Conference in the white house rose garden is imminent. Hes expected to declare a National State of emergency over the deadly coronavirus pandemic that has taken the lives at last count of 41 americans and infected more than 125,000 people around the world. As we await the president to appear before the m cameras, we will take it the second it happens, markets on the verge of closing out the worst week since october 2008. We are firmly still in a bear market right now. What if anything can the president say to pull the markets out of this weeklong tailspin . To our floor show traders. We are teeing it up in front of the president. You have been on the markets front line. Tom at the nyse, phil at the cme. What Market Indicator will you most closely watch as the president speaks . Well, we saw extreme fear yesterday and they always say when no ones worried, thats the time to worry. Well, yesterday everyone got worried and they came out with massive action. Mnuchin reminded me of mario draghi when he said whatever it takes this morning and he committed 1. 5 trillion of liquidity, the fed chair did yesterday, 60 billion of bond buying and fiscal stimulus to come. He said this is just the beginning of fiscal stimulus. That imparted confidence in the market and you know, here we are down 25 off the highs. Kenny rogers has a song, know when to hold em, know when to fold em. Historically you havent been paid very well to fold at 25 down. We have been nibbling on high quality names like wells fargo that are down 50 . Theyre not going to do 50 less business next year than they did last year. We will get through this. Liz phil flynn, yes, there is green on the screen today but market insiders are telling us they are seeing some distortions, particularly in the high yield or bond markets. We could cycle through some of these bond names. Everything from lqd, which of course is the, you know, thats the Investment Grade ishares, hyg, agg, barclays aggregate, 71 billion in assets. We are cycling through these. These are oneweek pictures. What distortions are you seeing . What to we need to hear from the president . I think we need to hear [ inaudible ] i think it would have to be his mario draghi moment, we will do whatever it takes to get through this. Interestingly enough, in the energy space, my phone is ringing from producers all day long, how bad is this going to get, when is it going to stop and how is the president going to respond to this. There has been a lot of concern in the energy space that President Trump isnt as worried about the shale space and the production space as he needs to be, because there can be a trickledown effect. I, on the other hand, know Steve Mnuchin has been on the phone with saudi arabia, hes been on the phone with russia about this Oil Price War and the damage it can do to the market. But the concern obviously is when we get into the high yield places, thats the energy space right now. This is a space thats been ground zero for this. Liz we will try and check back with you at the end because today is the day the Chicago Mercantile Exchange will shut operations at the close. No more Trading Floor being open for the foreseeable future due to the coronavirus threat. As we wait the president , Major League Sports league cancellations have snowballed at an alarming pace in the past 36 hours. Very latest news out of the sports world, three years ago, nascar announced its shutting down operations. This weekends planned races at the Atlanta Motor Speedway and next weeks in miami have been postponed. The famed masters Golf Tournament which dates back to 1934 has now been postponed. English premier league, Major League Baseball spring training, the nba, the xfl and late yesterday, we can put these all up on the screen here, the National Hockey league all suspending or outright canceling their season. Joining us now is the commissioner of the National Hockey league, gary bettman. Gary, thanks for joining us. First of all, as of yesterday, you had said none of your players had tested positive or were being monitored for the coronavirus. As of right now, has that changed at all . To the best of my knowledge, we do not have any player who has tested positive for the coronavirus. Liz describe the last 24 hours, if you could, for you, the owners, the Players Association and what brought you to the decision yesterday to suspend the season. Well, we had been contemplating over the last few weeks a variety of scenarios based on what was happening with the spread of the coronavirus. But every one of those scenarios in my mind had a caveat that once a player tested positive, we were done playing at this point in time or at that point in time. When the utah jazz player in the nba tested positive, and the players werent able to play the game and had to leave the court and they had to in effect have the fans leave what looked like a full building, it was clear to me that it was only going to be a matter of time before one of our players would test positive if we continued playing, and i decided to get ahead of it and say lets take a pause now before were faced with that same scene. And that night, wednesday night, i sent the notice out to the board of governors and asked for a Conference Call the next day so that they could brief on how we thought we would proceed. There was certainly no disagreement. And we decided it was prudent, appropriate for the players, for the game, and for our fans to take a pause. Liz i just want to let our viewers know we are awaiting President Trump. He will be holding a News Conference at any moment. In the meantime as we speak to gary bettman, the nhl commissioner, gary, are the players getting paid during the suspension . Yes. Its not a suspension. We are taking a pause in the season. As i said, our players, we have a payroll check i believe coming this weekend which they will receive. They have another payroll check i think its their last full payment under their player contract at the end of the month and they are being paid. Liz much of the leagues revenue rights come from, you know, actual fans attending the game versus some of the other leagues like the nfl, they get a lot of money from tv rights. Have you modeled for the kind of financial hits that some of these teams can take . We have. We, of our 1271 game regular season, we had about 190 games, give or take, left and so a good chunk of our revenue is already in, and we are certainly not as gatedependent as we used to be 10, 20 years ago. I dont think it even amounts to half of our revenues anymore. So listen, everybody, all of the sports leagues are going to be suffering a diminution in the revenues that they would otherwise get, except our hope is that we are going to be able to come back, we are going to be able to complete the season on a credible basis and the potential loss will be minimized. Liz ill tell you, the stock market has just been gyrating around and through this vortex. Yesterday we were down more than 2200 points for the dow jones industrials. Its just been absolutely nuts. I know for you guys, your focus is on the safety of the fans and of the players. 