Information. Its free, it is easily accessible, and its all there at cspan. Org. Vice president pens gave an update on the coronavirus outbreak with members of the White House Task force. They spoke about new travel restrictions, the level of risk for most americans, and the timeline for possible a possible vaccine. Good afternoon. We just finished the monday meeting of the White House Coronavirus task force. Since the time the president established the task force here at the white house, it has literally met daily. We continued that effort today. We added the head for the center of medicaid and Medicare Services seema verma to the task force today as well as Robert Wilkey with the va. First a few basic facts and reports and then well hear from other members of the task force about ongoing efforts. At the present moment we have 43 domestic cases of the coronavirus. 48 cases of individuals who have returned to the United States. Of the domestic cases, 29 of the 43 are either in california or Washington State. And we have communities that are facing what the experts tell us could potentially be a cluster in those communities. Sadly today there were four additional fatalities, raising the number that six americans have lost their life to the coronavirus. And on behalf of the president and all of the American People we extend our deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of those that were lost. Despite todays sad news, lets be clear. The risk to the American People of the coronavirus remains low, according to all of the experts that were working with across the government. This president has said were ready for anything. But this is an allhandsondeck effort. Todays activity really reflects the president s effort to bring the best minds of private industry together, the best leadership from around the country at every level. We had a good meeting this morning with governors from 50 states and three territories. I was able to convey to them the gratitude that the president and our entire administration feels. Particularly for governors that are dealing with the coronavirus in their states. Those that have taken repatriated personnel. I can say what i hear from the nations governors is that there has been a seamless relationship between all the agencies of the federal government and states thus far. And were encouraged to hear that. But i told them we are committed to a full partnership with state governments and to their Health Officials and to local Health Care Providers going forward. We also met today with some of the leaders of the Top Pharmaceutical Companies in the country. The president spoke to them not just about vaccines, which many of the companies are already beginning to work on. But just as importantly, the development of therapeutics. And it is remarkable to think that there may well be a vaccine going to Clinical Trials within the next six weeks. The nature of trials, as the experts have explained to us, is that the vaccine might not yet be available until late this year or early next. But the therapeutics, giving relief to people that contract the coronavirus could literally be available by this summer or early fall. The most encouraging news from the meeting was that our pharmaceutical companies, which are recognized as the greatest in the world, have formed a consortium to Work Together to share information in the development of therapeutics and vaccines. A quick update. Yesterday we were fully implementing the new travel advisories for portions of italy and south korea, and the implementation of screening of personnel from across those countries who are trying to take a direct flight to the United States of america. I was pleased in the White House Task force meeting today to learn that within the next 12 hours there will be 100 screening, all direct flights at all airports across italy and across south korea. The president has directed us to bring the full resources of the federal government and to bring the very best minds in this country to bear on this effort. And finally today im a pleased to welcome to our White House Team a world renowned global pl to welcome to our White House Team a world renowned globaplea to welcome to our White House Team a world renowned Global Health official and a physician. She will be my right arm through this effort as the president has tasked me to lead the white house response to the coronavirus. And im grateful that ambassador beb bra deborah birx, dr. Birx, will be on our team and even on her first day shes already been contributing significantly to our discussions. Dr. Birx serves as the u. S. Governments leader today for combatting hiv, a. I. D. S. Globally and has developed a reputation as that. Shes a scientist, physician, someone with three decades of Public Health, and has vast experience in interagency coordination. And dr. Birx and i have talked about the importance of bringing all of these various entities together to bring about president trumps vision for a whole of government response to the coronavirus. So with that, id like to recognize dr. Birx for a few introductory and welcome remarks. And thank you for stepping up one more time to serve our country. Thank you, mr. Vice president. Its a pleasure to be here. I just arrived from south africa last night. Everybody took great care of me. I had computer and phone in record time. It really shows the level of efficiency and expertise here to really get moving quickly. Its clear the early work of the president both with travel restrictions and the ability to quarantine has bought us the time and space to have this task force be effective. I have never worked with such incredible scientists and thoughtful policy leaders and i got to spend the day with them. Im trying to get up to speed as fast as possible and i look forward to the days ahead working together to end this epidemic. Thank you. Great. Secretary azar. You bet. Thank you, mr. Vice president. I just want to first start out by saying how delighted we are that ambassador birx is going to be leading coordinating these efforts across the government. Dr. Birx and i go way back and basically every leader at the department of health and Human Services go way back together. So we have established relationships maybe not too way back, right. We already have very established, productive working relationships that i think are going to keep the interagency process working smoothly. As the Vice President said, dr. Birx already has been asking the right questions and challenging us on all the right scientific and policy matters that we need to focus on. I just want to begin by recapping the Current Situation we face with covid19. As the Vice President mentioned as of this morning, we have 43 confirmed or presumptive cases of the virus in the United States, excluding our repatriated cases. 