Of the country may have their guidelines deborah will talk to you about that and tony in a few minutes. Well Start Talking about that we have to open up, we cant say lets close. People dont want to close, john. I say it again and again. The reason i do, i want you to report it eventually. Go ahead, steve. Reporter how will that work without widespread testing . Reporter president xi, what do you want to talk to him about . It is his call. I will talk about whatever he wants. I think well have a very fruitful call and a good call at 9 00 tonight, please. Reporter [inaudible] well be talking about that. Well be talking about the virus. In the back. Reporter thank you, mr. President. Jobless numbers, market rallied again. A record. Reporter largest since 1931. Do you think Economic Uncertainty has passed . No, not yet. It hasnt passed but it has come a long way. I think they think were doing a really good job in terms of running this whole situation having to do with the virus. I think they feel that, i think they feel the administration, myself and the administration are doing a good job. Were keeping very important people informed. Because it was a great fear and a lot of good things are happening. The, mortality rate is at a, in my opinion, you have to speak to deborah, tony, all of the others but in my opinion its way, way down and that takes a lot of fear out. It is one thing to have it. It is another thing to die. When i first got involved i was being told numbers that were much, much higher than numbers that seems to be. Remember that people that have it, many people have it. I spoke to two people they had it. They never went to a doctor, they had it, absolutely had it, but never went to a doctor. They never went, they didnt report it. You have thousands and, hundreds of thousands of cases like that. So you have to add that to the caseload also. And people that actually die, that percentage is a much lower percentage than i ever thought. That is one of the reasons i say, look, were going to beat this and were going to get back to work. Reporter i have one more question. Yes, sir, please. Reporter doj announced charges against Nicolas Maduro for drug trafficking. That was appropriate. Reporter also expected that venezuela will get really hard about it coronavirus. Does the administration see this as a weak point for the we dont look at a weak point this is a serious problem for over 150 nations, the virus. I would say this, maduro and venezuela, were watching it very closely. Well see what happens but that is correct, those charges were made. Please . Reporter you said a moment ago you would use the defense production act on two minor occasions . Yeah. Reporter what were those . We will give you the notification. Well let you know. Reporter follow up on johns question about the classifying for counties. A lot of these areas have not done testing yet. Is it safe to say that the current guidelines will be extended into next week . Will you, will you wait to change those guidelines until you have the data . I want those guidelines to go even when were open and fully operational and frankly, much of the guidelines, like shaking hands, maybe people arent going to be shaking hands anymore. You know, tony had mentioned to me, tony fauci, the other day that i dont think he would be too upset with the concept of not shaking hands. The regular flu would be cut down quite a bit if we didnt do that, the regular flu. We have a lot of deaths and a lot of problems with that too. So i think a lot of great things when were open, just to finish, when were open, as soon as we open, that doesnt mean you will stop with the guidelines. You will try and distance yourself. Maybe not to the same extent because you have to lead a life. How about one more question . Go ahead in the back, please. Reporter thank you very much, mr. President. I also have two questions because im asking on behalf of Foreign Press as well. One domestic question, one internationally. Domestically you tweeted the other day it is very important that we totally protect asianamericans . Yes i do. Very important to me. Very important to me. We have to protect our asianamericans. It is a very important, that was a very important tweet to me because i didnt like things i was hearing. Reporter what is the countermeasures youre taking to combat the hate crimes against asians . All i dont know, asia shurn americans in our country doing fantastically well. Im very close to them as you know. Theyre doing fantastically well, i want to put that statement out, the social media statement, to me asia shurn americans are great part of our country. Thank you all very much. I will see you soon. Reporter on your guidance [inaudible] people go from county to county . Good afternoon, everyone. The White House Coronavirus task force met today. We continue to move out on president trumps directive to slow the with mitigation, to advance and expand testing across the country, and to work on the critical supplyies that our Health Care Workers in our nation needs. Today the president convened the nations governors all of the states and territories and reiterated to them with fema in the lead our approach is, our response to the coronavirus in this country is locally executed, Health Care Workers, local Public Health officials. It is statemanaged and it is federallysupported. We took the opportunity to thank all the governors across the country, our states, territories for their incredible leadership and partnership they forged with this administration. We were able to confirm that 10 major disaster declarations have been issued, most recently to new jersey, north carolina, florida, texas and illinois. We spoke to them about the importance of the economic recovery legislation that will come before the house of representatives we believe tomorrow, midday. And were grateful for their efforts in working for that unanimous, bipartisan vote in the United States senate last night n addition to direct payments for american families, the average family of four will receive a direct payment of some 3400. They will also receive payroll report, many small businesses, even those restaurants that you just spoke about will now be able to keep people on the payroll for a period of months even if the restaurant or the business is not open. With the governors though, we talked about 50 billion in direct aid to the states. 