Were awatsi inawaiting todays at a moment when Public Health officials and even the president , in his own way, seem to be leveling with the public about how widespread the threat is and how many people could die. The u. S. Has now surged well beyond italy to become the country with the most confirmed cases in the world. The number of cases continues to rise exponentially. The white house is now warning that every metro area is going to be hit. The president has basically admitted through his actions that he underestimated the threat. He extended the social distancing guidelines that urge all americans to stay home as much as possible, through the end of april. Its far cry from his claim last week that the country could reopen by easter. He also warned that more than two million would die under a worst Case Scenario which was published in mid march. Today his Coronavirus Task force coordinator, said that 100 to 200,000 people will still die even in a best Case Scenario. If we do things together, well, almost perfectly, we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities. We dont even want to see that. I know but you kind of take my breath away with that. What i hear you saying is thats sort of the best Case Scenario, if everything works and people do the things youre asking them to do. Maybe you can hold the deaths to 1 to 200,000 in this country. The best Case Scenario would be 100 of americans doing precisely what is required. Were not sure based on the data that youre sharing from around the world and seeing these pictures that all of america is responding in a uniform way to protect one ooanother. Thats a best Case Scenario where every one takes the threat seriously. It should be noted the president was down playing the threat up until a few days ago. Right now an increasing number of states are taking drastic measures. Maryland, vv and the district of columbia announced new orders for all residents to stay at home unless its necessary to leave. In new york, the epicenter of the crisis, Field Hospitals are being built in central park has officials attempt to handle the surge in cases. Naval hospital ship has docked in an attempt to help the city handle an over flow of noncoronavirus patients and the crisis ismedical workers as the unimaginable burdens of too many patients and not enough basic equipment. As the New York Times reports two nurse vs ds two nurse vs have died. We do want to note two small pieces of hopeful news. Officials in the seattle area now say that social distancing measures appear to be slowing the spread of the virus. Its still spreading, just more slowly. Same goes for new york state where cases were doubling every two days. Now they are doubling every six day days. Both places have a long road ahead of them, as do we all. We have an nbc News White House reporter outside of the briefing. Shannon, i want to start with you on the phone. The president will come out and speak any moment. We know he had a Conference Call with governors today. What are are you expecting to hear from him . Reporter im in the rose garden right now. Were expecting the president to come out any minute here for the 5 00 briefing. One of the things the administration are getting presses is what more can they be doing so they have extended the guidelines. Are there additional guidelines to be put in place. Is it enough to carry on as if he Grocery Store every day or continuing to get delivery food or some areas of nail salons or dry cleaners that are still open. Is that enough or do we need to be taking things a step further. The president hinted maybe there will be expanded guidelines coming. I think thats also something we can expect to hear from them today or tomorrow. What we have been hearing from him is that everybody who wants a test can get a test and that we have done more testing in this country than anywhere else. Both of those things arent s e true. He was telling governors pe hasnt heard theres been a problem with tests in weeks suggesting that there isnt one and according to times there was pushback on that. What can you tell us about the information that the president is receiving from the states and whether hes getting all that information or if hes just not hearing it. There continues to be frustration about testing and in new york state its limited to patient who is are hospitalized or the most severe case and you have other people that are presumed to be positive but arent getting a test. That continues to be an issue and resources. The governors have complained about feel like they are fighting amongst themselves for the limited resources that are out there an wanting the federal government to get involved and rural hospitals, the New York Times was reporting as well from that phone call theres concern about rural hospitals while even though they might not have huge numbers new york has and they dont have the hospital. So many rural hospitals have closed in recent years which has stretched them even further when facing a situation like this. Gabe, you are somewhere outside of a Field Hospital that nobody ever expected to see. Field hospital in the middle of central park which only a few days ago was packed with sunbathers. Tell us whats happening there. Reporter hi there in is Field Hospital that started to be constructed over the weekend by a group, a charity organization. Its worked on many disasters including the ebola crisis. These are tents that sprung up out of nowhere. They are expected to open this fee Field Hospital tomorrow. It has just 58 beds. Local authorities have said every little bit helps. You mention the u. S. Comfort also docked here in new york with 1,000 beds as well. The governor has said repeatedly, as you know, this area needs 140,000 beds in just one small piece of it. Something we did see when we toured one of these tents earlier, they do have several of those critical ventilators that the governor and the mayor had been saying are so critical and President Trump suggested over the weekend perhaps they didnt need quite so many. There are a few of them here. To let you know what they plan to do, this is meant to relieve some of the pressure from the hospital system. They plan to bring in some patients from mt. Sanai as well as mt. Sanai west on the west side of manhattan. 