Limited number of cases but more important were tracking all the people who are in periods of cooling off and we track that very carefully, make sure that they come through without getting sick and if they need to be tested and stuff we work with them. Boris johnson comes down with it i talk with my wife. Are we going to get it, our kids, who is going to get it do you have to think like that at bank do you have people working closely with each other . Social distancing, im sure youre trying to practice it, but its on everybodys minds am i going to get it . Sure. For our teammates immediately, the first thing we did a couple weeks ago plus now is went out and solicited all the people high risk and you heard the medical experts, dr. Fauci, dr. Birx and others talk about that, you know, the high risk is a much different case. We went out and said, please identify and got them off the line and put got them home and away from the situation. I think that probably goes back two weeks ago now. So we got them out first we started the work from home implementation about the same time frame to where and immediately started moving traders out, separating and distancing between traders and call center operators. Think of a call center half the people in it that it would have a month ago, so that they can get social distancing and the branches, the same thing were thinning them down the customer visits are starting to tail off as people are in the various modes of staying home and things like that we continue to try to do everything we can, the deep cleaning, separation of our teammates. Theres a certain amount of work in the operations group, processing trade and things that have to go on, can go on most effectively at a central location, but were limiting the amount of people in those locations to allow them to have social distance while they work every day. Thank you, sir. I just want to say i know were switching to jon, but brian does not talk about enough about the charity he does. This man has done so many things behind the skeebs and this bank has done so many things behind the scenes he wont do it, ill do it, great stuff. Go ahead, jon. All right jim, thank you and good friday morning, everyone i am jon fortt with Morgan Brennan and kelly evans, all live in separate locations as cnbc continues to practice social distancing as a precaution lets get a check on the markets. All the major averages are down more than 3 the dow more than the others, down about 850 points after a threeday lift that the markets got. For now were going to go to meg tirrell who joins us with the ceo of Pharmaceutical Company novartis meg . Jon, thank you so much. Joins us from bassle its great to have you with us we want to ask you everything about what novartis is doing we know youre working as part of a major consortium with other Science Companies and the Gates Foundation as youre looking across the spectrum of academia and nonprofits, what is the nearest term potential timeline for getting a drug that could help with covid19 . First, thanks, meg, with the opportunity to speak with the audience and take the opportunity to express thigh gratitude and my admiration for all of the Health Care Workers, physicians, nurses, front line workers working tirelessly to ta on this pandemic we view it as our role to play our part in that fight i think right now theres three main groups of technologies that the industry is working on, novartis is working on some of them as well first is looking at existing medicines that we could repurpose to fight the virus or fight the immune response that is causing a lot of the hospitalizations and deaths that were seeing those trials are currently ongoing in a huge range. I did a look before sitting down to speak with you. Theres about 15 different molecules right now between the antivirals as well as existing immuno agents as well as antivirals that are in Clinical Trials we can see the data coming out in april and the months that follow the second big group is coming up with novel drugs and antibodies there, again, lot of work ongoing, about five to ten candidates already moving into the clinic, thats going to take us longer, probably towards the end of this year before we get really, you know, compelling data it could be sooner but well see. Of course the vaccines where theres roughly about five to search candidate vaccines, and more if you include vaccines in china either in the clinic or heading towards the clinic that, of course, will take us into 2021, probably towards the back half of 2021 before any of those vaccines would become available. Right and then the earliest group of those, those repurposed drugs that folks are very hopeful could work against the coronavirus, you know, in your role as a ceo, as somebody who reviews data every day at all stages, do we have some very early data on things like chloroquine, on the il6 drugs from regeneron, the antibodies being tested for the severe patients, how would you evaluate the potential of that data from what youve been able to see so far . Yeah. I think theres three classes of drugs that looked very intriguing with respect to the antima hair yals we are supporting four largescale initiated trials, preparing to start our own randomized kilncle study as well using hydroxy chloroquine, and a range of other efforts with that particular agent, there is preclinical evidence it works to kill the virus there is now small, very smallscale studies out of france and china, which indicate they can give benefit to hospitalized patients. I think thats one thats very intriguing weren investing behind it and committed to donate 130 million doses to the u. S. And around the world as soon as we have Clinical Data and were starting that process now the second are the antivirals. There was initial data out in the new england journnew engla medicine, gilead has a drug in Clinical Trials, well have to see but theres early evidence those drugs might have an opportunity to work against covid. The last as you pointed out are the socalled agents, the anti6, were working with our partner insight to evaluate that and evaluating one of our own drugs, an anti1 agent those are