100 billion in direct assistance to hospitals, of course the expansion of Unemployment Benefits to make sure that our states have the resources to meet the challenges that were so evident in those unemployment numbers this morning. On the be project of testing im pleased to report the testing is available in all 50 states and in partnership with commercial labs across america, this morning we received word 552,000 tests have been performed and completed all across the United States. We want to thank the American Hospital association and hospitals across the country that are just now beginning to report in a fulsome way the results of those tests. When the president signs the law tomorrow, well be actually required by law but as dr. Birx and dr. Fauci have explained many times at this podium, it is so important that any hospital or any lab that is doing testing report back to the cdc and fema so we have full visibility to provide the president with the very best counsel. Good news today on testing. Abbott laboratories submitted to the fda today request of approval for a point of care test. This is a test you can go to the doctor. You can get the test done there at your doctor and have the results in no more than 15 minutes. Dr. Steve hahn will be here tomorrow to talk about the progress of Abbott Laboratories point of care test. Speaking of the fda, on the subject of swabs, the fda announced earlier this week testing symptomatic patients by swabbing from the front of the nose is perfectly appropriate. It has already begun across the country t allows for selfcollection and relieves burden on health care protection. It saves personal protective equipment being extended when people can ad min strings a test themselves. Dr. Birx will talk about the importance and availability of swabs. With regard to supplies, you heard the president speak about what we already shipped out from the strategic stockpile, more than nine million n 945 masks for Health Care Workers, 20 million surgical masks, 6,000 ventilators and millions of gloves, gowns and face shields. In addition to that we are working with a number of suppliers to manufacture ventilators, even while we work with state leaders to assess not just what ventilators are available in their state hospitals but what ventilators are available in private hospitals across their state and governors across the country are doing great work evaluating the full supply of tens of thousands of ventilators that are available. Let me also say thank you to the American Society of anesthesiologists and dr. Mary petersen. The American Society of anesthesiologists actually produced a video. Tomorrow they will host a webinar for Health Care Workers to demonstrate how the devices that anesthesiologists use can be very easily converted into a ventilator thats appropriate for a patient struggling with respiratory ailment like the coronavirus. Were very grateful, this actually adds tens of thousands of devices to the supply and were all truly grateful to dr. Petersen and the whole association for their full cooperation. With five of 10 counties in the country being the top counties for coronavirus being in the new york city metropolitan area let us reiterate our recommendation that any resident of the Greater New York city area who has traveled elsewhere in the United States, please check your temperature, mind your health around selfisolate for 14 days. What we dont want, again, with five of the top 10 counties for coronavirus being in the Greater New York city area, we dont want anyone and no one would want to inadvertently carry the coronavirus to a community or to a family mem inadvertently because they come out of that community. Again as dr. Fauci said recently if you have come out of new york over the last several weeks before the mitigation measures were put into effect, in particular check your temperature, mine your health and selfisolate for 14 days. It is inspiring as i prepare to introduce dr. Birx to talk about the data were monitoring on a regular basis and dr. Fauci to talk about mitigation. Let me conclude how inspiring it is to see the way america and American People are responding to this moment. We were all aweakened this morning with record unemployment numbers, not unexpected during the time of National Crisis that we are facing but what you may not know is that while there were some three million plus new unemployment claims, walmart announced theyre hiring50,000 new associates through the end of may. 150,000. Amazon a few weeks back hired one 100,000 additional employees. Cvs health will provide bonitoses to employees working with patients and hire 50,000 workers. Pizza hut is planning to hire 30,000 permanent employees. That is just a short summary of a list that totals almost half a million jobs that have been announced by businesses around america. It is not just been about jobs but around generosity. Anheuserbusch is making a five Million Dollar donation to the American Red Cross to support firstresponders. Oyo hotels is offering doctors, nurses, firstresponders free rooms at any of their 300 hotels all across america. And the Pharmaceutical Company abbvie is donating 25 million to the International Medical corps and to feeding america. American businesses are stepping up to partner with us to meet this moment but theyre being incredibly generous as well, to all of those that are stepping in the lead and providing Health Care Services an of course to those most in need. We can do this, america but it will take all of us. As the president often says were all in this together but as millions of americans do their part with 15 days to slow the spread, putting into practice the president s guidelines for combating the coronavirus and its spread we grow more confident every day that this too shall pass with the cooperation and generosity and prayers of the American People. I just know that we will slow the spread, we will protect our most vulnerable and we will heal our land. And now for information of the latest on data and what were seeing, dr. Deborah birx. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Vice president. So this is a summary of where it looks domestically, i want so much about the global issues at this time. We do have 19 out of our 50 states to be reminded, that had early cases but have persistently low level of cases. At this point have less than 200 cases. So that is almost 40 of the country with extraordinarily low numbers and they are testing. On of our governors have been very adamant about their need for test kits. We have gotten them test kits, when we had abbott add a week ago to the test kits weve been able to open up additional test kits for states that want to do surveillance and want to do Contact Tracing. These 19 states are doing still active containment. Theyre at 200 cases despite the fact that they have been measuring them over the last three to four weeks. Still though, 55 of all cases and 55 of all new cases continue out of the new york metro area. Thats the new jersey part and new york part in particular. I havent added in connecticut or other counties at this point. We are concerned about certain counties that look like theyre having a more rapid increase. When you look at wayne county in michigan, you look at cook county in chicago. So we have intigrated all of our information to not only look at where the cases are today but how theyre moving so we can alert fema where we think the next potential hot spot is. All of the counties that i have mentioned, the hot spots are in urban areas or in the communities that serve that urban area. I think that is something very important to remember as we move forward. Because of the innovation within the private sector we continue have the new platforms for Laboratory Testing and these become critical platforms for states that have very low rates and very low rates needed to test. Why is that important . Some of these machines have wells and plastic plates in order to be effective you have to put on 96 samples. Others are made for four samples or 24 samples at a time. What is critical for us to be able to do is to match the need to the county and state and thats the role that we can provided a vice on because we get to see across the whole country and where those items are needed most. So this is allowing us to adapt and adopt really allocation of tests or recommendations to state, what piece of equipment they may need. Of the 550,000 tests you can do the math but were still running somewhere about 14 overall. That means 86 of the people with significant symptoms, because you remember you had to have a fever and symptoms to get tested at this point. So still 86 are negative. These are really important facts for the American People. Im sure many of you saw the recent report out of the uk about them adjusting completely their needs. This is really quite important. If you remember that was the report that said there would be 500,000 deaths in the uk and 2. 2 Million Deaths in the United States. They have adjusted that number in the uk to 20,000. So half a million to 20,000. Were looking into this in great detail to understand that adjustment. I am going to Say Something a little bit complicated but i will try to do it in a way we all can understand it together. In the model, either you have to have a large group of people who are asymptomatic who have never presented for any test in order to have the kind of numbers that were predicted, to get to 60 Million People infected or six Million People infected, you have to have a large group of asymptomatics because in no country to date have we seen an attack rate over one in 1000. So either were only measuring the tip of the iceberg of a symptomatic cases and underneath it are a large group of people. So were working very hard to get the antibody test. That is a good way to figure out who are all the people under here and do they exist . Or we have the transmission completely wrong. These are the things were looking at because the prediction of the models dont match the reality on the ground in either china, south korea or italy. We are about five times the size of italy so, if we were italy and you did all those divisions, italy should have close to 400,000 deaths. Theyre not close to achieving that. So these are the kinds of things were trying to understand. Models are models. Were adapting now to there is enough data now of the real experience with the coronavirus on the ground to really make these predictions much more sound. So when people Start Talking about 20 after population getting infected, it is very scary but we dont have data that matches that based on the experience. And then finally the situation about ventilators, we were reassured in meeting with our colleagues in new york that there are still icu beds remaining and there is still significant, over 1000 or 2000 ventilators have not been utilized yet. Please for the reassurance of people around the world, to wake up this morning and look at people talking about creating dnr situations, do not resuscitate situations for patients, there is no situation in the United States right now that warrants that kind of discussion. You can be thinking about it in a hospital, certainly many hospitals talk about this on a daily