189 games left in the regular season. You have been through three different work stoppages in your career. How does this coronavirus situation compare . Well, weve come back in each instance where weve been challenged, including the work stoppages, including the year we took off for a work stoppage stronger. We actually came back from the year off to record attendance and record revenues. We pride ourselves as an organization and we pride ourselves on how well our teams perform and being professional and being very thorough in how we handle the business side of the game, and the game itself. And we will do what we always do and thats come back as strong as possible. Liz gary bettman of the National Hockey league, maybe fans while theyre hanging out this weekend not being able to watch hockey can drown their sorrows in the just released new york rangers edition of New Amsterdam vodka. Well, you know, its hard for all of us, those who spend our lives working in the game and particularly our players who love playing for our fans and most importantly, our fans, but we will be back and we will make sure that we have a credible end to this season. Liz gary, good luck. Cant wait to watch a rangers or devils game or anything on tv. We love hockey. Good luck to you. I hope everybody and all the players stay safe. Thank you. Thank you, liz. You stay safe and healthy as well. Liz thank you. Fox is doing everything we can here in this building to do social distancing and keep the workers to a minimum so that we can make sure we are all safe here. In the meantime, weve got this breaking news. Norwegian cruise lines has Just Announced it is suspending all cruise voyages between march 13th and april 11th for all three, not just one, but all three of its cruise brands. This in an effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus. We are looking at the stock right now. Its holding on to gains of 16. 5 but you can see if we can stretch out certainly to a quarter to date chart, it has been unbelievably difficult and ugly for all the cruise liners. Norwegian has not experienced any confirmed cases across its 28ship fleet. Of course, its really been carnal cruises princess cruise line thats suffered for two different types of, we had the grand princess and the diamond princess. All guests on impacted voyages will receive a 125 refund of fare paid in the form of a future cruise credit. Yep. Still up about 16 . We are also getting this. The United States has granted tariff exemptions for more medical goods from china. This includes medical gowns, gloves and surgical drapes. These exemptions were initially denied but have now been reversed amid the worsening coronavirus. Check the dow right here. We are up about 866 points. Low of the session was a gain of 84 points. We are well up off that low at the moment. What we are going to do, as we wait for President Trump, we are going to take a brief break here. Closing bell is ringing in about 49 minutes. Stimulus hopes pushing Goldman Sachs and Jpmorgan Chase into the Winners Circle on the dow 30 heat map. Goldman is up by 17 bucks at the moment. But still down more than 13 for the week. Jpmorgan is still down 10 for the week but right now is scratching back at least 10 . President trump speaking any moment at the white house, as we said, on what is expected to be a major announcement. The National Situation here has now turned into an emergency. What will this do . It will release funds that perhaps can be used to stem the tide of the pandemic. We will bring you his comments live when countdown comes right back. [ applause ] thank you. Its an honor to tell you that Liberty Mutual customizes your Car Insurance so you only pay for what you need. I love you only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. 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We are, of course, awaiting President Trump at the moment to come before our cameras, he is expected to declare a National State of emergency as the coronavirus spreads. But is the world still depending, leaning too much on the Federal Reserve as the firefighter of last resort for every single problem right now that our economy and the markets are facing . Take a look at the fed funds futures. If we can put those up, you will see that there is a fastrising chance of a full point cut you know what, no. I thought it was a 100 basis point chance. All right. Theres a 66 chance of a full entire percentage point cut and then right now obviously theres a 100 chance of any rate cut at all. But is it really the fed who can fix the market ills entirely . Charlie gasparino is joining us right now in the newsroom on what hes finding that the fed can be doing in addition to what it did yesterday, which is about 1. 