follow the american people. look at what they're doing. look at how they're reacting. and politicians, try to be half as good as the american people. i want to show you a self-portrait that was done by america people. this is a self-portrait of america, okay? that's a self-portrait of america. and you know what it spells? it spells love. that's what it spells. you have to look carefully, but that's what the american people are say iing. we receive thousands of masks from all across america. unsolicited, in the mail,

homemade, creative, personal, with beautiful notes, from all across the country, literally, just saying, thinking about you, we care, we love you, we want to help. and this is just people's way of saying we care and we want to help. this is what this country is about and this is what americans are about. a little bit more of this and a little bit less of the partisanship and the ugliness, and this country would be a better place. thank you. thank you guys. questions, bernadette?

>> regarding the mta cleaning, you want it done on a 24-hour basis? how would this be done and -- >> i didn't say on a 24-hour basis, bernadette. i said when people get into the train in the morning, they had to know that that train was disinfected the night before. >> so what time will this happen and will it impact certain -- >> i don't know. i told the mta, give me a plan whereby you will clean and disinfect every train every night so that i can say to the essential workers who are killing themselves for our state, we're keeping the subways open for you, and when you get on the subway in the morning or in the afternoon, know that that car was disinfected the night before. >> how realistic is this and is there money for that? >> it's realistic. it's an essential. how realistic is it? what is the alternative? essential workers go to work.

by the way, you may get infected with the coronavirus on the train on the way to work. that's not realistic. i'm not going to do that. >> how come this hadn't been done prior? >> we had been starting. it is a tremendous undertaking that has never been done before. and you're going to have to get homeless people into shelters where they can get housing and the services they need, so that's a second operation. and the mta has been going back and forth with the nypd about this for weeks and weeks and weeks. the mta hired private security guards to help, but all a private security guard can do is call 311, which is the city hotline, which then has them call the nypd, who are there in the first place. so, the mta's story is they're at their wit's end. but what i said is, look, i

don't care. i don't care who's to blame. i don't want to point fingers. i don't care. at at a place where i'm dealing with people losing their lives every day, okay? i just want to get it done. and i will get it done. just tell me what i need to do to get it done. let's start telling the truth, let's stop with the filters and everybody covering their own rear end and people spewing facts to cover their own rear end, and let's start telling the truth, the blunt truth, and if it makes some people unhappy, that's the way it's going to be, but it has to stop. the trains have to be clean. the homeless need the services that they need, and we have to be able to do it as a society. we have to. tell me what it takes to clean

the trains and disinfect the trains so i know that i can say to the essential workers, it's safe to go on those trains. >> you don't think it should be on a 24-hour basis? because right now they do a 72-hour cleaning and then other -- >> i'm not going to do a cleaning schedule. i don't do that. i told them give me a plan as to how to make sure every train is cleaned so that when the train comes in, in the morning, it is cleaned. it's their job to figure out the schedule and how they do it. but however it has to be done, i will do whatever i have to do to make that happen. you can't be in a position where you say we're going to send a plane tribute to the nurses and we're going to applaud the nurses at elmhurst hospital. and yesterday i got out of my

car and i applauded the nurses in syracuse and the doctors in syracuse. and i said, on behalf of every new yorker, i thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did, on behalf of every new yorker. i believe that. but then at the same time, if that's what you believe, well then help them. and you know that they're getting on the subways to go to work. make sure the subways are clean. >> what should be done with homeless people because -- >> homeless people should be in shelters -- look, i've been working on the homeless issue -- >> shelter or -- >> bernadette, i've been working on the homeless issue since i was 20-something years old. i did the first plan for mayor david dinkins on how to help the homeless in new york city. mayor dinkins accepted it. next mayor was rudy giuliani. he came in and he accepted it. we made tremendous progress on the homeless.

i then went to washington. i did a homeless plan for bill clinton. for the nation on how to help the homeless. he accepted it. we implemented it. it made tremendous progress. it was called a continuum of care. this federal government still is operating the program. we have done this before. this is a false choice. well, the homeless are on the trains. they have a right to be on the train. no one wants to live their lives on a subway train. and we have a higher obligation as a society than to say, okay, you can sleep in a subway car. no. you deserve a shelter that is safe and services, if you need them, to help you improve your life. that's what we should offer and that's what we will. >> got more problems with

