Transcripts For MSNBCW MTP Daily 20200424

You dont see your family for a while. I thought to myself, could be worse, like my brothers and sisters over in new york who some of them, they didnt survive. Everybody around me is talking about opening up the economy and the hospital and all of that. Im not quite sure what to think. We cant be overconfident until we have some measure of being able to say its in the past. Once again, we begin the show tonight with a small glimpse into the lives of the medical workers. Welcome to friday, it is meet the press daily. Were continuing special coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. We passed a grim milestone today, more than 50,000 americans have now died from this virus and the number is likely much higher due to insufficient testing. At this rate, in just a few days, more americans will have died from coronavirus over a pan of roughly nine weeks than died in the vietnam war over the span of 12 years. And in the face of the economic calamity thats also hit our country, some states have become implementing plans to reopen. But the curb of cases and new deaths is yet to show a consistent decline in this country. More than 2,600 people died yesterday alone. There were 34,000 new cases. And while Testing Capacity is starting to increase, we still havent even tested 1. 5 of the population yet and we are almost at the end of april. It is a harsh reality facing this federal government as we brace for todays white house briefing. Scheduled to begin in roughly 30 minutes, and colliding with the harsh reality is the collection of statements today from the maker of lysol, from the u. S. Surgeon general and state Health Departments like maryland, reminding people to check with their doctors before starting any treatments. And please dont ingest or inject disinfectants into your body, even though the president asked his medical team to investigate it as a potential treatment. I see the disinfectant knocks it it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do Something Like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. You see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So youre going to have to use medical doctors. But it sounds interesting to me. As the blowback against the president s comments intensified today, he tried to gaslight us into believing that he did not tell his advisers what you just heard him tell his advisers. Can you clarify your comment about injections of disinfectant . I wag asking the question sarcastically to reporters like you. It was a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside. But you were asking your medical experts to look into it. Were you being sarcastic with them . To look into whether or not sun and disinfectant on the hands, but whether or not sun can help us. There isnt much else to say. You just saw it. Because there is perhaps no better of an indictment of the president s handling of this crisis than just hearing him suggest that disinfectant could treat the virus and then hearing him claim he didnt say what we just heard him say. And i know what some of you might be thinking in this moment, why would we air the president live today after all of this . Because we think that letting you see the president unfiltered in the moment, hes the american, hes the elected president , especially during a National Crisis like this one. At the moment, its simply put, a very important thing for american citizens to see right now. Joining me now is my colleague carol lee, who is reporting that the president s remarks on disinfectants left even his closest aides shocked. And we have any carney with some reporting of her own about the president s participation in the task force meetings. So carol, i first want to start with the disinfectant comments. It does seem as if the reporting to borrow a phrase, a wash, rinse, repeat episode of the president s advisers where they go, oh, my god, where did he get this one, and here we are. Reporter yeah, thats right. We were told that he ad libbed this and as he was speaking and saying lets look at sunlight and uv rays and heat and injecting disinfectants into the body, we were told that the aides in the west wing started texting each other immediately saying where did this come from. As one of them put us to us, they were saying it because they knew it was going to be bad. And we also learned before the president came out and did the briefing, he had a meeting in the oval office with a couple of advisers, including bill brian, who was the department of Homeland Security science and technology under secretary, he walked him through some research, talking about new developments on how heat and disinfectant and humidity can affect the virus, whether it doesnt live as long in heat or that disinfectants on surfaces can get rid of the virus. And the president , he just got up to the podium and conflated a lot of this and started thinking out loud essentially about whether this could be something that could work on the human body and it caused obviously all kinds of problems and has been widely criticized as being dangerous by any Health Officials all across the world. You know, its interesting, carol, and youre piecing this together, and it really sort of dovetails with your reporting on how the president participates in these Task Force Briefings in that heres a case where he was there for a presentation, but clearly only half heard it and conflated the information. You seem to have some reporting that he doesnt always even attend the meetings. Tell us more about it. Reporter no, the task force meets on a daily basis and the meeting usually takes place right before the briefing. The president goes occasionally when theres a big decision coming out but hes not a regular attendee. And what happens is he gets briefed by a small group of aides afterwards who present him with what we hear at the beginning of these daily News Conferences, which is the top lines hes reading from. But theyre making edits until the final moment basically as hes going out to the podium. So the aides today