Thanking our panelists. The democratic and republican colleagues for your participation in this forum. Over 80,000 citizens have lost their lives due to covid19. More than in any other question, country unearth. Many families have lost loved ones including my own. Mrs. Waters has also lost a member of her family due to the pandemic. This committee was not established to possibly or cast failures, or to search for the viruses origin. A relative, pursuit future success. We have been tasked with the urgent an important work of ensuring that our countrys response to this crisis is effective, efficient, and equitable. I agree that one of the most important components of our response is answering the question that is being discussed at every Kitchen Table in america right now. How will we know when we are ready to safely reopen our country . To answer that question, we should be informed by history, and guided by science. Well we all want to reopen as soon as possible, doing so before the proper safeguards are in place could cause more sickness, and death. A premature open would also cause greater harm to the economy. We must reopen responsibly. Therefore, we are beginning our work with a briefing from Public Health experts, including two former fda commissioners, who served under republican president s and three other experts whose primary interest is safeguarding the citizens of this great country. The greatest of this country must be accessible and affordable for all. That is why we need a comprehensive coordinated strategy for faster and free testing. We also have to deploy proven Public Health measures, like Contact Tracing, tracking, and surveillance to quickly identify sources and locations. Once we have identified new cases, we must provide necessary treatment in a medically appropriate, isolated setting while providing support to patients and their families. These are steps we must take to keep americans safe and prevent a second wave that will cost even more lives and livelihoods. Today i hope to hear what the federal government should do to support and coordinate states and report efforts to safely reopen our economies, rural and urban in an efficient, effective, and equitable manner. I now recognize the Ranking Member for his opening remarks. My condolences to maxine who lost her sister. I know this is touched so many families, some closer than others of course. I want to thank you for holding this briefing on such an important topic, which is how do we smartly and safely reopen our country and go back to work. Unfortunately the fact that the house is not back in session suggest that we cant reopen, this subcommittee along with the rest of congress, our job is to help show america that weve begun a path to start resuming our. Lives congress should be leading away. The subcommittee has only 12 members, there are literally dozens of rooms around the capital that are open that could hold the briefing safely. With 12 members we could achieve model social distancing. In fact, let me show you what is going on here. We are in a Briefing Room here in the capital, as you can see the roof is set up with proper social distancing, where you could safely have all 12 members of the committee, as well as the opportunity for the public and press to be here in person. I wish we would show that we can do what we are asking the rest of the country to do. The fact that we can hold this briefing in person means that we should hold the briefing and person. President trump is showing up to work every single day, working for the American People with his team. The senate in fact is here in the capital today. The United States house of representatives should lead by example, and we should be here working as well. But the partisanship aside and lets show america how the rest of this world is responding, look around the country. The first action of the subcommittee was not to help people get back to, work in fact the first action of the subcommittee was to attack hard blue color americans. I know that the chairman and all the democrats on the committee sent a letter out literally harassing companies from all across the country, which did everything they were told to do, they were told keep your workers on, payroll personal protective equipment was there to have the companies. They all voted for the bill. So why on one hand would you tell people we want this lifeline to help people stay attached to their employers and then turn around and target companies in the steele working field, truck drivers, wilders. These are the very people we tried to help and now they are living in fear because their companies have to return money. I have spoken to these companies and if they had to return the money after they followed all the rules we voted for they would have to lay off hundreds of workers, each, do we really want to see millions of americans laid off, as we are seeing these high unemployment numbers. That is the wrong message to send. Attacking Blue Collar Workers is not the message we want to scent. We should be Holding China counted for what they did. Unfortunately, that is not happening. That is not what is going on with this committee and thats a real concern as a chairman. Each state and local government is starting to reopen. You can safely reopen and showing a template for the rest of us to. Follow my home state of louisiana reopens on friday. I have stuck to so many businesses, restaurants who are already talking about safely reopening. Congress should lead the way how to do, it we had a vote here on the house floor. Not proxy voting but showing up to. Work we did it once before we are to do it again. The state local government also whats to continue to look at the things that we are doing to ramp up production. Protective protection equipment, and so many other. Things look at the