earlier today i spoke with seema verma.he heads the center for medicare and medicaid services and is part of the coronavirus task force. thank you so much for joining us, very grateful for your time. do you think your agency is doing enough, did enough in assisting seniors during the crisis? >> well, first of all, let me just say that our hearts and minds go out to the nursing home patients and their families. this has been an enormously difficult time. and nursing home residents were amongst the most vulnerable to the coronavirus. that's why we took early action, putting out infection control policies, reminding nursing homes of those long-standing guidelines. and we've continued to update that information based on the latest science and information. >> i'd like to take you back to early march. you received a letter from congress raising concerns that nursing homes were especially at risk from covid-19 outbreaks. the letter from senator ron weiden and richard neil accused the administration of previously weakening safety s

says he coinues to support he lawsuit but ceers for medicare and medicaiservices administrator seema verma sa it's not the administration's top priority right now we' focused on dealing with it with the pandemiobviously there are problems with e ac a at ha created insurance costs that are so expensive that a lot of people can't afrd them. oregon ngressman earl blumenauer says the president should withdraw his support for the lawsuit. >>jack is. the biggest outrage near the notion that he would continue to try and undei don't scare f millions of americans. >>even as the administration is woing to end the ac a it's encouraging more people to sign up for a ca plans, especially the more than 3 million americans who reported losing their jobs last week because of the coronavirus all of those people can come to the exchange and ey can they n apply for coverage day the supreme courtwill hear the case chalnging the ac a meantime republican louisiana senator john kennedy is among those working to prepare for an end to the ac a with a new piecof legislation it's all simple and sa you were going ever

seema verma from the task force is coming up. i just could not hear. i was hesitant to get the hearing aids because of my short hair, but nobody even sees them. (avo) our nearly invisible hearing aids are just one reason we've been the brand leader for over 70 years. (deborah) when i finally could hear for the first time, i started crying. i could hear everything. (avo) call 1-800-miracle to start your 30 day risk-free trial and schedule your free hearing evaluation today. >> ed: fox news alert. the coronavirus pandemic hitting another grim milestone amid new warnings the worst could be yet to come. welcome to a new hour of "america's newsroom," i'm ed henry. >> sandra: i'm sandra smith. 1,000 people in the u.s. have now died from the virus in a single day. pushing the total to now more than 5,000 deaths with the caseload now above 200,000. new york remains the hottest spot of this outbreak still. hospitals in the city under siege and pushed to the brink scrambling for extra beds and lifesaving equipment. president trump now on whether people should be

one on one with seema verma, white house task force member. "nightline" will be right back.

analytics and share care, the company running this, has been through a couple million records, and some seema verma has been very supportive of this. and big hospital system they give data to us to figure out if it is just a blip, or something real. we don't know. and i don't want people too jump up and down this is proof, listen, we have the ability in america to begin to answer important questions about covid-19 using some of the tools that are made this country great. having to to with basic analytics and big data. lou: -- doctor, always good too have you with us, we join you in cautious hope, keep our feet on the ground, we know what is ahead of us, we hope better than projections and estimates, thank you dr. oz. >> a time when tens of millions of americans are out of work, american businesses are hiring immigrants for low and high-skilled job, last week department of homeland security halted approval of 35,000 season worker visas, at order of the president, the department is processing 85,000 winners of so-called h-1b visa lottery for white collar jobs that would start in october, most of thos

also we know azar was butting heads with seema verma, another task force member that works at hhs andortantly a very close ally of vice president pence. so two big thing there's. we haven't seen azar in any of these publicized briefings, on camera, doing any interviews for weeks now. the speculation has been growing, but there is another side to note. one, we know that there's a lot of finger-pointing now. a lot of blame game. we're coming off of weeks of a negative criticism from not just the american people but also from state leaders who are asking for help from the federal government they say they hadn't received. and there finger-pointing who exactly to blame for this response and blame for the negativity surrounding it. one thing there to point out. the other thing, president trump, told by a senior administration official would have to sign off on any moves. across the white house and administration, not a big desire for a massive shake-up amid this response. >> christian holmes, thank you so much, from the white house. >>> the president's remarks about injecting or ingesting d

hospitals to provideservices off site centers for medicare and medicaid services administrator seema verma says the agency is changing the rules to pay for patient's treatmnt outse of hospitals d clinics fema is already helping expand hpital space in states across the country. us as this initiative adds to the work th have done and allows more involvement on the local level we want to do is empower lol communities to start thinking about this and to use the resources that they already have in their community the sienna swimmers will allow hospitals transfer an infected patients tothese sites making room for coronavirus as far as filling ese new spaces with supplies. berman says they want to make sure health care workers have thtools they need to save lis team has set a very specal for some people that are working to find supplies and then we've also seen a great response from the pvate sector the united states. i think we're hearing ery day about companies that are stepping forward toproduc ventilators we heard that om ge from us as new efforts are being made every day at the agency to tak

