announced five of ten regions in the state will be reopening today. his p.a.u.s.e. order extended until may 28th for beaches and hot spots. but he said state beaches will be opened the friday before memorial day. and here are the other facts this hour. retail sales plunging 16.4 in april, far more than predicted, as congress takes up a $3 trillion relief package today. congress said it's dead on arrival. the cdc belatedly issued watered down guide lins for schools and businesses, revised checklist for reopening after the white house blocked an earlier, much more restricted opening. and without warnings about his ousted vaccine expert rick bright, the president saying we will have a vaccine by the end of the year. experts telling nbc news he needs a miracle for that to be right. joining us, white house

correspondent peter baker, dr. marlg ret hammer from obama's administration and dr. michael osterholm from the infection disease control. the president said he has a vaccine announcement is and said it earlier this year that it would be likely by the end of the year. but experts are telling us that would be a miracle. is this reaction to dr. bright's testimony yesterday, the testimony from the vaccine whistle-blower, or is this something that has been worked up over days and weeks? >> i think both things are true, andrea. it's certainly fair to consider this a day of pushback and rebuttal at the white house. after weeks of stark warnings, dr. anthony fauci warning of the consequences of reopening too

quickly, counter to president trump's push to start the economy. and yesterday dr. bright, the vaccine expert turned whistle-blower, as it turns out, said the u.s. does not have a plan to distribute a vaccine even if one becomes available soon. what we expect from president trump any minute in the rose garden, as you see the shot on your screen, is he's going to formally roll out what the white house calls operation warp speed. he's going to introduce the people he tapped to lead it. including a former vaccine official at the ga laxio smithkline. and general gus perna, a four star general of the supply chain and he will handle the deployment part while slaoui

handles the performance start. and they are saying this is backing president trump's claim this could be done by the end of the year. >> let's talk about the fbi guidance which president trump previously presented in the rose garden, rapid test, reports starting at nyu and others as well that that test is flawed, there are a number of false negatives. 48% of fashion negatives in one case. this is the test the white house has been using for the president, vice president, white house staff, reporters who have any contact with the president. how disturbing is this? >> well, it is, of course, a concern as we've talked about before. tests are very, very crucial. but we have to know how reliable they are. so it's important to get this information out and now important to act on it. when you have a rapid test like that, you very often back it up with another test, the pcr test,

which does give you somewhat more reliable results. if you have someone who comes back negative that has symptoms and you're a physician taking care of that patient, you're going to send it off for followup with another backup test. but using it on asymptomatic as a screening tool for those who test negative and in fact are negative can be dangerous because we've seen individuals at the white house being tested every day have turned up positive. of course, one can be tested one day and get infected the next. so one test doesn't tell you everything you need to know either. >> and, of course, the president has been using the fact he is tested every day by this test, that is now being cast under suspicion by the fda itself, he's been using that to explain -- to justify why he does not wear a mask when he's out in public. i want to play dr. vin day

gupta, one of our contributors, who discussed this very fact with brian williams last night on "the 11th hour." >> this test effectively useless. new york university did a test and said they would not put it in their hospital that it's producing false negatives. the president should stop messaging on it. >> dr. hamburg, perhaps he is in one range of the scepticism about the test but it certainly raises concerns because this is what the president is relying on and has presented. he puts this box, the rapid test out in the rose garden and displayed it at a previous rollout. >> certainly by itself it is not enough. we need to understand more about how reliable it is. different studies have shown different levels of reliability but we have to recognize what it's good for.

it's a screening test. it's not a definitive test. you need to follow it up with a more definitive test if you really want to ensure whether the individual is infected. it needs to be used properly. frankly, the level of discrepancy between the actual reliability results in the field compared to the initial reporting on how sensitive and specific it was is disturbing. so i think abbott needs to take a very close look at this product. perhaps it could be improved upon. we do need rapid screening tests but this one is clearly not where we need to be and we need to be very careful about how we use it and what actions we take based on the findings from it. >> and peter baker, one of the issues also has been the white house claiming for quite some time that the obama administration didn't have a

plan. finally mitch mcconnell acknowledging on fox last night that in fact there was a handbook, a pandemic handbook, that was disregarded by the incoming trump administration. peter? >> that's right. kayleigh mcenany, the white house white house press secretary yesterday, held up that plan saying it was in fact inadequate. they came up with their own plan previously before this pandemic broke out. what's interesting about that, of course, is up until now what the president is saying who knew this could happen? we had no idea this could happen. now what they're saying is actually we had a plan for this. it's hard to reconcile those two messages. the president said repeatedly we opened the cupboard and the cupboard was left bare with stockpile. we found we had a broken testing system. how were those things only discovered in the last few months if in fact there had been a plan in advance? it's a conflict of messages here.

