Thousands of hospitals. He built in new york alone four hospitals and 2,900 beds. Got them done so quickly. Nobody sign anything like it. Fortunately we havent had to use too many of them. Thats okay. Thats better news than having to use them all. A lot of good things are happening in new york and elsewhere. So through the publicprivate partnerships and deregulation, the federal government has already made amends testing capabilities available. Some states need to take action to fully utilize it. To date, the United States has conductance million more test than any other of the country. You can add them all up and they dont catch us. Our numbers are doubling almost certainly on a monthly basis but almost on a weekly basis. We are moving very rapidly. At a number nobody thought possible. And well be doubling our number of daily test if the governors bring their states fully online to the capability that they have. We have tremendous capability out there already existing. And we explained that the governor today, mike and all the people explained it very strongly to the governors. They really get it now. I think. As the experts have explained, this capacity is sufficient to allow states to conduct diagnostic testing to treat patients as well as Contact Tracing to contain outbreaks and monitoring to pinpoint potential hot spots during phase one. There are some hot spots, and we have them pinpointed. They can really cover it very, very nicely when they know exactly where to go and they are being told where to go. Also these locations where they are going on some of them are federal. Some of the governors didnt realize they were allowed to use federal locations. They are. We have a booklet of the federal locations. We can hold it up. I think you will show that. Maybe we will hold it up now. Okay, fine. You see the number. Thanks. These are all locations where they can go, which is really pretty amazing. This is just one page out of many. Look. Look at this. These are all locations. Thats a lot of locations. 5,000. Thank you very much. Thats more than anybody thought and its already there. They have to use it, thats all. They have to use it. Some werent aware. Some were very much aware. Some werent aware. My administration also continues to support states with our massive operation to deliver masks, gowns, gloves and other vital supplies. Admiral polowczyk and his team. And pete, what job they are do done. They are using detailed data about supply chains to track the deployment of 1 billion pieces of protective equipment through private distributors every two weeks. So what we are doing is we are delivering a number that nobody anywhere in the world is delivering. Fema is working closely with dr. Birx and the distributors to prioritize supply of resources where they are most needed. We are finding the location that they have to get is not. We have locations that are very important to get to and get to them fast, and thats where they are going. So we have a very strong priority. This pandemic has reaffirmed the importance of keeping vital supply chains at home. We cannot outsource our independence. We cannot be reliant on foreign nations. I have been saying this for a long time. If weve learned one thing, its lets do it here. Lets build it here. Lets make it here. Weve got the greatest country in the world. Weve got to start bringing our supply chains back. Somebody years ago cut this crazy idea, lets build all over the place and lets have parts. Lets have a screw for a car delivered and made in a country thats far away. And lets have a fender made someplace else. Lets do this and lets do that and lets put it all together. And i like making it right here in the usa. And i think weve learned a lot about that and especially maybe when it comes to pharmaceutical products. We have also conducted Major Military operations providing cities and states with additional medical capacity. The incredible 1800 men and women from the army corps of engineers. You just met with todd. The job they have done is incredible. We have nurses, doctors. We have experts in every field, all over. Spoke with Governor Cuomo, spoke with mayor de blasio, spoke with many of the other governors i am both friendly and i think im friendly with just about all of them if you can believe it. Ive got friendly with a lot of them. I have gained a lot of respect for the openers, republican and democrat cobo during this process. Some really good people, some really good talent. Marist sending a lot of our medical people, not only our construction people like todd but a lot of our medical people are being sent all over the couy to different locations. New york city, new york state, new jersey, i spoke with phil today. Hes doing a terrific job in new jersey. New jersey got hit very, very hard. Phil murphy, governor bryan from today this crisis began, america launched a scientific mobilization of colossal size and scale. Someday they will be able to write through story. No one has seen anything like it. The fake news just refused to cover it correctly but thats okay. The people are understanding, and thats what matters to me. There are now 72 active trials underway across the United States researching dozens of therapies and treatments in another 211 are in the planning stages. They are getting i mean they literally are mobilizing on therapeutics and also on vaccines. A tremendous progress is being made and i must say on therapeutics. Frankly if i had my choice, give me the therapeutics right now. That would help people right now. We have some things that i think are working, not only working but we have some incredible things that look like they could be the answer. But well know soon. Being tested, working out right now. This includes their therapies designed to attack the virus as well as others that would hinder its replication, reduce the rate of infection, control of the immune response or transfer lifesaving antibodies from the blood of recovered patients. One of the incredible things that we have seen and mike and i were talking about it before, is the fact oftentimes somebody gets very ill from the plague, okay, from this horrible scourge, and they get better and they recover in the first thing they say is i want to give my blood. Its happened to the doctors. They tell me its happened so much. I want to give my blood. I want to give my blood. And they are doing that. But tremendous things are happening. Youll be seeing that over the weeks that i think well be talking about it in the nottoodistant future. Johnson johnson is very well along on vaccines. Again, the vaccines have to be tested. The therapeutics are for now. A lot of good things are happening on both. Ultimately we also help to prevent infection through a safe, very safe vaccine, and thatll be a great thing when we have that, and we will have that. So with