Duplicitous and on august date this is designed to hurt this president for the reasons which i am not interested in. Same email the cdc director homicide read and agree how they wrote it and to ensure it is fair and balanced and complete. These emails show clear political interference with the cdc efforts to carry out the science based mission. Mr. Secretary will you renounce this political interference and commit this will not happen again . As i said i support the base and challenging each other i do not support the statements doctor alexander is no longer employed at this department. I would like to get into Personnel Matters that is appropriate to let me be clear about that second quotation i do not know of any circumstance of anyone that would have authority and then to that knowledge she never had that authority i would not have supported that. When the statements came out i wrote you a letter asking these people appear before the select subcommittee. Not a single one was made available to appear before the subcommittee. I hope that you would agree to allow these witnesses to come forward next week i will be glad to come appear word you do that quick. Our staff is working to secure the agreements on the procedures to make that happen and with the final arrangements on that. That is a yes. And to protect individual some of these are career cdc officials mr. Caputo is on medical leave with a serious medical condition doctor alexander and never one doesnt work with the government we are working to get to agreement to how this can be facilitated. If my memory serves to recommend to participate and we would be pleased to have a virtual testimony from them if they would agree to appear if they come back that is because of you and me but we can do that virtually. Okay . I think they are in the final stages of getting everything arranged. I yield back i made it within 30 seconds. I appreciate the second round. Thank you for continuing to answer these questions. Talking about the vaccine and other therapies. You talk about hydroxychloroquine and i talked to internist doctors who are using it effectively a doctor knows what is best for the patient hopefully we can make as many options available so they can continue to help treat patients do you see an increase in the ability to treat those who work over positive compared to the movements ago . Advances to give people and help them recover is nothing short of revolutionary. In april an individual 70 or above would have a 30 percent chance of dying today it is five. 7 percent thanks to the president s efforts to get steroids for lung injury and getting things approved and convalescent plasma even how to use ventilators better and when to use them and forced oxygen and quality of care. My department played a vital role to educate providers across the country to enhance knowledge among providers. We passed some of the money to give the department the ability to respond even more effectively need to come up with and produce vaccine as these companies are in the final stages of testing. We are now waiting for one to be approved as part of operation warp speed but if it clears to the final stage they will start producing it than that is months later we actually make those now. If not approved than those go in the trashcan but then is that part of President Trumps plan we are doing that are how that has always been done quick. It is historic and unprecedented advancing the development with safety and advocacy millions of doses of vaccine making the industrial scale across six manufacturers right now something no drug company has ever been able to do without the support of the Us Government that his creation warp speed. Has it been created paying known to mankind . Never i worked very hard on the ebola vaccine with the democratic republic of the congo and thanks to america we had a vaccine with those antibodies but those took years. This is another story that is an old but if the vaccine is not one week later and then its the president s fault literally on the verge of full vaccines with millions of files already massproduced with the defense production act asking about new york this is very concerning you can see people planting seeds of doubt which would be deadly if they did it new york said they were not allow citizens to have access to a vaccine through another approval process have you seen their approval process and how many months how many people are denied if the governor gets his way. I am unbelievably distressed about the remarks of the governor to undermine the confidence not just for covid those getting mmr new york is a hotbed of the anti vaccine movement. Does new york even have a testing process. They dont. How many drugs with the be denied if governor will gets his way god help us . It is a ludicrous statement you said you agree with that but jumping to china and fortunately this isnt an area that i was in some of those meetings and the white house when we knew nothing about the virus officials wanted to medicine our officials wanted to go in with the Chinese Communist party stopping us and collected the who. It delayed by a month and a half getting into china after that on january 6. You know much we could have saved quick. And what we would have learned we learned a lot of information how to care for patients that was a month and a half delay. I yield back white house officialsdownplag schools. Secretary, we evolved instruction the cdc to issue guidance. Underwear and a certain cdc to issue that. They have a guidance there is a collaborative interagency process print is there wouldve been i assume under president obama with the ebola response. Write one and one print is quite normal in the white house correlated guidance would be there. Can you believe in and is your opinion evidence not for political advisers to write Public Health got its brightest when i believe its perfectly appropriate for all individuals that confident expertise to contribute whether politically appointed are career officials doctor redfield is