Incredible. [indiscernible] President Trump this laboratory is were regenerated materials that go into all of our diagnostic tests. Other e [indiscernible] Infectious Disease spread. And around the world. When we first heard of the illness in wuhan, china, we started paying close attention of what might be the cause. And with the announcement of the coronavirus and made available to the general public, we started using that information to develop a test. Can you hearmp that ok . No. [camera shutters] Infectious Disease in the u. S. And around the world and we heard early on at the beginning of the 10th of december about this unusual illness that was taking place. The fact it was associated with [indiscernible] led to some evidence of what might be a transmission from animals to people. As soon as the chinese announced it was a Novel Coronavirus and the chinese, to their credit, made the Information Available right away our experts here at , the cdc used that sequence information to design a test so we would be able to detect the virus. At that time there were no cases , in the u. S. And we had no samples of the virus because we had no clinical materials. We went from designing tests in dashed designing tests and the materials made in these laboratories, quality control, and then our scientists used that to validate that it would work against what they could make for coronavirus using the sequence information, but importantly so it would not , affect other things. You want a positive to only be for the coronavirus, not other kinds of viruses to create similar respiratory samples. President trump does everybody understand that . One question. President trump one second. And then the information coming out of china indicated this was more serious than originally thought. We set up our Incident Management System at cdc so we would have all of the right components together, epidemiology, the laboratory, communications. Once it became clear it was more serious, that is when we started to work with our colleagues to say we need to make this test available to the larger Laboratory Community and work with fda to get emergency use authorization so we could distribute the test to our Public Health laboratories. Working with commercial manufacturers we can scale that , up beyond what we can do with our own facilities here so there is the capacity to test more and more americans and we are, as we work today, with more of those materials to go out. It is important to note that at no time has the cdc ever denied a request from a Public Health official to test a patient. All of the patients who needed to be tested in the opinion of the Public Health officials have been taken. All of our state labs have the ability to test for this virus. Dark hotel is your name again. Tell us your name again. Dr. Steve monro. Thank you. For helping us, good Public Health group. Thank you for coming your today, for encouraging [indiscernible] President Trump the whole situation, the testing has been amazing. What they have been able to produce in such a short period of time. By the end of the week hopefully. The following week. Up to 4 million. We have got commercial labs getting validated as we speak by the end of this weekend. We will have enough testing for 75,000 people that are already out. Another one million tests to be done. The last ones are being validated by dr. Monros team. The purpose of all of this as dr. Morrow said is to have the capacity to check the unknown. This last developed test, sars, mers, this coronavirus and it is remarkable, once we got the sequence, this lab team had a functional test in about seven days. They worked with the fda. That is really what we do. President trump they started working when they saw there was a problem in china. They saw there was something going on in china. Long before anybody had heard of it. Problemrd there was a in china and then they started working on this. That is why we are in good shape. [indiscernible] yeah, i think at this point, again, said this before, the overall risk to the American Public remains low. We owe a lot to the decisive decision initially to have travel restrictions. Screening in airports and then getting the community to do recognition, isolation contact. Again, the fact that we have a test allowed us to do that more effectively. We do have some areas where there is Significant Community transmission. We see that in seattle, parts of california. We are working hard with the local state Health Departments to continue to try to control this infection in that area. We still have only 200 cases diagnosed in the United States. We are going to see more cases because we are getting more diagnostics, but i would say that what i said before, at the present time, there were risks but it remains low. We are going to concentrate and help those communities that are fighting the battle like the state of washington. Some of you were there. Would you admit the cdc has problems with testing . You had such strict guidelines. People were saying they could not get the test. Dozens of people contacted us saying they could not get the test. Wait we did learn charlie after there was an issue with one component of the test. We put together a team to figure out what the issue was and suggested people not test until we could sort that out. We have three different signatures we test for. We are working with fda we identifiednce two were sufficient. We have moved forward with testing with just the two signatures. And there is something that could happen where we are starting from scratch, the sequencing information, smallscale testing here before rolling it out. Our goal was to get it out as quickly as possible. Why did you start from scratch . We start with our test probably the same time the germans and italians were developing their test. Nobody could start with development until the