the three groups that have the opportunity to have an impact in the very near term probably the one thats going to be the most important to look at in terms of getting a significant supply quickly would be hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. Well see what the data ultimately shows and novartis has a pretty widespread role as both a developer of novel medicines and through sandos, a major generics player a lot of folks who track the drug supply chain are citing Major Concerns were going to see shortages because of issues with the shutdown in india whats been happening in china and also just the increased use of medicines, for example, to keep patients on ventilators how are you looking at the supply chain and the potential for any shortages . Yeah. Right now weve been very fortunate to date, we havent seen any supply disruptions in our supply chain novartis we produced about 72 billion doses of medicine every year and keep safety stocks and have redundancies in our supply chains were tracking it closely. Were well aware of the situation in india and china as well as other parts of the world where we source a lot of our active pharmaceutical ingredients. But we havent seen significant disruptions. Im hopeful that countries around the world will maintain open borders because our supply chains are very interconnected we need to be able, as a largescale manufacturer, along with our peers, largescale manufacturers as well, to move around the various parts of the drug production process. Im hopeful that will continue to be the case were watching it closely. Specifically on hydroxychloroquine, we are preparing if it were to ultimately show promise, that we could produce it in multiple sites around the world hydroxychloroquine is getting a lot of attention, particularly here in new york state where you have these trials, these more widespread programs that are implementing it right now. Here in the u. S. , the fact that you have plans by the fda to implement broader programs around compassionate use, a loosening of certain regulations or restrictions in the midst of this outbreak, has it been enough has it been fast enough . How much of those changes would you expect to stay even after the worst of the crisis is over . Well, i think the fda has very clear approaches with how they look at this, both in terms of treatment inds, kind of single patient Clinical Trials, compassionate use programs, where physicians and patients can opt to use a drug, even if it hasnt ultimately been licensed for that, as well as what are called emergency use author sdwagss weve been very impressed with the speed of response were getting from the fda across the various products that were trying to repurpose right now. I think its all the right setup. Its important to highlight, again, that we need good evidence in order to use these medicines appropriately. These medicines all have side effects. Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, despite the fact that they were first discovered in the 1930s, we know these have important side effects both in terms of the heart as well as the neurosystem, neurological system, and these are things people need to consider. The fda is trying to find the right balance between ensuring the drugs are providing benefit as well as protecting patients safety hope that we continue to maintain those standards that the fda has historically you talked to Health Leaders around the world you are a doctor yourself. In these conversations youre having, you must get to see all of the different modeling. What is your impression of how this is playing out around the world . What are the time lines that youre seeing in terms of outbreaks peaking . What are you seeing in terms of the potential for seasonality of this to come back in the fall . Just trying to get a sense of all of the data youre seeing, probably more and at a higher level than the rest of us, youre looking at the trajectory of this pandemic you know, i had the opportunity to work, of course, on the h1n1 pandemic about a decade ago so i have sort of an interest, a keen interest n understanding the epidemiological trends a lot of models, the imperial model out of the uk, university of washington has published another model, multiple models, all of them, of course, are based on a range of different assumptions but theres a few common trends i see. You see that you would expect peaks to happen over the coming, you know, two to six weeks, depending on the model were going to see peak utilization of health care resources, assuming that we maintain the kind of social distancing or physical distancing programs that have been put in place all around the world. And then comes the period of kind of the unknowns, unknown of how will seasonality in terms of the weather impact the spread of the virus, how much immunity is in the population that, you know given the virus has been circulating now for a number of months, and then the question, of course, is will we see a return in the fall or the winter i think most models suggest that there would be a return as social distancing is, you know, put to lower levels, and then, of course, as the weather turns and we get back to colder weather, its what we see typically with influenza and what we see with coronavirus the peak of that second wave is going to be, of course, the question and thats a big unknown. I see a lot of different projections. I think were going to know a lot more in the next month im very optimistic now that we have antibody tests being rolled out that will tell us how many people have been exposed to this virus, how many people have potential immunity, what is the socalled denominator effect in the broader population i think all of those things will make us enable us to make better predictions and as youre hearing the president here in the United States talk about potentially easter as a time we hopes well see Economic Activity resume and some of the restrictions be lifted, if you were advising him what would you tell him when the right time is to let up . You know, i think youve got to trust the data. With respect to, you know, how we think about these situations, we