He added that states with spiking cases should pause reopening efforts as opposed to reinstituting a complete shutdown. Welcome, i am steve clemons, editor at large of the hill. And the mask i am taking it off now, but i want to send a message that we believe in mask wearing here. More than ever before, our collective health is at stake. As we worked furiously to quell a Global Pandemic that has taken 500,000 lives nobly, the coronavirus locally, the the coronavirus has now we have an opportunity and a responsibility to fix those gaps and make sure innovation is accompanied by prescript and for affordability and access. I would like to thank our sponsor for this for their support of todays summit. We have a fantastic lineup of speakers of todays event, which will take place in three parts. The first hour, which we will kick off with an interview with dr. Anthony fauci, will examine prescriptions from the pandemic. If shaking hands is our past and immunity passports for our foreseeable future, are we also exercising expertise and money to fend off future attacks . The First Responders of this covid era to focus on healing and how can we build sustainability and build capacity with our health the second band, from 1 15 to reimagineeastern, health care alex azar, the health and Human Services secretary, join me at the top of that band, and then you get another break and i get another break. The third and final session will race,a light on affordability, and access, issues that have become a matter of life and death. My main guess in that hour will be cdc director robert redfield, a guest previously on my coronavirus report at the hill. You will not want to miss any of the sessions. Before we get underway, a few housekeeping notes. You can tweet us at thehill health. If your question is short and great, i have asked my colleague katie to walk up and give them to me. We will be monitoring those. We are broadcasting live and we will be taking your questions come as i just mentioned. As with any livestream, you could experience occasional trouble. Refresh the page and in most cases that fixes the problem. Good luck with that. My first guest today, dr. Anthony fauci has probably not had a good nights rest since the begin of the year. The country and the world continue to look to him for counsel, expertise, and hope in the fight against covid19. We are honored to have you in our midst, dr. Fauci. Global500 thousand deaths, more than 100 30,000 are from the United States. As you the state of play see it, in the most candid terms, from the United States right now . Dr. Fauci thank you for having me. We still have a significant problem. As you know, we have been hit harder than any country in the world, and what has happened is that we peaked and then came down to a level, instead of going all the way down to baseline the way many of the European Countries did, for a number of complicated reasons which we can discuss, we stayed at a certain level of about 20,000 cases per day until recently, when unfortunately southern states, which had not been previously impacted to a great degree california, tex, florida, arizona, are now experiencing surges of infections that have gone up to 30,000, 40 30,000, 40,000, a total of 60,000 new cases per day. We need to get our arms around that and do it quickly because if we do not, there is a possibility that we may be seeing surges in other areas. We are in a challenging period right now as we speak. Dealt with, you have hiv, aids, ebola, zika, h1n1, so many other epidemics out there, and you have worked with the communities that have been impacted in those communities that might be vulnerable. What is not clicking in this case . Dr. Fauci well, first of all, the nature of the microbe itself, the pathogen, this is something i often describe and not to be hyperbolic about it it really is the perfect storm and a public disease experts worst nightmare. Its a spectacularly transmissible virus. Efficiency in which this transmits is really striking. In addition, the wide degree of variability from a certain proportion who get no symptoms up to and including people who get sick enough to require intensive care and die, that is a very complex situation to really get control of. In addition, given the efficiency of the spread, we have to have in place the capability of going from containment and keeping it contained and if, in fact, we cant contain it, to go to mitigation. And in some respects, weve been successful. If you look at the curve, for example in new york city, which was hit harder than any place in the world, has been able to successfully bring down the number of new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths to an extreme a lowlevel. Now what we need to do in this country is to successfully make that transition from baseline control to safely reopening the country. And following the guidelines are going to be critical, and i think what weve seen, unfortunately, is in some of the southern states, the states have not really follow those guidelines in some respects, and jumped over the benchmarks and the point that needed to be checkpoints. Weve got to do better than that. We really do. Steve you have said that the states that have the most severe outbreaks right now really ought to consider shutting down again, that the stakes for Public Health are so high right now that we might not have to reverse that. I want to hear more about that and do you have a receptive audience out there . Dr. Fauci well, i would hope we dont have to resort to shut down. I think that would be something that is obviously an extreme. I think it would not be viewed very favorably, even by the states and the cities involved. So rather than thinking of terms of reverting down to a complete shutdown, i would think we need to get the states pausing in their opening process , looking at what did not work well, and try to mitigate that. I dont think we need to go back to an extreme of shutting down. So if you look at the states that are most heavily involved, and for a while, even up to the present time, when you look at california, arizona, texas, and for, they are accounting for and florida, they are accounting for 50 of the infections. So we know what the target is. We have got to get them to do fundamental things, closing bars, avoiding congregations of large numbers of people, getting the citizenry in those states to wear masks, maintain six foot distance, washing hands, the fundamentals weve been talking about all along. Thats what weve got to start. If we can do that consistently, i will tell you almost certainly you are going to see a down curve of those infections. But weve got to go to that. You cant just say all or none, which is what happened. We went from shutting down to opening up in a way that essentially skipped all the guidepost. Thats not the way to go. Youve got to rethink that and do it differently. Part, your job is, in offering this Public Health guidance like alex azar and others, some of whom will be on todays show, but your other job, part of your job, is the science, is the looking and dealing with vaccine and Vaccine Development as you have in the past. And we see this mad rush