People have been working very, very hard today. I tell you, for a long time, they have been working. Before i begin, i want to express our nations well wishes to Prime MinisterBoris Johnson as he wages his own personal fight with the virus. All americans are praying for him. Hes a friend of mine. Hes a great gentleman and a great leader. He is, as you know, he was brought to the hospital today. Im hopeful and sure that he is going to be fine. Hes a strong man, a strong person. Today, every patriotic american heart beats in solidarity with the incredible people of new york and new jersey. They have really become a very hot zone. Some very good things are happening. In new york, the first time aware of the deaths were less from the previous day. That is the first drop so far. Maybe that is a good sign. Could be. The hospital levels are starting to perhaps decrease. It has been very short but perhaps decrease. We wish Governor Cuomo and all the people in new york and new jersey, your governor is doing a great job. He is doing a great job in new jersey. They got hit very hard. I just want to say that the full power of the American Government this isican enterprise, an all military operation but we have waged. And especially over the last number of weeks. 50 states and territories have been approved for major disaster declarations, which is very unusual. Thanks to the army corps of engineers, new york citys Javits Center is one of the largest hospitals in the United States. It is designated for treatment of the virus, patients and staff by hundreds of federal medical personnel deployed from two Army Hospital units. They are doing a great job. This was something we didnt expect to do but they needed help in new york, and we sent federal troops. Not only troops, we sent a a lot of talented doctors, nurses, First Responders. People are now running javits. Also, as you know, the uss comfort which is in new york, there has been publicity about that coming in. That was not supposed to be for the virus at all under any circumstances. But it looks like more and more we will be using it for that. So we will see. That was supposed to be for people having other medical problems. But it is very interesting because there are virtually no cars on the road, no motorcycles on the road, no anything on the road. Things that would normally be taken care of, we dont see anymore. We havent seen that in a long time. Perhaps a positive. The ship is ready. If it has to, if we need it, if we need it for the virus, we will be using it for that. They would prefer not, for obvious reasons, but it for any reason they needed, it is ready ready. It, it is we have the best doctors, best military leaders, and the best logistics professionals anywhere in the world and we are orchestrating a federal response unlike anything our country has ever seen or done. Weve never done anything like this. More and more, we are using our medical people because of the fact that jurisdictions, states, in particular, new york, new jersey, the connecticut area, long island now has become a hotspot, part of new york, we are sending a lot of things on supplies. Now we are sending personnel where it is needed. Military personnel. As of tuesday, we will have deployed over 3000 military and Public Health professionals to new york, new jersey, connecticut, and other parts of our country. That number is going up. We hope we are seeing a leveling off in the hottest spots of them all. We will see. You will see it over the next few days. Lets see what happens. But we are prepared. In the last seven days, fema has airlifted reticle supplies and protective equipment from every corner of earth. They are coming from all over the planet. Including from within the United States where the equipment is not as necessary. Since last sunday, cargo planes have delivered almost, listen to this, 300 million gloves, almost 8 million masks, and 3 million gallons, and many more fully loaded cargo planes are right now on the way. Three big ones landed today. The supplies are being distributed directly to the hospitals and Health Care Providers across the nation so that the massive amount of material that we are getting in is being delivered all over the country. Will deliver an additional 600,000 n95 masks to new york city to take care of the needs of the Public Hospital system. It was a request of mayor de blasio. Weve been working great with mayor de blasio, getting him a lot of stuff. Hes working very hard, i can tell you that. And we are working very hard with new york city and new york state. And at the request of congressman lees eldon, out in long island, we will also be delivering another 200,000 n95 masks to Suffolk County where they need it badly. We are getting that out on an emergency basis. Should be there tomorrow. We will also be deploying millions of n95 masks to other locations that admiral poe love check will detail shortly. The admiral will be up in a couple of minutes. Over the last 24 hours, fema has delivered an additional 500 ventilators to new jersey. 500. Been, the governor has very thankful. We are working very hard with new jersey including building hospitals. We have also sent an additional 200 ventilators to louisiana, definite hotspot. 300 to michigan, working very well, i think, with the governor. 