Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing | Eastern North Carolina Now

Press Release:

Rose Garden  •  Washington D.C.  •  April 27  •  5:38 P.M. EDT
    THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you. Today I'd like to provide you with an update in our war against the coronavirus. Thanks to our comprehensive strategy and extraordinary devotion to our citizens - we've 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, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Nashville, Indianapolis, and St. Louis are all stable and declining. All parts of the country are either in good shape, getting better. In all cases, getting better. And we're seeing very little that we're going to look at as a superseding hotspot. Things are moving along. Really, a horrible situation that we've been confronted with, but they're moving along.

    As we express our gratitude for these hard-fought gains, however, we continue to mourn with thousands of families across the country whose loved ones have been stolen from us by the invisible enemy. We grieve by their side as one family - this great American family. And we do grieve.

    We also stand in solidarity with the thousands of Americans who are ill and waging a brave fight against the virus. We're doing everything in our power to heal the sick and to gradually re-open 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.

    Ensuring the health of our economy is vital to ensuring the health of our nation. These goals work in tandem. They work side by side.

    It's clear that our aggressive strategy to slow the spread has been working and is saving 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 has built more than 11,000 extra beds, shipped or delivered hundreds of millions of pieces of personal protective equipment, as you know - in fact, some of the people here are going to be talking about it; some of our greatest executives - some of the greatest anywhere in the world - and distributed over 10,000 ventilators.

    And we now have, in a very short period of time - many have been delivered, and hundreds of thousands are being built. And frankly, every governor has more ventilators right now than they know what to do with. They're actually shipping them to different locations, and we're shipping some to our allies and others throughout the world, because we have ventilators like - the job that they've done in getting this very complex piece of equipment built is actually incredible. You don't hear about ventilators anymore except in a positive way.

    We've launched the most ambitious testing effort, likewise, on Earth. The United States has now conducted more than 5.4 million tests - nearly double the number tested in any other country. More than twice as much as any other country. Think of that.

    Moments ago, I came from a meeting with some of our nation's largest retailers, including Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, and Kroger. We're joined by leaders of those great companies. And we also have with us the leaders from the world's top medical diagnostics companies and suppliers: Thermo Fisher, LabCorp, Quest, U.S. Cotton, and the American Clinical Laboratory Association. These are great - great companies.

    These private-sector leaders, along with others such as Roche, Abbott, Becton Dickinson, Hologic, and Cephe- Cepheid, have been exceptional partners in an unprecedented drive to expand the states' capabilities and our country's capabilities. The job they've 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've done. I want to thank Roche. And in particular, those two have really stepped forward. Abbott with a five-minute test that people can take, and in five minutes they know what the - what the answer is.

    I'd like to ask, if I could, the executives of these great companies - and they are - they have really helped us a lot over the last 45-day period. We're talking about a 45-day period when many of us met. And since then, what Walmart and the others have done has been nothing short of amazing.

    So I just want to ask them to come forward and say a few words about their company. Plus, they're going to make a big contribution to our country.


    Please. Come forward, please. Thank you.

    MR. RUSCKOWSKI: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for - all of you for being here today. And what we'd like to talk about is the progress we've made.

    The last time we were here was March 13th, and we've made tremendous progress. And none of that progress could be made without the 47,000 people at Quest Diagnostics that are working around the clock, working up the test and running the test and delivering the results that we need.

    As far as results, we've made tremendous progress. We are currently, at Quest Diagnostics, testing about 50,000 tests per day. We've 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 that we do today.

    We have also brought up serological testing. We started that this past week, and by the end of May, we'll be close to 250,000 a day, about 7,000 a month. So you put those two numbers together, and it's about 10 million tests by the end of May that we'll be doing at Quest Diagnostics.

    We're doing that also in a quicker way. Turnaround times were somewhat of an issue in the early days. We've reduced that to one to two days. Our turnaround time for people in beds - hospital beds - is less than 24 hours. And we're doing that in the same way we've done it with the FDA and with CLIA, delivering the quality that you all expect. And convenience will improve, as well, with convenient solutions that we'll be able to swab individuals more easily and also deliver to consumer - the ability to have consumers choose a test online with a telehealth provider.

    So with that, I'd like to offer my colleague the podium as well.

    THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

    MR. SCHECHTER: Mr. President, 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 possibly can for the American public and to turn those tests around as quickly as possible.

    Just 45 days ago, we said we could do several thousand tests a day. We can now do 60,000 tests a 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 now that are much smaller than the original ones that we originally launched with, but we also have the Pixel by LabCorp at-home test. That test, right now, is for healthcare workers on the frontline and first responders, but we will be rolling that out much more broadly over the coming weeks, and we're going to roll it out with absolutely no upfront cost for the individual consumers.

    At the same time, we are building our capacity for serology testing, and we can currently do about 50,000 today, and we'll be able to do several hundred thousand per day by the middle of May. And we're going to be working with the retailers - our colleagues that are here today - to help them as they expand their testing capabilities across the entire country.

    And lastly, Mr. President, we have a rather large drug development business, and we will continue to work with our colleagues in the pharmaceutical and the biotech - biotechnology industry to ensure we do everything we possibly can to enroll clinical trials fast so that we can get new treatments and potential vaccines.

    Thank you.

    ...

    Read the full transcript HERE.


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