Our more rural areas, specifically around our Indigenous People triangle nations. It was a very reassuring call. We were testing across the country. We do have about 63 of states that have less than 10 positive despite significant testing. And within the Indigenous Peoples and tribal nations they are seeing the same thing were seeing across the nation. Increase issues around those with comorbidity and those with elderly but also issues in Nursing Homes. They are testing, many of these states are still capable of doing full Contact Tracing. So theyve been doing Contact Tracing from nursing home outbreaks and other outbreaks. It really gives us a clear impression of no matter what we do in the future we need to really ensure that Nursing Homes have sentinel surveillance. What do i mean by that . That were actively testing in Nursing Homes both the residents
and the workers at all times. That is where, and how we saw this at the beginning, what we saw in washington state, and that is what were seeing in many of the states that have very low case attack rates. The other thing that i want to leave you with, i mean, we certainly know how desperate and difficult the situation has been in new york over the last few weeks. Weve been telling and talking about how this would be the week that would be most difficult because of the large proportion of cases that are coming from the new york metro area. Whats been encouraging to us, those early states outside of washington and california which still have extraordinarily low attack rates because of their level of mitigation, all of the new areas that are having new increase in cases, we talked about them yesterday, washington and baltimore and the philadelphia metro area. That includes camden,
wilmington, and the counties around philadelphia. Were seeing that the case numbers, what well get to as far as attack rates, we talked about 7 in a thousand in new york that are being measured. These are coming in even with their progress of their curve in the one to two per thousand range, showing that when you start mitigation early it has a very different impact. All of this data is coming together the testing rates, the zero positivity, the age groups, who really needs hospitalization, icu, the innovative pieces coming. We heard a great report from louisiana this morning on a phone call where they talked about a minimum now of 40 of people coming off ventilators alive and leaving the hospital. This is very encouraging to us. It really shows amazing process clinically at each of these hospitals and the real lessons were learning and sharing
across hospitals. It really shows us that the original outbreaks were very large. But the newer ones that we talk about in washington and philadelphia and baltimore, it looks like their attack rates and attack rates in denver and some of the other states that we have been talking about are much lower than new york and new jersey. And this gives us hope about really understanding how to integrate this information together. Not dealing with the model but the real life cases that are occurring and understanding how to move Forward Together to really have a different future. So thank you very much. Thank you very much, mr. Vice president. So just reflecting about what weve been doing over the last few days, remember last weekend, when we made the forecast that this would really be a bad week, as i mentioned yesterday and the day before, it is in the sense of deaths a bad week. In fact, every day there seems to be a record of number of deaths compared to the day before. In fact, new york today had again another record of i think the city, itself, was about 820 plus deaths. But what we were predicting with the increase and the real adherence to the physical separation, the guidelines that the Vice President talks about, physical separation, at the same time as were seeing the increase in deaths, were seeing rather dramatic decrease in the need for hospitalizations. Like i think yesterday was Something Like 200 new hospitalizations and its been as high as 1400 at any given time. So that is going in the right direction. I say that and i always remind myself when i say that, that means that what we are doing is working. And, therefore, we need to continue to do it. I know i sound like a broken record. Thats good. I want to sound like a broken record. Lets just keep doing it. I get questions a lot, dr. Birx and i, about these numbers, the projections that you went from 100,000, 200,000, now down to 60,000. Thats a sign that when as i keep saying, when you take the data you have and you reinsert it, into the model, the model modifies. The data is real. Model is hypothesis. Thats what you have to do. The other general good news from a general scientific standpoint that there are a lot of candidate, potential therapeutics going into Clinical Trials now that were sponsoring at the nih. The kinds of Clinical Trials that will give us the answer. Are they safe . Are they effective . And just what is the capability of using them under what circumstances . As preventative, treatment, early disease, late disease. As the time goes by and we have the Public Health measures to try and contain this were doing