progress thats already being meat on making sure that we get more manufacturing to america. Take care of the hospital workers on the front line. We need to keep the progress going the committee could help to find out how the work thats done in china could be brought over to the United States. I hope we could focus on that, its something we would like to see focused on. The Trump Administration continues to implement the largest working package in american history. As of today ppe has made loans to many companies, 550 million dollars. Billions jobs are saved, today because of the work weve that in a bipartisan way. Lets not take that and then target the very same companies. Lets recover, lets Work Together to get this country back on track and with that mister chairman i yield. Thank you very much mister Ranking Member. I want to welcome the panelists. The first one is the director of the Global Health institute at harvard. Next well hear from former fda commissioner scott gottlieb. He is currently a resident fellow at eight enterprise institute. Then we have doctor benjamin, the executive director of the american Public Health association, doctor benjamin previously served as the secretary of marylands department of health and hygiene. Then we hear from the former fda commissioner and cms administrator. The doctor is also the founding director of the duke center for Health Policy at duke university. Finally, we have doctor tom, director of the center for Health Security at the john hopkins university, school of Public Health. I think all the panelists for joining us this afternoon. Each will deliver a statement of two minutes. I now recognize one of the panelists for their remarks. Good afternoon. Members of the subcommittee. I am honored to join you today. We are at a Pivotal Moment in this crisis, our initial response to the pandemic has left more than 80,000 americans dead, and more than 20 million americans unemployed. As we enter into the next phase of the pandemic, we must do better. One key part of doing better is having a robust infrastructure. Testing is critical. Testing tells us who has the disease and who doesnt. Testing is the cornerstone of controlling every single disease outbreak. It was in testing that participated the shutdown. We must not make the same mistakes again. This suit that i run calculates that America Needs its 900,000 tests to safely reopen, were doing a third of that. While states have a critical role, i believe we need federal leadership. There are five key steps that the federal government should be taking. The first, the federal government must have visibility into the entire testing supply chain and use all of its power to ensure adequate testing supplies. Second, in a related vision, the federal government must coordinate the supplies because different states have different needs. Only the federal government can ensure that states get the material they need when they need it. Third, the feather government must offer guidance on testing strategies because its not just about having enough tests its about people getting the right test at the right time. Fourth, the federal government must ensure incentives for greater investments and better test so that our private sector will know that there is a matte, market for innovation. Finally the federal government has to be transparent with the American People about how much testing we need, and a road map for getting us there. If we act smartly, we can open up safely, allowing americans to get back to work, knowing they are safe in their workplaces and safe when they go back to their families. To Many Americans arent died in this pandemic. We can honor their memory by doing everything in our power to prevent more needless deaths. Thank you mister chairman. Thank you very much ashish jha thank you. I think we all understand the extreme hardship that the country is going through right now, also the extreme Economic Hardship and the consequences of the shutdown that we have put in place to mitigate the effects of the pandemic we all want to start reopening the economy and getting back to the things that we enjoyed but we need to recognize the challenges that we face against the backdrop of a lot of the spread that is still persistent in this country. Theres hopeful signs, we see hospitalizations and cases going down nationally, even as we increase testing and see positivity rates go down the positivity rates have gone up and the reproduction rate is at 1. 1 now. We are seeing signs of a slowing packet pandemic but there is more spread than we anticipated. So how can we do that smartly and prudently and try to mitigate the risk of extended outbreaks and new epidemic . It starts with a prudent approach to earth east reopening. I think it turns heavily on case based intervention, finding people who are infected, asking them to self isolate. Tracking and tracing Public Health work. Offer testing. We wont get everyone. This is a infectious pathogen, and a lot of people are asymptomatic. Even if we can track them a small percentage or meaningful percentage of people who are infected, and try to get them into isolation, we can have a hand on the epidemic. Also testing as the previous panelists mentioned, we need to get testing out widely, and most of all to people who are at the highest risk of the virus. Many people because of where they work and where they live and how they work, we need to make sure that we get testing into the communities most affected by this. Testing turns on technology and the technology will improve a lot in the coming weeks. We need to make sure that the technology we have placed but for the purpose. On the one hand we have a Rapid Diagnostics like the machine that was recently authorized, the abbott machine, used in doctors offices. Gottlieb, thank you very much. Doctor