Disease, who is at the risk of getting the disease, meaning if you are negative youre still at risk of getting the disease. Andra range of Public Health efforts call surveilling, understanding the prevalence of the disease in the community, that, coupled with knowing how many people are sick, and how toey people die who allow us ultimately open up our community and society back to near normal. It also tells us how close we are to herd immunity, which is the Public Health principle that says that if i have the disease, you will not get the disease. We know that testing is essential to be adequate for the number of people we have in our country. We know that we cannot do Contact Tracing without an adequate number of people and an adequate number of tests. Knowing the test results will ,llow us to target resources quarantine on people who may have been exposed, and to adequately treat people who get sick. I want to point out that the fastest way to be safe at home and away from home is to know your test status. We are here today to talk a bit about the importance of testing, and how we can get that ramped up. I want to thank you, senator murray, for your efforts and having me today. Senator schumer wanted to talk i dont know i was on. Thank you dr. Benjamin. And i want to thank you for the great work you have done. I want to thank our colleagues, we will hear from senator murrayw and then senator who has done the great details on the kind of testing we should , ford then senator durbin talking about the specific aspects of this crisis. Wanted say i hope that you and your loved ones are healthy. Another point, its mindboggling that at this critical time when the administrations testing regime is at best incomplete, and at worst in shambles, that the president is choosing to focus his time and energy on a vendetta against the who. Thats not leadership. Its not going to improve the situation, healthwise or economically for the american people. As you all know, here and coronavirus here in new york, the coronavirus continues to take a toll. My state and hometown are suffering in normas heartbreak and look enormous heartbreak and loss. At the same time, we are encouraged that the rate of hospitalizations is moving in the right direction. So while we are grieving at the loss of human life, there is a glimmer of hope. Everyone on the front lines has done an amazing and heroic job responding to the health crisis. So many others continue to put their lives on the line to keep our country operating. We are grateful. Be oncus continues to addressing the urgent crisis in our Health Care System and economy. But we also have to look ahead and prepare for the future, when things start to return to a bit of normal. As my colleagues and i have been saying for months, the only way we can get the economy back up and running is by addressing the health crisis. Separated. Cannot be is ready. A vaccine the best way to assess the readiness of the country to restart Economic Activity is through widespread and sophisticated testing. More than a month ago, President Trump proudly said that anybody who needs a test, gets a test. We she was very wrong. Woefullyng capacity is inadequate. We have testing shortages and communities in new york and across the country. Too often, this is even more poor communities and black and brown communities. We have to ramp up testing so it can be done on a broader scale. We need results back quickly. Thats going to take a National Major effort and it will require an organized coordinated focus and plan, not exactly the Trump Administrations strong suits. So today, Senate Democrats are outlining the challenge of this issue of testing, as well as the roadmap for a solution, we will have a white paper that senator stabenow and senator murray have and will go into shortly. Senate democrats will present an accurate picture of the challenges we are facing, not issuing false and misleading claims like President Trump. This is not china, this is the United States of america, we need our government to be truthful. And we are laying out the 30 billion dollar plan for a comprehensive National Testing includesand that bolstering the supply and manufacturing chain, with free testing for all and expanding reporting and Contact Tracing. , ahave put out the report white paper and a onepage fact sheet. Testing kitsve widely available across america, so we can beat this pandemic and help those affected. We need to track the results in real time, and we need a dedicated domestic supply chain to ensure that tests are readily available in every community, large and small. And if the president tries to ham handedly bully or dupe states into rio ocean reopening portions of the country and send people back to work prematurely or without testing, he could risk undoing all of the progress we have made towards this pandemic. If this is mishandled, the disease could resurge and be a greater challenge. We cannot afford to wait. We need to study and adapt to the coronavirus now. Testing is the best tool we have to fight the virus today, to know who is infected and who is not and went to open the economy. Its good to clean important to our health and wellbeing of every person in our country to restart done right and testing is the foundation. We will need by cart bipartisan support and we will need the president and the Trump Administration to step up and get the job done. Senator stabenow on the report. Sen stabenow thank you senator , and hopefully everyone on the call has our report. Lets say that the bottom line is that the u. S. Lags the world in testing. And we lead the world in cases. Theres a direct relationship there. Covid19 inse of the United States was diagnosed in Washington State on january 20. After 12 weeks, the appearance of over 600,000 cases and over , we still lackst the National Testing strategy, as has been talked about, to reliably and consistently test patients across the country. There are a lot of comparisons we make in our report, but let me really focus on one, because its a picture into what has happened and the difference between two countries. The United States and south korea diagnosed their first covid19 case on the same day. January 20. By march 17, eight weeks later, south korea was testing 40 times more people per Million People in their country. 