Signatory Coronavirus Press Release Made Easy

Signatory coronavirus press release

thank you very much thank you today I'd like to provide you with an update you know war against the corona virus thanks to our comprehensive strategy and extraordinary devotion to our citizens we've had such tremendous support all over we continue to see encouraging signs of progress cases in New York area New Orleans Detroit Boston and Houston are declining Denver Seattle Philadelphia Washington DC Atlanta Nashville Indianapolis and st. Louis are all stable and declining all parts of the country are either in good shape getting better in all cases getting better and we're seeing very little that we're going to look at as a superseding hotspot things are moving along really a horrible situation that we've been confronted with but they're moving along as we express our gratitude for these hard-fought gains however we continue to mourn with thousands of families across the country as loved ones have been stolen from us by the invisible enemy we grieve by their side as one family this great American family and we do grieve we also stand in solidarity with the thousands of Americans who are ill and waging a brave fight against the virus we're doing everything in our power to heal the sick and to gradually reopen our nation and to safely get our people back to work they want to get back to work and they want to get back to work soon there's a hunger for getting our country back and it's happening and it's happening faster than people would think ensuring the health of our economy is vital to ensuring the health of our nation these goals work in tandem they work side by side it's clear that our aggressive strategy to slow the spread been working and is saving countless lives for those who are infected we've taken unprecedented action to ensure they have the highest level of care anywhere in the world the federal government has built more than 11,000 extra beds shipped or delivered hundreds of millions of pieces of personal protective equipment as you know in fact some of the people here are going to be talking about it some of our greatest executive some of the greatest anywhere in the world and distributed over 10,000 ventilators and we now have in a very short period of time many have been delivered and hundreds of thousands are being built and frankly every governor has more ventilators right now than they know what to do with they're actually shipping them to different locations and we're shipping some to our allies and others throughout the world because we have ventilators like the job that they've done in getting this very complex piece of equipment built is actually incredible you don't hear about ventilators anymore except in a positive way we've launched the most ambitious testing effort likewise on earth the United States has now conducted more than 5.4 million tests nearly double the number tested in any other country more than twice as much as any other country think of that moments ago I came from a meeting with some of our nation's largest retailers including Walmart Walgreens CVS Rite Aid and Kroger we're joined by the leaders of those great companies and we also have with us the leaders from the world's top medical diagnostics companies and suppliers thermo Fisher lab core quest u.s. cotton and the American Clinical Laboratory Association these are great great companies these private sector leaders along with others such as Rose Abbott Becton Dickinson Howe logic and cephei sefa Hyde have been exceptional partners in an unprecedented drive to expand this Eight's capabilities and our country's capabilities the job they've done has been incredible the testing that's been developed and being developed right now has been truly an amazing thing I want to thank Abbott Laboratories for the job they've done I want to thank Roshan in particular those two have really stepped forward abbott with a five-minute test that people can take and in five minutes they know what the what the answer is i'd like to ask if i could the executives of these great companies and they are they have really helped us a lot over the last 45 day period we're talking about a 45 day period when many of us met and since then what wal-mart and the others have done has been nothing short of amazing so I just want to ask them to come forward and say a few words about their company plus they're going to make a big contribution to our country please come forward please thank you thank you mr. president and thank you for all of you for being here today and and what we'd like to talk about is the progress we made the last time we were here was March 3rd 13th and we've made tremendous progress and none of that progress could be made without the 47,000 people at quest Diagnostics that are working around the clock working up the test and running the test in delivering the results that we need as far as results we made tremendous progress we are currently at quest Diagnostics testing about 50 thousand tests per day we've been pushed by the task force to bring up that number by the end of May we'll have a hundred thousand tests per day about 3 million tests and these are the molecular tests that we do today we've also brought up serological testing we started about this past week and by the end of May we'll be close to 250,000 a day about 7,000 a month so you put those two numbers together together it's about 10 million tests by the end of May that we'll be doing at quest Diagnostics we're doing that also in a quicker way turnaround times were somewhat of an issue at the early days we've reduced that to one to two days or turnaround take time for people in beds hospital beds is less than 24 hours and we're doing that in the same way we've done it with the FDA and we're CLIA delivering the quality that you all expect and convenience will improve as well with convenient solutions that we'll be able to swab individuals more easily and also deliver to consumer the ability to have consumers choose a test online with a telehealth provider so with that I like to offer my colleague the podium as well mr. president thank you very much for your leadership and for having us all here today our