sequence information was made available. Those the not have any fault paired i would like to make one thing clear. When this test was developed, it was first offered here. All of the Public Health labs of this nation could use cdc and we could help them understand this new pathogen is in that individual. That was available as soon as our test was approved by the fda. Not a faulty test, a very accurate test. The challenge was, you have to send it to the cdc. The same test they have today. No state lab never had no access. They always had the ability to send it here. They had to send it here because there were false briefs. They had to send it here because that is where we started it. Manufacturing, we sent it out to the state to see if we can verify it worked. We found in some of the states it did not work. I do not consider that a fault. Quality control. I consider that success making , sure this was out there with the same efficiency that performed here. President trump now it is all performing well. Is there confidence in the cdc . President trump it is performing very well and it has been. [indiscernible] now it is performing well. Could you explain on the testing criteria how it compares to china and International Standards . Early on and when we submit our test the our test of the fda for emergency youth authorize rose emergency use authorization, we have to justify what other conditions it should be tested. At the beginning we wanted to be clear all of the cases were associated with travel the criteria in the package insert was strict about who could be tested because we didnt want a lot of people with no history of exposure to be tested. As was stated, there was never a time when a Public Health official contacted cdc for testing and it was not done even if they do [indiscernible] even china had a geographic travel restriction. They were the epicenter. At the beginning, they were only testing people who had direct contact at the Seafood Market in wuhan. Low numbers are [indiscernible] we have been diagnosing cases originally linked to travel associated with Public Health , measures of contact. You might find one confirmed case and you might evaluate another 300 people. When we went out to do that, the foundontact initially we were thousands who came back from wuhan. Over time, when the state of washington sent a sample from an individual, they made the first diagnosis. That individual was also a traveler. Continued to diagnose more, we found people who had no risk of travel. This is what we Call Community spread. We have community spread. We are continuing to look. We are enhancing surveillance. We are blending surveillance for coronavirus into the flu system. At this point, we have isolated a number of clusters, but it is not as if we have multiple or hundreds and hundreds around the United States. President trump i do think what is happening is you have people who are sick, but they do not go to the hospital or they are not very sick. It is a more minor case. You have a lot of people that are not going to the hospital so we are not seeing those people. Theou did see those people, statistics become better. They get better, they dont see a doctor, they dont see a hospital, they have the sniffles or a cold, something. Better. E, they get if you look at that, all of a sudden, you are coming into a much lower category of risk. I think a lot of people are not going to doctors. A lot of people are not going to hospitals. You are not seeing those people. After today, dr. Fauci published in new england journal a revised estimate of fatality accounts consistent with what the president was areng that the who numbers a math problem should if you extrapolate from the number diagnosed to how many likely cases who never got tested, he says in his paper he thinks it thinks than 1 , which i is what you were saying. One question about containment. Last friday to today we have gone like 57 or 59 cases. Seven days we had 200 and we even have not had the testing to see if there is more than that. Now we are getting the testing so is it likely there are more people who are going to come and get sick . We will see more community cases. There is no doubt the Public Health system in the United States is enhancing surveillance in a variety of ways to try to really understand is there any hidden pockets . That is all in process. I will say everyone has been using the same diagnosis and to go look at all of the contacts to try to begin to understand this is how the nursing home and ve infections in seattle [indiscernible] i want to assure the American Public we are enhancing our surveillance, not just cdc but the entire nation so we will have very accurate numbers on where this virus is. [indiscernible] airlines, travel companies can you give a sense of what you are considering [indiscernible] President Trump we are also considering the fact 36,000 the fact we have 36,000 deaths due to the flu. That is when i first heard this five or six weeks ago. I was hearing the amount of people that died from the flu, i was shocked. Anywhere from 77,000. Wasess any 1990, that particularly bad. As of the time i left the plane with you, there were 240 cases. [indiscernible] how was the show last night . Did it get ready ratings did you ratings . What happened, if you look at the number of the time we met, 240 cases you look at throughout the world, other countries, south korea, italy and in particular china. The numbers are Getting Better in those places and Getting Better in general. I hear the numbers are getting much better in italy etc. Etc. Cases, 11 deaths. I dont want any deaths. But over the last long period of time when people had the flu, you have an average of 36,000 people dying. I never heard of those numbers. I was shocked. I didnt know people died from the flu. 36,000 people died. Shou shed a couple of years where it was over 100,000 people. I start to say i wonder what is going on. The percentage of the flu is under 1 but this could also be because many of the people that are not that sick dont report. They are not putting those people in there. You are smiling. Who are you from . I am from cnn news. Pres. Trump i dont watch cnn because cnn is fake news. [indiscernible] President Trump if you know anything about me, i like when people stay in the United States and spend money in the United States. People have to remain calm. I think if you look at the numbers and look at numbers from other years and look at these numbers it will be interesting to see what you find. Statistics will soon be coming up. There was a big statistic that was under 1 . 