And it was an issue of embracing the way we have now and should have the private sector who clearly has the capability of making and providing tests at the level that we will need them for any of the things that i have just spoken about. So having said that, right now i totally understand and my colleagues understand that although we say there are x number of tests out there and youll hear from admiral yes regard about that there are situation that are correctable and will be corrected and some of which have been corrected. I know, i get on the phone a lot with my colleagues because believe it or not, some long time ago, i was where they are, in the hospitals, in the emergency room, looking at very
sick individuals that you need to take care of. And i know what it means when someone tells you, hey, you have what you need and you look around and you say, well, maybe you think i have what i need, but i dont really have what i need. So we have to figure out how do we close that gap . And there are a lot of things that i think we have learned and that we are correcting and going to correct. Mainly, you have a situation where tests are needed and appropriate and either found are found theres no tests or theres no reagents or theres no swabs or a person needed a test and were told that there was a restriction, they couldnt get a test. These are all the things that im telling you you already know because you have heard them. So right now, or theres a delay of five to seven days and what does that mean if you want to do if you want to get somebody out of circulation. We understand that that existed but upon careful examination,
what you are going to hear that many of those have been already corrected and other of those will be corrected. Because what i think people dont appreciate through no fault of their own is that theres there are two issues. Theres supply and demand. And if you have a supply that can meet the demand, but the supply is not connected to demand, then supply demand falls apart. What do you mean by that . I mean there is existing capacity that we have that for one reason or another maybe has not been fully communicated as to the availability of that existing capacity and youre going to hear about that now. Theres Production Capacity that gets better and better and better. And thats what were talking about because for what we need now we believe that with better
communications, well be able to make that happen. So i know theres going to be a lot of questions about that i dont want to go on too long but let me finish by saying given what i have just said and what i believe what youre going to hear that for what we need in the first phase if these things are done correctly what i believe they can, we will have and there will be enough tests to allow us to take this country safely through phase one. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Redfield . Thank you, mr. Vice president. I want to make a few comments here. First, i want to talk a little bit about cdc has developed multiple systems to monitor the disease outbreak. Youre familiar for example with how we monitor for food borne illness or antibiotic resistance in hospitals and we have also
developed a system to monitor for upper respiratory track disease. The first slide here. This is an example because when we talk about what we know about this current pandemic, the reality is we know a lot because we have developed the monitoring systems. You were on the up on the slide is a system developed initially for flu and what it does is you can see theres a multiple different flu seasons and they track them over the course of a year. I want you to look at the red line and that happens to be this years respiratory season. And you see theres a peak. There up over the 50, 52 week and that peak was when we actually had a peak of influenza b. This year was a little different because after that viral syndrome came down and you can see it, that actually we had another peak. And thats when influenza a was active through our country. And you can see influenza a started to drop. But then you saw a third peak. That peak was if you were longing at the coronavirus 19. So we had systems down to the county level that we can see where theres respiratory tract illness. And so its not just taking a test. Its monitoring these systems that have been developed over the last over decades. We have multiple ones. We have another one this is monitored in Emergency Rooms looking at syndrome diagnosis. And they showed the same thing. So were well equipped to monitor, to see when respiratory tract viral disease will come. And it becomes a very good surrogate for when you can become to understand that we need to look more ideologically about whats going on. In week 15 were coming down the
base line background in terms of the flu Surveillance System from the overall coronavirus situation right now. The second thing i wanted to say is that cdc continues to enhance the states Public Health capacity to accelerate their ability as tony talked about and as critical as we open america again to diagnose individuals that present with influenza like illness or coronavirus like illness, to diagnose them. Being able to isolate them and being able to Contact Trace around them and then diagnose the contacts and those that are coronavirus positive to go back and do their contacts. This is to the traditional Public Health approach which was started in this outbreak in january and february. And was quite successful. As i mentioned before through