politically appointed he runs a cdc. Is a final signoff. Sue. Political advices such as jerry kushner. Sec. Alex azar im not aware of mr. Christmas involvement. But i dont know that im aware of that but is perfectly normal for there to be all guidance is required to go through the white house process that is president ial executive order significant guidance as to go through the white house review. And he sees there i dont know but at the end of this, i want to be very clear about this bring the cdc, director must agree with this or and does not go out. Any changes of any suggestions for now back them up on that. The cdc reports that over 40 percent of all of these cases between the ages of five and 17 are latinos. Incident true there is evidence that Young Children can contract the virus. Sec. Alex azar oh yes. Children can transmit the virus. Thank you. And you agree that the transmission of covid19 is higher in poorly ventilated or enclosed areas. Sec. Alex azar congresswoman. That issue, just be careful to, on a deferred to the experts at cdc in terms of that i believe that to be the case. But i will not want to refer you to cdc guidance on that rather than speculating on that front. Are you aware that a recent report found that 36000 schools nationwide made ventilation upgrades. Sec. Alex azar i think in congress is statute that you i think 13 billion of funding for schools. I do believe there are issues and ventilation systems a canopy good upgrades to version erin keep going. Also keep adequate humidity levels which can be important. I understand. Do think it is right, we need to give peace of mind to the parents in this country that is safe to send kids especially in lowincome communities in the schools and the infrastructure is old. That has not been upgraded. Do you think it is right to say, we should fully reopen the schools. Sec. Alex azar we do believe we can reopen fully is a question. There are steps you can take, the hoarding cans and creating social distance. Moving teachers from classroom to classroom. Delivering meals for the kids free to social distance of the classrooms, and of course Face Covering wearing. And also, at all points, the individual making decisions for the right in the parents of the guardian to decide what is right for the kids. Im a vulnerabilities they are the household member separated and is finally be in the privacy. And you think that we have enough money nationwide to be able to upgrade of the schools. Sec. Alex azar i have not looked at that issue and funding. What you should prayed. Sec. Alex azar while the 13 billion in the form in is not been fully adequate in the school district. Okay. He has not been fully acquainted but my question to you is given the report and a thousand schools nationwide and needed ventilation upgrades. My question to you as you are the secretary of health. You are the one saying that resumption should be in week get our kids back to school. So you feel confident that having 36000 schools nationwide in need of ventilation upgrades that the money is there that is been allocated is appropriate. Sec. Alex azar there are several assumptions in their and your multiple questions. The key point is the presumption is, should be back in a physical environment. Having there, doctor redfield made it clear that the instruction of the childrens physical and emotional development, can be done safely. But we always have to look at the individual circumstances to make sure it is safe in any particular school or situation an adequate plan to make that happen. The fact of the matter is that there are 36000 according to the gao report and native upgrades. And that therefore, make such a statement has lets send the kids back to school. Does not provide the peace of mind up to the parents of this country. Their reports indicate that the white house pushed for the guidelines to be changed to recommend the people without covid19 symptoms abstain. From the testing. But there kids with the covid19 are a symptom medic. So what testing guidelines are you recommending for schools especially knowing the significant of covid19 is having the impact on the children of color. Sec. Alex azar so we recommend the testing of asymptomatic close contact. So in the disease tracking situation, this when we work to get something out, hundred million of those tests that we asked the governors to prioritize for the k12 kids to do contact tracing. As well as to assist with surveillance. In addition to close contact, we want to ensure that we have adequate Surveillance Systems to identify if we are seeing emerging cases. Thank you madam chair. Secretary alex azar i live in a very rural area. Very big chunk of my area is very rural. Throughout this in them, lot of Healthcare Services have been done by till help. To me this is extremely important going into the future that we allow this to continue to happen. Another since rules and regulations that are probably been waived or changed to be able to accommodate. It would like to give you a few minutes to talk about some of the rules and regulations, problems and things that we can implement. Suggestions for congress and how we can make this a Better Service between Healthcare Professionals and constituents and customers of this country. For the betterment of their healthcare. Would you like to comment for a few minutes. Sec. Alex azar thanks to the National Emergency powers of the president. We been able to for the First Time Ever really unleash the power of telehealth. We brought healthcare into the 31st century for the first time. When you want to visit hospitals and doctors and Community Health centers as i have done. You see this in a Truly Patient centric change in health care. Is bringing in overall healthcare costs down and craning. Ive been to centers there delivering the underserved. And having to drive through testing and sample taking. Vaccinations etc. So theyre combining them. Plus assumptions with the telehealth would be and it cost to the Healthcare Systems but worsening actually improve quality