what a job the army corps of engineers has done for all of us. thank you so much to them. join us tomorrow. dr. ian lipkin, jason chaffetz, michael pillsbury join us tomorrow. good night from sussex. >> we were able to finish the building two or three days before it is -- >> you can stay and watch these wonderful people ask us really nice questions or go back to building -- >> sir i have a lot of building to do. thank you, sir. >> very impressive. that is an impressive job, isn't it, seriously? really great. thank you very much. he's a terrific gentleman. we have a lot of great people doing that kind of thing that they really have to get recognition for, the incredible job they're doing because i don't think anybody else could do it. nothing like that.

that is on top of hundreds of thousands of hospitals. in new york you built 2,000 hospitals, 900 beds, nobody say anything like it. fortunately we have not had to use too many of them. that is okay. probably better news than using them at all, right. a lot of good things are happening in new york and elsewhere. through the public/private partnerships and deregulation the federal government has made immense testing capabilities available but some states need to take action to fully out advertise it. to date the united states has conducted millions more tests than any other country. you can add them all up and they don't catch us. our numbers are doubling certainly on a monthly basis, but almost on a weekly basis, we're moving very rapidly, at a number nobody thought possible. we'll double the number of daily

tests that the governor brings states on-line through the capability they have. we have tremendous capability out there already existing and we explained that to the governor today, mike and all of the people explained it very strongly to the governors. they really get it now i think. as the experts have explained this capacity is sufficient to allow states to conduct diagnostic testing to treat patients as well as contact tracing to contain outbreaks and monitoring to pinpoint potential hot spots during phase one and there are some hot spots and we have them pinpointed and they can really cover it very, very nicely when they know exactly where to go and they're being told where to go. also these locations where they're going. some of them are federal. some of the governors didn't realize they were allowed to use federal locations. they are. we have a booklet of the federal locations. we can hold it up. i think you show that. okay, fine.

but you see, number of things. thanks. these are all locations where they can go, which is really pretty amazing. this is one page out of many. >> over 5000. >> look at this. these are all locations. >> 5000 locations. >> that is a lot of locations. and they can all, what is it, 5000? >> 5000 pieces of equipment? >> so that is thank you, very much. that is more than anybody thought. but it is already there. they have to use it. that is all they have to use it. somewhere very much aware. some weren't aware. my administration also continues to support states with our massive operation to deliver masks, gowns, gloves, other vital supplies. admiral admiral admiral ad polo

polow-zyk. and they're using data about supply changes, attract one billion pieces of protect tougher equipment through private distributors every two weeks. so what we're doing is, we're, we're delivering a number no nobody anywhere in the world is delivering. fema is working closely with dr. burks and distributors to prioritize supply of resources where they are most needed. we're finding the location that they have to, they have to get to that location. we have locations very important to get to and get to them fast and that is where they're going. so wee -- we have strong priority. this pandemic keeping vital supply chains at home. we can't outsource our independence. we can't rely on foreign nations. i've been saying this for a long time. if we learned one thing, let's do it here, let's build it here, let's make it here. we have got the greatest country in the world. we have goat -- got to bring

supply chains back. somebody years ago had crazy idea make things all over the place. screw for a car made in country far away and fender made someplace else, let's do this, let's do that, put it all together. i like making it right here in the usa. and i think we learned a lot about that, especially when it comes maybe to pharmaceutical products. we also conducted major military operations providing cities and states with additional medical capacity and the incredible 1hundred men and women from the army corps of engineers. you just met with todd. the job they have done is incredible. we have nurses, doctors, we have experts in every field. all over. i spoke with governor cuomo, spoke with mayor de blasio, spoke with many of the other

governors that i'm both friendly i think i am friendly with just about all of them if you can believe it. i gotten friendly with a lot of them. i gained a lot of respect for a lot of the governors both republican and democrat during this process. some really good people. some really good talent. but we're sending a lot of our medical people. not only our construction people like todd semoonite. new york state, new jersey, i spoke with phil doing a, new jersey got hit very, very hard, phil murphy. the governor. we began a mobilization of colossal scale. some day they will write the true story. nobody has seen anything like it. the fake news refuss toes cover it correctly. that is okay. but the people are understanding and that is what matters to me.

there are now 72 active trials underway across the united states researching dozens of therapies and treatments and another 211 are in the planning stages. they're getting, i mean they're literally mobilizing on therapeutics and also on vaccines. tremendous progress made on vaccines and i must say on therapeutics. frankly if i had my choice give me the therapeutics right now because that would help people right now and we have some things that i think are working, not only working but we have some incredible things that look like they could be an answer but we'll know soon. being tested, working out right now. this includes there are therapies designed to attack the virus as well as others that would hinder its replication, reduce the rate of infection, control the immune response or transfer life-saving antibodies from the blood of recovered patients and one of the