nursing homes, more infections, more deaths. is the state at any point going to take action, set up maybe some kind of covid facility for nursing home patients as we've seen in other states? >> what facility, i'm sorry? >> one controversy has been your policy that nursing homes have to accept covid patients subject to all of the restrictions, but it seems in many ways that's setting up an impossible standard. so, is new york going to set up some kind of overflow facility -- >> we haven't -- let's review the facts again, okay? we've done that. >> the facility -- >> let me give you the fact, okay? because facts. we're talking about facts. you can have an opinion, but you can't have your own facts, right? senator daniel patrick moynihan. a nursing home takes a covid person, if, capital "i," capital "f," if they can adequately care

for that person. if they cannot adequately care for that person, they say, i can't adequately care for a covid person. fine. either they transfer that person to a different facility or they call the department of health and say, we have to transfer that person. we have other facilities. we have covid-only overflow facilities, just what you're talking about. we have it. we've discussed this. so, we can do that. but it starts with their determination. they have to say, i can't provide for this person. as long as they say, i can't provide for this person -- and by the way, nobody even asks why. it's just, i can't provide for this person.

okay. we'll take the person. and we have overflow facilities. nick. >> governor, and maybe this is a question for the commissioner, commissioner zucker. there's a department of health guidance that essentially allows asymptomatic nursing home staffers to work with covid-positive patients. some local officials are raising some concerns with this because it means people are still going to work while they're asymptomatic and are covid-positive. is there any concern that you have with nursing home staffers still going to work, even though they've tested positive for coronavirus? >> so, the patients who are -- your question about being asymptomatic. we make sure they have the necessary precautions that they need if they're going in there to care for other individuals there, and that includes all of the ppe, and we monitor them, and we're working on a way to test, and we are testing individuals who are in the nursing homes, both the workers as well as the patients. >> is there any indication of

how many nursing home staffers are covid positive, asymptomatic, and are still going to work every day? >> we are looking at those numbers. >> governor, do you agree with that policy of allowing six staffers -- >> governor, #extendthelockdown is trending on twitter today. yesterday you said one of your fears was that one of your fears early on was that essential workers would not go to work out of fear of coronavirus. as you get ready to open businesses in the state, are you worried that the next round of workers will not want to go back to work, will be fearful of going back to work? >> just let me understand the question. extend the lockdown is trending, meaning people want to extend the lockdown and not open up. >> yes. >> okay. last week -- >> the governor of new york, andrew cuomo, giving his daily coronavirus briefing in albany. if you're watching around america or around the world, some of this may seem a bit in the weeds, but the governor

discussing the complexity of this, the first at the top of the briefing, the medical data in new york all heading in the right direction, which is why the governor spent a lot of his time on a political fight with washington. he wants federal money to help rescue his state and others from the punishing budget impact the coronavirus has had. then at the end there talking about nursing homes, talking about the homeless on the new york city subways, talking about trending on twitter right now, extend the lockdown in new york, as many workers are apprehensive about going back to work in this environment. always fascinating to watch these briefings. you can tell now the governor feels more confident about the health care situation in his state trending better, but he says not out of the woods yet. one of the issues he says is absolutely critical is more testing. he says they're testing fire department, emts in new york, testing the police in new york, trying to get a sense of the racial disparities by testing in lower-income communities in new york city and elsewhere. let's discuss the challenges ahead. cnn medical analyst dr. larry brilliant joins me now. dr. brilliant, i'll leave the

conversation about the new york city subway for another day, but it does get at the complexities as every governor tries to make this decision. you have subpockets in your state. new york has 19 million people, new york city 8 million people. when you heard the governor go through earlier, you know, they're testing the fire department in new york, the emts, not surprisingly, have a higher positive rate than the fire department at large. the new york police department has a higher positive rate. you have been an advocate for more testing, signing on to a letter saying the federal government needs to spend a lot more money and develop a much more comprehensive and coordinated testing system. i want to read you something from the president's point man on testing, admiral giroir on testing. he said, "there is absolutely no way on earth, on this planet or any planet that we could do 20 million tests a day or even 5 million tests a day." do you agree with that or dhauz sound too stubborn to you? >> first of all, good morning, john, from the west coast. what a pleasure it was watching a politician look at graphs and

charts and speak like an epidemiologist. let's just start with that. that was so refreshing. and then to cap it off by putting up that collage of masks, it reminds me of a quilt from another era that sparked a movement. so, it was a wonderful briefing. so, on the issue of we're not going to be able to make what the medical community feels is the necessary number of tests, and the question is what planet do we live on? i live on planet america. of course we can make the tests. why we are not able to make the tests is that the federal government has defaulted on its obligation to lead. and the fda, which we need to believe in, has allowed into the country or manufactured tests that are faulty. would you accept a pregnancy test that was 30% wrong, either

