And it was an issue of embracing the way we have now and should have the private sector who clearly has the capability of making and providing tests at the level that we will need them for any of the things that i have just spoken about. So having said that, right now i totally understand and my colleagues understand that although we say there are x number of tests out there and youll hear from admiral yes regard about that there are situation 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 time ago, i was where they are, in the hospitals, in the emergency room, looking at very
sick individuals that you need to take care of. And i know what it means when someone tells you, hey, you have what you need and you look around and you say, well, maybe you think i have what i need, but i dont really have what i need. So we have to figure out how do we close that gap . And there are a lot of things that i think we have learned and that we are correcting and going to correct. Mainly, you have a situation where tests are needed and appropriate and either found are found theres no tests or theres no reagents or theres no swabs or a person needed a test and were told that there was a restriction, they couldnt get a test. These are all the things that im telling you you already know because you have heard them. So right now, or theres a delay of five to seven days and what does that mean if you want to do if you want to get somebody out of circulation. We understand that that existed but upon careful examination,
what you are going to hear that many of those have been already corrected and other of those will be corrected. Because what i think people dont appreciate through no fault of their own is that theres there are two issues. Theres supply and demand. And if you have a supply that can meet the demand, but the supply is not connected to demand, then supply demand falls apart. What do you mean by that . I mean there is existing capacity that we have that for one reason or another maybe has not been fully communicated as to the availability of that existing capacity and youre going to hear about that now. Theres Production Capacity that gets better and better and better. And thats what were talking about because for what we need now we believe that with better
communications, well be able to make that happen. So i know theres going to be a lot of questions about that i dont want to go on too long but let me finish by saying given what i have just said and what i believe what youre going to hear that for what we need in the first phase if these things are done correctly what i believe they can, we will have and there will be enough tests to allow us to take this country safely through phase one. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Redfield . 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 the disease outbreak. Youre familiar for example with how we monitor for food borne illness or antibiotic resistance in hospitals and we have also
developed a system to monitor for upper respiratory track disease. The first slide here. This is an example because when we talk about what we know about this current pandemic, the reality is we know a lot because we have developed the monitoring systems. You were on the up on the slide is a system developed initially for flu and what it does is you can see theres a multiple different flu seasons and they track them over the course of a year. I want you to look at the red line and that happens to be this years respiratory season. And you see theres a peak. There up over the 50, 52 week and that peak was when we actually had a peak of influenza b. This year was a little different because after that viral syndrome came down and you can see it, that actually we had another peak. And thats when influenza a was active through our country. And you can see influenza a started to drop. But then you saw a third peak. That peak was if you were longing at the coronavirus 19. So we had systems down to the county level that we can see where theres respiratory tract illness. And so its not just taking a test. Its monitoring these systems that have been developed over the last over decades. We have multiple ones. We have another one this is monitored in Emergency Rooms looking at syndrome diagnosis. And they showed the same thing. So were well equipped to monitor, to see when respiratory tract viral disease will come. And it becomes a very good surrogate for when you can become to understand that we need to look more ideologically about whats going on. In week 15 were coming down the
base line background in terms of the flu Surveillance System from the overall coronavirus situation right now. The second thing i wanted to say is that cdc continues to enhance the states Public Health capacity to accelerate their ability as tony talked about and as critical as we open america again to diagnose individuals that present with influenza like illness or coronavirus like illness, to diagnose them. Being able to isolate them and being able to Contact Trace around them and then diagnose the contacts and those that are coronavirus positive to go back and do their contacts. This is to the traditional Public Health approach which was started in this outbreak in january and february. And was quite successful. As i mentioned before through
february 27th, this country only had 14 cases. We did that isolation and that contact tracing. And it was very successful but then when the virus more exploded, got beyond the Public Health capacity but right now cdc is enhancing that Public Health capacity. And if i can get the second slide. I want to show you that this is just showing as we sit here today the cdc has embedded in the Health Departments and all of these states across this country more than 500 individuals. We have an additional almost 100 individuals that are working on more than 20 coronavirus outbreaks that are going through all these states and finally, at the direction of the president , we have been asked to further enhance this deployment in each of the states as the Vice President said so that theres additional Public Health personnel to help accelerate the states ability to basically