scientists and our lab technicians are working day and night in order to do as many tests as we possibly can for the American public and to turn those tests around as quickly as possible just 45 days ago we said we can do several thousand tests a day we can now do 60,000 tests a day and we're continuing to expand that capacity every single day in addition our scientists are working to make testing more convenient and easier we have the swabs now that are much smaller than the original ones that we originally launched with but we also have the pixel by LabCorp at-home test that tests right now is for healthcare workers on the front line and first responders but we will be rolling that out much more broadly over the coming weeks and we're going to roll it out with absolutely no upfront cost for the individual consumers at the same time we're building our capacity for serology testing and we can currently do about 50,000 today and we'll be able to do several hundred thousand per day by the middle of May and we're gonna be working with the retailers our colleagues are here today to help them as they expand their testing capabilities across the entire country and lastly mr. president we have a rather large drug development business and we will continue to work with our colleagues in the pharmaceutical and the biotech biotechnology industry to ensure we do everything we possibly can to enroll clinical trials fast so we can get new treatments and potential vaccines Thank You mr. president thank you and thank and thank the administration for all of the collaboration to enable Thermo Fisher Scientific to be able to produce the test kits that companies like LabCorp and quest and the public health labs around the world run we met our original commitments of producing five million kits a week and we're up to scaling that to double that in the coming weeks in terms of supporting testing around the world I'd like to thank my 75,000 colleagues around the world for their tireless effort to make that a reality and supporting all of our customers to have the testing necessary to get America back to work Thank You mr. president I'm John M's with us cotton and we are the company that is going to produce the swabs to be used in these testing kits we have about 1200 people in our company and in our Cleveland operation they have pivoted from as you've said the q-tip style swab to a swab that's going to have a plastic stick with a polyester tip so that they can be assembled into these kits our Cleveland team has done a wonderful job with this and I'm very they're very excited to be able to help in this effort so Thank You mr. president mr. president thank you I'm Larry Merlo with CVS health and it was just over a month ago that we opened up our first drive-through test site and since that time we have opened large-scale testing facilities across five states in partnership with the administration and working with the governors of Rhode Island Massachusetts Connecticut Georgia in Michigan and these sites are enabling us to test approximately a thousand individuals a day with real-time results we now have a capacity to test about 35,000 individuals each each week and this afternoon we announced plans to expand that capacity even further beginning in May we will install testing capabilities and up to a thousand CVS pharmacies will be using our drive-throughs and our parking lots with swab testing so again you'll see that coming online you know in May and we also recognize the fact that you know the virus is disproportionately affecting our minority communities so we're working in partnership with organizations like the National Medical Association to bring testing and care into the traditionally underserved communities we're also beginning to implement mobile capabilities with which to do that and as businesses are you know restarting their workforce we'll also be looking to assist them you know as they begin to come back to a normal operation and finally as my other colleagues I just want to thank my CVS colleague they have done a phenomenal job in terms of helping people in many different ways all across communities in the country and they're part of this army of health care professionals and the upfront store and you know first-line supervisors and workers that are doing terrific things to bring our country together and for that we owe them a huge amount of gratitude thank you Thank You mr. president appreciate the invitation to be here today and it was just 45 days ago when we were here I'm Richard Ashworth I oversee Walgreens in the US and I just want to start off Larry like you thinking the over 200,000 Walgreen team members who are in stores every day all across America taking care of our patients and our customers you know giving them essential daily needs the prescriptions obviously that they need and even covent testing while we're here we also announced today we'll be expanding our testing capabilities across all states including Puerto Rico we'll be able to triple the volume that we do now in partnership with our lab partners and we're excited to be able to do that we're really excited with the public-private partnership that we have here because that's what enabling us to do this and we look forward to working with the additional states to get these sites up and running as fast as possible as a pharmacist I just want to say one quick thing I'm really proud to be part of this profession and not just Walgreens pharmacist and pharmacy employees but all of them across Grocery mass independence you're really doing what you should be doing and what you went to school for it to help patients counseling them on their medicines and helping them understand the problems that we're facing you know Pharmacy is right here in it with everyone together in the community and we look forward to being part of the testing like we are now serology whatever that might look like in the future and eventually treatment when the vaccine does come so thank you mr. president for the opportunity thank you Thank You mr. president Thank You mr. vice president we appreciate all you're doing to get America back to work and doing it safely I represent Kroger my name is Rodney MacMullen