an awful lot from a scientific standpoint so that when we do get to next year, next fall, next winter, hopefully well have something that we can offer in addition to the very important Public Health measures. So ill be happy to answer questions. Mr. Secretary . Mr. Vice president , thank you. And thanks to the task force and of course thanks to the president for his leadership. The important Public Health measures that have been discussed so much in these briefings in this room have had a large impact in american workplaces. We saw that again today as the Labor Department released figures showing that 6. 6 million new unemployment claims were filed last week. Were all mindful, the president mentioned this, that the American People are making difficult sacrifices. That is, including being furloughed, laid off, or having a Small Business struggle. That said, American Workers can be encouraged by how swiftly and comprehensively the president and congress have responded. Three weeks ago the u. S. Had never had a law requiring paid sick leave at u. S. Companies. But three weeks ago the president signed a Families FirstCoronavirus Response act, which did provide paid sick leave as well as expanded family and medical leave for employees at Small Businesses. With those Small Businesses being reimbursed dollar for dollar, for having provided that leave. Last week we at the Labor Department issued rules to implement these leave requirements of the Families First act and weve been in near Constant Contact with employers and employees to help them understand the law and in a number of cases already to help workers get the leave they were entitled to. Another unprecedented benefit for workers was provided in the
cares act, less than two weeks ago. That law as you know includes a 600 a week plus up to Unemployment Benefits that are provided by the states. We have millions of unemployed americans making a sackary face f sacrifice for our National Well being. These are unprecedented, the government has never provided a plus up payment like this. These payments are intended to make those workers whole as near we can. This temporary benefit is available not just to employees but also to the selfemployed and gig economy workers. Before the president signed the cares act, gig workers, independent contractors were not available for unemployment compensation. Today they are. At the department our team has worked day and night to enable states to make this benefit available. I am pleased that a number of states are now making those 600 additional weekly payments. More states will follow in the coming days. How long it takes will vary by state. Some states systems will take longer. But we at the department will continue to support them. We have already disbursed 500 million to states to help them with their systems and making these payments. We have another 500 million that were ready to release. For workers who dont get this benefit when its first due them, states will be able to catch them up later when the Computer Systems are able to make these payments. Let me add that were also mindful at the Labor Department that Many Americans remain in the workplace, including on the front lines in our hospitals as well as our emergency responders. My departments Occupational Safety and Health Administration or osha has been providing guidance to employers and employees on coronavirus since the early days of this health emergency. We are faeldiielding and respon
to calls from workers worried about their health and sometimes from workers who believe theyve been illegally disciplined by their employer for expressing health concerns. We will not tolerate retaliation. Osha will continue to work with workers and employers to keep workplaces safe using all the tools available to us, including enforcement if needed. I wanted to finish by commenting on the Paycheck Protection Program we heard about earlier run by the Small Business administration. This is of course loans to Small Businesses to enable them to meet certain costs including utilities, rent, and most important from my perspective payroll. As you know, if these companies receiving the loans keep their workers on payroll, these loans are largely forgivable. Heres why that program is so important from my perspective. Were seeing unemployment
filings right now of a like weve never seen before. But these numbers arent the result of an underlying weakness to our economy. Our economy has been vibrant, incredibly strong just weeks ago, if as weve heard again today, if we are disciplined now and adhere carefully to the guidance being provided by health authorities, well get that economy back. The president spoke at the state of the union of the blue collar boom we were experiencing. We want to lay the ground work now for a blue collar bounceback. Well get there in part by helping Companies Hold on to their workers, which is what the Paycheck Protection Program does. Keep them on payroll so that when businesses are ready to reopen, they have the workers they need and americans have jobs. We will continue at the department and i know here at the white house to be laser focused on American Workers and jobs until this is done. So thank you very much. Very well done. Thank you. Great. Well take a few questions. Yes, please. Mr. Vice president , i have a question for you and then a question for dr. Birx or dr. Fauci. Just to clarify, on the federal funding for sites in the states, are you saying that federal funding will remain for those sites and will it remain at its current levels . Its not merely federal funding but in many cases we provided personnel from the u. S. Public Health Service and also flowed supplies, personal protective equipment, that was required for some of the early forms of testing. But its less required today with new formats for testing. But it is an option and as ive made clear to several governors, well continue to partner with our states. But i have to tell you that the way