move forward aggressively and we assist them so they can open up american again. So i wanted to make those points for you today. Thank you. Dr. Birx . Thank you, mr. Vice president. And thank you, dr. Fauci and dr. Redfield for all of that clarity. If we could have the next slide. Im going to go backto what dr. Fauci was talking to emphasize the two types of tests and then ill talk about a third one. First we all know about sampling in the front of your nose. To all of the labs out there and to the providers you dont have to use the nasal fa run jal swab anymore. As dr. Fauci talked about that is sampling for the virus itself. That replicates in your nose and as we know throughout some of the respiratory tissues. The second test is of course then your immune response to your infection in your nose so thats the Antibody Test. So those are the two tests we want to talk about but i want to come back to something that both dr. Fauci and dr. Redfield said. And we covered yesterday. Testing is a part of the exquisite monitoring that needs to occur up in partnership with cdc and state and local governments, utilizing the Surveillance Systems that are available. What we just talked about, the flu Surveillance System because we no longer have flu. And the syndromic respiratory system that is across the United States and you can see its going back to base line so that well be able to see at the Community Level any deviation from that base line. In addition what we talked about yesterday was adding that asymptomatic component. Because i think youll see as more and more articles come out for surveillance that other and monitoring that other states
have done higher and higher antibody in multiple individuals who dont remember having a sickness. That will give us an idea thats our asymptomatic monitoring in these sentinel monitoring sites and what we talk about yesterday we talked about nursing homes. We talked about Indigenous People and we talked about Vulnerable People in the inner city, ensuring something thats so small that cant even be seen on the surveillance monitoring will be able to be seen in the asymptomatic. So those are the two tests that we have. One available now. Two that have been approved or three by the fda. I want to just leave you with my last concept on the Antibody Tests. Antibody tests have different specificity and sensitivities. The fda we have made that 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 that they were 50, 60, 70 faulty. So were taking that very seriously. Because you never want to tell someone that they have an antibody and potential immunity when they dont. So those tests perform better when theres a high prevalence or high incidence of disease. We want to work with mayors around the United States 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 real life, real field experience of those assays. Because things can look really good in the lab and when you take then into the field sometimes theyre not as good. I have learned this lesson repeatedly in working around the globe. The next slide. So this is what we had asked
commercial and diagnostic companies to be working on. Because when you talk about multimillions worth of tests the way we do this in the United States today for strep, flu, influenza and for malaria is we test for the antigen. Now, we dont know right now if you shed antigen in the front of your nose. And so that is the question that scientists and companies are working on right now. Because that becomes a simpler test. Now, the flu test i think many of you will look it up tonight, you will see that outside of the flu season, because of the specificity of the test, it doesnt work so well. So these are tests were working on today that would be like a screening test. Because if youre positive on it its a good test. But it may miss that you actually had the flu. So then you would move into
what we called the nucleic acid test so were trying to bring the full talent of the science of the United States into the reality of the clinic. So bench to clinic. This is what were working on for the future. Next slide. So as i promised on both both the senators and the governors, this is the United States current platform capacity. Designated is high and low through put. What do i mean about that . We talked about the roche and abbott and others and then we talked about the gene expert and other machines that may be moderate to lower through put. I want you to see how its distributed through the United States so these are the current testing platforms available today throughout the United States for covid19. And 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. The next slide. So then we have looked at all of the Testing Capacity from those platforms and this gives you an idea of what that capacity is. The darkest red you can see like in texas and new york, those are states that have lots of different platforms as you saw on the prior slide. And the ability if you just add up the platforms and the potential for tests of over a million a month. This is what were working with each of the states, on unlocking that full potential up. How are we doing that . Were calling on the American Association of microbiologists. They work closely with 300 lab workers and the walter reed team who developed the entire hiv Testing Program for the military
35 years ago. I called them back into service and theyre calling lab by lab to find out what are the technical difficulties to bring up all the platforms that exist in your lab. Is it swab . Is it transport media, is it extraction . I just really want to thank them. They already worked through over 70 plus of those laboratories to really understand and the American Association of microbiologists and the academic societies of the laboratories are working together to ensure that all of this potential can be unlocked. Next slide, please. We talked a little bit yesterday about new orleans and we and the president talked about how many tests new orleans has done. During its outbreak, which you can see now is waning. They have done throughout the last month 27 tests per 1,000 new orleans and louisianans. So 27 per 1,000. So that is a good mark and thats what italy has done about