incredible things that we've seen and mike and i were talking about it before is the fact, often times somebody gets very ill from the plague, okay, from this horrible scourge and they get better and they recover, the first thing they say i want to give my blood. that has happened. the doctors told me it happened so much, i want to give my blood, i want to give my blood. and they're doing that but tremendous things are happening. you will be seeing about, you will see that over the weeks, we'll be talking about it in the not-too-distant future. johnson & johnson is very well along on vaccines. again the vaccines have to be tested. the therapeutics are for now but a lot of good things are happening on both but ultimately we hope to prevent infection through a safe, very safe vaccine and that i will was great thing when we have that. we will have that. so with that i would like to introduce admiral guar and brad smith to discuss some of the incredible things that have been

done. we have, they really are, what they have been able to do in a very, very short period of time with, and equipment, you're going to see equipment that you haven't seen before. and if you just come up, brad, if you guys would come up, give us a little display of some of the equipment we have and some of the things that are happening, having to do with testing because testing is a big word. remember it was all ventilators. the reason it was all ventilators, they said there is no way will he catch this one. not only did he catch it we're the king of ventilators all over the world. we have thousands being made aweek and they're very high quality and that was not playing well. then they said testing, we'll get him on testing. test something much easier than ventilators. ventilators are big machines that are very complex and very expensive. you need real, real, you need a group of people that really know

what they're doing. we took auto lines and number of different people t used to be ventilators, ventilators, ventilators and now it is testing, testing, testing. i think the admiral, brad will show you some things you haven't seen that are really very spectacular having to do with testing. we're way advanced, way advanced. the list i showed you, these are places you can go if you're in the states, 5000 machines, 5000, they're all over the country. and we have international also but these are all over the country. but you will see something that is now really eye popping in terms of what they have done, and they have done this under great pressure. they have come up with things under great pressure that are absolutely amazing. so, please, if you would. thank you, folks. >> thank you, mr. president. i want to talk about a couple things today a little bit

different than i have spoken about before. since early march we have really been focusing on two key concepts for testing. number one, to assure and expand supplies in the u.s. market. this is really critical because we're talking about a cottage industry with minimal suppliers we were something to supply over a two-week period of time the normal production that woe be at least a year. a simple as a swab is, a swab is not a swab, is not a swab. we need to be careful when we put something in a person and tell them a test result that it is correct. we need to get sufficient supplies at fema. this is the fema process of asking and sending things out and supporting outbreaks. starting many weeks ago, starting in my office many weeks ago we assemble ad multidoes

minute nary team of really incredible people. the medical side of the equation i represent, laboratory side of the iaea equation, high-tech side of the occasion, and logistics and operation and brad smith his day job is director of medicare, medicaid services. an incredibly important component of cms health care system but has done a incredible job operationally, logistically bringing everyone together. we have focused on every piece of the supply chain that relates to testing down to the most minute detail and he is going to talk to you about some of that. that started in the second week of march with starting an airlift because the only supplier, the main supplier of swabs at that time was a place in italy that was completely shut off because of the outbreak in italy. so admiral polowczyk got a plane to go to italy to bring back millions of swabs to secure. that is how it started and

expanded since then. we're marrying the logistics this is the beauty, logistics and supply to the overall strategy. two pieces of strategy. number one, what is the overall testing strategy? dr. birx has had an elegant strategy in the past, even more important in the future when we make sure we take care of indigent populations and most popular. clinical, contact tracing and monitoring of those who are at most risk. we also married it to the strategy you heard more than you know about, want the to know about it, small machine point of care is good for certain things but it will not test 5000 people over a short period of time. so the small machines, medium machines and large machines how to context allize them. the things thing before i give it to brad, it is really important and critical, coordinating the research, epidemiology and fda regulatory process and why is that so important? when we started five weeks ago if we wanted to test this many people with the technology we

had we would have used about 80% of the strategic national stockpile in ppe just to do testing. we needed an innovation that innovation was to be able to test out of the anterior nose with completely different swab. it sounds mundane, if you don't do that you can't get the testing to scale. that really allowed us to go to widespread testing, last week moving to polyester swabs will which open up, of new swabs on the market. that is regulatory science and innovation step that had to cocure with this. i will let brad talk about the the details he has shepherded over the weeks that has been amazing and special to me. >> thank you, mr. president. lifetime honor to be here and serving this way. i've been under dr. birx's and admiral girori's leadership to increase supply of testing over

the united states. there are they parts you need to make the test work. first you need the machine, which dr. birx will share more, the president spoke to. we have a very, very large number of those across the united states. it is about making sure we're taking advantage of them. the second part of the testing is making sure that we have the collection supplies to actually be able to collect the specimen and i will talk a little bit more about that. and the third part is making sure you have the materials you need to the support the machine to insure that you can actually process the test once it gets to the lab. i will let dr. birx talk more about the machines here in a second but as you will see across the united states we have a tremendous number. they arrange in variety. we have some very small machines that do point of care testing. they may do 50, 100 tests a day. we also have other very large machines that can do several thousand, can process several thousand tests a day. on the collection supply piece i will talk a couple of different kind of collection that can be done. for nucleic acid test, done

