We have a change in schedule. As we explained in the hearing memo, we were planning to do Opening Statements from 9 30 to 10 00 and testimony and questions from 10 00 to 1 00. This morning we were informed that President Trump and Vice President pence have called our witnesses to about emergency meeting at the white house. We dont know the details just that it is extremely urgent. Now the witnesses have to leave at 11 45. In light of the sudden change we will significantly reduce Opening Statements. We will do 10 minutes so we can get right to questions. Witnesses, please keep your oral statements as brief as possible. At 11 45 we will recess the hearing and work with the agencies to determine when the witnesses can return. With that i recognize myself for a few remarks. I want to thank everyone for being at this hearing. Our thoughts go out to everyone and our colleagues representative meadows and representative gosar who cannot participate here today. Were now in the middle of a Global Health crisis. Our response must be swift, coordinated, and based on science and the facts. That is what we all want on a bipartisan basis. Unfortunately when we look at the last three months objectively, it is clear that strategic errors and a failure of leadership failed to keep us safe from this outbreak. Lets start with testing. The Trump Administrations testing for the coronavirus has been veerly inadequate. Resulting in a substantial deficiency to determine who may be infected. The cdc has testing 4900 people. South korea has now tested more than 196,000 people but we are not anywhere close to that. They started conducting drive through testing, but people here in the United States cant even get tested by their own doctors. This is the United States of america. Were supposed to be leading the world instead were trailing far behind. How did south korea test so many people so quickly but we didnt test a fracture of that number. Why did it take so long . We must do better. Unfortunately these delays have been systemic. Just last week the Trump Administration promised to clever a million tests by the end of the week but it didnt even come close. On sunday they admitted they delivered only 75,000 tests, thats over 900,000 tests short. And this was their own stated goal to the American People. Now the Trump Administration is saying they have distributed a million tests and they will be distributing four million by the end of the week. That is difficult to believe given their record. We need facts, we need information, and we need it quickly. If we dont have testing, we dont know the full scope of the problem. And if you dont test people, you have no idea how many people are infected. We dont even know where the transmission is happening. We dont know where e to direct resources. Were operating in the dark. My question is whether or not the administration and President Trump is exacerbating the crisis by down playing it over and over again we have heard blatent misstatements. He said the tests are beautiful, he was absolutely wrong. My constituents are telling me they cant guest tested. The same at larry kudlow who said we have contained this, i wont say airtight, but pretty close to airtight, the business side, the economic side, i dont think it will be an economic tragedy at all. The numbers are saying that the u. S. Is holding up nicely. He could not have been more wrong. The stock market just had one of the worst weeks in history with the single biggest point drop in all time in history. The president and his aids may think theyre helping with political spin and happy talk but the American People want the truth, we need the facts, we need accurate information. The cdc now reported more than 647 cases against 36 states, but according to experts, the real number is far higher. My home state of new york has 173 confirmed cases and every member of congress is worried about their constituents. As we proceed this morning i would like to recognize several of our Sub Committee chairman for their tremendous leadership. It is truly a team effort. Chairman lynch held a hearing last week on the nations bio defense capability. And chairman connolly has been working with states and localities on the front lines of our response efforts. I now recognize our distinguished Ranking Member. I would like to express my regret that he is moving to chair another committee. Thank you to my witnesses for being here today and for all of your hard work. We recognize that your task is ongoing. So and the important work that youre doing to help combat this. I also want to express my con toll le doll le condolences for those that lost people. And i hope our experts will explain today the risk to the American People contracting the coronavirus remains real. We must continue the best practices to main tine good hygiene. Second, avoid crowds as much as possible and stay home if youre sick, and third we can protect ourselves from the virus like other viruss. All good common sense protocols and procedures we should be implementing. They all make sense and they should be applied. When the threats started to emerge from china, President Trump recognized the danger to American People traveling there. So that was an important time to get a head start in preparing for the