>> dr. osterholm, one of the messages about the virus is how you can contract it. i wanted to play part of an interview we've been talking about the last couple of days, our colleague dr. joseph az-zahir, working in africa with ebola and other viruses. he contracted it with a face mask and gloves but he was on a crowded flight home from new orleans after four weeks of being here. and he's very ill at home, in intensive care. here's part of kate snow's interview. >> my best guess at this point is because i wasn't wearing eye protection is it came through the eye route. >> should we all be wearing some kind of eye protection? >> in my opinion, yes. >> so dr. osterholm, should people be wearing eye protection when they go into a store? should they have unglasses on if

they don't normally wear glasses? is getting this virus through the eyes an important warning for people? >> i think we have to take a step back here and look at transmission in general. what we know today -- and i respectfully disagree with joe about how he might have contracted his infection. we know today aerosol, the very fine drop you and i put out just by speaking in a room, data yesterday from the nih confirming this, create a mist in an area just breathing in and out even with a surgical mask, the kind he was wearing, means you're still exposed to the virus. this was the fact why we had so many cases in health care workers who had been exposed because they had not access to n95 respirators, that are really important to keep the virus from coming in at all. so i would disagree with joe. i would say he likely got it because he was wearing a surgical mask. something that is a controversy, i agree, in this country.

because everybody wants to be masked today. i just want to use a mask to protect you, and i don't think he was using a protective mask. >> we should also point out dr. bright suggested because of the late rush to get masks into this country from china, that a lot of these have not been adequately tested. and he said that as many as -- as much as 30% -- or they could only protect about 30% against the virus among the health care workers with whom they were distributed because ppe was distributed so late. i also want to ask you about the president's timeline. he keeps talking about by the end of the year. we're hearing optimistic time lines for getting a vaccine from the president. i expect we will hear that from the rose garden very shortly. what is your best estimated length of time before we have a proper vaccine tested and vetted, which is another whole than weeks or months instead of getting it scaled up? >> yes, andrea, we all want to

be aspirational and make is this happen as quickly as possible. we have to stop promising we're going to move the grand canyon to fargo. that's not going to happen. so we have to match the science up and then manufacturing and distribution of that vaccine. when will it finally arrive and our population to protect them? i think there's no way this is going to be available by the end of this year, early next year. it's just not going to happen. i think we set back planning in this country in a major way by overpromising something that can't happen. >> dr. rick bright was testifying yesterday, the whistle-blower, as you know, saying there's no coordinated plan for dealing with this outbreak. let's watch. >> without better planning 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history. there is no master coordinated plan on how to respond to this outbreak. we don't have a strategy or plan

in place that identifies each of those critical components and we don't have a designated agency for the sourcing of those critical components. >> dr. hamburg, what is your analysis from as you know having left the administration previously? >> i think it's true there's not been a coordinated plan from the very beginning and that time after time that's set us back in our ability to damage control this pandemic. there are many, many over decades -- mike osterholm and i have been in this business since the 1990s, i believe, trying to find the range of pandemic athletes and how to best prepare for them. prevent them if you can but prepare. early detection and response is key and we lost the opportunity for that early response, even though we got the early warning

from the initial outbreak in china and then it's marched into and across europe. we did not develop the plan. the plan should have involved many important elements, including access to adequate, appropriate and reliable testing. access to critical medical equipment from personal protective equipment to ventilators and support for health care workers and our health care system. and also the public health structure needed, the contact str tracing and ability to isolate affected individuals and find their contract, their -- the people who have been possibly exposed by those individuals and ability to monitor and quarantine them. so all of these critical elements could have and should have been a part of a plan. but it was never laid out and we're always scrambling in a kind of herkie jerky way to try

to catch up and sometimes we can even see what is needed right in front of us with red lights flashing and still we're slow. so it's been very discouraging to see. i know many of these issues were in the pandemic plan that was left for the current administration, and many of these elements were actually practiced in the tabletop exercise that went on. >> dr. hamburg and dr. osterholm, thank you very much. i know you will stay with us to see what the president has to say. first, i want to shift gears for a bit and talk about the reopening across the country. wisconsin supreme court struck down democratic governor tony ebbers stay-at-home order this week and that barred the shutdown ahead of the orders. this has caused crowding at