today, you generally need a swab of the nose. to do that you need the swab, the collection tube and you also need the transport media it can be transported in. we have a large, very large number of swabs already in the country but we have secured an additional 30 million in production that will be ramping up over the next several weeks. one company, located in the northeast we're going to be using title 3 of the dpa to help them build four new production lines. they are currently the largest swab producer in the country and this will help them ramp up their production tremendously to over 20 million additional swab as month. a second company located in ohio is currently the largest cue-tip maker in the country. we're helping them convert the line from making cue-tips into making swabs. they're actually ramping up production this week of starting swabs and will ramp up to 10 million per month n total that is over 30 million new swabs that will be coming just

over the next handful of weeks. the second piece is on the collection tubes. the collection tubes we've been partnering with oak ridge national lab, department of energy lab based in tennessee. they have very unique and sophisticated injection molding, manufacturing capability and they are in the process of ramping you that up to make collection tubes. they will ramp up to 40 million collection tubes a month over next several weeks. in addition to swabses we believe as testing progresses there will be serological testing that occurs. those samples have to be collected in different ways. many times those tests require a finger prick. we procured 17 million lances you use for the finger prick and 17 million alcohol swabs you need to clean the finger before you do the finger prick. in addition, although folks are not talking much about this, we also believe businesses may want

thermometers to test folks to come into the office. we secured over 650,000 infrared thermometers, states and businesses can access to test folks as they come into work. we made tremendous progress on the collection side. in addition to the collection side, we've been focused insuring labs have what they need to process a specimen in a lab. you really need two things, you need something called an extraction kit and you need something called a pcr test. in order to be able to fully process a test you need both of these things. sometimes these things come together and sometimes they come separate. for some of our point of care tests including the abbott and cepheid tests they are ramping up to 3 million per month. these tests did not exist even a month ago. the second part of the test they sell complex cartridges that come together. one of the big manufacturers of that ramped up production from

1.6 million a month to more than twice that already. that already occurred. in addition to when they come together they also sometimes come separate. we see significant ramping up and production from our manufacturers to the public/private partnerships and we're seeing both several million more of next few weeks of rna extraction kit as well as the pcr test kit. so with that, thank you. >> mike, please. thank you, brad. >> thank you, mr. president. and i share your admiration for this remarkable team from the army corps of engineers to brad to admiral giroir. they're doing a remarkable job every day. as the president mentioned, today we had our weekly conference call with governors across the country, states and territories and i was able to convey to them our appreciation for the leadership that every governor of every state and territory has provided. thanks to their leadership,

thanks to the extraordinary cooperation of the american people in spite the fact that more than 770,000 americans have contracted the coronavirus, and our hearts grieve for the more than 41,000 americans who lost their life, the truth is that, as we stand here today we are slowing the spread and as the president reflected we continue to see steady progress and less cases, lower hospitalizations, even in hot spots around the country and we commended america's governors for their efforts in that regard. we are preserving our health care capacity as, as the general with the army corps of engineers reflected. the president's direction we built a great number of hospitals around the country but the utilization rate has been farly low because of the mitigation efforts, the cooperation of the american people. we have not had to use them. and that, as the president said

is very good news. in a word we thanked the governors across the country for taking actions, decisive action to save lives and make a difference. i reminded them they're all in this together, we have one mission, one team. we spoke on a conference call about last week's guidelines to open up america again. we heard from governors across the country about the progress they're making. we spoke to governors from new jersey, connecticut, florida, louisiana, texas and michigan about their ongoing efforts at social distancing and addressed questions that they had about needs that have been spoken of already in this, in this presentation today. in addition as we promised last week when we spoke to governors on thursday about the guidelines to open up america our team presented every governor in the country, states and territories with a memorandum detailing laboratory capacity and all locations of laboratory

equipment for diagnostic tests that can perform the coronavirus test. we also provided as dr. birx will, will elaborate in just a few moments, literally a map about where these, these testing devices are located and, and i must tell you, mr. president, i'm very impressed the way governors as we speak are scaling testing in their own states using these resources. our hope is that by providing this information and by our team that we've enlisted out of walter reed that is contacting everyone of the laboratories in the country to find out what their needs are and to encourage them to activate those testing machines to do coronavirus testing that we'll continue to be able to support a state-managed effort to increase testing even more. couple highlights. governor doug ducey highlighted antibody testing for 250,000. a partnership between the state

and university of arizona. we spoke today about governor gavin newsom's announcement he set up a task force for testing and five to seven high capacity testing hubs in partnership with uc san diego and uc-davis to increase testing in high capacity labs around the state of california. we heard from governor ron desantis, mr. president, about the efforts of the state of florida. i believe he said at this time florida had conducted 275,000 coronavirus tests and they're in the process of a major expansion of statewide testing with the goal of opening up additional sites and using the florida national guard to test residents at nursing homes and long-term care facilities in florida. we also recommended today to every governor's attention the public health website that the state of florida established which has useful information on a county by county level about where testing is happening. mr. president, as you said, governors are utilizing testing