68 beds. Dozens of medical workers here. Its something many people thought they would never see. Medical tents set up in central park. The last time we saw tents even remotely like that and not even like that because they were mean tos was during the Great Depression when people rr living in central park. Nobody expected that. The medical tents will be housing coronavirus patients. I know the usns is not for coronavirus patients. Thats for the over flow of nonviral infections that New York Hospital see on a daily basis. Reporter yes, they will. They have vent larilators here. That is to bring in noncovid19 patients to put on the Naval Hospital ship. Here, this is a very small facility. Several tents that have built behind me. The location is significant because of its location in central park here in east meadow. There will be covid19 patients here starting tomorrow. This might not fill up to several days or weeks as we get closer to the apex that Governor Cuomo has been talking about. Governor andrew cuomo has been talk in stark terms about the realities on the ground in new york and the need that this city and this state has for ventilators and hospital beds and doctors and it will see in the coming days. There was a bit of good news. He said that the rate of infection has been slowing to every six days, its doubling now. Reporter yes, thats true. That is hopeful news. The governor touted that number but he also said they are testing more people and the numbers of those testing positive is going up. Again, he said thats because new york now is testing more people than any other place in country. The state has over 66,000 people who have tested positive. New york has the highest number of positive cases. Ten times higher than what you see in california. Its only second to whats happening in new jersey. The point of why you see the hospital beds going up in new yorks central park and why we have this magnificent ship behind me with the red crosses at the bow here on new yorks west side highway is because this city and this state just needs more hospital beds because of all the cases in the state, the majority of the ones are happening right here in new york city. They are hoping that of the 140,000 hospital beds that they need as gabe mentioned, the governor said they only have 53,000. They are a far cry away from meeting all of their need even with this magnificent ship here. Even with the floating hospital, a Field Hospital thats opening at the javit center and even at sdral pa central park. Major de blasio said they would need 40 more of those ships. Were under two minutes for the president of the United States to come out and give his briefing. With that let me toss to my friend and colleague brian williams. Thank you. Even the two minute briefing has been flexible, shall we say, over the past few days. Well put the shot of the rose garden on camera for you and set the scene. Just in the last couple of minutes, white house military aids came out with a small table to the right and after affixing the president ial symbol to it, they put a box on the table and various television monitors were looking at it. Appears to be a kcovid device o some sort. The reporters now standing in the press core indicating the president and Vice President coming out of the oval office. Thank you very much. Thank you. Very afrcomfortable here. Lot of room. We appreciate you being here. Yesterday i announced we will be extending our social distance guidelines till the end of april. This is based on the peak of fatalities will not arrive for another two weeks. The same modelling also shows by very vigorously following these guidelines we could save more than one million american lives. Think of that. One million american lives. Our future is in our own hands and the choices and sacrifices we make will determine the fate of this virus and really the fate of our victory. We will have a great victory. We have no other choice. Every one of us have a role to play in winning this war. We can make the difference in stopping the virus. This is our shared patriotic duty. Challenging times are ahead for the next 30 days. This is a very vital 30 days. Were sort of putting it all in the line. So important because we have to get back. The more we dedicate ourselves today, the more quickly we will emerge on the other side of the crisis and thats the time were waiting for. The more we commit ourselves now, the sooner we can win the fight and return to our lives and they will be great lives. Today we reached a historic milestone. Over one million americans have now been tested, more than any other country by far. Not even close. Tested accurately. What id like to do is ask secretary azar, who has done a fantastic job to come up and say a few words about the fact we reached substantially now more than one million tests. Please. Thank you, alex. Thank you for your leadership in marshaling the resources we have for thisunprecedented testing effort and thank you mr. Vice preside testing. The United States hit more than one million samples tested. A number that no other country has reached. Were now testing nearly 100,000 samples a day. Also a level that no other country has reached. I want to thank every partner thats been involved in this effort. That includes all the men and women of the fda and the cdc, including director redfeeield. They have worked together to balance need nor testing on an aggressive skill with scientific rigor that americans expect. Working with our testing coordinator, they have now truly inleashed the ingenuity. The Center Pieces of americas historic approach