february 27th, this country only had 14 cases. We did that isolation and that contact tracing. And it was very successful but then when the virus more exploded, got beyond the Public Health capacity but right now cdc is enhancing that Public Health capacity. And if i can get the second slide. I want to show you that this is just showing as we sit here today the cdc has embedded in the Health Departments and all of these states across this country more than 500 individuals. We have an additional almost 100 individuals that are working on more than 20 coronavirus outbreaks that are going through all these states and finally, at the direction of the president , we have been asked to further enhance this deployment in each of the states as the Vice President said so that theres additional Public Health personnel to help accelerate the states ability to basically
move forward aggressively and we assist them so they can open up american again. So i wanted to make those points for you today. Thank you. Dr. Birx . Thank you, mr. Vice president. And thank you, dr. Fauci and dr. Redfield for all of that clarity. If we could have the next slide. Im going to go backto what dr. Fauci was talking to emphasize the two types of tests and then ill talk about a third one. First we all know about sampling in the front of your nose. To all of the labs out there and to the providers you dont have to use the nasal fa run jal swab anymore. As dr. Fauci talked about that is sampling for the virus itself. That replicates in your nose and as we know throughout some of the respiratory tissues. The second test is of course then your immune response to your infection in your nose so thats the Antibody Test. So those are the two tests we want to talk about but i want to come back to something that both dr. Fauci and dr. Redfield said. And we covered yesterday. Testing is a part of the exquisite monitoring that needs to occur up in partnership with cdc and state and local governments, utilizing the Surveillance Systems that are available. What we just talked about, the flu Surveillance System because we no longer have flu. And the syndromic respiratory system that is across the United States and you can see its going back to base line so that well be able to see at the Community Level any deviation from that base line. In addition what we talked about yesterday was adding that asymptomatic component. Because i think youll see as more and more articles come out for surveillance that other and monitoring that other states
have done higher and higher antibody in multiple individuals who dont remember having a sickness. That will give us an idea thats our asymptomatic monitoring in these sentinel monitoring sites and what we talk about yesterday we talked about nursing homes. We talked about Indigenous People and we talked about Vulnerable People in the inner city, ensuring something thats so small that cant even be seen on the surveillance monitoring will be able to be seen in the asymptomatic. So those are the two tests that we have. One available now. Two that have been approved or three by the fda. I want to just leave you with my last concept on the Antibody Tests. Antibody tests have different specificity and sensitivities. The fda we have made that the fda has been very cautious about the Antibody Test because i know
you see reports every day of countries that have ordered the Antibody Test and found that they were 50, 60, 70 faulty. So were taking that very seriously. Because you never want to tell someone that they have an antibody and potential immunity when they dont. So those tests perform better when theres a high prevalence or high incidence of disease. We want to work with mayors around the United States to really see what it is in First Responders and Health Care Workers in the highest prevalence states so that we can know about the quality and the real life, real field experience of those assays. Because things can look really good in the lab and when you take then into the field sometimes theyre not as good. I have learned this lesson repeatedly in working around the globe. The next slide. So this is what we had asked
commercial and diagnostic companies to be working on. Because when you talk about multimillions worth of tests the way we do this in the United States today for strep, flu, influenza and for malaria is we test for the antigen. Now, we dont know right now if you shed antigen in the front of your nose. And so that is the question that scientists and companies are working on right now. Because that becomes a simpler test. Now, the flu test i think many of you will look it up tonight, you will see that outside of the flu season, because of the specificity of the test, it doesnt work so well. So these are tests were working on today that would be like a screening test. Because if youre positive on it its a good test. But it may miss that you actually had the flu. So then you would move into
what we called the nucleic acid test so were trying to bring the full talent of the science of the United States into the reality of the clinic. So bench to clinic. This is what were working on for the future. Next slide. So as i promised on both both the senators and the governors, this is the United States current platform capacity. Designated is high and low through put. What do i mean about that . We talked about the roche and abbott and others and then we talked about the gene expert and other machines that may be moderate to lower through put. I want you to see how its distributed through the United States so these are the current testing platforms available today throughout the United States for covid19. And as you heard from dr. Fauci, everything has to be working from the swab to the transport media to the laboratory to