that, id like to introduce admiral giroir and brad smith to discuss some of the incredible things that have been done, and they really are, what they been able to do it a very, very short. Back in time very short period of time. You will see equipment you havent seen before and he would just come up and you could give us a little display of some of the equipment that we have and some of the things that are happening having to do with testing. Because testing is a big word. Remember, it was all ventilators. The reason it was all ventilators, they said theres no way i feel ever be able to catch this one. Not only did we catch it. We are now the king of ventilators all over the world. We can send them anywhere. We have thousands being made a week. They are very high quality. And that wasnt playing well. So the mason testing, testing. Well get them on testing. Testing is much easier than ventilators. Ventilators are big machines. They are very complex and very expensive. You need real, real, union or group of people that really know what theyre doing. We took auto lines. We took a lot of different people and now weve done that but it used to be ventilators, ventilators, ventilators. Now its testing, testing, testing. And i think the admiral and i think brad will show you some things that you havent seen that are really very spectacular having to do with testing. We are way advanced, way advanced. The list i showed you, these are places you can go if youre in the states. 5,000 different machines. 5,000. They are all over the country. We have international also. But these are all over the country. You will see something now thats really eyepopping in terms of what theyve done, and theyve done this under great pressure. They have come up with things under great pressure that are absolutely amazing. Please, if you would, thank you. Thank you, mr. President. I want to talk about a couple things a little different than what ive spoken about before. Since early march, we have been focusing on two key concepts for testing. Number one, to assure and expand supplies in the u. S. Market. This is really critical because we were talking about really a Cottage Industry with very minimal suppliers that we were asking to supply over a twoweek period of time the normal production that would be for at least a year. As simple as a swab is, a swab is not a swab is not a swab, and we need to be very careful that when we put something in a person and tell them a test result that its really correct. The second component is six secure sufficient supplies at this time of peak disease were we could eliminate maldistribution. This is the theme of requesting intended things out and also supporting outbreaks. Starting many weeks ago, starting in my office many weeks ago, we assembled a Multidisciplinary Team of really incredible people. The medical side of the equation which i represent, the laboratory side of the equation, the hightech side of the equation, logistics and operations, and brad smith, his day job is director of the center for medicare and medicaid services, and incredibly important component of our country. Building the future health care system. Hes done a really incredible job operationally and logistically in bringing everyone together. We have focused on every piece of the supply chain that relates to testing down to the most minute detail. Hes going to talk to you about some of that. That started in the second week of march with starting an airlift. Because the only supplier, the main supplier of swabs at that time was a place in italy there was completely shut off because of the outbreak in italy. So admiral polowczyk arranged the air force planes to go to italy to bring millions of swabs back to secure. Thats how it started and its expanded since then. The second part is we have been really marrying, this has been the beauty, logistics and supplies to the overall strategy. Two pieces of strategy. Number one, what is the overall testing strategy . Dr. Birx has had an elegant strategy in the past but even more important, in the future when we make sure we take care of indigent populations in those most vulnerable. The clinical, Contact Tracing, and the monitoring of those who are at most risk. We have also merited to the strategy and youve heard more than you know then you wanted to know about it, that a small machine at point of care is good for certain things but its not going to test 5,000 people over a short period of time. So the small machines, the medium machines, and the large machines and how to contextualize them. The third thing, before i give it to brad, which is very important and its critical, coordinating the research, the epidemiology, and the fda regulatory process. Why is that so important . When we started five weeks ago, if we wanted to test this many people with the technology we had, we would have used about 80 of the Strategic National stockpile in ppe just to do testing. We needed and innovation. That innovation was to be able to test out of the anterior nose with a completely different kind of swab. It sounds very mundane but if you dont do that, you cant get the testing to scale. That allowed us to really go to widespread testing. Last week, moving to polyester swabs, which is going to open up millions of new swabs onto the market, but thats a regulatory science and innovation step that had to cooccur with this. With that, im going to let brad talk about some of the details that he has really shepherded over the past weeks in ways that have truly been amazing and incredibly impressive. Thank you, mr. President. Its an honor of a lifetime to be here and serving in this way. Ive been working under dr. Birx and admiral giroirs leadership over the past several weeks to help increase supply of testing across the United States. If you all know, theres really three parts that you need to make the test work. First, you need the machine. Its, dr. Birx will share more. We have a very, very large number of those across the United States. Its about making sure that we are taking advantage of them. The second part of the testing is making sure that we have a collection supplies to actually be able to collect the specimen. I will talk a little bit more about that. The third part is making sure that you have the materials you need to support the machine, to ensure that you can actually process the test once he gets to the lab. I will let dr. Birx talk more about the machines here in a second. But as you will see, across the United States we have a tremendous number. They range and variety. We have some very small machines that do pointofcare testing. They may do 50 to 100 tests a day. We also have other very large machines that can do several thousand, process several thousand tests a day. On the collection supply piece, i will talk through a couple different kinds of collection