positive or negative? and you're going to have a baby shower? we're not going to accept tests that are wrong. we're not going to accept tests that are inadequate in number. if we want to open up the country, there is a reciprocal relationship between how quickly we can open up parts of the country and how quickly we can find those parts that need to be tested, quarantined, and taken out of the density of susceptibles. as we do that, we can open things up. but you can't have one without the other. >> well, as you make that case and you make it passionately and you make it based on science, yet you heard the admiral there saying, no way, no way we can get anywhere near the number that you think is necessary. i think you think the number's actually probably need even more than 5 million tests a day for a sustained reopening, as go through the summer and fall and it starts to come back. dr. fauci, on the other hand, he says progress is being made. he says we're going strongly in the right direction. he says keeping the country safe and healthy, hopefully we should see that as we get toward the

end of may, the beginning of june. when you -- i think you'd prefer to listen to dr. fauci than the admiral in the sense that dr. fauci is more aspirational. however, do you continue to hear from the federal government numbers that you believe are well below the necessary bar? >> well, even dr. fauci is saying now that we need to have three to 5 million tests a week. if you multiply five times, you know, 52 weeks, you're in a ballpark that the admiral says exists only on another planet. so, there's something that needs to be reconciled. but the question that america cannot make the number of tests that we need, it's off the table. we have to. otherwise, i believe we have to have a three-year plan. i think we need to understand that we're going to be in this game for a while. it doesn't mean it's going to be three years before stores are open or schools are open or you can have a love affair or go out and do the things that we want

to do, but we need to understand, if it's going to take us 12 to 18 months to have a vaccine, what you get when you get a vaccine is not rainbows and unicorns. when you get a vaccine, you get a vaccination program, in 220 countries all around the world. in order to get there and to make sure that we're safe, in that interim period, until we have a vaccine and we're delivering it everywhere, we need to have adequate testing. if that requires a manhattan project or a moonshot or a brand-new agency, we can do that. >> we can do that, if the president of the united states and his team accept the challenge. you can't do it without him on that side. dr. larry brilliant, appreciate, as always, making the case based on science. i that you bring science to the conversation as well. the conversation will continue. dr. brilliant, appreciate your time. up next, we shift to the economic impact of the coronavirus. u.s. gdp shrinking nearly 5%. that is the worst drop since the

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stunning new government numbers today tell us that the american economy suffered its worst quarter since 2008. first drop in six years. the new gdp number, you see it there, showing the economy shrinking nearly 5% in first quarter of 2020. the coronavirus shutdown halted grow growth, erased consumer confidence and pummeled the retail industry. julie chatterly is here with us to take a closer look. julia, a 5% drop. you say wow. and we also know that was the end of the first quarter. in the second quarter we're now in, probably worse. >> i'm sure we're worse, quite frankly. remember when we're talking about these quarterly numbers, we're only really talking about a shutdown that took place for the last two weeks of march. fast-forward to this month, april, and we've been in this situation with many of us stuck at home, not spending the way that we have done in the past. we know that the second

quarter's going to be multiple times worse. how much worse really is going to depend on what happens now as states like florida, like georgia, reopen and take a look at what reopening in the new normal at this stage looks like. in the end, the difference between economic recession, bad enough, economic depression, don't even want to go there, and economic recovery comes down to consumer confidence. what this number is, for the most part, is consumer spending. 70% of the u.s. economy is based on the consumer. one in four jobs in the united states are tied in some way to the retail sector. and what we've seen in this number was the fastest drop in consumer spending, john, in over 40 years. protecting that confidence, consumer confidence, as we come out of this, is going to be critical. it comes down to two things -- the stimulus checks, the lending to small businesses, bringing those jobs back. but two, getting on top of the

health crisis. and we talk about this time and again. it's more pivotal now than ever as states begin reopening. more need to get on top of the health crisis and more support for people is probably going to be crucial here. >> and we will see now that those states begin to reopen, ten days, two weeks from now. we'll see if the case rates are going up or if they've managed to pull this off in a safe way. julia chatterley, appreciate the insight on those depressing numbers today. look at the markets, the dow up more than 530 points there. for the latest stock market news and strategy for your portfolio, check out "markets now" treme issing live, 12:45 p.m. eastern only at cnn business. up next, why los angeles is not seeing the decline in coronavirus cases that the rest of the great state of california is.