and I am so proud of our nearly half a million associates that are doing everything every day to keep customers safe and our associates safe and one of the things that we were able to do is provide the basic practices we're doing we call it blueprint and it's the things that all of us can learn from on how to get America back working we also announced earlier today continuing to accelerate our practice on testing we are actively engaged in six states next in the next couple of weeks we'll take that to twelve states and the number of tests that we do continues to grow faster than that together we will win together we will solve this problem and move on America is always great thank you again Thank You mr. president my name is Doug McMillon I'm a Walmart associate and I too would like to start by thanking our associates for everything that they're doing in our stores Sam's Clubs distribution centers and in our e-commerce fulfillment centers they've been inspiring and continue to have a can-do attitude and step up it's much appreciated we started 45 days ago as did everyone else and we've been operating sites for a while now we're now up to 20 sites across 11 states by the end of next week we'll be 245 and by the end of the May end of May we'll be at a hundred we also a few weeks ago vice president pence and I were in a distribution center in Virginia food distribution center he was kind enough to come and thank our associates for us there which is much appreciated and the president vice president were speaking on the phone about surgical gowns and the president asked if we could put in an order for a millions of surgical gowns and we don't normally buy those so I wasn't sure if we were going to be able to do that but I'd like to think our apparel team and McKesson in particular for partnering with us we've been able to in the month of April secured an additional two and a half million surgical gowns and by the end of May we'll have an additional six million available to help so thank you for the opportunity to serve and for being here Thank You mr. president and thanks to the team for getting this great operation up and running for the benefit of the country I'm Hayward Donegan with Rite Aid and we are currently operating 40% of the current test sites in 25 locations across eight states and we had the I had the opportunity as I was driving up to stop at our Richmond location and see the testing in action and thanked the associates whether it be security or pharmacy front and everybody who's helping with this great effort and all of the customers that appreciate this so much it was really amazing to see and I want to thank my 50,000 associates also for keeping these retail locations up and running during these really really tough times it's been quite amazing and we too are going to expand our testing and we're doing about 1,500 a day thanks so thank you all very much it's incredible what we've done together over a short period of time I want to thank our vice president for the task force and the work every day it gets better and we had a fantastic call with the governors today and I would say that they are as thrilled as they can be considering that the fact is that there has been so much unnecessary death in this country it could have been stopped and it could have been stopped short but somebody a long time ago it seems decided not to do it that way and the whole world is suffering because of it 184 countries at least but I want to thank all of these great business men and women for the job they've done they have been fantastic with us working with us and as you know for several weeks my administration has encouraged the governor's to leverage unused testing capacity and States very few understood that we have tremendous capacity then one week ago we provided each governor with a list of names addresses and phone numbers of the labs where they could find additional testing capacity in their states within 48 hours the number of tests performed across the country began to absolutely skyrocket on Saturday alone more than 200,000 test results were reported which is a gigantic number bigger than any country anywhere in the world for a much longer period of time a number that is an increase earlier in the month when we tested roughly less than 100,000 a day so we much more than doubled it and that will be doubling again very shortly we are continuing to rapidly expand our capacity and confident that we have enough testing to begin reopening and the reopening process we want to get our country open and the testing is not going to be a problem at all in fact it's going to be one of the great assets that we have today we're releasing additional guidance on testing to inform the states as they develop their plans for phased and very safe reopening our blueprint describes how states should unlock their full capacity expand the number of testing platforms established monitoring systems to detect local outbreaks and conduct contact tracing we have it all other countries are calling to find out what are we doing and how do you do it and we're helping them we're dealing with a lot of countries helping them on testing just like we did on the ventilators I directed our Medicare program to make it easier for seniors to get the testing that they need and the pharmacies as you know we are allowing pharmacies now to do testing and we have other testing locations that we're going to be allowing also but having pharmacies get involved in testing is a very big deal we're also asking governor's to do the same in their Medicaid program so they're going to be able and authorized to do the same and Medicaid so it's a big that's a big deal so we're deploying the full power and strength of the federal government to help States cities to help local government get this horrible plague over with and over with fast there's tremendous energy in our country right now there's energy like people haven't seen in a long time a spirit that they have not seen and we're doing very well very well considering what happened to us and considering if you look at what happened to others this is something that the world has not seen for a long long time you can probably go