20 per 1,000. So in evaluating an outbreak, and really to get control of this outbreak, they did about 27 tests per 1,000. Using that as a measure next slide. We looked at all of the states of the United States of america and look for states that had 30 or more ability to do 30 or more tests per 1,000 of their habitants in each state. You can see except for oregon and maine and montana i worked overseas way too long. Thank you, all. So those are the three states that were working on building capacity in. So this is to give you a perspective of how seriously were taking the testing issue as we described we measured every single platform in every
single state. We know where they by geography, by address, zip code, what their kas capacity is, what their roadblock on not being able to run the full capacity and were addressing those because each one 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 or one Laboratory Director or one society that doesnt want to contribute to solving this issue of testing and ensuring that this testing is available for everyone. There is a strong this is all of the americans have social distanced in behind everyone, we dont often talk about the laboratories well talk about the nurses and the doctors on the front line, behind all of them are the Laboratory Technicians and Laboratory Directors who are coming in every day and putting things together to ensure that every Single Person that needs to be diagnosed is diagnosed. And hopefully you can see it from these labs. I mean these slides there is capacity out there. It is our job working with the states and having the state and the leadership role and the Laboratory Directors in the leadership role to provide support to ensure that all of the potential for testing in the United States is brought to bear. I just want to end with these are nucleic acid tests. There will never be the ability on a nucleic acid test to do 300 million tests a day and test everybody before they go to work or school but there might be with the antigen test. Theres a role for antigen test and a role for the other key tests to bring the full ability to the United States and so when we finish this well be talking to all americans. Because there are other tests that americans should have. I think this has brought to light the importance of diagnosis and well talk about hepatitis c and tb and other things to ensure every american is healthy. I think this has raised the Awareness Among all americans about how you do a test for different parts of your disease state. And what is long lasting immunity and what a nucleic and antigen test is. With that, admiral all right, good evening, im erin burnett. You have been watching the Coronavirus Task force giving the latest update on the pandemic. The administration while trying to explain away the issues with testing in the United States, tonight laying out plans to beef up testing which governors have said is needed before they can open up. And it comes out as the president has lashed out at several governors tweeting
liberate michigan and virginia. As the deaths in the United States tops 36,000 people. Right now the republican governor of ohio, mike dewine up. They were spending a lot of time talking about testing. I just want to get to this bottom line issue with you. The president of the United States a few moments ago said we have tremendous unused capability in the labs. The governors are responsible for testing. I hope theyll be able to use the tremendous amount of capacity. Vice president pence says you have everything you need for phase one reopening. Is that true . Is there a tremendous amount of excess capacity that you see that you can use . Well, we appreciate any help and it sounds like good news from the white house. We do have excess capacity but what thats a little i want to explain what i mean by that. We have six, seven major hospitals that can do significant testing. But one of the things thats really holding them back is they
do not have enough reagent. And so its almost like it comes in every week, rationed. So its a supply chain, production problem. Thats really whats holding it back. If they had more reagent, they would be able to expand that. Thats part of it. The other problem has been, you know, out in the smaller hospitals and smaller areas not enough swabs, not enough of the fluid to carry it, not enough of the tubes to carry it in. Actually ohio state and the Health Department, state Health Department have come together and theyre really doing a bang up job creating more of the swabs and more of the liquid. So that is moving forward. So were doing better than we were, but, you know, we certainly have a ways to go. Right. I think its important you explained that. Because sure you can get a test but if you dont have the reagent to interpret what the test is, that test doesnt mean
anything to anybody. If we have tremendous capacity we dont right yet. For whatever reason it is were not there yet which leads me to the question to you, you want to start reopening to be clear by may 1st. Are you going to have the Testing Capacity you need by that time even when it comes to testing people who are presymptomatic or asymptomatic . We think well have more testing than we do today so were making progress. Let me tell you what were taking about doing may 1st. We have classified essential businesses and others and theres some other businesses out there that are very similar to what we classified as essential and allow them to start. And very, very similar except for the product they produce is just different. So thats the place that were going to start. Were also going to start with our hospitals, moving back and letting them start to pick up with some procedures. So elective surgeries . Elective surgery, but theres other things that dont use up too much of the personal Protection Equipment and thats still an issue, certainly with our nursing homes. Were very concerned about that well slowly go into this. Were going to monitor it. Well watch it. But, you know, theres