welcome to monday. it's "meet the press daily." i'm in for chuck todd. we are standing by for the president to speak at the rose garden after telling reporters that the white house the releasing a blue print to expand testing. the 5:00 p.m. hour has been the home of the coronavirus task force briefings.

for weeks the task force briefing that was on the books for today was cancelled and now we're expecting this news conference to be just the president. it comes as nbc news has learned the white house is now preparing for the president to push a more optimistic message moving forward focusing on economic revival while diminishing the public presence of top health officials on the white house coronavirus task force, including dr. debra birx and dr. anthony fauci. sidelining the health experts, if that is the plan, will raise eyebrows for sure because they have given the public a more unvarnished and more honest assessment of the difficulties facing this country, which means they've had to at time, contradict the president's rosy view that the economy can reopen quickly. those experts have fact checked the president's many claims, some of which have been downright dangerous like his

suggestion that ingejecting disinfectant might be a cure. they acknowledged we will need a breakthrough on testing. they caution we'll be hit with another wave of cases in fall and they warn we're not going back to anything resembling normal for months at a minimum. in stark contrast to the past 36 thundershowers t hours the president has been breathing life into conspiracy theories about the death toll. he's been lashing out at the press and asking if they should limit aid to his political rooif rivals we're now about to hit another very grim milestone. one million confirmed cases. joining me now as we wait for the president is my nbc news colleague, hans nichols. the president is prepared to send enough tests and materials to screen 2% of every state's

population every month. also with us is robert costa, national political reporter with the washington post. moderator of pbs washington week and an msnbc political analyst. hans, i want to start with you that these task force briefings or these briefings will turn more economic and less about the health. what else do we know? >> well, we know that inside the administration there are a lot of discussions about how to couch these economic numbers and we know there's also going to be attention between how rosy you are about it, how optimistic and how much you try to almost let the public know how difficult this will be. earlier we heard from kevin hasset. he was brought back into the administration administration. talking about 16, 17% unemployment. those are rashabemarkably stark numbe numbers.

they said you could have a v shape recovery. now the united states government, the federal government wants to get back into testing, wants to increase the level of testing which seems to be a directly undercutting what they have been saying up to this point. they are insisting the u.s. government at the federal level be the testing resource of last reso resort. >> we know what the motivation might be for taking anthony fauco or debra birx out of the daily briefings, making them less visible, if that's the case. >> i'd be careful on saying birx or fauci is out of the loop. they have rotated individuals in and out. the president's has been clear he won't take whatever they say.

he'll weigh that against other interests. wo has the last word. we'll see today, whether or not birx or fauci sit up front or whether they're there or involved at all and whether or not this looks more like a traditional coronavirus task force briefing or for like a press conference in the rose garden. i think they pushed it back a little bit. i think we expected it mid way through your hour. you and i and robert will have a lot of time to talk about it before hand. >> i believe the president tweeted it would be at 5:30. can you walk us through what reopening will look like? >> at this point, the reopening

is driven by states but it's encouraged by the trump white house. so many governors i've spoken to in recent weeks, especially republicans, are taking their cues from president trump. they see him around easter moving toward reopening. that's when you saw governor abbot of texas and governor kemp of georgia start to move. you see democratic states starting to move forward in their own way. the key issue for so many governors is no what is president trump saying, it's testing. that's why what the president says today is so important. is he going to help governors and business leaders across the country have access to testing that is effective, that's widely available and fully understood by both business leaders and the communities they serve. >> be president tweeting saying

blue states shouldn't get a democratic bail out. he disappears but he wasn't visible over the weekend at any task force briefings. it was cancelled. now the president is appearing to be solo at 5:30. what are the politics behind the scenes. >> as a reporter, i don't read too much into the latest tweets because we have seen the president echo mitch mcconnell in previous rounds of negotiations. at the end of the day, phase one, two and three became bipartisan packages. what the president is doing, what the majority leader is doing by saying that states should request a bailout, they should declare bankruptcy, they are setting the stakes for this phase four of congressional talks with the white house. you see the majority leader and the white house want is a liability protection for businesses but democrats and many republicans, including larry hogan, a republican of