that can be done. So for the nucleic acid test which is the tests that are currently being done today, you generally need a swab of the nose. To do that, you need this swab, you need the collection tube, and you also need the transport media that it can be transported in. We have a very large number of swabs already in the country, but we have secured an additional 3 million in production that will be ramping up for the next several weeks. One Company Located in the northeast, we are going to be using title iii of the dpa to help them build four new production lines. They are currently the largest swab producer in the country and this will help them ramp up their production tremendously to over 20 million additional swabs a month. A second Company Located in ohio is currently the largest qtip maker in the country. Were helping them convert their life or making qtips into making swabs. They are actually ramping up production starting this week of swabs and will be ramping up to over 10 million per month. In total thats over 30 million new swabs they will be coming just over the next handful of weeks. The second pieces on the collection tubes. The collection tubes, we have been partnering with Oak Ridge National lab, based in tennessee. They have unique and sophisticated Injection Molding manufacturing capability. They are in the process of ramping it up to create collection tubes, they will be ramping up to over 40 million collection tubes a month here over the next several weeks. In addition to the swabs, we believe that as testing progresses there will be other types of testing like serological testing that will occur. Those samples have to be collected in different ways. So many times some of those tests will require a finger prick. So in addition, we have secured over 17 million lancets which is what you use for the finger pricks that we have those available as well as 17 million alcohol swabs which is what you need to clean the finger before you do the finger prick. In addition, although folks are not talking about this much yet, we also believe that businesses across the country may want thermometers to test folks as they come into the office. We have secured over 650,000 infrared thermometers that states and businesses will be able to access to be able to test folks as they come into work. I think weve made tremendous progress on the collection side. In addition to the collection side, weve been very focused on ensuring that the labs have what they need to process a specimen in a lab. You need two things. Need something called an extraction kit and you need something called a pcr test. In order to be able to fully process a test, you need both of these things. Sometimes these things come together and sometimes they come separate. For some of our pointofcare tests, including the abbott test, they come together. They are ramping up production rapidly. To over 3 million of those tests per month. These are tests that did not exist even a month ago. The second pieces on some of these large machines, they also have complex cartridges that come together. One of the big manufacturers of that has already ramped up production from about 1. 6 million a month to more than twice that already and thats already occurred. In addition to when they come together, they also sometimes come separate and we see significant ramping up of production there from are manufacturers from our publicprivate partnerships and we are seeing several more than next few weeks of the rna extraction kit and the pcr test kit. With that, thank you. Vice president pence thank you, mr. President. I share your admiration for the team from the army corps of engineers to brad, to admiral giroir. During our mark will job every day. As the president mentioned, we had our Weekly Conference call with governors across the country, states and territories. I was able to convey to them our appreciation for the leadership that every governor of every state and territory has provided. Thanks to their leadership, thanks to the ordinary cooperation of the American People, despite the fact that more than 770,000 americans have contracted the coronavirus, and our hearts grieve for the more than 41,000 americans who lost their lives. The truth is that as we stand here today, we are slowing the spread. As the president reflected, we continue to see steady progress and less cases, lower hospitalizations, even in hot spots around the country. And we commended americas governors for their efforts in that regard. We are preserving our health care capacity, as the general with the army corps of engineers reflected, at the president s direction we have built a great number of hospitals around the country. But the utilization rate has been fairly low because of the mitigation efforts, the cooperation of the American People. We have not had to use them. And that, as the president said, is very good news. Any word, we think governors across the country for taking action, Decisive Action to save lives and to make a difference. Reminding them we are all in this together. We have one mission, we are one team. We spoke on the Conference Call about last weeks guidelines to open up america again. We heard from governors across the country about the progress they are making. We spoke to governors from new jersey, connecticut, florida, louisiana, texas, and michigan about their ongoing efforts at social distancing and addressed questions that they had about needs that have been spoken of already in this presentation today. In addition, as we promised last week when we spoke to governors on thursday about the guidelines to open up america, our Team Presented every governor in the country, states and territories with a memorandum detailing Laboratory Capacity in all locations of laboratory equipmet that can perform the coronavirus test. We also provided, as dr. Birx will elaborate in just a few moments, literally a map about wearing these testing devices are located. And i must tell you, mr. President , i was very impressed at the weight governors, as we speak, are scaling testing in their own states using these resources. Our hope is that providing this information and by our team that weve enlisted out of walter reed that its contacting everyone on the laboratories in the country to find out what their needs are and to encourage them to activate those testing machines to do coronavirus testing that will continue to be able to support a state managed effort to increase testing even more. A few highlights. Governor doug ducey announced Antibody Testing for 250,000 Health Professionals this week and First Responders, partnership between the state and the university of arizona. We spoke today about governor Gavin Newsoms announcement that he set up a task force for testing at five to seven high capacity testing hubs in partnership with uc san diego and uc davis to increase testing in high capacity labs are the state of california. We heard from governor ron desantis, mr. President , about the efforts of the state of florida. I believe he said at this time florida had conducted 275,000 coronavirus tests. They were in the process of a major expansion of statewide testing with the goal of opening up additional sites and using the Florida National guard to test residents in Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities in florida. We also recommended today to every governors attention the Public Health website the state of florida established which has useful information on a county by county level about where testing is happening. Mr. President , as you sent, governors are utilizing testing assets. They are managing and deploying these resources as they see fit and in your direction we are going to continue to work very closely with them. Other governors that we spoke with, included Governor Gretchen Whitmer of michigan. 