some up businesses that one of things we have learned in the last three or four weeks theres some businesses if they conducted with all of the safeguards, you know, theyre fairly safe. And we can start moving back with but well be very careful about it. So is the word reopen then i mean, i understand you want it in terms of the message it sends but is it a misnomer in terms of the implication . It sounds like youre saying a built on margins. What is it of your state that reopens, 5 to 10 of where you are now . It isnt guess what you guys are open for business, back to you know, its not back. We made that very clear. We made it very clear yesterday and again today. We do a press conference every day at 2 00 and we said well roll this out slowly. Well be careful. Were going to look to the Business Community to help us design the best protocol for each type of company. And we think we can do that. Well be very careful about how we do it. But you know, one of the consequences of having a huge recession or a huge downturn in the economy, whatever you want to call it, is that there are medical and Health Related problems for people so we have to take that into consideration as well. We have to balance these things. Ohioans are chomping at bit to get back to work. We want to get some back to work and we understand this as i call it, this monster is still out there. It will be out there until we come up with the vaccination and
we have to live with it. Particularly with people with Health Problems and who are older. So the messaging for me is we have to be careful. We have to ease out on this. But everyone has got to you know, make their own calculation in the sense of if you have a these medical problems you have to be really care. So governor, you know the director of the cdc just spoke a couple moments ago, and we have 500 people embedded across the country and thats a good thing. But the number of people who would be required to do the Contract Tracing to make sure there arent outbreaks is in the hundreds of thousands possibly. Are you confident at this point that you have the people that you need with the expertise that they need to make sure that if theres an outbreak you catch it and youre able to do that contact tracing, isolate those people. Are you not confident about that . Were building up our capacity. We know we need to be doing that. And ill tell you, you know,
what keeps me awake at night what i worry about is the congregant living, the nursing homes. Thats where we have seen the flareups, in the prison as well. When you put people together. Ohioans have done a great job in distancing. Great job at staying home but when you get into the settings where with people cant really do that thats where we see the hot spots thats where we see the real tragedy and what were concerned about. So you have had people in your state, protest your stay at home orders and today President Trump seemed to urge people to protest in three other states. Wanting to reopen the states that he chose to pick on did have democratic governors. He tweeted lib rat minnesota, liberate michigan, liberate virginia. All caps, each a separate tweet. Save your great Second Amendment it is under siege. Obviously he didnt do that to you. I want to ask younot in the political context, but one of our reporters was on the ground for a protest in michigan that was happening. He saw dozens and dozens of people that were not social distancing. That were there to protest. They were not distancing. Do you think its appropriate for the president to be encouraging people to protest against the states and possibly put themselves and others in danger right now . Well, im not sure the president said all those things. I mean, im not sure hes telling people not to social distance. Look well, hes telling them to protest, right . People have a right to protest. This is what ive said about protesters in ohio who are protesting what im doing, you have every right to do that. We believe in the First Amendment. We have excluded First Amendment issues from our orders. Churches some churches have been open, not very many. So we believe in the First Amendment. If people want to protest in
ohio thats fine. You have every right to do that. Im going to worry about the safety of the people of the state of ohio and stay focused on what i took an oath to do and thats to protect the people of the state of ohio. All right. Governor dewine, i appreciate your time. Im glad to have you back, sir. Thank you. And dr. Sanjay gupta joins me now as we are awaiting questions and answers at the believing. So far, they release they were trying to talk about testing, both for the president to say theres a huge amount of unused capacity which you heard the governor of ohio say, yeah, but, no we might have the capacity to do the test but not to interpret them yet. So theres a long way to go but that was clearly a big aim from both the president as well as dr. Fauci, dr. Birx. So what was the goal here and what is the truth . I think that the bottom line is that the idea that people
anywhere in the country who need to be tested can get tested is still not the case. Now when people talk about testing as you mentioned you have the test kits themselves, you have the labs and you have all these various things that are needed to actually go from someone needing to get a test and getting tested to actually getting a result. The i think the capacity as ambassador birx talked about has improved in many cases around the country, meaning there are labs available to interpret results what seems to be the problem, the gap as dr. Fauci called it, you know, everything from the swabs to the reagents to do transport medium, all these things that are necessary to actually get a test some of those arent available. Some of them are not in the supply chain. Some of this stuff is coming from other countries. So thats the issue. The states have said, okay, we set up our labs maybe at the universities or Public Hospitals but we dont have the stuff. Erin, if i can for a second, i talked to dr. Tom frieden, he used to run the cdc. I asked him specifically, look, is this a state issue or a federal issue, whose obligation is it . Take a listen. It is absolutely the federal governments responsibility. Currently, were doing in this country less than 150,000 tests a day. Earlier today we released a report and we calculated quite simply if we were just testing the highest priority people and nobody else wed need about three times as many tests and since were also testing some lower priority people well need more than that. If we try to test really extensively it would be 10 or 20 times that. Erin, so 150,000 tests a day. He is saying we need to be doing 10 to 20 times that. Its the federal governments obligation to be able to provide all the components that go can into actually getting the test dont. I think thats a fundamentally