said that when we see him reading, you can see a Different Energy level from the read portion of the News Conference to the portion where hes taking questions and being combative with reporters. Hes often seeing the final version altogether for the first time live. I think weve all gotten used to the different ways that were used to this president speaking when hes reading versus when he is ad libbing. Carol, i want to play a back and forth he had today because today is a grim marker that we hit 50,000 dead from this virus and the president was asked about hitting this grim milestone today. Take a listen. Youre saying that you want credit for what the government has done. Do you take any responsibility for these 50,000 deaths that have happened in this country . I think weve done a great job. Minimal numbers were going to be 100,000 people and were going to be hopefully far below that. If we didnt take quick action we could have lost many millions of people. So were being given credit for a lot of people. Im not looking for credit for myself, but i am looking for credit for people in the federal government that have done such a great job and for the doctors and nurses and everybody else. Carol, it was remarkable, this responsibility, and this was a q a yesterday. I dont want to conflate the two. I misspoke there. But it is amazing here sort of the way he glosses over the 50,000 dead. Its a statistic. He has not embraced the i would say the personal, the empathetic side of this grim marker. Reporter no, chuck. And i think what you see there is the president just not wanting to the concern that if he leans into that. First of all, hes not very good at it, lets just say that. Its not something that oohes stepped up to as part of the presidency that he doesnt really engage in. But from his point of view, if he were to lean into that, acknowledge it and start to mourn that, then its almost owning it and he doesnt want to own this. You saw any number of times the president say that hes not responsible for this and is constantly just trying to flip the question around and say ive saved lives, you should be thanking me for what im doing. And hes just not the type of president who is going to do what, in fact, the whole country still hasnt gotten their head around, which is more than 50,000 people have died in what youve said, nine weeks. Hes just its not his way and in his view, it means admitting that he has some sort of responsibility in all of this and weve not seen him really willing to do that on anything. It has been interesting to me at these Task Force Briefings, Vice President mike pence has a few times wanted to stop and take a moment and sort of acknowledge this grim death toll. But it hasnt been a regular feature of these briefings, nor of this white house in general. Have you detected any sort of apprehension about that fact . Reporter this is a white house where the message and the tone are set from the top and everyone is trying to keep up, as carols reporting shows, often with the words actually coming out of the president s mouth, other times with what he wants to see. And he wants to project that he has saved lives, that his administration is responsible for a response that actually saved lives and the death toll would be higher if it wasnt for the actions they have taken. Thats the message that the administration wants to push out there. They want to gloss over the fact that there was a belated response and they lost a month and the president tried to downplay this virus at the beginning. They want that to be overtaken by the steps, the proactive steps they have taken. So any focus on the death toll, as carol said, is an acknowledgment of a lack of response in their minds. So yes, the Vice President often takes kind of the role that the president doesnt play, but the tone and tenor are set at the top. Theres no dount. And at times when the Vice President does it, it only exposes the fact that the president hasnt. So that can also almost be just as awkward. Carol and annie, thank you for kicking us off. I want to turn to someone who has served in the Trump Administration, knows what its like to deal with a president that has unpredictable behavior, and put yourself in a position where youre not quite sure what to do. He served in three press tenchl administrations. Most recently, the envoy for the Global Coalition to defeat isis under President Trump. He tweeted yesterday the crazy has caught up the the Public Institutions in the middle of a deadly pandemic. It is hard to think of a worse case scenario. It was interesting reading your tweet storm. It was sort of in reaction to the visual that took off on twitter with dr. Birx and her sort of very awkward reactions to what we saw yesterday. What is your advice to dr. Birx . How would you tell her to handle that moment if resignation is not an option . You know, chuck, these are really the most personal decisions that anybody can make. And weve seen this now across the institutions, in the intelligence community, Homeland Security, our diplomatic corps, our military. And when youre in the high level of decisionmaking circles theres something called a effectiveness trap when you have a leader like President Trump. To be effective, you need to be in the room and in the circle, but sometimes you need to muzzle your recommendations, live to fight another day. This is a term that came out of the vietnam experience. And i really feel for the faucis and dr. Birxs, we need them on the wall. But they have to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves can i be more effective standing by when the president is at the podium telling falsehoods to the American People or can i be more effective speaking to American People in other ways. And that podium, its sacred ground. Annie just said that the president hardly prepares when he goes out to speak to the American People living through this catastrophe. And that is just totally unacceptable. So i feel for them. But watching it, i think the images speak for themselves. Im curious of your own experience. You were in