assets, they're managing and deploying these resources as they see fit. at your direction we'll continue to work very closely with them. other governors that we spoke with, included governor gretchen whitmer of michigan. there are 13 new or expanded coronavirus drive-through testing sites in michigan that her team has stood up with michigan primary care association and we, we assured her that we would continue to work as brad and admiral giroir are literally working around the clock to make sure they have the supplies to support all of that testing. as the president said, governor hogan who always begins our conference calls as he is chairman of the national governors association, expressed appreciation for last week's guidelines to open america up again and, and his appreciation on behalf of all the governors for the list of laboratories in each individual state. he did raise the issue that we had included on the list,

department of defense facilities that have laboratories and machines and also other federal facilities, many of which are in maryland and i was able to assure governor hogan and every governor on the call we will make all of those laboratories available across the country to every state as the need for testing capacity continues to scale. and so this is one more step where you see the army corporation of engineers, where you literally see thousands of military doctors and nurses on the streets of new york and other cities around the country. this is one more step where we're literally, as the president said from early on, are leaving no stone unturned and we are delivering a whole of government approach for our states as they, as they deal with the coronavirus outbreak. governors are continuing to expand testing and we assured them we will continue to work in every way to support their efforts to do just that. and, i will say again as we said before, as dr. birx comes up to

explain to you what we delivered to the governors today we told the governors once again today that by our best estimates we have enough testing capacity today for every state in america to go to phase 1, if they meet the other criteria of 14 days of reduced cases and sufficient hospital capacity to prepare for any eventuality that may occur. once again we have enough testing capacity for every state in america to go to phase one but we assured the governors we'll continue to work around the clock to expand the testing capacity, support supplies and support their efforts to encourage social distancing in the very mitigation efforts that the american people have been doing that brought us the progress that we see all across the country today. with that, mr. president, i will let dr. birx describe what we directed today. >> thank you, mike.

>> thank you, mr. president, vice president. i want to show you a couple of additional slides but also to remind all americans we still have a significant number of cases both in the boston area and across massachusetts and chicago to really our hearts go out to those cities as they continue to struggle with coronavirus and the consequences of the hospitalization, to all the health care providers that are on the front lines. we wanted -- these are just an illustration of the different types of equipment out there, describing them both is low-speed but quick turnaround time, to high speed and taking three or four hours to run 100 or more tests. so the equipment ranged from those different -- that is why there is 5000 of them noted by the president in this list. we wanted every governor and every state and health laboratory director to have a clear understanding of the full capacity within the state both

for the capacity but also for technical assistance and additional supplies were made available and we were proud to put the military labs on the list because the military and va stepped up both to provide support for testing and care and we have many military members on the front lines and i'm sure the military would offer facilities to governor of maryland or any governor to wanted to use those to expand testing. next slide, i will run through them very quickly. every governor not only received the excel spreadsheet with a complete list of equipment and zip code of the location and of the laboratory to create a mosaic of laboratories of the high-speed and low speed equipment together to meet the needs of their clients depending if they're drive-through or hospital needs. this is what florida looks like, next slide. this is what louisiana looks

like, next slide. maryland with significant capacity, next slide. virginia with significant capacity throughout the state, next slide. new york, obviously a lot of capacity and new york city with overlapping capacity. it is important to know where this is because, then, hospitals and labs can support each other when they need surge capacity. next slide, this is new jersey. next slide. pennsylvania. next slide. massachusetts. next slide. ohio. next slide. oklahoma. next slide. washington. next slide. i think that is wyoming. so we wanted to show both in states that have large populations and in states that have lower populations you can see that in general, the number of machines match therapy population. we're working with the walter reed group and the american society of microbiologists and all the lab directors to really create a web of understanding of what the capacity is currently, what the

capacity can be and how the federal government can support them and developing their strategies linked to the overarching federal strategy of testing as outlined in our guidelines. thank you, mr. president. reporter: question for dr. birx. dr. birx, university of southern california and l.a. county public health put out a report today suggest the pen transof the virus 40 times as it was believed as many as 442,000 people in l.a. county may have been infected which suggests two things. it suggests that you have a lot more people out there who could be spreading the virus. but it also suggests that the case fatality rate is more in line with the 2017-2:08 flu than what we've seen in some other areas of the world. wondering if you have seen that, what your thoughts were? >> we're looking at all those studies very carefully. you remember over last few weeks i was talking about the level of

asymptomatic spread and my concern about asymptomatic spread because with flu and other diseases when people are sick it is easy to contract trace. when people are not sick, sledding virus you have to have a very different approach, a very different surveillance approach and sentinel monitoring we outlined in the guidelines. the guidelines took that very seriously. we know that was unique for respiratory diseases. we were concern the about the level of asymptomatic. we talked about younger age groups may have more asymptomatic disease and your aasymptomatic disease may decrease with younger age group and increase with age groups. this is the working hypothesis. we have no data right now still to report that these studies help that we know new york, detroit, other cities are very interested which we also want to support them in testing for