13 new or expanded coronavirus drivethru testing sites in michigan that her team has stood up with michigan primary care association. We assured her that we would continue to work, as brad and admiral giroir are literally working aroundtheclock to make sure they have the supplies to support all that testing. As the president said, Governor Hogan who always begins our Conference Calls come as he is chairman of the National Governors association, expressed appreciation for last weeks guidelines to open america up again. And his appreciation on behalf of all the governors with the list of laboratories in each individual state. He did raise the issue that we had included on the list, department of defense facilities that have laboratories and machines and also other federal facilities, many of which are in maryland. I was able to assure the governor and every governor on the call that we will make all of those laboratories available across the country to every state as the need for Testing Capacity continues to scale. And so this is one more step where you see the army corps of engineers, where you literally see thousands of military doctors and nurses on the streets of new york and other cities around the country. This is one more step for me literally, as the president said from early on, are leaving no stone unturned and we are delivering a whole of government approach for our state as they deal with the coronavirus outbreak. Governors are continuing to expand testing, and we assured them we are going to continue to work in every way to support their efforts to do just that. I will say again as we have said before, as dr. Birx comes up, to explain to you what we deliver to the governors today. We told the governors once again today that by our best estimates we have enough Testing Capacity today. Every state in america to go to phase one. If they meet the other criteria, 14 days of reduced cases in sufficient Hospital Capacity to prepare for any eventuality that may occur. Once again, we have enough Testing Capacity for every state in america to go to phase one, but we assured the governors today than we are going to continue to work around the clock to expand the Testing Capacity, support supplies, and to support their efforts to encourage social distancing in the very mitigation efforts for the American People have been doing that have brought us the progress that we see all across the country today. With that, mr. President , i will let dr. Birx describe what we distributed today. Thank you, mr. Vice president , mr. President. I want to show you a couple of additional slides but also to remind all america that we still have a significant number of cases both in the boston area and across massachusetts and chicago, that our hearts go out to those cities as they continue to struggle with coronavirus and the consequences that the hospitalization, all the Health Care Providers on the front line. We wanted, these, its an illustration of the different types of equipment thats out there. Describing them both is lowspeed and quick turn around times to high speed and taking three to four hours to actually run 100 or more tests. The equipment ranges from those different thats why theres 5,000 of them as noted by the president in this list. We wanted every governor and every state and Health Laboratory director to have a clear understanding of the full capacity within the states both for the capacity but also where Technical Assistance and additional supplies may be available. We were proud to put the federal labs on that list because the military and the va has stepped up every step of the weights or provide support both in testing and care, and we have many military members on the front lines. I am sure the military would offer their facilities to the governor of maryland or any governor who wanted to utilize both to expand testing. So the next slide, im going to run through them very quickly. Every governor not only received the excel spreadsheet with the complete list of the equipment in the zip code of the location in the laboratory to be able to create a mosaic of laboratories of the highspeed and low speed equipment together to meet the needs of their clients depending on if they are drivethru or hospital needs. This is what florida looks like. Next slide. This is what louisiana looks like. Next slide, maryland. Significant capacity. Next slide. Virginian with significant capacity throughout the state. Next slide. New york, obviously a lot of capacity in new york city with overlapping capacity. Its important to know where this is because hospitals and labs can support each other when they need capacity. Next slide. This is new jersey, next slide. Pennsylvania. Next slide. Massachusetts. Next slide. Ohio. Next slide. Oklahoma, next slide. Washington. Next slide. I think thats wyoming. So we wanted to show both in states that have large populations and in states that have lower populations you can see that in general the number of machines match their population. And we are working with the Walter Reed Group and the American Society of microbiologists and all the Lab Directors to really create a web of understanding of what that capacity is currently, what the capacity can be, and how the federal government can support them in developing their strategies linked to the overarching federal strategy of testing as outlined in our guidelines. Thank you, mr. President. Reporter dr. Birx, university of southern california, the l. A. County Public Health, put out a report today that suggested that the penetrance of the virus is as much is almost 40 times what it was believed to be, that is many as 442,000 people in l. A. County may have been infected. Which suggests two things. It suggests you have a lot more people out there who could be spreading the virus. It also suggests that the case fatality rate is more in