4/20/20: Members of the Coronavirus Task Force Hold a Press Briefing

Thank you all so much, thank you after the release of our reopening guidelines, governors across the country are looking forward to phase one and announcing plans for an economic resurgence, we too are going to have a resurgence at a time when millions of workers and American families We are struggling with the financial consequences of the virus, it is essential to continue the medical war while reopening the economy safely and responsibly during this time. Americans must maintain strict vigilance and continue to practice careful hygiene, social distancing and other protective measures we have in place. described and which everyone is very familiar with, we remain encouraged that many of the places hardest hit by the virus in the area appear to have turned the corner, for example, recent deaths have decreased very, very substantially;

You can compare that with its peak not long ago and you have figures of 30% 25% in Detroit, for example, it has dropped more than 50%, congratulations and in New Orleans, where they have done an excellent job, with a drop of sixty and five percent, thirty states have only one case or less per 1,000 people so far. Fewer cases per capita, for example, than Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Ireland, Switzerland, Singapore, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden. My administration continues to

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ure Congress to restore the hugely successful paycheck protection program that has impacted the 30 million American jobs we hope to have. an agreement very soon and, hopefully, tomorrow the Senate will be able to vote.

Great progress has been made in that tremendous progress. It's a great plan. These great plans helped a lot of people, so we hope to have a vote maybe tomorrow in the Senate and based on the record price of oil that we have been seeing at a level that is very interesting to a lot of people, we are filling our national oil reserves strategic, you know the strategic reserves and we are looking to put up to 75 million barrels in the reserves themselves, that would be the first time in a long time that it is complete with getting it for the right price.

We are also pushing for the deal to include an additional $75 billion of our reserves. OK, we are talking about 75 billion dollars for hospitals and other healthcare providers, many providers and their employees have taken a huge financial hit in recent weeks and visits, elective procedures, surgeries, etc., etc., have been cancelled, we believe everyone can get back online. Do it, the hospitals have been really fantastic, the hospitals that have stepped up and really done a great job. We appreciate it very much. Four areas less affected by the virus. We have issued new recommendations on how to do this safely. resume elective treatments HHS has also distributed the first $30 billion in direct payments to one million health care providers nationwide.

We have also invested one point four billion dollars in community health centers to ensure that our most vulnerable communities, including many African Americans and Hispanics, American communities have access to the services and testing they need today Vice President Pence spoke with the governors of all 50 states on our unified effort to defeat the virus. You had a great call that was a great, very positive call and I would say that each Well in advance of the call, we provided each governor with a list of the names, addresses and phone numbers of the laboratories where they can find additional testing capacity within their states.

Many labs were giving you a list, we'll show it to you now if you need it, we'll give you the details, but hundreds and hundreds of labs are ready, willing and able, and some of the governors, as an example, the governor of Maryland didn't really understand the list, he didn't understand much about what it was. It's happening so now I think they will be able to do it, it's pretty simple but they have tremendous capacity and we look forward to helping you, we will work with them and we will work with all the governors, similar to the situation with ventilators the states need to evaluate their full inventory of capacity available some states have much more capacity than they really understand and it is a complex issue but some governors did not understand it the governor is an example pritzker of Illinois did not understand his capacity Not simply ask the federal government to provide unlimited support;

I mean, you have to take the support where you have it, but we are there to support the governor and help him, and that is what we are doing, and they have an enormous capacity to we have already built and you will see that in a moment we will present a couple of people to talk about it. I want to draw your attention to Governor Cuomo's comments during his

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conference today, he said The president is right, state testing is up to the states, who will implement the testing and logistically coordinate the testing. We have about 300 labs in New York and they do it there, great labs.

In fact, it's my job to coordinate those 300 labs. I think the president is right when he says that the states should lead and the governor is really achieving it, he is achieving it in New York. There are a lot of good things happening in New York and I think the governor will come to see. We're coming to the Oval Office tomorrow afternoon Andrew is coming with some of his people so we're looking forward to some of the articles that have come out recently, if you remember, and today I put out a statement for a month it was good fan fan ventilated so that people could talk about ventilators and we did a great job with that we built a lot of ventilators to put it mildly we have so many now that sometime soon we will be helping Mexico Oh and Italy and other countries will send them the ventilators they desperately need.

They weren't in a position to build them themselves, but we have thousands under construction. All states have had the ventilators if they don't have them. We have almost 10,000 in our federal reserve, our reserve as they call it, and we did a great job with the ventilators, unfortunately the press doesn't cover it any more than the fair press, but then you say, they need ventilators, we don't need them. ventilators and that's it, under pressure we did it, no one who needed a ventilator in this country didn't get one and a story just came out about how the media completely ruined the Trump ventilator story.

I'm sure they'll love to see that that's rich. Lowry told reporters in person how the media completely ruined Trump's latest story, which unfortunately it did and here's another one that just came out Kyle Smith the ventilator shortage that wasn't the ventilator shortage that wasn't because it was we fixed and By the way, we're also going to help states stockpile ventilators, so if something like this were to happen again, they have them, the stories about the testing are all over the place that we're actually in good shape. I'll have the Vice President and others talk to you about it, but we are in very good shape during testing and we are improving all the time.

You'll see some interesting things I thought about before continuing, although I wish I had them. General Semin, incredible work, I tell you where we are, you know we are still building beds and hospitals for the people who need them. I guess the general hospital business is largely shutting down now, but we are creating a lot of space for people. in some cases they'll probably use them, but I thought the general has been so impressive and done such a great job that I thought on behalf of the services and on behalf of the federal government he had said a few words about what we're doing.

We are doing it right now, thank you, of course, thank you sir. President, I just want you to know that on behalf of all of us at the Department of Defense, our thoughts and prayers are with all those patients and all those victims who have been affected by this terrible virus and the president or vice president spoke the entire time. Time about heroes, but we've been out there, I've seen the doctors, I've seen the nurses and all those who have worked very, very hard and we are very proud to be part of this noble calling. I, for my team, really made it very, very simple.

I said there are three legs of this stool and they all have places where, in other words, hospitals, we have to worry about supplies and we have to worry about staffing and right when Governor Cuomo called the president almost 30 days ago, he said, I need help to worry about what could be tens of thousands of hotel rooms, hospital room shortages, so the President and the Secretary of Defense asked us to fly to Albany with the team and along the way we understood how complex the challenge was and we knew that there was no way to solve a complex catastrophe with a complicated solution, we needed a very, very simple solution to be able to then work with HHS to be able to Work with FEMA to be able to work for the vice president's

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and then to be able to take this down to the local level.

Some governors asked us to try to build a hospital in a parking lot or in a field. in two or three weeks you can't physically do that, so what we said was let's go to where there is an existing facility and I'm going to do this in two large planters, the ones that are hotel rooms or college dorms, smaller rooms or those that are in really large areas like country houses or convention centers and we designed those standard facilities that might not be Cova Dork Ovid and then we approved it here in the federal government so we could then turn it off, so we went to Governor Cuomo and he said from the beginning: I love the concept.

I need you at the Javits Center. I'm ready to start work tomorrow afternoon, so when we fly back that afternoon the next day, we basically build the standard layout and then move on. so we can completely shut it down through the rest of the team, so I just want to show you a couple of slides here and we'll let you know where we are at the moment, mr. president, we had to do a lot of assessments, so we went to some on the order of over 1,100 different places and we worked for FEMA, we worked for the president and we worked for governors and mayors and we said, what do you think your demand? "Based on a lot of the models that have been in this room, we were able to understand when the peak curve was, but we were also able to understand where the bed shortage is, so these 1,100 facilities right now, so." We are actually running 32 different facilities, which are in the order of merit of about 16,000 beds, eight of them are already completed, we still have a lot more to complete and in the next week and a half we will complete about 15 more facilities that We have some issues pending, some mayors and governors are still wondering if they have enough space for beds and the important thing here is that we need a very agile plan.

You can't do something 3 weeks ago and think that this is going to continue because this The virus gets a vote on this entire team, the federal government tries to be as agile as possible in those states and the beauty of those governors' paint plan, although it does not have to be built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. so we designed about 52 additional facilities that we gave to the governor and I have to be very complimentary of the governor, then they imposed and put a lot of them in the ground and did them themselves, so let's go to I.