maryland, they want to see states have more support because if you look across the country, you see budget, everywhere, red states and blue states needing to be sured up because of the enormous cost, economic wise of this pandemic. >> i do want to read a bit breaking down what the president has been talk about over the past few weeks. it says over the past three weeks, tally comes to more than 13 hours of trump including two hours spepts on attacks and 45 minutes praising himself and his administration but four and a half minutes expressing condolences for coronavirus victims. he spent twice as much time promoting an unproven anti-malaria drug that was the object of a food and drug administration warning on friday. there was reporting that some republicans were getting nervous about him at the briefings, were

getting nervous it was doing him more harm than good. do we have any sense of what we should expect from him, the president going forward? >> this idea he's going to pull back, you can't lean into that much at all. he's furious with his typical targets today, yesterday and likely tomorrow based on my conversations with white house officials. they aren't listening to republican concern. there's widespread unease in the gop that if this economy doesn't start to pick up in the next few months they'll have to rely on his capital more than ever to carry them across the finish line in 2020. if he's seen as a polarizing, toxic figure that doesn't help them. that why he's hearing this idea of pulling back a bit.

he can't resist getting out there because he doesn't have the rallies. he's restless inside the white house. until that dynamic dhachanges h will not stop talking to his -- according to his aides. >> the other day, dr. birx said we would need a breakthrough for testing. this task force or this press conference could be focused on testing. what else do we know? >> there's a blue print for testing that the administration is starting to share. that's where it says the federal government should still be the testing, the testing of last resort and it still up to the states. it's the first time in the last couple of weeks that president trump is acknowledged a central role in all of this. remember, the president has been a great deal of tension in his

own comments even when it comes to whether or not he has the authority to order the states. it was a couple weeks back he said he has total authority over the governors. now when you look at that phone call he had with the governors today, he is suggesting, he's ur urging, he's offering advice they should open up schools. when you look at the president's rhetoric, behind closed doors when talking to the governors, there's an acknowledge that he doesn't have the total authority. that he really is in a position only to offer advice, to offer opinions but he can't force anyone to do that. you're seeing the president nudge governors to open up schools. governor murphy up in new jersey talked about having some new jersey schools open for some grades and the end of june. you don't see the president order it. that's what we need to watch today as this tension between the president's apparent police chief he has total authority and his desire to sort of lead the

country and lead the governors and testing in schools to a place that puts the economy on stronger footing heading into the november elections. >> we will see what happens today at 5:30. thank you very much. bob costa, thank you as well. let's turn to a cup of experts for the scientific angle. they are co-authors of work in time of pandemic. a new plan on how to safely open american businesses while safeguarding workers and customers. gentlemen, welcome. jose joseph, i want to start with you. this report lays out how to safely do it. walk us through it. >> it comes back to what you were sddiscussing, die nos

diagnostics. the corner stone of us being able to open america fully and safely or as safe as possible, in the absence of a vaccine is going to be the availability and widespread availability of diagnostics. with we want them available on the scale of at home tests or other tests we'll find in a pharmacy. a phased approach of applying it to your business when you open it, be a coffee shop or movie theater or any other place of business and applying those social distancing measures as well as the third and kind of key and final point being a vaccine is how we're ultimately

going to put an end to this. >> would using the defense protection act help with any of this in. >> probably but everything is too late. we are playing catch up. we're talking about a couple hundred thousands tests day and probably ten times that many to really open up businesses safely. we're just kidding ourselves. this is a game of crazy russian roulette. we're talking about it on a practical sense. if you want to go into the barbershop in your neighborhood or go to the local restaurant you like going to, we'll need to know, if in fact, the workers in those places are free of this disease which means very rapid point of care testing that

joseph was just talking about. we don't even that. we're not even close to that. i would tell -- if i had an opportunity to talk to the governor, i would tell them don't rush this. you'll be causing a potential up surge, up tick in the number of cases we have out there. no amount of happy talk by the president of the united states is going tosoev solve that prob. what willsoever it is a lot of testing that happens very rapidly, that happens everywhere and in every community. >> the white house is talking about 2% of each state tested per month. >> it depends on where you are in the number of cases presenting. anyone presenting with symptoms should be able to be tested.

