Live now with a discussion with Public Health officials unsafely on safelythe u. S. Reopening the u. S. Good morning and welcome to Washington Post live. Im eugene scott, political reporter of the Washington Post, and id like to welcome our first guest this morning, assistant Health Secretary at hhs and a member of president Trumps Coronavirus Task force. Thank you so much for joining me. Good morning, is great to be here with you, thanks for the invitation. Host and i got the correct, right . You know, im from deep down in the country louisiana and that is pretty darn close. Thats a great first try at that. Host ok, great, great. Admiral, you are the white house testing czar and lead developer of the hhs Public Health policy recommendations, so i was hoping you could give us a bit of an overview on the Current Situation on the ground today. So, the situation on the ground with the pandemic, i think everyone understands that similar to where we were postmemorial day, we have had a significant increase in the number of cases. The hospitalization are starting to go up as well as unfortunately some of the fatalities. However, know how to defeat the pandemic, to control it, to get the vaccine. Socially distancing is incredibly important. Wearing this mask when you cant physically distance is really essential. The American People have done a really good job, we do rank among the top in the world in have got to but we get better as well as using good hand hygiene. And we have to have a program of smart testing. We will be talking a lot about that today. We do have the power to control this. We thought we did it in arizona, florida, texas. Are at a really important point in this pandemic right now where cases are going up, where there is community spread. If there is High Community spread, is going to be hard. Ws arene, those three incredibly important. When you cant visit with distance. Wash your hands. And please, be tested when you are asked to be tested because about 75 of people, at least 50 , with the virus can be mptomatic and the only way you can prevent spreading it is by wearing a mask. Eugene thats good to know. As you noted, we are seeing some changes in terms of infections and even fatalities. On friday, the u. S. Recorded a record single day high of work and 83,000 new cases. Saturday, just 39 cases short of the previous mark. Expanded testing or a fall surge . Guest let me answer that in two different ways. I think we are very comparable to what was going on in july and august. Testing may be identifying some more cases, but what were seeing is a real increase in the numbers. Back in march and april we were probably only detecting one out of every 15 cases. You cant really compare today to back in march and april. But compared to the first thatial day surge, we know the case numbers are up and we contacted late that, but we know that hospitalizations are going up. To put this in perspective, there are several areas of the country where hospitals are becoming full and being stressed. We are still at about 41,000 people in the hospital with coronavirus compared to a high of 76,000 in july. We really have a mixed picture. We really have to reengage the Public Health measures that we know work, or those hospitalizations could go up substantially. One of the things that we know is that a lot more younger people are getting it than older people which is one reason why up andpitals are filling we do have some effective therapy but there is nothing were going to do that is better than preventing infections in the first place and those are the Public Health measures we talk about. Until we get a vaccine. Vaccines are coming. We are very encouraged that there are now four open state of trial. Preliminary data looks good. But it is not going to be here tomorrow. We might get the first vaccines out this year, we are hopeful that they would be useful in screening the elderly, for example, protecting the elderly and the most honorable. Only have a few million vaccines, we market we might get most of the benefits you read that American People will not be fully immunized even if everything goes well at least until middle of 2021. We have to be very vigilant about avoiding crowds, particularly around the holidays. A Family Gathering of 20 or 25 or 30 still means that we have to be careful about our interactions, about our hygiene. Work, we have heard admiral, we have heard that the pandemic is putting a new strain on the old health care system. S the federal plan have federal government have a plaintiff resources to those in need . I would like to just put an end to those kinds of rumors because there is no need to ration care. In a tremendous supply situation now compared to march or april. I am not going to say one hospital on one day does not have a certain type of ppe, but we know that almost every ppe inl has a storage of addition to all that we have in the national stockpile. We have 150,000 ventilators in the national stockpile. Care is of rationing that is close to reality. We have the resources to have care for all needed. It. Eed eugene he froze. Mine ze on guest working with a Public Health service which i represent. We had a little momentary lapse, do you have me now . Eugene i have you now. You can continue, we will see if it keeps going. Guest ok, we had a little connection failure. Hopefully your viewers heard that there is no idea or thought of rationing care. Most states have a 60 day to 90 day stockpile. 