I'm just going to show you some really simple images. If you don't mind, go to the next slide. This is an example from the Javits Center and you may have heard the president talk about it several times, this time about the year 2100. bed spaces what you get is approximately an 11 or 12 foot square cubicle there are lights there there is a nurse call, so if you need to be able to call the nursing station there are nursing stations everywhere there are pharmacies everywhere this one started out like no colvett but then we came back and put in central oxygen so everyone had oxygen right behind their bed so we could take care of those patients and again we built this one with about a thousand pounds of treated patients, let's move on to the next one that I was with in Detroit.

She and Governor Whitmer accompanied us and told us their intention. This is what I needed to do this at the TCF center. You will see all the cubicles that are set up. This is right in the middle of the convention floor where there could be a boat show or car show and then I went in and presented different capabilities over and over again, great work by my guys at the Corps of Engineers and the rest of the mayors and the C team, all together, let's move on to the next one. It's called McCormick Place, Governor Prisco Satis said: this is our intention or what you want to do.

Mayor Lightfoot escorted us and we entered another large convention center. It actually has three thousand bed spaces, a very, very large building and we got this. one made in arelatively short time and then here's another one that helps you understand the dynamics here, go to the next one please, this is in Miami Beach and I flew to see the governor in Santos and my guys had investigated 450 beds and he said Todd, How long will it take to build us? and we said probably until April 27th and he went to see his little health people and told him how much time do you need.

They said the day we need each other is April 21st and I told my guys you don't have until the 27th. Figure out how to do it before the 20th. This is where you can't build so you can have the perfect solution that you need to have. able to obtain the essential mission, lives fulfilled are at stake here and we have to be able to do everything we can to be able to save those lives and let's go to the last here, this is what we are doing right now, Colorado, this is in Denver, another gigantic Convention Center.

You'll see all the different cubicles here to be able to just bring that 6-inch copper tube of oxygen that comes in and the whole tube extends throughout the Convention Center, six miles of tubes that can go in. to be able to make that happen and in closing I just want to be able to say that we are very focused on the Corps of Engineers getting this done, but this is all about the team, the federal team, the state team, the local team, the vice president. It's a

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and many of the people sitting here have told us how fast we need to go and it goes back to all levels of governors and mayors and we're betting that this will happen, but I want to reiterate that President Trump has called.

I three times and the secretary waits has been on the phone at least one of those times and she said what else do we need to do to set him up for success? Are there any other knobs we can turn to help you? about that equation of those 3 s, I think that if the federal government, the mayors and the cities here effectively eliminate those first s from the equation, so I can't tell you all the things that I have done in my career, this is a noble calling so we can step up and save American lives, so we're sorry, thank you very much.

There are more projects besides the ones you just identified, we thought about a week ago. we're almost limited to 26, what we're seeing is, like I said, the virus gets a vote, we're seeing some of these curves or spreading where we might have thought we only had five or six days, we actually have a couple of weeks. now all of us are seeing exactly the opposite so where we didn't think there were some and I'm not going to go into locations here but we are definitely being requested and we have six more requests just in the last In four or five days there are facilities a little bit smaller in more remote areas, but our job is still like that, if we have enough time to build, we want to go in there, do the evaluation, we work for the mayor and the city and the governor here and we can still achieve it if the mayors and the officials elected officials make a decision quickly enough on the wall on the southern border and we want to build 450 miles of wall and it is under construction.

I could give you a little help. update how we're going with the wall, so sir, I think the most important thing and you emphasize this and Secretary Esper emphasized that there are really several different priorities here, our number one priority in the Department of Defense in the Corps of Engineers is to protect the equipment. protect the force no matter what we do, we have to continue to take care of our civilians and our service

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and so every single thing that we're doing, whether we're building for the VA or for civilian construction projects or for the Department of Defense or construction on the southwest border we are doing everything we can.

I spoke to my commanders this morning. We have more than 4,000 contractors that are on the ground and we have had nothing positive. Well, knock on wood this morning, the same with my 400 employees, we are testing them, not necessarily in the most stringent tests, but with temperatures so that we can ensure that everyone is safe and that everyone is doing everything they can to do things the way correct. It's going very, very well, what we are seeing is that our contractors are extremely focused now that we have a very clear path both in the CBP program and in some Department of Defense programs, I think we are very well positioned. a very very aggressive bill but we are fine Posture we were able to meet your expectations server 450 by the end of December 2020 164 as of today 64 miles and we will do it early next year very exciting yes sir just Let's say one thing, the quality of that wall in terms of its power to stop people who shouldn't be coming into our country, so the same if you have a standard design that you trust and it works very well, I have to cook.

I have a pat on the back, Commissioner Morgan, he was very adamant and continued to make sure that he supported his agents, so now we have a design that certainly does that and then we have a phenomenal contractor. workforce that is there, my engineering staff, and it's going well, we don't see any significant problems and I think it's also important to note that we want to do this the right way, so we try to balance this with the environment. There are considerations, we are trying to do due diligence when it comes to anything that has to do with any of the affected citizens, we are trying to make sure that we are protecting all the things that we need to protect and trying to find that balance where we can both comply with the administration's directive and at the same time make sure that we are doing this so that everyone can vote and everyone is treated fairly, so I'm an engineer, I take my guys to some of these experts sitting on the bench for here and when the president says, "turn America on," which we initially did, like many other governors, you know, they closed beaches, they closed cities.

I had a meeting with my commanders this morning and as soon as we think it's safe, we go back to them. Again, I mean parking in a recreation area where you are 500 feet away from everyone in a camper is probably a low threat. I will continue to receive guidance from the administration, but we will have the green light to continue filling our recreation areas. Get up and let everyone go back and do things safely. I mean, we work for the administration, so I want to do it safely, but I don't want to be the last guy to turn things on, not at all, yeah, ma'am.

Does it say anything about whether or not there are specific efforts in communities that are most affected, like Black communities or Latino communities? Communities of color are doing the Army Corps of Engineers something that builds some type of temporary facilities for those communities, so Basically highlight what the city asked of the city and the governor, there are a couple of specific areas that certain mayors from the city have asked us again. I'm not going to go into the details, but basically, if you come in and say, "I'm very concerned about a hot spot on this side of town or a specific community here we'll do it and that's what management charges to do is all we can do." What we can do to be more responsive, we just don't ever want an ambulance to come to the back of a hospital and someone says we don't have room, let's go to the next hospital, that's where we're trying to make sure that bed space is there. available and so far everything we have built has been ahead of needs.

In other words, we were able to finish the building two or three days earlier than necessary, thank you ma'am, look at these wonderful people, that is a very good question sir. , I have a lot to build. I'm going to do it, it's really cool, thank you. He's really a great gentleman, we have a lot of wonderful people doing that kind of stuff and they really need to get recognition for the amazing work they're doing because I don't think anyone else does. can do it, none of that and that is on top of thousands and thousands of hospitals and you know that he built hospitals and 2,900 beds in New York alone and he finished it so quickly that no one saw anything like it, fortunately we have not had to use a lot of them and that's okay, that's how it is. probably better news and having to use it well because there are a lot of good things happening in New York and elsewhere, so through public-private partnerships and deregulation, the federal government has already made available immense testing capabilities, but some states must take steps to fully utilize it to date the United States has made millions more than any other country you can add them all up and we don't get caught and our numbers are almost certainly doubling monthly but almost weekly We are moving very quickly to achieve a number that no one thought possible and we will double our number of daily tests if the governor brings his state fully online through the capacity they have.

We have a tremendous capacity that already exists and we explained it to the Governor today, Mike and all the people explained it very clearly to the governor's position. They really get it now. I believe, as 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 identify potential hot spots during phase one and there are some hot spots and we have identified them and they can actually cover them very, very well when they know exactly where to go and they are told where to go and also these places. where they go and some of them are federal some of the governors didn't realize they were allowed to use federal locations they are and we have a brochure of the federal locations that we can show I think you will show that maybe We will stop it now yeah , okay, but you will see the amount of things, these are all places they can go, which is really surprising, this is just one page among many looks, these are all places, they are many places and how much is five thousand ?

So thank you very much, it's more than anyone thought, but it's already there, you have to use it, that's all, you have to use it somewhere and you are aware that some were very aware of where my administration continues as well. to support states with our massive operation to deliver masks, gowns, gloves and other vital supplies. Polish Admiral Eric and his team at FIFA are really the job they've done and Pete, what a job he's done, they're asking him to do on Easter Sunday. I'm sure everyone is fine, but they are using detailed data on supply chains to track the deployment of a billion pieces of protective equipment through private distributors every two weeks, so what we are doing is offering a figure that no one anywhere in the world can offer. delivering FEMA is working closely with dr.