i think some teleconferences with the president and you certainly i know that sometimes theres been meetings where people speak up and say, mr. President , you cant do that or thats crazy, what are you talking about. How often is it that or how often do people just have the awkward, they put their head down and they look at each other, they shift their eyes, they dont know what to say and they just deal with it after . What is the usual response when he presents sort of a bizarre outofthebox thought . In my experience you have policies that are articulated and that the president doesnt really study them or deliberate on them until something happens. He gets a phone call from a foreign leader, a crisis appears in the news, and then he completely pulls the rug out from everybody. I was serving in the first two years of the Trump Administration with jim mattis in particular, and the chain of command went from President Trump to jim mattis and jim mattis was always saying thats not what were able to achieve. So he always played a critical role. Whats so scary here is that the Public Health institutions, the scientists, the doctors, these are the institutions of people who have been serving for decades. These are the institutions that you would hope would never start to degrade based upon this unsteady leadership from the top. And what i fear is that the president clearly wants a miracle drug, a miracle cure, and hes being told by scientists and doctors theres not going to be one. And as this plays out, they will be increasingly tested and i think all of us are at risk. And the whole world is watching this. Our adversaries and allies and the diminishment of the United States as a global power is unfolding before our eyes. I want to go back to what you deemed the effectiveness trap. Because you do seem to be saying you fear that theres going to be a point where these medical professionals sit here and wonder where can i be most effective, am i hurting my own credibility standing here. You know the concern, and ive heard it from others who stuck around for a while, they say you have no idea who he replaced me with. And that is my greatest fear. How do you handle that . Well, thats true. Thats why fauci and birx, i think just as a citizen, i live here with the grandmother to my daughter. I dont want anything to happen to her. Were all suffering through this as citizens watching this. We want president ial leadership. But we really need the faucis and the birxs to be there and try to steer the ship and give guidance. But theres another risk, what happens with dr. Strong, who was in charge of leading the vaccine development, if you do get out of line with the president , you can be sidelined. So i think this is going to be difficult over the coming weeks when there isnt a miracle cure, there isnt a miracle drug and the president gets increasingly frustrated and tries to look around for the scientific advice that he wants rather than science that actually exists. Yesterdays performance looked like somebody he saw presentations, like thats the briefing i wish were true, which is this disappears in the sum r summer. Hes shopping for something. There you go. Brett mcgirk, thank you for coming on and sharing your perspective of what its like to serve in the Trump Administration. Stay safe and healthy. And we are awaiting the start of todays White House Coronavirus briefing. It is now set for 5 30 and once it begins, we will go to it live. Also ahead, the second battle for doctors and scientists as they work to fight the virus, they now have to work against misinformation, even from the president himself. For nearly 100 years, weve worked to provide you with the financial strength, stability, and online tools you need. And now its no different. Because helping you through this crisis is what were made for. However, there is one thing you can be certain of. The men and women of the United States postal service. Were here to deliver cards and packages from loved ones and also deliver the peace of mind of knowing that essentials like prescriptions are on their way. Every day, all across america, we deliver for you. And we always will. I dont have to worry about that, do i . Are irritated. Harmful bacteria lurk just below the gum line. Crest gum detoxify, voted product of the year. It works below the gum line to neutralize harmful plaque bacteria and help reverse early gum damage. Gum detoxify, from crest. Its more than just fast. It keeps all your devices running smoothly. With builtin security that protects your kids. No matter what theyre up to. It protects your info. And gives you 24 7 peace of mind. That if its connected, its protected. Even that that petcamera thingy. [ whines ] can your internet do that . Xfinity xfi can because its. Simple, easy, awesome. [ barking ] welcome back. Doctors, scientists and Public Health experts are working every day to combat a slew of disinformation on coronavirus cures and treatments, not just from the internet but now from the president himself. Its a difficult position for tho those tasked with saving lights and this isnt the first time the president has prompted dangerous advice. President trump touted the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a gamechanger. The fda issued a new warning today. Joining me now is an Infectious Disease physician and medical director of the special unit at Boston Medical Center and dr. Director of the Public Health department. I didnt know we were going to have to put up Public Service messages about drinking bleach, but i think it is worth noting we actually did a story about a month and a half ago about facebook having to deal with a bunch of bad rumors. There were 44 people in iran who died drinking toxics bleach essentially. So here we are months after facebook has to take down these bad posts and bad rumors and police that. The president promotes this, the Maryland Health Department Said it got inquiries. How concerned are you that people will listen to this advice . The tough part about this moment is ive been doing this Public Health and