5 trillion. Charlie just talking to fed watchers, i know those are economists and its a survey, but my sources say its a 100 chance that the fed will take the fed funds rate, the shortterm rate, down to zero. Thats 100 basis point drop, sometime either at the meeting on wednesday, their next scheduled meeting, or before that. Probably not today. You probably want to wait the weekend to do this just in case any bad news comes out in the weekend. The other thing is, what they say is the fed will do monetary easing on the long end. What is that called . Qe. Not monetary easing. Quantitative easing, qe. Essentially printing money. Now, is this going to solve the coronavirus problem . No. But what its going to do is help with the liquidity in the bond markets which is essentially the funding market for every business out there. They borrow essentially to pay whatever, salaries, money doesnt come into a business all at once. You got to pay salaries so you have to tap these shortterm markets. Thats whats been seizing up lately. I will tell you this. I have been speaking with people at Major Money Center Banks over the last couple days, including today. They said the fed was really unprepared for all this stuff. They had no idea exactly what was going on in the fed funds market. Its pretty scary that they had no idea and that there was a degree of educating so what im saying here is like the banks are trying to work with the fed. Theyre not asking for anything. Theyre just telling them how to proceed and again, you know, the word is that theres tremendous pressure from donald trump, the president , on Jerome Powell to cut that fed funds rate to zero. Liz would that cause distortions and what kind of distortions . Because right now, charlie, were looking hold on at some of these high yield corporate etfs, whether its hyg or jnk, there is a liquidity drought. They may be up to date but charlie the fed has to go in there, start doing something in those markets. Thats what its essentially saying. We are talking about disarray, where theres no liquidity, not a lot of supply of treasuries, theres, you know, not a lot of borrowing going on or difficult borrowing conditions. Thats a real issue. Thats the plumbing of the system. The other thing is that i heard, you know, just talking to bankers, and their clients are corporate america, that by midweek next week, they will say they are saying most u. S. Major companies are going to be telling people to work from home. Except for essential staff. Maybe not the banks because thats the plumbing of the financial system. You need certain people there. But most major companies, they are telling me at these banks, will be alerting their staff to work from home. We already had that from at t. 250,000 people saying work from home. So thats whats going on here. Again, this is a very difficult market condition because mainly, you cant figure out exactly how gdp and of course, corporate earnings are going to be impacted by all this. Whatever the president says right now will not be something that, you know, i mean, i think it would be market positive in the sense that, you know, checks will be cut to people who need them probably, once you declare a national emergency, you can tap Funding Sources that you cant tap in the past. So thats a net positive for the economy. But you know, listen, we are in, you know, when you talk to people at the banks, they say what do people at the banks know about the coronavirus. Well, theres so much money on the line, they have to hire people to try to figure this out so they get decent information. What theyre telling me is were kind of like in the fourth or fifth inning of this thing. Its going to be awhile to work through. Markets could be wobbly going forward. But again, you know, big news over the next couple days in addition to this announcement by the president will be a fiscal policy stimulus, a fiscal policy response and a continued Monetary Policy response by Jerome Powell and the fed. Liz charlie gasparino, thank you. As you see, our cameras are trained on that podium for the white house rose garden speech that we are expecting from the president. The second he begins speaking, i promise you we are going commercialfree right now so that you dont miss it when he does approach this. We had originally been told 3 00 p. M. , then 3 20. I just want you to know right now, eastern time its 3 21. So perhaps they are putting finishing touches on it. I am reading these headlines for the moment. Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin would like to keep negotiating on a house bill, house bill regarding coronavirus and any kind of aid that the house of representatives can put together for the economy and for citizens of the United States. He says he told House Republicans according to the wall street journal he cannot yet recommend a yes vote on the house coronavirus bill but they do have the lines of communication open. Fox business has been reporting all day long that we are now up to Something Like 38 discussions, im overexaggerating, but multiple discussions now between nancy pelosi, the speaker of the house, and Steven Mnuchin. We have this as we wait for the president. Dow jones industrials is up 900 points. Disney is a dow component. It has announced it is halting all of its live action filming due to the coronavirus. Disney is saying that quote, while there have been no confirmed cases of covid19 on our productions, after considering the current environment and the best interests of our cast and crew, we have made the decision to pause production on some of our live action films for a short time. Now, the impact of the outbreak is, as we look at the stock, which is up about 5. 86, the stock is looking healthy but of course, its down quarter to date 32 , walt disney stands at 97. 54 a share. The outbreak is also hitting films already in the can. Now, how does that work . Well, the live action reboot of the hit animated movie mulan which had been disneys most expensive remake to date boasting a 155 million budget, now shelved with no release date yet attached. The film had been set to open in both the United Kingdom and the u. S. On march 27th. Disney also pushing back the release of two other films, xmen the new mu tantants and antlers. Hadnt heard about that. I know we are looking forward to that. Disneys Box Office Dominance not the only thing targeted by the coronavirus. Theme parks at disney, what a roller coaster ride. To Jackie Deangelis live on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with brand new and fresh details on what the parks are having to do at this point. Jackie good afternoon, liz. Lets walk through those disney parks and what they are planning to do. They are planning to close u. S. And paris parks, tokyo and hong kong are still closed. The shanghai one partially reopening. Theres like a mall attached to it called disney town and they reopened that. Some people are saying that could potentially be, you know, this sort of optimistic sign that they are ready in that part of the world to start having guests back in. I also want to draw your attention to six flags, because six flags said they are going to delay opening or temporarily suspend operations for certain of their parks as well. So thats something to watch. Finally, i want to end with sea world because they also are taking very very close attention of this situation. They are saying they are going to temporarily close all the theme parks effective march 16th through the end of the month. This is definitely going to hurt the business but at the same time, i think investors are looking at these companies and saying theyre taking proactive measures to protect customers and that is certainly a sign of good will when this ey reopen. Liz i agree. We are watching this closely. Developments are fast and furious as you see sea world, 11. 