Burks and distributors must prioritize providing resources where they are needed most. We're finding the location that they need to have to get to that location. We have locations that are very important to get to and get to them quickly and that's where we go, so we have a very strong priority. This pandemic reaffirms the importance of maintaining vital supply chains at home. We cannot outsource our independence. We cannot depend on foreign nations. I have been saying this for a long time if we have learned. one thing is let's do it here let's build it here let's do it here we have the best country in the world we have to start recovering our supply chains someone years ago had this crazy idea let's build everywhere and have parts let's have it delivered and make a screw for a car in a country that's very far away and let's have a fender made somewhere else and let's do this and let's do that and put it all together and I like to do it here in the US and I think we've learned a lot about that and, Especially, perhaps when it comes to pharmaceuticals, we have also conducted major military operations providing cities and states with additional medical capacity and the incredible 1,800 men and women of the Army Corps of Engineers you just met. with Todd, the work they've done is incredible, but we have nurse practitioners, we have experts in every field, I talked to Governor Cuomo, I talked to Mayor DeBlasio, I talked to a lot of the other governors, I'm friendly and I think Dee I'm friendly with almost all of them, if you can believe it, but I have become friendly with many of them.

I have a lot of respect for a lot of the governors, both Republican and Democrat, during this process, some really good people. There is some really good talent, but we are sending a lot of our medical staff, not just our construction staff like Todd Semih Knight, but a lot of our medical staff are being sent around the country to different locations. New York City New York State New Jersey I spoke with Phil today he is doing an excellent job in New Jersey, but New Jersey was greatly affected governor filmography since today this crisis began United States launched ascientific mobilization of colossal size and scale will one day be able to write the real story because no one has seen anything like it, the fake news just refuses to cover it properly, but that's okay, but people understand it and that's what matters to me.

There are now 72 active trials underway in the United States investigating dozens of therapies and treatments, and another 200 eleven are in progress. planning stages that they are having, I mean, they are literally mobilizing on therapeutics and also on vaccines, tremendous progress is being made on vaccines and I must say that on therapeutics, I mean, frankly, if I could choose, give me therapy right now because that helps people right now and we have some things that I think are working, not only do they work, but we have some amazing things that look like they could be an answer, but we will know that soon they are being tested and working 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 the immune response or transfer life-saving antibodies from the blood of recovered patients and one of the incredible things that we have seen and that Mike and I were talking.

The above is the fact that many times someone gets seriously ill because of the plague, okay? The scourge and they get better and recover. The first thing they say is I want to give my blood. That has happened. The doctors have told me that it has happened so much. I want give my blood I want to give my blood and they are doing it but Tremendous things are happening that you will see, you will see that over the weeks I think we will talk about it in the not too distant future Johnson and Johnson are very well advanced with the vaccines again, the vaccines have to be Therapies are proven for now, but there are a lot of good things happening in both, but ultimately we also hope to prevent infection through a safe and very safe vaccine and that will be great when we have that and we will have it with that.

I'd like to introduce you to Ad Magua and Brad Smith to discuss some of the incredible things that have been done that we know are really what they've been able to do in a very, very short period of time with one team. We're going to see teams that you haven't seen before and if you come, Brad, if you guys could come, could you give us a little taste of some of the teams that we have and some of the things that are going on. with proof because proof is an important word, remember that they were all fans and the reason they were all fans.

I said there's no way I can catch him and not only did we catch him, now we're the king of fans everywhere. To the world we can send them anywhere of the thousands that are made per week and they are very high quality and that was not working well, so they said we would have them test which tests are much easier that the ventilated fans are large. machines that are very complex and expensive, you need something really real, you need a group of people who really know what they are doing. We took the car line, so we took a lot of different people and now we've done that, but it used to be like that. fans fans fans now we are testing tests and I think the Admiral and I think Brad will show you some things that you have not seen and that are really very spectacular and that have to do with the tests, we are very advanced, very advanced the list that I showed .

These are places you can go if you are in the United States. 5000 different machines. 5000 are throughout the country. We also have international services, but they're all over the country, but now you'll see something that really stands out to me in terms of what they've done and they've done it under great pressure, they've come up with things under great pressure that are absolutely amazing, so Please, if you could thank them, thank you sir. President, today I want to talk about a couple of things that are a little different than what I've talked about before since early March.

We have really focused on two key concepts to prove number one to secure and expand supplies in the US market. This is really critical because we were really talking about a cottage industry with minimal suppliers that we were asking to supply us for a two week period the normal production which would be for at least a year and as simple as a swab is a swab is not a swab is not a swab and we have to be very careful that when we put something on a person and tell them that a test result is actually correct, the second component is to ensure sufficient supplies at FEMA during this time of peak disease where we could alleviate any maldistribution within the state, this is FEMA's process of requesting and shipping things and also supporting outbreaks, so for many weeks now, from my office many weeks ago, we put together a multidisciplinary team of really incredible people, the side doctor of the equation I represent the laboratory side of the equation, the high-tech side of the equation, logistics and operations, and Brad Smith is his day job as director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an incredibly important component of the Our country's CMS system building the healthcare of the future. system, but he's done a really incredible job operationally and logistically in bringing everyone together, we've focused on every piece of the supply chain that relates to testing down to the smallest detail and he'll talk to you about something of that, but that started in the second week of March with the start of an airlift because the only supplier, the main supplier of swabs at that time, was a place in Italy that was completely closed due to the outbreak in Italy, so that the admiral check-up organized check-up Air Force planes with great beer. going to Italy to bring millions of swabs back to ensure that's how it started and has expanded since then.

The second part is we've really married Matt and this has been the beauty, the logistics and the supplies for the overall strategy, two pieces of strategy number one what is the overall testing strategy and dr. Burks 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 and the most vulnerable, so that we also take into account clinical contact tracing and monitoring of those with higher risk. combined it with strategy and you've heard more than you know, I wanted to know that a small machine, this point of focus is good for certain things, but it's not going to test 5,000 people in a short period of time, so machines small, medium machines and large machines and how to contextualize them and the third thing before I give it to Brad, which is very important and really critical, is coordinating the research, the epidemiology and the FDA regulatory process and why is that so important when We started five weeks ago, if we wanted to test that many people with the technology we had, we would have used about 80% of the strategic national stockpile of PPE just for testing.

We needed an innovation that was capable of testing. the nose above with a completely different type of swab, it sounds very mundane, but if you don't do it, you won't be able to do the testing at scale that allowed us to do widespread testing last week and move to polyester swabs, which is going to open up millions of new swabs to the market, but that is a science and innovation regulatory step that had to happen simultaneously with this and with that I'll let Brad talk about some of the details that he's really guided over the last few weeks in ways that have really been surprising and incredibly impressive to me, thank you mr.

President, it is an honor of a lifetime to be here and serve in this way. I have been working with Dr. Burke'iz leadership and Admiral Gerard for the past few weeks to help increase the supply of testing in the United States, as you all know there are actually three parts that need to get going, first they need the machine, which is dr. Burks we will share more and the president spoke: we have a very large number of them throughout the United States. It's about making sure we're taking advantage of them. The second part of the tests is to make sure we have the collection. supplies to be able to collect the sample and I'll talk a little bit more about that and then the third part is making sure you have the materials that you need to support the machine and ensure that it can actually process the test once it gets to the lab I'll let dr.

Burks will talk more about the machines here in a second, but as you'll see in the United States, we have a large number and they vary in variety, so we have some very small machines that do point-of-care testing. let's say 50 to 100 tests per day, we also have other very large machines that can process several thousand tests per day in the collection supply piece. I'll talk about a couple of different types of harvesting that can be done for the nucleic system. acid tests, which are the tests that are currently done, generally you need a swab of the nose to do that, you need the swab, you need the collection tube and you also need to carry media that can be transported, so we have a wide variety of tests.

There are already a large number of swabs in the country, but we have secured an additional 30 million in production which will increase over the coming weeks. A company located in the northeast we will use title three of the DPA to help them build. for new production lines, they are currently the largest producer of swabs in the country and this will help them greatly increase their production to over 20 million additional swabs per month. A second company located in Ohio is currently the largest swab manufacturer in the country. We are helping them convert their line to make swabs into swabs.