front line responders, first-responders, health care workers because we think their exposure may have been the greatest. what we don't want to do, i'm going to do another 30 second quarters on testing, these tests are not 100% sensitive or specific. i'm going to go over this over and over again. so if you have 1% of your population infected, and you have a test that is only 99% specific, that means that when you find a positive, 50% of the time it will be a real positive and 50% of the time it won't be. and that's why we're really asking people to start testing in among the first-responders and health care workers that may have had the greatest exposure because that is where the toes will be most reliable. when we have the luxury we can go out to broader and broader communities. but this has been the fundamental question to begin with and has been persistent and we will emphasize to the

american people again, this is a highly contagious virus and we don't know by looking at someone whether they have preexisting conditions or not. so all of us as far as protecting others must continue to do all of the recommendations to insure that when we are in a asymptomatic state we're not passing the virus to others. reporter: i have a question for you as well. the governor of south carolina today announced they will open stores with restrictions but just told my colleague natasha they have not achieved that criteria in the white house guide lines about the downward trajectory for 14 days. should they not be reopening stores today? >> we have asked every governor to follow the guidelines just as we asked every american to follow the guidelines put out by the president but each of the governors can decide for themselves whether they have reached specific guidelines in specific areas. i had a question i think on saturday about jacksonville. and their beaches. so i did spend about five hours

going to every state website and i will tell you that florida's department of health website is extraordinary. this is what every department of health should have. because when you go to that website you can see most of the cases are in southern florida, in the miami, fort lauderdale, broward county area. if you look in jacksonville, they had less than 20 cases per day. and less thanhundred in four weeks. so these are the kinds, when you inform the public and give them the information that they need, then they can make decisions along with the local government and governors. so i'm not going to say specifically with south carolina because i don't know their specific website right now, and i don't talk about data unless i have seen it myself. i know from jacksonville they had less than 20 case as stay. this is how we need to start informing community. these websites critical. it is by zip code.

they can see new cases they can see hospitalizations they can see mortality and they see age groups of mortality and every testing pieces. this is how we have to inform the american public and this is where the american public will develop confidence in each of their counties and local governments. reporter: vice president mentioned there is enough testing capacity right now to proceed to phase one, what about phase two, nays three, are there enough machines, cartridges reagents to reopening -- take place next month or two? >> you can see the current machine outline. you can see both these gentlemen prepared to have everything ready for phase two and preparing it now for what we will need in the future and i think that's what you saw with the ventilators. that is what you're seeing with ppe. it is not just for today, it is for tomorrow and our federal plan something not just for this instant. we're making sure we meet the needs for instance and we're planning for 30, 60, 90 days

ahead? >> [inaudible] >> i would agree with dr. birx completely that we are ready toneter phase one and we're ramping up our capabilities across the board not just to achieve the necessariability capabilities for phase two but two x, three x, 4 x, when the nation is ready to go into those phases. >> not everybody agrees we have to do that much testing. we're going maximum. some people don't want to do that much testing but we're going maximum. we're going to the outer limits. i think that is the way probably should be. jeff, go ahead. reporter: mr. president to return to topic you opened press conference with on oil, u.s. crude futures went below zero, negative territory. >> negative, like interest rates, they go negative. reporter: does that make you want to see saudi arabia and russia, opec plus do more? >> much it has to do with short

sellers. a bunch, if you look a month into the future it is 25 or 2dollars a barrel. so a lot of people got caught. they got caught, they're are a lot of people not too happy because they got caught. if you take a look at it, it is more after financial thing than a oil situation. because if you take i believe in a month or so, in other words go a little bit, it is at 25, 20 -- $28 a barrel. it is a largely a financial squeeze and they got squeezed. reporter: would you like to see saudi arabia -- >> we've already done that saudi arabia is cutting back. russia is cutting back, mexico is cutting back. opec plus, call it opec plus additional states are cutting back. the problem is nobody is driving a car anywhere in the world, essentially, 184 nations. factories are closed and businesses are closed. so all of a sudden we had really a lot of energy to start off

with, oil in particular. we had a lot. then all of a sudden they lost 40, 50% of their market so it just stops. it will be picking up. the energy business will be strong. they cut back, it could be 20 million barrels. let's say 15. that was between russia and saudi arabia. but this had to do with the squeeze and it was a very tough squeeze. a lot of people -- reporter: you don't think they need to do more right now? >> they have to do more by the market, to be honest. same thing over here. if the market is way it is people will slow down or stop that will be automatic. that is happening, yeah. reporter: mr. president, on criminal justice reform and sba loans, i got email early this morning from a fellow in the northwest who owns a supply business and he has felony on his record, non-violent felony in the past five years which under sba guidelines makes him inhe willable for one of these pp loans. he now had to let go 50 employees, many of whom are

criminals trying to get back into society. i don't believe there is anything in the cares act that would -- >> give me the name of the company and his name i will have that checked out, john. i will do that. friend of yours? >> reporter: not a friend of mine. is who -- >> called you to say he is criminal why he didn't get a loan. reporter: wanted to apply for sba loan and couldn't. >> if you give me the name i will look it into. i would like to look into that. go ahead. reporter: these companies that open and they have employees come back to work and they get sick will these companies be liable? >> which companies are you talking about? reporter: any companies and manufacturing -- >> i will give you a answer to that i will give you a legal answer to that when i look it up. we had tried to take away liability from companies, we don't want that we want companies to open and open strong. i will get you a legal opinion on that, that's what i'm saying i will get a legal opinion. reporter: you guys haven't discussed that yet?