important point. Right. Of course the president , you know, youre saying its the federal governments role. The states are responsible for testing and i hope theyll be able to use this tremendous capacity. He is clearly trying to put the burden of the blame of any issues on the states. Youre saying that that the ultimate blame does go to the federal government . Everything is in the nuance here a little bit, right . I mean, you can say on one hand, yes, theres plenty of capacity. Thats great. And maybe true. Maybe not true everywhere, but certainly improved. But the bottom line is that if somebody wants to get test and get a result back and can they do it right now, the answer is still no. It might be that they dont have enough swabs because the supply chain is disrupted on swabs. They may not have the react or the transport medium. All the various components to the test. I think the thing that struck me
and part out this came out of the interview with governor kelly yesterday, im doing everything i can within the state to do this. I have my University Hospital setup. I have my Public Hospital setup, but i dont have the swabs, i dont have a way of affecting that supply chain. That is what is happening at the national level. How do i get in on that as a state right now that wants to be able to test adequately. This is really important to get your sense of how to interpret this, dr. Fauci says you cant test people every day. So theyre basically making the argument that testing is not the be all and end all. However, in every other country what as this successfully been able to return to some sort of work although nobody has returned to normal, they are doing a lot more testing randomly, a. B, people who have come into
contact with people who have it who may be presymptomatic or asymptomatic and may go out there and extend the testing. And they didnt seem to address that issue at all in the briefing thus far. I was a little surprised by that, erin. I think that, you know, when you hear dr. Tom frieden again, he used to run the cdc saying were doing 150,000 tests a day. We may need to do 10 to 20 times that. You get a sense of what is necessary in the country. By the way that doesnt mean it will it would be 1 million or 2 Million People. There may be who get this testing more than once. If you go into the position where you cannot physically distance yourselves from others, youre at risk of contracting the virus or spreading the virus yourself. You may need to get tested on a regular basis in order to do that job. Thats the reality. It was interesting at the end of the comments that ambassador birx made, theres a nucleic
acid test which is testing for the complicated material and the antigen test which is testing for the virus itself. She said at the end, look, were not doing to be able to do the nucleic acid test for everybody in the country but we may get to the point that the antigen testing is more common place. Community centers, if youre coming back to work and its a crowded space, you may need to be tested on a regular basis thats efficient and comfortable. That can give you a quick result back. So you can determine am i going to work today or not . Think of it like a diabetic who is checking their blood sugar four times a day. Might be diabetes would be a way of putting it in peoples heads thats an interesting analogy. Absolutely. Then you raised the question, the costs need to come way, way down. Which you would presume the more
you do, it would. Sanjay, please stay with me. We are awaiting a question and answer session at the briefing which may begin any moment. I want to bring in jim acosta and dana bash in the mean up time. And dana, certainly what we with heard as sanjay is talking about here, a lot of explaining. Some nuanced im sorry. The questions and answers have started. Monitoring how much we have to use in phase one to help inform phase two. Because the really unknown in this to be completely transparent is asymptomatic and symptomatic spread. So if we find that theres a lot of asymptomatic individuals that we find in this active monitoring in what we very much concerned about the most vulnerable then we have to have increased testing to cover all of those sites. And as we made clear to the governors and other Health Officials well continue to scale the testing. As the president s made clear we want governors and states to manage the Testing Operations in their states. We have given criteria, we have given guidance for how we think that would best operate but were looking for the state and looking for the governors to manage it and the great experiments working with all the great facilities are going to continue to use that Great American ingenuity to scale and to increase the availability of 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 america back to work. They all did well, i think. I bet they did. Please. Go ahead. Mr. President , thank you. Earlier today, jay inslee said that your tweets encouraging who said this . Jay inslee. Said your tweets encouraging