In fact, they are increasing the production of swabs starting this week and we will increase to over 10 million products, 10 million per month, so in total it is over 30 million new. swabs will arrive in the next few weeks the second piece is in the collection tubes the collection tubes we have partnered with Oak Ridge National Lab, a Department of Energy laboratory based in Tennessee, has a unique and sophisticated investment in jek ssin mold manufacturing capacity and they are in the process of increasing that to create collection tubes and will increase to over 40 million collection tubes a month here over the next few weeks, in addition to the swabs, we believe that as testing progresses there .

Other types of tests will be done, such as syrup serology tests, and those samples have to be collected in different ways, so many times some of those tests will require a finger prick, which is why we have also obtained over 17 million lancets , which is what you use to prick your finger, so we have those available, as well as 17 million alcohol swabs, which is what you need to clean your finger before doing the prick, also, although people don't There's a lot of talk about this still, we also believe that businesses across the country may want thermometers to screen people when they come into the office, so we've gotten over 650,000 infrared thermometers that states and businesses will be able to access. access to be able to test people when they come into work, so I think we've made tremendous progress on the collection side, in addition to the collection side, we've been very focused on ensuring that the labs have what they need to process a sample in a laboratory.

You really need two things, you need something called an extraction kit and you need something called a PCR test in order to fully process a test. You need both, sometimes these things are put together and sometimes they are separated for some of our point-of-care tests, including the Abbot and Cepheid tests. come together, they are rapidly ramping up production to over 3 million of those tests per month and these are tests that didn't exist even a month ago. The second piece is on some of these large machines. They also sell complex cabins that bring together one of the large manufacturers is that they have already increased production from around 1.6 million per month to more than double and that has already happened, plus when they are joined together sometimes they are also separated and we see a significant increase in production by our manufacturers through our public-private partnerships and we are seeing several million more in the coming weeks of both the RNA extraction kit and the PCR test kit, so with that, thank you Mike Bliss, thank you, thank you, mr.

The president and I share your admiration for this extraordinary Army Corps of Engineers team. Brad. The admirals or all of them are doing an extraordinary job every day, as the president mentioned, and today we had our weekly conference call with governors from across the country, states and territories and I was able to convey to them our gratitude for the leadership that each governor of each Territory State has provided thanks to its leadership thanks to the extraordinary cooperation of the American people despite the fact that more than seven hundred and seventy thousandAmericans have contracted the corona virus and our hearts cry for the more than 41,000 Americans who have lost their lives, the truth is that as we stand here today, we are slowing the spread and, as the president reflected, we continue to see steady progress in fewer cases, even lower hospitalizations. in hot spots across the country, and we commend America's governors for their efforts in that regard, we are preserving our health care capacity as, as the Army Corps of Engineers general reflected the president's direction, we build a large number of hospitals across the country, but the utilization rate has been quite 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.

In a word, we thank governors across the country for taking decisive action to save lives. and to make a difference, I reminded them that we are all in this together and that we have a mission or a team. We spoke on last week's conference call about the guidelines for opening up America again and heard from governors across the country about the progress they are making, speaking with the governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Michigan about their continued efforts to achieve social distancing and addressed the questions they had about the needs that have already been mentioned in this presentation today, in addition to what we promised last week when we spoke with the governor on Thursday about the guidelines for opening the United States. , our team presented every state and territory governor in the country with a memorandum detailing laboratory capacity at all diagnostic testing laboratory equipment locations that can perform

coronavirus

testing.

We also provide as dr. Burks will be literally putting together a map of where these testing devices are located in a few moments, and I have to tell you, mr. President, I have been very impressed by the way that governors, as we speak, are expanding testing in their own states using these resources, our hope.is that they provide this information and by our team that we have recruited from Walter Reed that is reaching out to each of the labs in the country to find out what their needs are and encourage them to activate those testing machines to perform

coronavirus

tests that We will continue to support a state-run effort to further increase testing, but some highlights Governor Doug Ducey announced this week antibody testing for 250,000 healthcare professionals and first responders.

A partnership between the state and the University of Arizona. Talk later. today on Governor Gavin Newsom's announcement that he created a task force to test five to seven high-capacity testing centers in partnership with UC San Diego and UC Davis to increase testing and at high-capacity labs across the state from California, we heard from Governor Ron de Santos Sr. president on the state of Florida's efforts, I believe he said that at this point Florida had conducted 275,000 coronavirus tests and they are in the process of a major expansion of testing across the state with the goal of opening additional sites and utilizing the state from Florida.

National Guard to evaluate residents in nursing homes and long-term care facilities in Florida. We also recommend that all governors pay attention to the state of Florida's public health website, which has useful county-by-county information about testing for sr. President, as you said, the governors are using testing assets, they are managing and deploying these resources as they see fit and under your leadership we will continue to work very closely with them. Other governors we spoke to included Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. There are 13 new or expanded coronavirus testing sites in Michigan that your team has advocated with the Michigan Primary Care Association and we assured you that we would continue to work there as Brad and Admiral Tira are literally working around the clock to make Make sure they have the supplies to support all of that testing, as the president said.

Governor Hogan, who always begins our conference calls as president of the National Governors Association, expressed his appreciation for last week's guidelines to open America again and his thanks on behalf of all governors for the list of laboratories in each individual state, raised the issue that we had listed Department of Defense facilities that have laboratories and machines and also other federal facilities, many of which are in Maryland, and I was able to assure Governor Hogan and all the governors in the call that we will make all of those labs available to all states across the country as the need for testing capacity continues to increase, so this is another step where you see the Army Corps of Engineers where literally , seeing thousands of military doctors and nurses on the streets of New York and other cities across the country, this is another step in which, literally, as the president said from the beginning, we spare no effort and we are providing a comprehensive service . government's approach to our states as they face the corona virus outbreak, the governors continue to expand testing and we assure you that we will continue to work in every way to support your efforts to do just that and I will say it again as we said before as dr.

Burks comes over to explain what we delivered to the governor today. We told the governor once again today that, based on our best estimates, we have enough testing capacity today for every state in the United States to move to phase one if they meet the other criteria of 14 days of reduced cases and sufficient hospital capacity To prepare for any eventuality that may occur once again, we have enough testing capacity for every state in the United States to move to Phase 1, but today we assured the Governor that we will continue to work to fix it. The time to expand testing capacity, support supplies and support their efforts to encourage social distancing and the same mitigation efforts that the American people have been making and that have brought us the progress we see today across the country with that mr. president and i will let dr.

Burke describes what we distributed today. Thank you mr. vice president mr. President, I just want to show you a couple of additional slides, but also remind all Americans that we still have a significant number of cases both in the Boston area and throughout Massachusetts in Chicago, so that our hearts really go out to those cities as we Continue fighting the coronavirus and the consequences in hospitalization for all healthcare providers who are on the front lines. We wanted these to be just an illustration of the different types of equipment that exist and describe them as low speed but fast. high speed turnaround time and taking three or four hours to do a hundred or more tests, so the equipment varied between those different ones, that's why there are 5,000 of them, as the president pointed out, on this list we wanted every governor and every state and Health Laboratory director have a clear understanding of the total capacity within the state, both in terms of capacity and where additional technical assistance and supplies may be available, and we are proud to include federal laboratories on that list because the Army and the VA have stepped up.

We have been working every step of the way to provide support in both testing and care, and we have met many military

members

on the front lines and I am sure that the military would offer their facilities to the governor of Maryland or any governor who wanted to use them to expand on the testing, so on the next slide I'm going to go through it very quickly so that each governor not only receives the Excel spreadsheet with a complete list of the equipment and the zip code of the location in the lab so that they can really create a mosaic . of high and low speed equipment laboratories together to meet the needs of their customers depending on whether they are self-service or hospital needs.

This is what Florida looks like on the next slide. This is what Louisiana looks like on the next slide. Maryland with significant capacity. next slide Virginia with significant capacity across the state next slide New York obviously a lot of capacity in New York City with overlapping capacity it's important to know where this is because then they have saliva and the labs can support each other when they need increased capacity next slide This is New Jersey, next slide, Pennsylvania, next portion, Massachusetts, next slide, Ohio, next slide, Oklahoma, next slide, Washington, next slide. I think it's Wyoming, so we wanted to show both the states that have large populations and the states that have lower populations, you can see that across the board. the number of machines matches their population and we are working with the Walter Reed group at the American Society of Microbiologists and all the lab directors to really create a network of understanding what the current capacity is, what the capacity can be and how the federal government The government can support them in developing their strategies linked to the overall federal testing strategy, as outlined in our guidelines.