once antibesiody tests are available, anyone that wants one should be able to get it. that's the only way we'll know the true toll of covid-19 is by having those tests done. >> joseph, i was talking to richard engel and he was in sweden talking about how they are not doing social distancing. they're trying to isolate the p. the ambassador to the u.s. defended that position saying it's working even though they have a slightly higher death toll that the nordic countries around them. i'm sure there are people saying why can't we do that here? >> we could develop a herd immunity to this virus if we let a certain percentage of the population die. i personally am not willing to let that percentage of the population just die. in the united states it's going to be a very large percentage of

our population if you look at who this virus is killing. that's even changed. our demographic has changed. we have seen children die, young vi individuals die. we have seen the demographic change. i cannot accept the kind of numbers we would see if we took that approach, in my opinion. keep in mind those systems are a lot stronger than our own. >> they also have a higher life expectancy and their population is much healthier. >> this reporting from nbc news that dr. birx and fauci may be side lined or appearing less frequently even though they will be in these coronavirus task force briefings behind closed doors. what's your reaction to that? >> my reaction is they are side lining the wrong people. it's the president that should be sidelined and it's the public health experts that we need to

be able to depend on and hear from. we don't get anything believable out of the president's mouth. i think the epitamy was last thursday's briefing when he talked about the infamous remarks about bleach and alcohol and uv lights, et cetera. that was a depressing thing to say and undermine the credibility of everything coming out of the white house. he would be better off actually letting and having birx and fauci lead the press conferences so people might have some restored confidence in what's coming from the federal government in terms of information about this. i can't even imagine what the thinking is about trump by himself doing these press conferences on a medical and public health crisis in america. it's the totally wrong direction. >> in talking to people, a lot of the confusion and frustration and blue feelings have to do

with this unknown. when can we reopen and am i going to be safe? what does it look like? you talk about this in your plan, the paper that you came out with and you're talking about testing people who work in a salon every week. how does that work? if you get a test every week for someone who works in a salon or a test every week for somebody who drives a cab, would that functionally make society safer. what if they got it on day three of the week or day five of the week. why week long regimen? >> there's nothing that will be perfect here. we're going to do the best we can. that includes a significant amount of frequent testing and retesting. we had almost 50 people die now

who were operators of subways and buses in new york city. the whole system right now is very much in need of our ability to do a lot of testing very, very frequently. i need a haircut. i'm not going to the barber without knowing whether the guy is positive or not. he needs to know whether i'm positive or not. we have to figure out -- >> is that possible even though we're so far behind on testing? i'm sorry. >> yeah it's possible. it's going take longer. i think it's pobssible. it will take longer. you remember seeing those abbott toaster size testing machines, they would be everywhere. i think we need to figure out how we'll do testing. otherwise, you just have taken a chance. it comes out to a very personal decision. are you going to go to, a hairdress

hairdresser. am i going to barber? are we taking our grand children if we don't know whether it's safe to go there. i think it's a dilemma. it's been caused 100% by horrendous delays in a technology that americans should have developed a couple of months ago. this is we're in a situation where everybody wants to go back to work. i want the economy to get back. for goodness sake, we're now trying to play catch up and it's too late to make this happen quickly. the governors are in a terrible position either yieldsing to the political pressure or other local pressure to reopen everything and do so unsafely or wait longer, continue the public health measures and open when it feels safer. if you think about this on a personal level, it really does affect how you think about it in the macro sense of what we're doing in terms of public policy. >> it's such a horrible decision to have to make between physical and economic health.

gentlemen, thank you both very much. we are awaiting the president's news conference opinion it's now set to begin as 5:30 p.m. once it does, we'll bring it to you live. also ahead, with the virus still a potent threat, some states are already trying to get back to business. we'll go live to two states trying to balance health and economics. [ action music throughout ]

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as cases grow around the country and testing remains scarce, governors around the country and local officials are making plans to rope. out west, a coalition of states wrorki ing are working on a unified strategy. closer to the epicenter of the country's out break, new york is talking about upping up more rural areas in mid-may. kansas plans to lets its stay at home order expire in a few days. some states are beginning to

reopen right now. of those, georgia is leading the way by opening restaurants and movie theaters after already opening personal care businesses like hair and nail salons on friday. nbc news correspondent is in dallas where governor greg abbott outlined his reopening plan this afternoon. let us start with you. he lads out the next steps. what are they? >> the stay at home order that's been in effect for texas will expire on thursday night and come fri we will see reopenings. retail establishments, libraries and museums across the state will be allowed to reopen but only at 25% of their listed capacity and with a host of other hygiene and social distancing restrictions in place on them.

if you're in a rural county in texas or county that's had fewer than five confirmed coronavirus cases those same establishments can reopen but up to 50% of their listed capacity. then the governor wants to look with that, also doctors, dentist offices, sole pro pry torships, some other businesses open and there will be a pause until mid-m mid-may. at that point if there's not another significant spike or out break in cases. only then does the governor want to open things like is a lons, barbersho barbershops, gyms and bars. we'll see bit of a reopening starting friday and your restaurant experience, should you choose to have one, will look different. i was going through the regulations. no parties larger than six. all of your condi m vs to been disposable. no valet service. things will look different but it's a start to return to something like normal in texas come friday.