states step forward with the concept of drive through and Community Based testing is really inspiring. For our part, working with fema and our great team at the u. S. Public Health Service, weve stood up some nearly 50 different drive through test sites around the country but, literally, there are hundreds that have been deployed by states and by hospitals and local health care providers. But in this instance we wanted to at least give them the option to take control of that but well continue to resource them with personnel, supplies, and any other support that they need going forward. Just a question for the doctors. Im curious, did you see this information out of the cdc in south korea today that shows they are seeing evidence of reinfection in some people who had been cured of coronavirus . And what does that mean for our understanding of this . Im not aware of what youre speaking about now, but clearly there have been anecdotal mentioning of what appear to be reinfection. You have to really be very careful when you say reinfection because and we were dealing
with this with even ebola back during the ebola time. Someone might still, when someone does a test on them, do a pcr on a body fluid of some sort, and be able to detect what are likely not replication confident. If youre telling me which i dont think theyre saying that someone has coronavirus disease, they get sick, its documented, they get better, and then a month or so later they get sick with documented coronavirus disease, i dont think thats what theyre saying. But i dont want to jump the gun until i see the data. They used the word react investigate. Is that different . Well, yeah. What reactivating means if someone is ill and have virus isolated from them that they might have a prolonged course. If they were sick and had
documented virus and then three months later they had documented virus, is that reactivation or infection with another virus . Id like to see the data before i really comment on that. Dr. Fauci, i wanted to ask about medical criteria. You had a discussion with dr. Birx and the other Public Health experts on tuesday i understand. Can you discuss what is the medical criteria that you guys are discussing in order to reopen the government . What is the medical criteria . Well, its less medical criteria than it is Public Health criteria. And that is, and i think it is really important, because often people say, reopen the government, like its a light switch that goes on and off for the entire country. We have a very large country with really different patterns of disease and outbreaks in different parts of the country. So its not going to be a one size fits all. Its going to be what is the kinetics of an outbreak is that on the way down is it essentially out . Is it still smoldering and possibly going up . I think you have to take it individually. Are there some benchmarks youre looking at, numbers, some data you would like to see . What would you like to see before that happens . Well, i will allow dr. Birx to come up but just my own opinion i dont think there are going to be benchmarks that are consistent from one to the other. For example, i would not want to pull back at all in new york until i was clear that that curve really was doing what weve seen in other countries, a very steep decline down, and we had the capability if there was a resurgence of having everything in place to be able to do the containment as opposed to struggling with mitigation, with what weve been doing. Thats different than a relatively smaller city, town, or whatever in the midwest or mountain regions, which is
generally very well controlled. What i would want to see, do we have the capability of doing the isolation, Contact Tracing, and suppression of it . So it really varies. I dont think theres one medical criteria. But, deb, if you want to speak to it . Thank you. So its what i tried to cover in the representation i gave. In talking to the 17 states that have indigenous populations and tribal nations, in discussing with them what they were doing generally and what they were doing specifically through the indian Health Service, they discussed the ability to find new cases and doing full Contact Tracing. And so they are they have strike teams. They are very well organized. You dont hear about them every day. Thats why i wanted to call them out. They are really doing amazing work at their Public Health institutions, with their governors and their mayors. And they are really they are in full Contact Tracing. Yes, they are doing social distancing but they are also doing full Contact Tracing and understanding all aspects of their epidemic. So were looking at those pieces as well as when i was talking about blunting, really, when youre starting to go up that curve, having that unbelievable blunting where you only get evident attack rates and i want to be very clear about that when we see cases these are symptomatics that have been diagnosed, there is clearly, we believe, people we dont see. And that is why the Antibody Test is going to be helpful to us to really define that. So those are the pieces that were bringing together to really analyze that. I did want to say the president talks about the 150 plus countries that are in experiencing what we experience. I wanted to do a call out. We have americans around the world in every embassy that are working with those countries now. This scarf came from africa. It is one of my Public Health colleagues there. I just want to recognize thePublic Health colleagues around the world who are doing all of this Work Together to change the