Thank you, Mr. The chair of public health at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles today released a report suggesting that the penetrance of the virus is nearly 40 times greater than previously thought, affecting about 442,000 people. in Los Angeles County. may have been affected, which suggests two things: It suggests that there are many more people who could be spreading the virus, but it also suggests that the case fatality rate is more in line with the 2017-2018 flu than what we have seen. in other areas of the world, but I wonder if you have seen what your thoughts may be, so we are looking at all the studies very carefully and I think you will remember the last three weeks that I have been speaking. about the level of asymptomatic spread and my concern about symptomatic spread because with flu and other diseases, when people are sick, it's easy to do contact tracing when people are not sick and shedding viruses, you have to have a very different approach, a very different sentinel surveillance approach. of the sentinel monitoring approach that we described in the guidelines and that's why the guidelines took it very seriously.

We knew it was unique for respiratory diseases, but it was because we were very concerned about the level of asymptomatic and, if you remember, we used to talk about Younger age groups may have more asymptomatic disease and their asymptomatic disease may decrease with older groups. age and their symptomatic disease may increase with age groups. This remains our working hypothesis. We don't have data right now to support that, but it's these types of studies that help us know that New York, Detroit and other cities are very interested and we also want to support them in testing for frontline first responders and healthcare workers. health because we believe his exposure may have been the greatest. we don't want to do and I'm just going to do another 30 seconds to prove these tests are not one hundred percent, they are sensitive or specific and I'm going to go over this over and over again so if you have one percent of your population is infected and you have a test that is only 99 percent specific, which means that when you find a positive result, 50 percent of the time it will be actually positive and 50 percent of the time it won't be, and that's why we're really asking people to start testing among first responders and health care workers and you may have had the most exposure because that's where testing will be most reliable and then when we have the luxury we can go to broader and broader communities , but this has been the fundamental question to begin with and it has been persistent and we will emphasize again to the American people, this is a highly contagious virus and we do not know just by looking at someone whether they have pre-existing conditions or not, so all of us in terms of protect others we must continue to make all the recommendations to ensure that when we are in an asymptomatic state we are not passing the virus to others well, the governor of South Carolina announced today that they are going to open some stores with restrictions. but they just told my colleague Natasha Chen that they haven't met that criteria in the White House guidelines on the downward trajectory for 14 days, so shouldn't stores reopen today?

We have asked all governors to follow the guidelines just as we did. I have asked all Americans to follow the guidelines set by the president, but each governor can decide for himselfEven if you have reached specific guidelines and specific areas. I had a question, I think on Saturday about Jacksonville and its beaches, so I spent about Five hours going through all the states' websites and I will tell you that the Florida Department of Health's website is extraordinary and this is what every Department Health should have because when you go to that website you can see that most of the cases are in South Florida. in the Miami Fort Lauderdale Broward county area and if you look in Jacksonville, they had less than 20 cases a day and less than 800 in four weeks, so these are the guys when you inform the public and give them the information they need, so I can make decisions together with the local government and the governors, so I'm not going to say specifically with South Carolina because I don't know their specific website right now and I don't talk about data unless I've seen it myself, but We know from Jacksonville that they had less than 20 cases per day and that's how we need to start informing the community.

These websites are critical. It is by zip code and by county. You can see cases. You can see cumulative cases. They can see new cases. In the cases, they can see the hospitalizations, they can see the mortality, they can see the mentality age groups, and they can see where they are in each test. This is how we have to inform the American public and this is where the American public will develop trust in each of their counties. local governments there are enough complicated tests right now to move to phase one, but what about phase two or phase three?

Are there enough machines or not cartridges? Are there enough Regents right now for the kind of real thing the administration is envisioning taking place? next month or two so you can see the current schematic of the machine and you can see that both gentlemen have prepared to get everything ready for Phase Two and they are preparing it now for what we will need in the future and I think that is what that they saw with the ventilators that is what you are seeing with the PPE it is not just for today it is for tomorrow and it is our federal planning it is not only for this moment it is to make sure that we meet the needs of this instance but we are planning for 30 and 60 and within of 90 days I would agree with dr.

Burks completely, we are ready right now to enter phase one and we are increasing all of our capabilities across the board, not only to achieve what is necessary for Phase Two, but 2 X 3 X 4 X so that we are absolutely ready when the nation is ready to enter those phases, we are going to the maximum. You understand that some people don't want to do as much testing, but we go all out, we go to the outer limits and I think that's the way Jeff should probably be. go ahead mr. president to return to a topic that opens with oil, US crude oil futures today fell below zero when it is negative, yes, like interest rates go negative, does that make you want to see Saudi Arabia, Russia and OPEC besides doing more?

It has to do with the short sellers, a lot of that has to do if you look a month into the future, I think it's $25 or $28 a barrel, so they caught a lot of people, they caught and there's a lot of people who didn't. . happy because they got caught so if you take a look you will see. It is more of a financial issue than an oil situation, but I think that in a month or so, in other words, it goes down a little, it is at 25 and 28 dollars per barrel, so which is largely a financial constraint and they came under pressure.

Saudi Arabia. and other countries we've already done that where I'm sorry, Randy is cutting, Russia is cutting Mexico and OPEC cuts plus they called OPEC plus additional states are cutting and you know the problem is no one drives the car anywhere in the world. world essentially. Factories in 184 countries have closed and companies are closed and all of a sudden we had a lot of energy to start with oil in particular, we had a lot and then all of a sudden they lost 40 to 50 percent of their market, so which will just increase, so it will recover and the energy business will be strong, but they cut it, it could be 20 million barrels, but let's say 15, and that was between Russia and Saudi Arabia, but this had to do with the contraction and It was a very strong pressure a lot of people got more at this time well they have to do more for the market to be honest look the same here if the market is the way it is people will slow it down will they stop?

That will be automatic. and that's happening, yes, with respect to criminal justice reform in these SBA loans. I got an email this morning from a guy in the northwest who owns a supply business and has a felony on his record, non-violent felony in the last five years, which is according to SBA guidelines. he makes you ineligible for one of these PPP loans, so now he has to lay off 50 employees, many of whom are felons trying to return to society. I don't think there's anything in the Cares Act that would restrict you from giving me your name. of the company and its name I will have it reviewed yes, I will make it a friend of yours not a friend of I know someone who commented that blue called you to tell you that he is a criminal and why he got along or that he wanted to apply for a loan the SBA and I couldn't and I wondered how that square dot if your name I look into it I would like to look into that okay, it's these companies that open up and have employees that come back to work and get sick well. companies will be responsible which companies are you talking about manufacturing companies companies get sick well.

I'll give you an answer to that. I'll give you a legal answer to that when we look into it, but we had tried to take responsibility away from these companies. I just don't want that because we want businesses to open and open some, but I'll give you a legal opinion on that. I'll give it to you, well, that's what I'm saying. I will give you a legal opinion. Nobody is arguing, no. but now we will have some business executive who has expressed concern to you about that, no, it's not at this time, but we're going to look because they've talked about general liability, so I'll give you a forest-specific answer, okay, go ahead .

When he was speaking before, he was talking about the PPP agreement and mentioned that yes, they are in the first stimulus package even though he had announced that he knows the price of oil well. I know, do you know that there is a negative course like $7 that no one has heard of? Negative oil before, but it is very short term. In his opening remarks he talked about the PPP deal and then mentioned the 75 million barrels of oil that he had previously not said he wanted to buy and that he was unable to obtain financing. For that in the first agreement, some questions are fine, but the price you are talking about does not need financing, they pay.

You see, that's true, if you can get it, my first question is: are you asking for something funny at the very least? If you let people store it, then we will store it, use it as storage and charge for it, but people desperately need storage and we have massive storage under the interim PPP deal-seeking requirement oil requirement if we could buy it for nothing. We're going to take everything we can get, the only thing I like more than that is getting paid to take the oil, but that's a short-term restriction, you understand, so I don't think you'll see it, but No, we I would like to have Congress, this is a good time to buy oil and we would like to see Congress approve it so that instead of just storing it for the big guys, usually the big companies, because I think we have 75 million gallons.

Right now, the capacity is a lot, we've been building it up for a period of time, but that's a lot, 75 million barrels, so we're going to ask permission to buy it or we're going to store it one way or the other. another one will be full, okay, please finish, we'll go fine, sometimes including Senator Cramer calling you, that stops the road right now, is that you can do that under Section 232, is that something I would look at, I heard it just like it listen. I'm walking into the room, we certainly had a lot of oil, so I'll take a look.