40 times more. Casesontinued, and as the stayed close to level, as you can see on the graph, we continue to spike. As of yesterday, south korea had over just 10,000 cases. Cases. Have over 600,000 and with all of the comments the president makes, we remember on march 30 when he said that nobody was raising the issue of testing with him. In fact on that day, in our report, governors, democrats and republicans were on the phone, were pleading at that time for testing. Goesso have a graph that from january 17 when the World Health Organization adopted a diagnostic test that other countries around the world began using, the u. S. Did not use that, the administration wanted their own test. And we go through what has happened as a result of that. Need anine, we aggressive, National Testing action plan. To save lives, to get people back to work, to know where we need to focus, to know how to focus precious resources. The bottom line is we need testing, testing, testing. I hope you will take a look at the specifics of the report. What we are doing is raising the alarm and to do what we all want to do, get people back to work. We want to save lives of people who are running into the crisis now, it has to involve testing to save lives. And i would conclude by saying that when the president talks about each individual state having to do this, i think back to what is happening around the world. Nobody is saying this is the beijing versus the shanghai strategy. We talk about the country of china, or the country of south korea. We are the United States of america, if we are going to keep our people safe and save lives and put people back to work, we need a National Action plan for testing. Im going to turn it over to senator murray to talk about the democratic proposal. Thank you. as families and communities continue grappling with the covid19 pandemic, and as Health Care Workers hustle around the clock to save lives, and essential workers keep the lights on and shelves stocked, Public Health experts have made it clear that we need to do hundreds of millions of tests if we want to reduce social distancing and safely get people back to work, backtoschool, and back to some semblance of normal. For that to happen, we need testing to be fast, free, and everywhere. As you just heard from senator stabenow, the Trump Administrations early delays and missteps put us way behind here. And because of their continued lack of urgency and leadership, we have a lot of catching up to do. It was reported yesterday, testing has slowed down almost a third over the past week, as glitches and shortages continue to impede progress. At our current pace, getting 100 million tests done would already take too long. We cannot afford any backsliding , which is why democrats are introducing the roadmap to get things back on track. You may think a Strategic Plan to ramp up testing would already be put together, but since it is foremost, we want to require the Trump Administration to develop and communicate a detailed Strategic Plan to rapidly scale and optimize covid19 testing. This is a national crisis. We need a federally coordinated whole of society response. Not one that leaves each state to fend for itself or fight its neighbors for capacity. And we are calling for 30 billion in emergency funding to enable faster scaling of testing and development of different types of tests, particularly Rapid Response tests. This funding will also play an Important Role in optimizing the National Supply chain to address the shortages wherever they arise, to make sure we have plenty of tests that are rapid, reliable, and have adequate supplies, equipment, and workforce capacity, to conduct, analyze, and followup on those tests. Its not enough to just increase capacity, we have to make sure it reaches every community, including some of our most vulnerable and overlooked, our communities of color, tribes, rural communities, people with disabilities, older individuals and underserved communities. We are seeing this virus to the most harm to people and communities who the Health Care Care system has left behind. Dohave a responsibility to everything we can to stop the tragic patterns from repeating. Next, we need a robust Public Health infrastructure to maximize the impact of these efforts. Testing may be the first step in the path forward, but we have to bolster it with the public followcapacity needed to , like a massive increase in Contact Tracing, which requires a major investment in Public Health workers. With reliable transparent National Data reporting and surveillance which allows his outbreaks,ify demographic trends, or other problems. And we have to make sure the whole effort is transparent, accountable, driven by science, and experts, not politics. Democrats understand how important getting this done is to putting the country on the path to get through the crisis. I hope the republicans who are hearing from their states about the need for more testing and have said they want testing expanded will work with us. To require the administration to develop a National Plan, provide emergency funds, optimize the supply chain, support every community, and