopening might possibly lose more and the frontline doctors and nurses just wish them the est. And i dont know if it was an accident or not, you know, this is like war. It is like war. Host jimmy, thank you for the call. Let me take this point and pivot to your experience. What are you seeing in the greater l. A. Area, you personally . Guest i think that here in los angeles, l. S. L. A. Department of Public Health has done an excellent job of really trying to make sure that were getting testing up and running. That they are ding doing a really good job of try degree best they wan to do the best with identification and Contact Tracing and making sure that the messaging is getting out otestimony out to people, working closely with he mayors office. And you know, everybody here is trying to be as proactive as possible, being able to flatten the curve. Were reaping the benefits of that were seeing that our hospitals have not been overwhelmed and that our case counts have been down. Host whether its health or contact trace, can you explain how that works, how youre able to pinpoint some of the key areas you need to target in order to contain or mitigate coronavirus . Guest disease surveillance is the cornerstone of Public Health. You have to know where cases are and so you can do something about it. If you dont have the data as to where cases are, who is getting hit, who the contacts are, it all falls apart from there. What happens is, you need to have good testing in place so if somebody is ill, that they are identified and then we need to be able to identify all of their contacts. To follow up with these contacts, get in contact with them and then put those people in quarantine. The case will be isolated. People will be the contact will be in quarantine. During the incubation period of this virus. And by doing that, we should be able to identify clusters and to be able to slow the spread of disease in this way because then were going to be slowing down the opportunity for the virus to spread further. Right now, the idea of social distancing and everybody staying at home period is blunt measure because we dont have enough testing in place. We dont have p. P. E. s for this testing. Dent have so many of the components that are many place. So until we have these things in place, thats why were using social distancing as an extreme measure. St your guest is dr. Anne riomin, a fellow with the American Society of tropical medicine and hygiene. Kelvin is on the phone from columbia, south carolina. Caller good evening. First of all i want to say god have mercy on us all in this situation. , the c. D. C. , a couple of callers said they dont know if it was intentional or not. I dont either but but its tough, you know what i mean . They say china is not telling us everything, we dont know. It might be a war. It might be a biological war. Dont know. I dont know, nobody knows, until we find out, but may god have mercy on us all in america and across the world because its innocent people dying but i dont know. Nobody knows if it was intentionally or not. Host thanks for the call from south carolina. The early part of his question, whether or not there are equivalents to c. D. C. s in states and local communities, can you address that part of the issue . Guest in the United States, youre talking about . Host here in the u. S. Guest the c. D. C. Works nationally and they do have offices throughout the country and then they support local, the local Health Department as well working collaboration with local Health Department. So you know, c. D. C. Is our organization that says that really sets policy and come up with National Guidelines and our states and counties are able to enact it. Host lets move ahead to the next year and a half. There is a vaccine. Its been tested. Its been approved by this the f. D. A. , its ready to be administered. What are the mechanics of having that in a country this size . How do you go about doing that . Guest having spent many, many years working more places like the democratic republic of the con gow where we have National Vaccination of the congo, where we have National Vaccinations and large vaccinations campaign, thats what were going to see. Well see vaccination being made available everywhere that you can possibly get it. This is that is something that is not new to the world. These big, huge, we learned how to vaccinate people very quickly through the polio eradication program, smallpox eradication program. We know how to roll out this vaccine. If the supply is not an issue, we should be able to get this vaccine out, you know, production is not an issue, then the mechanism by which we do this is not complicated. Host youre not worried about supply being an issue regardless of how the vaccine is created . Guest i think well be able to ramp up supply quickly. Therell be production, a small lag in production but i think the wheels are turning for this. And we do know how to get vaccine out in large quantitykies. Host jerry is next in garr een gardenia, california. Caller good afternoon, dr. Anne, i have a quick question for you. I want to know how accurate is the test . If any, can it be improved in the