Okay, yes, please, first, when trying the second on the SBA loan program, will you invoke or actually invoke the DPA to bind that company that you mentioned? To increase production, we use it, we raise it and I've used it a lot, but we use it and then sometimes all you have to do is see it coming. Do you want to talk about that? I think this is so. I don't think any of us knew much about the DPA, but they're kind of four sides to the DPA where you force a company to do something, but there's a second side that's actually a help to the company that's doing it.

We are talking. about what it has done, it has done everything it can to support this effort and has increased production. I talk to them on the phone several times a day. This is the raised hand. This is the government coming in and saying, how can we help you expand your lines? There is no there is no asynchrony at all, so this is the good side of the DPA, which is exactly what these heroic small American companies need, they don't need to be forced, it's all in their employees, so today we were drinking cider . The people who are on site with that company finalizing what their capital projections are going to be so they can accelerate these four additional lines that talked about the company will then deliver a white paper to the Department of Defense that will then help move the process forward, but it's actively in the works, I think the need is enormous, but from March 24 to March 21, the administration promised 27 million tests by the end of March.

So far, approximately four million people have been tested, so where are the other 23 million tests? If they materialize, are they in process? They will help us understand that discrepancy, so since I was the one who said that, let me explain where we are, where we were, so I got my information, it was correct information about the actual tests that are on the market, so if we want to use those metrics , there have been over 40 million listings on the market, but we have a problem from start to finish that we needed to address and that's what we've been dealing with with the conveyance swabs if we don't.

Get people to use the machines the same way Dr. Burks is talking about we have some of our main platforms that are only used ten percent there may be a lot of tests on the market and those are fine numbers but if the machines are not using them and that If they are not organized at that level, then they are not being used to the maximum and, if many of those millions of tests had already been carried out, I think Ambassador Birx has estimated that we have another million tests. a week alone on a platform that could be done if the machines were used more fully.

Yes, I'm going for ours and the vice president has said this, Mr. Smith said there will be enough testing for phase one. The question is what standard of testing you now have the capacity to meet. Are these just people who come just because they want to test me? What is the standard here? They are the guidelines, but I tried to be a little specific about this on Friday and we all tried to be number one. It is necessary? screen everyone who has symptoms and you need to overtest because we're talking about any symptom that would be consistent with kovat, and there's a wide range of symptoms that you want to screen for and you want to overtest and we talked about the rough metric with the ambassador.

Birx is fully supported because we know this is a good metric and you want to get about one positive for every 10 tests, so you know you have more than a second sample and this is a really important part of the strategy because there are so many people. are asymptomatic, there's no way you can test enough people to get one asymptomatic out of every 300 people in the population, so the strategy was offered with ambassador birx and, you know, I talked to epidemiologists from around the country and they said: wow! I wish it had occurred to me that is to really focus on the vulnerable population where we know that the asymptomatic rate could be much higher than the rest of the population and we are going to focus on this is what my office does and during normal times, focusing on underserved populations particularly. in urban centers and ITER urban areas they have a higher rate due to overcrowding, they cannot telework, they are subject to many comorbid conditions. nursing homes, we all know nursing homes and there is both symptomatic and asymptomatic spread and finally some of our indigenous populations in the Indigenous Health Service, so this is a very, very important layer that most of the models and people don't talk because that's where we're going to detect asymptomatic transport and when you do that that's when you focus on track and trace if we have enough testing right now to get everyone into Phase One why the governor Maryland has to get half a million tests from South Korea?

I don't know what he's doinggovernor of Maryland in South Korea, but there is excess capacity every day if you wanted to send 30 or 40,000 tests to LabCorp and ask what could be done, what could be done tomorrow, they needed to get their testing capacity up and running. I think we're seeing it across the country than in the states. that have been most affected their capacity none of their capabilities that they are testing far exceeds that of South Korea and they have been able to do it in a relatively simple way. I don't know what the Maryland governor we spoke to today said.

I didn't mention that today we were on the governor's call today we talked to Governor Hogan today I will follow up because I heard that today there was an announcement that he had acquired some tests from overseas maybe we could re-upload the slide that showed the number of facilities only in the state of Maryland and part of our process and I don't know when the governor made the order from South Korea I wouldn't begrudge him or his health officials for ordering testing, but the capacity of all the different laboratories and a number of machines that are located in Maryland, part of what we were communicating today, including federal facilities.

NIH is in Maryland, there are Department of Defense facilities and what we assured the governor at that time and we are confident that the governor will open. all of those facilities, but John, getting back to your point, there was another element of that, which is the phase 1 trial and I can't, I can't really describe it as well as the doctors here, but it's the contact tracing piece in the that we really believe. which states that they meet the criteria of 14 days of case decline and adequate hospital capacity if they test people who have symptoms and if they deploy resources to vulnerable populations and nursing homes and other designated vulnerable populations where we believe there is a threat of serious results. the corona virus is real, so today we also informed the governor that we will be deploying CDC teams to every state and territory in the country to assist them in contact tracing.

Now Governor Jared Polis raised a very good point about the legislation that the president is currently working on. negotiating on Capitol Hill, he recommended that we make sure that the new bill that has some twenty-five billion dollars in testing resources also covers the costs of contact tracing by states. We assure you that our administration strongly supports that we communicated that to the Secretary of the Treasury and the rest of our negotiating team and we will continue with that, but we were able to tell each of the governors that we will deploy teams that we think of 10 or 12 to start from the CDC to reside in all of our states and territories to monitor and work with contractors and others to do the type of contact tracing so that people who are not feeling well and who have the coronavirus can be tested, be vigilant and monitor your vulnerable populations and, when you encounter a case, have a team in place. ground that can do immediate contact tracing and testing and that is how we restrict and contain the spread of the corona virus during phase one and frankly it is the beginning of the structure of how we will contain the corona virus in the future and that is Maryland, right? there, I could have saved a lot of money, but okay, no, I don't think you need to go to South Korea if they can't need you to get some knowledge.

It would have been helpful, well, SBA loans, do you think they are? It's true that big corporations, major institutions like the Root Spritz restaurant chain and Harvard University apparently got a lot of money under the Cares Act, money that was supposed to eat into their market for small business owners. I'm not getting anything that's for sure, I didn't get any, we'll look at individual things and some people will have to send it back if we think it's inappropriate. He really changed, that money goes to people who need it. Well, they are doing it by excellent professionals, the banks do it and, as you know, the community banks all over the country, that's what they do, they lend money and they're supposed to do it not only according to criteria but also according to agree with what we think is right, but if someone got something. which we think is inappropriate, we will bring it back, well, good point please, there are reports that you are personally negotiating with President Moon on the terms of reducing US exports. forces on the Korean Nina and that there are four scenarios involved, can you confirm that and if so, what is the desired outcome?

Well, I think South Korea had a great conversation with President Moon, he's a friend of mine. I congratulate you on a wonderful electoral victory. I was very happy about that, as you know recently, no, we are negotiating for President Moon and South Korea to help us monetarily because, as you know, we have thirty-two thousand troops there, which varies from twenty-eight to thirty-two thousand in the South. Korea and we believe that before I came on board they paid very little or nothing, so we are defending a wonderful nation, a nation that we have excellent relations with, but we ask them to pay for a large percentage of what we are doing.

Fair enough, so it's not a question of reduction, it's a question of whether they will contribute to the defense of their own nation. We are defending nations that are very rich. South Korea is a very rich nation. They make our televisions. They make boats. They manufacture everything. I give them great credit, we've been advocating for them for many, many decades, as you know, for over eight decades and I went to them last year. I went to them and now they're paying a billion dollars a year. and I went to him again and I said look, I'll come back because that's just a fraction and again the relationship is excellent but it's not a fair relationship.

We renegotiated the trade agreement and made it a much more equitable agreement than it was in the past. It was a terrible deal, Hillary Clinton did it, it was a terrible deal, the New Deal is a much more equitable deal that concerns trade, but the military, I mean, we are paying the military to defend another nation that has eight thousand population. five hundred miles away and they're not the only ones. By the way, I'm talking to you, as you know, I won't go into names, but I've done this. Nobody talks about it, but I think it's appropriate.