build a robust Public Health and response workforce. These ideas should be bipartisan and put in action as soon as possible. Our country cannot wait. Thats where we are moving forward today. Thank you and let me turn it over to senator durbin. Durbin thank you. We cannot safely end sheltering in place until we have testing every place. Why . Because our enemy, our threat, the coronavirus, does not care if youre black, white, brown, memberoor, young, old, a of the daughters of the american revolution, here on a valid or invalid visa, the fact is if you are breathing or coughing in america we need to test you. We need to make sure we are finding out the threats to others, who are currently spared but could be victims if we dont move and move quickly. We know that the testing has to go beyond the current limits, dramatically. If we are going to move from the shelterinplace to the next stage of opening our economy. If we look at the groups around america, you can see the disparities already in treatment which are being reflected in the inspection the infections and deaths. In chicago, illinois, we have done something most places ive done, extensive Data Collection by the people infected. It has illuminated a grim reality. Black and africanamerican residents make up 30 of the population in chicago and 70 of the fatalities from the covid virus. Ofs a dramatic question death rates among africanamericans at nearly five times the rates of their white counterparts. There are also disparities among those who are hispanic and in the undocumented population. Hospital, cook county told me that literally half of those who have died from the covid virus were uninsured, suggesting that many were undocumented, and many did not come into the Health System until they were literally dying. Issue, we know this is an that affects us downstate, in rural areas we have the same challenges. This morning i was on a phone call with the farmers and agriculture leaders across the state. A friend from lexington, illinois, has been raising cattle in the beef industry for many generations. He has had three loads of cattle ready which have been held back for three weeks because theres not a processor or packer in illinois that will take them. Because the workers, who are by and large hispanic, african, and asian, refused to come to work because its not safe. They understand and we do to that they could die by showing up for work. If we want to change this dynamic and move where we are today to opening this economy is a path that has to be followed. Project, manhattan certainly it involves a vaccine, which we have committed ourselves to and will continue to urge with every possible aspect. But we also need these two levels of testing, making sure we determine whether people are positive or negative in terms of their infection, and also a test to see which antibodies are being carried by each individual should not be a partisan matter in any way. The reason we are taking the initiative is that others have not. We urge our republicans to step up and join us, make this as bipartisan as the rollcall for the cares act. Lets have republicans and democrats together with a Manhattan Project for testing, so we can realistically talk about opening the economy. Thank you. We will take questions on this subject. If you would like to ask a question you may do so by pressing one and zero at this time. First comes from natalie brand, cbs news. Call,nk you for having us this is to dr. Benjamin and anyone else. I am wondering if you could tell us about the issues you are hearing in individual states about machines that were not running at capacity, im wondering if its a Lab Infrastructure issue, supplies, what are you hearing from the labs . And i heard from a doctor who could not order one of those machines and im wondering if thats a widespread problem. From what i understand its , i dont have the details on that, but i have heard it was both. Stabenow, ienator would say a different piece of this with avid in detroit, the mayor of detroit was the first to get the 15 minute test, it is an issue of getting enough of the test kits, not the machines, but the test kits. And this just reinforces what we are doing on the call, she has been using this to put Police Officers back to work. She had 500 officers out on 14 day quarantines who were exposed but did not know whether or not they had the virus. Every day now they are testing people with the 15 minute test and officers are able to go back to work. He told me that the sense of relief on peoples faces was amazing to see, knowing that they knew what was happening to them. There is a lot to get to the point where we can do this everywhere, but we are seeing it make a difference in detroit. Thank you. Our next question from pam cochran, new york times. Thank you for doing this. Do you see this blueprint becoming part of a phase four package . Looking ahead to future legislation to address the pandemic, do you see a resolution as well on providing additional funds for hospitals, states, and local governments . Answer, yes, we hope to see funds. If the president will not do this, as my colleagues have mentioned, we have to. This is so important to the future health and economy of the country, we would like it to be a part of the next package, because it is so necessary. And let me say, its not on asic but i will answer, secretary mnuchin and i spoke this morning and this afternoon, we will be getting together in the secretarys office. We see no reason why we cannot come to an agreement. We democrats believe that we need relief for Small Businesses but also to the people who are under banked and underserved, many of the Small Businesses that dont have a connection to a larger bank are no