600 will be going or have gone to illinois and i mean there is a governor, i hear him complaining all the time, pritzker. He is always complaining. And yet i said to give me a list of the couple of things we have done in illinois, and we are building 18,500 bed hospital in mccormick place. We are helping to staff it and probably we will end up staffing it because he is not able to do what he is supposed to do as a governor. He has not performed well. We are also sending 100 ventilators to massachusetts. Illinois, 100 to to massachusetts, 300 to michigan, 500 ventilators, 500, going to new jersey. And this is being done by fema, being delivered by fema. And it is i think of that, when you think about 500 ventilators. A ventilator is a big deal. We are also establishing a federal medical station in the washington, d. C. Area to help washington, d. C. And working closely with the mayor and everybody in washington, d. C. At the same time, governor inslee, we appreciate this of Washington State, has returned 400 ventilators which can now be deployed elsewhere in our country. The state of washington has done very well. They will not be needing some of the ventilators that have been sent. About 400, thats a lot. We appreciate that he is able to give them back. He feels confident that they are in good shape for the coming weeks. Until we can deflect declare a final victory. In the days ahead, america will endure the peak of this terrible pandemic, our warriors in this lifeanddeath battle are the incredible doctors and nurses and Health Care Workers on the front line of the fight. We pledge to them our eternal gratitude and everlasting support. They make all of us very proud. Our country is very proud. We have people, they love our country, the world loves our country, most of it. Probably all of it, they just dont say it. I can report today that the United States has now tested and given results. Gotten results of 1. 6 7 Million People, that is far more than any other country has been able to do. And you remember, we inherited a broken system. A lot of this has been developed. By tuesday, new rapid pointofcare testing kits has been produced by abbott laboratories. Great company. They will be distributed to all of our Public Health labs. That is a 15 minute test, as well as the Indian Health service, the cdc, and the Strategic National stockpile. We are going to have 1200. On a weekly basis, we are making more. They go very fast, they are very accurate tests. Other countries are wanting them. At the right time, we will be able to do that. Now, we are getting them to all of ours. We have done 1,670,000 tests. Think of that. 1,670,000 tests. We have a great system now. We are working with the states. In almost all instances. We have a great system. The other thing that we have bought a tremendous amount of is the hydroxychloroquine. As you know, it is a great malaria drug, it has worked unbelievably, it is a powerful drug on malaria. And there are signs that it works on this, some very strong signs. In the meantime, it has been time. A long it also works very powerfully on lupus. We will have to see because again, it is being tested now. This is a new thing that just happened to us, the invisible enemy, we call it. No if you can, if you have signs of heart problems, grissom rhythm ice and which will kill certain things that you dont want living within your body. It is a powerful drug. If you dont have a problem, a say letoblem, we would your doctor think about it. But as a combination, i think there are two things that should be looked at very strongly. Purchased and we have million pills of the hydroxychloroquine. 29 million. A lot of drug stores them by prescription, and also, and they are not expensive, also we are sending them to various labs, are military, we are sending them to the hospitals. We are sending them all over. I just think it is something you know the expression, ive used it for certain reasons, what do . You have to lose what do you have to lose what do you have to lose . A lot of people are saying if you are a doctor, a nurse, a first responder, a medical person going into hospitals, they say taking it before the fact is good. But what do you have to lose . They say take it. Im not looking at it one way or the other. But we want to get out of this. If it does work, it would be a shame if we didnt do it early. But we have some very good signs. That is hydroxychloroquine. And as rifamycin. Yourave to go through medical people, get the approval. I have seen things that i sort of like. What do i know . Im not a doctor. Im not a doctor. But i have common sense. The fda feels good about it. They have approved it. They gave it a rapid approval. And the reason because it has been out there for a long time, they know the side effects and they know the potential. Ited on that, we have sent throughout the country and we have it stockpiled. About 29 million doses, 29 million doses. We hope it works. Driven by the goal of the brightest minds in science, we have the brightest minds in science, but we are driven by the goal of getting rid of this plague, getting rid of this scorched, hitting rid of this virus. Getting rid of this virus. These Brilliant Minds are working on the most effective antiviral therapies and vaccines. I have met many of the doctors that are doing it. These are doctors that are working so hard on vanquishing the virus. We strongly recommend staying at vigorouscticing hygiene and maintaining social distance so that you are just not going to catch it. But is the most effective weapon in this war. I will tell you, we are committing to the to you, we are committing to the people of our country like few administrations, few people, few professionals have ever committed before. They are working so hard. I see them. I see them before my eyes exhausted. People that im dealing with everyday, exhausted. They havent left. They havent left their offices. They havent left their hospitals. We meet them, we see them. Tremendous strides have been made. I think the vaccines, we will have a report on that. But the vaccines, working together with other countries, we are also working with many other countries. And we all want everyone else to be first. We are very happy. But we are very far down the line on vaccines. We will see how all that works. Johnson johnson is doing a great job, working very hard. Great,ne would be therapeutics would be great. We will see what happens. In the meantime, you may listen to what i said about the two drugs mentioned. My administration is rapidly implementing the largest emergency Economic Relief package in american history. Youve seen what has been happening. Billions of dollars in Small