really get those tests run and the results back to the client. The next slide. So then we have looked at all of the Testing Capacity from those platforms and this gives you an idea of what that capacity is. The darkest red you can see like in texas and new york, those are states that have lots of different platforms as you saw on the prior slide. And the ability if you just add up the platforms and the potential for tests of over a million a month. This is what were working with each of the states, on unlocking that full potential up. How are we doing that . Were calling on the American Association of microbiologists. They work closely with 300 lab workers and the walter reed team who developed the entire hiv Testing Program for the military
35 years ago. I called them back into service and theyre calling lab by lab to find out what are the technical difficulties to bring up all the platforms that exist in your lab. Is it swab . Is it transport media, is it extraction . I just really want to thank them. They already worked through over 70 plus of those laboratories to really understand and the American Association of microbiologists and the academic societies of the laboratories are working together to ensure that all of this potential can be unlocked. Next slide, please. We talked a little bit yesterday about new orleans and we and the president talked about how many tests new orleans has done. During its outbreak, which you can see now is waning. They have done throughout the last month 27 tests per 1,000 new orleans and louisianans. So 27 per 1,000. So that is a good mark and thats what italy has done about
20 per 1,000. So in evaluating an outbreak, and really to get control of this outbreak, they did about 27 tests per 1,000. Using that as a measure next slide. We looked at all of the states of the United States of america and look for states that had 30 or more ability to do 30 or more tests per 1,000 of their habitants in each state. You can see except for oregon and maine and montana i worked overseas way too long. Thank you, all. So those are the three states that were working on building capacity in. So this is to give you a perspective of how seriously were taking the testing issue as we described we measured every single platform in every
single state. We know where they by geography, by address, zip code, what their kas capacity is, what their roadblock on not being able to run the full capacity and were addressing those because each one is different and you have to address each of them one by one, with the governors, with the state and local labs and with all of the hospitals. I have not come across one laboratory or one Laboratory Director or one society that doesnt want to contribute to solving this issue of testing and ensuring that this testing is available for everyone. There is a strong this is all of the americans have social distanced in behind everyone, we dont often talk about the laboratories well talk about the nurses and the doctors on the front line, behind all of them are the Laboratory Technicians and Laboratory Directors who are coming in every day and putting things together to ensure that every Single Person that needs to be diagnosed is diagnosed. And hopefully you can see it from these labs. I mean these slides there is capacity out there. It is our job working with the states and having the state and the leadership role and the Laboratory Directors in the leadership role to provide support to ensure that all of the potential for testing in the United States is brought to bear. I just want to end with these are nucleic acid tests. There will never be the ability on a nucleic acid test to do 300 million tests a day and test everybody before they go to work or school but there might be with the antigen test. Theres a role for antigen test and a role for the other key tests to bring the full ability to the United States and so when we finish this well be talking to all americans. Because there are other tests that americans should have. I think this has brought to light the importance of diagnosis and well talk about hepatitis c and tb and other things to ensure every american is healthy. I think this has raised the Awareness Among all americans about how you do a test for different parts of your disease state. And what is long lasting immunity and what a nucleic and antigen test is. With that, admiral all right, good evening, im erin burnett. You have been watching the Coronavirus Task force giving the latest update on the pandemic. The administration while trying to explain away the issues with testing in the United States, tonight laying out plans to beef up testing which governors have said is needed before they can open up. And it comes out as the president has lashed out at several governors tweeting
liberate michigan and virginia. As the deaths in the United States tops 36,000 people. Right now the republican governor of ohio, mike dewine up. They were spending a lot of time talking about testing. I just want to get to this bottom line issue with you. The president of the United States a few moments ago said we have tremendous unused capability in the labs. The governors are responsible for testing. I hope theyll be able to use the tremendous amount of capacity. Vice president pence says you have everything you need for phase one reopening. Is that true . Is there a tremendous amount of excess capacity that you see that you can use . Well, we appreciate any help and it sounds like good news from the white house. We do have excess capacity but what thats a little i want to explain what i mean by that. We have six, seven major hospitals that can do significant testing. But one of the things thats really holding them back is they
do not have enough reagent. And so its almost like it comes in every week, rationed. So its a supply chain, production problem. Thats really whats holding it back. If they had more reagent, they would be able to expand that. Thats