back to 1917 where it was a terrible period of time you all know what happened in 1917 that's over a hundred years ago with that I'd like to introduce if I might dr. Burks if you could come up and then Admiral you'll come up and between the two of you you'll explain the entire process and how much progress we've made and where we're going thank you very much Thank You mr. president so the blueprint lays out the roles and responsibilities to enhance our partnership between the private sector and the public sector bringing together state and local governments with the federal to ensure that we can accomplish and achieve our core principles and objectives we can have the first slide the core elements of the testing plan include both three elements roba robust diagnostic testing plans developed in partnerships with state and I just really want to thank the governor's and health officials both of the state and local levels who've been working with us day and night to work through these issues and also all the laboratory directors in many of the states as well as the American Society for Microbiology who've been working with us to ensure that the plans were efficient and effective within the robust diagnostic testing plans it was really unlocking the full capacity of the state increasing the number of testing platforms we now have multiple tests for different platforms increasing the ability to collect samples increasing testing and laboratory supplies and ensuring that we work together to make sure that every client receives the tests that they need this is added with timely monitoring symptoms and what do I mean by that systems where we bring together the ability to not only diagnose the symptomatic but program proactively and interactively work with individuals that we know are at higher risk we've worked with States to look at where the outbreaks have occurred when they're not in the large metros and we see that it occurs very often in places of closed settings among our Native Americans and among our long-term care facilities so an active monitoring program that's active integrated and innovative and then combining us with a third element which is the Rapid Response program relying on CDC to be working with state and local governments to ensure that every symptomatic case and critically the asymptomatic cases are quickly tracked and traced to ensure that we can not only control this epidemic but predict outbreaks before they expand and then finally the plan includes approach of using science and technology to develop even newer platforms more efficient testing really ensuring that the antibody tests that are utilized and recommended by both FDA and CDC have high quality and predicting both exposure to the virus and antibody development and then finally working on innovative tests that could be high throughput and point-of-care an antigen based test or a point-of-care expanded nucleic acid test thank you Thank You mr. president and thank you ambassador birx I could have the next slide please want to spend just a couple minutes about telling going over where we've been but more importantly where we're going I think we all can understand how we can group this into three distinct phases first is our launch phase when we were really engaging the emerging epidemic and the types of things we need to do for example mobilize the private sector to develop tests and have EU A's and I think you know over the past two months the FDA has issued 67 emergency use authorization x' which is far outpacing anything that has been done or could ever been imagined galvanizing the research community in the commercial labs the reason why we're here with a CLA labs having done about 3 million tests is because of that day when that was galvanized by the President and the Vice President we also set models in the community those first community-based testing sites that were federally supported and really under the direction of the US Public Health Service people who had been in Japan testing people on the diamond princess to assure that it would be done right and it would be done safely for everyone involved then we moved to really scaling that phase was very very important because we knew we needed to be at an immense scale to enter the third phase about supporting opening again this again for example a lot of my life is about swabs it was enhancing the production capability of a small company in Maine called puritan that you'll hear a whole lot more about that is provide that is sort of the swab provider for the country but also because of the FDA actions and the actions of scientific community being able to broaden the types to spun polyester so US cotton can now come in and start delivering within the next couple of weeks three million swabs per week of a different type it also did things like expanding the community-based testing sites where as we started small with the commercial partners you see today right now we have 73 of this 2.0 sites going to 110 and very importantly this demonstrated the model and 68% of those sites are in community of moderate or high social vulnerability and 22% are in the highest social vulnerability communities so that we can make sure the testing gets where it needs to be you've just heard that that could be expanded to thousands of sites and finally stage 3 which is very exciting coordinating with governor's to support testing plans and rapid response programs over the past week a multidisciplinary team from the White House HHS FDA FEMA has met virtually with multidisciplinary teams from every state Puerto Rico in the District of Columbia to understand what they're testing aspirations are and to make sure that we can meet those demands we're gonna have another round of those calls this week but as we talked about earlier today we will be able to supply every state with the with the supplies and the tests that they need that will dramatically increase the number of tests we've done to this point and just to give you an idea the supplies that we will be providing to States the minimum that we're supplying to States is approximately double in that month then the Republic of Korea has performed in the four months to now accumulated