line with the 20172018 flu than what weve seen in some other areas of the world. Wondering if youve seen that what your thoughts are. We are looking at those studies very carefully and i think you will remember over the last three weeks i have been talking about the level of a symptom addict spread. My concern about asymptomatic spread. With flu and other diseases, when people are sick, its easy to contact trees. When people are not sick and shutting virus, you have to have a very different approach, a different sentinel surveillance approach and sentinel monitoring approach. Its why the guidelines took that very seriously. We know it was unique for respiratory diseases but it was because we were very concerned about the level of asymptomatic. We talked about younger age groups may have more asymptomatic disease and your asymptomatic disease may decrease with her older age group, and that your symptomatic disease might increase with age groups. This is still our working hypothesis. We have no data right now still to support that. But its these kinds of studies that help. We know new york and detroit and other cities are very interested, which we want to also support them in testing front line responders, First Responders and health care workers, because we think they are exposure may have been the greatest. What we dont want to do and im just going to do another 30 seconds on testing. These tests are not 100 as sensitive or specific. Im going to go over this over and over again. If you have 1 of your population infected and you have a test thats only 99 specific, that means that when you find a positive, 50 of the time it will be a real positive and 50 of the time it wont be. Thats why we are really asking people to Start Testing in among the First Responders in the health care workers. They have had the greatest exposure. Thats where the tests will be most reliable. And then when we have the luxury where we can go out to broader communities. This has been the fundamental question to begin with and has been persistent, and we will emphasize the American People again, its a highly contagious virus. We dont know by looking at someone whether they have preexisting conditions or not, and so all of us as far as protecting others must continue to do all of the recommendations to ensure that when we are in an asymptomatic state we are not passing the virus to others. Reporter the governor of South Carolina announced today they are going to open some stores with restrictions but they just told my colleague that they have not achieved the criteria in the white house guidelines about the downward trajectory 14 days. Shouldnt they not be reopening stores today . We have asked every governor to follow the guidelines, just as we have asked every american to follow the guidelines put out by the president. But each of the governors can decide for themselves whether they have reached specific guidelines in specific areas. I had a question on saturday about jacksonville. And the beaches. I did spend about five hours going to every state website and i will tell you that the Florida Department of Health Website is extraordinary. This is what every department of health should have, because when you go to that website, you can see that most of the cases are in southern florida in the miami, for fort lauderdale, broward county. In jacksonville, they had less than 20 cases per day and less than 800 in four weeks. These are the kinds, when you inform the public and give them the information that they need, then they can make decisions along with the local government and governors. Im not going to say specifically with South Carolina because i dont know their specific website right now and i dont talk about data unless ive seen it myself. I know from jacksonville that they had less than 20 cases a day. This is how we need to start informing the community. These websites are critical. Its by zip code and county. They can see cases. They can see commutative cases. They can see new cases, hospitalizations, mortality, age groups of mortality and they can see where every testing piece is. This is how we have to inform the American Public and this is where the American Public will develop confidence in each of their counties and local governments. Reporter the Vice President said theres enough Testing Capacity to proceed to phase one. What about phase two or phase three . Are there enough machines, cartridges right now for this sort of reopening that the administration is envisioning taking place . You can see that current machine outline and you can see both these gentlemen have prepared to have everything ready for phase two. Preparing it now for what we will need in the future. I think thats what you saw with the ventilators. Thats what youre seeing with ppe. Its not just for today. Its for tomorrow and its our federal planning. Its not just for this instance. Is making sure that we meet the needs of this instance but we are planning for 30 and 60 and 90 days ahead. I would do agree with dr. Birx completely. We are ready right now to enter phase one and we are ramping up all our capabilities across the board not just to achieve whats necessary for phase two bu but 2x, 3x so that will be over prepared when the nation is ready to go into those phases. President trump not everybody agrees that we have to do that much. We are going maximum. You understand there are some people who dont want to do that much testing that we are going maximum, going to the outer limits. I think thats the way probably should be. Reporter to return to a topic that you opened the press conference with on oil, u. S. Crude futures went below zero, went into negative territory. President trump went negative, like interest rates, went negative. Reporter does it make you want to see saudi arabia and russia and opec plus. President trump much of it has to do with shortsellers. If you look them up into the future i think its a 25 or 28 a barrel. So a lot of people got caught. They got caught and there are a lot of people that are not too happy because they got caught. If you take a look at it youll see its more of a financial thing then and will situation. But because you take, i believe, in a month or so, goes a little bit out, its a 25 and 28 a barrel. Its largely a financial squeeze and they did get squeezed. Reporter would you like to see saudi arabia and other countries make President Trump we have already done that. Saudi arabia is cutting back. Russia is cutting back. Mexico is cutting back. And the opec plus, they call it opec plus states are cutting back. The problem is nobody is driving a car anywhere the world essentially appeared 184 nations. Factories are closed and businesses are closed. So all of a sudden, we had really a lot of energy to start off with, oil in particular. We had a lot. Then all of a sudden they lost 40, 50 