Transcripts For CSPAN2 HHS Secretary Alex Azar Delivers Remarks On The Coronavirus Response 20240712

Progressed over the last several months, one of the key things is a funding opportunity with investigationsti as you mentiond telemedicine but also treatment pathways and protocols in the idea would be to Fund Investigation and get information out on a very short 4 6 month timeframe so we cann get that out there and replicate it and enhance learnings. We saw one of the key impacts of this with the south in the southwest, what we saw we went through this in early april in new york, new jersey, connecticut and as we were competing Healthcare Providers and Health Systems and they were learning from each other so much of the rest of america was not terribly impacted and then when it did hit places like florida, texas, arizona, Southern California ridge worked very aggressively to essentially bring the Health Systems and Healthcare Providers on the journey new york, new jersey, connecticut went on a couple moismonths before. The idea of learn and replicate and disseminate information out is quite vital. One other initiative that we are harvesting that im really excited about. Our Nursing Homes are very much struggled with how to protect the vulnerable and help engage good Infection Control at their facilities and we have the traditional cms approaches of surveying and affecting and sanctioning true fines but weve actually started a new approach which is much more quality system by design approach using the provided really fun and we roll this out the end of last week where we are finding Nursing Homes to support their testing either Infection Control, the personal protective equipment but we crave incentive and system to keep their mortality and infection rate below Community Levels as well as below. Levels of Skilled Nursing facilities and added up component for where to an issue of skill not will wither Nursing Homes. Can we get Academic Medical Centers and others who are real experts in Quality Systems to help educate, mentor and bring along our Nursing Homes. Some who are really just momandpop operators on how to do the real basics of Quality Systems and arc is helping to convene that work, im very excited about this and hopeful that we will see a real improvement in our nursing home quality as a result. Thank you for bringing those incredible capabilities of our conveyor on this pandemic. The federal response to the pandemic has been at best and even in their areas when the government has taken a very robust, extremely proactive role with the publicprivate collaboration around new therapies and veryy importantly vaccines in the support from barta has been invaluable to the Pharma Companies that are developing the vaccines and we presume theres going to be ample payoff in terms of effective vaccine. There have been other areas where the response has not been robust and mixed and we dont have any Real National covid testing strategy for example but there is been sporadic leadership on areas like the supply chain. If we were resetting the clock on the pandemic, what do you think should have done differently in terms of the federal response. Susan, i have to respectfully beg to differ on the characterizations there has been a National Testing strategy coronavirus. Gov i read it regularly, it is right there and we are following thatol testing strategy and we have 92 million tests that are been performed, capacity for 3 million teston pr day, were doing 820,000 test per day and we have rapid pointofcare and antibody pcr and rapid antigenic pcr testing to pointofcare and speeds that nobody thought were even possible when we begin the journey back in february and capacities that nobody thought were possible, were following the strategy of ensuring that we have a system for diagnosis and individuals who are symptomatic of having covid and getting tested, for asymptomatic individuals were doctor Public Health professional believes they should be tested to get them tested and diagnosed. And having Surveillance System that use adequate and appropriately controlled since two sampling to determine if her facing operates in different communities. Weve been working with universities and colleges in states to set up alternative surveillance, schoolsce are doig wastewater surveillance, a product of our research where you can test at a dormitory test wastewater to determine if you have a positive case in the dorm and surgeon with testing on top of that. With oncologist comprehensive testing strategies and surveillanceat system. We have built from ground up a completely novel publicprivate testing system of both diagnosis and surveillance that no other country can even come close to and in terms of supply chain, we have taken a supply chain that really was not engaged in the federal government before in announced that the Strategic National stockpile we have built complete visibility into the complete supply chain. We have about one half a billion dollars of supplies in the Strategic National stockpile. The mission of that was primarily to have countermeasures for chemical and biologic incidents and a small amount of personal protective equipment and other search capacities and regional dislocation like a hurricane, fire or tornado. This is a completely different mission set that the commission for fns 2. 