And responsible fashion. During this time, americans must maintain strict vigilance and continue to practice careful hygiene, social distancing and the other protective measures that we have outlined, and that everyone has been very familiar with. We continue to be encouraged that many of the areas hit hard by the virus appeared to have turned the corner. For example, recent deaths are down very substantially. You can compare that with their peak not so long ago, and you 25 ,numbers of 30 , detroit as an example, is down over 50 . In new orleans, where they have done a terrific job, they are down 65 . 30 states had just one case or less per 1000 people. Thanewer cases per capita germany, united kingdom, spain, singapore, norway. The netherlands, austria, sweden. Administration continues to press conference to replenish the enormously successful Paycheck Protection Program which has impacted 30 million american jobs. We hope to have an agreement very soon, and hopefully tomorrow the senate is going to be able to vote. A lot of progress has been made on that, tremendous progress. It is a great plan. Has helped a lot of people. We hope to have a vote, maybe tomorrow in the senate. Based on the record low price of oil that you have been seeing, a level that is very interesting to a lot of people. We are filling up our National Petroleum reserve, the strategic reserves. Are looking to put as much as 75 Million Barrels into the reserves themselves. That would top it out, the first time in a long time that has been topped out. We get it for the right price. Were also pushing for a deal to theren additional were talking about 75 billion dollars for hospitals and other Health Care Providers. Visits, elected procedures, surgeries, elective procedures were canceled. We think we can get them online. Hospitals stepped up to the plate. They did a great job, we appreciate it so much. For areas lest affected by the virus, we have issued recommendations how to effectively resume treatments. Hhs has also distributed the first 30 Million Dollars in payments to Health Care Providers across the country. We have also invested 1. 4 billion dollars in Community Health centers to ensure our most vulnerable communities, including many africanamerican and hispanic American Communities have access to the services and testing that they need. Earlier today, Vice President pence spoke with governors from all 50 states about our unified effort to defeat the virus. He had a great call. A great call, very positive and i would say every way. Provided each governor with a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers of labs where they can find additional Testing Capacity within their state. It toabs, we will show now. If you need it we will give you the details. Hundreds and hundreds of labs are ready, willing and able. Governors, as an example, the governor of maryland didnt really understand. He didnt really understand what was going on. Now i think he will be able to do it, it is pretty simple. They have tremendous capacity, and we hope to be able to help him out. We will work with him, and work with all of the governors. Similar to the situation with ventilators, states need to assess their complete inventory of available capacity. Some states have far more capacity than they actually understand, that is a complex subject, but some of the governors did not understand it. From illinois did not understand his capacity. Federally as the government to provide unlimited support you have to take the support where you have it. But we are there to stand with the governors, and to help the governors. That is what we are doing. They have a tremendous capacity that we have already built up, you will see that we will be introducing a couple folks in a little while to talk about it. I want to draw your attention to Governor Cuomos remarks during his press conference today. He said the president is right, the states testing is up to the state to do. Testswill implement the and logistically coordinate the tests. Labs in newt 300 york, they are great labs actually. It is my job to coordinate those 300 labs, i think the president s right when he says the states should lead. Getting itrs are together in new york, a lot of good things are happening in new york. I think the governor is going to see us tomorrow, hes coming to the oval office tomorrow afternoon. Andrew will be coming in with some of his people. We look forward to that. Some of the articles that just recently came about if you remember, for a month it was all ventilator, ventilator, ventilators. Thats all people could talk about was ventilators. We did a great job with that. We built a lot of ventilators, we have so many now that at some point soon, we will be helping mexico and italy and other countries. We will be sending them ventilators which they desperately need. They were not in a position to build them themselves. We have thousands being built, every state has had the ventilators. If we dont, we have almost 10,000 in our federal reserve, our stockpile. We did a great job with the ventilators. Unfortunately the press doesnt cover it other than the fair press, so then you say g, dated ventilators, they dont need ventilators. That is under pressure we did that. Nobody that needed a ventilator in this country did not get one. Story that just came out, how the media completely blew the trumpet ventilator story. Im sure you love to see that. That is by rich lowry, a respected journalist and person. How the media completely blew the trumpet ventilator story. Trump ventilator story. Here is another one. The ventilator shortage that wasnt. The ventilator shortage that wasnt. Going to help the state stockpile ventilators. So anything should happen again, they have got them. The stories on testing are all over the place. Were actually in good shape. I will have the Vice President speak to you on that. Were Getting Better all the time. Before i would like to have the general who has done an incredible job tell you where we are. We