we also knew azar was butting heads with seema verma, a close ally of vice president pence. and we had not seen azar in any public briefing or doing any interviews for weeks. but one thing to note is the timing of all of this. while the trump administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been widely criticized, the last few weeks have been particularly bad, ranging from republican governors begging the federal government for help with testing to those comments on thursday night about ingesting some sort of disinfectant to clear your body for coronavirus. this is a time of extreme tension, of blame shifting, and of finger pointing. but it does appear tonight that president trump is saying that azar will not be a victim of that blame shifting. at least he will not be a victim tonight. i do want to mention that sources point out to us that there wasn't a huge appetite for a big shake up at the white house during this coronavirus pandemic response. kristen holmes, cnn, the white house. >>> and joining me now in new york, cnn medical analyst dr. kent sec wits. great t

allows hospitals to provide servicesff site centers for medicare and medicaid services administrator seema verma says the agency is changing the rules to pay for patient's treatment outside of hospitals and clinics fema is already helping expand hospital space in states across the country. us as this initiative adds to the work they have done and allows more involvement on the local level we want to do is empower local communities to start thinking about this and to use the resources that they already have in their community the sienna swimmers will allow hospitals to transfer an infected patients to these sites making room for those testing positive for the coronavirus as far as filling these new spaces with supplies. berman says they want to make sure health care workers have the tools ey need to save lives team has set a very special for some people that are working to find supplies and then we've also seen a great response from the private sector in the united states. i think we're hearing every day about companies that are stepping forward to prode ventilators we heard that from ge from us

we briefed on the disbursement of resources to local hospitals with seema verma and gave an update about what the secretary of state spoke today. remarkable to think more than 50,000 americans brought back home through nearly 500 flights and we thank the members of congress who have worked with the state department to identify family members and groups that found themselves stranded overseas and we are grateful for that. in addition to interaction with members of congress today, we spoke with the president of the henry ford hospital, it is the henry ford hospital that is conducting a clinical trial for hydroxychloroquine, he expressed great enthusiasm and they had a rather overwhelming response to the initial trial which is beginning this week with 3,000 people taking the hydroxychloroquine or a placebo they can match it. what the president of the henry ford hospital told me as they would like to expand the test. i put him in touch with steve han of the fda and we'll be adding several more clinical trial paths to look at impacts on particular demographic groups including seniors and mino

the team you assembled in january, seema verma, dr. she hahn of the fda. it's been inspiring to have the privilege to work with. the coronavirus task force met today. it was reported to us at this moment 746,000 americans tested positive for the coronavirus. unfortunately 68,000 -- fortunately 68,000 have fully recovered. but sadly 41,000 americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. we want to express your deepest sympathies to the tam hi -- to e families in their loss as well as the families who have loved ones struggling with this disease. today we have seen encouraging news again about our progress as a nation. president trump reflected on those momentarily. but the coronavirus white house task force today learned that our large metro areas continue to stabilize and see progress. the new york metro area including new jersey, new york, connecticut, and long island all appear to be past their peak. the detroit metro area appears to be past its peak and it's stable. the norms me though area is the most stable of all. areas where we had a main metrop

seema verma, who you deal with all the time, administrator. jared kushner, ceo of the u.s.nternational development finance corporation. adam bolan, rear admiral john bilufschek and pat werk, appreciate everybody for being here. we will have a big discussion today having to do with costs and hospitals and obviously, how it relates to the hidden enemy. look forward to discussing our new partnership to establish the dynamic ventilator reserve. as you know, hospitals throughout the country currently have more than 60,000 unused ventilators. probably never had so many, have you? what do you think? are you building up or are you going down? are you going in the right direction? >> slowly. >> slowly but we're building thousands of them right now. we're grateful that through this initiative, your hospitals are committing to lend unused surplus ventilators to other hospitals that have an immediate need and you have been doing that. we appreciate it. fema and hhs will support this initiative by guaranteeing that in the unlikely event a lending hospital needs or if there is a big lend

seema verma has been great getting allies. we will look at about 100 million records, i hope, and try to give america an idea using big data and analytics whether or not this is actually a trend or just a blip. it might be a preventing -- >> harris: we want to get to view or questions, i want to mention that sharecare is a company you have a connection to you. you can tell us quickly about that. you've been talking with french doctors. you've been studying this. you and i have talked about it for over a month. they've done a wide study. i believe it was with, what, about a thousand patients that they looked at hydroxychloroquine, and that combination prayed i will also say, is that combination with azithromycin? are those things working together? quickly and we will get two of your question. >> dr. oz: i just spoke to the doctor, world-famous infectious disease specialist. he's now got 1,000 patients he's taking care of using the hydroxychloroquine we've discussed, with azithromycin, which is z pack. that combination of medica