to give you an idea of the amount of testing that we're going to be going to be doing so I'm very exciting right now as we complete this ecosystem with the large reference labs the LabCorp and quest providing the very high throughput large-scale testing the galvanizing of the hospitals and academic labs that dr. Burks has done by a machine to machine understanding and promoting that with the governor's and of course using point-of-care testing when and where that's very important to stop outbreaks or in remote areas like in the Indian Health Service or in Alaska Thank You mr. president okay so with that we're here to answer some questions and mike is up here also so we'll answer Steve please go ahead grapple with Wynn and how to open their States what's the best advice from you on what well we want them to do it we recommend that they do it as quickly as possible but safely we want everyone to be safe and I think you're seeing that you're seeing a lot of governor's get out and they want to open it up many are thinking about their school system not a long way to go in the school system right now for this season for this year but I think you see a lot of schools open up even if it's for a very short period of time I think it would be a good thing because as you see in terms of what this vicious virus goes after young people seem to do very well young people seem to do very well so I know that there are some governor's that aren't necessarily ready to open up their states but they may be ready to open up their school systems we'll see but that's their choice but the word is safety okay wrap it but safety yeah please go ahead on January the 28th he was in the briefing and in the brief recorders that for the individual American the virus should not be an impact on their day-to-day life three months later more than 55,000 with our fellow Americans have now lost their lives mr. president why is he still yours top health advisor why is he still serving as the HHS secretary well I think it's a very unfair question because you have many great professionals some of them you have great respect for and you have many people in the other party you mentioned Alexei Zahra but you have many people in the other party that have said the same thing and with even more confidence so a lot of people didn't get that right I was I was very fortunate weather was through luck or whatever that we closed the border we put a ban on China other than our citizens coming in we had our citizens you can't keep out American citizens you know gee you can't come back into your country that's a little tough to do but we put a ban on China that was very fortunate but I could tell you that Nancy Pelosi was dancing in the streets in Chinatown she wanted to go let's go out and party and that was late into February so you don't mention that but you could mention that go ahead any other please go ahead you should have no complaints do you believe that's true well I can only say what we're doing we're reporting very accurately if you look at other countries other countries are not I mean you can look at China you can look at numerous countries where I don't think those are right numbers I can only say what we're doing it's very important to us to do very accurate reporting and that's what we're doing John go ahead please the payment Protection Plan the CPP plan help small businesses there's been a lot of concerns today with the website just not working in fact we're from the American Bankers Association saying that they are deeply frustrated until it's fixed American banks will not be able to help struggling small businesses no well I just came out and I hadn't heard I heard there was a glitch we'll find out whether or not that so certainly it did work out very well for the original amount of money this is the second amount and I'll find out about that we'll find we're relying on the banks to go out and do an accurate job yet please in the back well I wouldn't mind doing that I don't know what the legal status of something like that I would like to do that as far as I'm concerned I'm not involved in that process but I would certainly like to have it listed I'd have to find out if there's a legal problem but if there isn't I would do it loudly please a majority of polls show that Americans blame China for the spread of the corona virus and yet they're taking advantage of the crisis to make the world more dependent on their supply chains how do you get how do you hold China accountable and how do you keep our country well surely there are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable we're doing very serious investigations as you probably know and we are not happy with China we are not happy with that whole situation because we believe it could have been stopped at the source it could have been stopped quickly and it wouldn't have spread all over the world that we think that should have happened so we'll let you know what the appropriate time but we are doing serious investigations well we've already discussed that and especially having to do with medical supplies and others and others if you look prior to this virus the deficit was coming way down under my administration because I put massive tariffs on China we took in tens of billions of dollars gave some of it to the farmers who were unfairly targeted by China nobody's ever done that before we never took in ten cents from China now all of a sudden I think you know very well we've taken in tens of billions of dollars I helped the farmers by giving him two years ago twelve billion dollars all coming from China and we had plenty left over to and then the following year 16 billion and this year we're also going to help our farmers but nobody's ever done a thing like that because they were targeted unfairly by China so we're doing a very strong investigation and we'll let you know what the result of that is we should be able to get the answers to as you talked about potentially reopening up America again as we see in the slides behind you what data are you gonna look at in the future to see if restrictions need to be re-imposed yeah we're looking very much and reliant very much in the local areas the governors and