He was joined by the task force coordinator, dr. Deborah birx. Pres. Trump thank you very much. Good afternoon. We continue to see a number of positive signs that the virus is past its peak. It has been devastating all over the world. 184 countries, probably more. That number was as of one week ago. Dr. Birx will walk through some of these trends in a moment. But they are very positive trends, for winning. We are going to win and we are going to close it out. While we mourn the tragic loss of life, and you cannot mourn it any stronger than we are morning it, the u. S. Has produced Better Health outcomes than any other country with the possible exception of germany. Anyyou cannot mourn it stronger than we are mourning it, i think we are as good or better. On a per capita basis, our mortality rate is far lower than other nations of western europe. With the lone exception of possibly, germany. This includes the u. K. , switzerland, belgium, the netherlands, italy, france. Spain has a mortality rate that is almost four times that of the United States you do not hear that. You heard that with more deaths. But we are a much bigger country than any of those countries by far. Starts talking about the u. S. Is number one, we are not number one. Chinas number one. Just so you understand. China is number one by a lot. It is not even close. They are way ahead of us in terms of death. It is not even close. You know it. I know it. They know it. But you do not want to report it. Why . You will have to explain that. Someday i will explain it. Since we released the guidelines to open up america again, and this was two days ago, a number of states led by both democratic and republican governors have announced concrete steps to begin a safe, gradual opening. Texas and vermont will allow certain businesses to open on monday while still allowing still requiring appropriate social distancing precautions. And i can tell you the governor of texas he knows what he is , doing. He is a great governor. He knows exactly what he is doing. Montana will start lifting restrictions. Ohio, north dakota, idaho, have advised nonessential businesses to prepare for a phase opening starting throughout this crisis, may 1. My administration has taken action fored Economic Relief to our citizens. As an example, you do not here anymore about ventilators. What happened to the ventilators . And now they are giving you the other. It is called testing. Testing. Want to use all of the capacity but they do not we have created. We have tremendous capacity. Dr. Birx will explain that. They know that. The governors know that. The democrat governors know that. Through the Paycheck Protection Program, we have already processed nearly 350 billion to 1. 6 million Small Businesses across the nation. To keep American Workers on the payroll. So we are asking congress to get it done. This should be bipartisan. 100 vote. It has really been incredible. The 350 billion that has been approved is so popular. And it is keeping businesses open. Will be open hopefully forever. And it our swift action is supporting american jobs. 30 million one woman said the program is a game changer for her and her family. Coffee shops. She has 120 employees. Many of whom have developmental and intellectual disabilities. And now they are all staying and they are getting paid. And she has got a dream. And it is going to take place quickly when she opens again. So, amy good luck. , north carolina. Great place. Jewelry and julie helped lead a church and own a restaurant in south dakota. With about 15 employees, they were already starting layoffs. Layoffs were moving around rapidly. Now they have hired their employees back. They can keep their restaurant open. It will be moving quickly. Very quickly. As opposed to not having anyone. And probably not having a place place to have all of these people employed. She would have been out of business. She would have been gone. The Paycheck Protection Program is now drained. 350 billion. And it goes to the employees of the Small Businesses. Lawmakers must stop blocking these funds and replenish the program without delay. The democrats have to come on board. I used to read that these were democrat programs, not republican. It seems to have switched around a lot. The republicans and democrats want it. They also want other things that are unacceptable. This is about covid. And what it has done to us. This is not about extraneous things that they have been trying to get for years and our country does not want to have. We are continuing our relentless effort. My administration is taking steps to protect highrisk communities, by providing funding for 13,000 Community Health center sites and mobile Medical Center stations in order , to equip them with the most advanced and robust testing capabilities. These sites are incredible. What they can do is incredible. The job they do is incredible. These centers provide care to 28 Million People living in rural regions. A clear underserved urban and rural regions, including many africanamerican and hispanic communities. We are taking care of them. It is so important. And because you have all been reading about the onproportionate numbers africanamerican. And you are reading a little bit less about hispanic, but likewise hispanic communities. The numbers are disproportionate. In fact we are doing big studies , on it right now. We do not like it. It is not right. Nationwide, we have conducted more than 4 million tests. Dr. Birx will be talking about that. It is double the number conducted by any country on earth. That is more than two times the number conducted by any other country. You hear so much about testing. What we have done is incredible. In testing. And i started with an obsolete system from a Previous Administration or administrations. But i would really say administration for a different reason. Because testing has become so advanced over the last number of years. And we have the most advanced at of all. I spoke with other nations and they were talking about our great testing capability. Some of them what to know what to do. How can they get involved . Because they needed for their own countries. In louisiana, massachusetts, rhode island, new york and other hotspots, we have tested more people per