benjamin. Thank you for allowing me to be here today. Ive been saying now every person in the country understands that their second job is helping us. Theyre all gonna get out of this as we go back to our communities. The centerpiece of everything will have to do is going to be about testing, tracing, isolation, and quarantine. We know that our state local Health Departments are working diligently every day to build up that Testing Capacity, and also to do adequate Contact Tracing. This will be a task that we will need the federal government to assist in terms of guidance and help. We also know that we will have to address very specifically those communities that are most vulnerable. We already know that there are certain parts of our community that are disproportionately impacted by this outbreak. Does your people that have public facing, jobs higher incidences of disease, People Living in low income communities. We have to think about how we build a sustainable, long term Public Health system. That will require federal engagement. We have to think about what we are putting into the system today as being a long term. This is absolutely not the last outbreak of its kind that we will see. With that i want to turn it over to you mister chairman. Thank you very much doctor. Benjamin now doctor michael aaron, you are recognized. Thank you mister chairman, thank you for the opportunity to join you all today. I want to add to the comments that you have already heard or, we are in the process of reopening have to do so as safely as possible. We have to continue to require action from all of us and businesses as we move forward to keep that reproduction rate to one or as close to one as possible. To give you a sense of where we are in testing, now this past week the testing has been around two and 3 million per, week that is significantly short of the six plus million test. Its a significant improvement though. Based on the administrations expectations of testing we should be on track for three to half million per week by the end of the, month maybe 6 million per week by september. That is a ways off kind of number that a lot of doctors are talking about. Doctor gottlieb has talked about ways to Bring Technology to accelerate availability of testing. I agree that that can help to, i want to highlight a few other ways to make the testing go as far as possible, right now they are not distributed evenly, we are not testing everyone that needs cbc recommendations, tasking asymptomatic testing for surveillance. One thing we can do is to take further steps to create financial incentives for better and more testing. That includes steps like the steps that congress has taken, we could pay more for test that get better results faster and get tests that are connected to inter proper biloxi so the results could be shared quickly. In addition stopped to consider consideration from the Public Health system, it is very fresh right. Now most eight and local governments are collaborating with Health Care Providers including frontline primary care providers as well as academic medical centers. Those organizations are hurting financially under the pandemic, we can look at their four payments and supports to collaboration with a Public Health on implementing, tracing, and isolation. I think that there are opportunities for collaboration there as well. Thank you very much. You are recognized doctor. Distinguished members of the committee thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. Covid19 has done great damage to the country both in terms of loss of life and terrible economic consequences and jobless. To minimize the risk of covid spreading before reopening for conditions have to be in place. Reduction in cases for 14 days, capacity for hospitals to give covid patient standard, Care Capacity to test anyone with covid symptoms, capacity to trace, guide to quarantine. Isolation and Contact Tracing has been crucial for countries that have gotten their Epidemic Center comparatively better control. In order to stop that train a. Transmission in order to, our epidemic will grow more quickly if we dont do Contact Tracing. Well we need 100,000 contact racers to work across the states this year in order to do it. Well as of last a week, states have announced plans to hire about 66,000 workers. Eight states have said that they are planning to beat the benchmark. To close Contact Tracing will have to be a key part of our strategy so that vaccination can happen. We have to implement widespread diagnostic testing. Six feet of physical distancing. Cloth mask use in public and avoiding gatherings. If we do all this Work Together we can lower our national risks and begin to reopen the economy as safely as possible given the great covid challenges that remain ahead of us. Thank you. Now members have three minutes to question panelists, may i begin my three minutes by asking about the testing. I am a great advocate for mobile testing, mobile units going through our communities. Right now we have testing in place, we have stations that people can come to to be tested, but the fact of the matter is in rural america, and in some parts of urban america, the mobilization needed is not there. So ive been a strong advocate of getting mobile units to these communities. May i have your thoughts about mobile testing . Mr. Chairman thank you very much. Thats absolutely an important question, and you are right. My experience in columbia and the state of maryland, and talking to my colleagues those mobile tests work very well. For immunization, were going to use them for breast mammography, they work very well. Thank you very much. We also know that we are experiencing some unusual numbers during, in our rural communities, low income communities, African American and brown communities. Can either one of you call for