liberation in michigan, minnesota and virginia were fomenting or im wondering how that squares with the sobering, methodical guidance that you issued yesterday . I think we have a sobering guidance but some things are too tough. If you look at the states you mentioned its too tough, not only relative to this but what they have done in virginia with respect to the Second Amendment is just a horrible thing. They did a horrible thing. The governor. Hes a governor under a cloud to start off with. So when you see what he said about the Second Amendment, when you see what other states have done, you know, i think i feel very comfortable. Thank you. Just to be clear when you talk about the states, michigan, minnesota and virginia, do you think they should lift their stay at home orders or can you talk sort of i think elements of what they have done is too much. It was just too much. You know the elements because ive already said, but certainly Second Amendment and Second Amendment having to do with the state of virginia what they have
done in virginia is just incredible. Okay. Please. Sir, are you concerned though that people coming out in protest are going to spread covid to other people . Theyre congregating in ways that Health Experiments have said they should not. These are people expressing their views i see where they are and they seem to be very responsible people to me. But it its you know, they have been with treated a little bit rough. Thanks, mr. President. Im curious about some more of the dynamics we might see as the country begins reopening. Kind of like a puzzle. So as you mentioned we have states where were already seeing the curves begin to flatten and then there are others like more rural parts of the country they arent expected to peak until weeks or months. Can you talk about the difficulties that those later peaking states might face, if they need to stay locked down for longer even as other places around them are starting to open back up. Well, were seeing great
numbers and in almost every state. Big drops. We are seeing it in terms of beds the numbers we have to look at are the beds, the beds being occupied. Which is essentially people going in. That means that you have fewer people that are sick. Fewer people that feel they have to go to the hospital and those numbers are dropping really precipitously. So i think that were seeing a lot of good signs. Now, 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 really been great. Michigans had a hard time but its starting to do well. So i just think illinois is another one. Look at some of the numbers. But everyone is dropping and theyre dropping rather quickly. We dont have any hot spot thats developed where all of a sudden you say, well, other than we did have a meat packing plant or two where incredibly we had some you saw the number was
rather incredible. Took place in the plant. People could ask that. I wonder who owned that country. Theres a weird situation, but generally speaking, its been very good. The numbers have been really improving greatly. Please, in the back. Thank you. U. S. Intelligence is saying this week that the coronavirus likely came in a level four lab in wuhan. Theres another report that the nih under the Obama Administration in 2015 gave that lab 3. 7 million in a grant. Why would the u. S. Give a grant like that to the china . I have been hearing about that and we have instructed if any grants are going to that area were looking at literally about an hour ago. And also early in the morning. We will end that grant very quickly. But it was granted quite a while ago. They were granted a substantial amount of money and were going to take a look. But i understand it was a number of years ago. So you are what did you hear when the grant was made . 2015. Who was president then i wonder . It wasnt yesterday. Mr. President , i know negotiations are under way for the next round of funding for Small Businesses. Tens of millions of dollars went in a matter of days, so will this next relief package be enough . Well, i think it will certainly it will get us to the point thats going to be rather beautiful. We think that will be the point and it could be they want more but maybe at a certain point well stop. Its been a tremendous success. Its been executed flawlessly. Sba has done a very good job and the banks have done a great job, whether it was bank of america, wells fargo. The Community Banks have been incredible. I think we had over 4,000 Community Banks. A lot of people didnt know you had that many banks but 4,000 banks. Its so organized. It has been such a great
program. So essentially were waiting for 250 billion, the democrats are refusing to look, this is money that essentially is going to the workers, it will keep these companies whole. The restaurants and a lot of great companies. And its a small amount of money relative to what it represents because it represents Small Businesses. It represents them staying in business. And you know when you look at it, people dont know, Small Businesses represent approximately 50 of the power of our business enterprises. Not all the big monster businesses that you read about every day. But all of the Small Businesses when added its something that should be approved by the democrats, the republicans want it badly. And to be people want it very badly. Can i follow up on that. Some Small Business owners couldnt get a loan for 100,000 gls no, they would get that, but they have to approve it nobody knew it would be this
successful. When you say the money is gone its been a tremendous success as a program, they want it. And some people wont be able to keep their businesses open unless they get that money. Its been executed flawlessly. I mean, with few exceptions its really been good. And i think the democrats are going to do it. Look, nancy pelosi, shes away on vacation or something and she should come back, she could come back an 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. Theyre considering also adding more funding for hospitals included theyre thinking of hospitals. Well, hospitals are a good thing. Hospitals have been decimated by this. You know, they have given up their business which is good, because they did the right thing. In order to take care of the covid19. And you know hospitals im with that all the way. If they want to add hospitals, we could also add it into phase four if we do a phase four. Phase four would be hopefully 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. And art laffer, hes a tremendous in fact he recently got the president ial medal of freedom, economist. He was with ronald reagan. He looks like hes 25 years old, but i think he might be a little bit older than that he looks so great but art laffer said the single best thing you can do is the payroll tax cut and i would just about agree with that. Id like to see that. Im not sure well get that. But i think thats something that could be done. Its simple. Really good for both the company that employees these people and for the people that are employed. So were going to see whether that happens or not. The payroll i put it out there. The payroll tax cut would be a tremendous incentive for this country. China now says the