of their markets. So its going to be picking up in the Energy Business and it will be strong. They cut back. It could be 20 Million Barrels. That was between russia and saudi arabia. This had to do with a squeeze and it was a very squeeze. Theyre going to do more by the market. Same thing over here. If the market is the way it is, people are going to slow it down or theyre going to stop. Its going to be automatic and thats happening. Reporter mr. President , on criminal Justice Reform and these sba loans, i got an email early this morning from a fellow in the northwest who owns a supply business. He has a felony on his record, nonviolent felony in the past five years which under sba guidelines makes him ineligible for one of these loans. He has had to let go 50 employees many of whom are criminals trying to get back into society. I dont believe theres anything in the cares act that would restrict. President trump if you give me the name of the company, i will have it checked out. I would do it. A friend of yours . Reporter no, not a friend of mine. President trump he called you to say hes a criminal and wanted to get a loan . President trump you wanted to apply for an sba loan and couldnt and wondered how it squared President Trump if you give me the name, i would like to look into it. Reporter companies that open and have employees coming back to work, will the companies be liable . President trump which companies are you talking about . Reporter manufacturing, any kind of company opening. President trump i will give you answer to that when we look it up. We tried to take liability away from these companies. We dont want that because we want the companies to open and open strong but i will get you a legal opinion on that. I will get you, thats what im saying. I will get you a legal opinion. Reporter you havent discussed it . President trump no one has discussed it but we will now. Reporter have any business consecutive executive voiced concern to you . President trump not want. We have talked about general liability. I will get you a specific answer from the lawyers. Reporter i wanted to followup on oil. When you were talking earlier, you are talking about the ppp and mentioned svr. In the first package, even though you had announced President Trump you know the price of oil right now, dont you . Reporter i do. President trump no ones ever heard of negative oil before but its for a short term. Reporter in your opening remarks you were talking about the ppp deal. And then he mentioned the 75 Million Barrels of oil that you previously said he wanted a purchase. You werent able to get funding for that. Im wondering. President trump at the price you are talking about. They pay you. Reporter my first question is are you asking for funding President Trump at a minimum we will let people store. We will use storage. And charge for it but people need storage desperately and we have massive storage. Reporter youre not going to make it a requirement of the interim funding . President trump if we could buy it for nothing, we are going to take everything we can get. The only thing i like better than that is when they pay you to take the oil. But thats a shortterm squeeze, you understand that. I dont think youre going to see that. We like to have congress, its a great time to buy oil and we would like to have congress approve it so instead of just storing it for usually the big companies, because i think we have 75 million gallons right now capacity. Thats a lot. Weve been building up over a period of time. Thats a lot. 75 Million Barrels. So we are going to get, either ask for permission to buy it or well store it. One way or the other coming will be full. Please. Go ahead. Reporter some senators, senator cramer called on you to stop saudi Oil Shipments are on the way right now. Section 2 30 two. Is it something President Trump we will look at it. I just heard as i am walking in the room, we certainly have plenty of oil. Reporter first on testing and the second on the sba loan program. When will you invoke, forcing the company to ramp up production. President trump we dont really need it. Ive used it a lot. We use it and then sometimes all they have to do is see it coming. You want to talk about that, admiral . I think i dont think any of us knew very much about the dpa. There is sort of a fourth side reinforce the company to do something. There is a second side of it which is really a hand up. The company we are talking about has done everything to support this effort and have ramped up production. I am on the phone with them multiple times a day. This is the hand up. This is the government coming in and saying how can we help you expand your lines . There is no asynchrony here at all. This is the hand up side of the dpa which is exactly what the small American Horror companies need. They dont need to be forced. They are all win. There employees are all in. President trump we dont want to embarrass people either. Today we were on site with that Company Fishing out what their capital projections will be in order to be able to ramp up these additional four lines. That company will then turn in a white paper to the dod. Its actively in process. Reporter on march 21st the administration promised 27 million tests by the end of march. So far, roughly 4 Million People have been tested. Where are the other 23 million or so tests . Did they not materialize . Are they in the pipeline . Help us understand that discrepancy. Since i was the one who said that, let me explain where we were. I was getting my information. It was correct information about the actual tests that are in the marketplace. If you want to use those metrics, theres been over 40 million in the marketplace. We have an end to an issue we needed to deal with and thats what weve been dealing with. The swabs, transport media. If we dont have people utilizing the machines the way dr. Birx is talking about, we have some of our main platforms and are only 10 being utilized. You can have a lot, you can have a lot of tests in the market and those are correct numbers. But if the machines are utilized, not organized at that level, then theyre not being utilized to their fullest. President trump if the machines were utilized. You would have a lot of those millions of tests already being done. I think ambassador birx has estimated we have another million tests a week just on one platform that could be done and if the machines were utilized more fully. Reporter question for admiral giroir. The Vice President has said, mr. Smith said it, that there will be enough tests in place for phase one. There are. Reporter there are. The question is whats the standard of testing that you now have the capability for . Is it to test people who are only very ill . Test people who have the sniffles . Test people who come in just because they want to get a