>> nobody has discussed it. we will now. reporter: any business executives voiced a concern to you? >> not a one. not at this point but we're going to look because they have talked about general liability. i will get you a specific answer from the lawyers. okay? go ahead, please. reporter: for follow on oil, when you were talking earlier you were talking about the ppp deal and then mentioned the spr. >> right. reporter: in first stimulus package even though -- >> you know the price of oil right now, don't you? reporter: i do? i actually do. negative $37. >> nobody ever heard of negative oil but it is for a short term. reporter: in your opening remarks you were talking about the ppp deal and mentioned 75 million barrels of oil you previously said you wanted to purchase. >> yes. reporter: you were not able to get funding in that for the first deal. >> at the price you're talking about you don't need funding. they pay you.

reporter: you can get it -- >> that is true if you can get it. reporter: so nye my first question is are you asking for funding for -- >> at a minimum we'll let people store. we'll use it as storage and charge for it but people need storage desperately and we have massive storage under the petroleum. reporter: not going to make it a requirement of ppp interim funding deal? >> not a question of requirement f we could buy it for nothing we're going to take everything we can get. only thing i like better than that where they pay you to take the oil but that is a short-term squeeze, you understand that. so i don't think you are going to see that. but, no we'd like to have congress, this is a great time to buy oil. we would like to have congress approve it, instead of storing it usually for big companies, because i think we have 75 million gallons right now capacity. that is a lot. we've been building it up over a period of time but that's a lot, 75 million barrels.

so we're going to get either ask for permission to buy it or we'll store it. one way or the other it will be full. okay? please. reporter: mr. president -- >> finish up. we'll go right to you. reporter: yeah. some senators and particularly senator cramer called you on you to stop saud did you oil shipments on the way right now. you can do that under section 232. is that something -- >> we'll look at it. i heard just walking into the room. we certainly had plenty of oil. i will take a look at that, okay? question. reporter: first question on testing, the second on the sba loan program. when will you or will you invoke the dca to force the company ramp up production? >> we really don't need it. we go up, i used it a lot but we use it and then sometimes all they have to do is see it coming. do you want to talk about that, admiral? please. >> i don't think any of us knew very much about the dpa but there is a sort of a fourth side

of the dpa where you force a company to do something but there is second time it where it is a hand up. the company we're talking about has done everything to support this effort. they have ramped up production. i'm on the phone with them multiple times a day. this is the hand up. this is the government coming in, saying how can we help you expand your lines? there is no asynchrony at all. this is the hand up side of the dpa which is exactly what these small, american, heroic companies need. they don't need be forced. they're all-in. their employees are all-in. >> we don't want to embarass them. bret. >> today we were on site, folks on-site with that company finishing out what their capital projections will be in order to ramp up. it is actively in process. reporter: i fully understand the need is enormous, on march defend first, the administration

promised 2million tests by end of doctor 27 million. by end of march. so far 4 million have been tested. where are the 23 million people have not been tested. explain the discrepancy. >> i said that i will explain where we were or were. i was getting information about the actual tests in the marketplace. so, if you want to use those metrics, there has been over 40 million, quote in the marketplace. but we have an end to end issue that we needed to deal with, that is what we've been dealing with, the swabs, dance port media. if we don't have people utilizing the machines the way dr. birx is talking about. we have some of our main platforms only 10% being utilized. you could have a lot, you could have a lot of tests in the market, those are correct numbers, if the machines are not utilizing them, not organized at that level they're not being,

not being utilized to the fullest. >> if machines were utilized? >> if you would have a lot of those millions of tests already being done. i think ambassador birx has estimated we have another million test as week just on one platform that could be, could be done if the machines were utilized more fully. reporter: question for admiral giroir. you stated, vice president said this, mr. smith said it there will be enough test in place for phase one. >> there are. there are. reporter: the question is, what's the standard of testing that you now have the capability for? is it test people who are only very ill? is it test people who have the sniffles? is it test people who come in just because they want to get a test? what is the standard here? >> it is the guidelines but i tried to be a little specific about this on friday and we all tried to. number one you need to test everyone who is symptomatic, right? you need to overtest them. reporter: how symptomatic?