Business loans have already been processed through paycheck protection programs. So we went out on friday and literally, it has become so popular, it has been worked with the banks, they get it to the Small Business it is all about employment. It is all about jobs. Want you to keep your jobs. Keep Small Business funding to payroll. Workers on the and we are sending direct Cash Payments to millions of americans and rushing aid to the hardest hit industries. We are saving industries. You will be seeing it. And if we do more, we are going to do more and we are going to try and get rackley to people get directly to people. We will take care of our workers, are Small Businesses. We are going to take care of our large businesses, the airplane industry, the airline industry, a lot of Great Industries that we have that are in trouble because of what took place over the last short period of time. These are industries that were doing better, for the most part, doing better than ever. The airlines were doing great. Oil was doing great. Oil and gas. In the Energy Industry was doing phenomenally well. It got hit like nobody has ever been hit before. Just about like no industry has ever been hit before. There has never been anything like this. But we see light at the end of the tunnel. Things are happening. Things are happening. We are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. And hopefully in the not too distant future, we will be very proud of the job wielded. You can never be happy when so dying. Ople are but we are going to be very proud of the job we did to keep the death down to an absolute minimum, the least it could have happened with this terrible, terrible virus. In closing, i want to note that today is palm sunday and the beginning of holy week for christians and americans and all around the world. While we may be a part from one another, as you can see from our great churches, our great pastors and ministers who are out there working very hard, but we may be apart, we can use this time to turn to reflection and prayer, and our own personal relationship with god. I would ask that all americans pray for the heroic doctors and nurses, for the Truck Drivers and Grocery Store workers and for everyone fighting this battle. I mentioned yesterday, i see the nurses rushing into hospitals and they are putting on their outfits and they are putting on their masks and goggles, they are rushing into war. I see people from apartment houses screaming and shouting and singing. It isnt it is an incredible thing. They are warriors. They are running into buildings and they are literally putting it on as the doors are opening. They are running inside. And they are running inside to tremendous danger. Tremendous danger. But most of all, i would like to ask for your prayers, for the families who have lost loved ones, ask god to comfort them in their hour of grief. It is a great hour of grief for our nation, for the world. 151,morning, i was talking for four days i said 151, 151 countries. This morning, it is 182 countries. It jumped up a lot. As of this morning, it is 182 countries are under attack from this monster. With the faith of our families and the spirit of our people and the grace of our god, we will endure, we will overcome, we will prevail, we have learned so much, we will be stronger than ever. And i just want to thank everybody. I want to thank the incredible professionals on the task force. We had a big meeting today, there were calls all day long to so many different people. I think our package to get everyone working when we are ready is turning out to be successful. We may have to make it larger because it has been really successful. But all of that comes back to this country. We want to get them back, we want to get our people back to work. Everybody wants to be back. We want to open our country as soon as possible. With that, im going to ask dr. Birx to say a few words. You. As some charts to show and thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, mr. President. As you can see from the hopeful signs in italy and spain where we see finally new cases and deaths declining, it is giving us hope of what our future could be. We wanted to give you an update on where all of the states were. We are looking at this as states normalized per 100,000 citizens. It looks very similar to last week. We wanted to update you. We have been covering throughout the week this states that were moving on this map. You can see very clearly where new york is as a state. Although this is very much still centered in the new york metro area. New jersey is the orange line. The greenline is louisiana. That is followed by massachusetts and then connecticut and michigan are together in those lines toward the bottom. And then of course, washington, d. C. Is now visible on this map, which was not visible before. And the yellow line towards the bottom is Washington State. Next slide, please. This just summarizes all of the states that we are tracking closely at the county level. So we are tracing and tracking not only the epidemic at the state level, but understanding what is happening in county by county with new cases. And of course also, the deaths. We are also triangulating that with all of the laboratory data, and just to tell you how we are doing that, for new york which you can see at the top, it is now about 36 positive. They were in the 40s. Day over day, there percent positive is starting to decline. New jerseys is increasing, however. They are up to 42 of the specimens that come to the laboratory are positive. Louisiana, 25 . Massachusetts, 20 . Connecticut and michigan, 20 . District of columbia, 15 . Washington, 8 . Illinois, colorado are at about 16 . Pennsylvania, which is also new to the graphic, is at about 12 . Next slide, please. If we could go back one, im sorry, go back one slide, one more. All of the states here, those are 38 of the states, 38 of our states have less than 50 cases per 100,000. They are testing, there Laboratory Results ar