>> over the weekend, we saw a lot of people at huntington beach, california. packed crowds. what's the morning after like? is there a feeling of maybe we went too far in some of these communities? >> reporter: some officials are starting to question that especially south of l.a. in orange county. you talked about huntington beach, new port beach as well. tens of thousands of people on beaches especially on friday and saturday when temps were above average. newport will hold a meeting to discuss whether to close for the next three weeks. the governor sounding off during his briefing about what he saw at some beaches in california. take a listen to what he had to say. >> those images are an example of whatnot to see. whatnot to do. if we're going to make the

meaningful progress that we made in the last few weeks extend into the next number of weeks. this virus doesn't take the weekends off. this virus doesn't go home because it's a beautiful sunny day. >> reporter: governor newsom said california would be weeks, not months, but weeks away from seeing some changes to its stay at home order but that's con tin jents on not repeating images like what we're seeing at some beaches over the weekend. here they took a different approach. some of the beaches were open but there were restrictions in place. people could be on the sand if they are walking around but no sitting, no sunbathing and for the most part we didn't see much over crowding here. folks for the most part did a good job of moving around. toe totally different story in l.a. county. the beaches are closed with no plans to reopen any time soon. >> you'll have to fight the good weather across the country soon.

over the weekend here in new york it was a nice day on saturday and all the parks were crowded. some people or lot of people trying to social distance or they were alone wearing masks. there were families interacting with each other. what's the temperature there right now, joe? >> in ventura maybe like 70s or 80s. it's cooler along the water. it's not as hot in california say a friday, saturday or late last week when we saw temperatures in the 90s in many part of california. thing vs cooled down a bit. we have seen some people out here today but it's a monday. not nearly as busy when we were out here on saturday and a lot more people were aheheading out the beach. >> it's the rule of southern california, always live near the beach. the weather is cooler. ahead, is the meat supply chain in this country about to break down? plants remain shutdown and that could lead to food shortages. the latest on that plus worker

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welcome back. as the coronavirus crisis continues, it's becoming a abun dantsly clear there are several kinds of places that are incredibly vulnerable to outbreaks. places where social distancing is difficult, if not impossible. places like nursing homes, prisons and meat backing plants. tyson food just temporarily shut down a pork processing plant in

waterloo, iowa that's been linked to 180 cases. a smithfield processing plant in south dakota where more than 800 people tested positive remains closed and the governor says she hopes the plant will reopen in a matter of days. a jbs meat packing facility in colorado where as many as five workers have died from covid-19 has reopened. more than a dozen meat plants have closed at some point over the past two months leading to a 25% reduction in pork slaughtering capacity. the head of tyson's food warn that the food supply chain is breaking. nbc is live outside of that jvs plant in colorado. what is the status of the negotiations or the discussions between the union and plant?

>> reporter: let me show you some of what's going on right now as we speak. you can see this is where the employees are screened. we're starting to see more employees come in for their second shift. you can see this woman right here, she's not wearing mask and the people that are wearing a mask from the parking lot in, they are asked to remove their masks before they go into that white tent and once they make it inside that white tent, they are showing their ids and their temperatures are taken. they are screened and jvs says at that point if they are showing any signs or symptoms or have a fever, that's when they will be tested for covid-19. if they are cleared, they go through as you see those employees coming out the door right there and they will cross underneath a tunnel under this road and make their way into the plant itself which is over there. one other thing that i wanted to show you that you can see from the road -- >> i'm sorry, to interrupt. we have now just gotten a two

minute wampbi inwarning from th president. ooit going i'm going to hand it over to brian williams. >> the principals have been seated in the rose garden. this is not to be confused with the covid-19 task force news conferences that we have become used to. pretty much as a 7-day a week feature over the past few weeks. this was called as a separate news conference after we thought the president swore off those news conferences for covid-19 saying they weren't worth his time. this follows the debacle of an experience where he suggested insertion of uv light into the human body. the possible injection of disinfectants into the human body. that consumed the news cycle throughout this weekend.