that's been the way it has been for me maybe not for everybody but for me that's the way it's been at the beginning and from the beginning the governor's some of them are doing an extraordinary job not all of them but some of them and I think all of them maybe has it have a chance to do that some will be a little bit different the areas are much different Manhattan is much different than Montana you have a lot of different circumstances but and obviously if you look at the virus it hit some areas hasn't hit very much other areas not even at all almost not at all but the entire country has been infected West Virginia as an example I spoke to Jim Justice the governor of West Virginia and they were a long before anything hit and they had numerous deaths even in West Virginia and they were really the last one to be hit so we're dealing with the governor's we had a really great call today as I told you very very solid these are these were not complaining people these were people that were they had everything they needed they had their ventilators they have their testing they see their testing is growing they're growing they're testing we're helping them we're getting them that what they need and that was a group I wish I mean I'm sure some of you are on the line even though you are supposed to be and I think you know what the result of that call was please go ahead holding them responsible Germany sent a bill to China four hundred thirty billion dollars excuse me under 30 billion euros for the damages caused by the rotavirus would your administration look at doing the same well we could do something much easier than that we have ways of doing things a lot easier than that but Germany is looking at things that we're looking at things and we're talking about a lot more money than Germany is talking about yeah please go ahead we haven't determined the final value if you look at the world I mean this is worldwide damage this is damage to the US but this is damage to the world yeah please what's the strategy the federal government well you'd have to ask Attorney General bar but I think he wants to see like everybody he wants to see people get back and wants to see people get back to work he doesn't want people to be held up when there's no reason for doing it in some cases perhaps it's too strict he wants to make sure people have their rights and they maintained their rights very importantly so a lot of people would agree with him but you'd actually have to ask that question specifically from a legal standpoint to attorney general bar it would depend on the state it would depend on the circumstances of the state but some states are you know perhaps a little early and some states are a little bit late and the Attorney General I read that and I saw that and frankly the Attorney General doesn't want to have rights taken away cuz you know there are some people they're not allowed to open up a store or you're gonna lose their livelihood and by the way that causes death also between all of the things that happen and this has been a big study you know the fact that people aren't allowed to have their freedom causes tremendous amount of problems including death so that's what he's talking about please in the back now in other states they've seen a spike in people using disinfectant after your comments last week I know you said they were sorry I can't imagine why I can't imagine why yeah I can't imagine I can't imagine that yeah go ahead please president dr. Anthony Fauci says that we need to increase testing by double in at least so does the Rockefeller Foundation when are we going to be doubling well that's it it doesn't really matter what they say there and we just left him we just had a meeting but because we're gonna have much more than doublet very soon now there are big believers in testing and then there are some governors that don't feel as strongly about it at all you understand that they feel much differently about it but we're going with maximum testing because it's something we're very capable of doing but we'll be much more than doubled you know Mike I'd like you to answer that we're going to be much higher than doubled on testing very shortly Mike please Thank You mr. president I hope the American people looking on today are as proud as the president and I are of the incredible public and private partnership that you heard from today it was two months ago that we had done less than 10,000 tests for the corona virus in the United States but because the president brought together these incredible commercial labs brought together the best known retailers in America now mr. president we have 5.4 million tests and as you said earlier today we've we've done more than 200,000 tests in a single day as we met with governor's today I sense the enthusiasm among governor's for the way that testing is scaling all across the country and we assured them on the call today that we're going to continue to directly partner with them to to make sure that that all of the resources you heard about today continue to be expanded but I want to ask Admiral girar who is literally working day in and day out with the governor's to describe some of the numbers for exactly where we will be where we're north of 5 million tests done now it is it is remarkable to think of the pace of acceleration but Admiral maybe you could speak about exactly when we will reach the point that some of the experts say that they think we need to be at whether that be be a 300,000 tests a day or 500,000 tests a day but what's remarkable to me as a layperson mr. president is because of this partnership you forge we're we're almost there and we'll be there very very soon for the American people but everyone who is as anxious to see America reopen as this president and our entire administration are should know that the three phased approach that the president outlined 10 days ago we believe and and I believe increasingly governors understand around America that we have a sufficient amount of testing today for every state that qualifies to interface one to begin to reopen their economies mr. president with your permission I'll just ask Admiral Gerrard to give some specific numbers about about