coronavirus death toll in wuhan is 50 higher. Up to 4,000. Does that sound like a credible number to you . When i lot listen to the president we dont have the most in the world deaths. The most in the world has to be china. Its a massive the country. Its gone through a tremendous problem with this. A tremendous problem. They must have the most so today i saw they announced that essentially is theyre doubling up on the numbers. And thats only in wuhan. Theyre not talking about outside of wuhan. So it is what it is, steve. It is what it is. What a sad what a sad state of affairs. The investigation into whether the virus escaped from this lab in wuhan, how active is that well, were looking at it. It seems to make sense. They talk about a certain kind of bat but that bat wasnt in that area. If you can believe this, thats what theyre down to now, bats. But that bat wasnt sold at the wet zone, its 40 miles away. So a lot of strange things are happening but theres a lot of investigation going on. And well 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 it. And its too bad. And it could have been solved when it was starting very easily. Thank you, sir. So about the 80 million payments that have gone out that you mentioned you said that less than 1 have had snafus, but that could be 800,000 snafus so im just saying its less than 1 and the snafus are very minor. People who perceived no, they were 80 million
payments went out over a period of a few days. And they caught certain mistakes that they made. But this is a tiny amount of mistakes. I can tell you mistakes were made in government where wrong countries were signed, okay . 80 million this had been a tremendous success and any mistake that was made they have been caught and its less than 1 . Thats a good percentage for government. How about the obama website . The obamacare website where they spent 5 billion on building a website you could have built for peanuts. Okay . If money went out to deceased people is the government going to get that money back . Yeah, sometimes you send a check to somebody wrong. Sometimes people are listed they die. And they get a check. That can happen. You about talk i guess the number is 80 Million People. Sure. Well get it back. But its a tiny amount. They have done a fantastic job. This was done in a matter of a
few days. Yeah . Your Campaign Said today that they are planning on resuming rallies before with the election. Is there a time line youre looking at . Would it be restricted to certain states . Well i hope to do the rallies, its a great spirit, its a tremendous way of getting the word out. If you look at our success rate we have had tremendous success. We win where we have rallies and our success rate is unparalleled. Nothing like it. I certainly hope we can have rallies well find out. I dont like the rallies where were sitting like youre sitting. You have many reporters trying to come into the room. It loses a lot of flavor. It loses to me a lot of flavor, but i hope well have rallies. I think theyll be bigger than ever. I will say this. The rallies that were having until we had to stop with regard to the problem that we had here, the rallies were bigger than they were i think even
substantially bigger. Were going to the biggest arena and we turn away 20, 30,000 people. In one case i think we said in new jersey we had 175,000 show up for an arena that holds 9,000 people. And they showed up. The reporters even reported that. It was almost shocking to me. But i hope we can resume rallies because i think theyre an important part of politics actually. Mr. President , under your reopening plans some workers can go back to work in phase one, but schools cannot reopen until phase two. How can you get businesses back up and running as long as schools are closed . Well, i think the businesses are going to and i think we have given the businesses a real jolt, a real positive jolt. Theyre able to keep their employees. Without the employees if they leave that area, if they leave, you know, who knows where with theyre going. Or if they get another job maybe some place else. You wont have the same
business. So we gave them money to hold their employees. We hope we can do 250 billion more. Its absolutely so inexpensive compares what it represents. I really think the market was up 700 or 800 points today. If you would have told me that we would have a virus the likes of which this world has not seen since 1917, which was the spanish flu, where anywhere from 75 to 100 Million People were killed, and wed have a stock market not far below its alltime high starting to get a little low, then 1,000 point increase, and now we have a stock market not far from where it was. Weve gone through and closed
literally the country. Remember this also, had closed economy we have the best economy in the world, best weve had. And remember this, the dollar is very strong. And strong dollars are overall very good but causes problems, harder to sell outside the country, et cetera, et cetera, sometimes harder for manufacturers. Everybody wants to vest in our country and were paying almost zero in interest. In some cases, zero. Never had that before. People want the safety of our country but if you would have told me that market where it is today and had almost more than 700 point increase at point thats not what it was but not that far off, i would have told you thats got to be an impossibility. Theres a great pentup demand. This country is going to come back strong. We have to get rid of the virus,
