Response efforts have not instilled much confidence either. Testing kits were notg probaby sent to the hospitals, and medical labs around the country, political personnel has overruled the recommendations for the cdc. In the administration was slow to appoint any single official for the Public Health expertise to coordinated our governments response. Even now, President Trump seems to be spending one of us time blaming commedia and blaming the democrats and being constructi constructive. Infective blades everyone. He is downplaying, the virus to a dangerous degree. His chief of staff amazingly said to americans, turn off your televisions. They know the history of how these viruses spread and work. Winnie to deny them, you dont let people know what is happening and what to do about it. Things getd worse. And if the president , being self centered as is only cares about himself and his image any tribes uas usual instead of solving te problem, blame somebody else. The deflection and fingerpointing and the denial, must stop. President trump was take responsibility to ensure everyone in the Public Health community has the authority andu the resources needed. We need the president and his team to level with the American People and get a handle on the situation. No later this week, appropriators will put together an emergency supplemental package to start or responses to help local communities to quickly prepare for the coronavirus. I believe i have said that we need about 8. 5 billion. And for all the courts, the appropriators are very close to that number. Rather than the 2. 5 billion the president talked about early on. And is good. Because when it comes to americans health, when it comes to our safety, when it comes to dealing with this problem headon, skipping does not make any sense at all if there is ever something that is penny wise and counter thats it. Im going to have more to say as this package comes together but at a minimum, any package need to have provisions that ensure that a president cannot transfer these new funds to anything other than the coronavirus. An american and global preparedness, epidemics and in Infectious Diseases. Vaccines must be affordable and available to all who need them. Yesterday a call for vaccines to be fully covered by medicare because seniors, and vaccines most, do not have to worry if they can afford once it is available. They should be interestfree loans available for Small Businesses impacted byab the outbreak and state and local governments are in burst and provided response activities. In the meantime, thead Administration Means to keep working with local communities including schools and universities, and local agencies. And on the steps they must take, to prepare for an increase in coronavirus cases. Specifically the Administration Needs to do the following. First, issue coherent guidance on what School District should do in the event the viruses detected in a community. Two. Establish screening policies for airports and fort force of entry. Our product line pretense transportation the ticket essay, clear guidance from the coronavirus. Three. Make it clear that federal scientists and medical experts can speak out clearly be heard by the American People. Note no gag rule. No downplaying this because it makes things worse when people dont know the max. That democrats are ready to work on the bipartisan basis to make sure federal state and local officials are ready for whatever scenario can know virus presents. Our colleague, incident, must be ready to do the same. The new coronavirus continue to capture headlines over the weekend. News of the First American deaths, related to the disease confirmed this is a Public Health challenge. It is upon us. At its an intimate, and the role is clear, we need to support this federal state and local Public Health officials and Healthcare Professionals who are workingme overtime to block delight and mitigate the spread of the virus. With her colleagues, along with their appropriations counterparts in the house, work through the weekend on a bipartisan by agreement to provide supplemental appropriations so the coordinators response. As a challenge like this, we have no time for moving goalposts or outrage. The American People deserve the congress to meet this headon with a bipartisan and collaborative approach and im confident that we will, make this happen. And whether process for supplemental appropriations dress in the hands of a Bipartisan Group of negotiators. I would encourage the democratic colleagues both houses to let them do the work. It will be important to pass this first benchmark to supply these important funds within the next two weeks. It. Mr. President i want to talk for a few minutes about where we are with the coronavirus, response in the supplemental. I think both all senators have an opportunity to be updated again today. This is not a new place for us to be. This time last year, Lebron Health and Human ServicesAppropriations Committee held a hearing on emerging threats and at that point were experiencing the second largest outbreak of ebola in the democratic republic of congo antibiotic resistance with a global danger and their was a flu outbreak bigger than we had seen in a long time. So when you later were still eafighting the bullet outbreak e drc, antibiotic Resistance Continues to be anu global problem. And according to doctor tony, the director of the National Institute of allergy and Infectious Disease, the flute we are seeing this year, shaping up to be one of the worst in decades. Now several thousand