how quick for all that we've done how much more quickly you'll see an expansion of testing because of the partnership that you witnessed again here today Thank You mr. president mr. vice president the number of tests that need to be done depends on the state level you understand that places where there's high virus circulating we'll need many many more tests places that do not have high virus circulating may need less tests but lets us assume dr. foutch ii was talking about about a four million per month number which was sort of a week ago where we where we are so we will according to the governor's plans for next month we will easily double that four million number we will have over 20 million swabs that we're gonna send out we will have over 15 million tubes of media we have all the tests matched machine-to-machine in a focused area we've gone state-by-state and understand that and this is not even including what you just heard the five million per month tests by LabCorp and quest or the point-of-care tests by Abbott or all the other tests that are out there so in May we are going to be doing more testing in this country and people talk about South Korea a lot the state the states with the least amount of testing will double the overall cumulative number per capita that South Korea has done in four months to give you that understand cBS with a drive-through test the diagnostic agencies but we sat here in the Rose Garden back on March 13 these companies were here some other companies were here by my count only 69 drive-through test sites have been set up by the companies that were here I'm wondering if you of course mr. vice president back in early March you said we'd be at four million a test by the following week we're just now got there in the last few days so what have you learned about what went wrong you know month-and-a-half of the last month and a half or two months and what's going to go right now what lessons have you learn from the mistakes John I appreciate the question but it represents a misunderstanding on your part and and frankly the a lot of people in the public's part about the difference between having a test versus the ability to actually process the test I mean the truth was when the president tapped me to lead the White House coronavirus Task Force two months ago we saw the production of lots of test kits going into the marketplace but as the president has said many times what he understood early on was the old system would never be able to process the tests at the massive volume that we would need in the midst of an epidemic and that's why the president brought together these extraordinary commercial labs that you've heard from today literally sat them down in the Roosevelt Room and said we need you to turn all of your energies loose on doing the kind of high-speed testing that would be necessary for us to reach the numbers we're at today and so there was no disconnect at all there were there were lots of test kits out there at Merlin frankly there still are today there are literally millions of tests that could be run in the old-style slow laboratory that are still conducting tests today whether it be at the CDC or at state laboratories but what the president brought about with this public-private partnership has brought us to the point where we've done 5.4 million tests to date and and literally you just heard that by next month it could we could be doing as many as two million tests a week all across the country to give the American people confidence that we can reopen and get our economy moving again when you said four million about seven weeks ago you were just talking about tests being sent out not actually being being completed on my little confused John I think they're precisely correct that in my first week on this job we were informed that HHS I believe IDT was the vendor Admiral to our that had distributed a million was distributing another four million and we believe they did but again those were tests that frankly but for the president's leadership we'd still be waiting on those tests to be done in many cases because they were tests that were designed to be run in the old laboratory model but early on at the president's direction we brought in these incredible commercial labs we partnered with these extraordinary retailers and now we stand here today literally one day last week more than two hundred thousand tests in a single day about the time that that we were making those comments we'd we'd done less than twenty five thousand tests in the entire country but we've met this moment with American ingenuity with the incredible companies that are represented here and we couldn't be more proud it's very important to know and this you can get from any other country I think if they're being honest not only do we have the most testing in the world by far but we have by far the best testing OAM please I'd like to switch gears and talk about their report circulating now that he may well be fully exonerated this week if that were if that were the case is there any reason why you would not bring him back into the administration I will only say this I think that general Flynn is a wonderful man he had a wonderful career and it was a disgrace what happened to general Flynn let's see what happens now but what happened to general Flynn should never happen again in our country what happened to other people should never happen again in our country what happened to your President of the United States should never again be allowed to happen mr. president thank you today to experience a twenty to thirty percent the Great Depression do you agree with that assessment I don't know but I can tell you the third and the fourth quarter in particular are gonna be I think spectacular we were talking about it with the executives I think we're gonna have a phenomenal third quarter nobody you know except one country can be held accountable for what happened nobody's blaming anybody here looking at a group of people that should have stopped it at the source but so what happens and second happens in second what we are doing is I think we're going to have you can see a big rise in the third but you're gonna see in an incredible