medicine work in emerging Infectious Disease for almost 1518 years at this point and never have i encountered a moment where every individuals understanding of t the situation is so important and just cooperation with the Public Health conversations and suggestions. Its been so important to turning the tide of a large catastrophe that we have, which is this pandemic. And in the middle of this the confusi confusing part is everything is data shifting so fast. Youre learning about the science of them as youre responding to them. So the public is confused enough as it is because the science is changing, theres more data being thrown at them. And even when i come on a show like this one with you, i think twice about what i say. I consider my wording and the impact that it will have. With someone with a really big platform making big splashes this this pool of confusion, it just undoes a lot of work that Public Health has been doing. It leads to a lot of damage. Doctor, youre a director of Public Health for l. A. County. What are the Biggest Challenges youve had in myth busting in dealing with this virus so far . Thanks a lot, chuck. I mean, i want to say that with information changing so rapidly, you know, some of it is myth busting and some of it is just catching up all of our public listeners with the facts. A few weeks ago we werent that worried about asymptomatic spread, now were very worried. Today at our press briefing here in l. A. County, we did have to message around making sure that people dont ingest bleach, that they dont put it on their bodies, that they dont think that this is a really reliable way to fight this infection. I would like to say like everybody is doing all that they can do to stop the spread and thats what we need to focus on. Like what are the tools that we have right now that will help us make sure that every person who gets infected doesnt infect two to three other people. Thats the work and we all have to get behind it. Im glad you put it in those terms. I want to ask you about, and watching up on some things, a week ago there was some initial reports that remdesivir, a drug that is used with ebola, for ebola treatments, was seeing some promising signs and now another study comes out and its like maybe not. What more can you tell us about those studies . So im glad you brought that up. Perfect example of evolving data, right . So i think the report last week and the report this week are actually just we havent seen the studies. We have not seen the data. These are just reports that were made on these studies. So we have to wait and see what those data are. But my understanding is the most recent report was taken down from w. H. O. s website and it was about a chinese study on remdesivir that was stopped early because they didnt have enough of a sample size and it was on patients who were sicker. But it potentially didnt show promise in that population. But as if every study, i think we have to see the actual data to know what to expect. Theres also more promising information from two days ago or yesterday that shows that there are theres now an identification of another potential class of drugs that is going to take a long period of time to develop, but these are drugs that are targeted antibodies, cloned antibodies from survivors. And we actually used this class of drugs to treat ebola as well, and so we have to look forward to some of these other things getting both produced and then tried out in humans, i hope. Speaking of evolving information, you know, sort of the bizarreness of yesterdays briefing, which devolved into this whole disinfectant issue, it actually started out by being a briefing about what impact does warming weather and the sunlight have on the virus. So what are you saying to l. A. County . Is this a virus that is going to be less harder to catch in the summer in l. A. County or not . How are you advising residents . You know, we try to go with the science and theres no evidence that really says that thats in fact whats in front of us. And i think the best way to manage a confusing situation is to go with the facts that you have. So this virus has been seen all over the world, in warm climates and in cold climates. We know for sure it has the capacity to spread fairly easily. I think its clear that for us here in l. A. County, and we are always living in a relatively warm climate, we cannot stop the work were doing to slow the spread. We cannot count on our wishes that this virus is going to disappear somehow this summer. We dont have any evidence that suggests that and i think what we have to do is come up with a strategy that makes sense for really trying to control the virus. Weve got to do a better job on testing so that we can identify everybody who is positive and then be able to isolate the positives and quarantine their close contacts. Thats the work in front of us and we just have to stay with what we know. Is that a realistic strategy that could be implemented in a way that also opens up parts of the economy . So i think first and foremost and what i liked about what the white house released last week is they put out these criteria for readiness before states consider opening up and one was this testing and this contact tracing. The other was a strategy of when you open up and youre going to see a peak, potentially a smaller peak of new cases, do you have enough resources in your hospitals to take care of the next peak. Were just coming off the peaks in a lot of metropolitan areas. When its open, in my mind, when all those resources are in place, including testing. Were not there. Ill give you an example. We know that 25 of the people who get this have no symptoms. That means 25 of the people that come into my hospital that are not coming in for covid may actually have this disease. If i wanted to do a test of all Emergency Rooms in boston for a couple of weeks to see how many people are positive, theres not enough swabs to do that right now. Were lacking the ability to get the baseline picture. Once we get that, i think its going to be coming up with really