I think the taxpayer. of our country's taxpayers want to hear these things and now they have offered us a certain amount of money and I have rejected it. I just said you know we're doing a tremendous service, we have a wonderful feeling. and a wonderful relationship between us, but we have to be treated equally and fairly, and that's where we are now and I can't tell you what's going to happen, but we'll know pretty soon, but I congratulate the president, who is a friend of mine , I congratulate President Moon on his excellent victory. New York's governor, along with the National Governors Association, have called in the past for unrestricted aid as many state and local governments see their revenues decline.

Are you open to the idea? of aid without restrictions or do you want them to be pandemics, but we are going to talk about that in phase four, as you know, which will begin very soon and which has to do with infrastructure, hopefully infrastructure because this country needs infrastructure, we spend all this money. and the Middle East eight trillion dollars eight trillion trillion with the T dollars in the Middle East but if you have a pothole and a road somewhere they don't want you to spend the money to fix it how stupid we have been in this country how stupid we have been and that's changing rapidly, you know you've seen that including things like negotiating with friends, but when we're helping friends, a friend should reimburse us for the cost.

I mean why should we defend nations for free defending a nation for free now I get a billion dollars a year and where will we get they offered us a lot more than that but I turned it down so that's where we are as far as the another, look, we have To be smart in this country, we have all been taken to the Fleener and I mean, with the allies, not just with the enemies, with the allies we have been frankly, the allies have taken us much more than the enemies, the enemies that don't. We do not do business with the allies that we do business with and who made these agreements, who made these contracts, in many cases we did not have a contract as we did not have a contract, we did not have a trade agreement with China, they came in and took out five hundred billion of dollars a year for many years, but between two hundred and five hundred and fifty billion dollars a year of our furs now we made this big trade deal, unfortunately that was several months ago and it's a big deal, they're paying 25 percent on two hundred fifty billion dollars, a lot of things happen, they will have to buy goods worth two hundred and fifty billion dollars, including agricultural products, up to fifty billion dollars, so there are a lot of good things.

It happened but then what happened with China was the plague hit us right, the plague that came after this was long after we signed the agreement to appease us so I'm not happy about that okay John please ask them about the virus itself as it happens. From patient to patient in mutations over time, have you seen any indication that it has become less virulent? Have you detected any signs that it has become better? That's a great question because we see it all the time, particularly with RNA viruses, to really trace it is an adaptation to humans.

I mean, you're really asking if this virus is becoming more adapted to humans and more able to spread or is it becoming less adapted to humans and less able to spread. We have no indication that he is any less capable. spread and we will have good analyzes that will come from, obviously, Roosevelt had his incident with a virus outside of the United States and we will be able to look at those parameters and the Department of Defense and the military have done a great job in really ensuring the health of the sailors, but also ensuring that this cut, these questions can actually be asked and answered.

We have extraordinary molecular evolutionary biologists in this country, all over the United States, and they are looking at this very question and a lot of the work. that we have been doing and you will see a lot of work with testing in New Mexico and testing in other states. They have extraordinary molecular biologists who are evolutionary biologists and you will be able to see that in both. in New Mexico, which may have lower transmission rates and compare that to New York, which has maybe 10 times more transmission, but it's an excellent question and it's something that we may be ants from what we see in the United States.

John was, where did he? that comes from not, sorry, impressed, you know, when Senator Schumer wrote a letter a couple of months ago and said you should use admirals and generals. I said well, that's where first of all, our vice presidents were amazing, but we have the admirals, we have the generals and I was talking to the admiral inside right before we left. I said, did you go to Annapolis? He said no, sir. I said, "Oh, what a shame, what a shame, where did you go?" He said I went. to Harvard, oh, that's fine too, I guess so, so you went to Harvard, he was a great student at Harvard, he's doing fantastic work and this young gentleman was very, very successful, but he wanted to help the country he wanted to come to country and We appreciate it very much, it was a great success, a great success, let's do it here and there next, okay we are ready, no one speaks better when you meet tomorrow with Governor Cuomo that you mentioned, is there a reason why he will come until the end? down here I don't know what he loved you and believe it or not we get along, yesterday he was very generous in particular they said we made a phenomenal deal, I don't have anyone who wrote that, but he said that and I appreciate it because it's not about from me, it's about these people and thousands behind Mike and the Admiral and all the other people who are working with us, I mean, and you say look, I don't understand when I see the polls and the approval ratings for the job, I want say, this group should get a 95, it really should and we're really helping the governor a lot and the governor calls me the ones I know or the Republicans, but the ones I know and they say it's amazing the work they're doing. doing again, not me, the work that this group is doing and you sit here I'm just watching from the corner and I'm just saying guys, it's something incredible when you see the general get up from the general seminar and talk about boom boom boom you don't see that You don't see that when you listen to the Admiral talk about testing, how good it is and yet people don't like to say it, but remember a month ago it was all about ventilators, so we fixed it. don't listen to ventolin where is the ventilator Jeff?

You haven't asked about fans recently. What's going on? What about the fans? We are helping other countries now because they cannot have that, it is very difficult to obtain and it takes time.a long time. For years, it is incredible the work that they have done, that our people have done and also the private companies, you know, you talk about the act, we do not like to use their less, many times we have to do it just because the fact that it has it gives you everything what you need so you know we don't want to embarrass any of the companies but we have used it on several occasions and it worked but it works just as well before you have to use it because they I don't want to embarrass myself and I don't want to embarrass them because they have made a great job please go ahead no I think behind you I promise I can't I can't lie so every time we'll catch you.

Next, well, my question, I have two questions, the first is about testing. You talked about the idea that first it was ventilators, now it's testing. It sounds like you're possibly implying that talking about testing is a personal attack. Can you explain why you think? talking about testing is a personal attack since access to testing has been an issue for a long time. Even today there is a bipartisan outcry that there is not enough evidence. Why do you think this is a personal attack on you? Well, it's not bipartisan, it's mostly partisan. but more importantly than most of Florida, it is incorrect.

You have to have the experts look at these maps. I mean, you have maps with so many different locations in the case of, for example, Governor Hogan, that I didn't really know who he really was. very obvious to anyone listening to today's call, even though they weren't supposed to be on it. I'm sure some of you or representatives if he really didn't know about the federal labs, would say that's correct? He didn't know, he didn't know and Mike doesn't like to get involved in these things. He's less controversial than me, but he didn't know it and if he didn't know it, he would have been happy.

We've done a very good job testing now, that being said, we have tests coming up maybe over the next couple of weeks that will blow a hole in staying away. Now a lot of people love the Abbot test, so do you know the Abbot? The test is great because it's stupid, they touch it, they do it in five minutes. The problem is it doesn't do numbers as big as the big machine, but the big machine takes a day, it takes a day and a half, you know, with delivery. everything else, but we have tremendous testing capacity, remember this, we have tested more than any country in the world, in fact, I think I read that if you add up all the other countries in the world, we have tested more, but remember this.

We're dealing with politics, we're dealing with something called November 3rd of this year. Do you know what November 3 represents? You know this better than anyone in the room. November 3rd of this year is called a presidential election, no matter what you do. No matter where we go, no matter how well we do, no matter what, if I come up with a tablet and you pick it up and this plague goes away, they're going to say Trump did a terrible, terrible, terrible job because that's his bit, that It's the political bit that they know what a great job we've done, but having said all that, there's also something that someone could talk to if they want, but I don't want to bore you with it, not everyone thinks we should do so much testing. you don't need that much we are talking about the maximum but with that and you will see it in the coming weeks.

I think that in the next few weeks or sooner we will have a test, if it comes out, it will revolutionize everything. In the testing world it will be something really special, so I don't see it as personal at all. What I am saying is that it is something that is not fair to thousands of people who have done good work in tackling the coronavirus. Early on I interviewed someone who said his family got sick and went to a funeral in mid-March. He maybe he accepted mainly because the president didn't take it seriously and said that if the president had had a mask, if he was saying we. should stay home then I would have stayed well relatives and just when he said that his relatives were sick and because they were what they were listening to and do you feel like it or are you worried that they will downplay the importance of the virus? maybe it made people sick and many people love to Trump, a lot of people loved me, it seemed right all the time.

I guess I'm here for a reason, you know, as far as I know, I want to and I believe we're going to win. Again, I think we're going to win in a landslide, but just so you understand, you're talking about March, right? And yet, excuse me, excuse me, I know I understand, and yet, in January, a certain date, you know the date better than I do, we put it. in a band in China where China can't enter and before March we put a ban in Europe where Europe can't enter so how can you say I wasn't taking it seriously?