>> any symptoms would be consistent with covid, right? there is wide range of symptoms. you want to test them and you want to overtest. we talked about the approximate metric which ambassador birx fully supports. this is a good metric you want one positive for every 10 tests. then you know you oversample. second, this is a really important part of the strategy because so many people are asymptomatic there is no way you can test enough people to pull one asymptomatic out of 300 people in the population. so the strategy with ambassador birx offered, i talked to epidemiologists around the country, they go, wow i wish i would have thought of that, focus on vulnerable population where we know the asymptomatic rate could be much higher than the rest of the population. this is what my office does, during normal times, focusing on the underserved populations particularly the inner-cities

and urban areas. they have a higher rate because overcrowding. they can't telework. they're subject to a lot of comorbid conditions. nursing homes we all know about nursing homes. they're both symptomatic and asymptomatic spread. and finally some of our indigenous populations in the indian health service. this is a very, very important layer most of models and people don't talk about because that is where we pick up the asymptomatic. that what you do that you focus on track and trade. reporter: a quick follow-up if we have enough tests to go into phase one, why is governor of maryland getting half a million tests from south korea? >> i don't know what the governor of maryland is doing in south korea but there is excess capacity every day. if he wanted to send 30 or 40,000 tests to lab corps and quest that could be done tomorrow. reporter: needed to up their

testing capacity -- >> they're seeing all across the country, in the states hardest hit, not only their capacity, they're testing far, far exceeds south korea. they have been able to do that on relatively straightforward basis. i don't know what the governor of maryland, we talked to him today, he didn't bring that up. reporter: [inaudible] >> we were on the governor's call. reporter: you spoke to him personally on this. >> we spoke to governor hogan today and we'll follow up, i heard there was announcement that he had acquired some tests from overseas. maybe we could put the slide back up that showed the number of facilities just in the state of maryland. and part of our process, and i don't know when the governor placed the order from south korea. wouldn't begrudge him or his health officials for ordering tests but the capacity of all different laboratories, number of machines across maryland is

part of what we're communicating today, including federal facilities the nih is in maryland. there is department of defense facilities. what we assured the governor then, we assured all the governors that we'll open up all of those facilities. but, john, back to your point, there is one other element of that, the phase one testing. i can't really describe it as well as the doctors here but it's the contact tracing piece. we really believe that states that meet the criteria, 14 days, of cases going down, proper hospital capacity, if they test people that have symptoms, and if they deploy resources to vulnerable populations, nursing homes and other designated vulnerable populations where we believe the threat of serious outcomes from the coronavirus is real, then we also today, inform the governors that we will be deploying cdc teams to every state and every territory in the country to assist them in

contact tracing. governor garapolos raised a good point about the legislation the president is negotiating on capitol hill. he recommended that we make sure the new bill that has some $25 billion in testing resources also cover contact tracing expenses by states. we assured him our administration strongly supports that. we communicated that. the secretary of treasury to the rest of our negotiating team and we'll be pursuing that but we were able to tell everyone of the governors that we'll be deploying teams. we think of 10 or 12 for a start, from cdc, to reside in all of our states and territory ies to supervise and work with contractors and others to testing. people don't feel well, may have the coronavirus, keep a careful eye, monitor your vulnerable population and when you come

across a case have a team on the ground that can do immediate contract tracing and testing. that is how we restrain and contain the spreading of the coronavirus during phase one and frankly it is the beginning of the structure for how we contain the coronavirus going forward. >> take a look at that map. the governor of maryland could have told mike pence, saved a lot of money. look at these different places. that is maryland right there. so could have saved a lot of money. reporter: you don't think he needed to go to south korea? >> i think he didn't need to go to south korea. he needed a little knowledge. reporter: on sba loans, major corporations like the chris restaurant chain, harvard university got a lot of money on the cares act, earmarked for small business owners, do you think that is fair? >> i know for sure i didn't get any. some we'll to return if we think it is inappropriate tortoriello should the criteria be changed?

>> it is done by great professionals and community banks. all over the country. that is what they do. they loan money. they're spoused to do it according to criteria but according what we think is right. if somebody got something that we think is inappropriate we'll get it back. good point. reporter: different question about south korea. there are reports that you are personally negotiating with president moon the reduction of u.s. forces on the korean peninsula. there are four scenarios involved. can you confirm that and if so what is your desired out come? >> well i think that south korea had a great talk with president moon. he is a friend of mine. i congratulate -- had wonderful election victory. i was very happy about that. he was, as you know just recently. no, we are negotiating for president moon and for south korea to help us monetarily because we as you know, we have 32,000 soldiers there. that varies from 28 to 32,000 in south korea and we think that,

before i came aboard, they paid very little if anything. sew we're defending a wonderful nation, a nation that we have great relationships but we're asking them to pay for a big percentage of what we're doing. it's not fair. so it is not a question of reduction. it is a question of will they contribute toward the defense of their own nation? we're defending nations that are very wealthy. south korea is a very wealthy nation. they make our television sets, they make ships. they make everything. i give them great credit. we have been defending them for many, many decades as you know, many, over eight decades and i've gone to them in the past. last year i went to them and, and now they're paying a billion dollars a year and i went to them again. said look, i will be back. that is just a fraction. again the relationship is great but it is just not a fair relationship. we renegotiated the trade deal.