sensible guidelines for businesses, for schools and others about when to consider that theyre ready in terms of their resources to open and thats going to be a combination of surveilling people who are coming in who are working there and having some way to decontaminate surfaces, keeping distances between people. Well, once again, it always come back to the initial problem that weve yet to solve, and that is getting more testing and testing supplies and the ability to test faster, quicker and in greater bulk. Doctors, thank you both. Much appreciated for sharing your expertise with us. The White House Coronavirus Task Force Briefing is set to begin, i guess we can say any moment now. Well go no that live once it against. Also ahead, the impact of this crisis in vivid context. Ill be speaking with a historian next. Nevedrinking water. Neutrogena® bright boost with dullnessfighting neoglucosamine. Boosts cell turnover by 10 times for instantly brighter skin. Bright boost. Neutrogena®. The coronavirus continues to affect us all, and we are here, actively supporting you and your community. Every day, were providing trusted information from top health experts. Sharing tools to help protect families from fraud. And creating resources to support family caregivers everywhere. As always, you can count on aarp to advocate for you and your family. Join us and stay connected at aarp. Org coronavirus for you and your family. What do we wburger. Inner . I want a sugar cookie. Wait. I want a bucket of chicken. I want. Its the easiest because its the cheesiest. Kraft. For the win win. Your cells. Trillions of them. Thats why centrum contains 14 key nutrients to help feed your cells, nourishing your body inside and out so you can focus on what matters most. Centrum. Feed your cells. Fuel your life. That Liberty Mutual customizes your insurance, i just love hitting the open road and telling people so you only pay for what you need [squawks] only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. As we mentioned earlier, the coronavirus death toll in the United States surpassed 50,000 today, with more than 880,000 reported cases. We say reported, because clearly there is more of this out there. We dont know the exact number yet because of our testing situation. But the death toll puts us on pace to surpass the setting toll from the vietnam war. More than 58,000. And that could happen next week. More americans have already died in this pandemic than in the korean war. That was 36,000. And to put it another way, more americans have died from the virus in the last three days than in the last 19 years in iraq and afghanistan combined, which is more than 6,800. For more on this, im joined by nbc news historian, michael beschloss. I hope you are staying safe, staying healthy, all of those things. Thank you. Lets start with the issue of grieving, national mourning, national grieving. This is not the first time that this has been noted of this president. He is not generally an emotional person when it comes to showing empathy. That is who he is and that is who the American People elected. But this feels like its been an off its been uncomfortable that we havent mourned the 50,000 collectively as a nation. It sure does. And that is a big part of the presidency for our president to mourn with us and acknowledge the loss we have born. 50,000, thats almost half the number of soldiers we lost in world war i. Its about an eighth of the military people that we lost in world war ii. This is already a major event in American History and it is so important for a president to convey the fact that he understands not only his own responsibility, but how terrible this is, because its a sign of how hard a president is working to keep us safe. A lot of the decisions that donald trump or any president makes, we will not hear about because theyll be done in private. Probably about 99 of those. If we see someone who is obviously emotionally affected by the cost to lives, the cost to our society, then we have the sense that this is someone who shares our values and is going to do the right thing. You noted Woodrow Wilson didnt exactly handle the 1918 deaths in a way that we would have either. He did not. How much of this is a you know, i remember david burke saying to me early on, history shows societies arent nice to each other during pandemics. No, thats right. But it depends on who is president and youre absolutely right that Woodrow Wilson is a monumental negative example of basically how not to be president during a pandemic. That was 1918. The influenza began among american soldiers. Wilson has privately told dont put them in close quarters, dont send them to europe or theyll infect one another and spread it through the populations of europe. Instead, he put them in close quarters on ships that were called coffin ships because so many people died and they went to europe and ultimately we americans lost 675,000 americans to that pandemic. Tens of millions around the world. Woodrow wilson did not give a single speech. He almost tried to conceal this because he thought it would be bad for morale of americans during world war i. And that is just about as bad as you can be as president , not only because its obscene for a president not to convey his feelings and to tell americans the loss that they are suffering, the tragedy that is ongoing, but also wilson did not allow americans to protect themselves in a way that he would have if he were to say heres the magnitude of the problem, this is what you can do to make sure your family is safe. All right, michael. Well, ive got to cut you off because the president has just taken to the podium. The percent of tests that come back positive has declined very significantly. Last week roughly 38 of the tests in new york were positive. This week that number is down to 28 . New cases in new york are down 50 compared to a week ago. And fatalities are down 40 over the same period. In louisiana, the rate of positive test results have declined from 25 down to 15 in the last seven days alone. 