this is where we find ourselves. this is build. you see the television monitors flanking the poeds yum, opening up america again. we're told this is about testing and how we get there. here comes the president and the vice president. >> today i would like to provide you with an update in our war against the coronavirus. there'sprehensive strategy, we have had such tremendous support all over. we continue to see encouraging signs of progress. cases in new york area, new orleans, detroit, boston and houston are declining. denver, seattle, philadelphia, wa washington, d.c., at la ta,

nashville, indianapolis are all declining. all parts are in good shape, getting better. in all cases getting better. we're seeing very little that we're going to look at as a sup superceding hot spot. things are moving along. really a horrible situation that we have been con fronted with but they are moving along. as we express our gratitude for these hard fought gains, we continue to mourn with thousands of families across the country. loved ones have been stolen from us by the invisible enemy. we grieve by their side as one family, this great american family, we do grieve. we also stand in solidarity with the thousands of americans who are ill and waging a braver fight against the virus. we're doing everything to heal the sick and gradually reopen

our nation and to safely get our people back to work. they want to get back to work and they want to get back to work soon. there's a hunger for getting our country back and it's happening and it's happening faster than people would think. they work side by side. it's clear that our aggressive strategy to slow the spread has been working and savoring countless lives. for those who are infected, we have taken unprecedented action to ensure they have the highest level of care anywhere in the world. the federal government is built more than 11,000 extra beds. shipped or delivered hundreds of millions of pieces of personal protective equipment. some of the people here are going to be talking about it. distributed over 10,000 vent

lat ilat ilators. every governor has more ventilators right now than they know what to do with. they are shipping them to different locations. we're shipping some to our allies and others tlouts the world because we have ventilators like the job that they've done in getting this very complex piece of equipment built. you don't hear about ventilators anymore exsent cept in a positi way. the united states is now conducted more than 5.4 million tests, nearly double the number tested in any other country. more than twice as much as any of the country. think of that. moments ago i came from a meeting with some of our nation's largest retailers including walmart, walwalgreens

cvs, krogers. we have leaders of the world top diagnostic companies and suppliers. these are great, great companies. these prooifivate sector leader along with others, have been exceptional partners in an unprecedented drive to expand the state's capabilities and our country's capabilities. the job they have done has been incredible. the testing that's been developed and being developed right now has been truly an amazing thing. i want to thank abbott laboratories for the job they have done.

i want to thank rosch. those two have stepped forward. abbott with a five-minute test that people can take. in five minutes they know what the answer is. i'd like to ask, if i could, the executives of these great companies and they have really helped us a lot over the last 45-day period. it's been nothing short of amazing. i want to ask them to come forward and say a few words about their company. plus they will make a big contribution to our country. please, come forward, please. thank you. >> thaunk you, mr. president. thank you for being here today and wa we would like to talk about is the progress we made. the last time we were here is

march 13th and we made tremendous progress. none of that could be made without the 47,000 people at quest diagnostics that are working around the clock. working out the tests and running the tests and delivering the rulgesults we need. we made progress. we're at quest diagnostics testing about 50,000 tests per day. we have been pushed by the task force to bring up that number by the end of may. we'll have 100,000 tests per day. about 3 million tests and these are the molecular tests we do today. we brought up serological testing. by the end of may we'll be close to 250,000 a day. about 7,000 a month. you put those two numbers together it's about 10 million tests by the end of may that we'll be doing at quest diagnostics. we're doing that in a quicker way. we have reduced that to one or

two days. our turn around time for people in hospital beds is less than 24 hours. we're doing that in the same we we done it with the fda, delivering the quality that you all expect. convenience will improve as well with convenience solutions. they'll be able to swap individuals more easily and also deliver to consumer the abilities to have consumers choose a test online with a telehealth provider. a i'd like to offer my colleague the podium as well. >> thank you. thank you very much for your leadership and for having us all here today. our scientists and our lab technicians are working day and night in order to do as many tests as we can for american public and to turn those tests around as quickly as possible. just 45 days ago, we said we could do several thousands tests a day. we can now do 60,000 tests day and we're continuing to expand

