Meeting, the White House Coronavirus task force. The president established task force. He has met daily it has met daily. We continue that effort today. Medicaidthis ended for and medicaid services. First, a few basic facts and then we will hear from other members of the task force. At the present moment, we have 43 domestic cases of the coronavirus. 48 cases of individuals who returned to the united stated. And id states. Of the domestic cases, 29 of the 43 in california are Washington State could we have communities that are facing what the experts tell us could be a cluster in those communities. Sadly today, there were four additional fatalities. To six the number americans who have lost their life from the coronavirus. We extend our deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of those that were lost. Despite todays sad news, lets be clear. Peoplek to the american of the coronavirus remains low according to all of the expert we are working with across the government. The president has said we are ready for anything, but this is an all hands on deck effort. Todays activity reflects the president s effort to bring the industrys of private together. The best industry from around the country at every level. We had a good meeting this morning with governors from 50 states and three territories. I was able to convey to them the gratitude the president and our administration feels, particularly for governors that are dealing with the coronavirus in their states. Those that have taken repatriated personnel. I can say that what i hear from the nations governors as there has been a seamless relationship between all of the agencies of the federal government and states thus far. To hear that. Ged i told them we are committed to a full partnership with state governments and to their Health Officials and to local Health Care Providers going forward. Today with some of the leaders of the Top Pharmaceutical Companies in the country. The president spoke to them not just about vaccines, which many of the companies are beginning to work on, but just as importantly, the development of therapeutics. It is remarkable to think there may well be a vaccine going to Clinical Trials within the next six weeks. The nature of trials is the vaccine might yet not be available until late this year or early next, but therapeutics giving relief to people that contract the coronavirus could be available by this summer or early fall. The most encouraging news is that pharmaceutical companies, which are recognized as the greatest in the world, have already formed a consortium to Work Together to share information in the development of therapeutics and vaccines. Yesterday, we, were fully implementing the new travel advisories for portions of italy and south korea and the implementation of screening of personnel from across those countries who are going to who are working to take a direct flight to the United States of america. I was pleased to learn that within the next 12 hours, there , allbe 100 screening direct flights, at all airports across italy and across south korea. The president has directed us to bring the full resources of the federal government and to bring the best minds of this country to bear on this effort. Toally today, i am pleased welcome to our White House Team a world renowned Global Health official and a physician. She will be my right arm through this effort as the president has asked me to lead the white house response to the coronavirus. I am grateful the ambassador deborah burks, also dr. Deborah ands will be on our team even on her first day, she has been contributing significantly to our discussion. She serves as the u. S. Governments leader for combating hivaids globally and has developed an international reputation. She is a scientist, someone with three decades of Public Health diseases and has vast experience in interagency coordination. About thelked importance of bringing all of the various entities together to bring about president trumps vision for a whole of government response to the coronavirus. With that, i would like to recognize dr. Deborah burks for a few introductory and welcome remarks and thank you for stepping up one more time to serve our country. Dr. Burks thank you, i just arrived last night from south africa. It shows the level of efficiency and expertise here to get moving quickly. It is clear the early work of the president over travel restrictions and the ability to quarantine has bought us the time and space to have this task force be very effective. I have never worked with such incredible scientists and thoughtful policy leaders and i got to spend the day with them. I am trying to get up to speed and i look forward to the days ahead really working together to end this epidemic. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Vice president. I want to start off by saying how delighted we are that ambassador burks will be coordinating these efforts across. Go back. And i we all go way back together. We have established relationships. We have established, working productive relationships to keep the process working smoothly. Dr. Burks has been asking the right questions and challenging us on all the right scientific and policy matters we need to focus on. I want to begin by recapping the Current Situation we face with covid19. As of this morning we have 43 confirmed cases of the virus in the United States excluding our repatriated cases. 