18 states now show a decline in a number of positive tests in the last seven days. So over the last seven days, theres been significant progress. Half of all americans live in states that have now taken steps to open their economies. Just yesterday, governors gavin newsom, california, tim walz of minnesota and bill lee announced plans to restart certain sectors. We ask every american to maintain vigilance and hygiene, social distancing and voluntary use of face coverings. Were opening our country. Its very exciting to see. We have a lot of talent involved from governors down to people that just stand there and help you with the doors. Theres been tremendous talent involved and tremendous spirit from our country. Our country is a great place and its going to be greater than ever before. I really believe that. I think theres going to be a tremendous upward shift. I spoke with tim cooke today of apple and they have a good sense of the market and he feels its going to be a v. The v is sharply upward later on as we get it fully open. Today i signed the Paycheck Protection Program and health care and hazmat act providing 223 billion to keep American Workers on the payroll, 30 million of the paycheck protection funds will be reserved for small financial institutions, including those that serve minority and distressed communities, extending vital we leaf to thousands of africanamerican and hispanicamerican Small Business owners, and their employees. Under the c. A. R. E. S. Act, were sending direct payments to millions of American Workers, more than 80 million americans have already received their payment. 3,400 dollars for a typical family of four, 3,400, thats great. The c. A. R. E. S. Act requires that the federal government sent out a notice of what benefits americans are receiving to fulfill the requirement. The Treasury Department is mailing a letter to me. It will include the amount, their Economic Impact payment, how it will arrive, direct deposit, check or prepaid debit card, as well as a message to the nation letting each american know that we are getting through this challenge together as one person family. Thats whats been happening. The whole world is watching us. You have 184 countries out there that have been hit and now its probably higher than that. But theyre all watching us. Theyre all watching and theyre calling and they respect what were doing so much. I spoke with the leaders of numerous countries today. Theyre asking if we can send them ventilators and im agreeing to do it. We have tremendous capacity, now overcapacity of ventilators. Were filling up stockpiles for our states and for ourselves. The federal government has over 10,000 ventilators and we could have a lot more if we wanted to do that. But were helping mexico, honduras, indonesia, france, were sending to spain and italy, and well probably be sending to germany should they need them. Over the last three years, we built the strongest economy and the most successful country the world has ever seen. Nobody has ever done anything like what we were able to do. And we will rebuild that economy. Our economy in the nottoodistant future, i really believe with all that weve learned and all weve done, well be just as strong and maybe stronger than ever before, Even Stronger than it was just two months ago. Some interesting note is that the fda approved the first athome covid19 test kit. Just got approved and dr. Steven hahn is going to say a couple of words about that and some other things. I want to thank steven. The fda has been incredible. Theyve been approving not only this, but theyve been approving many things at a pace thats never happened before. And theyre being very safe about it, as steven told me. He told me very strongly. But at the same time, theyre approving things at record numbers in a record at a record rate. And its really been helpful. Many tests are going on. Many vaccine tests. And tests of every different kind. And things are happening just like this event, things are happening rapidly and i would like to have steven tell you a little bit about it. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. President. Appreciate the opportunity to tell you about whats happening at the fda. We have a team of more than 18,000 employees, including 10,000 scientists, doctors, pharmacists and nurses and theyve been working aroundtheclock, because as you probably know, many of the medical products that are being used for the covid19 outbreak are regulated by fda. The staff have been hard at work authorizing tests and other medical products. As part of these efforts to support diagnostic Test Development during this global pandemic, the president has asked us and under his leadership to actually cut down as many barriers as we possibly could to get medical products into the medical community and we have done that. Of course recognizing the urgency of the situation. I do want to emphasize what the president said, that we are very much paying attention to safety and va lidity and reliability of the tests. And i think its important to understand how far weve come in just a few short months. The academic community, which i come from, the private sector, the government, weve come together to develop diagnostics for a completely new Infectious Disease and its really important, weve heard from many Test Developers, both in academia and in the manufacturing world, this normally takes years to develop. Youve heard dr. Birx talk about the fact that hiv tests have taken many, many years to develop. This has happened in weeks and months. Weve been laser focused on working with both industry and academia to actually make this happen. To date, under our emergency use authorization approach, weve reviewed and authorized 63 tests, both diagnostic, as well as seer logic, the antibody tests. Weve had several point of care tests and those can be done in the emergency room, in a doctors office, et cetera, and much more convenient for the patient. And this week, as the president said, we authorized the first athome test by a Company Called lab corp. This is a test where under certain circumstances