local bars, not wearing masks or social distancing, leaving many to wonder about safety. shaq brewster is with us in wisconsin. what are you seeing there today? >> what you're seeing here in wisconsin is various differences not only county by county but business by business. things are vastly different. you see that in whaaukesha coun. when they struck down the stay-at-home rule they did it to force the government to sit down and renegotiate a reopening plan. now that the supreme court has acted and struck down that order, their leaders are now saying they're okay with different counties and different towns setting their own standards. and that's what you see here in waukesha, where there are no standards. you see businesses doing it on

their own and what they decide to do. listen to what people told me today. >> people just flocked to the bars. they were even two people deep. so i finished my business and then i left and still am an advocate for social distancing. because we don't know. >> because it was lifted statewide, do you think there will be a surge in cases? >> whether there is or there isn't, we have to see. we have to live. >> reporter: andrea, officials are saying what they are going to prepare for on a statewide level, but if there's a spike or increase in cases after people start coming out, you saw those images at bars and restaurants, if there's a spike, they will be ready for that and ready to put in new rules in place. right now what we are seeing is county by county, business by business. andrea? >> you were in michigan as well and that's another state that has had protests.

it's interesting it's wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. we will be going there in a moment. these are all three critical battleground states that actually decided the election in 2016. coincidence, shaq? >> well, no. i think that's part of it. and that's why president trump, for example, has been very involved in commenting when you have these reopenings in the different states. you saw that when he referenced a protest in michigan. he said liberate michigan on his twitter feed. he also commented and tweeted when the supreme court lifted those safer "hi-at-home orders. the president made it clear he wants to be involved putting pressure not only the reopening but pressure that devolved around partisan lines. where democrats want to take it a little more slow, be a little more cautious but republicans are saying they want multiple

controls and allow reopenings in certain sections of the state. andrea? >> of course, michigan's governor pointed out there were guns at some of these protests, where they stormed the capitol at some point. and there were some people -- some people, we should point out -- with con fed rfederate f and nazi symbols. now to pennsylvania. another third critical battleground state. businesses there have been closed for weeks. they may reopen their doors though today in beaver county, the one county that was accepted from the partial reopening without the state's approval. leaders decided to ignore the democrat i believe governor's edict leaving many businesses there caught between contradictory guidelines between county and state officials. joining me now is nbc's dasha burns in beaver county, pennsylvania. a critical county as well in the election and one of the counties are political reporters have been following because it was so critical in 2016.

dascha? >> hey, andrea, the scenes you're seeing in states like wisconsin, you're seeing also in pennsylvania. these trends are starting to emerge. the scenes in wisconsin are very real here. the residents on this strip in beaver are caught in the cross fire between local and state governments. county commissioners told them if they want to open their doors along the same guidelines as surrounding counties, they can go ahead and do so and they won't sequences at least from the county level. but the governor has come out and said he can sanction businesses who reopen prematurely. that has folks here pretty confused about what to do and nervous for their future. i spoke to the owner of grandpa joe's candy shop. he says he's an essential business. he actually had this open sign here since april 26th. but he talked to me about some of the tough choices business owners are facing right now. take a listen to what he said.

>> without a pandemic, without the government stepping in, owning a small business is scary every single day. so now they have this extra level of fear. i think some businesses will be defiant and they will open their doors, and i think they're not doing it because they're being defiant. they're doing it because they have to survive. >> now, andrea, the governor is expected to make an announcement today about more counties that will be allowed to reopen. he has seen a lot of pressure from counties like beaver but also from the president, who was here yesterday, saying the governor should really move a lot more quickly with the reopening. and remember, president trump won pennsylvania by less than 1% in '16. what happens here in the next few months could have a pretty big impact in november, andrea. >> indeed. dascha burns, thank you so much. joining us now michael

steele, former republican national political chair and former lieutenant general of maryland. what do you say about the politics of all of this? it's playing out pretty strongly in all three states. >> yes, andrea, the politics on this just stinks. the fact we're in the middle of a national pandemic, part of a global pandemic, and our political leadership's only play is to politicize this, is beyond unfortunate. people are going to get sibl again. people are going to die from some of these decisions that are being made. and that's not hyperbole. we're already beginning to see in countries that have cautiously reopened a new spike level emerge. we have our own scientists and doctors, andrea, who are telling us don't do this the way you're planning to do it. you just can't precipitously