open up our country, open it up in quadrants, in states. Some of the states should get together and work on their own borders and everything, dont want people pouring through the border of state that isnt infected and people coming from perhaps outside thats one of the reasons, i was asking tony about masks. Why in wyoming or montana do they have to wear masks, numbers are very good, reason is if somebody comes from the outside, you know which is very severe, but its again going to be up to them, a recommendation. Well see. If you would have told me how well were doing after we went through the worst event of its kind since 1917, its pretty amazing. About child care though, millions arent sure how go back to work if schools are closed
help them take care of kids. I think the schools are going to be open soon, lot of governors are talking about it. We have to take care of the seniors. Weve learned a lot about the disease. Learned a lot about this plague, we have to take care of our seniors and lot of people. I think schools will be open sooner rather than later. Ive spoken some governors talking about getting schools open. I have a young boy who goes to school, id like to see him go to school. Good as home is, like him to go to school. Thank you, mr. President , i agree with that point. Some of the areas you wanted to open up, virginia, michigan, they dont have decline yet but tweeted out today you would like to liberate them. Theyre going to have soon, theyre very, very what
theyve done is very powerful in terms of you know you can get the same result with a little bit less. What theyve done to some people is unfair. With virginia going beyond what weve talked about with horrible plague, they want to take their guns away, thats Second Amendment, thats virginia. You have a governor who is really i guess he should be under siege. If he were a republican he would be under siege but seems to have escaped something that was pretty bad, including what he said about birth, including what he said about many different things. But if you take aclook at virginia, they want to take away Second Amendment rights, thats what they want to do. When you talk about labor rate or liberation, could look at virginia as one. Anybody else . Mr. President which states are ready to reopen and how soon . I dont want to go, i want to
leave the governors make that decision. Were watching closely, if we see something happen we think is wrong well come down very strong on that. Very strong. Federal government has a lot to say, we have a lot to say beyond what anyone understands. Gotten to know many of the governors, democrats too. I knew the republicans, knew some of the democrats, got to know a lot of them. I think its going to be in the hands of a lot of good people. They want to do whats right. Vice president is traveling i think tomorrow to colorado. When are you going to be in position to travel again . Theyd rather not have me travel. I think ive been in the white house for months, i dont know how long, although i did leave to say goodbye to our beautiful ship the comfort, got out of
maintenance, supposed to be there a few days but we got it up to new york. I wouldnt say we helped, they didnt need it, that was good thing. Didnt need the convention center, 2,400 beds or 2,900 we ultimately converted to covid, army corps of engineers and fema. Thats a sign theyre making progress. We built it, it was ready, its there now. Converted it to covid, wasnt supposed to be to that are, at request of frankly our side and ultimately we converted it. Theres much less demand. 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 . To colorado . I think hes going to the air force to make commencement address. I think its great. I think its great. Going to have a very spread out crowd. Theyre going to be i will say theyre going to be socially very good, very far apart. That will be very interesting. I think im going to watch that one. No theyre going to be going to have a good spread, a good distance apart. I spoke to mike about it. Making the commencement speech, im doing it at west point which im looking forward to, i did it last year at air force, at app apr annapolis, at the air force academy and im doing it at west point, i assume theyve got it, i understand theyll have distancing, big distance, be very different than it ever looked. Do i like the look . No i dont. Eventually, next year theyll have a commencement which will be like its been when people like this, our great admiral has
done a great job when he gri graduated from where he graduated, me too, were nice and tight. Not going to be like this forever but for a period of time got to keep it that way. Includes baseball games and Football Games and everything but eventually as the virus goes away, its going to be better and better, were going to get our lives back to the way they were. One thing that bothers me, couple of restauranteurs called, sir, i barely made a living with 150 seats, now ill be down to 25. And i said yeah, wont be there forever. He didnt know that. Thought would move 150 down to 25 or 50. Dont worry about it, eventually youll be back to the scene you used to have, which was look i could tell you im not going to do it, going to breck
break it up, but could tell you events that took place and i said youll never do this again, dont want to mention the events, dont want to mention when youre supposed to be doing. One was so horrible, said a certain industry will be out of business, never happen again. Two weeks later was like nothing ever happened. Hopefully well get rid of this, tremendous talent up here and all over, including governors, local governments, state governments. I look forward to the time to me when we can really normalize. But normalizing is being back to where we were. Mr. President , some of your allies are calling for china to be stripped as host of the 2022 olympics. Wondering what you make of that. Is that something you would consider . So i just made a deal with china, where theyre going to put in 250 billion of product,