from Companies Like pfizer and others, and i guess my question to you is, how hardened are you or how confident are you that vaccines are going to ride to the rescue . Dr. Fauci steve, i think the durable solution to what were in right now has to be a vaccine. There is no doubt Public Health measures are critically important. But i think if you combine the Public Health measures with a vaccine, and just a comment about that since you brought it up, were really cautiously optimistic that things are moving along quite well with more than one candidate. There are a number of candidates that are in various stages of development. The one that you mentioned, the motor no one that was moderno one, will most likely be going into advanced phase three Clinical Trials by the end of this month of july. And then there are other candidates, equally as promising, that will be coming in later. We do hope, given the favorable data that weve seen at of the phase i trials, and in the animal data, that we would be able to induce a response that you would predict would be protective. As you know, with any Vaccine Development programs, you never can guarantee success of safety and efficacy. But the early signs are proving favorable. So we hope at the end of this calendar year and 2021, we will have a vaccine that will begin to deploy to people to people who needed, obviously the entire population, but priority to those most vulnerable. Steve last years future of health form form the hill organized, i had the pleasure of interviewing you and you shared what your nightmare was, and you described almost 280, this pandemic rush to to a t, this pandemic. You said we need to think about platform responses that anticipate the zoonotic transfers from animals to humans and think more proactively. Is this the time, while we are fighting this pandemic, to make the case we should be putting money and resources behind more proactive concerns about the next wave, if you will, the next wave, the next virus . Dr. Fauci yeah, im so sorry i was so prescient when we had our last interview. I really am sorry about that. But youre right. In fact, we did do some of that proactive platform development, which actually allowed us to essentially enter into development of a vaccine and into phase i and phase ii and now coming up on phase three trials, and in absolute record speeds. It was the things we did last year, the year before, the year before that allowed us to move very quickly. Enter your specific question, we need to get and to your specific question, we need to get better at that and do more. There will be many lessons learned. Weve got to, for the future, make sure we dont lose this corporate memory of what were going through because we need to be better prepared. We clearly were much better prepared now for this onslaught then we were 10 years ago. But weve got to take it a step further to be better prepared for the next onslaught, which inevitably will occur just the way when we had our conversation last year, i said this is what i would be most worried about. I am so sorry that it occurred and occurred so quickly after the interview. Steve dr. Fauci, ive been interviewing republican and democratic members of congress, governors, mayors, and other stakeholders in this fight against the coronavirus and i ask them what do you most need out there . What does Ronnie Davidson of whatois need or and they say is very consistent. We need consistent messaging. And we havent been seeing consistent messaging, like yours, that youve been offering consistently. What do we need to get back . What do you believe needs to happen here in washington to get consistent messaging . Dr. Fauci yeah, it needs to be a realization of what you are pointing out. We are all in this together. One of the problems were facing is that in the middle of trying to fight an unprecedented, historic pandemic, there is still divisiveness. There is divisiveness politically. We can see that women look at the different viewpoints that people take towards this. We are all in this together and we can get through this. We can be part of the solution and not part of the problem. And thats something that i hope now that were so deeply involved in this, there as a country, we realize that. One of the things thats so disturbing is that this issue, particularly now with the resurgence is of the young people resurgences, is of the young people that feel they will get significant difficulty from a health standpoint, mainly negative consequences, that theyre getting infected doesnt make that much different. It really does, steve, because not only do they owe it to themselves for an individual responsibility, because they can get severely ill from this. Young people can get severely ill. But by getting infected, they are propagating the pandemic. They are part of the evolution of the pandemic because even though innocently, and inadvertently, they may infect someone else, who then will infect someone else, and then you get a Vulnerable Person who has a very dire consequence. So you cant assume that youre in a vacuum and its only about you. For that reason, we call for and encourage people to really take the personal responsibility, which actually becomes a societal responsibility. If we do that, steve, we will get out of this and we will get out of this well. Steve final question, are you going to see this pandemic through . Dr. Fauci yes, we are. Im going to see it through and the country is going to see it through. And hopefully we will have scientific advances in the form of therapies and vaccines to complement successful Public Health. Steve dr. Anthony fauci, there have been surveys out there that say globally, you are the most trusted man in the world right now. Thank you for joining us. Look forward to seeing you again soon when announcer cspans washington journal, every day we are taking your calls live on the air. On the news of the day. And we will discuss policy issues that affect you. Coming up this morning, Grover Norquist with americans for tax reform discusses the impact of the coronavirus on tax payers and the tax reform. An Tiffany Cross on her book, say it louder black voters, white narratives, and saving our democracy. Watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook messages, text messages, and tweets. Sunday night on q a, journalist aaron geiger smith talks about the history of voting in the United States and some of the issues surrounding voting today in her book thank you for voting. Impact on Voting Rights, and there is not any Voting Rights aggregate or attorney that doesnt see it as just a ground shaking impact. While of course the voting laws that are discriminatory are still illegal, there is not historyoversight of the of discrimination that the kind of stopgap where they need federal approval to make voting changes. Atouncer watch sunday night 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. President , from public affairs, available now in paperback and ebook. Ranking, by their historians from best to worst. The lives of our nations chief executives and leadership styles. Cspan. Org the president. Rder your copy today wherever books and ebooks are sold. Jode