are still building beds and hospitals for people that need them. Business ishospital generally getting close out now, but we are creating a lot of space for people just in case. On behalf of the services, on behalf of the federal government, thank you very much. Thank you mr. President. I just want you to know that on all ofof all of that, those patients and victims that have been affected by this terrible virus. The president and Vice President talk all the time about heroes. I have been out there and soon the doctors and nurses working very hard. Working ond to be this calling. There are three legs of this stool. We have got to worry about supplies, we have to worry about staff. Right when Governor Cuomo called the president about 30 days ago, said i need some help. What could be tens of thousands of hospital room shortages. So the president and secretary of defense asked us to fly with the team, we understood how complex a challenge it was. We did a very simple solution to be able to work with hhs, to be able to work with fema, the Vice President s task force. To be able to power this down all the way to the local level. Some governors asked us to build a hospital in a parking or field into our three week. You cant physically do that. Go tot we said was, lets an existing facility. Those that are either hotel rooms or college dormitories, or those that are in real large areas like field houses or convention centers. We design those facilities that were either noncovid or covid. Fromwe got that approval the federal government to power that back down. We went to Governor Cuomo and he said right up front, need you in the javits center. When we flew back that afternoon, we built the standard design and continue to able to power it down all the way through the rest of the team. I want to show you a couple slides, we will let you know where were are at right now. We had to do a bunch of assessments. Fororked for fema, we work the president , we work for governors and buyers. We said what do you think your demand is going to be questioning . We were able to understand what the peak curve was, but also understand what the bed shortage was. Executing 32ly different facilities. Is about 16,000 beds. We still have a lot more to complete, and in the next weekend i have, were going to complete about 15 more facilities. Some mayors and governors are still wondering do they have enough bed space, and what is important here, we need a very agile plan. You can do something three weeks ago and hope that is continue to stay. This entire team, the federal government has tried to be as agile as they can supporting states and governors. The beauty was, it doesnt have to be built by the United States army corps of engineers. We designed about extra facilities, we gave us to governors, they then imposed and but a lot of those on the ground. Im going to show you some simple pictures here. Next slide you dont mind. Example of the javits center. You heard the president talk about it quite a few times. Is about 11 or 12 foot square cubicle. There are lights in there, there is a nurse call. Theyre under throughout, pharmacies throughout. Noncovid. Arted as everybody has oxygen by their beds to take care of those patients. In detroit, with the governor, she walked us and told us her intent. You will see all of the cubicles that are laid out. This is right in the middle of a Convention Floor where there might be a boat or car show. They went in and built 978 capabilities there. Work, whileat pulling together. This is called the mccormick place. Mayor lightfoot walked us through, we went into another large convention center. This is actually 3000 bed spaces. Got this done in a relatively short time. Here is another one that helps you understand the dynamic here. This is in miami beach. I flew into see governor desantis. Out beds, andoped said how long is it going to take to build this. We probably said by the 27th of april. He went to his people and said how long to need . Said we need the 21st of april. I told my guys, you dont have to the 27th. You dont have the personal solution, you need the Mission Essential done. Lets go to the last one here. This is when we are doing right now in colorado. In denver, another gigantic convention center. You see all the different cubicles. Here to be able to bring in that oxygen, six copperplate that comes in. It is all pipe throughout the entire invention center, six miles of pipe. In closing, i want to be able to say, we are very focused on the corps of engineers getting this done. The federal team, the state seemed, the local team, the Vice President and his task force. A lot of people sitting here have informed us how fast we need to go. It goes back to the governors and mayors making this happen. I want to reiterate, President Trump has called me three times. Secretary esper has been on at least one of us times. Said what else we need to do to set you up for success. Any other knobs we can turn. You think about the equation of those threes, we have effectively taken that first s out of the equation. Of all the things i have done in my career, this is a noble calling to be able to step up and save american lots. Pres trump anybody of a question for the general . Do have a question . Are there more projects beyond the ones you just identified . The virus gets a vote. We are seeing some of those curves are stretching out, where we thought we had five or six days, we actually have a couple weeks now. Others are the opposite. Where we didnt think there is some, not going into locations, we are definitely getting requests in. They are a little bit smaller facilities in more remote areas, but our job, we have enough time to go build. We work for the mayor and the city and the governor. We can get them done at the mayors and those elected decision officials make a fast enough decision. Pres trump the general is in charge of the wall on the southern border. We want to build 450 miles of walled which is very much under construction. How are we