capita then italy, and the u. K. And all countries combined. Ner, testing per capita is 6 higher than singapore. In fact, there is a typo. It is 67 higher. That is a big difference. I was looking and said, 6 does not look good. It is 67 . Good job out there. It is 67 . Higher than singapore. Than south korea and 47 higher than australia. Higher than singapore, which is very advanced place in terms of what they are doing. My administration has been speaking with many governors to try to unlock the vast Testing Capacity that exists in their states. Dr. Birx discussed the commercial and academic laboratories in this day. They have tremendous unused capabilities. The governor should use them. Tremendous and there waiting for business from these governors. Some of them like to complain. I must tell you, for the most part we are getting along great with them but some of them like to complain. I still about. Hardest thing by far, by factor of 20, is the ventilators. Now we are the king of ventilators. We have ventilators and we will be helping other countries very soon. We will be helping mexico. I spoke to the president of mexico. He is great. Great guy. I told him we are going to be helping him. They desperately need in mexico ventilators. ,i told him we would be helping them substantially. We are in a position to do that. Now we are building thousands a week. They are coming in rapidly. They are very high quality. We are also helping governors to develop strategies to deploy their Testing Capacity to protect vulnerable populations. And underserved populations, while getting americans at lower risk safely back to work. Again we have tremendous testing , capacity. Now a lot of people likely avid test. Abbott it is a brandnew technology. Brandnew test. Five minutes, boom, you put it in. They are making thousands of machines. Not everybody is going to get that one. They will get others. They have numerous platforms that we will talk about in a minute. Unfortunately, some voices are trying to politicize the issue of testing. They should not be doing that. Just as we did with ventilators. We had virtually none. The hospitals were empty. For the most part, the hospitals did not have ventilators. We had to take care of the whole country. And we did a job, like nobody. Army of young, brilliant people. A couple of older ones. For the most part they worry young, brilliant geniuses. They did a job like nobody would believe. I wish you could have seen it. Aroundtheclock. And now the rest of the world is coming to us asking to help with ventilators. Because they are very complicated. They are very expensive. They are very hard to build. And we have them coming in by the thousands. But you do not hear that, from even the governors. Nobody is complaining about governors. Nobody is complain about ventilators. If there was a surge, we could have ventilators to them in hours. We have a stockpile. Almost 10,000 ventilators. You dont hear about hospital beds. When i started everyone was oh, hospital beds, hospital beds. The governor of new york correctly asked me for hospital beds. We got the army corps of engineers out. They built them. He needed them. I know that he said we were projecting, we are not projecting new york, we are listening to the governors. He wanted them there and he needed them. And we gave them thousands of beds. Javits center. We brought the ship. Then we had the ship converted to covid19. And that was a big deal. Because of ventilation and all of the things we had to do. But we did. And fortunately for him, and for us, all of us, they have not used either one very much. Because the numbers have gone out to get kelly. But it was there. And it was built. And it was beautiful. 2900 beds. There was incredible what they did. They did it in a matter of a few days. But, unfortunately, and it was very good the relationship was , very good. And im, friendly, glad they do not need them. Louisiana the same thing. I think the governor, democrat, good guy. And he well, i think, tell you a story that, we had more than enough and i said we are supposed to build one more. I told him, if we do not have to build this hospital, it was an additional 500,000 5001 thousand beds. I said if you do not need it, would it be possible to build it somewhere else or not billed at all and save money, which is ok for governor meant government to, save money. Build it at all. And are not he called me back the next day and said we do not need it. We took good care of every place. We did not miss a trick. We are in great shape on testing. We have different platforms. We actually have nine platforms and on monday we are going to add one. I dont like to count on them before they are up. We have tremendous testing capability. People can go. We are building the , just like now with ventilators best ventilators. ,just our testing is getting like with ventilators our testing is Getting Better and , better. I took the first test. The first test was not pleasant. This was not a pleasant thing. I said, you have to be kidding. You have to be kidding. Up your nose and then we hang a right. And it goes down here. And then we wiggle it around here under your eye. And then we pull it out. And i said, theres no way that can happen. Is that the way it goes . Are you sure . This was a very unpleasant test. And then i was tested a few weeks later. With the new test that just came out, the abbott. They just touch your nose basically and they put it in a machine. And a few minutes later they tell you if you are fine. I was lucky in both cases. Because ive seen the damage that this does to people. We have great tests. Butwe have great tests. Gotten betterly and better as we go along. We have a tremendous lab but capability all of the country. And, for some reason, the governors, a lot of them are, but some of the governors, like to complain, and theyre not using it. We have a tremendous lab capability. We are ready for them. Just like all along, like with the ventilators, we will get better, more advanced. We will be able to do things that no one would believe possible. A broken,erited terrible system. I always say it our cupboards , were bare. We had very little in our stockpile. Now we are loaded up. Loaded up these hospitals. We alsoloaded up these