And thisgood friday sunday, millions of christians celebrate easter and the resurrection of jesus christ. Thatis holy time, we pray god will heal the sick and comfort the heartbroken and bless our heroes. As American Families look forward to easter, we are reminded that our story ends not in despair, but in triumph and renewal. It . Appropriate, isnt i would like to provide americans an update on our ongoing efforts in the war against the invisible enemy. Before i do that, i have a couple of notes. The United States in discussions last night with mexico, saudi arabia, russia and dealing with opec nations, we are trying to get mexico, as the expression goes, over the barrel. Doingico is committing to 100,000 fewer barrels and the president and i spoke last night. We have a great relationship and great friendship, they are helping is very much at the border. They have 27,000 mexican soldiers on our borders right now, stopping people from coming into our country as the wall goes up. We are up to about 106 t eight miles of wall. In speaking with the president , they have a limit. The opec nations have agreed to a different limit, the reduction of about 23 . What i thought i would do i dont know that it will be acceptable, the United States will help mexico along and they will reimburse us some time at a later date when they are prepared to do so. We had a great conversation but we will find out how that all works out. As you know, they are trying to get rid of the glut of oil. We dont want anything to hurt our incredible industry, we are the largest producer in the world now so we dont want anything to hurt those jobs, those great jobs in texas and north dakota and oklahoma and everywhere. Energy a tremendous business and we want to keep those jobs. We are working on it and eventually it will work out. It may work out quicker than what most people thought possible and maybe it wont but it will work out eventually. Our experts, our monitoring the data from every part of our country having to do with the topic we are here to discuss. In the midst of grief and pain, we are seeing clear signs that our aggressive strategy is saving countless lives. Tremendous progress is being made although when you look at some of the numbers, just spoke with Governor Cuomo, we had a good talk, when you look at those numbers, the numbers of died, people who have its horrible. On the others, you have the used are beds being substantially reduced. Thats usually a sign its heading in a downward curve. So, new york we know where that is but in the midst of all this grief and pain, we are seeing these signs and seeing them very strongly. A lot of that has to do with the aggressive strategy in saving so many lives. We are saving so many lives compared to what it could have been. Isody knows what the number but we had a number of 100,000 lives, as many as that is, its impossible to think of it. And that was the low end with a tremendous amount of work and a , you can callunt in many Different Things our people had to be extremely strong and brave to be able to put up with what they have put up with. This social every othernd aspect i think i can say 90 or more were able to do it. The minimum number was 100,000 lives and i think we will be substantially under that number. Hard to believe that if you had 60,000, you can never be happy. But thats a lot fewer than we were originally told and thinking. And said between 100000 200,000 side and up to 2. 2 million lives if we did nothing. Resolved a tremendous by the people of this country. We will see what it ends up being but it looks like we are headed to a number substantially below the 100,000 which would be the low mark. I hope that bears out. The situation in detroit and new orleans appears to be stabilizing. Starting to goly up and now it is stabilizing and a great place, i have so many friends there, they cannot believe what is happening, but it has stabilized. I spoke with the governor of louisiana and, as you know, we are building them additional beds now, the army corps of engineers and fema. That is going to be done and i hope they will not be very well used. I dont think they will need them or certainly not very many of them. We built them in a big hospital of 1000 beds and now we are in the midst of doing another 1000. I dont think they will be using very many of them and thats a good thing. Two weeks ago, we said that would not be enough and we would build more but we wanted to wait and see and im glad we waited. It looks like they are doing really well. Louisiana and the state of michigan is doing much better than we thought. Washington state, we have made enough progress that the governor is now able to return in Army Field Hospital so we will take that hospital. We dont think we need any more hospitals. We built thousands of beds all over the country. Are probably not going to need that hospital but if we do, we can move it to another location in new york. We see hospital admissions declining substantially. Nationwide, the number of new cases per day is flattening substantially, suggesting we are near the peak and our comprehensive strategy is working. Over time, or guidelines to slow the spread are decreasing the rate of new cases substantially and we and it admissions. We are seeing that. It is incredible. With no exceptions it is looking like it is low. That is because of the people doing what they had to do, great people. Working with elected representatives and the doctors, nurses, everybody. Just everybody. Everybody has been so amazing. I was told this morning please mention all those people working in the Grocery Stores, and it is true. The checkouts and the clerks and the people a number of those people have become infected. We want to thank them. A shout out to them. With the tireless devotion of american doctors and nurses and all the medical people we have capped our fatality rate kept our fatality rate very low compared to other countries. My administration