doing with the wall . I think the most important thing, you stress this, there are several different priorities here. Our number one priority in the department of defense is to protect the team. No matter what we do, continue to take care of our civilians and servicemembers out there. Every single thing you can doing, whether you are building for the v. A. , civil works projects, department of defense or building on the southwest border, were going out of our way. I talked to our commander this morning, we have over 4000 contractors on the ground out there. No positives as of this morning, not on wood. Them, to make sure everyone is safe and everybody goes out of their way. Construction is going very smooth. We are seeing is our contractors are extremely focused, now that we have a good clear path post on the cbp program, as well as the dod program. It is a very aggressive build, but we are well posture to be able to meet your expectations. Pres trump where over 100 62 miles. 160 miles. Very exciting. You might just say one thing, the quality of that wall same thing. A pat on the back from commissioner morgan. He was very adamant that it continues to support his agents. We have a design that certainly does that. We have a phenomenal contractor working for us there. It is going in well, we dont see any significant problems. I think it is also important to point out, we want to do this the right way. We want to balance this with environmental considerations out there. We want to do due diligence. We are trying to make sure we are protecting all of the things we need to protect. Try to find that balance where we can both meet the administrations directive, while at the same time we are doing this so everyone gets a vote, and a fair shake. May ask what you are doing arding the availability how is the access going . I am an engineer. When the president says turn on america, what we initially did, i had a meeting with my commanders this morning. As soon as we think it is safe, turn it back on. Park it out there at the rec area where you are 500 feet away from everyone in a camper is probably a low threat. Where we get green lights, to continue put our rec areas full and let everybody out there. I want to do it safe, but i dont want to be the last guy that turns things on. Reporter do you have any information about specific efforts in communities hardest hit. Like black communities or latino communities, communities of color. Are the army corps of engineers doing anything that would be building any sort of temporary facilities for those communities . Lt. General semonite we basically key off what the city asked for. The city and the governor. There are specific areas that certain city mayors have asked us for. Again, im not going to go into details but we basically, if they say im very worried about a hot spot on this side of town or a specific community here, we will do thats what the administration has charged us to do. Whatever we can do to be most responsive. We just dont want ever to have an ambulance pull up to the back of a hot and hospital and is somebody says, were out of room, go to the next hospital down. Were trying to make sure that bed space is available and so far everything weve built has been ahead of need. In other words, were able to finish the building two or three days before its needed. Thank you, maam. President trump you have a choice. You can stay and watch. Watch these wonderful people ask us really nice questions. Or you can go back to building lt. General semonite i have a lot of building to do. If you dont mind. President trump an impressive job, isnt it, seriously. Really great. Thank you very much. Hes a terrific gentleman. We have a lot of great people doing that kind of thing. They really have to get recognition for the incredible job theyre doing. Because i dont think anybody else could do it. Nothing like that. Thats on top of thousands and thousands of hospitals. He built, just in new york one, four hospitals, 2,900 beds and got them done so quickly, nobody saw anything like it. Fortunately we havent had to use too many of them. And thats ok. Thats probably better news than having to use them all. Right . Because 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 immense testing capabilities available. But some states need to take action to fully utilize it. To date, the United States has conducted millions more tests than any other country. You can add them all up and they dont catch us. Our numbers are doubling almost on a certainly on a monthly basis but almost on a weekly basis, were moving very rapidly. Far nobody thought possible. And well be doubling our number of daily tests if the governors bring their states fully online through the capabilities that they have. We have tremendous capability out there already existing. And we explained that to the governor today, mike and all of 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. And there are some hot spots and we have them pinpointed and they can really cover very, very nicely when they know exactly where to go and theyre being told where to go. Also these locations where theyre going and some of them are federal, some of the governors didnt realize they were allowed to use federal locations, they are, and we have a booklet of the federal locations, we can hold it up. I think yours show that. Maybe well hold it up now. Yeah. Ok. Fine. But you see the number things. These are all locations where they can go. Which is really pretty amazing. This is just one page out of many. Dr. Birx over 5,000. President trump look. These are all locations. Thats a lot of locations. And they can all what is it . 5,000 . Dr. Birx 5,000 peeks pieces of equipment pieces of equipment. President trump thank you very much. Thats more than anybody thought. Its already there. They have to use it. Thats all. They have to use it. Somewhere are very much aware, some werent aware. My administration also continues to support states with our massive operation to deliver masks, gowns, glov