virus here. We have seen clusters of communities where people have become sick without traveling to affected areaed in the world. There are important steps we can all take to prevent Community Spread. Today i look forward to specific recommendations to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. And i want to thank the president and Vice President for repatriy try the innovation drives our economy also helped to advance innovations in Public Health. They are developing test kits around the country. Over a million test kits have been sent out to date and i hope with can learn more about the efforts to increase the test kits that will be deployed. We should also understand that it will include cases around the country. Lastly i want to say that often times in this committee we disagree on many hot button issues. We dont always see eye to eye, but on this issue i think we should all Work Together for the health and wellbeing of every american. Now is the time for us to come together and work to help all americans. With that i would like to thank our witnesses again for their work. Were grateful to them and their teams. Madame chair i yield back. Thank you, i would like to begin by introducing our witnesses today, the director of the National Institute of allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is truly americas doctor, were honored to have you testifying today. The assistant secretary of preparedness and response department. Thank you for coming, and dr. Robert redfield is the director for the center of Disease Control and prevent. And the acting Deputy Assistant secretary of defense for health readiness, policy, and oversight at the department of defense. Thank you for being here and mr. Chris curry is the director of emergency manage and national preparedness. Thank you for being here. I will begin by swearing the witnesses in. Do you swear or affirm the testimony youre about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you god . Let the record show they answered in the affirmative. Thank you and please be seated. The microphones are very sensitive. Speak directly into them and bring them closer to you. Your temperature will be part of the record. We appreciate your service and with that, dr. Fauci youre now recognized to provide your testimony. Thank you very much chairwoman maloney. Thank you for calling the hearing and for giving me the opportunity to speak to you for a few minutes on the role of the nih and the Research Involved in addressing the 2009 novel coronavirus. They are on the path to understanding how these viruses work and to develop Counter Measures. I would like to refine me remarks to two accents. The development of vaccines and the development of Counter Measures in the form of therapeutics. With regard to vaccines that i mentioned publicly many times, we were able to quick gloi from an understanding of what this was to what the genetic swens was to developing a vaccine. But there is a lot of on fusion about developing a vaccine. We are going to go into a faze one Clinical Trial to determine if one of the candidates and there are more than one, there are probably ten or so that are at various stages of development. The one that were talking about is a platform called messenger rna that is a prototype for other types of vaccines that are multily bei simultaneously being developed. Getting into faze one is the quickest they have ever done, but the process of developing a vaccine is one that is not that quick. It will bring us three or four months down the spikpike and th you go into phase two. Since this is a vaccine, you dont want to give it to normal Healthy People with the possibility that a, it will hurt them, and b that it will not work. So the faze of determining if it works is critical. That will take another eight months or so. So when you heard me say we would not have a vaccine that would be ready to start to deploy for a year to a year and a half, that is the time frame. Anyone that thinks it will go quickly than that, i believe they will be cutting corners and that will be debt de detrimental. E let me go on quickly to sharp. The time line is dempt. The reason it is different is that youre giving this candidate therapy to someone who is already ill. So the idea of risks and how quickly you determine if and when it works is much more quickly than giving vaccine to normal people and determining if you protect them. There are a couple candidates now in Clinical Trial. Some of them in china, some of them right here in the United States. Particularly in some of the trials that are being done in some of our Clinical Centers including the university of nebraska if is likely that we will know if they work in the next several months. Im hoping that we do get a positive signal. If we do and we may, and i underline may, have therapy that we could use. But that needs to be proven first. So in summary, the development is involved in the development of the vaccine in the long term and in the development shorter term. I would be happy to answer questions after all the presentations. Thank you. Dr. Redfield, youre now recognized for your testimony. Thank you very much. Good morning, chairwoman maloney, Ranking Member jordan and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to