hospitals. And we are talking about payments. Billions of dollars worth of things to hospitals. I guess we will have to work that out at some point. I guess they are going to work it out with congress. The federal government loaded up hospitals. We loaded up hospitals with things to take care of people that are very desperate. We were not worried about payment at that time. We said, you will take care of it at the right time. But we gave billions of dollars worth of medical goods and medicines and equipment to hospitals. And we will work it out with them. People do not like to talk about that. So we have done a job that no one believed. This was a military and private enterprises march. We marched. , because theyely are viewing it as an election how did President Trump do . , he did terribly. Lets see he did terribly. , but we just got them the oh. Ventilators they didnt have that they should have had. We just got them hospital beds by the thousands. We just got them testing that they do not even know how to use. In some cases, they have machines that they are only using 5 or 10 of the machine. Because they have an advanced machine. They dont know how to use it. It can do much more. Siu have had people explain how to use them so, i do not know. I do not think i do that on the others. I really do not. I think here we have a crisis that we are going to work together. But we are moving along. And we are moving along well. This should not be a partisan witchhunt. You know . Like russia. Unfortunately, some of these voices are attempting to bring this into politics. Whether it is testing or ventilators or hospital beds or other dimensions of our sweeping , and weealth response have had a sweeping response. Speaking with leaders of other countries this morning they said it is incredible how you have done this so quickly. We are only talking about a few weeks since everybody knew this a fewa big problem months. The rest of the world is watching and they respect what we done. I know nobody else could have becausei know nobody else could have done what we did. And as our expert said yesterday our , testing capability is fully sufficient to begin opening the country. Indeed, our system is the most robust in the world by far. The rest of the world will tell you that. I spoke this morning to a friend of mine, president moon of south korea, he just won the election, he won by a lot or he had a big victory which i was happy about. He was saying what a great job andhe was saying what a great job we have done in this country. I told him the same thing. He said what a great job we have done here in this country. So, i appreciated that. By the way, he had a great victory and we are very happy about that from the standpoint , of our country. Working very well with them. South korea. As we approached, and the as we approach, hopefully, the downward side of what is going on, i think you will see some incredible, hard facts and evidence that what we did was right. There is a lot of talk about herd. The word herd. I dont want to show you charts of people who went a different way but it is scary. Scary. We would have had millions of people die we had gone a different way. Numbers are estimating that 60,000 people will die. That is horrible. I always one person is too much. Especially in this case, when it could have been stopped. It could have been stopped in china. Before it started. And it was not. The whole world is suffering because of it. But this herd concept, everyone had to think about it at the beginning. Because, look at us, we had the best economy in the world. Better than china, better than any country has always had. We had the highest stockmarket by far. I am honored that it has started to go up. They are viewing it like we have done a good job. We are at 24,000. Because if you would have told in the highest we were ever, we never had 30,000. We were getting close to 30. Lets say 29,000. We are at 24,000. We were heading down. I start to say, oh, wow. We are heading into territory where i started. If you wouldve said that after if you wouldve said, what we have gone through, not caused by anybody in our country if you , wouldve said that after going through this horrible plague that we would have a stock market that is much higher than when i started, much higher than where i started, i think we have tremendous momentum. We have a big election coming up. First we get rid of the plague. Because of what we are doing with the ppp, we have a chance to have these Companies Get back to action quickly. But our approach to testing is based on facts, data, very hard evidence. Not partisan agendas or coordinated political talking points. Mike pence is a phenomenal guy. He is making the commencement address right now at the air force academy where they are being very politically correct. 10 feet apart. I made that speech last year. Im going to west point. They are changing the date to june 13. It will be sad. But it is a big start. They will have the cadets. They may not have the parents. At the air force academy, they dont have the parents. You talk about social distancing. I looked at it. They are using 10 feet. It is very important to have it. That is a great start. He is a gentle man, mike pence. A real gentleman. The senators requested a call with him. I heard they were so rude. Rude and nasty. No matter what he said, which was all very positive in terms of winning this battle against the invisible enemy, they were fresh, nasty, i heard it was a terrible thing. I said mike, that is politics. If we came into this room today and set the battle is over, we have won, it was 100 gone, they would say the president has done a horrible job. He has done a disgraceful job. It is a shame how bad he is. This is their talking points. It would be nice not to have that. Especially when we have done the job we have done. We have to look at the big v for victory or v for ventilator. They thought we had us on that. We got it done at numbers you would not believe. We did use our act. Our production act. We did not need it like a hammer. We used it a couple of times. It worked out the hard way. Whether it was masks or ventilators, it has been incredible what we have been able to do. This is a critical time for the American People. T