open up your county or state without recognizing adequate testing is still not in place. i just don't get it. i just want to ask folks, who are you going to look to, since you like blaming folks for some, who are you going to blame when your grandmom gets sick or dad or uncle or your business doesn't get the revenue stream because folks with common sense are staying home in the face of the facts? which tell them to stay home. i don't understand it. i don't know anyone that desperate to get a tattoo or have a drink in a bar. i know a lot of folks stocked up their fridge and basement with a lot of beer and booze. if you're that desperate, take a glass, go on the front porch and yell at a neighbor. this is crazy what people are doing in the face of proving a point, supporting the lunacy of an administration that doesn't have a plan, just saying open up because it's going to get better

when? i don't understand it. it makes no sense to me. >> let me just play devil's advocate for a moment because really disturbing data from the fed yesterday that 40% of the people who lost their employment in march were making $40,000 or less. so you're talking about frontline workers. but perhaps you're also talking about small business owners and employees of small businesses and that is part of the urge to get back to work nationally. >> it is. and governors appreciate that. a lot of business owners appreciate that. it speaks, andrea, to the delicate balance we find ourselves in right now as a nation. how do you weigh the economic drivers that are pushing towards opening the economy because businesses have been stalled for two months and some won't recover versus the health of your employees? sure, you can go back to work

but under what conditions? you're not going to be able to fully staff up your restaurant or business the way you did before because you're not going to be able to allow the number of patrons into your establishment because of distancing regulations. if you violate those regulations, then you are putting not just your business at risk from the government coming in and shutting you down or finding you, but most importantly the people you're serving as well as the people who work for you. i get there's a delicate balance there. that's why it's so important as you heard from the guest in your previous segment and officials around the country that there's got to be a strategy based on some common sense facts about what we know and be -- and also reflective of what we don't still know about this virus. we have doctors out of hopkins and elsewhere who are making notes that this virus is possibly transforming itself,

it's mutating. children who once weren't getting sick are getting sick. there are still a lot of variables here that i think if you're going to weigh the economy versus the health, i'm going to fall more down on the health side. you can always rebuild an economy. i don't think you can get much health back when you're dead. that to me is a very stark reality, and a frustrating one but reality nonetheless. >> that's a very blunt and graphic way to describe it. thank you very much, michael steele. thanks to you and stay safe. coming up -- under pressure. president trump tried to turn the spotlight on a familiar target, former president obama. but to trump's claims carry weight or are they more conspiracy theories? we fact-checked and guess what we found? they're not true. stay with us. ♪

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now for our "friday fact check." the president is calling it obamagate, accusing president obama and former vice president joe biden of expiring againconst michael flynn. but a new investigation today conducted by "the washington post" and "the new york times" prove that's not true. the director of intelligence, richard berneling, turned over a list of officials, including obama and biden, who asked for the identity of the person heard on intercepts talking to the russian ambassador after the end

of the elections. that person was flynn. while the president and supporters are claiming such a request was part of a conspiracy to frame flynn, in fact those requests are routine. they're common. they occur thousands of times every year, including this year. when he became national security adviser, mike flynn went on to lie about what he said to the russian ambassador to both vice president pence and then the chief of staff, reince priebus. and then secretary of state sean spicer and then the fbi. that led to them recommending the president fire him. he then twice pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi and more recently withdrawing his plea and the attorney general then approving the prosecution be dropped, a very unusual occurrence. joining me now is our ben rhodes, former obama white house deputy national security adviser and frank figure lisi.

welcome to you both. how important is it for someone to ask questions to someone as important as the national adviser in the white house asking questions and having lied several times to officials about a conversation with a russian ambassador, a conversation picked up by an understood intercept of the ambassador, and, of course, flynn was involved in that having multiple qualifications with the ambassador. >> the answer to your first question, how prominent is it for prosecutors to move to dismiss their own case after a guilty plea? extremely rare. the answer to your second question, how often does the fbi interview officials to determine whether the case on them is valid and try to resolve a counterintelligence concern as to whether this person poses a continuing threat, very common. very common.

you have a national security adviser paid for by russia, photographed with president putin, acting as an unregistered foreign agent with turkey, and now sets in one of the most prominent positions in america, you need to resolve that. and that's what they attempted to do. when you hear obamagate, there's no such law. i tried looking up a law called obamagate and couldn't find one. but what this is all about is a conspiracy among obama senior officials to gin up the case on the front end. and what we're dealing with here is a valid attempt to resolve the question of whether the transition team for trump could be briefed on sensitive classified information or whether they had a problem in the form of flynn. >> and from my reporting, ben rhodes, there was a critical meeting january 5th, 2017.