43 stock. I did want to make a point here about norwegian caribbean. That stock is halted. Is it still halted . Yeah. Yep it oh, no, it just started to trade once again. It resumed a couple minutes ago here. It is up 12 even on the news that it is shutting down at least for a brief period of time, it is pausing all three of its cruise lines. All right. Check the markets right now. Dow up 918 points. High of the session today has pretty much been 1,339. We are off that right now but as we await the president , to new rochelle, new york, the highest density cluster of coronavirus cases in the entire country. What did it do today . Big news. Rolling out drivethrough testing for residents. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo explained how it will work. Listen. There are six lanes that are operating. You drive in in your car and the medical staff comes to you, does the test, takes the swabs, then you pull out and the test of the swabs gets sent to a laboratory, in this case bioreference. They do the testing, we get the results back for the person. Liz new york is fast becoming the leader when it comes to making sure its residents get tested. You are looking at the facilities for drivethrough testing in new rochelle. It can test up to 200 cars per day, no matter how many people are in the car. By comparison, the cdc has tested fewer than 100 people this week alone, while u. S. States are estimated to be testing fewer than 100 people per day. Bringing in Access HealthInternational PresidentWilliam Hazeltine who chairs the u. S. China Health Summit which facilitates the exchange of all kinds of breaking ideas and knowledge when it comes to health care leaders. All right. Is new york becoming in real time the Gold Standard for the United States of america on how to get and ramp up testing . Its certainly making great progress. Were slow but were making great progress and i hope that in the coming days and weeks, we do what we should. Make sure tests are available to anybody who appears ill. Liz there was some accusation that Governor Cuomo was jumping the gun when he declared that area a state of emergency. Do you think this is only the beginning of what were seeing around the nation . We do have texas announcing they are ramping up their labs and they have a whole bunch of coronavirus labs ready to ramp up testing as well. Testing is really important. The one way you know what the problem is, where it is, what it is, how bad it is, or how good it is. It could be either. But without testing you dont know what to do and you shut down things you might not shut down. Liz when you were a professor at harvard medical school, did you model for pandemics and are we following the appropriate model . I was right in the middle of a big pandemic, hiv, which has killed 50 million people. Its killed a lot of americans as well. So we know what epidemics can be like, we know what pandemics can be like. The one thing you need to know is how many people are infected. You have to do contact tracing. We know that. You have to test the people who have been around people who have been infected. And its absolutely critical. Im very happy to see that were ramping up that very quickly. Liz anthony fauci, dr. Anthony fauci, National Institutes for health director, was blunt on fox friends today. His quote was we are failing at testing. When you see that new york and new rochelle are testing way more than what the cdc has been able to test, thats got to be a disappointment for somebody like you who witnessed the worst pandemic certainly in our lifetime. Thats true. It has been a big disappointment. To see that countries like korea and other countries do better than we do, italy is doing better than we are, its a problem. Liz President Trump is now walking towards the microphone to make what is expected to be a National State of emergency declaration. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Beautiful day in the rose garden. Appreciate everybody being here. Today id like to provide an update to the American People on several decisive new actions were taking in our very vigilant effort to combat and ultimately defeat the coronavirus. Weve been working very hard on this. Weve made tremendous progress. When you compare what weve done to other areas of the world, its pretty incredible. A lot of that had to do with the early designation of the closing of the borders and as you know, europe was just designated as the hot spot right now, and we closed that border awhile ago so that was lucky, through talent or through luck, call it whatever you want, but through very collective action and shared sacrifice, national determination, we will overcome the threat of the virus. I also announced wednesday night following the advice of our medical professionals who are doing a tremendous job and we appreciate it very much, were suspending the entry of foreign nationals who have been to europe in the last 14 days from entering the United States. Citizens, permanent residents and our families, any of the families returning from europe will be subject to extra screening as well as selfisolation for a period of 14 days as the World Health Organization confirmed today many of the things what we said were 100 correct, including our designation before them of europe. Like our earlier very aggressive actions with china, this