test. What is the standard . It is the guidelines and i tried to be a little specific about this on friday and we all try to. Number one is you need to test everyone who is symptomatic. You need to over test them. How symptomatic . Any symptoms that would be consistent with covid. Theres a wide range of systems. You want to test and over test. The approximate metric with ambassador birx. Its a good metric the you want to get about one positive for every ten tests. Then you know that you oversample. Second, and this is a really important part of the strategy. Because so many people are asymptomatic, theres no way that you can test enough people to poll one asymptomatic out of 300 people in the population. So the strategy with ambassador birx, and i talked to eat epidemiologist around the country and they say wow i wish i wouldve thought of that, to really focus on the vulnerable population where we know that the asymptomatic rate could be much higher than the rest of the population. We are going to be, this is what my office does during normal times. Focusing on the underserved populations, particularly in inner cities and urban areas. They have a higher rate because of overcrowding, they cant telework, they are subject to a lot of comorbid conditions. Nursing homes, we all know about Nursing Homes. They are symptomatic and asymptomatic. Some of our indigenous populations in the Indian Health service. This is a very, very important layer that most of the models that people dont talk about. Thats where we are going to pick up the asymptomatic area and thats when you focus on track and trace. Reporter if we have enough tests right now for everyone to go in phase one, why is the governor of maryland having to get half a million tests from south korea . I dont know what the governor of maryland is doing in south korea, but theres excess capacity every day. If he wanted to send 30,000 or 40,000 tests, that could be do done. Reporter that they needed to up their Testing Capacity and make it adequate. I think we are seeing all across the country that in the states of been hardest hit, their capacity, not only their capacity. Their testing far exceeds south korea and they been able to do that on a relatively straightforward basis. I dont know, the governor of maryland, he didnt bring that up today. We were on the governors call today. Reporter personally on this. Vice president pence we spoke to Governor Hogan today. I will followup because i heard there was an announcement today that he had acquired some tests from overseas. Maybe we can put the slide back up that showed the number of facilities just in the state of maryland. Part of our process and i dont know when the governor placed the order from south korea. It i wouldnt begrudge him or his Health Officials for ordering tests. But the capacity of all the different laboratories and the number of machines that are across maryland as part of what we were communicating today, including federal facilities. Nih in maryland, the department of defense facilities. What we assure the governor then and reassured all the governors that will open up all the facilities. John, back to your point. One other element, phase one testing. I cant really describe it as well as the doctors here, but its the Contact Tracing piece. We really believe that states that meet the criteria of 14 days of cases going down and proper Hospital Capacity, if they test people that have symptoms and if they deploy resources to vulnerable populations, Nursing Homes and other designated vulnerable populations where we believe the threat of a serious outcome from the coronavirus is real, then we also today informed the governors that we will be deploying cdc teams to every state in every territory in the country to assist them in Contact Tracing. Governor jared polis raised a very good point about the legislation the president is currently negotiating on capitol hill. He recommended that we make sure that the new bill that has 25 billion in testing resources also cover Contact Tracing expenses by states. We assured him our administration strongly supports that. We communicated that to the secretary of treasury and the rest of our Negotiation Team and we will be pursuing that. We were able to tell everyone of the governors that we will be deploying teams, we think of ten or 12 for a start, from cdc to reside in all of our states and territories to supervise and work with contractors and others to do the kind of Contact Tracing. So its test people that dont feel well and may have a coronavirus, keep a careful eye and monitor your vulnerable populations, and when you come across a case, have a team on the ground that can do the immediate Contact Tracing in testing, and thats how we restrain and contain the spread of the coronavirus during phase one and frankly its the beginning of the structure for how we contain the coronavirus going forward. President trump take a look at that map. The governor of maryland couldve called mike pence and couldve saved a lot of money. Look at all those different places, thats maryland right there. Could have saved a lot of money but thats okay. I dont think he needed to go to south korea. I think he needed to get a get a little knowledge. That wouldve been helpful. Reporter Like Harvard University barely got money under their cares act, it was supposed to be for Small Business owners. President trump i know one thing, i didnt get any. Thats for sure. I didnt get any. We will look at individual things. Some people have to return it if we think its inappropriate. Reporter should the criteria be changed . President trump its being done by great professionals. Being done by banks, Community Banks all over the country, thats what they do. They loaned money and theyre supposed to do it according to not only criteria but according to what we think is right. If somebody got something that we think is inappropriate well get it back. Good point. Please go ahead. Putter a different question about south korea. There are reports you are personally negotiating with president moon the terms of reduction of u. S. Forces on the Korean Peninsula and that there are four scenarios involved. Can you confirm that and if so, what is your desired outcome . President trump i think south korea had a great talk with president moon. He is a friend of mine. He had a wonderful election victory. It was very happy about that. As you know just recently. We are negotiating for president moon and for south korea to help us monetarily because we, as you know, we have 32,000 soldiers there. We think, before i came aboard they paid very little, if anything here we are defending a wonderful nation. A nation that we have great relationships. We are asking them to pay for a big percentage of what we are doing. Its not fair. So its not a question of reduction. Its a question of what they