future . Host thank you, jerry. Guest so i think im there are two different types of tests were talking about here. The first kind of test were talking about is the nucleic acid test, the p. P. R. This is the nasal swab that test is very is very accurate. There are ways that this test cannot be you know, its a nasal swab. It can be difficult sometimes to be able to get it up far enough into the nasal cavity and sometimes the technique you might misgetting some of the material you need to get to have a good diagnosis. But generally speaking this is an accurate test. I think the big question about accuracy of tests these days has come from the issue of Antibody Test. The first thing to understand is what is the Antibody Test telling you . Its telling you, have you been exposed to this virus . Have you been infected with it . It doesnt tell you whether or not youre immune to it. The f. D. A. In order to get these tests out as quickly as possible made it possible for labs to validate their own tests. So the problem here is that there are a lot of tests out there that may not be very accurate. And that is why theres a lot of consternation and a lot of concern about people using Antibody Tests, commercially available Antibody Tests that have not been authorized by the f. D. A. And so i think that this is a very, very important issue. Even these Antibody Tests in and of themselves are not, theyre still going to be false positives. So people who are identified as having antibody when they dont, and false negatives, people who do not have who actually are positive but then are shown to be negative. Which can have a significant impact. In particular, because i think people are thinking of these Antibody Tests as telling them whether or not theyre immune, it could be a big problem because what happens is then people think, i have immunity when in fact they dont. Host final question, a number of state, tennessee, georgia, florida, beginning to ease the stay at home restrickses in the coming weeks. Your reaction to that . Guest well, listen. I understand that this has been extremely painful for everybody. Everybody wants to get back to work. And its very, very hard. But the thing is, we still dont have testing in place, we dont have the Contact Tracing in place, we dont have a vaccine, we dont have therapeutics that we know are going to work yet. Were not really in a different situation than we were a few weeks ago here. We dont even really know where we are on this curve because of the testing not being ramped upful my concern is if we open up too soon were going to lose all these gains we have all worked so hard and sacrificed so much to be able to see realized. And so i think that the key here is that we need to just wait a little longer until we have these things in place. So that we are able to reap the benefits of what everybody has sacrificed so to be able to achieve here with having, you know, a slowing of the virus. So i heard over and over again, i used this analogy several times, i saw it on some social media, but somebody likened it to jumping out of an airplane, pulling the parachute and then just as youre starting to decelerate say, i dont immediate the parachute anymore and cutting the cord, right . So we really want to make sure that we really decelerated and to a point where we can have a very soft landing. I dont think were there yet. Is an r. Anne riomin epidemiologist and director of the center for global and immigrant health. Joining us from l. A. We thank you for being with us. Guest thank you, nice to be here. Host every evening we check in with members of congress. Joining us on the phone is representative cedric smith from louisianas second Congressional District, which includes most of new orleans. Congressman, thank you for being with us. Guest thank you, its richmond. Host yes, sorry, congressman richmond. Your area is one of the hardest hit, why is it . Outt we dent want to leave the areas around us. Then in the metropolitan area you have Jefferson Parish also. So it has it hit us hard. I will say thatic the mayor and governor did the right thing by acting early with a stay at home order. However, we are still in the midst of it. As of today i think we still have 1,700 people in the hospital. Ound 332 of of them still on ventilators. And weve lnl done 142,000 tests. And i think that we have to continue to test, test, test. Host congressman, how are you communicating with your constituents . Are you holding teleconferences . What kind of feedback are you getting from them directly . Guest we do a little bit of we try to do a little bit of everything. Were doing multiple newsletters. We have done teletown halls, across the entire district. We did one in st. John parish because they are in the middle of per capita there one of the top parishes or downies in the country. So it is still a challenge to communicate but we do the best we can with technology and were still answering calls and taking constituent matters and doing our case work. So were doing the best we can with what we have. Host congressman richmond, youre used to being in washington, traveling back and forth. A busy schedule. How are you