17 are travel related in one way or another. 26 are believed to be persontoperson spread. Because of the president s strong leadership and all of the hard work that our Public Health professionals have done at the local, state, federal level, the immediate risk to any individual american has been and does continue to be low. But the risk for people with possible exposure to identified cases can be high. What every one of our experts and leaders have been saying for more than a month now remains true. The degree of risk has the potential to change quickly. Especially if we see sustained spread of the disease around the world, which could qualify this disease as a pandemic. As dr. Fauci said this morning, we will see more cases of Community Spread in the United States. As we emphasized for some time now, we all need to prepare for the potential need, prepare for the worst, hope for the best. In some places we will have to use the range of our mitigation efforts. In fact, we already are working closely with Santa Clara County and the state of washington, particularly king county, to assist them in thinking through some of the best practices from our pandemic action plan as well as learnings from singapore and hong kong around the most Effective Community mitigation efforts such as temporary School Closures or other responses such as having school, but perhaps not having assemblies in school. Thats why the president has taken an unprecedented whole of government approach to protecting the American People. Including the steps in the last few days to radically expand and improve the testing that we have and to improve access to respirators needed by health care workers. The cdc and i spoke with almost every governor we have this morning and we greatly appreciate their close cooperation with us. I also wanted to now introduce an individual who i asked the Vice President to have join this task force because the centers for medicare and Medicaid Services play such a vital role. 1. 3 trillion of spending here in the United States, providing health care to 60 million american seniors. As weve seen this disease can have a disproportionate severity impact on the elderly as well as the medically frail. So seema verma our administrator, has an important responsibility with regard to funding of care, whether its therapeutics or vaccines or diagnostics for our senior citizens, but also a vital role that you may not know of in regulating longterm care facilities, such as Nursing Homes and other Health Care Facilities. A very important regulatory function. So im delighted that administrator verma is joining the task force now. Let me turn it over to seema. Thank you. So for the Trump Administration and cms patients come first and the health and safety and welfare of americas patients and provider workforce is our highest priority. Let me start with what cms is. As the secretary said we are the nations largest insurer covering 130 million americans between medicare, medicaid and the individual insurance market. Some of these are our nations most vulnerable populations, those in poverty, the elderly, and children and so forth. Critically we have a regulatory responsibility for pretty much every Health Care Institution in america. This includes facilities such as hospitals, critical access hospitals, Nursing Homes, home health agencies, Nursing Homes, Surgery Centers and the list goes on. That gives us a Critical Role in addressing the coronavirus. We are responsible for enforcing the quality guidelines based in part on information from Partner Agencies like the cdc. So let me stress that cms has longstanding Infectious Disease policies already in place that weve used effectively for other outbreaks such as influenza. So Health Care Facilities already have these procedures in place and should be prepared for what they may see. Were going to continue to proactively update our regulations. Were going to be working with cdc. Like i said those are already in place and its our job to make sure that Health Care Facilities are effectively implementing those guidelines. And we will work with the cdc to determine whether we need to update or change those. Also we are looking at what we cover and clarifying the types of products and services that our programs will be able to pay for in terms of medicaid and medicare. With that ill turn it over. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for stepping up. I want to recognize a couple other members of our team. Tony fauci, the National Institute of health. Thank you, doctor. Thank you very much, mr. Vice president. I just want to make three comments and points, first of all, to underscore what Vice President and what secretary azar said. We had a really extraordinary meeting with the ceos of a variety of individuals in the pharmaceutical and biotech business. Several of whom in the room were people actually already actively collaborating with and their enthusiasm about getting involved in helping us along with the development of products and the availability of products be they vaccines or antibodies or therapeutics. It was very gratifying. Second im very pleased that the president and Vice President will be visiting the nih tomorrow. Were going to have the opportunity to show them firsthand in real time the kinds of things were doing. Finally, just one comment about ambassador dr. Birx. A couple people up here said i go back a long time with dr. Birx. Nobody goes back as long as i go with ambassador birx. She was actually a fellow in my program as a trainee and we knew she was a star then, and now what has happened over the years, shes become a superstar. Together we saw the first patients with hiv back in the early 80s. We were involved in a vaccine trial that was the First Successful trial with hiv. Weve known each other ive had the privilege and honor among others of putting together the program for president bush and she was the ambassador in charge of the program. I cant tell you how excited i am to finally, once again, get back in being a partner with debbie birx. Thank you. And finally, dr. Bob redfield, cdc. Bob . Thank you, mr. Vice president. What i would like to do is just recognize that cdc continues to work and provide support to really the backbone of our Public Health system in this nation, which is the state, local, tribal and Territory Health departments. These teams continue to work to identify new cases, isolate and Contact Trace these together to Work Together to try to limit the