0. We now have working with the gpos and distributors complete visibility of the 1 trillion commercial medsurg pharma supply chain in the United States. We know where things are and when theyre getting there and we can use our defense production powers to reallocate within the system. We have created purchase orders to onshore making of n95 respirators, ventilators, pharmaceutical production back to the unitedng states and comprehensive supplychain approach that is ever been seen before. I thinkk those are Lessons Learned from the novel pandemic but theyve also been lessons adopted to right away with historic action output is not just in a better position as we deal with covid but as we prepare for any future pandemic. Are you satisfied that we have all the capability now in place for what is widely deemed a possibility because a second severe wave of covid this fall and winter. I dont know why we speak of the second wave, that was a concept that was talked about when there was a thesis that somehow there was seasonalitytyf covid and somehow going to a dorm and see the summer weather by transmission factors or otherwise, we did not see that of course, we saw continued spread in the southnu and southwest and now were seeing cases in other parts of the United States. I dont know the notion ofs a second wave and the remains of valid concept and our job is to prepare for and spread anywhere as well as to ensure wehe have Health System capacity to deal with it and to encourage and prevent further spread through the 3ws of washer hand and watch your distance and where your face community cannot watch her distance and stay out of settings where you cannot do any of those things. We are in a period where i called the bridge, were so much better position and i just talked in testing and supply chain then we were five or six months ago. We are going to be thanks to operation warp speed in the next several months in a better position in terms of vaccine and therapeutics, diagnostic. Were in this bridge and the key is for all of us to engage into good, personal collective responsible haber and those three to get to. Whether we call it the second wave or wave 2. 5 or three, oiviously there are lots of concerns about the quinn students of the potential flu, major flu outbreaks alongside other viral outbreaks, possibly rsp and all of that coming to bear at the same time as a research and of covid and thats a particular set of issues that i am probing on. Do you think we have the adequate response built to respond in the case all of those things coming together . In terms of influenza we take it veryy seriously. Weve actually increased our influenza production and we are close to 200 million doses availablen this year and will work aggressively to try to make sure that people get their flu vaccine and wek are extending te vaccination. , the Campaign Season for flu vaccination and we want to get as many people vaccinated as possible w the season. As we look at flu incidents, nothing is a guarantee but if you look at flu incidents in the Southern Hemisphere with a data from australia and we look at data in south africa and chile. What we seen has been very, very anomalous low influenza activity in the Southern Hemisphere. I believe in part it is because we and other countries are practicing the 3ws of Community Mitigation washing our hands, watching her distance and wearing Face Covering when we cannot do that. That has the same beneficial impact with influenza. We saw and we looked back at the data in march and we saw precipitous bottoming out at influenza activity prematurely in the United States when we went into shelter in place methodologies. So no guarantees, we prepare for every scenario, we have the full Vaccination Campaign going but the very same mitigation efforts were doing for covid may have av very beneficial affect as we look at hitting the influenza season. That would be a silverlining of all of this. As you know the nine ceos nine of the major vaccine manufacturers engaged in operation warp speed just issued a very strong statement that they would not seek Regulatory Approval for any of their vaccines before phase three trials are completed in safety and efficacy of the vaccines fully established. They indicated in that regard they were going to stand with the science. What to you doesnt say that the ceo felt it was necessary to make that statement. We welcome the statement because its exactly what the president and i and the fda have said. We are going to move quickly on vaccines and therapeutics and we want vaccines and therapeutics acts quickly as possible and will use the publicprivate power of u. S. Government to get there and were de risking the Financial Investments and we can talk more about how were doing that but were not cutting quarters on fda standards. This is buy the book, weve been very transparent with fda and put our guidance with the fda looking for in terms of vaccine approval, we made it clear there will be a transparent Advisory Committee process with fda and i welcome the statement in i think it may help with a lot of those spreading the terrible antiPublic Health, antivax messages. Weve got ensure Public Confidence in our system in just a influenza season and we needed people vaccinated in a standard vaccine