is monitoring the data on the impact on our cherished africanamerican communities because they have been hit hard. The Surgeon General will be sharing more information right after we are finished here. He will be coming up and saying exactly what is happening. It is really very troublesome. I will tell you that. I would like to provide clarity on the important point for Many Americans on elective surgeries. We have asked hospitals to cancel surgeries and procedures that do not take place at this time, just not to do them now. Delaysny treatments and treatments remain between the patient and their doctor. We are not advising to postpone medical treatment their doctor believes should occur now. Different kinds of surgery, obviously, but we are getting to the point where you can start to think about doing that surgery if necessary pretty soon. Yesterday i directed secretary of agricultural sonny perdue tax with i aid to American Farmers expedite aid to American Farmers. He will be using all the tools at his disposal to develop a program and quickly of at least 60 billion to provide relief for farmers, ranchers and producers impacted by the coronavirus. And this time of crisis we must keep our supply chains moving from the beginning, right from beginning to end. We are committed to supporting the amazing men and women who produce supply. I did a statement on social i asked thesaid secretary to expedite help to our farmers, especially to the smaller farmers who are badly hurting right now. I expect secretary purdue to use all the funds and authorities at his disposal to make sure our food supply is stable and safe and are great farmers are prosperous and continue to be prosperous. We are working hard to make sure our Food Supply Chain is sound and plentiful. We all know that begins with our farmers, cattleman, ranchers and producers. We are working with these farmers, the big farmers, the cattleman, the ranchers, all the producers. We will take care of them. We have a lot of money that was put there three our use of tariffs and other means through our use of tariffs and other means. I have been helping our farmers for a couple of years. They were targeted by china and others. I think they are very grateful for what we have done. On the medical front, the fda has issued 47 emergency use authorizations for advancements in testing. New ventilator designs, innovations and personal protective equipment, and experiment old medicines and dr. Will be talking about that. We cut through the red tape to give doctors and patients unprecedented freedom to make their own health care decisions. Granting access to potential therapies and drugs. Since monday, we have deployed two major shipments of hydroxychloroquine from the National Stockpile going to various cities. Disposing and getting as quickly as we can portions of it to the department of Veterans Affairs and the department of defense. Speaking of the department of defense, they will be sending us 10 million n95 masks. We are in great shape with ventilators, with protective clothing. We have additional plane loads coming in. We are not getting any calls from governors at this moment. I can speak for Vice President pence who will be talking in a little while. We are getting very few calls from governors or anybody else needing anything. They are in great shape for the surge that is coming in certain areas in particular. Thats a good job. They have done a great job. Iappreciate that appreciate that. More than 2 million coronavirus tests have been completed. We are conducting approximately 100,000 more every day. We are working to bring bloodbased tests to the market as quickly as possible so americans can determine whether or not they have already had the virus and potentially have immunity. They have immunity if they have had the virus. A lot of them dont even know if it they headed. The Prime Minister seems to be doing well now, i hope. He had a rough go of it, and still is but he is doing better. Some people dont even know they had it. It could be snuffles. They dont feel perfect, but they have had it. They are the lucky ones. The nih, cdc and fda are validating these Antibody Tests to ensure they are accurate and they are doing it at breakneck speed. We will get them approved very quickly. Validated, we are confident it will scale up to tens of millions of tests very quickly. We are leading the world now in testing by far and we will keep it that way. Other countries are coming to us and they want to know about our tests. Can they buy the in all make that soon position to make that possible. We will have an announcement on the World Health Organization sometime next week. We give them approximately 500 million a year. We will be talking about that subject next week. We will have a lot to say about it. We will hold it. Every american should be proud of what our country has achieved in just a short period of time. The military has deployed thousands of personnel to build 23 temporary hospitals with more than 16,000 beds. We have potential to build many more if we needed them. We are ready to go but i dont think we will need them, which is great news. We built those hospitals in 12 states and the District Of Columbia using the defense production act. We used it like a hammer. A lot of the media said we were not using it. We are using it like a hammer to saidint where we the word and everybody gave us max. They really have done a job with a few exceptions. We harnessed the full power of american industry to reduce ventilators and other essential supplies. Right now we are making thousands of ventilators, many of which we wont need. We will use them in the stockpile. We will build that up. We will help build up the stockpiles, which they should have had in the states. We are working with governors on that and also help other countries. Countries are calling us for help. They need ventilators. They are in no position to build ventilators. We are. We have ford and General