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testing remains a serious flashpoint as states begin the reopening of the american economy. the president's son-in-law and senior adviser tells us all is good. >> dr. fauci and dr. birx gave the innovation team and admiral

giroir goals they'd like to see hit on testing. we've been able to so far exceed those goals for the month of april. somebody asked me why it took so long. i actually said you should look at how did we do this so quickly? >> but governors and mayors and public health officials tell us every day something very different. yes, progress in some areas, they say, but also still supply shortages and confusion over who is responsible for what. cnn's senior investigative correspondent drew griffin is with me now. drew is spending a lot of time on testing. drew, three main tests experts focusing most of the attention on right now. what are they? >> reporter: yeah, i'll take them in reverse order of relevance right now. the antigen test, which is what dr. birx is hoping for. this would be a very easy way to test for the virus on millions and millions of people at a time. it looks for a protein marker in your blood. the problem is, this test does not exist yet. look for that in the second wave, which could be a very big, play a big role in that second wave of virus that we're all expecting. the antibody tests out there,

they are widely disseminated and being used. the problem there is so many of them are questionable in their validity. a lot of people wondering whether or not the fda has allowed just too many unregulated tests of those on the market. those actually look for whether or not you've had the infection and recovered and perhaps have the antibody that could protect you or give you some immunity, though that is not scientifically proven. the big problem remains, john, with the actual covid-19 test, the pcr test, which is the nose swab, the saliva test that tells you if you have an active infection. that is where the supply problems are so damning, because it's completely uneven across the country as to who has the materials to actually conduct those tests. big labs, they seem to have all of the supplies they need, but the hospitals, the labs, the state labs, the smaller labs, the clinics where people are

actually coming in sick. just take a listen to what these people are telling us about where they're getting the supplies from. >> we kept running into anecdotal information from vendors that said they had reagent but they couldn't sell it to us. >> it's not unusual for us to place an order and to be told that the order is going to be canceled and it can't be filled or that we only get 10% of what we order. >> we feel there's a disconnect between the theoretical capacity and what we're actually able to do. >> the disconnect is that a lot of these labs just can't get what they need at the time they need it, john. dr. fauci did recognize this yesterday. he said we need to connect the dots, but we've been waiting for these dots to be connected. i mean, i've been reporting on this very issue for more than a month now. still not fixed. john? >> every single day you're reporting when you talk to these people, whether it's a mayor, a governor, public health professional, lab person.

and yet from the whcite house lawn, the president's son-in-law says all is good. drew, because of the questions about this, a congressional subcommittee demanding action from four separate makers of the antibody tests and the fda. what's the issue here? >> reporter: the issue is whether or not these antibody tests work or not. they have a failure rate that is unacceptable in some instances, whether it be false positive or false negative. the overall issue, john, is because the fda relaxed the rules so much, the fda didn't test the tests. so, what the committee is asking for is, number one, these, as they would call it, worst of the worst tests, be taken off the market. and number two, the fda to dial back the entire marketplace for these antibody tests until they can actually verify that these tests being sold on the open market actually work and are telling people correctly that they either had or did not have the coronavirus. >> one gets the need for speed, but one would hope that we at

least knew that they worked first. very important questions. drew griffin, appreciate the consistent reporting on this testing issue. it is the critical issue before us right now. drew, thank you very much. georgia went first, now other states starting to follow suit and start to reopen their economies. every state you see highlighted in red here is partially reopening, either this week or next week. arkansas, for example, opening restaurants today, gyms tomorrow, salons the next, churches, mosques, and temples next week. as you can see, california not reopening yet, but the governor is laying out a roadmap to begin the long process. cnn's stephanie elam is live for us in los angeles right now. it's a four-part plan for reopening. what is life going to look like? when is the change going to come for californians, stephanie? >> reporter: well, john, it may look a bit like the '70s here for a while because haircuts are not until phase three, and he says that is months away. but to look at the four phases, he says we're in the first phase right now, which is making sure that the workforce with essential jobs, that their workplaces are as safe as

possible with the ppe and the cleaning procedures. he says this is the time, though, that businesses need to start preparing for phase two, which he says is just weeks away, and that's where we could see some of the daycares opening up, some school programs coming back, some nonessential jobs like manufacturing coming back online, maybe some curbside retail businesses as well. and then, months away, not weeks away, phase three, which is personal care, like gyms and salons. and then after that, phase four, and that is when they're saying, basically, there needs to be herd immunity or some sort of vaccination for the population for us to see those large-scale sporting events, concerts, and also conventions. so that means seeing sports in person is probably not going to happen for a very long time. he was asked, the governor was asked today on the "today" show about whether or not he thinks, how california's doing. take a listen to his response on that. >> do you feel in your gut that the worst is behind you in california? >> in my gut, i do, with this