and we need to make sure people are willing to take them once they arere available. I know its hard to see outside the pandemic at this point but outside the pandemic, what are your priorities for hhs at this moment in time. We continue to drive on all the things that weve been working on before. But were working on health and transformation, were still driving towards a transparency of price and quality and information hospital and insurance companies. We have implemented the Health Information Technology Interoperability platforms, we continue to work on the most intractable disease states like sicklecell anemia, we still remain hopeful within five years will have a literal cure for sicklecell, its been a year n end half ago that the Boston Children and i got a c a young man he was exiting the hospital after 30 days of treatment and i got to see the experimental treatment with no sickle left in his blood. We want to bring that promise to people. I want to drive forward on ending the hiv epidemic so we can can continue to make progress there and we have an underlying we were a crisis still with us in the pandemic and the a social isolation has certainly harmed the progress made on that so weve got to get back to getting people into medication assisted treatment and ensuring people have the tools that they need for longterm treatment and recovery for them. That is just some of the things that we continue on even as we deal with this unprecedented pandemic. The rest of our Mission Remains here also. We want to thank you for your service to the nation that is very difficult and challenging time and moving forward on all the important priorities. Thank you on behalf of the Research Community for your leadership. Good to be with you. And to be with you to. Thank you, senator, the reason were investing not in one but six different vaccines is because of the expectation that they will not all work although it would be lovely if they did too have a clinical hold as its been placed on astrazeneca as of yesterday because of a single adverse event is not at all unprecedented it is certainly happens inanely largescale trial with tens of thousands of people invested in taking part in some may get ill and you have to try to figure out is that because of the vaccine or were they going to get the illness anyway and with an abundance of caution at a time like this you put a clinical hold and invest carefully to see if anybody else who receive that vaccine or any other vaccine might had a similar finding of a spinal cord problem. This ought to be reassuring to everybody listening when we say were going to focus first on safety and make no compromises that is exhibit a on how thats happening. If it turns out that thats a real consequence and can be shown to be causeandeffect than all the doses being manufactured will be thrown away because we do not want to issue something that is not safe. National institute of Health Director Francis Collins testified today on vaccine before the Senate Health education labor and Pension Committee along with Surgeon General jerome adams. You can watch the entirety of the hearing starting at nine eastern on cspan. Cspan washington journal every day, we are taking your calls live on the air on the news of the day and discussing policy issues that impact you. Coming up thursday morning we will talk about the approval process for potential covid19 vaccine with Georgetown University Medical Center doctor Jesse Goodman and former chief scientist at the fda in a discussion of the International Effort to develop a covid19 vaccine with doctor william, executive director of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health International Vaccine center. Watch cspan washington journal live at seven eastern on thursday morning and be sure to join the discussion on your facebook comments, Text Messages and tweets. Heres a look at the live coverage on thursday. Cspan House Speaker nancy pelosi hold her Weekly News Conference at 10 45 a. M. Eastern then at noon the governor of new mexico, minnesota, kansas and guam testify before the House Financial Services committee about providing Financial Aid to states and u. S. Territory during the coronavirus pandemic. And on cspan2 the senate is back to vote whether to move forward with a scaleddown Economic Relief bill that republicans are introduced in response to covid19. Book tv on cspan2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Coming up this weekend saturday at 8 40 p. M. Eastern, carter page former policy advisor for President Trump 2016 president ial campaign on his book abuse and power, how an innocent american was framed in an attemp attempted coup againse president. Sunday at 7 40 p. M. Eastern cnn worldwide chief media correspondent brian skelter with this book hoax, donald trump, fox news and the dangerous distortion of truth. And at 9 00 p. M. On after words, Sarah Huckabee sanders former White House Press secretary for President Trump on her book speaking for myself, faith, freedom and the fight for lives inside the trump white house. Shes interviewed by bloomberg news, White House Reporter jennifer jacobs. Watch book tv on cspan2 this weekend. Centers for Disease Control and prevention doctor Robert Redfield discussed the coronavirus pandemic at a Virtual Event hosted by research