i want to thank seema verma, who went through with us and thanks to the lab directors, they really explained to us highly technical difficulties to run some of these pieces of equipment. you have to do this samples, centrifuge, put them on the machine, take it full-time. at $50 a test it wasn't enough to hire another technician to run the machine full-time. at $100 a test, it is. those are the kinds of changes we have to make bit by bit. that alone doubles our testing capacity per week. we are committed to work with laboratories to answer everyone of their issues with the state and local governments. i think frankly every conversation i have and the governors will say i need 5,000 people tested. as i say, at the university of x, there are 6700 tests waiting for you. so it's more of making sure every governor in every public health official knows exactly where every lab is and where the tests are so we can create with them real understanding so all these tests can be run. so yes, there is twice the capacity right now. >> president trump: just so you understand, we have tremendous testing capa

the center stared seema verma weighing in on this >> i think the task force has been committed to makingthe american people, "let's all follow 30 days to slow the spread, so we can get through this quicker." may 1st, that would be -- obviously we hope that would come, but i think it's too early to identify a specific date. that being said, the president has been very clear that he wants us to get through this as quickly as possible. >> harris: meantime, stocks continue to climb as the fed announces that more than $2 trillion in new and expanded lending programs to shore up the economy. dr. saphier, let me ask you. one of the reasons we seen stocks really rally today is said chief jay powell came out and said he thinks the economy could rebound in the third and fourth quarter, which seems really optimistic to me. that's predicated on the idea that we can get people out and back to work, and that they continue to do the good work they are doing now, staying in. what is a safe way we can get people back out into work at? is it doing the antibody testing? what is the formula, do you think? >

we also had admiral john poe poe poe polowczyk and distributed on local hospitals with seema verma and what the secretary of state spoke about today. remarkable to think more than 50,000 americans brought back home through nearly 500 flights and we thank members of congress who have worked with the state department to identified family members and groups that found themselves stranded overseas and we were grateful for that. in ad diagnose to our interaction with members of congress today we spoke with the president of the henry ford hospital, bob renny. it is the henry ford hospital that is conducting a clinical trial for hydrochloroquine. they had overwhelming response to initial trial beginning this week with three thousand people taking hydrochloroquine or a placebo so they could match it, but what the president of the henry ford hospital told me they would like to expand the test. i put him in touch with steve hahn of the fda and we'll be adding several more clinical trial paths to look at impacts on particular demographic groups including seniors and minority populations and more

birx and then seema verma and dr. fauci and we will take all of your questions. >> thank you, mr. vice president. hopefully you can see from these numbers that we've taken a data-detailed approach bringing the power of granular data to the supply chain and moving supplies based on really what you would call the burden of disease and need. if i could start out by not just going to the numbers but really talking to the community of health advocates. to the community that works on the social determinants of disease and the communities of the historic black colleges and universities. we really need to improve messaging. i am asking them to help us increase the messaging around this. we don't want to give the impression that the african-american community is more susceptible to the virus. we don't have any data that suggest that. what our data suggests is they are more susceptible to more difficult and severe disease and poor outcomes. we really need to make sure that every household is aware of what it's going to take to protect the individuals in the household that have pre-existing

birx and seema verma and dr. fauci will take all of your questions. >> thank you, mr.e president so hopefully you can see from those numbers that we have taken a data detail approach really bringing the power of granular data to the supply chain, moving supplies, based on what you would call burden of disease and need. i can take, start out by not just going to the numbers at the beginning but really talking to the community of health advocates, to the community that works on social determinants of disease and communities of historic black colleges and universities. we really need to improve messaging and i'm asking them to help us to increase the messaging around this. which don't want to give the impression that the african-american community is more susceptible to the virus. we don't have any data that suggests that. what our data suggests they're more susceptible to more difficult and severe disease and poorer out comes. we really need to make sure every household is aware of what it is going to take to protect the individual in that household have preexisting cond

hahn and administrator seema verma are doing and also administrator angles to ensure that our federally funded clinics are actively engaged in all these aspects. i also want to recognize the military, the medical corps, the nursing core, the medical subspecialty car. my brothers and sisters for 29 years. it's highly unusual for the active force to be called into a domestic situation. i think that shows you how serious we are taking it at the federal government level. in my 29 years with the military, i was never deployed domestically. this is showing you how serious of an event we take it. if the military is deploying domestically, it's another reason for every american to be following these guidelines. on cdc, quietly launched a new website. cdc.gov and go to covid-19. you can find their surveillance data. this surveillance data is bringing together our influenza-like illnesses with their syndromic management databases. you can track the respiratory disease across the united states. the states are used to using the system. it's in emergency rooms. it's in hospitals. it's in doctor's of