americans die every year from the flu, usually at least 35000 and sometimes as high as 75000. And think 350,000 americans have died from the flu in the last decade. Now facing a new danger the danger that is the new seen before. As we learned with ebola, patients zero does not know they even have this yet, can board a plane or a cruise ship, they can be in another country or even another continent in a matter of hours. In this lesson once again, h reinforce, like all other diseases, it does not know any boundaries. No longer living in a world where our health can be separated from the health of other countries. Last week the number of new Coronavirus Infections outside ofof china, outpace those inside china for the first time. Maybe the good news is that china is beginning to see something ended in a different direction but the bad news is infections and iran in italy and south korea, and japan and other places, has moved in to europe now. And south american case was Just Announced in brazil but this is kind of that moment mr. President , we have some opportunity to do everything we can to prepare for the worst but we still have the option of hoping for the best. This would happen with sars, thats what happened with agent one and one. Just makes it that is what happened with the other one who didnt turn out to be bad for the other people that had it but not as bad as we had anticipated at one point. It might be disturbing to see the first deaths in the state of washington, but certainly the message to us is to be more militant vigilance and be better prepared. Congress and the last five years has increased money and that doesnt count whatever we do this week and next week as interest money for preparedness by 44 percent. In a year ago, we created for the first time and Infectious Disease fund. Our colleague in the house, toggle, one of the major components of this to let health and Human Services people have access to money immediately. Because of that they had 105 million that they would not have previously had to be able to spend immediately to help contain this problem where it could be contained to bring americans back here particularly from china. To keep them in a known location for the 14 day incubation. To see if anything happened and all of that was possible because we had given them the flexibility that they had not had before. The first line of defense and funding has beenne there. Were no moving towards inclusion of what we can do to make more money available for a vaccine. It takes a while. We will have a vaccine for a while. Continuing to talk to the doctors and teams about this. We are working with experts i was called the Biomedical Advanced Research and developmentce authorities to moe those vaccines quickly. But even if we had a vaccine, even if we had been 18 months, that would be the u. S. World record to develop a vaccine here we would need to have something anybody could it take vaccine and without vaccine, this particular virus, would likely be dealt with. There is no n treatments, reno d there is no cure right now. But the treatment is to handle these issues in the way that in the Public Health system that is been built over decades, there are 50 states and District Of Columbia all had public providers and were going to have no p money available to work wih them. But again the preparedness money that they have had for the last five years, shouldve been used in a b way and i believe was usd in a way that gets them all that much more ready to deal with this than they otherwise would have been. We need to continue that the centers for Disease Control and prevention have what they need to improve the Surveillance Systems and the Testing Systems and if were going to fight quickly that there will be a test, it will be approved by fda. It allows people to check in a number of locations. Another process in a number of locations that test to see if in fact, you have what you thought wasay worse than usual cold or maybe you thought it was a lot worse than usual cold. Sometimes this particular disease doesnt have much happening at all and because of that, and probably at this point, a bigger number of people who we think would be a percentage of people that would have really negative consequences even death from this disease, rather than all the people that had it and did it. I have learned in the past through outbreaks of a flu strain that we do not have a vaccine for, of ebola, zika, what we do to protect people in other countries, winds of protecting people here. We have to be sure that we understand that a lot of our fate, has been determined and will continue to be determined by what we do to first try to contain this virus and secondly to provide the money to be sure that when we do have an outbreak which is already begun in our country, that is an outbreak that is really held at the lowest possible level of people impacted and if you are infected by this disease that you have the ability to work from home, to do other things, hospital that was the place to go. Working with the state and local health officialw right now. To see that happens. The money is been used, these been used effectively, clearly we are trying to agree between the house and senate and the administration of exactly the r right number. I would say at this point, the administration has been the most agreeable to whatever money we want to provide but obviously would like to have that money provided it quickly. I feel confident we will have the resources to deal with this. Feel confident this will be a problem that will not