'my understanding is you were not one of the five people in that room. the five people were president, vice president, sally yates, jim comey, fbi director and susan rice, national security adviser. it followed on a meeting you probably did attend, i'm not sure. but the point of that critical meeting, which has been well documented and sally yates has been on the record on this and susan rice actually wrote a memo to the file on this. in that meeting president obama apparently very explicitly said to jim comey, the fbi director, i don't want you to tell me about anything that's going on in a law enforcement context because he had a firewall that was traditionally held between the president and a.g. on these issues. but as president of the united states i need to know whether my national security adviser, susan rice, can proceed to disclose everything we know about russia to this incoming national security adviser or does he have

a counterintelligence issue? am i characterizing that correctly? >> yes, andrea, you're characterizing it correctly. i was in a preceding meeting which was about the investigation of the russian interference in our election, which was he briefed to congress publicly as well. this was a short followup to answer the question specific question you pointed to, can we be comfortable sharing sensitive information. it was not at all about giving any guidance or direction whatsoever as related to law enforcement matters. we didn't do that in the obama administration, unlike the trump administration, which has wildly politicized the department of justice, most acutely in letting off the hook somebody who literally pled guilty to lying to the government about his contacts with the russian ambassador that was causing concern in the first place. >> tonight best of your knowledge did president obama

know or vice president biden know jim comey was looking at a law enforcement issue and planning to question to have fbi officials question the incoming national security adviser once he was sworn into office? >> my knowledge at the time, you know, simply about this question of sharing information. we were very deferential to the department of justice and fbi about what they decided to do in terms of law enforcement investigations. look, andrea, it's very simple, if the actual interest here was in transparency about the masking, they can be transparent about the more than 16,000 masking requests the trump administration made in 2018, which shows how routine this is. if they're interested in transparency around michael flynn, they can release the transcript of those phone calls with the russian ambassador. why don't they do that if they're so interested in getting to the bottom of this? they're not. they're interested in taking the word gate and attaching it to

obama to distract from the fact we're in a pandemic and depression in the hopes our political culture will follow it like a shiny object. it's not true. it's bogus. trump cannot even describe what it is himself. all we're doing is expressing valid concern about whether you want to share sensitive information while we are still the responsible governing entity in the united states of america with somebody who might be compromised with his contacts with russia and his work as frank said with turkey. >> and, frank, one indicator now what comey actually said to this group of four other people is still classified. we don't know that. one indicator that there was information still shared that if there was a law enforcement issue, that susan rice spent 12 hours one on one briefing mike flynn about incoming threats and handing over 1,000 pages of reports. i want to ask you about where

judge sullivan this week asked for a retired judge, judge gleason, to become an amicus and become a part of this upcoming process where he will review the prosecution's request that the prosecution be dropped. >> i think the judge has a valid concern here. look, he's very familiar, intimately familiar with this case and with flynn. understand he's coming at it from a couple of perspectives. first, two officials have now con forward and said their words were mischaracterized and extorted by the attorney general in the filing to dismiss the flynn charges. marin mccord at doj and bill pre-steph at the fbi. and the judge came forward and said, look, you have two problems, mr. flynn. you either lied to the fbi when you denied talking about sanctions with ambassador kislyak or you lied to me.

so which is it, you're a liar, one way or the other. so he's got to get to the bottom of this. i don't think attorney general barr should rest easy and think this is going to sail through the courts. >> up this. thank you for participating in our "friday fact check." it was a pleasure to have both of you guys on to clear this up. meanwhile, researchers at oxford university said they have promising signs in the race to find a coronavirus vaccine. they said their experimental formulation, and i believe it's based on a vaccine previously used for another virus, so they got a head start, successfully produced antibodies to covid-19 in animals. the results on human trials could reveal a lot more promising indicators in coming weeks. nbc's keir simmons is in london. how far they coming with this?