and increases cost. We need congress to act on this because we cannot enshrine in relation everything that weve been able to do. We can do much more Rural America under statue. We cannot do that in irvine. In addition in the rule, you have to under the statute, shot and a doctors office. Cannot do it from home for you have to have a preexisting relationship with a doctor or hospital before. We waived all of these things thanks to President Trump part of the emergency powers. And congress will have to act to make this lets abilities permit. So hope that congress lacked. Nothing you can walk this backwards nor should you. I appreciate that. Thank what we really need to do as we wind down from this thing at some point. We need to get together and figure out the rules and regulations and what it will take to implement this on a National Basis tonight grimaces to be able to be couple to the improvement of health forces. So i think you for that. I saw this week, think it was wednesday september 30th. I think the wall street journal here. Theres article with regards to the medications that are coming up with. It looks like there will underway to perhaps by the end of the year have this drug, rg in covid19 to that could be helpful to produce and a minus prayed you be willing to talk about that today. I realize were not there yet but this really sounds good party to note the article in the paper says Public Awareness of it. To let people know that besides the vaccines or therapeutics that the pipelines and can be beneficial as well and are being tested and worked on as we speak. Sec. Alex azar i actually think you saw that, the seven initial phase one. This ranging in the Clinical Trials. These are called on a monoclonal antibodies. Remember we had convalescent plasma. Which is the plaza from a survivor patient. Have antibodies in your body. We can actually synthetically make those antibodies at ranges that can be 1000 times more potent than what we can get of an individuals plasma rated and synthetically produced in mass quantities. The thinkings hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars this is in a very short order. We have manufacturers in a country such as several that have significant antibody programs. Rethink very promising indebtedness been made public. We could be literally any weeks to mother to her white from having data to support emergency authorizations if the data proves that they are safe as well as effective. Stomach you mentioned a couple of times, the emergency authorizations. I think dr. Fauci made a comment on this before. You like to explain what that actually is. Sec. Alex azar especially with the vaccine. Winnowing think about therapeutics, we one from fathers eyes the vaccine for therapeutics for emergency in a limited data set prayed for a vaccine because somebody is healthy and putting a. The fda is requiring a 30000 person Clinical Trials present 15000 placebo and 15000 active. And then asserting significant results. That is the same for emergency for full on licensure of the vaccine. The only real changes that happen within emergency use you have ongoing safety Data Collection through a Massive National pharmaceutical program. And you would have ongoing three validation locks needed for inspection in the manufacturing facility. But the actual data package other than that, term safety. That is the same. Dr. Fauci made the comment that the emergency authorizations probably necessary whenever using the data so overwhelming that it will be unethical and immoral to withhold those vaccines of this drug from people because he could be saving lives while youre sitting there to. Your eyes and tease cost. Sec. Alex azar especially with a safety for ec well. An easy clear trends of efficacys. It becomes an ethical question permission to allow people to try that. I get it and at times up and i yelled back. Thank you. Thank you very much and i know youll myself five minutes for questioning. Mr. Secretary. I was reviewing comments made at a labor Day Press Conference where he gave this production. He said one vaccine would be available very soon. We could have very big surprise coming up. You will be very happy. People will be happy. The world will be happy. Everybodys going to be happy. And you know what im talking about before the very special date. Then we have companies that involved the Development Like manure net. Is that there be ready to seek emergency use authorizations from fda before november 25th at the earliest. Now we have the president of the United States making these rosy predictions. Any of contradictions and those who are responsible for the development. We think that does to the credibility and the credibility of fda. Sec. Alex azar i think that president is trying to be hopeful. But i would be very clear. This will be determined by data. An independent processes. So for instance. We dont even seek data on these Clinical Trial programs until an independent data safety monitoring board determines that the data in Clinical Trials has achieved prespecified statistical endpoints. Reclaiming my time. Do you think, you just described the president s rosy predictions as being helpful. As a difference you know. Between being helpful misleading the people. Do you think it is helpful to you when the president is out making these kinds of predictions. Sec. Alex azar the results will be driven by data. If a company produces data. That is independence. In the beginning of october. That determines the vaccine is safe and effective and submitted to fda and the career scientist thrust or process determines its safe and effective. Reclaiming my time trying to do believe modern what is said, would not be right to seek emergency use authorizations from fda before the latter part of november. Sec. Alex azar quote what manure was saying is that is based on god is that they received. Whenever its based on brain to do believe them. Sec. Alex azar any of the context for in the gardens was they have 60 days from the median patient completion in the Clinical Trial.