Do you know I put a ban on China, before anyone died in this country, I put on a band and then you tell me that Nancy Pelosi was going to have a street party in Chinatown in San Francisco at the end of February, that's a month later, and then they tell me it's just a political talking point, but you feed it because you're too good a reporter to let that happen you're really a good reporter, you're too good a reporter to let that happen remember this, so at the end of January I put together a band.

The people who were in that room will tell you that I think there were 21 people. I was the only one in the whole room who wanted to do it. Fortunately, I was the one who counted for that purpose. We put a band together because I was reading things wrong about China, the Organization. World Health Organization should have told us but I was reading it with or without them they should or shouldn't they didn't have to do is read it they didn't even have to be there but they tried to cover up China's global health I covered up China but no, no, wait, but you can't say this anymore.

I put up a band, in other words, I stopped China from coming to the United States. I stopped Europe from entering the United States long before the March date you're talking about. so people should say that i acted very early that was a very difficult thing to do to do that was a very difficult thing to do i didn't want to do that but i did it because i thought and doctor ouchy said that by doing it president trump saved tens of thousands of lives, so I took it very seriously in February and March, and there are some that I don't know, I don't know about rallies, I really don't know about rallies, I know one thing that I haven't left.

I made it to the White House in months, except for a brief moment to provide comfort on a wonderful ship. In March, I held a demonstration. Sorry, I held a demonstration. I held a demonstration. Let me tell you in January, when I did this, but practically no. cases and no deaths and yet I put it like that, how could I not why Nancy Pelosi was right? Nancy Pelosi is

hold

ing a street fair, she wants a street fair in San Francisco and Chinatown to prove, you know what the purpose was to prove that No problem, many other politicians did the same.

I want to demonstrate while I don't, of course, no, no, no, no. People are surprised at how early I acted and I acted early, that being said, it's very hard to say let's close. the largest economy in the history of the world I shut down myself and everyone else who works with me and 300 and about 350 million people built the largest economy in the history of the world better employment numbers better stock market numbers better numbers in virtually every category, even good manufacturing numbers, the previous administration said the manufacturer was dead for our country, even great manufacturing numbers, and you know what I did, someone came into my office and said, sir, could you having to close the Academy.

I have to shut down the country, but you know what I'm telling you: we will rebuild it and we will rebuild it better and it will go faster than people think. I built it once I built it a second time please mr. president that we have, returning to the theme of friendship and bipartisanship, Americans, with the exception of Pelosi Schumer and even Romney, Americans have seen an unprecedented chapter on bipartisanship in cooperation in the political landscape in a personal capacity, which has been the most significant sign that his relationship with the Democrats. I think it's a great question because there is bipartisanship.

Look, we're getting the Paycheck plan, it's already 350 billion, it was passed essentially unanimously and we have another 250, which I think you'll find out is going to be a higher number. that, okay, I won't say it now because I don't know if they've published it or not, but it will end up being more than 250 billion and this will go to small businesses and workers and these are really bipartisan plans it's a great thing that is happening so I think the fact that we can do all of this in a bipartisan way is great now that the tax cuts that the Republicans did we didn't have any help from the Democrats so you can't say that's bipartisan but all of this take back our country and you know Nancy Pelosi has been very unpleasant, you know, wasted a lot of time when an impeachment hoax was a total hoax it went nowhere, but that wasn't good and Schumer, I guess it's the same thing, but he kind of accepted it, he just did what he was supposed to do and it didn't go very well, but you know, that wasn't appropriate, it was a bad thing for our country, but it was okay, I mean.

They understand the game, they have a little bit of a majority, so they say, let's do something and try to shake it up, but they wasted a year, they wasted a lot. We could have been doing things that would have been great for our country. They could have done it. When analyzing China, they should have considered China as an example. A lot of people blame the Democrats for losing all that time because it was during that period of time, as you know, that it was being fostered, but I think we've had a great spirit of bipartisanship in some ways, I wouldn't say we're going to set records in everyone, but things are happening that are very good, the country is uniting and I will tell you how people are uniting, how people are. really coming together I think you will find that our country is much more unified.

I think the press, the media ferment a lot of this, a lot of anger. I really think it fosters tremendous anger, for example. They will ask me a tremendous answer. someone's hostile question and then I will respond in a hostile manner, which is appropriate, otherwise you will look foolish, otherwise you will appear to just walk off stage and bow your head. I can't do that, you know, I just can't do that. but a lot of these questions that are asked from certain networks are so hostile and there is no reason for it there is no reason for it we are in a war this is a second world war this is a world war 1 we are by the way The war essentially ended because of a plague that was one of the worst that ever lost almost a hundred million people, but we are in a big war and I will say one thing because I think it's important, the last person I did it early, but it was the last person who wanted to close one of the great economic companies, you can't call it an experiment, but I guess everything in life is an experiment, so they are experiments, but one of the great economic stories in history, I'm the last person. that they wanted to do it but we did the right thing because if we didn't we would have had a million people a million and a half people maybe 2 million people dead now we're going towards 50 I'm listening or 60,000 people, one is too many, I always say one is too much, but we're going towards 50 or 60,000 people, which is the lowest number, as you know, the low number was supposed to be a hundred thousand people, we could end up between fifty and sixty, okay?

It's horrible if we hadn't done what we did we would have had I think a million people maybe two million people maybe more than that and if you look, there's one country in particular that decided to improvise, let's move on, they're being inundated. with death now, if you look at some of the hospitals where one of them I met when I was a kid in Queens and I'm looking at the bodies lying in the hallways being taken to refrigerated trucks, the trucks that these huge trucks go into are multiply those times. 10 is not sustainable and many of the people who have this theory, oh, let us know, maybe we could have gotten over it.

I was someone who would have loved to have done that, but it wouldn't have been sustainable, you can. Not losing a million people, that's more than this, almost double what we lost in the Civil War. I use it as a guide. In the Civil War 600,000 people died, so it's not sustainable, but it could have been much more than a million people, I mean, if you took a very conservative estimate, 500,000 people is not acceptable. It's kind of the right analogy, so I mean I see it all. the time for my friends for people for whom I have a lot of respect well we could have done this we could have done and remember this when we say 50 and they compare 50 with the 35 of the flu because it is an average of 35 36 thousand over a 10-year, There are many who would think that, but we are not talking about the flu, that's what happens, we don't lock ourselves in.our units, we don't lock ourselves in our apartments, we don't move, we don't touch anyone and I'm just saying you know the world, in this case we are and we are still going to lose between 50 and 60, but if we kept this in a normal way, which is really the only standard that you can compare it to flow because that was normal, you get on a plane, you go to Florida, you go to Texas, you go wherever you go, but in this case, if we did nothing, the number would not be fifty to sixty thousand, the number would be a million dead people would be a million five a million to maybe 700,000 would have been a number because because and it's very important because I see so many things oh well, you know, if they can, You can't compare it because to tell you what the people of this country what they've done they've gone out of their way what they had the way they've lived it's not it's not great it's terrible maybe the first three days and they're all Suddenly, you see what's going on, they want to move on and I fully understand that, but I'm just saying this: If we had done that, we would have lost between a million and over two million people now with all the death that we've seen and 50 or 60,000 people are headed right now, it's 40, but 50 or 60 thousand people probably over 54 are there to see, but that's with our guard up, if we let our guard down and just said, okay, let's just keep this open, we would have lost millions of people.

You imagine? Look how bad it looks now when you look at the bodies, when you look at Hart Island in New York, where they have the mass grave and all the things you see. Imagine if we had let our guard down, if we had done nothing and just said, "Let's write it", it wouldn't have been sustainable in any way, it would have been an atrocity, so we've done the right thing, we really have. the right thing and the people who have worked so hard and dangerously, I'll tell you again, I say it, but I saw those doctors, nurses and medical staff running to those hospitals and they don't even have that equipment on, forget about the equipment, whether it's a great team or not and we are bringing the best team in the world, but they are running with everything open and they are pushing, I mean the work, they are like warriors, the work that they are doing, but if we did If you didn't make the moves that We did, you would have had a million, a million and a half, two million people dead, so multiply that by 50 that you're talking about, you would have had 10, 20, 25 times more people dead than all the people we've been observing. that's not acceptable 50,000 is not acceptable it's so horrible but can you imagine multiplying that by 20 or more is not acceptable so that's a very good question.

I appreciate it, see you tomorrow. see you tomorrow thanks everyone