made it much more of an equitable deal. it was a terrible deal. it was done by hillary clinton t was a terrible deal. the new deal is much more equitable deal on trade. but the military we're paying for the military to defend another nation that is 8500 miles away. they're not only one i'm talking to by the way as you know. i won't go into names. i've done this. known talks about it. i think it is appropriate. i think taxpayers of our country, taxpayers want to hear these things. so now they're, they have offered us a certain amount of money and rejected it. we're doing a tremendous service. we have a wonderful feeling and a wonderful relationship with each other but we have to be treated equitiably and fairly. so that is where it is right now. and what is going to happen i can't tell you but we'll find out fairly soon. but i congratulate the president who is a friend of mine. i congratulate president moon on having a terrific victory. please? reporter: thank you, sir. a question for you about

governor cuomo's visit and question for dry birx. >> sure. reporter: the new york governor along with the national governors association in the past have called for aid to be unrestricted. a lot of state and local governments see their revenues drop, are you open to the idea of unrestricted aid or do you want it to be pandemic specific? >> we'll be talking about that in phase four as you know which will start very shortly. that has to do with infrastructure. hopefully infrastructure because this country needs infrastructure. we spend all this money in the middle east,trillion dollars, eight trillion, in the middle east. if you have a pothole someplace they don't want to spend money to fix it. how stupid in this couldn'ttry have we been? how stupid have we been. that is changing rapidly and you've seen that including negotiating with friends. but what we're helping friends, friends should reimburse us for

the cost. why should we defend nations for free. we're defending a nation for free. now i'm getting a billion dollars a year and we're, we'll be getting, we were offered much more than that but i turned it down. so that is where we are with that. as far as, as far as the other is concerned, look, we have to be smart in this country. we've been taken to the cleaners by every, i mean with allies, not just with the enemies, with allies. frankly allies have taken us much more so than the enemies. the enemies we don't do business with, right? the allies we do business with. whoever made these deals. whoever made these contracts, in many cases we didn't have a contract. like we didn't have a contract, we didn't have a trade deal with china. they came in and they took $500 billion a year for many years. anywhere from 200 to $550 billion a year out of our hides. now we made this great trade deal. unfortunately that was a number of months ago. and it's a great deal. they're paying 25% on

$250 billion. they're, a lot of things are happening. they will have to purchase $250 billion worth of goods, including farm product, up to $50 billion. so a lot of good things are happening but then what happened with china was, the plague hit us, right, the plague. that was after, this was long after we have signed the deal. the playing -- plague hit us. so i'm not hab about that. john, please? reporter: question for dr. birx if i could. dr. birx, question on the virus itself. when it passes from patient to patient it mutates. over time have you picked up any indication it has become less virulent? have you picked up any indication it has become more virulent? >> that is an excellent question. we watch that all the time particularly with ana viruses. it is adaptation to humans. you're really asking is this virus becoming more adaptive to

humans and more able to spread or less adaptive to humans and less able to spread? we don't have any indication it is less able to spread. we'll have good analyses that will come obviously, the roosevelt had an incident with the virus outside of the united states and we'll be able to look at those parameters. the dod and the military has done a great job ensuring health of the sailors. also insuring that these questions can really be asked and answered. we have extraordinary evolutionary molecular biologists in this country all around the united states and they're looking at this very question and a lot of the work that we've been doing and a lot -- you see a lot of work happening with testing in new mexico and testing in other states. they have extraordinary molecular biologists that are evolutionary biologists and they will be able to look at that. both in new mexico they may have lower transmission rates

compared to new york that has maybe 10-x the transmission. it is an excellent question. iting something that will be able to be answered by what we see in the united states. >> john, what a great question was. where did that question come from? reporter: once in a while. >> i'm impressed. when senator schumer wrote a letter a couple months ago said you should used a miles per hour and generals. first of all we have our vice president has been incredible, but we have the admirals, we have the generals and i was just talking to the admiral inside just before we came out. i said did you go to annapolis? he said, no, sir. oh, that's too bad. that's too bad. where did you go. he said, i went to harvard that is okay too i guess. he was a great student at harvard. he is doing a fantastic job. this younger gentleman was very successful. he wanted to help the country. he wanted to come into the country. he was a big success. elizabeth: i'm elizabeth

macdonald. you're watching the earning edit on fox business. that does it for us. thank you for watching. join us tomorrow night as we stay on this developing story. have a good evening. now. [♪] lou: good evening, everybody. china is on the verge of becoming a global pariah. the chinese communist party's cover-up of the deadly contagion they unleashed on the world will bring consequences for the government and its leader xi jinping. xi's lies and deception have been exposed to the world. he ordered the the head of the institutes of virology to go on stage on say that