adjusting to all of this with you and your family . Guest its a little different. Homeschooling is a challenge. Trying most part, were to just adjust to this new normal for now. Now we will go back, i will go back, wednesday or thursday depending on what date were going to vote on this emergency funding bill, because the Paycheck Protection Program ran small oney before many businesses could get it. We need money for hospitals. We need money for tests. I am absolutely going back to have input in that and to make sure that i vote on that. Host you expect a vote by mid week, latter part of this week in the house . Guest wednesday on the optimistic side, thursday on the pessimistic side. Hopefully we can get it done, the president can sign it and hopefully the banks and s. B. A. Can start giving that money out because you had a bunch of people who were very close to actually receiving it and then the money ran out. Then you saw, you know, good orporate citizens today like shake shack return 10 million because they said they thought they could go elsewhere and Small Businesses needed the money. This is our effort to make sure our Small Businesses and entrepreneurs can sustain themselves through this economic period. I mean i think we had 22 million unemployment claims in the last four weeks so thats amazing. Host youre expecting to come back on may 4, for the house, for your body, what do you think the month of may is going to look like in terms of your legislative priorities . Guest well, i think that what youre going to see especially from the black caucus, and youll see from me, there are a number of letters that have gone out over the last couple of weeks and theres a big one going out tomorrow to the e. P. A. And that is to figure out why you have such this big disparity between africanamericans and the infection and death rate compared to their percentage of the population. So you will see our the Congressional Black Caucus health brain trust and members dig into that. I think youll see hopefully the formation and standing up of the task force to make sure that this money is being spent the way we wanted it to be spent. Remember, were spending now trillions of dollars. We need to make sure that were spending it wisely, but too that the administration is following our wishes. So a lot of the things we did we just put the money in administration, implemented the rules and some of it has been inconsistent. So we just need to, i think, get back to work when it is safe and scientists tell us that its ok and we dont have to have as much social distancing and then if you look at just the yen age of congress, many of them fall in that age group where the c. D. C. Has recommended they stay inside and stay away from people. Host do you expect to be back may 4 or do you think that date could slide potentially . Guest it has the potential to slide but i think that youll see us back within that month. Host congressman Cedric Richmond from louisianas second Congressional District joining us on the phone. Thank you for being with us. Guest thank you. Thanks for having me. Host at the end of this hour, as we always do, a look at the numbers. Just in the last hour new worldwide infections, 2,799. Here in the u. S. , another 391. Confirmed case of coronavirus an deaths around the world, in the last 60 minutes, 1,300. Here in the u. S. , 266. A reminder, were back tomorrow wenching another primetime edition of washington journal, dr. Tom freedman will be joining us, hes the former director of c. D. C. And dr. Beth lauer one of the contributors to that dash board. And of course 7 00 a. M. For the morning edition of washington journal. All our coverage available on the website cspan. Org coronavirus. Thanks for joining us on this monday. Stay safe, keep healthy. Were back tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your evening. [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] cspans washington journal live every day with muse and policy issues name pact you. Tuesday morning we talk about the coronavirus pandemic and Domestic Violence with alejandra astillo, c. E. O. Of ywca u. S. A. Then how the pandemic affects u. S. Counties with duchess county, new york, executive marcus molinaro. And pbs frontline coffer spondent on pbs frontline documently ry about the first coronavirus case on u. S. Soil. Watch washington journal live at 7 00 eastern on tuesday morning. Join the discussion. The u. S. Senate is back on tuesday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern for what is tentatively expected to be a pro forma session. However, Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell added the session specifically so there could be a voice vote on any Coronavirus Relief legislation. Well have more live Senate Coverage on tuesday at 4 00 p. M. Astern, cspan2. Up next, todays White House Briefing with President Trump and members of the Coronavirus Task force. And later, an update on the Coronavirus Response from the governors of georgia and vermont. i ¿President Trump thank you very much everyone. Following the release of our reopening guidelines, governors across the country are looking forward to phase one and