caveat, only if we take seriously these next phases. if people just assume, like they did down in newport beach over the weekend, that the virus is going to take the weekend off or maybe go on summer vacation, then we're in real trouble with a potential second wave that erases all the progress. >> reporter: and all of this plan, he said, is based on the data, which is based on californians' behavior. and he said right now we are starting to see a stabilization in the number of cases, new cases as well as the number of deaths, but it's not going downward, which is what everyone wants to see. and so, therefore, all of this can change. i was in newport beach yesterday. a lot of people were out. the city council there, though, john, has voted to keep the beaches open but treat it more like they do fourth of july with that big rush of people and have more policing out there. but all of this, he says, can change, and they have worked into their plan a phase to bring back if they need to some of

these restrictions to keep the virus from spreading, john. >> the biggest experiment of all when it begins to kick in out in california. stephanie elam, thank you so much. los angeles, meanwhile, has just reached a sad point, surpassing its 1,000th death. the mayor says 59 people died on tuesday. that's a 6% increase from the day before. joining us now, director of the los angeles county department of public health, dr. barbara ferrer. doctor, thank you for being with us. you're in the worst pocket of the state. the governor says the worst is behind him, his gut says. how would you answer that question for los angeles? >> you know, first i want to thank you for inviting us to be here today, and i agree with the governor that people have tried extraordinarily hard here. we've had a lot of limitations on what people can and cannot do, and we've had really high compliance, which i think has led to the fact that even across the state, we've had really a very slow spread of the virus

here in california. l.a. does have, however, worst statistics than any other part of the state. you know, l.a. county, we're 10 million people. we have 40,000 beds in skilled nursing facilities. 45% of our deaths are happening among people who live in skilled nursing facilities. and that creates, i think, some of the reason why you see when you look at our mortality rate, our hospitalization rate, our case counts, that they're slightly higher than other parts of the state. we also have a lot of poverty here and people living in the margins. we have the largest homeless population in l.a. county. and i think these factors do contribute to the differences you'll see. but one thing i know for sure is that everybody here in the county is doing their part to slow the spread. we have really made great gains in terms of not seeing huge increases in our hospitalization

rates. we haven't even seen any spike, serious spike, in the number of deaths. they have been creeping up steadily. a lot of our deaths, as i noted, are occurring amongst our most vulnerable people who are already elderly and very sick. 92% of people who die in l.a. county have underlying health conditions. and so, we have our work to do ahead of us, but i want to agree with the governor, people have made great strides here in slowing the spread. >> well, it is good to hear that. some optimism as you address the challenges ahead. you mentioned the poverty, you mentioned the homeless population. one of the challenges there, where you have communities that either don't have health care or don't have access to health care, don't have quick, easy local access to health care, is how much are you flying blind in the sense how many people are out there who have the coronavirus who you just don't know because you don't have enough testing yet? you don't have access to them. they don't have access to testing, either, if they wanted it. about 133,000 people tested so far in l.a. county. you mentioned 10 million people. that number strikes me as not

where you want it to be. >> no, we don't. and i want to say, again, a lot of cooperation across the county family and with the mayor and the city, so we're expanding testing. you know, i think there's a couple of things to note. one is, people who live in wealthier communities in l.a. county have been tested more than people who are living in communities where there's less income, where there's higher rates of poverty. so, the first thing that we're doing under the leadership of dr. christina galley is we're expanding access in communities that have less resources, and that means working better with our federally qualified health centers, and that means really dealing with that supply thash you mentioned earlier in the program. we have to be able to get testing embedded in our primary care clinics, in our federally qualified health centers. where people are going to get their care and they have trusted relationships. that will augment what we're already doing with all of the mobile testing sites. but you're absolutely right, in order for us to actually

continue to slow the spread, we have to be able to do more testing. the other challenge is, in our institutions, we have to actually be able to test and go ahead and test well everybody who's in those institutions. we have a lot of people who are asymptomatic and positive for covid-19 in institutional settings, and the only way to contain an outbreak in that setting is for us to know who's positive. so, even if they have no symptoms and we know they're positive, they will be isolated if they're an employee or they're a resident, and that will help contain the spread. that means that -- >> dr. ferrer, i am sorry, i need to interrupt you at this point. we need to go to the white house. the president of the united states with dr. fauci and the governor of louisiana. >> -- and infectious diseases, which is the institute i direct spons sponsored, called the adaptic co-virus disease treatment trial, acct-1, was started in february 21st of this year, and it was a randomized