impact a more people than would usually be impacted by Something Like the flu. But again, we need to prepare for the very worst and hope for the very best in our driver now is toar prepare for the worst things that could happen. With having theil funding available, so that we dont have to go through a couple of weeks again, where easy determination shouldve been reached. One thing we couldve done is t give the administration exactly the amount of money they asked for, we could decide to spend it differently. We can do that two weeks ago. And then get into a discussion of what we need next. It is not the course we decided to go down where try to come up with an amount of money and it appears that we would get us through this entire incident with this virus. But it is time to get that done and hopefully we will see a bill filed later today in the house able to vote on that bill. Before they leave this week and once that number is done, i think it will be seen as almost certain that the senate will be able to deal with that bill and proof that number and were going to move forward. I think again will more for move forward in a way that minimizes as much as possible, the impact that this has on families and on individuals and mr. President , i look forward to you and i both having a chance to learn more about this even today, and to velearn more as we move forwardn the big thing we need to learn now she is what the amount of money we need to have to spend and how we allocate that money for vaccine and other things. I come to the floor today, as a senator as well as a physician. I want to do this to reassure the American People, that we are doing Everything Possible to combat and contain the coronavirus. According to Johns Hopkins university, a wellknown medical institution, we care in the United States are the most prepared nation on the face of the earth. To protect ourselves and in terms of preparation, for something an infection Infectious Disease like the coronavirus. Nevertheless, this virus is a Global Conservative and in his a pandemic potential problem. And the outbreak started in china goes without saying, weird events saddened by the loss of life there as well as here and around the world. I were concerned about those currently suffering from the virus. E our focus continues to be on protecting the health and the wellbeing and the a safety of e American People. That is where we need to focus. President trumps earlier travel restrictions in china have actually helped slow the spread of the virus. He has since expanded these restrictions. The president i believe is acting swiftly and decisively to contain the virus and keep americans safe. Still this country is nonmedically still mobile and cant be. Ewere likely to seek more cases in the days and weeks ahead. So we all must be prepare and stay vigilant. Be assured of the Trump Administration is fully engaged in responding to this virus. The United States is the best Public Health system in the world. And we have a plan in place to combat the coronavirus. Our Public Health experts are working to identify and isolate the virus as well as to produce a vaccine. At the fastest you can never produce a vaccine several years and we seem to be moving faster thanan that with regard to the coronavirus. To the vaccine develop me even moving faster than ever, will still take a minimum every year and year and six months to have a vaccine available and a level that could actually impact the population of the country. It is a new virus. So new vaccine needs to be developed. Then the Vice President sentxp over the weekend we expect to have a vaccine available next year and i agree. And meanwhile our strategy for testing, for isolation, for quarantines, right now is something to lower the risks. Years ago we created Infectious DiseaseRapid Response team. To make sure we were ready if the time we come. The National Institute of health talk tod about this specifically Infectious Disease group. The head of the center for Disease Control and the area, helping with our efforts on coronavirus. Eg as she has said, our aggressive containment strategy here in the United States has been working, she said, and is responsible for the low level of cases we have had so far. Officials at the cdc and the National Institute of health are coordinating with other federal officials. They are working aroundtheclock. The administration is making sure that state and local officials have all of the resources they need to respond, and has said our healthcare system, our businesses, and our communities and schools all have action plans. Senators have had a number of briefings from officials about the centers for Disease Control and the National Institute ofey health. They are working on ways to identify the virus, test for the virus, ways to treat people who are infected by the virus. They are working on quarantines and on a vaccine. That is what they should be doing. This is a massive nationwide undertaking. At meetings, and i have been going to meetings on this since it was first noted around the beginning of the year. No this issue in china, whereas the doctor who tried to get the word out to the world was the first to notice the specific new virus, the coronavirus, he was reprimanded by the chinese. For trying to do just what he learned to do as a doctor which was to share medical knowledge and information to try to get ahead of a disease that is progressing. He was reprimanded by the chinese government, and was subsequently has died from the disease. There are number of us who would be bipartis