with a doctors supervision, a test can be mailed to a patient and the patient can perform the selfswab and mail it back and get the results after that time. All under the guidance of a licensed physician. And were not just letting up with the 63 tests weve approved. We are working with more than 400 Test Developers who are pursuing authorization for their diagnostics under our current policies. And under our regulatory approach, which is quite fl flexible, many other tests are becoming available. We have heard and had reported to us 220 labs around the country have begun patient testing using their own validated tests. This has allowed us to increase tests around the country. I updated you earlier this week on seer logic tests that are used to detect Natural Immunity and the fdas way to make these available. They can play a role in helping move our economy forward by helping Health Care Professionals identify those who have immunity to the covid19. And just finally, when it comes to therapeutic, we are leaving no stone unturned in finding treatments for covid19. We do know that we dont have any approved currently therapeutic for covid19. But we are actively involved with both the academic and the commercial and private sector to find those. 72 trials of therapeutics are under way in the United States under fda oversight, and 211 are in the planning stages. So we expect to see more. This includes convalescent plasma, as well as antiviral therapies. Work continues on vaccines and two firms have announced that the fda has authorized their trials to go forward. And finally, in response to the president s task force request, theyve stood up the coronavirus treatment acceleration program. We are leaving no stone unturned and were working around the clock to develop these therapeutics for the American People. Thank you very much. I have a quick question. Its timely, because just about an hour ago a subcommittee released some findings that the fda doesnt have any review of the antibody tests that are on the market, there are no guidelines to tell which ones should be out there and theres no way to test their accuracy. Theyre quite worried that these are junk tests on the market because they werent reviewed before they were approved. Is that true . So under our policy, we provide flexibility. What weve told manufacturers is that in order to market in the u. S. They have to validate their tests, they have to tell us that they validated their tests, and then in the package insert inse have to let people know, end users, labs, et cetera, that those tests were not authorized by fda. Weve authorized four. As i mentioned, more are in the pipeline. And these tests that have come in without any information to us, but have been selfvalidated, as i mentioned at the podium a couple of days ago, we are working with the National Cancer institute as well as the cdc to perform our own validation of the tests that have been sent to us. Well provide as much information as we possibly can. And there is transparency on our website about those tests and also the tests that we have authorized. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. President. From early in this effort, President Trump has called fourth a whole of government response to the coronavirus epidemic in america. And by that the president made clear when he asked me to lead the White House Coronavirus task force not merely a hole in the federal government, but the full partnership of state and local governments across the country. Today we renewed that with our latest Conference Call with governors all across america. Weve met with them today, specifically to speak about the progress that our governors are making, expanding testing across the country. And we were pleased to hear about the extraordinary and rapid progress that governors are making. At the outset of the call where we had more than 50 of our nations governors, we had pete gainer of fema report on progress. More than 35,000 National Guards stood up. 5,000 active duty military deployed in ten states. And we were also pleased to report that fema, hhs, and the private sector have coordinated the delivery of shipments to states around the country, including nearly 67 million n95 masts, 135 million surgical masks, surgical gowns, shields, gloves. More than 10,000 ventilators, and more than 8,000 federal field medical station beds. Beyond the report that we provided to the governors, we assured them that at the president s direction, this is one team, one mission. And we made it clear to the governors that we know were all in this together, and the partnership that we have forged together really begins with mitigation efforts. It moves to making sure our Health Care Workers have the support they need, but also testing is in the forefront of all of our minds. Were working to make it possible for every governor to access the existing capacity to enable our states to be able to reopen responsibly under the phased approach that the president unveiled one week ago. A little bit of context. You may recall that one month ago, all of the testing that had been done in america, 80,000 americans had been tested. But as of this morning, 5. 