placebo-controlled trial comparing the gilead drug rem disve rem disveer with a placebo. it was highly powered with 190-plus individuals, so it is the first truly high-powered randomized placebo-controlled trial. it was an trial involving sites not only in the united states, but in various countries throughout the world, including germany, denmark, spain, greece, the uk, et cetera. the primary end point was the time to recovery, namely, the ability to be discharged. when you have a study like this, we have a data and safety monitoring board which looks at the data, and they are independent, so there's no prejudice on the part of the investigators because they're doing the trial or the drug is from a certain company. the data and safety monitoring board on monday afternoon contacted me on april 27th,

first on friday, the week before, and then again on april 27th and notified the study team, namely, the multiple investigators who were doing the study throughout the world, that the data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery. this is really quite important for a number of reasons, and i'll give you the data. it's highly significant. if you look at the time to recovery being shorter in the remdesivir arm, it was 11 days, compared to 15 days, and that's a p-value, for the scientists who are listening, of 0.001. so, that's something that, although a 31% improvement doesn't seem like a knockout 100%, it is a very important proof of concept, because what it has proven is that a drug can

block this virus. and i'll give you an example in a moment of why we think looking forward this is very optimistic. the mortality rate trended towards being better in the sense of less deaths in the remdesivir group. 8% versus 11% in the placebo group. it has not yet reached statistical significance, but the data needs to be further analyzed. the reason why we're making the announcement now is something that i believe people don't fully appreciate. whenever you have clear-cut evidence that a drug works, you have an ethical obligation to immediately let the people who are in the placebo group know so that they can have access. and all of the other trials that are taking place now have a new standard of care. so, we would have normally waited several days until the data gets further, dot the "i" and cross the "t," but the data are not going to change. some of the numbers may change a little, but the conclusion will

not change. so, when i was looking at this data with our team the other night, it was reminiscent of 34 years ago, in 1986, when we were struggling for drugs for hiv. we had nothing. and there was a lot of anecdotal reports about things that maybe did work, maybe not, and people were taking different kinds of drugs. and we did the first randomized placebo-controlled trial with act, which turned out to give an effect that was modest, but that was not the end game. because building on that every year after, we did better and better. we had better drugs of the same type, and we had drugs against different targets. this drug happens to be blocking an enzyme that the virus uses, and that's an r&a preliminaries, but there are a lot of other enzymes that the virus uses that are now going to be target for this. this will be the standard of care. and in fact, when we look at the other trials we're doing, we

were going to do a trial with another antiviral. actually, it isn't an antiviral, it's an anti-inflammatory, a monoclonal antibody. we're going to now compare the combination of remdesivir with this, so as drugs come in, we're going to see if we can add on that. so, bottom line, you're going to be hearing more details about this. this will be submitted to a peer review journal and will be peer reviewed appropriately. but we think it's really opening the door to the fact that we now have the capability of treating. and i can guarantee you, as more people, more companies, more investigators get involved, it's going to get better and better. so, i'll stop there, but i'd be happy to answer any questions. >> where do you go first, and then you go. >> -- change the timeline in the development of a vaccine -- >> no, no. this has nothing to do with vaccines. this is treatment for people who are already infected. vaccines is to prevent infection in those who are at risk. >> do you have any data on the vaccine? >> no, nothing more than that,

what i continue at the press conferences that we have regularly, keep you up to date, that everything is on track with the phase one study. we're in the third part of it. we're going to go into phase two in the summer, but nothing has changed that anything i've said when we've had press conferences. >> they're writing a lot about oxford. we know johnson & johnson as well -- >> yeah, another candidate. another one of several candidates that are moving along, because we're going to have a lot of shots on goal when it comes to vaccines. >> that's good. that's great. yeah, please, go ahead. >> this news, what's your thought process on states reopening their governments? do you think people should be more comfortable knowing that there is a product that is proven -- >> well, i think it's a beginning. i thought tony explained it really well. it's a beginning. it means you build on it. i love that it's a building block. just as a building block, i love that. but certainly, it's a positive. it's a very positive event from that standpoint. and we're going to be very careful as we open. a lot of people, a lot of governors are opening. i know you're very advanced.

you're going to be very advanced in getting it going. but we're doing it very carefully. we've learned a lot over the last couple of months. and if there's a fire, we're going to put it out. if there's a little ember burning, we're going to put it out. we're going to put it out very quickly. and i think we've learned how to do that. there have been some areas that have really started up and we put it out very quickly. so, we've learned a lot. yeah, please. >> mr. president, the stop the spread guidelines expire tomorrow. do you plan to extend those? >> mike, do you want to explain? >> i think, mr. president, we've issued the guidelines now, it was actually 45 days ago, first 15, then 30 days, to slow the spread. and frankly, every state in america has embraced those guidelines at a minimum or even done more. and now our focus is working with states as governors like governor john bel edwards,