share cdcs role in the u. S. Response to this novel coronavirus. Cdc is a sciencebased, datadriven organization. Science and data drives our Decision Making and will continue to do so as we form changing guidelines and recommendations. This is a new virus, and many uncertainties remain. Our Public Health response must be flexible. From the outset, cdc and the u. S. Government partners implemented an aggressive, multilayer strategy to slow the introduction of this virus to the United States, to buy time for our scientists to learn how this virus behaves, to prepare our nations Public Health infrastructure and Health Care System for the possibility of a Global Pandemic that would impact your communities, and to educate americans how best to prepare for eventual disruptions to their daily life and the potential risks to their families. The administrations interagency containment strategy relied on evidencebased Public Health interventions. Initially, early case recognition, isolation and Contact Tracing. Travel advisories and targeted travel restrictions, the use of quarantines for individuals returning from Transmission Hot zones, including china, japan and now the grand princess. Absence of immunity and treatment, our nations Public Health response has relied on traditional Public Health activities. As i said, early diagnosis, case isolation, Contact Tracing and targeted mitigation to slow the emergence of this virus in the United States. On february 25th, this global outbreak reached an inflection point. This was the first day we saw more cases outside of china than inside of china. We observed rapid widespread persontoperson transmission in iran and italy and long before the first case of Community Spread in california. Science and Data Collected from here in the United States and abroad are reviewing certain characteristics about this virus. At first, the chinese scientists reported fewer than 30 cases of pneumonia confined to one province, hubei province. Today theres more than 110,000 cases worldwide and yesterday, 99 of the new cases that occurred in the world were outside of china. This virus spreads through respiratory drop llets, sneezin coughing, and hand contamination. Reports out of china looked at more than 70,000 individuals with this infection and found that 85 or 80 of the patients actually developed mild illness and recovered, while 15 to 20 developed serious illness. Children and young people seem not to get sick. This disease disproportionately affects older adults and particularly those with serious Underlying Health conditions. Two months ago, chinese science shared the genome sequence with the world and within a week, cdc scientists developed a diagnostic test that is being used in more than 75 Public Health labs across 50 states with the capacity in the Public Health system to test up to 75,000 people. As of today, cdc has received confirmation of more than 990 cases of covid19 in 38 states, plus the district of columbus. Its with Great Sadness that i report now 31 deaths in the United States. As we experience the growing Community Spread in the United States, the burden of confronting this outbreak is shifting to states and local Health Professionals on the front lines. We appreciate your support to increase the Public Health capacity of your communities and our nation. Difficult, critical conditions are being made to mitigate the spread and cdc continues to provide guidance and support as requested. Theres not a onesizefitsall approach to the mitigation decisions that need to be made. They need to be made based on local Health Authorities and leaders. 630 staffers have been put in the field to support the Health Departments and repatriation efforts. We will continue to work 24 7 to protect the American People from this significant Global Health threat. Thank you, and i look forward to your questions. Thank you. Dr. Radley, youre now recognized for your testimony. Thank you, chairman maloney, Ranking Member jordan and distinguished members of the committee. My remarks will be very brief. In some ways we want to retain all the time for your questions. I do want to acknowledge the vital role congress has played in this outbreak that began 2002 with the passage of bioterrorism act that created possible Preparedness Program that i manage as well as a number of other critical pieces of legislation, such as project bioshield, the pandemic preparedness hazard act and most recently pandemic preparedness act and finally the public readiness Emergency Preparedness act. All these tools that you have given us have been vital in confronting this virus and this current outbreak. I want to acknowledge the role that additional monies you provided in supplementals for the h1n1 pandemic in 2009, Ebola Outbreak in 2014, that helped us create a National EbolaTreatment Network thats been vital to manage and care for patients who have been aflikted with this disease. As far as my role in this activity at this point in time i have four principle functions. My first and foremost responsibility as we transition from containment of this disease to a hybrid support of strategy and containment is for the health and Human Services to ensure we have a unified, coordinated, synchronized effort across hhs and the u.