>> they're ahead when you think of it as a race like that. it's a fascinating split screen, isn't it, to wait for the president to talk about vaccines and you vet that's going to be really a very political kind of take. and then you've got the scientists really just talking about the science and what they're trying to achieve. so what they did with this is test it on six monkeys. just six monkeys at the rocky mountains lab. it's an oxford university study. what they found is when they gave these monkeys the vaccination, they then did not fall with coronavirus, it did not penetrate their lungs the way that coronavirus does in many people. that's got them really hopeful. the other side of it too, andrea, is they didn't see substantial side effects. what could happen with vaccines is your body reacts badly and starts to attack the vaccine if

you like, and overattack it, to put it in kind of layman's terms. that didn't happen either. to be very fact it's six monkeys tells you something that it's a small study. but it's got people hoping. hopely partly because, as you rightly say, this is a vaccine that's based on a vaccine they've been working on over many, many years for other kinds of viruses, including other coronaviruses. what they've done, to not put it in scientific terms, they just tweaked it to fit this new coronavirus. and that's why they're hoping it would work in humans because they already tested it in humans. >> we see the president walking out now. i just want to also point out in this race for a vaccine, the u.s. has not participated in global meetings like in london. french officials are saying if they come out with the virus, they will not let the u.s. get it first. this will be a global race as well.

keir, let's stand by as we listen to the president. >> i thank this group for joining us as we announce a historic ground breaking initiative in our ongoing effort to rapidly develop and manufacture a coronavirus vaccine. we're joined by secretary steven mnuchin, secretary mark esper, secretary alex azar, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general mark milley, fda director dr. stephen hahn, director of the national institute of health, dr. francis collins, dr. fauci, dr. birx. we're joined by a very terrific group of professionals. tomorrow will mark 30 days since we released the white house guidelines for the safe and phased opening of america. that's what we're doing. it's the opening of america. we'll have an amazing yooer nea year. great transition into the fourth quarter. as of this moment every state

has taken steps to begin reopening and the american people are doing an extraordinary job of continuing to take precautions while at the same time wanting to start, and they will be starting, to resume their american way of life. we will be reigniting our economic engines. we're going to be taking care of our most vulnerable, which are our senior citizens and some others. we're going to be working very, very hard on our senior citizens and our nursing homes. and various communities that support those that are struggling in this very difficult ti time. secretary purdue today with ivanka trump launched the farmers and families food box families which will provide $3 billion to help small farmers. it will be helping farmers and ranchers but it will be bringing food to some of the food lines

and some of the food kitchens that you have been seeing on television. i said why aren't we doing that? we have all of this tremendous food produced by our farmers and our ranchers. we're going to be buying $3 billion worth of that food. great for everybody, our farmers, our ranchers and people who need great food. a key feature of our reopening plan is the largest and most ambitious testing system in the world by far. america is now conducting close to 350,000 tests per day, an unthinkable number just a short while ago. northern anybody in the world by far. suggesting many states now have excess testing capacity to monitor for new outbreaks, florida, many other states have so much testing. testers are waiting for people to show up. it's great. another essential pillar of our strategy to keep america open is the development of effective treatments in vaccines as quickly as possible.

i want to see if we can do that very quickly. we're looking to -- when i say quickly, we're looking to get it by the end of the year if we can. maybe before. we're doing tremendously well. from the earliest days of the pandemic, we've marshalled the genius of american scientists and researchers from all across government and the private sector, from academia, from everywhere, to vanquish the virus and tremendous strides had been made. i can tell you, i get to see it every day. tremendous strides are being made. scientists at the nih began developing the first vaccine candidate on january 11th. think of that. within hours of virus' genetic code being posted online. so january 11th, most people never even heard what was going on january 11th. and we were out there trying to develop a vaccine, not even knowing what we were up against. then my administration cut through every piece of red tape to achieve the fastest ever by

far launch of a vaccine trial for this new virus, this very vicious virus. and i want to thank all of the doctors and scientists and researchers involved because they've never moved like this, or never even close. the nih and hhs have also been working constantly with private industry to evaluate more than 100 potential treatments. the food and drug administration has swiftly approved more than 130 therapies for active trials. that's what we have right now, 130. and another 450 are in the planning stages. and tremendous potential awaits. i think we're going to have some very interesting things to report in the not-too-distant future. and thank you very much to dr. hahn. through an historic series of funding bills, my administration is providing roughly $10 billion to support a medical research

effort without parallel. i especially want to thank senator steve daines of mnts for his incredible work. he's worked so hard to secure additional funding for vaccine development. he's been right at the forefront. today i want to update you on the next stage of this momentous medical initiative. it's called you operation warp speed. that means big and it means fast. a massive scientific, industrial, and logistical endeavor unlike anything our country has seen since the manhattan project. you really could say that nobody's seen anything like we're doing, whether it's ventilators or testing, nobody's seen anything like we're doing now within our country since the second world war. incredible. its objective is to finish developing and manufacturing and distribute a proven coronavirus vaccine as fast as possible.