measure will save countless lives. I appreciate a number of the folks behind me, a number of the people behind me said that that saved a lot of lives, that early designation. This is only the beginning of what were really doing and now were in a different phase. We had some very old and obsolete rules that we had to live with. It worked under certain circumstances but not under mass circumstances. They were there for a long time, they were in place for a long time and were breaking them down now and theyre very usable for certain instances but not for this. To unleash the full power of the federal government in this effort today i am officially declaring a national emergency. Two very big words. The action i am taking will open up access to up to 50 billion of very importantly very important and a large amount of money for states and territories and localities in our shared fight against this disease. In furtherance of the order im urging every state to set up Emergency Operation centers effective immediately. Youre going to be hearing from some of the Largest Companies and greatest retailers and medical companies in the world. Theyre standing right behind me and the side of me. Im also asking every hospital in this country to activate its Emergency Preparedness plan so that they can meet the needs of americans everywhere. The hospitals are very engaged. New york and various other places are also very engaged. I just spoke with Governor Cuomo, we had a very good conversation and were working very strongly with many states, including new york. The emergency orders i am issuing today will also confirm broad new authority to the secretary of health and human services. The secretary of hhs will be able to immediately waive provisions of applicable laws and regulations to give doctors, hospitals, all hospitals, and Health Care Providers maximum flexibility to respond to the virus and care for patients. This includes the following critical authorities, the ability to waive laws to enable telehealth, a fairly new and incredible thing thats happened in the not so distant past. I tell you, what theyve done with telehealth is incredible. It gives remote doctors visits and hospital checkins the power to waive certain federal license requirements so that doctors from other states can provide services in states with the greatest need. Number two, the ability to waive requirements that critical access hospitals limit the number of beds to 25 and the length of stay to 96 hours, the ability to waive the requirements of a threeday hospital stay prior to admission to a nursing home, big thing. The authority to waive rules to hinder hospitals ability to bring additional physicians on board or obtain needed office space. They can do as they want. They can do what they have to do. They know what they have to do. Now they dont have any problem getting it done. The authority to waive rules that severely restrict where hospitals can care for patients within the hospital itself, ensuring that the emergency capacity can be quickly establish established, will remove or eliminate every obstacle necessary to deliver our people the care that they need and that theyre entitled to. No resource will be spared, nothing whatsoever. Ten days ago, i brought together the ceos of commercial labs at the white house and directed them to immediately begin working on a solution to dramatically increase the availability of tests. Other countries have called us and worked with us and theyre doing similar things or will be doing similar things. As a result of that action today, we are announcing a new partnership with private sector to vastly increase and accelerate our capacity to test for the coronavirus. We want to make sure that those who need a test can get a test very safely, quickly and conveniently but we dont want people to take a test if we feel that they shouldnt be doing it, and we dont want everyone running out and taking it, only if you have certain symptoms. Using federal emergency authorities, the fda approved a new test for the virus. We did this within hours after receiving the application from roche. A process that would normally take weeks. We therefore expect up to a half a million additional tests will be available early next week. Well be announcing locations probably on sunday night. I want to thank roche, great company, for their incredible work. I would also like to thank the fda for hopefully analyzing the application within 24 hours, its going very quickly, which would bring additionally 1. 4 million tests on board next week and five million within a month, i doubt we will need anywhere near that. At the same time, we have been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drivethrough tests available in the critical locations identified by Public Health professionals. The goal is for individuals to be able to drive up and be swabbed without having to leave your car. I want to thank google, google is helping to develop a website, its going to be very quickly do done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location. We have many, many locations behind us, by the way. We cover this country and large parts of the world, by the way. Were not going to be talking about the world right now. But we cover very, very strongly our country, stores in virtually every location. Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now. Theyve made tremendous progress. Our overriding goal is to stop the spread of the virus and to help all americans who have been impacted by this. Again, we dont want everybody taking this test. Its totally unnecessary. This will pass. This will pass through and were going to be Even Stronger for it. Weve learned a lot, a tremendous amount has been learned. I want to thank deborah birx and i want to ask her maybe to come up and say a few words as to whats happening. Dr. Birx is a highly respected person, ive gotten to know her very well over the last six days, and what weve done is we built something that was very old, very oldfashioned, somewhat obsolete, certainly obsolete when it comes to the kind of numbers that were talking about. Dr. Birx, please. Thank you, mr. President. Its a pleasure to be here with all of you. I think you know at the beginning of this epidemic, hhs or cdc