transmission of the coronavirus. And working with our Public Health partners we continue to be able to identify new Community Cases as the secretary said we always anticipated. And use our Public Health assets to aggressively, again, confirm those cases, isolate, do Contact Tracing to use our Public Health tools to limit the spread of this virus. I want to echo what was said by the Vice President and the secretary that despite seeing these new Community Cases, that shows you we have a Public HealthCommunity Across this country in action, the risk to the American People is low. I also want to add my looking forward, i know my entire agency is looking forward to the president and the Vice President and the secretarys visit to come to atlanta on friday and get to meet a lot of the wonderful people that form the backbone of this great agency. Thank you. Thank you, bob. Well take a few questions. Steve holand, reuters. Based on what youve seen so far, how quickly do you expect this virus to spread throughout the United States . Let me refer that to the experts. Go ahead, bob. Are there any details about the cluster in Washington State that show us anything . I think the important thing, as the secretary said, from the beginning we anticipated to see Community Cases pop up. And now we have a number of new Community Cases, which the Health Departments are aggressively evaluating to see if they can understand the linkage, who are the contacts, how is this virus spreading. I think the American Public should rest assured we have one of the finest Public Health programs in the world when you look at the state and local territories. So were going to continue to see the cases as a consequence of them doing their job. Were going to use the Public Health strategies that we can to limit that transmission. I think we should focus on that right now. Were working hard to contain the Community Outbreaks but as the secretary has said, we are blending that with strategic mitigation strategies. Just to underscore something i said the other day. There are two aspects of this, cases coming in and controlling the situation of the spread of whats already in here. There are two things going on. Its the kind of restrictions of travel to areas where there are hot spots in the rest of the world, just like the original inhibition of travel here with china i think is going to mitigate against the question of the wider spread and the Contact Tracing and the isolation thats aggressively going on. You can never predict 100 of anything. But i think whats going on right now with the cdc and particularly the state and local health authorities, is really i think going to get us through this. Steve, its something i learned along the way is that when we have cases that emerge, state and local Health Officials are in the lead but cdc is on the ground immediately helping to identify how that how that might have originated with that individual, find any other people that they have been exposed to. We know there will be more cases. The president initially took unprecedented action to do all that we could to prevent the coronavirus from coming into the country and now were focused on mitigation of the spread as well as treatment of the people that are affected. Kristen fisher here . She walked out. Let me go with hallie jackson. Thank you. Two questions for you, sir. If anybody else wants to jump in. President trump hinted today at the potential for new travel restrictions on top of what weve already seen, italy, south korea, china, iran, can you elaborate on what countries youre looking at . Is germany, for example, on the table . And then a followup as well. The president is very clear, were going to follow the facts and listen to the experts every step of the way. The action the president authorized this weekend raising that travel advisory, the American People should know that we are saying that you should not travel to certain sections of italy or south korea. Those advisories may expand, but well allow the caseload in those countries to define that. In addition to that by establishing this screening protocol which will be in full force and effect within the next 12 hours in both countries, well ensure that anyone traveling on a direct flight to the United States of america receives multiple screenings at all airports in italy and south korea. But to your point, the nature of the European Union is one doesnt require as passport to move around, so our task force spoke today about new cases and there were some in several european countries. Were following that very closely and again, well listen to the experts, well watch the cases and i know the president will makes the decisions with regard to both travel advisories or the restrictions on the basis of those facts. The second question sir, on the word pandemic, do you, do your experts behind you, do you consider this now a pandemic in all but designation only . I would just refer to the experts that our view is that would be for the World Health Organization to define and our team, our task force team, was in touch with the World Health Organization today. Do you want me to answer that . Let me let the secretary address that. This isnt so much about semantics. I think our briefing today was were in more than 60 countries at this point and so were going to continue to focus on ensure that we do all we can to prevent people coming into the country with the disease, to mitigate any spread of the disease once we identify cases and, of course, to provide cases. Do you want to speak to that. I spoke with dr. Tendras the Incident Manager for the World Health Organization about this precise question because wanted to get a sense of their thinking how how theyre assessing the pandemic status. Ill let them speak for themselves, but at the moment while were seeing Community Spreading in multiple regions of the world, theres not a there are many definitions that people use around pandemic. And one issue that the w. H. O. Is focused on is sheer magnitude. While weve had very large numbers of cases and spreading within china, the actual absolute number of cases outside of china while reflecting Community Spreading are not of the magnitude comparable to any other pandemics that have been cleared before. Even the h1n1 where you have billions of individuals infected across the world. So thats what theyre thats how they are thinking about this. And were just going to keep working with them. We dont have a view as to whether they should designate it a pandemic or not a pandemic. I just want to get a sense of how theyre thinking at it. But ill let them i asked them if they could put out some points. Good