150,000 ventilators in the stockpile. We are only about 50 of hospitalization levels that we were in july, so we have a lot of room in the system. We are sending not only physical resources but manpower resources to those areas. There is no concept of rationing care at this point in time. We have plenty of resources and we absolutely have a leeway to absorb the care. As a pediatrician, im always going to emphasize prevention. Her best weapon is to wear a mask, physically distance, and wash our hands. Our goal is to minimize the people in hospital, not see how many we can take care of. Everybody have the power to prevent infections and to save watching her distance, wearing a mask in washing your hands. Eugene speaking of those three ws or at least two of them, wear a mask and watch your distance, there has been another outbreak at the white house as you know. To mike pence has tested positive and mark meadows said that the administration is not going to control of pandemic, a are going to control can get that we vaccines and other mitigations. There is little indication we will have one until at least the middle of next year and you talk about that a bit. Have you reconcile that message that were getting from the white house with what you and the task force are telling americans to do. Guest im not inside chief meadows head but i think he is being misconstrued because he did talk about controlling for mitigation. That is whatthat he meant but instead of trying to figure out what he meant, i just want to be straight with the listeners that we are not going to completely defeat the virus until we get a vaccine, and then vaccine is distributed to the American People and we dont have herd immunity in the appropriate way. There are things we can do right now to control all the spread. All across the deep south, those are the Public Health measures that ive spoken repeatedly about already. You saw the white house last night, there was physical distancing and everyone had to wear a mask. That is good when you want everyone to channel that. In terms of a, i think we need to clarify, i think all of us understand that most americans will not get their vaccines until mid2021. Because we have hundreds of millions of people to vaccinate and depending on the vaccine, many of us will need two doses. But we are very hopeful that we will have millions within the year 2020. They have to be proven safe, but we are hopeful that we will get a read on that later this year and even though there will only be a few million doses available, we could get 50, 70, 80 of the benefits from that in terms of mortality if all of the vaccines were in the elderly. We saw the vaccine being highly effective in having immune response. Even if we could just immunize our Health Care Workers and vulnerable individuals, we might be able to save 80 of the lives. A lot of this is new wants. Yes, 300 million americans probably wont get immunized but we couldar, immunize the most critical ones this year assuming the trials continue positively. We cannot absolutely to be the virus, but we can certainly control the spread and save lives. Everybody can do that. Mask,st need to wear a remind people to wear a mask, physically distance, avoid indoor, crowds bases. Butnot a party pooper having 20 or 30 or 40 people at your house for thanksgiving, that could be a recipe for spread. Im not saying to throw grandma out in the cold, but im saying be very careful about your hygiene, handwashing. Physically distance if you can, particularly those who are very vulnerable. That will save lives. Eugene speaking of the need to be very careful, as you recall, we are closed in bars and restaurants since earlier this year when we saw numbers pretty comparable to what we are beginning to see again. The you believe we need to go back to that and ramp up coronavirus restrictions . Guest so, we saw in arizona and texas and the sun belt and in the deep south that if people are very disciplined, and what i mean by discipline is we have that is 85 , 90 when you cant physically bars and if you limit Indoor Dining to a certain percent, outdoors, fine, and you have testing particularly of those who could be spreading, that is effectively the same as shutting down the economy. However, if we dont do those things, lawmakers are going to get pressed against the wall to have those measures that none of us want. When you do shopping is down, people dont get cancer screenings. Children dont go to school. They dont learn. Issues,ave Emotional Mental Health issues. Substance misuse goes up. Theres increased suicide. There is a whole chain of bad Health Effects that occur in a shutdown in these have to be weighed because they are real. The bottom line is if we have if we dowearing, limit the indoor crowded spaces like bars and like indoor restaurants, we have appropriate testing, we wont have to use those measures. But unless we turn the Current Situation around, at the local weel and at the state level, want it to be the last resort because theres going to be great physical and emotional harm done by that but if it is a last resort, it is the last resort, but we are not there yet. I think we can continue to spread the message about what you can do to process what we have done in many localities before. That is where we want to be. We can flatten the curve, we can savethe spread, we can lives by doing these simple Public Health measures until we can absolutely defeat the virus by widespread vaccination. That really is a plan that we need to try to stick to it possible. A city byng to be on city basis, statebystate basis because every community is different, every community has different risk factors, different social order abilities. Thats why you cant just wave a wand nationally, it really has to be done at the community level. That last part takes me to a question from one of our audience members, charles from minnesota. He wants to know, will we require a National Social distancing and indoor mask mandate . So, i havent been elected to any office, so it is certainly not my decision about which way to go. I can say it has been the policy of the administration thus far to respect the local authorities in this regard. I think theres a good argument to say that if the federal government mandated something, number one, it could never be