fourth quarter and you're gonna have an incredible next year I think you're gonna have a recovery look I built they were just telling me inside and it's fact I built the greatest economy with the help of three hundred and twenty five million people I built the greatest economy and the history of the world and one day because of something that should have never been allowed to happen we had to close our country when it closed our economy I built it we had the best employment numbers and the best numbers for Hispanic American for African American for Asian American for everybody best stock market numbers and by the way the stock market was up very substantially today and people are seeing a lot of good things a lot of very smart people investing in the stock market right now it's a 24,000 approximately 24,000 and if you would have said with the tragedy that this country had to endure and go through with all of the death and the people that died and were so badly hurt by what happened and you can only say God bless them but if you would have said that our country would be in the position where now we're ready to move forward we'll never forget loved ones will never forget these great people that sacrifice for a reason of incompetence or something else other than incompetence what happened at a point where they could have protected the whole world not just us the whole world but we had the greatest economy ever in the history of our world and I had to turn it off in order to get to a point where we are today and now we're making a comeback and I think we're going to have economically from an economic standpoint next year an unbelievable year and I think that you're gonna see a fantastic fourth quarter and the third quarter will start to build but the second quarter obviously you're gonna have GDP lack of growth I'm looking at the head of Walmart what a job Walmart's done in going through something I mean they were they were doing yeoman's work including getting us millions of of really very very protective outfits and and I mean the job that Doug and Walmart did was incredible millions of outfits and those are high-quality I've seen them those are high-quality that's what we need so people have stepped up to the plate I think we're gonna have a really good I think it's good to start building I think it's gonna build fast I think it'll be a tremendous tremendous comeback and you know so I say I built the greatest economy with all of the people that helped me and all of the people in this country we built the greatest economy the world is ever seen and we're gonna do it again and it's not gonna be that long okay yes please go ahead mr. president opening up the country how long will you we'll keep up the travel restrictions for you well we're looking at that and it depends on how long it's taken Europe to heal Italy is starting to make a comeback I'm very happy to see that with my friend the Prime Minister's it's tragic what went on in Italy and Spain and France and Germany frankly in every every country over there it's tragic but we'll be looking at what's happening in Europe and certainly we want to do that and they want to do it too they want to do it very badly yeah when kim jong i can't tell you exactly yes I do have a very good idea but I can't talk about it now I just wish him well I've had a very good relationship with Kim jong-un if I weren't president you'd be in war you would have been in war with Korea you would have been in war with North Korea if I wasn't president that I can tell you he expected that that I can tell you I I hope he's fine I do know how he's doing relatively speaking we will see you'll probably be hearing in the not-too-distant future all right one or two more recently suggested that you were considering changing the date of the election that you might try something like that that's my first question the same I never even thought of changing the date of the election why would I do that November 3rd it's a good number no I look forward to that election and that was just made-up propaganda not by him but by some of the many people that are working writing little statements I see all the time statement made you say so statement made per joe biden sleepy joe he didn't make those statements but somebody did but they said he made it no let him know I'm not thinking about it at all not at all bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee came out with the fourth installment of its report it concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections and it was not political bias do you accept its conclusions oh I don't know I haven't seen the report I haven't seen the report yeah please go ahead he didn't say anything well Saturday nobody nobody knows where is so he obviously couldn't have said it if you have a this is breaking news that Kim jong-un read a statement on Saturday I don't think so okay go ahead let's do let's do one more please in the back so yeah we've lost a lot of people but if you look at what original projections were 2.2 million we're probably heading to 60,000 70,000 far too many one person is too many for this and I think we've made a lot of really good decisions the big decision was closing the border or doing the band people coming in from China obviously other than American citizens which had to come in can't say you can't come in you can't come back to your country I think we've made a lot of good decisions I think that Mike Pence and the task force have done a fantastic job I think that everybody working on the ventilators you see what we've done there have done unbelievable the press doesn't talk about ventilators anymore they just don't want to talk about him and that's okay but the reason they don't want to talk that was a subject that nobody would get off of they don't want to talk about them we're in the same position on testing we are lapping the world on testing and the world is coming to us as I said they're coming to us saying what are you doing how do you do it we're helping them so no I think we've done a great job and one person I will say this one person is too many thank you all very much thank you thank you have to go to South Korea to get 500,000 tests