17 of those cases are travel related in one way or another. 26 are believed to be persontoperson spread. Because of the president s strong leadership and all the hard work our Public Health professionals have done, the immediate risk to any individual american has been and does continue to be low, but the risk for people with possible exposure to identified cases can be high. What every one of our experts and leaders have been saying for more than a month remains true. The degree of risk has the potential to change quickly, especially if we see sustained spread of the disease around the this which could qualify disease as a pandemic. Cases ofee more Community Spread in the United States. As we emphasized for some time, well need to prepare for the potential need, prepare for the worst, hope for the best. In some places we will have to use the range of our mitigation efforts. We already are working closely with Santa Clara County and the state of washington, and king county, to assist them in thinking through asked practices for our pandemic action plan, as well as learning from singapore and hong kong, such as temporary School Closures or even, other responses, such as having school, but perhaps not having assemblies. That is why the president has taken an unprecedented whole government approach to protecting the American People, including the steps in the last few days to radically expand and improve the testing and access to respirators needed by health care workers. CdcVice President of the and i spoke with every governor we have this morning and we greatly appreciate their closer close cooperation with us. I want to introduce an individual i asked the Vice President to join this task force because the centers for Medicare Services play such a , 1. 2 trillion of spending, providing health care to 60 million american seniors. As we have seen, this disease can have a disproportionate severity impact on the elderly and medically frail. Our administrator has an important responsibility with regard to funding of care, therapeutics, vaccines or diagnostics for senior in regulatingalso longterm care facilities such as Nursing Homes and other Health Care Facilities. Vernaxcited administrator is joining the task force. Ms. Verna thank you, secretary come first and the health and safety of America Patients and provider workforce is our highest priority. Theme start with what secretary said, we are the largest insurer, covering 130 million americans between medicare, medicaid and the individual insurance market. Some of these our our nations most vulnerable populations, the elderly, those in poverty and children. We have a regulatory responsibility for pretty much every Health Care Institution in america. This includes hospitals, critical access hospitals, Nursing Homes, dialysis facilities, Surgery Centers on the list goes on. That gives us a Critical Role in addressing the coronavirus. We are responsible for enforcing quality guidelines based on information from Partner Agencies like the cdc. Hasme stress cms longstanding Infectious Disease policies in place that we have used effectively for other outbreaks such as influenza. Health care facilities already have these procedures in place and should be prepared for what they may see. We will continue to proactively update our regulations. We will be working with the cdc. Those are already in place and it is our job to make sure Health Care Facilities are effectively implementing those guidelines. We will work with the cdc to determine whether we need to update or change those. We are looking at what we cover in clarifying the types of products and services our programs will pay for, in terms of medicaid and medicare. With that, i will turn it over. I want to recognize a couple other members of our team. From the National Institute of health. Thank you, mr. Vice president. I want to make three comments and points. To underscore with the Vice President and secretary azar said, we had an extraordinary meeting with ceos, individuals in pharmaceutical and biotech industries. They were already actively collaborating with and were enthusiastic about helping us along with the development of products and availability, vaccines, antibodies, it was very gratifying. Second, i am very pleased the president and Vice President will be visiting tomorrow and we will have an opportunity to show them in real time the types of things we are doing. And one comment about ambassador, dr. Burks. We go back a long time nobody goes back as long as i go with ambassador burks. She was a fellow in my program as a trainee and we knew she was a star. She has become a superstar. Together we saw the first patients with hiv in the 1980s. We were involved in the First Successful trial with hiv. I have had the privilege and honor putting together a program for president bush she was the ambassador in charge. I cannot tell you how excited i am to finally get back to being a partner with debbie burks. Mr. Pence thank you, dr. Fauci. Bob redfield, cdc. You, mr. Eld thank Vice President. The cdc continues to provide support, the backbone of our Public Health system, estate, local, Tribal Health departments. These teams continue to work to tontify new cases, isolate Work Together to try to limit the transmission of the coronavirus. Health with our Public Partners we identify new Community Cases as the secretary