1 million americans have been tested for the coronavirus. A quick reminder to our fellow americans, and this is something from our scientists today at the task force. We reminded governors of this as well, that as testing increases dramatically across the country, cases will increase as well. But people should not be discouraged by those numbers. Were looking at very positive friends in hospitalization, in emergency room entrances, and we continue to see, as weve said at this podium every day over the past several weeks, we continue to see positive progress, not just on the west coast, but even where the coronavirus epidemic is most deeply impacted in areas of the Greater New York city area, new orleans, detroit, and elsewhere. On our nearly twohour phone call today with the governors, we heard of the progress governors were making in implementing the resources that weve been working to provide them. Not just the medical equipment, but also, as you recall that map a week ago that showed where all of the equipment is all across the country in all 50 states. Governor cuomo joined us for the call today. He spoke favorably of his meeting here at the white house, mr. President. And his recognition that testing is a partnership between the federal and state governments. As Governor Cuomo said today, he understood the federal Government Works with National Manufacturing and supply chain, and the governors deal with the labs to expand and implement testing at the state level. Governor cuomo also explained how he is using his Licensing Authority as governor to stand up the more than 300 labs that can do coronavirus testing in the state of new york. And we congratulated him for his leadership in that and urged other governors to use their authorities similarly. In tennessee, governor billy told us that he has deployed the National Guard to stand up more than 20 drivethrough test sites. Theyre testing 10,000 people a day, have already tested more than 130,000 people in tennessee. And they expect to surge another 15,000 people in testing sites this weekend in tennessee. Massachusetts is an area were continuing to watch very closely as cases have not yet stabilized. And governor charlie baker, after he thanked us, mr. President , for the army corps of engineers deployment of four field hospitals, he described how they have rapidly expanded testing all across massachusetts. We commended him for that. In the beginning of march he said they had just one testing site in the state of massachusetts, and now thanks to governor charlie bakers team, they have more than 30 testing sites. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz reflected on the call today about the partnership he has forged with the mayo clinic, the university of minnesota, and state health department. Theyre actually collaborating to perform 20,000 molecular tests and 15,000 antibody tests per day. And im looking forward to traveling to the mayo clinic in minnesota on tuesday of next week to learn firsthand from the governor about their efforts across the state to expand testing. Iowa governor kim reynolds gave us an update, mr. President , on her progress. She is literally tripling Testing Capacity in her state through a partnership with a private sector with the university of iowa and iowa state university. She also launched the testiowa. Com website, which actually creates an access point for people to fill out a questionnaire about whether or not their symptoms or circumstances would justify a test. She said in the first 72 hours, 150,000 people went to the test site to receive an assessment, and iowa is now testing 4,500 people a day in their state. In indiana i spoke also today with governor eric holcomb. They tested 70,000 hoosiers to date. Theyll have ten sites established before the end of the weekend. And as other governors have done, governor holcomb last week opened up half of their elective surgery sites in hospitals across the state, and theyll be opening up the balance of their elective surgery sites next week. In maryland, another area were watching closely, governor larry hogan expressed appreciation for federal support as he is continuing to scale testing. He had been in touch with the National Institutes of health, which is opening up its laboratories for maryland to do testing. And we were also able to confirm to him that walter reed Hospitals Laboratory capacity is available to maryland. And in utah, mr. President , governor gary herbert told us he diverted 1200 employees to do contact tracing. In the last 24 hours 23,000 residents have sign upped for what theyre calling their Healthy Together app. And they have different 50 testing locations across utah and have tested 82,000 people in the state already. Other state examines, mr. President , were just as inspiring. Governor phil murphy of new jersey has forged a partnership with rutgers university, working closely with the fda. Theyve authorized a salivabased test that is being deployed just at that site thats expanding their ability to track what continues to be a very challenge iing environment new jersey. And governor mike parsons of missouri, mr. President , also told us how they worked with google marketplace to create an online portal for more than 200 companies in missouri who have repurposed their manufacturing lines to create medical supplies to meet their need within the state and in Connecticut Governor ned lamont spoke about positive trend lines in connecticut which has been really at the center of the outbreak in the Greater New York area. But he also said they were hoping to double testing over the next week. Mr. President , thats just a sampling of what we heard today, and i know its an encouragement to you, and i trust its an encouragement to people all across the country that at your direction, we are implement iina testing strategy that is support at the federal level but it is deployed and managed at the state level. We want to express our appreciation to every governor across the country that are standing up all of those labs that are available, that are working with us and our supply chain personnel to make sure that the reagents and the swabs and the equipment is there to be able to process the tests. And were going continue to increase testing dramatically in the weeks ahead. We want to thank our governors for the progress were making on testing and for their role in urging their citizens to practice the kind of mitt fwags and social distancing efforts that are really making real progress. Were one team, one mission. Thats to save lives. Because of all of the efforts that have been made at the state level and the strong guidance thats come from the federal level, because of the amazing Health Care Workers across this country and our first responders, but mostly, i believe because of the cooperation of millions of americans who put the guidance into practice. Their cooperation and their prayers have set us on a path where we are slowing the spread. We are