Motors and Many Companies building ventilators. At ae going to be helping nottoodistant point. We will be helping quite a few countries. We have launched project air bridge to deliver nearly 300 million pieces of personal protective equipment from and around the globe. Out 60 shipping sterilization systems to 10 cities that can sterilize up to 80,000 masks each day. Im hearing it can go to 120,000 masks per day, certain equipment with certain additions. There is a company in ohio that makes this. Great company. I hear it is a great product. How come we have to buy so many masks . Why cant we sterilize the masks being used . The answer is you cant up to 20 times. We can take certain types of masks, the n95s in particular and sterilize them. Make them very clean up to 20 times. Thats a great thing. We passed the largest emergency Economic Relief package in American History to save the u. S. Economy and protect the american worker. This past week, which was four active days of the stock market. Today is not included. The markets are closed. In four days we had the biggest stock organ increase weve had in 50 years stock market increase in 50 years. There is a pent up demand. They want to get back. There is something good going to happen. Something very good is going to happen. We have to get back. Thisis horrible period, horrible, dark period where this monster came and worked its horrible, horrible spell over the world, 184 countries as of this morning. 184 countries. We have done well and i guess the market things we have done well because we had the biggest stock market increase we are talking four days instead of five that we had in 50 years. More than 50 years actually. The American People have launched the greatest mobilization of our Society Since world war ii, deploying every scientific, governmental, medical and military resource to defeat the virus. I want to just start then with we will answer questions later. I think we will have a lot of time today. A lot of people our office they should be for good friday. We will answer questions. I want to start with deborah birx, dr. Birx. You can go over some of the numbers we looked at and that would be great. Birx thank you for outlining how well we are doing in some areas. For those that are watching epidemic curves, thats how epidemiologist like to look at curves, you can see for the first time in the United States we are starting to level on the logarithmic phase like italy did about a week ago. This gives us great heart that not only in specific places, but we are starting to see that change. A lot of that is driven by the improvement in new york city. For a long time they were over 50 of our cases and 50 of new cases. That has dramatically changed because of the impact of what the citizens of new york and new jersey and across connecticut, and now rhode island are doing to really change the course of this pandemic. Really change the trajectory of new cases. Many statesg what and metro areas were fold anding as two fourfold increases that went back to twofold. Now they are going to eight days between the doubling rate. Watching this everyday gives us hope across the metro areas from new york and new jersey and all through denver and of course through new orleans. We still see cases occurring in the boston area and in chicago, but the rate of increase seems to be stabilizing. We really want to call out the work of the mayors of baltimore and the district and philadelphia who have brought all their Health Experts together. Working with their communities and are starting to change the curve in those areas. What we are seeing is we are united in social distancing. That has been very encouraging to all of us. It should be encouraging to the Health Care Providers on the front line, many of which are observing our americans with such dignity and respect and ensuring everybody gets optimal care. As the president noted, our mortality is significantly less than many of the other countries when you correct them for our population. That is really solely the work of our health our frontline Health Care Providers. Working with hopefully you we are incredibly proud of Public Health leaders at the city level, at the state level, at the federal level who are working together to change the course of this pandemic. Working with their citizens and communities to make these changes. The american public, who has really taken all of this to heart testate home. Last week we really asked a lot of people in the washington and baltimore areas to consolidate, not go out frequently to Grocery Stores or pharmacies. You can see that is having a huge impact. Its really about the encouraging signs that we see. As encouraging as they are, we have not reached the peak. Every day we need to continue to do what we did yesterday and the week before and the week before that. That is what in the end is going to take us up across the peak and down the other side. We continue to really applaud the work of california and Washington State and oregon. We are learning from all three of those states, from the Public Health officials about how they were able to keep the virus from ever becoming logarithmic. Thats an important lesson for all of us on how they did that, what the timing was in case we ever have to face this issue in the future. Thank you, mr. President. Dr. Fauci again, keeping on the theme dr. Birx mentioned, this is the end of the famous week we spoke about last weekend in which we were predicting to have happen happened. Remember this to is not the time to feel that since we have made such important advance in the success of the mitigation that we need to be pulling back at all. I was actually hearkened by the fact we have been talking about the new yorknew jerseyne and new orleans area where they have been getting spikes. I want to salute the governors of states throughout the entire United States, particularly in the central part of the country. The governors in these press c