proactively developed an assay built on the existing flu Surveillance System. That Surveillance System was then converted to diagnostic systems. But last tuesday, seeing the spread of the virus around the globe, the president realized that our current approach to testing was inadequate to meet the needs of the American Public. He asked for an entire overhaul of the testing approach. He immediately called the private sector laboratories to the white house as noted and charged them with developing a high throughput quality platform that can meet the needs of the American Public. We are grateful to labcorps and quest for taking up the charge immediately after the meeting and within 72 hours, bringing additional testing access, particularly to the outbreak areas of Washington State and california and now across the country. We are also very grateful to the universities and large Hospital Systems that took up the charge to develop their own quality test made available by new fda guidance. This has resulted in expanded testing across new york, california, washington, colorado and you see sometimes those drivethrough options that have been made available through these high throughput options. Following the meeting last week, major commercial Laboratory Equipment and diagnostic companies took immediate action to adopt and develop new testing systems. Last night, the initial Company Roche received fda approval, moving from request to development to approval in record time. This innovative approach centered fully on unleashing the power of the private sector. Focusing on providing convenient testing to hundreds of thousands of americans within short turnaround times. In less than two weeks together, we have developed a solution that we believe will meet the future needs testing needs of americans. I understand how difficult this has been. I was part of the hiv aids response in the 80s. We knew from first finding cases in 1981 it took us to almost 1985 to have a test. It took us another 11 years to have therapy. It is because of the Lessons Learned from that that we were able to mobilize and bring those individuals that were key to the hiv response to this response. I understand that a lot of this behind the scenes action over the last couple of weeks was invisible to the press and the American People, but this intense effort has not only resulted in innovative solutions, but an automated, high throughput system bringing the availability of these quality coronaviral testing to the American People at unprecedented speed. Finally, i want you to know in south korea, they did have a large number of tests available over the last several weeks. Their Positivity Rate is between 3 and 4 . With labcorps and quests expanded testing, their Positivity Rate is between 1 and 2 . So we want to also announce this new approach to testing which will start in the screening website up here, facilitated by google, where clients and patients and people of interest can go, fill out a screening questionnaire, move down for a symptoms or risk factors, yes, they would move down this and be told where the drivethrough options would be for them to receive this test. The labs will then move to the high throughput automated machines to be able to provide results in 24 to 36 hours. That is the intent of this approach. We have seen it work just in our own United States and we want to bring this across the continent. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Id like to maybe have tony, you want to come up . Youve become i think everybody out here knows you pretty well but tony has been doing a tremendous job working long, long hours and youve seen a lot happen but this has been a great experience and working with you has been terrific. Tony, please. Thank you very much, mr. President. This is an example of another example of what ive been referring to in my discussions with many of you in the audience as a proactive leaning forward aggressive, trying to stay ahead of the curve and what you are seeing now with this order is that we are going to be able to remove the constraints so that people at the state, the local level, the individual physician, all the way up through the federal government will have as many constraints as possible removed for them to do everything they possibly can so that we can implement the things that weve been talking about, the containment, the mitigation, so that as ive said many times, that curve that i referred to that goes up, we dont want to have that curve. We want to suppress it down to that small mound. I think what weve done today is something that is going to be a very important element in having us be successful in doing that. We still have a long way to go. There will be many more cases. But well take care of that and ultimately as the president said, this will end. Whats going on here today is going to help it to end sooner than it would have. Thank you. Thank you very much, tony. If i could, some of these folks we know, theyre celebrities in their own right. Theyre the biggest businesspeople, the greatest retailers anywhere in the world and one of them is Doug Mcmillan from walmart. I would like to have doug, if you will, say a few words. Please. When we got the call yesterday from the white house we were eager to do our part to help serve the country. Given what were facing, thats certainly important to do. We should all be doing that. So we have been asked to make portions of our parking lot available in select locations in the beginning and scaling over time as supply increases so that people can experience a drivethrough experience that the president described. We will stay involved and do everything we can from a supply chain point of view to be of assistance. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Appreciate it very much. Ill stay right over here. Richard, if you could come up, please. Richard, please. Walgreens. Thank you, mr. President. Similar to doug and walmart, we are happy to stand in here and help in communities all across america because a lot of times when we have natural disasters, our stores are a beacon in the community and this situation is no different. We look forward to partnering with the cdc, the administration, hhs and the task force and specifically to the Vice President s doing such a fantastic job, were ready to engage and help. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you very much. Brian cornell, target. Thank you, brian. Well, mr. President , thank you for inviting us here today. Along with our colleagues from walmart and walgreens and our partners at cvs, normally we view as competitors but today we are focused on a common competitor. Thats defeating the spread of the coronavirus. We look forward to working with the administration to do our fair share to alleviate this growing threat. So thank you for including us today. In the near term, we are all committed to making sure we are keeping our stores open to serve the American Consumer highwawho rapidly stocking up on household essential, key food and beverage items they need during this time, making sure we run safe stores and creating an environment thats safe for our team members, making sure they feel supported during this very critical time. Thank you for including us. Thank you very much. Great job. Is tom here . Please. Thank you, mr. President. We are one of the leading providers of medical devices as well as collection products for testing of coronavirus. We are ramping up our manufacturing capacity to ensure that the right collection devices and testing equipment are ready to address this issue. Thank you. Great job. Steven rakowski, quest diagnostics. Please. Thank you, mr. President. So as mentioned, we were called, the leadership of the Vice President last week, to come together as an industry and we took advantage of that opportunity to work with the fda, work with the centers for disease control, and we are up and running with tests in a number of our facilities. As the president mentioned, we now have capabilities in Roche Diagnostics that will bring into our facilities this weekend, and i know myself and my colleague at labcorps will be doing the same. The capacity available to the American Public to support this action with consumers will be considerably increased in the next few weeks. Thank you, mr. President. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And matt, please. Roche. Thank you, matt. Thank you, mr. President. So from roche, we want to thank the fda for their rapid approval of our coronavirus test. We really appreciate the partnership with the cdc and fda to get that to market as fast as possible because its critical for us to make that available to help patients in need and working with laboratories to get it up and going in the near future, which will bring hundreds of thousands of tests available to patients in need in the United States. Thank you. You can do it. You can do it. Great company. David pierre of signify health. Please. Thank you, mr. President. We are the largest house call provider in the u. S. And we go to the homes of the most vulnerable elderly and through our network and our logistics engine, we stand ready to help, and provide our clinicians to be where theyre needed, whether theyre in retail clinics or in the home. Were here to assist. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And well be changing a lot of the rules, regulations for future, should this happen in the future, which we hope it never does, but it will, i guess, somewhere out there. Some bad ones over the years. And i guess that will continue to an extent but we hope it never happens but we are going to be changing a lot of the old rules and specifications and regulations. Adam schecter, who has been of tremendous help, lapcorps. Adam . Thank you, mr. President. At labcorps we are working every second of every day to increase the number of tests that we can run. Were working with academic medical centers, with our colleagues at quest, with other hospital and other laboratories to ensure that we do everything we can to increase the testing as we move forward. I can tell you we understand how important the testing is and we are committed to doing everything possible. Thank you. Thomas moriarty, cvs. We all know cvs. Thank you. Thank you, mr. President. We have been focused since the start of making sure our patients and the customers we serve have the information they need, the safety they need as well. We are committed to working with the administration and local Public Health officials to make this work as well, and thank you, sir, for the honor. Thank you very much. Great job. And bruce greenstein, lhd group. Tremendously talented people. Thank you very much. Mr. President , thank you for the honor of being here and the Home Health Industry has been treating patients and seniors in the safety and comfort of their own home for decades. Were very proud to be part of the equation for testing in their own home. For americans that cant get to a test site or live in rural areas far away from a retail establishment, were here to help and to partner with our hospitals and physicians as well as the people we have here today that will be doing testing around the country. Thank you. Okay. I like that. Thats good. Were also announcing the following emergency executive actions today. To help our students and their families, ive waived interest on all Student Loans held by federal Government Agencies and that will be until further notice. Thats a big thing for a lot of students that are left in the middle right now. Many of those schools have been closed. Based on the price of oil, ive also instructed the secretary of energy to purchase at a very good price large quantities of crude oil for storage in the u. S. Strategic reserve. Were going to fill it right up to the top, saving the american taxpayer billions and billions of dollars, helping our oil industry and making us even further toward that wonderful goal which weve achieved which nobody thought was possible of energy independence. It puts us in a position thats very strong and were buying it at the right price. And thats something that would have not even been possible a week ago. The price of oil went down quite a bit so were going to fill it up. This is a good time to fill it up. I would like to ask mike pence to say a few words, please, vp. Thank you, mr. President. This day should be an inspiration to every american, because thanks to your leadership from early on, not only are we bringing a whole of government approach