know that, you know, the virus is ultimately going to determine the timeline i think dr. Fauci and others have commented in that direction. Its important that we follow the data and we follow the science because i think this is a critical moment, given the load thats impacting Health Care Systems around the world in the u. S. And in europe, and letting up too soon and allowing the virus again to spread at scale at exponential rates could make the situation challenging for Health Care Systems. I think we have to look at the data continuously and have the data drive the decisions and the data, of course, is getting refreshed every day. All right thank you meg and vas, ceo of novartis, for that important look at how the pharmaceutical industry is helping in this fight. Now also data is an important component of this fight, global fight, against the coronavirus want to bring in the ceo of snowflake, that is a startup with a valuation over 12 billion working in the area of data and the cloud frank joins us now great to see you. You as well, good morning, jon. Now, frank, your platform right now is being used as a single point of truth in data. Youre able to do that please explain what it is that your partners are doing on the platform and how its going to help in this fight data has become super important during this dislocation in terms of health and economically in normal times, institutions and enterprises can rely on their anecdotal perception of whats going on in the world when you have things happening of this order of magnitude, we need data to parse the realities and figure whats happening to us and how do we set policy and how do we direct ourselves as enterprises. We see enormous onslaught of interest in catalyst in terms of the revisiting what are we doing on data and analytics. Obviously data around covid19 is has sort of been center stage for this people are looking to join that data, the supply chain, with Demographic Data and Economic Data and see what the future might hold we had microsoft Ceo Satya Nadella on, on tuesday we had Bill Mcdermott on just yesterday of servicenow. Part of what their message was, was that the cloud, because of its flexibility, because of the extensionibility that it is an important tool in a crisis like this because if businesses were left on their own with their own resources they happen to have on hand, they would be pretty impossibly stretched what do you think the legacy of the use of tools like this is going to be . What kinds of inbound questions are you getting from customers and potential customers, that you think will continue to resonate after lord willing we get through this well, theres no doubt that this crisis is going to accelerate a trend towards Digital Transformation and everything that is associated with that. I mean were a 100 Cloud Company. We can literally vacate 2,000 people out of their offices and continue to operate, not just our data servers, but all our internal systems we have no on premise capabilities whatsoever. The agility that brings and the fact that we can turn on a dime and operate in that mode is a human advantage. I think everybody else is realizing that as well tell me how youre running the company right now, the kinds of messages youre sending to employees, the degree to which you are prepared for remote work and perhaps some of the tools youre putting into place that you hadnt planned on . Well, were, like everybody else, were relying enormously on the teleconferencing technologies and im literally on zoom, skype, web x calls eight hours a day with people all over the world our own people, customers, everybody is settling into this mode the thing that we have to recognize is that these network methods, there are limits to how effective they are they work very well for certain things, but you do find that people working alone at home, you know, theanxiety levels go up, especially when the news feed is on, so we got to make extra efforts to sort of replace the social support that people get in the office when theyre at home. Were playing it by ear. People are settling in well but were cognizant that its not just flipping a switch and that we sort of need to learn that the side effects of this way of doing things we had servicenow on yesterday and he said he believes that he believes this is going to accelerate the Digital Transformation across different industries, across different businesses and really across government as well. Is that your take on it too, and givens the fact that you are working with so many different clients across so many different sectors, where are you seeing the biggest weaknesses and where are you seeing the biggest strengths . Well, i largely agree with that and were seeing obviously were a Cloud Company and weve been preaching to the choir for the last decade on this and when the crisis like this happened, it just becomes more obvious to those who have lagged in the transformation if cloud was hot before, its going to be red hot, you know, once we get through this so for a lot of industries, this is really great. In the world of tech our adjustment is obviously the easiest. Were just finding out what industries, you know, really struggle in this mode and which ones thrive in this mode its obviously unfortunate for those for whom its difficult and we know who they are the travel industry and entertainment and sports and so on but then theres a bunch of other industries that are working hard as a function of this frank, the last time we talked, just a few weeks ago, but it seems like years now, we were talking about the possibilities for the timing of an ipo im not going to ask you about that, but i am going to ask, how you think the valley itself, tech startups, most of which are much more poorly positioned i would say than snowflake, are going to need to adjust in this environment and because of this environment to continue to survive and thrive yeah. You know, i remember back to a crisis of 2008 2009 and there were these draconian memos going out from vc firms about battening down the hatches for the next 20 years and attract all the capital that you can were not seeing that this time. Tech really