contribute toward the defense of their own nation . We are defending nations that are very wealthy. South korea is a very wealthy nation. They make our television sets. They make ships. They make everything. I give them great credit. We have been defending them for many, many decades, as you know. Many, over eight decades. Ive gone to them in the past. Last year i went to them and now they are paying a billion dollars a year and i went to them again and i said ill be back because thats just a fraction. Again, the relationship is great but its just not a fair relationship. We renegotiated the trade deal and made it a more equitable deal than it was in the past. It was a terrible deal. It was done by hillary clinton. It was a terrible deal. The new deal was a much more equitable deal. Its on trade. In the military, we are paying for the military to defend another nation thats 8,500 miles away. And they are not the only one im talking to, by the way, as you know. I wont go into names but ive done this nobody talks about it but i think its appropriate. I think the taxpayers of our country, they want to hear these things. And so now they have offered us a certain amount of money and i have rejected it. I said, you know, we are doing a tremendous service. We have a wonderful feeling in a wonderful relationship with each other but we have to be treated equitably and fairly. So thats where it is right now. And whats going to happen, i cant tell you but well find out fairly soon. I congratulate the president , hes a friend of mine. I congratulate president moon on having a terrific victory. Please. Reporter thank you, sir. A question for you about Governor Cuomos visit and a question for dr. Birx. The new york governor along with the National Governors association in the past have called for aid to be unrestricted is a lot of state and local governments see their revenues drop, are you open to the idea of unrestricted aid or do you want it to be pandemic specific . President trump president e going to be talking at that and faced four which will start shortly, that has to do with infrastructure. Hopefully infrastructure because this country needs infrastructure. We spent all this money in the middle east. A trillion dollars. 8 trillion, trillion with a t, dollars in the middle east. But if you have a pothole and a highway someplace they dont want you to spend the money to fix it. How stupid have we been in this country . How stupid have we been . Thats changing rapidly, you know that, youve seen that come including things like negotiating with friends. When we are helping friends, friends should reimburse us for the costs. Why should we be defending nations for free . We are defending a nation for free. Now im getting a billion dollars a year and well be getting, we were offered much more than that but i turned it down. So thats where we are without. As far as the other is concerned, we have to be smart in this country. We have been taken of the cleaner by every, and miming with allies not just with enemies, with allies. The allies have taken us much more so than the enemies. The enemies we dont do business with, right . The allies we do business with and whoever made these deals, however me these contracts in many cases we do not a contract. Like we didnt have a contract. We didnt have a dream deal with china. They came in and they took 500 billion a year for many years. Anywhere from 200 to 550 billion a year out of our our then we made this great trade deal. Its a great deal. They are paying 25 on 250 billion. A lot of things are happening. Theyre going to have to purchase 250 billion with of goods including Farm Products come up to 50 billion. A lot of good things are happening but then what happened with china was the playing hit us, right, the plague. This was long after we signed the deal. The plague hit us. Im not happy about that. John, please. Reporter a question for dr. Birx. Dr. Birx, question of the virus itself. Ias it passes from patient to patient and mutates, overtime will be picked up indication that had has become less of a rhode island . Have you picked up any indication its become more virulent . Thats an excellent question. We watch it all the time particular with rna viruses. Its adaptation to humans. You are asking, is this virus become more adapted to humans and more able to spread or is it becoming less adapted to humans and less able to spread . We dont have an any indication that its less able to spread. We will have good analysis that will come from obviously the roosevelt had its incident with the virus outside the United States. Well be look at those parameters, and the dod and military has done a great job and really ensuring the health of the sailors but also entering that these questions can really be asked and answered. We have extraordinary evolutionary molecular biologist in this country and they are looking at this very question and a lot of the work weve been doing, you will see a lot of work happening with testing in new mexico and testing and other states. They have extraordinary molecular biologist center evolutionary biologists and they will be able to look at that both in new mexico where they have lower transmission rates and compare that to new york that has maybe 10x of the transmission. It will be something that will be answered. President trump jiang, what a good question. Where did that come from . Reporter once in a while i pull it out of my hat. President trump senator schumer rode a letter and said you should use admirals and generals. Our Vice President has been incredible. We have the admirals. We have the generals. And i was just talking to the admiral just memory came out. I said, did you g go to an apple is . He said no, sir. I said thats too bad. Thats too bad. Where did you go . He said i went to thats okay to, i guess. He went to harvard, great student at harvard and doing a fantastic job. This young gentleman was varies successful but he wanted to help the country. We appreciate it very much. Big success, big, big success. Lets do here and there. Reporter he talked about your meeting tomorrow with Governor Cuomo or you mentioned, is there a reason hes coming here . President trump i dont know. He wanted to. We, believe it or not, we get along. He was very generous yesterday in particular. Said we did a quote phenomenal deal. I dont love anybody wrote that but he said it and i appreciated it. Its not about me. Its about these people of the thousands behind mike and the admiral and all the other people. I dont understand when i see polling and Approval Ratings for the job, this group should get and 95. They really should. We are really helping the governors a lot on the governors call me, the ones i know or the republicans but the ones i know they say its incredible the job youre doing. Again, not me. The job this group is doing