that capacity every single day. in addition, our scientists are working to make testing more convenient and easier. we have the swabs that are much smaller than the original one we launched with. we have the at home test. that test is for health care workers on the front line and first responders, but we will be rolling that out much more broadly over the coming weeks. we'll roll it out with no up front costs for the individual consumers. at the same time, we're building our capacity for serology testing. we can do about 50,000 today. we'll be able to do several hundred thousand per day by the middle of may. we'll work with the retailers, our colleagues that are here today, to help them as they expand their testing capabilities across the entire country. lastly, we have a rather large drug development business. we will continue to work with our colleagues in the

pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry to ensure we do everything we possibly can to enroll clinical trials fast so we can get new treatment and potential vaccines. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> mr. president, thank you and thank the administration for all of the collaboration to enable us to produce the test kits that companies like lab corp. and quest and other companies run. we met our original commitments of producing five million kits and week and we're up to scaling that in the coming weeks. i'd like to thank 75,000 colleagues around the world for their tireless effort to make that a reality and supporting all of our customers to have the testing necessary to get america back to work. >> thank you very much.

great job. >> we are the company that is going to produce the swabs to be used in testing kits. we have about 1200 people in our country in our cleveland operation. they have pivoted from the q-tip style swab to a swab that will have plastic stick with a polyester tip so they can be included in the kits. our cleveland team has done a wonderful job. they are excited to help in this effort. thank you, mr. president. >> thank you very much. appreciate it. >> mr. president, thank you. i'm with cvs health. it was a month ago we opened up our first drooi through test site. since that time, we have opened large scale testing facilities

across five states in partnership with the administration and working with the governors of rhode island ri, massachusetts, connecticut, ga g and georgia and michigan. we are testing with realtime results. we have capacity to test about 35,000 individuals each week and this afternoon we announce plans to expand that capacity even further. beginning in may, we will install testing capabilities in up to 1,000 cvs pharmacies. we'll be using our drive throughs and our parking lots with swab testing. again, you'll see that coming online in may. we also recognize the fact that the virus is disproportionately affecting our minority communities so we're working in partnerships with the national medical association to bring testing and care into the traditionally underserved communities. we're also beginning to

implement mobile capabilities with which to do that and as businesses are restarting their work force, we'll also be looking to assist them as they begin to come back to a normal operation. finally, assist them as they begin to come back to a normal operation. and finally, as my other colleagues, i just want to thank my cvs colleagues. they have done a phenomenal job in terms of helping people across communities in the country. and they're part of this army of health care professionals and front store and, you know, first line supervisors and workers that are doing terrific things to bring our country together. for that, we owe them a huge amount of gratitude. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. president. appreciate the invitation to be here today. it was just 45 days ago when we

were here. i'm richard ashworth. i oversee walgreen's in the u.s. i want to thank the 200,000 walgreen's team members taking care of our customers, giving them essential daily needs, the prescriptions that they need and even covid testing while we're here. we announced today we'll be expanding our testing capabilities across all states, including puerto rico. we'll be able to triple the volume we do now, and we're excited to do that. we're really excited with the public/private partnership we have here. we look forward to working with the additional states to get these sites up and running as fast as possible. as a pharmacist, i want to say i'm proud to be part of this profession. not just walgreen's, but all of them across grocery stores,

you're doing to help patients and helping them understand the problems that we're facing. pharmacy is right here. in it with everyone together in the community. we look forward to being part of the testing like we are now. serology, whatever that might look like, and treatment when the vaccine comes. so thank you for the opportunity. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. president. thank you, mr. vice president. we appreciate all you're doing to get america back to work and doing it safely. i represent kroger. i'm so proud of our 500,000 associates doing everything every day to keep our customers and associates safe. one of the things we were able to do is provide the basic practices we're doing, we call it blueprint. it's what we can learn from on

how to get america back working. we also announced earlier today, continuing to accelerate our practice on testing. we are actively engaged in six states. we'll take that to 12 states and the number of tests we do continues to grow faster. together, we will win, together we will solve this problem and move on. america is always great. thank you again. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. president. my name is doug mcmillen. i'm a walmart associate. i want to thank our associates for everything they're doing in our stores, distribution centers and e-commerce centers. they've been inspiring and continue to have a can-do attitude. we started 45 days ago like everyone else, and we've been operating sites now. we're up to 20 sites now, next week we'll be at 45 and end of