said. We always anticipated said we always anticipated. And use assets to aggressively confirm those cases, isolate, to use our Public Health tools to limit the spread of this virus. I want to echo what was said by the Vice President and secretary that despite seeing these new Community Cases that show you we have a Public HealthCommunity Across this country in action, the risk to the American People is low. Addll also also want to i am looking forward to the president and Vice President and secretarys visit to come to atlanta friday and meet with the wonderful people that formed the backbone of this great agency. Thank you. Mr. Pence steve holland, reuters. Based on what we have seen so far, how quickly do we expect this virus to spread throughout the United States . Mr. Pence let me refer that to the experts. There are details about the cluster in Washington State. The important thing is, from the beginning we have anticipated Community Cases pop up and now we have a number of new Community Cases which the Health Departments are aggressively evaluating to see if they can who arend the linkage, the contacts, how is it spreading. American public should rest assured we have one of the finest Public Health programs in the world when you look at state and local territorials. We will continue to see these cases as a consequence of them doing their job and we will use Public Health strategies to limit that transmission. We should focus on that. We are working hard to contain these community outbreaks. As the secretary has said, we are blending them with mitigation strategies. I two underscore something said the other day, there are two aspects of this, cases coming in and controlling the situation of what is already in here. On,e are two things going restriction of travel to areas that are hotspots and the rest of the world, just like the original inhibition of travel with china i think will mitigate against the question of the wider spread aggressively going on. I think what is going on with , it willn particular really get us through this. Steve, something i learned along the way, when we have cases that emerge, state and local Health Officials are in the lead, but cdc is on the ground immediately helping to identify how that might originate with that original to find any others they may be exposed to. We know there will be more cases. The president took unprecedented action to do all he could to prevent the virus from coming into the country and now we are focused on mitigation of the spread as well as treatment of those affected. Is Kristin Fisher here . She walked out . Let me go with haley jackson. Two questions. President trump hinted today there were new travel italy,tions going to south korea, china, iran. Can you elaborate on all the countries you are looking at . Is germany on the table . The president is very clear, we are going to follow the facts and listen to the experts every step of the way. The action the president authorized this weekend, raising the travel advisory, the American People should know we traveling you should not to certain sections of italy or south korea. Expands,isories may but we will allow the caseload in those countries to define that. In addition to that, by establishing screening protocol which will be in full force the next few hours in both countries , we will ensure anyone traveling on a direct flight to the u. S. Receives multiple screenings at all airports from italy and south korea. To your point, the nature of the requires aion passport to move around. Our task force spoke today about new cases, and there were some in several european countries. We are following that closely. We will listen to experts and watch the cases and i know the president will make decisions with regards to restrictions on basis of those facts. Do you consider this a pandemic in designation . Mr. Pence i would refer to the experts. Our Task Force Team was in touch with the World Health Organization today. Let me let the secretary address that. This is not about semantics. In more than 60 countries at this point. We are going to continue to focus on ensuring we can do all we can to prevent people coming into the country with the disease to mitigate any spread of the disease, and of course to provide treatment. I spoke with the Incident Manager for the World Health Organization about this question. I wanted to get a sense of how they are assessing the designation of pandemic status. Seeingmoment what we are , Community Spreading in multiple regions of the world. There are many definitions people use around pandemic and one issue the who is focused on his sheer magnitude. We had large magnitude of cases within china. The absolute number of cases are not of the magnitude comparable to any pandemic before. 1 when you have billions of individuals infected across the world. That is how they are thinking about this and we will keep working with them. We do not have a view whether they should designated a pandemic or not. Whatted to get a sense they were thinking about. It is reflective of their current thinking. I asked them if they could put out points about how they are assessing it. Mr. Pence good answer. How about ben with abc. On screening passengers from italy and south korea, what would that screening look like . Temperatures, every single passenger, who is conducting it . Many tests have been conducted . Last week i believ