answer. Hang on. How about ben with abc. Where are you, ben . Go ahead. On screening passengers from italy and south carolina, what exactly would that screening look like . Is that people taking temperatures . Is that every passenger . Who will be conducting it . And will it be expanded to other countries . And how many tests have been conducted last week i believe azar said there were 3600. Whats the update on that . Well, let me just our state department and inner agency group has worked out that arrangement with both italy and south korea. South korea actually about three hours ago fully implemented the screening on all direct flights, all airports. And as i mentioned, within the next 12 hours or so, italy will have implemented the same thing. It will be multiple temperature checks in the airports for people before they are boarding. Were working very closely to assist them in implementing that. But let me speak about yeah, dr. Hahn can speak to you about the status of tests. Because one of the things i heard from governors last week was the whole issue of test kits, the availability of testing. I really want to commend dr. Hahn and the fda for some very swift work making many more tests available, more kits that include multiple tests. And also authorizing local testing which will now make it more possible as our experts told us to identify additional cases. As we find more cases, it will mean our Health Officials are doing their job in large part. And the availability of those tests will contribute to that. Thank you, mr. Vice president. As you heard from the secretary and the Vice President this weekend, we had the capacity in state Public Health labs to perform between 75,000 and 100,000 tests. On saturday we issued new policy allowing us to have some flexibility, regulatory flexibility around the development of those tests so academic centers, private companies can develop these tests, tell us they validated those tests, and then begin to use them. They alert us of that and then later on within 15 days we can look at the validation data. Theyre having the responsibility to show the validation of those tests. With this new policy weve heard from multiple companies and multiple academic centers. And we expect to have a substantial increase in the number of tests this week, next week, and throughout the month. The estimates were getting from industry right now by the end of this week, close to a million tests will be able to be performed. You guys came out and said the risk is low. But with so few tests being done and the incubation rate being as much as two weeks, how can we accurately say that the risk is low at this point . We havent put out the tests yet. If you talk about the entire country, the whole 360 Million People in this country, the risk is a low risk. I think the point youre making is that since we havent done yet but will happen really soon the testing into the community, how do we know the risk is low. I would imagine its still going to be low regardless of that. What happens in realtime which is the reason we do this so frequently is that things can change. But right now today on this day, monday, if you look at the country as a whole, the risk is low. Guys, last question. Go right ahead. Families across the country are worried about spring break theyre worried about spring break and wonder whether they should book travel or cancel travel. What is the Expert Opinion from the take on Domestic Travel . And would you yourself feel comfortable bringing your family right now including your three grandchildren and their partners on a weeklong trip to disney world . Well, i can say theres been no recommendation about limitations on travel within the United States of america. But let the let the experts speak to recommendations with regard to travel. Would you feel comfortable bringing i travel across this country all the time. My kids live all over the country. And look. This is a time to use common sense. Good time to wash your hands. At this time of year, thats always a good decision. But as we said, the risk remains low. And while weve had a tragic loss, four today, the reality is that 29 of the 43 domestic cases are in california and in Washington State. They are centered in very specific areas that were working to identify the source on. But i dont i think people should just continue to use common sense this time of year. But with regard to international travel, let me yield to the expert. Well, i just want to echo what the Vice President said. That we want people to go about and live their normal lives in this nation right now. The secretarys right. Even before the coronavirus, if you had asked cdc what you should do about preparedness, we would give that every individual should think ahead and prepare. Whether its a hurricane. Those recommendations havent changed. And i really want people to reflect that. In going to theres no travel restrictions in the United States. The cdc and the state department, the task force have worked hard to recognize those areas where theres Significant Community transmission where we give you advice that we would recommend you not travel there. And you know that china is that. We now have south korea as a level three. Italy, japan, and iran as level three travel advisories which we would ask you to reconsider those travel plans. But in the United States, theres no travel restrictions. I want to echo again what everyone said. The risk to the American Public at this point is low. We are going to increase substantially surveillance. Same we do for flu. We have multiple different surveillance systems. With the fda getting more and more tests out, those will be activated in the near future. Well have eyes on whether there is significant new evidence of community pockets around this nation. With regard to international travel, we just well continue to monitor the cases. Well follow the facts, the experts, and the science and determine whether additional travel advisories or restrictions are warranted. That being said, folks, were going to slip out. We will be back let me tell you. We will be back here if i may, well be back here every day. Get used to seeing us. Were going to bring the experts in. Were going to make sure to bring you the best and high quality realtime information from the best people in the world. So thank you, all, for being here. Sno o. And live this morning, a Senate HealthCommittee Hearing on the u. S. Government response to the coronavirus outbreak with testimony from the head of the National Institute of allergy and Infectious Diseases dr. Anthony fauci, and dr. Stephen hahn. Youre watching live coverage on cspan3. Good morning. The