again, we'd love to see if we could do it prior to the end of the year. i think we're going to have some very good results coming out very quickly. in addition, it will continue accelerating the development of diagnostics and breakthrough therapies. the great national project will bring together the best of american industry and innovation, the full resources of the united states government, and the excellence and precision of the united states military. we have the military totally involved. we're also working very strongly with other countries who also have some great, great scientists and doctors. we're all working very closely together and they're viewing us as the leader, and we are -- the relationship with other countries on solving this problem has been incredible. to date operation warp speed has brought together all of the experts across the federal government from places like the nih, cdc, fda and many other

agencies. this historic partnership will now bring together the full resources of the department of health and human services, with the department of defense and we know what that means, that means the full power and strength of the military, and the military really talking about the logistics. we get it, when we get it. that means the logistics getting it out so everybody can take it. and today we're proud to announce the addition of two of the most highly respected skilled professionals in our country, worldwide respected. operation warp speed's chief scientist will be dr. moncef slaoui, a world renowned immunologist who helped create 14 new vaccines -- that's a lot of our new vaccines -- in ten years during his time in the private sector. one of the most respected men in the world in the production and

really the formulation of vaccine. joining dr. slaoui, his chief operating officer will be general gus perna, a four-star general who currently overseas 190,000 service members, civilians and contractors as commander of the u.s. army material command. that means logistics. that means getting it out. we've got to get it out there. so, general, thank you very much. and doctor, thank you very much. it's great to have you on board. really highly respected people. thank you. these two outstanding individuals will provide more details following my remarks. in preparation for this initiative, experts throughout the government have been collaborating to evaluate roughly 100 vaccine candidates from all over the world. they identified 14 they believe are the most promising and they're working to narrow that list still further. we started off with over 100 and we're down to 14. we have really interesting

choices to be made. we're doing very well. through operation warp speed, the federal government is providing unprecedented support and resources to safely expedite moving on at record, record, record speed. while we accelerate the final phases of vaccine trials, "operation warp speed" will be simultaneously accelerating its manufacturing and manufacturing process. in other words, we're getting ready so that when we get the good word that we have the vaccine, we have the formula, we have what we need, we're ready to go, as opposed to taking years to gear up. we're gearing up, it is risky, it is expensive, bought we'll be saving massive amounts of time. we'll be saving years if we do this properly and that's what we're doing. so we're gearing up on the assumption that we'll have in the near future relatively near

future a vaccine. typically pharmaceutical companies wait to manufacture a vaccine until it is received all of the regulatory approvals necessary. and this can delay vaccines availability to the public as much as a year and even more than that. however, our task is so urgent that under "operation warp speed", the federal government will invest in manufacturing all of the top vaccine candidates before they're approved so we're knowing exactly what we're doing before they're approved. that means they better come up with a good vaccine because we're ready to deliver it. this will eliminate any unnecessary delay and enable us to begin providing americans with a proven vaccine the day our scientists say we're ready, we got it. and as we work to bring critical medical production back to america, these vaccines will manufacture that we're going to be focused on and manufacturing,

they're all going to be right here in the usa. now, we're working as i said with other people, outside. and that's fine too. we want to get to the solution. we know exactly where the other countries are, and we'll be very happy if they are able to do it, we'll help them with delivery, in every way we can. we have no ego when it comes to this, no ego whatsoever. "operation warp speed" is making the necessary preparations to distribute these life saving treatments at scale, so we're talking about massive numbers, so that millions of americans will quickly have access to them. this includes ramping up production of supplies, and needed for distribution and i have to say, we're also very, very much involved in other things other than the vaccine, if you take a look at what we're doing beyond vaccines it going

to be very interesting and we may talk about that in a little -- in a little while. but this includes ramping up production of supplies needed for distribution such as cold chain storage, glass vials, needles, syringes and more. we'll have everything right on hand ready to go. when a vaccine is ready, the u.s. government will deploy every plane, truck and soldier required to help distribute it to the american people as quickly as possible. america's blessed to have the most brilliant talented doctors and researchers anywhere in the world. we have the mightiest military by far in the world, our military is completely rebuilt, much of the equipment has been delivered, some of it is on the way. all made right here in the usa. we took over very, very empty cupboards, i say, medically. we had empty cupboards in a military sense, our military was in sad shape, it was depleted. we now have the strongest