to confronting the coronavirus, were bringing an all of america approach. Mr. President , from early on, you took decisive action. You suspended all travel from china. You created travel advisories. South korea and italy. We screened all travelers from all airports in both of those countries and on the unanimous recommendation of your health experts, you at midnight tonight will effectively suspend all travel from europe and americans that were returning will be screened and asked to voluntarily participate in a 14day quarantine. Throughout this process, mr. President , you put the health of America First but you brought the best of america to address it and its not just at the federal level. As you said, mr. President , weve been working with states across the country. We issued broad guidelines from cdc for every american. But this week at your direction, we tailored specific recommendations from cdc for new york, Washington State, california, massachusetts and florida, and we have been in continuous contact, as you said, with governors around the country. Mr. President , you have forged a Seamless Partnership with every state and every territory in this country to put the health of our nation first. But today, i trust that people around the country that are looking on at this extraordinary public and private partnership to address the issue of testing with particular inspiration. After you tapped me to lead the White House Corona Task force, mr. President , you said this is all hands on deck and you directed us to immediately reach out to the American Business sector, commercial labs, to meet what we knew then would be the need for testing across the spectrum and today, with this historic Public Private partnership, we have laid the foundation to meet that need. For americans looking on by this sunday evening, we will be able to give specific guidance on when the website will be available. You can go to the website, as the president said, type in your symptoms and be given direction whether or not a test is indicated. Then at the same website, youll be directed then you will be directed to an Incredible Company who will allow people to come by and do a driveby test print i want to thank cvs, walmart, target, walgreens. These are synonymous with communities large and small where people come together and they will come together to meet the need of the American Public. These commercial laboratories, lab core and qwest and roach have done an incredible job stepping forward and they will literally make hundreds of thousands of tests available and be processed with results to patients in the very near future. Its all the result of you tasking us with bringing together, not just Government Resources which allstate labs can now test across the country, the cdc is testing, but said mrg all the resources of the country together and thats what this partnership really means. The truth is we have coronavirus cases now in 46 american states. While the risk of serious illness of the coronavirus remains low, we want to encourage every american to practice common sense, good hygiene, go to the cdc website and see what the guidance is for your community and for the American People hurt as the president has said, its especially important now that we look after Senior Citizens with Underlying Health conditions. Last week the president directed the center for medicaid and medicaid to increase inspections on our Nursing Homes. Today we are offering very specific guidance that will articulate about visitations at Nursing Homes. Its important to remember they were there for us when we were growing up mr. President , they helped us with our homework, they tucked us in at night, they cheered us on as we pursued education and in our career and now its time for us to be there for them and recognize seniors with Chronic Health conditions are the most vulnerable and americans can make a difference. To wash your hands, use common sense, look after the most vulnerable and i know i join you and say every american should be proud of this incredible Publicprivate Partnership that will be speeding access of testing to millions of americans in the weeks ahead, and together, as youve said many times, together we will get through this, together we will put the health of America First. I would like you to take that a step entrance step forward regarding the Nursing Homes. Thank you to the president for the declaration. It allows my agency cms that runs medicare and medicaid and has oversight of all the nations Healthcare Facilities to suspend regulations that could get my way of treating patients during this time. These temporary National Blanket waivers are reserved for the rarest of circumstances and they represent a massive globalization of our countrys resources to combat this terrible virus. The flexibilities we are offering will be a godsend to the providers, clinicians and facilities on the front line of this fight. Leader cms will be issuing guidance directing Nursing Homes to temporarily restrict all visitors and nonessential personnel with a few exceptions such as endoflife situations. We fully appreciate this measure represents the severe trial for residents of Nursing Homes and those who love them, what we are doing what we must to protect our vulnerable elderly. Thank you. As i said in my address to the nation the other night, all americans have a role to play in treating this virus and are most effective weapon is to limit the damage to our people and our country and slow the spread of the virus. The choice we make, the precautions we put into place are critical to overcoming the virus. We do see it spread and we wish to shorten the pandemic which is what it is. The cdc has published guidelines to enable, its coronavirus. Gov and its ver very heavily used t now to enable every american to respond and protect themselves, their families and their communities. While the risk to young and healthy americans remains very low, we have learned a lot about this over the past two weeks. Anyone can be a carrier for the virus and risk transmission to Older Americans and those with Underlying Health conditions and those were most at risk have not done very well. Older americans, especially if they have a health problem, they have not done well