One of my people came up to me and said, Mr President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia That didn't work out too well.

They couldn't do it.

They tried the impeachment hoax.

That was on a perfect conversation.

And this is their new hoax.

President Trump in South Carolina on Friday night night.

Weird.

I'm joined by one of his point people to fight the virus.

The Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Cesar.

Mr.

Secretary, thank you for joining us this morning.

I know the president said he was talking about the Democratsresponse there, but is it appropriate for him in any way to be using the word hoax in the context of this crisis?

Well, he's talking about the partisan sniping that we're seeing.

If that's just, it's unnecessary.

We don't need to have this made a political issue.

We're in a public health crisis here.

We need to all be banding together, and you know, we're working on this emergency supplemental bill in Congress and we're getting bipartisan support on that site.

I've got a lot of hope that we can get things back to us all working together on this and most important thing is that we're all communicating to the American people so they understand what we're dealing with.

That that the risk to any individual Americans.

Lowe, that we've been working to keep it low.

We're going to see more cases were seeing some community spreading, but they've got the finest public health system in the world in the finest public health experts who are on it.

This is what we d'oh.

I want to put up the CDC definition of a pandemic up on the screen right now.

It says the pandemic refers to an epidemic that has spread over several countries or continents, usually affecting a large number of people.

You know, the virus is in at least 60 countries right now, every continent except Antarctica, more than 87,000 cases, almost 3000 deaths.

That certainly does seem to meet the CDC definition of a pandemic.

You know, I'm gonna leave it to the World Health Organization to decide if we're there, but we're not changing anything that we're doing because of whether somebody labels it this that or the other.

We're following the science.

The evidence in the epidemiology.

We wouldn't do one thing differently if somebody slapped that word on it.

You mentioned the transmission.

Now, inside communities, we have this acute problem in Washington state.

Right now, they've declared a state of emergency the first death and the real concern there that the virus may have been spreading for weeks.

In your judgment, has that been happening?

Are they doing enough to stop it?

How many cases are we likely to see there?

Well, we've always believed and we've said publicly from day one that we would see more cases that we would see spreading here in the United States.

And this is exactly what we've been predicting all along were deployed out there with the state of Washington and local authorities.

They've got really one of the best public health departments in the country in the world, in the state of Washington and King County.

There in Seattle, we're working closely.

We're trying to discern How did these individuals contract the novel Corona virus?

We're ramping up testing, you know, we now have 75,000 tests available out there in the United States and over the next week that will expand radically on top of the 75,000 test available.

We just heard Vice President Biden criticized the administration for for the slowness in getting that testing fully operational.

Why has it taken so long?

Well, we've already tested over 3600 people here in the United States.

I'm not sure what he meant when he said there's no lab kit because we with historic speed the CDC developed a lab test, regretted emergency use authorization to it and FDA.

We promulgated it out in the country.

There was 1/3 element to the initial test because we do believe in quality testing.

Here in the United States, there was 1/3 element to the test that was specific to all Corona viruses.

Some labs were unable to replicate and validate their own performance on that.

CDC never had trouble with that.

So we've always been open for business.

C.

D.

C.

For testing.

We've had full throughput.

We've had no delays on testing there, but as of Wednesday, we authorized over 40 labs to use the test with only the 1st 2 elements of that specific to the novel Corona virus.

Yesterday morning, we've authorized homebrew test by certified clinical labs around the country.

As I said, we now have 75 the ability to test 75,000 people in the field at this moment, and that will increase radically over the next couple of weeks.

Is it time for for broader surveillance testing in communities taking in people who may not be showing symptoms?

Well, right now, it's important that we test people who have any type of respiratory illness, respiratory symptoms that is unidentified.

And that's why we we a week ago.

Headaches are actually a week and 1/2 ago expanded to six key cities Seattle, San Francisco L.

A.

Honolulu, Chicago in New York that if anyone's tested for flu, they also will be tested for novel Corona virus.

That is a key part of our of our emergency supplementals.

I want to expand that kind of surveillance testing nationwide as soon as Congress gets us the money that will be out there throughout the country.

Tom Bossert, who is President Trump's first homeland security adviser and led the effort to develop by preparing a strategy when he was there, has called this Corona spread an iceberg.

He says we're only seeing a small number of cases because of its asymptomatic spread.

Is it time to consider more aggressive communitywide measures like closures and other measures like that?

Well, Georgia, you are correct that with asymptomatic spreading, which we've seen some evidence of but not the major driver, Dr Fauci has said with respiratory illnesses, you'll see sometimes asymptomatic spreading, but that that is very, very odd.

If that were to be the driver of large scale infection, you really need to just focus on the individuals that are symptomatic, and you do the classic blocking and tackling a public health, identify cases, get them diagnosed, get him treated, get him isolated and then do the contact tracing and then engage in as you just talked about the types of community mitigation measures that bring this down.

Slow contact with individuals, social distancing, the full armamentarium.

But it really does depend on set on symptomatic presentation.

Should Americans be prepared for a dramatic increase in cases and more disruption to their daily lives?

I think it's very important that we treat the American people like adults and explain to them that we don't know where this will go, that we will see more cases that we will see continued community spreading in the United States as we're seeing around the world How big that gets?

We do not know, but we have the most advanced public health system and surveillance system in the world.

We're actively working on a vaccine.

We're actively working on therapeutics.

The diagnostic is out in the field, and we're gonna work toe to protect the American people with every tool that we've got.

Mr.

Secretary, Thank you for your time this morning.

Thank you, George.

Hi, everyone.

George Stephanopoulos here.

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