enforceable, and number two, it might actually create adverse behaviors for different behaviors that we want to do. It has been the policy of the administration to respect what the state and locals want to do. I can tell you from a Public Health point of view, that we need to increase maskwearing. There is no question we need to do that. And we need to avoid indoor, crowded spaces. How that needs to get done is really on a community by community basis. Some communities may choose to mandate that, we support that. Other communities may say we need massive educational campaigns because mandating it would give us the opposite that we want, because some people are like that. Europe, there are protests against mandates and we are getting the opposite behavior. This has been stressful for everyone. Weve been under incredible lastn, we have been since january. I do believe from a Public Health standpoint, Public Health has always been a local measure where people in the Community Work with the community. I can tell you what we need to done,appen, how that gets we support the local communities. Mandate,hat is a whether that is massive education or working with children, whether that is doing something with the elderly, we are telling you what the end results have to be. Get there isto by local mayors and county judges. Eugene another question from an audience member, the tory moser from michigan victoria moser from michigan wants to know. With the topic of registration and disregarding basic pandemic behavior and crosscountry containmentrging, seems utterly impossible. Does compliance to cdc guidelines for the rest of us actually make a difference and how . Thank you so much for asking the question, i really appreciate that because that really gets to the heart of the matter. None of us are 100 omniscient but the data are very clear that people who are not symptomatic can spread the virus and doing something simple like wearing a mask greatly reduces transmission from one person to the next. We have seen this whether you want to look at the micro level like hairdressers who took care of 129 clients, two of them while they were sick with coronavirus. Masksheir clients wore and what you saw was no transmission of the virus. Where theseizona simple measures really do make a difference. Again even and time summer camp where masks were required, the transition was minimal. We see at Day Care Centers across rhode island and many other places that transition is absolutely minimal. So i want to assure the american that we have to keep our guard up, that this is not futile. This is a great weapon against this pandemic. You could save a life, you could save multiple lines. If you infect one person, that person could infect two people. These measures really do work. And avoid crowds when you can. If youre in an area where there is spread, dont have a crowded indoor place. There is nothing magical about a , if you have a house party with the same people, it is going to be the same difference. Make good choices. Outdoors versus indoors, smaller gatherings versus large gatherings. Good ventilation when you can. Always wear a mask when you cant physically distance. I forget your name, but i really am so happy you asked that question because we have got to keep this up. We only have a few more months to go. That few more months can be the difference between 100,000 or more people dying and not having that, we have the power to do it and we have to keep our guard up. Talk a bitant to about a project youre working on that is really interesting. You are helping to coordinate a new Pilot Testing program in four select cities in rhode island, i believe, with guidance from Johns Hopkins and the duke center. We are going to get into the finer details of the phone call in the next segment but i was hoping you would explain how the federal government is involved with providing point of care or rapid test for americans. Guest we announced a few weeks ago that we would provide 150 tests, very easy. We have already shipped over 36 million of these to the vulnerable, about one third to the vulnerable in Nursing Homes. Two thirds of those two states that they can use to reopen their schools and to keep them open and support other critical infrastructure. Technology, at very sophisticated technology. We are very excited about it. The federal government doesnt work in a vacuum and hopefully everyone understand this. By workings works with the private sector or the academic sector, the nonprofit we work together, we talk to each other. They have been very involved in helping School District tried to develop plans to reopen schools. When children are not in school, they have severe and sometimes irreversible deficits in their emotional and intellectual health at very critical times. People dont get their health screenings. Getting kids in school is very important. We partnered with them to provide a number to start with, 120,000 of the tests. That they are going to be using them in multiple schools. There is another major School District that we hope gets announced this week that i cant talk about. We are supplying the test to distribute to the School System and to test different best practices. Were bringing children back to school. Theres a number of possible ways to use these tests. They can be used for Sick Children on the spot, they can be used to test teachers every week, twice a week. Those were working directly with the School District to understand how to best utilize these. We dont have time to wait six months, thats why we are distributing them and testing them at the same time. That is all we are doing with rockefeller and with the School Districts around the country. Very interesting pioneering thoughts, we want to make sure that we can share best practices around the country. All our local School Districts are working together the way it is truly meant to be. We are all