joining now live is the cms administrator, seema verma. great to see you. dr.gram yesterday with both of us and he talked about glimmers of hope, that he's starting to see signs of optimism. reducing more that this morning? >> that's right. even though it's been a very tough week and our hearts and minds are with all the friends and families that have lost loved ones, we are starting to see a little bit of that flattening of the curve. i think that has to do with the great work that every american is doing to implement 30 days to slow the spread. those actions that we are taking to not go out and to be socially distant, tuesday 6 feet away from people, all of that is starting to have an impact but it doesn't mean that we should stop. we need to continue to do those things that we can get through this quicker. >> ed: we noted at the top you been providing in the last week or so 34 million in money to get support to health care workers but house democrats released a report that you only sent about 1% of the 3.5 billion masks that you said were needed out there to

i want to thank administrator seema verma who went through with us and the lab directors, they really explained to us highly technical difficulty to run some of these big pieces of equipment. you have to centrifuge, put them on the machine. it takes a tech full-time. at $50 a test it wasn't enough to hire another technician to run the machine full-advertisement at $100 a test, it is. those are the kinds of changes we have to make bit by bit by bit. that, alone, doubles our testing capacity per week. so, we're committed to work with laboratories to answer every one of their issues with the state and local governments, and i think frankly every conversation i have, and the governors will say i need 5,000 people tested and i say, well, at the university of x, there are 6700 tests waiting for you. so, it's more making sure that every governor and every public health official knows exactly where every lab is, and where the tests are, so we can create, with them, a real understanding so all these tests can be run. so, yes, there is twice the capacity right now. >> just so you understand --

administrator seema verma will be telling you a little bit more about it. mike will tell you a few words, then seema will speak, tell you a little bit more about that. our administration continues to supply our hospitals with equipment they need, and beds if necessary, but it looks like we are totally covered on beds. we have plenty of beds. it is highly unlikely, that would be bad news if we needed more beds, but it looks like it is going just the opposite direction. i want to thank governor cuomo, the relationship there for this whole thing, we are building hospitals. it was very good. we built a little bit more than we needed, and that is good, as opposed to building a little bit less, that is not good. but he has worked very well with us. the governor of louisiana has been great on that whole situation with the beds. frankly, the governor of michigan was very good with us on beds. you know, it is a very complex subject. you need buildings or you have to do tents or a lot of different things, a lot of different ways. the army corps of engineers was fantas

in the team you assembled in january, some of whom are with us today, seema verma, admiral giroir, dr. steve holland, and others represent a level of commitment and dedication that has been inspiring for me to have the privilege to work with. i thank you for your gracious words. that white house coronavirus task force met today. thiss reported to us at moment, more than 700 some 6000 .mericans tested positive more than 68,000 americans have fully recovered. but sadly, more than 41,000 americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus. we always want to express our deepest sympathies to the families in their boss as well as the families who have loved ones are with this disease. today, we have seen an courage asnews -- encouraging news -- about our progress. president trump reflect on those momentarily. the coronavirus white house task force today learned that our large metro areas continue to stabilize and see progress. the new york area, including new jersey and new york, long island, connecticut, rhode island, up here to be passed to their peak. the detroit metro area up here to be

birx and then seema verma and dr. fauci and we will take your questions. dr. birx: thank you. hopefully you can see from those numbers that we've taken a data -detailed approach, bringing the power of granular data to the supply chain and moving supplies based on what you would call burden of disease and need. if i could start out by not just going through the numbers at the beginning, but talking to the community of health advocates, to the community that works on the social determinants of disease and the communities of historic black colleges and universities. we really need to improve messaging, and we are asking them to help us increase the messaging around this. we don't want to give the impression that the african-american community is more susceptible to the virus. we don't have any data that suggests that. what our data suggest is that they are more susceptible to more difficult and severe disease and poor outcomes. we really need to make sure that every household is aware of what it is going to take to protect the individuals in that household that have pre-existing

i talked to a medicare administrator seema verma about this, too.e agrees that hospitals are hurting and need help. steve: dr. siegel, you are always looking at the numbers. you know, as we look at the number of people who are infected, have been tested and tested positively and then you look at the number of people who have died, there is some scrutiny now about the number of people who have died and it being blamed on the coronavirus u i was reading about somebody who had coronavirus but died of a drug overdose. that's considered a covid death. and then there was somebody who was involved in a head trauma accident died was never tested and, yet, another covid death. can you explain how they are usersing that? >> you know, steve, that's a great question. this has gone on with pandemics throughout the centuries. 118 spanish flu half the deaths were listed pneumonia. they were probably not due to the spanish flu. i want to say something here though a lot of times we don't have the ability to test for covid-19 in the hospital or the test comes back ne