unveil plans to open up their states again. and the new guidance that we've issued is guidance for how they can do that safely and responsibly. and so, not only the gating criteria for when we believe it's appropriate for states to enter phase one are included, but also the very specific guidelines for when states open and how they can open, in, as the president said, in a safe and responsible way, are included in the president's guidelines for open up america again. >> so, the current guidelines then will not be extended. >> the current guidelines, i think you can say, are very much incorporated in the guidance that we're giving states to open up america again, but maybe, mr. president -- >> i think another way of saying it, they'll be fading out, because now the governors are doing it. i've had many calls from governors, governor of texas, greg abbott, many, many governors, tennessee, arkansas. we're speaking to a lot of different people, and they're explaining what they're doing.

and i am very much in favor of what they're doing. they're getting it going. and we're opening our country again. do you want to explain that, please? >> yeah, i think you could see from california, they made slow the spread the phase one of their four phases. so, every governor is adapting both currently where we are and moving forward of how to move through phase one, phase two, phase three. so, if a governor feels like they haven't met the grading criteria, some of them have made that their own first phase one and some of them made it phase zero. so, we've been very encouraged to see how the federal guidelines have helped inform or at least provide a framework for governors in moving forward all the way through from what they now call either phase zero all the way through phase three. >> and ron desantis, as you know, governor of florida, was here yesterday and he gave i thought a really good presentation of how he's doing it, what he's doing, how he's opening. you might have seen it. >> i did. >> and he did a very good job. i thought -- >> mr. president, i would say

that if you look at the plan that you had put out for 30 days to stop the spread, the mitigation measures that you promoted in that plan are carried forward in the guidelines for reopening. and so, it's sort of a seamless way to do it, by keeping those mitigation measures in place that you need to as you reopen, especially for the vulnerable population. so, it's really, i would agree with the vice president, that it is carried forward, not just theoretically, but expressly in the document that you gave us, and i thank you. >> thank you for mentioning the vulnerable people, because we've made it clear from over the last eight weeks that there was certain risk groups that were particularly vulnerable to serious disease. that has held up. we see most reports about 95% to 96% that individuals with serious disease and hospitalizations are still in those groups. i think in a way that's reassuring, but it also should be a message to all of our vulnerable populations, as we have said for the last eight weeks, in phase one and in phase

two, as well as in slow the spread. we've been very clear about them continuing to shelter and those families protecting them from becoming infected. >> mr. president, what are you hoping to learn about china and the world health organization with this investigation -- >> right. it's coming in and i'm getting pieces already. and we're not happy about it and we are by far the largest contributor to w.h.o., world health. and they misled us. i don't know. they must have known more than they knew, because they came after what other people knew that weren't even involved. we knew things that they didn't know, and either they didn't know it or they didn't tell us, or you know. right now they're literally a pipe organ for china. that's the way i view it. so, we're seeing and we're looking at, we're watching, and again, we give $500 million, we have over the years, from $400

million to $500 million for a long time, for many years, and china is giving $38 million. and yet, they seem to work for china. and they should have been in there early. they should have known what was going on. and they should have been able to stop it. you talk about stopping the spread or stopping the embers. that could have been stopped there. and now, why did china allow planes to fly out but not into china, but they allowed planes to come out? and planes are coming out of wuhan, and they're coming out, they're going all over the world. they're going to italy, very big time to italy. but they're going all over the world, but they're not going into china. what was that all about? so, we had -- no, no, you'll hear. we're coming up with a very distinct recommendation, but we're not happy with it. we're not happy with it. even today, i've heard some statements that are very positive. there's nothing positive about what happened in china having to do with this subject, nothing

positive at all. and i finished a number of months ago with a trade deal. and you would have thought it would have been like somebody would have said, hey, they could have stopped that at the source. they didn't have to let airplanes fly out and loads of people come out. and we're lucky. as tony said, we're lucky that we stopped it in january flowing into our country from china. outside of our citizens, you know. people now say, oh, well, you shouldn't have let our citizens back in. let's forget about that one. we're lucky we -- >> the president of the united states talking in the oval office there with reporters. one of the most interesting parts of the tape we just brought you there was dr. anthony fauci giving a detailed presentation of what he says still needs to be peer reviewed, but he's convinced that a drug called remdesivir is proving itself in clinical trials as a drug, a therapeutic, against the coronavirus, not a vaccine, not a cure, but a drug that helps patients' performance improve dramatically.