may 100. a few weeks ago, vice president pence and i were in a distribution center in virginia, a food distribute then center. he was find enough to thank our associates for us there, which is much appreciated. the president and vice president were speaking about surgical gowns and the president asked if he could put in an order for millions of surgical gowns. we don't normally buy those, so wasn't sure if we could do that. but i would like to thank our apparel team for partnering with us. we've been able to in the month of april, been able to secure 2.5 million surgical gowns and by the end of may, we'll have 6 million. so thank you for the opportunity to serve. >> great job. >> thank you, mr. president. and thanks to the team for get thing great operation up and running for benefit only the

company. i'm hayward donigan with rite aid. we had the -- i had the opportunity, as i was driving up, to stop at our richmond location and see the testing in action and thank the associates. whether it be security, pharmacy, front end, everybody who is helping with this great effort, and all of the customers that appreciate this so much. it was amazing to see. and i want to thank my 50,000 associates also for keeping these retail locations up and running during these really tough times. it's been quite amazing. and we, too, are going to expand our testing, and we're doing about 1500 a day. thanks. >> thank you. >> so thank you all very much. it's incredible what we have done together over a short period of time. i want to thank our vice president for the task force and the work. every day it gets better, and we

had a fantastic call with the governors today. and i would say that they are as thrilled as they can be considering that the fact is, there has been so much unnecessary death in this country. it could have been stopped, it could have been stopped short, but somebody a long time ago, it seems, decided not to do it that way. and the whole world is suffering because of it. 184 countries at least. but i want to thank all of these great businessmen and women for the job they've done. they've been fantastic working with us. as you know for several weeks, my administration is encouraged the governors to leverage unused testing capacity in states. very few understood we have tremendous capacity. then one week ago we provided each governor with a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers of the labs where they could find additional testing capacity in their states.

within 48 hours, the number of tests performed across the country began to absolutely skyrocket. on saturday alone, more than 200,000 test results were reported, which is a gigantic number, bigger than any country anywhere in the world for a much longer period of time. a numb they are is an increase earlier in the month to when we tested roughly less than 100,000 a day. so we much more than doubled it. that will be doubling again very shortly. we are continuing to rapidly expand our capacity and confident that we have enough testing to begin reopening and the reopening process. we want to get our country open and the testing is not going to be a problem at all. in fact, it's going to be one of the great assets that we have. today, we're releasing additional guidance on testing to inform the states as they develop their plans for a phased and very safe reopening. our blueprint describes how

states should unlock their full capacity, expand the testing platforms established, monitoring systems to detect local outbreaks and conduct contact tracing. we have it all. other countries are calling to find out what are we doing and we're helping them. we're helping a lot of countries with testing. just like we did on the ventilators. i directed our medicare program to make it easier for seniors to get the testing that they need, and the pharmacies, as you know, we are allowing pharmacies now to do testing. and we have other testing locations that we're going to be allowing also. but having pharmacies get involved, and testing is a big deal. we're asking governors to do the same in their medicaid program. so they're going to be authorized to do the same in medicaid. so that's a big deal. so we're deploying the full power and strength of the federal government to help states, cities, to help local

government, get this, horrible plague over with, and over with fast. there's tremendous energy in our country like now. energy like people haven't seen in a long time. a spirit that they have not seen. and we're doing very well, very well. considering what happened to us and considering if you look at what happened to others, this is something that the world has not seen for a long, long time. you can probably go back to 1917 where it was a terrible period of time. you all know what happened in 1917. that's over 100 years ago. with that, i would like to introduce, if i might, dr. birx, if you could come up. and then admiral, you can come up and you can explain the entire process and how much progress we've made and where we're going. thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. president. so the blueprint lays out the

roles and responsibilities to enhance our partnership between the private sector and the public sector, bringing together state and local governments with the federal government to ensure that we can accomplish and achieve our core objectives. first slide. the core elements include both three elements, robust diagnostic testing plans developed in partnership with state. and i want to thank the governors and the health officials who have been working with us to work through these issues. and also all the laboratory directors in the states as well as the american society for microbiology who have been working to assure that the plans were efficient and effective. within the diagnostic testing plan, there's really unlocking the full capacity of the states, increasing the number of testing platforms. we have tests for different platforms. increasing the ability to collect