to testing. I want to thank those state and local leaders who have used their on the Ground Resources and knowledge to lead testing and make it much more easily accessible to the americans who need it. Im also grateful to fema with whom we are working closely to get state an local partners what they need. I want to thank cms where administrator ve administrator verm harks hma had that tests will be paid for. We would not be where we are without the companies who have worked day an night to develop, as of today, 20 different emergency testing options. The number of options is growing nearly every day. Fda opened up new informations for using the available tests like selfswabbing and new options. I also want to thank fda and other components of hhs for rapid action on other tools that we need. This weekend, we actually work to secure 30 million tablets and one million tablets from bayer for covid19 treatments and we authorized the new decontamination machines with which sterilize thousands of essential n95 masks for reuse every day. Thank you for your leadership and thank you to everybody who has played part in getting us where we are today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Id like to ask dr. Hahn to come up. The numbers have been incredible on testing. In the days ahead well go even faster and we have something from abbott labs which is right here and that is a five minute test. Highly accurate and i maybe can show that as we listen to our fda commissioner, the job hes done and the approval process. We talked about the hydrochloroquine now. We have that now under test with 1,100 people in new york. It was only the fast approval by fda that allowed us to do that. This is the first one on the line from the five minute test for abbott. Thank you for your leadership. Im very proud of fda staff to expedite the availability of testing in this country. We had a substantial addition to testing especially the abbott point of test which the president has pulled out of the box. Its a test that gives you a result where youre getting care. Just like tests for flu or strep, we go to the doctor an get the test done, you can get an answer within minutes of having this test done. They are planning to scale up the number of tests that can be put out throughout the country and patients can get the answer within as little as 15 to 5 minutes. We are working with abbotas well. I was on the phone with the abbott ceo. He said this is a 9 to 12 month approach to developing a point of care test. They did this in collaboration with fda and u. S. Government within weeks. They will be delivering these tests tomorrow and will be ramping up. The other point is abbott and fda Work Together to make sure we a fast, reliable and accurate test to market. Thank you. Thank you. Great job. Really great job. Thank you, steve. So, the Pharmaceutical Company has been working with us very closely. As alex mentioned, little bit 30 million doses of the hydroxychloroquine to the United States government and bayer has donated one million doses of the chloroquine which will soon be distributed to states and state Health Officials around the country. Teva pharmaceuticals is donating six million doses of hydroxychloroquine to hospitals. Its been really amazing. Well introduce you to some of the greatest Business Executives in the world today, no matter where you go. Theyll say a bit about what they are doing. We have so many more. Fda is also authorized the patels n95 respirator masks sterilization kits. Ive been asking why are we throwing these masks away. You look at them and they are significant pieces of equipment. I say how come you throw them away. Why arent they using sterilization techniques. I got a call from mike dewine, the governor of ohio. Hes a tremendous guy. He said we have a Company Named batel and they are having a hard time getting approval from the fda. Kaled up dr. Hahn and within a short period of time they got the approval. I want to thank mike and steve. Each machine can disinfect 120,000 masks per day. Think of that. Each machine can disinfect 120,000 masks per day. It will be just like a new one. It can go up to about 20 times for each mask. Each mask can go through this process 20 times. They have two in ohio, one in new york and one will soon be shipped to seattle, washington a also to washington, d. C. That will make a tremendous difference on the masks. This morning i spoke to our nations governor to help each state get the medical supplies they need and yesterday Vice President mike pence asked our nations hospitals to begin reporting total bed capacity, icu bed capacity, Ventilator Capacity and vital medical supply level os on a daily basi. Mike, thank you for the great job. In new york, the 2,900 bed hospital under construction which is now completed, they completed it in three days. You might say three and a half days. It will be completed today. When you look, theyre going up, i think well be adding some more beds which will completed today. We have opened up, there goes our box. My hair is blowing around. Its mine. One thing you cant get away with, if its not yours you got a president if youre the u. S. Navy ship comfort also arrived today equipped with 12 operating rooms and 1,000 hospital beds be p wo. Work has begun on hospital sites including a 600 capacity nursing home in brooklyn. A 2,900bed hospital in new york in just about three days, maybe four days. The whole city is talking about it. On top of that, we floated in a great ship which is going be 1,000 rooms which is being used for patients outside of what were focused on and that will free up a lot of rooms for what were focused on. Its been great. The army corps of engineers is awarded contracts for the construction of alternate care facilities also at the State University of stony brook, old we westbury. Were sending 6 0 ambulances th new york city today. We have a total of 60. Were getting some additional ones wi