dr. larry brilliant is with us, epidemiologist in california. dr. brilliant, as you listened to dr. fauci, it seems a tad odd, still to be peer reviewed, the world health organization saying today it's not prepared to say anything about the study yet, but dr. fauci making the case that when you have data and you know it's good, the numbers might change a tiny bit, he says it's an ethical obligation to get it out there, especially for the patients in the trial taking the placebo. what did you make of that and how optimistic are you that remdesivir, and maybe plus other drugs, could at least help treat coronavirus as we wait, as we discussed earler in the program, the months and months moondz for a vaccine? >> i'm cautiously optimistic, but by nature i'm optimistic. there is a difference between having a moral obligation to stop a study because there is any value in the testing, the medicine you're testing. you have to for the benefit of the people that are in the

study, if it looks like you can get them a day or two or five shorter hospital stay, that you morally have to stop the study, and therefore, you have to make an announcement. that's not the same thing as proving something. this has not been a proven therapeutic. physicians would probably be reluctant to, if they had other choices, to use something that protected in such a marginally valuable way, but we don't have other choices. and these are desperate times. so i thought dr. fauci played it straight down the middle by the rules. >> our senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen is also with us as well. elizabeth, dr. fauci saying this will be the new standard of care. explain what that means. >> right. so, they have been trying. they have been really grappling with how to get remdesivir -- i'm sorry, what treatment -- sorry, my phone is ringing. okay, turned it off. okay, now we're good. so, doctors have been really

struggling with how do we treat these patients, other than what's called supportive care, which is keeping them hydrated and their blood pressure at the right level and those kinds of things. there's no treatment for covid. now he's saying we're going to consider this the standard treatment. in other words, everyone will get this drug. and i want to go over what exactly this study found, because i think it's not what people might think. it didn't cure it. it is not a cure at all. but it did seem to have an effect. so, john, let's go over that. what they found was that people who were taking remdesivir -- and this was a big study of more than 1,000 patients in the u.s. and elsewhere -- had an 8% mortality rate, whereas when they were taking a placebo, they had an 11% mortality rate. so that was not a statistically significant difference, but still a difference that they're going to be looking at more. also when you look at duration of illness, which is something that's very important, how long until someone got discharged, on remdesivir, it was 11 days, and on placebo, it was 15. so, it shortened the duration of

the illness. so, it didn't mean that everyone who took this drug lived or that everyone had a short hospital stay. not at all. but what dr. fauci tried to emphasize, john, is that it opened the door to thinking, you know what, this drug seems to be doing something, and so we want everyone to have it. it would be unethical to keep studying it. we want everyone to have it. >> our chief medical correspondent dr. sanjay gupta is with us as well. as you're listening, dr. fauci made the comparison to back in the hiv-aids days of azt, which he said we found a drug that had some effect, and not only did we want to rush it out there to help give some effect, but then it also taught us the way how do we build on, what does it do. in this case, he was saying blocks an enzyme. what did you take away from that? >> yeah, i think exactly as elizabeth was saying, and obviously, dr. brilliant. i mean, the two things i think, you know, that you need to keep in mind is, one, everyone is looking for some sort of victory here in this, because as larry brilliant was saying, you know,

we don't have anything. everybody knows that. and dr. fauci said, as a result of that, this should become the standard of care. compared to anything else, it's the standard of care compared to no standard of care right now. the other thing is you bring up azt and there's been other caveats. as you start to introduce medications to larger and larger populations, things pop up, you know? maybe it doesn't work as well for certain people or it causes some problems in certain segments of the population. you would want to have those sorts of trials and deliberations, and you know, assuring that you're not going to cause some sort of problem, especially. this is, even though it's as elizabeth said, a larger study than we've seen for some of the other therapeutics, it's still a small study, and it wasn't just so clear cut in terms of the benefit that you'd say, absolutely, you know, mostly benefit, very little harm, let's go full throttle ahead. but these are unusual times, you know.

so, the remdesivir has clearly been the medication i think the world health organization has been most optimistic about. we've been talking to a lot of researchers, elizabeth and i, around the world. there's a big trial that's part of this 152-center trial that's happening right here at emory university as well. so i'm sure we're going to get more data, maybe from some of these specific sites as well. but this is obviously the news, and it's the best news i think we've heard in terms of a therapeutic in some time. >> best news in terms of a therapeutic in some time. dr. brilliant said optimistic. we've heard these announcements. is there a dose of skepticism there or do you have confidence that they would not have announced if i thi unless they were certain that it at least helps? >> are you asking me, john? >> i was asking sanjay. i was noting your optimism, but you're more than welcome to jump in. >> oh, sorry. go ahead, sanjay. >> okay. i saw you on the screen, and i always love to hear from the brilliant larry br