1 10 of 1 in one case but nobody really knows. The problem is people that get better, that dont see a doctor, dont go to a hospital because people get better. The numbers would look better in terms of death rate. [indiscernible] pres. Trump i think you will have other things. The job numbers, had a tremendous job number. When you add last months number which was a correction of 80,000 jobs, 350,000 jobs number today, that was shocking. I was watching a particular network they said these are unbelievable numbers. They were shocked by the numbers. Over 350,000 when you add last months. [indiscernible] businesses were canceling conventions and travel within the United States. As it an overreacting or acting out of caution . President trump it is fine if they want to do it. I would not be generally inclined to do it. I really would not be. That depends on which country you are talking about. If they are going to another country or are you talking within the United States . United states. President trump people have to feel comfortable to have a good time. If you look at do i want to go to china or certain parts of italy or south korea, no. That is a different decision. You have some parts of the world most parts of the country in this great country of ours, we have 240 cases. Most of those people are going to be fine. We have had 11 deaths. They have largely been old people who were susceptible to what is happening. That wouldnt the case i assume with the regular flu. If someone is old or a weaker state they are susceptible to , the common flu. The common flu kills people and old people. Also the very young. President trump and the young. The interesting thing here, the young seem to be doing unbelievably well, actually better than they do with the flu. Young people are doing very well, which is another thing i guess they are trying to figure out. Taking a lot of pictures, are you protecting yourself at all . President trump not at all. I am the president. Handshaking deal throughout my life. [indiscernible] but if youre a politician i walked in and the doctors have their hands out. They dont shake hands. I never thought i would be a politician. The fact is i feel secure. [indiscernible] President Trump i was told that mayperson in the building have had the virus. Therefore they said because of the fact that one person may have been in the building, that turned out to be a negative report. They called me. It was already canceled. This morning i said, i am going to tennessee. We are going down to florida to have a meeting on monday. I would love to stop at cdc. It was a big deal with secret service, that they worked it out. But they were to doubt. The person was a negative diagnosis. Dr. On monday, it said canceled because of the coronavirus. President trump we had another big deal. There were two of them. Recommended they cancel that one. There was another one in a similar area. Have you considered not having Campaign Rallies . President trump i have not. I will tell you what, i have not had a problem filling them. We had one in north carolina, south carolina, tens of thousands of people standing outside the arenas. Is there a risk if there is that many people together . President trump doesnt bother me if it doesnt bother them. What should be done about that cruise ship . President trump that is a good question. I was on the phone with the Vice President. If it were up to me, i would be inclined to say leave everybody on the ship for some time and use the ship as your base. A lot of people would rather do it a different way. They would rather quarantine people on land. When they do that, our numbers are going to go up. The 240 is going to go up. It is a great big ship with thousands of people on it including the sailors and the crew. That is a big ship. If it were up to me, i would do it that way. A lot of people think we should do it the other way. We have to take care of americans. Bring them off the ship. They will be under quarantine. They will be tested very carefully. Everyone is tested carefully. Someone said today, the told a story, a friend yours was saying [indiscernible] general manager of Atlanta International hartsfield airport. He and i are on the task force here. He did a great job yesterday in the press conference explaining procedures put in place to has been everybody screened multiple times before they get on the airplane. That gives people great confidence as they are traveling to all the airports across the country. People coming in have been screened from those problem areas. The customs and border people are checking them. They will have a conversation. They tested one person in the atlanta airport. They have 300,000 people go through a day. That was negative. It is safe to travel now. People just need to be careful and do the things the cdc and the Vice President and his task force tells people to do. That is keep your hands clean, be careful where you are going. Dont go to the airport. He wasnt trump impressed with how hard it is to get on the plane. He was tested two times. Just to come in. We are watching a very cove very closely. Instead of being that we live, instead