military, the united states has ever had by far and the best equipment. and you hear that outside, that beautiful sound, those are truckers that are with us all the way. they're protesting in favor of president trump as opposed to against, hundreds of trucks out there and that's the sign of love, not the sign of your typical protest. i want to thank our great truckers, they like me and i like them. we're working on something together. but we have the mightiest -- and they'll be helping us with this, by the way, speaking of truckers. we have the mightiest military in the long history of human kind, we have the best and most devoted workers ever to walk the face of the earth. and now we're combining all of these amazing strengths for the most aggressive vaccine project in history. there has never been a vaccine project anywhere in history like this. and i just want to make something clear, it is very important, vaccine or no vaccine, we're back. and we're starting the process. and in many cases they don't

have vaccines and a virus or a flu comes, and you fight through it, we haven't seen anything like this in 100 some odd years, 1917. but you fight through it, and people sometimes i guess we don't know exactly yet, but it looks like they become immune or at least for a short while, maybe for life, but you fight through it, but what we would like to do, if we can, is the vaccine. i think we'll be successful in doing it, hopefully by the end of the year. just as generations of americans before us faced down the most difficult trials, set their sights on the highest summit and overcame the biggest obstacles, america will meet the moment and this moment specifically in our time. with unrivalled speed, unmatched skill, and the unyielding spirit of the american people, our nation will come back stronger and greater than ever. we're going to have a tremendous year next year. we're going to have a really good fourth quarter. we're going to have a very

interesting and productive transition quarter, where steve is there and i'm sure our secretary of the treasury, i think you feel the same way, steve. and thank you for your good work. really good work. and it is not finished yet, is it? i want to thank steve mnuchin, everybody. now, i'd like to ask dr. slowy and general purna to come up and say a few words followed by secretary azar and secretary esper. thank you, all, very much. we're doing something that has never been done before. it's going to result in a tremendous end, i think we're going to come up with a solution to a problem like this country probably has never seen before, us about it is an honor to be your president, we're doing a great job, these people are doing an incredible job. the people right here, i want to thank you all, total professionals, great men, great women. thank you all very much.

please. >> thank you, mr. president. good afternoon, everyone. it is a great honor and privilege for me to have the opportunity to serve our country and the world in this remarkable endeavor. extraordinary endeavor. helping them and supporting them do it. the "operation warp speed" objectives are very clear. the president described them. and i believe they are very credible. i also believe they are extremely challenging. however, i am really confident that our team across the many governmental agencies that are involved in this efforts nih, cdc, fda, esper and with the support of the army and our partners in the private sector will be able and will do the utmost to deliver these objectives.

in fact, mr. president, i have very recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine. and these data made me feel even more confident that we will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020. and we will do the best we can, the best we can to do that. thank you. we will of course also focus on progressing and accelerating development of medicines for those who unfortunately already caught the virus. this will be our focus 24/7 over the next many months. thank you. >> good afternoon, mr. president. thank you, thank you for this great honor for allowing me to be a part of this team. i'm very excited about this team. it will be historic as we

execute the mission that has been given to us. i also feel very confident that the team will be able to provide the results as directed. it is going to be a herculean task, but the combination of the two main partners between health and human services and the department of defense, their combined strengths, partnered with the other teammates, will ensure our success. one of the great advantages that we have as a military is our ability to do logistical and sustainment operations afar. we're just going to apply those capabilities to this mission. this mission is about defeating the enemy. we will defeat the enemy. why? because winning matters. and i'm excited to be a part of this team, and mr. president, thank you. >> thank you very much, appreciate it. >> well, thank you, mr. president, for your leadership of this historic effort.

your vision for "operation warp speed" setting a goal of a vaccine by january 2021 will be one of the great scientific and humanitarian accomplishments in human history. today you're announcing the team that can get it done. dr. slaoui is the most experience the and most successful vaccine developer, responsible for some of the major recent breakthroughs in vaccines. general perna oversees one of the world's largest logistics and supply chain operations, the one that keeps the army running. three highly accomplished career hhs scientists will oversee each area of "operation warp speed." dr. peter marks of fda for vaccines, dr. janet woodcock of fda for they're pewter therape. we started work on each of these areas in january and congress has provided nearly $10 billion explicitly for this kind